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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Library Of The World's Best Literature,
+Ancient And Modern, Vol 6, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: October 5, 2004 [EBook #13623]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORLD'S BEST LITERATURE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+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
+
+Connoisseur Edition
+
+VOL. VI.
+
+
+
+
+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,
+   TULANE UNIVERSITY, New Orleans, La.
+
+WILLIAM P. TRENT, M.A.,
+   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, Ill.
+
+WILLIAM T. HARRIS, LL.D.,
+   United States Commissioner of Education,
+   BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D.C.
+
+MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN, A.M., LL.D.,
+   Professor of Literature in the
+   CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA, Washington, D.C.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+VOL. VI
+
+                                                   LIVED          PAGE
+
+THE ABBÉ DE BRANTÔME (Pierre de Bourdeille)      1527-1614        2319
+  The Dancing of Royalty ('Lives of Notable Women')
+  The Shadow of a Tomb ('Lives of Courtly Women')
+  M. le Constable Anne de Montmorency ('Lives of Distinguished Men and
+    Great Captains')
+  Two Famous Entertainments ('Lives of Courtly Women')
+
+FREDRIKA BREMER                                  1801-1865        2328
+  A Home-Coming ('The Neighbors')
+  The Landed Proprietor ('The Home')
+  A Family Picture (same)
+
+CLEMENS BRENTANO                                 1778-1842        2343
+  The Nurse's Watch
+  The Castle in Austria
+
+ELISABETH BRENTANO (Bettina von Arnim)           1785-1859        2348
+  Dedication: To Goethe ('Goethe's Correspondence with a Child')
+  Letter to Goethe
+  Bettina's Last Meeting with Goethe (Letter to Her Niece)
+  In Goethe's Garden
+
+JOHN BRIGHT                                      1811-1889        2354
+  From Speech on the Corn Laws (1843)
+  From Speech on Incendiarism in Ireland (1844)
+  From Speech on Non-Recognition of the Southern Confederacy (1861)
+  From Speech on the State of Ireland (1866)
+  From Speech on the Irish Established Church (1868)
+
+BRILLAT-SAVARIN                                  1755-1826        2365
+
+  From 'Physiology of Taste': The Privations; On the Love of Good
+    Living; On People Fond of Good Living
+
+CHARLOTTE BRONTÉ AND HER SISTERS                 1816-1855        2381
+  Jane Eyre's Wedding-Day ('Jane Eyre')
+  Madame Beck ('Villette')
+  A Yorkshire Landscape ('Shirley')
+  The End of Heathcliff (Emily Bronté's 'Wuthering Heights')
+
+PHILLIPS BROOKS                                  1835-1893        2417
+  O Little Town of Bethlehem
+  Personal Character ('Essays and Addresses')
+  The Courage of Opinions (same)
+  Literature and Life (same)
+
+CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN                           1771-1810        2425
+  Wieland's Statement ('Wieland')
+
+JOHN BROWN                                       1810-1882        2437
+  Marjorie Fleming ('Spare Hours')
+  Death of Thackeray (same)
+
+CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE (Artemus Ward)             1834-1867        2461
+                BY CHARLES F. JOHNSON
+  Edwin Forrest as Othello
+  High-Handed Outrage at Utica
+  Affairs Round the Village Green
+  Mr. Pepper ('Artemus Ward: His Travels')
+  Horace Greeley's Ride to Placerville (same)
+
+SIR THOMAS BROWNE                                1605-1682        2473
+                BY FRANCIS BACON
+  From the 'Religio Medici'
+  From 'Christian Morals'
+  From 'Hydriotaphia, or Urn-Burial'
+  From 'A Fragment on Mummies'
+  From 'A Letter to a Friend'
+  Some Relations Whose Truth We Fear ('Pseudoxia Epidemica')
+
+WILLIAM BROWNE                                   1591-1643        2511
+  Circe's Charm ('Inner Temple Masque')
+  The Hunted Squirrel ('Britannia's Pastorals')
+  As Careful Merchants Do Expecting Stand (same)
+  Song of the Sirens ('Inner Temple Masque')
+  An Epistle on Parting
+  Sonnets to Cælia
+
+HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL                            1820-1872        2519
+  Annus Memorabilis
+  Words for the 'Hallelujah Chorus'
+  Coming
+  Psychaura
+  Suspiria Noctis
+
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING                       1809-1861        2523
+  A Musical Instrument
+  My Heart and I
+  From 'Catarina to Camoens'
+  The Sleep
+  The Cry of the Children
+  Mother and Poet
+  A Court Lady
+  The Prospect
+  De Profundis
+  The Cry of the Human
+  Romance of the Swan's Nest
+  The Best Thing in the World
+  Sonnets from the Portuguese
+  A False Step
+  A Child's Thought of God
+  Cheerfulness Taught by Reason
+
+ROBERT BROWNING                                  1812-1889        2557
+                BY E. L. BURLINGAME
+  Andrea del Sarto
+  A Toccata of Galuppi's
+  Confessions
+  Love among the Ruins
+  A Grammarian's Funeral
+  My Last Duchess
+  Up at a Villa--Down in the City
+  In Three Days
+  In a Year
+  Evelyn Hope
+  Prospice
+  The Patriot
+  One Word More
+
+ORESTES AUGUSTUS BROWNSON                        1803-1876        2594
+  Saint-Simonism ('The Convert')
+
+FERDINAND BRUNETIÈRE                             1849-            2603
+                BY ADOLPHE COHN
+  Taine and Prince Napoleon
+  The Literatures of France, England, and Germany
+
+GIORDANO BRUNO                                   1548-1600        2613
+  A Discourse of Poets ('The Heroic Enthusiasts')
+  Canticle of the Shining Ones: A Tribute to English Women ('The Nolan')
+  Song of the Nine Singers
+  Of Immensity
+  Life Well Lost
+  Parnassus Within
+  Compensation
+  Life for Song
+
+WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT                            1794-1878        2623
+                BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP
+  Thanatopsis
+  The Crowded Street
+  Death of the Flowers
+  The Conqueror's Grave
+  The Battle-Field
+  To a Water-fowl
+  Robert of Lincoln
+  June
+  To the Fringed Gentian
+  The Future Life
+  To the Past
+
+JAMES BRYCE                                      1838-            2643
+  Position of Women in the United States ('The American Commonwealth')
+  Ascent of Ararat ('Trans-Caucasia and Ararat')
+  The Work of the Roman Empire ('The Holy Roman Empire')
+
+FRANCIS TREVELYAN BUCKLAND                       1826-1880        2661
+  A Hunt in a Horse-Pond ('Curiosities of Natural History')
+  On Rats (same)
+  Snakes and their Poison (same)
+  My Monkey Jacko (same)
+
+HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE                              1821-1862        2673
+  Moral versus Intellectual Principles in Human Progress ('History of
+    Civilization in England')
+  Mythical Origin of History (same)
+
+GEORGE LOUIS LE CLERC BUFFON                     1707-1788        2689
+                BY SPENCER TROTTER
+  Nature ('Natural History')
+  The Humming-Bird (same)
+
+EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON                             1803-1873        2697
+                BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE
+  The Amphitheatre ('The Last Days of Pompeii')
+  Kenelm and Lily ('Kenelm Chillingly')
+
+
+
+
+FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+VOLUME VI
+
+                                                 PAGE
+
+"Les Satyres" (Colored Plate)            Frontispiece
+Charlotte Bronté (Portrait)                      2382
+Phillips Brooks (Portrait)                       2418
+"The Holy Child of Bethlehem" (Photogravure)     2420
+"Circe" (Photogravure)                           2514
+Robert Browning (Portrait)                       2558
+William Cullen Bryant (Portrait)                 2624
+Edward Bulwer-Lytton (Portrait)                  2698
+"In the Arena" (Photogravure)                    2718
+"Nydia" (Photogravure)                           2720
+
+
+VIGNETTE PORTRAITS
+
+Abbé de Brantôme
+Fredrika Bremer
+Elisabeth Brentano
+John Bright
+Brillat-Savarin
+Charles Brockden Brown
+John Brown
+Charles Farrar Browne
+Sir Thomas Browne
+Elizabeth Barrett Browning
+Orestes Augustus Brownson
+Ferdinand Brunetière
+James Bryce
+George Louis le Clere Buffon
+
+
+
+THE ABBÉ DE BRANTÔME
+
+(PIERRE DE BOURDEILLE)
+
+(1527-1614)
+
+Every historian of the Valois period is indebted to Brantôme for
+preserving the atmosphere and detail of the brilliant life in which he
+moved as a dashing courtier, a military adventurer, and a gallant
+gentleman of high degree. He was not a professional scribe, nor a
+student; but he took notes unconsciously, and in the evening of his life
+turned back the pages of his memory to record the scenes through which
+he had passed and the characters which he had known. He has been termed
+the "valet de chambre" of history; nevertheless the anecdotes scattered
+through his works will ever be treasured by all students and historians
+of that age of luxury and magnificence, art and beauty, beneath which
+lay the fermentation of great religious and political movements,
+culminating in the struggle between the Huguenots and Catholics.
+
+[Illustration: ABBÉ DE BRANTÔME]
+
+Brantôme was the third son of the Vicomte de Bourdeille, a Périgord
+nobleman, whose family had lived long in Guienne, and whose aristocratic
+lineage was lost in myth. Upon the estate stood the Abbey of Brantôme,
+founded by Charlemagne, and this Henry II. gave to young Pierre de
+Bourdeille in recognition of the military deeds of his brother, Jean de
+Bourdeille, who lost his life in service. Thereafter the lad was to sign
+his name as the Reverend Father in God, Messire Pierre de Bourdeille,
+Abbé de Brantôme. Born in the old château in 1527, he was destined for
+the church, but abandoned this career for arms. At an early age he was
+sent to court as page to Marguerite, sister of Francis I. and Queen of
+Navarre; after her death in 1549, he went to Paris to study at the
+University. His title of Abbé being merely honorary, he served in the
+army under François de Guise, Duke of Lorraine, and became Gentleman of
+the Chamber to Charles IX. His career extended through the reigns of
+Henry II., Francis II., Charles IX., Henry III., and Henry IV., to that
+of Louis XIII. With the exception of diplomatic missions, service on
+the battle-field, and voyages for pleasure, he spent his life at court.
+
+About 1594 he retired to his estate, where until his death on July 15th,
+1614, he passed his days in contentions with the monks of Brantôme, in
+lawsuits with his neighbors, and in writing his books: 'Lives of the
+Illustrious Men and Great Captains of France'; 'Lives of Illustrious
+Ladies'; 'Lives of Women of Gallantry'; 'Memoirs, containing anecdotes
+connected with the Court of France'; 'Spanish Rodomontades'; a 'Life' of
+his father, François de Bourdeille; a 'Funeral Oration' on his sister
+in-law; and a dialogue in verse, entitled 'The Tomb of Madame de
+Bourdeille.' These were not published until long after his death, first
+appearing in Leyden about 1665, at the Hague in 1740, and in Paris in
+1787. The best editions are by Fourcault (7 vols., Paris, 1822); by
+Lacour and Mérimée (3 vols., 1859); and Lalande (10 vols., 1865-'81).
+
+What Brantôme thought of himself may be seen by glancing at that portion
+of the "testament mystique" which relates to his writings:--
+
+     "I will and expressly charge my heirs that they cause to be
+     printed the books which I have composed by my talent and
+     invention. These books will be found covered with velvet,
+     either black, green or blue, and one larger volume, which is
+     that of the Rodomontades, covered with velvet, gilt outside
+     and curiously bound. All have been carefully corrected. There
+     will be found in these books excellent things, such as
+     stories, histories, discourses, and witty sayings, which I
+     flatter myself the world will not disdain to read when once
+     it has had a sight of them. I direct that a sum of money be
+     taken from my estate sufficient to pay for the printing
+     thereof, which certainly cannot be much; for I have known
+     many printers who would have given money rather than charged
+     any for the right of printing them. They print many things
+     without charge which are not at all equal to mine. I will
+     also that the said impression shall be in large type, in
+     order to make the better appearance, and that they should
+     appear with the Royal Privilege, which the King will readily
+     grant. Also care must be taken that the printers do not put
+     on the title-page any supposititious name instead of mine.
+     Otherwise, I should be defrauded of the glory which is my
+     due."
+
+The old man delighted in complimenting himself and talking about his
+"grandeur d'âme." This greatness of soul may be measured from the
+command he gave his heirs to annoy a man who had refused to swear homage
+to him, "it not being reasonable to leave at rest this little wretch,
+who descends from a low family, and whose grandfather was nothing but a
+notary." He also commands his nieces and nephews to take the same
+vengeance upon his enemies "as I should have done in my green and
+vigorous youth, during which I may boast, and I thank God for it, that I
+never received an injury without being revenged on the author of it."
+
+Brantôme writes like a "gentleman of the sword," with dash and _élan_,
+and as one, to use his own words, who has been "toujours trottant,
+traversant, et vagabondant le monde" (always trotting, traversing, and
+tramping the world). Not in the habit of a vagabond, however, for the
+balls, banquets, tournaments, masques, ballets, and wedding-feasts which
+he describes so vividly were occasions for the display of sumptuous
+costumes; and Messire Pierre de Bourdeille doubtless appeared as elegant
+as any other gallant in silken hose, jeweled doublet, flowing cape, and
+long rapier. What we value most are his paintings of these festive
+scenes, and the vivid portraits which he has left of the Valois women,
+who were largely responsible for the luxuries and the crimes of the
+period: women who could step without a tremor from a court-masque to a
+massacre; who could toy with a gallant's ribbons and direct the blow of
+an assassin; and who could poison a rival with a delicately perfumed
+gift. Such a court Brantôme calls the "true paradise of the world,
+school of all honesty and virtue, ornament of France." We like to hear
+about Catherine de' Medici riding with her famous "squadron of Venus":
+"You should have seen forty or fifty dames and demoiselles following
+her, mounted on beautifully accoutred hackneys, their hats adorned with
+feathers which increased their charm, so well did the flying plumes
+represent the demand for love or war. Virgil, who undertook to describe
+the fine apparel of Queen Dido when she went out hunting, has by no
+means equaled that of our Queen and her ladies."
+
+Charming, too, are such descriptions as "the most beautiful ballet that
+ever was, composed of sixteen of the fairest and best-trained dames and
+demoiselles, who appeared in a silvered rock where they were seated in
+niches, shut in on every side. The sixteen ladies represented the
+sixteen provinces of France. After having made the round of the hall for
+parade as in a camp, they all descended, and ranging themselves in the
+form of a little oddly contrived battalion, some thirty violins began a
+very pleasant warlike air, to which they danced their ballet." After an
+hour the ladies presented the King, the Queen-Mother, and others with
+golden plaques, on which were engraved "the fruits and singularities of
+each province," the wheat of Champagne, the vines of Burgundy, the
+lemons and oranges of Provence, etc. He shows us Catherine de' Medici,
+the elegant, cunning Florentine; her beautiful daughters, Elizabeth of
+Spain and Marguerite de Valois; Diana of Poitiers, the woman of eternal
+youth and beauty; Jeanne d'Albret, the mother of Henry IV.; Louise de
+Vaudemont; the Duchesse d'Étampes; Marie Touchet; and all their
+satellites,--as they enjoyed their lives.
+
+Very valuable are the data regarding Mary Stuart's departure from France
+in 1561. Brantôme was one of her suite, and describes her grief when
+the shores of France faded away, and her arrival in Scotland, where on
+the first night she was serenaded by Psalm-tunes with a most villainous
+accompaniment of Scotch music. "Hé! quelle musique!" he exclaims, "et
+quel repos pour la nuit!"
+
+But of all the gay ladies Brantôme loves to dwell upon, his favorites
+are the two Marguerites: Marguerite of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre, the
+sister of Francis I., and Marguerite, daughter of Catherine de' Medici
+and wife of Henry IV. Of the latter, called familiarly "La Reine
+Margot," he is always writing. "To speak of the beauty of this rare
+princess," he says, "I think that all that are, or will be, or have ever
+been near her are ugly."
+
+Brantôme has been a puzzle to many critics, who cannot explain his
+"contradictions." He had none. He extolled wicked and immoral characters
+because he recognized only two merits,--aristocratic birth and hatred of
+the Huguenots. He is well described by M. de Barante, who
+says:--"Brantôme expresses the entire character of his country and of
+his profession. Careless of the difference between good and evil; a
+courtier who has no idea that anything can be blameworthy in the great,
+but who sees and narrates their vices and their crimes all the more
+frankly in that he is not very sure whether what he tells be good or
+bad; as indifferent to the honor of women as he is to the morality of
+men; relating scandalous things with no consciousness that they are
+such, and almost leading his reader into accepting them as the simplest
+things in the world, so little importance does he attach to them;
+terming Louis XI., who poisoned his brother, the _good_ King Louis,
+calling women whose adventures could hardly have been written by any pen
+save his own, _honnêtes dames_."
+
+Brantôme must therefore not be regarded as a chronicler who revels in
+scandals, although his pages reek with them; but as the true mirror of
+the Valois court and the Valois period.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE DANCING OF ROYALTY
+
+From 'Lives of Notable Women'
+
+Ah! how the times have changed since I saw them together in the
+ball-room, expressing the very spirit of the dance! The King always
+opened the grand ball by leading out his sister, and each equaled the
+other in majesty and grace. I have often seen them dancing the Pavane
+d'Espagne, which must be performed with the utmost majesty and grace.
+The eyes of the entire court were riveted upon them, ravished by this
+lovely scene; for the measures were so well danced, the steps so
+intelligently placed, the sudden pauses timed so accurately and making
+so elegant an effect, that one did not know what to admire most,--the
+beautiful manner of moving, or the majesty of the halts, now expressing
+excessive gayety, now a beautiful and haughty disdain. Who could dance
+with such elegance and grace as the royal brother and sister? None, I
+believe; and I have watched the King dancing with the Queen of Spain and
+the Queen of Scotland, each of whom was an excellent dancer.
+
+I have seen them dance the 'Pazzemezzo d'Italie,' walking gravely
+through the measures, and directing their steps with so graceful and
+solemn a manner that no other prince nor lady could approach them in
+dignity. This Queen took great pleasure in performing these grave
+dances; for she preferred to exhibit dignified grace rather than to
+express the gayety of the Branle, the Volta, and the Courante. Although
+she acquired them quickly, she did not think them worthy of her majesty.
+
+I always enjoyed seeing her dance the Branle de la Torche, or du
+Flambeau. Once, returning from the nuptials of the daughter of the King
+of Poland, I saw her dance this kind of a Branle at Lyons before the
+assembled guests from Savoy, Piedmont, Italy, and other places; and
+every one said he had never seen any sight more captivating than this
+lovely lady moving with grace of motion and majestic mien, all agreeing
+that she had no need of the flaming torch which she held in her hand;
+for the flashing light from her brilliant eyes was sufficient to
+illuminate the set, and to pierce the dark veil of Night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE SHADOW OF A TOMB
+
+From 'Lives of Courtly Women'
+
+Once I had an elder brother who was called Captain Bourdeille, one of
+the bravest and most valiant soldiers of his time. Although he was my
+brother, I must praise him, for the record he made in the wars brought
+him fame. He was the _gentilhomme de France_ who stood first in the
+science and gallantry of arms. He was killed during the last siege of
+Hesdin. My brother's parents had destined him for the career of letters,
+and accordingly sent him at the age of eighteen to study in Italy, where
+he settled in Ferrara because of Madame Renée de France, Duchess of
+Ferrara, who ardently loved my mother. He enjoyed life at her court,
+and soon fell deeply in love with a young French widow,--Mademoiselle de
+La Roche,--who was in the suite of Madame de Ferrara.
+
+They remained there in the service of love, until my father, seeing that
+his son was not following literature, ordered him home. She, who loved
+him, begged him to take her with him to France and to the court of
+Marguerite of Navarre, whom she had served, and who had given her to
+Madame Renée when she went to Italy upon her marriage. My brother, who
+was young, was greatly charmed to have her companionship, and conducted
+her to Pau. The Queen was glad to welcome her, for the young widow was
+handsome and accomplished, and indeed considered superior in _esprit_ to
+the other ladies of the court.
+
+After remaining a few days with my mother and grandmother, who were
+there, my brother visited his father. In a short time he declared that
+he was disgusted with letters, and joined the army, serving in the wars
+of Piedmont and Parma, where he acquired much honor in the space of five
+or six months; during which time he did not revisit his home. At the end
+of this period he went to see his mother at Pau. He made his reverence
+to the Queen of Navarre as she returned from vespers; and she, who was
+the best princess in the world, received him cordially, and taking his
+hand, led him about the church for an hour or two. She demanded news
+regarding the wars of Piedmont and Italy, and many other particulars, to
+which my brother replied so well that she was greatly pleased with him.
+He was a very handsome young man of twenty-four years. After talking
+gravely and engaging him in earnest conversation, walking up and down
+the church, she directed her steps toward the tomb of Mademoiselle de La
+Roche, who had been dead for three months. She stopped here, and again
+took his hand, saying, "My cousin" (thus addressing him because a
+daughter of D'Albret was married into our family of Bourdeille; but of
+this I do not boast, for it has not helped me particularly), "do you not
+feel something move below your feet?"
+
+"No, Madame," he replied.
+
+"But reflect again, my cousin," she insisted.
+
+My brother answered, "Madame, I feel nothing move. I stand upon a solid
+stone."
+
+"Then I will explain," said the Queen, "without keeping you longer in
+suspense, that you stand upon the tomb and over the body of your poor
+dearly-loved Mademoiselle de La Roche, who is interred here; and that
+our friends may have sentiment for us at our death, render a pious
+homage here. You cannot doubt that the gentle creature, dying so
+recently, must have been affected when you approached. In remembrance I
+beg you to say a paternoster and an Ave Maria and a de profundis, and
+sprinkle holy water. Thus you will win the name of a very faithful lover
+and a good Christian."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+M. LE CONSTABLE ANNE DE MONTMORENCY
+
+From 'Lives of Distinguished Men and Great Captains'
+
+He never failed to say and keep up his paternosters every morning,
+whether he remained in the house, or mounted his horse and went out to
+the field to join the army. It was a common saying among the soldiers
+that one must "beware the paternosters of the Constable." For as
+disorders were very frequent, he would say, while mumbling and muttering
+his paternosters all the time, "Go and fetch that fellow and hang me him
+up to this tree;" "Out with a file of harquebusiers here before me this
+instant, for the execution of this man!" "Burn me this village
+instantly!" "Cut me to pieces at once all these villain peasants, who
+have dared to hold this church against the king!" All this without ever
+ceasing from his paternosters till he had finished them--thinking that
+he would have done very wrong to put them off to another time; so
+conscientious was he!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TWO FAMOUS ENTERTAINMENTS
+
+From 'Lives of Courtly Women'
+
+I have read in a Spanish book called 'El Viaje del Principe' (The Voyage
+of the Prince), made by the King of Spain in the Pays-Bas in the time of
+the Emperor Charles, his father, about the wonderful entertainments
+given in the rich cities. The most famous was that of the Queen of
+Hungary in the lovely town of Bains, which passed into a proverb, "Mas
+bravas que las festas de Bains" (more magnificent than the festivals of
+Bains). Among the displays which were seen during the siege of a
+counterfeit castle, she ordered for one day a fête in honor of the
+Emperor her brother, Queen Eleanor her sister, and the gentlemen and
+ladies of the court.
+
+Toward the end of the feast a lady appeared with six Oread-nymphs,
+dressed as huntresses in classic costumes of silver and green,
+glittering with jewels to imitate the light of the moon. Each one
+carried a bow and arrows in her hand and wore a quiver on her shoulder;
+their buskins were of cloth of silver. They entered the hall, leading
+their dogs after them, and placed on the table in front of the Emperor
+all kinds of venison pasties, supposed to have been the spoils of the
+chase. After them came the Goddess of Shepherds and her six nymphs,
+dressed in cloth of silver, garnished with pearls. They wore
+knee-breeches beneath their flowing robes, and white pumps, and brought
+in various products of the dairy.
+
+Then entered the third division--Pomona and her nymphs--bearing fruit of
+all descriptions. This goddess was the daughter of Donna Beatrix
+Pacheco, Countess d'Autremont, lady-in-waiting to Queen Eleanor, and was
+but nine years old. She was now Madame l'Admirale de Chastillon, whom
+the Admiral married for his second wife. Approaching with her
+companions, she presented her gifts to the Emperor with an eloquent
+speech, delivered so beautifully that she received the admiration of the
+entire assembly, and all predicted that she would become a beautiful,
+charming, graceful, and captivating lady. She was dressed in cloth of
+silver and white, with white buskins, and a profusion of precious
+stones--emeralds, colored like some of the fruit she bore. After making
+these presentations, she gave the Emperor a Palm of Victory, made of
+green enamel, the fronds tipped with pearls and jewels. This was very
+rich and gorgeous. To Queen Eleanor she gave a fan containing a mirror
+set with gems of great value. Indeed, the Queen of Hungary showed that
+she was a very excellent lady, and the Emperor was proud of a sister
+worthy of himself. All the young ladies who impersonated these mythical
+characters were selected from the suites of France, Hungary, and Madame
+de Lorraine; and were therefore French, Italian, Flemish, German, and of
+Lorraine. None of them lacked beauty.
+
+At the same time that these fêtes were taking place at Bains, Henry II.
+made his entrée in Piedmont and at his garrisons in Lyons, where were
+assembled the most brilliant of his courtiers and court ladies. If the
+representation of Diana and her chase given by the Queen of Hungary was
+found beautiful, the one at Lyons was more beautiful and complete. As
+the king entered the city, he saw obelisks of antiquity to the right and
+left, and a wall of six feet was constructed along the road to the
+courtyard, which was filled with underbrush and planted thickly with
+trees and shrubbery. In this miniature forest were hidden deer and
+other animals.
+
+As soon as his Majesty approached, to the sound of horns and trumpets
+Diana issued forth with her companions, dressed in the fashion of a
+classic nymph with her quiver at her side and her bow in her hand. Her
+figure was draped in black and gold sprinkled with silver stars, the
+sleeves were of crimson satin bordered with gold, and the garment,
+looped up above the knee, revealed her buskins of crimson satin covered
+with pearls and embroidery. Her hair was entwined with magnificent
+strings of rich pearls and gems of much value, and above her brow was
+placed a crescent of silver, surrounded by little diamonds. Gold could
+never have suggested half so well as the shining silver the white light
+of the real crescent. Her companions were attired in classic costumes
+made of taffetas of various colors, shot with gold, and their ringlets
+were adorned with all kinds of glittering gems....
+
+Other nymphs carried darts of Brazil-wood tipped with black and white
+tassels, and carried horns and trumpets suspended by ribbons of white
+and black. When the King appeared, a lion, which had long been under
+training, ran from the wood and lay at the feet of the Goddess, who
+bound him with a leash of white and black and led him to the king,
+accompanying her action with a poem of ten verses, which she delivered
+most beautifully. Like the lion--so ran the lines--the city of Lyons lay
+at his Majesty's feet, gentle, gracious, and obedient to his command.
+This spoken, Diana and her nymphs made low bows and retired.
+
+Note that Diana and her companions were married women, widows, and young
+girls, taken from the best society in Lyons, and there was no fault to
+be found with the way they performed their parts. The King, the princes,
+and the ladies and gentlemen of the court were ravished. Madame de
+Valentinois, called Diana of Poitiers,--whom the King served and in
+whose name the mock chase was arranged,--was not less content.
+
+
+
+FREDRIKA BREMER
+
+(1801-1865)
+
+Fredrika Bremer was born at Tuorla Manor-house, near Åbo, in Finland, on
+the 17th of August, 1801. In 1804 the family removed to Stockholm, and
+two years later to a large estate at Årsta, some twenty miles from the
+capital, which was her subsequent home. At Årsta the father of Fredrika,
+who had amassed a fortune in the iron industry in Finland, set up an
+establishment in accord with his means. The manor-house, built two
+centuries before, had become in some parts dilapidated, but it was
+ultimately restored and improved beyond its original condition. From its
+windows on one side the eye stretched over nearly five miles of meadows,
+fields, and villages belonging to the estate.
+
+[Illustration: FREDRIKA BREMER]
+
+In spite of its surroundings, however, Fredrika's childhood was not a
+happy one. Her mother was severe and impatient of petty faults, and the
+child's mind became embittered. Her father was reserved and melancholy.
+Fredrika herself was restless and passionate, although of an
+affectionate nature. Among the other children she was the ugly duckling,
+who was misunderstood, and whose natural development was continually
+checked and frustrated. Her talents were early exhibited in a variety of
+directions. Her first verses, in French, to the morn, were written at
+the age of eight. Subsequently she wrote comedies for home production,
+prose and verse of all sorts, and kept a journal, which has been
+preserved. In 1821 the whole family went on a tour abroad, from which
+they did not return until the following year, having visited in the
+meantime Germany, Switzerland, and France, and spent the winter in
+Paris. This year among new scenes and surroundings seems to have brought
+home to Fredrika, upon the resumption of her old life in the country,
+its narrowness and its isolation. She was entirely shut off from all
+desired activity; her illusions vanished one by one. "I was conscious,"
+she says in her short autobiography, "of being born with powerful wings,
+but I was conscious of their being clipped;" and she fancied that they
+would remain so.
+
+Her attention, however, was fortunately attracted from herself to the
+poor and sick in the country round about; and she presently became to
+the whole region a nurse and a helper, denying herself all sorts of
+comforts that she might give them to others, and braving storm and
+hunger on her errands of mercy. In order to earn money for her charities
+she painted miniature portraits of the Crown Princess and the King, and
+secretly sold them. Her desire to increase the small sums she thus
+gained induced her to seek a publisher for a number of sketches she had
+written. Her brother readily disposed of the manuscript for a hundred
+rix-dollars; and her first book, 'Teckningar ur Hvardagslifvet'
+(Sketches of Every-day Life), appeared in 1828, but without the name of
+the author, of whose identity the publisher himself was left in
+ignorance. The book was received with such favor that the young author
+was induced to try again; and what had originally been intended as a
+second volume of the 'Sketches' appeared in 1830 as 'Familjen H.' (The
+H. Family). Its success was immediate and unmistakable. It not only was
+received with applause, but created a sensation, and Swedish literature
+was congratulated on the acquisition of a new talent among its writers.
+
+The secret of Fredrika's authorship--which had as yet not been confided
+even to her parents--was presently revealed to the poet (and later
+bishop) Franzén, an old friend of the family. Shortly afterward the
+Swedish Academy, of which Franzén was secretary, awarded her its lesser
+gold medal as a sign of appreciation. A third volume met with even
+greater success than its predecessors, and seemed definitely to point
+out the career which she subsequently followed; and from this time until
+the close of her life she worked diligently in her chosen field. She
+rapidly acquired an appreciative public in and out of Sweden. Many of
+her novels and tales were translated into various languages, several of
+them appearing simultaneously in Swedish and English. In 1844 the
+Swedish Academy awarded her its great gold medal of merit.
+
+Several long journeys abroad mark the succeeding years: to Denmark and
+America from 1848 to 1857; to Switzerland, Belgium, France, Italy,
+Palestine, and Greece, from 1856 to 1861; to Germany in 1862, returning
+the same year. The summer months of 1864 she spent at Årsta, which since
+1853 had passed out of the hands of the family. She removed there the
+year after, and died there on the 31st of December.
+
+Fredrika Bremer's most successful literary work was in the line of her
+earliest writings, descriptive of the every-day life of the middle
+classes. Her novels in this line have an unusual charm of expression,
+whose definable elements are an unaffected simplicity and a certain
+quiet humor which admirably fits the chosen _milieu_. Besides the ones
+already mentioned, 'Presidentens Döttrar' (The President's Daughters),
+'Grannarna' (The Neighbors), 'Hemmet' (The Home), 'Nina,' and others,
+cultivated this field. Later she drifted into "tendency" fiction, making
+her novels the vehicles for her opinions on important public questions,
+such as religion, philanthropy, and above all the equal rights of women.
+These later productions, of which 'Hertha' and 'Syskonlif' are the most
+important, are far inferior to her earlier work. She had, however, the
+satisfaction of seeing the realization of several of the movements which
+she had so ardently espoused: the law that unmarried women in Sweden
+should attain their majority at twenty-five years of age; the
+organization at Stockholm of a seminary for the education of woman
+teachers; and certain parliamentary reforms.
+
+In addition to her novels and short stories, she wrote some verse,
+mostly unimportant, and several books of travel, among them 'Hemmen i ny
+Verlden' (Homes in the New World), containing her experiences of
+America; 'Life in the Old World'; and 'Greece and the Greeks.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A HOME-COMING
+
+From 'The Neighbors'
+
+LETTER I.--FRANCISCA W. TO MARIA M.
+
+ROSENVIK, 1st June, 18.
+
+Here I am now, dear Maria, in my own house and home, at my own
+writing-table, and with my own Bear. And who then is Bear? no doubt you
+ask. Who else should he be but my own husband? I call him _Bear_
+because--it so happens. I am seated at the window. The sun is setting.
+Two swans are swimming in the lake, and furrow its clear mirror. Three
+cows--_my cows_--are standing on the verdant margin, quiet, fat, and
+pensive, and certainly think of nothing. What excellent cows they are!
+Now the maid is coming up with the milk-pail. Delicious milk in the
+country! But what is not good in the country? Air and people, food and
+feelings, earth and sky, everything there is fresh and cheering.
+
+Now I must introduce you to my place of abode--no! I must begin farther
+off. Upon yonder hill, from which I first beheld the valley in which
+Rosenvik lies (the hill is some miles in the interior of Smaaland) do
+you descry a carriage covered with dust? In it are seated Bear and his
+wedded wife. The wife is looking out with curiosity, for before her lies
+a valley so beautiful in the tranquillity of evening! Below are green
+groves which fringe mirror-clear lakes, fields of standing corn bend in
+silken undulations round gray mountains, and white buildings glance amid
+the trees. Round about, pillars of smoke are shooting up vertically from
+the wood-covered hills to the serene evening sky. This seems to indicate
+the presence of volcanoes, but in point of fact it is merely the
+peaceful labor of the husbandmen burning the vegetation, in order to
+fertilize the soil. At all events, it is an excellent thing, and I am
+delighted, bend forward, and am just thinking about a happy family in
+nature,--Paradise, and Adam and Eve,--when suddenly Bear puts his great
+paws around me, and presses me so that I am near giving up the ghost,
+while, kissing me, he entreats me to "be comfortable here." I was a
+little provoked; but when I perceived the heartfelt intention of the
+embrace, I could not but be satisfied.
+
+In this valley, then, was my permanent home: here my new family was
+living; here lay Rosenvik; here I was to live with my Bear. We descended
+the hill, and the carriage rolled rapidly along the level way. Bear told
+me the names of every estate, both in the neighborhood and at a
+distance. I listened as if I were dreaming, but was roused from my
+reverie when he said with a certain stress, "_Here_ is the residence of
+_ma chère mère_," and the carriage drove into a courtyard, and stopped
+before a large and fine stone house.
+
+"What, are we going to alight here?" "Yes, my love." This was by no
+means an agreeable surprise to me. I would gladly have first driven to
+my own home, there to prepare myself a little for meeting my husband's
+stepmother, of whom I was a little afraid, from the accounts I had heard
+of that lady, and the respect Bear entertained for her. This visit
+appeared entirely _mal àpropos_ to me, but Bear has his own ideas, and I
+perceived from his manner that it was not expedient then to offer any
+resistance.
+
+It was Sunday, and on the carriage drawing up, the tones of a violin
+became audible to me. "Aha!" said Bear, "so much the better;" made a
+ponderous leap from the carriage, and lifted me out. Of hat-cases and
+packages, no manner of account was to be taken. Bear took my hand,
+ushered me up the steps into the magnificent hall, and dragged me toward
+the door from whence the sounds of music and dancing were heard. "See,"
+thought I, "now I am to dance in this costume forsooth!" I wished to go
+into some place where I could shake the dust from my nose and my bonnet;
+where I could at least view myself in a mirror. Impossible! Bear,
+leading me by the arm, assured me that I looked "most charming," and
+entreated me to mirror myself in his eyes. I then needs must be so
+discourteous as to reply that they were "too small." He protested that
+they were only the clearer, and opened the door to the ball-room. "Well,
+since you lead me to the ball, you shall also dance with me, you Bear!"
+I exclaimed in the gayety of despair, so to speak. "With delight!" cried
+Bear, and at the same moment we found ourselves in the salon.
+
+My alarm diminished considerably when I perceived in the spacious room
+only a crowd of cleanly attired maids and serving-men, who were sweeping
+merrily about with one another. They were so busied with dancing as
+scarcely to observe us. Bear then conducted me to the upper end of the
+apartment; and there, on a high seat, I saw a tall and strong lady of
+about fifty, who was playing on a violin with zealous earnestness, and
+beating time with her foot, which she stamped with energy. On her head
+she wore a remarkable and high-projecting cap of black velvet, which I
+will call a helmet, because that word occurred to my mind at the very
+first view I had of her, and I know no one more appropriate. She looked
+well, but singular. It was the lady of General Mansfelt, my husband's
+stepmother, _ma chère mère!_
+
+She speedily cast her large dark-brown eyes on me, instantly ceased
+playing, laid aside the violin, and drew herself up with a proud
+bearing, but an air of gladness and frankness. Bear led me towards her.
+I trembled a little, bowed profoundly, and kissed _ma chère mère's_
+hand. She kissed my forehead, and for a while regarded me with such a
+keen glance, that I was compelled to abase my eyes, on which she again
+kissed me most cordially on lips and forehead, and embraced me almost as
+lustily as Bear had. Now it was Bear's turn; he kissed the hand of _ma
+chère mère_ right respectfully; she however offered him her cheek, and
+they appeared very friendly. "Be welcome, my dear friends!" said _ma
+chère mère_, with a loud, masculine voice. "It was handsome in you to
+come to me before driving to your own home. I thank you for it. I would
+indeed have given you a better reception had I been prepared; at all
+events, I know that 'Welcome is the best cheer.' I hope, my friends, you
+stay the evening here?" Bear excused us, said that we desired to get
+home soon, that I was fatigued from the journey, but that we would not
+drive by Carlsfors without paying our respects to _ma chère mère_.
+
+"Well, very good, well, very good!" said _ma chère mère_, with
+satisfaction; "we will shortly talk further about that in the chamber
+there; but first I must say a few words to the people here. Hark ye,
+good friends!" and _ma chère mère_ knocked with the bow on the back of
+the violin, till a general silence ensued in the salon. "My children,"
+she pursued in a solemn manner, "I have to tell you--a plague upon you!
+will you not be still there, at the lower end?--I have to inform you
+that my dear son, Lars Anders Werner, has now led home, as his wedded
+wife, this Francisca Burén whom you see at his side. Marriages are made
+in heaven, my children, and we will supplicate heaven to complete its
+work in blessing this conjugal pair. We will this evening together drink
+a bumper to their prosperity. That will do! Now you can continue your
+dancing, my children. Olof, come you here, and do your best in playing."
+
+While a murmur of exultation and congratulations went through the
+assembly, _ma chère mère_ took me by the hand, and led me, together with
+Bear, into another room. Here she ordered punch and glasses to be
+brought in. In the interim she thrust her two elbows on the table,
+placed her clenched hands under her chin, and gazed steadfastly at me,
+but with a look which was rather gloomy than friendly. Bear, perceiving
+that _ma chère mère's_ review embarrassed me, broached the subject of
+the harvest or rural affairs. _Ma chère mère_ vented a few sighs, so
+deep that they rather resembled groans, appeared to make a violent
+effort to command herself, answered Bear's questions, and on the arrival
+of the punch, drank to us, saying, with a serious look and voice, "Son
+and son's wife, your health!" On this she grew more friendly, and said
+in a tone of pleasantry, which beseemed her very well, "Lars Anders, I
+don't think people can say you have bought the calf in the sack. Your
+wife does not by any means look in bad case, and has a pair of eyes to
+buy fish with. Little she is, it is true; but 'Little and bold is often
+more than a match for the great.'"
+
+I laughed, so did _ma chère mère_ also; I began to understand her
+character and manner. We gossiped a little while together in a lively
+manner, and I recounted some little adventures of travel, which amused
+her exceedingly. After the lapse of an hour, we arose to take leave, and
+_ma chère mère_ said, with a really charming smile, "I will not detain
+you this evening, delighted as I am to see you. I can well imagine that
+home is attractive. Stay at home to-morrow, if you will; but the day
+after to-morrow come and dine with me. As to the rest, you know well
+that you are at all times welcome. Fill now your glasses, and come and
+drink the folks' health. Sorrow we should keep to ourselves, but share
+joy in common."
+
+We went into the dancing-room with full glasses, _ma chère mère_ leading
+the way as herald. They were awaiting us with bumpers, and _ma chère
+mère_ addressed the people something in this strain:--"We must not
+indeed laugh until we get over the brook; but when we set out on the
+voyage of matrimony with piety and good sense, then may be applied the
+adage that 'Well begun is half won'; and on that, my friends, we will
+drink a skoal to this wedded pair you see before you, and wish that both
+they and their posterity may ever 'sit in the vineyard of our
+Lord.' Skoal!"
+
+"Skoal! skoal!" resounded from every side. Bear and I emptied our
+glasses, and went about and shook a multitude of people by the hand,
+till my head was all confusion. When this was over, and we were
+preparing to prosecute our journey, _ma chère mère_ came after us on the
+steps with a packet or bundle in her hand, and said in a friendly
+manner, "Take this cold roast veal with you, children, for breakfast
+to-morrow morning. After that, you must fatten and consume your own
+calves. But forget not, daughter-in-law, that I get back my napkin. No,
+you shan't carry it, dear child, you have enough to do with your bag and
+mantle. Lars Anders shall carry the roast veal." And as if Lars Anders
+had been still a little boy, she charged him with the bundle, showed him
+how he was to carry it, and Bear did as she said. Her last words were,
+"Forget not that I get my napkin again!" I looked with some degree of
+wonder at Bear; but he smiled, and lifted me into the carriage.
+
+THE LANDED PROPRIETOR
+
+From 'The Home'
+
+Louise possessed the quality of being a good listener in a higher degree
+than any one else in the family, and therefore she heard more than any
+one else of his Excellency; but not of him only, for Jacobi had always
+something to tell her, always something to consult her about; and in
+case she were not too much occupied with her thoughts about the weaving,
+he could always depend upon the most intense sympathy, and the best
+advice both with regard to moral questions and economical arrangements,
+dress, plans for the future, and so forth. He also gave her good
+advice--which however was very seldom followed--when she was playing
+Postilion; he also drew patterns for her tapestry work, and was very
+fond of reading aloud to her--but novels rather than sermons.
+
+But he was not long allowed to sit by her side alone; for very soon a
+person seated himself at her other side whom we will call the _Landed
+Proprietor_, as he was chiefly remarkable for the possession of a large
+estate in the vicinity of the town.
+
+The Landed Proprietor seemed to be disposed to dispute with the
+Candidate--let us continue to call him so, as we are all, in one way or
+the other, Candidates in this world--the place which he possessed. The
+Landed Proprietor had, besides his estate, a very portly body; round,
+healthy-looking cheeks; a pair of large gray eyes, remarkable for their
+want of expression; and a little rosy mouth, which preferred mastication
+to speaking, which laughed without meaning, and which now began to
+direct to "Cousin Louise"--for he considered himself related to the
+Lagman--several short speeches, which we will recapitulate in the
+following chapter, headed
+
+STRANGE QUESTIONS
+
+"Cousin Louise, are you fond of fish--bream for instance?" asked the
+Landed Proprietor one evening, as he seated himself by the side of
+Louise, who was busy working a landscape in tapestry.
+
+"Oh, yes! bream is a very good fish," answered she, phlegmatically,
+without looking up.
+
+"Oh, with red-wine sauce, delicious! I have splendid fishing on my
+estate, Oestanvik. Big fellows of bream! I fish for them myself."
+
+"Who is the large fish there?" inquired Jacobi of Henrik, with an
+impatient sneer; "and what is it to him if your sister Louise is fond of
+bream or not?"
+
+"Because then she might like him too, _mon cher_! A very fine and solid
+fellow is my cousin Thure of Oestanvik. I advise you to cultivate his
+acquaintance. What now, Gabrielle dear, what now, your Highness?"
+
+"What is that which--"
+
+"Yes, what is it? I shall lose my head over that riddle. Mamma dear,
+come and help your stupid son!"
+
+"No, no! Mamma knows it already. She must not say it!" exclaimed
+Gabrielle with fear.
+
+"What king do you place above all other kings, Magister?" asked Petrea
+for the second time,--having this evening her "raptus" of questioning.
+
+"Charles the Thirteenth," answered the Candidate, and listened for what
+Louise was going to reply to the Landed Proprietor.
+
+"Do you like birds, Cousin Louise?" asked the Landed Proprietor.
+
+"Oh yes, particularly the throstle," answered Louise.
+
+"Well,--I am glad of that!" said the Landed Proprietor. "On my estate,
+Oestanvik, there is an immense quantity of throstles. I often go out
+with my gun, and shoot them for my dinner. Piff, paff! with two shots I
+have directly a whole dishful."
+
+Petrea, who was asked by no one "Do you like birds, cousin?" and who
+wished to occupy the Candidate, did not let herself be deterred by his
+evident confusion, but for the second time put the following
+question:--"Do you think, Magister, that people before the Flood were
+really worse than they are nowadays?"
+
+"Oh, much, much better," answered the Candidate.
+
+"Are you fond of roasted hare, Cousin Louise?" asked the Landed
+Proprietor.
+
+"Are you fond of roasted hare, Magister?" whispered Petrea waggishly to
+Jacobi.
+
+"Brava, Petrea!" whispered her brother to her.
+
+"Are you fond of cold meat, Cousin Louise?" asked the Landed
+Proprietor, as he was handing Louise to the supper-table.
+
+"Are you fond of Landed Proprietor?" whispered Henrik to her as she left
+it.
+
+Louise answered just as a cathedral would have answered: she looked very
+solemn and was silent.
+
+After supper Petrea was quite excited, and left nobody alone who by any
+possibility could answer her. "Is reason sufficient for mankind? What is
+the ground of morals? What is properly the meaning of 'revelation'? Why
+is everything so badly arranged in the State? Why must there be rich and
+poor?" etc., etc.
+
+"Dear Petrea!" said Louise, "what use can there be in asking those
+questions?"
+
+It was an evening for questions; they did not end even when the company
+had broken up.
+
+"Don't you think, Elise," said the Lagman to his wife when they were
+alone, "that our little Petrea begins to be disagreeable with her
+continual questioning and disputing? She leaves no one in peace, and is
+stirred up herself the whole time. She will make herself ridiculous if
+she keeps on in this way."
+
+"Yes, if she does keep on so. But I have a feeling that she will change.
+I have observed her very particularly for some time, and do you know, I
+think there is really something very uncommon in that girl."
+
+"Yes, yes, there is certainly something uncommon in her. Her liveliness
+and the many games and schemes which she invents--"
+
+"Yes, don't you think they indicate a decided talent for the fine arts?
+And then her extraordinary thirst for learning: every morning, between
+three and four o'clock, she gets up in order to read or write, or to
+work at her compositions. That is not at all a common thing. And may not
+her uneasiness, her eagerness to question and dispute, arise from a sort
+of intellectual hunger? Ah, from such hunger, which many women must
+suffer throughout their lives, from want of literary food,--from such an
+emptiness of the soul arise disquiet, discontent, nay, innumerable
+faults."
+
+"I believe you are right, Elise," said the Lagman, "and no condition in
+life is sadder, particularly in more advanced years. But this shall not
+be the lot of our Petrea--that I will promise. What do you think now
+would benefit her most?"
+
+"My opinion is that a serious and continued plan of study would assist
+in regulating her mind. She is too much left to herself with her
+confused tendencies, with her zeal and her inquiry. I am too ignorant
+myself to lead and instruct her, you have too little time, and she has
+no one here who can properly direct her young and unregulated mind.
+Sometimes I almost pity her, for her sisters don't understand at all
+what is going on within her, and I confess it is often painful to
+myself; I wish I were more able to assist her. Petrea needs some ground
+on which to take her stand. Her thoughts require more firmness; from the
+want of this comes her uneasiness. She is like a flower without roots,
+which is moved about by wind and waves."
+
+"She shall take root, she shall find ground as sure as it is to be found
+in the world," said the Lagman, with a serious and beaming eye, at the
+same time striking his hand on the book containing the law of West
+Gotha, so that it fell to the ground. "We will consider more of this,
+Elise," continued he: "Petrea is still too young for us to judge with
+certainty of her talents and tendencies. But if they turn out to be what
+they appear, then she shall never feel any hunger as long as I live and
+can procure bread for my family. You know my friend, the excellent
+Bishop B----: perhaps we can at first confide our Petrea to his
+guidance. After a few years we shall see; she is still only a child.
+Don't you think that we ought to speak to Jacobi, in order to get him to
+read and converse with her? Apropos, how is it with Jacobi? I imagine
+that he begins to be too attentive to Louise."
+
+"Well, well! you are not so far wrong; and even our cousin Thure of
+Oestanvik,--have you perceived anything there?"
+
+"Yes, I did perceive something yesterday evening; what the deuce was his
+meaning with those stupid questions he put to her? 'Does cousin like
+this?' or 'Is cousin fond of that?' I don't like that at all myself.
+Louise is not yet full-grown, and already people come and ask her, 'Does
+cousin like--?' Well, it may signify very little after all, which would
+perhaps please me best. What a pity, however, that our cousin is not a
+little more manly; for he has certainly got a most beautiful estate, and
+so near us."
+
+"Yes, a pity; because, as he is at present, I am almost sure Louise
+would find it impossible to give him her hand."
+
+"You do not believe that her inclination is toward Jacobi?"
+
+"To tell the truth, I fancy that this is the case."
+
+"Nay, that would be very unpleasant and very unwise: I am very fond of
+Jacobi, but he has nothing and is nothing."
+
+"But, my dear, he may get something and become something; I confess,
+dear Ernst, that I believe he would suit Louise better for a husband
+than any one else we know, and I would with pleasure call him my son."
+
+"Would you, Elise? then I must also prepare myself to do the same. You
+have had most trouble and most labor with the children, it is therefore
+right that you should decide in their affairs."
+
+"Ernst, you are so kind!"
+
+"Say just, Elise; not more than just. Besides, it is my opinion that our
+thoughts and inclinations will not differ much. I confess that Louise
+appears to me to be a great treasure, and I know of nobody I could give
+her to with all my heart; but if Jacobi obtains her affections, I feel
+that I could not oppose their union, although it would be painful to me
+on account of his uncertain prospects. He is really dear to me, and we
+are under great obligations to him on account of Henrik; his excellent
+heart, his honesty, and his good qualities, will make him as good a
+citizen as a husband and father, and I consider him to be one of the
+most agreeable men to associate with daily. But, God bless me! I speak
+as if I wished the union, but that is far from my desire: I would much
+rather keep my daughters at home, so long as they find themselves happy
+with me; but when girls grow up, there is never any peace to depend on.
+I wish all lovers and questioners a long way off. Here we could live
+altogether as in a kingdom of heaven, now that we have got everything in
+such order. Some small improvements may still be wanted, but this will
+be all right if we are only left in peace. I have been thinking that we
+could so easily make a wardrobe here: do you see on this side of the
+wall--don't you think if we were to open--What! are you asleep
+already, my dear?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Louise was often teased about Cousin Thure; Cousin Thure was often
+teased about Cousin Louise. He liked very much to be teased about his
+Cousin Louise, and it gave him great pleasure to be told that Oestanvik
+wanted a mistress, that he himself wanted a good wife, and that Louise
+Frank was decidedly one of the wisest and most amiable girls in the
+whole neighborhood, and of the most respectable family. The Landed
+Proprietor was half ready to receive congratulations on his betrothal.
+What the supposed bride thought about the matter, however, is difficult
+to divine. Louise was certainly always polite to her "Cousin Thure," but
+more indifference than attachment seemed to be expressed in this
+politeness; and she declined, with a decision astonishing to many a
+person, his constantly repeated invitations to make a tour to Oestanvik
+in his new landau drawn by "my chestnut horses," four-in-hand. It was
+said by many that the agreeable and friendly Jacobi was much nearer to
+Louise's heart than the rich Landed Proprietor. But even towards Jacobi
+her behavior was so uniform, so quiet, and so unconstrained that nobody
+knew what to think. Very few knew so well as we do that Louise
+considered it in accordance with the dignity of a woman to show perfect
+indifference to the attentions or _doux propos_ of men, until they had
+openly and fully explained themselves. She despised coquetry to that
+degree that she feared everything which had the least appearance of it.
+Her young friends used to joke with her upon her strong notions in this
+respect, and often told her that she would remain unmarried.
+
+"That may be!" answered Louise calmly.
+
+One day she was told that a gentleman had said, "I will not stand up for
+any girl who is not a little coquettish!"
+
+"Then he may remain sitting!" answered Louise, with a great deal of
+dignity.
+
+Louise's views with regard to the dignity of woman, her serious and
+decided principles, and her manner of expressing them, amused her young
+friends, at the same time that they inspired them with great regard for
+her, and caused many little contentions and discussions in which Louise
+fearlessly, though not without some excess, defended what was right.
+These contentions, which began in merriment, sometimes ended quite
+differently.
+
+A young and somewhat coquettish married lady felt herself one day
+wounded by the severity with which Louise judged the coquetry of her
+sex, particularly of married ladies, and in revenge she made use of some
+words which awakened Louise's astonishment and anger at the same time.
+An explanation followed between the two, the consequence of which was a
+complete rupture between Louise and the young lady, together with an
+altered disposition of mind in the former, which she in vain attempted
+to conceal. She had been unusually joyous and lively during the first
+days of her stay at Axelholm; but she now became silent and thoughtful,
+often absent; and some people thought that she seemed less friendly than
+formerly towards the Candidate, but somewhat more attentive to the
+Landed Proprietor, although she constantly declined his invitation "to
+take a tour to Oestanvik."
+
+The evening after this explanation took place, Elise was engaged with
+Jacobi in a lively conversation in the balcony.
+
+"And if," said Jacobi, "if I endeavor to win her affections, oh, tell
+me! would her parents, would her mother see it without displeasure? Ah,
+speak openly with me; the happiness of my life depends upon it!"
+
+"You have my approval and my good wishes," answered Elise; "I tell you
+now what I have often told my husband, that I should very much like to
+call you my son!"
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Jacobi, deeply affected, falling on his knees and
+pressing Elise's hand to his lips: "oh, that every act in my life might
+prove my gratitude, my love--!"
+
+At this moment Louise, who had been looking for her mother, approached
+the balcony; she saw Jacobi's action and heard his words. She withdrew
+quickly, as if she had been stung by a serpent.
+
+From this time a great change was more and more perceptible in her.
+Silent, shy, and very pale, she moved about like a dreaming person in
+the merry circle at Axelholm, and willingly agreed to her mother's
+proposal to shorten her stay at this place.
+
+Jacobi, who was as much astonished as sorry at Louise's sudden
+unfriendliness towards him, began to think the place was somehow
+bewitched, and wished more than once to leave it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A FAMILY PICTURE
+
+From 'The Home'
+
+The family is assembled in the library; tea is just finished. Louise, at
+the pressing request of Gabrielle and Petrea, lays out the cards in
+order to tell the sisters their fortune. The Candidate seats himself
+beside her, and seems to have made up his mind to be a little more
+cheerful. But then "the object" looks more like a cathedral than ever.
+The Landed Proprietor enters, bows, blows his nose, and kisses the hand
+of his "gracious aunt."
+
+_Landed Proprietor_--Very cold this evening; I think we shall have
+frost.
+
+_Elise_--It is a miserable spring; we have just read a melancholy
+account of the famine in the northern provinces; these years of dearth
+are truly unfortunate.
+
+_Landed Proprietor_--Oh yes, the famine up there. No, let us talk of
+something else; that is too gloomy. I have had my peas covered with
+straw. Cousin Louise, are you fond of playing Patience? I am very fond
+of it myself; it is so composing. At Oestanvik I have got very small
+cards for Patience; I am quite sure you would like them, Cousin Louise.
+
+The Landed Proprietor seats himself on the other side of Louise. The
+Candidate is seized with a fit of curious shrugs.
+
+_Louise_--This is not Patience, but a little conjuring by means of which
+I can tell future things. Shall I tell your fortune, Cousin Thure?
+
+_Landed Proprietor_--Oh yes! do tell my fortune; but don't tell me
+anything disagreeable. If I hear anything disagreeable in the evening, I
+always dream of it at night. Tell me now from the cards that I shall
+have a pretty little wife;--a wife beautiful and amiable as
+Cousin Louise.
+
+_The Candidate (with an expression in his eyes as if he would send the
+Landed Proprietor head-over-heels to Oestanvik)_--I don't know whether
+Miss Louise likes flattery.
+
+_Landed Proprietor (who takes no notice of his rival)_--Cousin Louise,
+are you fond of blue?
+
+_Louise_--Blue? It is a pretty color; but I almost like green better.
+
+_Landed Proprietor_--Well, that's very droll; it suits exceedingly well.
+At Oestanvik my drawing-room furniture is blue; beautiful light-blue
+satin. But in my bedroom I have green moreen. Cousin Louise, I
+believe really--
+
+The Candidate coughs as though he were going to be suffocated, and
+rushes out of the room. Louise looks after him and sighs, and afterwards
+sees in the cards so many misfortunes for Cousin Thure that he is
+quite frightened. "The peas frosted!"--"conflagration in the
+drawing-room"--and at last "a basket" ["the mitten"]. The Landed
+Proprietor declares still laughingly that he will not receive "a
+basket." The sisters smile and make their remarks.
+
+
+
+CLEMENS BRENTANO
+
+(1778-1842)
+
+The intellectual upheaval in Germany at the beginning of this century
+brought a host of remarkable characters upon the literary stage, and
+none more gifted, more whimsical, more winning than Clemens Brentano,
+the erratic son of a brilliant family. Born September 8th, 1778, at
+Ehrenbreitstein, Brentano spent his youth among the stimulating
+influences which accompanied the renaissance of German culture. His
+grandmother, Sophie de la Roche, had been the close friend of Wieland,
+and his mother the youthful companion of Goethe. Clemens, after a vain
+attempt to follow in the mercantile footsteps of his father, went to
+Jena, where he met the Schlegels; and here his brilliant but unsteady
+literary career began.
+
+In 1803 he married the talented Sophie Mareau, but three years later his
+happiness was terminated by her death. His next matrimonial venture was,
+however, a failure: an elopement in 1808 with the daughter of a
+Frankfort banker was quickly followed by a divorce, and he thereafter
+led the uncontrolled life of an errant poet. Among his early writings,
+published under the pseudonym of 'Marie,' were several satires and
+dramas and a novel entitled 'Godwi,' which he himself called "a romance
+gone mad." The meeting with Achim von Arnim, who subsequently married
+his sister Bettina, decided his fate: he embarked in literature once and
+for all in close association with Von Arnim. Together they compiled a
+collection of several hundred folk-songs of the sixteenth, seventeenth,
+and eighteenth centuries, under the name of 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn' (The
+Boy's Wonderhorn), 1806-1808. That so musical a people as the Germans
+should be masters of lyric poetry is but natural,--every longing, every
+impression, every impulse gushes into song; and in 'Des Knaben
+Wunderhorn' we hear the tuneful voices of a naïve race, singing what
+they have seen or dreamed or felt during three hundred years. The work
+is dedicated to Goethe, who wrote an almost enthusiastic review of it
+for the Literary Gazette of Jena. "Every lover or master of musical
+art," he says, "should have this volume upon his piano."
+
+The 'Wunderhorn' was greeted by the German public with extraordinary
+cordiality. It was in fact an epoch-making work, the pioneer in the new
+field of German folk poetry. It carried out in a purely national spirit
+the efforts which Herder had made in behalf of the folk-songs of all
+peoples. It revealed the spirit of the time. 1806 was the year of the
+battle of Jena, and Germany in her hour of deepest humiliation gave ear
+to the encouraging voices from out her own past. "The editors of the
+'Wunderhorn,'" said their friend Görres, "have deserved of their
+countrymen a civic crown, for having saved from destruction what yet
+remained to be saved;" and on this civic crown the poets' laurels are
+still green.
+
+Brentano's contagious laughter may even now be heard re-echoing through
+the pages of his book on 'The Philistine' (1811). His dramatic power is
+evinced in the broadly conceived play 'Die Gründung Prags' (The Founding
+of Prague: 1815); but it is upon two stories, told in the simple style
+of the folk-tale, that his widest popularity is founded. 'Die Geschichte
+vom braven Casperl und der schönen Annerl' (The Story of Good Casper and
+Pretty Annie) and his fable of 'Gockel, Hinkel, und Gackeleia,' both of
+the year 1838, are still an indispensable part of the reading of every
+German boy and girl.
+
+Like his brilliant sister, Brentano is a fascinating figure in
+literature. He was amiable and winning, full of quips and cranks, and
+with an inexhaustible fund of stories. Astonishing tales of adventure,
+related with great circumstantiality of detail, and of which he himself
+was the hero, played an important part in his conversation. Tieck once
+said he had never known a better improvisatore than Brentano, nor one
+who could "lie more gracefully."
+
+When Brentano was forty years of age a total change came over his life.
+The witty and fascinating man of the world was transformed into a pious
+and gloomy ascetic. The visions of the stigmatized nun of Dülmen,
+Katharina Emmerich, attracted him, and he remained under her influence
+until her death in 1824. These visions he subsequently published as the
+'Life of the Virgin Mary.' The eccentricities of his later years
+bordered upon insanity. He died in the Catholic faith in the year 1842.
+
+        THE NURSE'S WATCH
+
+        From 'The Boy's Wonderhorn'
+
+
+             The moon it shines,
+               My darling whines;
+     The clock strikes twelve:--God cheer
+             The sick both far and near.
+                 God knoweth all;
+               Mousy nibbles in the wall;
+             The clock strikes one:--like day,
+             Dreams o'er thy pillow play.
+                   The matin-bell
+               Wakes the nun in convent cell;
+             The clock strikes two:--they go
+               To choir in a row.
+                 The wind it blows,
+                 The cock he crows;
+             The clock strikes three:--the wagoner
+             In his straw bed begins to stir.
+               The steed he paws the floor,
+               Creaks the stable door;
+             The clock strikes four:--'tis plain
+             The coachman sifts his grain.
+         The swallow's laugh the still air shakes,
+                   The sun awakes;
+     The clock strikes five:--the traveler must be gone,
+             He puts his stockings on.
+               The hen is clacking,
+               The ducks are quacking;
+             The clock strikes six:--awake, arise,
+             Thou lazy hag; come, ope thy eyes.
+               Quick to the baker's run;
+               The rolls are done;
+             The clock strikes seven:--
+             'Tis time the milk were in the oven.
+               Put in some butter, do,
+               And some fine sugar, too;
+             The clock strikes eight:--
+         Now bring my baby's porridge straight.
+
+     Englished by Charles T. Brooks.
+
+     THE CASTLE IN AUSTRIA
+
+     From 'The Boy's Wonderhorn'
+
+
+     There lies a castle in Austria,
+       Right goodly to behold,
+     Walled tip with marble stones so fair,
+       With silver and with red gold.
+
+     Therein lies captive a young boy,
+       For life and death he lies bound,
+     Full forty fathoms under the earth,
+       'Midst vipers and snakes around.
+
+     His father came from Rosenberg,
+       Before the tower he went:--
+     "My son, my dearest son, how hard
+       Is thy imprisonment!"
+
+     "O father, dearest father mine,
+       So hardly I am bound,
+     Full forty fathoms under the earth,
+       'Midst vipers and snakes around!"
+
+     His father went before the lord:--
+       "Let loose thy captive to me!
+     I have at home three casks of gold,
+       And these for the boy I'll gi'e."
+
+     "Three casks of gold, they help you not:
+       That boy, and he must die!
+     He wears round his neck a golden chain;
+       Therein doth his ruin lie."
+
+     "And if he thus wear a golden chain,
+       He hath not stolen it; nay!
+     A maiden good gave it to him
+       For true love, did she say."
+
+     They led the boy forth from the tower,
+       And the sacrament took he:--
+     "Help thou, rich Christ, from heaven high,
+       It's come to an end with me!"
+
+     They led him to the scaffold place,
+        Up the ladder he must go:--
+     "O headsman, dearest headsman, do
+       But a short respite allow!"
+
+     "A short respite I must not grant;
+       Thou wouldst escape and fly:
+     Reach me a silken handkerchief
+       Around his eyes to tie."
+
+     "Oh, do not, do not bind mine eyes!
+       I must look on the world so fine;
+     I see it to-day, then never more,
+       With these weeping eyes of mine."
+
+     His father near the scaffold stood,
+       And his heart, it almost rends:--
+     "O son, O thou my dearest son,
+       Thy death I will avenge!"
+
+     "O father, dearest father mine!
+       My death thou shalt not avenge:
+     'Twould bring to my soul but heavy pains;
+       Let me die in innocence.
+
+     "It is not for this life of mine,
+       Nor for my body proud;
+     'Tis but for my dear mother's sake:
+       At home she weeps aloud."
+
+     Not yet three days had passed away,
+       When an angel from heaven came down:
+     "Take ye the boy from the scaffold away;
+       Else the city shall sink under ground!"
+
+     And not six months had passed away,
+       Ere his death was avenged amain;
+     And upwards of three hundred men
+       For the boy's life were slain.
+
+     Who is it that hath made this lay,
+       Hath sung it, and so on?
+     That, in Vienna in Austria,
+       Three maidens fair have done.
+
+
+
+ELISABETH BRENTANO (BETTINA VON ARNIM)
+
+(1785-1859)
+
+No picture of German life at the beginning of this century would be
+complete which did not include the distinguished women who left their
+mark upon the time. Among these Bettina von Arnim stands easily
+foremost. There was something triumphant in her nature, which in her
+youth manifested itself in her splendid enthusiasm for the two great
+geniuses who dominated her life,--Goethe and Beethoven,--and which, in
+the lean years when Germany was overclouded, maintained itself by an
+inexhaustible optimism. Her merry willfulness and wit covered a warm
+heart and a vigorous mind; and both of her great idols understood her
+and took her seriously.
+
+[Illustration: ELISABETH BRENTANO]
+
+Elisabeth Brentano was the daughter of Goethe's friend, Maximiliane de
+la Roche. She was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1785, and was brought
+up after the death of her mother under the somewhat peculiar influence
+of the highly-strung Caroline von Günderode. Through her filial intimacy
+with Goethe's mother, she came to know the poet; and out of their
+friendship grew the correspondence which formed the basis of Bettina's
+famous book, 'Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde' (Goethe's
+Correspondence with a Child). She attached herself with unbounded
+enthusiasm to Goethe, and he responded with affectionate tact. To him
+Bettina was the embodiment of the loving grace and willfulness
+of 'Mignon.'
+
+In 1811 these relations were interrupted, owing to Bettina's attitude
+toward Goethe's wife. In the same year she married Achim von Arnim, one
+of the most refined poets and noblest characters of that brilliant
+circle. The marriage was an ideal one; each cherished and delighted in
+the genius of the other, but in 1831 the death of Von Arnim brought this
+happiness to an end. Goethe died in the following year, and Germany went
+into mourning. Then in 1835 Bettina appeared before the world for the
+first time as an authoress, in 'Goethe's Correspondence with a Child.'
+The dithyrambic exaltation, the unrestrained but beautiful enthusiasm of
+the book came like an electric shock. Into an atmosphere of spiritual
+stagnation, these letters brought a fresh access of vitality and hope.
+Bettina's old friendly relations with Goethe had been resumed later in
+life, and in a letter written to her niece she gives a charming account
+of the visit to the poet in 1824, which proved to be her last. This
+letter first saw the light in 1896, and an extract from it has been
+included below.
+
+The inspiration which went out from Bettina's magnetic nature was
+profound. She had her part in every great movement of her time, from the
+liberation of Greece to the fight with cholera in Berlin. During the
+latter, her devotion to the cause of the suffering poor in Berlin opened
+her eyes to the miseries of the common people; and she wrote a work full
+of indignant fervor, 'Dies Buch gehört dem König' (This Book belongs to
+the King), in consequence of which her welcome at the court of Frederick
+William IV. grew cool. A subsequent book, written in a similar vein, was
+suppressed. But Bettina's love of the people, as of every cause in which
+she was interested, was genuine and not to be quenched; she acted upon
+the maxim once expressed by Emerson, "Every brave heart must treat
+society as a child, and never allow it to dictate." Emerson greatly
+admired Bettina, and Louisa M. Alcott relates that she first made
+acquaintance with the famous 'Correspondence' when in her girlhood she
+was left to browse in Emerson's library. Bettina's influence was most
+keenly felt by the young, and she had the youth of Germany at her feet.
+She died in 1859.
+
+There is in Weimar a picture in which are represented the literary men
+of the period, grouped as in Raphael's School of Athens, with Goethe and
+Schiller occupying the centre. Upon the broad steps which lead to the
+elevation where they are standing, is the girlish figure of Bettina
+bending forward and holding a laurel wreath in her hand. This is the
+position which she occupies in the history of German literature.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+DEDICATION: TO GOETHE
+
+From 'Goethe's Correspondence with a Child'
+
+Thou, who knowest love, and the refinement of sentiment, oh how
+beautiful is everything in thee! How the streams of life rush through
+thy sensitive heart, and plunge with force into the cold waves of thy
+time, then boil and bubble up till mountain and vale flush with the glow
+of life, and the forests stand with glistening boughs upon the shore of
+thy being, and all upon which rests thy glance is filled with happiness
+and life! O God, how happy were I with thee! And were I winging my
+flight far over all times, and far over thee, I would fold my pinions
+and yield myself wholly to the domination of thine eyes.
+
+Men will never understand thee, and those nearest to thee will most
+thoroughly disown and betray thee; I look into the future, and I hear
+them cry, "Stone him!" Now, when thine own inspiration, like a lion,
+stands beside thee and guards thee, vulgarity ventures not to approach
+thee. Thy mother said recently, "The men to-day are all like Gerning,
+who always says, 'We, the superfluous learned';" and she speaks truly,
+for he is superfluous. Rather be dead than superfluous! But I am not so,
+for I am thine, because I recognize thee in all things. I know that when
+the clouds lift themselves up before the sun-god, they will soon be
+depressed by his fiery hand; I know that he endures no shadow except
+that which his own fame seeks; the rest of consciousness will overshadow
+thee. I know, when he descends in the evening, that he will again appear
+in the morning with golden front. Thou art eternal, therefore it is good
+for me to be with thee.
+
+When, in the evening, I am alone in my dark room, and the neighbors'
+lights are thrown upon my wall, they sometimes light up thy bust; or
+when all is silent in the city, here and there a dog barks or a cock
+crows: I know not why, but it seems something beyond human to me; I know
+what I shall do to still my pain.
+
+I would fain speak with thee otherwise than with words; I would fain
+press myself to thy heart. I feel that my soul is aflame. How fearfully
+still is the air before the storm! So stand now my thoughts, cold and
+silent, and my heart surges like the sea. Dear, dear Goethe! A
+reminiscence of thee breaks the spell; the signs of fire and warfare
+sink slowly down in my sky, and thou art like the in-streaming
+moonlight. Thou art great and glorious, and better than all that I have
+ever known and experienced up to this time. Thy whole life is so good!
+
+TO GOETHE
+
+CASSEL, August 13th, 1807.
+
+Who can interpret and measure what is passing within me? I am happy now
+in remembrance of the past, which I scarcely was when that past was the
+present. To my sensitive heart the surprise of being with thee, the
+coming and going and returning in a few blessed days--this was all like
+clouds flitting across my heaven; through my too near presence I feared
+it might be darkened by my shadow, as it is ever darker when it nears
+the earth; now, in the distance, it is mild and lofty and ever clear.
+
+I would fain press thy dear hand with both of mine to my bosom, and say
+to thee, "How peace and content have come to me since I have
+known thee!"
+
+I know that the evening has not come when life's twilight gathers in my
+heart: oh, would it were so! Would that I had lived out my days, that my
+wishes and joys were fulfilled, and that they could all be heaped upon
+thee, that thou mightst be therewith decked and crowned as with
+evergreen bays.
+
+When I was alone with thee on that evening I could not comprehend thee:
+thou didst smile at me because I was moved, and laughed at me because I
+wept; but why? And yet it was thy laughter, the _tone_ of thy laughter,
+which moved me to tears; and I am content, and see, under the cloak of
+this riddle, roses burst forth which spring alike from sadness and joy.
+Yes, thou art right, prophet: I shall yet with light heart struggle up
+through jest and mirth; I shall weary myself with struggling as I did in
+my childhood (ah, it seems as if it were but yesterday!) when with the
+exuberance of joy I wandered through the blossoming fields, pulling up
+the flowers by the roots and throwing them into the water. But I wish to
+seek rest in a warm, firm earnestness, and there at hand standest thou,
+smiling prophet!
+
+I say to thee yet once more: Whoever in this wide world understands what
+is passing within me, who, am so restful in thee, so silent, so
+unwavering in my feeling? I could, like the mountains, bear nights and
+days in the past without disturbing thee in thy reflections! And yet
+when at times the wind bears the fragrance and the germs together from
+the blossoming world up to the mountain heights, they will be
+intoxicated with delight as I was yesterday. Then I loved the world,
+then I was as glad as a gushing, murmuring spring in which the sun for
+the first time shines.
+
+Farewell, sublime one who blindest and intimidatest me! From this steep
+rock upon which my love has in life-danger ventured, I cannot clamber
+down. I cannot think of descending, for I should break my neck in
+the attempt.
+
+BETTINA'S LAST MEETING WITH GOETHE
+
+From a Letter to her Niece in 1824, first published in 1896
+
+IN THE evening I was alone again with Goethe. Had any one observed us,
+he would have had something to tell to posterity. Goethe's peculiarities
+were exhibited to the full: first he would growl at me, then to make it
+all up again he would caress me, with the most flattering words. His
+bottle of wine he kept in the adjoining room, because I had reproached
+him for his drinking the night before: on some pretext or other he
+disappeared from the scene half a dozen times in order to drink a glass.
+I pretended to notice nothing; but at parting I told him that twelve
+glasses of wine wouldn't hurt him, and that he had had only six. "How do
+you know that so positively?" he said. "I heard the gurgle of the bottle
+in the next room, and I heard you drinking, and then you have betrayed
+yourself to me, as Solomon in the Song of Songs betrayed himself to his
+beloved, by your breath." "You are an arrant rogue," he said; "now take
+yourself off," and he brought the candle to light me out. But I sprang
+in front of him and knelt upon the threshold of the room. "Now I shall
+see if I can shut you in, and whether you are a good spirit or an evil
+one, like the rat in Faust; I kiss this threshold and bless it, for over
+it daily passes the most glorious human spirit and my best friend."
+"Over you and your love I shall never pass," he answered, "it is too
+dear to me; and around your spirit I creep so" (and he carefully paced
+around the spot where I was kneeling), "for you are too artful, and it
+is better to keep on good terms with you." And so he dismissed me with
+tears in his eyes. I remained standing in the dark before his door, to
+gulp down my emotion. I was thinking that this door, which I had closed
+with my own hand, had separated me from him in all probability forever.
+Whoever comes near him must confess that his genius has partly passed
+into goodness; the fiery sun of his spirit is transformed at its setting
+into a soft purple light.
+
+
+     IN GOETHE'S GARDEN
+
+     I from this hillock all my world survey!
+       Yon vale, bedecked by nature's fairy fingers,
+       Where the still by-road picturesquely lingers,
+     The cottage white whose quaint charms grace the way--
+     These are the scenes that o'er my heart hold sway.
+
+     I from this hillock all my world survey!
+       Though I ascend to heights fair lands dividing,
+       Where stately ships I see the ocean riding,
+     While cities gird the view in proud array,
+     Naught prompts my heart's impulses to obey.
+
+     I from this hillock all my world survey!
+       And could I stand while Paradise descrying,
+       Still for these verdant meads should I be sighing,
+     Where thy dear roof-peaks skirt the verdant way:
+     Beyond these bounds my heart longs not to stray.
+
+
+
+JOHN BRIGHT
+
+(1811-1889)
+
+John Bright was the modern representative of the ancient Tribunes of the
+people or Demagogues (in the original and perfectly honorable sense);
+and a full comparison of his work and position with those of the Cleons
+or the Gracchi would almost be an outline of the respective peoples,
+polities, and problems. He was a higher type of man and politician than
+Cleon,--largely because the English aristocracy is not an unpatriotic
+and unprincipled clique like the Athenian, ready to use any weapon from
+murder down or to make their country a province of a foreign empire
+rather than give up their class monopoly of power; but like his
+prototype he was a democrat by nature as well as profession, the welfare
+of the common people at once his passion and his political livelihood,
+full of faith that popular instincts are both morally right and
+intellectually sound, and all his own instincts and most of his labors
+antagonistic to those of the aristocracy. It is a phase of the same fact
+to say that he also represented the active force of religious feeling in
+politics, as opposed to pure secular statesmanship.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN BRIGHT]
+
+The son of a Quaker manufacturer of Rochdale, England, and born near
+that place November 16th, 1811, he began his public career when a mere
+boy as a stirring and effective temperance orator, his ready eloquence
+and intense earnestness prevailing over an ungraceful manner and a bad
+delivery; he wrought all his life for popular education and for the
+widest extension of the franchise; and being a Quaker and a member of
+the Peace Society, he opposed all war on principle, fighting the Crimean
+War bitterly, and leaving the Gladstone Cabinet in 1882 on account of
+the bombardment of Alexandria. He was retired from the service of the
+public for some time on account of his opposition to the Crimean War;
+but Mr. Gladstone, who differed from him on this point, calls it the
+action of his life most worthy of honor. He was perhaps the most warlike
+opponent of war ever high in public life; the pugnacious and aggressive
+agitator, pouring out floods of fiery oratory to the effect that nobody
+ought to fight anybody, was a curious paradox.
+
+He was by far the most influential English friend of the North in the
+Civil War, and the magic of his eloquence and his name was a force of
+perhaps decisive potency in keeping the working classes on the same
+side; so that mass meetings of unemployed laborers with half-starving
+families resolved that they would rather starve altogether than help to
+perpetuate slavery in America. He shares with Richard Cobden the credit
+of having obtained free trade for England: Bright's thrilling oratory
+was second only to Cobden's organizing power in winning the victory, and
+both had the immense weight of manufacturers opposing their own class.
+That he opposed the game laws and favored electoral reform is a matter
+of course.
+
+Mr. Bright entered on an active political career in 1839, when he joined
+the Anti-Corn-Law League. He first became a member of Parliament in
+1843, and illustrates a most valuable feature of English political
+practice. When a change of feeling in one place prevented his
+re-election, he selected another which was glad to honor itself by
+having a great man represent it, so that the country was not robbed of a
+statesman by a village faction; and there being no spoils system, he did
+not have to waste his time in office-jobbing to keep his seat. He sat
+first for Durham, then for Manchester, and finally for Birmingham,
+remaining in public life over forty years; and never had to make a
+"deal" or get any one an office in all that period.
+
+He was in Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet from 1868 to 1870, and again from 1873
+to 1882. On the Home Rule question the two old friends and long
+co-workers divided; Mr. Bright, with more than half the oldest and
+sincerest friends of liberty and haters of oppression in England,
+holding the step to be political suicide for the British Empire.
+
+As an orator, Mr. Bright stood in a sense alone. He was direct and
+logical; he carefully collected and massed his facts, and used strong,
+homely Saxon English, and short crisp words; he was a master of telling
+epigram whose force lay in its truth as much as in its humor. Several
+volumes of his speeches have been published: 'On Public Affairs'; 'On
+Parliamentary Reform'; 'On Questions of Public Policy'; 'On the American
+Question,' etc. His life has been written by Gilchrist, Smith,
+Robertson, and others. He died March 27th, 1889.
+
+FROM THE SPEECH ON THE CORN LAWS (1843)
+
+It must not be supposed, because I wish to represent the interest of the
+many, that I am hostile to the interest of the few.
+
+But is it not perfectly certain that if the foundation of the most
+magnificent building be destroyed and undermined, the whole fabric
+itself is in danger? Is it not certain, also, that the vast body of the
+people who form the foundation of the social fabric, if they are
+suffering, if they are trampled upon, if they are degraded, if they are
+discontented, if "their hands are against every man, and every man's
+hands are against them," if they do not flourish as well, reasonably
+speaking, as the classes who are above them because they are richer and
+more powerful,--then are those classes as much in danger as the working
+classes themselves?
+
+There never was a revolution in any country which destroyed the great
+body of the people. There have been convulsions of a most dire character
+which have overturned old-established monarchies and have hurled thrones
+and sceptres to the dust. There have been revolutions which have brought
+down most powerful aristocracies, and swept them from the face of the
+earth forever, but never was there a revolution yet which destroyed the
+people. And whatever may come as a consequence of the state of things in
+this country, of this we may rest assured: that the common people, that
+the great bulk of our countrymen will remain and survive the shock,
+though it may be that the Crown and the aristocracy and the Church may
+be leveled with the dust, and rise no more. In seeking to represent the
+working classes, and in standing up for their rights and liberties, I
+hold that I am also defending the rights and liberties of the middle and
+richer classes of society. Doing justice to one class cannot inflict
+injustice on any other class, and "justice and impartiality to all" is
+what we all have a right to from government. And we have a right to
+clamor; and so long as I have breath, so long will I clamor against the
+oppression which I see to exist, and in favor of the rights of the great
+body of the people....
+
+What is the condition in which we are? I have already spoken of Ireland.
+You know that hundreds of thousands meet there, week after week, in
+various parts of the country, to proclaim to all the world the tyranny
+under which they suffer. You know that in South Wales, at this moment,
+there is an insurrection of the most extraordinary character going on,
+and that the Government is sending, day after day, soldiers and
+artillery amongst the innocent inhabitants of that mountainous country
+for the purpose of putting down the insurrection thereby raised and
+carried on. You know that in the Staffordshire ironworks almost all the
+workmen are now out and in want of wages, from want of employment and
+from attempting to resist the inevitable reduction of wages which must
+follow restriction upon trade. You know that in August last, Lancashire
+and Yorkshire rose in peaceful insurrection to proclaim to the world,
+and in face of Heaven, the wrongs of an insulted and oppressed people. I
+know that my own neighborhood is unsettled and uncomfortable. I know
+that in your own city your families are suffering. Yes, I have been to
+your cottages and seen their condition. Thanks to my canvass of Durham,
+I have been able to see the condition of many honest and independent--or
+ought-to-be-independent--and industrious artisans. I have seen even
+freemen of your city sitting, looking disconsolate and sad. Their hands
+were ready to labor; their skill was ready to produce all that their
+trade demanded. They were as honest and industrious as any man in this
+assembly, but no man hired them. They were in a state of involuntary
+idleness, and were driving fast to the point of pauperism. I have seen
+their wives, too, with three or four children about them--one in the
+cradle, one at the breast. I have seen their countenances, and I have
+seen the signs of their sufferings. I have seen the emblems and symbols
+of affliction such as I did not expect to see in this city. Ay! and I
+have seen those little children who at not a distant day will be the men
+and women of this city of Durham; I have seen their poor little wan
+faces and anxious looks, as if the furrows of old age were coming upon
+them before they had escaped from the age of childhood. I have seen all
+this in this city, and I have seen far more in the neighborhood from
+which I have come. You have seen, in all probability, people from my
+neighborhood walking your streets and begging for that bread which the
+Corn Laws would not allow them to earn.
+
+     "Bread-taxed weaver, all can see
+     What the tax hath done for thee,
+     And thy children, vilely led,
+     Singing hymns for shameful bread,
+     Till the stones of every street
+     Know their little naked feet."
+
+This is what the Corn Law does for the weavers of my neighborhood, and
+for the weavers and artisans of yours....
+
+FROM THE SPEECH ON INCENDIARISM IN IRELAND (1844)
+
+The great and all-present evil of the rural districts is this--you have
+too many people for the work to be done, and you, the landed
+proprietors, are alone responsible for this state of things; and to
+speak honestly, I believe many of you know it. I have been charged with
+saying out-of-doors that this House is a club of land-owners legislating
+for land-owners. If I had not said it, the public must long ago have
+found out that fact. My honorable friend the member for Stockport on one
+occasion proposed that before you passed a law to raise the price of
+bread, you should consider how far you had the power to raise the rates
+of wages. What did you say to that? You said that the laborers did not
+understand political economy, or they would not apply to Parliament to
+raise wages; that Parliament could not raise wages. And yet the very
+next thing you did was to pass a law to raise the price of produce of
+your own land, at the expense of the very class whose wages you
+confessed your inability to increase.
+
+What is the condition of the county of Suffolk? Is it not notorious that
+the rents are as high as they were fifty years ago, and probably much
+higher? But the return for the farmer's capital is much lower, and the
+condition of the laborer is very much worse. The farmers are subject to
+the law of competition, and rents are thereby raised from time to time
+so as to keep their profits down to the lowest point, and the laborers
+by the competition amongst them are reduced to the point below which
+life cannot be maintained. Your tenants and laborers are being devoured
+by this excessive competition, whilst you, their magnanimous landlords,
+shelter yourselves from all competition by the Corn Law yourselves have
+passed, and make the competition of all other classes serve still more
+to swell your rentals. It was for this object the Corn Law was passed,
+and yet in the face of your countrymen you dare to call it a law for the
+protection of native industry....
+
+Again, a rural police is kept up by the gentry; the farmers say for the
+sole use of watching game and frightening poachers, for which formerly
+they had to pay watchers. Is this true, or is it not? I say, then, you
+care everything for the rights--and for something beyond the rights--of
+your own property, but you are oblivious to its duties. How many lives
+have been sacrificed during the past year to the childish infatuation of
+preserving game? The noble lord, the member for North Lancashire, could
+tell of a gamekeeper killed in an affray on his father's estate in that
+county. For the offense one man was hanged, and four men are now on
+their way to penal colonies. Six families are thus deprived of husband
+and father, that this wretched system of game-preserving may be
+continued in a country densely peopled as this is. The Marquis of
+Normanby's gamekeeper has been murdered also, and the poacher who shot
+him only escaped death by the intervention of the Home Secretary. At
+Godalming, in Surrey, a gamekeeper has been murdered; and at Buckhill,
+in Buckinghamshire, a person has recently been killed in a poaching
+affray. This insane system is the cause of a fearful loss of life; it
+tends to the ruin of your tenantry, and is the fruitful cause of the
+demoralization of the peasantry. But you are caring for the rights of
+property; for its most obvious duties you have no concern. With such a
+policy, what can you expect but that which is now passing before you?
+
+It is the remark of a beautiful writer that "to have known nothing but
+misery is the most portentous condition under which human nature can
+start on its course." Has your agricultural laborer ever known anything
+but misery? He is born in a miserable hovel, which in mockery is termed
+a house or a home; he is reared in penury: he passes a life of hopeless
+and unrequited toil, and the jail or the union house is before him as
+the only asylum on this side of the pauper's grave. Is this the result
+of your protection to native industry? Have you cared for the laborer
+till, from a home of comfort, he has but a hovel for shelter? and have
+you cherished him into starvation and rags? I tell you what your boasted
+protection is--it is a protection of native idleness at the expense of
+the impoverishment of native industry.
+
+FROM THE SPEECH ON NON-RECOGNITION OF THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY (1861)
+
+I advise you, and I advise the people of England, to abstain from
+applying to the United States doctrines and principles which we never
+apply to our own case. At any rate, they [the Americans] have never
+fought "for the balance of power" in Europe. They have never fought to
+keep up a decaying empire. They have never squandered the money of their
+people in such a phantom expedition as we have been engaged in. And now,
+at this moment, when you are told that they are going to be ruined by
+their vast expenditure,--why, the sum that they are going to raise in
+the great emergency of this grievous war is not greater than what we
+raise every year during a time of peace.
+
+They say they are not going to liberate slaves. No; the object of the
+Washington government is to maintain their own Constitution and to act
+legally, as it permits and requires. No man is more in favor of peace
+than I am; no man has denounced war more than I have, probably, in this
+country; few men in their public life have suffered more obloquy--I had
+almost said, more indignity--in consequence of it. But I cannot for the
+life of me see, upon any of those principles upon which States are
+governed now,--I say nothing of the literal word of the New
+Testament,--I cannot see how the state of affairs in America, with
+regard to the United States government, could have been different from
+what it is at this moment. We had a Heptarchy in this country, and it
+was thought to be a good thing to get rid of it, and have a united
+nation. If the thirty-three or thirty-four States of the American Union
+can break off whenever they like, I can see nothing but disaster and
+confusion throughout the whole of that continent. I say that the war, be
+it successful or not, be it Christian or not, be it wise or not, is a
+war to sustain the government and to sustain the authority of a great
+nation; and that the people of England, if they are true to their own
+sympathies, to their own history, and to their own great act of 1834, to
+which reference has already been made, will have no sympathy with those
+who wish to build up a great empire on the perpetual bondage of millions
+of their fellow-men.
+
+FROM THE SPEECH ON THE STATE OF IRELAND (1866)
+
+I think I was told in 1849, as I stood in the burial ground at
+Skibbereen, that at least four hundred people who had died of famine
+were buried within the quarter of an acre of ground on which I was then
+looking. It is a country, too, from which there has been a greater
+emigration by sea within a given time than has been known at any time
+from any other country in the world. It is a country where there has
+been, for generations past, a general sense of wrong, out of which has
+grown a chronic state of insurrection; and at this very moment when I
+speak, the general safeguard of constitutional liberty is withdrawn, and
+we meet in this hall, and I speak here to-night, rather by the
+forbearance and permission of the Irish executive than under the
+protection of the common safeguards of the rights and liberties of the
+people of the United Kingdom.
+
+I venture to say that this is a miserable and a humiliating picture to
+draw of this country. Bear in mind that I am not speaking of Poland
+suffering under the conquest of Russia. There is a gentleman, now a
+candidate for an Irish county, who is very great upon the wrongs of
+Poland; but I have found him always in the House of Commons taking sides
+with that great party which has systematically supported the wrongs of
+Ireland. I am not speaking of Hungary, or of Venice as she was under the
+rule of Austria, or of the Greeks under the dominion of the Turk; but I
+am speaking of Ireland--part of the United Kingdom--part of that which
+boasts itself to be the most civilized and the most Christian nation in
+the world. I took the liberty recently, at a meeting in Glasgow, to say
+that I believed it was impossible for a class to govern a great nation
+wisely and justly. Now, in Ireland there has been a field in which all
+the principles of the Tory party have had their complete experiment and
+development. You have had the country gentleman in all his power. You
+have had any number of Acts of Parliament which the ancient Parliament
+of Ireland or the Parliament of the United Kingdom could give him. You
+have had the Established Church supported by the law, even to the
+extent, not many years ago, of collecting its revenues by the aid of
+military force. In point of fact, I believe it would be impossible to
+imagine a state of things in which the Tory party should have a more
+entire and complete opportunity for their trial than they have had
+within the limits of this island. And yet what has happened? This,
+surely: that the kingdom has been continually weakened, that the harmony
+of the empire has been disturbed, and that the mischief has not been
+confined to the United Kingdom, but has spread to the colonies....
+
+I am told--you can answer it if I am wrong--that it is not common in
+Ireland now to give leases to tenants, especially to Catholic tenants.
+If that be so, then the security for the property rests only upon the
+good feeling and favor of the owner of the land; for the laws, as we
+know, have been made by the land-owners, and many propositions for the
+advantage of the tenants have unfortunately been too little considered
+by Parliament. The result is that you have bad farming, bad
+dwelling-houses, bad temper, and everything bad connected with the
+occupation and cultivation of land in Ireland. One of the results--a
+result the most appalling--is this, that your population is fleeing your
+country and seeking refuge in a distant land. On this point I wish to
+refer to a letter which I received a few days ago from a most esteemed
+citizen of Dublin. He told me that he believed that a very large portion
+of what he called the poor, amongst Irishmen, sympathized with any
+scheme or any proposition that was adverse to the Imperial Government.
+He said further that the people here are rather in the country than of
+it, and that they are looking more to America than they are looking to
+England. I think there is a good deal in that. When we consider how many
+Irishmen have found a refuge in America, I do not know how we can wonder
+at that statement. You will recollect that when the ancient Hebrew
+prophet prayed in his captivity, he prayed with his window open towards
+Jerusalem. You know that the followers of Mohammed, when they pray, turn
+their faces towards Mecca. When the Irish peasant asks for food and
+freedom and blessing, his eye follows the setting sun, the aspirations
+of his heart reach beyond the wide Atlantic, and in spirit he grasps
+hands with the great Republic of the West. If this be so, I say then
+that the disease is not only serious, but it is desperate; but desperate
+as it is, I believe there is a certain remedy for it if the people and
+Parliament of the United Kingdom are willing to apply it....
+
+I believe that at the root of a general discontent there is in all
+countries a general grievance and general suffering. The surface of
+society is not incessantly disturbed without a cause. I recollect in the
+poem of the greatest of Italian poets, he tells us that as he saw in
+vision the Stygian lake, and stood upon its banks, he observed the
+constant commotion upon the surface of the pool, and his good instructor
+and guide explained to him the cause of it:--
+
+     "This, too, for certain know, that underneath
+     The water dwells a multitude, whose sighs
+     Into these bubbles make the surface heave,
+     As thine eye tells thee wheresoe'er it turn."
+
+And I say that in Ireland, for generations back, the misery and the
+wrongs of the people have made their sign, and have found a voice in
+constant insurrection and disorder. I have said that Ireland is a
+country of many wrongs and of many sorrows. Her past lies almost in
+shadow. Her present is full of anxiety and peril. Her future depends on
+the power of her people to substitute equality and justice for
+supremacy, and a generous patriotism for the spirit of faction. In the
+effort now making in Great Britain to create a free representation of
+the people you have the deepest interest. The people never wish to
+suffer, and they never wish to inflict injustice. They have no sympathy
+with the wrong-doer, whether in Great Britain or in Ireland; and when
+they are fairly represented in the Imperial Parliament, as I hope they
+will one day be, they will speedily give an effective and final answer
+to that old question of the Parliament of Kilkenny--"How comes it to
+pass that the King has never been the richer for Ireland?"
+
+FROM THE SPEECH ON THE IRISH ESTABLISHED CHURCH
+
+(1868)
+
+I am one of those who do not believe that the Established Church of
+Ireland--of which I am not a member--would go to absolute ruin, in the
+manner of which many of its friends are now so fearful. There was a
+paper sent to me this morning, called 'An Address from the Protestants
+of Ireland to their Protestant Brethren of Great Britain.' It is dated
+"5, Dawson Street," and is signed by "John Trant Hamilton, T.A. Lefroy,
+and R.W. Gamble." The paper is written in a fair and mild, and I would
+even say,--for persons who have these opinions,--in a kindly and just
+spirit. But they have been alarmed, and I would wish, if I can, to offer
+them consolation. They say they have no interest in protecting any
+abuses of the Established Church, but they protest against their being
+now deprived of the Church of their fathers. Now, I am quite of opinion
+that it would be a most monstrous thing to deprive the Protestants of
+the Church of their fathers; and there is no man in the world who would
+more strenuously resist even any step in that direction than I would,
+unless it were Mr. Gladstone, the author of the famous resolutions. The
+next sentence goes on to say, "We ask for no ascendancy." Having read
+that sentence, I think that we must come to the conclusion that these
+gentlemen are in a better frame of mind than we thought them to be in. I
+can understand easily that these gentlemen are very sorry and doubtful
+as to the depths into which they are to be plunged; but I disagree with
+them in this--that I think there would still be a Protestant Church in
+Ireland when all is done that Parliament has proposed to do. The only
+difference will be, that it will not then be an establishment--that it
+will have no special favor or grant from the State--that it will stand
+in relation to the State just as your Church does, and just as the
+churches of the majority of the people of Great Britain at this moment
+stand. There will then be no Protestant bishops from Ireland to sit in
+the House of Lords; but he must be the most enthusiastic Protestant and
+Churchman who believes that there can be any advantage to his Church and
+to Protestantism generally in Ireland from such a phenomenon.
+
+
+
+BRILLAT-SAVARIN
+
+(1755-1826)
+
+Brillat-Savarin was a French magistrate and legislator, whose reputation
+as man of letters rests mainly upon a single volume, his inimitable
+'Physiologie du Goût'. Although writing in the present century, he was
+essentially a Frenchman of the old régime, having been born in 1755 at
+Belley, almost on the border-line of Savoy, where he afterwards gained
+distinction as an advocate. In later life he regretted his native
+province chiefly for its figpeckers, superior in his opinion to ortolans
+or robins, and for the cuisine of the innkeeper Genin, where "the
+old-timers of Belley used to gather to eat chestnuts and drink the new
+white wine known as _vin bourru_"
+
+[Illustration: Brillat-Savarin]
+
+After holding various minor offices in his department, Savarin became
+mayor of Belley in 1793; but the Reign of Terror soon forced him to flee
+to Switzerland and join the colony of French refugees at Lausanne.
+Souvenirs of this period are frequent in his 'Physiologie du Goût', all
+eminently gastronomic, as befits his subject-matter, but full of
+interest, as showing his unfailing cheerfulness amidst the vicissitudes
+and privations of exile. He fled first to Dôle, to "obtain from the
+Representative Prôt a safe-conduct, which was to save me from going to
+prison and thence probably to the scaffold," and which he ultimately
+owed to Madame Prôt, with whom he spent the evening playing duets, and
+who declared, "Citizen, any one who cultivates the fine arts as you do
+cannot betray his country!" It was not the safe-conduct, however, but an
+unexpected dinner which he enjoyed on his route, that made this a
+red-letter day to Savarin:--"What a good dinner!--I will not give the
+details, but an honorable mention is due to a _fricassée_ of chicken, of
+the first order, such as cannot be found except in the provinces, and so
+richly dowered with truffles that there were enough to put new life into
+old Tithonus himself."
+
+The whole episode is told in Savarin's happiest vein, and well-nigh
+justifies his somewhat complacent conclusion that "any one who, with a
+revolutionary committee at his heels, could so conduct himself,
+assuredly has the head and the heart of a Frenchman!"
+
+Natural scenery did not appeal to Savarin; to him Switzerland meant the
+restaurant of the Lion d'Argent, at Lausanne, where "for only 15 _batz_
+we passed in review three complete courses;" the _table d'hôte_ of the
+Rue de Rosny; and the little village of Moudon, where the cheese
+_fondue_ was so good. Circumstances, however, soon necessitated his
+departure for the United States, which he always gratefully remembered
+as having afforded him "an asylum, employment, and tranquillity." For
+three years he supported himself in New York, giving French lessons and
+at night playing in a theatre orchestra. "I was so comfortable there,"
+he writes, "that in the moment of emotion which preceded departure, all
+that I asked of Heaven (a prayer which it has granted) was never to know
+greater sorrow in the Old World than I had known in the New." Returning
+to France in 1796, Savarin settled in Paris, and after holding several
+offices under the Directory, became a Judge in the Cour de Cassation,
+the French court of last resort, where he remained until his death
+in 1826.
+
+Although an able and conscientious magistrate, Savarin was better
+adapted to play the kindly friend and cordial host than the stern and
+impartial judge. He was a convivial soul, a lover of good cheer and
+free-handed hospitality; and to-day, while almost forgotten as a jurist,
+his name has become immortalized as the representative of gastronomic
+excellence. His 'Physiologic du Goût'--"that _olla podrida_ which defies
+analysis," as Balzac calls it--belongs, like Walton's 'Compleat Angler',
+or White's 'Selborne', among those unique gems of literature, too rare
+in any age, which owe their subtle and imperishable charm primarily to
+the author's own delightful personality. Savarin spent many years of
+loving care in polishing his manuscript, often carrying it to court with
+him, where it was one day mislaid, but--luckily for future generations
+of epicures--was afterward recovered. The book is a charming badinage, a
+bizarre ragoût of gastronomic precepts and spicy anecdote, doubly
+piquant for its prevailing tone of mock seriousness and intentional
+grandiloquence.
+
+In emulation of the poet Lamartine, Savarin divided his subject into
+'Meditations', of which the seventh is consecrated to the 'Theory of
+Frying', and the twenty-first to 'Corpulence'. In the familiar aphorism,
+"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are", he strikes his
+key-note; man's true superiority lies in his palate! "The pleasure of
+eating we have in common with the animals; the pleasure of the table is
+peculiar to the human species." Gastronomy he proclaims the chief of all
+sciences: "It rules life in its entirety; for the tears of the new-born
+infant summon the breast of its nurse, and the dying man still receives
+with some pleasure the final potion, which, alas, he is not destined to
+digest." Occasionally he affects an epic strain, invoking Gasteria,
+"the tenth muse, who presides over the pleasures of taste." "It is the
+fairest of the Muses who inspires me: I will be clearer than an oracle,
+and my precepts will traverse the centuries." Beneath his pen, soup,
+"the first consolation of the needy stomach," assumes fresh dignity; and
+even the humble fowl becomes to the cook "what the canvas is to the
+painter, or the cap of Fortunatus to the charlatan." But like the worthy
+epicure that he was, Savarin reserved his highest flights of eloquence
+for such rare and toothsome viands as the _Poularde fine de Bresse_, the
+pheasant, "an enigma of which the key-word is known only to the adepts,"
+a _sauté_ of truffles, "the diamonds of the kitchen," or, best of all,
+truffled turkeys, "whose reputation and price are ever on the increase!
+Benign stars, whose apparition renders the gourmands of every category
+sparkling, radiant, and quivering!" But the true charm of the book lies
+in Savarin's endless fund of piquant anecdotes, reminiscences of bygone
+feasts, over which the reader's mouth waters. Who can read without a
+covetous pang his account of 'The Day at Home with the Bernadins,' or of
+his entertainment of the Dubois brothers, of the _Rue du Bac_, "a bonbon
+which I have put into the reader's mouth to recompense him for his
+kindness in having read me with pleasure"?
+
+'Physiologic du Goût' was not published until 1825, and then
+anonymously, presumably because he thought its tone inconsistent with
+his dignity as magistrate. It would almost seem that he had a
+presentiment of impending death, for in the midst of his brightest
+'Variétés' he has incongruously inserted a dolorous little poem, the
+burden of each verse being "Je vais mourir." The 'Physiologic du Goût'
+is now accessible to English readers in the versions of R.E. Anderson
+(London, 1877), and in a later one published in New York; but there is a
+subtle flavor to the original which defies translation.
+
+
+
+FROM THE 'PHYSIOLOGY OF TASTE'
+
+THE PRIVATIONS
+
+First parents of the human species, whose gormandizing is historic, you
+who fell for the sake of an apple, what would you not have done for a
+turkey with truffles? But there were in the terrestrial Paradise neither
+cooks nor confectioners.
+
+How I pity you!
+
+Mighty kings, who laid proud Troy in ruins, your valor will be handed
+down from age to age; but your table was poor. Reduced to a rump of beef
+and a chine of pork, you were ever ignorant of the charms of the
+_matelote_ and the delights of a fricassée of chicken.
+
+How I pity you!
+
+Aspasia, Chloe, and all of you whose forms the chisel of the Greeks
+immortalized, to the despair of the belles of to-day, never did your
+charming mouths enjoy the smoothness of a meringue _à la vanille_ or _à
+la rose_; hardly did you rise to the height of a spice-cake.
+
+How I pity you!
+
+Gentle priestesses of Vesta, at one and the same time burdened with so
+many honors and menaced with such horrible punishments, would that you
+might at least have tasted those agreeable syrups which refresh the
+soul, those candied fruits which brave the seasons, those perfumed
+creams, the marvel of our day!
+
+How I pity you!
+
+Roman financiers, who made the whole known universe pay tribute, never
+did your far-famed banquet-halls witness the appearance of those
+succulent jellies, the delight of the indolent, nor those varied ices
+whose cold would brave the torrid zone.
+
+How I pity you!
+
+Invincible paladins, celebrated by flattering minstrels, when you had
+cleft in twain the giants, set free the ladies, and exterminated armies,
+never, alas! never did a dark-eyed captive offer you the sparkling
+champagne, the malmsey of Madeira, the liqueurs, creation of this great
+century: you were reduced to ale or to some cheap herb-flavored wine.
+
+How I pity you!
+
+Crosiered and mitred abbots, dispensers of the favors of heaven; and
+you, terrible Templars, who donned your armor for the extermination of
+the Saracens,--you knew not the sweetness of chocolate which restores,
+nor the Arabian bean which promotes thought.
+
+How I pity you!
+
+Superb châtelaines, who during the loneliness of the Crusades raised
+into highest favor your chaplains and your pages, you never could share
+with them the charms of the biscuit and the delights of the macaroon.
+
+How I pity you!
+
+And lastly you, gastronomers of 1825, who already find satiety in the
+lap of abundance, and dream of new preparations, you will not enjoy
+those discoveries which the sciences have in store for the year 1900,
+such as esculent minerals and liqueurs resulting from a pressure of a
+hundred atmospheres; you will not behold the importations which
+travelers yet unborn shall cause to arrive from that half of the globe
+which still remains to be discovered or explored.
+
+How I pity you!
+
+
+
+ON THE LOVE OF GOOD LIVING
+
+I have consulted the dictionaries under the word _gourmandise_, and am
+by no means satisfied with what I find. The love of good living seems to
+be constantly confounded with gluttony and voracity; whence I infer that
+our lexicographers, however otherwise estimable, are not to be classed
+with those good fellows amongst learned men who can put away gracefully
+a wing of partridge, and then, by raising the little finger, wash it
+down with a glass of Lafitte or Clos-Vougeot.
+
+They have utterly forgot that social love of good eating which combines
+in one, Athenian elegance, Roman luxury, and Parisian refinement. It
+implies discretion to arrange, skill to prepare; it appreciates
+energetically, and judges profoundly. It is a precious quality, almost
+deserving to rank as a virtue, and is very certainly the source of much
+unqualified enjoyment.
+
+_Gourmandise_, or the love of good living, is an impassioned, rational,
+and habitual preference for whatever flatters the sense of taste. It is
+opposed to excess; therefore every man who eats to indigestion, or makes
+himself drunk, runs the risk of being erased from the list of its
+votaries. _Gourmandise_ also comprises a love for dainties or tit-bits;
+which is merely an analogous preference, limited to light, delicate, or
+small dishes, to pastry, and so forth. It is a modification allowed in
+favor of the women, or men of feminine tastes.
+
+Regarded from any point of view, the love of good living deserves
+nothing but praise and encouragement. Physically, it is the result and
+proof of the digestive organs being healthy and perfect. Morally, it
+shows implicit resignation to the commands of Nature, who, in ordering
+man to eat that he may live, gives him appetite to invite, flavor to
+encourage, and pleasure to reward.
+
+From the political economist's point of view, the love of good living is
+a tie between nations, uniting them by the interchange of various
+articles of food which are in constant use. Hence the voyage from Pole
+to Pole of wines, sugars, fruits, and so forth. What else sustains the
+hope and emulation of that crowd of fishermen, huntsmen, gardeners, and
+others who daily stock the most sumptuous larders with the results of
+their skill and labor? What else supports the industrious army of cooks,
+pastry-cooks, confectioners, and many other food-preparers, with all
+their various assistants? These various branches of industry derive
+their support in a great measure from the largest incomes, but they also
+rely upon the daily wants of all classes.
+
+As society is at present constituted, it is almost impossible to
+conceive of a race living solely on bread and vegetables. Such a nation
+would infallibly be conquered by the armies of some flesh-eating race
+(like the Hindoos, who have been the prey of all those, one after
+another, who cared to attack them), or else it would be converted by the
+cooking of the neighboring nations, as ancient history records of the
+Boeotians, who acquired a love for good living after the battle
+of Leuctra.
+
+Good living opens out great resources for replenishing the public purse:
+it brings contributions to town-dues, to the custom-house, and other
+indirect contributions. Everything we eat is taxed, and there is no
+exchequer that is not substantially supported by lovers of good living.
+Shall we speak of that swarm of cooks who have for ages been annually
+leaving France, to improve foreign nations in the art of good living?
+Most of them succeed; and in obedience to an instinct which never dies
+in a Frenchman's heart, bring back to their country the fruits of their
+economy. The sum thus imported is greater than might be supposed, and
+therefore they, like the others, will be honored by posterity.
+
+But if nations were grateful, then Frenchmen, above all other races,
+ought to raise a temple and altars to "Gourmandise." By the treaty of
+November, 1815, the allies imposed upon France the condition of paying
+thirty millions sterling in three years, besides claims for compensation
+and various requisitions, amounting to nearly as much more. The
+apprehension, or rather certainty, became general that a national
+bankruptcy must ensue, more especially as the money was to be paid
+in specie.
+
+"Alas!" said all who had anything to lose, as they saw the fatal
+tumbril pass to be filled in the Rue Vivienne, "there is our money
+emigrating in a lump; next year we shall fall on our knees before a
+crown-piece; we are about to fall into the condition of a ruined man;
+speculations of every kind will fail; it will be impossible to borrow;
+there will be nothing but weakness, exhaustion, civil death."
+
+These terrors were proved false by the result; and to the great
+astonishment of all engaged in financial matters, the payments were made
+without difficulty, credit rose, loans were eagerly caught at, and
+during all the time this "superpurgation" lasted, the balance of
+exchange was in favor of France. In other words, more money came into
+the country than went out of it.
+
+What is the power that came to our assistance? Who is the divinity that
+worked this miracle? The love of good living.
+
+When the Britons, Germans, Teutons, Cimmerians, and Scythians made their
+irruption into France, they brought a rare voracity, and stomachs of no
+ordinary capacity. They did not long remain satisfied with the official
+cheer which a forced hospitality had to supply them with. They aspired
+to enjoyments of greater refinement; and soon the Queen City was nothing
+but a huge refectory. Everywhere they were seen eating, those
+intruders--in the restaurants, the eating-houses, the inns, the taverns,
+the stalls, and even in the streets. They gorged themselves with flesh,
+fish, game, truffles, pastry, and especially with fruit. They drank with
+an avidity equal to their appetite, and always ordered the most
+expensive wines, in the hope of finding in them some enjoyment hitherto
+unknown, and seemed quite astonished when they were disappointed.
+Superficial observers did not know what to think of this menagerie
+without bounds or limits; but your genuine Parisian laughed and rubbed
+his hands. "We have them now!" said he; "and to-night they'll have paid
+us back more than was counted out to them this morning from the public
+treasury!"
+
+That was a lucky time for those who provide for the enjoyments of the
+sense of taste. Véry made his fortune; Achard laid the foundation of
+his; Beauvilliers made a third; and Madame Sullot, whose shop in the
+Palais Royal was a mere box of a place, sold as many as twelve thousand
+tarts a day.
+
+The effect still lasts. Foreigners flow in from all quarters of Europe
+to renew during peace the delightful habits which they contracted
+during the war. They must come to Paris, and when they are there, they
+must be regaled at any price. If our funds are in favor, it is due not
+so much to the higher interest they pay, as to the instinctive
+confidence which foreigners cannot help placing in a people amongst whom
+every lover of good living finds so much happiness.
+
+Love of good living is by no means unbecoming in women. It agrees with
+the delicacy of their organization, and serves as a compensation for
+some pleasures which they are obliged to abstain from, and for some
+hardships to which nature seems to have condemned them. There is no more
+pleasant sight than a pretty _gourmande_ under arms. Her napkin is
+nicely adjusted; one of her hands rests on the table, the other carries
+to her mouth little morsels artistically carved, or the wing of a
+partridge which must be picked. Her eyes sparkle, her lips are glossy,
+her talk is cheerful, all her movements graceful; nor is there lacking
+some spice of the coquetry which accompanies all that women do. With so
+many advantages, she is irresistible, and Cato the Censor himself could
+not help yielding to the influence.
+
+The love of good living is in some sort instinctive in women, because it
+is favorable to beauty. It has been proved, by a series of rigorously
+exact observations, that by a succulent, delicate, and choice regimen,
+the external appearances of age are kept away for a long time. It gives
+more brilliancy to the eye, more freshness to the skin, more support to
+the muscles; and as it is certain in physiology that wrinkles, those
+formidable enemies of beauty, are caused by the depression of muscle, it
+is equally true that, other things being equal, those who understand
+eating are comparatively four years younger than those ignorant of that
+science. Painters and sculptors are deeply impenetrated with this truth;
+for in representing those who practice abstinence by choice or duty as
+misers or anchorites, they always give them the pallor of disease, the
+leanness of misery, and the wrinkles of decrepitude.
+
+Good living is one of the main links of society, by gradually extending
+that spirit of conviviality by which different classes are daily brought
+closer together and welded into one whole; by animating the
+conversation, and rounding off the angles of conventional inequality. To
+the same cause we can also ascribe all the efforts a host makes to
+receive his guests properly, as well as their gratitude for his pains so
+well bestowed. What disgrace should ever be heaped upon those senseless
+feeders who, with unpardonable indifference, swallow down morsels of
+the rarest quality, or gulp with unrighteous carelessness some
+fine-flavored and sparkling wine.
+
+As a general maxim: Whoever shows a desire to please will be certain of
+having a delicate compliment paid him by every well-bred man.
+
+Again, when shared, the love of good living has the most marked
+influence on the happiness of the conjugal state. A wedded pair with
+this taste in common have once a day at least a pleasant opportunity of
+meeting. For even when they sleep apart (and a great many do so), they
+at least eat at the same table, they have a subject of conversation
+which is ever new, they speak not only of what they are eating, but also
+of what they have eaten or will eat, of dishes which are in vogue, of
+novelties, etc. Everybody knows that a familiar chat is delightful.
+
+Music, no doubt, has powerful attractions for those who are fond of it,
+but one must set about it--it is an exertion. Besides, one sometimes has
+a cold, the music is mislaid, the instruments are out of tune, one has a
+fit of the blues, or it is a forbidden day. Whereas, in the other case,
+a common want summons the spouses to table, the same inclination keeps
+them there; they naturally show each other these little attentions as a
+proof of their wish to oblige, and the mode of conducting their meals
+has a great share in the happiness of their lives.
+
+This observation, though new in France, has not escaped the notice of
+Richardson, the English moralist. He has worked out the idea in his
+novel 'Pamela,' by painting the different manner in which two married
+couples finish their day. The first husband is a lord, an eldest son,
+and therefore heir to all the family property; the second is his younger
+brother, the husband of Pamela, who has been disinherited on account of
+his marriage, and lives on half-pay in a state but little removed from
+abject poverty.
+
+The lord and lady enter their dining-room by different doors, and salute
+each other coldly, though they have not met the whole day before.
+Sitting down at a table which is magnificently covered, surrounded by
+lackeys in brilliant liveries, they help themselves in silence, and eat
+without pleasure. As soon, however, as the servants have withdrawn, a
+sort of conversation is begun between the pair, which quickly shows a
+bitter tone, passing into a regular fight, and they rise from the table
+in a fury of anger, and go off to their separate apartments to reflect
+upon the pleasures of a single life.
+
+The younger brother, on the contrary, is, on reaching his unpretentious
+home, received with a gentle, loving heartiness and the fondest
+caresses. He sits down to a frugal meal, but everything he eats is
+excellent; and how could it be otherwise? It is Pamela herself who has
+prepared it all. They eat with enjoyment, talking of their affairs,
+their plans, their love for each other. A half-bottle of Madeira serves
+to prolong their repast and conversation, and soon after they retire
+together, to forget in sleep their present hardships, and to dream of a
+better future.
+
+All honor to the love of good living, such as it is the purpose of this
+book to describe, so long as it does not come between men and their
+occupations or duties! For, as all the debaucheries of a Sardanapalus
+cannot bring disrespect upon womankind in general, so the excesses of a
+Vitellius need not make us turn our backs upon a well-appointed banquet.
+Should the love of good living pass into gluttony, voracity,
+intemperance, it then loses its name and advantages, escapes from our
+jurisdiction, and falls within that of the moralist to ply it with good
+counsel, or of the physician who will cure it by his remedies.
+
+ON PEOPLE FOND OF GOOD LIVING
+
+There are individuals to whom nature has denied a refinement of organs,
+or a continuity of attention, without which the most succulent dishes
+pass unobserved. Physiology has already recognized the first of these
+varieties, by showing us the tongue of these unhappy ones, badly
+furnished with nerves for inhaling and appreciating flavors. These
+excite in them but an obtuse sentiment; such persons are, with regard to
+objects of taste, what the blind are with regard to light. The second
+class are the absent-minded, chatterboxes, persons engrossed in business
+or ambition, and others who seek to occupy themselves with two things at
+once, and eat only to be filled. Such, for example, was Napoleon; he was
+irregular in his meals, and ate fast and badly. But there again was to
+be traced that absolute will which he carried into everything he did.
+The moment appetite was felt, it was necessary that it should be
+satisfied; and his establishment was so arranged that, in any place and
+at any hour, chicken, cutlets, and coffee might be forthcoming at
+a word.
+
+There is a privileged class of persons who are summoned to the
+enjoyments of taste by a physical and organic predisposition. I have
+always believed in physiognomy and phrenology. Men have inborn
+tendencies; and since there are some who come into the world seeing,
+hearing, and walking badly, because they are short-sighted, deaf, or
+crippled, why should there not be others who are specially predisposed
+to experience a certain series of sensations? Moreover, even an
+ordinary observer will constantly discover faces which bear the
+unmistakable imprint of a ruling passion--such as superciliousness,
+self-satisfaction, misanthropy, sensuality, and many others. Sometimes,
+no doubt, we meet with a face that expresses nothing; but when the
+physiognomy has a marked stamp it is almost always a true index. The
+passions act upon the muscles, and frequently, although a man says
+nothing, the various feelings by which he is moved can be read in his
+face. By this tension, if in the slightest degree habitual, perceptible
+traces are at last left, and the physiognomy thus assumes its permanent
+and recognizable characteristics.
+
+Those predisposed to epicurism are for the most part of middling height.
+They are broad-faced, and have bright eyes, small forehead, short nose,
+fleshy lips, and rounded chin. The women are plump, chubby, pretty
+rather than beautiful, with a slight tendency to fullness of figure. It
+is under such an exterior that we must look for agreeable guests. They
+accept all that is offered them, eat without hurry, and taste with
+discrimination. They never make any haste to get away from houses where
+they have been well treated, but stay for the evening, because they know
+all the games and other after-dinner amusements.
+
+Those, on the contrary, to whom nature has denied an aptitude for the
+enjoyments of taste, are long-faced, long-nosed, and long-eyed: whatever
+their stature, they have something lanky about them. They have dark,
+lanky hair, and are never in good condition. It was one of them who
+invented trousers. The women whom nature has afflicted with the same
+misfortune are angular, feel themselves bored at table, and live on
+cards and scandal.
+
+This theory of mine can be verified by each reader from his own personal
+observation. I shall give an instance from my own personal experience:--
+
+Sitting one day at a grand banquet, I had opposite me a very pretty
+neighbor, whose face showed the predisposition I have described.
+Leaning to the guest beside me, I said quietly that from her
+physiognomy, the young lady on the other side of the table must be fond
+of good eating. "You must be mad!" he answered; "she is but fifteen at
+most, which is certainly not the age for such a thing. However, let
+us watch."
+
+At first, things were by no means in my favor, and I was somewhat afraid
+of having compromised myself, for during the first two courses the young
+lady quite astonished me by her discretion, and I suspected we had
+stumbled upon an exception, remembering that there are some for every
+rule. But at last the dessert came,--a dessert both magnificent and
+abundant,--and my hopes were again revived. Nor did I hope in vain: not
+only did she eat of all that was offered her, but she even got dishes
+brought to her from the farthest parts of the table. In a word, she
+tasted everything, and my neighbor at last expressed his astonishment
+that the little stomach could hold so many things. Thus was my diagnosis
+verified, and once again science triumphed.
+
+Whilst I was writing the above, on a fine winter's evening, M. Cartier,
+formerly the first violinist at the Opera, paid me a visit, and sat down
+at the fireside. Being full of my subject, I said, after looking at him
+attentively for some time, "How does it happen, my dear professor, that
+you are no epicure, when you have all the features of one?" "I was one,"
+he replied, "and among the foremost; but now I refrain." "On principle,
+I suppose?" said I; but all the answer I had was a sigh, like one of Sir
+Walter Scott's--that is to say, almost a groan.
+
+As some are gourmands by predestination, so others become so by their
+state in society or their calling. There are four classes which I should
+signalize by way of eminence: the moneyed class, the doctors, men of
+letters, and the devout.
+
+Inequality of condition implies inequality of wealth, but inequality of
+wealth does not imply inequality of wants; and he who can afford every
+day a dinner sufficient for a hundred persons is often satisfied by
+eating the thigh of a chicken. Hence the necessity for the many devices
+of art to reanimate that ghost of an appetite by dishes which maintain
+it without injury, and caress without stifling it.
+
+The causes which act upon doctors are very different, though not less
+powerful. They become epicures in spite of themselves, and must be made
+of bronze to resist the seductive power of circumstances. The "dear
+doctor" is all the more kindly welcomed that health is the most precious
+of boons; and thus they are always waited for with impatience and
+received with eagerness. Some are kind to them from hope, others from
+gratitude. They are fed like pet pigeons. They let things take their
+course, and in six months the habit is confirmed, and they are gourmands
+past redemption.
+
+I ventured one day to express this opinion at a banquet in which, with
+eight others, I took a part, with Dr. Corvisart at the head of the
+table. It was about the year 1806.
+
+"You!" cried I, with the inspired tone of a Puritan preacher; "you are
+the last remnant of a body which formerly covered the whole of France.
+Alas! its members are annihilated or widely scattered. No more
+_fermiers-généraux_, no abbés nor knights nor white-coated friars. The
+members of your profession constitute the whole gastronomic body.
+Sustain with firmness that great responsibility, even if you must share
+the fate of the three hundred Spartans at the Pass of Thermopylae."
+
+At the same dinner I observed the following noteworthy fact. The doctor,
+who, when in the mood, was a most agreeable companion, drank nothing but
+iced champagne; and therefore in the earlier part of the dinner, whilst
+others were engaged in eating, he kept talking loudly and telling
+stories. But at dessert, on the contrary, and when the general
+conversation began to be lively, he became serious, silent, and
+sometimes low-spirited.
+
+From this observation, confirmed by many others, I have deduced the
+following theorem:--"Champagne, though at first exhilarating, ultimately
+produces stupefying effects;" a result, moreover, which is a well-known
+characteristic of the carbonic acid which it contains.
+
+Whilst I have the university doctors under my grasp, I must, before I
+die, reproach them with the extreme severity which they use towards
+their patients. As soon as one has the misfortune to fall into their
+hands, he must undergo a whole litany of prohibitions, and give up
+everything that he is accustomed to think agreeable. I rise up to oppose
+such interdictions, as being for the most part useless. I say useless,
+because the patient never longs for what is hurtful. A doctor of
+judgment will never lose sight of the instinctive tendency of our
+inclinations, or forget that if painful sensations are naturally fraught
+with danger, those which are pleasant have a healthy tendency. We have
+seen a drop of wine, a cup of coffee, or a thimbleful of liqueur, call
+up a smile to the most Hippocratic face.
+
+Those severe prescribers must, moreover, know very well that their
+prescriptions remain almost always without result. The patient tries to
+evade the duty of taking them; those about him easily find a good excuse
+for humoring him, and thus his death is neither hastened nor retarded.
+In 1815 the medical allowance of a sick Russian would have made a
+drayman drunk, and that of an Englishman was enough for a Limousin. Nor
+was any diminution possible, for there were military inspectors
+constantly going round our hospitals to examine the supply and the
+consumption.
+
+I am the more confident in announcing my opinion because it is based
+upon numerous facts, and the most successful practitioners have used a
+system closely resembling it.
+
+Canon Rollet, who died some fifty years ago, was a hard drinker,
+according to the custom of those days. He fell ill, and the doctor's
+first words were a prohibition of wine in any form. On his very next
+visit, however, our physician found beside the bed of his patient the
+_corpus delicti_ itself, to wit, a table covered with a snow-white
+cloth, a crystal cup, a handsome-looking bottle, and a napkin to wipe
+the lips. At this sight he flew into a violent passion and spoke of
+leaving the house, when the wretched canon cried to him in tones of
+lamentation, "Ah, doctor, remember that in forbidding me to drink, you
+have not forbidden me the pleasure of looking at the bottle!"
+
+The physician who treated Montlusin of Pont de Veyle was still more
+severe, for not only did he forbid the use of wine to his patient, but
+also prescribed large doses of water. Shortly after the doctor's
+departure, Madame Montlusin, anxious to give full effect to the medical
+orders and assist in the recovery of her husband's health, offered him a
+large glass of the finest and clearest water. The patient took it with
+docility, and began to drink it with resignation; but stopping short at
+the first mouthful, he handed back the glass to his wife. "Take it, my
+dear," said he, "and keep it for another time; I have always heard it
+said that we should not trifle with remedies."
+
+In the domain of gastronomy the men of letters are near neighbors to the
+doctors. A hundred years ago literary men were all hard drinkers. They
+followed the fashion, and the memoirs of the period are quite edifying
+on that subject. At the present day they are gastronomes, and it is a
+step in the right direction. I by no means agree with the cynical
+Geoffroy, who used to say that if our modern writings are weak, it is
+because literary men now drink nothing stronger than lemonade. The
+present age is rich in talents, and the very number of books probably
+interferes with their proper appreciation; but posterity, being more
+calm and judicial, will see amongst them much to admire, just as we
+ourselves have done justice to the masterpieces of Racine and Molière,
+which were received by their contemporaries with coldness.
+
+Never has the social position of men of letters been more pleasant than
+at present. They no longer live in wretched garrets; the fields of
+literature are become more fertile, and even the study of the Muses has
+become productive. Received on an equality in any rank of life, they no
+longer wait for patronage; and to fill up their cup of happiness, good
+living bestows upon them its dearest favors. Men of letters are invited
+because of the good opinion men have of their talents; because their
+conversation has, generally speaking, something piquant in it, and also
+because now every dinner-party must as a matter of course have its
+literary man.
+
+Those gentlemen always arrive a little late, but are welcomed, because
+expected. They are treated as favorites so that they may come again, and
+regaled that they may shine; and as they find all this very natural, by
+being accustomed to it they become, are, and remain gastronomes.
+
+Finally, amongst the most faithful in the ranks of gastronomy we must
+reckon many of the devout--i.e., those spoken of by Louis XIV. and
+Molière, whose religion consists in outward show;--nothing to do with
+those who are really pious and charitable.
+
+Let us consider how this comes about. Of those who wish to secure their
+salvation, the greater number try to find the most pleasant road. Men
+who flee from society, sleep on the ground, and wear hair-cloth next the
+skin, have always been, and must ever be, exceptions. Now there are
+certain things unquestionably to be condemned, and on no account to be
+indulged in--as balls, theatres, gambling, and other similar amusements;
+and whilst they and all that practice them are to be hated, good living
+presents itself insinuatingly in a thoroughly orthodox guise.
+
+By right divine, man is king of nature, and all that the earth produces
+was created for him. It is for him that the quail is fattened, for him
+that Mocha possesses so agreeable an aroma, for him that sugar has such
+wholesome properties. How then neglect to use, within reasonable limits,
+the good things which Providence presents to us; especially if we
+continue to regard them as things that perish with the using, especially
+if they raise our thankfulness towards the Author of all!
+
+Other equally strong reasons come to strengthen these. Can we be too
+hospitable in receiving those who have charge of our souls, and keep us
+in the way of safety? Should those meetings with so excellent an object
+not be made pleasant, and therefore frequent?
+
+Sometimes, also, the gifts of Comus arrive unsought--perhaps a souvenir
+of college days, a present from an old friend, a peace-offering from a
+penitent or a college chum recalling himself to one's memory. How refuse
+to accept such offerings, or to make systematic use of them? It is
+simply a necessity.
+
+The monasteries were real magazines of charming dainties, which is one
+reason why certain connoisseurs so bitterly regret them. Several of the
+monastic orders, especially that of St. Bernard, made a profession of
+good cheer. The limits of gastronomic art have been extended by the
+cooks of the clergy, and when M. de Pressigni (afterwards Archbishop of
+Besançon) returned from the Conclave at the election of Pius VI., he
+said that the best dinner he had had in Rome was at the table of the
+head of the Capuchins.
+
+We cannot conclude this article better than by honorably mentioning two
+classes of men whom we have seen in all their glory, and whom the
+Revolution has eclipsed--the chevaliers and the abbés. How they enjoyed
+good living, those dear old fellows! That could be told at a glance by
+their nervous nostrils, their clear eyes, their moist lips and mobile
+tongues. Each class had at the same time its own special manner of
+eating: the chevalier having something military and dignified in his air
+and attitude; while the abbé gathered himself together, as it were, to
+be nearer his plate, with his right hand curved inward like the paw of a
+cat drawing chestnuts from the fire, whilst in every feature was shown
+enjoyment and an indefinable look of close attention.
+
+So far from good living being hurtful to health, it has been
+arithmetically proved by Dr. Villermé in an able paper read before the
+Académie des Sciences, that other things being equal, the gourmands live
+longer than ordinary men.
+
+
+
+CHARLOTTE BRONTÉ AND HER SISTERS
+
+(1816-1855)
+
+The least that can be said of Charlotte Bronté is that she is a unique
+figure in literature. Nowhere else do we find another personality
+combining such extraordinary qualities of mind and heart,--qualities
+strangely contrasted, but still more strangely harmonized. At times they
+are baffling, but always fascinating. Nowhere else do we find so
+intimate an association of the personality of the author with the work,
+so thorough an identification with it of the author's life, even to the
+smaller details. So true is this in the case of Charlotte Bronté that
+the four novels 'Jane Eyre,' 'Shirley,' 'Villette,' and 'The Professor'
+might with some justice be termed 'Charlotte Bronté; her life and her
+friends.' Her works were in large part an expression of herself; at
+times the best expression of herself--of her actual self in experience
+and of her spiritual self in travail and in aspiration. It is manifestly
+impossible therefore to consider the works of Charlotte Bronté with
+justice apart from herself. A correct understanding of her books can be
+obtained only from a study of her remarkable personality and of the sad
+circumstances of her life.
+
+Public interest in Charlotte Bronté was first roused in 1847. In October
+of that year there appeared in London a novel that created a sensation,
+the like of which had not been known since the publication of
+'Waverley.' Its stern and paradoxical disregard for the conventional,
+its masculine energy, and its intense realism, startled the public, and
+proclaimed to all in accents unmistakable that a new, strange, and
+splendid power had come into literature, "but yet a woman."
+
+And with the success of 'Jane Eyre' came a lively curiosity to know
+something of the personality of the author. This was not gratified for
+some time. There were many conjectures, all of them far amiss. The
+majority of readers asserted confidently that the work must be that of a
+man; the touch was unmistakably masculine. In some quarters it met with
+hearty abuse. The Quarterly Review, in an article still notorious for
+its brutality, condemned the book as coarse, and stated that if 'Jane
+Eyre' were really written by a woman, she must be an improper woman, who
+had forfeited the society of her sex. This was said in December, 1848,
+of one of the noblest and purest of womankind. It is not a matter of
+surprise that the identity of this audacious speculator was not
+revealed. The recent examination into the topic by Mr. Clement Shorter
+seems, however, to fix the authorship of the notice on Lady Eastlake, at
+that time Miss Driggs.
+
+But hostile criticism of the book and its mysterious author could not
+injure its popularity. The story swept all before it--press and public.
+Whatever might be the source, the work stood there and spoke for itself
+in commanding terms. At length the mystery was cleared. A shrewd
+Yorkshireman guessed and published the truth, and the curious world knew
+that the author of 'Jane Eyre' was the daughter of a clergyman in the
+little village of Haworth, and that the literary sensation of the day
+found its source in a nervous, shrinking, awkward, plain, delicate young
+creature of thirty-one years of age, whose life, with the exception of
+two years, had been spent on the bleak and dreary moorlands of
+Yorkshire, and for the most part in the narrow confines of a grim gray
+stone parsonage. There she had lived a pinched and meagre little life,
+full of sadness and self-denial, with two sisters more delicate than
+herself, a dissolute brother, and a father her only parent,--a stern and
+forbidding father. This was no genial environment for an author, even if
+helpful to her vivid imagination. Nor was it a temporary condition; it
+was a permanent one. Nearly all the influences in Charlotte Bronté's
+life were such as these, which would seem to cramp if not to stifle
+sensitive talent. Her brother Branwell (physically weaker than herself,
+though unquestionably talented, and for a time the idol and hope of the
+family) became dissipated, irresponsible, untruthful, and a
+ne'er-do-weel, and finally yielding to circumstances, ended miserably a
+life of failure.
+
+But Charlotte Bronté's nature was one of indomitable courage, that
+circumstances might shadow but could not obscure. Out of the meagre
+elements of her narrow life she evolved works that stand among the
+imperishable things of English literature. It is a paradox that finds
+its explanation only in a statement of natural sources, primitive,
+bardic, the sources of the early epics, the sources of such epics as
+Cædmon and Beowulf bore. She wrote from a sort of necessity; it was in
+obedience to the commanding authority of an extraordinary genius,--a
+creative power that struggled for expression,--and much of her work
+deserves in the best and fullest sense the term "inspired."
+
+[Illustration: Charlotte Bronté]
+
+The facts of her life are few in number, but they have a direct and
+significant bearing on her work. She was born at Thornton, in the parish
+of Bradford, in 1816. Four years later her father moved to Haworth, to
+the parsonage now indissolubly associated with her name, and there Mr.
+Bronté entered upon a long period of pastorate service, that only
+ended with his death. Charlotte's mother was dead. In 1824 Charlotte and
+two older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, went to a school at Cowan's
+Bridge. It was an institution for clergymen's children, a vivid picture
+of which appears in 'Jane Eyre.' It was so badly managed and the food
+was so poor that many of the children fell sick, among them Maria
+Bronté, who died in 1825. Elizabeth followed her a few months later, and
+Charlotte returned to Haworth, where she remained for six years, then
+went to school at Roe Head for a period of three years. She was offered
+the position of teacher by Miss Wooler, the principal at Roe Head, but
+considering herself unfit to teach, she resolved to go to Brussels to
+study French. She spent two years there, and it was there that her
+intimate and misconstrued friendship for M. Heger developed. The
+incidents of that period formed the material of a greater portion of her
+novel 'Villette,' filled twenty-two volumes of from sixty to one hundred
+pages of fine writing, and consisted of some forty complete novelettes
+or other stories and childish "magazines."
+
+On returning to Haworth, she endeavored, together with her sister Emily,
+to establish a school at their home. But pupils were not to be had, and
+the outlook was discouraging. Two periods of service as governess, and
+the ill health that had followed, had taught Charlotte the danger that
+threatened her. Her experiences as a governess in the Sedgwick family
+were pictured by-and-by in 'Jane Eyre.' In a letter to Miss Ellen
+Nussey, written at this time, she gives a dark vignette of her
+situation.
+
+With her two sisters Emily and Anne she lived a quiet and retired life.
+The harsh realities about them, the rough natures of the Yorkshire
+people, impelled the three sisters to construct in their home an ideal
+world of their own, and in this their pent-up natures found expression.
+Their home was lonely and gloomy. Mr. Clement K. Shorter, in his recent
+study of the novelist and her family, says that the house is much the
+same to-day, though its immediate surroundings are brightened.
+He writes:
+
+"One day Emily confided to Charlotte that she had written some verses.
+Charlotte answered with a similar confidence, and then Anne acknowledged
+that she too had been secretly writing. This mutual confession brought
+about a complete understanding and sympathy, and from that time on the
+sisters worked together--reading their literary productions to one
+another and submitting to each other's criticism."
+
+This was however by no means Charlotte's first literary work. She has
+left a catalogue of books written by her between 1829 and 1830. Her
+first printed work however appeared in a volume of 'Poems' by Acton,
+Ellis, and Currer Bell, published in 1846 at the expense of the authors.
+Under these names the little book of the Bronté sisters went forth to
+the world, was reviewed with mild favor in some few periodicals, and was
+lost to sight.
+
+Then came a period of novel-writing. As a result, Emily Bronté's
+'Wuthering Heights,' Anne Bronté's 'Agnes Grey,' and Charlotte Bronté's
+'The Professor' set out together to find a publisher. The last-named was
+unsuccessful; but on the day it was returned to her, Charlotte Bronté
+began writing 'Jane Eyre.' That first masterpiece was shaped during a
+period of sorrow and discouragement. Her father was ill and in danger of
+losing his eyesight. Her brother Bran well was sinking into the slough
+of disgrace. No wonder 'Jane Eyre' is not a story of sunshine and roses.
+She finished the story in 1847, and it was accepted by the publishers
+promptly upon examination.
+
+After its publication and the sensation produced, Charlotte Bronté
+continued her literary work quietly, and unaffected by the furore she
+had aroused. A few brief visits to London, where attempts were made to
+lionize her,--very much to her distaste,--a few literary friendships,
+notably those with Thackeray, George Henry Lewes, Mrs. Gaskell, and
+Harriet Martineau, were the only features that distinguished her
+literary life from the simple life she had always led and continued to
+lead at Haworth. She was ever busy, if not ever at her desk. Success had
+come; she was sane in the midst of it. She wrote slowly and only as she
+felt the impulse, and when she knew she had found the proper impression.
+In 1849 'Shirley' was published. In 1853 appeared 'Villette,' her last
+finished work, and the one considered by herself the best.
+
+In 1854 she married her father's curate, Mr. A.B. Nicholls. She had lost
+her brother Branwell and her two sisters Emily and Anne. Sorrow upon
+sorrow had closed like deepening shadows about her. All happiness in
+life for her had apparently ended, when this marriage brought a brief
+ray of sunshine. It was a happy union, and seemed to assure a period of
+peace and rest for the sorely tried soul. Only a few short months,
+however, and fate, as if grudging her even the bit of happiness, snapped
+the slender threads of her life and the whole sad episode of her
+existence was ended. She died March 31st, 1855, leaving her husband and
+father to mourn together in the lonely parsonage. She left a literary
+fragment--the story entitled 'Emma,' which was published with an
+introduction by Thackeray.
+
+Such are the main facts of this reserved life of Charlotte Bronté. Are
+they dull and commonplace? Some of them are indeed inexpressibly sad.
+Tragedy is beneath all the bitter chronicle. The sadness of her days can
+be appreciated by all who read her books. Through all her stories there
+is an intense note, especially in treating the pathos of existence, that
+is unmistakably subjective. There is a keen perception of the darker
+depths of human nature that could have been revealed to a human heart
+only by suffering and sorrow.
+
+She did not allow sadness, however, to crush her spirit. She was neither
+morbid nor melancholy, but on the contrary Charlotte was cheerful and
+pleasant in disposition and manner. She was a loving sister and devoted
+daughter, patient and obedient to a parent who afterwards made obedience
+a severe hardship. There were other sides to her character. She was not
+always calm. She was not ever tender and a maker of allowances. But who
+is such? And she had good reason to be impatient with the world as
+she found it.
+
+Her character and disposition are partially reflected in 'Jane Eyre.'
+The calm, clear mind, the brave, independent spirit are there. But a
+fuller and more accurate picture of her character may be found in Lucy
+Snowe, the heroine of 'Villette.' Here we find especially that note of
+hopelessness that predominated in Charlotte's character. Mrs. Gaskell,
+in her admirable biography of Charlotte Bronté, has called attention to
+this absence of hope in her nature. Charlotte indeed never allowed
+herself to look forward to happy issues. She had no confidence in the
+future. The pressure of grief apparently crushed all buoyancy of
+expectation. It was in this attitude that when literary success greeted
+her, she made little of it, scarcely allowing herself to believe that
+the world really set a high value on her work. Throughout all the
+excitement that her books produced, she was almost indifferent. Brought
+up as she had been to regard literary work as something beyond the
+proper limits of her sex, she never could quite rid herself of the
+belief that in writing successfully, she had made of herself not so much
+a literary figure as a sort of social curiosity. Nor was that idea
+wholly foreign to her time.
+
+Personally Charlotte Bronté was not unattractive. Though somewhat too
+slender and pale, and plain of feature, she had a pleasant expression,
+and her homelier features were redeemed by a strong massive forehead,
+luxuriant glossy hair, and handsome eyes. Though she had little faith in
+her powers of inspiring affection, she attracted people strongly and was
+well beloved by her friends. That she could stir romantic sentiment too
+was attested by the fact that she received and rejected three proposals
+of marriage from as many suitors, before her acceptance of Mr. Nicholls.
+
+Allusion has been made to the work of Charlotte's two sisters, Emily and
+Anne. Of the two Emily is by far the more remarkable, revealing in the
+single novel we have from her pen a genius as distinct and individual as
+that of her more celebrated sister. Had she lived, it is more than
+likely that her literary achievements would have rivaled Charlotte's.
+
+Emily Bronté has always been something of a puzzle to biographers. She
+was eccentric, an odd mixture of bashful reserve and unexpected spells
+of frankness, sweet, gentle, and retiring in disposition, but possessed
+of great courage. She was two years younger than Charlotte, but taller.
