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{{Template}} Library of the World's Best Literature (1897) in 46 volumes edited by Charles Dudley Warner.

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VEM AOBK YORK NEW BRARY CHRIST AS A BOY IN THE TEMPLE. Photogravure from a painting by Hoffman.

LIBRARY OF THE WORLD'S BEST LITERATURE ANCIENT AND MODERN CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER EDITOR HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE GEORGE HENRY WARNER ASSOCIATE EDITORS Special Edition THIRTY-ONE VOLUMES VOL. XXI. NEW YORK THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY PUBLIC 1 TIBBYBA 254672 ASTOL. TILLEN ( R COPYRIGHT 1897 BY R. S. PEALE AND J. A. HILL All rights reserved THE WERNER COMPANY PRINTERS BINDERS THE ADVISORY COUNCIL CRAWFORD H. TOY, A. M. , LL. D. , Professor of Hebrew, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Cambridge, Mass. THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY, LL. D. , L. H. D. , Professor of English in the Sheffield Scientific School of YALE UNIVERSITY, New Haven, Conn. WILLIAM M. SLOANE, PH. D. , L. H. D. , Professor of History and Political Science, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, Princeton, N. J. BRANDER MATTHEWS, A. M. , LL. B. , Professor of Literature, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, New York City. JAMES B. ANGELL, LL. D. , President of the UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, Ann Arbor, Mich. WILLARD FISKE, A. M. , PH. D. , Late Professor of the Germanic and Scandinavian Languages and Literatures, CORNELL UNIVERSITY, Ithaca, N. Y. EDWARD S. HOLDEN, A. M., LL, D. , Director of the Lick Observatory, and Astronomer, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Berkeley, Cal. ALCÉE FORTIER, LIT. D. , Professor of the Romance Languages, WILLIAM P. TRENT, M. A. , TULANE UNIVERSITY, New Orleans, La. Dean of the Department of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of English and History, UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH, Sewanee, Tenn. PAUL SHOREY, PH. D. , Professor of Greek and Latin Literature, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, Chicago, Hil. WILLIAM T. HARRIS, LL. D., United States Commissioner of Education, MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN, A. M. , LL. D.. Professor of Literature in the CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA, Washington, D. C BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D. C. AOBK MEM V FRANÇOIS RABELAIS TABLE OF CONTENTS VOLUME XXI LIVED 1495-1553 PAGE I 2001 BY HENRY BÉRENGER The Childhood of Gargantua (Besant's ' Readings from Rabelais ' ) The Education of Gargantua ( same) The Abbey of Thelema (same) JEAN RACINE 1639-1699 12027 BY FREDERICK MORRIS WARREN The Rivals (' Bajazet') The Appeal of Andromache (' Andromaque ') The Confession of Phædra (' Phèdre ' ) ALFRED RAMBAUD 1842- Halting Steps toward Democracy ( History of Civilization in France ') French Governmental Experiments ( History of Contemporary Civilization in France ') Russian Expansion West and South ( General History ' ) : The Greek Project of Catharine II.; Poland and Kosciuszko Benefits to Germany from French Invasions ( Germany under Napoleon, 1804-1811 ') Civil Life in France during the Middle Ages ( History of French Civilization ' ) French Medical Science during the Middle Ages (same) The Middle Ages (same) : Character of their Civilization ; The Close of the Middle Ages 12041 ALLAN RAMSAY The Gentle Shepherd vi LIVED 1686-1758 PAGE 12061 An Thou were My Ain Thing The Highland Lassie Bessy Bell and Mary Gray A Sang Lochaber No More LEOPOLD VON RANKE 1795-1886 The Fall of Strafford ( History of England ') The Rise of the Jesuits in Germany ( History of the Popes of Rome ') The Last Years of Queen Johanna ( History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations ') The Swiss Army in Italy in 1513 : and the Battle of Novara (same) From The History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations ' THOMAS BUCHANAN READ Drifting Sheridan's Ride CHARLES READE 1822-1872 The Closing Scene. Inez 12074 12094 1814-1884 12103 Viscount and Lower Classes ( Christie Johnstone ') In the Green- Room ( Peg Woffington ') Extract from a Sixteenth- Century Letter ( The Cloister and the Hearth ' ) . Monk and Father (same) ERNEST RENAN 1823-1892 12149 BY FERDINAND BRUNETIÈRE Brother and Sister ( My Sister Henriette ') To the Pure Soul of My Sister Henriette ( Dedication to the Life of Jesus ') Motives and Conduct ( Recollections of My Youth ') The Share of the Semitic People in the History of Civilization (Inaugural Address on Assuming the Chair of Semitic Languages) The Persistence of the Celtic Race ( La Poésie des Races Celtiques ' ) FRITZ REUTER 1810-1874 The Old Parson's Death ( My Apprenticeship on the Farm ' ) The Miller and the Justice (' In the Year ' 13 ' ) 12195 vii LIVED JAMES FORD RHODES 1848- Daniel Webster ( History of the United States ' ) Webster's Death (same) Improvement in American Health (same) American Manners in 1850 (same) PAGE 12206 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 1689-1761 12225 Pamela Immured by her Lover ( Pamela ') Miss Byron's Rescue from Abduction, by Sir Charles Grandison ( Sir Charles Grandison ' ) JEAN PAUL RICHTER 1763-1825 12247 BY E. P. EVANS Extra Leaf on Consolation ( Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces ') The New-Year's Night of a Miserable Man From First Flower Piece ' Maxims from Richter's Works JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 1852- 12265 Away A Song When She Comes Home Nothin' to Say A Life Lesson Knee-Deep in June ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE 1838- 12273 Memoirs ') My Witch's- Caldron ( Chapters from Some Unwritten My Father's Mother (same) Bricks and Ivy (' Old Kensington ') Dutch Tiles (same) CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS Strayed The Unsleeping An Epitaph for a Husbandman 1860- T2295 The Little Field of Peace Marsyas The Flight of the Geese Beside the Winter Sea The Deserted City FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON 1816-1853 The Early Development of Christ ( Sermons Preached in Trinity Chapel ') The Universal Nature of Christ ( same) 12305 AGNES MARY FRANCES ROBINSON Tuscan Cypress LA ROCHEFOUCAULD Maxims viii LIVED PAGE 1857- 12315 Red May 1613-1686 12320 Reflections : On Society ; On Conversation ÉDOUARD ROD 1857- 12335 BY GRACE KING Marriage ( The Sense of Life ' ) Paternity (same) SAMUEL ROGERS 1763-1855 12345 Ginevra From the Pleasures of Memory' : Opening Lines ; Closing Lines From Table-Talk ' ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE BY HARRIET WATERS PRESTON Annius Florus : Roses 12357 The Emperor Hadrian : To his Soul From the ' Pervigilium Veneris ' (Author Unknown) Calpurnius Siculus : The Rustic in the Amphitheatre Decimus Magnus Ausonius : Idyll of the Roses ; A Mother's Epitaph Claudius Claudianus : The Bereavement of Ceres ( Rape of Proserpine ' ) ; Invocation to Victory ( Consulate of Stilicho ') Claudius Rutilius Numatianus : Prologue to the ' Itinerarium ' Anicius Severinus Boëthius : The Government of the World ( Consolation of Philosophy ' ) ; The Hymn of Philosophy (same) PIERRE RONSARD BY KATHARINE HILLARD Sonnet : To Angelette His Lady's Tomb Roses To Cassandra 1524-1585 12373 Song: To Marie A Madrigal : To Astræa Good Counsel Ronsard to his Mistress ix THEODORE Roosevelt LIVED 1858- The Indians of the Northwest ( Winning of the West ') Backwoodsmen and Other Early Types (same) PAGE 12384 CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI 1830-1894 12397 BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE Hope is Like a Harebell Dream-Land

• A Birthday

Remember After Death Echo Song Rest Up-Hill The Three Enemies Old and New Year Ditties Amor Mundi Life Hidden Whitsun Eve Heaven Overarches The Heart Knoweth its Own Bitterness DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 1828-1882 12411 BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE The Blessed Damozel The Double Betrayal ( Rose Mary ' ) The Second- Sight ( The King's Tragedy ') The Card-Dealer Sudden Light The Woodspurge The Sea-Limits The Cloud Confines Song of the Bower Sonnets from The House of Life ' : Introductory Sonnet ; Lovesight ; Known in Vain ; The Hill Summit ; The Choice ; Lost Days ; A Superscription ; On Refusal of Aid between Nations ; For A Venetian Pastoral ' by Giorgione, in the Louvre JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU BY ÉDOUARD ROD Foreword ( The Social Contract ') The People (same) From ' Émile › On the Uses of Travel (same) In the Isle of St. Peter ( Rêveries ') 1712-1778 12435 X FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT The Hour-Glass of Ashes Amaryllis Sad Spring ( In Memory of Agnes ') The Sun and the Brook LIVED 1788-1866 Nature More than Science Greediness Punished The Patriot's Lament Barbarossa The Drum Gone in the Wind PAGE 12457 The Dying Flower Told by a Brahmin GIOVANNI DOMENICO RUFFINI 1807-1881 12471 The Idyl at a Close ( Dr. Antonio ') JALAL- AD- DIN RŪMI 1207-1273 12487 BY A. V. WILLIAMS JACKSON The Song of the Reed, or Divine Affections ( ' Masnavi ' ) The Merchant and the Parrot (same) The Chinese and Roman Artists ; or, the Mirror of the Heart JOHAN LUDVIG RUNEBERG 1804-1877 BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE 12495 Ensign Stål The Swan The Village Girl ( Fänrik Ståls Sägner') The Old Man's Return The Work-Girl My Life Idyll Counsels JOHN RUSKIN 1819- 12509 BY JOHN C. VAN DYKE On Womanhood ( Sesame and Lilies ') The Uses of Ornament (' The Seven Lamps of Architecture ') Landscapes of the Poets ( Lectures on Architecture and Painting ') The Throne ( Stones of Venice ' ) Description of St. Mark's (same) Calais Spire ( Modern Painters ' ) The Fribourg District, Switzerland (same) The Mountain Gloom (same) Description of Nature ( same) Leaves Motionless (same) Cloud-Balancings (same) xi WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL A Storm and a Rescue ( Wreck of the Grosvenor ' ) RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY LIVED PAGE 1844- 12563 12583 BY PRINCE SERGE WOLKONSKY Aleksandr Sergyevich Poushkin ( 1799-1837) : The Black Shawl ; The Rose ; To ; My Studies ; Caucasus ; The Bard ; A Monument ; Ya Perezhil Svoï Zhelanya; The Free Life of the Bird ; The Angel Mikhail Yurevich Lermontov ( 1814-41 ) : The Prisoner ; The Cloud ; The Cup of Life ; The Angel M. Y. Nekrassov ( 1821-77) : The Russian Soldier ; The Prophet Vasili Andreyevich Joukovsky ( 1783-1852) : Happiness in Slumber; The Coming of Spring ; Night Ivan Ivanovich Kozlov ( 1779-1840) : The Vesper Bells Fedor Ivanovich Tutchev ( 1803-73) : Spring Waters ; Sunrise ; Evening; The Leaves Aleksei Stepanovich Homiakoff ( 1804-1860) : Russian Song Apollon Nikolayvich Maykov ( 1821- ?) : The Easter Kiss ; The Alpine Glacier ; The Kiss Refused Count Aleksei Konstantinovich Tolstoy ( 1817-75) : Believe It Not ; Renewal Yakov Petrovich Polonsky ( 1820- ?) : On Skobelev A. Fet (Afanasi Afanasyevich Sheashin) ( 1820-93 ) : Tryst; A Russian Scene Aleksei Nikolaevich Apukhtin ( 1841- ?) : Folk- Songs Anonymous: Sorrow

LIST OF PORTRAITS IN VOL. XXI Jean Racine François Rabelais Allan Ramsay Leopold von Ranke Thomas Buchanan Read Charles Reade Ernest Renan Fritz Reuter James Ford Rhodes Samuel Richardson Jean Paul Richter James Whitcomb Riley Anne Thackeray Ritchie Charles G. D. Roberts Frederick William Robertson La Rochefoucauld Samuel Rogers Pierre Ronsard Full page Full page Vignette Vignette Vignette Vignette Full page Vignette Vignette Vignette Full page Vignette Vignette Vignette Vignette Full page Vignette Vignette Vignette Vignette Theodore Roosevelt Christina Georgina Rossetti Dante Gabriel Rossetti Jean Jacques Rousseau Friedrich Rückert Johan Ludvig Runeberg John Ruskin William Clark Russell Full page Full page Vignette Vignette Full page Vignette

RABELAIS .

12001 FRANÇOIS RABELAIS (1495 ?-1553) BY HENRY BÉRENGER RANÇOIS RABELAIS was born toward the end of the fifteenth century: in 1483 according to some, in 1495 according to others. The second hypothesis accords better with most of the important facts of his life . The chronological legend would have you believe that he was born the same year as Martin Luther. While Luther, however, was born in a peasant's hut at Eisleben, in the shadow of the Gothic towers and the forests of dreamy Germany, François Rabelais was born in an apothecary's shop or the inn of a publican, at Chinon, on the banks of the sluggish Loire, among the songs of drinkers which awoke him in his cradle. At the threshold of the sixteenth century these two powerful and popular geniuses, both vowed to the monastic state, still half sheathed in the past, escape from the convent to create the future. Rabelais studied first at the convent of Seville ; then at the convent of the Franciscans of La Baumette, near Angers, where at first he was novice. In 1509 he went to finish his novitiate at the convent of Fontenay-le-Comte, where he became priest about 1519, and lived until 1523. Thus his early youth was passed among those rich and gracious landscapes of Touraine, where Honoré de Balzac also was to be born, and to grow up three centuries later, with the same exuberant and magnificent talents of reason and imagination as his great elder and compatriot, François Rabelais. It was The first convents in which young Rabelais studied were prisons rather than refuges. The mendicant monks among whom he dwelt at La Baumette and at Fontenay-le-Comte were ignorant, sensual, and superstitious beings, who detested the intellectual life. in such an environment, however, but secretly, that Rabelais acquired that passion for study which never quitted him . As long as he studied only Latin and the old French authors, he was unmolested. But one day they discovered some Greek books in his cell. This was a case of heresy. The Greek books were confiscated, and Rabelais was forced to flee in order to escape the stake or the oubliettes. The Pope, Clement VII . , was more liberal than these monks, and in 1524 he authorized Rabelais to enter the order of St. Benedict. XXI-751 I 2002 FRANÇOIS RABELAIS Just at this time he became regular canon of the abbey of Maillezais. He remained there only a short time. He then passed to the secular clergy, and was attached to the household of Guy d'Estissac, bishop of Maillezais. He seems to have lived there very happily. Soon afterward the taste for travel seized him. He visited France, and studied at her chief universities. On the 16th of September, 1530, we know that he took his first registry at the Faculty of Medicine of Montpellier. He received all the degrees of that University, and rapidly achieved a great medical reputation. He was appointed physician of the great hospital of Lyons in 1532, and exercised that function until February 1534. During the same period he published 'Gargantua and the first book of Pantagruel. ' In 1534 he left Lyons to accompany as physician the bishop of Paris, Jean du Bellay, uncle of Joachim, the celebrated poet of the Pleiade, — who was sent to Rome as ambassador extraordinary of Francis I. to the Holy See, from which mission he was to win the cardinal's cap. He possessed a noble and liberal spirit, and always protected Rabelais against the rage of his enemies. Rabelais followed him again to Rome in 1536–1537 . Thanks to the protection of the Cardinal du Bellay, Pope Paul III . granted him absolution for his apostasy (that is, for his change of costume) , and moreover permitted him to become a Benedictine again, and to exercise the profession of medicine. Strong in these two authorizations, Rabelais took at the Faculty of Montpellier, where he had been received doctor in 1537, a course in anatomy. Later he was consulting physician in different cities , - Narbonne, Castres, and Lyons. His faithful patron, the Cardinal du Bellay, who was also abbot of St. Maur as well as bishop of Paris, had him appointed canon of the abbey of St. Maur- les- Fossés. Not being bound to reside there, he continued to travel. He was in Poitou ; then in his dear native land of Touraine ; then again in Piedmont with the vice-king Guillaume de Langey (brother of the Cardinal du Bellay), where he continued to act as physician. In 1545 he obtained from the King, Francis I. , permission to publish the third book of his work. After the death of the King he was in great anxiety ; for the Cardinal du Bellay was not in favor with the new King, Henry II . But he found new protectors in the houses of Châtillon and of Lorraine, who recalled him from Metz and from Rome, where he had gone, in a measure to find refuge. In 1550 he was allowed to publish his fourth book, which he dedicated to the Cardinal de Châtillon. The same year he was appointed parish priest of Meudon by Cardinal du Bellay. We do not know whether Rabelais exercised his priestly functions. Everything indicates that he did, however, for he possessed a practical spirit desirous of action . But at the beginning of the year 1552 he resigned his two charges, just as FRANÇOIS RABELAIS 12003 his fourth book appeared. Doubtless he wished to be more independent, unless he simply quitted these too exacting functions on account of his health ; indeed, he died in 1553. The fifth book of his work, part of which seems apocryphal, was not published until 1562. Considering this life as a whole, it appears that of a laborious as well as daring genius, and of one independent as well as able. Man of free studies and free pleasures, Rabelais was above all the enemy of whatever constrained him. Action was life to him. On coming into the world, he found about him all kinds of fetters : first those of the convent, then those of the Sorbonne, and later those, of Parliament; finally those of fanatics, both papists and Huguenots. Rabelais never posed as apostle or martyr, but far more as a shrewd and witty dilettante, whose device, framed by himself, was - Primo vivere, deinde philosophari. In order to live, he sought protectors. Like Jean de Meung before him, and Molière after him, he relied upon royalty. He went to Rome to solicit the Pope. He obtained protection against the monks from the high dignitaries of the Church. And having once taken these precautions against the malice and stupidity of subalterns, he composed, at his own leisure and convenience , one of the most vehement and most revolutionary works ever directed by human thought against the social institutions among which it struggles. The work of Rabelais is divided into five books, of which the first is entitled ' La Vie Très-Horrifique du Grand Gargantua, Père de Pantagruel ' (The Astounding Life of the Great Gargantua, Father of Pantagruel) ; the second, ' Pantagruel, Roi des Dipsodes, avec ses Faits et Prouesses Épouvantables ' (Pantagruel, King of the Drunkards, with his Heroic Acts and Achievements) ; while the last three narrate ' Les Faits et Dicts Heroïques du Bon Pantagruel ' (The Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Good Pantagruel). This work was written at different times during a period of twenty years, and among all kinds of journeys and occupations, from 1532 to 1553. Therefore those who look upon it as a work composed once for all, issuing harmoniously from the artist's brain like Minerva all armed issuing from the brain of Jupiter, are entirely wrong. It is rather a Gothic monument like the cathedrals of the same period, to which have been added one after another a portal, a tower, a gable, a gallery, rose-windows, gargoyles, with no thought of unity other than that of the general inspiration. Strange monument built of mud and of marble, bathed in shadow and in sunshine, decked with a thousand monstrous forms, with riddles and logogriphs, and upon which the artist has carved innumerable sacred or grotesque personages, angels, beasts, monks, maidens, wise men and fools, devils and phantoms ! But this monument is already illuminated by the classic glimmers of the Renaissance ; rays of ancient wisdom penetrate it, and reveal here and 12004 FRANÇOIS RABELAIS there passages worthy of a place beside the works of Homer, of Plato, or of Plutarch. The religion of human reason and of natural beauty ennobles this architecture, apparently so barbarous and monstrous. An encyclopædic genius, stationed on the boundary between two epochs, two civilizations, and two countries, between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, between the north and the south, -Rabelais is the heir of the free-singers, of the bold story- tellers and farce-lovers of past time, from Maître Renart to the Basoche. In this immense monument still resound all the echoes of the Gallic spirit, and already vibrates the alarum of the classic spirit. The abbey of Thélème is vast enough to harbor at one time Plato, St. Paul, Virgil, Socrates, Jean de Meung, Patelin, François Villon ; and also those macaronic poets of Italy whose unctuous joviality and gigantomachia had so greatly diverted him during his stay at Rome. Rabelais combined in his work all these inspirations, as he blended in his style all the dialects of Picardy, Normandy, Touraine, Champagne, Provence, etc. ' Gargantua' and ' Pantagruel' are, under a diverting and fantastic form, the epic of the sixteenth century, as the Iliad and Odyssey were the epic of ancient Greece ; as the ' Divine Comedy ' was the epic of medieval Catholicism ; as the ' Comédie Humaine ' of Balzac is the epic of modern democracy. Châteaubriand was right in defining Rabelais as " a mother-genius " ; for he has conceived and given life to most of the great French geniuses who followed him. In a tragic and tumultuous age, filled with public calamities, with the follies of royal ambition, with the mania for military conquests, with the fury of intellectual controversies, with the nascent rage for civil wars, with the Parliament's sentences to death, with the decrees and the fagots of the Sorbonne, Rabelais attempted to restore his contemporaries to mental health by making them laugh at their own maladies. The powerful mocker cast such ridicule upon bad kings (Picrochole) , bad priests (Janotus de Bragmardo), bad magistrates (Grippemihaud, etc. ) , all kinds of fanatics (Coresme- Prenant, Autyrhysis), that he almost destroyed their infernal power by the mere force of his genial buffoonery. And he did not content himself merely with destroying ; he constructed. He was as sublime an idealist as he was a profound, sometimes coarse, realist. He invented the succession of good kings (Grangousier, Gargantua, Pantagruel), he created the type of the good educator (Ponocrates), of the good monk (Brother Jean des Entommeures) , he dreamed the Utopia of the new society, more tolerant, more generous, happier than the old ; and over the ruins accumulated by his terrible and avenging irony he built the abbey of Thélème, -that is, of Free Will. On the front he inscribed, " Do what thou wilt ; " thus answering the old cry of the Dominican Izarn FRANÇOIS RABELAIS 12005 at the stake of the Albigeois , " Believe as you do, and you shall be burned. " Rabelais is a powerful emancipator of modern thought, and the natural ancestor of the Voltaires and the Diderots. But he is at the same time a great and incomparable artist. He had the gift of creating types and the power of creating a language. A key to Rabelais has been made and remade twenty times : the commentators have striven to attach a historic name to every character. According to the usual opinion, Grangousier is Louis XII.; Gargantua, Francis I .; Pantagruel, Henry II.; Picrochole, either Maximilien Sforza, Ferdinand of Aragon, or Charles V.; Brother Jean, the Cardinal du Bellay; Panurge, the Cardinal of Lorraine, or the author himself. It singularly lessens and lowers Rabelais to reduce him to the rôle of a contemporary portrait painter ; and thus doing, one understands nothing of the essence or the scope of his work. The truth is that Rabelais's imagination transformed the matter upon which it worked, brought out its essential features, the figures worthy of preservation , -and composed those imperishable types, mixtures of fancy and truth, which, rooted in their own time, reach to the most distant future. And Rabelais is not only an epic genius : he is also the first of the great comic poets of France. Before Corneille and Molière, no author possessed to such a degree the sense of action, the art of scenic effect, and that of writing dialogue. The meeting of Pantagruel and the Limousin student, the visit to Rondibilis, the bargain with Dindenant, the consultation of Panurge with the philosopher Trouillogan, are scenes of the most living comedy. - Finally, his style, like his thought, is magnificent in contrasts, in exuberance, in fancy and profoundness, lights and shadows. It has the opulence of Rubens, the irony of Callot, the sublimity of Rembrandt. The sentence, capricious and unrestrained, is curiously chiseled, clear, and finished ; it is embellished and embroidered at pleasure, like the ornamental stone of the Gothic monuments under the hands of the great artists of the Middle Ages. The vocabulary, one of unequaled wealth , is a heap of diamonds and of waste matter for the future to sort out. The syntax is a curious one : complex, multiform, sheathed in Latin, not quite emancipated from dialect, but already singularly flexible, agile, undulating ; realistic or lyrical, brutal or winged, at his will . Finally, it is French language forged and shaped from pure Latin and Romance metal, with great blows of the hammer, by the first and most vigorous of its workers of genius. Every great French writer proceeds from Rabelais, as every great Italian writer proceeds from Dante. Such is this strong and jovial figure, both comic and serious, like the spectacle of life itself. Great philosopher, great artist, and great author, Rabelais compels the admiration of the centuries — in spite .. 12006 FRANÇOIS RABELAIS of his masks, voluntarily coarse and jocose -as the first complete. type of French genius ; of the genius of tolerance, of liberty, of generous irony, which since Rabelais, and from century to century, has given us Molière, Voltaire and Diderot, Balzac and Hugo. Henry Bérengen THE CHILDHOOD OF GARGANTUA From The Inestimable Life of the Great Gargantua ARGANTUA, from three years to five, was nourished and inGARstructed in all proper discipline by the commandment of his father, and spent that time like the other little children of the country, -that is, in drinking, eating, and sleeping ; in eating, sleeping, and drinking ; and in sleeping, drinking, and eating. Still he wallowed in the mire, blackened his face , trod down his shoes at heel ; at the flies he did oftentimes yawn, and willingly ran after the butterflies, the empire whereof belonged to his father. He sharpened his teeth with a slipper, washed his hands with his broth, combed his head with a bowl, sat down between two stools and came to the ground, covered himself with a wet sack, drank while eating his soup, ate his cake without bread, would bite in laughing, laugh in biting, hide himself in the water for fear of rain, go cross, fall into dumps, look demure, skin the fox, say the ape's paternoster, return to his sheep, turn the sows into the hay, beat the dog before the lion, put the cart before the horse, scratch where he did not itch, shoe the grasshopper, tickle himself to make himself laugh, know flies in milk, scrape paper, blur parchment, then run away, pull at the kid's leather, reckon without his host, beat the bushes without catching the birds, and thought that bladders were lanterns. He always looked a gift-horse in the mouth, hoped to catch larks if ever the heavens should fall, and made a virtue of necessity. Every morning his father's puppies ate out of the dish with him, and he with them. He would bite their ears, and they would scratch his nose. The good man Grangousier said to Gargantua's governesses : " Philip, King of Macedon , knew the wit of his son Alexander, FRANÇOIS RABELAIS 12007 by his skillful managing of a horse ; for the said horse was so fierce and unruly that none durst adventure to ride him, because he gave a fall to all his riders, breaking the neck of this man, the leg of that, the brain of one, and the jawbone of another. This by Alexander being considered, one day in the hippodrome (which was a place appointed for the walking and running of horses) he perceived that the fury of the horse proceeded merely from the fear he had of his own shadow ; whereupon, getting on his back he ran him against the sun, so that the shadow fell behind, and by that means tamed the horse and brought him to his hand. Whereby his father recognized the divine judgment that was in him, and caused him most carefully to be instructed by Aristotle, who at that time was highly renowned above all the philosophers of Greece. After the same manner I tell you, that as regards my son Gargantua, I know that his understanding doth participate of some divinity, - so keen, subtle, profound, and clear do I find him ; and if he be well taught, he will attain to a sovereign degree of wisdom. Therefore will I commit him to some learned man, to have him indoctrinated according to his capacity, and will spare no cost. " Whereupon they appointed him a great sophister-doctor, called Maître Tubal Holophernes, who taught him his A B C so well that he could say it by heart backwards ; and about this he was five years and three months. Then read he to him Donat, Facet, Theodolet, and Alanus in parabolis. About this he was thirteen years, six months, and two weeks. But you must remark that in the mean time he did learn to write in Gothic characters, and that he wrote all his books, -for the art of printing was not then in use. After that he read unto him the book ' De Modis Significandi, ' with the commentaries of Hurtebise , of Fasquin, of Tropditeux, of Gaulehaut, of John le Veau, of Billonio, of Brelingandus, and a rabble of others ; and herein he spent more than eighteen years and eleven months, and was so well versed in it that at the examination he would recite it by heart backwards, and did sometimes prove on his fingers to his mother quod de modis significandi non erat scientia. Then did he read to him the ' Compost,' on which he spent sixteen years and two months, and that justly at the time his said preceptor died, which was in the year one thousand four hundred and twenty. Afterwards he got another old fellow with a cough to teach him, named Maître Jobelin Bride, who read unto him Hugutio, Hebrard's 12008 FRANÇOIS RABELAIS ' Grécisme, ' the Doctrinal, ' the ' Parts, ' the ' Quid Est,' the 'Supplementum' ; Marmotret De Moribus in Mensa Servandis ' ; Seneca De Quatuor Virtutibus Cardinalibus ' ; Passavantus ' Cum Commento ' and ' Dormi Securé, ' for the holidays ; and some other of such- like stuff, by reading whereof he became as wise. as any we have ever baked in an oven. At the last his father perceived that indeed he studied hard, and that although he spent all his time in it, he did nevertheless profit nothing, but which is worse, grew thereby foolish, simple, doted, and blockish : whereof making a heavy regret to Don Philip des Marays, Viceroy of Papeligosse, he found that it were better for him to learn nothing at all than to be taught such-like books under such schoolmasters ; because their knowledge was nothing but brutishness, and their wisdom but toys, bastardizing good and noble spirits and corrupting the flower of youth. " That it is so, take, " said he, " any young boy of the present time, who hath only studied two years : if he have not a better judgment, a better discourse, and that expressed in better terms, than your son, with a completer carriage and civility to all manner of persons, account me forever a chawbacon of La Brène. " This pleased Grangousier very well, and he commanded that it should be done. At night at supper, the said Des Marays brought in a young page of his from Ville- gouges, called Eudemon, so well combed, so well dressed, so well brushed, so sweet in his behavior, that he resembled a little angel more than a human creature. Then he said to Grangousier, " Do you see this child ? He is not as yet full twelve years old. Let us try, if it pleaseth you, what difference there is betwixt the knowledge of the doting dreamers of old time and the young lads that are now. " The trial pleased Grangousier, and he commanded the page to begin. Then Eudemon, asking leave of the viceroy, his master, so to do, with his cap in his hand, a clear and open countenance, ruddy lips, his eyes steady, and his looks fixed upon Gargantua, with a youthful modesty, stood up straight on his feet and began to commend and magnify him, first , for his virtue and good manners; secondly, for his knowledge ; thirdly, for his nobility ; fourthly, for his bodily beauty ; and in the fifth place, sweetly exhorted him to reverence his father with all observancy, who was so careful to have him well brought up. FRANÇOIS RABELAIS 12009 In the end he prayed him that he would vouchsafe to admit of him amongst the least of his servants ; for other favor at that time desired he none of heaven, but that he might do him some grateful and acceptable service. All this was by him delivered with gestures so proper, pronunciation so distinct, a voice so eloquent, language so well turned, and in such good Latin, that he seemed rather a Gracchus, a Cicero, an Æmilius of the time past, than a youth of his age. But all the countenance that Gargantua kept was, that he fell to crying like a cow, and cast down his face, hiding it with his cap ; nor could they possibly draw one word from him. Whereat his father was so grievously vexed that he would have killed Maître Jobelin ; but the said Des Marays withheld him from it by fair persuasions, so that at length he pacified his wrath . Then Grangousier commanded he should be paid his wages, that they should make him drink theologically, after which he was to go to all the devils . " At least, " said he, " to-day shall it not cost his host much, if by chance he should die as drunk as an Englishman. " Maître Jobelin being gone out of the house, Grangousier consulted with the viceroy what tutor they should choose for Gargantua ; and it was betwixt them resolved that Ponocrates, the tutor of Eudemon, should have the charge, and that they should all go together to Paris, to know what was the study of the young men of France at that time. THE EDUCATION OF GARGANTUA [The mare on which Gargantua rode to Paris was as big as six elephants : she was brought by sea in three corvettes and a brigantine. With the whisking of her tail she laid low a whole forest. Mounted on her, Gargantua was received with great admiration by the Parisians , who, says Rabelais, are more easily drawn together by a fiddler or a mule with bells than by an evangelical preacher, a peculiarity which they still preserve. The young giant rewarded their admiration by carrying away the bells of Notre Dame to hang round the neck of his mare. To recover these bells the Parisians sent their most esteemed orator, Maître Janotus de Bragmardo, who came, like the ViceChancellor of Cambridge, duly preceded by three bedells, and followed by six Masters of Arts -Artless Masters, " Maistres Inerts, " Rabelais calls them. His oration is a parody on the pretensions of the old-fashioned scholars, the ostentatious parade of bad Latin, and the learned discourses of doctors. The bells are restored and the orator rewarded. Then we leave the realms of I 2010 FRANÇOIS RABELAIS the miraculous and become human again. Gargantua ceases, except at intervals, to be a giant ; and Rabelais develops -it is the best, the wisest, the most useful chapter of his book -his theory of what the education of a prince should be. ] PON ONOCRATES appointed that for the beginning, he should do as he had been accustomed ; to the end he might understand by what means, for so long a time, his old masters had made him so foolish, simple, and ignorant. He disposed, therefore, of his time in such fashion that ordinarily he did awake between eight and nine o'clock, whether it was day or not; for so had his ancient governors ordained, alleging that which David saith, Vanum est vobis ante lucem surgere. Then did he tumble and wallow in the bed some time, the better to stir up his vital spirits, and appareled himself according to the season ; but willingly he would wear a great long gown of thick frieze, lined with fox fur. Afterwards he combed his head with the German comb, which is the four fingers and the thumb; for his preceptors said that to comb himself otherwise, to wash and make himself neat, was to lose time in this world. Then to suppress the dew and bad air, he breakfasted on fair fried tripe, fair grilled meats, fair hams, fair hashed capon, and store of sippet brewis. Ponocrates showed him that he ought not to eat so soon after rising out of his bed, unless he had performed some exercise beforehand. Gargantua answered : " What ! have not I sufficiently well exercised myself ? I rolled myself six or seven turns in my bed before I rose. Is not that enough ? Pope Alexander did so, by the advice of a Jew, his physician ; and lived till his dying day in despite of the envious. My first masters have used me to it, saying that breakfast makes a good memory; wherefore they drank first . I am very well after it, and dine but the better. And Maître Tubal, who was the first licentiate at Paris, told me that it is not everything to run a pace, but to set forth well betimes : so doth not the total welfare of our humanity depend upon perpetual drinking atas, atas, like ducks, but on drinking well in the morning; whence the verse- « To rise betimes is no good hour, To drink betimes is better sure."» After he had thoroughly broken his fast, he went to church ; and they carried for him, in a great basket, a huge breviary. There he heard six-and-twenty or thirty masses. This while, to FRANÇOIS RABELAIS 12011 the same place came his sayer of hours, lapped up about the chin like a tufted whoop, and his breath perfumed with good store of syrup. With him he mumbled all his kyriels, which he so curiously picked that there fell not so much as one grain to the ground. As he went from the church, they brought him, upon a dray drawn by oxen, a heap of paternosters of Sanct Claude, every one of them being of the bigness of a hat-block ; and thus walking through the cloisters, galleries, or garden, he said more in turning them over than sixteen hermits would have done. Then did he study for some paltry half-hour with his eyes fixed upon his book; but as the comic saith, his mind was in the kitchen. Then he sat down at table ; and because he was naturally phlegmatic, he began his meal with some dozens of hams, dried neats' tongues, mullet's roe, chitterlings, and such other forerunners of wine. In the meanwhile, four of his folks did cast into his mouth, one after another continually, mustard by whole shovelfuls. Immediately after that he drank a horrific draught of white wine for the ease of his kidneys. When that was done, he ate according to the season meat agreeable to his appetite, and then left off eating when he was like to crack for fulness. As for his drinking, he had neither end nor rule. For he was wont to say, that the limits and bounds of drinking were when the cork of the shoes of him that drinketh swelleth up half a foot high. Then heavily mumbling a scurvy grace, he washed his hands in fresh wine, picked his teeth with the foot of a pig, and talked jovially with his attendants. Then the carpet being spread, they brought great store of cards, dice, and chessboards. After having well played, reveled, passed and spent his time, it was proper to drink a little, and that was eleven goblets the man; and immediately after making good cheer again, he would stretch himself upon a fair bench, or a good large bed, and there sleep two or three hours together without thinking or speaking any hurt. After he was awakened he would shake his ears a little. In the mean time they brought him fresh wine. Then he drank better than ever. Ponocrates showed him that it was an ill diet to drink so after sleeping. " It is, " answered Gargantua, "the very life of the Fathers ; for naturally I sleep salt, and my sleep hath been to me instead of so much ham. " Then began he to study a little , and the paternosters first, which the better and more formally to dispatch, he got up on an old mule which had 1 I 2012 FRANÇOIS RABELAIS served nine kings ; and so mumbling with his mouth, doddling his head, would go see a coney caught in a net. At his return he went into the kitchen, to know what roast meat was on the spit ; and supped very well, upon my conscience, and commonly did invite some of his neighbors that were good drinkers ; with whom carousing, they told stories of all sorts, from the old to the new. After supper were brought in upon the place the fair wooden gospels -that is to say, many pairs of tables and cards with little small banquets, intermined with collations and reersuppers. Then did he sleep without unbridling, until eight o'clock in the next morning. ― When Ponocrates knew Gargantua's vicious manner of living, he resolved to bring him up in another kind; but for a while he bore with him, considering that nature does not endure sudden changes without great violence. Therefore, to begin his work the better, he requested a learned physician of that time, called Maître Theodorus, seriously to perpend, if it were possible, how to bring Gargantua unto a better course. The said physician purged him canonically with Anticyran hellebore, by which medicine he cleansed all the alteration and perverse habitude of his brain. By this means also Ponocrates made him forget all that he had learned under his ancient preceptors. To do this better, they brought him into the company of learned men who were there, in emulation of whom a great desire and affection came to him to study otherwise, and to improve his parts. Afterwards he put himself into such a train of study that he lost not any hour in the day, but employed all his time in learning and honest knowledge. Gargantua awaked then about four o'clock in the morning. Whilst they were rubbing him, there was read unto him some chapter of the Holy Scripture aloud and clearly, with a pronunciation fit for the matter ; and hereunto was appointed a young page born in Basché, named Anagnostes. According to the purpose and argument of that lesson , he oftentimes gave himself to revere, adore, pray, and send up his supplications to that good God whose word did show his majesty and marvelous judgments. Then his master repeated what had been read, expounding unto him the most obscure and difficult points. They then considered the face of the sky, if it was such as they had observed it the night before, and into what signs the sun was entering, as also the moon for that day. This done, he was appareled, combed, curled, trimmed, and perfumed, during which FRANÇOIS RABELAIS 12013 time they repeated to He him the lessons of the day before. himself said them by heart, and upon them grounded practical cases concerning the estate of man ; which he would prosecute sometimes two or three hours, but ordinarily they ceased as soon as he was fully clothed. Then for three good hours there was reading. This done, they went forth, still conferring of the substance of the reading, and disported themselves at ball, tennis, or the pile trigone; gallantly exercising their bodies, as before they had done their minds. All their play was but in liberty, for they left off when they pleased ; and that was commonly when they did sweat, or were otherwise weary. Then were they very well dried and rubbed, shifted their shirts, and walking soberly, went to see if dinner was ready. Whilst they stayed for that, they did clearly and eloquently recite some sentences that they had retained of the lecture. In the mean time Master Appetite came, and then very orderly sat they down at table. At the beginning of the meal there was read some pleasant history of ancient prowess, until he had taken his wine. Then if they thought good, they continued reading, or began to discourse merrily together; speaking first of the virtue, propriety, efficacy, and nature of all that was served in at that table ; of bread, of wine, of water, of salt, of flesh, fish , fruits, herbs, roots, and of their dressing. By means whereof, he learned in a little time all the passages that on these subjects are to be found in Pliny, Athenæus, Dioscorides, Julius Pollux, Galen, Porphyrius, Oppian, Polybius, Heliodorus, Aristotle, Ælian, and others. Whilst they talked of these things, many times, to be more the certain, they caused the very books to be brought to the table ; and so well and perfectly did he in his memory retain the things above said, that in that time there was not a physician that knew half so much as he did. Afterwards they conferred of the lessons read in the morning; and ending their repast with some conserve of quince, he washed his hands and eyes with fair fresh water, and gave thanks unto God in some fine canticle, made in praise of the Divine bounty and munificence. This done, they brought in cards, not to play, but to learn a thousand pretty tricks and new inventions, which were all grounded upon arithmetic. By this means he fell in love with that numerical science ; and every day after dinner and supper he passed his time in it as pleasantly as he was wont to do at cards and dice : so that at last he understood so well both the theory and practice thereof, that 12014 FRANÇOIS RABELAIS Tonstal the Englishman, who had written very largely of that purpose, confessed that verily in comparison of him he understood nothing but double Dutch; and not only in that, but in the other mathematical sciences, as geometry, astronomy, music. For while waiting for the digestion of his food, they made a thousand joyous instruments and geometrical figures, and at the same time practiced the astronomical canons. After this they recreated themselves with singing musically, in four or five parts, or upon a set theme, as it best pleased them. In matter of musical instruments, he learned to play the lute, the spinet, the harp, the German flute, the flute with nine holes, the violin, and the sackbut. This hour thus spent, he betook himself to his principal study for three hours together, or more, as well to repeat his matutinal lectures as to proceed in the book wherein he was ; as also to write handsomely, to draw and form the antique and Roman letters. This being done, they went out of their house, and with them a young gentleman of Touraine, named Gymnast, who taught him the art of riding. Changing then his clothes, he mounted on any kind of a horse, which he made to bound in the air, to jump the ditch, to leap the palisade, and to turn short in a ring both to the right and left hand. There he broke not his lance ; for it is the greatest foolishness in the world to say, I have broken ten lances at tilts or in fight. A carpenter can do even as much. But it is a glorious and praiseworthy action with one lance to break and overthrow ten enemies. Therefore with a sharp, strong, and stiff lance would he usually force a door, pierce a harness, uproot a tree, carry away the ring, lift up a saddle, with the mail- coat and gauntlet. All this he did in complete arms from head to foot. He was singularly skillful in leaping nimbly from one horse to another without putting foot to ground. He could likewise from either side, with a lance in his hand, leap on horseback without stirrups, and rule the horse at his pleasure without a bridle ; for such things are useful in military engagements. Another day he exercised the battle-axe, which he so dexterously wielded that he was passed knight of arms in the field and at all essays. Then tossed he the pike, played with the two- handed sword, with the back sword, with the Spanish tuck, the dagger, poniard, armed, unarmed, with a buckler, with a cloak, with a target. Then would he hunt the hart, the roebuck, the bear, the fallow FRANÇOIS RABELAIS 12015 deer, the wild boar, the hare, the pheasant, the partridge, and the bustard. He played at the great ball, and made it bound in the air, both with fist and foot. He wrestled, ran, jumped, not at three steps and a leap, nor a hopping, nor yet at the German jump ; " for, " said Gymnast, " these jumps are for the wars altogether unprofitable, and of no use : " but at one leap he would skip over a ditch, spring over a hedge, mount six paces upon a wall, climb after this fashion up against a window, the height of a lance. He did swim in deep waters on his face, on his back, sidewise, with all his body, with his feet only, with one hand in the air, wherein he held a book, crossing thus the breadth of the river Seine without wetting, and dragging along his cloak with. his teeth, as did Julius Cæsar; then with the help of one hand he entered forcibly into a boat, from whence he cast himself again headlong into the water, sounded the depths, hollowed the rocks, and plunged into the pits and gulfs. Then turned he the boat about, governed it, led it swiftly or slowly with the stream and against the stream, stopped it in its course, guided it with one hand, and with the other laid hard about him with a huge great oar, hoisted the sail, hied up along the mast by the shrouds, ran upon the bulwarks, set the compass, tackled the bowlines, and steered the helm. Coming out of the water, he ran furiously up against a hill, and with the same alacrity and swiftness ran down again. He climbed up trees like a cat, leaped from the one to the other like a squirrel. He did pull down the great boughs and branches, like another Milo : then with two sharp well- steeled daggers, and two tried bodkins, would he run up by the wall to the very top of a house like a rat ; then suddenly come down from the top to the bottom, with such an even disposal of members that by the fall he would catch no harm. He did cast the dart, throw the bar, put the stone, practice the javelin, the boar-spear or partisan, and the halbert. He broke the strongest bows in drawing, bended against his breast the greatest cross-bows of steel, took his aim by the eye with the hand-gun, traversed the cannon ; shot at the butts, at the papegay, before him, sidewise, and behind him, like the Parthians. They tied a cable-rope to the top of a high tower, by one end whereof hanging near the ground he wrought himself with his hands to the very top ; then came down again so sturdily and firmly that you could not on a plain meadow have run with more assurance. They set up a great pole fixed upon two trees. 12016 FRANÇOIS RABELAIS There would he hang by his hands, and with them alone , his feet touching at nothing, would go back and fore along the aforesaid rope with so great swiftness, that hardly could one overtake him. with running. Then to exercise his breast and lungs, he would shout like all the devils. I heard him once call Eudemon from the Porte St. Victor to Montmartre. Stentor never had such a voice at the siege of Troy. Then for the strengthening of his nerves, they made him two great pigs of lead, each in weight 8,700 quintals. Those he took up from the ground, in each hand one, then lifted them up over his head, and held them so without stirring three quarters of an hour or more, which was an inimitable force. He fought at barriers with the stoutest ; and when it came to the cope, he stood so sturdily on his feet that he abandoned himself unto the strongest, in case they could remove him from his place, as Milo was wont to do of old, -in imitation of whom he held a pomegranate in his hand, to give it unto him that Icould take it from him. The time being thus bestowed, and himself rubbed, cleansed, and refreshed with other clothes, they returned fair and softly; and passing through certain meadows, or other grassy places, beheld the trees and plants, comparing them with what is written of them in the books of the ancients, such as Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Marinus, Pliny, Nicander, Macer, and Galen, and carried home to the house great handfuls of them, whereof a young page called Rhizotomos had charge -together with hoes, picks, spuds, pruning-knives, and other instruments requisite for herbarizing. Being come to their lodging, whilst supper was making ready, they repeated certain passages of that which has been read, and then sat down at table. Here remark, that his dinner was sober and frugal, for he did then eat only to prevent the gnawings of his stomach ; but his supper was copious and large, for he took then as much as was fit to maintain and nourish him which indeed is the true diet prescribed by the art of good and sound physic, although a rabble of fond physicians counsel the contrary. During that repast was continued the lesson read at dinner as long as they thought good ; the rest was spent in good discourse, learned and profitable. After that they had given thanks, they set themselves to sing musically, and play upon harmonious instruments, or at those pretty sports made with FRANÇOIS RABELAIS 12017 cards, dice, or cups, -thus made merry till it was time to go to bed; and sometimes they would go make visits unto learned men, or to such as had been travelers in strange countries. At full ight they went unto the most open place of the house to see the face of the sky, and there beheld the comets, if any were, as likewise the figures, situations, aspects, oppositions, and conjunctions of the stars. Then with his master did he briefly recapitulate, after the nanner of the Pythagoreans, that which he had read, seen, learned, done, and understood in the whole course of that day. Then prayed they unto God the Creator, falling down before him, and strengthening their faith towards him, and glorifying him for his boundless bounty ; and giving thanks unto him for the time that was past, they recommended themselves to his Divine clemency for the future. Which being done, they entered upon their repose. If it happened that the weather were rainy and inclement, the forenoon was employed according to custom, except that they had a good clear fire lighted, to correct the distempers of the air. But after dinner, instead of their wonted exercitations, they did abide within, and by way of Apotherapie, did recreate themselves in bottling hay, in cleaving and sawing wood, and in threshing sheaves of corn at the barn. Then they studied the art of painting or carving; or brought into use the antique game of knucklebones, as Leonicus hath written of it, and as our good friend Lascaris playeth at it. While playing, they examined the passages of ancient authors wherein the said play is mentioned, or any metaphor drawn from it. They went likewise to see the drawing of metals, or the casting of great ordnance : they went to see the lapidaries, the goldsmiths and cutters of precious stones, the alchemists , coiners of money, upholsterers, weavers, velvet- workers, watchmakers, looking- glass- makers, printers, organists, dyers, and other such kind of artificers ; and everywhere giving them wine, did learn and consider the industry and invention of the trades. They went also to hear the public lectures, the solemn Acts, the repetitions, the declamations, the pleadings of the gentle lawyers, and sermons of evangelical preachers. He went through the halls and places appointed for fencing, and there played against the masters of all weapons, and showed them by experience that he knew as much in it as, yea, more XXI-752 12018 FRANÇOIS RABELAIS than they. And instead of herbarizing, they visited the shops of druggists, herbalists, and apothecaries, and diligently considered the fruits, roots, leaves, gums, seeds, and strange unguents, as also how they did compound them. He went to see jugglers, tumblers, mountebanks, and quacksalvers, and considered their cunning, their shifts, their summersaults, and their smooth tongues; especially of those of Chauny in Picardy, who are naturally great praters, and brave gibers of fibs, in manner of green apes. At their return they did eat more soberly at supper than at other times, and meats more desiccative and extenuating ; to the end that the intemperate moisture of the air, communicated to the body by a necessary confinity, might by this means be corrected, and that they might not receive any prejudice for want of their ordinary bodily exercise. Thus was Gargantua governed ; and kept on in this course of education, from day to day profiting, as you may understand such a young man of good sense, with such discipline so continued, may do. Which, although at the beginning it seemed difficult, became a little after so sweet, so easy, and so delightful, that it seemed rather the recreation of a king than the study of a scholar. Nevertheless, Ponocrates, to divert him from this vehement intention of spirit, thought fit, once in a month, upon some fair and clear day, to go out of the city betimes in the morning, either towards Gentilly or Boulogne, or to Montrouge, or Charenton- bridge, or to Vanves, or St. Cloud, and there spend all the day long in making the greatest cheer that could be devised; sporting, making merry, drinking healths, playing, singing, dancing, tumbling in some fair meadow, unnestling of sparrows, taking of quails, and fishing for frogs and crayfish. But though that day was passed without books or lecture, yet was it not spent without profit ; for in the said meadows they repeated certain pleasant verses of Virgil's ' Agriculture, ' of Hesiod, and of Politian's Husbandry ' ; would set abroach some witty Latin epigrams, then immediately turned them into rondeaux and ballades in the French language. In their feasting they would sometimes separate the water from the wine that was therewith mixed -as Cato teacheth, De re rustica, and Pliny -with an ivy cup; would wash the wine in a basin full of water, and take it out again with a funnel ; would make the water go from one glass to another, and would contrive little automatic engines, —that is to say, machines moving of themselves. FRANÇOIS RABELAIS 12019 THE THE ABBEY OF THELEMA HERE was left only the monk to provide for; whom Gargantua would have made Abbot of Seuillé, but he refused it. He would have given him the Abbey of Bourgueil, or of Sanct Florent which was better, or both if it pleased him ; but the monk gave him a very peremptory answer, that he would never take upon him the charge nor government of monks. " For how shall I be able, " said he, " to rule over others, that have not full power and command of myself ? If you think I have done you, or may hereafter do you, any acceptable service, give me leave to found an abbey after my own mind and fancy. " The motion pleased Gargantua very well ; who thereupon offered him all the country of Thelema by the river Loire, till within two leagues of the great forest of Port- Huaut. The monk then requested Gargantua to institute his religious order contrary to all others. " First, then, " said Gargantua, " you must not build a wall about your convent, for all other abbeys are strongly walled and mured about. " Moreover, seeing there are certain convents in the world whereof the custom is, if any women come in, -I mean honorable and honest women, -they immediately sweep the ground which they have trod upon ; therefore was it ordained that if any man or woman, entered into religious orders, should by chance come within this new abbey, all the rooms should be thoroughly washed and cleansed through which they had passed. And because in other monasteries all is compassed, limited, and regulated by hours, it was decreed that in this new structure there should be neither clock nor dial, but that according to the opportunities, and incident occasions, all their works should be disposed of; -" for, " said Gargantua, " the greatest loss of time. that I know is to count the hours. What good comes of it ? Nor can there be any greater folly in the world than for one to guide and direct his courses by the sound of a bell, and not by his own judgment and discretion. " Item, Because at that time they put no women into nunneries but such as were either one-eyed, lame, humpbacked, illfavored, misshapen, foolish, senseless, spoiled, or corrupt ; nor encloistered any men but those that were either sickly, ill- bred, clownish, and the trouble of the house : - 12020 FRANÇOIS RABELAIS >> ("Apropos, " said the monk, - "a woman that is neither fair nor good, to what use serves she ? " To make a nun of, " said Gargantua. " Yea, " said the monk, " and to make shirts. ") Therefore, Gargantua said, was it ordained, that into this religious order should be admitted no women that were not fair, well- featured, and of a sweet disposition ; nor men that were not comely, personable, and also of a sweet disposition . Item, Because in the convents of women men come not but underhand, privily, and by stealth : it was therefore enacted that in this house there shall be no women in case there be not men, nor men in case there be not women. Item, Because both men and women that are received into religious orders after the year of their novitiate were constrained and forced perpetually to stay there all the days of their life : it was ordered that all of whatever kind, men or women, admitted within this abbey, should have full leave to depart with peace and contentment whensoever it should seem good to them so to do. Item, For that the religious men and women did ordinarily make three vows, -to wit, those of chastity, poverty, and obedience: it was therefore constituted and appointed that in this convent they might be honorably married, that they might be rich , and live at liberty. In regard to the legitimate age, the women were to be admitted from ten till fifteen, and the men from twelve till eighteen. For the fabric and furniture of the abbey, Gargantua caused to be delivered out in ready money twenty- seven hundred thousand eight hundred and one-and-thirty of those long- wooled rams ; and for every year until the whole work was completed he allotted threescore nine thousand gold crowns, and as many of the seven stars, to be charged all upon the receipt of the river Dive. For the foundation and maintenance thereof he settled in perpetuity three-and-twenty hundred threescore and nine thousand five hundred and fourteen rose nobles, taxes exempted from all in landed rents, and payable every year at the gate of the abbey; and for this gave them fair letters patent. The building was hexagonal, and in such a fashion that in every one of the six corners there was built a great round tower, sixty paces in diameter, and were all of a like form and bigness. Upon the north side ran the river Loire, on the bank whereof was situated the tower called Arctic. Going towards the FRANÇOIS RABELAIS 12021 east there was another called Calær, the next following Anatole, the next Mesembrine, the next Hesperia, and the last Criere. Between each two towers was the space of three hundred and twelve paces. The whole edifice was built in six stories, reckoning the cellars underground for one. The second was vaulted after the fashion of a basket-handle ; the rest were coated with Flanders plaster, in the form of a lamp foot. It was roofed with fine slates of lead, carrying figures of baskets and animals ; the ridge gilt, together with the gutters, which issued without the wall between the windows, painted diagonally in gold and blue down to the ground, where they ended in great canals, which carried away the water below the house into the river. This same building was a hundred times more sumptuous and magnificent than ever was Bonivet ; for there were in it nine thousand three hundred and two-and-thirty chambers, every one whereof had a withdrawing- room, a closet, a wardrobe, a chapel, and a passage into a great hall. Between every tower, in the midst of the said body of building, there was a winding stair, whereof the steps were part of porphyry, which is a dark- red marble spotted with white, part of Numidian stone, and part of serpentine marble ; each of those steps being two- and-twenty feet in length and three fingers thick, and the just number of twelve betwixt every landing-place. On every landing were two fair antique arcades where the light came in ; and by those they went into a cabinet, made even with, and of the breadth of the said winding, and they mounted above the roof and ended in a pavilion. By this winding they entered on every side into a great hall, and from the halls into the chambers. From the Arctic tower unto the Criere were fair great libraries in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, Italian, and Spanish, respectively distributed on different stories, according to their languages. In the midst there was a wonderful winding stair, the entry whereof was without the house, in an arch six fathoms broad. It was made in such symmetry and largeness that six men- at-arms, lance on thigh, might ride abreast all up to the very top of all the palace. From the tower Anatole to the Mesembrine were fair great galleries, all painted with the ancient prowess, histories, and descriptions of the world. In the midst thereof there was likewise such another ascent and gate as we said there was on the river- side. 12022 FRANÇOIS RABELAIS In the middle of the lower court there was a stately fountain of fair alabaster. Upon the top thereof stood the three Graces, with horns of abundance, and did jet out the water at their breasts, mouth, ears, and eyes. The inside of the buildings in this lower court stood upon great pillars of Cassydonian stone, and porphyry in fair ancient arches. Within these were spacious galleries, long and large, adorned with curious pictures - the horns of bucks and unicorns ; of the rhinoceros and the hippopotamus ; the teeth and tusks of elephants, and other things well worth the beholding. The lodging of the ladies took up all from the tower Arctic unto the gate Mesembrine. The men possessed the rest. Before the said lodging of the ladies, that they might have their recreation, between the two first towers, on the outside, were placed the tilt-yard, the hippodrome, the theatre, the swimming-bath, with most admirable baths in three stages, well furnished with all necessary accommodation, and store of myrtlewater. By the river- side was the fair garden of pleasure, and in the midst of that a fair labyrinth. Between the two other towers were the tennis and fives courts. Towards the tower Criere stood the orchard full of all fruit- trees, set and ranged in a quincunx. At the end of that was the great park, abounding with all sort of game. Betwixt the third couple of towers were the butts for arquebus, crossbow, and arbalist. The stables were beyond the offices, and before them stood the falconry , managed by falconers very expert in the art ; and it was yearly supplied by the Candians, Venetians, Sarmatians, with all sorts of excellent birds , eagles, gerfalcons, goshawks, falcons, sparrow- hawks, merlins, and other kinds of them, so gentle and perfectly well trained that, flying from the castle for their own disport, they would not fail to catch whatever they encountered. The venery was a little further off, drawing towards the park. All the halls, chambers, and cabinets were hung with tapestry of divers sorts, according to the seasons of the year. All the pavements were covered with green cloth. The beds were embroidered . In every back chamber there was a looking-glass of pure crystal, set in a frame of fine gold garnished with pearls, and of such greatness that it would represent to the full the whole person. At the going out of the halls belonging to the ladies' lodgings were the perfumers and hair-dressers, through whose hands the gallants passed when they were to visit the FRANÇOIS RABELAIS 12023 ladies. These did every morning furnish the ladies chambers with rose-water, musk, and angelica ; and to each of them gave a little smelling-bottle breathing the choicest aromatical scents. The ladies on the foundation of this order were appareled after their own pleasure and liking. But since, of their own free will, they were reformed in manner as followeth :- - They wore stockings of scarlet which reached just three inches. above the knee, having the border beautified with embroideries. and trimming. Their garters were of the color of their bracelets, and circled the knee both over and under. Their shoes and slippers were either of red, violet, or crimson velvet, cut à barbe d'écrévisse. Next to their smock they put on a fair corset of pure silk camblet ; above that went the petticoat of white, red tawny, or gray taffety. Above this was the cotte in cloth of silver, with needlework either (according to the temperature and disposition of the weather) of satin, damask, velvet, orange, tawny, green, ash-colored, blue, yellow, crimson, cloth of gold, cloth of silver, or some other choice stuff, according to the day. Their gowns, correspondent to the season, were either of cloth of gold with silver edging, of red satin covered with gold purl, of taffety, white, blue, black, or tawny, of silk serge, silk camblet, velvet, cloth of silver, silver tissue, cloth of gold, velvet, or figured satin with golden threads. In the summer, some days, instead of gowns, they wore fair mantles of the above- named stuff, or capes of violet velvet with edging of gold, or with knotted cordwork of gold embroidery, garnished with little Indian pearls. They always carried a fair plume of feathers, of the color of their muff, bravely adorned with spangles of gold. In the winter-time they had their taffety gowns of all colors, as above named, and those lined with the rich furrings of wolves, weasels, Calabrian martlet, sables, and other costly furs. Their beads, rings, bracelets, and collars were of precious stones, such as carbuncles, rubies, diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, turquoises, garnets, agates, beryls, and pearls. Their head-dressing varied with the season of the year. In, winter it was of the French fashion ; in the spring of the Spanish; in summer of the fashion of Tuscany, except only upon the holy-days and Sundays, at which times they were accoutred in the French mode, because they accounted it more honorable, better befitting the modesty of a matron. 12024 FRANÇOIS RABELAIS The men were appareled after their fashion. Their stockings were of worsted or of serge, of white, black, or scarlet. Their breeches were of velvet, of the same color with their stockings, or very near, embroidered and cut according to their fancy. Their doublet was of cloth of gold, cloth of silver, velvet, satin, damask, or taffety, of the same colors, cut, embroidered, and trimmed up in the same manner. The points were of silk of the same colors, the tags were of gold enameled. Their coats and jerkins were of cloth of gold, cloth of silver, gold tissue, or velvet embroidered, as they thought fit. Their gowns were every whit as costly as those of the ladies. Their girdles were of silk, of the color of their doublets. Every one had a gallant sword by his side, the hilt and handle whereof were gilt , and the scabbard of velvet, of the color of his breeches, the end in gold, and goldsmith's work. The dagger of the same. Their caps were of black velvet, adorned with jewels and buttons of gold. Upon that they wore a white plume, most prettily and minionlike parted by so many rows of gold spangles, at the end whereof hung dangling fair rubies, emeralds, etc. But so great was the sympathy between the gallants and the ladies, that every day they were appareled in the same livery. And that they might not miss, there were certain gentlemen appointed to tell the youths every morning what colors the ladies would on that day wear ; for all was done according to the pleasure of the ladies. In these so handsome clothes, and habiliments so rich, think not that either one or other of either sex did waste any time at all ; for the masters of the wardrobes had all their raiments and apparel so ready for every morning, and the chamber-ladies were so well skilled, that in a trice they would be dressed, and completely in their clothes from head to foot. And to have these accoutrements with the more conveniency, there was about the wood of Thelema a row of houses half a league long, very neat and cleanly, wherein dwelt the goldsmiths, lapidaries, embroiderers, tailors, gold-drawers, velvet-weavers, tapestrymakers, and upholsterers, who wrought there every one in his. own trade, and all for the aforesaid friars and nuns. They were furnished with matter and stuff from the hands of Lord Nausiclete, who every year brought them seven ships from the Perlas and Cannibal Islands, laden with ingots of gold, with raw silk, with pearls and precious stones. And if any pearls began to grow old, and lose somewhat of their natural whiteness and lus- FRANÇOIS RABELAIS 12025 tre, those by their art they did renew by tendering them to cocks. to be eaten, as they used to give casting unto hawks. All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought good; they did eat, drink, labor, sleep, when they had a mind to it, and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did constrain them to eat, drink, nor do any other thing; for so had Gargantua established it . In all their rule, and strictest tie of their order, there was but this one clause to be observed:-- FAY CE QUE VOULDRAS Because men that are free, well born, well bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions and withdraws them from vice, which is called honor. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break the bond of servitude ; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden, and to desire what is denied. By this liberty they entered into a very laudable emulation : to do all of them what they saw did please one. If any of the gallants or ladies should say, " Let us drink, " they would all drink. If any one of them said, " Let us play, " they all played. If one said, " Let us go for our delight into the fields, " they went all. If it were to go a-hawking or a-hunting, the ladies, mounted upon well- paced nags, carried on their lovely fists (miniardly begloved every one of them) either a sparrow-hawk, or a laneret, or a merlin, and the gallants carried the other kinds of birds. So nobly were they taught, that there was not one amongst them but could read, write, sing, play upon musical instruments, speak five or six several languages, and compose in them all very quaintly, both in verse and prose. Never were seen knights so valiant, so noble and worthy, so dexterous and skillful both on foot and a-horseback, more active, more nimble and quick, or better handling all manner of weapons, than were there. Never were seen ladies so proper, so miniard, less forward, or more ready with hand and needle in every honest and free action belonging to that sex, than were there. 12026 FRANÇOIS RABELAIS For this reason, when the time came that any man of the said abbey, either at the request of his parents or for some other cause, had a mind to go out of it, he carried along with him one of the ladies, -namely, her whom he had before that chosen for his mistress, -and they were married together. And if they had formerly in Thelema lived in devotion and amity, much more did they continue therein in the state of matrimony ; and did entertain that mutual love till the very last day of their life, in no less vigor and fervency than at the very day of their wedding. ( All the foregoing citations are made from Readings from Rabelais, ' by Walter Besant

JEAN BAPTISTE RACINE.

12027 B - JEAN RACINE (1639-1699) BY FREDERICK MORRIS WARREN Y THE time French classical tragedy had reached Racine, in its development from the Latin drama of Senecà, its form and style had become definitely fixed. Like its Latin progenitor it consisted of five acts, subdivided into scenes ; was written in long lines, the Alexandrine verse of twelve syllables, -and observed in its stage setting and the duration of its action the unities of place and time. But in the process of assimilation to modern requirements the chorus of the ancients had been dropped, their monologues had been shortened and subjected to interruptions by the theatrical device of confidants, and Seneca's lyricism had been given a stronger admixture of the dramatic element, by the pressure of audiences which had been trained to the action and episodes of the old miracle plays. All the questions of scenic art which had been agitated for four generations, and from which Corneille's early years were not exempt, were settled before Racine began. He had only to take his structure as he found it, and fill it in with such material as would be in harmony with the French conception of tragedy. Racine was genius enough to make a place for himself, while conforming to these limitations. Corneille had produced his dramatic effects by opposing the passion of love to some general conception of duty, honor, or patriotism. His plays treat these topics subjectively, didactically. They abound in maxims. Their characters are ideal, perhaps. Their heroes often win attention away from the heroines. Racine's method is different. He belongs to another, a new generation, inspired by a different spirit. Instead of being general, his treatment is individual. His themes relate to private life, not public. He is objective, studying humanity around him. He indulges rarely in abstract ideas. If we might apply a modern term to him we might call him realistic. Certainly he stood, as did Molière, in the eyes of his contemporaries, for a close adherence to the plain facts of existence. And in the judgment of the eighteenth century Racine was "natural. » Furthermore he worked from within outward. It is an analysis of character which he aims at, or rather a study of the effects of some 12028 JEAN RACINE - passion almost always love, or its concomitant emotions of jealousy, hatred, revenge, or remorse, rarely ambition or bigotry - on the human heart, with the actions that result from it. The dramatic solution in Racine is obtained by the clash of such passions. In other words, Racine's situations are brought about by his characters, whereas with Corneille it was the situations which produced the characters. And it so happens, whether from the very nature of things or from a fixed purpose, that most of Racine's characters are women. Few of his men can support comparison with them. Racine's career shows an impulsive temperament, the temperament of a poet. He was born at the small town of La Ferté-Milon, some distance to the northeast of Paris, on December 21st, 1639. His Christian name, Jean, was in the family. His parents dying before he was three years old, he fell to the care of his relatives, who sent him to the college at Beauvais. Leaving this institution at the age of sixteen, he entered the Jansenist school at Port Royal, where he imbibed that love for the Greek poets which was to manifest itself so vigorously in his later works. The foundations of an ardent piety were evidently laid here also, though they were to be hidden many years by other interests and occupations. On leaving Port Royal in 1658, and entering Harcourt College at Paris, to receive his final training, Racine, with his literary instincts and his capacity for enjoying life, was quickly admitted to a pleasure-loving set of authors. and amateurs, of whom La Fontaine the fabulist was one. Encouraged by them, he threw himself into poetry, and in 1660 attracted public attention and royal munificence by an ode, The Nymph of the Seine, ' written on the occasion of Louis XIV.'s marriage . His devout family connections, alarmed for his salvation, rusticated him to the south of . France, where he was to study for orders. But in 1663 this experiment was abandoned. Racine returned to Paris, met La Fontaine again, formed acquaintance with Boileau and Molière , and under their sanction began his theatrical career. After one unsuccessful venture, his ' Thébaïde ' ( 1664) was played by Molière's company. It was followed the next season by ' Alexandre.' Both of these dramas reflect the ideas of older authors, particularly Corneille. But in 1667 , with ' Andromaque, ' a delineation of maternal love in conflict with a widow's fidelity, set off by the love and jealousy of suitors and rivals, Racine found his peculiar and lasting manner. The enthusiasm aroused by the psychological analyses of ' Andromaque ' had been exceeded in Paris only by the delight occasioned by the romantic declamations of ' The Cid. ' He next tried a comedy of an Aristophanic bent, ' The Pleaders ' ( 1668), a satire of legal procedure. But this was Racine's sole deviation from the tragic path. Britannicus ' (1669) , on the imperiousness of

JEAN RACINE 12029 Agrippina and the baseness of Nero ; ' Bérénice ' ( 1670) , the idyl of the Jewish princess forsaken by her lover Titus, for reasons of State ; ' Bajazet ' ( 1672), the vengeance of a queen on her rival and faithless lover ; ' Mithridate ' ( 1673) , the Oriental despot, the enemy of Rome, disputing a girl's heart with his own son ; ' Iphigénie › ( 1674) , a mother's love, oblivious of all but the object of its passion, contrasted with filial affection and obedience, -all these pictures of the heart of woman were summed up, reached their culmination, in the love, shame, jealousy, revenge, and remorse which the poet imagined in the story of ' Phèdre ' ( 1677) . The great parts in Racine were for the heroines. The heroes rarely attained the level of being even counterpoises. A literary cabal in favor of the rhymester Pradon prevented the immediate success of ' Phèdre ' ; and this circumstance, coupled with his reviving devotion, led Racine to renounce the stage and its surroundings. He was made historiographer of the King, married, and divided his time between his family and the court. But the old fire was only smoldering within him. It burst forth into new and brighter flame when at the summons of Madame de Maintenon a religious drama was demanded for the girls' school at St. Cyr. The fusion of Racine's piety with the gratification of his poetic ideals was now possible ; and ' Esther ' ( 1689) , a Scriptural idyl built on the model of French tragedy, with the addition of the lyric choruses of the Greeks, displayed his talent at its best. Another sacred tragedy with choruses, 'Athalie ' ( 1691) , was lost to Racine's contemporaries by doubts about the wisdom of schoolgirls acting. The remainder of our author's life was passed in the exercise of his official duties, in the composition of religious hymns, and the penning of biting epigrams ridiculing the playwrights of the time. He died the last year of the century, on April 26th. ties. The first part of Racine's dramatic work, from ' Andromaque ' to ' Phèdre, ' being strictly within the canons of French classical tragedy, calls for no further mention. But the second part, though consisting of but two plays, 'drawn from sacred sources, presents certain novelThe addition of the choruses, imitated as they evidently were from Greek models, suggests that French tragedy, in its conflict with its rival the opera, would not be above borrowing some of that rival's attractions. Besides, ' Athalie, ' which is regarded by many as the best example of French tragedy, takes certain liberties with the scenery and the number of persons in evidence on the stage ; and this points to a modification, an enlarging, of the scope of the tradi- tional play. 'Athalie ' is also to be noticed for its plot. The element of love does not enter into it. It is the strife of an unscrupulous, ambitious, 12030 JEAN RACINE yet fluctuating woman with the direct and persevering enthusiasm. of a strong man who summons the miraculous to his aid. For these divergences from the ordinary run, and for its intrinsic excellence, ' Athalie ' was the constant preoccupation of French dramatists down to the reaction in the nineteenth century against all tragedy, classical or romantic. It powerfully aided in confirming Racine in the supremacy which his method, his psychology, his measured language and harmonious versification, had combined in awarding to him . The subsequent history of French tragedy is hardly more than a commentary on Racine. The best edition of Racine's complete works is published at Paris by Hachette et Cie. , in the series of ' Les Grands Écrivains ' (8 vols. , Svo). It is edited by Paul Mesnard. Nearly every French critic has written on Racine, but F. Brunetière's chapters (Lectures 5 and 7) in his ' Époques du Théâtre Français ' (Paris, 1892) , and G. Lanson's comments in his ' Histoire de la Littérature Française ' (Paris, 1895), pages 532-547, are especially valuable. FM Warren. THE RIVALS From Bajazet Scene: The private apartments of Bajazet at Byzantium. Present: Roxana, Bajazet, Atalide, Zara. R OXANA- Come, Bajazet, ' tis time to show yourself, That all the court may recognize its master: All that these walls contain, many in number, Gathered by my command, await my wishes. My slaves (the rest will follow where they lead) Are the first subjects that my love allots you. [To Atalide] - This sudden change from wrath to milder mood May well surprise you, madam. For, but now, Determined to take vengeance on a traitor, I swore he should not see another day; Yet almost ere he spoke my heart relented : 'Twas love imposed that oath, and love revokes it. Reading deep passion in his wild distraction, His pardon I pronounced, and trust his promise. JEAN RACINE 12031 Bajazet— Yes, I have promised, and my word is pledged Ne'er to forget all that to you I owe: Have I not sworn that constant care and kindness Shall duly pay my debt of gratitude ? If on these terms your favor I may claim, I go to wait the harvest of your bounty. [Exit. Roxana- Heavens ! What amazement strikes me at this moment ! - Is it a dream ? and have mine eyes deceived me ? What mean these frigid words, this sombre greeting, Which seems to cancel all that passed between us ? What hope does he imagine mine, for which I banished my resentment, and restored him To favor? He, methought, swore that his heart Would own me mistress to his dying day. Does he repent already of the peace That we had signed ? Was I just now deluded ? But was he not conversing with you, madam ? What did he say ? Atalide- To me? He loves you always. Roxana His life at least depends on my belief That it is so. But tell me, pray, when joy Should triumph, how can you explain the gloom That settled on his features as he left me ? Atalide Madam, I saw no cloud upon his brow. Roxana AtalideOft has he told me of your gracious kindness, And he just now was full of it ; at parting He seemed to me the same as when he entered. But be that as it may, need it surprise you That on the eve of such important issues He should be troubled, and some signs escape him Of anxious thoughts that on his mind intrude ? Such plausible excuses do you credit For skill that pleads on his behalf more fairly Than he could do himself. What other cause Roxana -Enough! I read your motive, madam, better Than you suppose. Leave me, for I would be Alone a little while. I too am troubled, And anxious cares are mine as well as his, To which I owe a moment's thought in secret. • Roxana - How must I construe all that I have seen ? Are they in league together to deceive me ? Wherefore this change, those words, that quick departure ? Did I not catch a glance that passed between them ? 12032 JEAN RACINE FatimaRoxanaFatimaWere they not both struck with embarrassment ? Ah! why has Heaven doomed me to this affront ? Is this the fruit of all my blind affection ? So many painful days and sleepless nights, Plots and intrigues, treason too deep for pardon! And shall they all turn to a rival's profit ? But yet, too ready to torment myself, I may too closely scan a passing cloud, And take for passion what is mere caprice. Surely he would have carried to the end His wiles ; and in full prospect of success, He could have feigned at least a moment longer. Love, uncontrolled by reason, quakes at shadows: Let me take courage. Why should Atalide Be dreaded as my rival ? What has he To thank her for ? To which of us to- day Owes he the sceptre ? But too well I know Love is a tyrant ; and if other charms Attract, what matter crowns, or life itself ? Can benefits outweigh the heart's attachment ? I need but search mine own. Did gratitude Constrain me to his brother, when this wretch Bewitched me ? Ah! if other tie were absent, Would the idea of marriage so alarm him ? He gladly would have seconded my wishes, And not have braved destruction by refusal. Just causeBut some one comes to speak with me. What can she want ? Enter Fatima Forgive me this intrusion : But there is come a courier from the army; And though the seaward gate was shut, the guards, On bended knees, without delay unlocked it To orders from the Sultan, to yourself - Addressed, and strange to say, ' tis Orcan brings them. Orcan! Yes, he; of all the Sultan's slaves The one most trusted for his faithful service, Blackest of those whom Afric's sun has scorched. Madam, he asks impatiently for you :

CAPTIVE ANDROMACHE Painting From arederick bySir Leighton JEAN RACINE 12033 Roxana I thought it best to give you timely notice, And lest you should be taken by surprise, I have detained him in your own apartments. What new disaster comes to overwhelm me ? What can his bidding be ? What my reply ? Doubtless the Sultan, in his mind perturbed, Has Bajazet condemned a second time. Without my sanction none will dare to take His life ; for all obey me here. But ought I To shield him ? Bajazet or Amurath Which claims allegiance ? One have I betrayed ; The other may be false to me. Time presses ; I must resolve this fatal doubt, nor let The precious moments pass. Love, when most cautious, Cannot conceal its secret inclination. I will watch Bajazet and Atalide : Then crown the lover, or destroy the traitor. Translation of R. B. Boswell. • THE APPEAL OF ANDROMACHE From 'Andromaque> The palace of Pyrrhus, at Buthrotum in Epirus. Present : Andromache, Hermione, Cleone, Cephissa. NDROMACHE [ to Hermione] - A Why fly you, madam ? Is it not a sight To please you, Hector's widow at your knees, Weeping ? But not with tears of jealousy I come, nor do I envy you the heart Surrendered to your charms. A cruel hand Robbed me of him whom only I admired. Love's flame was lit by Hector long ago, With him it was extinguished in the tomb. But he has left a son. Some day you'll know How closely to one's heart a son can cling ; But you will never know, I wish it not, How keen the pang when danger threatens him, And they would take him from you, -all that's left To soothe a blighted heart. Ah, when worn out With ten long years of woe, the Trojans sought Your mother's life , on Hector I prevailed XXI-753 12034 JEAN RACINE HermioneTo succor her. O'er Pyrrhus you have power As I had then o'er Hector. Can they dread The infant he has left ? In some far distant isle. Him let me hide And they may trust My fears to keep him there, taught but to weep With me. I feel for you, but duty holds My tongue tied, when my sire declares his will : It is by him that Pyrrhus's wrath is stirred. But who can bend him better than yourself ? His soul has long been subject to your eyes : Make him pronounce the word, and I'll consent. AndromacheHow scornfully did she refuse my prayer! Cephissa Accept her counsel. See him, as she says ; One look of yours may Greece and her confound— But look, he seeks you of his own accord. Pyrrhus [to Phonix] - Enter Pyrrhus and Phoenix Where is the princess ?, Said you not that she Was here? PhoenixAndromache [to Cephissa] - My eyes have over him! I thought so. Now you see what power PyrrhusAndromacheWhat says she ? All Is lost ! Phoenix- Hermione is gone, and we Will follow. CephissaAndromacheHas he not promised them my child ? Speak! Why obstinately dumb? Cephissa- But not Given him up. Andromache- Vain are my tears, - his death Is certain. PyrrhusAndromachePyrrhusMy way! How her pride disdains to look I should but irritate him more. Let us retire. Come, Hector's son shall be Yielded to Greece. JEAN RACINE 12035 Andromache [throwing herself at his feetStop, sire. What will you do ? Give up the son ? Why not the mother, then ? Where is the kindness that you swore to me So lately ? Can I touch no chord at least Of pity ? Does this sentence bar all hope Of pardon ? Pyrrhus AndromachePyrrhus Phoenix knows my word is pledged. No dangers were too great for you to brave On my behalf! Blind then, I now can see. Your wishes might have won his pardon once ; You ne'er so much as asked it. Now you come Too late. AndromachePyrrhusFull well you understood, my lord, The sigh that feared repulse . Forgive the trace Of pride, that died not with my royal rank, And made me shrink from importunity. My lord, you know, had it not been for you, Andromache would never have embraced A master's knees. No, in your secret soul You hate me, scorn to owe me anything. This son, the only object of your care, — You would have loved him less, had he been saved Through me. You hate me with a bitter scorn, And worse than all the other Greeks combined. Enjoy at leisure such a noble rage. Come, Phoenix. Andromache Cephissa - Madam Andromache - I will go where Hector's gone. What further can I say to him ? The author of my woes, he knows them all. [To Pyrrhus]- See to what state you have reduced me, sire ! I've seen my father slain, our walls enwrapt In flames, and all our family cut off, My husband's bloody corpse dragged through the dust, His only son reserved for chains with me. For his sake I endure to live a slave. Yea, more, this thought has sometimes brought relief, - That fate has fixed my place of exile here ; The son of many kings beneath your sway 12036 JEAN RACINE Is happier as a slave than he could be Elsewhere, and I had hoped his prison walls Might be a place of refuge. Priam found Achilles could respect his fallen state : I thought his son more generous still. That trust, My Hector, pardon, when I deemed thy foe Too noble to commit a dastard's crime! Ah, had he but allowed us to abide Where for thine ashes I had raised a tomb, And ending there his hatred and our woes, Parted us not from thy beloved remains! Pyrrhus Go and await me, Phoenix.- Madam, stay. Your tears may yet win back this cherished son. Yes, I regret that, moving you to weep, I armed you with a weapon ' gainst myself; I thought I could have brought more hatred here. You might at least consent to look at me: See, are my eyes those of an angry judge, Whose pleasure ' tis to cause you misery ? Why force me to be faithless to yourself ? Now for your son's sake let us cease to hate. 'Tis I who urge you, Save the child from death. Must sighs of mine beg you to spare his life ? And must I clasp your knees to plead for him ? Once more, but once, -Save him and save yourself. I know what solemn vows for you I break, What hatred I bring down upon myself. Hermione shall go, and on her brow For crown I set a burning brand of shame ; And in the fane decked for her marriage rites Her royal diadem yourself shall wear. This offer, lady, is no longer one You can afford to scorn. Perish or reign! A year's contempt has made me desperate, Nor can I any longer live in doubt, Harassed by fears and mingling threats with groans. To lose you is to die, -'tis death to wait. I leave you to consider, and will come To bring you to the temple where this child My fury shall destroy before your eyes, Or where in love I crown you as my queen. JEAN RACINE 12037 THE CONFESSION OF PHÆDRA From 'Phèdre Scene: The palace at Træzen, in the Peloponnesus. Present : Phædra, Hippolytus, Enone. HÆDRA [ to Enone] -— There I see him! PHEDRA My blood forgets to flow, my tongue to speak Enone Phadra HippolytusPhædra What I am come to say. Think of your son, How all his hopes depend on you. I hear You leave us and in haste. I come to add My tears to your distress, and for a son Plead my alarm. No more has he a father, And at no distant day my son must witness My death. Already do a thousand foes Threaten his youth. You only can defend him. But in my secret heart remorse awakes, And fear lest I have shut your ears against His cries. I tremble lest your righteous anger Visit on him ere long the hatred earned By me, his mother. Madam, is mine. No such base resentment, I could not blame you, prince, If you should hate me. I have injured you : So much you know, but could not read my heart. T' incur your enmity has been mine aim: The selfsame borders could not hold us both ; In public and in private I declared Myself your foe, and found no peace till seas Parted us from each other. I forbade Your very name to be pronounced before me. And yet if punishment should be proportioned To the offense, if only hatred draws Your hatred, never woman merited More pity, less deserved your enmity. Hippolytus -A mother jealous of her children's rights Seldom forgives the offspring of a wife Who reigned before her. Harassing suspicions Are common sequels of a second marriage. Of me would any other have been jealous No less than you, perhaps more violent. 12038 JEAN RACINE Phædra-— Ah, prince, how Heaven has from the general law Made me exempt, be that same Heaven witness! Far different is the trouble that devours me! Hippolytus -This is no time for self-reproaches, madam. It may be that your husband still beholds The light, and Heaven may grant him safe return, In answer to our prayers. His guardian god Is Neptune, ne'er by him invoked in vain. Phædra- He who has seen the mansions of the dead Returns not thence. Since to those gloomy shores Theseus is gone, ' tis vain to hope that Heaven Prince, there is no release HippolytusPhædra-

May send him back. From Acheron's greedy maw. And yet, methinks, He lives and breathes in you. I see him still Before me, and to him I seem to speak ; My heartOh, I am mad! Do what I will, I cannot hide my passion. Yes, I see The strange effects of love. Seems present to your eyes, There burns a constant flame. Theseus, though dead, for in your soul Ah, yes, for Theseus I languish and I long ; not as the Shades Have seen him, of a thousand different forms The fickle lover, and of Pluto's bride The would-be ravisher, but faithful, proud E'en to a slight disdain, with youthful charms Attracting every heart, as gods are painted, Or like yourself. He had your mien, your eyes, Spoke and could blush like you, when to the isle Of Crete, my childhood's home, he crossed the waves, Worthy to win the love of Minos's daughters. What were you doing then ? Why did he gather The flower of Greece, and leave Hippolytus ? Oh, why were you too young to have embarked On board the ship that brought thy sire to Crete ? At your hands would the monster then have perished, Despite the windings of his vast retreat. To guide your doubtful steps within the maze My sister would have armed you with the clue. But no, therein would Phædra have forestalled her. Love would have first inspired me with the thought And I it would have been whose timely aid JEAN RACINE 12039 Had taught you all the labyrinth's crooked ways. What anxious care a life so dear had cost me ! No thread had satisfied your lover's fears : I would myself have wished to lead the way, And share the peril you were bound to face ; Phædra with you would have explored the maze, With you emerged in safety or have perished. Hippolytus-Gods ! What is this I hear ? Have you forgotten That Theseus is my father and your husband ? Phædra - Why should you fancy I have lost remembrance Thereof, and am regardless of mine honor ? Hippolytus-Forgive me, madam. With a blush I own Phædra That I misconstrued words of innocence. For very shame I cannot bear your sight Longer. I goAh ! cruel prince , too well You understood me. I have said enough To save you from mistake . I love. But think not That at the moment when I love you most I do not feel my guilt ; no weak compliance Has fed the poison that infects my brain. The ill-starred object of celestial vengeance, I am not so detestable to you As to myself. The gods will bear me witness, Who have within my veins kindled this fire ; The gods, who take a barbarous delight In leading a poor mortal's heart astray. Do you yourself recall to mind the past : 'Twas not enough for me to fly, -I chased you Out of the country, wishing to appear Inhuman, odious ; to resist you better, I sought to make you hate me. All in vain ! Hating me more, I loved you none the less : New charms were lent to you by your misfortunes. I have been drowned in tears, and scorched by fire ; Your own eyes might convince you of the truth, If for one moment you could look at me. What is't I say ? Think you this vile confession That I have made is what I meant to utter ? Not daring to betray a son for whom I trembled, ' twas to beg you not to hate him I came. Weak purpose of a heart too full Of love for you to speak of aught besides ! Take your revenge, punish my odious passion ; 12040 JEAN RACINE Enone TheramenesProve yourself worthy of your valiant sire, And rid the world of an offensive monster! Does Theseus's widow dare to love his son ? The frightful monster ! Let her not escape you! Here is my heart. This is the place to strike. Already prompt to expiate its guilt, I feel it leap impatiently to meet Your arın. Strike home. Or if it would disgrace you To steep your hand in such polluted blood, If that were punishment too mild to slake Your hatred, lend me then your sword, if not Your arm. Quick, give ' t. What, madam, will you do ? Just gods ! But some one comes. Go, fly from shame ; You cannot ' scape if seen by any thus. Enter Theramenes Is that the form of Phædra that I see Hurried away ? What mean these signs of sorrow ? Where is your sword ? Why are you pale, confused ? Hippolytus - Friend, let us fly. I am, indeed, confounded With horror and astonishment extreme. Phædra- but no ; gods, let this dreadful secret Remain forever buried in oblivion. Translation of R. B. Boswell. 12041 ALFRED RAMBAUD ( 1842-) LFRED RAMBAUD, like many of his predecessors at the head of the Board of Education in France, taught in the ranks before he rose to be Grand Master of the University. He was born in 1842 at Besançon, in the province of Franche-Comté, whose children are supposed to be peculiarly hot-headed and tenacious of opinion. But M. Rambaud is no fanatic : he is liberal and conciliatory, with an ardent desire for the education of the masses. He is a disciple of Jules Ferry, who first called him to a leading position in the direction of public affairs, as private secretary and chef de cabinet at the ministry of Public Affairs in 1879. After three years at the École Normale, M. Rambaud was successively professor of history at Caen and at Nancy. On quitting the ministry he returned to his duties as professor, and was appointed to the Faculty of Letters in Paris. His works are educational and historical. His favorite occupation is looking over and preparing the great work he has undertaken in collaboration with his friend and colleague, Ernest Lavisse, the historian dear to French youth ; namely, the ' General History from the Fourth Century to Our Day. ' The first number of this serial history appeared in 1892. It is carefully done, clear, and in a widely liberal, philosophical spirit. M. Rambaud contributes the portion on Russia. He is an authority on all things Russian, knowing the language and having traveled in the country. the French say. His speeches form an important part of his "literary luggage, " as He speaks well, but not in the florid, ornamental style common in France. He is journalier (" touch-and- go "), and must warm to his subject before mastering it . No one knows what will warm him ; the man himself probably less than any one. But once warmed, his voice never falters in its soft, far-reaching wave of sound. His gestures are slow and propitiatory ; he turns his head slyly from left to right, and sees very well with those small, dark, sharp yet merry eyes of his, that are surmounted, not shaded, by the thin regular arch of eyebrows, like notes of interrogation on his high narrow forehead. He has a great deal of dry humor, both as speaker and writer, and doubtless often laughs to himself at his opponents as he sits comfortably on the ministerial bench of the Chamber of 12042 ALFRED RAMBAUD Deputies. The present looks small to a man who studies the past. Like most of his countrymen, he mingles the politics of the day with speeches on literary, artistic, or educational subjects, and spangles them with quotations from the classics and similes boldly drawn from practical illustrations. One day at the Franco- English Guild, at a meeting presided over by the British minister, M. Rambaud in a little improvisation on the two countries, " who never, " said he, " need be enemies, though their differences were so great, " compared them to " twin piston-rods, impelling with equal beat the onward march of liberty, order, and peace. " Elsewhere he calls them " the Siamese twins of political economy. " M. Rambaud is a linguist, a colonialist, and a Russophil, -uniting the three fads of the French of to-day. He wrote a preface and notes to a translation of Seely's ' Expansion of England ' ; contributed to a geographical work, ' La France Coloniale, ' and to the articles on Russia in the General History of Europe ' ; and has written two books on Russia, —' La Russie Épique, ' a translation of popular and heroic song, and a History of Russia. ' This last won a prize at the French Academy. It is clear and concise. Every sentence contains a fact. The description of Nicholas I. (Chapter xxxvi. , page 638) is striking: " He was a living incarnation of despotism . His giant stature, his stately manner, his mystic pride in his imperial office , his unwearied attention to business in its smallest details, his iron will, his love of military grandeur, uniform, and display, all tended to strike awe. When his power was shattered, a nation rose full grown from its ruins. " The work closes with the following words : - - "With the government of Russia, France has often been in conflict ; with her people, since she has become a nation, France sympathizes and is at one. » -- - The most important of his educational works is the ' History of Civilization in France ' from the earliest times to the French Revolution, with a concluding chapter on general events up to our day. This chapter has been developed into a volume of seven hundred and fifty closely packed pages, The History of Contemporary Civilization in France ' : an interesting, amusing summing-up of the progress made since 1789 in all branches of human knowledge. It contains a declaration of principle, and a theory of the duty of a citizen. Extracts are given illustrating these points. M. Rambaud has further written a ' History of the Greek Empire in the Tenth Century ' ; a History of the French Revolution, 1789- 1799 ' ; a novel for the young -a story of ancient Gaul, ' L'Anneau de César ' ; and French Rule in Germany, ' in two volumes, -the first entitled ' The French on the Rhine, 1792-1804 , ' and the second ' Germany under Napoleon, 1804-1811 . ' These last-named volumes are ALFRED RAMBAUD 12043 written to refute the accusation of cruelty, tyranny, and perfidy, made by recent German historians against France. The extracts given further on show the line of argument. The ' General History ' has reached Vol. x. , No. 109, -The Congress of Verona, ' 1822. Chapter vi. of Vol. viii. , entirely from the pen of M. Rambaud, treats of Russia, Poland, and the East. The late Greco-Turkish conflict gives interest to the section on Catharine II.'s attempt at founding a Russo- Greek empire, a passage from which is given. M. Rambaud gives his facts in general with little comment, wasting few words in explanation or ornament. The broad lines that show the important events are straight and clear, without twirl or flourish . Impartial, philosophical, and at times anecdotal, his style differs entirely from the French writers we are accustomed to : unlike Michelet, who was a poet rather than a historian, unlike Thiers, who was a politician and wrote his books in his leisure hours, this scholar of a new school loves the quiet of his study better than the noise of the forum, the depths of historical research better than the shallow stream of popular favor. Yet he must speak, because speech in France is the great organ of education. No man who has not lived in France can understand the power of spoken words over Frenchmen, whether in private or public life. His first speech was delivered at Besançon in 1880, where he represented the minister, Jules Ferry, at the unveiling of a statue of Victor Hugo. His latest was at the palace of the Trocadero in June last ( 1897 ) , where he told his fellow-citizens that peoples who would be free must depend on individual effort rather than on government support. Jules Ferry often said the same thing ; indeed, M. Rambaud never fails to recall with rare and dignified gratitude, on every occasion, what he owes to his patron : an uncommon thing in these forgetful , hurried times, and a bold thing some years ago in France, where the mention of Jules Ferry's name at a public meeting was shaking a red rag at a bull. M. Rambaud does speak much and often : he is a minister, and his duties are migratory. He flits from place to place, presiding, discoursing, distributing rewards, and giving good advice. Indeed, the Liberal Republicans are everywhere setting the sound good sense of their teaching against the eloquently worded promises of the reactionary socialist party, who, like all attacking bodies, are very active. Of late M. Rambaud has become a protectionist ; imitating Jules Ferry, who did so to please his electors in the east of France. The flame of his eloquence burns low and long ; it lights the way without dazzling, it guides without exciting. 12044 ALFRED RAMBAUD NAP Ν HALTING STEPS TOWARD DEMOCRACY From the History of Civilization in France > APOLEON, as First Consul and Emperor, modeled his court on that of former kings, and endeavored to give good manners to his officers and their wives, and to attract the members of the old noblesse ; saying, " They alone know how to serve. " The revolution of 1848 gave back to the popular classes their rights and power ; but the impatience of the workmen and the apathy of the peasants let a new Cæsar rise, who treated. democracy and universal suffrage as children. To-day they are full-grown men. Among the nations of Europe, France stands alone as being the sole important State at once democratic, republican, and with universal suffrage. C FRENCH GOVERNMENTAL EXPERIMENTS From the ' History of Contemporary Civilization in France > ONTEMPORARY history should not be separated from politics; nor can politics be, as some seem to think, a matter of opinion, of prejudice, passion, or excitement. When well understood they are a science, and even belong to experimental science ; and as such, are of course still uncertain , hypothetical in conclusions : but must tend, if judged in a truly scientific spirit, to laws as sure as those of physics, chemistry, or natural history. . . In politics, the heat of passion is always in inverse ratio, to a man's scientific education . Ignorant people are always violent. · In my study of the different forms of government we have tried, it will be seen that I have denied the merits of none : neither the generous, humane ideas of the Constituent, nor the patriotic energy of the Convention, nor the administrative genius of Napoleon I. , nor the parliamentary honesty of the two constitutional monarchies, nor the ardent spirit of social justice which animated the Second Republic [ 1848 ] , nor the great material progress accomplished under the Second Empire. At the same time, these studies show that none of these forms of government realized the ideal of liberty, equality, and public order, which every party worthy of the name should have in view. ALFRED RAMBAUD 12045 French royalty had not been strong enough to realize equality : it was too strong to permit liberty. Timid with regard to the historical rights of clergy and nobility, it had been tyrannical towards its people. . The population of France was divided into three estates : the clergy, nobility, and Third Estate. It formed three distinct classes, each having its own laws. The clergy alone numbered 130,000 priests ; the nobility 140,000 persons ; the Third Estate twentyfive million. The It great revolution is not an accident in our history. was prepared and brought on by the preceding eight centuries. Its results may be described in three words, -Unity, Equality, Liberty . *

• The last paragraph is from the main work, ' History of Civilization in France . >

HE nurse a RUSSIAN EXPANSION WEST AND SOUTH From the ' General History > THE GREEK PROJECT OF CATHARINE II. intended, if successful in driving out the Turks, to create Greek empire under a Russian Grand- Duke independent of Russia. She gave a Greek name, Constantine, a Greek and playmates, to her grandson born in 1779 ; and invited the Emperor to visit her in South Russia and settle the European Turkish question. Her progress through New Russia in 1787 was a triumphal march, where all was not show; for the coloni- zation of New Russia, lately a desert exposed to the incursions of Cossacks and Tartars (now peopled with six million human beings) , was commenced. On Catharine's return to her capital, war was declared ( 1787) . Neither party was well prepared. French and Prussian officers drilled the Ottoman recruits. POLA POLAND AND KOSCIUSZKO LAND was waking up from its intestine quarrels. The Jesuits. were dismissed by a bull of Clement XIV. This was no misfortune: they had taught the Poles intolerance and the exterior forms of religion ; moreover, they had taught Latin to the exclusion of Polish. On their disappearance there was a 12046 ALFRED RAMBAUD national awakening ; at least in the hearts of the middle classes, who were educated better than the nobles, less apart from European civilization, already imbued with French ideas, and who were deeply saddened by the misfortunes of their country, which they compared to the wonderful success of the French Revolution against the allied kings. Some nobles were animated with the same sentiments. Such was Thadeus Kosciuszko. Born in 1757, in the district of Novogrodek (Lithuania) , he had entered in 1764 the cadet school founded by Czartoryski. This son of a country gentleman received, one after another, two cruel lessons of social equality : his father was assassinated by some exasperated peasants ; while he himself, having fallen in love with the daughter of a nobleman of high rank, found himself scornfully refused . In America, where Washington appointed him colonel, and where he distinguished himself at Saratoga, Kosciuszko learned what real liberty was, and completed the knowledge he had first sought in our philosophers. During the last war, he was the only Polish general who had been victorious. After the second partition of Poland he became a Russian subject, but refused to serve in the Russian army. He passed into Saxony, and thence. to Paris on a mission. Already the Legislative Assembly had named him a French citizen . THE BENEFITS TO GERMANY FROM FRENCH INVASIONS From Germany under Napoleon, 1804-1811 HE Germans complain of the harm we have done them in the wars, almost always defensive, which our kings carried on against the ambition of Austria. Who could calculate the harm done to us by their princes, when in 1791 they turned France from her task of reorganization ; when they stirred up hatred between our working classes and our nobility, between the Assembly and Royalty; when they caused the Revolution to end in the Terror ? Afterwards, even if the Emperor, the King of Prussia, and the Ecclesiastic Electors did declare war, the people called and welcomed us. After a glorious defensive war, we were able to wage the most humane, the most beneficial of propagating wars. Even under Napoleon I. , French ALFRED RAMBAUD 12047 intervention in Germany was essentially different from German invasion of France : the former brought with it the elements of progress. Thus it may be said that in all times, and under every form of government, we have done more good than harm to the Germans; and a Prussian empire, founded on a so- called right of revenge of Germany against us, is based on injustice and falsehood. It is strange that Germany should accept from Prussia, along with new laws, its opinions ready- made. What magic spell has between its new masters used to make Germany forget history ? Before the Revolution there was no trace of hatred France and Germany; and that is why the wars of the Revolution were none of them a war of races. All western Germany accepted French influence willingly. Our language was written and spoken there, our literary traditions and our fashions. were followed with even too much docility. Frenchmen were enticed to dwell there ; but not always chosen with sufficient discernment, so that adventurers by whom the Germans were duped gave a sorry idea of our nation. On the other hand, the feeling of hostility against England dates very far back. It is that nation which, from the first, made us understand what a foreigner. was, and by trampling on France revealed her to herself. Large German States owe their prosperity to French political and religious refugees. Nor was the influx less from Germany into France. Princes came as pilgrims to the shrine of Versailles to admire and worship the kingliest King; to Paris, where they found the greatest number of men of genius and of sharpers, the wittiest ladies, and the lightest women. There came those who wished to serve in the army; like Maurice of Saxe, the victor of Fontenoy, and the Count of Löwendal, the victor of Berg- op-Zoom. The Rhenish provinces were but a continuation of France beyond the frontier ; their sons fought under French colors : war and hate were not between the peoples, they were the business of the governments. Men were cosmopolitan, citizens of the world, rather than French, German, or Prussian. The Revolution of 1803 in Germany was relatively as radical as the French Revolution. The German people looked on it with indifference, neither rejoicing nor grieving at the fall of its revolutions past ; because there was a great difference between the two . The sacrifices exacted from the privileged classes 12048 ALFRED RAMBAUD of France had served to found the unity of a great people, had brought liberty into the State and equality among the citizens . In Germany no such advantages had been obtained. The French had despoiled themselves for the grandeur of their country; in Germany for some great or petty sovereign, often more a princeling than a prince. It was not as an enemy but as an Emperor that Napoleon was received. Princes and people crowded to see the small lankhaired man, so unlike the legendary Charlemagne, whose sallow complexion, sinister unfathomable glance, and Roman features, reminded them of the pagan Cæsar who had first crossed the mighty river. I' CIVIL LIFE IN FRANCE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES From the History of French Civilization > F JUSTICE was cruel, the police of Paris were feeble. The multiplicity of jurisdictions among which Paris was divided, and the right of sanctuary allowed to nearly all the churches and abbeys, permitted criminals to elude pursuit. Paris, although Philip Augustus had paved some streets and filled up the filthy holes which infected his palace, was still horribly dirty. The narrow streets, with the houses overhanging in successive corbelings so that the upper stories touched, were incumbered. with stalls, sign-boards, and goods exposed for sale . Swine, geese, and cattle wandered through them. There the butchers slaughtered their beasts at night ; there was no light except that of the moon when it shone. The police were not responsible for anything after sunset. When once the curfew had rung, the honest bourgeois went to his home and shut himself in securely. The watch -that is , the prevost's archers were too few to control the dangerous classes. To thrash the watch was a student's sport : naturally, ill-doers feared it little. Sometimes a watchman like Gautier Rallard found an ingenious means of never entering into a fight with the robbers: he made his rounds preceded by music. The night watchman. who went through the streets in a coat embellished with tears and death's- heads, -armed with a lantern and a bell, announcing ALFRED RAMBAUD 12049 the hours, and calling the sleepers to " pray for the dead, " - scarcely interfered with the cutpurses and the pillagers of shops. The robbers, assassins, beggars, vagabonds, were organized in corporations just like the honest folk. They had their regular chiefs, their rules of apprenticeship, their trials for the mastery, their places of reunion. In Paris they formed a State apart, — the Kingdom of Argot, -where was spoken the " langue vert,” and across the boundaries of which the archers of the watch did not venture. Their elected chief was the great Coësre or King of Thune, who was drawn in a cart by dogs. He held his court his Court of Miracles -sometimes in the cul-de- sac Saint Sauveur, sometimes in the rue des Frams- Bourgeois, or near the Convent of the Filles- Dieu, or in the streets of Grande and Petite Truanderie. He had in each province, like the king, his bailiff, called the cagou. Sometimes he summoned a sort of States-General in the Pré aux Gueux (Beggars' Field) near Notre Dame d'Auray. His immense people, including all the beggars, blacklegs, and vagabonds of France, were divided into numerous classes. All paid a tribute to the King of Thune, and rendered him homage. Another powerful monarch was the King of Egypt, sovereign of the Gipsies. In 1427 the advance guard of these mysterious Asiatics had appeared in Paris ; a duke, a count, ten knights, followed by a hundred men, women, and children. These people, known as Bohemians, Saracens, Egyptians, Tsiganes, were soon swarming on the roads and at the gates of the towns, as showmen of bears and apes, as tinkers, counterfeiters, fortune- tellers. From these swarming crowds the army of crime was recruited. From time to time justice cast in her net, and exposed her capture in the pillory of the Halles or on the gibbet of Montfauçon ; but the mass was not thereby diminished . If the prevost hung some scamp in broad day, the King of Thune in turn hung in broad night some rash bourgeois or too inquisitive sergeant. As in India there were pariahs, despised even by the slave , and whose contact was pollution, so in France there were outcast races. These were called marrons in Auvergne ; cagots or cagoux in the Pyrenees; gaffots, caffots, capots, in Béarn and Navarre ; cagueux, cacuas, cacoux, in Bretagne; gahets, gaffets, in Guyenne. Whence came they, and who were they? Were they, as was said, descendants of the Mussulmans left in France by Abderrahman, or ofXXI the -754 Spaniards who were driven from their homes by the 12050 ALFRED RAMBAUD Arabs, or of converted heretics, or of ancient lepers ? No one knew, not even those who persecuted them. The only sure thing is, that they were treated like veritable lepers, forbidden to frequent churches, taverns, public festivals ; forced in Bretagne and Béarn to wear a red costume, and not permitted to go barefoot on the roads or to carry arms. Marriage or any contact with them was refused. They lived in isolated villages hidden in the country, or in obscure valleys ; intermarrying, hated by all and hating all the world. Although ancient slavery had disappeared from our soil through transformation into serfdom, there was a tendency to reconstitute it in Europe at the expense of the infidels taken in war. The Italian republics trafficked in their captives. In the twelfth century they were sold at fairs in Champagne, and Saracen slaves were bequeathed in a will to the bishop of Béziers. In the thirteenth century, slaves were traded in Provence. The new slavery was then in force in Roussillon , -which was not French territory, -but royal France spurned it. Then was established the maxim by virtue of which every slave who touched French soil became free. In 1402 and in 1406 the municipality of Toulouse applied this to the profit of fugitive slaves from Perpignan. In the Middle Ages, the duty of charity toward the poor was generally discharged . The pouch full of money which hung at the belts of nobles and bourgeois, men and women, was called an alms- purse ; a chaplain was an almoner. Kings, nobles, and ladies were often surrounded, as they walked, by the poor whom they maintained. King Robert allowed them to enter so freely into his palace, to go under his table, to sit on the floor beside him, almost between his legs, that on a certain day one of them cut a gold acorn from his clothing. Not only did alms-givers aid the poor with money, food, and clothing ; but seeing in them the image of suffering Christ, they gloried in sometimes serving them at table, and in washing their feet upon Holy Thursday. The religious orders, founded for the relief of the poor, consecrated to them at least a part of their revenues. In certain convents there were cells reserved for the poor ; in nearly all, distributions of soup and bread were made at the door of the monastery. Nevertheless, this charity of the Middle Ages was unintelligent . enough. The kings would have done better to aid their people ALFRED RAMBAUD 12051 instead of surrounding themselves with a few tatterdemalions ; the monasteries, while distributing their charity, became by seizing upon the land a cause of impoverishment for a vast radius around them . They relieved a few poor people ; but these were infinitely less to be pitied than thousands of peasants crushed under feudal laws, the ecclesiastical tenth, or the laws of the royal treasury. The problem of how to aid the poor without increasing pauperism and without offering a reward to idleness, so difficult even to modern France, was not one which the Middle Ages could solve . Moreover, the French of the thirteenth century, thoroughly imbued with religious ideas, were charitable not from philanthropy, but from piety; to secure salvation. The "virtuous poor, " with knees worn callous by many prostrations, with mouths full of prayers, well trained and indoctrinated by the Church, always present on the skirts of the sanctuary, always ready to reap the benefit of a pious thought, were very convenient to whoever wished to acquit himself of the Christian duty of charity. Poverty was too wide- spread to be possibly diminished ; at least one did what one was called upon to do, leaving the rest to God. From the MeroThe The sick formed a more limited category of the distressed, and charity toward them was more efficacious. vingian epoch, St. Clotilde and St. Aboflède , the wife and sister of Clovis ; St. Radegonde, the wife of Clotaire ; St. Bathilde, the wife of Clovis II . , —are cited as founders of hospitals. hospitals were usually annexed to a monastery, as was that of Bathilde to the royal abbey of Chelles. At the time of the Crusade's, the valiant Knights of St. John prided themselves above all upon being Hospitallers. The diffusion of leprosy in the twelfth century brought about the creation of special hospitals -leper-houses. In the thirteenth century there were nearly two thousand of these in France. They were usually managed by Knights of St. Lazarus, another military order. Louis VII. established them at the end of the Faubourg St. Denis ; their motherhouse was the domain of Boigny. He also created at Saussaie near Villejuif a convent of women to care for lepers. The kings made large benefactions to these houses : when they died, their personal linen and all their horses, mules, etc. , belonged to the leper-house of La Saussaie. When Jean II . died in England, so that the house was deprived of his horses, his son paid it an indemnity. Later, Charles VI. bought back from this convent for ALFRED RAMBAUD 12052 twenty-five hundred francs the horses of his father Charles V. The knights showed themselves deserving of these favors by caring not only for the lepers, but for all kinds of invalids. St. Louis was a Grand- Hospitaller. It was he who enlarged and endowed the Maison- Dieu ( Hotel- Dieu) of Paris, who founded the Hospital of the Quinze- Vingts for three hundred blind men, who instituted the hostelleries des postes in the principal towns of the kingdom. Devout nobles followed his example ; and in the thirteenth century Elzéar de Sabran and his wife are cited as having given everything -life and fortune -to the service of the sick. The Church did not content itself with offering prayers for travelers. In the most difficult passes of the mountains, in the snows of the Alps, rose pious hostelries : those of St. Bernard, of St. Gothard, of the Simplon, of Mont Cenis, are of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The wars with the Saracens, the Mussulman piracy on the Mediterranean, peopled the markets and prisons of the Orient and Africa with Christian captives. Religious orders, -the Mathurins, founded in 1198, and the Fathers of Mercy, founded in 1223 , -went with money to ransom Christian prisoners. Translated for ' A Library of the World's Best Literature, ' by Jane Grosvenor Cooke FRENCH MEDICAL SCIENCE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES From the History of French Civilization › HE most celebrated physicians of antiquity were among the Greeks, Hippocrates of Cos, Galen of Pergamus, Herophilus, Erasistratus ; among the Romans, Celsus and Coelius Aurelianus. Their knowledge of anatomy was still imperfect ; their physiology amounted to nothing, since they were not acquainted either with the circulation of the blood or the functions of the nervous system ; their remedies were few, and often purely imaginary. The downfall of Roman civilization arrested the progress of this science. The Arabs succeeded. In a compilation of a certain Aaron Christian, priest of Alexandria, known under the name of " Pandects of Medicine, " they rediscovered extracts from ancient writings. They seized upon these and made some progress. The most celebrated Arabian physicians were ALFRED RAMBAUD 12053 Rhazès (850-923) , and Avicenna (980-1037) , both born in the caliphate of Bagdad ; Avenzoar ( 1072-1162) , and Averroës ( 1120-1198) , both Spanish Arabs. Maimonides ( 1135-1204) was a Jewish rabbi of Spain. The ' Canon ' of Avicenna, translated into Latin, was the medical work most extensively known throughout Europe. Thus Europeans seldom knew the physicians of antiquity except through a triple series of translations from Greek into Syriac, from Syriac into Arabic, and from Arabic into Latin. For a long time the Christians abandoned the study of medicine to the Arabs and Jews. It was to these infidel masters that later the most daring went to learn the elements of the sci- ence. Charlemagne in 805 had prescribed the study of medicine in the monasteries. About the ninth century, the school of Salerno in Italy began to be famous throughout Christendom. In the tenth century some Jews founded the school of Montpellier , which in the thirteenth became a faculty. In 1200 the University of Paris was founded, which was not until later anything more than a faculty of medicine ; but already in 1213 there was question of professors of medicine. The Church showed little favor to this science, which seemed an evidence of distrust toward Providence. " The precepts of medicine are contrary to Divine knowledge, " wrote St. Ambrose : " they condemn prayers and vigils. » The councils of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries forbade the study of this art to prelates and archdeacons, and only permitted it to the lower clergy. No clergyman could practice surgery, because it sheds blood. Boniface VIII. menaced with excommunication whoever should dissect a dead body. Anatomy being proscribed ; the natural sciences, such as botany, mineralogy, and chemistry, being in their infancy, -one cant imagine our medical science of the Middle Ages. It consisted of prescriptions often childish and incomplete ; observations borrowed from antiquity or from the Arabs. The prejudices and superstitions of the time played an important part in it . The doctors, also called physicians or mires, were also alchemists and astroloThey taught that the brain increases and decreases according to the phases of the moon ; that it has, like the sea, its ebb and flow twice a day. The purpose of the lungs was to air the heart, the liver was the seat of love, the spleen that of laughter. They made use of formulas and cabalistic words ; they ordered strange remedies, such as the liver of a toad, the blood of a ALFRED RAMBAUD 12054 frog, a rat, or a goat ; they sought universal remedies or panaceas; they bled people only upon certain days, and after having observed the position of the stars and the phases of the moon. Such-and- such a remedy was good for the noble but bad for the serf; the noble must purge himself with hyssop, the peasant with myrobolan. The one cured a fracture with an earth bolus ; the other with the dung of his cattle. Surgery was considered an inferior art. As the clergy was forbidden to exercise it, it was separated from medicine. It was abandoned to the practitioners who had not received degrees, and who were also barbers and even bath- keepers. Even in the seventeenth century, in 1613 , there were corporations of surgeonbarbers. They shaved people, bled them, and bandaged their wounds. The surgeons traced their organization into a corporation back to St. Louis, but their Collège de Saint- Côme does not seem to date farther back than the fourteenth century. They were placed under the authority of the " king's barber, " who had his delegates in all the towns of the kingdom. Further, the doctors and surgeon-barbers served only the nobles and the rich. The people had their own therapeutics ; in medicine, the remedies of wise women and sorcerers ; in surgery, the bone- setters, who had charms and secrets for restoring broken limbs with ointments of their own composition, signs of the cross, and formulas. The bone- setter above all others was the executioner: since he understood so well how to break limbs, he ought to understand how to mend them. It was he who furnished a precious panacea, -the fat of the hanged. They believed, too, that a donkey's breath expelled all poison. Aching teeth they cured by touching them with a dead man's tooth. To arrest hemorrhage or nose- bleed they dropped a key down the back. By spitting in the mouth of a living frog they stopped a cough. Rather than apply to the doctor they had recourse to the apothecary, who, in spite of the prohibitions of the faculty, took a part in healing. Charlatans swarmed. Religion too had its medicine, in which Christian beliefs were amalgamated with old pagan superstitions. Epilepsy was then called the sacred evil, the Divine evil. The epileptic was believed to be possessed by a demon; the only consideration was to drive out the evil spirit from him. Therefore the priest sprinkled him with holy water ; and while the sufferer was rolling in ALFRED RAMBAUD 12055 convulsions, read the formula of exorcism. It is known that nervous maladies are easily communicated to persons with sensitive nerves ; thus the demon driven from one body often gave himself the pleasure of entering into the body of a spectator, who writhed in his turn. Sometimes in revenge he entered into the exorciser. The possessed were also cured by a pilgrimage to Saint- Maur near Paris, by a novena at the church of BonSecours near Nancy, or by touching the holy cerement at Besançon. Heaven was peopled with healing saints. If one had sore throat he addressed himself to Saint Christopher; if dropsy, to Saint Eutropius ; if fever, to Saint Pernella ; if insanity, to Saint Mathurin ; if the plague, to Saint Roque ; if hydrophobia, to Saint Hubert, the patron of the chase and of dogs. At the monastery of Saint Hubert, near Liege, a monk touched the patient with the saint's stole, and cauterized him with " the key of Saint Hubert. » Often the choice of the saint was determined by a kind of pun. For scurf (teigne) they addressed to Saint Aignan (pronounced " Saint Teignan ") ; for trouble with the eyes, to Saint Claire ; for gout, to Saint Genou (genou, knee) ; for cramps, to Saint Crampan. Certain maladies were even designated only by the name of the saint who cured them : thus Saint Vitus's dance, a nervous disease which we now call chorea ; Saint John's ill , which was epilepsy ; Saint Anthony's evil, which was canker; Saint Eloy's evil, which was scurvy; Saint Firmin's evil, which was erysipelas ; Saint Lazarus's evil, which was leprosy; Saint Quentin's evil, which was dropsy ; Saint Sylvan's evil, which seems to have been a kind of eruptive fever. The monks who practiced this medicine sometimes drew illicit profits from it. In the thirteenth century, those of Saint Anthony were accused of receiving into their hospitals only healthy people, upon whose bodies they painted apparent sores, and then sent them to solicit the charity of the faithful. Those of Saint Sylvan retained as serfs those who had recovered their health under the porch of their church. In order to increase the number of supplicants they forbade all competition. In 1263 they prohibited women from attempting to heal those afflicted with Saint Sylvan's evil, with the exception of the lord and any of his family"; for these could not be reduced to serfdom. 12056 ALFRED RAMBAUD Kings too cured by touching : the King of England cured epilepsy; the King of France scrofula. The King of England, when he had added to his title that too of King of France, also. cured scrofula. The heads of certain noble families, like that of the house of Aumont in Bourgogne, had the same gift. The progress of royal power put an end to these feudal healings. Yet never would a truly serious medical science have been more useful than at certain epochs of the Middle Ages, when diseases raged which have since disappeared, and when those which still exist attained an unequaled violence. Then they ignored or neglected the most elementary principles of hygiene. The peasant lived on his refuse heap, huddled in with his beasts, like the wretched Irish peasant of to- day; the townsman lived in the stench of narrow streets. The clergy, by preaching contempt of the body, indirectly encouraged neglect of the most necessary care of it. Until toward the middle of the fourteenth century hemp and linen cloth was little used, even by the upper classes ; and woolen fabrics in direct contact with the skin must have irritated it. The peasant was poorly nourished, and by way of meat had scarcely anything but salt provisions. In the tenth raged, which Such a regimen naturally favored skin diseases. and eleventh centuries a scrofula or gangrene loosed the members of the body joint by joint. Ulcers, tetter, scurf, the itch were frequent. The poverty of the blood increased the number of the scrofulous. Leprosy, which began with the first Crusades, and later developed enormously, lasted throughout the Middle Ages. In 1250 the army of Saint Louis in Egypt. was decimated by dysentery and scrofula. Nervous diseases multiplied, incited by terror of the wars, by the spectacle of tortures, by fear of the devil and of hell, by the isolation and monotony of life in castle and cloister. There were epidemics of Saint Vitus's dance, which seized upon entire populations and drew them into a mad round ; frequent cases of epilepsy, the victims of which were thought to be possessed by devils ; melancholia, or black sadness ; lycanthropy, or mania of those who believed themselves changed into wolves, and who were called were-wolves ; demonomania, which made thousands of unfortunates believe themselves in commerce with the infernal spirit ; the mania of scourging ; hallucinations taken for visions. Small- pox first appeared in Gaul in the sixth century : from this disease, described by Gregory of Tours, died the children of ALFRED RAMBAUD 12057 Frédégonde. The Oriental plague or bubonic pest began to show itself about 540. The black pest, also a bubonic pest, ran over all Europe in the fourteenth century, and destroyed a large part of the population. In the fifteenth century the whooping- cough appeared, which in 1414 killed many old people ; and the English sweatingsickness, which made many ravages down to the sixteenth century, but which then became limited to England, and to Calais which was occupied by the English . Medical science remained powerless before these scourges : often it let rule a superstition which it shared. Those believed to be possessed of evil spirits were exorcised ; those who were asserted to be sorcerers were burned. The lepers recommended to Saint Lazarus were confined, -sometimes in isolated huts, sometimes in leper-houses, but always away from other people. They made them wear a striking costume, -a red blouse ; they covered their hands with gloves ; they supplied them with a rattle to warn those who passed. The priest, when lepers were brought to him, forbade them to go barefoot, or to go elsewhere than on the broad thoroughfares, lest they should brush against travelers ; to enter churches, or to bathe in streams. He consoled them, however, by recalling to them that their spiritual communion with Christians still subsisted . Then he pronounced prayers, turned a shovelful of earth upon their heads as a sign that they were cut off from the living, and offered them the sole of his shoe to kiss. Lepers could associate only with lepers, and marry only with lepers ; and when they died, their huts were burned . In the fifteenth century there seems to have been a reawakening of medical science. At Montpellier, under Charles VI. , the body of a criminal was dissected for the first time in France. In 1484, an ordinance of Charles VIII . fixed at four years the duration of apprenticeship in the corporation of the grocers and apothecaries of Paris ; for pharmacists or apothecaries formed a single corporation with the grocers, which had obtained second among the trades of Paris. An ordinance of Louis XII. distinctly separates the two professions. These are the origins of French pharmacy. rank Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature, ' by Jane Grosvenor Cooke 12058 ALFRED RAMBAUD THE MIDDLE AGES CHARACTER OF THEIR CIVILIZATION From the History of French Civilization ' HE Middle Ages were only considered by the historians of the Teighteenth century as a period of ignorance and barbarism, unproductive and void. They are considered to-day in an entirely different light. It was during the Middle Ages that new nations and new languages originated in Europe ; among these the French nation and the French language. Institutions which would have astonished the Greeks and Romans were developed during this period. The ancients knew no other political life than the municipal life ; they had only the idea of a city, not at all that of a nation ; they did not believe liberty possible except within the walls of a town. As soon as the Romans had to govern not only towns but an empire, they believed that they could only govern by the most absolute despotism. On the contrary, the new nations found the means, in dominating vast regions, to harmonize the principle of authority with that of the liberty of the subjects. They outlined the system of representation, from which have proceeded the modern constitutions ; they established the jury, -that is, the judgment of the accused by his peers. Great steps were accomplished in social progress. Slavery, that curse of the ancient world, disappeared . The laborer in the field began to enfranchise himself from the servitude of the globe, which Roman law had consecrated. The sphere of woman was enlarged in the family and in society, not only by effect of law but by custom ; and this feature alone was sufficient to distinguish in the strongest manner the Middle Ages from the ancient civilization . In literature we remained in the Middle Ages far behind the classic perfection, but we created original methods and styles — epic poems, the " mysteries, " and the lyric poetry of the south. In the sciences, it is to the Middle Ages that we owe the modern system of numeration, algebra, the compass, the magnifying glass, gunpowder, the process of distillation, the discovery of gas, the most important acids, the first fulminating elements, and numberless chemical combinations. ALFRED RAMBAUD 12059 In the arts, the Middle Ages were glorified by two grand creations : French architecture (Roman and ogival) and musical harmony. A more rational notation of music was adopted . Engraving was begun, and painting in oils made its début. If modern painting and sculpture owe to ancient art the perfection of form, the artists of the Middle Ages have preceded us in the choice of expression. Besides the invention of printing, it may be noted that during that time were manufactured for the first time in Europe, sugar, silk tissues, plate mirrors, clocks, and watches. New conditions of life, comforts unknown to the ancients, such as body linen and chimneys, characterized the private life of the Middle Ages. The world itself was enlarged. No Roman navigator had, like the Scandinavians, or perhaps the Basques, brought the ancient world in contact with America ; no Roman explorer had, like Marco Polo and his emulators, revealed to his compatriots central Asia and the extreme Orient. The majority of the weak points in the civilization of the Middle Ages are identical with those of the Roman civilization ; for example, the barbarism of criminal procedure, the cruelty of torture, and the grosser superstitions. that of Our old French civilization on only three points of viewthe glory and the perfection of the arts, the liberty of thought, and the power of the scientific spirit —is perhaps inferior to the civilization of the Greeks, which was the mother of all the others, and which has remained incomparable as the initiative, original, and prolific. But assuredly our own old civilization is not inferior to the Roman civilization. Between that of the Romans and Our ancestors there is a difference, not of degree, but of A colder climate, instincts and needs peculiar to the and Germanic races, and the great influence of the religious sentiment, have contributed to this result. It is the civilization of the north contrasted with the civilization of the south . One cannot say that the France of the thirteenth century was barbaric in comparison with the Rome of the emperors ; for amid the ruins of the Empire it regained all that it was possible to possess of political culture. nature . Gallic 12060 ALFRED RAMBAUD THE CLOSE OF THE Middle AgeS The close of the mediæval period is marked by the following stages: ― In the political order : The taking of Constantinople, and the establishment of the Turks in Oriental Europe upon the débris of the Greek empire ; the fall of the papacy as the directing power of Europe ; the succeeding of national wars to holy wars; the birth of the patriotic sentiment ; the progress of the royal power ; the new form taken by the power of the third estate , which is not the form of local communes, but the national form of general States.. In the social order : The emancipation of the rural classes ; the enrichment of the middle classes, and their increasing influence. In the religious order : The appearance of new heresies, notably that of John Huss in Bohemia, which appears to have prepared the way for the advent of Protestantism. In the literary order : The end of chivalric poetry ; the appearance of philosophy in history (under Comines) ; the decadence of the ancient theatre, the " mysteries " and the " moralities "; the first steps in the progress of printing ; and the introduction in the Occident, after the fall of Constantinople, of new Greek and Latin manuscripts. In the scientific order : The tendency of the sciences to free themselves from the yoke of scholasticism and theology through the resumption of the theory of the world according to Nicholas de Cusa ; and by the revival of medicine in the times of Louis XI. In the artistic order : The relaxation in the construction of ogival (pointed arched) cathedrals ; the emancipation of the arts -sculpture, painting, and music -from the religious influence. In the military order : The decline of the ideas of chivalry ; the perfection of cannon and portable firearms ; the establishment of permanent armies ; the improvement of infantry. In the economic order : The discovery of new routes of communication with the Indies ; the development of navigation, and the first voyages across the ocean. 12061 ALLAN RAMSAY (1686-1758) HE criticism which ranks Allan Ramsay with Theocritus and Tasso, as a writer of pastoral poetry, is to a great degree justifiable. The Edinburgh wig-maker resembles the singer of Greece and the singer of Italy in that his verse is redolent of the soil. In an age given over to the composition of artificial pastorals, of impossible Arcadias, peopled by Strephons and Chloes and Phyllises, Ramsay portrayed real shepherds in the actual country life of the Scotch peasantry. Instead of placing high-flown, impossible language upon their lips, he made them use the familiar Lowland Scotch dialect. He wrote a poem breathing of the fields, and full of the homely sights and sounds of rustic existence. His naturalness and his spontaneity in an artificial age constitute his right to be named as a worthy progenitor of Burns. ALLAN RAMSAY On his father's The author of The Gentle Shepherd ' was born in 1686, in Leadhills, Lanarkshire, Scotland, in the heart of the Lowther hills. It is significant that the future poet, while born and bred among the peasantry, was far enough removed from them by a strain of gentler blood to be in the position of observer and critic, rather than in that of a comrade. side he was related to the Earls of Dalhousie, on his mother's to the great Douglas clan. Neither his father nor his mother were native to Leadhills, and between Ramsay and the rough mining population there could have been little sympathy. He remained in the bleak region until his sixteenth year, aiding his stepfather, David Crichton, on his farm ; he was then apprenticed to an Edinburgh wigmaker, whom he served until 1707, when having received back his indentures, he began business for himself. The Edinburgh of this period, deprived of its political prominence by the Act of Union, passed in 1707, which united England and Scotland under the name of Great Britain, gave itself up to certain literary and social activities, which took concrete form in a variety of 12062 ALLAN RAMSAY clubs. Of one of these, " The Easy Club, " Ramsay was made a member; and it was through its encouragement and stimulus that his poetical talents bore fruit. He published occasional pieces— “ elegies, " as he called them - full of humor and insight into the life of which he formed a part. In 1716 appeared the poem which first showed him to be a master in the portrayal of rustic Scottish life . This was ' Christ's Kirk on the Green.' King James I. of Scotland had written a single canto under this title, describing a brawl at a country wedding. Ramsay supplied a second and a third canto, imitating so perfectly the spirit and form of the royal author's work that the whole appears as the work of one hand. < In 1725 The Gentle Shepherd ' was published . The immediate cause of its composition is said to have been an article in the Guardian for April 7th, 1713 ; which, taking Pope's ' Windsor Forest ' as its starting-point of discussion, proceeded to describe the characteristics of a true pastoral poem. These differed essentially from the popular ideal, which regarded the " shepherd » of literature as a kind of Dresden-china embodiment of all the virtues ; a silken swain living an exquisite life among beribboned sheep and dainty shepherdesses. Ramsay, with the instinct of the true poet, brushed this flummery aside, and following the prescription of nature as set forth in the Guardian, went direct to the " common people " to obtain material for his pastoral. The Gentle Shepherd ' is a poetical embodiment of rustic Scotland. It is written in the language of the peasantry ; it is an intimate reproduction of their life. The simple tale, told with such truthfulness of detail and sincerity of feeling, became at once popular with all classes. It found its way not only into the homes of the London and Edinburgh wits, but into the farm-houses of the country people, to whom it became a kind of Bible. Its maxims passed into proverbs ; its many passages of beautiful verse found their true home in the hearts of those whose manner of life had been the author's inspiration. > It is through The Gentle Shepherd ' that Allan Ramsay is chiefly remembered as a poet only second to Burns himself. Yet he claims recognition as one who did not a little for the literature of his country by the publication of the ' Tea- Table Miscellany and the ' Evergreen, ' collections of ancient Scottish verse, which went far to revive interest in that golden age of Scotland's literature extending from the time of King James I. to the death of Drummond of Hawthornden. - The remainder of Ramsay's life was uneventful. He opened a book-store in Edinburgh, with which was connected the first circulating library ever established in the country. He continued to write until late in his life : many of his poems were issued in " broadsides, " ALLAN RAMSAY 12063 or quarto sheets, which were hawked through the streets of Edinburgh; their popularity was enormous. They have long since dropped into the limbo of obscurity ; but ' The Gentle Shepherd ' is read and loved in Scotland to this day. B THE GENTLE SHEPHERD Prologue to the Scene ENEATH the south side of a craigy bield, Where crystal springs the halesome waters yield, Twa youthfu' shepherds on the gowans lay, Tenting their flocks ae bonny morn of May. Poor Roger granes, till hollow echoes ring; But blyther Patie likes to laugh and sing. Sang Tune - The Wauking of the Faulds.' PATIE My Peggy is a young thing, Just entered in her teens, Fair as the day, and sweet as May, Fair as the day, and always gay. My Peggy is a young thing, And I'm not very auld, Yet well I like to meet her at The wauking of the fauld. My Peggy speaks sae sweetly, Whene'er we meet alane, I wish nae mair to lay my care; - I wish nae mair of a' that's rare. My Peggy speaks sae sweetly, To a' the lave I'm cauld ; But she gars a' my spirits glow, At wauking of the fauld. My Peggy smiles sae kindly, Whene'er I whisper love, That I look down on a' the town, - That I look down upon a crown. My Peggy smiles sae kindly, It makes me blyth and bauld ; 12064 ALLAN RAMSAY And naething gi'es me sic delight As wauking of the fauld. My Peggy sings sae saftly, When on my pipe I play, By a' the rest it is confest, — By a' the rest, that she sings best. My Peggy sings sae saftly, And in her sangs are tauld, With innocence, the wale o' sense, At wauking of the fauld. This sunny morning, Roger, cheers my blood, And puts all nature in a jovial mood. How heartsome is't to see the rising plants, - To hear the birds chirm o'er their pleasing rants ! How halesome is't to snuff the cawler air, And all the sweets it bears, when void of care! What ails thee, Roger, then ? what gars thee grane ? Tell me the cause of thy ill-season'd pain. ROGER I'm born, O Patie ! to a thrawart fate ; I'm born to strive with hardships sad and great! Tempests may cease to jaw the rowan flood, Corbies and tods to grein for lambkins' blood, But I , opprest with never-ending grief, Maun ay despair of lighting on relief. PATIE The bees shall loath the flower, and quit the hive, The saughs on boggie ground shall cease to thrive, Ere scornfu' queans, or loss of warldly gear, Shall spill my rest, or ever force a tear ! ROGER Sae might I say ; but it's no easy done By ane whase saul's sae sadly out of tune. You have sae saft a voice, and slid a tongue, You are the darling of baith old and young. If I but ettle at a sang, or speak, They dit their lugs, syne up their leglens cleek, And jeer me hameward frae the loan or bught, While I'm confused with mony a vexing thought. ALLAN RAMSAY 12065 Yet I am tall, and as well built as thee, Nor mair unlikely to a lass's ee; For ilka sheep ye have, I'll number ten ; And should, as ane may think, come farther ben. PATIE But aiblins ! nibour, ye have not a heart, And downa eithly with your cunzie part : If that be true, what signifies your gear ? A mind that's scrimpit never wants some care. ROGER My byar tumbled, nine braw nowt were smoored, Three elf-shot were, yet I these ills endured : In winter last my cares were very sma', Though scores of wathers perished in the snaw. PATIE Were your bein rooms as thinly stocked as mine, Less ye wad loss, and less ye wad repine. He that has just enough can soundly sleep ; The o'ercome only fashes fawk to keep. ROGER May plenty flow upon thee for a cross, That thou may'st thole the pangs of mony a loss ; Oh, may'st thou doat on some fair paughty wench, That ne'er will lout thy lowan drowth to quench : Till brised beneath the burden, thou cry dool, And awn that ane may fret that is nae fool. PATIE Sax good fat lambs, I sald them ilka clute At the West-port, and bought a winsome flute, Of plum-tree made, with iv'ry virles round, A dainty whistle, with a pleasant sound: I'll be mair canty wi't, -and ne'er cry dool, — Than you with all your cash, ye dowie fool ! ROGER Na, Patie, na ! I'm nae sic churlish beast ; Some other thing lies heavier at my breast. I dreamed a dreary dream this hinder night, That gars my flesh a' creep yet with the fright. XXI-755 12066 ALLAN RAMSAY PATIE Now, to a friend, how silly's this pretense, - To ane wha you and a' your secrets kens! Daft are your dreams, as daftly wad ye hide Your well-seen love, and dorty Jenny's pride. Take courage, Roger, me your sorrows tell, And safely think nane kens them but yoursell. ROGER Indeed now, Patie, ye have guessed o'er true ; And there is naithing I'll keep up frae you. Me dorty Jenny looks upon asquint, — To speak but till her I dare hardly mint ; In ilka place she jeers me air and late, And gars me look bombazed and unco blate. But yesterday I met her yont a knowe, — She fled as frae a shelly-coated kow. She Bauldy looes, —Bauldy that drives the car, - But gecks at me and says I smell of tar. PATIE But Bauldy looes not her. Right well I wat He sighs for Neps. Sae that may stand for that. ROGER I wish I couldna looe her- but in vain : I still maun doat, and thole her proud disdain. My Bawty is a cur I dearly like : Till he yowled sair she strak the poor dumb tyke ; If I had filled a nook within her breast, She wad have shawn mair kindness to my beast. When I begin to tune my stock and horn, With a' her face she shaws a cauldrife scorn. Last night I played, -ye never heard sic spite : ' O'er Bogie ' was the spring, and her delyte, Yet tauntingly she at her cousin speered Gif she could tell what tune I played, and sneered ! Flocks, wander where ye like, I dinna care : I'll break my reed, and never whistle mair! PATIE E'en do sae, Roger, wha can help misluck ? Saebeins she be sic a thrawn-gabbit chuck, — ALLAN RAMSAY 12067 Yonder's a craig, since ye have tint all houp : Gae till't your ways, and take the lover's lowp! ROGER I needna mak sic speed my blood to spill : I'll warrant death come soon enough a-will. PATIE Daft gowk! leave aff that silly whingin way; Seem careless, -there's my hand ye'll win the day. Hear how I served my lass I looe as weel As ye do Jenny, and with heart as leel. Last morning I was gay and early out ; Upon a dyke I leaned glowring about; I saw my Meg come linking o'er the lee ; I saw my Meg, but Meggy saw na me, - For yet the sun was wading through the mist, And she was close upon me e'er she wist ; Her coats were kiltit, and did sweetly shaw Her straight bare legs that whiter were than snaw. Her cockernony snooded up fou sleek, Her haffet locks hang waving on her cheek ; Her cheek sae ruddy, and her een sae clear ; And oh her mouth's like ony hinny pear. Neat, neat she was, in bustine waistcoat clean, As she came skiffing o'er the dewy green. Blythsome I cried, " My bonny Meg, come here : I ferly wherefore ye're sae soon asteer ; But I can guess, ye're gawn to gather dew. " She scoured awa, and said, " What's that to you ? » " Then fare ye weel, Meg-dorts ; and e'en's ye like ! » I careless cried, and lap in o'er the dyke. I trow, when that she saw, within a crack She came with a right thieveless errand back : Miscawed me first ; then bad me hound my dog, To wear up three waff ewes strayed on the bog. I leugh ; and sae did she ; then with great haste I clasped my arms about her neck and waist ; About her yielding waist, and took a fouth Of sweetest kisses frae her glowing mouth. While hard and fast I held her in my grips, My very saul came lowping to my lips. Sair, sair she flet wi' me ' tween ilka smack, But weel I kend she meant nae as she spak. 12068 ALLAN RAMSAY Dear Roger, when your jo puts on her gloom, Do ye sae too, and never fash your thumb : Seem to forsake her, soon she'll change her mood; Gae woo anither, and she'll gang clean wood. Sang Tune — ' Fye, gar rub her o'er wi' strae. ' EAR Roger, if your Jenny geck, DE And answer kindness with a slight, Seem unconcerned at her neglect ; For women in a man delight, But them despise who're soon defeat, And with a simple face give way To a repulse : then be not blate, — Push bauldly on, and win the day. When maidens, innocently young, Say often what they never mean, Ne'er mind their pretty lying tongue, But tent the language of their een: If these agree, and she persist To answer all your love with hate, Seek elsewhere to be better blest, And let her sigh when ' tis too late. ROGER Kind Patie, now fair fa' your honest heart, - Ye're ay sae cadgy, and have sic an art To hearten ane ! for now, as clean's a leek, Ye've cherished me since ye began to speak. Sae, for your pains, I'll mak ye a propine (My mother, rest her saul ! she made it fine) : A tartan plaid, spun of good hawslock woo, Scarlet and green the sets, the borders blue ; With spraings like gowd and siller crossed with black : I never had it yet upon my back. Weel are ye wordy o't, wha have sae kind Redd up my raveled doubts, and cleared my mind. PATIE Weel, had ye there ! And since ye've frankly made To me a present of your braw new plaid, ALLAN RAMSAY 12069 My flute's be yours ; and she too that's sae nice Shall come a-will, gif ye'll take my advice. ROGER As ye advise, I'll promise to observ't ; But ye maun keep the flute, ye best deserv't. Now tak it out, and gie's a bonny spring, For I'm in tift to hear you play and sing. PATIE But first we'll take a turn up to the height, And see gif all our flocks be feeding right : Be that time bannocks, and a shave of cheese, Will make a breakfast that a laird might please ; Might please the daintiest gabs were they sae wise To season meat with health instead of spice. When we have ta'en the grace drink at this well, I'll whistle syne, and sing t'ye like mysell. [ Exeunt. BESSY BELL AND MARY GRAY * H, Bessy Bell and Mary Gray! OH They are twa bonny lasses ; They bigged a bower on yon burn-brae, And thecked it o'er with rashes : Fair Bessy Bell I looed yestreen, And thought I ne'er could alter, But Mary Gray's twa pawky een They gar my fancy falter. Now Bessy's hair's like a lint tap, She smiles like a May morning, When Phoebus starts frae Thetis's lap, The hills with rays adorning ; White is her neck, saft is her hand, Her waist and feet's fou genty, With ilka grace she can command ; Her lips, oh, wow! they're dainty. And Mary's locks are like the craw, Her eyes like diamonds glances ; The first four lines of this are from an old ballad, - see under The Bal- lad,' Vol. iii . of this work. 12070 ALLAN RAMSAY She's ay sae clean red up and braw, She kills whene'er she dances ; Blyth as a kid, with wit at will, She blooming, tight, and tall is ; And guides her airs sae graceful still, O Jove! she's like thy Pallas. Dear Bessy Bell and Mary Gray, Ye unco sair oppress us ; Our fancies jee between you twae, Ye are sic bonny lasses : Wae's me! for baith I canna get, - To ane by law we're stinted ; Then I'll draw cuts, and take my fate, And be with ane contented. F LOCHABER NO MORE AREWELL to Lochaber, and farewell my Jean, Where heartsome with thee I've mony day been ; For Lochaber no more, Lochaber no more, We'll maybe return to Lochaber no more. These tears that I shed, they are a' for my dear, And no for the dangers attending on wear, Though bore on rough seas to a far bloody shore, Maybe to return to Lochaber no more. Though hurricanes rise, and rise every wind, They'll ne'er make a tempest like that in my mind; Though loudest of thunder on louder waves roar, That's naething like leaving my love on the shore. To leave thee behind me my heart is sair pained ; By ease that's inglorious no fame can be gained ; And beauty and love's the reward of the brave, And I must deserve it before I can crave. Then glory, my Jeany, maun plead my excuse ! Since honor commands me, how can I refuse ? Without it I ne'er can have merit for thee, And without thy favor I'd better not be. I gae then, my lass, to win honor and fame, And if I should luck to come gloriously hame, I'll bring a heart to thee with love running o'er, And then I'll leave thee and Lochaber no more. ALLAN RAMSAY AN THOU WERE MY AIN THING N THOU were my ain thing, AN I would love thee, I would love thee ; An thou were my ain thing, How dearly would I love thee. Like bees that suck the morning dew Frae flowers of sweetest scent and hue, Sae wad I dwell upo' thy mou', And gar the gods envy me. An thou were, etc. Sae lang's I had the use of light, I'd on thy beauties feast my sight ; Syne in saft whispers through the night I'd tell how much I looed thee. An thou were, etc. How fair and ruddy is my Jean! She moves a goddess o'er the green : Were I a king, thou should be queen, Nane but myself aboon thee. An thou were, etc. I'd grasp thee to this breast of mine, Whilst thou like ivy, or the vine, Around my stronger limbs should twine, Formed hardy to defend thee. An thou were, etc. Time's on the wing and will not stay ; In shining youth let's make our hay, Since love admits of no delay; Oh, let na scorn undo thee. An thou were, etc. While love does at his altar stand, Hae, there's my heart, gi'e me thy hand, And with ilk smile thou shalt command The will of him wha loves thee. An thou were, etc. 12071 12072 ALLAN RAMSAY B A SANG Tune - Busk ye, my bonny bride. ' USK ye, busk ye, my bonny bride ; Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny marrow; Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny bride, Busk, and go to the braes of Yarrow: There will we sport and gather dew, Dancing while lavrocks sing the morning; There learn frae turtles to prove true : O Bell! ne'er vex me with thy scorning. To westlin breezes Flora yields ; And when the beams are kindly warming, Blythness appears o'er all the fields , And nature looks mair fresh and charming : Learn frae the burns that trace the mead, - Though on their banks the roses blossom, Yet hastily they flow to Tweed, And pour their sweetness in his bosom. Haste ye, haste ye, my bonny Bell, Haste to my arms, and there I'll guard thee ; With free consent my fears repel, I'll with my love and care reward thee.— Thus sang I saftly to my fair, Wha raised my hopes with kind relenting : O queen of smiles ! I ask nae mair, Since now my bonny Bell's consenting. TH THE HIGHLAND LASSIE HE Lawland maids gang trig and fine, But aft they're sour and unco saucy ; Sae proud they never can be kind Like my good-humored Highland lassie. Chorus O my bonny, bonny Highland lassie, My hearty, smiling Highland lassie, May never care make thee less fair, But bloom of youth still bless my lassie. ALLAN RAMSAY 12073 Than ony lass in borrows-town, Wha makes their cheeks with patches motie, I'd take my Katie but a gown, Barefooted, in her little coatie. Chorus. Beneath the brier or breken bush, Whene'er I kiss and court my dautie, Happy and blyth as ane wad wish, My flighteren heart gangs pittie- pattie . O'er highest heathery hills I'll sten, With cockit gun and ratches tenty, To drive the deer out of their den, To feast my lass on dishes dainty. Chorus. Chorus. There's noane shall dare, by deed or word, 'Gainst her to wag a tongue or finger, While I can wield my trusty sword, Or frae my side whisk out a whinger. The mountains clad with purple bloom, And berries ripe, invite my treasure Chorus. To range with me ; let great fowk gloom, While wealth and pride confound their pleasure. Chorus. 12074 LEOPOLD VON RANKE (1795-1886) EOPOLD VON RANKE, the founder of the objective school of history, was born at Wiehe in Thuringia, on December 21st, 1795. He studied at the gymnasium at Pforta, famous for the excellence of its training in the humanities, and at the university of Leipzig, where he devoted himself to theology and philology. He took the degree of doctor of philosophy in 1817, and the year after became a teacher in the Gymnasium at Frankfort-on-the-Oder. His reading as a Protestant student of divinity had aroused his interest in the history of the Reformation. He regarded the Reformation as the beginning of modern history ; and its importance was enhanced in his mind by the fact that it illustrated in an admirable manner his theory of the unity of history. He held that European civilization was fundamentally a unit ; and that it was made up of a mixture of Romanic and Germanic elements, represented by the French, the Spaniards, and the Italians on the one hand, and by Germany, England, and Scandinavia on the other. Accordingly, at Frankfort, he began that of the Reformation and of the counterReformation which occupied the better part of his life. His first book, which bore the title History of the Romanic and Germanic Peoples, ' appeared in 1824 ; and in conformity with its author's conception of European history, aimed to exhibit in a single view the great religious and political movements that simultaneously agitated the Romanic and Germanic nations at the beginning of the Reformation. It opened with the year 1494, when all Europe met in the wars of Italy ; and closed with the year 1514. LEOPOLD VON RANKE research into the history The History of the Romanic and Germanic Peoples ' formulated the theory of the unity of history. It announced, besides, a new aim and a new method of history. Von Ranke maintained that the aim of history was, not to enforce preconceived theological or political views, but to narrate events as they happened, without regard to their moral worth. He denied that history was auxiliary to politics, LEOPOLD VON RANKE 12075 theology, or ethics ; and insisted that it was an independent science . As the aim of history was to narrate the simple and unadulterated truth, it followed that the writer of history must divest himself as far as possible of his own opinions and prejudices. He must adopt the objective style of narration, and let the events speak for themselves. Literary art was not to be excluded, but it must be subservient to the facts. This dignified conception of history demanded a new method of historiography. Hitherto writers of history had depended chiefly on the printed accounts of persons contemporary with the events related, such as memoirs and formal histories. Von Ranke showed the untrustworthiness of such sources ; for even if the contemporaneous author had a personal knowledge of the events of which he wrote, and even if, in addition, he intended to tell the truth concerning them, it was not at all certain that he had appreciated their relative importance, or that he had narrated them clearly. Von Ranke therefore insisted that the true method of historiography was to rely upon primary sources of information, such as diplomatic correspondence and State papers generally ; in short, on original docu- ments. Succinctly stated in his own words, the aims and methods of history were " a critical study of the genuine sources, an impartial apprehension of their contents, an objective representation, the presentation of the whole truth. » The History of the Romanic and Germanic Peoples ' took its place at once as a classic in German historical literature. In recognition of its extraordinary merits, Von Ranke, a year after its appearance, was appointed to a professorship of history in the University of Berlin. His personal history, aside from his scientific achievements, is devoid of incident. At the age of thirty he became a university professor ; thirty years later he retired from the active duties of his professorship ; the remaining thirty years of his life were devoted wholly to literary labors. In 1841 he was appointed historiographer of Prussia, and in 1865 he was raised to the rank of the hereditary nobility. During the years of his professorship he trained hundreds of young men in his own peculiar method of historical research ; and most of the leading historians of Germany have either sat under his oral in- struction, or have been influenced by his writings. As to his works, the ' History of the Romanic and Germanic Peo- ples ' was followed by a series of histories of the separate States in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in which the aim was to exhibit the special national aspect which the great religious and political movements of the period assumed among the several nations. This series included ' Fürsten und Völker von Südeuropa im XVI. und XVII. Jahrhundert (The Princes and Peoples of Southern Europe in 12076 LEOPOLD VON RANKE the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries) , 1827 ; Die Römischen Päbste, ihre Kirche und ihr Staat im XVI. und XVII. Jahrhundert ' (The Roman Popes, their Church and their State in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries) , 1834-36 ; ' Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation ' (German History in the Period of the Reformation) , 1839-47 ; ' Neun Bücher Preuszischer Geschichte ' (Nine Books of Prussian History), 1847-48 ; ' Französische Geschichte, Vornehmlich im XVI. und XVII. Jahrhundert ' (French History, Especially in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries) , 1852-61 ; Englische Geschichte im XVI. und XVII. Jahrhundert ' (A History of England, Principally in the Seventeenth Century) , 1859-68 ; ' Geschichte Wallensteins ' (History of Wallenstein) , 1869 ; and ' Zur Deutschen Geschichte, vom Religionsfrieden bis zum Dreiszigjährigen Kriege ' (German History from the Religious Peace to the Thirty Years' War) , 1869. Other works dealt with the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. In his eighty-third year Ranke undertook a history of the world, the first volume of which appeared in 1880, when he was fourscore and five years of age. Thenceforward a new volume appeared each year until his death, which occurred on May 23d, 1886. The seventh volume, which was nearly ready for the press at the time of his death, brought the history down to the beginning of the Middle Ages. The most typical, certainly the most popular, of all Ranke's works is his History of the Popes. ' Macaulay speaks of it as the " work of a mind fitted both for minute researches and for large speculations. " By way of introduction, it gave a rapid sketch of the rise of the papal power, emphasizing the characteristic features of the principal epochs or stages of its development, and frankly recognizing its importance as an agency of civilization during the Middle Ages. The body of the work discussed with admirable clearness, fullness, and insight the causes, political and religious, of the Reformation and of the counter-Reformation. In symmetry of plan, in animation of thought, and in directness of language, the History of the Popes ' was a model of historical writing, and was no less notable as a contribution to literature than as a contribution to historical science.