+She was slender, though well formed, and was pale in complexion, with
+great gray eyes of remarkable beauty. Emily's literary work is to be
+found in the volume of "Poems" of her sisters, her share in that work
+being considered superior in imaginative quality and in finish to that
+of the others; and in the novel "Wuthering Heights," a weird, horrid
+story of astonishing power, written when she was twenty-eight years of
+age. Considered purely as an imaginative work, "Wuthering Heights" is
+one of the most remarkable stories in English literature, and is worthy
+to be ranked with the works of Edgar A. Poe. Many will say that it might
+better not have been written, so utterly repulsive is it, but others
+will value it as a striking, though distorted, expression of
+unmistakable genius. It is a ghastly and gruesome creation. Not one
+bright ray redeems it. It deals with the most evil characters and the
+most evil phases of human experience. But it fascinates. Heathcliff, the
+chief figure in the book, is one of the greatest villains in
+fiction,--an abhorrent creature,--strange, monstrous, Frankensteinesque.
+
+Anne Bronté is known by her share in the book of "Poems" and by two
+novels, "Agnes Gray" and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," both of which
+are disappointing. The former is based on the author's experiences as a
+governess, and is written in the usual placid style of romances of the
+time. "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" found its suggestion in the wretched
+career of Branwell Bronté, and presents a sad and depressing picture of
+a life of degradation. The book was not a success, and would no doubt
+have sunk long ago into oblivion but for its association with the novels
+of Emily and Charlotte.
+
+In studying the work of Charlotte Bronté, the gifted older sister of the
+group, one of the first of the qualities that impress the reader is her
+actual creative power. To one of her imaginative power, the simplest
+life was sufficient, the smallest details a fund of material. Mr.
+Swinburne has called attention to the fact that Charlotte Bronté's
+characters are individual creations, not types constructed out of
+elements gathered from a wide observation of human nature, and that they
+are _real_ creations; that they compel our interest and command our
+assent because they are true, inevitably true. Perhaps no better example
+of this individualism could be cited than Rochester. The character is
+unique. It is not a type, nor has it even a prototype, like so many of
+Charlotte Bronté's characters. Gossip insisted at one time that the
+author intended to picture Thackeray in Rochester, but this is
+groundless. Rochester is an original creation. The character of Jane
+Eyre, too, while reflecting something of the author's nature, was
+distinctly individual; and it is interesting to note here that with Jane
+Eyre came a new heroine into fiction, a woman of calm, clear reason, of
+firm positive character, and what was most novel, a plain woman, a
+homely heroine.
+
+"Why is it," Charlotte had once said, "that heroines must always be
+beautiful?" The hero of romance was always noble and handsome, the
+heroine lovely and often insipid, and the scenes set in an atmosphere of
+exaggerated idealism. Against this idealism Charlotte Bronté revolted.
+Her effort was always toward realism.
+
+In her realism she reveals a second characteristic scarcely less marked
+than her creative powers,--an extraordinary faculty of observation. She
+saw the essence, the spirit of things, and the simplest details of life
+revealed to her the secrets of human nature. What she had herself seen
+and felt--the plain rugged types of Yorkshire character, the wild
+scenery of the moorlands--she reflected with living truth. She got the
+real fact out of every bit of material in humanity and nature that her
+simple life afforded her. And where her experience could not afford her
+the necessary material, she drew upon some mysterious resources in her
+nature, which were apparently not less reliable than actual experience.
+On being asked once how she could describe so accurately the effects of
+opium as she does in 'Villette,' she replied that she knew nothing of
+opium, but that she had followed the process she always adopted in cases
+of this kind. She had thought intently on the matter for many a night
+before falling asleep; till at length, after some time, she waked in the
+morning with all clear before her, just as if she had actually gone
+through the experience, and then could describe it word for word as
+it happened.
+
+Her sensitiveness to impressions of nature was exceedingly keen. She had
+what Swinburne calls "an instinct for the tragic use of landscape." By
+constant and close observation during her walks she had established a
+fellowship with nature in all her phases; learning her secrets from the
+voices of the night, from the whisper of the trees, and from the eerie
+moaning of the moorland blasts. She studied the cold sky, and had
+watched the "coming night-clouds trailing low like banners drooping."
+
+Other qualities that distinguish her work are purity, depth and ardor of
+passion, and spiritual force and fervor. Her genius was lofty and noble,
+and an exalted moral quality predominates in her stories. She was
+ethical as sincerely as she was emotional.
+
+We have only to consider her technique, in which she is
+characteristically original. This originality is noticeable especially
+in her use of words. There is a sense of fitness that often surprises
+the reader. Words at times in her hands reveal a new power and
+significance. In the choice of words Charlotte Bronté was scrupulous.
+She believed that there was just one word fit to express the idea or
+shade of meaning she wished to convey, and she never admitted a
+substitute, sometimes waiting days until the right word came. Her
+expressions are therefore well fitted and forcible. Though the
+predominant key is a serious one, there is nevertheless considerable
+humor in Charlotte Bronté's work. In 'Shirley' especially we find many
+happy scenes, and much wit in repartee. And yet, with all these merits,
+one will find at times her style to be lame, stiff, and crude, and even
+when strongest, occasionally coarse. Not infrequently she is
+melodramatic and sensational. But through it all there is that pervading
+sense of reality and it redeems these defects.
+
+Of the unusual, the improbable, the highly colored in Charlotte Bronté's
+books we shall say little. In criticizing works so true to life and
+nature as these, one should not be hasty. We feel the presence of a
+seer. Some one once made an objection in Charlotte Bronté's presence to
+that part of 'Jane Eyre' in which she hears Rochester's voice calling to
+her at a great crisis in her life, he being many miles distant from her
+at the time. Charlotte caught her breath and replied in a low
+voice:--"But it is a true thing; it really happened." And so it might be
+said of Charlotte Bronté's work as a whole:--"It is a true thing; it
+really happened."
+
+JANE EYRE'S WEDDING DAY
+
+From 'Jane Eyre'
+
+Sophie came at seven to dress me. She was very long indeed in
+accomplishing her task; so long that Mr. Rochester--grown, I suppose,
+impatient of my delay--sent up to ask why I did not come. She was just
+fastening my veil (the plain square of blonde, after all) to my hair
+with a brooch; I hurried from under her hands as soon as I could.
+
+"Stop!" she cried in French, "Look at yourself in the mirror; you have
+not taken one peep."
+
+So I turned at the door. I saw a robed and veiled figure, so unlike my
+usual self that it seemed almost the image of a stranger.
+
+"Jane!" called a voice, and I hastened down. I was received at the foot
+of the stairs by Mr. Rochester. "Lingerer," he said, "my brain is on
+fire with impatience; and you tarry so long!"
+
+He took me into the dining-room, surveyed me keenly all over, pronounced
+me "fair as a lily, and not only the pride of his life, but the desire
+of his eyes"; and then, telling me he would give me but ten minutes to
+eat some breakfast, he rang the bell. One of his lately hired servants,
+a footman, answered it.
+
+"Is John getting the carriage ready?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Is the luggage brought down?"
+
+"They are bringing it down, sir."
+
+"Go you to the church; see if Mr. Wood" (the clergyman) "and the clerk
+are there; return and tell me."
+
+The church, as the reader knows, was but just beyond the gates; the
+footman soon returned.
+
+"Mr. Wood is in the vestry, sir, putting on his surplice."
+
+"And the carriage?"
+
+"The horses are harnessing."
+
+"We shall not want it to go to church; but it must be ready the moment
+we return--all the boxes and luggage arranged and strapped on, and the
+coachman in his seat."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Jane, are you ready?"
+
+I rose. There were no groomsmen, no bridesmaids, no relatives to wait
+for or marshal; none but Mr. Rochester and I. Mrs. Fairfax stood in the
+hall as we passed. I would fain have spoken to her, but my hand was held
+by a grasp of iron; I was hurried along by a stride I could hardly
+follow; and to look at Mr. Rochester's face was to feel that not a
+second of delay would be tolerated for any purpose. I wondered what
+other bridegroom ever looked as he did--so bent up to a purpose, so
+grimly resolute; or who, under such steadfast brows, ever revealed such
+flaming and flashing eyes.
+
+I know not whether the day was fair or foul; in descending the drive I
+gazed neither on sky nor earth; my heart was with my eyes, and both
+seemed migrated into Mr. Rochester's frame. I wanted to see the
+invisible thing on which, as we went along, he appeared to fasten a
+glance fierce and fell. I wanted to feel the thoughts whose force he
+seemed breasting and resisting.
+
+At the churchyard wicket he stopped; he discovered I was quite out of
+breath.
+
+"Am I cruel in my love?" he said. "Delay an instant; lean on me, Jane."
+
+And now I can recall the picture of the gray old house of God rising
+calm before me, of a rook wheeling around the steeple, of a ruddy
+morning sky beyond. I remember something, too, of the green
+grave-mounds; and I have not forgotten, either, two figures of
+strangers, straying among the low hillocks, and reading the mementos
+graven on the few mossy headstones. I noticed them because as they saw
+us they passed around to the back of the church; and I doubted not they
+were going to enter by the side aisle door and witness the ceremony. By
+Mr. Rochester they were not observed; he was earnestly looking at my
+face, from which the blood had, I dare say, momentarily fled; for I felt
+my forehead dewy and my cheeks and lips cold. When I rallied, which I
+soon did, he walked gently with me up the path to the porch.
+
+We entered the quiet and humble temple; the priest waited in his white
+surplice at the lowly altar, the clerk beside him. All was still; two
+shadows only moved in a remote corner. My conjecture had been correct;
+the strangers had slipped in before us, and they now stood by the vault
+of the Rochesters, their backs toward us, viewing through the rails the
+old time-stained marble tomb, where a kneeling angel guarded the remains
+of Damer de Rochester, slain at Marston Moor in the time of the civil
+wars, and of Elizabeth his wife.
+
+Our place was taken at the communion-rails. Hearing a cautious step
+behind me, I glanced over my shoulder; one of the strangers--a
+gentleman, evidently--was advancing up the chancel. The service began.
+The explanation of the intent of matrimony was gone through: and then
+the clergyman came a step farther forward, and bending slightly toward
+Mr. Rochester, went on:--
+
+"I require and charge you both (as ye will answer at the dreadful day of
+judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed) that if
+either of you know any impediment why ye may not lawfully be joined
+together in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well assured that
+so many as are coupled together otherwise than God's word doth allow are
+not joined together by God, neither is their matrimony lawful."
+
+He paused, as the custom is. When is the pause after that sentence ever
+broken by reply? Not, perhaps, once in a hundred years. And the
+clergyman, who had not lifted his eyes from his book, and had held his
+breath but for a moment, was proceeding; his hand was already stretched
+toward. Mr. Rochester, as his lips unclosed to ask, "Wilt thou have this
+woman for thy wedded wife?"--when a distinct and near voice said, "The
+marriage cannot go on: I declare the existence of an impediment."
+
+The clergyman looked up at the speaker and stood mute: the clerk did the
+same; Mr. Rochester moved slightly, as if an earthquake had rolled under
+his feet; taking a firmer footing, and not turning his head or eyes, he
+said, "Proceed!"
+
+Profound silence fell when he had uttered that word, with deep but low
+intonation. Presently Mr. Wood said, "I cannot proceed without some
+investigation into what has been asserted, and evidence of its truth or
+falsehood."
+
+"The ceremony is quite broken off," subjoined the voice behind us. "I am
+in a condition to prove my allegation; an insuperable impediment to this
+marriage exists."
+
+Mr. Rochester heard, but heeded not; he stood stubborn and rigid; making
+no movement but to possess himself of my hand. What a hot and strong
+grasp he had!--and how like quarried marble was his pale, firm, massive
+front at this moment! How his eye shone, still, watchful, and yet
+wild beneath!
+
+Mr. Wood seemed at a loss. "What is the nature of the impediment?" he
+asked. "Perhaps it may be got over--explained away?"
+
+"Hardly," was the answer: "I have called it insuperable, and I speak
+advisedly."
+
+The speaker came forward and leaned on the rails. He continued, uttering
+each word distinctly, calmly, steadily, but not loudly.
+
+"It simply consists in the existence of a previous marriage. Mr.
+Rochester has a wife now living."
+
+My nerves vibrated to those low-spoken words as they had never vibrated
+to thunder; my blood felt their subtle violence as it had never felt
+frost or fire; but I was collected, and in no danger of swooning. I
+looked at Mr. Rochester; I made him look at me. His whole face was
+colorless rock; his eye was both spark and flint. He disavowed nothing;
+he seemed as if he would defy all things. Without speaking, without
+smiling, without seeming to recognize in me a human being, he only
+twined my waist with his arm and riveted me to his side.
+
+"Who are you?" he asked of the intruder.
+
+"My name is Briggs, a solicitor of ---- Street, London."
+
+"And you would thrust on me a wife?"
+
+"I would remind you of your lady's existence, sir, which the law
+recognizes if you do not."
+
+"Favor me with an account of her--with her name, her parentage, her
+place of abode."
+
+"Certainly." Mr. Briggs calmly took a paper from his pocket, and read
+out in a sort of official, nasal voice:--
+
+"I affirm and can prove that on the 20th of October, A.D.--" (a date of
+fifteen years back), "Edward Fairfax Rochester, of Thornfield Hall, in
+the county of ----, and of Ferndean Manor, in ---- shire, England, was
+married to my sister, Bertha Antoinetta Mason, daughter of Jonas Mason,
+merchant, and of Antoinetta his wife, a Creole, at ---- church, Spanish
+Town, Jamaica. The record of the marriage will be found in the register
+of that church--a copy of it is now in my possession. Signed,
+Richard Mason."
+
+"That, if a genuine document, may prove I have been married, but it does
+not prove that the woman mentioned therein as my wife is still living."
+
+"She was living three months ago," returned the lawyer.
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I have a witness to the fact whose testimony even you, sir, will
+scarcely controvert."
+
+"Produce him--or go to hell!"
+
+"I will produce him first--he is on the spot: Mr. Mason, have the
+goodness to step forward."
+
+Mr. Rochester, on hearing the name, set his teeth: he experienced, too,
+a sort of strong convulsive quiver; near to him as I was, I felt the
+spasmodic movement of fury or despair run through his frame.
+
+The second stranger, who had hitherto lingered in the background, now
+drew near; a pale face looked over the solicitor's shoulder--yes, it was
+Mason himself. Mr. Rochester turned and glared at him. His eye, as I
+have often said, was a black eye--it had now a tawny, nay, a bloody
+light in its gloom; and his face flushed--olive cheek and hueless
+forehead received a glow, as from spreading, ascending heart-fire; and
+he stirred, lifted his strong arm; he could have struck Mason--dashed
+him on the church floor--shocked by ruthless blow the breath from his
+body; but Mason shrank away, and cried faintly, "Good God!" Contempt
+fell cool on Mr. Rochester--his passion died as if a blight had
+shriveled it up; he only asked, "What have _you_ to say?"
+
+An inaudible reply escaped Mason's white lips.
+
+"The devil is in it if you cannot answer distinctly. I again demand,
+what have _you_ to say?"
+
+"Sir--sir," interrupted the clergyman, "do not forget you are in a
+sacred place." Then addressing Mason, he inquired gently, "Are you
+aware, sir, whether or not this gentleman's wife is still living?"
+
+"Courage," urged the lawyer; "speak out."
+
+"She is now living at Thornfield Hall," said Mason, in more articulate
+tones. "I saw her there last April. I am her brother."
+
+"At Thornfield Hall!" ejaculated the clergyman. "Impossible! I am an old
+resident in this neighborhood, sir, and I never heard of a Mrs.
+Rochester at Thornfield Hall."
+
+I saw a grim smile contort Mr. Rochester's lip, and he muttered, "No, by
+God! I took care that none should hear of it, or of her under that
+name." He mused; for ten minutes he held counsel with himself: he formed
+his resolve, and announced it:--"Enough; all shall bolt out at once,
+like a bullet from the barrel. Wood, close your book and take off your
+surplice; John Green" (to the clerk) "leave the church: there will be no
+wedding to-day." The man obeyed.
+
+Mr. Rochester continued hardily and recklessly:--"Bigamy is an ugly
+word! I meant, however, to be a bigamist; but fate has out-manoeuvred
+me, or Providence has checked me--perhaps the last. I am little better
+than a devil at this moment; and as my pastor there would tell me,
+deserve no doubt the sternest judgments of God, even to the quenchless
+fire and deathless worm.
+
+"Gentlemen, my plan is broken up! what this lawyer and his client say is
+true: I have been married, and the woman to whom I was married lives!
+You say you never heard of a Mrs. Rochester at the house up yonder,
+Wood; but I dare say you have many a time inclined your ear to gossip
+about the mysterious lunatic kept there under watch and ward. Some have
+whispered to you that she is my bastard half-sister; some, my cast-off
+mistress: I now inform you that she is my wife, whom I married fifteen
+years ago--Bertha Mason by name; sister of this resolute personage who
+is now, with his quivering limbs and white cheeks, showing you what a
+stout heart men may bear. Cheer up, Dick! never fear me! I'd almost as
+soon strike a woman as you. Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad
+family--idiots and maniacs through three generations! Her mother, the
+Creole, was both a mad-woman and a drunkard!--as I found out after I had
+wed the daughter; for they were silent on family secrets before. Bertha,
+like a dutiful child, copied her parent in both points. I had a charming
+partner--pure, wise, modest; you can fancy I was a happy man. I went
+through rich scenes! Oh! my experience has been heavenly, if you only
+knew it! But I owe you no further explanation. Briggs, Wood, Mason, I
+invite you all to come up to the house and visit Mrs. Poole's patient,
+and _my wife_! You shall see what sort of a being I was cheated into
+espousing, and judge whether or not I had a right to break the compact,
+and seek sympathy with something at least human. This girl," he
+continued, looking at me, "knew no more than you, Wood, of the
+disgusting secret: she thought all was fair and legal, and never dreamed
+that she was going to be entrapped into a feigned union with a defrauded
+wretch, already bound to a bad, mad, and imbruted partner! Come, all of
+you, follow."
+
+Still holding me fast, he left the church: the three gentlemen came
+after. At the front door of the hall we found the carriage.
+
+"Take it back to the coach-house, John," said Mr. Rochester, coolly: "it
+will not be wanted to-day."
+
+At our entrance, Mrs. Fairfax, Adèle, Sophie, Leah, advanced to meet and
+greet us.
+
+"To the right-about--every soul!" cried the master: "away with your
+congratulations! Who wants them? Not I! they are fifteen years
+too late!"
+
+He passed on and ascended the stairs, still holding my hand, and still
+beckoning the gentlemen to follow him; which they did. We mounted the
+first staircase, passed up the gallery, proceeded to the third story:
+the low black door, opened by Mr. Rochester's master-key, admitted us to
+the tapestried room, with its great bed and its pictorial cabinet.
+
+"You know this place, Mason," said our guide; "she bit and stabbed you
+here."
+
+He lifted the hangings from the wall, uncovering the second door; this
+too he opened. In a room without a window there burned a fire, guarded
+by a high and strong fender, and a lamp suspended from the ceiling by a
+chain. Grace Poole bent over the fire, apparently cooking something in a
+saucepan. In the deep shade, at the further end of the room, a figure
+ran backward and forward. What it was, whether beast or human being, one
+could not at first sight tell; it groveled, seemingly, on all fours; it
+snatched and growled like some strange wild animal; but it was covered
+with clothing; and a quantity of dark grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid
+its head and face.
+
+"Good morning, Mrs. Poole," said Mr. Rochester. "How are you? and how is
+your charge to-day?"
+
+"We're tolerable, sir, I thank you," replied Grace, lifting the boiling
+mess carefully on to the hob: "rather snappish, but not 'rageous."
+
+A fierce cry seemed to give the lie to her favorable report: the clothed
+hyena rose up, and stood tall on its hind feet.
+
+"Ah, sir, she sees you!" exclaimed Grace: "you'd better not stay."
+
+"Only a few moments, Grace; you must allow me a few moments."
+
+"Take care then, sir! for God's sake, take care!"
+
+The maniac bellowed; she parted her shaggy locks from her visage, and
+gazed wildly at her visitors. I recognized well that purple face--those
+bloated features. Mrs. Poole advanced.
+
+"Keep out of the way," said Mr. Rochester, thrusting her aside; "she has
+no knife now, I suppose? and I'm on my guard."
+
+"One never knows what she has, sir, she is so cunning; it is not in
+mortal discretion to fathom her craft."
+
+"We had better leave her," whispered Mason.
+
+"Go to the devil!" was his brother-in-law's recommendation.
+
+"'Ware!" cried Grace. The three gentlemen retreated simultaneously. Mr.
+Rochester flung me behind him; the lunatic sprang and grappled his
+throat viciously, and laid her teeth to his cheek; they struggled. She
+was a big woman, in stature almost equaling her husband, and corpulent
+besides; she showed virile force in the contest--more than once she
+almost throttled him, athletic as he was. He could have settled her with
+a well-planted blow; but he would not strike her; he would only wrestle.
+At last he mastered her arms; Grace Poole gave him a cord, and he
+pinioned them behind her; with more rope, which was at hand, he bound
+her to a chair. The operation was performed amid the fiercest yells and
+the most convulsive plunges. Mr. Rochester then turned to the
+spectators; he looked at them with a smile both acrid and desolate.
+
+"That is _my wife_," said he. "Such is the sole conjugal embrace I am
+ever to know--such are the endearments which are to solace my leisure
+hours! And _this_ is what I wished to have" (laying his hand on my
+shoulder): "this young girl, who stands so grave and quiet at the mouth
+of hell, looking collectedly at the gambols of a demon. I wanted her
+just as a change, after that fierce ragoût. Wood and Briggs, look at the
+difference. Compare these clear eyes with the red balls yonder--this
+face with that mask--this form with that bulk; then judge me, priest of
+the Gospel and man of the law, and remember, with what judgment ye judge
+ye shall be judged! Off with you now: I must shut up my prize."
+
+We all withdrew. Mr. Rochester stayed a moment behind us, to give some
+further order to Grace Poole. The solicitor addressed me as he descended
+the stair.
+
+"You, madam," said he, "are cleared from all blame; your uncle will be
+glad to hear it--if indeed he should be still living--when Mr. Mason
+returns to Madeira."
+
+"My uncle? What of him? Do you know him?"
+
+"Mr. Mason does; Mr. Eyre has been the Funchal correspondent of his
+house for some years. When your uncle received your letter intimating
+the contemplated union between yourself and Mr. Rochester, Mr. Mason,
+who was staying at Madeira to recruit his health, on his way back to
+Jamaica happened to be with him. Mr. Eyre mentioned the intelligence;
+for he knew that my client here was acquainted with a gentleman of the
+name of Rochester. Mr. Mason, astonished and distressed, as you may
+suppose, revealed the real state of matters. Your uncle, I am sorry to
+say, is now on a sick-bed; from which, considering the nature of his
+disease--decline--and the stage it has reached, it is unlikely he will
+ever rise. He could not then hasten to England himself, to extricate you
+from the snare into which you had fallen, but he implored Mr. Mason to
+lose no time in taking steps to prevent the false marriage. He referred
+him to me for assistance, I used all dispatch, and am thankful I was not
+too late: as you, doubtless, must be also. Were I not morally certain
+that your uncle will be dead ere you reach Madeira, I would advise you
+to accompany Mr. Mason back; but as it is, I think you had better remain
+in England till you can hear further, either from or of Mr. Eyre. Have
+we anything else to stay for?" he inquired of Mr. Mason.
+
+"No, no; let us be gone," was the anxious reply; and without waiting to
+take leave of Mr. Rochester, they made their exit at the hall door. The
+clergyman stayed to exchange a few sentences, either of admonition or
+reproof, with his haughty parishioner: this duty done, he too departed.
+
+I heard him go as I stood at the half-open door of my own room, to which
+I had now withdrawn. The house cleared, I shut myself in, fastened the
+bolt that none might intrude, and proceeded--not to weep, not to mourn,
+I was yet too calm for that, but--mechanically to take off the
+wedding-dress, and replace if by the stuff gown I had worn yesterday, as
+I thought for the last time. I then sat down: I felt weak and tired. I
+leaned my arms on a table, and my head dropped on them. And now I
+thought: till now I had only heard, seen, moved--followed up and down
+where I was led or dragged--watched event rush on event, disclosure open
+beyond disclosure; but _now I thought_.
+
+The morning had been a quiet morning enough--all except the brief scene
+with the lunatic. The transaction in the church had not been noisy;
+there was no explosion of passion, no loud altercation, no dispute, no
+defiance or challenge, no tears, no sobs: a few words had been spoken, a
+calmly pronounced objection to the marriage made; some stern, short
+questions put by Mr. Rochester; answers, explanations given, evidence
+adduced; an open admission of the truth had been uttered by my master:
+then the living proof had been seen; the intruders were gone, and
+all was over.
+
+I was in my own room as usual--just myself, without obvious change;
+nothing had smitten me, or scathed me, or maimed me. And yet where was
+the Jane Eyre of yesterday? where was her life? where were her
+prospects?
+
+Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman--almost a bride--was
+a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were
+desolate. A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December
+storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples; drifts crushed
+the blowing roses; on hay-field and corn-field lay a frozen shroud;
+lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless
+with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy
+and fragrant as groves between the tropics, now spread waste, wild, and
+white as pine forests in wintry Norway.
+
+My hopes were all dead--struck with a subtle doom, such as in one night
+fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my
+cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark,
+chill, livid corpses that could never revive. I looked at my love, that
+feeling which was my master's--which he had created: it shivered in my
+heart, like a suffering child in a cold cradle; sickness and anguish had
+seized it; it could not seek Mr. Rochester's arms--it could not derive
+warmth from his breast. Oh, never more could it turn to him; for faith
+was blighted--confidence destroyed! Mr. Rochester was not to me what he
+had been; for he was not what I had thought him. I would not ascribe
+vice to him; I would not say he had betrayed me: but the attribute of
+stainless truth was gone from his idea; and from his presence I must go;
+_that_ I perceived well. When--how--whither, I could not yet discern;
+but he himself, I doubted not, would hurry me from Thornfield. Real
+affection, it seemed, he could not have for me; it had been only fitful
+passion; that was balked; he would want me no more. I should fear even
+to cross his path now: my view must be hateful to him. Oh, how blind had
+been my eyes! how weak my conduct!
+
+MADAME BECK
+
+(From 'Villette')
+
+"You ayre Engliss?" said a voice at my elbow. I almost bounded, so
+unexpected was the sound; so certain had I been of solitude.
+
+No ghost stood beside me, nor anything of spectral aspect; merely a
+motherly, dumpy little woman, in a large shawl, a wrapping-gown, and a
+clean, trim, nightcap.
+
+I said I was English, and immediately, without further prelude, we fell
+to a most remarkable conversation. Madame Beck (for Madame Beck it was;
+she had entered by a little door behind me, and being shod with the
+shoes of silence, I had heard neither her entrance nor approach)--Madame
+Beck had exhausted her command of insular speech when she said "You ayre
+Engliss," and she now proceeded to work away volubly in her own tongue.
+I answered in mine. She partly understood me, but as I did not at all
+understand her--though we made together an awful clamor (anything like
+madame's gift of utterance I had not hitherto heard or imagined)--we
+achieved little progress. She rang, ere long, for aid; which arrived in
+the shape of a "maîtresse," who had been partly educated in an Irish
+convent, and was esteemed a perfect adept in the English language. A
+bluff little personage this maîtresse was--Labasse-courienne from top to
+toe: and how she did slaughter the speech of Albion! However, I told her
+a plain tale, which she translated. I told her how I had left my own
+country, intent on extending my knowledge and gaining my bread; how I
+was ready to turn my hand to any useful thing, provided it was not wrong
+or degrading: how I would be a child's nurse or a lady's-maid, and would
+not refuse even housework adapted to my strength. Madame heard this; and
+questioning her countenance, I almost thought the tale won her ear.
+
+"Il n'y a que les Anglaises pour ces sortes d'entreprises," said she:
+"sont-elles done intrépides, ces femmes-là!"
+
+She asked my name, my age; she sat and looked at me--not pityingly, not
+with interest: never a gleam of sympathy or a shade of compassion
+crossed her countenance during the interview. I felt she was not one to
+be led an inch by her feelings: grave and considerate, she gazed,
+consulting her judgment and studying my narrative....
+
+In the dead of night I suddenly awoke. All was hushed, but a white
+figure stood in the room--Madame in her night-dress. Moving without
+perceptible sound, she visited the three children in the three beds; she
+approached me; I feigned sleep, and she studied me long. A small
+pantomime ensued, curious enough. I dare say she sat a quarter of an
+hour on the edge of my bed, gazing at my face. She then drew nearer,
+bent close over me; slightly raised my cap, and turned back the border
+so as to expose my hair; she looked at my hand lying on the bed-clothes.
+This done, she turned to the chair where my clothes lay; it was at the
+foot of the bed. Hearing her touch and lift them, I opened my eyes with
+precaution, for I own I felt curious to see how far her taste for
+research would lead her. It led her a good way: every article did she
+inspect. I divined her motive for this proceeding; viz., the wish to
+form from the garments a judgment respecting the wearer, her station,
+means, neatness, etc. The end was not bad, but the means were hardly
+fair or justifiable. In my dress was a pocket; she fairly turned it
+inside out; she counted the money in my purse; she opened a little
+memorandum-book, coolly perused its contents, and took from between the
+leaves a small plaited lock of Miss Marchmont's gray hair. To a bunch of
+three keys, being those of my trunk, desk, and work-box, she accorded
+special attention: with these, indeed, she withdrew a moment to her own
+room. I softly rose in my bed and followed her with my eye: these keys,
+reader, were not brought back till they had left on the toilet of the
+adjoining room the impress of their wards in wax. All being thus done
+decently and in order, my property was returned to its place, my clothes
+were carefully refolded. Of what nature were the conclusions deduced
+from this scrutiny? Were they favorable or otherwise? Vain question.
+Madame's face of stone (for of stone in its present night-aspect it
+looked: it had been human, and as I said before, motherly, in the salon)
+betrayed no response.
+
+Her duty done--I felt that in her eyes this business was a duty--she
+rose, noiseless as a shadow: she moved toward her own chamber; at the
+door she turned, fixing her eyes on the heroine of the bottle, who still
+slept and loudly snored. Mrs. Svini (I presume this was Mrs. Svini,
+Anglicé or Hibernicé Sweeny)--Mrs. Sweeny's doom was in Madame Beck's
+eye--an immutable purpose that eye spoke: madame's visitations for
+shortcomings might be slow, but they were sure. All this was very
+un-English: truly I was in a foreign land....
+
+When attired, Madame Beck appeared a personage of a figure rather short
+and stout, yet still graceful in its own peculiar way: that is, with the
+grace resulting from proportion of parts. Her complexion was fresh and
+sanguine, not too rubicund; her eye, blue and serene; her dark silk
+dress fitted her as a French sempstress alone can make a dress fit; she
+looked well, though a little bourgeoise, as bourgeoise indeed she was. I
+know not what of harmony pervaded her whole person; and yet her face
+offered contrast too: its features were by no means such as are usually
+seen in conjunction with a complexion of such blended freshness and
+repose: their outline was stern; her forehead was high but narrow; it
+expressed capacity and some benevolence, but no expanse; nor did her
+peaceful yet watchful eye ever know the fire which is kindled in the
+heart or the softness which flows thence. Her mouth was hard: it could
+be a little grim; her lips were thin. For sensibility and genius, with
+all their tenderness and temerity, I felt somehow that madame would be
+the right sort of Minos in petticoats.
+
+In the long run, I found that she was something else in petticoats too.
+Her name was Modeste Maria Beck, née Kint: it ought to have been
+Ignacia. She was a charitable woman, and did a great deal of good. There
+never was a mistress whose rule was milder. I was told that she never
+once remonstrated with the intolerable Mrs. Sweeny [the heroine's
+predecessor], despite her tipsiness, disorder, and general neglect; yet
+Mrs. Sweeny had to go, the moment her departure became convenient. I was
+told too that neither masters nor teachers were found fault with in that
+establishment: yet both masters and teachers were often changed; they
+vanished and others filled their places, none could well explain how.
+
+The establishment was both a pensionnat and an externat: the externes or
+day-pupils exceeded one hundred in number; the boarders were about a
+score. Madame must have possessed high administrative powers: she ruled
+all these, together with four teachers, eight masters, six servants, and
+three children, managing at the same time to perfection the pupil's
+parents and friends; and that without apparent effort, without bustle,
+fatigue, fever, or any symptom of undue excitement; occupied she always
+was--busy, rarely. It is true that madame had her own system for
+managing and regulating this mass of machinery; and a very pretty system
+it was: the reader has seen a specimen of it in that small affair of
+turning my pocket inside out and reading my private memoranda.
+_Surveillance, espionnage_, these were her watchwords.
+
+Still, madame knew what honesty was, and liked it--that is, when it did
+not obtrude its clumsy scruples in the way of her will and interest. She
+had a respect for "Angleterre"; and as to "les Anglaises," she would
+have the women of no other country about her own children, if she
+could help it.
+
+Often in the evening, after she had been plotting and counter-plotting,
+spying and receiving the reports of spies all day, she would come up to
+my room, a trace of real weariness on her brow, and she would sit down
+and listen while the children said their little prayers to me in
+English: the Lord's Prayer and the hymn beginning "Gentle Jesus," these
+little Catholics were permitted to repeat at my knee; and when I had put
+them to bed, she would talk to me (I soon gained enough French to be
+able to understand and even answer her) about England and Englishwomen,
+and the reason for what she was pleased to term their superior
+intelligence, and, more real and reliable probity. Very good sense she
+often showed; very sound opinions she often broached: she seemed to know
+that keeping girls in distrustful restraint, in blind ignorance, and
+under a surveillance that left them no moment and no corner for
+retirement, was not the best way to make them grow up honest and modest
+women; but she averred that ruinous consequences would ensue if any
+other method were tried with Continental children--they were so
+accustomed to restraint that relaxation, however guarded, would be
+misunderstood and fatally presumed on: she was sick, she would declare,
+of the means she had to use, but use them she must; and after
+discoursing, often with dignity and delicacy, to me, she would move away
+on her "souliers de silence," and glide ghost-like through the house,
+watching and spying everywhere, peering through every key-hole,
+listening behind every door.
+
+After all, madame's system was not bad--let me do her justice. Nothing
+could be better than all her arrangements for the physical well-being of
+her scholars. No minds were overtasked; the lessons were well
+distributed and made incomparably easy to the learner; there was a
+liberty of amusement and a provision for exercise which kept the girls
+healthy; the food was abundant and good: neither pale nor puny faces
+were anywhere to be seen in the Rue Fossette. She never grudged a
+holiday; she allowed plenty of time for sleeping, dressing, washing,
+eating: her method in all these matters was easy, liberal, salutary, and
+rational; many an austere English schoolmistress would do vastly well to
+imitate it--and I believe many would be glad to do so, if exacting
+English parents would let them.
+
+As Madame Beck ruled by espionage, she of course had her staff of spies;
+she perfectly knew the quality of the tools she used, and while she
+would not scruple to handle the dirtiest for a dirty occasion--flinging
+this sort from her like refuse rind? after the orange has been duly
+squeezed--I have known her fastidious in seeking pure metal for clean
+uses; and when once a bloodless and rustless instrument was found, she
+was careful of the prize, keeping it in silk and cotton-wool. Yet woe be
+to the man or woman who relied on her one inch beyond the point where it
+was her interest to be trustworthy; interest was the master-key of
+madame's nature--the mainspring of her motives--the alpha and omega of
+her life. I have seen her _feelings_ appealed to, and I have smiled in
+half-pity, half-scorn at the appellants. None ever gained her ear
+through that channel, or swayed her purpose by that means. On the
+contrary, to attempt to touch her heart was the surest way to rouse her
+antipathy, and to make of her a secret foe. It proved to her that she
+had no heart to be touched: it reminded her where she was impotent and
+dead. Never was the distinction between charity and mercy better
+exemplified than in her. While devoid of sympathy, she had a sufficiency
+of rational benevolence: she would give in the readiest manner to people
+she had never seen--rather, however, to classes than to individuals.
+"Pour les pauvres" she opened her purse freely--against the _poor man_,
+as a rule, she kept it closed. In philanthropic schemes, for the benefit
+of society at large, she took a cheerful part; no private sorrow touched
+her: no force or mass of suffering concentrated in one heart had power
+to pierce hers. Not the agony of Gethsemane, not the death on Calvary,
+could have wrung from her eyes one tear.
+
+I say again, madame was a very great and a very capable woman. That
+school offered for her powers too limited a sphere: she ought to have
+swayed a nation; she should have been the leader of a turbulent
+legislative assembly. Nobody could have browbeaten her, none irritated
+her nerves, exhausted her patience, or overreached her astuteness. In
+her own single person, she could have comprised the duties of a first
+minister and a superintendent of police. Wise, firm, faithless, secret,
+crafty, passionless; watchful and inscrutable; acute and
+insensate--withal perfectly decorous--what more could be desired?
+
+
+
+
+
+A YORKSHIRE LANDSCAPE
+
+From 'Shirley'
+
+"Miss Keeldar, just stand still now, and look down at Nunneley dale and
+wood."
+
+They both halted on the green brow of the Common. They looked down on
+the deep valley robed in May raiment; on varied meads, some pearled with
+daisies and some golden with kingcups: to-day all this young verdure
+smiled clear in sunlight; transparent emerald and amber gleams played
+over it. On Nunnwood--the sole remnant of antique British forest in a
+region whose lowlands were once all sylvan chase, as its highlands were
+breast-deep heather--slept the shadow of a cloud; the distant hills were
+dappled, the horizon was shaded and tinted like mother-of-pearl; silvery
+blues, soft purples, evanescent greens and rose-shades, all melting into
+fleeces of white cloud, pure as azury snow, allured the eye with a
+remote glimpse of heaven's foundations. The air blowing on the brow was
+fresh and sweet and bracing.
+
+"Our England is a bonnie island," said Shirley, "and Yorkshire is one of
+her bonniest nooks."
+
+"You are a Yorkshire girl too?"
+
+"I am--Yorkshire in blood and birth. Five generations of my race sleep
+under the aisles of Briarfield Church: I drew my first breath in the old
+black hall behind us."
+
+Hereupon Caroline presented her hand, which was accordingly taken and
+shaken. "We are compatriots," said she.
+
+"Yes," agreed Shirley, with a grave nod.
+
+"And that," asked Miss Keeldar, pointing to the forest--"that is
+Nunnwood?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Were you ever there?"
+
+"Many a time."
+
+"In the heart of it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What is it like?"
+
+"It is like an encampment of forest sons of Anak. The trees are huge and
+old. When you stand at their roots, the summits seem in another region:
+the trunks remain still and firm as pillars, while the boughs sway to
+every breeze. In the deepest calm their leaves are never quite hushed,
+and in a high wind a flood rushes--a sea thunders above you."
+
+"Was it not one of Robin Hood's haunts?"
+
+"Yes, and there are mementos of him still existing. To penetrate into
+Nunnwood, Miss Keeldar, is to go far back into the dim days of old. Can
+you see a break in the forest, about the centre?"
+
+"Yes, distinctly."
+
+"That break is a dell--a deep hollow cup, lined with turf as green and
+short as the sod of this Common: the very oldest of the trees, gnarled
+mighty oaks, crowd about the brink of this dell; in the bottom lie the
+ruins of a nunnery.
+
+"We will go--you and I alone, Caroline--to that wood, early some fine
+summer morning, and spend a long day there. We can take pencils and
+sketch-books, and any interesting reading-book we like; and of course we
+shall take something to eat. I have two little baskets, in which Mrs.
+Gill, my house-keeper, might pack our provisions, and we could each
+carry our own. It would not tire you too much to walk so far?"
+
+"Oh, no; especially if we rested the whole day in the wood; and I know
+all the pleasantest spots. I know where we could get nuts in nutting
+time; I know where wild strawberries abound; I know certain lonely,
+quite untrodden glades, carpeted with strange mosses, some yellow as if
+gilded, some a sober gray, some gem-green. I know groups of trees that
+ravish the eye with their perfect, picture-like effects: rude oak,
+delicate birch, glossy beech, clustered in contrast; and ash-trees,
+stately as Saul, standing isolated; and superannuated wood-giants clad
+in bright shrouds of ivy."
+
+THE END OF HEATHCLIFF
+
+From Emily Bronté's 'Wuthering Heights'
+
+For some days after that evening Mr. Heathcliff shunned meeting us at
+meals; yet he would not consent formally to exclude Hareton and Cathy.
+He had an aversion to yielding so completely to his feelings, choosing
+rather to absent himself; and eating once in twenty-four hours seemed
+sufficient sustenance for him.
+
+One night, after the family were in bed, I heard him go down-stairs and
+out at the front door; I did not hear him re-enter, and in the morning I
+found he was still away. We were in April then, the weather was sweet
+and warm, the grass as green as showers and sun could make it, and the
+two dwarf apple-trees near the southern wall in full bloom.
+
+After breakfast, Catherine insisted on my bringing a chair and sitting
+with my work under the fir-trees at the end of the house; and she
+beguiled Hareton, who had recovered from his accident, to dig and
+arrange her little garden, which was shifted to that corner by the
+influence of Joseph's complaints.
+
+I was comfortably reveling in the spring fragrance around, and the
+beautiful soft blue overhead, when my young lady, who had run down near
+the gate to procure some primrose roots for a border, returned only half
+laden, and informed us that Mr. Heathcliff was coming in.
+
+"And he spoke to me," she added with a perplexed look.
+
+"What did he say?" asked Hareton.
+
+"He told me to begone as fast as I could," she answered. "But he looked
+so different from his usual look that I stopped a moment to stare
+at him."
+
+"How?" he inquired.
+
+"Why, almost bright and cheerful--no, almost nothing--_very much_
+excited, and wild, and glad!" she replied.
+
+"Night-walking amuses him, then," I remarked, affecting a careless
+manner; in reality as surprised as she was, and anxious to ascertain the
+truth of her statement--for to see the master looking glad would not be
+an every-day spectacle; I framed an excuse to go in.
+
+Heathcliff stood at the open door--he was pale, and he trembled; yet
+certainly he had a strange joyful glitter in his eyes, that altered the
+aspect of his whole face.
+
+"Will you have some breakfast?" I said. "You must be hungry, rambling
+about all night!"
+
+I wanted to discover where he had been; but I did not like to ask
+directly.
+
+"No, I'm not hungry," he answered, averting his head, and speaking
+rather contemptuously, as if he guessed I was trying to divine the
+occasion of his good humor.
+
+I felt perplexed--I didn't know whether it were not a proper opportunity
+to offer a bit of admonition.
+
+"I don't think it right to wander out of doors," I observed, "instead of
+being in bed; it is not wise, at any rate, this moist season. I daresay
+you'll catch a bad cold, or a fever--you have something the matter
+with you now!"
+
+"Nothing but what I can bear," he replied, "and with the greatest
+pleasure, provided you'll leave me alone--get in, and don't annoy me."
+
+I obeyed; and in passing, I saw he breathed as fast as a cat.
+
+"Yes!" I reflected to myself, "we shall have a fit of illness. I cannot
+conceive what he has been doing!"
+
+That noon he sat down to dinner with us, and received a heaped-up plate
+from my hands, as if he intended to make amends for previous fasting.
+
+"I've neither cold nor fever, Nelly," he remarked, in allusion to my
+morning speech. "And I'm ready to do justice to the food you give me."
+
+He took his knife and fork, and was going to commence eating, when the
+inclination appeared to become suddenly extinct. He laid them on the
+table, looked eagerly toward the window, then rose and went out. We saw
+him walking to and fro in the garden, while we concluded our meal; and
+Earnshaw said he'd go and ask why he would not dine; he thought we had
+grieved him some way.
+
+"Well, is he coming?" cried Catherine, when he returned.
+
+"Nay," he answered; "but he's not angry: he seemed rare and pleased
+indeed; only I made him impatient by speaking to him twice: and then he
+bid me be off to you; he wondered how I could want the company of
+anybody else."
+
+I set his plate to keep warm on the fender; and after an hour or two he
+re-entered, when the room was clear, in no degree calmer: the same
+unnatural--it was unnatural!--appearance of joy under his black brows;
+the same bloodless hue; and his teeth visible now and then in a kind of
+smile; his frame shivering, not as one shivers with chill or weakness,
+but as a tight-stretched cord vibrates--a strong thrilling, rather than
+trembling.
+
+"I will ask what is the matter," I thought, "or who should?" And I
+exclaimed, "Have you heard any good news, Mr. Heathcliff? You look
+uncommonly animated."
+
+"Where should good news come from to me?" he said. "I'm animated with
+hunger; and seemingly I must not eat."
+
+"Your dinner is here," I returned: "why won't you get it?"
+
+"I don't want it now," he muttered hastily. "I'll wait till supper. And,
+Nelly, once for all, let me beg you to warn Hareton and the other away
+from me. I wish to be troubled by nobody--I wish to have this place
+to myself."
+
+"Is there some new reason for this banishment?" I inquired. "Tell me why
+you are so queer, Mr. Heathcliff. Where were you last night? I'm not
+putting the question through idle curiosity, but--"
+
+"You are putting the question through very idle curiosity," he
+interrupted, with a laugh. "Yet I'll answer it. Last night I was on the
+threshold of hell. To-day I am within sight of my heaven--I have my eyes
+on it--hardly three feet to sever me. And now you'd better go. You'll
+neither see nor hear anything to frighten you if you refrain
+from prying."
+
+Having swept the hearth and wiped the table, I departed more perplexed
+than ever. He did not quit the house again that afternoon, and no one
+intruded on his solitude till at eight o'clock I deemed it proper,
+though unsummoned, to carry a candle and his supper to him.
+
+He was leaning against the ledge of an open lattice, but not looking
+out; his face was turned to the interior gloom. The fire had smoldered
+to ashes; the room was filled with the damp, mild air of the cloudy
+evening; and so still, that not only the murmur of the beck down
+Gimmerton was distinguishable, but its ripples, and its gurgling over
+the pebbles, or through the large stones which it could not cover.
+
+I uttered an ejaculation of discontent at seeing the dismal grate, and
+commenced shutting the casements, one after another, till I came to his.
+
+"Must I close this?" I asked, in order to rouse him, for he would not
+stir.
+
+The light flashed on his features as I spoke. O Mr. Lockwood, I cannot
+express what a terrible start I got by the momentary view! Those deep
+black eyes! That smile and ghastly paleness! It appeared to me not Mr.
+Heathcliff, but a goblin; and in my terror I let the candle bend toward
+the wall, and it left me in darkness.
+
+"Yes, close it," he replied in his familiar voice. "There, that is pure
+awkwardness! Why did you hold the candle horizontally? Be quick, and
+bring another."
+
+I hurried out in a foolish state of dread, and said to Joseph, "The
+master wishes you to take him a light and rekindle the fire." For I dare
+not go in myself again just then.
+
+Joseph rattled some fire into the shovel and went; but he brought it
+back immediately, with the supper tray in his other hand, explaining
+that Mr. Heathcliff was going to bed, and he wanted nothing to eat
+till morning.
+
+We heard him mount the stairs directly. He did not proceed to his
+ordinary chamber, but turned into that with the paneled bed; its window,
+as I mentioned before, is wide enough for anybody to get through, and it
+struck me that he plotted another midnight excursion, which he had
+rather we had no suspicion of.
+
+"Is he a ghoul, or a vampire?" I mused. I had read of such hideous
+incarnate demons. And then I set myself to reflect how I had tended him
+in infancy, and watched him grow to youth, and followed him almost
+through his whole course, and what nonsense it was to yield to that
+sense of horror.
+
+"But where did he come from, the little dark thing, harbored by a good
+man to his bane?" muttered Superstition, as I dozed into
+unconsciousness. And I began, half dreaming, to weary myself with
+imagining some fit parentage for him: and repeating my waking
+meditations I tracked his existence over again, with grim variations; at
+last picturing his death and funeral; of which all I can remember is
+being exceedingly vexed at having the task of dictating an inscription
+for his monument, and consulting the sexton about it; and as he had no
+surname, and we could not tell his age, we were obliged to content
+ourselves with the single word "Heathcliff." That came true--we were. If
+you enter the kirkyard, you'll read on his headstone only that, and the
+date of his death. Dawn restored me to common-sense. I rose, and went
+into the garden, as soon as I could see, to ascertain if there were any
+foot-marks under his window. There were none.
+
+"He has staid at home," I thought, "and he'll be all right to-day!"
+
+I prepared breakfast for the household, as was my usual custom, but told
+Hareton and Catherine to get theirs ere the master came down, for he lay
+late. They preferred taking it out of doors, under the trees, and I set
+a little table to accommodate them.
+
+On my re-entrance I found Mr. Heathcliff below. He and Joseph were
+conversing about some farming business; he gave clear, minute directions
+concerning the matter discussed, but he spoke rapidly, and turned his
+head continually aside, and had the same excited expression, even more
+exaggerated.
+
+When Joseph quitted the room, he took his seat in the place he generally
+chose, and I put a basin of coffee before him. He drew it nearer, and
+then rested his arms on the table, and looked at the opposite wall, as I
+supposed surveying one particular portion, up and down, with glittering,
+restless eyes, and with such eager interest that he stopped breathing
+during half a minute together.
+
+"Come now," I exclaimed, pushing some bread against his hand, "eat and
+drink that while it is hot. It has been waiting near an hour."
+
+He didn't notice me, and yet he smiled. I'd rather have seen him gnash
+his teeth than smile so.
+
+"Mr. Heathcliff! master!" I cried. "Don't, for God's sake, stare as if
+you saw an unearthly vision."
+
+"Don't, for God's sake, shout so loud," he replied. "Turn round and tell
+me, are we by ourselves?"
+
+"Of course," was my answer, "of course we are!"
+
+Still I involuntarily obeyed him, as if I were not quite sure. With a
+sweep of his hand he cleared a vacant space in front among the breakfast
+things, and leaned forward to gaze more at his ease.
+
+Now I perceived he was not looking at the wall; for when I regarded him
+alone, it seemed exactly that he gazed at something within two yards'
+distance. And, whatever it was, it communicated apparently both pleasure
+and pain in exquisite extremes; at least the anguished yet raptured
+expression of his countenance suggested that idea.
+
+The fancied object was not fixed either; his eyes pursued it with
+unwearied vigilance, and even in speaking to me, were never weaned away.
+
+I vainly reminded him of his protracted abstinence from food. If he
+stirred to touch anything in compliance with my entreaties--if he
+stretched his hand out to get a piece of bread--his fingers clenched
+before they reached it, and remained on the table, forgetful of
+their aim.
+
+I sat, a model of patience, trying to attract his absorbed attention
+from its engrossing speculation till he grew irritable and got up,
+asking why I would not allow him to have his own time in taking his
+meals? and saying that on the next occasion I needn't wait--I might set
+the things down and go. Having uttered these words, he left the house,
+slowly sauntered down the garden path, and disappeared through the gate.
+
+The hours crept anxiously by: another evening came. I did not retire to
+rest till late, and when I did I could not sleep. He returned after
+midnight, and instead of going to bed, shut himself into the room
+beneath. I listened and tossed about, and finally dressed and descended.
+It was too irksome to lie up there, harassing my brain with a hundred
+idle misgivings.
+
+I distinguished Mr. Heathcliff's step, restlessly measuring the floor;
+and he frequently broke the silence by a deep inspiration, resembling a
+groan. He muttered detached words also; the only one I could catch was
+the name of Catherine, coupled with some wild term of endearment or
+suffering, and spoken as one would speak to a person present--low and
+earnest, and wrung from the depth of his soul.
+
+I had not courage to walk straight into the apartment; but I desired to
+divert him from his revery, and therefore fell foul of the kitchen fire;
+stirred it and began to scrape the cinders. It drew him forth sooner
+than I expected. He opened the door immediately, and said:--
+
+"Nelly, come here--is it morning? Come in with your light."
+
+"It is striking four," I answered; "you want a candle to take
+upstairs--you might have lighted one at this fire."
+
+"No, I don't wish to go upstairs," he said. "Come in, and kindle _me_ a
+fire, and do anything there is to do about the room."
+
+"I must blow the coals red first, before I can carry any," I replied,
+getting a chair and the bellows.
+
+He roamed to and fro, meantime, in a state approaching distraction, his
+heavy sighs succeeding each other so thick as to leave no space for
+common breathing between.
+
+"When day breaks, I'll send for Green," he said; "I wish to make some
+legal inquiries of him, while I can bestow a thought on those matters,
+and while I can act calmly. I have not written my will yet, and how to
+leave my property I cannot determine! I wish I could annihilate it from
+the face of the earth."
+
+"I would not talk so, Mr. Heathcliff," I interposed. "Let your will be a
+while--you'll be spared to repent of your many injustices yet! I never
+expected that your nerves would be disordered--they are, at present,
+marvelously so, however; and almost entirely through your own fault. The
+way you've passed these last three days might knock up a Titan. Do take
+some food and some repose. You need only look at yourself in a glass to
+see how you require both. Your cheeks are hollow and your eyes
+bloodshot, like a person starving with hunger and going blind with loss
+of sleep."
+
+"It is not my fault that I cannot eat or rest," he replied. "I assure
+you it is through no settled designs. I'll do both as soon as I possibly
+can. But you might as well bid a man struggling in the water rest within
+arm's-length of the shore! I must reach it first, and then I'll rest.
+Well, never mind Mr. Green; as to repenting of my injustices, I've done
+no injustice, and I repent of nothing. I'm too happy, and yet I'm not
+happy enough. My soul's bliss kills my body, but does not
+satisfy itself."
+
+"Happy, master?" I cried. "Strange happiness! If you would hear me
+without being angry, I might offer some advice that would make
+you happier."
+
+"What is that?" he asked. "Give it."
+
+"You are aware, Mr. Heathcliff," I said, "that from the time you were
+thirteen years old you have lived a selfish, unchristian life: and
+probably hardly had a Bible in your hands during all that period. You
+must have forgotten the contents of the book, and you may not have space
+to search it now. Could it be hurtful to send for some one--some
+minister of any denomination, it does not matter which--to explain it,
+and show you how very far you have erred from its precepts, and how
+unfit you will be for its heaven, unless a change takes place before
+you die?"
+
+"I'm rather obliged than angry, Nelly," he said, "for you remind me of
+the manner that I desire to be buried in. It is to be carried to the
+churchyard in the evening. You and Hareton may, if you please, accompany
+me--and mind, particularly, to notice that the sexton obeys my
+directions concerning the two coffins! No minister need come; nor need
+anything be said over me. I tell you, I have nearly attained _my_
+heaven; and that of others is altogether unvalued and uncoveted by me!"
+
+"And supposing you persevered in your obstinate fast, and died by that
+means, and they refused to bury you in the precincts of the kirk?" I
+said, shocked at his godless indifference. "How would you like it?"
+
+"They won't do that," he replied; "if they did, you must have me removed
+secretly; and if you neglect it, you shall prove practically that the
+dead are not annihilated!"
+
+As soon as he heard the other members of the family stirring, he retired
+to his den, and I breathed freer. But in the afternoon, while Joseph and
+Hareton were at their work, he came into the kitchen again, and with a
+wild look bid me come and sit in the house--he wanted somebody with him.
+
+I declined, telling him plainly that his strange talk and manner
+frightened me, and I had neither the nerve nor the will to be his
+companion alone.
+
+"I believe you think me a fiend!" he said, with his dismal laugh;
+"something too horrible to live under a decent roof!"
+
+Then turning to Catherine, who was there, and who drew behind me at his
+approach, he added, half sneeringly:--
+
+"Will _you_ come, chuck? I'll not hurt you. No! to you I've made myself
+worse than the devil. Well, there is _one_ who won't shrink from my
+company! By God! she's relentless. Oh, damn it! It's unutterably too
+much for flesh and blood to bear, even mine."
+
+He solicited the society of no one more. At dusk he went into his
+chamber. Through the whole night, and far into the morning, we heard him
+groaning and murmuring to himself. Hareton was anxious to enter, but I
+bid him fetch Mr. Kenneth, and he should go in and see him.
+
+When he came, and I requested admittance and tried to open the door, I
+found it locked; and Heathcliff bid us be damned. He was better, and
+would be left alone; so the doctor went away.
+
+The following evening was very wet; indeed, it poured down till
+day-dawn; and as I took my morning walk round the house, I observed the
+master's window swinging open, and the rain driving straight in.
+
+"He cannot be in bed," I thought: "those showers would drench him
+through! He must be either up or out. But I'll make no more ado; I'll go
+boldly, and look!"
+
+Having succeeded in obtaining entrance with another key, I ran to
+unclose the panels, for the chamber was vacant--quickly pushing them
+aside, I peeped in. Mr. Heathcliff was there--laid on his back. His eyes
+met mine, so keen and fierce that I started; and then he seemed
+to smile.
+
+I could not think him dead--but his face and throat were washed with
+rain; the bed-clothes dripped, and he was perfectly still. The lattice,
+flapping to and fro, had grazed one hand that rested on the sill--no
+blood trickled from the broken skin, and when I put my fingers to it I
+could doubt no more--he was dead and stark!
+
+I hasped the window; I combed his long, black hair from his forehead; I
+tried to close his eyes--to extinguish, if possible, that frightful,
+lifelike exultation, before any one else beheld it. They would not
+shut--they seemed to sneer at my attempts, and his parted lips and sharp
+white teeth sneered too! Taken with another fit of cowardice, I cried
+out for Joseph. Joseph shuffled up and made a noise, but resolutely
+refused to meddle with him. "Th' divil's harried off his soul," he
+cried, "and he muh hev his carcass intuh t' bargain, for ow't aw care!
+Ech! what a wicked un he looks, grinning at death!" and the old sinner
+grinned in mockery.
+
+I thought he intended to cut a caper round the bed; but suddenly
+composing himself, he fell on his knees and raised his hands, and
+returned thanks that the lawful master and the ancient stock were
+restored to their rights.
+
+I felt stunned by the awful event; and my memory unavoidably recurred to
+former times with a sort of oppressive sadness. But poor Hareton, the
+most wronged, was the only one that really suffered much. He sat by the
+corpse all night, weeping in bitter earnest. He pressed its hand, and
+kissed the sarcastic, savage face that every one else shrank from
+contemplating; and bemoaned him with that strong grief which springs
+naturally from a generous heart, though it be tough as tempered steel.
+
+Kenneth was perplexed to pronounce of what disorder the master died. I
+concealed the fact of his having swallowed nothing for four days,
+fearing it might lead to trouble; and then, I am persuaded, he did not
+abstain on purpose: it was the consequence of his strange illness, not
+the cause.
+
+We buried him, to the scandal of the whole neighborhood, as he had
+wished. Earnshaw and I, the sexton, and six men to carry the coffin,
+comprehended the whole attendance.
+
+The six men departed when they had let it down into the grave: we stayed
+to see it covered. Hareton, with a streaming face, dug green sods and
+laid them over the brown mold himself. At present it is as smooth and
+verdant as its companion mounds--and I hope its tenant sleeps as
+soundly. But the country folks, if you asked them, would swear on their
+Bibles that he _walks_. There are those who speak to having met him near
+the church, and on the moor, and even within this house. Idle tales,
+you'll say, and so say I. Yet that old man by the kitchen fire affirms
+he has seen "two on 'em" looking out of his chamber window on every
+rainy night since his death--and an odd thing happened to me about a
+month ago.
+
+I was going to the grange one evening--a dark evening threatening
+thunder--and, just at the turn of the Heights, I encountered a little
+boy with a sheep and two lambs before him. He was crying terribly, and I
+supposed the lambs were skittish and would not be guided.
+
+"What is the matter, my little man?" I asked.
+
+"They's Heathcliff and a woman yonder, under t' nab," he blubbered, "un'
+aw darnut pass 'em."
+
+I saw nothing, but neither the sheep nor he would go on, so I bid him
+take the road lower down. He probably raised the phantoms from thinking,
+as he traversed the moors alone, on the nonsense he had heard his
+parents and companions repeat; yet still I don't like being out in the
+dark now, and I don't like being left by myself in this grim house. I
+cannot help it; I shall be glad when they leave it and shift to
+the Grange!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"They are going to the Grange, then?" I said.
+
+"Yes," answered Mrs. Dean, "as soon as they are married; and that will
+be on New Year's day."
+
+"And who will live here then?"
+
+"Why, Joseph will take care of the house, and perhaps a lad to keep him
+company. They will live in the kitchen, and the rest will be shut up."
+
+"For the use of such ghosts as choose to inhabit it," I observed.
+
+"No, Mr. Lockwood," said Nelly, shaking her head. "I believe the dead
+are at peace, but it is not right to speak of them with levity."
+
+At that moment the garden gate swung to; the ramblers were returning.
+
+"_They_ are afraid of nothing," I grumbled, watching their approach
+through the window. "Together they would brave Satan and all
+his legions."
+
+As they stepped upon the door-stones, and halted to take a last look at
+the moon, or more correctly at each other, by her light, I felt
+irresistibly impelled to escape them again; and pressing a remembrance
+into the hands of Mrs. Dean, and disregarding her expostulations at my
+rudeness, I vanished through the kitchen, as they opened the house-door;
+and so should have confirmed Joseph in his opinion of his
+fellow-servant's gay indiscretions, had he not fortunately recognized me
+for a respectable character by the sweet ring of a sovereign at
+his feet.
+
+My walk home was lengthened by a diversion in the direction of the kirk.
+When beneath its walls, I perceived decay had made progress even in
+seven months--many a window showed black gaps deprived of glass; and
+slates jutted off, here and there, beyond the right line of the roof, to
+be gradually worked off in coming autumn storms.
+
+I sought, and soon discovered, the three headstones on the slope next
+the moor--the middle one, gray, and half buried in the heath--Edgar
+Linton's only harmonized by the turf and moss creeping up its
+foot--Heathcliff's still bare.
+
+I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths
+fluttering among the heath and harebells; listened to the soft wind
+breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine
+unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.
+
+
+
+PHILLIPS BROOKS
+
+(1835-1893)
+
+Phillips Brooks was born in Boston, Massachusetts, December 13th, 1835,
+and died there January 23d, 1893. He inherited the best traditions of
+New England history, being on the paternal side the direct descendant of
+John Cotton, and his mother's name, Phillips, standing for high learning
+and distinction in the Congregational church. Born at a time when the
+orthodox faith was fighting its bitterest battle with Unitarianism, his
+parents accepted the dogmas of the new theology, and had him baptized by
+a Unitarian clergyman. But while refusing certain dogmas of the orthodox
+church, they were the more thrown back for spiritual support upon the
+internal evidences of evangelical Christianity. "Holding still," says
+the Rev. Arthur Brooks, "in a greater or less degree, and with more or
+less precision, to the old statements, they counted the great fact that
+these statements enshrined more precious truth than any other."
+Transition to the Episcopal church was easy; the mother became an
+Episcopalian, and Phillips Brooks received all his early training in
+that communion. But heredity had its influence, and in after-life the
+great Bishop said that the Episcopal church could reap the fruits of the
+long and bitter controversy which divided the New England church, only
+as it discerned the spiritual worth of Puritanism, and the value of its
+contributions to the history of religious thought and character.
+
+Such were the early surroundings of the man, and the subsequent
+influences of his life tended to foster this liberal spirit. For such a
+purpose, Boston itself was a good place to live in: it was too large to
+be wholly provincial, and it was not so large that the individual was
+lost; and at that time it was moreover the literary centre of America.
+When Phillips Brooks entered Harvard, he came into an atmosphere of
+intense intellectual activity. James Walker was the president of the
+college, and Lowell, Holmes, Agassiz, and Longfellow were among the
+professors. He graduated with honor in 1855, and soon after entered the
+Episcopal theological seminary at Alexandria, Virginia.
+
+The transition from Harvard to this college was an abrupt one. The
+standards of the North and South were radically different. The theology
+of the Church in Virginia, while tolerant to that of other
+denominations, was uncompromisingly hostile to what it regarded as
+heterodox.
+
+When the War was declared he threw himself passionately into the cause
+of the Union. Yet his affection for his Southern classmates, men from
+whom he so widely differed, broadened that charity that was one of his
+finest characteristics, a charity that respected conviction
+wherever found.
+
+No man, in truth, ever did so much to remove prejudice against a Church
+that had never been popular in New England. To the old Puritan dislike
+of Episcopacy and distrust of the English Church as that of the
+oppressors of the colony, was added a sense of resentment toward its
+sacerdotal claims and its assumption of ecclesiastical supremacy. But he
+nevertheless protested against the claim by his own communion to the
+title of "The American Church," he preached occasionally in other
+pulpits, he even had among his audiences clergymen of other
+denominations, and he was able to reconcile men of different creeds into
+concord on what is essential in all. The breadth and depth of his
+teaching attracted so large a following that he increased the strength
+of the Episcopal Church in America far more than he could have done by
+carrying on an active propaganda in its behalf. Under his pastorate
+Trinity Church, Boston, became the centre of some of the most vigorous
+Christian activity in America.
+
+His first charge was the Church of the Advent, in Philadelphia; in two
+years he became rector of Holy Trinity Church in the same city. In 1869
+he was called to Trinity Church, Boston, of which he was rector until
+his election as bishop of Massachusetts in 1891.
+
+It is impossible to give an idea of Phillips Brooks without a word about
+his personality, which was almost contradictory. His commanding figure,
+his wit, the charm of his conversation, and a certain boyish gayety and
+naturalness, drew people to him as to a powerful magnet. He was one of
+the best known men in America; people pointed him out to strangers in
+his own city as they pointed out the Common and the Bunker Hill
+monument. When he went to England, where he preached before the Queen,
+men and women of all classes greeted him as a friend. They thronged the
+churches where he preached, not only to hear him but to see him. Many
+stories are told of him; some true, some more or less apocryphal, all
+proving the affectionate sympathy existing between him and his kind. It
+was said of him that as soon as he entered a pulpit he was absolutely
+impersonal. There was no trace of individual experience or theological
+conflict by which he might be labeled. He was simply a messenger of the
+truth as he held it, a mouthpiece of the gospel as he believed it had
+been delivered to him.
+
+[Illustration: PHILIPS BROOKS.]
+
+Although in his seminary days his sermons were described as vague and
+unpractical, Phillips Brooks was as great a preacher when under thirty
+years of age as he was at any later time. His early sermons,
+delivered to his first charge in Philadelphia, displayed the same
+individuality, the same force and completeness and clearness of
+construction, the same deep, strong undertone of religious thought, as
+his great discourses preached in Westminster Abbey six months before his
+death. His sentences are sonorous; his style was characterized by a
+noble simplicity, impressive, but without a touch showing that dramatic
+effect was strained for.
+
+He passionately loved nature in all her aspects, and traveled widely in
+search of the picturesque; but he used his experience with reserve, and
+his illustrations are used to explain human life. His power of painting
+a picture in a few bold strokes appears strikingly in the great sermon
+on the 'Lesson of the Life of Saul,' where he contrasts early promise
+and final failure; and in that other not less remarkable presentation of
+the vision of Saint Peter. His treatment of Bible narratives is not a
+translation into the modern manner, nor is it an adaptation, but a
+poetical rendering, in which the flavor of the original is not lost
+though the lesson is made contemporary. And while he did not transcribe
+nature upon his pages, his sermons are not lacking in decoration. He
+used figures of speech and drew freely on history and art for
+illustrations, but not so much to elucidate his subject as to ornament
+it. His essays on social and literary subjects are written with the aim
+of directness of statement, pure and simple; but the stuff of which his
+sermons are woven is of royal purple.
+
+The conviction that religious sentiment should penetrate the whole life
+showed itself in Phillips Brooks's relation to literature. "Truth bathed
+in light and uttered in love makes the new unit of power," he says in
+his essay on literature. It was his task to mediate between literature
+and theology, and restore theology to the place it lost through the
+abstractions of the schoolmen. What he would have done if he had devoted
+himself to literature alone, we can only conjecture by the excellence of
+his style in essays and sermons. They show his poetical temperament; and
+his little lyric 'O Little Town of Bethlehem' will be sung as long as
+Christmas is celebrated. His essays show more clearly even than his
+sermons his opinions on society, literature, and religion. They place
+him where he belongs, in that "small transfigured band the world cannot
+tame,"--the world of Cranmer, Jeremy Taylor, Robertson, Arnold, Maurice.
+His paper on Dean Stanley discloses his theological views as openly as
+do his addresses on 'Heresies and Orthodoxy.'
+
+As might be expected of one who, in the word's best sense, was so
+thoroughly a man, he had great influence with young men and was one of
+the most popular of Harvard preachers. It was his custom for thirty
+alternate years to go abroad in the summer, and there, as in America, he
+was regarded as a great pulpit orator. He took a large view of social
+questions and was in sympathy with all great popular movements. His
+advancement to the episcopate was warmly welcomed by all parties, except
+one branch of his own church with which his principles were at variance,
+and every denomination delighted in his elevation as if he were the
+peculiar property of each.
+
+He published several volumes of sermons. His works include 'Lectures on
+Preaching' (New York, 1877), 'Sermons' (1878-81), 'Bohlen Lectures'
+(1879), 'Baptism and Confirmation' (1880), 'Sermons Preached in English
+Churches' (1883), 'The Oldest Schools in America' (Boston, 1885),
+'Twenty Sermons' (New York, 1886), 'Tolerance' (1887), 'The Light of the
+World, and Other Sermons' (1890), and 'Essays and Addresses' (1894). His
+'Letters of Travel' show him to be an accurate observer, with a large
+fund of spontaneous humor. No letters to children are so delightful as
+those in this volume.
+
+
+
+
+     O LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM
+
+
+     O little town of Bethlehem,
+       How still we see thee lie!
+     Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
+       The silent stars go by.
+     Yet in thy dark streets shineth
+       The everlasting Light;
+     The hopes and fears of all the years
+       Are met in thee to-night.
+
+     O morning stars, together
+       Proclaim the holy birth!
+     And praises sing to God the King,
+       And peace to men on earth.
+     For Christ is born of Mary,
+       And gathered all above;
+     While mortals sleep the angels keep
+       Their watch of wondering love.
+
+     How silently, how silently,
+       The wondrous gift is given!
+     So God imparts to human hearts
+       The blessings of his heaven.
+     No ear may hear his coming;
+       But in this world of sin,
+     Where meek souls will receive him still,
+       The dear Christ enters in.
+
+Where children pure and happy
+       Pray to the blessèd Child,
+     Where Misery cries out to thee,
+       Son of the Mother mild;
+     Where Charity stands watching,
+       And Faith holds wide the door,
+     The dark night wakes; the glory breaks,
+       And Christmas comes once more.
+
+     O holy Child of Bethlehem,
+       Descend to us, we pray!
+     Cast out our sin and enter in;
+       Be born in us to-day.
+     We hear the Christmas angels
+       The great glad tidings tell;
+     O come to us, abide with us,
+       Our Lord Emmanuel!
+
+     Copyrighted by E.P. Dutton and Company, New York.
+[Illustration]
+
+_THE HOLY CHILD OF BETHLEHEM_.
+
+Photogravure from a Painting by H. Havenith.
+
+"Where children pure and happy Pray to the blessed Child."
+
+
+
+PERSONAL CHARACTER
+
+From 'Essays and Addresses'
+
+As one looks around the world, and as one looks around our own land
+to-day, he sees that the one thing we need in high places--the thing
+whose absence, among those who hold the reins of highest power, is
+making us all anxious with regard to the progress of the country--is
+personal character. The trouble is not what we hold to be mistaken ideas
+with regard to policies of government, but it is the absence of lofty
+and unselfish character. It is the absence of the complete consecration
+of a man's self to the public good; it is the willingness of men to
+bring their personal and private spites into spheres whose elevation
+ought to shame such things into absolute death; the tendencies of men,
+even of men whom the nation has put in very high places indeed, to count
+those high places their privileges, and to try to draw from them, not
+help for humanity and the community over which they rule, but their own
+mean personal private advantage.
+
+If there is any power that can elevate human character: if there is any
+power which, without inspiring men with a supernatural knowledge with
+regard to policies of government; without making men solve all at once,
+intuitively, the intricacies of problems of legislation with which they
+are called upon to deal; without making men see instantly to the very
+heart of every matter; if there is any power which could permeate to the
+very bottom of our community, which would make men unselfish and
+true--why, the errors of men, the mistakes men might make in their
+judgment, would not be an obstacle in the way of the progress of this
+great nation in the work which God has given her to do. They would make
+jolts, but nothing more. Or in the course which God has appointed her to
+run she would go to her true results. There is no power that man has
+ever seen that can abide; there is no power of which man has ever
+dreamed that can regenerate human character except religion; and till
+the Christian religion, which is the religion of this land--till the
+Christian religion shall have so far regenerated human character in this
+land that multitudes of men shall act under its high impulses and
+principles, so that the men who are not inspired with them shall be
+shamed at least into an outward conformity with them, there is no
+security for the great final continuance of the nation.
+
+Copyrighted by E.P. Dutton and Company, New York.
+
+
+
+THE COURAGE OF OPINIONS
+
+From 'Essays and Addresses'
+
+We have spoken of physical courage, or the courage of nerves; of moral
+courage, or the courage of principles. Besides these there is
+intellectual courage, or the courage of opinions. Let me say a few words
+upon that, for surely there is nothing which we more need to understand.
+
+The ways in which people form their opinions are most remarkable. Every
+man, when he begins his reasonable life, finds certain general opinions
+current in the world. He is shaped by these opinions in one way or
+another, either directly or by reaction. If he is soft and plastic, like
+the majority of people, he takes the opinions that are about him for his
+own. If he is self-asserting and defiant, he takes the opposite of these
+opinions and gives to them his vehement adherence. We know the two kinds
+well, and as we ordinarily see them, the fault which is at the root of
+both is intellectual cowardice. One man clings servilely to the old
+ready-made opinions which he finds, because he is afraid of being
+called rash and radical; another rejects the traditions of his people
+from fear of being thought fearful, and timid, and a slave. The results
+are very different: one is the tame conservative and the other is the
+fiery iconoclast; but I beg you to see that the cause in both cases is
+the same. Both are cowards. Both are equally removed from that brave
+seeking of the truth which is not set upon either winning or avoiding
+any name, which will take no opinion for the sake of conformity and
+reject no opinion for the sake of originality; which is free,
+therefore--free to gather its own convictions, a slave neither to any
+compulsion nor to any antagonism. Tell me, have you never seen two
+teachers, one of them slavishly adopting old methods because he feared
+to be called "imitator," the other crudely devising new plans because he
+was afraid of seeming conservative, both of them really cowards, neither
+of them really thinking out his work? ...
+
+The great vice of our people in their relation to the politics of the
+land is cowardice. It is not lack of intelligence: our people know the
+meaning of political conditions with wonderful sagacity. It is not low
+morality: the great mass of our people apply high standards to the acts
+of public men. But it is cowardice. It is the disposition of one part of
+our people to fall in with current ways of working, to run with the
+mass; and of another part to rush headlong into this or that new scheme
+or policy of opposition, merely to escape the stigma of conservatism.
+
+
+
+LITERATURE AND LIFE
+
+From 'Essays and Addresses'
+
+Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the
+work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.
+The forests are full of trees before the sea is thick with ships. So the
+world abounds in life before men begin to reason and describe and
+analyze and sing, and literature is born. The fact and the action must
+come first. This is true in every kind of literature. The mind and its
+workings are before the metaphysician. Beauty and romance antedate the
+poet. The nations rise and fall before the historian tells their story.
+Nature's profusion exists before the first scientific book is written.
+Even the facts of mathematics must be true before the first diagram is
+drawn for their demonstration.
+
+To own and recognize this priority of life is the first need of
+literature. Literature which does not utter a life already existent,
+more fundamental than itself, is shallow and unreal. I had a schoolmate
+who at the age of twenty published a volume of poems called
+'Life-Memories.' The book died before it was born. There were no real
+memories, because there had been no life. So every science which does
+not utter investigated fact, every history which does not tell of
+experience, every poetry which is not based upon the truth of things,
+has no real life. It does not perish; it is never born. Therefore men
+and nations must live before they can make literature. Boys and girls do
+not write books. Oregon and Van Diemen's Land produce no literature:
+they are too busy living. The first attempts at literature of any
+country, as of our own, are apt to be unreal and imitative and
+transitory, because life has not yet accumulated and presented itself in
+forms which recommend themselves to literature. The wars must come, the
+clamorous problems must arise, the new types of character must be
+evolved, the picturesque social complication must develop, a life must
+come, and then will be the true time for a literature.... Literature
+grows feeble and conceited unless it ever recognizes the priority and
+superiority of life, and stands in genuine awe before the greatness of
+the men and of the ages which have simply lived.
+
+
+
+CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN (1771-1810)
+
+Not only was Brockden Brown the first American man-of-letters
+proper,--one writing for a living before we had any real literature of
+our own,--but his work possessed a genuine power and originality which
+gives it some claim to remembrance for its own sake. And it is fair
+always to remember that a given product from a pioneer indicates a far
+greater endowment than the same from one of a group in a more developed
+age. The forerunner lacks not one thing only, but many things, which
+help his successors. He lacks the mental friction from, the emulation
+of, the competition with, other writers; he lacks the stimulus and
+comfort of sympathetic companionship; he lacks an audience to spur him
+on, and a market to work for; lacks labor-saving conventions, training,
+and an environment that heartens him instead of merely tolerating him.
+Like Robinson Crusoe, he must make his tools before he can use them. A
+meagre result may therefore be a proof of great abilities.
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES B. BROWN]
+
+The United States in 1800 was mentally and morally a colony of Great
+Britain still. A few hundred thousand white families scattered over
+about as many square miles of territory, much of it refractory
+wilderness with more refractory inhabitants; with no cities of any size,
+and no communication save by wretched roads or by sailing vessels; no
+rich old universities for centres of culture, and no rich leisured
+society to enjoy it; the energies of the people perforce absorbed in
+subduing material obstacles, or solidifying a political experiment
+disbelieved in by the very men who organized it;--neither time nor
+materials existed then for an independent literary life, which is the
+growth of security and comfort and leisure if it embraces a whole
+society, or of endowed college foundations and an aristocracy if it is
+only of the few. Hence American society took its literary meals at the
+common table of the English-speaking race, with little or no effort at a
+separate establishment. There was much writing, but mostly polemic or
+journalistic. When real literature was attempted, it consisted in
+general of imitations of British essays, or fiction, or poetry; and in
+the last two cases not even imitations of the best models in either. The
+essays were modeled on Addison; the poetry on the heavy imitators of
+Pope's heroics; the fiction either on the effusive sentimentalists who
+followed Richardson, or on the pseudo-Orientalists like Walpole and
+Lewis, or on the pseudo-mediævalists like Mrs. Roche and Mrs. Radcliffe.
+This sort of work filled the few literary periodicals of the day, but
+was not read enough to make such publications profitable even then, and
+is pretty much all unreadable now.
+
+Charles Brockden Brown stands in marked contrast to these second-hand
+weaklings, not only by his work but still more by his method and temper.
+In actual achievement he did not quite fulfill the promise of his early
+books, and cannot be set high among his craft. He was an inferior
+artist; and though he achieved naturalism of matter, he clung to the
+theatrical artificiality of style which was in vogue. But if he had
+broken away from all traditions, he could have gained no hearing
+whatever; he died young--twenty years more might have left him a much
+greater figure; and he wrought in disheartening loneliness of spirit.
+His accomplishment was that of a pioneer. He was the first American
+author to see that the true field for his fellows was America and not
+Europe. He realized, as the genius of Châteaubriand realized at almost
+the same moment, the artistic richness of the material which lay to hand
+in the silent forest vastnesses, with their unfamiliar life of man and
+beast, and their possibilities of mystery enough to satisfy the most
+craving. He was not the equal of the author of 'The Natchez' and
+'Atala'; but he had a fresh and daring mind. He turned away from both
+the emotional orgasms and the stage claptrap of his time, to break
+ground for all future American novelists. He antedated Cooper in the
+field of Indian life and character; and he entered the regions of mystic
+supernaturalism and the disordered human brain in advance of
+Hawthorne and Poe.
+
+That his choice of material was neither chance nor blind instinct, but
+deliberate judgment and insight, is shown by the preface to 'Edgar
+Huntly,' in which he sets forth his views:--
+
+     "America has opened new views to the naturalist and
+     politician, but has seldom furnished themes to the
+     moral-pointer. That new springs of action and new motives of
+     curiosity should operate, that the field of investigation
+     opened to us by our own country should differ essentially
+     from those which exist in Europe, may be readily conceived.
+     The sources of amusement to the fancy and instruction to the
+     heart that are peculiar to ourselves are equally numerous and
+     inexhaustible. It is the purpose of this work to profit by
+     some of these sources, to exhibit a series of adventures
+     growing out of the conditions of our country, and connected
+     with one of the most common and wonderful diseases of the
+     human frame. Puerile superstition and exploded manners,
+     Gothic castles and chimeras, are the materials usually
+     employed for this end. The incidents of Indian hostility and
+     the perils of the Western wilderness are far more suitable,
+     and for a native of America to overlook these would admit of
+     no apology. These therefore are in part the ingredients of
+     this tale."
+
+Brown's was an uneventful career. He was much given to solitary rambles
+and musings, varied by social intercourse with a few congenial friends
+and the companionship of his affectionate family, and later, many hours
+spent at his writing-desk or in an editorial chair.
+
+He was born January 17th, 1771, in Philadelphia, of good Quaker stock. A
+delicate boyhood, keeping him away from the more active life of youths
+of his own age, fostered, a love for solitude and a taste for reading.
+He received a good classical education; but poor health prevented him
+from pursuing his studies at college. At his family's wish he entered a
+law office instead; but the literary instinct was strong within him.
+Literature at this time was scarcely considered a profession. Magazine
+circulations were too limited for publishers to pay for contributions,
+and all an author usually got or expected to get was some copies to
+distribute among his friends. To please his prudent home circle, Brown
+dallied for a while with the law; but a visit to New York, where he was
+cordially received by the members of the "Friendly Club," opened up
+avenues of literary work to him, and he removed to New York in 1796 to
+devote himself to it.
+
+The first important work he produced was 'Wieland: or the
+Transformation' (1798). It shows at the outset Brown's characteristic
+traits--independence of British materials and methods. It is in
+substance a powerful tale of ventriloquism operating on an unbalanced
+and superstitious mind. Its psychology is acute and searching; the
+characterization realistic and effective. His second book, 'Ormond: or
+the Secret Witness' (1799), does not reach the level of 'Wieland.' It is
+more conventional, and not entirely independent of foreign models,
+especially Godwin, whom Brown greatly admired. A rapid writer, he soon
+had the MS. of his next novel in the hands of the publisher. The first
+part of 'Arthur Mervyn: or Memoirs of the Year 1793' came out in 1799,
+and the second part in 1800. It is the best known of his six novels.
+Though the scene is laid in Philadelphia, Brown embodied in it his
+experience of the yellow fever which raged in New York in 1799. The
+passage describing this epidemic can stand beside Defoe's or Poe's or
+Manzoni's similar descriptions, for power in setting forth the horrors
+of the plague.
+
+In the same year with the first volume of 'Arthur Mervyn' appeared
+'Edgar Huntly: or Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker.' Here he deals with the
+wild life of nature, the rugged solitudes, and the redskins, the field
+in which he was followed by Cooper. A thrilling scene in which a
+panther is chief actor was long familiar to American children in their
+school reading-books.
+
+In 1801 came out his last two novels, 'Clara Howard: In a Series of
+Letters,' and 'Jane Talbot.' They are a departure from his previous
+work: instead of dealing with uncanny subjects they treat of quiet
+domestic and social life. They show also a great advance on his previous
+books in constructive art. In 1799 Brown became editor of the Monthly
+Magazine and American Review, and contributed largely to it.
+
+In the autumn of 1801 he returned to Philadelphia, to assume the
+editorship of Conrad's Literary Magazine and American Review. The duties
+of this office suspended his own creative work, and he did not live to
+take up again the novelist's stylus. In 1806 he became editor of the
+Annual Register. His genuine literary force is best proved by the fact
+that whatever periodical he took in charge, he raised its standard of
+quality and made it a success for the time.
+
+He died in February, 1810. The work to which he had given the greater
+part of his time and strength, especially toward the end of his life,
+was in its nature not only transitory, but not of a sort to keep his
+name alive. The magazines were children of a day, and the editor's
+repute as such could hardly survive them long. The fame which belongs to
+Charles Brockden Brown, grudgingly accorded by a country that can ill
+afford to neglect one of its earliest, most devoted, and most original
+workers, rests on his novels. Judged by standards of the present day,
+these are far from faultless. The facts are not very coherent, the
+diction is artificial in the fashion of the day. But when all is said,
+Brown was a rare story-teller; he interested his readers by the novelty
+of his material, and he was quite objective in its treatment, never
+obtruding his own personality. 'Wieland,' 'Edgar Huntly,' and 'Arthur
+Mervyn,' the trilogy of his best novels, are not to be contemned; and he
+has the distinction of being in very truth the pioneer of
+_American_ letters.
+
+
+
+WIELAND'S STATEMENT
+
+Theodore Wieland, the prisoner at the bar, was now called upon for his
+defense. He looked around him for some time in silence, and with a mild
+countenance. At length he spoke:--
+
+It is strange: I am known to my judges and my auditors. Who is there
+present a stranger to the character of Wieland? Who knows him not as a
+husband, as a father, as a friend? Yet here am I arraigned as a
+criminal. I am charged with diabolical malice; I am accused of the
+murder of my wife and my children!
+
+It is true, they were slain by me; they all perished by my hand. The
+task of vindication is ignoble. What is it that I am called to
+vindicate? and before whom?
+
+You know that they are dead, and that they were killed by me. What more
+would you have? Would you extort from me a statement of my motives? Have
+you failed to discover them already? You charge me with malice: but your
+eyes are not shut; your reason is still vigorous; your memory has not
+forsaken you. You know whom it is that you thus charge. The habits of
+his life are known to you; his treatment of his wife and his offspring
+is known to you; the soundness of his integrity and the unchangeableness
+of his principles are familiar to your apprehension: yet you persist in
+this charge! You lead me hither manacled as a felon; you deem me worthy
+of a vile and tormenting death!
+
+Who are they whom I have devoted to death? My wife--the little ones that
+drew their being from me--that creature who, as she surpassed them in
+excellence, claimed a larger affection than those whom natural
+affinities bound to my heart. Think ye that malice could have urged me
+to this deed? Hide your audacious fronts from the scrutiny of heaven.
+Take refuge in some cavern unvisited by human eyes. Ye may deplore your
+wickedness or folly, but ye cannot expiate it.
+
+Think not that I speak for your sakes. Hug to your hearts this
+detestable infatuation. Deem me still a murderer, and drag me to
+untimely death. I make not an effort to dispel your illusion; I utter
+not a word to cure you of your sanguinary folly: but there are probably
+some in this assembly who have come from far; for their sakes, whose
+distance has disabled them from knowing me, I will tell what I have
+done, and why.
+
+It is needless to say that God is the object of my supreme passion. I
+have cherished in his presence a single and upright heart. I have
+thirsted for the knowledge of his will. I have burnt with ardor to
+approve my faith and my obedience. My days have been spent in searching
+for the revelation of that will; but my days have been mournful, because
+my search failed. I solicited direction; I turned on every side where
+glimmerings of light could be discovered. I have not been wholly
+uninformed; but my knowledge has always stopped short of certainty.
+Dissatisfaction has insinuated itself into all my thoughts. My purposes
+have been pure, my wishes indefatigable; but not till lately were these
+purposes thoroughly accomplished and these wishes fully gratified.
+
+I thank Thee, my Father, for Thy bounty; that Thou didst not ask a less
+sacrifice than this; that Thou placedst me in a condition to testify my
+submission to Thy will! What have I withheld which it was Thy pleasure
+to exact? Now may I, with dauntless and erect eye, claim my reward,
+since I have given Thee the treasure of my soul.
+
+I was at my own house; it was late in the evening; my sister had gone to
+the city, but proposed to return. It was in expectation of her return
+that my wife and I delayed going to bed beyond the usual hour; the rest
+of the family, however, were retired. My mind was contemplative and
+calm--not wholly devoid of apprehension on account of my sister's
+safety. Recent events, not easily explained, had suggested the existence
+of some danger; but this danger was without a distinct form in our
+imagination, and scarcely ruffled our tranquillity.
+
+Time passed, and my sister did not arrive. Her house is at some distance
+from mine, and though her arrangements had been made with a view of
+residing with us, it was possible that through forgetfulness, or the
+occurrence of unforeseen emergencies, she had returned to her
+own dwelling.
+
+Hence it was conceived proper that I should ascertain the truth by going
+thither. I went. On my way my mind was full of those ideas which related
+to my intellectual condition. In the torrent of fervid conceptions I
+lost sight of my purpose. Sometimes I stood still; sometimes I wandered
+from my path, and experienced some difficulty, on recovering from my fit
+of musing, to regain it.
+
+The series of my thoughts is easily traced. At first every vein beat
+with raptures known only to the man whose parental and conjugal love is
+without limits, and the cup of whose desires, immense as it is,
+overflows with gratification. I know not why emotions that were
+perpetual visitants should now have recurred with unusual energy. The
+transition was not new from sensations of joy to a consciousness of
+gratitude. The Author of my being was likewise the dispenser of every
+gift with which that being was embellished. The service to which a
+benefactor like this was entitled could not be circumscribed. My social
+sentiments were indebted to their alliance with devotion for all their
+value. All passions are base, all joys feeble, all energies malignant,
+which are not drawn from this source.
+
+For a time my contemplations soared above earth and its inhabitants. I
+stretched forth my hands; I lifted my eyes, and exclaimed, "Oh, that I
+might be admitted to thy presence! that mine were the supreme delight of
+knowing Thy will and of performing it!--the blissful privilege of direct
+communication with Thee, and of listening to the audible enunciation of
+Thy pleasure!
+
+"What task would I not undertake, what privation would I not cheerfully
+endure, to testify my love of Thee? Alas! Thou hidest Thyself from my
+view; glimpses only of Thy excellence and beauty are afforded me. Would
+that a momentary emanation from Thy glory would visit me! that some
+unambiguous token of Thy presence would salute my senses!"
+
+In this mood I entered the house of my sister. It was vacant. Scarcely
+had I regained recollection of the purpose that brought me hither.
+Thoughts of a different tendency had such an absolute possession of my
+mind, that the relations of time and space were almost obliterated from
+my understanding. These wanderings, however, were restrained, and I
+ascended to her chamber. I had no light, and might have known by
+external observation that the house was without any inhabitant. With
+this, however, I was not satisfied. I entered the room, and the object
+of my search not appearing, I prepared to return. The darkness required
+some caution in descending the stair. I stretched out my hand to seize
+the balustrade, by which I might regulate my steps. How shall I describe
+the lustre which at that moment burst upon my vision?
+
+I was dazzled. My organs were bereaved of their activity. My eyelids
+were half closed, and my hands withdrawn from the balustrade. A nameless
+fear chilled my veins, and I stood motionless. This irradiation did not
+retire or lessen. It seemed as if some powerful effulgence covered me
+like a mantle. I opened my eyes and found all about me luminous and
+glowing. It was the element of heaven that flowed around. Nothing but a
+fiery stream was at first visible; but anon a shrill voice from behind
+called upon me to attend.
+
+I turned. It is forbidden to describe what I saw: words, indeed, would
+be wanting to the task. The lineaments of that Being whose veil was now
+lifted and whose visage beamed upon my sight, no hues of pencil or of
+language can portray. As it spoke, the accents thrilled to my
+heart:--"Thy prayers are heard. In proof of thy faith, render me thy
+wife. This is the victim I choose. Call her hither, and here let her
+fall." The sound and visage and light vanished at once.
+
+What demand was this? The blood of Catharine was to be shed! My wife was
+to perish by my hand! I sought opportunity to attest my virtue. Little
+did I expect that a proof like this would have been demanded.
+
+"My wife!" I exclaimed: "O God! substitute some other victim. Make me
+not the butcher of my wife. My own blood is cheap. This will I pour out
+before Thee with a willing heart; but spare, I beseech Thee, this
+precious life, or commission some other than her husband to perform the
+bloody deed."
+
+In vain. The conditions were prescribed; the decree had gone forth, and
+nothing remained but to execute it. I rushed out of the house and across
+the intermediate fields, and stopped not till I entered my own parlor.
+My wife had remained here during my absence, in anxious expectation of
+my return with some tidings of her sister. I had none to communicate.
+For a time I was breathless with my speed. This, and the tremors that
+shook my frame, and the wildness of my looks, alarmed her. She
+immediately suspected some disaster to have happened to her friend, and
+her own speech was as much overpowered by emotion as mine. She was
+silent, but her looks manifested her impatience to hear what I had to
+communicate. I spoke, but with so much precipitation as scarcely to be
+understood; catching her at the same time by the arm, and forcibly
+pulling her from her seat.
+
+"Come along with me; fly; waste not a moment; time will be lost, and the
+deed will be omitted. Tarry not, question not, but fly with me."
+
+This deportment added afresh to her alarms. Her eyes pursued mine, and
+she said, "What is the matter? For God's sake, what is the matter? Where
+would you have me go?"
+
+My eyes were fixed upon her countenance while she spoke. I thought upon
+her virtues; I viewed her as the mother of my babes; as my wife. I
+recalled the purpose for which I thus urged her attendance. My heart
+faltered, and I saw that I must rouse to this work all my faculties. The
+danger of the least delay was imminent.
+
+I looked away from her, and, again exerting my force, drew her toward
+the door. "You must go with me; indeed you must."
+
+In her fright she half resisted my efforts, and again exclaimed, "Good
+heaven! what is it you mean? Where go? What has happened? Have you
+found Clara?"
+
+"Follow me and you will see," I answered, still urging her reluctant
+steps forward.
+
+"What frenzy has seized you? Something must needs have happened. Is she
+sick? Have you found her?"
+
+"Come and see. Follow me and know for yourself."
+
+Still she expostulated and besought me to explain this mysterious
+behavior. I could not trust myself to answer her, to look at her; but
+grasping her arm, I drew her after me. She hesitated, rather through
+confusion of mind than from unwillingness to accompany me. This
+confusion gradually abated, and she moved forward, but with irresolute
+footsteps and continual exclamations of wonder and terror. Her
+interrogations of "What was the matter?" and "Whither was I going?" were
+ceaseless and vehement.
+
+It was the scope of my efforts not to think; to keep up a conflict and
+uproar in my mind in which all order and distinctness should be lost; to
+escape from the sensations produced by her voice. I was therefore
+silent. I strove to abridge this interval by haste, and to waste all my
+attention in furious gesticulations.
+
+In this state of mind we reached my sister's door. She looked at the
+windows and saw that all was desolate. "Why come we here? There is
+nobody here. I will not go in."
+
+Still I was dumb; but, opening the door, I drew her into the entry. This
+was the allotted scene; here she was to fall. I let go her hand, and
+pressing my palms against my forehead, made one mighty effort to work up
+my soul to the deed.
+
+In vain; it would not be; my courage was appalled, my arms nerveless. I
+muttered prayers that my strength might be aided from above. They
+availed nothing.
+
+Horror diffused itself over me. This conviction of my cowardice, my
+rebellion, fastened upon me, and I stood rigid and cold as marble. From
+this state I was somewhat relieved by my wife's voice, who renewed her
+supplications to be told why we come hither and what was the fate of my
+sister....
+
+The fellness of a gloomy hurricane but faintly resembled the discord
+that reigned in my mind. To omit this sacrifice must not be; yet my
+sinews had refused to perform it. No alternative was offered. To rebel
+against the mandate was impossible; but obedience would render me the
+executioner of my wife. My will was strong, but my limbs refused
+their office.
+
+That accents and looks so winning should disarm me of my resolution was
+to be expected. My thoughts were thrown anew into anarchy. I spread my
+hand before my eyes that I might not see her, and answered only by
+groans. She took my other hand between hers, and pressing it to her
+heart, spoke with that voice which had ever swayed my will and wafted
+away sorrow:--
+
+"My friend! my soul's friend! tell me thy cause of grief. Do I not merit
+to partake with thee in thy cares? Am I not thy wife?"
+
+This was too much. I broke from her embrace and retired to a corner of
+the room. In this pause, courage was once more infused into me. I
+resolved to execute my duty. She followed me, and renewed her passionate
+entreaties to know the cause of my distress. I raised my head and
+regarded her with steadfast looks. I muttered something about death, and
+the injunctions of my duty. At these words she shrunk back, and looked
+at me with a new expression of anguish. After a pause, she clasped her
+hands, and exclaimed:---
+
+"O Wieland! Wieland! God grant that I am mistaken! but something surely
+is wrong. I see it; it is too plain; thou art undone--lost to me and to
+thyself." At the same time she gazed on my features with intensest
+anxiety, in hope that different symptoms would take place. I replied to
+her with vehemence:--
+
+"Undone! No; my duty is known, and I thank my God that my cowardice is
+now vanquished and I have power to fulfill it. Catharine, I pity the
+weakness of thy nature; I pity thee, but must not spare. Thy life is
+claimed from my hands; thou must die!"
+
+Fear was now added to her grief. "What mean you? Why talk you of death?
+Bethink yourself, Wieland; bethink yourself, and this fit will pass. Oh,
+why came I hither? Why did you drag me hither?"
+
+"I brought thee hither to fulfill a divine command. I am appointed thy
+destroyer, and destroy thee I must." Saying this, I seized her wrists.
+She shrieked aloud, and endeavored to free herself from my grasp; but
+her efforts were vain.
+
+"Surely, surely, Wieland, thou dost not mean it. Am I not thy wife? and
+wouldst thou kill me? Thou wilt not; and yet--I see--thou art Wieland no
+longer! A fury resistless and horrible possesses thee. Spare
+me--spare--help--help--"
+
+Till her breath was stopped she shrieked for help, for mercy. When she
+could speak no longer, her gestures, her looks appealed to my
+compassion. My accursed hand was irresolute and tremulous. I meant thy
+death to be sudden, thy struggles to be brief. Alas! my heart was
+infirm, my resolves mutable. Thrice I slackened my grasp, and life kept
+its hold, though in the midst of pangs. Her eyeballs started from their
+sockets. Grimness and distortion took the place of all that used to
+bewitch me into transport and subdue me into reverence. I was
+commissioned to kill thee, but not to torment thee with the foresight of
+thy death; not to multiply thy fears and prolong thy agonies. Haggard
+and pale and lifeless, at length thou ceasedst to contend with
+thy destiny.
+
+This was the moment of triumph. Thus had I successfully subdued the
+stubbornness of human passions: the victim which had been demanded was
+given; the deed was done past recall.
+
+I lifted the corpse in my arms and laid it on the bed. I gazed upon it
+with delight. Such was the elation of my thoughts that I even broke into
+laughter. I clapped my hands and exclaimed, "It is done! My sacred duty
+is fulfilled! To that I have sacrificed, O my God, Thy last and best
+gift, my wife!"
+
+For a while I thus soared above frailty. I imagined I had set myself
+forever beyond the reach of selfishness; but my imaginations were false.
+This rapture quickly subsided. I looked again at my wife. My joyous
+ebullitions vanished, and I asked myself who it was whom I saw.
+Methought it could not be Catharine. It could not be the woman who had
+lodged for years in my heart; who had slept nightly in my bosom; who had
+borne in her womb, who had fostered at her breast, the beings who called
+me father; whom I have watched with delight, and cherished with a
+fondness ever new and perpetually growing; it could not be the same.
+Where was her bloom? These deadly and blood-suffused orbs but ill
+resemble the azure and ecstatic tenderness of her eyes. The lucid stream
+that meandered over that bosom, the glow of love that was wont to sit
+upon that cheek, are much unlike these livid stains and this hideous
+deformity. Alas! these were the traces of agony; the gripe of the
+assassin had been here!
+
+I will not dwell upon my lapse into desperate and outrageous sorrow. The
+breath of heaven that sustained me was withdrawn, and I sunk into _mere
+man_. I leaped from the floor; I dashed my head against the wall; I
+uttered screams of horror; I panted after torment and pain. Eternal fire
+and the bickerings of hell, compared with what I felt, were music and a
+bed of roses.
+
+I thank my God that this degeneracy was transient--that He deigned once
+more to raise me aloft. I thought upon what I had done as a sacrifice to
+duty, and _was calm_. My wife was dead; but I reflected that though this
+source of human consolation was closed, yet others were still open. If
+the transports of a husband were no more, the feelings of a father had
+still scope for exercise. When remembrance of their mother should excite
+too keen a pang, I would look upon them and _be comforted_.
+
+While I revolved these ideas, new warmth flowed in upon my heart. I was
+wrong. These feelings were the growth of selfishness. Of this I was not
+aware; and to dispel the mist that obscured my perceptions, a new
+effulgence and a new mandate were necessary. From these thoughts I was
+recalled by a ray that was shot into the room. A voice spake like that
+which I had before heard:--"Thou hast done well. But all is not
+done--the sacrifice is incomplete--thy children must be offered--they
+must perish with their mother!--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thou, Omnipotent and Holy! Thou knowest that my actions were conformable
+to Thy will. I know not what is crime; what actions are evil in their
+ultimate and comprehensive tendency, or what are good. Thy knowledge, as
+Thy power, is unlimited. I have taken Thee for my guide, and cannot err.
+To the arms of Thy protection I intrust my safety. In the awards of Thy
+justice I confide for my recompense.
+
+Come death when it will, I am safe. Let calumny and abhorrence pursue me
+among men; I shall not be defrauded of my dues. The peace of virtue and
+the glory of obedience will be my portion hereafter.
+
+
+
+JOHN BROWN
+
+(1810-1882)
+
+John Brown, the son of a secession-church minister, was born in Biggar,
+Lanarkshire, Scotland, September 22d, 1810, and died in Edinburgh, May
+11th, 1882. He was educated at the Edinburgh High School and at the
+University, and graduated in medicine in 1833. For a time he was a
+surgeon's assistant to the great Dr. Syme, the man of whom he said "he
+never wasted a drop of ink or blood," and whose character he has drawn
+in one of his most charming biographies. When he began to practice for
+himself he gradually "got into a good connection," and his patients made
+him their confidant and adviser. He was considered a fine doctor too,
+for he had remarkable common-sense, and was said to be unerring in
+diagnosis.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN BROWN]
+
+Dr. Brown did not, as is commonly believed, dislike his profession; but
+later on he took a view of it which seemed non-progressive, and his
+success as a writer no doubt interfered with his practice. His friend
+Professor Masson draws a pleasant picture of him when he first settled
+in practice, as a dark-haired man with soft, fine eyes and a benignant
+manner, the husband of a singularly beautiful woman, and much liked and
+sought after in the social circles of Edinburgh. This was partly owing
+to the charm of his conversation, and partly to the literary reputation
+he had achieved through some articles on the Academy exhibition and on
+local artists. Though he had little technical training, he had an eye
+for color and form, an appreciation of the artist's meaning, and an
+instinct for discovering genius, as in the case of Noel Paton and David
+Scott. He soon became an authority among artists, and he gave a new
+impulse to national art.
+
+He contributed largely to the North British Review. In 1855 he published
+'Horæ Subsceivæ,' which contained, among medical biography and
+medico-literary papers, the immortal Scotch idyl, 'Rab and his Friends.'
+Up to this time the unique personality of the doctor, with its
+delightful mixture of humor and sympathy, was known only to his own
+circle. The appearance of 'Rab and his Friends' revealed it to the
+world. Brief as it is in form, and simple in outline, Scotland has
+produced nothing so full of pure, pathetic genius since Scott.
+
+Another volume of 'Horæ Subsceivæ' appeared two years after, and some
+selections from it, and others from unpublished manuscript, were printed
+separately in the volume entitled 'Spare Hours.' They met with instant
+and unprecedented success. In a short time ten thousand copies of
+'Minchmoor' and 'James the Doorkeeper' were sold, fifteen thousand
+copies of 'Pet Marjorie,' and 'Rab' had reached its fiftieth thousand.
+With all this success and praise, and constantly besought by publishers
+for his work, he could not be persuaded that his writings were of any
+permanent value, and was reluctant to publish. In 1882 appeared a third
+volume of the 'Horæ Subsceivæ,' which included all his writings. A few
+weeks after its publication he died.
+
+The Doctor's medical essays, which are replete with humor, are written
+in defense of his special theory, the distinction between the active and
+the speculative mind. He thought there was too much science and too
+little intuitive sagacity in the world, and looked back longingly to the
+old-time common-sense, which he believed modern science had driven away.
+His own mind was anti-speculative, although he paid just tributes to
+philosophy and science and admired their achievements. He stigmatized
+the speculations of the day as the "lust of innovation." But the reader
+cares little for the opinions of Dr. Brown as arguments: his subject is
+of little consequence if he will but talk. By the charm of his
+story-telling these dead Scotch doctors are made to live again. The
+death-bed of Syme, for instance, is as pathetic as the wonderful paper
+on Thackeray's death; and to-day many a heart is sore for 'Pet
+Marjorie,' the ten-year-old child who died in Scotland almost a hundred
+years ago.
+
+As an essayist, Dr. Brown belongs to the followers of Addison and
+Charles Lamb, and he blends humor, pathos, and quiet hopefulness with a
+grave and earnest dignity. He delighted, not like Lamb "in the habitable
+parts of the earth," but in the lonely moorlands and pastoral hills,
+over which his silent, stalwart shepherds walked with swinging stride.
+He had a keen appreciation for anything he felt to be excellent: his
+usual question concerning a stranger, either in literature or life, was
+"Has he wecht, sir?"--quoting Dr. Chalmers; and when he wanted to give
+the highest praise, he said certain writing was "strong meat." He had a
+warm enthusiasm for the work of other literary men: an artist himself,
+he was quick to appreciate and seize upon the witty thing or the
+excellent thing wherever he found it, and he was eager to share his
+pleasure with the whole world. He reintroduced to the public Henry
+Vaughn, the quaint seventeenth-century poet; he wrote a sympathetic
+memoir of Arthur Hallam; he imported 'Modern Painters,' and enlightened
+Edinburgh as to its merits. His art papers were what Walter Pater would
+call "appreciations,"--that is to say, he dwelt upon the beauties of
+what he described rather than upon the defects. What he did not admire
+he left alone.
+
+As the author of 'Rab' loved the lonely glens on Minchmoor and in the
+Enterkin, or where Queen Mary's "baby garden" shows its box-row border
+among the Spanish chestnuts of Lake Monteith, so he loved the Scottish
+character, "bitter to the taste and sweet to the diaphragm": "Jeemes"
+the beadle, with his family worship when he himself was all the family;
+the old Aberdeen Jacobite people; Miss Stirling Graham of Duntrune, who
+in her day bewitched Edinburgh; Rab, Ailie, and Bob Ainslie. His
+characters are oddities, but are drawn without a touch of cynicism. What
+an amount of playful, wayward nonsense lies between these pages, and
+what depths of melancholy under the fun! Like Sir Walter, he had a great
+love for dogs, and never went out unaccompanied by one or two of them.
+They are the heroes of several of his sketches.
+
+Throughout the English-speaking world, he was affectionately known as
+Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh. He stood aloof from political and
+ecclesiastical controversies, and was fond of telling a story to
+illustrate how little reasoning went to forming partisans. A minister
+catechizing a raw plowboy, after asking the first question, "Who made
+you?" and getting the answer "God," asked him, "How do you know that God
+made you?" After some pause and head-scratching, the reply came, "Weel,
+sir, it's the clash [common talk] o' the kintry." "Ay," Brown added,
+"I'm afraid that a deal of our belief is founded on just 'the clash o'
+the kintry.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MARJORIE FLEMING
+
+From 'Spare Hours'
+
+One November afternoon in 1810--the year in which 'Waverley' was resumed
+and laid aside again, to be finished off, its last two volumes in three
+weeks, and made immortal in 1814; and when its author, by the death of
+Lord Melville, narrowly escaped getting a civil appointment in
+India--three men, evidently lawyers, might have been seen escaping like
+schoolboys from the Parliament House, and speeding arm-in-arm down Bank
+Street and the Mound in the teeth of a surly blast of sleet.
+
+The three friends sought the _bield_ of the low wall old Edinburgh boys
+remember well, and sometimes miss now, as they struggle with the stout
+west wind....
+
+The third we all know. What has he not done for every one of us? Who
+else ever, except Shakespeare, so diverted mankind, entertained and
+entertains a world so liberally, so wholesomely? We are fain to say not
+even Shakespeare, for his is something deeper than diversion, something
+higher than pleasure; and yet who would care to split this hair?
+
+Had any one watched him closely before and after the parting, what a
+change he would see! The bright, broad laugh, the shrewd, jovial word,
+the man of the Parliament House and of the world; and next step, moody,
+the light of his eye withdrawn, as if seeing things that were invisible;
+his shut mouth like a child's, so impressionable, so innocent, so sad;
+he was now all within, as before he was all without; hence his brooding
+look. As the snow blattered in his face, he muttered, "How it raves and
+drifts! On-ding o' snaw,--ay, that's the word,--on-ding--" He was now at
+his own door, "Castle Street, No. 39." He opened the door and went
+straight to his den; that wondrous workshop, where in one year, 1823,
+when he was fifty-two, he wrote 'Peveril of the Peak,' 'Quentin
+Durward,' and 'St. Ronan's Well,' besides much else. We once took the
+foremost of our novelists--the greatest, we would say, since Scott--into
+this room, and could not but mark the solemnizing effect of sitting
+where the great magician sat so often and so long, and looking out upon
+that little shabby bit of sky, and that back green where faithful dog
+Camp lies.
+
+He sat down in his large green morocco elbow-chair, drew himself close
+to his table, and glowered and gloomed at his writing apparatus, "a very
+handsome old box, richly carved, lined with crimson velvet, and
+containing ink-bottles, taper-stand, etc., in silver, the whole in such
+order that it might have come from the silversmith's window half an hour
+before." He took out his paper, then starting up angrily, said, "'Go
+spin, you jade, go spin.' No, d---- it, it won't do,--
+
+     "'My spinnin' wheel is auld and stiff,
+       The rock o't wunna stand, sir;
+     To keep the temper-pin in tiff
+       Employs ower aft my hand, sir.'
+
+I am off the fang. I can make nothing of 'Waverley' to-day; I'll awa'
+to Marjorie. Come wi' me, Maida, you thief." The great creature rose
+slowly, and the pair were off, Scott taking a _maud_ (a plaid) with him.
+"White as a frosted plum-cake, by jingo!" said he, when he got to the
+street. Maida gamboled and whisked among the snow, and his master strode
+across to Young Street, and through it to 1 North Charlotte Street, to
+the house of his dear friend, Mrs. William Keith, of Corstorphine Hill;
+niece of Mrs. Keith of Ravelston, of whom he said at her death, eight
+years after, "Much tradition, and that of the best, has died with this
+excellent old lady, one of the few persons whose spirits, and
+_cleanliness_ and freshness of mind and body, made old age lovely and
+desirable."
+
+Sir Walter was in that house almost every day, and had a key, so in he
+and the hound went, shaking themselves in the lobby. "Marjorie!
+Marjorie!" shouted her friend, "where are ye, my bonnie wee croodlin'
+doo?" In a moment a bright, eager child of seven was in his arms, and he
+was kissing her all over. Out came Mrs. Keith. "Come your ways in,
+Wattie." "No, not now. I am going to take Marjorie wi' me, and you may
+come to your tea in Duncan Roy's sedan, and bring the bairn home in your
+lap." "Tak' Marjorie, and it _on-ding o' snaw_!" said Mrs. Keith. He
+said to himself, "On-ding,'--that's odd,--that is the very word. Hoot,
+awa'! look here," and he displayed the corner of his plaid, made to hold
+lambs [the true shepherd's plaid, consisting of two breadths sewed
+together, and uncut at one end, making a poke or _cul-de-sac_]. "Tak'
+your lamb," said she, laughing at the contrivance, and so the Pet was
+first well happit up, and then put, laughing silently, into the plaid
+neuk, and the shepherd strode off with his lamb,--Maida gamboling
+through the snow, and running races in her mirth.
+
+Didn't he face "the angry airt," and make her bield his bosom, and into
+his own room with her, and lock the door, and out with the warm rosy
+little wifie, who took it all with great composure! There the two
+remained for three or more hours, making the house ring with their
+laughter; you can fancy the big man's and Maidie's laugh. Having made
+the fire cheery, he set her down in his ample chair, and standing
+sheepishly before her, began to say his lesson, which happened to
+be,--"Ziccotty, diccotty, dock, the mouse ran up the clock; the clock
+struck one, down the mouse ran, ziccotty, diccotty, dock." This done
+repeatedly till she was pleased, she gave him his new lesson, gravely
+and slowly, timing it upon her small fingers,--he saying it after her,--
+
+     "Wonery, twoery, tickery, seven;
+     Alibi, crackaby, ten and eleven;
+     Pin, pan, musky dan;
+     Tweedle-um, twoddle-um, twenty-wan;
+     Eerie, orie, ourie,
+     You, are, out."
+
+He pretended to great difficulty, and she rebuked him with most comical
+gravity, treating him as a child. He used to say that when he came to
+Alibi Crackaby he broke down, and Pin-Pan, Musky-Dan, Tweedle-um
+Twoddle-um made him roar with laughter. He said Musky-Dan especially was
+beyond endurance, bringing up an Irishman and his hat fresh from the
+Spice Islands and odoriferous Ind; she getting quite bitter in her
+displeasure at his ill behavior and stupidness.
+
+Then he would read ballads to her in his own glorious way, the two
+getting wild with excitement over 'Gil Morrice' or the 'Baron of
+Smailholm'; and he would take her on his knee, and make her repeat
+Constance's speech in 'King John,' till he swayed to and fro, sobbing
+his fill....
+
+Scott used to say that he was amazed at her power over him, saying to
+Mrs. Keith, "She's the most extraordinary creature I ever met with, and
+her repeating of Shakespeare overpowers me as nothing else does."
+
+Thanks to the unforgetting sister of this dear child, who has much of
+the sensibility and fun of her who has been in her small grave these
+fifty and more years, we have now before us the letters and journals of
+Pet Marjorie,--before us lies and gleams her rich brown hair, bright and
+sunny as if yesterday's, with the words on the paper, "Cut out in her
+last illness," and two pictures of her by her beloved Isabella, whom she
+worshiped; there are the faded old scraps of paper, hoarded still, over
+which her warm breath and her warm little heart had poured themselves;
+there is the old water-mark, "Lingard, 1808." The two portraits are very
+like each other, but plainly done at different times; it is a chubby,
+healthy face, deep-set, brooding eyes, as eager to tell what is going on
+within as to gather in all the glories from without; quick with the
+wonder and the pride of life; they are eyes that would not be soon
+satisfied with seeing; eyes that would devour their object, and yet
+childlike and fearless. And that is a mouth that will not be soon
+satisfied with love; it has a curious likeness to Scott's own, which has
+always appeared to us his sweetest, most mobile and speaking feature.
+
+There she is, looking straight at us as she did at him,--fearless and
+full of love, passionate, wild, willful, fancy's child.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was an old servant, Jeanie Robertson, who was forty years in her
+grandfather's family. Marjorie Fleming--or as she is called in the
+letters and by Sir Walter, Maidie--was the last child she kept. Jeanie's
+wages never exceeded £3 a year, and when she left service she had saved
+£40. She was devotedly attached to Maidie, rather despising and
+ill-using her sister Isabella, a beautiful and gentle child. This
+partiality made Maidie apt at times to domineer over Isabella. "I
+mention this," writes her surviving sister, "for the purpose of telling
+you an instance of Maidie's generous justice. When only five years old,
+when walking in Raith grounds, the two children had run on before, and
+old Jeanie remembered they might come too near a dangerous mill-lade.
+She called to them to turn back. Maidie heeded her not, rushed all the
+faster on, and fell, and would have been lost, had her sister not pulled
+her back, saving her life, but tearing her clothes. Jeanie flew on
+Isabella to 'give it her' for spoiling her favorite's dress; Maidie
+rushed in between, crying out, 'Pay (whip) Maidie as much as you like,
+and I'll not say one word; but touch Isy, and I'll roar like a bull!'
+Years after Maidie was resting in her grave, my mother used to take me
+to the place, and told the story always in the exact same words." This
+Jeanie must have been a character. She took great pride in exhibiting
+Maidie's brother William's Calvinistic acquirements when nineteen months
+old, to the officers of a militia regiment then quartered in Kirkcaldy.
+This performance was so amusing that it was often repeated, and the
+little theologian was presented by them with a cap and feathers.
+Jeanie's glory was "putting him through the carritch" (catechism) in
+broad Scotch, beginning at the beginning with "Wha made ye, ma bonnie
+man?" For the correctness of this and the three next replies, Jeanie had
+no anxiety; but the tone changed to menace, and the closed _nieve_
+(fist) was shaken in the child's face as she demanded, "Of what are you
+made?" "DIRT," was the answer uniformly given. "Wull ye never learn to
+say _dust_, ye thrawn deevil?" with a cuff from the opened hand, was the
+as inevitable rejoinder.
+
+Here is Maidie's first letter, before she was six, the spelling
+unaltered, and there are no "commoes."
+
+"MY DEAR ISA--I now sit down to answer all your kind and beloved letters
+which you was so good as to write to me. This is the first time I ever
+wrote a letter in my Life. There are a great many Girls in the Square
+and they cry just like a pig when we are under the painfull necessity of
+putting it to Death. Miss Potune a Lady of my acquaintance praises me
+dreadfully. I repeated something out of Dean Swift and she said I was
+fit for the stage and you may think I was primmed up with majestick
+Pride but upon my word I felt myselfe turn a little birsay--birsay is a
+word which is a word that William composed which is as you may suppose a
+little enraged. This horrid fat simpliton says that my Aunt is
+beautifull which is intirely impossible for that is not her nature."
+
+What a peppery little pen we wield! What could that have been out of the
+sardonic Dean? what other child of that age would have used "beloved" as
+she does? This power of affection, this faculty of _be_loving, and wild
+hunger to be beloved, comes out more and more. She periled her all upon
+it, and it may have been as well--we know, indeed, that it was far
+better--for her that this wealth of love was so soon withdrawn to its
+one only infinite Giver and Receiver. This must have been the law of her
+earthly life. Love was indeed "her Lord and King"; and it was perhaps
+well for her that she found so soon that her and our only Lord and King
+Himself is Love. Here are bits from her Diary at Braehead:--
+
+"The day of my existence here has been delightful and enchanting. On
+Saturday I expected no less than three well-made Bucks the names of whom
+is here advertised. Mr. Geo. Crakey [Craigie], and Wm. Keith and Jn.
+Keith--the first is the funniest of every one of them. Mr. Crakey and I
+walked to Crakyhall [Craigiehall] hand in hand in Innocence and
+matitation [meditation] sweet thinking on the kind love which flows in
+our tender hearted mind which is overflowing with majestic pleasure no
+one was ever so polite to me in the hole state of my existence. Mr.
+Craky you must-know is a great Buck and pretty good-looking."
+
+"I am at Ravelston enjoying nature's fresh air. The birds are singing
+sweetly--the calf doth frisk and nature shows her glorious face."
+
+Here is a confession:
+
+"I confess I have been very more like a little young divil than a
+creature for when Isabella went up stairs to teach me religion and my
+multiplication and to be good and all my other lessons I stamped with my
+foot and threw my new hat which she had made on the ground and was sulky
+and was dreadfully passionate, but she never whiped me but said Marjory
+go into another room and think what a great crime you are committing
+letting your temper git the better of you. But I went so sulkily that
+the Devil got the better of me but she never never never whips me so
+that I think I would be the better of it and the next time that I behave
+ill I think she should do it for she never does it.... Isabella has
+given me praise for checking my temper for I was sulky even when she was
+kneeling an hole hour teaching me to write."
+
+Our poor little wifie, _she_ has no doubts of the personality of the
+Devil!--"Yesterday I behave extremely ill in God's most holy church for
+I would never attend myself nor let Isabella attend which was a great
+crime for she often, often tells me that when to or three are geathered
+together God is in the midst of them, and it was the very same Divil
+that tempted Job that tempted me I am sure; but he resisted Satan though
+he had boils and many many other misfortunes which I have escaped.... I
+am now going to tell you the horible and wretched plaege that my
+multiplication gives me you can't conceive it the most Devilish thing is
+8 times 8 and 7 times 7 it is what nature itself cant endure."
+
+This is delicious; and what harm is there in her "Devilish"? it is
+strong language merely; even old Rowland Hill used to say "he grudged
+the Devil those rough and ready words." "I walked to that delightful
+place Crakyhall with a delightful young man beloved by all his friends
+especially by me his loveress, but I must not talk any more about him
+for Isa said it is not proper for to speak of gentalmen but I will never
+forget him! ... I am very very glad that satan has not given me boils
+and many other misfortunes--In the holy bible these words are written
+that the Devil goes like a roaring lyon in search of his pray but the
+lord lets us escape from him but we" (_pauvre petite_!) "do not strive
+with this awfull Spirit.... To-day I pronounced a word which should
+never come out of a lady's lips it was that I called John a Impudent
+Bitch. I will tell you what I think made me in so bad a humor is I got
+one or two of that bad sina [senna] tea to-day,"--a better excuse for
+bad humor and bad language than most.
+
+She has been reading the Book of Esther:--"It was a dreadful thing that
+Haman was hanged on the very gallows which he had prepared for Mordecai
+to hang him and his ten sons thereon and it was very wrong and cruel to
+hang his sons for they did not commit the crime; _but then Jesus was not
+then come to teach us to be merciful_." This is wise and beautiful,--has
+upon it the very dew of youth and holiness. Out of the mouths of babes
+and sucklings He perfects his praise.
+
+"This is Saturday and I am very glad of it because I have play half the
+Day and I get money too but alas I owe Isabella 4 pence for I am finned
+2 pence whenever I bite my nails. Isabella is teaching me to make
+simmecoling nots of interrigations peorids commoes, etc.... As this is
+Sunday I will meditate upon Senciable and Religious subjects. First I
+should be very thankful I am not a beggar."
+
+This amount of meditation and thankfulness seems to have been all she
+was able for.
+
+"I am going to-morrow to a delightfull place, Braehead by name,
+belonging to Mrs. Crraford, where there is ducks cocks hens bubblyjocks
+2 dogs 2 cats and swine which is delightful. I think it is shocking to
+think that the dog and cat should bear them" (this is a meditation
+physiological) "and they are drowned after all. I would rather have a
+man-dog than a woman-dog, because they do not bear like woman-dogs; it
+is a hard case--it is shocking. I came here to enjoy natures delightful
+breath it is sweeter than a fial of rose oil."
+
+Braehead is the farm the historical Jock Howison asked and got from our
+gay James the Fifth, "the gudeman o' Ballengiech," as a reward for the
+services of his flail when the King had the worst of it at Cramond Brig
+with the gipsies. The farm is unchanged in size from that time, and
+still in the unbroken line of the ready and victorious thrasher.
+Braehead is held on the condition of the possessor being ready to
+present the King with a ewer and basin to wash his hands, Jock having
+done this for his unknown king after the _splore_; and when George the
+Fourth came to Edinburgh, this ceremony was performed in silver
+at Holyrood.
+
+It is a lovely neuk, this Braehead, preserved almost as it was two
+hundred years ago. "Lot and his wife," mentioned by Maidie,--two
+quaintly cropped yew-trees,--still thrive; the burn runs as it did in
+her time, and sings the same quiet tune,--as much the same and as
+different as _Now_ and _Then_. The house is full of old family relics
+and pictures, the sun shining on them through the small deep windows
+with their plate-glass; and there, blinking at the sun and chattering
+contentedly, is a parrot, that might, for its looks of eld, have been in
+the ark, and domineered over and _deaved_ the dove. Everything about the
+place is old and fresh.
+
+This is beautiful:--"I am very sorry to say that I forgot God--that is
+to say I forgot to pray to-day and Isabella told me that I should be
+thankful that God did not forget me--if he did, O what would become of
+me if I was in danger and God not friends with me--I must go to
+unquenchable fire and if I was tempted to sin--how could I resist it O
+no I will never do it again--no no--if I can help it." (Canny wee
+wifie!) "My religion is greatly falling off because I dont pray with so
+much attention when I am saying my prayers, and my charecter is lost
+among the Braehead people. I hope I will be religious again--but as for
+regaining my charecter I despare for it." [Poor little "habit
+and repute"!]
+
+Her temper, her passion, and her "badness" are almost daily confessed
+and deplored:--"I will never again trust to my own power, for I see that
+I cannot be good without God's assistance--. I will not trust in my own
+selfe, and Isa's health will be quite ruined by me--it will indeed."
+"Isa has giving me advice, which is, that when I feel Satan beginning to
+tempt me, that I flea him and he would flea me." "Remorse is the worst
+thing to bear, and I am afraid that I will fall a marter to it."
+
+Poor dear little sinner!--Here comes the world again:--"In my travels I
+met with a handsome lad named Charles Balfour Esq., and from him I got
+ofers of marage--offers of marage, did I say? Nay plenty heard me." A
+fine scent for "breach of promise"!
+
+This is abrupt and strong:--"The Divil is curced and all works. 'Tis a
+fine work 'Newton on the profecies.' I wonder if there is another book
+of poems comes near the Bible. The Divil always girns at the sight of
+the Bible." "Miss Potune" (her "simpliton" friend) "is very fat; she
+pretends to be very learned. She says she saw a stone that dropt from
+the skies; but she is a good Christian."
+
+Here come her views on church government:--"An Anni-babtist is a thing I
+am not a member of--I am a Pisplekan (Episcopalian) just now, and" (O
+you little Laodicean and Latitudinarian!) "a Prisbeteran at
+Kirkcaldy"--_(Blandula! Vagula! coelum et animum mutas quoe trans mare_
+[i.e., _trans Bodotriam] curris!_)--"my native town."
+
+"Sentiment is not what I am acquainted with as yet, though I wish it,
+and should like to practise it" (!) "I wish I had a great, great deal of
+gratitude in my heart, in all my body." There is a new novel published,
+named 'Self-Control' (Mrs. Brunton's)--"a very good maxim forsooth!"
+
+This is shocking:--"Yesterday a marrade man, named Mr. John Balfour,
+Esq., offered to kiss me, and offered to marry me, though the man" (a
+fine directness this!) "was espused, and his wife was present and said
+he must ask her permission; but he did not. I think he was ashamed and
+confounded before 3 gentelman--Mr. Jobson and 2 Mr. Kings." "Mr.
+Banesters" (Bannister's) "Budjet is to-night; I hope it will be a good
+one. A great many authors have expressed themselves too sentimentally."
+You are right, Marjorie. "A Mr. Burns writes a beautiful song on Mr.
+Cunhaming, whose wife desarted him--truly it is a most beautiful one."
+"I like to read the Fabulous historys, about the histerys of Robin,
+Dickey, flapsay, and Peccay, and it is very amusing, for some were good
+birds and others bad, but Peccay was the most dutiful and obedient to
+her parients." "Thomson is a beautiful author, and Pope, but nothing to
+Shakespear, of which I have a little knolege. 'Macbeth' is a pretty
+composition, but awful one." "The 'Newgate Calender' is very
+instructive." (!)
+
+"A sailor called here to say farewell; it must be dreadful to leave his
+native country when he might get a wife; or perhaps me, for I love him
+very much. But O I forgot, Isabella forbid me to speak about love." This
+antiphlogistic regimen and lesson is ill to learn by our Maidie, for
+here she sins again:--"Love is a very papithatick thing" (it is almost a
+pity to correct this into pathetic), "as well as troublesome and
+tiresome--but O Isabella forbid me to speak of it."
+
+Here are her reflections on a pineapple:--"I think the price of a
+pineapple is very dear: it is a whole bright goulden guinea, that might
+have sustained a poor family." Here is a new vernal simile:--"The hedges
+are sprouting like chicks from the eggs when they are newly hatched or,
+as the vulgar say, _clacked_". "Doctor Swift's works are very funny; I
+got some of them by heart." "Moreheads sermons are I hear much praised,
+but I never read sermons of any kind; but I read novelettes and my
+Bible, and I never forget it, or my prayers." Brava, Marjorie!
+
+She seems now, when still about six, to have broken out into song:--
+
+     EPHIBOL [EPIGRAM OR EPITAPH--WHO KNOWS WHICH?] ON MY DEAR
+     LOVE ISABELLA.
+
+     "Here lies sweet Isabel in bed,
+     With a night-cap on her head;
+     Her skin is soft, her face is fair,
+     And she has very pretty hair;
+     She and I in bed lies nice,
+     And undisturbed by rats or mice.
+     She is disgusted with Mr. Worgan,
+     Though he plays upon the organ.
+     Her nails are neat, her teeth are white,
+     Her eyes are very, very bright.
+     In a conspicuous town she lives,
+     And to the poor her money gives.
+     Here ends sweet Isabella's story,
+     And may it be much to her glory."
+
+Here are some bits at random:--
+
+     "Of summer I am very fond,
+     And love to bathe into a pond:
+     The look of sunshine dies away,
+     And will not let me out to play;
+     I love the morning's sun to spy
+     Glittering through the casement's eye;
+     The rays of light are very sweet,
+     And puts away the taste of meat;
+     The balmy breeze comes down from heaven,
+     And makes us like for to be living."
+
+"The casawary is an curious bird, and so is the gigantic crane, and the
+pelican of the wilderness, whose mouth holds a bucket of fish and water.
+Fighting is what ladies is not qualyfied for, they would not make a good
+figure in battle or in a duel. Alas! we females are of little use to our
+country. The history of all the malcontents as ever was hanged is
+amusing." Still harping on the Newgate Calendar!
+
+"Braehead is extremely pleasant to me by the companie of swine, geese,
+cocks, etc., and they are the delight of my soul."
+
+"I am going to tell you of a melancholy story. A young turkie of two or
+three months old, would you believe it, the father broke its leg, and he
+killed another! I think he ought to be transported or hanged."
+
+"Queen Street is a very gay one, and so is Princes Street, for all the
+lads and lasses, besides bucks and beggars, parade there"
+
+"I should like to see a play very much, for I never saw one in all my
+life, and don't believe I ever shall; but I hope I can be content
+without going to one. I can be quite happy without my desire
+being granted."
+
+"Some days ago Isabella had a terrible fit of the toothake, and she
+walked with a long night-shift at dead of night like a ghost, and I
+thought she was one. She prayed for nature's sweet restorer--balmy
+sleep--but did not get it--a ghostly figure indeed she was, enough to
+make a saint tremble. It made me quiver and shake from top to toe.
+Superstition is a very mean thing, and should be despised and shunned."
+
+Here is her weakness and her strength again:--"In the love-novels all
+the heroines are very desperate. Isabella will not allow me to speak
+about lovers and heroins, and 'tis too refined for my taste." "Miss
+Egward's [Edgeworth's] tails are very good, particularly some that are
+very much adapted for youth (!) as Laz Laurance and Tarelton, False
+Keys, etc., etc."
+
+"Tom Jones and Gray's Elegey in a country churchyard are both excellent,
+and much spoke of by both sex, particularly by the men." Are our
+Marjories now-a-days better or worse, because they cannot read 'Tom
+Jones' unharmed? More better than worse; but who among them can repeat
+Gray's 'Lines on a Distant Prospect of Eton College' as could
+our Maidie?
+
+Here is some more of her prattle:--"I went into Isabella's bed to make
+her smile like the Genius Demedicus [the Venus de' Medicis] or the
+statute in an ancient Greece, but she fell asleep in my very face, at
+which my anger broke forth, so that I awoke her from a comfortable nap.
+All was now hushed up again, but again my anger burst forth at her
+biding me get up."
+
+She begins thus loftily,--
+
+     "Death the righteous love to see,
+     But from it doth the wicked flee."
+
+Then suddenly breaks off [as if with laughter],--
+
+"I am sure they fly as fast as their legs can carry them!"
+
+     "There is a thing I love to see,
+     That is our monkey catch a flee."
+
+     "I love in Isa's bed to lie,
+     Oh, such a joy and luxury!
+     The bottom of the bed I sleep,
+     And with great care within I creep;
+     Oft I embrace her feet of lillys,
+     But she has goton all the pillys.
+     Her neck I never can embrace,
+     But I do hug her feet in place."
+
+How childish and yet how strong and free is her use of words!--"I lay at
+the foot of the bed because Isabella said I disturbed her by continial
+fighting and kicking, but I was very dull, and continially at work
+reading the Arabian Nights, which I could not have done if I had slept
+at the top. I am reading the Mysteries of Udolpho. I am much interested
+in the fate of poor, poor Emily."
+
+Here is one of her swains:--
+
+     "Very soft and white his cheeks,
+     His hair is red, and gray his breeks;
+     His tooth is like the daisy fair,
+     His only fault is in his hair."
+
+This is a higher flight:--
+
+     DEDICATED TO MRS. H. CRAWFORD BY THE AUTHOR, M. F.
+
+     "Three turkeys fair their last have breathed,
+     And now this world forever leaved;
+     Their father, and their mother too,
+     They sigh and weep as well as you;
+     Indeed, the rats their bones have crunched,
+     Into eternity theire laanched.
+     A direful death indeed they had,
+     As wad put any parent mad;
+     But she was more than usual calm:
+     She did not give a single dam."
+
+This last word is saved from all sin by its tender age, not to speak of
+the want of the _n_. We fear "she" is the abandoned mother, in spite of
+her previous sighs and tears.
+
+"Isabella says when we pray we should pray fervently, and not rattel
+over a prayer--for that we are kneeling at the foot-stool of our Lord
+and Creator, who saves us from eternal damnation, and from
+unquestionable fire and brimston."
+
+She has a long poem on Mary Queen of Scots:--
+
+     "Queen Mary was much loved by all,
+     Both by the great and by the small,
+     But hark! her soul to heaven doth rise?
+     And I suppose she has gained a prize;
+     For I do think she would not go
+     Into the _awful_ place below.
+     There is a thing that I must tell--
+     Elizabeth went to fire and hell!
+     He who would teach her to be civil,
+     It must be her great friend, the divil!"
+
+She hits off Darnley well:--
+
+     "A noble's son,--a handsome lad,--
+     By some queer way or other, had
+     Got quite the better of her heart;
+     With him she always talked apart:
+     Silly he was, but very fair;
+     A greater buck was not found there."
+
+"By some queer way or other": is not this the general case and the
+mystery, young ladies and gentlemen? Goethe's doctrine of "elective
+affinities" discovered by our Pet Maidie!
+
+     SONNET TO A MONKEY
+
+     O lively, O most charming pug:
+     Thy graceful air and heavenly mug!
+     The beauties of his mind do shine,
+     And every bit is shaped and fine.
+     Your teeth are whiter than the snow;
+     Your a great buck, your a great beau;
+     Your eyes are of so nice a shape,
+     More like a Christian's than an ape;
+     Your cheek is like the rose's blume;
+     Your hair is like the raven's plume;
+     His nose's cast is of the Roman:
+     He is a very pretty woman.
+     I could not get a rhyme for Roman,
+     So was obliged to call him woman.
+
+This last joke is good. She repeats it when writing of James the Second
+being killed at Roxburgh:--
+
+     He was killed by a cannon splinter,
+     Quite in the middle of the winter;
+     Perhaps it was not at that time,
+     But I can get no other rhyme.
+
+Here is one of her last letters, dated Kirkcaldy, 12th October, 1811.
+You can see how her nature is deepening and enriching:--
+
+     MY DEAR MOTHER--You will think that I entirely forget you but
+     I assure you that you are greatly mistaken. I think of you
+     always and often sigh to think of the distance between us two
+     loving creatures of nature. We have regular hours for all our
+     occupations first at 7 o'clock we go to the dancing and come
+     home at 8 we then read our Bible and get our repeating and
+     then play till ten then we get our music till 11 when we get
+     our writing and accounts we sew from 12 till 1 after which I
+     get my gramer and then work till five. At 7 we come and knit
+     till 8 when we dont go to the dancing. This is an exact
+     description. I must take a hasty farewell to her whom I love,
+     reverence and doat on and who I hope thinks the same of
+
+     MARJORY FLEMING.
+
+     P.S.--An old pack of cards (!) would be very exceptible.
+
+This other is a month earlier:--
+
+     "MY DEAR LITTLE MAMA--I was truly happy to hear that you were
+     all well. We are surrounded with measles at present on every
+     side, for the Herons got it, and Isabella Heron was near
+     Death's Door, and one night her father lifted her out of bed,
+     and she fell down as they thought lifeless. Mr. Heron said,
+     'That lassie's deed noo'--'I'm no deed yet.' She then threw
+     up a big worm nine inches and a half long. I have begun
+     dancing, but am not very fond of it, for the boys strikes and
+     mocks me.--I have been another night at the dancing; I like
+     it better. I will write to you as often as I can; but I am
+     afraid not every week. _I long for you with the longings of a
+     child to embrace you--to fold you in my arms. I respect you
+     with all the respect due to a mother. You don't know how I
+     love you. So I shall remain, your loving child_,
+
+     M. FLEMING."
+
+What rich involution of love in the words marked! Here are some lines to
+her beloved Isabella, in July, 1811:--
+
+     "There is a thing that I do want--
+     With you these beauteous walks to haunt;
+     We would be happy if you would
+     Try to come over if you could.
+     Then I would all quite happy be
+     _Now and for all eternity_.
+     My mother is so very sweet,
+     _And checks my appetite to eat_;
+     My father shows us what to do;
+     But O I'm sure that I want you.
+     I have no more of poetry;
+     O Isa do remember me,
+     And try to love your Marjory."
+
+In a letter from "Isa" to
+
+     "Miss Muff Maidie Marjory Fleming,
+     favored by Rare Rear-Admiral Fleming,"
+
+she says:--"I long much to see you, and talk over all our old stories
+together, and to hear you read and repeat. I am pining for my old friend
+Cesario, and poor Lear, and wicked Richard. How is the dear
+Multiplication table going on? are you still as much attached to 9 times
+9 as you used to be?"
+
+But this dainty, bright thing is about to flee,--to come "quick to
+confusion." The measles she writes of seized her, and she died on the
+19th of December, 1811. The day before her death, Sunday, she sat up in
+bed, worn and thin, her eye gleaming as with the light of a coming
+world, and with a tremulous, old voice repeated the lines by
+Burns,--heavy with the shadow of death, and lit with the fantasy of the
+judgment-seat,--the publican's prayer in paraphrase:--
+
+     Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene
+
+It is more affecting than we care to say to read her mother's and
+Isabella Keith's letters, written immediately after her death. Old and
+withered, tattered and pale, they are now: but when you read them, how
+quick, how throbbing with life and love! how rich in that language of
+affection which only women and Shakespeare and Luther can use,--that
+power of detaining the soul over the beloved object and its loss....
+
+In her first letter to Miss Keith, Mrs. Fleming says of her dead
+Maidie:--"Never did I behold so beautiful an object. It resembled the
+finest wax-work. There was in the countenance an expression of sweetness
+and serenity which seemed to indicate that the pure spirit had
+anticipated the joys of heaven ere it quitted the mortal frame. To tell
+you what your Maidie said of you would fill volumes; for you were the
+constant theme of her discourse, the subject of her thoughts, and ruler
+of her actions. The last time she mentioned you was a few hours before
+all sense save that of suffering was suspended, when she said to Dr.
+Johnstone, 'If you will let me out at the New Year, I will be quite
+contented.' I asked what made her so anxious to get out then. 'I want to
+purchase a New Year's gift for Isa Keith with the sixpence you gave me
+for being patient in the measles; and I would like to choose it myself.'
+I do not remember her speaking afterwards, except to complain of her
+head, till just before she expired, when she articulated, 'O
+mother! mother!'"
+
+Do we make too much of this little child, who has been in her grave in
+Abbotshall. Kirkyard these fifty and more years? We may of her
+cleverness,--not of her affectionateness, her nature. What a picture the
+_animosa infans_ gives us of herself, her vivacity, her passionateness,
+her precocious love-making, her passion for nature, for swine, for all
+living things, her reading, her turn for expression, her satire, her
+frankness, her little sins and rages, her great repentances. We don't
+wonder Walter Scott carried her off in the neuk of his plaid, and
+played himself with her for hours....
+
+We are indebted for the following--and our readers will be not unwilling
+to share our obligations--to her sister:--"Her birth was 15th January,
+1803; her death 19th December, 1811. I take this from her Bibles. I
+believe she was a child of robust health, of much vigor of body, and
+beautifully formed arms, and until her last illness, never was an hour
+in bed. She was niece to Mrs. Keith, residing in No. 1 North Charlotte
+Street, who was _not_ Mrs. Murray Keith, although very intimately
+acquainted with that old lady....
+
+"As to my aunt and Scott, they were on a very intimate footing. He asked
+my aunt to be godmother to his eldest daughter Sophia Charlotte. I had a
+copy of Miss Edgeworth's 'Rosamond' and 'Harry and Lucy' for long, which
+was 'a gift to Marjorie from Walter Scott,' probably the first edition
+of that attractive series, for it wanted 'Frank,' which is always now
+published as part of the series under the title of 'Early Lessons.' I
+regret to say these little volumes have disappeared."
+
+Sir Walter was no relation of Marjorie's, but of the Keiths, through the
+Swintons; and like Marjorie, he stayed much at Ravelstone in his early
+days, with his grand-aunt Mrs. Keith....