EXECUTION LORD STAFFORD ONHIS WAY TO LEOPOLD VON RANKE 12077 THE FALL OF STRAFFORD From ' A History of England, Principally in the Seventeenth Century > THE HE King was still very far from giving up his own or Strafford's cause. On Saturday, May 1st, he declared that he would never again endure Strafford in his council or his presence, but that he thought him not deserving of death ; and the Lords seemed of the same opinion. Equally little did it seem necessary to give way to the proposals against the bishops. On Sunday, May 2d, the wedding of the young Prince of Orange with the princess Mary of England -who however was but ten years old, and was to stay longer in England -was celebrated at Whitehall. Charles himself presided with address and goodhumor over the wedding festivities, and seemed to be well pleased with his new son-in-law. Once more a numerous court crowded with the usual zeal around the highest personages in the country. Yet at that very hour the pulpits of the city were ringing with fiery addresses on the necessity of bringing the arch-offender to justice; disquieting rumors were in the air, and kept every one in suspense. The next morning, Monday, May 3d, Westminster presented a disorderly spectacle. In order to throw into the scale the expression of their will on impending questions, which already had been so effective once, thousands of petitioners repaired to the Houses of Parliament ; the members of the lower House who had voted for the Bill of Attainder, and the unpopular Lords, were received on their arrival with insults and abusive At the hour when the sitting of the lower House ought to have begun, -prayers were already over, all the members remained in profound silence. There was a presentiment of what was coming: the attempt of the clerk to bring on some unimportant matter was greeted with laughter. After some time the doors were closed , and John Pym rose to make a serious communication. He said that desperate plots against the Parliament and the peace of the realm were at work within and without the country, for bringing the army against Parliament, seizing the Tower, and releasing Strafford ; that there was an understanding with France on the subject, and that sundry persons in immediate attendance on the Queen were deep in the plot. cries. Pym might and did know that the French government was in no way inclined to take part with the Queen ; and the Parliamentary leaders had already sent their joint thanks to Cardinal 12078 LEOPOLD VON RANKE Richelieu for preventing the Queen's journey. We must leave it in doubt whether Pym was notwithstanding led by the appearance of things and by rumor to believe in the possibility of an alliance between the French government and the Queen, or whether he merely thought it advisable to arouse the apprehension in others. His speech conveyed the idea that a plot was at work for the overthrow of Parliament and the Protestant religion, which must be resisted with the whole strength of the nation. The mob, assembled outside the doors, where vague reports of Pym's exordium reached them, certainly received this impression: a conspiracy had been detected, as bad as the Gunpowder Plot or worse, for massacring the members of Parliament, and even all Strafford's opponents among the inhabitants. The fact that the Tower, which commanded the city, was reckoned on for this purpose, caused an indescribable agitation. At times the cry " To Whitehall ! " was heard : at others it seemed as if the mob would go to the Tower in order to storm it . With these tumultuous proceedings were connected a consistent and systematic series of decisive measures taken by Parliament. The strongest motive for agitation in England as well as in Scotland was the danger to religion : and a similar attempt was made to obtain security on this point. A kind of covenant was devised in England also, -a Parliamentary and national oath, by which every man pledged himself to defend with body and life the true Protestant religion against all Popish devices, as well as the privileges of Parliament and the liberties of the subject. Since in this oath the doctrines, if not the constitution, of the English Church were maintained, and the allegiance due to the King was mentioned, no great trouble was found in obtaining its acceptance by Parliament and the nation. Its importance lies in the connection it established between Protestantism and the interests of Parliament : whoever took it pledged himself to defend the privileges of Parliament. Amid the general agreement it was not forgotten that an eye must be kept on the immediate sources of danger. The undeniable needs of the army were provided for, and precautions taken against any possible movement in that quarter. For several days the rumor of impending danger grew. The French ambassador was warned at that time, as if he or his government had a share in the matter, and it might still at any moment be carried out. But in truth the disclosure of the LEOPOLD VON RANKE 12079 scheme was equivalent to its defeat. Jermyn and Percy fled ; other persons suspected or implicated were arrested ; the Queen herself one day prepared to quit London. But she had nowhere to go: she could not but be aware that the Governor of Portsmouth, with whom she intended to take refuge, had caused the discovery of the scheme. than ever. Little as her attempt to cause a reaction may have been matured, it had nevertheless the effect of doubling the violence of the previous movement. The royal power itself immediately felt the force of the shock. The King had sanctioned the proposal to strengthen his hold on the Tower with trustworthy troops : the number of men that he desired to introduce was not more than a hundred, but even this now appeared a dangerous innovation. The commandant Balfour hesitated to admit the troops ; the tumultuous mob directed against it a more urgent petition The Lords were induced to make representations on the subject to the King; who justified the arrangement on the score of his duty to provide for the safety of the ammunition stored in the Tower, but in view of the popular agitation did not insist on its being carried out. The Lords further empowered the Constable and Lord Mayor, if necessary, to introduce a body of militia into the Tower ; and thus the control of the fortress which might keep the city in check began to slip out of the King's hands. The measures taken for the security of Portsmouth, for the arming of the militia in several inland counties for this purpose, and for the defense of Jersey and Guernsey,- those islands seeming to be in danger from France, —were in effect so many usurpations of the military authority of the Crown, however well justified they may have been under the circum- stances. Out of the necessity for satisfying the English army arose an idea involving the most serious consequences. As the Scottish army must be paid and the Irish one disbanded, which was impossible without discharging the arrears due them, new and extensive loans were needed. Yet who was likely to lend money to the Parliament, so long as its existence depended on the resolve and arbitrary will of the King, with whom it had engaged in violent strife ? As the only security for the capitalists, a provision was desired that Parliament should not be dissolved at the simple will of the King. On May 5th a motion was made to this effect : on the 6th the special committee brought the bill 12080 LEOPOLD VON RANKE before the assembled House : on the 7th it passed the third reading, and went to the upper House, where it was agreed to after a few objections of trifling importance. The fate of Strafford formed the central point of all these movements in the nation and in Parliament ; of the tumultuous agitation in the one, and the far-seeing resolutions of the other. For new loans and for the payment of taxes one condition was on all sides insisted on: that the Viceroy of Ireland should first expiate his crimes by death. The Lords had alleged the troubles as the reason why they could not immediately deal with the bill of attainder : but the continued terror at length made all further opposition impossible. The sittings were now attended chiefly by those in whom government by prerogative, such as Strafford aimed at, had awakened from the first a spirit of aristocratic resistance. And when an opinion of the Court of King's Bench was given, to the effect that on the points which had been taken as proved by the Lords, Strafford certainly merited the punishment for high treason , all opposition was at length silenced : the bill of attainder passed the upper House by a majority of 7 votes, 26 against 19.

18

A deputation of the Lords went immediately to the King, to recommend him to assent to the bill on account of the danger which would attend a refusal. It was Saturday, May in the afternoon the bill, together with the one for not dissolving Parliament, was laid before him by the two Houses, with a prayer for his immediate assent to both. Two or three thousand men had assembled at Whitehall to receive his answer. To their great indignation the King deferred his decision until Monday. The following Sunday was to him a day for the most painful determination ; -for what an admission it was, to recognize as a capital crime the having executed his own will and purposes ! The political tendency it fully carried out, obviously was to separate the Crown from its advisers, and make them dependent on another authority than that of the King ; to make the King's power inferior to that of the Parliament. Charles I. had solemnly declared that he found the accused not guilty of high treason ; he had given him his word to let no evil befall him, not to let a hair of his head be harmed. Could he nevertheless sanction his execution ? Verily it was a great moment for the King : what glory would attend his memory had he lived up to his convictions, and opposed to the pressure put upon him an immovable LEOPOLD VON RANKE 12081 moral strength ! To this end was he King, and possessed the right of sanctioning or of rejecting the resolutions of Parliament : that was the theory of the Constitution . But among the five bishops whom the King called to his side in this great case of conscience, only one advised him to follow his own convictions. The others represented that it was not the King's business to form a personal opinion on the legality of a sentence ; that the acts which Strafford himself admitted had now been pronounced to be treasonable ; and that he might allow the judgment without being convinced of its accuracy, as he would a judgment of the King's Bench or at the assizes. This may be the meaning of the doctrine attributed to Bishop Williams, that the King has a double conscience, a public and a private one, and that he may lawfully do as King what he would not do as a private man. But the constitutional principle essentially was that personal convictions in this high office should possess a negative influence. The distinction must be regarded as an insult to the theory of the Crown, implying its annihilation as a free power in the State. King Charles felt this fully ; all the days of his life he regretted , as one of his greatest faults, that in this case he had not followed the dictates of his conscience. But he was told that he must not ruin himself, his future, and his house for the sake of a single man : the question was not whether he would save Strafford, but whether he would perish with him. The movement begun in the city was spreading throughout the country ; from every county, men were coming up to join the city populace. From a letter of one of the best informed and most intelligent eye- witnesses, we gather that the idea of appealing to the Commons of the country against the King's refusal was mooted in the lower House. And so far as the assurances given to the Viceroy of Ireland were concerned, a letter from Strafford was laid before the King, in which he released him from his promise , and entreated him to avoid the disasters which would result from the rejection of the bill, and to sacrifice him, the writer, as he stood in the way of a reconciliation between the King and his people. So it came to pass that on May 10th the King commissioned Lord Arundel and the Lord Keeper to signify his royal assent to the bill of attainder. The next day he made another attempt to return from the path of justice to that of mercy. Would it not be better to consign Strafford to prison for life, with the XXI-756 12082 LEOPOLD VON RANKE provision that for any participation in public affairs, or attempt at flight, his life would certainly and finally be forfeited. He asked the Lords whether this was possible : they replied that it would endanger himself and his wife and children. For no relaxation was to be obtained from the universal disposition both in Parliament and in the city. Unless the King gave way it would be scarcely possible to maintain his government any longer. At the news of the King's submission, Strafford exclaimed that " No one should trust in princes, who are but men. " The genuineness of his letter has been denied, it being supposed that others wrote it in order to remove the King's personal scruples ; but a thorough examination of the fact removes every doubt. Though Strafford confirmed in his own person the experience expressed in the words of Scripture, * he himself with his last words gave, with high-minded forbearance, the opinion that it was necessary to sacrifice him, in consideration of the general circumstances and of the possible consequences. Strafford went to the scaffold in an exalted frame of mind. On his way he saw Laud, who at his request appeared at the window of his prison. The archbishop was unable to speak. Strafford bade him farewell, and prayed that God might protect his innocence ; for he had no doubt that he was in the right in fulfilling his King's will, and establishing his prerogative . He persisted that he had never intended either to destroy the parliamentary constitution, or to endanger the Protestant Church. He did not appeal to the judgment of posterity, as if he had been conscious that great antagonisms are transmitted from generation to generation : he looked for a righteous judgment in the other world. Such moments must come, in order to bring to light the absolute independence of success and of the world's judgment which strong characters possess. His guilt was of a nature entirely political ; he had done his best to guide the King in these complications, undoubtedly in the belief that he was right in so doing, but still with indiscreet zeal. So also his execution was a political act : it was the expression of the defeat which he had suffered and occasioned, of the triumph of the ideas against which he had contended to the death.

• «Put not your trust in princes " was the exact phrase he used.

LEOPOLD VON RANKE 12083 THE RISE OF THE JESUITS IN GERMANY From the History of the Popes of Rome ' T THE diet of Augsburg, in the year 1550, Ferdinand I. was A accompanied by his confessor, Bishop Urban of Laibach. Urban was one of the few prelates whose opinions had remained unshaken. At home he often ascended the pulpit to exhort the people, in their own provincial dialect, to be constant to the faith of their fathers ; he preached to them of the one fold under the one Shepherd. At this time the Jesuit Le Jay was also at Augsburg, and excited great attention by his conversions. Bishop Urban made his acquaintance, and from him first heard of the colleges which the Jesuits had founded in several universities. In order to rescue Catholic theology from the neglect into which it had fallen in Germany, he advised his master to establish a similar college at Vienna. Ferdinand eagerly embraced the project ; and in the letter he addressed on the subject to Ignatius Loyola, he expressed his conviction that the only means of propping the declining cause of Catholicism in Germany was to give the rising generation learned and pious Catholic teachers. The arrangements were quickly made. In the year 1551 thirteen Jesuits, among whom was Le Jay himself, arrived at Vienna, where Ferdinand instantly granted them a dwelling, chapel, and pension ; and shortly after incorporated them with the university, and assigned them the superintendence of it. arate ; nor They soon after rose into consideration at Cologne, where they had already dwelt for two years, but had been so far from making any progress that they had even been forced to live sepwas it till the year 1556 that the endowed school, established under a Protestant regent, gave them the means of acquiring a more secure footing. For as there was a party in the city which was most deeply interested in keeping the university Catholic, the partisans of the Jesuits at length prevailed on the citizens to confide the direction of the establishment to that order. Their great advocates were -the prior of the Carthusians; the provincial of the Carmelites ; and above all , Dr. Johann. Gropper, who occasionally gave a feast to which he invited the most influential burghers, in order that after the good old German fashion, he might further the interests he had most at heart,, 12084 LEOPOLD VON RANKE

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over a glass of wine. Fortunately for the Jesuits, one of their order was a native of Cologne, —Johann Rhetius, a man of patrician family, to whom the endowed school could be more particularly intrusted .. This could not however be done without very considerable restrictions : the Jesuits were expressly forbidden to introduce into the school those monastic rules of life which were in force in their colleges. - At the same period they also gained a firm footing in Ingolstadt. Their former attempts had been frustrated chiefly by the resistance of the younger members of the university, who would not suffer any privileged school to interfere with the private instruction they gave. In the year 1556, however, after the duke, as we have already related , had been obliged to make important concessions in favor of the Protestants, the duke's counselors, who were zealous Catholics, deemed it a matter of urgent necessity to have recourse to some vigorous measures for the support of the ancient faith . The principal movers were the chancellor, Wiguleus Hund, a man who displayed as much zeal in the support of the Church as in the study of her ancient history and constitution, —and the duke's private secretary, Heinrich Schwigger. By their instrumentality the Jesuits were recalled, and eighteen of them entered Ingolstadt on the day of St. Wilibald , the 7th of July, 1556. They chose that day because St. Wilibald was said to have been the first bishop of the diocese . They still had to encounter great difficulties in the town and in the university ; but they gradually overcame all opposition by the assistance of the same patronage to which they owed their establishment. From these three metropolitan settlements the Jesuits now spread in all directions. From Vienna they immediately extended over the whole of the Austrian dominions. In 1556, Ferdinand I. removed some of them to Prague, and founded a school there, intended principally for the young nobility. To this he sent his own pages, and the order found support and encouragement from the Catholic portion of the Bohemian nobility, especially from the families of Rosenberg and Lobkowitz. One of the most considerable men in Hungary at that time was Nicolaus Olahus, Archbishop of Gran, -of Wallachian extraction , as his name denotes. His father Stoia, a fit of terror for the murder of a woiwode of his family, had consecrated him to the Church, and the success of his destination was complete. Under the last native kings he LEOPOLD VON RANKE 12085 filled the important office of private secretary, and he had subsequently risen still higher in the service of the Austrian party. At the time of the general decline of Catholicism in Hungary, he perceived that the only hope of support for it was from the common people, who were not entirely alienated. But here also Catholic teachers were wanting ; in order to form them, he founded a college of Jesuits at Tyrnau in 1561 , and gave them a pension out of his own income, to which the Emperor Ferdinand added the grant of an abbey. An assembly of the clergy of the diocese had just been convoked when the Jesuits arrived . Their first labors were devoted to an attempt to reclaim the Hungarian priests and clergymen from the heterodox opinions to which they leaned. They were immediately after summoned to Moravia also. William Prussinowski, bishop of Olmütz, who had become acquainted with the order when he was studying in Italy, invited them to his diocese : Hurtado Perez, a Spaniard, was the first rector in Olmütz. Shortly after we find them likewise established at Brünn. Trèves. him From Cologne the society spread over the whole of the Rhenish provinces. We have already mentioned that Protestantism had found adherents, and had occasioned some fermentation in The archbishop Johann von Stein had determined to inflict only slight punishments on the recalcitrants, and to oppose innovation by argument rather than by force. He summoned the two principals of the Jesuit college of Cologne to repair to at Coblentz, and represented to them that he wished to some of the members of their body with him; " in order, " as he expresses it, " to lead the flock intrusted to him in their duty, rather by means of admonition and friendly instruction, than by arms or threats. " He then addressed himself to Rome, very soon came to an understanding with both. Six Jesuits were sent to him from Rome ; the rest came from Cologne. They opened their college with great solemnity on February 3d, 1561 , and undertook to preach during the approaching season of Lent. have and Two privy-councilors of the elector Daniel of Mayence, Peter Echter and Simon Bagen, now thought they perceived that the introduction of the Jesuits was the only means of restoring the declining university of Mayence. In spite of the opposition of the canons and feudal lords, they founded for the order a college at Mayence and a preparatory school at Aschaffenburg. 12086 LEOPOLD VON RANKE The society continued to advance higher up the Rhine. What they more particularly desired was an establishment at Spires : partly because the body of assessors to the Kammergericht included so many remarkable men, over whom it would be of the greatest importance to obtain influence ; and partly in order to place themselves in immediate and local opposition to the university of Heidelberg, which at that time enjoyed the greatest celebrity for its Protestant professors. The Jesuits gradually gained a footing at Spires. Without further delay they also tried their fortune along the Main. Although Frankfort was wholly Protestant, they hoped to achieve something there during the fair. This was not to be done without danger, and they were forced to change their lodging every night for fear of being discovered. At Würzburg they were far safer and more welcome. It seemed as if the exhortation which the Emperor Ferdinand addressed to the bishops at the Diet of 1559, imploring them to exert their strength at last in the support of the Catholic Church, had contributed greatly to the brilliant success of the order in the spiritual principalities. From Würzburg they spread throughout Franconia. In the mean while the Tyrol had been opened to them from another point. At the desire of the Emperor's daughters they settled themselves at Innsbrück, and then at Hall in that neighborhood. In Bavaria they continued to make great progress. At Munich, which they entered in 1559, they were even better satisfied than at Ingolstadt, and pronounced it to be "the Rome of Germany. " A large new colony had already arisen not far from Ingolstadt. In order to restore his university of Dillingen to its original purpose, Cardinal Truchsess resolved to dismiss all the professors who then taught there, and to commit the institution to the exclusive care of Jesuits. A formal treaty was accordingly concluded at Botzen, between German and Italian commissaries of the cardinal and of the order. In the year 1563 the Jesuits arrived in Dillingen, and took possession of the chairs of the university. They relate with great complacency how the cardinal, who, returning shortly afterwards from a journey, made a solemn entrance into Dillingen, turned with marked preference to the Jesuits, amidst all the crowd arrayed to receive him, stretched out his hand to them to kiss, greeted them as his brethren, visited their cells himself, and dined with them. He encouraged LEOPOLD VON RANK 12087 them to the utmost of his power, and soon established a mission for them in Augsburg. This was a most extraordinary progress of the society in so short a time. As late as the year 1551 they had no firm station in Germany: in 1566 their influence extended over Bavaria and Tyrol, Franconia and Suabia, a great part of the Rhineland, and Austria; they had penetrated into Hungary, Bohemia : and Moravia. The effects of their labors were already perceptible ; in the year 1561 , the papal nuncio affirms that " they gain over many souls, and render great service to the Holy See. " This the first counteracting impulse, the first anti- Protestant impression, that Germany received. Above all , they labored at the improvement of the universities. They were ambitious of their rivaling the fame of those of the Protestants. The education of the time, being a purely learned one, rested exclusively on the study of the languages of antiquity. These the Jesuits cultivated with great ardor ; and in a short time they had among them teachers who might claim to be ranked with the restorers of classical learning. They likewise addicted themselves to the strict sciences ; at Cologne, Franz Koster taught astronomy in a manner equally agreeable and instructive. Theological discipline, however, of course continued the principal object. The Jesuits lectured with the greatest diligence , even during the holidays ; they re-introduced the practice of disputations, without which they said all instruction was dead. These were held in public, and were dignified, decorous, rich in matter: in short, the most brilliant that had ever been witnessed. In Ingolstadt they soon persuaded themselves that they had attained to an equality with any other university in Germany, at least in the faculty of theology. Ingolstadt acquired (in the contrary spirit) an influence like that which Wittenberg and Geneva possessed. The Jesuits devoted an equal degree of assiduity to the direction of the Latin schools. It was one of the principal maxims of Lainez, that the lower grammar-schools should be provided with good masters. duct of man were mainly determined by the first impressions he received. With accurate discrimination , he chose men who, when they had once undertaken this subordinate branch of teaching, were willing to devote their whole lives to it ; for it was only with time that so difficult a business could be learned, or the authority indispensable to a teacher be acquired . Here the He maintained that the character and con- 12088 LEOPOLD VON RANKE Jesuits succeeded to admiration : it was found that their scholars learned more in one year than those of other masters in two; and even Protestants recalled their children from distant gymnasia and committed them to their care. Schools for the poor, modes of instruction suited to children, and catechizing, followed. Canisius constructed his catechism, which satisfied the mental wants of the learners by its wellconnected questions and concise answers. The whole course of instruction was given entirely in that enthusiastic, devout spirit which had characterized the Jesuits from their earliest institution. Translated by Sarah Austin. THE THE LAST YEARS OF QUEEN JOHANNA From the History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations ' HE old hereditary faction of the Nuñez and Gamboa, whose heads were Najara and the Condestable, had already again showed themselves among the grandees. What was next to come depended chiefly upon the Queen's state of health. The disease from which she was suffering first declared itself on Philip's journey to Lyons ; that is, in the year 1503. After taking leave of him with many tears , she never more raised her eyes, or said a word save that she wished to follow him. When she learnt that he had obtained a safe- conduct for her also, she heeded her mother no longer ; but ordered her carriage to proceed to Bayonne ; thence -for horses were refused her- she attempted to set out on foot ; and when the gate was closed , she remained, in spite of the entreaties of her attendant ladies and her father confessor, in her light attire, sitting upon the barrier until late into the November night ; it was only her mother who at length contrived to persuade her to seek her chamber. At last she found her husband. She found him devoted to a beautiful girl with fair hair. In a momentary outburst of jealous passion , she had the girl's hair cut off. Philip did not conceal his vexation. Here who can fathom the unexplored depths of the soul, see where it unconsciously works, and where it unconsciously suffers ; who can discover where the root of its health or sickness lies ? her mind became overshadowed. In Spain her love for Philip, and in the Netherlands her reverence for her father, were her guiding passions : these two feelings possessed her whole being, LEOPOLD VON RANKE 12089 alternately influenced her, and excluded the rest of the world. Since then, she still knew the affairs of ordinary life , and could portray vividly and accurately to her mind distant things ; but she knew not how to suit herself to the varying circumstances of life. Whilst still in the Netherlands, she expressed the wish that her father should retain the government in his hands. On her return to Spain, she entered her capital in a black-velvet tunic and with veiled face ; she would frequently sit in a dark room , her cap drawn half over her face, wishing to be able only to speak for once with her father. But it was not until after her husband's death that her disease became fully developed. She caused his corpse to be brought into a hall, attired in dress half Flemish, half Spanish, and the obsequies celebrated over it. never, the while, gave vent to a sob. She did not shed tears, but only sat and laid her hand to her chin. The plague drove her away from Burgos, but not away from her loved corpse. A monk had once told her that he knew of a king who awoke to life after being fourteen years dead. She took the corpse about with her. Four Frisian stallions drew the coffin, which was conveyed at night, surrounded by torches. Sometimes it halted , and the singers sang wailing songs. Having thus come to Furnillos, a small place of fourteen or fifteen houses, she perceived there a pretty house with a fine view, and remained there; " for it was unseemly for a widow to live in a populous city. " There she retained the members of the government who had been installed, the grandees of her court dwelling with her. Around the coffin she gave her audiences. · In Tortoles the King met his daughter. As soon as they set eyes on each other, the father took off his hat, and the daughter her mourning-veil. When she prostrated herself to kiss his feet, and he sank on one knee to recognize her royal dignity, they embraced and opened their hearts to each other. He shed tears. Tears she had none, but she granted his desire ; only she would not consent to bury the corpse . " Why so soon ? " she inquired. Nor would she go to Burgos, where she had lost her husband. He took her to Tordesillas. Here the queen of such vast realms lived for forty- seven years. She educated her youngest daughter, gazed from the window upon the grave of her dear departed, and prayed for his eternal happiness. Her soul never more disclosed itself to the world. LEOPOLD VON RANKE 12090 THE SWISS ARMY IN ITALY IN 1513 : AND THE BATTLE OF NOVARA From the History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations > HE four thousand Swiss who were in the country retired from Tplace to place. When thus the whole country rose up in revolt, the French from the Castle of Milan again marched through the city as lords and masters, and the four thousand. with their duke at their head fled to Novara, the very city where Lodovico had been betrayed, -all appeared to be at an end ; and Trivulzio boasted that he had the Swiss like molten lead in a spoon. But on this occasion he boasted prematurely. The Swiss replied to his attempts to persuade them, " With arms should he try them, and not with words. " They all followed in this matter the advice of Benedict von Weingarten, —a man, according to Anselm , stout, upright, and wise, -who, though he unwillingly took the command, led them bravely. The French attacks met with almost more contempt than resistance . The gates of Novara were left open, and the breach- holes hung with sheets. Whilst thus the Swiss, by this show of unanimous bravery, wiped out the shame of Novara of fourteen years before, their confederates of the reserve crossed the mountains : the greater portion, the Waldstadts and Berne, came over the St. Gothard and down by the Lake Maggiore ; whilst the smaller contingent, the Zürichers and Churwalden, crossed the Little St. Bernard and descended to Lake Como. A messenger soon arrived, asking " why they hurried ? there was no danger; " a priest shortly afterwards made the announcement that " the duke and all the Swiss had been slain. " But they collected, and resolved to find their comrades, dead or alive. Both forces hastened ; the nearest road from the St. Gothard was chosen ; and on July 5th the greater part of the force had arrived close to Novara. On the same day the French raised the siege. On the road to Trecas, Trivulzio selected a rising knoll called Riotta, which, owing to ditches and marshes, was well suited for defense ; they bivouacked here at night, mounted their guns, and intended the following morning to fix their iron palisade. Their good intrenchments emboldened them to await the coming of the six thousand lansquenets, who with five hundred fresh lances were already in the Susa Valley. LEOPOLD VON RANKE 12091 As soon as the Swiss appear in the field, their whole thought is battle. They have neither generals nor plans, nor yet any carefully considered strategy: the God of their fathers and St. Urs, their strong arm and the halberd, are enough for them, and their bravery shows them the way. Those who had arrived at Novara on June 6th refreshed themselves with a draught, an hour's sleep, and another draught ; and then, without waiting for the Zürichers, they all -both those who had been there and the fresh arrivals -rushed in disorder, like a swarm of bees flying from the hive into the summer sun, as Anselm describes it, through the gates and the breaches, into the open. They were almost without guns, entirely without cavalry, and many were without armor ; but all the same they rushed on the enemy, well intrenched as he was behind good artillery, and upon those knights " without fear and blame " in full cuirass. They stood face to face with the enemy; the first rays of the rising sun flashed from their breastplates ; they seemed to them hill of gleaming steel. like a They first attacked the lances and cannon of Robert von der Mark. Here were engaged the smaller body, in whose front ranks stood with their spears the bravest heroes, -two Diesbachs, Ærni Winkelried, and Niklaus Conrad, all distinguished for their ancestry or the nobility of virtue : the greater body, almost more by instinct than intention, made in the midst of the smoke and the first effect of the hostile artillery a detour round a copse ; it sought and found the lansquenets. As these latter were reinforced by artillery, the Swiss again separated. Some fought against the Black Flags ; the greater part, however, threw themselves upon the guns. Thus they fought in three distinct places : first against the knights, who often broke up their own ranks and appeared behind their flags, —but they always rallied the and threw back their assailants ; the next, four hundred men, wielding the halberd in both hands, fought against a company of Fleuranges's Black Flags, dealing blow for blow and thrust for thrust ; whilst the third and greatest body were engaged with the lansquenets, who, besides cannon, had eight hundred arquebuses. But soon the rain of bullets ceased : only the clash of swords and the crash of pikes was audible. At length the flags of the lansquenets sank ; their leaders were buried under a heap of slain ; their cannon were lost , and employed against them. Meanwhile the Blacks also gave way. Robert von der Mark looked about 12092 LEOPOLD VON RANKE him : he saw his foot soldiery and his sons lost ; in order to save these, he also retreated. He found them among the dead, among the victors, bleeding still from wounds, and rescued them. In vain did Trivulzio appeal to St. Catherine and St. Mark ; he too, as well as Tremouille who was wounded, was forced to retire. The Swiss gave no quarter to the fugitives whom they overtook ; they then returned, ordered their ranks for prayer, and knelt down to give thanks to God and their saints. They next set about dividing the spoil and burying the dead. It was the second hour in the morning when the tidings of the issue of the battle reached Milan. The French, who in anticipation of victory had left the castle, immediately fled, - some back thither, others to the churches and their friends' palaces ; the Ghibelline faction at once rose, and city and country returned to their allegiance to Maximilian Sforza. The Swiss undertook to chastise those who had revolted . They compelled the Astesans who had left their houses to pay one hundred thousand ducats ; Savoy, which had gone over to the enemy, fifty thousand ; and Montferrat, which had insulted their ambassador, one hundred thousand. This event enabled the Spaniards to hold their heads high. In Genoa they restored the Fregosi, who had been expelled for twenty-one days, and Ottaviano among them; they reconquered Bergamo, Brescia, and Peschiera, which also had revolted . After this victory, the Swiss enjoyed far greater power in Milan than ever before. " What you have restored by your blood and your strength, " wrote Maximilian Sforza, " shall belong for the future as much to you as to me ; " and these were not empty words. The Swiss perceived that they were strong enough to attempt other achievements. " If we could only reckon upon obedience in our men, " they were heard to say, " we would march through the whole of France, long and broad as it is. " MAXIMILIAN AT THE DIET OF WORMS From the History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations > N MARCH IN 1495 , Maximilian came to the Diet at Worms. He showed himself in his full chivalrous bearing, when he himself entered the lists with a Frenchman who had come to challenge all the Germans, and conquered him . He appeared LEOPOLD VON RANKE 12093 in the full glory of his regal dignity when he sat in public between the archbishops and his chancellors. On such occasions, the Count Palatine sat on his right and held his orb, on his left stood the Duke of Saxony and held his sword; before him, facing him, stood the envoy of Brandenburg with the sceptre, and behind him, instead of Bohemia, the hereditary cupbearer of Limburg with the crown ; and grouped round him were the rest of the forty princes, sixty- seven counts and lords, -as many as had come, and the ambassadors of the cities, and others , all in their order. Then a prince would come before him, lower his colors before the royal throne, and receive enfeoffment. One could not perceive that the mode of enfeoffment involved any compulsion upon the King, or that the insignia of royal power resided in the hands of the princes. At this Reichstag the King gained two momentous prospects. In Würtemberg there had sprung from two lines two counts of quite opposite characters. The elder was kind- hearted , tender, always resolute, and dared " sleep in the lap of any one of his subjects "; the younger, volatile, unsteady, violent, and always repent- ant of what he had done. Both were named Eberhard ; but the elder, by special favor of the Imperial Court, also governed the land of the younger. In return for this he furnished four hundred horse for the Hungarian war, and dispatched aid against Flanders . With the elder, Maximilian now entered into a compact. Würtemberg was to be raised to a dukedom, —an elevation which excluded the female line from the succession ; and in the event of the stock failing, was to be a " widow's portion " of the realm to the use of the Imperial Chamber. Now, as the sole hopes of this family centred in a weakling of a boy, this arrangement held out to Maximilian and his successors the prospect of acquir- ing a splendid country. Yet this was the smaller of his two sucThe greater was the espousal of his children , Philip and Margaret, with the two children of Ferdinand the Catholic, Juana and Juan, which was here settled. This opened to his house cesses. intimate still greater expectations, -it brought him at once into the most alliance with the kings of Spain. 12094 THOMAS BUCHANAN READ (1822-1872) HOMAS BUCHANAN READ gained some distinction both as poet and painter, and the picturesqueness of his verse suggests one who saw things with the artist's eye. This is perhaps the most marked characteristic of his poetry, which also possesses an easy flow and a felicity of diction which make it pleasing, -though it is rather the product of taste and culture than the independent inspiration of one compelled to song. Read was born on March 12th, 1822, in Chester, Pennsylvania; and spent his youth there. When he was fourteen the family went to Cincinnati ; Thomas entered the studio of the sculptor Clevenger, and after a course of study turned his attention to painting. From 1840 to 1845 he lived in Boston, busy with pen and brush, winning recognition as an artist, and contributing poems to Graham's Magazine and to the Boston newspapers. In 1846 he went to Philadelphia, spent the year of 185c -1 in Florence, and made several subsequent Italian journeys ; residing mostly abroad, and only returning for brief visits in PhiladelHe came back from Europe in 1872, to die in New York May 11th of that year. T. BUCHANAN READ phia and Cincinnati. When Read began to publish his verse in Boston its merit was pointed out by Longfellow; and the young poet gathered his fugitive pieces together and brought out his first volume of ' Poems ' in 1847. The contemporary criticism was kindly ; in some cases what now seems extravagant in laudation. Poe called Read " one of our truest poets. " Other volumes of verse followed : ' Lays and Ballads ' (1848) ; ' Poems ' ( 1852) ; ' Poems ' ( 1853) : The New Pastoral ' ( 1855) , -sketches of country life , the result of observation in Italy; ' The House by the Sea ' ( 1856) ; Sylvia ' ( 1857) ; ' Rural Poems ' ( 1857) ; ' The Wagoner of the Alleghanies, ' a poem of the American Revolution ( 1862) ; 'A Summer Story, Sheridan's Ride, and Other Poems ' (1865) ; and ' Good Samaritans ' (1867) . A general edition of his poetical works appeared in 1860, and an enlarged edition in 1867. THOMAS BUCHANAN READ 12095 His prose writings include a romance, The Pilgrims of the Great St. Bernard, ' published serially in a magazine ; and a critical work on 'The Female Poets of America ' ( 1848) . From the various books of verse published by Read during his literary career, two or three poems have become popular favorites ; a slender legacy, but one sufficient to perpetuate his name. This is true pre-eminently of the graceful and familiar Drifting, ' which with its happy form and expression is imbued with the very spirit of dreamy revery, of sweet do-nothingness. It is the verse of the genial traveler who muses over rich foreign impressions. 'Sheridan's Ride ' is another poem found in the anthologies. It is a ballad that uses to good purpose a stirring national theme. It bears the mark of being an improvisation, not a finished piece of ballad-writing, and hardly belongs in the class of ballad masterpieces. But it is decidedly effective. The Closing Scene ' is an example of the blending of human interest with descriptions of nature. It is on a few of these lyrics that Read's reputation rests ; and he has had the good fortune to strike an occasional note to which there was and is a response from many readers. [The following poems are reprinted with the approval of the J. B. Lippincott Co. , publishers. ] DRIFTING Y SOUL to- day MY Is far away, Sailing the Vesuvian Bay ; My winged boat, A bird afloat, Swims round the purple peaks remote ; Round purple peaks It sails, and seeks Blue inlets and their crystal creeks, Where high rocks throw, Through deeps below, A duplicated golden glow. Far, vague, and dim, The mountains swim ; While on Vesuvius's misty brim, With outstretched hands, The gray smoke stands O'erlooking the volcanic lands. 12096 THOMAS BUCHANAN READ Here Ischia smiles O'er liquid miles ; And yonder, bluest of the isles, Calm Capri waits, Her sapphire gates Beguiling to her bright estates. I heed not if My rippling skiff Float swift or slow from cliff to cliff ; With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Under the walls of Paradise. Under the walls Where swells and falls The Bay's deep breast at intervals, At peace I lie, Blown softly by, — A cloud upon this liquid sky. The day, so mild, Is heaven's own child, With earth and ocean reconciled ; The airs I feel Around me steal Are murmuring to the murmuring keel. Over the rail My hand I trail Within the shadow of the sail ; A joy intense, The cooling sense Glides down my drowsy indolence. With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Where Summer sings and never dies ; O'erveiled with vines, She glows and shines Among her future oil and wines. Her children, hid The cliffs amid, Are gamboling with the gamboling kid ;

"And Sheridan twenty miles away " ("Sheridan's Ride " ) From a Painting by T. Buchanan Reaa THOMAS BUCHANAN READ 12097 Or down the walls, With tipsy calls, Laugh on the rocks like waterfalls. The fisher's child, With tresses wild, Unto the smooth, bright sand beguiled, With glowing lips Sings as she skips, Or gazes at the far-off ships. Yon deep bark goes Where traffic blows, From lands of sun to lands of snows ; This happier one, Its course is run From lands of snow to lands of sun. O happy ship, To rise and dip, With the blue crystal at your lip ! O happy crew, My heart with you Sails, and sails, and sings anew! No more, no more The worldly shore Upbraids me with its loud uproar: With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Under the walls of Paradise ! SHERIDAN'S RIDE P FROM the south at break of day, Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay, The affrighted air with a shudder bore, Like a herald in haste to the chieftain's door, The. terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar, Telling the battle was on once more, And Sheridan twenty miles away. XXI-757 And wider still those billows of war Thundered along the horizon's bar; 12098 THOMAS BUCHANAN READ And louder yet into Winchester rolled The roar of that red sea uncontrolled ; Making the blood of the listener cold, As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray, And Sheridan twenty miles away. But there is a road from Winchester town, A good broad highway leading down : And there, through the flush of the morning light, A steed as black as the steeds of night Was seen to pass, as with eagle flight, As if he knew the terrible need ; He stretched away with his utmost speed : Hills rose and fell ; but his heart was gay, With Sheridan fifteen miles away. Still sprang from those swift hoofs, thundering south, The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth, Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster, Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster. The heart of the steed and the heart of the master Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls, Impatient to be where the battle-field calls ; Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play, With Sheridan only ten miles away. Under his spurning feet the road Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed, And the landscape sped away behind Like an ocean flying before the wind; And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace ire, Swept on, with his wild eye full of fire. But lo ! he is nearing his heart's desire ; He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fráy, With Sheridan only five miles away. The first that the general saw were the groups Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops : What was done ? what to do ? a glance told him both. Then striking his spurs, with a terrible oath , He dashed down the line, ' mid a storm of huzzas, And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because The sight of the master compelled it to pause. With foam and with dust the black charger was gray; By the flash of his eye and the red nostril's play THOMAS BUCHANAN READ 12099 He seemed to the whole great army to say, " I have brought you Sheridan all the way From Winchester down, to save the day. " Hurrah! hurrah ! for Sheridan! Hurrah! hurrah ! for horse and man! And when their statues are placed on high, Under the dome of the Union sky, The American soldier's Temple of Fame, There with the glorious general's name, Be it said, in letters both bold and bright : - " Here is the steed that saved the day By carrying Sheridan into the fight, From Winchester -twenty miles away! " THE CLOSING SCENE ITHIN his sober realm of leafless trees WITHThe russet year inhaled the dreamy air ; Like some tanned reaper in his hour of ease, When all the fields are lying brown and bare. The gray barns looking from their hazy hills O'er the dim waters widening in the vales, Sent down the air a greeting to the mills, On the dull thunder of alternate flails. All sights were mellowed and all sounds subdued ; The hills seemed farther and the streams sang low; As in a dream, the distant woodman hewed His winter log with many a muffled blow. The embattled forests, erewhile armed in gold, Their banners bright with every martial hue, Now stood, like some sad beaten host of old, Withdrawn afar in Time's remotest blue. On slumberous wings the vulture held his flight ; The dove scarce heard his sighing mate's complaint; And like a star slow drowning in the light, The village church-vane seemed to pale and faint. The sentinel- cock upon the hillside crewCrew thrice, and all was stiller than before, 12100 THOMAS BUCHANAN READ Silent till some replying warder blew His alien horn, and then was heard no more. Where erst the jay, within the elm's tall crest, Made garrulous trouble round her unfledged young, And where the oriole hung her swaying nest, By every light wind like a censer swung ; Where sang the noisy masons of the eaves, The busy swallows, circling ever near, Foreboding, as the rustic mind believes, An early harvest and a plenteous year; Where every bird which charmed the vernal feast Shook the sweet slumber from its wings at morn, To warn the reaper of the rosy east, — All now was songless, empty, and forlorn . Alone from out the stubble piped the quail, And croaked the crow through all the dreamy gloom; Alone the pheasant, drumming in the vale, Made echo to the distant cottage loom. There was no bud, no bloom upon the bowers ; The spiders wove their thin shrouds night by night; The thistle-down, the only ghost of flowers, Sailed slowly by, passed noiseless out of sight. Amid all this, in this most cheerless air, And where the woodbine shed upon the porch Its crimson leaves, as if the Year stood there Firing the floor with his inverted torch ; - Amid all this, the centre of the scene, The white-haired matron, with monotonous tread, Plied the swift wheel, and with her joyless mien Sat like a Fate, and watched the flying thread . She had known Sorrow, - he had walked with her, Oft supped and broke the bitter ashen crust ; And in the dead leaves still she heard the stir Of his black mantle trailing in the dust. While yet her cheek was bright with summer bloom, Her country summoned and she gave her all ; And twice War bowed to her his sable plumeRegave the swords to rust upon her wall. THOMAS BUCHANAN READ 12101 Regave the swords, -but not the hand that drew And struck for Liberty its dying blow; Nor him who, to his sire and country true, Fell ' mid the ranks of the invading foe. Long, but not loud, the droning wheel went on, Like the low murmur of a hive at noon ; Long, but not loud, the memory of the gone Breathed through her lips a sad and tremulous tune. -- At last the thread was snapped her head was bowed ; Life dropped the distaff through his hands serene : And loving neighbors smoothed her careful shroud, While Death and Winter closed the autumn scene. INEZ OWN behind the hidden village, fringed around with hazel DOWN brake, (Like a holy hermit dreaming, half asleep and half awake, One who loveth the sweet quiet for the happy quiet's sake , ) Dozing, murmuring in its visions, lay the heaven-enamored lake.. And within a doll where shadows through the brightest days abide, Like the silvery swimming gossamer by breezes scattered wide, Fell a shining skein of water that ran down the lakelet's side, As within the brain by beauty lulled, a pleasant thought may glide. When the sinking sun of August, growing large in the decline, Shot his arrows long and golden through the maple and the pine ; And the russet-thrush fled singing from the alder to the vine, While the cat-bird in the hazel gave its melancholy whine ; And the little squirrel chattered, peering round the hickory bole, And, a-sudden like a meteor, gleamed along the oriole ; -— There I walked beside fair Inez, and her gentle beauty stole Like the scene athwart my senses, like the sunshine through my soul. And her fairy feet that pressed the leaves, a pleasant music made, And they dimpled the sweet beds of moss with blossoms thick inlaid : 12102 THOMAS BUCHANAN READ There I told her old romances, and with love's sweet woe we played, Till fair Inez's eyes, like evening, held the dew beneath their shade. There I wove for her love ballads, such as lover only weaves, Till she sighed and grieved, as only mild and loving maiden grieves ; And to hide her tears she stooped to glean the violets from the leaves, As of old sweet Ruth went gleaning ' mid the Oriental sheaves. Down we walked beside the lakelet : gazing deep into her eye, There I told her all my passion ! With a sudden blush and sigh, Turning half away with look askant, she only made reply, " How deep within the water glows the happy evening sky! " Then I asked her if she loved me, and our hands met each in each, And the dainty, sighing ripples seemed to listen up the reach ; While thus slowly with a hazel wand she wrote along the beach, "Love, like the sky, lies deepest ere the heart is stirred to speech. " Thus I gained the love of Inez, thus I won her gentle hand ; And our paths now lie together, as our footprints on the strand ; We have vowed to love each other in the golden morning land, When our names from earth have vanished like the writing from the sand! 12103 CHARLES READE (1814-1884) N THE early fifties, Mrs. Seymour, a popular actress at the Haymarket Theatre, London, received a call one day from a stranger, a Mr. Charles Reade. He was a tall, heavily built man of attractive manner, and seemed younger than his age, which was nearly forty. For some years he had been writing plays, and trying unsuccessfully to get them accepted. He had brought part of a manuscript drama, which he was anxious to read her. Mrs. Seymour listened politely, was complimentary, but added, " Why don't you write a novel ?" This indirect criticism stung the would-be dramatist, who hurried Good-natured Mrs. Seymour, sorry away. to have wounded her visitor, and concluding that he was pressed by poverty, wrote him a kindly note inclosing a £5 note as a loan. Charles Reade promptly returned the money, but he welcomed the frank sympathy. The two became friends ; and his talent thus gained a much-needed practical stimulus. Up to this time he had been somewhat of a dilettante, -ardent, ambitious, and energetic, but disseminating his forces too widely for adequate achievement. CHARLES READE From his boyhood he had been strongly attracted toward drama. Its life and action, the visual presentment of moral problems, suited his taste. Yet all his first plays were refused by the managers. To the end of his life he considered himself primarily a playwright, in spite of the greater success of his fiction. Some of his plots took form first as plays, and some first as stories ; but sooner or later most of them found their way to the stage. Among his early works are many sketches and short stories, written for cheap London journals ; and it is characteristic of the man that he did these as well as he could, and signed his own name to them, although by so doing he led the critics to consider him beneath their notice. His first noteworthy original work- he had done some translation was the well known and brilliant comedy, ' Masks and Faces, ' CHARLES READE 12104 which he wrote in collaboration with Tom Taylor. The effective plotdevelopment shows dramatic instinct ; and the spontaneity and sparkling dialogue gave it great vogue. Later, acting upon Mrs. Seymour's suggestion, he turned it into a novel, ' Peg Woffington ' ( 1852 ) . The next year he published another story, Christie Johnstone, ' which resembles Peg Woffington ' in its primarily dramatic arrangement. In vivid characterization, descriptive charm, and emotional range, the two are as fine and as distinctive as anything he ever wrote. During holiday trips in Scotland he had gathered material for Christie Johnstone ' ; and he was thoroughly at home in the breezy fishing hamlet where Joan and Christie, sturdy young fishwives, teach the blasé young viscount the true values of life. The wit though sharp is good-natured, and mingled with deeper sentiment. Humor and pathos, tragedy and comedy, are all blended in the one short tale. With drawing-room life Reade was not in sympathy ; nor does he describe it successfully. But he excels in the strong presentment of individuals, and in establishing the harmony between them and their environment. Rugged Griffith Gaunt is an unpleasant but very real country gentleman of a past century. Jael Dence in her reserve and simple strength is the product of her native village. Charles Reade was born at Ipsden in 1814, youngest of the eleven children of John Reade, a good country squire. His father and mother were busy, healthy people, fond of society, of religious observances, of regulating village affairs . Among their many interests their children were decidedly in the way; and although they loved them heartily, they gladly turned them over to tutors and governesses as soon as possible. Charles spent much of his childhood in boardingschool ; for years with a merciless Mr. Slater, who flogged his pupils daily, and whose only idea of teaching was memory-cramming. It was not until he escaped from this thraldom that Reade began to show his quickness of mind. In 1831 he entered Magdalen College on a demyship ; and three years later, when he took his degree, he was appointed to a fellowship, which he held for fifty years, until his death in 1884. In spite of this long connection he did not love Oxford. His free- lance spirit detested her conventions, and he preferred the freer air of London. Nor did he love the fellowship which he could not resign. Charles Reade never experienced acute poverty, yet for years his means were just meagre enough to make him feel pinched and uncomfortable. His fellowship with its income was necessary to him. So his life was perforce influenced by monasticism ; and he showed a deep personal appreciation of all the commonplace happiness renounced by the monk Gerard, the epic hero of The Cloister and the Hearth. ' After his graduation he read law; in rather desultory fashion, for his CHARLES READÉ 12105 livelier interests were in general reading, in making himself an authority upon violins ancient and modern, and in traveling whenever he could afford it. It took the public some time to relish Reade's new flavor and to recognize his merit. But with 'It's Never too Late to Mend ' ( 1856) he found himself a popular novelist. The book provoked wide discussion, and was read, praised, and reviled on both sides of the Atlantic. Charles Reade was a fighting Englishman, always ready for a fray, always believing himself or somebody else ill-used. He was a man of deep feeling, too alive to human suffering. to take life lightly. He was a man of intense energy which constantly sought vent. He was generous and warm-hearted, ready to give time, money, and influence for the relief of others. The morbid sensitiveness to criticism which continually embroiled him with critics and publishers, and most of those with whom he had business dealings, made him a butt of ridicule. It was not all self-love, but a stout demand for justice, which he was as ready to make for others as for himself. No sooner was he fairly launched as a writer of repute than he aspired to become a social reformer. This inclination was doubtless strengthened by his friendship with Dickens, for whose Household Words and All the Year Round he wrote ; and whom he warmly admired. The two had been introduced by Bulwer-Lytton, and found themselves in sympathy at once. Like the author of ' Nicholas Nickleby, ' Reade longed to right abuses. ' It's Never too Late to Mend ' was an exposition of the evils of the English prison system. So strong was the indignation aroused, that when reproduced at the Princess Theatre years after its first dramatization, there was almost a riot in the audience. What he himself said in it might stand as a motto to most of his novels : " I have taken a few undeniable truths out of many, and have labored to make my readers realize those appalling facts of the day which most men know, but not one in a thousand comprehends , and not one in a hundred thousand realizes, until fiction —which, whatever you may have been told to the contrary, is the highest, widest, noblest, and greatest of all the artscomes to his aid, studies, penetrates, digests the hard facts of chronicles and blue-books, and makes their dry bones live. " He took up one alleged evil after another : in ' Hard Cash, ' abuses of insane asylums, and still more the legal power of physicians to commit for insanity, which he accused them of exercising on the sane for bribes ; in ' Foul Play, ' those in the merchant shipping service ; in Put Yourself in His Place, ' those resulting from trades-unions and labor conditions. Upon these different themes he employed all his strength of mind and imagination, and he produced novels which 12106 CHARLES READE were read, and are still read, for their lively romantic interest. Never dully didactic, they fully achieved a forceful presentment of the evil. The system upon which he worked was laborious. " I propose never to guess what I can know, " he said ; and was an indefatigable collector of newspaper clippings, institution reports, and the like. When his statements were questioned, his facts denied, or he was accused of exaggeration, he would turn triumphantly to his carefully classified collections, and refute the objection with positive proof. He knew how to fuse this material into an artistic whole. "It would require a chemical analysis to separate the fiction from the reality, " said Justin McCarthy of Reade's novels. " I studied the great art of fiction closely for fifteen years before I presumed to write a word of it. I was a ripe critic long before I became an artist, " wrote Reade. One result of this study was the determination to seek personal sincerity of expression above everything else. In the effort to see things for himself, not through other people's eyes, his unusualness of phrase is sometimes startling. The effect is often delightfully novel, occasionally harsh and jagged. Yet there is always a charm in his trenchant wit and uncompromising frankness. He pictured English life as he saw it, with an intuition of what was salient in a character, a locality, or a period. In 1859 Charles Reade published in Once a Week a short serial called 'A Good Fight. ' While writing it he discovered other possibilities in the plot, and resolved to give it a more comprehensive treatment. But the publishers of the magazine took editorial liberties with the manuscript, which Reade quickly resented . Therefore he hurried up the tale to a happy but inartistic conclusion, and soon set about remodeling it on a different scale, and with the new title, ' The Cloister and the Hearth. ' 'The Cloister and the Hearth ' ( 1861 ) , Reade's masterpiece, stands out clearly differentiated from anything else he did. He put his best into it, and the maturity of his mind. He was a scholar as well as man of general reading, and for all his knowledge he found scope in this great mediæval romance. All the minor characters - as well as the pathetic figures of Gerard and Margaret, and the gay Burgundian Denys -are drawn with an artistic insight and power of sympathy which make the old time live again. With rare synthetic power, his imagination grasped the social conditions of the fifteenth century, and recognized what the lives of men and women must have been. His book is truer than history ; for while based on historical records, it reflects with life and color, not alone outward fact but also the workings of minds and hearts. CHARLES READE 12107 THE VISCOUNT AND LOWER CLASSES From Christie Johnstone ' HE air was tepid, pure and sweet as heaven. This bright afternoon, nature had grudged nothing that could give fresh life and hope to such dwellers in dust and smoke and vice as were there, to look awhile on her clean face and drink her honeyed breath. This young gentleman was not insensible to the beauty of the scene. He was a little lazy by nature, and made lazier by the misfortune of wealth : but he had sensibilities. He was an artist of great natural talent. Had he only been without a penny, how he would have handled the brush ! And then he was a mighty sailor. If he had sailed for biscuit a few years, how he would have handled a ship! As he was, he had the eye of a hawk for nature's beauties ; and the sea always came back to him like a friend after an absence. This scene, then, curled round his heart a little ; and he felt the good physician was wiser than the tribe that go by that name, and strive to build health on the sandy foundation of drugs. «< Saunders, do you know what Dr. Aberford means by the lower classes ? " " Perfectly, my lord. " "Are there any about here ? » " I am sorry to say they are everywhere, my lord. " " Get me some " (cigarette). Out went Saunders, with his usual graceful empressement, but an internal shrug of his shoulders. He was absent an hour and a half ; he then returned with a double expression on his face. Pride at his success in diving to the very bottom of society, and contempt of what he had fished up thence. «< He approached his lord mysteriously, and said, sotto voce but impressively, This is low enough, my lord. " Then glided back, and ushered in, with polite disdain, two lovelier women than he had ever opened a door to in the whole course of his perfumed existence. On their heads they wore caps of Dutch or Flemish origin , with a broad lace border, stiffened , and arched over the forehead 12108 CHARLES READE about three inches high, leaving the brow and cheeks unincumbered. They had cotton jackets, bright red and yellow, mixed in patterns , confined at the waist by the apron-strings, but bobtailed below the waist ; short woolen petticoats, with broad vertical stripes, red and white, most vivid in color ; white worsted stockings, and neat though high-quartered shoes. Under their jackets they wore a thick spotted cotton handkerchief, about one inch of which was visible round the lower part of the throat. Of their petticoats, the outer one was kilted, or gathered up towards the front ; and the second, of the same color, hung in the usual way. Of these young women, one had an olive complexion, with the red blood mantling under it, and black hair, and glorious black eyebrows. The other was fair, with a massive but shapely throat, as white as milk ; glossy brown hair, the loose threads of which glittered like gold, and a blue eye, which being contrasted with dark eyebrows and lashes, took the luminous effect peculiar to that rare beauty. Their short petticoats revealed a neat ankle, and a leg with a noble swell ; for Nature, when she is in earnest, builds beauty on the ideas of ancient sculptors and poets, not of modern poetasters, who with their air- like sylphs, and their smoke- like verses, fight for want of flesh in woman and want of fact in poetry as parallel beauties. They are, my lads.- Continues! These women had a grand corporeal trait : they had never known a corset ! so they were straight as javelins ; they could lift their hands above their heads ! -actually! Their supple persons moved as nature intended ; every gesture was ease, grace, and freedom. What with their own radiance, and the snowy cleanliness and brightness of their costume, they came like meteors into the apartment. Lord Ipsden, rising gently from his seat, with the same quiet politeness with which he would have received two princes of the blood, said, " How do you do ? " and smiled a welcome. " Fine ! hoow's yoursel' ? " answered the dark lass, whose name was Jean Carnie, and whose voice was not so sweet as her face. " What'n lord are ye ? " continued she. "Are you a juke ? —I wad like fine to hae a crack wi' a juke. " CHARLES READE 12109 Saunders, who knew himself the cause of this question, replied sotto voce, " His Lordship is a viscount. " " I dinna ken't, " was Jean's remark. soond . " " But it has a bonny " What_mair would ye hae ? " said the fair beauty, whose name was Christie Johnstone. Then appealing to his Lordship as the likeliest to know, she added, " Nobeelity is just a soond itsel ' , I'm tauld. » The viscount, finding himself expected to say something on a topic he had not attended much to, answered dryly, " We must ask the republicans : they are the people that give their minds to such subjects. " "And yon man, " asked Jean Carnie, - " is he a lord too ? » " I am his Lordship's servant, " replied Saunders . gravely, not without a secret misgiving whether fate had been just. " Na! " replied she, not to be imposed upon. " Ye are statelier and prooder than this ane. " " I will explain, " said his master. " Saunders knows his value : a servant like Saunders is rarer than an idle viscount. " " My lord, my lord ! " remonstrated Saunders, with a shocked and most disclamatory tone. " Rather! " was his inward reflection. " Jean, " said Christie, " ye hae muckle to laern. Are ye for herrin' the day, Vile Count ? » " No : are you for this sort of thing ? " At this, Saunders, with a world of empressement, offered the Carnie some cake that was on the table. She took a piece, instantly spat it out into her hand, and with more energy than delicacy flung it into the fire . "Augh! " cried she, " just a sugar and saut butter thegither: buy nae mair at yon shoep, Vile Count. " " Try this, out of Nature's shop, " laughed their entertainer ; and he offered them, himself, some peaches and things. " Hech! a medi-cine ! " said Christie. " Nature, my lad, " said Miss Carnie, making her ivory teeth meet in their first nectarine, " I dinna ken whaur ye stoep, but ye beat the other confectioners, that div ye. " The fair lass , who had watched the viscount all this time as demurely as a cat cream, now approached him. This young woman was the thinker : her voice was also rich, full, and melodious, and her manner very engaging; it was half advancing, half retiring, not easy to resist or to describe . 12110 CHARLES READE " Noo, " said she, with a very slight blush stealing across her face, " ye maun let me catecheeze ye, wull ye ? " The last two words were said in a way that would have induced a bear to reveal his winter residence . He smiled assent. Saunders retired to the door, and excluding every shade of curiosity from his face, took an attitude half majesty, half obsequiousness. Christie stood by Lord Ipsden, with one hand on her hip (the knuckles downwards) , but graceful as Antinoüs, and began : - " Hoo muckle is the Queen greater than y'are ? ” His Lordship was obliged to reflect. " Let me see -; as is the moon to a wax taper, so is her Majesty the Queen to you and me and the rest. " "An' whaur does the juke come in ?" " On this particular occasion, the duke makes one of us, my pretty maid. " " I see! Are na ye awfu' prood o' being a lorrd ? » "What an idea! " " His Lordship did not go to bed a spinning-jenny, and rise up a lord, like some of them, " put in Saunders. " Saunders, " said the peer doubtfully, " eloquence rather bores. people. " " Then I mustn't speak again, my lord, " said Saunders, respectfully. " Noo, " said the fair inquisitor, " ye shall tell me how ye came. to be lorrds, your faemily. " " Saunders ! " " Na! ye mauna flee to Sandy for a thing : ye are no a bairn, are ye ?" Here was a dilemma : the Saunders prop knocked rudely away, and obliged to think for ourselves. But Saunders would come to his distressed master's assistance. He furtively conveyed to him a plump book, -this was Saunders's manual of faith ; the author was Mr. Burke - not Edmund. Lord Ipsden ran hastily over the page, closed the book, and said, Here is the story : ་ - " Five hundred years ago - >> " Listen, Jean, " said Christie : " we're gaun to get a boeny story. Five hundre' years ago, ' " added she, with interest and awe. " CHARLES READE 12111 « was a great battle, " resumed the narrator in cheerful tones, as one larking with history, " between a King of England and his rebels. He was in the thick of the fight- " " That's the King, Jean, —he was in the thick o't . " " My ancestor killed a fellow who was sneaking behind him ; but the next moment a man-at-arms prepared a thrust at his Majesty, who had his hands full with three assailants. " " Eh! that's no fair, " said Christie, " as sure as deeth. " " My ancestor dashed forward, and as the King's sword passed through one of them, he clove another to the waist with a blow. " "Weel done ! weel done ! " Lord Ipsden looked at the speaker : her eyes were glittering and her cheek flushing. " Good Heavens! " thought he: "she believes it ! " So he began to take more pains with his legend. " But for the spearsman, " continued he, " he had nothing but his body: he gave it, -it was his duty, and received the death leveled at his sovereign. " " Hech! puir mon. " And the glowing eyes began to glisten. " The battle flowed another way, and God gave victory to the right ; but the King came back to look for him, for it was no common service . » Deed no! >> Here Lord Ipsden began to turn his eye inwards, and call up the scene . He lowered his voice. " They found him lying on his back, looking death in the face . " The nobles by the King's side uncovered as soon as he was found, for they were brave men too. There was a moment's silence : eyes met eyes, and said, This is a stout soldier's last battle. " The King could not bid him live,- " " Na ! lad, King Deeth has ower strong a grrip. " But he did what kings can do : he gave him two blows with his royal sword. " " Oh, the robber, and him a deeing mon! " " Two words from his royal mouth, and he and we were barons of Ipsden and Hawthorn Glen from that day to this. " " But the puir dying creature ? » "What poor dying creature- ? » " Your forbear, lad. " 12112 CHARLES READE " I don't know why you call him poor, madam : all the men of that day are dust ; they are the gold dust, who died with honor. " He looked round uneasily for his son, -for he had but one, -and when that son knelt, unwounded, by him, he said, ' Good night, Baron Ipsden ; ' and so he died, fire in his eye, a smile on his lip, and honor on his name for ever. I meant to tell you a lie, and I've told you the truth. " " Laddie, " said Christie, half admiringly, half reproachfully, "ye gar the tear come in my een. Hech! look at yon lassie ! how could you think t'eat plums through siccan a boeny story ? " " Hets, " answered Jean, who had in fact cleared the plate. " I aye listen best when my ain mooth's stappit. " " But see now, " pondered Christie : " two words fra a kingthir titles are just breeth. " " Of course," was the answer. "All titles are. What is popularity ? Ask Aristides and Lamartine : the breath of a mob, - smells of its source, - and is gone before the sun can set on it. Now, the royal breath does smell of the Rose and Crown, and stays by us from age to age. " The story had warmed our marble acquaintance. Saunders opened his eyes, and thought, " We shall wake up the House of Lords some evening, -we shall . " His Lordship then added, less warmly, looking at the girls : " I think I should like to be a fisherman. " So saying, my lord yawned slightly. To this aspiration the young fishwives deigned no attention, doubting perhaps its sincerity ; and Christie, with a shade of severity, inquired of him how he came to be a Vile Count. "A baron's no a Vile Count, I'm sure, " said she ; sae tell me how ye came to be a Vile Count. " "Ah! " said he, " that is by no means a pretty story, like the other: you will not like it, I am sure. " "Ay will I , -ay will I : " Well, it is soon told. seat, in the same house, so " Ower muckle pay for I'm aye seeking knowledge. " One of us sat twenty years on one one day he got up a -Viscount. " ower little wark. " " Now don't say that ; I wouldn't do it to be Emperor of Russia. " "Aweel, I hae gotten a heap out o ' ye ; sae noow I'll gang, since ye are no for herrin' : come away, Jean. " CHARLES READE 12113 At this their host remonstrated, and inquired why bores are at one's service night and day, and bright people are always in a hurry. He was informed in reply, " Labor is the lot o' man. Div ye no ken that muckle ? And abune a' , o' women. » " Why, what can two such pretty creatures have to do, except to be admired ? » This question coming within the dark beauty's scope, she hastened to reply: - "To sell our herrin' , - "What is the price ? >> we hae three hundre' left in the creel. " At this question the poetry died out of Christie Johnstone's face ; she gave her companion a rapid look, indiscernible to male. eye, and answered : " Three a penny, sirr : they are no plenty the day, " added she, in smooth tones that carried conviction . (Little liar, they were selling six a penny everywhere. ) - " Saunders, buy them all, and be ever so long about it , count them, or some nonsense. " " He's daft ! he's daft ! Oh, ye ken, Jean, an Ennglishman and a lorrd, twa daft things thegither, he couldna' miss the road. Coont them, lassie. " " Come away, Sandy, till I coont them till ye, " said Jean. Saunders and Jean disappeared. Business being out of sight, curiosity revived . "An' what brings ye here from London, if you please ? " recommenced the fair inquisitor. ་ " You have a good countenance ; there is something in your face. I could find it in my heart to tell you, but I should bore you. " " De'el a fear ! Bore me, bore me ! whaat's thaat, I wonder ? » "What is your name, madam ? Mine is Ipsden. ” They ca' me Christie Johnstone . " " Well, Christie Johnstone, I am under the doctor's hands. " " Puir lad! What's the trouble ? " (solemnly and tenderly) . " Ennui ! " (rather piteously) . " Yawn-we ? I never heerd tell o't. " " Oh you lucky girl ! " burst out he ; " but the doctor has undertaken to cure me : in one thing you could assist me, if I am not presuming too far on our short acquaintance. I am to relieve one poor distressed person every day, but I mustn't do two : is not that a bore ? " XXI-758 CHARLES READE 12114 " Gie's your hand, gie's your hand. I'm vexed for ca'ing you daft. Hech! what a saft hand ye hae. Jean, I'm saying, come here; feel this. " Jean, who had run in, took the viscount's hand from Christie. " It never wroucht any, " explained Jean. "And he has boeny hair, " said Christie, just touching his locks on the other side. " He's a boeny lad , " said Jean, inspecting him scientifically and point- blank. "Ay is he, ” said the other. " Aweel, there's Jess Rutherford, a widdy, wi' four bairns : ye meicht do waur than ware your siller on her. " " Five pounds to begin ? " inquired his Lordship. " Five pund! Are ye made o' siller ? Ten schell'n ! " Saunders was rung for, and produced a one-pound note. " The herrin' is five and saxpence ; it's four and saxpence I'm awin' ye, " said the young fishwife, " and Jess will be a glad woman the neicht. " The settlement was effected, and away went the two friends, saying : - "Good boye, Vile Count. " Their host fell into thought. "When have I talked so much ? " asked he of himself. " Dr. Aberford, you are a wonderful man ; I like your lower classes amazingly. " said. " Méfiez- vous, Monsieur Ipsden ! " should some mentor have As the devil puts into a beginner's hands ace , queen, five trumps, to give him a taste for whist, so these lower classes have perhaps put forward one of their best cards to lead you into a false estimate of the strength of their hand. Instead however of this, who should return to disturb the equilibrium of truth but this Christina Johnstone. She came thoughtfully in, and said : - " I've been taking a thoucht, and this is no what yon gude physeecian meaned: ye are no to fling your chaerity like a bane till a doeg ; ye'll gang yoursel' to Jess Rutherford ; Flucker Johnstone, that's my brother, will convoy ye. " " But how is your brother to know me ? " " How? Because I'll give him a sair, sair hiding if he lets ye gang by. " CHARLES READE 12115 She then returned the one-pound note, a fresh settlement was effected, and she left him. At the door she said, "And I am muckle obleeged to ye for your story and your goodness. " Whilst uttering these words she half kissed her hand to him, with a lofty and disengaged gesture such as one might expect from a queen, if queens did not wear stays, —and was gone. When his Lordship, a few minutes after, sauntered out for a stroll, the first object he beheld was an exact human square : a handsome boy, with a body swelled out, apparently to the size of a man's, with blue flannel, and blue cloth above it, leaning against a wall, with his hands in his pockets, a statuette of insouciance. - This marine puff- ball was Flucker Johnstone, aged fourteen. Stain his sister's face with diluted walnut-juice, as they make the stage gipsy and red Indian (two animals imagined by actors to be one) , and you have Flucker's face. A slight moral distinction remains, not to be so easily got over. She was the best girl in the place, and he a baddish boy. He was however as sharp in his way as she was intelligent in hers. This youthful mariner allowed his Lordship to pass him, and take twenty steps, but watched him all the time, and compared him with a description furnished him by his sister. He then followed, and brought him to, as he called it. " I daursay it's you I'm to convoy to yon auld faggitt! " said this baddish boy. On they went, Flucker rolling and pitching and yawing to keep up with the lordly galley ; for a fisherman's natural waddle. is two miles an hour. At the very entrance of Newhaven, the new pilot suddenly. sung out, " Starboard! " Starboard it was : and they ascended a filthy " close " or alley, they mounted a staircase which was out of doors, and without knocking, Flucker introduced himself into Jess Rutherford's house. " Here a gentleman to speak till ye, wife. " The widow was weather-beaten and rough. She sat mending an old net. 12116 CHARLES READE " The gentleman's welcome, " said she ; but there was no gratification in her tone, and but little surprise. His Lordship then explained that, understanding there were worthy people in distress, he was in hopes he might be permitted to assist them ; and that she must blame a neighbor of hers if he had broken in upon her too abruptly with this object . He then, with a blush, hinted at ten shillings, which he begged she would consider as merely an installment, until he could learn the precise nature of her embarrassments, and the best way of placing means at her disposal. The widow heard all this with a lack-lustre mind. For many years her life had been unsuccessful labor ; if anything ever had come to her, it had always been a misfortune ; her incidents had been thorns, -her events, daggers. She could not realize a human angel coming to her relief, and she did not realize it ; and she worked away at her net. At this Flucker, to whom his Lordship's speech appeared monstrously weak and pointless, drew nigh, and gave the widow in her ear his version ; namely, his sister's embellished. It was briefly this: " That the gentleman was a daft lord from England who had come with the bank in his breeks, to remove poverty from Scotland, beginning with her. Sae speak loud aneuch, and ye'll no want siller, " was his polite corollary. His Lordship rose, laid a card on a chair, begged her to make use of him, et cetera ; he then, recalling the oracular prescription, said, " Do me the favor to apply to me for any little sum you have a use for, and in return I will beg of you (if it does not bore you too much) to make me acquainted with any little troubles you may have encountered in the course of your life. ” His Lordship, receiving no answer, was about to go, after bowing to her and smiling gracefully upon her. His hand was on the latch, when Jess Rutherford burst into a passion of tears. He turned with surprise. "My troubles, laddie, " cried she, trembling all over. « The sun wad set, and rise , and set again, ere I could tell ye a' the trouble I hae come through. " Oh ! ye needna vex yourself for an auld wife's tears : tears are a blessin' , lad, I shall assure ye. Mony's the time I hae prayed for them, and could na hae them. Sit ye doon ! sit ye doon ! I'll no let ye gang fra my door till I hae thankit ye, — CHARLES READE 12117 but gie me time, gie me time. I canna greet a' the days of the week. " Flucker, ætat. 14, opened his eyes, unable to connect ten shillings and tears. Lord Ipsden sat down, and felt very sorry for her. And she cried at her ease. If one touch of nature makes the whole world kin, methinks that sweet and wonderful thing, sympathy, is not less powerful. What frozen barriers, what ice of centuries, it can melt in a moment! His bare mention of her troubles had surprised the widow woman's heart : and now she looked up, and examined his countenance ; it was soon done. A woman, young or old, high or low, can discern and appreciate sensibility in a man's face at a single glance. What she saw there was enough. She was sure of sympathy. She recalled his resolve, and the tale of her sorrows burst from her like a flood. The old fishwife told the young aristocrat how she had borne twelve children, and buried six as bairns ; how her man was always unlucky ; how a mast fell on him, and disabled him a whole season ; how they could but just keep the pot boiling by deep- sea fishing, and he was not allowed to dredge for oysters because his father was not a Newhaven man. How, when the herring- fishing came to make all right, he never had another man's luck ; how his boat's crew would draw empty nets, and a boat alongside him would be gunwale down in the water with the fish. How at last , one morning, the 20th day of November, his boat came into Newhaven Pier without him, and when he was inquired for, his crew said " he had stayed at home, like a lazy loon, and not sailed with them the night before. ” How she was anxious, and had all the public- houses searched, " for he took a drop now and then, -nae wonder, and him aye in the weather. " Poor thing ! when he was alive she used to call him a drunken scoundrel to his face. How when the tide went down, a mad wife, whose husband had been drowned twenty years ago, pointed out something under the pier, that the rest took for seaweed floating.- how it was the hair of her man's head, washed about by the water; and he was there, drowned without a cry or a struggle by his enormous boots, that kept him in an upright position, though he was dead ; there he stood , —dead, —drowned 12118 CHARLES READE by slipping from the slippery pier, close to his comrades' hands, in a dark and gusty night ; how her daughter married, and was well-to-do, and assisted her ; how she fell into a rapid decline, and died, a picture of health to inexperienced eyes. How she, the mother, saw and knew and watched the treacherous advance of disease and death; how others said gayly " her daughter was better, " and she was obliged to say " Yes. " How she had worked eighteen hours a day at making nets ; how when she let out her nets to the other men at the herring-fishing, they always cheated her because her man was gone. How she had many times had to choose between begging her meal and going to bed without it, but thank Heaven! she had always chosen the latter. She told him of hunger, cold, and anguish. As she spoke they became real things to him; up to that moment they had been things in a story-book. And as she spoke she rocked herself from side to side. Indeed, she was a woman " acquainted with grief. " She might have said, " Here I and sorrow sit ! This is my throne ; bid kings come bow to it ! " Her hearer felt this : and therefore this woman, poor, old, and ugly, became sacred in his eye ; it was with a strange sort of respect that he tried to console her. He spoke to her in tones gentle and sweet as the south wind on a summer evening. " Madam, " said he, " let me be so happy as to bring you some comfort. The sorrows of the heart I cannot heal ; they are for a mightier hand : but a part of your distress appears to have been positive need; that we can at least dispose of, and I entreat you to believe that from this hour want shall never enter that door again. Never ! upon my honor! " The Scotch are icebergs with volcanoes underneath ; thaw the Scotch ice, which is very cold , and you shall get to the Scotch fire, warmer than any sun of Italy or Spain. His Lordship had risen to go. The old wife had seemed absorbed in her own grief ; she now dried her tears. " Bide ye, sirr, " said she, " till I thank ye. " So she began to thank him, rather coldly and stiffly. " He says ye are a lord, " said she ; " I dinna ken, an' I dinna care : but ye're a gentleman, I daursay, and a kind heart ye hae. " CHARLES READE Then she began to warm. 12119 "And ye'll never be a grain the poorer for the siller ye hae gi'en me; for he that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord. " Then she began to glow. " But it's no your siller ; dinna think it, —na, lad , na ! Oh, fine ! I ken there's mony a supper for the bairns and me in yon bits metal ; but I canna feel your siller as I feel your winsome smile, —the drop in your young een, —and the sweet words ye gied me, in the sweet music o' your Soothern tongue, Gude bless ye! " (Where was her ice by this time ?) " Gude bless ye! and I bless ye! " And she did bless him; and what a blessing it was! -not a melodious generality, like a stage parent's, or papa's in a damsel's novel. It was like the son of Barak on Zophim. She blessed him as one who had the power and the right to bless or curse. She stood on the high ground of her low estate and her afflictions, and demanded of their Creator to bless the fellow- creature that had come to her aid and consolation. This woman had suffered to the limits of endurance ; yesterday she had said, " Surely the Almighty doesna see me a' these years ! " So now she blessed him, and her heart's blood seemed to gush into words. She blessed him by land and water. She knew most mortal griefs ; for she had felt them. She warned them away from him one by one. She knew the joys of life ; for she had felt their want. She summoned them one by one to his side. “And a fair wind to your ship, " cried she ; " an' the storms aye ten miles to leeward o' her. " • Many happy days, " an' weel spent, " she wished him. " His love should love him dearly, or a better take her place. " " Health to his side by day; sleep to his pillow by night. " A thousand good wishes came, like a torrent of fire , from her lips, with a power that eclipsed his dreams of human eloquence ; and then, changing in a moment from the thunder of a Pythoness to the tender music of some poetess mother, she ended : "An' oh, my boeny, boeny lad, may ye be wi' the rich upon the airth a' your days, -AN' WI' THE PUIR IN THE WARLD ΤΟ COME ! » 12120 CHARLES READE His Lordship's tongue refused him the thin phrases of society. " Farewell for the present, " said he, and he went quietly away. He paced thoughtfully home. He had drunk a fact with every sentence ; and an idea with every fact. For the knowledge we have never realized is not knowledge to us, only knowledge's shadow. "M IN THE GREEN- ROOM ( From Peg Woffington ' R. CIBBER, what do you understand by an actor ? Tell me; for I am foolish enough to respect your opinion on these matters ! " "An actor, young lady, " said he gravely, " is an artist who has gone deep enough in his art to make dunces, critics, and greenhorns take it for nature ; moreover, he really personates, which your mere man of the stage never does. He has learned the true art of self- multiplication . He drops Betterton, Booth, Wilkes, or -a- hem— " " Cibber, " inserted Sir Charles Pomander. Cibber bowed. « in his dressing- room, and comes out young or old, a fop, a valet, a lover, or a hero, with voice, mien, and every gesture to match. A grain less than this may be good speaking, fine preaching, deep grunting, high ranting, eloquent reciting ; but I'll be hanged if it is acting ! " " Then Colley Cibber never acted, " whispered Quin to Mrs. Clive. " Then Margaret Woffington is an actress, " said M. W.: "the fine ladies take my Lady Betty for their sister ; in Mrs. Day I pass for a woman of seventy ; and in Sir Harry Wildair I have been taken for a man. I would have told you that before , but I didn't know it was to my credit, " said she slyly, " till Mr. Cibber laid down the law. " " Proof! " said Cibber. "A warm letter from one lady, diamond buckles from another, and an offer of her hand and fortune from a third : rien que cela.» Mr. Cibber conveyed behind her back a look of absolute incredulity; she divined it. CHARLES READE 12121 >>>> " I will not show you the letters, " continued she, " because Sir Harry, though a rake, was a gentleman : but here are the buckles; and she fished them out of her pocket, capacious of such things. The buckles were gravely inspected : they made more than one eye water ; they were undeniable . " Well, let us see what we can do for her, " said the Laureate. He tapped his box, and without a moment's hesitation produced the most execrable distich in the language: - " Now who is like Peggy, with talent at will ? A maid loved her Harry, for want of a Bill. " " Well, child, " continued he, after the applause which follows extemporary verses had subsided , " take me in. Play something to make me lose sight of saucy Peg Woffington, and I'll give the world five acts more before the curtain falls on Colley Cibber. " " If you could be deceived, " put in Mr. Vane, somewhat timidly. " I think there is no disguise through which grace and beauty such as Mrs. Woffington's would not shine, to my eyes. " " That is to praise my person at the expense of my wit, sir, is it not ?" was her reply. This was the first word she had ever addressed to him ; the tones appeared so sweet to him that he could not find anything to reply for listening to them; and Cibber resumed : - Meantime I will show you a real actress : she is coming here to-night to meet me. Did ever you children hear of Ann Bracegirdle ? » Bracegirdle ! " said Mrs. Clive : " why, she has been dead this thirty years ; at least I thought so. " "Dead to the stage. There is more heat in her ashes than in your fire , Kate Clive ! Ah! here comes her messenger, " continued he, as an ancient man appeared with a letter in his hand. This letter Mrs. Woffington snatched and read, and at the same instant in bounced the call -boy. " Epilogue called, " said this urchin, in the tone of command which these small- fry of Parnassus adopt ; and obedient to his high behest, Mrs. Woffington moved to the door with the Bracegirdle missive in her hand, but not before she had delivered its general contents : " The great actress will be here in a few minutes, " said she ; and she glided swiftly out of the room. 12122 CHARLES READE People whose mind or manners possess any feature, and are not as devoid of all eccentricity as half-pounds of butter bought of metropolitan grocers, are recommended not to leave a roomful of their acquaintances until the last but one. Yes, they should always be penultimate. Perhaps Mrs. Woffington knew this ; but epilogues are stubborn things, and call- boys undeniable. " Did you ever hear a woman whistle before ? » " Never ; but I saw one sit astride of an ass in Germany ! " " The saddle was not on her husband, I hope, madam ? » " No, sir : the husband walked by his kinsfolk's side, and made the best of a bad bargain, as Peggy's husband will have to. " "Wait till some one ventures on the gay Lothario, -illi æs triplex; that means he must have triple brass, Kitty. " " I deny that, sir ; since his wife will always have enough for both. " " I have not observed the lady's brass, " said Vane, trembling with passion ; " but I observed her talent, and I noticed that whoever attacks her to her face comes badly off. " " Well said, sir, " answered Quin ; " and I wish Kitty here would tell us why she hates Mrs. Woffington, the best-natured woman in the theatre ? " " I don't hate her, I don't trouble my head about her. " " Yes, you hate her; for you never miss a cut at her, never ! " " Do you hate a haunch of venison, Quin ? " said the lady. " No! you little unnatural monster, " replied Quin. " For all that, you never miss a cut at one, tongue ! " so hold your " Le beau raisonnement ! " said Mr. Cibber. "James Quin, don't interfere with nature's laws : let our ladies hate one another, — it eases their minds ; try to make them Christians and you will not convert their tempers, but spoil your own. Peggy there hates George Anne Bellamy because she has gaudy silk dresses from Paris, by paying for them as she could, if not too stingy. Kitty here hates Peggy because Rich has breeched her, whereas Kitty, who now sets up for a prude, wanted to put delicacy off and small-clothes on in Peg's stead ; that is where the Kate and Peg shoe pinches, -near the femoral artery, James. (( Shrimps have the souls of shrimps, " resumed this censor castigatorque minorum . " Listen to me, and learn that really great actors are great in soul, and do not blubber like a great school- CHARLES READE 12123 girl because Anne Bellamy has two yellow- silk dresses from Paris, as I saw Woffington blubber in this room, and would not be comforted ; nor fume like Kitty Clive, because Woffington has a pair of breeches and a little boy's rapier to go a- playing at acting with. When I was young, two giantesses fought for empire upon this very stage, where now dwarfs crack and bounce like parched peas. They played Roxana and Statira in the 'Rival Queens. ' Rival queens of art themselves, they put out all their strength. In the middle of the last act the town gave judgment in favor of Statira. What did Roxana ? Did she spill grease on Statira's robe, as Peg Woffington would ? or stab her, as I believe Kitty here capable of doing ? No ! Statira was never so tenderly killed as that night : she owned this to me. Roxana bade the theatre farewell that night, and wrote to Statira thus I give you word for word : ' Madam, the best judge we have has decided in your favor. I shall never play second on a stage where I have been first so long, but I shall often be a spectator ; and methinks none will appreciate your talent more than I , who have felt its weight. My wardrobe, one of the best in Europe, is of no use to me : if you will honor me by selecting a few of my dresses you will gratify me, and I shall fancy I see myself upon the stage to greater advantage than before. »» "And what did Statira answer, sir ? " said Mr. Vane eagerly. «< She answered thus: ' Madam, the town has often been wrong, and may have been so last night, in supposing that I vied successfully with your merit ; but thus much is certain, - and here, madam, I am the best judge, - that off the stage you have just conquered me. I shall wear with pride any dress you have honored, and shall feel inspired to great exertions by your presence among our spectators, unless indeed the sense of your magnanimity and the recollection of your talent should damp me by the dread of losing any portion of your good opinion . ' " What a couple of stiff old things ! " said Mrs. Clive. " Nay, madam, say not so, " cried Vane warmly: " surely this was the lofty courtesy of two great minds, not to be overbalanced by strife, defeat, or victory. " " What were their names, sir ? " " Statira was the great Mrs. Oldfield. here to-night. " This caused a sensation . > >> Roxana you will see Colley's reminiscences were interrupted by loud applause from the theatre : the present seldom gives the past a long hearing. 12124 CHARLES READE The old war-horse cocked his ears. " It is Woffington speaking the epilogue, " said Quin. " Oh ! she has got the length of their foot, somehow, " said a small actress. "And the breadth of their hands, too, " said Pomander, waking from a nap. " It is the depth of their hearts she has sounded, " said Vane. In those days, if a metaphor started up, the poor thing was coursed up hill and down dale, and torn limb from jacket ; even in Parliament, a trope was sometimes hunted from one session into another. " You were asking me about Mrs. Oldfield, sir, " resumed Cibber rather peevishly. " I will own to you, I lack words to convey a just idea of her double and complete supremacy. But the comedians of this day are weak- strained farceurs compared with her, and her tragic tone was thunder set to music. " I saw a brigadier- general cry like a child at her ' Indiana. ' I have seen her crying with pain herself at the wing (for she was always a great sufferer) : I have seen her then spring upon the stage as Lady Townley, and in a moment sorrow brightened into joy ; the air seemed to fill with singing- birds, that chirped the pleasures of fashion, love, and youth, in notes sparkling like diamonds, and stars, and prisms. She was above criticism , — out of its scope, as is the blue sky ; men went not to judge her, - they drank her, and gazed at her, and were warmed at her, and refreshed by her. The fops were awed into silence ; and with their humbler betters thanked Heaven for her, if they thanked it for anything. " In all the crowded theatre, care and pain and poverty were banished from the memory whilst Oldfield's face spoke and her tongue flashed melodies ; the lawyer forgot his quillets ; the polemic, the mote in his brother's eye ; the old maid, her grudge against the two sexes ; the old man, his gray hairs and his lost hours. And can it be that all this, which should have been immortal, is quite, quite lost , is as though it had never been ? ” he sighed. " Can it be that its fame is now sustained by me? who twang with my poor lute, cracked and old, these feeble praises of a broken lyre- " Whose wires were golden, and its heavenly air More tunable than lark to shepherd's ear, When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear. ' " CHARLES READE 12125 He paused, and his eye looked back over many years ; then with a very different tone he added : - "And that Jack Falstaff there must have seen her, now I think on't. " " Only once, sir, " said Quin ; " and I was but ten years old . " " He saw her once, and he was ten years old ; yet he calls Woffington a great comedian, and my son The's wife, with her hatchet face, the greatest tragedian he ever saw! Jemmy, what an ass you must be ! " . " Mrs. Cibber always makes me cry, and t'other always makes me laugh, " said Quin stoutly : " that's why. " Ce beau raisonnement met no answer but a look of sovereign contempt. A very trifling incident saved the ladies of the British stage. from further criticism . There were two candles in this room, one on each side ; the call -boy had entered , and poking about for something, knocked down and broke one of these. "Awkward imp ! " cried a velvet page. " I'll go to the Treasury for another, ma'am, " said the boy pertly, and vanished with the fractured wax. I take advantage of the interruption to open Mr. Vane's mind to the reader. First he had been astonished at the freedom of sarcasm these people indulged in without quarreling; next at the non-respect of sex. " So sex is not recognized in this community, " thought he. Then the glibness and merit of some of their answers surprised and amused him. He, like me, had seldom met an imaginative repartee except in a play or a book. " Society's repartees were then, as they are now, the good old three in various dresses and veils : Tu quoque, tu mentiris, vos damnemini; but he was sick and dispirited on the whole, such very bright illusions had been dimmed in these few minutes. She was brilliant : but her manners, if not masculine, were very daring ; and yet when she spoke to him, a stranger, how sweet and gentle her voice was! Then it was clear nothing but his ignorance could have placed her at the summit of her art. Still he clung to his enthusiasm for her. He drew Pomander aside. " What a simplicity there is in Mrs. Woffington ! " said he: "the rest, male and female, are all so affected ; she is so fresh and natural. They are all hot-house plants ; she is a cowslip with the May dew on it. " 12126 CHARLES READE " What you take for simplicity is her refined art, " replied Sir Charles. " No! " said Vane : " I never saw a more innocent creature ! Pomander laughed in his face : this laugh disconcerted him more than words ; he spoke no more. -he sat pensive. He was sorry he had come to this place, where everybody knew his goddess, yet nobody admired, nobody loved, and alas ! nobody respected her. He was roused from his reverie by a noise ; the noise was caused by Cibber falling on Garrick, whom Pomander had maliciously quoted against all the tragedians of Colley Cibber's day. " I tell you, " cried the veteran, " that this Garrick has banished dignity from the stage, and given us in exchange what you and he take for fire ; but it is smoke and vapor. His manner is little ; like his person, it is all fuss and bustle. This is his idea of a tragic scene : A little fellow comes bustling in, goes bustling about, and runs bustling out. " Here Mr. Cibber left the room to give greater effect to his description, but presently returned in a mighty pother, saying : " Give me another horse! Well, where's the horse ? don't you see I'm waiting for him ? Bind up my wounds! Look sharp now with these wounds. Have mercy, Heaven! but be quick about it, for the pit can't wait for Heaven. ' Bustle ! bustle ! bustle ! " The old dog was so irresistibly funny that the whole company were obliged to laugh; but in the midst of their merriment. Mrs. Woffington's voice was heard at the door. " This way, madam. " A clear and somewhat shrill voice replied , " I know the way better than you, child ; " and a stately old lady appeared on the threshold. " Bracegirdle, " said Mr. Cibber. greenIt may well be supposed that every eye was turned on this new- comer, that Roxana for whom Mr. Cibber's story had prepared a peculiar interest. She was dressed in a rich velvet gown with gold fringe. Cibber remembered it : she had played the ' Eastern Queen ' in it . Heaven forgive all concerned ! It was fearfully pinched in at the waist and ribs, so as to give the idea of wood inside , not woman. Her hair and eyebrows were iron-gray, and she had lost a front tooth, or she would still have been eminently handsome. She was tall and straight as a dart, and her noble port betrayed CHARLES READE 12127 none of the weakness of age ; only it was to be seen that her hands were a little weak, and the gold-headed crutch struck the ground rather sharply, as if it did a little limbs'- duty. Such was the lady who marched into the middle of the room, with a " How do, Colley ? " and looking over the company's heads as if she did not see them, regarded the four walls with some interest. Like a cat, she seemed to think more of places than of folk. The page obsequiously offered her a chair. " Not so clean as it used to be, " said Mrs. Bracegirdle. Unfortunately, in making this remark, the old lady graciously patted the page's head for offering her the chair ; and this action gave, with some of the ill- constituted minds that are ever on the titter, a ridiculous direction to a remark intended, I believe, for the paint and wainscots, etc. " Nothing is as it used to be, " remarked Mr. Cibber. "All the better for everything, " said Mrs. Clive. "We were laughing at this mighty little David, first actor of this mighty little age. " Now if Mr. Cibber thought to find in the new- comer an ally of the past in its indiscriminate attack upon the present, he was much mistaken ; for the old actress made onslaught on this nonsense at once. "Ay, ay, " said she, " and not the first time by many hundreds. 'Tis a disease you have. Cure yourself, Colley. David Garrick pleases the public ; and in trifles like acting, that take nobody to heaven, to please all the world is to be great. Some pretend to higher aims, but none have ' em. You may hide this from young fools, mayhap, but not from an old ' oman like me. He he he ! No, no, no, - not from an old ' oman like me. " She then turned round in her chair, and with that sudden, unaccountable snappishness of tone to which the brisk old are subject, she snarled : " Gie me a pinch of snuff, some of ye, do. " Tobacco dust was instantly at her disposal. She took it with the points of her fingers, delicately, and divested the crime of half its uncleanness and vulgarity -more an angel couldn't. " Monstrous sensible woman, though, >> whispered Quin to Clive. " Hey, sir ! what do you say, sir ? for I'm a little deaf. " (Not very to praise, it seems. ) " That your judgment, madam, is equal to the reputation of your talent. " 12128 CHARLES READE The words were hardly spoken, before the old lady rose upright as a tower. She then made an oblique preliminary sweep, and came down with such a curtsy as the young had never seen. James Quin, not to disgrace his generation, attempted a corresponding bow, for which his figure and apoplectic tendency rendered him unfit ; and whilst he was transacting it, the graceful Cibber stepped gravely up, and looked down and up the process with his glass, like a naturalist inspecting some strange capriccio of an orang-outang. The gymnastics of courtesy ended without back- falls, Cibber lowered his tone : " You are right, Bracy, -it is nonsense denying the young fellow's talent ; but his Othello, now, Bracy ! be just -his Othello ! " " Oh dear! oh dear ! " cried she : " I thought it was Desdemona's little black boy come in without the tea-kettle. " Quin laughed uproariously, " It made me laugh a deal more than Mr. Quin's Falstaff. Oh dear! oh dear ! " 1 " Falstaff, indeed ! Snuff ! " in the tone of a trumpet. Quin secretly revoked his good opinion of this woman's sense. Madam, " said the page timidly, " if you would but favor us with a specimen of the old style ! " “ Well, child , why not ? Only what makes you mumble like that ? But they all do it now, I see. Bless my soul ! our words used to come out like brandy- cherries ; but now a sentence is like raspberry jam, on the stage and off » Cibber chuckled. "And why don't you men carry yourself like Cibber here ? » " Don't press that question, " said Colley dryly. "A monstrous poor actor, though, " said the merciless old woman, in a mock aside.to the others, - " only twenty shillings a week for half his life ; " and her shoulders went up to her ears -then she fell into a half- revery. " Yes, we were distinct, " said she ; " but I must own, children, we were slow. Once in the midst of a beautiful tirade my lover went to sleep and fell against me. A mighty pretty epigram, twenty lines, was writ on't by one of my gallants. Have ye as many of them as we used ? " " In that respect, " said the page, " we are not behind our great-grandmothers. " CHARLES READE 12129 " I call that pert, " said Mrs. Bracegirdle, with the air of one drawing scientific distinctions. " Now, is that a boy or a lady. that spoke to me last ? " By its dress, I should say a boy, " said Cibber, with his glass ; ' by its assurance, a lady! " " There's one clever woman amongst ye : Peg something, plays Lothario, Lady Betty Modish, and what not. " " What ! admire Woffington ?" screamed Mrs. Clive : " why, she is the greatest gabbler on the stage. ” " I don't care, " was the reply : " there's nature about the jade. Don't contradict me, " added she with sudden fury: " a parcel of children ! " " No, madam, " said Clive humbly. " Mr. Cibber, will you try and prevail on Mrs. Bracegirdle to favor us with a recitation ? » Cibber handed his cane with pomp to a small actor. Bracegirdle did the same; and striking the attitudes that had passed for heroic in their day, they declaimed out of the ' Rival Queens ' two or three tirades, which I graciously spare the reader of this tale. Their elocution was neat and silvery ; but not one bit like the way people speak in streets, palaces, fields, roads, and rooms. They had not made the grand discovery, which Mr. A. Wigan on the stage, and every man of sense off it, has made in our day and nation : namely, that the stage is a representation not of stage, but of life ; and that an actor ought to speak and act in imitation of human beings, not of speaking machines that have run and creaked in a stage groove, with their eyes shut upon the world at large, upon nature, upon truth, upon man, upon woman, and upon child. " This is slow ! " cried Cibber : " let us show these young people how ladies and gentlemen moved fifty years ago ; dansons. " A fiddler was caught, a beautiful slow minuet played, and a bit of " solemn dancing " done. Certainly it was not gay, but it must be owned it was beautiful ; it was the dance of kings, the poetry of the courtly saloon. The retired actress, however, had friskier notions left in her: " This is slow! " cried she, and bade the fiddler play ' The Wind that Shakes the Barley, '-an ancient jig tune ; this she danced to in a style that utterly astounded the spectators. She showed them what fun was : her feet and her stick were all echoes to the mad strain ; out went her heel behind, and returning, drove her four yards forward. She made unaccountable XXI-759 12130 CHARLES READE slants, and cut them all over in turn if they did not jump for it. Roars of inextinguishable laughter arose ; it would have made an oyster merry. Suddenly she stopped, and put her hands to her side, and soon after she gave a vehement cry of pain. The laughter ceased. She gave another cry of such agony that they were all round her in a moment. " Oh! help me, ladies, " screamed the poor woman, in tones as feminine as they were heart-rending and piteous. " Oh, my back! my loins ! I suffer, gentlemen, " said the poor thing, faintly What was to be done ? Mr. Vane offered his penknife to cut. her laces. " You shall cut my head off sooner, " cried she with sudden energy. Don't pity me," said she sadly, " I don't deserve it ; " then lifting her eyes, she exclaimed with a sad air of selfreproach, " O vanity ! do you never leave a woman ? " Oh! " Nay, madam ! " whimpered the page, who was a good-hearted girl : 'twas your great complaisance for us, not vanity. oh ! oh ! " and she began to blubber to make matters better. " No, my children, " said the old lady, "'twas vanity. I wanted to show you what an old ' oman could do ; and I have humiliated myself, trying to outshine younger folk. I am justly humiliated, as you see; " and she began to cry a little. " This is very painful, " said Cibber. Mrs. Bracegirdle now raised her eyes (they had set her in a chair) , and looking sweetly, tenderly, and earnestly on her old companion, she said to him, slowly, gently, but impressively : - " Colley, at threescore years and ten, this was ill done of us! You and I are here now for what ? to cheer the young up the hill we mounted years ago. And, old friend, if we detract from them we discourage them. A great sin in the old ! Every dog his day. We have had ours. Here she smiled, then laying her hand tenderly in the old man's, she added with calm solemnity: "And now we must go quietly towards our rest, and strut and fret no more the few last minutes of life's fleeting hour. " >>>> How tame my cacotype of these words compared with what they were ! I am ashamed of them and myself, and the human craft of writing, which, though commoner far, is so miserably behind the godlike art of speech : Si ipsam audivisses ! These ink scratches, which in the imperfection of language we have called words till the unthinking actually dream they CHARLES READE 12131 are words, but which are the shadows of the corpses of words, -these word- shadows then were living powers on her lips, and subdued, as eloquence always does, every heart within reach of the imperial tongue. The young loved her : and the old man, softened and vanquished, and mindful of his failing life, was silent, and pressed his handkerchief to his eyes a moment ; then he said : - " No, Bracy - no. Be composed, I pray you. She is right. Young people, forgive me that I love the dead too well, and the days when I was what you are now. Drat the woman, ” continued he, half ashamed of his emotion : " she makes us laugh and makes us cry, just as she used. " "What does he say, young woman ? " said the old lady dryly, to Mrs. Clive. " He says you make us laugh, and make us cry, madam ; and so you do me, I'm sure. " "And that's Peg Woffington's notion of an actress ! Better it, Cibber and Bracegirdle, if you can, " said the other, rising up like lightning. She then threw Colley Cibber a note, and walked coolly and rapidly out of the room, without looking once behind her. The rest stood transfixed, looking at one another and at the empty chair. Then Cibber opened and read the note aloud. It was from Mrs. Bracegirdle : " Playing at tric-trac ; so can't play the fool in your green-room to-night. - B. " On this, a musical ringing laugh was heard from outside the door, where the pseudo- Bracegirdle was washing the gray from her hair and the wrinkles from her face, -ah! I wish I could do it as easily ! -and the little bit of sticking- plaster from her front tooth. " Why, it is the Irish jade ! " roared Cibber. " Divil a less ! " rang back a rich brogue ; " and it's not the furst time we put the comether upon ye, England, my jewal ! " One more mutual glance, and then the mortal cleverness of all this began to dawn on their minds : and they broke forth into clapping of hands, and gave this accomplished mime three rounds of applause ; Mr. Vane and Sir Charles Pomander leading with "Brava, Woffington! " CHARLES READE 12132 EXTRACT FROM A SIXTEENTH-CENTURY LETTER From The Cloister and the Hearth ' [ Margaret has received a letter from her young husband, Gerard, who is traveling afoot to Italy. She reads it to his father and mother, brothers and sister. ] LI " Whisht, wife ! " E-" And I did sigh, loud and often . And me sighing so, one came caroling like a bird adown t'other road. ‘Ay, chirp and chirp, ' cried I bitterly. Thou hast not lost sweetheart and friend, thy father's hearth, thy mother's smile, and every penny in the world. ' And at last he did so carol and carol, I jumped up in ire to get away from his most jarring mirth. But ere I fled from it, I looked down the path to see what could make a man so light-hearted in this weary world ; and lo ! the songster was a humpbacked cripple, with a bloody bandage o'er his eye, and both legs gone at the knee. " " He! he he ! he! he! " went Sybrandt, laughing and cackling. Margaret's eyes flashed ; she began to fold the letter up. " Nay, lass, " said Eli, " heed him not ! Thou unmannerly cur, offer't but again and I put thee to the door. " " Why, what was there to gibe at, Sybrandt ? " remonstrated Catherine more mildly. " Is not our Kate afflicted ? and is she not the most content of us all, and singeth like a merle at times between her pains ? But I am as bad as thou : prithee read on, lass, and stop our gabble wi' somewhat worth the hearkening. >> « ‹ Then, ' said I, ' may this thing be ?' And I took myself to task : ' Gerard, son of Eli, dost thou well to bemoan thy lot, that hast youth and health ; and here comes the wreck of nature on crutches, praising God's goodness with singing like a mavis ? › » Catherine-" There you see. " Eli-"Whisht, dame, whisht ! " . "And whenever he saw me, he left caroling and presently hobbled up and chanted, ' Charity, for love of Heaven, sweet master, charity; ' with a whine as piteous as wind at keyhole. 'Alack, poor soul, ' said I, ' charity is in my heart, but not my purse ; I am poor as thou. ' Then he believed me none, and to melt me undid his sleeve, and showed a sore wound on his arm, and said he , ' Poor cripple though I be, I am like to lose this CHARLES READE 12133 eye to boot, look else. ' I saw and groaned for him, and to excuse myself, let him wot how I had been robbed of my last copper. Thereat he left whining all in a moment, and said in a big manly voice, ' Then I'll e'en take a rest. Here, youngster, pull thou this strap : nay, fear not ! ' I pulled, and down came a stout pair of legs out of his back ; and half his hump had melted away, and the wound in his eye no deeper than the bandage. " " Oh ! " ejaculated Margaret's hearers in a body. " Whereat, seeing me astounded, he laughed in my face, and told me I was not worth gulling, and offered me his protection . ' My face was prophetic, ' he said. ' Of what ?' said I. ' Marry,' said he, ' that its owner will starve in this thievish land. ' Travel teaches e'en the young wisdom. Time was I had turned and fled this impostor as a pestilence ; but now I listened patiently to pick up crumbs of counsel. And well I did ; for nature and his adventurous life had crammed the poor knave with shrewdness and knowledge of the homelier sort —a child was I beside him. When he had turned me inside out, said he, ' Didst well to leave France and make for Germany ; but think not of Holland again. Nay, on to Augsburg and Nürnberg, the Paradise of craftsmen ; thence to Venice, an thou wilt. But thou wilt never bide in Italy nor any other land , having once tasted the great German cities. Why, there is but one honest country in Europe, and that is Germany; and since thou art honest, and since I am a vagabone, Germany was made for us twain. ' I bade him make that good : how might one country fit true men and knaves ! ' Why, thou novice, ' said he, ' because in an honest land are fewer knaves to bite the honest man, and many honest men for the knave to bite. ' ' I was in luck, being honest, to have fallen in with a friendly sharp. ' ' Be my pal, ' said he : ' I go to Nürnberg ; we will reach it with full pouches. I'll learn ye the cul de bois, and the cul de jatte, and how to maund, and chaunt, and patter, and to raise swellings, and paint sores and ulcers on thy body would take in the divell. I told him, shivering, I'd liefer die than shame myself and my folk so. " Eli-" Good lad ! good lad ! " “ Why, what shame was it for such as I to turn beggar ? Beggary was an ancient and most honorable mystery. What did holy monks, and bishops, and kings, when they would win Heaven's smile ? why, wash the feet of beggars, those favorites of the saints. The saints were no fools, ' he told me. Then he did put CHARLES READE 12134 out his foot. 'Look at that, that was washed by the greatest king alive, Louis of France, the last holy Thursday that was. And the next day, Friday, clapped in the stocks by the warden of a petty hamlet. ' " So I told him my foot should walk between such high honor and such low disgrace, on the safe path of honesty, please God. Well then, since I had not spirit to beg, he would indulge my perversity. I should work under him; he be the head, I the fingers. ' And with that he set himself up like a judge, on a heap of dust by the road's side, and questioned me strictly what I could do. I began to say I was strong and willing. ' Bah ! ' said he, ' so is an ox. Say, what canst do that Sir Ox cannot ?' -I could write ; I had won a prize for it. 'Canst write as fast as the printers ? ' quo' he, jeering : ' what else ?' -I could paint. 'That was better. ' I was like to tear my hair to hear him say so, and me going to Rome to write. I could twang the psaltery a bit. 'That was well. Could I tell stories ? ' Ay, by the score. ' Then, ' said he, ' I hire you from this moment. ' 'What to do ? ' said I. ' Naught crooked, Sir Candor, ' says he. ' I will feed thee all the way and find thee work ; and take half thine earnings, no more. ' ' Agreed, ' said I , and gave my hand on it. - " Now, servant, ' said he, ' we will dine. But ye need not stand behind my chair, for two reasons : first , I ha' got no chair ; and next, good- fellowship likes me better than state. ' And out of his wallet he brought flesh, fowl, and pastry, a good dozen of spices lapped in flax- paper, and wine fit for a king. Ne'er feasted I better than out of this beggar's wallet, now my master. When we had well eaten I was for going on. ' But, ' said he, ' servants should not drive their masters too hard, especially after feeding, for then the body is for repose and the mind turns to contemplation ; ' and he lay on his back gazing calmly at the sky, and presently wondered whether there were any beggars up there. I told him I knew but of one, called Lazarus. 'Could he do the cul de jatte better than I ? ' said he, and looked quite jealous like. I told him nay; Lazarus was honest, though a beggar, and fed daily of the crumbs fal'n from a rich man's table, and the dogs licked his sores. Servant, ' quo' he, ' I spy a foul fault in thee. Thou liest without discretion ; now, the end of lying being to gull, this is no better than fumbling with the divell's tail. I pray Heaven thou mayst prove to paint better than thou cuttest whids, or I am done out of a dinner. No CHARLES READE 12135 beggar eats crumbs, but only the fat of the land; and dogs lick not a beggar's sores, being made with spearwort, or ratsbane, or biting acids, from all which dogs, and even pigs, abhor. My sores are made after my proper receipt ; but no dog would lick e'en them twice. I have made a scurvy bargain : art a cozening knave , I doubt, as well as a nincompoop. ' I deigned no reply to this bundle of lies, which did accuse heavenly truth of falsehood for not being in a tale with him. " He rose and we took the road ; and presently we came to a place where were two little wayside inns, scarce a furlong apart. ' Halt, ' said my master. Their armories are sore faded all the better. Go thou in ; shun the master; board the wife ; and flatter her inn sky-high, all but the armories, and offer to color them dirt cheap. ' So I went in and told the wife I was a painter, and would revive her armories cheap ; but she sent me away with a rebuff. I to my master. He groaned. ' Ye are all fingers and no tongue, ' said he : ' I have made a scurvy bargain. Come and hear me patter and flatter. ' Between the two inns was a high hedge. He goes behind it a minute and comes out a decent tradesman. We went on to the other inn, and then I heard him praise it so fulsome as the very wife did blush. ' But,' says he, ' there is one little, little fault : your armories are dull and faded. Say but the word, and for a silver franc my apprentice here, the cunningest e'er I had, shall make them bright as ever. ' Whilst she hesitated, the rogue told her he had done it to a little inn hard by, and now the inn's face was like the starry firmament. ' D'ye hear that, my man ?' cries she : ' The Three Frogs have been and painted up their armories. Shall The Four Hedgehogs be outshone by them ?' So I painted, and my master stood by like a lord, advising me how to do, and winking to me to heed him nonę, and I got a silver franc. And he back to The Three Frogs, and on the way put me on a beard and disguised me, and flattered The Three Frogs, and told them how he had adorned The Four Hedgehogs, and into the net jumped the three poor simple frogs, and I earned another silver franc. Then we went on and he found his crutches, and sent me forward, and showed his cicatrices d'emprunt, as he called them, and all his infirmities, at The Four Hedgehogs, and got both food and money. took me " Come, share and share , ' quoth he : so I gave him one franc . ' I have made a good bargain , ' said he. 'Art a master limner , 12136 CHARLES READE but takest too much time. ' So I let him know that in matters of honest craft things could not be done quick and well. 'Then do them quick, ' quoth he. And he told me my name was Bon Bec ; and I might call him Cul de Jatte, because that was his lay at our first meeting. And at the next town my master Cul de Jatte bought me a psaltery, and sat himself up again by the roadside in state like him that erst judged Marsyas and Apollo, piping for vain glory. So I played a strain. ' Indifferent well, harmonious Bon Bec, ' said he haughtily. ' Now tune thy pipes . ' So I did sing a sweet strain the good monks taught me ; and singing it reminded poor Bon Bec, Gerard erst, of his young days and home, and brought the water to my e'en . But looking up, my master's visage was as the face of a little boy whipt soundly, or sipping foulest medicine. Zounds, stop that belly- ache blether, ' quoth he : 'that will ne'er wile a stiver out o' peasants' purses ; ' twill but sour the nurses' milk, and gar the kine jump into rivers to be out of earshot on't. What, false knave, did I buy thee a fine new psaltery to be minded o' my latter end withal ? Hearken ! these be the songs that glad the heart and fill the minstrel's purse. ' And he sung so blasphemous a stave, and eke so obscene, as I drew away from him a space that the lightning might not spoil the new psaltery. However, none came, being winter ; and then I said, ' Master, the Lord is debonair. Held I the thunder, yon ribaldry had been thy last, thou foul- mouthed wretch. ' " Why, Bon Bec, what is to do ? ' quoth he. ' I have made an ill bargain. O perverse heart, that turneth from doctrine. ' So I bade him keep his breath to cool his broth : ne'er would I shame my folk with singing ribald songs. • " Then I to him, 'Take now thy psaltery, and part we here ; for art a walking prison , a walking hell. ' But lo ! my master fell on his knees, and begged me for pity's sake not to turn him off. 'What would become of him ? He did so love honesty. ' ' Thou love honesty ? ' said I. ' Ay, ' said he : ' not to enact it ; the saints forbid: but to look on. 'Tis so fair a thing to look on. Alas, good Bon Bec, ' said he ; ' hadst starved peradventure but for me. Kick not down thy ladder ! Call ye that just ? Nay, calm thy choler ! Have pity on me ! I must have a pal : and how could I bear one like myself after one so simple as thou ? He might cut my throat for the money that is hid in my belt. 'Tis not much; ' tis not much. With thee I walk at mine ease ; with a sharp I CHARLES READE 12137- dare not go before in a narrow way. Alas! forgive me. Now I know where in thy bonnet lurks the bee, I will 'ware his sting ; I will but pluck the secular goose. ' ' So be it, ' said I. 'And example was contagious : he should be a true man by then we reached Nürnberg. 'Twas a long way to Nürnberg. ' Seeing him so humble, I said, ' Well, doff rags, and make thyself decent : 'twill help me forget what thou art. ' And he did so ; and we sat down to our nonemete. " Presently came by a reverend palmer with hat stuck round with cockle- shells from Holy Land, and great rosary of beads like eggs of teal, and sandals for shoes. And he leaned aweary on his long staff, and offered us a shell apiece. My master would none. But I , to set him a better example, took one, and for it gave the poor pilgrim two batzen , and had his blessing. And he was scarce gone when we heard savage cries, and came a sorry sight, -one leading a wild woman in a chain, all rags, and howling like a wolf. And when they came nigh us, she fell to tearing her rags to threads. The man sought an alms of us, and told us his hard case. 'Twas his wife stark raving mad; and he could not work in the fields , and leave her in his house to fire it, nor cure her could he without the saintys help, and had vowed six pounds of wax to St. Anthony to heal her, and So was fain beg of charitable folk for the money. And now she espied us, and flew at me with her long nails, and I was cold with fear, so devilish showed her face and rolling eyes and nails like birdys talons. But he with the chain checked her sudden, and with his whip did cruelly lash her for it , that I cried , ' Forbear! forbear! She knoweth not what she doth; and gave him a batz. « a trull a "And being gone, said I , ' Master, of those twain I know not which is the the more more pitiable. '. ' And he laughed in my face. ' Behold thy justice, Bon Bec, ' said he. 'Thou railest on thy poor, good, within-an-ace- of-honest master, and bestowest alms on Vopper. » › 'Vopper!' said I : ' what is a vopper ? ' ' Why, that feigns madness. That was one of us, that sham and wow but she did it clumsily. I blushed for her Also gavest two batzen for a shell from Holy Land, that came no farther than Normandy. I have culled them myself on that coast by scores, and sold them to pilgrims true and pilgrims false, to gull flats like thee withal.' 'What!' said I: ' that reverend man ?' ' One of us ! ' cried Cul de Jatte ; ' one maniac, and thee . 12138 CHARLES READE of us! In France we call them " Coquillarts, " but here " Calmierers." Railest on me for selling a false relic now and then, and wastest thy earnings on such as sell naught else. I tell thee, Bon Bec, ' said he, ' there is not one true relic on earth's face. The saints died a thousand years agone, and their bones mixed with the dust : but the trade in relics, it is of yesterday ; and there are forty thousand tramps in Europe live by it, selling relics of forty or fifty bodies : oh, threadbare lie ! And of the true Cross enow to build Cologne Minster. Why then may not poor Cul de Jatte turn his penny with the crowd ? Art but a scurvy tyrannical servant to let thy poor master from his share of the swag with your whorson pilgrims, palmers, and friars, black, gray, and crutched ; for all these are of our brotherhood and of our art, -only masters they, and we but poor apprentices, in guild. ' For his tongue was an ell and a half. " A truce to thy irreverend sophistries, ' said I , ' and say what company is this a-coming. ' ' Bohemians, ' cried he. 'Ay, ay, this shall be the rest of the band. ' With that came along so motley a crew as never your eyes beheld, dear Margaret. Marched at their head one with a banner on a steel- pointed lance, and girded with a great long sword, and in velvet doublet and leathern jerkin, the which stuffs ne'er saw I wedded afore on mortal flesh, and a gay feather in his lordly cap, and a couple of dead fowls at his back, -the which an the spark had come by honestly, I am much mistook. Him followed wives and babes on two lean horses, whose flanks still rattled like parchment drum, being beaten by kettles and caldrons. Next an armed man a-riding of a horse, which drew a cart full of females and children: and in it, sitting backwards, a lusty, lazy knave, lance in hand, with his luxurious feet raised on a holy-water pail that lay along; and therein a cat, new kittened , sat glowing o'er her brood, and sparks for eyes. And the cart-horse cavalier had on his shoulders a round bundle ; and thereon did perch a cock and crowed with zeal, poor ruffler, proud of his brave feathers as the rest, and haply with more reason, being his own. And on an ass another wife and new-born child ; and one poor quean afoot scarce dragged herself along, so near her time was she , yet held two little ones by the hand, and helplessly helped them on the road . And the little folk were just a farce : some rode sticks with horses' heads between their legs, which pranced and caracoled, and soon wearied the riders so sore they stood stock- still CHARLES READE 12139 and wept, which cavaliers were presently taken into cart and cuffed. And one, more grave, lost in a man's hat and feather, walked in Egyptian darkness, handed by a girl ; another had the great saucepan on his back, and a tremendous three- footed clay pot sat on his head and shoulders, swallowing him so as he too went darkling, led by his sweetheart three foot high. When they were gone by, and we had both laughed lustily, said I, ' Natheless, master, my bowels they yearn for one of that tawdry band; even for the poor wife so near the down- lying, scarce able to drag herself, yet still, poor soul, helping the weaker on the way. ' > >> Catherine- " Nay, nay, Margaret. Why, wench, pluck up heart. Certes thou art no Bohemian. " Kate -" Nay, mother, ' tis not that, I trow, but her father. And dear heart, why take notice to put her to the blush ? " Richart- " So I say. >>> < "And he derided me. 'Why, that is a " biltreger, ", " said he, and you waste your bowels on a pillow, ' or so forth . I told him he lied. Time would show, ' said he: 'wait till they camp. ' And rising after meat and meditation, and traveling forward, we found them camped between two great trees on a common by the wayside ; and they had lighted a great fire , and on it was their caldron; and one of the trees slanting o'er the fire, a kid hung down by a chain from the tree-fork to the fire, and in the fork was wedged an urchin turning still the chain to keep the meat from burning, and a gay spark with a feather in his cap cut up a sheep ; and another had spitted a leg of it on a wooden stake ; and a woman ended chanticleer's pride with wringing of his neck. “ And under the other tree four rufflers played at cards and quarreled, and no word sans oath; and of these lewd gamblers one had cockles in his hat and was my reverend pilgrim. And a female, young and comely and dressed like a butterfly, sat and mended a heap of dirty rags. And Cul de Jatte said, ' Yon is the <<< Vopper "' ; and I looked incredulous, and looked again, and it was so and at her feet sat he that had so late lashed her-but Iween he had wist where to strike, or woe betide him ; and she did now oppress him sore, and made him thread her very needle, the which he did with all humility: so was their comedy turned seamy side without ; and Cul de Jatte told me ' twas still so with "toppers " and their men in camp: they would don their bravery 12140 CHARLES READE though but for an hour, and with their tinsel, empire ; and the man durst not the least gainsay the ' vopper, ' or she would turn him off at these times, as I my master, and take another tyrant more submissive. And my master chuckled over me. - " Natheless we soon espied a wife set with her back against the tree, and her hair down, and her face white ; and by her side a wench held up to her eye a new- born babe, with words of cheer; and the rough fellow, her husband, did bring her hot wine in a cup, and bade her take courage. And just o'er the place she sat, they had pinned from bough to bough of those neighboring trees two shawls, and blankets two, together, to keep the drizzle off her. And so had another poor little rogue come into the world : and by her own particular folk tended gipsywise ; but of the roasters and boilers, and voppers and gamblers, no more noticed -no, not for a single moment than sheep which droppeth her lamb in a field, by travelers upon the way. Then said I, 'What of thy foul suspicions, master ? over-knavery blinds the eye as well as over- simplicity. ' And he laughed and said, ' Triumph, Bon Bec, triumph. The chances were nine in ten against thee.' Then I did pity her, to be in a crowd at such a time ; but he rebuked me : -'I should pity rather your queens and royal duchesses, which by law are condemned to groan in a crowd of nobles and courtiers, and do writhe with shame as well as sorrow, being come of decent mothers ; whereas these gipsy women have no more shame under their skins than a wolf ruth, or a hare valor. And, Bon Bec, ' quoth he, ' I espy in thee a lamentable fault. Wastest thy bowels. Wilt have none left for thy poor good master which doeth thy will by night and 'day. ' " Then we came forward ; and he talked with the men in some strange Hebrew cant whereof no word knew I ; and the poor knaves bade us welcome and denied us naught. With them, and all they had, ' twas lightly come and lightly go ; and when we left them my master said to me, ' This is thy first lesson, but to- night we shall lie at Hansburg. Come with me to the " rotboss " there, and I'll show thee all our folk and their lays ; and especially the "lossners, " the " dutzers, " the " schleppers, " the " gickisses, " the " schwanfelders " (whom in England we call " shivering Jemmies ") , the " süntvegers, " the " schwiegers, " the " joners," the " sessel-degers, " the " gennscherers " (in France " marcandiers " or rifodés " ) , the " veranerins, " the " stabulers, " with a few foreigners « CHARLES READE >>> - 12141 like ourselves, such as " pietres, " " francmitoux, ” " polissons, " " malingreux, ” " traters," " rufflers, " " whipjalks, " " dommerars, " " glymmerars," " jarkmen, " " patricos, " " swadders, " " autem morts, " walking morts ' Enow, ' cried I, stopping him : ' art as gleesome as the Evil One a-counting of his imps. I'll jot down in my tablet all these caitiffs and their accursed names ; for knowledge is knowledge. But go among them, alive or dead, that will I not with my good will . Moreover, ' said I , ' what need, since I have a companion in thee who is all the knaves on earth in one ? ' and thought to abash him ; but his face shone with pride, and hand on breast he did bow low to me. 'If thy wit be scant, good Bon Bec, thy manners are a charm . I have made a good bargain. ' " So he to the ' rotboss ' : and I to a decent inn, and sketched the landlord's daughter by candlelight, and started at morn batzen three the richer, but could not find my master ; so loitered slowly on, and presently met him coming west for me, and cursing the quiens. Why so? Because he could blind the culls but not the quiens. At last I prevailed on him to leave cursing and canting, and tell me his adventure . vent fell on " Said he, ' I sat outside the gate of yon monastery, full of sores, which I showed the passers-by. O Bon Bec, beautifuller sores you never saw; and it rained coppers in my hat. Presently the monks came home from some procession, and the condogs ran out to meet them, curse the quiens ! ' ' What, did they fall on thee and bite thee, poor soul ? Worse, worse, dear Bon Bec. Had they bitten me I had earned silver. But the great idiots - being, as I think, puppies, or little better— me where I sat, downed me, and fell a- licking my sores among them. As thou, false knave, didst swear the whelps in heaven licked the sores of Lazybones, a beggar of old . ' ' Nay, nay,' said I, ' I said no such thing. But tell me, since they bit thee not, but sportfully licked thee, what harm ?' ' What harm, noodle ? why, the sores came off.'- 'How could that be ? '. ' How could aught else be, and them just fresh put on ? Did I think he was so weak as bite holes in his flesh with ratsbane ? Nay, he was an artist, a painter like his servant ; and had put on Sores made of pig's blood, rye meal, and glue.'-' So when the folk saw my sores go on tongues of puppies, they laughed, and cord or sack before me. So up I jumped, and shouted, “A miracle! a miracle ! The very dogs of this holy convent be I saw - - CHARLES READE 12142 holy, and have cured me. Good fathers, " cried I, " whose day is this ? " " St. Isidore's, " said one. " St. Isidore ! " cried I , in a sort of rapture. " Why, St. Isidore is my patron saint ; so that accounts. " And the simple folk swallowed my miracle as those accursed quiens my wounds. But the monks took me inside and shut the gate, and put their heads together : but I have a quick ear, and one did say " Caret miraculo monasterium "; which is Greek patter, I trow-leastways it is no beggar's cant. Finally they bade the lay brethren give me a hiding, and take me out a back way and put me on the road ; and threatened me did I come back to the town to hand me to the magistrate and have me drowned for a plain impostor. " Profit now by the Church's grace, " said they, " and mend thy ways. " So forward, Bon Bec, for my life is not sure nigh hand this town. ' "As we went he worked his shoulders. ' Wow, but the brethren laid on!. And what means yon piece of monk's cant, I wonder? So I told him the words meant ' The monastery is in want of a miracle, ' but the application thereof was dark to me. ' Dark ! ' cried he : ' dark as noon. Why, it means they are going to work the miracle, my miracle, and gather all the grain I Therefore these blows on their benefactor's shoulders; therefore is he that wrought their scurvy miracle driven forth with stripes and threats. Oh, cozening knaves ! ' Said I , ' Becomes you to complain of guile. ' ' Alas, Bon Bec, ' said he, " I but outwit the simple ; but these monks would pluck Lucifer of his wing- feathers. ' And went a league bemoaning himself that he was not convent- bred like his servant, -' he would put it to more profit ' ; and railing on quiens. ' And as for those monks, there was one Above-' ' Certes, ' said I, ' there is one Above : what then ? ' who will call those shavelings to compt, one day,' quoth he. 'And all deceitful men, ' said I.- "At one that afternoon I got armories to paint ; so my master took the yellow jaundice , and went begging through the town, and with his oily tongue and saffron- water face did fill his hat. Now in all the towns are certain licensed beggars, and one of these was an old favorite with the townsfolk ; had his station at St. Martin's porch, the greatest church : a blind man ; they called him Blind Hans. He saw my master drawing coppers on the other side the street, and knew him by his tricks for an impostor ; so sent and warned the constables, and I met my master in the constable's hands, and going to his trial in the town- hall. I CHARLES READE 12143 followed, and many more; and he was none abashed, neither by the pomp of justice nor memory of his misdeeds, but demanded his accuser like a trumpet. And blind Hans's boy came forward, but was sifted narrowly by my master, and stammered and faltered, and owned he had seen nothing, but only carried blind Hans's tale to the chief constable. This is but hearsay, ' said my master. ' Lo ye, now, here standeth Misfortune backbit by Envy. But stand thou forth, blind Envy, and vent thine own lie.' And blind Hans behoved to stand forth, sore against his will . Him did my master so press with questions, and so pinch and torture, asking him again and again how, being blind, he could see all that befell, and some that befell not, across a way ; and why, an he could not see , he came there holding up his perjured hand, and maligning the misfortunate, that at last he groaned aloud and would utter no word more. And an alderman said, ‘ In sooth, Hans, ye are to blame ; hast cast more dirt of suspicion on thyself than on him. ' But the burgomaster, a wondrous fat man, and methinks of his fat some had gotten into his head, checked him, and said : ' Nay, Hans we know this many years, and be he blind or not, he hath passed for blind so long, ' tis all one. Back to thy porch, good Hans, and let the strange varlet leave the town incontinent on pain of whipping. ' " Then my master winked to me: but there rose a civic officer in his gown of state and golden chain, —a Dignity with us lightly prized, and even shunned of some, but in Germany and hangman France much courted save by condemned malefactors , to wit the ; and says he, ' An't please you, first let us see why he weareth his hair so thick and low. And his man went and lifted Cul de Jatte's hair, and lo the upper gristle of both ears was gone. 'How is this, knave ?' quoth the burgomaster. My master life of said carelessly, he minded not precisely : his had been a misfortunes and losses. 'When a poor soul has lost the use his memory.' named of his legs, noble sirs, these more trivial woes rest lightly in When he found this would not serve his turn, he two famous battles, in each of which he had lost half an ear, a- fighting like a true man against traitors and rebels. But the hangman showed them the two cuts were made at one time, and by measurement. Tis no bungling soldier's-work, my masters , ' said he; "tis ourn. ' Then the burgomaster gave judgment : ' The present charge is not proven against thee ; but an thou beest not guilty now, thou hast been at other times, witness thine ears . 12144 CHARLES READE Wherefore I send thee to prison for one month, and to give a florin towards the new hall of the guilds now a-building, and to be whipt out of the town and pay the hangman's fee for the same. ' And all the aldermen approved, and my master was haled to prison with one look of anguish. It did strike my bosom. " I tried to get speech of him, but the jailer denied me. But lingering near the jail I heard a whistle, and there was Cul de Jatte at a narrow window twenty feet from earth . I went under, and he asked me what made I there ? I told him I was loath to go forward and not bid him farewell. He seemed quite amazed ; but soon his suspicious soul got the better. That was not all mine errand, I told him — not all : the psaltery. ' Well, what of that ? ' 'Twas not mine, but his : I would pay him the price of it . Then throw me a rix-dollar, ' said he. I counted out my coins, and they came to a rix-dollar and two batzen. I threw him up his money in three throws, and when he had got it all he said, softly, Bon Bec. ' Then the poor rogue was greatly moved. me, ' said he : ' O Bon Bec, Bon Bec, if I had found the world like thee at starting, I had put my wit to better use, and I had not lain here. ' Then he whimpered out, I gave not quité a rixdollar for the jingler, ' and threw me back that he had gone to cheat me of ; honest for once, and over late : and so with many sighs bade me Godspeed. ( ' Master, ' said I. ' I thought ye had been mocking " Thus did my master, after often baffling men's justice , fall by their injustice ; for his lost ears proved not his guilt only, but of that guilt the bitter punishment : so the account was even; yet they for his chastisement did chastise him. Natheless he was a parlous rogue. Yet he holp to make a man of me. Thanks to his good wit, I went forward richer far with my psaltery and brush than with yon as good as stolen purse ; for that must have run dry in time, like a big trough, but these a little fountain. " CHARLES READE 12145 E MONK AND FATHER From The Cloister and the Hearth > STAGGERED to his den. " I am safe here," he groaned : HⓇ " she will never come near me again, -unmanly, ungrateful wretch that I am. " And he flung his emaciated, frozen body down on the floor, not without a secret hope that it might never rise thence alive . But presently he saw by the hour-glass that it was past midnight. On this, he rose slowly and took off his wet things ; and moaning all the time at the pain he had caused her he loved, put on the old hermit's cilice of bristles, and over that his breastplate. He had never worn either of these before, doubting himself worthy to don the arms of that tried soldier. But now he must give himself every aid : the bristles might distract his earthly remorse by bodily pain, and there might be holy virtue in the breastplate. Then he kneeled down and prayed God humbly to release him that very night from the burden of the flesh . Then he lighted all his candles, and recited his psalter doggedly : each word seemed to come like a lump of lead from a leaden heart, and to fall leaden to the ground ; and in this mechanical office every now and then he moaned with all his soul. In the midst of which he suddenly observed a little bundle in the corner he had not seen before in the feebler light, and at one end of it something like gold spun into silk. He went to see what it could be ; and he had no sooner viewed it closer, than he threw up his hands with rapture. " It is a seraph, " he whispered, " a lovely seraph. Heaven hath witnessed my bitter trial, and approves my cruelty ; and this flower of the skies is sent to cheer me, fainting under my burden. " He fell on his knees, and gazed with ecstasy on its golden hair, and its tender skin, and cheeks like a peach. " Let me feast my sad eyes on thee ere thou leavest me for thine ever-blessed abode, and my cell darkens again at thy parting, as it did at hers. " With all this, the hermit disturbed the lovely visitor. He opened wide two eyes, the color of heaven ; and seeing a strange. figure kneeling over him, he cried piteously, " Mum-ma ! Mumma! " And the tears began to run down his little cheeks. XXI-760 12146 CHARLES READE 1 Perhaps, after all, Clement, who for more than six months had not looked on the human face divine, estimated childish beauty more justly than we can ; and in truth , this fair Northern child , with its long golden hair, was far more angelic than any of our imagined angels. But now the spell was broken. Yet not unhappily. Clement, it may be remembered, was fond of children ; and true monastic life fosters this sentiment. The innocent distress on the cherubic face, the tears that ran so smoothly from those transparent violets, his eyes, and his pretty, dismal cry for his only friend, his mother, went through the hermit's heart. He employed all his gentleness and all his art to soothe him: and as the little soul was wonderfully intelligent for his age, presently succeeded so far that he ceased to cry out, and wonder took the place of fear ; while in silence, broken only in little gulps, he scanned with great tearful eyes this strange figure that looked so wild but spoke so kindly, and wore armor, yet did not kill little boys, but coaxed them. Clement was equally perplexed to know how this little human flower came to lie sparkling and blooming in his gloomy cave. But he remembered he had left the door wide open ; and he was driven to conclude that owing to this negligence, some unfortunate creature of high or low degree had seized this opportunity to get rid of her child for ever. At this his bowels yearned so over the poor deserted cherub, that the tears of pure tenderness stood in his eyes ; and still, beneath the crime of the mother, he saw the Divine goodness which had so directed her heartlessness as to comfort his servant's breaking heart. " Now bless thee, bless thee, bless thee, sweet innocent, I would not change thee for e'en a cherub in heaven. " "At's pooty, " replied the infant, —ignoring contemptuously, after the manner of infants, all remarks that did not interest him. " What is pretty here, my love, besides thee ? " " Ookum-gars, " said the boy, pointing to the hermit's breastplate. "Quot liberi, tot sententiunculæ ! " Hector's child screamed at his father's glittering casque and nodding crest : and here was a mediæval babe charmed with a polished cuirass, and his griefs assuaged. " There are prettier things here than that, " said Clement ; " there are little birds ; lovest thou birds ? » CHARLES READE 12147 " Nay. Ay. En um ittle, ery ittle ? Not ike torks. Hate torks ; um bigger an baby. " He then confided , in very broken language, that the storks, with their great flapping wings, scared him, and were a great trouble and worry to him, darkening his existence more or less. "Ay, but my birds are very little, and good, and oh, so pretty ! » " Den I ikes ' m, " said the child authoritatively. " I ont my mammy. >> "Alas, sweet dove ! I doubt I shall have to fill her place as best I may. Hast thou no daddy as well as mammy, sweet one ? » The next moment the moonlight burst into his cell, and with it, and in it, and almost as swift as it, Margaret Brandt was down at his knee with a timorous hand upon his shoulder. «< Gerard, you do not reject us. You cannot. >>> The startled hermit glared from his nurseling to Margaret, and from her to him, in amazement equaled only by his agitation at her so unexpected return. The child lay asleep on his left arm, and she was at his right knee ; no longer the pale, scared, panting girl he had overpowered so easily an hour or two ago, but an imperial beauty, with blushing cheeks and sparkling eyes, and lips sweetly parted in triumph, .and her whole face radiant with a look he could not quite read, for he had never yet seen it on her, -maternal pride. He stared and stared from the child to her, in throbbing amazement. " Us ? " he gasped at last. And still his wonder- stricken eyes turned to and fro. Margaret was surprised in her turn. It was an age of impressions, not facts. " What! " she cried, " doth not a father know his own child ? and a man of God too ? Fie, Gerard, to pretend! nay, thou art too wise, too good, not to have- why, I watched thee ; and e'en now look at you twain ! 'Tis thine own flesh and blood thou holdest to thine heart. " Clement trembled. "What words are these ? " he stammered ; " this angel mine ? ” "Whose else ? since he is mine. " Clement turned on the sleeping child, with a look beyond the power of the pen to describe, and trembled all over, as his eyes seemed to absorb the little love. 12148 CHARLES READE Margaret's eyes followed his. " He is not a bit like me," said she, proudly; " but oh, at whiles he is thy very image in little ; and see this golden hair. Thine was the very color at his age; ask mother else. And see this mole on his little finger ; now look at thine own: there ! 'Twas thy mother let me weet thou wast marked so before him: and O Gerard, ' twas this our child found thee for me ; for by that little mark on thy finger I knew thee for his father, when I watched above thy window and saw thee feed the birds : " here she seized the child's hand and kissed it eagerly, and got half of it into her mouth, heaven knows how. "Ah, bless thee ! thou didst find thy poor daddy for her, and now thou hast made us friends again after our little quarrel ; the first, the last. Wast very cruel to me but now, my poor Gerard, and I forgive thee -for loving of thy child. "

ERNEST RENAN.