+
+We cannot better end than in words from this same pen:--"I have to ask
+you to forgive my anxiety in gathering up the fragments of Marjorie's
+last days, but I have an almost sacred feeling to all that pertains to
+her. You are quite correct in stating that measles were the cause of her
+death. My mother was struck by the patient quietness manifested by
+Marjorie during this illness, unlike her ardent, impulsive nature; but
+love and poetic feeling were unquenched. When lying very still, her
+mother asked her if there was anything she wished: 'Oh yes! if you would
+just leave the room door open a wee bit, and play 'The Land o' the
+Leal,' and I will lie and _think_, and enjoy myself' (this is just as
+stated to me by her mother and mine). Well, the happy day came, alike to
+parents and child, when Marjorie was allowed to come forth from the
+nursery to the parlor. It was Sabbath evening, and after tea. My father,
+who idolized this child, and never afterwards in my hearing mentioned
+her name, took her in his arms; and while walking up and down the room,
+she said, 'Father, I will repeat something to you; what would you
+like?' He said, 'Just choose yourself, Maidie.' She hesitated for a
+moment between the paraphrase 'Few are thy days, and full of woe,' and
+the lines of Burns already quoted, but decided on the latter, a
+remarkable choice for a child. The repeating these lines seemed to stir
+up the depths of feeling in her soul. She asked to be allowed to write a
+poem; there was a doubt whether it would be right to allow her, in case
+of hurting her eyes. She pleaded earnestly, 'Just this once;' the point
+was yielded, her slate was given her, and with great rapidity she wrote
+an address of fourteen lines, 'To her loved cousin on the author's
+recovery,' her last work on earth:--
+
+     'Oh! Isa, pain did visit me,
+     I was at the last extremity;
+     How often did I think of you,
+     I wished your graceful form to view,
+     To clasp you in my weak embrace,
+     Indeed I thought I'd run my race:
+     Good care, I'm sure, was of me taken,
+     But still indeed I was much shaken.
+     At last I daily strength did gain,
+     And oh! at last, away went pain;
+     At length the doctor thought I might
+     Stay in the parlor all the night;
+     I now continue so to do;
+     Farewell to Nancy and to you.'
+
+She went to bed apparently well, awoke in the middle of the night with
+the old cry of woe to a mother's heart, 'My head, my head!' Three days
+of the dire malady 'water in the head' followed, and the end came."
+
+     "Soft, silken primrose, fading timelessly!"
+
+It is needless, it is impossible to add anything to this; the fervor,
+the sweetness, the flush of poetic ecstasy, the lovely and glowing eye,
+the perfect nature of that bright and warm intelligence, that darling
+child; Lady Nairne's words, and the old tune, stealing up from the
+depths of the human heart, deep calling unto deep, gentle and strong
+like the waves of the great sea hushing themselves to sleep in the dark;
+the words of Burns touching the kindred chord; her last numbers, "wildly
+sweet," traced with thin and eager fingers, already touched by the last
+enemy and friend,--_moriens canit_,--and that love which is so soon to
+be her everlasting light, is her song's burden to the end.
+
+     "She set as sets the morning star, which goes
+     Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides
+     Obscured among the tempests of the sky,
+     But melts away into the light of heaven."
+
+THE DEATH OF THACKERAY
+
+From 'Spare Hours'
+
+We cannot resist here recalling one Sunday evening in December, when he
+was walking with two friends along the Dean road, to the west of
+Edinburgh,--one of the noblest outlets to any city. It was a lovely
+evening,--such a sunset as one never forgets: a rich dark bar of cloud
+hovered over the sun, going down behind the Highland hills, lying bathed
+in amethystine bloom; between this cloud and the hills there was a
+narrow slip of the pure ether, of a tender cowslip color, lucid, and as
+if it were the very body of heaven in its clearness; every object
+standing out as if etched upon the sky. The northwest end of
+Corstorphine Hill, with its trees and rocks, lay in the heart of this
+pure radiance, and there a wooden crane, used in the quarry below, was
+so placed as to assume the figure of a cross; there it was,
+unmistakable, lifted up against the crystalline sky. All three gazed at
+it silently. As they gazed, he gave utterance in a tremulous, gentle,
+and rapid voice, to what all were feeling, in the word "CALVARY!" The
+friends walked on in silence, and then turned to other things. All that
+evening he was very gentle and serious, speaking, as he seldom did, of
+divine things,--of death, of sin, of eternity, of salvation; expressing
+his simple faith in God and in his Savior.
+
+There is a passage at the close of the 'Roundabout Paper' No. 23, 'De
+Finibus,' in which a sense of the ebb of life is very marked; the whole
+paper is like a soliloquy. It opens with a drawing of Mr. Punch, with
+unusually mild eye, retiring for the night; he is putting out his
+high-heeled shoes, and before disappearing gives a wistful look into the
+passage, as if bidding it and all else good-night. He will be in bed,
+his candle out, and in darkness, in five minutes, and his shoes found
+next morning at his door, the little potentate all the while in his
+final sleep. The whole paper is worth the most careful study; it reveals
+not a little of his real nature, and unfolds very curiously the secret
+of his work, the vitality and abiding power of his own creations; how he
+"invented a certain Costigan, out of scraps, heel-taps, odds and ends of
+characters," and met the original the other day, without surprise, in a
+tavern parlor. The following is beautiful: "Years ago I had a quarrel
+with a certain well-known person (I believed a statement regarding him
+which his friends imparted to me, and which turned out to be quite
+incorrect). To his dying day that quarrel was never quite made up. I
+said to his brother, 'Why is your brother's soul still dark against me?
+_It is I who ought to be angry and unforgiving, for I was in the
+wrong_.'" _Odisse quem læseris_ was never better contravened. But what
+we chiefly refer to now is the profound pensiveness of the following
+strain, as if written with a presentiment of what was not then very far
+off:--"Another Finis written; another milestone on this journey from
+birth to the next world. Sure it is a subject for solemn cogitation.
+Shall we continue this story-telling business, and be voluble to the end
+of our age?" "Will it not be presently time, O prattler, to hold your
+tongue?" And thus he ends:--
+
+"Oh, the sad old pages, the dull old pages; oh, the cares, the _ennui_,
+the squabbles, the repetitions, the old conversations over and over
+again! But now and again a kind thought is recalled, and now and again a
+dear memory. Yet a few chapters more, and then the last; after which,
+behold Finis itself comes to an end, and the Infinite begins."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He had been suffering on Sunday from an old and cruel enemy. He fixed
+with his friend and surgeon to come again on Tuesday, but with that
+dread of anticipated pain which is a common condition of sensibility and
+genius, he put him off with a note from "yours unfaithfully, W.M.T." He
+went out on Wednesday for a little, and came home at ten. He went to his
+room, suffering much, but declining his man's offer to sit with him. He
+hated to make others suffer. He was heard moving, as if in pain, about
+twelve, on the eve of--
+
+     "That happy morn
+     Wherein the Son of Heaven's eternal King,
+     Of wedded maid and virgin-mother born,
+     Our great redemption from above did bring."
+
+Then all was quiet, and then he must have died--in a moment. Next
+morning his man went in, and opening the windows found his master dead,
+his arms behind his head, as if he had tried to take one more breath. We
+think of him as of our Chalmers, found dead in like manner: the same
+childlike, unspoiled, open face; the same gentle mouth; the same
+spaciousness and softness of nature; the same look of power. What a
+thing to think of,--his lying there alone in the dark, in the midst of
+his own mighty London; his mother and his daughters asleep, and, it may
+be, dreaming of his goodness. God help them, and us all! What would
+become of us, stumbling along this our path of life, if we could not, at
+our utmost need, stay ourselves on Him?
+
+Long years of sorrow, labor, and pain had killed him before his time. It
+was found after death how little life he had to live. He looked always
+fresh, with that abounding silvery hair, and his young, almost infantine
+face, but he was worn to a shadow, and his hands wasted as if by eighty
+years. With him it is the end of Ends; finite is over and, infinite
+begun. What we all felt and feel can never be so well expressed as in
+his own words of sorrow for the early death of Charles Buller:--
+
+     "Who knows the inscrutable design?
+        Blest He who took and He who gave!
+      Why should your mother, Charles, not mine,
+        Be weeping at her darling's grave?
+      We bow to heaven that willed it so,
+        That darkly rules the fate of all,
+      That sends the respite or the blow,
+        That's free to give or to recall."
+
+
+
+CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE (ARTEMUS WARD)
+
+(1834-1867)
+
+BY CHARLES F. JOHNSON
+
+Charles Farrar Brown, better known to the public of thirty years ago
+under his pen-name of Artemus Ward, was born in the little village of
+Waterford, Maine, on the 26th day of April, 1834. Waterford is a quiet
+village of about seven hundred inhabitants, lying among the foot-hills
+of the White Mountains. When Browne was a child it was a station on the
+western stage-route, and an important depot for lumbermen's supplies.
+Since the extension of railroads northerly and westerly from the
+seaboard, it has however shared the fate of many New England villages in
+being left on one side of the main currents of commercial activity, and
+gradually assuming a character of repose and leisure, in many regards
+more attractive than the life and bustle of earlier days. Many persons
+are still living there who remember the humorist as a quaint and tricksy
+boy, alternating between laughter and preternatural gravity, and of a
+surprising ingenuity in devising odd practical jokes in which good
+nature so far prevailed that even the victims were too much amused to be
+very angry.
+
+[Illustration: Charles F. Browne]
+
+On both sides, he came from original New England stock; and although he
+was proud of his descent from a very ancient English family, in
+deference to whom he wrote his name with the final "e," he felt greater
+pride in his American ancestors, and always said that they were genuine
+and primitive Yankees,--people of intelligence, activity, and integrity
+in business, but entirely unaffected by new-fangled ideas. It is
+interesting to notice that Browne's humor was hereditary on the paternal
+side, his father especially being noted for his quaint sayings and
+harmless eccentricities. His cousin Daniel many years later bore a
+strong resemblance to what Charles had been, and he too possessed a
+kindred humorous faculty and told a story in much the same solemn
+manner, bringing out the point as if it were something entirely
+irrelevant and unimportant and casually remembered. The subject of this
+sketch, however, was the only member of the family in whom a love for
+the droll and incongruous was a controlling disposition. As is
+frequently the case, a family trait was intensified in one individual to
+the point where talent passes over into genius.
+
+On his mother's side, too, Browne was a thorough-bred New-Englander. His
+maternal grandfather, Mr. Calvin Farrar, was a man of influence in town
+and State, and was able to send two of his sons to Bowdoin College. I
+have mentioned Browne's parentage because his humor is so essentially
+American. Whether this consists in a peculiar gravity in the humorous
+attitude towards the subject, rather than playfulness, or in a tendency
+to exaggerated statement, or in a broad humanitarian standpoint, or in a
+certain flavor given by a blending of all these, it is very difficult to
+decide. Probably the peculiar standpoint is the distinguishing note, and
+American humor is a product of democracy.
+
+Humor is as difficult of definition as is poetry. It is an intimate
+quality of the mind, which predisposes a man to look for remote and
+unreal analogies and to present them gravely as if they were valid. It
+sees that many of the objects valued by men are illusions, and it
+expresses this conviction by assuming that other manifest trifles are
+important. It is the deadly enemy of sentimentality and affectation, for
+its vision is clear. Although it turns everything topsy-turvy in sport,
+its world is not a chaos nor a child's play-ground, for humor is based
+on keen perception of truth. There is no method--except the highest
+poetic treatment--which reveals so distinctly the falsehoods and
+hypocrisies of the social and economic order as the _reductio ad
+absurdum_ of humor; for all human institutions have their ridiculous
+sides, which astonish and amuse us when pointed out, but from viewing
+which we suddenly become aware of relative values before misunderstood.
+But just as poetry may degenerate into a musical collection of words and
+painting into a decorative association of colors, so humor may
+degenerate into the merely comic or amusing. The laugh which true humor
+arouses is not far removed from tears. Humor indeed is not always
+associated with kindliness, for we have the sardonic humor of Carlyle
+and the savage humor of Swift; but it is naturally dissociated from
+egotism, and is never more attractive than when, as in the case of
+Charles Lamb and Oliver Goldsmith, it is based on a loving and generous
+interest in humanity.
+
+Humor, must rest on a broad human foundation, and cannot be narrowed to
+the notions of a certain class. But in most English humor,--as indeed in
+all English literature except the very highest,--the social class to
+which the writer does not belong is regarded _ab extra_. In Punch, for
+instance, not only are servants always given a conventional set of
+features, but they are given conventional minds, and the jokes are based
+on a hypothetical conception of personality. Dickens was a great
+humorist, and understood the nature of the poor because he had been one
+of them; but his gentlemen and ladies are lay figures. Thackeray's
+studies of the flunky are capital; but he studies him _qua flunky_, as a
+naturalist might study an animal, and hardly ranks him _sub specie
+humanitatis_. But to the American humorist all men are primarily men.
+The waiter and the prince are equally ridiculous to him, because in each
+he finds similar incongruities between the man and his surroundings; but
+in England there is a deep impassable gulf between the man at the table
+and the man behind his chair. This democratic independence of external
+and adventitious circumstance sometimes gives a tone of irreverence to
+American persiflage, and the temporary character of class distinctions
+in America undoubtedly diminishes the amount of literary material "in
+sight" but when, as in the case of Browne and Clemens, there is in the
+humorist's mind a basis of reverence for things and persons that are
+really reverend, it gives a breadth and freedom to the humorous
+conception that is distinctively American.
+
+We put Clemens and Browne in the same line, because in reading a page of
+either we feel at once the American touch. Browne of course is not to be
+compared to Clemens in affluence or in range in depicting humorous
+character-types; but it must be remembered that Clemens has lived thirty
+active years longer than his predecessor did. Neither has written a line
+that he would wish to blot for its foul suggestion, or because it
+ridiculed things that were lovely and of good report. Both were educated
+in journalism, and came into direct contact with the strenuous and
+realistic life of labor. And to repeat, though one was born and bred
+west of the Mississippi and the other far "down east," both are
+distinctly American. Had either been born and passed his childhood
+outside our magic line, this resemblance would not have existed. And yet
+we cannot say precisely wherein this likeness lies, nor what caused it;
+so deep, so subtle, so pervading is the influence of nationality. But
+their original expressions of the American humorous tone are worth ten
+thousand literary echoes of Sterne or Lamb or Dickens or Thackeray.
+
+The education of young Browne was limited to the strictly preparatory
+years. At the age of thirteen he was forced by the death of his father
+to try to earn his living. When about fourteen, he was apprenticed to a
+Mr. Rex, who published a paper at Lancaster, New Hampshire. He remained
+there about a year, then worked on various country papers, and finally
+passed three years in the printing-house of Snow and Wilder, Boston. He
+then went to Ohio, and after working for some months on the Tiffin
+Advertiser, went to Toledo, where he remained till the fall of 1857.
+Thence he went to Cleveland, Ohio, as local editor of the Plain Dealer.
+Here appeared the humorous letters signed "Artemus Ward" and written in
+the character of an itinerant showman. In 1860 he went to New York as
+editor of the comic journal Vanity Fair.
+
+His reputation grew steadily, and his first volume, 'Artemus Ward, His
+Book,' was brought out in 1862. In 1863 he went to San Francisco by way
+of the Isthmus and returned overland. This journey was chronicled in a
+short volume, 'Artemus Ward, His Travels.' He had already undertaken a
+career of lecturing, and his comic entertainments, given in a style
+peculiarly his own, became very popular. The mimetic gift is frequently
+found in the humorist; and Browne's peculiar drawl, his profound gravity
+and dreamy, far-away expression, the unexpected character of his jokes
+and the surprise with which he seemed to regard the audience, made a
+combination of a delightfully quaint absurdity. Browne himself was a
+very winning personality, and never failed to put his audience in good
+humor. None who knew him twenty-nine years ago think of him without
+tenderness. In 1866 he visited England, and became almost as popular
+there as lecturer and writer for Punch. He died from a pulmonary trouble
+in Southampton, March 6th, 1867, being not quite thirty-three years old.
+He was never married.
+
+When we remember that a large part of Browne's mature life was taken up
+in learning the printer's trade, in which he became a master, we must
+decide that he had only entered on his career as humorous writer. Much
+of what he wrote is simply amusing, with little depth or power of
+suggestion; it is comic, not humorous. He was gaining the ear of the
+public and training his powers of expression. What he has left consists
+of a few collections of sketches written for a daily paper. But the
+subjoined extracts will show, albeit dimly, that he was more than a
+joker, as under the cap and bells of the fool in Lear we catch a glimpse
+of the face of a tender-hearted and philosophic friend. Browne's nature
+was so kindly and sympathetic, so pure and manly, that after he had
+achieved a reputation and was relieved from immediate pecuniary
+pressure, he would have felt an ambition to do some worthy work and take
+time to bring out the best that was in him. As it is, he had only tried
+his 'prentice hand. Still, the figure of the old showman, though not
+very solidly painted, is admirably done. He is a sort of sublimated and
+unoffensive Barnum; perfectly consistent, permeated with his
+professional view of life, yet quite incapable of anything underhand or
+mean; radically loyal to the Union, appreciative of the nature of his
+animals, steady in his humorous attitude toward life: and above all, not
+a composite of shreds and patches, but a personality. Slight as he is,
+and unconscious and unpracticed as is the art that went to his creation,
+he is one of the humorous figures of all literature; and old Sir John
+Falstaff, Sir Roger de Coverley, Uncle Toby, and Dr. Primrose will not
+disdain to admit him into their company; for he too is a man, not an
+abstraction, and need not be ashamed of his parentage nor doubtful of
+his standing among the "children of the men of wit."
+
+
+
+EDWIN FORREST AS OTHELLO
+
+Durin a recent visit to New York the undersined went to see Edwin
+Forrest. As I am into the moral show biziness myself I ginrally go to
+Barnum's moral museum, where only moral peeple air admitted, partickly
+on Wednesday arternoons. But this time I thot I'd go and see Ed. Ed has
+bin actin out on the stage for many years. There is varis 'pinions about
+his actin, Englishmen ginrally bleevin that he's far superior to Mister
+Macready; but on one pint all agree, & that is that Ed draws like a
+six-ox team. Ed was actin at Niblo's Garding, which looks considerable
+more like a parster than a garding, but let that pars. I sot down in the
+pit, took out my spectacles and commenced peroosin the evenin's bill.
+The awjince was all-fired large & the boxes was full of the elitty of
+New York. Several opery glasses was leveled at me by Gotham's fairest
+darters, but I didn't let on as tho I noticed it, tho mebby I did take
+out my sixteen-dollar silver watch & brandish it round more than was
+necessary. But the best of us has our weaknesses & if a man has gewelry
+let him show it. As I was peroosin the bill a grave young man who sot
+near me axed me if I'd ever seen Forrest dance the Essence of Old
+Virginny. "He's immense in that," sed the young man. "He also does a
+fair champion jig," the young man continnered, "but his Big Thing is the
+Essence of Old Virginny." Sez I, "Fair youth, do you know what I'd do
+with you if you was my sun?"
+
+"No," sez he.
+
+"Wall," sez I, "I'd appint your funeral to-morrow arternoon, & the
+_korps should be ready_. You're too smart to live on this yerth."
+
+He didn't try any more of his capers on me. But another pussylanermuss
+individooul in a red vest and patent leather boots told me his name was
+Bill Astor & axed me to lend him 50 cents till early in the mornin. I
+told him I'd probly send it round to him before he retired to his
+virtoous couch, but if I didn't he might look for it next fall as soon
+as I'd cut my corn. The orchestry was now fiddling with all their might
+& as the peeple didn't understan anything about it they applaudid
+versifrusly. Presently old Ed cum out. The play was Otheller or More of
+Veniss. Otheller was writ by Wm. Shakspeer. The seene is laid in Veniss.
+Otheller was a likely man & was a ginral in the Veniss army. He eloped
+with Desdemony, a darter of the Hon. Mr. Brabantio, who represented one
+of the back districks in the Veneshun legislater. Old Brabantio was as
+mad as thunder at this & tore round considerable, but finally cooled
+down, tellin Otheller, howsoever, that Desdemony had come it over her
+par, & that he had better look out or she'd come it over him likewise.
+Mr. and Mrs. Otheller git along very comfortable-like for a spell. She
+is sweet-tempered and lovin--a nice, sensible female, never goin in for
+he-female conventions, green cotton umbrellers, and pickled beats.
+Otheller is a good provider and thinks all the world of his wife. She
+has a lazy time of it, the hird girl doin all the cookin and washin.
+Desdemony in fact don't have to git the water to wash her own hands
+with. But a low cuss named Iago, who I bleeve wants to git Otheller out
+of his snug government birth, now goes to work & upsets the Otheller
+family in most outrajus stile. Iago falls in with a brainless youth
+named Roderigo & wins all his money at poker. (Iago allers played foul.)
+He thus got money enuff to carry out his onprincipled skeem. Mike
+Cassio, a Irishman, is selected as a tool by Iago. Mike was a clever
+feller & a orficer in Otheller's army. He liked his tods too well,
+howsoever, & they floored him as they have many other promisin young
+men. Iago injuces Mike to drink with him, Iago slily throwin his whiskey
+over his shoulder. Mike gits as drunk as a biled owl & allows that he
+can lick a yard full of the Veneshun fancy before breakfast, without
+sweatin a hair. He meets Roderigo & proceeds for to smash him. A feller
+named Mentano undertakes to slap Cassio, when that infatooated person
+runs his sword into him. That miserble man, Iago, pretends to be very
+sorry to see Mike conduck hisself in this way & undertakes to smooth the
+thing over to Otheller, who rushes in with a drawn sword & wants to know
+what's up. Iago cunningly tells his story & Otheller tells Mike that he
+thinks a good deal of him but that he cant train no more in his
+regiment. Desdemony sympathises with poor Mike & interceds for him with
+Otheller. Iago makes him bleeve she does this because she thinks more of
+Mike than she does of hisself. Otheller swallers Iagos lyin tail & goes
+to makin a noosence of hisself ginrally. He worries poor Desdemony
+terrible by his vile insinuations & finally smothers her to deth with a
+piller. Mrs. Iago comes in just as Otheller has finished the fowl deed &
+givs him fits right & left, showin him that he has been orfully gulled
+by her miserble cuss of a husband. Iago cums in & his wife commences
+rakin him down also, when he stabs her. Otheller jaws him a spell & then
+cuts a small hole in his stummick with his sword. Iago pints to
+Desdemony's deth bed & goes orf with a sardonic smile onto his
+countenance. Otheller tells the peple that he has dun the state some
+service & they know it; axes them to do as fair a thing as they can for
+him under the circumstances, & kills hisself with a fish-knife, which is
+the most sensible thing he can do. This is a breef skedule of the
+synopsis of the play.
+
+Edwin Forrest is a grate acter. I thot I saw Otheller before me all the
+time he was actin &, when the curtin fell, I found my spectacles was
+still mistened with salt-water, which had run from my eyes while poor
+Desdemony was dyin. Betsy Jane--Betsy Jane! let us pray that our
+domestic bliss may never be busted up by a Iago!
+
+Edwin Forrest makes money actin out on the stage. He gits five hundred
+dollars a nite & his board & washin. I wish I had such a Forrest in
+my Garding!
+
+Copyrighted by G.W. Dillingham and Company, New York.
+
+HIGH-HANDED OUTRAGE AT UTICA
+
+In the fall of 1856 I showed my show in Utiky, a trooly grate sitty in
+the State of New York.
+
+The people gave me a cordyal recepshun. The press was loud in her
+prases.
+
+1 day as I was givin a descripshun of my Beests and Snaiks in my usual
+flowry stile, what was my skorn & disgust to see a big burly feller walk
+up to the cage containin my wax figgers of the Lord's Last Supper, and
+cease Judas Iscariot by the feet and drag him out on the ground. He then
+commenced fur to pound him as hard as he cood.
+
+"What under the son are you abowt?" cried I.
+
+Sez he, "What did you bring this pussylanermus cuss here fur?" & he hit
+the wax figger another tremenjus blow on the hed.
+
+Sez I, "You egrejus ass that air's a wax figger--a representashun of the
+false 'Postle."
+
+Sez he, "That's all very well fur you to say, but I tell you, old man,
+that Judas Iscariot can't show hisself in Utiky with impunerty by a darn
+site!" with which observashun he kaved in Judassis hed. The young man
+belonged to 1 of the first famerlies in Utiky. I sood him and the Joory
+brawt in a verdick of Arson in the 3d degree.
+
+Copyrighted by G.W. Dillingham and Company, New York.
+
+AFFAIRS ROUND THE VILLAGE GREEN
+
+And where are the friends of my youth? I have found one of 'em,
+certainly. I saw him ride in a circus the other day on a bareback horse,
+and even now his name stares at me from yonder board-fence in green and
+blue and red and yellow letters. Dashington, the youth with whom I used
+to read the able orations of Cicero, and who as a declaimer on
+exhibition days used to wipe the rest of us boys pretty handsomely
+out--well, Dashington is identified with the halibut and cod interests
+--drives a fish-cart, in fact, from a certain town on the coast back
+into the interior. Hurburtson--the utterly stupid boy--the lunkhead who
+never had his lesson, he's about the ablest lawyer a sister State can
+boast. Mills is a newspaper man, and is just now editing a Major General
+down South. Singlingson, the sweet-faced boy whose face was always
+washed and who was never rude, _he_ is in the penitentiary for putting
+his uncle's autograph to a financial document. Hawkins, the clergyman's
+son, is an actor; and Williamson, the good little boy who divided his
+bread and butter with the beggar-man, is a failing merchant, and makes
+money by it. Tom Slink, who used to smoke Short Sixes and get acquainted
+with the little circus boys, is popularly supposed to be the proprietor
+of a cheap gaming establishment in Boston, where the beautiful but
+uncertain prop is nightly tossed. Be sure the Army is represented by
+many of the friends of my youth, the most of whom have given a good
+account of themselves.
+
+But Chalmerson hasn't done much. No, Chalmerson is rather of a failure.
+He plays on the guitar and sings love-songs. Not that he is a bad man--a
+kinder-hearted creature never lived, and they say he hasn't yet got over
+crying for his little curly-haired sister who died ever so long ago. But
+he knows nothing about business, politics, the world, and those things.
+He is dull at trade--indeed, it is the common remark that "Everybody
+cheats Chalmerson." He came to the party the other evening and brought
+his guitar. They wouldn't have him for a tenor in the opera, certainly,
+for he is shaky in his upper notes; but if his simple melodies didn't
+gush straight from the heart! why, even my trained eyes were wet! And
+although some of the girls giggled, and some of the men seemed to pity
+him, I could not help fancying that poor Chalmerson was nearer heaven
+than any of us all.
+
+Copyrighted by G. W. Dillingham and Company.
+
+MR. PEPPER
+
+From 'Artemus Ward: His Travels'
+
+My arrival at Virginia City was signalized by the following incident:--
+
+I had no sooner achieved my room in the garret of the International
+Hotel than I was called upon by an intoxicated man, who said he was an
+Editor. Knowing how rare it is for an Editor to be under the blighting
+influence of either spirituous or malt liquors, I received this
+statement doubtfully. But I said:
+
+"What name?"
+
+"Wait!" he said, and went out.
+
+I heard him pacing unsteadily up and down the hall outside.
+
+In ten minutes he returned, and said, "Pepper!"
+
+Pepper was indeed his name. He had been out to see if he could remember
+it, and he was so flushed with his success that he repeated it joyously
+several times, and then, with a short laugh, he went away.
+
+I had often heard of a man being "so drunk that he didn't know what town
+he lived in," but here was a man so hideously inebriated that he didn't
+know what his name was.
+
+I saw him no more, but I heard from him. For he published a notice of my
+lecture, in which he said that I had _a dissipated air!_
+
+HORACE GREELEY'S RIDE TO PLACERVILLE
+
+From 'Artemus Ward: His Travels'
+
+When Mr. Greeley was in California, ovations awaited him at every town.
+He had written powerful leaders in the Tribune in favor of the Pacific
+Railroad, which had greatly endeared him to the citizens of the Golden
+State. And therefore they made much of him when he went to see them.
+
+At one town the enthusiastic populace tore his celebrated white coat to
+pieces and carried the pieces home to remember him by.
+
+The citizens of Placerville prepared to fête the great journalist,
+and an extra coach with extra relays of horses was chartered
+of the California Stage Company to carry him from Folsom to
+Placerville--distance, forty miles. The extra was in some way delayed,
+and did not leave Folsom until late in the afternoon. Mr. Greeley was to
+be fêted at seven o'clock that evening by the citizens of Placerville,
+and it was altogether necessary that he should be there by that time. So
+the Stage Company said to Henry Monk, the driver of the extra, "Henry,
+this great man must be there by seven to-night." And Henry answered,
+"The great man shall be there."
+
+The roads were in an awful state, and during the first few miles out of
+Folsom slow progress was made.
+
+"Sir," said Mr. Greeley, "are you aware that I must be in Placerville at
+seven o'clock to-night?"
+
+"I've got my orders!" laconically replied Henry Monk.
+
+Still the coach dragged slowly forward.
+
+"Sir," said Mr. Greeley, "this is not a trifling matter. I _must_ be
+there at seven!"
+
+Again came the answer, "I've got my orders!"
+
+But the speed was not increased, and Mr. Greeley chafed away another
+half-hour; when, as he was again about to remonstrate with the driver,
+the horses suddenly started into a furious run, and all sorts of
+encouraging yells filled the air from the throat of Henry Monk.
+
+"That is right, my good fellow," said Mr. Greeley. "I'll give you ten
+dollars when we get to Placerville. Now we are going!"
+
+They were indeed, and at a terrible speed.
+
+Crack, crack! went the whip, and again "that voice" split the air, "Get
+up! Hi-yi! G'long! Yip-yip."
+
+And on they tore over stones and ruts, up hill and down, at a rate of
+speed never before achieved by stage horses.
+
+Mr. Greeley, who had been bouncing from one end of the stage to the
+other like an India-rubber ball, managed to get his head out of the
+window, when he said:--
+
+"Do-on't-on't-on't you-u-u think we-e-e-e shall get there by seven if we
+do-on't-on't go so fast?"
+
+"I've got my orders!" That was all Henry Monk said. And on tore the
+coach.
+
+It was becoming serious. Already the journalist was extremely sore from
+the terrible jolting--and again his head "might have been seen from
+the window."
+
+"Sir," he said, "I don't care-care-air if we _don't_ get there at
+seven."
+
+"I've got my orders!" Fresh horses--forward again, faster than
+before--over rocks and stumps, on one of which the coach narrowly
+escaped turning a summerset.
+
+"See here!" shrieked Mr. Greeley, "I don't care if we don't get there at
+all."
+
+"I've got my orders! I work fer the California Stage Company, I do.
+That's wot I _work_ fer. They said, 'Get this man through by seving.'
+An' this man's goin' through, you bet! Gerlong! Whoo-ep!"
+
+Another frightful jolt, and Mr. Greeley's bald head suddenly found its
+way through the roof of the coach, amidst the crash of small timbers and
+the ripping of strong canvas.
+
+"Stop, you--maniac!" he roared.
+
+Again answered Henry Monk:--
+
+"I've got my orders! _Keep your seat, Horace!_"
+
+At Mud Springs, a village a few miles from Placerville, they met a large
+delegation of the citizens of Placerville, who had come out to meet the
+celebrated editor, and escort him into town. There was a military
+company, a brass band, and a six-horse wagon-load of beautiful damsels
+in milk-white dresses, representing all the States in the Union. It was
+nearly dark now, but the delegation was amply provided with torches, and
+bonfires blazed all along the road to Placerville.
+
+The citizens met the coach in the outskirts of Mud Springs, and Mr. Monk
+reined in his foam-covered steeds.
+
+"Is Mr. Greeley on board?" asked the chairman of the committee.
+
+"_He was, a few miles back_!" said Mr. Monk. "Yes," he added, looking
+down through the hole which the fearful jolting had made in the
+coach-roof, "Yes, I can see him! He is there!"
+
+"Mr. Greeley," said the chairman of the committee, presenting himself at
+the window of the coach, "Mr. Greeley, sir! We are come to most
+cordially welcome you, sir!--Why, God bless me, sir, you are bleeding at
+the nose!"
+
+"I've got my orders!" cried Mr. Monk. "My orders is as follows: Git him
+there by seving! It wants a quarter to seving. Stand out of the way!"
+
+"But, sir," exclaimed the committee-man, seizing the off-leader by the
+reins, "Mr. Monk, we are come to escort him into town! Look at the
+procession, sir, and the brass-band, and the people, and the young
+women, sir!"
+
+"_I've got my orders_!" screamed Mr. Monk. "My orders don't say nothin'
+about no brass bands and young women. My orders says, 'Git him there by
+seving.' Let go them lines! Clear the way there! Whoo-ep! Keep your
+seat, Horace!" and the coach dashed wildly through the procession,
+upsetting a portion of the brass band, and violently grazing the wagon
+which contained the beautiful young women in white.
+
+Years hence, gray-haired men who were little boys in this procession
+will tell their grandchildren how this stage tore through Mud Springs,
+and how Horace Greeley's bald head ever and anon showed itself like a
+wild apparition above the coach-roof.
+
+Mr. Monk was on time. There is a tradition that Mr. Greeley was very
+indignant for a while: then he laughed and finally presented Mr. Monk
+with a brand-new suit of clothes. Mr. Monk himself is still in the
+employ of the California Stage Company, and is rather fond of relating a
+story that has made him famous all over the Pacific coast. But he says
+he yields to no man in his admiration for Horace Greeley.
+
+
+
+SIR THOMAS BROWNE
+
+(1605-1682)
+
+BY FRANCIS BACON
+
+When Sir Thomas Browne, in the last decade of his life, was asked to
+furnish data for the writing of his memoirs in Wood's 'Athenæ
+Oxonienses,' he gave in a letter to his friend Mr. Aubrey in the fewest
+words his birthplace and the places of his education, his admission as
+"Socius Honorarius of the College of Physitians in London," the date of
+his being knighted, and the titles of the four books or tracts which he
+had printed; and ended with "Have some miscellaneous tracts which may be
+published."
+
+This account of himself, curter than many an epitaph, and scantier in
+details than the requirements of a census-taker's blank, may serve, with
+many other signs that one finds scattered among the pages of this
+author, to show his rare modesty and effacement of his physical self. He
+seems, like some other thoughtful and sensitive natures before and
+since, averse or at least indifferent to being put on record as an
+eating, digesting, sleeping, and clothes-wearing animal, of that species
+of which his contemporary Sir Samuel Pepys stands as the classical
+instance, and which the newspaper interviewer of our own day--that
+"fellow who would vulgarize the Day of Judgment"--has trained to the
+most noxious degree of offensiveness.
+
+[Illustration: SIR THOMAS BROWNE]
+
+Sir Thomas felt, undoubtedly, that having admitted that select
+company--"fit audience though few"--who are students of the 'Religio
+Medici' to a close intimacy with his highest mental processes and
+conditions, his "separable accidents," affairs of assimilation and
+secretion as one may say, were business between himself and his grocer
+and tailor, his cook and his laundress.
+
+The industrious research of Mr. Simon Wilkin, who in 1836 produced the
+completest edition (William Pickering, London) of the literary remains
+of Sir Thomas Browne, has gathered from all sources--his own note-books,
+domestic and friendly correspondence, allusions of contemporary writers
+and the works of subsequent biographers--all that we are likely, this
+side of Paradise, to know of this great scholar and admirable man.
+
+The main facts of his life are as follows. He was born in the Parish of
+St. Michael's Cheap, in London, on the 19th of October, 1605 (the year
+of the Gunpowder Plot). His father, as is apologetically admitted by a
+granddaughter, Mrs. Littleton, "was a tradesman, a mercer, though a
+gentleman of a good family in Cheshire" (_generosa familia_, says Sir
+Thomas's own epitaph). That he was the parent of his son's temperament,
+a devout man with a leaning toward mysticism in religion, is shown by
+the charming story Mrs. Littleton tells of him, exhibiting traits worthy
+of the best ages of faith, and more to be expected in the father of a
+mediæval saint than in a prosperous Cheapside mercer, whose son was to
+be one of the most learned and philosophical physicians of the age of
+Harvey and Sydenham:--"His father used to open his breast when he was
+asleep and kiss it in prayers over him, as 'tis said of Origen's father,
+that the Holy Ghost would take possession there." Clearly, it was with
+reverent memory of this good man that Sir Thomas, near the close of his
+own long life, wrote:--"Among thy multiplied acknowledgments, lift up
+one hand unto heaven that thou wert born of honest parents; that
+modesty, humility, patience, and veracity lay in the same egg and came
+into the world with thee."
+
+This loving father, of whom one would fain know more, died in the early
+childhood of his son Thomas. He left a handsome estate of £9,000, and a
+widow not wholly inconsolable with her third portion and a not unduly
+deferred second marriage to a titled gentleman, Sir Thomas Button,--a
+knight so scantily and at the same time so variously described, as "a
+worthy person who had great places," and "a bad member" of "mutinous and
+unworthy carriage," that one is content to leave him as a problematical
+character.
+
+The boy Thomas Browne being left to the care of guardians, his estate
+was despoiled, though to what extent does not appear; nor can it be
+considered greatly deplorable, since it did not prevent his early
+schooling at that ancient and noble foundation of Winchester, nor in
+1623 his entrance into Pembroke College, Oxford, and in due course his
+graduation in 1626 as bachelor of arts. With what special assistance or
+direction he began his studies in medical science, cannot now be
+ascertained; but after taking his degree of master of arts in 1629, he
+practiced physic for about two years in some uncertain place in
+Oxfordshire. He then began a course of travel, unusually extensive for
+that day. His stepfather upon occasion of his official duties under the
+government "shewed him all Ireland in some visitation of the forts and
+castles." It is improbable that Ireland at that time long detained a
+traveler essentially literary in his tastes. Browne betook himself to
+France and Italy, where he appears to have spent about two years,
+residing at Montpellier and Padua, then great centres of medical
+learning, with students drawn from most parts of Christendom. Returning
+homeward through Holland, he received the degree of doctor of medicine
+from the University of Leyden in 1633, and settled in practice at
+Halifax, England.
+
+At this time--favored probably by the leisure which largely attends the
+beginning of a medical career, but which is rarely so laudably or
+productively employed,--he wrote the treatise 'Religio Medici,' which
+more than any other of his works has established his fame and won the
+affectionate admiration of thoughtful readers. This production was not
+printed until seven years later, although some unauthorized manuscript
+copies, more or less faulty, were in circulation. When in 1642 "it
+arrived in a most depraved copy at the press," Browne felt it necessary
+to vindicate himself by publishing a correct edition, although, he
+protests, its original "intention was not publick: and being a private
+exercise directed to myself, what is delivered therein was rather a
+memorial unto me than an example or rule unto any other."
+
+In 1636 he removed to Norwich and permanently established himself there
+in the practice of physic. There in 1641 he married Dorothy Mileham, a
+lady of good family in Norfolk; thereby not only improving his social
+connections, but securing a wife "of such symmetrical proportion to her
+worthy husband both in the graces of her body and mind, that they seemed
+to come together by a kind of natural magnetism." Such at least was the
+view of an intimate friend of more than forty years, Rev. John
+Whitefoot, in the 'Minutes' which, at the request of the widow, he drew
+up after Sir Thomas's death, and which contain the most that is known of
+his personal appearance and manners. Evidently the marriage was a happy
+one for forty-one years, when the Lady Dorothy was left _mæstissima
+conjux_, as her husband's stately epitaph, rich with many an _issimus_,
+declares. Twelve children were born of it; and though only four of them
+survived their parents, such mortality in carefully tended and
+well-circumstanced families was less remarkable than it would be now,
+when two centuries more of progress in medical science have added
+security and length to human life.
+
+The good mother--had she not endeared herself to the modern reader by
+the affectionate gentleness and the quaint glimpses of domestic life
+that her family letters reveal--would be irresistible by the ingeniously
+bad spelling in which she reveled, transgressing even the wide limits
+then allowed to feminine heterography.
+
+It is noteworthy that Dr. Browne's professional prosperity was not
+impaired by the suspicion which early attached to him, and soon
+deepened into conviction, that he was addicted to literary pursuits. He
+was in high repute as a physician. His practice was extensive, and he
+was diligent in it, as also in those works of literature and scientific
+investigation which occupied all "snatches of time," he says, "as
+medical vacations and the fruitless importunity of uroscopy would
+permit." His large family was liberally reared; his hospitality and his
+charities were ample.
+
+In 1646 he printed his second book, the largest and most operose of all
+his productions: the 'Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Inquiries into Vulgar
+and Common Errors' the work evidently of the _horæ subsecivæ_ of many
+years. In 1658 he gave to the public two smaller but important and most
+characteristic works, 'Hydriotaphia' and 'The Garden of Cyrus.' Beside
+these publications he left many manuscripts which appeared posthumously;
+the most important of them, for its size and general interest, being
+'Christian Morals.'
+
+When Sir Thomas's long life drew to its close, it was with all the
+blessings "which should accompany old age." His domestic life had been
+one of felicity. His eldest and only surviving son, Edward Browne, had
+become a scholar after his father's own heart; and though not inheriting
+his genius, was already renowned in London, one of the physicians to the
+King, and in a way to become, as afterward he did, President of the
+College of Physicians. All his daughters who had attained womanhood had
+been well married. He lived in the society of the honorable and learned,
+and had received from the King the honor of knighthood[1].
+
+[Footnote 1: As for this business of the knighting, one hesitates fully
+to adopt Dr. Johnson's remark that Charles II. "had skill to discover
+excellence and virtue to reward it, at least with such honorary
+distinctions as cost him nothing." A candid observer of the walk and
+conversation of this illustrious monarch finds room for doubt that he
+was an attentive reader or consistent admirer of the 'Religio Medici,'
+or 'Christian Morals'; and though his own personal history might have
+contributed much to a complete catalogue of Vulgar Errors, Browne's
+treatise so named did not include divagations from common decency in its
+scope, and so may have failed to impress the royal mind. The fact is
+that the King on his visit to Norwich, looking about for somebody to
+knight, intended, as usual on such occasions, to confer the title on the
+mayor of the city; but this functionary,--some brewer or grocer perhaps,
+of whom nothing else than this incident is recorded,--declined the
+honor, whereupon the gap was stopped with Dr. Browne.]
+
+Mr. John Evelyn, carrying out a long and cherished plan of seeing one
+whom he had known and admired by his writings, visited him at Norwich in
+1671. He found Sir Thomas among fit surroundings, "his whole house and
+garden being a paradise and cabinet of rarities, and that of the best
+collections, especially medails, books, plants, and natural things[2]."
+Here we have the right background and accessories for Whitefoot's
+portrait of the central figure:--
+
+     "His complexion and hair ... answerable to his name, his
+     stature moderate, and habit of body neither fat nor lean but
+     [Greek: eusarkos;] ... never seen to be transported with
+     mirth or dejected with sadness; always cheerful, but rarely
+     merry at any sensible rate; seldom heard to break a jest, and
+     when he did, ... apt to blush at the levity of it: his
+     gravity was natural without affectation. His modesty ...
+     visible in a natural habitual blush, which was increased upon
+     the least occasion, and oft discovered without any observable
+     cause.... So free from loquacity or much talkativeness, that
+     he was something difficult to be engaged in any discourse;
+     though when he was so, it was always singular and never trite
+     or vulgar."
+
+[Footnote 2: These two distinguished authors were of congenial tastes,
+and both cultivated the same Latinistic literary diction. Their meeting
+must have occasioned a copious effusion of those "long-tailed words in
+osity and ation" which both had so readily at command or made to order.
+It is regrettable that Evelyn never completed a work entitled 'Elysium
+Brittannicum' which he planned, and to which Browne contributed a
+chapter 'Of Coronary Plants.' It would have taken rank with its author's
+'Sylva' among English classics.]
+
+A man of character so lofty and self-contained might be expected to
+leave a life so long, honorable, and beneficent with becoming dignity.
+Sir Thomas's last sickness, a brief but very painful one, was "endured
+with exemplary patience founded upon the Christian philosophy," and
+"with a meek, rational, and religious courage," much to the edification
+of his friend Whitefoot. One may see even a kind of felicity in his
+death, falling exactly on the completion of his seventy-seventh year.
+
+He was buried in the church of St. Peter Mancroft, where his monument
+still claims regard as chief among the _memorabilia_ of that noble
+sanctuary[3].
+
+[Footnote 3: In the course of repairs, "in August, 1840, his coffin was
+broken open by a pickaxe; the bones were found in good preservation, the
+fine auburn hair had not lost its freshness." It is painful to relate
+that the cranium was removed and placed in the pathological museum of
+the Norwich Hospital, labeled as "the gift of" some person (name not
+recalled), whose own cranium is probably an object of interest solely to
+its present proprietor. "Who knows the fate of his own bones? ... We
+insult not over their ashes," says Sir Thomas. The curator of the museum
+feels that he has a clever joke on the dead man, when with a grin he
+points to a label bearing these words from the 'Hydriotaphia':--"To be
+knaved out of our graves, to have our skulls made drinking-bowls, and
+our bones turned into pipes to delight and sport our enemies, are
+tragical abominations escaped in burning burials."]
+
+At the first appearance of Browne's several publications, they attracted
+that attention from the learned and thoughtful which they have ever
+since retained. The 'Religio Medici' was soon translated into several
+modern languages as well as into Latin, and became the subject of
+curiously diverse criticism. The book received the distinction of a
+place in the Roman 'Index Expurgatorius,' while from various points of
+view its author was regarded as a Romanist, an atheist, a deist, a
+pantheist, and as bearing the number 666 somewhere about him.
+
+A worthy Quaker, a fellow-townsman, was so impressed by his tone of
+quietistic mysticism that he felt sure the philosophic doctor was guided
+by "the inward light," and wrote, sending a godly book, and proposing to
+clinch his conversion in a personal interview. Such are the perils that
+environ the man who not only repeats a creed in sincerity, but ventures
+to do and to utter his own thinking about it.
+
+From Browne's own day to the present time his critics and commentators
+have been numerous and distinguished; one of the most renowned among
+them being Dr. Johnson, whose life of the author, prefixed to an edition
+of the 'Christian Morals' in 1756, is a fine specimen of that facile and
+effective hack-work of which Johnson was master. In that characteristic
+way of his, half of patronage, half of reproof, and wholly pedagogical,
+he summons his subject to the bar of his dialectics, and according to
+his lights administers justice. He admits that Browne has "great
+excellencies" and "uncommon sentiments," and that his scholarship and
+science are admirable, but strongly condemns his style: "It is vigorous,
+but rugged; it is learned, but pedantic; it is deep, but obscure; it
+strikes, but does not please; it commands, but does not allure; his
+tropes are harsh and his combinations uncouth."
+
+Behemoth prescribing rules of locomotion to the swan! By how much would
+English letters have been the poorer if Browne had learned his art
+of Johnson!
+
+Notwithstanding such objurgations, some have supposed that the style of
+Johnson, perhaps without conscious intent, was founded upon that of
+Browne. A tone of oracular authority, an academic Latinism sometimes
+disregarding the limitations of the unlearned reader, an elaborate
+balancing of antitheses in the same period,--these are qualities which
+the two writers have in common. But the resemblance, such as it is, is
+skin-deep. Johnson is a polemic by nature, and at his best cogent and
+triumphant in argument. His thought is carefully kept level with the
+apprehension of the ordinary reader, while arrayed in a verbal pomp
+simulating the expression of something weighty and profound. Browne is
+intuitive and ever averse to controversy, feeling, as he exquisitely
+says, that "many have too rashly charged the troops of error and remain
+as trophies unto the enemies of truth. A man may be in as just
+possession of the truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender."
+Calmly philosophic, he writes for kindred minds, and his concepts
+satisfying his own intellect, he delivers them with as little passion as
+an Æolian harp answering the wind, and lingers not for applause or
+explanation. His being
+
+     "Those thoughts that wander through eternity,"
+
+he means that we too shall "have a glimpse of incomprehensibles, and
+thoughts of things which thoughts but tenderly touch."
+
+How grandly he rounds his pregnant paragraphs with phrases which for
+stately and compulsive rhythm, sonorous harmony, and sweetly solemn
+cadences, are almost matchless in English prose, and lack only the
+mechanism of metre to give them the highest rank as verse.
+
+"Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave,
+solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting
+ceremonies of bravery in the infancy of his nature;" "When personations
+shall cease, and histrionism of happiness be over; when reality shall
+rule, and all shall be as they shall be forever:"--such passages as
+these, and the whole of the 'Fragment on Mummies,' one can scarcely
+recite without falling into something of that chant which the blank
+verse of Milton and Tennyson seems to enforce.
+
+That the 'Religio Medici' was the work of a gentleman before his
+thirtieth year, not a recluse nor trained in a cloister, but active in a
+calling which keeps closest touch with the passions and frailties of
+humanity, seems to justify his assertion, "I have shaken hands with
+delight [_sc._ by way of parting] in my warm blood and canicular days."
+So uniformly lofty and dignified is its tone, and so austere its
+morality, that the book might be taken for the fruit of those later and
+sadder years that bring the philosophic mind. Its frank confessions and
+calm analysis of motive and action have been compared with Montaigne's:
+if Montaigne had been graduated after a due education in Purgatory, or
+if his pedigree had been remotely crossed with a St. Anthony and he had
+lived to see the _fluctus decumanus_ gathering in the tide of
+Puritanism, the likeness would have been closer.
+
+"The 'Religio Medici,'" says Coleridge, "is a fine portrait of a
+handsome man in his best clothes." There is truth in the criticism, and
+if there is no color of a sneer in it, it is entirely true. Who does not
+feel, when following Browne into his study or his garden, that here is a
+kind of cloistral retreat from the common places of the outside world,
+that the handsome man is a true gentleman and a noble friend, and that
+his best clothes are his every-day wear?
+
+This aloofness of Browne's, which holds him apart "in the still air of
+delightful studies," is no affectation; it is an innate quality. He
+thinks his thoughts in his own way, and "the style is the man" never
+more truly than with him. One of his family letters mentions the
+execution of Charles I. as a "horrid murther," and another speaks of
+Cromwell as a usurper; but nowhere in anything intended for the public
+eye is there an indication that he lived in the most tumultuous and
+heroic period of English history. Not a word shows that Shakespeare was
+of the generation just preceding his, nor that Milton and George Herbert
+and Henry Vaughan, numerous as are the parallels in their thought and
+feeling and in his, were his contemporaries. Constant and extensive as
+are his excursions into ancient literature, it is rare for him to make
+any reference to writers of his own time.
+
+Yet with all his delight in antiquity and reverence for the great names
+of former ages, he is keen in the quest for new discoveries. His
+commonplace books abound in ingenious queries and minute observations
+regarding physical facts, conceived in the very spirit of our modern
+school:--"What is the use of dew-claws in dogs?" He does not instantly
+answer, as a schoolboy in this Darwinian day would, "To carry out an
+analogy;" but the mere asking of the question sets him ahead of his age.
+See too his curious inquiries into the left-footedness of parrots and
+left-handedness of certain monkeys and squirrels. The epoch-making
+announcement of his fellow-physician Harvey he quickly appreciates at
+its true value: "his piece 'De Circul. Sang.,' which discovery I prefer
+to that of Columbus." And here again a truly surprising suggestion of
+the great results achieved a century and two centuries later by Jenner
+and Pasteur--concerning canine madness, "whether it holdeth not better
+at second than at first hand, so that if a dog bite a horse, and that
+horse a man, the evil proves less considerable." He is the first to
+observe and describe that curious product of the decomposition of flesh
+known to modern chemists as adipocere.
+
+He is full of eager anticipation of the future. "Join sense unto
+reason," he cries, "and experiment unto speculation, and so give life
+unto embryon truths and verities yet in their chaos.... What libraries
+of new volumes after-times will behold, and in what a new world of
+knowledge the eyes of our posterity may be happy, a few ages may
+joyfully declare."
+
+But acute and active as our author's perceptions were, they did not
+prevent his sharing the then prevalent theory which assigned to the
+devil, and to witches who were his ministers, an important part in the
+economy of the world. This belief affords so easy a solution of some
+problems otherwise puzzling, that this degenerate age may look back with
+envy upon those who held it in serene and comfortable possession.
+
+It is to be regretted, however, that the eminent Lord Chief Justice Hale
+in 1664, presiding at the trial for witchcraft of two women, should have
+called Dr. Browne, apparently as _amicus curiæ_, to give his view of
+the fits which were supposed to be the work of the witches. He was
+clearly of the opinion that the Devil had even more to do with that case
+than he has with most cases of hysteria; and consequently the witches,
+it must be said, fared no better in Sir Matthew Hale's court than many
+of their kind in various parts of Christendom about the same time. But
+it would be unreasonable for us to hold the ghost of Sir Thomas deeply
+culpable because, while he showed in most matters an exceptionally
+enlightened liberality of opinion and practice, in this one particular
+he declined to deny the scientific dictum of previous ages and the
+popular belief of his own time.
+
+The mental attitude of reverent belief in its symbolic value, in which
+this devout philosopher contemplated the material world, is that of many
+of those who have since helped most to build the structure of Natural
+Science. The rapturous exclamation of Linnæus, "My God, I think thy
+thoughts after thee!" comes like an antiphonal response by "the man of
+flowers" to these passages in the 'Religio Medici':--"This visible world
+is but a picture of the invisible, wherein, as in a portrait, things are
+not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some real
+substance in that invisible fabric." "Things are really true as they
+correspond unto God's conception; and have so much verity as they hold
+of conformity unto that intellect, in whose idea they had their first
+determinations."
+
+[Illustration: Signature: Fr's. Bacon]
+
+
+
+FROM THE 'RELIGIO MEDICI'
+
+I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an
+opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not agreeing with me in that
+from which within a few days I should dissent myself. I have no genius
+to disputes in religion, and have often thought it wisdom to decline
+them, especially upon a disadvantage, or when the cause of truth might
+suffer in the weakness of my patronage. Where we desire to be informed,
+'tis good to contest with men above ourselves; but to confirm and
+establish our opinions, 'tis best to argue with judgments below our own,
+that the frequent spoils and victories over their reasons may settle in
+ourselves an esteem and confirmed opinion of our own. Every man is not a
+proper champion for truth, nor fit to take up the gauntlet in the cause
+of verity: many from the ignorance of these maxims, and an
+inconsiderate zeal for truth, have too rashly charged the troops of
+error, and remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth. A man may be in
+as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to
+surrender; 'tis therefore far better to enjoy her with peace, than to
+hazard her on a battle: if therefore there rise any doubts in my way, I
+do forget them, or at least defer them, till my better settled judgment
+and more manly reason be able to resolve them; for I perceive every
+man's own reason is his best Oedipus, and will, upon a reasonable truce,
+find a way to loose those bonds wherewith the subtleties of error have
+enchained our more flexible and tender judgments. In philosophy, where
+truth seems double-faced, there is no man more paradoxical than myself:
+but in divinity I love to keep the road; and though not in an implicit,
+yet an humble faith, follow the great wheel of the Church, by which I
+move, not reserving any proper poles or motion from the epicycle of my
+own brain: by these means I leave no gap for heresy, schisms, or errors.
+
+As for those wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties in
+religion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they never
+stretched the _pia mater_ of mine: methinks there be not impossibilities
+enough in religion for an active faith; the deepest mysteries ours
+contains have not only been illustrated, but maintained, by syllogism
+and the rule of reason. I love to lose myself in a mystery, to pursue my
+reason to an _O altitudo!_ 'Tis my solitary recreation to pose my
+apprehension with those involved enigmas and riddles of the Trinity,
+with Incarnation and Resurrection. I can answer all the objections of
+Satan and my rebellious reason with that odd resolution I learned of
+Tertullian, "Certum est quia impossible est." I desire to exercise my
+faith in the difficultest point; for to credit ordinary and visible
+objects is not faith, but persuasion. Some believe the better for seeing
+Christ's sepulchre; and when they have seen the Red Sea, doubt not of
+the miracle. Now contrarily, I bless myself and am thankful that I live
+not in the days of miracles, that I never saw Christ nor his disciples;
+I would not have been one of those Israelites that passed the Red Sea,
+nor one of Christ's patients on whom he wrought his wonders: then had my
+faith been thrust upon me; nor should I enjoy that greater blessing
+pronounced to all that believe and saw not. 'Tis an easy and necessary
+belief, to credit what our eye and sense hath examined: I believe he was
+dead and buried, and rose again; and desire to see him in his glory,
+rather than to contemplate him in his cenotaph or sepulchre. Nor is this
+much to believe; as we have reason, we owe this faith unto history: they
+only had the advantage of a bold and noble faith who lived before his
+coming, who upon obscure prophecies and mystical types could raise a
+belief and expect apparent impossibilities.
+
+In my solitary and retired imagination,
+
+     "Neque enim cum lectulus aut me
+     Porticus excepit, desum mihi"--
+
+I remember I am not alone, and therefore forget not to contemplate Him
+and his attributes who is ever with me, especially those two mighty
+ones, His wisdom and eternity: with the one I recreate, with the other I
+confound my understanding; for who can speak of eternity without a
+solecism, or think thereof without an ecstasy? Time we may comprehend:
+it is but five days older than ourselves, and hath the same horoscope
+with the world; but to retire so far back as to apprehend a beginning,
+to give such an infinite start forward as to conceive an end in an
+essence that we affirm hath neither the one nor the other, it puts my
+reason to St. Paul's sanctuary: my philosophy dares not say the angels
+can do it; God hath not made a creature that can comprehend him; it is a
+privilege of his own nature: _I am that I am_, was his own definition
+unto Moses; and it was a short one, to confound mortality, that durst
+question God or ask him what he was. Indeed he only is; all others have
+and shall be; but in eternity there is no distinction of tenses; and
+therefore that terrible term _predestination_, which hath troubled so
+many weak heads to conceive, and the wisest to explain, is in respect to
+God no prescious determination of our states to come, but a definitive
+blast of his will already fulfilled, and at the instant that he first
+decreed it; for to his eternity, which is indivisible and all together,
+the last trump, is already sounded, the reprobates in the flame and the
+blessed in Abraham's bosom. St. Peter speaks modestly when he saith, a
+thousand years to God are but as one day; for to speak like a
+philosopher, those continued instances of time which flow into a
+thousand years make not to him one moment: what to us is to come, to his
+eternity is present, his whole duration being but one permanent point,
+without succession, parts, flux, or division.
+
+The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but studied and
+contemplated by man; 'tis the debt of our reason we owe unto God, and
+the homage we pay for not being beasts; without this, the world is still
+as though it had not been, or as it was before the sixth day, when as
+yet there was not a creature that could conceive or say there was a
+world. The wisdom of God receives small honor from those vulgar heads
+that rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity admire his works:
+those highly magnify him whose judicious inquiry into his acts, and
+deliberate research into his creatures, return the duty of a devout and
+learned admiration.
+
+"Natura nihil agit frustra," is the only indisputable axiom in
+philosophy; there are no grotesques in nature; not anything framed to
+fill up empty cantons and unnecessary spaces: in the most imperfect
+creatures, and such as were not preserved in the ark, but, having their
+seeds and principles in the womb of nature, are everywhere where the
+power of the sun is--in these is the wisdom of His hand discovered; out
+of this rank Solomon chose the object of his admiration; indeed, what
+reason may not go to school to the wisdom of bees, ants, and spiders?
+what wise hand teacheth them to do what reason cannot teach us? Ruder
+heads stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature--whales,
+elephants, dromedaries, and camels; these, I confess, are the colossi
+and majestic pieces of her hand: but in these narrow engines there is
+more curious mathematics; and the civility of these little citizens more
+neatly sets forth the wisdom of their Maker. Who admires not
+Regio-Montanus his fly beyond his eagle, or wonders not more at the
+operation of two souls in those little bodies, than but one in the trunk
+of a cedar? I could never content my contemplation with those general
+pieces of wonder, the flux and reflux of the sea, the increase of the
+Nile, the conversion of the needle to the north; and have studied to
+match and parallel those in the more obvious and neglected pieces of
+nature, which without further travel I can do in the cosmography of
+myself: we carry with us the wonders we seek without us; there is all
+Africa and her prodigies in us; we are that bold and adventurous piece
+of nature which he that studies wisely learns in a compendium, what
+others labor at in a divided piece and endless volume.
+
+Thus there are two books from whence I collect my divinity: besides that
+written one of God, another of his servant nature, that universal and
+public manuscript that lies expansed unto the eyes of all; those that
+never saw him in the one have discovered him in the other. This was the
+Scripture and Theology of the heathens: the natural motion of the sun
+made them more admire him than its supernatural station did the children
+of Israel; the ordinary effect of nature wrought more admiration in them
+than in the other all his miracles: surely the heathens knew better how
+to join and read these mystical letters than we Christians, who cast a
+more careless eye on these common hieroglyphics and disdain to suck
+divinity from the flowers of nature. Nor do I so forget God as to adore
+the name of nature; which I define not, with the schools, to be the
+principle of motion and rest, but that straight and regular line, that
+settled and constant course the wisdom of God hath ordained the actions
+of his creatures, according to their several kinds. To make a revolution
+every day is the nature of the sun, because of that necessary course
+which God hath ordained it, from which it cannot swerve but by a faculty
+from that voice which first did give it motion. Now this course of
+nature God seldom alters or perverts, but, like an excellent artist,
+hath so contrived his work that with the selfsame instrument, without a
+new creation, he may effect his obscurest designs. Thus he sweeteneth
+the water with a wood, preserveth the creatures in the ark, which the
+blast of his mouth might have as easily created; for God is like a
+skillful geometrician, who when more easily, and with one stroke of his
+compass, he might describe or divide a right line, had yet rather to do
+this in a circle or longer way, according to the constituted and
+forelaid principles of his art: yet this rule of his he doth sometimes
+pervert to acquaint the world with his prerogative, lest the arrogancy
+of our reason should question his power and conclude he could not. And
+thus I call the effects of nature the works of God, whose hand and
+instrument she only is; and therefore to ascribe his actions unto her is
+to devolve the honor of the principal agent upon the instrument; which
+if with reason we may do, then let our hammers rise up and boast they
+have built our houses, and our pens receive the honor of our writing. I
+hold there is a general beauty in the works of God, and therefore no
+deformity in any kind of species whatsoever: I cannot tell by what
+logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly, they being created in
+those outward shapes and figures which best express those actions of
+their inward forms. And having passed that general visitation of God,
+who saw that all that he had made was good, that is, conformable to his
+will, which abhors deformity, and is the rule of order and beauty: there
+is no deformity but in monstrosity, wherein notwithstanding there is a
+kind of beauty, nature so ingeniously contriving the irregular parts
+that they become sometimes more remarkable than the principal fabric. To
+speak yet more narrowly, there was never anything ugly or misshapen but
+the chaos; wherein, notwithstanding, to speak strictly, there was no
+deformity, because no form, nor was it yet impregnate by the voice of
+God; now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature, they
+being both servants of his providence: art is the perfection of nature:
+were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos;
+nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are
+artificial; for nature is the art of God.
+
+I have heard some with deep sighs lament the lost lines of Cicero;
+others with as many groans deplore the combustion of the library of
+Alexandria; for my own part, I think there be too many in the world, and
+could with patience behold the urn and ashes of the Vatican, could I,
+with a few others, recover the perished leaves of Solomon. I would not
+omit a copy of Enoch's Pillars had they many nearer authors than
+Josephus, or did not relish somewhat of the fable. Some men have written
+more than others have spoken: Pineda quotes more authors in one work
+than are necessary in a whole world. Of those three great inventions in
+Germany, there are two which are not without their incommodities. It is
+not a melancholy _utinam_ of my own, but the desires of better heads,
+that there were a general synod; not to unite the incompatible
+difference of religion, but for the benefit of learning, to reduce it,
+as it lay at first, in a few and solid authors; and to condemn to the
+fire those swarms and millions of rhapsodies begotten only to distract
+and abuse the weaker judgments of scholars, and to maintain the trade
+and mystery of typographers.
+
+Again, I believe that all that use sorceries, incantations, and spells
+are not witches, or, as we term them, magicians. I conceive there is a
+traditional magic not learned immediately from the Devil, but at second
+hand from his scholars, who, having once the secret betrayed, are able,
+and do empirically practice without his advice, they both proceeding
+upon the principles of nature; where actives aptly conjoined to disposed
+passives will under any master produce their effects. Thus, I think at
+first a great part of philosophy was witchcraft, which being afterward
+derived to one another, proved but philosophy, and was indeed no more
+but the honest effects of nature: what invented by us is philosophy,
+learned from him is magic. We do surely owe the discovery of many
+secrets to the discovery of good and bad angels. I could never pass that
+sentence of Paracelsus without an asterisk or annotation: "Ascendens
+astrum multa revelat quærentibus magnalia naturæ, i.e., opera Dei." I do
+think that many mysteries ascribed to our own inventions have been the
+courteous revelations of spirits,--for those noble essences in heaven
+bear a friendly regard unto their fellow natures on earth; and therefore
+believe that those many prodigies and ominous prognostics which forerun
+the ruins of States, princes, and private persons are the charitable
+premonitions of good angels, which more careless inquiries term but the
+effects of chance and nature.
+
+Now, besides these particular and divided spirits there may be (for
+aught I know) an universal and common spirit to the whole world. It was
+the opinion of Plato, and it is yet of the Hermetical philosophers: if
+there be a common nature that unites and ties the scattered and divided
+individuals into one species, why may there not be one that unites them
+all? However, I am sure there is a common spirit that plays within us,
+yet makes no part of us: and that is the Spirit of God, the fire and
+scintillation of that noble and mighty essence which is the life and
+radical heat of spirits and those essences that know not the virtue of
+the sun; a fire quite contrary to the fire of hell: this is that gentle
+heat that brooded on the waters, and in six days hatched the world; this
+is that irradiation that dispels the mists of hell, the clouds of
+horror, fear, sorrow, despair; and preserves the region of the mind in
+serenity: whosoever feels not the warm gale and gentle ventilation of
+this spirit (though I feel his pulse) I dare not say he lives; for truly
+without this, to me there is no heat under the tropic; nor any light,
+though I dwelt in the body of the sun.
+
+I believe that the whole frame of a beast doth perish, and is left in
+the same state after death as before it was materialled unto life: that
+the souls of men know neither contrary nor corruption; that they subsist
+beyond the body, and outlive death by the privilege of their proper
+natures, and without a miracle; that the souls of the faithful, as they
+leave earth, take possession of heaven: that those apparitions and
+ghosts of departed persons are not the wandering souls of men, but the
+unquiet walks of devils, prompting and suggesting us into mischief,
+blood, and villainy; instilling and stealing into our hearts that the
+blessed spirits are not at rest in their graves, but wander solicitous
+of the affairs of the world: but that those phantasms appear often, and
+do frequent cemeteries, charnel-houses, and churches, it is because
+those are the dormitories of the dead, where the Devil, like an insolent
+champion, beholds with pride the spoils and trophies of his victory
+in Adam.
+
+This is that dismal conquest we all deplore, that makes us so often cry,
+"Adam, quid fecisti?" I thank God I have not those strait ligaments, or
+narrow obligations to the world, as to dote on life, or be convulsed and
+tremble at the name of death: not that I am insensible of the dread and
+horror thereof; or by raking into the bowels of the deceased, continual
+sight of anatomies, skeletons, or cadaverous reliques, like vespilloes
+or grave-makers, I am become stupid or have forgot the apprehension of
+mortality; but that marshaling all the horrors, and contemplating the
+extremities thereof, I find not anything therein able to daunt the
+courage of a man, much less a well-resolved Christian; and therefore am
+not angry at the error of our first parents, or unwilling to bear a part
+of this common fate, and like the best of them to die--that is, to cease
+to breathe, to take a farewell of the elements, to be a kind of nothing
+for a moment, to be within one instant of a spirit. When I take a full
+view and circle of myself without this reasonable moderator and equal
+piece of justice, Death, I do conceive myself the miserablest person
+extant: were there not another life that I hope for, all the vanities of
+this world should not entreat a moment's breath from me; could the Devil
+work my belief to imagine I could never die, I would not outlive that
+very thought. I have so abject a conceit of this common way of
+existence, this retaining to the sun and elements, I cannot think this
+to be a man, or to live according to the dignity of humanity. In
+expectation of a better, I can with patience embrace this life, yet in
+my best meditations do often defy death: I honor any man that contemns
+it, nor can I highly love any that is afraid of it: this makes me
+naturally love a soldier, and honor those tattered and contemptible
+regiments that will die at the command of a sergeant. For a pagan there
+may be some motives to be in love with life; but for a Christian to be
+amazed at death, I see not how he can escape this dilemma--that he is
+too sensible of this life, or hopeless of the life to come.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am naturally bashful; nor hath conversation, age, or travel been able
+to effront or enharden me: yet I have one part of modesty which I have
+seldom discovered in another, that is (to speak truly) I am not so much
+afraid of death, as ashamed thereof: 'tis the very disgrace and ignominy
+of our natures that in a moment can so disfigure us that our nearest
+friends, wife, and children, stand afraid and start at us. The birds and
+beasts of the field, that before in a natural fear obeyed us, forgetting
+all allegiance, begin to prey upon us. This very conceit hath in a
+tempest disposed and left me willing to be swallowed up in the abyss of
+waters, wherein I had perished unseen, unpitied, without wondering eyes,
+tears of pity, lectures of mortality, and none had said, "Quantum
+mutatus ab illo!" Not that I am ashamed of the anatomy of my parts, or
+can accuse nature for playing the bungler in any part of me, or my own
+vicious life for contracting any shameful disease upon me, whereby I
+might not call myself as wholesome a morsel for the worms as any.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Men commonly set forth the torments of hell by fire and the extremity of
+corporal afflictions, and describe hell in the same method that Mahomet
+doth heaven. This indeed makes a noise, and drums in popular ears: but
+if this be the terrible piece thereof, it is not worthy to stand in
+diameter with heaven, whose happiness consists in that part that is best
+able to comprehend it--that immortal essence, that translated divinity
+and colony of God, the soul. Surely, though we place hell under earth,
+the Devil's walk and purlieu is about it; men speak too popularly who
+place it in those flaming mountains which to grosser apprehensions
+represent hell. The heart of man is the place the Devil dwells in: I
+feel sometimes a hell within myself; Lucifer keeps his court in my
+breast; Legion is revived in me. There are as many hells as Anaxarchus
+conceited worlds: there was more than one hell in Magdalen, when there
+were seven devils, for every devil is an hell unto himself; he holds
+enough of torture in his own _ubi_, and needs not the misery of
+circumference to afflict him; and thus a distracted conscience here is a
+shadow or introduction unto hell hereafter. Who can but pity the
+merciful intention of those hands that do destroy themselves? the Devil,
+were it in his power, would do the like; which being impossible, his
+miseries are endless, and he suffers most in that attribute wherein he
+is impassible, his immortality.
+
+I thank God, and with joy I mention it, I was never afraid of hell, nor
+never grew pale at the description of that place; I have so fixed my
+contemplations on heaven, that I have almost forgot the idea of hell,
+and am afraid rather to lose the joys of the one than endure the misery
+of the other: to be deprived of them is a perfect hell, and needs,
+methinks, no addition to complete our afflictions. That terrible term
+hath never detained me from sin, nor do I owe any good action to the
+name thereof. I fear God, yet am not afraid of him; his mercies make me
+ashamed of my sins, before his judgments afraid thereof; these are the
+forced and secondary method of his wisdom, which he useth but as the
+last remedy, and upon provocation: a course rather to deter the wicked
+than incite the virtuous to his worship. I can hardly think there was
+ever any scared into heaven; they go the fairest way to heaven that
+would serve God without a hell; other mercenaries, that crouch unto him
+in fear of hell, though they term themselves the servants, are indeed
+but the slaves of the Almighty.
+
+That which is the cause of my election I hold to be the cause of my
+salvation, which was the mercy and _beneplacit_ of God, before I was, or
+the foundation of the world. "Before Abraham was, I am," is the saying
+of Christ; yet is it true in some sense, if I say it of myself; for I
+was not only before myself, but Adam--that is, in the idea of God, and
+the decree of that synod held from all eternity: and in this sense, I
+say, the world was before the creation, and at an end before it had a
+beginning; and thus was I dead before I was alive; though my grave be
+England, my dying place was Paradise; and Eve miscarried of me before
+she conceived of Cain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now for that other virtue of charity, without which faith is a mere
+notion and of no existence, I have ever endeavored to nourish the
+merciful disposition and humane inclination I borrowed from my parents,
+and regulate it to the written and prescribed laws of charity: and if I
+hold the true anatomy of myself, I am delineated and naturally framed to
+such a piece of virtue; for I am of a constitution so general that it
+consorts and sympathizeth with all things: I have no antipathy, or
+rather idiosyncrasy, in diet, humor, air, anything. I wonder not at the
+French for their dishes of frogs, snails, and toadstools; nor at the
+Jews for locusts and grasshoppers; but being amongst them, make them my
+common viands, and I find they agree with my stomach as well as theirs.
+I could digest a salad gathered in a churchyard as well as in a garden.
+I cannot start at the presence of a serpent, scorpion, lizard, or
+salamander: at the sight of a toad or viper I find in me no desire to
+take up a stone to destroy them. I feel not in myself those common
+antipathies that I can discover in others; those national repugnances do
+not touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian,
+Spaniard, or Dutch: but where I find their actions in balance with my
+countrymen's, I honor, love, and embrace them in the same degree. I was
+born in the eighth climate, but seem for to be framed and constellated
+unto all: I am no plant that will not prosper out of a garden; all
+places, all airs, make unto me one country; I am in England, everywhere,
+and under any meridian; I have been shipwrecked, yet am not enemy with
+the sea or winds; I can study, play or sleep in a tempest. In brief, I
+am averse from nothing: my conscience would give me the lie if I should
+absolutely detest or hate any essence but the Devil; or so at least
+abhor anything but that we might come to composition. If there be any
+among those common objects of hatred I do contemn and laugh at, it is
+that great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion--the multitude: that
+numerous piece of monstrosity which, taken asunder, seem men and the
+reasonable creatures of God, but confused together, make but one great
+beast and a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra: it is no breach of
+charity to call these fools; it is the style all holy writers have
+afforded them, set down by Solomon in canonical Scripture, and a point
+of our faith to believe so. Neither in the name of multitude do I only
+include the base and minor sort of people: there is a rabble even
+amongst the gentry, a sort of plebeian heads, whose fancy moves with the
+same wheel as these; men in the same level with mechanics, though their
+fortunes do somewhat gild their infirmities, and their purses compound
+for their follies.
+
+I must give no alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfill
+and accomplish the will and command of my God: I draw not my purse for
+his sake that demands it, but His that enjoined it; I believe no man
+upon the rhetoric of his miseries, nor to content mine own commiserating
+disposition; for this is still but moral charity, and an act that oweth
+more to passion than reason. He that relieves another upon the bare
+suggestion and bowels of pity doth not this so much for his sake as for
+his own; for by compassion we make others' misery our own, and so, by
+relieving them, we relieve ourselves also. It is as erroneous a conceit
+to redress other men's misfortunes upon the common considerations of
+merciful natures, that it may be one day our own case; for this is a
+sinister and politic kind of charity, whereby we seem to bespeak the
+pities of men in the like occasions. And truly I have observed that
+those professed eleemosynaries, though in a crowd or multitude, do yet
+direct and place their petitions on a few and selected persons: there is
+surely a physiognomy which those experienced and master mendicants
+observe, whereby they instantly discover a merciful aspect, and will
+single out a face wherein they spy the signatures and marks of mercy.
+For there are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in
+them the motto of our souls, wherein he that cannot read ABC may read
+our natures. I hold moreover that there is a phytognomy, or physiognomy,
+not only of men, but of plants and vegetables; and in every one of them
+some outward figures which hang as signs or bushes of their inward
+forms. The finger of God hath left an inscription upon all his works,
+not graphical or composed of letters, but of their several forms,
+constitutions, parts and operations, which, aptly joined together, do
+make one word that doth express their natures. By these letters God
+calls the stars by their names; and by this alphabet Adam assigned to
+every creature a name peculiar to its nature. Now there are, besides
+these characters in our faces, certain mystical figures in our hands,
+which I dare not call mere dashes, strokes _à la volée_, or at random,
+because delineated by a pencil that never works in vain; and hereof I
+take more particular notice, because I carry that in mine own hand which
+I could never read of or discover in another. Aristotle, I confess, in
+his acute and singular book of physiognomy, hath made no mention of
+chiromancy; yet I believe the Egyptians, who were nearer addicted to
+those abstruse and mystical sciences, had a knowledge therein, to which
+those vagabond and counterfeit Egyptians did after pretend, and perhaps
+retained a few corrupted principles which sometimes might verify their
+prognostics.
+
+It is the common wonder of all men, how, among so many millions of
+faces, there should be none alike. Now, contrary, I wonder as much how
+there should be any: he that shall consider how many thousand several
+words have been carelessly and without study composed out of twenty-four
+letters; withal, how many hundred lines there are to be drawn in the
+fabric of one man, shall easily find that this variety is necessary; and
+it will be very hard that they shall so concur as to make one portrait
+like another. Let a painter carelessly limn out a million of faces, and
+you shall find them all different; yea, let him have his copy before
+him, yet after all his art there will remain a sensible distinction; for
+the pattern or example of everything is the perfectest in that kind,
+whereof we still come short, though we transcend or go beyond it,
+because herein it is wide, and agrees not in all points unto its copy.
+Nor doth the similitude of creatures disparage the variety of nature,
+nor any way confound the works of God. For even in things alike there is
+diversity; and those that do seem to accord do manifestly disagree. And
+thus is man like God; for in the same things that we resemble him we are
+utterly different from him. There was never anything so like another as
+in all points to concur; there will ever some reserved difference slip
+in, to prevent the identity, without which two several things would not
+be alike, but the same, which is impossible.
+
+Naturally amorous of all that is beautiful, I can look a whole day with
+delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of an horse. It is my
+temper, and I like it the better, to affect all harmony; and sure there
+is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes,
+far sweeter than the sound of an instrument: for there is music wherever
+there is harmony, order, or, proportion: and thus far we may maintain
+_the music of the spheres_; for those well-ordered motions and regular
+paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding
+they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatsoever is harmonically
+composed, delights in harmony, which makes me much distrust the
+symmetry of those heads which declaim against all church music. For
+myself, not only from my obedience, but my particular genius, I do
+embrace it: for even that vulgar and tavern music, which makes one man
+merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion and a profound
+contemplation of the First Composer; there is something in it of
+divinity more than the ear discovers: it is an hieroglyphical and
+shadowed lesson of the whole world and creatures of God; such a melody
+to the ear as the whole world, well understood, would afford the
+understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony which
+intellectually sounds in the ears of God. It unties the ligaments of my
+frame, takes me to pieces, dilates me out of myself, and by degrees,
+methinks, resolves me into heaven. I will not say, with Plato, the soul
+is an harmony, but harmonical, and hath its nearest sympathy unto music;
+thus some, whose temper of body agrees and humors the constitution of
+their souls, are born poets, though indeed all are naturally inclined
+unto rhythm.
+
+There is surely a nearer apprehension of anything that delights us in
+our dreams than in our waked senses: without this, I were unhappy; for
+my awaked judgment discontents me, ever whispering unto me that I am
+from my friend; but my friendly dreams in the night requite me, and make
+me think I am within his arms. I thank God for my happy dreams, as I do
+for my good rest, for there is a satisfaction in them unto reasonable
+desires, and such as can be content with a fit of happiness; and surely
+it is not a melancholy conceit to think we are all asleep in this world,
+and that the conceits of this life are as mere dreams to those of the
+next; as the phantasms of the night to the conceits of the day. There is
+an equal delusion in both, and the one doth but seem to be the emblem or
+picture of the other; we are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps,
+and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It
+is the ligation of sense, but the liberty of reason; and our waking
+conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleeps. At my nativity my
+ascendant was the watery sign of Scorpius; I was born in the planetary
+hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me.
+I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of
+company; yet in one dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the
+action, and apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits
+thereof. Were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I
+would never study but in my dreams, and this time also would I choose
+for my devotions; but our grosser memories have then so little hold of
+our abstracted understandings that they forget the story, and can only
+relate to our awaked souls a confused and broken tale of that that hath
+passed. Aristotle, who hath written a singular tract of sleep, hath not,
+methinks, thoroughly defined it; nor yet Galen, though he seem to have
+corrected it: for those noctambuloes and night-walkers, though in their
+sleep do yet enjoy the action of their senses; we must therefore say
+that there is something in us that is not in the jurisdiction of
+Morpheus; and that those abstracted and ecstatic souls do walk about in
+their own corps, as spirits with the bodies they assume, wherein they
+seem to hear, see, and feel, though indeed the organs are destitute of
+sense, and their natures of those faculties that should inform them.
+Thus it is observed that men sometimes, upon the hour of their
+departure, do speak and reason above themselves. For then the soul,
+beginning to be freed from the ligaments of the body, begins to reason
+like herself, and to discourse in a strain above mortality.
+
+FROM 'CHRISTIAN MORALS'
+
+When thou lookest upon the imperfections of others, allow one eye for
+what is laudable in them, and the balance they have from some
+excellency, which may render them considerable. While we look with fear
+or hatred upon the teeth of the viper, we may behold his eye with love.
+In venomous natures something may be amiable: poisons afford
+anti-poisons: nothing is totally or altogether uselessly bad. Notable
+virtues are sometimes dashed with notorious vices, and in some vicious
+tempers have been found illustrious acts of virtue, which makes such
+observable worth in some actions of King Demetrius, Antonius, and Ahab,
+as are not to be found in the same kind in Aristides, Numa, or David.
+Constancy, generosity, clemency, and liberality have been highly
+conspicuous in some persons not marked out in other concerns for example
+or imitation. But since goodness is exemplary in all, if others have not
+our virtues, let us not be wanting in theirs; nor, scorning them for
+their vices whereof we are free, be condemned by their virtues wherein
+we are deficient. There is dross, alloy, and embasement in all human
+tempers; and he flieth without wings, who thinks to find ophir or pure
+metal in any. For perfection is not, like light, centred in any one
+body; but, like the dispersed seminalities of vegetables at the
+creation, scattered through the whole mass of the earth, no place
+producing all, and almost all some. So that 'tis well if a perfect man
+can be made out of many men, and to the perfect eye of God, even out of
+mankind. Time, which perfects some things, imperfects also others. Could
+we intimately apprehend the ideated man, and as he stood in the
+intellect of God upon the first exertion by creation, we might more
+narrowly comprehend our present degeneration, and how widely we are
+fallen from the pure exemplar and idea of our nature: for after this
+corruptive elongation, from a primitive and pure creation we are almost
+lost in degeneration; and Adam hath not only fallen from his Creator,
+but we ourselves from Adam, our Tycho and primary generator.
+
+If generous honesty, valor, and plain dealing be the cognizance of thy
+family or characteristic of thy country, hold fast such inclinations
+sucked in with thy first breath, and which lay in the cradle with thee.
+Fall not into transforming degenerations, which under the old name
+create a new nation. Be not an alien in thine own nation; bring not
+Orontes into Tiber; learn the virtues, not the vices, of thy foreign
+neighbors, and make thy imitation by discretion, not contagion. Feel
+something of thyself in the noble acts of thy ancestors, and find in
+thine own genius that of thy predecessors. Rest not under the expired
+merits of others; shine by those of thine own. Flame not, like the
+central fire which enlighteneth no eyes, which no man seeth, and most
+men think there is no such thing to be seen. Add one ray unto the common
+lustre; add not only to the number, but the note of thy generation; and
+prove not a cloud, but an asterisk in thy region.
+
+Since thou hast an alarum in thy breast, which tells thee thou hast a
+living spirit in thee above two thousand times in an hour, dull not away
+thy days in slothful supinity and the tediousness of doing nothing. To
+strenuous minds there is an inquietude in overquietness and no
+laboriousness in labor; and to tread a mile after the slow pace of a
+snail, or the heavy measures of the lazy of Brazilia, were a most tiring
+penance, and worse than a race of some furlongs at the Olympics. The
+rapid courses of the heavenly bodies are rather imitable by our
+thoughts than our corporeal motions; yet the solemn motions of our lives
+amount unto a greater measure than is commonly apprehended. Some few men
+have surrounded the globe of the earth; yet many, in the set locomotions
+and movements of their days, have measured the circuit of it, and twenty
+thousand miles have been exceeded by them. Move circumspectly, not
+meticulously, and rather carefully solicitous than anxiously
+solicitudinous. Think not there is a lion in the way, nor walk with
+leaden sandals in the paths of goodness; but in all virtuous motions let
+prudence determine thy measures. Strive not to run, like Hercules, a
+furlong in a breath: festination may prove precipitation; deliberating
+delay may be wise cunctation, and slowness no slothfulness.
+
+Despise not the obliquities of younger ways, nor despair of better
+things whereof there is yet no prospect. Who would imagine that
+Diogenes, who in his younger days was a falsifier of money, should, in
+the after course of his life, be so great a contemner of metal? Some
+negroes, who believe the resurrection, think that they shall rise white.
+Even in this life regeneration may imitate resurrection; our black and
+vicious tinctures may wear off, and goodness clothe us with candor. Good
+admonitions knock not always in vain. There will be signal examples of
+God's mercy, and the angels must not want their charitable rejoices for
+the conversion of lost sinners. Figures of most angles do nearest
+approach unto circles, which have no angles at all. Some may be near
+unto goodness who are conceived far from it; and many things happen not
+likely to ensue from any promises of antecedencies. Culpable beginnings
+have found commendable conclusions, and infamous courses pious
+retractations. Detestable sinners have proved exemplary converts on
+earth, and may be glorious in the apartment of Mary Magdalen in heaven.
+Men are not the same through all divisions of their ages: time,
+experience, self-reflections, and God's mercies, make in some
+well-tempered minds a kind of translation before death, and men to
+differ from themselves as well as from other persons. Hereof the old
+world afforded many examples to the infamy of latter ages, wherein men
+too often live by the rule of their inclinations; so that, without any
+astral prediction, the first day gives the last: men are commonly as
+they were; or rather, as bad dispositions run into worser habits, the
+evening doth not crown, but sourly conclude, the day.
+
+If the Almighty will not spare us according to his merciful capitulation
+at Sodom; if his goodness please not to pass over a great deal of bad
+for a small pittance of good, or to look upon us in the lump, there is
+slender hope for mercy, or sound presumption of fulfilling half his
+will, either in persons or nations: they who excel in some virtues being
+so often defective in others; few men driving at the extent and
+amplitude of goodness, but computing themselves by their best parts, and
+others by their worst, are content to rest in those virtues which others
+commonly want. Which makes this speckled face of honesty in the world;
+and which was the imperfection of the old philosophers and great
+pretenders unto virtue; who, well declining the gaping vices of
+intemperance, incontinency, violence, and oppression, were yet blindly
+peccant in iniquities of closer faces; were envious, malicious,
+contemners, scoffers, censurers, and stuffed with vizard vices, no less
+depraving the ethereal particle and diviner portion of man. For envy,
+malice, hatred, are the qualities of Satan, close and dark like himself;
+and where such brands smoke, the soul cannot be white. Vice may be had
+at all prices; expensive and costly iniquities, which make the noise,
+cannot be every man's sins; but the soul may be foully inquinated at a
+very low rate, and a man may be cheaply vicious to the perdition
+of himself.
+
+Having been long tossed in the ocean of the world, he will by that time
+feel the in-draught of another, unto which this seems but preparatory
+and without it of no high value. He will experimentally find the
+emptiness of all things, and the nothing of what is past; and wisely
+grounding upon true Christian expectations, finding so much past, will
+wholly fix upon what is to come. He will long for perpetuity, and live
+as though he made haste to be happy. The last may prove the prime part
+of his life, and those his best days which he lived nearest heaven.
+
+Live happy in the Elysium of a virtuously composed mind, and let
+intellectual contents exceed the delights wherein mere pleasurists place
+their paradise. Bear not too slack reins upon pleasure, nor let
+complexion or contagion betray thee unto the exorbitancy of delight.
+Make pleasure thy recreation or intermissive relaxation, not thy Diana,
+life, and profession. Voluptuousness is as insatiable as covetousness.
+Tranquillity is better than jollity, and to appease pain than to invent
+pleasure. Our hard entrance into the world, our miserable going out of
+it, our sicknesses, disturbances, and sad rencounters in it, do
+clamorously tell us we came not into the world to run a race of delight,
+but to perform the sober acts and serious purposes of man; which to omit
+were foully to miscarry in the advantage of humanity, to play away an
+uniterable life, and to have lived in vain. Forget not the capital end,
+and frustrate not the opportunity of once living. Dream not of any kind
+of metempsychosis or transanimation, but into thine own body, and that
+after a long time; and then also unto wail or bliss, according to thy
+first and fundamental life. Upon a curricle in this world depends a long
+course of the next, and upon a narrow scene here an endless expansion
+hereafter. In vain some think to have an end of their beings with their
+lives. Things cannot get out of their natures, or be, or not be, in
+despite of their constitutions. Rational existences in heaven perish not
+at all, and but partially on earth; that which is thus once, will in
+some way be always; the first living human soul is still alive, and all
+Adam hath found no period.
+
+Since the stars of heaven do differ in glory; since it hath pleased the
+Almighty hand to honor the north pole with lights above the south; since
+there are some stars so bright that they can hardly be looked upon, some
+so dim that they can scarcely be seen, and vast numbers not to be seen
+at all even by artificial eyes; read thou the earth in heaven and things
+below from above. Look contentedly upon the scattered difference of
+things, and expect not equality in lustre, dignity, or perfection, in
+regions or persons below; where numerous numbers must be content to
+stand like lacteous or nebulous stars, little taken notice of, or dim in
+their generations. All which may be contentedly allowable in the affairs
+and ends of this world, and in suspension unto what will be in the order
+of things hereafter, and the new system of mankind which will be in the
+world to come; when the last may be the first, and the first the last;
+when Lazarus may sit above Cæsar, and the just, obscure on earth, shall
+shine like the sun in heaven; when personations shall cease, and
+histrionism of happiness be over; when reality shall rule, and all shall
+be as they shall be forever.
+
+FROM 'HYDRIOTAPHIA, OR URN-BURIAL'
+
+In the Jewish Hypogæum and subterranean cell at Rome was little
+observable beside the variety of lamps and frequent draughts of the holy
+candlestick. In authentic draughts of Antony and Jerome, we meet with
+thigh bones and death's-heads; but the cemeterial cells of ancient
+Christians and martyrs were filled with draughts of Scripture stories;
+not declining the flourishes of cypress, palms, and olive, and the
+mystical figures of peacocks, doves, and cocks; but literately affecting
+the portraits of Enoch, Lazarus, Jonas, and the vision of Ezekiel, as
+hopeful draughts and hinting imagery of the resurrection--which is the
+life of the grave and sweetens our habitations in the land of moles
+and pismires.
+
+The particulars of future beings must needs be dark unto ancient
+theories, which Christian philosophy yet determines but in a cloud of
+opinions. A dialogue between two infants in the womb concerning the
+state of this world, might handsomely illustrate our ignorance of the
+next, whereof methinks we yet discourse in Plato's den, and are but
+embryon philosophers.
+
+Pythagoras escapes, in the fabulous hell of Dante, among that swarm of
+philosophers, wherein, whilst we meet with Plato and Socrates, Cato is
+to be found in no lower place than Purgatory. Among all the set,
+Epicurus is most considerable, whom men make honest without an Elysium,
+who contemned life without encouragement of immortality, and making
+nothing after death, yet made nothing of the king of terrors.
+
+Were the happiness of the next world as closely apprehended as the
+felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live; and unto such as
+consider none hereafter, it must be more than death to die, which makes
+us amazed at those audacities that durst be nothing and return into
+their chaos again. Certainly, such spirits as could contemn death, when
+they expected no better being after, would have scorned to live had they
+known any. And therefore we applaud not the judgments of Machiavel that
+Christianity makes men cowards, or that with the confidence of but half
+dying, the despised virtues of patience and humility have abased the
+spirits of men, which pagan principles exalted; but rather regulated the
+wildness of audacities, in the attempts, grounds, and eternal sequels of
+death, wherein men of the boldest spirits are often prodigiously
+temerarious. Nor can we extenuate the valor of ancient martyrs, who
+contemned death in the uncomfortable scene of their lives, and in their
+decrepit martyrdoms did probably lose not many months of their days, or
+parted with life when it was scarce worth the living; for (beside that
+long time past holds no consideration unto a slender time to come) they
+had no small disadvantage from the constitution of old age, which
+naturally makes men fearful, and complexionally superannuated from the
+bold and courageous thoughts of youth and fervent years. But the
+contempt of death from corporal animosity promoteth not our felicity.
+They may sit in the orchestra and noblest seats of heaven who have held
+up shaking hands in the fire, and humanly contended for glory.
+
+Meanwhile, Epicurus lies deep in Dante's hell, wherein we meet with
+tombs inclosing souls which denied their immortalities. But whether the
+virtuous heathen, who lived better than he spake, or, erring in the
+principles of himself, yet lived above philosophers of more specious
+maxims, lie so deep as he is placed; at least so low as not to rise
+against Christians who, believing or knowing that truth, have lastingly
+denied it in their practice and conversation--were a query too sad to
+insist on.
+
+But all or most apprehensions rested in opinions of some future being,
+which, ignorantly or coldly believed, begat those perverted conceptions,
+ceremonies, sayings, which Christians pity or laugh at. Happy are they
+which live not in that disadvantage of time, when men could say little
+for futurity but from reason; whereby the noblest minds fell often upon
+doubtful deaths and melancholy dissolutions. With those hopes Socrates
+warmed his doubtful spirits against that cold potion; and Cato, before
+he durst give the fatal stroke, spent part of the night in reading the
+immortality of Plato, thereby confirming his wavering hand unto the
+animosity of that attempt.
+
+It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him
+he is at the end of his nature; or that there is no farther state to
+come, unto which this seems progressional, and otherwise made in vain.
+Without this accomplishment, the natural expectation and desire of such
+a state were but a fallacy in nature. Unsatisfied considerators would
+quarrel at the justice of their constitutions, and rest content that
+Adam had fallen lower; whereby, by knowing no other original, and deeper
+ignorance of themselves, they might have enjoyed the happiness of
+inferior creatures, who in tranquillity possess their constitutions, as
+having not the apprehension to deplore their own natures; and being
+framed below the circumference of these hopes, or cognition of better
+being, the wisdom of God hath necessitated their contentment. But the
+superior ingredient and obscured part of ourselves, whereto all present
+felicities afford no resting contentment, will be able at last to tell
+us we are more than our present selves, and evacuate such hopes in the
+fruition of their own accomplishments....
+
+But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals
+with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who
+can but pity the founder of the pyramids? Erostratus lives that burnt
+the Temple of Diana; he is almost lost that built it. Time hath spared
+the epitaph of Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we
+compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad
+have equal durations; and Thersites is like to live as long as
+Agamemnon. Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there
+be not more remarkable persons forgot than any that stand remembered in
+the known account of time? Without the favor of the everlasting
+register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and
+Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.
+
+Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as
+though they had not been; to be found in the register of God, not in the
+record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the first story, and the
+recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of
+the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far
+surpasseth the day; and who knows when was the equinox? Every hour adds
+unto that current arithmetic, which scarce stands one moment. And since
+death must be the Lucina of life, and even pagans could doubt whether
+thus to live were to die; since our longest sun sets at right
+declensions, and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be
+long before we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes[4];
+since the brother of death daily haunts us with dying mementos, and
+time, that grows old itself, bids us hope no long duration, diuturnity
+is a dream and folly of expectation.
+
+[Footnote 4: According to the custom of the Jews, who placed a lighted
+wax candle in a pot of ashes by the corpse.]
+
+Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with
+memory a great part even of our living beings. We slightly remember our
+felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart
+upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or
+themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce
+callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which
+notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to
+come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature,
+whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and our
+delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows
+are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions. A great part of antiquity
+contented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration of their
+souls; a good way to continue their memories, while, having the
+advantage of plural successions, they could not but act something
+remarkable in such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their
+passed selves, making accumulation of glory unto their last durations.
+Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were
+content to recede into the common being, and make one particle of the
+public soul of all things, which was no more than to return into their
+unknown and divine original again. Egyptian ingenuity was more
+unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in sweet consistencies to attend
+the return of their souls. But all was vanity, feeding the wind and
+folly. The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice
+now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and
+Pharaoh is sold for balsams....
+
+There is nothing strictly immortal but immortality. Whatever hath no
+beginning may be confident of no end, which is the peculiar of that
+necessary essence that cannot destroy itself, and the highest strain of
+omnipotency to be so powerfully constituted, as not to suffer even from
+the power of itself. All others have a dependent being, and within the
+reach of destruction. But the sufficiency of Christian immortality
+frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after
+death makes a folly of posthumous memory. God, who can only destroy our
+souls, and hath assured our resurrection, either of our bodies or names
+hath directly promised no duration. Wherein there is so much of chance,
+that the boldest expectants have found unhappy frustration; and to hold
+long subsistence seems but a scape in oblivion. But man is a noble
+animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing
+nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of
+bravery in the infamy of his nature....
+
+Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. A small
+fire sufficeth for life; great flames seemed too little after death,
+while men vainly affected pyres, and to burn like Sardanapalus. But the
+wisdom of funeral laws found the folly of prodigal blazes, and reduced
+undoing fires into the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so
+mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an urn....
+
+While some have studied monuments, others have studiously declined them;
+and some have been so vainly boisterous, that they durst not acknowledge
+their graves; wherein Alaricus seems more subtle, who had a river turned
+to hide his bones at the bottom. Even Sylla, who thought himself safe in
+his urn, could not prevent revenging tongues, and stones thrown at his
+monument. Happy are they whom privacy makes innocent, who deal so with
+men in this world that they are not afraid to meet them in the next; who
+when they die make no commotion among the dead, and are not touched with
+that poetical taunt of Isaiah.
+
+Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vainglory and
+wild enormities of ancient magnanimity. But the most magnanimous
+resolution rests in the Christian religion, which trampleth upon pride
+and sits on the neck of ambition, humbly pursuing that infallible
+perpetuity unto which all others must diminish their diameters, and be
+poorly seen in angles of contingency.
+
+Pious spirits, who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made
+little more of this world than the world that was before it, while they
+lay obscure in the chaos of preordination and night of their forebeings.
+And if any have been so happy as truly to understand Christian
+annihilation, ecstasis, exolution, liquefaction, transformation, the
+kiss of the spouse, gustation of God, and ingression into the divine
+shadow, they have already had a handsome anticipation of heaven; the
+glory of the world is surely over, and the earth in ashes unto them.
+
+FROM 'A FRAGMENT ON MUMMIES'
+
+Wise Egypt, prodigal of her embalmments, wrapped up her princes and
+great commanders in aromatical folds, and, studiously extracting from
+corruptible bodies their corruption, ambitiously looked forward to
+immortality; from which vainglory we have become acquainted with many
+remnants of the old world, who could discourse unto us of the great
+things of yore, and tell us strange tales of the sons of Mizraim and
+ancient braveries of Egypt. Wonderful indeed are the preserves of time,
+which openeth unto us mummies from crypts and pyramids, and mammoth
+bones from caverns and excavations; whereof man hath found the best
+preservation, appearing unto us in some sort fleshly, while beasts must
+be fain of an osseous continuance.
+
+In what original this practice of the Egyptians had root, divers authors
+dispute; while some place the origin hereof in the desire to prevent the
+separation of the soul by keeping the body untabified, and alluring the
+spiritual part to remain by sweet and precious odors. But all this was
+but fond inconsideration. The soul, having broken its ..., is not stayed
+by bands and cerecloths, nor to be recalled by Sabaean odors, but fleeth
+to the place of invisibles, the _ubi_ of spirits, and needeth a surer
+than Hermes's seal to imprison it to its medicated trunk, which yet
+subsists anomalously in its indestructible case, and, like a widow
+looking for her husband, anxiously awaits its return....
+
+That mummy is medicinal, the Arabian Doctor Haly delivereth, and divers
+confirms; but of the particular uses thereof, there is much discrepancy
+of opinion. While Hofmannus prescribes the same to epileptics, Johan de
+Muralto commends the use thereof to gouty persons; Bacon likewise extols
+it as a stiptic, and Junkenius considers it of efficacy to resolve
+coagulated blood. Meanwhile, we hardly applaud Francis the First of
+France, who always carried mummies with him as a panacea against all
+disorders; and were the efficacy thereof more clearly made out, scarce
+conceive the use thereof allowable in physic, exceeding the barbarities
+of Cambyses, and turning old heroes unto unworthy potions. Shall Egypt
+lend out her ancients unto chirurgeons and apothecaries, and Cheops and
+Psammitticus be weighed unto us for drugs? Shall we eat of Chamnes and
+Amosis in electuaries and pills, and be cured by cannibal mixtures?
+Surely, such diet is dismal vampirism, and exceeds in horror the black
+banquet of Domitian, not to be paralleled except in those Arabian
+feasts, wherein Ghoules feed horribly.
+
+But the common opinion of the virtues of mummy bred great consumption
+thereof, and princes and great men contended for this strange panacea,
+wherein Jews dealt largely, manufacturing mummies from dead carcasses
+and giving them the names of kings, while specifics were compounded from
+crosses and gibbet leavings. There wanted not a set of Arabians who
+counterfeited mummies so accurately that it needed great skill to
+distinguish the false from the true. Queasy stomachs would hardly fancy
+the doubtful potion, wherein one might so easily swallow a cloud for his
+Juno, and defraud the fowls of the air while in conceit enjoying the
+conserves of Canopus....
+
+For those dark caves and mummy repositories are Satan's abodes, wherein
+he speculates and rejoices on human vainglory, and keeps those kings and
+conquerors, whom alive he bewitched, whole for that great day when he
+will claim his own, and marshal the kings of Nilus and Thebes in sad
+procession unto the pit.
+
+Death, that fatal necessity which so many would overlook or blinkingly
+survey, the old Egyptians held continually before their eyes. Their
+embalmed ancestors they carried about at their banquets, as holding them
+still a part of their families, and not thrusting them from their places
+at feasts. They wanted not likewise a sad preacher at their tables to
+admonish them daily of death,--surely an unnecessary discourse while
+they banqueted in sepulchres. Whether this were not making too much of
+death, as tending to assuefaction, some reason there is to doubt; but
+certain it is that such practices would hardly be embraced by our modern
+gourmands, who like not to look on faces of _mortua_, or be elbowed
+by mummies.
+
+Yet in those huge structures and pyramidal immensities, of the builders
+whereof so little is known, they seemed not so much to raise sepulchres
+or temples to death as to contemn and disdain it, astonishing heaven
+with their audacities, and looking forward with delight to their
+interment in those eternal piles. Of their living habitations they made
+little account, conceiving of them but as _hospitia_, or inns, while
+they adorned the sepulchres of the dead, and, planting thereon lasting
+bases, defied the crumbling touches of time and the misty vaporousness
+of oblivion. Yet all were but Babel vanities. Time sadly overcometh all
+things, and is now dominant, and sitteth upon a sphinx, and looketh
+unto Memphis and old Thebes, while his sister Oblivion reclineth
+semisomnous on a pyramid, gloriously triumphing, making puzzles of
+Titanian erections, and turning old glories into dreams. History sinketh
+beneath her cloud. The traveler, as he paceth amazedly through those
+deserts, asketh of her, Who builded them? and she mumbleth something,
+but what it is he heareth not.
+
+Egypt itself is now become the land of obliviousness, and doteth. Her
+ancient civility is gone, and her glory hath vanished as a phantasma.
+Her youthful days are over, and her face hath become wrinkled and
+tetric. She poreth not upon the heavens; astronomy is dead unto her, and
+knowledge maketh other cycles. Canopus is afar off, Memnon resoundeth
+not to the sun, and Nilus heareth strange voices. Her monuments are but
+hieroglyphically sempiternal. Osiris and Anubis, her averruncous
+deities, have departed, while Orus yet remains dimly shadowing the
+principle of vicissitude and the effluxion of things, but receiveth
+little oblation.
+
+
+
+FROM 'A LETTER TO A FRIEND'
+
+He was willing to quit the world alone and altogether, leaving no
+earnest behind him for corruption or after-grave, having small content
+in that common satisfaction to survive or live in another, but amply
+satisfied that his disease should die with himself, nor revive in a
+posterity to puzzle physic, and make sad mementos of their parent
+hereditary....
+
+In this deliberate and creeping progress unto the grave, he was somewhat
+too young and of too noble a mind to fall upon that stupid symptom,
+observable in divers persons near their journey's end, and which may be
+reckoned among the mortal symptoms of their last disease; that is, to
+become more narrow-minded, miserable, and tenacious, unready to part
+with anything when they are ready to part with all, and afraid to want
+when they have no time to spend; meanwhile physicians, who know that
+many are mad but in a single depraved imagination, and one prevalent
+decipiency, and that beside and out of such single deliriums a man may
+meet with sober actions and good sense in Bedlam, cannot but smile to
+see the heirs and concerned relations gratulating themselves on the
+sober departure of their friends; and though they behold such mad
+covetous passages, content to think they die in good understanding, and
+in their sober senses.
+
+Avarice, which is not only infidelity but idolatry, either from covetous
+progeny or questuary education, had no root in his breast, who made good
+works the expression of his faith, and was big with desires unto public
+and lasting charities; and surely, where good wishes and charitable
+intentions exceed abilities, theorical beneficency may be more than a
+dream. They build not castles in the air who would build churches on
+earth; and though they leave no such structures here, may lay good
+foundations in heaven. In brief, his life and death were such that I
+could not blame them who wished the like, and almost to have been
+himself: almost, I say; for though we may wish the prosperous
+appurtenances of others, or to be another in his happy accidents, yet so
+intrinsical is every man unto himself that some doubt may be made
+whether any would exchange his being, or substantially become
+another man.
+
+He had wisely seen the world at home and abroad, and thereby observed
+under what variety men are deluded in the pursuit of that which is not
+here to be found. And although he had no opinion of reputed felicities
+below, and apprehended men widely out in the estimate of such happiness,
+yet his sober contempt of the world wrought no Democratism or Cynicism,
+no laughing or snarling at it, as well understanding there are not
+felicities in this world to satisfy a serious mind; and therefore, to
+soften the stream of our lives, we are fain to take in the reputed
+contentions of this world, to unite with the crowd in their beatitudes,
+and to make ourselves happy by consortion, opinion, or co-existimation:
+for strictly to separate from received and customary felicities, and to
+confine unto the rigor of realities, were to contract the consolation of
+our beings unto too uncomfortable circumscriptions.
+
+Not to be content with life is the unsatisfactory state of those who
+destroy themselves; who, being afraid to live, run blindly upon their
+own death, which no man fears by experience: and the Stoics had a
+notable doctrine to take away the fear thereof; that is, in such
+extremities, to desire that which is not to be avoided, and wish what
+might be feared; and so made evils voluntary and to suit with their own
+desires, which took off the terror of them.
+
+But the ancient martyrs were not encouraged by such fallacies, who,
+though they feared not death, were afraid to be their own executioners;
+and therefore thought it more wisdom to crucify their lusts than their
+bodies, to circumcise than stab their hearts, and to mortify than kill
+themselves.
+
+His willingness to leave this world about that age when most men think
+they may best enjoy it, though paradoxical unto worldly ears, was not
+strange unto mine, who have so often observed that many, though old, oft
+stick fast unto the world, and seem to be drawn like Cacus's oxen,
+backward with great struggling and reluctancy unto the grave. The long
+habit of living makes mere men more hardly to part with life, and all to
+be nothing, but what is to come. To live at the rate of the old world,
+when some could scarce remember themselves young, may afford no better
+digested death than a more moderate period. Many would have thought it
+an happiness to have had their lot of life in some notable conjunctures
+of ages past; but the uncertainty of future times hath tempted few to
+make a part in ages to come. And surely, he that hath taken the true
+altitude of things, and rightly calculated the degenerate state of this
+age, is not like to envy those that shall live in the next, much less
+three or four hundred years hence, when no man can comfortably imagine
+what face this world will carry; and therefore, since every age makes a
+step unto the end of all things, and the Scripture affords so hard a
+character of the last times, quiet minds will be content with their
+generations, and rather bless ages past than be ambitious of those
+to come.
+
+Though age had set no seal upon his face, yet a dim eye might clearly
+discover fifty in his actions; and therefore, since wisdom is the gray
+hair, and an unspotted life old age, although his years came short, he
+might have been said to have held up with longer livers, and to have
+been Solomon's old man. And surely if we deduct all those days of our
+life which we might wish unlived, and which abate the comfort of those
+we now live, if we reckon up only those days which God hath accepted of
+our lives, a life of good years will hardly be a span long; the son in
+this sense may outlive the father, and none be climacterically old. He
+that early arriveth unto the parts and prudence of age is happily old
+without the uncomfortable attendants of it; and 'tis superfluous to live
+unto gray hairs, when in a precocious temper we anticipate the virtues
+of them. In brief, he cannot be accounted young who outliveth the old
+man. He that hath early arrived unto the measure of a perfect stature in
+Christ, hath already fulfilled the prime and longest intention of his
+being; and one day lived after the perfect rule of piety is to be
+preferred before sinning immortality.
+
+Although he attained not unto the years of his predecessors, yet he
+wanted not those preserving virtues which confirm the thread of weaker
+constitutions. _Cautelous_ chastity and _crafty_ sobriety were far from
+him; those jewels were _paragon_, without flaw, hair, ice, or cloud in
+him: which affords me a hint to proceed in these good wishes and few
+mementos unto you.
+
+
+
+SOME RELATIONS WHOSE TRUTH WE FEAR
+
+From 'Pseudoxia Epidemica'
+
+Many other accounts like these we meet sometimes in history, scandalous
+unto Christianity, and even unto humanity; whose verities not only, but
+whose relations, honest minds do deprecate. For of sins heteroclital,
+and such as want either name or precedent, there is ofttimes a sin even
+in their histories. We desire no records of such enormities; sins should
+be accounted new, that so they may be esteemed monstrous. They amit of
+monstrosity as they fall from their rarity; for men count it venial to
+err with their forefathers, and foolishly conceive they divide a sin in
+its society. The pens of men may sufficiently expatiate without these
+singularities of villainy; for as they increase the hatred of vice in
+some, so do they enlarge the theory of wickedness in all. And this is
+one thing that may make latter ages worse than were the former; for the
+vicious examples of ages past poison the curiosity of these present,
+affording a hint of sin unto seducible spirits, and soliciting those
+unto the imitation of them, whose heads were never so perversely
+principled as to invent them. In this kind we commend the wisdom and
+goodness of Galen, who would not leave unto the world too subtle a
+theory of poisons; unarming thereby the malice of venomous spirits,
+whose ignorance must be contented with sublimate and arsenic. For surely
+there are subtler venerations, such as will invisibly destroy, and like
+the basilisks of heaven. In things of this nature silence commendeth
+history: 'tis the veniable part of things lost; wherein there must never
+rise a Pancirollus, nor remain any register but that of hell.
+
+
+
+WILLIAM BROWNE
+
+(1591-1643)
+
+Among the English poets fatuous for their imaginative interpretation of
+nature, high rank must be given to William Browne, who belongs in the
+list headed by Spenser, and including Thomas Lodge, Michael Drayton,
+Nicholas Breton, George Wither, and Phineas Fletcher. Although he shows
+skill and charm of style in various kinds of verse, his name rests
+chiefly upon his largest work, 'Britannia's Pastorals.' This is much
+wider in scope than the title suggests, if one follows the definition
+given by Pope in his 'Discourse on Pastoral Poetry.' He says:--"A
+Pastoral is an imitation of the action of a shepherd or one considered
+under that character. The form of this imitation is dramatic, or
+narrated, or mixed of both; the fable simple, the manners not too polite
+nor too rustic; the thoughts are plain, yet admit a little quickness and
+passion.... If we would copy Nature, it may be useful to take this Idea
+along with us: that Pastoral is an image of what they call the Golden
+Age. So that we are not to describe our shepherds as shepherds at this
+day really are, but as they may be conceived then to have been when the
+best of men followed the employment.... We must therefore use some
+illusion to render a Pastoral delightful, and this consists in exposing
+the best side only of a shepherd's life, and in concealing its
+miseries."
+
+In his 'Shepherd's Pipe,' a series of 'Eclogues' Browne follows this
+plan; but 'Britannia's Pastorals' contains rambling stories of
+Hamadryads and Oreads; figures which are too shadowy to seem real, yet
+stand in exquisite woodland landscapes. When the story passes to the
+yellow sands and "froth-girt rocks," washed by the crisped and curling
+waves from "Neptune's silver, ever-shaking breast," or when it touches
+the mysteries of the ocean world, over which "Thetis drives her silver
+throne," the poet's fancy is as delicate as when he revels in the earthy
+smell of the woods, where the leaves, golden and green, hide from sight
+the feathered choir; where glow the hips of scarlet berries; where is
+heard the dropping of nuts; and where the active bright-eyed squirrels
+leap from tree to tree.
+
+The loves, hardships, and adventures of Marina, Celadyne, Redmond, Fida,
+Philocel, Aletheia, Metanoia, and Amintas do not hold the reader from
+delight in descriptions of the blackbird and dove calling from the dewy
+branches; crystal streams lisping through banks purple with violets,
+rosy with eglantine, or sweet with wild thyme; thickets where the
+rabbits hide; sequestered nooks on which the elms and alders throw long
+shadows; circles of green grass made by dancing elves; rounded hills
+shut in by oaks, pines, birches, and laurel, where shepherds pipe on
+oaten straws, or shag-haired satyrs frolic and sleep; and meadows, whose
+carpets of cowslip and mint are freshened daily by nymphs pouring out
+gentle streams from crystal urns. Every now and then, huntsmen in green
+dash through his sombre woods with their hounds in full cry; anglers are
+seated by still pools, shepherds dance around the May-pole, and
+shepherdesses gather flowers for garlands. Gloomy caves appear,
+surrounded by hawthorn and holly that "outdares cold winter's ire," and
+sheltering old hermits, skilled in simples and the secret power of
+herbs. Sometimes the poet describes a choir where the tiny wren sings
+the treble, Robin Redbreast the mean, the thrush the tenor, and the
+nightingale the counter-tenor, while droning bees fill in the bass; and
+shows us fairy haunts and customs with a delicacy only equaled by
+Drayton and Herrick.
+
+Several lyric songs of high order are scattered through the 'Pastorals,'
+and the famous 'Palinode on Man' is imbedded in the Third Book as
+follows:--
+
+     "I truly know
+     How men are born and whither they shall go;
+     I know that like to silkworms of one year,
+     Or like a kind and wronged lover's tear,
+     Or on the pathless waves a rudder's dint,
+     Or like the little sparkles of a flint,
+     Or like to thin round cakes with cost perfum'd,
+     Or fireworks only made to be consum'd:
+     I know that such is man, and all that trust
+     In that weak piece of animated dust.
+     The silkworm droops, the lover's tears soon shed,
+     The ship's way quickly lost, the sparkle dead;
+     The cake burns out in haste, the firework's done,
+     And man as soon as these as quickly gone."
+
+Little is known of Browne's life. He was a native of Tavistock,
+Devonshire; born, it is thought, in 1591, the son of Thomas Browne, who
+is supposed by Prince in his 'Worthies of Devon' to have belonged to a
+knightly family. According to Wood, who says "he had a great mind in a
+little body," he was sent to Exeter College, Oxford, "about the
+beginning of the reign of James I." Leaving Oxford without a degree, he
+was admitted in 1612 to the Inner Temple, London, and a little later he
+is discovered at Oxford, engaged as private tutor to Robert Dormer,
+afterward Earl of Carnarvon. In 1624 he received his degree of Master of
+Arts from Oxford. He appears to have settled in Dorking, and after 1640
+nothing more is heard of him. Wood thinks he died in 1645, but there is
+an entry in the Tavistock register, dated March 27th, 1643, and reading
+"William Browne was buried" on that day. That he was devoted to the
+streams, dales, and downs of his native Devonshire is shown in the
+Pastorals, where he sings:--
+
+     "Hail, thou my native soil! thou blessèd plot
+     Whose equal all the world affordeth not!
+     Show me who can, so many crystal rills,
+     Such sweet-cloth'd valleys or aspiring hills;
+     Such wood-ground, pastures, quarries, wealthy mines;
+     Such rocks in whom the diamond fairly shines."
+
+And in another place he says:--
+
+     "And Tavy in my rhymes
+     Challenge a due; let it thy glory be
+     That famous Drake and I were born by thee."
+
+The First Book of 'Britannia's Pastorals' was written before its author
+was twenty, and was published in 1631. The Second Book appeared in 1616,
+and both were reprinted in 1625. The Third Book was not published during
+Browne's life. The 'Shepherd's Pipe' was published in 1614, and 'The
+Inner Temple Masque,' written on the story of Ulysses and Circe, for
+representation in 1614, was first published in Thomas Davies's edition
+of Browne's works (3 vols., 1772). Two critical editions of value have
+been brought out in recent years: one by W. Carew Hazlitt (London,
+1868-69); and the other by Gordon Goodwin and A.H. Bullen (1894).
+
+"In the third song of the Second Book," says Mr. Bullen in his
+preface,--
+
+     "There is a description of a delightful grove, perfumed with
+     'odoriferous buds and herbs of price,' where fruits hang in
+     gallant clusters from the trees, and birds tune their notes
+     to the music of running water; so fair a pleasaunce
+
+          'that you are fain
+          Where you last walked to turn and walk again.'
+
+     A generous reader might apply that description to Browne's
+     poetry; he might urge that the breezes which blew down these
+     leafy alleys and over those trim parterres were not more
+     grateful than the fragrance exhaled from the 'Pastorals';
+     that the brooks and birds babble and twitter in the printed
+     page not less blithely than in that western Paradise. What so
+     pleasant as to read of May-games, true-love knots, and
+     shepherds piping in the shade? of pixies and fairy-circles?
+     of rustic bridals and junketings? of angling, hunting the
+     squirrel, nut-gathering? Of such subjects William Browne
+     treats, singing like the shepherd in the 'Arcadia,' as though
+     he would never grow old. He was a happy poet. It was his good
+     fortune to grow up among wholesome surroundings whose
+     gracious influences sank into his spirit. He loved the hills
+     and dales round Tavistock, and lovingly described them in his
+     verse. Frequently he indulges in descriptions of sunrise and
+     sunset; they leave no vivid impression, but charm the reader
+     by their quiet beauty. It cannot be denied that his fondness
+     for simple, homely images sometimes led him into sheer
+     fatuity; and candid admirers must also admit that, despite
+     his study of simplicity, he could not refrain from hunting
+     (as the manner was) after far-fetched outrageous conceits."
+
+Browne is a poet's poet. Drayton, Wither, Herbert, and John Davies of
+Hereford, wrote his praises. Mrs. Browning includes him in her 'Vision
+of Poets,' where she says:--
+
+     "Drayton and Browne,--with smiles they drew
+     From outward Nature, still kept new
+     From their own inward nature true."
+
+Milton studied him carefully, and just as his influence is perceived in
+the work of Keats, so is it found in 'Comus' and in 'Lycidas.' Browne
+acknowledges Spenser and Sidney as his masters, and his work shows that
+he loved Chaucer and Shakespeare.
+
+
+
+     CIRCE'S CHARM
+
+     Song from the 'Inner Temple Masque'
+
+
+     Son of Erebus and night,
+     Hie away; and aim thy flight
+     Where consort none other fowl
+     Than the bat and sullen owl;
+     Where upon thy limber grass,
+     Poppy and mandragoras,
+     With like simples not a few,
+     Hang forever drops of dew;
+     Where flows Lethe without coil
+     Softly like a stream of oil.
+     Hie thee hither, gentle sleep:
+     With this Greek no longer keep.
+     Thrice I charge thee by my wand,
+     Thrice with moly from my hand
+     Do I touch Ulysses's eyes,
+     And with the jaspis: then arise,
+       Sagest Greek!
+
+_CIRCE_.
+
+Photogravure from a Painting by E Burne-Jones.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+     THE HUNTED SQUIRREL
+
+     From 'Britannia's Pastorals'
+
+
+     Then as a nimble squirrel from the wood
+     Ranging the hedges for his filbert food
+     Sits pertly on a bough, his brown nuts cracking,
+     And from the shell the sweet white kernel taking;
+     Till with their crooks and bags a sort of boys
+     To share with him come with so great a noise
+     That he is forced to leave a nut nigh broke,
+     And for his life leap to a neighbor oak,
+     Thence to a beach, thence to a row of ashes;
+     Whilst through the quagmires and red water plashes
+     The boys run dabbling through thick and thin;
+     One tears his hose, another breaks his shin;
+     This, torn and tattered, hath with much ado
+     Got by the briars; and that hath lost his shoe;
+     This drops his band; that headlong falls for haste;
+     Another cries behind for being last:
+     With sticks and stones and many a sounding holloa
+     The little fool with no small sport they follow,
+     Whilst he from tree to tree, from spray to spray
+     Gets to the woods and hides him in his dray.
+
+
+
+
+     AS CAREFUL MERCHANTS DO EXPECTING STAND
+
+     From 'Britannia's Pastorals'
+
+
+     As careful merchants do expecting stand,
+       After long time and merry gales of wind,
+     Upon the place where their brave ships must land,
+       So wait I for the vessel of my mind.
+
+     Upon a great adventure is it bound,
+       Whose safe return will valued be at more
+     Than all the wealthy prizes which have crowned
+       The golden wishes of an age before.
+
+     Out of the East jewels of worth she brings;
+       The unvalued diamond of her sparkling eye
+     Wants in the treasures of all Europe's kings;
+       And were it mine, they nor their crowns should buy.
+
+     The sapphires ringèd on her panting breast
+       Run as rich veins of ore about the mold,
+     And are in sickness with a pale possessed;
+       So true for them I should disvalue gold.
+
+     The melting rubies on her cherry lip
+       Are of such power to hold, that as one day
+     Cupid flew thirsty by, he stooped to sip:
+       And, fastened there, could never get away.
+
+     The sweets of Candy are no sweets to me
+       Where hers I taste: nor the perfumes of price,
+     Robbed from the happy shrubs of Araby,
+       As her sweet breath so powerful to entice.
+
+     O hasten then! and if thou be not gone
+       Unto that wicked traffic through the main,
+     My powerful sigh shall quickly drive thee on,
+       And then begin to draw thee back again.
+
+     If, in the mean, rude waves have it opprest,
+     It shall suffice, I ventured at the best.
+
+
+
+
+     SONG OF THE SIRENS
+
+     From 'The Inner Temple Masque'
+
+
+     Steer hither, steer your wingèd pines,
+       All beaten mariners!
+     Here lie love's undiscovered mines,
+       A prey to passengers:
+     Perfumes far sweeter than the best
+     Which make the Phoenix's urn and nest.
+       Fear not your ships,
+     Nor any to oppose you save our lips,
+       But come on shore,
+     Where no joy dies till love hath gotten more.
+
+     For swelling waves our panting breasts,
+       Where never storms arise,
+     Exchange, and be awhile our guests:
+       For stars, gaze on our eyes.
+     The compass love shall hourly sing,
+     And as he goes about the ring,
+       We will not miss
+     To tell each point he nameth with a kiss.
+       Then come on shore,
+     Where no joy dies till love hath gotten more.
+
+
+
+     AN EPISTLE ON PARTING
+
+     From 'Epistles'
+
+
+     Dear soul, the time is come, and we must part;
+     Yet, ere I go, in these lines read my heart:
+     A heart so just, so loving, and so true,
+     So full of sorrow and so full of you,
+     That all I speak or write or pray or mean,--
+     And, which is all I can, all that I dream,--
+     Is not without a sigh, a thought of you,
+     And as your beauties are, so are they true.
+     Seven summers now are fully spent and gone,
+     Since first I loved, loved you, and you alone;
+     And should mine eyes as many hundreds see,
+     Yet none but you should claim a right in me;
+     A right so placed that time shall never hear
+     Of one so vowed, or any loved so dear.
+     When I am gone, if ever prayers moved you,
+     Relate to none that I so well have loved you:
+     For all that know your beauty and desert,
+     Would swear he never loved that knew to part.
+     Why part we then? That spring, which but this day
+     Met some sweet river, in his bed can play,
+     And with a dimpled cheek smile at their bliss,
+     Who never know what separation is.
+     The amorous vine with wanton interlaces
+     Clips still the rough elm in her kind embraces:
+     Doves with their doves sit billing in the groves,
+     And woo the lesser birds to sing their loves:
+     Whilst hapless we in griefful absence sit,
+     Yet dare not ask a hand to lessen it.
+
+
+
+
+     SONNETS TO CÆLIA
+
+
+     Fairest, when by the rules of palmistry,
+       You took my hand to try if you could guess,
+     By lines therein, if any wight there be
+       Ordained to make me know some happiness:
+     I wished that those charácters could explain,
+       Whom I will never wrong with hope to win;
+     Or that by them a copy might be ta'en,
+       By you alone what thoughts I have within.
+     But since the hand of nature did not set
+       (As providently loath to have it known)
+     The means to find that hidden alphabet,
+       Mine eyes shall be the interpreters alone:
+     By them conceive my thoughts, and tell me, fair,
+      If now you see her that doth love me, there.
+
+     Were't not for you, here should my pen have rest,
+       And take a long leave of sweet poesy;
+     Britannia's swains, and rivers far by west,
+       Should hear no more my oaten melody.
+     Yet shall the song I sung of them awhile
+       Unperfect lie, and make no further known
+     The happy loves of this our pleasant Isle,
+       Till I have left some record of mine own.
+     You are the subject now, and, writing you,
+       I well may versify, not poetize:
+     Here needs no fiction; for the graces true
+       And virtues clip not with base flatteries.
+     Here should I write what you deserve of praise;
+     Others might wear, but I should win, the bays.
+
+     Fairest, when I am gone, as now the glass
+       Of Time is marked how long I have to stay,
+     Let me entreat you, ere from hence I pass,
+       Perhaps from you for ever more away,--
+     Think that no common love hath fired my breast,
+       No base desire, but virtue truly known,
+     Which I may love, and wish to have possessed,
+       Were you the highest as fairest of any one.
+     'Tis not your lovely eye enforcing flames,
+       Nor beauteous red beneath a snowy skin,
+     That so much binds me yours, or makes your fame's,
+       As the pure light and beauty shrined within:
+     Yet outward parts I must affect of duty,
+     As for the smell we like the rose's beauty.
+
+
+
+HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL
+
+(1820-1872)
+
+This poet, prominent among those who gained their chief inspiration from
+the stirring events of the Civil War, was born in Providence, Rhode
+Island, February 6th, 1820, and died in East Hartford, Connecticut,
+October 31st, 1872. He was graduated at Trinity College, Hartford,
+studied law, and was admitted to the bar; but instead of the legal
+profession adopted that of a teacher, and made his home in Hartford,
+which was the residence of his uncle, the Bishop of Connecticut.
+Although Mr. Brownell soon became known as a writer of verse, both grave
+and humorous, it was not till the coming on of the Civil War that his
+muse found truest and noblest expression. With a poet's sensitiveness he
+foresaw the coming storm, and predicted it in verse that has the ring of
+an ancient prophet; and when the crash came he sang of the great deeds
+of warriors in the old heroic strain. Many of these poems, like 'Annus
+Memorabilis' and 'Coming,' were born of the great passion of patriotism
+which took possession of him, and were regarded only as the visions of a
+heated imagination. But when the storm burst it was seen that he had the
+true vision. As the dreadful drama unrolled, Brownell rose to greater
+issues, and became the war-poet _par excellence_, the vigorous
+chronicler of great actions.
+
+He was fond of the sea, and ardently longed for the opportunity to
+witness, if not to participate in, a sea-fight. His desire was gratified
+in a singular way. He had printed in a Hartford paper a very felicitous
+versification of Farragut's 'General Orders' in the fight at the mouth
+of the Mississippi. This attracted Farragut's attention, and he took
+steps to learn the name of the author. When it was given, Commodore
+Farragut (he was not then Admiral) offered Mr. Brownell the position of
+master's-mate on board the Hartford, and attached the poet to him in the
+character of a private secretary. Thus he was present at the fight of
+Mobile Bay. After the war he accompanied the Admiral in his cruise in
+European waters.
+
+Although Brownell was best known to the country by his descriptive
+poems, 'The River Fight' and 'The Bay Fight,' which appear in his volume
+of collected works, 'War Lyrics,' his title to be considered a true poet
+does not rest upon these only. He was unequal in his performance and
+occasionally was betrayed by a grotesque humor into disregard of dignity
+and finish; but he had both the vision and the lyric grace of the
+builder of lasting verse.
+
+
+     ANNUS MEMORABILIS
+
+     (CONGRESS, 1860-61)
+
+
+     Stand strong and calm as Fate! not a breath of scorn or hate--
+       Of taunt for the base, or of menace for the strong--
+     Since our fortunes must be sealed on that old and famous Field
+       Where the Right is set in battle with the Wrong.
+     'Tis coming, with the loom of Khamsin or Simoom,
+       The tempest that shall try if we are of God or no--
+     Its roar is in the sky,--and they there be which cry,
+       "Let us cower, and the storm may over-blow."
+     Now, nay! stand firm and fast! (that was a spiteful blast!)
+       This is not a war of men, but of Angels Good and Ill--
+     'Tis hell that storms at heaven--'tis the black and deadly Seven,
+       Sworn 'gainst the Shining Ones to work their damnèd will!
+     How the Ether glooms and burns, as the tide of combat turns,
+       And the smoke and dust above it whirl and float!
+     It eddies and it streams--and, certes, oft it seems
+       As the Sins had the Seraphs fairly by the throat.
+     But we all have read (in that Legend grand and dread),
+       How Michael and his host met the Serpent and his crew--
+     Naught has reached us of the Fight--but if I have dreamed aright,
+       'Twas a loud one and a long, as ever thundered through!
+     Right stiffly, past a doubt, the Dragon fought it out,
+       And his Angels, each and all, did for Tophet their devoir--
+     There was creak of iron wings, and whirl of scorpion stings,
+       Hiss of bifid tongues, and the Pit in full uproar!
+     But, naught thereof enscrolled, in one brief line 'tis told
+       (Calm as dew the Apocalyptic Pen),
+     That on the Infinite Shore their place was found no more.
+       God send the like on this our earth! Amen.
+
+     Copyrighted by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston.
+
+
+     WORDS FOR THE 'HALLELUJAH CHORUS'
+
+     Old John Brown lies a-moldering in the grave,
+     Old John Brown lies slumbering in his grave--
+     But John Brown's soul is marching with the brave,
+               His soul is marching on.
+
+                 Glory, glory, hallelujah!
+                 Glory, glory, hallelujah!
+                 Glory, glory, hallelujah!
+                 His soul is marching on.
+
+     He has gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord;
+     He is sworn as a private in the ranks of the Lord,--
+     He shall stand at Armageddon with his brave old sword,
+               When Heaven is marching on.
+
+     He shall file in front where the lines of battle form,
+     He shall face to front when the squares of battle form--
+     Time with the column, and charge in the storm,
+               Where men are marching on.
+
+     Ah, foul Tyrants! do ye hear him where he comes?
+     Ah, black traitors! do ye know him as he comes,
+     In thunder of the cannon and roll of the drums,
+               As we go marching on?
+
+     Men may die, and molder in the dust--
+     Men may die, and arise again from dust,
+     Shoulder to shoulder, in the ranks of the Just,
+               When Heaven is marching on.
+
+                 Glory, glory, hallelujah!
+                 Glory, glory, hallelujah!
+                 Glory, glory, hallelujah!
+                 His soul is marching on.
+
+
+     COMING
+
+     (APRIL, 1861)
+
+
+     World, are thou 'ware of a storm?
+         Hark to the ominous sound;
+     How the far-off gales their battle form,
+         And the great sea-swells feel ground!
+
+     It comes, the Typhoon of Death--
+         Nearer and nearer it comes!
+     The horizon thunder of cannon-breath
+         And the roar of angry drums!
+
+     Hurtle, Terror sublime!
+         Swoop o'er the Land to-day--
+     So the mist of wrong and crime,
+     The breath of our Evil Time
+         Be swept, as by fire, away!
+
+
+
+     PSYCHAURA
+
+     The wind of an autumn midnight
+       Is moaning around my door--
+     The curtains wave at the window,
+       The carpet lifts on the floor.
+
+     There are sounds like startled footfalls
+       In the distant chambers now,
+     And the touching of airy ringers
+       Is busy on hand and brow.
+
+     'Tis thus, in the Soul's dark dwelling--
+       By the moody host unsought--
+     Through the chambers of memory wander
+       The invisible airs of thought.
+
+     For it bloweth where it listeth,
+       With a murmur loud or low;
+     Whence it cometh--whither it goeth--
+       None tell us, and none may know.
+
+     Now wearying round the portals
+       Of the vacant, desolate mind--
+     As the doors of a ruined mansion,
+       That creak in the cold night wind.
+
+     And anon an awful memory
+       Sweeps over it fierce and high--
+     Like the roar of a mountain forest
+       When the midnight gale goes by.
+
+     Then its voice subsides in wailing,
+       And, ere the dawning of day,
+     Murmuring fainter and fainter,
+       In the distance dies away.
+
+
+     SUSPIRIA NOCTIS
+
+
+     Reading, and reading--little is the gain
+       Long dwelling with the minds of dead men leaves.
+     List rather to the melancholy rain,
+             Drop--dropping from the eaves.
+
+     Still the old tale--how hardly worth the telling!
+       Hark to the wind!--again that mournful sound,
+     That all night long, around this lonely dwelling,
+             Moans like a dying hound.
+
+
+
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
+
+(1809-1861)
+
+It is interesting to step back sixty years into the lives of Miss
+Mitford and her "dear young friend Miss Barrett," when the _-esses_ of
+"authoresses" and "poetesses" and "editresses" and "hermitesses" make
+the pages sibilant; when 'Books of Beauty,' and 'Keepsakes,' and the
+extraordinary methods of "Finden's Tableaux" make us wonder that
+literature survived; when Mr. Kenyon, taking Miss Mitford "to the
+giraffes and the Diorama," called for "Miss Barrett, a hermitess in
+Gloucester Place, who reads Greek as I do French, who has published some
+translations from Æschylus, and some most striking poems,"--"Our sweet
+Miss Barrett! to think of virtue and genius is to think of her." Of her
+own life Mrs. Browning writes:--"As to stories, my story amounts to the
+knife-grinder's, with nothing at all for a catastrophe. A bird in a cage
+would have as good a story; most of my events and nearly all my intense
+pleasure have passed in my thoughts."
+
+[Illustration: Mrs. Browning]
+
+She was born at Burn Hall, Durham, on March 6th, 1809, and passed a
+happy childhood and youth in her father's country house at Hope End,
+Herefordshire. She was remarkably precocious, reading Homer in the
+original at eight years of age. She said that in those days "the Greeks
+were her demigods. She dreamed more of Agamemnon than of Moses, her
+black pony." "I wrote verses very early, at eight years old and earlier.
+But what is less common, the early fancy turned into a will, and
+remained with me." At seventeen years of age she published the 'Essay on
+Mind,' and translated the 'Prometheus' of Æschylus. Some years later the
+family removed to London, and here Elizabeth, on account of her
+continued delicate health, was kept in her room for months at a time.
+The shock following on the death of her brother, who was drowned before
+her eyes in Torquay, whither she had gone for rest, completely shattered
+her physically. Now her life of seclusion in her London home began. For
+years she lay upon a couch in a large, comfortably darkened room, seeing
+only the immediate members of her family and a few privileged friends,
+and spending her days in writing and study, "reading," Miss Mitford
+says, "almost every book worth reading in almost every language." Here
+Robert Browning met her. They were married in 1846, against the will of
+her father. Going abroad immediately, they finally settled in Florence
+at the Casa Guidi, made famous by her poem bearing the same name. Their
+home became the centre of attraction to visitors in Florence, and many
+of the finest minds in the literary and artistic world were among their
+friends. Hawthorne, who visited them, describes Mrs. Browning as "a
+pale, small person, scarcely embodied at all, at any rate only
+substantial enough to put forth her slender fingers to be grasped, and
+to speak with a shrill yet sweet tenuity of voice. It is wonderful to
+see how small she is, how pale her cheek, how bright and dark her eyes.
+There is not such another figure in the world, and her black ringlets
+cluster down in her neck and make her face look whiter." She died in
+Florence on the 30th of June, 1861, and the citizens of Florence placed
+a tablet to her memory on the walls of Casa Guidi.
+
+The life and personality of Elizabeth Barrett Browning seem to explain
+her poetry. It is a life "without a catastrophe," except perhaps to her
+devoted father. And it is to this father's devotion that some of Mrs.
+Browning's poetical sins are due; for by him she was so pampered and
+shielded from every outside touch, that all the woes common to humanity
+grew for her into awful tragedies. Her life was abnormal and unreal,--an
+unreality that passed more or less into everything she did. Indeed, her
+resuscitation after meeting Robert Browning would mount into a miracle,
+unless it were realized that nothing in her former life had been quite
+as woful as it seemed. That Mrs. Browning was "a woman of real genius,"
+even Edward Fitzgerald allowed; and in speaking of Shelley, Walter
+Savage Landor said, "With the exception of Burns, he [Shelley] and Keats
+were inspired with a stronger spirit of poetry than any other poet since
+Milton. I sometimes fancy that Elizabeth Barrett Browning comes next."
+This is very high praise from very high authority, but none too high for
+Mrs. Browning, for her best work has the true lyric ring, that
+spontaneity of thought and expression which comes when the singer
+forgets himself in his song and becomes tuneful under the stress of the
+moment's inspiration. All of Mrs. Browning's work is buoyed up by her
+luxurious and overflowing imagination. With all its imperfections of
+technique, its lapses of taste and faults of expression, it always
+remains poetry, throbbing with passion and emotion and rich in color and
+sound. She wrote because she must. Her own assertions notwithstanding,
+one cannot think of Mrs. Browning as sitting down in cold blood to
+compose a poem according to fixed rules of art. This is the secret of
+her shortcomings, as it is also the source of her strength, and in her
+best work raises her high above those who, with more technical skill,
+have less of the true poet's divine fire and overflowing imagination.
+
+So in the 'Sonnets from the Portuguese,' written at a time when her
+woman's nature was thrilled to its very depths by the love of her "most
+gracious singer of high poems," and put forth as translations from
+another writer and tongue--in these her imperfections drop away, and she
+soars to marvelous heights of song. Such a lyric outburst as this, which
+reveals with magnificent frankness the innermost secrets of an ardently
+loving woman's heart, is unequaled in literature. Here the woman-poet is
+strong and sane; here she is free from obscurity and mannerism, and from
+grotesque rhymes. She has stepped out from her life of visions and of
+morbid woes into a life of wholesome reality and of "sweet
+reasonableness." Their literary excellence is due also to the fact that
+in the sonnet Mrs. Browning was held to a rigid form, and was obliged to
+curb her imagination and restrain her tendency to diffuseness of
+expression. Mr. Saintsbury goes so far as to say that the sonnet
+beginning--
+
+     "If thou wilt love me, let it be for naught
+     Except for love's sake only--"
+
+does not fall far short of Shakespeare.
+
+'Aurora Leigh' gives rise to the old question, Is it advisable to turn a
+three-volume novel into verse? Yet Landor wrote about it:--"I am
+reading a poem full of thought and fascinating with fancy--Mrs.
+Browning's (Aurora Leigh.) In many places there is the wild imagination
+of Shakespeare.... I am half drunk with it. Never did I think I should
+have a good draught of poetry again." Ruskin somewhere considered it the
+greatest poem of the nineteenth century, "with enough imagination to set
+up a dozen lesser poets"; and Stedman calls it "a representative and
+original creation: representative in a versatile, kaleidoscopic
+presentment of modern life and issues; original, because the most
+idiosyncratic of its author's poems. An audacious speculative freedom
+pervades it, which smacks of the New World rather than the Old....
+'Aurora Leigh' is a mirror of contemporary life, while its learned and
+beautiful illustrations make it almost a handbook of literature and the
+arts.... Although a most uneven production, full of ups and downs, of
+capricious or prosaic episodes, it nevertheless contains poetry as fine
+as its author has given us elsewhere, and enough spare inspiration to
+set up a dozen smaller poets. The flexible verse is noticeably her own,
+and often handled with as much spirit as freedom." Mrs. Browning
+herself declared it the most mature of her works, "and the one into
+which my highest convictions upon life and art have entered."
+Consider this:--
+
+     "For 'tis not in mere death that men die most:
+     And after our first girding of the loins
+     In youth's fine linen and fair broidery,
+     To run up-hill and meet the rising sun,
+     We are apt to sit tired, patient as a fool,
+     While others gird us with the violent bands
+     Of social figments, feints, and formalisms,
+     Reversing our straight nature, lifting up
+     Our base needs, keeping down our lofty thoughts,
+     Head downwards on the cross-sticks of the world.
+     Yet He can pluck us from that shameful cross.
+     God, set our feet low and our foreheads high,
+     And teach us how a man was made to walk!"