12149 ERNEST RENAN ( 1823-1892) BY FERDINAND BRUNETIÈRE THE Preface to his ' Recollections of Infancy and Youth, ' Ernest Renan himself recalled the legend of that town of Is, long ago engulfed by the sea in punishment of its crimes, the sound of whose bells one hears on calm days, rising from the depths of the abyss, where they continue always to call together for prayer a people who have not yet finished paying the debt of their repentance. And he adds : " It often seems to me that I have at the bottom of my heart a town of Is, that still resounds with bells continuing to call to sacred rites the faithful who no longer hear. » This was "the state of his soul " when, nearing the sixties, having almost completed his life work, he tried to represent himself by this poetic comparison ; where he re-found, mingled with memories of his devout infancy, all the melancholy that weeps in the heart of the people and soil of Brittany. But he characterized at the same time, perhaps without knowing it , the nature of his own talent ; and he gave us the reason of his great reputation as a writer. We also, during forty years, have heard sounding in his work the far-off bells of the town of Is ; we have heard the thrill of their voice vibrating even in the unthanked works of the philologue and the exegete : and he himself, do what he might, has never been able to make himself wholly unfaithful to his first beginnings. The vase has kept its perfume, quo recens imbuta semel; and if the originality of Ernest Renan is anywhere, it is there, in the strange and often displeasing but sometimes exquisite combination, developing itself in him, of the sincerest emotionalism with the narrow rationalism of the scholar and the philologue. The originality of a great writer, in a literature like the French literature of our time, is always a little composite : we are Alexandrians ; that is not our fault, and we could not be reproached with it if we did not abuse it by abandoning ourselves to the pleasure of dilettanteism. This is a reproach, as will be seen, that Renan did not always know how to avoid. He was born in 1823 at Tréguier, in the Department of the Côtes du Nord, under the shadow of an old cathedral full of mystery and incense ; and he was educated for the priesthood. His family being ERNEST RENAN 12150 humble, did his mother's ambition go beyond a vague hope of some day seeing him the celebrant at the high altar of their native town? But from the depths of his province, his successes in scholarship attracted the attention of the Abbé Dupanloup ; the same who afterwards became the blustering bishop of Orléans, but who was then only the converter of M. de Talleyrand - Charles Maurice de Talleyrand- Périgord -and the superior or director of the Little Seminary of St. Nicolas du Chardonnet. The Little Seminary of St. Nicolas du Chardonnet was a " free institution of secondary instruction , " where the best families of the Faubourg Saint-Germain sent their children to be educated. One of these children, afterwards the Duke de Noailles, -that Frenchman who since Tocqueville has understood America best, -kept a most vivid recollection of Renan ; and I remember to have read some pages that he wrote upon his old schoolfellow, - pages that unfortunately have not seen nor perhaps ever will see the light. From St. Nicolas du Chardonnet, where rhetoric completed the course, Ernest Renan passed to the Seminary of Issy, which stands somewhat in the relation of a preparatory school to the great seminary of St. Sulpice ; and it was there that he began to experience his first doubts as to the justifiability of the vocation to which until then he had believed himself called. In his 'Recollections of Youth, ' which he wrote thirty years later, he undertook to explain the nature of that crisis ; and one would suppose, to hear him speak, that neither the desire of the world, —that avidity of living which is so characteristic of the twentieth year, -nor philosophy even, nor the sudden revelation of science, played the least part in it. It would seem that his reasons for doubting were purely philological ; and that textual criticism alone swept away the faith of his childhood. We shall not contradict this. But the publication of his ' Correspondence has revealed to us since then another influence that affected the formation of his character, —the most powerful perhaps of all : it was that of his sister Henriette. This girl, poor and highly cultivated, who conducted far from her family, in Poland or Russia, the education of the children of a great lady, was gnawed by resentment ; and in her triple rôle of woman, hired teacher, and native of Brittany, suffered cruelly from being unable to satisfy or even to relieve it by giving it expression. It was through her brother that she found her opportunity. As soon as the first doubts began to show themselves in the seminarist, it was his sister who encouraged them ; or rather she communicated to him her own boldness of spirit : and putting her savings to the service of her passion, it was she who supplied Ernest Renan with the means of quitting St. Sulpice, and of resuming thus the life of a layman. We are able to-day to affirm that Henriette ERNEST RENAN 12151 Renan was the great worker of her brother's unbelief ; she was the patient worker, the impassioned worker : and only later did exegesis or philology furnish Renan with the reasons he needed for establishing the convictions his sister had breathed into him. It is right to add that both were utterly sincere, and that for Ernest Renan the sacrifice was painful. He was born to be a priest, as he himself has said ; and his life was to be, if one may use the expression, that of a priest of science. With that suppleness of mind which was one day to characterize him, and procure him the means of being more at ease in the midst of contradictions than are many believers in the fortress of their dogmatism, he would have found without doubt the art of reconciling his studious tastes with the practice and observances of a dead faith. But with a care for his dignity which did him honor, he did not desire this. He liked better -in this country of France, where the conduct of the priest who renounces the altar is so eagerly laid to the lightest [ les plus "joyeux"] —that is to say, to the lowest -motives, he found it more loyal and noble to brave the anger of some, the pleasantries of others, the distrust of all. He resumed his studies ; he took his university degrees ; and in 1847 he made his début as " philologue ” and as "Hebraist, " by a brilliant stroke, submitting to the Institute of France the paper which became, a few years later, his ' General and Comparative History of the Semitic Languages. ' We have from him, written about the same time, an important book which appeared later —much later ; indeed, in 1890 : it is ' The Future of Science,' of which it can truthfully be said that this "future of science " is in his work that " thought of youth realized by ripe age, " that a great poet has set before the ambitions of young men as the image or the ideal of a noble life . The whole of Renan is in his Future of Science ' ; he was to draw, all his life, upon his vast Purana, as he liked to call it himself : nevertheless, he was not to make for himself a law of conforming during forty years to all the convictions of the beginning of his career. But he was not to abjure them ; and in the future as in the present, when it is desired to form a just opinion of the type of mind, the personal method, and even the work of Ernest Renan, it is in this vast book that they must be sought. Let us go on to consider his first great works given to the public : his thesis for the doctorate, upon ' Averroes and Averroïsm , ' 1852 ; his General History of the Semitic Languages, ' 1855 ; his ' Studies of Religious History, 1857 ; his translation of the Book of Job, 1858 ; his book on the Origin of Language, ' 1858 ; his ' Essays, Moral and Critical, 1859. Their charm of style is incomparable ; and never have subjects so severe been treated with more precision, ease, and 12152 ERNEST RENAN lucidity. This is saying too little : for the real truth is that there is something " Platonic " in this first manner of Renan, were it only the art with which he envelops his most abstract ideas in the most ingenious metaphors, or the most captivating and poetic images. With him, as with the author of the ' Cratylus ' and the ' Gorgias, ' comparisons, in spite of the proverb, are often reasons, explanations, solutions. Equally notable in these first writings is a keen perception of the analogies between natural history and philology ; which enables him to bind together by insensible transitions, and nuances contrived with infinite art, that which is most " human " in us-that is, language with that which is most instinctive, which is the imprint we receive from surrounding nature. There is a good example of it in the development of the celebrated formula, " The desert is monotheistic "; and who does not see that on this basis it would indeed be possible to establish an entire new science, to be called " the Geography of the Religions " ? As to the scientific or technical value of these same works, it is attested by the fact that in 1856 it came about that the Academy of Inscriptions elected the young author to succeed the brilliant historian of the Conquest of England by the Normans. ' He was appointed librarian of the National Library in the department of manuscripts. The imperial government charged him with a mission to Phoenicia. But what is more interesting than all else to affirm here, is that from this time forth he knew what he wished to do ; he approached his whole life work on all sides at once and already good judges, like Sainte- Beuve in his ' New Mondays, ' or like Edmond Schérer in his ' Studies of Religious History, ' saw its first lineaments outlined. The attempt was novel and the undertaking bold. Convinced that . all the great races of men which have appeared in turn or together upon the world's stage have left us in the remains of their language, and still more conclusively in the monuments of their literature, the surest witnesses to their highest aspirations, it was precisely these aspirations that Renan proposed to rediscover ; and he saw in philology, to use his own expression, " the science of the productions of the human soul. " Therefore, just as under the superfluous matter with which the hand of an ignorant copyist has covered a precious palimpsest, palæography endeavors to find again the authentic text of Virgil or Homer, and as soon as it begins to decipher it, calls to its aid, to further its efforts to fix it in a way to remain, all the resources of grammar, criticism, and history, -so Renan, brushing away the dust with which time has covered, as it were, the archives of humanity, proposed to re-establish their true meaning, altered or disfigured by superstition. From all these archives, he chose the religious archives as the most significant of all, to make them the object of a ERNEST RENAN 12153 more profound study : the Vedas of the Hindus, the Zend- Avesta of the Persians, the Pentateuch of the Hebrews, the Koran of the Arabs ; and in truth, since there is no religion which is not at the same time a system of the world, an expression of the relations that man believes that he sustains with the nature which surrounds him, and a solution of the enigma of destiny, what surer means could be imagined of penetrating more deeply into what is innermost in the mind of the races ? Aryans or Semites, Mussulmans or Buddhists, it is in the intimate constitution of our race spirit that we find the first principle, the reason for the forms of our belief, the limits also of our religions ! And believing that he saw at last in this very formula a way of reconciling the sincerity, the ardor of his idealism with the complete independence of his thought, Renan proposed to disengage " religion, " in so far as necessary or innate in humanity, from the midst of the " religions " which have been until now in history, at least from his point of view, only its multiple expression, changeable and superstitious. From Indian Buddhism, from Greek polytheism, from the monotheism of the Mussulman, and generally from the particular content of the symbolism, rites, and dogma of all the religions, when we have eliminated whatever they include that is " local, >> dependent on time or circumstance, —when we have, as it were, purified them above all of whatever they include that is ethnical , — what remains ? This is the thought that, floating about for the last hundred years, more or less, began a little while ago to condense, to take shape, to " concrete " itself so to speak, in the Congress of Religions at Chicago ; and whatever may be its future, the propagation of this thought in the history of the contemporary mind is the work of Ernest Renan. Undoubtedly there is no need of showing in how many points it differs from the thought of Voltaire or of Condorcet ; but in how many points also it approaches their thought ! It comes so near it, that like the philosophy of the eighteenth century itself, it ends in the constitution of a " natural religion. " But while the natural religion of Voltaire is a creation of pure reason, a deduction of good sense, common-sense, opposed to all things of any depth that the positive religions teach, decidedly on the contrary it is from the fundamental history of the positive religions, studied scientifically and impartially, that the " natural religion " of Renan is derived ; and hence its truths have no value except through their conformity to whatever is most concrete and most intimate in the world. Or in still other words, it appears that the same conclusion is reached , but by different roads, —and that is the important point here, —in every domain, in science itself, in physics or in psychology. " Discov- eries » are nothing, —all lies in the manner in which they are made ; ERNEST RENAN 12154 and it is not the verities that enrich the human intellect, but the " methods " that have led to them. The exclusive employment of the philological or exegetical method suffices to establish between Voltaire's religion and Renan's a difference that Renan himself, in his latter years, by means of an affected impiety, could not wholly succeed in effacing. In vain did he compare David to Troppmann ; and with less provoking coarseness, but in the same spirit, the prophet Amos to some living " anarchist. " These pleasantries belied his good taste ; they led some persons to doubt his " sincerity » : but his " method " was the strongest ; and it is this that keeps intact, with the greatness of his name, whatever is most original and solid in his work. Meanwhile the moment of the struggle approached. " When a man writes upon the rulers of Nineveh or upon the Pharaohs of Egypt, " said D. F. Strauss, " he can take only an historical interest ! But Christianity is such a living thing, and the problem of its origin involves such consequences for the most immediate present, that critics who would bring only a purely historical interest to these questions are to be pitied for their imbecility. " Ernest Renan was not, he could not be, of the number of these critics . But above all , having set forth as he had done the question of the relation between the " religions " and " religion, " he could not leave Christianity out of his inquest. One expected him to deal with the question of the origins of Christianity. He must come to it. None of his works were of interest except as they led to that. To hesitate or to withdraw that would have been to fail not only in courage, but in intellectual probity. He understood it himself ; and in 1863 he published his Life of Jesus. ' No book, as is well known, has made more noise, in France, in Europe, in the world ; a very different noise from that raised by Strauss's ' Life of Jesus , ' or all the works of the School of Tübingen. No book has stirred up more polemics, more ardent or more violent. No book has engendered graver consequences. Whence came that tumult, and what did it mean? Just here, to understand it perfectly, it is necessary to develop Renan's method somewhat; and in order to develop it, join to the 'Life of Jesus ' the six volumes which followed it, and which are- 'The Apostles ' ( 1866) , ' St. Paul ' ( 1869) , ' Antichrist ' ( 1873) , ' The Gospels ( 1877), The Christian Church ' ( 1879) , and ' Marcus Aurelius ' (1881). - There is still some uncertainty or embarrassment in the ' Life of Jesus ' : the embarrassment or constraint of a man who does not know exactly how far he can push audacity, and who fears pushing it too far, lest he alienate from himself the very public he would like to reach. This is why Renan attempts to restore all that he ERNEST RENAN 12155 ― takes away from the " divinity " of Jesus to his " humanity, " of which he traces an image exceeding in every way the proportions of humanity itself. Neither man nor God, his Jesus resembles sometimes those Christs of the Italian decadence -so admirable but so insignificant ; of a beauty so perfect, or rather so commonplace ; so well clothed, so well combed. seen in the pictures of Guido or of Domenichino ; and sometimes one would say a giant, a " sombre giant, " —it is his very expression, - and not the greatest among us, but a force of nature necessarily incommensurable with our mediocrity. But beginning with 'The Apostles, ' and especially with St. Paul, ' the method acquires precision or character ; and it is absolutely clear that its first principle is to beat down, so to speak, the history that till then had always been called " holy " or " sacred " to the level of other histories, of all histories ; and it must be said, it was what no one since Spinoza, in his famous treatise Theology and Politics, ' had dared to attempt. D. F. Strauss and Christian Baur themselves had appeared to believe that if the Old and the New Testament are like other books, or, to go directly to the bottom of their thought, are books like the ' Ramayana,' for example, or like the ' Zend-Avesta, ' -nevertheless Biblical criticism does not forego her own principles, her own rules, her own methods ; and it would seem from reading them that " exegesis " is something other and more than an application of philology. It is this distinction that Renan strives to efface . There is for him only one method, only one philology, as there is only one physics ; and whatever may be the content of the Pentateuch or of the Gospels, it can be determined or interpreted by no other means than that used for the content of the Iliad or Odyssey. Until his work, one had taken for granted the entire authenticity of the form, according to the accepted importance of the subject : it is the contrary that ought to be done, —the conditions of the form should determine the value of the substance. It is not a question of knowing the worth of Christian ethics, nor whether the lofty character of Christianity is a proof of its divinity, -that would be theology ! But who wrote the Gospel of Matthew or the Gospel of John, at what periods, in what places, under what circumstances, on what occasion, with what in- tention ? There is the problem ; and the object of a ' History of the Origin of Christianity ' is to elucidate it. When the problem is solved, the history will be complete : and in fact, it is quite in this way that Renan conceived it ; it is thus that he proposed to write it ; it is the plan that he followed in writing it . Taine liked to say that what he most admired in the works of Renan, was "that one could not see how it was done " ; and he was right, if he meant only the style or the " phrase, " which gives the impression of being born spontaneously, without effort and without art, 12156 ERNEST RENAN < under the pen of Renan. But he was in error if he meant the plan or arrangement of his books : it is, on the contrary, fully seen how that "is done. " Having collected all the texts that taken together constitute the New Testament, -and not neglecting to add to them the "apocryphal, " - Renan discussed them all as a philologue, according to the principles of his exegesis, and dated and classified them chronologically. He thus obtained a series of documents spread over a period of about a hundred and fifty or two hundred years, from Jesus to Marcus Aurelius. He then set himself to determine, according to chronological order, what might be called the logical relations between them ; and -to take an example -very much as if, not knowing the authentic dates of Pascal's Thoughts ' or of the Genius of Christianity, ' of Bunyan's ' Pilgrim's Progress ' or of Wesley's sermons, we should nevertheless see without difficulty that these works could not answer to one and the same moment in the evolution of Christian thought. But the determination of that moment, in its turn, is not fixed by itself, nor above all by the sole consideration of that moment itself. Pascal and Bunyan are men who have lived, like all men, at a given time in history ; who are related to other men by all their personal traits, who are contemporaries of Louis XIV. or Charles II . , witnesses of the apogee of French greatness or of the corruption of England under the Stuarts ; the latter a bourgeois, the former an artisan, whence it follows that we cannot understand them unless we begin by replacing them in their milieu. It was this also that Renan did ; and thus the general history of the Roman Empire -which is found to coincide with the history of the world -enters, so to speak, into the intervals of these documents, which it binds together, which it illumines with its light, which it sometimes overflows by the intensity of its interest. The propagation of the Christian idea becomes the soul or the active principle, -the principle of the movement of a history of which its triumph is the limit. The historians of the Empire had seen only the Empire in the Empire : and the excellent and learned Lenain de Tillemont would alone furnish a proof of it, since he wrote on the one hand the History of the Emperors, ' and on the other the precious quarto of his ' Ecclesiastical History, ' without ever conceiving the idea of intermingling them, as they were nevertheless intermingled in reality. Renan did this ; and is it necessary to remark how this second application of the method confirmed, and in the eyes of many of his readers naturally contributed to aggravate, the first ? The miraculous, the Divine element in the beginnings of Christianity became in some sort attenuated ; or to change the figure, was the more " humanized " the more attentively the investigator appeared to be following its evolution . It only remained to dispel a kind of prestige in which all that is ancient ERNEST RENAN 12157 is enveloped, major e longinquo reverentia; and the very logic of his method obliged Renan to perform this office. < - ― No means more simple nor more powerful in its simplicity. It is the theory of existing causes that theory with which the names of Lyell and Darwin are associated -transferred from the order of natural history to that of high erudition. The active causes which without our suspecting it, deform , reform, and transform the physical universe under our eyes, are the same that formerly produced all that our fathers interpreted as gigantic and marvelous in the archives of the past. The drop of water wears away the stone ; polyps have constructed islands — perhaps continents ; and accumulated dust has become Himalayas and Alleghanies. In the same way, at no epoch in the short history of humanity have other forces been at work than those that are working still ; and the present contains all that is essential to the explanation of the past. Hence in Renan's writings, in his History of the Origins of Christianity, ' those perpetual allusions to the present. He is of his time ; and he never forgets it when he speaks of Marcus Aurelius or Nero, because man is always man, and the obscurity of the past could not be cleared away better than by the light of the present. Nothing creates itself nor is lost : he takes literally and in its entirety an axiom that is perhaps true only of the physical universe ; and still it would be necessary to be very clear on this point, and he applies it rigorously to history. He goes further : not only does he explain the most considerable revolutions by the action of existing causes, but like Darwin and Lyell, he insinuates that there are no revolutions, strictly speaking ; and for this reason, if he encounters some unique or extraordinary fact, he reduces it to a contemporary fact. The preaching of St. Paul on the Areopagus " must have had no more success than a visionary imbued with neo-Catholicism would have had, endeavoring in the time of the Empire to convert to his ideas an academician attached to the religion of Horace ; or than a humanitarian socialist of our own day would have, were he to hold forth against English prejudices before the fellows of Oxford or of Cambridge. " These perpetual juxtapositions, which have pleased certain of Renan's readers, have irritated many more of them ; and their irritation was not unreasonable, if perhaps nothing has contributed so much as the cleverness, often deceiving, with which he uses them, to remodel the history of the origin of Christianity upon the plan of universal history. But what we cannot make too emphatic is, that they proceed from the very foundation of his method : this we have just tried to show ; and it could be shown in another way by demonstrating that one has only to examine these same things somewhat closely, to discover that there is much in the method not only hazardous, conjectural, and arbitrary, but also ruinous. 12158 ERNEST RENAN In truth, for all these comparisons, the propagation of Christianity in the world remains a unique fact, -a ära heyóuevov, according to the expression that Renan himself liked to employ; and I do not wish to say " a miracle, " but incontestably an effect that down to the present time has never been wholly explained by the reasoning of history. Renan knew it so well that he exhausted himself in subtle evasions of this conclusion of his own studies. And did he not do this even in the Preface to his History of the People of Israel, ' in 1887, when he strove to distinguish what he called a " providential history " from a " miraculous history, " or when to the " Jewish miracle " he opposed the " Greek miracle " ? But it is not possible to escape the consequences of a complete method by such distinctions ; and in fact, without discussing here either the principles of his exegesis, which are not immovable, nor his opinion of the supernatural, which up to this point recognizes only the authority of physics, Renan has slipped up in his attempt to bring the history of the beginnings of Christianity to the level of other histories, and if one dares speak thus, to " secularize [ laiciser] God himself. " This is why those who would like to know all that was extraordinary in the development of Christianity have only to inquire of Renan ; for in truth no one has demonstrated better than he that "the Church is an edifice drawn from the void, a creation, the work of an all- powerful hand. " And I know very well he did not mean it thus, when he protested the purity of his intentions, and when with an irony slightly tinged with pharisaism, he bore witness to having himself " established for eternity the true God of the universe "! But we do not always the thing we would do, nor what we think we are doing ; and in reality, by a strange mockery, it happens that the work to which Renan's came nearest was the Discourses of Bossuet on Universal History. ' In the mean time, and while he worked at his ' Origins of Christianity, ' important changes were brought about in the world, in France, and in the condition of Ernest Renan himself. A political revolution had not only reinstated him in that chair of Hebrew at the College of France, of which he had formerly been dispossessed for having begun his teaching with a lesson on The Part of the Semitic People in the History of Civilization ' ; but it had also made of him, without any effort of his own to obtain the honor, the theoretical or ideal head of what went by the name of anti- clericalism at that time among us. Immediately after the events of 1871 - and indeed because he had pleaded with eloquence, two or three years before, the cause of higher instruction -we still insisted upon seeing in him the representative of that " high German culture " which passed at that time for the very mainspring of our misfortunes. It was naïvely believed that if France had been conquered by Germany, ERNEST RENAN 12159 it was for lack of a few chairs of Sanskrit and laboratories of organic chemistry or experimental physiology ! Finally, boldnesses that a little while before would have been pronounced reckless or sacrilegious, were hardly more than boldnesses : and it was easy to see this even in England : for example, where the distinguished author of the book on the Origin of Species, ' who formerly had thought necessary to take many precautions, not only dispensed with them, but may be said to have blushed for them, in his book on ' The Descent of Man. ' The reputation of Ernest Renan increased, so to speak, by the concurrence and combination of these circumstances. It was fostered all the more because, alone of all those who had maintained with him the struggle of free thought, -the Taines, the Littrés, the Vacherots, the Schérers, he retracted nothing, he did not withdraw; he gave proof in his ' Antichrist ' or in his ' Marcus Aurelius ' of the same independence of mind as in his ' Life of Jesus. ' His popularity was equal to his reputation. He became at last what is called a master of minds ; criticism itself was appeased ; and since a " literary sovereignty " is always necessary to us in France, in the decline of the old Hugo it was he whom our youth admired, followed, applauded. This could not be too deeply regretted . This popularity that hitherto he had not sought, whose advances he had even disdained in other days, pleased him ; he breathed its incense with delight. Unhappily he wished to make himself worthy of it ; and it was then that he wrote his Caliban ' ( 1878) , his ' Fountain of Youth ' ( 1880) , his ' Priest of Némi ' ( 1885) , his ' Abbess of Jouarre ( 1886). The worst facetia of Voltaire are scarcely more trivial. But he did not stop there. He suffered those who sounded his praises to mock at all that he had believed, - at all that he still believed, that they might praise him better. He mocked at it himself ; and seeing that everything was permitted him, he did just as he pleased . He taught that «< as a man makes the beauty of that which he loves, so each one of us makes the sanctity of what he believes " ; that " talent, genius, virtue even, are nothing by the side of beauty " ; that among several means " of securing one's salvation, ” morphine or alcohol is no worse nor less certain than others ; that a little crapulence and dissipation are not unbecoming to youth ; and that after all, no one can say whether our duty in this world is not to amuse ourselves. " Singular words these, which it is forever to be regretted that a man of the age, the position , the authority of Renan, should have dared let fall from his mouth. Having set out with ' The Future of Science, ' to finish with The Abbess of Jouarre ' -what mockery and what debasement ! But what greater debasement yet, if when he developed these paradoxes he hardly believed them himself, -happily for him, but unhappily for so many " Renanists » who did believe them. 12160 ERNEST RENAN I hold in my hand a precious and curious copy of The Abbess of Jouarre, ' bearing on the cover these few words of Renan : " À Mr B- en souvenir de notre conversation d'hier " (To M. B in memory of our conversation of yesterday). I had been having a long talk with him about my intention of speaking of ' The Abbess of Jouarre ' ; and doubtless fearing that I had not unraveled his exact thought, he had turned down the leaves of the volume, and underlined those places in the dialogue by which he desired to be judged. One of these places is the following : " O God of simple souls, why have I abandoned thee ? " Did the great master of irony mock at me on that day ? Several times since, I have asked myself this question ; and without letting my amour-propre enter otherwise into the matter, it is indeed what I should have supposed, if afterwards we had not seen him quit this rôle and devote the last years of his life to composing his History of the People of Israel. ' It is well known that he was not to see its completion ; and it was not he who published the last volume. - The author of ' The Origins of Christianity ' is easily found there ; and if the genius is not always the same, it is always the same method: only the structure is somewhat more summary and naked. The comparisons, the juxtapositions, that we have already noted, are more numerous here ; not so felicitous, more flagrant if I may venture to say so, sometimes no less cynical, than those of Voltaire in his pamphlets. In vain is he Renan ; it is not with impunity that a man quits the reading of the gospel to write ' Caliban ' or ' The Abbess of Jouarre, ' and later returns to the Pentateuch. Then too, some parts of it are it must be said frankly -arid, unpleasant, tedious. The style no longer has the same ease, nor in the ease the same firmness. It is unequal, negligent, loaded with the terms of exact scholarship, science, and politics. But in default of a brilliant book, we still have here the idea of a brilliant book : and I know not if the history of Israel is explained by the struggle, often secular, of the Prophets against the Kings, of the religious ideal of the first against the political ideal of the second ; but what cannot be doubted is, that this same idea throws a bright light on that history, and this is all that is of interest here. It may be well to add, however, that in The History of the People of Israel ' as in ' The History of the Origins of Christianity, ' the execution has finally turned against the design of the historian ; and the continuity of prophetism in Israel remains a fact none the less inexplicable, and down to the present, no less inexplicable than even the propagation of Christianity in the Græco-Roman world. It now remains for us to speak of several other works of Renan ; and in particular, of the many articles he wrote for The Literary ERNEST RENAN 12161 History of France.' The most remarkable of all is his ' Discourse on the State of the Fine Arts in the Fourteenth Century ' ; where he dealt with the conditions, the history, and the decline, of Gothic architecture, with no less ability than precision and brilliancy of style. No man assimilated with more ease the things that were most alien to him ; and in such a way, as one of our old poets said, as to " turn them into blood and nourishment. " The analysis that he gave of the philosophy of Duns Scotus is still a masterpiece of lucidity. The same may be said of his articles on William de Nogaret and Pierre du Boys, - two of those jurists who have so greatly contributed to the formation of our monarchical unity ; on Bertrand de Got, who was Pope in Avignon under the name of Clement V.; on Christine de Stommeln. This last article is particularly curious for the accent of far-away sympathy with which Renan cannot help speaking of the ecstasies and visions of the beatific one. Without doubt it is his works of this kind that have defended him against himself, and kept him from yielding completely to the breath of an unwholesome popularity. Let us return thanks for this to the ' Literary History of France, ' and to the Benedictine brothers who began long ago that monumental series. The diversity of these works also explains that variety of learning which constitutes one of the charms of the style of Renan. It is filled with learned allusions, scarcely more than indicated with a rapid stroke that prolongs the sentence, leaving the impression that he always said less than he could have said. Much more than a philosopher or a " thinker, " indeed, Renan was a writer, — I mean an artist in style ; and although he affected to discourage admiration, he lived on it. " The vanity of the man of letters is not mine, " said he ; " and I see clearly that talent is of worth only because the world is childish. " He deceived himself. Talent is of worth because it is rare, greatly in demand, but seldom offered ; and because there is a close connection between its rarity and the insufficiency that language opposes to the exact expression of thought. Again, he said upon this subject that " if the public had a strong enough head, he should content himself with the truth. " But what truth ? Of what sort ? For example, to how many people is it of any importance that one Artaxerxes was called " Long Hand " because he was ambidextrous, or because one of his arms was longer than the other ? A ' Provincial Letter ' of Pascal, a tragedy of Racine, concerns much more deeply the intelligence of man and the moral progress of humanity than the discovery of a new planet, than the exact reading of a Phoenician inscription, than the catalogue of the deeds of Philippe le Bel or Francis I. ! Then finally, if humanity is alive to talent, that is doubtless a trait of our species, a characteristic of our make-up, which it would be as " childish " to complain of as it would XXI-761 12162 ERNEST RENAN be to regret having only two eyes or no wings whatever. All this Renan knew. But if he knew it, how and why did he so often say the contrary ? And are we to attribute this to pure affectation on his part ? No! There is something else there. His great merit as a writer is to have annexed in some sort, to the domain of general literature, an entire vast province that before his time was not included in it. Just as Buffon, and before Buffon, Montesquieu, put into general circulation, the latter " universal jurisprudence " and the former " natural history, " so Renan introduced exegesis and philology. But he made the mistake of shutting himself up in his domain ; referring everything to it, as it were involuntarily; and of finally reaching a point where he no longer saw anything save at the angle and from the point of view of exegesis and philology. " Is he a good philologian ? " is what he would willingly have inquired concerning any man, in order to regulate his opinion of him; and it may be said that in all things he thought only of how exegesis could profit by them. This initial error explains the paradoxes of Renan in style and art. From it have resulted other consequences as well ; more serious and more lamentable. Of all the forms indeed that the concupiscence of the intellect -libido sciendi, as it is called in the Church — can put on, I believe that there is none more presumptuous than philological pride. Let us recall the measureless vanity of the scholars of the Renaissance, of a Poggio or of a Philelphus, when philology was yet taking only its first steps. In like manner, early introduced into the sanctuary of Oriental studies and into the recesses [ les chapelles] of German exegesis, Renan drank in that sort of pride that the consciousness of knowing rare and singular things inspires. This pride in turn engendered that confidence in himself, which, beneath an appearance of dilettanteism, remained to his last day the essential characteristic of Renan. Yes, those who could take him for a skeptic have failed to understand him ! But on the contrary, he continued to believe, without ever yielding an iota, that the secret of the universe was inclosed, as it were, in the recesses of Orientalism ; and the great reproach that the future will make him —that even now is beginning to be made -is and will be, that he caused the most vital questions that exist for humanity to depend upon a philological problem. Would it be possible to conceive of a more audacious dogmatism ; of a stranger confidence in the powers of the human intellect ; of a more aristocratic pride ? For to this too is traceable the great defect in the very style of Renan, which is an aristocratic style if ever there was one, -I mean a style that illuminates, that instructs, that pleases, that gives to the ERNEST RENAN 12163 spirit or to the intellect all the satisfaction, let us even say all the delights, that can be expected of a great writer ; but which does not move us, does not go to the heart, does not reach the spot where resolutions take shape : an egoistic style, if I may so say, of which the chief result is to create admiration of the writer's erudition, knowledge, and " virtuosity. " It has been possible to reproach some of Renan's contemporaries —the author of the ' Barbaric Poems, ' for example, or the author of ' Salammbô -that they lacked feeling. But how much more was not Renan lacking in it ; and what can we say, what could we find in his work that he loved ? This is why the reading of it is at once instructive and blighting. It is also at times displeasing, when he makes us feel how much he is himself above us who read him ; as when he writes, for example, that " few persons have the right to disbelieve Christianity, " or twenty other sentences that breathe no less a consciousness of superiority. Happily for him and for us, as we said at the beginning, the Breton in him has lived on under the philologue, and the bells of the town of Is have kept on sounding in his heart. Whatever diligence he has shown besides in reducing the religious problem to the terms of a strictly philological problem, he has been unable to make a complete success of it. No more has he succeeded in separating religion from the religions ; that is to say, in isolating the metaphysical or moral idea of the lessons that form the basis of its authority, from the observances that are its ritual envelope, from the symbols that are the very life of it , from the great hopes that are the poetry of it, and from the love that is the soul of it. And something of all this passed into his style. He could not help yielding, abandoning himself to the attraction of that which he tried to describe or to explain. So much so, that by a final irony which would perhaps have " amused " him, what is best in his work, the freshest, the truly exquisite, is what he put there, not at all unconsciously, but better still, in order to combat it ; and his most beautiful pages are beautiful only because they are inspired, penetrated, impregnated, with the sense of the grandeur and value of all that he worked forty years to destroy. Ր 5. firunding. чип 12164 ERNEST RENAN BROTHER AND SISTER From My Sister Henriette. Copyright 1895, by Roberts Brothers THE HE memory of men is but an imperceptible trace of the furrow which each of us leaves upon the bosom of infinity. And yet it is no vain thing. The consciousness of humanity is the highest reflective image that we know of the total consciousness of the universe. The esteem of a single individual is a part of the absolute Justice. Therefore, although noble lives need no other memory than that of God, there has in all ages been an effort to make their image permanent. " I should be the more guilty did I fail to render this duty to my sister Henriette, since I alone knew the treasures of that elect soul. Her timidity, her reserve, her fixed opinion that a woman should live in retirement, cast over her rare qualities a veil which very few were permitted to lift. But those who belonged to the select few to whom she showed herself as she really was, would blame me if I did not strive to bring together all which may complete their memories. My sister's strong liking for domestic life was the result of an infancy spent in surroundings thus full of poetry and sweet melancholy. A few old nuns, driven from their convent by the Revolution and turned schoolmistresses, taught her to read and to recite the Psalms in Latin. She learned by heart all the music of the Church; bringing her mind to bear later upon those antique words, which she compared with French and Italian, she contrived to pick up a good deal of Latin, although she never studied it regularly. Her education, nevertheless, would necessarily have remained very incomplete, had it not been for a happy chance which gave her a teacher superior to any hitherto possessed by the country. The noble families of Tréguier had returned from exile completely ruined. A young girl belonging to one of those families, whose education was acquired in England, undertook to give lessons. She was a person distinguished alike for her taste and her manners ; she made a deep impression upon my sister, and left behind a memory which never died. The misfortunes by which my sister was early surrounded increased that tendency to concentration which was inborn with her. Our paternal grandfather belonged to a sort of clan of sailors and peasants which peoples the entire province of Goëlo. ERNEST RENAN 12105 He made a small fortune by his boat, and settled at Tréguier. Our father served in the fleet of the Republic. After the naval disasters of that time, he commanded ships on his own account, and was by degrees drawn into a considerable business. This was a great mistake. Utterly unskilled in such matters, simple and incapable of calculation, continually held back by that timidity which makes the sailor a complete child in practical affairs, he saw the little fortune which he had inherited gradually disappear in an abyss whose depth he could not fathom . The events of 1815 brought about commercial crises which were fatal to him. His weak and sentimental nature could not resist these trials ; he gradually lost his interest in life. My sister hour by hour beheld the ravages which anxiety and misfortune made in that sweet and gentle soul, lost in an order of occupations for which it was not fitted. Amid these hard experiences she gained a precocious maturity. From the age of twelve she was a serious personage, burdened with cares, overwhelmed with grave thoughts and sombre forebodings. On his return from one of his long voyages on our cold , sad seas, my father had a final gleam of joy : I was born in February 1823. The arrival of this little brother was a great comfort to my sister. She clung to me with all the strength of a timid, tender heart, to which love is a necessity. I can still recall the petty tyrannies which I exercised over her, and against which she never rebelled . When she came forth bedecked to go to gatherings of girls of her age, I hung upon her skirts and implored her to return ; then she would turn back, take off her holiday dress, and stay with me. One day, in jest, she threatened me that if I were not good she would die ; she even feigned to be dead, reclining in an arm-chair. The horror which my dear one's silent motionlessness caused me is possibly the strongest impression which I ever received, fate not having permitted me to receive. her last sigh. Beside myself with grief, I rushed at her, and gave her arm a terrible bite. She uttered a cry which still rings in my ears. To the reproaches lavished upon me, I made but one reply: " Then why did you die ? will you die again ? " From this time on, our condition was one of poverty. My sister was seventeen . Her faith was still strong ; and the thought of embracing a religious life had more than once strongly occupied her mind . On winter nights she took me to church under her cloak : it was a great pleasure for me to tramp over 12166 ERNEST RENAN the snow, thus warmly sheltered from head to foot. If it had not been for me, she would undoubtedly have adopted a vocation which, considering her education , her pious tastes, her lack of fortune, and the customs of the country, seemed to be exactly suited to her. Her wishes turned especially towards the convent of St. Anne, at Lannion, where the care of sick people was combined with the education of young girls. Alas ! perhaps, had she followed out this purpose, it would have been better for her own peace of mind. Yet she was too good a daughter and too affectionate a sister to prefer her own peace to her duty, even when religious prejudices in which she still shared upheld her. Thenceforth she regarded herself as responsible for my future. On one occasion, I being clumsy and awkward in my movements, she saw that I was timidly trying to disguise a hole in a wornout garment. She wept : the sight of that poor child destined to suffering, with other instinctive feelings, wrung her heart. She resolved to accept the struggle of life, and single-handed took up the task of filling the yawning gulf which our father's ill fortune had dug at our feet. I left St. Sulpice seminary in 1845. Thanks to the liberal and earnest spirit which ruled over that institution , I had carried my philologic studies very far ; my religious opinions were greatly shaken thereby. Here again Henriette was my support . She had outstripped me in this path ; her Catholic beliefs had wholly disappeared : but she had always refrained from exerting any influence over me upon this subject. When I told her of the doubts which tormented me, and which made it my duty to abandon a career for which absolute faith was requisite, she was enchanted, and offered to smooth the difficult passage. I entered upon life, scarce twenty-three years of age, old in thought, but as great a novice, as ignorant of the world, as any one could possibly be. I knew literally no one ; I lacked the most ordinary advantages of a youth of fifteen . I was not even Bachelor of Arts. It was agreed that I should search the boarding - schools of Paris for some position which would square me, as the slang phrase is, that is, would give me board and lodging without salary, at the same time leaving me abundant time for independent study. Twelve hundred francs, which she gave me, enabled me to wait ; and to supplement all the deficiencies which such a position might entail. Those twelve hundred francs were the corner- stone of my life. I never exhausted them ; but they gave --- ERNEST RENAN 12167 me the requisite tranquillity of mind to think at my ease, and made it unnecessary for me to overburden myself with tasks which would have crushed me. Her exquisite letters were my consolation and my support at this turning- point in my life. While I struggled with difficulties increased by my entire lack of experience of the world, her health suffered serious inroads in consequence of the severity of the winters in Poland. She developed a chronic affection of the larynx, which in 1850 became so serious that it was thought necessary for her to return. Moreover, her task was accomplished : our father's debts were paid ; the small properties which he had left to us were now free from incumbrance, in the hands of our mother; my brother had won by his labor a position which promised to make him rich . We decided to unite our fortunes. In September 1850 I joined her in Berlin. Those ten years of exile had utterly transformed her. The wrinkles of old age were prematurely printed on her brow; of the charm which she still possessed when she took leave of me in the parlor of the St. Nicholas seminary, nothing now remained but the delicious expression of her ineffable goodness. Then began for us those delightful years, the mere memory of which brings tears to my eyes. We took a small apartment in a garden near Val- de- Grâce. Our solitude was absolute. She had no friends, and made little effort to acquire any. Our windows looked out upon the garden of the Carmelites in the Rue d'Enfer. The life of those recluses, during the long hours which I spent at the library, in some sort regulated her existence and afforded her only source of amusement. Her respect for my work was extreme. I have seen her in the evening sit for hours beside me, scarcely breathing for fear of interrupting me; yet she could not bear to have me out of her sight, and the door between our two bedrooms was always open . Her love was so discreet and so secure that the secret communion of our thoughts was enough for her. She, naturally so exacting, so jealous in her affections, was content with a few minutes out of the day, provided she was sure that she alone was loved. By her rigid economy, she provided for me, with singularly limited resources, a home where nothing was ever lacking, nay, which had its austere charm. Our thoughts were so perfectly in accord that we hardly needed to impart them each to the other. Our general opinions as to the world and God were identical. There was no shade of distinction, however delicate, in the theories which I resolved 12168 ERNEST RENAN at that period, that she did not understand. Upon many points of modern history, which she had studied at the fountain- head, she outstripped me. The general purpose of my career, the plan of unwavering sincerity which I formed, was so thoroughly the combined product of our two consciences, that had I been tempted to depart from it, she would have stood beside me, like another self, to recall me to my duty. Her share in the direction of my ideas was thus a very large one. She was a matchless secretary to me; she copied all my works, and grasped them so fully that I could depend upon her as upon a living index of my own thought. I am infinitely indebted to her in the matter of literary style. She read the proofs of everything I wrote ; and her acute criticism, with infinite. keenness, discovered errors which I had not observed. She had acquired an excellent mode of writing, wholly taken from antique sources ; and so pure, so precise, that I think no one since the days of Port Royal ever set up an ideal of diction more perfectly correct. This made her very severe : she accepted very few modern writers ; and when she saw the essays which I wrote before our reunion, and which I had not been able to send her in Poland, she was only half satisfied with them. She agreed with their tendency ; and in any event she thought that in this order of intimate and individual thought, expressed with moderation, every one should give utterance with entire freedom to that which is in him. But the form struck her as careless and abrupt ; she discovered exaggerated touches, a hard tone, a disrespectful way of treating language. She convinced me that one may say anything and everything in the simple, correct style of good authors ; and that new expressions or violent images always proceed either from improper affectation or from ignorance of our genuine riches . Hence a great change in my mode of writing dates from my reunion with her. I acquired the habit of composing with a view to her remarks, risking many touches to see what effect they would produce on her, and determined to sacrifice them if she asked me to do so. This mental process, when she ceased to live, became to me like the painful feeling of one who has been amputated, who continually acts with a view to the lost limb. She was an organ of my intellectual life , and a portion of my own being truly entered the tomb with her. In all moral matters we had come to see with the same eyes, and to feel with the same heart. She was so thoroughly familiar ERNEST RENAN 12169 One with my order of thought that she almost always knew beforehand what I was about to say, the idea dawning upon her and upon me at the same moment. But in one sense she was greatly my superior. In spiritual things I was still seeking material for interesting essays or artistic studies ; with her nothing marred the purity of her intimate communion with the good. Her religion of the true could not endure the least discordant note. thing that wounded her in my writings was a touch of irony which possessed me, and which I mingled with the best things. I had never suffered ; and I found a certain philosophy in the discreet smile provoked by human weakness or vanity. This trick wounded her, and I gradually gave it up for her sake. I now know how right she was. The good should be simply good ; any touch of mockery implies a remnant of vanity and of personal challenge which ends by being in bad taste. Her capacity for work was extraordinary. I have seen her, for days at a time, devote herself unceasingly to the task which she had taken up. She took part in editing educational journals, especially the one in charge of her friend, Mademoiselle UlliacTremadeure. She never signed her name ; and it was impossible, with her great modesty, that she could ever win in this line more than the esteem of a select few. Moreover, the detestable taste which in France presides over the composition of works meant for the education of women, left her no room to hope either for great satisfaction or great success. It was particularly to oblige her friend, who was old and infirm, that she undertook this labor. The writings wherein she may be found entire are her letters. She wrote them to perfection. Her notes of travel were also excellent. I trusted to her to tell the unscientific part of our journey to the East. Alas ! all knowledge of this side of my enterprise, which I left to her, perished with her. What I found on this head in her papers is very good. We hope to be able to publish it, completing it by her letters. We shall then publish a story which she wrote of the great maritime expeditions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. She made very extensive researches for this task; and she brought to bear on it a critical judgment very rare in works intended for children. She did. nothing by halves : the rectitude of her judgment was shown in everything by an exquisite taste for solidity and truth. She had not what is called wit, if by that word we understand something airy and sly, as is the French fashion . She ERNEST RENAN 12170 never made a mock of anybody. Malice was odious to her : she regarded it as a species of cruelty. I remember that at a pardon (pilgrimage) in Lower Brittany, to which we went in boats, our bark was preceded by another containing certain poor ladies, who, wishing to make themselves beautiful for the festival, had hit upon pitiful arrangements of their attire, which was in very bad taste. The people in whose company we were, laughed at them, and the poor ladies observed this. My sister burst into tears : it seemed to her barbarous to jest at well- meaning persons who had for a time forgotten their misfortunes in order to be cheerful ; and who had perhaps submitted to great privations out of deference to the world. In her eyes, a ridiculous person was to be pitied ; she at once loved him and took his part against those who scoffed at him. Hence her aversion to the world, and the poor show which she made in ordinary conversation , -almost always a tissue of malice and frivolity. She was prematurely old ; and she generally added still more to her age by her dress and manners. She was a worshiper of misfortune ; she hailed, almost cultivated, every excuse for tears . Sorrow became to her a familiar and agreeable feeling. Ordinary people did not in general understand her, and considered her somewhat stiff and embarrassed. Nothing which was not completely good could please her. Everything about her was true and profound; she could not dishonor herself. The lower classes, peasants, on the contrary, regarded her as exquisitely kind ; and those who knew how to take her on the right side soon learned to recognize the depth of her nature and her real distinction. She sometimes betrayed delightful feminine touches; she became a young girl again ; she clung to life almost with a smile, and the veil between her and the world seemed to fall. These fleeting moments of delicious weakness, transient gleams of a vanished dawn, were full of melancholy sweetness. In this she was superior to persons who profess, in their gloomy abstraction, the detachment preached by the mystics. She loved life ; she found a relish in it ; she could smile at an ornament, at a feminine trifle, as we might smile at a flower. She did not say to Nature that frenzied " Abrenuntio " [ I renounce thee ] of Christian ascetism. Virtue to her was no stern rigor, no studied effort : it was the natural instinct of a beautiful soul aiming at goodness by a spontaneous exertion, serving God without fear or tremor. ERNEST RENAN 12171 We know not the relations of great souls with the infinite ; but if, as everything leads us to believe, consciousness be but a transitory communion with the universe, -a communion which leads us more or less directly into the bosom of God, -is it not for souls like hers that immortality is intended ? If man have the power to carve out, after a Divine model which he does not select, a great moral personality, made up in equal parts of himself and of the ideal, it is surely this that lives with full reality. It is not matter that exists, since a unit is not that ; it is not the atom which exists, since that is unconscious. It is the soul which exists, when it has truly made its mark in the eternal history of the true and the good. Who ever fulfilled this high destiny better than did my dear one ? Removed just as she attained to the full maturity of her nature, she could never have been more perfect. She had reached the pinnacle of virtuous life ; her views in regard to the universe would not have been carried further ; her measure of devotion and tenderness was running over. - Ah! but she might have been without a doubt she might have been happier. I was dreaming of all sorts of small, sweet rewards for her ; I had imagined a thousand foolish fancies to please her taste. I saw her old, respected like a mother, proud of me, resting at last in a peace without alloy. I longed to have her good and noble heart, which never ceased to bleed with tenderness, know a sort of calm -I may say a selfish moment at last. God willed her to know here none but hard and rough roads. She died almost unrewarded. The hour for reaping what she had sown, for sitting down and looking back upon past sorrows and fatigues, never struck for her. To tell the truth, she never thought of reward. That interested view, which often spoils the sacrifices inspired by positive religions, leading us to think that virtue is practiced only for the usury to be derived from it, never entered into her great soul. When she lost her religious faith, her faith in duty was not lessened ; because that faith was the echo of her inner nobility. Virtue with her was not the fruit of a theory, but the result of an absolute disposition of nature. She did good for its own sake, and not for her own salvation. She loved the beautiful and the true, without any of that calculation which seems to say to God, " Were it not for thy hell or thy paradise, I should not love thee. " ERNEST RENAN 12172 - But God does not let his saints see corruption . O heart wherein perpetually burned so sweet a flame of love, - brain, seat of such pure thought, ―fair eyes, beaming with kindness, —slender delicate hand, which I have so often pressed, I shudder with horror when I think that you are naught but dust. But all here below is but symbol and image. The truly eternal part of each of us is his relation to the infinite. It is in the recollection of God that man is immortal. It is there that our Henriette lives, forever radiant, forever stainless, -lives a thousand times more truly than when she struggled with her frail organs to create her spiritual person, and when, cast into the midst of a world incapable of understanding her, she obstinately sought after perfection. May her memory remain with us as a precious argument for those eternal truths which every virtuous life helps to demonstrate. For myself, I have never doubted the reality of the moral order; but I now see plainly that the entire logic of the system of the universe would be overthrown if such lives were only trickery and delusion. TO THE PURE SOUL OF MY SISTER HENRIETTE Who died at Byblos, September 24th, 1861. Dedication to the Life of Jesus. ' Copyright 1895 , by Roberts Brothers F ROM the bosom of God, in which thou reposest, dost thou recall those long days at Ghazir when, alone with thee, I wrote these pages, inspired by the places we had visited together ? Silent at my side, thou didst read each sheet, and copy it as soon as written ; while the sea, the villages, the ravines, the mountains, were spread out at our feet. When the overpowering light had given place to the innumerable host of stars, thy delicate and subtile questions, thy cautious doubts, brought me back to the sublime object of our common thoughts. Thou saidst to me one day that this book would be dear to thee, because it had been written with thy aid, and because also it was after thine own heart. If at times thou didst fear for it the narrow judgment of frivolous men, thou wast ever persuaded that truly religious souls would in the end take delight in it. the midst of these sweet meditations, Death struck us both with his wing; the sleep of fever overtook us at the same hour : I awoke alone ! Thou sleepest now in the land of Adonis, near In ERNEST RENAN 12173 the holy Byblos, and the sacred waters where the women of the ancient mysteries came to mingle their tears. Reveal to me, O good genius, -to me whom thou lovedst, -those truths which conquer death, deprive it of fear, and make it almost beloved. I MOTIVES AND CONDUCT From the Recollections of My Youth ' HAD always had an idea of writing, but it had never occurred to me that it would bring me in any money. I was greatly astonished, therefore, when a man of pleasant and intelligent appearance called upon me in my garret one day, and after complimenting me upon several articles which I had written, offered to publish them in a collected form. A stamped agreement which he had with him specified terms which seemed to me so wonderfully liberal, that when he asked me if all my future writings should be included in the agreement, I gave my assent. I was tempted to make one or two observations ; but the sight of the stamp stopped me, and I was unwilling that so fine a piece of paper should be wasted . I did well to forego them, for M. Michel Lévy must have been created by a special decree of Providence to be my editor. A man of letters who has any self-respect should write in only one journal and in one review, and should have only one publisher. M. Michel Lévy and myself always got on very well together. At a subsequent date, he pointed out to me that the agreement which he had prepared was not sufficiently remunerative for me, and he substituted for it one much more to my advantage. I am told that he has not made a bad speculation out of me. I am delighted to hear it. In any event, I may safely say that if I possessed a fund of literary wealth it was only fair that he should have a large share of it ; as but for him I should never have suspected its existence . It is very difficult to prove that one is modest ; for the mere assertion of one's modesty destroys one's claim to it. As I have said, our old Christian teachers had an excellent rule upon this score, which was never to speak of oneself either in praise or depreciation . This is the true principle ; but the general reader will not have it so, and is the cause of all the mischief. He leads the writer to commit faults upon which he is afterwards ERNEST RENAN 12174 very hard ; just as the staid middle classes of another age applauded the actor, and yet excluded him from the Church. " Incur your own damnation, as long as you amuse us, " is often the sentiment which lurks beneath the encouragement, often flattering in appearance, of the public. Success is more often than not acquired by our defects. When I am very well pleased with what I have written, I have perhaps nine or ten persons who approve of what I have said. When I cease to keep a strict watch upon myself, when my literary conscience hesitates and my hand shakes, thousands are anxious for me to go on. But notwithstanding all this, and making due allowance for venial faults, I may safely claim that I have been modest ; and in this respect, at all events, I have not come short of the St. Sulpice standard. I am not afflicted with literary vanity. I do not fall into the error which distinguishes the literary views of our day. I am well assured that no really great man has ever imagined himself to be one ; and that those who during their lifetime browse upon their glory while it is green, do not garner it ripe after their death. I only feigned to set store by literature for a time to please M. Sainte- Beuve, who had great influence over me. Since his death, I have ceased to attach any value to it. I see plainly enough that talent is only prized because people are so childish. If the public were wise, they would be content with getting the truth. What they like is in most cases imperfections. My adversaries, in order to deny me the possession of other qualities which interfere with their apologeticum, are so profuse in their allowance of talent to me that I need not scruple to accept an encomium which, coming from them, is a criticism . In any event, I have never sought to gain anything by the display of this inferior quality, which has been more prejudicial to me as a savant than it has been useful of itself. I have not based any calculations upon it. I have never counted upon my supposed talent for a livelihood, and I have not in any way tried to turn it to account. The late M. Beulé, who looked upon me with a kind of good- natured curiosity mingled with astonishment, could not understand why I made so little use of it. I have never been at all a literary man. In the most decisive moments of my life I had not the least idea that my prose would secure any success. I have never done anything to foster my success ; which, if I may be permitted to say so, might have been much greater if I ERNEST RENAN 12175 had so willed. I have in no wise followed up my good fortune ; upon the contrary, I have rather tried to check it. The public likes a writer who sticks closely to his line, and who has his own specialty ; placing but little confidence in those who try to shine in contradictory subjects. I could have secured an immense amount of popularity if I had gone in for a crescendo of anticlericalism after the ' Life of Jesus. ' The general reader likes a strong style. I could easily have left in the flourishes and tinsel phrases which excite the enthusiasm of those whose taste is not of a very elevated kind, -that is to say, of the majority. I spent a year in toning down the style of the ' Life of Jesus, ' as I thought that such a subject could not be treated too soberly or too simply. And we know how fond the masses are of declamation. I have never accentuated my opinions in order to gain the ear of my readers. It is no fault of mine if, owing to the bad taste of the day, a slender voice has made itself heard athwart the darkness in which we dwell, as if reverberated by a thousand echoes. With regard to my politeness, I shall find fewer cavilers than with regard to my modesty ; for so far as mere externals go, I have been endowed with much more of the former than of the latter. The extreme urbanity of my old masters made so great an impression upon me that I have never broken away from it. Theirs was the true French politeness ; that which is shown. not only towards acquaintances, but towards all persons without exception. Politeness of this kind implies a general standard of conduct, without which life cannot, as I hold, go on smoothly; viz. , that every human creature should be given credit for goodness failing proof to the contrary, and treated kindly. Many people, especially in certain countries, follow the opposite rule ; and this leads to great injustice . For my own part, I cannot possibly be severe upon any one a priori. I take for granted that every person I see for the first time is a man of merit and of good repute ; reserving to myself the right to alter my opinions (as I often have to do) if facts compel me to do so. This is the St. Sulpice rule ; which, in my contact with the outside world, has placed me in very singular positions, and has often made me appear very old-fashioned, a relic of the past, and unfamiliar with the age in which we live. The right way to behave at table is to help oneself to the worst piece in the dish, so as to avoid the semblance of leaving for others what one does 12176 ERNEST RENAN not think good enough, -or better still , to take the piece nearest to one without looking at what is in the dish. Any one who was to act in this delicate way in the struggle of modern life would sacrifice himself to no purpose. His delicacy would not even be noticed. " First come, first served, " is the objectionable rule of modern egotism. To obey, in a world which has ceased to have any heed of civility, the excellent rules of the politeness of other days, would be tantamount to playing the part of a dupe ; and no one would thank you for your pains. When one feels oneself being pushed by people who want to get in front of one, the proper thing to do is to draw back with a gesture tantamount to saying-" Do not let me prevent you passing. " But it is very certain that any one who adhered to this rule in an omnibus would be the victim of his own deference ; in fact, I believe that he would be infringing the by-laws. In traveling by rail, how few people seem to see that in trying to force their way before others on the platform in order to secure the best seats, they are guilty of gross discourtesy ! In other words, our democratic machines have no place for the man of polite manners. I have long since given up taking the omnibus : the conductor came to look upon me as a passenger who did not know what he was about. In traveling by rail, I invariably have the worst seat, unless I happen to get a helping hand from the station- master. I was fashioned for a society based upon respect, in which people could be treated, classified , and placed according to their costume, and in which they would not have to fight for their own hand. I am only at home at the Institute or the Collège de France ; and that because our officials are all well- conducted men and hold us in great respect. The Eastern habit of always having a cavass to walk in front of one in the public thoroughfares suited me very well ; for modesty is seasoned by a display of force. It is agreeable to have under one's orders a man armed with a kourbash which one does not allow him to use. I should not at all mind having the power of life and death without ever exercising it ; and I should much like to own some slaves, in order to be extremely kind to them and to make them adore me. My clerical ideas have exercised a still greater influence over me in all that relates to the rules of morality. I should have looked upon it as a lack of decorum if I had made any change in my austere habits upon this score. The world at large, in its ERNEST RENAN 12177 ignorance of spiritual things, believes that men only abandon the ecclesiastical calling because they find its duties too severe. I should never have forgiven myself if I had done anything to lend even a semblance of reason to views so superficial. With my extreme conscientiousness I was anxious to be at rest with myself; and I continued to live in Paris the life which I had led in the seminary. Women have, as a rule, understood how much respect and sympathy for them my affectionate reserve implied. In fine , I have been beloved by the four women whose love was of the most comfort to me: my mother, my sister, my wife, and my daughter. I have had the better part, and it will not be taken from me ; for I often fancy that the judgments which will be passed upon us in the valley of Jehoshaphat will be neither more nor less than those of women, countersigned by the Almighty. Thus it may, upon the whole, be said that I have come short in little of my clerical promises. I have exchanged spirituality for ideality. I have been truer to my engagements than many priests apparently more regular in their conduct. In resolutely clinging to the virtues of disinterestedness, politeness, and modesty in a world to which they are not applicable, I have shown how very simple I am. I have never courted success ; I may almost say that it is distasteful to me. The pleasure of living and of working is quite enough for me. Whatever may be egotistical in this way of enjoying the pleasure of existence is neutralized by the sacrifices which I believe that I have made for the public good. I have always been at the orders of my country: at the first sign from it, in 1869, I placed myself at its disposal. I might perhaps have rendered it some service ; the country did not think so, but I have done my part. I have never flattered the errors of public opinion ; and I have been so careful not to lose a single opportunity of pointing out these errors, that superficial persons have regarded me as wanting in patriotism. One is not called upon to descend to charlatanism or falsehood to obtain a mandate, the main condition of which is independence and sincerity . Amidst the public misfortunes which may be in store for us, my conscience will therefore be quite at rest. All things considered, I should not, if I had to begin my life over again, with the right of making what erasures I liked, change anything. The defects of my nature and education have, XXI-762 12178 ERNEST RENAN by a sort of benevolent Providence, been so attenuated and reduced as to be of very little moment. A certain apparent lack of frankness in my relations with them is forgiven me by my friends, who attribute it to my clerical education. I must admit that in the early part of my life I often told untruths, -not in my own interest, but out of good-nature and indifference, —upon the mistaken idea which always induces me to take the view of the person with whom I may be conversing. My sister depicted to me in very vivid colors the drawbacks involved in acting like this ; and I have given up doing so. I am not aware of having told a single untruth since 1851 ; with the exception, of course, of the harmless stories and polite fibs which all casuists permit, as also the literary evasions, which, in the interests of a higher truth, must be used to make up a well- poised phrase, or to avoid a still greater misfortune, -that of stabbing an author. Thus for instance, a poet brings you some verses. You must say that they are admirable ; for if you said less it would be tantamount to describing them as worthless, and to inflicting a grievous insult upon a man who intended to show you a polite attention . My friends may well have found it much more difficult to forgive me another defect, which consists in being rather slow, not to show them affection but to render them assistance . One of the injunctions most impressed upon us at the seminary was to avoid " special friendships . " Friendships of this kind were described as being a fraud upon the rest of the community. This rule has always remained indelibly impressed upon my mind. I have never given much encouragement to friendship ; I have done little for my friends, and they have done little for me. One of the ideas which I have so often to cope with is that friendship, as it is generally understood, is an injustice and a blunder, which only allows you to distinguish the good qualities of a single person, and blinds you to those of others who are perhaps more deserving of your sympathy. I fancy to myself at times, like my ancient masters, that friendship is a larceny committed at the expense of society at large ; and that, in a more elevated world, friendship would disappear. In some cases, it has seemed to me that the special attachment which unites two individuals is a slight upon good-fellowship generally; and I am always tempted to hold aloof from them as being warped in their judgment and devoid of impartiality and liberty. A close association of this kind between two persons must, in ERNEST RENAN 12179 my view, narrow the mind, detract from anything like breadth of view, and fetter the independence. Beulé often used to banter me upon this score. He was somewhat attached to me, and was anxious to render me a service, though I had not done the equivalent for him. Upon a certain occasion I voted against him in favor of some one who had been very ill-natured towards me ; and he said to me afterwards, " Renan, I shall play some mean trick upon you : out of impartiality you will vote for me. " While I have been very fond of my friends, I have done very little for them. I have been as much at the disposal of the public as of them. This is why I receive so many letters from unknown and anonymous correspondents ; and this is also why I am such a bad correspondent. It has often happened to me while writing a letter to break off suddenly, and convert into general terms the ideas which have occurred to me. The best of my life has been lived for the public, which has had all I have to give. There is no surprise in store for it after my death, as I have kept nothing back for anybody. Having thus given my preference instinctively to the many rather than to the few, I have enjoyed the sympathy even of my adversaries, but I have had few friends. No sooner has there been any sign of warmth in my feelings, than the St. Sulpice dictum, " No special friendships, " has acted as a refrigerator, and stood in the way of any close affinity. My craving to be just has prevented me from being obliging. I am too much impressed by the idea that in doing one person a service you as a rule disoblige another person ; that to further the chances of one competitor is very often equivalent to an injury upon another. the image of the unknown person whom I am about to injure brings my zeal to a sudden check. I have obliged hardly any one; I have never learnt how people succeed in obtaining the management of a tobacco-shop for those in whom they are Thus interested. world ; This has caused me to be devoid of influence in the but from a literary point of view it has been a good Mérimée would have been a man of the very highest mark if he had not had so many friends. But his friends took complete possession of him. How can a man write private thing for me. letters world ? when it is in his power to address himself to all the The person to whom you write reduces your talent ; you are obliged to write down to his level. The public has a broader intelligence than any one person. There are a great many fools, 12180 ERNEST RENAN it is true, among the " all "; but the " all " comprises as well the few thousand clever men and women for whom alone the world may be said to exist. It is in view of them that one should write. THE SHARE OF THE SEMITIC PEOPLE IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION From the Inaugural Address on assuming the Chair of Semitic Languages, in ' Studies of Religious History and Criticism . ' Copyright 1864, by F. W. Christern. Gentlemen: I AM proud to ascend this chair -the most ancient in the College of France -made illustrious in the sixteenth century by eminent men, and in our own generation occupied by a scholar of the merit of M. Quatremère. In creating the College of France as an asylum for liberal science, King Francis I. laid down as the constitutional law of this grand foundation, the complete independence of criticism ; the disinterested search for truth ; impartial discussion, that knows no rules save those of good taste and sincerity. Precisely this, gentlemen, is the spirit which I would fain bring to the instruction here. I know the difficulties that are inseparable from the chair which I have the honor to occupy. It is the privilege and the peril of Semitic studies, that they touch on the most important problems in the history of mankind. The free mind knows no limit ; but the human race at large is far from having reached that stage of serene contemplation in which it has no need of beholding God. in this or that particular order of facts, for the very reason that it sees him in everything. Liberty, gentlemen, had it been well understood, would have allowed these opposite claims to exist side by side. I hope that by your favor, this course will prove that they can. As I shall bring to my instructions no dogmatism ; as I shall confine myself always to appeals to your reason, to the statement of what I think most probable, leaving you full liberty of judgment, who can complain ? Those only who believe they have a monopoly of the truth ; but these must renounce the claim to be the masters of the world. In our day Galileo would not go down on his knees to retract what he knew to be the truth . ERNEST RENAN 12181 So much granted, if we ask what the Semitic peoples have contributed to this organic and living whole which is called civilization, we shall find in the first place that in polity we owe them nothing at all . Political life is perhaps the most peculiar and native characteristic of the Indo- European nations. These nations are the only ones that have known liberty, that have reconciled the State with the independence of the individual. To be sure , they are far from having always equally well adjusted these two opposite necessities. But among them are never found those great unitary despotisms, crushing all individuality, reducing man to the condition of a kind of abstract nameless function, as is the case in Egypt, China, and the Mussulman and Tartar despotisms. Examine successively the small municipal republics of Greece and of Italy, the Germanic feudalisms, the grand centralized organizations of which Rome gave the first model, whose ideal reappeared in the French Revolution, -you find always a vigorous moral element, a powerful idea of the public good, sacrifice for a general object. In Sparta individuality was little protected ; the petty democracies of Athens and of Italy in the Middle Ages were almost as ferocious as the most tyrant; the Roman Empire became (in part, however, through the influence of the East) an intolerable despotism ; feudalism in Germany resulted in regular brigandage; royalty in France under Louis XIV. almost reached the excesses of the dynasties of the Sassanidæ or the Mongols ; the French Revolution, while establishing with incomparable energy the principle of unity in the State, often strongly compromised liberty. But swift reactions have always saved these nations from the consequences of their errors. Not so in the East. The East, especially the Semitic East, has known no medium between the utter anarchy of the nomadic Arabs, and bloody unmitigated despotThe idea of the commonweal, of the public welfare, is totally wanting among these nations. Liberty, true and entire , - liberty as the Anglo- Saxon peoples have realized , - and grand State organizations such as the Roman Empire and France have brewscreated, were equally unknown to them. The ancient He- , the Arabs, have been or are at times the freest of men ; on condition of having the next day a chief who cuts off heads at his own good pleasure. And when this happens, no complains of violated right : David seizes the sceptre by means of an energetic condottiérie, which does not hinder his cruel ism . such but - 12182 ERNEST RENAN being a very religious man, a king after God's own heart ; Solomon ascends the throne and maintains himself there by measures such as sultans in all ages have used, but this does not prevent his being called the wisest of kings. When the prophets storm against royalty, it is not in the name of a political right ; it is in the name of theocracy. Theocracy, anarchy, despotism, — such, gentlemen, is a summary of the Semitic polity ; happily it is not ours. The political principle drawn from the Holy Scriptures (very badly drawn, it is true) by Bossuet, is a detestable principle. In polity, as in poetry, religion, philosophy, the duty of the Indo- European nations is to seek after nice combinations ; the harmony of opposite things; the complexity so totally unknown among the Semitic nations, whose organization has always been of a disheartening and fatal simplicity. In art and poetry, what do we owe them ? In art, nothing. These tribes have but little of the artist ; our art comes entirely from Greece. In poetry, nevertheless, without being their tributaries, we have with them more than one bond of union. The Psalms have become in some respects one of our sources of poetry. Hebrew poetry has taken a place with us beside Greek poetry, not as having furnished a distinct order of poetry, but as constituting a poetic ideal, -a sort of Olympus where in consequence of an accepted prestige everything is suffused with a halo of light. Milton, Lamartine, Lamennais, would not exist, or at least would not exist as they are, but for the Psalms. Here again, however, all the shades of expression, all the delicacy, all the depth is our work. The thing essentially poetic is the destiny of man: his melancholy moods, his restless search after causes, his just complaint to heaven. There was no necessity of going to strangers to learn this. The eternal school here is each man's soul. In science and philosophy we are exclusively Greek. The investigation of causes, knowledge for knowledge's own sake, is a thing of which there is no trace previous to Greece, -a thing that we have learned from her alone. Babylon possessed a science ; but it had not that pre- eminently scientific principle, the absolute fixedness of natural law. Egypt had some knowledge of geometry, but it did not originate the ' Elements ' of Euclid. As for the old Semitic spirit, it is by its nature anti-philosophic, anti- scientific. In Job, the investigation of causes is represented as almost an impiety. In Ecclesiastes, science is declared to be ERNEST RENAN 12183 a vanity. The author, prematurely surfeited, boasts of having studied everything under the sun, and of having found nothing. but vanity. Aristotle, who was almost his contemporary, and who might have said with more reason that he had exhausted the universe, never speaks of his weariness. The wisdom of the Semitic nations never got beyond parables and proverbs. We often hear of Arabian science and philosophy ; and it is true that during one or two centuries in the Middle Ages, the Arabs were our masters, but only however until the discovery of the Greek originals. As soon as authentic Greece emerges, this Arabian science and philosophy -these miserable translations -become useless ; and it is not without reason that all the philologists of the Renaissance undertake a veritable crusade against them. Moreover, on close examination, we find that this Arabian science had nothing of the Arab in it . Its foundation is purely Greek : among those who originated it, there is not one real Semite ; they were Spaniards and Persians writing in Arabic. The Jews of the Middle Ages acted also as simple interpreters of philosophy. The Jewish philosophy of the epoch is unmodified Arabic. One page of Roger Bacon contains more of the true scientific spirit than does all that second- hand science, worthy of respect certainly as a link of tradition, but destitute of all noble originality. If we examine the question with reference to moral and social ideas, we shall find that the Semitic ethics are occasionally very lofty and very pure. of egotistical. The code attributed to Moses contains eleOn vated ideas of right. The prophets are at times very eloquent tribunes. The moralists, Jesus son of Sirak, and Hillel , reach a surprising grandeur. Let us not forget, finally, that the ethics the Gospel were first preached in a Semitic tongue. the other hand, the Semitic nature is in general hard, narrow, devotions This race possesses noble passions, complete self- , matchless characters. But there is rarely that delicacy Germanic of moral sense which seems to be the especial endowment of the and Celtic races. Tender, profound, melancholy sentiments, those dreams of the infinite in which all the faculties of the soul blend, that grand revelation of duty which alone gives a solid and basis to our faith and our hopes, are the work of our race -- Our climate. Here then the task is divided. The moral education of humanity is not the exclusive merit of any race. reason is quite simple : morals are not taught any more than poetry; fine aphorisms do not make the honest man; each The 12184 ERNEST RENAN one finds goodness in the loftiness of his nature, in the immediate revelation of his heart. In industrial pursuits, inventions, external civilization, we owe certainly much to the Semitic peoples. Our race, gentlemen, did not set out with a taste for comfort and for business. It was a moral, brave, warlike race, jealous of liberty and honor, loving nature, capable of sacrifice, preferring many things to life. Trade, the arts of industry, were practiced for the first time on a grand scale by the Semitic tribes ; or at least by those speaking a Semitic language, -the Phoenicians. In the Middle Ages, also, the Arabs and the Jews were our instructors in commercial affairs. All European luxury, from ancient times till the seventeenth century, came from the East. I say luxury, and not art : the distance from one to the other is infinite. Greece, which in point of art was immensely superior to the rest of mankind, was not a country of luxury: there the magnificence of the Great King's palace was spoken of with disdain ; and were it permitted to us to see the house of Pericles, we should probably find it hardly habitable . I do not insist on this point, for it would be necessary to consider whether the Asiatic luxury-that of Babylon, for instance -is really due to the Semites ; I doubt it, for my part. But one gift they have incontestably made us : a gift of the highest order, and one which ought to place the Phoenicians, in the history of progress, almost by the side of the Hebrews and the Arabs, their brothers, writing. You know that the characters we use at this day are, through a thousand transformations, those that the Semites used first to express the sounds of their language. The Greek and Latin alphabets, from which all our European alphabets are derived, are nothing else than the Phoenician alphabet. Phonetics, that bright device for expressing each articulate sound by a sign, and for reducing the articulate sound to a small number (twenty-two) , is a Semitic invention. But for them, we should perhaps be still dragging along painfully with hieroglyphics. In one sense we may say that the Phoenicians, whose whole literature has so unfortunately disappeared, have thus laid down the essential condition of all vigorous and precise exercise of thought. - — But I am eager, gentlemen, to come to the prime service which the Semitic race has rendered to the world, its peculiar work, its providential mission , if I may so express myself. We owe to the Semitic race neither political life , art, poetry, philosophy, nor ERNEST RENAN 12185 science. What then do we owe to them ? We owe to them religion. The whole world - if we except India, China, Japan, and tribes altogether savage -has adopted the Semitic religions. The civilized world comprises only Jews, Christians, and MussulThe Indo- European race in particular, excepting the Brahmanic family and the feeble relics of the Parsees, has gone over completely to the Semitic faiths. What has been the cause of this strange phenomenon ? How happens it that the nations who hold the supremacy of the world have renounced their own creed to adopt that of the people they have conquered ? mans. The primitive worship of the Indo- European race, gentlemen, was charming and profound, like the imagination of the nations themselves. It was like an echo of nature, a sort of naturalistic hymn, in which the idea of one sole cause appears but occasionally and uncertainly. It was a child's religion, full of artlessness and poetry, but destined to crumble at the first demand of thought. Persia first effected its reform (that which is associated with the name of Zoroaster) under influences and at an epoch unknown to us. Greece, in the time of Pisistratus, was already dissatisfied with her religion, and was turning towards the East. In the Roman period, the old pagan worship had become utterly It no longer addressed the imagination ; it spoke feebly to the moral sense. The old myths on the forces of nature become changed into fables ; not unfrequently amusing and ingenious, but destitute of all religious value. It is precisely at this epoch that the civilized world finds itself face to face with Jewish faith. Based upon the clear and simple dogma of Divine unity ; discarding naturalism and pantheism by the marvelously terse phrase, " In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth "; possessing a law, a book, the depository grand moral precepts and of an elevated religious poetry, - Judaism had an incontestable superiority ; and it might have been foreseen then that some day the world would become Jewish, - that is to say, would forsake the old mythology for Monotheism. insufficient. had the the of An the of extraordinary movement which took place at this epoch in heart of Judaism itself decided the victory. By the side its grand and incomparable qualities, Judaism contained the principle of a narrow formalism, of an exclusive and scornful fanaticism; this was the Pharisaic spirit which became later the Talmudic spirit. Had Judaism been merely Phariseeism it would have had no future. But this race had within itself a 12186 ERNEST RENAN truly remarkable religious activity. Like all the noble races, moreover, it combined contrary elements : it knew how to react on itself, and to develop at need qualities the very opposite of its defects. In the midst of the enormous ferment in which the Jewish nation was plunged under the last Asmoneans, there took place in Galilee the most wonderful moral event which history has ever recorded. AA matchless man -so grand, that although here all must be judged from a purely scientific point of view, I would not gainsay those who, struck with the exceptional character of his work, call him God —effected a reform in Judaism ; a reform so radical, so thorough, that it was in all respects a complete creation . Having reached a higher religious plane than ever man reached before, having attained the point of regarding himself in his relation to God as a son to his father, devoted to his work with a forgetfulness of all else and a self-renunciation never so sublimely practiced before, the victim at last of his idea and deified by death, Jesus founded the eternal religion of humanity, the religion of the soul, stripped of everything sacerdotal, of creed, of external ceremonies, accessible to every race, superior to all castes, in a word absolute : " Woman, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father; but when the true worshipers shall worship him in spirit and in truth. " The vital centre was established to which humanity must for centuries refer its hopes, its consolations, its motives for well-doing. The most copious. source of virtue that the sympathetic touch of a sublime conscience ever caused to well up in the heart of man was opened. The lofty thought of Jesus, hardly comprehended by his disciples, suffered many lapses. Christianity, notwithstanding, prevailed from the very first ; and prevailed supremely over other existing religions. These religions, which pretended to no absolute value, which had no strong organizations, and which represented no moral idea, offered but feeble resistance. Some attempts which were made to reform them in accordance with the new needs of humanity, and to introduce into them an earnest moral element, -the effort of Julian, for instance , ―failed completely. The Empire, which clearly saw its principle threatened by the birth of a new power, the Church, resisted at first energetically. It ended by adopting the faith it had opposed. All the nations that were under Greek and Latin influence became Christian ; the Germanic ERNEST RENAN 12187 and Slavic peoples came in a little later. Persia and India alone of the Indo- European race -thanks to their very strong religious institutions, which are closely allied to their polity -preserved, though much modified, the ancient worship of their forefathers. The Brahmanic race, especially, rendered to the world a scientific service of the highest kind, by preserving with a minute and touching excess of precaution the oldest hymns of their faith, the Vedas. But after this incomparable victory the religious fecundity of the Semitic race was not exhausted. Christianity, absorbed by Greek and Latin civilization, had become a Western institution. The East, its cradle, was precisely the land in which it encountered the most formidable obstacles. Arabia in particular, in the seventh century, could not make up its mind to become Christ- ian. Hesitating between Judaism and Christianity, native superstitions and the remembrance of the old patriarchal faith, recoiling from the mythologic elements which the Indo- European race had introduced into the heart of Christianity, Arabia wished to return to the religion of Abraham ; she founded Islamism. Islamism, in its turn, appeared immensely superior amidst the debased reli- gions of Asia. With one breath it overturned Parsism, which had been vigorous enough under the Sassanidæ to triumph over Christianity, and reduce it to the condition of an insignificant India in its turn saw, but without being converted, the Divine unity proclaimed victoriously in the midst of its obsolete pantheon. Islamism, in a word, won over to Monotheism almost all the heathen whom Christianity had not yet converted . finishing its mission in our days by the conquest of Africa , which is becoming at this time almost wholly Mussulman. With a few exceptions, of secondary importance, the world has been thus conquered entire by the monotheistic apostleship of the Semites. sect. ing It is Do we mean to say that the Indo-European nations, in adoptthe Semitic dogma, have completely given up their own individuality? No indeed. In adopting the Semitic religion, we have stood modified it profoundly. Christianity, as popularly under- , is in reality our work. Primitive Christianity, consisting essentially of the apocalyptic belief in a Kingdom of God, which was about to come ; Christianity as it existed in the mind of a St. James, of a Papias, —was very different from our Christianity, incumbered with metaphysics by the Greek Fathers and with scholasticism by the Middle Ages, and by the progress of modern 12188 ERNEST RENAN times reduced to a teaching of morality and charity. The victory of Christianity was secured only when it broke completely its Jewish shell, when it became again what it had been in the lofty purpose of its founder, -a creation released from the narrow trammels of the Semitic mind. This is so true that the Jews and Mussulmans feel only aversion to this religion, the sister of their own, but which in the hands of another race has clothed itself with an exquisite poetry, with a delicious attire of romantic legends. Refined, sensitive, imaginative souls, such as the author of the ' Imitation, ' the mystics of the Middle Ages, and the saints in general, professed a religion which had indeed sprung from the Semitic genius, but had been transformed from its very foundation by the genius of modern nations, especially of the Celts and Germans. That depth of sentimentalism , that species of religious languor of a Francis d'Assisi, of a Fra Angelico, were the precise opposite of the Semitic genius, which is essentially hard and dry. As regards the future, gentlemen, I see in it more and more the triumph of the Indo- European genius. Since the sixteenth century an immense event, until then undecided, has been coming out with striking vigor. It is the definitive victory of Europe, the accomplishment of this old Semitic proverb : " Let God increase Japhet, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan (Cham ?) be his servant. " Till that time the Semitic spirit had been master on its soil. The Mussulman East defeated the West ; had better arms and a better political system ; sent it riches, knowledge, civilization. Henceforward the parts are changed. European genius rises with peerless grandeur ; Islamism, on the contrary, is slowly decomposing, -in our days it is falling with a crash . At the present time, the essential condition of a diffused civilization is the destruction of the peculiarly Semitic element, the destruction of the theocratic power of Islamism ; consequently the destruction of Islamism itself : for Islamism can exist only as an official religion ; as soon as it shall be reduced to the state of a free personal religion , it will perish. Islamism is not merely a State religion, as Catholicism was in France under Louis XIV. , as it still is in Spain : it is religion excluding the State ; it is an organization the type of which, in Europe, the Pontifical States alone exhibited . There is the endless strife ; the strife which will cease only when the last son of Ishmael shall have ERNEST RENAN 12189 died of misery, or shall have been driven by terror into the depths of the desert. Islam completely negatives Europe ; Islam is fanaticism, such as Spain under Philip II . and Italy under Pius V. have scarcely known ; Islam is contempt for science, suppression of civil society ; it is the appalling simplicity of the Semitic spirit cramping the human intellect, closing it against every delicate thought, every fine feeling, every rational inquiry, to confront it with an eternal repetition : -God is God. The future, gentlemen, belongs then to Europe, and to Europe alone . Europe will conquer the world ; and spread through it her religion, which is law, liberty, respect for man, -the belief that there is something Divine in the heart of humanity. In all departments, progress for the Indo- European people will consist in departing farther and farther from the Semitic spirit. Our religion will become less and less Jewish ; more and more will it reject all political organizations as connected with the affairs of the soul. It will become the religion of the heart, the innermost poetry of every soul. In ethics we shall cultivate a refinement unknown to the austere natures of the Old Alliance ; we shall become more and more Christian. In polity we shall reconcile things which the Semitic nations have always ignored, — liberty and a strong State organization . From poetry we shall demand expression for that instinct of the infinite which is at our joy and our torment, -at all events our greatness. From philosophy, instead of the absolute of the scholastics, wel shall demand delicate studies on the general system of the unisubtletyIn everything we shall seek after fine distinctions, - instead of dogmatism, the relative in place of the absoThere is the future, as I anticipate it, if the future is to two once verse. lute . belong to progress . Shall we attain a clearer view of the destiny of man and his relations with the infinite ? Shall we know more surely the law of the origin of beings , the nature of conscience , what is life and personality ? Without lapsing into credulity , and still persisting in its path of positive philosophy , will the world recover its joy, its ardor , its hope , its deeper thoughts ? Will existence become again worth the possessing , and will the man who believes in duty find in duty his reward ? This science to which we consecrate our life, will it render back to us what we sacrifice to it ? I know not. But this is certain , that in seeking out truth by scientific methods we shall have done our duty . If truth be cheerless , we shall at least have the consolation of --- 12190 ERNEST RENAN having honestly discovered it : we may say that we deserved to find it more consoling, -still, we will bear this witness in our hearts, that we have been thoroughly sincere. To tell the truth, I cannot dwell on such thoughts. History demonstrates that there is in human nature a transcendent instinct that urges it towards a nobler aim. The development of man is inexplicable on the hypothesis that man is only a being with an already finished destiny, virtue only a refined egotism, religion but a chimera. Let us work on, then, gentlemen. Whatever the author of Ecclesiastes may say in a moment of discouragement, science is not " the meanest occupation that God has given to the sons of men. " It is the best. If all be vanity, he who has consecrated his life to truth will be no more duped than others. If all the good and true be real, - and we are sure that they are, their seeker and lover will have unquestionably breathed the finest spirit. We shall not meet again, gentlemen. At my next lecture, I shall plunge into Hebraic philology, where the greater number of you will not follow me. But I pray those who are young, and to whom I may be allowed to offer a word of counsel, to favor me with their attention. The impulse which is in you, and which has shown itself more than once during this lecture in a manner so honorable to me, is praiseworthy in its principle and of good promise ; but do not let it degenerate into frivolous activity. Direct your attention to solid studies ; believe that the liberal thing par excellence is cultivation of mind, nobleness of heart, independence of judgment. Prepare for our country generations ripe for all that makes the glory and the ornament of life . Beware of rash enthusiasms ; and remember that liberty is won only by earnestness, respect for ourselves and others, devotion to the commonweal, and to the special work that each of us in this world is called upon to establish or to continue. ERNEST RENAN 12191 IF THE PERSISTENCE OF THE CELTIC RACE From ' La Poésie des Races Celtiques ' THE excellence of races were to be decided by their purity of blood and inviolability of character, it inust be confessed that none would be able to vie with the nobility of the still existing remnants of the Celtic race. No human family has ever lived more isolated from the world, and remained more pure from all foreign mixture. Driven by conquests to half- forgotten islands and peninsulas, it has raised an insurmountable barrier to all outside influence : it has depended upon itself for everything, and has drawn its life from its own sources. Hence this dominant individuality, this hate of the foreign element, which even to our day has been the distinguishing trait of the Celtic races. The civilization of Rome hardly touched them, and left but little mark upon them. The Germanic invasion drove them back but did not absorb them. At the present moment they are resisting another and even more dangerous invasion, that of modern civilization, so destructive to local distinctions and national types. Ireland especially (and this may be the secret of her irremedia- ble can weakness) is the only European country where the native Show the title of his descent, and can point out with certitude, even as far back as the prehistoric shadows, the race from which he sprang. It is in this retired life , in this defiance of all outside influence, that we must seek the explanation of the principal traits of the Celtic racial character. It has all the faults and all the feeling qualities of the solitary man : at once proud and timid, strong in and feeble in action ; at home free and open, away from home awkward and shy. It distrusts the stranger because it sees in him a being more subtle than itself, seeking to impose on its simplicity. Indifferent to the admiration of others , it asks only thing, that it be left alone. It is essentially a domestic one - race , made for family life and the joys of home. not It is easily seen that natures so strongly concentrated would be of a kind to present one of those brilliant developments that impress the world with the sudden ascendency of a people ; and that is undoubtedly why the Cymric race has always played a subordinate part. Lacking in the power to reach out, strange ERNEST RENAN 12192 to all instincts of aggression and conquest, not caring to have its thought take the lead in the world outside, it has known only how to retreat into the least essential space ; and then, driven into this last corner, meet its enemies with invincible resistance. Even its fidelity has been merely a wasted devotion . Hard to conquer, and always behind time, it is faithful to its conquerors when the latter have ceased being faithful to themselves. It was the last to surrender its religious independence to Rome, and it has become the greatest stronghold of Catholicism ; it was the last in France to surrender its political independence to the king, and it has given the world the last royalists. Thus the Celtic race has spent itself resisting the age and defending desperate causes. It would seem that at no time has it had any gift for political life : the sense of family has stifled all attempts at a larger organization. It would seem also that the peoples of which it is composed are not in themselves open to progress. Life is to them a fixed condition which it is not in the power of man to change. Gifted with but little initiative power, too apt to look upon themselves as minors under tutelage, they are inclined to believe in fatality and to resign themselves to it. To see it so submissive to God, one would hardly believe this race to be the daughter of Japhet. Hence the reason of its sadness. Take the songs of its bard of the sixteenth century : the defeats they bewail are more than the victories they glorify. Its history is but one long complaint; it still remembers its exile, its flights over the waters. If at times it seems to awaken into glad life, a tear soon sparkles behind its smile ; it does not know that strange forgetfulness of human life and its vicissitudes which we call gayety. Its songs of joy end in elegies : nothing approaches the delightful sadness of its national melodies ; one is tempted to call them dews from heaven, which, falling on the soul drop by drop, sink into it like memories of another world. One never feels more completely the secret delights of consciousness, - those poetic memories where all the sensations of life meet at once, so vague, so deep, so penetrating, that were they to last but a moment longer one would die thereof, without being able to say whether it were of bitter sorrow or of tenderness. The infinite delicacy of sentiment which characterizes the Celtic race is intimately connected with its necessity of concentration . Undemonstrative natures are nearly always those that ERNEST RENAN 12193 feel most intensely ; the deeper the sentiment, the less can it express itself. Hence this charming modesty, this something, as it were, veiled, serious, exquisite, -equally far from the rhetoric of sentiment, too familiar in the Latin races, and from the conscious naïveté of Germany, — which expresses itself in so admirable a way in the songs published by M. de la Villemarqué. The apparent reserve of the Celtic peoples, so often taken for coldness, comes from this timidity of soul which makes them think that a feeling loses half its worth when it is expressed, and that the heart must have no audience beside itself. If it were permissible to give nations a sex as we do individuals, we should unhesitatingly say that the Celtic race, especially taken in its Cymric and Breton branches, is an essentially feminine race. No human family has, I believe, brought so much mystery into love. No other has had a more delicate conception of the ideal of . woman, and has been more dominated thereby. It is a sort of intoxication , a madness, a dizziness. Read the strange Mabinogion of Pérédur, or its . French imitation Parceval the Gaul : these pages are, so to speak, soft with feminine sentiment. Woman appears therein like a sort of vague vision, something between man and the supernatural world. I know of no literature which offers anything analogous. Compare Genevra and Isolde with the Scandinavian furies Gudrun and Krimhilde, and you will admit that woman, as chivalry has conceived her, — this ideal of tenderness and beauty set up as the supreme end of life, is neither a classic, nor a Christian, nor a Germanic creation, but truly Celtic. - The power of imagination is almost always in proportion to the concentration of feeling and to the lack of events in outward life . The very limitation of the imagination of Greece and Italy comes from the easy self- expression of the peoples of the South, with whom the soul, spent upon the outside world, has very little self-reflection . Compared with classic imagination, Celtic imagination is really the infinite compared to the finite. In the beautiful Mabinogion of The Dream ' of Maxen Wledig, the emperor Maxime sees in his dream a young girl so beautiful that on awakening he declares that he cannot live without her. For several years his ambassadors travel through the world to find her for him. She is finally discovered in Bretagne. This is what the Celtic race did : it grew tired of taking its dreams for realities, and running after beautiful visions. The essential element XXI-763 CL· 12194 ERNEST RENAN of Celtic poetic life is adventure, -that is to say, the pursuit of the unknown, a never-ending hunt after the always fleeing object of desire. This is what St. Brandan dreamed on the other side of the waters ; this is what Pérédur sought in his mystic chivalry; this is what the knight Owenn expected of his subterranean peregrinations. This race wants the infinite ; it is thirsting for it, it seeks it at all hazards, beyond the grave, beyond hell. The essential fault of the Breton people -the leaning toward drink, a fault which according to the traditions of the sixteenth century was the cause of its disasters— comes from this invincible need of illusion. Do not say that it is an appetite for gross pleasures, for, aside from this, there never was a people more sober and free from sensuality ; no, the Bretons sought in the hydromel what Owenn, St. Brandan, and Pérédur, sought in their way, - the vision of the invisible world. Even to-day, in Ireland, drunkenness is part of all patronal feasts, -that is to say, of the feasts which have best preserved their national and popular character. Hence this profound sentiment of the future, and the eternal destiny of its race, which has always upheld the Cymry, and makes it appear young still beside its aged conquerors. Hence this dogma of the resurrection of heroes, which seems to have been one of those most difficult for Christianity to uproot. Hence this Celtic belief in the coming of a Messiah (' messianisme ') , this belief in a future which will restore the Cymry and deliver it from its oppressors, like the mysterious Leminok which Merlin has promised them, the Lez- Breiz of the Armoricans, the Arthur of the Gauls. The hand which raises itself out of the lake when Arthur's sword falls in, which seizes it and brandishes it three times, is the hope of the Celtic races. Little peoples gifted with imagination do usually thus take their revenge over those who conquer them. Feeling strong within and feeble without, they protest, they grow inspired : and such a struggle, strengthening their forces tenfold, makes them capable of miracles. Almost all great appeals to the supernatural are due to people hoping against all hope. Who can say what has in our days been fermenting in the heart of that most obstinate and most helpless of nations, Poland ? Israel humiliated dreamt of the spiritual conquest of the world, and succeeded . Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature by Olga Flinch. 12195 FRITZ REUTER ( 1810-1874) MONG the novelists of the German realistic school, Fritz Reuter occupies the first place. No one of them has come nearer than he to the heart of life, nor understood with greater sympathy the lives of the people, in whose apparently monotonous and commonplace conditions he found endless dramatic possibilities of humor and pathos. He is the novelist of the proletariat ; his works are steeped in the clear sunshine of the working-day world. With the romantic moonshine of an artificial nobility he had nothing to do. His life was favorable for the fostering of his peculiar genius. He was born on the 7th of November, 1810, at Stavenhagen in Mecklenburg-Schwerin : his boyhood was passed in this sleepy, out- of-the-way German town, among such types of people as he has immortalized in his novels. His father was burgomaster and sheriff of the place, and was also a farmer; he purposed however that his son should study law. Until his fourteenth year the boy was educated at home with private tutors ; then he entered the gymnasium at Friedland in Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and afterwards passed through the higher classes of the gymnasium at Parchim. In 1831 he attended lectures on jurisprudence at the University of Rostock, going the following year to the University of Jena, where he became a member of the Burschenschaft Germania. The government, alarmed by the revolutionary agitation of 1830, was on the lookout for undue exhibitions of patriotism among the student body. The riot at Frankfort in 1833 served as a pretext for making arrests. Reuter was seized, on no other evidence of guilt than that of wearing the German colors, was tried and condemned to death for high treason. This sentence was commuted by King Frederick William III. to thirty years' . imprisonment. Reuter was taken from one Prussian fortress to another ; in 1838, through the intervention of the Grand-Duke of Mecklenburg, he was delivered over to the authorities of his native State. A two-years' imprisonment in FRITZ REUTER 12196 FRITZ REUTER the fortress of Dömitz followed. In 1840, Frederick William IV. having proclaimed an amnesty after his accession, Reuter was set . free. Severe as his experiences had been, they had ripened him and prepared him for his life's work, though at that time he was scarcely aware of his gifts. He went to Heidelberg to resume his legal studies ; but the death of his father compelled his return to Stavenhagen, where he undertook the charge of the farm. During this period he gained that practical knowledge of agriculture and of the farmer's life which he has interwoven in his masterpiece, My Apprenticeship on the Farm . In 1850 he was obliged, however, to abandon farming : removing to Sreptow in Pomerania, he became a private tutor, and soon afterwards married Luise Kunze, the daughter of a clergyman. His life at this time was full of drudgery ; but he found occasion to write a number of tales and anecdotes in prose and verse, which were published in 1853 in a volume with the title ' Läuschen un Rimels ' (Funny Tales and Nonsense Rhymes) . These were written in Platt Deutsch, the Low German which is so well adapted for the expression of simple and natural feeling, and for the portrayal of the concrete life of the people. Reuter was possessed with the spirit of homeliness, and he used the hearty dialect with consummate tact to embody this spirit. The great success of his first book led him to write and publish another, ' Polterabendgedichte ' (Nuptial-Eve Stories) . In 1855 appeared ' De Reis nah Belligen ' (An Account of a Journey to Belgium), a humorous poem relating the adventures of a number of Mecklenburg peasants, who travel to Belgium for the sake of learning the secrets of an advanced civilization. wwwwxxxxx In 1856 Reuter removed to Neubrandenburg, devoting himself entirely to literary work. In 1858 he published ' Kein Hüsung, ' a poem of village life ; in 1859 ' Hanne Nüte un de Lüdde Pudel, ' considered his masterpiece in verse ; and in 1861 Schurr-Murr, ' a collection of tales. Soon afterwards he began the publication of Olle Kamellen, ' literally Old Camomile-Flowers, ' meaning " old tales, old recollections , » a series which was to include his best work. The first, 'Zwei Lustige Geschichte ' (Two Pleasant Stories) , included Wo aus ik tau ' ne Fru kamm, ' a little skit of how he wooed his wife ; and 'Ut de Franzosentid ' (In the Year '13 ) , a novel of the time of the uprising of the German people against Napoleon. The scenes are laid in Stavenhagen, Reuter's native town ; and its characters are drawn from real life. This work has had enormous popularity in Europe and America. No. 2 of the series, ' Ut Mine Festungstid ' (My Imprisonment), was founded on Reuter's own experience as a prisoner. Nos. 3 , 4, and 5 were embodied in ' Ut Mine Stromtid ' (My Apprenticeship on the Farm) ; No. 6, the last of the series, was entitled 'Dörchläuchting. ' FRITZ REUTER 12197 Of these novels the greatest is ' Ut Mine Stromtid. ' On it is based Reuter's claim of being the most eminent realist of his country. Nothing could be more true to life than this straightforward story of Mecklenburg farmers, of their quiet simple lives, relieved by homely fun and homely pathos. The light of Reuter's genius does not serve as a halo to idealize lowly existence, after the manner of sentimentalists : like penetrative daylight it reveals the little details which make up the picture. He is masterful in his drawing of character. His men and women are persons whom the reader knows, and loves or hates : so abundant is their life, so impressive their personality. The good-hearted comical bailiff Bräsig ; the twins Mina and Lina ; Parson Behrens and his bustling, loving little wife ; the stripling Fred Triddelfitz ; the rascal Pomuchelskopp, - are from the world Reuter knew best. He paints the sunshine and shadow of their lives with unrivaled delicacy of touch. The humor of Triddelfitz's love- making, the pathos of the old pastor's death in his quiet home, are consummate in truthfulness. The strong humanity of the novel places it in the first rank. - After a journey to the East, Reuter published ' Die Montechi und Capuleti in Konstantinopel ' ; but the book shows plainly that the author was out of his element. He died in 1874. In 1875 appeared his ' Nachgelassene Schriften ' (Posthumous Works) in two volumes, supplementing the edition of his writings in thirteen volumes which had been published between 1863 and 1868. • E THE OLD PARSON'S DEATH From My Apprenticeship on the Farm ' VERY house in the parish had its share of happiness, each of them after its kind; but one house formed an exception to this rule, although it used to have its full share. In winter round the fireside, and in summer under the great limetree, or in the arbor in the garden, there always used to be a calm peaceful happiness, in which the child Louisa, as she played about the old house and grounds, and little Mrs. Behrens, who ruled all things duster in hand, had had part ; and also the good old clergyman, who had now done with all earthly things forPeace had taken leave of the house, and had gone forth calmly to the place from whence she came ; and during that time of illness, care and sorrow had taken up their abode there, deepening with the growing weakness of the good old man. ever. He 12198 FRITZ REUTER did not lie long in bed, and had no particular illness ; so that Dr. Strump of Rahnstädt could not find amongst all the three thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven diseases of which he knew, one that suited the present case. Peace seemed to have laid her hand on the old man's head in blessing, and to have said to him: " I am going to leave thee, but only for a short time. I shall afterwards return to thy Regina. Thou needst me no more, because thou hast had me in thy heart during all the long years thou hast fought the good fight of faith. Now sleep softly : thou must needs be tired. » ― And he was tired, — very tired. His wife had laid him on the sofa under the pictures, that he might look out at the window as much as he liked ; Louisa had covered him comfortably with rugs and shawls : and then they had both left the room softly, that he might rest undisturbed. Out of doors the first flakes of snow were falling slowly, slowly, from the sky; it was as quiet and still outside as within his heart : and he felt as if the blessing of Christ were resting upon him. No one saw it, but his Regina was the first to find it out. He rose, and pushing the large arm-chair up to the cupboard, opened the door, and sitting down, began to examine the treasures that he had kept as relics of the past. Some of them had belonged to his father, and some to his mother : they were all reminiscences of what he had loved. This cupboard was the place where he had stowed away whatever reminded him of all the chief events of his life ; and they had become relics, the sight of which did him good when he was down-hearted. They were not preserved in crystal vessels or in embroidered cases, but were simply placed on the shelf, and kept there to be looked at whenever he wanted to see them. When he felt low and sad, it did him good to take out these relics and to live over again in thought the happy days of which they reminded him; and he never closed the cupboard door without gaining strength and courage, or without thanking God silently for his many blessings. There lay the Bible his father had given him when he was a boy; the beautiful glass vase his old college friend had sent him; the pocket-book his Regina had worked for him during their engagement ; the shell which a sailor had sent him in token of his gratitude for having been shown the way to become a better man; the pieces of paper on which Louisa, Mina, and Lina had written their Christmas and New-Year's Day messages of affection, -as also some of their FRITZ REUTER 12199 earlier bits of handiwork ; the withered myrtle wreath his wife had worn on her wedding day; the large pictorial Bible with the silver clasps, that Hawermann had given him on his seventieth birthday, and the silver-mounted meerschaum that Bräsig had given him on the same occasion ; and down below on the lowest shelf were three pairs of shoes, -the shoes that Louisa, Regina, and he had worn when they first entered the parsonage. Old shoes are not beautiful in themselves, but the memories attached to these made them beautiful in his eyes ; so he took them out of the cupboard, and laid them down by his side, and then, placing his first Bible on his knee, he opened it at our Lord's Sermon on the Mount, and began to read . No one saw him, but that was not necessary ; and his Regina knew when it was all over. He grew very tired ; and resting his head in the corner of the great chair, fell asleep like a little child. And so they found him when they came back. Mrs. Behrens seated herself on the arm of his chair, clasped him in her arms, closed his eyes, and then, resting her head against his, wept silently. Louisa knelt at his feet, and laying her folded hands on his knee, looked with tearful eyes at the two quiet faces that were so dear to her. Then Mrs. Behrens rose, and folding down the leaf of the Bible, drew it softly out of her husband's hand; and Louisa also rose, and threw her arms round her fostermother's neck. They both wept long and passionately; till at last, when it was growing dusk, Mrs. Behrens replaced the shoes in the cupboard, saying as she did so, " I bless the day when we came to this house together; " and while laying Louisa's little shoes beside them, she added, "And I bless the day when the child came to us. She then closed the cupboard door. The good old clergyman was buried three days later in the piece of ground he had long ago sought out for his last restingplace ; and any one standing by the grave which was lighted by the earliest rays of the morning sun, might easily see into the parlor in the parsonage-house. The people who had been at the funeral were all gone home, and Hawermann had also been obliged to go ; but Uncle Bräsig, who had spent the day at the parsonage, helping his friends in every possible way, had announced his intention of remaining for the night. Seeing the two women standing arm-in- arm at the window, buried in sad thought, he slipped quietly up- stairs to 12200 FRITZ REUTER his bedroom, and going to the window looked sorrowfully down into the church-yard, where the newly made grave showed distinctly against the white snow surrounding it. He thought of the good man who lay there, and who had so often helped him with kindness and advice ; and he swore to himself that he would be a faithful friend to Mrs. Behrens. Down-stairs the two sadhearted women were gazing at the same grave, and silently vowing to show each other all the love and tenderness that he who was gone from them had been wont to bestow. Little Mrs. Behrens thanked God and her husband for the comforter she had in her adopted daughter, whom she held in her arms, and whose smooth hair she stroked as she kissed her lovingly. Louisa prayed that God would bless the lessons she had learned from her foster- father, and would give her strength to be a good and faithful daughter to the kind woman who had been as a mother to her. New-made graves may be likened to flower-beds in which the gardener puts his rarest and most beautiful plants ; but alas, ill weeds sometimes take root there also. I THE MILLER AND THE JUSTICE From In the Year ' 13 ' WAS baptized, and had godfathers -four of them ; and if my godfathers were still alive, and walked through the streets with me, people would stop and say, " Look, what fine fellows ! You won't see many such. " They were indeed godfathers ! And one of them was a head taller than the others, and towered above them as Saul did above his brethren. This was old Amtshauptmann Weber. He used to wear a well-brushed blue coat, yellowish trousers, and well-blacked boots ; and his face was so marked by the small-pox that it looked as if the Devil had been threshing his peas on it , or as if he had sat down upon his face on a cane-bottomed chair. On his broad forehead there stood written, " Not the fear of Man, but the fear of God. " And he was the right man in the right place. About eleven o'clock in the morning he might be seen sitting in an arm-chair in the middle of the room, whilst his wife fastened a napkin under his chin, put the powder on his hair, tied it behind, and twisted it into a neat pigtail . FRITZ REUTER 12201 When the old gentleman walked up and down under the shade of the chestnut-trees at noon, his little rogue of a pigtail wagged merrily, and nodded over the collar of his blue coat, as if it wanted to say to any one who would listen : " Yes ; look, old fellow! What do you think of me ? I am only the tip of his hair; and if I wag so comically out here, you may fancy how merry it must be inside his head. " When I took him a message from my father, and managed to give it straight off, he would pat me on the head, and then say: " Now, away with you, boy. Off like a shot ! When you pull the trigger, the gun mustn't hang fire, but must go off like a flash of lightning. Run to Ma'm'selle Westphalen, and ask her for an apple. " To my father he would say : " Well, friend , what do you think ? Are you not glad that you have a son ? Boys are much better than girls : girls are always fretting and crying. Thank God, I have a boy too, -my Joe. What say you, eh ? " My father told my mother. " Do you know, " said he, " what the old Amtshauptmann says ? boys are better than girls. ” Now, I was in the room at the time, and overheard this ; and of course I said to myself : " My godfather is always right : boys are better than girls, and every one should have his deserts. So I took the large piece of plum-cake for myself, and gave my sister the small one, and thought not a little of myself, for I knew now that I was the larger half of the apple. not to last: the tables were to be turned. But this was One day it was at the time when the rascally French had just come back from Russia, and everything was in commotionsome one knocked at the Herr Amtshauptmann's door. « Come in, " cried the old gentleman ; and in came old Miller Voss of Gielow, ducking his head nearly down to the ground by way of a bow. " Good afternoon, Herr Amtshauptmann, " said he. " Good morning, miller. " Now, though the one said " good afternoon, " and the other said " good morning, " each was right from his own point of view: for the miller got up at four o'clock in the morning, and with him it was afternoon ; while with the Amtshauptmann it was still early in the morning, as he did not rise until eleven. " What is it, miller ? » " Herr Amtshauptmann, I've come to you about a weighty I'll tell you what it is : I want to be made a bankrupt. ” matter. 12202 FRITZ REUTER "What, miller ! » " I want to be made a bankrupt, Herr Amtshauptmann. " " Hm -hm, " muttered the Amtshauptmann, " that's an ugly business. " And he paced up and down the room scratching his head. " How long have you been at the bailiwick of Stemhagen ?" " Three-and-thirty years, come midsummer. " " Hm -hm, " again muttered the Amtshauptmann: " and how old are you, miller ? » " Come peas-harvest five-and- sixty, or maybe six-and-sixty : for as to our old Pastor Hammerschmidt, he wasn't much given to writing, and didn't trouble his head about parish registers ; and the Frau Pastor, who made the entries, -i' faith she had a deal to do besides, -only attended to them every three years, so that there might be enough to make it worth while, and then some fine afternoon she would go through the village and write down the children's ages-but more according to height and size than to what they really were ; and my mother always said she had cut a year from me because I was small and weakly. But less than five-and- sixty I'm not. I am sure of that. " During this speech the Amtshauptmann had kept walking up and down the room, listening with only one ear ; he now stood still before the miller, looked straight into his eyes, and said sharply, " Then, Miller Voss, you're much too old for anything of the kind. " " How so, Herr ? " exclaimed the poor miller, quite cast down. «< Bankruptcy is a hard matter: at your age you could not carry it through. " " Do you think so, Herr ? " " Yes, I do. We are both too old for it . We must leave such things to younger people. What do you think folks would say if I were to get myself declared bankrupt ? Why, they would say, of course, the old Amtshauptmann up at the Schloss had gone quite mad! And, " added he, laying his hand gently on the miller's shoulder, " they would be right, Miller Voss. What say you, eh? » The miller looked down at the toes of his boots, and scratched his head: " It's true, Herr. " " Tell me, " said the old gentleman, patting him kindly on the shoulder, " where does the shoe pinch ? What is troubling you?" " Troubling, say you! Herr Amtshauptmann, " shouted the miller, clapping his hand to the side of his head as if a wasp FRITZ REUTER 12203 had stung him, " troubling !, torturing, you mean. Torturing! That Jew! that cursed Jew! and then the lawsuit, Herr Amtshauptmann, the cursed lawsuit ! » " Look you, miller, that's another of your follies, -entangling yourself at your age in a lawsuit. " " True enough, Herr : but when I began it I was in my prime, and thought to be able to fight it out ; now I see clear enough that your lawsuit has a longer breath than an honest miller. " " But I think it is coming to an end now. " " Yes, Herr Amtshauptmann, and then I shall be hard up; for my affairs are in a bad way. The lawyers have muddled them ; and as for my uncle, old Joe Voss, -why, his son, who will soon get possession of all, is a downright vagabond, and they say he's sworn a great oath to oust me from the Borcherts Inn at Malchin. But I have the right on my side, Herr Amtshauptmann, and how I got into this lawsuit I don't know to this day ; for old Frau Borcherts while she was still alive - she was the aunt of my mother's sister's daughter -and Joe Voss -he was my cousin " I know the story, " interrupted the Amtshauptmann ; " and if you would follow my advice you would make it up. " " But I can't, Herr : for Joe Voss's rascally son wouldn't be satisfied with less than half the money; and if I pay that I shall be a beggar. No, Herr Amtshauptmann, it may go as it will ; but one thing I'm resolved on : I won't give in though I go to prison for it. Is a ruffian like that, who struts about with his father's money in his pocket, spending it right and left, and who doesn't know what it is to have to keep up a house in these hard times, -and who's never had his cattle carried off by those cursed . French, nor his horses stolen out of the stable, nor his house plundered, —is such a rascal as that to get the better of me ? By your leave, Herr, I could kick the fellow. " " Miller Voss, gently, Miller Voss, " said the old gentleman : " the lawsuit will come to an end some time or other. It is going on. " «< Going, Herr Amtshauptmann ? It's flying, as the Devil said when he tied the Bible to his whip and swung it around his head. " " True, true, Miller Voss ; but at present you're not much pressed. " 12204 FRITZ REUTER " Pressed ? Why, I'm fixed in a vise ―- in a vise ― and say! That Jew, Herr Amtshauptmann, that thrice-cursed Jew! " " What Jew is it ?" asked the Herr Amtshauptmann; and the miller twirls his hat between his finger and thumb, looks cautiously round to see that no one is listening, draws closer to the old gentleman, and laying a finger on his lips, whispers, " Itzig, Herr Amtshauptmann. " Whew! " said the old Herr. up with that fellow ? " " How came you to be mixed " Herr Amtshauptmann, how came the ass to have long ears ? Some go to gather wild strawberries, and get stung by nettles. The sexton of Gägelow thought his wheelbarrow was full of holy angels, and when he had got to the top of the mountain, and expected to see them fly up to heaven, the Devil's grandmother was sitting in the wheelbarrow, and she grinned at him and said, 'Neighbor, we shall meet again ! ' In my. troubles, when the enemy had taken everything I had, I borrowed two hundred. thalers from him ; and for the last two years I have been obliged to renew the bill from term to term, and the debt has crept up to five hundred thalers, and the day after to-morrow I shall be forced to pay it. " " But, miller, did you sign ? » " Yes, Herr Amtshauptmann. >>>> " Then you must pay. What's written is written. " " But, Herr Amtshauptmann, I thought -" " It can't be helped, miller. What's written is written . " " But the Jew— ? ” " Miller, what's written is written. " " Then, Herr Amtshauptmann, what shall I do ? " The old gentleman began again to walk backwards and forwards in the room, tapping his forehead. At last he stopped, looked earnestly in the miller's face, and said , " Miller, young people get out of such difficulties better than old ones : send me one of your boys. " — The old miller looked once more at the toes of his boots, and then turning his face away, said in a tone which went straight to the old Amtshauptmann's heart, " Sir, whom shall I send ? My Joe was ground to death in the mill ; and Karl was carried off to Russia by the French last year, and he's not come back. " " Miller, " replied the old Amtshauptmann, patting him on the back, " have you then no children at all ? " FRITZ REUTER 12205 " I have, " said he, wiping a tear from his eye, " a little girl left. " " Well, miller, I am not particularly fond of girls myself: they are always fretting and crying. " " That's true, sir : they are always fretting and crying. ” " And they can be of no use in a matter like this, miller. " " But what will happen to me then ?" " The Jew will put in an execution, and will take away everything » " Well, Herr Amtshauptmann, the French have done that twice already, so the Jew may as well try it now. At any rate he will leave the millstone behind ; and you think I'm too old to be made bankrupt? " "Yes, miller, I fear so. " "Well then, good day, Herr Amtshauptmann ; " and so saying he went away. 12206 JAMES FORD RHODES (1848-) HE historical work of James Ford Rhodes proves, what is oftentimes denied, that it is possible to record fully a contemporaneous period, with impartiality and with due regard to perspective. In his ' History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 ' he has not only done this : he has treated one of the most intricate periods in the history of this country, or of any country, with a degree of insight into its complex forces not always attained by historians of remoter events, from which the mists of JAMES FORD RHODES partisanship have faded. The treatment of the Civil War, and of the causes which led to it, requires delicate but firm handling. It demands of the historian not alone penetrative scholarship : for its satisfactory accomplishment, he must be inspired with that spirit of Americanism which is in no sense local or partisan. Mr. Rhodes has performed his difficult task well, because he is constantly guided by a luminous patriot- ism . His historical acumen is synonymous with the American temper. His early training fostered those quali ties by which he was developed into an American historian. He was born in Cleve land, Ohio, on May 1st, 1848, of parents who had come from New England. His father, who was engaged in the coal and iron business. was a man of strong character and of decided opinions, a Democrat, and a kinsman of Stephen A. Douglas, whose printed speeches in the Congressional Globe were read eagerly by James Ford Rhodes, then a boy of ten. It was his good fortune to be constantly under the guidance of those whose interest in public affairs was deep and vital. When the Civil War broke out, his teacher in the Cleveland High School accustomed the scholars to read aloud in turn every morning the political news of the day, explaining to them that they were living in times fraught with history. In 1865, Mr. Rhodes, who had already shown his preference for history and literature over the classics and mathematics, entered as a special student in the JAMES FORD RHODES 12207 University of the City of New York. There he devoted himself to historical work under Professor Benjamin N. Martin, and to science under John W. Draper. Under Professor Martin, his enthusiasm for history was further awakened. His text-books became guide- books ; especially Buckle's great ' History of Civilization, ' which first inspired him with the ambition to become himself a historian. The following year he entered a university in Chicago, where he studied metaphysics and rhetoric, and read largely in the works of Sir William Hamilton, Mill, McCosh, and Herbert Spencer. In 1867 he went to Paris, with a mind keenly alert, through training and influencé, to political situations and conditions. The spectacle of the Second Empire reinforced his democracy, and deepened his love of civil liberty. His studies of the conditions then existing in France led to his becoming the Paris correspondent of the Chicago Times. About this time it became evident to him that he was expected to engage in his father's business, so he put aside for the time his dream of a literary career ; but before returning to the United States he attended lectures at the Collège de France, going afterwards to Berlin to study iron metallurgy under Dr. Wedding ; he further prepared himself for his new interests by making a tour of the iron and steel works of Western Germany, and of South Wales, England, and Scotland. In 1868 he entered into business life . In the following year he was obliged to travel extensively through the South : he was thus brought in contact with the fermenting forces of a region struggling out of one stage of its existence into another. His desire to write history was re-awakened, and he now ordered his life to that end; accumulating a large historical library, and laboring to render himself financially independent, that he might have time and opportunity in the future for the labors of scholarship. After fifteen years of successful business enterprise, he entered upon his life's work at the end of the year 1885. In 1893 the first two volumes of his great work were issued, and in 1895 the third appeared. It is not yet completed. The period which it covers extends from the Compromise of 1850 to the election of President Cleveland . The first volume deals primarily with slavery, its history, its nature, and its effects upon the political and social development of the United States ; there having been, as Mr. Rhodes states, " no other than a single cause for secession and the war that ensued , -slavery. " The question of State Rights entered into it only incidentally, and if slavery had not existed, could never have precipitated the war ; since the unification of the United States was being constantly effected by the forces of growth. Steam and electricity, immigration, intermarriage, and the multiplying business interests, were constantly obliterating sectional differences, and mold- 12208 JAMES FORD RHODES ing the many into the one by a slow, silent, but organic process. Over the institution of slavery, however, the forces of civilization and progress had no power. They could not make organic use of it, because it was a moral evil, and as a moral evil was directly in the path of honorable national advancement. Mr. Rhodes's discussion of this subject is in the spirit of the patriot rather than of the Northerner ; at the same time, it is impersonal. He is in the sweep of the historical movement, but no prejudice nor blindness disturbs the even course of his record. His book in a sense has written itself, after the manner of history. His scholarship is singularly conscientious and painstaking. He has consulted a vast number of sources, giving special attention to the utterances of the press ; thus recognizing the truth that newspapers, being obliged to say what the public wishes them to say, are as fair indices as may be found of the popular temper. He has verified his statements step by step, with a diligence worthy of Teutonic scholarship ; yet his work is in the best sense popular. It is clear, straightforward, and inspiriting. The quality of inspiration is most clearly manifest in his portraits of such men as Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. His sympathies in every case are not partisan but human. His history, while of great value to his own generation, will fulfill perhaps its greatest mission in revealing to later generations. the living spirit of a time farther and farther removed from their comprehension and their sympathy. DANIEL WEBSTER From History of the United States. Copyright 1892, by James Ford Rhodes T™ wo of the great senatorial triumvirate had spoken ; the Senate and the country had yet to hear the greatest of them all. Daniel Webster spoke on the compromise resolutions the 7th of March. In the course of this work, whenever possible, his precise words have been used, in narration and illustration ; for in intellectual endowment Webster surpassed all of our public No one understood the fundamental principles of our polity better ; no one approached his wonderful power of expression. It seemed that the language of the constitutional lawyer who laid down principles of law that the profound legal mind of Marshall fixed in an immutable judicial decision , and who at the same time could make clear abstruse points and carry conviction to the understanding of men who were untrained in logic or in law, JAMES FORD RHODES 12209 was best fitted to guide us through the maze of constitutional interpretation in which our history abounds. Indeed, the political history of the country for twenty- seven years preceding 1850 might be written as well and fully from the speeches, State papers, and letters of Webster, as the story of the latter days of the Roman republic from the like material of Cicero which has come down to us. As an orator, Webster has been compared in simplicity to Demosthenes and in profundity to Burke. This is the highest praise . The wonderful effect of his oratory is strikingly told by George Ticknor, who, fresh from a long intercourse with the most distinguished men in England and on the Continent, went to hear Webster deliver his Plymouth oration. Ticknor writes : " I was never so excited by public speaking before in my life. Three or four times I thought my temples would burst with the gush of blood ; " and though from his youth an intimate friend of Webster's, he was so impressed that " when I came out I was almost afraid to come near him. It seemed to me as if he was like the mount that might not be touched, and that burned with Thomas Marshall, of Kentucky, heard the reply to Hayne; and when Webster came to the peroration he " listened as to one inspired, and finally thought he could see a halo around the orator's head like what one sees in the old pictures of saints and martyrs. " The diction of Webster was formed by a grateful study of Shakespeare and Milton : through his communion with these masters, his whole soul was thoroughly attuned to the highest thinking and purest harmonies of our literature . He is one of the few orators whose speeches are read as literature. He was our greatest lawyer, yet in a bad cause he was not a good advocate, for he had not the flexibility of mind which made the worse appear the better reason ; but in cases apparently hopeless, with the right on his side, he won imposing triumphs. He was our greatest Secretary of State. He had, said Sumner, " by the successful and masterly negotiation of the treaty of Washington, " earned the title of " Defender of Peace. " The Graces presided at his birth. His growth developed the strong physical constitution with which nature had endowed him, equally with a massive brain. His was a sound mind in a sound body. His physical structure was magnificent, his face handsome; he had the front of Jove himself. " He is , " said Carlyle, XXI-764 12210 JAMES FORD RHODES " a magnificent specimen. As a logic-fencer, or parliamentary Hercules, one would incline to back him at first sight against all the extant world. " "Webster, " said Henry Hallam, " approaches as nearly to the beau ideal of a Republican Senator as any man that I have ever seen in the course of my life. " Josiah Quincy speaks of him as a " figure cast in heroic mold, and which represented the ideal of American manhood. " He was well described by the bard he loved so well : " How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties ! in form and moving, how express and admirable ! in action how like an angel ! in apprehension how like a god ! " On the basis of this extraordinary natural ability was built the superstructure of a systematic education. His devoted father mortgaged the New Hampshire farm to send him to college, and three years of laborious study of law followed the regular course at Dartmouth. Years afterwards he repaid his Alma Mater for her gifts when he pleaded, and not in vain, for her chartered rights in invincible logic before the most solemn tribunal of the country. Intellectually, Webster was a man of slow growth. The zenith of his power was not reached until he made the celebrated reply to Hayne, and he was then forty- eight years old. In union with this grand intellect were social qualities of a high order. His manners were charming, his nature was genial, and he had a quick sense of seemly humor. Carlyle speaks of him as " a dignified, perfectly bred man. ” Harriet Martineau says " he would illuminate an evening by telling stories, cracking jokes, or smoothly discoursing to the perfect felicity of the logi cal part of one's constitution . " Ticknor, who was so impressed with the majestic delivery of the orator, speaks of his being " as gay and playful as a kitten. " The social intercourse between Webster and Lord Ashburton, while they were at work on the Washington treaty, is one of those international amenities that grace the history of diplomacy. This treaty, by which we gained substantial advantages and England made honorable concessions, was not negotiated through stately protocols, but was concluded through a friendly correspondence, and during the interchange of refined social civilities. During this transaction , Ashburton was impressed with "the upright and honorable character " of Webster. As late as 1845 , there might be seen engravings which were an indication of the popular notion that honesty was his cardinal virtue. JAMES FORD RHODES 12211 He had strong domestic feelings. He honored his father, loved his brother, and was devoted to his wife and children ; his affection for his many friends was pure and disinterested. He had during his life a large share of domestic affliction ; and his deep and sincere grief shows that he had a large heart as well as a great head. He had a constant belief in revealed as well as natural religion. His healthy disposition was displayed even in his recreations. He was a true disciple of Izaak Walton, and he also delighted in the chase. Few men have loved nature more. Those grand periods that will never cease to delight lovers of oratory were many of them conned at his Marshfield retreat, where he worshiped the sea and did reverence to the rising sun. After a winter of severe work in his declining years, he gets to Marshfield in May, and writes : " I grow strong every hour. The giants grew strong again by touching the earth : the same effect is produced on me by touching the salt sea shore » The distinctive virtue of Webster was his patriotism. He loved his country as few men have loved it ; he had a profound reverence for the Constitution and its makers. He spoke truly when he said, " I am an American, and I know no locality but America; that is my country ; " and he was deeply in earnest when he gave utterance to the sentiment, " I was bred, indeed I might almost say I was born, in admiration of our political institutions. " Webster's great work was to inspire the country with a strong and enduring national feeling; and he impressed upon the people everywhere, except in the cotton States, a sacred love for the Union. How well his life work was done, was seen less than nine years after he died, in the zealous appeal to arms for the defense of the nation. In the sleepless nights before his death, no sight was so welcome to his eyes as the lantern he saw through the windows, placed at the mast- head of the little shallop, in order that he might discern, fluttering at the mast, the national flag, the emblem of that Union to which he had consecrated the best thoughts and purest efforts of his life . During the last twenty years of his career, Webster had a great desire to be President. Three times he was exceedingly anxious for the Whig nomination, and thought his chances were good for getting it ; but the nomination even never came to him . Indeed, he always overrated the probabilities of his success. He was of that class of statesmen who were stronger before the 12212 JAMES FORD RHODES country than before the political convention. Had he ever been named as his party's choice, he would unquestionably have been a strong candidate ; but he never had the knack of arousing the enthusiasm of the party, which Clay possessed in so eminent degree. Nor did his frequent action independent of political considerations commend him to the men who shaped the action of the party convention. George Ticknor said in 1831 , Webster "belongs to no party; but he has uniformly contended for the great and essential principles of our government on all occasions : " and this was to a large extent true of him during his whole life . His tendency to break away from party trammels was shown more than once during his long career. In 1833, as we have seen, he supported with enthusiasm the Democratic President, and would not assent to the compromise devised by the leader of his party. But the crowning act of independence was when he remained in the cabinet of President Tyler, when all his colleagues resigned. The motive for this action was the desire to complete the negotiation of the Ashburton treaty ; for Webster felt that he of all men was best fitted for that work, and his heart was earnestly enlisted in the effort to remove the difficulties in the way of a peaceful settlement, and to avert a war between England and the United States. His course, although eminently patriotic, was certain to interfere with his political advancement. For he resisted the imperious dictation of Clay, he breasted the popular clamor of his party, and he pursued his own ideas of right despite the fact that he had to encounter the tyranny of public opinion which De Tocqueville has so well described. The French, who make excuses for men of genius, as the Athenians were wont to do, have a proverb, " It belongs to great men to have great defects. " Webster exemplified this maxim. He was fond of wine and brandy, and at times drank deep ; he was not scrupulous in observing the seventh commandment. Though born and reared in .poverty, he had little idea of the value of money and of the sacredness of money obligations. He had no conception of the duty of living within his means, and he was habitually careless in regard to the payment of his debts. His friends more than once discharged his obligations ; besides such assistance, he accepted from them at other times presents of money, but he would have rejected their bounty with scorn had there gone with it an expectation of influencing his public JAMES FORD RHODES 12213 action. This failing was the cause of serious charges being preferred against him. He was accused of being in the pay of the United States Bank, but this was not true ; and he was charged with a corrupt misuse of the secret- service fund while Secretary of State under Tyler, but from this accusation he was fully and fairly exonerated. Considering that it was only by strenuous effort that the son of the New Hampshire farmer obtained the highest rank in political and social life , it is hard to believe that he was constitutionally indolent, as one of his biographers states. When sixtyseven years old, it was his practice to study from five to eleven in the morning; he was in the Supreme Court from eleven to three, and the rest of the day in the Senate until ten in the evening. When he had the time to devote himself to his legal practice, his professional income was large. Such, in the main, if Daniel Webster had died on the morning of the seventh of March, 1850 , would have been the estimate of his character that would have come down to this generation. But his speech in the Senate on that day placed a wide gulf between him and most of the men who were best fitted to transmit his name to posterity. Partisan malignity has magnified his vices, depreciated his virtues, and distorted his motives. WEBSTER'S DEATH From History of the United States. Copyright 1892, by James Ford Rhodes THE HE election of 1852 gave the death-blow to the Whig party: it never entered another Presidential contest. Webster, as well as Clay, died before his party received this crushing defeat, which indeed he had predicted . His physical frame worn out, he went, early in September, home to Marshfield to die. The story of his last days, as told in loving detail by his friend and biographer, is of intense interest to the hero-worshiper ; and has likewise pointed the moral of many a Christian sermon. The conversations of great minds that, unimpaired, deliver themselves at the approach of death to introspection, are, like the most famous of all , the discourse of Socrates in the ' Phædo, ' a boon to human-kind. The mind of Webster was perfectly clear ; and when all earthly striving was over, his true nature shone out 12214 JAMES FORD RHODES in the expression of thoughts that filled his soul. Speaking of the love of nature growing stronger with time, he said : " The man who has not abandoned himself to sensuality feels, as years advance and old age comes on, a greater love of Mother Earth, a greater willingness and even desire to return to her bosom , and mingle with this universal frame of things from which he sprang. " Two weeks before he died, he wrote that he wished inscribed on his monument : " Philosophical argument, especially that drawn from the vastness of the universe in comparison with the apparent insignificance of this globe, has sometimes shaken. my reason for the faith that is within me ; but my heart has assured and reassured me that the Gospel of Jesus Christ must be a Divine reality. " The day before his death, he said with perfect calmness to his physician, " Doctor, you have carried me through the night, I think you will get me through to-day ; I shall die to-night. " The doctor honestly replied , " You are right, sir. " His family, friends , and servants having assembled in his room, he spoke to them " in a strong, full voice, and with his usual modulation and emphasis : ' No man who is not a brute can say that he is not afraid of death. No man can come back from that bourn ; no man can comprehend the will or works of God. That there is a God, all must acknowledge. I see him in all these wondrous works, himself how wondrous ! "" Eloquent in life, Webster was sublime in death. He took leave of his household one by one, addressing to each fitting words of consolation. He wanted to know the gradual steps towards dissolution ; and calmly discussed them with his physician. At one time, awaking from a partial stupor which preceded death, he heard repeated the words of the psalm which has smoothed the death pillow of many a Christian : " Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me." The dying statesman exclaimed, " Yes, ' thy rod -thy staff, ' -but the fact, the fact I want ; " . . . for he was not certain whether the words that had been repeated to him were intended as an intimation that he was already in the dark valley. Waking up again past midnight, and conscious that he was living, he uttered the well-known words, " I still live . " Later he said something about poetry, and his son repeated one of the verses of Gray's ' Elegy. ' He heard it, and smiled . In the early morning Webster's soul went out with the tide . JAMES FORD RHODES 12215 · It was a beautiful Sunday morning of an Indian Summer's day when the sad tidings reached Boston, which came home to nearly all of her citizens as a personal sorrow. In all the cities of the land, mourning emblems were displayed and minute-guns were fired . New York City and Washington grieved for him as for a friend. During the week there were the usual manifestations of mourning by the government at Washington ; the various departments were closed, and the public buildings were draped with emblems of woe. Festal scenes and celebrations were postponed ; and on the day of his funeral, business was suspended in nearly all the cities during the hours when he was borne to his last resting-place. " From east to west, " said Edward Everett, " and from north to south, a voice of lamentation has already gone forth, such as has not echoed through the land since the death of him who was first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen. " By Webster's own request, he had a modest country funeral. The services were conducted in his Marshfield home. The coffin was borne to the tomb by six of the neighboring farmers ; and the multitude followed slowly and reverently. To the Marshfield farmers and Green Harbor fishermen, Webster was a companion and a friend ; by them he was mourned sincerely as one of their own fellowship. It could not be said of him that a prophet is not without honor save in his own country. One man in a plain and rustic garb paid the most eloquent of all tributes to the mighty dead: " Daniel Webster, the world without you will seem lonesome. " A Massachusetts orator of our day has truly said : " Massachusetts smote and broke the heart of Webster, her idol, and then broke her own above his grave. " IMPROVEMENT IN AMERICAN HEALTH From History of the United States. Copyright 1895, by James Ford E Rhodes NGLISH travelers, with hardly an exception, were struck with the lack of health of Americans. " An Englishman, " wrote Lyell, is usually recognized at once in a party by a more robust look, and greater clearness and ruddiness of complexion. » He also noted " a careworn expression in the countenances of the 12216 JAMES FORD RHODES New- Englanders. " Harriet Martineau said we were distinguished for " spare forms and pallid complexions "; and that " the feeling of vigorous health " was almost unknown. Thackeray wrote from New York, " Most of the ladies are as lean as greyhounds. " Our shortcomings in this respect were fully appreciated by ourselves. The Atlantic Monthly pointed out that in the appearance of health and in bodily vigor we compared very unfavorably with English men and women. George William Curtis spoke of the typical American as " sharp-faced, thought-furrowed, hard-handed, " with " anxious eye and sallow complexion, nervous motion, and concentrated expression "; and he averred that we were " lanternjawed, lean, sickly, and serious of aspect. " Emerson mentioned "that depression of spirits, that furrow of care, said to mark every American brow"; and on another occasion he referred to " the invalid habits of this country "; when in England in 1847 he wrote home : " When I see my muscular neighbors day by day, I say, Had I been born in England, with but one chip of English oak in my willowy constitution ! " The Atlantic Monthly declared that, " in truth, we are a nation of health- hunters, betraying the want by the search. " It was admitted that the young men were coming up badly. Holmes wrote : " I am satisfied that such a set of black-coated, stiff- jointed, soft- muscled, paste-complexioned youth as we can boast in our Atlantic cities never before sprang from loins of Anglo-Saxon lineage. " In the "Easy Chair " Curtis observed, " In the proportion that the physique of Young America diminishes, its clothes enlarge. " The students in the colleges were no better than the young men of the cities. The women sadly lacked physical tone. Dr. Holmes spoke of the " American female constitution, which collapses just in the middle third of life ; and comes out vulcanized india-rubber if it happen to live through the period when health and strength are most wanted. " Curiously enough, we advertised our ailments. The hearty English salutation of " good- morning" had given way to an inquiry about one's health, which, instead of being conventional, like that of the French and Germans, was a question requiring an answer about one's physical feelings and condition. Pleas of ill-health in the national Senate and the House of Representatives were not infrequent. Our physical degeneracy was attributed to the climate. Yet it is difficult to reconcile this opinion with the enthusiasm of many " JAMES FORD RHODES 12217 European travelers over certain aspects of nature in America. The bright sunshine, the blue sky, the golden, Oriental sunsets, the exhilarating air, were an astonishment and delight. " The climate of the Union, " wrote De Tocqueville, " is upon the whole preferable to that of Europe. " We have now come to recognize the fact that a climate to be salubrious need not be moist; that between the dryness of Colorado and the humidity of England, there may be a mean - such as is found in the larger part of the Northern States -better adapted to health than either ; and that the greater amount of sunshine compensates for the wider variations in temperature. But without begging the question of American ill-health by ascribing it to climate, it may unquestionably be found to be due to bad diet, bad cooking, fast eating, and insufficient exercise in the open air. The appetizing forms in which the genius of New England cookery displayed itself, provoked an inordinate consumption of sweets, hot breads, and cakes. With what surprise does this generation read that our greatest philosopher always ate pie for breakfast ! The use ofthe frying- pan in the West and the South pointed well the quaint remark that " God sends meat, and the Devil sends cooks. " Men ate too much animal food, and especially too much pork. The cooking and the service at hotels and other public places made dinner " the seed-time of dyspepsia. » A fashionable tendency prevailing in the cities to live in hotels and large boarding- houses, promoted unwholesome living. The use of wine at table was rare, the drinking of drams before dinner habitual. Tobacco was used to excess, and chewing was as common as smoking. Boys at schools and colleges, young men who were clerks and salesmen in the cities, and the sons of rich parents, alike formed these bad habits. Neither men nor women took exercise in the open air. No one walked when he could ride. The trottingbuggy took the place of the horse's back. The Americans were gregarious, and loved town life, having no taste for healthful country recreations. Their idea of the country was the veranda of a large caravansary at Saratoga or Newport. Athletics were almost unknown. " There is no lack, " said Edward Everett in 1856 , " of a few tasteless and soulless dissipations which are called amusements ; but noble athletic sports, manly outdoor exercises, which strengthen the mind by strengthening the body, and bring man into a generous and exhilarating communion 12218 JAMES FORD RHODES with nature, are too little cultivated in town or country. " « We have a few good boatmen, " wrote Holmes in 1858 ; " no good horsemen that I hear of; -I cannot speak for cricketing, but as for any great athletic feat performed by a gentleman in these latitudes, society would drop a man who should run round the Common in five minutes. " Athletics were not a prominent feature even of college life. The improvement in these respects since the decade of 1850- 60 is marked : and despite the large element of truth in the precise observations of Emerson, Everett, Holmes, and Curtis, they do not embrace with scientific breadth the whole subject, for the experience of our Civil War gave little indication of physical degeneracy in the Northern people ; signs of improvement were already manifest before this period closed. The gospel of physical culture had been preached with effect, and " muscular Christianity " was set up as an ideal worth striving to realize. " Health is the condition of wisdom, " declared Emerson in 1858 ; and not long after, the world of fashion, discarding the Parisian model of life and beginning the imitation of the English, shortened the city season, acquired a love for the country, for outdoor exercise, and athletic sports. But the French cuisine, almost the sole outward trace left of the period of French domination , was a potent and enduring influence. Any one who considers the difference between the cooking and the service of a dinner at a hotel or restaurant before the War and now, will appreciate what a practical apostle of health and decent living has been Delmonico, who deserves canonization in the American calendar. With better digestion and more robust bodies, the use of stimulants has decreased. While wine at table is more common, tippling at bars has come to be frowned upon ; lager beer and native wines have to a considerable extent taken the place of spirituous liquors ; hard drinkers are less numerous, total abstainers are probably on the increase, and tobacco- chewing is dying out. The duration of life is now at least as long in America as it is in Europe. During the last forty years the American physique has unquestionably improved. A philosopher now, contrasting Englishmen and ourselves, would not make the comparison to our so great disadvantage as did Emerson from his observations in 1848, when he wrote : " The English, at the present day, have great vigor of body and endurance. Other countrymen look slight and JAMES FORD RHODES 12219 undersized beside them, and invalids. They are bigger men than the Americans. I suppose a hundred English, taken at random out of the street, would weigh a fourth more than so many Americans. Yet I am told the skeleton is not larger. " " I used to think myself, " said Edward Atkinson, " only an average man in size, height, and weight at home ; but when I made my first visit to England ( in 1877) , I was rather surprised to find myself a tall and large man by comparison with those whom I passed in the streets. " The American schoolboy and college student are to-day equal in physical development to the English youth. This is due in some degree to the growth of athletics. But a superiority in physique of American to English students was observed as early as 1877 . AMERICAN MANNERS IN 1850 From ' History of the United States. Copyright 1895 , by James Ford Rhodes WHEN HEN we come to consider society in the narrower sense given to the word, we find we must study it as something distinct from the great throbbing life of the American people of 1850-60. New York, whose " Upper Ten Thousand » have been described by N. P. Willis and Charles Astor Bristed, furnishes the example. Bristed introduces us into what is .a curious world, when we reflect that he writes of the United States of 1850-52. While his sketches show a touch of caricature, they represent well enough the life of a fashionable set of New York City. We see men working hard to get money for their personal enjoyment ; idlers who have come into a fortune; pretty and stylish girls ; women who preside gracefully at table and converse with wit and intelligence . Bristed takes us among men whose sole aim in life seemed to be to make a lucky hit in stock speculation ; to compound a sherry cobbler ; to be apt in bar-room repartee ; to drink the best brands of claret and champagne, and to expatiate on them in a knowing manner; to drive a fast horse ; to dance well, and to dress in the latest fashion. We assist at a wedding “ above Bleecker Street " ; we are taken to a country-house, and see a family dinner served at four o'clock, where, although the only guest is a gentleman just from England, and the viands are not remarkable, " champagne decanted and 12220 JAMES FORD RHODES iced to the freezing- point " followed Manzanilla sherry, and “ a prime bottle of Latour and a swelling slender-necked decanter of the old Vanderlyn Madeira " succeeded the champagne. Bristed describes the fashionable life at " Oldport Springs, " a disguise for Saratoga. He speaks of a huge caravansary, a profuse American breakfast, a promenade on the wide porticos, cigars and ten-pins, the bar-room and billiards, lounging and gossip, a bad dinner at three which the ladies dressed for, a drive after dinner, dancing until two in the morning for men and women, and gambling the rest of the night for the men. The Upper Ten Thousand of 1850-60 lend themselves to delineation somewhat better than the same class of our own time. Those who did not go to Europe passed the summer at Saratoga, Newport, or Sharon ; and their watering-place life was open to the public gaze. N. P. Willis's chapter on ' Manners at Watering- Places ' would read oddly enough if set forth by a similar adviser of the fashionable world of our time. People of reserve, who wished for no other than their city acquaintances, were termed " absolute exclusives, " and counseled to have a summer resort of their own; for the very purpose of most, in going to Saratoga and Newport in the gay season, was to make new acquaintances. Yet care should be taken to avoid too great promiscuity in social intercourse. While young men who happened to be strangers to the reigning set could of course become acquainted with some of the " dandies " during " a game at billiards or a chance fraternization over juleps in the bar-room , " those whose pleasure was not found in games or in drink might find it difficult to get properly introduced ; and young ladies who were strangers would encounter the same obstacle . Therefore, in order that desirable acquaintances might be easily made, Willis, an authority whom society held in respect, proposed that a "committee of introduction " should be named by the landlord of each large hotel. These should act under a " code of etiquette, " which Willis proceeded to outline. Such action, he declared, would delightfully harmonize and enliven our summer resorts. It is hardly probable that the plan proposed by the literary social leader of the day was systematically adopted. There was little need of it, for entrance into watering- place society was not difficult. Respectability and fairly good manners were of course requisite ; but these being presupposed, the important qualification was wealth. " Wealth, " wrote George William Curtis, " will JAMES FORD RHODES 1 12221 " socially befriend a man at Newport or Saratoga better than at any similar spot in the world. " Yet all was not garish. At Newport, the votary of fashion could not be insensible to nature's charm . At Saratoga, " youth, health, and beauty " reigned ; " we discriminate, " the Lotus- Eater said , " the Arctic and Antarctic Bostonians, fair, still, and stately, with a vein of scorn in their Saratoga enjoyment ; and the languid, cordial, and careless Southerners, far from precise in dress or style, but balmy in manner as a bland Southern morning. We mark the crisp courtesy of the New-Yorker, elegant in dress, exclusive in association, a pallid ghost of Paris. " After the sectional excitement of 1850, however, fewer Southerners came North. The repeal of the slave sojournment laws of Pennsylvania and New York made the bringing of their slaves with them as body- servants inconvenient. The excitement about the Fugitive Slave Act, and the passage of the Personal Liberty Laws, involved the risk of losing their negroes; and after the most powerful Northern party made, in 1856, a political shibboleth of the declaration that slavery was a relic of barbarism, it was still more disagreeable for Southern gentlemen accompanied by their servants to travel at the North. - Newport, the leading watering-place in the country, was, in the opinion of Curtis, the vantage- ground to study the fashionable world. There he found wealth the touchstone ; but he saw money spent without taste and in vulgar display. We Americans, he declared, had the money- getting, but not the " money-spending genius. " If high society was " but the genial intercourse of the highest intelligences with which we converse -the festival of Wit and Beauty and Wisdom » he saw none at Newport. " Fine society, " he moralizes, " is a fruit that ripens slowly. We Americans fancy we can buy it. " The peripatetic observer was glad to get to Nahant. There he wrote : " You find no village , no dust, no commotion. You encounter no crowds of carriages or of curious and gossiping people. No fast men in velvet coats are trotting fast horses ; " and in the evenings " there are no balls, no hops, no concerts, no congregating under any pretense in hotel parlors. " But by the early part of the decade of 1850-60 the life in Newport had begun to change . Originally a Southern resort, New- Yorkers commenced to divide their favors between it and Saratoga. Cottages became the fashion . declined. The hotel season 12222 JAMES FORD RHODES The fashionable people of New York generally went to Europe. When De Tocqueville wrote his last volume on America, the rich American in Europe was characteristic ; and between 1850 and 1860 crowds went over the sea for the summer. To writers of books and writers for the magazines, there seemed in the high American society much that was meretricious, and certainly no real enjoyment. The " uncommon splendatiousness » annoyed Thackeray. That Mammon had become the national saint, and that as a consequence, dullness and gloom characterized the elegant people, was undeniable. This led a witty. Frenchman to record that " the most cheerful place he could find in one of the metropolitan cities was the public cemetery. " One of our stanch admirers found our society " sometimes fatiguing " ; and another, who went frequently to dinner parties in New York, thought they were very stupid. Men talked of trade, and women talked about dress, each other, and their troubles with servants. Yet the people Lady Wortley met on the streets in New York reminded her of Paris. The Americans were said to resemble the French more than the English. The ladies in New York, Thackeray wrote, " dress prodigiously fine, -taking for their models the French actresses, I think, of the Boulevard theatres. " He thought Boston, New York, and Philadelphia " not so civilized as our London, but more so than Manchester and Liverpool. " Bristed noted that only makeshift liveries could be seen in the American metropolis. When liveries were first introduced, there was a great outcry against them, which resulted in their being adopted in a half-way manner. " They were hooted out of Boston. " None but the greatest dandies at Saratoga put their coachmen in uniform . In March 1853, however, the New York Herald complained of the " alarming spread of flunkeyism, " as evidenced from the rich people setting up liveries for their coachmen and their footmen. The dress of gentlemen in the decade we are studying would in these days appear peculiar ; that of the ladies, grotesque. In Washington, where society retained the tone imparted to it by President Madison and his wife, Senators went to the Senate and Representatives to the House, as late as 1853 , dressed as if they were going to a party. A reference to some of the topics on which Willis discourses will afford us a glimpse of the life of the people to whom he addressed himself. He complains of the " want of married belles JAMES FORD RHODES 12223 mence in American society, " and decries the public opinion that obliges a woman to give up " all active participation in society after the birth of her first child. " He devotes a chapter to the consideration of the question , " Should married ladies go into society with their daughters ? " In dilating upon ' The Usages of Society, ' he asks, " Ought young girls to be left by mothers to themselves ? Should those who have incomes of $5,000 vie with those who have $25,000 ? In a business country, should socialities comnear midnight and end near morning ? Should very young children be dressed as expensively as their mothers ? " To the Upper Ten Thousand of to-day -or if high society has increased proportionately to the growth of population, it must be more nearly the upper thirty thousand-the highest social class of 1850-60 would seem crude and garish. Extraordinary has been the development of taste, the growth of refinement, the improvement in manners since that time. When we take a broader view, and consider the whole Northern people, limiting our inquiry to men and women of American birth, we see similar betterment in their personal bearing. The testimony of foreign travelers regarding American manners differs ; but whether we rely on the favorable, the unfavorable, or the impartial opinions, we arrive alike at the conclusion that there has been a gain. Omitting a comparison regarding certain personal habits and uncouth behavior, that disgusted many Europeans and made the burden of much comment, we see in one particular an improvement, denoting a rising out of provincialism. " For fifty years, " wrote De Tocqueville, " it has been impressed upon the inhabitants of the United States that they form the only religious, enlightened, and free people. They see that with them, up to the present, democratic institutions prosper, while meeting with failure in the rest of the world : they have then an immense opinion of themselves, and they are not far from believing that they form a species apart from the human race. " Ampère notes of Americans their " perpetual glorification " of their country; and he cannot keep from thinking that it is a mortification for them " not to be able to pretend that an American discovered America. " But when we come to our own time, Bryce observes that one finds nowadays from European travelers the " general admission that the Americans are as pleasant to one another and to strangers, as are the French or the Germans or the English . The least agreeable feature to the visitors of former years, an 12224 JAMES FORD RHODES incessant vaunting of their own country and disparagement of others, has disappeared ; and the tinge of self-assertion which the sense of equality used to give is now but faintly noticeable. " With improvement in this respect, there is no longer evident, as formerly, such extreme sensitiveness to the opinions of Europeans, and especially of the English . Harriet Martineau thought that the veneration in New England for Old England was greater " than any one people ought to feel for any other. " It is undeniable that, mingled with the unrestrained curiosity with which the American people ran headlong after the Prince of Wales on the occasion of his visit to the United States in 1860 , there was a genuine enthusiasm and a kindly feeling for the country and the sovereign that he represented. With all our improvement, have we grown more interesting ? De Tocqueville was just when he wrote : " In the long run, however, the view of that society, so agitated, appears monotonous; . and after having contemplated for a while this ever-changing picture, the spectator becomes weary. " Somewhere about 1870 , Lowell asked: " Did it never occur to you that somehow we are not interesting except as a phenomenon ? " The people of the decade we are studying did not lack for public amusements. In music, the era began with Jenny Lind and ended with Adelina Patti. The impression made by the Swedish Nightingale still remains fresh. On her arrival at New · York she was received like a queen. Triumphal arches of flowers and evergreens were erected on the pier, where an enthusiastic crowd greeted her. The flag of Norway and Sweden floated over her hotel. Barnum, her manager, kept up the interest in the songstress by all sorts of clever advertising until the day of the sale of the tickets for the first concert, when fabulous prices were paid for seats. She sang at Castle Garden; and the accounts of the pressing crowd that gathered outside on the occasion of her first appearance, call to mind a national party convention rather than a host assembled to do homage to the greatest interpreter of the art of song. Her singing of operatic selections struck lovers of music with amazement and delight ; but when she burst forth in one of her national airs, the great audience was thrilled, and their hearts vibrated with emotions that took them for the moment away from earth. 12225 SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689-1761) T IS a remarkable fact that the writer who may fairly be called the father of the modern analytic novel of society, wrote his first and most famous book with a utilitarian object in view, with no thought of making a novel, -and moreover, was over fifty years of age when this story of ' Pamela ' was penned. By producing this piece of fiction , Richardson founded a school, and gave a new impulse and direction to modern fiction. years Samuel Richardson was born in a Derbyshire village in 1689, and got his only education at the local school. His father was a joiner. When seventeen he was apprenticed to a London printer, serving his seven faithfully. This employment was followed by six years more of hard work as journeyman. In 1719 he set up a Fleet Street printing-office of his own, and wrote prefaces and dedications to the works of othIt was in this way that ' Pamela ' had its origin ; for Richardson in 1739 composed a series of ' Familiar Letters, ' to help those too illiterate to write for themselves, -a sort of Servant-Girl's Guide, -and the novel was a result. ers. Richardson was always a diligent worker SAMUEL RICHARDSON , a man of thrift and character, whose rise in his profession was well earned. He widened the circle of his friends, and married the daughter of his former employer. He extended his business connections by printing the Daily Journal, the Daily Gazet- teer, and the Briton. His friendship with the Duke of Wharton was influential in his advancement. In 1754 he was appointed to the important post of Master of the Stationers' Company. During his last years he was an invalid, and passed much of his time at his countryseat, reading from his own work to a circle of female admirers. Few men have received more adulation of this sort than Richardson ; and while he had his share of amiable vanity, it is to his credit that he remained in character unsophisticated, kind, and generous. He died in his home July 4th, 1761 . XXI-765 12226 SAMUEL RICHARDSON As a boy at school Richardson amused his schoolmates by making up extemporaneous romances; and when but thirteen years old, such was his talent as a letter-writer that the village girls employed him to write their love epistles. This is described amusingly in his autobiography. " As a bashful and not forward boy, I was an early favorite with all the young women of taste and reading in the neighborhood. Half a dozen of them, when met to work with their needles, used when they got a book they liked, and thought I should, to borrow me to read to them; their mothers sometimes with them: and both mothers and daughters used to be pleased with the observations they put me upon making. I was not more than thirteen when three of these young women, having a high opinion of my taciturnity, revealed to me their love secrets, in order to induce me to give them copies to write after or correct, for answers to their lovers' letters ; nor did any of them ever know that I was the secretary of the others. I have been directed to chide, and even repulse, when an offense was either taken or given, at the very time that the heart of the chider or repulser was open before me, overflowing with esteem and affection, and the fair repulser, dreading to be taken at her word, directing this word or that expression to be softened or changed. One, highly gratified with her lover's fervor and vows of everlasting love, has said when I have asked her direction : ' I cannot tell you what to write, but'-her heart on her lips- ( you cannot write too kindly. All her fear was only lest she should incur slight for her kindness. » Excellent training this, it will be seen, for the future novelist and portrayer of the soul feminine. ' Pamela, ' which appeared in 1742, can be recognized as the child of this youthful employ, and similar experiences in maturity. It narrates the trials of a serving- maid of that name, whose virtue is assailed by the son of the lady who employs her. Through a long series of temptations and efforts, including an abduction, she refuses to yield ; until finally, finding he can get her in no other way, the quasi-hero condescends to marry her, and is naïvely lauded by Richardson for the act. The novel's subtitle, ' Virtue Rewarded, ' expresses the author's feeling. Pamela's hard-headed, practical valuation of her character as a purchasable commodity, as well as the elegant rascality of the lover, give the present-day reader a keen sense of the comparatively low state of social morals in eighteenth- century England. But the story is full of human interest ; and one follows the long- suffering, and be it confessed, long-winded Pamela, with genuine sympathy. Having depicted the servant-girl type in his first story, Richardson essayed in his second - Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady, ' which appeared half a dozen years later, in 1748 -to draw with equal accuracy the young woman of gentility, also in sore straits through the love-passion. Clarissa is seduced and ruined by Lovelace - who SAMUEL RICHARDSON 12227 has given his name to the genus fine-gentleman profligate. Here again, with certain allowances for the change in times and customs, Richardson has succeeded in making a powerful tale, though a very slow-moving one to the modern taste. The lachrymose dénouement is an eighteenth-century prototype of a whole train of latter-day fiction after it became fashionable to end a novel ill. In his final story, 'The History of Sir Charles Grandison ' ( 1753) , he turns from painting heroines in order to limn a hero, with whom he most egregiously fails. Sir Charles is an impossible prig and pattern-plate ; the reader cannot accept him as true, nor stomach him as in any wise admirable. Surrounded by an adoring bevy of women, he struts about like a turkey-cock, and is twice as ridiculous. In George Meredith's ' The Egoist , ' Willoughby is Grandison, with the significant difference that the later story-teller consciously satirizes the character, while Richardson takes him in full seriousness. Of these three main works, then, two are masterpieces when viewed in relation to their time and the prior poor estate of English fiction . The third is a compara- tive failure . All of them, it should be understood, are cast in the epistolary form . Novels in the shape of letters have bred fast since, and the device is now pretty well outworn ; but in the middle of the last century this way of telling a story had the charm of novelty. It is a method lending itself well to Richardson's leisurely, at times tedious, gait. Richardson's popularity with the fair sex was immense after the appearance of his novels ; nor was this confined to one class. That brilliant worldling, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, testifies that the chambermaids of all nations wept over Pamela ; while ladies of quality knelt sobbing at Richardson's feet, begging him to spare Clarissa. The situation is not without humor for us to- day ; and indeed the modern reader can afford to smile at the mawkish sentimentality and utilitarian morals of a book like ' Pamela. ' But the story is epoch-making in English fiction . It does a new thing. A girl of the lower class is painted at full length, as if she were worth attention -painted sympathetically ; and in this and the subsequent stories the interest is made to depend upon the development of character, rather than upon objective incident as in the case of De Foe's ' Robinson Crusoe, ' which came some twenty years earlier. In this Richardson struck the modern note, and started the analytic tendency, which has unceasingly dominated the modern novel since his day. Hence Richardson's important place in the evolution of fiction of our speech. Again, it was in the spirit of parody and satire that Fielding, his greater fellow novelist, began his career by writing ' Joseph Andrews' ; so that Richardson, in a sense, may be regarded as inspiring 12228 SAMUEL RICHARDSON the author of ' Tom Jones. ' The former's influence was felt largely in foreign fiction, particularly in that of Germany and France. Richardson's ' Life and Correspondence, ' with a Memoir by Mrs. Barbauld, appeared in 1804. PAMELA IMMURED BY HER LOVER From Pamela > THURSDAY. HIS completes a terrible week since my setting out, as I hoped THISto see you, my dear father and mother. My impatience was great to walk in the garden, to see if anything had offered answerable to my hopes ; but this wicked Mrs. Jewkes would not let me go without her, and said she was not at leisure. We had a great many words about it : I told her it was very hard I could not be trusted to walk by myself in the garden for a little air, but must be dogged and watched worse than a thief. " I remember, " said she, " your asking Mr. Williamsif there were any gentry in the neighborhood. This make me suspect you want to go away to them, to tell your dismal story, as you call it. " "Why, " said I, " are you afraid I should confederate with them to commit a robbery upon my master ? » " Maybe I am, " said she ; " for to rob him of yourself would be the worst that could happen to him, in his opinion. " "And pray, " said I, walking on, " how came I to be his property ? what right has he to me, but such as a thief may plead to stolen goods ? >>> >>> "Why, was ever the like heard! says she. " This is downright rebellion, I protest ! Well, well, lambkin " (which the foolish woman often calls me) , " if I was in his place, he should not have his property in you so long questionable. ' " Why, what would you do, " said I, " if you were he ?" " Not stand shill- I shall- I, as he does, but put you and himself both out of pain. " " Why, Jezebel, " said I (I could not help it) , " would you ruin me by force ? » Upon this she gave me a deadly slap upon the shoulder. " Take that, " said she : " whom do you call Jezebel ? " SAMUEL RICHARDSON 12229 I was so surprised (for you never beat me, my dear father and mother, in your lives) , that I was like one thunder-struck, and looked round as if I wanted somebody to help me; but alas, I had nobody! and said, rubbing my shoulder, " Is this also in your instructions ? Alas for me! am I to be beaten too ? » And so I fell a-crying, and threw myself upon the grass-walk we were upon. Said she in a great pet, " I won't be called such names, I'll assure you. Marry come up ! I see you have a spirit : you must and shall be kept under. I'll manage such little provoking things as you, I warrant ye ! Come, come : we'll go indoors, and I'll lock you up ; you shall have no shoes, nor anything else, if this be the case.'>>> I did not know what to do. This was a cruel thing to me : I blamed myself for my free speech ; for now I had given her some pretense for severity, and had by my pertness ruined the only project I had left. >>> The gardener saw the scene : but she called to him, " Well, Jacob, what do you stare at ? Pray mind what you are upon. And away he walked to another quarter, out of sight. " Well," thought I , " I must put on the dissembler a little, I see. » She took my hand roughly. " Come, get up, " said she, " and come in a' doors. I'll Jezebel you, I will ! » " Why, dear Mrs. Jewkes-" said I. " None of your dears and your coaxing," said she : " why not Jezebel again ? ” She was in a passion, I saw; and I was out of my wits. I have often heard women blamed for their tongues. I wished mine had been shorter. " But I can't go in , ” said I ; " indeed I can't. " ་ " Why, " said she, " can't you ? I'll warrant I can take such a thin body as you under my arm, and carry you in, if you won't walk. You don't know my strength. " " Yes, but I do, " said I , " too well ; and will you not use me worse when I come in ? " So I arose ; and she muttered to herself all the way, —she to be a Jezebel with me, that had used me so well, and such like. When I came near the house, I said , sitting down upon a bench, " Well, I will not go in until you say you forgive me, 12230 SAMUEL RICHARDSON Mrs. Jewkes. If you will forgive me calling you that name, I will forgive your beating me. " She sat down by me, and seemed in a great pucker, and said, " Well, come, I will forgive you this time ; " and so kissed me as a mark of reconciliation. " But pray, " said I, " tell me where I am to walk or go, and give me what liberty you can ; and when I know the most you can favor me with, you shall see I will be as content as I can, and not ask you for more. " "Aye," said she, " this is something like : I wish I could give you all the liberty you desire ; for you must think it no pleasure to me to tie you to my petticoat, as it were, and not let you stir without me. But people that will do their duties must have some trouble ; and what I do is to serve as good a master as lives. " " Yes, " said I, " to every one but me. " " He loves you too well, to be sure, " said she ; " that's the reason ! so you ought to bear it . Come, " said she, " don't let the servant see you have been crying, nor tell her any tales ; for you won't tell them fairly, I'm sure. I'll send her to you, and you shall take another walk in the garden, if you will: maybe it will get you a stomach for your dinner ; for you don't eat enough to keep life and soul together. the bone, or you could not look so well little stomach, so little rest, and so much for nothing at all. " You are a beauty to as you do, with so pining and whining "Well, " thought I, " say what thou wilt, so I can be rid of thy bad tongue and company; and I hope to find some opportunity now to come at my sunflower. " But I walked the other way to take that in my return, to avoid suspicion. I forced my discourse to the maid, but it was all upon general things ; for I found she is asked after everything I say or do. When I came near the place, as I had been devising, I said, " Pray step to the gardener, and ask him to gather a salad for me to dinner. " She called out, " Jacob! " Said I, " He can't hear you so far off : and pray tell him I should like a cucumber too, if he has one . " When she had stepped about a bowshot from me, I popt down, and whipt my fingers under the upper tile ; and pulled out SAMUEL RICHARDSON 12231 a letter without direction , and thrust it into my bosom, trembling for joy. She was with me before I could secure it ; and I was in such a taking that I feared I should discover myself. "You seem frightened, madam, " said she. " Why, " said I, with a lucky thought, (alas ! your poor daughter will make an intriguer by-and- by ; but I hope an innocent one ! ) " I stooped to smell at the sunflower, and a great nasty worm ran into the ground, that startled me ; for I can't abide worms. " Said she, «< Sunflowers don't smell. " " So I find, " I replied. And then we walked in. Mrs. Jewkes said , " Well, you have made haste now. You shall go another time. " I went to my closet, locked myself in, and opening my letter, found in it these words : I am infinitely concerned in your distress. I most heartily wish it may be in my power to serve and save so much innocence, beauty, and merit. My whole dependence is upon Mr. B. , and I have a near view of being provided for by his favor to me. But yet I would sooner forfeit all my hopes in him (trusting to God for the rest) than not assist you, if possible. I never looked upon Mr. B. in the light he now appears in. I am entirely of opinion you should, if possible, get out of his hands, and especially as you are in very bad ones in Mrs. Jewkes's. We have here the widow Lady Jones ; mistress of a good fortune, and a woman of virtue, I believe. We have also Sir Simon Darnford, and his lady, who is a good woman ; and they have two daughters, virtuous young ladies. All the rest are but middling people, and traders, at best. I will try, if you please, either Lady Jones or Lady Darnford, if they'll permit you to take refuge with them. I see no probability of keeping myself concealed in this matter, but will, as I said, risk all things to serve you ; for never saw I sweetness and innocence like yours : your hard case has attached me entirely to you; for I well know, as you so happily express, if I can serve you in this case, I shall thereby perform all the acts of religion in one. As to Lady Davers, I will convey a letter, if you please ; but it must not be from our post-house, I give you caution : for the man owes all his bread to Mr. B. , and his place too ; and I believe, from something that dropped from him over a can of ale, has his instructions. You don't know how you are surrounded : all which confirms me in your opinion that no honor is meant you, let what will be professed ; and I am glad you want no caution on that head. 12232 SAMUEL RICHARDSON Give me leave to say, that I had heard much in your praise, but I think greatly short of what you deserve, both as to person and mind: my eyes convince me of the one, your letter of the other. For fear of losing the present lucky opportunity, I am longer than otherwise I should be. But I will not enlarge any further than to assure you that I am, to the best of my power, your faithful friend and servant, ARTHUR WILLIAMS. I will come once every morning, and once every evening, after school-time, to look for your letters. I'll come in, and return without going into the house if I see the coast clear ; otherwise, to avoid suspicion, I'll come in. I instantly, in answer to this pleasing letter, wrote as follows: - Reverend Sir: Oh, how suited to your function and your character is your kind letter ! God bless you for it ! I now think I am beginning to be happy. I should be very sorry to have you suffer on my account ; but I hope it will be made up to you a hundredfold by that God whom you so faithfully serve. Any way you think best I shall be pleased with ; for I know not the persons, nor in what manner to apply to them. I should think, sir, if either of these ladies would give me leave, I might get out by favor of your key. As it is impossible, watched as I am, to know when it can be, suppose, sir, you could get one made by it, and put it the next opportunity under the sunflower. If, sir, I had this key, I could, if these ladies would not shelter me, run away anywhere : and if I was once out of the house, they could have no pretense to force me in again ; for I have done no harm, and hope to make my story good to any impassionate body: by this way you need not be known. Torture should not wring it from me, I assure you. I inclose you a letter of a deceitful wretch (for I can intrust you with anything) , poor John Arnold. Perhaps by his means something may be discovered ; for he seems willing to atone for his treachery to me by the intimation of future services. I leave the hint to you to improve upon. I am, Reverend Sir, your forever obliged and faithful servant. I hope, sir, by your favor, I could send a little packet now and then to my poor father and mother. I have about five or six guineas : shall I put half in your hands, to defray the charge of a man and horse, or any other incidents ? SAMUEL RICHARDSON 12233 I am just come off from a walk in the garden, and have deposited my letter : we took a turn in the garden to angle, as Mrs. Jewkes had promised me. She baited the hook, I held it, and soon hooked a lovely carp. " I'll try my fortune, " said she, and took the rod. " Do, " answered I ; " and I will plant life , if I can, while you are destroying it. I have some horse-beans, and will go and stick them in one of the borders, to see how long they will be coming up; and I will call them my garden. " So you see, dear father and mother, that this furnishes me with a good excuse to look after my garden another time ; and if the mold should look a little fresh, it won't be so much suspected : she mistrusted nothing of this ; and I went and stuck in here and there my beans, for about the length of six yards, on each side of the sunflower, and easily deposited my letter. And not a little proud am I of this. Sure something will do at last. FRIDAY, SATURDAY. I HAVE just now told of a trick of mine ; now I'll tell you a trick of this wicked woman's. She came up to me and said, " I have a bill I cannot change till to-morrow, and a tradesman wants his money sadly ; I don't love to turn poor tradesmen away without their money : have you any about you ? » " I have a little, " replied I : " how much will do ? " " Oh, " said she, " I want eight pounds. " "Alack ! " said I, " I have only between five and six. " " Lend me that, " said she, " till to-morrow. " I did so, and she went down- stairs ; and when she came up, she laughed and said, " Well, I have paid the tradesman. " " I hope, " said I , " you'll give it me to-morrow. " At this she laughing said, " To tell the truth, lambkin, I didn't want it. I only feared your making bad use of it : and now I can trust Nan with you a little oftener, especially as I have got the key of your portmanteau ; so that you can neither corrupt her with money nor fine things. " And now I have not five shillings left to support me, if I can get away. The more I think of this, the more I regret it, and blame myself. 12234 SAMUEL RICHARDSON This night the postman brought a letter for Mrs. Jewkes, in which one was inclosed for me; she brought it up to me, and said, " Well, my good master don't forget us: he has sent you a letter ; and see what he writes to me. " So she read that he hoped her fair charge was well, happy, and contented. "Aye, to be sure, " said I, " I can't but choose! " That he did not doubt her care and kindness to me ; that I was dear to him, and she could not use me too well ; and the like. " There's a master, " said she : " sure you will love and pray for him! " I desired her to read the rest. " No, " said she, " but I won't." " Then, " said I , " are there any orders for taking my shoes away, and for beating me?" " No, " said she, " nor about Jezebel neither. " "Well, " returned I, " I cry truce ; for I have no mind to be beat again. " " I thought, " said she, " we had forgiven one another. " My letter is as follows : - My dear Pamela: - I begin to repent already that I have bound myself, by promise, not to see you till you give me leave ; for I think the time very tedious. Can you place so much confidence in me as to invite me down ? Assure yourself that your generosity shall not be thrown away upon me. I would press this, as I am uneasy for your uneasiness ; for Mrs. Jewkes acquaints me that you take your restraint very heavily, and neither eat, drink, nor rest well. I have too great an interest in your health, not to wish to shorten the time of this trial ; which will be the consequence of my coming down to you. John too has intimated to me your concern, with a grief that hardly gave him leave for utterance, - a grief that a little alarmed my tenderness for you. I will only say one thing : that if you will give me leave to attend you at the hall (consider who it is that requests this from you as a favor) , I solemnly declare that you shall have cause to be pleased with this obliging mark of your confidence and consideration for me. If I find Mrs. Jewkes has not behaved to you with the respect due to one I so tenderly love, I will put it entirely in your power to discharge her the house, if you think proper ; and Mrs. Jervis, of who else you please, shall attend you in her place. This I say on a hint John gave me, as if you resented something from that quarter. Dearest Pamela, answer favorably this earnest request of one that cannot live without you, and on whose honor to you, you may absolutely depend; and so much the more, as you place a confidence in it. I am, and assuredly ever will be, your faithful and affectionate, etc. SAMUEL RICHARDSON 12235 You will be glad, I know, to hear that your father and mother are well, and easy upon your last letter. That gave me a pleasure I am resolved you shall not repent. Mrs. Jewkes will convey to me your answer. I but slightly read this letter for the present, to give way to one I had hopes of finding by this time from Mr. Williams. I took an evening turn, as I called it, in Mrs. Jewkes's company; and walking by the place, I said, " Do you think, Mrs. Jewkes, any of my beans can have struck since yesterday ? » She laughed and said, " You are a poor gardener, but I love to see you divert yourself. " She passing on, I found my good friend had provided for me ; and slipping it in my bosom (for her back was towards me) -" Here, " said I (having a bean in my hand) , " is one of them; but it has not stirred. " " No, to be sure," said she ; and then turned upon me a most wicked jest, unbecoming the mouth of a woman, about planting, etc. When I came in I went to my closet, and read as follows : I am sorry to inform you that I have had a repulse from Lady Jones. She is concerned at your case, she says, but don't like to make herself enemies. I applied to Lady Darnford, and told, in the most pathetic manner, your sad story, and showed her your more pathetic letter. I found her well disposed : but she would advise with Sir Simon, who is not a man of an extraordinary character for virtue ; for he said to his lady in my presence, " Why, what is all this, my dear, but that our neighbor has a mind to his mother's waiting-maid ! And if he takes care she wants for nothing, I don't see any great injury will be done to her. He hurts no family by this. " (So, my dear father and mother, it seems poor people's honesty is to go for nothing. ) "And I think, Mr. Williams, you of all men should not engage in this affair, against your friend and patron. " I have hinted your case to Mr. Peters, the minister of this parish ; but I am concerned to say that he imputed selfish views to me, as if I would make an interest in your affections by my zeal. I represented the different circumstances of your affair : that other women lived evilly by their own consent ; but to serve you was to save an innocence that had but few examples. I then showed him your letter. He said it was prettily written ; he was sorry for you ; and that your good intentions ought to be encouraged. " But what, " said he, "would you have me do, Mr. Williams ? » 12236 SAMUEL RICHARDSON . " Why, suppose, sir, " said I, " you give her shelter in your house with your spouse and niece, till she can get to her friends ? " " What, and embroil myself with a man of Mr. B.'s power and fortune ? No! not I, I assure you. " I am greatly concerned for you, I assure you ; but am not discouraged by this ill success, let what will come of it, if I can serve you. I don't hear as yet that Mr. B. is coming. I am glad of your hint as to that unhappy fellow John Arnold. Something perhaps will strike out from that, which may be useful. As to your packets, if you seal them up and lay them inthe usual place, if you find it not suspected, I will watch an opportunity to convey them; but if they are large, you had best be very cautious. This evil woman, I find, mistrusts me. I have just heard that the gentleman is dying, whose living Mr. B. has promised me. I have almost a scruple to take it, as I am acting so contrary to his desire ; but I hope he'll one day thank me for it. I believe when we hear he is coming, it will be best to make use of the key, which I shall soon procure you : I can borrow a horse for you, to wait within half a mile of the back door, over the pasture, and will contrive by myself, or somebody, to have you conducted some miles distant, to one of the villages thereabouts ; so don't be discomforted, I beseech you. I am, Mrs. Pamela, your faithful friend, etc. I made a thousand sad reflections upon the former part of this honest gentleman's kind letter ; and but for the hopes he gave me at last, should have given up my case as quite desperate. I then wrote to thank him most gratefully for his kind endeavors ; and that I would wait the happy event I might hope for from his kind assistance in the key and the horse. I had no time to take a copy of this letter, I was so watched. But when I had it in my bosom I was easy. And so I went to seek out Mrs. Jewkes, and told her I would hear her advice upon the letter I had received from my master; which point of confidence in her pleased her not a little . "Aye, " said she, " now this is something like ; and we'll take a turn in the garden, or where you please. " I pretended it was indifferent to me; and so we walked into the garden. I began to talk to her of the letter, but was far from acquainting her with all the contents ; only that he wanted my consent to come down, and hoped that she used me kindly, and the like. SAMUEL RICHARDSON 12237 And I said, " Now, Mrs. Jewkes, let me have your advice as to this. " "Why then, " said she, " I will give it you freely : e'en send for him to come down. It will highly oblige him, and I daresay you will fare the better for it. " " Well, " said I, " I will write him a letter, because he expects an answer, or maybe he will make a pretense to come down. How can it go ? " " I'll take care of that, " said she : " it is in my instructions. " " Aye, " thought I, " so I doubt, by the hint Mr. Williams gave me about the post- house. " I wrote to my master as follows : Honored Sir: When I consider how easily you might have made me happy, since all I desire is to be permitted to go to my poor father and mother ; when I reflect upon your former proposal to me in relation to a certain person, not one word of which is now mentioned ; and upon my being in that strange manner run away with, and still kept here a miserable prisoner, do you think, sir (pardon your poor servant's freedom : my fears make me bold), - do you think, I say, that your general assurances of honor to me can have the effect they ought to have ? O good sir! I too much apprehend that your notions of honor and mine are very different from one another ; I have no other hope but in your continual absence. If you have any proposals to make me that are consistent with your honorable professions, in my humble sense of the word, a few lines will communicate them to me, and I will return such an answer as befits me. Whatever rashness you may impute to me, I cannot help it ; but I wish I may not be forced upon any that otherwise would not enter my thoughts. Forgive, sir, my plainness ; I should be loth to behave to my master unbecomingly: but I must say, sir, my innocence is so dear to me that all other considerations must be dispensed with. If you mean honorably, why should you not let me know it plainly ? Why, sir, I humbly ask, why all this if you mean honorably? It is not for me to expostulate too freely with you, sir, so greatly my superior. Pardon me, I hope you will ; but as to seeing you, I cannot bear the dreadful apprehension. Whatever you have to propose to me, whatever you intend, let my assent be that of a free person, and not of a sordid slave, who is to be threatened and frightened into a compliance with measures which your conduct seems to imply. My restraint is hard upon me ; I am very uneasy under it. Shorten it, I beseech you, or- But I will dare to say no more than that I am your greatly oppressed, unhappy servant. 12238 SAMUEL RICHARDSON After I had taken a copy of this, I folded it up : and Mrs. Jewkes coming just as I had done, sat down by me; and said, when she saw me directing it, " I wish you would tell me if you have taken my advice, and consented to my master's coming down. " " If it will oblige you, " said I , " I will read it to you. " " That's good, " said she ; " then I'll love you dearly. " Said I, " Then you must not offer to alter one word. " " I won't, " replied she. So I read it to her. She praised me much for my wording of it ; but said she thought I pushed the matter very close , and it would better bear talking than writing about. She wanted an explanation or two about a certain person ; but I said she must take it as she heard it. "Well, well, " said she, " I make no doubt you understand one another, and will do so more and more . " I sealed up the letter, and she undertook to convey it. MISS BYRON'S RESCUE FROM ABDUCTION, BY SIR CHARLES GRANDISON RELATED IN A LETTER FROM MISS BYRON TO HER FRIEND MISS SELBY A⁹ From Sir Charles Grandison > S THE chariot drove by houses, I cried out for help. But under pretense of preventing my taking cold, Sir Hargrave tied a handkerchief over my face, head, and mouth, having first muffled me up in the cloak ; and with his right arm thrown round me, kept me fast on the seat : and except that now and then my struggling head gave me a little opening, I was blinded . On the road, just after I had screamed, and made another effort to get my hands free, I heard voices ; and immediately the chariot stopped. Then how my heart was filled with hope ! But alas ! it was momentary. I heard one of his men say, " The best of husbands, I assure you, sir ; and she is the worst of wives. " I screamed again. " Aye, scream and be d-d! Poor gentleman, I pity him with all my heart. " And immediately the coachman drove on again. The vile wretch laughed. I was ready to faint several times. I begged for air ; and when we were in an open road, and I suppose there was nobody in sight he vouchsafed to pull down the blinding handkerchief, SAMUEL RICHARDSON 12239 but kept it over my mouth ; so that, except now and then that I struggled it aside with my head (and my neck is very stiff with my efforts to free my face) , I could only make a murmuring kind of noise. The curtain of the fore-glass was pulled down, and generally the canvas on both sides drawn up. But I was sure to be made acquainted when we came near houses, by his care again to blind and stifle me up. A little before we were met by my deliverer, I had, by getting one hand free, unmuffled myself so far as to see (as I had guessed once or twice before by the stone pavements) that we were going through a town: and then I again vehemently screamed ; but he had the cruelty to thrust a handkerchief into my mouth, so that I was almost strangled, and my mouth was hurt, and is still sore. At one place the chariot drove out of the road, over rough ways and little hillocks, as I thought, by its rocking; and then, it stopping, he let go my hands and endeavored to soothe me. He begged I would be pacified ; and offered , if I would forbear crying out for help, to leave my eyes unmuffled all the rest of the way. But I would not, I told him, give such a sanction. to his barbarous violence. On the chariot's stopping, one of his men came up, and put a handkerchief into his master's hands, in which were some cakes and sweetmeats, and gave him also a bottle of sack, with a glass. Sir Hargrave was very urgent with me to take some of the sweetmeats and to drink a glass of the wine ; but I had neither stomach nor will to touch either. He eat himself very cordially. God forgive me! I wished in my heart there were pins and needles in every bit he put into his mouth. He drank two glasses of the wine. Again he urged me I said I hoped I had eat and drank my last. . I saw that I was upon a large, wild, heath-like place, between two roads, as it seemed. I asked nothing about my journey's end. All I had to hope for as to an escape (though then I began to despair of it) was upon the road, or in some town. My journey's end, I knew, must be the beginning of new trials ; for I was resolved to suffer death rather than to marry him. The chariot had not many minutes got into the great road again, over the like rough and sometimes plashy ground, when it stopped on a dispute between the coachman and the coachman. of another chariot- and- six, as it proved. Sir Hargrave looked out of his chariot to see the occasion of this stop ; and then I 12240 SAMUEL RICHARDSON found means to disengage one hand. I heard a gentleman's voice directing his own coachman to give way. I then pushed up the handkerchief with my disengaged hand from my mouth, and pulled it down from over my eyes, and cried out for help- " Help, for God's sake ! " A man's voice (it was my deliverer's, as it happily proved) bid Sir Hargrave's coachman proceed at his peril. Sir Hargrave, with terrible oaths and curses, ordered him to proceed, and to drive through all opposition . The gentleman called Sir Hargrave by his name, and charged him with being upon a bad design. The vile wretch said he had only secured a runaway wife, eloped to, and intending to elope from, a masquerade, to her adulterer : [ horrid ! ] He put aside the cloak, and appealed to my dress. The gentleman would not be satisfied with Sir Hargrave's story. He would speak to me, and asked me, with an air that promised deliverance, if I were Sir Hargrave's wife ? " No, no, no, no! " I could only say. For my own part, I could have no scruple, distressed as I was, and made desperate, to throw myself into the protection , and even into the arms, of my deliverer, though a very fine young gentleman. But you may better conceive than I can express the terror I was in when Sir Hargrave drew his sword and pushed at the gentleman, with such words as denoted (for I could not look that way) he had done him mischief. But when I found my oppressor pulled out of the chariot by the brave, the gallant man (which was done with such force as made the chariot rock) , and my protector safe, I was as near fainting with joy as before I had been with terror. I had shaken off the cloak, and untied the handkerchief. He carried me in his arms (I could not walk) to his own chariot. I heard Sir Hargrave curse, swear, and threaten. I was glad, however, he was not dead. " Mind him not, madam—fear him not! " said Sir Charles Grandison. [You know his noble name, my Lucy. ] " Coachman, drive not over your master : take care of your master ! " or some such words he said, as he lifted me into his own chariot. He just surveyed, as it were, the spot, and bid a servant let Sir Hargrave know who he was ; and then came back to me. He ordered his coachman to drive back to Colnebrook. In accents of kindness he told me that he had there at present the most SAMUEL RICHARDSON 12241 virtuous and prudent of sisters, to whose care he would commit. me, and then proceed on his journey to town. How irresistibly welcome to me was his supporting arm, thrown round me, as we flew back, compared to that of the vile Sir Hargrave ! Mr. Reeves has given you an account from the angelic sister. O my Lucy, they are a pair of angels ! I have written a long, long letter, or rather five letters in one, of my distresses, of my deliverance ; and when my heart is stronger I will say more of the persons, as well as minds, of this excellent brother and sister. Just now I have received a congratulatory packet of letters. And so you expect the particular character and description of the persons of this more than amiable brother and sister ? Need you to have told me that you do ? And could you think that after having wasted so many quires of paper in giving you the characters of people, many of whom deserved not to be drawn out from the common crowd of mortals, I would forbear to give you those of persons who adorn the age in which they live, and even human nature ? You don't question, you say, if I begin in their praises, but my gratitude will make me write in a sublime style; and are ready, you promise me, to take, with allowance, all the fine things from me which Mr. Reeves has already taught you to expect. Which shall I begin with ? You will have a sharp lookout upon me, you say. Ah, my Lucy ! I know what you mean. And so, if I begin with the character of the brother, then you will join with my uncle, shake your head, and cry, “ Ah, my Harriet ! » If I begin with the sister, will you not say that I save my choicest subject for the last ? How difficult is it to avoid censure, when there is a resolution taken to be censorious ! Miss Grandison - Yes, my volant, my self- conducted quill, begin with the sister, say my Lucy what she pleases : - Miss Grandison is about twenty-four ; of a fine stature. She has dignity in her aspect, and a very penetrating black eye, with which she does what she pleases. Her hair is black, very fine, and naturally curls. She is not fair ; but her complexion is delicate and clear, and promises a long duration to her loveliness. Her features are generally regular; her nose is a little aquiline ; but that is so far from being a blemish, that it gives a kind of majesty to her other features. Her teeth are white and even, XXI-766 12242 SAMUEL RICHARDSON her mouth is perfectly lovely, and a modest archness appears in her smiles that makes one both love and fear her, when she begins to speak. She is finely shaped ; and in her air and whole appearance, perfectly genteel. She has charming spirits. I daresay she sings well, from the airs she now and then warbles in the gayety of her heart. She is very polite ; yet has a vein of raillery, that were she not polite, would give one too much apprehension for one's ease : but I am sure she is frank, easy, and good-humored. She says she has but lately taken a very great liking to reading. She pretends that she was too volatile, too gay, too airy, to be confined to sedentary amusements. Her father, however, according to the genteelest and most laudable modern education for women, had given her a master who taught her history and geography, in both which she acknowledges she made some progress. In music she owns she has skill : but I am told by her maid, who attended me by her young lady's direction, and who delights to praise her mistress, that she reads and speaks French and Italian ; that she writes finely ; and is greatly admired for her wit, prudence, and obligingness. " Nobody, " said Jenny (who is a sensible young woman, a clergyman's daughter, well educated, and very obliging) , can stand against her good-natured raillery . " Her brother, she says, is not spared ; but he takes delight in her vivacity, and gives way to it, when it is easy to see that he could take her down if he pleased. "And then, " added this good young woman, " she is an excellent manager in a family, finely as she is educated. She knows everything, and how to direct what should be done, from the private family dinner to a sumptuous entertainment ; and every day inspects, and approves or alters, the bill of fare. " By the way, my Lucy, she is an early riser -do you mind that ? - and so can do everything with ease, pleasure, and without hurry and confusion ; for all her servants are early risers of course. Yet this fine lady loves to go to the public places ; and often goes, and makes a brilliant figure there. She has time for them, and earns her pleasures by her early rising. Miss Grandison, Jenny tells me, has two humble servants : [ I wonder she has not two-and-twenty! ] one is Sir Walter Watkins, a man of a large estate in Somersetshire ; the other is Lord G. , son of the Earl of G. but neither of them highly approved by her; yet, Jenny says, they are both of them handsome men, and admired by the ladies. This makes me afraid that they are modern men, and SAMUEL RICHARDSON 12243 ་pay their court by the exterior appearance, rather than by interior worth. Who, my Lucy, that has heard what my late grandfather has said, and my grandmamma still says, of the men in their youthful days, will not say that we have our lots cast in an age of petit maîtres and insignificants ? Such an amiable woman is Miss Charlotte Grandison.- May I be found, on further acquaintance, but half as lovely in her eyes as she is in mine ! But now for her brother my deliverer! Sir Charles Grandison, in his person, is really a very fine He is tall, rather slender than full ; his face, in shape, is a fine oval ; he seems to have florid health -health confirmed by exercise . His complexion seems to have been naturally too fine for a man: but as if he were above being regardful of it , his face is overspread with a manly sunniness [ I want a word] , that shows he has been in warmer climates than England ; and so it seems he has, since the tour of Europe has not contented him. He has visited some parts of Asia, and even of Africa, Egypt particularly. I wonder what business a man has for such fine teeth and for so fine a mouth as Sir Charles Grandison might boast of, were he vain. In his aspect there is something great and noble, that shows him to be of rank. Were kings to be chosen for beauty and majesty of person, Sir Charles Grandison would have few competitors. His eye-indeed, my Lucy, his eye shows, if possible, more of sparkling intelligence than that of his sister. Now pray be quiet, my dear Uncle Selby! What is beauty in a man to me ? You all know that I never thought beauty a qualification in a man. And yet, this grandeur in his person and air is accompanied with so much ease and freedom of manners, as engages one's love with one's reverence. His good breeding renders him very accessible . In a word, he has such an easy yet manly politeness, as well in his dress as in his address, that were he not a fine figure of a man, but were even plain and hard-featured, he would be thought very agreeable. Sir Charles Grandison, my dear, has traveled, we may say, to some purpose. Well might his sister tell Mr. Reeves that whenever he married he would break half a score hearts. The good sense of this real fine gentleman is not, as I can find, rusted over by sourness, by moroseness : he is above quarreling with the world for trifles ; but he is still more above making 12244 SAMUEL RICHARDSON such compliances with it as would impeach either his honor or conscience . Once Miss Grandison, speaking of her brother, said: " My brother is valued by those who know him best, not so much for being a handsome man, not so much for his birth and fortune, nor for this or that single worthiness, as for being, in the great and yet comprehensive sense of the word, a good man. And at another time she said that he lived to himself, and to his own heart ; and though he had the happiness to please everybody, yet he made the judgment or approbation of the world, matter but of second consideration. " In a word, " added she, " Sir Charles Grandison, my brother " (and when she looks proud, it is when she says my brother) , " is not to be misled either by false glory or false shame, which he calls the great snares of virtue." But let me tell you, my dear, that Sir Charles does not look to be so great a self- denier as his sister seems to think him when she says he lives to himself, and to his own heart, rather than to the opinion of the world. He dresses to the fashion ; rather richly, ' tis true, than gaudily, but still richly : so that he gives his fine person its full consideration. He has a great deal of vivacity in his whole aspect, as well as in his eye. Mrs. Jenny says that he is a great admirer of handsome women. His equipage is perfectly in taste , though not so much to the glare of taste, as if he aimed either to inspire or show emulation. He seldom travels without a set, and suitable attendants ; and (what I think seems a little to savor of singularity) his horses are not docked; their tails are only tied up when they are on the road. This I took notice of when we came to town. But if he be of opinion that the tails of these noble animals are not only a natural ornament, but are of real use to defend them from the vexatious insects that in. summer are so apt to annoy them (as Jenny just now told me was thought to be his reason for not depriving his cattle of a defense which nature gave them) , how far from a dispraise is this humane consideration ! And how, in the more minute as well as (we may suppose) in the greater instances, does he deserve the character of the man of mercy, who will be merciful to his beast! Do you wonder, Lucy, that I cannot hold up my head, when I recollect the figure I must make in that odious masquerade habit, hanging by my clasping arms about the neck of such a gentleman ? Can I be more effectually humbled than by such a SAMUEL RICHARDSON 12245 recollection ? Surely, surely, I have had my punishment for my compliances with this foolish world. But now, I think, something offers of blame in the character of this almost faultless man, as his sister and her Jenny represent him to be. I cannot think, from a hint given by Miss Grandison, that he is quite so frank and so unreserved as his sister is . "As for my brother, " said she, " he winds one about and about, yet seems not to have more curiosity, than one would wish him to have. Led on by his smiling benignity, and fond of his attention to my prattle, I have caught myself in the midst of a tale of which I intended not to tell him one syllable. ' O Sir Charles ! where am I got ? ' have I said, and suddenly stopped.— ' Proceed, my Charlotte ! No reserves to your nearest friend. ' Yet he has his; and I have winded and winded about him, as he has done about me, but all to no purpose. " Now this reserve to such a sister, and in points that she thinks it imports her to know, is what I do not like in Sir Charles. His sister, who cannot think he has one fault, excuses him, and says that her brother has no other view in drawing her on to reveal her own heart but the better to know how to serve and oblige her. But then, might not the same thing be said in behalf of the curiosity of so generous a sister ? - Sir Charles has seen more of the world, it may be said, than his sister has : he has traveled. But is not human nature the same in every country, allowing for only different customs ? not love, hatred, anger, malice, —all the passions in short, good or bad, show themselves by like effects in the faces, hearts, and actions of the people of every country ? And let men make ever such strong pretensions to knowledge from their far- fetched and dear- bought experience , cannot a penetrating spirit learn as much from the passion of a Sir Hargrave Pollexfen in England, as it could from a man of the same or the like ill qualities in Spain, in France, or in Italy ? If I am allowed to be so happy as to cultivate this desirable acquaintance, then will I closely watch every step of this excellent man , in hope, however, to find him as perfect as report declares him, that I may fearlessly make him my theme, as I shall delight to make his sister my example. And if I were to find any considerable faults in him, never fear, my dear, but my gratitude will enlarge my charity in his favor. But I shall, at 12246 SAMUEL RICHARDSON the same time, arm my heart with those remembered failings, lest my gratitude should endanger it, and make me a hopeless fool. I have not said one half of what I intended to say of this extraordinary man. But having imagined, from the equal love I have to his admirable sister, that I had found something to blame him for, my impartiality has carried me out of my path ; and I know not how to recover it, without going a great way back. Let, therefore, what I have further to say mingle in with my future narratives, as new occasions call it forth. But yet I will not suffer any other subject to interfere with that which fills my heart with the praises, the due praises, of this worthy brother and sister, to which I intended to consecrate this rambling and very imperfect letter ; and which here I will conclude, with assurances of duty, love, and gratitude, where so much is due from your HARRIET BYRON.