+
+Or this:--
+
+     "I've waked and slept through many nights and days
+     Since then--but still that day will catch my breath
+     Like a nightmare. There are fatal days, indeed,
+     In which the fibrous years have taken root
+     So deeply, that they quiver to their tops
+     Whene'er you stir the dust of such a day."
+
+Again:--
+
+     "Passion is
+     But something suffered after all--
+     . . . . . While Art
+
+     Sets action on the top of suffering."
+
+And this:--
+
+     "Nothing is small!
+     No lily-muffled hum of summer-bee
+     But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;
+     No pebble at your foot but proves a sphere:
+     . . . . . Earth's crammed with Heaven,
+     And every common bush afire with God;
+     But only he who sees, takes off his shoes."
+
+Among Mrs. Browning's smaller poems, 'Crowned and Buried' is,
+notwithstanding serious defects of technique, one of the most virile
+things she has written; indeed, some of her finest lines are to be found
+in it. In 'The Cry of the Children' and in 'Cowper's Grave' the pathos
+is most true and deep. 'Lord Walter's Wife' is an even more courageous
+vindication of the feminine essence than 'Aurora Leigh'; and her 'Vision
+of Poets' is said to "vie in beauty with Tennyson's own." The fine
+thought and haunting beauty of 'A Musical Instrument,' with its
+matchless climax, need not be dwelt on.
+
+During her fifteen years' residence in Florence she threw herself with
+great enthusiasm into Italian affairs, and wrote some political poems of
+varying merit, whose interest necessarily faded away when the occasion
+passed. But among those poems inspired by the struggle for freedom,
+'Casa Guidi Windows' comes close to the 'Sonnets from the Portuguese'
+and 'Aurora Leigh,' and holds an enduring place for its high poetry, its
+musical, sonorous verse, and the sustained intellectual vigor of
+composition. Her volume of 'Last Poems' contains, among much inferior
+matter, some of her finest and most touching work, as 'A Musical
+Instrument,' 'The Forced Recruit,' and 'Mother and Poet,' Peter Bayne
+says of her in his 'Great Englishwomen':--"In melodiousness and splendor
+of poetic gift Mrs. Browning stands ... first among women. She may not
+have the knowledge of life, the insight into character, the
+comprehensiveness of some, but we must all agree that a poet's far more
+essential qualities are hers: usefulness, fervor, a noble aspiration,
+and above all a tender, far-reaching nature, loving and beloved, and
+touching the hearts of her readers with some virtue from its depths. She
+seemed even in her life something of a spirit; and her view of life's
+sorrow and shame, of its hearty and eternal hope, is something like that
+which one might imagine a spirit's to be." Whether political, or
+sociological, or mystical, or sentimental, or impossible, there is about
+all that Mrs. Browning has written an enduring charm of picturesqueness,
+of romance, and of a pure enthusiasm for art. "Art for Art," she cries,
+
+     "And good for God, himself the essential Good!
+     We'll keep our aims sublime, our eyes erect,
+     Although our woman-hands should shake and fail."
+
+This was her achievement--her hands did not fail!
+
+Her husband's words will furnish, perhaps, the best conclusion to this
+slight study:--"You are wrong," he said, "quite wrong--she has genius; I
+am only a painstaking fellow. Can't you imagine a clever sort of angel
+who plots and plans, and tries to build up something,--he wants to make
+you see it as he sees it, shows you one point of view, carries you off
+to another, hammering into your head the thing he wants you to
+understand; and whilst this bother is going on, God Almighty turns you
+off a little star--that's the difference between us. The true creative
+power is hers, not mine."
+
+
+     A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT
+
+     WHAT was he doing, the great god Pan,
+     Down in the reeds by the river?
+         Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
+     Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
+     And breaking the golden lilies afloat
+         With the dragon-fly on the river.
+
+     He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
+         From the deep, cool bed of the river.
+     The limpid water turbidly ran,
+     And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
+     And the dragon-fly had fled away,
+         Ere he brought it out of the river.
+
+     High on the shore sat the great god Pan,
+         While turbidly flowed the river,
+     And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
+     With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
+     Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
+         To prove it fresh from the river.
+
+     He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
+         (How tall it stood in the river!)
+     Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
+     Steadily from the outside ring,
+     And notched the poor, dry, empty thing
+         In holes as he sat by the river.
+
+     "This is the way," laughed the great god Pan,
+         (Laughed while he sat by the river,)
+     "The only way, since gods began
+     To make sweet music, they could succeed."
+     Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
+         He blew in power by the river.
+
+     Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan,
+         Piercing sweet by the river!
+     Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
+     The sun on the hill forgot to die,
+     And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
+         Came back to dream on the river.
+
+     Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
+         To laugh as he sits by the river,
+     Making a poet out of a man:
+     The true gods sigh for the cost and the pain,--
+     For the reed which grows nevermore again
+         As a reed with the reeds in the river.
+
+
+     MY HEART AND I
+
+     Enough! we're tired, my heart and I.
+        We sit beside the headstone thus,
+        And wish that name were carved for us.
+     The moss reprints more tenderly
+        The hard types of the mason's knife,
+        As heaven's sweet life renews earth's life
+     With which we're tired, my heart and I.
+
+     You see we're tired, my heart and I.
+        We dealt with books, we trusted men,
+        And in our own blood drenched the pen,
+     As if such colors could not fly.
+        We walked too straight for fortune's end,
+        We loved too true to keep a friend:
+     At last we're tired, my heart and I.
+
+     How tired we feel, my heart and I!
+        We seem of no use in the world;
+        Our fancies hang gray and uncurled
+     About men's eyes indifferently;
+        Our voice, which thrilled you so, will let
+        You sleep; our tears are only wet:
+     What do we here, my heart and I?
+
+     So tired, so tired, my heart and I!
+        It was not thus in that old time
+        When Ralph sat with me 'neath the lime
+     To watch the sunset from the sky.
+        "Dear love, you're looking tired," he said;
+        I, smiling at him, shook my head:
+     'Tis now we're tired, my heart and I.
+
+     So tired, so tired, my heart and I!
+        Though now none takes me on his arm
+        To fold me close and kiss me warm
+     Till each quick breath end in a sigh
+        Of happy languor. Now, alone,
+        We lean upon this graveyard stone,
+     Uncheered, unkissed, my heart and I.
+
+     Tired out we are, my heart and I.
+        Suppose the world brought diadems
+        To tempt us, crusted with loose gems
+     Of powers and pleasures? Let it try.
+        We scarcely care to look at even
+        A pretty child, or God's blue heaven,
+     We feel so tired, my heart and I.
+
+     Yet who complains? My heart and I?
+        In this abundant earth, no doubt,
+        Is little room for things worn out:
+     Disdain them, break them, throw them by!
+        And if, before the days grew rough,
+        We _once_ were loved, used,--well enough
+     I think we've fared, my heart and I.
+
+
+     FROM 'CATARINA TO CAMOENS'
+
+     [Dying in his absence abroad, and referring to the poem in which he
+     recorded the sweetness of her eyes.]
+
+     On the door you will not enter
+         I have gazed too long: adieu!
+       Hope withdraws her "peradventure";
+     Death is near me,--and not _you!_
+         Come, O lover,
+         Close and cover
+     These poor eyes you called, I ween,
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen!"
+
+     When I heard you sing that burden
+       In my vernal days and bowers,
+     Other praises disregarding,
+       I but hearkened that of yours,
+         Only saying
+         In heart-playing,
+     "Blessed eyes mine eyes have been,
+     If the sweetest HIS have seen!"
+
+     But all changes. At this vesper
+       Cold the sun shines down the door.
+     If you stood there, would you whisper,
+       "Love, I love you," as before,--
+         Death pervading
+         Now and shading
+     Eyes you sang of, that yestreen,
+     As the sweetest ever seen?
+
+     Yes, I think, were you beside them,
+       Near the bed I die upon,
+     Though their beauty you denied them,
+       As you stood there looking down,
+         You would truly
+         Call them duly,
+     For the love's sake found therein,
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen."
+
+     And if _you_ looked down upon them,
+       And if _they_ looked up to _you_,
+     All the light which has foregone them
+       Would be gathered back anew;
+         They would truly
+         Be as duly
+     Love-transformed to beauty's sheen,
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen."
+
+     But, ah me! you only see me,
+       In your thoughts of loving man,
+     Smiling soft, perhaps, and dreamy,
+       Through the wavings of my fan;
+         And unweeting
+         Go repeating
+     In your revery serene,
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen."
+
+     O my poet, O my prophet!
+       When you praised their sweetness so,
+     Did you think, in singing of it,
+       That it might be near to go?
+         Had you fancies
+         From their glances,
+     That the grave would quickly screen
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen"?
+
+     No reply. The fountain's warble
+       In the courtyard sounds alone.
+     As the water to the marble
+       So my heart falls with a moan
+         From love-sighing
+         To this dying.
+     Death forerunneth Love to win
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen."
+
+     _Will_ you come? When I'm departed
+       Where all sweetnesses are hid,
+     Where thy voice, my tender-hearted,
+       Will not lift up either lid,
+         Cry, O lover,
+         Love is over!
+     Cry, beneath the cypress green,
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen!"
+
+     When the Angelus is ringing,
+       Near the convent will you walk,
+     And recall the choral singing
+       Which brought angels down our talk?
+         Spirit-shriven
+         I viewed heaven,
+     Till you smiled--"Is earth unclean,
+     Sweetest eyes were ever seen?"
+
+     When beneath the palace-lattice
+       You ride slow as you have done,
+     And you see a face there that is
+       Not the old familiar one,
+         Will you oftly
+         Murmur softly,
+     "Here ye watched me morn and e'en,
+     Sweetest eyes were ever seen"?
+
+     When the palace-ladies, sitting
+       Round your gittern, shall have said,
+     "Poets, sing those verses written
+     For the lady who is dead,"
+         Will you tremble,
+         Yet dissemble,
+     Or sing hoarse, with tears between,
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen"?
+
+     "Sweetest eyes!" How sweet in flowings
+       The repeated cadence is!
+     Though you sang a hundred poems,
+       Still the best one would be this.
+         I can hear it
+         'Twixt my spirit
+     And the earth-noise intervene,--
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen!"
+
+     But--but _now_--yet unremovèd
+       Up to heaven they glisten fast;
+     You may cast away, beloved,
+       In your future all my past:
+         Such old phrases
+         May be praises
+     For some fairer bosom-queen--
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen!"
+
+     Eyes of mine, what are ye doing?
+       Faithless, faithless, praised amiss
+     If a tear be, on your showing,
+       Dropped for any hope of HIS!
+         Death has boldness
+         Besides coldness,
+     If unworthy tears demean
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen."
+
+     I will look out to his future;
+       I will bless it till it shine.
+     Should he ever be a suitor
+       Unto sweeter eyes than mine,
+         Sunshine gild them,
+         Angels shield them,
+     Whatsoever eyes terrene
+     _Be_ the sweetest HIS have seen.
+
+
+     THE SLEEP
+
+     "He giveth his beloved sleep."--Ps. cxxvii. 2
+
+     OF ALL the thoughts of God that are
+       Borne inward into souls afar
+       Along the Psalmist's music deep,
+     Now tell me if that any is,
+     For gift or grace, surpassing this--
+     "He giveth his beloved sleep."
+
+     What would we give to our beloved?
+     The hero's heart to be unmoved.
+       The poet's star-tuned harp to sweep,
+     The patriot's voice to teach and rouse,
+     The monarch's crown to light the brows?--
+       He giveth his belovèd sleep.
+
+     What do we give to our beloved?
+     A little faith all undisproved,
+       A little dust to overweep,
+     And bitter memories to make
+     The whole earth blasted for our sake.
+       He giveth his beloved sleep.
+
+     "Sleep soft, beloved!" we sometimes say,
+     Who have no tune to charm away
+       Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep;
+     But never doleful dream again
+     Shall break the happy slumber when
+       He giveth his belovèd sleep.
+
+     O earth, so full of dreary noises!
+     O men with wailing in your voices!
+       O delvèd gold the wailers heap!
+     O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall!
+     God strikes a silence through you all,
+       And giveth his beloved sleep.
+
+     His dews drop mutely on the hill,
+     His cloud above it saileth still,
+       Though on its slope men sow and reap;
+     More softly than the dew is shed,
+     Or cloud is floated overhead,
+       He giveth his belovèd sleep.
+
+     Ay, men may wonder while they scan
+     A living, thinking, feeling man
+       Confirmed in such a rest to keep;
+     But angels say,--and through the word
+     I think their happy smile is _heard_,--
+       "He giveth his belovèd sleep."
+
+     For me, my heart that erst did go
+     Most like a tired child at a show,
+       That sees through tears the mummers leap,
+     Would now its wearied vision close,
+     Would childlike on His love repose
+       Who giveth his belovèd sleep.
+
+     And friends, dear friends, when it shall be
+     That this low breath is gone from me,
+       And round my bier ye come to weep,
+     Let one most loving of you all
+     Say, "Not a tear must o'er her fall!
+       He giveth his belovèd sleep."
+
+
+     THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN
+
+     I
+
+     Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
+         Ere the sorrow comes with years?
+     They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,
+         And _that_ cannot stop their tears.
+     The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
+       The young birds are chirping in the nest;
+     The young fawns are playing with the shadows;
+       The young flowers are blowing toward the west:
+     But the young, young children, O my brothers!
+         They are weeping bitterly.
+     They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
+         In the country of the free.
+
+     II
+
+     Do you question the young children in their sorrow,
+         Why their tears are falling so?
+     The old man may weep for his To-morrow
+         Which is lost in Long-Ago;
+     The old tree is leafless in the forest;
+       The old year is ending in the frost;
+     The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest;
+       The old hope is hardest to be lost:
+     But the young, young children, O my brothers!
+         Do you ask them why they stand
+     Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,
+         In our happy Fatherland?
+
+     III
+
+     They look up with their pale and sunken faces;
+         And their looks are sad to see,
+     For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses
+         Down the cheeks of infancy.
+     "Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary;
+       Our young feet," they say, "are very weak;
+     Few paces have we taken, yet are weary;
+       Our grave-rest is very far to seek.
+     Ask the aged why they weep, and not the children;
+         For the outside earth is cold,
+     And we young ones stand without in our bewildering,
+         And the graves are for the old."
+
+     IV
+
+     "True," say the children, "it may happen
+         That we die before our time:
+     Little Alice died last year; her grave is shapen
+         Like a snowball in the rime.
+     We looked into the pit prepared to take her:
+       Was no room for any work in the close clay,
+     From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her,
+       Crying, 'Get up, little Alice! it is day.'
+     If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower,
+       With your ear down, little Alice never cries.
+     Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,
+       For the smile has time for growing in her eyes;
+     And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in
+       The shroud by the kirk-chime.
+     It is good when it happens," say the children,
+         "That we die before our time."
+
+     V
+
+     Alas, alas, the children! They are seeking
+         Death in life, as best to have.
+     They are binding up their hearts away from breaking
+         With a cerement from the grave.
+     Go out, children, from the mine and from the city;
+       Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do;
+     Pluck your handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty;
+       Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through.
+     But they answer, "Are your cowslips of the meadows
+         Like our weeds anear the mine?
+     Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows,
+         From your pleasures fair and fine.
+
+     VI
+
+     "For oh!" say the children, "we are weary,
+         And we cannot run or leap;
+     If we cared for any meadows, it were merely
+         To drop down in them, and sleep.
+     Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping;
+       We fall upon our faces, trying to go;
+     And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping,
+       The reddest flower would look as pale as snow;
+     For all day we drag our burden tiring,
+         Through the coal-dark, underground;
+     Or all day we drive the wheels of iron
+         In the factories, round and round.
+
+     VII
+
+     "For all-day the wheels are droning, turning;
+         Their wind comes in our faces,
+     Till our hearts turn, our heads with pulses burning,
+         And the walls turn in their places.
+     Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling,
+       Turns the long light that drops adown the wall,
+     Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling,--
+       All are turning, all the day, and we with all.
+     And all day the iron wheels are droning,
+         And sometimes we could pray,
+     'O ye wheels' (breaking out in a mad moaning),
+         'Stop! be silent for to-day!'"
+
+     VIII
+
+     Ay. be silent! Let them hear each other breathing
+         For a moment, mouth to mouth;
+     Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing
+         Of their tender human youth;
+     Let them feel that this cold metallic motion
+       Is not all the life God fashions or reveals;
+     Let them prove their living souls against the notion
+       That they live in you, or tinder you, O wheels!
+     Still all day the iron wheels go onward,
+         Grinding life down from its mark;
+     And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward,
+         Spin on blindly in the dark.
+
+     IX
+
+     Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers,
+         To look up to Him, and pray;
+     So the blessèd One who blesseth all the others
+         Will bless them another day.
+     They answer, "Who is God, that he should hear us
+       While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred?
+     When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us
+       Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word;
+     And _we_ hear not (for the wheels in their resounding)
+         Strangers speaking at the door.
+     Is it likely God, with angels singing round him,
+         Hears our weeping any more?
+
+     X
+
+     "Two words, indeed, of praying we remember;
+         And at midnight's hour of harm,
+     'Our Father,' looking upward in the chamber,
+         We say softly for a charm.
+     We know no other words except 'Our Father';
+       And we think that, in some pause of angels' song,
+     God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather,
+       And hold both within his right hand, which is strong.
+     'Our Father!' If he heard us, he would surely
+         (For they call him good and mild)
+     Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely,
+         'Come and rest with me, my child.'
+
+     XI
+
+     "But no!" say the children, weeping faster,
+         "He is speechless as a stone;
+     And they tell us, of his image is the master
+         Who commands us to work on.
+     Go to!" say the children,--"up in heaven,
+       Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find.
+     Do not mock us: Grief has made us unbelieving:
+       We look up for God; but tears have made us blind."
+     Do you hear the children weeping and disproving,
+         O my brothers, what ye preach?
+     For God's possible is taught by his world's loving--
+         And the children doubt of each.
+
+     XII
+
+     And well may the children weep before you!
+         They are weary ere they run;
+     They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory
+         Which is brighter than the sun.
+     They know the grief of man, without its wisdom;
+       They sink in man's despair, without its calm;
+     Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom;
+       Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm;
+     Are worn as if with age, yet unretrievingly
+       The harvest of its memories cannot reap;
+     Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly--
+         Let them weep! let them weep!
+
+     XIII
+
+     They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
+         And their look is dread to see.
+     For they mind you of their angels in high places,
+         With eyes turned on Deity.
+     "How long," they say, "how long, O cruel nation,
+       Will you stand, to move the world on a child's heart,--
+     Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,
+       And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?
+     Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper,
+         And your purple shows your path;
+     But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper
+         Than the strong man in his wrath!"
+
+
+     MOTHER AND POET
+
+     [On Laura Savio of Turin, a poetess and patriot, whose sons
+     were killed at Ancona and Gaeta.]
+
+     DEAD! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
+       And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
+     Dead! both my boys! When you sit at the feast,
+       And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
+         Let none look at _me_!
+
+     Yet I was a poetess only last year,
+       And good at my art, for a woman, men said:
+     But _this_ woman, _this_, who is agonized here,--
+       The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head
+         Forever instead.
+
+     What art can a woman be good at? Oh, vain!
+       What art _is_ she good at, but hurting her breast
+     With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain?
+       Ah, boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you prest,
+         And I proud by that test.
+
+     What art's for a woman? To hold on her knees
+       Both darlings! to feel all their arms round her throat
+     Cling, strangle a little! to sew by degrees,
+       And 'broider the long-clothes and neat little coat;
+         To dream and to dote.
+
+     To teach them.... It stings there! _I_ made them indeed
+       Speak plain the word _country. I_ taught them, no doubt,
+     That a country's a thing men should die for at need.
+       I prated of liberty, rights, and about
+         The tyrant cast out.
+
+     And when their eyes flashed ... O my beautiful eyes! ...
+       I exulted; nay, let them go forth at the wheels
+     Of the guns, and denied not. But then the surprise
+       When one sits quite alone! Then one weeps, then one kneels.
+         God, how the house feels!
+
+     At first, happy news came, in gay letters moiled
+       With my kisses, of camp-life and glory, and how
+     They both loved me; and soon, coming home to be spoiled,
+       In return would fan off every fly from my brow
+         With their green laurel-bough.
+
+     There was triumph at Turin: "Ancona was free!"
+       And some one came out of the cheers in the street,
+     With a face pale as stone, to say something to me.
+       My Guido was dead! I fell down at his feet,
+         While they cheered in the street.
+
+     I bore it; friends soothed me; my grief looked sublime
+       As the ransom of Italy. One boy remained
+     To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time
+       When the first grew immortal, while both of us strained
+         To the height _he_ had gained.
+
+     And letters still came; shorter, sadder, more strong,
+       Writ now but in one hand:--"I was not to faint,--
+     One loved me for two; would be with me ere long:
+       And _Viva l'Italia_ he died for, our saint,
+         Who forbids our complaint."
+
+     My Nanni would add, "he was safe, and aware
+       Of a presence that turned off the balls,--was imprest
+     It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear,
+       And how 'twas impossible, quite dispossest,
+         To live on for the rest."
+
+     On which, without pause, up the telegraph-line
+       Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta,--"_Shot.
+     Tell his mother_." Ah, ah! "his," "their" mother, not "mine":
+       No voice says, "_My_ mother," again to me. What!
+         You think Guido forgot?
+
+     Are souls straight so happy, that, dizzy with heaven,
+       They drop earth's affections, conceive not of woe?
+     I think not! Themselves were too lately forgiven
+       Through that Love and that Sorrow which reconciled so
+         The Above and Below.
+
+     O Christ of the seven wounds, who look'dst through the dark
+       To the face of thy mother! Consider, I pray,
+     How we common mothers stand desolate, mark,--
+       Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned away,
+         And no last word to say!
+
+     Both boys dead? but that's out of nature. We all
+       Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one.
+     'Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall;
+       And when Italy's made, for what end is it done,
+         If we have not a son?
+
+     Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta's taken, what then?
+       When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport
+     Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men;
+       When the guns of Cavalli with final retort
+         Have cut the game short;
+
+     When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee;
+       When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green, and red:
+     When _you_ have your country from mountain to sea,
+       When King Victor has Italy's crown on his head,
+         (And I have my dead)--
+
+     What then? Do not mock me. Ah, ring your bells low
+       And burn your lights faintly! _My_ country is _there_.
+     Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow:
+       My Italy's THERE, with my brave civic pair,
+         To disfranchise despair!
+
+     Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength,
+       And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn;
+     But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length
+       Into wail such as this, and we sit on forlorn
+         When the man-child is born.
+
+     Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
+       And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
+     Both! both my boys! If in keeping the feast
+       You want a great song for your Italy free,
+         Let none look at _me_!
+
+
+     A COURT LADY
+
+     Her hair was tawny with gold; her eyes with purple were dark;
+     Her cheeks' pale opal burnt with a red and restless spark.
+
+     Never was lady of Milan nobler in name and in race;
+     Never was lady of Italy fairer to see in the face.
+
+     Never was lady on earth more true as woman and wife,
+     Larger in judgment and instinct, prouder in manners and life.
+
+     She stood in the early morning, and said to her maidens, "Bring
+     That silken robe made ready to wear at the court of the King.
+
+     "Bring me the clasps of diamond, lucid, clear of the mote;
+     Clasp me the large at the waist, and clasp me the small at the throat.
+
+     "Diamonds to fasten the hair, and diamonds to fasten the sleeves,
+     Laces to drop from their rays, like a powder of snow from the eaves."
+
+     Gorgeous she entered the sunlight, which gathered her up in a flame,
+     While, straight in her open carriage, she to the hospital came.
+
+     In she went at the door, and gazing from end to end,--
+     "Many and low are the pallets; but each is the place of a friend."
+
+     Up she passed through the wards, and stood at a young man's bed;
+     Bloody the band on his brow, and livid the droop of his head.
+
+     "Art thou a Lombard, my brother? Happy art thou!" she cried,
+     And smiled like Italy on him: he dreamed in her face--and died.
+
+     Pale with his passing soul, she went on still to a second:
+     He was a grave hard man, whose years by dungeons were reckoned.
+
+     Wounds in his body were sore, wounds in his life were sorer.
+     "Art thou a Romagnole?" Her eyes drove lightnings before her.
+
+     "Austrian and priest had joined to double and tighten the cord
+     Able to bind thee, O strong one, free by the stroke of a sword.
+
+     "Now be grave for the rest of us, using the life overcast
+     To ripen our wine of the present (too new) in glooms of the past."
+
+     Down she stepped to a pallet where lay a face like a girl's,
+     Young, and pathetic with dying,--a deep black hole in the curls.
+
+     "Art thou from Tuscany, brother? and seest thou, dreaming in pain,
+     Thy mother stand in the piazza, searching the list of the slain?"
+
+Kind as a mother herself, she touched his cheeks with her hands:
+     "Blessed is she who has borne thee, although she should weep as
+                she stands."
+
+     On she passed to a Frenchman, his arm carried off by a ball:
+     Kneeling: "O more than my brother! how shall I thank thee for all?
+
+     "Each of the heroes around us has fought for his land and line;
+     But thou hast fought for a stranger, in hate of a wrong not thine.
+
+     "Happy are all free peoples, too strong to be dispossest,
+     But blessed are those among nations who dare to be strong for the
+     rest."
+
+     Ever she passed on her way, and came to a couch where pined
+     One with a face from Venetia, white with a hope out of mind.
+
+     Long she stood and gazed, and twice she tried at the name;
+     But two great crystal tears were all that faltered and came.
+
+     Only a tear for Venice? She turned as in passion and loss,
+     And stooped to his forehead and kissed it, as if she were kissing
+     the cross.
+
+     Faint with that strain of heart, she moved on then to another,
+     Stern and strong in his death: "And dost thou suffer, my brother?"
+
+     Holding his hands in hers: "Out of the Piedmont lion
+     Cometh the sweetness of freedom! sweetest to live or to die on."
+
+     Holding his cold rough hands: "Well, oh well have ye done
+     In noble, noble Piedmont, who would not be noble alone."
+
+     Back he fell while she spoke. She rose to her feet with a spring.
+     "That was a Piedmontese! and this is the court of the King!"
+
+
+     THE PROSPECT
+
+     Methinks we do as fretful children do,
+        Leaning their faces on the window-pane
+        To sigh the glass dim with their own breath's stain,
+     And shut the sky and landscape from their view;
+     And thus, alas! since God the maker drew
+        A mystic separation 'twixt those twain,--
+        The life beyond us and our souls in pain,--
+     We miss the prospect which we are called unto
+     By grief we are fools to use. Be still and strong,
+     O man, my brother! hold thy sobbing breath,
+       And keep thy soul's large window pure from wrong;
+     That so, as life's appointment issueth,
+       Thy vision may be clear to watch along
+     The sunset consummation-lights of death.
+
+
+     DE PROFUNDIS
+
+     The face which, duly as the sun,
+     Rose up for me with life begun,
+     To mark all bright hours of the day
+     With daily love, is dimmed away--
+       And yet my days go on, go on.
+
+     The tongue which, like a stream, could run
+     Smooth music from the roughest stone,
+     And every morning with "Good day"
+     Make each day good, is hushed away--
+       And yet my days go on, go on.
+
+     The heart which, like a staff, was one
+     For mine to lean and rest upon,
+     The strongest on the longest day,
+     With steadfast love is caught away--
+       And yet my days go on, go on.
+
+     The world goes whispering to its own,
+     "This anguish pierces to the bone."
+     And tender friends go sighing round,
+     "What love can ever cure this wound?"
+       My days go on, my days go on.
+
+     The past rolls forward on the sun
+     And makes all night. O dreams begun,
+     Not to be ended! Ended bliss!
+     And life, that will not end in this!
+       My days go on, my days go on.
+
+     Breath freezes on my lips to moan:
+     As one alone, once not alone,
+     I sit and knock at Nature's door,
+     Heart-bare, heart-hungry, very poor,
+       Whose desolated days go on.
+
+     I knock and cry--Undone, undone!
+     Is there no help, no comfort--none?
+     No gleaning in the wide wheat-plains
+     Where others drive their loaded wains?
+       My vacant days go on, go on.
+
+     This Nature, though the snows be down,
+     Thinks kindly of the bird of June.
+     The little red hip on the tree
+     Is ripe for such. What is for me,
+       Whose days so winterly go on?
+
+     No bird am I to sing in June,
+     And dare not ask an equal boon.
+     Good nests and berries red are Nature's
+     To give away to better creatures--
+       And yet my days go on, go on.
+
+     _I_ ask less kindness to be done--
+     Only to loose these pilgrim-shoon
+     (Too early worn and grimed) with sweet
+     Cool deathly touch to these tired feet,
+       Till days go out which now go on.
+
+     Only to lift the turf unmown
+     From off the earth where it has grown,
+     Some cubit-space, and say, "Behold,
+     Creep in, poor Heart, beneath that fold,
+       Forgetting how the days go on."
+
+     A Voice reproves me thereupon,
+     More sweet than Nature's, when the drone
+     Of bees is sweetest, and more deep,
+     Than when the rivers overleap
+       The shuddering pines, and thunder on.
+
+     God's Voice, not Nature's--night and noon
+     He sits upon the great white throne,
+     And listens for the creature's praise.
+     What babble we of days and days?
+       The Dayspring he, whose days go on!
+
+     He reigns above, he reigns alone:
+     Systems burn out and leave his throne:
+     Fair mists of seraphs melt and fall
+     Around him, changeless amid all--
+       Ancient of days, whose days go on!
+
+     He reigns below, he reigns alone--
+     And having life in love forgone
+     Beneath the crown of sovran thorns,
+     He reigns the jealous God. Who mourns
+       Or rules with HIM, while days go on?
+
+     By anguish which made pale the sun,
+     I hear him charge his saints that none
+     Among the creatures anywhere
+     Blaspheme against him with despair,
+       However darkly days go on.
+
+     Take from my head the thorn-wreath brown:
+     No mortal grief deserves that crown.
+     O supreme Love, chief misery,
+     The sharp regalia are for _Thee_,
+       Whose days eternally go on!
+
+     For us, ... whatever's undergone,
+     Thou knowest, willest what is done.
+     Grief may be joy misunderstood:
+     Only the Good discerns the good.
+       I trust Thee while my days go on.
+
+     Whatever's lost, it first was won!
+     We will not struggle nor impugn.
+     Perhaps the cup was broken here
+     That Heaven's new wine might show more clear.
+       I praise Thee while my days go on.
+
+     I praise Thee while my days go on;
+     I love Thee while my days go on!
+     Through dark and dearth, through fire and frost,
+     With emptied arms and treasure lost,
+       I thank Thee while my days go on!
+
+     And, having in thy life-depth thrown
+     Being and suffering (which are one),
+     As a child drops some pebble small
+     Down some deep well, and hears it fall
+       Smiling--so I! THY DAYS GO ON!
+
+
+     THE CRY OF THE HUMAN
+
+     "There is no God," the foolish saith,
+       But none, "There is no sorrow;"
+     And nature oft the cry of faith
+       In bitter need will borrow:
+     Eyes which the preacher could not school
+       By wayside graves are raised;
+     And lips say, "God be pitiful,"
+       Who ne'er said, "God be praised."
+               Be pitiful, O God.
+
+     The tempest stretches from the steep
+       The shadow of its coming;
+     The beasts grow tame, and near us creep,
+       As help were in the human:
+     Yet while the cloud-wheels roll and grind,
+       We spirits tremble under!
+     The hills have echoes; but we find
+       No answer for the thunder.
+               Be pitiful, O God!
+
+     The battle hurtles on the plains--
+       Earth feels new scythes upon her:
+     We reap our brothers for the wains,
+       And call the harvest--honor.
+     Draw face to face, front line to line,
+       One image all inherit:
+     Then kill, curse on, by that same sign,
+       Clay, clay,--and spirit, spirit.
+               Be pitiful, O God!
+
+     We meet together at the feast--
+       To private mirth betake us--
+     We stare down in the winecup, lest
+       Some vacant chair should shake us!
+     We name delight, and pledge it round--
+       "It shall be ours to-morrow!"
+     God's seraphs! do your voices sound
+       As sad in naming sorrow?
+               Be pitiful, O God!
+
+     We sit together, with the skies,
+       The steadfast skies, above us;
+     We look into each other's eyes,
+       "And how long will you love us?"
+     The eyes grow dim with prophecy,
+       The voices, low and breathless--
+     "Till death us part!"--O words, to be
+       Our _best_ for love the deathless!
+               Be pitiful, dear God!
+
+     We tremble by the harmless bed
+       Of one loved and departed--
+     Our tears drop on the lips that said
+       Last night, "Be stronger-hearted!"
+     O God,--to clasp those fingers close,
+       And yet to feel so lonely!--
+     To see a light upon such brows,
+       Which is the daylight only!
+               Be pitiful, O God!
+
+     The happy children come to us,
+       And look up in our faces;
+     They ask us--Was it thus, and thus,
+       When we were in their places?
+     We cannot speak--we see anew
+       The hills we used to live in,
+     And feel our mother's smile press through
+       The kisses she is giving.
+               Be pitiful, O God!
+
+     We pray together at the kirk,
+       For mercy, mercy, solely--
+     Hands weary with the evil work,
+       We lift them to the Holy!
+     The corpse is calm below our knee--
+       Its spirit bright before Thee--
+     Between them, worse than either, we
+       Without the rest of glory!
+               Be pitiful, O God!
+
+     And soon all vision waxeth dull--
+       Men whisper, "He is dying;"
+     We cry no more, "Be pitiful!"--
+       We have no strength for crying:
+     No strength, no need! Then, Soul of mine,
+       Look up and triumph rather--
+     Lo! in the depth of God's Divine,
+       The Son adjures the Father--
+               BE PITIFUL, O GOD!
+
+
+
+     ROMANCE OF THE SWAN'S NEST
+
+
+        Little Ellie sits alone
+     'Mid the beeches of a meadow,
+        By a stream-side on the grass;
+        And the trees are showering down
+     Doubles of their leaves in shadow,
+        On her shining hair and face.
+
+        She has thrown her bonnet by;
+     And her feet she has been dipping
+        In the shallow water's flow--
+        Now she holds them nakedly
+     In her hands, all sleek and dripping,
+        While she rocketh to and fro.
+
+        Little Ellie sits alone,
+     And the smile she softly uses
+        Fills the silence like a speech;
+        While she thinks what shall be done,
+     And the sweetest pleasure chooses,
+        For her future within reach.
+
+        Little Ellie in her smile
+     Chooseth--"I will have a lover,
+        Riding on a steed of steeds!
+        He shall love me without guile;
+     And to _him_ I will discover
+        That swan's nest among the reeds.
+
+        "And the steed shall be red-roan.
+     And the lover shall be noble,
+        With an eye that takes the breath.
+        And the lute he plays upon
+     Shall strike ladies into trouble,
+        As his sword strikes men to death.
+
+        "And the steed it shall be shod
+     All in silver, housed in _azure_,
+        And the mane shall swim the wind:
+        And the hoofs along the sod
+     Shall flash onward and keep measure,
+        Till the shepherds look behind.
+
+        "But my lover will not prize
+     All the glory that he rides in,
+        When he gazes in my face.
+        He will say, 'O Love, thine eyes
+     Build the shrine my soul abides in;
+        And I kneel here for thy grace.'
+
+        "Then, ay, then--he shall kneel low,
+     With the red-roan steed anear him,
+        Which shall seem to understand--
+        Till I answer, 'Rise and go!
+     For the world must love and fear him
+        Whom I gift with heart and hand.'
+
+        "Then he will arise so pale,
+     I shall feel my own lips tremble
+        With a _yes_ I must not say--
+        Nathless maiden-brave, 'Fare well,'
+     I will utter, and dissemble--
+        'Light to-morrow with to-day.'
+
+        "Then he'll ride among the hills
+     To the wide world past the river,
+        There to put away all wrong:
+        To make straight distorted wills,
+     And to empty the broad quiver
+        Which the wicked bear along.
+
+        "Three times shall a young foot-page
+     Swim the stream and climb the mountain
+        And kneel down beside my feet--
+        'Lo! my master sends this gage,
+     Lady, for thy pity's counting!
+        What wilt thou exchange for it?'
+
+        "And the first time I will send
+     A white rosebud for a guerdon,
+        And the second time, a glove:
+        But the third time--I may bend
+     From my pride, and answer--'Pardon--
+        If he come to take my love.'
+
+        "Then the young foot-page will run--
+     Then my lover will ride faster,
+        Till he kneeleth at my knee:
+        'I am a duke's eldest son!
+     Thousand serfs do call me master,--
+        But, O Love, I love but _thee!_
+
+       "He will kiss me on the mouth
+     Then; and lead me as a lover
+       Through the crowds that praise his deeds;
+       And when soul-tied by one troth,
+     Unto _him_ I will discover
+       That swan's nest among the reeds."
+
+       Little Ellie, with her smile
+     Not yet ended, rose up gayly,
+       Tied the bonnet, donned the shoe--
+       And went homeward, round a mile,
+     Just to see, as she did daily,
+       What more eggs were with the _two_.
+
+       Pushing through the elm-tree copse
+     Winding by the stream, light-hearted,
+       Where the osier pathway leads--
+       Past the boughs she stoops--and stops!
+     Lo! the wild swan had deserted--
+       And a rat had gnawed the reeds.
+
+       Ellie went home sad and slow:
+     If she found the lover ever,
+       With his red-roan steed of steeds,
+       Sooth I know not! but I know
+     She could never show him--never,
+       That swan's nest among the reeds!
+
+
+
+     THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD
+
+     WHAT'S the best thing in the world?
+        June-rose by May-dew impearled;
+        Sweet south-wind, that means no rain;
+     Truth, not cruel to a friend;
+     Pleasure, not in haste to end;
+     Beauty, not self-decked and curled
+     Till its pride is over-plain;
+     Light, that never makes you wink;
+     Memory, that gives no pain;
+     Love, when _so_ you're loved again.
+     What's the best thing in the world?--
+     Something out of it, I think.
+
+
+     SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE
+
+
+     Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!
+       Unlike our uses and our destinies.
+       Our ministering two angels look surprise
+     On one another as they strike athwart
+     Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art
+       A guest for queens to social pageantries,
+       With gages from a hundred brighter eyes
+     Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part
+       Of chief musician. What hast _thou_ to do
+     With looking from the lattice-lights at me,
+       A poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through
+     The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?
+       The chrism is on thine head; on mine the dew:
+     And Death must dig the level where these agree.
+
+     Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor,
+       Most gracious singer of high poems, where
+       The dancers will break footing, from the care
+     Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.
+     And dost thou lift this house's latch, too poor
+       For hand of thine? and canst thou think, and bear
+       To let thy music drop here unaware
+     In folds of golden fulness at my door?
+       Look up, and see the casement broken in,
+     The bats and owlets builders in the roof!
+       My cricket chirps against thy mandolin.
+     Hush, call no echo up in further proof
+       Of desolation! there's a voice within
+     That weeps--as thou must sing--alone, aloof.
+
+     What can I give thee back, O liberal
+       And princely giver, who hast brought the gold
+       And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold,
+     And laid them on the outside of the wall
+     For such as I to take or leave withal,
+       In unexpected largesse? Am I cold,
+       Ungrateful, that for these most manifold
+     High gifts, I render nothing back at all?
+       Not so; not cold, but very poor instead.
+     Ask God, who knows. For frequent tears have run
+       The colors from my life, and left so dead
+     And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done
+       To give the same as pillow to thy head.
+     Go farther! let it serve to trample on.
+
+     If thou must love me, let it be for naught
+        Except for love's sake only. Do not say
+        "I love her for her smile, her look, her way
+     Of speaking gently, for a trick of thought
+     That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
+        A sense of pleasant ease on such a day:"
+        For these things in themselves, beloved, may
+     Be changed, or change for thee; and love so wrought
+        May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
+     Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry:
+        A creature might forget to weep, who bore
+     Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby.
+        But love me for love's sake, that evermore
+     Thou mayst love on through love's eternity.
+
+     First time he kissed me, he but only kissed
+        The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;
+        And ever since it grew more clean and white,
+     Slow to world-greetings, quick with its "Oh list!"
+     When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst
+        I could not wear here plainer to my sight
+        Than that first kiss. The second passed in height
+     The first, and sought the forehead, and half missed,
+        Half falling on the hair. Oh, beyond meed!
+     That was the chrism of love, which love's own crown
+        With sanctifying sweetness did precede.
+     The third upon my lips was folded down
+        In perfect purple state; since when, indeed,
+     I have been proud, and said "My love, my own!"
+
+     I LIVED with visions for my company,
+        Instead of men and women, years ago,
+        And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know
+     A sweeter music than they played to me.
+     But soon their trailing purple was not free
+        Of this world's dust, their lutes did silent grow,
+        And I myself grew faint and blind below
+     Their vanishing eyes. Then THOU didst come--to be,
+        Beloved, what they seemed. Their shining fronts,
+     Their songs, their splendors (better, yet the same,
+        As river-water hallowed into fonts),
+     Met in thee, and from out thee overcame
+        My soul with satisfaction of all wants,
+     Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.
+
+     BELOVED, my beloved, when I think
+        That thou wast in the world a year ago,
+        What time I sat alone here in the snow,
+     And saw no footprint, heard the silence sink
+     No moment at thy voice, but, link by link,
+        Went counting all my chains as if that so
+        They never could fall off at any blow
+     Struck by thy possible hand--why, thus I drink
+        Of life's great cup of wonder! Wonderful,
+     Never to feel thee thrill the day or night
+        With personal act or speech, nor ever cull
+     Some prescience of thee with the blossoms white
+        Thou sawest growing! Atheists are as dull,
+     Who cannot guess God's presence out of sight.
+
+     BECAUSE thou hast the power and own'st the grace
+        To look through and behind this mask of me,
+        (Against which years have beat thus blanchingly
+     With their rains!) and behold my soul's true face,
+     The dim and weary witness of life's race;
+        Because thou hast the faith and love to see,
+        Through that same soul's distracting lethargy,
+     The patient angel waiting for his place
+        In the new heavens; because nor sin nor woe,
+     Nor God's infliction, nor death's neighborhood,
+        Nor all which others viewing, turn to go,
+     Nor all which makes me tired of all, self-viewed,--
+        Nothing repels thee.--Dearest, teach me so
+     To pour out gratitude, as thou dost, good!
+
+     I THANK all who have loved me in their hearts,
+        With thanks and love from mine. Deep thanks to all
+        Who paused a little near the prison-wall,
+     To hear my music in its louder parts,
+     Ere they went onward, each one to the mart's
+        Or temple's occupation, beyond call.
+        But thou, who in my voice's sink and fall,
+     When the sob took it, thy divinest Art's
+        Own instrument didst drop down at thy foot,
+     To hearken what I said between my tears,
+        Instruct me how to thank thee!--Oh, to shoot
+     My soul's full meaning into future years,
+        That _they_ should lend it utterance, and salute
+     Love that endures! with Life that disappears!
+
+     How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
+       I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
+       My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
+     For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace.
+     I love thee to the level of every day's
+       Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
+       I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
+     I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise;
+       I love thee with the passion put to use
+     In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith;
+       I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
+     With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,
+       Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and if God choose,
+     I shall but love thee better after death.
+
+
+
+     A FALSE STEP
+
+
+     Sweet, thou hast trod on a heart.
+        Pass! there's a world full of men;
+      And women as fair as thou art
+     Must do such things now and then.
+
+     Thou only hast stepped unaware,--
+       Malice, not one can impute;
+     And why should a heart have been there
+       In the way of a fair woman's foot?
+
+     It was not a stone that could trip,
+        Nor was it a thorn that could rend:
+     Put up thy proud underlip!
+       'Twas merely the heart of a friend.
+
+     And yet peradventure one day
+       Thou, sitting alone at the glass,
+     Remarking the bloom gone away,
+       Where the smile in its dimplement was,
+
+     And seeking around thee in vain
+       From hundreds who flattered before,
+     Such a word as,--"Oh, not in the main
+       Do I hold thee less precious,--but more!"
+
+     Thou'lt sigh, very like, on thy part:--
+       "Of all I have known or can know,
+     I wish I had only that Heart
+       I trod upon, ages ago!"
+
+
+     A CHILD'S THOUGHT OF GOD
+
+     They say that God lives very high!
+       But if you look above the pines
+     You cannot see our God. And why?
+
+     And if you dig down in the mines
+       You never see him in the gold,
+     Though, from him, all that's glory shines.
+
+     God is so good, he wears a fold
+       Of heaven and earth across his face--
+     Like secrets kept, for love, untold.
+
+     But still I feel that his embrace
+       Slides down by thrills, through all things made,
+     Through sight and sound of every place:
+
+     As if my tender mother laid
+       On my shut lids her kisses' pressure,
+     Half-waking me at night; and said
+       "Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser?"
+
+
+     CHEERFULNESS TAUGHT BY REASON
+
+     I think we are too ready with complaint
+       In this fair world of God's. Had we no hope
+       Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope
+     Of yon gray blank of sky, we might be faint
+     To muse upon eternity's constraint
+       Round our aspirant souls. But since the scope
+       Must widen early, is it well to droop
+     For a few days consumed in loss and taint?
+     O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted,--
+       And like a cheerful traveler, take the road,
+     Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread
+       Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod
+     To meet the flints?--At least it may be said,
+       "Because the way is _short_, I thank thee, God!"
+
+
+
+ROBERT BROWNING
+
+(1812-1889)
+
+BY E.L. BURLINGAME
+
+Robert Browning was born at Camberwell on May 7th, 1812, the son and
+grandson of men who held clerkships in the Bank of England--the one for
+more than forty and the other for full fifty years. His surroundings
+were apparently typical of English moderate prosperity, and neither
+they, nor his good but undistinguished family traditions, furnish any
+basis for the theorizing of biographers, except indeed in a single
+point. His grandmother was a West Indian Creole, and though only of the
+first generation to be born away from England, seems, from the restless
+and adventurous life led by her brother, to have belonged to a family of
+the opposite type from her husband's. Whether this crossing of the
+imaginative, Westward-Ho strain of the English blood with the
+home-keeping type has to do with the production of such intensely
+vitalized temperaments as Robert Browning's, is the only question
+suggested by his ancestry. It is noticeable that his father wished to go
+to a university, then to become an artist--- both ambitions repressed by
+the grandfather; and that he took up his bank official's career
+unwillingly. He seems to have been anything but a man of routine; to
+have had keen and wide interests outside of his work; to have been a
+great reader and book collector, even an exceptional scholar in certain
+directions; and to have kept till old age a remarkable vivacity, with
+unbroken health--altogether a personality thoroughly sympathetic with
+that of his son, to whom this may well have been the final touch of a
+prosperity calculated to shake all traditional ideas of a poet's youth.
+
+Browning's education was exceptional, for an English boy's. He left
+school at fourteen, and after that was taught by tutors at home, except
+that at eighteen he took a Greek course at the London University. His
+training seems to have been unusually thorough for these conditions,
+though largely self-directed; it may be supposed that his father kept a
+sympathetic and intelligent guidance, wisely not too obvious. But in the
+main it is clear that from a very early age, Browning had deliberately
+and distinctly in view the idea of making literature the pursuit of his
+life, and that he troubled himself seriously with nothing that did not
+help to that end; while into everything that did he seems to have thrown
+himself with precocious intensity. Individual anecdotes of his
+precocity are told by his biographers; but they are flat beside the
+general fact of the depth and character of his studies, and superfluous
+of the man who had written 'Pauline' at twenty-one and 'Paracelsus' at
+twenty-two. At eighteen he knew himself as a poet, and encountered no
+opposition in his chosen career from his father, whose "kindness we must
+seek," as Mrs. Sutherland Orr says, "not only in this first, almost
+inevitable assent to his son's becoming a writer, but in the subsequent
+unfailing readiness to support him in his literary career. 'Paracelsus,'
+'Sordello,' and the whole of 'Bells and Pomegranates' were published at
+his father's expense, and, incredible as it appears, brought him no
+return." An aunt, Mrs. Silverthorne, paid the costs of the earlier
+'Pauline.'
+
+From this time of his earliest published work ('Pauline' was issued
+without his name in 1833) that part of the story of his life known to
+the public, in spite of two or three more or less elaborate biographies,
+is mainly the history of his writings and the record of his different
+residences, supplemented by less than the usual number of personal
+anecdotes, to which neither circumstance nor temperament contributed
+material. He had nothing of the attitude of the recluse, like Tennyson;
+but while healthily social and a man of the world about him, he was not
+one of whom people tell "reminiscences" of consequence, and he was in no
+sense a public personality. Little of his correspondence has appeared in
+print; and it seems probable that he will be fortunate, to an even
+greater degree than Thackeray, in living in his works and escaping the
+"ripping up" of the personal chronicler.
+
+He traveled occasionally in the next few years, and in 1838 and again in
+1844 visited Italy. In that year, or early in 1845, he became engaged to
+Miss Elizabeth Barrett, their acquaintance beginning through a
+friend,--her cousin,--and through letters from Browning expressing
+admiration for her poems. Miss Barrett had then been for some years an
+invalid from an accident, and an enforced recluse; but in September 1846
+they were married without the knowledge of her father, and almost
+immediately afterward (she leaving her sick room to join him) went to
+Paris and then to Italy, where they lived first in Genoa and afterward
+in Florence, which with occasional absences was their home for fourteen
+years. Mrs. Browning died there, at Casa Guidi, in June 1861. Browning
+left Florence some time afterward, and in spite of his later visits to
+Italy, never returned there. He lived again in London in the winter, but
+most of his summers were spent in France, and especially in Brittany.
+About 1878 he formed the habit of going to Venice for the autumn, which
+continued with rare exceptions to the end of his life. There in 1888
+his son, recently married, had made his home; and there on the 12th
+of December, 1889, Robert Browning died. He was buried in Westminster
+Abbey on the last day of the year.
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING.]
+
+'Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession,' Browning's first published poem,
+was a psychological self-analysis, perfectly characteristic of the time
+of life at which he wrote it,--very young, full of excesses of mood, of
+real exultation, and somewhat less real depression--the "confession" of
+a poet of twenty-one, intensely interested in the ever-new discovery of
+his own nature, its possibilities, and its relations. It rings very
+true, and has no decadent touch in it:--
+
+     "I am made up of an intensest life
+      ... a principle of restlessness
+     Which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel, all--"
+
+this is the note that stays in the reader's mind. But the poem is
+psychologically rather than poetically noteworthy--except as all
+beginnings are so; and Browning's statement in a note in his collected
+poems that he "acknowledged and retained it with extreme repugnance,"
+shows how fully he recognized this.
+
+In 'Paracelsus,' his next long poem, published some two years later, the
+strength of his later work is first definitely felt. Taking for theme
+the life of the sixteenth-century physician, astrologer, alchemist,
+conjuror,--compound of Faust and Cagliostro, mixture of truth-seeker,
+charlatan, and dreamer,--Browning makes of it the history of the soul of
+a feverish aspirant after the finality of intellectual power, the
+knowledge which should be for man the key to the universe; the tragedy
+of its failure, and the greater tragedy of its discovery of the
+barrenness of the effort, and the omission from its scheme of life of an
+element without which power was impotent.
+
+     "Yet, constituted thus and thus endowed,
+     I failed; I gazed on power till I grew blind.
+     Power--I could not take my eyes from that;
+     That only I thought should be preserved, increased.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     I learned my own deep error: love's undoing
+     Taught me the worth of love in man's estate,
+     And what proportion love should hold with power
+     In his right constitution; love preceding
+     Power, and with much power always much more love."
+
+'Paracelsus' is the work of a man still far from maturity; but it is
+Browning's first use of a type of poem in which his powers were to find
+one of their chief manifestations--a psychological history, told with so
+slight an aid from "an external machinery of incidents" (to use his own
+phrase), or from conventional dramatic arrangement, as to constitute a
+form virtually new.
+
+This was to be notably the method of 'Sordello,' which appeared in 1840.
+In a note written twenty-three years later to his friend Milsand, and
+prefixed as a dedication to 'Sordello' in his collected works, he
+defined the form and its reason most exactly:--"The historical
+decoration was purposely of no more importance than a background
+requires, and my stress lay on the incidents in the development of a
+soul; little else is worth study." This poem, with its "historical
+decoration" or "background" from the Guelf and Ghibelline struggles in
+Italy, carries out this design in a fashion that defies description or
+characterization. With its inexhaustible wealth of psychological
+suggestion, its interwoven discussion of the most complex problems of
+life and thought, its metaphysical speculation, it may well give pause
+to the reader who makes his first approach to Browning through it, and
+send him back,--if he begins, as is likely, with the feeling of one
+challenged to an intellectual task,--baffled by the intricacy of its
+ways and without a comprehension of what it contains or leads to. Mr.
+Augustine Birrell says of it:--
+
+     "We have all heard of the young architect who forgot to put a
+     staircase in his house, which contained fine rooms but no way
+     of getting into them. 'Sordello' is a poem without a
+     staircase. The author, still in his twenties, essayed a high
+     thing. For his subject
+
+     'He singled out
+     Sordello compassed murkily about
+     With ravage of six long sad hundred years.'
+
+     "He partially failed; and the British public, with its
+     accustomed generosity, and in order, I suppose, to encourage
+     the others, has never ceased girding at him because,
+     forty-two years ago, he published at his own charges a little
+     book of two hundred and fifty pages, which even such of them
+     as were then able to read could not understand."
+
+With 'Sordello,' however, ended for many years--until he may perhaps be
+said to have taken it up in a greatly disciplined and more powerful form
+in 'The Ring and the Book' and others--this type and this length of the
+psychological poem for Browning; and now began that part of his work
+which is his best gift to English literature.
+
+Four years before the publication of 'Sordello' he had written one play,
+'Strafford,' of which the name sufficiently indicates the subject, which
+had been put upon the stage with some success by Macready;--the
+forerunner of a noble series of poems in dramatic form, most
+conveniently mentioned here together, though not always in chronological
+order. They were 'The Blot on the 'Scutcheon,' perhaps the finest of
+those actually fitted for the stage; 'Colombe's Birthday'; 'King Victor
+and King Charles'; 'The Return of the Druses'; 'Luria'; 'A Soul's
+Tragedy'; 'In a Balcony'; and,--though less on the conventional lines of
+a play than the others,--perhaps the finest dramatic poem of them all,
+'Pippa Passes,' which, among the earlier (it was published in 1841), is
+also among the finest of all Browning's works, and touches the very
+highest level of his powers.
+
+Interspersed with these during the fifteen years between 1840 and 1855,
+and following them during the next five, appeared the greater number of
+the single shorter poems which make his most generally recognized, his
+highest, and his unquestionably permanent title to rank among the first
+of English poets. Manifestly, it is impossible and needless to recall
+any number of these here by even the briefest description; and merely to
+enumerate the chief among them would be to repeat a familiar catalogue,
+except as they illustrate the points of a later general consideration.
+
+Finally, to complete the list of Browning's works, reference is
+necessary to the group of books of his later years: the two self-called
+narrative poems, 'The Ring and the Book,' with its vast length, and 'Red
+Cotton Nightcap Country,' its fellow in method if not in extent. Mr.
+Birrell (it is worth while to quote him again, as one who has not merged
+the appreciator in the adulator) calls 'The Ring and the Book' "a huge
+novel in 20,000 lines--told after the method not of Scott, but of
+Balzac; it tears the hearts out of a dozen characters; it tells the same
+story from ten different points of view. It is loaded with detail of
+every kind and description: you are let off nothing." But he adds
+later:--"If you are prepared for this, you will have your reward; for
+the style, though rugged and involved, is throughout, with the exception
+of the speeches of counsel, eloquent and at times superb: and as for the
+matter--if your interest in human nature is keen, curious, almost
+professional; if nothing man, woman, or child has been, done, or
+suffered, or conceivably can be, do, or suffer, is without interest for
+you; if you are fond of analysis, and do not shrink from dissection--you
+will prize 'The Ring and the Book' as the surgeon prizes the last great
+contribution to comparative anatomy or pathology."
+
+This is the key of the matter: the reader who has learned, through his
+greater work, to follow with interest the very analytic exercises, and
+as it were _tours de force_ of Browning's mind, will prize 'The
+Ring and the Book' and 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country'; even he will
+prize but little the two 'Adventures of Balaustion,' 'Prince
+Hohenstiel-Schwangau,' 'The Inn Album,' and one or two others of the
+latest works in the same _genre_. But he can well do without them, and
+still have the inexhaustible left.
+
+The attitude of a large part of his own generation toward Browning's
+poetry will probably be hardly understood by the future, and is not easy
+to comprehend even now for those who have the whole body of his work
+before them. It is intelligible enough that the "crude preliminary
+sketch" 'Pauline' should have given only the bare hint of a poet to the
+few dozen people who saw that it was out of the common; that
+'Paracelsus' should have carried the information,--though then, beyond a
+doubt, to only a small circle; and especially that 'Sordello,' a clear
+call to a few, should have sounded to even an intelligent many like an
+exercise in intricacy, and to the world at large like something to which
+it is useless to listen. Or, to look at the other end of his career, it
+is not extraordinary that the work of his last period--'The Ring and the
+Book,' 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country,'--those wonderful minute studies of
+human motive, made with the highly specialized skill of the psychical
+surgeon and with the confidence of another Balzac in the reader's
+following power--should always remain more or less esoteric literature.
+But when it is remembered that between these lie the most vivid and
+intensely dramatic series of short poems in English,--those grouped in
+the unfortunately diverse editions of his works under the rubrics 'Men
+and Women,' 'Dramatic Lyrics,' 'Dramatic Romances,' 'Dramatis Personæ,'
+and the rest, as well as larger masterpieces of the broad appeal of
+'Pippa Passes,' 'A Blot on the 'Scutcheon,' or 'In a Balcony,'--it is
+hard to understand, and will be still harder fifty years hence, why
+Browning has not become the familiar and inspiring poet of a vastly
+larger body of readers. Undoubtedly a large number of intelligent
+persons still suspect a note of affectation in the man who declares his
+full and intense enjoyment--not only his admiration--of Browning; a
+suspicion showing not only the persistence of the Sordello-born
+tradition of "obscurity," but the harm worked by those commentators who
+approach him as a problem. Not all commentators share this reproach; but
+as Browning makes Bishop Blougram say:--
+
+     "Even your prime men who appraise their kind
+     Are men still, catch a wheel within a wheel,
+     See more in a truth than the truth's simple self--
+     Confuse themselves--"
+
+and beyond question such persons are largely responsible for the fact
+that for some time to come, every one who speaks of Browning to a
+general audience will feel that he has some cant to clear away. If he
+can make them read this body of intensely human, essentially simple and
+direct dramatic and lyrical work, he will help to bring about the time
+when the once popular attitude will seem as unjustifiable as to judge
+Goethe only by the second part of 'Faust.'
+
+The first great characteristic of Browning's poetry is undoubtedly the
+essential, elemental quality of its humanity--a trait in which it is
+surpassed by no other English poetry but that of Shakespeare. It can be
+subtile to a degree almost fantastic (as can Shakespeare's to an extent
+that familiarity makes us forget); but this is in method. The stuff of
+it--the texture of the fabric which the swift and intricate shuttle is
+weaving--is always something in which the human being is vitally, not
+merely aesthetically interested. It deals with no shadows, and indeed
+with few abstractions, except those that form a part of vital
+problems--a statement which may provoke the scoffer, but will be found
+to be true.
+
+A second characteristic, which, if not a necessary result of this first,
+would at least be impossible without it, is the extent to which
+Browning's poetry produces its effect by suggestion rather than by
+elaboration; by stimulating thought, emotion, and the aesthetic sense,
+instead of seeking to satisfy any one of these--especially instead of
+contenting itself with only soothing the last. The comparison of his
+poetry with--for instance--Tennyson's, in this respect, is instructive;
+if it is possibly unjust to both.
+
+And a third trait in Browning--to make an end of a dangerously
+categorical attempt to characterize him--follows logically from this
+second; its extreme compactness and concentration. Browning sometimes
+dwells long--even dallies--over an idea, as does Shakespeare; turns it,
+shows its every facet; and even then it is noticeable, as with the
+greater master, that every individual phrase with which he does so is
+practically exhaustive of the suggestiveness of that particular aspect.
+But commonly he crowds idea upon idea even in his lyrics, and--strangely
+enough--without losing the lyric quality; each thought pressed down to
+its very essence, and each with that germinal power that makes the
+reading of him one of the most stimulating things to be had from
+literature. His figures especially are apt and telling in the very
+minimum of words; they say it all, like the unsurpassable Shakespearean
+example of "the dyer's hand"; and the more you think of them, the more
+you see that not a word could be added or taken away.
+
+It may be said that this quality of compactness is common to all genius,
+and of the very essence of all true poetry; but Browning manifested it
+in a way of his own, such as to suggest that he believed in the
+subordination of all other qualities to it; even of melody, for
+instance, as may be said by his critics and admitted in many cases by
+even his strongest admirers. But all things are not given to one, even
+among the giants; and Browning's force with its measure of melody (which
+is often great) has its place among others' melody with its measure of
+force. Open at random: here are two lines in 'A Toccata of Galuppi's,'
+not deficient in melody by any means:--
+
+     "Dear dead women--with such hair, too: what's become of all the gold
+     Used to hang and brush their bosoms?--I feel chilly and grown old."
+
+This is not Villon's 'Ballad of Dead Ladies,' nor even Tennyson's 'Dream
+of Fair Women'; but a master can still say a good deal in two lines.
+
+What is called the "roughness" of Browning's verse is at all events
+never the roughness that comes from mismanagement or disregard of the
+form chosen. He has an unerring ear for time and quantity; and his
+subordination to the laws of his metre is extraordinary in its
+minuteness. Of ringing lines there are many; of broadly sonorous or
+softly melodious ones but few; and especially (if one chooses to go into
+details of technic) he seems curiously without that use of the broad
+vowels which underlies the melody of so many great passages of English
+poetry. Except in the one remarkable instance of 'How we Carried the
+Good News from Ghent to Aix,' there is little onomatopoeia, and almost
+no note of the flute; no "moan of doves in immemorial elms" or "lucent
+sirops tinct with cinnamon." On the other hand, in his management of
+metres like that of 'Love Among the Ruins,' for instance, he shows a
+different side; the pure lyrics in 'Pippa Passes' and elsewhere sing
+themselves; and there are memorable cadences in some of the more
+meditative poems, like 'By the Fireside.'
+
+The vividness and vigor and truth of Browning's embodiments of character
+come, it is needless to say, from the same power that has created all
+great dramatic work,--the capacity for incarnating not a quality or an
+ideal, but the mixture and balance of qualities that make up the real
+human being. There is not a walking phantom among them, or a lay-figure
+to hang sentiment on. A writer in the New Review said recently that of
+all the poets he remembered, only Shakespeare and Browning never drew a
+prig. It is this complete absence of the false note that gives to
+certain of Browning's poems the finality which is felt in all consummate
+works of art, great and small; the sense that they convey, if not the
+last word, at least the last necessary word, on their subject. 'Andrea
+del Sarto' is in its way the whole problem of the artist-ideal, the weak
+will and the inner failure, in all times and guises; and at the other
+end of the gamut, nobody will ever need again to set forth Bishop
+Blougram's attitude, or even that of Mr. Sludge the Medium. Of the
+informing, almost exuberant vitality of all the lyric and dramatic
+poems, it is needless to speak; that fairly leaps to meet the reader at
+every page of them, and a quality of it is their essential optimism.
+
+     "What is he buzzing in my ears?
+       Now that I come to die.
+     Do I view the world as a vale of tears?
+       Ah, reverend sir, not I!"
+
+The world was never a vale of tears to Robert Browning, man or poet; but
+a world of men and women, with plenty of red corpuscles in their blood.
+
+[Illustration: E.L. Burlingame signature]
+
+
+     ANDREA DEL SARTO
+
+     CALLED "THE FAULTLESS PAINTER"
+
+     But do not let us quarrel any more;
+     No, my Lucrezia! bear with me for once:
+     Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.
+     You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?
+     I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear,
+     Treat his own subject after his own way?
+     Fix his own time, accept too his own price,
+     And shut the money into this small hand
+     When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly?
+     Oh, I'll content him,--but to-morrow, Love!
+     I often am much wearier than you think,--
+     This evening more than usual: and it seems
+     As if--forgive now--should you let me sit
+     Here by the window, with your hand in mine,
+     And look a. half-hour forth on Fiesole,
+     Both of one mind, as married people use,
+     Quietly, quietly the evening through,
+     I might get up to-morrow to my work
+     Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try.
+     To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this!
+     Your soft hand is a woman of itself,
+     And mine, the man's bared breast she curls inside.
+     Don't count the time lost, neither: you must serve
+     For each of the five pictures we require;
+     It saves a model. So! keep looking so--My
+     serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds!--How
+     could you ever prick those perfect ears,
+     Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet--My
+     face, my moon, my everybody's moon,
+     Which everybody looks on and calls his,
+     And I suppose is looked on by in turn,
+     While she looks--no one's: very dear, no less.
+     You smile? why, there's my picture ready made;
+     There's what we painters call our harmony!
+     A common grayness silvers everything,--
+     All in a twilight, you and I alike--
+     You at the point of your first pride in me
+     (That's gone, you know)--but I at every point,
+     My youth, my hope, my art being all toned down
+     To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole.
+     There's the bell clinking from the chapel-top;
+     That length of convent-wall across the way
+     Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside;
+     The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease,
+     And autumn grows, autumn in everything.
+     Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape,
+     As if I saw alike my work and self
+     And all that I was born to be and do,
+     A twilight piece. Love, we are in God's hand.
+     How strange now looks the life he makes us lead;
+     So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!
+     I feel he laid the fetter: let it lie!
+     This chamber, for example--turn your head--
+     All that's behind us! You don't understand
+     Nor care to understand about my art,
+     But you can hear at least when people speak:
+     And that cartoon, the second from the door--
+     It is the thing, Love! so such things should be;
+     Behold Madonna!--I am bold to say,
+     I can do with my pencil what I know,
+     What I see, what at bottom of my heart
+     I wish for, if I ever wish so deep--
+     Do easily, too--when I say perfectly,
+     I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge,
+     Who listened to the Legate's talk last week;
+     And just as much they used to say in France,
+     At any rate 'tis easy, all of it!
+     No sketches first, no studies, that's long past:
+     I do what many dream of, all their lives--
+     Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,
+     And fail in doing. I could count twenty such
+     On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,
+     Who strive--you don't know how the others strive
+     To paint a little thing like that you smeared
+     Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,--
+     Yet do much less, so much less, Some One says,
+     (I know his name, no matter)--so much less!
+     Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
+     There burns a truer light of God in them,
+     In their vexed, beating, stuffed, and stopped-up brain,
+     Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt
+     This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.
+     Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,
+     Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me,
+     Enter and take their place there sure enough,
+     Though they come back and cannot tell the world.
+     My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.
+     The sudden blood of these men! at a word--
+     Praise them, it boils; or blame them, it boils too.
+     I, painting from myself and to thyself,
+     Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame
+     Or their praise either. Somebody remarks
+     Morello's outline there is wrongly traced,
+     His hue mistaken: what of that? or else,
+     Rightly traced and well ordered: what of that?
+     Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?
+     Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
+     Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-gray,
+     Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!
+     I know both what I want and what might gain;
+     And yet how profitless to know, to sigh
+     "Had I been two, another and myself,
+     Our head would have o'erlooked the world" No doubt.
+     Yonder's a work now, of that famous youth
+     The Urbinate who died five years ago.
+     ('Tis copied, George Vasari sent it me.)
+     Well, I can fancy how he did it all,
+     Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see,
+     Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,
+     Above and through his art--for it gives way:
+     That arm is wrongly put--and there again--
+     A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines,
+     Its body, so to speak; its soul is right;
+     He meant right--that, a child may understand.
+     Still, what an arm! and I could alter it:
+     But all the play, the insight, and the stretch--
+     Out of me, out of me! And wherefore out?
+     Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul,
+     We might have risen to Rafael, I and you.
+     Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think--
+     More than I merit, yes, by many times.
+     But had you--oh, with the same perfect brow,
+     And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth
+     And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird
+     The fowler's pipe, and follows to the snare--
+     Had you, with these, these same, but brought a mind!
+     Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged
+     "God and the glory! never care for gain.
+     The present by the future, what is that?
+     Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo!
+     Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!"
+     I might have done it for you. So it seems:
+     Perhaps not. All is as God overrules.
+     Beside, incentives come from the soul's self;
+     The rest avail not. Why do I need you?
+     What wife had Rafael, or has Agnolo?
+     In this world, who can do a thing, will not;
+     And who would do it, cannot, I perceive:
+     Yet the will's somewhat--somewhat, too, the power--
+     And thus we half-men struggle. At the end,
+     God, I conclude, compensates, punishes.
+     'Tis safer for me, if the award be strict,
+     That I am something underrated here,
+     Poor this long while,--despised, to speak the truth.
+     I dared not, do you know, leave home all day,
+     For fear of chancing on the Paris lords.
+     The best is when they pass and look aside;
+     But they speak sometimes: I must bear it all.
+     Well may they speak! That Francis, that first time,
+     And that long festal year at Fontainebleau!
+     I surely then could sometimes leave the ground,
+     Put on the glory, Rafael's daily wear,
+     In that humane great monarch's golden look,--
+     One finger in his beard or twisted curl
+     Over his mouth's good mark that made the smile,
+     One arm about my shoulder, around my neck,
+     The jingle of his gold chain in my ear,
+     I painting proudly with his breath on me,
+     All his court round him, seeing with his eyes,
+     Such frank French eyes, and such a fire of souls
+     Profuse, my hand kept plying by those hearts,--
+     And best of all, this, this, this face beyond,
+     This in the background, waiting on my work,
+     To crown the issue with a last reward!
+     A good time, was it not, my kingly days,
+     And had you not grown restless ... but I know--
+     'Tis done and past; 'twas right, my instinct said;
+     Too live the life grew, golden and not gray;
+     And I'm the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt
+     Out of the grange whose four walls make his world.
+     How could it end in any other way?
+     You called me, and I came home to your heart.
+     The triumph was to have ended there; then, if
+     I reached it ere the triumph, what is lost?
+     Let my hands frame your face in your hair's gold,
+     You beautiful Lucrezia that are mine!
+     "Rafael did this, Andrea painted that;
+     The Roman's is the better when you pray,
+     But still the other Virgin was his wife"--
+     Men will excuse me. I am glad to judge
+     Both pictures in your presence; clearer grows
+     My better fortune, I resolve to think,
+     For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives,
+     Said one day Agnolo, his very self,
+     To Rafael--I have known it all these years--
+     (When the young man was flaming out his thoughts
+     Upon a palace wall for Rome to see,
+     Too lifted up in heart because of it)
+     "Friend, there's a certain sorry little scrub
+     Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how,
+     Who, were he set to plan and execute
+     As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings,
+     Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!"
+     To Rafael's!--and indeed the arm is wrong.
+     I hardly dare ... yet, only you to see,
+     Give the chalk here--quick, thus the line should go!
+     Ay, but the soul! he's Rafael! rub it out!
+     Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth,
+     (What he? why, who but Michel Agnolo?
+     Do you forget already words like those?)
+     If really there was such a chance so lost,--
+     Is, whether you're--not grateful--but more pleased.
+     Well, let me think so. And you smile indeed!
+     This hour has been an hour! Another smile?
+     If you would sit thus by me every night,
+     I should work better--do you comprehend?
+     I mean that I should earn more, give you more.
+     See, it is settled dusk now: there's a star;
+     Morello's gone, the watch lights show the wall,
+     The cue-owls speak the name we call them by.
+     Come from the window, love,--come in, at last,
+     Inside the melancholy little house
+     We built to be so gay with. God is just.
+     King Francis may forgive me: oft at nights
+     When I look up from painting, eyes tired out,
+     The walls become illumined, brick from brick
+     Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright gold,
+     That gold of his I did cement them with!
+     Let us but love each other. Must you go?
+     That cousin here again? he waits outside?
+     Must see you--you, and not with me? Those loans?
+     More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for that?
+     Well, let smiles buy me! have you more to spend?
+     While hand and eye and something of a heart
+     Are left me, work's my ware, and what's it worth?
+     I'll pay my fancy. Only let me sit
+     The gray remainder of the evening out,
+     Idle, you call it, and muse perfectly
+     How I could paint were I but back in France,
+     One picture, just one more--the Virgin's face,
+     Not yours this time! I want you at my side
+     To hear them--that is, Michel Agnolo--
+     Judge all I do and tell you of its worth.
+     Will you? To-morrow satisfy your friend.
+     I take the subjects for his corridor,
+     Finish the portrait out of hand--there, there,
+     And throw him in another thing or two
+     If he demurs: the whole should prove enough
+     To pay for this same cousin's freak. Beside,
+     What's better, and what's all I care about,
+     Get you the thirteen send for the ruff!
+     Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he,
+     The cousin! what does he to please you more?
+
+     I am grown peaceful as old age to-night.
+     I regret little, I would change still less.
+     Since there my past life lies, why alter it?
+     The very wrong to Francis!--it is true
+     I took his coin, was tempted and complied,
+     And built this house and sinned, and all is said.
+     My father and my mother died of want.
+     Well, had I riches of my own? you see
+     How one gets rich! Let each one bear his lot.
+     They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they died;
+     And I have labored somewhat in my time
+     And not been paid profusely. Some good son
+     Paint my two hundred pictures--let him try!
+     No doubt, there's something strikes a balance. Yes,
+     You loved me quite enough, it seems to-night.
+     This must suffice me here. What would one have?
+     In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance--
+     Four great walls in the New Jerusalem,
+     Meted on each side by the angel's reed,
+     For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo, and me
+     To cover--the three first without a wife,
+     While I have mine! So still they overcome--
+     Because there's still Lucrezia,--as I choose.
+
+     Again the cousin's whistle! Go, my love.
+
+
+
+     A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S
+
+
+     O GALLUPI, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!
+     I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind:
+     But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind!
+
+     Have you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings?
+     What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the
+                kings,
+     Where Saint Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with
+                rings?
+
+     Ay, because the sea's the street there; and 'tis arched by--what
+                you call--
+     Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival:
+     I was never out of England--it's as if I saw it all.
+
+     Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?
+     Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day,
+     When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?
+
+     Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red,--
+     On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed,
+     O'er the breast's superb abundance where a man might base his head?
+
+     Well, and it was graceful of them: they'd break talk off and afford--
+     She to bite her mask's black velvet, he to finger on his sword,
+     While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord!
+
+     What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on
+                sigh,
+     Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions--"Must
+                we die?"
+     Those commiserating sevenths--"Life might last! we can but try!"
+
+     "Were you happy?" "Yes."--"And are you still as happy?"
+                "Yes. And you?"--
+     "Then, more kisses!" "Did _I_ stop them, when a million seemed so few?"
+     Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be answered to!
+
+     So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!
+     "Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!
+     I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!"
+
+     Then they left you for their pleasure; till in due time, one by one,
+     Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,
+     Death stepped tacitly, and took them where they never see the sun.
+
+     But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve,
+     While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve,
+     In you come with your cold music till I creep through every nerve.
+
+     Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned.
+     "Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned.
+     The soul, doubtless, is immortal--where a soul can be discerned.
+
+     "Yours for instance: you know physics, something of geology,
+     Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;
+     Butterflies may dread extinction,--you'll not die, it cannot be!
+
+     "As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,
+     Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop;
+     What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?
+
+     "Dust and ashes!" So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.
+     Dear dead women, with such hair, too--what's become of all the gold
+     Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.
+
+
+
+
+     CONFESSIONS
+
+     What is he buzzing in my ears?
+       "Now that I come to die
+     Do I view the world as a vale of tears?"
+       Ah, reverend sir, not I!
+
+     What I viewed there once,--what I viewed again
+       Where the physic bottles stand
+     On the table's edge,--is a suburb lane,
+       With a wall to my bedside hand.
+
+     That lane sloped, much as the bottles do,
+       From a house you could descry
+     O'er the garden wall: is the curtain blue,
+       Or green to a healthy eye?
+
+     To mine, it serves for the old June weather
+       Blue above lane and wall;
+     And that farthest bottle labeled "Ether"
+       Is the house o'ertopping all.
+
+     At a terrace, somewhat near the stopper,
+        There watched for me, one June,
+     A girl: I know, sir, it's improper,
+        My poor mind's out of tune.
+
+     Only, there was a way--you crept
+        Close by the side, to dodge
+     Eyes in the house, two eyes except:
+        They styled their house "The Lodge"
+
+     What right had a lounger up their lane?
+        But by creeping very close,
+     With the good wall's help,--their eyes might strain
+        And stretch themselves to O's,
+
+     Yet never catch her and me together,
+        As she left the attic there,
+     By the rim of the bottle labeled "Ether,"
+        And stole from stair to stair,
+
+     And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas,
+        We loved, sir--used to meet:
+     How sad and bad and mad it was--
+        But then, how it was sweet!
+
+
+
+     LOVE AMONG THE RUINS
+
+
+     Where the quiet-colored end of evening smiles,
+               Miles and miles,
+       On the solitary pastures where our sheep
+               Half asleep
+     Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray or stop
+               As they crop--
+     Was the site once of a city great and gay
+               (So they say);
+     Of our country's very capital, its prince,
+                Ages since,
+     Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
+                Peace or war.
+
+     Now,--the country does not even boast a tree,
+                As you see;
+     To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills
+                From the hills
+     Intersect and give a name to (else they run
+                Into one).
+     Where the domed and daring palace shot in spires
+                Up like fires
+     O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall
+                Bounding all,
+     Made of marble, men might march on nor be pressed,
+                Twelve abreast.
+
+     And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass
+                Never was!
+     Such a carpet as this summer-time o'erspreads
+                And imbeds
+     Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,
+                Stock or stone--
+     Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe
+                Long ago;
+     Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame
+                Struck them tame;
+     And that glory and that shame alike, the gold
+                Bought and sold.
+
+     Now,--the single little turret that remains
+                On the plains,
+     By the caper overrooted, by the gourd
+           Overscored,
+     While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks
+           Through the chinks--
+     Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time
+           Sprang sublime,
+     And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced
+           As they raced,
+     And the monarch and his minions and his dames
+           Viewed the games.
+
+     And I know--while thus the quiet-colored eve
+           Smiles to leave
+     To their folding all our many-tinkling fleece
+           In such peace,
+     And the slopes and rills in undistinguished gray
+           Melt away--
+     That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair
+           Waits me there
+     In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul
+           For the goal,
+     When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb,
+           Till I come.
+
+     But he looked upon the city every side,
+           Far and wide,
+     All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades
+           Colonnades,
+     All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,--and then,
+           All the men!
+     When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
+           Either hand
+     On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
+           Of my face,
+     Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
+           Each on each.
+
+     In one year they sent a million fighters forth
+           South and North,
+     And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
+           As the sky,
+     Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force--
+           Gold, of course.
+     O heart! O blood that freezes, blood that burns!
+           Earth's returns
+     For whole centuries of folly, noise, and sin!
+       Shut them in,
+     With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!
+       Love is best.
+
+
+
+     A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL
+
+     SHORTLY AFTER THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING IN EUROPE
+
+     Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
+       Singing together.
+     Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes,
+       Each in its tether,
+     Sleeping safe in the bosom of the plain,
+       Cared-for till cock-crow:
+     Look out if yonder be not day again
+       Rimming the rock-row!
+     That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought,
+       Rarer, intenser,
+     Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,
+       Chafes in the censer.
+     Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop;
+       Seek we sepulture
+     On a tall mountain, citied to the top,
+       Crowded with culture!
+     All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels:
+       Clouds overcome it;
+     No, yonder sparkle is the citadel's
+       Circling its summit.
+     Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights!
+       Wait ye the warning?
+     Our low life was the level's and the night's:
+       He's for the morning.
+     Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head,
+       'Ware the beholders!
+     This is our master, famous, calm, and dead,
+       Borne on our shoulders.
+
+     Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft,
+       Safe from the weather!
+     He whom we convoy to his grave aloft,
+       Singing together,
+     He was a man born with thy face and throat,
+       Lyric Apollo!
+     Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note
+       Winter would follow?
+     Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone!
+       Cramped and diminished,
+     Moaned he, "New measures, other feet anon!
+       My dance is finished"?
+     No, that's the world's way: (keep the mountain side,
+       Make for the city!)
+     He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride
+       Over men's pity;
+     Left play for work, and grappled with the world
+       Bent on escaping:
+     "What's in the scroll," quoth he, "thou keepest furled?
+       Show me their shaping,
+     Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage,--
+       Give!" so he gowned him,
+     Straight got by heart that book to its last page;
+       Learned, we found him.
+     Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead.
+       Accents uncertain:
+     "Time to taste life," another would have said,
+       "Up with the curtain!"
+     This man said rather, "Actual life comes next?
+       Patience a moment!
+     Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text,
+       Still there's the comment.
+     Let me know all! Prate not of most or least,
+       Painful or easy!
+     Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up the feast,
+       Ay, nor feel queasy."
+     Oh, such a life as he resolved to live,
+       When he had learned it,
+     When he had gathered all books had to give!
+       Sooner, he spurned it.
+     Image the whole, then execute the parts--
+       Fancy the fabric
+     Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz,
+       Ere mortar dab brick!
+
+     (Here's the town-gate reached; there's the market-place
+       Gaping before us.)
+     Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace:
+       (Hearten our chorus!)
+     That before living he'd learn how to live--
+       No end to learning:
+     Earn the means first--God surely will contrive
+       Use for our earning.
+     Others mistrust and say, "But time escapes!
+       Live now or never!"
+     He said, "What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes!
+       Man has Forever."
+     Back to his book then: deeper drooped his head;
+       _Calculus_ racked him;
+     Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead;
+       _Tussis_ attacked him.
+     "Now, master, take a little rest!"--not he!
+       (Caution redoubled!
+     Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!)
+       Not a whit troubled,
+     Back to his studies, fresher than at first,
+       Fierce as a dragon
+     He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst)
+       Sucked at the flagon.
+
+     Oh, if we draw a circle premature,
+       Heedless of far gain,
+     Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure
+       Bad is our bargain!
+     Was it not great? did not he throw on God
+       (He loves the burthen)--
+     God's task to make the heavenly period
+       Perfect the earthen?
+     Did not he magnify the mind, show clear
+       Just what it all meant?
+     He would not discount life, as fools do here
+       Paid by installment.
+     He ventured neck or nothing--heaven's success
+       Found, or earth's failure:
+     "Wilt thou trust death or not?" He answered, "Yes!
+       Hence with life's pale lure!"
+     That low man seeks a little thing to do,
+       Sees it and does it:
+     This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
+       Dies ere he knows it.
+     That low man goes on adding one to one,
+       His hundred's soon hit:
+     This high man, aiming at a million,
+       Misses an unit.
+     That, has the world here--should he need the next.
+       Let the world mind him!
+     This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed
+       Seeking shall find him.
+     So, with the throttling hands of death at strife,
+       Ground he at grammar;
+     Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife:
+       While he could stammer
+     He settled _Hoti's_ business--let it be!--
+       Properly based _Oun_--
+     Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic _De_,
+       Dead from the waist down.
+
+     Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place:
+       Hail to your purlieus,
+     All ye highfliers of the feathered race,
+       Swallows and curlews!
+     Here's the top-peak; the multitude below
+       Live, for they can, there:
+     This man decided not to Live but Know--
+       Bury this man there?
+     Here--here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
+       Lightnings are loosened,
+     Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,
+       Peace let the dew send!
+     Lofty designs must close in like effects:
+       Loftily lying,
+     Leave him--still loftier than the world suspects,
+       Living and dying.
+
+
+     MY LAST DUCHESS
+
+     FERRARA
+
+
+     That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
+     Looking as if she were alive. I call
+     That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
+     Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
+     Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
+     "Frà Pandolf" by design: for never read
+     Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
+     The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
+     But to myself they turned (since none puts by
+     The curtain I have drawn for you, but I),
+     And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
+     How such a glance came there; so, not the first
+     Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
+     Her husband's presence only, called that spot
+     Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
+     Frà Pandolf chanced to say, "Her mantle laps
+     Over my lady's wrists too much," or "Paint
+     Must never hope to reproduce the faint
+     Half-flush that dies along her throat;" such stuff
+     Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
+     For calling up that spot of joy. She had
+     A heart--how shall I say?--too soon made glad,
+     Too easily impressed: she liked whate'er
+     She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
+     Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast,
+     The dropping of the daylight in the West,
+     The bough of cherries some officious fool
+     Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
+     She rode with round the terrace,--all and each
+     Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
+     Or blush, at least. She thanked men,--good! but thanked
+     Somehow--I know not how--as if she ranked
+     My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
+     With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
+     This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
+     In speech (which I have not) to make your will
+     Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
+     Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
+     Or there exceed the mark,"--and if she let
+     Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
+     Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,--
+     E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
+     Never to stoop. O sir! she smiled, no doubt,
+     When'er I passed her; but who passed without
+     Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
+     Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
+     As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
+     The company below, then. I repeat,
+     The Count your master's known munificence
+     Is ample warrant that no just pretense
+     Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
+     Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
+     At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
+     Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
+     Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
+     Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
+
+
+     UP AT A VILLA--DOWN IN THE CITY
+
+     (As DISTINGUISHED BY AN ITALIAN PERSON OF QUALITY)
+
+
+     Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
+     The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
+     Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!
+
+     Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
+     There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast;
+     While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast.
+
+     Well, now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull
+     Just on a mountain edge as bare as the creature's skull,
+     Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull!--
+     scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's turned wool.
+
+     But the city, oh the city--the square with the houses! Why!
+     They are stone-faced, white as a curd; there's something to take the
+                eye!
+     Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry;
+     You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by;
+     Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high;
+     And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.
+
+     What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights,
+     'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the
+                heights;
+     You've the brown-plowed land before, where the oxen steam and
+                wheeze,
+     And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray olive-trees.
+
+     Is it better in May, I ask you? You've summer all at once;
+     In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns.
+     'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well,
+     The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell
+     Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell.
+
+     Is it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to spout and splash!
+     In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows flash
+     On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle and
+                pash
+     Round the lady atop in her conch--fifty gazers do not abash,
+     Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort
+                of sash.
+
+     All the year long at the villa, nothing to see though you linger,
+     Except yon cypress that points like death's lean lifted forefinger.
+     Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix i' the corn and mingle,
+     Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle.
+     Late August or early September, the stunning cicala is shrill,
+     And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs on
+                the hill.
+     Enough of the seasons,--I spare you the months of the fever and
+                chill.
+
+     Ere you open your eyes in the city, the blessèd church-bells begin;
+     No sooner the bells leave off than the diligence rattles in:
+     You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin.
+     By and by there's the traveling doctor gives pills, lets blood, draws
+                teeth,
+     Or the Pulcinella-trumpet breaks up the market beneath.
+     At the post-office such a scene picture--the new play, piping hot!
+     And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot.
+     Above it, behold the Archbishop's most fatherly of rebukes,
+     And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little new law of
+                the Duke's!
+     Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don So-and-so
+     Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, St. Jerome, and Cicero,
+     "And moreover" (the sonnet goes rhyming), "the skirts of St. Paul
+                has reached,
+     Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever
+                he preached."
+     Noon strikes,--here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling
+                and smart,
+     With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her
+                heart!
+     _Bang-whang-whang_ goes the drum, _tootle-te-tootle_ the fife;
+     No keeping one's haunches still: it's the greatest pleasure in life.
+
+     But bless you, it's dear--it's dear! fowls, wine, at double the rate;
+     They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil pays passing
+                the gate
+     It's a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, not the city!
+     Beggars can scarcely be choosers: but still--ah, the pity, the pity!
+     Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with cowls and
+                sandals,
+     And then penitents dressed in white shirts, a-holding the yellow
+                candles;
+     One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a cross with handles,
+     And the Duke's guard brings up the rear, for the better prevention
+                of scandals:
+     _Bang-whang-whang_ goes the drum, _tootle-te-tootle_ the fife,
+     Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!
+
+
+
+     IN THREE DAYS
+
+
+     So, I shall see her in three days
+     And just one night,--but nights are short,--
+     Then two long hours, and that is morn.
+     See how I come, unchanged, unworn--
+     Feel, where my life broke off from thine,
+     How fresh the splinters keep and fine,--Only
+     a touch and we combine!
+
+     Too long, this time of year, the days!
+     But nights--at least the nights are short,
+     As night shows where her one moon is,
+     A hand's-breadth of pure light and bliss,
+     So, life's night gives my lady birth
+     And my eyes hold her! What is worth
+     The rest of heaven, the rest of earth?
+
+     O loaded curls, release your store
+     Of warmth and scent, as once before
+     The tingling hair did, lights and darks
+     Outbreaking into fairy sparks
+     When under curl and curl I pried
+     After the warmth and scent inside,
+     Through lights and darks how manifold--The
+     dark inspired, the light controlled!
+     As early Art embrowned the gold.
+
+     What great fear--should one say, "Three days
+     That change the world might change as well
+     Your fortune; and if joy delays,
+     Be happy that no worse befell."
+     What small fear--if another says,
+     "Three days and one short night beside
+     May throw no shadow on your ways;
+     But years must teem with change untried,
+     With chance not easily defied,
+     With an end somewhere undescried."
+     No fear!--or if a fear be born
+     This minute, it dies out in scorn.
+     Fear? I shall see her in three days
+     And one night,--now the nights are short,--
+     Then just two hours, and that is morn.
+
+
+     IN A YEAR
+
+     Never any more,
+          While I live,
+     Need I hope to see his face
+          As before.
+     Once his love grown chill,
+          Mine may strive:
+     Bitterly we re-embrace,
+          Single still.
+
+     Was it something said,
+          Something done,
+     Vexed him? was it touch of hand,
+          Turn of head?
+     Strange! that very way
+          Love begun:
+     I as little understand
+          Love's decay.
+
+     When I sewed or drew,
+          I recall
+     How he looked as if I sung,--
+          Sweetly too.
+     If I spoke a word,
+          First of all
+     Up his cheek the color sprung,
+          Then he heard.
+
+     Sitting by my side,
+          At my feet,
+     So he breathed but air I breathed,
+          Satisfied!
+     I, too, at love's brim
+          Touched the sweet:
+     I would die if death bequeathed
+          Sweet to him.
+
+     "Speak, I love thee best!"
+          He exclaimed:
+     "Let thy love my own foretell!"
+          I confessed:
+     "Clasp my heart on thine
+          Now unblamed,
+     Since upon thy soul as well
+          Hangeth mine!"
+
+     Was it wrong to own,
+          Being truth?
+     Why should all the giving prove
+          His alone?
+     I had wealth and ease,
+          Beauty, youth:
+     Since my lover gave me love,
+          I gave these.
+
+     That was all I meant,--
+          To be just,
+     And the passion I had raised
+          To content.
+     Since he chose to change
+          Gold for dust,
+     If I gave him what he praised
+          Was it strange?
+     Would he loved me yet,
+          On and on,
+     While I found some way undreamed--
+          Paid my debt!
+     Gave more life and more,
+          Till all gone,
+     He should smile--"She never seemed
+          Mine before.
+
+     "What, she felt the while,
+          Must I think?
+     Love's so different with us men!"
+          He should smile:
+     "Dying for my sake--
+          White and pink!
+     Can't we touch these bubbles then
+          But they break?"
+
+     Dear, the pang is brief,
+          Do thy part,
+     Have thy pleasure! How perplexed
+          Grows belief!
+     Well, this cold clay clod
+          Was man's heart:
+     Crumble it, and what comes next?
+          Is it God?
+
+
+     EVELYN HOPE
+
+     Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead!
+        Sit and watch by her side an hour.
+     That is her book-shelf, this her bed:
+        She plucked that piece of geranium-flower,
+     Beginning to die too, in the glass:
+        Little has yet been changed, I think;
+     The shutters are shut, no light may pass
+        Save two long rays through the hinge's chink.
+
+     Sixteen years old when she died!
+        Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name;
+     It was not her time to love; beside,
+        Her life had many a hope and aim,
+     Duties enough and little cares,
+        And now was quiet, now astir,
+     Till God's hand beckoned unawares--
+        And the sweet white brow is all of her.
+
+     Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope?
+        What, your soul was pure and true,
+     The good stars met in your horoscope,
+        Made you of spirit, fire, and dew
+     And just because I was thrice as old,
+        And our paths in the world diverged so wide,
+     Each was naught to each, must I be told?
+        We were fellow mortals, naught beside?
+
+     No, indeed! for God above
+        Is great to grant, as mighty to make,
+     And creates the love to reward the love:
+        I claim you still, for my own love's sake!
+     Delayed it may be for more lives yet,
+        Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few;
+     Much is to learn, much to forget
+        Ere the time be come for taking you.
+
+     But the time will come,--at last it will,
+        When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say)
+     In the lower earth, in the years long still,
+        That body and soul so pure and gay?
+     Why your hair was amber, I shall divine,
+        And your mouth of your own geranium's red--
+     And what would you do with me, in fine,
+        In the new life come in the old one's stead?
+
+     I have lived (I shall say) so much since then,
+        Given up myself so many times,
+     Gained me the gains of various men,
+        Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes;
+     Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope,
+        Either I missed or itself missed me:
+     And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope!
+        What is the issue? let us see!
+
+     I loved you, Evelyn, all the while!
+        My heart seemed full as it could hold;
+     There was place and to spare for the frank young smile,
+        And the red young mouth, and the hair's young gold.
+     So hush,--I will give you this leaf to keep;
+        See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand!
+     There, that is our secret: go to sleep!
+        You will wake, and remember, and understand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     PROSPICE
+
+     Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat,
+          The mist in my face,
+     When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
+          I am nearing the place,
+     The power of the night, the press of the storm,
+          The post of the foe;
+     Where he stands, the Arch-Fear in a visible form,
+          Yet the strong man must go:
+     For the journey is done and the summit attained,
+          And the barriers fall,
+     Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
+          The reward of it all.
+     I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more,
+          The best and the last!
+     I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
+          And bade me creep past.
+     No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
+          The heroes of old,
+     Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
+          Of pain, darkness, and cold.
+     For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
+          The black minute's at end,
+     And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
+          Shall dwindle, shall blend,
+     Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
+          Then a light, then thy breast,
+     O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
+          And with God be the rest!
+
+
+
+     THE PATRIOT
+
+     AN OLD STORY
+
+
+     It was roses, roses, all the way,
+      With myrtle mixed in my path like mad:
+     The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,
+      The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,
+     A year ago on this very day.
+
+     The air broke into a mist with bells,
+      The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries.
+     Had I said, "Good folk, mere noise repels--
+      But give me your sun from yonder skies"
+     They had answered, "And afterward, what else?"
+
+     Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun
+      To give it my loving friends to keep!
+     Naught man could do have I left undone;
+      And you see my harvest, what I reap
+     This very day, now a year is run.
+
+     There's nobody on the housetops now--
+      Just a palsied few at the windows set;
+     For the best of the sight is, all allow,
+      At the Shambles' Gate--or, better yet,
+     By the very scaffold's foot, I trow.
+
+     I go in the rain, and, more than needs,
+      A rope cuts both my wrists behind;
+     And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds,
+      For they fling, whoever has a mind,
+     Stones at me for my year's misdeeds.
+
+     Thus I entered, and thus I go!
+      In triumphs, people have dropped down dead.
+     "Paid by the world, what dost thou owe
+      Me?"--God might question; now instead,
+     'Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.
+
+
+
+     ONE WORD MORE
+
+     To E.B.B.
+
+     London, September, 1855
+
+
+     There they are, my fifty men and women,
+     Naming me the fifty poems finished!
+     Take them, Love, the book and me together:
+     Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.
+
+     Raphael made a century of sonnets,
+     Made and wrote them in a certain volume
+     Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil
+     Else he only used to draw Madonnas:
+     These, the world might view--but one, the volume.
+     Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you.
+     Did she live and love it all her lifetime?
+     Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets,
+     Die and let it drop beside her pillow,
+     Where it lay in place of Raphael's glory,
+     Raphael's cheek so duteous and so loving--
+     Cheek the world was wont to hail a painter's,
+     Raphael's cheek, her love had turned a poet's?
+
+     You and I would rather read that volume
+     (Taken to his beating bosom by it),
+     Lean and list the bosom-beats of Raphael,
+     Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas--
+     Her, San Sisto names, and Her, Foligno,
+     Her, that visits Florence in a vision,
+     Her, that's left with lilies in the Louvre--
+     Seen by us and all the world in circle.
+
+     You and I will never read that volume.
+     Guido Reni like his own eye's apple
+     Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it.
+     Guido Reni dying, all Bologna
+     Cried, and the world cried too, "Ours the treasure!"
+     Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.
+
+     Dante once prepared to paint an angel:
+     Whom to please? You whisper "Beatrice."
+     While he mused and traced it and retraced it,
+     (Peradventure with a pen corroded
+     Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for
+     When, his left hand i' the hair o' the wicked,
+     Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma,
+     Bit into the live man's flesh for parchment,
+     Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle,
+     Let the wretch go festering through Florence)--
+     Dante, who loved well because he hated,
+     Hated wickedness that hinders loving,
+     Dante standing, studying his angel--
+     In there broke the folk of his Inferno.
+     Says he--"Certain people of importance"
+     (Such he gave his daily dreadful line to)
+     "Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet."
+     Says the poet--"Then I stopped my painting."
+
+     You and I would rather see that angel
+     Painted by the tenderness of Dante--
+     Would we not?--than read a fresh Inferno.
+
+     You and I will never see that picture.
+     While he mused on love and Beatrice,
+     While he softened o'er his outlined angel,
+     In they broke, those "people of importance";
+     We and Bice bear the loss forever.
+
+     What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's picture?
+     This: no artist lives and loves, that longs not
+     Once, and only once, and for one only,
+     (Ah, the prize!) to find his love a language
+     Fit and fair and simple and sufficient--
+     Using nature that's an art to others,
+     Not, this one time, art that's turned his nature.
+     Ay, of all the artists living, loving,
+     None but would forego his proper dowry.
+     Does he paint? he fain would write a poem:
+     Does he write? he fain would paint a picture:
+     Put to proof art alien to the artist's,
+     Once, and only once, and for one only,
+     So to be the man and leave the artist,
+     Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow.
+
+     Wherefore? Heaven's gift takes earth's abatement!
+     He who smites the rock and spreads the water,
+     Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him,
+     Even he the minute makes immortal
+     Proves perchance but mortal in the minute,
+     Desecrates belike the deed in doing.
+     While he smites, how can he but remember
+     So he smote before, in such a peril,
+     When they stood and mocked--"Shall smiting help us?"
+     When they drank and sneered--"A stroke is easy!"
+     When they wiped their mouths and went their journey,
+     Throwing him for thanks--"But drought was pleasant."
+     Thus old memories mar the actual triumph;
+     Thus the doing savors of disrelish;
+     Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat;
+     O'er-importuned brows becloud the mandate,
+     Carelessness or consciousness--the gesture.
+     For he bears an ancient wrong about him,
+     Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces,
+     Hears, yet one time more, the 'customed prelude--
+     "How shouldst thou, of all men, smite, and save us?"
+     Guesses what is like to prove the sequel--
+     "Egypt's flesh-pots--nay, the drought was better."
+
+     Oh, the crowd must have emphatic warrant!
+     Theirs the Sinai-forehead's cloven brilliance,
+     Right-arm's rod-sweep, tongue's imperial fiat.
+     Never dares the man put off the prophet.
+
+     Did he love one face from out the thousands
+     (Were she Jethro's daughter, white and wifely,
+     Were she but the Æthiopian bondslave),
+     He would envy yon dumb patient camel,
+     Keeping a reserve of scanty water
+     Meant to save his own life in the desert;
+     Ready in the desert to deliver
+     (Kneeling down to let his breast be opened)
+     Hoard and life together for his mistress.
+
+     I shall never, in the years remaining,
+     Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues.
+     Make you music that should all-express me;
+     So it seems: I stand on my attainment.
+     This of verse alone, one life allows me;
+     Verse and nothing else have I to give you.
+     Other heights in other lives, God willing:
+     All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love!
+
+     Yet a semblance of resource avails us--
+     Shade so finely touched, love's sense must seize it.
+     Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly,
+     Lines I write the first time and the last time.
+     He who works in fresco, steals a hair-brush,
+     Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly,
+     Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little,
+     Makes a strange art of an art familiar,
+     Fills his lady's missal-marge with flowerets.
+     He who blows through bronze may breathe through silver,
+     Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess.
+     He who writes may write for once as I do.
+
+     Love, you saw me gather men and women,
+     Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy,
+     Enter each and all, and use their service,
+     Speak from every mouth,--the speech a poem.
+     Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows,
+     Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving:
+     I am mine and yours--the rest be all men's,
+     Karshish, Cleon, Norbert, and the fifty.
+     Let me speak this once in my true person,
+     Not as Lippo, Roland, or Andrea,
+     Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence:
+     Pray you, look on these, my men and women,
+     Take and keep my fifty poems finished;
+     Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also!
+     Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things.
+
+     Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon's self!
+     Here in London, yonder late in Florence,
+     Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured.
+     Curving on a sky imbrued with color,
+     Drifted over Fiesole by twilight,
+     Came she, our new crescent of a hair's-breadth.
+     Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato,
+     Rounder 'twixt the cypresses and rounder,
+     Perfect till the nightingales applauded.
+     Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished,
+     Hard to greet, she traverses the house-roofs,
+     Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver,
+     Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish.
+     What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy?
+     Nay: for if that moon could love a mortal,
+     Use to charm him (so to fit a fancy),
+     All her magic ('tis the old sweet mythos).
+     She would turn a new side to her mortal,
+     Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman--
+     Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,
+     Blind to Galileo on his turret,
+     Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats--him, even!
+     Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal--
+     When she turns round, comes again in heaven,
+     Opens out anew for worse or better!
+     Proves she like some portent of an iceberg
+     Swimming full upon the ship it founders,
+     Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals?
+     Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire
+     Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain?
+     Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu
+     Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest,
+     Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire.
+     Like the bodied heaven in his clearness
+     Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work,
+     When they ate and drank and saw God also!
+
+     What were seen? None knows, none ever shall know.
+     Only this is sure--the sight were other,
+     Not the moon's same side, born late in Florence,
+     Dying now impoverished here in London.
+     God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
+     Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,
+     One to show a woman when he loves her!
+
+     This I say of me, but think of you, Love!
+     This to you--yourself my moon of poets!
+     Ah, but that's the world's side, there's the wonder;
+     Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you!
+     There, in turn I stand with them and praise you--
+     Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it.
+     But the best is when I glide from out them,
+
+     Cross a step or two of dubious twilight,
+     Come out on the other side, the novel
+     Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of,
+     Where I hush and bless myself with silence.
+
+     Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,
+     Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno,
+     Wrote one song--and in my brain I sing it,
+     Drew one angel--borne, see, on my bosom!
+
+     R.B.
+
+
+
+ORESTES AUGUSTUS BROWNSON
+
+(1803-1876)
+
+Orestes Brownson, in his time, was a figure of striking originality and
+influence in American literature and American political, philosophical,
+and religious discussion. His career was an exceptional one; for he was
+connected with some of the most important contemporaneous movements of
+thought, and passed through several distinct phases: Presbyterianism,
+Universalism, Socialism--of a mild and benevolent kind, not to be
+confused with the later fiery and destructive socialism of "the Reds";
+afterward sympathizing somewhat with the aims and tendencies of the New
+England Transcendentalists; a close intellectual associate of Ralph
+Waldo Emerson; then the apostle of a "new Christianity"--finally
+becoming a Roman Catholic.
+
+[Illustration: ORESTES BROWNSON]
+
+Coming of old Connecticut stock on his father's side, he was born in
+Vermont, September 16th, 1803; and, notwithstanding that he was brought
+up in poverty on a farm with small opportunity for education, contrived
+in later years to make himself a thorough scholar in various directions,
+mastering several languages, acquiring a wide knowledge of history,
+reading deeply in philosophy, and developing marked originality in
+setting forth new philosophical views. His bent in childhood was
+strongly religious; and he even believed, at that period of his life,
+that he held long conversations with the sacred personages of Holy
+Scripture. Yet while in manhood he devoted many years and much of his
+energy to preaching, his character was aggressive and his tone
+controversial, he however revealed many traits of real gentleness and
+humility, and the mixture of rugged strength and tenderness in his
+character and his work won him a large following in whatever position
+he took.
+
+He performed the remarkable feat, when the support of American letters
+was slight, of founding and conducting almost single-handed, from 1838
+to 1843, his famous Quarterly Review, which was a power in the land. He
+started it again in 1844 as 'Brownson's Quarterly Review,' and resumed
+it thirty years later in still a third series. He died in 1876 at
+Detroit, much of his active career having been passed in Boston, and
+some of his later years at Seton Hall, New Jersey.
+
+His various changes of belief have often been taken as an index of
+vacillation; but a simple and candid study of his writings shows that
+such changes were merely the normal progress of an intensely earnest and
+sincere mind, which never hesitated to avow its honest convictions nor
+to admit its errors. This is the quality which gives Brownson his
+vitality as a mind and an author; and he will be found to be consistent
+with conscience throughout.
+
+His writings are forceful, eloquent, and lucid in style, with a
+Websterian massiveness that does not detract from their charm. They fill
+twenty volumes, divided into groups of essays on Civilization,
+Controversy, Religion, Philosophy, Scientific Theories, and Popular
+Literature, which cover a great and fascinating variety of topics in
+detail. Brownson was an intense and patriotic American, and his national
+quality comes out strongly in his extended treatise 'The American
+Republic' (1865). The best known of his other works is a candid,
+vigorous, and engaging autobiography entitled 'The Convert' (1853).
+
+
+
+
+
+SAINT-SIMONISM
+
+From 'The Convert'
+
+If I drew my doctrine of Union in part from the eclecticism of Cousin,
+I drew my views of the Church and of the reorganization of the
+race from the Saint-Simonians,--a philo-sophico-religious or a
+politico-philosophical sect that sprung up in France under the
+Restoration, and figured largely for a year or two under the monarchy of
+July. Their founder was Claude Henri, Count de Saint-Simon, a descendant
+of the Due de Saint-Simon, well known as the author of the 'Memoirs.' He
+was born in 1760, entered the army at the age of seventeen, and the
+year after came to this country, where he served with distinction in our
+Revolutionary War under Bouillié. After the peace of 1783 he devoted two
+years to the study of our people and institutions, and then returned to
+France. Hardly had he returned before he found himself in the midst of
+the French Revolution, which he regarded as the practical application of
+the principles or theories adopted by the reformers of the sixteenth
+century and popularized by the philosophers of the eighteenth. He looked
+upon that revolution, we are told, as having only a destructive
+mission--necessary, important, but inadequate to the wants of humanity;
+and instead of being carried away by it as were most of the young men of
+his age and his principles, he set himself at work to amass materials
+for the erection of a new social edifice on the ruins of the old, which
+should stand and improve in solidity, strength, grandeur, and
+beauty forever.
+
+The way he seems to have taken to amass these materials was to engage
+with a partner in some grand speculations for the accumulation of
+wealth,--and speculations too, it is said, not of the most honorable or
+even the most honest character. His plans succeeded for a time, and he
+became very rich, as did many others in those troublous times; but he
+finally met with reverses, and lost all but the wrecks of his fortune.
+He then for a number of years plunged into all manner of vice, and
+indulged to excess in every species of dissipation; not, we are told,
+from love of vice, any inordinate desire, or any impure affection, but
+for the holy purpose of preparing himself by his experience for the
+great work of redeeming man and securing for him a Paradise on earth.
+Having gained all that experience could give him in the department of
+vice, he then proceeded to consult the learned professors of L'École
+Polytechnique for seven or ten years, to make himself master of science,
+literature, and the fine arts in all their departments, and to place
+himself at the level of the last attainments of the race. Thus qualified
+to be the founder of a new social organization, he wrote several books,
+in which he deposited the germs of his ideas, or rather the germs of the
+future; most of which have hitherto remained unpublished.
+
+But now that he was so well qualified for his work he found himself a
+beggar, and had as yet made only a single disciple. He was reduced to
+despair and attempted to take his own life; but failed, the ball only
+grazing his sacred forehead. His faithful disciple was near him, saved
+him, and aroused him into life and hope. When he recovered he found that
+he had fallen into a gross error. He had been a materialist, an atheist,
+and had discarded all religious ideas as long since outgrown by the
+human race. He had proposed to organize the human race with materials
+furnished by the senses alone, and by the aid of positive science. He
+owns his fault, and conceives and brings forth a new Christianity,
+consigned to a small pamphlet entitled 'Nouveau Christianisme,' which
+was immediately published. This done, his mission was ended, and he
+died May 19th, 1825, and I suppose was buried.
+
+Saint-Simon, the preacher of a new Christianity, very soon attracted
+disciples, chiefly from the pupils of the Polytechnic School; ardent and
+lively young men, full of enthusiasm, brought up without faith in the
+gospel and yet unable to live without religion of some sort. Among the
+active members of the sect were at one time Pierre Leroux, Jules and
+Michel Chevalier, Lerminier, [and] my personal friend Dr. Poyen, who
+initiated me and so many others in New England into the mysteries of
+animal magnetism. Dr. Poyen was, I believe, a native of the island of
+Guadeloupe: a man of more ability than he usually had credit for, of
+solid learning, genuine science, and honest intentions. I knew him well
+and esteemed him highly. When I knew him his attachment to the new
+religion was much weakened, and he often talked to me of the old Church,
+and assured me that he felt at times that he must return to her bosom. I
+owe him many hints which turned my thoughts toward Catholic principles,
+and which, with God's grace, were of much service to me. These and many
+others were in the sect; whose chiefs, after the death of its founder,
+were--Bazard, a Liberal and a practical man, who killed himself; and
+Enfantin, who after the dissolution of the sect sought employment in the
+service of the Viceroy of Egypt, and occupies now some important post in
+connection with the French railways.
+
+The sect began in 1826 by addressing the working classes; but their
+success was small. In 1829 they came out of their narrow circle, assumed
+a bolder tone, addressed themselves to the general public, and became in
+less than eighteen months a Parisian _mode_. In 1831 they purchased the
+Globe newspaper, made it their organ, and distributed gratuitously five
+thousand copies daily. In 1832 they had established a central
+propagandism in Paris, and had their missionaries in most of the
+departments of France. They attacked the hereditary peerage, and it
+fell; they seemed to be numerous and strong, and I believed for a moment
+in their complete success. They called their doctrine a religion, their
+ministers priests, and their organization a church; and as such they
+claimed to be recognized by the State, and to receive from it a
+subvention as other religious denominations [did]. But the courts
+decided that Saint-Simonism was not a religion and its ministers were
+not religious teachers. This decision struck them with death. Their
+prestige vanished. They scattered, dissolved in thin air, and went off,
+as Carlyle would say, into endless vacuity, as do sooner or later all
+shams and unrealities.
+
+Saint-Simon himself, who as presented to us by his disciples is a
+half-mythic personage, seems, so far as I can judge by those of his
+writings that I have seen, to have been a man of large ability and
+laudable intentions; but I have not been able to find any new or
+original thoughts of which he was the indisputable father. His whole
+system, if system he had, is summed up in the two maxims "Eden is before
+us, not behind us" (or the Golden Age of the poets is in the future, not
+in the past), and "Society ought to be so organized as to tend in the
+most rapid manner possible to the continuous moral, intellectual, and
+physical amelioration of the poorer and more numerous classes." He
+simply adopts the doctrine of progress set forth with so much flash
+eloquence by Condorcet, and the philanthropic doctrine with regard to
+the laboring classes, or the people, defended by Barbeuf and a large
+section of the French Revolutionists. His religion was not so much as
+the Theophilanthropy attempted to be introduced by some members of the
+French Directory: it admitted God in name, and in name did not deny
+Jesus Christ, but it rejected all mysteries, and reduced religion to
+mere socialism. It conceded that Catholicity had been the true Church
+down to the pontificate of Leo X., because down to that time its
+ministers had taken the lead in directing the intelligence and labors of
+mankind, had aided the progress of civilization, and promoted the
+well-being of the poorer and more numerous classes. But since Leo X.,
+who made of the Papacy a secular principality, it had neglected its
+mission, had ceased to labor for the poorer and more numerous classes,
+had leagued itself with the ruling orders, and lent all its influence to
+uphold tyrants and tyranny. A new church was needed; a church which
+should realize the ideal of Jesus Christ, and tend directly and
+constantly to the moral, physical, and social amelioration of the poorer
+and more numerous classes,--in other words, the greatest happiness in
+this life of the greatest number, the principle of Jeremy Bentham and
+his Utilitarian school.
+
+His disciples enlarged upon the hints of the master, and attributed to
+him ideas which he never entertained. They endeavored to reduce his
+hints to a complete system of religion, philosophy, and social
+organization. Their chiefs, I have said, were Amand Bazard and
+Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin....
+
+Bazard took the lead in what related to the external, political, and
+economical organization, and Enfantin in what regarded doctrine and
+worship. The philosophy or theology of the sect or school was derived
+principally from Hegel, and was a refined Pantheism. Its Christology was
+the unity, not union, of the divine and human; and the Incarnation
+symbolized the unity of God and man, or the Divinity manifesting himself
+in humanity, and making humanity substantially divine,--the very
+doctrine in reality which I myself had embraced even before I had heard
+of the Saint-Simonians, if not before they had published it. The
+religious organization was founded on the doctrine of the progressive
+nature of man, and the maxim that all institutions should tend in the
+most speedy and direct manner possible to the constant amelioration of
+the moral, intellectual, and physical condition of the poorer and more
+numerous classes. Socially men were to be divided into three
+classes,--artists, _savans_, and industrials or working men,
+corresponding to the psychological division of the human faculties. The
+soul has three powers or faculties,--to love, to know, and to act. Those
+in whom the love-faculty is predominant belong to the class of artists,
+those in whom the knowledge-faculty is predominant belong to the class
+of _savans_, the scientific and the learned, and in fine, those in whom
+the act-faculty predominates belong to the industrial class. This
+classification places every man in the social category for which he is
+fitted, and to which he is attracted by his nature. These several
+classes are to be hierarchically organized under chiefs or priests, who
+are respectively priests of the artists, of the scientific, and of the
+industrials, and are, priests and all, to be subjected to a supreme
+Father, _Père Supréme_, and a Supreme Mother, _Mère Supréme_.
+
+The economical organization is to be based on the maxims, "To each one
+according to his capacity," and "To each capacity according to its
+work." Private property is to be retained, but its transmission by
+inheritance or testamentary disposition must be abolished. The property
+is to be held by a tenure resembling that of gavel-kind. It belongs to
+the community, and the priests, chiefs, or brehons, as the Celtic tribes
+call them, to distribute it for life to individuals, and to each
+individual according to his capacity. It was supposed that in this way
+the advantages of both common and individual property might be secured.
+Something of this prevailed originally in most nations, and a
+reminiscence of it still exists in the village system among the Slavonic
+tribes of Russia and Poland; and nearly all jurists maintain that the
+testamentary right by which a man disposes of his goods after his
+natural death, as well as that by which a child inherits from the
+parent, is a municipal, not a natural right.
+
+The most striking feature in the Saint-Simonian scheme was the rank and
+position it assigned to woman. It asserted the absolute equality of the
+sexes, and maintained that either sex is incomplete without the other.
+Man is an incomplete individual without woman. Hence a religion, a
+doctrine, a social institution founded by one sex alone is incomplete,
+and can never be adequate to the wants of the race or a definite order.
+This idea was also entertained by Frances Wright, and appears to be
+entertained by all our Women's Rights folk of either sex. The old
+civilization was masculine, not male and female as God made man. Hence
+its condemnation. The Saint-Simonians, therefore, proposed to place by
+the side of their sovereign Father at the summit of their hierarchy a
+sovereign Mother. The man to be sovereign Father they found; but a woman
+to be sovereign Mother, _Mère Suprême_, they found not. This caused
+great embarrassment, and a split between Bazard and Enfantin. Bazard was
+about marrying his daughter, and he proposed to place her marriage under
+the protection of the existing French laws. Enfantin opposed his doing
+so, and called it a sinful compliance with the prejudices of the world.
+The Saint-Simonian society, he maintained, was a State, a kingdom within
+itself, and should be governed by its own laws and its own chiefs
+without any recognition of those without. Bazard persisted, and had the
+marriage of his daughter solemnized in a legal manner, and for aught I
+know, according to the rites of the Church. A great scandal followed.
+Bazard charged Enfantin with denying Christian marriage, and with
+holding loose notions on the subject. Enfantin replied that he neither
+denied nor affirmed Christian marriage; that in enacting the existing
+law on the subject man alone had been consulted, and he could not
+recognize it as law till woman had given her consent to it. As yet the
+society was only provisionally organized, inasmuch as they had not yet
+found the _Mère Suprême_. The law on marriage must emanate conjointly
+from the Supreme Father and the Supreme Mother, and it would be
+irregular and a usurpation for the Supreme Father to undertake alone to
+legislate on the subject. Bazard would not submit, and went out and shot
+himself. Most of the politicians abandoned the association; and Père
+Enfantin, almost in despair, dispatched twelve apostles to
+Constantinople to find in the Turkish harems the Supreme Mother. After a
+year they returned and reported that they were unable to find her; and
+the society, condemned by the French courts as immoral, broke up, and
+broke up because no woman could be found to be its mother. And so they
+ended, having risen, flourished, and decayed in less than a
+single decade.
+
+The points in the Saint-Simonian movement that arrested my attention and
+commanded my belief were what it will seem strange to my readers could
+ever have been doubted,--its assertion of a religious future for the
+human race, and that religion, in the future as well as in the past,
+must have an organization, and a hierarchical organization. Its
+classification of men according to the predominant psychological faculty
+in each, into artists, savans, and industrials, struck me as very well;
+and the maxims "To each according to his capacity," and "To each
+capacity according to its works," as evidently just, and desirable if
+practicable. The doctrine of the Divinity in Humanity, of progress, of
+no essential antagonism between the spiritual and the material, and of
+the duty of shaping all institutions for the speediest and continuous
+moral, intellectual, and physical amelioration of the poorer and more
+numerous classes, I already held. I was rather pleased than otherwise
+with the doctrine with regard to property, and thought it a decided
+improvement on that of a community of goods. The doctrine with regard to
+the relation of the sexes I rather acquiesced in than approved. I was
+disposed to maintain, as the Indian said, that "woman is the weaker
+canoe," and to assert my marital prerogatives; but the equality of the
+sexes was asserted by nearly all my friends, and I remained generally
+silent on the subject, till some of the admirers of Harriet Martineau
+and Margaret Fuller began to scorn equality and to claim for woman
+superiority. Then I became roused, and ventured to assert my
+masculine dignity.
+
+It is remarkable that most reformers find fault with the Christian law
+of marriage, and propose to alter the relations which God has
+established both in nature and the gospel between the sexes; and this is
+generally the rock on which they split. Women do not usually admire men
+who cast off their manhood or are unconscious of the rights and
+prerogatives of the stronger sex; and they admire just as little those
+"strong-minded women" who strive to excel only in the masculine virtues.
+I have never been persuaded that it argues well for a people when its
+women are men and its men women. Yet I trust I have always honored and
+always shall honor woman. I raise no question as to woman's equality or
+inequality with man, for comparisons cannot be made between things not
+of the same kind. Woman's sphere and office in life are as high, as
+holy, as important as man's, but different; and the glory of both man
+and woman is for each to act well the part assigned to each by
+Almighty God.
+
+The Saint-Simonian writings made me familiar with the idea of a
+hierarchy, and removed from my mind the prejudices against the Papacy
+generally entertained by my countrymen. Their proposed organization, I
+saw, might be good and desirable if their priests, their Supreme Father
+and Mother, could really be the wisest, the best,--not merely the
+nominal but the real chiefs of society. Yet what security have I that
+they will be? Their power was to have no limit save their own wisdom and
+love, but who would answer for it that these would always be an
+effectual limit? How were these priests or chiefs to be designated and
+installed in their office? By popular election? But popular election
+often passes over the proper man and takes the improper. Then as to the
+assignment to each man of a capital proportioned to his capacity to
+begin life with, what certainty is there that the rules of strict right
+will be followed? that wrong will not often be done, both voluntarily
+and involuntarily? Are your chiefs to be infallible and impeccable?
+Still the movement interested me, and many of its principles took firm
+hold of me and held me for years in a species of mental thraldom;
+insomuch that I found it difficult, if not impossible, either to refute
+them or to harmonize them with other principles which I also held, or
+rather which held me, and in which I detected no unsoundness. Yet I
+imbibed no errors from the Saint-Simonians; and I can say of them as of
+the Unitarians,--they did me no harm, but were in my fallen state the
+occasion of much good to me.
+
+
+
+FERDINAND BRUNETIÈRE
+
+(1849-)
+
+BY ADOLPHE COHN
+
+Ferdinand Brunetière, the celebrated French literary critic, was born in
+Toulon, the great military Mediterranean sea-port of France, in the year
+1849. His studies were begun in the college of his native city and
+continued in Paris, in the Lycée Louis le Grand, where in the class of
+philosophy he came under Professor Émile Charles, by whose original and
+profound though decidedly sad way of thinking he was powerfully
+influenced. His own ambition then was to become a teacher in the
+University of France, an ambition which seemed unlikely to be ever
+realized, as he failed to secure admission to the celebrated École
+Normale Supérieure, in the competitive examination which leads up to
+that school. Strangely enough, about fifteen years later he was, though
+not in possession of any very high University degree, appointed to the
+Professorship of French Literature in the school which he had been
+unable to enter as a scholar, and his appointment received the hearty
+indorsement of all the leading educational authorities in France.
+
+[Illustration: Ferdiand Brunetière]
+
+For several years after leaving the Lycée Louis le Grand, while
+completing his literary outfit by wonderfully extensive reading,
+Ferdinand Brunetière lived on stray orders for work for publishers. He
+seldom succeeded in getting these, and when he got any they were seldom
+filled. Thus he happened to be commissioned by the firm of Germer,
+Baillière and Company to write a history of Russia, which never was and
+to all appearances never will be written. The event which determined the
+direction of his career was the acceptance by the Revue des Deux Mondes,
+in 1875, of an article upon contemporary French novelists. François
+Buloz, the energetic and imperious founder and editor of the world-famed
+French bi-monthly, felt that he had found in the young critic the man
+whom French literary circles had been waiting for, and who was to be
+Sainte-Beuve's successor; and François Buloz was a man who seldom
+made mistakes.
+
+French literary criticism was just then at a very low ebb. Sainte-Beuve
+had been dead about five years; his own contemporaries, Edmond Schérer
+for instance, were getting old and discouraged; the new generation
+seemed to be turning unanimously, in consequence of the disasters of the
+Franco-German war and of the Revolution of September, 1870, to military
+or political activity. The only form of literature which had power to
+attract young writers was the novel, which they could fill with the
+description of all the passions then agitating the public mind. That a
+man of real intellectual strength should then give his undivided
+attention to pure literature seemed a most unlikely phenomenon; but all
+had to acknowledge that the unlikely had happened, soon after Ferdinand
+Brunetière had become the regular literary critic of the Revue des
+Deux Mondes.
+
+Fortunately the new critic did not undertake to walk in the footsteps of
+Sainte-Beuve. In the art of presenting to the reader the marrow of a
+writer's work, of making the writer himself known by the description of
+his surroundings, the narrative of his life, the study of the forces by
+which he was influenced, the illustrious author of the 'Causeries du
+Lundi' remains to this day without a rival or a continuator. Ferdinand
+Brunetière had a different conception of the duties of a literary
+critic. The one fault with which thoughtful readers were apt to charge
+Sainte-Beuve was, that he failed to pass judgment upon the works and
+writers; and this failure was often, and not altogether unjustly,
+ascribed to a certain weakness in his grasp of principles, a certain
+faint-heartedness whenever it became necessary to take sides. Any one
+who studies Brunetière can easily see that from the start his chief
+concern was to make it impossible for any one to charge him with the
+same fault. He came in with a set of principles which he has since
+upheld with remarkable steadfastness and courage. In an age when nearly
+every one was turning to the future and advocating the doctrine and the
+necessity of progress, when the chief fear of most men was that they
+should appear too much afraid of change, Brunetière proclaimed time and
+again that there was no safety for any nation or set of men except in a
+staunch adherence to tradition. He bade his readers turn their minds
+away from the current literature of the day, and take hold of the
+exemplars of excellence handed down to us by the great men of the past.
+Together with tradition he upheld authority, and therefore preferred to
+all others the period in which French literature and society had most
+willingly submitted to authority, that is, the seventeenth century and
+the reign of Louis XIV. When compelled to speak of the literature of the
+day, he did it in no uncertain tones. His book 'The Naturalistic Novel'
+consists of a series of articles in which he studies Zola and his
+school, upholding the old doctrine that there are things in life which
+must be kept out of the domain of art and cannot be therein introduced
+without lowering the ideal of man. Between the naturalistic and the
+idealistic novel he unhesitatingly declares for the latter, and places
+George Sand far above the author of 'L'Assommoir.'
+
+But the great success of his labors cannot be said to have been due
+solely or even mainly to the principles he advocated. Other critics have
+appeared since--Messrs. Jules Lemaître and Anatole France, for
+instance,--who antagonize almost everything that he defends and defend
+almost everything that he antagonizes, and whose success has hardly been
+inferior to his. Neither is it due to any charm in his style.
+Brunetière's sentences are compact,--indeed, strongly knit
+together,--but decidedly heavy and at times even clumsy. What he has to
+say he always says strongly, but not gracefully. He has a remarkable
+appreciation of the value of the words of the French language, but his
+arrangement of them is seldom free from mannerisms. What, then, has made
+him the foremost literary critic of the present day? The answer is,
+knowledge and sincerity. No writer of the present day, save perhaps
+Anatole France, is so accurately informed of every fact that bears upon
+literary history. Every argument he brings forward is supported by an
+array of incontrovertible facts that is simply appalling. No one can
+argue with him who does not first subject himself to the severest kind
+of training, go through a mass of tedious reading, become familiar with
+dates to the point of handling them as nimbly as a bank clerk handles
+the figures of a check list. And all this comes forward in Brunetière's
+articles in the most natural, we had almost said casual way. The fact
+takes its place unheralded in the reasoning. It is there because it has
+to be there, not because the writer wishes to make a display of his
+wonderful knowledge; and thus it happens that Ferdinand Brunetière's
+literary articles are perhaps the most instructive ones ever written in
+the French language. They are moreover admirably trustworthy. It would
+never come to this author's mind to hide a fact that goes against any of
+his theories. He feels so sure of being in the right that he is always
+willing to give his opponents all that they can possibly claim.
+
+Of late years, moreover, it must be acknowledged that Brunetière's mind
+has given signs of remarkable broadening. Under the influence of the
+doctrine of evolution, he has undertaken to class all literary facts as
+the great naturalists of the day have classed the facts of physiology,
+and to show that literary forms spring from each other by way of
+transformation in the same way as do the forms of animal or vegetable
+life. Already three works have been produced by him since he entered
+upon this new line of development: a history of literary criticism in
+France, which forms the first and hitherto only published volume of a
+large work, (The Evolution of Literary Forms); a work on the French
+drama, (The Periods of the French Theatre); and a treatise on modern
+French poetry, (The Evolution of French Lyric Poetry during the
+Nineteenth Century.) The second and last of these were first delivered
+by their author from the professor's chair or the lecturer's platform,
+where he has managed to display some of the greatest gifts of the public
+speaker. Most of M. Brunetière's literary articles have been collected
+in book form under the following titles:--(Questions of Criticism) (2
+vols.), (History and Criticism) (3 vols.), (Critical Studies on the
+History of French Literature) (6 vols.), (The Naturalistic Novel)
+(1 vol.).
+
+At various times remarkable addresses have been delivered by him on
+public occasions, in which he has often represented the French Academy
+since his election to that illustrious body. Unfortunately his
+productive literary activity has slackened of late. In 1895 he was
+called to the editorship of the Revue des Deux Mondes, and since his
+assumption of this responsible editorial position he has published only
+two or three articles, bearing upon moral and educational questions.
+
+To pass final judgment upon a man whose development is far from
+completed is an almost impossible task. Still it may be said that with
+the exception of Sainte-Beuve's (Causeries du Lundi) and (Nouveaux
+Lundis,) nothing exists that can teach the reader so much about the
+history of French literature as Brunetière's works. The doctrinal side,
+to which the author himself undoubtedly attaches the greatest
+importance, will strike the reader as often very questionable. Too often
+Brunetière seems in his judgments to be quite unconsciously actuated by
+a dislike of the accepted opinion of the present day. His love of the
+past bears a look of defiance of the present, not calculated to win the
+reader's assent. But even this does not go without its good side. It
+gives to Brunetière's judgments a unity which is seldom if ever found in
+the works of those whose chief labors have been spent in the often
+ungrateful task of making a hurried public acquainted with the
+uninterrupted stream of literary production.
+
+TAINE AND PRINCE NAPOLEON
+
+For the last five or six months, since it has been known that a prince,
+nephew, cousin, and son of emperors or kings formerly very powerful, had
+proposed to answer the libel, as he calls it, written by M. Taine about
+Napoleon, we have been awaiting this reply with an impatience, a
+curiosity which were equally justified,--although for very different
+reasons,--by M. Taine's reputation, by the glorious name of his
+antagonist, by the greatness, and finally the national interest of
+the subject.
+
+The book has just appeared; and if we can say without flattery that it
+has revealed to us in the Prince a writer whose existence we had not
+suspected, it is because we must at once add that neither in its manner
+nor in its matter is the book itself what it might have been. Prince
+Napoleon did not wish to write a 'Life of Napoleon,' and nobody expected
+that of him,--for after all, and for twenty different reasons, even had
+he wished it he could not have done it. But to M. Taine's Napoleon,
+since he did not find in him the true Napoleon, since he declared him to
+be as much against nature as against history, he could, and we expected
+that he would, have opposed his own Napoleon. By the side of the
+"inventions of a writer whose judgment had been misled and whose
+conscience had been obscured by passion,"--these are his own words,--he
+could have restored, as he promised in his 'Introduction,' "the man and
+his work in their living reality." And in our imaginations, on which M.
+Taine's harsh and morose workmanship had engraven the features of a
+modern Malatesta or modern Sforza, _he_ could at last substitute for
+them, as the inheritor of the name and the dynastic claims, the image of
+the founder of contemporary France, of the god of war. Unfortunately,
+instead of doing so, it is M. Taine himself, it is his analytical
+method, it is the witnesses whom M. Taine chose as his authorities, that
+Prince Napoleon preferred to assail, as a scholar in an Academy who
+descants upon the importance of the genuineness of a text, and moreover
+with a freedom of utterance and a pertness of expression which on any
+occasion I should venture to pronounce decidedly insulting.
+
+For it is a misfortune of princes, when they do us the honor of
+discussing with us, that they must observe a moderation, a reserve, a
+courtesy greater even than our own. It will therefore be unanimously
+thought that it ill became Prince Napoleon to address M. Taine in a tone
+which M. Taine would decline to use in his answer, out of respect for
+the very name which he is accused of _slandering_. It will be thought
+also that it ill became him, when speaking of Miot de Melito, for
+instance, or of many other servants of the imperial government, to seem
+to ignore that princes also are under an obligation to those who have
+served them well. Perhaps even it may be thought that it poorly became
+him, when discussing or contradicting the 'Memoirs of Madame de
+Rémusat,' to forget under what auspices the remains of his uncle, the
+Emperor, were years ago carried in his city of Paris. But what will be
+thought especially is, that he had something else to do than to split
+hairs in discussion of evidences; that he had something far better to
+say, more peremptory and to the point, and more literary besides, than
+to call M. Taine names, to hurl at him the epithets of "Entomologist,
+Materialist, Pessimist, Destroyer of Reputations, Iconoclast," and to
+class him as a "déboulonneur" among those who, in 1871, pulled down the
+Colonne Vendôme.
+
+Not, undoubtedly, that M. Taine--and we said so ourselves more than once
+with perfect freedom--if spending much patience and conscientiousness in
+his search for documents, has always displayed as much critical spirit
+and discrimination in the use he made of them. We cannot understand why
+in his 'Napoleon' he accepted the testimony of Bourrienne, for instance,
+any more than recently, in his 'Revolution,' that of George Duval, or
+again, in his 'Ancien Régime,' that of the notorious Soulavic. M.
+Taine's documents as a rule are not used by him as a foundation for his
+argument; no, he first takes his position, and then he consults his
+library, or he goes to the original records, with the hope of finding
+those documents that will support his reasoning. But granting that, we
+must own that though different from M. Taine's, Prince Napoleon's
+historical method is not much better; that though in a different manner
+and in a different direction, it is neither less partial nor less
+passionate: and here is a proof of it.
+
+Prince Napoleon blames M. Taine for quoting "eight times" 'Bourrienne's
+Memoirs,' and then, letting his feelings loose, he takes advantage of
+the occasion and cruelly besmirches Bourrienne's name. Does he tell the
+truth or not? is he right at the bottom? I do not know anything about
+it; I do not _wish_ to know anything; I do not need it, since I _know_,
+from other sources, that 'Bourrienne's Memoirs' are hardly less spurious
+than, say, the 'Souvenirs of the Marquise de Créqui' or the 'Memoirs of
+Monsieur d'Artagnan.' But if these so-called 'Memoirs' are really not
+his, what has Bourrienne himself to do here? and suppose the former
+secretary of the First Consul to have been, instead of the shameless
+embezzler whom Prince Napoleon so fully and so uselessly describes to
+us, the most honest man in the world, would the 'Memoirs' be any more
+reliable, since it is a fact that _he_ wrote nothing? ...
+
+And now I cannot but wonder at the tone in which those who contradict M.
+Taine, and especially Prince Napoleon himself, condescend to tell him
+that he lacks that which would be needed in order to speak of Napoleon
+or the Revolution. But who is it, then, that _has_ what is needed in
+order to judge Napoleon? Frederick the Great, or Catherine II.,
+perhaps,--as Napoleon himself desired, "his peers"; or in other words,
+those who, born as he was for war and government, can only admire,
+justify, and glorify themselves in him. And who will judge the
+Revolution? Danton. we suppose, or Robespierre,--that is, the men who
+were the Revolution itself. No: the real judge will be the average
+opinion of men; the force that will create, modify, correct this average
+opinion, the historians will be; and among the historians of our time,
+in spite of Prince Napoleon, it will be M. Taine for a large share.
+
+
+
+THE LITERATURES OF FRANCE, ENGLAND, AND GERMANY
+
+Twice at least in the course of their long history, it is known that the
+literature and even the language of France has exerted over the whole of
+Europe an influence, whose universal character other languages perhaps
+more harmonious,--Italian for instance,--and other literatures more
+original in certain respects, like English literature, have never
+possessed. It is in a purely French form that our mediæval poems, our
+'Chansons de Geste,' our 'Romances of the Round Table,' our _fabliaux_
+themselves, whencesoever they came,--Germany or Tuscany, England or
+Brittany, Asia or Greece,--conquered, fascinated, charmed, from one end
+of Europe to the other, the imaginations of the Middle Ages. The
+amorous languor and the subtlety of our "courteous poetry" are breathed
+no less by the madrigals of Shakespeare himself than by Petrarch's
+sonnets; and after such a long lapse of time we still discover something
+that comes from us even in the Wagnerian drama, for instance in
+'Parsifal' or in 'Tristan and Isolde.' A long time later, in a Europe
+belonging entirely to classicism, from the beginning of the seventeenth
+to the end of the eighteenth century, during one hundred and fifty years
+or even longer, French literature possessed a real sovereignty in Italy,
+in Spain, in England, and in Germany. Do not the names of Algarotti,
+Bettinelli, Beccaria, Filengieri, almost belong to France? What shall I
+say of the famous Gottschedt? Shall I recall the fact that in his
+victorious struggle against Voltaire, Lessing had to call in Diderot's
+assistance? And who ignores that if Rivarol wrote his 'Discourse upon
+the Universality of the French Language,' it can be charged neither to
+his vanity nor to our national vanity, since he was himself half
+Italian, and the subject had been proposed by the Academy of Berlin?
+
+All sorts of reasons have been given for this universality of French
+literature: some were statistical, if I may say so, some geographical,
+political, linguistic. But the true one, the good one, is different: it
+must be found in the supremely sociable character of the literature
+itself. If at that time our great writers were understood and
+appreciated by everybody, it is because they were addressing everybody,
+or better, because they were speaking to all concerning the interests of
+all. They were attracted neither by exceptions nor by peculiarities:
+they cared to treat only of man in general, or as is also said, of the
+universal man, restrained by the ties of human society; and their very
+success shows that below all that distinguishes, say, an Italian from a
+German, this universal man whose reality has so often been discussed,
+persists and lives, and though constantly changing never loses his own
+likeness....
+
+In comparison with the literature of France, thus defined and
+characterized by its sociable spirit, the literature of England is an
+individualistic literature. Let us put aside, as should be done, the
+generation of Congreve and Wycherley, perhaps also the generation of
+Pope and Addison,--to which, however, we ought not to forget that Swift
+also belonged;--it seems that an Englishman never writes except in order
+to give to himself the external sensation of his own personality.
+Thence his _humor_, which may be defined as the expression of the
+pleasure he feels in thinking like nobody else. Thence, in England, the
+plenteousness, the wealth, the amplitude of the lyric vein; it being
+granted that _individualism_ is the very spring of lyric poetry, and
+that an ode or an elegy is, as it were, the involuntary surging, the
+outflowing of what is most intimate, most secret, most peculiar in the
+poet's soul. Thence also the _eccentricity_ of all the great English
+writers when compared with the rest of the nation, as though they became
+conscious of themselves only by distinguishing themselves from those who
+claim to differ from them least. But is it not possible to otherwise
+characterize the literature of England? It will be easily conceived that
+I dare not assert such a thing; all I say here is, that I cannot better
+express the differences which distinguish that literature from our own.
+
+That is also all I claim, in stating that the essential character of the
+literature of Germany is, that it is _philosophical_. The philosophers
+there are poets, and the poets are philosophers. Goethe is to be found
+no more, or no less, in his 'Theory of Colors' or in his 'Metamorphosis
+of Plants,' than in his 'Divan' or his 'Faust'; and lyrism, if I may use
+this trite expression, "is overflowing" in Schleiermacher's theology and
+in Schelling's philosophy. Is this not perhaps at least one of the
+reasons of the inferiority of the German drama? It is surely the reason
+of the depth and scope of Germanic poetry. Even in the masterpieces of
+German literature it seems that there is mixed something indistinct, or
+rather mysterious, _suggestive_ in the extreme, which leads us to
+thought by the channel of the dream. But who has not been struck by
+what, under a barbarous terminology, there is of attractive, and as such
+of eminently poetical, of realistic and at the same time idealistic, in
+the great systems of Kant and Fichte, Hegel and Schopenhauer? Assuredly
+nothing is further removed from the character of our French literature.
+We can here understand what the Germans mean when they charge us with a
+lack of depth. Let them forgive us if _we_ do not blame their literature
+for not being the same as ours.
+
+For it is good that it be thus, and for five or six hundred years this
+it is that has made the greatness not only of European literature, but
+of Western civilization itself; I mean that which all the great nations,
+after slowly elaborating it, as it were, in their national isolation,
+have afterwards deposited in the common treasury of the human race.
+Thus, to this one we owe the sense of mystery, and we might say the
+revelation of what is beautiful, in that which remains obscure and
+cannot be grasped. To another we owe the sense of art, and what may be
+called the appreciation of the power of form. A third one has handed to
+us what was most heroic in the conception of chivalrous honor. And to
+another, finally, we owe it that we know what is both most ferocious and
+noblest, most wholesome and most to be feared, in human pride. The share
+that belongs to us Frenchmen was, in the meanwhile, to bind, to fuse
+together, and as it were to unify under the idea of the general society
+of mankind, the contradictory and even hostile elements that may have
+existed in all that. No matter whether our inventions and ideas were, by
+their origin, Latin or Romance, Celtic or Gallic, Germanic even, if you
+please, the whole of Europe had borrowed them from us in order to adapt
+them to the genius of its different races. Before re-admitting them in
+our turn, before adopting them after they had been thus transformed, we
+asked only that they should be able to serve the progress of reason and
+of humanity. What was troublous in them we clarified; what was
+corrupting we corrected; what was local we generalized; what was
+excessive we brought down to the proportions of mankind. Have we not
+sometimes also lessened their grandeur and altered their purity? If
+Corneille has undoubtedly brought nearer to us the still somewhat
+barbaric heroes of Guillem de Castro, La Fontaine, when imitating the
+author of the Decameron, has made him more indecent than he is in his
+own language; and if the Italians have no right to assail Molière for
+borrowing somewhat from them, the English may well complain that
+Voltaire failed to understand Shakespeare. But it is true none the less
+that in disengaging from the particular man of the North or the South
+this idea of a universal man, for which we have been so often
+reviled,--if any one of the modern literatures has breathed in its
+entirety the spirit of the public weal and of civilization, it is the
+literature of France. And this ideal cannot possibly be as empty as has
+too often been asserted; since, as I endeavored to show, from Lisbon to
+Stockholm and from Archangel to Naples, it is its manifestations that
+foreigners have loved to come across in the masterpieces, or better, in
+the whole sequence of the history of our literature.
+
+
+
+GIORDANO BRUNO
+
+(1548-1600)
+
+Fillippo Bruno, known as Giordano Bruno, was born at Nola, near Naples,
+in 1548. This was eight years after the death of Copernicus, whose
+system he eagerly espoused, and ten years before the birth of Bacon,
+with whom he associated in England. Of an ardent, poetic temperament, he
+entered the Dominican order in Naples at the early age of sixteen,
+doubtless attracted to conventual life by the opportunities of study it
+offered to an eager intellect. Bruno had been in the monastery nearly
+thirteen years when he was accused of heresy in attacking some of the
+dogmas of the Church. He fled first to Rome and then to Northern Italy,
+where he wandered about for three seasons from city to city, teaching
+and writing. In 1579 he arrived at Geneva, then the stronghold of the
+Calvinists. Coming into conflict with the authorities there on account
+of his religious opinions, he was thrown into prison. He escaped and
+went to Toulouse, at that time the literary centre of Southern France,
+where he lectured for a year on Aristotle. His restless spirit, however,
+drove him on to Paris. Here he was made professor extraordinary at
+the Sorbonne.
+
+Although his teachings were almost directly opposed to the philosophic
+tenets of the time, attacking the current dogmas, and Aristotle, the
+idol of the schoolmen, yet such was the power of Bruno's eloquence and
+the charm of his manner that crowds flocked to his lecture-room, and he
+became one of the most popular foreign teachers the university had
+known. Under pretense of expounding the writings of Thomas Aquinas, he
+set forth his own philosophy. He also spoke much on the art of memory,
+amplifying the writings of Raymond Lully; and these principles,
+formulated by the monk of the thirteenth century and taken up again by
+the free-thinkers of the sixteenth, are the basis of all the present-day
+mnemonics.
+
+But Bruno went even further. He attracted the attention of King Henry
+III. of France, who in 1583 introduced him to the French ambassador to
+England, Castelnuovo di Manvissière. Going to London, he spent three
+years in the family of this nobleman, more as friend than dependent.
+They were the happiest, or at least the most restful years of his stormy
+life. England was just then entering on the glorious epoch of her
+Elizabethan literature. Bruno came into the brilliant court circles,
+meeting even the Queen, who cordially welcomed all men of culture,
+especially the Italians. The astute monk reciprocated her good-will by
+paying her the customary tribute of flattery. He won the friendship of
+Sir Philip Sidney, to whom he dedicated two of his books, and enjoyed
+the acquaintance of Spenser, Sir Fulke Greville, Dyer, Harvey, Sir
+William Temple, Bacon, and other wits and poets of the day.
+
+At that time--somewhere about 1580--Shakespeare was still serving his
+apprenticeship as playwright, and had perhaps less claim on the notice
+of the observant foreigner than his elder contemporaries. London was
+still a small town, where the news of the day spread rapidly, and where,
+no doubt, strangers were as eagerly discussed as they are now within
+narrow town limits. Bruno's daring speculations could not remain the
+exclusive property of his own coterie. And as Shakespeare had the
+faculty of absorbing all new ideas afloat in the air, he would hardly
+have escaped the influence of the teacher who proclaimed in proud
+self-confidence that he was come to arouse men out of their theological
+stagnation. His influence on Bacon is more evident, because of their
+friendly associations. Bruno lectured at Oxford, but the English
+university found less favor in his eyes than English court life.
+Pedantry had indeed set its fatal mark on scholarship, not only on the
+Continent but in England. Aristotle was still the god of the pedants of
+that age, and dissent from his teaching was heavily punished, for the
+dry dust of learning blinded the eyes of the scholastics to new truths.
+
+Bruno, the knight-errant of these truths, devoted all his life to
+scourging pedantry, and dissented _in toto_ from the idol of the
+schools. No wonder he and Oxford did not agree together. He wittily
+calls her "the widow of sound learning," and again, "a constellation of
+pedantic, obstinate ignorance and presumption, mixed with a clownish
+incivility that would tax the patience of Job." He lashed the
+shortcomings of English learning in 'La Cena delle Ceneri' (Ash
+Wednesday Conversation). But Bruno's roving spirit, and perhaps also his
+heterodox tendencies, drove him at last from England, and for the next
+five years he roamed about Germany, leading the life of the wandering
+scholars of the time, always involved in conflicts and controversies
+with the authorities, always antagonistic to public opinion. Flying in
+the face of the most cherished traditions, he underwent the common
+experience of all prophets: the minds he was bent on awakening refused
+to be aroused.
+
+Finally he was invited by Zuone Mocenigo of Venice to teach him the
+higher and secret learning. The Venetian supposed that Bruno, with more
+than human erudition, possessed the art of conveying knowledge into the
+heads of dullards. Disappointed in this expectation, he quarreled with
+his teacher, and in a spirit of revenge picked out of Bruno's writings
+a mass of testimony sufficient to convict him of heresy. This he turned
+over to the Inquisitor at Venice, Bruno was arrested, convicted, and
+sent to the Inquisition in Rome. When called upon there to recant, he
+replied, "I ought not to recant, and I will not recant." He was
+accordingly confined in prison for seven years, then sentenced to death.
+On hearing the warrant he said, "It may be that you fear more to deliver
+this judgment than I to bear it." On February 17th, 1600, he was burned
+at the stake in the Campo de' Fiori at Rome. He remained steadfast to
+the end, saying, "I die a martyr, and willingly." His ashes were cast
+into the Tiber. Two hundred and fifty-nine years afterwards, his statue
+was unveiled on the very spot where he suffered; and the Italian
+government is bringing out (1896) the first complete edition, the
+'National Edition,' of his works.
+
+In their substance Bruno's writings belong to philosophy rather than to
+literature, although they are still interesting both historically and
+biographically as an index of the character of the man and of the temper
+of the time. Many of the works have either perished or are hidden away
+in inaccessible archives. For two hundred years they were tabooed, and
+as late as 1836 forbidden to be shown in the public library of Dresden.
+He published twenty-five works in Latin and Italian, and left many
+others incomplete, for in all his wanderings he was continually writing.
+The eccentric titles show his desire to attract attention: as 'The Work
+of the Great Key,' 'The Exploration of the Thirty Seals,' etc. The first
+extant work is 'Il Candelajo' (The Taper), a comedy which in its license
+of language and manner vividly reflects the time. In the dedication he
+discloses his philosophy: 'Time takes away everything and gives
+everything.' The 'Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante' (Expulsion of the
+Triumphant Beast), the most celebrated of his works, is an attack on the
+superstitions of the day, a curious medley of learning, imagination, and
+buffoonery. 'Degl' Eroici Furori' (The Heroic Enthusiasts) is the most
+interesting to modern readers, and in its majestic exaltation and poetic
+imagery is a true product of Italian culture.
+
+Bruno was evidently a man of vast intellect and of immense erudition.
+His philosophic speculations comprehended not only the ancient thought,
+and that current at his time, but also reached out toward the future and
+the results of modern science. He perceived some of the facts which were
+later formulated in the theory of evolution. "The mind of man differs
+from that of lower animals and of plants not in quality but only in
+quantity.... Each individual is the resultant of innumerable
+individuals. Each species is the Starting point for the next.... No
+individual is the same to-day as yesterday."
+
+Not only in this divination of coming truths is he modern, but also in
+his methods of investigation. Reason was to him the guide to truth. In a
+study of him Lewes says:--"Bruno was a true Neapolitan child--as ardent
+as its soil ... as capricious as its varied climate. There was a
+restless energy which fitted him to become the preacher of a new
+crusade--urging him to throw a haughty defiance in the face of every
+authority in every country,--an energy which closed his wild adventurous
+career at the stake." He was distinguished also by a rich fancy, a
+varied humor, and a chivalrous gallantry, which constantly remind us
+that the intellectual athlete is an Italian, and an Italian of the
+sixteenth century.
+
+
+
+A DISCOURSE OF POETS
+
+From 'The Heroic Enthusiasts'
+
+_Cicada_--Say, what do you mean by those who vaunt themselves of myrtle
+and laurel?
+
+_Tansillo_--Those may and do boast of the myrtle who sing of love: if
+they bear themselves nobly, they may wear a crown of that plant
+consecrated to Venus, of which they know the potency. Those may boast of
+the laurel who sing worthily of things pertaining to heroes,
+substituting heroic souls for speculative and moral philosophy, praising
+them and setting them as mirrors and exemplars for political and
+civil actions.
+
+_Cicada_--There are then many species of poets and crowns?
+
+_Tansillo_--Not only as many as there are Muses, but a great many more;
+for although genius is to be met with, yet certain modes and species of
+human ingenuity cannot be thus classified.
+
+_Cicada_--There are certain schoolmen who barely allow Homer to be a
+poet, and set down Virgil, Ovid, Martial, Hesiod, Lucretius, and many
+others as versifiers, judging them by the rules of poetry of Aristotle.
+
+_Tansillo_--Know for certain, my brother, that such as these are beasts.
+They do not consider that those rules serve principally as a frame for
+the Homeric poetry, and for other similar to it; and they set up one as
+a great poet, high as Homer, and disallow those of other vein and art
+and enthusiasm, who in their various kinds are equal, similar,
+or greater.
+
+_Cicada_--So that Homer was not a poet who depended upon rules, but was
+the cause of the rules which serve for those who are more apt at
+imitation than invention, and they have been used by him who, being no
+poet, yet knew how to take the rules of Homeric poetry into service, so
+as to become, not a poet or a Homer, but one who apes the Muse
+of others?
+
+_Tansillo_--Thou dost well conclude that poetry is not born in rules, or
+only slightly and accidentally so: the rules are derived, from the
+poetry, and there are as many kinds and sorts of true rules as there are
+kinds and sorts of true poets.
+
+_Cicada_--How then are the true poets to be known?
+
+_Tansillo_--By the singing of their verses: in that singing they give
+delight, or they edify, or they edify and delight together.
+
+_Cicada_--To whom then are the rules of Aristotle useful?
+
+_Tansillo_--To him who, unlike Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, and others, could
+not sing without the rules of Aristotle, and who, having no Muse of his
+own, would coquette with that of Homer.
+
+_Cicada_--Then they are wrong, those stupid pedants of our days, who
+exclude from the number of poets those who do not use words and
+metaphors conformable to, or whose principles are not in union with,
+those of Homer and Virgil; or because they do not observe the custom of
+invocation, or because they weave one history or tale with another, or
+because they finish the song with an epilogue on what has been said and
+a prelude on what is to be said, and many other kinds of criticism and
+censure; from whence it seems they would imply that they themselves, if
+the fancy took them, could be the true poets: and yet in fact they are
+no other than worms, that know not how to do anything well, but are born
+only to gnaw and befoul the studies and labors of others; and not being
+able to attain celebrity by their own virtue and ingenuity, seek to put
+themselves in the front, by hook or by crook, through the defects and
+errors of others.
+
+_Tansillo_--There are as many sorts of poets as there are sentiments and
+ideas; and to these it is possible to adapt garlands, not only of every
+species of plant, but also of other kinds of material. So the crowns of
+poets are made not only of myrtle and of laurel, but of vine leaves for
+the white-wine verses, and of ivy for the bacchanals; of olive for
+sacrifice and laws; of poplar, of elm, and of corn for agriculture; of
+cypress for funerals, and innumerable others for other occasions; and if
+it please you, also of the material signified by a good fellow when he
+exclaimed:
+
+     "O Friar Leek! O Poetaster!
+     That in Milan didst buckle on thy wreath
+     Composed of salad, sausage, and the pepper-caster."
+
+_Cicada_--Now surely he of divers moods, which he exhibits in various
+ways, may cover himself with the branches of different plants, and may
+hold discourse worthily with the Muses; for they are his aura or
+comforter, his anchor or support, and his harbor, to which he retires in
+times of labor, of agitation, and of storm. Hence he cries:--"O Mountain
+of Parnassus, where I abide; Muses, with whom I converse; Fountain of
+Helicon, where I am nourished; Mountain, that affordest me a quiet
+dwelling-place; Muses, that inspire me with profound doctrines;
+Fountain, that cleansest me; Mountain, on whose ascent my heart uprises;
+Muses, that in discourse revive my spirits; Fountain, whose arbors cool
+my brows,--change my death into life, my cypress to laurels, and my
+hells into heavens: that is, give me immortality, make me a poet, render
+me illustrious!"
+
+_Tansillo_--Well; because to those whom Heaven favors, the greatest
+evils turn to greatest good; for needs or necessities bring forth labors
+and studies, and these most often bring the glory of immortal splendor.
+
+_Cicada_--For to die in one age makes us live in all the rest.
+
+
+
+     CANTICLE OF THE SHINING ONES
+
+     A Tribute to English Women, from 'The Nolan'
+
+
+     "Nothing I envy, Jove, from this thy sky,"
+       Spake Neptune thus, and raised his lofty crest.
+     "God of the waves," said Jove, "thy pride runs high;
+       What more wouldst add to own thy stern behest?"
+
+     "Thou," spake the god, "dost rule the fiery span,
+       The circling spheres, the glittering shafts of day;
+     Greater am I, who in the realm of man
+       Rule Thames, with all his Nymphs in fair array.
+
+     "In this my breast I hold the fruitful land,
+       The vasty reaches of the trembling sea;
+     And what in night's bright dome, or day's, shall stand
+       Before these radiant maids who dwell with me?"
+
+     "Not thine," said Jove, "god of the watery mount,
+       To exceed my lot; but thou my lot shalt share:
+     Thy heavenly maids among my stars I'll count,
+       And thou shalt own the stars beyond compare!"
+
+
+     THE SONG OF THE NINE SINGERS
+
+     [_The first sings and plays the cithern_.]
+
+     O cliffs and rocks! O thorny woods! O shore!
+     O hills and dales! O valleys, rivers, seas!
+     How do your new-discovered beauties please?
+     O Nymph, 'tis yours the guerdon rare,
+     If now the open skies shine fair;
+     O happy wanderings, well spent and o'er!
+
+     [_The second sings and plays to his mandolin_.]
+
+     O happy wanderings, well spent and o'er!
+     Say then, O Circe, these heroic tears,
+     These griefs, endured through tedious months and years,
+     Were as a grace divine bestowed
+     If now our weary travail is no more.
+
+     [_The third sings and plays to his lyre_.]
+
+     If now our weary travail is no more!
+     If this sweet haven be our destined rest,
+     Then naught remains but to be blest,
+     To thank our God for all his gifts,
+     Who from our eyes the veil uplifts,
+     Where shines the light upon the heavenly shore,
+
+     [_The fourth sings to the viol_.]
+
+     Where shines the light upon the heavenly shore!
+     O blindness, dearer far than others' sight!
+     O sweeter grief than earth's most sweet delight!
+     For ye have led the erring soul
+     By gradual steps to this fair goal,
+     And through the darkness into light we soar.
+
+     [_The fifth sings to a Spanish timbrel_.]
+
+     And through the darkness into light we soar!
+     To full fruition all high thought is brought,
+     With such brave patience that ev'n we
+     At least the only path can see,
+     And in his noblest work our God adore.
+
+     [_The sixth sings to a lute_.]
+
+     And in his noblest work our God adore!
+       God doth not will joy should to joy succeed,
+       Nor ill shall be of other ill the seed;
+         But in his hand the wheel of fate
+         Turns, now depressed and now elate,
+     Evolving day from night for evermore.
+
+     [_The seventh sings to the Irish harp_.]
+
+     Evolving day from night for evermore!
+       And as yon robe of glorious nightly fire
+       Pales when the morning beams to noon aspire,
+         Thus He who rules with law eternal,
+         Creating order fair diurnal,
+     Casts down the proud and doth exalt the poor.
+
+     [_The eighth plays with a viol and bow_.]
+
+     Casts down the proud and doth exalt the poor!
+         And with an equal hand maintains
+         The boundless worlds which He sustains,
+         And scatters all our finite sense
+         At thought of His omnipotence,
+     Clouded awhile, to be revealed once more.
+
+     [_The ninth plays upon the rebeck_.]
+
+     Clouded awhile, to be revealed once more!
+         Thus neither doubt nor fear avails;
+         O'er all the incomparable End prevails,
+         O'er fair champaign and mountain,
+         O'er river-brink and fountain,
+     And o'er the shocks of seas and perils of the shore.
+
+     Translation of Isa Blagden.
+
+
+
+     OF IMMENSITY
+
+     From Frith's 'Life of Giordano Bruno'
+
+
+     'Tis thou, O Spirit, dost within my soul
+       This weakly thought with thine own life amend;
+       Rejoicing, dost thy rapid pinions lend
+     Me, and dost wing me to that lofty goal
+     Where secret portals ope and fetters break,
+       And thou dost grant me, by thy grace complete,
+     Fortune to spurn, and death; O high retreat,
+       Which few attain, and fewer yet forsake!
+     Girdled with gates of brass in every part,
+       Prisoned and bound in vain, 'tis mine to rise
+       Through sparkling fields of air to pierce the skies,
+     Sped and accoutred by no doubting heart,
+     Till, raised on clouds of contemplation vast,
+     Light, leader, law, Creator, I attain at last.
+
+
+
+
+     LIFE WELL LOST
+
+
+     Winged by desire and thee, O dear delight!
+       As still the vast and succoring air I tread,
+       So, mounting still, on swifter pinions sped,
+     I scorn the world, and heaven receives my flight.
+     And if the end of Ikaros be nigh,
+       I will submit, for I shall know no pain:
+       And falling dead to earth, shall rise again;
+     What lowly life with such high death can vie?
+     Then speaks my heart from out the upper air,
+     "Whither dost lead me? sorrow and despair
+     Attend the rash." and thus I make reply:--
+       "Fear thou no fall, nor lofty ruin sent;
+       Safely divide the clouds, and die content,
+     When such proud death is dealt thee from on high."
+
+
+
+     PARNASSUS WITHIN
+
+
+     O heart, 'tis you my chief Parnassus are,
+       Where for my safety I must ever climb.
+       My wingèd thoughts are Muses, who from far
+       Bring gifts of beauty to the court of Time;
+     And Helicon, that fair unwasted rill,
+       Springs newly in my tears upon the earth,
+     And by those streams and nymphs, and by that hill,
+       It pleased the gods to give a poet birth.
+     No favoring hand that comes of lofty race,
+       No priestly unction, nor the grant of kings,
+     Can on me lay such lustre and such grace,
+       Nor add such heritage; for one who sings
+     Hath a crowned head, and by the sacred bay,
+     His heart, his thoughts, his tears, are consecrate alway.
+
+
+
+
+     COMPENSATION
+
+
+     The moth beholds not death as forth he flies
+       Into the splendor of the living flame;
+     The hart athirst to crystal water hies,
+       Nor heeds the shaft, nor fears the hunter's aim;
+     The timid bird, returning from above
+       To join his mate, deems not the net is nigh;
+     Unto the light, the fount, and to my love,
+       Seeing the flame, the shaft, the chains, I fly;
+     So high a torch, love-lighted in the skies,
+       Consumes my soul; and with this bow divine
+     Of piercing sweetness what terrestrial vies?
+       This net of dear delight doth prison mine;
+     And I to life's last day have this desire--
+     Be mine thine arrows, love, and mine thy fire.
+
+
+
+
+     LIFE FOR SONG
+
+
+     Come Muse, O Muse, so often scorned by me,
+       The hope of sorrow and the balm of care,--
+     Give to me speech and song, that I may be
+     Unchid by grief; grant me such graces rare
+       As other ministering souls may never see
+     Who boast thy laurel, and thy myrtle wear.
+     I know no joy wherein thou hast not part,
+       My speeding wind, my anchor, and my goal,
+     Come, fair Parnassus, lift thou up my heart;
+       Come, Helicon, renew my thirsty soul.
+     A cypress crown, O Muse, is thine to give,
+       And pain eternal: take this weary frame,
+     Touch me with fire, and this my death shall live
+     On all men's lips and in undying fame.
+
+
+
+WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
+
+(1794-1878)
+
+BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP
+
+Distinguished as he was by the lofty qualities of his verse, William
+Cullen Bryant held a place almost unique in American literature, by the
+union of his activity as a poet with his eminence as a citizen and an
+influential journalist, throughout an uncommonly long career. Two traits
+still further define the peculiarity of his position--his precocious
+development, and the evenness and sustained vigor of all his poetic work
+from the beginning to the end. He began writing verse at the age of
+eight; at ten he made contributions in this kind to the county gazette,
+and produced a finished and effective rhymed address, read at his school
+examination, which became popular for recitation; and in his thirteenth
+year, during the Presidency of Thomas Jefferson, he composed a political
+satire, 'The Embargo.' This, being published, was at first supposed by
+many to be the work of a man, attracted much attention and praise, and
+passed into a second edition with other shorter pieces.
+
+But these, while well wrought in the formal eighteenth-century fashion,
+showed no special originality. It was with 'Thanatopsis,' written in
+1811, when he was only seventeen, that his career as a poet of original
+and assured strength began. 'Thanatopsis' was an inspiration of the
+primeval woods of America, of the scenes that surrounded the writer in
+youth. At the same time it expressed with striking independence and
+power a fresh conception of "the universality of Death in the natural
+order." As has been well said, "it takes the idea of death out of its
+theological aspects and restores it to its proper place in the vast
+scheme of things. This in itself was a mark of genius in a youth of his
+time and place." Another American poet, Stoddard, calls it the greatest
+poem ever written by so young a man. The author's son-in-law and
+biographer, Parke Godwin, remarks upon it aptly, "For the first time on
+this continent a poem was written destined to general admiration and
+enduring fame;" and this indeed is a very significant point, that it
+began the history of true poetry in the United States,--a fact which
+further secured to Bryant his exceptional place. The poem remains a
+classic of the English language, and the author himself never surpassed
+the high mark attained in it; although the balanced and lasting nature
+of his faculty is shown in a pendant to this poem, which he created in
+his old age and entitled 'The Flood of Years.' The last is equal to the
+first in dignity and finish, but is less original, and has never gained
+a similar fame.
+
+Another consideration regarding Bryant is, that representing a modern
+development of poetry under American inspiration, he was also a
+descendant of the early Massachusetts colonists, being connected with
+the Pilgrim Fathers through three ancestral lines. Born at Cummington,
+Massachusetts, November 3d, 1794, the son of a stalwart but studious
+country physician of literary tastes, he inherited the strong religious
+feeling of this ancestry, which was united in him with a deep and
+sensitive love of nature. This led him to reflect in his poems the
+strength and beauty of American landscape, vividly as it had never
+before been mirrored; and the blending of serious thought and innate
+piety with the sentiment for nature so reflected gave a new and
+impressive result.
+
+Like many other long-lived men, Bryant suffered from delicate health in
+the earlier third of his life: there was a tendency to consumption in
+his otherwise vigorous family stock. He read much, and was much
+interested in Greek literature and somewhat influenced by it. But he
+also lived a great deal in the open air, rejoiced in the boisterous
+games and excursions in the woods with his brothers and sisters, and
+took long rambles alone among the hills and wild groves; being then, as
+always afterwards, an untiring walker. After a stay of only seven months
+at Williams College, he studied law, which he practiced for some eight
+years in Plainfield and Great Barrington. In the last-named village he
+was elected a tithingman, charged with the duty of keeping order in the
+churches and enforcing the observance of Sunday. Chosen town clerk soon
+afterwards, at a salary of five dollars a year, he kept the records of
+the town with his own hand for five years, and also served as justice of
+the peace with power to hear cases in a lower court. These biographical
+items are of value, as showing his close relation to the self-government
+of the people in its simpler forms, and his early practical familiarity
+with the duties of a trusted citizen.
+
+Meanwhile, however, he kept on writing at intervals, and in 1821 read
+before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard a long poem, 'The Ages,' a
+kind of composition more in favor at that period than in later days,
+being a general review of the progress of man in knowledge and virtue.
+With the passage of time it has not held its own as against some of his
+other poems, although it long enjoyed a high reputation; but its success
+on its original hearing was the cause of his bringing together his first
+volume of poems, hardly more than a pamphlet, in the same year. It made
+him famous with the reading public of the United States, and won some
+recognition in England. In this little book were contained, besides 'The
+Ages' and 'Thanatopsis,' several pieces which have kept their hold upon
+popular taste; such as the well-known lines 'To a Waterfowl' and the
+'Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood.'
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.]
+
+The year of its publication also brought into the world Cooper's 'The
+Spy,' Irving's 'Sketch Book' and 'Bracebridge Hall,' with various other
+significant volumes, including Channing's early essays and Daniel
+Webster's great Plymouth Oration. It was evident that a native
+literature was dawning brightly; and as Bryant's productions now came
+into demand, and he had never liked the profession of law, he quitted it
+and went to New York in 1825, there to seek a living by his pen as "a
+literary adventurer." The adventure led to ultimate triumph, but not
+until after a long term of dark prospects and hard struggles.
+
+Even in his latest years Bryant used to declare that his favorite among
+his poems--although it is one of the least known--was 'Green River';
+perhaps because it recalled the scenes of young manhood, when he was
+about entering the law, and contrasted the peacefulness of that stream
+with the life in which he would be
+
+     "Forced to drudge for the dregs of men,
+     And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen,
+     And mingle among the jostling crowd,
+     Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud."
+
+This might be applied to much of his experience in New York, where he
+edited the New York Review and became one of the editors, then a
+proprietor, and finally chief editor of the Evening Post. A great part
+of his energies now for many years was given to his journalistic
+function, and to the active outspoken discussion of important political
+questions; often in trying crises and at the cost of harsh unpopularity.
+Success, financial as well as moral, came to him within the next
+quarter-century, during which laborious interval he had likewise
+maintained his interest and work in pure literature and produced new
+poems from time to time in various editions.
+
+From this point on until his death, June 12th, 1878, in his
+eighty-fourth year, he was the central and commanding figure in the
+enlarging literary world of New York. His newspaper had gained a potent
+reputation, and it brought to bear upon public affairs a strong
+influence of the highest sort. Its editorial course and tone, as well as
+the earnest and patriotic part taken by Bryant in popular questions and
+national affairs, without political ambition or office-holding, had
+established him as one of the most distinguished citizens of the
+metropolis, no less than its most renowned poet. His presence and
+co-operation were indispensable in all great public functions or
+humanitarian and intellectual movements. In 1864 his seventieth birthday
+was celebrated at the Century Club with extraordinary honors. In 1875,
+again, the two houses of the State Legislature at Albany paid him the
+compliment, unprecedented in the annals of American authorship, of
+inviting him to a reception given to him in their official capacity.
+Another mark of the abounding esteem in which he was held among his
+fellow-citizens was the presentation to him in 1876 of a rich silver
+vase, commemorative of his life and works. He was now a wealthy man; yet
+his habits of life remained essentially unchanged. His tastes were
+simple, his love of nature was still ardent; his literary and editorial
+industry unflagging.
+
+Besides his poems, Bryant wrote two short stories for 'Tales of the
+Glauber Spa'; and published 'Letters of a Traveler' in 1850, as a result
+of three journeys to Europe and the Orient, together with various public
+addresses. His style as a writer of prose is clear, calm, dignified, and
+denotes exact observation and a wide range of interests. So too his
+editorial articles in the Evening Post, some of which have been
+preserved in his collected writings, are couched in serene and forcible
+English, with nothing of the sensational or the colloquial about them.
+They were a fitting medium of expression for his firm conscientiousness
+and integrity as a journalist.
+
+But it is as a poet, and especially by a few distinctive compositions,
+that Bryant will be most widely and deeply held in remembrance. In the
+midst of the exacting business of his career as an editor, and many
+public or social demands upon his time, he found opportunity to
+familiarize himself with portions of German and Spanish poetry, which he
+translated, and to maintain in the quietude of his country home in
+Roslyn, Long Island, his old acquaintance with the Greek and Latin
+classics. From this continued study there resulted naturally in 1870 his
+elaborate translation of Homer's Iliad, which was followed by that of
+the Odyssey in 1871. These scholarly works, cast in strong and polished
+blank verse, won high praise from American critics, and even achieved a
+popular success, although they were not warmly acclaimed, in England.
+Among literarians they are still regarded as in a manner standards of
+their kind. Bryant, in his long march of over sixty-five years across
+the literary field, was witness to many new developments in poetic
+writing, in both his own and other countries. But while he perceived the
+splendor and color and rich novelty of these, he held in his own work to
+the plain theory and practice which had guided him from the start. "The
+best poetry," he still believed--"that which takes the strongest hold of
+the general mind, not in one age only but in all ages--is that which is
+always simple and always luminous." He did not embody in impassioned
+forms the sufferings, emotions, or problems of the human kind, but was
+disposed to generalize them, as in 'The Journey of Life,' the 'Hymn of
+the City,' and 'The Song of the Sower,' it is characteristic that two of
+the longer poems, 'Sella' and 'The Little People of the Snow,' which are
+narratives, deal with legends of an individual human life merging itself
+with the inner life of nature, under the form of imaginary beings who
+dwell in the snow or in water. On the other hand, one of his eulogists
+observes that although some of his contemporaries went much beyond him
+in fullness of insight and nearness to the great conflicts of the age,
+"he has certainly not been surpassed, perhaps not been approached, by
+any writer since Wordsworth, in that majestic repose and that
+self-reliant simplicity which characterized the morning stars of song."
+In 'Our Country's Call,' however, one hears the ring of true martial
+enthusiasm; and there is a deep patriotic fervor in 'O Mother of a
+Mighty Race.' The noble and sympathetic homage paid to the typical
+womanhood of a genuine woman of every day, in 'The Conqueror's Grave,'
+reveals also great underlying warmth and sensitiveness of feeling.
+'Robert of Lincoln,' and 'The Planting of the Apple-Tree' are both
+touched with a lighter mood of joy in nature, which supplies a contrast
+to his usual pensiveness.
+
+Bryant's venerable aspect in old age--with erect form, white hair, and
+flowing snowy beard--gave him a resemblance to Homer; and there was
+something Homeric about his influence upon the literature of his
+country, in the dignity with which he invested the poetic art and the
+poet's relation to the people.
+
+[Illustration: Signature: George Parsons Lathrop]
+
+[All Bryant's poems were originally published by D. Appleton and
+Company.]
+
+
+
+     THANATOPSIS
+
+     To him who in the love of Nature holds
+     Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
+     A various language; for his gayer hours
+     She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
+     And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
+     Into his darker musings, with a mild
+     And healing sympathy, that steals away
+     Their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts
+     Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
+     Over thy spirit, and sad images
+     Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
+     And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
+     Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;--
+     Go forth, under the open sky, and list
+     To Nature's teachings, while from all around--
+     Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--
+     Comes a still voice:--
+
+                         Yet a few days, and thee
+     The all-beholding sun shall see no more
+     In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
+     Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
+     Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
+     Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
+     Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
+     And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
+     Thine individual being, shalt thou go
+     To mix for ever with the elements,
+     To be a brother to the insensible rock
+     And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
+     Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
+     Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.
+
+       Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
+     Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
+     Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
+     With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings,
+     The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good,
+     Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
+     All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
+     Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,--the vales
+     Stretching in pensive quietness between;
+     The venerable woods--rivers that move
+     In majesty, and the complaining brooks
+     That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
+     Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,--
+     Are but the solemn decorations all
+     Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
+     The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
+     Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
+     Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
+     The globe are but a handful to the tribes
+     That slumber in its bosom.--Take the wings
+     Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
+     Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
+     Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
+     Save his own dashings--yet the dead are there;
+     And millions in those solitudes, since first
+     The flight of years began, have laid them down
+     In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone.
+
+     So shalt thou rest; and what if thou withdraw
+     In silence from the living, and no friend
+     Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
+     Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
+     When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
+     Plod on, and each one as before will chase
+     His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
+     Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
+     And make their bed with thee. As the long train
+     Of ages glides away, the sons of men,--
+     The youth in life's fresh spring and he who goes
+     In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
+     The speechless babe and the gray-headed man--
+     Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
+     By those who in their turn shall follow them.
+
+       So live, that when thy summons comes to join
+     The innumerable caravan which moves
+     To that mysterious realm where each shall take
+     His chamber in the silent halls of death,
+     Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
+     Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed
+     By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
+     Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
+     About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
+
+
+
+
+     THE CROWDED STREET
+
+
+     Let me move slowly through the street,
+       Filled with an ever-shifting train,
+     Amid the sound of steps that beat
+       The murmuring walks like autumn rain.
+
+     How fast the flitting figures come!
+       The mild, the fierce, the stony face--
+     Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some
+       Where secret tears have lost their trace.
+
+     They pass to toil, to strife, to rest--
+       To halls in which the feast is spread--
+     To chambers where the funeral guest
+       In silence sits beside the dead.
+
+     And some to happy homes repair,
+       Where children, pressing cheek to cheek,
+     With mute caresses shall declare
+       The tenderness they cannot speak.
+
+     And some, who walk in calmness here,
+       Shall shudder as they reach the door
+     Where one who made their dwelling dear,
+       Its flower, its light, is seen no more.
+
+     Youth, with pale cheek and slender frame,
+       And dreams of greatness in thine eye!
+     Go'st thou to build an early name,
+       Or early in the task to die?
+
+     Keen son of trade, with eager brow!
+       Who is now fluttering in thy snare?
+     Thy golden fortunes, tower they now,
+       Or melt the glittering spires in air?
+
+     Who of this crowd to-night shall tread
+       The dance till daylight gleam again?
+     Who sorrow o'er the untimely dead?
+       Who writhe in throes of mortal pain?
+
+     Some, famine-struck, shall think how long
+       The cold dark hours, how slow the light;
+     And some who flaunt amid the throng
+       Shall hide in dens of shame to-night.
+
+     Each where his tasks or pleasures call,
+       They pass, and heed each other not.
+     There is Who heeds, Who holds them all
+       In His large love and boundless thought.
+
+     These struggling tides of life, that seem
+       In wayward, aimless course to tend,
+     Are eddies of the mighty stream
+       That rolls to its appointed end.
+
+
+     D. Appleton and Company, New York.
+
+
+     THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS
+
+     The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
+     Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.
+     Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
+     They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.
+     The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,
+     And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.
+
+     Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang
+                and stood
+     In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
+     Alas! they all are in their graves; the gentle race of flowers
+     Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.
+     The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain
+     Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.
+
+     The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,
+     And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;
+     But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,
+     And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood,
+     Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague
+                on men,
+     And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland, glade, and
+                glen.
+
+     And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will
+                come,
+     To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home;
+     When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are
+                still,
+     And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,
+     The south-wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he
+                bore,
+     And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.
+
+     And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died,
+     The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side.
+     In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forests cast the leaf,
+     And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief;
+     Yet not unmeet it was that one like that young friend of ours,
+     So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.
+
+
+     THE CONQUEROR'S GRAVE
+
+     Within this lowly grave a Conqueror lies,
+       And yet the monument proclaims it not,
+       Nor round the sleeper's name hath chisel wrought
+     The emblems of a fame that never dies,--
+     Ivy and amaranth, in a graceful sheaf,
+     Twined with the laurel's fair, imperial leaf.
+         A simple name alone,
+         To the great world unknown,
+     Is graven here, and wild-flowers rising round,
+     Meek meadow-sweet and violets of the ground,
+       Lean lovingly against the humble stone.
+
+     Here, in the quiet earth, they laid apart
+       No man of iron mold and bloody hands,
+       Who sought to wreak upon the cowering lands
+     The passions that consumed his restless heart:
+     But one of tender spirit and delicate frame,
+          Gentlest, in mien and mind,
+          Of gentle womankind,
+     Timidly shrinking from the breath of blame;
+     One in whose eyes the smile of kindness made
+       Its haunts, like flowers by sunny brooks in May,
+     Yet, at the thought of others' pain, a shade
+       Of sweeter sadness chased the smile away.
+
+     Nor deem that when the hand that molders here
+     Was raised in menace, realms were chilled with fear,
+       And armies mustered at the sign, as when
+     Clouds rise on clouds before the rainy East--
+       Gray captains leading bands of veteran men
+     And fiery youths to be the vulture's feast.
+     Not thus were waged the mighty wars that gave
+     The victory to her who fills this grave:
+         Alone her task was wrought,
+         Alone the battle fought;
+     Through that long strife her constant hope was staid
+     On God alone, nor looked for other aid.
+
+     She met the hosts of Sorrow with a look
+       That altered not beneath the frown they wore,
+     And soon the lowering brood were tamed, and took
+       Meekly her gentle rule, and frowned no more.
+     Her soft hand put aside the assaults of wrath,
+             And calmly broke in twain
+             The fiery shafts of pain,
+     And rent the nets of passion from her path.
+       By that victorious hand despair was slain.
+     With love she vanquished hate and overcame
+     Evil with good, in her Great Master's name.
+
+     Her glory is not of this shadowy state,
+       Glory that with the fleeting season dies;
+     But when she entered at the sapphire gate
+       What joy was radiant in celestial eyes!
+     How heaven's bright depths with sounding welcomes rung,
+     And flowers of heaven by shining hands were flung!
+             And He who long before,
+             Pain, scorn, and sorrow bore,
+     The Mighty Sufferer, with aspect sweet,
+     Smiled on the timid stranger from his seat;
+       He who returning, glorious, from the grave,
+       Dragged Death disarmed, in chains, a crouching slave.
+
+     See, as I linger here, the sun grows low;
+       Cool airs are murmuring that the night is near.
+     O gentle sleeper, from the grave I go,
+       Consoled though sad, in hope and yet in fear.
+            Brief is the time, I know,
+            The warfare scarce begun;
+     Yet all may win the triumphs thou hast won.
+     Still flows the fount whose waters strengthened thee;
+       The victors' names are yet too few to fill
+     Heaven's mighty roll; the glorious armory
+       That ministered to thee, is open still.
+
+
+
+
+     THE-BATTLE-FIELD
+
+
+     Once this soft turf, this rivulet's sands,
+       Were trampled by a hurrying crowd,
+     And fiery hearts and armed hands
+       Encountered in the battle-cloud.
+
+     Ah! never shall the land forget
+       How gushed the life-blood of her brave--
+     Gushed, warm with hope and courage yet,
+       Upon the soil they sought to save.
+
+     Now all is calm, and fresh, and still;
+       Alone the chirp of flitting bird,
+     And talk of children on the hill,
+       And bell of wandering kine are heard.
+
+     No solemn host goes trailing by
+       The black-mouthed gun and staggering wain;
+     Men start not at the battle-cry--
+       Oh, be it never heard again!
+
+     Soon rested those who fought; but thou
+       Who minglest in the harder strife
+     For truths which men receive not now,
+       Thy warfare only ends with life.
+
+     A friendless warfare! lingering long
+       Through weary day and weary year;
+     A wild and many-weaponed throng
+       Hang on thy front, and flank, and rear.
+
+     Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof,
+       And blench not at thy chosen lot;
+     The timid good may stand aloof,
+       The sage may frown--yet faint thou not.
+
+     Nor heed the shaft too surely cast,
+       The foul and hissing bolt of scorn;
+     For with thy side shall dwell, at last,
+       The victory of endurance born.
+
+     Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again--
+       The eternal years of God are hers;
+     But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
+       And dies among his worshipers.
+
+     Yea, though thou lie upon the dust,
+       When they who helped thee flee in fear,
+     Die full of hope and manly trust,
+       Like those who fell in battle here!
+
+     Another hand thy sword shall wield,
+       Another hand the standard wave,
+     Till from the trumpet's mouth is pealed
+       The blast of triumph o'er thy grave.
+
+
+     D. Appleton and Company, New York.
+
+
+
+     TO A WATERFOWL
+
+
+     Whither, 'midst falling dew,
+             While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
+     Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue
+             Thy solitary way?
+
+             Vainly the fowler's eye
+     Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
+     As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
+             Thy figure floats along,
+
+             Seek'st thou the plashy brink
+     Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
+     Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
+             On the chafed ocean-side?
+
+             There is a Power whose care
+     Teaches thy way along that pathless coast--
+     The desert and illimitable air--
+             Lone wandering, but not lost.
+
+             All day thy wings have fanned,
+     At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere,
+     Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
+             Though the dark night is near.
+
+             And soon that toil shall end;
+     Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
+     And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,
+             Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.
+
+             Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven
+     Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart
+     Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given,
+             And shall not soon depart.
+
+             He who, from zone to zone,
+     Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
+     In the long way that I must tread alone,
+             Will lead my steps aright.
+
+
+     ROBERT OF LINCOLN
+
+     Merrily swinging on brier and weed,
+       Near to the nest of his little dame,
+     Over the mountain-side or mead,
+       Robert of Lincoln is telling his name:--
+         Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+         Spink, spank, spink;
+     Snug and safe is that nest of ours,
+     Hidden among the summer flowers.
+           Chee, chee, chee.
+
+     Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest,
+       Wearing a bright black wedding-coat;
+     White are his shoulders and white his crest.
+       Hear him call in his merry note:--
+         Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+         Spink, spank, spink;
+     Look what a nice new coat is mine,
+     Sure there was never a bird so fine.
+           Chee, chee, chee.
+
+     Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife,
+       Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings,
+     Passing at home a patient life,
+       Broods in the grass while her husband sings:
+         Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+         Spink, spank, spink:
+     Brood, kind creature; you need not fear
+     Thieves and robbers while I am here.
+           Chee, chee, chee.
+
+     Modest and shy as a nun is she;
+       One weak chirp is her only note.
+     Braggart and prince of braggarts is he,
+       Pouring boasts from his little throat:--
+         Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+         Spink, spank, spink:
+     Never was I afraid of man;
+     Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can!
+           Chee, chee, chee.
+
+     Six white eggs on a bed of hay,
+       Flecked with purple, a pretty sight!
+     There as the mother sits all day,
+       Robert is singing with all his might:--
+         Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+         Spink, spank, spink;
+     Nice good wife, that never goes out,
+     Keeping house while I frolic about.
+           Chee, chee, chee.
+
+     Soon as the little ones chip the shell,
+       Six wide mouths are open for food;
+     Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well,
+       Gathering seeds for the hungry brood.
+         Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+         Spink, spank, spink;
+     This new life is likely to be
+     Hard for a gay young fellow like me.
+           Chee, chee, chee.
+
+     Robert of Lincoln at length is made
+       Sober with work, and silent with care;
+     Off is his holiday garment laid,
+       Half forgotten that merry air:
+         Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+         Spink, spank, spink;
+     Nobody knows but my mate and I
+     Where our nest and our nestlings lie.
+           Chee, chee, chee.
+
+     Summer wanes; the children are grown;
+       Fun and frolic no more he knows;
+     Robert of Lincoln's a humdrum crone;
+       Off he flies, and we sing as he goes:--
+         Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+         Spink, spank, spink;
+     When you can pipe that merry old strain,
+     Robert of Lincoln, come back again.
+           Chee, chee, chee.
+
+
+     _1855_
+
+
+     JUNE
+
+     I gazed upon the glorious sky
+       And the green mountains round;
+     And thought that when I came to lie
+       At rest within the ground,
+     'Twere pleasant that in flowery June,
+     When brooks send up a cheerful tune
+       And groves a joyous sound,
+     The sexton's hand, my grave to make,
+     The rich green mountain turf should break.
+
+     A cell within the frozen mold,
+       A coffin borne through sleet,
+     And icy clods above it rolled,
+       While fierce the tempests beat--
+     Away! I will not think of these:
+     Blue be the sky and soft the breeze,
+       Earth green beneath the feet,
+     And be the damp mold gently pressed
+     Into my narrow place of rest.
+
+     There through the long, long summer hours
+       The golden light should lie,
+     And thick young herbs and groups of flowers
+       Stand in their beauty by;
+     The oriole should build and tell
+     His love-tale close beside my cell;
+       The idle butterfly
+     Should rest him there, and there be heard
+     The housewife bee and humming-bird.
+
+     And what if cheerful shouts at noon
+       Come, from the village sent,
+     Or songs of maids beneath the moon,
+       With fairy laughter blent?
+     And what if, in the evening light,
+     Betrothed lovers walk in sight
+       Of my low monument?
+     I would the lovely scene around
+     Might know no sadder sight nor sound.
+
+     I know that I no more should see
+       The season's glorious show,
+     Nor would its brightness shine for me,
+       Nor its wild music flow;
+     But if, around my place of sleep.
+     The friends I love should come to weep,
+       They might not haste to go.
+     Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom,
+     Should keep them lingering by my tomb.
+
+     These to their softened hearts should bear
+       The thought of what has been,
+     And speak of one who cannot share
+       The gladness of the scene;
+     Whose part in all the pomp that fills
+     The circuit of the summer hills
+       Is--that his grave is green;
+     And deeply would their hearts rejoice
+     To hear again his living voice.
+
+
+     TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN
+
+     Thou blossom, bright with autumn dew,
+     And colored with the heaven's own blue,
+     That openest when the quiet light
+     Succeeds the keen and frosty night;
+
+     Thou comest not when violets lean
+     O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
+     Or columbines, in purple dressed,
+     Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest.
+
+     Thou waitest late, and com'st alone,
+     When woods are bare and birds are flown,
+     And frost and shortening days portend
+     The aged Year is near his end.
+
+     Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
+     Look through its fringes to the sky,
+     Blue--blue--as if that sky let fall
+     A flower from its cerulean wall.
+
+     I would that thus, when I shall see
+     The hour of death draw near to me,
+     Hope, blossoming within my heart,
+     May look to heaven as I depart.
+
+
+     D. Appleton and Company, New York.
+
+
+     THE FUTURE LIFE
+
+     How shall I know thee in the sphere which keeps
+       The disembodied spirits of the dead,
+     When all of thee that time could wither sleeps
+       And perishes among the dust we tread?
+
+     For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain
+       If there I meet thy gentle presence not;
+     Nor hear the voice I love, nor read again
+       In thy serenest eyes the tender thought.
+
+     Will not thy own meek heart demand me there?
+       That heart whose fondest throbs to me were given?
+     My name on earth was ever in thy prayer,
+       And wilt thou never utter it in heaven?
+
+     In meadows fanned by heaven's life-breathing wind,
+       In the resplendence of that glorious sphere,
+     And larger movements of the unfettered mind,
+       Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here?
+
+     The love that lived through all the stormy past,
+       And meekly with my harsher nature bore,
+     And deeper grew, and tenderer to the last,
+       Shall it expire with life, and be no more?
+
+     A happier lot than mine, and larger light,
+       Await thee there; for thou hast bowed thy will
+     In cheerful homage to the rule of right,
+       And lovest all, and renderest good for ill.
+
+     For me, the sordid cares in which I dwell
+       Shrink and consume my heart, as heat the scroll;
+     And wrath has left its scar--that fire of hell
+       Has left its frightful scar upon my soul.
+
+     Yet though thou wear'st the glory of the sky,
+       Wilt thou not keep the same beloved name,
+     The same fair thoughtful brow, and gentle eye,
+       Lovelier in heaven's sweet climate, yet the same?
+
+     Shalt thou not teach me, in that calmer home,
+       The wisdom that I learned so ill in this--
+     The wisdom which is love--till I become
+       Thy fit companion in that land of bliss?
+
+
+     D. Appleton and Company, New York.
+
+
+     TO THE PAST
+
+           Thou unrelenting Past!
+     Stern are the fetters round thy dark domain,
+           And fetters, sure and fast,
+     Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.
+
+           Far in thy realm withdrawn
+     Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom,
+           And glorious ages gone
+     Lie deep within the shadows of thy womb.
+
+           Childhood, with all its mirth,
+     Youth, Manhood, Age, that draws us to the ground,
+           And last, Man's Life on earth,
+     Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound.
+
+           Thou hast my better years,
+     Thou hast my earlier friends--the good, the kind--
+           Yielded to thee with tears--
+     The venerable form, the exalted mind.
+
+           My spirit yearns to bring
+     The lost ones back; yearns with desire intense,
+           And struggles hard to wring
+     Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence.
+
+           In vain!--Thy gates deny
+     All passage save to those who hence depart.
+           Nor to the streaming eye
+     Thou givest them back, nor to the broken heart.
+
+           In thy abysses hide
+     Beauty and excellence unknown. To thee
+           Earth's wonder and her pride
+     Are gathered, as the waters to the sea.
+
+           Labors of good to man,
+     Unpublished charity, unbroken faith;
+           Love, that 'midst grief began,
+     And grew with years, and faltered not in death.
+
+           Full many a mighty name
+     Lurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevered.
+           With thee are silent Fame,
+     Forgotten Arts, and Wisdom disappeared.
+
+           Thine for a space are they.
+     Yet thou shalt yield thy treasures up at last;
+           Thy gates shall yet give way,
+     Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past!
+
+           All that of good and fair
+     Has gone into thy womb from earliest time
+           Shall then come forth, to wear
+     The glory and the beauty of its prime.
+
+           They have not perished--no!
+     Kind words, remembered voices once so sweet,
+           Smiles, radiant long ago,
+     And features, the great soul's apparent seat:
+
+           All shall come back. Each tie
+     Of pure affection shall be knit again:
+           Alone shall Evil die,
+     And sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign.
+
+           And then shall I behold
+     Him by whose kind paternal side I sprung;
+           And her who, still and cold,
+     Fills the next grave--the beautiful and young.
+
+
+     D. Appleton and Company, New York.
+
+
+
+JAMES BRYCE
+
+(1838-)
+
+James Bryce was born at Belfast, Ireland, of Scotch and Irish parents.
+He studied at the University of Glasgow and later at Oxford, where he
+graduated with high honors in 1862, and where after some years of legal
+practice he was appointed Regius Professor of Civil Law in 1870. He had
+already established a high reputation as an original and accurate
+historical scholar by his prize essay on the 'Holy Roman Empire' (1864),
+which passed through many editions, was translated into German, French,
+and Italian, and remains to-day a standard work and the best known work
+on the subject, Edward A. Freeman said on the appearance of the work
+that it had raised the author at once to the rank of a great historian.
+It has done more than any other treatise to clarify the vague notions of
+historians as to the significance of the imperial idea in the Middle
+Ages, and its importance as a factor in German and Italian politics; and
+it is safe to say that there is scarcely a recent history of the period
+that does not show traces of its influence. The scope of this work being
+juristic and philosophical, it does not admit of much historical
+narrative, and the style is lucid but not brilliant. It is not in fact
+as a historian that Mr. Bryce is best known, but rather as a jurist, a
+politician, and a student of institutions.
+
+[Illustration: JAMES BRYCE]
+
+The most striking characteristic of the man is his versatility; a
+quality which in his case has not been accompanied by its usual defects,
+for his achievements in one field seem to have made him no less
+conscientious in others, while they have given him that breadth of view
+which is more essential than any special training to the critic of men
+and affairs. For the ten years that followed his Oxford appointment he
+contributed frequently to the magazines on geographical, social, and
+political topics. His vacations he spent in travel and in mountain
+climbing, of which he gave an interesting narrative in 'Transcaucasia
+and Ararat' (1877). In 1880 he entered active politics, and was elected
+to Parliament in the Liberal interest. He has continued steadfast in
+his support of the Liberal party and of Mr. Gladstone, whose Home Rule
+policy he has heartily seconded. In 1886 he became Gladstone's
+Under-Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and in 1894 was appointed President
+of the Board of Trade.
+
+The work by which he is best known in this country, the 'American
+Commonwealth' (1888), is the fruit of his observations during three
+visits to the United States, and of many years of study. It is generally
+conceded to be the best critical analysis of American institutions ever
+made by a foreign author. Inferior in point of style to De Tocqueville's
+'Democracy in America,' it far surpasses that book in amplitude, breadth
+of view, acuteness of observation, and minuteness of information;
+besides being half a century later in date, and therefore able to set
+down accomplished facts where the earlier observer could only make
+forecasts. His extensive knowledge of foreign countries, by divesting
+him of insular prejudice, fitted him to handle his theme with
+impartiality, and his experience in the practical workings of British
+institutions gave him an insight into the practical defects and benefits
+of ours. That he has a keen eye for defects is obvious, but his tone is
+invariably sympathetic; so much so, in fact, that Goldwin Smith has
+accused him of being somewhat "hard on England" in some of his
+comparisons. The faults of the book pertain rather to the manner than to
+the matter. He does not mislead, but sometimes wearies, and in some
+portions of the work the frequent repetitions, the massing of details,
+and the absence of compact statement tend to obscure the general drift
+of his argument and to add unduly to the bulkiness of his volumes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE POSITION OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES
+
+From 'The American Commonwealth'
+
+Social intercourse between youths and maidens is everywhere more easy
+and unrestrained than in England or Germany, not to speak of France. Yet
+there are considerable differences between the Eastern cities, whose
+usages have begun to approximate to those of Europe, and other parts of
+the country. In the rural districts, and generally all over the West,
+young men and girls are permitted to walk together, drive together, go
+out to parties and even to public entertainments together, without the
+presence of any third person who can be supposed to be looking after or
+taking charge of the girl. So a girl may, if she pleases, keep up a
+correspondence with a young man, nor will her parents think of
+interfering. She will have her own friends, who when they call at her
+house ask for her, and are received by her, it may be alone; because
+they are not deemed to be necessarily the friends of her parents also,
+nor even of her sisters.
+
+In the cities of the Atlantic States it is now thought scarcely correct
+for a young man to take a young lady out for a solitary drive; and in
+few sets would he be permitted to escort her alone to the theatre. But
+girls still go without chaperons to dances, the hostess being deemed to
+act as chaperon for all her guests; and as regards both correspondence
+and the right to have one's own circle of acquaintances, the usage even
+of New York or Boston allows more liberty than does that of London or
+Edinburgh. It was at one time, and it may possibly still be, not
+uncommon for a group of young people who know one another well to make
+up an autumn "party in the woods." They choose some mountain and forest
+region, such as the Adirondack Wilderness west of Lake Champlain, engage
+three or four guides, embark with guns and fishing-rods, tents,
+blankets, and a stock of groceries, and pass in boats up the rivers and
+across the lakes of this wild country through sixty or seventy miles of
+trackless forest, to their chosen camping-ground at the foot of some
+tall rock that rises from the still crystal of the lake. Here they build
+their bark hut, and spread their beds of the elastic and fragrant
+hemlock boughs; the youths roam about during the day, tracking the deer,
+the girls read and work and bake the corn-cakes; at night there is a
+merry gathering round the fire, or a row in the soft moonlight. On these
+expeditions brothers will take their sisters and cousins, who bring
+perhaps some lady friends with them; the brothers' friends will come
+too; and all will live together in a fraternal way for weeks or months,
+though no elderly relative or married lady be of the party.
+
+There can be no doubt that the pleasure of life is sensibly increased by
+the greater freedom which transatlantic custom permits; and as the
+Americans insist that no bad results have followed, one notes with
+regret that freedom declines in the places which deem themselves most
+civilized. American girls have been, so far as a stranger can ascertain,
+less disposed to what are called "fast ways" than girls of the
+corresponding classes in England, and exercise in this respect a pretty
+rigorous censorship over one another. But when two young people find
+pleasure in one another's company, they can see as much of each other as
+they please, can talk and walk together frequently, can show that they
+are mutually interested, and yet need have little fear of being
+misunderstood either by one another or by the rest of the world. It is
+all a matter of custom. In the West, custom sanctions this easy
+friendship; in the Atlantic cities, so soon as people have come to find
+something exceptional in it, constraint is felt, and a conventional
+etiquette like that of the Old World begins to replace the innocent
+simplicity of the older time, the test of whose merit may be gathered
+from the universal persuasion in America that happy marriages are in the
+middle and upper ranks more common than in Europe, and that this is due
+to the ampler opportunities which young men and women have of learning
+one another's characters and habits before becoming betrothed. Most
+girls have a larger range of intimate acquaintances than girls have in
+Europe, intercourse is franker, there is less difference between the
+manners of home and the manners of general society. The conclusions of a
+stranger are in such matters of no value; so I can only repeat that I
+have never met any judicious American lady who, however well she knew
+the Old World, did not think that the New World customs conduced more
+both to the pleasantness of life before marriage, and to constancy and
+concord after it.
+
+In no country are women, and especially young women, so much made of.
+The world is at their feet. Society seems organized for the purpose of
+providing enjoyment for them. Parents, uncles, aunts, elderly friends,
+even brothers, are ready to make their comfort and convenience bend to
+the girls' wishes. The wife has fewer opportunities for reigning over
+the world of amusements, because except among the richest people she has
+more to do in household management than in England, owing to the
+scarcity of servants; but she holds in her own house a more prominent if
+not a more substantially powerful position than in England or even in
+France. With the German _haus-frau_, who is too often content to be a
+mere housewife, there is of course no comparison. The best proof of the
+superior place American ladies occupy is to be found in the notions they
+profess to entertain of the relations of an English married pair. They
+talk of the English wife as little better than a slave; declaring that
+when they stay with English friends, or receive an English couple in
+America, they see the wife always deferring to the husband and the
+husband always assuming that his pleasure and convenience are to
+prevail. The European wife, they admit, often gets her own way, but she
+gets it by tactful arts, by flattery or wheedling or playing on the
+man's weaknesses; whereas in America the husband's duty and desire is to
+gratify the wife, and render to her those services which the English
+tyrant exacts from his consort. One may often hear an American matron
+commiserate a friend who has married in Europe, while the daughters
+declare in chorus that they will never follow the example. Laughable as
+all this may seem to English women, it is perfectly true that the theory
+as well as the practice of conjugal life is not the same in America as
+in England. There are overbearing husbands in America, but they are more
+condemned by the opinion of the neighborhood than in England. There are
+exacting wives in England, but their husbands are more pitied than would
+be the case in America. In neither country can one say that the
+principle of perfect equality reigns; for in America the balance
+inclines nearly, though not quite, as much in favor of the wife as it
+does in England in favor of the husband. No one man can have a
+sufficiently large acquaintance in both countries to entitle his
+individual opinion on the results to much weight. So far as I have been
+able to collect views from those observers who have lived in both
+countries, they are in favor of the American practice, perhaps because
+the theory it is based on departs less from pure equality than does that
+of England. These observers do not mean that the recognition of women as
+equals or superiors makes them any better or sweeter or wiser than
+Englishwomen; but rather that the principle of equality, by correcting
+the characteristic faults of men, and especially their selfishness and
+vanity, is more conducive to the concord and happiness of a home. They
+conceive that to make the wife feel her independence and responsibility
+more strongly than she does in Europe tends to brace and expand her
+character; while conjugal affection, usually stronger in her than in the
+husband, inasmuch as there are fewer competing interests, saves her from
+abusing the precedence yielded to her. This seems to be true; but I have
+heard others maintain that the American system, since it does not
+require the wife habitually to forego her own wishes, tends, if not to
+make her self-indulgent and capricious, yet slightly to impair the more
+delicate charms of character; as it is written, "It is more blessed to
+give than to receive."
+
+A European cannot spend an evening in an American drawing-room without
+perceiving that the attitude of men to women is not that with which he
+is familiar at home. The average European man has usually a slight sense
+of condescension when he talks to a woman on serious subjects. Even if
+she is his superior in intellect, in character, in social rank, he
+thinks that as a man he is her superior, and consciously or
+unconsciously talks down to her. She is too much accustomed to this to
+resent it, unless it becomes tastelessly palpable. Such a notion does
+not cross an American's mind. He talks to a woman just as he would to a
+man; of course with more deference of manner, and with a proper regard
+to the topics likely to interest her, but giving her his intellectual
+best, addressing her as a person whose opinion is understood by both to
+be worth as much as his own. Similarly an American lady does not expect
+to have conversation made to her: it is just as much her duty or
+pleasure to lead it as the man's is; and more often than not she takes
+the burden from him, darting along with a gay vivacity which puts to
+shame his slower wits.
+
+It need hardly be said that in all cases where the two sexes come into
+competition for comfort, the provision is made first for women. In
+railroads the end car of the train, being that farthest removed from the
+smoke of the locomotive, is often reserved for them (though men
+accompanying a lady are allowed to enter it); and at hotels their
+sitting-room is the best and sometimes the only available public room,
+ladyless guests being driven to the bar or the hall. In omnibuses and
+horse-cars (tram-cars), it was formerly the custom for a gentleman to
+rise and offer his seat to a lady if there were no vacant place. This is
+now less universally done. In New York and Boston (and I think also in
+San Francisco), I have seen the men keep their seats when ladies
+entered; and I recollect one occasion when the offer of a seat to a lady
+was declined by her, on the ground that as she had chosen to enter a
+full car she ought to take the consequences. It was (I was told in
+Boston) a feeling of this kind that had led to the discontinuance of the
+old courtesy: when ladies constantly pressed into the already crowded
+vehicles, the men, who could not secure the enforcement of the
+regulations against over-crowding, tried to protect themselves by
+refusing to rise. It is sometimes said that the privileges yielded to
+American women have disposed them to claim as a right what was only a
+courtesy, and have told unfavorably upon their manners. I know of
+several instances, besides this one of the horse-cars, which might seem
+to support the criticism, but cannot on the whole think it well founded.
+The better-bred women do not presume on their sex, and the area of good
+breeding is always widening. It need hardly be said that the community
+at large gains by the softening and restraining influence which the
+reverence for womanhood diffuses. Nothing so quickly incenses the people
+as any insult offered to a woman. Wife-beating, and indeed any kind of
+rough violence offered to women, is far less common among the rudest
+class than it is in England. Field work or work at the pit-mouth of
+mines is seldom or never done by women in America; and the American
+traveler who in some parts of Europe finds women performing severe
+manual labor, is revolted by the sight in a way which Europeans find
+surprising.
+
+In the farther West, that is to say, beyond the Mississippi, in the
+Rocky Mountain and Pacific States, one is much struck by what seems the
+absence of the humblest class of women. The trains are full of poorly
+dressed and sometimes (though less frequently) rough-mannered men. One
+discovers no women whose dress or air marks them out as the wives,
+daughters, or sisters of these men, and wonders whether the male
+population is celibate, and if so, why there are so many women. Closer
+observation shows that the wives, daughters, and sisters are there, only
+their attire and manner are those of what Europeans would call
+middle-class and not working-class people. This is partly due to the
+fact that Western men affect a rough dress. Still one may say that the
+remark so often made, that the masses of the American people correspond
+to the middle class of Europe, is more true of the women than of the
+men; and is more true of them, in the rural districts and in the West
+than it is of the inhabitants of Atlantic cities. I remember to have
+been dawdling in a book-store in a small town in Oregon when a lady
+entered to inquire if a monthly magazine, whose name was unknown to me,
+had yet arrived. When she was gone I asked the salesman who she was, and
+what was the periodical she wanted. He answered that she was the wife of
+a railway workman, that the magazine was a journal of fashions, and that
+the demand for such journals was large and constant among women of the
+wage-earning class in the town. This set me to observing female dress
+more closely; and it turned out to be perfectly true that the women in
+these little towns were following the Parisian fashions very closely,
+and were in fact ahead of the majority of English ladies belonging to
+the professional and mercantile classes. Of course in such a town as I
+refer to, there are no domestic servants except in the hotels (indeed,
+almost the only domestic service to be had in the Pacific States was
+till very recently that of Chinese), so these votaries of fashion did
+all their own housework and looked after their own babies.
+
+Three causes combine to create among American women an average of
+literary taste and influence higher than that of women in any European
+country. These are the educational facilities they enjoy, the
+recognition of the equality of the sexes in the whole social and
+intellectual sphere, and the leisure which they possess as compared with
+men. In a country where men are incessantly occupied at their business
+or profession, the function of keeping up the level of culture devolves
+upon women. It is safe in their hands. They are quick and keen-witted,
+less fond of open-air life and physical exertion than English women are,
+and obliged by the climate to pass a greater part of their time under
+shelter from the cold of winter and the sun of summer. For music and for
+the pictorial arts they do not yet seem to have formed so strong a taste
+as for literature; partly perhaps owing to the fact that in America the
+opportunities of seeing and hearing masterpieces, except indeed operas,
+are rarer than in Europe. But they are eager and assiduous readers of
+all such books and periodicals as do not presuppose special knowledge in
+some branch of science or learning, while the number who have devoted
+themselves to some special study and attained proficiency in it is
+large. The fondness for sentiment, especially moral and domestic
+sentiment, which is often observed as characterizing American taste in
+literature, seems to be mainly due to the influence of women, for they
+form not only the larger part of the reading public, but an
+independent-minded part, not disposed to adopt the canons laid down by
+men, and their preferences count for more in the opinions and
+predilections of the whole nation than is the case in England. Similarly
+the number of women who write is infinitely larger in America than in
+Europe. Fiction, essays, and poetry are naturally their favorite
+provinces. In poetry more particularly, many whose names are quite
+unknown in Europe have attained wide-spread fame.
+
+Some one may ask how far the differences between the position of women
+in America and their position in Europe are due to democracy? or if not
+to this, then to what other cause?
+
+They are due to democratic feeling, in so far as they spring from the
+notion that all men are free and equal, possessed of certain inalienable
+rights and owing certain corresponding duties. This root idea of
+democracy cannot stop at defining men as male human beings, any more
+than it could ultimately stop at defining them as white human beings.
+For many years the Americans believed in equality with the pride of
+discoverers as well as with the fervor of apostles. Accustomed to apply
+it to all sorts and conditions of men, they were naturally the first to
+apply it to women also; not indeed as respects politics, but in all the
+social as well as legal relations of life. Democracy is in America more
+respectful of the individual, less disposed to infringe his freedom or
+subject him to any sort of legal or family control, than it has shown
+itself in Continental Europe; and this regard for the individual inured
+to the benefit of women. Of the other causes that have worked in the
+same direction, two may be mentioned. One is the usage of the
+Congregationalist, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches, under which a
+woman who is a member of the congregation has the same rights in
+choosing a deacon, elder, or pastor, as a man has. Another is the fact
+that among the westward-moving settlers women were at first few in
+number, and were therefore treated with special respect. The habit then
+formed was retained as the communities grew, and propagated itself all
+over the country.
+
+What have been the results on the character and usefulness of women
+themselves?
+
+Favorable. They have opened to them a wider life and more variety of
+career. While the special graces of the feminine character do not appear
+to have suffered, there has been produced a sort of independence and a
+capacity for self-help which are increasingly valuable as the number of
+unmarried women increases. More resources are open to an American woman
+who has to lead a solitary life, not merely in the way of employment,
+but for the occupation of her mind and tastes, than to a European
+spinster or widow; while her education has not rendered the American
+wife less competent for the discharge of household duties.
+
+How has the nation at large been affected by the development of this new
+type of womanhood, or rather perhaps of this variation on the
+English type?
+
+If women have on the whole gained, it is clear that the nation gains
+through them. As mothers they mold the character of their children;
+while the function of forming the habits of society and determining its
+moral tone rests greatly in their hands. But there is reason to think
+that the influence of the American system tells directly for good upon
+men as well as upon the whole community. Men gain in being brought to
+treat women as equals, rather than as graceful playthings or useful
+drudges. The respect for women which every American man either feels, or
+is obliged by public sentiment to profess, has a wholesome effect on his
+conduct and character, and serves to check the cynicism which some other
+peculiarities of the country foster. The nation as a whole owes to the
+active benevolence of its women, and their zeal in promoting social
+reforms, benefits which the customs of Continental Europe would scarcely
+have permitted women to confer. Europeans have of late years begun to
+render a well-deserved admiration to the brightness and vivacity of
+American ladies. Those who know the work they have done and are doing in
+many a noble cause will admire still more their energy, their courage,
+their self-devotion. No country seems to owe more to its women than
+America does, nor to owe to them so much of what is best in social
+institutions and in the beliefs that govern conduct.
+
+By permission of James Bryce and the Macmillan Company.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE ASCENT OF ARARAT
+
+From 'Trans-Caucasia and Ararat'
+
+About 1 A.M. we got off, thirteen in all, and made straight across the
+grassy hollows for the ridges which trend up towards the great cone,
+running parallel in a west-north-westerly direction, and inclosing
+between them several long narrow depressions, hardly deep enough to be
+called valleys. The Kurds led the way, and at first we made pretty good
+progress. The Cossacks seemed fair walkers, though less stalwart than
+the Kurds; the pace generally was better than that with which Swiss
+guides start. However, we were soon cruelly undeceived. In twenty-five
+minutes there came a steep bit, and at the top of it they flung
+themselves down on the grass to rest. So did we all. Less than half a
+mile farther, down they dropped again, and this time we were obliged to
+give the signal for resuming the march. In another quarter of an hour
+they were down once more, and so it continued for the rest of the way.
+Every ten minutes' walking--it was seldom steep enough to be called
+actual climbing--was followed by seven or eight minutes of sitting
+still, smoking and chattering. How they did chatter! It was to no
+purpose that we continued to move on when they sat down, or that we rose
+to go before they had sufficiently rested. They looked at one another,
+so far as I could make out by the faint light, and occasionally they
+laughed; but they would not and did not stir till such time as pleased
+themselves. We were helpless. Impossible to go on alone; impossible also
+to explain to them why every moment was precious, for the acquaintance
+who had acted as interpreter had been obliged to stay behind at
+Sardarbulakh, and we were absolutely without means of communication with
+our companions. One could not even be angry, had there been any use in
+that, for they were perfectly good-humored. It was all very well to
+beckon them, or pull them by the elbow, or clap them on the back; they
+thought this was only our fun, and sat still and chattered all the same.
+When it grew light enough to see the hands of a watch, and mark how the
+hours advanced while the party did not, we began for a second time to
+despair of success.
+
+About 3 A.M. there suddenly sprang up from behind the Median mountains
+the morning star, shedding a light such as no star ever gave in these
+northern climes of ours,--a light that almost outshone the moon. An hour
+later it began to pale in the first faint flush of yellowish light that
+spread over the eastern heaven; and first the rocky masses above us,
+then Little Ararat, throwing behind him a gigantic shadow, then the long
+lines of mountains beyond the Araxes, became revealed, while the wide
+Araxes plain still lay dim and shadowy below. One by one the stars died
+out as the yellow turned to a deeper glow that shot forth in long
+streamers, the rosy fingers of the dawn, from the horizon to the zenith.
+Cold and ghostly lay the snows on the mighty cone; till at last there
+came upon their topmost slope, six thousand feet above us, a sudden
+blush of pink. Swiftly it floated down the eastern face, and touched and
+kindled the rocks just above us. Then the sun flamed out, and in a
+moment the Araxes valley and all the hollows of the savage ridges we
+were crossing were flooded with overpowering light.
+
+It was nearly six o'clock, and progress became easier now that we could
+see our way distinctly. The Cossacks seemed to grow lazier, halting as
+often as before and walking less briskly; in fact, they did not relish
+the exceeding roughness of the jagged lava ridges along whose tops or
+sides we toiled. I could willingly have lingered here myself; for in the
+hollows, wherever a little soil appeared, some interesting plants were
+growing, whose similarity to and difference from the Alpine species of
+Western Europe alike excited one's curiosity. Time allowed me to secure
+only a few; I trusted to get more on the way back, but this turned out
+to be impossible. As we scrambled along a ridge above a long narrow
+winding glen filled with loose blocks, one of the Kurds suddenly swooped
+down like a vulture from the height on a spot at the bottom, and began
+peering and grubbing among the stones. In a minute or two he cried out,
+and the rest followed; he had found a spring, and by scraping in the
+gravel had made a tiny basin out of which we could manage to drink a
+little. Here was a fresh cause of delay: everybody was thirsty, and
+everybody must drink; not only the water which, as we afterwards saw,
+trickled down hither under the stones from a snow-bed seven hundred feet
+higher, but the water mixed with some whisky from a flask my friend
+carried, which even in this highly diluted state the Cossacks took to
+heartily. When at last we got them up and away again, they began to
+waddle and strangle; after a while two or three sat down, and plainly
+gave us to see they would go no farther. By the time we had reached a
+little snow-bed whence the now strong sun was drawing a stream of water,
+and halted on the rocks beside it for breakfast, there were only two
+Cossacks and the four Kurds left with us, the rest having scattered
+themselves about somewhere lower down. We had no idea what instructions
+they had received, nor whether indeed they had been told anything except
+to bring us as far as they could, to see that the Kurds brought the
+baggage, and to fetch us back again, which last was essential for
+Jaafar's peace of mind. We concluded therefore that if left to
+themselves they would probably wait our return; and the day was running
+on so fast that it was clear there was no more time to be lost in trying
+to drag them along with us.
+
+Accordingly I resolved to take what I wanted in the way of food, and
+start at my own pace. My friend, who carried more weight, and had felt
+the want of training on our way up, decided to come no farther, but wait
+about here, and look out for me towards nightfall. We noted the
+landmarks carefully,--the little snow-bed, the head of the glen covered
+with reddish masses of stone and gravel; and high above it, standing out
+of the face of the great cone of Ararat, a bold peak or rather
+projecting tooth of black rock, which our Cossacks called the Monastery,
+and which, I suppose from the same fancied resemblance to a building, is
+said to be called in Tatar Tach Kilissa, "the church rock." It is
+doubtless an old cone of eruption, about thirteen thousand feet in
+height, and is really the upper end of the long ridge we had been
+following, which may perhaps represent a lava flow from it, or the edge
+of a fissure which at this point found a vent.
+
+It was an odd position to be in: guides of two different races, unable
+to communicate either with us or with one another: guides who could not
+lead and would not follow; guides one-half of whom were supposed to be
+there to save us from being robbed and murdered by the other half, but
+all of whom, I am bound to say, looked for the moment equally simple and
+friendly, the swarthy Iranian as well as the blue-eyed Slav.
+
+At eight o'clock I buckled on my canvas gaiters, thrust some crusts of
+bread, a lemon, a small flask of cold tea, four hard-boiled eggs, and a
+few meat lozenges into my pocket, bade good-by to my friend, and set
+off. Rather to our surprise, the two Cossacks and one of the Kurds came
+with me, whether persuaded by a pantomime of encouraging signs, or
+simply curious to see what would happen. The ice-axe had hugely amused
+the Cossacks all through. Climbing the ridge to the left, and keeping
+along its top for a little way, I then struck across the semi-circular
+head of a wide glen, in the middle of which, a little lower, lay a
+snow-bed over a long steep slope of loose broken stones and sand. This
+slope, a sort of talus or "screen" as they say in the Lake country, was
+excessively fatiguing from the want of firm foothold; and when I reached
+the other side, I was already so tired and breathless, having been on
+foot since midnight, that it seemed almost useless to persevere farther.
+However, on the other side I got upon solid rock, where the walking was
+better, and was soon environed by a multitude of rills bubbling down
+over the stones from the stone-slopes above. The summit of Little
+Ararat, which had for the last two hours provokingly kept at the same
+apparent height above me, began to sink, and before ten o'clock I could
+look down upon its small flat top, studded with lumps of rock, but
+bearing no trace of a crater. Mounting steadily along the same ridge, I
+saw at a height of over thirteen thousand feet, lying on the loose
+blocks, a piece of wood about four feet long and five inches thick,
+evidently cut by some tool, and so far above the limit of trees that it
+could by no possibility be a natural fragment of one. Darting on it with
+a glee that astonished the Cossack and the Kurd, I held it up to them,
+and repeated several times the word "Noah." The Cossack grinned; but he
+was such a cheery, genial fellow that I think he would have grinned
+whatever I had said, and I cannot be sure that he took my meaning, and
+recognized the wood as a fragment of the true Ark. Whether it was really
+gopher wood, of which material the Ark was built, I will not undertake
+to say, but am willing to submit to the inspection of the curious the
+bit which I cut off with my ice-axe and brought away. Anyhow, it will be
+hard to prove that it is not gopher wood. And if there be any remains of
+the Ark on Ararat at all,--a point as to which the natives are perfectly
+clear,--here rather than the top is the place where one might expect to
+find them, since in the course of ages they would get carried down by
+the onward movement of the snow-beds along the declivities. This wood,
+therefore, suits all the requirements of the case. In fact, the argument
+is for the case of a relic exceptionally strong: the Crusaders who found
+the Holy Lance at Antioch, the archbishop who recognized the Holy Coat
+at Treves, not to speak of many others, proceeded upon slighter
+evidence. I am, however, bound to admit that another explanation of the
+presence of this piece of timber on the rocks of this vast height did
+occur to me. But as no man is bound to discredit his own relic, and such
+is certainly not the practice of the Armenian Church, I will not disturb
+my readers' minds or yield to the rationalizing tendencies of the age by
+suggesting it.
+
+Fearing that the ridge by which we were mounting would become too
+precipitous higher up, I turned off to the left, and crossed a long,
+narrow snow-slope that descended between this ridge and another line of
+rocks more to the west. It was firm, and just steep enough to make steps
+cut in the snow comfortable, though not necessary; so the ice-axe was
+brought into use. The Cossack who accompanied me--there was but one now,
+for the other Cossack had gone away to the right some time before, and
+was quite lost to view--had brought my friend's alpenstock, and was
+developing a considerable capacity for wielding it. He followed nimbly
+across; but the Kurd stopped on the edge of the snow, and stood peering
+and hesitating, like one who shivers on the plank at a bathing-place,
+nor could the jeering cries of the Cossack induce him to venture on the
+treacherous surface. Meanwhile, we who had crossed were examining the
+broken cliff which rose above us. It looked not exactly dangerous, but a
+little troublesome, as if it might want some care to get over or
+through. So after a short rest I stood up, touched my Cossack's arm, and
+pointed upward. He reconnoitred the cliff with his eye, and shook his
+head. Then, with various gestures of hopefulness, I clapped him on the
+back, and made as though to pull him along. He looked at the rocks again
+and pointed, to them, stroked his knees, turned up and pointed to the
+soles of his boots, which certainly were suffering from the lava, and
+once more solemnly shook his head. This was conclusive: so I conveyed to
+him my pantomime that he had better go back to the bivouac where my
+friend was, rather than remain here alone, and that I hoped to meet him
+there in the evening; took an affectionate farewell, and turned towards
+the rocks. There was evidently nothing for it but to go on alone. It was
+half-past ten o'clock, and the height about thirteen thousand six
+hundred feet, Little Ararat now lying nearly one thousand feet below
+the eye.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not knowing how far the ridge I was following might continue passable, I
+was obliged to stop frequently to survey the rocks above, and erect
+little piles of stone to mark the way. This not only consumed time, but
+so completely absorbed the attention that for hours together I scarcely
+noticed the marvelous landscape spread out beneath, and felt the solemn
+grandeur of the scenery far less than many times before on less striking
+mountains. Solitude at great heights, or among majestic rocks or
+forests, commonly stirs in us all deep veins of feeling, joyous or
+saddening, or more often of joy and sadness mingled. Here the strain on
+the observing senses seemed too great for fancy or emotion to have any
+scope. When the mind is preocupied by the task of the moment,
+imagination is checked. This was a race against time, in which I could
+only scan the cliffs for a route, refer constantly to the watch, husband
+my strength by morsels of food taken at frequent intervals, and endeavor
+to conceive how a particular block or bit of slope which it would be
+necessary to recognize would look when seen the other way in
+descending....
+
+All the way up this rock-slope, which proved so fatiguing that for the
+fourth time I had almost given up hope, I kept my eye fixed on its upper
+end to see what signs there were of crags or snow-fields above. But the
+mist lay steadily at the point where the snow seemed to begin, and it
+was impossible to say what might be hidden behind that soft white
+curtain. As little could I conjecture the height I had reached by
+looking around, as one so often does on mountain ascents, upon other
+summits; for by this time I was thousands of feet above Little Ararat,
+the next highest peak visible, and could scarcely guess how many
+thousands. From this tremendous height it looked more like a broken
+obelisk than an independent summit twelve thousand eight hundred feet in
+height. Clouds covered the farther side of the great snow basin, and
+were seething like waves about the savage pinnacles, the towers of the
+Jinn palace, which guard its lower margin, and past which my upward path
+had lain. With mists to the left and above, and a range of black
+precipices cutting off all view to the right, there came a vehement
+sense of isolation and solitude, and I began to understand better the
+awe with which the mountain silence inspires the Kurdish shepherds.
+Overhead the sky had turned from dark blue to an intense bright green, a
+color whose strangeness seemed to add to the weird terror of the scene.
+It wanted barely an hour to the time when I had resolved to turn back;
+and as I struggled up the crumbling rocks, trying now to right and now
+to left, where the foothold looked a little firmer, I began to doubt
+whether there was strength enough left to carry me an hour higher. At
+length the rock-slope came suddenly to an end, and I stepped out upon
+the almost level snow at the top of it, coming at the same time into the
+clouds, which naturally clung to the colder surfaces. A violent west
+wind was blowing, and the temperature must have been pretty low, for a
+big icicle at once enveloped the lower half of my face, and did not melt
+till I got to the bottom of the cone four hours afterwards. Unluckily I
+was very thinly clad, the stout tweed coat reserved for such occasions
+having been stolen on a Russian railway. The only expedient to be tried
+against the piercing cold was to tighten in my loose light coat by
+winding around the waist a Spanish _faja_, or scarf, which I had brought
+up to use in case of need as a neck wrapper. Its bright purple looked
+odd enough in such surroundings, but as there was nobody there to
+notice, appearances did not much matter. In the mist, which was now
+thick, the eye could pierce only some thirty yards ahead; so I walked on
+over the snow five or six minutes, following the rise of its surface,
+which was gentle, and fancying there might still be a good long way to
+go. To mark the backward track I trailed the point of the ice-axe along
+behind me in the soft snow, for there was no longer any landmark; all
+was cloud on every side. Suddenly to my astonishment the ground began to
+fall away to the north; I stopped; a puff of wind drove off the mists on
+one side, the opposite side to that by which I had come, and showed the
+Araxes plain at an abysmal depth below. It was the top of Ararat.
+
+
+
+THE WORK OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
+
+From 'The Holy Roman Empire'
+
+No one who reads the history of the last three hundred years--no one,
+above all, who studies attentively the career of Napoleon--can believe
+it possible for any State, however great her energy and material
+resources, to repeat in modern Europe the part of ancient Rome; to
+gather into one vast political body races whose national individuality
+has grown more and more marked in each successive age. Nevertheless, it
+is in great measure due to Rome and to the Roman Empire of the Middle
+Ages that the bonds of national union are on the whole both stronger and
+nobler than they were ever before. The latest historian of Rome
+[Mommsen], after summing up the results to the world of his hero's
+career, closes his treatise with these words:
+
+     "There was in the world as Cæsar found it the rich and noble
+     heritage of past centuries, and an endless abundance of
+     splendor and glory; but little soul, still less taste, and
+     least of all, joy in and through life. Truly it was an old
+     world, and even Cæsar's genial patriotism could not make it
+     young again. The blush of dawn returns not until the night
+     has fully descended. Yet with him there came to the
+     much-tormented races of the Mediterranean a tranquil evening
+     after a sultry day; and when after long historical night the
+     new day broke once more upon the peoples, and fresh nations
+     in free self-guided movement began their course toward new
+     and higher aims, many were found among them in whom the seed
+     of Cæsar had sprung up,--many who owed him, and who owe him
+     still, their national individuality."
+
+If this be the glory of Julius, the first great founder of the Empire,
+so is it also the glory of Charles, the second founder, and of more than
+one among his Teutonic successors. The work of the mediæval Empire was
+self-destructive; and it fostered, while seeming to oppose, the
+nationalities that were destined to replace it. It tamed the barbarous
+races of the North and forced them within the pale of civilization. It
+preserved the arts and literature of antiquity. In times of violence and
+oppression, it set before its subjects the duty of rational obedience to
+an authority whose watchwords were peace and religion. It kept alive,
+when national hatreds were most bitter, the notion of a great European
+Commonwealth. And by doing all this, it was in effect abolishing the
+need for a centralizing and despotic power like itself; it was making
+men capable of using national independence aright; it was teaching them
+to rise to that conception of spontaneous activity, and a freedom which
+is above law but not against it, to which national independence itself,
+if it is to be a blessing at all, must be only a means. Those who mark
+what has been the tendency of events since A.D. 1789, and who remember
+how many of the crimes and calamities of the past are still but half
+redressed, need not be surprised to see the so-called principle of
+nationalities advocated with honest devotion as the final and perfect
+form of political development. But such undistinguishing advocacy is
+after all only the old error in a new shape. If all other history did
+not bid us beware the habit of taking the problems and the conditions of
+our own age for those of all time, the warning which the Empire gives
+might alone be warning enough. From the days of Augustus down to those
+of Charles V., the whole civilized world believed in its existence as a
+part of the eternal fitness of things, and Christian theologians were
+not behind heathen poets in declaring that when it perished the world
+would perish with it. Yet the Empire is gone, and the world remains, and
+hardly notes the change.
+
+
+
+FRANCIS TREVELYAN BUCKLAND
+
+(1826-1880)
+
+Certainly, among the most useful of writers are the popularizers of
+science; those who can describe in readable, picturesque fashion those
+wonders and innumerable inhabitants of the world which the Dryasdusts
+discover, but which are apt to escape the attention of idlers or of the
+busy workers in other fields. Sometimes--not often--the same man unites
+the capacities of a patient and accurate investigator and of an
+accomplished narrator. To such men the field of enjoyment is boundless,
+as is the opportunity to promote the enjoyment of others.
+
+One of these two-sided men was Francis Trevelyan Buckland, popularly
+known as "Frank" Buckland, and so called in some of his books. His
+father, William Buckland,--at the time of the son's birth canon of
+Christ College, Oxford, and subsequently Dean of Westminster,--was the
+well-known geologist. As the father's life was devoted to the study of
+the inorganic, so that of the son was absorbed in the investigation of
+the organic world. He never tired of watching the habits of living
+creatures of all kinds; he lived as it were in a menagerie and it is
+related that his numerous callers were accustomed to the most familiar
+and impertinent demonstrations on the part of his monkeys and various
+other pets. He was an expert salmon-fisher, and his actual specialty was
+fishes; but he could not have these about him so conveniently as some
+other forms of life, and he extended his studies and specimens widely
+beyond ichthyology.
+
+Buckland was born December 17th, 1826, and died December 19th, 1880.
+Brought up in a scientific atmosphere, he was all his life interested in
+the same subjects. Educated as a physician and surgeon and distinguished
+for his anatomical skill, his training fitted him for the careful
+investigation which is necessary on the part of the biologist. He was
+fortunate too in receiving in early middle life the government
+appointment of Inspector of Salmon Fisheries, and so being enabled to
+devote himself wholly to his favorite pursuits. In this position he was
+unwearied in his efforts to develop pisciculture, and to improve the
+apparatus used by the fishermen, interesting himself also in the
+condition of themselves and their families.
+
+He was always writing. He was a very frequent contributor to The Field
+from its foundation in 1856, and subsequently to Land and Water, a
+periodical which he started in 1866, and to other periodicals. He
+published a number of volumes, made up in great part from his
+contributions to periodicals, most of them of a popular character and
+full of interesting information. Among those which are best known are
+the 'Curiosities of Natural History' (1857-72); the 'Log-Book of a
+Fisherman and Geologist' (1875); a 'Natural History of British Fishes'
+(1881); and 'Notes and Jottings from Animal Life,' which was not issued
+until 1882, though the material was selected by himself.
+
+Buckland was of a jovial disposition, and always sure to see the
+humorous side of the facts which were presented to him; and in his
+social life he was extremely unconventional, and inclined to merry
+pranks. His books are as delightful as was their writer. They are
+records of accurate, useful, eye-opening details as to fauna, all the
+world over. They are written with a brisk, sincere informality that
+suggest the lively talker rather than the writer. He takes us a-walking
+in green lanes and woods, and a-wading in brooks and still pools--not
+drawing us into a class-room or a study. He enters into the heart and
+life of creatures, and shows us how we should do the same. A lively
+humor is in all his popular pages. He instructs while smiling; and he is
+a savant while a light-hearted friend. Few English naturalists are as
+genial--not even White of Selborne--and few as wide in didactics. To
+know him is a profit indeed; but just as surely a pleasure.
+
+
+
+A HUNT IN A HORSE-POND
+
+From 'Curiosities of Natural History'
+
+Well, let us have a look at the pond-world; choose a dry place at the
+side, and fix our eyes steadily upon the dirty water: what shall we see?
+Nothing at first; but wait a minute or two: a little round black knob
+appears in the middle; gradually it rises higher and higher, till at
+last you can make out a frog's head, with his great eyes staring hard at
+you, like the eyes of the frog in the woodcut facing Æsop's fable of the
+frog and the bull. Not a bit of his body do you see: he is much too
+cunning for that; he does not know who or what you are; you may be a
+heron, his mortal enemy, for aught he knows. You move your arm: he
+thinks it is the heron's bill coming; down he goes again, and you see
+him not: a few seconds, he regains courage and reappears, having
+probably communicated the intelligence to the other frogs; for many big
+heads and many big eyes appear, in all parts of the pond, looking like
+so many hippopotami on a small scale. Soon a conversational "Wurk; wurk,
+wurk," begins: you don't understand it; luckily, perhaps, as from the
+swelling in their throats it is evident that the colony is outraged by
+the intrusion, and the remarks passing are not complimentary to the
+intruder. These frogs are all respectable, grown-up, well-to-do frogs,
+and they have in this pond duly deposited their spawn, and then,
+hard-hearted creatures! left it to its fate; it has, however, taken care
+of itself, and is now hatched, at least that part of it which has
+escaped the hands of the gipsies, who not unfrequently prescribe baths
+of this natural jelly for rheumatism....
+
+In some places, from their making this peculiar noise, frogs have been
+called "Dutch nightingales." In Scotland, too, they have a curious name,
+Paddock or Puddick; but there is poetical authority for it:--
+
+     "The water-snake whom fish and paddocks feed,
+     With staring scales lies poisoned."--DRYDEN.
+
+Returning from the University of Giessen, I brought with me about a
+dozen green tree-frogs, which I had caught in the woods near the town.
+The Germans call them _laub-frosch,_ or leaf-frog; they are most
+difficult things to find, on account of their color so much resembling
+the leaves on which they live. I have frequently heard one singing in a
+small bush, and though I have searched carefully, have not been able to
+find him: the only way is to remain quite quiet till he again begins his
+song. After much ambush-work, at length I collected a dozen frogs and
+put them in a bottle. I started at night on my homeward journey by the
+diligence, and I put the bottle containing the frogs into the pocket
+inside the diligence. My fellow-passengers were sleepy old smoke-dried
+Germans: very little conversation took place, and after the first mile
+every one settled himself to sleep, and soon all were snoring. I
+suddenly awoke with a start, and found all the sleepers had been roused
+at the same moment. On their sleepy faces were depicted fear and anger.
+What had woke us all up so suddenly? The morning was just breaking, and
+my frogs, though in the dark pocket of the coach, had found it out; and
+with one accord, all twelve of them had begun their morning song. As if
+at a given signal, they one and all of them began to croak as loud as
+ever they could. The noise their united concert made, seemed, in the
+closed compartment of the coach, quite deafening. Well might the Germans
+look angry: they wanted to throw the frogs, bottle and all, out of the
+window; but I gave the bottle a good shaking, and made the frogs keep
+quiet. The Germans all went to sleep again, but I was obliged to remain
+awake, to shake the frogs when they began to croak. It was lucky that I
+did so, for they tried to begin their concert again two or three times.
+These frogs came safely to Oxford; and the day after their arrival, a
+stupid housemaid took off the top of the bottle to see what was inside;
+one of the frogs croaked at that instant, and so frightened her that she
+dared not put the cover on again. They all got loose in the garden,
+where I believe the ducks ate them, for I never heard or saw them again.
+
+
+
+ON RATS
+
+From 'Curiosities of Natural History'
+
+On one occasion, when a boy, I recollect secretly borrowing an
+old-fashioned flint gun from the bird-keeper of the farm to which I had
+been invited. I ensconced myself behind the door of the pig-sty,
+determined to make a victim of one of the many rats that were accustomed
+to disport themselves among the straw that formed the bed of the
+farmer's pet bacon-pigs. In a few minutes out came an old
+patriarchal-looking rat, who, having taken a careful survey, quietly
+began to feed. After a long aim, bang went the gun--I fell backwards,
+knocked down by the recoil of the rusty old piece of artillery. I did
+not remain prone long, for I was soon roused by the most unearthly
+squeaks, and a dreadful noise as of an infuriated animal madly rushing
+round and round the sty. Ye gods! what had I done? I had not surely,
+like the tailor in the old song of the 'Carrion Crow,'
+
+     "Shot and missed my mark,
+     And shot the old sow right bang through the heart."
+
+But I had nearly performed a similar sportsman-like feat. There was poor
+piggy, the blood flowing in streamlets from several small punctures in
+that part of his body destined, at no very distant period, to become
+ham; in vain attempting, by dismal cries and by energetic waggings of
+his curly tail, to appease the pain of the charge of small shot which
+had so unceremoniously awaked him from his porcine dreams of oatmeal
+and boiled potatoes. But where was the rat? He had disappeared unhurt;
+the buttocks of the unfortunate pig, the rightful owner of the premises,
+had received the charge of shot intended to destroy the daring intruder.
+
+To appease piggy's wrath I gave him a bucketful of food from the
+hog-tub; and while he was thus consoling his inward self, wiped off the
+blood from the wounded parts, and said nothing about it to anybody. No
+doubt, before this time, some frugal housewife has been puzzled and
+astonished at the unwonted appearance of a charge of small shot in the
+centre of the breakfast ham which she procured from Squire Morland, of
+Sheepstead, Berks.
+
+Rats are very fond of warmth, and will remain coiled up for hours in any
+snug retreat where they can find this very necessary element of their
+existence. The following anecdote well illustrates this point:--
+
+My late father, when fellow of Corpus College, Oxford, many years ago,
+on arriving at his rooms late one night, found that a rat was running
+about among the books and geological specimens, behind the sofa, under
+the fender, and poking his nose into every hiding-place he could find.
+Being studiously inclined, and wishing to set to work at his books, he
+pursued him, armed with the poker in one hand, and a large dictionary,
+big enough to crush any rat, in the other; but in vain; Mr. Rat was not
+to be caught, particularly when such "arma scholastica" were used.
+
+No sooner had the studies recommenced than the rat resumed his gambols,
+squeaking and rushing about the room like a mad creature. The battle was
+renewed, and continued at intervals, to the destruction of all studies,
+till quite a late hour at night, when the pursuer, angry and wearied,
+retired to his adjoining bedroom; though he listened attentively he
+heard no more of the enemy, and soon fell asleep. In the morning he was
+astonished to find something warm lying on his chest; carefully lifting
+up the bed-clothes, he discovered his tormentor of the preceding night
+quietly and snugly ensconced in a fold in the blanket, and taking
+advantage of the bodily warmth of his two-legged adversary. These two
+lay looking daggers at each other for some minutes, the one unwilling to
+leave his warm berth, the other afraid to put his hand out from under
+the protection of the coverlid, particularly as the stranger's aspect
+was anything but friendly, his little sharp teeth and fierce little
+black eyes seeming to say, "Paws off from me, if you please!"
+
+At length, remembering the maxim that "discretion is the better part of
+valor"--the truth of which, I imagine, rats understand as well as most
+creatures,--he made a sudden jump off the bed, scuttled away into the
+next room, and was never seen or heard of afterwards....
+
+Rats are not selfish animals: having found out where the feast is
+stored, they will kindly communicate the intelligence to their friends
+and neighbors. The following anecdote will confirm this fact. A certain
+worthy old lady named Mrs. Oke, who resided at Axminster several years
+ago, made a cask of sweet wine, for which she was celebrated, and
+carefully placed it on a shelf in the cellar. The second night after
+this event she was frightened almost to death by a strange unaccountable
+noise in the said cellar. The household was called up and a search made,
+but nothing was found to clear up the mystery. The next night, as soon
+as the lights were extinguished and the house quiet, this dreadful noise
+was heard again. This time it was most alarming: a sound of squeaking,
+crying, knocking, pattering feet; then a dull scratching sound, with
+many other such ghostly noises, which continued throughout the livelong
+night. The old lady lay in bed with the candle alight, pale and
+sleepless with fright, anon muttering her prayers, anon determined to
+fire off the rusty old blunderbuss that hung over the chimneypiece. At
+last the morning broke, and the cock began to crow. "Now," thought she,
+"the ghosts must disappear." To her infinite relief, the noise really
+did cease, and the poor frightened dame adjusted her nightcap and fell
+asleep. Great preparations had she made for the next night; farm
+servants armed with pitchforks slept in the house; the maids took the
+family dinner-bell and the tinder-box into their rooms; the big dog was
+tied to the hall-table. Then the dame retired to her room, not to sleep,
+but to sit up in the arm-chair by the fire, keeping a drowsy guard over
+the neighbor's loaded horse-pistols, of which she was almost as much
+afraid as she was of the ghost in the cellar. Sure enough, her warlike
+preparations had succeeded; the ghost was certainly frightened; not a
+noise, not a sound, except the heavy snoring of the bumpkins and the
+rattling of the dog's chain in the hall, could be heard. She had gained
+a complete victory; the ghost was never heard again on the premises, and
+the whole affair was soon forgotten. Some weeks afterward some friends
+dropped in to take a cup of tea and talk over the last piece of gossip.
+Among other things the wine was mentioned, and the maid sent to get some
+from the cellar. She soon returned, and gasping for breath, rushed into
+the room, exclaiming, "'Tis all gone, ma'am;" and sure enough it was all
+gone. "The ghost has taken it"--not a drop was left, only the empty cask
+remained; the side was half eaten away, and marks of sharp teeth were
+visible round the ragged margins of the newly made bungholes.
+
+This discovery fully accounted for the noise the ghost had made, which
+caused so much alarm. The aboriginal rats in the dame's cellar had found
+out the wine, and communicated the joyful news to all the other rats in
+the parish; they had assembled there to enjoy the fun, and get very
+tipsy (which, judging from the noise they made, they certainly did) on
+this treasured cask of wine. Being quite a family party, they had
+finished it in two nights; and having got all they could, like wise rats
+they returned to their respective homes, perfectly unconscious that
+their merry-making had nearly been the death of the rightful owner and
+"founder of the feast." They had first gnawed out the cork, and got as
+much as they could: they soon found that the more they drank the lower
+the wine became. Perseverance is the motto of the rat; so they set to
+work and ate away the wood to the level of the wine again. This they
+continued till they had emptied the cask; they must then have got into
+it and licked up the last drains, for another and less agreeable smell
+was substituted for that of wine. I may add that this cask, with the
+side gone, and the marks of the rats' teeth, is still in my possession.
+
+
+
+SNAKES AND THEIR POISON
+
+From 'Curiosities of Natural History'
+
+Be it known to any person to whose lot it should fall to rescue a person
+from the crushing folds of a boa-constrictor, that it is no use pulling
+and hauling at the centre of the brute's body; catch hold of the tip of
+his tail,--he can then be easily unwound,--he cannot help himself;--he
+"must" come off. Again, if you wish to kill a snake, it is no use
+hitting and trying to crush his head. The bones of the head are
+composed of the densest material, affording effectual protection to the
+brain underneath: a wise provision for the animal's preservation; for
+were his skull brittle, his habit of crawling on the ground would render
+it very liable to be fractured. The spinal cord runs down the entire
+length of the body; this being wounded, the animal is disabled or killed
+instanter. Strike therefore his tail, and not his head; for at his tail
+the spinal cord is but thinly covered with bone, and suffers readily
+from injury. This practice is applicable to eels. If you want to kill an
+eel, it is not much use belaboring his head: strike, however, his tail
+two or three times against any hard substance, and he is quickly dead.
+
+About four years ago I myself, in person, had painful experience of the
+awful effects of snake's poison. I have received a dose of the cobra's
+poison into my system; luckily a minute dose, or I should not have
+survived it. The accident happened in a very curious way. I was poisoned
+by the snake but not bitten by him. I got the poison second-hand.
+Anxious to witness the effects of the poison of the cobra upon a rat, I
+took up a couple in a bag alive to a certain cobra. I took one rat out
+of the bag and put him into the cage with the snake. The cobra was
+coiled up among the stones in the centre of the cage, apparently asleep.
+When he heard the noise of the rat falling into the cage, he just looked
+up and put out his tongue, hissing at the same time. The rat got in a
+corner and began washing himself, keeping one eye on the snake, whose
+appearance he evidently did not half like. Presently the rat ran across
+the snake's body, and in an instant the latter assumed his fighting
+attitude. As the rat passed the snake, he made a dart, but missing his
+aim, hit his nose a pretty hard blow against the side of the cage. This
+accident seemed to anger him, for he spread out his crest and waved it
+to and fro in the beautiful manner peculiar to his kind. The rat became
+alarmed and ran near him again. Again cobra made a dart, and bit him,
+but did not, I think, inject any poison into him, the rat being so very
+active; at least, no symptoms of poisoning were shown. The bite
+nevertheless aroused the ire of the rat, for he gathered himself for a
+spring, and measuring his distance, sprang right on to the neck of the
+cobra, who was waving about in front of him. This plucky rat, determined
+to die hard, gave the cobra two or three severe bites in the neck, the
+snake keeping his body erect all this time, and endeavoring to turn his
+head round so as to bite the rat who was clinging on like the old man in
+'Sindbad the Sailor.' Soon, however, cobra changed his tactics. Tired,
+possibly, with sustaining the weight of the rat, he lowered his head,
+and the rat, finding himself again on terra firma, tried to run away:
+not so; for the snake, collecting all his force, brought down his
+erected poison-fangs, making his head tell by its weight in giving vigor
+to the blow, right on to the body of the rat.
+
+This poor beast now seemed to know that the fight was over and that he
+was conquered. He retired to a corner of the cage and began panting
+violently, endeavoring at the same time to steady his failing strength
+with his feet. His eyes were widely dilated, and his mouth open as if
+gasping for breath. The cobra stood erect over him, hissing and putting
+out his tongue as if conscious of victory. In about three minutes the
+rat fell quietly on his side and expired; the cobra then moved off and
+took no further notice of his defunct enemy. About ten minutes afterward
+the rat was hooked out of the cage for me to examine. No external wound
+could I see anywhere, so I took out my knife and began taking the skin
+off the rat. I soon discovered two very minute punctures, like small
+needle-holes, in the side of the rat, where the fangs of the snake had
+entered. The parts between the skin and the flesh, and the flesh itself,
+appeared as though affected with mortification, even though the wound
+had not been inflicted above a quarter of an hour, if so much.
+
+Anxious to see if the skin itself was affected, I scraped away the parts
+on it with my finger-nail. Finding nothing but the punctures, I threw
+the rat away and put the knife and skin in my pocket, and started to go
+away. I had not walked a hundred yards before all of a sudden I felt
+just as if somebody had come behind me and struck me a severe blow on
+the head and neck, and at the same time I experienced a most acute pain
+and sense of oppression at the chest, as though a hot iron had been run
+in and a hundred-weight put on the top of it. I knew instantly, from
+what I had read, that I was poisoned; I said as much to my friend, a
+most intelligent gentleman, who happened to be with me, and told him if
+I fell to give me brandy and "eau de luce," words which he kept
+repeating in case he might forget them. At the same time I enjoined him
+to keep me going, and not on any account to allow me to lie down.
+
+I then forgot everything for several minutes, and my friend tells me I
+rolled about as if very faint and weak. He also informs me that the
+first thing I did was to fall against him, asking if I looked seedy. He
+most wisely answered, "No, you look very well." I don't think he thought
+so, for his own face was as white as a ghost; I recollect this much. He
+tells me my face was of a greenish-yellow color. After walking or rather
+staggering along for some minutes, I gradually recovered my senses and
+steered for the nearest chemist's shop. Rushing in, I asked for eau de
+luce. Of course he had none, but my eye caught the words "Spirit, ammon.
+co.," or hartshorn, on a bottle. I reached it down myself, and pouring a
+large quantity into a tumbler with a little water, both of which
+articles I found on a soda-water stand in the shop, drank it off, though
+it burnt my mouth and lips very much. Instantly I felt relief from the
+pain at the chest and head. The chemist stood aghast, and on my telling
+him what was the matter, recommended a warm bath. If I had then followed
+his advice these words would never have been placed on record. After a
+second draught at the hartshorn bottle, I proceeded on my way, feeling
+very stupid and confused. On arriving at my friend's residence close by,
+he kindly procured me a bottle of brandy, of which I drank four large
+wine-glasses one after the other, but did not feel the least tipsy after
+the operation. Feeling nearly well, I started on my way home, and then
+for the first time perceived a most acute pain under the nail of the
+left thumb: this pain also ran up the arm. I set to work to suck the
+wound, and then found out how the poison had got into the system. About
+an hour before I examined the dead rat I had been cleaning the nail with
+a penknife, and had slightly separated the nail from the skin beneath.
+Into this little crack the poison had got when I was scraping the rat's
+skin to examine the wound. How virulent, therefore, must the poison of
+the cobra be! It had already been circulated in the body of the rat,
+from which I had imbibed it second-hand!
+
+MY MONKEY JACKO
+
+From 'Curiosities of Natural History'
+
+After some considerable amount of bargaining (in which amusing,
+sometimes animated, not to say exciting exhibition of talent, Englishmen
+generally get worsted by the Frenchmen, as was the case in the present
+instance), Jacko became transferred, chain, tail and all, to his new
+English master. Having arrived at the hotel, it became a question as to
+what was to become of Jacko while his master was absent from home. A
+little closet, opening into the wall of the bedroom, offered itself as a
+temporary prison. Jacko was tied up _securely_--alas! how vain are the
+thoughts of man!--to one of the row of pegs that were fastened against
+the wall. As the door closed on him his wicked eyes seemed to say, "I'll
+do some mischief now;" and sure enough he did, for when I came back to
+release him, like Æneas,
+
+     "Obstupni, steteruntque comæ et vox fancibus hæsit[5]."
+
+[Footnote 5:
+     "Aghast, astonished, and struck dumb with fear,
+     I stood; like bristles rose my stiffened hair."--DRYDEN.
+]
+
+The walls, that but half an hour previously were covered with a finely
+ornamented paper, now stood out in the bold nakedness of lath and
+plaster; the relics on the floor showed that the little wretch's fingers
+had by no means been idle. The pegs were all loosened, the individual
+peg to which his chain had been fastened, torn completely from its
+socket, that the destroyer's movements might not be impeded, and an
+unfortunate garment that happened to be hung up in the closet was torn
+to a thousand shreds. If ever Jack Sheppard had a successor, it was this
+monkey. If he had tied the torn bits of petticoat together and tried to
+make his escape from the window, I don't think I should have been much
+surprised....
+
+It was, after Jacko's misdeeds, quite evident that he must no longer be
+allowed full liberty; and a lawyer's blue bag, such as may be frequently
+seen in the dreaded neighborhood of the Court of Chancery,--filled,
+however, more frequently with papers and parchment than with
+monkeys,--was provided for him; and this receptacle, with some hay
+placed at the bottom for a bed, became his new abode. It was a movable
+home, and therein lay the advantage; for when the strings of it were
+tied there was no mode of escape. He could not get his hands through the
+aperture at the end to unfasten them, the bag was too strong for him to
+bite his way through, and his ineffectual efforts to get out only had
+the effect of making the bag roll along the floor, and occasionally make
+a jump up into the air; forming altogether an exhibition which if
+advertised in the present day of wonders as "le bag vivant," would
+attract crowds of delighted and admiring citizens.
+
+In the bag aforesaid he traveled as far as Southampton on his road to
+town. While taking the ticket at the railway station, Jacko, who must
+needs see everything that was going on, suddenly poked his head out of
+the bag and gave a malicious grin at the ticket-giver. This much
+frightened the poor man, but with great presence of mind,--quite
+astonishing under the circumstances,--he retaliated the insult: "Sir,
+that's a dog; you must pay for it accordingly." In vain was the monkey
+made to come out of the bag and exhibit his whole person; in vain were
+arguments in full accordance with the views of Cuvier and Owen urged
+eagerly, vehemently, and without hesitation (for the train was on the
+point of starting), to prove that the animal in question was not a dog,
+but a monkey. A dog it was in the peculiar views of the official, and
+three-and-sixpence was paid. Thinking to carry the joke further (there
+were just a few minutes to spare), I took out from my pocket a live
+tortoise I happened to have with me, and showing it, said, "What must I
+pay for this, as you charge for _all_ animals?" The employé adjusted his
+specs, withdrew from the desk to consult with his superior; then
+returning, gave the verdict with a grave but determined manner, "No
+charge for them, sir: them be insects."
+
+
+
+HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE
+
+(1821-1862)
+
+Henry Thomas Buckle was born at Lee, in Kent, on November 24th, 1821,
+the son of a wealthy London merchant. A delicate child, he participated
+in none of the ordinary sports of children, but sat instead for hours
+listening to his mother's reading of the Bible and the 'Arabian Nights.'
+She had a great influence on his early development. She was a Calvinist,
+deeply religious, and Buckle himself in after years acknowledged that to
+her he owed his faith in human progress through the dissemination and
+triumph of truth, as well as his taste for philosophic speculations and
+his love for poetry. His devotion to her was lifelong. Owing to his
+feeble health he passed but a few years at school, and did not enter
+college. Nor did he know much, in the scholar's sense, of books. Till he
+was nearly eighteen the 'Arabian Nights,' the 'Pilgrim's Progress' and
+Shakespeare constituted his chief reading.
+
+But he was fond of games of mental skill, and curiously enough, first
+gained distinction, not in letters but at the chessboard, and in the
+course of his subsequent travels he challenged and defeated the
+champions of Europe. He was concerned for a short time in business; but
+being left with an independent income at the death of his father, he
+resolved to devote himself to study. He traveled for a year on the
+Continent, learning on the spot the languages of the countries he passed
+through. In time he became an accomplished linguist, reading nineteen
+languages and conversing fluently in seven.
+
+By the time he was nineteen he had resolved to write a great historic
+work, of a nature not yet attempted by any one. To prepare himself for
+this monumental labor, and to make up for past deficiencies, he settled
+in London; and, apparently single-handed and without the advice or help
+of tutors or professional men, entered upon that course of voluminous
+reading on which his erudition rests.
+
+He is a singular instance of a self-taught man, without scientific or
+academic training, producing a work that marks an epoch in historical
+literature. With a wonderful memory, he had, like Macaulay, the gift of
+getting the meaning and value of a book by simply glancing over the
+pages. On an average he could read with intelligent comprehension three
+books in a working day of eight hours, and in time mastered his library
+of twenty-two thousand volumes, indexing every book on the back, and
+transcribing many pages into his commonplace-books. In this way he
+spent fifteen years of study in collecting his materials.
+
+The first volume of his introduction to the 'History of Civilization in
+England' appeared in 1857, and aroused an extraordinary interest because
+of the novelty and audacity of its statements. It was both bitterly
+attacked and enthusiastically praised, as it antagonized or attracted
+its readers. Buckle became the intellectual hero of the hour. The second
+volume appeared in May, 1861. And now, worn out by overwork, his
+delicate nerves completely unstrung by the death of his mother, who had
+remained his first and only love, he left England for the East, in
+company with the two young sons of a friend. In Palestine he was
+stricken with typhoid fever, and died at Damascus on May 29th, 1862. His
+grave is marked by a marble tomb with the inscription from the Arabic:--
+
+     "The written word remains long after the writer;
+     The writer is resting under the earth, but his works endure."
+
+Three volumes of 'Miscellanies and Posthumous Works,' edited by Helen
+Taylor, were published in 1872. Among these are a lecture on 'Woman,'
+delivered before the Royal Institution,--Buckle's single and very
+successful attempt at public speaking,--and a Review of Mill's
+'Liberty,' one of the finest contemporary appreciations of that thinker.
+But he wrote little outside his 'History,' devoting himself with entire
+singleness of purpose to his life-work.
+
+The introduction to the 'History of Civilization in England' has been
+aptly called the "fragment of a fragment." When as a mere youth he
+outlined his work, he overestimated the extremest accomplishment of a
+single mind, and did not clearly comprehend the vastness of the
+undertaking. He had planned a general history of civilization; but as
+the material increased on his hands he was forced to limit his project,
+and finally decided to confine his work to a consideration of England
+from the middle of the sixteenth century. In February, 1853, he wrote to
+a friend:--
+
+     "I have been long convinced that the progress of every people
+     is regulated by principles--or as they are called, laws--as
+     regular and as certain as those which govern the physical
+     world. To discover these laws is the object of my work.... I
+     propose to take a general survey of the moral, intellectual,
+     and legislative peculiarities of the great countries of
+     Europe; and I hope to point out the circumstances under which
+     these peculiarities have arisen. This will lead to a
+     perception of certain relations between the various stages
+     through which each people have progressively passed. Of these
+     _general_ relations I intend to make a _particular_
+     application; and by a careful analysis of the history of
+     England, show how they have regulated our civilization, and
+     how the successive and apparently the arbitrary forms of our
+     opinions, our literature, our laws, and our manners, have
+     naturally grown out of their antecedents."
+
+This general scheme was adhered to in the published history, and he
+supported his views by a vast array of illustrations and proofs. The
+main ideas advanced in the Introduction--for he did not live to write
+the body of the work, the future volumes to which he often pathetically
+refers--these ideas may be thus stated:--First: Nothing had yet been
+done toward discovering the principles underlying the character and
+destiny of nations, to establish a basis for a science of history,--a
+task which Buckle proposed to himself. Second: Experience shows that
+nations are governed by laws as fixed and regular as the laws of the
+physical world. Third: Climate, soil, food, and the aspects of nature
+are the primary causes in forming the character of a nation. Fourth: The
+civilization within and without Europe is determined by the fact that in
+Europe man is stronger than nature, and here alone has subdued her to
+his service; whereas on the other continents nature is the stronger and
+man has been subdued by her. Fifth: The continually increasing influence
+of mental laws and the continually diminishing influence of physical
+laws characterize the advance of European civilization. Sixth: The
+mental laws regulating the progress of society can only be discovered by
+such a comprehensive survey of facts as will enable us to eliminate
+disturbances; namely, by the method of averages. Seventh: Human progress
+is due to intellectual activity, which continually changes and expands,
+rather than to moral agencies, which from the beginnings of society have
+been more or less stationary. Eighth: In human affairs in general,
+individual efforts are insignificant, and great men work for evil rather
+than for good, and are moreover merely incidental to their age. Ninth:
+Religion, literature, art, and government instead of being causes of
+civilization, are merely its products. Tenth: The progress of
+civilization varies directly as skepticism--the disposition to doubt, or
+the "protective spirit"--the disposition to maintain without examination
+established beliefs and practices, predominates.
+
+The new scientific methods of Darwin and Mill were just then being
+eagerly discussed in England; and Buckle, an alert student and great
+admirer of Mill, in touch with the new movements of the day, proposed,
+"by applying to the history of man those methods of investigation which
+have been found successful in other branches of knowledge, and rejecting
+all preconceived notions which could not bear the test of those
+methods," to remove history from the condemnation of being a mere series
+of arbitrary facts, or a biography of famous men, or the small-beer
+chronicle of court gossip and intrigues, and to raise it to the level
+of an exact science, subject to mental laws as rigid and infallible as
+the laws of nature:--
+
+     "Instead of telling us of those things which alone have any
+     value--instead of giving us information respecting the
+     progress of knowledge and the way in which mankind has been
+     affected by the diffusion of that knowledge ... the vast
+     majority of historians fill their works with the most
+     trifling and miserable details.... In other great branches of
+     knowledge, observation has preceded discovery; first the
+     facts have been registered and then their laws have been
+     found. But in the study of the history of man, the important
+     facts have been neglected and the unimportant ones preserved.
+     The consequence is, that whoever now attempts to generalize
+     historical phenomena must collect the facts as well as
+     conduct the generalization."
+
+Buckle's ideal of the office and acquirements of the historian was of
+the highest. He must indeed possess a synthesis of the whole range of
+human knowledge to explain the progress of man. By connecting history
+with political economy and statistics, he strove to make it exact. And
+he exemplified his theories by taking up branches of scientific
+investigation hitherto considered entirely outside the province of the
+historian. He first wrote history scientifically, pursuing the same
+methods and using the same kinds of proofs as the scientific worker. The
+first volume excited as much angry discussion as Darwin's 'Origin of
+Species' had done in its day. The boldness of its generalizations, its
+uncompromising and dogmatic tone, irritated more than one class of
+readers. The chapters on Spain and on Scotland, with their strictures on
+the religions of those countries, containing some of the most brilliant
+passages in the book, brought up in arms against him both Catholics and
+Presbyterians. Trained scientists blamed him for encroaching on their
+domains with an insufficient knowledge of the phenomena of the natural
+world, whence resulted a defective logic and vague generalizations.
+
+It is true that Buckle was not trained in the methods of the schools;
+that he labored under the disadvantage of a self-taught, solitary
+worker, not receiving the friction of other vigorous minds; and that his
+reading, if extensive, was not always wisely chosen, and from its very
+amount often ill-digested. He had knowledge rather than true learning,
+and taking this knowledge at second hand, often relied on sources that
+proved either untrustworthy or antiquated, for he lacked the true
+relator's fine discrimination, that weighs and sifts authorities and
+rejects the inadequate. Malicious critics declared that all was grist
+that came to his mill. Yet his popularity with that class of readers
+whom he did not shock by his disquisitions on religions and morals, or
+make distrustful by his sweeping generalizations and scientific
+inaccuracies, is due to the fact that his book appeared at the right
+moment: for the time was really come to make history something more than
+a chronicle of detached facts and anecdotes. The scientific spirit was
+awake, and demanded that human action, like the processes of nature, be
+made the subject of general law. The mind of Buckle proved fruitful soil
+for those germs of thought floating in the air, and he gave them visible
+form in his history. If he was not a leader, he was a brilliant
+formulator of thought, and he was the first to put before the reading
+world, then ready to receive them, ideas and speculations till now
+belonging to the student. For he wrote with the determination to be
+intelligible to the general reader. It detracts nothing from the
+permanent value of his work thus to state its genesis, for this is
+merely to apply to it his own methods.
+
+Moreover, a perpetual charm lies in his clear, limpid English, a medium
+perfectly adapted to calm exposition or to impassioned rhetoric.
+Whatever the defects of Buckle's system: whatever the inaccuracies that
+the advance of thirty years of patient scientific labors can easily
+point out; however sweeping his generalization; or however dogmatic his
+assertions, the book must be allowed high rank among the works that set
+men thinking, and must thus be conceded to possess enduring value.
+
+
+
+MORAL VERSUS INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLES IN HUMAN PROGRESS
+
+From the 'History of Civilization in England'
+
+There is unquestionably nothing to be found in the world which has
+undergone so little change as those great dogmas of which moral systems
+are composed. To do good to others; to sacrifice for their benefit your
+own wishes; to love your neighbor as yourself; to forgive your enemies;
+to restrain your passions; to honor your parents; to respect those who
+are set over you,--these and a few others are the sole essentials of
+morals: but they have been known for thousands of years, and not one jot
+or tittle has been added to them by all the sermons, homilies, and
+text-books which moralists and theologians have been able to produce.
+But if we contrast this stationary aspect of moral truths with the
+progressive aspect of intellectual truths, the difference is indeed
+startling. All the great moral systems which have exercised much
+influence have been fundamentally the same; all the great intellectual
+systems have been fundamentally different. In reference to our moral
+conduct, there is not a single principle now known to the most
+cultivated Europeans which was not likewise known to the ancients. In
+reference to the conduct of our intellect, the moderns have not only
+made the most important additions to every department of knowledge that
+the ancients ever attempted to study, but besides this they have upset
+and revolutionized the old methods of inquiry; they have consolidated
+into one great scheme all those resources of induction which Aristotle
+alone dimly perceived; and they have created sciences, the faintest idea
+of which never entered the mind of the boldest thinker antiquity
+produced.
+
+These are, to every educated man, recognized and notorious facts; and
+the inference to be drawn from them is immediately obvious. Since
+civilization is the product of moral and intellectual agencies, and
+since that product is constantly changing, it evidently cannot be
+regulated by the stationary agent; because, when surrounding
+circumstances are unchanged, a stationary agent can only produce a
+stationary effect. The only other agent is the intellectual one; and
+that this is the real mover may be proved in two distinct ways: first
+because, being as we have already seen either moral or intellectual, and
+being as we have also seen not moral, it must be intellectual; and
+secondly, because the intellectual principle has an activity and a
+capacity for adaptation which, as I undertake to show, is quite
+sufficient to account for the extraordinary progress that during several
+centuries Europe has continued to make.
+
+Such are the main arguments by which my view is supported; but there are
+also other and collateral circumstances which are well worthy of
+consideration. The first is, that the intellectual principle is not only
+far more progressive than the moral principle, but is also far more
+permanent in its results. The acquisitions made by the intellect are, in
+every civilized country, carefully preserved, registered in certain
+well-understood formulas, and protected by the use of technical and
+scientific language; they are easily handed down from one generation to
+another, and thus assuming an accessible, or as it were a tangible form,
+they often influence the most distant posterity, they become the
+heirlooms of mankind, the immortal bequest of the genius to which they
+owe their birth. But the good deeds effected by our moral faculties are
+less capable of transmission; they are of a more private and retiring
+character: while as the motives to which they owe their origin are
+generally the result of self-discipline and of self-sacrifice, they
+have to be worked out by every man for himself; and thus, begun by each
+anew, they derive little benefit from the maxims of preceding
+experience, nor can they well be stored up for the use of future
+moralists. The consequence is that although moral excellence is more
+amiable, and to most persons more attractive, than intellectual
+excellence, still it must be confessed that looking at ulterior results,
+it is far less active, less permanent, and as I shall presently prove,
+less productive of real good. Indeed, if we examine the effects of the
+most active philanthropy and of the largest and most disinterested
+kindness, we shall find that those effects are, comparatively speaking,
+short-lived; that there is only a small number of individuals they come
+in contact with and benefit; that they rarely survive the generation
+which witnessed their commencement; and that when they take the more
+durable form of founding great public charities, such institutions
+invariably fall, first into abuse, then into decay, and after a time are
+either destroyed or perverted from their original intention, mocking the
+effort by which it is vainly attempted to perpetuate the memory even of
+the purest and most energetic benevolence.
+
+These conclusions are no doubt very unpalatable; and what makes them
+peculiarly offensive is, that it is impossible to refute them. For the
+deeper we penetrate into this question, the more clearly shall we see
+the superiority of intellectual acquisitions over moral feeling. There
+is no instance on record of an ignorant man who, having good intentions
+and supreme power to enforce them, has not done far more evil than good.
+And whenever the intentions have been very eager, and the power very
+extensive, the evil has been enormous. But if you can diminish the
+sincerity of that man, if you can mix some alloy with his motives, you
+will likewise diminish the evil which he works. If he is selfish as well
+as ignorant, it will often happen [that] you may play off his vice
+against his ignorance, and by exciting his fears restrain his mischief.
+If, however, he has no fear, if he is entirely unselfish, if his sole
+object is the good of others, if he pursues that object with enthusiasm,
+upon a large scale, and with disinterested zeal, then it is that you
+have no check upon him, you have no means of preventing the calamities
+which in an ignorant age an ignorant man will be sure to inflict. How
+entirely this is verified by experience, we may see in studying the
+history of religious persecution. To punish even a single man for his
+religious tenets is assuredly a crime of the deepest dye; but to punish
+a large body of men, to persecute an entire sect, to attempt to
+extirpate opinions which, growing out of the state of society in which
+they arise, are themselves a manifestation of the marvelous and
+luxuriant fertility of the human mind,--to do this is not only one of
+the most pernicious, but one of the most foolish acts that can possibly
+be conceived. Nevertheless it is an undoubted fact that an overwhelming
+majority of religious persecutors have been men of the purest
+intentions, of the most admirable and unsullied morals. It is impossible
+that this should be otherwise. For they are not bad-intentioned men who
+seek to enforce opinions which they believe to be good. Still less are
+they bad men who are so regardless of temporal considerations as to
+employ all the resources of their power, not for their own benefit, but
+for the purpose of propagating a religion which they think necessary to
+the future happiness of mankind. Such men as these are not bad, they are
+only ignorant; ignorant of the nature of truth, ignorant of the
+consequences of their own acts. But in a moral point of view their
+motives are unimpeachable. Indeed, it is the very ardor of their
+sincerity which warms them into persecution. It is the holy zeal by
+which they are fired that quickens their fanaticism into a deadly
+activity. If you can impress any man with an absorbing conviction of the
+supreme importance of some moral or religious doctrine; if you can make
+him believe that those who reject that doctrine are doomed to eternal
+perdition; if you then give that man power, and by means of his
+ignorance blind him to the ulterior consequences of his own act,--he
+will infallibly persecute those who deny his doctrine; and the extent of
+his persecution will be regulated by the extent of his sincerity.
+Diminish the sincerity, and you will diminish the persecution; in other
+words, by weakening the virtue you may check the evil. This is a truth
+of which history furnishes such innumerable examples, that to deny it
+would be not only to reject the plainest and most conclusive arguments,
+but to refuse the concurrent testimony of every age. I will merely
+select two cases, which, from the entire difference in their
+circumstances, are very apposite as illustrations: the first being from
+the history of Paganism, the other from the history of Christianity; and
+both proving the inability of moral feelings to control religious
+persecution.
+
+I. The Roman emperors, as is well known, subjected the early Christians
+to persecutions which, though they have been exaggerated, were frequent
+and very grievous. But what to some persons must appear extremely
+strange, is, that among the active authors of these cruelties we find
+the names of the best men who ever sat on the throne; while the worst
+and most infamous princes were precisely those who spared the
+Christians, and took no heed of their increase. The two most thoroughly
+depraved of all the emperors were certainly Commodus and Elagabalus;
+neither of whom persecuted the new religion, or indeed adopted any
+measures against it. They were too reckless of the future, too selfish,
+too absorbed in their own infamous pleasures, to mind whether truth or
+error prevailed; and being thus indifferent to the welfare of their
+subjects, they cared nothing about the progress of a creed which they,
+as Pagan emperors, were bound to regard as a fatal and impious delusion.
+They therefore allowed Christianity to run its course, unchecked by
+those penal laws which more honest but more mistaken rulers would
+assuredly have enacted. We find, accordingly, that the great enemy of
+Christianity was Marcus Aurelius; a man of kindly temper, and of
+fearless, unflinching honesty, but whose reign was characterized by a
+persecution from which he would have refrained had he been less in
+earnest about the religion of his fathers. And to complete the argument,
+it may be added that the last and one of the most strenuous opponents of
+Christianity who occupied the throne of the Cæsars was Julian; a prince
+of eminent probity, whose opinions are often attacked, but against whose
+moral conduct even calumny itself has hardly breathed a suspicion.
+
+II. The second illustration is supplied by Spain; a country of which it
+must be confessed, that in no other have religiuos feelings exercised
+such sway over the affairs of men. No other European nation has produced
+so many ardent and disinterested missionaries, zealous self-denying
+martyrs, who have cheerfully sacrificed their lives in order to
+propagate truths which they thought necessary to be known. Nowhere else
+have the spiritual classes been so long in the ascendant; nowhere else
+are the people so devout, the churches so crowded, the clergy so
+numerous. But the sincerity and honesty of purpose by which the Spanish
+people, taken as a whole, have always been marked, have not only been
+unable to prevent religious persecution, but have proved the means of
+encouraging it. If the nation had been more lukewarm, it would have
+been more tolerant. As it was, the preservation of the faith became the
+first consideration; and everything being sacrificed to this one object,
+it naturally happened that zeal begat cruelty, and the soil was prepared
+in which the Inquisition took root and flourished. The supporters of
+that barbarous institution were not hypocrites, but enthusiasts.
+Hypocrites are for the most part too supple to be cruel. For cruelty is
+a stern and unbending passion; while hypocrisy is a fawning and flexible
+art, which accommodates itself to human feelings, and flatters the
+weakness of men in order that it may gain its own ends. In Spain, the
+earnestness of the nation, being concentrated on a single topic, carried
+everything before it; and hatred of heresy becoming a habit, persecution
+of heresy was thought a duty. The conscientious energy with which that
+duty was fulfilled is seen in the history of the Spanish Church. Indeed,
+that the inquisitors were remarkable for an undeviating and
+uncorruptible integrity may be proved in a variety of ways, and from
+different and independent sources of evidence. This is a question to
+which I shall hereafter return; but there are two testimonies which I
+cannot omit, because, from the circumstances attending them, they are
+peculiarly unimpeachable. Llorente, the great historian of the
+Inquisition, and its bitter enemy, had access to its private papers: and
+yet, with the fullest means of information, he does not even insinuate a
+charge against the moral character of the inquisitors; but while
+execrating the cruelty of their conduct, he cannot deny the purity of
+their intentions. Thirty years earlier, Townsend, a clergyman of the
+Church of England, published his valuable work on Spain: and though, as
+a Protestant and an Englishman, he had every reason to be prejudiced
+against the infamous system which he describes, he also can bring no
+charge against those who upheld it; but having occasion to mention its
+establishment at Barcelona, one of its most important branches, he makes
+the remarkable admission that all its members are men of worth, and that
+most of them are of distinguished humanity.
+
+These facts, startling as they are, form a very small part of that vast
+mass of evidence which history contains, and which decisively proves the
+utter inability of moral feelings to diminish religious persecution. The
+way in which the diminution has been really effected by the mere
+progress of intellectual acquirements will be pointed out in another
+part of this volume; when we shall see that the great antagonist of
+intolerance is not humanity, but knowledge. It is to the diffusion of
+knowledge, and to that alone, that we owe the comparative cessation of
+what is unquestionably the greatest evil men have ever inflicted on
+their own species. For that religious persecution is a greater evil than
+any other, is apparent, not so much from the enormous and almost
+incredible number of its known victims, as from the fact that the
+unknown must be far more numerous, and that history gives no account of
+those who have been spared in the body in order that they might suffer
+in the mind. We hear much of martyrs and confessors--of those who were
+slain by the sword, or consumed in the fire: but we know little of that
+still larger number who by the mere threat of persecution have been
+driven into an outward abandonment of their real opinions; and who, thus
+forced into an apostasy the heart abhors, have passed the remainder of
+their lives in the practice of a constant and humiliating hypocrisy. It
+is this which is the real curse of religious persecution. For in this
+way, men being constrained to mask their thoughts, there arises a habit
+of securing safety by falsehood, and of purchasing impunity with deceit.
+In this way fraud becomes a necessary of life; insincerity is made a
+daily custom; the whole tone of public feeling is vitiated, and the
+gross amount of vice and of error fearfully increased. Surely, then, we
+have reason to say that, compared to this, all other crimes are of small
+account; and we may well be grateful for that increase of intellectual
+pursuits which has destroyed an evil that some among us would even now
+willingly restore.
+
+
+
+THE MYTHICAL ORIGIN OF HISTORY
+
+From the 'History of Civilization in England'
+
+At a very early period in the progress of a people, and long before they
+are acquainted with the use of letters, they feel the want of some
+resource which in peace may amuse their leisure, and in war may
+stimulate their courage. This is supplied to them by the invention of
+ballads; which form the groundwork of all historical knowledge, and
+which, in one shape or another, are found among some of the rudest
+tribes of the earth. They are for the most part sung by a class of men
+whose particular business it is thus to preserve the stock of
+traditions. Indeed, so natural is this curiosity as to past events that
+there are few nations to whom these bards or minstrels are unknown.
+Thus, to select a few instances, it is they who have preserved the
+popular traditions, not only of Europe, but also of China, Tibet, and
+Tartary; likewise of India, of Scinde, of Beloochistan, of Western Asia,
+of the islands of the Black Sea, of Egypt, of Western Africa, of North
+America, of South America, and of the islands in the Pacific.
+
+In all these countries, letters were long unknown, and as a people in
+that state have no means of perpetuating their history except by oral
+tradition, they select the form best calculated to assist their memory;
+and it will, I believe, be found that the first rudiments of knowledge
+consist always of poetry, and often of rhyme. The jingle pleases the ear
+of the barbarian, and affords a security that he will hand it down to
+his children in the unimpaired state in which he received it. This
+guarantee against error increases still further the value of these
+ballads; and instead of being considered as a mere amusement, they rise
+to the dignity of judicial authorities. The allusions contained in them
+are satisfactory proofs to decide the merits of rival families, or even
+to fix the limits of those rude estates which such a society can
+possess. We therefore find that the professed reciters and composers of
+these songs are the recognized judges in all disputed matters; and as
+they are often priests, and believed to be inspired, it is probably in
+this way that the notion of the divine origin of poetry first arose.
+These ballads will of course vary according to the customs and
+temperaments of the different nations, and according to the climate to
+which they are accustomed. In the south they assume a passionate and
+voluptuous form; in the north they are rather remarkable for their
+tragic and warlike character. But notwithstanding these diversities, all
+such productions have one feature in common: they are not only founded
+on truth, but making allowance for the colorings of poetry, they are all
+strictly true. Men who are constantly repeating songs which they
+constantly hear, and who appeal to the authorized singers of them as
+final umpires in disputed questions, are not likely to be mistaken on
+matters in the accuracy of which they have so lively an interest.
+
+This is the earliest and most simple of the various stages through which
+history is obliged to pass. But in the course of time, unless
+unfavorable circumstances intervene, society advances; and among other
+changes, there is one in particular of the greatest importance. I mean
+the introduction of the art of writing, which, before many generations
+are passed, must effect a complete alteration in the character of the
+national traditions. The manner in which, this occurs has, so far as I
+am aware, never been pointed out; and it will therefore be interesting
+to attempt to trace some of its details.
+
+The first and perhaps the most obvious consideration is, that the
+introduction of the art of writing gives permanence to the national
+knowledge, and thus lessens the utility of that oral information in
+which all the acquirements of an unlettered people must be contained.
+Hence it is that as a country advances the influence of tradition
+diminishes, and traditions themselves become less trustworthy. Besides
+this, the preservers of these traditions lose in this stage of society
+much of their former reputation. Among a perfectly unlettered people,
+the singers of ballads are, as we have already seen, the sole
+depositaries of those historical facts on which the fame, and often the
+property, of their chieftains principally depend. But when this same
+nation becomes acquainted with the art of writing, it grows unwilling to
+intrust these matters to the memory of itinerant singers, and avails
+itself of its new art to preserve them in a fixed and material form. As
+soon as this is effected, the importance of those who repeat the
+national traditions is sensibly diminished. They gradually sink into an
+inferior class, which, having lost its old reputation, no longer
+consists of those superior men to whose abilities it owed its former
+fame. Thus we see that although without letters there can be no
+knowledge of much importance, it is nevertheless true that their
+introduction is injurious to historical traditions in two distinct ways:
+first by weakening the traditions, and secondly by weakening the class
+of men whose occupation it is to preserve them.
+
+But this is not all. Not only does the art of writing lessen the number
+of traditionary truths, but it directly encourages the propagation of
+falsehoods. This is effected by what may be termed a principle of
+accumulation, to which all systems of belief have been deeply indebted.
+In ancient times, for example, the name of Hercules was given to several
+of those great public robbers who scourged mankind, and who, if their
+crimes were successful as well as enormous, were sure after their death
+to be worshiped as heroes. How this appellation originated is
+uncertain; but it was probably bestowed at first on a single man, and
+afterwards on those who resembled him in the character of their
+achievements. This mode of extending the use of a single name is natural
+to a barbarous people, and would cause little or no confusion, as long
+as the tradition of the country remained local and unconnected. But as
+soon as these traditions became fixed by a written language, the
+collectors of them, deceived by the similarity of name, assembled the
+scattered facts, and ascribing to a single man these accumulated
+exploits, degraded history to the level of a miraculous mythology. In
+the same way, soon after the use of letters was known in the North of
+Europe, there was drawn up by Saxo Grammaticus the life of the
+celebrated Ragnar Lodbrok. Either from accident or design, this great
+warrior of Scandinavia, who had taught England to tremble, had received
+the same name as another Ragnar, who was prince of Jutland about a
+hundred years earlier. This coincidence would have caused no confusion
+as long as each district preserved a distinct and independent account of
+its own Ragnar. But by possessing the resource of writing, men became
+able to consolidate the separate trains of events, and as it were, fuse
+two truths into one error. And this was what actually happened. The
+credulous Saxo put together the different exploits of both Ragnars, and
+ascribing the whole of them to his favorite hero, has involved in
+obscurity one of the most interesting parts of the early history
+of Europe.
+
+The annals of the North afford another curious instance of this source
+of error. A tribe of Finns called Quæns occupied a considerable part of
+the eastern coast of the Gulf of Bothnia. Their country was known as
+Quænland; and this name gave rise to a belief that to the north of the
+Baltic there was a nation of Amazons. This would easily have been
+corrected by local knowledge: but by the use of writing, the flying
+rumor was at once fixed; and the existence of such a people is
+positively affirmed in some of the earliest European histories. Thus too
+Åbo, the ancient capital of Finland, was called Turku, which in the
+Swedish language means a market-place. Adam of Bremen, having occasion
+to treat of the countries adjoining the Baltic, was so misled by the
+word Turku that this celebrated historian assures his readers that there
+were Turks in Finland.
+
+To these illustrations many others might be added, showing how mere
+names deceived the early historians, and gave rise to relations which
+were entirely false, and might have been rectified on the spot; but
+which, owing to the art of writing, were carried into distant countries
+and thus placed beyond the reach of contradiction. Of such cases, one
+more may be mentioned, as it concerns the history of England. Richard
+I., the most barbarous of our princes, was known to his contemporaries
+as the Lion; an appellation conferred upon him on account of his
+fearlessness and the ferocity of his temper. Hence it was said that he
+had the heart of a lion; and the title Coeur de Lion not only became
+indissolubly connected with his name, but actually gave rise to a story,
+repeated by innumerable writers, according to which he slew a lion in a
+single combat. The name gave rise to the story; the story confirmed the
+name: and another fiction was added to that long series of falsehoods of
+which history mainly consisted during the Middle Ages.
+
+The corruptions of history, thus naturally brought about by the mere
+introduction of letters, were in Europe aided by an additional cause.
+With the art of writing, there was in most cases also communicated a
+knowledge of Christianity; and the new religion not only destroyed many
+of the Pagan traditions, but falsified the remainder by amalgamating
+them with monastic legends. The extent to which this was carried would
+form a curious subject for inquiry; but one or two instances of it will
+perhaps be sufficient to satisfy the generality of readers.
+
+Of the earliest state of the great Northern nations we have little
+positive evidence; but several of the lays in which the Scandinavian
+poets related the feats of their ancestors or of their contemporaries
+are still preserved; and notwithstanding their subsequent corruption, it
+is admitted by the most competent judges that they embody real and
+historical events. But in the ninth and tenth centuries, Christian
+missionaries found their way across the Baltic, and introduced a
+knowledge of their religion among the inhabitants of Northern Europe.
+Scarcely was this effected when the sources of history began to be
+poisoned. At the end of the eleventh century Saemund Sigfusson, a
+Christian priest, gathered the popular and hitherto unwritten histories
+of the North into what is called the "Elder Edda"; and he was satisfied
+with adding to his compilation the corrective of a Christian hymn. A
+hundred years later there was made another collection of the native
+histories; but the principle which I have mentioned, having had a longer
+time to operate, now displayed its effects still more clearly. In this
+second collection, which is known by the name of the 'Younger Edda,'
+there is an agreeable mixture of Greek, Jewish, and Christian fables;
+and for the first time in the Scandinavian annals, we meet with the
+widely diffused fiction of a Trojan descent.
+
+If by way of further illustration we turn to other parts of the world,
+we shall find a series of facts confirming this view. We shall find that
+in those countries where there has been no change of religion, history
+is more trustworthy and connected than in those countries where such a
+change has taken place. In India, Brahmanism, which is still supreme,
+was established at so early a period that its origin is lost in the
+remotest antiquity. The consequence is that the native annals have never
+been corrupted by any new superstition, and the Hindus are possessed of
+historic traditions more ancient than can be found among any other
+Asiatic people. In the same way, the Chinese have for upwards of two
+thousand years preserved the religion of Fo, which is a form of
+Buddhism. In China, therefore, though the civilization has never been
+equal to that of India, there is a history, not indeed as old as the
+natives would wish us to believe, but still stretching back to several
+centuries before the Christian era, from whence it has been brought down
+to our own times in an uninterrupted succession. On the other hand, the
+Persians, whose intellectual development was certainly superior to that
+of the Chinese, are nevertheless without any authentic information
+respecting the early transactions of their ancient monarchy. For this I
+can see no possible reason except the fact that Persia, soon after the
+promulgation of the Koran, was conquered by the Mohammedans, who
+completely subverted the Parsee religion and thus interrupted the stream
+of the national traditions. Hence it is that, putting aside the myths of
+the Zendavesta, we have no native authorities for Persian history of any
+value, until the appearance in the eleventh century of the Shah Nameh;
+in which, however, Firdusi has mingled the miraculous relations of those
+two religions by which his country had been successively subjected. The
+result is, that if it were not for the various discoveries which have
+been made, of monuments, inscriptions, and coins, we should be compelled
+to rely on the scanty and inaccurate details in the Greek writers for
+our knowledge of the history of one of the most important of the Asiatic
+monarchies.
+
+
+
+GEORGE LOUIS LE CLERC BUFFON
+
+(1707-1788)
+
+BY SPENCER TROTTER
+
+A science becomes part of the general stock of knowledge only after it
+has entered into the literature of a people. The bare skeleton of facts
+must be clothed with the flesh and blood of imagination, through the
+humanizing influence of literary expression, before it can be
+assimilated by the average intellectual being. The scientific
+investigator is rarely endowed with the gift of weaving the facts into a
+story that will charm, and the man of letters is too often devoid of
+that patience which is the chief virtue of the scientist. These gifts of
+the gods are bestowed upon mankind under the guiding genius of the
+division of labor. The name of Buffon will always be associated with
+natural history, though in the man himself the spirit of science was
+conspicuously absent. In this respect he was in marked contrast with his
+contemporary Linnæus, whose intellect and labor laid the foundations of
+much of the scientific knowledge of to-day.