J. P. RICHTER

12247 JEAN PAUL RICHTER (1763-1825) BY E. P. EVANS EAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER was born as the " twin brother of spring, " on March 21st, 1763, at Wunsiedel, a little town of the Fichtelgebirge in the principality of Bayreuth, where his father was assistant schoolmaster and organist. His mother, Sophie Rosina, was the daughter of a clothier, Johann Paul Kuhn, who plied his trade in Hof, an important manufacturing centre situated on a spur of the above-mentioned pine-clad range of mountains. On the next day after his birth the child was baptized . He had for his sponsors the maternal grandfather aforenamed, and a bookbinder, Johann Friedrich Thieme ; the infant was therefore burdened at the font with a compound of both their names, the first of which he translated some years later into French, out of admiration for Jean Jacques Rousseau. When the babe was scarcely five months old, he was taken to the death-bed of his grandfather Johann Richter, rector or head master of the school at Neustadt on the Kulm, in the Upper Palatinate. The dying man, like Jacob of old, laid his hand on the child and blessed him. The event left a strong impression, not so much in the actual occurrence as in the repeated relation of it by his father in after years. " Pious grandfather, " exclaims Jean Paul in his autobiography, " often have I thought of thy hand, blessing as it grew cold, when fate led me out of dark hours into brighter ; and I can already hold fast to the belief in thy blessing in this world, penetrated, ruled, and animated as it is by miracles and spirits. " In the second year of his age his father became pastor of the church in Joditz, a village not far from Hof, and situated in a charming region on the Saale ; where the boy passed his earliest and most impressionable years in idyllic surroundings, and cultivated that innate delicacy of feeling for the beauties of nature which finds such warm and wonderfully original expression in the writings of the Unfortunately his entire education at this period was conducted at home by his father in a desultory and very disadvantageous way, with no inkling of the pedagogical method which Pestalozzi was just then putting into practice with the charity- children of Zürich. The good pastor pursued the old preceptorial system of mechanically man. 12248 JEAN PAUL RICHTER - memorizing Biblical texts and catechistical doctrines, alternating with long lists of Latin words and grammatical rules, without any explanation, —a form of instruction called " learning by heart, " but contributing little or nothing to the development of either heart or head. History, natural science, geography, arithmetic, astronomy, and even a branch of knowledge so elementary and useful as orthography, were utterly neglected ; music too, in which the father was quite accomplished, and for which the son showed decided taste and talent, found no place in this pietistic and pedantic programme. Oases in the pedagogical desert were occasional opportunities of reading by stealth in his father's library ; and the eagerness with which he devoured the dry theological tomes whose contents, as he confesses, were wholly unintelligible to him-is pathetic proof of his inborn and insatiable love of letters. It was only after his father was promoted to the more important pastorate of Schwarzenbach in 1776, that the youngster of thirteen was sent to school ; where he received systematic instruction from the kind-hearted and clearheaded Rector Werner, and above all, had access to books that were books, -poems, romances, and other products of polite literature, historical works, philosophical treatises, and a casual volume of controversial divinity, which seems to have attracted him in proportion as it " leaned to the heterodox side. " Three years later he was sent to the gymnasium at Hof, and in 1781 matriculated as a student of theology in the University of Leipsic. Meanwhile the death of his father on April 15th, 1779, had not only cut off all financial supplies from home, but also reduced the family to extreme poverty, and caused the widowed mother to look to him as her only strength and stay. Ofttimes he was on the verge of starvation, without either money or credit for a loaf of bread, a bowl of milk, or new soles to his boots ; but he struggled on manfully and cheerfully and overcame all adversities. Hardships arising from this source could not depress a man who was convinced that as a rule, «< wealth weighs heavier than poverty on talent. " The choice of theology as a profession - which may have been determined by family influences, but certainly accorded with his deeply religious nature- grew somewhat distasteful to him even during his preparatory course of study at Hof, and was wholly abandoned soon after he entered the University, where, as he states, the academical atmosphere was impregnated with religious skepticism, and " most of the professors and nearly all the students had a leaning to heterodoxy. " Thus he wrote in one of his letters to Pastor Vogel : - - " I am no longer a theologian, and do not pursue any science ex professo: indeed, none of them have any attraction for me except so far as they bear upon my literary work; even philosophy is now indifferent to me, since I doubt everything. " JEAN PAUL RICHTER 12249 The literary work here referred to was the series of satirical sketches entitled Grönländische Processe (Greenland Lawsuits) , published in two parts in 1783-4. It is a rather unripe production ; somewhat in the manner of Hippel's ' Lebensläufe , ' but with a delicate vein of sentiment and genuine humor in it reminding the reader occasionally of Sterne. Unhappily his exuberant fancy runs riot : the quaintest conceits are clothed in forced and far-fetched similitudes, often inextricably mixed ; one metaphor gives birth to a dozen ; and the whole living mass, composed of parts without organic connection, holds together like a mother-opossum and her young by intertwisting their tails. Nevertheless it was a remarkable performance for a youth of nineteen ; rich in promise, and full of deep meanings half hidden from the hasty reader under a grotesque style. Of a like character, though rather more mature and therefore less extravagant, are ' Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren ' ( Selection from the Devil's Papers : 1788) , and Biographische Belustigungen unter der Gehirnschale einer Riesin ' (Biographical Diversions under the Brain-pan of a Giantess : 1796) . But these works did not suit the public taste, and brought neither fame nor pecuniary returns to the author; who in 1784 was obliged to flee from Leipsic, as Lessing had done thirty-six years before, in order to avoid the debtor's prison. It may be proper to add that in both cases the creditors, thus constrained to possess their souls with patience, received their own with usury in due time. Meanwhile Jean Paul earned his daily food as private tutor ; but although devoting himself conscientiously and lovingly to the training of his pupils, gave his best energies to the more congenial task of " bringing up his own children, ” — namely, to the writing of books. The first of this literary progeny that excited favorable attention, and was thought to do credit to him, was ' Die Unsichtbare Loge ' ( The Invisible Lodge) , which appeared in two volumes in 1793, and bore the secondary title of ' Mummies. ' From a purely artistic point of view this novel, in which the influence of Rousseau is clearly perceptible, is a failure. Jean Paul himself speaks of it as " a born ruin, ». -a quite characteristic example of mixed metaphor (for ruins, unlike poets, are not born, but made) , though sufficiently expressive of the fact that the work not only remained unfinished, but was positively unfinishable. The course of the narration is constantly obstructed , diverted, and covered up by the masses of miscellaneous matter which are dumped into it, and borne along by the current until they take shape as a luxuriant and labyrinthian delta of reflections on all sorts of topics, in which the stream is at last wholly lost to view. If in its structure it is a chaos " without form, " it is in its substance by no means void. " It is also important as a turning-point in the career of the author, who was not only warmly praised by the critics, but received a still more «< 12250 JEAN PAUL RICHTER welcome recognition from the publisher in the form of a hundred ducats. It was doubtless due in a great measure to this encouragement, that a more cheerful and less sardonic tone prevails in his next novel, ' Hesperus ' ( 1794) , as well as in most of his subsequent writings : ' Leben des Quintus Fixlein ' ( Life of Quintus Fixlein : 1796) ; Blumen-, Frucht-, und Dornenstücke ; oder, Ehestand, Tod, und Hochzeit des Armenadvocaten Siebenkäs ' (Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces ; or, Wedded Life, Death, and Nuptials of the Poor Man's Advocate Siebenkäs : 1796-7) ; ' Das Kampaner Thal ; oder, Über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele ' (The Campan Valley; or, On the Immortality of the Soul : 1797) ; Titan ' (1800-3) ; ' Flegeljahre ' (Wild Oats : 1804-5) ; Dr. Katzenbergers Badereise ' (Dr. Katzenberger's Journey to the Bath : 1809) ; Der Feldpredigers Schmelzles Reise nach Fläz ' (Chaplain Schmelzle's Journey to Fläz : 1809) ; ' Leben Fibels ' (Life of Fibel : 1812) ; and ' Der Komet ; oder, Nikolaus Marggraf ' ( The Comet ; or, Nicholas Marggraf : 1820-2). To these titles, which comprise his principal works, may be added ' Die Vorschule der Aesthetik ' (Introduction to Esthetics : 1804) ; ' Levana; oder, Erziehungslehre (Levana ; or, Theory of Education : 1807) ; and ' Selina ; oder, Über die Unsterblichkeit ( Selina ; or, On the Immortality of the Soul) . The lastmentioned discourse on his favorite theme was left unfinished at the time of his death on November 14th, 1825, and borne on his bier to the grave, but was not published till two years later. To complete the account of Richter's outer life , it may be added that after the death in 1797 of his mother, whose last years were cheered and made comfortable by his literary success, he lived for a time in Leipsic and Weimar, and then went to Berlin, where in 1801 he found a highly cultivated and thoroughly congenial wife in Caroline Mayer, the daughter of a Prussian privy-councilor. In 1804 he settled permanently in Bayreuth ; and four years later the Archbishop and Prince Primate von Dalberg granted him a pension of one thousand florins, which after the dissolution of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1813 continued to be paid by the King of Bavaria. Titular honors were also bestowed upon him : he was made Legationsrath (Councilor of Legation) by the Duke of Saxe-Hildburghausen; in 1817 he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Heidelberg ; and was chosen a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in 1820. Richter's best and most brilliant works of fiction are ' Hesperus, Titan,' 'Quintus Fixlein, ' Flegeljahre, ' and ' Siebenkäs. ' He himself seems to have thought most highly of Flegeljahre ' ; but the critical reader of to-day will probably give the preference to 'Fixlein ' and ' Siebenkäs. ' The permanent value of these products of the imagination, as well as of his so- called scientific writings, - JEAN PAUL RICHTER 12251 'Introduction to Esthetics, ' " Levana, ' and ' Selina, ' -lies less in their symmetry and unity as artistic creations (in which respects they are woefully deficient) than in the wealth of isolated thoughts, aphoristic utterances, and original conceits which they contain. Even in Germany the dust on the sixty-five volumes of his ' Complete Works,' issued shortly after his death, is nowadays seldom disturbed. It is only in anthologies that he is read or can be really enjoyed by the present generation. Even his humor, which is his one precious quality, is apt to cloy through excess of sensibility running ' over into sentimentality. It is also difficult to find a passage of considerable length in which his metaphors do not halt, and to use his own comparison, go limping along like an actor with a buskin on one foot and a sock on the other. The meaning, too, is apt to be obscured by unintelligible allusions ; a peculiarity due in part to his lifelong habit of keeping a commonplace-book, which gradually grew into numerous volumes, and was filled with notes and excerpts, curious facts and fancies, serving as material for illustration, and suggesting tropes overstrained and incomprehensible to the general reader without a special commentary. Indeed, as early as 1808, the Hamburg publicist Carl William Reinhold deemed it necessary to prepare a dictionary explaining Richter's strange modes of speech, and rendering the more difficult passages into plain German for the benefit of his own countrymen and contemporaries. In this respect he is the very antithesis of Lessing, whose thoughts are simply and strongly expressed, and need no exegetical apparatus to make them understood. But with all these defects as an artist, Richter was an original thinker, a keen but kind-hearted humorist, a genuine poet, and a noble man. Of the German romanticists he was unquestionably the healthiest ; or rather the least "tainted in his wits. " However much he may love to peer into graves and charnels, and to weep over the wrongs and miseries of human life, his melancholy is " a most humorous sadness "; the wormwood and the gall of cynicism are not the ingredients of his satire, and in his bosom there beats a stout, warm, cheerful heart, with no drop of misanthropic bitterness in it. He studied men and nature through a microscopic lens, and thus discovered a world of wonders where the common eye saw nothing. Owing to the circumstances of his youth, the sphere of his observation of social phenomena was limited, but his vision exceedingly sharp within this narrow range. His one point of firm footing on the earth was his genuine sympathy with the joys and sorrows of the common people, the sufferings and sacrifices of the poor ; and herein lay his strength. E.P.Evans JEAN PAUL RICHTER 12252 A EXTRA LEAF ON CONSOLATION From Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces > TIME will come —that is , must come-when we shall be commanded by morality not only to cease tormenting others, but also ourselves. A time must come when man, even on earth, shall wipe away most of his tears, were it only from pride. Nature indeed draws tears out of the eyes, and sighs out of the breast, so quickly that the wise man can never wholly lay aside the garb of mourning from his body; but let his soul wear none. For as it is ever a merit to bear a small suffering with cheerfulness, so must the calm and patient endurance of the worst be a merit, and will only differ in being a greater one; as the same reason which is valid for the forgiveness of small injuries is equally valid for the forgiveness of the greatest. The first thing that we have to contend against and despise , in sorrow as in anger, is its poisonous, enervating sweetness, which we are so loath to exchange for the labor of consoling ourselves, and to drive away by the effort of reason. We must not exact of philosophy, that with one stroke of the pen it shall reverse the transformation of Rubens, who with one stroke of his brush changed a laughing child into a weeping one. It is enough if it change the full mourning of the soul into halfmourning; it is enough if I can say to myself, I will be content to endure the sorrow that philosophy has left me: without it, it would be greater, and the gnat's bite would be a wasp's sting. Even physical pain shoots its sparks upon us out of the electrical condenser of the imagination. We could endure the most acute pangs calmly, if they only lasted the sixtieth part of a second; but in fact we never have to endure an hour of pain, but only a succession of the sixtieth parts of a second, the sixty beams of which are collected into the burning focus of a second, and directed upon our nerves by the imagination alone. The most painful part of our bodily pain is that which is bodiless or immaterial, —namely, our impatience, and the delusion that it will last forever. There is many a loss over which we all know for certain that we shall no longer grieve in twenty - ten -two years. Why do we not say to ourselves, -I will at once then, to-day, throw JEAN PAUL RICHTER 12253 away an opinion which I shall abandon in twenty years ? Why should I be able to abandon errors of twenty years' standing, and not of twenty hours ? When I awake from a dream which has painted an Otaheite for me on the dark ground of the night, and find the flowery land melted away, I scarcely sigh, thinking to myself, " It was only a dream. " Why is it that if I had really possessed this island while awake, and it had been swallowed up by an earthquake, why is it that I do not then exclaim, " The island was only a dream " ? Wherefore am I more inconsolable at the loss of a longer dream than at the loss of a shorter, -for that is the difference ; and why does man find a great loss less probable, and less a matter of necessity when it occurs, than a small one ? - The reason is, that every sentiment and every emotion is mad, and exacts and builds its own world. A man can vex himself that it is already, or only, twelve o'clock. What folly! The mood not only exacts its own world, its own individual consciousness, but its own time. I beg every one to let his passions, for once, speak out plainly within himself, and to probe and question them to the bottom, as to what they really desire . He will be terror- struck at the enormity of these hitherto only half- muttered wishes. Anger wishes that all mankind had only one neck ; love, that it had only one heart ; grief, two tear- glands ; pride, two bent knees. Translation by Edward Henry Noel. THE NEW-YEAR'S NIGHT OF A MISERABLE MAN I IN THE lone stillness of the New-Year's night An old man at his window stood, and turned His dim eyes to the firmament, where, bright And pure, a million rolling planets burned, — And then down on the earth all cold and white, And felt that moment that of all who mourned And groaned upon its bosom, none there were With his deep wretchedness and great despair. For near him lay his grave, -hidden from view Not by the flowers of youth, but by the snows Of age alone. In torturing thought he flew Over the past, and on his memory rose 12254 JEAN PAUL RICHTER That picture of his life which conscience drew, With all its fruits, -diseases, sins, and woes; A ruined frame, a blighted soul, dark years Of agony, remorse, and withering fears. Like spectres now his bright youth-days came back, And that cross-road of life where, when a boy, His father placed him first : its right-hand track Leads to a land of glory, peace, and joy, Its left to wildernesses waste and black, Where snakes and plagues and poison-winds destroy. Which had he trod ? Alas ! the serpents hung Coiled round his heart, their venom on his tongue. Sunk in unutterable grief, he cried, " Restore my youth to me ! O God, restore My morn of life ! O father ! be my guide, And let me, let me choose my path once more! " But on the wide waste air his ravings died Away, and all was silent as before. His youth had glided by, fleet as the wave ; His father came not, -he was in his grave. Strange lights flashed flickering by: a star was falling ; Down to the miry marsh he saw it rush - " Like me ! " he thought, and oh ! that thought was galling, And hot and heart-wrung tears began to gush. Sleep-walkers crossed his eyes in shapes appalling; Gaunt windmills lifted up their arms to crush; And skeleton monsters rose up from the dim Pits of the charnel-house, and glared on him ! Amid these overboiling bursts of feeling, Rich music, heralding the young year's birth, Rolled from a distant steeple, like the pealing Of some celestial organ o'er the earth : Milder emotions over him came stealing ; He felt the soul's unpurchasable worth. " Return ! " again he cried, imploringly; " O my lost youth ! return, return to me ! " And youth returned, and age withdrew its terrors ; Still was he young, -for he had dreamed the whole : But faithful is the image conscience mirrors When whirlwind passions darken not the soul. JEAN PAUL RICHTER 12255 Ο Alas! too real were his sins and errors ; Too truly had he made the earth his goal ; He wept, and thanked his God that with the will, He had the power, to choose the right path still. Here, youthful reader, ponder ! and if thou, Like him, art reeling over the abyss, And shakest off sin's iron bondage now, This ghastly dream may prove thy guide to bliss ; But should age once be written on thy brow, Its wrinkles will not be a dream, like this. Mayest vainly pour thy tears above the urn Of thy departed youth,,- it never will return ! Translation of James Clarence Mangan. FROM FIRST FLOWER PIECE › NCE on a summer evening I was lying in the sunshine on a mountain, and fell asleep. Then I dreamed that I awoke in a church-yard. The down-rolling wheels of the steepleclock, which was striking eleven, had awakened me. I looked for the sun in the empty night- heaven, for I thought an eclipse was veiling it with the moon. All the graves were open, and the iron doors of the charnel-house were moved to and fro by invisible hands. Shadows which no one cast, flitted on the walls ; and other shadows walked erect in the thin air. In the open coffins none were sleeping now but children. In the sky hung in large folds merely a gray sultry mist, which a giant shadow like a net was drawing down nearer, tighter, and hotter. Above me I heard the distant fall of avalanches ; under me the first step of an illimitable earthquake. The church wavered up and down with two unceasing discords, which contended with each other and vainly endeavored to mingle in unison. At times a gray gleam skipped up along its windows, and under the gleam the lead and iron ran down molten. The net of the mist and the reeling earth thrust me into that fearful temple, at the door of which, in two poisonous thickets, two glittering basilisks were brooding. I passed through unknown shadows, on whom ancient centuries were impressed. All the shadows were standing round. the empty altar ; and in all of them the breast, instead of the heart, quivered and beat. One dead man only, who had just been buried in the church, still lay on his pillow without a 12256 JEAN PAUL RICHTER quivering breast, and on his smiling countenance stood a happy dream. But as a living one entered, he awoke, and smiled no more ; he lifted with difficulty his heavy eyelids, but within was no eye, and in his beating breast there was, instead of a heart, a wound. He lifted up his hands and folded them to pray; but the arms lengthened out and dissolved, and the hands, still folded, fell away. Above, on the vault of the church, stood the dial-plate of eternity, on which no number appeared, and which was its own index hand ; but a black finger pointed thereon, and the dead sought to see the time by it. An immense and immeasurably extended hammer was about to strike the last hour of time and shatter the universe, when I awoke. My soul wept for joy that I could still pray to God; and the joy, and the weeping, and the faith in him, were my prayer. And as I arose, the sun was glowing deep behind the full purpled ears of corn, and casting meekly the gleam of its twilight red on the little moon, which was rising in the east without an aurora ; and between the sky and the earth, a gay transient air people was stretching out its short wings, and living, as I did , before the Infinite Father ; and from all nature around me flowed peaceful tones as from distant evening bells. MAXIMS FROM RICHTER'S WORKS E WHO remains modest, not when he is praised but when he HⓇ is blamed, is truly modest. OF ALL human qualities, modesty is most easily stifled by fumes of incense, or of sulphur ; and praise is often more hurtful than censure. THE truest love is the most timid; the falsest is the boldest. IF YOU wish to become acquainted with your betrothed, travel with him for a few days, —especially if he is accompanied by his own folks, —and take your mother along. IT IS the misfortune of the bachelor that he has no one to tell him frankly his faults ; but the husband has this happiness. JEAN PAUL RICHTER 12257 A MAN ought never to be more delicately attentive to his wife than after making her a present, in order to lighten the sense of obligation. MARRIAGES are so unhappy, because men cannot make up their minds to substitute love for force and arguments, and because they wish to attain their purpose by might and right. LOVE increases in strength with years, and diminishes in its outward manifestations. THE wedlock is happiest when one discovers the greatest advantages in it and not before it. It is therefore perilous to marry a poet. MEN of imagination more easily make up with a lady- love when she is absent than when she is present. JEALOUSY Constitutes the sole difference between love and friendship. Friendship has therefore one pleasure, and love one pain, the more. PAINS of sympathy are the sign of love : but if genuine, they are not imaginary, and cause more suffering than one's own pains ; for we have at least the right to conquer the latter. ONE should never hope to be compatible with a wife with whom one has quarreled as a bride. IF YOU are unable to refute an argument, you find fault with the way in which it is put. No Two persons are ever more confidential and cordial than when they are censuring a third. INTERCOURSE with men of the world narrows the heart, communion with nature expands it. SATAN is a scarecrow set up by the clergy in the spiritual vineyard. SO EASILY are we impressed by numbers, that even a dozen wheelbarrows in succession seem quite imposing. XXI-767 12258 JEAN PAUL RICHTER REFORMERS are constantly forgetting that the hour-hand must make progress if only the minute-hand keeps moving. IT IS of little avail that fortune makes us rich, if our desires make us poor again. THE Indians mistook the clothes of the first European they saw for the body ; we mistake them for the soul. Ir is not always the best actor that plays the part of king, either on the stage or in real life. How quickly and quietly the eye opens and closes, revealing and concealing a world ! DULL persons look upon the refined as false. THE head, like the stomach, is most easily infected with poison when it is empty. THE whole constitution of the English is like their manufactured cloth, which may not have a fair gloss, but is capable of standing bad weather. THE timid fear before danger, the cowardly in the midst of it, and the courageous after it is over. BETWEEN no two things are the resemblance and the antipathy. stronger than between critic and author, unless it be between. wolf and dog. THE public is so fond of reading reviews because it likes to see authors, as the English used to like to see bears, not only made to dance, but also goaded and baited. MAN'S moral, like his physical progress, is nothing but a continuous falling. EVERY recovery from illness is a restoration and palingenesis of our youth. FEMALE Virtue is the glowing iron, which, as formerly in or deals, women must bear from the font to the altar in order to be innocent. JEAN PAUL RICHTER 12259 GIRLS and gold are the softer the purer they are. OUT of craftiness women often let the man rule ; and then they do as they please. NO ONE believes so readily as a woman that she has understood a very difficult point in philosophy. FROM thinking to acting is a longer way with women than with men. THE vanity of women is hurt by disparaging, not their intelligence or their virtue, but their comeliness or taste. A man may safely say to his wife, " You are stupider than I. " But just let him say once, " You are homelier than I. " IMITATE the bee : take the honey, but leave to the rose its fragrance. IT is as hard to prove anything to women as to lawyers. SCARS grow with the body; so do stings of conscience. CHILDREN, like wives, prefer that in every marriage there should be but one child to love. MUSIC is the Madonna among the arts : she can give birth and being only to the holiest. MUSIC is too good for drinking- songs and merry-makings. THE courtesy with which I receive a stranger, and the civility I show him, form the background on which he paints my portrait. SULKINESS is a spiritual catalepsy, in which, as in the physical, every member grows stiff in the position in which it was when the attack came on ; spiritual catalepsy has also this in common with physical, that it seizes women oftener than men. WOMEN are not fallen, but falling angels. YOUTH and Age. -The rising star looks larger, but the risen one shines brighter. 12260 JEAN PAUL RICHTER OLD people are long shadows that are projected by the even. ing sun, and lie cold upon the earth ; but they all point to the morning. EVERY one utters the word " past " with more emotion than " future. " - No MAIDEN should slander, scold, or hate , at least so long as she is in love, on account of the contrast : when she is a housewife with children, cattle, and maid- servants, no just man will object to moderate anger and modest chiding. IN THE Spirit world, autumn is the next neighbor to spring. IF ANY departed souls long for earth, it must be those of children. IF A man should rise from the dead, we should adore him as a saint, even if he should tell us that he had merely fallen into a long and profound sleep . Is it not the same with the newborn ? HE WHO sacrifices health to knowledge will find that he has in most cases sacrificed knowledge too. IN GOING over the bridge to the Castle of St. Angelo in Rome, one is reminded of women: for there are ten angels standing on it hewn in stone, each with a different instrument of martyrdom ; one with the nails, another with the reed, and a third with the dice. Thus every woman has in her hand a different instrument of martyrdom for us, poor lambs of God. IF A man spends the day in reading and studying, what worlds, what comprehensive ideas, dwarfing the present, pass before him! How vast the universe seems, and how small the earth ! THE greater the thing that comes to end, the more we think of the end; like the end of a day, a year, or a century. DARKNESS is pleasanter than a dim light. THE past and the future are both veiled ; but the former wears the widow's and the latter the virgin's veil. JEAN PAUL RICHTER • 12261 DYING for the truth is death not merely for one's country, but also for the world. Truth, like the Medicean Venus, may be transmitted to posterity in thirty fragments, but posterity will put them together into a goddess. Genius is the alarm - clock of sleeping centuries. THERE are truths of which we hope that great men will be more firmly convinced than we can be, and that therefore our conviction will be supplemented by theirs. WE WISH for immortality not as the reward, but as the perpetuity, of virtue. VIRTUE can be no more rewarded than joy ; its sole reward is its continuance. VICE wins the battle- field, but virtue the Elysian fields. ART may not be the bread, but it is the wine, of life . To disparage it on the plea of utility is to imitate Domitian, who ordered the grape-vines to be rooted out in order to promote agriculture. A CONVERSATION about a work of art can embrace almost everything. KNOWLEDGE and Action. -It is a fine thing in the springtide of youth to poetize and theorize, and then in the years of manhood to rule from a higher throne and to crown thoughts with deeds. It is like the sun, which in the morning merely paints the clouds and lights up the earth, but at midday fructifies it with heat, and yet continues to shine and to paint rainbows on storm-clouds. IT WERE damnable if I should not have as much freedom to do good as other poetic heads have to work evil. IF A ruler has received the two heavenly gifts of knowledge and purity of heart, the earthly gift of statecraft will come of itself. Thus two celestial telescopes combine to form one terrestrial telescope. NECESSITY is the mother of the arts ; but also the grandmother of vices. 12262 . JEAN PAUL RICHTER WHAT bloomed in Rome on high elevations, grows in Germany on lower levels ; as in the far north, Alpine plants are found at the foot of mountains. But it is gratifying to experience the oldest in the newest, and to discover that the modern, like the ancient classic, is born rich and grand, just as he writes. SATIRE invents ridiculous combinations of purely imaginary follies, not in order that they may be laughed at and laid aside , for they never existed, but in order to render the sense of the ludicrous more acute, so that like combinations in real life may be better observed. A MAN may curse a misfortune, but never weep over it. HE WHO no longer aspires to be more than a man will be less than a man. THE thought of immortality is a luminous sea, in which he who bathes is all surrounded by stars. WHERE man is, infinity begins. A BEING in whom the thought of immortality can arise, cannot be mortal. O MUSIC! thou that bringest the past and the future with their fluttering flames so near to our wounds, art thou the evening zephyr of this life, or the morning breeze of the life to come ? Yes, thy notes are echoes which angels catch from the joyous tones of another world, in order to drop into our mute heart and our desolate night the exhaled vernal harmonies of the heavens that fly far from us. MAN, an Egyptian deity, a patchwork of beasts' heads and human bodies, stretches out his hands in opposite directions towards the present and the future life. He is moved by spiritual' and material forces, as the moon is attracted at once by the sun and the earth ; but the earth holds it fast in its fetters, while the sun only produces slight deviations in its course. THE progress of mankind towards the holy city of God is like that of some penitents, who on their pilgrimage to Jerusalem always take three steps forward and one backward. JEAN PAUL RICHTER 12263 HE WHO differs from the world in important matters should be the more careful to conform to it in insignificant ones. PHILOSOPHY and the nymph Echo never let you have the last word. THE belief in immortality is by no means incompatible with the belief in atheism : for the same Necessity which in this life threw my shining dewdrop of Me into a flower-bell and under a sun, can repeat the process in a second life ; indeed, it can embody me more easily the second time than the first. MEN deny the existence of God with as little feeling as the most affirm it . Even in our true systems we are constantly collecting mere words, counters and medals, as misers do coins ; and not till late do we convert the words into feelings, the coins into enjoyments. A man may believe in the immortality of the soul for twenty years, and not till in the one-and- twentieth, in a great moment, be amazed at the rich contents of this belief, the warmth of this naphtha- well. CHILDHOOD, and its terrors rather than its raptures, take wings and radiance in dreams, and sport like fireflies in the little night of the soul. Do not crush these flickering sparks ! IT is a fine thing that authors, even those who deny the immortality of their souls, seldom dare to contest that of their names; and as Cicero affirmed that he would believe in another life even if there were none, so they wish to cling to the belief in the future eternal life of their names, although the critics may have furnished positive proofs to the contrary. LET us not despise the slender thread upon which we and our fortune mar depend. If, like the spider, we have spun and drawn it out of ourselves, it will hold us quite well ; and we may hang on it safely as the tempest tosses us and the web uninjured to and fro. POVERTY is the only burden which grows heavier when loved ones help to bear it. THE human body is a musical instrument, in which the Cremona chords are twisted out of living intestines, and the breast is the sounding-board and the head the damper. 12264 JEAN PAUL RICHTER SINCE there are in our world so many delicate and Divine sentiments hovering about, so many rich blossoms unfolding and bearing no seed, it is fortunate that poesy was invented to preserve all these unborn spirits and the fragrance of flowers in its halo. IF YOU are an author, picture to yourself the best man, one who cherishes in his heart all that is most holy and most beautiful, and never suffers anything impure to enter there ; then take your pen and strive to enrapture this imaginary reader. MAN is like horse-radish : the more it is grated the more it bites. The satirist is sadder than the jester, for the same reason that the orang- outang is more melancholy than the monkey, — because he is nobler. 1 1 12265 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY (1852-) - AMES WHITCOMB RILEY, the western-American dialect poet, is one of the younger writers who have given to the newer native literature a quality expressive of interesting and typical local conditions. A man of the people, he has in his homely and heartfelt song uttered their joys and sorrows, -to be repaid by the affectionate admiration of his Indiana Hoosier folk and by a wide popularity throughout the United States. Riley's work is honestly a product of the soil. It reflects the life of the Middle West, and at its best calls for recognition as something more than social documents ; namely, as lyric utterance vital with feeling and full of a truly democratic sympathy for common humanity. JAMES W. RILEY Riley was born in 1852 in Greenfield, Indiana, a small town twenty miles from Indianapolis. His father, a country lawyer, wished his son to read for that profession : but it took the latter, after a course at the village school, but a short time to learn that Blackstone was not for him, and he ran away from home with a patent-medicine and concert wagon, it being his function to beat the bass-drum; then he worked at the trade of sign-painting, coming back to Greenfield to do some experimental journalism on a local paper, the failure of which sheet sent him to Indianapolis, where his labors on the Journal of that city resulted in a connection which introduced him as a writer and brought him fame and fortune. Riley's boyhood in the little town, with its simple honest ways, among his kin and comrades, is described in the autobiographic book ' A Child World ' ( 1897) . His upbringing was typical of the place and time, and richly has he made use in his writings of these early experiences. For a while Riley used the penname " B. F. Johnson of Boone " in signing his Journal contributions; and a great deal of his verse and prose first appeared in the columns of that paper, -the rapidly thrown off , " copy " of the practical newspaper man. Yet this long apprenticeship helped Riley to acquire the firm technique, the grasp on the art of verse-making, which he now possesses. 12266 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY Since Riley has come into prosperity and fame he has returned to Greenfield, and purchased and fitted up for his summer home the old family residence, endeared to him by so many associations. He is in demand all over the country as a reader, his gifts as a platform speaker being remarkable. A tour made with the late humorist Bill Nye was very successful. A friend thus describes his personal appearance : " In physical stature he is below the average height. His complexion is fair. His hair has never changed from the flaxen whiteness of boyhood. His eyes are large, light-blue, wide open, and marvelous in their expression. His face is smooth-shaven ; his attire neat and fashionable. To his friends, to all the associations, interests, and memories of his life, he is profoundly, patriotically loyal. " His literary bow as a maker of poems was made in 1883 , when he was turned thirty, with the volume entitled ' Old Swimmin' Hole. ' It was brought out by an Indianapolis firm , the Bowen- Merrill Company, which has continued to issue Riley's books ; although the Century Company of New York in 1893 published a handsome volume of his representative lyrics, Poems Here at Home. ' That maiden volume, with its quaint verse depicting the rustic haunts and characters he knew as a lad, pleased the public, and Riley's road was smooth thereafter. Other collections of poems, typical of the man and his quality, are ' Afterwhiles ' ( 1887) , ' Old- Fashioned Roses ' ( 1888) , ' Pipes o' Pan ( 1889) , Green Fields and Running Brooks ' ( 1893) . Riley's publications also include several volumes of humorous prose sketches ; but this side of his work, when compared with his poetry, is unimportant. His most winning verse is that which blends pathos and humor. His dialect pieces have made him most broadly known, and his choicest in this kind are admirable. He catches the idiom of the middle- class home, and interprets the homely human heart with sure divination. He chose this medium of expression because he wished to speak for and of the plain people, and believed this the most direct and honest way As he says himself, " I went among the people : < I learned their wants, their sufferings, their joys ; and I put them into rhyme. " But it would be a mistake to regard Riley exclusively as a dialect poet. The Poet of the Future, ' for example, with its healthy democratic teaching, its vigorous lilt, its unforced melody, is one of numerous inspiring poems written in more conventional English . This is true too of the exquisite sonnet, ' When She Comes Home, ' showing what lovely work he can do in one of the most difficult of verse forms ; while his ' Away ' is another illustration of his tender simplicity which makes magic effects. Riley believes that — " The tanned face, garlanded with mirth, It hath the kingliest smile on earth; The swart brow, diamonded with sweat, Hath never need of coronet. » JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 12267 He is a genuine people's poet ; and although his work suffers here and there from prolixity and suggests the pressure of over-production, he is, judged by his highest accomplishment (as every literary maker should be) , a true singer, who has contributed authentically to the content of American letters. [All the following poems are quoted from ' Afterwhiles, ' -copyright 1887, by James Whitcomb Riley, —and are reprinted by permission of The BowenMerrill Co. , publishers. ] I AWAY CANNOT say and I will not say That he is dead. ― He is just away! With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand, He has wandered into an unknown land, And left us dreaming how very fair It needs must be, since he lingers there. And you-O you, who the wildest yearn For the old-time step and the glad return, — Think of him faring on, as dear In the love of There as the love of Here; And loyal still as he gave the blows Of his warrior strength to his country's foes. Mild and gentle, as he was brave, When the sweetest love of his life he gave To simple things : where the violets grew Pure as the eyes they were likened to, The touches of his hands have strayed As reverently as his lips have prayed ; When the little brown thrush that harshly chirred Was dear to him as the mocking-bird ; And he pitied as much as a man in pain A writhing honey-bee wet with rain.— Think of him still as the same, I say: He is not dead -he is just away! 12268 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY WHEN SHE COMES HOME HEN she comes home again ! A thousand ways WHEI fashion, to myself, the tenderness Of my glad welcome : I shall tremble-yes ; And touch her, as when first in the old days I touched her girlish hand, nor dared upraise Mine eyes, such was my faint heart's sweet distress. Then silence ; and the. perfume of her dress. The room will sway a little , and a haze Cloy eyesight -soul sight, even -for a space. And tears -yes ; and the ache here in the throat, To know that I so ill deserve the place Her arms make for me ; and the sobbing note I stay with kisses, ere the tearful face Again is hidden in the old embrace. A LIFE LESSON HERE, little girl - don't cry ! TH They have broken your doll, I know; And your tea- set blue, And your play-house, too, Are things of the long ago : But childish troubles will soon pass by ; - There, little girl - don't cry! There, little girl - don't cry! They have broken your slate , I know; And the glad, wild ways Of your schoolgirl days Are things of the long ago : But life and love will soon come by ; - There, little girl- don't cry ! There, little girl -don't cry ! They have broken your heart, I know; And the rainbow gleams Of your youthful dreams Are things of the long ago: But heaven holds all for which you sigh ; - There, little girl -don't cry! JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 12269 A SONG HERE is ever a song somewhere, my dear, THE There is ever a something sings alway: There's the song of the lark when the skies are clear, And the song of the thrush when the skies are gray ; The sunshine showers across the grain, And the bluebird trills in the orchard tree ; And in and out, when the eaves drip rain, The swallows are twittering ceaselessly. There is ever a song somewhere, my dear, Be the skies above or dark or fair ; There is ever a song that our hearts may hearThere is ever a song somewhere, my dearThere is ever a song somewhere ! There is ever a song somewhere, my dear, In the midnight black or the midday blue: The robin pipes when the sun is here, And the cricket chirrups the whole night through; The buds may blow and the fruit may grow, And the autumn leaves drop crisp and sere : But whether the sun or the rain or the snow, There is ever a song somewhere, my dear. NOTHIN' TO SAY OTHIN' to say, my daughter ! nothin' at all to say ! - -- NG'yirls that's in love, I've noticed, ginerly has their way! Yer mother did, afore you, when her folks objected to me - Yit here I am, and here you air ; and yer mother - where is she ? You look lots like yer mother : purty much same in size ; And about the same complected ; and favor about the eyes ; Like her, too, about her livin' here, -because she couldn't stay : It'll most seem like you was dead. -like her! but I hain't got nothin' to say! She left you her little Bible - writ yer name acrost the page ; And left her ear-bobs fer you, ef ever you come of age. I've allus kep' ' em and g'yarded ' em, but ef yer goin' awayNothin' to say, my daughter! nothin' at all to say! 12270 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY You don't rikollect her, I reckon ? No: you wasn't a year old then! And now yer -how old air you ? W'y, child, not ' twenty ' ! When ? And yer nex' birthday's in April ? and you want to get married that day ?- I wisht yer mother was livin' ! -but -I hain't got nothin' to say ! Twenty year ! and as good a girl as parent ever found ! There's a straw ketched onto yer dress there -I'll bresh it off — turn round. (Her mother was jes' twenty when us two run away!) Nothin' to say, my daughter ! nothin' at all to say ! KNEE-DEEP IN JUNE ELL you what I like the best : TELL 'Long about knee-deep in June, 'Bout the time the strawberries melts On the vine, -some afternoon Like to jes' git out and rest, And not work at nothin' else ! Orchard ' s where I'd ruther beNeedn't fence it in for me!- Jes' the whole sky overhead, And the whole airth underneath - Sorto' so's a man kin breathe Like he ort, and kindo' has Elbow-room to keerlessly - Sprawl out len'thways on the grass, Where the shadder's thick and soft As the kivvers on the bed Mother fixes in the loft Allus, when they's company! Jes' a sorto' lazin' thereS' lazy ' at you peek and peer Through the wavin' leaves above, Like a feller ' at's in love And don't know it, ner don't keer! Ever'thing you hear and see Got some sort o' interest : Maybe find a bluebird's nest Tucked up there conveenently For the boys ' at's apt to be Up some other apple-tree ! JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 12271 Watch the swallers scootin' past 'Bout as peert as you could ast ; Er the bobwhite raise and whiz Where some other's whistle is. Ketch a shadder down below, And look up to find the crow; Er a hawk away up there, 'Pearantly froze in the air ! - Hear the old hen squawk, and squat Over every chick she's got, Suddent-like ! -And she knows where That air hawk is, well as you! You jes' bet your life she do ! - Eyes a-glitterin' like glass, Waitin' till he makes a pass ! Pee-wee's singin' , to express My opinions second-class, Yit you'll hear ' em more or less ; Sapsuck's gittin' down to biz, Weedin' out the lonesomeness ; Mr. Bluejay, full o' sass, In them base-ball clothes o' his, Sportin' ' round the orchard jes' Like he owned the premises ! Sun out in the fields kin sizz, But flat on yer back, I guess, In the shade's where glory is ! That's jes' what I'd like to do Stiddy fer a year er two. Plague! ef they ain't sompin' in Work, ' at kind o' goes ag'in My convictions ! -' long about Here in June especially! Under some old apple-tree, Jes' a-restin' through and through, I could git along without Nothin' else at all to do Only jes' a-wishin' you Was a-gittin' there like me, — And June was eternity! Lay out there and try to see Jes' how lazy you kin be ! — 12272 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY Tumble round and souse your head In the clover-bloom, er pull Yer straw hat acrost yer eyes, And peek through it at the skies, Thinkin' of old chums ' at's dead, Maybe smilin' back at you In betwixt the beautiful Clouds o' gold and white and blue ! — Month a man kin railly love — June, you know, I'm talkin' of! March ain't never nothin' new ! - April's altogether too Brash fer me ! and May -I jes' 'Bominate its promises : Little hints o' sunshine and Green around the timber-landA few blossoms, and a few Chip-birds, and a sprout er two— Drap asleep, and it turns in 'Fore daylight and snows ag'in! But when June comes With wild honey ! — -clear my throat Rench my hair In the dew! and hold my coat! Whoop out loud ! and throw my hat! June wants me, and I'm to spare ! Spread them shadders anywhere, I'll git down and waller there, And obleeged to you at that ! 12273 ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE (1838-) HE feminine quality in Thackeray's genius, which saved his unerring comprehension of human nature from harshness, seems detached and given complete embodiment in the writings of his daughter, Anne Thackeray Ritchie. Not that these are lacking in strength, nor in evidences of keen perception ; but they are steeped in the mellow atmosphere of an exquisite womanliness. They are feminine in the highest and completest sense of the word. They contain moreover a quality lacking to the works of the younger generation of writers, -that of nobility, of high breeding; the spirit indeed of one whose life from her childhood up has been spent among the true aristocracy of mind and of character, and whose sensitive soul responded wholly to gracious influences. Anne Isabella Thackeray (Ritchie) , the daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray, was born in London in 1838. Her childhood was spent partly in Kensington, - whose quaintness she has immortalized in her most characteristic novel, -partly on the continent with her grandparents. She grew up in London as her own heroine Dolly grew up, " like a little spring flower among the silent old bricks. " Her girlhood was spent in association with her father and his circle of friends ; which included indeed the cream of England's true gentry. Never did a little lady grow into womanhood in a more harmonious environment. ANNE T. RITCHIE In 1877 Miss Thackeray married her cousin, Richmond Thackeray Ritchie. In 1860 her first story, ' Little Scholars in the London Schools,' had appeared in the Cornhill Magazine, of which her father was editor. Unpretentious as it was, it revealed the author's dominant qualities : her appreciation of the beautiful and dramatic elements which may lie hidden in obscure lives, and in the experiences of commonplace people ; her genial sympathy, the rare charity and truthfulness of her spirit. It revealed, moreover, the genuineness of her literary gift. Her simple and strong English belonged to no " school. " It was that of one who had drunk deep at the undefiled wells of the great Masters of the tongue. XXI-768 12274 ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE In Old Kensington, ' published in 1873, her gifts become fully manifest. It would be difficult to overrate the charm of this novel of gentlefolk, living out their simple lives in that quaint quarter of London where the author's own girlhood was passed, and whose oldfashioned beauties (many of them now vanished) she depicts with the clear memory of love. The odor as of lavender haunts each chapter of this book; whose fine, clean atmosphere removes it, as the East from the West, from the neurotic vulgarities which in the present day have debased the beautiful art of fiction. To read a novel like ' Old Kensington ' is to come at once into good society. The book is remarkable, moreover, for its depiction of human nature, and of child nature ; and for its exquisite bits of description, like some little warm Dutch landscapes : - " As days go by, Dolly's pictures warm and brighten from early spring into summer-time. By degrees they reach above the table, and over and beyond the garden roller. They are chiefly of the old garden, whose brick walls seem to inclose sunshine and gaudy flowers all the summer through; of the great Kensington parks, where in due season chestnuts are to be found shining among the leaves and dry grasses ; of the pond where the ducks are flapping and diving; of the house which was little Rhoda's home. This was the great bare house in Old Street, with plenty of noise , dried herbs, content, children without end, and thick bread-and-butter. There was also cold stalled ox on Sundays at one. » Scattered through the book are wise comments on the mysteries of life, worthy of Thackeray's daughter, who was too much of a woman and of an artist ever to change her broad morality into the moralizing spirit. "To hate the Devil and all his works is one thing ; but to-day, who is the Devil and which are his works is another. " "Dolly was true to herself ; and in those days she used to think that all her life she would be always true, and always say all she felt. As life grows long, and people living on together through time and sorrow and experience realize more and more the complexities of their own hearts, and sympathize more and more with the failings and sorrows of others, they are apt to ask themselves with dismay, if it is a reality of life to be less and less uncompromising as complexities increase, less true to themselves as they are more true to others. " In 1873 and 1874 Miss Thackeray also published a number of short stories and sketches : Toilers and Spinsters, ' ' Bluebeard's Keys, ' etc. In 1875 appeared a novel, ' Miss Angel, ' of which the heroine is Angelica Kaufmann. In the same year she edited ' The Orphan of Pimlico, and other Sketches, Fragments, and Drawings, ' by her father. Her life of Madame de Sévigné, in the ' Foreign Classics for English Readers ' series, appeared in 1881 ; and in the same year she published another novel, Miss Williamson's Divagations. ' Later, ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE 12275 ' Chapters from Some Unwritten Memoirs ' was published. This book of personal reminiscences is delightful, for the glimpses it affords the reader of the Thackeray household, and of the rare guests who gathered there from time to time. One of the prettiest pictures is that of a child's party at Dickens's house : of the little Misses Thackeray in plaid sashes and bronze shoes, of Dickens's little daughters in white sashes and white shoes ; of the supper table presided over by Mr. and Mrs. Dickens ; of the innumerable small boys who swarmed on the staircase, and who gave three cheers for Thackeray when he appeared in the hall to take his little girls home. There is a humorous picture of Charlotte Bronté dining with Thackeray and his family: a number of his intimate friends were invited to meet her afterwards, and hopes of brilliant conversation ran high ; but the little shy author took refuge with the family governess, an awful gloom like a London fog settled upon the company, and Thackeray in despair went off to his club. In her ' Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, and Browning, ' Mrs. Ritchie has given to the world pictures of these great men drawn by the hand of a loving and understanding friend. Like her other books, it is instinct with the charm of her sympathy. Her true, pure, and sweet spirit has left a precious imprint upon the world of letters and of society. She is loved and will be long remembered, not as Thackeray's daughter alone, but for her own inherent qualities of true greatness. MY WITCH'S-CALDRON From Chapters from Some Unwritten Memoirs. ' Copyright 1894, by Harper & Brothers I REMEMBER a visit from another hero of those times. We were walking across Kensington Square early one morning when we heard some one hurrying after us and calling, " Thackeray, Thackeray ! " This was also one of Byron's friends, —a bright-eyed, active old man; with long wavy white hair and a picturesque cloak flung over one shoulder. I can see him still, as he crossed the corner of the square and followed us with a light, rapid step. My father, stopping short, turned back to meet him; greeting him kindly, and bringing him home with us to the old brown house at the corner where we were then living. There was a sort of eagerness and vividness of manner about the stranger which was very impressive. You could not help watching him and his cloak, which kept slipping from its place , 12276 ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE and which he caught at again and again. We wondered at his romantic foreign looks, and his gayety and bright eager way. Afterwards we were told that this was Leigh Hunt. We knew his name very well ; for on the drawing-room table, in company with various Ruskins and Punches, lay a pretty shining book called ' A Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla, ' —from which, in that dilettante childish fashion which is half play, half impatience and search for something else, we had contrived to extract our own allowance of honey. It was still an event to see a real author in those days, specially an author with a long cloak flung over his shoulder ; though for the matter of that, it is still and always will be an event to see the faces and hear the voices of those whose thoughts have added something delightful to our lives. Not very long afterwards came a different visitor, still belonging to that same company of people. I had thrown open the dining-room door and come in, looking for something ; and then I stopped short, for the room was not empty. A striking and somewhat alarming- looking person stood alone by the fireplace with folded arms, -a dark, impressive- looking man, not tall, but broad and brown and weather-beaten, -gazing with a sort of scowl at his own reflection in the glass. As I entered he turned slowly, and looked at me over his shoulder. This time it was Trelawny, Byron's biographer and companion, who had come to see my father. He frowned, walked deliberately and slowly from the room, and I saw him no more. . All these people now seem almost like figures out of a fairy tale. One could almost as well imagine Sindbad, or Prince Charming, or the Seven Champions of Christendom, dropping in for an hour's chat. But each generation, however matter-of-fact it may be, sets up fairy figures in turn to wonder at and delight in. I had not then read any of the books which have since appeared ; though I had heard my elders talking, and I knew from hearsay something of the strange, pathetic, irrational histories of these bygone wanderers, searching the world for the Golden Fleece and the Enchanted Gardens. These were the only members of that special, impracticable, romantic crew of Argonauts I ever saw; though I have read and re-read their histories and diaries so that I seem to know them all, and can almost hear their voices. One of the most notable persons who ever came into our old bow- windowed drawing-room in Young Street is a guest never to be forgotten by me, -a tiny, delicate little person, whose small ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE 12277 hand nevertheless grasped a mighty lever which set all the literary world of that day vibrating. I can still see the scene quite plainly ! —the hot summer evening, the open windows, the carriage driving to the door as we all sat silent and expectant ; my father, who rarely waited, waiting with us ; our governess and my sister and I all in a row, and prepared for the great event. We saw the carriage stop, and out of it sprang the active, well-knit figure of young Mr. George Smith, who was bringing Miss Bronté to see our father. My father, who had been walking up and down the room, goes out into the hall to meet his guests ; and then, after a moment's delay, the door opens wide and the two gentlemen come in, leading a tiny, delicate, serious little lady, pale, with fair, straight hair, and steady eyes. She may be a little over thirty ; she is dressed in a little barège dress with a pattern of faint green moss. She enters in mittens, in silence, in seriousness ; our hearts are beating with wild excitement. This, then, is the authoress, the unknown power whose books have set all London talking, reading, speculating ; some people even say our father wrote the books -the wonderful books. To say that we little girls had been given ' Jane Eyre ' to read, scarcely represents the facts of the case ; to say that we had taken it without leave, read bits here and read bits there, been carried away by an undreamedof and hitherto unimagined whirlwind into things, times, places, all utterly absorbing and at the same time absolutely unintelligible to us, would more accurately describe our states of mind on that summer's evening as we look at Jane Eyre -the great Jane Eyre -the tiny little lady. The moment is so breathless that dinner comes as a relief to the solemnity of the occasion, and we all smile as my father stoops to offer his arm; for, genius though she may be, Miss Bronté can barely reach his elbow. My own personal impressions are that she is somewhat grave and stern, especially to forward little girls who wish to chatter. Mr. George Smith has since told me how she afterwards remarked upon my father's wonderful forbearance and gentleness with our uncalledfor incursions into the conversation. She sat gazing at him with kindling eyes of interest, lighting up with a sort of illumination · every now and then as she answered him. I can see her bending forward over the table, not eating, but listening to what he said as he carved the dish before him. I think it must have been on this very occasion that my father invited some of his friends in the evening to meet Miss 12278 ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE Bronté, for everybody was interested and anxious to see her. Mrs. Crowe, the reciter of ghost stories, was there. Mrs. Brookfield, Mrs. Carlyle - Mr. Carlyle himself was present, so I am told, railing at the appearance of cockneys upon Scotch mountainsides ; there were also too many Americans for his taste ; " but the Americans were as God compared to the cockneys," says the philosopher. Besides the Carlyles, there were Mrs. Elliott and Miss Perry, Mrs. Procter and her daughter, most of my father's habitual friends and companions. In the recent life of Lord Houghton, I was amused to see a note quoted in which Lord Houghton also was convened. Would that he had been present ! -perhaps the party would have gone off better. It was a gloomy and a silent evening. Every one waited for the brilliant conversation which never began at all . Miss Bronté retired to the sofa in the study, and murmured a low word now and then to our kind governess, Miss Truelock. The room looked very dark; the lamp began to smoke a little ; the conversation grew dimmer and more dim; the ladies sat round still expectant ; my father was too much perturbed by the gloom and the silence to be able to cope with it at all. Mrs. Brookfield, who was in the doorway by the study, near the corner in which Miss Bronté was sitting, leaned forward with a little commonplace, since brilliance was not to be the order of the evening. " Do you like London, Miss Bronté ? " she said. Another silence ; a pause ; then Miss Bronté answers " Yes " and " No, " very gravely. My sister and I were much too young to be bored in those days : alarmed, impressed, we might be, but not yet bored. A party was a party, a lioness was a lioness ; andshall I confess it ? —at that time an extra dish of biscuits was enough to mark the evening. We felt all the importance of the occasion -tea spread in the dining-room, ladies in the drawingroom. We roamed about inconveniently, no doubt, and excitedly ; and in one of my excursions crossing the hall, towards the close of the entertainment, I was surprised to see my father opening the front door with his hat on. He put his fingers to his lips, walked out into the darkness, and shut the door quietly behind him. When I went back to the drawing-room again, the ladies asked me where he was. I vaguely answered that I thought he was coming back. I was puzzled at the time ; nor was it all made clear to me till long years afterwards, when one day Mrs. Procter asked me if I knew what had happened once when my ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE 12279 father had invited a party to meet Jane Eyre at his house. It was one of the dullest evenings she had ever spent in her life , she said. And then with a good deal of humor she described the situation : the ladies who had all come expecting so much delightful conversation ; and how as the evening went on, the gloom and the constraint increased ; and how finally, after the departure of the more important guests, overwhelmed by the situation, my father had quietly left the room, left the house, and gone off to his club. The ladies waited, wondered, and finally departed also ; and as we were going up to bed with our candles, after everybody was gone, I remember two pretty Miss L― s , in shiny silk dresses, arriving, full of expectation . We still said we thought our father would soon be back ; but the Miss Ls declined to wait upon the chance, laughed, and drove away again almost immediately. • • I remember the trembling little frame, the little hand, the great honest eyes ; an impetuous honesty seemed to me to characterize the woman. I fancied an austere little Joan of Arc marching in upon us, and rebuking our easy lives, our easy morals. She gave me the impression of being a very pure and lofty and high-minded person. A great and holy reverence of right and truth seemed to be with her always. Such in our brief interview she appeared to me. As one thinks of that life , so noble, so lonely, of that passion for truth, -of those nights and nights of eager study, swarming fancies, invention, depression, elation , and prayer; as one reads of the necessarily incomplete though most touching and admirable history of the heart that throbbed in this one little frame, of this one among the myriads of souls that have lived and died on this great earth, - this great earth ! this little speck in the infinite universe of God, -with what wonder do we think of to- day, with what awe await to-morrow, when that which is now but darkly seen shall be clear! · I am suddenly conscious as I write that my experiences are very partial ; but a witch's-caldron must needs after all contain heterogeneous scraps, and mine, alas ! can be no exception to the rest. It produces nothing more valuable than odds and ends, happily harmless enough ; neither sweltered venom nor fillet of finny snake, but the back of one great man's head, the hat and umbrella of another. The first time I ever saw Mr. Gladstone, I only saw the soles of his boots. A friend had taken me into the ventilator of the House of Commons, where we listened to a 12280 ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE noble speech, and watched the two shadows on the grating overhead, of the feet of the messenger of glad tidings. One special back I cannot refrain from writing down, in a dark-blue frock coat and strapped trousers, walking leisurely before us up Piccadilly. The sun is shining, and an odd sort of brass buckle which fastens an old-fashioned stock flashes like a star. " Do look! " I say: "who is that old gentleman ? » " That old gentleman! Why, that is the Duke of Wellington, " said my father. On another occasion I remember some one coming up to us and beginning to talk very charmingly, and among other things describing some new lord mayor who had been in state to a theatrical performance, by which it seemed he had been much affected. " I cried, I do assure you, " the lord mayor had said ; " and as for the lady mayoress, she cry too : " and the gentleman smiled, and told the little story so dryly and drolly that my sister and I couldn't help laughing; and we went on repeating to one another afterwards, " As for the lady mayoress, she cry too. " And then as usual, we asked who was that. " Don't you know Lord Palmerston by sight ? " said my father. Another miscellaneous apparition out of my caldron rises before me as I write. On a certain day we went to call at Mrs. Procter's with our father. We found an old man standing in the middle of the room, taking leave of his hostess, nodding his head: he was a little like a Chinese mandarin with an ivory face. His expression never changed, but seemed quite fixed. He knew my father, and spoke to him and to us too, still in this odd, fixed way. Then he looked at my sister. " My little girl , " he said to her, " will you come and live with me ? You shall be as happy as the day is long ; you shall have a white pony to ride, and feed upon red-currant jelly. " This prospect was so alarming and unexpected that the poor little girl suddenly blushed up and burst into tears. The old man was Mr. Samuel Rogers ; but happily he did not see her cry, for he was already on his way to the door. · · My father used to write in his study at the back of the house in Young Street. The vine shaded his two windows, which looked out upon the bit of garden, and the medlar-tree, and the Spanish jasmines, of which the yellow flowers scented our old brick walls. I can remember the tortoise belonging to the boys next door crawling along the top of the wall where they had set it, and making its way between the jasmine sprigs. Jasmines won't ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE 12281 grow now any more, as they did then, in the gardens of Kensington, nor will medlars and vine-trees take root and spread their green branches : only herbs and bulbs, such as lilies and Solomon's- seals, seem to flourish ; though I have a faint hope that all the things people put in will come up all right some centuries hence, when London is resting and at peace, and has turned into the grass-grown ruin one so often hears described. Our garden was not tidy (though on one grand occasion a man came to mow the grass) , but it was full of sweet things. There were verbenas -red, blue, and scented ; and there were lovely stacks of flags, blades of green with purple heads between, and bunches of London- pride growing luxuriantly ; and there were some blush-roses at the end of the garden, which were not always quite eaten up by the caterpillars. Lady Duff Gordon came to stay with us once (it was on that occasion , I think, that the grass was mowed) ; and she afterwards sent us some doves, which used to hang high up in a wicker cage from the windows of the school-room. The top school- room was over my father's bedroom, and the bedroom was over the study where he used to write. I liked the top school-room the best of all the rooms in the dear old house: the sky was in it, and the evening bells used to ring into it across the garden, and seemed to come in dancing and clanging with the sunset; and the floor sloped so that if you put down a ball, it would roll in a leisurely way right across the room of its own accord. And then there was a mystery, —a small trap-door between the windows which we never could open. Where did not that trap-door lead to ? It was the gateway of paradise, of many paradises, to us. We kept our dolls, our bricks, our books, our baby-houses, in the top room, and most of our stupid little fancies. My little sister had a menagerie of snails and flies in the sunny window- sill : these latter, chiefly invalids rescued out of milk-jugs, lay upon rose-leaves in various little. pots and receptacles. She was very fond of animals, and so was my father —at least, he always liked our animals. Now, looking back, I am full of wonder at the number of cats we were allowed to keep, though De la Pluche the butler, and Gray the housekeeper, waged war against them. The cats used to come to us from the garden ; for then, as now, the open spaces of Kensington abounded in fauna. My sister used to adopt and christen them all in turn by the names of her favorite heroes : she had 12282 ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE Nicholas Nickleby, a huge gray tabby, and Martin Chuzzlewit, and a poor little half-starved Barnaby Rudge, and many others. Their saucers used to be placed in a row on the little terrace at the back of my father's study, under the vine where the sour green grapes grew -not at all out of reach ; and at the farther end of which was an empty greenhouse ornamented by the busts of my father as a boy and of a relation in a military cloak. One of my friends —she never lived to be an old woman used to laugh and say that she had reached the time of life when she loved to see even the people her parents had particularly disliked, just for the sake of old times. I don't know how I should feel if I were to meet one agreeable, cordial gentleman, who used to come on horseback, and invite us to all sorts of dazzling treats and entertainments, —which, to our great disappointment, my father invariably refused , saying, " No, I don't like him ; I don't want to have anything to do with him. " The wretched man fully justified these objections by getting himself transported long after for a protracted course of peculiarly deliberate and cold-blooded fraud. On one occasion, a friend told me, he was talking to my father, and mentioning some one in good repute at the time, and my father incidentally spoke as if he knew of a murder that person had committed. " You know it, then ! " said the other man. " Who could have told you ? " My father had never been told , but he had known it all along, he said ; and indeed he sometimes spoke of this curious feeling he had about people at times, as if uncomfortable facts in their past history were actually revealed to him. At the same time I do not think anybody had a greater enjoyment than he in other people's goodness and well-doing: he used to be proud of a boy's prizes at school, he used to be proud of a woman's sweet voice or of her success in housekeeping. He had a friend in the Victoria Road hard by, whose delightful household ways he used to describe ; and I can still hear the lady he called Jingleby warbling “ O du schöne Müllerin, " to his great delight. Any generous thing or word seemed like something happening to himself. I can remember, when ' David Copperfield ' came out, hearing him saying in his emphatic way to my grandmother, that "little Emly's letter to old Peggotty was a masterpiece. " I wondered to hear him at the time, for that was not at all the part I cared for most; nor, indeed, could I imagine how little Enly ever was so stupid as to run away from Peggotty's ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE 12283 enchanted house- boat. But we each and all enjoyed in turn our share of those thin green books full of delicious things ; and how glad we were when they came to our hands at last, after our elders and our governess and our butler had all read them in turn ! It is curious to me now to remember, considering how little we met and what a long way off they lived, what an important part the Dickens household played in our childhood. But the Dickens books were as much a part of our home as our own father's. est. - Certainly the Dickens children's- parties were shining facts in our early London days ; nothing came in the least near them. There were other parties, and they were very nice, but nothing to compare to these : not nearly so light, not nearly so shining, not nearly so going round and round. Perhaps so dear K. P. suggests it was not all as brilliantly wonderful as I imagined. it ; but most assuredly the spirit of mirth and kindly jollity was a reality to every one present, and the master of the house had that wondrous fairy gift of leadership . I know not what to call that power by which he inspired every one with spirit and interOne special party I remember, which seemed to me to go on for years, with its kind, gay hospitality, its music, its streams of children passing and repassing. We were a little shy coming in alone, in all the consciousness of new shoes and ribbons ; but Mrs. Dickens called us to sit beside her till the long sweeping dance was over, and talked to us as if we were grown up, —which is always flattering to little girls. Then Miss Hogarth found us partners; and we too formed part of the throng. I remember watching the white satin shoes and long flowing white sashes of the little Dickens girls, who were just about our own age, but how much more graceful and beautifully dressed ! Our sashes were bright plaids of red and blue, (tributes from one of our father's Scotch admirers ; -is it ungrateful to confess now, after all these years, that we could not bear them ?) our shoes were only bronze. Shall I own to this passing shadow amid all that radiance ? But when people are once dancing, they are all equal again, and happy. Somehow after the music we all floated into a long supperroom, and I found myself sitting near the head of the table by Mr. Dickens, with another little girl much younger than myself ; she wore a necklace, and pretty little sausage curls all round her 12284 ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE head. Mr. Dickens was very kind to the little girl, and presently I heard him persuading her to sing, and he put his arm round her to encourage her; and then, wonderful to say, the little girl stood up (she was little Miss Hullah) and began very shyly, trembling and blushing at first, but as she blushed and trembled she sang more and more sweetly ; and then all the jeunesse dorée, consisting of the little Dickens boys and their friends, ranged along the supper table, clapped and clapped, and Mr. Dickens clapped too, smiling and applauding her. And then he made a little speech, with one hand on the table ; I think it was thanking the jeunesse dorée for their applause, and they again clapped and laughed ; but here my memory fails me, and everything grows very vague and like a dream. Only this much I do remember very clearly: that we had danced and supped and danced again, and that we were all standing in a hall lighted and hung with bunches of Christmas green, and as I have said, everything seemed altogether magnificent and important ; more magnificent and important every minute, for as the evening went on, more and more people kept arriving. The hall was crowded, and the broad staircase was lined with little boys -thousands of little boys -whose heads and legs and arms were waving about together. They were making a great noise, and talking and shouting ; and the eldest son of the house seemed to be marshaling them. Presently their noise became a cheer, and then another ; and we looked up and saw that our own father had come to fetch us, and that his white head was there above the others : then came a third final ringing cheer, and some one went up to him-it was Mr. Dickens himself —who laughed and said quickly, " That is for you! and my father looked up, - surprised, pleased , touched, — settled his spectacles, and nodded gravely to the little boys. A BRICKS AND IVY From Old Kensington. Published by Harper & Brothers QUARTER of a century ago, the shabby tide of progress had not spread to the quiet old suburb where Lady Sarah Francis's brown house was standing, with its many windows dazzling, as the sun traveled across the old -fashioned house- tops to ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE 12285 set into a distant sea of tenements and echoing life. The roar did not reach the old house. The children could listen to the cawing of the rooks, to the echo of the hours, as they struck on from one day to another, vibrating from the old brown tower of the church. At night the strokes seemed to ring more slowly than in the day. Little Dolly Vanborough, Lady Sarah's niece, thought each special hour had its voice. The church clock is silent now, but the rooks caw on undisturbed from one spring to another in the old Kensington suburb. There are tranquil corners still, and sunny silent nooks, and ivy wreaths growing in the western sun ; and jasmines and vine-trees, planted by a former generation, spreading along the old garden walls. But every year the shabby stream of progress rises and ingulfs one relic or another, carrying off many and many a landmark and memory. Last year only the old church was standing, in its iron cage, at the junction of the thoroughfares. It was the Church of England itself to Dolly and George Vanborough, in those early church-going days of theirs. There was the old painting of the lion and the unicorn hanging from the gallery ; the light streaming through the brown saints over the communion table. In after life the children may have seen other saints more glorious in crimson and in purple, nobler piles and arches ; but none of them have ever seemed so near to heaven as the old Queen Anne building, and the wooden pew with its high stools, through which elbows of straw were protruding, where they used to kneel on either side of their aunt, watching with awe-stricken faces the tears as they came falling from the widow's sad eyes. Lady Sarah could scarcely have told you the meaning of those tears as they fell : old love and life partings, sorrows and past mercies, all came returning to her with the familiar words of the prayers. The tears fell bright and awe- stricken as she thought of the present, of distances immeasurable, of life and its inconceivable mystery ; and then her heart would warm with hope perhaps of what might be to come, of the overwhelming possibilities -how many of them to her lay in the warm clasp of the child's hand that came pushing into hers ! For her, as for the children, heaven's state was in the old wooden pew. Then the sing-song of the hymn would flood the old church with its homely cadence. 12286 ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE " Prepare your glad voices ; Let Hisreal rejoice, " sang the little charity children ; poor little Israelites, with bluestockings, and funny woolen knobs to their fustian caps, rejoicing, though their pastures were not green as yet, nor was their land overflowing with milk and honey. However, they sang praises for others, as all people do at times; thanks be to the merciful dispensation that allows us to weep, to work, to be comforted, and to rejoice , with one another's hearts, consciously or unconsciously, as long as life exists. Every lane and corner and archway had a childish story for Dolly and her brother ; for Dolly most especially, because girls cling more to the inanimate aspects of life than boys do. For Dolly the hawthorn bleeds as it is laid low, and is transformed year after year into iron railings and areas ; for particulars of which you are requested to apply to the railway company, and to Mr. Taylor, the house-agent. In those days the lanes spread to Fulham, white with blossom in spring, or golden with the yellow London sunsets that blazed beyond the cabbage fields. In those days there were gardens and trees and great walls along the high- road that came from London, passing through the old white turnpike. There were high brown walls along Kensington Gardens, reaching to the Palace Gate ; elms spread their shade, and birds chirruped, and children played behind them. Dolly Vanborough and her brother had many a game there, and knew every corner and haunt of this sylvan world of children and ducks and nurse-maids. They had knocked their noses against the old sun-dial many and many a time. Sometimes now, as she comes walking along the straight avenues, Dolly thinks she can hear the echo of their own childish voices whooping and calling to one another as they used to do. How often they had played with their big cousin, Robert Henley, and the little Morgans, round about the stately orange- house, and made believe to be statues in the niches! " I am Apollo, " cries George Vanborough, throwing himself into an attitude . "Apollo! " cries Robert, exploding with schoolboy wit ; " an Apollo-guy, you mean. " ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE 12287 Dolly does not understand why the Morgan boys laugh, and George blushes up furiously. When they are tired of jumping about in the sun, the statues straggle homeward, accompanied by Dolly's French governess, who has been reading a novel on a bench close by. They pass along the front of the old Palace, that stands blinking its sleepy windows across elmy vistas, or into tranquil courts where sentries go pacing. Robert has his grandmother living in the Palace, and he strides off across the court to her apartments. The children think she is a witch and always on the watch for them, though they do not tell Robert So. The Morgans turn up Old Street, and George and Dolly escort them so far on their way home. It is a shabby brown street, with shops at one end, and old- fashioned houses, stonestepped, bow- windowed, at the other Dear Old Street ! where an echo still lingers of the quaint and stately music of the past, of which the voice comes to us like a song of Mozart sounding above the dreamy flutterings of a Wagner of the present ! Little Zoë Morgan would linger to peep at the parrot that lived next door in the area, with the little page-boy, who always winked at them as they went by; little Cassie would glance wistfully at a certain shop-front where various medals and crosses were exposed for sale. There were even in those days convents and Catholics established at Kensington , and this little repository had been opened for their use. When they have seen the little Morgans safe into their old brown house, —very often it is John Morgan who comes to the door to admit them (John is the eldest son, the curate, the tutor, the mainstay of the straggling establishment) , -Dolly and her brother trudge home through the Square, followed by Mademoiselle, still lost in her novel. The lilacs are flowering behind the rusty rails . The children know every flagstone and window; they turn up a little shabby passage of narrow doorways and wide-eaved roofs, and so get out into the high- road again. They look up with friendly recognition at the little boy and girl, in their quaint Dutch garb, standing on their pedestals above the crowd as it passes the Vestry-hall ; then they turn down a sunshiny spring lane, where ivy is growing, and brown bricks are twinkling in the western sunshine ; and they ring at a gateway where an iron bell is swung. The house is called Church House, and all its windows look upon gardens, along which the sunshine comes flowing. The light used to fill Dolly's slanting wooden 12288 ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE school- room at the top of the house. When the bells were ringing, and the sun flood came in and made shadows on the wall, it used to seem to her like a chapel full of music. George wanted to make an altar one day, and to light Lady Sarah's toilet candles, and to burn the sandalwood matches ; but Dolly, who was a little Puritan, blew the matches out and carried the candles back to their places. " I shall go over to the Morgans, " said George, " since you are so disagreeable. " Whether Dolly was agreeable or not, this was what George was pretty sure to do. DUTCH TILES From Old Kensington. ' Published by Harper & Brothers HERE are many disconnected pictures in Dorothea Vanborough's gallery, drifting and following each other like the images of a dissolving view. There are voices and faces changing ; people whom she hardly knows to be the same, appearing and disappearing. Looking back nowadays through a score or two of years, Dorothea can see many lights crossing and reflecting one another, many strange places and persons in juxtaposition. She can hear, as we all can, a great clamor of words and of laughter, cries of pain and of sorrow and anger, through all of which sound the sacred voices that will utter to her through life —and beyond life, she humbly prays. Dorothea's pictures are but mist and fancy- work ; not made of paint and canvas, as is that one which hangs over the fireplace in the wainscot dining-room at Church House in Kensington, where my heroine passed so much of her life. It is supposed by some to be a Van der Helst. It represents a golden-brown grandmother, with a coiffe and a ruffle and a grand chain round her neck, and a ring on her forefinger, and a double- winged house in the background. This placid-faced Dutchwoman, existing two centuries ago, has some looks still living in the face of the Dorothea Vanborough of these days. Her descendants have changed their name and their dress, cast away their ruffles, forgotten the story of their early origin ; but there is still a something that tells of it, -in Dolly's slow quaint grace and crumpled bronze hair, in her brother George's black brows, in ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE 12289 their aunt Lady Sarah Francis's round brown eyes and big ears, to say nothing of her store of blue Dutch china. Tall blue pots, with dragon handles, are ranged in rows upon the chimney- board under the picture. On either side of the flame below are blue tiles, that Lady Sarah's husband brought over from The Hague the year before he died. Abraham, Jonah, Noah, Balaam tumbling off his blue ass, the whole sacred history is there, lighted up by the flaring flame of the logs. When first George and Dolly came to live in the old house, then it was the pictures came to life. The ass began to call out " Balaam ! Balaam ! " the animals to walk two by two (all blue) into the ark. Jonah's whale swallowed and disgorged him night after night, as George and Dolly sat at their aunt's knee listening to her stories in the dusk of the " children's hour "; and the vivid life that childhood strikes even into inanimate things awakened the widow's dull heart and the silent house in the old bylane in Kensington. - The lady over the fireplace had married in King Charles's reign: she was Dorothea Vanborough, and the first Countess of Churchtown. Other countesses followed in due course, of whom one or two were engraved in the passage overhead ; the last was a miniature in Lady Sarah's own room, her mother and my heroine's grandmother, a beautiful person, who had grievously offended by taking a second husband soon after her lord's demise in 1806. This second husband was himself a member of the Vanborough family, —a certain Colonel Stanham Vanborough, a descendant of the lady over the chimney-piece . He was afterward killed in the Peninsula. Lady Sarah bitterly resented her mother's marriage, and once said she would never forgive it. It was herself that she never forgave for her own unforgiveness. She was a generous-hearted woman ; fantastic, impressionable , reserved. When her mother died soon after Colonel Vanborough, it was to her own home that Lady Sarah brought her little halfbrother, now left friendless, and justly ignored by the ' Peerage, ' where the elder sister's own life was concisely detailed as " dau. John Vanborough, last Earl of Churchtown, b. 1790, m. 1807 , to Darby Francis, Esq. of Church House, Kensington . " Young Stanham Vanborough found but a cold welcome from Mr. Francis ; but much faithful care and affection, lavished , not without remorse, by the sister who had been so long estranged. The boy grew up in time, and went out into the world, and XXI-769 12290 ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE became a soldier as his father had been. He was a simple, straightforward youth, very fond of his sister and loath to leave her, but very glad to be his own master at last . He married in India the daughter of a Yorkshire baronet ; a pretty young lady, who had come out to keep her brother's house. Her name was Philippa Henley, and her fortune consisted chiefly in golden hair and two pearly rows of teeth. The marriage was not so happy as it might have been: trouble came, children died ; the poor parents, in fear and trembling, sent their one little boy home to Lady Sarah to save his life. And then, some three years later, their little daughter Dolly was making her way, a young traveler by land and by sea, coming from the distant Indian station where she had been born, to the shelter of the old house in the old by-lane in Kensington. The children found the door open wide, and the lonely woman on her threshold looking out for them. Mr. Francis was dead, and it was an empty house by this time, out of which a whole home had passed away. Lady Sarah's troubles were over, leaving little behind ; the silence of mid- life had succeeded to the loving turmoils and jealousies and anxieties of earlier days ; only some memories remained, of which the very tears and words seemed wanting now and then, —although other people may have thought that if words failed the widow, the silent deeds were there that should belong to all past affection . One of the first things Dolly remembers is a landing- place one bitter east-winded morning, with the white blast blowing dry and fierce from the land, and swirling out to sea through the leafless forest of shipping ; the squalid houses fast closed and double- locked upon their sleeping inmates ; the sudden storms of dust and wind ; the distant clanking of some awakening peal ; and the bewildered ayah, in her rings and bangles, squatting on the ground and veiling her face in white muslin. By the side of the ayah stands my heroine, a little puppy-like girl, staring as Indian children stare, at the strange dismal shores upon which they are cast ; staring at the lady in the gray cloak who had come on board, with her papa's face, and caught her in her arms, and who is her Aunt Sarah ; at the big boy of seven in the red mittens, whose photograph her papa had shown her in the veranda, and who is her brother George ; at the luggage as it comes bumping and stumbling off the big ship ; at the passengers departing. The stout little gentleman who used to take her to see the chickens, pats Dolly on the head, and says he shall ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE 12291 come and see her ; the friendly sailor who carried her on shore shakes hands, and then the clouds close in, and the sounds and the faces disappear. Presently into Dolly's gallery come pleasanter visions of the old house at Kensington, to which Lady Sarah took her straight away; with its brick wall and ivy creepers and many-paned windows, and the stone balls at either side of the door, -on one of which a little dark-eyed girl is sitting, expecting them. " Who is dat ?" says little three-year- old Dolly, running up and pulling the child's pinafore, to make sure that she is real. Children believe in many things : in fairies, and sudden disappearances; they would not think it very strange if they were to see people turn to fountains and dragons in the course of conversation . " That is a nice little girl like you, " said Lady Sarah kindly. " A nice little girl lite me ?" said Dolly. " Go away, " says the little strange girl, hiding her face in her hands. " Have you come to play wiss me ? My name is Dolliciavanble, " continues Dolly, who is not shy, and quite used to the world, having traveled so far. " Is that your name ? What a funny name ! says the little girl, looking up. " My name is Rhoda, but they call me Dody at our house. I's four years old . " Dolly was three years old, but she could not speak quite plain. She took the little girl's hand and stood by the ayah, watching the people passing and repassing, the carriage being unpacked, Lady Sarah directing and giving people money, George stumping about in everybody's way, and then, somehow, everything and everybody seem going up and down stairs, and in confusion ; she is very tired and sleepy, and forgets all the rest. Next day Dolly wakes up crying for her mamma. It is not the ship any more. Everything is quite still, and her crib does not rock up and down. " I sought she would be here, " said poor little Dolly, in a croaking, waking voice, sitting up with crumpled curls and bright warm cheeks. It is not her mamma, but Aunt Sarah, who takes her up and kisses her, and tries to comfort her; while the ayah, Nun Comee, who has been lying on the floor, jumps up and dances in her flowing white garment, and snaps her black fingers ; and George brings three tops to spin all 12292 ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE at once. Dolly is interested, and ceases crying ; and begins to smile and to show all her little white teeth. Lady Sarah rarely smiled. She used to frown so as not to show what she felt. But Dolly from the first day had seemed to understand her; she was never afraid of her, and she used to jump on her knee and make her welcome to the nursery. "Is you very pretty ? " said little Dolly one day, looking at the grim face with the long nose and pinched lips. " I think you is a very ugly aunt. " And she smiled up in the ugly aunt's face. " O Dolly! how naughty! " said Rhoda, who happened to be in Dolly's nursery. Rhoda was a little waif protégée of Lady Sarah's. She came from the curate's home close by, and was often sent in to play with Dolly, who would be lonely, her aunt thought, without a companion of her own age. Rhoda was Mr. Morgan's niece, and a timid little thing : she was very much afraid at first of Dolly; so she was of the ayah, with her brown face and ear- rings and monkey hands : but soon the ayah went back to India with silver pins in her ears, taking back many messages to the poor childbereft parents, and a pair of Dolly's shoes as a remembrance, and a couple of dolls for herself as a token of good- will from her young mistress. They were for her brothers, Nun Comee said; but it was supposed that she intended to worship them on her return to her native land. The ayah being gone, little Rhoda soon ceased to be afraid of Dolly ; the kind, merry, helpful little playmate, who remained behind, frisking along the passages and up and down the landingplaces of Church House. She was much nicer, Rhoda thought, than her own real cousins, the Morgans in Old Street. As days go by, Dolly's pictures warm and brighten from early spring into summer- time. By degrees they reach above the table, and over and beyond the garden- roller. They are chiefly of the old garden, whose brick walls seem to inclose sunshine and gaudy flowers all the summer through; of the great Kensington parks, where in due season chestnuts are to be found shining among the leaves and dry grasses ; of the pond where the ducks are flapping and diving; of the house which was little Rhoda's home. This was the great bare house in Old Street , with plenty of noise, dried herbs, content, children without end, ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE 12293 and thick bread-and- butter. Sundays at one. There was also cold stalled ox on In those days life was a simple matter to the children : their days and their legs lengthened together; they loved, they learned, and they looked for a time that was never to be, - when their father and mother should come home and live with them again, and everybody was to be happy. As yet the children thought they were only expecting happiness. George went to school at Frant, near Tunbridge Wells, and came home for the holidays. Dolly had a governess too ; and she used to do her lessons with little Rhoda in the slanting schoolroom at the top of Church House. The little girls did a great many sums, and learned some French, and read ' Little Arthur's History of England ' to everybody's satisfaction. Kind Lady Sarah wrote careful records of the children's progress to her brother, who had sent them to the faithful old sister at home. He heard of the two growing up with good care and much love in the sunshine that streamed upon the old garden ; playing together on the terrace that he remembered so well ; pulling up the crocuses and the violets that grew in the shade of the white holly-tree. George was a quaint, clever boy, Sarah wrote ; Dolly was not so quick, but happy and obedient, and growing up like a little spring flower among the silent old bricks. Lady Sarah also kept up a desultory correspondence with Philippa, her sister-in-law. Mrs. Vanborough sent many minute directions about the children : Dolly was to dine off cold meat for her complexion's sake, and she wished her to have her hair crimped ; and George was to wear kid gloves and write a better hand; and she hoped they were very good, and that they sometimes saw their cousin Robert, and wrote to their uncle, Sir Thomas Henley, Henley Court, Smokethwaite, Yorkshire ; and she and dear papa often and often longed for their darlings. Then came presents : a spangled dress for Lady Sarah, and silver ornaments for Dolly, and an Indian sword for George with which he nearly cut off Rhoda's head. 12294 ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE < MY FATHER'S MOTHER From Chapters from Some Unwritten Memoirs. ' Copyright 1894, by Harper Ο & Brothers NE's early life is certainly a great deal more amusing to look back to than it used to be when it was going on. For one thing, it isn't nearly so long now as it was then ; and remembered events come cheerfully scurrying up one after another, while the intervening periods are no longer the portentous cycles they once were. And another thing to consider is, that the people walking in and out of the bygone mansions of life were not, to our newly opened eyes, the interesting personages many of them have since become : then they were men walking as trees before us, without names or histories ; now some of the very names mean for us the history of our time. Very young people's eyes are certainly of more importance to them than their ears, and they all see the persons they are destined to spend their lives with, long before the figures begin to talk and to explain themselves. - My grandmother had a little society of her own at Paris, in the midst of which she seemed to reign from dignity and kindness of heart ; her friends, it must be confessed, have not as yet become historic, but she herself was well worthy of a record. Grandmothers in books and memoirs are mostly alike , stately, old-fashioned, kindly, and critical. Mine was no exception to the general rule. She had been one of the most beautiful women of her time ; she was very tall, with a queenly head and carriage ; she always moved in a dignified way. She had an odd taste in dress, I remember, and used to walk out in a red merino cloak trimmed with ermine, which gave her the air of a retired empress wearing out her robes. She was a woman of strong feeling, somewhat imperious, with a passionate love for little children , and with extraordinary sympathy and enthusiasm for any one in trouble or in disgrace . How benevolently she used to look round the room at her many protégés, with her beautiful gray eyes! Her friends as a rule were shorter than she was, and brisker, less serious and emotional. They adopted her views upon politics, religion, and homoeopathy, or at all events did not venture to contradict them. But they certainly could not reach her heights, and her almost romantic passion of feeling. 12295 CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS (1860-) HE writings of Charles G. D. Roberts are distinguished by an imaginative quality, which in its most perfect expression elevates them to a high plane of originality; and even in its fainter manifestations lends charm to them. This quality is instinct in both his prose and his verse ; like a subtle fragrance it attracts and eludes the reader, who will return to his poems and his stories when works of more palpable excellence are forgotten. He is an exquisite poet of the minor order ; his limitations are well defined, but within them he is complete and satisfying. The writer of ' An Epitaph for a Husbandman ' and The Deserted City ' has not the range of the earth and sky; but the fields which are his he has made beautiful. He is still a young man, so judgment of his work must take account of the unknown element of the future. He was born in New Brunswick, Canada, in 1860 ; and was the son of a Church of England clergyman, from whom he received his early education. After graduation from the University of New Brunswick, he became in 1879 head- CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS master of Chatham Grammar School. Two years later he edited the Toronto Week for a short time. In 1885 he was appointed professor of modern literature in King's College, Windsor. He has lately resigned his chair to devote himself entirely to literature. His first volume of poetry is entitled ' Orion and Other Poems.' 'In Divers Tones ' appeared in 1887, and subsequently 'Songs of the Common Day, ' and ' The Book of the Native. ' Much of Mr. Roberts's most finished and significant work appears in these two last-named volumes. " Songs of the Common Day ' contains an ode on the Shelley centenary, entitled ' Ave, ' which attains in parts to a high degree of impassioned strength and beauty. This collection includes also a number of sonnets ; in which form of verse he is peculiarly successful, understanding as he does the spiritual requirements of the sonnet, its temper of restraint, its frugal music. 'The Book of the Native ' is rich in poems most characteristic of 12296 CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS the author's peculiar gifts. These are not alone a delicate sense of melody, and a sympathetic understanding of the requirements of the various verse forms : they include those endowments without which true poetry cannot come into being, -passion, insight, sympathy. Mr. Roberts's poems of nature are warm with life. To him- " Life is good and love is eager In the playground of the sun . » In his ' Epitaph for a Husbandman ' this simple, objective exultation in nature's bounties gives place to the recognition of the silent companionship of man with Mother Earth and her creatures. The poem bears about it the cool gray air of the twilit farm, the kindly scent of the soil . The pathos of this, as of other of his poems, is hidden in the general and the impersonal. It is the pathos of all human life, -running its course, coming back at last to the great Mother, as a child at evening. The sailor, " wooing the East to win the West," whose " will was the water's will "; the farmer in his fields, the child among " the comrade grasses, " return to sleep on the bosom of nature. His lyrics are graceful and full of melody : there is the rush of the tide in the movement of ' The Lone Wharf' ; the passionate heart of the night throbs in the first two verses of the ' Trysting Song. ' His ballads have not the same beauty; although there are lines in them, as in all of his poems, of the true poetical quality. Mr. Roberts's prose possesses the same imaginative quality as his verse, though its manifestation is along different lines. In Earth's Enigmas, ' a volume of unique short stories, there is contained some very subtle work. The scenes of these tales are nearly all laid out of doors, in Canadian regions with which the author is familiar : nature is less a background in them than a wild, disturbing element, a gigantic actor in the scene itself. In two of them, The Young Ravens that Call upon Him, ' and ' Strayed, ' there is no trace of a human footstep. The wandering lonely winds of the wilderness are the very spirit of these stories. In ' The Perdu ' and ' The Stone Dog ' there is a certain weird imagination, which seems unlike anything but the strange quality which informs the works of Poe. The former has a mysterious beauty which impels a re-reading, although the tale seems nothing in itself. In this entire collection, Mr. Roberts exhibits a high degree of sensitiveness to nature, although not always without that mixture of the pathetic fallacy which seems inevitable in the attitude of the present-day generation towards the natural world. Mr. Roberts's latest book, ' The Forge in the Forest, ' is an Acadian romance ; being the narrative of the Acadian ranger, Jean de Mer, Seigneur de Briart. Like his short stories, it is instinct with the spirit of the wilderness. CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS 12297 IN STRAYED From Earth's Enigmas. Copyright 1895 , by Lamson, Wolffe & Co. THE Cabineau Camp, of unlucky reputation, there was a young ox of splendid build, but of a wild and restless nature. He was one of a yoke, of part Devon blood, large, darkred, all muscle and nerve, and with wide magnificent horns. His yoke-fellow was a docile steady worker, the pride of his owner's heart ; but he himself seemed never to have been more than half broken in. The woods appeared to draw him by some spell. He wanted to get back to the pastures where he had roamed untrammeled of old with his fellow- steers. The remembrance was in his heart of the dewy mornings when the herd used to feed together on the sweet grassy hillocks ; and of the clover- smelling heats of June, when they would gather hock- deep in the pools under the green willow shadows. He hated the yoke, he hated the winter ; and he imagined that in the wild pastures he remembered, it would be forever summer. If only he could get back to those pastures ! One day there came the longed- for opportunity ; and he seized it. He was standing unyoked beside his mate, and none of the teamsters were near. His head went up in the air, and with a snort of triumph he dashed away through the forest. For a little. while there was a vain pursuit. At last the lumbermen gave it up. " Let him be ! " said his owner, " an' I rayther guess he'll turn up ag'in when he gets peckish. He kaint browse on spruce buds an' lungwort. " Plunging on with long gallop through the snow, he was soon miles from camp. Growing weary, he slackened his pace. He came down to a walk. As the lonely red of the winter sunset began to stream through the openings of the forest, flushing the snows of the tiny glades and swales, he grew hungry, and began to swallow unsatisfying mouthfuls of the long moss which roughened the tree- trunks. Ere the moon got up he had filled himself with this fodder, and then he lay down in a little thicket for the night. " But some miles back from his retreat a bear had chanced upon his footprints. A strayed steer ! That would be an easy prey. The bear started straightway in pursuit. The moon was high in heaven when the crouched ox heard his pursuer's approach. He had no idea what was coming, but he rose to his feet and waited. 12298 CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS The bear plunged boldly into the thicket, never dreaming of resistance. With a muffled roar the ox charged upon him, and bore him to the ground. Then he wheeled, and charged again, and the astonished bear was beaten at once. Gored by those keen horns, he had no stomach for further encounter, and would fain have made his escape ; but as he retreated, the ox charged him again, dashing him against a huge trunk. The bear dragged himself up with difficulty beyond his opponent's reach ; and the ox turned scornfully back to his lair. At the first yellow of dawn, the restless creature was again upon the march. He pulled more mosses by the way ; but he disliked them the more intensely now, because he thought he must be nearing his ancient pastures, with their tender grass and their streams. The snow was deeper about him, and his hatred of the winter grew apace. He came out upon a hillside, partly open, whence the pine had years before been stripped, and where now grew young birches thick together. Here he browsed on the aromatic twigs ; but for him it was harsh fare. As his hunger increased he thought a little longingly of the camp he had deserted; but he dreamed not of turning back. He would keep on till he reached his pastures, and the glad herd of his comrades, licking salt out of the trough beside the accustomed pool. He had some blind instinct as to his direction, and kept his course to the south very strictly, the desire in his heart continually leading him aright. That afternoon he was attacked by a panther, which dropped out of a tree and tore his throat. He dashed under a low branch, and scraped his assailant off ; then, wheeling about savagely, put the brute to flight with his first mad charge. The panther sprang back into his tree, and the ox continued his quest. Soon his steps grew weaker ; for the panther's cruel claws had gone deep into his neck, and his path was marked with blood. Yet the dream in his great wild eyes was not dimmed as his strength ebbed away. His weakness he never noticed or heeded. The desire that was urging him absorbed all other thoughts, - even, almost, his sense of hunger. This however it was easy for him to assuage, after a fashion ; for the long, gray, unnourishing mosses were abundant. • By-and-by his path led him into the bed of a stream, whose waters could be heard faintly tinkling on thin pebbles beneath their coverlet of ice and snow. His slow steps conducted him far along this open course. Soon after he had disappeared around CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS 12299 a curve in the distance, there came the panther, following stealthily upon his crimsoned trail. The crafty beast was waiting till the bleeding and the hunger should do its work, and the object of its inexorable pursuit should have no more heart left for resistance. This was late in the afternoon. The ox was now possessed with his desire, and would not lie down for any rest. All night long, through the gleaming silver of the open spaces, through the weird and checkered gloom of the deep forest, heedless even of his hunger, -or perhaps driven the more by it as he thought of the wild clover bunches and tender timothy awaiting him, - the solitary ox strove on. And all night, lagging far behind in his unabating caution, the panther followed him. At sunrise the worn and stumbling animal came out upon the borders of the great lake, stretching its leagues of unshadowed snow away to the south before him. There was his path, and without hesitation he followed it. The wide and frost-bound water here and there had been swept clear of its snows by the wind, but for the most part its covering lay unruffled ; and the pale dove- colors and saffrons and rose- lilacs of the dawn were sweetly reflected on its surface. The doomed ox was now journeying very slowly, and with the greatest labor. He staggered at every step, and his beautiful head drooped almost to the snow. When he had got a great way out upon the lake, at the forest's edge appeared the pursuing panther, emerging cautiously from the coverts. The round tawny face and malignant green eyes were raised to peer out across the expanse. The laboring progress of the ox was promptly marked. Dropping its nose again to the ensanguined snow, the beast resumed his pursuit, first at a slow trot, and then at a long elastic gallop. By this time the ox's quest was nearly done. He plunged forward upon his knees, rose again with difficulty, stood still , and looked around him. His eyes were clouding over, but he saw dimly the tawny brute that was now hard upon his steps. Back came a flash of the old courage, and he turned, horns lowered, to face the attack. With the last of his strength he charged, and the panther paused irresolutely ; but the wanderer's knees gave way beneath his own impetus, and his horns plowed the snow. With a deep bellowing groan he rolled over on his side, and the longing and the dream of the pleasant pastures faded from his eyes. With a great spring the panther 12300 CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS was upon - him, and the eager teeth were at his throat, but he knew naught of it . No wild beast, but his own desire, had conquered him. When the panther had slaked his thirst for blood, he raised his head and stood with his fore- paws resting on the dead ox's side, and gazed all about him. To one watching from the lake shore, had there been any one to watch in that solitude, the wild beast and his prey would have seemed but a speck of black on the gleaming waste. At the same hour, league upon league back in the depth of the ancient forest, a lonely ox was lowing in his stanchions, restless, refusing to eat, grieving for the absence of his yoke- fellow . THE UNSLEEPING From Book of the Native. Copyright 1896, by Lamson, Wolffe & Co. I SOOTHE to unimagined sleep The sunless bases of the deep ; And then I stir the aching tide That gropes in its reluctant side. I heave aloft the smoking hill ; To silent peace its throes I still. But ever at its heart of fire I lurk, an unassuaged desire. I wrap me in the sightless germ An instant or an endless term ; And still its atoms are my care, Dispersed in ashes or in air. I hush the comets one by one To sleep for ages in the sun ; The sun resumes before my face His circuit of the shores of space. The mount, the star, the germ, the deep, They all shall wake, they all shall sleep. Time, like a flurry of wild rain , Shall drip across the darkened pane. Space in the dim predestined hour Shall crumble like a ruined tower. I only, with unfaltering eye, Shall watch the dreams of God go by. CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS 12301 AN EPITAPH FOR A HUSBANDMAN From ' Book of the Native. ' Copyright 1896, by Lamson, Wolffe & Co. E WHO Would start and rise HⓇ Before the crowing cocks, - No more he lifts his eyes, Whoever knocks. He who before the stars Would call the cattle home, - They wait about the bars For him to come. Him at whose hearty calls The farmstead woke again, — The horses in their stalls Expect in vain. Busy and blithe and bold, He labored for the morrow ; The plow his hands would hold Rests in the furrow. His fields he had to leave, His orchards cool and dim ; The clods he used to cleave Now cover him. But the green, growing things Lean kindly to his sleep ; - White roots and wandering strings, Closer they creep. Because he loved them long, And with them bore his part, Tenderly now they throng About his heart. THE LITTLE FIELD OF PEACE From Book of the Native. ' Copyright 1896, by Lamson, Wolffe & Co. B Y THE long wash of his ancestral sea He sleeps how quietly! How quiet the unlifting eyelids lie Under this tranquil sky! 12302 CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS The little busy hands and restless feet Here find that rest is sweet ; -- For, sweetly from the hands grown tired of play The child-world slips away, With its confusion of forgotten toys And kind, familiar noise. Not lonely does he lie in his last bed, For love o'erbroods his head. Kindly to him the comrade grasses lean Their fellowship of green. The wilding meadow companies give heed : Brave tansy, and the weed That on the dike-top lifts its dauntless stalk, - Around his couch they talk. The shadows of the oak-tree flit and play Above his dreams all day. The wind that was his playmate on the hills His sleep with music fills. Here in this tender acre by the tide His vanished kin abide. Ah! what compassionate care for him they keep, Too soon returned to sleep ! They watch him in this little field of peace Where they have found release. Not as a stranger or alone he went Unto his long content ; But kissed to sleep and comforted lies he By his ancestral sea. MARSYAS From ' Songs of the Common Day. By permission of Mr. Roberts and his publishers LITTLE gray hill-glade, close-turfed , withdrawn Beyond resort or heed of trafficking feet, Ringed round with slim trunks of the mountain-ash. Through the slim trunks and scarlet bunches flash — Beneath the clear, chill glitterings of the dawn— Far off, the crests where down the rosy shore The Pontic surges beat. The plains lie dim below. The thin airs wash The circuit of the autumn- colored hills, CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS 12303 And this high glade whereon The satyr pipes, who soon shall pipe no more. He sits against the beech-tree's mighty bole ; He leans, and with persuasive breathing fills The happy shadows of the slant- set lawn. The goat-feet fold beneath a gnarlèd root, And sweet and sweet the note that steals and thrills From slender stops of that shy flute. Then to the goat-feet comes the wide-eyed fawn Hearkening: the rabbits fringe the glade, and lay Their long ears to the sound ; In the pale boughs the partridge gather round, And quaint hern from the sea-green river reeds ; The wild ram halts upon a rocky horn O'erhanging; and unmindful of his prey, The leopard steals with narrow lids to lay His spotted length along the ground. All the morn The thin airs wash, the thin clouds wander by, And those hushed listeners move not. He pipes, soft swaying, and with half-shut eye In rapt content of utterance, - - Nor heeds The young god standing in his branchy place ; The languor on his lips ; and in his face Divinely inaccessible, the scorn. THE FLIGHT OF THE GEESE From Songs of the Common Day. ' By permission of Mr. Roberts and his I publishers HEAR the long wind wash the softening snow, The low tide loiter down the shore. The night, Full filled with April forecast, hath no light ; The salt wave on the sedge- flat pulses slow. Through the hid furrows lisp in murmurous flow The thaw's shy ministers ; and hark ! the height Of heaven grows weird and loud with unseen flight Of strong hosts prophesying as they go! High through the drenched and hollow night their wings Beat northward hard on winter's trail . The sound Of their confused and solemn voices, borne Athwart the dark to their long arctic morn, Comes with a sanction and an awe profound, A boding of unknown, foreshadowed things. 1 CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS 12304 BESIDE THE WINTER SEA From Book of the Native. Copyright 1896, by Lamson, Wolffe & Co. AⓇ S ONE who sleeps and hears across his dream The cry of battles ended long ago, Inland I hear the calling of the sea. I hear its hollow voices, though between My wind-worn dwelling and thy wave-worn strand How many miles, how many mountains are ! And thou beside the winter sea alone Art walking with thy cloak about thy face. Bleak, bleak the tide, and evening coming on; And gray the pale, pale light that wans thy face. Solemnly breaks the long wave at thy feet; And sullenly in patches clings the snow Upon the low, red rocks worn round with years. I see thine eyes, I see their grave desire, Unsatisfied and lonely as the sea's, - Yet how unlike the wintry sea's despair ! For could my feet but follow thine, my hands But reach for thy warm hands beneath thy cloak, What summer joy would lighten in thy face, What sunshine warm thy eyes, and thy sad mouth Break to a dewy rose and laugh on mine ! THE DESERTED CITY From 'Songs of the Common Day. By permission of Mr. Roberts and his publishers HERE lies a little city leagues away; THERIts wharves the green sea washes all day long, Its busy sun-bright wharves with sailor's song And clamor of trade ring loud the livelong day. Into the happy harbor hastening gay With press of snowy canvas, tall ships throng. The peopled streets to blithe-eyed Peace belong, Glad housed beneath these crowding roofs of gray. 'Twas long ago the city prospered so ; For yesterday a woman died therein, Since when the wharves are idle fallen, I know, And in the streets is hushed the pleasant din ; The thronging ships have been, the songs have been. Since yesterday it is so long ago. 4 12305 FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON ( 1816-1853) MONG the souls which refused the haven where Newman had found peace, because they dreamed of longer voyages and of undiscovered lands, few so suffered in the lonelier seas of their choice as did Frederick William Robertson. His short intense life was spent in a spiritual isolation from his fellows, which was partly the result of temperament, partly of his ability to see clearer and farther than most men into the mysteries of existence. He never found home. It seemed, indeed, as if a divine nostalgia drew him out of the world. He left it still young, struggling, the questions upon his lips, the desire in his heart ; faring forth into the lands of God as one who could not mistrust the divine Lover, and would fain learn of himself the meaning of the confused earthly existence, which had only deepened his dejection. He was indeed the embodiment of the religious spirit of the end of the century. He exhibited its most striking characteristics : its dependence upon conduct rather than emotion ; its glorification of morality ; its humanism, its hunger for God, hidden under a pantheistic composure ; its adoration of Jesus, as the one wholly comforting figure in the bleak perspectives of human history; finally, he held its conception of Christianity as a life, not a creed. The man who wrote, " The religion of Christ is not a law but a spirit, not a creed but a life, " had felt within him the forces of a new realization of religion as yet unperceived by his generation. He suffered in consequence the pangs of those who travail to bring forth the new which will supplant the old. F. W. ROBERTSON His short life of thirty-seven years was lived in a transitional period of England's spiritual development, when through the prayers of both ritualist and evangelical might be heard strange voices speaking of strange things, -of a universe emptied of God, of man without a soul. XXI-770 12306 FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON Robertson was born in 1816, in London. His father was a captain in the Royal Artillery ; the boy grew up therefore in the atmosphere of the military life, and imbibed not a few of its nobler ideals. Until he was five years old he was at Leith Fort, where his father was stationed. In 1821 the latter retired to Beverley ; there Robertson attended the grammar school, going later to Tours for the sake of learning the French tongue. After a year he returned home, continuing his education at the Edinburgh Academy and then at the University. His elevation of character, his nobility of mind, led to a proposal from his father that he should enter the church ; but he refused on the ground of his unworthiness. At the age of eighteen he was articled to a solicitor in Bury St. Edmunds ; but a year's study so undermined his health that he was obliged to give up the project of studying the law. His name was then entered on the list of the 3d Dragoons. He spent two years in preparation for military service ; but on the eve of receiving his commission, in 1837, he matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford. There he read extensively, coming under the influence of Plato and Aristotle, of Butler and Jonathan Edwards. With the Tractarian movement he seems to have had little sympathy, his temper at that stage of his development being evangelical. He was being drawn gradually into the church : in July 1840, he was ordained by the Bishop of Winchester, and immediately entered upon ministerial work in that place. His enthusiasm led him, however, into excesses of self- denial and of religious exercises, so that his health being undermined, he was obliged to go abroad within a year. Of It was during his sojourn in Switzerland that he met and married Helen, third daughter of Sir George William Denys. Upon his return to England in 1842 he accepted the curacy of Cheltenham, where he remained for four years ; a period of great importance in his life, for his religious views were gradually undergoing a radical change. a temperament characterized by its reasonableness and by its sensitiveness to reality, what he considered the extravagance and the cant of the extreme evangelical party filled him with repugnance. Moreover he had come under the influence of Carlyle and Emerson, and was beginning to think that dogma occupied too large a place in religion. He himself was too much of a man of the world in the best sense, to remain long fettered by what he believed to be provincial in a church party. He cut loose therefore from his moorings, and ventured out upon that sea which stretches beyond the limits of the world. At first he was to encounter only night and the terror of the unknown. " It is an awful moment, " he writes , " when the soul begins to find that the props on which it has blindly rested so long are many of them rotten, and FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON 12307 begins to suspect them all ; when it begins to feel the nothingness of many of the traditionary opinions which have been received with implicit confidence, and in that horrible insecurity begins also to doubt whether there be anything to believe at all. It is an awful hour-let him who has passed through it say how awful- when this life has lost its meaning, and seems shriveled into a span; when the grave appears to be the end of all, human goodness nothing but a name, and the sky above this universe a dead expanse, black with the void from which God himself has disappeared. I know of but one way in which a man may come forth from his agony scathless ; it is by holding fast to those things which are certain still, -the grand, simple landmarks of morality. If there be no God and no future state, yet even then it is bet- . ter to be generous than selfish, better to be chaste than licentious, better to be true than false , better to be brave than a coward. " Like many other noble spirits of the time, he found in right conduct, in the keeping of the commandments, that " upon which his soul might assuredly rest and depend " ; despite the suffering incident upon his growth, he entered through this new hope into a conception of Christianity as being primarily not a theological system but a life, not a religion of emotion but one of principle. He believed that under this aspect of it only could it become a universal religion, making its appeal not to the changing intellect but to the eternal conscience of the race. - - These new phases in Robertson's development led to his giving up the curacy of Cheltenham, and after a short residence abroad, and a few subsequent months at Oxford -to entrance upon his famous ministry at Trinity Chapel, Brighton. There he preached sermons which attracted the attention of all England, and there he endeavored to realize his new conception of Christianity, which seemed little short of heretical to his generation. He founded a workingman's institute, and was called a socialist ; he preached the religion of holiness, and was accused of heresy : yet his sermons seem wholly reasonable and beautiful to this generation. They exhibit a remarkable clearness of spiritual insight, profound knowledge of human nature, and a sweetness, born of strength, most winning in its warm humanity. Nevertheless his teachings were misunderstood ; in obscure ways he was persecuted. His sensitive spirit, which could expand only in the atmosphere of sympathy, drew into itself in pain. He suffered likewise from religious doubt and terror. He had chosen the eternal rather than the finite ; but its vastness struck a chill to a nature made for the uses of love, for the intimacy and definiteness of affection. He died on the 15th of August, 1853 , knowing that his unfinished life could be completed only in the lives of his spiritual children, breathing the air of a time more friendly to a wider interpretation of the gospel. 12308 FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON IN THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF CHRIST From Sermons Preached in Trinity Chapel ' N THE case of all rare excellence that is merely human, it is the first object of the biographer of a marvelous man to seek for surprising stories of his early life . The appetite for the marvelous in this matter is almost instinctive and invariable . All men, almost, love to discover the early wonders which were prophetic of after greatness. Apparently the reason is that we are unwilling to believe that wondrous excellence was attained by slow, patient labor. We get an excuse for our own slowness and stunted growth, by settling it , once for all, that the original differences between such men and us were immeasurable. Therefore it is, I conceive, that we seek so eagerly for anecdotes of early precocity. In this spirit the fathers of the primitive Church collected legends of the early life of Christ, stories of superhuman infancy, what the Infant and the Child said and did . Many of these legends are absurd ; all, as resting on no authority, are rejected . Very different from this is the spirit of the Bible narrative. It records no marvelous stories of infantine sagacity or miraculous power, to feed a prurient curiosity . Both in what it tells and in what it does not tell, one thing is plain, that the human life of the Son of God was natural. There was first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn. In what it does not say; because, had there been anything preternatural to record, no doubt it would have been recorded. In what it does say; because that little is all unaffectedly simple. One anecdote, and two verses of general description, -that is all which is told us of the Redeemer's childhood. The child, it is written, grew. Two pregnant facts : He was a child, and a child that grew in heart, in intellect, in size , in grace, in favor with God. Not a man in child's years. No hotbed precocity marked the holiest of infancies. The Son of Man grew up in the quiet valley of existence, -in shadow, not in sunshine, not forced. No unnatural, stimulating culture had developed the mind or feelings ; no public flattery, no sunning of infantine perfections in the glare of the world's show, had brought the Temptation of the Wilderness, with which his manhood grappled, too early on his soul. We know that he was childlike, as FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON 12309 other children ; for in after years his brethren thought his fame strange, and his townsmen rejected him. They could not believe that that one who had gone in and out, ate and drank and worked, was He whose Name is Wonderful. The proverb, true of others, was true of him : "A prophet is not without honor but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. " You know him in a picture at once, by the halo round his brow: there was no glory in his real life to mark him. He was in the world, and the world knew him not. Gradually and gently he woke to consciousness of life and its manifold meaning; found himself in possession of a self ; by degrees opened his eyes upon this outer world, and drank in its beauty. Early he felt the lily of the field discourse to him of the Invisible Loveliness, and the ravens tell of God his Father. Gradually, and not at once, he embraced the sphere of human duties, and woke to his earthly relationships one by one, the Son, the Brother, the Citizen, the Master. - - It is a very deep and beautiful and precious truth that the Eternal Son had a human and progressive childhood. Happy the child who is suffered to be and content to be what God meant it to be, a child while childhood lasts. Happy the parent who does not force artificial manners, precocious feeling, premature religion. Our age is one of stimulus and high pressure. We live, as it were, our lives out fast. Effect is everything, - results produced at once ; something to show and something that may tell. The folio of patient years is replaced by the pamphlet that stirs men's curiosity to-day, and to- morrow is forgotten. " Plain living and high thinking " are no more. The town with its fever and its excitements, and its collision of mind with mind, has spread over the country ; and there is no country -scarcely home. To men who traverse England in a few hours, and spend only a portion of the year in one place, " home " is becoming a vocable of past ages. The result is that heart and brain, which were given to last for seventy years, wear out before their time. We have our exhausted men of twenty-five, and our old men of forty. Heart and brain give way : the heart hardens and the brain grows soft. Brethren, the Son of God lived till thirty in an obscure village of Judea unknown, then came forth a matured and perfect Man, —with mind, and heart, and frame, in perfect balance of humanity. It is a divine lesson ! I would I could say as strongly H 12310 FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON as I feel deeply. Our stimulating artificial culture destroys depth. Our competition, our nights turned into days by pleasure, leave no time for earnestness. We are superficial men. Character in the world wants root. England has gained much ; she has lost also much. The world wants what has passed away (and which until we secure , we shall remain the clever, shallow men we are) , a childhood and a youth spent in shade a home. Now, this growth took place in three particulars. I. In spiritual strength. " The child waxed strong in spirit. " Spiritual strength consists of two things, -power of will, and power of self- restraint. It requires two things, therefore, for its existence, strong feelings, and strong command over them. Now it is here we make a great mistake : we mistake strong feelings for strong character. A man who bears all before him, - before whose frown domestics tremble, and whose bursts of fury make the children of the house quake, - because he has his will obeyed, and his own way in all things, we call him a strong man. The truth is, that is the weak man : it is his passions that are strong; he, mastered by them, is weak. You must measure the strength of a man by the power of the feelings which he subdues, not by the power of those which subdué him. And hence composure is very often the highest result of strength. Did we never see a man receive a flagrant insult, and only grow a little pale, and then reply quietly ? That was a man spiritually strong. Or did we never see a man in anguish stand as if carved out of solid rock, mastering himself ? or one bearing a hopeless daily trial, remain silent, and never tell the world. what it was that cankered his home peace ? That is strength. He who with strong passions remains chaste, -he who, keenly sensitive, with manly power of indignation in him, can be provoked and yet refrain himself and forgive, -these are strong men, spiritual heroes. The child waxed strong: spiritual strength is reached by successive steps. Fresh strength is got by every mastery of self. It is the belief of the savage that the spirit of every enemy he slays enters into him and becomes added to his own, accumulating a warrior's strength for the day of battle ; therefore he slays all he can. It is true in the spiritual warfare. Every sin you slay, the spirit of that sin passes into you transformed into strength; every passion, not merely kept in abeyance by asceticism , but subdued by a higher impulse, is so much character FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON 12311 strengthened. The strength of the passion not expended is yours still. Understand, then, you are not a man of spiritual power because your impulses are irresistible. They sweep over your soul like a tornado, -lay all flat before them, —whereupon you feel a secret pride of strength. Last week, men saw a vessel on this coast borne headlong on the breakers, and dashing itself with terrific force against the shore. It embedded itself, a miserable wreck, deep in sand and shingle. Was that brig, in her convulsive throes, strong ? or was it powerless and helpless ? No, my brethren : God's spirit in the soul, -an inward power of doing the same thing we will and ought, -that is strength, nothing else. All other force in us is only our weakness, the violence of driving passion . " I can do all things through Christ, who strengtheneth me, "-that is Christian strength. " I cannot do the things I would, " that is the weakness of an unredeemed slave. I instance one single evidence of strength in the early years of Jesus : I find it in that calm, long waiting of thirty years before he began his work. And yet all the evils he was to redress were there, provoking indignation, crying for interference, —the hollowness of social life, the misinterpretations of Scripture, the forms of worship and phraseology which had hidden moral truth, the injustice, the priestcraft, the cowardice, the hypocrisies : he had long seen them all. -