+
+[ILLUSTRATION: BUFFON]
+
+George Louis le Clerc Buffon was born on the 7th of September, 1707, at
+Montbar, in Burgundy. His father, Benjamin le Clerc, who was possessed
+of a fortune, appears to have bestowed great care and liberality on the
+education of his son. While a youth Buffon made the acquaintance of a
+young English nobleman, the Duke of Kingston, whose tutor, a man well
+versed in the knowledge of physical science, exerted a profound
+influence on the future career of the young Frenchman. At twenty-one
+Buffon came into his mother's estate, a fortune yielding an annual
+income of £12,000. But this wealth did not change his purpose to gain
+knowledge. He traveled through Italy, and after living for a short
+period in England returned to France and devoted his time to literary
+work. His first efforts were translations of two English works of
+science--Hale's 'Vegetable Statics' and Newton's 'Fluxions'; and he
+followed these with various studies in the different branches of
+physical science.
+
+The determining event in his life, which led him to devote the rest of
+his years to the study of natural history, was the death of his friend
+Du Fay, the Intendant of the Jardin du Roi (now the Jardin des Plantes),
+who on his death-bed recommended Buffon as his successor. A man of
+letters, Buffon saw before him the opportunity to write a natural
+history of the earth and its inhabitants; and he set to work with a zeal
+that lasted until his death in 1788, at the age of eighty-one. His great
+work, 'L'Histoire Naturelle,' was the outcome of these years of labor,
+the first edition being complete in thirty-six quarto volumes.
+
+The first fifteen volumes of this great work, published between the
+years 1749 and 1767, treated of the theory of the earth, the nature of
+animals, and the history of man and viviparous quadrupeds; and was the
+joint work of Buffon and Daubenton, a physician of Buffon's native
+village. The scientific portion of the work was done by Daubenton, who
+possessed considerable anatomical knowledge, and who wrote accurate
+descriptions of the various animals mentioned. Buffon, however, affected
+to ignore the work of his co-laborer and reaped the entire glory, so
+that Daubenton withdrew his services. Later appeared the nine volumes on
+birds, in which Buffon was aided by the Abbé Sexon. Then followed the
+'History of Minerals' in five volumes, and seven volumes of
+'Supplements,' the last one of which was published the year after
+Buffon's death.
+
+One can hardly admire the personal character of Buffon. He was vain and
+superficial, and given to extravagant speculations. He is reported to
+have said, "I know but five great geniuses--Newton, Bacon, Leibnitz,
+Montesquieu, and myself." His natural vanity was undoubtedly fostered by
+the adulation which he received from those in authority. He saw his own
+statue placed in the cabinet of Louis XVI., with the inscription
+"Majestati Naturæ par ingenium." Louis XV. bestowed upon him a title of
+nobility, and crowned heads "addressed him in language of the most
+exaggerated compliment." Buffon's conduct and conversation were marked
+throughout by a certain coarseness and vulgarity that constantly appear
+in his writings. He was foppish and trifling, and affected religion
+though at heart a disbeliever.
+
+The chief value of Buffon's work lies in the fact that it first brought
+the subject of natural history into popular literature. Probably no
+writer of the time, with the exception of Voltaire and Rousseau, was so
+widely read and quoted as Buffon. But the gross inaccuracy which
+pervaded his writings, and the visionary theories in which he constantly
+indulged, gave the work a less permanent value than it might otherwise
+have attained. Buffon detested the scientific method, preferring
+literary finish to accuracy of statement. Although the work was widely
+translated, and was the only popular natural history of the time, there
+is little of it that is worthy of a place in the world's best
+literature. It is chiefly as a relic of a past literary epoch, and as
+the pioneer work in a new literary field, that Buffon's writings appeal
+to us. They awakened for the first time a wide interest in natural
+history, though their author was distinctly _not_ a naturalist.
+
+Arabella Buckley has said of Buffon and his writings that though "he
+often made great mistakes and arrived at false conclusions, still he had
+so much genius and knowledge that a great part of his work will always
+remain true." Cuvier has left us a good memoir of Buffon in the
+'Biographic Universelle.'
+
+[Illustration: Signature: Spencer Trotter]
+
+
+
+NATURE
+
+From the 'Natural History'
+
+So with what magnificence Nature shines upon the earth! A pure light
+extending from east to west gilds successively the hemispheres of the
+globe. An airy transparent element surrounds it; a warm and fruitful
+heat animates and develops all its germs of life; living and salutary
+waters tend to their support and increase; high points scattered over
+the lands, by arresting the airy vapors, render these sources
+inexhaustible and always fresh; gathered into immense hollows, they
+divide the continents. The extent of the sea is as great as that of the
+land. It is not a cold and sterile element, but another empire as rich
+and populated as the first. The finger of God has marked the boundaries.
+When the waters encroach upon the beaches of the west, they leave bare
+those of the east. This enormous mass of water, itself inert, follows
+the guidance of heavenly movements. Balanced by the regular oscillations
+of ebb and flow, it rises and falls with the planet of night; rising
+still higher when concurrent with the planet of day, the two uniting
+their forces during the equinoxes cause the great tides. Our connection
+with the heavens is nowhere more clearly indicated. From these constant
+and general movements result others variable and particular: removals of
+earth, deposits at the bottom of water forming elevations like those
+upon the earth's surface, currents which, following the direction of
+these mountain ranges, shape them to corresponding angles; and rolling
+in the midst of the waves, as waters upon the earth, are in truth the
+rivers of the sea.
+
+The air, too, lighter and more fluid than water, obeys many forces: the
+distant action of sun and moon, the immediate action of the sea, that of
+rarefying heat and of condensing cold, produce in it continual
+agitations. The winds are its currents, driving before them and
+collecting the clouds. They produce meteors; transport the humid vapors
+of maritime beaches to the land surfaces of the continents; determine
+the storms; distribute the fruitful rains and kindly dews; stir the sea;
+agitate the mobile waters, arrest or hasten the currents; raise floods;
+excite tempests. The angry sea rises toward heaven and breaks roaring
+against immovable dikes, which it can neither destroy nor surmount.
+
+The land elevated above sea-level is safe from these irruptions. Its
+surface, enameled with flowers, adorned with ever fresh verdure, peopled
+with thousands and thousands of differing species of animals, is a place
+of repose; an abode of delights, where man, placed to aid nature,
+dominates all other things, the only one who can know and admire. God
+has made him spectator of the universe and witness of his marvels. He is
+animated by a divine spark which renders him a participant in the divine
+mysteries; and by whose light he thinks and reflects, sees and reads in
+the book of the world as in a copy of divinity.
+
+Nature is the exterior throne of God's glory. The man who studies and
+contemplates it rises gradually towards the interior throne of
+omniscience. Made to adore the Creator, he commands all the creatures.
+Vassal of heaven, king of earth, which he ennobles and enriches, he
+establishes order, harmony, and subordination among living beings. He
+embellishes Nature itself; cultivates, extends, and refines it;
+suppresses its thistles and brambles, and multiplies its grapes
+and roses.
+
+Look upon the solitary beaches and sad lands where man has never dwelt:
+covered--or rather bristling--with thick black woods on all their rising
+ground, stunted barkless trees, bent, twisted, falling from age; near
+by, others even more numerous, rotting upon heaps already
+rotten,--stifling, burying the germs ready to burst forth. Nature, young
+everywhere else, is here decrepit. The land surmounted by the ruins of
+these productions offers, instead of flourishing verdure, only an
+incumbered space pierced by aged trees, loaded with parasitic plants,
+lichens, agarics--impure fruits of corruption. In the low parts is
+water, dead and stagnant because undirected; or swampy soil neither
+solid nor liquid, hence unapproachable and useless to the habitants both
+of land and of water. Here are swamps covered with rank aquatic plants
+nourishing only venomous insects and haunted by unclean animals. Between
+these low infectious marshes and these higher ancient forests extend
+plains having nothing in common with our meadows, upon which weeds
+smother useful plants. There is none of that fine turf which seems like
+down upon the earth, or of that enameled lawn which announces a
+brilliant fertility; but instead an interlacement of hard and thorny
+herbs which seem to cling to each other rather than to the soil, and
+which, successively withering and impeding each other, form a coarse mat
+several feet thick. There are no roads, no communications, no vestiges
+of intelligence in these wild places. Man, obliged to follow the paths
+of savage beasts and to watch constantly lest he become their prey,
+terrified by their roars, thrilled by the very silence of these profound
+solitudes, turns back and says:--
+
+Primitive nature is hideous and dying; I, I alone, can make it living
+and agreeable. Let us dry these swamps; converting into streams and
+canals, animate these dead waters by setting them in motion. Let us use
+the active and devouring element once hidden from us, and which we
+ourselves have discovered; and set fire to this superfluous mat, to
+these aged forests already half consumed, and finish with iron what fire
+cannot destroy! Soon, instead of rush and water-lily from which the toad
+compounds his venom, we shall see buttercups and clover, sweet and
+salutary herbs. Herds of bounding animals will tread this once
+impracticable soil and find abundant, constantly renewed pasture. They
+will multiply, to multiply again. Let us employ the new aid to complete
+our work; and let the ox, submissive to the yoke, exercise his strength
+in furrowing the land. Then it will grow young again with cultivation,
+and a new nature shall spring up under our hands.
+
+How beautiful is cultivated Nature when by the cares of man she is
+brilliantly and pompously adorned! He himself is the chief ornament, the
+most noble production; in multiplying himself he multiplies her most
+precious gem. She seems to multiply herself with him, for his art brings
+to light all that her bosom conceals. What treasures hitherto ignored!
+What new riches! Flowers, fruits, perfected grains infinitely
+multiplied; useful species of animals transported, propagated, endlessly
+increased; harmful species destroyed, confined, banished; gold, and iron
+more necessary than gold, drawn from the bowels of the earth; torrents
+confined; rivers directed and restrained; the sea, submissive and
+comprehended, crossed from one hemisphere to the other; the earth
+everywhere accessible, everywhere living and fertile; in the valleys,
+laughing prairies; in the plains, rich pastures or richer harvests; the
+hills loaded with vines and fruits, their summits crowned by useful
+trees and young forests; deserts changed to cities inhabited by a great
+people, who, ceaselessly circulating, scatter themselves from centres to
+extremities; frequent open roads and communications established
+everywhere like so many witnesses of the force and union of society; a
+thousand other monuments of power and glory: proving that man, master of
+the world, has transformed it, renewed its whole surface, and that he
+shares his empire with Nature.
+
+However, he rules only by right of conquest, and enjoys rather than
+possesses. He can only retain by ever-renewed efforts. If these cease,
+everything languishes, changes, grows disordered, enters again into the
+hands of Nature. She retakes her rights; effaces man's work; covers his
+most sumptuous monuments with dust and moss; destroys them in time,
+leaving him only the regret that he has lost by his own fault the
+conquests of his ancestors. These periods during which man loses his
+domain, ages of barbarism when everything perishes, are always prepared
+by wars and arrive with famine and depopulation. Man, who can do nothing
+except in numbers, and is only strong in union, only happy in peace, has
+the madness to arm himself for his unhappiness and to fight for his own
+ruin. Incited by insatiable greed, blinded by still more insatiable
+ambition, he renounces the sentiments of humanity, turns all his forces
+against himself, and seeking to destroy his fellow, does indeed destroy
+himself. And after these days of blood and carnage, when the smoke of
+glory has passed away, he sees with sadness that the earth is
+devastated, the arts buried, the nations dispersed, the races enfeebled,
+his own happiness ruined, and his power annihilated.
+
+THE HUMMING-BIRD
+
+From the 'Natural History'
+
+Of all animated beings this is the most elegant in form and the most
+brilliant in colors. The stones and metals polished by our arts are not
+comparable to this jewel of Nature. She has placed it least in size of
+the order of birds, _maxime miranda in minimis_. Her masterpiece is the
+little humming-bird, and upon it she has heaped all the gifts which the
+other birds may only share. Lightness, rapidity, nimbleness, grace, and
+rich apparel all belong to this little favorite. The emerald, the ruby,
+and the topaz gleam upon its dress. It never soils them with the dust of
+earth, and in its aërial life scarcely touches the turf an instant.
+Always in the air, flying from flower to flower, it has their freshness
+as well as their brightness. It lives upon their nectar, and dwells only
+in the climates where they perennially bloom.
+
+All kinds of humming-birds are found in the hottest countries of the New
+World. They are quite numerous and seem to be confined between the two
+tropics, for those which penetrate the temperate zones in summer only
+stay there a short time. They seem to follow the sun in its advance and
+retreat; and to fly on the wing of zephyrs after an eternal spring.
+
+The smaller species of the humming-birds are less in size than the great
+fly wasp, and more slender than the drone. Their beak is a fine needle
+and their tongue a slender thread. Their little black eyes are like two
+shining points, and the feathers of their wings so delicate that they
+seem transparent. Their short feet, which they use very little, are so
+tiny one can scarcely see them. They alight only at night, resting in
+the air during the day. They have a swift continual humming flight. The
+movement of their wings is so rapid that when pausing in the air, the
+bird seems quite motionless. One sees him stop before a blossom, then
+dart like a flash to another, visiting all, plunging his tongue into
+their hearts, flattening them with his wings, never settling anywhere,
+but neglecting none. He hastens his inconstancies only to pursue his
+loves more eagerly and to multiply his innocent joys. For this light
+lover of flowers lives at their expense without ever blighting them. He
+only pumps their honey, and to this alone his tongue seems destined.
+
+The vivacity of these small birds is only equaled by their courage, or
+rather their audacity. Sometimes they may be seen chasing furiously
+birds twenty times their size, fastening upon their bodies, letting
+themselves be carried along in their flight, while they peck them
+fiercely until their tiny rage is satisfied. Sometimes they fight each
+other vigorously. Impatience seems their very essence. If they approach
+a blossom and find it faded, they mark their spite by hasty rending of
+the petals. Their only voice is a weak cry, "_screp, screp_," frequent
+and repeated, which they utter in the woods from dawn, until at the
+first rays of the sun they all take flight and scatter over the country.
+
+
+
+EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
+
+(1803-1873)
+
+BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE
+
+The patrician in literature is always an interesting spectacle. We are
+prone to regard his performance as a test of the worth of long descent
+and high breeding. If he does well, he vindicates the claims of his
+caste; if ill, we infer that inherited estates and blue blood are but
+surface advantages, leaving the effective brain unimproved, or even
+causing deterioration. But the argument is still open; and whether
+genius be the creature of circumstance or divinely independent, is a
+question which prejudice rather than evidence commonly decides.
+
+Certainly literature tries men's souls. The charlatan must betray
+himself. Genius shines through all cerements. On the other hand, genius
+may be nourished, and the charlatan permeates all classes. The truth
+probably is that an aristocrat is quite as apt as a plebeian to be a
+good writer. Only since there are fewer of the former than of the
+latter, and since, unlike the last, the first are seldom forced to live
+by their brains, there are more plebeian than aristocratic names on the
+literary roll of honor. Admitting this, the instance of the writer known
+as "Bulwer" proves nothing one way or the other. At all events, not, Was
+he a genius because he was a, patrician? but, Was he a genius at all? is
+the inquiry most germane to our present purpose.
+
+An aristocrat of aristocrats undoubtedly he was, though it concerns us
+not to determine whether the blood of Plantagenet kings and Norman
+conquerors really flowed in his veins. On both father's and mother's
+side he was thoroughly well connected. Heydon Hall in Norfolk was the
+hereditary home of the Norman Bulwers; the Saxon Lyttons had since the
+Conquest lived at Knebworth in Derbyshire. The historic background of
+each family was honorable, and when the marriage of William Earle Bulwer
+with Elizabeth Barbara Lytton united them, it might be said that in
+their offspring England found her type.
+
+Edward, being the youngest son, had little money, but he happened to
+have brains. He began existence delicate and precocious. Culture, with
+him, set in almost with what he would have termed the "consciousness of
+his own identity," and the process never intermitted: in fact,
+appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, his spiritual and
+intellectual emancipation was hindered by many obstacles; for, an ailing
+child, he was petted by his mother, and such germs of intelligence
+(verses at seven years old, and the like) as he betrayed were trumpeted
+as prodigies. He was spoilt so long before he was ripe that it is a
+marvel he ever ripened at all. Many years must pass before vanity could
+be replaced in him by manly ambition; a vein of silliness is traceable
+through his career almost to the end. He expatiated in the falsetto key;
+almost never do we hear in his voice that hearty bass note so dear to
+plain humanity. In his pilgrimage toward freedom he had to wrestle not
+only with flesh-and-blood mothers, uncles, and wives, _et id genus
+omne_, but with the more subtle and vital ideas, superstitions, and
+prejudices appertaining to his social station. His worst foes were not
+those of his household merely, but of his heart. The more arduous
+achievement of such a man is to see his real self and believe in it.
+There are so many misleading purple-velvet waistcoats, gold chains,
+superfine sentiments, and blue-blooded affiliations in the way, that the
+true nucleus of so much decoration becomes less accessible than the
+needle in the hay-stack. It is greatly to Bulwer's credit that he stuck
+valiantly to his quest, and nearly, if not quite, ran down his game at
+last. His intellectual record is one of constant progress, from
+childhood to age.
+
+Whether his advance in other respects was as uniform does not much
+concern us. He was unhappy with his wife, and perhaps they even threw
+things at each other at table, the servants looking on. Nothing in his
+matrimonial relations so much became him as his conduct after their
+severance: he held his tongue like a man, in spite of the poor lady's
+shrieks and clapper-clawings. His whimsical, hair-splitting
+conscientiousness is less admirable. A healthy conscience does not
+whine--it creates. No one cares to know what a man thinks of his own
+actions. No one is interested to learn that Bulwer meant 'Paul Clifford'
+to be an edifying work, or that he married his wife from the highest
+motives. We do not take him so seriously: we are satisfied that he wrote
+the story first and discovered its morality afterwards; and that lofty
+motives would not have united him to Miss Rosina Doyle Wheeler had she
+not been pretty and clever. His hectic letters to his mamma; his Byronic
+struttings and mouthings over the grave of his schoolgirl lady-love; his
+eighteenth-century comedy-scene with Caroline Lamb; his starched-frill
+participation in the Fred Villiers duel at Boulogne,--how silly and
+artificial is all this! There is no genuine feeling in it: he attires
+himself in tawdry sentiment as in a flowered waistcoat. What a
+difference between him, at this period, and his contemporary Benjamin
+Disraeli, who indeed committed similar inanities, but with a saturnine
+sense of humor cropping out at every turn which altered the whole
+complexion of the performance. We laugh at the one, but with
+the other.
+
+[Illustration: BULWER-LYTTON.]
+
+Of course, however, there was a man hidden somewhere in Edward Bulwer's
+perfumed clothes and mincing attitudes, else the world had long since
+forgotten him. Amidst his dandyism, he learned how to speak well in
+debate and how to use his hands to guard his head; he paid his debts by
+honest hard work, and would not be dishonorably beholden to his mother
+or any one else. He posed as a blighted being, and invented black
+evening-dress; but he lived down the scorn of such men as Tennyson and
+Thackeray, and won their respect and friendship at last. He aimed high,
+according to his lights, meant well, and in the long run did well too.
+
+The main activities of his life--and from start to finish his energy was
+great--were in politics and in literature. His political career covers
+about forty years, from the time he took his degree at Cambridge till
+Lord Derby made him a peer in 1866. He accomplished nothing of serious
+importance, but his course was always creditable: he began as a
+sentimental Radical and ended as a liberal Conservative; he advocated
+the Crimean War; the Corn Laws found him in a compromising humor; his
+record as Colonial Secretary offers nothing memorable in statesmanship.
+The extraordinary brilliancy of his brother Henry's diplomatic life
+throws Edward's achievements into the shade. There is nothing to be
+ashamed of, but had he done nothing else he would have been unknown. But
+literature, first seriously cultivated as a means of livelihood,
+outlasted his political ambitions, and his books are to-day his only
+claim to remembrance. They made a strong impression at the time they
+were written, and many are still read as much as ever, by a generation
+born after his death. Their popularity is not of the catchpenny sort;
+thoughtful people read them, as well as the great drove of the
+undiscriminating. For they are the product of thought: they show
+workmanship; they have quality; they are carefully made. If the literary
+critic never finds occasion to put off the shoes from his feet as in the
+sacred presence of genius, he is constantly moved to recognize with a
+friendly nod the presence of sterling talent. He is even inclined to
+think that nobody else ever had so much talent as this little
+red-haired, blue-eyed, high-nosed, dandified Edward Bulwer; the mere
+mass of it lifts him at times to the levels where genius dwells, though
+he never quite shares their nectar and ambrosia. He as it were catches
+echoes of the talk of the Immortals,--the turn of their phrase, the
+intonation of their utterance,--and straightway reproduces it with the
+fidelity of the phonograph. But, as in the phonograph, we find something
+lacking; our mind accepts the report as genuine, but our ear affirms an
+unreality; this is reproduction, indeed, but not creation. Bulwer
+himself, when his fit is past, and his critical faculty re-awakens,
+probably knows as well as another that these labored and meritorious
+pages of his are not graven on the eternal adamant. But they are the
+best he can do, and perhaps there is none better of their kind. They
+have a right to be; for while genius may do harm as well as good, Bulwer
+never does harm, and in spite of sickly sentiment and sham philosophy,
+is uniformly instructive, amusing, and edifying.
+
+"To love her," wrote Dick Steele of a certain great dame, "is a liberal
+education;" and we might almost say the same of the reading of Bulwer's
+romances. He was learned, and he put into his books all his learning, as
+well as all else that was his. They represent artistically grouped,
+ingeniously lighted, with suitable acompaniments of music and
+illusion--the acquisitions of his intellect, the sympathies of his
+nature, and the achievements of his character.
+
+He wrote in various styles, making deliberate experiments in one after
+another, and often hiding himself completely in anonymity. He was
+versatile, not deep. Robert Louis Stevenson also employs various styles;
+but with him the changes are intuitive--they are the subtle variations
+in touch and timbre which genius makes, in harmony with the subject
+treated. Stevenson could not have written 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' in
+the same tune and key as 'Treasure Island'; and the music of 'Marxheim'
+differs from both. The reason is organic: the writer is inspired by his
+theme, and it passes through his mind with a lilt and measure of its
+own. It makes its own style, just as a human spirit makes its own
+features and gait; and we know Stevenson through all his transformations
+only by dint of the exquisite distinction and felicity of word and
+phrase that always characterize him. Now, with Bulwer there is none of
+this lovely inevitable spontaneity. He costumes his tale arbitrarily,
+like a stage-haberdasher, and invents a voice to deliver it withal. 'The
+Last Days of Pompeii' shall be mouthed out grandiloquently; the
+incredibilities of 'The Coming Race' shall wear the guise of naïve and
+artless narrative; the humors of 'The Caxtons' and 'What Will He Do with
+It?' shall reflect the mood of the sagacious, affable man of the world,
+gossiping over the nuts and wine; the marvels of 'Zanoni' and 'A Strange
+Story' must be portrayed with a resonance and exaltation of diction
+fitted to their transcendental claims. But between the stark mechanism
+of the Englishman and the lithe, inspired felicity of the Scot, what a
+difference!
+
+Bulwer's work may be classified according to subject, though not
+chronologically. He wrote novels of society, of history, of mystery, and
+of romance. In all he was successful, and perhaps felt as much interest
+in one as in another. In his own life the study of the occult played a
+part; he was familiar with the contemporary fads in mystery and
+acquainted with their professors. "Ancient" history also attracted him,
+and he even wrote a couple of volumes of a 'History of Athens.' In all
+his writing there is a tendency to lapse into a discussion of the "Ideal
+and the Real," aiming always at the conclusion that the only true Real
+is the Ideal. It was this tendency which chiefly aroused the ridicule of
+his critics, and from the 'Sredwardlyttonbulwig' of Thackeray to the
+'Condensed Novels' burlesque of Bret Harte, they harp upon that facile
+string, The thing satirized is after all not cheaper than the satire.
+The ideal _is_ the true real; the only absurdity lies in the pomp and
+circumstance wherewith that simple truth is introduced. There _is_ a
+'Dweller on the Threshold,' but it, or he, is nothing more than that
+doubt concerning the truth of spiritual things which assails all
+beginners in higher speculation, and there was no need to call it or him
+by so formidable a name. A sense of humor would have saved Bulwer from
+almost all his faults, and have endowed him with several valuable
+virtues into the bargain; but it was not born in him, and with all his
+diligence he never could beget it.
+
+The domestic series, of which 'The Caxtons' is the type, are the most
+generally popular of his works, and are likely to be so longest. The
+romantic vein ('Ernest Maltravers,' 'Alice, or the Mysteries,' etc.) are
+in his worst style, and are now only in existence as books because they
+are members of "the edition," It is doubtful if any human being has read
+one of them through in twenty years. Such historical books as 'The Last
+Days of Pompeii' are not only well constructed dramatically, but are
+painfully accurate in details, and may still be read for information as
+well as for pleasure. The 'Zanoni' species is undeniably interesting.
+The weird traditions of the 'Philosopher's Stone' and the 'Elixir of
+Life' can never cease to fascinate human souls, and all the
+paraphernalia of magic are charming to minds weary of the
+matter-of-factitude of current existence. The stories are put together
+with Bulwer's unfailing cleverness, and in all external respects neither
+Dumas nor Balzac has done anything better in this kind: the trouble is
+that these authors compel our belief, while Bulwer does not. For, once
+more, he lacks the magic of genius and the spirit of style which are
+immortally and incommunicably theirs, without which no other magic can
+be made literarily effective.
+
+'Pelham,' written at twenty-five years of age, is a creditable boy's
+book; it aims to portray character as well as to develop incidents, and
+in spite of the dreadful silliness of its melodramatic passages it has
+merit. Conventionally it is more nearly a work of art than that other
+famous boy's book, Disraeli's 'Vivian Grey,' though the latter is alive
+and blooming with the original literary charm which is denied to the
+other. Other characteristic novels of his are 'The Last Days of
+Pompeii,' 'Ernest Maltravers,' 'Zanoni,' 'The Caxtons,' 'My Novel,'
+'What Will He Do with It?' 'A Strange Story,' 'The Coming Race,' and
+'Kenelm Chillingly,' the last of which appeared in the year of the
+author's death, 1873. The student who has read these books will know all
+that is worth knowing of Bulwer's work. He wrote upwards of fifty
+substantial volumes, and left a mass of posthumous material besides. Of
+all that he did, the most nearly satisfactory thing is one of the last,
+'Kenelm Chillingly.' In style, persons, and incidents it is alike
+charming: it subsides somewhat into the inevitable Bulwer sentimentality
+towards the end--a silk purse cannot be made out of a sow's ear; but the
+miracle was never nearer being accomplished than in this instance. Here
+we see the thoroughly equipped man of letters doing with apparent ease
+what scarce five of his contemporaries could have done at all. The book
+is lightsome and graceful, yet it touches serious thoughts: most
+remarkable of all, it shows a suppleness of mind and freshness of
+feeling more to be expected in a youth of thirty than in a veteran of
+threescore and ten. Bulwer never ceased to grow; and what is better
+still, to grow away from his faults and towards improvement.
+
+But in comparing him with others, we must admit that he had better
+opportunities than most. His social station brought him in contact with
+the best people and most pregnant events of his time; and the driving
+poverty of youth having established him in the novel-writing habit, he
+thereafter had leisure to polish and expand his faculty to the utmost.
+No talent of his was folded up in a napkin: he did his best and utmost
+with all he had. Whereas the path of genius is commonly tortuous and
+hard-beset: and while we are always saying of Shakespeare, or Thackeray,
+or Shelley, or Keats, or Poe, "What wonders they would have done had
+life been longer or fate kinder to them!"--of Bulwer we say, "No help
+was wanting to him, and he profited by all; he got out of the egg more
+than we had believed was in it!" Instead of a great faculty hobbled by
+circumstance, we have a small faculty magnified by occasion and
+enriched by time.
+
+Certainly, as men of letters go, Bulwer must be accounted fortunate. The
+long inflamed row of his domestic life apart, all things went his way.
+He received large sums for his books; at the age of forty, his mother
+dying, he succeeded to the Knebworth estate; three-and-twenty years
+later his old age (if such a man could be called old) was consoled by
+the title of Lord Lytton. His health was never robust, and occasionally
+failed; but he seems to have been able to accomplish after a fashion
+everything that he undertook; he was "thorough," as the English say. He
+lived in the midst of events; he was a friend of the men who made the
+age, and saw them make it, lending a hand himself too when and where he
+could. He lived long enough to see the hostility which had opposed him
+in youth die away, and honor and kindness take its place. Let it be
+repeated, his aims were good. He would have been candid and
+un-selfconscious had that been possible for him; and perhaps the failure
+was one of manner rather than of heart.--Yes, he was a fortunate man.
+
+His most conspicuous success was as a play-writer. In view of his
+essentially dramatic and historic temperament, it is surprising that he
+did not altogether devote himself to this branch of art; but all his
+dramas were produced between his thirty-third and his thirty-eighth
+years. The first--'La Duchesse de la Valliere' was not to the public
+liking; but 'The Lady of Lyons,' written in two weeks, is in
+undiminished favor after near sixty years; and so are 'Richelieu' and
+'Money.' There is no apparent reason why Bulwer should not have been as
+prolific a stage-author as Molière or even Lope de Vega. But we often
+value our best faculties least.
+
+'The Coming Race,' published anonymously and never acknowledged during
+his life, was an unexpected product of his mind, but is useful to mark
+his limitations. It is a forecast of the future, and proves, as nothing
+else could so well do, the utter absence in Bulwer of the creative
+imagination. It is an invention, cleverly conceived, mechanically and
+rather tediously worked out, and written in a style astonishingly
+commonplace. The man who wrote that book (one would say) had no heaven
+in his soul, nor any pinions whereon to soar heavenward. Yet it is full
+of thought and ingenuity, and the central conception of "vrii" has been
+much commended. But the whole concoction is tainted with the deadness of
+stark materialism, and we should be unjust, after all, to deny Bulwer
+something loftier and broader than is discoverable here. In inventing
+the narrative he depended upon the weakest element in his mental
+make-up, and the result could not but be dismal. We like to believe that
+there was better stuff in him than he himself ever found; and that when
+he left this world for the next, he had sloughed off more dross than
+most men have time to accumulate.
+
+[Illustration: Signature:]
+
+THE AMPHITHEATRE
+
+From 'The Last Days of Pompeii'
+
+On the upper tier (but apart from the male spectators) sat the women,
+their gay dresses resembling some gaudy flowerbed; it is needless to add
+that they were the most talkative part of the assembly; and many were
+the looks directed up to them, especially from the benches appropriated
+to the young and the unmarried men. On the lower seats round the arena
+sat the more high-born and wealthy visitors--the magistrates and those
+of senatorial or equestrian dignity: the passages which, by corridors at
+the right and left, gave access to these seats, at either end of the
+oval arena, were also the entrances for the combatants. Strong palings
+at these passages prevented any unwelcome eccentricity in the movements
+of the beasts, and confined them to their appointed prey. Around the
+parapet which was raised above the arena, and from which the seats
+gradually rose, were gladiatorial inscriptions, and paintings wrought in
+fresco, typical of the entertainments for which the place was designed.
+Throughout the whole building wound invisible pipes, from which, as the
+day advanced, cooling and fragrant showers were to be sprinkled over the
+spectators. The officers of the amphitheatre were still employed in the
+task of fixing the vast awning (or _velaria_) which covered the whole,
+and which luxurious invention the Campanians arrogated to themselves: it
+was woven of the whitest Apulian wool, and variegated with broad stripes
+of crimson. Owing either to some inexperience on the part of the workmen
+or to some defect in the machinery, the awning, however, was not
+arranged that day so happily as usual; indeed, from the immense space of
+the circumference, the task was always one of great difficulty and
+art--so much so that it could seldom be adventured in rough or windy
+weather. But the present day was so remarkably still that there seemed
+to the spectators no excuse for the awkwardness of the artificers; and
+when a large gap in the back of the awning was still visible, from the
+obstinate refusal of one part of the velaria to ally itself with the
+rest, the murmurs of discontent were loud and general.
+
+The sedile Pansa, at whose expense the exhibition was given, looked
+particularly annoyed at the defect, and vowed bitter vengeance on the
+head of the chief officer of the show, who, fretting, puffing,
+perspiring, busied himself in idle orders and unavailing threats.
+
+The hubbub ceased suddenly--the operators desisted--the crowd were
+stilled--the gap was forgotten--for now, with a loud and warlike
+flourish of trumpets, the gladiators, marshaled in ceremonious
+procession, entered the arena. They swept round the oval space very
+slowly and deliberately, in order to give the spectators full leisure to
+admire their stern serenity of feature--their brawny limbs and various
+arms, as well as to form such wagers as the excitement of the moment
+might suggest.
+
+"Oh!" cried the widow Fulvia to the wife of Pansa, as they leaned down
+from their lofty bench, "do you see that gigantic gladiator? how drolly
+he is dressed!"
+
+"Yes," said the aedile's wife with complacent importance, for she knew
+all the names and qualities of each combatant: "he is a retiarius or
+netter; he is armed only, you see, with a three-pronged spear like a
+trident, and a net; he wears no armor, only the fillet and the tunic. He
+is a mighty man, and is to fight with Sporus, yon thick-set gladiator,
+with the round shield and drawn sword but without body armor; he has not
+his helmet on now, in order that you may see his face--how fearless it
+is! By-and-by he will fight with his visor down."
+
+"But surely a net and a spear are poor arms against a shield and sword?"
+
+"That shows how innocent you are, my dear Fulvia: the retiarius has
+generally the best of it."
+
+"But who is yon handsome gladiator, nearly naked--is it not quite
+improper? By Venus! but his limbs are beautifully shaped!"
+
+"It is Lydon, a young untried man! he has the rashness to fight yon
+other gladiator similarly dressed, or rather undressed--Tetraides. They
+fight first in the Greek fashion, with the cestus; afterward they put on
+armor, and try sword and shield."
+
+"He is a proper man, this Lydon; and the women, I am sure, are on his
+side."
+
+"So are not the experienced bettors: Clodius offers three to one against
+him."
+
+"Oh, Jove! how beautiful!" exclaimed the widow, as two gladiators, armed
+_cap-à-pie,_ rode round the arena on light and prancing steeds.
+Resembling much the combatants in the tilts of the middle age, they
+bore lances and round shields beautifully inlaid; their armor was woven
+intricately with bands of iron, but it covered only the thighs and the
+right arms; short cloaks extending to the seat gave a picturesque and
+graceful air to their costume; their legs were naked with the exception
+of sandals, which were fastened a little above the ankle. "Oh,
+beautiful! Who are these?" asked the widow.
+
+"The one is named Berbix: he has conquered twelve times. The other
+assumes the arrogant Nobilior. They are both Gauls."
+
+While thus conversing, the first formalities of the show were over. To
+these succeeded a feigned combat with wooden swords between the various
+gladiators matched against each other. Among these the skill of two
+Roman gladiators, hired for the occasion, was the most admired; and next
+to them the most graceful combatant was Lydon. This sham contest did not
+last above an hour, nor did it attract any very lively interest except
+among those connoisseurs of the arena to whom art was preferable to more
+coarse excitement; the body of the spectators were rejoiced when it was
+over, and when the sympathy rose to terror. The combatants were now
+arranged in pairs, as agreed beforehand; their weapons examined; and the
+grave sports of the day commenced amid the deepest silence--broken only
+by an exciting and preliminary blast of warlike music.
+
+It was often customary to begin the sports by the most cruel of all; and
+some bestiarius, or gladiator appointed to the beasts, was slain first
+as an initiatory sacrifice. But in the present instance the experienced
+Pansa thought better that the sanguinary drama should advance, not
+decrease, in interest; and accordingly the execution of Olinthus and
+Glaucus was reserved for the last. It was arranged that the two horsemen
+should first occupy the arena; that the foot gladiators, paired off,
+should then be loosed indiscriminately on the stage; that Glaucus and
+the lion should next perform their part in the bloody spectacle; and the
+tiger and the Nazarene be the grand finale. And in the spectacles of
+Pompeii, the reader of Roman history must limit his imagination, nor
+expect to find those vast and wholesale exhibitions of magnificent
+slaughter with which a Nero or a Caligula regaled the inhabitants of the
+Imperial City. The Roman shows, which absorbed the more celebrated
+gladiators and the chief proportion of foreign beasts, were indeed the
+very reason why in the lesser towns of the empire the sports of the
+amphitheatre were comparatively humane and rare; and in this as in
+other respects, Pompeii was the miniature, the microcosm of Rome. Still,
+it was an awful and imposing spectacle, with which modern times have,
+happily, nothing to compare; a vast theatre, rising row upon row, and
+swarming with human beings, from fifteen to eighteen thousand in number,
+intent upon no fictitious representation--no tragedy of the stage--but
+the actual victory or defeat, the exultant life or the bloody death, of
+each and all who entered the arena!
+
+The two horsemen were now at either extremity of the lists (if so they
+might be called), and at a given signal from Pansa the combatants
+started simultaneously as in full collision, each advancing his round
+buckler, each poising on high his sturdy javelin; but just when within
+three paces of his opponent, the steed of Berbix suddenly halted,
+wheeled round, and, as Nobilior was borne rapidly by, his antagonist
+spurred upon him. The buckler of Nobilior, quickly and skillfully
+extended, received a blow which otherwise would have been fatal.
+
+"Well done, Nobilior!" cried the prætor, giving the first vent to the
+popular excitement.
+
+"Bravely struck, my Berbix!" answered Clodius from his seat.
+
+And the wild murmur, swelled by many a shout, echoed from side to side.
+
+The visors of both the horsemen were completely closed (like those of
+the knights in after times), but the head was nevertheless the great
+point of assault; and Nobilior, now wheeling his charger with no less
+adroitness than his opponent, directed his spear full on the helmet of
+his foe. Berbix raised his buckler to shield himself, and his quick-eyed
+antagonist, suddenly lowering his weapon, pierced him through the
+breast. Berbix reeled and fell.
+
+"Nobilior! Nobilior!" shouted the populace.
+
+"I have lost ten sestertia," said Clodius, between his teeth.
+
+"_Habet_!" (He has it) said Pansa deliberately.
+
+The populace, not yet hardened into cruelty, made the signal of mercy:
+but as the attendants of the arena approached, they found the kindness
+came too late; the heart of the Gaul had been pierced, and his eyes were
+set in death. It was his life's blood that flowed so darkly over the
+sand and sawdust of the arena.
+
+"It is a pity it was so soon over--there was little enough for one's
+trouble," said the widow Fulvia.
+
+"Yes--I have no compassion for Berbix. Any one might have seen that
+Nobilior did but feint. Mark, they fix the fatal hook to the body--they
+drag him away to the spoliarium--they scatter new sand over the stage!
+Pansa regrets nothing more than that he is not rich enough to strew the
+arena with borax and cinnabar, as Nero used to do."
+
+"Well, if it has been a brief battle, it is quickly succeeded. See my
+handsome Lydon on the arena--ay, and the net-bearer too, and the
+swordsmen! Oh, charming!"
+
+There were now on the arena six combatants: Niger and his net, matched
+against Sporus with his shield and his short broad-sword; Lydon and
+Tetraides, naked save by a cincture round the waist, each armed only
+with a heavy Greek cestus; and two gladiators from Rome, clad in
+complete steel, and evenly matched with immense bucklers and
+pointed swords.
+
+The initiatory contest between Lydon and Tetraides being less deadly
+than that between the other combatants, no sooner had they advanced to
+the middle of the arena than as by common consent the rest held back, to
+see how that contest should be decided, and wait till fiercer weapons
+might replace the cestus ere they themselves commenced hostilities. They
+stood leaning on their arms and apart from each other, gazing on the
+show, which, if not bloody enough thoroughly to please the populace,
+they were still inclined to admire because its origin was of their
+ancestral Greece.
+
+No persons could at first glance have seemed less evenly matched than
+the two antagonists. Tetraides, though no taller than Lydon, weighed
+considerably more; the natural size of his muscles was increased, to the
+eyes of the vulgar, by masses of solid flesh; for, as it was a notion
+that the contest of the cestus fared easiest with him who was plumpest,
+Tetraides had encouraged to the utmost his hereditary predisposition to
+the portly. His shoulders were vast, and his lower limbs thick-set,
+double-jointed, and slightly curved outward, in that formation which
+takes so much from beauty to give so largely to strength. But Lydon,
+except that he was slender even almost to meagreness, was beautifully
+and delicately proportioned; and the skillful might have perceived that
+with much less compass of muscle than his foe, that which he had was
+more seasoned--iron and compact. In proportion, too, as he wanted
+flesh, he was likely to possess activity; and a haughty smile on his
+resolute face, which strongly contrasted with the solid heaviness of his
+enemy's, gave assurance to those who beheld it and united their hope to
+their pity; so that despite the disparity of their seeming strength, the
+cry of the multitude was nearly as loud for Lydon as for Tetraides.
+
+Whoever is acquainted with the modern prize-ring--whoever has witnessed
+the heavy and disabling strokes which the human fist, skillfully
+directed, hath the power to bestow--may easily understand how much that
+happy facility would be increased by a band carried by thongs of leather
+round the arm as high as the elbow, and terribly strengthened about the
+knuckles by a plate of iron, and sometimes a plummet of lead. Yet this,
+which was meant to increase, perhaps rather diminished, the interest of
+the fray; for it necessarily shortened its duration. A very few blows,
+successfully and scientifically planted, might suffice to bring the
+contest to a close; and the battle did not, therefore, often allow full
+scope for the energy, fortitude, and dogged perseverance that we
+technically style _pluck_, which not unusually wins the day against
+superior science, and which heightens to so painful a delight the
+interest in the battle and the sympathy for the brave.
+
+"Guard thyself!" growled Tetraides, moving nearer and nearer to his foe,
+who rather shifted round him than receded.
+
+Lydon did not answer, save by a scornful glance of his quick, vigilant
+eye. Tetraides struck--it was as the blow of a smith on a vise; Lydon
+sank suddenly on one knee--the blow passed over his head. Not so
+harmless was Lydon's retaliation; he quickly sprang to his feet, and
+aimed his cestus full on the broad chest of his antagonist. Tetraides
+reeled--the populace shouted.
+
+"You are unlucky to-day," said Lepidus to Clodius: "you have lost one
+bet; you will lose another."
+
+"By the gods! my bronzes go to the auctioneer if that is the case. I
+have no less than a hundred sestertia upon Tetraides. Ha, ha! see how he
+rallies! That was a home stroke: he has cut open Lydon's shoulder.--A
+Tetraides!--a Tetraides!"
+
+"But Lydon is not disheartened. By Pollux! how well he keeps his temper!
+See how dextrously he avoids those hammer-like hands!--dodging now here,
+now there--circling round and round. Ah, poor Lydon! he has it again."
+
+"Three to one still on Tetraides! What say you, Lepidus?"
+
+"Well--nine sestertia to three--be it so! What! again Lydon. He
+stops--he gasps for breath. By the gods, he is down! No--he is again on
+his legs. Brave Lydon! Tetraides is encouraged--he laughs loud--he
+rushes on him."
+
+"Fool--success blinds him--he should be cautious. Lydon's eye is like a
+lynx's!" said Clodius, between his teeth.
+
+"Ha, Clodius! saw you that? Your man totters! Another blow--he falls--he
+falls!"
+
+"Earth revives him then. He is once more up; but the blood rolls down
+his face."
+
+"By the Thunderer! Lydon wins it. See how he presses on him! That blow
+on the temple would have crushed an ox! it _has_ crushed Tetraides. He
+falls again--he cannot move--_habet_!--_habet_!"
+
+"_Habet_!" repeated Pansa. "Take them out and give them the armor and
+swords." ...
+
+While the contest in the amphitheatre had thus commenced, there was one
+in the loftier benches for whom it had assumed indeed a poignant, a
+stifling interest. The aged father of Lydon, despite his Christian
+horror of the spectacle, in his agonized anxiety for his son had not
+been able to resist being the spectator of his fate. Once amid a fierce
+crowd of strangers, the lowest rabble of the populace, the old man saw,
+felt nothing but the form, the presence of his brave son! Not a sound
+had escaped his lips when twice he had seen him fall to the earth; only
+he had turned paler, and his limbs trembled. But he had uttered one low
+cry when he saw him victorious; unconscious, alas! of the more fearful
+battle to which that victory was but a prelude.
+
+"My gallant boy!" said he, and wiped his eyes.
+
+"Is he thy son?" said a brawny fellow to the right of the Nazarene: "he
+has fought well; let us see how he does by-and-by. Hark! he is to fight
+the first victor. Now, old boy, pray the gods that that victor be
+neither of the Romans! nor, next to them, the giant Niger."
+
+The old man sat down again and covered his face. The fray for the moment
+was indifferent to him--Lydon was not one of the combatants. Yet, yet,
+the thought flashed across him--the fray was indeed of deadly
+interest--the first who fell was to make way for Lydon! He started, and
+bent down, with straining eyes and clasped hands, to view the
+encounter.
+
+The first interest was attracted toward the combat of Niger with Sporus;
+for this spectacle of contest, from the fatal result which usually
+attended it, and from the great science it required in either
+antagonist, was always peculiarly inviting to the spectators.
+
+They stood at a considerable distance from each other. The singular
+helmet which Sporus wore (the visor of which was down) concealed his
+face; but the features of Niger attracted a fearful and universal
+interest from their compressed and vigilant ferocity. Thus they stood
+for some moments, each eying each, until Sporus began slowly and with
+great caution to advance, holding his sword pointed, like a modern
+fencer's, at the breast of his foe. Niger retreated as his antagonist
+advanced, gathering up his net with his right hand and never taking his
+small, glittering eye from the movements of the swordsman. Suddenly,
+when Sporus had approached nearly at arm's length, the retiarius threw
+himself forward and cast his net. A quick inflection of body saved the
+gladiator from the deadly snare; he uttered a sharp cry of joy and rage
+and rushed upon Niger; but Niger had already drawn in his net, thrown it
+across his shoulders, and now fled around the lists with a swiftness
+which the _secutor_[6] in vain endeavored to equal. The people laughed
+and shouted aloud to see the ineffectual efforts of the broad-shouldered
+gladiator to overtake the flying giant; when at that moment their
+attention was turned from these to the two Roman combatants.
+
+[Footnote 6: So called from the office of that tribe of gladiators in
+_following_ the foe the moment the net was cast, in order to smite him
+ere he could have time to re-arrange it.]
+
+They had placed themselves at the onset face to face, at the distance of
+modern fencers from each other; but the extreme caution which both
+evinced at first had prevented any warmth of engagement, and allowed the
+spectators full leisure to interest themselves in the battle between
+Sporus and his foe. But the Romans were now heated into full and fierce
+encounter: they pushed--returned--advanced on--retreated from each
+other, with all that careful yet scarcely perceptible caution which
+characterizes men well experienced and equally matched. But at this
+moment Eumolpus, the older gladiator, by that dextrous back-stroke which
+was considered in the arena so difficult to avoid, had wounded Nepimus
+in the side. The people shouted; Lepidus turned pale.
+
+"Ho!" said Clodius, "the game is nearly over. If Eumolpus rights now the
+quiet fight, the other will gradually bleed himself away."
+
+"But, thank the gods! he does _not_ fight the backward fight. See!--he
+presses hard upon Nepimus. By Mars! but Nepimus had him there! the
+helmet rang again!--Clodius, I shall win!"
+
+"Why do I ever bet but at the dice?" groaned Clodius to himself;--"or
+why cannot one cog a gladiator?"
+
+"A Sporus!--a Sporus!" shouted the populace, as Niger, now having
+suddenly paused, had again cast his net, and again unsuccessfully. He
+had not retreated this time with sufficient agility--the sword of Sporus
+had inflicted a severe wound upon his right leg; and, incapacitated to
+fly, he was pressed hard by the fierce swordsman. His great height and
+length of arm still continued, however, to give him no despicable
+advantages; and steadily keeping his trident at the front of his foe, he
+repelled him successfully for several minutes.
+
+Sporus now tried by great rapidity of evolution to get round his
+antagonist, who necessarily moved with pain and slowness. In so doing he
+lost his caution--he advanced too near to the giant--raised his arm to
+strike, and received the three points of the fatal spear full in his
+breast! He sank on his knee. In a moment more the deadly net was cast
+over him,--he struggled against its meshes in vain; again--again--again
+he writhed mutely beneath the fresh strokes of the trident--his blood
+flowed fast through the net and redly over the sand. He lowered his arms
+in acknowledgment of defeat.
+
+The conquering retiarius withdrew his net, and leaning on his spear,
+looked to the audience for their judgment. Slowly, too, at the same
+moment, the vanquished gladiator rolled his dim and despairing eyes
+around the theatre. From row to row, from bench to bench, there glared
+upon him but merciless and unpitying eyes.
+
+Hushed was the roar--the murmur! The silence was dread, for in it was no
+sympathy; not a hand--no, not even a woman's hand--gave the signal of
+charity and life! Sporus had never been popular in the arena; and lately
+the interest of the combat had been excited on behalf of the wounded
+Niger. The people were warmed into blood--the _mimic_ fight had ceased
+to charm; the interest had mounted up to the desire of sacrifice and the
+thirst of death!
+
+The gladiator felt that his doom was sealed; he uttered no prayer--no
+groan. The people gave the signal of death! In dogged but agonized
+submission he bent his neck to receive the fatal stroke. And now, as the
+spear of the retiarius was not a weapon to inflict instant and certain
+death, there stalked into the arena a grim and fatal form, brandishing a
+short, sharp sword, and with features utterly concealed beneath its
+visor. With slow and measured step this dismal headsman approached the
+gladiator, still kneeling--laid the left hand on his humbled crest--drew
+the edge of the blade across his neck--turned round to the assembly,
+lest, in the last moment, remorse should come upon them; the dread
+signal continued the same; the blade glittered brightly in the
+air--fell--and the gladiator rolled upon the sand: his limbs
+quivered--were still--he was a corpse.
+
+His body was dragged at once from the arena through the gate of death,
+and thrown into the gloomy den termed technically the "spoliarium." And
+ere it had well reached that destination the strife between the
+remaining combatants was decided. The sword of Eumolpus had inflicted
+the death-wound upon the less experienced combatant. A new victim was
+added to the receptacle of the slain.
+
+Throughout that mighty assembly there now ran a universal movement; the
+people breathed more freely and settled themselves in their seats. A
+grateful shower was cast over every row from the concealed conduits. In
+cool and luxurious pleasure they talked over the late spectacle of
+blood. Eumolpus removed his helmet and wiped his brows; his close-curled
+hair and short beard, his noble Roman features and bright dark eye,
+attracted the general admiration. He was fresh, unwounded, unfatigued.
+
+The ædile paused, and proclaimed aloud that as Niger's wound disabled
+him from again entering the arena, Lydon was to be the successor to the
+slaughtered Nepimus and the new combatant of Eumolpus.
+
+"Yet, Lydon," added he, "if thou wouldst decline the combat with one so
+brave and tried, thou mayst have full liberty to do so. Eumolpus is not
+the antagonist that was originally decreed for thee. Thou knowest best
+how far thou canst cope with him. If thou failest, thy doom is honorable
+death; if thou conquerest, out of my own purse I will double the
+stipulated prize."
+
+The people shouted applause. Lydon stood in the lists; he gazed around;
+high above he beheld the pale face, the straining eyes of his father.
+He turned away irresolute for a moment. No! the conquest of the cestus
+was not sufficient--he had not yet won the prize of victory--his father
+was still a slave!
+
+"Noble ædile!" he replied, in a firm and deep tone, "I shrink not from
+this combat. For the honor of Pompeii, I demand that one trained by its
+long-celebrated lanista shall do battle with this Roman."
+
+The people shouted louder than before.
+
+"Four to one against Lydon!" said Clodius to Lepidus.
+
+"I would not take twenty to one! Why, Eumolpus is a very Achilles, and
+this poor fellow is but a tyro!"
+
+Eumolpus gazed hard on the face of Lydon: he smiled; yet the smile was
+followed by a slight and scarce audible sigh--a touch of compassionate
+emotion, which custom conquered the moment the heart acknowledged it.
+
+And now both, clad in complete armor, the sword drawn, the visor closed,
+the two last combatants of the arena (ere man, at least, was matched
+with beast) stood opposed to each other.
+
+It was just at this time that a letter was delivered to the prætor by
+one of the attendants of the arena; he removed the cincture--glanced
+over it for a moment--his countenance betrayed surprise and
+embarrassment. He re-read the letter, and then muttering,--"Tush! it is
+impossible!--the man must be drunk, even in the morning, to dream of
+such follies!"--threw it carelessly aside and gravely settled himself
+once more in the attitude of attention to the sports.
+
+The interest of the public was wound up very high. Eumolpus had at first
+won their favor; but the gallantry of Lydon, and his well-timed allusion
+to the honor of the Pompeiian lanista, had afterward given the latter
+the preference in their eyes.
+
+"Holla, old fellow!" said Medon's neighbor to him. "Your son is hardly
+matched; but never fear, the editor will not permit him to be slain--no,
+nor the people neither: he has behaved too bravely for that. Ha! that
+was a home thrust!--well averted by Pollux! At him again, Lydon!--they
+stop to breathe! What art thou muttering, old boy?"
+
+"Prayers!" answered Medon, with a more calm and hopeful mien than he had
+yet maintained.
+
+"Prayers!--trifles! The time for gods to carry a man away in a cloud is
+gone now. Ha! Jupiter, what a blow! Thy side--thy side!--take care of
+thy side, Lydon!"
+
+There was a convulsive tremor throughout the assembly. A fierce blow
+from Eumolpus, full on the crest, had brought Lydon to his knee.
+
+"_Habet_!--he has it!" cried a shrill female voice; "he has it!"
+
+It was the voice of the girl who had so anxiously anticipated the
+sacrifice of some criminal to the beasts.
+
+"Be silent, child!" said the wife of Pansa, haughtily. "_Non habet!_--he
+is _not_ wounded!"
+
+"I wish he were, if only to spite old surly Medon," muttered the girl.
+
+Meanwhile Lydon, who had hitherto defended himself with great skill and
+valor, began to give way before the vigorous assaults of the practiced
+Roman; his arm grew tired, his eye dizzy, he breathed hard and
+painfully. The combatants paused again for breath.
+
+"Young man," said Eumolpus, in a low voice, "desist; I will wound thee
+slightly--then lower thy arm; thou hast propitiated the editor and the
+mob--thou wilt be honorably saved!"
+
+"And my father still enslaved!" groaned Lydon to himself. "No! death or
+his freedom."
+
+At that thought, and seeing that, his strength not being equal to the
+endurance of the Roman, everything depended on a sudden and desperate
+effort, he threw himself fiercely on Eumolpus; the Roman warily
+retreated--Lydon thrust again--Eumolpus drew himself aside--the sword
+grazed his cuirass--Lydon's breast was exposed--the Roman plunged his
+sword through the joints of the armor, not meaning however to inflict a
+deep wound; Lydon, weak and exhausted, fell forward, fell right on the
+point; it passed through and through, even to the back. Eumolpus drew
+forth his blade; Lydon still made an effort to regain his balance--his
+sword left his grasp--he struck mechanically at the gladiator with his
+naked hand and fell prostrate on the arena. With one accord, ædile and
+assembly made the signal of mercy; the officers of the arena approached,
+they took off the helmet of the vanquished. He still breathed; his eyes
+rolled fiercely on his foe; the savageness he had acquired in his
+calling glared from his gaze and lowered upon the brow, darkened already
+with the shades of death; then with a convulsive groan, with a
+half-start, he lifted his eyes above. They rested not on the face of the
+ædile nor on the pitying brows of the relenting judges. He saw them not;
+they were as if the vast space was desolate and bare; one pale
+agonizing face alone was all he recognized--one cry of a broken heart
+was all that, amid the murmurs and the shouts of the populace, reached
+his ear. The ferocity vanished from his brow; a soft, tender expression
+of sanctifying but despairing filial love played over his
+features--played--waned--darkened! His face suddenly became locked and
+rigid, resuming its former fierceness. He fell upon the earth.
+
+"Look to him," said the ædile; "he has done his duty!"
+
+The officers dragged him off to the spoliarium.
+
+"A true type of glory, and of its fate!" murmured Arbaces to himself;
+and his eye, glancing around the amphitheatre, betrayed so much of
+disdain and scorn that whoever encountered it felt his breath suddenly
+arrested, and his emotions frozen into one sensation of abasement and
+of awe.
+
+Again rich perfumes were wafted around the theatre; the attendants
+sprinkled fresh sand over the arena.
+
+"Bring forth the lion and Glaucus the Athenian," said the ædile.
+
+And a deep and breathless hush of overwrought interest and intense (yet
+strange to say not unpleasing) terror lay like a mighty and awful dream
+over the assembly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The door swung gratingly back--the gleam of spears shot along the wall.
+
+"Glaucus the Athenian, thy time has come," said a loud and clear voice;
+"the lion awaits thee."
+
+"I am ready," said the Athenian. "Brother and co-mate, one last embrace!
+Bless me--and farewell!"
+
+The Christian opened his arms; he clasped the young heathen to his
+breast; he kissed his forehead and cheek; he sobbed aloud; his tears
+flowed fast and hot over the features of his new friend.
+
+"Oh! could I have converted thee, I had not wept. Oh that I might say to
+thee, 'We two shall sup this night in Paradise!'"
+
+"It may be so yet," answered the Greek with a tremulous voice, "They
+whom death parts now may yet meet beyond the grave; on the earth--oh!
+the beautiful, the beloved earth, farewell for ever! Worthy officer, I
+attend you."
+
+Glaucus tore himself away; and when he came forth into the air, its
+breath, which though sunless was hot and arid, smote witheringly upon
+him. His frame, not yet restored from the effects of the deadly
+draught, shrank and trembled. The officers supported him.
+
+"Courage!" said one; "thou art young, active, well knit. They give thee
+a weapon! despair not, and thou mayst yet conquer."
+
+Glaucus did not reply; but ashamed of his infirmity, he made a desperate
+and convulsive effort and regained the firmness of his nerves. They
+anointed his body, completely naked save by a cincture round the loins,
+placed the stilus (vain weapon!) in his hand, and led him into
+the arena.
+
+And now when the Greek saw the eyes of thousands and tens of thousands
+upon him, he no longer felt that he was mortal. All evidence of fear,
+all fear itself, was gone. A red and haughty flush spread over the
+paleness of his features; he towered aloft to the full of his glorious
+stature. In the elastic beauty of his limbs and form; in his intent but
+unfrowning brow; in the high disdain and in the indomitable soul which
+breathed visibly, which spoke audibly, from his attitude, his lip, his
+eye,--he seemed the very incarnation, vivid and corporeal, of the valor
+of his land; of the divinity of its worship: at once a hero and a god!
+
+The murmur of hatred and horror at his crime which had greeted his
+entrance died into the silence of involuntary admiration and
+half-compassionate respect; and with a quick and convulsive sigh, that
+seemed to move the whole mass of life as if it were one body, the gaze
+of the spectators turned from the Athenian to a dark uncouth object in
+the centre of the arena. It was the grated den of the lion.
+
+"By Venus, how warm it is!" said Fulvia, "yet there is no sun. Would
+that those stupid sailors could have fastened up that gap in
+the awning!"
+
+"Oh, it is warm indeed. I turn sick--I faint!" said the wife of Pansa;
+even her experienced stoicism giving way at the struggle about to
+take place.
+
+The lion had been kept without food for twenty-four hours, and the
+animal had, during the whole morning, testified a singular and restless
+uneasiness, which the keeper had attributed to the pangs of hunger. Yet
+its bearing seemed rather that of fear than of rage; its roar was
+painful and distressed; it hung its head--snuffed the air through the
+bars--then lay down--started again--and again uttered its wild and
+far-resounding cries. And now in its den it lay utterly dumb and mute,
+with distended nostrils forced hard against the grating, and disturbing,
+with a heaving breath, the sand below on the arena.
+
+The editor's lip quivered, and his cheek grew pale; he looked anxiously
+around--hesitated--delayed; the crowd became impatient. Slowly he gave
+the sign; the keeper, who was behind the den, cautiously removed the
+grating, and the lion leaped forth with a mighty and glad roar of
+release. The keeper hastily retreated through the grated passage leading
+from the arena, and left the lord of the forest--and his prey.
+
+Glaucus had bent his limbs so as to give himself the firmest posture at
+the expected rush of the lion, with his small and shining weapon raised
+on high, in the faint hope that _one_ well-directed thrust (for he knew
+that he should have time but for _one_) might penetrate through the eye
+to the brain of his grim foe.
+
+But to the unutterable astonishment of all, the beast seemed not even
+aware of the presence of the criminal.
+
+At the first moment of its release it halted abruptly in the arena,
+raised itself half on end, snuffing the upward air with impatient signs,
+then suddenly it sprang forward, but not on the Athenian. At half-speed
+it circled round and round the space, turning its vast head from side to
+side with an anxious and perturbed gaze, as if seeking only some avenue
+of escape; once or twice it endeavored to leap up the parapet that
+divided it from the audience, and on falling, uttered rather a baffled
+howl than its deep-toned and kingly roar. It evinced no sign either of
+wrath or hunger; its tail drooped along the sand, instead of lashing its
+gaunt sides; and its eye, though it wandered at times to Glaucus, rolled
+again listlessly from him. At length, as if tired of attempting to
+escape, it crept with a moan into its cage, and once more laid itself
+down to rest.
+
+The first surprise of the assembly at the apathy of the lion soon grew
+converted into resentment at its cowardice; and the populace already
+merged their pity for the fate of Glaucus into angry compassion for
+their own disappointment.
+
+The editor called to the keeper:--"How is this? Take the goad, prick him
+forth, and then close the door of the den."
+
+As the keeper, with some fear but more astonishment, was preparing to
+obey, a loud cry was heard at one of the entrances of the arena; there
+was a confusion, a bustle--voices of remonstrance suddenly breaking
+forth, and suddenly silenced at the reply. All eyes turned in
+wonder at the interruption, toward the quarter of the disturbance; the
+crowd gave way, and suddenly Sallust appeared on the senatorial benches,
+his hair disheveled--breathless--heated--half exhausted. He cast his
+eyes hastily round the ring. "Remove the Athenian!" he cried; "haste--he
+is innocent! Arrest Arbaces the Egyptian--HE is the murderer of
+Apæcides!"
+
+[Illustration: _IN THE ARENA,_ Photogravure from a Drawing by Frank
+Kirchbach.
+
+"Glaucus had bent his limbs so as to give himself the firmest posture at
+the expected rush of the lion, with his small and shining weapon raised
+on high, in the faint hope that _one_ well-directed thrust (for he knew
+that he should have time but for _one_) might penetrate through the eye
+to the brain of his grim foe. But to the unutterable astonishment of
+all, the beast seemed not even aware of the presence of the criminal." ]
+
+[Illustration: Untitled]
+
+"Art thou mad, O Sallust!" said the prætor, rising from his seat. "What
+means this raving?"
+
+"Remove the Athenian!--Quick! or his blood be on your head. Prætor,
+delay, and you answer with your own life to the Emperor! I bring with me
+the eye-witness to the death of the priest Apæcides. Room there, stand
+back, give way. People of Pompeii, fix every eye upon Arbaces; there he
+sits! Room there for the priest Calenus!"
+
+Pale, haggard, fresh from the jaws of famine and of death, his face
+fallen, his eyes dull as a vulture's, his broad frame gaunt as a
+skeleton, Calenus was supported into the very row in which Arbaces sat.
+His releasers had given him sparingly of food; but the chief sustenance
+that nerved his feeble limbs was revenge!
+
+"The priest Calenus--Calenus!" cried the mob. "It is he? No--it is a
+dead man!"
+
+"It is the priest Calenus," said the prætor, gravely. "What hast thou to
+say?"
+
+"Arbaces of Egypt is the murderer of Apæcides, the priest of Isis; these
+eyes saw him deal the blow. It is from the dungeon into which he plunged
+me--it is from the darkness and horror of a death by famine--that the
+gods have raised me to proclaim his crime! Release the Athenian--_he_ is
+innocent!"
+
+"It is for this, then, that the lion spared him, A miracle! a miracle!"
+cried Pansa.
+
+"A miracle! a miracle!" shouted the people; "remove the
+Athenian--_Arbaces to the lion_."
+
+And that shout echoed from hill to vale--from coast to sea--_Arbaces to
+the lion_.
+
+"Officers, remove the accused Glaucus--remove, but guard him yet," said
+the prætor. "The gods lavish their wonders upon this day."
+
+As the prætor gave the word of release, there was a cry of joy: a female
+voice, a child's voice; and it was of joy! It rang through the heart of
+the assembly with electric force; it was touching, it was holy, that
+child's voice. And the populace echoed it back with sympathizing
+congratulation.
+
+"Silence!" said the grave prætor; "who is there?"
+
+"The blind girl--Nydia," answered Sallust; "it is her hand that has
+raised Calenus from the grave, and delivered Glaucus from the lion."
+
+"Of this hereafter," said the prætor. "Calenus, priest of Isis, thou
+accusest Arbaces of the murder of Apæcides?"
+
+"I do!"
+
+"Thou didst behold the deed?"
+
+"Prætor--with these eyes--"
+
+"Enough at present--the details must be reserved for more suiting time
+and place. Arbaces of Egypt, thou hearest the charge against thee--thou
+hast not yet spoken--what hast thou to say?"
+
+The gaze of the crowd had been long riveted on Arbaces; but not until
+the confusion which he had betrayed at the first charge of Sallust and
+the entrance of Calenus had subsided. At the shout, "Arbaces to the
+lion!" he had indeed trembled, and the dark bronze of his cheek had
+taken a paler hue. But he had soon recovered his haughtiness and
+self-control. Proudly he returned the angry glare of the countless eyes
+around him; and replying now to the question of the prætor, he said, in
+that accent so peculiarly tranquil and commanding which characterized
+his tones:--
+
+"Prætor, this charge is so mad that it scarcely deserves reply. My first
+accuser is the noble Sallust--the most intimate friend of Glaucus! My
+second is a priest: I revere his garb and calling--but, people of
+Pompeii! ye know somewhat of the character of Calenus--he is griping and
+gold-thirsty to a proverb; the witness of such men is to be bought!
+Prætor, I am innocent!"
+
+"Sallust," said the magistrate, "where found you Calenus?"
+
+"In the dungeons of Arbaces."
+
+"Egyptian," said the prætor, frowning, "thou didst, then, dare to
+imprison a priest of the gods--and wherefore?"
+
+[Illustration: NYDIA The blind flower-girl of Bulwer's Last Days of
+Pompeii. Photogravure from a Painting by C. Von Bodenhausen.]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Hear me," answered Arbaces, rising calmly, but with agitation visible
+in his face. "This man came to threaten that he would make against me
+the charge he has now made, unless I would purchase his silence with
+half my fortune; I remonstrated--in vain. Peace there--let not the
+priest interrupt me! Noble prætor--and ye, O people! I was a stranger in
+the land--I knew myself innocent of crime--but the witness of a
+priest against me might yet destroy me. In my perplexity I decoyed him
+to the cell whence he has been released, on pretense that it was the
+coffer-house of my gold. I resolved to detain him there until the fate
+of the true criminal was sealed and his threats could avail no longer;
+but I meant no worse. I may have erred--but who among ye will not
+acknowledge the equity of self-preservation? Were I guilty, why was the
+witness of this priest silent at the trial?--_then_ I had not detained
+or concealed him. Why did he not proclaim my guilt when I proclaimed
+that of Glaucus? Prætor, this needs an answer. For the rest, I throw
+myself on your laws. I demand their protection. Remove hence the accused
+and the accuser. I will willingly meet, and cheerfully abide by the
+decision of, the legitimate tribunal. This is no place for
+further parley."
+
+"He says right." said the prætor. "Ho! guards--remove Arbaces--guard
+Calenus! Sallust, we hold you responsible for your accusation. Let the
+sports be resumed."
+
+"What!" cried Calenus, turning round to the people, "shall Isis be thus
+contemned? Shall the blood of Apæcides yet cry for vengeance? Shall
+justice be delayed now, that it may be frustrated hereafter? Shall the
+lion be cheated of his lawful prey? A god! a god!--I feel the god rush
+to my lips! _To the lion--to the lion with Arbaces_!"
+
+His exhausted frame could support no longer the ferocious malice of the
+priest; he sank on the ground in strong convulsions; the foam gathered
+to his mouth; he was as a man, indeed, whom a supernatural power had
+entered! The people saw, and shuddered.
+
+"It is a god that inspires the holy man! _To the lion with the
+Egyptian_!"
+
+With that cry up sprang, on moved, thousands upon thousands. They rushed
+from the heights; they poured down in the direction of the Egyptian. In
+vain did the ædile command; in vain did the prætor lift his voice and
+proclaim the law. The people had been already rendered savage by the
+exhibition of blood; they thirsted for more; their superstition was
+aided by their ferocity. Aroused, inflamed by the spectacle of their
+victims, they forgot the authority of their rulers. It was one of those
+dread popular convulsions common to crowds wholly ignorant, half free
+and half servile, and which the peculiar constitution of the Roman
+provinces so frequently exhibited. The power of the prætor was a reed
+beneath the whirlwind; still, at his word the guards had drawn
+themselves along the lower benches, on which the upper classes sat
+separate from the vulgar. They made but a feeble barrier; the waves of
+the human sea halted for a moment, to enable Arbaces to count the exact
+moment of his doom! In despair, and in a terror which beat down even
+pride, he glanced his eye over the rolling and rushing crowd; when,
+right above them, through the wide chasm which had been left in the
+velaria, he beheld a strange and awful apparition; he beheld, and his
+craft restored his courage!
+
+He stretched his hand on high; over his lofty brow and royal features
+there came an expression, of unutterable solemnity and command.
+
+"Behold!" he shouted with a voice of thunder, which stilled the roar of
+the crowd: "behold how the gods protect the guiltless! The fires of the
+avenging Orcus burst forth against the false witness of my accusers!"
+
+The eyes of the crowd followed the gesture of the Egyptian, and beheld
+with dismay a vast vapor shooting from the summit of Vesuvius in the
+form of a gigantic pine-tree; the trunk, blackness--the branches
+fire!--a fire that shifted and wavered in its hues with every moment,
+now fiercely luminous, now of a dull and dying red, that again blazed
+terrifically forth with intolerable glare!
+
+There was a dead, heart-sunken silence; through which there suddenly
+broke the roar of the lion, which was echoed back from within the
+building by the sharper and fiercer yells of its fellow-beast. Dread
+seers were they of the Burden of the Atmosphere, and wild prophets of
+the wrath to come!
+
+Then there arose on high the universal shrieks of women; the men stared
+at each other, but were dumb. At that moment they felt the earth shake
+under their feet; the walls of the theatre trembled; and beyond in the
+distance they heard the crash of falling roofs; an instant more, and the
+mountain cloud seemed to roll toward them, dark and rapid, like a
+torrent; at the same time it cast forth from its bosom a shower of ashes
+mixed with vast fragments of burning stone! over the crushing vines,
+over the desolate streets, over the amphitheatre itself; far and wide,
+with many a mighty splash in the agitated sea, fell that awful shower!
+
+No longer thought the crowd of justice or of Arbaces; safety for
+themselves was their sole thought. Each turned to fly--each dashing,
+pressing, crushing against the other. Trampling recklessly over the
+fallen, amid groans and oaths and prayers and sudden shrieks, the
+enormous crowd vomited itself forth through the numerous passages.
+Whither should they fly? Some, anticipating a second earthquake,
+hastened to their homes to load themselves with their more costly goods
+and escape while it was yet time; others, dreading the showers of ashes
+that now fell fast, torrent upon torrent, over the streets, rushed under
+the roofs of the nearest houses, or temples, or sheds--shelter of any
+kind--for protection from the terrors of the open air. But darker, and
+larger, and mightier, spread the cloud above them. It was a sudden and
+more ghastly Night rushing upon the realm of Noon!
+
+
+
+KENELM AND LILY
+
+From 'Kenelm Chillingly'
+
+The children have come,--some thirty of them, pretty as English children
+generally are, happy in the joy of the summer sunshine, and the flower
+lawns, and the feast under cover of an awning suspended between
+chestnut-trees and carpeted with sward.
+
+No doubt Kenelm held his own at the banquet, and did his best to
+increase the general gayety, for whenever he spoke the children listened
+eagerly, and when he had done they laughed mirthfully.
+
+"The fair face I promised you," whispered Mrs. Braefield, "is not here
+yet. I have a little note from the young lady to say that Mrs. Cameron
+does not feel very well this morning, but hopes to recover sufficiently
+to come later in the afternoon."
+
+"And pray who is Mrs. Cameron?"
+
+"Ah! I forgot that you are a stranger to the place. Mrs. Cameron is the
+aunt with whom Lily resides. Is it not a pretty name, Lily?"
+
+"Very! emblematic of a spinster that does not spin, with a white head
+and a thin stalk."
+
+"Then the name belies my Lily; as you will see."
+
+The children now finished their feast and betook themselves to dancing,
+in an alley smoothed for a croquet-ground and to the sound of a violin
+played by the old grandfather of one of the party. While Mrs. Braefield
+was busying herself with forming the dance, Kenelm seized the occasion
+to escape from a young nymph of the age of twelve, who had sat next to
+him at the banquet and taken so great a fancy to him that he began to
+fear she would vow never to forsake his side,--and stole away
+undetected.
+
+There are times when the mirth of others only saddens us, especially the
+mirth of children with high spirits, that jar on our own quiet mood.
+Gliding through a dense shrubbery, in which, though the lilacs were
+faded, the laburnum still retained here and there the waning gold of its
+clusters, Kenelm came into a recess which bounded his steps and invited
+him to repose. It was a circle, so formed artificially by slight
+trellises, to which clung parasite roses heavy with leaves and flowers.
+In the midst played a tiny fountain with a silvery murmuring sound; at
+the background, dominating the place, rose the crests of stately trees,
+on which the sunlight shimmered, but which rampired out all horizon
+beyond. Even as in life do the great dominant passions--love, ambition,
+desire of power, or gold, or fame, or knowledge--form the proud
+background to the brief-lived flowerets of our youth, lift our eyes
+beyond the smile of their bloom, catch the glint of a loftier sunbeam,
+and yet--and yet--exclude our sight from the lengths and the widths of
+the space which extends behind and beyond them.
+
+Kenelm threw himself on the turf beside the fountain. From afar came the
+whoop and the laugh of the children in their sports or their dance. At
+the distance their joy did not sadden him--he marveled why; and thus, in
+musing reverie, thought to explain the why to himself.
+
+"The poet," so ran his lazy thinking, "has told us that 'distance lends
+enchantment to the view,' and thus compares to the charm of distance the
+illusion of hope. But the poet narrows the scope of his own
+illustration. Distance lends enchantment to the ear as well as to the
+sight; nor to these bodily senses alone. Memory, no less than hope, owes
+its charm to 'the far away.'
+
+"I cannot imagine myself again a child when I am in the midst of yon
+noisy children. But as their noise reaches me here, subdued and
+mellowed; and knowing, thank Heaven! that the urchins are not within
+reach of me, I could readily dream myself back into childhood and into
+sympathy with the lost playfields of school.
+
+"So surely it must be with grief: how different the terrible agony for a
+beloved one just gone from earth, to the soft regret for one who
+disappeared into heaven years ago! So with the art of poetry: how
+imperatively, when it deals with the great emotions of tragedy, it must
+remove the actors from us, in proportion as the emotions are to elevate,
+and the tragedy is to please us by the tears it draws! Imagine our shock
+if a poet were to place on the stage some wise gentleman with whom we
+dined yesterday, and who was discovered to have killed his father and
+married his mother. But when Oedipus commits those unhappy mistakes
+nobody is shocked. Oxford in the nineteenth century is a long way off
+from Thebes three thousand or four thousand years ago.
+
+"And," continued Kenelm, plunging deeper into the maze of metaphysical
+criticism, "even where the poet deals with persons and things close upon
+our daily sight--if he would give them poetic charm he must resort to a
+sort of moral or psychological distance; the nearer they are to us in
+external circumstance, the farther they must be in some internal
+peculiarities. Werter and Clarissa Harlowe are described as
+contemporaries of their artistic creation, and with the minutest details
+of an apparent realism; yet they are at once removed from our daily
+lives by their idiosyncrasies and their fates. We know that while Werter
+and Clarissa are so near to us in much that we sympathize with them as
+friends and kinsfolk, they are yet as much remote from us in the poetic
+and idealized side of their natures as if they belonged to the age of
+Homer; and this it is that invests with charm the very pain which their
+fate inflicts on us. Thus, I suppose, it must be in love. If the love we
+feel is to have the glamor of poetry, it must be love for some one
+morally at a distance from our ordinary habitual selves; in short,
+differing from us in attributes which, however near we draw to the
+possessor, we can never approach, never blend, in attributes of our own;
+so that there is something in the loved one that always remains an
+ideal--a mystery--'a sun-bright summit mingling with the sky!'" ...
+
+From this state, half comatose, half unconscious, Kenelm was roused
+slowly, reluctantly. Something struck softly on his cheek--again a
+little less softly; he opened his eyes--they fell first upon two tiny
+rosebuds, which, on striking his face, had fallen on his breast; and
+then looking up, he saw before him, in an opening of the trellised
+circle, a female child's laughing face. Her hand was still uplifted,
+charged with another rosebud; but behind the child's figure, looking
+over her shoulder and holding back the menacing arm, was a face as
+innocent but lovelier far--the face of a girl in her first youth, framed
+round with the blossoms that festooned the trellis. How the face became
+the flowers! It seemed the fairy spirit of them.
+
+Kenelm started and rose to his feet. The child, the one whom he had so
+ungallantly escaped from, ran towards him through a wicket in the
+circle. Her companion disappeared.
+
+"Is it you?" said Kenelm to the child--"you who pelted me so cruelly?
+Ungrateful creature! Did I not give you the best strawberries in the
+dish, and all my own cream?"
+
+"But why did you run away and hide yourself when you ought to be dancing
+with me?" replied the young lady, evading, with the instinct of her sex,
+all answer to the reproach she had deserved.
+
+"I did not run away; and it is clear that I did not mean to hide myself,
+since you so easily found me out. But who was the young lady with you? I
+suspect she pelted me too, for _she_ seems to have run away to
+hide herself."
+
+"No, she did not pelt you; she wanted to stop me, and you would have had
+another rosebud--oh, so much bigger!--if she had not held back my arm.
+Don't you know her--don't you know Lily?"
+
+"No; so that is Lily? You shall introduce me to her."
+
+By this time they had passed out of the circle through the little wicket
+opposite the path by which Kenelm had entered, and opening at once on
+the lawn. Here at some distance the children were grouped; some reclined
+on the grass, some walking to and fro, in the interval of the dance....
+
+Before he had reached the place, Mrs. Braefield met him.
+
+"Lily is come!"
+
+"I know it--I have seen her."
+
+"Is not she beautiful?"
+
+"I must see more of her if I am to answer critically; but before you
+introduce me, may I be permitted to ask who and what is Lily?"
+
+Mrs. Braefield paused a moment before she answered, and yet the answer
+was brief enough not to need much consideration She is a Miss Mordaunt,
+an orphan; and as I before told you, resides with her aunt, Mrs.
+Cameron, a widow. They have the prettiest cottage you ever saw on the
+banks of the river, or rather rivulet, about a mile from this place.
+Mrs. Cameron is a very good, simple-hearted woman. As to Lily, I can
+praise her beauty only with safe conscience, for as yet she is a mere
+child--her mind quite unformed."
+
+"Did you ever meet any man, much less any woman, whose mind was formed?"
+muttered Kenelm. "I am sure mine is not, and never will be on
+this earth."
+
+Mrs. Braefield did not hear this low-voiced observation. She was looking
+about for Lily; and perceiving her at last as the children who
+surrounded her were dispersing to renew the dance, she took Kenelm's
+arm, led him to the young lady, and a formal introduction took place.
+
+Formal as it could be on those sunlit swards, amidst the joy of summer
+and the laugh of children. In such scene and such circumstance,
+formality does not last long. I know not how it was, but in a very few
+minutes Kenelm and Lily had ceased to be strangers to each other. They
+found themselves seated apart from the rest of the merry-makers, on the
+bank shadowed by lime-trees; the man listening with downcast eyes, the
+girl with mobile shifting glances, now on earth, now on heaven, and
+talking freely, gayly--like the babble of a happy stream, with a silvery
+dulcet voice and a sparkle of rippling smiles.
+
+No doubt this is a reversal of the formalities of well-bred life and
+conventional narrating thereof. According to them, no doubt, it is for
+the man to talk and the maid to listen; but I state the facts as they
+were, honestly. And Lily knew no more of the formalities of drawing-room
+life than a skylark fresh from its nest knows of the song-teacher and
+the cage. She was still so much of a child. Mrs. Braefield was
+right--her mind was still so unformed.
+
+What she did talk about in that first talk between them that could make
+the meditative Kenelm listen so mutely, so intently, I know not; at
+least I could not jot it down on paper. I fear it was very egotistical,
+as the talk of children generally is--about herself and her aunt and her
+home and her friends--all her friends seemed children like herself,
+though younger--Clemmy the chief of them. Clemmy was the one who had
+taken a fancy to Kenelm. And amidst all the ingenuous prattle there came
+flashes of a quick intellect, a lively fancy--nay, even a poetry of
+expression or of sentiment. It might be the talk of a child, but
+certainly not of a silly child.
+
+But as soon as the dance was over, the little ones again gathered round
+Lily. Evidently she was the prime favorite of them all; and as her
+companions had now become tired of dancing, new sports were proposed,
+and Lily was carried off to "Prisoner's Base."
+
+"I am very happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Chillingly," said a
+frank, pleasant voice; and a well-dressed, good-looking man held out his
+hand to Kenelm.
+
+"My husband," said Mrs. Braefield with a certain pride in her look.
+
+Kenelm responded cordially to the civilities of the master of the house,
+who had just returned from his city office, and left all its cares
+behind him. You had only to look at him to see that he was prosperous
+and deserved to be so. There were in his countenance the signs of strong
+sense, of good-humor--above all, of an active, energetic temperament. A
+man of broad smooth forehead, keen hazel eyes, firm lips and jaw; with a
+happy contentment in himself, his house, the world in general, mantling
+over his genial smile, and outspoken in the metallic ring of his voice.
+
+"You will stay and dine with us, of course," said Mr. Braefield; "and
+unless you want very much to be in town to-night, I hope you will take a
+bed here."
+
+Kenelm hesitated.
+
+"Do stay at least till to-morrow," said Mrs. Braefield. Kenelm hesitated
+still; and while hesitating, his eyes rested on Lily, leaning on the arm
+of a middle-aged lady, and approaching the hostess--evidently to
+take leave.
+
+"I cannot resist so tempting an invitation," said Kenelm, and he fell
+back a little behind Lily and her companion.
+
+"Thank you much for so pleasant a day," said Mrs. Cameron to the
+hostess. "Lily has enjoyed herself extremely. I only regret we could not
+come earlier."
+
+"If you are walking home," said Mr. Braefield, "let me accompany you. I
+want to speak to your gardener about his heart's-ease--it is much finer
+than mine."
+
+"If so," said Kenelm to Lily, "may I come too? Of all flowers that grow,
+heart's-ease is the one I most prize."
+
+A few minutes afterward Kenelm was walking by the side of Lily along the
+banks of a little stream tributary to the Thames; Mrs. Cameron and Mr.
+Braefield in advance, for the path only held two abreast.
+
+Suddenly Lily left his side, allured by a rare butterfly--I think it is
+called the Emperor of Morocco--that was sunning its yellow wings upon a
+group of wild reeds. She succeeded in capturing this wanderer in her
+straw hat, over which she drew her sun-veil. After this notable capture
+she returned demurely to Kenelm's side.
+
+"Do you collect insects?" said that philosopher, as much surprised as it
+was his nature to be at anything.
+
+"Only butterflies," answered Lily; "they are not insects, you know; they
+are souls."
+
+"Emblems of souls, you mean--at least so the Greeks prettily represented
+them to be."
+
+"No, real souls--the souls of infants that die in their cradles
+unbaptized; and if they are taken care of, and not eaten by birds, and
+live a year, then they pass into fairies."
+
+"It is a very poetical idea, Miss Mordaunt, and founded on evidence
+quite as rational as other assertions of the metamorphosis of one
+creature into another. Perhaps you can do what the philosophers
+cannot--tell me how you learned a new idea to be an incontestable fact?"
+
+"I don't know," replied Lily, looking very much puzzled: "perhaps I
+learned it in a book, or perhaps I dreamed it."
+
+"You could not make a wiser answer if you were a philosopher. But you
+talk of taking care of butterflies: how do you do that? Do you impale
+them on pins stuck into a glass case?"
+
+"Impale them! How can you talk so cruelly? You deserve to be pinched by
+the fairies."
+
+"I am afraid," thought Kenelm, compassionately, "that my companion has
+no mind to be formed; what is euphoniously called 'an innocent.'"
+
+He shook his head and remained silent.
+
+Lily resumed--"I will show you my collection when we get home--they seem
+so happy. I am sure there are some of them who know me--they will feed
+from my hand. I have only had one die since I began to collect them
+last summer."
+
+"Then you have kept them a year; they ought to have turned into
+fairies."
+
+"I suppose many of them have. Of course I let out all those that had
+been with me twelve months--they don't turn to fairies in the cage, you
+know. Now I have only those I caught this year, or last autumn; the
+prettiest don't appear till the autumn."
+
+The girl here bent her uncovered head over the straw hat, her tresses
+shadowing it, and uttered loving words to the prisoner. Then again she
+looked up and around her, and abruptly stopped and exclaimed:--
+
+"How can people live in towns--how can people say they are ever dull in
+the country? Look," she continued, gravely and earnestly--"look at that
+tall pine-tree, with its long branch sweeping over the water; see how,
+as the breeze catches it, it changes its shadow, and how the shadow
+changes the play of the sunlight on the brook:--
+
+     'Wave your tops, ye pines;
+      With every plant, in sign of worship wave.'
+
+What an interchange of music there must be between Nature and a poet!"
+
+Kenelm was startled. This "an innocent!"--this a girl who had no mind to
+be formed! In that presence he could not be cynical; could not speak of
+Nature as a mechanism, a lying humbug, as he had done to the man poet.
+He replied gravely:--
+
+"The Creator has gifted the whole universe with language, but few are
+the hearts that can interpret it. Happy those to whom it is no foreign
+tongue, acquired imperfectly with care and pain, but rather a native
+language, learned unconsciously from the lips of the great mother. To
+them the butterfly's wing may well buoy into heaven a fairy's soul!"
+
+When he had thus said, Lily turned, and for the first time attentively
+looked into his dark soft eyes; then instinctively she laid her light
+hand on his arm, and said in a low voice, "Talk on--talk thus; I like to
+hear you."
+
+But Kenelm did not talk on. They had now arrived at the garden-gate of
+Mrs. Cameron's cottage, and the elder persons in advance paused at the
+gate and walked with them to the house.
+
+
+End of Volume VI.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Library Of The World's Best
+Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6, by Various
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+    .poem p.i8        {margin-left: 8em;}
+    .poem p.i9        {margin-left: 9em;}
+    .poem p.i10       {margin-left: 10em;}
+    .poem p.i11       {margin-left: 11em;}
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+
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+         margin-left: 15%;
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+</head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Library Of The World's Best Literature,
+Ancient And Modern, Vol 6, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: October 5, 2004 [EBook #13623]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORLD'S BEST LITERATURE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<br>
+<a name="cover.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/cover.jpg"><img src=
+"images/cover.jpg" width="40%" alt=""></a></p>
+<br>
+<h2>LIBRARY OF THE</h2>
+<h1>WORLD'S BEST LITERATURE</h1>
+<h3>ANCIENT AND MODERN</h3>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<h2>CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER</h2>
+<h4>EDITOR</h4>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<h3>HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE<br>
+LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE<br>
+GEORGE HENRY WARNER</h3>
+<h4>ASSOCIATE EDITORS</h4>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<h3>Connoisseur Edition</h3>
+<h4>VOL. VI.</h4>
+<h5>1896</h5>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>THE ADVISORY COUNCIL</h2>
+<br>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>CRAWFORD H. TOY, A.M., LL.D.,</p>
+<p class="i2">Professor of Hebrew,</p>
+<p class="i2">HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Cambridge, Mass.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY, LL.D., L.H.D.,</p>
+<p class="i2">Professor of English in the Sheffield Scientific
+School of</p>
+<p class="i2">YALE UNIVERSITY, New Haven, Conn.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>WILLIAM M. SLOANE, PH.D., L.H.D.,</p>
+<p class="i2">Professor of History and Political Science,</p>
+<p class="i2">PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, Princeton, N.J.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>BRANDER MATTHEWS, A.M., LL.B.,</p>
+<p class="i2">Professor of Literature,</p>
+<p class="i2">COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, New York City.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>JAMES B. ANGELL, LL.D.,</p>
+<p class="i2">President of the</p>
+<p class="i2">UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, Ann Arbor, Mich.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>WILLARD FISKE, A.M., PH.D.,</p>
+<p class="i2">Late Professor of the Germanic and Scandinavian
+Languages and Literatures,</p>
+<p class="i2">CORNELL UNIVERSITY, Ithaca, N.Y.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>EDWARD S. HOLDEN, A.M., LL.D.,</p>
+<p class="i2">Director of the Lick Observatory, and Astronomer</p>
+<p class="i2">UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Berkeley, Cal.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>ALC&Eacute;E FORTIER, LIT.D.,</p>
+<p class="i2">Professor of the Romance Languages,</p>
+<p class="i2">TULANE UNIVERSITY, New Orleans, La.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>WILLIAM P. TRENT, M.A.,</p>
+<p class="i2">Dean of the Department of Arts and Sciences, and
+Professor of English and History,</p>
+<p class="i2">UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH, Sewanee, Tenn.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>PAUL SHOREY, PH.D.,</p>
+<p class="i2">Professor of Greek and Latin Literature,</p>
+<p class="i2">UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, Chicago, Ill.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>WILLIAM T. HARRIS, LL.D.,</p>
+<p class="i2">United States Commissioner of Education,</p>
+<p class="i2">BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D.C.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN, A.M., LL.D.,</p>
+<p class="i2">Professor of Literature in the</p>
+<p class="i2">CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA, Washington, D.C.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>TABLE OF CONTENTS</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>VOL. VI</h3>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#BRANTOME">THE ABB&Eacute; DE BRANT&Ocirc;ME</a>
+(Pierre de Bourdeille) -- 1527-1614</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRANTOME01">The Dancing of Royalty</a>
+('Lives of Notable Women')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRANTOME02">The Shadow of a Tomb</a>
+('Lives of Courtly Women')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRANTOME03">M. le Constable Anne de
+Montmorency</a></p>
+<p class="i4">('Lives of Distinguished Men and Great Captains')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRANTOME04">Two Famous Entertainments</a>
+('Lives of Courtly Women')</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#BREMER">FREDRIKA BREMER</a> -- 1801-1865</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BREMER01">A Home-Coming</a> ('The
+Neighbors')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BREMER02">The Landed Proprietor</a> ('The
+Home')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BREMER03">A Family Picture</a> (same)</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#CLEMENS_BRENTANO">CLEMENS BRENTANO</a> --
+1778-1842</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRENTANO01">The Nurse's Watch</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRENTANO02">The Castle in Austria</a></p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#ELIZABETH_BRENTANO">ELISABETH BRENTANO</a> (Bettina
+von Arnim) -- 1785-1859</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRENTANO11">Dedication: To Goethe</a>
+('Goethe's Correspondence with a Child')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRENTANO12">Letter to Goethe</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRENTANO13">Bettina's Last Meeting with
+Goethe</a> (Letter to Her Niece)</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRENTANO14">In Goethe's Garden</a></p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#BRIGHT">JOHN BRIGHT</a> -- 1811-1889</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRIGHT01">From Speech on the Corn Laws</a>
+(1843)</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRIGHT02">From Speech on Incendiarism in
+Ireland</a> (1844)</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRIGHT03">From Speech on Non-Recognition of
+the Southern Confederacy</a> (1861)</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRIGHT04">From Speech on the State of
+Ireland</a> (1866)</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRIGHT05">From Speech on the Irish
+Established Church</a> (1868)</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#BRILLAT">BRILLAT-SAVARIN</a> -- 1755-1826</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRILLAT01">From 'Physiology of
+Taste':</a></p>
+<p class="i4"><a href="#BRILLAT01">The Privations;</a></p>
+<p class="i4"><a href="#BRILLAT02">On the Love of Good
+Living;</a></p>
+<p class="i4"><a href="#BRILLAT03">On People Fond of Good
+Living</a></p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#BRONTE">CHARLOTTE BRONT&Eacute; AND HER SISTERS</a>
+--1816-1855</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRONTE01">Jane Eyre's Wedding-Day</a>
+('Jane Eyre')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRONTE02">Madame Beck</a> ('Villette')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRONTE03">A Yorkshire Landscape</a>
+('Shirley')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRONTE04">The End of Heathcliff</a> (Emily
+Bront&eacute;'s 'Wuthering Heights')</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#BROOKS">PHILLIPS BROOKS</a> -- 1835-1893</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROOKS01">O Little Town of
+Bethlehem</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROOKS02">Personal Character</a> ('Essays
+and Addresses')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROOKS03">The Courage of Opinions</a>
+(same)</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROOKS04">Literature and Life</a>
+(same)</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#CHARLES_BROWN">CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN</a> --
+1771-1810</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWN01">Wieland's Statement</a>
+('Wieland')</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#JOHN_BROWN">JOHN BROWN</a> -- 1810-1882</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWN11">Marjorie Fleming</a> ('Spare
+Hours')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWN12">Death of Thackeray</a> (same)</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#CHARLES_BROWNE">CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE</a> (Artemus
+Ward) -- 1834-1867</p>
+<p class="i6">By Charles F. Johnson</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNE01">Edwin Forrest as Othello</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNE02">High-Handed Outrage at
+Utica</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNE03">Affairs Round the Village
+Green</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNE04">Mr. Pepper</a> ('Artemus Ward:
+His Travels')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNE05">Horace Greeley's Ride to
+Placerville</a> (same)</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#THOMAS_BROWNE">SIR THOMAS BROWNE</a> -- 1605-1682</p>
+<p class="i6">By Francis Bacon</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNE11">From the 'Religio Medici'</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNE12">From 'Christian Morals'</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNE13">From 'Hydriotaphia, or
+Urn-Burial'</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNE14">From 'A Fragment on
+Mummies'</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNE15">From 'A Letter to a
+Friend'</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNE16">Some Relations Whose Truth We
+Fear</a> ('Pseudoxia Epidemica')</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#WILLIAM_BROWNE">WILLIAM BROWNE</a> -- 1591-1643</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNE21">Circe's Charm</a> ('Inner Temple
+Masque')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNE22">The Hunted Squirrel</a>
+('Britannia's Pastorals')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNE23">As Careful Merchants Do Expecting
+Stand</a> (same)</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNE24">Song of the Sirens</a> ('Inner
+Temple Masque')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNE25">An Epistle on Parting</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNE26">Sonnets to C&aelig;lia</a></p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#BROWNELL">HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL</a> -- 1820-1872</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNELL01">Annus Memorabilis</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNELL02">Words for the 'Hallelujah
+Chorus'</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNELL03">Coming</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNELL04">Psychaura</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNELL05">Suspiria Noctis</a></p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#ELIZABETH_BROWNING">ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING</a> --
+1809-1861</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING01E">A Musical Instrument</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING02E">My Heart and I</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING03E">From 'Catarina to
+Camoens'</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING04E">The Sleep</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING05E">The Cry of the
+Children</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING06E">Mother and Poet</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING07E">A Court Lady</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING08E">The Prospect</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING09E">De Profundis</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING10E">The Cry of the Human</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING11E">Romance of the Swan's
+Nest</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING12E">The Best Thing in the
+World</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING13E">Sonnets from the
+Portuguese</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING14E">A False Step</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING15E">A Child's Thought of
+God</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING16E">Cheerfulness Taught by
+Reason</a></p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#ROBERT_BROWNING">ROBERT BROWNING</a> -- 1812-1889</p>
+<p class="i6">By E.L. Burlingame</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING01R">Andrea del Sarto</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING02R">A Toccata of Galuppi's</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING03R">Confessions</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING04R">Love among the Ruins</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING05R">A Grammarian's Funeral</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING06R">My Last Duchess</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING07R">Up at a Villa--Down in the
+City</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING08R">In Three Days</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING09R">In a Year</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING10R">Evelyn Hope</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING11R">Prospice</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING12R">The Patriot</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNING13R">One Word More</a></p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#BROWNSON">ORESTES AUGUSTUS BROWNSON</a> --
+1803-1876</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BROWNSON01">Saint-Simonism</a> ('The
+Convert')</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#BRUNETIERE">FERDINAND BRUNETI&Egrave;RE</a> --
+1849-</p>
+<p class="i6">By Adolphe Cohn</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRUNETIERE01">Taine and Prince
+Napoleon</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRUNETIERE02">The Literatures of France,
+England, and Germany</a></p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#BRUNO">GIORDANO BRUNO</a> --1548-1600</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRUNO01">A Discourse of Poets</a> ('The
+Heroic Enthusiasts')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRUNO02">Canticle of the Shining Ones: A
+Tribute to English Women</a> ('The Nolan')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRUNO03">Song of the Nine Singers</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRUNO04">Of Immensity</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRUNO05">Life Well Lost</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRUNO06">Parnassus Within</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRUNO07">Compensation</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRUNO08">Life for Song</a></p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#BRYANT">WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT</a> --1794-1878</p>
+<p class="i6">By George Parsons Lathrop</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRYANT01">Thanatopsis</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRYANT02">The Crowded Street</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRYANT03">Death of the Flowers</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRYANT04">The Conqueror's Grave</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRYANT05">The Battle-Field</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRYANT06">To a Water-fowl</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRYANT07">Robert of Lincoln</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRYANT08">June</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRYANT09">To the Fringed Gentian</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRYANT10">The Future Life</a></p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRYANT11">To the Past</a></p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#BRYCE">JAMES BRYCE</a> -- 1838-</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRYCE01">Position of Women in the United
+States</a> ('The American Commonwealth')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRYCE02">Ascent of Ararat</a>
+('Trans-Caucasia and Ararat')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BRYCE03">The Work of the Roman Empire</a>
+('The Holy Roman Empire')</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#BUCKLAND">FRANCIS TREVELYAN BUCKLAND</a> --
+1826-1880</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BUCKLAND01">A Hunt in a Horse-Pond</a>
+('Curiosities of Natural History')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BUCKLAND02">On Rats</a> (same)</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BUCKLAND03">Snakes and their Poison</a>
+(same)</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BUCKLAND04">My Monkey Jacko</a> (same)</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#BUCKLE">HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE</a> -- 1821-1862</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BUCKLE01">Moral versus Intellectual
+Principles in Human Progress</a></p>
+<p class="i5">('History of Civilization in England')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BUCKLE02">Mythical Origin of History</a>
+(same)</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#BUFFON">GEORGE LOUIS LE CLERC BUFFON</a> --
+1707-1788</p>
+<p class="i6">By Spencer Trotter</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BUFFON01">Nature</a> ('Natural
+History')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BUFFON02">The Humming-Bird</a> (same)</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><a href="#BULWER">EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON</a> -- 1803-1873</p>
+<p class="i6">By Julian Hawthorne</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BULWER01">The Amphitheatre</a> ('The Last
+Days of Pompeii')</p>
+<p class="i3"><a href="#BULWER02">Kenelm and Lily</a> ('Kenelm
+Chillingly')</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+<h3>VOLUME VI</h3>
+<center>
+<table summary="">
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#cover.jpg">"Les Satyres"</a> (Colored Plate)</td>
+<td><a href="#cover.jpg">Frontispiece</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#bronte.jpg">Charlotte Bront&eacute;</a>
+(Portrait)</td>
+<td><a href="#bronte.jpg">2382</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#brooks.jpg">Phillips Brooks</a> (Portrait)</td>
+<td><a href="#brooks.jpg">2418</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#illus-2420.jpg">"The Holy Child of Bethlehem"</a>
+(Photogravure)</td>
+<td><a href="#illus-2420.jpg">2420</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#illus-2514.jpg">"Circe"</a> (Photogravure)</td>
+<td><a href="#illus-2514.jpg">2514</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#browning_r.jpg">Robert Browning</a> (Portrait)</td>
+<td><a href="#browning_r.jpg">2558</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#bryant.jpg">William Cullen Bryant</a> (Portrait)</td>
+<td><a href="#bryant.jpg">2624</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#bulwer.jpg">Edward Bulwer-Lytton</a> (Portrait)</td>
+<td><a href="#bulwer.jpg">2698</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#illus-2718.jpg">"In the Arena"</a>
+(Photogravure)</td>
+<td><a href="#illus-2718.jpg">2718</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#illus-2720.jpg">"Nydia"</a> (Photogravure)</td>
+<td><a href="#illus-2720.jpg">2720</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<center>VIGNETTE PORTRAITS</center>
+<br>
+<center><a href="#BRANTOME">Abb&eacute; de Brant&ocirc;me</a><br>
+<a href="#BREMER">Fredrika Bremer</a><br>
+<a href="#ELIZABETH_BRENTANO">Elisabeth Brentano</a><br>
+<a href="#BRIGHT">John Bright</a><br>
+<a href="#BRILLAT">Brillat-Savarin</a><br>
+<a href="#CHARLES_BROWN">Charles Brockden Brown</a><br>
+<a href="#JOHN_BROWN">John Brown</a><br>
+<a href="#CHARLES_BROWNE">Charles Farrar Browne</a><br>
+<a href="#THOMAS_BROWNE">Sir Thomas Browne</a><br>
+<a href="#ELIZABETH_BROWNING">Elizabeth Barrett Browning</a><br>
+<a href="#BROWNSON">Orestes Augustus Brownson</a><br>
+<a href="#BRUNETIERE">Ferdinand Bruneti&egrave;re</a><br>
+<a href="#BRYCE">James Bryce</a><br>
+<a href="#BUFFON">George Louis le Clere Buffon</a></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="BRANTOME"></a>
+<h2>THE ABB&Eacute; DE BRANT&Ocirc;ME (PIERRE DE BOURDEILLE)</h2>
+<h3>(1527-1614)</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-e.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>very historian of the Valois period is indebted to
+Brant&ocirc;me for preserving the atmosphere and detail of the
+brilliant life in which he moved as a dashing courtier, a military
+adventurer, and a gallant gentleman of high degree. He was not a
+professional scribe, nor a student; but he took notes
+unconsciously, and in the evening of his life turned back the pages
+of his memory to record the scenes through which he had passed and
+the characters which he had known. He has been termed the "valet de
+chambre" of history; nevertheless the anecdotes scattered through
+his works will ever be treasured by all students and historians of
+that age of luxury and magnificence, art and beauty, beneath which
+lay the fermentation of great religious and political movements,
+culminating in the struggle between the Huguenots and
+Catholics.</p>
+<p class="rgt"><img src="images/brantome.jpg" width="45%" alt=
+""><br>
+<b>Abb&eacute; De Brant&ocirc;me</b></p>
+<p>Brant&ocirc;me was the third son of the Vicomte de Bourdeille, a
+P&eacute;rigord nobleman, whose family had lived long in Guienne,
+and whose aristocratic lineage was lost in myth. Upon the estate
+stood the Abbey of Brant&ocirc;me, founded by Charlemagne, and this
+Henry II. gave to young Pierre de Bourdeille in recognition of the
+military deeds of his brother, Jean de Bourdeille, who lost his
+life in service. Thereafter the lad was to sign his name as the
+Reverend Father in God, Messire Pierre de Bourdeille, Abb&eacute;
+de Brant&ocirc;me. Born in the old ch&acirc;teau in 1527, he was
+destined for the church, but abandoned this career for arms. At an
+early age he was sent to court as page to Marguerite, sister of
+Francis I. and Queen of Navarre; after her death in 1549, he went
+to Paris to study at the University. His title of Abb&eacute; being
+merely honorary, he served in the army under Fran&ccedil;ois de
+Guise, Duke of Lorraine, and became Gentleman of the Chamber to
+Charles IX. His career extended through the reigns of Henry II.,
+Francis II., Charles IX., Henry III., and Henry IV., to that of
+Louis XIII. With the exception of diplomatic missions, service on
+the battle-field, and voyages for pleasure, he spent his life at
+court.</p>
+<p>About 1594 he retired to his estate, where until his death on
+July 15th, 1614, he passed his days in contentions with the monks
+of Brant&ocirc;me, in lawsuits with his neighbors, and in writing
+his books: 'Lives of the Illustrious Men and Great Captains of
+France'; 'Lives of Illustrious Ladies'; 'Lives of Women of
+Gallantry'; 'Memoirs, containing anecdotes connected with the Court
+of France'; 'Spanish Rodomontades'; a 'Life' of his father,
+Fran&ccedil;ois de Bourdeille; a 'Funeral Oration' on his sister
+in-law; and a dialogue in verse, entitled 'The Tomb of Madame de
+Bourdeille.' These were not published until long after his death,
+first appearing in Leyden about 1665, at the Hague in 1740, and in
+Paris in 1787. The best editions are by Fourcault (7 vols., Paris,
+1822); by Lacour and M&eacute;rim&eacute;e (3 vols., 1859); and
+Lalande (10 vols., 1865-'81).</p>
+<p>What Brant&ocirc;me thought of himself may be seen by glancing
+at that portion of the "testament mystique" which relates to his
+writings:--</p>
+<blockquote>"I will and expressly charge my heirs that they cause
+to be printed the books which I have composed by my talent and
+invention. These books will be found covered with velvet, either
+black, green or blue, and one larger volume, which is that of the
+Rodomontades, covered with velvet, gilt outside and curiously
+bound. All have been carefully corrected. There will be found in
+these books excellent things, such as stories, histories,
+discourses, and witty sayings, which I flatter myself the world
+will not disdain to read when once it has had a sight of them. I
+direct that a sum of money be taken from my estate sufficient to
+pay for the printing thereof, which certainly cannot be much; for I
+have known many printers who would have given money rather than
+charged any for the right of printing them. They print many things
+without charge which are not at all equal to mine. I will also that
+the said impression shall be in large type, in order to make the
+better appearance, and that they should appear with the Royal
+Privilege, which the King will readily grant. Also care must be
+taken that the printers do not put on the title-page any
+supposititious name instead of mine. Otherwise, I should be
+defrauded of the glory which is my due."</blockquote>
+<p>The old man delighted in complimenting himself and talking about
+his "grandeur d'&acirc;me." This greatness of soul may be measured
+from the command he gave his heirs to annoy a man who had refused
+to swear homage to him, "it not being reasonable to leave at rest
+this little wretch, who descends from a low family, and whose
+grandfather was nothing but a notary." He also commands his nieces
+and nephews to take the same vengeance upon his enemies "as I
+should have done in my green and vigorous youth, during which I may
+boast, and I thank God for it, that I never received an injury
+without being revenged on the author of it."</p>
+<p>Brant&ocirc;me writes like a "gentleman of the sword," with dash
+and <i>&eacute;lan</i>, and as one, to use his own words, who has
+been "toujours trottant, traversant, et vagabondant le monde"
+(always trotting, traversing, and tramping the world). Not in the
+habit of a vagabond, however, for the balls, banquets, tournaments,
+masques, ballets, and wedding-feasts which he describes so vividly
+were occasions for the display of sumptuous costumes; and Messire
+Pierre de Bourdeille doubtless appeared as elegant as any other
+gallant in silken hose, jeweled doublet, flowing cape, and long
+rapier. What we value most are his paintings of these festive
+scenes, and the vivid portraits which he has left of the Valois
+women, who were largely responsible for the luxuries and the crimes
+of the period: women who could step without a tremor from a
+court-masque to a massacre; who could toy with a gallant's ribbons
+and direct the blow of an assassin; and who could poison a rival
+with a delicately perfumed gift. Such a court Brant&ocirc;me calls
+the "true paradise of the world, school of all honesty and virtue,
+ornament of France." We like to hear about Catherine de' Medici
+riding with her famous "squadron of Venus": "You should have seen
+forty or fifty dames and demoiselles following her, mounted on
+beautifully accoutred hackneys, their hats adorned with feathers
+which increased their charm, so well did the flying plumes
+represent the demand for love or war. Virgil, who undertook to
+describe the fine apparel of Queen Dido when she went out hunting,
+has by no means equaled that of our Queen and her ladies."</p>
+<p>Charming, too, are such descriptions as "the most beautiful
+ballet that ever was, composed of sixteen of the fairest and
+best-trained dames and demoiselles, who appeared in a silvered rock
+where they were seated in niches, shut in on every side. The
+sixteen ladies represented the sixteen provinces of France. After
+having made the round of the hall for parade as in a camp, they all
+descended, and ranging themselves in the form of a little oddly
+contrived battalion, some thirty violins began a very pleasant
+warlike air, to which they danced their ballet." After an hour the
+ladies presented the King, the Queen-Mother, and others with golden
+plaques, on which were engraved "the fruits and singularities of
+each province," the wheat of Champagne, the vines of Burgundy, the
+lemons and oranges of Provence, etc. He shows us Catherine de'
+Medici, the elegant, cunning Florentine; her beautiful daughters,
+Elizabeth of Spain and Marguerite de Valois; Diana of Poitiers, the
+woman of eternal youth and beauty; Jeanne d'Albret, the mother of
+Henry IV.; Louise de Vaudemont; the Duchesse d'&Eacute;tampes;
+Marie Touchet; and all their satellites,--as they enjoyed their
+lives.</p>
+<p>Very valuable are the data regarding Mary Stuart's departure
+from France in 1561. Brant&ocirc;me was one of her suite, and
+describes her grief when the shores of France faded away, and her
+arrival in Scotland, where on the first night she was serenaded by
+Psalm-tunes with a most villainous accompaniment of Scotch music.
+"H&eacute;! quelle musique!" he exclaims, "et quel repos pour la
+nuit!"</p>
+<p>But of all the gay ladies Brant&ocirc;me loves to dwell upon,
+his favorites are the two Marguerites: Marguerite of
+Angoul&ecirc;me, Queen of Navarre, the sister of Francis I., and
+Marguerite, daughter of Catherine de' Medici and wife of Henry IV.
+Of the latter, called familiarly "La Reine Margot," he is always
+writing. "To speak of the beauty of this rare princess," he says,
+"I think that all that are, or will be, or have ever been near her
+are ugly."</p>
+<p>Brant&ocirc;me has been a puzzle to many critics, who cannot
+explain his "contradictions." He had none. He extolled wicked and
+immoral characters because he recognized only two
+merits,--aristocratic birth and hatred of the Huguenots. He is well
+described by M. de Barante, who says:--"Brant&ocirc;me expresses
+the entire character of his country and of his profession. Careless
+of the difference between good and evil; a courtier who has no idea
+that anything can be blameworthy in the great, but who sees and
+narrates their vices and their crimes all the more frankly in that
+he is not very sure whether what he tells be good or bad; as
+indifferent to the honor of women as he is to the morality of men;
+relating scandalous things with no consciousness that they are
+such, and almost leading his reader into accepting them as the
+simplest things in the world, so little importance does he attach
+to them; terming Louis XI., who poisoned his brother, the
+<i>good</i> King Louis, calling women whose adventures could hardly
+have been written by any pen save his own, <i>honn&ecirc;tes
+dames</i>."</p>
+<p>Brant&ocirc;me must therefore not be regarded as a chronicler
+who revels in scandals, although his pages reek with them; but as
+the true mirror of the Valois court and the Valois period.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRANTOME01"></a>
+<h3>THE DANCING OF ROYALTY</h3>
+<center>From 'Lives of Notable Women'</center>
+<br>
+<p>Ah! how the times have changed since I saw them together in the
+ball-room, expressing the very spirit of the dance! The King always
+opened the grand ball by leading out his sister, and each equaled
+the other in majesty and grace. I have often seen them dancing the
+Pavane d'Espagne, which must be performed with the utmost majesty
+and grace. The eyes of the entire court were riveted upon them,
+ravished by this lovely scene; for the measures were so well
+danced, the steps so intelligently placed, the sudden pauses timed
+so accurately and making so elegant an effect, that one did not
+know what to admire most,--the beautiful manner of moving, or the
+majesty of the halts, now expressing excessive gayety, now a
+beautiful and haughty disdain. Who could dance with such elegance
+and grace as the royal brother and sister? None, I believe; and I
+have watched the King dancing with the Queen of Spain and the Queen
+of Scotland, each of whom was an excellent dancer.</p>
+<p>I have seen them dance the 'Pazzemezzo d'Italie,' walking
+gravely through the measures, and directing their steps with so
+graceful and solemn a manner that no other prince nor lady could
+approach them in dignity. This Queen took great pleasure in
+performing these grave dances; for she preferred to exhibit
+dignified grace rather than to express the gayety of the Branle,
+the Volta, and the Courante. Although she acquired them quickly,
+she did not think them worthy of her majesty.</p>
+<p>I always enjoyed seeing her dance the Branle de la Torche, or du
+Flambeau. Once, returning from the nuptials of the daughter of the
+King of Poland, I saw her dance this kind of a Branle at Lyons
+before the assembled guests from Savoy, Piedmont, Italy, and other
+places; and every one said he had never seen any sight more
+captivating than this lovely lady moving with grace of motion and
+majestic mien, all agreeing that she had no need of the flaming
+torch which she held in her hand; for the flashing light from her
+brilliant eyes was sufficient to illuminate the set, and to pierce
+the dark veil of Night.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRANTOME02"></a>
+<h3>THE SHADOW OF A TOMB</h3>
+<center>From 'Lives of Courtly Women'</center>
+<br>
+<p>Once I had an elder brother who was called Captain Bourdeille,
+one of the bravest and most valiant soldiers of his time. Although
+he was my brother, I must praise him, for the record he made in the
+wars brought him fame. He was the <i>gentilhomme de France</i> who
+stood first in the science and gallantry of arms. He was killed
+during the last siege of Hesdin. My brother's parents had destined
+him for the career of letters, and accordingly sent him at the age
+of eighteen to study in Italy, where he settled in Ferrara because
+of Madame Ren&eacute;e de France, Duchess of Ferrara, who ardently
+loved my mother. He enjoyed life at her court, and soon fell deeply
+in love with a young French widow,--Mademoiselle de La Roche,--who
+was in the suite of Madame de Ferrara.</p>
+<p>They remained there in the service of love, until my father,
+seeing that his son was not following literature, ordered him home.
+She, who loved him, begged him to take her with him to France and
+to the court of Marguerite of Navarre, whom she had served, and who
+had given her to Madame Ren&eacute;e when she went to Italy upon
+her marriage. My brother, who was young, was greatly charmed to
+have her companionship, and conducted her to Pau. The Queen was
+glad to welcome her, for the young widow was handsome and
+accomplished, and indeed considered superior in <i>esprit</i> to
+the other ladies of the court.</p>
+<p>After remaining a few days with my mother and grandmother, who
+were there, my brother visited his father. In a short time he
+declared that he was disgusted with letters, and joined the army,
+serving in the wars of Piedmont and Parma, where he acquired much
+honor in the space of five or six months; during which time he did
+not revisit his home. At the end of this period he went to see his
+mother at Pau. He made his reverence to the Queen of Navarre as she
+returned from vespers; and she, who was the best princess in the
+world, received him cordially, and taking his hand, led him about
+the church for an hour or two. She demanded news regarding the wars
+of Piedmont and Italy, and many other particulars, to which my
+brother replied so well that she was greatly pleased with him. He
+was a very handsome young man of twenty-four years. After talking
+gravely and engaging him in earnest conversation, walking up and
+down the church, she directed her steps toward the tomb of
+Mademoiselle de La Roche, who had been dead for three months. She
+stopped here, and again took his hand, saying, "My cousin" (thus
+addressing him because a daughter of D'Albret was married into our
+family of Bourdeille; but of this I do not boast, for it has not
+helped me particularly), "do you not feel something move below your
+feet?"</p>
+<p>"No, Madame," he replied.</p>
+<p>"But reflect again, my cousin," she insisted.</p>
+<p>My brother answered, "Madame, I feel nothing move. I stand upon
+a solid stone."</p>
+<p>"Then I will explain," said the Queen, "without keeping you
+longer in suspense, that you stand upon the tomb and over the body
+of your poor dearly-loved Mademoiselle de La Roche, who is interred
+here; and that our friends may have sentiment for us at our death,
+render a pious homage here. You cannot doubt that the gentle
+creature, dying so recently, must have been affected when you
+approached. In remembrance I beg you to say a paternoster and an
+Ave Maria and a de profundis, and sprinkle holy water. Thus you
+will win the name of a very faithful lover and a good
+Christian."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRANTOME03"></a>
+<h3>M. LE CONSTABLE ANNE DE MONTMORENCY</h3>
+<center>From 'Lives of Distinguished Men and Great
+Captains'</center>
+<br>
+<p>He never failed to say and keep up his paternosters every
+morning, whether he remained in the house, or mounted his horse and
+went out to the field to join the army. It was a common saying
+among the soldiers that one must "beware the paternosters of the
+Constable." For as disorders were very frequent, he would say,
+while mumbling and muttering his paternosters all the time, "Go and
+fetch that fellow and hang me him up to this tree;" "Out with a
+file of harquebusiers here before me this instant, for the
+execution of this man!" "Burn me this village instantly!" "Cut me
+to pieces at once all these villain peasants, who have dared to
+hold this church against the king!" All this without ever ceasing
+from his paternosters till he had finished them--thinking that he
+would have done very wrong to put them off to another time; so
+conscientious was he!</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRANTOME04"></a>
+<h3>TWO FAMOUS ENTERTAINMENTS</h3>
+<center>From 'Lives of Courtly Women'</center>
+<br>
+<p>I have read in a Spanish book called 'El Viaje del Principe'
+(The Voyage of the Prince), made by the King of Spain in the
+Pays-Bas in the time of the Emperor Charles, his father, about the
+wonderful entertainments given in the rich cities. The most famous
+was that of the Queen of Hungary in the lovely town of Bains, which
+passed into a proverb, "Mas bravas que las festas de Bains" (more
+magnificent than the festivals of Bains). Among the displays which
+were seen during the siege of a counterfeit castle, she ordered for
+one day a f&ecirc;te in honor of the Emperor her brother, Queen
+Eleanor her sister, and the gentlemen and ladies of the court.</p>
+<p>Toward the end of the feast a lady appeared with six
+Oread-nymphs, dressed as huntresses in classic costumes of silver
+and green, glittering with jewels to imitate the light of the moon.
+Each one carried a bow and arrows in her hand and wore a quiver on
+her shoulder; their buskins were of cloth of silver. They entered
+the hall, leading their dogs after them, and placed on the table in
+front of the Emperor all kinds of venison pasties, supposed to have
+been the spoils of the chase. After them came the Goddess of
+Shepherds and her six nymphs, dressed in cloth of silver, garnished
+with pearls. They wore knee-breeches beneath their flowing robes,
+and white pumps, and brought in various products of the dairy.</p>
+<p>Then entered the third division--Pomona and her nymphs--bearing
+fruit of all descriptions. This goddess was the daughter of Donna
+Beatrix Pacheco, Countess d'Autremont, lady-in-waiting to Queen
+Eleanor, and was but nine years old. She was now Madame l'Admirale
+de Chastillon, whom the Admiral married for his second wife.
+Approaching with her companions, she presented her gifts to the
+Emperor with an eloquent speech, delivered so beautifully that she
+received the admiration of the entire assembly, and all predicted
+that she would become a beautiful, charming, graceful, and
+captivating lady. She was dressed in cloth of silver and white,
+with white buskins, and a profusion of precious stones--emeralds,
+colored like some of the fruit she bore. After making these
+presentations, she gave the Emperor a Palm of Victory, made of
+green enamel, the fronds tipped with pearls and jewels. This was
+very rich and gorgeous. To Queen Eleanor she gave a fan containing
+a mirror set with gems of great value. Indeed, the Queen of Hungary
+showed that she was a very excellent lady, and the Emperor was
+proud of a sister worthy of himself. All the young ladies who
+impersonated these mythical characters were selected from the
+suites of France, Hungary, and Madame de Lorraine; and were
+therefore French, Italian, Flemish, German, and of Lorraine. None
+of them lacked beauty.</p>
+<p>At the same time that these f&ecirc;tes were taking place at
+Bains, Henry II. made his entr&eacute;e in Piedmont and at his
+garrisons in Lyons, where were assembled the most brilliant of his
+courtiers and court ladies. If the representation of Diana and her
+chase given by the Queen of Hungary was found beautiful, the one at
+Lyons was more beautiful and complete. As the king entered the
+city, he saw obelisks of antiquity to the right and left, and a
+wall of six feet was constructed along the road to the courtyard,
+which was filled with underbrush and planted thickly with trees and
+shrubbery. In this miniature forest were hidden deer and other
+animals.</p>
+<p>As soon as his Majesty approached, to the sound of horns and
+trumpets Diana issued forth with her companions, dressed in the
+fashion of a classic nymph with her quiver at her side and her bow
+in her hand. Her figure was draped in black and gold sprinkled with
+silver stars, the sleeves were of crimson satin bordered with gold,
+and the garment, looped up above the knee, revealed her buskins of
+crimson satin covered with pearls and embroidery. Her hair was
+entwined with magnificent strings of rich pearls and gems of much
+value, and above her brow was placed a crescent of silver,
+surrounded by little diamonds. Gold could never have suggested half
+so well as the shining silver the white light of the real crescent.
+Her companions were attired in classic costumes made of taffetas of
+various colors, shot with gold, and their ringlets were adorned
+with all kinds of glittering gems....</p>
+<p>Other nymphs carried darts of Brazil-wood tipped with black and
+white tassels, and carried horns and trumpets suspended by ribbons
+of white and black. When the King appeared, a lion, which had long
+been under training, ran from the wood and lay at the feet of the
+Goddess, who bound him with a leash of white and black and led him
+to the king, accompanying her action with a poem of ten verses,
+which she delivered most beautifully. Like the lion--so ran the
+lines--the city of Lyons lay at his Majesty's feet, gentle,
+gracious, and obedient to his command. This spoken, Diana and her
+nymphs made low bows and retired.</p>
+<p>Note that Diana and her companions were married women, widows,
+and young girls, taken from the best society in Lyons, and there
+was no fault to be found with the way they performed their parts.
+The King, the princes, and the ladies and gentlemen of the court
+were ravished. Madame de Valentinois, called Diana of
+Poitiers,--whom the King served and in whose name the mock chase
+was arranged,--was not less content.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="BREMER"></a>
+<h2>FREDRIKA BREMER</h2>
+<h3>(1801-1865)</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-f.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>redrika Bremer was born at Tuorla Manor-house, near &Aring;bo,
+in Finland, on the 17th of August, 1801. In 1804 the family removed
+to Stockholm, and two years later to a large estate at &Aring;rsta,
+some twenty miles from the capital, which was her subsequent home.
+At &Aring;rsta the father of Fredrika, who had amassed a fortune in
+the iron industry in Finland, set up an establishment in accord
+with his means. The manor-house, built two centuries before, had
+become in some parts dilapidated, but it was ultimately restored
+and improved beyond its original condition. From its windows on one
+side the eye stretched over nearly five miles of meadows, fields,
+and villages belonging to the estate.</p>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/bremer.jpg" width="45%" alt=""><br>
+<b>Fredrika Bremer</b></p>
+<p>In spite of its surroundings, however, Fredrika's childhood was
+not a happy one. Her mother was severe and impatient of petty
+faults, and the child's mind became embittered. Her father was
+reserved and melancholy. Fredrika herself was restless and
+passionate, although of an affectionate nature. Among the other
+children she was the ugly duckling, who was misunderstood, and
+whose natural development was continually checked and frustrated.
+Her talents were early exhibited in a variety of directions. Her
+first verses, in French, to the morn, were written at the age of
+eight. Subsequently she wrote comedies for home production, prose
+and verse of all sorts, and kept a journal, which has been
+preserved. In 1821 the whole family went on a tour abroad, from
+which they did not return until the following year, having visited
+in the meantime Germany, Switzerland, and France, and spent the
+winter in Paris. This year among new scenes and surroundings seems
+to have brought home to Fredrika, upon the resumption of her old
+life in the country, its narrowness and its isolation. She was
+entirely shut off from all desired activity; her illusions vanished
+one by one. "I was conscious," she says in her short autobiography,
+"of being born with powerful wings, but I was conscious of their
+being clipped;" and she fancied that they would remain so.</p>
+<p>Her attention, however, was fortunately attracted from herself
+to the poor and sick in the country round about; and she presently
+became to the whole region a nurse and a helper, denying herself
+all sorts of comforts that she might give them to others, and
+braving storm and hunger on her errands of mercy. In order to earn
+money for her charities she painted miniature portraits of the
+Crown Princess and the King, and secretly sold them. Her desire to
+increase the small sums she thus gained induced her to seek a
+publisher for a number of sketches she had written. Her brother
+readily disposed of the manuscript for a hundred rix-dollars; and
+her first book, 'Teckningar ur Hvardagslifvet' (Sketches of
+Every-day Life), appeared in 1828, but without the name of the
+author, of whose identity the publisher himself was left in
+ignorance. The book was received with such favor that the young
+author was induced to try again; and what had originally been
+intended as a second volume of the 'Sketches' appeared in 1830 as
+'Familjen H.' (The H. Family). Its success was immediate and
+unmistakable. It not only was received with applause, but created a
+sensation, and Swedish literature was congratulated on the
+acquisition of a new talent among its writers.</p>
+<p>The secret of Fredrika's authorship--which had as yet not been
+confided even to her parents--was presently revealed to the poet
+(and later bishop) Franz&eacute;n, an old friend of the family.
+Shortly afterward the Swedish Academy, of which Franz&eacute;n was
+secretary, awarded her its lesser gold medal as a sign of
+appreciation. A third volume met with even greater success than its
+predecessors, and seemed definitely to point out the career which
+she subsequently followed; and from this time until the close of
+her life she worked diligently in her chosen field. She rapidly
+acquired an appreciative public in and out of Sweden. Many of her
+novels and tales were translated into various languages, several of
+them appearing simultaneously in Swedish and English. In 1844 the
+Swedish Academy awarded her its great gold medal of merit.</p>
+<p>Several long journeys abroad mark the succeeding years: to
+Denmark and America from 1848 to 1857; to Switzerland, Belgium,
+France, Italy, Palestine, and Greece, from 1856 to 1861; to Germany
+in 1862, returning the same year. The summer months of 1864 she
+spent at &Aring;rsta, which since 1853 had passed out of the hands
+of the family. She removed there the year after, and died there on
+the 31st of December.</p>
+<p>Fredrika Bremer's most successful literary work was in the line
+of her earliest writings, descriptive of the every-day life of the
+middle classes. Her novels in this line have an unusual charm of
+expression, whose definable elements are an unaffected simplicity
+and a certain quiet humor which admirably fits the chosen
+<i>milieu</i>. Besides the ones already mentioned, 'Presidentens
+D&ouml;ttrar' (The President's Daughters), 'Grannarna' (The
+Neighbors), 'Hemmet' (The Home), 'Nina,' and others, cultivated
+this field. Later she drifted into "tendency" fiction, making her
+novels the vehicles for her opinions on important public questions,
+such as religion, philanthropy, and above all the equal rights of
+women. These later productions, of which 'Hertha' and 'Syskonlif'
+are the most important, are far inferior to her earlier work. She
+had, however, the satisfaction of seeing the realization of several
+of the movements which she had so ardently espoused: the law that
+unmarried women in Sweden should attain their majority at
+twenty-five years of age; the organization at Stockholm of a
+seminary for the education of woman teachers; and certain
+parliamentary reforms.</p>
+<p>In addition to her novels and short stories, she wrote some
+verse, mostly unimportant, and several books of travel, among them
+'Hemmen i ny Verlden' (Homes in the New World), containing her
+experiences of America; 'Life in the Old World'; and 'Greece and
+the Greeks.'</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BREMER01"></a>
+<h3>A HOME-COMING</h3>
+<center>From 'The Neighbors'</center>
+<br>
+<p>LETTER I.--FRANCISCA W. TO MARIA M.</p>
+<p>ROSENVIK, 1st June, 18.</p>
+<p>Here I am now, dear Maria, in my own house and home, at my own
+writing-table, and with my own Bear. And who then is Bear? no doubt
+you ask. Who else should he be but my own husband? I call him
+<i>Bear</i> because--it so happens. I am seated at the window. The
+sun is setting. Two swans are swimming in the lake, and furrow its
+clear mirror. Three cows--<i>my cows</i>--are standing on the
+verdant margin, quiet, fat, and pensive, and certainly think of
+nothing. What excellent cows they are! Now the maid is coming up
+with the milk-pail. Delicious milk in the country! But what is not
+good in the country? Air and people, food and feelings, earth and
+sky, everything there is fresh and cheering.</p>
+<p>Now I must introduce you to my place of abode--no! I must begin
+farther off. Upon yonder hill, from which I first beheld the valley
+in which Rosenvik lies (the hill is some miles in the interior of
+Smaaland) do you descry a carriage covered with dust? In it are
+seated Bear and his wedded wife. The wife is looking out with
+curiosity, for before her lies a valley so beautiful in the
+tranquillity of evening! Below are green groves which fringe
+mirror-clear lakes, fields of standing corn bend in silken
+undulations round gray mountains, and white buildings glance amid
+the trees. Round about, pillars of smoke are shooting up vertically
+from the wood-covered hills to the serene evening sky. This seems
+to indicate the presence of volcanoes, but in point of fact it is
+merely the peaceful labor of the husbandmen burning the vegetation,
+in order to fertilize the soil. At all events, it is an excellent
+thing, and I am delighted, bend forward, and am just thinking about
+a happy family in nature,--Paradise, and Adam and Eve,--when
+suddenly Bear puts his great paws around me, and presses me so that
+I am near giving up the ghost, while, kissing me, he entreats me to
+"be comfortable here." I was a little provoked; but when I
+perceived the heartfelt intention of the embrace, I could not but
+be satisfied.</p>
+<p>In this valley, then, was my permanent home: here my new family
+was living; here lay Rosenvik; here I was to live with my Bear. We
+descended the hill, and the carriage rolled rapidly along the level
+way. Bear told me the names of every estate, both in the
+neighborhood and at a distance. I listened as if I were dreaming,
+but was roused from my reverie when he said with a certain stress,
+"<i>Here</i> is the residence of <i>ma ch&egrave;re
+m&egrave;re</i>," and the carriage drove into a courtyard, and
+stopped before a large and fine stone house.</p>
+<p>"What, are we going to alight here?" "Yes, my love." This was by
+no means an agreeable surprise to me. I would gladly have first
+driven to my own home, there to prepare myself a little for meeting
+my husband's stepmother, of whom I was a little afraid, from the
+accounts I had heard of that lady, and the respect Bear entertained
+for her. This visit appeared entirely <i>mal &agrave;propos</i> to
+me, but Bear has his own ideas, and I perceived from his manner
+that it was not expedient then to offer any resistance.</p>
+<p>It was Sunday, and on the carriage drawing up, the tones of a
+violin became audible to me. "Aha!" said Bear, "so much the
+better;" made a ponderous leap from the carriage, and lifted me
+out. Of hat-cases and packages, no manner of account was to be
+taken. Bear took my hand, ushered me up the steps into the
+magnificent hall, and dragged me toward the door from whence the
+sounds of music and dancing were heard. "See," thought I, "now I am
+to dance in this costume forsooth!" I wished to go into some place
+where I could shake the dust from my nose and my bonnet; where I
+could at least view myself in a mirror. Impossible! Bear, leading
+me by the arm, assured me that I looked "most charming," and
+entreated me to mirror myself in his eyes. I then needs must be so
+discourteous as to reply that they were "too small." He protested
+that they were only the clearer, and opened the door to the
+ball-room. "Well, since you lead me to the ball, you shall also
+dance with me, you Bear!" I exclaimed in the gayety of despair, so
+to speak. "With delight!" cried Bear, and at the same moment we
+found ourselves in the salon.</p>
+<p>My alarm diminished considerably when I perceived in the
+spacious room only a crowd of cleanly attired maids and
+serving-men, who were sweeping merrily about with one another. They
+were so busied with dancing as scarcely to observe us. Bear then
+conducted me to the upper end of the apartment; and there, on a
+high seat, I saw a tall and strong lady of about fifty, who was
+playing on a violin with zealous earnestness, and beating time with
+her foot, which she stamped with energy. On her head she wore a
+remarkable and high-projecting cap of black velvet, which I will
+call a helmet, because that word occurred to my mind at the very
+first view I had of her, and I know no one more appropriate. She
+looked well, but singular. It was the lady of General Mansfelt, my
+husband's stepmother, <i>ma ch&egrave;re m&egrave;re!</i></p>
+<p>She speedily cast her large dark-brown eyes on me, instantly
+ceased playing, laid aside the violin, and drew herself up with a
+proud bearing, but an air of gladness and frankness. Bear led me
+towards her. I trembled a little, bowed profoundly, and kissed
+<i>ma ch&egrave;re m&egrave;re's</i> hand. She kissed my forehead,
+and for a while regarded me with such a keen glance, that I was
+compelled to abase my eyes, on which she again kissed me most
+cordially on lips and forehead, and embraced me almost as lustily
+as Bear had. Now it was Bear's turn; he kissed the hand of <i>ma
+ch&egrave;re m&egrave;re</i> right respectfully; she however
+offered him her cheek, and they appeared very friendly. "Be
+welcome, my dear friends!" said <i>ma ch&egrave;re m&egrave;re</i>,
+with a loud, masculine voice. "It was handsome in you to come to me
+before driving to your own home. I thank you for it. I would indeed
+have given you a better reception had I been prepared; at all
+events, I know that 'Welcome is the best cheer.' I hope, my
+friends, you stay the evening here?" Bear excused us, said that we
+desired to get home soon, that I was fatigued from the journey, but
+that we would not drive by Carlsfors without paying our respects to
+<i>ma ch&egrave;re m&egrave;re</i>.</p>
+<p>"Well, very good, well, very good!" said <i>ma ch&egrave;re
+m&egrave;re</i>, with satisfaction; "we will shortly talk further
+about that in the chamber there; but first I must say a few words
+to the people here. Hark ye, good friends!" and <i>ma ch&egrave;re
+m&egrave;re</i> knocked with the bow on the back of the violin,
+till a general silence ensued in the salon. "My children," she
+pursued in a solemn manner, "I have to tell you--a plague upon you!
+will you not be still there, at the lower end?--I have to inform
+you that my dear son, Lars Anders Werner, has now led home, as his
+wedded wife, this Francisca Bur&eacute;n whom you see at his side.
+Marriages are made in heaven, my children, and we will supplicate
+heaven to complete its work in blessing this conjugal pair. We will
+this evening together drink a bumper to their prosperity. That will
+do! Now you can continue your dancing, my children. Olof, come you
+here, and do your best in playing."</p>
+<p>While a murmur of exultation and congratulations went through
+the assembly, <i>ma ch&egrave;re m&egrave;re</i> took me by the
+hand, and led me, together with Bear, into another room. Here she
+ordered punch and glasses to be brought in. In the interim she
+thrust her two elbows on the table, placed her clenched hands under
+her chin, and gazed steadfastly at me, but with a look which was
+rather gloomy than friendly. Bear, perceiving that <i>ma
+ch&egrave;re m&egrave;re's</i> review embarrassed me, broached the
+subject of the harvest or rural affairs. <i>Ma ch&egrave;re
+m&egrave;re</i> vented a few sighs, so deep that they rather
+resembled groans, appeared to make a violent effort to command
+herself, answered Bear's questions, and on the arrival of the
+punch, drank to us, saying, with a serious look and voice, "Son and
+son's wife, your health!" On this she grew more friendly, and said
+in a tone of pleasantry, which beseemed her very well, "Lars
+Anders, I don't think people can say you have bought the calf in
+the sack. Your wife does not by any means look in bad case, and has
+a pair of eyes to buy fish with. Little she is, it is true; but
+'Little and bold is often more than a match for the great.'"</p>
+<p>I laughed, so did <i>ma ch&egrave;re m&egrave;re</i> also; I
+began to understand her character and manner. We gossiped a little
+while together in a lively manner, and I recounted some little
+adventures of travel, which amused her exceedingly. After the lapse
+of an hour, we arose to take leave, and <i>ma ch&egrave;re
+m&egrave;re</i> said, with a really charming smile, "I will not
+detain you this evening, delighted as I am to see you. I can well
+imagine that home is attractive. Stay at home to-morrow, if you
+will; but the day after to-morrow come and dine with me. As to the
+rest, you know well that you are at all times welcome. Fill now
+your glasses, and come and drink the folks' health. Sorrow we
+should keep to ourselves, but share joy in common."</p>
+<p>We went into the dancing-room with full glasses, <i>ma
+ch&egrave;re m&egrave;re</i> leading the way as herald. They were
+awaiting us with bumpers, and <i>ma ch&egrave;re m&egrave;re</i>
+addressed the people something in this strain:--"We must not indeed
+laugh until we get over the brook; but when we set out on the
+voyage of matrimony with piety and good sense, then may be applied
+the adage that 'Well begun is half won'; and on that, my friends,
+we will drink a skoal to this wedded pair you see before you, and
+wish that both they and their posterity may ever 'sit in the
+vineyard of our Lord.' Skoal!"</p>
+<p>"Skoal! skoal!" resounded from every side. Bear and I emptied
+our glasses, and went about and shook a multitude of people by the
+hand, till my head was all confusion. When this was over, and we
+were preparing to prosecute our journey, <i>ma ch&egrave;re
+m&egrave;re</i> came after us on the steps with a packet or bundle
+in her hand, and said in a friendly manner, "Take this cold roast
+veal with you, children, for breakfast to-morrow morning. After
+that, you must fatten and consume your own calves. But forget not,
+daughter-in-law, that I get back my napkin. No, you shan't carry
+it, dear child, you have enough to do with your bag and mantle.
+Lars Anders shall carry the roast veal." And as if Lars Anders had
+been still a little boy, she charged him with the bundle, showed
+him how he was to carry it, and Bear did as she said. Her last
+words were, "Forget not that I get my napkin again!" I looked with
+some degree of wonder at Bear; but he smiled, and lifted me into
+the carriage.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BREMER02"></a>
+<h3>THE LANDED PROPRIETOR</h3>
+<center>From 'The Home'</center>
+<br>
+<p>Louise possessed the quality of being a good listener in a
+higher degree than any one else in the family, and therefore she
+heard more than any one else of his Excellency; but not of him
+only, for Jacobi had always something to tell her, always something
+to consult her about; and in case she were not too much occupied
+with her thoughts about the weaving, he could always depend upon
+the most intense sympathy, and the best advice both with regard to
+moral questions and economical arrangements, dress, plans for the
+future, and so forth. He also gave her good advice--which however
+was very seldom followed--when she was playing Postilion; he also
+drew patterns for her tapestry work, and was very fond of reading
+aloud to her--but novels rather than sermons.</p>
+<p>But he was not long allowed to sit by her side alone; for very
+soon a person seated himself at her other side whom we will call
+the <i>Landed Proprietor</i>, as he was chiefly remarkable for the
+possession of a large estate in the vicinity of the town.</p>
+<p>The Landed Proprietor seemed to be disposed to dispute with the
+Candidate--let us continue to call him so, as we are all, in one
+way or the other, Candidates in this world--the place which he
+possessed. The Landed Proprietor had, besides his estate, a very
+portly body; round, healthy-looking cheeks; a pair of large gray
+eyes, remarkable for their want of expression; and a little rosy
+mouth, which preferred mastication to speaking, which laughed
+without meaning, and which now began to direct to "Cousin
+Louise"--for he considered himself related to the Lagman--several
+short speeches, which we will recapitulate in the following
+chapter, headed</p>
+<p>STRANGE QUESTIONS</p>
+<p>"Cousin Louise, are you fond of fish--bream for instance?" asked
+the Landed Proprietor one evening, as he seated himself by the side
+of Louise, who was busy working a landscape in tapestry.</p>
+<p>"Oh, yes! bream is a very good fish," answered she,
+phlegmatically, without looking up.</p>
+<p>"Oh, with red-wine sauce, delicious! I have splendid fishing on
+my estate, Oestanvik. Big fellows of bream! I fish for them
+myself."</p>
+<p>"Who is the large fish there?" inquired Jacobi of Henrik, with
+an impatient sneer; "and what is it to him if your sister Louise is
+fond of bream or not?"</p>
+<p>"Because then she might like him too, <i>mon cher</i>! A very
+fine and solid fellow is my cousin Thure of Oestanvik. I advise you
+to cultivate his acquaintance. What now, Gabrielle dear, what now,
+your Highness?"</p>
+<p>"What is that which--"</p>
+<p>"Yes, what is it? I shall lose my head over that riddle. Mamma
+dear, come and help your stupid son!"</p>
+<p>"No, no! Mamma knows it already. She must not say it!" exclaimed
+Gabrielle with fear.</p>
+<p>"What king do you place above all other kings, Magister?" asked
+Petrea for the second time,--having this evening her "raptus" of
+questioning.</p>
+<p>"Charles the Thirteenth," answered the Candidate, and listened
+for what Louise was going to reply to the Landed Proprietor.</p>
+<p>"Do you like birds, Cousin Louise?" asked the Landed
+Proprietor.</p>
+<p>"Oh yes, particularly the throstle," answered Louise.</p>
+<p>"Well,--I am glad of that!" said the Landed Proprietor. "On my
+estate, Oestanvik, there is an immense quantity of throstles. I
+often go out with my gun, and shoot them for my dinner. Piff, paff!
+with two shots I have directly a whole dishful."</p>
+<p>Petrea, who was asked by no one "Do you like birds, cousin?" and
+who wished to occupy the Candidate, did not let herself be deterred
+by his evident confusion, but for the second time put the following
+question:--"Do you think, Magister, that people before the Flood
+were really worse than they are nowadays?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, much, much better," answered the Candidate.</p>
+<p>"Are you fond of roasted hare, Cousin Louise?" asked the Landed
+Proprietor.</p>
+<p>"Are you fond of roasted hare, Magister?" whispered Petrea
+waggishly to Jacobi.</p>
+<p>"Brava, Petrea!" whispered her brother to her.</p>
+<p>"Are you fond of cold meat, Cousin Louise?" asked the Landed
+Proprietor, as he was handing Louise to the supper-table.</p>
+<p>"Are you fond of Landed Proprietor?" whispered Henrik to her as
+she left it.</p>
+<p>Louise answered just as a cathedral would have answered: she
+looked very solemn and was silent.</p>
+<p>After supper Petrea was quite excited, and left nobody alone who
+by any possibility could answer her. "Is reason sufficient for
+mankind? What is the ground of morals? What is properly the meaning
+of 'revelation'? Why is everything so badly arranged in the State?
+Why must there be rich and poor?" etc., etc.</p>
+<p>"Dear Petrea!" said Louise, "what use can there be in asking
+those questions?"</p>
+<p>It was an evening for questions; they did not end even when the
+company had broken up.</p>
+<p>"Don't you think, Elise," said the Lagman to his wife when they
+were alone, "that our little Petrea begins to be disagreeable with
+her continual questioning and disputing? She leaves no one in
+peace, and is stirred up herself the whole time. She will make
+herself ridiculous if she keeps on in this way."</p>
+<p>"Yes, if she does keep on so. But I have a feeling that she will
+change. I have observed her very particularly for some time, and do
+you know, I think there is really something very uncommon in that
+girl."</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, there is certainly something uncommon in her. Her
+liveliness and the many games and schemes which she invents--"</p>
+<p>"Yes, don't you think they indicate a decided talent for the
+fine arts? And then her extraordinary thirst for learning: every
+morning, between three and four o'clock, she gets up in order to
+read or write, or to work at her compositions. That is not at all a
+common thing. And may not her uneasiness, her eagerness to question
+and dispute, arise from a sort of intellectual hunger? Ah, from
+such hunger, which many women must suffer throughout their lives,
+from want of literary food,--from such an emptiness of the soul
+arise disquiet, discontent, nay, innumerable faults."</p>
+<p>"I believe you are right, Elise," said the Lagman, "and no
+condition in life is sadder, particularly in more advanced years.
+But this shall not be the lot of our Petrea--that I will promise.
+What do you think now would benefit her most?"</p>
+<p>"My opinion is that a serious and continued plan of study would
+assist in regulating her mind. She is too much left to herself with
+her confused tendencies, with her zeal and her inquiry. I am too
+ignorant myself to lead and instruct her, you have too little time,
+and she has no one here who can properly direct her young and
+unregulated mind. Sometimes I almost pity her, for her sisters
+don't understand at all what is going on within her, and I confess
+it is often painful to myself; I wish I were more able to assist
+her. Petrea needs some ground on which to take her stand. Her
+thoughts require more firmness; from the want of this comes her
+uneasiness. She is like a flower without roots, which is moved
+about by wind and waves."</p>
+<p>"She shall take root, she shall find ground as sure as it is to
+be found in the world," said the Lagman, with a serious and beaming
+eye, at the same time striking his hand on the book containing the
+law of West Gotha, so that it fell to the ground. "We will consider
+more of this, Elise," continued he: "Petrea is still too young for
+us to judge with certainty of her talents and tendencies. But if
+they turn out to be what they appear, then she shall never feel any
+hunger as long as I live and can procure bread for my family. You
+know my friend, the excellent Bishop B----: perhaps we can at first
+confide our Petrea to his guidance. After a few years we shall see;
+she is still only a child. Don't you think that we ought to speak
+to Jacobi, in order to get him to read and converse with her?
+Apropos, how is it with Jacobi? I imagine that he begins to be too
+attentive to Louise."</p>
+<p>"Well, well! you are not so far wrong; and even our cousin Thure
+of Oestanvik,--have you perceived anything there?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, I did perceive something yesterday evening; what the deuce
+was his meaning with those stupid questions he put to her? 'Does
+cousin like this?' or 'Is cousin fond of that?' I don't like that
+at all myself. Louise is not yet full-grown, and already people
+come and ask her, 'Does cousin like--?' Well, it may signify very
+little after all, which would perhaps please me best. What a pity,
+however, that our cousin is not a little more manly; for he has
+certainly got a most beautiful estate, and so near us."</p>
+<p>"Yes, a pity; because, as he is at present, I am almost sure
+Louise would find it impossible to give him her hand."</p>
+<p>"You do not believe that her inclination is toward Jacobi?"</p>
+<p>"To tell the truth, I fancy that this is the case."</p>
+<p>"Nay, that would be very unpleasant and very unwise: I am very
+fond of Jacobi, but he has nothing and is nothing."</p>
+<p>"But, my dear, he may get something and become something; I
+confess, dear Ernst, that I believe he would suit Louise better for
+a husband than any one else we know, and I would with pleasure call
+him my son."</p>
+<p>"Would you, Elise? then I must also prepare myself to do the
+same. You have had most trouble and most labor with the children,
+it is therefore right that you should decide in their affairs."</p>
+<p>"Ernst, you are so kind!"</p>
+<p>"Say just, Elise; not more than just. Besides, it is my opinion
+that our thoughts and inclinations will not differ much. I confess
+that Louise appears to me to be a great treasure, and I know of
+nobody I could give her to with all my heart; but if Jacobi obtains
+her affections, I feel that I could not oppose their union,
+although it would be painful to me on account of his uncertain
+prospects. He is really dear to me, and we are under great
+obligations to him on account of Henrik; his excellent heart, his
+honesty, and his good qualities, will make him as good a citizen as
+a husband and father, and I consider him to be one of the most
+agreeable men to associate with daily. But, God bless me! I speak
+as if I wished the union, but that is far from my desire: I would
+much rather keep my daughters at home, so long as they find
+themselves happy with me; but when girls grow up, there is never
+any peace to depend on. I wish all lovers and questioners a long
+way off. Here we could live altogether as in a kingdom of heaven,
+now that we have got everything in such order. Some small
+improvements may still be wanted, but this will be all right if we
+are only left in peace. I have been thinking that we could so
+easily make a wardrobe here: do you see on this side of the
+wall--don't you think if we were to open--What! are you asleep
+already, my dear?"</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Louise was often teased about Cousin Thure; Cousin Thure was
+often teased about Cousin Louise. He liked very much to be teased
+about his Cousin Louise, and it gave him great pleasure to be told
+that Oestanvik wanted a mistress, that he himself wanted a good
+wife, and that Louise Frank was decidedly one of the wisest and
+most amiable girls in the whole neighborhood, and of the most
+respectable family. The Landed Proprietor was half ready to receive
+congratulations on his betrothal. What the supposed bride thought
+about the matter, however, is difficult to divine. Louise was
+certainly always polite to her "Cousin Thure," but more
+indifference than attachment seemed to be expressed in this
+politeness; and she declined, with a decision astonishing to many a
+person, his constantly repeated invitations to make a tour to
+Oestanvik in his new landau drawn by "my chestnut horses,"
+four-in-hand. It was said by many that the agreeable and friendly
+Jacobi was much nearer to Louise's heart than the rich Landed
+Proprietor. But even towards Jacobi her behavior was so uniform, so
+quiet, and so unconstrained that nobody knew what to think. Very
+few knew so well as we do that Louise considered it in accordance
+with the dignity of a woman to show perfect indifference to the
+attentions or <i>doux propos</i> of men, until they had openly and
+fully explained themselves. She despised coquetry to that degree
+that she feared everything which had the least appearance of it.
+Her young friends used to joke with her upon her strong notions in
+this respect, and often told her that she would remain
+unmarried.</p>
+<p>"That may be!" answered Louise calmly.</p>
+<p>One day she was told that a gentleman had said, "I will not
+stand up for any girl who is not a little coquettish!"</p>
+<p>"Then he may remain sitting!" answered Louise, with a great deal
+of dignity.</p>
+<p>Louise's views with regard to the dignity of woman, her serious
+and decided principles, and her manner of expressing them, amused
+her young friends, at the same time that they inspired them with
+great regard for her, and caused many little contentions and
+discussions in which Louise fearlessly, though not without some
+excess, defended what was right. These contentions, which began in
+merriment, sometimes ended quite differently.</p>
+<p>A young and somewhat coquettish married lady felt herself one
+day wounded by the severity with which Louise judged the coquetry
+of her sex, particularly of married ladies, and in revenge she made
+use of some words which awakened Louise's astonishment and anger at
+the same time. An explanation followed between the two, the
+consequence of which was a complete rupture between Louise and the
+young lady, together with an altered disposition of mind in the
+former, which she in vain attempted to conceal. She had been
+unusually joyous and lively during the first days of her stay at
+Axelholm; but she now became silent and thoughtful, often absent;
+and some people thought that she seemed less friendly than formerly
+towards the Candidate, but somewhat more attentive to the Landed
+Proprietor, although she constantly declined his invitation "to
+take a tour to Oestanvik."</p>
+<p>The evening after this explanation took place, Elise was engaged
+with Jacobi in a lively conversation in the balcony.</p>
+<p>"And if," said Jacobi, "if I endeavor to win her affections, oh,
+tell me! would her parents, would her mother see it without
+displeasure? Ah, speak openly with me; the happiness of my life
+depends upon it!"</p>
+<p>"You have my approval and my good wishes," answered Elise; "I
+tell you now what I have often told my husband, that I should very
+much like to call you my son!"</p>
+<p>"Oh!" exclaimed Jacobi, deeply affected, falling on his knees
+and pressing Elise's hand to his lips: "oh, that every act in my
+life might prove my gratitude, my love--!"</p>
+<p>At this moment Louise, who had been looking for her mother,
+approached the balcony; she saw Jacobi's action and heard his
+words. She withdrew quickly, as if she had been stung by a
+serpent.</p>
+<p>From this time a great change was more and more perceptible in
+her. Silent, shy, and very pale, she moved about like a dreaming
+person in the merry circle at Axelholm, and willingly agreed to her
+mother's proposal to shorten her stay at this place.</p>
+<p>Jacobi, who was as much astonished as sorry at Louise's sudden
+unfriendliness towards him, began to think the place was somehow
+bewitched, and wished more than once to leave it.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BREMER03"></a>
+<h3>A FAMILY PICTURE</h3>
+<center>From 'The Home'</center>
+<br>
+<p>The family is assembled in the library; tea is just finished.
+Louise, at the pressing request of Gabrielle and Petrea, lays out
+the cards in order to tell the sisters their fortune. The Candidate
+seats himself beside her, and seems to have made up his mind to be
+a little more cheerful. But then "the object" looks more like a
+cathedral than ever. The Landed Proprietor enters, bows, blows his
+nose, and kisses the hand of his "gracious aunt."</p>
+<p><i>Landed Proprietor</i>--Very cold this evening; I think we
+shall have frost.</p>
+<p><i>Elise</i>--It is a miserable spring; we have just read a
+melancholy account of the famine in the northern provinces; these
+years of dearth are truly unfortunate.</p>
+<p><i>Landed Proprietor</i>--Oh yes, the famine up there. No, let
+us talk of something else; that is too gloomy. I have had my peas
+covered with straw. Cousin Louise, are you fond of playing
+Patience? I am very fond of it myself; it is so composing. At
+Oestanvik I have got very small cards for Patience; I am quite sure
+you would like them, Cousin Louise.</p>
+<p>The Landed Proprietor seats himself on the other side of Louise.
+The Candidate is seized with a fit of curious shrugs.</p>
+<p><i>Louise</i>--This is not Patience, but a little conjuring by
+means of which I can tell future things. Shall I tell your fortune,
+Cousin Thure?</p>
+<p><i>Landed Proprietor</i>--Oh yes! do tell my fortune; but don't
+tell me anything disagreeable. If I hear anything disagreeable in
+the evening, I always dream of it at night. Tell me now from the
+cards that I shall have a pretty little wife;--a wife beautiful and
+amiable as Cousin Louise.</p>
+<p><i>The Candidate (with an expression in his eyes as if he would
+send the Landed Proprietor head-over-heels to Oestanvik)</i>--I
+don't know whether Miss Louise likes flattery.</p>
+<p><i>Landed Proprietor (who takes no notice of his
+rival)</i>--Cousin Louise, are you fond of blue?</p>
+<p><i>Louise</i>--Blue? It is a pretty color; but I almost like
+green better.</p>
+<p><i>Landed Proprietor</i>--Well, that's very droll; it suits
+exceedingly well. At Oestanvik my drawing-room furniture is blue;
+beautiful light-blue satin. But in my bedroom I have green moreen.
+Cousin Louise, I believe really--</p>
+<p>The Candidate coughs as though he were going to be suffocated,
+and rushes out of the room. Louise looks after him and sighs, and
+afterwards sees in the cards so many misfortunes for Cousin Thure
+that he is quite frightened. "The peas frosted!"--"conflagration in
+the drawing-room"--and at last "a basket" ["the mitten"]. The
+Landed Proprietor declares still laughingly that he will not
+receive "a basket." The sisters smile and make their remarks.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="CLEMENS_BRENTANO"></a>
+<h2>CLEMENS BRENTANO</h2>
+<h3>(1778-1842)</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-t.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>he intellectual upheaval in Germany at the beginning of this
+century brought a host of remarkable characters upon the literary
+stage, and none more gifted, more whimsical, more winning than
+Clemens Brentano, the erratic son of a brilliant family. Born
+September 8th, 1778, at Ehrenbreitstein, Brentano spent his youth
+among the stimulating influences which accompanied the renaissance
+of German culture. His grandmother, Sophie de la Roche, had been
+the close friend of Wieland, and his mother the youthful companion
+of Goethe. Clemens, after a vain attempt to follow in the
+mercantile footsteps of his father, went to Jena, where he met the
+Schlegels; and here his brilliant but unsteady literary career
+began.</p>
+<p>In 1803 he married the talented Sophie Mareau, but three years
+later his happiness was terminated by her death. His next
+matrimonial venture was, however, a failure: an elopement in 1808
+with the daughter of a Frankfort banker was quickly followed by a
+divorce, and he thereafter led the uncontrolled life of an errant
+poet. Among his early writings, published under the pseudonym of
+'Marie,' were several satires and dramas and a novel entitled
+'Godwi,' which he himself called "a romance gone mad." The meeting
+with Achim von Arnim, who subsequently married his sister Bettina,
+decided his fate: he embarked in literature once and for all in
+close association with Von Arnim. Together they compiled a
+collection of several hundred folk-songs of the sixteenth,
+seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, under the name of 'Des
+Knaben Wunderhorn' (The Boy's Wonderhorn), 1806-1808. That so
+musical a people as the Germans should be masters of lyric poetry
+is but natural,--every longing, every impression, every impulse
+gushes into song; and in 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn' we hear the
+tuneful voices of a na&iuml;ve race, singing what they have seen or
+dreamed or felt during three hundred years. The work is dedicated
+to Goethe, who wrote an almost enthusiastic review of it for the
+Literary Gazette of Jena. "Every lover or master of musical art,"
+he says, "should have this volume upon his piano."</p>
+<p>The 'Wunderhorn' was greeted by the German public with
+extraordinary cordiality. It was in fact an epoch-making work, the
+pioneer in the new field of German folk poetry. It carried out in a
+purely national spirit the efforts which Herder had made in behalf
+of the folk-songs of all peoples. It revealed the spirit of the
+time. 1806 was the year of the battle of Jena, and Germany in her
+hour of deepest humiliation gave ear to the encouraging voices from
+out her own past. "The editors of the 'Wunderhorn,'" said their
+friend G&ouml;rres, "have deserved of their countrymen a civic
+crown, for having saved from destruction what yet remained to be
+saved;" and on this civic crown the poets' laurels are still
+green.</p>
+<p>Brentano's contagious laughter may even now be heard re-echoing
+through the pages of his book on 'The Philistine' (1811). His
+dramatic power is evinced in the broadly conceived play 'Die
+Gr&uuml;ndung Prags' (The Founding of Prague: 1815); but it is upon
+two stories, told in the simple style of the folk-tale, that his
+widest popularity is founded. 'Die Geschichte vom braven Casperl
+und der sch&ouml;nen Annerl' (The Story of Good Casper and Pretty
+Annie) and his fable of 'Gockel, Hinkel, und Gackeleia,' both of
+the year 1838, are still an indispensable part of the reading of
+every German boy and girl.</p>
+<p>Like his brilliant sister, Brentano is a fascinating figure in
+literature. He was amiable and winning, full of quips and cranks,
+and with an inexhaustible fund of stories. Astonishing tales of
+adventure, related with great circumstantiality of detail, and of
+which he himself was the hero, played an important part in his
+conversation. Tieck once said he had never known a better
+improvisatore than Brentano, nor one who could "lie more
+gracefully."</p>
+<p>When Brentano was forty years of age a total change came over
+his life. The witty and fascinating man of the world was
+transformed into a pious and gloomy ascetic. The visions of the
+stigmatized nun of D&uuml;lmen, Katharina Emmerich, attracted him,
+and he remained under her influence until her death in 1824. These
+visions he subsequently published as the 'Life of the Virgin Mary.'
+The eccentricities of his later years bordered upon insanity. He
+died in the Catholic faith in the year 1842.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRENTANO01"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>THE
+NURSE'S WATCH</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; From 'The Boy's
+Wonderhorn'<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+moon it shines,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My
+darling whines;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The clock strikes twelve:--God
+cheer<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+sick both far and near.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;God
+knoweth all;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Mousy
+nibbles in the wall;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+clock strikes one:--like day,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dreams
+o'er thy pillow play.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+matin-bell<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Wakes
+the nun in convent cell;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+clock strikes two:--they go<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To
+choir in a row.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+wind it blows,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+cock he crows;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+clock strikes three:--the wagoner<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In
+his straw bed begins to stir.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+steed he paws the floor,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Creaks
+the stable door;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+clock strikes four:--'tis plain<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+coachman sifts his grain.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The swallow's
+laugh the still air shakes,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+sun awakes;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The clock strikes five:--the traveler
+must be gone,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He
+puts his stockings on.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+hen is clacking,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+ducks are quacking;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+clock strikes six:--awake, arise,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thou
+lazy hag; come, ope thy eyes.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Quick
+to the baker's run;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+rolls are done;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+clock strikes seven:--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Tis
+time the milk were in the oven.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Put
+in some butter, do,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And
+some fine sugar, too;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+clock strikes eight:--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Now bring my
+baby's porridge straight.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Englished by Charles T.
+Brooks.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRENTANO02"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>THE CASTLE IN
+AUSTRIA</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;From 'The Boy's Wonderhorn'<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;There lies a castle in Austria,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Right goodly to
+behold,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Walled tip with marble stones so
+fair,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With silver and with red
+gold.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Therein lies captive a young boy,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For life and death he
+lies bound,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Full forty fathoms under the
+earth,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Midst vipers and snakes
+around.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;His father came from Rosenberg,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Before the tower he
+went:--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"My son, my dearest son, how hard<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Is thy imprisonment!"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"O father, dearest father mine,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So hardly I am bound,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Full forty fathoms under the
+earth,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Midst vipers and snakes
+around!"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;His father went before the
+lord:--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Let loose thy captive to
+me!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I have at home three casks of
+gold,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And these for the boy
+I'll gi'e."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Three casks of gold, they help you
+not:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That boy, and he must
+die!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He wears round his neck a golden
+chain;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Therein doth his ruin
+lie."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"And if he thus wear a golden
+chain,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He hath not stolen it;
+nay!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A maiden good gave it to him<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For true love, did she
+say."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They led the boy forth from the
+tower,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the sacrament took
+he:--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Help thou, rich Christ, from heaven
+high,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;It's come to an end with
+me!"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They led him to the scaffold
+place,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Up the ladder he must
+go:--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"O headsman, dearest headsman, do<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But a short respite
+allow!"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"A short respite I must not
+grant;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thou wouldst escape and
+fly:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Reach me a silken handkerchief<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Around his eyes to
+tie."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Oh, do not, do not bind mine
+eyes!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I must look on the world
+so fine;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I see it to-day, then never more,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With these weeping eyes
+of mine."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;His father near the scaffold
+stood,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And his heart, it almost
+rends:--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"O son, O thou my dearest son,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thy death I will
+avenge!"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"O father, dearest father mine!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My death thou shalt not
+avenge:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Twould bring to my soul but heavy
+pains;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let me die in
+innocence.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"It is not for this life of mine,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nor for my body
+proud;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Tis but for my dear mother's
+sake:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;At home she weeps
+aloud."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Not yet three days had passed
+away,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When an angel from heaven
+came down:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Take ye the boy from the scaffold
+away;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Else the city shall sink
+under ground!"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And not six months had passed
+away,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ere his death was avenged
+amain;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And upwards of three hundred men<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For the boy's life were
+slain.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who is it that hath made this
+lay,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hath sung it, and so
+on?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That, in Vienna in Austria,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Three maidens fair have
+done.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="ELIZABETH_BRENTANO"></a>
+<h2>ELISABETH BRENTANO (BETTINA VON ARNIM)</h2>
+<h3>(1785-1859)</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-n.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>o picture of German life at the beginning of this century would
+be complete which did not include the distinguished women who left
+their mark upon the time. Among these Bettina von Arnim stands
+easily foremost. There was something triumphant in her nature,
+which in her youth manifested itself in her splendid enthusiasm for
+the two great geniuses who dominated her life,--Goethe and
+Beethoven,--and which, in the lean years when Germany was
+overclouded, maintained itself by an inexhaustible optimism. Her
+merry willfulness and wit covered a warm heart and a vigorous mind;
+and both of her great idols understood her and took her
+seriously.</p>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/brentano.jpg" width="45%" alt=
+""><br>
+<b>Elisabeth Brentano</b></p>
+<p>Elisabeth Brentano was the daughter of Goethe's friend,
+Maximiliane de la Roche. She was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main in
+1785, and was brought up after the death of her mother under the
+somewhat peculiar influence of the highly-strung Caroline von
+G&uuml;nderode. Through her filial intimacy with Goethe's mother,
+she came to know the poet; and out of their friendship grew the
+correspondence which formed the basis of Bettina's famous book,
+'Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde' (Goethe's Correspondence
+with a Child). She attached herself with unbounded enthusiasm to
+Goethe, and he responded with affectionate tact. To him Bettina was
+the embodiment of the loving grace and willfulness of 'Mignon.'</p>
+<p>In 1811 these relations were interrupted, owing to Bettina's
+attitude toward Goethe's wife. In the same year she married Achim
+von Arnim, one of the most refined poets and noblest characters of
+that brilliant circle. The marriage was an ideal one; each
+cherished and delighted in the genius of the other, but in 1831 the
+death of Von Arnim brought this happiness to an end. Goethe died in
+the following year, and Germany went into mourning. Then in 1835
+Bettina appeared before the world for the first time as an
+authoress, in 'Goethe's Correspondence with a Child.' The
+dithyrambic exaltation, the unrestrained but beautiful enthusiasm
+of the book came like an electric shock. Into an atmosphere of
+spiritual stagnation, these letters brought a fresh access of
+vitality and hope. Bettina's old friendly relations with Goethe had
+been resumed later in life, and in a letter written to her niece
+she gives a charming account of the visit to the poet in 1824,
+which proved to be her last. This letter first saw the light in
+1896, and an extract from it has been included below.</p>
+<p>The inspiration which went out from Bettina's magnetic nature
+was profound. She had her part in every great movement of her time,
+from the liberation of Greece to the fight with cholera in Berlin.
+During the latter, her devotion to the cause of the suffering poor
+in Berlin opened her eyes to the miseries of the common people; and
+she wrote a work full of indignant fervor, 'Dies Buch geh&ouml;rt
+dem K&ouml;nig' (This Book belongs to the King), in consequence of
+which her welcome at the court of Frederick William IV. grew cool.
+A subsequent book, written in a similar vein, was suppressed. But
+Bettina's love of the people, as of every cause in which she was
+interested, was genuine and not to be quenched; she acted upon the
+maxim once expressed by Emerson, "Every brave heart must treat
+society as a child, and never allow it to dictate." Emerson greatly
+admired Bettina, and Louisa M. Alcott relates that she first made
+acquaintance with the famous 'Correspondence' when in her girlhood
+she was left to browse in Emerson's library. Bettina's influence
+was most keenly felt by the young, and she had the youth of Germany
+at her feet. She died in 1859.</p>
+<p>There is in Weimar a picture in which are represented the
+literary men of the period, grouped as in Raphael's School of
+Athens, with Goethe and Schiller occupying the centre. Upon the
+broad steps which lead to the elevation where they are standing, is
+the girlish figure of Bettina bending forward and holding a laurel
+wreath in her hand. This is the position which she occupies in the
+history of German literature.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRENTANO11"></a>
+<h3>DEDICATION: TO GOETHE</h3>
+<center>From 'Goethe's Correspondence with a Child'</center>
+<br>
+<p>Thou, who knowest love, and the refinement of sentiment, oh how
+beautiful is everything in thee! How the streams of life rush
+through thy sensitive heart, and plunge with force into the cold
+waves of thy time, then boil and bubble up till mountain and vale
+flush with the glow of life, and the forests stand with glistening
+boughs upon the shore of thy being, and all upon which rests thy
+glance is filled with happiness and life! O God, how happy were I
+with thee! And were I winging my flight far over all times, and far
+over thee, I would fold my pinions and yield myself wholly to the
+domination of thine eyes.</p>
+<p>Men will never understand thee, and those nearest to thee will
+most thoroughly disown and betray thee; I look into the future, and
+I hear them cry, "Stone him!" Now, when thine own inspiration, like
+a lion, stands beside thee and guards thee, vulgarity ventures not
+to approach thee. Thy mother said recently, "The men to-day are all
+like Gerning, who always says, 'We, the superfluous learned';" and
+she speaks truly, for he is superfluous. Rather be dead than
+superfluous! But I am not so, for I am thine, because I recognize
+thee in all things. I know that when the clouds lift themselves up
+before the sun-god, they will soon be depressed by his fiery hand;
+I know that he endures no shadow except that which his own fame
+seeks; the rest of consciousness will overshadow thee. I know, when
+he descends in the evening, that he will again appear in the
+morning with golden front. Thou art eternal, therefore it is good
+for me to be with thee.</p>
+<p>When, in the evening, I am alone in my dark room, and the
+neighbors' lights are thrown upon my wall, they sometimes light up
+thy bust; or when all is silent in the city, here and there a dog
+barks or a cock crows: I know not why, but it seems something
+beyond human to me; I know what I shall do to still my pain.</p>
+<p>I would fain speak with thee otherwise than with words; I would
+fain press myself to thy heart. I feel that my soul is aflame. How
+fearfully still is the air before the storm! So stand now my
+thoughts, cold and silent, and my heart surges like the sea. Dear,
+dear Goethe! A reminiscence of thee breaks the spell; the signs of
+fire and warfare sink slowly down in my sky, and thou art like the
+in-streaming moonlight. Thou art great and glorious, and better
+than all that I have ever known and experienced up to this time.
+Thy whole life is so good!</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRENTANO12"></a>
+<h3>TO GOETHE</h3>
+<br>
+<p>CASSEL, August 13th, 1807.</p>
+<br>
+<p>Who can interpret and measure what is passing within me? I am
+happy now in remembrance of the past, which I scarcely was when
+that past was the present. To my sensitive heart the surprise of
+being with thee, the coming and going and returning in a few
+blessed days--this was all like clouds flitting across my heaven;
+through my too near presence I feared it might be darkened by my
+shadow, as it is ever darker when it nears the earth; now, in the
+distance, it is mild and lofty and ever clear.</p>
+<p>I would fain press thy dear hand with both of mine to my bosom,
+and say to thee, "How peace and content have come to me since I
+have known thee!"</p>
+<p>I know that the evening has not come when life's twilight
+gathers in my heart: oh, would it were so! Would that I had lived
+out my days, that my wishes and joys were fulfilled, and that they
+could all be heaped upon thee, that thou mightst be therewith
+decked and crowned as with evergreen bays.</p>
+<p>When I was alone with thee on that evening I could not
+comprehend thee: thou didst smile at me because I was moved, and
+laughed at me because I wept; but why? And yet it was thy laughter,
+the <i>tone</i> of thy laughter, which moved me to tears; and I am
+content, and see, under the cloak of this riddle, roses burst forth
+which spring alike from sadness and joy. Yes, thou art right,
+prophet: I shall yet with light heart struggle up through jest and
+mirth; I shall weary myself with struggling as I did in my
+childhood (ah, it seems as if it were but yesterday!) when with the
+exuberance of joy I wandered through the blossoming fields, pulling
+up the flowers by the roots and throwing them into the water. But I
+wish to seek rest in a warm, firm earnestness, and there at hand
+standest thou, smiling prophet!</p>
+<p>I say to thee yet once more: Whoever in this wide world
+understands what is passing within me, who, am so restful in thee,
+so silent, so unwavering in my feeling? I could, like the
+mountains, bear nights and days in the past without disturbing thee
+in thy reflections! And yet when at times the wind bears the
+fragrance and the germs together from the blossoming world up to
+the mountain heights, they will be intoxicated with delight as I
+was yesterday. Then I loved the world, then I was as glad as a
+gushing, murmuring spring in which the sun for the first time
+shines.</p>
+<p>Farewell, sublime one who blindest and intimidatest me! From
+this steep rock upon which my love has in life-danger ventured, I
+cannot clamber down. I cannot think of descending, for I should
+break my neck in the attempt.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRENTANO13"></a>
+<h3>BETTINA'S LAST MEETING WITH GOETHE</h3>
+<br>
+<p>From a Letter to her Niece in 1824, first published in 1896</p>
+<p>IN THE evening I was alone again with Goethe. Had any one
+observed us, he would have had something to tell to posterity.
+Goethe's peculiarities were exhibited to the full: first he would
+growl at me, then to make it all up again he would caress me, with
+the most flattering words. His bottle of wine he kept in the
+adjoining room, because I had reproached him for his drinking the
+night before: on some pretext or other he disappeared from the
+scene half a dozen times in order to drink a glass. I pretended to
+notice nothing; but at parting I told him that twelve glasses of
+wine wouldn't hurt him, and that he had had only six. "How do you
+know that so positively?" he said. "I heard the gurgle of the
+bottle in the next room, and I heard you drinking, and then you
+have betrayed yourself to me, as Solomon in the Song of Songs
+betrayed himself to his beloved, by your breath." "You are an
+arrant rogue," he said; "now take yourself off," and he brought the
+candle to light me out. But I sprang in front of him and knelt upon
+the threshold of the room. "Now I shall see if I can shut you in,
+and whether you are a good spirit or an evil one, like the rat in
+Faust; I kiss this threshold and bless it, for over it daily passes
+the most glorious human spirit and my best friend." "Over you and
+your love I shall never pass," he answered, "it is too dear to me;
+and around your spirit I creep so" (and he carefully paced around
+the spot where I was kneeling), "for you are too artful, and it is
+better to keep on good terms with you." And so he dismissed me with
+tears in his eyes. I remained standing in the dark before his door,
+to gulp down my emotion. I was thinking that this door, which I had
+closed with my own hand, had separated me from him in all
+probability forever. Whoever comes near him must confess that his
+genius has partly passed into goodness; the fiery sun of his spirit
+is transformed at its setting into a soft purple light.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRENTANO14"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>IN GOETHE'S
+GARDEN</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I from this hillock all my world
+survey!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yon vale, bedecked by
+nature's fairy fingers,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where the still by-road
+picturesquely lingers,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The cottage white whose quaint charms
+grace the way--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;These are the scenes that o'er my
+heart hold sway.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I from this hillock all my world
+survey!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Though I ascend to
+heights fair lands dividing,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where stately ships I see
+the ocean riding,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While cities gird the view in proud
+array,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Naught prompts my heart's impulses to
+obey.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I from this hillock all my world
+survey!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And could I stand while
+Paradise descrying,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Still for these verdant
+meads should I be sighing,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where thy dear roof-peaks skirt the
+verdant way:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Beyond these bounds my heart longs
+not to stray.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="BRIGHT"></a>
+<h2>JOHN BRIGHT</h2>
+<h3>(1811-1889)</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-j.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>ohn Bright was the modern representative of the ancient Tribunes
+of the people or Demagogues (in the original and perfectly
+honorable sense); and a full comparison of his work and position
+with those of the Cleons or the Gracchi would almost be an outline
+of the respective peoples, polities, and problems. He was a higher
+type of man and politician than Cleon,--largely because the English
+aristocracy is not an unpatriotic and unprincipled clique like the
+Athenian, ready to use any weapon from murder down or to make their
+country a province of a foreign empire rather than give up their
+class monopoly of power; but like his prototype he was a democrat
+by nature as well as profession, the welfare of the common people
+at once his passion and his political livelihood, full of faith
+that popular instincts are both morally right and intellectually
+sound, and all his own instincts and most of his labors
+antagonistic to those of the aristocracy. It is a phase of the same
+fact to say that he also represented the active force of religious
+feeling in politics, as opposed to pure secular statesmanship.</p>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/bright.jpg" width="45%" alt=""><br>
+<b>John Bright</b></p>
+<p>The son of a Quaker manufacturer of Rochdale, England, and born
+near that place November 16th, 1811, he began his public career
+when a mere boy as a stirring and effective temperance orator, his
+ready eloquence and intense earnestness prevailing over an
+ungraceful manner and a bad delivery; he wrought all his life for
+popular education and for the widest extension of the franchise;
+and being a Quaker and a member of the Peace Society, he opposed
+all war on principle, fighting the Crimean War bitterly, and
+leaving the Gladstone Cabinet in 1882 on account of the bombardment
+of Alexandria. He was retired from the service of the public for
+some time on account of his opposition to the Crimean War; but Mr.
+Gladstone, who differed from him on this point, calls it the action
+of his life most worthy of honor. He was perhaps the most warlike
+opponent of war ever high in public life; the pugnacious and
+aggressive agitator, pouring out floods of fiery oratory to the
+effect that nobody ought to fight anybody, was a curious
+paradox.</p>
+<p>He was by far the most influential English friend of the North
+in the Civil War, and the magic of his eloquence and his name was a
+force of perhaps decisive potency in keeping the working classes on
+the same side; so that mass meetings of unemployed laborers with
+half-starving families resolved that they would rather starve
+altogether than help to perpetuate slavery in America. He shares
+with Richard Cobden the credit of having obtained free trade for
+England: Bright's thrilling oratory was second only to Cobden's
+organizing power in winning the victory, and both had the immense
+weight of manufacturers opposing their own class. That he opposed
+the game laws and favored electoral reform is a matter of
+course.</p>
+<p>Mr. Bright entered on an active political career in 1839, when
+he joined the Anti-Corn-Law League. He first became a member of
+Parliament in 1843, and illustrates a most valuable feature of
+English political practice. When a change of feeling in one place
+prevented his re-election, he selected another which was glad to
+honor itself by having a great man represent it, so that the
+country was not robbed of a statesman by a village faction; and
+there being no spoils system, he did not have to waste his time in
+office-jobbing to keep his seat. He sat first for Durham, then for
+Manchester, and finally for Birmingham, remaining in public life
+over forty years; and never had to make a "deal" or get any one an
+office in all that period.</p>
+<p>He was in Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet from 1868 to 1870, and again
+from 1873 to 1882. On the Home Rule question the two old friends
+and long co-workers divided; Mr. Bright, with more than half the
+oldest and sincerest friends of liberty and haters of oppression in
+England, holding the step to be political suicide for the British
+Empire.</p>
+<p>As an orator, Mr. Bright stood in a sense alone. He was direct
+and logical; he carefully collected and massed his facts, and used
+strong, homely Saxon English, and short crisp words; he was a
+master of telling epigram whose force lay in its truth as much as
+in its humor. Several volumes of his speeches have been published:
+'On Public Affairs'; 'On Parliamentary Reform'; 'On Questions of
+Public Policy'; 'On the American Question,' etc. His life has been
+written by Gilchrist, Smith, Robertson, and others. He died March
+27th, 1889.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRIGHT01"></a>
+<h3>FROM THE SPEECH ON THE CORN LAWS (1843)</h3>
+<br>
+<p>It must not be supposed, because I wish to represent the
+interest of the many, that I am hostile to the interest of the
+few.</p>
+<p>But is it not perfectly certain that if the foundation of the
+most magnificent building be destroyed and undermined, the whole
+fabric itself is in danger? Is it not certain, also, that the vast
+body of the people who form the foundation of the social fabric, if
+they are suffering, if they are trampled upon, if they are
+degraded, if they are discontented, if "their hands are against
+every man, and every man's hands are against them," if they do not
+flourish as well, reasonably speaking, as the classes who are above
+them because they are richer and more powerful,--then are those
+classes as much in danger as the working classes themselves?</p>
+<p>There never was a revolution in any country which destroyed the
+great body of the people. There have been convulsions of a most
+dire character which have overturned old-established monarchies and
+have hurled thrones and sceptres to the dust. There have been
+revolutions which have brought down most powerful aristocracies,
+and swept them from the face of the earth forever, but never was
+there a revolution yet which destroyed the people. And whatever may
+come as a consequence of the state of things in this country, of
+this we may rest assured: that the common people, that the great
+bulk of our countrymen will remain and survive the shock, though it
+may be that the Crown and the aristocracy and the Church may be
+leveled with the dust, and rise no more. In seeking to represent
+the working classes, and in standing up for their rights and
+liberties, I hold that I am also defending the rights and liberties
+of the middle and richer classes of society. Doing justice to one
+class cannot inflict injustice on any other class, and "justice and
+impartiality to all" is what we all have a right to from
+government. And we have a right to clamor; and so long as I have
+breath, so long will I clamor against the oppression which I see to
+exist, and in favor of the rights of the great body of the
+people....</p>
+<p>What is the condition in which we are? I have already spoken of
+Ireland. You know that hundreds of thousands meet there, week after
+week, in various parts of the country, to proclaim to all the world
+the tyranny under which they suffer. You know that in South Wales,
+at this moment, there is an insurrection of the most extraordinary
+character going on, and that the Government is sending, day after
+day, soldiers and artillery amongst the innocent inhabitants of
+that mountainous country for the purpose of putting down the
+insurrection thereby raised and carried on. You know that in the
+Staffordshire ironworks almost all the workmen are now out and in
+want of wages, from want of employment and from attempting to
+resist the inevitable reduction of wages which must follow
+restriction upon trade. You know that in August last, Lancashire
+and Yorkshire rose in peaceful insurrection to proclaim to the
+world, and in face of Heaven, the wrongs of an insulted and
+oppressed people. I know that my own neighborhood is unsettled and
+uncomfortable. I know that in your own city your families are
+suffering. Yes, I have been to your cottages and seen their
+condition. Thanks to my canvass of Durham, I have been able to see
+the condition of many honest and independent--or
+ought-to-be-independent--and industrious artisans. I have seen even
+freemen of your city sitting, looking disconsolate and sad. Their
+hands were ready to labor; their skill was ready to produce all
+that their trade demanded. They were as honest and industrious as
+any man in this assembly, but no man hired them. They were in a
+state of involuntary idleness, and were driving fast to the point
+of pauperism. I have seen their wives, too, with three or four
+children about them--one in the cradle, one at the breast. I have
+seen their countenances, and I have seen the signs of their
+sufferings. I have seen the emblems and symbols of affliction such
+as I did not expect to see in this city. Ay! and I have seen those
+little children who at not a distant day will be the men and women
+of this city of Durham; I have seen their poor little wan faces and
+anxious looks, as if the furrows of old age were coming upon them
+before they had escaped from the age of childhood. I have seen all
+this in this city, and I have seen far more in the neighborhood
+from which I have come. You have seen, in all probability, people
+from my neighborhood walking your streets and begging for that
+bread which the Corn Laws would not allow them to earn.</p>
+<blockquote>"Bread-taxed weaver, all can see<br>
+What the tax hath done for thee,<br>
+And thy children, vilely led,<br>
+Singing hymns for shameful bread,<br>
+Till the stones of every street<br>
+Know their little naked feet."</blockquote>
+<p>This is what the Corn Law does for the weavers of my
+neighborhood, and for the weavers and artisans of yours....</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRIGHT02"></a>
+<h3>FROM THE SPEECH ON INCENDIARISM IN IRELAND (1844)</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The great and all-present evil of the rural districts is
+this--you have too many people for the work to be done, and you,
+the landed proprietors, are alone responsible for this state of
+things; and to speak honestly, I believe many of you know it. I
+have been charged with saying out-of-doors that this House is a
+club of land-owners legislating for land-owners. If I had not said
+it, the public must long ago have found out that fact. My honorable
+friend the member for Stockport on one occasion proposed that
+before you passed a law to raise the price of bread, you should
+consider how far you had the power to raise the rates of wages.
+What did you say to that? You said that the laborers did not
+understand political economy, or they would not apply to Parliament
+to raise wages; that Parliament could not raise wages. And yet the
+very next thing you did was to pass a law to raise the price of
+produce of your own land, at the expense of the very class whose
+wages you confessed your inability to increase.</p>
+<p>What is the condition of the county of Suffolk? Is it not
+notorious that the rents are as high as they were fifty years ago,
+and probably much higher? But the return for the farmer's capital
+is much lower, and the condition of the laborer is very much worse.
+The farmers are subject to the law of competition, and rents are
+thereby raised from time to time so as to keep their profits down
+to the lowest point, and the laborers by the competition amongst
+them are reduced to the point below which life cannot be
+maintained. Your tenants and laborers are being devoured by this
+excessive competition, whilst you, their magnanimous landlords,
+shelter yourselves from all competition by the Corn Law yourselves
+have passed, and make the competition of all other classes serve
+still more to swell your rentals. It was for this object the Corn
+Law was passed, and yet in the face of your countrymen you dare to
+call it a law for the protection of native industry....</p>
+<p>Again, a rural police is kept up by the gentry; the farmers say
+for the sole use of watching game and frightening poachers, for
+which formerly they had to pay watchers. Is this true, or is it
+not? I say, then, you care everything for the rights--and for
+something beyond the rights--of your own property, but you are
+oblivious to its duties. How many lives have been sacrificed during
+the past year to the childish infatuation of preserving game? The
+noble lord, the member for North Lancashire, could tell of a
+gamekeeper killed in an affray on his father's estate in that
+county. For the offense one man was hanged, and four men are now on
+their way to penal colonies. Six families are thus deprived of
+husband and father, that this wretched system of game-preserving
+may be continued in a country densely peopled as this is. The
+Marquis of Normanby's gamekeeper has been murdered also, and the
+poacher who shot him only escaped death by the intervention of the
+Home Secretary. At Godalming, in Surrey, a gamekeeper has been
+murdered; and at Buckhill, in Buckinghamshire, a person has
+recently been killed in a poaching affray. This insane system is
+the cause of a fearful loss of life; it tends to the ruin of your
+tenantry, and is the fruitful cause of the demoralization of the
+peasantry. But you are caring for the rights of property; for its
+most obvious duties you have no concern. With such a policy, what
+can you expect but that which is now passing before you?</p>
+<p>It is the remark of a beautiful writer that "to have known
+nothing but misery is the most portentous condition under which
+human nature can start on its course." Has your agricultural
+laborer ever known anything but misery? He is born in a miserable
+hovel, which in mockery is termed a house or a home; he is reared
+in penury: he passes a life of hopeless and unrequited toil, and
+the jail or the union house is before him as the only asylum on
+this side of the pauper's grave. Is this the result of your
+protection to native industry? Have you cared for the laborer till,
+from a home of comfort, he has but a hovel for shelter? and have
+you cherished him into starvation and rags? I tell you what your
+boasted protection is--it is a protection of native idleness at the
+expense of the impoverishment of native industry.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRIGHT03"></a>
+<h3>FROM THE SPEECH ON NON-RECOGNITION OF THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY
+(1861)</h3>
+<br>
+<p>I advise you, and I advise the people of England, to abstain
+from applying to the United States doctrines and principles which
+we never apply to our own case. At any rate, they [the Americans]
+have never fought "for the balance of power" in Europe. They have
+never fought to keep up a decaying empire. They have never
+squandered the money of their people in such a phantom expedition
+as we have been engaged in. And now, at this moment, when you are
+told that they are going to be ruined by their vast
+expenditure,--why, the sum that they are going to raise in the
+great emergency of this grievous war is not greater than what we
+raise every year during a time of peace.</p>
+<p>They say they are not going to liberate slaves. No; the object
+of the Washington government is to maintain their own Constitution
+and to act legally, as it permits and requires. No man is more in
+favor of peace than I am; no man has denounced war more than I
+have, probably, in this country; few men in their public life have
+suffered more obloquy--I had almost said, more indignity--in
+consequence of it. But I cannot for the life of me see, upon any of
+those principles upon which States are governed now,--I say nothing
+of the literal word of the New Testament,--I cannot see how the
+state of affairs in America, with regard to the United States
+government, could have been different from what it is at this
+moment. We had a Heptarchy in this country, and it was thought to
+be a good thing to get rid of it, and have a united nation. If the
+thirty-three or thirty-four States of the American Union can break
+off whenever they like, I can see nothing but disaster and
+confusion throughout the whole of that continent. I say that the
+war, be it successful or not, be it Christian or not, be it wise or
+not, is a war to sustain the government and to sustain the
+authority of a great nation; and that the people of England, if
+they are true to their own sympathies, to their own history, and to
+their own great act of 1834, to which reference has already been
+made, will have no sympathy with those who wish to build up a great
+empire on the perpetual bondage of millions of their
+fellow-men.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRIGHT04"></a>
+<h3>FROM THE SPEECH ON THE STATE OF IRELAND (1866)</h3>
+<br>
+<p>I think I was told in 1849, as I stood in the burial ground at
+Skibbereen, that at least four hundred people who had died of
+famine were buried within the quarter of an acre of ground on which
+I was then looking. It is a country, too, from which there has been
+a greater emigration by sea within a given time than has been known
+at any time from any other country in the world. It is a country
+where there has been, for generations past, a general sense of
+wrong, out of which has grown a chronic state of insurrection; and
+at this very moment when I speak, the general safeguard of
+constitutional liberty is withdrawn, and we meet in this hall, and
+I speak here to-night, rather by the forbearance and permission of
+the Irish executive than under the protection of the common
+safeguards of the rights and liberties of the people of the United
+Kingdom.</p>
+<p>I venture to say that this is a miserable and a humiliating
+picture to draw of this country. Bear in mind that I am not
+speaking of Poland suffering under the conquest of Russia. There is
+a gentleman, now a candidate for an Irish county, who is very great
+upon the wrongs of Poland; but I have found him always in the House
+of Commons taking sides with that great party which has
+systematically supported the wrongs of Ireland. I am not speaking
+of Hungary, or of Venice as she was under the rule of Austria, or
+of the Greeks under the dominion of the Turk; but I am speaking of
+Ireland--part of the United Kingdom--part of that which boasts
+itself to be the most civilized and the most Christian nation in
+the world. I took the liberty recently, at a meeting in Glasgow, to
+say that I believed it was impossible for a class to govern a great
+nation wisely and justly. Now, in Ireland there has been a field in
+which all the principles of the Tory party have had their complete
+experiment and development. You have had the country gentleman in
+all his power. You have had any number of Acts of Parliament which
+the ancient Parliament of Ireland or the Parliament of the United
+Kingdom could give him. You have had the Established Church
+supported by the law, even to the extent, not many years ago, of
+collecting its revenues by the aid of military force. In point of
+fact, I believe it would be impossible to imagine a state of things
+in which the Tory party should have a more entire and complete
+opportunity for their trial than they have had within the limits of
+this island. And yet what has happened? This, surely: that the
+kingdom has been continually weakened, that the harmony of the
+empire has been disturbed, and that the mischief has not been
+confined to the United Kingdom, but has spread to the
+colonies....</p>
+<p>I am told--you can answer it if I am wrong--that it is not
+common in Ireland now to give leases to tenants, especially to
+Catholic tenants. If that be so, then the security for the property
+rests only upon the good feeling and favor of the owner of the
+land; for the laws, as we know, have been made by the land-owners,
+and many propositions for the advantage of the tenants have
+unfortunately been too little considered by Parliament. The result
+is that you have bad farming, bad dwelling-houses, bad temper, and
+everything bad connected with the occupation and cultivation of
+land in Ireland. One of the results--a result the most
+appalling--is this, that your population is fleeing your country
+and seeking refuge in a distant land. On this point I wish to refer
+to a letter which I received a few days ago from a most esteemed
+citizen of Dublin. He told me that he believed that a very large
+portion of what he called the poor, amongst Irishmen, sympathized
+with any scheme or any proposition that was adverse to the Imperial
+Government. He said further that the people here are rather in the
+country than of it, and that they are looking more to America than
+they are looking to England. I think there is a good deal in that.
+When we consider how many Irishmen have found a refuge in America,
+I do not know how we can wonder at that statement. You will
+recollect that when the ancient Hebrew prophet prayed in his
+captivity, he prayed with his window open towards Jerusalem. You
+know that the followers of Mohammed, when they pray, turn their
+faces towards Mecca. When the Irish peasant asks for food and
+freedom and blessing, his eye follows the setting sun, the
+aspirations of his heart reach beyond the wide Atlantic, and in
+spirit he grasps hands with the great Republic of the West. If this
+be so, I say then that the disease is not only serious, but it is
+desperate; but desperate as it is, I believe there is a certain
+remedy for it if the people and Parliament of the United Kingdom
+are willing to apply it....</p>
+<p>I believe that at the root of a general discontent there is in
+all countries a general grievance and general suffering. The
+surface of society is not incessantly disturbed without a cause. I
+recollect in the poem of the greatest of Italian poets, he tells us
+that as he saw in vision the Stygian lake, and stood upon its
+banks, he observed the constant commotion upon the surface of the
+pool, and his good instructor and guide explained to him the cause
+of it:--</p>
+<blockquote>"This, too, for certain know, that underneath<br>
+The water dwells a multitude, whose sighs<br>
+Into these bubbles make the surface heave,<br>
+As thine eye tells thee wheresoe'er it turn."</blockquote>
+<p>And I say that in Ireland, for generations back, the misery and
+the wrongs of the people have made their sign, and have found a
+voice in constant insurrection and disorder. I have said that
+Ireland is a country of many wrongs and of many sorrows. Her past
+lies almost in shadow. Her present is full of anxiety and peril.
+Her future depends on the power of her people to substitute
+equality and justice for supremacy, and a generous patriotism for
+the spirit of faction. In the effort now making in Great Britain to
+create a free representation of the people you have the deepest
+interest. The people never wish to suffer, and they never wish to
+inflict injustice. They have no sympathy with the wrong-doer,
+whether in Great Britain or in Ireland; and when they are fairly
+represented in the Imperial Parliament, as I hope they will one day
+be, they will speedily give an effective and final answer to that
+old question of the Parliament of Kilkenny--"How comes it to pass
+that the King has never been the richer for Ireland?"</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRIGHT05"></a>
+<h3>FROM THE SPEECH ON THE IRISH ESTABLISHED CHURCH (1868)</h3>
+<br>
+<p>I am one of those who do not believe that the Established Church
+of Ireland--of which I am not a member--would go to absolute ruin,
+in the manner of which many of its friends are now so fearful.
+There was a paper sent to me this morning, called 'An Address from
+the Protestants of Ireland to their Protestant Brethren of Great
+Britain.' It is dated "5, Dawson Street," and is signed by "John
+Trant Hamilton, T.A. Lefroy, and R.W. Gamble." The paper is written
+in a fair and mild, and I would even say,--for persons who have
+these opinions,--in a kindly and just spirit. But they have been
+alarmed, and I would wish, if I can, to offer them consolation.
+They say they have no interest in protecting any abuses of the
+Established Church, but they protest against their being now
+deprived of the Church of their fathers. Now, I am quite of opinion
+that it would be a most monstrous thing to deprive the Protestants
+of the Church of their fathers; and there is no man in the world
+who would more strenuously resist even any step in that direction
+than I would, unless it were Mr. Gladstone, the author of the
+famous resolutions. The next sentence goes on to say, "We ask for
+no ascendancy." Having read that sentence, I think that we must
+come to the conclusion that these gentlemen are in a better frame
+of mind than we thought them to be in. I can understand easily that
+these gentlemen are very sorry and doubtful as to the depths into
+which they are to be plunged; but I disagree with them in
+this--that I think there would still be a Protestant Church in
+Ireland when all is done that Parliament has proposed to do. The
+only difference will be, that it will not then be an
+establishment--that it will have no special favor or grant from the
+State--that it will stand in relation to the State just as your
+Church does, and just as the churches of the majority of the people
+of Great Britain at this moment stand. There will then be no
+Protestant bishops from Ireland to sit in the House of Lords; but
+he must be the most enthusiastic Protestant and Churchman who
+believes that there can be any advantage to his Church and to
+Protestantism generally in Ireland from such a phenomenon.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="BRILLAT"></a>
+<h2>BRILLAT-SAVARIN</h2>
+<h3>(1755-1826)</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-b.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>rillat-Savarin was a French magistrate and legislator, whose
+reputation as man of letters rests mainly upon a single volume, his
+inimitable 'Physiologie du Go&ucirc;t'. Although writing in the
+present century, he was essentially a Frenchman of the old
+r&eacute;gime, having been born in 1755 at Belley, almost on the
+border-line of Savoy, where he afterwards gained distinction as an
+advocate. In later life he regretted his native province chiefly
+for its figpeckers, superior in his opinion to ortolans or robins,
+and for the cuisine of the innkeeper Genin, where "the old-timers
+of Belley used to gather to eat chestnuts and drink the new white
+wine known as <i>vin bourru</i>"</p>
+<p class="rgt"><img src="images/bremer.jpg" width="45%" alt=""><br>
+<b>Brillat-Savarin</b></p>
+<p>After holding various minor offices in his department, Savarin
+became mayor of Belley in 1793; but the Reign of Terror soon forced
+him to flee to Switzerland and join the colony of French refugees
+at Lausanne. Souvenirs of this period are frequent in his
+'Physiologie du Go&ucirc;t', all eminently gastronomic, as befits
+his subject-matter, but full of interest, as showing his unfailing
+cheerfulness amidst the vicissitudes and privations of exile. He
+fled first to D&ocirc;le, to "obtain from the Representative
+Pr&ocirc;t a safe-conduct, which was to save me from going to
+prison and thence probably to the scaffold," and which he
+ultimately owed to Madame Pr&ocirc;t, with whom he spent the
+evening playing duets, and who declared, "Citizen, any one who
+cultivates the fine arts as you do cannot betray his country!" It
+was not the safe-conduct, however, but an unexpected dinner which
+he enjoyed on his route, that made this a red-letter day to
+Savarin:--"What a good dinner!--I will not give the details, but an
+honorable mention is due to a <i>fricass&eacute;e</i> of chicken,
+of the first order, such as cannot be found except in the
+provinces, and so richly dowered with truffles that there were
+enough to put new life into old Tithonus himself."</p>
+<p>The whole episode is told in Savarin's happiest vein, and
+well-nigh justifies his somewhat complacent conclusion that "any
+one who, with a revolutionary committee at his heels, could so
+conduct himself, assuredly has the head and the heart of a
+Frenchman!"</p>
+<p>Natural scenery did not appeal to Savarin; to him Switzerland
+meant the restaurant of the Lion d'Argent, at Lausanne, where "for
+only 15 <i>batz</i> we passed in review three complete courses;"
+the <i>table d'h&ocirc;te</i> of the Rue de Rosny; and the little
+village of Moudon, where the cheese <i>fondue</i> was so good.
+Circumstances, however, soon necessitated his departure for the
+United States, which he always gratefully remembered as having
+afforded him "an asylum, employment, and tranquillity." For three
+years he supported himself in New York, giving French lessons and
+at night playing in a theatre orchestra. "I was so comfortable
+there," he writes, "that in the moment of emotion which preceded
+departure, all that I asked of Heaven (a prayer which it has
+granted) was never to know greater sorrow in the Old World than I
+had known in the New." Returning to France in 1796, Savarin settled
+in Paris, and after holding several offices under the Directory,
+became a Judge in the Cour de Cassation, the French court of last
+resort, where he remained until his death in 1826.</p>
+<p>Although an able and conscientious magistrate, Savarin was
+better adapted to play the kindly friend and cordial host than the
+stern and impartial judge. He was a convivial soul, a lover of good
+cheer and free-handed hospitality; and to-day, while almost
+forgotten as a jurist, his name has become immortalized as the
+representative of gastronomic excellence. His 'Physiologic du
+Go&ucirc;t'--"that <i>olla podrida</i> which defies analysis," as
+Balzac calls it--belongs, like Walton's 'Compleat Angler', or
+White's 'Selborne', among those unique gems of literature, too rare
+in any age, which owe their subtle and imperishable charm primarily
+to the author's own delightful personality. Savarin spent many
+years of loving care in polishing his manuscript, often carrying it
+to court with him, where it was one day mislaid, but--luckily for
+future generations of epicures--was afterward recovered. The book
+is a charming badinage, a bizarre rago&ucirc;t of gastronomic
+precepts and spicy anecdote, doubly piquant for its prevailing tone
+of mock seriousness and intentional grandiloquence.</p>
+<p>In emulation of the poet Lamartine, Savarin divided his subject
+into 'Meditations', of which the seventh is consecrated to the
+'Theory of Frying', and the twenty-first to 'Corpulence'. In the
+familiar aphorism, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what
+you are", he strikes his key-note; man's true superiority lies in
+his palate! "The pleasure of eating we have in common with the
+animals; the pleasure of the table is peculiar to the human
+species." Gastronomy he proclaims the chief of all sciences: "It
+rules life in its entirety; for the tears of the new-born infant
+summon the breast of its nurse, and the dying man still receives
+with some pleasure the final potion, which, alas, he is not
+destined to digest." Occasionally he affects an epic strain,
+invoking Gasteria, "the tenth muse, who presides over the pleasures
+of taste." "It is the fairest of the Muses who inspires me: I will
+be clearer than an oracle, and my precepts will traverse the
+centuries." Beneath his pen, soup, "the first consolation of the
+needy stomach," assumes fresh dignity; and even the humble fowl
+becomes to the cook "what the canvas is to the painter, or the cap
+of Fortunatus to the charlatan." But like the worthy epicure that
+he was, Savarin reserved his highest flights of eloquence for such
+rare and toothsome viands as the <i>Poularde fine de Bresse</i>,
+the pheasant, "an enigma of which the key-word is known only to the
+adepts," a <i>saut&eacute;</i> of truffles, "the diamonds of the
+kitchen," or, best of all, truffled turkeys, "whose reputation and
+price are ever on the increase! Benign stars, whose apparition
+renders the gourmands of every category sparkling, radiant, and
+quivering!" But the true charm of the book lies in Savarin's
+endless fund of piquant anecdotes, reminiscences of bygone feasts,
+over which the reader's mouth waters. Who can read without a
+covetous pang his account of 'The Day at Home with the Bernadins,'
+or of his entertainment of the Dubois brothers, of the <i>Rue du
+Bac</i>, "a bonbon which I have put into the reader's mouth to
+recompense him for his kindness in having read me with
+pleasure"?</p>
+<p>'Physiologic du Go&ucirc;t' was not published until 1825, and
+then anonymously, presumably because he thought its tone
+inconsistent with his dignity as magistrate. It would almost seem
+that he had a presentiment of impending death, for in the midst of
+his brightest 'Vari&eacute;t&eacute;s' he has incongruously
+inserted a dolorous little poem, the burden of each verse being "Je
+vais mourir." The 'Physiologic du Go&ucirc;t' is now accessible to
+English readers in the versions of R.E. Anderson (London, 1877),
+and in a later one published in New York; but there is a subtle
+flavor to the original which defies translation.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRILLAT01"></a>
+<h2>FROM THE 'PHYSIOLOGY OF TASTE'</h2>
+<h3>THE PRIVATIONS</h3>
+<br>
+<p>First parents of the human species, whose gormandizing is
+historic, you who fell for the sake of an apple, what would you not
+have done for a turkey with truffles? But there were in the
+terrestrial Paradise neither cooks nor confectioners.</p>
+<p>How I pity you!</p>
+<p>Mighty kings, who laid proud Troy in ruins, your valor will be
+handed down from age to age; but your table was poor. Reduced to a
+rump of beef and a chine of pork, you were ever ignorant of the
+charms of the <i>matelote</i> and the delights of a
+fricass&eacute;e of chicken.</p>
+<p>How I pity you!</p>
+<p>Aspasia, Chloe, and all of you whose forms the chisel of the
+Greeks immortalized, to the despair of the belles of to-day, never
+did your charming mouths enjoy the smoothness of a meringue
+<i>&agrave; la vanille</i> or <i>&agrave; la rose</i>; hardly did
+you rise to the height of a spice-cake.</p>
+<p>How I pity you!</p>
+<p>Gentle priestesses of Vesta, at one and the same time burdened
+with so many honors and menaced with such horrible punishments,
+would that you might at least have tasted those agreeable syrups
+which refresh the soul, those candied fruits which brave the
+seasons, those perfumed creams, the marvel of our day!</p>
+<p>How I pity you!</p>
+<p>Roman financiers, who made the whole known universe pay tribute,
+never did your far-famed banquet-halls witness the appearance of
+those succulent jellies, the delight of the indolent, nor those
+varied ices whose cold would brave the torrid zone.</p>
+<p>How I pity you!</p>
+<p>Invincible paladins, celebrated by flattering minstrels, when
+you had cleft in twain the giants, set free the ladies, and
+exterminated armies, never, alas! never did a dark-eyed captive
+offer you the sparkling champagne, the malmsey of Madeira, the
+liqueurs, creation of this great century: you were reduced to ale
+or to some cheap herb-flavored wine.</p>
+<p>How I pity you!</p>
+<p>Crosiered and mitred abbots, dispensers of the favors of heaven;
+and you, terrible Templars, who donned your armor for the
+extermination of the Saracens,--you knew not the sweetness of
+chocolate which restores, nor the Arabian bean which promotes
+thought.</p>
+<p>How I pity you!</p>
+<p>Superb ch&acirc;telaines, who during the loneliness of the
+Crusades raised into highest favor your chaplains and your pages,
+you never could share with them the charms of the biscuit and the
+delights of the macaroon.</p>
+<p>How I pity you!</p>
+<p>And lastly you, gastronomers of 1825, who already find satiety
+in the lap of abundance, and dream of new preparations, you will
+not enjoy those discoveries which the sciences have in store for
+the year 1900, such as esculent minerals and liqueurs resulting
+from a pressure of a hundred atmospheres; you will not behold the
+importations which travelers yet unborn shall cause to arrive from
+that half of the globe which still remains to be discovered or
+explored.</p>
+<p>How I pity you!</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRILLAT02"></a>
+<h3>ON THE LOVE OF GOOD LIVING</h3>
+<br>
+<p>I have consulted the dictionaries under the word
+<i>gourmandise</i>, and am by no means satisfied with what I find.
+The love of good living seems to be constantly confounded with
+gluttony and voracity; whence I infer that our lexicographers,
+however otherwise estimable, are not to be classed with those good
+fellows amongst learned men who can put away gracefully a wing of
+partridge, and then, by raising the little finger, wash it down
+with a glass of Lafitte or Clos-Vougeot.</p>
+<p>They have utterly forgot that social love of good eating which
+combines in one, Athenian elegance, Roman luxury, and Parisian
+refinement. It implies discretion to arrange, skill to prepare; it
+appreciates energetically, and judges profoundly. It is a precious
+quality, almost deserving to rank as a virtue, and is very
+certainly the source of much unqualified enjoyment.</p>
+<p><i>Gourmandise</i>, or the love of good living, is an
+impassioned, rational, and habitual preference for whatever
+flatters the sense of taste. It is opposed to excess; therefore
+every man who eats to indigestion, or makes himself drunk, runs the
+risk of being erased from the list of its votaries.
+<i>Gourmandise</i> also comprises a love for dainties or tit-bits;
+which is merely an analogous preference, limited to light,
+delicate, or small dishes, to pastry, and so forth. It is a
+modification allowed in favor of the women, or men of feminine
+tastes.</p>
+<p>Regarded from any point of view, the love of good living
+deserves nothing but praise and encouragement. Physically, it is
+the result and proof of the digestive organs being healthy and
+perfect. Morally, it shows implicit resignation to the commands of
+Nature, who, in ordering man to eat that he may live, gives him
+appetite to invite, flavor to encourage, and pleasure to
+reward.</p>
+<p>From the political economist's point of view, the love of good
+living is a tie between nations, uniting them by the interchange of
+various articles of food which are in constant use. Hence the
+voyage from Pole to Pole of wines, sugars, fruits, and so forth.
+What else sustains the hope and emulation of that crowd of
+fishermen, huntsmen, gardeners, and others who daily stock the most
+sumptuous larders with the results of their skill and labor? What
+else supports the industrious army of cooks, pastry-cooks,
+confectioners, and many other food-preparers, with all their
+various assistants? These various branches of industry derive their
+support in a great measure from the largest incomes, but they also
+rely upon the daily wants of all classes.</p>
+<p>As society is at present constituted, it is almost impossible to
+conceive of a race living solely on bread and vegetables. Such a
+nation would infallibly be conquered by the armies of some
+flesh-eating race (like the Hindoos, who have been the prey of all
+those, one after another, who cared to attack them), or else it
+would be converted by the cooking of the neighboring nations, as
+ancient history records of the Boeotians, who acquired a love for
+good living after the battle of Leuctra.</p>
+<p>Good living opens out great resources for replenishing the
+public purse: it brings contributions to town-dues, to the
+custom-house, and other indirect contributions. Everything we eat
+is taxed, and there is no exchequer that is not substantially
+supported by lovers of good living. Shall we speak of that swarm of
+cooks who have for ages been annually leaving France, to improve
+foreign nations in the art of good living? Most of them succeed;
+and in obedience to an instinct which never dies in a Frenchman's
+heart, bring back to their country the fruits of their economy. The
+sum thus imported is greater than might be supposed, and therefore
+they, like the others, will be honored by posterity.</p>
+<p>But if nations were grateful, then Frenchmen, above all other
+races, ought to raise a temple and altars to "Gourmandise." By the
+treaty of November, 1815, the allies imposed upon France the
+condition of paying thirty millions sterling in three years,
+besides claims for compensation and various requisitions, amounting
+to nearly as much more. The apprehension, or rather certainty,
+became general that a national bankruptcy must ensue, more
+especially as the money was to be paid in specie.</p>
+<p>"Alas!" said all who had anything to lose, as they saw the fatal
+tumbril pass to be filled in the Rue Vivienne, "there is our money
+emigrating in a lump; next year we shall fall on our knees before a
+crown-piece; we are about to fall into the condition of a ruined
+man; speculations of every kind will fail; it will be impossible to
+borrow; there will be nothing but weakness, exhaustion, civil
+death."</p>
+<p>These terrors were proved false by the result; and to the great
+astonishment of all engaged in financial matters, the payments were
+made without difficulty, credit rose, loans were eagerly caught at,
+and during all the time this "superpurgation" lasted, the balance
+of exchange was in favor of France. In other words, more money came
+into the country than went out of it.</p>
+<p>What is the power that came to our assistance? Who is the
+divinity that worked this miracle? The love of good living.</p>
+<p>When the Britons, Germans, Teutons, Cimmerians, and Scythians
+made their irruption into France, they brought a rare voracity, and
+stomachs of no ordinary capacity. They did not long remain
+satisfied with the official cheer which a forced hospitality had to
+supply them with. They aspired to enjoyments of greater refinement;
+and soon the Queen City was nothing but a huge refectory.
+Everywhere they were seen eating, those intruders--in the
+restaurants, the eating-houses, the inns, the taverns, the stalls,
+and even in the streets. They gorged themselves with flesh, fish,
+game, truffles, pastry, and especially with fruit. They drank with
+an avidity equal to their appetite, and always ordered the most
+expensive wines, in the hope of finding in them some enjoyment
+hitherto unknown, and seemed quite astonished when they were
+disappointed. Superficial observers did not know what to think of
+this menagerie without bounds or limits; but your genuine Parisian
+laughed and rubbed his hands. "We have them now!" said he; "and
+to-night they'll have paid us back more than was counted out to
+them this morning from the public treasury!"</p>
+<p>That was a lucky time for those who provide for the enjoyments
+of the sense of taste. V&eacute;ry made his fortune; Achard laid
+the foundation of his; Beauvilliers made a third; and Madame
+Sullot, whose shop in the Palais Royal was a mere box of a place,
+sold as many as twelve thousand tarts a day.</p>
+<p>The effect still lasts. Foreigners flow in from all quarters of
+Europe to renew during peace the delightful habits which they
+contracted during the war. They must come to Paris, and when they
+are there, they must be regaled at any price. If our funds are in
+favor, it is due not so much to the higher interest they pay, as to
+the instinctive confidence which foreigners cannot help placing in
+a people amongst whom every lover of good living finds so much
+happiness.</p>
+<p>Love of good living is by no means unbecoming in women. It
+agrees with the delicacy of their organization, and serves as a
+compensation for some pleasures which they are obliged to abstain
+from, and for some hardships to which nature seems to have
+condemned them. There is no more pleasant sight than a pretty
+<i>gourmande</i> under arms. Her napkin is nicely adjusted; one of
+her hands rests on the table, the other carries to her mouth little
+morsels artistically carved, or the wing of a partridge which must
+be picked. Her eyes sparkle, her lips are glossy, her talk is
+cheerful, all her movements graceful; nor is there lacking some
+spice of the coquetry which accompanies all that women do. With so
+many advantages, she is irresistible, and Cato the Censor himself
+could not help yielding to the influence.</p>
+<p>The love of good living is in some sort instinctive in women,
+because it is favorable to beauty. It has been proved, by a series
+of rigorously exact observations, that by a succulent, delicate,
+and choice regimen, the external appearances of age are kept away
+for a long time. It gives more brilliancy to the eye, more
+freshness to the skin, more support to the muscles; and as it is
+certain in physiology that wrinkles, those formidable enemies of
+beauty, are caused by the depression of muscle, it is equally true
+that, other things being equal, those who understand eating are
+comparatively four years younger than those ignorant of that
+science. Painters and sculptors are deeply impenetrated with this
+truth; for in representing those who practice abstinence by choice
+or duty as misers or anchorites, they always give them the pallor
+of disease, the leanness of misery, and the wrinkles of
+decrepitude.</p>
+<p>Good living is one of the main links of society, by gradually
+extending that spirit of conviviality by which different classes
+are daily brought closer together and welded into one whole; by
+animating the conversation, and rounding off the angles of
+conventional inequality. To the same cause we can also ascribe all
+the efforts a host makes to receive his guests properly, as well as
+their gratitude for his pains so well bestowed. What disgrace
+should ever be heaped upon those senseless feeders who, with
+unpardonable indifference, swallow down morsels of the rarest
+quality, or gulp with unrighteous carelessness some fine-flavored
+and sparkling wine.</p>
+<p>As a general maxim: Whoever shows a desire to please will be
+certain of having a delicate compliment paid him by every well-bred
+man.</p>
+<p>Again, when shared, the love of good living has the most marked
+influence on the happiness of the conjugal state. A wedded pair
+with this taste in common have once a day at least a pleasant
+opportunity of meeting. For even when they sleep apart (and a great
+many do so), they at least eat at the same table, they have a
+subject of conversation which is ever new, they speak not only of
+what they are eating, but also of what they have eaten or will eat,
+of dishes which are in vogue, of novelties, etc. Everybody knows
+that a familiar chat is delightful.</p>
+<p>Music, no doubt, has powerful attractions for those who are fond
+of it, but one must set about it--it is an exertion. Besides, one
+sometimes has a cold, the music is mislaid, the instruments are out
+of tune, one has a fit of the blues, or it is a forbidden day.
+Whereas, in the other case, a common want summons the spouses to
+table, the same inclination keeps them there; they naturally show
+each other these little attentions as a proof of their wish to
+oblige, and the mode of conducting their meals has a great share in
+the happiness of their lives.</p>
+<p>This observation, though new in France, has not escaped the
+notice of Richardson, the English moralist. He has worked out the
+idea in his novel 'Pamela,' by painting the different manner in
+which two married couples finish their day. The first husband is a
+lord, an eldest son, and therefore heir to all the family property;
+the second is his younger brother, the husband of Pamela, who has
+been disinherited on account of his marriage, and lives on half-pay
+in a state but little removed from abject poverty.</p>
+<p>The lord and lady enter their dining-room by different doors,
+and salute each other coldly, though they have not met the whole
+day before. Sitting down at a table which is magnificently covered,
+surrounded by lackeys in brilliant liveries, they help themselves
+in silence, and eat without pleasure. As soon, however, as the
+servants have withdrawn, a sort of conversation is begun between
+the pair, which quickly shows a bitter tone, passing into a regular
+fight, and they rise from the table in a fury of anger, and go off
+to their separate apartments to reflect upon the pleasures of a
+single life.</p>
+<p>The younger brother, on the contrary, is, on reaching his
+unpretentious home, received with a gentle, loving heartiness and
+the fondest caresses. He sits down to a frugal meal, but everything
+he eats is excellent; and how could it be otherwise? It is Pamela
+herself who has prepared it all. They eat with enjoyment, talking
+of their affairs, their plans, their love for each other. A
+half-bottle of Madeira serves to prolong their repast and
+conversation, and soon after they retire together, to forget in
+sleep their present hardships, and to dream of a better future.</p>
+<p>All honor to the love of good living, such as it is the purpose
+of this book to describe, so long as it does not come between men
+and their occupations or duties! For, as all the debaucheries of a
+Sardanapalus cannot bring disrespect upon womankind in general, so
+the excesses of a Vitellius need not make us turn our backs upon a
+well-appointed banquet. Should the love of good living pass into
+gluttony, voracity, intemperance, it then loses its name and
+advantages, escapes from our jurisdiction, and falls within that of
+the moralist to ply it with good counsel, or of the physician who
+will cure it by his remedies.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRILLAT03"></a>
+<h3>ON PEOPLE FOND OF GOOD LIVING</h3>
+<br>
+<p>There are individuals to whom nature has denied a refinement of
+organs, or a continuity of attention, without which the most
+succulent dishes pass unobserved. Physiology has already recognized
+the first of these varieties, by showing us the tongue of these
+unhappy ones, badly furnished with nerves for inhaling and
+appreciating flavors. These excite in them but an obtuse sentiment;
+such persons are, with regard to objects of taste, what the blind
+are with regard to light. The second class are the absent-minded,
+chatterboxes, persons engrossed in business or ambition, and others
+who seek to occupy themselves with two things at once, and eat only
+to be filled. Such, for example, was Napoleon; he was irregular in
+his meals, and ate fast and badly. But there again was to be traced
+that absolute will which he carried into everything he did. The
+moment appetite was felt, it was necessary that it should be
+satisfied; and his establishment was so arranged that, in any place
+and at any hour, chicken, cutlets, and coffee might be forthcoming
+at a word.</p>
+<p>There is a privileged class of persons who are summoned to the
+enjoyments of taste by a physical and organic predisposition. I
+have always believed in physiognomy and phrenology. Men have inborn
+tendencies; and since there are some who come into the world
+seeing, hearing, and walking badly, because they are short-sighted,
+deaf, or crippled, why should there not be others who are specially
+predisposed to experience a certain series of sensations? Moreover,
+even an ordinary observer will constantly discover faces which bear
+the unmistakable imprint of a ruling passion--such as
+superciliousness, self-satisfaction, misanthropy, sensuality, and
+many others. Sometimes, no doubt, we meet with a face that
+expresses nothing; but when the physiognomy has a marked stamp it
+is almost always a true index. The passions act upon the muscles,
+and frequently, although a man says nothing, the various feelings
+by which he is moved can be read in his face. By this tension, if
+in the slightest degree habitual, perceptible traces are at last
+left, and the physiognomy thus assumes its permanent and
+recognizable characteristics.</p>
+<p>Those predisposed to epicurism are for the most part of middling
+height. They are broad-faced, and have bright eyes, small forehead,
+short nose, fleshy lips, and rounded chin. The women are plump,
+chubby, pretty rather than beautiful, with a slight tendency to
+fullness of figure. It is under such an exterior that we must look
+for agreeable guests. They accept all that is offered them, eat
+without hurry, and taste with discrimination. They never make any
+haste to get away from houses where they have been well treated,
+but stay for the evening, because they know all the games and other
+after-dinner amusements.</p>
+<p>Those, on the contrary, to whom nature has denied an aptitude
+for the enjoyments of taste, are long-faced, long-nosed, and
+long-eyed: whatever their stature, they have something lanky about
+them. They have dark, lanky hair, and are never in good condition.
+It was one of them who invented trousers. The women whom nature has
+afflicted with the same misfortune are angular, feel themselves
+bored at table, and live on cards and scandal.</p>
+<p>This theory of mine can be verified by each reader from his own
+personal observation. I shall give an instance from my own personal
+experience:--</p>
+<p>Sitting one day at a grand banquet, I had opposite me a very
+pretty neighbor, whose face showed the predisposition I have
+described. Leaning to the guest beside me, I said quietly that from
+her physiognomy, the young lady on the other side of the table must
+be fond of good eating. "You must be mad!" he answered; "she is but
+fifteen at most, which is certainly not the age for such a thing.
+However, let us watch."</p>
+<p>At first, things were by no means in my favor, and I was
+somewhat afraid of having compromised myself, for during the first
+two courses the young lady quite astonished me by her discretion,
+and I suspected we had stumbled upon an exception, remembering that
+there are some for every rule. But at last the dessert came,--a
+dessert both magnificent and abundant,--and my hopes were again
+revived. Nor did I hope in vain: not only did she eat of all that
+was offered her, but she even got dishes brought to her from the
+farthest parts of the table. In a word, she tasted everything, and
+my neighbor at last expressed his astonishment that the little
+stomach could hold so many things. Thus was my diagnosis verified,
+and once again science triumphed.</p>
+<p>Whilst I was writing the above, on a fine winter's evening, M.
+Cartier, formerly the first violinist at the Opera, paid me a
+visit, and sat down at the fireside. Being full of my subject, I
+said, after looking at him attentively for some time, "How does it
+happen, my dear professor, that you are no epicure, when you have
+all the features of one?" "I was one," he replied, "and among the
+foremost; but now I refrain." "On principle, I suppose?" said I;
+but all the answer I had was a sigh, like one of Sir Walter
+Scott's--that is to say, almost a groan.</p>
+<p>As some are gourmands by predestination, so others become so by
+their state in society or their calling. There are four classes
+which I should signalize by way of eminence: the moneyed class, the
+doctors, men of letters, and the devout.</p>
+<p>Inequality of condition implies inequality of wealth, but
+inequality of wealth does not imply inequality of wants; and he who
+can afford every day a dinner sufficient for a hundred persons is
+often satisfied by eating the thigh of a chicken. Hence the
+necessity for the many devices of art to reanimate that ghost of an
+appetite by dishes which maintain it without injury, and caress
+without stifling it.</p>
+<p>The causes which act upon doctors are very different, though not
+less powerful. They become epicures in spite of themselves, and
+must be made of bronze to resist the seductive power of
+circumstances. The "dear doctor" is all the more kindly welcomed
+that health is the most precious of boons; and thus they are always
+waited for with impatience and received with eagerness. Some are
+kind to them from hope, others from gratitude. They are fed like
+pet pigeons. They let things take their course, and in six months
+the habit is confirmed, and they are gourmands past redemption.</p>
+<p>I ventured one day to express this opinion at a banquet in
+which, with eight others, I took a part, with Dr. Corvisart at the
+head of the table. It was about the year 1806.</p>
+<p>"You!" cried I, with the inspired tone of a Puritan preacher;
+"you are the last remnant of a body which formerly covered the
+whole of France. Alas! its members are annihilated or widely
+scattered. No more <i>fermiers-g&eacute;n&eacute;raux</i>, no
+abb&eacute;s nor knights nor white-coated friars. The members of
+your profession constitute the whole gastronomic body. Sustain with
+firmness that great responsibility, even if you must share the fate
+of the three hundred Spartans at the Pass of Thermopylae."</p>
+<p>At the same dinner I observed the following noteworthy fact. The
+doctor, who, when in the mood, was a most agreeable companion,
+drank nothing but iced champagne; and therefore in the earlier part
+of the dinner, whilst others were engaged in eating, he kept
+talking loudly and telling stories. But at dessert, on the
+contrary, and when the general conversation began to be lively, he
+became serious, silent, and sometimes low-spirited.</p>
+<p>From this observation, confirmed by many others, I have deduced
+the following theorem:--"Champagne, though at first exhilarating,
+ultimately produces stupefying effects;" a result, moreover, which
+is a well-known characteristic of the carbonic acid which it
+contains.</p>
+<p>Whilst I have the university doctors under my grasp, I must,
+before I die, reproach them with the extreme severity which they
+use towards their patients. As soon as one has the misfortune to
+fall into their hands, he must undergo a whole litany of
+prohibitions, and give up everything that he is accustomed to think
+agreeable. I rise up to oppose such interdictions, as being for the
+most part useless. I say useless, because the patient never longs
+for what is hurtful. A doctor of judgment will never lose sight of
+the instinctive tendency of our inclinations, or forget that if
+painful sensations are naturally fraught with danger, those which
+are pleasant have a healthy tendency. We have seen a drop of wine,
+a cup of coffee, or a thimbleful of liqueur, call up a smile to the
+most Hippocratic face.</p>
+<p>Those severe prescribers must, moreover, know very well that
+their prescriptions remain almost always without result. The
+patient tries to evade the duty of taking them; those about him
+easily find a good excuse for humoring him, and thus his death is
+neither hastened nor retarded. In 1815 the medical allowance of a
+sick Russian would have made a drayman drunk, and that of an
+Englishman was enough for a Limousin. Nor was any diminution
+possible, for there were military inspectors constantly going round
+our hospitals to examine the supply and the consumption.</p>
+<p>I am the more confident in announcing my opinion because it is
+based upon numerous facts, and the most successful practitioners
+have used a system closely resembling it.</p>
+<p>Canon Rollet, who died some fifty years ago, was a hard drinker,
+according to the custom of those days. He fell ill, and the
+doctor's first words were a prohibition of wine in any form. On his
+very next visit, however, our physician found beside the bed of his
+patient the <i>corpus delicti</i> itself, to wit, a table covered
+with a snow-white cloth, a crystal cup, a handsome-looking bottle,
+and a napkin to wipe the lips. At this sight he flew into a violent
+passion and spoke of leaving the house, when the wretched canon
+cried to him in tones of lamentation, "Ah, doctor, remember that in
+forbidding me to drink, you have not forbidden me the pleasure of
+looking at the bottle!"</p>
+<p>The physician who treated Montlusin of Pont de Veyle was still
+more severe, for not only did he forbid the use of wine to his
+patient, but also prescribed large doses of water. Shortly after
+the doctor's departure, Madame Montlusin, anxious to give full
+effect to the medical orders and assist in the recovery of her
+husband's health, offered him a large glass of the finest and
+clearest water. The patient took it with docility, and began to
+drink it with resignation; but stopping short at the first
+mouthful, he handed back the glass to his wife. "Take it, my dear,"
+said he, "and keep it for another time; I have always heard it said
+that we should not trifle with remedies."</p>
+<p>In the domain of gastronomy the men of letters are near
+neighbors to the doctors. A hundred years ago literary men were all
+hard drinkers. They followed the fashion, and the memoirs of the
+period are quite edifying on that subject. At the present day they
+are gastronomes, and it is a step in the right direction. I by no
+means agree with the cynical Geoffroy, who used to say that if our
+modern writings are weak, it is because literary men now drink
+nothing stronger than lemonade. The present age is rich in talents,
+and the very number of books probably interferes with their proper
+appreciation; but posterity, being more calm and judicial, will see
+amongst them much to admire, just as we ourselves have done justice
+to the masterpieces of Racine and Moli&egrave;re, which were
+received by their contemporaries with coldness.</p>
+<p>Never has the social position of men of letters been more
+pleasant than at present. They no longer live in wretched garrets;
+the fields of literature are become more fertile, and even the
+study of the Muses has become productive. Received on an equality
+in any rank of life, they no longer wait for patronage; and to fill
+up their cup of happiness, good living bestows upon them its
+dearest favors. Men of letters are invited because of the good
+opinion men have of their talents; because their conversation has,
+generally speaking, something piquant in it, and also because now
+every dinner-party must as a matter of course have its literary
+man.</p>
+<p>Those gentlemen always arrive a little late, but are welcomed,
+because expected. They are treated as favorites so that they may
+come again, and regaled that they may shine; and as they find all
+this very natural, by being accustomed to it they become, are, and
+remain gastronomes.</p>
+<p>Finally, amongst the most faithful in the ranks of gastronomy we
+must reckon many of the devout--i.e., those spoken of by Louis XIV.
+and Moli&egrave;re, whose religion consists in outward
+show;--nothing to do with those who are really pious and
+charitable.</p>
+<p>Let us consider how this comes about. Of those who wish to
+secure their salvation, the greater number try to find the most
+pleasant road. Men who flee from society, sleep on the ground, and
+wear hair-cloth next the skin, have always been, and must ever be,
+exceptions. Now there are certain things unquestionably to be
+condemned, and on no account to be indulged in--as balls, theatres,
+gambling, and other similar amusements; and whilst they and all
+that practice them are to be hated, good living presents itself
+insinuatingly in a thoroughly orthodox guise.</p>
+<p>By right divine, man is king of nature, and all that the earth
+produces was created for him. It is for him that the quail is
+fattened, for him that Mocha possesses so agreeable an aroma, for
+him that sugar has such wholesome properties. How then neglect to
+use, within reasonable limits, the good things which Providence
+presents to us; especially if we continue to regard them as things
+that perish with the using, especially if they raise our
+thankfulness towards the Author of all!</p>
+<p>Other equally strong reasons come to strengthen these. Can we be
+too hospitable in receiving those who have charge of our souls, and
+keep us in the way of safety? Should those meetings with so
+excellent an object not be made pleasant, and therefore
+frequent?</p>
+<p>Sometimes, also, the gifts of Comus arrive unsought--perhaps a
+souvenir of college days, a present from an old friend, a
+peace-offering from a penitent or a college chum recalling himself
+to one's memory. How refuse to accept such offerings, or to make
+systematic use of them? It is simply a necessity.</p>
+<p>The monasteries were real magazines of charming dainties, which
+is one reason why certain connoisseurs so bitterly regret them.
+Several of the monastic orders, especially that of St. Bernard,
+made a profession of good cheer. The limits of gastronomic art have
+been extended by the cooks of the clergy, and when M. de Pressigni
+(afterwards Archbishop of Besan&ccedil;on) returned from the
+Conclave at the election of Pius VI., he said that the best dinner
+he had had in Rome was at the table of the head of the
+Capuchins.</p>
+<p>We cannot conclude this article better than by honorably
+mentioning two classes of men whom we have seen in all their glory,
+and whom the Revolution has eclipsed--the chevaliers and the
+abb&eacute;s. How they enjoyed good living, those dear old fellows!
+That could be told at a glance by their nervous nostrils, their
+clear eyes, their moist lips and mobile tongues. Each class had at
+the same time its own special manner of eating: the chevalier
+having something military and dignified in his air and attitude;
+while the abb&eacute; gathered himself together, as it were, to be
+nearer his plate, with his right hand curved inward like the paw of
+a cat drawing chestnuts from the fire, whilst in every feature was
+shown enjoyment and an indefinable look of close attention.</p>
+<p>So far from good living being hurtful to health, it has been
+arithmetically proved by Dr. Villerm&eacute; in an able paper read
+before the Acad&eacute;mie des Sciences, that other things being
+equal, the gourmands live longer than ordinary men.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="BRONTE"></a>
+<h2>CHARLOTTE BRONT&Eacute; AND HER SISTERS</h2>
+<h3>(1816-1855)</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-t.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>he least that can be said of Charlotte Bront&eacute; is that she
+is a unique figure in literature. Nowhere else do we find another
+personality combining such extraordinary qualities of mind and
+heart,--qualities strangely contrasted, but still more strangely
+harmonized. At times they are baffling, but always fascinating.
+Nowhere else do we find so intimate an association of the
+personality of the author with the work, so thorough an
+identification with it of the author's life, even to the smaller
+details. So true is this in the case of Charlotte Bront&eacute;
+that the four novels 'Jane Eyre,' 'Shirley,' 'Villette,' and 'The
+Professor' might with some justice be termed 'Charlotte
+Bront&eacute;; her life and her friends.' Her works were in large
+part an expression of herself; at times the best expression of
+herself--of her actual self in experience and of her spiritual self
+in travail and in aspiration. It is manifestly impossible therefore
+to consider the works of Charlotte Bront&eacute; with justice apart
+from herself. A correct understanding of her books can be obtained
+only from a study of her remarkable personality and of the sad
+circumstances of her life.</p>
+<p>Public interest in Charlotte Bront&eacute; was first roused in
+1847. In October of that year there appeared in London a novel that
+created a sensation, the like of which had not been known since the
+publication of 'Waverley.' Its stern and paradoxical disregard for
+the conventional, its masculine energy, and its intense realism,
+startled the public, and proclaimed to all in accents unmistakable
+that a new, strange, and splendid power had come into literature,
+"but yet a woman."</p>
+<p>And with the success of 'Jane Eyre' came a lively curiosity to
+know something of the personality of the author. This was not
+gratified for some time. There were many conjectures, all of them
+far amiss. The majority of readers asserted confidently that the
+work must be that of a man; the touch was unmistakably masculine.
+In some quarters it met with hearty abuse. The Quarterly Review, in
+an article still notorious for its brutality, condemned the book as
+coarse, and stated that if 'Jane Eyre' were really written by a
+woman, she must be an improper woman, who had forfeited the society
+of her sex. This was said in December, 1848, of one of the noblest
+and purest of womankind. It is not a matter of surprise that the
+identity of this audacious speculator was not revealed. The recent
+examination into the topic by Mr. Clement Shorter seems, however,
+to fix the authorship of the notice on Lady Eastlake, at that time
+Miss Driggs.</p>
+<p>But hostile criticism of the book and its mysterious author
+could not injure its popularity. The story swept all before
+it--press and public. Whatever might be the source, the work stood
+there and spoke for itself in commanding terms. At length the
+mystery was cleared. A shrewd Yorkshireman guessed and published
+the truth, and the curious world knew that the author of 'Jane
+Eyre' was the daughter of a clergyman in the little village of
+Haworth, and that the literary sensation of the day found its
+source in a nervous, shrinking, awkward, plain, delicate young
+creature of thirty-one years of age, whose life, with the exception
+of two years, had been spent on the bleak and dreary moorlands of
+Yorkshire, and for the most part in the narrow confines of a grim
+gray stone parsonage. There she had lived a pinched and meagre
+little life, full of sadness and self-denial, with two sisters more
+delicate than herself, a dissolute brother, and a father her only
+parent,--a stern and forbidding father. This was no genial
+environment for an author, even if helpful to her vivid
+imagination. Nor was it a temporary condition; it was a permanent
+one. Nearly all the influences in Charlotte Bront&eacute;'s life
+were such as these, which would seem to cramp if not to stifle
+sensitive talent. Her brother Branwell (physically weaker than
+herself, though unquestionably talented, and for a time the idol
+and hope of the family) became dissipated, irresponsible,
+untruthful, and a ne'er-do-weel, and finally yielding to
+circumstances, ended miserably a life of failure.</p>
+<p>But Charlotte Bront&eacute;'s nature was one of indomitable
+courage, that circumstances might shadow but could not obscure. Out
+of the meagre elements of her narrow life she evolved works that
+stand among the imperishable things of English literature. It is a
+paradox that finds its explanation only in a statement of natural
+sources, primitive, bardic, the sources of the early epics, the
+sources of such epics as C&aelig;dmon and Beowulf bore. She wrote
+from a sort of necessity; it was in obedience to the commanding
+authority of an extraordinary genius,--a creative power that
+struggled for expression,--and much of her work deserves in the
+best and fullest sense the term "inspired."</p>
+<br>
+<a name="bronte.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/bronte.jpg"><img src=
+"images/bronte.jpg" width="45%" alt=""></a></p>
+<br>
+<p>The facts of her life are few in number, but they have a direct
+and significant bearing on her work. She was born at Thornton, in
+the parish of Bradford, in 1816. Four years later her father moved
+to Haworth, to the parsonage now indissolubly associated with her
+name, and there Mr. Bront&eacute; entered upon a long period of
+pastorate service, that only ended with his death. Charlotte's
+mother was dead. In 1824 Charlotte and two older sisters, Maria and
+Elizabeth, went to a school at Cowan's Bridge. It was an
+institution for clergymen's children, a vivid picture of which
+appears in 'Jane Eyre.' It was so badly managed and the food was so
+poor that many of the children fell sick, among them Maria
+Bront&eacute;, who died in 1825. Elizabeth followed her a few
+months later, and Charlotte returned to Haworth, where she remained
+for six years, then went to school at Roe Head for a period of
+three years. She was offered the position of teacher by Miss
+Wooler, the principal at Roe Head, but considering herself unfit to
+teach, she resolved to go to Brussels to study French. She spent
+two years there, and it was there that her intimate and
+misconstrued friendship for M. Heger developed. The incidents of
+that period formed the material of a greater portion of her novel
+'Villette,' filled twenty-two volumes of from sixty to one hundred
+pages of fine writing, and consisted of some forty complete
+novelettes or other stories and childish "magazines."</p>
+<p>On returning to Haworth, she endeavored, together with her
+sister Emily, to establish a school at their home. But pupils were
+not to be had, and the outlook was discouraging. Two periods of
+service as governess, and the ill health that had followed, had
+taught Charlotte the danger that threatened her. Her experiences as
+a governess in the Sedgwick family were pictured by-and-by in 'Jane
+Eyre.' In a letter to Miss Ellen Nussey, written at this time, she
+gives a dark vignette of her situation.</p>
+<p>With her two sisters Emily and Anne she lived a quiet and
+retired life. The harsh realities about them, the rough natures of
+the Yorkshire people, impelled the three sisters to construct in
+their home an ideal world of their own, and in this their pent-up
+natures found expression. Their home was lonely and gloomy. Mr.
+Clement K. Shorter, in his recent study of the novelist and her
+family, says that the house is much the same to-day, though its
+immediate surroundings are brightened. He writes:</p>
+<p>"One day Emily confided to Charlotte that she had written some
+verses. Charlotte answered with a similar confidence, and then Anne
+acknowledged that she too had been secretly writing. This mutual
+confession brought about a complete understanding and sympathy, and
+from that time on the sisters worked together--reading their
+literary productions to one another and submitting to each other's
+criticism."</p>
+<p>This was however by no means Charlotte's first literary work.
+She has left a catalogue of books written by her between 1829 and
+1830. Her first printed work however appeared in a volume of
+'Poems' by Acton, Ellis, and Currer Bell, published in 1846 at the
+expense of the authors. Under these names the little book of the
+Bront&eacute; sisters went forth to the world, was reviewed with
+mild favor in some few periodicals, and was lost to sight.</p>
+<p>Then came a period of novel-writing. As a result, Emily
+Bront&eacute;'s 'Wuthering Heights,' Anne Bront&eacute;'s 'Agnes
+Grey,' and Charlotte Bront&eacute;'s 'The Professor' set out
+together to find a publisher. The last-named was unsuccessful; but
+on the day it was returned to her, Charlotte Bront&eacute; began
+writing 'Jane Eyre.' That first masterpiece was shaped during a
+period of sorrow and discouragement. Her father was ill and in
+danger of losing his eyesight. Her brother Bran well was sinking
+into the slough of disgrace. No wonder 'Jane Eyre' is not a story
+of sunshine and roses. She finished the story in 1847, and it was
+accepted by the publishers promptly upon examination.</p>
+<p>After its publication and the sensation produced, Charlotte
+Bront&eacute; continued her literary work quietly, and unaffected
+by the furore she had aroused. A few brief visits to London, where
+attempts were made to lionize her,--very much to her distaste,--a
+few literary friendships, notably those with Thackeray, George
+Henry Lewes, Mrs. Gaskell, and Harriet Martineau, were the only
+features that distinguished her literary life from the simple life
+she had always led and continued to lead at Haworth. She was ever
+busy, if not ever at her desk. Success had come; she was sane in
+the midst of it. She wrote slowly and only as she felt the impulse,
+and when she knew she had found the proper impression. In 1849
+'Shirley' was published. In 1853 appeared 'Villette,' her last
+finished work, and the one considered by herself the best.</p>
+<p>In 1854 she married her father's curate, Mr. A.B. Nicholls. She
+had lost her brother Branwell and her two sisters Emily and Anne.
+Sorrow upon sorrow had closed like deepening shadows about her. All
+happiness in life for her had apparently ended, when this marriage
+brought a brief ray of sunshine. It was a happy union, and seemed
+to assure a period of peace and rest for the sorely tried soul.
+Only a few short months, however, and fate, as if grudging her even
+the bit of happiness, snapped the slender threads of her life and
+the whole sad episode of her existence was ended. She died March
+31st, 1855, leaving her husband and father to mourn together in the
+lonely parsonage. She left a literary fragment--the story entitled
+'Emma,' which was published with an introduction by Thackeray.</p>
+<p>Such are the main facts of this reserved life of Charlotte
+Bront&eacute;. Are they dull and commonplace? Some of them are
+indeed inexpressibly sad. Tragedy is beneath all the bitter
+chronicle. The sadness of her days can be appreciated by all who
+read her books. Through all her stories there is an intense note,
+especially in treating the pathos of existence, that is
+unmistakably subjective. There is a keen perception of the darker
+depths of human nature that could have been revealed to a human
+heart only by suffering and sorrow.</p>
+<p>She did not allow sadness, however, to crush her spirit. She was
+neither morbid nor melancholy, but on the contrary Charlotte was
+cheerful and pleasant in disposition and manner. She was a loving
+sister and devoted daughter, patient and obedient to a parent who
+afterwards made obedience a severe hardship. There were other sides
+to her character. She was not always calm. She was not ever tender
+and a maker of allowances. But who is such? And she had good reason
+to be impatient with the world as she found it.</p>
+<p>Her character and disposition are partially reflected in 'Jane
+Eyre.' The calm, clear mind, the brave, independent spirit are
+there. But a fuller and more accurate picture of her character may
+be found in Lucy Snowe, the heroine of 'Villette.' Here we find
+especially that note of hopelessness that predominated in
+Charlotte's character. Mrs. Gaskell, in her admirable biography of
+Charlotte Bront&eacute;, has called attention to this absence of
+hope in her nature. Charlotte indeed never allowed herself to look
+forward to happy issues. She had no confidence in the future. The
+pressure of grief apparently crushed all buoyancy of expectation.
+It was in this attitude that when literary success greeted her, she
+made little of it, scarcely allowing herself to believe that the
+world really set a high value on her work. Throughout all the
+excitement that her books produced, she was almost indifferent.
+Brought up as she had been to regard literary work as something
+beyond the proper limits of her sex, she never could quite rid
+herself of the belief that in writing successfully, she had made of
+herself not so much a literary figure as a sort of social
+curiosity. Nor was that idea wholly foreign to her time.</p>
+<p>Personally Charlotte Bront&eacute; was not unattractive. Though
+somewhat too slender and pale, and plain of feature, she had a
+pleasant expression, and her homelier features were redeemed by a
+strong massive forehead, luxuriant glossy hair, and handsome eyes.
+Though she had little faith in her powers of inspiring affection,
+she attracted people strongly and was well beloved by her friends.
+That she could stir romantic sentiment too was attested by the fact
+that she received and rejected three proposals of marriage from as
+many suitors, before her acceptance of Mr. Nicholls.</p>
+<p>Allusion has been made to the work of Charlotte's two sisters,
+Emily and Anne. Of the two Emily is by far the more remarkable,
+revealing in the single novel we have from her pen a genius as
+distinct and individual as that of her more celebrated sister. Had
+she lived, it is more than likely that her literary achievements
+would have rivaled Charlotte's.</p>
+<p>Emily Bront&eacute; has always been something of a puzzle to
+biographers. She was eccentric, an odd mixture of bashful reserve
+and unexpected spells of frankness, sweet, gentle, and retiring in
+disposition, but possessed of great courage. She was two years
+younger than Charlotte, but taller. She was slender, though well
+formed, and was pale in complexion, with great gray eyes of
+remarkable beauty. Emily's literary work is to be found in the
+volume of "Poems" of her sisters, her share in that work being
+considered superior in imaginative quality and in finish to that of
+the others; and in the novel "Wuthering Heights," a weird, horrid
+story of astonishing power, written when she was twenty-eight years
+of age. Considered purely as an imaginative work, "Wuthering
+Heights" is one of the most remarkable stories in English
+literature, and is worthy to be ranked with the works of Edgar A.
+Poe. Many will say that it might better not have been written, so
+utterly repulsive is it, but others will value it as a striking,
+though distorted, expression of unmistakable genius. It is a
+ghastly and gruesome creation. Not one bright ray redeems it. It
+deals with the most evil characters and the most evil phases of
+human experience. But it fascinates. Heathcliff, the chief figure
+in the book, is one of the greatest villains in fiction,--an
+abhorrent creature,--strange, monstrous, Frankensteinesque.</p>
+<p>Anne Bront&eacute; is known by her share in the book of "Poems"
+and by two novels, "Agnes Gray" and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,"
+both of which are disappointing. The former is based on the
+author's experiences as a governess, and is written in the usual
+placid style of romances of the time. "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall"
+found its suggestion in the wretched career of Branwell
+Bront&eacute;, and presents a sad and depressing picture of a life
+of degradation. The book was not a success, and would no doubt have
+sunk long ago into oblivion but for its association with the novels
+of Emily and Charlotte.</p>
+<p>In studying the work of Charlotte Bront&eacute;, the gifted
+older sister of the group, one of the first of the qualities that
+impress the reader is her actual creative power. To one of her
+imaginative power, the simplest life was sufficient, the smallest
+details a fund of material. Mr. Swinburne has called attention to
+the fact that Charlotte Bront&eacute;'s characters are individual
+creations, not types constructed out of elements gathered from a
+wide observation of human nature, and that they are <i>real</i>
+creations; that they compel our interest and command our assent
+because they are true, inevitably true. Perhaps no better example
+of this individualism could be cited than Rochester. The character
+is unique. It is not a type, nor has it even a prototype, like so
+many of Charlotte Bront&eacute;'s characters. Gossip insisted at
+one time that the author intended to picture Thackeray in
+Rochester, but this is groundless. Rochester is an original
+creation. The character of Jane Eyre, too, while reflecting
+something of the author's nature, was distinctly individual; and it
+is interesting to note here that with Jane Eyre came a new heroine
+into fiction, a woman of calm, clear reason, of firm positive
+character, and what was most novel, a plain woman, a homely
+heroine.</p>
+<p>"Why is it," Charlotte had once said, "that heroines must always
+be beautiful?" The hero of romance was always noble and handsome,
+the heroine lovely and often insipid, and the scenes set in an
+atmosphere of exaggerated idealism. Against this idealism Charlotte
+Bront&eacute; revolted. Her effort was always toward realism.</p>
+<p>In her realism she reveals a second characteristic scarcely less
+marked than her creative powers,--an extraordinary faculty of
+observation. She saw the essence, the spirit of things, and the
+simplest details of life revealed to her the secrets of human
+nature. What she had herself seen and felt--the plain rugged types
+of Yorkshire character, the wild scenery of the moorlands--she
+reflected with living truth. She got the real fact out of every bit
+of material in humanity and nature that her simple life afforded
+her. And where her experience could not afford her the necessary
+material, she drew upon some mysterious resources in her nature,
+which were apparently not less reliable than actual experience. On
+being asked once how she could describe so accurately the effects
+of opium as she does in 'Villette,' she replied that she knew
+nothing of opium, but that she had followed the process she always
+adopted in cases of this kind. She had thought intently on the
+matter for many a night before falling asleep; till at length,
+after some time, she waked in the morning with all clear before
+her, just as if she had actually gone through the experience, and
+then could describe it word for word as it happened.</p>
+<p>Her sensitiveness to impressions of nature was exceedingly keen.
+She had what Swinburne calls "an instinct for the tragic use of
+landscape." By constant and close observation during her walks she
+had established a fellowship with nature in all her phases;
+learning her secrets from the voices of the night, from the whisper
+of the trees, and from the eerie moaning of the moorland blasts.
+She studied the cold sky, and had watched the "coming night-clouds
+trailing low like banners drooping."</p>
+<p>Other qualities that distinguish her work are purity, depth and
+ardor of passion, and spiritual force and fervor. Her genius was
+lofty and noble, and an exalted moral quality predominates in her
+stories. She was ethical as sincerely as she was emotional.</p>
+<p>We have only to consider her technique, in which she is
+characteristically original. This originality is noticeable
+especially in her use of words. There is a sense of fitness that
+often surprises the reader. Words at times in her hands reveal a
+new power and significance. In the choice of words Charlotte
+Bront&eacute; was scrupulous. She believed that there was just one
+word fit to express the idea or shade of meaning she wished to
+convey, and she never admitted a substitute, sometimes waiting days
+until the right word came. Her expressions are therefore well
+fitted and forcible. Though the predominant key is a serious one,
+there is nevertheless considerable humor in Charlotte
+Bront&eacute;'s work. In 'Shirley' especially we find many happy
+scenes, and much wit in repartee. And yet, with all these merits,
+one will find at times her style to be lame, stiff, and crude, and
+even when strongest, occasionally coarse. Not infrequently she is
+melodramatic and sensational. But through it all there is that
+pervading sense of reality and it redeems these defects.</p>
+<p>Of the unusual, the improbable, the highly colored in Charlotte
+Bront&eacute;'s books we shall say little. In criticizing works so
+true to life and nature as these, one should not be hasty. We feel
+the presence of a seer. Some one once made an objection in
+Charlotte Bront&eacute;'s presence to that part of 'Jane Eyre' in
+which she hears Rochester's voice calling to her at a great crisis
+in her life, he being many miles distant from her at the time.
+Charlotte caught her breath and replied in a low voice:--"But it is
+a true thing; it really happened." And so it might be said of
+Charlotte Bront&eacute;'s work as a whole:--"It is a true thing; it
+really happened."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRONTE01"></a>
+<h3>JANE EYRE'S WEDDING DAY</h3>
+<center>From 'Jane Eyre'</center>
+<br>
+<p>Sophie came at seven to dress me. She was very long indeed in
+accomplishing her task; so long that Mr. Rochester--grown, I
+suppose, impatient of my delay--sent up to ask why I did not come.
+She was just fastening my veil (the plain square of blonde, after
+all) to my hair with a brooch; I hurried from under her hands as
+soon as I could.</p>
+<p>"Stop!" she cried in French, "Look at yourself in the mirror;
+you have not taken one peep."</p>
+<p>So I turned at the door. I saw a robed and veiled figure, so
+unlike my usual self that it seemed almost the image of a
+stranger.</p>
+<p>"Jane!" called a voice, and I hastened down. I was received at
+the foot of the stairs by Mr. Rochester. "Lingerer," he said, "my
+brain is on fire with impatience; and you tarry so long!"</p>
+<p>He took me into the dining-room, surveyed me keenly all over,
+pronounced me "fair as a lily, and not only the pride of his life,
+but the desire of his eyes"; and then, telling me he would give me
+but ten minutes to eat some breakfast, he rang the bell. One of his
+lately hired servants, a footman, answered it.</p>
+<p>"Is John getting the carriage ready?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+<p>"Is the luggage brought down?"</p>
+<p>"They are bringing it down, sir."</p>
+<p>"Go you to the church; see if Mr. Wood" (the clergyman) "and the
+clerk are there; return and tell me."</p>
+<p>The church, as the reader knows, was but just beyond the gates;
+the footman soon returned.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Wood is in the vestry, sir, putting on his surplice."</p>
+<p>"And the carriage?"</p>
+<p>"The horses are harnessing."</p>
+<p>"We shall not want it to go to church; but it must be ready the
+moment we return--all the boxes and luggage arranged and strapped
+on, and the coachman in his seat."</p>
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+<p>"Jane, are you ready?"</p>
+<p>I rose. There were no groomsmen, no bridesmaids, no relatives to
+wait for or marshal; none but Mr. Rochester and I. Mrs. Fairfax
+stood in the hall as we passed. I would fain have spoken to her,
+but my hand was held by a grasp of iron; I was hurried along by a
+stride I could hardly follow; and to look at Mr. Rochester's face
+was to feel that not a second of delay would be tolerated for any
+purpose. I wondered what other bridegroom ever looked as he did--so
+bent up to a purpose, so grimly resolute; or who, under such
+steadfast brows, ever revealed such flaming and flashing eyes.</p>
+<p>I know not whether the day was fair or foul; in descending the
+drive I gazed neither on sky nor earth; my heart was with my eyes,
+and both seemed migrated into Mr. Rochester's frame. I wanted to
+see the invisible thing on which, as we went along, he appeared to
+fasten a glance fierce and fell. I wanted to feel the thoughts
+whose force he seemed breasting and resisting.</p>
+<p>At the churchyard wicket he stopped; he discovered I was quite
+out of breath.</p>
+<p>"Am I cruel in my love?" he said. "Delay an instant; lean on me,
+Jane."</p>
+<p>And now I can recall the picture of the gray old house of God
+rising calm before me, of a rook wheeling around the steeple, of a
+ruddy morning sky beyond. I remember something, too, of the green
+grave-mounds; and I have not forgotten, either, two figures of
+strangers, straying among the low hillocks, and reading the
+mementos graven on the few mossy headstones. I noticed them because
+as they saw us they passed around to the back of the church; and I
+doubted not they were going to enter by the side aisle door and
+witness the ceremony. By Mr. Rochester they were not observed; he
+was earnestly looking at my face, from which the blood had, I dare
+say, momentarily fled; for I felt my forehead dewy and my cheeks
+and lips cold. When I rallied, which I soon did, he walked gently
+with me up the path to the porch.</p>
+<p>We entered the quiet and humble temple; the priest waited in his
+white surplice at the lowly altar, the clerk beside him. All was
+still; two shadows only moved in a remote corner. My conjecture had
+been correct; the strangers had slipped in before us, and they now
+stood by the vault of the Rochesters, their backs toward us,
+viewing through the rails the old time-stained marble tomb, where a
+kneeling angel guarded the remains of Damer de Rochester, slain at
+Marston Moor in the time of the civil wars, and of Elizabeth his
+wife.</p>
+<p>Our place was taken at the communion-rails. Hearing a cautious
+step behind me, I glanced over my shoulder; one of the strangers--a
+gentleman, evidently--was advancing up the chancel. The service
+began. The explanation of the intent of matrimony was gone through:
+and then the clergyman came a step farther forward, and bending
+slightly toward Mr. Rochester, went on:--</p>
+<p>"I require and charge you both (as ye will answer at the
+dreadful day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be
+disclosed) that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not
+lawfully be joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for
+be ye well assured that so many as are coupled together otherwise
+than God's word doth allow are not joined together by God, neither
+is their matrimony lawful."</p>
+<p>He paused, as the custom is. When is the pause after that
+sentence ever broken by reply? Not, perhaps, once in a hundred
+years. And the clergyman, who had not lifted his eyes from his
+book, and had held his breath but for a moment, was proceeding; his
+hand was already stretched toward. Mr. Rochester, as his lips
+unclosed to ask, "Wilt thou have this woman for thy wedded
+wife?"--when a distinct and near voice said, "The marriage cannot
+go on: I declare the existence of an impediment."</p>
+<p>The clergyman looked up at the speaker and stood mute: the clerk
+did the same; Mr. Rochester moved slightly, as if an earthquake had
+rolled under his feet; taking a firmer footing, and not turning his
+head or eyes, he said, "Proceed!"</p>
+<p>Profound silence fell when he had uttered that word, with deep
+but low intonation. Presently Mr. Wood said, "I cannot proceed
+without some investigation into what has been asserted, and
+evidence of its truth or falsehood."</p>
+<p>"The ceremony is quite broken off," subjoined the voice behind
+us. "I am in a condition to prove my allegation; an insuperable
+impediment to this marriage exists."</p>
+<p>Mr. Rochester heard, but heeded not; he stood stubborn and
+rigid; making no movement but to possess himself of my hand. What a
+hot and strong grasp he had!--and how like quarried marble was his
+pale, firm, massive front at this moment! How his eye shone, still,
+watchful, and yet wild beneath!</p>
+<p>Mr. Wood seemed at a loss. "What is the nature of the
+impediment?" he asked. "Perhaps it may be got over--explained
+away?"</p>
+<p>"Hardly," was the answer: "I have called it insuperable, and I
+speak advisedly."</p>
+<p>The speaker came forward and leaned on the rails. He continued,
+uttering each word distinctly, calmly, steadily, but not
+loudly.</p>
+<p>"It simply consists in the existence of a previous marriage. Mr.
+Rochester has a wife now living."</p>
+<p>My nerves vibrated to those low-spoken words as they had never
+vibrated to thunder; my blood felt their subtle violence as it had
+never felt frost or fire; but I was collected, and in no danger of
+swooning. I looked at Mr. Rochester; I made him look at me. His
+whole face was colorless rock; his eye was both spark and flint. He
+disavowed nothing; he seemed as if he would defy all things.
+Without speaking, without smiling, without seeming to recognize in
+me a human being, he only twined my waist with his arm and riveted
+me to his side.</p>
+<p>"Who are you?" he asked of the intruder.</p>
+<p>"My name is Briggs, a solicitor of ---- Street, London."</p>
+<p>"And you would thrust on me a wife?"</p>
+<p>"I would remind you of your lady's existence, sir, which the law
+recognizes if you do not."</p>
+<p>"Favor me with an account of her--with her name, her parentage,
+her place of abode."</p>
+<p>"Certainly." Mr. Briggs calmly took a paper from his pocket, and
+read out in a sort of official, nasal voice:--</p>
+<p>"I affirm and can prove that on the 20th of October, A.D.--" (a
+date of fifteen years back), "Edward Fairfax Rochester, of
+Thornfield Hall, in the county of ----, and of Ferndean Manor, in
+---- shire, England, was married to my sister, Bertha Antoinetta
+Mason, daughter of Jonas Mason, merchant, and of Antoinetta his
+wife, a Creole, at ---- church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. The record
+of the marriage will be found in the register of that church--a
+copy of it is now in my possession. Signed, Richard Mason."</p>
+<p>"That, if a genuine document, may prove I have been married, but
+it does not prove that the woman mentioned therein as my wife is
+still living."</p>
+<p>"She was living three months ago," returned the lawyer.</p>
+<p>"How do you know?"</p>
+<p>"I have a witness to the fact whose testimony even you, sir,
+will scarcely controvert."</p>
+<p>"Produce him--or go to hell!"</p>
+<p>"I will produce him first--he is on the spot: Mr. Mason, have
+the goodness to step forward."</p>
+<p>Mr. Rochester, on hearing the name, set his teeth: he
+experienced, too, a sort of strong convulsive quiver; near to him
+as I was, I felt the spasmodic movement of fury or despair run
+through his frame.</p>
+<p>The second stranger, who had hitherto lingered in the
+background, now drew near; a pale face looked over the solicitor's
+shoulder--yes, it was Mason himself. Mr. Rochester turned and
+glared at him. His eye, as I have often said, was a black eye--it
+had now a tawny, nay, a bloody light in its gloom; and his face
+flushed--olive cheek and hueless forehead received a glow, as from
+spreading, ascending heart-fire; and he stirred, lifted his strong
+arm; he could have struck Mason--dashed him on the church
+floor--shocked by ruthless blow the breath from his body; but Mason
+shrank away, and cried faintly, "Good God!" Contempt fell cool on
+Mr. Rochester--his passion died as if a blight had shriveled it up;
+he only asked, "What have <i>you</i> to say?"</p>
+<p>An inaudible reply escaped Mason's white lips.</p>
+<p>"The devil is in it if you cannot answer distinctly. I again
+demand, what have <i>you</i> to say?"</p>
+<p>"Sir--sir," interrupted the clergyman, "do not forget you are in
+a sacred place." Then addressing Mason, he inquired gently, "Are
+you aware, sir, whether or not this gentleman's wife is still
+living?"</p>
+<p>"Courage," urged the lawyer; "speak out."</p>
+<p>"She is now living at Thornfield Hall," said Mason, in more
+articulate tones. "I saw her there last April. I am her
+brother."</p>
+<p>"At Thornfield Hall!" ejaculated the clergyman. "Impossible! I
+am an old resident in this neighborhood, sir, and I never heard of
+a Mrs. Rochester at Thornfield Hall."</p>
+<p>I saw a grim smile contort Mr. Rochester's lip, and he muttered,
+"No, by God! I took care that none should hear of it, or of her
+under that name." He mused; for ten minutes he held counsel with
+himself: he formed his resolve, and announced it:--"Enough; all
+shall bolt out at once, like a bullet from the barrel. Wood, close
+your book and take off your surplice; John Green" (to the clerk)
+"leave the church: there will be no wedding to-day." The man
+obeyed.</p>
+<p>Mr. Rochester continued hardily and recklessly:--"Bigamy is an
+ugly word! I meant, however, to be a bigamist; but fate has
+out-manoeuvred me, or Providence has checked me--perhaps the last.
+I am little better than a devil at this moment; and as my pastor
+there would tell me, deserve no doubt the sternest judgments of
+God, even to the quenchless fire and deathless worm.</p>
+<p>"Gentlemen, my plan is broken up! what this lawyer and his
+client say is true: I have been married, and the woman to whom I
+was married lives! You say you never heard of a Mrs. Rochester at
+the house up yonder, Wood; but I dare say you have many a time
+inclined your ear to gossip about the mysterious lunatic kept there
+under watch and ward. Some have whispered to you that she is my
+bastard half-sister; some, my cast-off mistress: I now inform you
+that she is my wife, whom I married fifteen years ago--Bertha Mason
+by name; sister of this resolute personage who is now, with his
+quivering limbs and white cheeks, showing you what a stout heart
+men may bear. Cheer up, Dick! never fear me! I'd almost as soon
+strike a woman as you. Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad
+family--idiots and maniacs through three generations! Her mother,
+the Creole, was both a mad-woman and a drunkard!--as I found out
+after I had wed the daughter; for they were silent on family
+secrets before. Bertha, like a dutiful child, copied her parent in
+both points. I had a charming partner--pure, wise, modest; you can
+fancy I was a happy man. I went through rich scenes! Oh! my
+experience has been heavenly, if you only knew it! But I owe you no
+further explanation. Briggs, Wood, Mason, I invite you all to come
+up to the house and visit Mrs. Poole's patient, and <i>my wife</i>!
+You shall see what sort of a being I was cheated into espousing,
+and judge whether or not I had a right to break the compact, and
+seek sympathy with something at least human. This girl," he
+continued, looking at me, "knew no more than you, Wood, of the
+disgusting secret: she thought all was fair and legal, and never
+dreamed that she was going to be entrapped into a feigned union
+with a defrauded wretch, already bound to a bad, mad, and imbruted
+partner! Come, all of you, follow."</p>
+<p>Still holding me fast, he left the church: the three gentlemen
+came after. At the front door of the hall we found the
+carriage.</p>
+<p>"Take it back to the coach-house, John," said Mr. Rochester,
+coolly: "it will not be wanted to-day."</p>
+<p>At our entrance, Mrs. Fairfax, Ad&egrave;le, Sophie, Leah,
+advanced to meet and greet us.</p>
+<p>"To the right-about--every soul!" cried the master: "away with
+your congratulations! Who wants them? Not I! they are fifteen years
+too late!"</p>
+<p>He passed on and ascended the stairs, still holding my hand, and
+still beckoning the gentlemen to follow him; which they did. We
+mounted the first staircase, passed up the gallery, proceeded to
+the third story: the low black door, opened by Mr. Rochester's
+master-key, admitted us to the tapestried room, with its great bed
+and its pictorial cabinet.</p>
+<p>"You know this place, Mason," said our guide; "she bit and
+stabbed you here."</p>
+<p>He lifted the hangings from the wall, uncovering the second
+door; this too he opened. In a room without a window there burned a
+fire, guarded by a high and strong fender, and a lamp suspended
+from the ceiling by a chain. Grace Poole bent over the fire,
+apparently cooking something in a saucepan. In the deep shade, at
+the further end of the room, a figure ran backward and forward.
+What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not at first
+sight tell; it groveled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and
+growled like some strange wild animal; but it was covered with
+clothing; and a quantity of dark grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid
+its head and face.</p>
+<p>"Good morning, Mrs. Poole," said Mr. Rochester. "How are you?
+and how is your charge to-day?"</p>
+<p>"We're tolerable, sir, I thank you," replied Grace, lifting the
+boiling mess carefully on to the hob: "rather snappish, but not
+'rageous."</p>
+<p>A fierce cry seemed to give the lie to her favorable report: the
+clothed hyena rose up, and stood tall on its hind feet.</p>
+<p>"Ah, sir, she sees you!" exclaimed Grace: "you'd better not
+stay."</p>
+<p>"Only a few moments, Grace; you must allow me a few
+moments."</p>
+<p>"Take care then, sir! for God's sake, take care!"</p>
+<p>The maniac bellowed; she parted her shaggy locks from her
+visage, and gazed wildly at her visitors. I recognized well that
+purple face--those bloated features. Mrs. Poole advanced.</p>
+<p>"Keep out of the way," said Mr. Rochester, thrusting her aside;
+"she has no knife now, I suppose? and I'm on my guard."</p>
+<p>"One never knows what she has, sir, she is so cunning; it is not
+in mortal discretion to fathom her craft."</p>
+<p>"We had better leave her," whispered Mason.</p>
+<p>"Go to the devil!" was his brother-in-law's recommendation.</p>
+<p>"'Ware!" cried Grace. The three gentlemen retreated
+simultaneously. Mr. Rochester flung me behind him; the lunatic
+sprang and grappled his throat viciously, and laid her teeth to his
+cheek; they struggled. She was a big woman, in stature almost
+equaling her husband, and corpulent besides; she showed virile
+force in the contest--more than once she almost throttled him,
+athletic as he was. He could have settled her with a well-planted
+blow; but he would not strike her; he would only wrestle. At last
+he mastered her arms; Grace Poole gave him a cord, and he pinioned
+them behind her; with more rope, which was at hand, he bound her to
+a chair. The operation was performed amid the fiercest yells and
+the most convulsive plunges. Mr. Rochester then turned to the
+spectators; he looked at them with a smile both acrid and
+desolate.</p>
+<p>"That is <i>my wife</i>," said he. "Such is the sole conjugal
+embrace I am ever to know--such are the endearments which are to
+solace my leisure hours! And <i>this</i> is what I wished to have"
+(laying his hand on my shoulder): "this young girl, who stands so
+grave and quiet at the mouth of hell, looking collectedly at the
+gambols of a demon. I wanted her just as a change, after that
+fierce rago&ucirc;t. Wood and Briggs, look at the difference.
+Compare these clear eyes with the red balls yonder--this face with
+that mask--this form with that bulk; then judge me, priest of the
+Gospel and man of the law, and remember, with what judgment ye
+judge ye shall be judged! Off with you now: I must shut up my
+prize."</p>
+<p>We all withdrew. Mr. Rochester stayed a moment behind us, to
+give some further order to Grace Poole. The solicitor addressed me
+as he descended the stair.</p>
+<p>"You, madam," said he, "are cleared from all blame; your uncle
+will be glad to hear it--if indeed he should be still living--when
+Mr. Mason returns to Madeira."</p>
+<p>"My uncle? What of him? Do you know him?"</p>
+<p>"Mr. Mason does; Mr. Eyre has been the Funchal correspondent of
+his house for some years. When your uncle received your letter
+intimating the contemplated union between yourself and Mr.
+Rochester, Mr. Mason, who was staying at Madeira to recruit his
+health, on his way back to Jamaica happened to be with him. Mr.
+Eyre mentioned the intelligence; for he knew that my client here
+was acquainted with a gentleman of the name of Rochester. Mr.
+Mason, astonished and distressed, as you may suppose, revealed the
+real state of matters. Your uncle, I am sorry to say, is now on a
+sick-bed; from which, considering the nature of his
+disease--decline--and the stage it has reached, it is unlikely he
+will ever rise. He could not then hasten to England himself, to
+extricate you from the snare into which you had fallen, but he
+implored Mr. Mason to lose no time in taking steps to prevent the
+false marriage. He referred him to me for assistance, I used all
+dispatch, and am thankful I was not too late: as you, doubtless,
+must be also. Were I not morally certain that your uncle will be
+dead ere you reach Madeira, I would advise you to accompany Mr.
+Mason back; but as it is, I think you had better remain in England
+till you can hear further, either from or of Mr. Eyre. Have we
+anything else to stay for?" he inquired of Mr. Mason.</p>
+<p>"No, no; let us be gone," was the anxious reply; and without
+waiting to take leave of Mr. Rochester, they made their exit at the
+hall door. The clergyman stayed to exchange a few sentences, either
+of admonition or reproof, with his haughty parishioner: this duty
+done, he too departed.</p>
+<p>I heard him go as I stood at the half-open door of my own room,
+to which I had now withdrawn. The house cleared, I shut myself in,
+fastened the bolt that none might intrude, and proceeded--not to
+weep, not to mourn, I was yet too calm for that, but--mechanically
+to take off the wedding-dress, and replace if by the stuff gown I
+had worn yesterday, as I thought for the last time. I then sat
+down: I felt weak and tired. I leaned my arms on a table, and my
+head dropped on them. And now I thought: till now I had only heard,
+seen, moved--followed up and down where I was led or
+dragged--watched event rush on event, disclosure open beyond
+disclosure; but <i>now I thought</i>.</p>
+<p>The morning had been a quiet morning enough--all except the
+brief scene with the lunatic. The transaction in the church had not
+been noisy; there was no explosion of passion, no loud altercation,
+no dispute, no defiance or challenge, no tears, no sobs: a few
+words had been spoken, a calmly pronounced objection to the
+marriage made; some stern, short questions put by Mr. Rochester;
+answers, explanations given, evidence adduced; an open admission of
+the truth had been uttered by my master: then the living proof had
+been seen; the intruders were gone, and all was over.</p>
+<p>I was in my own room as usual--just myself, without obvious
+change; nothing had smitten me, or scathed me, or maimed me. And
+yet where was the Jane Eyre of yesterday? where was her life? where
+were her prospects?</p>
+<p>Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman--almost a
+bride--was a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her
+prospects were desolate. A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a
+white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe
+apples; drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hay-field and
+corn-field lay a frozen shroud; lanes which last night blushed full
+of flowers, to-day were pathless with untrodden snow; and the
+woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and fragrant as groves
+between the tropics, now spread waste, wild, and white as pine
+forests in wintry Norway.</p>
+<p>My hopes were all dead--struck with a subtle doom, such as in
+one night fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked
+on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay
+stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive. I looked at my
+love, that feeling which was my master's--which he had created: it
+shivered in my heart, like a suffering child in a cold cradle;
+sickness and anguish had seized it; it could not seek Mr.
+Rochester's arms--it could not derive warmth from his breast. Oh,
+never more could it turn to him; for faith was blighted--confidence
+destroyed! Mr. Rochester was not to me what he had been; for he was
+not what I had thought him. I would not ascribe vice to him; I
+would not say he had betrayed me: but the attribute of stainless
+truth was gone from his idea; and from his presence I must go;
+<i>that</i> I perceived well. When--how--whither, I could not yet
+discern; but he himself, I doubted not, would hurry me from
+Thornfield. Real affection, it seemed, he could not have for me; it
+had been only fitful passion; that was balked; he would want me no
+more. I should fear even to cross his path now: my view must be
+hateful to him. Oh, how blind had been my eyes! how weak my
+conduct!</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRONTE02"></a>
+<h3>MADAME BECK</h3>
+<center>(From 'Villette')</center>
+<br>
+<p>"You ayre Engliss?" said a voice at my elbow. I almost bounded,
+so unexpected was the sound; so certain had I been of solitude.</p>
+<p>No ghost stood beside me, nor anything of spectral aspect;
+merely a motherly, dumpy little woman, in a large shawl, a
+wrapping-gown, and a clean, trim, nightcap.</p>
+<p>I said I was English, and immediately, without further prelude,
+we fell to a most remarkable conversation. Madame Beck (for Madame
+Beck it was; she had entered by a little door behind me, and being
+shod with the shoes of silence, I had heard neither her entrance
+nor approach)--Madame Beck had exhausted her command of insular
+speech when she said "You ayre Engliss," and she now proceeded to
+work away volubly in her own tongue. I answered in mine. She partly
+understood me, but as I did not at all understand her--though we
+made together an awful clamor (anything like madame's gift of
+utterance I had not hitherto heard or imagined)--we achieved little
+progress. She rang, ere long, for aid; which arrived in the shape
+of a "ma&icirc;tresse," who had been partly educated in an Irish
+convent, and was esteemed a perfect adept in the English language.
+A bluff little personage this ma&icirc;tresse
+was--Labasse-courienne from top to toe: and how she did slaughter
+the speech of Albion! However, I told her a plain tale, which she
+translated. I told her how I had left my own country, intent on
+extending my knowledge and gaining my bread; how I was ready to
+turn my hand to any useful thing, provided it was not wrong or
+degrading: how I would be a child's nurse or a lady's-maid, and
+would not refuse even housework adapted to my strength. Madame
+heard this; and questioning her countenance, I almost thought the
+tale won her ear.</p>
+<p>"Il n'y a que les Anglaises pour ces sortes d'entreprises," said
+she: "sont-elles done intr&eacute;pides, ces femmes-l&agrave;!"</p>
+<p>She asked my name, my age; she sat and looked at me--not
+pityingly, not with interest: never a gleam of sympathy or a shade
+of compassion crossed her countenance during the interview. I felt
+she was not one to be led an inch by her feelings: grave and
+considerate, she gazed, consulting her judgment and studying my
+narrative....</p>
+<p>In the dead of night I suddenly awoke. All was hushed, but a
+white figure stood in the room--Madame in her night-dress. Moving
+without perceptible sound, she visited the three children in the
+three beds; she approached me; I feigned sleep, and she studied me
+long. A small pantomime ensued, curious enough. I dare say she sat
+a quarter of an hour on the edge of my bed, gazing at my face. She
+then drew nearer, bent close over me; slightly raised my cap, and
+turned back the border so as to expose my hair; she looked at my
+hand lying on the bed-clothes. This done, she turned to the chair
+where my clothes lay; it was at the foot of the bed. Hearing her
+touch and lift them, I opened my eyes with precaution, for I own I
+felt curious to see how far her taste for research would lead her.
+It led her a good way: every article did she inspect. I divined her
+motive for this proceeding; viz., the wish to form from the
+garments a judgment respecting the wearer, her station, means,
+neatness, etc. The end was not bad, but the means were hardly fair
+or justifiable. In my dress was a pocket; she fairly turned it
+inside out; she counted the money in my purse; she opened a little
+memorandum-book, coolly perused its contents, and took from between
+the leaves a small plaited lock of Miss Marchmont's gray hair. To a
+bunch of three keys, being those of my trunk, desk, and work-box,
+she accorded special attention: with these, indeed, she withdrew a
+moment to her own room. I softly rose in my bed and followed her
+with my eye: these keys, reader, were not brought back till they
+had left on the toilet of the adjoining room the impress of their
+wards in wax. All being thus done decently and in order, my
+property was returned to its place, my clothes were carefully
+refolded. Of what nature were the conclusions deduced from this
+scrutiny? Were they favorable or otherwise? Vain question. Madame's
+face of stone (for of stone in its present night-aspect it looked:
+it had been human, and as I said before, motherly, in the salon)
+betrayed no response.</p>
+<p>Her duty done--I felt that in her eyes this business was a
+duty--she rose, noiseless as a shadow: she moved toward her own
+chamber; at the door she turned, fixing her eyes on the heroine of
+the bottle, who still slept and loudly snored. Mrs. Svini (I
+presume this was Mrs. Svini, Anglic&eacute; or Hibernic&eacute;
+Sweeny)--Mrs. Sweeny's doom was in Madame Beck's eye--an immutable
+purpose that eye spoke: madame's visitations for shortcomings might
+be slow, but they were sure. All this was very un-English: truly I
+was in a foreign land....</p>
+<p>When attired, Madame Beck appeared a personage of a figure
+rather short and stout, yet still graceful in its own peculiar way:
+that is, with the grace resulting from proportion of parts. Her
+complexion was fresh and sanguine, not too rubicund; her eye, blue
+and serene; her dark silk dress fitted her as a French sempstress
+alone can make a dress fit; she looked well, though a little
+bourgeoise, as bourgeoise indeed she was. I know not what of
+harmony pervaded her whole person; and yet her face offered
+contrast too: its features were by no means such as are usually
+seen in conjunction with a complexion of such blended freshness and
+repose: their outline was stern; her forehead was high but narrow;
+it expressed capacity and some benevolence, but no expanse; nor did
+her peaceful yet watchful eye ever know the fire which is kindled
+in the heart or the softness which flows thence. Her mouth was
+hard: it could be a little grim; her lips were thin. For
+sensibility and genius, with all their tenderness and temerity, I
+felt somehow that madame would be the right sort of Minos in
+petticoats.</p>
+<p>In the long run, I found that she was something else in
+petticoats too. Her name was Modeste Maria Beck, n&eacute;e Kint:
+it ought to have been Ignacia. She was a charitable woman, and did
+a great deal of good. There never was a mistress whose rule was
+milder. I was told that she never once remonstrated with the
+intolerable Mrs. Sweeny [the heroine's predecessor], despite her
+tipsiness, disorder, and general neglect; yet Mrs. Sweeny had to
+go, the moment her departure became convenient. I was told too that
+neither masters nor teachers were found fault with in that
+establishment: yet both masters and teachers were often changed;
+they vanished and others filled their places, none could well
+explain how.</p>
+<p>The establishment was both a pensionnat and an externat: the
+externes or day-pupils exceeded one hundred in number; the boarders
+were about a score. Madame must have possessed high administrative
+powers: she ruled all these, together with four teachers, eight
+masters, six servants, and three children, managing at the same
+time to perfection the pupil's parents and friends; and that
+without apparent effort, without bustle, fatigue, fever, or any
+symptom of undue excitement; occupied she always was--busy, rarely.
+It is true that madame had her own system for managing and
+regulating this mass of machinery; and a very pretty system it was:
+the reader has seen a specimen of it in that small affair of
+turning my pocket inside out and reading my private memoranda.
+<i>Surveillance, espionnage</i>, these were her watchwords.</p>
+<p>Still, madame knew what honesty was, and liked it--that is, when
+it did not obtrude its clumsy scruples in the way of her will and
+interest. She had a respect for "Angleterre"; and as to "les
+Anglaises," she would have the women of no other country about her
+own children, if she could help it.</p>
+<p>Often in the evening, after she had been plotting and
+counter-plotting, spying and receiving the reports of spies all
+day, she would come up to my room, a trace of real weariness on her
+brow, and she would sit down and listen while the children said
+their little prayers to me in English: the Lord's Prayer and the
+hymn beginning "Gentle Jesus," these little Catholics were
+permitted to repeat at my knee; and when I had put them to bed, she
+would talk to me (I soon gained enough French to be able to
+understand and even answer her) about England and Englishwomen, and
+the reason for what she was pleased to term their superior
+intelligence, and, more real and reliable probity. Very good sense
+she often showed; very sound opinions she often broached: she
+seemed to know that keeping girls in distrustful restraint, in
+blind ignorance, and under a surveillance that left them no moment
+and no corner for retirement, was not the best way to make them
+grow up honest and modest women; but she averred that ruinous
+consequences would ensue if any other method were tried with
+Continental children--they were so accustomed to restraint that
+relaxation, however guarded, would be misunderstood and fatally
+presumed on: she was sick, she would declare, of the means she had
+to use, but use them she must; and after discoursing, often with
+dignity and delicacy, to me, she would move away on her "souliers
+de silence," and glide ghost-like through the house, watching and
+spying everywhere, peering through every key-hole, listening behind
+every door.</p>
+<p>After all, madame's system was not bad--let me do her justice.
+Nothing could be better than all her arrangements for the physical
+well-being of her scholars. No minds were overtasked; the lessons
+were well distributed and made incomparably easy to the learner;
+there was a liberty of amusement and a provision for exercise which
+kept the girls healthy; the food was abundant and good: neither
+pale nor puny faces were anywhere to be seen in the Rue Fossette.
+She never grudged a holiday; she allowed plenty of time for
+sleeping, dressing, washing, eating: her method in all these
+matters was easy, liberal, salutary, and rational; many an austere
+English schoolmistress would do vastly well to imitate it--and I
+believe many would be glad to do so, if exacting English parents
+would let them.</p>
+<p>As Madame Beck ruled by espionage, she of course had her staff
+of spies; she perfectly knew the quality of the tools she used, and
+while she would not scruple to handle the dirtiest for a dirty
+occasion--flinging this sort from her like refuse rind? after the
+orange has been duly squeezed--I have known her fastidious in
+seeking pure metal for clean uses; and when once a bloodless and
+rustless instrument was found, she was careful of the prize,
+keeping it in silk and cotton-wool. Yet woe be to the man or woman
+who relied on her one inch beyond the point where it was her
+interest to be trustworthy; interest was the master-key of madame's
+nature--the mainspring of her motives--the alpha and omega of her
+life. I have seen her <i>feelings</i> appealed to, and I have
+smiled in half-pity, half-scorn at the appellants. None ever gained
+her ear through that channel, or swayed her purpose by that means.
+On the contrary, to attempt to touch her heart was the surest way
+to rouse her antipathy, and to make of her a secret foe. It proved
+to her that she had no heart to be touched: it reminded her where
+she was impotent and dead. Never was the distinction between
+charity and mercy better exemplified than in her. While devoid of
+sympathy, she had a sufficiency of rational benevolence: she would
+give in the readiest manner to people she had never seen--rather,
+however, to classes than to individuals. "Pour les pauvres" she
+opened her purse freely--against the <i>poor man</i>, as a rule,
+she kept it closed. In philanthropic schemes, for the benefit of
+society at large, she took a cheerful part; no private sorrow
+touched her: no force or mass of suffering concentrated in one
+heart had power to pierce hers. Not the agony of Gethsemane, not
+the death on Calvary, could have wrung from her eyes one tear.</p>
+<p>I say again, madame was a very great and a very capable woman.
+That school offered for her powers too limited a sphere: she ought
+to have swayed a nation; she should have been the leader of a
+turbulent legislative assembly. Nobody could have browbeaten her,
+none irritated her nerves, exhausted her patience, or overreached
+her astuteness. In her own single person, she could have comprised
+the duties of a first minister and a superintendent of police.