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All those years his soul burned within him with a divine zeal and heavenly indignation . A mere man —a weak, emotional man of spasmodic feeling, a hot enthusiast would have spoken out at once, and at once been crushed. The Everlasting Word incarnate bided his own time, -" Mine hour is not yet come, " matured his energies, condensed them by repression ; and then went forth to speak, and do, and suffer. His hour was come. This is strength : the power of a Divine Silence ; the strong will to keep force till it is wanted; the power to wait God's time. " He that believeth , " said the wise prophet, " shall not make haste. " 12312 FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON NOT THE UNIVERSAL NATURE OF CHRIST From Sermons Preached in Trinity Chapel ' ― [OTHING, in the judgment of historians, stands out so sharply distinct as race, national character ; nothing is more ineffaceable. The Hebrew was marked from all mankind. The Roman was perfectly distinct from the Grecian character ; as markedly different as the rough English truthfulness is from Celtic brilliancy of talent. Now, these peculiar nationalities are seldom combined. You rarely find the stern old Jewish sense of holiness going together with the Athenian sensitiveness of what is beautiful . Not often do you find together severe truth and refined tenderness. Brilliancy seems opposed to perseverance. Exquisiteness of taste commonly goes along with a certain amount of untruthfulness. By " humanity " as a whole, we mean the aggregate of all these separate excellences. Only in two places are they all found together, —in the universal human race and in Jesus Christ. He, having as it were a whole humanity in himself, combines them all. Now, this is the universality of the nature of Jesus Christ. There was in him no national peculiarity or individual idiosyncrasy. He was not the son of the Jew, nor the son of the carpenter, nor the offspring of the modes of living and thinking of that particular century. He was the son of Man. Once in the world's history was born a MAN. Once in the roll of ages, out of innumerable failures, from the stock of human nature one bud developed itself into a faultless flower. One perfect specimen of humanity has God exhibited on earth . The best and most catholic of Englishmen has his prejudices. All the world over, our greatest writer would be recognized as having the English cast of thought. The pattern Jew would seem Jewish everywhere but in Judea. Take Abraham, St. John, St. Paul, place them where you will, -in China or in Peru, - they are Hebrews : they could not command all sympathies ; their life could not be imitable except in part. They are foreigners in every land, and out of place in every century, but their own. But Christ is the king of men, and " draws all men, " because all character is in him, separate from nationalities and limitations. As if the life - blood of every nation were in his FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON 12313 veins, and that which is best and truest in every man, and that which is tenderest and gentlest and purest in every woman, in his character. He is emphatically the son of Man. Out of this arose two powers of his sacred humanity, —the universality of his sympathies, and their intense particular personality. The universality of his sympathies : for, compare him with any one of the sacred characters of Scripture. You know how intensely national they were -priests, prophets, and apostlesin their sympathies. For example, the apostles " marveled that he spake with a woman of Samaria " ; just before his resurrection, their largest charity had not reached beyond this, - " Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom unto Israel ? » Or to come down to modern times, when his spirit has been molding men's ways of thought for many ages : now, when we talk of our philanthropy and catholic liberality, here in Christian Eng. land, we have scarcely any fellow- feeling, true and genuine, with other nations, other churches, other parties, than our own : we care nothing for Italian or Hungarian struggles ; we think of Romanists as the Jew thought of Gentiles ; we speak of German Protestants in the same proud, wicked, self- sufficient way in which the Jew spoke of Samaritans. Unless we bring such matters home, and away from vague generalities, and consider what we and all men are, or rather are not, we cannot comprehend with due wonder the mighty sympathies of the heart of Christ. None of the miserable antipathies that fence us from all the world bounded the outgoings of that Love, broad and deep and wide as the heart of God. Wherever the mysterious pulse of human life was beating, wherever aught human was in struggle, there to him was a thing not common or unclean, but cleansed by God and sacred. Compare the daily, almost indispensable, language of our life with his spirit .-" Common people" ? point us out the passage where he called any people that God his Father made, common.- "Lower orders " ? tell us when and where he, whose home was the workshop of the carpenter, authorized you or me to know any man after the flesh as low or high. To him who called himself the Son of Man, the link was manhood. And that he could discern even when it was marred. Even in outcasts his eye could recognize the sanctities of a nature human still. Even in the harlot, ་ of Eve's family ; " a son of Abraham even in Zaccheus. one 12314 FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON Once more, out of that universal, catholic nature rose another power, the power of intense, particular, personal affections. He was the brother and savior of the human race ; but this because he was the brother and savior of every separate man in it . Now, it is very easy to feel great affection for a country as a whole; to have, for instance, great sympathies for Poland, or Ireland, or America, and yet not to care a whit for any single man in Poland, and to have strong antipathies to every single individual American. Easy to be a warm lover of England, and yet not love one living Englishman. Easy to set a great value on a flock of sheep, and yet have no particular care for any one sheep or lamb. If it were killed, another of the same species might replace it. Easy to have fine, large, liberal views about the working classes, or the emancipation of the negroes, and yet never have done a loving act to one. Easy to be a great philanthropist, and yet have no strong friendships , no deep personal attachments. - For the idea of a universal Manlike sympathy was not new when Christ was born. The reality was new. But before this, in the Roman theatre, deafening applause was called forth by this sentence : - " I am a man : nothing that can affect man is indifferent to me. " A fine sentiment- - that was all . Every pretense of realizing that sentiment, except one, has been a failure. One, and but one, has succeeded in loving man - and that by loving men. No sublime high-sounding language in his lips about educating the masses, or elevating the people. The charlatanry of our modern sentiment had not appeared then ; it is but the parody of his love. - What was his mode of sympathy with men ? He did not sit down to philosophize about the progress of the species, or dream about a millennium. He gathered round him twelve men. He formed one friendship , special, concentrated, deep. He did not give himself out as the leader of the publican's cause or the champion of the rights of the dangerous classés : but he associated with himselt Matthew, a publican called from the detested receipt of custom ; he went into the house of Zaccheus, and treated him like a fellow- creature, a brother, and a son of Abraham . His catholicity, or philanthropy, was not an abstraction, but an aggregate of personal attachments. 12315 AGNES MARY FRANCES ROBINSON (1857-) HE poetry of culture -the poetry which smells of the lamp and implies commerce with books - can be as genuine and enjoyable as any other. All that is necessary is the authentic impulse, and sufficient individuality to assimilate the many. influences to which the sensitive mind and soul of this order of singer are subjected . It is a mistake to sneer at culture-verse as derived and uninspired. As with any other kind of work, so in this, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.. The young Englishwoman whose verse is signed by the name of A. Mary F. Robinson -and who in 1882 became the wife of the brilliant French Orientalist, the late James Darmesteter -is of this school of poets. Her polished and lovely verse indicates reading, and the absorption of the riches of the literary past of her own and other tongues especially that of the Romance peoples. But her talent is independent ; her note is distinct enough to justify all her contact with the great spirits of literature ; and the chastened classic quality of some of her song in no wise detracts from the modernness of her mind. For a certain refined melancholy and pure lyric musicalness she is thoroughly a modern, the child of Pre- Raphaelite models, - feeling some of the time's realistic tendencies, and yet showing too a close affiliation with the Elizabethan song-makers. Agnes Mary Frances Robinson (Madame Darmesteter) was born at Leamington, February 27th, 1857. Her father was an architect in connection with the ecclesiastical buildings in the neighboring town of Coventry. She was educated at Brussels, in Italy, and at University College, London, giving special attention to Greek. Her taste for poetry showed itself very early : at thirteen she was writing on history. Her first volume of verse, ' A Handful of Honeysuckle, ' appeared in 1878, when she was twenty- one. Following this came ' The Crowned Hippolytus ( 1880) , containing a translation from Euripides and pieces of her own ; ' The New Arcadia and Other Poems ( 1884) ; 'An Italian Garden: A Book of Songs ' (1886) ; Songs, Ballads, and A Garden Play ' (1888) ; and ' Retrospect ' ( 1895). Besides verse, Madame Darmesteter has published a novel, ' Arden ' ( 1883) ; a couple of biographies, -one of Emily Bronté in the Eminent Women Series (1883) , the other on ' Margaret of Angoulême, 12316 AGNES MARY FRANCES ROBINSON Queen of Navarre ' ( 1889) ; and a book of historical essays, ' The End of the Middle Ages ' ( 1888 ) . Her response to the realistic demand of the day is felt in ' The New Arcadia, ' which contains a number of narrative poems dealing with the English peasant life, and sternly tragic in subject. The work, though not without strength and skill, and commendable for its yearning sympathy with the wrongs and sorrows of the working folk, is not in the poet's most successful vein. A trip to Italy in 1880 revealed her truest source of inspiration. She sings most sweetly when seized with the gentle spirit of sadness which wafts from some old exotic garden where lovers, soon to be separated by chance or change or death, wander with clasped hands and dimly foreboding hearts. In 'An Italian Garden ' are songs and lyrics of great beauty, whose art is hidden by the simplicity and fervor of the utterance. Here Madame Darmesteter gives unaffected expression to her thoughts and imaginings on the grave things and the glad things of life ; and the delicacy of the music, the tender mournfulness of the verse, together with its felicitous descriptive touches, make a very lovely impression. The sequence of love lyrics which imitate in form the Italian Rispetti are fairly Heinesque in their passionate feeling and charm of phrase. Of all the chords in the diapason of song, that most native to this poet is a tender dreamy minor that lingers long on the ear. She is neither robust nor optimistic ; but the mysterious sweet sadness of life is of the very essence of poetry, and few of the younger English singers have given it voice with more attraction. Since Madame Darmesteter's marriage and foreign residence she has written several works in French. One of them, a sketch of the chronicler Froissart, appeared in English translation in 1895. She published in 1896 her husband's ' New English Studies, ' a collection of magazine papers and reviews, -furnishing an introduction to the volume. There is no reason to conclude that her poetical activity has ceased. In any case she has done sufficient work to secure her a place among the minor lyric singers of England. WHA TUSCAN CYPRESS (RISPETTI) HAT good is there, ah me, what good in Love ? Since even if you love me, we must part : And since for either, an you cared enough, There's but division and a broken heart ? AGNES MARY FRANCES ROBINSON 12317 And yet, God knows, to hear you say -My dear ! I would lie down and stretch me on the bier. And yet would I, to hear you say -My own! With mine own hands drag down the burial stone. I LOVE you more than any words can say, And yet you do not feel I love you sc ; And slowly I am dying day by day, - You look at me, and yet you do not know. You look at me, and yet you do not fear ; You do not see the mourners with the bier. You answer when I speak, and wish me well, And still you do not hear the passing- bell. O LOVE, O Love, come over the sea, come here, Come back and kiss me once when I am dead ' Come back and lay a rose upon my bier, Come, light the tapers at my feet and head. Come back and kiss me once upon the eyes, So I, being dead, shall dream of Paradise ; Come, kneel beside me once and say a prayer, So shall my soul be happy anywhere. WHEN I am dead and I am quite forgot, What care I if my spirit lives or dies ? To walk with angels in a grassy plot, And pluck the lilies grown in Paradise ? Ah, no, -the heaven of all my heart has been To hear your voice and catch the sighs between. Ah, no, the better heaven I fain would give, But in a cranny of your soul to live. AH ME, you well might wait a little while, And not forget me, Sweet, until I die ! I had a home, a little distant isle , With shadowy trees and tender misty sky. I had a home ! It was less dear than thou, And I forgot, as you forget me now. I had a home, more dear than I could tell, And I forgot, but now remember well. 12318 AGNES MARY FRANCES ROBINSON LOVE me to-day and think not on to-morrow ; Come, take my hands, and lead me out of doors ; There in the fields let us forget our sorrow, Talking of Venice and Ionian shores ; - Talking of all the seas innumerable Where we will sail and sing when I am well ; Talking of Indian roses gold and red, Which we will plait in wreaths- when I am dead. TELL me a story, dear, that is not true, Strange as a vision, full of splendid things : Here will I lie and dream it is not you, And dream it is a mocking-bird that sings. For if I find your voice in any part, Even the sound of it will break my heart ; For if you speak of us and of our love, I faint and die to feel the thrill thereof. LET us forget we loved each other much, Let us forget, we ever have to part ; Let us forget that any look or touch Once let in either to the other's heart. Only we'll sit upon the daisied grass, And hear the larks and see the swallows pass ; Only we'll live awhile, as children play, Without to-morrow, without yesterday. FAR, far away and in the middle sea, So still I dream, although the dream is vain, There lies a valley full of rest for me, Where I shall live and you shall love again. O ships that sail, O masts against the sky, Will you not stop awhile in passing by? O prayers that hope, O faith that never knew, Will you not take me on to heaven with you ? AH, LOVE, I cannot die, I cannot go Down in the dark and leave you all alone : Ah, hold me fast, safe in the warmth I know, And never shut me underneath a stone. AGNES MARY FRANCES ROBINSON 12319 Dead in the grave ! And I can never hear If you are ill or if you miss me, dear. Dead, oh my God! and you may need me yet, While I shall sleep, while I - while I -forget ! COME away, Sorrow, Sorrow come away— Let us go sit in some cool, shadowy place ; There shall you sing and hush me all the day, While I will dream about my lover's face. Hush me, O Sorrow, like a babe to sleep, Then close the lids above mine eyes that weep ; Rock me, O Sorrow, like a babe in pain, Nor, when I slumber, wake me up again. Ο RED MAY UT of the window the trees in the square Are covered with crimson May: You, that were all of my love and my care, Have broken my heart to-day. But though I have lost you, and though I despair Till even the past looks gray, — Out of the window the trees in the square Are covered with crimson May. 12320 YOGKG LA ROCHEFOUCAULD (1613-1680) HE 'Maxims ' of La Rochefoucauld are perhaps most clearly understood in the light of his life. He was a gentleman, a soldier, a courtier, a cavalier, a lover, in one of the most picturesque periods of French history, -one which afforded the man of affairs unique opportunities for the study of human nature, especially of those weaknesses of human nature which the atmosphere of courts seems to foster. The Maxims ' are the very essence of a luminous and seductive worldliness. They are the conclusions drawn by a man whose intellect was always guided by his judgment ; they exhibit tact which amounts to genius. They might serve as rules alike for courtiers and Christians. La Rochefoucauld was born in Paris in 1613, in the reign of Louis XIII. His family was ancient and noble ; his father enjoyed the royal favor. He himself, as Prince de Marcillac, became early a prominent figure in the army and at court. Throughout his long life he was peculiarly susceptible to the influence of women : it was through his attachment to Madame de Chevreuse that he became the devoted champion of the Queen, Anne of Austria, the neglected wife of Louis ; infusing into his devotion to her that romanticism which is sometimes discoverable in the Maxims, ' under their brilliant worldwisdom . Caballings against Richelieu engaged him until the great statesman's death in 1642. He was then prominent in effecting a reconcilement between the Queen and Condé, that they might league together against Gaston of Orléans. Cardinal Mazarin, however, was to thwart his plans as Richelieu had done. From 1642 to 1652 his life was one of confusion and of intrigue, with nothing better to steady it and to direct it than the fascinations of the Duchesse de Longueville, for whose sake he became a Frondeur. At the battle of the Faubourg St. Antoine in 1652 , he was shot in the head ; this misfortune in his military career proved to be of most happy significance in his career as a man of letters, for it forced him into that semi-retirement from which issued his famous Maxims ' and ' Memoirs. ' The remainder of his life was spent chiefly in Paris, in that brilliant and cultured society of which glimpses are obtained in the letters of Madame de Sévigné, whose intimate friend he was. La Rochefoucauld -the passionate soldier, the restless gallant, the

S LA ROCHEFOUCAULD .

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD 12321 suave lover - became in his old age the polished ornament of the most exclusive and exacting of Parisian salons. His friendship for Madame de Sévigné, for Madame de Sablé, for Madame de La Fayette, mellowed his declining years. He died in 1680 . In his ' Memoirs ' he says of himself, " I have talent, marred by melancholy; " and again, " I extremely approve of exalted passion : it shows a grandeur of soul. I who know all the delicacy and strength of the lofty sentiments of love —if I ever love, it will assuredly be after this fashion ; but such as I am, I do not believe that this knowledge which I have would ever pass from my head to my heart. " The key to Rochefoucauld's character and to his writings may perhaps be found in these passages. The melancholy of which he speaks was genuine. It lurks in many of the ' Maxims, ' as the natural sorrow of one disillusioned by his contact with the world, forced to acknowledge the gulf between the ideal and the actual, and to bow to the power of expediency. La Rochefoucauld has been accused of supremest egotism ; of teaching a mode of life which is little else than the essence of selfishness. If so, it is a selfishness disguised in a constant effort to put the world at its ease, -to infuse all society with the golden atmosphere of courts, in which everybody and everything is assumed to be perfect. The ' Maxims ' show, indeed, how nearly the wisdom of the children of the world approaches the wisdom of the children of light. Their author knew the world as few men have the opportunity to know it ; and once for all, he gave to worldly knowledge perfect literary embodiment. His loves for many women gave to him likewise an almost perfect insight into woman nature. " In their first love women love the lover ; in the others they love love. " The ' Maxims ' are faultless in style and form : brief complete sayings, forming doorways neither too strait nor too broad into the House of Life, whose many chambers La Rochefoucauld had explored. His 'Memoirs ' are equally famous, taking first rank in their class. His letters are vistas into the highly colored picturesque life of the time. He himself seems less a great figure in French literature than a great figure in old French life. What he wrote has more the character of an afterthought than of a supreme intention, —the reflections of one concerning the world after that world had ceased to be of vital importance to him. XXI-771 12322 LA ROCHEFOUCAULD MAXIMS P ASSION often makes the cleverest man a fool, and often renders the most foolish clever. Those great and brilliant feats which dazzle our eyes are represented by politicians as the effects of great designs, whereas they are usually only the effects of temper and of passions. Thus the war between Augustus and Antony, which is ascribed to their ambition to make themselves masters of the world, was perhaps only an effect of jealousy. The passions often beget their contraries. Avarice sometimes produces prodigality, and prodigality avarice ; we are often firm from weakness, and daring from timidity. Our self-love bears more impatiently the condemnation of our tastes than of our opinions. The moderation of prosperous people comes from the calm which good fortune gives to their temper. We have strength enough to bear the ills of others. The steadfastness of sages is only the art of locking up their uneasiness in their hearts. Philosophy triumphs easily over troubles passed and troubles to come; but present troubles triumph over it . When great men allow themselves to be cast down by continued misfortunes, they show that they bore them only through the strength of their ambition, and not through that of their soul ; and that, great vanity apart, heroes are made like other men. It requires greater virtue to bear good fortune than bad. Neither sin nor death can be looked at steadily. We often make a parade of passions, -even of the most criminal ; but envy is a timid and shameful passion which we never dare to acknowledge. Jealousy is in some measure just and reasonable, since it tends only to retain a good which belongs to us, or which we think belongs to us ; whereas envy is a fury which cannot endure the good of others. We have more strength than will ; and it is often to excuse ourselves to ourselves that we imagine that things are impossible. Pride has a greater share than goodness in our remonstrances with those who commit faults ; and we reprove not so much to LA ROCHEFOUCAULD 12323 correct, as to persuade them that we ourselves are free from them . We promise according to our hopes, and we perform according to our fears. Interest speaks all sorts of languages, and plays all sorts of parts, even that of disinterestedness. Those who occupy themselves too much with small things usually become incapable of great. Strength and weakness of mind are misnamed : they are in fact only the good or bad arrangement of the bodily organs. The love or the indifference which the philosophers had for life was only a taste of their self- love ; which we should no more argue about than about the taste of the tongue or the choice of colors. Happiness is in relish, and not in things: it is by having what we like that we are happy, and not in having what others find likable. We are never so happy or so unhappy as we imagine. Nothing ought to lessen the satisfaction we have in ourselves. so much as seeing that we disapprove at one time what we approved at another . Contempt for riches was with the philosophers a hidden desire to avenge their worth for the injustice of fortune, by contempt for the good things of which she deprived them; it was a secret to secure themselves from the degradation of poverty; it was a byway to gain that consolation which they could not have from wealth. Sincerity is a frankness of heart. We find it in very few people, and what we usually see is only a delicate dissimulation. to gain the confidence of others. Grace is to the body what good sense is to the mind. It is difficult to define love. What we may say of it is, that in the soul it is a ruling passion ; in the mind it is a sympathy; and in the body it is a hidden and delicate desire to possess what we love, after much mystery. There is no disguise which can hide love long where it is, or feign it where it is not. There are few people who are not ashamed of having loved • each other when they no longer love each other. We may find women who have never had a gallantry, but it is rare to find any who have only had one. 12324 LA ROCHEFOUCAULD Love, as well as fire, cannot exist without constant motion; and it ceases to live as soon as it ceases to hope or to fear. It is of true love as of the apparition of spirits : all the world talks of it, but few people have seen it. The love of justice is in most men only the fear of suffering injustice. What makes us so fickle in our friendships is, that it is difficult to know the qualities of the soul and easy to know those of the mind. We can love nothing but by its relation to ourselves ; and we only follow our taste and our pleasure when we prefer our friends to ourselves. Nevertheless it is by this preference alone that friendship can be true and perfect. Every one complains of his memory, and no one complains of his judgment. To undeceive a man absorbed in his own merit, is to do him as bad a turn as was done to that mad Athenian who believed that all the ships which entered the harbor belonged to himself. Old men like to give good advice, to console themselves for being no longer able to give bad examples. The sign of extraordinary merit is to see that those who envy it most are constrained to praise it . We are mistaken when we think that the mind and the judgment are two different things. The judgment is only the greatness of the light of the mind : this light penetrates the depths of things; it notes there all that should be noted, and perceives those things which seem imperceptible. Thus we must admit that it is the extent of the light of the mind which causes all the effects which we attribute to judgment. Refinement of mind consists in thinking on proper and delicate things. The mind is ever the dupe of the heart. All who know their mind do not know their heart. The mind could not long play the part of the heart.' Youth changes its tastes from heat of blood, and age preserves its own from habit. We give nothing so liberally as advice. The more we love a lady- love , the nearer we are to hating her. There are some good marriages, but no delightful ones. We often do good to be able to do harm with impunity. LA ROCHEFOUCAULD 12325 If we resist our passions, it is more from their weakness than from our strength . The true way to be deceived is to think oneself sharper than others. The least fault of women who give themselves up to lovemaking, is making love. One of the causes why we find so few people who appear reasonable and agreeable in conversation is, that there is scarcely any one who does not think more of what he wishes to say than of replying exactly to what is said to him. The cleverest and the most compliant think it enough to show an attentive air, while we see in their eyes and in their mind a wandering from what is said to them, and a hurry to return to what they wish to say; instead of considering that it is a bad way to please or to persuade others, to try so hard to please oneself, and that to listen well and answer well is one of the greatest accomplishments we can have in conversation. We generally praise only to be praised. Nature creates merit, and fortune sets it to work. It is more easy to appear worthy of a calling not our own than of the one we follow. There are two kinds of constancy in love : the one comes from constantly finding new things to love in the person we love, and the other comes from our making it a point of honor to be constant. There are heroes in evil as well as in good. We do not despise all who have vices, but we despise all who have not any virtue. We may say that vices await us in the journey of life , as hosts with whom we must successively lodge ; and I doubt whether experience would enable us to avoid them were we allowed to travel the same road again. When vices leave us, we flatter ourselves by thinking that it is we who leave them. Virtue would not go so far if vanity did not keep her company. Whoever thinks he can do without the world deceives himself much ; but whoever thinks the world cannot do without him deceives himself much more. The virtue of women is often the love of their reputation and their repose. 12326 LA ROCHEFOUCAULD The true gentleman is he who does not plume himself on anything. Perfect valor is to do without a witness all that we could do before the whole world. Hypocrisy is a homage which vice renders to virtue. All those who discharge debts of gratitude cannot on account flatter themselves that they are grateful . Too great eagerness to requite an obligation is a kind of ingratitude. Fortunate people seldom correct themselves : they always think they are right when fortune favors their bad conduct. Pride will not owe, and self- love will not pay. The good we have received from a man requires us to be tender of the evil he does us. Nothing is so contagious as example ; and we never do any great good or any great harm that does not produce its like. We copy good actions from emulation, and bad ones from the malignity of our nature, which shame kept a prisoner and example sets at liberty. It is a great folly to wish to be wise all alone. In afflictions there are various sorts of hypocrisy. In one, while pretending to mourn the loss of a person dear to us, we mourn for ourselves : we regret the good opinion he had of us, we mourn the diminution of our possessions, of our pleasure, of our consideration. Thus the dead are honored with tears which flow only for the living. I say that it is a kind of hypocrisy, for in these sorts of afflictions we deceive ourselves. There is another hypocrisy which is not so innocent, because it imposes on every one : it is the affliction of certain persons who aspire to the glory of a noble and immortal grief. When time, which wastes all things, has quenched the grief they really felt, they persist in their tears, their wailings, and their sighs ; they assume a mournful aspect, and labor to persuade, by all their acts, that their grief will only end with their life. This sad and wearisome vanity is generally found in ambitious women : as their sex bars them from the roads which lead to glory, they seek celebrity by the show of unspeakable sorrow. There is yet another kind of tears whose springs are only small, which flow and dry up easily the weepers weep to have a name for being tender; they weep to be pitied ; they weep to be wept for : in short, they weep to avoid the shame of not weeping. LA ROCHEFOUCAULD 12327 It is more often from pride than from deficiency of light that we so obstinately oppose the most received opinions : we find the first places taken on the good side, and we will have nothing to do with the last. No one deserves to be praised for goodness, unless he has strength to be bad: all other goodness is most often only sloth or weakness of will. It is not so dangerous to do harm to most men as it is to do them too much good. Coquetry is the basis of the temper of women ; but all do not practice it, for the coquetry of some is restrained by fear or by reason. We often inconvenience others when we think we never could inconvenience them. Magnanimity despises everything to gain everything. True eloquence consists in saying all that is needed, and in saying only what is needed. It is as common to see tastes change as it is uncommon to see inclinations change. Gravity is a physical cloak invented to hide mental defects. The pleasure of love is in loving; and we are happier in the passion we feel than in that we inspire. What is called liberality is most often only the vanity of giving, which we prefer to the thing we give. There are people whom the world approves of, whose only merits are the vices which serve in the intercourse of life. The charm of novelty is, in relation to love, what the bloom is on fruit : it gives a lustre to it which is easily effaced, and which never returns. Absence diminishes moderate passions and increases great ones, as wind puts out candles and inflames fire. Women often think they love even when they do not. The occupation of an intrigue, the excitement of mind which gallantry causes, the natural inclination to the pleasure of being loved, and the pain of refusing, ―persuade them that they are influenced by love, when they are influenced only by coquetry. There are bad people who would be less dangerous if there was no good in them. The gratitude of most men is only a secret desire to obtain greater favors. 12328 LA ROCHEFOUCAULD Nearly every one takes pleasure in acknowledging small obligations ; many are grateful for common ones ; but there is scarcely any one who is not ungrateful for great ones. We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore. The reason why lovers and their lady- loves do not weary of being together, is that they always talk of themselves. Why should we have memory enough to retain even the smallest particulars of what has happened to us, and yet not have enough to remember how often we have told them to the same individual ? In jealousy there is more of self- love than of love. We sometimes think we hate flattery, but we only hate the way in which we are flattered. We forgive as long as we love. Women can less overcome their coquetry than their love. The passions of youth are scarcely more opposed to salvation than is the tepidity of age. There can be no order either in the mind or in the heart of woman, if her temperament be not in harmony with it. We find few sensible people except those who are of our way of thinking. The greatest miracle of love is to cure coquetry. Most women mourn the death of their lovers, not so much because they loved them as to appear more worthy of being loved. Most young people think they are natural when they are only unpolished and rude. When our worth declines, our taste also declines. We ought only to be astonished that we are still able to be astonished. What makes the vanity of others unbearable to us is, that it wounds our own. We may be sharper than one other, but not sharper than all others. There is merit without loftiness , but there is no loftiness without some merit. Loftiness is to merit, what dress is to handsome women. Whatever shame we may have deserved, it is almost always in our power to re- establish our reputation . Confidence contributes more to conversation than does mind. LA ROCHEFOUCAULD 12329 Women who love, forgive great indiscretions more readily than small infidelities. Nothing prevents us from being natural so much as the desire to appear so. To praise noble actions heartily is in some sort to take part in them. The reason why most women are but little influenced by friendship is, that it is insipid when they have tasted of love. Decorum is the least of all laws and the most observed. In great matters, we ought to strive less to create opportunities than to profit by those which offer. There are few occasions on which we should make a bad bargain by giving up the good that is said of us, on condition that nothing bad may be said. In their first love women love the lover, in the others they love love. There are few women whose worth lasts longer than their beauty. However wicked men may be, they dare not appear the enemies of virtue : when they wish to persecute it they pretend to believe it is false, or they impute crimes to it. Quarrels would not last long if the wrong were only on one side. Love, pleasant as it is, pleases even more by the ways in which it shows itself than by itself. It seems that it is the Devil who has purposely placed sloth on the frontier of many virtues. The ruin of a neighbor pleases friends and enemies. Little is wanted to make the wise happy ; nothing can satisfy a fool : therefore nearly all men are miserable. It is sometimes agreeable to a husband to have a jealous wife : he always hears her talk of what he likes. An honest woman is a hidden treasure : he who has found her does well not to boast of her. It is never more difficult to talk well than when we are ashamed to be silent. We prefer seeing those to whom we do good, to seeing those who do good to us. In the adversity of our best friends we always find something which does not displease us. 12330 LA ROCHEFOUCAULD There are none who hurry others so much as the slothful when they have gratified their sloth, in order to appear diligent. Great souls are not those which have fewer passions and more virtues than common ones, but those only which have greater aims. Luxury and too great refinement in States are the sure forerunners of decay ; because every individual, clinging to his own interests, turns aside from the public good. Of all the passions, that which is the most unknown to ourselves is sloth; it is the most fierce and malignant of all, though its violence may be insensible, and the harm it does may be deeply hidden. If we attentively consider its power, we shall see that on all occasions it masters our feelings, our interests, and our pleasures ; it is the remora which has power to stop the largest vessels ; it is a calm more dangerous to the most important affairs than rocks and the most violent tempests. The repose of sloth is a secret charm of the soul, which suddenly suspends the most ardent pursuits and the most stubborn resolves. In short, to give a true idea of this passion, we must say that sloth is like a beatitude of the soul, which consoles it for all its losses and takes the place of all its good. Translation of A. S. Bolton. REFLECTIONS ON SOCIETY N SPEAKING Of society, it is not my intention to speak of friendship : although they have some connection , they are nevertheless very different ; of the two, the second has more elevation and humility, and the greatest merit of the other is to resemble it. I shall speak, then, at present only of the particular intercourse which well-bred people ought to have with each other. It would be useless to say how necessary society is to man. All desire it , and all seek it ; but few make use of the means to render it pleasant and to make it lasting. Every one wishes to find his own pleasure and advantage at the expense of others : we always prefer ourselves to those we propose to live with ; and we almost always make them feel this preference : it is this · LA ROCHEFOUCAULD 12331 which disturbs and breaks up society. We ought at least to know how to conceal this preference , since it is too much part of our nature for us to be able to conquer it. We ought to derive our pleasure from that of others, to spare their self- love, and never to wound it. The mind has a large part in so great a work; but alone, it does not suffice to lead us in the various roads we must travel. The harmony which is met with between minds would not long preserve society if it were not ruled and supported by good sense, by temper, and by the regard which ought to exist between people who wish to live together. If it sometimes happens that persons opposed in temper and in mind appear to be united, they doubtless hold together from extraneous causes, which do not last long. We may also be in society with persons to whom we are superior by birth or by personal qualities : but those who have this advantage ought not to abuse it ; they ought seldom to make it felt, and only make use of it for the instruction of others. They ought to make them see that they need to be guided, and lead them by reason, adapting themselves as much as is possible to their feelings and their interests. To make society agreeable, all its members should preserve their liberty. They should either not see each other, or should see each other without constraint, and with a view to mutual enjoyment. They should be able to part without that parting causing a change. They should be able to do without each other, if they would not expose themselves sometimes to being in the way; and they should remember that they often bore others when they think it impossible ever to bore them. They should contribute as much as is possible to the amusement of those with whom they desire to live, but they should not always burden themselves with the care of contributing to it. In society, compliance with the wishes of others is necessary, but it ought to have limits : it becomes a slavery when it is excessive. It should at least appear to be free ; and that in following the sentiments. of our friends they should believe we are also following our own. It should be easy to find excuses for our friends when their faults are born with them, and when they are fewer than their good qualities. We should often avoid letting them see that we have observed them and are shocked at them. We should 12332 LA ROCHEFOUCAULD endeavor so to manage that they may see them themselves, to leave them the merit of correcting them. There is a kind of politeness which is necessary in the intercourse of well-bred people : it makes them familiar with raillery, and prevents them from taking or giving offense by sharp and hard forms of speech, which often escape us without our thinking of it when we support our opinion with warmth. Intercourse between well- bred people cannot exist without a certain sort of confidence : it ought to be common among them; every one should have an air of security and discretion which never gives rise to fear that anything could be said imprudently. There should be variety in the mind : those who have only one kind of mind cannot please long. We may take various roads, not having the same talents, provided that we contribute to the pleasure of society, and observe in it the same propriety which different voices and different instruments ought to observe in music. As it is not easy for several persons to have the same interests, they must at least, for the comfort of society, have no conflicting ones. We ought to anticipate what may please our friends, seek the means of being useful to them, save them from troubles, let them see that we share them with them when we cannot turn them aside, efface them insensibly without pretending to pluck them away at once, and replace them with agreeable subjects, or at least with such as engage their attention . We may talk to them of their own concerns; but only so far as they allow us to do so, and in that we ought to observe great discretion. There is politeness and sometimes even humanity in not going too far into the recesses of their heart : people often feel pain in showing all they know of them, and still more when we penetrate to what they do not know well. Although the intercourse which well- bred people have together gives them familiarity, and supplies them with numberless topics for frank conversation, scarcely any one has sufficient docility and good sense to receive in good part much of the advice that is necessary for preserving society. We like to be advised up to a certain point, but we do not like to be so in all things ; and we are afraid to know all kinds of truths. As we ought to preserve distances in order to see objects, we should preserve them also for society. Every one has his point LA ROCHEFOUCAULD 12333 of view from which he desires to be seen ; we are generally right in not liking to be seen too closely, and scarcely any man likes to be seen in all things such as he is. Translation of A. S. Bolton. THE ON CONVERSATION HE reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is, that every one thinks more of what he wishes to say than of what others say. We should listen to those who speak, if we would be listened to by them; we should allow them to make themselves understood, and even to say pointless things. Instead of contradicting or interrupting them, as we often do, we ought on the contrary to enter into their mind and into their taste, show that we understand them, praise what they say so far as it deserves to be praised, and make them see that it is rather from choice that we praise them than from courtesy. We should avoid disputing about indifferent things, seldom ask questions (which are almost always useless) , never let them think that we pretend to more sense than others, and easily cede the advantage of deciding a question. . We ought to talk of things naturally, easily, and more or less seriously, according to the temper and inclination of the persons we entertain ; never press them to approve what we say, nor even to reply to it. When we have thus complied with the duties of politeness, we may express our opinions, without prejudice or obstinacy, in making it appear that we seek to support them with the opinions of those who are listening. We should avoid talking much of ourselves, and often giving ourselves as example. We cannot take too much pains to understand the bent and the compass of those we are talking with, in order to link ourselves to the mind of him whose mind is the most highly endowed ; and to add his thoughts to our own, while making him think as much as is possible that it is from him we take them. There is cleverness in not exhausting the subjects. we treat, and in always leaving to others something to think of and say. We ought never to talk with an air of authority, nor make use of words and expressions grander than the things. We may. 12334 LA ROCHEFOUCAULD keep our opinions, if they are reasonable ; but in keeping them, we should never wound the feelings of others, or appear to be shocked at what they have said. It is dangerous to wish to be always master of the conversation, and to talk of the same thing too often ; we ought to enter indifferently on all agreeable subjects which offer, and never let it be seen that we wish to draw the conversation to a subject we wish to talk of. It is necessary to observe that every kind of conversation , however polite or however intelligent it may be, is not equally proper for all kinds of well-bred persons ; we should choose what is suited to each, and choose even the time for saying it : but if there be much art in knowing how to talk to the purpose, there is not less in knowing how to be silent. There is an eloquent silence, it serves sometimes to approve or to condemn; there is a mocking silence ; there is a respectful silence . There are, in short, airs, tones, and manners in conversation which often make up what is agreeable or disagreeable, delicate or shocking : the secret for making good use of them is given to few persons, those even who make rules for them mistake them sometimes; the surest, in my opinion , is to have none that we cannot change, to let our conversation be careless rather than affected, to listen, to speak seldom, and never to force ourselves to talk. Translation of A. S. Bolton. 12335 ÉDOUARD ROD (1857-) BY GRACE KING DOUARD ROD belongs in the class of young French authors of the last quarter of the century ; the last recruits in the column of which De Stendhal, in the opening quarter, was the standard-bearer. His writings belong to that phase of the literary development of the period which may be termed parenthetical, rather than transitional. They are in their nature a consequent, a production, a reflection, rather than a factor, a vital actor ; and their value lies perhaps in their ethical rather than literary relation to their period, important and charming as they are from a literary point of view. They might indeed be fitly defined as intuitive, had not the author, by himself assuming the classification of " intuitivist, " shorn the term of its fundamental meaning of. self- unconsciousness. Although Rod's writings belong to French literature, he himself is Swiss. He was born at Nyon in 1857, and studied at Berne and Berlin ; and after a brilliant literary career, was invited to the chair of professor of foreign literature in the University of Geneva. Starting with essays upon his first ideals, - Leopardi , Schopenhauer, and Wagner, -he has followed in his books, as a critic has pointed out, the entire revolution of thought with which men's minds have been in travail for twenty years : first the inflexible rulings of naturalism and positivism, -of facts, externals, experiences, limited by the contracted horizon of immediate reality; then the gradual modification of the reactionary movement, when facts began to be accompanied by explanatory and supplemental ideas, -deprived of which they had been proven incomplete and sterile of conclusions. The soul was rediscovered ; the phenomena of conscience began to be observed ; intellectual activity was recognized to have an aim, and its development to be in conformity with certain rules and regulations of the time ; the sum of whose changing, amended formulæ constitutes morality, which is of and for all time. And now it is being asked in literature if this morality, to be solid, should not rest on some supernatural foundation. In short, the human mind has turned round and retraced every step of its previous journey. Rod's first novel, Palmyre Veulard, ' is dedicated to the author of ' Nana. " Conscientiously brutal and studiously impure, " says the 12336 ÉDOUARD ROD judicial critic, René Doumic, " it is worthy a disciple of Zola and the school of Medan. " But -to follow the reasoning of this authority — Rod's own nature protested against the developing tendencies of Naturalism ; and besides, outside influences came to his assistance. He is a Swiss University man, and he is a Protestant ; although he has retained but little tenderness of heart for the religion in which he has been reared, and mocks it upon all occasions. " But we remain prisoners for life in the religion that first fashioned our souls ; we may lose faith, but not mental discipline. " Disengaging himself from Zola, and following his intuitive predilections for Leopardi, Schopenhauer, the music of Wagner, the art of the English pre-Raphaelites and the great Russian novelists, and for the contemporary psychological analysis, as applied by Bourget, - he came to the conception of his own work, his own true originality, and his self- possession, enfranchised from all other mastership. ' La Course à la Mort ' (The Way to Death) , ' Le Sens de la Vie ' (The Sense of Life) , ' La Haut ' (Up Above) , ' La Vie Privée de Michel Tessier ' (The Private Life of Michael Tessier) , and ' La Seconde Vie de Michel Tessier ' (The Second Life of Michael Tessier), are the novels which, succeeding one another in rapid succession, have carried his name and the stream of his fresh strong thought afield into literature. Their titles are a fair indication of their essential nature. ' La Course à la Mort ' is the intimate journal, the pitiless self-analysis, of the typical pessimistic youth of the day ; a despairing cry in the darkness ; the confession of the want of the very light of which one denies the existence. It has been criticized as a catechism of pessimism drawn from the philosophy of Schopenhauer, and its author is reproached with its possible contagious influence upon the young. But as he himself observes in the preface to the book, the analysis of a more or less subjective state of mind, which is itself more or less general, is not to be taken as the personal conviction of the author, - a confession of faith ; still less as the propagation of a system. ' La Haut ' itself is the antidote to the contagious influence, if such there be, of ' La Course à la Mort. ' It is the story of the cure of a soul and its restoration to virility and hope, in the pure heights of an Alpine village. ' La Vie Privée de Michel Tessier, ' with its sequel, is the melancholy story of a highprincipled man, overtaken in his home and in an honored and honorable career by a love which seems to him pre-eminent above all previous claims and duties ; and his conscientious effort, through divorce and remarriage, to reconsecrate his life with love, and his love with life. It is a modern French tragedy of the purest writing. ' The Sense of Life, ' crowned by the Academy, is however the work which displays M. Rod's originality to the best advantage, to himself ÉDOUARD ROD 12337 and to that of the reader. There is hardly a novel in modern French literature that can be read with more profit, particularly by the foreign student of that literature and that life . And it is one of the books upon which criticism seems least profitably employed ; ·-necessarily, from its nature and from the nature of M. Rod. To quote a characteristic passage from Jules Lemaître about it : -" M. Édouard Rod puts to himself the question : What is the Sense of Life ? ' and if I have quite understood him, he answers himself in pretty much these words : ' If life have a meaning, it is that which honest and brave people give it, no matter what be the kind and degree of their culture. ' . . . Life has no meaning except for such as believe and love, —that is his conclusion. " Besides these stories, M. Rod has written other works on the same lines. It would hardly be just to the author to omit the competent criticism of M. Anatole France upon one of these : -" I understand nevertheless that there is a moral in the book of M. Rod, - that to the vain all is vanity, to the lying all is lies. But even in its desolation of sadness, the book warns us to fear egoism as the worst of evils. It teaches us purity of heart and simplicity. It brings back to our memory that verse of the ' Imitation ' : ' For in whatever instance a person seeketh himself, there he falleth from love. ' » • 'Moral Ideals of the Present Time ' is a volume of essays upon those masters who have appeared to M. Rod to exercise a direct moral influence upon the public. It opens with a worthy dedication to M. Paul Desjardins, and passes in review Renan, Schopenhauer, Zola, Bourget, Lemâitre, Scherer, Dumas, Brunetière, Tolstoy, and De Vogüé. The most succinct expression of the worth of the work is , that it is an invaluable and indispensable document to any literary student or demonstrator of the literary influences of the century. Grue Sing I MARRIAGE From The Sense of Life ' SHOULD like to find a word to express a being who is tranquil, sweet, good, confiding; one whose presence alone gives repose; a being of grace and charm, breathing peace. While I work she is there behind me, watchful not to disturb XXI-772 12338 ÉDOUARD ROD me ; from time to time I am conscious of the noise of the worsted she draws through the canvas, or the page she turns, or of her light breathing. Sometimes I turn and no longer see her; she has silently disappeared : after a moment she returns in the same way, without even a creak of the floor beneath her little slippers ; and I feel her look resting on me as a continual caress, - the look of her great, deep, clear eyes, wherein there is only goodness, tenderness, and devotion. And always also I feel her thought following mine, and traveling side by side with it across the dreams, as across the cares of the day. What mystery is there, then, in this sentiment of intimate union, which lessens disquietude and doubles joys ? I suffered so much formerly in feeling myself alone ! I passed nights wandering amid crowds to evade myself; forcing myself to the illusion that I was something to those others who were moving before my eyes. I have fled with horror from my home, so pitilessly filled with myself; where the smallest objects -the bibelots, books, paper on the wall, pictures and easy-chairs -sent back to me. like multiplied mirrors my odious image. It seemed to me that I might leave it behind me as I went in the streets -this me; or forget it in a café, or deposit it in a theatre ; and I haunted theatres, cafés, and streets. Often I fastened myself on to trumpery friends, -friends met by chance, and recounted to them my affairs, sharing with them fragments of my soul, without allowing myself to be rebuffed by their indifference. How many times has not my heart beat out to strange hearts, without hearing aught but its own palpitations beating in a vacancy ? How many times after having forgotten myself for an hour or a night in gay company, -in salons, casinos, or taverns ; after laughing from full lips, and talking boisterously ; after having diffused myself in confidences to others, and received with a friendly air theirs in return, -have I not felt with tenfold bitterness on the morrow that I was still alone, irremediably alone ; that the noises had vanished, leaving naught behind ; that the fumes of alcohol, -all had exhaled into sadness, like the friendship or love of the day before. Well, it seems to me now that my solitude is vanquished ; certainly not because I see unceasingly near me the same known form, but because that form is loved. Something of her passes continually into me, like a beautiful warmth ; like another, better life ; and something of me passes into her. It is no longer a ÉDOUARD ROD 12339 strange soul, which remains a stranger in spite of frequent meetings, in spite cf closeness of relation ; it is a continuous penetration, which little by little , of two beings makes only one. It is strange how one permits oneself to be taken and swept on by the machinery of life. We yield one finger carelessly ; it takes the whole body. We think we can play with it ; take from it what we wish ; give up to it, through laziness, through lassitude or indifference, fragments of ourselves, —and yet remain masters and maintain our independence. Illusion ! After the revolt of first youth, one day we see that we have surrendered ourselves, that we are bound ! It is the trifling and treacherous habits whose insinuating sweetness has insensibly conquered you ; it is the ambition for a long-disdained aim, which yet developed itself across your disdain ; it is love -your powerlessness to feel which made you for a long time doubt it, which you even denied because you had experienced it under none of its known forms, and which glides into you in a guise you never expected. It is duty. Heavens! Yes, duty, - the sentiment unjustified among all ; that convention, that absurdity, that imperative, whose non-existence your reason has a thousand times demonstrated ; which sets itself to cry out its orders, and makes itself obeyed. All these ties bind me; all these voices govern me; I feel that I no longer belong to myself. · • How many times before, when I suffered without cause, or when some dolorous shock produced agonizing thoughts in me, have I consoled myself by saying, “After all, I am master of my existence ; when the measure shall be full, nothing shall prevent my delivering myself; a few precautions so as not to be remarked, the least noise possible, and all these worries will be forever away from me ! " Now I can no longer thus console myself: I have by an act of will bound myself, my destiny, to another destiny ; and this double chain which I imprudently linked, I have not the right to break. The right ! -oh, the absurd word which comes and imposes itself upon my mind ! Whence comes that unknown force which can weigh upon my decision ? whence the mysterious fluid which paralyzes my egoism ? I know that the moment I close my eyes, the world will cease to exist, with her of whom I think, with the affection which grows in my heart, with the ideas I forge around myself, and with my wranglings about the right, duty, liberty, and all the rest. I know that I shall know nothing of the tears, sorrows, struggles, ÉDOUARD ROD 12340 which will exist after me ; that in my repose I shall feel nothing, absolutely nothing, of the ill caused by my act, which may even possibly result in good. I know all this; an effort of my imagination lets me touch nothingness : and yet I feel myself a slave. Destiny may strike with redoubled blows upon me; I may be harassed by the troop of enemies from without, or by a worse one which we carry within ourselves ; I may find myself in the clutches of those two adversaries which in other times I would not have hesitated to rid myself of at the price of life, - misery and suffering. I shall probably have to struggle with them for a long time ; to bear their frightful wiles : my relations with men may become a source of continual goadings, on which my imagination will pour the boiling oil of its dreams. I must support all this, -patient beast of burden bending under the lash, without a way of issue, without being able to look once more toward the Great Liberator ; without ever dreaming again in sweet hours of the means of putting an end to all the evils. · · · Sometimes at nightfall we go and sit beside that Auteuil pond, which we have taken to loving for its silence, and its old trees that bathe their branches in its sleeping waters. Generally it is deserted ; and, separated from the road by a thick curtain of leaves, we are very far from the Bois, very far from Paris, very far from life. To-day, by chance, a young woman was there with her children : one still in swaddling-clothes, sleeping on her lap ; while the other, a little girl, was playing at her side with a shovel in the gravel. We seated ourselves opposite this pretty group; and soon the little girl observed us and came toward us, her finger in her mouth, with an adorable air of timidity and roguishness. She greatly wanted to come to us, yet dared not quite do so. Ever looking at us, she stooped to gather a few daisies in the turf; then deciding suddenly, she came running and laid them on my wife's knee, with a pretty " Here, " friendly and satisfied. We embraced her, and she told us many charming things, and we played with her until her mother called her back again. She left, throwing us kisses. Then, left alone, we began to speak of children. She, like all women, a mother by instinct , desired to have them. I do not. I fear the responsibilities ; fear the disturbances : our intimacy of two suffices me ; it seems to me that we lack nothing. " Nevertheless, " said she, " they are so beautiful, and put so much life into the house. Imagine how ÉDOUARD ROD 12341 much gayer our house would be with a pretty little girl, — such a one as you have just kissed . " " But the anxieties about the mother, the cares, the noise night and day, the worry with the nurse, the sacrifice of our independence ! Would it not be necessary to renounce our walks, our project of traveling, change all our plans for the future, which we have made as though we were always to be tête-à-tête ? » " But when we are old ? » - "Well, when we are old, - and after all it is not certain that we ever shall be old, -our affection will be all the more solid because we are alone . God knows the storms which await our common life ; escaping together, wearied it may be, we shall press one to the other to brave the common sadness of our fate. Our days being fewer, will be dearer to us ; we shall not have one too many in which to love on ; and how well off we shall be amid the revolutions of human affairs, which will scarcely touch us any longer ! Detached from all save one another, having inclosed our entire horizon with our affection, life -whose possible caprices we now dread —will have glided away behind our footsteps ; we shall look upon it as from the summit of a traveled road, of which we no longer see the rough places or pebbles ; recalling together good and bad recollections, which in the mirage of memory will appear equally good to us. We shall love each the other all the more, for we shall have proved each other for a long time : for the heart grows old only to the world ; it remains a temple wherein are piously preserved sacred affections : and if we too come to be cold, that indifference towards everything, which obscures the eyes of the aged, shall not prevent our cultivating the feeling which shall still unite us, but rather the contrary. Who knows but that some night, bent and leaning one upon the other, going out once more to breathe the spring air, - our last, perhaps, our talk of to-day will come back to us like a gust of air from the past ? And I am sure that, taught by our experience, we shall say then, ' Decidedly it is best it should have been so. ' » - She looked at the murmuring water with an unconvinced air, hesitating to answer. " But, " she said at last, after a silence in which we both heard the other think, " one of us two will go first. If we have no child, the other will remain alone . " This was precisely the idea that had come to me, and had silenced me. Both of us shivered and said no more. Translation of Grace King. I 12342 EDOUARD ROD PATERNITY From The Sense of Life ' Y WIFE has gravely propounded the question of baptism. MΜ Before, when I was an aggressive unbeliever, I loved to say in a peremptory tone that my children should never be baptized. She would never reply, and her silence irritated me: I divined a menace; I understood that it announced a resistance, and that I should never be able to impose my opinion except by an act of tyranny. This perspective troubled me a little , although I was determined to remain firm. But time has progressed since that epoch, which already seems far away; I have just made an examination of conscience in order that I may answer in perfect sincerity my wife's question. I find I have no longer any temper against religion, -quite the contrary. When I had broken the chains that it had so firmly bound about me, I had a period of hatred and revolt, in which I dreamed of exciting the world to the great combat for Truth against Faith. · Then this hatred changed into a profound indifference ; the meaning of the word " truth " wavered in my mind ; I no longer found either criterion or proof: I said to myself that my negation was a religion also, just as much so as affirmation ; just as gross, no more certain, no better, worse probably. . Then why trouble simple souls ? Why prevent them from deceiving themselves holily ? Why teach them that the source at which they quench their thirst is imaginary ? Is their error greater than mine ? In the ocean of uncertainty on which we float, is my plank any safer than theirs ? I have therefore promised myself to remain neutral in the contest. I had reached thus far, when I recognized that it was the free-thinkers who had disgusted me with free thought. It was at the time of the " disaffection " of the Pantheon. God was being chased out to give place to Victor Hugo: the adored of yesterday ceded place to the idol of to-day ; the sweet Christ of the ' Imitation ' fled before the man of the Chastisements' ; the good Holy Virgin of so many tender miracles went down before Lucretia Borgia and Marion Delorme. And this was, they said, the progress of light, and the cause of truth gained in the exchange. Chance led me into the temple. They were all there : municipal counselors, deputies, politicians of all kinds, as if they were at home ; hats on heads, canes in hands ; ÉDOUARD ROD 12343 some had not even extinguished their cigars : and all were proud of driving out by their smoke the last vanishing trace of incense. Beneath the majesty of the dome they talked, laughed, gesticulated , and disputed, insolent and disrespectful. In a corner, however, before an altar left standing for a moment, a poor old woman in black cap and blue apron, unmindful of their noise, faithful to the God they had chased out, fervently knelt and prayed. She had brought two candles, whose flames flickered in the draught, and which a brutal breath would blow out before they were half consumed. Of what sorrow had she laid there the burthen ? of what remorse, perhaps ? What confidences was she addressing silently to the One who understands, compassionates, pardons ? And when the last altar shall have fallen, which of these political mountebanks will give her the means of appeasing her sufferings ? Then I understood that she was in the right against them all : for a moment the light of her flickering candle seemed to me a sun of truth ; and passing before the altar, I bent my knee, and made the sign of the Cross. Ah! poor old unknown woman ! Thou hast enlightened me more than much reading. If thy prayer was lost in its flight through space, it at least resounded in my heart, and thou madest me feel the void in my own depths. Why should I prevent the baptism of my child ? . To-day is Marie's birthday, and she probably has but a few hours to live. Her condition is unaltered. The fever does not increase ; if it had increased, all would now be ended ; but it has not decreased. Her respiration is just as labored, her breathing uneven, the noise in her chest is like broken machinery, and the same hacking cough shakes and rends her. She is as languid as ever, as indifferent, as detached from all. • What beginnings of ideas may not this unexplained and brutal illness start in her little brain through which fever gallops ? Oh, that constant moan! And there is one thing more heartrending : it is when the wailing is suddenly interrupted for a moment, and the hoarse voice begins to coo as it used to do in her well days. No, I cannot imagine the little body stiffened in death! It would be too hideous to see it immovable and to know that it is so forever ; that no voice can call her back ; that she will never smile again ; that she must be put into the earth, where soon she will be nothing : while the inanimate objects she has touched her doll, her sheep -will remain here, surviving - ÉDOUARD ROD 12344 her in all their longevity as things. And then I think of the mother's grief. And then I imagine the material details which come after: the little coffin which they will nail ; the mourning notes to be addressed, all the formalities that have been invented to make mourning more painful. And again the slow procession winding its way, so far, to the cemetery of Passy ; and on our return, the desolation, the immense desolation, of the apartment where she is no more ! The danger is over; yesterday the fever fell almost at once, as if by enchantment. It already seems as if the illness were only a part of a bad dream. I am happy. Up to this time I have asked myself unceasingly whether I loved my child. Now I am enlightened : and my affection is so deep in this hour of deliverance that I forget to grieve that she will have to live a whole life ; that she will have to become acquainted with the agonies we have passed through, and more still, -who knows what ? -all the future sufferings from which death would have delivered her. And for the first time I saw that in all I had said and thought of life , there was a good part of it only words, phrases. And when one has felt death pass very near ; when one has just missed seeing one of those existences which is one's very own disappear, then one understands probably that life -frightful, iniquitous, ferocious life -is perhaps better than nothingness. Live then, little Marie, as thou hast not wished to die ! Live, —that is, suffer, weep, despair; live to the end, as long as Destiny will drag thee on its hurdle. And knowest thou, since he can no longer wish thee unborn, since he has not the strength to wish thee to die young as those whom the gods love, — knowest thou what thy father wishes for thee ? It is to see all, feel all, know all, understand all. I say " all, " and I know the bitternesses the word contains ; yet I do not wish to spare thee one : since if all be sorrow, chimera, falsehood , the summing-up of all these sorrows, chimeras, falsehoods , is nevertheless fine , like a landscape made up of abysms ; and since there is a supreme satisfaction in feeling that we change with the years, that we ever reflect more images, even as a river grows larger in rolling towards the sea, and that we are, and we shall have been ; and that nothing, neither human revolutions nor universal catastrophe, can ever cause to be taken away from us that part of eternity which we have had, which is human life. Translation of Grace King. 12345 SAMUEL ROGERS (1763-1855) ATE in the eighteenth century a young man started out one day to call upon the great Dr. Johnson. He himself was nursing literary ambition, and he felt a vast veneration for successful authorship. He rang the bell ; then fancying he heard the Doctor's own steps approaching, he lost courage and ran away. Young Samuel Rogers hardly foresaw that he too was to be a literary lion of London, his favor eagerly sought by tyros in writing. For over half a century his home in St. James's Place was a rendezvous for poets and artists, statesmen and musicians; for English men and women of note, and for distinguished people from abroad. Here almost daily he entertained five or six at breakfast, and talked with them through the morning hours. Here art and politics were discussed, bons- mots originated, and entertaining anecdotes retailed. This English " autocrat of the breakfast table, " whose keen ugly face, high brow, and striking pallor, had a cadaverous effect provoking much witticism , was himself an able story-teller. Sometimes his wit grew caustic, and his almost ferocious frankness inspired terror. But in spite of surface crabbedness he was philanthropic and personally generous. He was a faithful friend not alone to Sheridan through his wretched last years of poverty, but to many another unfortunate, author or not. Keenly appreciative rather than creative, the practical adviser of Wordsworth and the other " Lake poets, " as well as their admiring auditor, he was the friend of poets to a greater extent than a considerable poet himself. Perhaps his greatest hindrance was his continuous prosperity. From the beginning to the end of his life he was quite too comfortable for poetic thrills. His poems have no intensity ; they are gentle moralizings and appreciations of moral and physical beauty, -the fruit more of refinement and cultivation than of irresistible poetic impulse, -and bear no very strong individual stamp. SAMUEL ROGERS There is idyllic charm about Rogers's early life . Fortunate son of a loving if austere father and a beautiful sprightly mother, he was T2346 SAMUEL ROGERS born at Stoke Newington, a suburb of London, on July 30th, 1763. His parents were people of refined and liberal tastes, who constantly received in their hospitable mansion a circle of delightful friends, among them Dr. Priestley. There with his brothers and sisters, ten in all, Samuel was carefully trained by private tutors. Good Dr. Price, the clergyman, dropping in of an evening in dressing-gown and slippers to chat with the children before their bedtime, was an important factor in their daily life. At this home Rogers learned to appreciate social intercourse ; and there in leisure hours he pored over Pope and Goldsmith, and took their poems as models. When he was sixteen or seventeen his father placed him in the London bank of which he himself was head ; and he remained in connection with it all his life, as clerk, partner, or director. In London he found a helpful friend in Miss Helen Williams, an intellectual woman, at whose literary parties he heard brilliant conversation and formed congenial friendships. In 1793, when he was about thirty, his father's death left him with an income of £5,000. Ten years later he fitted up comfortable bachelor quarters in St. James's Place ; where, following his own recipe for long life, " temperance, the bath and flesh-brush, and don't fret, " he lived to the age of ninety-two, dying in 1855. Rogers's first literary efforts were short sketches, signed " The Scribbler, " which appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine, and were the tentative work every young poet must practice his hand on.. In 1786 the ' Ode to Superstition , ' appearing in a time of comparative poetic dearth and of metrical trivialties, was greatly admired. Rogers loved music ; and his ear for harmonious sound guided him to a pleasing choice of word and measure. At its best, his verse is as trim and gently smooth as a Kentish landscape. He was reared in the traditions of an era of common-sense and well-regulated emotions. Grace of workmanship is the predominating characteristic of the banker- poet ; he had nothing in common with the passion of his younger friend Byron. The Pleasures of Memory, ' published in 1792 (doubtless suggested by Akenside's ' Pleasures of Imagination ' ) , and ' Human Life, ' have the same leisurely, meditative quality. At the same time, the usual fling that Rogers owed all his contemporary repute to his social and business position is unjust and untrue. He was a welcome member of the literary group, as a distinguished component of it , before he had any such position. Travelers in Italy soon grow familiar with often quoted lines from his long poem upon Italy. In 1814 he spent eight months in Italy; and he worked over material gathered there until 1822, when the first part of the poem appeared. It was a failure ; and the author burned the unsold copies, and set about a careful revision. A second edition, beautifully bound, and so profusely illustrated that an illnatured critic called it " Turner illustrated, " had more success, though SAMUEL ROGERS 12347 public taste was already demanding something different. The very fact, however, that a century after it was written it is still quoted from, shows that it has some enduring quality ; for poems on Italy have been written and forgotten by the thousand, and there is nothing to keep Rogers's alive but its own merit. What that is, our extract will indicate. Rogers was a link between the forms of thought and expression before and after the French Revolution . A disciple of Pope, intimate with the Barbaulds and the Burneys, with Joanna Baillie, Mrs. Siddons, Fox, and Sheridan, he saw the revival of the poetry of the soul, knew Wordsworth and Coleridge, Byron and Scott, and lived on to know Dickens and Thackeray. I' GINEVRA F THOU shouldst ever come by choice or chance To Modena, where still religiously Among her ancient trophies is preserved Bologna's bucket (in its chain it hangs Within that reverend tower, the Guirlandine) , Stop at a palace near the Reggio-gate, Dwelt in of old by one of the Orsini. Its noble gardens, terrace above terrace, And rich in fountains, statues, cypresses, Will long detain thee ; through their arched walks, Dim at noonday, discovering many a glimpse Of knights and dames such as in old romance, And lovers such as in heroic song, -- Perhaps the two, for groves were their delight That in the springtime, as alone they sate, Venturing together on a tale of love , Read only part that day. - A summer sun Sets ere one-half is seen ; but ere thou go, Enter the house -prithee , forget it not — And look a while upon a picture there. 'Tis of a lady in her earliest youth, The very last of an illustrious race, Done by Zampieri -but by whom I care not. He who observes it, ere he passes on, Gazes his fill, and comes and comes again, That he may call it up when far away. She sits, inclining forward as to speak, Her lips half-open, and her finger up, 12348 SAMUEL ROGERS As though she said " Beware ! ” her vest of gold Broidered with flowers, and clasped from head to foot, An emerald stone in every golden clasp ; And on her brow, fairer than alabaster, A coronet of pearls. But then her face, So lovely, yet so arch, so full of mirth, The overflowings of an innocent heart, - --- It haunts me still, though many a year has fled, Like some wild melody! Alone it hangs Over a moldering heirloom, its companion, An oaken chest, half eaten by the worm, But richly carved by Antony of Trent With Scripture stories from the life of Christ ; A chest that came from Venice, and had held The ducal robes of some old ancestor. That by the way, —it may be true or false , ― But don't forget the picture ; and thou wilt not, When thou hast heard the tale they told me there. She was an only child ; from infancy The joy, the pride, of an indulgent sire. Her mother dying of the gift she gave, — That precious gift, —what else remained to him? The young Ginevra was his all in life ; Still as she grew, forever in his sight : And in her fifteenth year became a bride, Marrying an only son, Francesco Doria, — Her playmate from her birth, and her first love. Just as she looks there in her bridal dress, She was all gentleness, all gayety, Her pranks the favorite theme of every tongue. But now the day was come, the day, the hour; Now, frowning, smiling, for the hundredth time, The nurse, that ancient lady, preached decorum ; And in the lustre of her youth, she gave Her hand, with her heart in it, to Francesco. Great was the joy ; but at the bridal feast, When all sate down, the bride was wanting there. Nor was she to be found ! Her father cried, 'Tis but to make a trial of our love ! " And filled his glass to all ; but his hand shook, And soon from guest to guest the panic spread.. 'Twas but that instant she had left Francesco , Laughing and looking back and flying still , SAMUEL ROGERS 12349 Her ivory tooth imprinted on his finger : But now, alas ! she was not to be found ; Nor from that hour could anything be guessed But that she was not ! - Weary of his life, Francesco flew to Venice , and forthwith Flung it away in battle with the Turk. Orsini lived ; and long was to be seen An old man wandering as in quest of something, Something he could not find- he knew not what. When he was gone, the house remained a while Silent and tenantless -then went to strangers. Full fifty years were past, and all forgot, When on an idle day- a day of search ' Mid the old lumber in the gallery, — That moldering chest was noticed ; and ' twas said By one as young, as thoughtless as Ginevra, " Why not remove it from its lurking-place ?» 'Twas done as soon as said : but on the way It burst, it fell ; and, lo ! a skeleton , With here and there a pearl, an emerald stone, A golden clasp, clasping a shred of gold. All else had perished -save a nuptial ring, And a small seal, her mother's legacy, Engraven with a name, the name of both, " Ginevra. " There then had she found a grave ! Within that chest had she concealed herself, Fluttering with joy, the happiest of the happy; When a spring-lock that lay in ambush there Fastened her down forever! FROM THE PLEASURES OF MEMORY' OPENING LINES WILIGHT'S Soft dews steal o'er the village green, TW With magic tints to harmonize the scene. Stilled is the hum that through the hamlet broke, When round the ruins of their ancient oak The peasants flocked to hear the minstrel play, And games and carols closed the busy day. Her wheel at rest, the matron thrills no more With treasured tales and legendary lore. All, all are fled ; nor mirth nor music flows To chase the dreams of innocent repose. 12350 SAMUEL ROGERS All, all are fled ; yet still I linger here ! What secret charms this silent spot endear ? Mark yon old mansion frowning through the trees, Whose hollow turret wooes the whistling breeze. That casement, arched with ivy's brownest shade , First to these eyes the light of heaven conveyed. The moldering gateway strews the grass-grown court, Once the calm scene of many a simple sport ; When nature pleased, for life itself was new, And the heart promised what the fancy drew. Childhood's loved group revisits every scene, The tangled wood-walk and the tufted green! Indulgent Memory wakes, and lo, they live ! Clothed with far softer hues than light can give. Thou first, best friend that Heaven assigns below, To soothe and sweeten all the cares we know; Whose glad suggestions still each vain alarm, When nature fades and life forgets to charm, — Thee would the Muse invoke ! to thee belong The sage's precept and the poet's song. What softened views thy magic glass reveals, When o'er the landscape Time's meek landscape steals ! As when in ocean sinks the orb of day, Long on the wave reflected lustres play.— Thy tempered gleams of happiness resigned, Glance on the darkened mirror of the mind. The school's lone porch, with reverend mosses gray, Just tells the pensive pilgrim where it lay. Mute is the bell that rung at peep of dawn, Quickening my truant feet across the lawn. Unheard the shout that rent the noontide air When the slow dial gave a pause to care. Up springs, at every step, to claim a tear, Some little friendship formed and cherished here ; And not the lightest leaf but trembling teems With golden visions and romantic dreams. CLOSING LINES OFT may the spirits of the dead descend To watch the silent slumbers of a friend; To hover round his evening walk unseen, And hold sweet converse on the dusky green ; To hail the spot where first their friendship grew, And heaven and nature opened to their view ! SAMUEL ROGERS 12351 Oft when he trims his cheerful hearth and sees A smiling circle emulous to please, - There may these gentle guests delight to dwell, And bless the scene they loved in life so well. O thou! with whom my heart was wont to share From Reason's dawn each pleasure and each care ; With whom, alas, I fondly hoped to know The humble walks of happiness below ; – If thy blest nature now unites above An angel's pity with a brother's love, Still o'er my life preserve thy mild control, Correct my views and elevate my soul ; Grant me thy peace and purity of mind, Devout yet cheerful, active yet resigned ; Grant me, like thee, whose heart knew no disguise , Whose blameless wishes never aimed to rise, To meet the changes Time and Chance present With modest dignity and calm content. When thy last breath, ere Nature sunk to rest, Thy meek submission to thy God expressed, — When thy last look ere thought and feeling fled, A mingled gleam of hope and triumph shed, - What to thy soul its glad assurance gave, Its hope in death , its triumph o'er the grave ? The sweet remembrance of unblemished Youth, The still inspiring voice of Innocence and Truth ! Hail, Memory, hail ! in thy exhaustless mine From age to age unnumbered treasures shine! Thought and her shadowy brood thy call obey, And Place and Time are subject to thy sway! Thy pleasures must we feel, when most alone ; The only pleasures we can call our own. Lighter than air, Hope's summer visions die, If but a fleeting cloud obscure the sky ; If but a beam of sober Reason play, Lo, Fancy's fairy frostwork melts away! But can the wiles of Art, the grasp of Power, Snatch the rich relics of a well-spent hour ? These, when the trembling spirit wings her flight, Pour round her path a stream of living light ; And gild those pure and perfect realms of rest, Where Virtue triumphs and her sons are blest ! 12352 SAMUEL ROGERS I FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF THE TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS WAS present when Sir Joshua Reynolds delivered his last lecture at the Royal Academy. On entering the room, I found that a semicircle of chairs immediately in front of the pulpit was reserved for persons of distinction, being labeled " Mr. Burke, " " Mr. Boswell, " etc. , etc.; and I, with other young men, was forced to station myself a good way off . During the lecture, a great crash was heard ; and the company, fearing that the building was about to come down, rushed towards the door. Presently however it appeared that there was no cause for alarm, and they endeavored to resume their places : but in consequence of the confusion, the reserved seats were now occupied by those who could first get into them; and I, pressing forwards, secured one of them. Sir Joshua concluded the lecture by saying with great emotion, " And I should desire that the last words which I should pronounce in this Academy, and from this place, might be the name of Michael Angelo. " As he descended from the rostrum , Burke went up to him, took his hand, and said, — " The Angel ended, and in Adam's ear So charming left his voice, that he awhile Thought him still speaking, still stood fixed to hear. " What a quantity of snuff Sir Joshua took ! I once saw him at an Academy dinner when his waistcoat was absolutely pow dered with it. coach THE head-dresses of the ladies during my youth were of a truly preposterous size. I have gone to Ranelagh in a with a lady who was obliged to sit upon a stool placed in the bottom of the coach, the height of her head-dress not allowing her to occupy the regular seat. Their tight lacing was equally absurd. Lady Crewe told me that on returning home from Ranelagh, she has rushed up to her bedroom, and desired her maid to cut her laces without a moment's delay, for fear she should faint. DR. FORDYCE sometimes drank a good deal at dinner. He was summoned one evening to see a lady patient when he was more than half- seas-over, and conscious that he was so. Feeling her pulse, and finding himself unable to count its beats, he SAMUEL ROGERS 12353 muttered, " Drunk, by God! " Next morning, recollecting the circumstance, he was greatly vexed ; and just as he was thinking what explanation of his behavior he should offer to the lady, a letter from her was put into his hand. " She too well knew, " said the letter, " that he had discovered the unfortunate condition in which she was when he last visited her; and she entreated him to keep the matter secret in consideration of the inclosed (a hundred-pound bank- note) ! SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT once met Quin at a very small dinner party. There was a delicious pudding, which the master of the house, pushing the dish towards Quin, begged him to taste. A gentleman had just before helped himself to an immense piece of it. " Pray, " said Quin, looking first at the gentleman's plate and then at the dish, " which is the pudding ? " Sir George Beaumont, when a young man, was one day in the Mount (a famous coffee-house in Mount Street, Grosvenor Square) with Harvey Aston. Various persons were seated at different tables. Among others present, there was an Irishman who was very celebrated as a duelist, having killed at least half a dozen antagonists. Aston, talking to some of his acquaintance, Iswore that he would make the duelist stand barefooted before them. " You had better take care what you say, " they replied ; " he has his eye upon you. " " No matter, " rejoined Aston ; " I declare again that he shall stand barefooted before you, if you will make up among you a purse of fifty guineas. " They did so. Aston then said in a loud voice, " I have been in Ireland, and am well acquainted with the natives. " The Irishman was all ear. Aston went on, " The Irish, being born in bogs, are every one of them web-footed : I know it for a fact. " " Sir, " roared the duelist, starting up from his table, " it is false ! Aston persisted in his assertion. " Sir, " cried the other, "I was born in Ireland ; and I will prove to you that it is a falsehood. ” So saying, in great haste he pulled off his shoes and stockings and displayed his bare feet. The joke ended in Aston's sharing the purse between the Irishman and himself, giving the former thirty guineas and keeping twenty. Sir George assured me that this was a true story. >>>> Aston was always kicking up disturbances. I remember being at Ranelagh with my father and mother, when we heard a great row and were told that it was occasioned by Aston. XXI-773 12354 SAMUEL ROGERS If I mistake not, Aston fought two duels in India on two successive days, and fell in the second one. WORDS are so twisted and tortured by some writers of the present day that I am really sorry for them, -I mean for the words. It is a favorite fancy of mine that perhaps in the next world the use of words may be dispensed with, -that our thoughts may stream into each other's minds without any verbal communication. THOMAS GRENVILLE told me this curious fact. When he was a young man, he one day dined with Lord Spencer at Wimbledon. Among the company was George Pitt (afterwards Lord Rivers) , who declared that he could tame the most furious animal by looking at it steadily. Lord Spencer said, " Well, there is a mastiff in the court-yard here which is the terror of the neighborhood : will you try your powers on him ? " Pitt agreed to do so ; and the company descended into the court-yard. servant held the mastiff by a chain. Pitt knelt down at a short distance from the animal, and stared him sternly in the face . They all shuddered. At a signal given, the mastiff was let loose, and rushed furiously towards Pitt, -then suddenly checked his pace, seemed confounded, and leaping over Pitt's head, ran away, and was not seen for many hours after. A During one of my visits to Italy, while I was walking a little before my carriage on the road not far from Vicenza, I perceived two huge dogs, nearly as tall as myself, bounding toward S me (from out a gateway, though there was no house in sight) – I recollected what Pitt had done ; and trembling from head to foot, I yet had resolution enough to stand quite still and eye them with a fixed look. They gradually relaxed their speed from a gallop to a trot, came up to me, stopped for a moment, and then went back again. DUNNING (afterwards Lord Ashburton) was " stating the law → to a jury at Guildhall, when Lord Mansfield interrupted him by saying, " If that be law, I'll go home and burn my books. " " My lord," replied Dunning, " you had better go home and read them. " Dunning was remarkably ugly. One night while he was playing whist at Nando's with Horne Tooke and two others, Lord SAMUEL ROGERS 12355 Thurlow called at the door and desired the waiter to give a note to Dunning (with whom, though their politics were so different, he was very intimate) . The waiter did not know Dunning by sight. " Take the note up- stairs, " said Thurlow, " and deliver it to the ugliest man at the card-table -to him who most resembles the knave of spades. " The note immediately reached its destination. Horne Tooke used often to tell this anecdote. WHEN titled ladies become authoresses or composers, their friends suffer for it. Lady asked me to buy her book, and I replied that I would do so when I was rich enough. I went to a concert at Lady's, during which several pieces composed by her daughter were performed ; and early next morning a music- seller arrived at my house, bringing with him the daughter's compositions (and a bill receipted) , price sixteen shillings. THOMAS GRENVILLE told me that he was present in the House when Lord North, suddenly rising from his seat and going out, carried off on the hilt of his sword the wig of Welbore Ellis, who was stooping to take up some papers. I have myself often seen Lord North in the House. While sitting there he would frequently hold a handkerchief to his face ; and once after a long debate, when somebody said to him, " My lord, I fear you have been asleep, " he replied, " I wish I had. " ONE morning at his own house, while speaking to me of his travels, Fox could not recollect the name of a particular town in Holland, and was much vexed at the treacherousness of his memory. He had a dinner party that day ; and just as he had applied the carving-knife to the sirloin, the name of the town having suddenly occurred to him, he roared out exultingly, to the astonishment of the company, " Gorcum, Gorcum ! " LORD ST. HELENS (who had been ambassador to Russia) told me as a fact this anecdote of the Empress Catherine . She frequently had little whist parties, at which she sometimes played, and sometimes not. One night when she was not playing, but walking about from table to table and watching the different hands, she rang the bell to summon the page- in-waiting from an antechamber. No page appeared. She rang the bell again ; and again without effect. Upon this she left the room, looking 12356 SAMUEL ROGERS daggers, and did not return for a very considerable time ; the company supposing that the unfortunate page was destined for the knout or Siberia. On entering the antechamber, the Empress found that the page, like his betters, was busy at whist ; and that when she had rung the bell, he happened to have so very interesting a hand that he could not make up his mind to quit it. Now what did the Empress do ? She dispatched the page on her errand, and then quietly sat down to hold his cards till he should return. Lord St. Helens also told me that he and Ségur were with the Empress in her carriage, when the horses took fright, and ran furiously down-hill. The danger was excessive . When it was over the Empress said, " Mon étoile vous a sauvée. " 12357 ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE BY HARRIET WATERS PRESTON ARLY in the second century A. D. the sweet but slender aftermath of Latin pagan poetry began to ripen upon the sunny hillside where it had pleased the Emperor Hadrian to fix his most magnificent abode. That many-sided and enigmatical being, whom the ancient writers can only attempt to describe by accumu lating pairs of contradictory adjectives-" grave and gay, cordial and reserved, impulsive and cautious, niggardly and lavish, crafty and ingenuous, ” —had certainly both a refined taste in poetry and a delicate poetical talent of his own. The ghosts of the light and languid men of letters whom he rather disdainfully patronized- " with an air," goes on Spartianus, the author quoted above, " of knowing much more than they ". seem always to haunt the beautiful oval gymnasium of Hadrian's villa at Tivoli, upon whose original marble seats one may still dream away an idle hour. Here Annius Florus chanted the brief glories of the rose, or engaged in merry metrical duels with his imperial master ; and the Etruscan Annianus sang in tripping measure the song of the Falernian vine (“ I am the one grape —I am the grape of Falernum "), or sought to bring again into vogue, by slightly adapting to the superficial squeamishness of a sophisticated time, the naïve indecencies of the Fescennine harvest-home and marriage hymns. The taste of the clique, as often happens in a period of decadence, was for the far- sought and archaic, the curious and the daintily sensuous, for tender sentimentalism and aromatic pains. These artificial folk doted upon nature ; and the fragments of their verse which we possess reveal an altogether new sensitiveness to her beauties, and sympathy with her moods. Whatever they knew of aspiration or regret seems to have been gathered into one wistful sigh, and to exhale in the forever inimitable farewell of the Emperor himself to his own departing soul, -" Animula, blandula, vagula. " It is difficult also, upon internal evidence, not to refer to the same period, and to some member or members of the same circle, the one fragment of highly impassioned and melodious Latin verse which has survived the wreckage of a couple of centuries, -the ' Pervigilium Veneris. ' We know that Hadrian restored with great pomp the worship of Alma Venus ; and it seemed as if this dulcet song for the vigil of her festa must have been inspired by that circumstance. The 12358 ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE connection of ideas is loose, the imagery as vaporous, fluctuating, and insaissisable as in a Troubadour love-song ; but here too the atmosphere is voluptuous and the emotion strong. The German critic who «< proves all things, " without always holding fast to that which is good, has both shown conclusively that the ' Pervigilium ' does belong to the time of Hadrian, and that it does not. The fact that the strongly accented septennarian verse in which it is written, constantly recalls the long surge of certain Augustinian hymns, may only mean that the tonic accent really went for more in the delivery of native Latin verse than is commonly supposed. A similar uncertainty with regard to its date involves the work of the best Latin bucolic poet after Virgil ; the only one, in fact, whose compositions will stand any kind of comparison with those of the master. Calpurnius Siculus wrote eclogues of indisputable though unequal beauty. He offered the incense of extravagant praise to a youthful emperor who had lately acceded, whose advent had been heralded by the appearance of a wonderful comet; whose personal and mental gifts excited ardent hopes; who built a huge amphitheatre of wood on or near the Campus Martius, and ransacked the earth for curious beasts to exhibit therein. All these things have commonly been thought to refer to Nero, and to the first five years of his reign (54-59 A. D.) , during which he gave no sign of the vicious and insane propensities which afterwards made his name a synonym of horro . It appears, however, by the precise testimony of astronomy, that the comet of 54 cannot be identified with the one which is described very vividly by Calpurnius ; while a comet meeting the requirements fairly well did appear early in the third century A. D. Of the eleven eclogues long attributed to the Sicilian, four are now almost unive sally assigned to the African, Olympius Aurelius Nemesianus, who also wrote a poem upon hunting, and who certainly flourished during the brief reign of the Emperor Carus and his sons -282-284 A. D. On the other hand, the recurring refrain of the last of these Neme sianian eclogues bears a strong resemblance to that of the ' Pervigi 1- ium Veneris, ' and may perhaps be considered an argument for the advanced date of the latter. Nearly a century more was to pass before the last ardent revival of Roman patriotism found expression in a poetic revival, during which the venerable forms of classic Latin verse were once again handled for a moment with something like the old mastery and grace. It was the flare of a forlorn hope. The cloud of barbarian invasion already hung low upon the horizon ; and the end of the Golden City of the past was as plainly announced as is that of the " golden autumn woodland " on the last still day of October. while Roma Aurea had lost but little as yet of her unparalleled Mean- ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE 12359 outward magnificence ; and it seems to have been more that visionary and bewildering beauty of aspect which fired the imaginations of her latest pagan devotees, than any deep reverence for her hoary traditions, or reasoned attachment to her political code and forms. The three poets of the fourth and early fifth centuries whose names we instinctively associate -Ausonius, Claudian, and Rutilius —were all of them, like nearly every other late writer whose name has survived, of provincial extraction. Two were professed pagan believers, and eager pagan apologists. The third, who as the tutor of a nominally Christian prince was himself of necessity a nominal Christian, was the most deeply imbued with pagan feeling, and debauched by pagan sensualism, of them all . Decimus Magnus Ausonius-" proud, " as he used to say, " of preserving even in his name a reminiscence of Italy " -was born in Burdigala, now Bordeaux, in 309. He saw the conversion of Constantine, the apostasy and death of Julian, the restoration of socalled Christian rule in the person of the blunt soldier Jovian. In 369, being already well advanced in years, he was appointed tutor to Gratian, then a boy of eight, son of the Pannonian general Valentinian I., who had been proclaimed Roman Emperor three years before. Valentinian had divided the empire with his brother Valens ; sending the latter to the city of Constantine in the East, while he himself assumed the sovereignty of the West and fixed his court at Augusta Trevirorum (Trier or Trèves) . Ausonius was educated at Toulouse, and returned at about the age of twenty-eight to Bordeaux, where he had been known as a teacher of rhetoric and literature for nearly thirty years before he received his court appointment. In 375 Valentinian I. went back to his own native province, to subdue a revolt which had broken out among the Quadi ; and died there suddenly in the month of November of the same year. After the accession of his royal pupil at the age of sixteen, Ausonius was made prefect of Italy and Africa. Three years later, in 378, he and his son Hesperius were joint prefects of Gaul ; and we find him consul-designate for 379. Four years later Gratian was murdered by the revolting Briton Maximus, but not before he had associated with himself in the empire a Spanish general who was none other than Theodosius the Great. Maximus managed to hold his own for four years ; and while he reigned at Trèves, Ausonius was in disgrace. Theodosius restored him to favor ; but he was now past seventy, and soon retired to a fine estate near his native town of Bordeaux, where he seems to have lived to extreme old age, corresponding with friends all over the Roman world, and polishing for publication his early poetical writings. 12360 ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE The most noteworthy of these, the ' Idyll of the Moselle, ' is a description of the poet's journey upon that river from the port of Tabernæ (now Bern-Castel) to the Augustan capital. It is full of keen observation and picturesque description, affording by far the clearest picture we possess of Roman civilization in the north of Europe, and enabling us -along with the highly impressive Roman remains yet existing in and about Trèves -to reconstruct with very tolerable success the outward features of that civilization. Ausonius also sketched a certain number of human figures typical of his time, in the series of epigrams and epitaphs upon his own kindred which he entitled ' Parentalia ' ; and in his ' Ordo Nobilium Orbium ' he described, seemingly from personal observation, the sixteen greatest cities of Europe in his day, beginning with Rome and ending with Bordeaux. " Her I love, " he says of his native place : " but Rome I worship. " Officially as a laureate produces a birthday ode ―- Ausonius composed, soon after his arrival at Valentinian's court, an Easter hymn. But in his graceful ' Dream of Cupid Crucified ' he travesties, apparently with no thought of blasphemy, and in singularly light and charming verse, the awful central scene of Christian history ; and in his ' Griphus, ' or riddling disquisition on the properties of the number three, he points out that there are " three Graces, three Harpies, three Furies, three prophesying Sibyls, three drinks to a toast, and three persons in the Trinity. " Ausonius also perpetrated many epigrams, most of them insufferably coarse, and a few tame and tasteless eclogues ; and he wrote other idyls besides that of the ' Moselle. > In the best of these he essays, as Omar Khayyám and Ronsard, Wal— ler and Herrick, and a hundred more have done since his day, the everlasting theme of the evanescent rose ; adorning it lavishly with " pathetic fallacies, " and giving it a wealth of sentimental develop ment which contrasts curiously with the perfectly simple transcrip tion of the elementary melody by Florus, two hundred years beforeA far more virile minstrel, many of whose compact and ringing hexameters need have been disdained neither by Lucretius nor Virgil, was Claudius Claudianus. He was born and brought up at Alexandria ; and his father, who seems to have lectured on philosophy in the city of Hypatia something like a generation before her day, was a native of Asia Minor. But though born to speak Greek, Claudian wrote, by preference if not always, in Latin. His mature years were passed in Rome, and he was passionately identified with the last struggle of the Roman patriciate against the official establishment of Christianity by Theodosius. When the great Spaniard died, in 395, each of his two sons, between whom the kingdom of the world was divided, fell under the ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE 12361 dominion of a powerful prime minister. Arcadius, in the East, became the tool of the infamous Rufinus ; Honorius, in the West, was more happily controlled by his father-in-law, the brilliant Vandal warrior Stilicho, who was able so long as he lived to hold the other barbarians at bay. It was the signal deliverance, under his generalship, of the Golden City from its first threatened sack by Alaric the Visigoth, which rendered Stilicho the hero par excellence of the poet Claudian. He wrote among other things an epithalamium and four short Fescennine lays on the marriage of Honorius to Stilicho's daughter Maria ; the praises of the great Vandal leader in two books ; of his consulate in another ; of his wife Serena in a fourth ; a brilliant poem on the Getic war and the defeat of Alaric ; invectives against Rufinus and Eutropius ; and three books of a mythological poem on the rape of Proserpine, parts of which are exceedingly fine. The literary merits of Claudian were acknowledged by those who had least sympathy with him in opinion : by Sidonius Apollinaris in an ode ; in the ' Civitas Dei ' by St. Augustine, who mourns that so noble a writer should have been " hostile to the name of Christ " ; and by Orosius, who says that though a superlatively good poet, he was a most stubborn (pervicacissimus) pagan. After the fall of Stilicho in 403, there is no further mention of Claudian in history ; and it seems natural to conclude that his fate was involved in that of the man whom he so admired and exalted. The emperors Honorius and Arcadius, on petition of the Roman Senate, erected in the Forum of Trajan a statue, of which the inscription, discovered in the fifteenth century, describes " Claudian the Tribune " as uniting in one person " the mind of Virgil and the muse of Homer. » It is a singular fact that the one other militant pagan of this tragic period whose poetical work has endured should have been as vehemently hostile to Stilicho as Claudian was eloquent in his praise. Rutilius Claudius Numatianus was born in Toulouse, but like Claudian, he lived long in Rome, was at one time prefect of the city, and was undoubtedly residing there at the time of Stilicho's disgrace and Claudian's disappearance. He bitterly charges the great Vandal himself with contempt of the elder gods, in ordering the destruction of the Sibylline Books ; and though this particular accusation has never been substantiated, it is apparently true that Stilicho did strip the doors of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus of their golden plating, and steal from the neck of a venerable statue of Cybele —a horrified Vestal protesting the while - a most ancient and precious necklace, which he bestowed upon his wife Serena. When in 410 Rome had finally succumbed to the second assault of Alaric, and the barbarian hordes had overflowed into Gaul, breaking up the Aurelian Way as they went, destroying bridges and plundering and laying waste the 12362 ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE country, ―Rutilius followed them by sea, to save what he might of his patrimony. It was with heartsick reluctance that he forsook the city of his impassioned predilection ; endeavoring to silence, by yearning promises of a speedy return, the ominous voice within which told him that his farewell was a final one. Seven years later, in 417, we find him beguiling his lingering exile in Gaul by the composition in sweetly flowing elegiacs of an 'Itinerarium, ' or narrative of his homeward journey. The poem was to have been a long one, to judge by the first and fragment of a second book, which are all that we possess ; and its easy graphic style enables one to follow the poet, mile by mile and day by day, from the port of Ostia, where he embarked, to a point on the eastern Riviera of the Mediterranean somewhere between Pisa and Genoa. All the incidents of the voyage are recalled and revivified . All the objects descried in passing, upon mainland or island, - cities, villas, fortifications, fishing and salt-making stations ; immemorial ruins, like those of the Etruscan Populonia, whose aspect is almost the same today as when Rutilius beheld it ; incipient convents which excite him to explosions of scorn and wrath at the senseless fanaticism of the monks ; mines of Elba divined rather than seen, -pass before him in review; and when the white city of Luna, on a spur of the Carrara Mountains, fades from view, and this fascinating guide-book of the fifth century comes to an untimely end, we regret its fragmentary nature, for the moment, almost more than the mutilation of some of the greater works of antiquity. One more name remains to be added to the list of Roman poets whose hearts were irrevocably set upon the past, and who caught such inspiration as they had from the expiring glories of the preChristian order. Claudian had once said, in his carelessly hyperbolical way, that every individual of the renowned Anician stock would be found to have sprung from a consul ; and Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius, born in 480, or about seventy-five years after Claudian ceased to be, was certainly himself a consul, the son of a consul, and the father of two boys who were named honorary consuls in their mere infancy by Theodoric, on his visit to Rome in 522. The Anicii, like the remnant in general of the old Roman patriciate, were now Christian in name, as their sovereigns had long been ; but their feeling of race, their habits of mind, their code of conduct, -all their civic and social traditions, in a word, -were still intensely and impenitently pagan. With great wealth, commanding position, and the broadest culture of his day, Boëthius passed the years of his early manhood chiefly in his own beautiful library, " ceiled with ivory and decorated with crystal , " now writing a philosophical essay on the Trinity or a tract against Nestorius, now translating Plato, Aristotle, ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE 12363 or Euclid. But when the hour came suddenly upon him, of cruel calamity and uttermost reverse, it was in the innate pride and power of a long-descended and indomitable Roman that he rose to meet his fate. It was philosophy, not religion, that he summoned to his aid ; and in her mystic sign, rather than that of the Labarum of Constantine, he conquered. A monotheist Boëthius undoubtedly was, and a devout one ; but not, if we are to judge him by his own clear and candid testimony, a practical follower of the sect of the Nazarenes. He was a Roman citizen first ; a deist afterward ; an orthodox Christian last and least of all : and the book by which he still holds the memory and affections of men, and still, out of the solitude and squalor of his dim prison chamber, affords help in trouble to a certain order of minds among them, is a dialogue, partly in prose, but interrupted by pieces of noble verse, with a visible embodiment of the philosophic spirit. - Jealousy of the splendid fortune and exclusive national prejudices. of Boëthius would seem to have been the sole source of the baseless and malign accusation of treason which poisoned against him the mind of Theodoric. He was arrested in the sacristy of a church near Ticinum, the modern Pavia, -imprisoned for a year in a strong tower, never examined or allowed a hearing, finally tortured and slain in prison. The ' Consolation of Philosophy, ' beloved of Dante and many another undaunted sufferer, was written there ; and the simplicity and sincerity of expression born of the writer's own desperate condition invest its thrilling pages with unique and enduring power. HarmetTraces Preston ANNIUS FLORUS ROSES NCE more the genius of the laughing spring ON Doth roses bring. A spear-like point amid the under green Is one day seen, The next a swelling bud, the next we greet The rose complete ; Whose race, before another set of sun, Will all be run. Gather then, quickly, ere this glory's o'er, Or nevermore! Translation of H. W. P. 12364 ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE THE EMPEROR HADRIAN TO HIS SOUL IFELING, changeling, darling, My body's comrade and guest, — To what place now wilt betake thee, Weakling, shivering, starveling, Nor utter thy wonted jest ? Translation of William Everett. LITTLE Soul from far away, Sweet and gay, While the body's friend and guest,- Whither now again wilt stray ? Shivering, paling, Rent thy veiling, And forgot thy wonted jest ? Translation of L. P. D. AUTHOR UNKNOWN From the Pervigilium Veneris > Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet! PRING again ! The time of singing ! All the earth regenerate ! Everywhere the rapt embrace ! Each winged creature seeks his mate. From thy leafy locks, O forest, shake the drops of bridal dew, For to-morrow shall the Linker pass thy shadowy by-ways through, Binding every bower with myrtle. Yea, to-morrow, on her throne, Set in queenly state, Dione gives the law to all her own. Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet! Hark ! the goddess calls her nymphs to enter by the myrtle gate. " Come, my maidens, for the day to Love disarmed is consecrate. Bidden to fling his burning gear, his quiver bidden to fling away, So nor brand nor barbèd shaft may wound upon my holiday : Lo, the Boy among the maidens ! Foolish maidens, dull to see In the helpless, bowless Cupid, still the dread divinity. Have a care ! his limbs are fair, and nakedness his panoply ! " ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE 12365 Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet! " Be my bar, " the queen ordains, " with blushing garlands decorate. When I sit for judgment, let the Graces three upon me wait ; Send me every blossom, Hybla, that thy opulent year doth yield ; Shed thy painted vesture, fair as that of Enna's holy field. Rally, all ye rural creatures ! nymphs of grove and fountain bright, Dwellers in the darksome woodland, haunters of the lonely height ! " Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet! This is she, the procreatrix, hers the power, occult, innate, Whereby soul and sense of man with breath divine are permeate. Sower of the seed, and breather of the brooding warmth of life, Hers the universal realm, with universal being rife . None in air or hidden ocean, or the utmost parts of earth, But have trodden, at her bidding, the mysterious ways of birth. · Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet ! Hark the lowing herd, their joys in leafy shades who celebrate ! Hark the hoarser calling of the noisy marsh-bird to his mate! Aye the goddess will have song of all whom she has dowered with wings ; Wherefore still the soul of Philomela in the poplar sings, Till the very pulse of love seems beating in the rapturous strain, And the sister soul of Procne hath forgot her wedded pain. Who am I, to listen dumbly ? Come, my spring, desired so long ! I have angered great Apollo, I have done the Muses wrong. Come and waken on these voiceless lips of mine the swallow- song ! Translation of H. W. P. CALPURNIUS SICULUS THE RUSTIC IN THE AMPHITHEATRE ORYDON —I saw the heaven : high structure of woven timbers COR wrought, Looking down on the very Tarpeian rock, methought ; I saw the gradients vast, and I gained by easy stairs The place assigned to the common folk, and the women's chairs, Where these and the men in homely raiment view the show; For the statelier places under the open sky below 12366 ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE Are all for the knights and the tribunes in their snowy dress. Even as our sunny valley in the wilderness Ringed by these forest ranks that aye reclining seem, Flares to the unbroken chain of hills about its brim, So there, the arena circuit girds the level ground, And the massive hemispheres in an oval vast are bound. But how to tell thee all, which I scarce had eyes to see In part ? For the universal splendor dazzled me. And there I stood agape, and as rooted to the spot, - Though little of all the coming wonders then I wot, Till an ancient gaffer on my left hand spake and said : - " No marvel if all this glory hath turned thy clownish head, Who knowest, mayhap, not gold by sight, nor ever saw Statelier home than a starveling peasant's hut of straw! Why, hoary-headed and shaky as I stand here to-day, Having grown old in the city - I know not what to say ! All they have shown us in years before is poor and mean, Sordid, I tell thee, man, to this bewildering scene ! Look how the gem- set barriers and gilded loggia shine ! And down on the marble wall, the arena's boundary-line, — Where are the foremost seats of all, dost thou discern The cylinders made of beauteous ivory slabs, that turn Smoothly on polished axles, and suddenly let slip Claws of the dizzied climber, who tumbles in a heap? For him too glitter the nets of golden wire hung out, Each from an ivory tusk, -the arena round about Whole tusks, and all of a size ! " And I, Lycotas, deem Each one of those tusks was longer than our plowshare beam ! And what shall I tell thee next? All manner of beasts were there, The elk, even in his own native forest rare ; With snow-white hares, and horrid boars, and bulls galore ! Some without necks, a hideous hump on the shoulders bore ; There were shaggy manes and bearded chins. And others yet Had rigid dewlaps all with quivering bristles set. But the strange, wild forest creatures made not all the show:- Seals were there, along with the bear, their constant foe ; And the shapeless being called a river-horse, and born Of the stream whose overflowings quicken the vernal corn. Awesome it was indeed, to see in the sandy deep The wild things out of their subterranean caverns leap, Or up from the selfsame hollow places grow amain Living arbutus bowers, in a nimbus of golden rain ! ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE 12367 Lycotas - Ay, ay! And thou art a happy fellow, Corydon, To have seen by grace divine , e'er tremulous eld come on, This age of ours ! And tell, oh, tell me if by chance Thou hadst a right near view of the godlike countenance ; And how did the dread one look ? What manner of garb wore he ? I fain would know the aspect on earth of deity ! Corydon -Would I had gone less meanly clad ! For then, mayhap, I had not been balked of a noble sight by a sordid wrap And a clumsy brooch ! But to me, as I stood afar, He carried, unless these eyes of mine deceivers are, The part at once of the god of song and the god of war ! Translation of H. W. P. DECIMUS MAGNUS AUSONIUS IDYL OF THE ROSES PRING morning ! and in all the saffron air, SPRIThe tingling freshness of a day to be! The breeze that runs before the sun-steeds, ere They kindle fire, appeared to summon me ; And I went forth by the prim garden beds To taste that early freshness, and behold The bending blades dew-frosted, and the heads Of the tall plants impearled, and heavy-rolled O'er spreading leaves, the sky-drops crystalline. Here too were roses, as in Pæstum gay; Dim through the morning mist I saw them shine, Save where at intervals a blinding ray Flashed from a gem that Sol would soon devour! Verily, one knew not if the rosy Dawn Borrowed her blushes from the rosy flower, Or this from her ; for that the two had on The same warm color, the same dewy veil . Yea, and why not ? For flower alike and star Live under Lady Venus, and exhale, Mayhap, the self-same fragrance. But afar The planet's breath is wafted and is spent, The blossom sheds its fragrance at our side ; Yet still they wear the one habiliment The Paphian goddess lent them, murex-dyed ! A moment more and the young buds were seen Bursting their star-like sheathings. Ohe was there 12368 ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE Who sported yet a fairy helm of green; And one a crimson coronal did wear; And one was like a stately pyramid Tipped at the apex with a purple spire ; And one the foldings of her veil undid From her fair head, as moved by the desire To number her own petals. Quick, ' tis done ! The smiling casket opens, and we see The crocus therein hidden from the sun Dense-seeded. But another flower, ah me! With flame- like hair afloat upon the breeze Paled suddenly, of all her glory shorn. "Alas for the untimely fate of these, Who age the very hour wherein they're born, » I cried. And even so, the chevelure Of yon poor blossom dropped upon the mold, Clothing it far and wide with color pure ! How can the same sunrising see unfold And fade so many shapes of loveliness ? Ah cruel Nature, with thy boon of flowers Too quick withdrawn! Ah youth, grim age doth press ! Ah life of roses, told in one day's hours! The morning star beholds a birth divine Whereof the evening star shall find no trace. Think then upon the rose's endless line, Since the one rose revisiteth her place Never again ! And gather, sweetest maid, Gather young roses in the early dew Of thine own years, remembering how they fade, And how for thee the end is hastening too! Translation of H. W. P. Α A MOTHER'S EPITAPH ONIA, mother, with thy mingled strain Of blood from Normandy and Aquitaine, Thine were the graces of the perfect wife ! The busy fingers the inviolate life, Thine husband's trust, the empire of thy boys, A gracious mien, a fund of quiet joys! Thy long embrace among the peaceful dead Make warm my father's tomb, as once his bed! Translation of H. W. P. ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE 12369 A CLAUDIUS CLAUDIANUS THE BEREAVEMENT OF CERES From the Rape of Proserpine ' LL in terror, in hope no more, as the mother of nestlings Fears for her tender young, in the rowan sapling deserted, Fears while she seeks their food, and wearies again to be with them; Trembling lest the wind may have smitten the nest from the bough, or Cruel man have slain, or the fang of the ravening serpent, — So she came again to her lonesome dwelling unguarded. Wide on their idle hinges yawned the doors, and, beholding All the silent space of the empty hall, in her anguish, Rent she her robes, and tore the bearded wheat from her tresses. Never a tear nor a word had she, for the breath of her nostrils Barely went and came, and she shivered in every member. Then upon quaking feet, and closing the portal behind her, Passed within, and on through the lorn and sorrowful chambers, Found the loom with its trailing web and intricate skein, and Read with a failing heart the woven story unfinished. Vain that gracious labor now! and the insolent spider Busily spinning among the threads his texture unholy! Never a tear nor a moan; but she fell with kisses unnumbered Upon the woven stuff, and the sob of her gathering passion Choked with the useless thread : then pressed to her bosom maternal, As it had been the maid herself, the delicate shuttle Smooth from her hand, and the fallen wool, and the virginal trifles Of her delight ; surveyed the seats where she loved to linger, Leaned o'er the spotless couch, and touched the pillow forsaken. Translation of H. W. P. WHAT INVOCATION TO VICTORY From the Consulate of Stilicho HAT shouts of our nobles, in jubilant chorus Went up to the hero, while over his head, Inviolate Victory, bodied before us Wide, wide in the ether, her pinions outspread ! O guardian Goddess of Rome in her splendor ! O radiant Palm-bearer in trophies arrayed, Who only the spirit undaunted canst render, XXI-774 Who healest the wounds that our foemen had made ! 12370 ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE I know not thy rank in the heavenly legion, - If thou shinest a star in the Dictæan crown, Or art girt by the fires of the Leonine region, Or bearest Ione's sceptre, or winnest renown From the shield of Minerva, or soothest in slumber The War-god, aweary when battles are o'er ; But come, all the prayers of thy chosen to number, Oh, welcome to Latium ! Leave us no more! Translation of H. W. P. R CLAUDIUS RUTILIUS NUMATIANUS PROLOGUE TO THE ' ITINERARIUM ' EADER, marvelest thou at one who early departing, Missed the unspeakable boon granted the children of Rome ? Know there is time no more to the dwellers in Rome the beloved, Early and late no more, under her infinite charm ! Happy beyond compute the sons of mortals appointed Unto that marvelous prize, birth on the consecrate soil! Who to the rich estate of the heirs of Roman patricians Add thy illustrious fame -City without a peer ! Happiest these, but following close in the order of blessing, They who have come from afar, seeking a Latian home. Wide to their pilgrim feet the Senate opens its portal, — Come and be aliens no more ! » So they sit with the mighty and share in the honors of Empire. Share in their worship too, kneeling where all do adore, Thrill with the State's great life, as aye the State and its æther, Unto the uttermost Pole, thrills with the being of Jove. " Come all ye who are fit ! Translation of H. W. P. O ANICIUS SEVERINUS BOËTHIUS THE GOVERNMENT OF THE World From the Consolation of Philosophy ' FRAMER of the jeweled sphere, Who, firm on thy eternal throne, Dost urge the swift-revolving year The stars compel thy laws to own ; - The stars that hide their lesser light When Luna with her horns full-grown ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE 12371 Reflects her brother's glories bright, Paling -she too -when he draws nigh, In his great fires extinguished quite ; As Hesper up the evening sky Leads the cold planets, but to fling Their wonted leash aside, and fly At Phoebus's bright awakening ; - Thou who dost veil in vapors chill The season of the leaf-dropping With its brief days, rekindling still The fires of summer, making fleet The lessening nights ; -all do thy will ; The year obeys thee on thy seat ; The leaves that Boreas bore amain Return once more with Zephyr sweet; Arcturus tills the unsown grain, And Sirius burns the waving gold ; The task thy ancient laws ordain All do, the allotted station hold. Man's work alone dost thou despise, Nor deign his weakness to enfold In changeless law. Else wherefore flies Sleek Fortune's wheel so madly round ? The good man bears the penalties Of yon bold sinner, who is found Enthroned, exultant, apt to grind His blameless victim to the ground! Virtue is fain in caverns blind Her light to hide ; and just men know The scourgings meet for baser kind. Mendacious Fraud reserves no blow For men like these, nor Perjury ; But when they will their might to show, Then conquer they, with ease and glee, The kings unnumbered tribes obey. O Judge unknown, we cry to thee! To our sad planet, turn, we pray! Are we we men-- the meanest side Of all thy great creation ? Nay! Though but the drift of Fortune's tide Compel her wasteful floods to pause ! And, ruling heaven, rule beside O'er quiet lands, by steadfast laws. Translation of L. P. D. 12372 ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE THE HYMN OF PHILOSOPHY From the Consolation of Philosophy' INDYING Soul of this material ball, UNEHeaven-and-Earth-Maker ! Thou who first didst call Time into being, and by thy behest Movest all things, thyself alone at rest, No outward power impelled thee thus to mold In shape the fluid atoms manifold, Only the immortal image, born within Of perfect beauty! Wherefore thou hast been Thine own fair model, and the things of sense The image bear of thy magnificence ! Parts perfect in' themselves, by Thy control, Are newly wrought into a perfect whole; The yoked elements obey thy hand: Frost works with fire , water with barren sand, So the dense continents are fast maintained, And heaven's ethereal fire to earth restrained . Thou dost the life of threefold nature tame, To serve the parts of one harmonious frame, — That soul of things constrained eternally To trace thy image on the starry sky, The greater and the lesser deeps to round, And on thyself return. Thou too hast found For us, thy lesser creatures of a day, Wherewith thou sowest earth, -forms of a clay So kindly-fragile naught can stay our flight Backward, unto the source of all our light! Grant, Father, yet, the undethroned mind ! A way unto the fount of truth to find, And, sought so long, the Vision of thy Face ! Lighten our flesh ! Terrestrial vapors chase, And shine in all thy splendor ! For thou art The final Rest of every faithful heart, The First, the Last ! of the expatriate soul Lord, Leader, Pathway, and Eternal Goal ! Translation of H. W. P. 12373 PIERRE RONSARD (1524-1585) BY KATHARINE HILLARD HERE is no more picturesque moment in the whole history of France than that at which Pierre Ronsard was born. The first quarter of the sixteenth century had just struck, and Europe was waking to the new day of the Renaissance. Luther had burned the Pope's bull at Wittenberg, and had introduced the reformed worship there. Henry VIII. and Francis I. had met on the Field of the Cloth of Gold ; Michael Angelo had finished his masterpieces in the Sistine Chapel ; Raphael, having painted the greatest of all Madonnas, had been dead five years ; Titian was still holding the world breathless with the triumphs of his brush ; Rabelais had just emerged from his monastic prison to begin life at the age of forty; Sir Thomas Wyatt, the Earl of Surrey, and their co-mates, were preparing the way in England for the full choir of the next half-century ; and France, stimulated on all sides by the advance of her neighbors in literature and art, had set herself to rival them. Since the appearance of the ' Roman de la Rose ' in 1310, there had been little of note in French literature. The feeble singers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, whose voices could scarcely be heard through the constant din of war, made that poem their great example ; and it is hard to say whether the poverty of their invention, or the religious allegory concealed beneath its sentimental platitudes, had had the greater power in preserving it so long. Charles d'Orléans, François Villon, and Clément Marot, had already sung the first chansons worthy of note since the Roman de la Rose' began to reign ; and the " gentil maistre Clément " was even now sharing the captivity of his royal master at Pavia. PIERRE RONSARD Besides the usual causes that impede the production of great poems, we must take into account the transitions and imperfect condition of the French language at this time ; the patronage of zealous PIERRE RONSARD 12374 but ignorant princes ; and more than all, the fact that in the recent revival of learning, studious minds grasped at everything. They made no distinction between natural genius and acquired talents ; and believed the development of poetry to be as much a matter of perseverance as the development of physics, -a thing to be worked at like a sum in arithmetic. While, then, in France the learned were poring over classical dictionaries, and occasionally giving evidence of progress by a neat copy of Greek or Latin verses, the French language was suffering neglect. Noble words and phrases used by the Troubadours had dropped out altogether ; the writers of each half-century had to be translated by their successors before they could be understood. For the new music there must be new strings to the lyre ; and two young poets, Pierre Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay, undertook the audacious task of reconstructing their native tongue. Pierre Ronsard, to whose influence may be ascribed the ' Illustration de la Langue Française, ' published by his friend Du Bellay, was born on the 11th of September, 1524, at the Château de la Poissonière (Vendômois). He was the fifth son of Louis Ronsard, maître d'hotel to Francis I. His father, born of a noble Hungarian family, was himself a scholar and a poet, who composed verses in both French and Latin which received a tolerable amount of praise from his contemporaries. Till the age of nine, Pierre was brought up at home under the direction of a tutor. When sent to the College of Navarre, he was a bright and beautiful boy of ten ; but the Regent there was an uncommonly harsh master, under whose rule in six months the child lost not only his color and his vivacity, but his taste for study. His alarmed father gave up all thought of educating him for the law or the church, and entered him in the service of the Duke of Orléans as a page. Three years later, in 1537 , when James V. of Scotland returned to his own country with his first wife, Madeleine of France, Ronsard went in their train to Edinburgh, where he spent two years ; and then, despite the King's efforts to detain him, returned to France (spending six months in England on the way), and re-entered the service of the Duke. His royal master sent his prodigy of a page on all sorts of secret missions, -to Scotland, to Flanders, to Zealand, to the Diet of Spires with Lazare de Baïf, to Piedmont with the viceroy Du Bellay. He suffered many hardships, and even shipwreck ; and finally a severe illness, which left him almost totally deaf at the early age of sixteen. He lost his heart too about this . time (not so irremediable a loss, however, as his hearing) , to a fair bourgeoise of Blois, whom he chose to christen Cassandra. She was little more than a child ; and he, though not seventeen, was already an accomplished courtier, skilled in all manly exercises, and already PIERRE RONSARD 12375 a verse-maker. His deafness interfering with his chances at court, he wished to devote himself to study. But his father, ambitious for the future of his brilliant son, peremptorily forbade his apprenticeship to "le mestier des Muses. " During his travels, however, he had learned to speak English, Italian, and German, while one of his comrades had taught him Latin. When the elder Ronsard died, Pierre was left free to follow his own inclinations. At eighteen, having already seen more of life than most men, he retired with his friend Antoine de Baïf, then only sixteen, to the College of Coqueret. Seven long years they passed in this retreat, studying with the greatest ardor, and helping each other along the thorny ways of learning. At the college they were joined by Remi Belleau, afterwards an enthusiastic disciple of Ronsard, and by Antoine Muret, his future commentator. Here too came Joachim du Bellay, who eagerly embraced the literary theories of Ronsard, and published in 1549 the result of their joint studies and speculations under the title of ' L'Illustration de la Langue Française. ' " Coloring their prejudices as erudite scholars with all the illusions of youth and patriotism, " says Sainte-Beuve in his admirable work on ' French Poetry in the Sixteenth Century, ' " they asserted that there was no such thing as poetry in France, and promised themselves to create it all. " The ideas of these youthful enthusiasts were set forth (in part) as follows : « Languages are not like plants, strong or weak by chance : they depend upon human volition. Consequently, if our language be more feeble than the Greek or the Latin, it is the fault of our ancestors, who neglected to strengthen and adorn it. Translations alone will never enrich a language. We need to follow the example of the Romans, who imitated rather than translated the best Greek authors, transforming them into their own likeness , devouring their substance, and after digesting it thoroughly, converting it into nourishment and blood. » To this careful transportation of the classics, of Spanish and Italian, Ronsard added an audacious use of the words of his own tongue. Where French failed him, he dressed up a Latin, Greek, or Italian substitute. He advised what he called the provignement (literally the layering of words, the term being taken from the gardener's method of laying a shoot under ground to take root, without detaching it from the parent stem) ; and from a recognized substantive, for instance, would form a verb or an adjective to suit his need. Moreover, he borrowed right and left from every French patois he could lay his hands upon ; and in all the workshops of Paris he sought among the artisans for words and phrases to give amplitude and vigor to his verse . His genius melted down this heterogeneous mass into a wonderfully mellifluous stream ; and to us, in this polyglot age, 12376 PIERRE RONSARD his verse presents fewer difficulties than it did, perhaps, to his contemporaries. ― In 1549, after seven years' study of " le mestier des Muses, " Ronsard was persuaded to appear in print for the first time ; and to publish his Epithalamium on the marriage of Antoine de Bourbon with Jeanne de Navarre. His first book of Odes ' came out in 1550 ; and two years later, ' Amours, ' a collection of sonnets addressed to the fair Cassandra. Meantime he was publishing more odes, of which a fifth book appeared in 1553 , accompanied with music fitted to the songs and sonnets, and a commentary by Muret. Then came a book of ' Hymnes, ' followed in two years by a second, and by the last of the ' Amours. ' Finally, in 1560, he brought out the first edition of his collected works. Never were poems received with such tempests of applause. In vain the jovial curé of Meudon made fun of his neighbor ; not even the mighty laughter of Rabelais could drown the praise of princes. The Toulouse Academy of Floral Games christened Ronsard " the prince of poets " ; and although he had not entered their lists as a competitor, they not only crowned him with their usual golden wreath of eglantine, but sent him also a massive silver statue of Minerva. Queen Elizabeth presented a diamond of great price ; and Marie Stuart sent him from her English prison a buffet surmounted by a silver Pegasus, standing on the summit of Parnassus, bearing this inscription : " To Ronsard, the Apollo of the fountain of the Muses. " Montaigne immortalized him in a single line ; Tasso was proud to read to him the first cantos of his Gerusalemme; and his works were publicly read and expounded in the French schools of Flanders, Poland, England, and other countries. Saddest and sweetest tribute of all, the poet Chastelard would have no other consolation upon the scaffold than Ronsard's ' Hymn to Death. ' The people shared the admiration of princes, and women burned incense before the popular idol. Many damsels besides Cassandra are celebrated in his charming verses ; either by their real names, or by the finer Callirrhoës and Astræas of the fashion of the day. The nebulous clouds of adoration that surrounded him finally encompassed that famous constellation, the " Pléiade, " wherein he was still the central star. Around him at a respectful distance revolved Dorat, his old master ; Jamyn, his pupil ; Du Bellay and De Baïf, his fellowstudents ; Jodelle and De Thiard : but it was only Ronsard whom the whole world delighted to honor. At the command of Charles IX. he undertook an epic poem ; and about a fortnight after the massacre of St. Bartholomew (August 24th, 1572) appeared all that was ever written of the ' Franciade, ' four cantos of the destined twenty-four. The delighted King loaded PIERRE RONSARD 12377 him with new honors ; bestowing upon him, besides two priories, the abbeys of Bellozane and Croix-Val. To Croix-Val Ronsard retired upon the death of his royal patron in 1574. Gouty and prematurely old, he led a studious and pious life ; amusing himself by editing another edition of his complete works, which appeared in 1584. So captious had grown his fastidious taste, that he altered the sonnets and lyrics of his youth with a most unsparing hand, often much to the loss of their spontaneity and vigor ; " not considering, " says Colletet, in his quaint old French, " that although he was the father of his works, yet doth it not appertain to sad and captious age to sit in judgment upon the strokes of gallant youth. " A singer to the last, he died at his priory of St. Cosme, Tours, on December 27th, 1585, at the age of 61 ; and was quietly buried in the choir of the priory church. Two months after his death, however, his dear friend Galland, who had closed the poet's eyes, celebrated his obsequies at the chapel of the College of Boncour. Henri III. , then King, sent his own musicians to sing the mass ; Duperron, afterwards bishop of Evreux and cardinal, pronounced the funeral oration, and drew tears from the eyes of all present. The chapel was crowded with the princes of the blood, the cardinals, the Parliament, and the University of Paris. The next day memorial orations and verses were recited in all the colleges of Paris, and volumes might be made of the commemorative elegies and epitaphs. But only fifteen years after these panegyrics filled the air, arose the star of Malherbe, severest of his critics because so close a rival. It is related that Racan, coming in one day, -when Malherbe was ill, let us hope, took up a volume of Ronsard with many verses erased. " Posterity will quote the others as admired by Malherbe, " said Racan ; whereupon the irritated censor seized a pen and scratched out all the rest. The wheel of Fortune turned again. Malherbe was as completely forgotten as Ronsard. Corneille, Racine, and classic drama ruled the day. Again the wheel went round ; and in 1828 the reign of the Romantic School began. Guizot, Ampère, Prosper Mérimée, Philarète Chasles, Théophile Gautier, Sainte-Beuve, Victor Hugo, led the acclaim for Ronsard ; and once more all France rang with his praises. Sainte- Beuve wrote his ' Tableau Historique et Critique de la Poésie Française au 16e. Siècle ' (Critical and Historical View of French Poetry in the Sixteenth Century) , followed by a volume of selections which set the new school wild. Early editions commanded fabulous prices ; and a copy of 1609 was presented to Victor Hugo as the fittest tribute to " the successor of the greatest lyric poet of France. » It is easier to account for the fame of Ronsard than for its sudden waning. His service to French speech is enormous. As a poet, he 12378 PIERRE RONSARD worked much upon the same lines as did Rabelais in prose, allowing for the humorous extravagance of the latter. Both borrowed from all sources, and both developed the French vocabulary in every direction. Nor were Ronsard's services to the art of versification less notable. To him belongs the honor of introducing the ode into French poetry; that he also revived the epic is a doubtful matter for congratulation. Sainte-Beuve claims as his invention a great variety of new rhythms, and at least eight or ten new forms of strophes. Indeed, France had to wait three hundred years for a worthy successor to him in the realm of lyric verse. Not until Victor Hugo took up the fallen lyre do we find in French poetry any songs that for exquisite melody, simplicity, and grace can rival his. He transplanted some of the finest odes and sonnets of Anacreon, Theocritus, Horace, Petrarch, and Bembo into his native tongue ; but added to them such fine and delicate touches of his own fancy that they seemed to bloom anew as with engrafted flowers. And he kept a kind and fatherly eye upon the younger poets springing up around him. He taught them the value of careful work ; inspired them to write less and write better ; and bade them remember that verses should be weighed, not counted, and that like diamonds, one fine gem was far more precious than a hundred mediocre specimens. Of all English poets Herrick most resembles Ronsard. But Herrick set out with the great advantage of finding his material ready to his hand ; for the noble English language was at the very acme of its splendor. His mastery of rhythm is as great as Ronsard's, but his poetic genius is of a lower order. Ronsard's imagination has a loftier flight than Herrick's fancy ; there is more dignity and depth in his sweetness, a subtler pathos in his tenderness. Both poets profess a like Epicurean philosophy : " Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, old Time is still a-flying, " sings Herrick ; and Ronsard utters the same wisdom to Cassandra. This is the moral of many a verse in both poets, it is true ; but Ronsard's treatment of love is more noble and dignified than that of the English singer. Although touched occasionally by the worst taste of his time, Ronsard preserves in nearly all his love poems a manliness and a delicacy that enhance their richness. Perhaps the most celebrated of his verses is the sonnet to Hélène de Surgères, maid of honor to Catherine de Medici, a sonnet which Béranger has imitated and Thackeray paraphrased : - " When by the fire , grown old, with silvery hair, You spin by candle-light with weary eyes, Humming my songs you'll say, with still surprise , ' Ronsard once sang of me, when I was young and fair. ' PIERRE RONSARD 12379 Then as your maidens hear the well-known sound, — Though half asleep after the toils of day, - Not one but wakes, and as she goes her way Blesses your name, with praise immortal crowned. I shall be dead and gone, a fleshless shade Under Elysian bowers my head be laid ; While you, crouched o'er your fire, grown old and gray, Sigh for my love, regret your past disdain. Live now, nor wait for love to come again ; Gather the roses of your life to-day ! " Ronsard, like Chaucer, in spite of a courtier's training, had an intense love of nature. The poet laureate of his age and country, he was none the less an excellent gardener, well versed in all the secrets of horticulture ; and side by side with marriage odes to princes and epistles to kings and queens, we find charming songs addressed to the birds and insects and fountains of the country that he loved even better than the court. And like Chaucer, again, he was capable of higher flights ; and could comfort a dying poet with his ' Hymn to Death, ' or write verses full of a lofty stoicism, —like the stanzas taken from one of the odes, which irresistibly suggest the " good counsel " of Geoffrey Chaucer. Agathaime Hillard SONNET TO ANGELETTE ERE through this wood my saintly Angelette HR Goes, making springtime blither with her song; Here lost in smiling thought she strays along, While on these flowers her little feet are set. Here is the meadow and the gentle stream That laughs in ripples by her hand caressed, As loitering still, she gathers to her breast The enameled flowers that o'er its wavelets dream. Here, singing I behold her, there, in tears ; And here she smiles, and there my fancy hears Her sweet discourse, with boundless blessings rife. Here sits she down, and there I see her dance ; So with the shuttle of a vague romance, Love weaves the warp and woof of all my life. Translation of Katharine Hillard. 12380 PIERRE RONSARD HIS LADY'S TOMB S IN the gardens, all through May, the rose, A Lovely and young and rich apparelled, Makes sunrise jealous of her rosy red, When dawn upon the dew of dawning glows; Graces and Loves within her breast repose, The woods are faint with the sweet odor shed, Till rains and heavy suns have smitten dead The languid flower, and the loose leaves unclose : So this, the perfect beauty of our days, When heaven and earth were vocal of her praise , The fates have slain, and her sweet soul reposes : And tears I bring, and sighs, and on her tomb Pour milk, and scatter buds of many a bloom, That, dead as living, Rose may be with roses. Translation of Andrew Lang. I ROSES SEND you here a wreath of blossoms blown, And woven flowers at sunset gathered. Another dawn had seen them ruined, and shed Loose leaves upon the grass at random strown. By this, their sure example, be it known That all your beauties, now in perfect flower, Shall fade as these, and wither in an hour, Flower-like, and brief of days, as the flower sown. Ah, time is flying, lady —time is flying ; Nay, ' tis not time that flies but we that go, Who in short space shall be in churchyard lying, And of our loving parley none shall know, Nor any man consider what we were : Be therefore kind, my love , whiles thou art fair. Translation of Andrew Lang. "D TO CASSANDRA ARLING! look if that blushing rose, That but this morning did unclose Her crimson vestments to the sun, Hath not quite lost in evening's air PIERRE RONSARD 12381 The fine folds of that vestment rare, And that bright tinting like your own. "Alas! even in this little space, Dearest, we see o'er all the place Her scattered beauties strown! O stepdame Nature ! stern and hard, That could not such a flower have spared From morn till eve along! " Then, darling, hear me while I sing! Enjoy the verdure of your spring, The sweets of youth's short hour ; Gather the blossoms while ye may, For youth is gone like yesterday, And beauty like that flower! " • Translation of Katharine Hillard. SONG TO MARIE HE spring hath not so many flowers ; TH The autumn, grapes within its bowers ; The summer, heats that make men pale ; The winter, stores of icy hail ; Nor fishes hath the boundless sea, Nor harvests in fair Beau there be; Nor Brittany, unnumbered sands, Nor fountains have Auvergne's broad lands ; Nor hath so many stars the night, Nor the wide woodland branches light, — As hath my heart of heavy pains, Born of my mistress's disdains. Translation of Katharine Hillard. A MADRIGAL TO ASTREA HY those engraven agates dost thou wear, WHYRich rubies, and the flash of diamonds bright ? Thy beauty is enough to make thee fair, - Beauty that love endows with its own light. 12382 PIERRE RONSARD Then hide that pearl, born of the Orient sea : Thy grace alone should ornament thy hand ; Thy gems but serve to make us understand They take their splendor and their worth from thee. 'Tis thy bright eyes that make thy diamonds shine, And not the gems that make thee more divine. Thou work'st thy miracles, my lady fair, With or without thy jewels ; all the same, I own thy sovranty : now ice, now flame, — As love and hatred drive me to despair, — I die with rapture, or I writhe in shame, Faint with my grief, or seem to tread on air. Translation of Katharine Hillard. GOOD COUNSEL or to rejoice too much at Fortune's smile NOT Nor at her frown despair, — This makes man happy, and he lives meanwhile Without or fear or care. Like Time himself, borne by his sweeping wings, All things else pass away; And fifty sudden summers and sweet springs Flit by us like a day. Cities and forts and kingdoms perish all Before Time's mighty breath ; And new ones spring to life, like them to fall, And crumble into death. Therefore let no man cherish the vain thought Of an immortal name, Seeing how Time itself doth come to naught, And he shall fare the same. Arm thyself then with proud philosophy Against the blows of fate ; And with a soul courageous, firm, and free The storms of life await. Translation of Katharine Hillard. PIERRE RONSARD 12383 RONSARD TO HIS MISTRESS OME winter night, shut snugly in SOMBeside the fagot in the hall, I think I see you sit and spin, Surrounded by your maidens all. Old tales are told, old songs are sung, Old days come back to memory: " When I was fair and young, A poet sang of me! " You say, There's not a maiden in your hall, Though tired and sleepy ever so, But wakes as you my name recall, And longs the history to know. And as the piteous tale is said Of lady cold and lover true, Each, musing, carries it to bed, And sighs and envies you! " Our lady's old and feeble now, " They'll say ; " she once was fresh and fair, And yet she spurned her lover's vow, And heartless left him to despair: The lover lies in silent earth, No kindly mate the lady cheers ; She sits beside a lonely hearth, With threescore and ten years ! " Ah! dreary thoughts and dreams are those, But wherefore yield me to despair, While yet the poet's bosom glows, While yet the dame is peerless fair ! Sweet lady mine ! while yet ' tis time, Requite my passion and my truth ; And gather in their blushing prime The roses of your youth! Paraphrased by Thackeray. 12384 THEODORE ROOSEVELT (1858-) HEODORE ROOSEVELT is an example of a type of American justifying the experiment of democratic government on a large scale. He is a man of good family and private fortune, well educated and of high character, who has devoted his abilities and energies to practical politics, and has risen steadily as a public servant by reason of his probity, intelligence, and force. His keen interest in his own country has led him to make frequent hunting trips in the West, where he owns a ranch and has made himself an authority on hunting; and he has studied. the conditions of that civilization, and then written books concerning it. This interest in the West has extended to its history, and has produced a capital historical survey of the stirring dramatic development of the Western States : much of the material upon which the account is based being drawn fresh from government archives, and involving painstaking independent labor. Mr. Roosevelt's other writings - historical, biographical, or of the lighter essay sort-are robustly American in spirit, and enjoyable in point of style. He is a vigorous personality, whether in life or literature. சி THEODORE ROOSEVELT The son's Theodore Roosevelt was born in New York city, on October 27th, 1858 ; and is the son of a successful business man and philanthropist of the same name, well known and honored in that city. uncle was R. B. Roosevelt, also distinguished as politician and author. Theodore the younger was educated at Harvard, being graduated in 1880. He at once interested himself in local politics ; and became a New York State Assemblyman 1882-4. The latter year he was a member of the National Republican Convention ; in 1886 a Republican candidate for mayor of New York; in 1889 he was made a United States Civil Service Commissioner, serving until 1895, when he became president of the New York Board of Police Commissioners, — holding this position until 1897, when he accepted the post of Assistant Secretary of the Navy. TO LIBR OR, LENOX AND ON FOUNDAT HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT Copyrighted, 1898 By G. G. Rockwood, N. Y. THEODORE ROOSEVELT 12385 - Mr. Roosevelt began to publish books as a young man of twentyfive. His ' Hunting Trips of a Ranchman ' appeared in 1883 ; other books in the order of their publication are ( History of the Naval War of 1812 ( 1885) , the lives of Thomas Hart Benton ( 1887) and of Gouverneur Morris ( 1888) in the American Statesmen Series, ' ' Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail ' ( 1888) , Essays on Practical Politics ( 1888), ' The Winning of the West ' (fourth volume 1895), History of New York City ' ( 1891 ) , and The Wilderness Hunter ' ( 1893) . This is a considerable literary baggage for so young a writer. His papers descriptive of his hunting and camp life are very readable ; but Mr. Roosevelt's most important work has been the presentation of different phases of the American historical development. His studies on the naval war and the New York municipality are done in the true spirit of scholarly investigation. Most comprehensive and valuable of all is his ' The Winning of the West ' ; in which he tells the story with admirable freshness, grasp, and a sense of the drama underlying the evolution of the Western States. His taste for and experience in the adventurous overcoming of material difficulties , and the rough-and-ready life of the open, have led him to select sympathetically a fine subject, which he has treated in a way to re- create the past, and make this series very acceptable for its clear, vivid sketches of pioneer conditions out of which the West has sprung. What interests Mr. Roosevelt, here and in his biographies, is the development of American personalities and of the American idea from all manner of untoward environment. Mr. Roosevelt, because of his stalwart independence and aggressive honesty in political life, has become a hero with those who are striving for the purification of American politics. He has been a strong force for good; and his books reflect these same qualities of vigorous thought and worthy ideals. His sturdy Americanism is to be felt alike in his acts and words. THE INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST From The Winning of the West. Copyright 1889, by G. P. Putman's Sons THE HE Wyandots, and the Algonquins who surrounded them, dwelt in a region of sunless, tangled forests ; and all the wars we waged for the possession of the country between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi were carried on in the never-ending stretches of gloomy woodland. It was not an open forest. The underbrush grew, dense and rank, between the boles of the tall XXI-775 12386 THEODORE ROOSEVELT trees, making a cover so thick that it was in many places impenetrable, so thick that it nowhere gave a chance for human eye to see even as far as a bow could carry. No horse could penetrate it save by following the game trails or paths chopped with the axe ; and a stranger venturing a hundred yards from a beaten road would be so helplessly lost that he could not, except by the merest chance, even find his way back to the spot he had just left. Here and there it was broken by a rare hillside glade, or by a meadow in a stream valley ; but elsewhere a man might travel for weeks as if in a perpetual twilight, never once able to see the sun through the interlacing twigs that formed a dark canopy above his head. This dense forest was to the Indians a home in which they had lived from childhood , and where they were as much at ease as a farmer on his own acres. To their keen eyes, trained for generations to more than a wild beast's watchfulness, the wilderness was an open book : nothing at rest or in motion escaped them. They had begun to track game as soon as they could walk ; a scrape on a tree trunk, a bruised leaf, a faint indentation of the soil, which the eye of no white man could see, -all told them a tale as plainly as if it had been shouted in their ears. With moccasined feet they trod among brittle twigs, dried leaves, and dead branches, as silently as the cougar; and they equaled this great wood- cat in stealth, and far surpassed it in cunning and ferocity. They could no more get lost in the trackless wilderness than a civilized man could get lost on a highway. Moreover, no knight of the Middle Ages was so surely protected by his armor as they were by their skill in hiding : the whole forest was to the whites one vast ambush, and to them a sure and ever- present shield. Every tree trunk was a breastwork ready prepared for battle ; every bush, every moss-covered bowlder, was a defense against assault, from behind which, themselves unseen, they watched with fierce derision the movements of their clumsy white enemy. Lurking, skulking, traveling with noiseless rapidity, they left a trail that only a master in woodcraft could. follow; while on the other hand they could dog a white man's footsteps as a hound runs a fox. Their silence, their cunning and stealth, their terrible prowess and merciless cruelty, makes it no figure of speech to call them the tigers of the human race. Unlike the southern Indians, the villages of the northwestern tribes were usually far from the frontier. Tireless, and careless THEODORE ROOSEVELT 12387 · of all hardship, they came silently out of unknown forests, robbed and murdered, and then disappeared again into the fathomless depths of the woods. Half the terror they caused was due to the extreme difficulty of following them, and the absolute impossibility of forecasting their attacks. Without warning, and unseen until the moment they dealt the death stroke, they emerged from their forest fastnesses, the horror they caused being heightened no less by the mystery that shrouded them than by the dreadful nature of their ravages. Wrapped in the mantle of the unknown, appalling by their craft, their ferocity, their fiendish cruelty, they seemed to the white settlers devils and not men ; no one could say with certainty whence they came, nor of what tribe they were ; and when they had finished their dreadful work, they retired into a wilderness that closed over their trail, as the waves of the ocean close in the wake of a ship. They were trained to the use of arms from their youth up; and war and hunting were their two chief occupations, -the business as well as the pleasure of their lives. They were not as skillful as the white hunters with the rifle, -though more so than the average regular soldier, —nor could they equal the frontiersman in feats of physical prowess, such as boxing and wrestling ; but their superior endurance, and the ease with which they stood fatigue and exposure, made amends for this. A white might outrun them for eight or ten miles ; but on a long journey they could tire out any man, and any beast except a wolf. Like most barbarians they were fickle and inconstant, -not to be relied on for pushing through a long campaign ; and after a great victory apt to go off to their homes, because each man desired to secure his own plunder and tell his own tale of glory. They are often spoken of as undisciplined ; but in reality their discipline in the battle itself was very high. They attacked, retreated, rallied or repelled a charge, at the signal of command; and they were able to fight in open order in thick covers without losing touch of each other -a feat that no European regiment was then able to perform . On their own ground they were far more formidable than the best European troops. The British grenadiers throughout the eighteenth century showed themselves superior, in the actual shock of battle, to any infantry of continental Europe ; if they ever met an overmatch, it was when pitted against the Scotch highlanders. Yet both grenadier and highlander, the heroes of 12388 THEODORE ROOSEVELT Minden, the heirs to the glory of Marlborough's campaigns, as well as the sinewy soldiers who shared in the charges of Prestonpans and Culloden, proved helpless when led against the dark tribesmen of the forest. On the march they could not be trusted thirty yards from the column without getting lost in the woods, - the mountain training of the highlanders apparently standing them in no stead whatever,-and were only able to get around at all when convoyed by backwoodsmen. In fight they fared even worse. The British regulars at Braddock's battle, and the highlanders at Grant's defeat a few years later, suffered the same fate. Both battles were fair fights, -neither was a surprise ; yet the stubborn valor of the red- coated grenadier and the headlong courage of the kilted Scot proved of less than no avail. Not only were they utterly routed and destroyed in each case by an inferior force of Indians (the French taking little part in the conflict), but they were able to make no effective resistance whatever; it is to this day doubtful whether these superb regulars were able, in the battles where they were destroyed, to so much as kill one Indian for every hundred of their own men who fell. The provincials who were with the regulars were the only troops who caused any loss to the foe ; and this was true in but a less degree of Bouquet's fight at Bushy Run. Here Bouquet, by a clever stratagem, gained the victory over an enemy inferior in numbers to himself; but only after a two-days' struggle in which he suffered a fourfold greater loss than he inflicted. When hemmed in so that they had no hope of escape, the Indians fought to the death : but when a way of retreat was open, they would not stand cutting like British , French, or American regulars ; and so, though with a nearly equal force, would retire if they were suffering heavily, even if they were causing their foes to suffer still more. This was not due to lack of courage, it was their system; for they were few in numbers, and they did not believe in losing their men. The Wyandots were exceptions to this rule, for with them it was a point of honor not to yield ; and so they were of all the tribes the most dangerous in an actual pitched battle. But making the attack, as they usually did, with the expectation of success, all were equally dangerous. If their foes were clustered together in a huddle, they attacked them without hesitation , no matter what the difference in numbers, - and shot them down as if they had been elk or buffalo ; they themselves THEODORE ROOSEVELT 12389 being almost absolutely safe from harm, as they flitted from cover to cover. It was this capacity for hiding, or taking advantage of cover, that gave them their great superiority; and it is because of this that the wood tribes were so much more formidable foes in actual battle than the horse Indians of the plains afterwards proved themselves. In dense woodland, a body of regular soldiers are almost as useless against Indians as they would be if at night they had to fight foes who could see in the dark : it needs special and long- continued training to fit them in any degree for wood- fighting against such foes. But on the plains, the white hunter's skill with the rifle and his cool resolution give him an immense advantage : a few determined men can withstand a host of Indians in the open, although helpless if they meet them in thick cover ; and our defeats by the Sioux and other plains tribes have generally taken the form of a small force being overwhelmed by a large one. Not only were the Indians very terrible in battle, but they were cruel beyond all belief in victory ; and the gloomy annals of border warfare are stained with their darkest hues, because it was a war in which helpless women and children suffered the same hideous fate that so often befell their husbands and fathers. It was a war waged by savages against armed settlers, whose families followed them into the wilderness. Such a war is inevitably bloody and cruel ; but the inhuman love of cruelty for cruelty's sake, which marks the red ' Indian above all other savages, rendered these wars more terrible than any others. For the hideous, unnamable, unthinkable tortures practiced by the red men on their captured foes, and on their foes' tender women and helpless children, were such as we read of in no other struggle ; hardly even in the revolting pages that tell the deeds of the Holy Inquisition . It was inevitable -indeed it was in many instances proper-that such deeds should awake in the breasts of the whites the grimmest, wildest spirit of revenge and hatred. The history of the border wars, both in the ways they were begun and in the ways they were waged, makes a long tale of injuries inflicted , suffered, and mercilessly revenged. It could not be otherwise when brutal, reckless, lawless borderers, despising all men not of their own color, were thrown in contact with savages who esteemed cruelty and treachery as the highest of virtues, and rapine and murder as the worthiest of pursuits. 12390 THEODORE ROOSEVELT Moreover, it was sadly inevitable that the law-abiding borderer as well as the white ruffian, the peaceful Indian as well as the painted marauder, should be plunged into the struggle to suffer the punishment that should only have fallen on their evil-minded fellows. BACKWOODSMEN AND OTHER EARLY TYPES From The Winning of the West.' Copyright 1889, by G. P. Putnam's Sons THE - HE first duty of the backwoodsmen who thus conquered the West was to institute civil government. Their efforts to overcome and beat back the Indians went hand in hand with their efforts to introduce law and order in the primitive communities they founded ; and exactly as they relied purely on themselves in withstanding outside foes, so they likewise built up their social life and their first systems of government with reference simply to their special needs, and without any outside help or direction . The whole character of the westward movement the methods of warfare, of settlement, and of government were determined by the extreme and defiant individualism of the backwoodsmen, their inborn independence and self- reliance, and their intensely democratic spirit. The West was won and settled by a number of groups of men, all acting independently of one another, but with a common object, and at about the same time. There was no one controlling spirit : it was essentially the movement of a whole free people, not of a single master-mind. There were strong and able leaders, who showed themselves fearless soldiers and just lawgivers, undaunted by danger, resolute to persevere in the teeth of disaster ; but even these leaders are most deeply interesting because they stand foremost among a host of others like them. There were hundreds of hunters and Indian-fighters like Mansker, Wetzel, Kenton, and Brady ; there were scores of commonwealth- founders like Logan, Todd, Floyd, and Harrod ; there were many adventurous land speculators like Henderson ; there were even plenty of commanders like Shelby and Campbell. These were all men of mark; some of them exercised a powerful and honorable influence on the course of events in the West. Above them rise four greater figures, fit to be called not merely State or local , but THEODORE ROOSEVELT 12391 national heroes . Clark, Sevier, Robertson, and Boon are emphatically American worthies. They were men of might in their day, born to sway the minds of others, helpful in shaping the destiny of the continent. Yet of Clark alone can it be said that he did a particular piece of work which without him would have remained undone. Sevier, Robertson, and Boon only hastened, and did more perfectly, a work which would have been done by others had they themselves fallen by the wayside. Important though they are for their own sakes, they are still more important as types of the men who surrounded them. The individualism of the backwoodsmen, however, was tempered by a sound common- sense , and capacity for combination. The first hunters might come alone or in couples ; but the actual colonization was done not by individuals, but by groups of individuals. The settlers brought their families and belongings either on pack- horses along the forest trails , or in scows down the streams; they settled in palisaded villages, and immediately took steps to provide both a civil and military organization. They were men of facts, not theories ; and they showed their usual hard common- sense in making a government. They did not try to invent a new system ; they simply took that under which they had grown up, and applied it to their altered conditions. They were most familiar with the government of the county ; and therefore they adopted this for the framework of their little independent, self-governing commonwealths of Watauga, Cumberland, and Transylvania. They were also familiar with the representative system ; and accordingly they introduced it into the new communities, the little forted villages serving as natural units of representation. They were already thoroughly democratic, in instinct and principle ; and as a matter of course they made the offices elective , and gave full play to the majority. In organizing the militia. they kept the old system of county lieutenants, making them elective, not appointive ; and they organized the men on the basis. of a regiment, -the companies representing territorial divisions, each commanded by its own officers, who were thus chosen by the fighting men of the fort or forts in their respective districts. Thus each of the backwoods commonwealths, during its shortlived term of absolute freedom, reproduced as its governmental system that of the old colonial county ; increasing the powers of 12392 THEODORE ROOSEVELT the court, and changing the justices into the elective representatives of an absolute democracy. The civil head, the chairman of the court or committee, was also usually the military head, -the colonel- commandant. In fact, the military side of the organization rapidly became the most conspicuous, and, at least in certain crises, the most important. There were also some years of desperate warfare, during which the entire strength of the little commonwealth was drawn on to resist outside aggression ; and during these years the chief function of the government was to provide for the griping military needs of the community, and the one pressing duty of its chief was to lead his followers with valor and wisdom in the struggle with the stranger. These little communities were extremely independent in feeling, not only of the Federal Government, but of their parent States, and even of one another. They had won their positions by their own courage and hardihood ; very few State troops and hardly a Continental soldier had appeared west of the Alleghanies. They had heartily sympathized with their several mother colonies when they became the United States, and had manfully played their part in the Revolutionary war. Moreover, they were united among themselves by ties of good- will and of services mutually rendered. Kentucky, for instance, had been succored more than once by troops raised among the Watauga Carolinians or the Holston Virginians, and in her turn she had sent needed supplies to the Cumberland. But when the strain of the war was over; the separatist spirit asserted itself very strongly. The groups of Western settlements not only looked on the Union itself very coldly, but they were also more or less actively hostile to their parent States, and regarded even one another as foreign communities ; they considered the Confederation as being literally only a lax league of friendship . Up to the close of the Revolutionary contest, the settlers who were building homes and States beyond the Alleghanies formed a homogeneous backwoods population. The wood- choppers, gamehunters, and Indian- fighters, who dressed and lived alike , were the typical pioneers. They were a shifting people. In every settlement the tide ebbed and flowed. Some of the new- comers would be beaten in the hard struggle for existence, and would drift back to whence they had come. Of those who succeeded, some would take root in the land, and others would move still THEODORE ROOSEVELT 12393 further into the wilderness. Thus each generation rolled westward, leaving its children at a point where the wave stopped no less than at that where it started . The descendants of the victors of King's Mountain are as likely to be found in the Rockies as in the Alleghanies. With the close of the war came an enormous increase in the tide of immigration ; and many of the new-comers were of a very different stamp from their predecessors. The main current flowed towards Kentucky, and gave an entirely different character to its population. The two typical figures in Kentucky so far had been Clark and Boon, but after the close of the Revolution both of them sank into unimportance ; whereas the careers of Sevier and Robertson had only begun. The disappearance of the two former from active life was partly accidental, and partly a resultant of the forces that assimilated Kentucky so much more rapidly than Tennessee to the conditions prevailing in the old States. Kentucky was the best known and most accessible of the Western regions; within her own borders she was now comparatively safe from serious Indian invasion, and the tide of immigration naturally followed thither. So strong was the current, that within a dozen years it had completely swamped the original settlers, and had changed Kentucky from a peculiar pioneer and backwoods commonwealth into a State differing no more from Virginia, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, than these differed from one another. The men who gave the tone to this great flood of new- comers were the gentry from the sea- coast country : the planters, the young lawyers, the men of means who had been impoverished by the long-continued and harassing civil war. Straitened in circumstances, desirous of winning back wealth and position, they cast longing eyes towards the beautiful and fertile country beyond the mountains ; deeming it a place that afforded unusual opportunities to the man with capital, no less than to him whose sole trust was in his own adventurous energy. Most of the gentlefolks in Virginia and the Carolinas, the men who lived in great roomy houses on their well- stocked and slave-tilled plantations, had been forced to struggle hard to keep their heads above water during the Revolution. They loyally supported the government with blood and money; and at the same time they endeavored to save some of their property from the general wreck, and to fittingly educate their girls, and those 12394 THEODORE ROOSEVELT of their boys who were too young to be in the army. The men of this stamp who now prepared to cast in their lot with the new communities formed an exceptionally valuable class of immigrants : they contributed the very qualities of which the raw settlements stood most in need. They had suffered for no fault of their own : fate had gone hard with them. The fathers had been in the Federal or Provincial Congresses ; the older sons had served in the Continental line or in the militia. The plantations were occasionally overrun by the enemy; and the general disorder had completed their ruin . Nevertheless the heads of the families had striven to send the younger sons to school or college. For their daughters they did even more ; .and throughout the contest, even in it darkest hours, they sent them down to receive the final touches of a lady-like education at some one of the State capitals not at the moment in the hands of the enemy -such as Charleston or Philadelphia. There the young ladies were taught dancing and music; for which, as well as for their frocks and " pink calamanco shoes, " their fathers paid enormous sums in depreciated Continental currency. Even the close of active hostilities, when the British were driven from the Southern States, brought at first but a slight betterment of condition to the struggling people. There was no cash in the land, the paper currency was nearly worthless, every one was heavily in debt, and no one was able to collect what was owing to him. There was much mob violence , and a general relaxation of the bonds of law and order. Even nature turned hostile : a terrible drought shrunk up all the streams until they could not turn the grist- mills, while from the same cause the crops failed almost completely. A hard winter followed, and many cattle and hogs died ; so that the well-to-do were brought to the verge of bankruptcy, and the poor suffered extreme priva. tions, being forced to go fifty or sixty miles to purchase small quantities of meal and grain at exorbitant prices. - This distress at home inclined many people of means and ambition to try their fortunes in the West ; while another and equally powerful motive was the desire to secure great tracts of virgin lands for possession or speculation . Many distinguished soldiers had been rewarded by successive warrants for unoccupied land, which they entered wherever they chose, until they could claim thousands upon thousands of acres. Sometimes they sold these warrants to outsiders ; but whether they remained in the THEODORE ROOSEVELT 12395 hands of the original holders or not, they served as a great stimulus to the westward movement, and drew many of the representatives of the wealthiest and most influential families in the parent States to the lands on the farther side of the mountains. At the close of the Revolution, however, the men from the sea- coast region formed but an insignificant portion of the Western. pioneers. The country beyond the Alleghanies was first won and settled by the backwoodsmen themselves, acting under their own. leaders, obeying their own desires, and following their own methods. They were marked and peculiar people. The good and evil traits in their character were such as naturally belonged to a strong, harsh, and homely race ; which, with all its shortcomings, was nevertheless bringing a tremendous work to a triumphant conclusion . The backwoodsmen were above all things characteristically American ; and it is fitting that the two greatest and most typical of all Americans should have been respectively a sharer and an outcome of their work. Washington himself passed the most important years of his youth heading the westward movement of his people ; clad in the traditional dress of the backwoodsmen, in tasseled hunting- shirt and fringed leggings, he led them to battle against the French and Indians, and helped to clear the way for the American advance. The only other man who in the American roll of honor stands by the side of Washington, was born when the distinctive work of the pioneers had ended : and yet he was bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh ; for from the loins of this gaunt frontier folk sprang mighty Abraham Lincoln. Looking back, it is easy to say that much of the wrong- doing could have been prevented ; but if we examine the facts to find out the truth , not to establish a theory, we are bound to admit that the struggle was really one that could not possibly have been avoided. The sentimental historians speak as if the blame had been all ours, and the wrong all done to our foes, and as if it would have been possible by any exercise of wisdom to reconcile claims that were in their very essence conflicting ; but their utterances are as shallow as they are untruthful. Unless we were willing that the whole continent west of the Alleghanies should remain an unpeopled waste, the hunting- ground of savages, war was inevitable ; and even had we been willing, and had we refrained from encroaching on the Indians' lands, the war would have come nevertheless, for then the Indians themselves would 12396 THEODORE ROOSEVELT have encroached on ours. Undoubtedly we have wronged many tribes ; but equally undoubtedly our first definite knowledge of many others has been derived from their unprovoked outrages upon our people. The Chippewas, Ottawas, and Pottawatamies furnished hundreds of young warriors to the parties that devastated our frontiers, generations before we in any way encroached upon or wronged them. Mere outrages could be atoned for or settled : the question which lay at the root of our difficulties was that of the occupation of the land itself; and to this there could be no solution save war. The Indians had no ownership of the land in the way in which we understand the term . The tribes lived far apart ; each had for its hunting-grounds all the territory from which it was not barred by rivals. Each looked with jealousy upon all interlopers, but each was prompt to act as an interloper when occasion offered. Every good hunting-ground was claimed by many nations. It was rare indeed that any tribe had an uncontested title to a large tract of land : where such title existed, it rested not on actual occupancy and cultivation, but on the recent butchery of weaker rivals. For instance, there were a dozen tribes, all of whom hunted in Kentucky, and fought each other there, all of whom had equally good titles to the soil, and not one of whom acknowledged the right of any other : as a matter of fact they had therein no right, save the right of the strongest. The land no more belonged to them than it belonged to Boon and the white hunters who first visited it. 12397 CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI (1830-1894) BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE NGLISH poetry enjoys a unique distinction in the possession of two women whose works must be ranked with all but the highest achievements of our song. It is neither misplaced sentiment nor mistaken chivalry, but the dispassionate verdict of a searching and objective criticism, that claims for Elizabeth Browning and Christina Rossetti two seats in the temple of fame not far below those in which the greatest English poets of the Victorian era are enthroned. It is idle to inquire from which of the two we have received the more enduring work ; but a brief comparison in general terms may be found instructive. Mrs. Browning has undoubtedly won a wider acceptance than Miss Rossetti, and enjoyed a greater popularity ; on the other hand, the acceptance won by the latter poet has probably included the more distinguished suffrages, while her popularity has of recent years grown apace, and may in time outstrip that of the older singer. Again, the matter of Mrs. Brown- CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI ing's work was to a considerable extent timely, which does not often mean of lasting interest ; the achievement of Italian unity has somewhat outworn the passion of ' Casa Guidi Windows, ' and the problems of ' Aurora Leigh ' are not exactly the problems of the present day. But time is not so likely to wither the flower of Miss Rossetti's work; for there is little of the temporal about its themes, which are as a rule the everlasting verities of the spirit . Finally, it must be allowed that Miss Rossetti was endowed with a more exquisite perception of poetical form than was attained to by Mrs. Browning, and that her work as a whole has a higher degree of purely artistic finish. The rich emotional nature of the former woman was too frequently content to rely upon the first impulsive form with which the thought became clothed in the white heat of her imagination ; in the case of the latter, with no less of 12398 CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI imaginative glow at heart, there were superadded the powers of intellectual control and artistic restraint. Christina Rossetti was born December 5th, 1830 ; the youngest of the remarkable group of four children that, with their parents, made up the London household of the exiled Italian patriot and philosopher, Gabriele Rossetti. She died December 29th, 1894, after an externally uneventful life of sixty-four years, -a life happy in its domestic relations, and in its intercourse with the circle of distinguished people that were gathered about the Rossettis ; but darkened by much physical suffering, and in its closing years by a painful and incurable disease. She was one of the most precocious of poets, and began at the early age of eleven to write verses, which have been carefully preserved, and which her brother, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, has thought it worth while to publish in the posthumous collection edited by him not quite two years after her death. A volume of her Verses ' was privately printed as early as 1847, and in 1850 she was a contributor to the Germ. Nearly all of her work that calls for serious consideration is included within the three volumes ( Goblin Market and Other Poems, 1862 ; The Prince's Progress and Other Poems, ' 1866 ; and 'A Pageant and Other Poems, 1881 ) published during her lifetime, and the posthumous volume of ' New Poems ' ( 1896) to which allusion has already been made. The titles of her other books, most of which are of a devotional nature and in prose, are as follows : ' Commonplace and Other Short Stories, ' ' Sing- Song : A Nursery RhymeBook, ' ' Speaking Likenesses, ' 'Annus Domini : A Prayer for Every Day in the Year, ' ' Seek and Find, ' Called to the Saints, ' ' Letter and Spirit, ' and Time Flies. These books would be noticeable enough if they stood alone ; but the thoughts and the moods which they embody find a far more intense and rapturous expression in the four volumes of poems upon which the author's reputation is so securely based. Very varied are the contents of these volumes, which range from a divine simplicity to a richness that is the very ecstasy of religious utterance ; from a cloying sweetness of diction to a noble austerity ; from a picturesque and almost dramatic style to one so chastened and so ethereal that the spirit soars with it to a higher than the earthly plane. Yet certain insistent characteristics may hardly be missed anywhere in Christina Rossetti's work : certain qualities of dreamy tenderness and ardent mysticism, a certain strain of pensive melancholy, based upon a recognition of the essential vanity of the external forms of human existence, and upon an unshaken faith in the reality of that " city of the soul " whereof poets and philosophers have in all ages dreamed. It is indeed as the poet of religious aspiration and spiritual vision that she is pre-eminent among English CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI 12399 singers. Compared with her work, the best of Newman and Keble seems forced and formal ; the inspiration of Herbert and Vaughan seems to flash out but fitfully when contrasted with the steady glow of hers. Such poems as ' Up-Hill, ' ' Amor Mundi, ' and ' Old and New Year Ditties ' must be ranked among the very noblest examples of the religious lyric to be found in English literature. And although these poems, together with their many fellow- songs, were inspired by the doctrines of the Anglican communion, of which the author was ever a devoted adherent, there is nothing narrow or dogmatic about them ; rather do they appeal to the general religious consciousness. that is shared by all fervid and lofty souls : while their stately harmonies of thought and of emotion move in a region in which all symbols are valued but as symbols, in which theology becomes but the handmaid of religion, and in which all technical differences of belief fade in the effulgence of the vision vouchsafed to the spirit. Etterlayou H HOPE IS LIKE A HAREBELL OPE is like a harebell, trembling from its birth ; Love is like a rose, the joy of all the earth. Faith is like a lily lifted high and white ; Love is like a lovely rose, the world's delight. Harebells and sweet lilies show a thornless growth, But the rose with all its thorns excels them both. DREAM- LAND From Poems. ' Macmillan & Co.: 1894 ´HERE sunless rivers weep WHTheir waves into the deep, She sleeps a charmèd sleep : Awake her not. Led by a single star, She came from very far To seek where shadows are Her pleasant lot. CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI 12400 She left the rosy morn, She left the fields of corn, For twilight cold and lorn And water springs. Through sleep, as through a veil, She sees the sky look pale, And hears the nightingale That sadly sings. Rest, rest, a perfect rest Shed over brow and breast ; Her face is toward the west, The purple land. She cannot see the grain Ripening on hill and plain ; She cannot feel the rain Upon her hand. Rest, rest, forevermore Upon a mossy shore ; Rest, rest at the heart's core Till time shall cease : Sleep that no pain shall wake, Night that no morn shall break, Till joy shall overtake Her perfect peace. A BIRTHDAY From Poems. ' Macmillan & Co.: 1894 M Y HEART is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a watered shoot ; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit ; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these Because my love is come to me. Raise me a dais of silk and down; Hang it with vair and purple dyes ; Carve it in doves and pomegranates, And peacocks with a hundred eyes ; CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI 12401 Work it in gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys : Because the birthday of my life Is come, my love is come to me. R REMEMBER From ' Poems.' Macmillan & Co.: 1894 EMEMBER me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land; When you can no more hold me by the hand, Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay. Remember me when no more, day by day, You tell me of our future that you planned ; Only remember me : you understand It will be late to counsel then, or pray. Yet if you should forget me for a while And afterwards remember, do not grieve ; For if the darkness and corruption leave A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad. AFTER DEATH From Poems. ' Macmillan & Co.: 1894 HE curtains were half drawn, the floor was swept THEAnd strewn with rushes ; rosemary and may Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay, Where through the lattice ivy shadows crept. He leaned above me, thinking that I slept And could not hear him ; but I heard him say, " Poor child, poor child ! " and as he turned away Came a deep silence, and I knew he wept. He did not touch the shroud, or raise the fold That hid my face, or take my hand in his, Or ruffle the smooth pillows for my head. He did not love me living : but once dead He pitied me; and very sweet it is To know he still is warm, though I am cold. XXI-776 12402 CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI C ECHO From Poems. ' Macmillan & Co.: 1894 COME to me in the silence of the night; Come in the speaking silence of a dream ; Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright As sunlight on a stream ; Come back in tears, O memory, hope, love, of finished years. O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise, Where souls brimful of love abide and meet; Where thirsting longing eyes Watch the slow door That opening, letting in, lets out no more. Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live My very life again though cold in death ; Come back to me in dreams, that I may give Pulse for pulse, breath for breath : Speak low, lean low, As long ago, my love, how long ago! SONG From ' Poems. ' Macmillan & Co.: 1894 HEN I am dead, my dearest, WHENSing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress-tree : Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet ; And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget. I shall not see the shadows, I shall not feel the rain ; I shall not hear the nightingale Sing on, as if in pain ; And dreaming through the twilight That doth not rise or set, Haply I may remember, And haply may forget. CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI 12403 O REST From Poems. Macmillan & Co.: 1894 EARTH, lie heavily upon her eyes ; Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth ; Lie close around her ; leave no room for mirth With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs. She hath no questions, she hath no replies, Hushed in and curtained with a blessed dearth Of all that irked her from the hour of birth ; With stillness that is almost Paradise. Darkness more clear than noonday holdeth her ; Silence more musical than any song ; Even her very heart has ceased to stir : Until the morning of Eternity Her rest shall not begin nor end, but be; And when she wakes she will not think it long. UP-HILL From Poems.' Macmillan & Co.: 1894 OES the road wind up-hill all the way ? — DOES Yes, to the very end. Will the day's journey take the whole long day ? — From morn to night, my friend. But is there for the night a resting-place ?- A roof for when the slow dark hours begin. May not the darkness hide it from my face ? — You cannot miss that inn. Shall I meet other wayfarers at night ? - Those who have gone before. Then must I knock, or call, when just in sight ? — They will not keep you standing at that door. Shall I find comfort, travel- sore and weak ?. Of labor you shall find the sum. Will there be beds for me and all who seek ? — Yea, beds for all who come. 12404 CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI THE THREE ENEMIES From Poems. ' Macmillan & Co.: 1894 THE FLESH WEET, thou art pale. " " SWEET, " More pale to see, Christ hung upon the cruel tree And bore his Father's wrath for me. " " Sweet, thou art sad. " " Beneath a rod More heavy, Christ for my sake trod The wine- press of the wrath of God. " " Sweet, thou art weary. " " Not so Christ ; Whose mighty love of me sufficed For Strength, Salvation, Eucharist. " " Sweet, thou art footsore. " " If I bleed, His feet have bled ; yea, in my need His heart once bled for mine indeed. " THE WORLD « SWEET, thou art young. ” " So He was young Who for my sake in silence hung Upon the Cross with Passion wrung. " " Look, thou art fair. " " He was more fair Than men, who deigned for me to wear A visage marred beyond compare. " " And thou hast riches. " "Daily bread : All else is His who living, dead, For me lacked where to lay his head. " " And life is sweet. " " It was not so To Him whose cup did overflow With mine unutterable woe. " CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI 12405 THE DEVIL « THOU drinkest deep. " << When Christ would sup, He drained the dregs from out my cup : So how should I be lifted up ? ” " Thou shalt win glory. " " In the skies, Lord Jesus, cover up mine eyes, Lest they should look on vanities. " " Thou shalt have knowledge. " " Helpless dust, In thee, O Lord, I put my trust: Answer thou for me, Wise and Just. " " And might. " "Get thee behind me. Lord, Who hast redeemed and not abhorred My soul, O keep it by thy Word. " OLD AND NEW YEAR DITTIES From Poems. ' Roberts Bros.: 1866 NEW I EW YEAR met me somewhat sad : Old Year leaves me tired, Stripped of favorite things I had, Balked of much desired ; Yet farther on my road to-day, - God willing, farther on my way. New Year, coming on apace, What have you to give me? Bring you scathe, or bring you grace, Face me with an honest face ; You shall not deceive me: Be it good or ill, be it what you will, It needs shall help me on my road, My rugged way to heaven, please God. 12406 CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI II WATCH with me, men, women, and children dear, You whom I love, for whom I hope and fear, Watch with me this last vigil of the year. Some hug their business, some their pleasure-scheme; Some seize the vacant hour to sleep or dream ; Heart locked in heart some kneel and watch apart. Watch with me, blessed spirits, who delight All through the holy night to walk in white, Or take your ease after the long-drawn fight. I know not if they watch with me; I know They count this eve of resurrection slow, And cry, " How long ?" with urgent utterance strong. Watch with me, Jesus, in my loneliness : Though others say me nay, yet say thou yes ; Though others pass me by, stop thou to bless. Yea, thou dost stop with me this vigil-night ; To-night of pain, to-morrow of delight : I, Love, am thine ; thou, Lord my God, art mine. III PASSING away, saith the world, passing away : Chances, beauty, and youth sapped day by day; Thy life never continueth in one stay. Is the eye waxen dim, is the dark hair changing to gray That hath won neither laurel nor bay? I shall clothe myself in spring and bud in May: Thou, root-stricken, shalt not rebuild thy decay On my bosom for aye. Then I answered, Yea. Passing away, saith my soul, passing away ; With its burden of fear and hope, of labor and play. Hearken what the past doth witness and say : - Rust in thy gold, a moth is in thine array, A canker is in thy bud, thy leaf must decay. At midnight, at cock-crow, at morning one certain day Lo, the Bridegroom shall come and shall not delay : Watch thou and pray. Then I answered, Yea. CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI 12407 Passing away, saith my God, passing away : Winter passeth after long delay ; New grapes on the vine, new figs on the tender spray, Turtle calleth turtle in heaven's May. Though I tarry, wait for me, trust me, watch and pray. Arise, come away ; night is past, and lo, it is day, My love, my sister, my spouse, thou shalt hear me say. Then I answered , Yea. " O AMOR MUNDI From Poems. ' Macmillan & Co.: 1894 H, WHERE are you going with your love-locks flowing On the west wind blowing along this valley track ? » . " The down-hill path is easy ; come with me an it please ye : We shall escape the up-hill by never turning back. " So they two went together in glowing August weather : The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right ; And dear she was to doat on, her swift feet seemed to float on The air like soft twin pigeons too sportive to alight. " Oh, what is that in heaven where gray cloud-flakes are seven, Where blackest clouds hang riven just at the rainy skirt ? » " Oh, that's a meteor sent us, a message dumb, portentous, An undeciphered solemn signal of help or hurt. " " Oh, what is that glides quickly where velvet flowers grow thickly, Their scent comes rich and sickly ? " - "A scaled and hooded worm . " - " Oh, what's that in the hollow, so pale I quake to follow ? » - " Oh, that's a thin dead body which waits the eternal term. " " Turn again, O my sweetest, —turn again, false and fleetest : This beaten way thou beatest I fear is hell's own track. ” — " Nay, too steep for hill mounting; nay, too late for cost counting : This downward path is easy, but there's no turning back. " 12408 CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI LIFE HIDDEN From New Poems. Copyright 1896, by Macmillan & Co. OSES and lilies grow above the place RⓇ Where she sleeps the long sleep that doth not dream . If we could look upon her hidden face, Nor shadow would be there, nor garish gleam Of light ; her life is lapsing like a stream That makes no noise, but floweth on apace Seawards, while many a shade and shady beam Vary the ripples in their gliding chase. She doth not see, but knows ; she doth not feel, And yet is sensible ; she hears no sound, Yet counts the flight of time and doth not err. Peace far and near, peace to ourselves and her : Her body is at peace in holy ground, Her spirit is at peace where angels kneel. WHITSUN EVE From ' New Poems. ' Copyright 1896, by Macmillan & Co, TH HE white dove cooeth in her downy nest, Keeping her young ones warm beneath her breast ; The white moon saileth through the cool clear sky, Screened by a tender mist in passing by; The white rose buds, with thorns upon its stem, All the more precious and more dear for them ; The stream shines silver in the tufted grass, The white clouds scarcely dim it as they pass ; Deep in the valleys lily-cups are white, They send up incense all the holy night. Our souls are white, made clean in Blood once shed ; White blessed angels watch around our bed : O spotless Lamb of God, still keep us so, Thou who wert born for us in time of snow. CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI 12409 HEAVEN OVERARCHES From New Poems. Copyright 1896, by Macmillan & Co. Η EAVEN Overarches earth and sea, Earth-sadness and sea-bitterness. Heaven overarches you and me : A little while and we shall bePlease God - where there is no more sea Nor barren wilderness. Heaven overarches you and me, And all earth's gardens and her graves. Look up with me, until we see The day break and the shadows flee. What though to-night wrecks you and me If so to-morrow saves ? THE HEART KNOWETH ITS OWN BITTERNESS From New Poems. Copyright 1896, by Macmillan & Co. HEN all the over-work of life WHENIs finished once, and fast asleep We swerve no more beneath the knife, But taste the silence cool and deep : Forgetful of the highways rough, Forgetful of the thorny scourge, Forgetful of the tossing surge, Then shall we find it is enough ? How can we say " enough " on earth- " Enough " with such a craving heart ? I have not found it since my birth, But still have bartered part for part. I have not held and hugged the whole, But paid the old to gain the new: Much have I paid, yet much is due, Till I am beggared sense and soul. I used to labor, used to strive For pleasure with a restless will : Now if I save my soul alive, All else what matters, good or ill ? CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI 12410 I used to dream alone, to plan Unspoken hopes and days to come: Of all my past this is the sum, - I will not lean on child of man. To give, to give, not to receive ! I long to pour myself, my soul, Not to keep back or count or leave, But king with king to give the whole. I long for one to stir my deep, - I have had enough of help and gift; I long for one to search and sift Myself, to take myself, and keep. You scratch my surface with your pin, You stroke me smooth with hushing breath : Nay, pierce, nay, probe, nay, dig within, - Probe my quick core and sound my depth. You call me with a puny call , You talk, you smile, you nothing do : How should I spend my heart on you, My heart that so outweighs you all ? Your vessels are by much too strait : Were I to pour you, you could not hold. Bear with me: I must bear to wait, A fountain sealed through heat and cold. Bear with me days or months or years : Deep must call deep until the end, When friend shall no more envy friend Nor vex his friend at unawares. Not in this world of hope deferred, This world of perishable stuff ; Eye hath not seen nor ear hath heard Nor heart conceived that full " enough " : Here moans the separating sea; Here harvests fail ; here breaks the heart : There God shall join and no man part, I full of Christ and Christ of me. f 2000 000000000000000000000 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 10100 00000

12411 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI ( 1828-1882) BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE N THE tender ' One Word More ' with which Browning dedicated to his wife the " fifty poems finished " of " Men and Women,' the poet speaks of the lost " century of sonnets » said to have been written by Raphael, and of the painting affirmed by tradition to have been begun by Dante. Since the days of Dante and Raphael, other poets have been painters, and other painters poets ; but probably no one has attained to the high and equal mastery of both arts that we find exemplified in the work of Rossetti. In such a case, it was only natural that each art should react upon the other : that the paintings should be peculiarly poetical in conception and execution ; that the poems should have much of the pictorial quality, however abstract their themes and however idealized their motives. Although the present article can say nothing of Rossetti the painter, the fact that the poet was also a painter of the highest achievement must constantly be kept in view; for it helps to account for many things in the poems, -from the statement that the hair of the Blessèd Damozel " was yellow like ripe corn, " to " the flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame, " that symbolizes the changing moods of the soul stirred to its depths by the magic of the musician. Yet it must not be inferred from all this that the artist (two-souled, as Michelangelo was four-souled) either unconsciously or deliberately confused the distinct aims of poetry and painting, or that his work in either art transcends, to any considerable degree, the limitations laid down by Lessing's searching criticism in the ' Laocoön. ' If we examine the cases in which Rossetti brought the two arts into the closest juxtaposition, as in the sonnets which he wrote for certain of his own pictures, we shall find that while the poems comment upon the paintings, the descriptive element is far less important than the elements of retrospection, anticipation, and gnomic philosophical utterance. Rossetti takes his place in English literature as one of the six major poets of the later Victorian era, and as the oldest of the subgroup of three associated with the artistic revival vaguely known as Pre-Raphaelitism. Although several years the senior of Morris and Swinburne, the public knew little of him as a poet for some years 12412 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI after their reputations had been fairly well established . Yet much of his most characteristic work had been done long before Morris published his first volume, or Swinburne made the earliest displays of his astonishing virtuosity ; and both of these men in some sense regarded Rossetti as their master. But his contributions to the Germ ( 1850) and the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine ( 1856) did not reach the larger public ; and it was not until the ' Poems ' appeared in 1870 that the world discovered how bright a planet had swum into its ken. Meanwhile the small group of Rossetti's friends had long cherished his work, and manuscript copies of many of his pieces had circulated from hand to hand. In fact, when the time of publication approached, it may be said that rumor had so heralded the advent of the new poet that when the volume of 1870 appeared, it was, as Mr. Gosse remarks, " after such expectation and tiptoe curiosity as have preceded no other book in our generation. " The story of that volume is one of the most familiar bits of literary history : buried in the grave of a beloved wife , who died after but two years of wedded happiness, it was only upon the earnest solicitation of his friends that Rossetti permitted the manuscript to be unearthed, seven years later, and made arrangements for its publication. When this volume appeared, the poet was just completing his forty-second year. Born in London, May 12th, 1828, he was named Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, which appellation was in early manhood modified into the form that became generally familiar. The means of his family were scanty ; and at the age of fifteen he left school and began the study of painting. In 1848 he united with two of his fellow-students in art -Millais and Holman Hunt —and with the sculptor-poet Woolner, to form the famous Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. In 1860, after a long engagement, he married Elizabeth Siddal, who died less than two years thereafter. His reputation as a painter was by this time firmly established ; but his literary work, mostly contributed to the periodicals above mentioned, was known. to but few readers. In 1861 he published the marvelous volume of translations at first entitled ' The Early Italian Poets, ' and afterwards republished as ' Dante and his Circle. ' This is one of the few works of translation into English that are almost beyond praise. It includes, besides the ' New Life ' of Dante, a selection of poems by about a dozen of Dante's contemporaries, -chief among them being Guido Cavalcanti, -and by a still greater number of the twelfth and thirteenth century poets who came before Dante. The path of the translator, we read in Rossetti's preface, " is like that of Aladdin through the enchanted vaults : many are the precious fruits and flowers which he must pass by unheeded in search for the lamp alone ; happy if at last, when brought to light, it does not prove that his old lamp has been exchanged for a new one -glittering indeed to DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 12413 the eye, but scarcely of the same virtue nor with the same genius at its summons. " Precious indeed are these translations of old Italian poetry, for they interpret with perfect insight and sympathy an important literary epoch ; and precious also are Rossetti's infrequent later experiments in translation, which include the Francesca episode of the ' Inferno ' and some of the ballads of Villon. His version of the ' Ballade des Dames de Temps Jadis ' (Ballad of the Ladies of Bygone Times) has received such praise from men like Pater and Swinburne, that ordinary words seem inadequate to convey the sense of its matchless charm. The ' Poems ' of 1870 found, as has already been stated, an audience half prepared to receive them ; and a chorus of critical enthusiasm greeted their appearance . With the exception of Swinburne's ' Poems and Ballads, ' it may be said that no other volume of English poetry published during the last half-century has created so great a sensation, or been received with so much acclaim. But while all serious critics were agreed in recognizing the advent of a new great poet, the emergence of a new and distinctly individual note in the chorus of English song, -the dovecotes of literature were not a little fluttered by the swoop of one bird of prey. A little more than a year after the publication of the Poems, ' an unimportant scribbler, whose name does not deserve to be dignified by mention, obtained access to the pages of a leading review, and published over a pseudonymous signature an article entitled ' The Fleshly School of Poetry. ' This article was a direct attack upon Rossetti's poems, and fairly reeked with what Swinburne calls a " rancid morality. " Utterly unfair in its methods and unjust in its conclusions, this article seized upon certain of the more sensuous passages in the ' Poems, ' and strove to create the impression that they were merely sensual, -a very different thing. The injustice of this attack was afterwards acknowledged by its author, and the incident would hardly call for notice were it not for the effect produced upon Rossetti's morbidly sensitive nature. He was already suffering from the insomnia that was to wreck his life a few years later, besides being threatened with the loss of his eyesight ; and it is not surprising that under these circumstances he magnified the significance of the contemptible attack. He fell " into the belief that he was fast becoming the object of wide- spread calumny and obloquy, not less malignant and insidious than unprovoked and undeserved, " so his brother tells us. An alarming illness followed ; and when he recovered from it, so far as he did recover, he was a changed man. The exuberant vitality of his earlier years, and the unaffected geniality which had made him so companionable, gave place to moodiness, depression , and a gloomy irritability, that estranged many of his friends, and almost made him a recluse for the last ten years of his life. - 12414 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI A few words about these last years may properly precede the discussion of Rossetti's poetical achievement. He worked diligently at his painting, and made some additions to his poems during this period ; and his life was not without intervals of its old-time serenity. But the excessive use of chloral as a remedy for sleeplessness was steadily sapping his energies ; and he was becoming more and more of a physical wreck. For a time he lived almost wholly with William Morris at Kelmscot ; but from 1874 on, his home was the house in Chelsea which he had occupied at intervals ever since the death of his wife. In 1881 he issued a new edition of his ' Poems ' ; and also the volume of ' Ballads and Sonnets, ' which included the now completed ' House of Life ' and a number of long poems hitherto unpublished. In December of this year he suffered a paralytic shock, and was removed to Birchington, where he died on the 9th of April, 1882, and where his remains were interred. The entire works of Rossetti, in prose and verse, original and translated, fill two stout volumes in the standard edition. A single volume of no inordinate bulk suffices to contain all the poems. Thus we see that of the six great poets of his age, Rossetti was one of the least voluminous. The bulk of his work is about equal to that of Matthew Arnold, but is much less than that of Tennyson ; and falls far short of the opulence of Browning, Morris, and Swinburne . Although its composition covered a period of more than thirty years, little is to be gained from a study of its chronological sequence ; for the wings of the poet were full- fledged almost from the start, and it would be difficult to show anything like the steady development of power that may be traced in the activity of many of his contemporaries. If The Blessed Damozel' (written at eighteen) bears the marks of immaturity upon its magical beauty, The Burden of Nineveh (written only three or four years later) is the work of a strong man of fully ripened powers. What we have to say of the poems, then, need take no account of their dates ; and we are left free to group them according to subject-matter and form . First of all, we may mention the long narrative poems and ballads : the chronicle history of ' Dante at Verona, ' which is the noblest of the several tributes of Rossetti's genius to what was probably the deepest artistic influence of his life ; the intensely dramatic ' A Last Confession, ' which rivals the strongest of Browning's dramatic idyls ; the story of Jenny, ' with its frank but delicate treatment of one of the most difficult of subjects ; the unfinished poem called ' The Bride's Prelude ' ; and the four great ballads ( Sister Helen, ' ' Rose Mary, ' 'The White Ship, ' and ' The King's Tragedy. ' Then, following the classification of Mr. W. M. Rossetti, we come to the great sonnetsequence named ' The House of Life ' ; a brimming century of poems, which embody in splendid imagery and harmonious measure the DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 12415 experiences that youth and change and fate bring to the life of man. These sonnets alone would suffice to insure the immortality of the poet ; for they must be ranked no lower than with the greatest in the language, -with those of Shakespeare and of Milton, of Wordsworth and of Keats. Finally, in the miscellaneous section of the poems we find many more sonnets of equal beauty and power, including the important group of ' Sonnets for Pictures ' ; such ballads as Troy Town ' and ' Eden Bower ' ; such matchless lyrics as ' The Sea Limits, ' ' The Cloud Confines, ' and ' The Song of the Bower ' ; and so impressive and solemn an utterance as ' The Burden of Nineveh. ' Here are many different forms and styles, in some cases represented by but a single example : it seems as if Rossetti, whose distinctive forms of expression were the ballad, the lyric, and the sonnet, had made such single ventures in other manners as ' Jenny, ' 'A Last Confession, ' and ' The Burden of Nineveh, ' merely to show that he could do these things if he chose, and do them supremely well. To sum up the characteristics of the poet in a few concluding words, it may be said that he possessed in an extraordinary degree .both richness of imagination, and the power to pack a world of meaning into one pregnant and melodious phrase. But both his pictorial faculty and his intellectual force were tempered by a strain of mysticism, for which he has been charged with obscurity by hardheaded and dull-witted readers. He was at once the most spiritual and the most material of poets ; and the accusation of sensuality from which he was made to suffer could only result from inability to see more than one side of the Druid shield of his poetical personality. Mr. Pater, who saw both sides of the shield, compared him with the Florentine whose name he bore ; and his words may be borrowed to crown with a touch of grace this brief study of Rossetti's work. " Practically, the Church of the Middle Age, by its æsthetic worship, its sacramentalism, its real faith in the resurrection of the flesh, had set itself against the Manichean opposition of spirit and matter, and its results in men's ways of taking life ; and in this, Dante is the central representative of its spirit. To him, in the vehement and impassioned heat of his conceptions, the material and the spiritual are fused and blent : if the spiritual attains the definite visibility of a crystal, what is material loses its earthiness and impurity. And here again, by force of instinct, Rossetti is one with him. His chosen type of beauty is one- " Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought, Nor Love her body from her soul. >>> Ettlayou 12416 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI THE BLESSED DAMOZEL HE blessed damozel leaned out THEFrom the gold bar of Heaven : Her eyes were deeper than the depth Of waters stilled at even ; She had three lilies in her hand, And the stars in her hair were seven. Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem, No wrought flowers did adorn, But a white rose of Mary's gift, For service meetly worn ; Her hair that lay along her back Was yellow like ripe corn. Herseemed she scarce had been a day One of God's choristers ; The wonder was not yet quite gone From that still look of hers : Albeit, to them she left, her day Had counted as ten years. (To one, it is ten years of years.- Yet now, and in this place, Surely she leaned o'er me -her hair Fell all about my face.- Nothing : the autumn fall of leaves. The whole year sets apace. ) It was the rampart of God's house That she was standing on : By God built over the sheer depth The which is Space begun; So high, that looking downward thence She scarce could see the sun. It lies in Heaven, across the flood Of ether, as a bridge. Beneath, the tides of day and night With flame and darkness ridge The void, as low as where this earth Spins like a fretful midge. Around her, lovers, newly met 'Mid deathless love's acclaims, 1874 BLESSED DAMOZEL From a Painting by D. G. Rossetti " DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI XXI-777 Spoke evermore among themselves Their heart- remembered names; And the souls mounting up to God Went by her like thin flames. And still she bowed herself and stooped Out of the circling charm ; Until her bosom must have made The bar she leaned on warm, And the lilies lay as if asleep Along her bended arm. From the fixed place of Heaven she saw Time like a pulse shake fierce Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove Within the gulf to pierce Its path ; and now she spoke as when The stars sang in their spheres. The sun was gone now; the curled moon Was like a little feather Fluttering far down the gulf ; and now She spoke through the still weather. Her voice was like the voice the stars Had when they sang together. (Ah sweet ! Even now, in that bird's song, Strove not her accents there, Fain to be hearkened ? When those bells Possessed the midday air, Strove not her steps to reach my side Down all the echoing stair ?) " I wish that he were come to me, For he will come, " she said. " Have I not prayed in Heaven ? -on earth, Lord, Lord, has he not prayed ? Are not two prayers a perfect strength ? And shall I feel afraid ? " When round his head the aureole clings, And he is clothed in white, I'll take his hand and go with him To the deep wells of light ; As unto a stream we will step down, And bathe there in God's sight. 12417 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI "We two will stand beside that shrine, Occult, withheld, untrod, Whose lamps are stirred continually With prayer sent up to God; And see our old prayers, granted, melt Each like a little cloud. "We two will lie i' the shadow of That living mystic tree Within whose secret growth the Dove Is sometimes felt to be, While every leaf that his plumes touch Saith his name audibly. "And I myself will teach to him, I myself, lying so, The songs I sing here ; which his voice Shall pause in, hushed and slow, And find some knowledge at each pause, Or some new thing to know. " (Alas ! We two, we two, thou say'st ! Yea, one wast thou with me That once of old. But shall God lift To endless unity The soul whose likeness with thy soul Was but its love for thee ?) " We two, " she said, " will seek the groves Where the lady Mary is, With her five handmaidens, whose names Are five sweet symphonies, - Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen, Margaret, and Rosalys. " Circlewise sit they, with bound locks And foreheads garlanded ; Into the fine cloth white like flame Weaving the golden thread, To fashion the birth-robes for them Who are just born, being dead. " He shall fear, haply, and be dumb;, Then will I lay my cheek To his, and tell about our love, Not once abashed or weak: DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 12419 And the dear Mother will approve My pride, and let me speak. " Herself shall bring us, hand in hand, To Him round whom all souls Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads Bowed with their aureoles : And angels meeting us shall sing To their citherns and citoles. "There will I ask of Christ the Lord Thus much for him and me: Only to live as once on earth With Love, -only to be, As then awhile, for ever now Together, I and he. ” She gazed and listened, and then said, Less sad of speech than mild, "All this is when he comes. " She ceased. The light thrilled towards her, filled With angels in strong level flight. Her eyes prayed, and she smiled. (I saw her smile. ) 'But soon their path Was vague in distant spheres ; And then she cast her arms along The golden barriers, And laid her face between her hands, And wept. (I heard her tears. ) THE DOUBLE BETRAYAL From Rose Mary' HE signed all folk from the threshold stone, SHEAnd gazed in the dead man's face alone. The fight for life found record yet In the clenchèd lips and the teeth hard- set ; The wrath from the bent brow was not gone, And stark in the eyes the hate still shone Of that they last had looked upon. The blazoned coat was rent on his breast Where the golden field was goodliest ; DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 12420 But the shivered sword, close-gripped, could tell That the blood shed round him where he fell Was not all his in the distant dell. The lady recked of the corpse no whit, But saw the soul and spoke to it : A light there was in her steadfast eyes, — The fire of mortal tears and sighs That pity and love immortalize. " By thy death have I learnt to-day Thy deed, O James of Heronhaye ! Great wrong thou hast done to me and mine ; And haply God hath wrought for a sign By our blind deed this doom of thine. « Thy shrift, alas ! thou wast not to win ; But may death shrive thy soul herein! Full well do I know thy love should be Even yet - had life but stayed with theeOur honor's strong security. " She stooped, and said with a.sob's low stir, " Peace be thine -but what peace for her ? " But ere to the brow her lips were pressed, She marked, half hid in the riven vest, A packet close to the dead man's breast. 'Neath surcoat pierced and broken mail It lay on the blood-stained bosom pale. The clot clung round it , dull and dense, And a faintness seized her mortal sense As she reached her hand and drew it thence. 'Twas steeped in the heart's flood welling high From the heart it there had rested by; 'Twas glued to a broidered fragment gay, - A shred by spear thrust rent away From the heron wings of Heronhaye. She gazed on the thing with piteous eyne : "Alas, poor child, some pledge of thine ! Ah me! in this troth the hearts were twain, And one hath ebbed to this crimson stain, And when shall the other throb again ? " She opened the packet heedfully; The blood was stiff, and it scarce might be. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI She found but a folded paper there, And round it, twined with tenderest care, A long bright tress of golden hair. Even as she looked, she saw again That dark-haired face in its swoon of pain : It seemed a snake with a golden sheath Crept near, as a slow flame flickereth, And stung her daughter's heart to death. She loosed the tress, but her hand did shake As though indeed she had touched a snake ; And next she undid the paper's fold, But that too trembled in her hold, And the sense scarce grasped the tale it told. " My heart's sweet lord " ('twas thus she read) , "At length our love is garlanded. At Holy Cross, within eight days' space, I seek my shrift ; and the time and place Shall fit thee too for thy soul's good grace. " From Holycleugh on the seventh day My brother rides, and bides away ; And long or e'er he is back, mine own, Afar where the face of fear's unknown We shall be safe with our love alone. " Ere yet at the shrine my knees I bow, I shear one tress for our holy vow. As round these words these threads I wind, So, eight days hence, shall our loves be twined, Says my lord's poor lady, JOCELIND. " She read it twice, with a brain in thrall, And then its echo told her all. O'er brows low-fallen her hands she drew : - " O God! " she said, as her hands fell too , - " The Warden's sister of Holycleugh ! " She rose upright with a long low moan, And stared in the dead man's face new-known. Had it lived indeed ? She scarce could tell : 'Twas a cloud where fiends had come to dwell, - A mask that hung on the gate of hell. She lifted the lock of gleaming hair, And smote the lips and left it there. 12421 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 12422 " Here's gold that Hell shall take for thy toll! Full well hath thy treason found its goal, O thou dead body and damnèd soul ! ” She turned, sore dazed, for a voice was near, And she knew that some one called to her. On many a column fair and tall A high court ran round the castle hall ; And thence it was that the priest did call. " I sought your child where you bade me go, And in rooms around and in rooms below; But where, alas ! may the maiden be ? - Fear naught, we shall find her speedily, - But come, come hither, and seek with me. " She reached the stair like a lifelorn thing, But hastened upward murmuring :- " Yea, Death's is a face that's fell to see ; But bitterer pang Life hoards for thee, Thou broken heart of Rose Mary! " A THE SECOND-SIGHT From The King's Tragedy' GAINST the coming of Christmastide That year the King bade call I' the Black Friars' Charterhouse of Perth A solemn festival. And we of his household rode with him In a close-ranked company ; But not till the sun had sunk from his throne Did we reach the Scotish Sea. That eve was clenched for a boding storm , 'Neath a toilsome moon half seen : The cloud stooped low and the surf rose high; And where there was a line of the sky, Wild wings loomed dark between. And on a rock of the black beach-side, By the veiled moon dimly lit, There was something seemed to heave with life As the King drew nigh to it. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 12423 And was it only the tossing furze Or brake of the waste sea-wold ? Or was it an eagle bent to the blast ? When near we came, we knew it at last For a woman tattered and old. But it seemed as though by a fire within Her writhen limbs were wrung ; And as soon as the King was close to her She stood up gaunt and strong. 'Twas then the moon sailed clear of the rack, On high in her hollow dome; And still as aloft with hoary crest Each clamorous wave rang home, Like fire in snow the moonlight blazed Amid the champing foam. And the woman held his eyes with her eyes : - " O King, thou art come at last ; But thy wraith has haunted the Scotish Sea To my sight for four years past. " Four years it is since first I met, 'Twixt the Duchray and the Dhu, A shape whose feet clung close in a shroud, And that shape for thine I knew. "A year again, and on Inchkeith Isle I saw thee pass in the breeze, With the cerecloth risen above thy feet And wound about thy knees. "And yet a year, in the Links of Forth, As a wanderer without rest, Thou cam'st with both thine arms i' the shroud That clung high up thy breast. "And in this hour I find thee here, And well mine eyes may note That the winding-sheet hath passed thy breast. And risen around thy throat. "And when I meet thee again, O King, That of death hast such sore drouth, — Except thou turn again on this shore, The winding-sheet will have moved once more And covered thine eyes and mouth. 12424 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI " O King whom poor men bless for their king, Of thy fate be not so fain ; But these my words for God's message take, And turn thy steed, O King, for her sake Who rides beside thy rein ! " While the woman spoke, the King's horse reared As if it would breast the sea, And the Queen turned pale as she heard on the gale The voice die dolorously. When the woman ceased, the steed was still, But the King gazed on her yet ; And in silence save for the wail of the sea His eyes and her eyes met. At last he said : -" God's ways are his own; Man is but shadow and dust. Last night I prayed by his altar-stone ; To-night I wend to the Feast of his Son : And in him I set my trust. " I have held my people in sacred charge, And have not feared the sting Of proud men's hate, -to His will resigned Who has but one same death for a hind And one same death for a king. "And if God in his wisdom have brought close The day when I must die, That day by water or fire or air My feet shall fall in the destined snare Wherever my road may lie. "What man can say but the Fiend hath set Thy sorcery on my path, My heart with the fear of death to fill , And turn me against God's very will To sink in his burning wrath ? " The woman stood as the train rode past, And moved nor limb nor eye ; And when we were shipped, we saw her there Still standing against the sky. As the ship made way, the moon once more Sank low in her rising pall ; And I thought of the shrouded wraith of the King, And I said, " The Heavens know all. " DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 12425 THE CARD-DEALER OULD you not drink her gaze like wine ? Cou Yet though its splendor swoon Into the silence languidly As a tune into a tune, Those eyes unravel the coiled nigh, And know the stars at noon. A The gold that's heaped beside her hand, In truth rich prize it were ; And rich the dreams that wreathe her brows With magic stillness there ; And he were rich who should unwind That woven golden hair. Around her, where she sits, the dance Now breathes its eager heat ; And not more lightly or more true Fall there the dancers' feet Than fall her cards on the bright board As ' twere an heart that beat. Her fingers let them softly through, Smooth polished silent things ; And each one as it falls reflects In swift light- shadowings, Blood-red and purple, green and blue, The great eyes of her rings. Whom plays she with ? With thee, who lov'st Those gems upon her hand ; With me, who search her secret brows; With all men, blessed or banned. We play together, she and we, Within a vain strange land : A land without any order, — Day even as night (one saith) , — Where who lieth down ariseth not Nor the sleeper awakeneth ; A land of darkness as darkness itself And of the shadow of death. What be her cards, you ask ? Even these : - The heart, that doth but crave More, having fed; the diamond, Skilled to make base seem brave ; 12426 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI The club, for smiting in the dark ; The spade, to dig a grave. And do you ask what game she plays ? With me 'tis lost or won ; With thee it is playing still ; with him It is not well begun ; But ' tis a game she plays with all Beneath the sway o' the sun. Thou seest the card that falls, -she knows The card that followeth : Her game in thy tongue is called Life, As ebbs thy daily breath : When she shall speak, thou'lt learn her tongue And know she calls it Death. I SUDDEN LIGHT HAVE been here before, But when or how I cannot tell : I know the grass beyond the door, The sweet keen smell, The sighing sound, the lights around the shore. You have been mine before, — How long ago I may not know: But just when at that swallow's soar Your neck turned so, Some veil did fall, -I knew it all of yore. Has this been thus before ? And shall not thus time's eddying flight Still with our lives our loves restore In death's despite, And day and night yield one delight once more ? THE WOODSPURGE HE wind flapped loose, the wind was still , THEShaken out dead from tree and hill : I had walked on at the wind's will , I sat now, for the wind was still. Between my knees my forehead was, - My lips, drawn in, said not Alas ! DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 12427 My hair was over in the grass, My naked ears heard the day pass. My eyes, wide open, had the run Of some ten weeds to fix upon ; Among those few, out of the sun, The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one. From perfect grief there need not be Wisdom, or even memory : One thing then learnt remains to me, - The woodspurge has a cup of three. C THE SEA- LIMITS ONSIDER the sea's listless chime : Time's self it is, made audible, - The murmur of the earth's own shell. Secret continuance sublime Is the sea's end : our sight may pass No furlong further. Since time was, This sound hath told the lapse of time. No quiet, which is death's, —it hath The mournfulness of ancient life , Enduring always at dull strife. As the world's heart of rest and wrath, Its painful pulse is in the sands. Last utterly, the whole sky stands, Gray and not known, along its path. Listen alone beside the sea, Listen alone among the woods ; Those voices of twin solitudes Shall have one sound alike to thee : Hark where the murmurs of thronged men Surge and sink back and surge again, - Still the one voice of wave and tree. Gather a shell from the strown beach And listen at its lips : they sigh The same desire and mystery, The echo of the whole sea's speech. And all mankind is thus at heart Not anything but what thou art : And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each. 12428 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI THE CLOUD CONFINES HE day is dark and the night THE To him that would search their heart ; No lips of cloud that will part, Nor morning song in the light : Only, gazing alone, To him wild shadows are shown, Deep under deep unknown And height above unknown height. Still we say as we go, — " Strange to think by the way,. Whatever there is to know, That shall we know one day. " The Past is over and fled ; Named new, we name it the old: Thereof some tale hath been told, But no word comes from the dead ; Whether at all they be, Or whether as bond or free, Or whether they too were we, Or by what spell they have sped. Still we say as we go, - " Strange to think by the way, Whatever there is to know, That shall we know one day. " What of the heart of hate That beats in thy breast, O Time ? — Red strife from the furthest prime, And anguish of fierce debate ; War that shatters her slain, And peace that grinds them as grain, And eyes fixed ever in vain On the pitiless eyes of Fate . Still we say as we go, - " Strange to think by the way, Whatever there is to know, That shall we know one day. " What of the heart of love That bleeds in thy breast, O Man ? — Thy kisses snatched ' neath the ban Of fangs that mock them above ; DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI Thy bells prolonged unto knells, Thy hope that a breath dispels, Thy bitter forlorn farewells And the empty echoes thereof ? Still we say as we go, - " Strange to think by the way, Whatever there is to know, That shall we know one day. " The sky leans dumb on the sea, Aweary with all its wings ; And oh! the song the sea sings Is dark everlastingly. Our past is clean forgot, Our present is and is not, Our future's a sealed seed-plot, And what betwixt them are we? We who say as we go, — " Strange to think by the way, Whatever there is to know, That shall we know one day. " 12429 SONG OF THE BOWER Ay, is it day, is it dusk in thy bower, SAY, Thou whom I long for, who longest for me ? Oh! be it light, be it night, ' tis Love's hour, Love's that is fettered as Love's that is free. Free Love has leaped to that innermost chamber, Oh! the last time, and the hundred before : Fettered Love, motionless, can but remember, Yet something that sighs from him passes the door. Nay, but my heart when it flies to thy bower, What does it find there that knows it again ? There it must droop like a shower-beaten flower, Red at the rent core and dark with the rain. Ah! yet what shelter is still shed above it, — What waters still image its leaves torn apart ? Thy soul is the shade that clings round it to love it, And tears are its mirror deep down in thy heart. What were my prize could I enter thy bower, This day, to-morrow, at eve or at morn ? 12430 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI Large lovely arms and a neck like a tower, Bosom then heaving that now lies forlorn. Kindled with love- breath, (the sun's kiss is colder ! ) Thy sweetness all near me, so distant to-day ; My hand round thy neck and thy hand on my shoulder, My mouth to thy mouth as the world melts away. What is it keeps me afar from thy bower, My spirit, my body, so fain to be there ? Waters engulfing or fires that devour ? — Earth heaped against me or death in the air ? Nay, but in day-dreams, for terror, for pity, The trees wave their heads with an omen to tell ; Nay, but in night-dreams, throughout the dark city, The hours, clashed together, lose count in the bell. Shall I not one day remember thy bower, One day when all days are one day to me? - Thinking, " I stirred not, and yet had the power; " Yearning, "Ah God, if again it might be! " Peace, peace ! such a small lamp illumes, on this highway, 1 So dimly so few steps in front of my feet, Yet shows me that her way is parted from my way: Out of sight, beyond light, at what goal may we meet ? SONNETS FROM THE HOUSE OF LIFE › A INTRODUCTORY SONNET SONNET is a moment's monument, - Memorial from the Soul's eternity To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be, Whether for lustral rite or dire portent, Of its own arduous fullness reverent : Carve it in ivory or in ebony, As Day or Night may rule ; and let Time see Its flowering crest impearled and orient. A Sonnet is a coin : its face reveals The soul, -its converse, to what Power ' tis due : Whether for tribute to the august appeals Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue, It serve ; or, ' mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath, In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 12431 LOVESIGHT WHEN do I see thee most, beloved one ? When in the light the spirits of mine eyes Before thy face, their altar, solemnize The worship of that Love through thee made known ? Or when in the dusk hours (we two alone) , Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies Thy twilight hidden glimmering visage lies, And my soul only sees thy soul its own ? O love, my love ! if I no more should see Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee, Nor image of thine eyes in any spring, - How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope, The wind of Death's imperishable wing ? KNOWN IN VAIN As Two whose love, first foolish, widening scope, Knows suddenly, to music high and soft, The Holy of Holies ; who because they scoffed Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope : Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they laughed In speech ; nor speak, at length : but sitting oft Together, within hopeless sight of hope, For hours are silent ; ― so it happeneth When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze After their life sailed by, and hold their breath. Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze Thenceforth their incommunicable ways Follow the desultory feet of Death ? THE HILL SUMMIT THIS feast-day of the sun, his altar there In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song ; And I have loitered in the vale too long, And gaze now a belated worshiper. Yet may I not forget that I was ' ware, So journeying, of his face at intervals Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls, - A fiery bush with coruscating hair. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 12432 And now that I have climbed and won this height, I must tread downward through the sloping shade And travel the bewildered tracks till night. Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed, And see the gold air and the silver fade And the last bird fly into the last light. THE CHOICE I EAT thou and drink : to-morrow thou shalt die. Surely the earth, that's wise being very old, Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold Thy sultry hair up from my face ; that I May pour for thee this golden wine, brim- high, Till round the glass thy fingers glow like gold. We'll drown all hours: thy song, while hours, are tolled, Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky. Now kiss, and think that there are really those, My own high-bosomed beauty, who increase Vain gold, vain lore, and yet might choose our way! Through many years they toil : then on a day They die not, -for their life was death, -but cease ; And round their narrow lips the mold falls close. II WATCH thou and fear : to-morrow thou shalt die. Or art thou sure thou shalt have time for death ? Is not the day which God's word promiseth To come man knows not when? In yonder sky, Now while we speak, the sun speeds forth : can I Or thou assure him of his goal ? God's breath Even at this moment haply quickeneth The air to a flame ; till spirits, always nigh Though screened and hid, shall walk the daylight here. And dost thou prate of all that man shall do ? Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be Glad in his gladness that comes after thee ? Will his strength slay thy worm in Hell ? Go to : Cover thy countenance, and watch, and fear. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 12433 III THINK thou and act : to-morrow thou shalt die. Outstretched in the sun's warmth upon the shore, Thou say'st : -" Man's measured path is all gone o'er : Up, all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh, Man clomb until he touched the truth ; and I , Even I, am he whom it was destined for. " How should this be ? Art thou then so much more Than they who sowed, that thou shouldst reap thereby ? Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed mound Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me ; Then reach on with thy thought till it be drowned. Miles and miles distant though the last line be, And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond, - Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea. LOST DAYS THE lost days of my life until to- day, What were they, could I see them on the street Lie as they fell ? Would they be ears of wheat Sown once for food but trodden into clay ? Or golden coins squandered and still to pay? Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet? Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway ? I do not see them here ; but after death God knows I know the faces I shall see, Each one a murdered self, with low last breath. " I am thyself, -what hast thou done to me ? > "And I- and I -thyself " (lo ! each one saith) , "And thou thyself to all eternity ! " A SUPERSCRIPTION Look in my face ; my name is Might-have-been ; I am also called No-more, Too-late , Farewell ; Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between ; Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell Is now a shaken shadow intolerable, Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen. XXI-778 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 12434 Mark me, how still I am! But should there dart One moment through thy soul the soft surprise Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs, — Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart, Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes. ON REFUSAL OF AID BETWEEN NATIONS NOT OT that the earth is changing, O my God ! Nor that the seasons totter in their walk, - Not that the virulent ill of act and talk Seethes ever as a winepress ever trod, - Not therefore are we certain that the rod - Weighs in thine hand to smite thy world ; though now Beneath thine hand so many nations bow, So many kings : not therefore, O my God ! - But because Man is parceled out in men To-day because, for any wrongful blow, No man not stricken asks, " I would be told Why thou dost thus ; " but his heart whispers then, " He is he, I am I. " By this we know That the earth falls asunder, being old. FOR 'A VENETIAN PASTORAL, ' BY GIORGIONE, IN THE LOUVRE ATER, for anguish of the solstice : nay, WATEBut dip the vessel slowly, -nay, but lean And hark how at its verge the wave sighs in Reluctant. Hush ! Beyond all depth away The heat lies silent at the brink of day : Now the hand trails upon the viol- string That sobs, and the brown faces cease to sing, Sad with the whole of pleasure. Whither stray Her eyes now, from whose mouth the slim pipes creep And leave it pouting, while the shadowed grass Is cool against her naked side ? Let be: Say nothing now unto her lest she weep, Nor name this ever. Be it as it was, - Life touching lips with Immortality. 1 VIX AND N FOUNDATIONS J. J. ROUSSEAU .

12435 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU (1712-1778) BY ÉDOUARD ROD HROUGHOUT his life , Rousseau was tossed about as by an inner storm, in exciting the violence of which malicious circumstances seemed to delight. He was born at Geneva, June 28th, 1712, in a troubled atmosphere, among the riots and agitations✔ which were beginning to threaten the old Genevan oligarchy. He lost his mother at birth. His father, who was a watchmaker, scarcely concerned himself with his early education except to read Plutarch and Richardson with him. When forced to leave Geneva, he intrusted the boy to the care of a maternal uncle. Jean Jacques was a dreamy, romantic child, sentimental, and not without a touch of perversity. Early embarked on a wandering and adventurous life , he was successively engraver's apprentice, vagabond, lackey, secretary. He improvised himself into a musician ; he even made himself a traveling tradesman. The counsels of a benefactress whose influence over him was very great - Madame de Warens -converted him to Catholicism, a faith which he afterward renounced. He traveled. He saw Italy. He read French, English, and German philosophers pell-mell, while studying music, history, and mathematics without method. Engaged as a preceptor at the elder Mably's, — brother of the Abbé Mably, -he was introduced to the literary society of the epoch. After some fruitless gropings he was to conquer first place in a competition before the Academy of Dijon, by a memorial (which was crowned) upon this question : " Has the progress of sciences and arts contributed to corrupt or to purify morals ? ( 1749) . The success of this initial work, which contains the germs of most of the ideas developed in his later works, was both brilliant and belligerent. Suddenly famous, Rousseau became at the same time distrustful, solitary, misanthropic ; and these characteristics were intensified by his alliance with her who was to be the companion of his life, —a person of inferior heart and mind, from whom he suffered much, and with whom he could not break. The ' Discourse on the Arts and Sciences ' was soon followed by a new competitive essay assigned by the same Academy of Dijon, -'A Discourse on the Inequality among 12436 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU Men, ' which is a fuller and more authoritative exposition of the earlier theme. The fundamental idea of this work is the keystone /of all Rousseau's philosophy. It is summed up in this simple remark : " Men are bad ; my own sad experience furnishes the proof : yet man is naturally good, as I think I have shown. What then can so have degraded him, except the changes in his condition, the progress he has made, and the knowledge he has acquired ? " The Academy of Dijon did not crown this second discourse , which was thought too radical ; and Rousseau continued a career filled with triumphs whose bitterness alone he felt. His theories were violently opposed by the literary and philosophic classes ; but the public was with him. In 1752, his opera ' Le Devin du Village ' (The Village Soothsayer) , played at court under his direction, brought him a pension from the King. He became the fashion ; great lords and lovely ladies invited him, petted him, patronized him. In less than five years he was to launch on the world the works which made him the most formidable protagonist of the new era : ' La Nouvelle Héloïse, ' which inaugurated " romantic " literature long before the word was found to characterize it ; the Contrat Social, ' which preludes the doctrines of the Revolution ; and ' Émile, ' which attempts to reform the principles of education. These three works brought Rousseau an unexampled popularity. But the violent controversies they aroused, the real hatreds they excited, the condemnations they drew upon him, -at Paris where the Parlament decreed his arrest, and at Geneva where Émile was burned by the executioner, -hurried him into a melancholy more and more bitter and afflicting. He took refuge with different friends, whom his suspicions presently transformed into persecutors, in different places, where he always believed himself persecuted. Returning to Paris in 1770, he passed there several years of anxious poverty : copying music for a livelihood ; composing, in answer to demands which honored him, such works as the ' Considerations on the Government of Poland ' ; or to defend himself before posterity, books like The Confessions, ' and the Rêveries d'un Promeneur Solitaire (Musings of a Solitary Stroller) , which did not appear until after his death. In 1778 he accepted a refuge offered by one of his faithful friends, René de Girardin, on his estate of Ermenonville. There his mind seemed to be growing calmer in the serene contemplation of the green and smiling country, when he died suddenly, on the 2d of July, 1778, in his sixty-seventh year. At first, suicide was suspected ; but an autopsy disclosed the cause of death to be serous apoplexy. His body, buried at two o'clock at night under the poplars of Ermenonville, -" by the most beautiful moonlight and in the calmest weather, " says a witness, was transported to the Pantheon JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 12437 in 1794 by order of the Convention. But in 1814 it was exhumed, as was Voltaire's, without official order ; and the bones of the two philosophers, placed in the same sack, were thrust under ground in the waste land toward Bercy. -a romancer What especially strikes the writer who attempts to analyze the moral and intellectual personality of Rousseau, is the predominance of his imagination. He was a poet and a romancer, - who made theories instead of making romances ; but ' Émile ' is certainly a pedagogical story, as the ' Contrat Social' is a story, as the ' Discours sur l'Inégalité ' is a historical, or if you like, an anthropological story. This fertile imagination was constantly excited by a very lively sensibility, which exalted itself in ardent friendships, in ardent passions, which embraced all humanity, reaching out to animals and even to inanimate things, and finding only in communion with nature some little joy and compensation. The disordered action of the romantic imagination upon this morbid sensibility would naturally produce and did produce errors of judgment, such as the doctrines of the Contrat, of Émile, etc.; and also errors in life , of which the gravest was that systematic and deliberate abandonment of his children, with which Rousseau has been so strongly reproached. But these errors came from the mind, not from the heart. Many facts prove that despite his paradoxes of thought and conduct, this man possessed a sincere kindness, a generosity which could pardon the worst offenses, a simple and touching tenderness of soul, a disinterestedness so great as to deprive him of all profit from his talents. These qualities are sometimes spoiled or perverted by a pride to which perhaps must be attributed some of his acts of generosity or devotion, as well as some of his errors ; and which later became exaggerated to mania in the mental malady of which it is impossible to say whether it was cause or effect. This pride, from which he suffered more than any one else , was his only vice ; in spite of his having allowed himself to be drawn into certain culpable acts, such as once to have stolen and often to have lied, -offenses which would never have been known but for his own confession. In spite of such errors, committed in hours of temptation, and expiated by long and sincere regrets, it would be unjust to deny Rousseau's true nobility of soul. If that soul seems to us sullied , the blame rests upon the hazards of his neglected childhood and adventurous youth ; upon the storms of his genius, his sufferings during the long period when he was forced to seek his true self among the worst obstacles, upon the tempests he aroused ; and finally, later, upon the maddening mirages with which his sick imagination surrounded him. 12438 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU - to The elements of Rousseau's character were also those of his genius. Although he delighted to reason according to the method which Descartes had inaugurated, and from which he could not free himself, ―that old vessel in which bubbled up the new wine of his thought, yet it is unreasonable to expect much reason from him. His logic usually ends in paradox. Upon going back to the origin of his ideas and attempting to analyze them, one finds that taken separately they are neither very original nor very profound : all return to that fundamental conception of the superiority of " the state of nature " over " the social state, " a too inadequate conception, of which it is impossible to prove the truth. It is that which inspired his earliest Discourses. ' At first the ' Contrat Social ' seemed contradict them : for how could a philosopher who hated society justify the basis of its organization ; and especially how could he conclude, as he does, that to this fatal and illegitimate society the citizen owes the sacrifice of himself ? But after this passing infidelity to his dominant faith, he returned to it again in ' Émile, ' where he maintains that normal education should isolate a child from society in order that his natural qualities may develop ; and he held this view to the end, as appears in those ' Confessions, ' which, in the portrait they give of himself, explain without justifying the fundamental idea of all his doctrine. The defects of his early education Rousseau never supplied ; his reading, insufficient and fantastic, left him defenseless to all external influences. His religion was a vague spiritualism ; his morality, an unconvincing optimism ; his politics, a Utopia, pastoral in the ' Discours sur l'Inégalité, ' epic in the ' Contrat Social. Finally, he seems never to have known any other man than himself; and the psychology of his ' Nouvelle Héloïse remains essentially personal. Whence comes it then, that in spite of so much weakness he was the greatest French writer of his century, —or at least the most influential, the most universal, and the most persistent ? To understand this curious fact, we must consider Rousseau in his century and environment. At that period, literature found itself in flagrant conflict with the morality whose aspirations it was supposed to express. The writers, most of them new-comers from another class, usually ended by adding themselves to the old society and adopting its conventions ; or, penetrated with new sentiments, failed to adopt new tools, and clung to the rhetoric inherited from the preceding Dry, arid, " oldish " in Goethe's apt phrase, they tried in vain to cultivate sensibility ; and when they endeavored to depart from routine, achieved only the artificial, as Diderot's plays show. strength and greatness of Rousseau was, above all, his sincerity : if he was the first to discard conventional rhetoric, and to express his own sensibility, it is because he possessed true sensibility ; moreover, age. The JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 12439 plebeian by birth, he remained plebeian from resolute pride. Different from his contemporaries in these two essentials, which consecrated his superiority, he became the supreme interpreter of those ideas, feelings, passions, which were fermenting in the decomposition of the Old World. He was sentimental and revolutionary, romantic and rebellious. Animated by the fierce breath of the spirit of negation, he set himself against all authority, against all tradition ; and his attack was the more resistless, that the charm of his romantic spirit dissembled its violence. In the discharge of this little understood and almost fatal office, he was aided by his wonderful literary gifts. With his most illustrious rivals, French prose had become a conversational language, — rapid, facile, and brilliant ; but without the life which captivates or the power which impresses itself. Rousseau instinctively abandoned this use to return to the great oratorical style, to rediscover the lost secrets of eloquence. For the short sentence, dry, laconic, and incisive, which is that of the best writers of his time, he adopted the long balanced period, sometimes even too rhythmic, which seizes the attention and holds it to the end. For the abstract terms in which those about him delighted, he substituted words of color, living and ardent ; words which paint, words which feel, words which vibrate and weep. The same instinct which thus revealed to him a new skill in the sentence, revealed to him also a new and corresponding skill in composition. His sentences -long, vivid, and musical -link themselves together to form a kind of organic charm ; so that the complete work may exercise the same fascination as each of its component parts. It was the language of passion succeeding that of reason, or rather of reasoning. The effect could not be doubtful. This effect was extremely violent, not only upon ideas but upon morals. Is it necessary to recall that after the ' Nouvelle Héloïse, ' everybody wanted to love like Saint- Preux and Julie ? that ' Émile ' transformed the current opinions upon education ? that people wished to be emotional, to dream in the fields, to reascend the current of civilization, to make their spirits ingenuous, primitive, or at least " natural " ? Who then first uttered the cry of the period, " O Nature ! Nature ! " the cry which soon became a new affectation ? - Thus Rousseau appears to us as the most enticing guide of his century. " Beside him, " says M. Faguet, " Voltaire appears at times merely a witty student, and Buffon only a very remarkable teacher of rhetoric. Montesquieu alone, inferior as a man of imagination, equals him in strength of view, and excels him in clearness of vision. " But exactly because he lacked imagination, Montesquieu was not a harbinger. Rousseau was essentially a forerunner. One may say that he has shaped the whole century which followed him. His 12440 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU principal works not only called forth successions of imitations, but the world is imbued with his ideas, whose consequences continue to renew or overturn the human soul and society. The ' Contrat Social ' accounts in part for the excesses of the Revolution ; and as to the chief revolutionists, the most dangerous indeed were " Spartans, " as Rousseau had recommended. The vague yet ardent spiritualism proclaimed in the ' Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard ' (The Savoyard Vicar's Creed), led to the Festival of the Supreme Being, and provoked the religious reaction of the beginning of the century. The notions concerning a return to the primitive life which he developed. in his first work, and which remained the basis of his doctrine, may be found again with the socialists of 1848, underlying the Utopias of the Saint- Simons, the Fouriers, the Enfantiers, and perhaps even in the origin of the " collectivism " which has replaced those innocent dreams. His optimism, his faith in the constant progress of humanity, inspired during the same period not only the " reformer" who transported the golden age of the past to the future, but also the most moderate, most clear-sighted, and most politic minds. The ' Nouvelle Héloïse created romanticism, that perilous and seductive disposition of spirit to which we owe so many affecting works : Saint- Preux is an elder brother of Werther, and what a posterity follows them! Before Rousseau, a few English poets alone had perceived Nature. After him, no one dared longer ignore her. Every one prided himself upon loving her. She found sincere adorers who perhaps would never have perceived her if they had not listened to her worshiper's enchanting voice. In such details we get the impression of the whole man. Others have left works more perfect, and above all more beneficent ; but I do not believe that in the whole history of literature there exists the man whose influence has been so decisive, so far-reaching, and upon whom it is so difficult to form a fair judgment. Measured from the point of view of to-day, this influence seems disproportioned to the genius which exercised it, and to the value of the works of that genius. But the most perfect works do not necessarily count the most ; and the keenest criticism cannot always explain the mysterious affinities. of genius, of thought, and of morals. It has been questioned whether this influence, the extent and duration of which are incontestable, has been a salutary one. We are not now to consider this. An alluring, an irresistible guide, Rousseau has not been an infallible one. Many have gone astray in following him. If he had a kind and feeling heart, he had not less a faulty intellect ; and his paradoxes often paralyzed his good intention. The ability with which he followed them to their extreme conclusion , like the eloquence he employed in their service, only served to render them more dangerous. Therefore in JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 12441 penetrating so deeply the consciousness of the generations that followed him, Rousseau's thought has drawn upon them many ills. It has involved them in many gropings and errors, in many delusive visions and sufferings. It has spread abroad in the Old World a general agitation, which the violent convulsions following it did not. succeed in dispelling. It has scattered abroad sadness which still encompasses us. Passion is sad; nature breathes melancholy: all that Rousseau loved and made us love puts the heart in mourning ; it may be that it is the memory of his teaching which spreads such darkness over the end of the century. For by an amazing contradiction, the optimist who believed so profoundly in the goodness of human nature is the true father of the pessimists of our time. But whatever the proportions of the good and ill he has done us, we are still responsive to his influence, while cherishing for him an affection not unmingled with reproach. Those even who condemn or oppose him do not always escape loving him. Although a whole century —one of the centuries most freighted with historical events and evolutions has passed over his work, it is still too near to be fairly judged. But we may feel sure that it will be reckoned in a balance whose weights we do not know. ― - duceandRud I FOREWORD From The Social Contract. ' Copyright 1893, by G. P. Putnam's Sons WISH to discover whether, in the existing social order, there may not be some rule of safe and legitimate administration, taking men as they are and laws as they might be. I shall try to ally, in this research, that which the law permits with that which interest prescribes, so that justice and utility may not be divided. I enter upon this discussion without proving the importance of the subject. I shall be asked if I am a prince or a legislator, that I write about politics. I shall answer, No —and that for this reason I write about politics. If I were a prince or a legislator, I should not lose time in telling what ought to be done : I should do it or be silent. 12442 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU Born citizen of a free State and member of the sovereign people, however feeble the influence of my voice in public affairs , the right to vote upon them imposes upon me the duty of instructing myself. Whenever I meditate upon governments, I am happy to find in my investigations new reasons for loving that of my own country. THE PEOPLE From The Social Contract. Copyright 1893, by G. P. Putnam's Sons THE HE architect, before erecting a great building, examines and sounds the soil to see if it will bear its weight : so the wise lawgiver will not begin by making good laws, but he will first see whether the people for whom they are destined is ready to hear them. It was for this reason that Plato refused to give laws to the Arcadians and the Cyrenians, knowing that these two nations were rich and would not endure equality. The reason that in Crete there were good laws and bad men, was because Minos had given laws to a people loaded with vices. Thousands of nations have flourished upon earth which could never have endured good laws ; and those which could have borne them had but a short existence. Most nations, like most men, are docile only in youth ; they become incorrigible as they grow old. When customs are once established and prejudices rooted, it is a dangerous and useless enterprise to try to reform them: the people will not permit their misfortunes to be touched upon, even for their instruction , -like the stupid and cowardly sick who shudder at sight of a physician. It is not that -as some maladies upset a man's head and make him forget the past -there may not be, in the existence of States, violent epochs when revolutions produce upon nations the effect that certain crises produce upon individuals ; when horror of the past takes the place of forgetfulness, and when the State, destroyed by civil wars, rises from its ashes and takes on the vigor of youth. Such was Sparta in the time of Lycurgus ; such was Rome after the Tarquins ; and such have been among us Holland and Switzerland after the expulsion of tyrants. JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 12443 But these events are rare ; they are exceptions, and their cause is always found in the particular constitution of the exceptional State. They cannot even take place twice with the same nation ; for a nation can make itself free as long as it is barbarous, but it can do so no more when its civil energy is exhausted. Troubles may then destroy, without its being possible for revolutions to re-establish it : as soon as its chains are broken it falls apart and exists no longer, needing thereafter a master, not a liberator. Let free nations remember this truth : " Liberty may be acquired, but never recovered. " - Youth is not infancy. There is a time of youth for nations as well as man, —or if you will, of maturity, which must be waited for before subjecting them to laws : but the maturity of a people is not always easy to recognize, and if begun too early the labor is lost. Certain peoples may be disciplined from their earliest existence ; others cannot be disciplined at the end of ten centuries. The Russians will never be truly civilized, because they were taken in hand too early. Peter had the genius of imitation : he had not the true genius which creates all from nothing. Some things which he did were good, most of them were ill- timed. He saw that his was a barbarous people : he did not see that it was not ripe for civilization ; he tried to civilize it when he should have accustomed it to war. He tried at first to make Germans or English, when he should have begun by making Russians ; he prevented his subjects from ever becoming what they might have been, by persuading them that they were what they were not. It is thus that a French preceptor teaches his pupil to shine in his infancy, and then to amount to nothing afterward. The empire of Russia will desire to subjugate Europe, and will itself be subjugated. The Tartars, its subjects or neighbors, will become its masters and ours : this revolution seems to me inevitable. All the kings of Europe are working together to accelerate it. 12444 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU FROM ÉMILE > Copyright 1892, by D. Appleton & Co., and reprinted by permission of the Translator R ATTLE- HEADED children become commonplace men. I know of no observation more general and more certain than this. Nothing is more difficult than to distinguish, in infancy, real stupidity from that apparent and deceptive stupidity which is the indication of strong characters. It seems strange, at first sight, that the two extremes should have the same signs, and yet this must needs be so ; for at an age when the man has as yet no real ideas, all the difference that exists between him who has genius and him who has it not is, that the latter gives admittance only to false ideas, while the former, finding no others, gives admittance to none. In so far then as one is capable of nothing, and nothing is befitting the other, both appear to be stupid. The only sign that can distinguish them depends on chance, which may offer to the last some idea within his comprehension ; whereas the first is always and everywhere the same. During his infancy the younger Cato seemed an imbecile in the family. He was taciturn and obstinate, and this was all the judg ment that was formed of him. It was only in the antechamber of Sylla that his uncle learned to know him. If he had not gone into that antechamber, perhaps he would have passed for a dolt till the age of reason. If Cæsar had not lived, perhaps men would always have treated as a visionary that very Cato who penetrated his baleful genius, and foresaw all his projects from afar. Oh, how liable to be deceived are they who are so precipitate in their judgments of children ! They are often the more childish. I myself have seen a man somewhat advanced in age, who honored me with his friendship, who was regarded by his family and his friends as lacking in intelligence ; but this was a superior mind maturing in silence. All at once he has shown himself a philosopher , and I doubt not that posterity will assign him a distinguished and honorable place among the best reason. ers and the most profound metaphysicians of his age. Respect childhood, and do not hastily judge of it either for good or for evil. Allow a long time for the exceptions to be manifested, proved, and confirmed, before adopting special methods for them. Allow Nature to act in her place, for fear of thwarting her operations. You know, you say, the value of time, JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 12445 { and do not wish to waste it. You do not see that to make a bad use of time is much more wasteful than to do nothing with it ; and that a poorly taught child is further from wisdom than one who has not been taught at all. You are alarmed at seeing him consume his early years in doing nothing ! Really ! Is it nothing to be happy ? Is it nothing to jump, play, and run, all day long? In no other part of his life will he be so busy. Plato, in his ' Republic, ' which is deemed so austere, brings up children only in festivals, games, songs, and pastimes. It might be said that he has done all when he has really taught them how to enjoy themselves ; and Seneca, speaking of the ancient Roman youth, says they were always on their feet, and were taught anything which they could learn while seated. Were they of less value for this when they reached the age of manhood ? Be not at all frightened, therefore, at this so-called idleness. What would you think of a man who, in order to turn his whole life to profitable account, would never take time to sleep ? You will say that he is a man out of his senses : that he does not make use of his time but deprives himself of it ; and that to fly from sleep is to run toward death. Reflect, therefore, that this is the same thing, and that childhood is the slumber of reason. never The apparent facility with which children learn is the cause of their ruin. We do not see that this very facility is the proof that they are learning nothing. Their smooth and polished brain reflects like a mirror the objects that are presented to it ; but nothing remains, nothing penetrates it. The child retains words, but ideas are reflected. Those who hear these words understand them, but the child who utters them does not. Although memory and reasoning are two essentially different faculties, yet the first is not truly developed save in conjunction with the second. Before the age of reason a child does not receive ideas, but images ; and there is this difference between them : images are but the faithful pictures of sensible objects, while ideas are notions of objects determined by their relations. An image may exist alone in the mind which forms the representation of it ; but every idea supposes others. When we imagine, we do no more than see ; but when we conceive, we compare. Our sensations are purely passive, whereas all our perceptions or ideas spring from an active principle which judges. I say then, that children, not being capable of judgment, have no real memory. They retain sounds, forms, sensations, but rarely 12446 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU ideas ; and still more rarely their combinations. The objection that they learn some elements of geometry is thought to be a proof that I am wrong ; but directly to the contrary, it is a proof in my favor. It is shown that, far from knowing how to reason for themselves, they cannot even retain the reasonings of others ; for if you follow these little geometricians in their recitations, you will at once see that they have retained only the exact expressions of the figure and the terms of the demonstration. If you interpose the least unforeseen objection to the argument, or if you reverse the figure they are following, they are at once disconcerted. All their knowledge is in sensation, and nothing has penetrated the understanding. Their memory itself is hardly more perfect than their other faculties ; since they must almost always learn over again, when grown, the things which they learned by rote in childhood. · I am very far from thinking, however, that children are incapable of any kind of reasoning. On the contrary, I see that they reason very well on whatever they know, and on whatever is related to their present and obvious interests. But it is with respect to their knowledge that we are deceived. We give them credit for knowledge which they do not have, and make them reason on matters which they cannot comprehend. We are deceived, moreover, in trying to make them attentive to considerations which in no wise affect them; -as that of their prospective interest, of their happiness when grown to be men, or of the esteem in which they will be held when they have become great, -talk which, addressed to creatures deprived of all foresight, has absolutely no significance for them. Now, all the premature studies of these unfortunates relate to objects entirely foreign to their minds ; and we may judge of the attention which they can give them. The pedagogues who make such a great display of the subjects which they teach their disciples, are paid to speak of this matter in different terms ; but we see by their own course of action that they think exactly as I do. For what do they really teach their pupils ? Words, words, nothing but words. Among the different sciences which they boast of teaching, they are very careful not to choose those which are really useful to them, because they are the sciences of things, and they would never succeed in teaching them; but they prefer the sciences which we seem to know when we have learned their terminology, -such as heraldry, geography, JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 12447 chronology, the languages, etc. , -all of them studies so remote from man, and especially from the child, that it would be a marvel if a single item of all this could be useful to him once in the course of his life. It will seem surprising to some that I include the study of languages among the inutilities of education ; but it will be recollected that I am speaking here only of primary studies ; and that, whatever may be thought of it, I do not believe that up to the age of twelve or fifteen years, any child, prodigies excepted, has ever really learned two languages. I grant that if the study of languages were but the study of words, that is, of the forms or sounds which express them, - it might be suitable for children ; but languages, by the changing symbols, also modify the ideas which they represent. Languages have their several and peculiar effects in the formation of the intellectual faculties ; the thoughts are tinged by their respective idioms. The only thing common to languages is the reason. The spirit of each language has its peculiar form ; and this difference is doubtless partly the cause and partly the effect of national characteristics. This conjecture seems to be confirmed by the fact that among all the nations of the earth, language follows the vicissitudes of manners , and is preserved pure or is corrupted just as they are . Use has given one of these different forms of thought to the child ; and it is the only one which he preserves to the age of reason. In order to have two of these forms, he must needs know how to compare ideas ; and how can he compare them when he is hardly in a condition to conceive them ? Each thing may have for him a thousand different symbols ; but each idea can have but one form. Nevertheless, we are told that he learns to speak several. This I deny. I have seen such little prodigies, who thought they were speaking five or six languages. I have heard them speak German in terms of Latin, French, and Italian, respectively. In fact, they used five or six vocabularies, but they spoke nothing but German. In a word, give children as many synonyms as you please, and you will change the words they utter, but not the language : they will never know but one. It is to conceal their inaptitude in this respect that they are drilled by preference on dead languages, since there are no longer judges of those who may be called to testify. The familiar use of these languages having for a long time been lost, we 12448 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU are content to imitate the remains of them which we find written in books ; and this is what we call speaking them. If such is the Greek and Latin of the teachers, we may imagine what the Greek and Latin of the children is ! Scarcely have they learned by heart the rudiments of these languages, of which they understand absolutely nothing, when they are taught, first to turn a French discourse into Latin words ; and then when they are more advanced, to tack together in prose , sentences from Cicero, and in verse, scraps from Virgil. Then they think that they are speaking Latin : and who is there to contradict them ? Translation of William H. Payne. ON THE USES OF TRAVEL From Émile. Copyright 1892 , by D. Appleton & Co. , and reprinted by permission of the Translator THE HE abuse of books kills science. Thinking they know what they have read, men think that they can dispense with learning it. Too much reading serves only to make presumptuous ignoramuses. Of all the centuries of literature, there is not one in which there has been so much reading as in this , and not one in which men have been less wise ; of all the countries of Europe, there is not one where so many histories and travels have been printed as in France, and not one where less is known of the genius and customs of other countries. So many books make us neglect the book of the world ; or if we still read in it, each one confines himself to his leaf. A Parisian fancies he knows men, while he knows only Frenchmen. In his city, always full of strangers, he regards each foreigner as an extraordinary phenomenon, which has no fellow in the rest of the universe. We must have had a near view of the citizens of that great city, we must have lived with them, in order to believe that with so much spirit they can also be so stupid. The queer thing about it is that each of them has read, perhaps ten times, the description of the country one of whose inhabitants has filled him with so much wonder. It is too much to have to wade through at the same time the prejudices of authors and our own in order to arrive at the truth. I have spent my life in reading books of travel, and I have never JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 12449 found two of them which gave me the same idea of the same people. On comparing the little which I was able to observe with what I had read, I have ended by abandoning travelers, and by regretting the time which I had spent in order to instruct. myself in their reading ; thoroughly convinced that in respect of observations of all sorts we must not read but see. This would be true if all travelers were sincere ; if they related only what they have seen or what they believe, and if they disguised the truth only by the false colors which it takes in their eyes. What must it be when, in addition, we have to discern the truth through their falsehoods and their bad faith ? Let us, then, abandon to those made to be contented with them the expedient of books commended to us. Like the art of Raymond Lully, they are useful for teaching us to prate about what we do not know. They are useful for preparing Platos of fifteen for philosophizing in clubs, and for instructing a company on the customs of Egypt and India, on the faith of Paul Lucas or of Tavernier. I hold it for an incontestable maxim, that whoever has seen but one people, instead of knowing men, knows only those with whom he has lived. Here then is still another way of stating the same question of travels. Is it sufficient for a well-educated man to know only his own countrymen , or is it important for him to know men in general ? There no longer remains dispute or doubt on this point. Observe how the solution of a difficult question sometimes depends on the manner of stating it. But in order to study men, must we make the tour of the whole earth ? Must we go to Japan to observe Europeans ? In order to know the species, must we know all the individuals ? No: there are men who resemble one another so closely that it is not worth the trouble to study them separately. He who has seen ten Frenchmen has seen them all . Although we cannot say the same of the English and of some other peoples, it is nevertheless certain that each nation has its peculiar and specific character, which is inferred by induction, not from the observation of a single one of its members, but of several. He who has compared ten peoples knows mankind, just as he who has seen ten Frenchmen knows the French. For purposes of instruction it is not sufficient to stroll through countries, but we must know how to travel. In order to observe, we must have eyes, and must turn them toward the XXI-779 12450 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU object which we wish to examine. There are many people whom travel instructs still less than books, because they are ignorant of the art of thinking ; whereas in reading, their mind is at least guided by the author, while in their travels they do not know how to see anything for themselves.. Others are not instructed because they do not wish to be instructed . Their object is so different that this hardly affects them. It is very doubtful whether we can see with exactness what we are not anxious to observe. Of all the people in the world, the Frenchman is he who travels the most ; but, full of his own ways, he slights indiscriminately everything which does not resemble them. There are Frenchmen in every corner of the world. There is no country where we can find more people who have traveled than we find in France. But notwithstanding all this, of all the people of Europe, the one that sees the most of them knows the least. The English also travel, but in a different way; and it seems that these two nations must be different in everything. The English nobility travel, the French nobility do not travel ; the French people travel, the English people do not travel. This difference seems to me honorable to the latter. The French have almost always some personal interest in their travels ; but the English do not go to seek their fortune abroad, unless it is through commerce, and with full pockets. When they travel it is to spend their money abroad, and not to live there on the fruits of their industry ; they are too proud to go prowling about away from home. This also causes them to learn more from foreigners than the French do, who have a totally different object in view. The English, however, have their national prejudices also, and even more of them than any one else ; but these prejudices are due less to ignorance than to passion. The Englishman has the prejudices of pride, and the Frenchman those of vanity. There is a great difference between traveling to see the country and traveling to see the people. The first object is always that of the curious, while the other is only incidental for them. It ought to be the very opposite for one who wishes to philosophize. The child observes things, and waits until he can observe men. The man ought to begin by observing his fellows ; and then he can observe things if he has the time. It is bad reasoning to conclude that travels are useless because we travel in the wrong way. But admitting the utility of travels, does it follow that they are best for everybody ? Far from it ;

BROOK THE . JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 12451 on the contrary, they are good for only a very few people : they are good only for men who have sufficient self- control to listen to the lessons of error without allowing themselves to go astray, and to see the example of vice without permitting themselves to be drawn into it. Travel develops the natural bent of character, and finally makes a man good or bad. Whoever returns from a tour of the world is, on his return, what he will be for the rest of his life. Of those who return, more are bad than good, because more of those who start out are inclined to evil rather than good. Badly educated and badly trained young men contract during their travels all the vices of the peoples whom they visit, but not one of the virtues with which these vices are mingled ; but those who are happily born, those whose good nature has been well cultivated, and who travel with the real purpose of becoming instructed, all return better and wiser than when they started out. It is thus that my Émile shall travel. Whatever is done through reason ought to have its rules : travels, considered as a part of education, ought to have theirs. To travel for the sake of traveling is to be a wanderer, a vagabond ; to travel for the sake of instruction is still too vague an object; for instruction which has no determined end amounts to nothing. Translation of William H. Payne. I IN THE ISLE OF ST. PETER From the Fifth of the ' Rêveries > FOUND my existence so charming, and led a life so agreeable to my humor, that I resolved here to end my days. My only source of disquiet was whether I should be allowed to carry my project out. In the midst of the presentiments that disturbed me, I would fain have had them make a perpetual prison of my refuge, to confine me in it for all the rest of my life. I longed for them to cut off all chance and all hope of leaving it ; to forbid my holding any communication with the mainland, so that knowing nothing of what was going on in the world, I might have forgotten the world's existence, and people might have forgotten mine too. They suffered me to pass only two months in the island, but I could have passed two years, two centuries, and all eternity, without a moment's weariness ; though I had not, 12452 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU — with my companion, any other society than that of the steward, his wife, and their servants. They were in truth honest souls and nothing more, but that was just what I wanted. . Carried thither in a violent hurry, alone and without a thing, I afterwards sent for my housekeeper, my books, and my scanty possessions, of which I had the delight of unpacking nothing, — leaving my boxes and chests just as they had come, and dwelling in the house where I counted on ending my days exactly as if it were an inn whence I must set forth on the morrow. All things went so well, just as they were, that to think of ordering. them better were to spoil them. One of my greatest joys was to leave my books fastened up in their boxes, and to be without even a case for writing. When any luckless letter forced me to take up a pen for an answer, I grumblingly borrowed the steward's inkstand, and hurried to give it back to him with all the haste I could, in the vain hope that I should never have need of the loan any more. Instead of meddling with those weary quires and reams and piles of old books, I filled my chamber with flowers and grasses ; for I was then in my first fervor for botany. Having given up employment that would be a task to me, I needed one that would be an amusement, nor cause me more pains than a sluggard might choose to take. I undertook to make the ' Flora Petrinsularis ' ; and to describe every single plant on the island, in detail enough to occupy me for the rest of my days. In consequence of this fine, scheme, every morning after breakfast, which we all took in company, I used to go with a magnifying-glass in my hand, and my ' Systema Naturæ under my arm, to visit some district of the island. I had divided it for that purpose into small squares, meaning to go through them one after another in each season of the year. At the end of two or three hours I used to return laden with an ample harvest, a provision for amusing myself after dinner indoors, in case of rain. I spent the rest of the morning in going with the steward, his wife, and Theresa, to see the laborers and the harvesting, and I generally set to work along with them : many a time when people from Berne came to see me, they found me perched on a high tree, with a bag fastened round my waist ; I kept filling it with fruit, and then let it down to the ground with a rope. The exercise I had taken in the morning, and the good- humor that always comes from exercise, made the repose of dinner vastly pleasant to me. But if dinner was kept JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 12453 up too long, and fine weather invited me forth, I could not wait ; but was speedily off to throw myself all alone into a boat, which, when the water was smooth enough, I used to pull out to the middle of the lake. There, stretched at full length in the boat's bottom, with my eyes turned up to the sky, I let myself float slowly hither and thither as the water listed, sometimes for hours together; plunged in a thousand confused delicious musings, which, though they had no fixed nor constant object, were not the less on that account a hundred times dearer to me than all that I had found sweetest in what they call the pleasures of life. Often warned by the going down of the sun that it was time to return, I found myself so far from the island that I was forced to row with all my might to get in before it was pitch dark. At other times, instead of losing myself in the midst of the waters, I had a fancy to coast along the green shores of the island, where the clear waters and cool shadows tempted me to bathe. But one of my most frequent expeditions was from the larger island to the less : there I disembarked and spent my afternoon, -sometimes in mimic rambles among wild elders, persicaries, willows, and shrubs of every species ; sometimes settling, myself on the top of a sandy knoll, covered with turf, wild thyme, flowers, even sainfoin and trefoil that had most likely been sown there in old days, making excellent quarters for rabbits. They might multiply in peace without either fearing anything or harming anything. I spoke of this to the steward. He at once had male and female rabbits brought from Neuchâtel, and we went in high state -his wife, one of his sisters, Theresa, and Ito settle them in the little islet. The foundation of our colony was a feast-day. The pilot of the Argonauts was not prouder than I, as I bore my company and the rabbits in triumph from our island to the smaller one. When the lake was too rough for me to sail , I spent my afternoon in going up and down the island, gathering plants to right and left ; seating myself now in smiling lonely nooks to dream at my ease , now on little terraces and knolls, to follow with my eyes the superb and ravishing prospect of the lake and its shores, crowned on one side by the neighboring hills, and on the other melting into rich and fertile plains up to the feet of the pale-blue mountains on their far- off edge. 12454 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU As evening drew on, I used to come down from the high ground, and sit on the beach at the water's brink in some hidden sheltering-place. There the murmur of the waves and their agitation charmed all my senses, and drove every other movement away from my soul : they plunged it into delicious dreamings, in which I was often surprised by night. The flux and reflux of the water, its ceaseless stir, swelling and falling at intervals, striking on ear and sight, made up for the internal movements which my musings extinguished ; they were enough to give me delight in mere existence , without taking any trouble of thinking. From time to time arose some passing thought of the instability of the things of this world, of which the face of the waters offered an image : but such light impressions were swiftly effaced in the uniformity of the ceaseless motion, which rocked me as in a cradle ; it held me with such fascination that even when called at the hour and by the signal appointed, I could not tear myself away without summoning all my force. After supper, when the evening was fine, we used to go all together for a saunter on the terrace, to breathe the freshness of the air from the lake. We sat down in the arbor, -laughing, chatting, or singing some old song, -and then we went home to bed, well pleased with the day, and only craving another that should be exactly like it on the morrow. All is a continual flux upon the earth. Nothing in it keeps a form constant and determinate ; our affections -fastening on external things-necessarily change and pass just as they do. Ever in front of us or behind us, they recall the past that is gone, or anticipate a future that in many a case is destined never to be. There is nothing solid to which the heart can fix itself. Here we have little more than a pleasure that comes and passes away; as for the happiness that endures, I cannot tell if it be so much as known among men. There is hardly in the midst of our liveliest delights a single instant when the heart could tell us with real truth, "I would this instant might last forever." And how can we give the name of happiness to a fleeting state that all the time leaves the heart unquiet and void, -that makes us regret something gone, or still long for something to come ? But if there is a state in which the soul finds a situation solid enough to comport with perfect repose , and with the expansion of its whole faculty, without need of calling back the JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 12455 past or pressing on towards the future ; where time is nothing for it, and the present has no ending ; with no mark for its own duration, and without a trace of succession ; without a single other sense of privation or delight, of pleasure or pain, of desire or apprehension, than this single sense of existence, -so long as such a state endures, he who finds himself in it may talk of bliss, not with a poor, relative, and imperfect happiness such as people find in the pleasures of iife , but with a happiness full , perfect, and sufficing, that leaves in the soul no conscious unfilled void. Such a state was many a day mine in my solitary musings in the isle of St. Peter, either lying in my boat as it floated on the water, or seated on the banks of the broad lake, or in other places than the little isle , - on the brink of some broad stream, or a rivulet murmuring over a gravel bed. What is it that one enjoys in a situation like this ? Nothing outside of one's self, nothing except one's self and one's own existence. But most men, tossed as they are by unceasing passion, have little knowledge of such a state : they taste it imperfectly for a few moments, and then retain more than an obscure confused idea of it, that is too weak to let them feel its charm . It would not even be good, in the present constitution of things, that in their eagerness for these gentle ecstasies, they should fall into a disgust for the active life in which their duty is prescribed to them by needs that are ever on the increase. But a wretch cut off from human society, who can do nothing here below that is useful and good either for himself or for other people, may in such a state find for all lost human felicities many recompenses, of which neither fortune nor men can ever rob him. 'Tis true that these recompenses cannot be felt by all souls, nor in all situations. The heart must be in peace, nor any passion come to trouble its calm. There must be in the surrounding objects neither absolute repose nor excess of agitation ; but a uniform and moderated movement, without shock, without interval. With no movement, life is only a lethargy. If the movement be unequal or too strong, it awakes us ; by recalling us to the objects around, it destroys the charm of our musing, and plucks us from within ourselves, instantly to throw us back under the yoke of fortune and man, in a moment to restore us to all the consciousness of misery. Absolute stillness inclines one to gloom. It offers an image of death : then the help of a cheerful imagination 12456 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU is necessary, and presents itself naturally enough to those whom Heaven has endowed with such a gift. The movement which does not come from without then stirs within us. The repose is less complete, it is true ; but it is also more agreeable when light and gentle ideas, without agitating the depths of the soul, only softly skim the surface. This sort of musing we may taste whenever there is tranquillity about us ; and I have thought that in the Bastile, and even in a dungeon where no object struck my sight, I could have dreamed away many a thrice pleasurable day. But it must be said that all this came better and more happily in a fruitful and lonely island, where nothing presented itself to me save smiling pictures, where nothing recalled saddening memories, where the fellowship of the few dwellers there was gentle and obliging, without being exciting enough to busy me incessantly; where, in short, I was free to surrender myself all day long to the promptings of my taste or to the most luxurious indolence. As I came out from a long and most sweet musing fit, seeing myself surrounded by verdure and flowers and birds, and letting my eyes wander far over romantic shores that fringed a wide expanse of water bright as crystal, I fitted all these attractive objects into my dreams ; and when at last I slowly recovered myself, and recognized what was about me, I could not mark the point that cut off dream from reality, so equally did all things unite to endear to me the lonely retired life I led in this happy spot ! Why can that life not come back to me again ? Why can I not go finish my days in the beloved island, never to quit it, never again to see in it one dweller from the mainland, to bring back to me the memory of all the woes of every sort that they have delighted in heaping on my head for all these long years ? . Freed from the earthly passions engendered by the tumult of social life, my soul would many a time lift itself above this atmosphere, and commune beforehand with the heavenly intelligences, into whose number it trusts to be ere long taken. • 12457 FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT (1788-1866) ÜCKERT was not only a great poet and fervid patriot, but a man of wide learning and solid scholarly attainments. His knowledge of languages was phenomenal, and his boast that for him " every language written by men possessed life " was not a gross exaggeration. His contributions to Oriental studies were voluminous and valuable, but they have inevitably been rendered obsolete or obsolescent by the restless advance of German scholarship ; it is only in the inspired translations from Oriental literatures that we have results of permanent value. The ultimate analysis of Rückert's manifold life labors reveals as the essential and indestructible part, his poetry. The parallel with Uhland is obvious. Both were scholars and pioneers in their chosen fields ; both were active in the liberal movement in Germany ; both were poets of the first rank, and have erected poetic monuments of enduring worth. Uhland was more racy of the German soil, and his ballads and lyrics have the touch of the autochthonous folk-song ; his scholarship was Germanistic. Rückert's studies were in Oriental fields, and in the Orient he found much of his poetic material ; he was more exotic than Uhland, and yet he has left behind a mass of true German poetry which has endeared him to the hearts of German children. The still retiracy of wood and garden, nursery and home, he has sung most movingly. The larger ambitions for a united fatherland he has expressed most powerfully. That this poetic productivity, which continued unimpaired to the end of his long life , should have been but the lounging garment of the German professor when his talar was laid aside, is a remarkable evidence of the depth and strength and versatile beauty of Rückert's mind. FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT Friedrich Rückert was born at Schweinfurt on May 16th, 1788. It was obvious at an early age that the study of philology and æsthetics was his vocation, and to these he devoted himself at the University of Würzburg. He became a private teacher, an official tutor, and 12458 FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT eventually a university professor. His life was that of the typical German scholar ; but he retained the freshness of the poet's heart, and the expression quoted above-" Every language possesses life for me » —is characteristic : he infused vitality into all he taught. All poets were patriots in the stirring first years of the nineteenth century. Rückert's part in the national uprising is represented by his vigorous ' Geharnischte Sonette ' ( Sonnets in Armor) , and the martial songs entitled ' Spott- und Ehrenlieder ' (Songs of Praise and Derision) . These were published in Deutsche Gedichte ' (German Poems) in 1814, under the pseudonym of Freimund Reimar. After the declaration of peace, Rückert assumed the editorship of Cotta's Morgenblatt in Stuttgart, and there formed the friendship of Uhland. In the autumn of 1817 he went to Italy ; but Rome did not throw its powerful enchantment about him as it had around Goethe and Platen. Rückert stayed but one year. On his return he stopped in Vienna, where he received invaluable instruction in Persian from the celebrated Orientalist, Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. Thenceforth the study of the Oriental languages and literatures became his chief occupation and life task. In 1826 he accepted the Oriental chair at Erlangen ; and in 1841 , shortly after the accession of Frederick William IV. , he was called to the University of Berlin. The Frankish poet was never quite at home in the Prussian capital ; but he held his position till 1848, when he retired definitely to the happy life of a gardener and scholar at Neuses, near Coburg. In this charming retreat he had established his poet's-home shortly after his marriage with Luise Fischer in 1821 ; there he spent almost without interruption the last eighteen years of his life , and there he died on January 31st, 1866. The most important poetic yield of Rückert's Oriental studies was the book of Oriental lyrics called ' Oestliche Rosen ' ( Roses of the East) , much admired by Goethe. His translations from the Indian, Hebrew, Persian, Arabian, and Chinese are permanent enrichments of the literature of Germany ; the writings of Sa'di, Firdausī, and Kālidāsa he has transformed into German classics : and in this sense he is the greatest and worthiest successor of Herder and Goethe in their strivings toward the ideal of a universal literature. Rückert's resources seemed inexhaustible. Ripe wisdom, broad knowledge, deep sympathy, strong imagination, and absolute mastery of language and form, were all his. It was not unnatural that his virtuosity should mislead his Muse into mediocrity at times, but he says of himself : - " Had I not written the verse you care nothing about, The verses that really delight you had ne'er been thought out. " FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT 12459 Several historical plays remain to show that the drama was not his field. The lyric, the gnomic, the didactic, were his proper element. The glowing, joyous love-songs to his fiancée, which he published in the year of his marriage under the title of ' Liebesfrühling ' (Springtime of Love) , display his lyric quality in its highest degree. His pure and strong fancy enabled him to give poetic value to the commonplace and unimportant. The popular ' Haus und Jahreslieder ' (Songs of the House and Year) show how Rückert was able to bring the most insignificant and unpromising subjects into poetic relations with fair and lofty thoughts. The singable quality of his verse was publicly praised by Goethe, and composers have borne frequent witness to their appreciation of it by setting the songs to music. Most famous perhaps is the simple, compact, tender, and untranslatable ' Du bist die Ruh ' of Schubert (Thou art Rest) . Goethe on his death-bed repeated Rückert's solemn lines, ' At Midnight. ' But the stores of wisdom and learning which filled the poet's mind received artistic expression in the finest didactic poem of German literature, ' Die Weisheit des Brahmanen ' (The Brahman's Wisdom). It contains a wealth of wisdom, wrought into finely fashioned forms. With an artist's eye he could fathom the profound and gaze at the sublime, and he was able to proclaim his vision with the awing solemnity of an ancient prophet. With this poem Rückert established himself permanently in the German heart, into which he had first entered singing his lays of love and of war. He died before his lifelong dream of a united Germany had been realized . He had symbolized this dream in Barbarossa, ' but had lost hope, for the ravens of discord and distrust continued still to circle round the mountain. It was only five years after Rückert's death that a German emperor was crowned at Versailles. < THE HOUR-GLASS OF ASHES HEN Torismund, for love of Rosalind, WHEConsumed to ashes in the flames he fanned, She did not strew his ashes on the wind, But gathered it all up with faithful hand ; And now he serves the child's inventive mind, Within her hour-glass placed instead of sand : Glad that through her, he still no peace doth find In death, who found none in the living's land. Translation of C. T. Brooks. 12460 FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT D° AMARYLLIS O NOT bid me welcome, dearest ; Do not say to me, Good-by ! » When I come, thy kisses, dearest ; When I go, then breathe a sigh. Not when coming thou dost see me, Do I come to thee, my dear : Ever when I'm parted from thee Stays my heart behind me here. Nor when going thou dost see me, Do I leave the sacred spot : Dearest, I remain there in the Chamber, though thou know'st it not. Translation of Charles Harvey Genung. SAD SPRING From the series of sonnets entitled In Memory of Agnes > "S" WEET Spring is here, " I heard men say and sing ; Then went I forth to seek where he might be: I found the buds on every bush and tree, But nowhere could I find my darling, Spring. Birds sang, the bees they hummed, but everything They sang or hummed was sad as sad could be ; Rills gushed, but all their waves were tears to me ; Suns laughed, —no joy to me their looks could bring. Nor of my darling could I find a trace, Till with my pilgrim staff I took my way To a well-known but long-neglected place, And there I found him , Spring : near where she lay, He sate, a beauteous boy, with tearful face, Like one who weeps above a mother's clay. Translation of C. T. Brooks. FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT 12461 THE SUN AND THE BROOK HE Sun he spoke THE To the Meadow- Brook, And said, " I sorely blame you; Through every nook The wild-flower folk You hunt, as naught could shame you. What but the light Makes them so bright, - The light from me they borrow? Yet me you slight, To get a sight At them, and I must sorrow ! Ah! pity take On me, and make Your smooth breast stiller, clearer ; And as I wake In the blue sky-lake, Be thou, O Brook, my mirror ! " The Brook flowed on, And said anon : - " Good Sun, it should not grieve you, That as I run I gaze upon The motley flowers, and leave you. You are so great In your heavenly state, And they so unpretending, On you they wait, And only get The graces of your lending. But when the sea Receiveth me, From them I must me sever: I then shall be A glass to thee, Reflecting thee forever. " Translation of J. S. Dwight. 12462 FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT THE DYING FLOWER DIALOGUE BETWEEN A PASSENGER AND A FADING VIOLET D PASSENGER ROOP not, poor flower ! - there's hope for thee : The spring again will breathe and burn, And glory robe the kingly tree, Whose life is in the sun's return ; And once again its buds will chime Their peal of joy from viewless bells, Though all the long dark winter-time They mourned within their dreary cells. FLOWER Alas ! no kingly tree am I, No marvel of a thousand years : I cannot dream a winter by, And wake with song when spring appears. At best my life is kin to death ; My little all of being flows From summer's kiss, from summer's breath, And sleeps in summer's grave of snows. PASSENGER Yet grieve not ! Summer may depart, And beauty seek a brighter home; But thou, thou bearest in thy heart The germ of many a life to come. Mayest lightly reck of autumn storms : Whate'er thine individual doom, Thine essence, blent with other forms, Will still shine out in radiant bloom! FLOWER Yes! moons will wane, and bluer skies Breathe blessing forth for flower and tree ; I know that while the unit dies, The myriad live immortally : But shall my soul survive in them ? Shall I be all I was before ? Vain dream ! I wither, soul and stem ; I die, and know my place no more ! FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT 12463 The sun may lavish life on them ; His light, in summer morns and eves, May color every dewy gem That sparkles on their tender leaves : But this will not avail the dead ; The glory of his wondrous face Who now rains lustre on my head, Can only mock my burial-place ! And woe to me, fond foolish one, To tempt an all-consuming ray! To think a flower could love the sun, Nor feel her soul dissolve away! Oh, could I be what once I was, How should I shun his fatal beam! Wrapt in myself, my life should pass But as a still, dark, painless dream ! But vainly in my bitterness I speak the language of despair : In life, in death, I still must bless The sun, the light, the cradling air! Mine early love to them I gave ; And now that yon bright orb on high Illumines but a wider grave, For them I breathe my final sigh! How often soared my soul aloft In balmy bliss too deep to speak, When Zephyr came and kissed with soft, Sweet incense breath my blushing cheek ! When beauteous bees and butterflies Flew round me in the summer beam, Or when some virgin's glorious eyes Bent o'er me like a dazzling dream ! Ah, yes ! I know myself a birth Of that All-wise, All-mighty Love, Which made the flower to bloom on earth, And sun and stars to burn above ; And if like them I fade and fail , If I but share the common doom, Let no lament of mine bewail My dark descent to Hades's gloom! Farewell, thou Lamp of this green globe! Thy light is on my dying face ; 12464 FRIEDRICH. RÜCKERT Thy glory tints my faded robe, And clasps me in a death embrace ! Farewell, thou balsam-dropping spring ! Farewell, ye skies that beam and weep ! Unhoping and unmurmuring, I bow my head and sink to sleep ! Translation of James Clarence Mangan. NATURE MORE THAN SCIENCE I HAVE a thousand thousand lays, Compact of myriad myriad words, And so can sing a million ways, Can play at pleasure on the chords Of tuned harp or heart ; Yet is there one sweet song For which in vain I pine and long ; I cannot reach that song, with all my minstrel art. A shepherd sits within a dell, O'er-canopied from rain and heat ; A shallow but pellucid well Doth bubble at his feet. His pipe is but a leaf, Yet there, above that stream, He plays and plays, as in a dream, One air that steals away the senses like a thief. A simple air it seems, in truth, And who begins will end it soon ; Yet when that hidden shepherd- youth So pours it in the ear of Noon, Tears flow from those anear. All songs of yours and mine Condensed in one were less divine Than that sweet air to sing, that sweet, sweet air to hear ! 'Twas yesternoon he played it last ; The hummings of a hundred bees Were in mine ears, yet as I passed I heard him through the myrtle-trees. Stretched all along he lay, 'Mid foliage half decayed ; His lambs were feeding while he played, And sleepily wore on the stilly summer day. Translation of James Clarence Mangan FRIEDRICH . RÜCKERT 12465 IT GREEDINESS PUNISHED T WAS the cloister Grabow, in the land of Usédom ; For years had God's free goodness to fill its larder come : They might have been contented ! Along the shore came swimming, to give the monks good cheer Who dwelt within the cloister, two fishes every year : They might have been contented ! Two sturgeons -two great fat ones -and then this law was set, That one of them should yearly be taken in a net : They might have been contented ! The other swam away then until next year came round, Then with a new companion he punctually was found : They might have been contented ! So then again they caught one, and served him in the dish, And regularly caught they, year in, year out, a fish : They might have been contented! One year, the time appointed two such great fishes brought, The question was a hard one, which of them should be caught : They might have been contented ! They caught them both together, but every greedy wight Just spoiled his stomach by it ; it served the gluttons right : They might have been contented ! This was the least of sorrows : hear how the cup ran o'er! Henceforward to the cloister no fish came swimming more : They might have been contented ! So long had God supplied them of his free grace alone, That now it is denied them, the fault is all their own : They might have been contented! XXI-780 Translation of C. T. Brooks. 12466 FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT THE PATRIOT'S LAMENT HAT forgest, smith ? " -" We're forging chains ; ay, " WHAchains ! "- "Alas! to chains yourselves degraded are ! " - " What plowest, farmer ? » — « Fields their fruit must bear. " — " Yes, seed for foes : the burr for thee remains ! " " What aim'st at, sportsman ? » ― " Yonder stag, so fat. ". " To hunt you down, like stag and roe, they'll try. " . " What snarest, fisher ? " " Yonder fish so shy. " . "Who's there to save you from your fatal net ? " - << - Boys. " - " What art thou rocking, sleepless mother ? » . " Yes : let them grow, and wound their country's fame, Slaves to her foes, with parricidal arm ! ". " What art thou writing, poet ? " — " Words of flame : I mark my own, record my country's harm, Whom thought of freedom never more employs. " I blame them not, who with the foreign steel Tear out our vitals, pierce our inmost heart ; For they are foes created for our smart, And when they slay us, why they do it, feel. But in these paths, ye seek what recompense ? For you what brilliant toys of fame are here, Ye mongrel foes, who lift the sword and spear Against your country, not for her defense ? Ye Franks, Bavarians, and ye Swabians, say-- Ye aliens, sold to bear the slavish name What wages for your servitude they pay. -- Your eagle may perchance redeem your fame ; More sure his robber train, ye birds of prey, To coming ages shall prolong your shame ! Translation of C. C. Felton. FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT 12467 BARBAROSSA HE ancient Barbarossa THEBy magic spell is bound, — Old Frederic the kaiser, In castle underground. The kaiser hath not perished, - He sleeps an iron sleep ; For in the castle hidden, He's sunk in slumber deep. With him the chiefest treasures Of empire hath he ta'en, Wherewith in fitting season He shall appear again. The kaiser he is sitting Upon an ivory throne; Of marble is the table His head he resteth on. His beard it is not flaxen : Like living fire it shines, And groweth through the table. Whereon his chin reclines. As in a dream he noddeth ; Then wakes he, heavy-eyed, And calls, with lifted finger, A stripling to his side : - - " Dwarf, get thee to the gateway, And tidings bring, if still Their course the ancient ravens Are wheeling round the hill. " For if the ancient ravens Are flying still around, A hundred years to slumber By magic spell I'm bound. " Translation by H. W. Dulcken. 12468 FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT THE DRUM H, THE drum -it rattles so loud! OH When it calls me with its rattle , To the battle -to the battleSounds that once so charmed my ear I no longer now can hear ; They are all an empty hum, For the drum – Oh, the drum -it rattles so loud! Oh, the drum - it rattles so loud! At the door with tearful eye, Father, mother, to me cry ; - Father! mother ! shut the door! I can hear you now no more! Ye might as well be dumb, For the drum - Oh, the drum -it rattles so loud ! Oh, the drum -it rattles so loud ! At the corner of the street, Where so oft we used to meet, Stands my bride, and cries, " Ah, woe! My bridegroom, wilt thou go?» Dearest bride, the hour is come! For the drum - Oh, the drum -it rattles so loud ! Oh, the drum -it rattles so loud ! My brother in the fight Bids a last, a long good-night ; And the guns, with knell on knell, Their tale of warning tell ; - But my ear to that is numb, For the drum -- Oh, the drum -it rattles so loud! Oh, the drum.-- it rattles so loud! There's no such stirring sound Is heard the wide world round As the drum that with its rattle Echoes Freedom's call to battle ! I fear no martyrdom While the drumOh, the drum --it rattles so loud! Translation of C. T. Brooks. FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT 12469 GONE IN THE WIND OLOMON ! where is thy throne ? It is gone in the wind. So Babylon ! where is thy might ? It is gone in the wind. Like the swift shadows of noon, like the dreams of the blind, Vanish the glories and pomps of the earth in the wind. Man! canst thou build upon aught in the pride of thy mind ? Wisdom will teach thee that nothing can tarry behind ; Though there be thousand bright actions embalmed and enshrined, Myriads and millions of brighter are snow in the wind. Solomon! where is thy throne ? It is gone in the wind. Babylon ! where is thy might ? It is gone in the wind. All that the genius of man hath achieved or designed Waits but its hour to be dealt with as dust by the wind. Say, what is pleasure ? A phantom, a mask undefined. Science ? An almond, whereof we can pierce but the rind. Honor and affluence ? Firmans that Fortune hath signed Only to glitter and pass on the wings of the wind. Solomon! where is thy throne ? It is gone in the wind. Babylon ! where is thy might ? It is gone in the wind. Who is the fortunate ? He who in anguish hath pined ! He shall rejoice when his relics are dust in the wind ! Mortal ! be careful with what thy best hopes are entwined. Woe to the miners for truth ―- where the lampless have mined ! Woe to the seekers on earth for- what none ever find! They and their trust shall be scattered like leaves on the wind. Solomon! where is thy throne ? It is gone in the wind. Babylon ! where is thy might ? It is gone in the wind. Happy in death are they only whose hearts have consigned All earth's affections and longings and cares to the wind. Pity thou, reader ! the madness of poor human-kind, Raving of knowledge- and Satan so busy to blind ! Raving of glory -like me ; -for the garlands I bind (Garlands of song) are but gathered, and -strewn in the wind! Solomon ! where is thy throne ? It is gone in the wind. Babylon ! where is thy might ? It is gone in the wind. I, Abul- Namez, must rest ; for my fire hath declined, And I hear voices from Hades like bells on the wind. Translation of James Clarence Mangan. 12470 FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT G TOLD BY A BRAHMIN OLD weighed ' gainst Honor is naught in the scale, - Hear of an Arab the ancient tale : - The eye of a robber was set on the steed That was dearer to him than wife or than creed. The steed was his joy both day and night, Her course was as swift as an arrow in flight. At night she was chained with a chain whose twist Through the tent-walls went to his sleeping wrist. But the robber-snake in the douar crept, While he and the men of his tribe all slept.

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He loosened the chain with which she was tied, He sprang on the mare and loudly cried : " Wake, fool, and know that I have thine horse ; Race after, and take her back by force. " The robbed and his tribe race hard behind, As fast as the simoom's desert wind. They are neck to croup - he will overtake ! - Like a flash came the thought, " Her fame is at stake. " If I overtake her she's mine again ; If not, with her robber she will remain. " Yet ten times rather lose her than she Should be overmatched, were it even by me. " To the robber he shouted loud and clear, " Fool, press your mount in her pricked right ear ! " For that was the spot that he touched at need, — The secret sign for the mare's full speed. The robber obeyed, and swift with him She vanished in dust o'er the desert's rim. Each man of the tribe turned round to upbraid : - " Thou hast thyself and thine horse betrayed. " Thou hast lost the best steed man ever crossed. " Said he, " Her honor remains unlost ! " Unconquered, -though lost for her honor's sake, That triumph no robber from me can take. " Translation of Elizabeth Craigmyle. 12471 GIOVANNI DOMENICO RUFFINI (1807-1881) IOVANNI DOMENICO RUFFINI, conspirator, politician, patriot, is remembered in none of these characters, -not rare in his time and country, -but as a novelist ; and especially as the author of one book, ' Dr. Antonio, ' -a lovely record of love, patriotism, and despair. His first story, ' Lorenzo Benoni, ' purporting to be a novel, is really an autobiography; a faithful transcript of his boyhood and life. in Italy between 1818 and 1833, when Piedmont was the stronghold of despotism, and when Ruffini, who was educated at the university (he was born in Genoa in 1807) , was one of the band of high if turbulent spirits - Mazzini the leader -who joined the " Young Italy " movement and set up the national standard. ' Lorenzo ' in one way merited the attention accorded it in the first reviews of the day. It fell at a lucky moment, and was filled with Italian politics, then at their most interesting moment. To the modern reader its sole interest is in one unique quality : the naïve expression of a conspirator's life, its futility, its childishness, its splendid courage, its duplicity, its high motives, and the stage tricks used to elevate it —as the author unconsciously betrays. The minute details of Italian school life are faithful enough ; but a pedagogue is a pedagogue the world over, and his portrait can never be a novel one. Ruffini fled to France in 1833, and afterwards to England, where he studied the language with such assiduity that it is hard to believe that the tongue in which he wrote is not his own. On the promulgation of the constitution of 1848 he re-entered Italian politics, and was deputy from Taggia, the little Riviera town which was to achieve romantic distinction as the scene of ' Dr. Antonio.' Charles Albert appointed him Sardinian minister to France ; but the battle of Novara having resulted in the abdication of the King and his own exile, he returned to London, and wrote a series of novels depicting Italian life during the revolutions of 1833 and 1848. ' Lavinia, ' ' Paragreens, ' ' Carlino, ' and ' Vincenzo ' have the single merit of so portraying the fortunes of commonplace men and women, that the foreigner is able to understand their temper and social opportunity. Between the gloomy Lorenzo Benoni ' and the other unremarkable stories that 12472 GIOVANNI DOMENICO RUFFINI follow, Dr. Antonio ' shines out an almost flawless jewel among a handful of smooth pebbles. Ruffini spent his peaceful age in Taggia, and died there in 1881. 'Dr. Antonio, ' published in 1855 , is written in a style as far as possible from the modern manner. The author does not fill his canvas with figures, and then stand off, a dispassionate observer, to see how they look and move. He is frankly the partisan, the protector, of his hero and heroine ; and prodigal in gifts to them of beauty, character, and charm. He crowns his Lucy with golden hair, his Antonio with dark curls, the one the complement of the other. His language is old-fashioned ; and through his limpid sentences walk " Lucy the fair, " "Antonio the noble. " The story rests on supports which, though firm , are slender. Lucy Davenne, a young English girl, accompanied by her father, an insular, prejudiced , wealthy baronet, traveling by carriage along the Cornice road, is overturned at a dangerous pass and seriously injured. The parish doctor of the little town of Taggia happens to rescue her, carries her to an inn, and afterward attends her with patience and skill through a long invalidism. The romance which grows softly, sweetly, daily, before our eyes, is revealed by no gesture, no sound. Not a whisper, even to the reader, breaks the silence of perfect reserve, entire reticence. The unspoken love has a larger life, and permeates the atmosphere ; it is a part of the fragrance of the flowers ; it is breathed in the cool wind, tremulous with feeling. And perfect art leaves it so, -unanalyzed, undefined . Long and lovely are their days in the little osteria on the olivecrowned height, the rainbow- colored Mediterranean at their feet, and the snow mountains piercing the northern horizon. Pleasant the hours when they drive along the silvery tract of road that undulates among palms and olives, from the bending coast to frowning hills, whose outlines are veiled in mists of mother-of-pearl. But when they wake from their day-dream, and Lucy is forced to return to England, the reader, with Dr. Antonio, can only submit. Parental authority is supreme in Italian eyes ; and Antonio, poet and dreamer, has the practicality of his race and station . After the lapse of years, Lucy, now the widow of an English lord, returns to Italy, with the unconfessed purpose of seeing Antonio again. He has thrown himself into politics, and become an authority in the Liberal party. They meet, but scarcely an hour of intercourse is vouchsafed them ; for a crisis has come in the affairs of the country. The battle of Novara is fought and lost ; and Antonio is captured, tried, and sentenced to imprisonment for life on the gloomy promontory which overlooks Ischia. The calamity which befalls her lover makes of the timid Lucy a very Machiavelli. With what art the GIOVANNI DOMENICO RUFFINI 12473 author shows the change ! how prodigal of self, of money, of charm to win her way! And finally it is done. The boat which is to rescue him passes under the prison walls, hands are stretched out to save him, he has but to leap into the soft darkness of the Italian night ; but he does not come. The astonished, the indignant messen. gers bring back to Lucy a little note, the letters formed by holes pierced in the paper. " There are five here besides myself: all noble fellows, the least of them worth ten of me. I cannot desert them. You cannot save us all ; leave me to my fate. Providence has assigned me my place among the sufferers. Perhaps our trials will be reckoned to our country. Pray that it may be so. Pray for Italy. God bless you. Your own A— . ” The unuttered romance ends in failure and death. Does the sentimentalist protest that the real Antonio would not have submitted to fate, or taken his country for a mistress when love failed ? Antonio was a character called out of the unordered individualities of Italian life, and patriotism with him might well have been the absorbing passion. And what of the vain sacrifice, the immolation to an idea, which bound him to his chains when his duty was to love ? For Antonio there was no choice. The high resolve, the senseless, noble, quixotic action, was but the expression of his ideal. Ruffini was a man of one book ; a dignified and interesting figure. IT THE IDYL AT A CLOSE From ' Dr. Antonio › WAS one of those hot sultry days in the month of August, so trying to the nerves of sensitive people, and during which Nature, as it were, herself exhausted, seems to come to a standstill. Shooting through a thin veil of white clouds, as through a burning-glass, the rays of the sun poured down upon the earth volumes of heavy malignant heat. No leaf stirred, no bird was singing ; the very cicadas had suspended their shrill chirp. The only sound that occasionally broke the ominous stillness was the plaintive cry of the cuckoo calling to its mate. Lucy had tried drawing, gardening, practicing, sleeping, all with no success ; and now lay panting on a sofa. " Here you are at 1 last ! " said she, as Dr. Antonio walked in : " I have been longing for you these two hours. I feel so ill . " " Indeed ! " exclaimed Antonio, turning white : " what is the matter with you ? I met Sir John on his way to the count's not 12474 GIOVANNI DOMENICO RUFFINI an hour ago, and he never breathed a syllable about your being unwell. " " I said nothing about the matter to papa, " answered Lucy: " he is uneasy enough already at not having heard from Aubrey. " " You mean your brother ? " " Yes : Aubrey was to write by the Indian mail, which we see has arrived, and without bringing any letter from him. " " I am very sorry for that, " said Antonio. " But tell me all about yourself. You have not been coughing, have you ? » " No, but I feel very uncomfortable : so faint -so oppressedso hot. " " No wonder. weather. Everybody suffers more or less from this Let me feel your pulse . -There is no fever. It is this confounded sirocco that tells on your nerves. Now just lie down again quietly, " and he arranged the pillows under her head, - " and I will try to make you more comfortable. Miss Hutchins, " he added, walking away, " will you make a glass of strong lemonade for Miss Davenne ? the juice of two lemons in half a tumbler of water -lukewarm water, if you please. " - " Yes, sir," answered the lady's-maid, in the most mellifluous voice at her command. Miss Hutchins, be it known, was quite conquered: a hard conquest, but Antonio had achieved it. The once stiff abigail now courted his notice, and prided herself in carrying out his directions. Presently Antonio reappeared, followed by Speranza, both of them looking like Jacks-in-the-green on a May morning, or like a bit of Birnam Wood, from the quantity of cut boughs they were carrying. They spread them all over the floor ; then, Rosa bringing in a watering-pot, the doctor watered the branches several times, saying, " This will soon cool us, provided we let in no air from the furnace without. " He shut up the glass door, and let down the green curtain over it so as to create a twilight. " Do you like your lemonade ? " he asked, as Lucy put down her glass. " Very much : it is so refreshing. " " Do you feel inclined to go to sleep ? " " No, " said Lucy: " are you going ? " " Not unless you feel sleepy.. You do not ? Very well. Shall I read to you ? " continued Antonio, going to the book-shelves near the piano, and coming back with a book ; " shall I read you something from your favorite poet, Giusti ? " GIOVANNI DOMENICO RUFFINI 12475 " What a clever man you are ! " said Lucy, instead of answering the question. " I feel better already. What is to become of me when you are no long- " The rest of the phrase was lost in a burst of tears. Poor Antonio stood still, with the book in his hand and large tears in his eyes, -within an ace of crying also. Fortunately for him, something stuck in his throat at this moment and necessitated his clearing it violently. Having by this means recovered his voice, he said, " See how nervous you are : you weep without the least cause, as if you were going away to-morrow. Don't you know the Italian proverb, ' Prendi tempo e camperai › ? » His tone was that of a mother chiding her pet child . There ensued a pause, during which Lucy by degrees recovered from her emotion. " Doctor, " said she all at once, " do you believe in presentiments ? >>> " Not a bit, " replied Antonio briskly ; " I believe in the sirocco. " " You are wrong, then, " said Lucy gravely. " Did you not tell me once of sensitive plants which foretold storms ? Well, I am one of them. I am sure that some misfortune is about to happen to me. I feel it in the air. " " You feel the treacherous south wind, that is what you feel. A shower of rain will put your discomfort and presentiments all to flight. " Lucy shook her head incredulously ; then said, " Will you read to me? anything you choose. " " Let us try ' Il Brindisi di Don Girella. ' It is so droll, it will make you laugh ; " and carrying a chair close to the glass door, in order to profit by the little light that stole in through it, he began reading. We have reasons of our own for particularizing as minutely as possible the details of this domestic scene, and the position with regard to each other of reader and listener. Alittle to the right of the glass door, at some five or six paces from it, stood sidewise the sofa on which Lucy was lying, her face towards the light. She had on a white muslin gown with a blue sash ; her broad-brimmed straw hat was hanging by its blue ribbons on a corner of the back of the sofa, just over her head. Miss Hutchins, her arms crossed before her, sat at the large table in the 12476 GIOVANNI DOMENICO RUFFINI centre of the room, busily engaged in trying to swallow a series of obstinate yawns that would not be suppressed. Opposite to Lucy that is, to the left of the glass door, but so close to it that the green curtain touched his book -was seated Antonio. - Well, the reading had been going on for some time , and more than once had the condensed vis comica of the inimitable poet brought a faint smile on Lucy's pale face. By degrees, however, her perception of the author's meaning became fainter and fainter; and the rich melodious voice of the reader, soothing her like the murmuring of a brook, lulled the sweet girl into that state which is not yet sleep, yet neither is it waking, but a voluptuous compound of the two. All on a sudden a heavy footstep is heard coming up the stairs. Lucy started up : " Who can that be ? " faltered she with a shudder. At the same instant the glass door is flung open with a crash, a colossal figure stalks in noisily, and " Halloa, Lucy, my girl, " roars out a voice like thunder, as the living tower stoops down to kiss the prostrate form . " Here you are at last ! Heyday ! What is all this ? By Jove ! with your green boughs and watering- pots you look as pastoral as one of the shepherdesses in a ballet. Une chaumière et ton cœur. Ah! ah! nothing is wanting to the idyl, as they used to say at Eton ; d- it , not even the shepherd! more. >> "Aubrey ! " cried Lucy in a tone of reproach, but could say no The oath and witty sally, we need scarcely remark, were aimed at our friend the doctor. Antonio had received such a violent slap from the door, when Aubrey entered, as to be nearly felled to the ground ; and in the effort to recover his balance , his chair was upset. The new-comer turned round at the noise, saw Antonio, and uttered the silly vapid joke about the shepherd. The eyes of the two men met in no friendly way. Aubrey's haughty scowl, curled lip, and somewhat aggressive demeanor, evinced little good-will to the object of his present scrutiny. Antonio's firm - set lips, ashy- pale countenance, and collected look of self- defense, gave evidence of his scenting the near approach of a foe. Thus they stood, confronting each other, types of two fine races, two such as even Greece and Rome had seldom seen the like of the one, fair, rosy, blue-eyed; (Lucy's very eyes !) the other, dark as a tempest : the Englishman taller by nearly a head than his tall antagonist, square- chested , broad-shouldered in proportion, the very ne plus ultra of muscular development and GIOVANNI DOMENICO RUFFINI 12477 strength; Italian less bulky but as firmly knit, springy and supple as a tiger, with iron nerves and sinews, ready servants of the indomitable will betrayed in the sombre fire of his eyes. God grant that they may never meet in anger, for theirs will be like the meeting of two thunder- clouds ! This mutual survey did not last ten seconds ; but even that time sufficed to develop between the two a strong feeling of antipathy. Lucy, woman-like, divined it, and her increasing terror loosened her tongue. " My brother, Captain Davenne : Dr. Antonio, my doctor, -papa's best friend . " The words broke the spell. Captain Davenne bowed slightly, as did Dr. Antonio. A parting recommendation to Lucy to keep quiet, and to go to bed early if she did not feel better in the evening, and the doctor withdrew. Aubrey began kicking about in the most uproarious manner all the chairs and arm-chairs that were in the room, every fresh kick eliciting a fresh start from Lucy ; till at last, having disposed them somewhat symmetrically by the side of the sofa, he stretched his ponderous limbs on this extempore couch, talking loudly all the while. Lucy was thus made aware, between one kick and the other, of the string of lucky circumstances which had procured for her so unexpectedly the blessing of her brother's company. They were briefly these : The invalid brother officer, whose duties had devolved upon Aubrey, recovering more rapidly than had been anticipated, Captain Davenne had in consequence been enabled to sail by the very Indian mail the arrival of which, without a letter from him, had caused Sir John's uneasiness in the morning. What was the use of writing when he should reach England at the same time as his letter ? In London he had met Tom Carnifex, -eldest son of Lord Carnifex, -who had just received a hasty summons from his father to join him at Florence as quickly as he could. Tom had offered Aubrey a place in his britschka ; Aubrey had accepted it, and here he was. Of the stranger he had found in his sister's company, of the pleasant or unpleasant impression made on him by the sight, not a single word. Who so surprised and happy and elated as Sir John, when on entering the room soon after, the firstthing his eyes fell upon was his long- missed treasure, Aubrey, seated by the side of his sister ? Sir John would, had his sense of decorum permitted, 12478 GIOVANNI DOMENICO RUFFINI have done foolish things. How proudly and fondly he gazed on the " boy, " as he called him! Truth to say, Aubrey's Herculean proportions and handsome features must have excited the admiration of a more impartial judge than his father. The baronet's eager inquiries immediately brought forth a second edition of Aubrey's statements just related ; and then began between father and son a brisk fire of queries and answers, like hammers plying in quick succession on an anvil. No wonder they had much to say to one another, considering their ten years' separation. They rattled on uninterruptedly, until John Ducket's advent to lay the cloth for dinner put an end to their effusions. Captain Davenne complimented John on his good looks ; an honor which spread on John's grave face a grin of intense complacency. The two gentlemen then adjourned to Sir John's own room, from whence they were shortly after summoned forth by the announcement that dinner was on the table. Aubrey ate and drank enough for two; and as he ate and drank, his praises of the fare, the wines, the situation, rendered still more impressive by sundry oaths and tremendous peals of laughter, which made plates, glasses, decanters, and the very glass door ring again, grew louder and louder. " By-the- by, my dear boy, " said the baronet, " at what inn did Carnifex leave you ? " "At none,'>> was the answer. " I left my portmanteau at a kind of pot-house, where he changed horses. I say, John, you must go there after dinner and have my portmanteau brought here. " " I am afraid, " said Sir John, " that there is no room for you here: it is a mere nutshell ; there is not a hole to spare, I know. " " Never mind, " retorted Aubrey: " à la guerre comme à la guerre; I can sleep on the sofa, or on the ground, anywhere. Here I am, and here I mean to stay; for I suppose you won't turn me out by force. " This being Aubrey's ultimatum, from which it was clear that no reasons, however good, would divert him, a short consultation ensued between Sir John and John Ducket, the upshot of which was that John should manage to find a resting- place for himself where he could, and that his room should be made as comfortable as possible for his young master. To be of service to Aubrey, John would have willingly slept in the fields. GIOVANNI DOMENICO RUFFINI 12479 Dinner over, Captain Davenne, to Sir John's great amazement and consternation, lighted an enormous cigar. << First- rate cigar, " said he, puffing away: " I hope you don't dislike the smell, Lucy; I know my father doesn't. " Lucy protested she had no objection to it —she rather liked it than not. Now the truth was that she could not bear it. What was it that forced from her an assertion so little consonant with the truth ? Lucy almost unconsciously felt a sort of necessity to humor her brother. Poor, timid, weak Lucy! How many of thy sisters have I seen, as candid and artless as thou art, sin in a like and worse way, to propitiate such bears as this brother of thine ! For all which sins, let us hope, not the weak, sensitive things will be called to account some day, but the blustering, overbearing rulers in whose violence the sins originated. Sir John neither openly admitted nor contradicted Aubrey's declaration as to himself : it might be he did not feel sure how a flat denial on his part would be received, or it might be that he chose on the first day of reunion to be indulgent. He only prudently proposed a levée en masse to the garden, where they would have coffee. The usual hour for Antonio's evening call was now past, and no Antonio had appeared. " I hope the doctor is not going to give us the slip, " said Sir John, after he had consulted his watch two or three times. " My son's company is no good reason why I should not have my friend's also. I wish you very much to make his acquaintance, Aubrey : as nice a man, this Dr. Antonio, as you could meet anywhere, -quite a gentleman ; we are under infinite obligations to him. " And then Sir John told his son all over again the story of the overturn, and the Italian's timely help, already related in sundry letters to India ; and warming with the subject, the baronet went on to enlarge on all the unremitting attention Antonio had paid to Lucy, and how ingeniously he had contrived to amuse her during her confinement to the house. The lending of books, the lectures on botany, the lessons on the guitar, were all set forth ; the catalogue winding up with that stupendous master- stroke, the easy-chair invented by the doctor. To all of which discourse Aubrey listened with an attention quite edifying, and an appearance of great gratification, a gratification made more evident as he watched the pleasure the details afforded to his darling sister, on whose glowing countenance the sympathizing brother's eyes rested all the while 12480 GIOVANNI DOMENICO RUFFINI " I long to shake hands with this phoenix of doctors, " said Aubrey, " and apologize for my rudeness. I suppose it was he I found here this morning ? " " Yes," said Lucy. " What do you say, " continued Aubrey, speaking to Sir John, but looking at his sister, " to our going and laying violent hands on this forgetful friend of yours, and dragging him captive here? ha! ha! ha! " " Ah, do ! " said Lucy, with sparkling eyes, and inwardly calling herself all sorts of names for having so unkindly misjudged her brother. Sir John agreeing immediately to the proposal, Captain Davenne lit a fresh cigar, and out they sallied. As they passed through the garden-gate, Aubrey was seized by a violent fit of laughing. -- " What are you laughing at ? " asked Sir John, perplexed. " Why, this is such a devilish queer house- such a wrongsided look about it. I would give something to carry it bodily to London, and show it at a shilling a head. I bet something no one would credit that Sir John and Miss Davenne had lived contentedly weeks in it . I verily believe Hutchins and John have forgotten what a decent room is like. " Sir John felt his son's words as a personal reproach. He hung his head. "Àpropos de bottes » (Aubrey had been in love with a French actress at Madras, and spoke French fluently, and liked to show that he did) , " the old Duke of B— asked after you. " “ Very kind of him, " said the baronet, his features expanding. " How is the old gentleman ? ” " As fresh as ever, " said Aubrey. " He wondered what had become of you. Indeed, everybody does : Lady Deloraine most of all , at whose house I met the ian ambassadress, and her daughter-in-law Lady Charlotte Tuicy, both of them full of suspicions about your absence, and willing to join in any conspiracy for carrying you off by force from your mysterious hiding- place." " God forbid they should put their threat in execution ! " said the baronet chuckling. " But talking of carrying off, have you heard of that pretty business of Fanny Carnifex's elope— ” " Blast the cowardly Italian beggar ! " yelled out Aubrey. " I have heard all about it. " "Are they married, at least ? " asked Sir John with an effort. " They are ; but it is a matrimonial alliance that won't last long. Fanny will soon be a jolly widow, I can tell her. " GIOVANNI DOMENICO RUFFINI 12481 " How do you mean ? " inquired Sir John, surprised. Aubrey stopped short, slowly raised his right arm, held it out as if taking aim, and with a clack of his tongue, imitated the report of a pistol. " Tom Carnifex is one of the best shots in England, my dear sir, " said he carelessly, by way of explanation . The acting of this little scene was so splendidly natural, there was in the look of the performer something so savage, that Sir John could not help a shudder. However desirable it might have once seemed to him that the offender should be made an example of, it was no part of Sir John's programme of to-day to be present at the execution. Engrossed by such pleasant converse and anticipations, the chief of the Davenne dynasty and his heir had come in sight of Dr. Antonio's poor dwelling just as its tenant, in no very pleasant mood, was issuing from the door. Antonio was little prepared for the present warm greeting from the surly stranger of a few hours back, who now, shaking him heartily by the hand, made a sort of laughing apology for having been so unceremonious in the morning. Though rather taken by surprise , the Italian returned Aubrey's advances in as kindly a spirit as he could summon on such short notice ; and the three, Antonio in the middle, walked back to the Osteria, where they found the count, between whom and young Davenne an introduction in due form took place. The evening passed, if not as quietly as usual, not the less agreeably, perhaps, for being rather noisy. Captain Davenne was in the most communicative of humors, and rattled away famously, laughing a good deal at his own jokes and stories, drinking freely all the while of what he called lemonade ; and so it was, only with a strong infusion of old Jamaica rum. Some of his tiger-hunting adventures, which he told with great spirit, were listened to with thrilling interest, -Antonio translating for the count, who had learnt about as much English as Sir John had Italian. Lucy retired early, but not before she had seen a real good-will and friendship springing up between her brother and her doctor and friend. Let us hope that she slept well, poor girl. As ten struck, Sir John and Antonio according to habit sat down to their game of chess, which was on the baronet's part a series of continual blunders. His thoughts were otherwise engaged. When Lucy, about eight next morning, after her early bath and one or two hours of additional rest, crossed the anteroom on her way out, she found her brother already installed on the sofa, and yawning violently. XXI-781 12482 GIOVANNI DOMENICO RUFFINI "Where are you going ? " asked Aubrey. " To water my flowers. I have a nice little garden of my own: come and look at it. " Aubrey raised his long length, went, looked at it, and admired it. The garden was not her own making, was it ? Oh no ! Speranza had made it ; Speranza, the landlady's daughter, a very nice girl. Dr. Antonio had given Lucy most of the plants. "Are they not beautiful ? » " Very, " said Aubrey ; adding, " Do you know, Lucy, I am quite in love with that doctor of yours ? " "Are you ? " said Lucy, looking up at him with such beaming eyes! " I have seldom seen a more commanding figure than his ; and he is very gentleman-like, certainly. I wish he were an English duke. " " Why? " said Lucy. " I assure you he is quite contented with his lot. " " Because if he were, young lady, you would make a handsome couple. " Lucy grew scarlet. "As it is, " pursued Aubrey slowly, in a clear, cruel, stern voice, - " as it is, I would rather see you dead and buried than married to that man. ” The little watering-pot slipt out of her hand, and her knees gave way. " D it ! " cried Aubrey, raising her from the ground, " you needn't take fright at a mere supposition ! " And without another word he passed his powerful arm round his sister's waist, and led her up the stairs to the sofa. This was the first and the last time that Antonio's name was mentioned between them. The doctor called, as was his wont, during the morning ; but instead of his usual warm recognition from Lucy he received a silent bow. Her cheeks were dreadfully pale, her eyes red. He inquired about her health, and got a hurried answer that she was very well. He would have felt her pulse : there was no need, she assured him, -she was very comfortable. When he stooped over her shoulder to examine her drawing, she recollected that she had left a brush in her room which was indispensable at that moment, and got up to fetch it. There was a constraint about poor Lucy which Antonio had never seen. His heart contracted painfully. That Aubrey was the cause of the sweet girl's altered looks and manner, Antonio had not the least doubt ; but how and why? Was he, Antonio, in any way connected with this new state of things ? To solve the mystery he GIOVANNI DOMENICO RUFFINI 12483 would have willingly shed his blood. Oh for ten seconds alone with her, but ten, to ask one question, receive one answer ! He loitered longer than he generally did, to take advantage of a possible chance. In vain. There stood between him and her a moving Chinese wall. Four days passed without the situation mending. Aubrey had taken such a fancy to the wretched Osteria that neither the count's pressing invitations, nor his father's exhortations to take his horse and go and enjoy the fine scenery, could prevail upon the colossal dragoon to leave its precincts for a moment ; unless Lucy did, which was commonly the case in the evening, when he would put her arm under his and fondly support her steps. All the rest of the day, from seven in the morning to eleven at night, Aubrey would spend indoors, most of the time stretched at full length, smoking and indulging in his favorite beverage ; or shaking the poor inn with his ponderous strides. His most gracious smile and heartiest squeeze of the hand was for Antonio, to whom he had taken such a liking that for nothing in the world would Aubrey have missed a minute of his new friend's company. A boisterous, rather vulgar, lively, good- tempered, companionable fellow, this young Davenne, easily satisfied with everything and everybody, making light of the inconveniences of his far from comfortable room down- stairs, never hinting by word or look at any the least wish on his part to leave his present quarters. His conversation with Sir John turned almost exclusively, it is true, on London (the London, we mean, whose existence is acknowledged by people of rank and fashion) , London gayeties, the illustrious relatives and acquaintances of the Davenne family, or the general regret at the baronet's prolonged absence, and so on. But nine times out of ten it was Sir John himself who broached the subject ; and then, was it not natural and proper for a dutiful son to dwell on such topics as were palpably the most agreeable to his father ? Meanwhile the healthy bloom was fading fast from Lucy's cheek, and her head drooped like a lily deprived of sunshine . It was not enough that poor Lucy was to be weaned all at once from the joys and benefits of the friendly intercourse which habit had made a sweet necessity to her But she had to wear a mask, and act a part too cruelly at variance with her feelings. Why she was compelled to do so she scarcely knew; but a mysterious warning from within told her that only at such a cost might something awful be averted . Her heart was full of strange 12484 GIOVANNI DOMENICO RUFFINI - misgivings and fears. Aubrey's show of friendship to Antonio, far from reassuring her, added to her uneasiness. It was clear, even to her inexperienced eye, that all that extreme good- will was assumed, a mere display ; and being so, what could be Aubrey's motive ? And the saddened girl brooded till her head grew giddy over the hostility of the two young men's first meeting, the significant hint given to her on the morrow, and Aubrey's sudden change of manner. No pleasant early associations connected with the boy came to counteract the painful impressions aroused by the full -grown man. Aubrey, be it remembered, had spent his boyhood at Eton ; and of his holidays Lucy recalled little , excepting her terrors for her doll, and for a favorite kitten it had been his delight to torment. But there was no want of clearness in her perceptions with regard to his six- months' stay at home previous to his entering the army. The almost daily quarrels between father and son, her mother all in tears, the gloom that pervaded the family, Aubrey's angry scowl, and something worse, in return for her childish attempts at conciliation (she was scarcely ten years old at the time) , and the fear in which she stood of him : such were Lucy's sole recollections, such the images and feelings linked in her memory with that brother of hers. Intervening years had softened, but not obliterated, these impressions ; and the Aubrey that to the day of his arrival figured in his sister's mind was anything but the type of youthful dutifulness and affection. What she had now seen of him brought the conviction home to her that the man had kept the promise of the boy. Lucy from the first had felt afraid of him. His boisterous ways and overbearing manners, his frequent oaths and coarse mirth, told cruelly on her nerves, and wounded all the sympathies of her refined nature. Delicate, sensitive organizations like Lucy's have an inborn horror of violence in any shape : it is with them a dissolving element, ― something incompatible with their being, from which they shrink as instinctively as those plants to which Miss Davenne had likened herself in her last conversation with Dr. Antonio, shrink from the touch of a hand. On these grounds alone would the pressure of Aubrey's presence have been too much for Lucy. How incomparably more so when fancy obscurely hinted at the possible bursting of that violence, of which she stood in such awe, in a direction where much of her grateful affection and reverence lay! - GIOVANNI DOMENICO RUFFINI 12485 - On the fourth day from his son's arrival, Sir John gave a farewell dinner, and announced to the small but select partythe count, the mayor, Dr. Antonio, etc. - that his departure was fixed for the day after the next. Aubrey might watch his sister as much as he pleased, Lucy did not wince. Indeed, her misery was such that she felt almost relieved by the announcement. So that she may but say, " Thank you, Dr. Antonio : God bless you and your country ! " so that she may but say this to him freely, as her heart prompts, without restraint, with no eye upon her, Lucy will depart in peace. This thought is ever uppermost in her mind ; nay, she has no thought but this one, which presses on her temples like a crown of thorns, -to thank and bless him. It would look so unfeeling not to do so. This man has been all forbearance, all gentleness, all kindness to her. What could a friend, a brother, a father, do more than he has done for her! " Bless you and your country. " She murmurs the words to herself ; she would fain write them down for him, but that they look so cold on paper. He has no idea, she is sure, of the depth of her gratitude, of all that she is feeling. Fool that she was, not to have let him know when time was her own, -when no dark cloud cast its shadow between them; on one of these bright mornings frittered away in general conversation on the balcony; on one of these moonlit evenings spent by the water's edge, so near that the silvery wave came creeping lovingly to their very feet. Oh, those sweet strolls in the garden, -those boatings on the blue sea, -that blessed trip to Lampedusa ! Oh that she could recall one minute, only one, of that past ! Vain yearnings, vain imaginings ! Unrelenting time rolls on, the day is come, the very hour of departure is at hand, and Lucy has found no opportunity of unburdening her heart. She sits on her invalid- chair looking vacantly before her, as though in a dream ; Aubrey and Antonio stand in the balcony and discuss the English policy in India, Antonio with a very pale face and unwonted animation of manner; Sir John paces the room , meditating a farewell speech, casting now and then a disconsolate glance at his daughter; Hutchins is bustling up and down, in and out, in a state of flurry and excitement ; John Ducket left for Nice in the morning to make room for the captain in the rumble ; and poor Hutchins has been working for two. She announces that the horses are to the carriage. " Now, Lucy, " says the baronet encouragingly. Aubrey is already at his sister's side , 12486 GIOVANNI DOMENICO RUFFINI and helps her to rise. Hutchins has noticed a small basket hanging on Lucy's arm, and offers to carry it for her; Lucy draws it back hurriedly, and frowns on her maid. A handful of poor withered, almost colorless flowers, once so blue, —such is the treasure she clings to so closely. As Sir John and the doctor go down the steps, followed by Aubrey and Miss Davenne, a number of persons assembled in the garden take off their hats and caps and wave them in the air. Sir John's tongue cleaves to his palate, and he gives up his speech. He even thinks it prudent to proceed to the shaking of hands in silence . Those who choose to kiss his hand - Prospero, his younger brother, their aged mother all are free to do so now. Sir John offers no resistance . Meanwhile Aubrey hurries Lucy on to the little gate where the carriage is waiting. Rosa and Speranza, and a little in the rear, Battista, are crying like fountains. Lucy returns half unconsciously the warm caresses of the two women, who kiss her hands and clothes, and cling desperately to their young benefactress, until Aubrey with an oath jerks her into the carriage. Antonio helps the baronet in. " Pleasant journey, Sir John ; buon viaggio, signorina, take care of yourself. " The signorina does not say a word, does not smile, does not bow, but stares at the kind face -the kind face that dares not even smile, alas ! for it feels the evil eye resting on it . A clack from the postilion ; a shout from the assembled bystanders, "Buon viaggio, il signore gli accompagni; ” —the ponderous machine rolls up the lane, and the kind face disappears . Lucy arouses from her trance : " Papa, are we going ? " and she bursts into a passion of tears . It was like the giving way of a dam in a river. Papa fairly gives way too, hugs the suffering child to his bosom, and father and daughter mingle their tears . While this passes within, Aubrey, in the rumble, lights a fresh cigar from the one he had been smoking. Those left behind stood on the highway watching the fast diminishing carriage. They watched till it disappeared. Poor Antonio was sick at heart, and would fain throw off his mask. But no : he must listen to the idle verbiage of the count and the mayor, who insisted on accompanying him home. He reached it at last, threw himself upon his bed, and -man is but man after all -wept like a child. 12487 JALĀL- AD- DİN RŪMI (A. D. 1207-1273) BY A. V. WILLIAMS JACKSON

THE appellation Rūmi, or Syrian, is given to the Persian poet Jalāl-ad-din because most of his life was passed at Iconium in Rum, or Asia Minor. His full name is recorded as Jalāl-ad-din Mohammed Rūmi ; he is generally known as Jalāl-ad- din, or Splendor of the Faith, " but it is convenient to record his name, according to Western methods, under the simple form Rūmi. This Persian poet may best be remembered as the founder of the Maulavi sect of dervishes, or the whirling dervishes as they are often called ; whose austerity of life, mystic philosophy, enthusiastic devotion, and religious ecstasy superinduced by the whirling dance, are familiar to readers of Eastern literature. The writings of Jalāl- ad- din, like Jāmi, Nizāmī, and others, breathe the religious spirituality of Sufi philosophy : the world and all that is comprised therein is but a part of God, and the universe exists only through God ; the Love Divine is all- pervading, and the rivers of life pour their waters into the boundless ocean of the supreme soul ; man must burnish the mirror of his heart and wipe away the dross of self that blurs the perfect image there. This is a keynote to the " Rūmian's " religious and mystic poetry. Jalāl-ad-din Rumi was not only himself renowned, but he inherited renown from a noble father and from distinguished ancestors. The blood of the old Khvarismian kings flowed in his veins. He was born in Balkh, Bactria, A. D. 1207. The child's father was a zealous teacher and preacher, a scholar whose learning and influence won for him so great popularity with the people of Balkh as to arouse the jealous opposition of the reigning Sultan. Obliged to leave his native city, this worthy man wandered westward with his family, and ultimately settled in Syria, where he founded a college under the generous patronage of the Sultan of Rūm, as Asia Minor is termed in the Orient. He died honored with years and with favors, at a moment when his son had recently passed into manhood. Upon his father's death Jalāl-ad-din succeeded to the noble teacher's chair, and entered upon the distinguished career for which his natural gifts and splendid training had destined him. He was already 12488 JALAL-AD-DIN RUMI married ; and when sorrow came in the untimely death of a son , and in the sad fate of a beloved teacher, his life seems to have taken on a deeper tinge of sombre richness and a fuller tone of spiritual devotion, that colors his poetry. Revered for his teaching, his purity of life, and his poetic talents, the " Rūmian's " fame soon spread, and he became widely followed . Among many anecdotes that are told of his upright but uneventful life is a sort of St. Patrick story, that ascribes to him supernatural power and influence. Preaching one time on the bank of a pond, to a large concourse of eager listeners who had assembled to drink in his inspired words, his voice was drowned by the incessant croaking of innumerable frogs. The pious man calmly proceeded to the brink of the water and bade the frogs be still. Their mouths were instantly sealed. When his discourse was ended, he turned once more to the marge of the lake and gave the frogs permission again to pipe up. Immediately their hoarse voices began to sound, and their lusty croaking has since been allowed to continue in this hallowed spot. To-day, Jalāl-ad- dîn Rūmī's fame rests upon one magnum opus, the 'Masnavi' or ' Mathnavi. ' The title literally signifies " measure, " then a poem composed in that certain measure, then the poem par excel lence that is composed in that measure, the ' Masnavi. ' It is a large collection of some 30,000 or 40,000 rhymed couplets, teaching Divine love and the purification of the heart, under the guise of tales, anecdotes, precepts, parables, and legends. The poetic merit, religious fervor, and philosophic depth of the work are acknowledged. Six books make up the contents of the poem ; and it seems to have been finished just as Jalāl-ad-din, the religious devotee, mystic philosopher, and enthusiastic poetic teacher, died A. D. 1273. The best collection of bibliographical material is that given by Ethé in Geiger and Kuhn's ' Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie, ' Vol. ii . , pages 289-291 . The first of the six books of the ' Masnavi is easily accessible in a metrical English version by J. W. Redhouse, London, 1881 (Trübner's Oriental Series) ; and three selections are to be found in S. Robinson's ' Persian Poetry for English Readers, ' 1883 , pages 367-382 . Both these valuable works have been drawn upon for the present sketch . The abridged English translation of the Masnavi ' by E. H. Whinfield, London, 1887 (Trübner's Oriental Series) , is a standard to be consulted. M... A.r.Webeams 1Jackuns JALAL-AD-DİN RÜMİ 12489 THE SONG OF THE REED, OR DIVINE AFFECTIONS From the Masnavi ' IST how that reed is telling its story; how it is bewailing the L'STpangs of separation : - Whilst they are cutting me away from the reed-bed, men and maidens are regretting my fluting. My bosom is torn to pieces with the anguish of parting, in my efforts to express the yearnings of affection. Every one who liveth banished from his own family will long for the day which will see them reunited . To every assembly I still bore my sorrow, whether the companion of the happy or the unhappy. Every one personally was ever a friend, but no one sought to know the secrets within me. My affections and my regrets were never far distant, but neither eye nor ear can always discern light. The body is not veiled from the soul, nor the soul from the body; but to see the soul hath not been permitted. It is love that with its fire inspireth the reed ; it is love that with its fervor inflameth the wine. Like the reed, the wine is at once bane and antidote ; like the reed, it longeth for companionship, and to breathe the same breath. The reed it is that painteth in blood the story of the journey, and inspired the love- tale of the frenzied Mejnun. * Devoid of this sense, we are but senseless ourselves ; and the ear and the tongue are but partners to one another. In our grief, our days glide on unprofitably ; and heartcompunctions accompany them on their way. But if our days pass in blindness, and we are impure, O remain Thou Thou, like whom none is pure. No untried man can understand the condition of him who hath been sifted ; therefore , let your words be short, and let him go in peace. Rise up, young man; burst thy bonds, and be free ! How long wilt thou be the slave of thy silver and thy gold ? If thou shouldest fill thy pitcher from the ocean, what were thy store ? The pittance of a day !

• Mejnun and Laila, the Romeo and Juliet of the East. Their love-tale

forms the subject of poems by several eminent Persian poets. 12490 JALAL- AD-DIN RÜMI In the eye of the covetous man it would not be full . If the shell lay not contented in its bed, it would never be filled with the pearl. He whose garment is rent by Love Divine -he only is cleansed from avarice, and the multitude of sins. Hail to thee, Love, our sweet insanity ! O thou, the physician of all our ills! Thou, our Plato and our Galen, the medicine of our pride and our self-estimation ! By Love the earthly eye is raised to heaven, the hills begin to dance, and the mountains are quickened. Could I join my lip to that of one who breatheth my breath, I would utter words as melodious as my reed. When the rose- garden is withered, and the rose is gone, thou wilt hear no longer news of the nightingale. How should I be able any longer to retain my understanding, when the light of my beloved one no longer shineth upon me ? If the lover no longer receiveth his nourishment, he must perish like a bird deprived of its food. Translation of S. Robinson. THE MERCHANT AND THE PARROT From the Masnavi HERE was a merchant owned a parrot which was kept shut THEup in a cage, the paroquet's world. On a certain occasion the merchant made preparations for a journey, beginning with Hindustan. Calling each of his man- servants and his maid- servants, he said : " What am I to bring back to you ? Let me know. " Each expressed a wish according to his own choice ; and the good man promised something to every one. Turning to the poll- parrot, he said : " And what gift am I to bring you from the land of Hindustan ? " Polly replied : " When you see those parrots there, make my situation known to them, and say : - " There is a certain parrot who is longing for you, but is confined from the free vault of heaven, shut up in a cage. " He sends you his greetings, and he asks of you direction and some means of deliverance . ' JALĀL-AD-DIN RÜMİ 12491 "And add : ' Does it seem fair for me to be wasting my life in longing and to die here far away? " Am I to be allowed to continue in durance vile, while you are in green nooks among the boughs ? " Is this to be the loyalty of friends -for me to be in a cage, and you out in the gardens ? " Recall to memory that grieving bird, O ye grandees, in the morning draft amid your delightsome nooks. ' » [The parrot proceeds then to expatiate upon love, and upon the union existing between souls . ] The merchant received the message, with its salutation, to deliver to the bird's kindred. And when he came to the far-off land of Hindustan, he saw in the desert parrots, many a one. Stopping his beast and raising his voice , he delivered his salutation and his message. Then, wonderful to relate, one of the parrots began a great fluttering, and down it fell, dead, and breathed its last. «< The merchant sore repented of telling his message, and said : Tis only for the death of a living creature I am come. " There was perchance a connection between these parrots, two bodies with but a single soul. "Ah, why did I do it ! Why did I carry out my commission ! I am helplessly grieved at telling this. " [The merchant moralizes at some length upon life, and upon the soul and its relation to God. ] When the merchant had finished up his business abroad, he returned to his glad home. And to every man- servant he presented some gift, and to each maid- servant he handed out a gift. Then up spake the Polly: " What gift for the prisoner ? What did you see and what did you say ? Tell me that. ” Said the merchant : "Ah me! That whereof I repent me, and for which I could bite my hand and gnaw my fingers. "Why did I, through ignorance and folly, vainly carry that idle message ? " Said Poll : " Merchant, what's this repentance about ? And what has brought about this passion and grief ? " 12492 JALAL-AD-DIN RŪMI He replied : " I told that plaintive story of yours to a flock of parrots that looked just like you. "And a certain parrot felt so keenly for your distress that its heart broke in twain, and it fluttered and dropped dead. " I felt deep regret. What was this I had said ? But what does regret help, whatever I said ? " [The merchant moralizes at some length. ] As soon as the parrot heard what that bird had done, he too fluttered and dropped down and grew cold. When the merchant observed it thus fallen, he started up and flung down his turban upon the ground. And when he saw the bird in such plight and condition, he started to tear the very clothes at his throat, Saying: " O Polly, my pretty creature, what is this, alas, that has happened thee ? Why art thou thus ? "Ah, alas, my sweet-voiced bird ! Ah, alas, my companion and confidant! "Ah, alas, my sweet-note bird ; my spirit of joy and angel of the garden ! " [He continues to lament over the departed bird. But it must have fallen in accordance with the Divine Will. Man's dependence upon God. ] Thereupon the merchant tossed the bird out of the cage ; but the paroquet instantly flew up on a high bough. The merchant. was dumbfounded at the bird's conduct ; amazed and at a loss, he marveled at the mystery of the bird. And looking upward he said : " My nightingale, give some explanation of what you have done! Said the parrot : «< That bird it was gave me counsel how I' should act ; in effect, this : ' Rid yourself of your speech, voice, and talking; " For it is your voice that has brought you into captivity. ' And then to prove its counsel it died itself. " [ The parrot dilates further in religious manner upon the changes and chances of mortal life . ] Then Polly gave one or two bits more of guileless advice, and now said: - "Adieu, good- by ! Farewell, my merchant ; you have done a mercy to me : you have set me free from bonds and oppression. JALAL-AD-DIN RÜMI 12493 " Farewell, O merchant : I am now going home; and one day mayest thou become free just like me. " The merchant responded : " To God's keeping go thou ; thou hast taught me from this instant a new path of life. " Version by A. V. W. Jackson. THE CHINESE AND ROMAN ARTISTS ; OR, THE MIRROR OF THE HEART HIS Contest heed, of Chinaman's and Roman's art. THISThe Chinese urged they had the greater painters' skill ; The Romans pleaded they of art the throne did fill . The sovereign heard them both : decreed a contest fair ; Results the palm should give the worthiest of the pair. The parties twain a wordy war waged in debate ; The Romans' show of science did predominate. The Chinamen then asked to have a house assigned For their especial use ; and one for Rome designed. Th' allotted houses stood on either side one street ; In one the Chinese, one the Roman artists meet. The Chinese asked a hundred paints for their art's use : The sovereign his resources would not them refuse. Each morning from the treasury, rich colors' store Was served out to the Chinese till they asked no more. The Romans argued, " Color or design is vain : We simply have to banish soil and filth amain. " They closed their gate. To burnish then they set themselves ; As heaven's vault, simplicity filled all their shelves : Vast difference there is ' twixt colors and not one. The colors are as clouds ; simplicity's the moon. Whatever tinge you see embellishing the clouds, You know comes from the sun, the moon, or stars in crowds. At length the Chinamen their task had quite fulfilled ; With joy intense their hearts did beat, their bosoms thrilled . The sovereign came, inspected all their rich designs, And lost his heart with wonder at their talents' signs. 12494 JALAL-AD-DIN RUMI He then passed to the Romans, that his eyes might see ; The curtains were withdrawn to show whate'er might be. The Chinese paintings all, their whole designs in full , Reflected truly were on that high-burnished wall. Whatever was depicted by the Chinese art Was reproduced by mirrors, perfect every part. Those Romans are our mystics, know, my worthy friend : No art, no learning ; study, none : but gain their end. They polish well their bosoms, burnish bright their hearts , Remove all stain of lust, of self, pride, hate's deep smarts. That mirror's purity prefigures their hearts' trust ; With endless images reflections it incrust. Translation of J. W. Redhouse. 12495 JOHAN LUDVIG RUNEBERG (1804-1877) BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE HE Grand Duchy of Finland, " torn like a bloody shield from the heart of Sweden " in 1809, by the ruthless despot who was then all-powerful in Europe, and who now, by the irony of fate, lies buried in Paris beneath a sarcophagus of Finnish porphyry, has not become Russianized to any considerable extent, and still looks to the old mother-country for its social and intellectual ideals. This fact is due in part to the force of historical association upon the mind of a simple and conservative race, and in part to the fact that the Russian treatment of the conquered province has been fairly lenient, and most strikingly contrasted with the repressive policy pursued toward Russian Poland. It is not, then, as surprising as might at first sight appear, that the greatest name in Swedish literature should belong to a native of Finland, who was but five years of age at the time of the Russian annexation. Johan Ludvig Runeberg was born Febru- JOHAN RUNEBERG ary 5th, 1804, at Jakobsstad, a small seaport town on the Gulf of Bothnia. He was the oldest of the six children of a merchant captain in reduced circumstances. He went to school at Vasa, and in 1822 to the university at Åbo, supporting himself in part by tutoring. He was so poor that he literally lived on potatoes for months at a time. He took his doctor's degree in 1827, and soon thereafter was betrothed to Fredrika Tengström, a woman who afterwards attained some celebrity as a writer on her own account. The year that Runeberg left the university was also the year of the great fire that destroyed the greater part of the capital, and led to the transfer of both university and seat of government to Helsingfors. The years immediately following were decisive for the poet's development, since they took him to Sarkijarvi, a town far to the north in the heart of Finland, where he came into close contact .. 12496 JOHAN LUDVIG RUNEBERG with the purest type of the Finnish peasantry. In this povertystricken wilderness, where men toiled incessantly for a subsistence so precarious that those were deemed fortunate who did not have to live upon bread made in large part from the bark of trees, the young scholar learned really to know his fellow-countrymen, to enter intimately into their humble lives, and to collect a wealth of first-hand impressions that were afterwards to be turned to literary account. The years at Sarkijarvi were devoted to earnest study, and to the composition of poems that showed his powers to be steadily ripening ; so that when, in 1830, he received a university appointment at Helsingfors, he was able to bring back with him to civilization the material for the volume of poems that saw the light in that year. The publication of this volume was coincident with a stirring of the Finnish national consciousness that promised much for the future . The Russian yoke turned out to be no very heavy burden, since Finland was left a considerable degree of autonomy, and since the Russian censorship was disposed to deal very leniently with the literary expressions of national aspiration, and even with the most passionate assertions of spiritual allegiance to the Swedish tradition. This was also the time when the consciousness of Finland was quickened by the restoration of the ' Kalevala. ' Dr. Lönnrot, a physician and professor at the university, had been traveling through the country for the purpose of collecting fragments of folk-song and popular tradition, and had made the great discovery that there still existed on the lips of the people a popular epic that had been transmitted from generation to generation through the centuries, —an epic which was comparable with, let us say, the ' Nibelungenlied, ' and which the dis- . coverer pieced together and reconstructed into substantial unity. This was clearly an opportune time for the appearance of a national poet ; and in Runeberg the man of the hour was found. Fortunately for the history of culture, he realized that the aspirations of Finland were best to be furthered by an adherence to the Swedish tongue, and so it came about that Sweden as well as Finland gained a new poet of the first rank. The influence of Runeberg's appearance upon Swedish literature in the narrower sense was also of the utmost importance. Swedish poetry up to this time had been divided into the two camps of Phosphorists and Gothics. The former were the torch-bearers of the German romantic movement ; and had, if anything, made its mysticism more exaggerated and its extravagance more unreal. If they had lived in New England, they would have been called transcendentalists. The Gothics, on the other hand, had sought to bring about a more strictly national revival of letters ; and as represented by Geijer and Tegnér, had endeavored to reproduce the spirit of the past. But even Tegnér, great and true JOHAN LUDVIG RUNEBERG 12497 poet as he was, could not escape from the prevailing artificiality of an essentially rhetorical age ; and so the work of Runeberg, with its vivid realism, its direct simplicity, and its fidelity to the facts of nature and human life, came into Swedish poetry with a new note, and helped to accomplish a sort of Wordsworthian revolution in literary standards. The 'Poems ' of 1830 were well received, and were followed in the same year by a collection of Servian folk-songs, translated from Goetze's German version. A certain kinship between the popular poetry of Finland and Servia has been more than once pointed out. In both cases the utterance of races that failed to reach the front in the struggle for existence, the resemblance of the two bodies of folksong is noticeable when we consider their spirit alone, and is made still more noticeable by their common employment of an unrhymed trochaic verse. This work in Servian poetry is also significant because it was the direct inspiration of Runeberg's ' Idyll och Epigram, ' a collection of short original pieces in the same manner. In 1831 the poet received a prize from the Swedish Academy for an epic composition called ' Grafven i Perrho ' (The Grave in Perrho) , and in the same year married the woman to whom he had so long been engaged. A university promotion also came to him, and he felt himself to be on the high-road to success. He soon became editor of a newspaper as well ; and for it he wrote most of the critical essays and prose tales that occupy an honorable place among his collected writings. His stay in Helsingfors lasted until 1837 ; and during this period he published, besides the works already mentioned, ' Elgskyttarne › (The Elk Hunters) , —a beautiful epic in hexameters, which more than once suggests Goethe's ' Hermann and Dorothea ' ; a second collection of ' Poems ' ; a comedy in verse entitled ' Friaren från Landet ' (The Country Suitor) ; and the village idyl Hanna, ' a love story in hexameters, with an exquisitely beautiful dedication to "the first love. " In 1837, Runeberg's friends obtained for him a professorial appointment at the gymnasium of Borgå, a quiet country town on the Gulf of Finland, about thirty miles from Helsingfors. Here he remained for the last forty years of his life, and his biography from this time on is little more than an account of his successive publications. Externally, there is almost nothing to record beyond the promotions which finally gave to him the rectorship of the gymnasium (followed after a few years of service by a pension for life) , and the trip to Sweden in 1851 , which was the only occasion upon which the poet ever left his native Finland. He died May 6th, 1877, after having been in precarious health for several years. Four years after his removal to Borgå, Runeberg published ' Julqvällen (Christmas Eve) , the last of his hexameter narratives.— a XXI-782 12498 JOHAN LUDVIG RUNEBERG somewhat less successful idyl than its predecessors. A more important work, also produced in 1841 , is the narrative poem ' Nadeschda, ' a study of Russian character and manners. It is written in a variety of unrhymed measures, and tells of the love of a nobleman for a beautiful serf. In this work, and those that follow, the powers of the poet have outgrown the somewhat close limitations of the idyl, and seek to bring deeper and more tragic themes within their grasp. In ' Nadeschda ' we have for essential subject-matter the struggle between the institution of serfdom and the freedom of the individual. In a still nobler poem, ' Kung Fjalar ' ( 1845 ) , we have the conflict between the will of man and the inscrutable purposes of the gods, presented in the spirit, although not in the form, of a Greek tragedy : an ' Antigone ' or an Edipus Rex. ' It is a poem in five cantos of four-line unrhymed stanzas, telling how the king, defiant of the gods, orders his infant daughter to be thrown into the sea, that he may avert the doom that has been prophesied to come upon his race through the child . But the child is rescued, and taken to the Ossianic kingdom of Morven, where she grows to be a beautiful woman. Twenty years later, King Fjalar's son conquers Morven, and bears away the maiden as his bride. On the voyage homeward she tells him the story of her rescue from the sea : and he, filled with horror when he realizes that his bride is his sister, slays both her and himself. The old king, conquered at last by fate, puts an end to his life, finally recognizing the existence of a power higher than his own. ( The poems thus far described , together with a third volume of short pieces, bring us to the year 1848, when was published the first part of ' Fänrik Stål's Sägner ' (the Tales of Ensign Stål) , Runeberg's greatest work. The second part bears the date of 1860. This collection of poems, thirty- four in number ( besides one that was suppressed for personal reasons), deals with episodes of the war which ended with the annexation of Finland to Russia. The several poems are supposed to be related by a veteran of the war to an eager youth who comes day after day and hangs upon the lips of the story- teller. They are tales of a heroic age still fresh in the recollection of the poet's hearers, tales of famous battles and individual exploits, of historical personages and obscure peasants united by a common devotion and a common sacrifice , of the maiden who is consoled for her lover's death by the thought that his life was given for his fatherland, and of the boy who is impatient to grow up that he too may give himself to his country's cause. The poems are dramatic, pathetic, even humorous by turn ; breathing a strain of the purest patriotism, and flowing in numbers so musical that they fix themselves forever in the memory. And besides all this, they are so simple in form and vocabulary that they reach the heart of the unlettered as well as of the JOHAN LUDVIG RUNEBERG 12499 cultured ; so deep in their sympathy with the elementary joys and griefs of human-kind that they found a widely responsive echo from the beginning, and still constitute the most treasured possession of Swedish literature. Indeed, the first poem of them all, Vårt Land ' (Our Country) became at once, and has ever since remained, the national song of both Finn and Swede, bound together by the genius of the poet in a closer union than the old political tie. A close reproduction of the form of this poem, and perhaps something of its beauty as well, may be found in the following translation of its closing stanzas : — " Here all about us lies this land, Our eyes may see it here ; We have but to stretch forth our hand, And blithely point to sea and strand, And say, Behold this land so near, Our fatherland so dear. " And were we called to dwell on high, Of heaven's own blue made free, To dance with stars that deck the sky, Where falls no tear, and breathes no sigh, - We still should yearn, poor though it be, This land of ours to see. " O land! thou thousand-laked land, With song and virtue clad, On life's wild sea our own safe strand, Land of our past, our future's land, If thou art poor, yet be not sad, - Be joyous, blithe , and glad. " Yęt shall thy flower in beauty ope Its petals without stain ; Our love shall with thy darkness cope, And be thy light, thy joy, thy hope, And this our patriotic strain To nobler heights attain . " This song Mr. Gosse declares to be " one of the noblest strains of patriotic verse ever indited ; it lifts Runeberg at once to the level of Callinus or Campbell, -to the first rank of poets in whom art and ardor, national sentiment and power of utterance, are equally blended. " The works remaining to be mentioned include a volume of ' Smärre Berättelser ' ( Short Stories : 1854) , the sixty-odd hymns written for the official Lutheran hymn-book of Finland, and the two plays, ' Kan Ej ' (Cannot : 1862) and ' Kungarne på Salamis (The 12500 JOHAN LUDVIG RUNEBERG Kings at Salamis : 1863) . The former of these plays is a sentimental domestic comedy in two acts, and in rhymed verse. The latter is a five-act tragedy written upon a Greek theme in the classical manner, and in iambic hexameter verse. It was the last work of any importance published by Runeberg, and one of the noblest of all his works, worthily crowning a great career. Atta layer I ENSIGN STÅL TOOK such books as first I found, Merely to while the time along; Which written by no name renowned, Treated of Finland's war and wrong ;- 'Twas simply stitched, and as by grace, Had ' mid bound volumes found a place ; And in my room, with little heed, The pages carelessly surveyed, And all by chance began to read Of noble Savolak's brigade. I read a page, then word by word, My heart unto its depths was stirred. I saw a people who could hold The loss of all, save honor, light ; A troop, ' mid hunger-pangs and cold, Yet still victorious in the fight. On, on from page to page I sped, I could have kissed the words I read. In danger's hour, in battle's scathe , - What courage showed this little band; What patriot love, what matchless faith Didst thou inspire, poor native land ; What generous, steadfast love was born In those thou fed'st on bark and corn! Into new realms my fancy broke Where all a magic influence bore, And in my heart a life awoke Whose rapture was unknown before. JOHAN LUDVIG RUNEBERG 12501 As if on wings the day careered, But oh! how short the book appeared ! With close of day the book was done, Yet was my spirit all aglow : Much yet remained to ponder on, Much to inquire about and know, Much yet of darkness wrapped the whole ; I went to seek old Cornet Stål. He sat, as oft he sat before, Busily bending o'er his net And at the opening of the door, A glance displeased my coming met ; It seemed as though his thought might say, " Is there no peace by night or day! " But mischief from my mind was far, - I came in very different mood : " I've read of Finland's latest warAnd in my veins runs Finnish blood! To hear yet more I am on fire : Pray can you tell what I desire ? » Thus spoke I, and the aged man Amazed his netting laid aside ; A flush passed o'er his features wan As if of ancient martial pride : "Yes, " said he, " I can witness bear, If so you will, for I was there ! " His bed of straw my seat became, And he began with joy to tell Of Malm and Duncker's soul of flame, And even deeds which theirs excel. Bright was his eye and clear his brow, His noble look is with me now. Full many a bloody day he'd seen ; Had shared much peril and much woe; In conquest, in defeat, had been, - Defeat whose wounds no cure can know. Much which the world doth quite forget Lay in his faithful memory yet. I listening sat, but naught I said, And every word fell on my heart ; 12502 JOHAN LUDVIG RUNEBERG And half the night away had fled, Before I rose from him to part. The threshold reached, he made a stand, And pressed with joy my willing hand. Since then, no better joy he had, Than when he saw me by his side ; Together mourned we or were glad, Together smoked as friends long tried. He was in years, I in life's spring ; A student I, he more than king! The tales which now I tell in song, Through many a long and silent night, Fell from the old man's faltering tongue Beside the peat-fire's feeble light. They speak what all may understand : ' Receive them, thou dear native land. Howitt's Translation. THE THE VILLAGE GIRL From Fänrik Ståls Sägner ' HE sun went down and evening came, the quiet summer even ; A mass of glowing purple lay between the farms and heaven ; A weary troop of men went by, their day's hard labor done, - Tired and contented, towards their home they wended one by one. Their work was done, their harvest reaped, a goodly harvest truly! A well-appointed band of foes all slain or captured newly ; At dawn against this armèd band they had gone forth to fight, And all had closed in victory before the fall of night. Close by the field where all day long the hard hot strife was raging, A cottage by the wayside stood, half-desolate and aging ; And on its worn low steps there sat a silent girl, and mused And watched the troop come slowly by, in weary line confused. She looked like one who sought a friend,-she scanned each man's face nearly ; High burned the color in her cheek, too high for sunset merely; She sat so quiet, looked so warm, so flushed with secret heat, It seemed she listened as she gazed, and felt her own heart beat. JOHAN LUDVIG RUNEBERG 12503 But as she saw the troop march by, and darkness round them stealing, To every file, to every man, her anxious eye appealing Seemed muttering in a shy distress a question without speech, More silent than a sigh itself, too anguished to beseech. But when the men had all gone past, and not a word was spoken, The poor girl's courage failed at last, and all her strength was broken. She wept not loud, but on her hand her weary forehead fell , And large tears followed one by one as from a burning well. "Why dost thou weep ? For hope may break just where the gloom is deepest ! O daughter, hear thy mother's voice : a needless tear thou weepest ; He whom thy eyes were seeking for, whose face thou couldst not see, He is not dead : he thought of love, and still he lives for thee. " He thought of love : I counseled him to shield himself from danger ; I taught him how to slip the fight, and leave them like a stranger ; By force they made him march with them, but weep not, rave not thus : - I know he will not choose to die from happy life and us. ” Shivering the maiden rose like one whom awful dreams awaken, — As if some grim foreboding all her soul in her had shaken : She lingered not ; she sought the place where late had raged the fight, And stole away and swiftly fled and vanished out of sight. An hour went by, another hour ; the night had closed around her; The moon-shot clouds were silver-white, but darkness hung below them. " She lingers long : O daughter, come ; thy toil is all in vain : To-morrow, ere the dawn is red, thy bridegroom's here again ! ” The daughter came ; with silent steps she came to meet her mother: The pallid eyelids strained no more with tears she fain would smother ; But colder than the wind at night the hand that mother pressed, And whiter than a winter cloud the maiden's cheek and breast. - " Make me a grave, O mother dear : my days on earth are over! The only man that fled to-day —that coward- was my lover : He thought of me and of himself, the battle-field he scanned, And then betrayed his brothers' hope and shamed his father's land. 12504 JOHAN LUDVIG RUNEBERG "When past our door the troop marched by, and I their ranks had numbered, I wept to think that like a man among the dead he slumbered ; I sorrowed, but my grief was mild -it had no bitter weight — I would have lived a thousand years to mourn his noble fate. " O mother, I have looked for him where'er the dead are lying, But none of all the stricken bears his features, calm in dying. Now will I live no more on earth in shame to sit and sigh ; He lies not there among the dead, and therefore I will die. " Translation of Edmund W. Gosse. THE OLD MAN'S RETURN IKE birds of passage, after winter's days returning LIKE To lake-land home and rest, I come now unto thee, my foster-valley, yearning . For long-lost childhood's rest. Full many a sea since then from thy dear strands has torn me, And many a chilly year ; Full many a joy since then those far-off lands have borne me, And many a bitter tear. Here am I back once more.. Great heaven ! there stands the dwelling - Which erst my cradle bore, The selfsame sound, bay, grove, and hilly range upswelling : My world in days of yore. All as before. Trees in the selfsame verdant dresses With the same crowns are crowned ; The tracts of heaven, and all the woodland's far recesses With well-known songs resound. There with the crowd of flower-nymphs still the wave is playing, As erst so light and sweet ; And from dim wooded aits I hear the echoes straying All as before. Glad youthful tones repeat. But my own self no more remaineth, Glad valley ! as of old ; My passion quenched long since, no flame my cheek retaineth, My pulse now beateth cold. JOHAN LUDVIG RUNEBERG 12505 I know not how to prize the charms that thou possessest, Thy lavish gifts of yore ; What thou through whispering brooks or through thy flowers expressest, I understand no more. Dead is mine ear to harp-strings which thy gods are ringing From out thy streamlet clear ; No more the elfin hosts, all frolicsome and singing, Upon the meads appear. I went so rich, so rich from thee, my cottage lowly, So full of hopes untold ; And with me feelings, nourished in thy shadows holy, That promised days of gold. The memory of thy wondrous springtimes went beside me, And of thy peaceful ways, And thy good spirits, borne within me, seemed to guide me, E'en from my earliest days. And what have I brought back from yon world wide and dreary ? A snow-incumbered head, A heart with sorrow sickened and with falsehood weary, And longing to be dead. I crave no more, of all that once was in my keeping, Dear mother ! but one thing : Grant me a grave, where still thy fountain fair is weeping, And where thy poplars spring ! So shall I dream on, mother! to thy calm breast owing A faithful shelter then, And live in every floweret, from mine ashes growing, A guiltless life again. Translation of Palmer and Magnusson. THE SWAN ROM cloud with purple-sprinkled rim, FR A swan, in calm delight, Sank down upon the river's brim, And sang in June, one night. Of Northlands' beauty was his song, How glad their skies, their air; 12506 JOHAN LUDVIG RUNEBERG How day forgets, the whole night long, To go to rest out there ; How shadows there, both rich and deep, 'Neath birch and alder fall ; How gold-beams o'er each inlet sweep, How cool the billows all ; How fair it is, how passing fair, To own there one true friend! How faithfulness is home-bred there, And thither longs to wend! When thus from wave to wave his note, His simple praise- song rang, Swift fawned he on his fond mate's throat, And thus, methought, he sang : - What more? though of thy life's short dream No tales the ages bring, Yet hast thou loved on Northlands' stream , And sung songs there in spring! Translation of Palmer and Magnusson. OH THE WORK-GIRL H, IF with church bells ringing clear, I did but stand in feast-day gear, And saw the night and darkness fly, And Sunday's lovely dawn draw nigh! For then my weekly toil were past ; To matins I might go at last, And meet him by the church-yard, too, Who missed his friend the whole week through. There long beforehand does he bide Alone upon the church bank's side, And scans across the marshes long The sledges' and the people's throng. And she for whom he looks am I ; The crowds increase, the troop draws nigh, When ' midst them I am seen to stand , And gladly reach to him my hand. JOHAN LUDVIG RUNEBERG 12507 Now, merry cricket, sing thy lay Until the wick is burnt away, And I may to my bed repair And dream about my sweetheart there. I sit and spin, but cannot get Half through the skein of wool as yet ; When I shall spin it out, God knows, Or when the tardy eve will close ! Translation of Palmer and Magnusson. MY LIFE TRUGGLING o'er an open grave, S Sailing o'er an angry wave, Toiling on with aimless aim, Oh, my life, I name thy name! Longing fills the sailor's soul, Seas before his eyesight roll, - " Lo, behind yon purple haze Higher sights shall meet my gaze. " I shall near a better strand, - Light and freedom's happy land. ” . Swelled the sail, expectance laughed, Towards the boundless sped the craft. Struggling o'er an open grave, Sailing o'er an angry wave, Toiling on with aimless aim, — O my life, I name thy name ! Ah, the haven calm and clear, Peace of heart in bygone year, Hope's gold coast, ah ! hidden spot, Never reached, and ne'er forgot! Billows check the sailor's course, Overhead the tempest hoarse : Still is yonder purple haze Far as ever from his gaze ! Translation of Palmer and Magnusson. 12508 JOHAN LUDVIG RUNEBERG H IDYLL COME the maid came from her lover's meeting, Came with reddened hands. The mother questioned, "Wherewith have thy hands got reddened, Maiden ? " Said the maiden, " I have plucked some roses, And upon the thorns my hands have wounded. » She again came from her lover's meeting, Came with crimson lips. The mother questioned. " Wherewith have thy lips got crimson, Maiden ? » Said the maiden, " I have eaten strawberries, And my lips I with their juice have painted. " She again came from her lover's meeting, Came with pallid cheeks. The mother questioned, "Wherewith are thy cheeks so pallid, Maiden ? » Said the maiden, " Make a grave, O mother ! Hide me there, and place a cross thereover, And cut on the cross what now I tell thee :-- " Once she came home, and her hands were reddened, For betwixt her lover's hands they reddened. Once she came home, and her lips were crimson, 'Neath her lover's lips they had grown crimson. Last she came home, and her cheeks were pallid, For they blanched beneath her lover's treason. " " Translation of Palmer and Magnusson. C COUNSELS OUNSELS three the mother gave her daughter: Not to sigh, and not be discontented, And to kiss no young man whatsoever. Mother, if thy daughter trespass never, Trespass never ' gainst your last-named counsel, She will trespass ' gainst the first two, surely. Translation of Palmer and Magnusson.

JOHN RUSKIN .

12509 JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900) BY JOHN C. VAN DYKE T IS not given every man to date an epoch from himself, to turn aside old conceptions, and to swing the whole current of thought into a new channel. The epoch- making men are few in any century; they themselves seldom realize the value of the work they are doing, and the public recognizes it perhaps last of all. Each one of them, as he appears, undergoes the usual misunderstanding at the hands of both friends and foes. There are assertions and denials, attacks and defenses, adulation and abuse ; until at last it has passed into a proverb that a man cannot be summed up justly by contemporary thought. Perhaps no one in the nineteenth century has suffered so much from misunderstanding and indiscriminate criticism as John Ruskin. And even now that his work is done and he himself has passed from the field of activity, the value of that work and the place of the worker are far from being accurately estimated. The world persists in considering him only as an art critic ; while he himself thought his best endeavor to have been in the field of political economy. It is not impossible that both of these conclusions are wide of the mark. One may venture to think that his greatest service to mankind has been his revelation of the beauties of nature ; and that his enduring fame will rest upon no theories of art or of human well-being, but upon his masterful handling of the English language. Whatever feature of his activity may be thought the best, it cannot be denied that he has been a powerful force in many departments : a prophet with a denunciatory and enunciatory creed, a leader who has counted his followers by the thousands, a writer who has left a deeper stamp upon the language than almost any Englishman of this century. ( Mr. Ruskin's parentage, early training, and education are recorded in Præterita ' ( 1885-9) , - his fascinating but incomplete autobiography. In his childhood his Scotch mother made him read the Bible again and again ; and to this he thought was due his habit of taking pains, and his literary taste. Peace, obedience, and faith, with fixed attention in both mind and eye, were the virtues inculcated by his early training. The defects of that training he puts down as- 12510 JOHN RUSKIN nothing to love, nothing to endure of either pain, patience, or misery, nothing taught him in a social way, no independence of action, and no responsibility. At fourteen Mr. Telford, one of his father's partners in the wine trade, gave him a copy of Rogers's ' Italy ' with Turner's illustrations ; and his parents forever after held Mr. Telford personally responsible for the art tastes of the son. They had predestined him to the Church. " He might have been a bishop, " was the elder Ruskin's sigh. His study of art practically began with an admiration for Turner. He knew a great deal about nature, and had met his great passion, the Alps, before he was twenty ; and he had also studied drawing under Runciman, Copley Fielding, and Harding. His earliest writings were poetical ; and as an Oxford student he wrote the pretty story, 'The King of the Golden River ' ( 1841 ) , besides making some contributions to magazine literature : but his first important effort was when as the Oxford graduate he put forth the first volume of ' Modern Painters ( 1843) . Ostensibly this was an inquiry into the object and means of landscape painting, the spirit which should govern its production, the appearances of nature, the discussion of what is true in art as revealed by nature ; but in reality it was a defense of Turner at the expense of almost every other landscape painter, ancient or modern. It came at a time when people knew very little about art, and thought it a mystery understood only by the priests of the craft ; but Mr. Ruskin burst the door wide open, and talked about the contents of the high altar in a language that any one could understand. It was an energetic and eloquent statement of what he believed to be truth. From his studies of nature he came to think that truth was the one and only desideratum in art ; and the whole argument and illustration of ' Modern Painters ' is hinged upon nature-truth and its appearance in the works of Turner. It was nearly twenty years before the five volumes of the work were completed, and during that time Mr. Ruskin's views had broadened and changed, so that there is something of contradiction in the volumes ; but it to-day stands as his most forceful work. Philosophical it is not, because lacking in system ; scientific it is not, because lacking in fundamental principles. The logic of it is often weak, the positiveness of statement often annoying, the digressions and side issues often wearisome ; yet with all this it contains some of his keenest observations on nature, his most suggestive conceits, and his most brilliant prose passages. It made something of a sensation, and Mr. Ruskin came into prominence at once. While ' Modern Painters ' was being written, he made frequent journeys to Switzerland to study the Alps, and to Italy to study the old Italian masters. From being at first a naturalist and a prophet JOHN RUSKIN 12511 of modernity, he soon became an admirer of Gothic and Renaissance art. Turner and Fra Angelico were almost antithetical. He tried to reconcile them on the principle of their truthfulness ; but one had put forth an individual truth, the other a symbolic truth, and Mr. Ruskin never brought them together without the appearance of incongruity. The more he studied Italian painting, the more he became impregnated with the moral and the religious in art. In a letter he has put it down that what is wanted in English art is a " total change of character. It is Giotto and Ghirlandajo and Angelico that you want and must want until this disgusting nineteenth century has -I can't say breathed, but steamed, its last . " The moral element and the sincerity of fifteenth-century work quite captivated him, and he began to fail in sympathy for modern products. He started the hopeless task of turning the art world backward, and reviving the truth and faith of the early Italians. But the world never turns backward successfully. Italian art was good art because it did not turn backward ; because it revealed its own time and people, and was imbued with the spirit of its age. That spirit died with the Renaissance. The nineteenth century could not revive it. It had a spirit of its own which it revealed, and which Mr. Ruskin opposed all his life . It was not moral enough or reverent enough or true enough ; in short, it was not like the old, and therefore it was wrong. About 1850 the Pre-Raphaelites began to attract attention. They were not followers of Mr. Ruskin, though they were a part of the new movement which he more than any other man had started . His advice to go to nature -selecting nothing, rejecting nothing, scorning nothing -had been accepted by many landscapists, and it undoubtedly somewhat affected the Pre-Raphaelites. He defended their work against popular ridicule in his spirited ' Pre-Raphaelitism ' ( 1851 ) ; and tried to show that they and Turner were on the same naturalistic basis, and that his old ideas of nature and his new ideas of Italian art were not contradictory. In principle he seemed to have eliminated the personal equation (the dominant factor in nineteenthcentury art) ; and what really attracted him in Pre-Raphaelitism was the combination of literal detail with the imitated sincerity of the early Italians. The Pre-Raphaelites as a body soon drifted apart ; and Mr. Ruskin's teaching, as regards their work, was condemned as impractical and impossible . It did not reckon with the nineteenthcentury spirit. Painting alone was not sufficient to occupy so active and manysided an intellect ; and Mr. Ruskin's first twenty years of authorship produced many books on many subjects. He wrote on the Alps, published his ' Poems ' ( 1850) , reviewed books, issued ' Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds ( 1851 ) , -the misleading title of a plea for 12512 JOHN RUSKIN church unity in England, -and wrote his ' Seven Lamps of Architecture ( 1849) and his ' Stones of Venice ' ( 1850-53) . The last-named work is not a manual of history or a traveler's guide ; but the expression of Mr. Ruskin's ideas of life, society, and nationality as shown in architecture. The ideas are somewhat smothered by beautiful language, and many side issues in parenthesis ; but they are at least original, and the result of his own observations. He spent much time and labor in Venice taking measurements and trying to reconcile conflicting styles on a single basis ; but the task was too colossal. Venetian architecture is a medley of all styles. Mr. Ruskin did what he could, and the ' Stones of Venice ' was the result. It excited opposition and was sharply attacked. He had been too erratic, too rhetorical, too violently independent of architectural laws ; but at least he had explained Gothic architecture in a new way, and made an impression on the lay mind. Other works on art came out one by one: the ' Elements of Drawing ' ( 1857) , the ' Political Economy of Art' ( 1857) , the ' Elements of Perspective ' ( 1859) , and yearly ' Notes cn the Royal Academy ' ; but Mr. Ruskin's art teaching was practically summed up in ' Modern Painters, ' the ' Seven Lamps, ' and the 'Stones of Venice. ' His other art writings have been desultory, scattered, lacking in plan and unity. At forty years of age his career as an art critic closed, though he never ceased to write about art until he ceased writing altogether ; but after 1860 he became interested in the human problem, and his mind turned to political economy. As an art critic Mr. Ruskin has never been unreservedly accepted. He felt aggrieved that his readers cared more for the " pretty passages " in the second volume of ' Modern Painters ' than for the ideas ; but his readers were more than half right. Criticism calls for more of the calm philosophical spirit than Mr. Ruskin ever possessed. All his life he had been not so much a judge as a partisan advocate, an enthusiast, —a man praising indiscriminately where he admired, and condemning indiscriminately where he lacked sympathy. His passion of praise, his vehemence of attack, his brilliancy of style, have attracted and still attract attention ; but the feeling that they are too brilliant to be true underlies all . Nevertheless, the multiplicity and clearness of his ideas are astonishing, and their stimulating power incalculable. To-day one may disagree with him at every page and yet be the gainer by the opposition excited. No writer of our times has been quite so helpful by suggestion. Moreover, many of his ideas are true and sound. It is only his art teaching as a whole to which objection may be taken. This is thought to be too erratic, too inconsiderate of existing conditions, -in other words, too impractical. The services which Mr. Ruskin has rendered humanity as an art writer should not, however, be overlooked. First, he brought art JOHN RUSKIN 12513 positively and permanently before the public, explained it to the average intelligence, and created a universal interest in it by subjecting it to inquiry. Secondly, he elevated the rank and relative importance of the artist, and showed that he was a most useful factor in civilization. Many of the artists who are to-day sneering at Mr. Ruskin for some hasty opinion uttered in anger, appreciate but poorly what a great preacher and priest for the craft he has been, and what importance his winged words have given to art in this nineteenth century. Thirdly, though he did not make Turner, yet he made the public look at him; and though he did not discover Italian art, he turned people's eyes toward it. Before Mr. Ruskin's utterances, Giotto and Botticelli and Carpaccio and Tintoretto were practically unknown and unseen. Mr. Ruskin was the pioneer of Renaissance art study ; and though modern critics may have much amusement over his occasional false attribution of a picture, they should not forget that when Mr. Ruskin' went to Italy in the 1840's there was no established body of Italian art criticism to lean upon. He stood quite alone ; and the wonder is not that he made so many mistakes, but that he made so few. Generally speaking, his estimate of Italian art was just enough, and his appreciations of certain men well founded. But Mr. Ruskin's greatest discovery was picturesque nature ; and for that, humanity is more indebted to him than for anything else. Wordsworth, Scott, and Byron had dabbled in nature beauty in a romantic associative way ; but Ruskin, following them and in a measure their pupil, began its elaborate study. To enforce his argument for truth in art, he drew for illustration truth in nature. With rare knowledge, keenness of observation, and facility in description, he displayed the wonder- world of clouds, skies, mountains, trees, grasses, waters, holding them up in all their colors, lights, shadows, and atmospheric settings. In youth his predilection for mountain forms, rock. structure, crystals, and scientific facts was well marked ; and in his art writings his sympathy is always with the landscape at the expense of the figure composition. Indeed, it was to prove Turner true to nature that he first began writing upon art ; and his most profound studies were ever in the field of natural phenomena. Well trained and specially equipped for this field, he pointed out the beauties of nature in the infinitely little and the infinitely great with such masterful insight and skill that people followed him willy- nilly. Almost instantly he created a nature cult -a worship of beauty in things inanimate. People's eyes were opened to the glories of the world about them. They have not been closed since ; and the study of nature is with succeeding generations a growing passion and an unwearying source of pleasurable good. Mr. Ruskin is to be thanked for it. This great service alone should more than counterbalance in XXI-783 12514 JOHN RUSKIN popular judgment any artistic or political vagaries into which he may have fallen. About 1860, as already noted, his art and nature studies were pushed aside by what he thought more urgent matter. His moral sense and intense humanity went out to the workingmen of England, and he courageously devoted the rest of his life to an attempt to better their condition. This was the natural leaning of his mind. He was always an intensely sensitive and sympathetic man, with moral ideas of truth, justice, and righteousness opposed to the ideas of his times. He should have been a bishop, as his parents desired, or a preacher at least ; for he had the Savonarola equipment. Denunciation and invective were his most powerful weapons ; and lacking a pulpit, he now sent forth letters against the prevailing social system, written as eloquently as though he were describing sunsets and Alpine peaks. His ' Unto this Last ' ( 1860) , " the truest, rightest- worded, and most serviceable things I have ever written, " was followed by 'Munera Pulveris ( 1862-63) , Time and Tide ' ( 1867) , and ' Fors Clavigera ' ( 1871-84) . These books contain the substance of his political economy, which is as impossible to epitomize as his art teachings. It was written for the workingmen of England, but it shot over their heads ; and is moreover marked by inconsistencies, the result of Mr. Ruskin's changing views and waning strength -for much of his work in the 1880's is hectic and spasmodic from pain of mind and body. He believed in a mild form of socialism or collectivism, -a pooling of interests, a stopping of competition, and a doing away of interest upon money. So earnest was he in his beliefs that he did not write only, but strove for practical results. He established St. George's Guild, the Sheffield museum, an agricultural community, a tea store, and a factory. He even had the streets of London swept clean to show that it could be done, and lent a helping hand wherever he could. Like Tolstoi, he tried to live his beliefs ; but British materialism was too strong for him . After giving away his whole fortune, upwards of £200,000, he had to stop ; broken physically and mentally as well as financially. His political economy was not a success practically, but no one who loves his fellow-man will ever cast a stone at him for it. It was a noble effort to benefit humanity. During all the years of his political-economy struggles, his restless mind and pen found many other fields in which to labor. He lectured at Oxford ; wrote ' Sesame and Lilies ' ( 1865) , a series of miscellaneous essays ; ' Ethics of the Dust ' ( 1866) , lectures on crystallization ; 'The Crown of Wild Olive ' ( 1866) , three lectures on work, traffic, and war; The Queen of the Air ' ( 1869) , a study of Greek myths of cloud and storm; ' Aratra Pentelici ' ( 1872), on the elements of sculpture ; 'Love's Meinie ' ( 1873) ; ' Ariadne Florentina ' ( 1873) ; ' Val d'Arno ' JOHN RUSKIN 12515 (1874); Mornings in Florence ' ( 1875-7) ; Proserpina ' ( 1875-86) ; ' Deucalion ' ( 1875-83 ) ; St. Mark's Rest ' ( 1877-84) ; ' The Bible of Amiens ' (1880-5) ; The Art of England ' ( 1883) ; and a vast quantity of lectures, addresses, letters, catalogues, prefaces, and notes. In sheer bulk alone this work was enormous. Finally body and mind both failed him ; and the last thing he wrote, ' Præterita, ' his autobiography, was done at intervals of returning strength after severe illnesses. Mr. Ruskin has stated that his literary work was " always done as quietly and methodically as a piece of tapestry. I knew exactly what I had got to say, put the words firmly in their places like so many stitches, hemmed the edges of chapters round with what seemed to me graceful flourishes, and touched them finally with my cunningest points of color. " His poems are all youthful and of small consequence. His prose is marked by two styles. The first is dramatic, vehement, rhetorical, full of imagery, some over-exuberance of language, and long - drawn sentences. This is the style of Modern Painters ' and the ' Seven Lamps. ' After 1860, when he took up political writing, he strove for more simplicity ; and his ' Fors Clavigera ' is an excellent example of his more moderate style. But he never attained reserve either in thinking or in writing. It was not in his temperament. He had almost everything else -purity, elasticity, dramatic force, wit, passion, imagination, nobility. In addition his vocabulary was almost limitless, his rhythm and flow of sentences almost endless, his brilliancy in illustration , description, and argument almost exhaustless. Indeed, his facility in language has been fatal only too often to his logic and philosophy. Words and their limpid flow ran away with his sobriety, lusciousness in illustration and heaped-up imagery led him into rambling sentences, and the long reverberating roll of numbers at the close of his chapters often smacks of the theatre. Alliteration and assonance, the use of the adjective in description, the antithesis in argument, the climax in dramatic effect, -all these Mr. Ruskin well understood and used with powerful effect. How he came by his style would be difficult to determine. He said he got it from the Bible and Carlyle : but he was a part of the romantic, poetic, and Catholic revival in this century ; and Byron, Scott, Coleridge, Newman, Tennyson, Carlyle, were influences upon. him. The impetuosity of romanticism was his heritage ; and the great bulk of his writing is headlong, feverish, brilliant as a meteor, but self-consuming. His prose cannot be judged by rules of rhetoric or composition, any more than the pictures of Turner can be measured by the academic yard- stick. They both defy rules and measurements. 'Modern Painters ' and the Ulysses and Polyphemus ' blaze with arbitrary color, and are in parts false in tone, value, and ( 12516 JOHN RUSKIN perspective ; yet behind each work there is the fire of genius —the energy of overpowering individuality. Mr. Ruskin's style is his creation as an artist, as distinguished from his exposition as a teacher; and perhaps it is as an artist in language that he will live longest in human memory. A whole library of books on many subjects -art, science, history, poetry, ethics, theology, agriculture, education, economy-has come from his pen. Few even among the learned classes realize how much the nineteenth century owes to Mr. Ruskin for suggestion, stimulus, and hopeful inspiration in many fields. He has taught several generations to see with their eyes, think with their minds, and work with their hands. And the beautiful language of that teaching will remain with many generations to come. He has been in the right and he has been in the wrong. Apples of discord and olive-branches of peace-he has planted both, and both have borne fruit ; but the good outbalances the bad, the true outweighs the false. John C. Van Dyhe G ON WOMANHOOD From Sesame and Lilies ' ENERALLY we are under an impression that a man's duties are public, and a woman's private . But this is not altogether so. A man has a personal work or duty relating to his own home, and a public work or duty- which is the expansion of the other relating to the State. So a woman has a personal work and duty relating to her own home, and a public work and duty which is also the expansion of that. - Now, the man's work for his own home is, as has been said, to secure its maintenance, progress, and defense ; the woman's to secure its order, comfort, and loveliness. Expand both these functions. The man's duty as a member of a commonwealth is to assist in the maintenance, in the advance, in the defense of the State. The woman's duty as a member of the commonwealth is to assist in the ordering, in the comforting, and in the beautiful adornment of the State. What the man is at his own gate, -defending it if need be against insult and spoil, that also, -not in a less but in a more. devoted measure, he is to be at the gate of his country; leaving JOHN RUSKIN 12517 his home, if need be, even to the spoiler, to do his more incumbent work there. And in like manner, what the woman is to be within her gates, as the centre of order, the balm of distress, and the mirror of beauty, that she is also to be without her gates, where order is more difficult, distress more imminent, loveliness more rare. It is now long since the women of England arrogated, universally, a title which once belonged to nobility only ; and having once been in the habit of accepting the simple title of gentlewoman, as correspondent to that of gentleman, insisted on the privilege of assuming the title of " Lady, " which properly corresponds only to the title of " Lord. " I do not blame them for this ; but only for their narrow motive in this. I would have them desire and claim the title of Lady, provided they claim not merely the title, but the office and duty signified by it. Lady means " bread-giver " or " loafgiver, " and Lord means " maintainer of laws " ; and both titles have reference not to the law which is maintained in the house, nor to the bread which is given to the household, but to law maintained for the multitude and to bread broken among the multitude. So that a Lord has legal claim only to this title. in so far as he is the maintainer of the justice of the Lord of Lords ; and a Lady has legal claim to her title only so far as she communicates that help to the poor representatives of her Master, which women once, ministering to him of their substance, were permitted to extend to that Master himself; and when she is known, as he himself once was, in breaking of bread. And this beneficent and legal dominion, this power of the Dominus, or House- Lord, and of the Domina, or House- Lady, is great and venerable, not in the number of those through whom it has lineally descended, but in the number of those whom it grasps within its sway; it is always regarded with reverent worship wherever its dynasty is founded on its duty, and its ambition co-relative with its beneficence. Your fancy is pleased with the thought of being noble ladies, with a train of vassals. Be it so: you cannot be too noble, and your train cannot be too great ; but see to it that your train is of vassals whom you serve and feed, not merely of slaves who serve and feed you; and that the multitude which obeys you is of those whom you have comforted, not oppressed, -whom you have redeemed, not led into captivity. 12518 JOHN RUSKIN WHA THE USES OF ORNAMENT From The Seven Lamps of Architecture ' AT is the place for ornament ? Consider first that the characters of natural objects which the architect can represent are few and abstract. The greater part of those delights by which Nature recommends herself to man at all times cannot be conveyed by him into his imitative work. He cannot make his grass green and cool and good to rest upon, which in nature is its chief use to man ; nor can he make his flowers tender and full of color and of scent, which in nature are their chief powers of giving joy. Those qualities which alone he can secure are certain severe characters of form, such as men only see in nature on deliberate examination, and by the full and set appliance of sight and thought : a man must lie down on the bank of grass on his breast and set himself to watch and penetrate the intertwining of it, before he finds that which is good. to be gathered by the architect. So then while Nature is at all times pleasant to us, and while the sight and sense of her work may mingle happily with all our thoughts and labors and times. of existence, that image of her which the architect carries away represents what we can only perceive in her by direct intellectual exertion ; and demands from us, wherever it appears, an intellectual exertion of a similar kind in order to understand it and feel it. It is the written or sealed impression of a thing sought out ; it is the shaped result of inquiry and bodily expression of thought. Now let us consider for an instant what would be the effect of continually repeating an expression of a beautiful thought to any other of the senses, at times when the mind could not address that sense to the understanding of it . Suppose that in time of serious occupation , of stern business, a companion should repeat in our ears continually some favorite passage of poetry, over and over again all day long. We should not only soon be utterly sick and weary of the sound of it, but that sound would at the end of the day have so sunk into the habit of the ear, that the entire meaning of the passage would be dead to us, and it would ever thenceforward require some effort to fix and recover it. The music of it would not meanwhile have aided the business in hand, while its own delightfulness would thenceforward be in a measure destroyed . It is the same with every other JOHN RUSKIN 12519 form of definite thought. If you violently present its expression to the senses, at times when the mind is otherwise engaged, that expression will be ineffective at the time, and will have its sharpness and clearness destroyed forever. Much more if you present it to the mind at times when it is painfully affected or disturbed , or if you associate the expression of pleasant thought with incongruous circumstances, you will affect that expression thenceforward with a painful color forever. Apply this to expressions of thought received by the eye. Remember that the eye is at your mercy more than the ear " The eye, it cannot choose but see. " Its nerve is not so easily numbed as that of the ear, and it is often busied in tracing and watching forms when the ear is at rest. Now if you present lovely forms to it when it cannot call the mind to help it in its work, and among objects of vulgar use and unhappy position, you will neither please the eye nor elevate the vulgar object. But you will fill and weary the eye with the beautiful form, and you will infect that form itself with the vulgarity of the thing to which you have violently attached it. It will never be of much use to you any more : you have killed or defiled it ; its freshness and purity are gone. You will have to pass it through the fire of much thought before you will cleanse it, and warm it with much love before it will revive. Hence then a general law, of singular importance in the present day, a law of simple common- sense, -not to decorate things belonging to purposes of active and occupied life . Wherever you can rest, there decorate ; where rest is forbidden, so is beauty. You must not mix ornament with business, any more than you may mix play. Work first, and then rest. Work first, and then gaze ; but do not use golden plowshares, nor bind ledgers in enamel. Do not thrash with sculptured flails ; nor put bas- reliefs on millstones. What! it will be asked, are we in the habit of doing so ? Even so; always and everywhere: The most familiar position of Greek moldings is in these days on shop fronts. There is not a tradesman's sign nor shelf nor counter in all the streets of all our cities, which has not upon it ornaments which were invented to adorn temples and beautify kings' palaces. There is not the smallest advantage in them where they are. Absolutely valueless, utterly without the power of giving pleasure, they only satiate the eye and vulgarize their own forms. Many of these are in themselves thoroughly good copies of fine 12520 JOHN RUSKIN things ; which things themselves we shall never, in consequence, enjoy any more. Many a pretty beading and graceful bracket there is in wood or stucco above our grocers' and cheesemongers' and hosiers' shops : how is it that the tradesmen cannot understand that custom is to be had only by selling good tea and cheese and cloth ; and that people come to them for their honesty, and their readiness, and their right wares, and not because they have Greek cornices over their windows, or their names in large gilt letters on their house fronts ? How pleasurable it would be to have the power of going through the streets of London, pulling down those brackets and friezes and large names, restoring to the tradesmen the capital they had spent in architecture, and putting them on honest and equal terms ; each with his name in black letters over his door, not shouted down the street from the upper stories, and each with a plain wooden shop casement, with small panes in it that people would not think of breaking in order to be sent to prison !. How much better for them would it be, how much happier, how much wiser, to put their trust upon their own truth and industry, and not on the idiocy of their cus tomers! It is curious, and it says little for our national probity on the one hand, or prudence on the other, to see the whole system of our street decoration based on the idea that people must be baited to a shop as moths are to a candle. But it will be said that much of the best wooden decoration of the Middle Ages was in shop fronts. No: it was in house fronts, of which the shop was a part, and received its natural and consistent portion of the ornament. In those days men lived, and intended to live, by their shops, and over them, all their days. They were contented with them and happy in them: they were their palaces and castles. They gave them therefore such decoration as made themselves happy in their own habitation, and they gave it for their own sake. The upper stories were always the richest ; and the shop was decorated chiefly about the door, which belonged to the house more than to it. And when our tradesmen settle to their shops in the same way, and form no plans respecting future villa architecture, let their whole. houses be decorated, and their shops too, but with a national and domestic decoration . However, our cities are for the most part too large to admit of contented dwelling in them throughout life : and I do not say there is harm in our present system of separating the shop from the dwelling-house; only where they are so JOHN RUSKIN 12521 separated, let us remember that the only reason for shop decoration is removed, and see that the decoration be removed also. Another of the strange and evil tendencies of the present day is to the decoration of the railroad station. Now, if there be any place in the world in which people are deprived of that portion of temper and discretion which is necessary to the contemplation of beauty, it is there. It is the very temple of discomfort ; and the only charity that the builder can extend to us is to show us, plainly as may be, how soonest to escape from it. The whole system of railroad traveling is addressed to people who, being in a hurry, are therefore, for the time being, miserable. No one would travel in that manner who could help it, — who had time to go leisurely over hills and between hedges, instead of through tunnels and between banks ; at least those who would, have no sense of beauty so acute as that we need consult it at the station . The railroad is in all its relations a matter of earnest business, to be got through as soon as possible. It transmutes a man from a traveler into a living parcel . For the time, he has parted with the nobler characteristics of his humanity for the sake of a planetary power of locomotion. Do not ask him to admire anything. You might as well ask the wind. Carry him safely, dismiss him soon : he will thank you for nothing else. All attempts to please him in any other way are mere mockery, and insults to the things by which you endeavor to do so. There never was more flagrant nor impertinent folly than the smallest portion of ornament in anything concerned with railroads or near them. Keep them out of the way, take them through the ugliest country you can find, confess them the miserable things they are, and spend nothing upon them but for safety and speed. Give large salaries to efficient servants, large prices to good manufacturers, large wages to able workmen ; let the iron be tough, and the brickwork solid, and the carriages strong. The time is perhaps not distant when these first necessities may not be easily met : and to increase expense in any other direction is madness. Better bury gold in the embankments than put it in ornaments on the stations. Will a single traveler be willing to pay an increased fare on the South- Western because the columns of the terminus are covered with patterns from Nineveh ? -he will only care less for the Ninevite ivories in the British Museum : or on the North-Western, because there are Old-English-looking spandrels to the roof of the station at 12522 JOHN RUSKIN - Crewe ? he will only have less pleasure in their prototypes at Crewe House. Railroad architecture has, or would have, a dignity of its own if it were only left to its work. You would not put rings on the fingers of a smith at his anvil. - It is not however only in these marked situations that the abuse of which I speak takes place. There is hardly, at present, an application of ornamental work which is not in some sort liable to blame of the same kind. We have a bad habit of trying to disguise disagreeable necessities by some form of sudden. decoration, which is in all other places associated with such necessities. I will name only one instance, that to which I have alluded before the roses which conceal the ventilators in the flat roofs of our chapels. Many of those roses are of very beautiful design, borrowed from fine works : all their grace and finish are invisible when they are so placed, but their general form is afterwards associated with the ugly buildings in which they constantly occur; and all the beautiful roses of the early French and English Gothic, especially such elaborate ones as those of the triforium of Coutances, are in consequence deprived of their pleasurable influence, and this without our having accomplished the smallest good by the use we have made of the dishonored form. Not a single person in the congregation ever receives one ray of pleasure from those roof roses ; they are regarded with mere indifference, or lost in the general impression of harsh emptiness. Must not beauty, then, it will be asked, be sought for in the forms which we associate with our every- day life ? Yes, if you do it consistently, and in places where it can be calmly seen ; but not if you use the beautiful form only as a mask and covering of the proper conditions and uses of things, nor if you thrust it into the places set apart for toil . Put it in the drawing- room, not into the workshop ; put it upon domestic furniture, not upon tools of handicraft. All men have sense of what is right in this matter, if they would only use and apply that sense ; every man knows where and how beauty gives him pleasure, if he would only ask for it when it does so, and not allow it to be forced upon him when he does not want it. Ask any one of the passengers over London Bridge at this instant whether he cares about the forms of the bronze leaves on its lamps, and he will tell you, No. Modify these forms of leaves to a less scale, and put them on his milk-jug at breakfast, and ask him whether he JOHN RUSKIN 12523 likes them, and he will tell you, Yes. People have no need of teaching, if they could only think and speak truth, and ask for what they like and want, and for nothing else ; nor can a right disposition of beauty be ever arrived at except by this commonsense, and allowance for the circumstances of the time and place. It does not follow, because bronze leafage is in bad taste on the . lamps of London Bridge, that it would be so on those of the Ponte della Trinità ; nor because it would be a folly to decorate the house fronts of Gracechurch Street, that it would be equally so to adorn those of some quiet provincial town. The question of greatest external or internal decoration depends entirely on the conditions of probable repose . It was a wise feeling which made the streets of Venice so rich in external ornament ; for there is no couch of rest like the gondola. So again, there is no subject of street ornament so wisely chosen as the fountain, where it is a fountain of use ; for it is just there that perhaps the happiest pause takes place in the labor of the day, when the pitcher is rested on the edge of it, and the breath of the bearer is drawn deeply, and the hair swept from the forehead, and the uprightness of the form declined against the marble ledge, and the sound of the kind word or light laugh mixes with the trickle of the falling water, heard shriller and shriller as the pitcher fills. What pause is so sweet as that so full of the depth of ancient days, so softened with the calm of pastoral solitude ? -- Ο LANDSCAPES OF THE POETS From 'Lectures on Architecture and Painting ) F COURSE all good poetry descriptive of rural life is essentially pastoral, or has the effect of the pastoral, on the minds of men living in cities : but the class of poetry which I mean, and which you probably understand, by the term pastoral, is that in which a farmer's girl is spoken of as a " nymph, " and a farmer's boy as a " swain " ; and in which, throughout, a ridiculous and unnatural refinement is supposed to exist in rural life , merely because the poet himself has neither had the courage to endure its hardships, nor the wit to conceive its realities. you examine the literature of the past century, you will find that nearly all its expressions having reference to the country show something of this kind ; either a foolish sentimentality or a 12524 JOHN RUSKIN morbid fear, both of course coupled with the most curious ignorance. You will find all its descriptive expressions at once vague and monotonous. Brooks are always " purling " ; birds always " warbling"; mountains always " lift their horrid peaks above the clouds " ; vales always " are lost in the shadow of gloomy woods " ; a few more distinct ideas about hay-making and curds and cream, acquired in the neighborhood of Richmond Bridge, serving to give an occasional appearance of freshness to the catalogue of the sublime and beautiful which descended from poet to poet ; while a few true pieces of pastoral, like the 'Vicar of Wakefield ' and Walton's 'Angler, ' relieved the general waste of dullness. Even in these better productions, nothing is more remarkable than the general conception of the country merely as a series of green fields, and the combined ignorance and dread of more sublime scenery; of which the mysteries and dangers were enhanced by the difficulties of traveling at the period . Thus, in Walton's 'Angler' you have a meeting of two friends, one a Derbyshire man, the other a lowland traveler who is as much alarmed, and uses nearly as many expressions of astonishment, at having to go down a steep hill and ford a brook, as a traveler uses now at crossing the glacier of the Col de Geant. I am not sure whether the difficulties which until late years have lain in the way of peaceful and convenient traveling, ought not to have great weight assigned to them among the other causes of the temper of the century ; but be that as it may, if you will examine the whole range of its literature -keeping this point in view- I am well persuaded that you will be struck most forcibly by the strange deadness to the higher sources of landscape sublimity which is mingled with the morbid pastoralism . The love of fresh air and green grass forced itself upon the animal natures of men ; but that of the sublimer features of scenery had no place in minds whose chief powers had been repressed by the formalisms of the age. And although in the second- rate writers continually, and in the first- rate ones occasionally, you find an affectation of interest in mountains, clouds, and forests, yet whenever they write from their heart you will find an utter absence of feeling respecting anything beyond gardens and grass. Examine, for instance, the novels of Smollett, Fielding, and Sterne, the comedies of Molière, and the writings of Johnson and Addison, and I do not think you will find a single expression of true delight in sublime nature in any one of them. Perhaps Sterne's ' Sentimental Journey, ' in its JOHN RUSKIN 12525 total absence of sentiment on any subject but humanity, and its entire want of notice of anything at Geneva which might not as well have been seen at Coxwold, is the most striking instance I could give you; and if you compare with this negation of feeling on one side , the interludes of Molière, in which shepherds and shepherdesses are introduced in court dress, you will have a very accurate conception of the general spirit of the age. It was in such a state of society that the landscape of Claude, Gaspar Poussin, and Salvator Rosa attained its reputation . It is the complete expression on canvas of the spirit of the time. Claude embodies the foolish pastoralism , Salvator the ignorant terror, and Gaspar the dull and affected erudition. It was, however, altogether impossible that this state of things could long continue. The age which had buried itself in formalism grew weary at last of the restraint ; and the approach of a new era was marked by the appearance, and the enthusiastic reception, of writers who took true delight in those wild scenes of nature which had so long been despised. I think the first two writers in whom the symptoms of a change are strongly manifested are Mrs. Radcliffe and Rousseau; in both of whom the love of natural scenery, though mingled in the one case with what was merely dramatic, and in the other with much that was pitifully morbid or vicious, was still itself genuine and intense, differing altogether in character from any sentiments previously traceable in literature. And then rapidly followed a group of writers who expressed, in various ways, the more powerful or more pure feeling which had now become one of the strongest instincts of the age. Of these, the principal is your own Walter Scott. Many writers, indeed, describe nature more minutely and more profoundly ; but none show in higher intensity the peculiar passion for what is majestic or lovely in wild nature, to which I am now referring. The whole of the poem of the ' Lady of the Lake ' is written with almost a boyish enthusiasm for rocks, and lakes, and cataracts ; the early novels show the same instinct in equal strength wherever he approaches Highland scenery: and the feeling is mingled, observe, with a most touching and affectionate appreciation of the Gothic architecture, in which alone he found the elements of natural beauty seized by art ; so that to this day his descriptions of Melrose and Holy Island Cathedral in the ' Lay of the Last Minstrel ' and 'Marmion, as well as of the ideal abbeys in the Monastery ' 12526 JOHN RUSKIN and ' Antiquary, ' together with those of Caerlaverock and Lochleven Castles in ' Guy Mannering ' and ' The Abbot, ' remain the staple possessions and text-books of all travelers, —not so much for their beauty or accuracy, as for their exactly expressing that degree of feeling with which most men in this century can sympathize. I` THE THRONE From the Stones of Venice > N THE olden days of traveling, now to return no more, in which distance could not be vanquished without toil , but in which that toil was rewarded, partly by the power of deliberate survey of the countries through which the journey lay, and partly by the happiness of the evening hours, when, from the top of the last hill he had surmounted, the traveler beheld the quiet village where he was to rest, scattered among the meadows beside its valley stream ; or from the long- hoped- for turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw for the first time the towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of sunset, —hours of peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of the arrival in the railway station is perhaps not always, or to all men, an equivalent, -in those days, I say, when there was something more to be anticipated and remembered in the first aspect of each successive halting- place than a new arrangement of glass roofing and iron girder, there were few moments of which the recollection was more fondly cherished by the traveler than that which, as I endeavored to describe in the close of the last chapter, brought him within sight of Venice, as his gondola shot into the open lagoon from the canal of Mestre. Not but that the aspect of the city itself was generally the source of some slight disappointment; for, seen in this direction, its buildings are far less characteristic than those of the other great towns of Italy : but this inferiority was partly disguised by distance, and more than atoned for by the strange rising of its walls and towers out of the midst, as it seemed, of the deep sea ; for it was impossible that the mind or the eye could at once comprehend the shallowness of the vast sheet of water which stretched away in leagues of rippling lustre to the north and south , or trace the narrow line of islets bounding it to the east. The salt breeze, the white • MALL THE FROM ROYAL GARDENS (Venice ) JOHN RUSKIN 12527 moaning sea-birds, the masses of black weed separating and disappearing gradually, in knots of heaving shoal, under the advance of the steady tide, all proclaimed it to be indeed the ocean on whose bosom the great city rested so calmly; not such blue, soft, lake-like ocean as bathes the Neapolitan promontories, or sleeps beneath the marble rocks of Genoa, but a sea with the bleak power of our own northern waves, yet subdued into a strange spacious rest, and changed from its angry pallor into a field of burnished gold, as the sun declined behind the belfry tower of the lonely island church, fitly named " St. George of the Seaweed. " As the boat drew nearer to the city, the coast which the traveler had just left sank behind him into one long, low, sad- colored line, tufted irregularly with brushwood and willows : but at what seemed its northern extremity, the hills of Arqua rose in a dark cluster of purple pyramids, balanced on the bright mirage of the lagoon; two or three smooth surges of inferior hill extended themselves about their roots, and beyond these, beginning with the craggy peaks above Vicenza, the chain of the Alps girded the whole horizon to the north- a wall of jagged blue, here and there showing through its clefts a wilderness of misty precipices, fading far back into the recesses of Cadore, and itself rising and breaking away eastward, where the sun struck opposite upon its snow, into mighty fragments of peaked light, standing up behind the barred clouds of evening, one after another, countless, the crown of the Adrian Sea, until the eye turned back from pursuing them to rest upon the nearer burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on the great city, where it magnified itself along the waves as the quick silent pacing of the gondola drew nearer and nearer. And at last, when its walls were reached, and the outmost of its untrodden streets was entered, not through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deep inlet between two rocks of coral in the Indian sea ; when first upon the traveler's sight opened the long ranges of columned palaces, each with its black boat moored at the portal, each with its image cast down beneath its feet upon that green pavement which every breeze broke into new fantasies of rich tessellation ; when first, at the extremity of the bright vista, the shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth from behind the palace of the Camerlenghi — that strange curve, so delicate, so adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent ; when first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the gondolier's cry, 12528 JOHN RUSKIN "Ah, Stall ! " struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the plash of the water followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the boat's side ; and when at last that boat darted forth upon the breadth of silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal Palace, flushed with its sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation, -it was no marvel that the mind should be so deeply entranced by the visionary charm of a scene so beautiful and so strange, as to forget the darker truths of its history and its being. Well might it seem that such a city had owed her existence rather to the rod of the enchanter than the fear of the fugitive ; that the waters which encircled her had been chosen for the mirror of her state, rather than the shelter of her nakedness ; and that all which in nature was wild or merciless, -Time and Decay, as well as the waves and tempests, -had been won to adorn her instead of to destroy, and might still spare, for ages to come, that beauty which seemed to have fixed for its throne the sands of the hourglass as well as of the sea. And although the last few eventful years, fraught with change to the face of the whole earth, have been more fatal in their influence on Venice than the five hundred that preceded them ; though the noble landscape of approach to her can now be seen no more, or seen only by a glance as the engine slackens its rushing on the iron line ; and though many of her palaces are for ever defaced, and many in desecrated ruins, there is still so much of magic in her aspect that the hurried traveler, who -must leave her before the wonder of that first aspect has been worn away, may still be led to forget the humility of her origin, and to shut his eyes to the depth of her desolation . They at least are little to be envied, in whose hearts the great charities of the imagination lie dead, and for whom the fancy has no power to repress the importunity of painful impressions, or to raise what is ignoble and disguise what is discordant in a scene so rich in its remembrances, so surpassing in its beauty. But for this work of the imagination there must be no permission during the task which is before us. The impotent feelings of romance, so singularly characteristic of this century, may indeed gild, but never save, the remains of those mightier ages to which they are attached like climbing flowers ; and they must be torn away from the magnificent fragments, if we would see them as they stood JOHN RUSKIN 12529 in their own strength. Those feelings, always as fruitless as they are fond, are in Venice not only incapable of protecting, but even of discerning, the objects to which they ought to have been attached. The Venice of modern fiction and drama is a thing of yesterday, a mere efflorescence of decay, a stage dream which the first ray of daylight must dissipate into dust. No prisoner whose name is worth remembering, or whose sorrow deserved sympathy, ever crossed that " Bridge of Sighs " which is the centre of the Byronic ideal of Venice ; no great merchant of Venice ever saw that Rialto under which the traveler now passes with breathless interest ; the statue which Byron makes Faliero address as of one of his great ancestors was erected to a soldier of fortune a hundred and fifty years after Faliero's death ; and the most conspicuous parts of the city have been so entirely altered in the course of the last three centuries, that if Henry Dandolo or Francis Foscari could be summoned from their tombs, and stood each on the deck of his galley at the entrance of the Grand Canal, -that renowned entrance, the painter's favorite subject, the novelist's favorite scene, where the water first narrows by the steps of the Church of La Salute, -the mighty Doges would not know in what spot of the world they stood, would literally not recognize one stone of the great city for whose sake, and by whose ingratitude, their gray hairs had been brought down with bitterness to the grave. The remains of their Venice lie hidden behind the cumbrous masses which were the delight of the nation in its dotage ; hidden in many a grassgrown court and silent pathway, and lightless canal, where the slow waves have sapped their foundations for five hundred years, and must soon prevail over them for ever. It must be our task to glean and gather them forth, and restore out of them some faint image of the lost city, more gorgeous a thousandfold than that which now exists, yet not created in the day-dream of the prince, nor by the ostentation of the noble, but built by iron hands and patient hearts, contending against the adversity of nature and the fury of man ; so that its wonderfulness cannot be grasped by the indolence of imagination , but only after frank inquiry into the true nature of that wild and solitary scene whose restless tides and trembling sands did indeed shelter the birth of the city, but long denied her dominion. The average rise and fall of the tide is about three feet (varying considerably with the seasons) ; but this fall, on so flat a XXI-784 12530 JOHN RUSKIN shore, is enough to cause continual movement in the waters, and in the main canals to produce a reflux which frequently runs like a mill-stream. At high water no land is visible for many miles to the north or south of Venice, except in the form of small islands crowned with towers or gleaming with villages. There is a channel some three miles wide between the city and the mainland, and some mile and a half wide between it and the sandy breakwater called the Lido, which divides the lagoon from the Adriatic, but which is so low as hardly to disturb the impression of the city's having been built in the midst of the ocean ; although the secret of its true position is partly, yet not painfully, betrayed by the clusters of piles set to mark the deep-water channels, which undulate far away in spotty chains like the studded backs of huge sea- snakes, and by the quick glittering of the crisped and crowded waves that flicker and dance before the strong winds upon the unlifted level of the shallow sea. But the scene is widely different at low tide. A fall of eighteen or twenty inches is enough to show ground over the greater part of the lagoon; and at the complete ebb the city is seen standing in the midst of a dark plain of seaweed of gloomy green, except only where the larger branches of the Brenta and its associated streams converge towards the port of the Lido. Through this salt and sombre plain the gondola and the fishing-boat advance by tortuous channels, seldom more than four or five feet deep, and often so choked with slime that the heavier keels furrow the bottom till their crossing tracks are seen through the clear sea-water like the ruts upon a wintry road, and the oar leaves blue gashes upon the ground at every stroke, or is entangled among the thick weed that fringes the banks with the weight of its sullen waves, leaning to and fro upon the uncertain sway of the exhausted tide. The scene is often profoundly oppressive, even at this day, when every plot of higher ground bears some fragment of fair building: but in order to know what it was once, let the traveler follow in his boat at evening the windings of some unfrequented channel far into the midst of the melancholy plain ; let him remove, in his imagination, the brightness of the great city that still extends itself in the distance, and the walls and towers from the islands that are near ; and so wait until the bright investiture and sweet warmth of the sunset are withdrawn from the waters, and the black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and JOHN RUSKIN 12531 fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools, or the sea-birds flit from their margins with a questioning cry, and he will be enabled to enter in some sort into the horror of heart with which this solitude was anciently chosen by man for his habitation . They little thought, who first drove the stakes into the sand, and strewed the ocean reeds for their rest, that their children were to be the princes of that ocean, and their palaces its pride ; and yet, in the great natural laws that rule that sorrowful wilderness, let it be remembered what strange preparation had been made for the things which no human imagination could have foretold, and how the whole existence and fortune of the Venetian nation were anticipated or compelled, by the setting of those bars and doors to the rivers and the sea. Had deeper currents divided their islands, hostile navies would again and again have reduced the rising city into servitude ; had stronger surges beaten their shores, all the richness and refinement of the Venetian architecture must have been exchanged for the walls and bulwarks of an ordinary seaport. Had there been no tide, as in other parts of the Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have become noisome, and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the tide been only a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise , the water access to the doors of the palaces would have been impossible : even as it is , there is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in landing without setting foot upon the lower and slippery steps ; and the highest tides. sometimes enter the court-yards, and overflow the entrance halls. Eighteen inches more of difference between the level of the flood and ebb would have rendered the doorsteps of every palace, at low water, a treacherous mass of weeds and limpets, and the entire system of water carriage for the higher classes, in their easy and daily intercourse, must have been done away with. The streets of the city would have been widened, its network of canals filled up, and all the peculiar character of the place and the people destroyed. The reader may perhaps have felt some pain in the contrast between this faithful view of the site of the Venetian Throne, and the romantic conception of it which we ordinarily form ; but this pain, if he have felt it, ought to be more than counterbalanced by the value of the instance thus afforded to us at once of the inscrutableness and the wisdom of the ways of God. If, two thousand years ago, we had been permitted to watch the 12532 JOHN RUSKIN slow settling of the slime of those turbid rivers into the polluted sea, and the gaining upon its deep and fresh waters of the lifeless, impassable, unvoyageable plain, how little could we have understood the purpose with which those islands were shaped out of the void, and the torpid waters inclosed with their desolate walls of sand ! How little could we have known, any more than of what now seems to us most distressful, dark, and objectless , the glorious aim which was then in the mind of Him in whose hand are all the corners of the earth ! how little imagined that in the laws which were stretching forth the gloomy margins of those fruitless banks, and feeding the bitter grass among their shallows, there was indeed a preparation, and the only preparation possible, for the founding of a city which was to be set like a golden clasp on the girdle of the earth, to write her history on the white scrolls of the sea surges, and to word it in their thunder, and to gather and give forth in world-wide pulsation the glory of the West and of the East, from the burning heart of her Fortitude and Splendor. A DESCRIPTION OF ST. MARK'S From the Stones of Venice › YARD or two farther we pass the hostelry of the Black Eagle ; and glancing as we pass through the square door of marble, deeply molded, in the outer wall, we see the shadows of its pergola of vines resting on an ancient well, with a pointed shield carved on its side ; and so presently emerge on the bridge and Campo San Moisè, whence to the entrance into St. Mark's Place, called the Bocca di Piazza (mouth of the square) , the Venetian character is nearly destroyed, first by the frightful façade of San Moisè, which we will pause at another time to examine, and then by the modernizing of the shops as they near the piazza, and the mingling with the lower Venetian populace of lounging groups of English and Austrians. We will push fast through them into the shadow of the pillars at the end of the Bocca di Piazza, and then we forget them all : for between those pillars there opens a great light, and in the midst of it, as we advance slowly, the vast tower of St. Mark seems to lift itself visibly forth from the level field of checkered stones ; and on each side the countless arches prolong themselves into ranged symmetry, JOHN RUSKIN 12533 as if the rugged and irregular houses that pressed together above us in the dark alley had been struck back into sudden obedience and lovely order, and all their rude casements and broken walls had been transformed into arches charged with goodly sculpture and fluted shafts of delicate stone. And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of ordered arches there rises a vision, out of the earth, and all the great square seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it far away; -a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long low pyramid of colored light ; a treasure heap, it seems, partly of gold and partly of opal and mother- ofpearl, hollowed beneath into five great vaulted porches, ceiled with. fair mosaic and beset with sculpture of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory, -sculpture fantastic and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and pomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all twined together into an endless network of buds and plumes ; and in the midst of it the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to the feet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them, -interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the branches of Eden when first its gates were angelguarded long ago. And round the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated stones, -jasper and porphyry, and deepgreen serpentine spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles that half refuse and half yield to the sunshine, Cleopatra- like , " their bluest veins to kiss, " -the shadow, as it steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation, as a receding tide leaves the waved sand ; their capitals rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and ending in the Cross ; and above them, in the broad archivolts, a continuous chain of language and of life , —angels, and the signs of heaven, and the labors of men, each in its appointed season upon the earth ; and above these, another range of glittering pinnacles, mixed with white arches edged with scarlet flowers, -a confusion of delight, amidst which the breasts of the Greek horses are seen blazing in their breadth of golden strength, and the St. Mark's Lion, lifted on a blue field covered with stars : until at last, as if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break into a marble foam, and toss them- 12534 JOHN RUSKIN selves far into the blue sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the breakers on the Lido shore had been frost-bound before they fell, and the sea- nymphs had inlaid them with coral and amethyst. Between that grim cathedral of England and this, what an interval ! There is a type of it in the very birds that haunt them ; for instead of the restless crowd, hoarse-voiced and sablewinged, drifting on the bleak upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that nestle among the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of their living plumes, changing at every motion, with the tints, hardly less lovely, that have stood unchanged for seven hundred years. And what effect has this splendor on those who pass beneath it ? You may walk from sunrise to sunset, to and fro, before the gateway of St. Mark's, and you will not see an eye lifted to it, nor a countenance brightened by it. Priest and layman, soldier and civilian , rich and poor, pass by it alike regardlessly. Up to the very recesses of the porches, the meanest tradesmen of the city push their counters ; nay, the foundations of its pillars are themselves the seats, not " of them that sell doves " for sacrifice , but of the vendors of toys and caricatures. Round the whole square in front of the church there is almost a continuous line of cafés, where the idle Venetians of the middle classes lounge. and read empty journals ; in its centre the Austrian bands play during the time of vespers, their martial music jarring with the organ notes, the march drowning the miserere, and the sullen. crowd thickening round them, -a crowd which if it had its will, would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it . And in the recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards ; and unregarded children- every heavy glance of their young eyes full of desperation and stony depravity, and their throats hoarse with cursing-gamble and fight and snarl and sleep, hour after hour, clashing their bruised centesimi upon the marble ledges of the church porch. And the images of Christ and his angels look down upon it continually. That we may not enter the church out of the midst of the horror of this, let us turn aside under the portico which looks towards the sea, and passing round within the two massive pillars brought from St. Jean d'Acre, we shall find the gate of the JOHN RUSKIN 12535 Baptistery: let us enter there . The heavy door closes behind us instantly ; and the light, and the turbulence of the Piazzetta, are together shut out by it. We are in a low vaulted room ; vaulted not with arches, but with small cupolas starred with gold and checkered with gloomy figures : in the centre is a bronze font charged with rich basreliefs ; a small figure of the Baptist standing above it in a single ray of light, that glances across the narrow room, dying as it falls, from a window high in the wall -and the first thing that it strikes, and the only thing that it strikes brightly, is a tomb. We hardly know if it be a tomb indeed : for it is like a narrow couch set beside the window, low- roofed and curtained ; so that it might seem, but that it has some height above the pavement, to have been drawn towards the window, that the sleeper might be wakened early, -only there are two angels who have drawn the curtain back, and are looking down upon him. Let us look also, and thank that gentle light that rests upon his forehead for ever, and dies away upon his breast. The face is of a man in middle life , but there are two deep furrows right across the forehead, dividing it like the foundations of a tower; the height of it above is bound by the fillet of the ducal cap. The rest of the features are singularly small and delicate, the lips sharp, -perhaps the sharpness of death being added to that of the natural lines ; but there is a sweet smile upon them, and a deep serenity upon the whole countenance. The roof of the canopy above has been blue, filled with stars ; beneath, in the centre of the tomb on which the figure rests, is a seated figure of the Virgin, and the border of it all around is of flowers and soft leaves, growing rich and deep as if in a field in summer. It is the Doge Andrea Dandolo ; a man early great among the great of Venice, and early lost. She chose him for her king in his thirty-sixth year ; he died ten years later, leaving behind him that history to which we owe half of what we know of her former fortunes. Look round at the room in which he lies. The floor of it is of rich mosaic, encompassed by a low seat of red marble ; and its walls are of alabaster, but worn and shattered and darkly stained with age, almost a ruin, -in places the slabs of marble have fallen away altogether, and the rugged brickwork is seen through the rents : but all beautiful, -the ravaging fissures fretting their 12536 JOHN RUSKIN way among the islands and channeled zones of the alabaster, and the time stains on its translucent masses darkened into fields of rich golden brown, like the color of seaweed when the sun strikes on it through deep sea. The light fades away into the recess of the chamber towards the altar, and the eye can hardly trace the lines of the bas-relief behind it of the baptism of Christ : but on the vaulting of the roof the figures are distinct, and there are seen upon it two great circles, -one surrounded by the " principalities and powers in heavenly places, " of which Milton has expressed the ancient division in the single massy line- " Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers, ❞— and around the other the Apostles ; Christ the centre of both: and upon the walls, again and again repeated, the gaunt figure of the Baptist, in every circumstance of his life and death ; and the streams of the Jordan running down between their cloven rocks ; the axe laid to the root of a fruitless tree that springs upon their shore. " Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be hewn down, and cast into the fire. " Yes, verily to be baptized with fire or to be cast therein, -it is the choice set before all men. The march notes still murmur through the grated window, and mingle with the sounding in our ears of the sentence of judgment which the old Greek has written on that Baptistery wall. Venice has made her choice. He who lies under that stony canopy would have taught her another choice, in his day, if she would have listened to him; but he and his counsels have long been forgotten by her, and the dust lies upon his lips. Through the heavy door whose bronze network closes the place of his rest, let us enter the church itself. It is lost in still deeper twilight, to which the eye must be accustomed for some moments before the form of the building can be traced ; and then there opens before us a vast cave, hewn out into the form of a cross, and divided into shadowy aisles by many pillars. Round the domes of its roof the light enters only through narrow apertures like large stars ; and here and there a ray or two from some far- away casement wanders into the darkness, and casts a narrow phosphoric stream upon the waves of marble that heave and fall in a thousand colors along the floor. What else there is of light is from torches, or silver lamps, burning JOHN RUSKIN 12537 ceaselessly in the recesses of the chapels : the roof sheeted with gold, and the polished walls covered with alabaster, give back at every curve and angle some feeble gleaming to the flames ; and the glories round the heads of the sculptured saints flash out upon us as we pass them, and sink again into the gloom. Under foot and over head, a continual succession of crowded imagery, one picture passing into another, as in a dream ; forms beautiful and terrible mixed together ; dragons and serpents, and ravening beasts of prey, and graceful birds that in the midst of them drink from running fountains and feed from vases of crystal : the passions and the pleasures of human life symbolized together, and the mystery of its redemption ; for the mazes of interwoven lines. and changeful pictures lead always at last to the Cross, lifted and carved in every place and upon every stone ; sometimes with the serpent of eternity wrapt round it, sometimes with doves beneath. its arms and sweet herbage growing forth from its feet ; but conspicuous most of all on the great rood that crosses the church before the altar, raised in bright blazonry against the shadow of the apse. And although in the recesses of the isles and chapels, when the mist of the incense hangs heavily, we may see continually a figure traced in faint lines upon their marble, - a woman standing with her eyes raised to heaven, and the inscription above her " Mother of God, " she is not here the presiding deity. It is the Cross that is first seen, and always, burning in the centre of the temple ; and every dome and hollow of its roof has the figure of Christ in the utmost height of it, raised in power, or returning in judgment. - Nor is this interior without effect on the minds of the people. At every hour of the day there are groups collected before the various shrines, and solitary worshipers scattered through the darker places of the church, -evidently in prayer both deep and reverent, and for the most part profoundly sorrowful. The devotees at the greater number of the renowned shrines of Romanism may be seen murmuring their appointed prayers with wandering eyes and unengaged gestures : but the step of the stranger does not disturb those who kneel on the pavement of St. Mark's ; and hardly a moment passes, from early morning to sunset, in which we may not see some half-veiled figure enter beneath the Arabian porch, cast itself into long abasement on the floor of the temple, and then, rising slowly with more confirmed step, and with a passionate kiss and clasp of the arms 12538 JOHN RUSKIN given to the feet of the crucifix, by which the lamps burn always in the northern aisle, leave the church as if comforted. But we must not hastily conclude from this that the nobler characters of the building have at present any influence in fostering a devotional spirit. There is distress enough in Venice to bring many to their knees, without excitement from external imagery; and whatever there may be in the temper of the worship offered in St. Mark's more than can be accounted for by reference to the unhappy circumstances of the city, is assuredly not owing either to the beauty of its architecture or to the impressiveness of the Scripture histories embodied in its mosaics. That it has a peculiar effect, however slight, on the popular mind, may perhaps be safely conjectured from the number of worshipers which it attracts, while the churches of St. Paul and the Frari, larger in size and more central in position, are left comparatively empty. But this effect is altogether to be ascribed to its richer assemblage of those sources of influence which address themselves to the commonest instincts of the human mind, and which, in all ages and countries, have been more or less employed in the support of superstition. Darkness and mystery ; confused recesses of building ; artificial light employed in small quantity, but maintained with a constancy which seems to give it a kind of sacredness ; preciousness of material easily comprehended by the vulgar eye ; close air loaded with a sweet and peculiar odor associated only with religious services, solemn music, and tangible idols or images having popular legends attached to them, these, the stage properties of superstition, which have been from the beginning of the world, and must be to the end of it, employed by all nations, whether openly savage or nominally civilized, to produce a false awe in minds incapable of apprehending the true nature of the Deity, are assembled in St. Mark's to a degree, as far as I know, unexampled in any other European church. The arts of the Magus and the Brahmin are exhausted in the animation of a paralyzed Christianity ; and the popular sentiment which these arts excite is to be regarded by us with no more respect than we should have considered ourselves justified in rendering to the devotion of the worshipers at Eleusis, Ellora, or Edfou. Indeed, these inferior means of exciting religious emotion were employed in the ancient Church as they are at this day; but not employed alone. Torchlight there was, as there is now; JOHN RUSKIN 12539 but the torchlight illumined Scripture histories on the walls, which every eye traced and every heart comprehended, but which, during my whole residence in Venice, I never saw one Venetian regard for an instant. I never heard from any one the most languid expression of interest in any feature of the church, or perceived the slightest evidence of their understanding the meaning of its architecture ; and while therefore the English cathedral, though no longer dedicated to the kind of services for which it was intended by its builders, and much at variance in many of its characters with the temper of the people by whom it is now surrounded, retains yet so much of its religious influence that no prominent feature of its architecture can be said to exist altogether in vain, we have in St. Mark's a building apparently still employed in the ceremonies for which it was designed, and yet of which the impressive attributes have altogether ceased to be comprehended by its votaries. The beauty which it possesses is unfelt, the language it uses is forgotten ; and in the midst of the city to whose service it has so long been consecrated, and still filled by crowds of the descendants of those to whom it owes its magnificence, it stands in reality more desolate than the ruins through which the sheep-walk passes unbroken in our English valleys ; and the writing on its marble walls is less regarded and less powerful for the teaching of men than the letters which the shepherd follows with his finger, where the moss is lightest on the tombs in the desecrated cloister. THE CALAIS SPIRE From Modern Painters > HE essence of picturesque character has been already defined to be a sublimity not inherent in the nature of the thing , but caused by something external to it ; as the ruggedness of a cottage roof possesses something of a mountain aspect, not belonging to the cottage as such. And this sublimity may be either in mere external ruggedness and other visible character, or it may lie deeper, in an expression of sorrow and old age, -attributes which are both sublime ; not a dominant expression, but one mingled with such familiar and common characters as prevent the object from becoming perfectly pathetic in its sorrow, or perfectly venerable in its age. 12540 JOHN RUSKIN For instance, I cannot find words to express the intense pleasure I have always in first finding myself, after some prolonged stay in England, at the foot of the old tower of Calais church. The large neglect, the noble unsightliness of it; the record of its years written so visibly, yet without sign of weakness or decay; its stern wasteness and gloom, eaten away by the Channel winds and overgrown with the bitter sea grasses ; its slates and tiles all shaken and rent, and yet not falling; its desert of brickwork full of bolts and holes and ugly fissures, and yet strong, like a bare brown rock; its carelessness of what any one thinks or feels about it, -putting forth no claim, having no beauty nor desirableness, pride nor grace, yet neither asking for pity ; not, as ruins are, useless and piteous, feebly or fondly garrulous of better days, but useful still , going through its own daily work, —as some old fisherman beaten gray by storm, yet drawing his daily nets : so it stands, with no complaint about its past youth, in blanched and meagre massiveness and serviceableness, gathering human souls together underneath it ; the sound of its bells for prayer still rolling through its rents ; and the gray peak of it seen far across the sea, principal of the three that rise above the waste of surfy sand and hillocked shore, - the lighthouse for life, and the belfry for labor, and this for patience and praise. I cannot tell the half of the strange pleasures and thoughts that come about me at the sight of that old tower : for in some sort, it is the epitome of all that makes the Continent of Europe interesting, as opposed to new countries ; and above all, it completely expresses that agedness in the midst of active life which binds the old and the new into harmony. We in England have our new street, our new inn, our green shaven lawn, and our piece of ruin emergent from it, a mere specimen of the Middle Ages put on a bit of velvet carpet to be shown, which but for its size might as well be on the museum shelf at once, under cover. But on the Continent the links are unbroken between the past and present, and in such use as they can serve for, the gray-headed wrecks are suffered to stay with men; while in unbroken line the generations of spared buildings are seen succeeding each in its place . And thus in its largeness, in its permitted evidence of slow decline, in its poverty, in its absence of all pretense, of all show and care for outside aspect, that Calais tower has an infinite of symbolism in it, all the more striking because JOHN RUSKIN 12541 usually seen in contrast with English scenes expressive of feelings the exact reverse of these. And I am sorry to say that the opposition is most distinct in that noble carelessness as to what people think of it. Once, on coming from the Continent, almost the first inscription I saw in my native English was this: - or a «< " TO LET, A GENTEEL HOUSE UP THIS ROAD » >>> And it struck me forcibly, for I had not come across the idea of gentility, among the upper limestones of the Alps, for seven months; nor do I think that the Continental nations in general have the idea. They would have advertised a " pretty " house, large " one, or a " convenient one; but they could not, by any use of the terms afforded by their several languages, have got at the English " genteel. " Consider a little all the meanness that there is in that epithet, and then see, when next you cross the Channel, how scornful of it that Calais spire will look. Of which spire the largeness and age are also opposed exactly to the chief appearances of modern England, as one feels them on first returning to it : that marvelous smallness both of houses. and scenery, so that a plowman in the valley has his head on a level with the tops of all the hills in the neighborhood ; and a house is organized into complete establishment -parlor, kitchen, and all, with a knocker to its door, and a garret window to its roof, and a bow to its second story -on a scale of twelve feet wide by fifteen high, so that three such at least would go into the granary of any ordinary Swiss cottage ; and also our serenity of perfection, our peace of conceit, everything being done that vulgar minds can conceive as wanting to be done ; the spirit of well-principled housemaids everywhere exerting itself for perpetual propriety and renovation, -so that nothing is old, but only " old-fashioned, " and contemporary, as it were, in date and impressiveness , only with last year's bonnets. Abroad, a building of the eighth or tenth century stands ruinous in the open street ; the children play round it, the peasants heap their corn in it, the buildings of yesterday nestle about it, and fit their new stones. into its rents, and tremble in sympathy as it trembles. No one wonders at it, or thinks of it as separate, and of another time ; we feel the ancient world to be a real thing, and one with the new: antiquity is no dream ; it is rather the children playing 12542 JOHN RUSKIN - about the old stones that are the dream. But all is continuous, and the words " from generation to generation " understandable there. Whereas here we have a living present, consisting merely of what is " fashionable " and " old-fashioned " ; and a past of which there are no vestiges ; a past which peasant or citizen can no more conceive -all equally far away -Queen Elizabeth as old as Queen Boadicea, and both incredible. At Verona we look out of Can Grande's window to his tomb; and if he does not stand beside us, we feel only that he is in the grave instead of the chamber, -not that he is old, but that he might have been beside us last night. But in England the dead are dead to purpose. One cannot believe they ever were alive , or anything else than what they are now, - names in schoolbooks. Then that spirit of trimness. The smooth paving-stones ; the scraped, hard, even, rutless roads ; the neat gates and plates, and essence of border and order, and spikiness and spruceness. Abroad, a country-house has some confession of human weakness. and human fates about it. There are the old grand gates still, which the mob pressed sore against at the Revolution, and the strained hinges have never gone so well since ; and the broken. greyhound on the pillar -still broken -better so : but the long avenue is gracefully pale with fresh green, and the court-yard bright with orange- trees ; the garden is a little run to waste, - since Mademoiselle was married nobody cares much about it ; and one range of apartments is shut up, -nobody goes into them since Madame died. But with us, let who will be married or die, we neglect nothing. All is polished and precise again next morning; and whether people are happy or miserable, poor or prosperous, still we sweep the stairs of a Saturday. Now, I have insisted long on this English character, because I want the reader to understand thoroughly the opposite element of the noble picturesque ; its expression, namely, of suffer ing, of poverty, or decay, nobly endured by unpretending strength of heart. Nor only unpretending, but unconscious. If there be visible pensiveness in the building, as in a ruined abbey, it be comes, or claims to become, beautiful ; but the picturesqueness is in the unconscious suffering,-the look that an old laborer has, not knowing that there is anything pathetic in his gray hair and withered arms and sunburnt breast : and thus there are the two extremes, the consciousness of pathos in the confessed ruin, which may or may not be beautiful, according to the kind of it ; JOHN RUSKIN 12543 and the entire denial of all human calamity and care, in the swept proprieties and neatness of English modernism: and between these there is the unconscious confession of the facts of distress and decay, in by-words ; the world's hard work being gone through all the while, and no pity asked for nor contempt feared. And this is the expression of that Calais spire, and of all picturesque things , in so far as they have mental or human expression at all. I THE FRIBOURG DISTRICT, SWITZERLAND From Modern Painters > Do not know that there is a district in the world more calculated to illustrate this power of the expectant imagination, than that which surrounds the city of Fribourg in Switzerland, extending from it towards Berne. It is of gray sandstone, considerably elevated, but presenting no object of striking interest to the passing traveler ; so that, as it is generally seen in the course of a hasty journey from the Bernese Alps to those of Savoy, it is rarely regarded with any other sensation than that of weariness, all the more painful because accompanied with reaction from the high excitement caused by the splendor of the Bernese Oberland. The traveler, footsore, feverish, and satiated with glacier and precipice, lies back in the corner of the diligence , perceiving little more than that the road is winding and hilly, and the country through which it passes cultivated and tame, Let him, however, only do this tame country the justice of staying in it a few days until his mind has recovered its tone, and take one or two long walks through its fields, and he will have other thoughts of it. It is, as I said, an undulating district of gray sandstone, never attaining any considerable height, but having enough of the mountain spirit to throw itself into continual succession of bold slope and dale ; elevated also just far enough above the sea to render the pine a frequent forest tree along its irregular ridges. Through this elevated tract the river cuts its way in a ravine some five or six hundred feet in depth, which winds for leagues between the gentle hills, unthought of, until its edge is approached : and then suddenly, through the boughs of the firs, the eye perceives, beneath, the green and gliding stream, and the broad walls of sandstone cliff that form its 12544 JOHN RUSKIN banks; hollowed out where the river leans against them, at its turns, into perilous overhanging; and on the other shore, at the same spots, leaving little breadths of meadow between them and the water, half overgrown with thicket, deserted in their sweetness, inaccessible from above, and rarely visited by any curious. wanderers along the hardly traceable foot- path which struggles for existence beneath the rocks. And there the river ripples and eddies and murmurs, in an utter solitude. It is passing through the midst of a thickly peopled country ; but never was a stream so lonely. The feeblest and most far-away torrent among the high hills has its companions: the goats browse beside it ; and the traveler drinks from it, and passes over it with his staff ; and the peasant traces a new channel for it down to his millwheel. But this stream has no companions : it flows on in an infinite seclusion, not secret nor threatening, but a quietness of sweet daylight and open air, —a broad space of tender and deep desolateness, drooped into repose out of the midst of human labor and life ; the waves plashing lowly, with none to hear them ; and the wild birds building in the boughs, with none to fray them away; and the soft, fragrant herbs rising and breathing and fading, with no hand to gather them ; -and yet all bright and bare to the clouds above, and to the fresh fall of the passing sunshine and pure rain. But above the brows of those scarped cliffs, all is in an instant changed. A few steps only beyond the firs that stretch their branches, angular and wild and white like forks of lightning, into the air of the ravine, and we are in an arable country of the most perfect richness : the swathes of its corn glowing and burning from field to field ; its pretty hamlets all vivid with fruitful orchards and flowery gardens, and goodly with steep- roofed storehouse and barn ; its well-kept, hard, park-like roads rising and falling from hillside to hillside, or disappearing among brown banks of moss and thickets of the wild raspberry and rose, or gleaming through lines of tall trees, half glade, half avenue, where the gate opens -or the gateless path turns trustedly aside, unhindered, into the garden of some statelier house, surrounded in rural pride with its golden hives, and carved granaries, and irregular domain of latticed and espaliered cottages, gladdening to look upon in their delicate homeliness - delicate, yet in some sort rude : not like our English homes- trim, laborious, formal, irreproachable in comfort; but with a peculiar carelessness and JOHN RUSKIN 12545 largeness in all their detail, harmonizing with the outlawed loveliness of their country. For there is an untamed strength even in all that soft and habitable land. It is indeed gilded with corn and fragrant with deep grass ; but it is not subdued to the plow or to the scythe. It gives at its own free will, —it seems to have nothing wrested from it nor conquered in it. It is not redeemed from desertness, but unrestrained in fruitfulness, — a generous land, bright with capricious plenty, and laughing from vale to vale in fitful fullness, kind and wild ; nor this without some sterner element mingled in the heart of it. For along all its ridge stand the dark masses of innumerable pines, taking no part in its gladness, -asserting themselves for ever as fixed shadows, not to be pierced or banished even in the intensest sunlight ; fallen flakes and fragments of the night, stayed in their solemn squares in the midst of all the rosy bendings of the orchard. boughs and yellow effulgence of the harvest, and tracing them selves in black network and motionless fringes against the blanched blue of the horizon in its saintly clearness. And yet they do not sadden the landscape, but seem to have been set there chiefly to show how bright everything else is round them ; and all the clouds look of purer silver, and all the air seems filled with a whiter and more living sunshine, where they are pierced by the sable points of the pines ; and all the pastures look of more glowing green, where they run up between the purple trunks : and the sweet field footpaths skirt the edges of the forest for the sake of its shade, sloping up and down about the slippery roots, and losing themselves every now and then hopelessly among the violets, and ground ivy, and brown sheddings of the fibrous leaves ; and at last plunging into some open aisle where the light through the distant stems shows that there is a chance of coming out again on the other side ; and coming out indeed in a little while, from the scented darkness into the dazzling air and marvelous landscape, that stretches still farther and farther in new willfulness of grove and garden, until at last the craggy mountains of the Simmenthal rise out of it, sharp into the rolling of the southern clouds. I believe, for general development of human intelligence and sensibility, country of this kind is about the most perfect that exists. A richer landscape, as that of Italy, enervates or causes wantonness ; a poorer contracts the conceptions, and hardens the temperament of both mind and body; and one more curiously or XXI-785 12546 JOHN RUSKIN prominently beautiful deadens the sense of beauty. Even what is here of attractiveness -far exceeding, as it does, that of most of the thickly peopled districts of the temperate zone -seems to act harmfully on the poetical character of the Swiss ; but take its inhabitants all in all, -as with deep love and stern penetration they are painted in the works of their principal writer, Gotthelf, and I believe we shall not easily find a peasantry which would completely sustain comparison with them. I THE MOUNTAIN GLOOM From Modern Painters > Do not know any district possessing more pure or uninterrupted fullness of mountain character (and that of the highest order) , or which appears to have been less disturbed. by foreign agencies, than that which borders the course of the Trient between Valorsine and Martigny. The paths which lead to it out of the valley of the Rhone, rising at first in steep circles among the walnut-trees, like winding stairs among the pillars of a Gothic tower, retire over the shoulders of the hills into a valley almost unknown, but thickly inhabited by an industrious and patient population. Along the ridges of the rocks, smoothed by old glaciers into long, dark, billowy swellings, like the backs of plunging dolphins, the peasant watches the slow coloring of the tufts of moss and roots of herb, which little by little gather a feeble soil over the iron substance ; then, supporting the narrow strip of clinging ground with a few stones, he subdues it to the spade ; and in a year or two a little crest of corn is seen waving upon the rocky casque. The irregular meadows run in and out like inlets of lake among these harvested rocks, sweet with perpetual streamlets that seem always to have chosen the steepest places to come down for the sake of the leaps, scattering their handfuls of crystal this way and that as the wind takes them, with all the grace but with none of the formalism of fountains ; dividing into fanciful change of dash and spring, yet with the seal of their granite channels upon them, as the lightest play of human speech may bear the seal of past toil, and closing back out of their spray to lave the rigid angles, and brighten with silver fringes and glassy films each JOHN RUSKIN 12547 lower and lower step of stable stone ; until at last, gathered all together again, except perhaps some chance drops caught on the apple blossom, where it has budded a little nearer the cascade. than it did last spring, -they find their way down to the turf, and lose themselves in that silently; with quiet depth of clear water furrowing among the grass blades, and looking only like their shadow, but presently emerging again in little startled gushes and laughing hurries, as if they had remembered sud denly that the day was too short for them to get down the hill. Green field, and glowing rock, and glancing streamlet, all slope together in the sunshine towards the brows of the ravines, where the pines take up their own dominion of saddened shade ; and with everlasting roar in the twilight, the stronger torrents thunder down pale from the glaciers, filling all their chasms with enchanted cold, beating themselves to pieces against the great rocks that they have themselves cast down, and forcing fierce way beneath their ghastly poise. The mountain paths stoop to these glens in forky zigzags, leading to some gray and narrow arch, all fringed under its shuddering curve with the ferns that fear the light ; a cross of rough-hewn pine, iron-bound to its parapet, standing dark against the lurid fury of the foam. Far up the glen, as we pause beside the cross, the sky is seen through the openings in the pines, thin with excess of light ; and, in its clear, consuming flame of white space, the summits of the rocky mountains are gathered into solemn crown and circlets, all flushed in that strange, faint silence of possession by the sunshine which has in it so deep a melancholy; full of power, yet as frail as shadows ; lifeless, like the walls of a sepulchre, yet beautiful in tender fall of crimson folds, like the veil of some sea spirit that lives and dies as the foam flashes ; fixed on a perpetual throne, stern against all strength, lifted above all sorrow, and yet effaced and melted utterly into the air by that last sunbeam that has crossed to them from between the two golden clouds. High above all sorrow : yes ; but not unwitnessing to it. The traveler on his happy journey, as his foot springs from the deep turf and strikes the pebbles gayly over the edge of the mountain road, sees with a glance of delight the clusters of nut- brown cottages that nestle among those sloping orchards, and glow be. neath the boughs of the pines. Here, it may well seem to him, if there be sometimes hardship, there must be at least innocence 12548 JOHN RUSKIN - and peace, and fellowship of the human soul with nature. It . is not so. The wild goats that leap along those rocks have as much passion of joy in all that fair work of God as the men that toil among them. Perhaps more. Enter the street of one of those villages, and you will find it foul with that gloomy foulness that is suffered only by torpor, or by anguish of soul. Here it is torpor : not absolute suffering, not starvation or disease, but darkness of calm enduring ; -the spring known only as the time of the scythe , and the autumn as the time of the sickle ; and the sun only as a warmth, the wind as a chill, and the mountains as a danger.. They do not understand so much as the name of beauty, or of knowledge. They understand dimly that of virtue. Love, patience, hospitality, faith, these things they know. To glean their meadows side by side, so happier ; to bear the burden up the breathless mountain flank, unmurmuringly; to bid the stranger drink from their vessel of milk; to see at the foot of their low death- beds a pale figure upon a cross, dying also, patiently ; -in this they are different from the cattle and from the stones, but in all this unrewarded as far as concerns the present life. For them, there is neither hope nor passion of spirit ; for them neither advance nor exultation . Black bread, rude roof, dark night, laborious day, weary arm at sunset ; and life ebbs away. No books, no thoughts, no attainments; no rest except only sometimes a little sitting in the sun under the church wall, as the bell tolls thin and far in the mountain air ; a pattering of a few prayers, not understood, by the altar rails of the dimly gilded chapel, and so back to the sombre home, with the cloud upon them still unbroken — that cloud of rocky gloom, born out of the wild torrents and ruinous stones, and unlightened even in their religion except by the vague promise of some better thing unknown, mingled with threatening, and obscured by an unspeakable horror -a smoke as it were of martyrdom, coiling up with the incense, and amidst the images of tortured bodies and lamenting spirits in hurtling flames, the very cross, for them, dashed more deeply than for others with gouts of blood. Do not let this be thought a darkened picture of the life of these mountaineers. It is literal fact. No contrast can be more painful than that between the dwelling of any well- conducted English cottager and that of the equally honest Savoyard. The one, set in the midst of its dull flat fields and uninteresting JOHN RUSKIN 12549 hedge-rows, shows in itself the love of brightness and beauty; its daisy-studded garden beds, its smoothly swept brick path to the threshold, its freshly, sanded floor and orderly shelves of household furniture, all testify to energy of heart, and happiness in the simple course and simple possessions of daily life. The other cottage, in the midst of an inconceivable, inexpressible beauty, set on some sloping bank of golden sward, with clear fountains flowing beside it, and wild flowers and noble trees and goodly rocks gathered round into a perfection as of Paradise, is itself a dark and plague-like stain in the midst of the gentle landscape. Within a certain distance of its threshold the ground is foul and cattle-trampled ; its timbers are black with smoke, its garden choked with weeds and nameless refuse, its chambers empty and joyless, the light and wind gleaming and filtering through the crannies of their stones. All testifies that to its inhabitant the world is labor and vanity ; that for him neither flowers bloom ; nor birds sing, nor fountains glisten ; and that his soul hardly differs from the gray cloud that coils and dies upon his hills, except in having no fold of it touched by the sunbeams. DESCRIPTION OF NATURE From Modern Painters ' NO DRESS it and to keep it. " "T° That, then, was to be our work. Alas! what work have we set ourselves upon instead ! How have we ravaged the garden instead of kept it, -feeding our war-horses with its flowers, and splintering its trees into spear shafts ! "And at the East a flaming sword. " Is its flame quenchless ? and are those gates that keep the way indeed passable no more ? or is it not rather that we no more desire to enter ? For what can we conceive of that first Eden which we might not yet win back, if we chose ? It was a place full of flowers, we say. Well : the flowers are always striving to grow wherever we suffer them ; and the fairer, the closer. There may indeed have been a Fall of Flowers, as a Fall of Man : but assuredly creatures such as we are can now fancy nothing lovelier than roses and lilies ; which would grow for us side by side, leaf overlapping leaf, till the earth was white and red with them, if 12550 JOHN RUSKIN we cared to have it so . And Paradise was full of pleasant shades and fruitful avenues. Well: what hinders us from covering as much of the world as we like with pleasant shade and pure blossom, and goodly fruit ? Who forbids its valleys to be covered over with corn, till they laugh and sing ? Who prevents its dark forests, ghostly and uninhabitable, from being changed into infinite orchards, wreathing the hills with frail- floretted snow, far away to the half-lighted horizon of April, and flushing the face of all the autumnal earth with glow of clustered food ? But Paradise was a place of peace, we say, and all the animals were gentle servants to us. Well: the world would yet be a place of peace if we were all peacemakers, and gentle service should we have of its creatures if we gave them gentle mastery. But so long as we make sport of slaying bird and beast, so long as we choose to contend rather with our fellows than with our faults, and make battle- field of our meadows instead of pasture, — so long, truly, the Flaming Sword will still turn every way, and the gates of Eden remain barred close enough, till we have sheathed the sharper flame of our own passions, and broken down the closer gates of our own hearts. I have been led to see and feel this more and more, as I considered the service which the flowers and trees, which man was at first appointed to keep, were intended to render to him in return for his care ; and the services they still render to him, as far as he allows their influence, or fulfills his own task towards them . For what infinite wonderfulness there is in this vegetation, considered, as indeed it is, as the means by which the earth becomes the companion of man -his friend and his teacher ! In the conditions which we have traced in its rocks, there could only be seen preparation for his existence ; -the characters which enable him to live on it safely, and to work with it easily —in all these it has been inanimate and passive ; but vegetation is to it as an imperfect soul, given to meet the soul of man. The earth in its depths must remain dead and cold, incapable except of slow crystalline change ; but at its surface, which human beings look upon and deal with, it ministers to them through a veil of strange intermediate being ; which breathes, but has no voice; moves, but cannot leave its appointed place ; passes through life without consciousness, to death without bitterness ; wears the beauty of youth, without its passion ; and declines to the weakness of age, without its regret. JOHN RUSKIN 12551 And in this mystery of intermediate being, entirely subordinate to us, with which we can deal as we choose, having just the greater power as we have the less responsibility for our treatment of the unsuffering creature, most of the pleasures which we need from the external world are gathered, and most of the lessons we need are written, -all kinds of precious grace and teaching being united in this link between the Earth and Man : wonderful in universal adaptation to his need, desire, and discipline ; God's daily preparation of the earth for him, with beautiful means of life . First a carpet to make it soft for him ; then, a colored fantasy of embroidery thereon ; then, tall spreading of foliage to shade him from sun heat, and shade also the fallen rain , that it may not dry quickly back into the clouds, but stay to nourish the springs among the moss. Stout wood to bear this leafage ; easily to be cut, yet tough and light, to make houses for him, or instruments (lance shaft, or plow handle, according to his temper) : useless it had been, if harder; useless, if less fibrous; useless, if less elastic. Winter comes, and the shade of leafage falls away, to let the sun warm the earth ; the strong boughs remain, breaking the strength of winter winds. The seeds which are to prolong the race, innumerable according to the need, are made beautiful and palatable, varied into infinitude of appeal to the fancy of man or provision for his service : cold juice or glowing spice, or balm, or incense , softening oil , preserving resin , medicine of styptic, febrifuge, or lulling charm : and all these presented in forms of endless change. Fragility or force, softness and strength, in all degrees and aspects ; unerring uprightness as of temple pillars, or undivided wandering of feeble tendrils on the ground; mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb to the storms of ages, or wavings to and from with faintest pulse of summer streamlet. Roots cleaving the strength of rock, or binding the transience of the sand ; crests basking in sunshine of the desert, or hiding by dripping spring and lightless cave ; foliage far tossing in entangled fields beneath every wave of ocean clothing with variegated, everlasting films the peaks of the trackless mountains, or ministering at cottage doors to every gentlest passion and simplest joy of humanity. Being thus prepared for us in all ways, and made beautiful, and good for food and for building and for instruments of our hands, this race of plants, deserving boundless affection and 12552 JOHN RUSKIN admiration from us, become, in proportion to their obtaining it, a nearly perfect test of our being in right temper of mind and way of life : so that no one can be far wrong in either who loves the trees enough; and every one is assuredly wrong in both who does not love them, if his life has brought them in his way. is clearly possible to do without them, for the great companionship of the sea and sky are all that sailors need ; and many a noble heart has been taught the best it had to learn between dark stone walls. Still, if human life be cast among trees at all, the love borne to them is a sure test of its purity. And it is a sorrowful proof of the mistaken ways of the world that the country, " in the simple sense of a place of fields and trees, has hitherto been the source of reproach to its inhabitants ; and that the words " countryman, " " rustic, " " clown, " " paysan, " " villager, " still signify a rude and untaught person, as opposed to the words " townsman and " citizen. " We accept this usage of words, or the evil which it signifies, somewhat too quietly ; as if it were quite necessary and natural that countrypeople should be rude, and townspeople gentle. Whereas I believe that the result of each mode of life may, in some stages of the world's progress, be the exact reverse ; and that another use of words may be forced upon us by a new aspect of facts, so that we may find ourselves saying: " Such-and-such a person is very gentle and kind, he is quite rustic ; and such- and-such another person is very rude and ill-taught, -he is quite urbane. " At all events, cities have hitherto gained the better part of their good report through our evil ways of going on in the world generally ; —chiefly and eminently through our bad habit of fighting with each other. No field, in the middle ages, being safe from devastation, and every country lane yielding easier passage to the marauders, peacefully minded men necessarily congregated in cities, and walled themselves in, making as few cross- country roads as possible ; while the men who sowed and reaped the harvests of Europe were only the servants or slaves of the barons. The disdain of all agricultural pursuits by the nobility, and of all plain facts by the monks, kept educated Europe in a state of mind over which natural phenomena could have no power ; body and intellect being lost in the practice of war without purpose, and the meditation of words without meaning. Men learned the dexterity with sword and syllogism, which they JOHN RUSKIN 12553 mistook for education, within cloister and tilt-yard ; and looked on all the broad space of the world of God mainly as a place. for exercise of horses, or for growth of food . There is a beautiful type of this neglect of the perfectness of the Earth's beauty, by reason of the passions of men, in that picture of Paul Uccello's of the battle of Sant' Egidio, in which the armies meet on a country road beside a hedge of wild roses ; the tender red flowers tossing above the helmets and glowing between the lowered lances. For in like manner the whole of Nature only shone hitherto for man between the tossing of helmet crests : and sometimes I cannot but think of the trees of the earth as capable of a kind of sorrow, in that imperfect life of theirs, as they opened their innocent leaves in the warm springtime, in vain for men ; and all along the dells of England her beeches cast their dappled shade only where the outlaw drew his bow, and the king rode his careless chase ; and by the sweet French rivers their long ranks of poplar waved in the twilight, only to show the flames of burning cities, on the horizon, through the tracery of their stems ; amidst the fair defiles of the Apennines, the twisted olive trunks hid the ambushes of treachery ; and on their valley meadows, day by day, the lilies which were white at the dawn were washed with crimson at sunset. · · Of the many marked adaptations of nature to the mind of man, it seems one of the most singular, that trees intended especially for the adornment of the wildest mountains should be in broad outline the most formal of trees. The vine, which is to be the companion of man, is waywardly docile in its growth, falling into festoons beside his cornfields, or roofing his garden walks, or casting its shadow all summer upon his door. Asso ciated always with the trimness of cultivation, it introduces all possible elements of sweet wildness. The pine, placed nearly always among scenes disordered and desolate, brings into them. all possible elements of order and precision . Lowland trees may lean to this side and that, though it is but a meadow breeze that bends them, or a bank of cowslips from which their trunks lean aslope. But let storm and avalanche do their worst, and let the pine find only a ledge of vertical precipice to cling to, it will nevertheless grow straight. Thrust a rod from its last shoot down the stem ; - it shall point to the centre of the earth as long as the tree lives. 12554 JOHN RUSKIN Also it may be well for lowland branches to reach hither and thither for what they need, and to take all kinds of irregular shape and extension . But the pine is trained to need nothing and to endure everything. It is resolvedly whole, self-contained, desiring nothing but rightness, content with restricted completion. Tall or short, it will be straight. Small or large, it will be round. It may be permitted also to these soft lowland trees that they should make themselves gay with show of blossom, and glad with pretty charities of fruitfulness. We builders with the sword have harder work to do for man, and must do it in closeset troops. To stay the sliding of the mountain snows, which would bury him ; to hold in divided drops at our sword points the rain, which would sweep away him and his treasure fields ; to nurse in shade among our brown fallen leaves the tricklings that feed the brooks in drought ; to give massive shield against the winter wind, which shrieks through the bare branches of the plain ; —such service must we do him steadfastly while we live. Our bodies also are at his service : softer than the bodies of other trees, though our toil is harder than theirs. Let him take them as pleases him, for his houses and ships. So also it may be well for these timid lowland trees to tremble with all their leaves, or turn their paleness to the sky, if but a rush of rain passes by them; or to let fall their leaves at last, sick and sere. But we pines must live carelessly amidst the wrath of clouds. We only wave our branches to and fro when the storm pleads with us, as men toss their arms in a dream. And finally, these weak lowland trees may struggle fondly for the last remnants of life , and send up feeble saplings again from their roots when they are cut down. But we builders with the sword perish boldly; our dying shall be perfect and solemn, as our warring; we give up our lives without reluctance, and for ever. I wish the reader to fix his attention for a moment on these two great characters of the pine, -its straightness and rounded perfectness ; both wonderful, and in their issue lovely, though they have hitherto prevented the tree from being drawn. I say first, its straightness. Because we constantly see it in the wildest scenery, we are apt to remember only as characteristic examples. of it those which have been disturbed by violent accident or disease. Of course such instances are frequent. The soil of the pine is subject to continual change ; perhaps the rock in which JOHN RUSKIN 12555 it is rooted splits in frost and falls forward, throwing the young stems aslope ; or the whole mass of earth around it is undermined by rain ; or a huge bowlder falls on its stem from above, and forces it for twenty years to grow with weight of a couple of tons leaning on its side. Hence, especially at edges of loose cliffs, about waterfalls, or at glacier banks, and in other places liable to disturbance, the pine may be seen distorted and oblique ; and in Turner's Source of the Arveron,' he has, with his usual unerring perception of the main point in any matter, fastened on this means of relating the glacier's history. The glacier cannot explain its own motion, and ordinary observers saw in it only its rigidity ; but Turner saw that the wonderful thing was its non-rigidity. Other ice is fixed, only this ice stirs. All the banks are staggering beneath its waves, crumbling and withered. as by the blast of a perpetual storm . He made the rocks of his foreground loose -rolling and tottering down together ; the pines, smitten aside by them, their tops dead, bared by the ice wind. Nevertheless, this is not the truest or universal expression of the pine's character. I said long ago, even of Turner : “ Into the spirit of the pine he cannot enter. He understood the glacier at once : he had seen the force of sea on shore too often to miss the action of those crystal- crested waves. But the pine was strange to him, adverse to his delight in broad and flowing line ; he refused its magnificent erectness. Magnificent ! -nay, sometimes, almost terrible. Other trees, tufting crag or hill, yield to the form and sway of the ground; clothe it with soft compliance ; are partly its subjects, partly its flatterers, partly its comforters. But the pine rises in serene resistance, self- contained ; nor can I ever without awe stay long under a great Alpine cliff, far from all house or work of men, looking up to its companies of pine, as they stand on the inaccessible juts and perilous ledges of the enormous wall, in quiet multitudes, each like the shadow of the one beside it -upright, fixed, spectral as troops of ghosts standing on the walls of Hades, not knowing each other— dumb for ever. You cannot reach them, cannot cry to them : those trees never heard human voice ; they are far above all sound but of the winds. No foot ever stirred fallen leaf of theirs. All comfortless they stand, between the two eternities of the Vacancy and the Rock: yet with such iron will that the rock itself looks bent and shattered beside them, -fragile, weak, inconsistent, 12556 JOHN RUSKIN compared to their dark energy of delicate life, and monotony of enchanted pride ; -unnumbered, unconquerable. Then note, farther, their perfectness. The impression on most people's minds must have been received more from pictures than reality, so far as I can judge, so ragged they think the pine ; whereas its chief character in health is green and full roundness. It stands compact, like one of its own cones, slightly curved on its sides, finished and quaint as a carved tree in some Elizabethan garden ; and instead of being wild in expression, forms the softest of all forest scenery : for other trees show their trunks and twisting boughs ; but the pine, growing either in luxuriant mass or in happy isolation, allows no branch to be seen. Summit behind summit rise its pyramidal ranges, or down to the very grass sweep the circlets of its boughs ; so that there is nothing but green cone and green carpet. Nor is it only softer, but in one sense more cheerful than other foliage ; ' for it casts only a pyramidal shadow. Lowland forest arches overhead, and checkers the ground with darkness ; but the pine, growing in scattered groups, leaves the glades between emerald-bright. Its gloom is all its own; narrowing into the sky, it lets the sunshine strike down to the dew. And if ever a superstitious feeling comes over me among the pine glades, it is never tainted with the old German forest fear, but is only a more solemn tone of the fairy enchantment that haunts our English meadows ; so that I have always called the prettiest pine glade in Chamouni, " Fairies' Hollow, " It is in the glen beneath the steep ascent above Pont Pelissier, and may be reached by a little winding path which goes down from the top of the hill ; being indeed not truly a glen, but a broad ledge of moss and turf, leaning in a formidable precipice (which however the gentle branches hide) over the Arve. An almost isolated rock promontory, manycolored, rises at the end of it. On the other sides it is bordered by cliffs, from which a little cascade falls, literally down among the pines ; for it is so light, shaking itself into mere showers of seed pearl in the sun, that the pines don't know it from mist, and grow through it without minding. Underneath, there is only the mossy silence ; and above, for ever, the snow of the nameless Aiguille. And then the third character which I want you to notice in the pine is its exquisite fineness. Other trees rise against the JOHN RUSKIN 12557 sky in dots and knots, but this in fringes. * You never see the edges of it, so subtle are they ; and for this reason, it alone of trees, so far as I know, is capable of the fiery change which we saw before had been noticed by Shakespeare. When the sun rises behind a ridge crested with pine, -provided the ridge be at a distance of about two miles, and seen clear, - all the trees, for about three or four degrees on each side of the sun, become trees of light, seen in clear flame against the darker sky, and dazzling as the sun itself. I thought at first this was owing to the actual lustre of the leaves ; but I believe now it is caused by the cloud dew upon them, -every minutest leaf carrying its diamond. It seems as if these trees, living always among the clouds, had caught part of their glory from them; and, themselves the darkest of vegetation, could yet add splendor to the sun itself. Yet I have been more struck by their character of finished delicacy at a distance from the central Alps, among the pastoral hills of the Emmenthal or lowland districts of Berne ; where they are set in groups between the cottages, whose shingle roofs

• Keats (as is . his way) puts nearly all that may be said of the pine into

one verse, though they are only figurative pines of which he is speaking. I have come to that pass of admiration for him now, that I dare not read him, so discontented he makes me with my own work; but others must not leave unread, in considering the influence of trees upon the human soul, that marvelous ode to Psyche. Here is the piece about pines : - "Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane In some untrodden region of my mind, Where branchèd thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain, Instead of pines, shall murmur in the wind : Far, far around shall those dark-clustered trees Fledge the wild-ridgèd mountains, steep by steep ; And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds , and bees, The moss-lain Dryads shall be lulled to sleep ; And in the midst of this wide quietness A rosy sanctuary will I dress With the wreathed trellis of a working brain, With buds, and bells, and stars without a name, With all the Gardener Fancy e'er could feign, Who, breeding flowers, will never breed the same. And there shall be for thee all soft delight That shadowy thought can win ; A bright torch, and a casement ope, at night, To let the warm Love in. » 12558 JOHN RUSKIN (they also of pine) of deep gray blue, and lightly carved fronts, golden and orange in the autumn sunshine, gleam on the banks and lawns of hillside, -endless lawns, mounded and studded and bossed all over with deeper green hay heaps, orderly set, like jewelry (the mountain hay, when the pastures are full of springs, being strangely dark and fresh in verdure for a whole day after it is cut). And amidst this delicate delight of cottage and field, the young pines stand delicatest of all, scented as with frankincense, their slender stems straight as arrows, and crystal white, looking as if they would break with a touch, like needles; and their arabesques of dark leaf pierced through and through by the pale radiance of clear sky, opal blue, where they follow each other along the soft hill ridges, up and down. I have watched them in such scenes with the deeper interest, because of all trees they have hitherto had most influence on human character. The effect of other vegetation, however great, has been divided by mingled species : elm and oak in England, poplar in France, birch in Scotland, olive in Italy and Spain, share their power with inferior trees, and with all the changing charm of successive agriculture. But the tremendous unity of the pine absorbs and molds the life of a race. The pine shadows rest upon a nation. The Northern peoples, century after century, lived under one or other of the two great powers of the Pine and the Sea, both infinite. They dwelt amidst the forests, as they wandered on the waves, and saw no end, nor any other horizon ; -still the dark-green trees, or the dark-green waters, jagged the dawn with their fringe or their foam. And whatever elements of imagination, or of warrior strength, or of domestic justice, were brought down by the Norwegian and the Goth against the dissoluteness or degradation of the South of Europe, were taught them under the green roofs and wild penetralia of the pine. L LEAVES MOTIONLESS From Modern Painters ' EAVES motionless. The strong pines wave above them, and the weak grasses tremble beside them: but the blue stars rest upon the earth with a peace as of heaven ; and far along the ridges of iron rock, moveless as they, the rubied crests of Alpine rose flush in the low rays of morning. Nor these yet JOHN RUSKIN 12559 the stillest leaves. Others there are subdued to a deeper quietness, the mute slaves of the earth, to whom we owe perhaps thanks and tenderness the most profound of all we have to render for the leaf ministries. It is strange to think of the gradually diminished power and withdrawn freedom among the orders of leaves, -from the sweep of the chestnut and gadding of the vine, down to the close shrinking trefoil and contented daisy, pressed on earth ; and at last to the leaves that are not merely close to earth, but themselves a part of it, -fastened down to it by their sides , here and there only a wrinkled edge rising from the granite crystals. We have found beauty in the tree yielding fruit, and in the herb yielding seed. How of the herb yielding no seed, * the fruitless, flowerless lichen of the rock ? Lichen, and mosses (though these last in their luxuriance are deep and rich as herbage, yet both for the most part humblest of the green things that live) , - how of these ? Meek creatures ! the first mercy of the earth, veiling with hushed softness its dintless rocks ; creatures full of pity, covering with strange and tender honor the scarred disgrace of ruin, -laying quiet finger on the trembling stones, to teach them rest. No words, that I know of, will say what these mosses are. None are delicate enough, none perfect enough, none rich enough. How is one to tell of the rounded bosses of furred and beaming green, - the starred divisions of rubied bloom, fine-filmed, as if the Rock Spirits could spin porphyry as we do glass, -the traceries of intricate silver, and fringes of amber, lustrous, arborescent, burnished through every fibre into fitful brightness and glossy traverses of silken change, yet all subdued and pensive, and framed for simplest, sweetest offices of grace. They will not be gathered, like the flowers, for chaplet or love token ; but of these the wild bird will make its nest, and the wearied child his pillow. And as the earth's first mercy, so they are its last gift to us. When all other service is vain, from plant and tree, the soft mosses and gray lichen take up their watch by the headstone. The woods, the blossoms, the gift-bearing grasses, have done their parts for a time ; but these do service for ever. Trees for

• The reader must remember always that my work is concerning the

aspects of things only. Of course a lichen has seeds, just as other plants have ; but not effectually or visibly, for man. 12560 JOHN RUSKIN the builder's yard, flowers for the bride's chamber, corn for the granary, moss for the grave. Yet as in one sense . the humblest, in another they are the most honored of the earth-children. Unfading as motionless, the worm frets them not, and the autumn wastes not. Strong in lowliness, they neither blanch in heat nor pine in frost. Το them, slow-fingered, constant-hearted, is intrusted the weaving of the dark eternal tapestries of the hills ; to them, slow-penciled , iris-dyed, the tender framing of their endless imagery. Sharing the stillness of the unimpassioned rock, they share also its endurance : and while the winds of departing spring scatter the white hawthorn blossom like drifted snow, and summer dims on the parched meadow the drooping of its cowslip gold, -far above, among the mountains, the silver lichen- spots rest starlike on the stone ; and the gathering orange stain upon the edge of yonder western peak reflects the sunsets of a thousand years. W* CLOUD-BALANCINGS From Modern Painters ' E HAVE seen that when the earth had to be prepared for the habitation of man, a veil, as it were, of intermediate being was spread between him and its darkness, in which were joined, in a subdued measure, the stability and insensibility of the earth and the passion and perishing of mankind. But the heavens also had to be prepared for his habitation . Between their burning light -their deep vacuity -and man, as between the earth's gloom of iron substance and man, a veil had to be spread of intermediate being : -which should appease the unendurable glory to the level of human feebleness, and sign the changeless motion of the heavens with a semblance of human vicissitude. Between earth and man arose the leaf. Between the heaven and man came the cloud. His life being partly as the falling leaf, and partly as the flying vapor. Has the reader any distinct idea of what clouds are ? We had some talk about them long ago, and perhaps thought their nature, though at that time not clear to us, would be easily enough understandable when we put ourselves seriously to make it out. Shall we begin with one or two easiest questions ?

DIDO BUILDING CARTHAGE From aPainting byJ.M.WTurner JOHN RUSKIN 12561 That mist which lies in the morning so softly in the valley, level and white, through which the tops of the trees rise as if through an inundation , -why is it so heavy ? and why does it lie so low, being yet so thin and frail that it will melt away utterly into splendor of morning, when the sun has shone on it but a few moments more ? Those colossal pyramids, huge and firm , with outlines as of rocks, and strength to bear the beating of the high sun full on their fiery flanks, -why are they so light, their bases high over our heads, high over the heads of Alps ? why will these melt away, not as the sun rises, but as he descends, and leave the stars of twilight clear, while the valley vapor gains. again upon the earth like a shroud? Or that ghost of a cloud, which steals by yonder clump of pines ; nay, which does not steal by them, but haunts them , wreathing yet round them, and yet -and yet, slowly; now falling in a fair waved line like a woman's veil ; now fading, now gone: we look away for an instant, and look back, and it is again. there. What has it to do with that clump of pines, that it broods by them and weaves itself among their branches, to and fro ? Has it hidden a cloudy treasure among the moss at their roots, which it watches thus ? Or has some strong enchanter charmed it into fond returning, or bound it fast within those bars of bough ? And yonder filmy crescent, bent like an archer's bow above the snowy summit, the highest of all the hill, -that white arch which never forms but over the supreme crest, - how is it stayed there, repelled apparently from the snow; nowhere touching it, the clear sky seen between it and the mountain edge, yet never leaving it, poised as a white bird hovers over its nest ? Or those war- clouds that gather on the horizon, dragon- crested, tongued with fire ; -how is their barbed strength bridled ? what bits are these they are champing with their vaporous lips, flinging off flakes of black foam ? Leagued leviathans of the Sea of Heaven, out of their nostrils goeth smoke, and their eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. The sword of him that layeth at them cannot hold the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon. Where ride the captains of their armies ? Where are set the measures of their march ? Fierce murmurers, answering each other from morning until evening, -what rebuke is this which has awed them into peace ? what hand has reined them back by the way by which they came ? XXI-786 12562 JOHN RUSKIN - How is a cloud outlined ? Granted whatever you choose to ask, concerning its material or its aspect, its loftiness and luminousness, how of its limitation ? What hews it into a heap, or spins it into a web ? Cold is usually shapeless, I suppose ; extending over large spaces equally, or with gradual diminution. You cannot have, in the open air, angles and wedges and coils and cliffs of cold. Yet the vapor stops suddenly, sharp and steep as a rock, or thrusts itself across the gates of heaven in likeness of a brazen bar ; or braids itself in and out, and across and across, like a tissue of tapestry ; or falls into ripples, like sand ; or into waving shreds and tongues, as fire . On what anvils and wheels is the vapor pointed, twisted, hammered, whirled, as the potter's clay ? By what hands is the incense of the sea built up into domes of marble ? 12563 WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL (1844-) ILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL, a disciple of George Cupples the unrivaled, is the story-teller of the sea : not so picturesque as Cooper, not so broadly humorous as Marryat, not so imaginative as Stevenson ; but now that they have ceased spinning yarns, its story-teller par excellence. The ocean is his stage, the ship his drawing-room or tennis court, the launch his bicycle ; his heroes the brave sailors who stand for pluck, endurance, promptitude, courage. Through a dozen or more. tales the sea lashes in a most beautiful manner, the sails creak, the salt breeze blows. Black night, blazing noon, starlight and moonlight are shifted over it ; terrible tempests come and go. The author of the 'Wreck of the Grosvenor, ' most thrilling and absorbing exposé of the sailor's life of peril and privation in the service of the British ship-owner, writes stories strangely compounded of romance and reality; curiously realistic in the delineation of character, wildly improbable in plot and situation. When he sits down to spin his yarn, all things are possible to him, and to us. Early in the action we give the ship over to him, and do not attempt to account for motive or situation ; but swallow the whole impossible, perfectly credible story, as we swallowed ' Red Rover ' in its time. W. CLARK RUSSELL Perhaps, with all the freedom of the broad seas, the story is told by a young girl, who mentions in the opening chapter that this is her first voyage; or perhaps the strange methods of ocean life, the evolutions of a ship, and its seizure by convicts in a storm, are related in nautical phraseology by another young woman who now first smells salt water. Perhaps the hero and heroine are picked up in an open boat which also holds her venerable father, presumably a thousand miles distant ; -but we do not demur. The art of life, the " ernst ist das leben " kind, is a trifling matter to him and to us. His men and women, on the contrary, barring the nautical wisdom of his heroines, make no demands on credulity. They are drawn with unadorned 12564 WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL plainness ; they have matter-of-fact affections, and straightforward views of duty. The reader's first sensation, when he has finished one of Mr. Clark Russell's stories, is the amused perception that he has been in the hands of an entirely independent genius, who has sat down before bare walls, with a sheet of paper in front of him, and told his tale, undisturbed by the hobgoblin Consistency or the scourge of tradition , -who would perhaps have written as he writes, if nobody had ever written a novel before or since. His material - shipwrecks, storms, fires at sea -is not novel to us ; but it is new to him, and he revels in it with all the joy of discovery. We may look for nothing modern in the treatment or style ; no note of mental alertness, of swift moral process or subtle inference. It is all plain sailing in the world of motive and character. The sea is the deus ex machina : it battles with the privateers, frees the prisoners on the convict ship, bears the emigrant vessel sailed by its woman crew safely into port. With its calm loveliness the author contrasts the blood-stained decks of a vessel after a sea fight ; the darkness of the hold where the brave heroine hides, a stowaway, is heightened by the sunrise on the ocean, its broad breast bathed in rainbow hues. The sea is his stage of impossible actions, where his characters perform their courageous, self-forgetful deeds. William Clark Russell was born in New York city, of English parents, February 24th , 1844 ; the son of Henry Russell the composer, author of the popular songs ' Cheer, Boys, Cheer, ' and ' A Good Time's Coming. ' He went to school in France and at Winchester ; and entering the merchant service at thirteen and a half years of age, made voyages to Japan, India, and Australia. After he came of age he left the sea, and was on the staff of the Newcastle Chronicle, and afterwards of the London Daily Telegraph. His first positive success in literature, ' The Wreck of the Grosvenor, ' was published anonymously in London in 1878 : but his second book, 'A Sea Queen, ' betrayed his identity, and since that time he has gone the way of the popular author ; at his best perhaps in his first book, in the ' Sea Queen, ' ' Jack's Courtship, ' 'An Ocean Free Lance, ' 'A Sailor's Sweetheart, ' and ' The Good Ship Mohonk. ' There is a fine ignoring of self in Mr. Clark Russell's novels ; and all his romances are healthy food for healthy appetites. His is a Homeric conception of sea life : his picture of the British seamannoble, generous, confiding in unprofessional matters, imperious, cruel, unscrupulous to the enemy-has the value of a portrait . To appreciate the splendid word-painting, the subtle delicate touches, one has only to turn the pages of any one of his stories. Rarely has the sea had a truer lover, a more faithful interpreter. WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL 12565 A A STORM AND A RESCUE From the Wreck of the Grosvenor > LL that night it blew terribly hard, and raised as wild and raging a sea as ever I remember hearing or seeing described. During my watch -that is, from midnight until four o'clock the wind veered a couple of points, but had gone back again only to blow harder; just as though it had stepped out of its way a trifle to catch extra breath. - I was quite worn out by the time my turn came to go below; and though the vessel was groaning like a live creature in its death agonies, and the seas thumping against her with such shocks as kept me thinking that she was striking hard ground, I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow, and never moved until routed out by Duckling four hours afterward. All this time the gale had not bated a jot of its violence, and the ship labored so heavily that I had the utmost difficulty in getting out of the cuddy on to the poop. When I say that the decks fore and aft were streaming wet, I convey no notion of the truth : the main deck was simply afloat, and every time the ship rolled, the water on her deck rushed in a wave against the bulwarks and shot high in the air, to mingle sometimes with fresh and heavy inroads of the sea, both falling back upon the deck with the boom of a gun. I had already ascertained from Duckling that the well had been sounded and the ship found dry; and therefore, since we were tight below, it mattered little what water was shipped above, as the hatches were securely battened down fore and aft, and the mast-coats unwrung. But still she labored under the serious disadvantage of being overloaded ; and the result was, her fore parts were being incessantly swept by seas which at times completely hid her forecastle in spray. Shortly after breakfast, Captain Coxon sent me forward to dispatch a couple of hands on to the jib-boom to snug the inner jib, which looked to be rather shakily stowed. I managed to dodge the water on the main-deck by waiting until it rolled to the starboard scuppers, and then cutting ahead as fast as I could ; but just as I got upon the forecastle, I was saluted by a green sea which carried me off my legs, and would have swept me down on the main- deck had I not held on stoutly with both hands to one of the fore- shrouds. The water nearly drowned me, and 12566 WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL kept me sneezing and coughing for ten minutes afterward. But it did me no further mischief ; for I was incased in good oilskins and sou' -wester, which kept me as dry as a bone inside. Two ordinary seamen got upon the jib- boom, and I bade them keep a good hold, for the ship sometimes danced her figure- head under water and buried her spritsail-yard; and when she sunk her stern, her flying jib-boom stood up like the mizzenmast. I waited until this job of snugging the sail was finished, and then made haste to get off the forecastle, where the seas flew so continuously and heavily that had I not kept a sharp lookout, I should several times have been knocked overboard. Partly out of curiosity and partly with a wish to hearten the men, I looked into the forecastle before going aft. There were sliding-doors let into the entrance on either side the windlass, but one of them was kept half open to admit air, the forescuttle above being closed . The darkness here was made visible by an oil lamp, -in shape resembling a tin coffee- pot with a wick in the spout, which burned black and smokily. The deck was up to my ankles in water, which gurgled over the pile of swabs. that lay at the open entrance. It took my eye some moments to distinguish objects in the gloom ; and then by degrees the strange interior was revealed. A number of hammocks were swung against the upper deck; and around the forecastle were two rows of bunks, one atop the other. Here and there were sea- chests lashed to the deck; and these, with the huge windlass, a range of chain cable, lengths of rope, odds and ends of pots and dishes, with here a pair of breeches hanging from a hammock, and there a row of oilskins swinging from a beam, -pretty well made up all the furniture that met my eye. The whole of the crew were below. Some of the men lay smoking in their bunks, others in their hammocks with their boots over the edge ; one was patching a coat, another greasing his boots ; others were seated in a group talking ; while under the lamp were a couple of men playing at cards upon a chest, three or four watching and holding on by the hammocks over their heads. A man, lying in his bunk with his face toward me, started up and sent his legs, incased in blanket trousers and brown woolen stockings, flying out. " Here's Mr. Royle, mates ! " he called out. " Let's ask him the name of the port the captain means to touch at for proper food, for we aren't goin' to wait much longer. " WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL 12567 " Don't ask me any questions of that kind, my lads, " I replied promptly, seeing a general movement of heads in the bunks and hammocks. " I'd give you proper victuals if I had the ordering of them ; and I have spoken to Captain Coxon about you, and I am sure he will see this matter put to rights. " I had difficulty in making my voice heard, for the striking of the seas against the ship's bows filled the place with an overwhelming volume of sound ; and the hollow, deafening thunder was increased by the uproar of the ship's straining timbers. " Who the devil thinks, " said a voice from a hammock, " that we're going to let ourselves be grinded as we was last night without proper wittles to support us ? I'd rather have signed articles for a coal-barge, with drowned rats to eat from Gravesend to Whitstable, than shipped in this here cursed wessel, where the bread's just fit to make savages retch ! " I had not bargained for this, but had merely meant to address them cheerily, with a few words of approval of the smart way in which they had worked the ship in the night. Seeing that my presence would do no good, I turned about and left the forecastle, hearing, as I came away, one of the Dutchmen cry out :- " Look here, Mister Rile , vill you be pleashed to ssay when we are to hov' something to eat ? -for by Gott ! ve vill kill te dom pigs in the long-boat if the skipper don't mindt - so look out! " As ill-luck would have it, Captain Coxon was at the break of the poop, and saw me come out of the forecastle. He waited until he had got me alongside of him, when he asked me what I was doing among the men. " I looked in to give them a good word for the work they did last night, " I answered. "And who asked you to give them a good word, as you call it ? » " I have never had to wait for orders to encourage a crew. " Mind what you are about, sir ! " he exclaimed, in a voice tremulous with rage. " I see through your game, and I'll put a stopper upon it that you won't like. " " What game, sir ? Let me have your meaning. " "An infernal mutinous game ! >> he roared. "Don't talk to me, sir ! I know you ! I've had my eye upon you ! You'll play false if you can, and are trying to smother up your d-d rebel meanings with genteel airs ! Get away, sir ! " he bellowed, stamping 12568 WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL his foot. " Get away aft ! You're a lumping, useless incumbrance! But by thunder ! I'll give you two for every one you try to give me! So stand by! " And apparently half mad with his rage, he staggered away in the very direction in which he had told me to go, and stood near the wheel, glaring upon me with a white face, which looked indescribably malevolent in the fur cap and ear- protectors that ornamented it. I was terribly vexed by this rudeness, which I was powerless to resist, and regretted my indiscretion in entering the forecastle after the politic resolutions I had formed. However, Captain Coxon's ferocity was nothing new to me ; truly I believed he was not quite right in his mind, and expected, as in former cases, that he would come round a bit by-and-by when his insane temper had passed. Still his insinuations were highly dangerous, not to speak of their offensiveness. It was no joke to be charged, even by a madman, with striving to arouse the crew to mutiny. Nevertheless I tried to console myself as best I could by reflecting that he could not prove his charges; that I need only to endure his insolence for a few weeks, and that there was always a law to vindicate me and punish him, should his evil temper betray him into any acts of cruelty against me. The gale, at times the severest that I was ever in, lasted three days; during which the ship drove something like eighty miles. to the northwest. The sea on the afternoon of the third day was appalling : had the ship attempted to run, she would have been pooped and smothered in a minute ; but lying close, she rode fairly well, though there were moments when I held my breath as she sunk in a hollow like a coal-mine, filled with the astounding noise of boiling water, -really believing that the immense waves which came hurtling towards us with solid, sharp, transparent ridges , out of which the wind tore lumps of water and flung them through the rigging of the ship, must overwhelm the vessel before she could rise to it. The fury of the tempest and the violence of the sea, which the boldest could not contemplate without feeling that the ship was every moment in more or less peril, kept the crew subdued ; and they eat as best they could the provisions, without complaint. However, it needed nothing less than a storm to keep them quiet : for on the second day a sea extinguished the galley fire, and until the gale abated no cooking could be done ; so that WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL 12569 the men had to put up with the cold water and biscuit. Hence all hands were thrown upon the ship's bread for two days ; and the badness of it , therefore, was made even more apparent than heretofore, when its wormy moldiness was in some degree qualified by the nauseousness of bad salt pork and beef and the sickly flavor of damaged tea. round a little a few I think his temper Like others of his My character was As I had anticipated, the captain came hours after his insulting attack upon me. frightened him when it had reference to me. breed, he was a bit of a cur at the bottom. a trifle beyond him ; and he was ignorant enough to hate and fear what he could not understand. Be this as it may, he made some rough attempts at a rude kind of politeness when I went below to get some grog, and condescended to say that when I had been to sea as long as he, I would know that the most ungrateful rascals in the world were sailors ; that every crew he had sailed with had always taken care to invent some grievance to growl over: either the provisions were bad, or the work too heavy, or the ship unseaworthy; and that long ago he had made up his mind never to pay attention to their complaints, since no sooner would one wrong be redressed than another would be coined and shoved under his nose. I took this opportunity of assuring him that I had never willingly listened to the complaints of the men, and that I was always annoyed when they spoke to me about the provisions, as I had nothing whatever to do with that matter ; and that so far from my wishing to stir up the men into rebellion, my conduct had been uniformly influenced by the desire to conciliate them and represent their conditions as very tolerable, so as to repress any tendency to disaffection which they might foment among themselves. To this he made no reply, and soon we parted ; but all the next day he was sullen again, and never addressed me save to give an order. On the evening of the third day the gale broke ; the glass had risen since the morning ; but until the first dog-watch the wind. did not bate one iota of its violence , and the horizon still retained its stormy and threatening aspect. The clouds then broke in the west, and the setting sun shone forth with deep crimson light upon the wilderness of mountainous waters. The wind fell quickly, then went round to the west and blew freshly; but 12570 WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL there was a remarkable softness and sweetness in the feel and taste of it. A couple of reefs were at once shaken out of the maintopsail, and a sail made. By midnight the heavy sea had subsided into a deep, long, rolling swell, still (strangely enough) coming from the south ; but the fresh westerly wind held the ship steady, and for the first time for nearly a hundred hours we were able to move about the decks with comparative comfort. Early the next morning the watch were set to wash down and clear up the decks ; and when I left my cabin at eight o'clock, I found the weather bright and warm, with a blue sky shining among heavy, white, April- looking clouds, and the ship making seven knots under all plain sail. The decks were dry and comfortable, and the ship had a habitable and civilized look, by reason of the row of clothes hung by the seamen to dry on the forecastle. It was half past nine o'clock, and I was standing near the taffrail looking at a shoal of porpoises playing some hundreds of feet astern, when the man who was steering asked me to look in the direction to which he pointed that was, a little to the right of the bowsprit- and say if there was anything to be seen there ; for he had caught sight of something black upon the horizon twice, but could not detect it now. I turned my eyes toward the quarter of the sea indicated, but could discern nothing whatever ; and telling him that what he had seen was probably a wave, which, standing higher than his fellows, will sometimes show black a long distance off, walked to the fore part of the poop. The breeze still held good ; and the vessel was slipping easily through the water, though the southerly swell made her roll and at times shook the wind out of the sails. The skipper had gone to lie down, -being pretty well exhausted, I daresay; for he had kept the deck for the greater part of three nights running. Duckling was also below. Most of my watch were on the forecastle, sitting or lying in the sun, which shone very warm upon the decks ; the hens under the long- boat were chattering briskly, and the cocks crowing, and the pigs grunting, with the comfort of the warmth. Suddenly, as the ship rose, I distinctly beheld something black out away upon the horizon, showing just under the foot of the foresail. It vanished instantly ; but I was not satisfied, and went for the glass which lay upon the brackets just under the WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL 12571 companion. I then told the man who was steering to keep her away a couple of points for a few moments ; and resting the glass against the mizzen-royal backstay, pointed it toward the place where I had seen the black object. For some moments nothing but sea or sky filled the field of the glass as the ship rose and fell ; but all at once there leaped into this field the hull of a ship, deep as her main-chains in the water, which came and went before my eye as the long seas lifted or dropped in the foreground. I managed to keep her sufficiently long in view to perceive that she was totally dismasted. " It's a wreck, " said I, turning to the man: " let her come to again and luff a point. There may be living creatures aboard of her. » Knowing what sort of man Captain Coxon was, I do not think that I should have had the hardihood to luff the ship a point out of her course had it involved the bracing of the yards ; for the songs of the men would certainly have brought him on deck, and I might have provoked some ugly insolence. But the ship was going free, and would head more westerly without occasioning further change than slightly slackening the weather-braces of the upper yards. This I did quietly ; and the dismantled hull was brought right dead on end with our flying jib-boom . The men now caught sight of her, and began to stare and point ; but did not sing out, as they saw by the telescope in my hand that I perceived her. The breeze unhappily began to slacken somewhat, owing perhaps to the gathering heat of the sun; our pace fell off : and a full hour passed before we brought the wreck near enough to see her permanently, -for up to this she had been constantly vanishing under the rise of the swell. She was now about two miles off, and I took a long and steady look at her through the telescope . It was a black hull with painted ports. The deck was flush fore and aft, and there was a good- sized house just before where the mainmast should have been. This house was uninjured, though the galley was split up, and to starboard stood up in splinters like the stump of a tree struck by lightning. No boats could be seen aboard of her. Her jib-boom was gone, and so were all three masts, -clean cut off at the deck, as though a hand- saw had done it ; but the mizzen- mast was alongside, held by the shrouds and backstays, and the port main and fore shrouds streamed like serpents from her chains into the water. I reckoned at once that she must be loaded with timber, 12572 WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL for she never could keep afloat at that depth with any other kind of cargo in her. She made a most mournful and piteous object in the sunlight, sluggishly rolling to the swell which ran in transparent volumes over her sides and foamed around the deck-house. Once when her stern rose, I read the name Cecilia in broad white letters. I was gazing at her intently, in the effort to witness some indication of living thing on board, when, to my mingled consternation and horror, I witnessed an arm projecting through the window of the deck-house and frantically waving what resembled a white handkerchief. As none of the men called out, I judged the signal was not perceptible to the naked eye ; and in my excitement I shouted, " There's a living man on board of her, my lads ! " dropped the glass, and ran aft to call the captain. I met him coming up the companion ladder. The first thing he said was, " You're out of your course, " and looked up at the sails . " There's a wreck yonder ! " I cried, pointing eagerly, " with a man on board signaling to us. " " Get me the glass, " he said sulkily ; and I picked it up and handed it to him. He looked at the wreck for some moments ; and addressing the man at the wheel, exclaimed, making a movement with his hand, " Keep her away! Where in the devil are you steering to ? " " Good heaven! " I ejaculated : " there's a man on board. there may be others ! " " Damnation ! he exclaimed between his teeth : " what do you mean by interfering with me? Keep her away! " he roared out. During this time we had drawn sufficiently near to the wreck to enable the sharper-sighted among the hands to remark the signal, and they were calling out that there was somebody flying a handkerchief aboard the hull. "Captain Coxon, " said I, with as firm a voice as I could command, for I was nearly in as great a rage as he, and rendered. insensible to all consequences by his inhumanity,-" if you bear away and leave that man yonder to sink with that wreck when he can be saved with very little trouble, you will become as much a murderer as any ruffian who stabs a man asleep. " When I had said this, Coxon turned black in the face with passion. His eyes protruded, his hands and fingers worked as WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL 12573 though he were under some electrical process, and I saw for the first time in my life a sight I had always laughed at as a bit of impossible novelist description, -a mouth foaming with rage. He rushed aft, just over Duckling's cabin, and stamped with all his might. " Now, " thought I, " they may try to murder me ! " And without a word I pulled off my coat, seized a belaying-pin, and stood ready; resolved that happen what might, I would give the first man who should lay his fingers on me something to remember me by while he had breath in his body. The men, not quite understanding what was happening, but seeing that a " row " was taking place, came to the forecastle and advanced by degrees along the main-deck. Among them I noticed the cook, muttering to one or the other who stood near. Mr. Duckling, awakened by the violent clattering over his head, came running up the companion-way with a bewildered, sleepy look in his face. The captain grasped him by the arm, and pointing to me, cried out with an oath that " that villain was breeding a mutiny on board, and he believed wanted to murder him and Duckling. " I at once answered, " Nothing of the kind! There is a man miserably perishing on board that sinking wreck, Mr. Duckling, and he ought to be saved. My lads ! " I cried, addressing the men on the main-deck, " is there a sailor among you all who would have the heart to leave that man yonder without an effort to rescue him ? " " No, sir ! " shouted one of them . "We'll save the man; and if the skipper refuses, we'll make him! " " Luff! " I called to the man at the wheel. " Luff at your peril ! " screamed the skipper. "Aft here, some hands, " I cried, " and lay the main-yard aback. Let go the port main-braces ! " The captain came running toward me. " By the living God ! " I cried in a fury, grasping the heavy brass belaying-pin, " if you come within a foot of me, Captain Coxon, I'll dash your brains out ! " My attitude, my enraged face and menacing gesture, produced the desired effect. He stopped dead, turned a ghastly white, and looked round at Duckling. " What do you mean by this ( etc. ) conduct, you (etc. ) mutinous scoundrels ? " roared Duckling, with a volley of foul language. 12574 WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL " Give him one for himself if he says too much, Mr. Royle ! " sung out some hoarse voice on the main-deck ; " we'll back yer! " And then came cries of " They're a cursed pair o' murderers ! " "Who run the smack down ? " "Who lets men drown ? " « Who starves honest men ?" This last exclamation was followed by a roar. The whole of the crew were now on deck, having been aroused by our voices. Some of them were looking on with a grin, others with an expression of fierce curiosity. It was at once understood that I was making a stand against the captain and chief mate ; and a single glance at them assured me that by one word I could set the whole of them on fire to do my bidding, even to shedding blood. In the mean time, the man at the wheel had luffed until the weather leeches were flat and the ship scarcely moving. And at this moment, that the skipper might know their meaning, a couple of hands jumped aft and let go the weather main- braces. I took care to keep my eyes on Coxon and the mate, fully prepared for any attack that one or both might make on me. Duckling eyed me furiously but in silence, evidently baffled by my resolute air and the position of the men. Then he said something to the captain, who looked exhausted and white and haggard with his useless passion. They walked over to the lee side of the poop ; and after a short conference, the captain to my surprise went below, and Duckling came forward. " There's no objection, " he said, " to your saving the man's life, if you want. Lower away the starboard quarter- boat ; —and you go along in her, " he added to me, uttering the last words in such a thick voice that I thought he was choking. " Come along, some of you ! " I cried out, hastily putting on my coat; and in less than a minute I was in the boat with the rudder and thole- pins shipped, and four hands ready to out oars. as soon as we touched the water. Duckling began to fumble at one end of the boat's falls. " Don't let him lower away! " roared out one of the men in the boat. "He'll let us go with a run. He'd like to see us drowned ! " Duckling fell back, scowling with fury; and shoving his head over as the boat sunk quietly into the water, he discharged a volley of execrations at us, saying that he would shoot some of us, if he swung for it, before he was done, and especially apply. ing a heap of abusive terms to me. WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL 12575 The fellow pulling the bow oar laughed in his face ; and another shouted out, " We'll teach you to say your prayers yet, you ugly old sinner ! » We got away from the ship's side cleverly, and in a short time were rowing fast for the wreck. The excitement under which I labored made me reckless of the issue of this adventure. The sight of the lonely man upon the wreck, coupled with the unmanly, brutal intention of Coxon to leave him to his fate, had goaded me into a state of mind infuriate enough to have done and dared anything to compel Coxon to save him. He might call it mutiny, but I called it humanity ; and I was prepared to stand or fall by my theory. The hate the crew had for their captain and chief mate was quite strong enough to guarantee me against any foul play on the part of Coxon ; otherwise I might have prepared myself to see the ship fill and stand away, and leave us alone on the sea with the wreck. One of the men in the boat suggested this ; but another immediately answered, " They'd pitch the skipper overboard if he gave such an order, and glad o' the chance. There's no love for ' em among us, I can tell you ; and by ! there'll be bloody work done aboard the Grosvenor if things aren't mended soon, as you'll see. " They all four pulled at their oars savagely as these words. were spoken ; and I never saw such sullen and ferocious expressions on men's faces as came into theirs, as they fixed their eyes as with one accord upon the ship. She, deep as she was, looked a beautiful model on the mighty surface of the water, rolling with marvelous grace to the swell, the strength and volume of which made me feel my littleness. and weakness as it lifted the small boat with irresistible power. There was wind enough to keep her sails full upon her graceful, slender masts, and the brass- work upon her deck flashed brilliantly as she rolled from side to side. Strange contrast, to look from her to the broken and desolate picture ahead ! My eyes were riveted upon it now with new and intense emotion, for by this time I could discern that the person who was waving to us was a female, - woman or girl I could not yet make out, — and that her hair was like a veil of gold behind her swaying arm. - " It's a woman ! " I cried in my excitement ; " it's no man at all. Pull smartly, my lads ! pull smartly, for God's sake ! " The men gave way stoutly, and the swell favoring us, we were soon close to the wreck. The girl, as I now perceived she 12576 WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL was, waved her handkerchief wildly as we approached ; but my attention was occupied in considering how we could best board the wreck without injury to the boat. She lay broadside to us, with her stern on our right, and was not only rolling heavily with wallowing, squelching movements, but was swirling the heavy mizzenmast that lay alongside through the water each time she went over to starboard ; so that it was necessary to approach her with the greatest caution to prevent our boat from being stove in. Another element of danger was the great flood of water which she took in over her shattered bulwarks, first on this side, then on that, discharging the torrent again into the sea as she rolled. This water came from her like a cataract, and in a second would fill and sink the boat, unless extreme care were taken to keep clear of it. I waved my hat to the poor girl, to let her know that we saw her and had come to save her, and steered the boat right around the wreck, that I might observe the most practical point for boarding her. She appeared to be a vessel of about seven hundred tons. The falling of her masts had crushed her port bulwarks level with the deck, and part of her starboard bulwarks was also smashed to pieces. Her wheel was gone, and the heavy seas that had swept her deck had carried away capstans, binnacle, hatchway gratings, pumps -everything, in short, but the deckhouse and the remnants of the galley. I particularly noticed a strong iron boat's-davit twisted up like a corkscrew. She was full of water, and lay as deep as her main-chains ; but her bows stood high, and her fore - chains were out of the sea. It was miraculous to see her keep afloat as the long swell rolled over her in a cruel, foaming succession of waves. Though these plain details impressed themselves upon my memory, I did not seem to notice anything, in the anxiety that possessed me to rescue the lonely creature in the deck- house. It would have been impossible to keep a footing upon the maindeck without a life -line or something to hold on by; and seeing this, and forming my resolutions rapidly, I ordered the man in the bow of the boat to throw in his oar and exchange places with me, and head the boat for the starboard port-chains. As we approached I stood up with one foot planted on the gunwale ready to spring ; the broken shrouds were streaming aft and alongside, so that if I missed the jump and fell into the water there was plenty of stuff to catch hold of. WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL 12577 " Gently -' vast rowing -ready to back astern smartly! " I cried as we approached. I waited a moment : the hull rolled toward us, and the succeeding swell threw up our boat; the deck, though all aslant, was on a line with my feet. I sprung with all my strength, and got well upon the deck, but fell heavily as I reached it. However, I was up again in a moment, and ran forward out of the water. Here was a heap of gear, -stay-sail , and jib-halyards, and other ropes, some of the ends swarming overboard. I hauled in one of these ends, but found I could not clear the raffle ; but looking round, I perceived a couple of coils of line —spare stun’- sail tacks or halyards I took them to be -lying close against the foot of the bowsprit. I immediately seized the end of one of these coils, and flung it into the boat, telling them to drop clear of the wreck astern ; and when they had backed as far as the length of the line permitted, I bent on the end of the other coil, and paid that out until the boat was some fathoms astern. I then made my end fast, and sung out to one of the men to get on board by the starboard mizzen- chains, and to bring the end of the line with him. After waiting a few minutes, the boat being hidden, I saw the fellow come scrambling over the side with a red face, his clothes and hair streaming, he having fallen overboard. He shook himself like a dog, and crawled with the line, on his hands and knees, a short distance forward, then hauled the line taut and made it fast. " Tell them to bring the boat round here, " I cried, " and lay off on their oars until we are ready. And you get hold of this line and work yourself up to me. " Saying which, I advanced along the deck, clinging tightly with both hands. It very providentially happened that the door of the deck- house faced the forecastle within a few feet of where the remains of the galley stood. There would be, therefore, less risk in opening it than had it faced beamwise : for the water, as it broke against the sides of the house, disparted clear of the fore and after parts ; that is, the great bulk of it ran clear, though of course a foot's depth of it at least surged against the door. I called out to the girl to open the door quickly, as it slid in grooves like a panel, and was not to be stirred from the outside. The poor creature appeared mad; and I repeated my request three times without inducing her to leave the window. Then, XXI-787 12578 WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL not believing that she understood me, I cried out, "Are you English ?" "Yes," she replied. " For God's sake, save us ! " " I cannot get you through that window, " I exclaimed. " Rouse yourself and open that door, and I will save you. " She now seemed to comprehend, and drew in her head. By this time the man out of the boat had succeeded in sliding along the rope to where I stood, though the poor devil was nearly drowned on the road; for when about half-way, the hull took in a lump of swell which swept him right off his legs, and he was swung hard a- starboard, holding on for his life. However, he recovered himself smartly when the water was gone, and came along hand over fist, snorting and cursing in wonderful style. Meanwhile, though I kept a firm hold of the life-line, I took care to stand where the inroads of water were not heavy, waiting impatiently for the door to open. It shook in the grooves, tried by a feeble hand ; then a desperate effort was made, and it slid a couple of inches. " That will do ! I shouted. " Now then, my lad, catch hold of me with one hand, and the line with the other. " The fellow took a firm grip of my monkey-jacket, and I made for the door. The water washed up to my knees, but I soon inserted my fingers in the crevice of the door and thrust it open. The house was a single compartment, though I had expected to find it divided into two. In the centre was a table that traveled on stanchions from the roof to the deck. On either side were a couple of bunks. The girl stood near the door. In a bunk to the left of the door lay an old man with white hair. Prostrate on his back, on the deck, with his arms stretched against his ears, was the corpse of a man, well dressed ; and in a bunk on the right sat a sailor, who, when he saw me, yelled out and snapped his fingers, making horrible grimaces. Such, in brief, was the coup d'œil of that weird interior as it met my eyes. I seized the girl by the arm. "You first, " said I. Come; there is no time to be lost. " But she shrunk back, pressing against the door with her hand to prevent me from pulling her, crying in a husky voice, and looking at the old man with the white hair, " My father first ! my father first ! " WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL 12579 " You shall all be saved, but you must obey me. Quickly, now ! " I exclaimed passionately; for a heavy sea at that moment flooded the ship, and a rush of water swamped the house through the door and washed the corpse on the deck up into a open corner. Grasping her firmly, I lifted her off her feet, and went staggering to the life- rope, slinging her light body over my shoul-. der as I went. Assisted by my man, I gained the bow of the wreck, and hailing the boat, ordered it alongside. " One of you, " cried I , " stand ready to receive this lady when I give the signal. " I then told the man who was with me to jump into the forechains, which he instantly did. The wreck lurched heavily to port. " Stand by, my lads ! " I shouted. Over she came again, with the water swooping along the main-deck. The boat rose high, and the fore-chains were submerged to the height of the man's knees. " Now! " I called, and lifted the girl over. She was seized by the man in the chains, and pushed toward the boat; the fellow standing in the bow of the boat caught her, and at the same moment down sunk the boat, and the wreck rolled wearily over. But the girl was safe. " Hurrah, my lad ! " I sung out. " Up with you, -there are others remaining; " and I went sprawling along the line to the deck-house, there to encounter another rush of water, which washed as high as my thighs, and fetched me such a thump in the stomach that I thought I must have died of suffocation. I was glad to find that the old man had got out of his bunk, and was standing at the door. " Is my poor girl safe, sir ?" he exclaimed, with the same huskiness of voice that had grated so unpleasantly in the girl's tone. "Quite safe: come along. " " Thanks be to Almighty God ! " he ejaculated , and burst into tears. I seized hold of his thin cold hands, but shifted my fingers to catch him by the coat collar, so as to exert more power over him ; and handed him along the deck, telling my companion to lay hold of the seaman and fetch him away smartly. We managed to escape the water, for the poor old gentleman bestirred. himself very nimbly, and I helped him over the fore- chains; and when the boat rose, tumbled him into her without ceremony. I 12580 WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL saw the daughter leap toward him and clasp him in her arms; but I was soon again scrambling on to the deck, having heard cries from my man, accompanied with several loud curses, mingled with dreadful yells. " He's bitten me, sir ! " cried my companion, hauling himself away from the deck- house. " He's roaring mad. " " It can't be helped, " I answered. " We must get him out. " He saw me pushing along the life-line, plucked up heart, and went with myself through a sousing sea to the door. I caught a glimpse of a white face glaring at me from the interior : in a second a figure shot out, fled with incredible speed toward the bow, and leaped into the sea just where our boat lay. " They'll pick him up, " I exclaimed. " Stop a second ; " and I entered the house and stooped over the figure of the man on the deck. I was not familiar with death, and yet I knew it was here . I cannot describe the signs in his face ; but such as they were, they told me the truth. I noticed a ring upon his finger, and that his clothes were good. His hair was black, and his features well shaped, though his face had a half- convulsed expression, as if something frightful had appeared to him, and he had died of the sight of it . " This wreck must be his coffin , " I said. We can do no more. " " He is a corpse. We scrambled for the last time along the life-line and got into the fore- chains ; but to our consternation , saw the boat rowing away from the wreck. However, the fit of rage and terror that possessed me lasted but a moment or two ; for I now saw they were giving chase to the madman, who was swimming steadily away. Two of the men rowed, and the third hung over the bows, ready to grasp the miserable wretch. The Grosvenor stood steady, about a mile off, with her mainyards backed ; and just as the fellow over the boat's bows caught hold of the swimmer's hair, the ensign was run up on board the ship and dipped three times. " Bring him along! " I shouted. we don't bear a hand. " "They'll be off without us if They nearly capsized the boat as they dragged the lunatic, streaming like a drowned rat, out of the water ; and one of the sailors tumbled him over on his back, and knelt upon him, while he took some turns with the boat's painter round his body, arms WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL 12581 and legs. The boat then came alongside ; and watching our opportunity, we jumped into her and shoved off. I had now leisure to examine the persons whom we had saved. They -father and daughter, as I judged them by the girl's exclamation on the wreck -sat in the stern- sheets, their hands locked. The old man seemed nearly insensible ; leaning backward with his chin on his breast and his eyes partially closed. I feared he was dying ; but could do no good until we reached the Grosvenor, as we had no spirits in the boat. The girl appeared to be about twenty years of age ; very fair, her hair of golden straw color, which hung wet and streaky down. her back and over her shoulders, though a portion of it was held by a comb. She was deadly pale, and her lips blue ; and in her fine eyes was such a look of mingled horror and rapture as she cast them around her, -first glancing at me, then at the wreck, then at the Grosvenor, —that the memory of it will last me to my death: Her dress, of some dark material, was soaked with salt water up to her hips, and she shivered and moaned incessantly, though the sun beat so warmly upon us that the thwarts were hot to the hand. The mad sailor lay at the bottom of the boat, looking straight into the sky. He was a horrid-looking object, with his streaming hair, pasty features, and red beard, his naked shanks and feet. protruding through his soaking, clinging trousers, which figured his shin- bones as though they clothed a skeleton. Now and again he would give himself a wild twirl and yelp out fiercely ; but he was well-nigh spent with his swim, and on the whole was quiet enough. I said to the girl, " How long have you been in this dreadful position ? » " Since yesterday morning, " she answered, in a choking voice painful to hear, and gulping after each word. " We have not had a drop of water to drink since the night before last. He is mad with thirst, for he drank the water on the deck; " and she pointed to the man in the bottom of the boat. " My God ! " I cried to the men, " do you hear her ? They have not drunk water for two days! For the love of God, give way ! " They bent their backs to the oars, and the boat foamed over the long swell. The wind was astern and helped us. I did not speak again to the poor girl ; for it was cruel to make her 12582 WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL · talk, when the words lacerated her throat as though they were pieces of burning iron. After twenty minutes, which seemed as many hours, we reached the vessel. The crew pressing round the gangway cheered when they saw we had brought people from the wreck. Duckling and the skipper watched us grimly from the poop. " Now then, my lads, " I cried, " up with this lady first. Some of you on deck get water ready, as these people are dying of thirst. " In a few minutes, both the girl and the old man were handed over the gangway. I cut the boat's painter adrift from the ringbolt so that we could ship the madman without loosening his bonds, and he was hoisted up like a bale of goods. Then four of us got out of the boat, leaving one to drop her under the davits and hook on the falls. At this moment a horrible scene took place . The old man, tottering on the arms of two seamen, was being led into the cuddy, followed by the girl, who walked unaided. The madman, in the grasp of the big sailor named Johnson, stood near the gangway; and as I scrambled on deck, one of the men was holding a pannikin full of water to his face. The poor . wretch was shrinking away from it, with his eyes half out of their sockets : but suddenly tearing his arm with a violent effort from the rope that bound him, he seized the pannikin and bit clean through the tin; after which, throwing back his head, he swallowed the whole draught, dashed the pannikin down, his face turned black, and he fell dead on the deck. The big sailor sprung aside with an oath, forced from him by his terror ; and from every looker-on there broke a groan. They all shrunk away and stood staring with blanched faces. Such a piteous sight as it was, lying doubled up, with the rope pinioning the miserable limbs, the teeth locked, and the right arm uptossed! "Aft here and get the quarter-boat hoisted up! " shouted Duckling, advancing on the poop ; and seeing the man dead on the deck, he added, " Get a tarpaulin and cover him up, and let him. lie on the fore- hatch. " " Shall I tell the steward to serve out grog to the men who went with me ? " I asked him. He stared at me contemptuously, and walked away without answering. 12583 RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY BY PRINCE SERGE WOLKONSKY - O OTHER branch of literature is better fitted than lyric poetry to affirm the two principles which seem to constitute the chief acquisition of our modern culture : individualism and cosmopolitism. In no other kind of poetry do the great variety of individuals and the great equality of mankind find more concise nor more simultaneous expression . The two apparently contradictory elements are combined : the endless variety of feeling and expression is covered by the unchangeable eternity of the subject, of that " old story which is always new, " the story of man's inner life . The poets of the world are, as it were, the irradiation of the universal human soul ; the poetry of every one of them is the irradiation of the poet's individuality ; yet every single poem, though itself the result of individualism , is a focus which gathers all other individualities and makes them meet on the common ground of their identity and similitude. Passing over all barriers erected by national distinctions, a Frenchman, for instance, and an Englishman will recognize in a German poem their identity and similitude with the author, hence with each other, consequently with all mankind. The cosmopolitan importance of the most individual of all arts appears clearly enough, and the circumference of its humanitarian influence stands in exact proportion with the depth of the poet's individualism . If measured by this standard, Russian lyricism will count among the most precious contributors to universal poetry : the human soul in our lyric songs, like a harp with palpitating chords, vibrates and responds to every touch of life. The blossoming of Russian lyric poetry was sudden, and developed with a wonderful rapidity, if we consider that its beginning and its finest bloom are contained in the first eighty years of the present century. The eighteenth century, or, as it is more specifically called in the history of Russian literature, the " century of Catherine the Great, " struck in fact no lyrical chords ; and this is comprehensible. Lyricism is not possible without genuine feeling nor without genuine ways of expressing it : Russian literature of the eighteenth century was, per contra, all imitative. Under the impulse of Peter the Great's reform, the Russian intellect awakens to literary interests ; at the touch of French literature and philosophy of the time, a number of 12584 RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY poets and writers arise and bring forth that imitative literature which is known as " Russian pseudo-classicism » : Russian subjects, draped in the mantle of Greek and Roman antiquity, seen through French spectacles, and sung in Russian verses. The latter, we must acknowledge, attain a wonderful sonority ; and however artificial the whole gait of that pompous and often ridiculous poetry, the beauty of the language it had worked out constitutes its everlasting merit for Russian poetry. But with the exception of the language there was scarcely anything genuine ; for even genuine subjects seemed to lose their reality through being forced into unsuitable foreign forms. Poets did not compose because they felt a psychological necessity of doing so their productiveness was stimulated not by inner inspiration, but by the simple desire of living up to patterns created by foreign writers, consecrated by public opinion. Our poetry of the eighteenth century is not so much the result of feeling, as the result of a deliberate decision on the part of writers to possess a Russian literature because other nations possessed theirs : it is imbued rather with a spirit of international competition than with that of national expression. It is easy to conceive that such conditions could offer no propitious ground for the blossoming of lyricism . In the first years of our century the Russian intellect emancipates itself from its passive acceptance of European influences. The seeds of foreign culture had germinated in the national soil ; writers apply themselves to the study of national questions, they give up their attitude of confiding pupils, and consciously and deliberately join the great stream of universal literature. Russian poetry gives up its spirit of competition; poets begin to sing because they want to sing, and not because they want to sing as well as others. This was just at the time when the romantic flood which inundated Europe stood at its highest. The romantic stream makes irruption into our country, and fructifies the virgin soil which had been slumbering for so many centuries. Among the brilliant pleiad of poets who brought about the vigorous offspring of Russian poetry in the twenties and thirties of our century, three figures arise, though with different literary importance, yet each with strong individual coloring. These are Zoukovsky, the poet of romantic melancholy; Poushkin, the poet of romantic epicurism ; and Lermontov, the poet of romantic pessimism. Zoukovsky ( 1783-1852 ) was the first among Russian poets who made the human soul the object of poetry, not without a certain exaggeration and one- sidedness. After the cold stiffness of the French pseudo-classical style, the new romantic breeze which came from Germany and England entirely took hold of the young poet, who seemed by nature the most fitted man to navigate on the waves of sentimental and fantastic romanticism . His ballads, RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY 12585 either original, or translated from German and English, became the funnel through which romanticism inundated Russian poetry. The main tonality of his lyre is elegy. Simplicity, genuineness, a quiet melancholy, a serene resignation to the troubles of real life, belief and hope in the future, a constant thought of death and compensation in eternity, are, with the extreme charm of their musical fascination, the chief characteristics of Zoukovsky's poems. In his verses did for the first time those gentle chords resound which Christianity made to vibrate in the human soul. " His romantic lyre, " says a critic, «< gave soul and heart to Russian poetry : it taught the mystery of suffering, of loss, of mystic relations, and of anxious strivings towards the mysterious world which has no name, no place, and yet in which a young soul feels its sacred native land. " This “ striving » towards unknown, unreachable regions is what communicates to Zoukovsky's poetry its exaggeratedly idealistic character : earth and real life to him are but a starting-point ; reality seems to present no interest by itself, to possess no other capacity but that of provoking sorrow, no other value but that of contrasting with the happiness which exists somewhere -which cannot be attained in this life , and undoubtedly will be reached some day. The absolute intrinsic value of Zoukovsky's poems is not of an everlasting character, yet his merits toward national poetry are great : for those qualities of his lyre we mentioned above, he is the founder of Russian lyricism ; for the beauty of his language and the simplicity of means by which he obtained it, he is the precursor of Poushkin. His influence was great on the generation, in the first decades of our century, when Byronism pervaded our literary life : the serene tranquillity of Zoukovsky's elegy was enforced by the storm and gloom of the British poet, and this combined influence produced that kind of poetry which we characterized as romantic pessimism, and which found its final intensified expression in Lermontov. In the minor harmony of these poetical lamentations, the powerful lyre of Poushkin strikes the chords of the major triton in all its plenitude. Poushkin ( 1799-1837) is among our poets the most difficult figure to be retraced ; for the sublime excellency of his poetry comes just from the fact that he has no predominating coloring. Every poet has his favorite element, his beloved subjects, his own particular moods : this makes it easy for the critic , - as a matter of fact, the more one-sided a poet the easier it is to retrace his portrait. Poushkin has no predominating element : his chief particularity is that he has none. The most many- chorded responsiveness, the greatest variety of moods and expressions, are fused in a general harmony; if we may say so, of a " spherical " equilibrium. In another place we characterized Poushkin's lyricism as " pouring rain with brilliant sunshine. " 12586 RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY We find no other words for expressing its completeness : the whole scale of feelings has been touched by the poet, from the abysses of sorrow to the summits of joy ; and yet none of his lyrical poems can be classified into one of these extremes, for in his artistic contemplation of life, human happiness and human misery are to him so equal, that even in the given moment when he depicts one of them, the other is present to his mind. Thus never does a feeling appear single in his verses : joy never goes without regret, sorrow without a ray of hope ; a vague idea of death floats in the background of those poems which give way to the most boundless gayety, and a smile is shining from behind the bitterest of his tears. The striking difference from Zoukovsky's poetry is the absence of sterile strivings in unreal regions, and a vigorous healthy love of real life : our greatest romanticist was at the same time our first realist. This combination is the very quality which assigns to Poushkin's poetry its individual place in the concert of the poets of the world. Prosper Mérimée could not conceive how it was possible to make such beautiful poetry with every-day-life subjects, nor to write such beautiful verses with words taken from the very heart of every- day-life speech ; and the French writer envies the language which can raise its " spoken speech " to such a degree of beauty as to introduce it into the highest regions of poetry. Zoukovsky had proclaimed that " poetry and life are one ": yet in his verses he did not live up to this principle ; his romantic aspirations drew him away from life into a world of dreams. Poushkin proves and realizes that which Zoukovsky proclaimed : his is the real " poetry of life . " " It is not a poetical lie which inflames the imagination, " says the critic Belinsky, " not one of those lies which make man hostile at his first encounter with reality, and exhaust his forces in early useless struggle. " Life and dream, real and ideal, are combined and fused into each other in that poetry which the same critic characterizes as " earth imbued with heaven. » Poushkin's place in Russian literature is unique. He marks the culminating point in the ascending curve of our poetical evolution, and at the same time he is the literary contemporary of all those writers who came after him : for not only are all kinds of our poetry contained in his, but all branches of prose, all shadowings of style. He marks the central point of our literature : the preceding writers converge towards Poushkin, those who come after radiate from Poushkin. Of no less importance than his literary influence was Poushkin's personal prestige : he had become a sort of literary ferment amidst his generation. A pleiad of talented poets group themselves round their young leader, and cast over the first four decades of the present century a quite peculiar charm of romantic youthfulness. RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY 12587 Among these poets, who are all more or less a reflection of Poushkin, only one is powerful enough to stand as an independent individ- uality: this is the already mentioned Lermontov ( 1814-1841) . It is hard for a critic to speak of Lermontov's poetry without mentioning the poet's age ; it is almost impossible for a Russian to consider as an accomplished cycle the work of a man who died at the age of twenty-seven. And yet it is certainly not as an extenuating circumstance we mention the fact : no one can guess what might have become of the poet had he lived longer, but that which he left is as excellent as the productions of a genius in its full maturity. We are far from Poushkin's harmony and many-sidedness in Lermontov's lyricism. Poushkin's serenity, his inner equilibrium, appear almost as if they belonged to some distant world , -so painfully do the chords of Lermontov's lyre resound at the contact of life. His is the poetry of longing, of hopeless expectations ; disenchantment, indignation, accesses of moral fatigue, revolt and resignation, alternate in his beautiful verses with a painful intensity of feeling. How far the bitterness of this romantic pessimism from Zoukovsky's sentimental melancholy ! The world of dreams is left behind : with Poushkin and Lermontov, poetry abandons phantoms, visions, sterile strivings into unreachable regions ; it confines itself to the human soul, and finds the greatest beauty in expressing reality of feeling. In this respect Lermontov's merit towards Russian lyricism can stand the comparison with Poushkin : though his individuality was not as vast, not as comprehensive, yet the circumference in which he moved was a different one from Poushkin's, and his poetry therefore is an independent and important contribution ; his lyre was not as manychorded, but if added to Poushkin's, his chords would not be out of tune, -they would only introduce into the limpid harmony of his major triton, the melancholy of minor tones and the hopeless bitterness of dissonances longing for resolution. Thus the works of the two great poets complete each other, and establish the whole scale of Russian lyricism. After Poushkin and Lermontov, Russian poetry is but a working out : no new chords will be added ; the individuality of poets will express itself in diversity of styles, of coloring, of moods, of intensity ; there will be different kinds of poetry, matter of poetry will be one. Since the forties of the present century we enter into the second period of Russian modern literature. The representatives of the first pleiad of poets, like their leaders, all die very young : the last writer who belonged to the Poushkin circle, the novelist Gogol, dies in 1852 ; under his influence romanticism expires, naturalism definitely takes root in the soil, and the Russian naturalistic novel brings its powerful contribution to the stream of universal literature. The names of 12588 RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY Tourgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, rise as embodiers of Russia's intellectual activity, as representatives of the country's inner life . Yet behind these names there is a series of others, which until to-day remain screened from the eyes of the reader of universal literature. It is one of the most remarkable features of Russia's literary development, that just in the fifties and sixties, at the very time when the naturalistic novel was debating the most burning problems of practical life, a chorus of poets raised their voices to give as it were a lyrical echo to the demands of reality. Their participation with the intellectual, social, and political movement of their time was very different, and influenced their lyricism in a very different way ; yet the general spirit of their poetry was more contemplative than active. Only two poets did in a considerable part of their productions enter the way of deliberate didacticism, and impressed upon their literary activity a character of belligerency. These are Nekrassov ( 1821-1877) and Count Alexis Tolstoy ( 1817- 1875). The former was the poet of " civic sorrows " ; bureaucratic indifference, epicurism of the rich, are the objects of his venomous sarcasm . His poetical gifts were great ; unfortunately they were stimulated not so much with love for the lower people as with hatred for the upper classes, -and hatred has never been a creative element in art (nor in anything) . His lyricism , when it appears pure, without any alloy of sarcastic didacticism, attains a great intensity of bitterness and grief. Count Alexis Tolstoy's didacticism was directed against the materialistic tendencies of his time, especially against the habit of measuring works of art by the standard of practical usefulness. For his criticism he selected the form of old Russian ballads : this gives a very peculiar character to his satires where the novelty of the subject is combined with an archaism of folk-lore. When expressing pure feeling, Count Tolstoy's lyre is serene, ethereal, seraphic : he is the only poet after Poushkin who is entirely major ; the minor tones in his harmony are transitory, and never leave any bitterness behind them. Strange as it may appear, in spite of the above- mentioned belligerent character of his poetry, peace is the predominating element of his lyricism ; peaceful are his joys, peaceful his sorrows : no extremes ; he dives into no abysses ; he takes the æsthetical surface, rather the expression than the substance of feeling ; his love is dreamy, his anger indulgent ; there is much light in his poetry, its rays vibrate and sparkle in multiple combinations of coloring and shadowing, - but they are not burning, their heat is mild, and they remind one of the long caressing beams of the sunset, whose glow is all color. - Two poets have communicated to their poetry a strong coloring of the political and scientific parties to which they belonged : these RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY 12589 are the two poets- Slavophiles, Homiakov ( 1804-1860) and Tutchev (1803-1873) . The characteristic feature of the Slavophiles' doctrinethe ardent belief in the sacred mission of their fatherland, in its being predestined by Providence to be the instrument for the fulfillment of its plans -finds more or less decisive expression in Homiakov's and Tutchev's verses. The high qualities of their personal character preserved them from entering the direction of bombastic spread-eagleism, and communicate to their poetry a sort of religious gravity, which commands respect even to those who do not share their ideas : we may contest opinions, we always bow before faith. Homiakov's lyricism moves in the field of religious thought. Tutchev has a refined sense of nature ; and his lyricism— differently from others who treat the same subject -is not so much a reflection of nature in the poet's personality as a participation with the phenomena, an infusion of the poet into nature. These are the poets in whose works the intellectual, political, and social currents of their time find active responsiveness ; others give but a few occasional echoes to the problems of their time, and are all more or less contemplative. Maykov (born in 1821 ) , the Alma-Tadema of Russian poetry, resuscitates pictures of Greek and Roman antiquity ; a lofty spirit emanates from his philosophical juxtapositions. His lyricism is cold : his lyric poems do not seem an immediate expression of feeling ; the process of incarnation seems to remove the work from the artist ; perhaps an exaggerated propensity towards antiquity has dried up the source of genuine feeling, which cannot gush but out of the soil of reality. Polonsky (born in 1820) is the poet of " psychological landscape " : the outside world is either reflected by the poet's personality, or participates with his feelings in a peaceful harmony of mood; nature seems to have no proper life nor any sense by itself, — it exists simply as man's perception. Quite different is the landscape of Count Golenischev- Koutousov (born in 1848) : he is an observer, a spectator, not a participant of nature, and the latter has a complex. and multiple life of its own, independently from man ; she pursues her own way, with her own direction, and leaves man the choice of joining her after his death in a nirvanic fusion with impersonal cosThe most lyric of lyric poets is Fet ( 1820-1893) : pure feeling, impalpable, immaterial, like effect without cause ; imagine a picture without canvas, a sound without the chord which produces it, the perfume of a flower without the flower itself, -so free of matter is his poetry. He is the poet of indefinite emotions, unseizable shadowings ; where others enter into silence, there he begins to talk ; with a wonderful subtlety, and at the same time a great audacity of expression, he becomes the singer of lyrical twilight, of fugitive impressions , fading memories, vanishing sounds. For the usual chords of a poet's mos. 12590 RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY lyre he substituted the palpitating rays of the moonlight and the rainbow. Such is in brief lines the evolution of Russian lyricism to the present moment, and such is in concise formulas the character of its chief representatives. THE BLACK SHAWL (ALEKSANDR SERGYEVICH POUSHKIN : 1799-1837) IKE a madman I gaze on a raven-black shawl : L Remorse, fear, and anguish, -this heart knows them all. When believing and fond, in the springtime of youth, I loved a Greek maiden with tenderest truth. That fair one caressed me.- - my life ! oh, ' twas bright ; But it set, that fair day, in a hurricane night. One day I had bidden young guests, a gay crew, When sudden there knocked at my gate a vile Jew. " With guests thou art feasting, " he whisperingly said, "And she hath betrayed thee-- thy young Grecian maid. " I cursed him and gave him good guerdon of gold, And called me a slave that was trusty and bold. " Ho! my charger -my charger ! " - We mount, we depart, And soft pity whispered in vain at my heart. On the Greek maiden's threshold in frenzy I stood : I was faint, and the sun seemed as darkened with blond. By the maiden's low window I listen, and there I beheld an Armenian caressing the fair. The light darkened round me ; then flashed my good bladeThe minion ne'er finished the kiss that betrayed. On the corse of the minion in fury I danced, Then silent and pale at the maiden I glanced . RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY I remember the prayers and the red-bursting stream Thus perished the maiden- thus perished my dream. This raven-black shawl from her dead brow I tore - On its fold from my dagger I wiped off the gore. The mists of the evening arose, and my slave Hurled the corpses of both in the Danube's dark wave. Since then, I kiss never the maid's eyes of light, Since then, I know never the soft joys of night. Like a madman I gaze on the raven-black shawl : Remorse, fear, and anguish, —this heart knows them all. 12591 Translation of Thomas B. Shaw. THE ROSE (ALEKSANDR SERGYEVICH POUSHKIN) HERE is our rose, friends ? WHERTell if ye may! Faded the rose, friends, The Dawn-child of Day. Ah, do not say, Such is life's fleetness ! No, rather say, I mourn thee, rose , -farewell! Now to the lily-bell Flit we away. Translation of Thomas B. Shaw. TO- (ALEKSANDR SERGYEVICH POUSHKIN) ES! I remember well our meeting YES!When first thou dawnedst on my sight, Like some fair phantom past me fleeting, Some nymph of purity and light. By weary agonies surrounded 'Mid toil, ' mid mean and noisy care, Long in mine ear thy soft voice sounded, Long dreamed I of thy features fair. 12592 RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY Years flew ; Fate's blast blew ever stronger, Scattering mine early dreams to air, And thy soft voice I heard no longerNo longer saw thy features fair. In exile's silent desolation Slowly dragged on the days for me, - Orphaned of life , of inspiration, Of tears, of love, of deity. I woke : once more my heart was beating — Once more thou dawnèdst on my sight, Like some fair phantom past me fleeting, Some nymph of purity and light. My heart has found its consolation ; All has revived once more for me, And vanished life, and inspiration, And tears, and love, and deity. Translation of Thomas B. Shaw. I MY STUDIES (ALEKSANDR SERGYEVICH POUSHKIN) N SOLITUDE my soul, my wayward inspiration I've schooled to quiet toil, to fervent meditation . I'm master of my days ; order is reason's friend ; On graver thoughts I've learned my spirit's powers to bend : I seek to compensate, in freedom's calm embraces, For the warm years of youth, its joys and vanished graces, And to keep equal step with an enlightened age. Translation of Thomas B. Shaw. CAUCASUS (ALEKSANDR SERGYEVICH POUSHKIN) ENEATH me the peaks of the Caucasus lie ; My gaze from the snow-bordered cliff I am bending ; From her sun- lighted eyrie the eagle ascending Floats movelessly on in a line with mine eye. I see the young torrent's first leaps towards the ocean, And the cliff-cradled lawine essay its first motion.

THE CAUCASUS RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY 12593 Beneath me the clouds in their silentness go, The cataracts through them in thunder down-dashing, Far beneath them bare peaks in the sunny ray flashing ; Weak moss and dry shrubs I can mark yet below, Dark thickets still lower ; green meadows are blooming Where the throstle is singing and reindeer are roaming. Here man, too, has nested his hut, and the flocks On the long grassy slopes in their quiet are feeding, And down to the valley the shepherd is speeding, Where Arágva gleams out from her wood-crested rocks. And there in his crags the poor robber is hiding, And Térek in anger is wrestling and chiding. Like a fierce young wild beast, how he bellows and raves, Like that beast from his cage when his prey he espieth ; ' Gainst the bank, like a wrestler, he struggleth and plieth, And licks at the rocks with his ravening waves. In vain, thou wild river ! dumb cliffs are around thee, And sternly and grimly their bondage hath bound thee ! Translation of Thomas B. Shaw. THE BARD (ALEKSANDR SERGYEVICH POUSHKIN) AY, have you heard by night in woodland depths SAVThe bard who sings his love, who sings his sorrow, And when the fields at morning-hour were silent, The plaintive simple accents of his pipe, — Say, have you heard ? Say, have you met in empty forest shades The bard who sings his love, who sings his sorrow ? Have you remarked his recent tears, his smiling, His gentle eyes so full of pathos mild, - Say, have you seen ? Say, have you sighed to hear his gentle voice, - The bard who sings his love, who sings his sorrow? When in the grove you saw the youthful poet And met the glance of his pathetic eyes , — Say, have you sighed ? Translation of Nathan Haskell Dole. XXI-788 RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY 12594 I A MONUMENT (ALEKSANDR SERGYEVICH POUSHKIN) ' VE raised myself no statue made with hands, - The people's path to it no weeds will hide. Rising with no submissive head, it stands Above the pillar of Napoleon's pride. No! I shall never die : in sacred strains My soul survives my dust and flees decay; And famous shall I be, while there remains A single poet ' neath the light of day. Through all great Russia will go forth my fame, And every tongue in it will name my name ; And by the nation long shall I be loved, Because my lyre their nobler feelings moved : Because I strove to serve them with my song, And called forth mercy for the fallen throng. Hear God's command, O Muse, obediently, Nor dread reproach, nor claim the poet's bay; To praise and blame alike indifferent be, And let fools say their say! Translation of John Pollen. YA PEREZHIL SVOÏ ZHELANYA (ALEKSANDR SERGYEVICH POUSHKIN) 'VE Overlived aspirings, My fancies I disdain ; The fruit of hollow-heartedness, Sufferings alone remain. 'Neath cruel storms of Fate With my crown of bay, A sad and lonely life I lead, Waiting my latest day. Thus, struck by latter cold While howls the wintry wind, Trembles upon the naked bough The last leaf left behind. Translation of John Pollen. RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY 12595 THE FREE LIFE OF THE BIRD (ALEKSANDR SERGYEVICH POUSHKIN) AINFUL labors, grievous sorrows, P₁ Never on God's birdling rest, And it fears no dark to- morrows, Builds itself no lasting nest. On the bough it sleeps and swings Till the ruddy sun appears ; Then it shakes its wings and sings, For the voice of God it hears. After spring's delightful weather, When the burning summer's fled, And the autumn brings together For men's sorrow, for men's dread, Mists and storms in gloomy legions, — Then the bird across the main Flies to far-off southern regions, Till the spring returns again. Translation of Nathan Haskell Dole. THE ANGEL (ALEKSANDR SERGYEVICH POUSHKIN) T EDEN'S gates an angel holy A™ Was shining with bowed reverent head, While o'er the abyss of hell soared slowly A demon with black pinions dread. The rebel spirit of doubt and lying Beheld the sinless one ; and then The glow of tenderness, fast dying, Awoke within his breast again ! " Farewell ! my eyes have seen the vision : Thou dost not shine in vain! " he cries. " Not all on earth draws my derision, Not all in heaven do I despise ! " Translation of Nathan Haskell Dole. 12596 RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY THE PRISONER (MIKHAIL YUREVICH LERMONTOV : 1814-41 ) WAY from the prison shade ! AWAYGive me the broad daylight ; Bring me a black-eyed maid, A steed dark-maned as night. First the maiden fair Will I kiss on her ruddy lips, Then the dark steed shall bear Me, like the wind, to the steppes. But the heavy door hath a bar, The prison window is high ; The black-eyed maiden afar In her own soft bed doth lie ; In meadow green the horse, Unbridled, alone, at ease, Gallops a playful course And tosses his tail to the breeze. Lonely am I, unjoying Amid bare prison walls ; The light in the lamp is dying, Dimmer the shadow falls ; And only, without my room, I hear the measured ring Of the sentry's steps in the gloom, As he treads unanswering. Translation of A. E. Staley. T THE CLOUD (MIKHAIL YUREVICH LERMONTOV) O THE giant cliff's wide bosom straying Came a golden cloud, and soon was sleeping. In the early dawn it woke, and leaping, Hurried down the blue sky, gayly playing. On the old cliff's wrinkled breast remaining, Was a humid trace of dew-drops only. Lost in thought the cliff stands, silent, lonely ; In the wilderness its tears are raining ! Translation of Nathan Haskell Dole. RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY 12597 THE CUP OF LIFE (MIKHAIL YUREVICH LERMONTOV) 'E QUAFF life's cup with dim, WⓇ With covered eyes ; We blur its golden rim With tears and sighs. When from our brows at death The bonds shall fall , And with them vanisheth False festival, - Then shall we see that naught The cup outpours ; A dream the draught so sought, And that- not ours. Translation of A. E. Staley. THE ANGEL (MIKHAIL YUREVICH LERMONTOV) HROUGH the midnight heavens an angel flew, THROU And a soft low song sang he, And the moon and the stars and the rolling clouds Heard that holy melody. He sang of the bliss of sinless souls 'Neath the tents of Eden-bowers ; Of God the Great One -he sang ; and unfeigned Was his praise of the Godhead's powers. A little babe in his arms he bore, For this world of woe and tears ; And the sound of his song in the soul of the child Kept ringing, though wordless, for years. And long languished she on this earth below, With a wondrous longing filled, But the world's harsh songs could not change for her The notes which that angel trilled . Translation of John Pollen. 12598 RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY THE RUSSIAN SOLDIER ( M. Y. NEKRASSOV : 1821-77) HEN up there comes a veteran, THEWith medals on his breast : He scarcely lives, but yet he strives To drink with all the rest. "A lucky man am I, ” he cries, And thus to prove the fact he tries : "In what consists a soldier's luck ? Pray listen while I tell. In twenty fights or more I've been, And yet I never fell. And what is more, in peaceful times Full weal I never knew; Yet all the same, I have contrived Not to give Death his due. Again, for sins both great and small Full many a time they've me With sticks unmercifully flogged, Yet I'm alive, you see ! " Translation of John Pollen. THE PROPHET (M. Y. NEKRASSOV) H ! TELL me not he prudence quite forgot ; A❞ That he himself for his own fate's to blame. Clearer than we, he saw that man cannot Both serve the good and save himself from flame. But men he loved with higher, broader glow ; His soul for worldly honors did not sigh ; For self alone he could not live below, But for the sake of others he could die. Thus thought he and to die, for him, was gain. He will not say that "life to him was dear " ; He will not say that " death was useless pain " : To him long since his destiny was clear. Translation of John Pollen. RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY 12599 HAPPINESS IN SLUMBER (VASILI ANDREYEVICH ZOUKOVSKY : 1783-1852) A LONG the road the maiden Walked with her faithful youth; Their eyes with grief were laden, Their faces pale with ruth. On eyes and lips with yearning Their tender kisses rain ; And life and beauty returning Bloom in their hearts again. Their joy was quickly reckoned : Twice rang a solemn bell ! She in a convent wakenedHe, in a prison cell ! Translation of Nathan Haskell Dole. THE COMING OF SPRING (VASILI ANDREYEVICH ZOUKOVSKY) D EEP silence in the sky; The moon mysteriously Through filmy haze is sinking ; The Star of Love is winking Above the darkling hill, And in the abyss so still Things formless, fascinating, Come flying, animating The silence of the night, - They bring the Spring's delight. Translation of Nathan Haskell Dole. A NIGHT (VASILI ANDREYEVICH ZOUKOVSKY) LREADY now the weary day Has through the purple waves descended ; The cooling shades have fast extended ; The azure arch of heaven grows gray! 4672 12600 RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY And solemn Night with peaceful pinions Comes winging through her vast dominions, And Hesper with his glittering star Is herald of her flight afar ! To us, O heavenly Night, draw near With Slumber's welcome chalice hovering, With magic curtain all things covering, To weary hearts bring peace and cheer ! Soothe with thy presence so pacific, With thy sweet music soporific, As mothers soothe their babes to rest, The soul by sorrow's pangs distrest. Translation of Nathan Haskell Dole. THE VESPER BELLS (IVAN IVANOVICH KOZLOV : 1779-1840) VESPER bells, O vesper bells ! My heart with sweet remembrance swells. Ye bring me back to days of yore ; I see my father's home once more, As when I left it for all time, And heard your last, your parting chime. The bright days of my traitorous spring, How little profit did ye bring ! How many, once so young and gay, No longer see the light of day. Their sleep is deep where silence dwells, — They do not hear the vesper bells! Lay me too in the damp cold ground! A song of melancholy sound The breeze above my grave shall sigh ; Another singer shall pass by, - Not I but he it is who tells The meaning of the vesper bells ! Translation of Nathan Haskell Dole. RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY 12601 SPRING WATERS (FEDOR IVANOVICH TUTCHEV : 1803-73) STILL TILL on the fields the snow lies white, But spring-like founts already spout : Adown the banks in sunshine bright They dash and gleam and shout! They shout aloud to every side : " The Spring is near, the Spring is near ! Her couriers, we have hither hied ; She sent us forward-― we are here ! » The Spring is near, the Spring is near ! And in a ruddy brilliant throng The warm sweet days of May appear, To cheer her train with joy and song. Translation of Nathan Haskell Dole. THE SUNRISE (FEDOR IVANOVICH TUTCHEV) HE East grew white -fast flew the shallop ; The joyous sails were full distended ; And like a heaven beneath us stretching, The sea with misty light was blended. The East grew red-the maiden worshipt, Her veil from off her locks untying. Heaven seemed to glow upon her features, As on her lips the prayer was sighing. The East grew fire - in adoration She knelt, her beauteous head inclining. And on her young cheeks, fresh and blooming, The tear-drops stood like jewels shining. Translation of Nathan Haskell Dole. 12602 RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY EVENING (FEDOR IVANOVICH TUTCHEV) wow sweetly o'er the silent valley. HowThe distant solemn bell-tones fly! Like rustling flights of cranes they dally, Then in the sighing of leaves they die. And like a spring tide overflowing The day grows bright, then slowly fades ; And swifter and more silent going, Adown the valley creep the shades. Translation of Nathan Haskell Dole. THE LEAVES (FEDOR IVANOVICH TUTCHEV) ET pine-trees and cedars L All winter make show, And sleep ' mid the snow- storms, Wrapt fast in the snow. Their needles are pallid Like grass that is transient ; Though they never turn yellow They always look ancient. But we, tribes of lightness, Though brief our abiding, Are blooming with brightness On our branches residing. All the long lovely summer In beauty we grew; We played with the sunbeams, We bathed in the dew. But the birds have ceased singing, The blossoms are dead, The meadows are yellow, The south wind has fled. What use then in clinging To the boughs all in vain ? 'Twere best we should follow O'er valley and plain. RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY 12603 O buffeting storm-winds ! Blow fiercer, blow harder, And strip us from branches We hate now with ardor. Despoil us completely, - We wish not to stay. O whirl us and hurl us Forever away! Translation of Nathan Haskell Dole. RUSSIAN SONG ALEKSEI STEPANOVICH HOMIAKOFF ( 1804-1860) Η AIL, lovely land of Saint Vladimir ! H Thy strength is vast, thy cities mighty ; Thou hast a host of faithful people ! On azure mountains firm thou leanest ; In azure seas thy feet thou bathest. Thou dost not fear the cruel foe, But thou dost fear the wrath of God! Hail, lovely land of Saint Vladimir! My fathers' fathers gave thee service. They won thee peace by fruitful reason, Thy holy cities they embellisht, Thy cruel foes they helpt to vanquish. Recall the good deeds of my fathers. They served thee with a faithful service, And I with faithful heart have served thee. On the steppes from my loins have peasants descended, Have peasants descended, well- to- do little peasants ; Their place do they know, they know what is useful, Their brethren they love, and God do they worship. From me, in the courts, has justice been done Has justice been done, unbought and impartial . From me has gone forth to the whole world a rumor That bluer skies are not to be seen, That bluer seas are not to be plowed, That beautiful is the land of Vladimir. Admire her -thou wilt never sufficiently gaze ; Draw wisdom from her, thou ne'er wilt exhaust her. 12604 RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY Across the heavens the bright sun goes ; All the earth it warms, it lightens. - By night the crowded stars are shining, And there is no counting the sand or the grass-blades, And over the earth proceed the words of GodIt warms with life, with joy it shineth ; Bright gleam the churches' golden cupolas, And the servants of the Lord and the pilgrims Are countless like the grass-blades on the steppes, Are countless like the sands upon the sea- shore. Translation of Nathan Haskell Dole. THE EASTER KISS (APOLLON NIKOLAYVICH MAYKOV : 1821- ?) OON the sun-bright feast-day cometh, - S⁰⁰ I will claim my Easter kiss ; Others then will stand around us : Pray, my Dora, mark you this! Just as if I never kissed you, Blushing red before the rest, You must kiss with downcast eyelids , I will kiss with smile repressed . Translation of John Pollen. THE ALPINE GLACIER (APOLLON NIKOLAYVICH MAYKOV) D ANK the darkness on the cliff- side ; Faintly outlined from below, In their modest maiden gladness Glaciers in the dawn's blush glow. What new life upon me blowing Breathes from yonder snowy height, From that depth of liquid turquoise. Flashing in the morning light? RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY 12605 There I know, dread Terror dwelleth, Track of man there is not there ; Yet my heart in answer swelleth To the challenge, " Come thou here ! " Translation of John Pollen. THE KISS REFUSED (APOLLON NIKOLAYVICH MAYKOV) I WOULD kiss you, lover true ! But I fear the moon would spy ; Little bright stars watch us too . Little stars might fall from sky To the blue sea, telling all ! To the oars the sea will tell, Oars, in turn, tell Fisher EnoHim whom Mary loveth well : And when Mary knows a thing, All the neighborhood will know ; How by moonlight in the garden Where the fragrant flowers grow, I caressed and fondly kissed thee, While the silver apple-tree Shed its bloom on you and me! Translation of John Pollen. BELIEVE IT NOT (COUNT ALEKSEI KONSTANTINOVICH TOLSTOY : 1817-75) B ELIEVE it not, when in excess of sorrow I murmur that my love for thee is o'er! When ebbs the tide, think not the sea's a traitor, — He will return and love the land once more. I still am pining, full of former passion : To thee again my freedom I'll restore , E'en as the waves, with homeward murmur flowing, Roll back from far to the beloved shore ! Translation of John Pollen . 12606 RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY RENEWAL (COUNT ALEKSEI KONSTANTINOVICH TOLSTOY) RIGHTER look the early flowers, BR Louder sounds the skylark's strain ; Blue the air and green the bowers, And the heart feels young again. Shaking off all bonds and fetters, Flinging every chain aside, Life in sunshine flows and glitters Like the freely flowing tide. Do you hear fresh voices singing, And all pulses beating high, As if chords unseen were ringing, Tightly drawn from earth to sky ? Translation of S. N. Wolkonsky. ON SKOBELEV (YAKOV PETROVICH POLONSKY : 1820-?) H' E STOOD alone! Around, from East, from West, By Russia watched from far, A giant -nay! a god of war. Beneath the hostile fire he stood Unmoved, in reckless hardihood. His snow-white vest on battle-field Seemed covered by St. Michael's shield . And now his life is reft ; that strength Broken at length. Translation of John Pollen. TRYST (A. FET [ AFANASI AFANASYEVICH SHEASHIN ] : 1820-93) A WHISPER, a gentle sigh, Trills of the nightingale ; The silver flash of the brook Asleep in the sleepy vale . RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY 12607 The shadow and shine of night Shadows in endless race ; The sweep of a magical change Over a sweet young face. The blush of a rose in the mist, An amber gleam on the lawn, A rush of kisses and tears - And oh, "the Dawn, the Dawn! " Translation of John Pollen. A RUSSIAN SCENE (A. FET [ AFANASI AFANASYEVICH SHEASHIN] ) WONDROUS the picture, - WONDHow homelike to me! Distant plain whitening, Full moon on the lea; Light -in the heavens high, And snow flashing bright ; Sledge in the distance In its lonely flight. Translation of John Pollen. FOLK-SONGS (ALEKSEI NIKOLAEVICH APUKHTIN : 1841-?) AY in the court ! Begins now the planting ; MAY Sings in his furrow the sower. Songs of my fatherland, mournful, enchanting, Sadly I hear you once more. Yet in your cadences sad and pathetic, Born of an infinite pain, There is a something unknown and prophetic Echoing through their refrain ! Conquering sorrow, their melodies swelling Thrill with the vigor of youth ; Vanish the torments of years beyond telling Under the sway of their truth . 12608 RUSSIAN LYRIC POETRY Mayst thou, my Russia, for glory created, Mayst thou, my fatherland dearNo! Freedom's songs thy children ill-fated Ne'er o'er these prairies shall hear ! Translation of Pauline W. Brigham. SORROW (AUTHOR UNKNOWN) HITHER shall I, the fair maiden, flee from WHITE Sorrow ? If I fly from Sorrow into the dark forest, After me runs Sorrow with an axe : " I will fell, I will fell the green oaks ; I will seek, I will find the fair maiden. " If I fly from Sorrow into the open field, After me runs Sorrow with a scythe : " I will mow, I will mow the open field ; I will seek, I will find the fair maiden. " Whither then shall I flee from Sorrow ? If I rush from Sorrow into the blue sea, After me comes Sorrow as a huge fish : " I will drink, I will swallow the blue sea; I will seek, I will find the fair maiden. " If I seek refuge from Sorrow in marriage, Sorrow follows me as my dowry ; If I take to my bed to escape from Sorrow, Sorrow sits beside my pillow. And when I shall have fled from Sorrow into the damp earth, Sorrow will come after me with a spade ; Then will Sorrow stand over me, and cry triumphantly, " I have driven, I have driven the maiden into the damp earth. " Translation of W. R. S. Ralston.

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