+Wise, firm, faithless, secret, crafty, passionless; watchful and
+inscrutable; acute and insensate--withal perfectly decorous--what
+more could be desired?</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRONTE03"></a>
+<h3>A YORKSHIRE LANDSCAPE</h3>
+<center>From 'Shirley'</center>
+<br>
+<p>"Miss Keeldar, just stand still now, and look down at Nunneley
+dale and wood."</p>
+<p>They both halted on the green brow of the Common. They looked
+down on the deep valley robed in May raiment; on varied meads, some
+pearled with daisies and some golden with kingcups: to-day all this
+young verdure smiled clear in sunlight; transparent emerald and
+amber gleams played over it. On Nunnwood--the sole remnant of
+antique British forest in a region whose lowlands were once all
+sylvan chase, as its highlands were breast-deep heather--slept the
+shadow of a cloud; the distant hills were dappled, the horizon was
+shaded and tinted like mother-of-pearl; silvery blues, soft
+purples, evanescent greens and rose-shades, all melting into
+fleeces of white cloud, pure as azury snow, allured the eye with a
+remote glimpse of heaven's foundations. The air blowing on the brow
+was fresh and sweet and bracing.</p>
+<p>"Our England is a bonnie island," said Shirley, "and Yorkshire
+is one of her bonniest nooks."</p>
+<p>"You are a Yorkshire girl too?"</p>
+<p>"I am--Yorkshire in blood and birth. Five generations of my race
+sleep under the aisles of Briarfield Church: I drew my first breath
+in the old black hall behind us."</p>
+<p>Hereupon Caroline presented her hand, which was accordingly
+taken and shaken. "We are compatriots," said she.</p>
+<p>"Yes," agreed Shirley, with a grave nod.</p>
+<p>"And that," asked Miss Keeldar, pointing to the forest--"that is
+Nunnwood?"</p>
+<p>"It is."</p>
+<p>"Were you ever there?"</p>
+<p>"Many a time."</p>
+<p>"In the heart of it?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"What is it like?"</p>
+<p>"It is like an encampment of forest sons of Anak. The trees are
+huge and old. When you stand at their roots, the summits seem in
+another region: the trunks remain still and firm as pillars, while
+the boughs sway to every breeze. In the deepest calm their leaves
+are never quite hushed, and in a high wind a flood rushes--a sea
+thunders above you."</p>
+<p>"Was it not one of Robin Hood's haunts?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, and there are mementos of him still existing. To penetrate
+into Nunnwood, Miss Keeldar, is to go far back into the dim days of
+old. Can you see a break in the forest, about the centre?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, distinctly."</p>
+<p>"That break is a dell--a deep hollow cup, lined with turf as
+green and short as the sod of this Common: the very oldest of the
+trees, gnarled mighty oaks, crowd about the brink of this dell; in
+the bottom lie the ruins of a nunnery.</p>
+<p>"We will go--you and I alone, Caroline--to that wood, early some
+fine summer morning, and spend a long day there. We can take
+pencils and sketch-books, and any interesting reading-book we like;
+and of course we shall take something to eat. I have two little
+baskets, in which Mrs. Gill, my house-keeper, might pack our
+provisions, and we could each carry our own. It would not tire you
+too much to walk so far?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, no; especially if we rested the whole day in the wood; and
+I know all the pleasantest spots. I know where we could get nuts in
+nutting time; I know where wild strawberries abound; I know certain
+lonely, quite untrodden glades, carpeted with strange mosses, some
+yellow as if gilded, some a sober gray, some gem-green. I know
+groups of trees that ravish the eye with their perfect,
+picture-like effects: rude oak, delicate birch, glossy beech,
+clustered in contrast; and ash-trees, stately as Saul, standing
+isolated; and superannuated wood-giants clad in bright shrouds of
+ivy."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRONTE04"></a>
+<h3>THE END OF HEATHCLIFF</h3>
+<center>From Emily Bront&eacute;'s 'Wuthering Heights'</center>
+<br>
+<p>For some days after that evening Mr. Heathcliff shunned meeting
+us at meals; yet he would not consent formally to exclude Hareton
+and Cathy. He had an aversion to yielding so completely to his
+feelings, choosing rather to absent himself; and eating once in
+twenty-four hours seemed sufficient sustenance for him.</p>
+<p>One night, after the family were in bed, I heard him go
+down-stairs and out at the front door; I did not hear him re-enter,
+and in the morning I found he was still away. We were in April
+then, the weather was sweet and warm, the grass as green as showers
+and sun could make it, and the two dwarf apple-trees near the
+southern wall in full bloom.</p>
+<p>After breakfast, Catherine insisted on my bringing a chair and
+sitting with my work under the fir-trees at the end of the house;
+and she beguiled Hareton, who had recovered from his accident, to
+dig and arrange her little garden, which was shifted to that corner
+by the influence of Joseph's complaints.</p>
+<p>I was comfortably reveling in the spring fragrance around, and
+the beautiful soft blue overhead, when my young lady, who had run
+down near the gate to procure some primrose roots for a border,
+returned only half laden, and informed us that Mr. Heathcliff was
+coming in.</p>
+<p>"And he spoke to me," she added with a perplexed look.</p>
+<p>"What did he say?" asked Hareton.</p>
+<p>"He told me to begone as fast as I could," she answered. "But he
+looked so different from his usual look that I stopped a moment to
+stare at him."</p>
+<p>"How?" he inquired.</p>
+<p>"Why, almost bright and cheerful--no, almost nothing--<i>very
+much</i> excited, and wild, and glad!" she replied.</p>
+<p>"Night-walking amuses him, then," I remarked, affecting a
+careless manner; in reality as surprised as she was, and anxious to
+ascertain the truth of her statement--for to see the master looking
+glad would not be an every-day spectacle; I framed an excuse to go
+in.</p>
+<p>Heathcliff stood at the open door--he was pale, and he trembled;
+yet certainly he had a strange joyful glitter in his eyes, that
+altered the aspect of his whole face.</p>
+<p>"Will you have some breakfast?" I said. "You must be hungry,
+rambling about all night!"</p>
+<p>I wanted to discover where he had been; but I did not like to
+ask directly.</p>
+<p>"No, I'm not hungry," he answered, averting his head, and
+speaking rather contemptuously, as if he guessed I was trying to
+divine the occasion of his good humor.</p>
+<p>I felt perplexed--I didn't know whether it were not a proper
+opportunity to offer a bit of admonition.</p>
+<p>"I don't think it right to wander out of doors," I observed,
+"instead of being in bed; it is not wise, at any rate, this moist
+season. I daresay you'll catch a bad cold, or a fever--you have
+something the matter with you now!"</p>
+<p>"Nothing but what I can bear," he replied, "and with the
+greatest pleasure, provided you'll leave me alone--get in, and
+don't annoy me."</p>
+<p>I obeyed; and in passing, I saw he breathed as fast as a
+cat.</p>
+<p>"Yes!" I reflected to myself, "we shall have a fit of illness. I
+cannot conceive what he has been doing!"</p>
+<p>That noon he sat down to dinner with us, and received a
+heaped-up plate from my hands, as if he intended to make amends for
+previous fasting.</p>
+<p>"I've neither cold nor fever, Nelly," he remarked, in allusion
+to my morning speech. "And I'm ready to do justice to the food you
+give me."</p>
+<p>He took his knife and fork, and was going to commence eating,
+when the inclination appeared to become suddenly extinct. He laid
+them on the table, looked eagerly toward the window, then rose and
+went out. We saw him walking to and fro in the garden, while we
+concluded our meal; and Earnshaw said he'd go and ask why he would
+not dine; he thought we had grieved him some way.</p>
+<p>"Well, is he coming?" cried Catherine, when he returned.</p>
+<p>"Nay," he answered; "but he's not angry: he seemed rare and
+pleased indeed; only I made him impatient by speaking to him twice:
+and then he bid me be off to you; he wondered how I could want the
+company of anybody else."</p>
+<p>I set his plate to keep warm on the fender; and after an hour or
+two he re-entered, when the room was clear, in no degree calmer:
+the same unnatural--it was unnatural!--appearance of joy under his
+black brows; the same bloodless hue; and his teeth visible now and
+then in a kind of smile; his frame shivering, not as one shivers
+with chill or weakness, but as a tight-stretched cord vibrates--a
+strong thrilling, rather than trembling.</p>
+<p>"I will ask what is the matter," I thought, "or who should?" And
+I exclaimed, "Have you heard any good news, Mr. Heathcliff? You
+look uncommonly animated."</p>
+<p>"Where should good news come from to me?" he said. "I'm animated
+with hunger; and seemingly I must not eat."</p>
+<p>"Your dinner is here," I returned: "why won't you get it?"</p>
+<p>"I don't want it now," he muttered hastily. "I'll wait till
+supper. And, Nelly, once for all, let me beg you to warn Hareton
+and the other away from me. I wish to be troubled by nobody--I wish
+to have this place to myself."</p>
+<p>"Is there some new reason for this banishment?" I inquired.
+"Tell me why you are so queer, Mr. Heathcliff. Where were you last
+night? I'm not putting the question through idle curiosity,
+but--"</p>
+<p>"You are putting the question through very idle curiosity," he
+interrupted, with a laugh. "Yet I'll answer it. Last night I was on
+the threshold of hell. To-day I am within sight of my heaven--I
+have my eyes on it--hardly three feet to sever me. And now you'd
+better go. You'll neither see nor hear anything to frighten you if
+you refrain from prying."</p>
+<p>Having swept the hearth and wiped the table, I departed more
+perplexed than ever. He did not quit the house again that
+afternoon, and no one intruded on his solitude till at eight
+o'clock I deemed it proper, though unsummoned, to carry a candle
+and his supper to him.</p>
+<p>He was leaning against the ledge of an open lattice, but not
+looking out; his face was turned to the interior gloom. The fire
+had smoldered to ashes; the room was filled with the damp, mild air
+of the cloudy evening; and so still, that not only the murmur of
+the beck down Gimmerton was distinguishable, but its ripples, and
+its gurgling over the pebbles, or through the large stones which it
+could not cover.</p>
+<p>I uttered an ejaculation of discontent at seeing the dismal
+grate, and commenced shutting the casements, one after another,
+till I came to his.</p>
+<p>"Must I close this?" I asked, in order to rouse him, for he
+would not stir.</p>
+<p>The light flashed on his features as I spoke. O Mr. Lockwood, I
+cannot express what a terrible start I got by the momentary view!
+Those deep black eyes! That smile and ghastly paleness! It appeared
+to me not Mr. Heathcliff, but a goblin; and in my terror I let the
+candle bend toward the wall, and it left me in darkness.</p>
+<p>"Yes, close it," he replied in his familiar voice. "There, that
+is pure awkwardness! Why did you hold the candle horizontally? Be
+quick, and bring another."</p>
+<p>I hurried out in a foolish state of dread, and said to Joseph,
+"The master wishes you to take him a light and rekindle the fire."
+For I dare not go in myself again just then.</p>
+<p>Joseph rattled some fire into the shovel and went; but he
+brought it back immediately, with the supper tray in his other
+hand, explaining that Mr. Heathcliff was going to bed, and he
+wanted nothing to eat till morning.</p>
+<p>We heard him mount the stairs directly. He did not proceed to
+his ordinary chamber, but turned into that with the paneled bed;
+its window, as I mentioned before, is wide enough for anybody to
+get through, and it struck me that he plotted another midnight
+excursion, which he had rather we had no suspicion of.</p>
+<p>"Is he a ghoul, or a vampire?" I mused. I had read of such
+hideous incarnate demons. And then I set myself to reflect how I
+had tended him in infancy, and watched him grow to youth, and
+followed him almost through his whole course, and what nonsense it
+was to yield to that sense of horror.</p>
+<p>"But where did he come from, the little dark thing, harbored by
+a good man to his bane?" muttered Superstition, as I dozed into
+unconsciousness. And I began, half dreaming, to weary myself with
+imagining some fit parentage for him: and repeating my waking
+meditations I tracked his existence over again, with grim
+variations; at last picturing his death and funeral; of which all I
+can remember is being exceedingly vexed at having the task of
+dictating an inscription for his monument, and consulting the
+sexton about it; and as he had no surname, and we could not tell
+his age, we were obliged to content ourselves with the single word
+"Heathcliff." That came true--we were. If you enter the kirkyard,
+you'll read on his headstone only that, and the date of his death.
+Dawn restored me to common-sense. I rose, and went into the garden,
+as soon as I could see, to ascertain if there were any foot-marks
+under his window. There were none.</p>
+<p>"He has staid at home," I thought, "and he'll be all right
+to-day!"</p>
+<p>I prepared breakfast for the household, as was my usual custom,
+but told Hareton and Catherine to get theirs ere the master came
+down, for he lay late. They preferred taking it out of doors, under
+the trees, and I set a little table to accommodate them.</p>
+<p>On my re-entrance I found Mr. Heathcliff below. He and Joseph
+were conversing about some farming business; he gave clear, minute
+directions concerning the matter discussed, but he spoke rapidly,
+and turned his head continually aside, and had the same excited
+expression, even more exaggerated.</p>
+<p>When Joseph quitted the room, he took his seat in the place he
+generally chose, and I put a basin of coffee before him. He drew it
+nearer, and then rested his arms on the table, and looked at the
+opposite wall, as I supposed surveying one particular portion, up
+and down, with glittering, restless eyes, and with such eager
+interest that he stopped breathing during half a minute
+together.</p>
+<p>"Come now," I exclaimed, pushing some bread against his hand,
+"eat and drink that while it is hot. It has been waiting near an
+hour."</p>
+<p>He didn't notice me, and yet he smiled. I'd rather have seen him
+gnash his teeth than smile so.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Heathcliff! master!" I cried. "Don't, for God's sake, stare
+as if you saw an unearthly vision."</p>
+<p>"Don't, for God's sake, shout so loud," he replied. "Turn round
+and tell me, are we by ourselves?"</p>
+<p>"Of course," was my answer, "of course we are!"</p>
+<p>Still I involuntarily obeyed him, as if I were not quite sure.
+With a sweep of his hand he cleared a vacant space in front among
+the breakfast things, and leaned forward to gaze more at his
+ease.</p>
+<p>Now I perceived he was not looking at the wall; for when I
+regarded him alone, it seemed exactly that he gazed at something
+within two yards' distance. And, whatever it was, it communicated
+apparently both pleasure and pain in exquisite extremes; at least
+the anguished yet raptured expression of his countenance suggested
+that idea.</p>
+<p>The fancied object was not fixed either; his eyes pursued it
+with unwearied vigilance, and even in speaking to me, were never
+weaned away.</p>
+<p>I vainly reminded him of his protracted abstinence from food. If
+he stirred to touch anything in compliance with my entreaties--if
+he stretched his hand out to get a piece of bread--his fingers
+clenched before they reached it, and remained on the table,
+forgetful of their aim.</p>
+<p>I sat, a model of patience, trying to attract his absorbed
+attention from its engrossing speculation till he grew irritable
+and got up, asking why I would not allow him to have his own time
+in taking his meals? and saying that on the next occasion I needn't
+wait--I might set the things down and go. Having uttered these
+words, he left the house, slowly sauntered down the garden path,
+and disappeared through the gate.</p>
+<p>The hours crept anxiously by: another evening came. I did not
+retire to rest till late, and when I did I could not sleep. He
+returned after midnight, and instead of going to bed, shut himself
+into the room beneath. I listened and tossed about, and finally
+dressed and descended. It was too irksome to lie up there,
+harassing my brain with a hundred idle misgivings.</p>
+<p>I distinguished Mr. Heathcliff's step, restlessly measuring the
+floor; and he frequently broke the silence by a deep inspiration,
+resembling a groan. He muttered detached words also; the only one I
+could catch was the name of Catherine, coupled with some wild term
+of endearment or suffering, and spoken as one would speak to a
+person present--low and earnest, and wrung from the depth of his
+soul.</p>
+<p>I had not courage to walk straight into the apartment; but I
+desired to divert him from his revery, and therefore fell foul of
+the kitchen fire; stirred it and began to scrape the cinders. It
+drew him forth sooner than I expected. He opened the door
+immediately, and said:--</p>
+<p>"Nelly, come here--is it morning? Come in with your light."</p>
+<p>"It is striking four," I answered; "you want a candle to take
+upstairs--you might have lighted one at this fire."</p>
+<p>"No, I don't wish to go upstairs," he said. "Come in, and kindle
+<i>me</i> a fire, and do anything there is to do about the
+room."</p>
+<p>"I must blow the coals red first, before I can carry any," I
+replied, getting a chair and the bellows.</p>
+<p>He roamed to and fro, meantime, in a state approaching
+distraction, his heavy sighs succeeding each other so thick as to
+leave no space for common breathing between.</p>
+<p>"When day breaks, I'll send for Green," he said; "I wish to make
+some legal inquiries of him, while I can bestow a thought on those
+matters, and while I can act calmly. I have not written my will
+yet, and how to leave my property I cannot determine! I wish I
+could annihilate it from the face of the earth."</p>
+<p>"I would not talk so, Mr. Heathcliff," I interposed. "Let your
+will be a while--you'll be spared to repent of your many injustices
+yet! I never expected that your nerves would be disordered--they
+are, at present, marvelously so, however; and almost entirely
+through your own fault. The way you've passed these last three days
+might knock up a Titan. Do take some food and some repose. You need
+only look at yourself in a glass to see how you require both. Your
+cheeks are hollow and your eyes bloodshot, like a person starving
+with hunger and going blind with loss of sleep."</p>
+<p>"It is not my fault that I cannot eat or rest," he replied. "I
+assure you it is through no settled designs. I'll do both as soon
+as I possibly can. But you might as well bid a man struggling in
+the water rest within arm's-length of the shore! I must reach it
+first, and then I'll rest. Well, never mind Mr. Green; as to
+repenting of my injustices, I've done no injustice, and I repent of
+nothing. I'm too happy, and yet I'm not happy enough. My soul's
+bliss kills my body, but does not satisfy itself."</p>
+<p>"Happy, master?" I cried. "Strange happiness! If you would hear
+me without being angry, I might offer some advice that would make
+you happier."</p>
+<p>"What is that?" he asked. "Give it."</p>
+<p>"You are aware, Mr. Heathcliff," I said, "that from the time you
+were thirteen years old you have lived a selfish, unchristian life:
+and probably hardly had a Bible in your hands during all that
+period. You must have forgotten the contents of the book, and you
+may not have space to search it now. Could it be hurtful to send
+for some one--some minister of any denomination, it does not matter
+which--to explain it, and show you how very far you have erred from
+its precepts, and how unfit you will be for its heaven, unless a
+change takes place before you die?"</p>
+<p>"I'm rather obliged than angry, Nelly," he said, "for you remind
+me of the manner that I desire to be buried in. It is to be carried
+to the churchyard in the evening. You and Hareton may, if you
+please, accompany me--and mind, particularly, to notice that the
+sexton obeys my directions concerning the two coffins! No minister
+need come; nor need anything be said over me. I tell you, I have
+nearly attained <i>my</i> heaven; and that of others is altogether
+unvalued and uncoveted by me!"</p>
+<p>"And supposing you persevered in your obstinate fast, and died
+by that means, and they refused to bury you in the precincts of the
+kirk?" I said, shocked at his godless indifference. "How would you
+like it?"</p>
+<p>"They won't do that," he replied; "if they did, you must have me
+removed secretly; and if you neglect it, you shall prove
+practically that the dead are not annihilated!"</p>
+<p>As soon as he heard the other members of the family stirring, he
+retired to his den, and I breathed freer. But in the afternoon,
+while Joseph and Hareton were at their work, he came into the
+kitchen again, and with a wild look bid me come and sit in the
+house--he wanted somebody with him.</p>
+<p>I declined, telling him plainly that his strange talk and manner
+frightened me, and I had neither the nerve nor the will to be his
+companion alone.</p>
+<p>"I believe you think me a fiend!" he said, with his dismal
+laugh; "something too horrible to live under a decent roof!"</p>
+<p>Then turning to Catherine, who was there, and who drew behind me
+at his approach, he added, half sneeringly:--</p>
+<p>"Will <i>you</i> come, chuck? I'll not hurt you. No! to you I've
+made myself worse than the devil. Well, there is <i>one</i> who
+won't shrink from my company! By God! she's relentless. Oh, damn
+it! It's unutterably too much for flesh and blood to bear, even
+mine."</p>
+<p>He solicited the society of no one more. At dusk he went into
+his chamber. Through the whole night, and far into the morning, we
+heard him groaning and murmuring to himself. Hareton was anxious to
+enter, but I bid him fetch Mr. Kenneth, and he should go in and see
+him.</p>
+<p>When he came, and I requested admittance and tried to open the
+door, I found it locked; and Heathcliff bid us be damned. He was
+better, and would be left alone; so the doctor went away.</p>
+<p>The following evening was very wet; indeed, it poured down till
+day-dawn; and as I took my morning walk round the house, I observed
+the master's window swinging open, and the rain driving straight
+in.</p>
+<p>"He cannot be in bed," I thought: "those showers would drench
+him through! He must be either up or out. But I'll make no more
+ado; I'll go boldly, and look!"</p>
+<p>Having succeeded in obtaining entrance with another key, I ran
+to unclose the panels, for the chamber was vacant--quickly pushing
+them aside, I peeped in. Mr. Heathcliff was there--laid on his
+back. His eyes met mine, so keen and fierce that I started; and
+then he seemed to smile.</p>
+<p>I could not think him dead--but his face and throat were washed
+with rain; the bed-clothes dripped, and he was perfectly still. The
+lattice, flapping to and fro, had grazed one hand that rested on
+the sill--no blood trickled from the broken skin, and when I put my
+fingers to it I could doubt no more--he was dead and stark!</p>
+<p>I hasped the window; I combed his long, black hair from his
+forehead; I tried to close his eyes--to extinguish, if possible,
+that frightful, lifelike exultation, before any one else beheld it.
+They would not shut--they seemed to sneer at my attempts, and his
+parted lips and sharp white teeth sneered too! Taken with another
+fit of cowardice, I cried out for Joseph. Joseph shuffled up and
+made a noise, but resolutely refused to meddle with him. "Th'
+divil's harried off his soul," he cried, "and he muh hev his
+carcass intuh t' bargain, for ow't aw care! Ech! what a wicked un
+he looks, grinning at death!" and the old sinner grinned in
+mockery.</p>
+<p>I thought he intended to cut a caper round the bed; but suddenly
+composing himself, he fell on his knees and raised his hands, and
+returned thanks that the lawful master and the ancient stock were
+restored to their rights.</p>
+<p>I felt stunned by the awful event; and my memory unavoidably
+recurred to former times with a sort of oppressive sadness. But
+poor Hareton, the most wronged, was the only one that really
+suffered much. He sat by the corpse all night, weeping in bitter
+earnest. He pressed its hand, and kissed the sarcastic, savage face
+that every one else shrank from contemplating; and bemoaned him
+with that strong grief which springs naturally from a generous
+heart, though it be tough as tempered steel.</p>
+<p>Kenneth was perplexed to pronounce of what disorder the master
+died. I concealed the fact of his having swallowed nothing for four
+days, fearing it might lead to trouble; and then, I am persuaded,
+he did not abstain on purpose: it was the consequence of his
+strange illness, not the cause.</p>
+<p>We buried him, to the scandal of the whole neighborhood, as he
+had wished. Earnshaw and I, the sexton, and six men to carry the
+coffin, comprehended the whole attendance.</p>
+<p>The six men departed when they had let it down into the grave:
+we stayed to see it covered. Hareton, with a streaming face, dug
+green sods and laid them over the brown mold himself. At present it
+is as smooth and verdant as its companion mounds--and I hope its
+tenant sleeps as soundly. But the country folks, if you asked them,
+would swear on their Bibles that he <i>walks</i>. There are those
+who speak to having met him near the church, and on the moor, and
+even within this house. Idle tales, you'll say, and so say I. Yet
+that old man by the kitchen fire affirms he has seen "two on 'em"
+looking out of his chamber window on every rainy night since his
+death--and an odd thing happened to me about a month ago.</p>
+<p>I was going to the grange one evening--a dark evening
+threatening thunder--and, just at the turn of the Heights, I
+encountered a little boy with a sheep and two lambs before him. He
+was crying terribly, and I supposed the lambs were skittish and
+would not be guided.</p>
+<p>"What is the matter, my little man?" I asked.</p>
+<p>"They's Heathcliff and a woman yonder, under t' nab," he
+blubbered, "un' aw darnut pass 'em."</p>
+<p>I saw nothing, but neither the sheep nor he would go on, so I
+bid him take the road lower down. He probably raised the phantoms
+from thinking, as he traversed the moors alone, on the nonsense he
+had heard his parents and companions repeat; yet still I don't like
+being out in the dark now, and I don't like being left by myself in
+this grim house. I cannot help it; I shall be glad when they leave
+it and shift to the Grange!</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>"They are going to the Grange, then?" I said.</p>
+<p>"Yes," answered Mrs. Dean, "as soon as they are married; and
+that will be on New Year's day."</p>
+<p>"And who will live here then?"</p>
+<p>"Why, Joseph will take care of the house, and perhaps a lad to
+keep him company. They will live in the kitchen, and the rest will
+be shut up."</p>
+<p>"For the use of such ghosts as choose to inhabit it," I
+observed.</p>
+<p>"No, Mr. Lockwood," said Nelly, shaking her head. "I believe the
+dead are at peace, but it is not right to speak of them with
+levity."</p>
+<p>At that moment the garden gate swung to; the ramblers were
+returning.</p>
+<p>"<i>They</i> are afraid of nothing," I grumbled, watching their
+approach through the window. "Together they would brave Satan and
+all his legions."</p>
+<p>As they stepped upon the door-stones, and halted to take a last
+look at the moon, or more correctly at each other, by her light, I
+felt irresistibly impelled to escape them again; and pressing a
+remembrance into the hands of Mrs. Dean, and disregarding her
+expostulations at my rudeness, I vanished through the kitchen, as
+they opened the house-door; and so should have confirmed Joseph in
+his opinion of his fellow-servant's gay indiscretions, had he not
+fortunately recognized me for a respectable character by the sweet
+ring of a sovereign at his feet.</p>
+<p>My walk home was lengthened by a diversion in the direction of
+the kirk. When beneath its walls, I perceived decay had made
+progress even in seven months--many a window showed black gaps
+deprived of glass; and slates jutted off, here and there, beyond
+the right line of the roof, to be gradually worked off in coming
+autumn storms.</p>
+<p>I sought, and soon discovered, the three headstones on the slope
+next the moor--the middle one, gray, and half buried in the
+heath--Edgar Linton's only harmonized by the turf and moss creeping
+up its foot--Heathcliff's still bare.</p>
+<p>I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths
+fluttering among the heath and harebells; listened to the soft wind
+breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever
+imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="BROOKS"></a>
+<h2>PHILLIPS BROOKS</h2>
+<h3>(1835-1893)</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-p.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>hillips Brooks was born in Boston, Massachusetts, December 13th,
+1835, and died there January 23d, 1893. He inherited the best
+traditions of New England history, being on the paternal side the
+direct descendant of John Cotton, and his mother's name, Phillips,
+standing for high learning and distinction in the Congregational
+church. Born at a time when the orthodox faith was fighting its
+bitterest battle with Unitarianism, his parents accepted the dogmas
+of the new theology, and had him baptized by a Unitarian clergyman.
+But while refusing certain dogmas of the orthodox church, they were
+the more thrown back for spiritual support upon the internal
+evidences of evangelical Christianity. "Holding still," says the
+Rev. Arthur Brooks, "in a greater or less degree, and with more or
+less precision, to the old statements, they counted the great fact
+that these statements enshrined more precious truth than any
+other." Transition to the Episcopal church was easy; the mother
+became an Episcopalian, and Phillips Brooks received all his early
+training in that communion. But heredity had its influence, and in
+after-life the great Bishop said that the Episcopal church could
+reap the fruits of the long and bitter controversy which divided
+the New England church, only as it discerned the spiritual worth of
+Puritanism, and the value of its contributions to the history of
+religious thought and character.</p>
+<p>Such were the early surroundings of the man, and the subsequent
+influences of his life tended to foster this liberal spirit. For
+such a purpose, Boston itself was a good place to live in: it was
+too large to be wholly provincial, and it was not so large that the
+individual was lost; and at that time it was moreover the literary
+centre of America. When Phillips Brooks entered Harvard, he came
+into an atmosphere of intense intellectual activity. James Walker
+was the president of the college, and Lowell, Holmes, Agassiz, and
+Longfellow were among the professors. He graduated with honor in
+1855, and soon after entered the Episcopal theological seminary at
+Alexandria, Virginia.</p>
+<p>The transition from Harvard to this college was an abrupt one.
+The standards of the North and South were radically different. The
+theology of the Church in Virginia, while tolerant to that of other
+denominations, was uncompromisingly hostile to what it regarded as
+heterodox.</p>
+<p>When the War was declared he threw himself passionately into the
+cause of the Union. Yet his affection for his Southern classmates,
+men from whom he so widely differed, broadened that charity that
+was one of his finest characteristics, a charity that respected
+conviction wherever found.</p>
+<p>No man, in truth, ever did so much to remove prejudice against a
+Church that had never been popular in New England. To the old
+Puritan dislike of Episcopacy and distrust of the English Church as
+that of the oppressors of the colony, was added a sense of
+resentment toward its sacerdotal claims and its assumption of
+ecclesiastical supremacy. But he nevertheless protested against the
+claim by his own communion to the title of "The American Church,"
+he preached occasionally in other pulpits, he even had among his
+audiences clergymen of other denominations, and he was able to
+reconcile men of different creeds into concord on what is essential
+in all. The breadth and depth of his teaching attracted so large a
+following that he increased the strength of the Episcopal Church in
+America far more than he could have done by carrying on an active
+propaganda in its behalf. Under his pastorate Trinity Church,
+Boston, became the centre of some of the most vigorous Christian
+activity in America.</p>
+<p>His first charge was the Church of the Advent, in Philadelphia;
+in two years he became rector of Holy Trinity Church in the same
+city. In 1869 he was called to Trinity Church, Boston, of which he
+was rector until his election as bishop of Massachusetts in
+1891.</p>
+<p>It is impossible to give an idea of Phillips Brooks without a
+word about his personality, which was almost contradictory. His
+commanding figure, his wit, the charm of his conversation, and a
+certain boyish gayety and naturalness, drew people to him as to a
+powerful magnet. He was one of the best known men in America;
+people pointed him out to strangers in his own city as they pointed
+out the Common and the Bunker Hill monument. When he went to
+England, where he preached before the Queen, men and women of all
+classes greeted him as a friend. They thronged the churches where
+he preached, not only to hear him but to see him. Many stories are
+told of him; some true, some more or less apocryphal, all proving
+the affectionate sympathy existing between him and his kind. It was
+said of him that as soon as he entered a pulpit he was absolutely
+impersonal. There was no trace of individual experience or
+theological conflict by which he might be labeled. He was simply a
+messenger of the truth as he held it, a mouthpiece of the gospel as
+he believed it had been delivered to him.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="brooks.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/brooks.jpg"><img src=
+"images/brooks.jpg" width="45%" alt=""></a></p>
+<br>
+<p>Although in his seminary days his sermons were described as
+vague and unpractical, Phillips Brooks was as great a preacher when
+under thirty years of age as he was at any later time. His early
+sermons, delivered to his first charge in Philadelphia, displayed
+the same individuality, the same force and completeness and
+clearness of construction, the same deep, strong undertone of
+religious thought, as his great discourses preached in Westminster
+Abbey six months before his death. His sentences are sonorous; his
+style was characterized by a noble simplicity, impressive, but
+without a touch showing that dramatic effect was strained for.</p>
+<p>He passionately loved nature in all her aspects, and traveled
+widely in search of the picturesque; but he used his experience
+with reserve, and his illustrations are used to explain human life.
+His power of painting a picture in a few bold strokes appears
+strikingly in the great sermon on the 'Lesson of the Life of Saul,'
+where he contrasts early promise and final failure; and in that
+other not less remarkable presentation of the vision of Saint
+Peter. His treatment of Bible narratives is not a translation into
+the modern manner, nor is it an adaptation, but a poetical
+rendering, in which the flavor of the original is not lost though
+the lesson is made contemporary. And while he did not transcribe
+nature upon his pages, his sermons are not lacking in decoration.
+He used figures of speech and drew freely on history and art for
+illustrations, but not so much to elucidate his subject as to
+ornament it. His essays on social and literary subjects are written
+with the aim of directness of statement, pure and simple; but the
+stuff of which his sermons are woven is of royal purple.</p>
+<p>The conviction that religious sentiment should penetrate the
+whole life showed itself in Phillips Brooks's relation to
+literature. "Truth bathed in light and uttered in love makes the
+new unit of power," he says in his essay on literature. It was his
+task to mediate between literature and theology, and restore
+theology to the place it lost through the abstractions of the
+schoolmen. What he would have done if he had devoted himself to
+literature alone, we can only conjecture by the excellence of his
+style in essays and sermons. They show his poetical temperament;
+and his little lyric 'O Little Town of Bethlehem' will be sung as
+long as Christmas is celebrated. His essays show more clearly even
+than his sermons his opinions on society, literature, and religion.
+They place him where he belongs, in that "small transfigured band
+the world cannot tame,"--the world of Cranmer, Jeremy Taylor,
+Robertson, Arnold, Maurice. His paper on Dean Stanley discloses his
+theological views as openly as do his addresses on 'Heresies and
+Orthodoxy.'</p>
+<p>As might be expected of one who, in the word's best sense, was
+so thoroughly a man, he had great influence with young men and was
+one of the most popular of Harvard preachers. It was his custom for
+thirty alternate years to go abroad in the summer, and there, as in
+America, he was regarded as a great pulpit orator. He took a large
+view of social questions and was in sympathy with all great popular
+movements. His advancement to the episcopate was warmly welcomed by
+all parties, except one branch of his own church with which his
+principles were at variance, and every denomination delighted in
+his elevation as if he were the peculiar property of each.</p>
+<p>He published several volumes of sermons. His works include
+'Lectures on Preaching' (New York, 1877), 'Sermons' (1878-81),
+'Bohlen Lectures' (1879), 'Baptism and Confirmation' (1880),
+'Sermons Preached in English Churches' (1883), 'The Oldest Schools
+in America' (Boston, 1885), 'Twenty Sermons' (New York, 1886),
+'Tolerance' (1887), 'The Light of the World, and Other Sermons'
+(1890), and 'Essays and Addresses' (1894). His 'Letters of Travel'
+show him to be an accurate observer, with a large fund of
+spontaneous humor. No letters to children are so delightful as
+those in this volume.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROOKS01"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>O LITTLE TOWN OF
+BETHLEHEM</b><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O little town of Bethlehem,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How still we see thee
+lie!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Above thy deep and dreamless
+sleep<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The silent stars go
+by.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet in thy dark streets shineth<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The everlasting
+Light;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The hopes and fears of all the
+years<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Are met in thee
+to-night.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O morning stars, together<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Proclaim the holy
+birth!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And praises sing to God the King,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And peace to men on
+earth.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For Christ is born of Mary,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And gathered all
+above;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While mortals sleep the angels
+keep<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Their watch of wondering
+love.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How silently, how silently,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The wondrous gift is
+given!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So God imparts to human hearts<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The blessings of his
+heaven.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No ear may hear his coming;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But in this world of
+sin,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where meek souls will receive him
+still,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The dear Christ enters
+in.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where children pure and happy<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Pray to the
+bless&egrave;d Child,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where Misery cries out to thee,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Son of the Mother
+mild;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where Charity stands watching,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And Faith holds wide the
+door,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The dark night wakes; the glory
+breaks,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And Christmas comes once
+more.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O holy Child of Bethlehem,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Descend to us, we
+pray!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cast out our sin and enter in;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Be born in us to-day.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We hear the Christmas angels<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The great glad tidings
+tell;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O come to us, abide with us,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Our Lord Emmanuel!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Copyrighted by E.P. Dutton and
+Company, New York.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<a name="illus-2420.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/illus-2420.jpg"><img src=
+"images/illus-2420.jpg" width="80%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>The Holy Child of Bethlehem</b></p>
+<br>
+<center>Photogravure from a Painting by H. Havenith.<br>
+<br>
+"Where children pure and happy<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Pray to the blessed Child."</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROOKS02"></a>
+<h3>PERSONAL CHARACTER</h3>
+<center>From 'Essays and Addresses'</center>
+<br>
+<p>As one looks around the world, and as one looks around our own
+land to-day, he sees that the one thing we need in high places--the
+thing whose absence, among those who hold the reins of highest
+power, is making us all anxious with regard to the progress of the
+country--is personal character. The trouble is not what we hold to
+be mistaken ideas with regard to policies of government, but it is
+the absence of lofty and unselfish character. It is the absence of
+the complete consecration of a man's self to the public good; it is
+the willingness of men to bring their personal and private spites
+into spheres whose elevation ought to shame such things into
+absolute death; the tendencies of men, even of men whom the nation
+has put in very high places indeed, to count those high places
+their privileges, and to try to draw from them, not help for
+humanity and the community over which they rule, but their own mean
+personal private advantage.</p>
+<p>If there is any power that can elevate human character: if there
+is any power which, without inspiring men with a supernatural
+knowledge with regard to policies of government; without making men
+solve all at once, intuitively, the intricacies of problems of
+legislation with which they are called upon to deal; without making
+men see instantly to the very heart of every matter; if there is
+any power which could permeate to the very bottom of our community,
+which would make men unselfish and true--why, the errors of men,
+the mistakes men might make in their judgment, would not be an
+obstacle in the way of the progress of this great nation in the
+work which God has given her to do. They would make jolts, but
+nothing more. Or in the course which God has appointed her to run
+she would go to her true results. There is no power that man has
+ever seen that can abide; there is no power of which man has ever
+dreamed that can regenerate human character except religion; and
+till the Christian religion, which is the religion of this
+land--till the Christian religion shall have so far regenerated
+human character in this land that multitudes of men shall act under
+its high impulses and principles, so that the men who are not
+inspired with them shall be shamed at least into an outward
+conformity with them, there is no security for the great final
+continuance of the nation.</p>
+<p>Copyrighted by E.P. Dutton and Company, New York.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROOKS03"></a>
+<h3>THE COURAGE OF OPINIONS</h3>
+<center>From 'Essays and Addresses'</center>
+<br>
+<p>We have spoken of physical courage, or the courage of nerves; of
+moral courage, or the courage of principles. Besides these there is
+intellectual courage, or the courage of opinions. Let me say a few
+words upon that, for surely there is nothing which we more need to
+understand.</p>
+<p>The ways in which people form their opinions are most
+remarkable. Every man, when he begins his reasonable life, finds
+certain general opinions current in the world. He is shaped by
+these opinions in one way or another, either directly or by
+reaction. If he is soft and plastic, like the majority of people,
+he takes the opinions that are about him for his own. If he is
+self-asserting and defiant, he takes the opposite of these opinions
+and gives to them his vehement adherence. We know the two kinds
+well, and as we ordinarily see them, the fault which is at the root
+of both is intellectual cowardice. One man clings servilely to the
+old ready-made opinions which he finds, because he is afraid of
+being called rash and radical; another rejects the traditions of
+his people from fear of being thought fearful, and timid, and a
+slave. The results are very different: one is the tame conservative
+and the other is the fiery iconoclast; but I beg you to see that
+the cause in both cases is the same. Both are cowards. Both are
+equally removed from that brave seeking of the truth which is not
+set upon either winning or avoiding any name, which will take no
+opinion for the sake of conformity and reject no opinion for the
+sake of originality; which is free, therefore--free to gather its
+own convictions, a slave neither to any compulsion nor to any
+antagonism. Tell me, have you never seen two teachers, one of them
+slavishly adopting old methods because he feared to be called
+"imitator," the other crudely devising new plans because he was
+afraid of seeming conservative, both of them really cowards,
+neither of them really thinking out his work? ...</p>
+<p>The great vice of our people in their relation to the politics
+of the land is cowardice. It is not lack of intelligence: our
+people know the meaning of political conditions with wonderful
+sagacity. It is not low morality: the great mass of our people
+apply high standards to the acts of public men. But it is
+cowardice. It is the disposition of one part of our people to fall
+in with current ways of working, to run with the mass; and of
+another part to rush headlong into this or that new scheme or
+policy of opposition, merely to escape the stigma of
+conservatism.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROOKS04"></a>
+<h3>LITERATURE AND LIFE</h3>
+<center>From 'Essays and Addresses'</center>
+<br>
+<p>Life comes before literature, as the material always comes
+before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world
+blooms with statues. The forests are full of trees before the sea
+is thick with ships. So the world abounds in life before men begin
+to reason and describe and analyze and sing, and literature is
+born. The fact and the action must come first. This is true in
+every kind of literature. The mind and its workings are before the
+metaphysician. Beauty and romance antedate the poet. The nations
+rise and fall before the historian tells their story. Nature's
+profusion exists before the first scientific book is written. Even
+the facts of mathematics must be true before the first diagram is
+drawn for their demonstration.</p>
+<p>To own and recognize this priority of life is the first need of
+literature. Literature which does not utter a life already
+existent, more fundamental than itself, is shallow and unreal. I
+had a schoolmate who at the age of twenty published a volume of
+poems called 'Life-Memories.' The book died before it was born.
+There were no real memories, because there had been no life. So
+every science which does not utter investigated fact, every history
+which does not tell of experience, every poetry which is not based
+upon the truth of things, has no real life. It does not perish; it
+is never born. Therefore men and nations must live before they can
+make literature. Boys and girls do not write books. Oregon and Van
+Diemen's Land produce no literature: they are too busy living. The
+first attempts at literature of any country, as of our own, are apt
+to be unreal and imitative and transitory, because life has not yet
+accumulated and presented itself in forms which recommend
+themselves to literature. The wars must come, the clamorous
+problems must arise, the new types of character must be evolved,
+the picturesque social complication must develop, a life must come,
+and then will be the true time for a literature.... Literature
+grows feeble and conceited unless it ever recognizes the priority
+and superiority of life, and stands in genuine awe before the
+greatness of the men and of the ages which have simply lived.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="CHARLES_BROWN"></a>
+<h2>CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN</h2>
+<h3>(1771-1810)</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-n.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>ot only was Brockden Brown the first American man-of-letters
+proper,--one writing for a living before we had any real literature
+of our own,--but his work possessed a genuine power and originality
+which gives it some claim to remembrance for its own sake. And it
+is fair always to remember that a given product from a pioneer
+indicates a far greater endowment than the same from one of a group
+in a more developed age. The forerunner lacks not one thing only,
+but many things, which help his successors. He lacks the mental
+friction from, the emulation of, the competition with, other
+writers; he lacks the stimulus and comfort of sympathetic
+companionship; he lacks an audience to spur him on, and a market to
+work for; lacks labor-saving conventions, training, and an
+environment that heartens him instead of merely tolerating him.
+Like Robinson Crusoe, he must make his tools before he can use
+them. A meagre result may therefore be a proof of great
+abilities.</p>
+<p class="rgt"><img src="images/brown_c.jpg" width="45%" alt=
+""><br>
+<b>Charles B. Brown</b></p>
+<p>The United States in 1800 was mentally and morally a colony of
+Great Britain still. A few hundred thousand white families
+scattered over about as many square miles of territory, much of it
+refractory wilderness with more refractory inhabitants; with no
+cities of any size, and no communication save by wretched roads or
+by sailing vessels; no rich old universities for centres of
+culture, and no rich leisured society to enjoy it; the energies of
+the people perforce absorbed in subduing material obstacles, or
+solidifying a political experiment disbelieved in by the very men
+who organized it;--neither time nor materials existed then for an
+independent literary life, which is the growth of security and
+comfort and leisure if it embraces a whole society, or of endowed
+college foundations and an aristocracy if it is only of the few.
+Hence American society took its literary meals at the common table
+of the English-speaking race, with little or no effort at a
+separate establishment. There was much writing, but mostly polemic
+or journalistic. When real literature was attempted, it consisted
+in general of imitations of British essays, or fiction, or poetry;
+and in the last two cases not even imitations of the best models in
+either. The essays were modeled on Addison; the poetry on the heavy
+imitators of Pope's heroics; the fiction either on the effusive
+sentimentalists who followed Richardson, or on the
+pseudo-Orientalists like Walpole and Lewis, or on the
+pseudo-medi&aelig;valists like Mrs. Roche and Mrs. Radcliffe. This
+sort of work filled the few literary periodicals of the day, but
+was not read enough to make such publications profitable even then,
+and is pretty much all unreadable now.</p>
+<p>Charles Brockden Brown stands in marked contrast to these
+second-hand weaklings, not only by his work but still more by his
+method and temper. In actual achievement he did not quite fulfill
+the promise of his early books, and cannot be set high among his
+craft. He was an inferior artist; and though he achieved naturalism
+of matter, he clung to the theatrical artificiality of style which
+was in vogue. But if he had broken away from all traditions, he
+could have gained no hearing whatever; he died young--twenty years
+more might have left him a much greater figure; and he wrought in
+disheartening loneliness of spirit. His accomplishment was that of
+a pioneer. He was the first American author to see that the true
+field for his fellows was America and not Europe. He realized, as
+the genius of Ch&acirc;teaubriand realized at almost the same
+moment, the artistic richness of the material which lay to hand in
+the silent forest vastnesses, with their unfamiliar life of man and
+beast, and their possibilities of mystery enough to satisfy the
+most craving. He was not the equal of the author of 'The Natchez'
+and 'Atala'; but he had a fresh and daring mind. He turned away
+from both the emotional orgasms and the stage claptrap of his time,
+to break ground for all future American novelists. He antedated
+Cooper in the field of Indian life and character; and he entered
+the regions of mystic supernaturalism and the disordered human
+brain in advance of Hawthorne and Poe.</p>
+<p>That his choice of material was neither chance nor blind
+instinct, but deliberate judgment and insight, is shown by the
+preface to 'Edgar Huntly,' in which he sets forth his views:--</p>
+<blockquote>"America has opened new views to the naturalist and
+politician, but has seldom furnished themes to the moral-pointer.
+That new springs of action and new motives of curiosity should
+operate, that the field of investigation opened to us by our own
+country should differ essentially from those which exist in Europe,
+may be readily conceived. The sources of amusement to the fancy and
+instruction to the heart that are peculiar to ourselves are equally
+numerous and inexhaustible. It is the purpose of this work to
+profit by some of these sources, to exhibit a series of adventures
+growing out of the conditions of our country, and connected with
+one of the most common and wonderful diseases of the human frame.
+Puerile superstition and exploded manners, Gothic castles and
+chimeras, are the materials usually employed for this end. The
+incidents of Indian hostility and the perils of the Western
+wilderness are far more suitable, and for a native of America to
+overlook these would admit of no apology. These therefore are in
+part the ingredients of this tale."</blockquote>
+<p>Brown's was an uneventful career. He was much given to solitary
+rambles and musings, varied by social intercourse with a few
+congenial friends and the companionship of his affectionate family,
+and later, many hours spent at his writing-desk or in an editorial
+chair.</p>
+<p>He was born January 17th, 1771, in Philadelphia, of good Quaker
+stock. A delicate boyhood, keeping him away from the more active
+life of youths of his own age, fostered, a love for solitude and a
+taste for reading. He received a good classical education; but poor
+health prevented him from pursuing his studies at college. At his
+family's wish he entered a law office instead; but the literary
+instinct was strong within him. Literature at this time was
+scarcely considered a profession. Magazine circulations were too
+limited for publishers to pay for contributions, and all an author
+usually got or expected to get was some copies to distribute among
+his friends. To please his prudent home circle, Brown dallied for a
+while with the law; but a visit to New York, where he was cordially
+received by the members of the "Friendly Club," opened up avenues
+of literary work to him, and he removed to New York in 1796 to
+devote himself to it.</p>
+<p>The first important work he produced was 'Wieland: or the
+Transformation' (1798). It shows at the outset Brown's
+characteristic traits--independence of British materials and
+methods. It is in substance a powerful tale of ventriloquism
+operating on an unbalanced and superstitious mind. Its psychology
+is acute and searching; the characterization realistic and
+effective. His second book, 'Ormond: or the Secret Witness' (1799),
+does not reach the level of 'Wieland.' It is more conventional, and
+not entirely independent of foreign models, especially Godwin, whom
+Brown greatly admired. A rapid writer, he soon had the MS. of his
+next novel in the hands of the publisher. The first part of 'Arthur
+Mervyn: or Memoirs of the Year 1793' came out in 1799, and the
+second part in 1800. It is the best known of his six novels. Though
+the scene is laid in Philadelphia, Brown embodied in it his
+experience of the yellow fever which raged in New York in 1799. The
+passage describing this epidemic can stand beside Defoe's or Poe's
+or Manzoni's similar descriptions, for power in setting forth the
+horrors of the plague.</p>
+<p>In the same year with the first volume of 'Arthur Mervyn'
+appeared 'Edgar Huntly: or Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker.' Here he
+deals with the wild life of nature, the rugged solitudes, and the
+redskins, the field in which he was followed by Cooper. A thrilling
+scene in which a panther is chief actor was long familiar to
+American children in their school reading-books.</p>
+<p>In 1801 came out his last two novels, 'Clara Howard: In a Series
+of Letters,' and 'Jane Talbot.' They are a departure from his
+previous work: instead of dealing with uncanny subjects they treat
+of quiet domestic and social life. They show also a great advance
+on his previous books in constructive art. In 1799 Brown became
+editor of the Monthly Magazine and American Review, and contributed
+largely to it.</p>
+<p>In the autumn of 1801 he returned to Philadelphia, to assume the
+editorship of Conrad's Literary Magazine and American Review. The
+duties of this office suspended his own creative work, and he did
+not live to take up again the novelist's stylus. In 1806 he became
+editor of the Annual Register. His genuine literary force is best
+proved by the fact that whatever periodical he took in charge, he
+raised its standard of quality and made it a success for the
+time.</p>
+<p>He died in February, 1810. The work to which he had given the
+greater part of his time and strength, especially toward the end of
+his life, was in its nature not only transitory, but not of a sort
+to keep his name alive. The magazines were children of a day, and
+the editor's repute as such could hardly survive them long. The
+fame which belongs to Charles Brockden Brown, grudgingly accorded
+by a country that can ill afford to neglect one of its earliest,
+most devoted, and most original workers, rests on his novels.
+Judged by standards of the present day, these are far from
+faultless. The facts are not very coherent, the diction is
+artificial in the fashion of the day. But when all is said, Brown
+was a rare story-teller; he interested his readers by the novelty
+of his material, and he was quite objective in its treatment, never
+obtruding his own personality. 'Wieland,' 'Edgar Huntly,' and
+'Arthur Mervyn,' the trilogy of his best novels, are not to be
+contemned; and he has the distinction of being in very truth the
+pioneer of <i>American</i> letters.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWN01"></a>
+<h3>WIELAND'S STATEMENT</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Theodore Wieland, the prisoner at the bar, was now called upon
+for his defense. He looked around him for some time in silence, and
+with a mild countenance. At length he spoke:--</p>
+<p>It is strange: I am known to my judges and my auditors. Who is
+there present a stranger to the character of Wieland? Who knows him
+not as a husband, as a father, as a friend? Yet here am I arraigned
+as a criminal. I am charged with diabolical malice; I am accused of
+the murder of my wife and my children!</p>
+<p>It is true, they were slain by me; they all perished by my hand.
+The task of vindication is ignoble. What is it that I am called to
+vindicate? and before whom?</p>
+<p>You know that they are dead, and that they were killed by me.
+What more would you have? Would you extort from me a statement of
+my motives? Have you failed to discover them already? You charge me
+with malice: but your eyes are not shut; your reason is still
+vigorous; your memory has not forsaken you. You know whom it is
+that you thus charge. The habits of his life are known to you; his
+treatment of his wife and his offspring is known to you; the
+soundness of his integrity and the unchangeableness of his
+principles are familiar to your apprehension: yet you persist in
+this charge! You lead me hither manacled as a felon; you deem me
+worthy of a vile and tormenting death!</p>
+<p>Who are they whom I have devoted to death? My wife--the little
+ones that drew their being from me--that creature who, as she
+surpassed them in excellence, claimed a larger affection than those
+whom natural affinities bound to my heart. Think ye that malice
+could have urged me to this deed? Hide your audacious fronts from
+the scrutiny of heaven. Take refuge in some cavern unvisited by
+human eyes. Ye may deplore your wickedness or folly, but ye cannot
+expiate it.</p>
+<p>Think not that I speak for your sakes. Hug to your hearts this
+detestable infatuation. Deem me still a murderer, and drag me to
+untimely death. I make not an effort to dispel your illusion; I
+utter not a word to cure you of your sanguinary folly: but there
+are probably some in this assembly who have come from far; for
+their sakes, whose distance has disabled them from knowing me, I
+will tell what I have done, and why.</p>
+<p>It is needless to say that God is the object of my supreme
+passion. I have cherished in his presence a single and upright
+heart. I have thirsted for the knowledge of his will. I have burnt
+with ardor to approve my faith and my obedience. My days have been
+spent in searching for the revelation of that will; but my days
+have been mournful, because my search failed. I solicited
+direction; I turned on every side where glimmerings of light could
+be discovered. I have not been wholly uninformed; but my knowledge
+has always stopped short of certainty. Dissatisfaction has
+insinuated itself into all my thoughts. My purposes have been pure,
+my wishes indefatigable; but not till lately were these purposes
+thoroughly accomplished and these wishes fully gratified.</p>
+<p>I thank Thee, my Father, for Thy bounty; that Thou didst not ask
+a less sacrifice than this; that Thou placedst me in a condition to
+testify my submission to Thy will! What have I withheld which it
+was Thy pleasure to exact? Now may I, with dauntless and erect eye,
+claim my reward, since I have given Thee the treasure of my
+soul.</p>
+<p>I was at my own house; it was late in the evening; my sister had
+gone to the city, but proposed to return. It was in expectation of
+her return that my wife and I delayed going to bed beyond the usual
+hour; the rest of the family, however, were retired. My mind was
+contemplative and calm--not wholly devoid of apprehension on
+account of my sister's safety. Recent events, not easily explained,
+had suggested the existence of some danger; but this danger was
+without a distinct form in our imagination, and scarcely ruffled
+our tranquillity.</p>
+<p>Time passed, and my sister did not arrive. Her house is at some
+distance from mine, and though her arrangements had been made with
+a view of residing with us, it was possible that through
+forgetfulness, or the occurrence of unforeseen emergencies, she had
+returned to her own dwelling.</p>
+<p>Hence it was conceived proper that I should ascertain the truth
+by going thither. I went. On my way my mind was full of those ideas
+which related to my intellectual condition. In the torrent of
+fervid conceptions I lost sight of my purpose. Sometimes I stood
+still; sometimes I wandered from my path, and experienced some
+difficulty, on recovering from my fit of musing, to regain it.</p>
+<p>The series of my thoughts is easily traced. At first every vein
+beat with raptures known only to the man whose parental and
+conjugal love is without limits, and the cup of whose desires,
+immense as it is, overflows with gratification. I know not why
+emotions that were perpetual visitants should now have recurred
+with unusual energy. The transition was not new from sensations of
+joy to a consciousness of gratitude. The Author of my being was
+likewise the dispenser of every gift with which that being was
+embellished. The service to which a benefactor like this was
+entitled could not be circumscribed. My social sentiments were
+indebted to their alliance with devotion for all their value. All
+passions are base, all joys feeble, all energies malignant, which
+are not drawn from this source.</p>
+<p>For a time my contemplations soared above earth and its
+inhabitants. I stretched forth my hands; I lifted my eyes, and
+exclaimed, "Oh, that I might be admitted to thy presence! that mine
+were the supreme delight of knowing Thy will and of performing
+it!--the blissful privilege of direct communication with Thee, and
+of listening to the audible enunciation of Thy pleasure!</p>
+<p>"What task would I not undertake, what privation would I not
+cheerfully endure, to testify my love of Thee? Alas! Thou hidest
+Thyself from my view; glimpses only of Thy excellence and beauty
+are afforded me. Would that a momentary emanation from Thy glory
+would visit me! that some unambiguous token of Thy presence would
+salute my senses!"</p>
+<p>In this mood I entered the house of my sister. It was vacant.
+Scarcely had I regained recollection of the purpose that brought me
+hither. Thoughts of a different tendency had such an absolute
+possession of my mind, that the relations of time and space were
+almost obliterated from my understanding. These wanderings,
+however, were restrained, and I ascended to her chamber. I had no
+light, and might have known by external observation that the house
+was without any inhabitant. With this, however, I was not
+satisfied. I entered the room, and the object of my search not
+appearing, I prepared to return. The darkness required some caution
+in descending the stair. I stretched out my hand to seize the
+balustrade, by which I might regulate my steps. How shall I
+describe the lustre which at that moment burst upon my vision?</p>
+<p>I was dazzled. My organs were bereaved of their activity. My
+eyelids were half closed, and my hands withdrawn from the
+balustrade. A nameless fear chilled my veins, and I stood
+motionless. This irradiation did not retire or lessen. It seemed as
+if some powerful effulgence covered me like a mantle. I opened my
+eyes and found all about me luminous and glowing. It was the
+element of heaven that flowed around. Nothing but a fiery stream
+was at first visible; but anon a shrill voice from behind called
+upon me to attend.</p>
+<p>I turned. It is forbidden to describe what I saw: words, indeed,
+would be wanting to the task. The lineaments of that Being whose
+veil was now lifted and whose visage beamed upon my sight, no hues
+of pencil or of language can portray. As it spoke, the accents
+thrilled to my heart:--"Thy prayers are heard. In proof of thy
+faith, render me thy wife. This is the victim I choose. Call her
+hither, and here let her fall." The sound and visage and light
+vanished at once.</p>
+<p>What demand was this? The blood of Catharine was to be shed! My
+wife was to perish by my hand! I sought opportunity to attest my
+virtue. Little did I expect that a proof like this would have been
+demanded.</p>
+<p>"My wife!" I exclaimed: "O God! substitute some other victim.
+Make me not the butcher of my wife. My own blood is cheap. This
+will I pour out before Thee with a willing heart; but spare, I
+beseech Thee, this precious life, or commission some other than her
+husband to perform the bloody deed."</p>
+<p>In vain. The conditions were prescribed; the decree had gone
+forth, and nothing remained but to execute it. I rushed out of the
+house and across the intermediate fields, and stopped not till I
+entered my own parlor. My wife had remained here during my absence,
+in anxious expectation of my return with some tidings of her
+sister. I had none to communicate. For a time I was breathless with
+my speed. This, and the tremors that shook my frame, and the
+wildness of my looks, alarmed her. She immediately suspected some
+disaster to have happened to her friend, and her own speech was as
+much overpowered by emotion as mine. She was silent, but her looks
+manifested her impatience to hear what I had to communicate. I
+spoke, but with so much precipitation as scarcely to be understood;
+catching her at the same time by the arm, and forcibly pulling her
+from her seat.</p>
+<p>"Come along with me; fly; waste not a moment; time will be lost,
+and the deed will be omitted. Tarry not, question not, but fly with
+me."</p>
+<p>This deportment added afresh to her alarms. Her eyes pursued
+mine, and she said, "What is the matter? For God's sake, what is
+the matter? Where would you have me go?"</p>
+<p>My eyes were fixed upon her countenance while she spoke. I
+thought upon her virtues; I viewed her as the mother of my babes;
+as my wife. I recalled the purpose for which I thus urged her
+attendance. My heart faltered, and I saw that I must rouse to this
+work all my faculties. The danger of the least delay was
+imminent.</p>
+<p>I looked away from her, and, again exerting my force, drew her
+toward the door. "You must go with me; indeed you must."</p>
+<p>In her fright she half resisted my efforts, and again exclaimed,
+"Good heaven! what is it you mean? Where go? What has happened?
+Have you found Clara?"</p>
+<p>"Follow me and you will see," I answered, still urging her
+reluctant steps forward.</p>
+<p>"What frenzy has seized you? Something must needs have happened.
+Is she sick? Have you found her?"</p>
+<p>"Come and see. Follow me and know for yourself."</p>
+<p>Still she expostulated and besought me to explain this
+mysterious behavior. I could not trust myself to answer her, to
+look at her; but grasping her arm, I drew her after me. She
+hesitated, rather through confusion of mind than from unwillingness
+to accompany me. This confusion gradually abated, and she moved
+forward, but with irresolute footsteps and continual exclamations
+of wonder and terror. Her interrogations of "What was the matter?"
+and "Whither was I going?" were ceaseless and vehement.</p>
+<p>It was the scope of my efforts not to think; to keep up a
+conflict and uproar in my mind in which all order and distinctness
+should be lost; to escape from the sensations produced by her
+voice. I was therefore silent. I strove to abridge this interval by
+haste, and to waste all my attention in furious gesticulations.</p>
+<p>In this state of mind we reached my sister's door. She looked at
+the windows and saw that all was desolate. "Why come we here? There
+is nobody here. I will not go in."</p>
+<p>Still I was dumb; but, opening the door, I drew her into the
+entry. This was the allotted scene; here she was to fall. I let go
+her hand, and pressing my palms against my forehead, made one
+mighty effort to work up my soul to the deed.</p>
+<p>In vain; it would not be; my courage was appalled, my arms
+nerveless. I muttered prayers that my strength might be aided from
+above. They availed nothing.</p>
+<p>Horror diffused itself over me. This conviction of my cowardice,
+my rebellion, fastened upon me, and I stood rigid and cold as
+marble. From this state I was somewhat relieved by my wife's voice,
+who renewed her supplications to be told why we come hither and
+what was the fate of my sister....</p>
+<p>The fellness of a gloomy hurricane but faintly resembled the
+discord that reigned in my mind. To omit this sacrifice must not
+be; yet my sinews had refused to perform it. No alternative was
+offered. To rebel against the mandate was impossible; but obedience
+would render me the executioner of my wife. My will was strong, but
+my limbs refused their office.</p>
+<p>That accents and looks so winning should disarm me of my
+resolution was to be expected. My thoughts were thrown anew into
+anarchy. I spread my hand before my eyes that I might not see her,
+and answered only by groans. She took my other hand between hers,
+and pressing it to her heart, spoke with that voice which had ever
+swayed my will and wafted away sorrow:--</p>
+<p>"My friend! my soul's friend! tell me thy cause of grief. Do I
+not merit to partake with thee in thy cares? Am I not thy
+wife?"</p>
+<p>This was too much. I broke from her embrace and retired to a
+corner of the room. In this pause, courage was once more infused
+into me. I resolved to execute my duty. She followed me, and
+renewed her passionate entreaties to know the cause of my distress.
+I raised my head and regarded her with steadfast looks. I muttered
+something about death, and the injunctions of my duty. At these
+words she shrunk back, and looked at me with a new expression of
+anguish. After a pause, she clasped her hands, and
+exclaimed:---</p>
+<p>"O Wieland! Wieland! God grant that I am mistaken! but something
+surely is wrong. I see it; it is too plain; thou art undone--lost
+to me and to thyself." At the same time she gazed on my features
+with intensest anxiety, in hope that different symptoms would take
+place. I replied to her with vehemence:--</p>
+<p>"Undone! No; my duty is known, and I thank my God that my
+cowardice is now vanquished and I have power to fulfill it.
+Catharine, I pity the weakness of thy nature; I pity thee, but must
+not spare. Thy life is claimed from my hands; thou must die!"</p>
+<p>Fear was now added to her grief. "What mean you? Why talk you of
+death? Bethink yourself, Wieland; bethink yourself, and this fit
+will pass. Oh, why came I hither? Why did you drag me hither?"</p>
+<p>"I brought thee hither to fulfill a divine command. I am
+appointed thy destroyer, and destroy thee I must." Saying this, I
+seized her wrists. She shrieked aloud, and endeavored to free
+herself from my grasp; but her efforts were vain.</p>
+<p>"Surely, surely, Wieland, thou dost not mean it. Am I not thy
+wife? and wouldst thou kill me? Thou wilt not; and yet--I see--thou
+art Wieland no longer! A fury resistless and horrible possesses
+thee. Spare me--spare--help--help--"</p>
+<p>Till her breath was stopped she shrieked for help, for mercy.
+When she could speak no longer, her gestures, her looks appealed to
+my compassion. My accursed hand was irresolute and tremulous. I
+meant thy death to be sudden, thy struggles to be brief. Alas! my
+heart was infirm, my resolves mutable. Thrice I slackened my grasp,
+and life kept its hold, though in the midst of pangs. Her eyeballs
+started from their sockets. Grimness and distortion took the place
+of all that used to bewitch me into transport and subdue me into
+reverence. I was commissioned to kill thee, but not to torment thee
+with the foresight of thy death; not to multiply thy fears and
+prolong thy agonies. Haggard and pale and lifeless, at length thou
+ceasedst to contend with thy destiny.</p>
+<p>This was the moment of triumph. Thus had I successfully subdued
+the stubbornness of human passions: the victim which had been
+demanded was given; the deed was done past recall.</p>
+<p>I lifted the corpse in my arms and laid it on the bed. I gazed
+upon it with delight. Such was the elation of my thoughts that I
+even broke into laughter. I clapped my hands and exclaimed, "It is
+done! My sacred duty is fulfilled! To that I have sacrificed, O my
+God, Thy last and best gift, my wife!"</p>
+<p>For a while I thus soared above frailty. I imagined I had set
+myself forever beyond the reach of selfishness; but my imaginations
+were false. This rapture quickly subsided. I looked again at my
+wife. My joyous ebullitions vanished, and I asked myself who it was
+whom I saw. Methought it could not be Catharine. It could not be
+the woman who had lodged for years in my heart; who had slept
+nightly in my bosom; who had borne in her womb, who had fostered at
+her breast, the beings who called me father; whom I have watched
+with delight, and cherished with a fondness ever new and
+perpetually growing; it could not be the same. Where was her bloom?
+These deadly and blood-suffused orbs but ill resemble the azure and
+ecstatic tenderness of her eyes. The lucid stream that meandered
+over that bosom, the glow of love that was wont to sit upon that
+cheek, are much unlike these livid stains and this hideous
+deformity. Alas! these were the traces of agony; the gripe of the
+assassin had been here!</p>
+<p>I will not dwell upon my lapse into desperate and outrageous
+sorrow. The breath of heaven that sustained me was withdrawn, and I
+sunk into <i>mere man</i>. I leaped from the floor; I dashed my
+head against the wall; I uttered screams of horror; I panted after
+torment and pain. Eternal fire and the bickerings of hell, compared
+with what I felt, were music and a bed of roses.</p>
+<p>I thank my God that this degeneracy was transient--that He
+deigned once more to raise me aloft. I thought upon what I had done
+as a sacrifice to duty, and <i>was calm</i>. My wife was dead; but
+I reflected that though this source of human consolation was
+closed, yet others were still open. If the transports of a husband
+were no more, the feelings of a father had still scope for
+exercise. When remembrance of their mother should excite too keen a
+pang, I would look upon them and <i>be comforted</i>.</p>
+<p>While I revolved these ideas, new warmth flowed in upon my
+heart. I was wrong. These feelings were the growth of selfishness.
+Of this I was not aware; and to dispel the mist that obscured my
+perceptions, a new effulgence and a new mandate were necessary.
+From these thoughts I was recalled by a ray that was shot into the
+room. A voice spake like that which I had before heard:--"Thou hast
+done well. But all is not done--the sacrifice is incomplete--thy
+children must be offered--they must perish with their
+mother!--"</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Thou, Omnipotent and Holy! Thou knowest that my actions were
+conformable to Thy will. I know not what is crime; what actions are
+evil in their ultimate and comprehensive tendency, or what are
+good. Thy knowledge, as Thy power, is unlimited. I have taken Thee
+for my guide, and cannot err. To the arms of Thy protection I
+intrust my safety. In the awards of Thy justice I confide for my
+recompense.</p>
+<p>Come death when it will, I am safe. Let calumny and abhorrence
+pursue me among men; I shall not be defrauded of my dues. The peace
+of virtue and the glory of obedience will be my portion
+hereafter.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="JOHN_BROWN"></a>
+<h2>JOHN BROWN</h2>
+<h3>(1810-1882)</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-j.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>ohn Brown, the son of a secession-church minister, was born in
+Biggar, Lanarkshire, Scotland, September 22d, 1810, and died in
+Edinburgh, May 11th, 1882. He was educated at the Edinburgh High
+School and at the University, and graduated in medicine in 1833.
+For a time he was a surgeon's assistant to the great Dr. Syme, the
+man of whom he said "he never wasted a drop of ink or blood," and
+whose character he has drawn in one of his most charming
+biographies. When he began to practice for himself he gradually
+"got into a good connection," and his patients made him their
+confidant and adviser. He was considered a fine doctor too, for he
+had remarkable common-sense, and was said to be unerring in
+diagnosis.</p>
+<p class="rgt"><img src="images/brown_j.jpg" width="45%" alt=
+""><br>
+<b>John Brown</b></p>
+<p>Dr. Brown did not, as is commonly believed, dislike his
+profession; but later on he took a view of it which seemed
+non-progressive, and his success as a writer no doubt interfered
+with his practice. His friend Professor Masson draws a pleasant
+picture of him when he first settled in practice, as a dark-haired
+man with soft, fine eyes and a benignant manner, the husband of a
+singularly beautiful woman, and much liked and sought after in the
+social circles of Edinburgh. This was partly owing to the charm of
+his conversation, and partly to the literary reputation he had
+achieved through some articles on the Academy exhibition and on
+local artists. Though he had little technical training, he had an
+eye for color and form, an appreciation of the artist's meaning,
+and an instinct for discovering genius, as in the case of Noel
+Paton and David Scott. He soon became an authority among artists,
+and he gave a new impulse to national art.</p>
+<p>He contributed largely to the North British Review. In 1855 he
+published 'Hor&aelig; Subsceiv&aelig;,' which contained, among
+medical biography and medico-literary papers, the immortal Scotch
+idyl, 'Rab and his Friends.' Up to this time the unique personality
+of the doctor, with its delightful mixture of humor and sympathy,
+was known only to his own circle. The appearance of 'Rab and his
+Friends' revealed it to the world. Brief as it is in form, and
+simple in outline, Scotland has produced nothing so full of pure,
+pathetic genius since Scott.</p>
+<p>Another volume of 'Hor&aelig; Subsceiv&aelig;' appeared two
+years after, and some selections from it, and others from
+unpublished manuscript, were printed separately in the volume
+entitled 'Spare Hours.' They met with instant and unprecedented
+success. In a short time ten thousand copies of 'Minchmoor' and
+'James the Doorkeeper' were sold, fifteen thousand copies of 'Pet
+Marjorie,' and 'Rab' had reached its fiftieth thousand. With all
+this success and praise, and constantly besought by publishers for
+his work, he could not be persuaded that his writings were of any
+permanent value, and was reluctant to publish. In 1882 appeared a
+third volume of the 'Hor&aelig; Subsceiv&aelig;,' which included
+all his writings. A few weeks after its publication he died.</p>
+<p>The Doctor's medical essays, which are replete with humor, are
+written in defense of his special theory, the distinction between
+the active and the speculative mind. He thought there was too much
+science and too little intuitive sagacity in the world, and looked
+back longingly to the old-time common-sense, which he believed
+modern science had driven away. His own mind was anti-speculative,
+although he paid just tributes to philosophy and science and
+admired their achievements. He stigmatized the speculations of the
+day as the "lust of innovation." But the reader cares little for
+the opinions of Dr. Brown as arguments: his subject is of little
+consequence if he will but talk. By the charm of his story-telling
+these dead Scotch doctors are made to live again. The death-bed of
+Syme, for instance, is as pathetic as the wonderful paper on
+Thackeray's death; and to-day many a heart is sore for 'Pet
+Marjorie,' the ten-year-old child who died in Scotland almost a
+hundred years ago.</p>
+<p>As an essayist, Dr. Brown belongs to the followers of Addison
+and Charles Lamb, and he blends humor, pathos, and quiet
+hopefulness with a grave and earnest dignity. He delighted, not
+like Lamb "in the habitable parts of the earth," but in the lonely
+moorlands and pastoral hills, over which his silent, stalwart
+shepherds walked with swinging stride. He had a keen appreciation
+for anything he felt to be excellent: his usual question concerning
+a stranger, either in literature or life, was "Has he wecht,
+sir?"--quoting Dr. Chalmers; and when he wanted to give the highest
+praise, he said certain writing was "strong meat." He had a warm
+enthusiasm for the work of other literary men: an artist himself,
+he was quick to appreciate and seize upon the witty thing or the
+excellent thing wherever he found it, and he was eager to share his
+pleasure with the whole world. He reintroduced to the public Henry
+Vaughn, the quaint seventeenth-century poet; he wrote a sympathetic
+memoir of Arthur Hallam; he imported 'Modern Painters,' and
+enlightened Edinburgh as to its merits. His art papers were what
+Walter Pater would call "appreciations,"--that is to say, he dwelt
+upon the beauties of what he described rather than upon the
+defects. What he did not admire he left alone.</p>
+<p>As the author of 'Rab' loved the lonely glens on Minchmoor and
+in the Enterkin, or where Queen Mary's "baby garden" shows its
+box-row border among the Spanish chestnuts of Lake Monteith, so he
+loved the Scottish character, "bitter to the taste and sweet to the
+diaphragm": "Jeemes" the beadle, with his family worship when he
+himself was all the family; the old Aberdeen Jacobite people; Miss
+Stirling Graham of Duntrune, who in her day bewitched Edinburgh;
+Rab, Ailie, and Bob Ainslie. His characters are oddities, but are
+drawn without a touch of cynicism. What an amount of playful,
+wayward nonsense lies between these pages, and what depths of
+melancholy under the fun! Like Sir Walter, he had a great love for
+dogs, and never went out unaccompanied by one or two of them. They
+are the heroes of several of his sketches.</p>
+<p>Throughout the English-speaking world, he was affectionately
+known as Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh. He stood aloof from political
+and ecclesiastical controversies, and was fond of telling a story
+to illustrate how little reasoning went to forming partisans. A
+minister catechizing a raw plowboy, after asking the first
+question, "Who made you?" and getting the answer "God," asked him,
+"How do you know that God made you?" After some pause and
+head-scratching, the reply came, "Weel, sir, it's the clash [common
+talk] o' the kintry." "Ay," Brown added, "I'm afraid that a deal of
+our belief is founded on just 'the clash o' the kintry.'"</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWN11"></a>
+<h3>MARJORIE FLEMING</h3>
+<center>From 'Spare Hours'</center>
+<br>
+<p>One November afternoon in 1810--the year in which 'Waverley' was
+resumed and laid aside again, to be finished off, its last two
+volumes in three weeks, and made immortal in 1814; and when its
+author, by the death of Lord Melville, narrowly escaped getting a
+civil appointment in India--three men, evidently lawyers, might
+have been seen escaping like schoolboys from the Parliament House,
+and speeding arm-in-arm down Bank Street and the Mound in the teeth
+of a surly blast of sleet.</p>
+<p>The three friends sought the <i>bield</i> of the low wall old
+Edinburgh boys remember well, and sometimes miss now, as they
+struggle with the stout west wind....</p>
+<p>The third we all know. What has he not done for every one of us?
+Who else ever, except Shakespeare, so diverted mankind, entertained
+and entertains a world so liberally, so wholesomely? We are fain to
+say not even Shakespeare, for his is something deeper than
+diversion, something higher than pleasure; and yet who would care
+to split this hair?</p>
+<p>Had any one watched him closely before and after the parting,
+what a change he would see! The bright, broad laugh, the shrewd,
+jovial word, the man of the Parliament House and of the world; and
+next step, moody, the light of his eye withdrawn, as if seeing
+things that were invisible; his shut mouth like a child's, so
+impressionable, so innocent, so sad; he was now all within, as
+before he was all without; hence his brooding look. As the snow
+blattered in his face, he muttered, "How it raves and drifts!
+On-ding o' snaw,--ay, that's the word,--on-ding--" He was now at
+his own door, "Castle Street, No. 39." He opened the door and went
+straight to his den; that wondrous workshop, where in one year,
+1823, when he was fifty-two, he wrote 'Peveril of the Peak,'
+'Quentin Durward,' and 'St. Ronan's Well,' besides much else. We
+once took the foremost of our novelists--the greatest, we would
+say, since Scott--into this room, and could not but mark the
+solemnizing effect of sitting where the great magician sat so often
+and so long, and looking out upon that little shabby bit of sky,
+and that back green where faithful dog Camp lies.</p>
+<p>He sat down in his large green morocco elbow-chair, drew himself
+close to his table, and glowered and gloomed at his writing
+apparatus, "a very handsome old box, richly carved, lined with
+crimson velvet, and containing ink-bottles, taper-stand, etc., in
+silver, the whole in such order that it might have come from the
+silversmith's window half an hour before." He took out his paper,
+then starting up angrily, said, "'Go spin, you jade, go spin.' No,
+d---- it, it won't do,--</p>
+<blockquote>"'My spinnin' wheel is auld and stiff,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;The rock o't wunna stand, sir;<br>
+To keep the temper-pin in tiff<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Employs ower aft my hand, sir.'</blockquote>
+<p>I am off the fang. I can make nothing of 'Waverley' to-day; I'll
+awa' to Marjorie. Come wi' me, Maida, you thief." The great
+creature rose slowly, and the pair were off, Scott taking a
+<i>maud</i> (a plaid) with him. "White as a frosted plum-cake, by
+jingo!" said he, when he got to the street. Maida gamboled and
+whisked among the snow, and his master strode across to Young
+Street, and through it to 1 North Charlotte Street, to the house of
+his dear friend, Mrs. William Keith, of Corstorphine Hill; niece of
+Mrs. Keith of Ravelston, of whom he said at her death, eight years
+after, "Much tradition, and that of the best, has died with this
+excellent old lady, one of the few persons whose spirits, and
+<i>cleanliness</i> and freshness of mind and body, made old age
+lovely and desirable."</p>
+<p>Sir Walter was in that house almost every day, and had a key, so
+in he and the hound went, shaking themselves in the lobby.
+"Marjorie! Marjorie!" shouted her friend, "where are ye, my bonnie
+wee croodlin' doo?" In a moment a bright, eager child of seven was
+in his arms, and he was kissing her all over. Out came Mrs. Keith.
+"Come your ways in, Wattie." "No, not now. I am going to take
+Marjorie wi' me, and you may come to your tea in Duncan Roy's
+sedan, and bring the bairn home in your lap." "Tak' Marjorie, and
+it <i>on-ding o' snaw</i>!" said Mrs. Keith. He said to himself,
+"On-ding,'--that's odd,--that is the very word. Hoot, awa'! look
+here," and he displayed the corner of his plaid, made to hold lambs
+[the true shepherd's plaid, consisting of two breadths sewed
+together, and uncut at one end, making a poke or
+<i>cul-de-sac</i>]. "Tak' your lamb," said she, laughing at the
+contrivance, and so the Pet was first well happit up, and then put,
+laughing silently, into the plaid neuk, and the shepherd strode off
+with his lamb,--Maida gamboling through the snow, and running races
+in her mirth.</p>
+<p>Didn't he face "the angry airt," and make her bield his bosom,
+and into his own room with her, and lock the door, and out with the
+warm rosy little wifie, who took it all with great composure! There
+the two remained for three or more hours, making the house ring
+with their laughter; you can fancy the big man's and Maidie's
+laugh. Having made the fire cheery, he set her down in his ample
+chair, and standing sheepishly before her, began to say his lesson,
+which happened to be,--"Ziccotty, diccotty, dock, the mouse ran up
+the clock; the clock struck one, down the mouse ran, ziccotty,
+diccotty, dock." This done repeatedly till she was pleased, she
+gave him his new lesson, gravely and slowly, timing it upon her
+small fingers,--he saying it after her,--</p>
+<blockquote>"Wonery, twoery, tickery, seven;<br>
+Alibi, crackaby, ten and eleven;<br>
+Pin, pan, musky dan;<br>
+Tweedle-um, twoddle-um, twenty-wan;<br>
+Eerie, orie, ourie,<br>
+You, are, out."</blockquote>
+<p>He pretended to great difficulty, and she rebuked him with most
+comical gravity, treating him as a child. He used to say that when
+he came to Alibi Crackaby he broke down, and Pin-Pan, Musky-Dan,
+Tweedle-um Twoddle-um made him roar with laughter. He said
+Musky-Dan especially was beyond endurance, bringing up an Irishman
+and his hat fresh from the Spice Islands and odoriferous Ind; she
+getting quite bitter in her displeasure at his ill behavior and
+stupidness.</p>
+<p>Then he would read ballads to her in his own glorious way, the
+two getting wild with excitement over 'Gil Morrice' or the 'Baron
+of Smailholm'; and he would take her on his knee, and make her
+repeat Constance's speech in 'King John,' till he swayed to and
+fro, sobbing his fill....</p>
+<p>Scott used to say that he was amazed at her power over him,
+saying to Mrs. Keith, "She's the most extraordinary creature I ever
+met with, and her repeating of Shakespeare overpowers me as nothing
+else does."</p>
+<p>Thanks to the unforgetting sister of this dear child, who has
+much of the sensibility and fun of her who has been in her small
+grave these fifty and more years, we have now before us the letters
+and journals of Pet Marjorie,--before us lies and gleams her rich
+brown hair, bright and sunny as if yesterday's, with the words on
+the paper, "Cut out in her last illness," and two pictures of her
+by her beloved Isabella, whom she worshiped; there are the faded
+old scraps of paper, hoarded still, over which her warm breath and
+her warm little heart had poured themselves; there is the old
+water-mark, "Lingard, 1808." The two portraits are very like each
+other, but plainly done at different times; it is a chubby, healthy
+face, deep-set, brooding eyes, as eager to tell what is going on
+within as to gather in all the glories from without; quick with the
+wonder and the pride of life; they are eyes that would not be soon
+satisfied with seeing; eyes that would devour their object, and yet
+childlike and fearless. And that is a mouth that will not be soon
+satisfied with love; it has a curious likeness to Scott's own,
+which has always appeared to us his sweetest, most mobile and
+speaking feature.</p>
+<p>There she is, looking straight at us as she did at
+him,--fearless and full of love, passionate, wild, willful, fancy's
+child.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>There was an old servant, Jeanie Robertson, who was forty years
+in her grandfather's family. Marjorie Fleming--or as she is called
+in the letters and by Sir Walter, Maidie--was the last child she
+kept. Jeanie's wages never exceeded &pound;3 a year, and when she
+left service she had saved &pound;40. She was devotedly attached to
+Maidie, rather despising and ill-using her sister Isabella, a
+beautiful and gentle child. This partiality made Maidie apt at
+times to domineer over Isabella. "I mention this," writes her
+surviving sister, "for the purpose of telling you an instance of
+Maidie's generous justice. When only five years old, when walking
+in Raith grounds, the two children had run on before, and old
+Jeanie remembered they might come too near a dangerous mill-lade.
+She called to them to turn back. Maidie heeded her not, rushed all
+the faster on, and fell, and would have been lost, had her sister
+not pulled her back, saving her life, but tearing her clothes.
+Jeanie flew on Isabella to 'give it her' for spoiling her
+favorite's dress; Maidie rushed in between, crying out, 'Pay (whip)
+Maidie as much as you like, and I'll not say one word; but touch
+Isy, and I'll roar like a bull!' Years after Maidie was resting in
+her grave, my mother used to take me to the place, and told the
+story always in the exact same words." This Jeanie must have been a
+character. She took great pride in exhibiting Maidie's brother
+William's Calvinistic acquirements when nineteen months old, to the
+officers of a militia regiment then quartered in Kirkcaldy. This
+performance was so amusing that it was often repeated, and the
+little theologian was presented by them with a cap and feathers.
+Jeanie's glory was "putting him through the carritch" (catechism)
+in broad Scotch, beginning at the beginning with "Wha made ye, ma
+bonnie man?" For the correctness of this and the three next
+replies, Jeanie had no anxiety; but the tone changed to menace, and
+the closed <i>nieve</i> (fist) was shaken in the child's face as
+she demanded, "Of what are you made?" "DIRT," was the answer
+uniformly given. "Wull ye never learn to say <i>dust</i>, ye thrawn
+deevil?" with a cuff from the opened hand, was the as inevitable
+rejoinder.</p>
+<p>Here is Maidie's first letter, before she was six, the spelling
+unaltered, and there are no "commoes."</p>
+<p>&nbsp;"MY DEAR ISA--I now sit down to answer all your kind
+and<br>
+beloved letters which you was so good as to write to me. This is
+the first time I ever wrote a letter in my Life. There are a great
+many Girls in the Square and they cry just like a pig when we are
+under the painfull necessity of putting it to Death. Miss Potune a
+Lady of my acquaintance praises me dreadfully. I repeated something
+out of Dean Swift and she said I was fit for the stage and you may
+think I was primmed up with majestick Pride but upon my word I felt
+myselfe turn a little birsay--birsay is a word which is a word that
+William composed which is as you may suppose a little enraged. This
+horrid fat simpliton says that my Aunt is beautifull which is
+intirely impossible for that is not her nature."</p>
+<br>
+<p>What a peppery little pen we wield! What could that have been
+out of the sardonic Dean? what other child of that age would have
+used "beloved" as she does? This power of affection, this faculty
+of <i>be</i>loving, and wild hunger to be beloved, comes out more
+and more. She periled her all upon it, and it may have been as
+well--we know, indeed, that it was far better--for her that this
+wealth of love was so soon withdrawn to its one only infinite Giver
+and Receiver. This must have been the law of her earthly life. Love
+was indeed "her Lord and King"; and it was perhaps well for her
+that she found so soon that her and our only Lord and King Himself
+is Love. Here are bits from her Diary at Braehead:--</p>
+<p>"The day of my existence here has been delightful and
+enchanting. On Saturday I expected no less than three well-made
+Bucks the names of whom is here advertised. Mr. Geo. Crakey
+[Craigie], and Wm. Keith and Jn. Keith--the first is the funniest
+of every one of them. Mr. Crakey and I walked to Crakyhall
+[Craigiehall] hand in hand in Innocence and matitation [meditation]
+sweet thinking on the kind love which flows in our tender hearted
+mind which is overflowing with majestic pleasure no one was ever so
+polite to me in the hole state of my existence. Mr. Craky you
+must-know is a great Buck and pretty good-looking."</p>
+<p>"I am at Ravelston enjoying nature's fresh air. The birds are
+singing sweetly--the calf doth frisk and nature shows her glorious
+face."</p>
+<p>Here is a confession:</p>
+<p>"I confess I have been very more like a little young divil than
+a creature for when Isabella went up stairs to teach me religion
+and my multiplication and to be good and all my other lessons I
+stamped with my foot and threw my new hat which she had made on the
+ground and was sulky and was dreadfully passionate, but she never
+whiped me but said Marjory go into another room and think what a
+great crime you are committing letting your temper git the better
+of you. But I went so sulkily that the Devil got the better of me
+but she never never never whips me so that I think I would be the
+better of it and the next time that I behave ill I think she should
+do it for she never does it.... Isabella has given me praise for
+checking my temper for I was sulky even when she was kneeling an
+hole hour teaching me to write."</p>
+<p>Our poor little wifie, <i>she</i> has no doubts of the
+personality of the Devil!--"Yesterday I behave extremely ill in
+God's most holy church for I would never attend myself nor let
+Isabella attend which was a great crime for she often, often tells
+me that when to or three are geathered together God is in the midst
+of them, and it was the very same Divil that tempted Job that
+tempted me I am sure; but he resisted Satan though he had boils and
+many many other misfortunes which I have escaped.... I am now going
+to tell you the horible and wretched plaege that my multiplication
+gives me you can't conceive it the most Devilish thing is 8 times 8
+and 7 times 7 it is what nature itself cant endure."</p>
+<p>This is delicious; and what harm is there in her "Devilish"? it
+is strong language merely; even old Rowland Hill used to say "he
+grudged the Devil those rough and ready words." "I walked to that
+delightful place Crakyhall with a delightful young man beloved by
+all his friends especially by me his loveress, but I must not talk
+any more about him for Isa said it is not proper for to speak of
+gentalmen but I will never forget him! ... I am very very glad that
+satan has not given me boils and many other misfortunes--In the
+holy bible these words are written that the Devil goes like a
+roaring lyon in search of his pray but the lord lets us escape from
+him but we" (<i>pauvre petite</i>!) "do not strive with this awfull
+Spirit.... To-day I pronounced a word which should never come out
+of a lady's lips it was that I called John a Impudent Bitch. I will
+tell you what I think made me in so bad a humor is I got one or two
+of that bad sina [senna] tea to-day,"--a better excuse for bad
+humor and bad language than most.</p>
+<p>She has been reading the Book of Esther:--"It was a dreadful
+thing that Haman was hanged on the very gallows which he had
+prepared for Mordecai to hang him and his ten sons thereon and it
+was very wrong and cruel to hang his sons for they did not commit
+the crime; <i>but then Jesus was not then come to teach us to be
+merciful</i>." This is wise and beautiful,--has upon it the very
+dew of youth and holiness. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings
+He perfects his praise.</p>
+<p>"This is Saturday and I am very glad of it because I have play
+half the Day and I get money too but alas I owe Isabella 4 pence
+for I am finned 2 pence whenever I bite my nails. Isabella is
+teaching me to make simmecoling nots of interrigations peorids
+commoes, etc.... As this is Sunday I will meditate upon Senciable
+and Religious subjects. First I should be very thankful I am not a
+beggar."</p>
+<p>This amount of meditation and thankfulness seems to have been
+all she was able for.</p>
+<p>"I am going to-morrow to a delightfull place, Braehead by name,
+belonging to Mrs. Crraford, where there is ducks cocks hens
+bubblyjocks 2 dogs 2 cats and swine which is delightful. I think it
+is shocking to think that the dog and cat should bear them" (this
+is a meditation physiological) "and they are drowned after all. I
+would rather have a man-dog than a woman-dog, because they do not
+bear like woman-dogs; it is a hard case--it is shocking. I came
+here to enjoy natures delightful breath it is sweeter than a fial
+of rose oil."</p>
+<p>Braehead is the farm the historical Jock Howison asked and got
+from our gay James the Fifth, "the gudeman o' Ballengiech," as a
+reward for the services of his flail when the King had the worst of
+it at Cramond Brig with the gipsies. The farm is unchanged in size
+from that time, and still in the unbroken line of the ready and
+victorious thrasher. Braehead is held on the condition of the
+possessor being ready to present the King with a ewer and basin to
+wash his hands, Jock having done this for his unknown king after
+the <i>splore</i>; and when George the Fourth came to Edinburgh,
+this ceremony was performed in silver at Holyrood.</p>
+<p>It is a lovely neuk, this Braehead, preserved almost as it was
+two hundred years ago. "Lot and his wife," mentioned by
+Maidie,--two quaintly cropped yew-trees,--still thrive; the burn
+runs as it did in her time, and sings the same quiet tune,--as much
+the same and as different as <i>Now</i> and <i>Then</i>. The house
+is full of old family relics and pictures, the sun shining on them
+through the small deep windows with their plate-glass; and there,
+blinking at the sun and chattering contentedly, is a parrot, that
+might, for its looks of eld, have been in the ark, and domineered
+over and <i>deaved</i> the dove. Everything about the place is old
+and fresh.</p>
+<p>This is beautiful:--"I am very sorry to say that I forgot
+God--that is to say I forgot to pray to-day and Isabella told me
+that I should be thankful that God did not forget me--if he did, O
+what would become of me if I was in danger and God not friends with
+me--I must go to unquenchable fire and if I was tempted to sin--how
+could I resist it O no I will never do it again--no no--if I can
+help it." (Canny wee wifie!) "My religion is greatly falling off
+because I dont pray with so much attention when I am saying my
+prayers, and my charecter is lost among the Braehead people. I hope
+I will be religious again--but as for regaining my charecter I
+despare for it." [Poor little "habit and repute"!]</p>
+<p>Her temper, her passion, and her "badness" are almost daily
+confessed and deplored:--"I will never again trust to my own power,
+for I see that I cannot be good without God's assistance--. I will
+not trust in my own selfe, and Isa's health will be quite ruined by
+me--it will indeed." "Isa has giving me advice, which is, that when
+I feel Satan beginning to tempt me, that I flea him and he would
+flea me." "Remorse is the worst thing to bear, and I am afraid that
+I will fall a marter to it."</p>
+<p>Poor dear little sinner!--Here comes the world again:--"In my
+travels I met with a handsome lad named Charles Balfour Esq., and
+from him I got ofers of marage--offers of marage, did I say? Nay
+plenty heard me." A fine scent for "breach of promise"!</p>
+<p>This is abrupt and strong:--"The Divil is curced and all works.
+'Tis a fine work 'Newton on the profecies.' I wonder if there is
+another book of poems comes near the Bible. The Divil always girns
+at the sight of the Bible." "Miss Potune" (her "simpliton" friend)
+"is very fat; she pretends to be very learned. She says she saw a
+stone that dropt from the skies; but she is a good Christian."</p>
+<p>Here come her views on church government:--"An Anni-babtist is a
+thing I am not a member of--I am a Pisplekan (Episcopalian) just
+now, and" (O you little Laodicean and Latitudinarian!) "a
+Prisbeteran at Kirkcaldy"--<i>(Blandula! Vagula! coelum et animum
+mutas quoe trans mare</i> [i.e., <i>trans Bodotriam]
+curris!</i>)--"my native town."</p>
+<p>"Sentiment is not what I am acquainted with as yet, though I
+wish it, and should like to practise it" (!) "I wish I had a great,
+great deal of gratitude in my heart, in all my body." There is a
+new novel published, named 'Self-Control' (Mrs. Brunton's)--"a very
+good maxim forsooth!"</p>
+<p>This is shocking:--"Yesterday a marrade man, named Mr. John
+Balfour, Esq., offered to kiss me, and offered to marry me, though
+the man" (a fine directness this!) "was espused, and his wife was
+present and said he must ask her permission; but he did not. I
+think he was ashamed and confounded before 3 gentelman--Mr. Jobson
+and 2 Mr. Kings." "Mr. Banesters" (Bannister's) "Budjet is
+to-night; I hope it will be a good one. A great many authors have
+expressed themselves too sentimentally." You are right, Marjorie.
+"A Mr. Burns writes a beautiful song on Mr. Cunhaming, whose wife
+desarted him--truly it is a most beautiful one." "I like to read
+the Fabulous historys, about the histerys of Robin, Dickey,
+flapsay, and Peccay, and it is very amusing, for some were good
+birds and others bad, but Peccay was the most dutiful and obedient
+to her parients." "Thomson is a beautiful author, and Pope, but
+nothing to Shakespear, of which I have a little knolege. 'Macbeth'
+is a pretty composition, but awful one." "The 'Newgate Calender' is
+very instructive."(!)</p>
+<p>"A sailor called here to say farewell; it must be dreadful to
+leave his native country when he might get a wife; or perhaps me,
+for I love him very much. But O I forgot, Isabella forbid me to
+speak about love." This antiphlogistic regimen and lesson is ill to
+learn by our Maidie, for here she sins again:--"Love is a very
+papithatick thing" (it is almost a pity to correct this into
+pathetic), "as well as troublesome and tiresome--but O Isabella
+forbid me to speak of it."</p>
+<p>Here are her reflections on a pineapple:--"I think the price of
+a pineapple is very dear: it is a whole bright goulden guinea, that
+might have sustained a poor family." Here is a new vernal
+simile:--"The hedges are sprouting like chicks from the eggs when
+they are newly hatched or, as the vulgar say, <i>clacked</i>".
+"Doctor Swift's works are very funny; I got some of them by heart."
+"Moreheads sermons are I hear much praised, but I never read
+sermons of any kind; but I read novelettes and my Bible, and I
+never forget it, or my prayers." Brava, Marjorie!</p>
+<p>She seems now, when still about six, to have broken out into
+song:--</p>
+<blockquote>EPHIBOL [EPIGRAM OR EPITAPH--WHO KNOWS WHICH?] ON MY
+DEAR LOVE ISABELLA.<br>
+<br>
+"Here lies sweet Isabel in bed,<br>
+With a night-cap on her head;<br>
+Her skin is soft, her face is fair,<br>
+And she has very pretty hair;<br>
+She and I in bed lies nice,<br>
+And undisturbed by rats or mice.<br>
+She is disgusted with Mr. Worgan,<br>
+Though he plays upon the organ.<br>
+Her nails are neat, her teeth are white,<br>
+Her eyes are very, very bright.<br>
+In a conspicuous town she lives,<br>
+And to the poor her money gives.<br>
+Here ends sweet Isabella's story,<br>
+And may it be much to her glory."</blockquote>
+<p>Here are some bits at random:--</p>
+<blockquote>"Of summer I am very fond,<br>
+And love to bathe into a pond:<br>
+The look of sunshine dies away,<br>
+And will not let me out to play;<br>
+I love the morning's sun to spy<br>
+Glittering through the casement's eye;<br>
+The rays of light are very sweet,<br>
+And puts away the taste of meat;<br>
+The balmy breeze comes down from heaven,<br>
+And makes us like for to be living."</blockquote>
+<p>"The casawary is an curious bird, and so is the gigantic crane,
+and the pelican of the wilderness, whose mouth holds a bucket of
+fish and water. Fighting is what ladies is not qualyfied for, they
+would not make a good figure in battle or in a duel. Alas! we
+females are of little use to our country. The history of all the
+malcontents as ever was hanged is amusing." Still harping on the
+Newgate Calendar!</p>
+<p>"Braehead is extremely pleasant to me by the companie of swine,
+geese, cocks, etc., and they are the delight of my soul."</p>
+<p>"I am going to tell you of a melancholy story. A young turkie of
+two or three months old, would you believe it, the father broke its
+leg, and he killed another! I think he ought to be transported or
+hanged."</p>
+<p>"Queen Street is a very gay one, and so is Princes Street, for
+all the lads and lasses, besides bucks and beggars, parade
+there"</p>
+<p>"I should like to see a play very much, for I never saw one in
+all my life, and don't believe I ever shall; but I hope I can be
+content without going to one. I can be quite happy without my
+desire being granted."</p>
+<p>"Some days ago Isabella had a terrible fit of the toothake, and
+she walked with a long night-shift at dead of night like a ghost,
+and I thought she was one. She prayed for nature's sweet
+restorer--balmy sleep--but did not get it--a ghostly figure indeed
+she was, enough to make a saint tremble. It made me quiver and
+shake from top to toe. Superstition is a very mean thing, and
+should be despised and shunned."</p>
+<p>Here is her weakness and her strength again:--"In the
+love-novels all the heroines are very desperate. Isabella will not
+allow me to speak about lovers and heroins, and 'tis too refined
+for my taste." "Miss Egward's [Edgeworth's] tails are very good,
+particularly some that are very much adapted for youth (!) as Laz
+Laurance and Tarelton, False Keys, etc., etc."</p>
+<p>"Tom Jones and Gray's Elegey in a country churchyard are both
+excellent, and much spoke of by both sex, particularly by the men."
+Are our Marjories now-a-days better or worse, because they cannot
+read 'Tom Jones' unharmed? More better than worse; but who among
+them can repeat Gray's 'Lines on a Distant Prospect of Eton
+College' as could our Maidie?</p>
+<p>Here is some more of her prattle:--"I went into Isabella's bed
+to make her smile like the Genius Demedicus [the Venus de' Medicis]
+or the statute in an ancient Greece, but she fell asleep in my very
+face, at which my anger broke forth, so that I awoke her from a
+comfortable nap. All was now hushed up again, but again my anger
+burst forth at her biding me get up."</p>
+<p>She begins thus loftily,--</p>
+<blockquote>"Death the righteous love to see,<br>
+But from it doth the wicked flee."</blockquote>
+<p>Then suddenly breaks off [as if with laughter],--</p>
+<p>"I am sure they fly as fast as their legs can carry them!"</p>
+<blockquote>"There is a thing I love to see,<br>
+That is our monkey catch a flee."<br>
+<br>
+"I love in Isa's bed to lie,<br>
+Oh, such a joy and luxury!<br>
+The bottom of the bed I sleep,<br>
+And with great care within I creep;<br>
+Oft I embrace her feet of lillys,<br>
+But she has goton all the pillys.<br>
+Her neck I never can embrace,<br>
+But I do hug her feet in place."</blockquote>
+<p>How childish and yet how strong and free is her use of
+words!--"I lay at the foot of the bed because Isabella said I
+disturbed her by continial fighting and kicking, but I was very
+dull, and continially at work reading the Arabian Nights, which I
+could not have done if I had slept at the top. I am reading the
+Mysteries of Udolpho. I am much interested in the fate of poor,
+poor Emily."</p>
+<p>Here is one of her swains:--</p>
+<blockquote>"Very soft and white his cheeks,<br>
+His hair is red, and gray his breeks;<br>
+His tooth is like the daisy fair,<br>
+His only fault is in his hair."</blockquote>
+<p>This is a higher flight:--</p>
+<blockquote>DEDICATED TO MRS. H. CRAWFORD BY THE AUTHOR, M.F.<br>
+<br>
+"Three turkeys fair their last have breathed,<br>
+And now this world forever leaved;<br>
+Their father, and their mother too,<br>
+They sigh and weep as well as you;<br>
+Indeed, the rats their bones have crunched,<br>
+Into eternity theire laanched.<br>
+A direful death indeed they had,<br>
+As wad put any parent mad;<br>
+But she was more than usual calm:<br>
+She did not give a single dam."</blockquote>
+<p>This last word is saved from all sin by its tender age, not to
+speak of the want of the <i>n</i>. We fear "she" is the abandoned
+mother, in spite of her previous sighs and tears.</p>
+<p>"Isabella says when we pray we should pray fervently, and not
+rattel over a prayer--for that we are kneeling at the foot-stool of
+our Lord and Creator, who saves us from eternal damnation, and from
+unquestionable fire and brimston."</p>
+<p>She has a long poem on Mary Queen of Scots:--</p>
+<blockquote>"Queen Mary was much loved by all,<br>
+Both by the great and by the small,<br>
+But hark! her soul to heaven doth rise?<br>
+And I suppose she has gained a prize;<br>
+For I do think she would not go<br>
+Into the <i>awful</i> place below.<br>
+There is a thing that I must tell--<br>
+Elizabeth went to fire and hell!<br>
+He who would teach her to be civil,<br>
+It must be her great friend, the divil!"</blockquote>
+<p>She hits off Darnley well:--</p>
+<blockquote>"A noble's son,--a handsome lad,--<br>
+By some queer way or other, had<br>
+Got quite the better of her heart;<br>
+With him she always talked apart:<br>
+Silly he was, but very fair;<br>
+A greater buck was not found there."</blockquote>
+<p>"By some queer way or other": is not this the general case and
+the mystery, young ladies and gentlemen? Goethe's doctrine of
+"elective affinities" discovered by our Pet Maidie!</p>
+<blockquote>SONNET TO A MONKEY<br>
+<br>
+O lively, O most charming pug:<br>
+Thy graceful air and heavenly mug!<br>
+The beauties of his mind do shine,<br>
+And every bit is shaped and fine.<br>
+Your teeth are whiter than the snow;<br>
+Your a great buck, your a great beau;<br>
+Your eyes are of so nice a shape,<br>
+More like a Christian's than an ape;<br>
+Your cheek is like the rose's blume;<br>
+Your hair is like the raven's plume;<br>
+His nose's cast is of the Roman:<br>
+He is a very pretty woman.<br>
+I could not get a rhyme for Roman,<br>
+So was obliged to call him woman.</blockquote>
+<p>This last joke is good. She repeats it when writing of James the
+Second being killed at Roxburgh:--</p>
+<blockquote>He was killed by a cannon splinter,<br>
+Quite in the middle of the winter;<br>
+Perhaps it was not at that time,<br>
+But I can get no other rhyme.</blockquote>
+<p>Here is one of her last letters, dated Kirkcaldy, 12th October,
+1811. You can see how her nature is deepening and enriching:--</p>
+<blockquote>MY DEAR MOTHER--You will think that I entirely forget
+you but I assure you that you are greatly mistaken. I think of you
+always and often sigh to think of the distance between us two
+loving creatures of nature. We have regular hours for all our
+occupations first at 7 o'clock we go to the dancing and come home
+at 8 we then read our Bible and get our repeating and then play
+till ten then we get our music till 11 when we get our writing and
+accounts we sew from 12 till 1 after which I get my gramer and then
+work till five. At 7 we come and knit till 8 when we dont go to the
+dancing. This is an exact description. I must take a hasty farewell
+to her whom I love, reverence and doat on and who I hope thinks the
+same of<br>
+<br>
+MARJORY FLEMING.<br>
+<br>
+P.S.--An old pack of cards (!) would be very
+exceptible.</blockquote>
+<p>This other is a month earlier:--</p>
+<blockquote>"MY DEAR LITTLE MAMA--I was truly happy to hear that
+you were all well. We are surrounded with measles at present on
+every side, for the Herons got it, and Isabella Heron was near
+Death's Door, and one night her father lifted her out of bed, and
+she fell down as they thought lifeless. Mr. Heron said, 'That
+lassie's deed noo'--'I'm no deed yet.' She then threw up a big worm
+nine inches and a half long. I have begun dancing, but am not very
+fond of it, for the boys strikes and mocks me.--I have been another
+night at the dancing; I like it better. I will write to you as
+often as I can; but I am afraid not every week. <i>I long for you
+with the longings of a child to embrace you--to fold you in my
+arms. I respect you with all the respect due to a mother. You don't
+know how I love you. So I shall remain, your loving child</i>,<br>
+<br>
+M. FLEMING."</blockquote>
+<p>What rich involution of love in the words marked! Here are some
+lines to her beloved Isabella, in July, 1811:--</p>
+<blockquote>"There is a thing that I do want--<br>
+With you these beauteous walks to haunt;<br>
+We would be happy if you would<br>
+Try to come over if you could.<br>
+Then I would all quite happy be<br>
+<i>Now and for all eternity</i>.<br>
+My mother is so very sweet,<br>
+<i>And checks my appetite to eat</i>;<br>
+My father shows us what to do;<br>
+But O I'm sure that I want you.<br>
+I have no more of poetry;<br>
+O Isa do remember me,<br>
+And try to love your Marjory."</blockquote>
+<p>In a letter from "Isa" to</p>
+<blockquote>Miss Muff Maidie Marjory Fleming,<br>
+favored by Rare Rear-Admiral Fleming,"</blockquote>
+<p>she says:--"I long much to see you, and talk over all our old
+stories together, and to hear you read and repeat. I am pining for
+my old friend Cesario, and poor Lear, and wicked Richard. How is
+the dear Multiplication table going on? are you still as much
+attached to 9 times 9 as you used to be?"</p>
+<p>But this dainty, bright thing is about to flee,--to come "quick
+to confusion." The measles she writes of seized her, and she died
+on the 19th of December, 1811. The day before her death, Sunday,
+she sat up in bed, worn and thin, her eye gleaming as with the
+light of a coming world, and with a tremulous, old voice repeated
+the lines by Burns,--heavy with the shadow of death, and lit with
+the fantasy of the judgment-seat,--the publican's prayer in
+paraphrase:--</p>
+<blockquote>Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene</blockquote>
+<p>It is more affecting than we care to say to read her mother's
+and Isabella Keith's letters, written immediately after her death.
+Old and withered, tattered and pale, they are now: but when you
+read them, how quick, how throbbing with life and love! how rich in
+that language of affection which only women and Shakespeare and
+Luther can use,--that power of detaining the soul over the beloved
+object and its loss....</p>
+<p>In her first letter to Miss Keith, Mrs. Fleming says of her dead
+Maidie:--"Never did I behold so beautiful an object. It resembled
+the finest wax-work. There was in the countenance an expression of
+sweetness and serenity which seemed to indicate that the pure
+spirit had anticipated the joys of heaven ere it quitted the mortal
+frame. To tell you what your Maidie said of you would fill volumes;
+for you were the constant theme of her discourse, the subject of
+her thoughts, and ruler of her actions. The last time she mentioned
+you was a few hours before all sense save that of suffering was
+suspended, when she said to Dr. Johnstone, 'If you will let me out
+at the New Year, I will be quite contented.' I asked what made her
+so anxious to get out then. 'I want to purchase a New Year's gift
+for Isa Keith with the sixpence you gave me for being patient in
+the measles; and I would like to choose it myself.' I do not
+remember her speaking afterwards, except to complain of her head,
+till just before she expired, when she articulated, 'O mother!
+mother!'"</p>
+<p>Do we make too much of this little child, who has been in her
+grave in Abbotshall. Kirkyard these fifty and more years? We may of
+her cleverness,--not of her affectionateness, her nature. What a
+picture the <i>animosa infans</i> gives us of herself, her
+vivacity, her passionateness, her precocious love-making, her
+passion for nature, for swine, for all living things, her reading,
+her turn for expression, her satire, her frankness, her little sins
+and rages, her great repentances. We don't wonder Walter Scott
+carried her off in the neuk of his plaid, and played himself with
+her for hours....</p>
+<p>We are indebted for the following--and our readers will be not
+unwilling to share our obligations--to her sister:--"Her birth was
+15th January, 1803; her death 19th December, 1811. I take this from
+her Bibles. I believe she was a child of robust health, of much
+vigor of body, and beautifully formed arms, and until her last
+illness, never was an hour in bed. She was niece to Mrs. Keith,
+residing in No. 1 North Charlotte Street, who was <i>not</i> Mrs.
+Murray Keith, although very intimately acquainted with that old
+lady....</p>
+<p>"As to my aunt and Scott, they were on a very intimate footing.
+He asked my aunt to be godmother to his eldest daughter Sophia
+Charlotte. I had a copy of Miss Edgeworth's 'Rosamond' and 'Harry
+and Lucy' for long, which was 'a gift to Marjorie from Walter
+Scott,' probably the first edition of that attractive series, for
+it wanted 'Frank,' which is always now published as part of the
+series under the title of 'Early Lessons.' I regret to say these
+little volumes have disappeared."</p>
+<p>Sir Walter was no relation of Marjorie's, but of the Keiths,
+through the Swintons; and like Marjorie, he stayed much at
+Ravelstone in his early days, with his grand-aunt Mrs.
+Keith....</p>
+<p>We cannot better end than in words from this same pen:--"I have
+to ask you to forgive my anxiety in gathering up the fragments of
+Marjorie's last days, but I have an almost sacred feeling to all
+that pertains to her. You are quite correct in stating that measles
+were the cause of her death. My mother was struck by the patient
+quietness manifested by Marjorie during this illness, unlike her
+ardent, impulsive nature; but love and poetic feeling were
+unquenched. When lying very still, her mother asked her if there
+was anything she wished: 'Oh yes! if you would just leave the room
+door open a wee bit, and play 'The Land o' the Leal,' and I will
+lie and <i>think</i>, and enjoy myself' (this is just as stated to
+me by her mother and mine). Well, the happy day came, alike to
+parents and child, when Marjorie was allowed to come forth from the
+nursery to the parlor. It was Sabbath evening, and after tea. My
+father, who idolized this child, and never afterwards in my hearing
+mentioned her name, took her in his arms; and while walking up and
+down the room, she said, 'Father, I will repeat something to you;
+what would you like?' He said, 'Just choose yourself, Maidie.' She
+hesitated for a moment between the paraphrase 'Few are thy days,
+and full of woe,' and the lines of Burns already quoted, but
+decided on the latter, a remarkable choice for a child. The
+repeating these lines seemed to stir up the depths of feeling in
+her soul. She asked to be allowed to write a poem; there was a
+doubt whether it would be right to allow her, in case of hurting
+her eyes. She pleaded earnestly, 'Just this once;' the point was
+yielded, her slate was given her, and with great rapidity she wrote
+an address of fourteen lines, 'To her loved cousin on the author's
+recovery,' her last work on earth:--</p>
+<blockquote>'Oh! Isa, pain did visit me,<br>
+I was at the last extremity;<br>
+How often did I think of you,<br>
+I wished your graceful form to view,<br>
+To clasp you in my weak embrace,<br>
+Indeed I thought I'd run my race:<br>
+Good care, I'm sure, was of me taken,<br>
+But still indeed I was much shaken.<br>
+At last I daily strength did gain,<br>
+And oh! at last, away went pain;<br>
+At length the doctor thought I might<br>
+Stay in the parlor all the night;<br>
+I now continue so to do;<br>
+Farewell to Nancy and to you.'</blockquote>
+<p>She went to bed apparently well, awoke in the middle of the
+night with the old cry of woe to a mother's heart, 'My head, my
+head!' Three days of the dire malady 'water in the head' followed,
+and the end came."</p>
+<blockquote>"Soft, silken primrose, fading
+timelessly!"</blockquote>
+<p>It is needless, it is impossible to add anything to this; the
+fervor, the sweetness, the flush of poetic ecstasy, the lovely and
+glowing eye, the perfect nature of that bright and warm
+intelligence, that darling child; Lady Nairne's words, and the old
+tune, stealing up from the depths of the human heart, deep calling
+unto deep, gentle and strong like the waves of the great sea
+hushing themselves to sleep in the dark; the words of Burns
+touching the kindred chord; her last numbers, "wildly sweet,"
+traced with thin and eager fingers, already touched by the last
+enemy and friend,--<i>moriens canit</i>,--and that love which is so
+soon to be her everlasting light, is her song's burden to the
+end.</p>
+<blockquote>"She set as sets the morning star, which goes<br>
+Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides<br>
+Obscured among the tempests of the sky,<br>
+But melts away into the light of heaven."</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWN12"></a>
+<h3>THE DEATH OF THACKERAY</h3>
+<center>From 'Spare Hours'</center>
+<br>
+<p>We cannot resist here recalling one Sunday evening in December,
+when he was walking with two friends along the Dean road, to the
+west of Edinburgh,--one of the noblest outlets to any city. It was
+a lovely evening,--such a sunset as one never forgets: a rich dark
+bar of cloud hovered over the sun, going down behind the Highland
+hills, lying bathed in amethystine bloom; between this cloud and
+the hills there was a narrow slip of the pure ether, of a tender
+cowslip color, lucid, and as if it were the very body of heaven in
+its clearness; every object standing out as if etched upon the sky.
+The northwest end of Corstorphine Hill, with its trees and rocks,
+lay in the heart of this pure radiance, and there a wooden crane,
+used in the quarry below, was so placed as to assume the figure of
+a cross; there it was, unmistakable, lifted up against the
+crystalline sky. All three gazed at it silently. As they gazed, he
+gave utterance in a tremulous, gentle, and rapid voice, to what all
+were feeling, in the word "CALVARY!" The friends walked on in
+silence, and then turned to other things. All that evening he was
+very gentle and serious, speaking, as he seldom did, of divine
+things,--of death, of sin, of eternity, of salvation; expressing
+his simple faith in God and in his Savior.</p>
+<p>There is a passage at the close of the 'Roundabout Paper' No.
+23, 'De Finibus,' in which a sense of the ebb of life is very
+marked; the whole paper is like a soliloquy. It opens with a
+drawing of Mr. Punch, with unusually mild eye, retiring for the
+night; he is putting out his high-heeled shoes, and before
+disappearing gives a wistful look into the passage, as if bidding
+it and all else good-night. He will be in bed, his candle out, and
+in darkness, in five minutes, and his shoes found next morning at
+his door, the little potentate all the while in his final sleep.
+The whole paper is worth the most careful study; it reveals not a
+little of his real nature, and unfolds very curiously the secret of
+his work, the vitality and abiding power of his own creations; how
+he "invented a certain Costigan, out of scraps, heel-taps, odds and
+ends of characters," and met the original the other day, without
+surprise, in a tavern parlor. The following is beautiful: "Years
+ago I had a quarrel with a certain well-known person (I believed a
+statement regarding him which his friends imparted to me, and which
+turned out to be quite incorrect). To his dying day that quarrel
+was never quite made up. I said to his brother, 'Why is your
+brother's soul still dark against me? <i>It is I who ought to be
+angry and unforgiving, for I was in the wrong</i>.'" <i>Odisse quem
+l&aelig;seris</i> was never better contravened. But what we chiefly
+refer to now is the profound pensiveness of the following strain,
+as if written with a presentiment of what was not then very far
+off:--"Another Finis written; another milestone on this journey
+from birth to the next world. Sure it is a subject for solemn
+cogitation. Shall we continue this story-telling business, and be
+voluble to the end of our age?" "Will it not be presently time, O
+prattler, to hold your tongue?" And thus he ends:--</p>
+<p>"Oh, the sad old pages, the dull old pages; oh, the cares, the
+<i>ennui</i>, the squabbles, the repetitions, the old conversations
+over and over again! But now and again a kind thought is recalled,
+and now and again a dear memory. Yet a few chapters more, and then
+the last; after which, behold Finis itself comes to an end, and the
+Infinite begins."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>He had been suffering on Sunday from an old and cruel enemy. He
+fixed with his friend and surgeon to come again on Tuesday, but
+with that dread of anticipated pain which is a common condition of
+sensibility and genius, he put him off with a note from "yours
+unfaithfully, W.M.T." He went out on Wednesday for a little, and
+came home at ten. He went to his room, suffering much, but
+declining his man's offer to sit with him. He hated to make others
+suffer. He was heard moving, as if in pain, about twelve, on the
+eve of--</p>
+<blockquote>"That happy morn<br>
+Wherein the Son of Heaven's eternal King,<br>
+Of wedded maid and virgin-mother born,<br>
+Our great redemption from above did bring."</blockquote>
+<p>Then all was quiet, and then he must have died--in a moment.
+Next morning his man went in, and opening the windows found his
+master dead, his arms behind his head, as if he had tried to take
+one more breath. We think of him as of our Chalmers, found dead in
+like manner: the same childlike, unspoiled, open face; the same
+gentle mouth; the same spaciousness and softness of nature; the
+same look of power. What a thing to think of,--his lying there
+alone in the dark, in the midst of his own mighty London; his
+mother and his daughters asleep, and, it may be, dreaming of his
+goodness. God help them, and us all! What would become of us,
+stumbling along this our path of life, if we could not, at our
+utmost need, stay ourselves on Him?</p>
+<p>Long years of sorrow, labor, and pain had killed him before his
+time. It was found after death how little life he had to live. He
+looked always fresh, with that abounding silvery hair, and his
+young, almost infantine face, but he was worn to a shadow, and his
+hands wasted as if by eighty years. With him it is the end of Ends;
+finite is over and, infinite begun. What we all felt and feel can
+never be so well expressed as in his own words of sorrow for the
+early death of Charles Buller:--</p>
+<blockquote>"Who knows the inscrutable design?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Blest He who took and He who gave!<br>
+Why should your mother, Charles, not mine,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Be weeping at her darling's grave?<br>
+We bow to heaven that willed it so,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That darkly rules the fate of all,<br>
+That sends the respite or the blow,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;That's free to give or to recall."</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="CHARLES_BROWNE"></a>
+<h2>CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE (ARTEMUS WARD)</h2>
+<h3>(1834-1867)</h3>
+<center>BY CHARLES F. JOHNSON</center>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-c.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>harles Farrar Brown, better known to the public of thirty years
+ago under his pen-name of Artemus Ward, was born in the little
+village of Waterford, Maine, on the 26th day of April, 1834.
+Waterford is a quiet village of about seven hundred inhabitants,
+lying among the foot-hills of the White Mountains. When Browne was
+a child it was a station on the western stage-route, and an
+important depot for lumbermen's supplies. Since the extension of
+railroads northerly and westerly from the seaboard, it has however
+shared the fate of many New England villages in being left on one
+side of the main currents of commercial activity, and gradually
+assuming a character of repose and leisure, in many regards more
+attractive than the life and bustle of earlier days. Many persons
+are still living there who remember the humorist as a quaint and
+tricksy boy, alternating between laughter and preternatural
+gravity, and of a surprising ingenuity in devising odd practical
+jokes in which good nature so far prevailed that even the victims
+were too much amused to be very angry.</p>
+<p class="rgt"><img src="images/browne_c.jpg" width="45%" alt=
+""><br>
+<b>Charles F. Browne</b></p>
+<p>On both sides, he came from original New England stock; and
+although he was proud of his descent from a very ancient English
+family, in deference to whom he wrote his name with the final "e,"
+he felt greater pride in his American ancestors, and always said
+that they were genuine and primitive Yankees,--people of
+intelligence, activity, and integrity in business, but entirely
+unaffected by new-fangled ideas. It is interesting to notice that
+Browne's humor was hereditary on the paternal side, his father
+especially being noted for his quaint sayings and harmless
+eccentricities. His cousin Daniel many years later bore a strong
+resemblance to what Charles had been, and he too possessed a
+kindred humorous faculty and told a story in much the same solemn
+manner, bringing out the point as if it were something entirely
+irrelevant and unimportant and casually remembered. The subject of
+this sketch, however, was the only member of the family in whom a
+love for the droll and incongruous was a controlling disposition.
+As is frequently the case, a family trait was intensified in one
+individual to the point where talent passes over into genius.</p>
+<p>On his mother's side, too, Browne was a thorough-bred
+New-Englander. His maternal grandfather, Mr. Calvin Farrar, was a
+man of influence in town and State, and was able to send two of his
+sons to Bowdoin College. I have mentioned Browne's parentage
+because his humor is so essentially American. Whether this consists
+in a peculiar gravity in the humorous attitude towards the subject,
+rather than playfulness, or in a tendency to exaggerated statement,
+or in a broad humanitarian standpoint, or in a certain flavor given
+by a blending of all these, it is very difficult to decide.
+Probably the peculiar standpoint is the distinguishing note, and
+American humor is a product of democracy.</p>
+<p>Humor is as difficult of definition as is poetry. It is an
+intimate quality of the mind, which predisposes a man to look for
+remote and unreal analogies and to present them gravely as if they
+were valid. It sees that many of the objects valued by men are
+illusions, and it expresses this conviction by assuming that other
+manifest trifles are important. It is the deadly enemy of
+sentimentality and affectation, for its vision is clear. Although
+it turns everything topsy-turvy in sport, its world is not a chaos
+nor a child's play-ground, for humor is based on keen perception of
+truth. There is no method--except the highest poetic
+treatment--which reveals so distinctly the falsehoods and
+hypocrisies of the social and economic order as the <i>reductio ad
+absurdum</i> of humor; for all human institutions have their
+ridiculous sides, which astonish and amuse us when pointed out, but
+from viewing which we suddenly become aware of relative values
+before misunderstood. But just as poetry may degenerate into a
+musical collection of words and painting into a decorative
+association of colors, so humor may degenerate into the merely
+comic or amusing. The laugh which true humor arouses is not far
+removed from tears. Humor indeed is not always associated with
+kindliness, for we have the sardonic humor of Carlyle and the
+savage humor of Swift; but it is naturally dissociated from
+egotism, and is never more attractive than when, as in the case of
+Charles Lamb and Oliver Goldsmith, it is based on a loving and
+generous interest in humanity.</p>
+<p>Humor, must rest on a broad human foundation, and cannot be
+narrowed to the notions of a certain class. But in most English
+humor,--as indeed in all English literature except the very
+highest,--the social class to which the writer does not belong is
+regarded <i>ab extra</i>. In Punch, for instance, not only are
+servants always given a conventional set of features, but they are
+given conventional minds, and the jokes are based on a hypothetical
+conception of personality. Dickens was a great humorist, and
+understood the nature of the poor because he had been one of them;
+but his gentlemen and ladies are lay figures. Thackeray's studies
+of the flunky are capital; but he studies him <i>qua flunky</i>, as
+a naturalist might study an animal, and hardly ranks him <i>sub
+specie humanitatis</i>. But to the American humorist all men are
+primarily men. The waiter and the prince are equally ridiculous to
+him, because in each he finds similar incongruities between the man
+and his surroundings; but in England there is a deep impassable
+gulf between the man at the table and the man behind his chair.
+This democratic independence of external and adventitious
+circumstance sometimes gives a tone of irreverence to American
+persiflage, and the temporary character of class distinctions in
+America undoubtedly diminishes the amount of literary material "in
+sight" but when, as in the case of Browne and Clemens, there is in
+the humorist's mind a basis of reverence for things and persons
+that are really reverend, it gives a breadth and freedom to the
+humorous conception that is distinctively American.</p>
+<p>We put Clemens and Browne in the same line, because in reading a
+page of either we feel at once the American touch. Browne of course
+is not to be compared to Clemens in affluence or in range in
+depicting humorous character-types; but it must be remembered that
+Clemens has lived thirty active years longer than his predecessor
+did. Neither has written a line that he would wish to blot for its
+foul suggestion, or because it ridiculed things that were lovely
+and of good report. Both were educated in journalism, and came into
+direct contact with the strenuous and realistic life of labor. And
+to repeat, though one was born and bred west of the Mississippi and
+the other far "down east," both are distinctly American. Had either
+been born and passed his childhood outside our magic line, this
+resemblance would not have existed. And yet we cannot say precisely
+wherein this likeness lies, nor what caused it; so deep, so subtle,
+so pervading is the influence of nationality. But their original
+expressions of the American humorous tone are worth ten thousand
+literary echoes of Sterne or Lamb or Dickens or Thackeray.</p>
+<p>The education of young Browne was limited to the strictly
+preparatory years. At the age of thirteen he was forced by the
+death of his father to try to earn his living. When about fourteen,
+he was apprenticed to a Mr. Rex, who published a paper at
+Lancaster, New Hampshire. He remained there about a year, then
+worked on various country papers, and finally passed three years in
+the printing-house of Snow and Wilder, Boston. He then went to
+Ohio, and after working for some months on the Tiffin Advertiser,
+went to Toledo, where he remained till the fall of 1857. Thence he
+went to Cleveland, Ohio, as local editor of the Plain Dealer. Here
+appeared the humorous letters signed "Artemus Ward" and written in
+the character of an itinerant showman. In 1860 he went to New York
+as editor of the comic journal Vanity Fair.</p>
+<p>His reputation grew steadily, and his first volume, 'Artemus
+Ward, His Book,' was brought out in 1862. In 1863 he went to San
+Francisco by way of the Isthmus and returned overland. This journey
+was chronicled in a short volume, 'Artemus Ward, His Travels.' He
+had already undertaken a career of lecturing, and his comic
+entertainments, given in a style peculiarly his own, became very
+popular. The mimetic gift is frequently found in the humorist; and
+Browne's peculiar drawl, his profound gravity and dreamy, far-away
+expression, the unexpected character of his jokes and the surprise
+with which he seemed to regard the audience, made a combination of
+a delightfully quaint absurdity. Browne himself was a very winning
+personality, and never failed to put his audience in good humor.
+None who knew him twenty-nine years ago think of him without
+tenderness. In 1866 he visited England, and became almost as
+popular there as lecturer and writer for Punch. He died from a
+pulmonary trouble in Southampton, March 6th, 1867, being not quite
+thirty-three years old. He was never married.</p>
+<p>When we remember that a large part of Browne's mature life was
+taken up in learning the printer's trade, in which he became a
+master, we must decide that he had only entered on his career as
+humorous writer. Much of what he wrote is simply amusing, with
+little depth or power of suggestion; it is comic, not humorous. He
+was gaining the ear of the public and training his powers of
+expression. What he has left consists of a few collections of
+sketches written for a daily paper. But the subjoined extracts will
+show, albeit dimly, that he was more than a joker, as under the cap
+and bells of the fool in Lear we catch a glimpse of the face of a
+tender-hearted and philosophic friend. Browne's nature was so
+kindly and sympathetic, so pure and manly, that after he had
+achieved a reputation and was relieved from immediate pecuniary
+pressure, he would have felt an ambition to do some worthy work and
+take time to bring out the best that was in him. As it is, he had
+only tried his 'prentice hand. Still, the figure of the old
+showman, though not very solidly painted, is admirably done. He is
+a sort of sublimated and unoffensive Barnum; perfectly consistent,
+permeated with his professional view of life, yet quite incapable
+of anything underhand or mean; radically loyal to the Union,
+appreciative of the nature of his animals, steady in his humorous
+attitude toward life: and above all, not a composite of shreds and
+patches, but a personality. Slight as he is, and unconscious and
+unpracticed as is the art that went to his creation, he is one of
+the humorous figures of all literature; and old Sir John Falstaff,
+Sir Roger de Coverley, Uncle Toby, and Dr. Primrose will not
+disdain to admit him into their company; for he too is a man, not
+an abstraction, and need not be ashamed of his parentage nor
+doubtful of his standing among the "children of the men of
+wit."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNE01"></a>
+<h3>EDWIN FORREST AS OTHELLO</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Durin a recent visit to New York the undersined went to see
+Edwin Forrest. As I am into the moral show biziness myself I
+ginrally go to Barnum's moral museum, where only moral peeple air
+admitted, partickly on Wednesday arternoons. But this time I thot
+I'd go and see Ed. Ed has bin actin out on the stage for many
+years. There is varis 'pinions about his actin, Englishmen ginrally
+bleevin that he's far superior to Mister Macready; but on one pint
+all agree, &amp; that is that Ed draws like a six-ox team. Ed was
+actin at Niblo's Garding, which looks considerable more like a
+parster than a garding, but let that pars. I sot down in the pit,
+took out my spectacles and commenced peroosin the evenin's bill.
+The awjince was all-fired large &amp; the boxes was full of the
+elitty of New York. Several opery glasses was leveled at me by
+Gotham's fairest darters, but I didn't let on as tho I noticed it,
+tho mebby I did take out my sixteen-dollar silver watch &amp;
+brandish it round more than was necessary. But the best of us has
+our weaknesses &amp; if a man has gewelry let him show it. As I was
+peroosin the bill a grave young man who sot near me axed me if I'd
+ever seen Forrest dance the Essence of Old Virginny. "He's immense
+in that," sed the young man. "He also does a fair champion jig,"
+the young man continnered, "but his Big Thing is the Essence of Old
+Virginny." Sez I, "Fair youth, do you know what I'd do with you if
+you was my sun?"</p>
+<p>"No," sez he.</p>
+<p>"Wall," sez I, "I'd appint your funeral to-morrow arternoon,
+&amp; the <i>korps should be ready</i>. You're too smart to live on
+this yerth."</p>
+<p>He didn't try any more of his capers on me. But another
+pussylanermuss individooul in a red vest and patent leather boots
+told me his name was Bill Astor &amp; axed me to lend him 50 cents
+till early in the mornin. I told him I'd probly send it round to
+him before he retired to his virtoous couch, but if I didn't he
+might look for it next fall as soon as I'd cut my corn. The
+orchestry was now fiddling with all their might &amp; as the peeple
+didn't understan anything about it they applaudid versifrusly.
+Presently old Ed cum out. The play was Otheller or More of Veniss.
+Otheller was writ by Wm. Shakspeer. The seene is laid in Veniss.
+Otheller was a likely man &amp; was a ginral in the Veniss army. He
+eloped with Desdemony, a darter of the Hon. Mr. Brabantio, who
+represented one of the back districks in the Veneshun legislater.
+Old Brabantio was as mad as thunder at this &amp; tore round
+considerable, but finally cooled down, tellin Otheller, howsoever,
+that Desdemony had come it over her par, &amp; that he had better
+look out or she'd come it over him likewise. Mr. and Mrs. Otheller
+git along very comfortable-like for a spell. She is sweet-tempered
+and lovin--a nice, sensible female, never goin in for he-female
+conventions, green cotton umbrellers, and pickled beats. Otheller
+is a good provider and thinks all the world of his wife. She has a
+lazy time of it, the hird girl doin all the cookin and washin.
+Desdemony in fact don't have to git the water to wash her own hands
+with. But a low cuss named Iago, who I bleeve wants to git Otheller
+out of his snug government birth, now goes to work &amp; upsets the
+Otheller family in most outrajus stile. Iago falls in with a
+brainless youth named Roderigo &amp; wins all his money at poker.
+(Iago allers played foul.) He thus got money enuff to carry out his
+onprincipled skeem. Mike Cassio, a Irishman, is selected as a tool
+by Iago. Mike was a clever feller &amp; a orficer in Otheller's
+army. He liked his tods too well, howsoever, &amp; they floored him
+as they have many other promisin young men. Iago injuces Mike to
+drink with him, Iago slily throwin his whiskey over his shoulder.
+Mike gits as drunk as a biled owl &amp; allows that he can lick a
+yard full of the Veneshun fancy before breakfast, without sweatin a
+hair. He meets Roderigo &amp; proceeds for to smash him. A feller
+named Mentano undertakes to slap Cassio, when that infatooated
+person runs his sword into him. That miserble man, Iago, pretends
+to be very sorry to see Mike conduck hisself in this way &amp;
+undertakes to smooth the thing over to Otheller, who rushes in with
+a drawn sword &amp; wants to know what's up. Iago cunningly tells
+his story &amp; Otheller tells Mike that he thinks a good deal of
+him but that he cant train no more in his regiment. Desdemony
+sympathises with poor Mike &amp; interceds for him with Otheller.
+Iago makes him bleeve she does this because she thinks more of Mike
+than she does of hisself. Otheller swallers Iagos lyin tail &amp;
+goes to makin a noosence of hisself ginrally. He worries poor
+Desdemony terrible by his vile insinuations &amp; finally smothers
+her to deth with a piller. Mrs. Iago comes in just as Otheller has
+finished the fowl deed &amp; givs him fits right &amp; left, showin
+him that he has been orfully gulled by her miserble cuss of a
+husband. Iago cums in &amp; his wife commences rakin him down also,
+when he stabs her. Otheller jaws him a spell &amp; then cuts a
+small hole in his stummick with his sword. Iago pints to
+Desdemony's deth bed &amp; goes orf with a sardonic smile onto his
+countenance. Otheller tells the peple that he has dun the state
+some service &amp; they know it; axes them to do as fair a thing as
+they can for him under the circumstances, &amp; kills hisself with
+a fish-knife, which is the most sensible thing he can do. This is a
+breef skedule of the synopsis of the play.</p>
+<p>Edwin Forrest is a grate acter. I thot I saw Otheller before me
+all the time he was actin &amp;, when the curtin fell, I found my
+spectacles was still mistened with salt-water, which had run from
+my eyes while poor Desdemony was dyin. Betsy Jane--Betsy Jane! let
+us pray that our domestic bliss may never be busted up by a
+Iago!</p>
+<p>Edwin Forrest makes money actin out on the stage. He gits five
+hundred dollars a nite &amp; his board &amp; washin. I wish I had
+such a Forrest in my Garding!</p>
+<p>Copyrighted by G.W. Dillingham and Company, New York.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNE02"></a>
+<h3>HIGH-HANDED OUTRAGE AT UTICA</h3>
+<br>
+<p>In the fall of 1856 I showed my show in Utiky, a trooly grate
+sitty in the State of New York.</p>
+<p>The people gave me a cordyal recepshun. The press was loud in
+her prases.</p>
+<p>1 day as I was givin a descripshun of my Beests and Snaiks in my
+usual flowry stile, what was my skorn &amp; disgust to see a big
+burly feller walk up to the cage containin my wax figgers of the
+Lord's Last Supper, and cease Judas Iscariot by the feet and drag
+him out on the ground. He then commenced fur to pound him as hard
+as he cood.</p>
+<p>"What under the son are you abowt?" cried I.</p>
+<p>Sez he, "What did you bring this pussylanermus cuss here fur?"
+&amp; he hit the wax figger another tremenjus blow on the hed.</p>
+<p>Sez I, "You egrejus ass that air's a wax figger--a
+representashun of the false 'Postle."</p>
+<p>Sez he, "That's all very well fur you to say, but I tell you,
+old man, that Judas Iscariot can't show hisself in Utiky with
+impunerty by a darn site!" with which observashun he kaved in
+Judassis hed. The young man belonged to 1 of the first famerlies in
+Utiky. I sood him and the Joory brawt in a verdick of Arson in the
+3d degree.</p>
+<p>Copyrighted by G.W. Dillingham and Company, New York.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNE03"></a>
+<h3>AFFAIRS ROUND THE VILLAGE GREEN</h3>
+<br>
+<p>And where are the friends of my youth? I have found one of 'em,
+certainly. I saw him ride in a circus the other day on a bareback
+horse, and even now his name stares at me from yonder board-fence
+in green and blue and red and yellow letters. Dashington, the youth
+with whom I used to read the able orations of Cicero, and who as a
+declaimer on exhibition days used to wipe the rest of us boys
+pretty handsomely out--well, Dashington is identified with the
+halibut and cod interests --drives a fish-cart, in fact, from a
+certain town on the coast back into the interior. Hurburtson--the
+utterly stupid boy--the lunkhead who never had his lesson, he's
+about the ablest lawyer a sister State can boast. Mills is a
+newspaper man, and is just now editing a Major General down South.
+Singlingson, the sweet-faced boy whose face was always washed and
+who was never rude, <i>he</i> is in the penitentiary for putting
+his uncle's autograph to a financial document. Hawkins, the
+clergyman's son, is an actor; and Williamson, the good little boy
+who divided his bread and butter with the beggar-man, is a failing
+merchant, and makes money by it. Tom Slink, who used to smoke Short
+Sixes and get acquainted with the little circus boys, is popularly
+supposed to be the proprietor of a cheap gaming establishment in
+Boston, where the beautiful but uncertain prop is nightly tossed.
+Be sure the Army is represented by many of the friends of my youth,
+the most of whom have given a good account of themselves.</p>
+<p>But Chalmerson hasn't done much. No, Chalmerson is rather of a
+failure. He plays on the guitar and sings love-songs. Not that he
+is a bad man--a kinder-hearted creature never lived, and they say
+he hasn't yet got over crying for his little curly-haired sister
+who died ever so long ago. But he knows nothing about business,
+politics, the world, and those things. He is dull at trade--indeed,
+it is the common remark that "Everybody cheats Chalmerson." He came
+to the party the other evening and brought his guitar. They
+wouldn't have him for a tenor in the opera, certainly, for he is
+shaky in his upper notes; but if his simple melodies didn't gush
+straight from the heart! why, even my trained eyes were wet! And
+although some of the girls giggled, and some of the men seemed to
+pity him, I could not help fancying that poor Chalmerson was nearer
+heaven than any of us all.</p>
+<p>Copyrighted by G.W. Dillingham and Company.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNE04"></a>
+<h3>MR. PEPPER</h3>
+<center>From 'Artemus Ward: His Travels'</center>
+<br>
+<p>My arrival at Virginia City was signalized by the following
+incident:--</p>
+<p>I had no sooner achieved my room in the garret of the
+International Hotel than I was called upon by an intoxicated man,
+who said he was an Editor. Knowing how rare it is for an Editor to
+be under the blighting influence of either spirituous or malt
+liquors, I received this statement doubtfully. But I said:</p>
+<p>"What name?"</p>
+<p>"Wait!" he said, and went out.</p>
+<p>I heard him pacing unsteadily up and down the hall outside.</p>
+<p>In ten minutes he returned, and said, "Pepper!"</p>
+<p>Pepper was indeed his name. He had been out to see if he could
+remember it, and he was so flushed with his success that he
+repeated it joyously several times, and then, with a short laugh,
+he went away.</p>
+<p>I had often heard of a man being "so drunk that he didn't know
+what town he lived in," but here was a man so hideously inebriated
+that he didn't know what his name was.</p>
+<p>I saw him no more, but I heard from him. For he published a
+notice of my lecture, in which he said that I had <i>a dissipated
+air!</i></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNE05"></a>
+<h3>HORACE GREELEY'S RIDE TO PLACERVILLE</h3>
+<center>From 'Artemus Ward: His Travels'</center>
+<br>
+<p>When Mr. Greeley was in California, ovations awaited him at
+every town. He had written powerful leaders in the Tribune in favor
+of the Pacific Railroad, which had greatly endeared him to the
+citizens of the Golden State. And therefore they made much of him
+when he went to see them.</p>
+<p>At one town the enthusiastic populace tore his celebrated white
+coat to pieces and carried the pieces home to remember him by.</p>
+<p>The citizens of Placerville prepared to f&ecirc;te the great
+journalist, and an extra coach with extra relays of horses was
+chartered of the California Stage Company to carry him from Folsom
+to Placerville--distance, forty miles. The extra was in some way
+delayed, and did not leave Folsom until late in the afternoon. Mr.
+Greeley was to be f&ecirc;ted at seven o'clock that evening by the
+citizens of Placerville, and it was altogether necessary that he
+should be there by that time. So the Stage Company said to Henry
+Monk, the driver of the extra, "Henry, this great man must be there
+by seven to-night." And Henry answered, "The great man shall be
+there."</p>
+<p>The roads were in an awful state, and during the first few miles
+out of Folsom slow progress was made.</p>
+<p>"Sir," said Mr. Greeley, "are you aware that I must be in
+Placerville at seven o'clock to-night?"</p>
+<p>"I've got my orders!" laconically replied Henry Monk.</p>
+<p>Still the coach dragged slowly forward.</p>
+<p>"Sir," said Mr. Greeley, "this is not a trifling matter. I
+<i>must</i> be there at seven!"</p>
+<p>Again came the answer, "I've got my orders!"</p>
+<p>But the speed was not increased, and Mr. Greeley chafed away
+another half-hour; when, as he was again about to remonstrate with
+the driver, the horses suddenly started into a furious run, and all
+sorts of encouraging yells filled the air from the throat of Henry
+Monk.</p>
+<p>"That is right, my good fellow," said Mr. Greeley. "I'll give
+you ten dollars when we get to Placerville. Now we are going!"</p>
+<p>They were indeed, and at a terrible speed.</p>
+<p>Crack, crack! went the whip, and again "that voice" split the
+air, "Get up! Hi-yi! G'long! Yip-yip."</p>
+<p>And on they tore over stones and ruts, up hill and down, at a
+rate of speed never before achieved by stage horses.</p>
+<p>Mr. Greeley, who had been bouncing from one end of the stage to
+the other like an India-rubber ball, managed to get his head out of
+the window, when he said:--</p>
+<p>"Do-on't-on't-on't you-u-u think we-e-e-e shall get there by
+seven if we do-on't-on't go so fast?"</p>
+<p>"I've got my orders!" That was all Henry Monk said. And on tore
+the coach.</p>
+<p>It was becoming serious. Already the journalist was extremely
+sore from the terrible jolting--and again his head "might have been
+seen from the window."</p>
+<p>"Sir," he said, "I don't care-care-air if we <i>don't</i> get
+there at seven."</p>
+<p>"I've got my orders!" Fresh horses--forward again, faster than
+before--over rocks and stumps, on one of which the coach narrowly
+escaped turning a summerset.</p>
+<p>"See here!" shrieked Mr. Greeley, "I don't care if we don't get
+there at all."</p>
+<p>"I've got my orders! I work fer the California Stage Company, I
+do. That's wot I <i>work</i> fer. They said, 'Get this man through
+by seving.' An' this man's goin' through, you bet! Gerlong!
+Whoo-ep!"</p>
+<p>Another frightful jolt, and Mr. Greeley's bald head suddenly
+found its way through the roof of the coach, amidst the crash of
+small timbers and the ripping of strong canvas.</p>
+<p>"Stop, you--maniac!" he roared.</p>
+<p>Again answered Henry Monk:--</p>
+<p>"I've got my orders! <i>Keep your seat, Horace!</i>"</p>
+<p>At Mud Springs, a village a few miles from Placerville, they met
+a large delegation of the citizens of Placerville, who had come out
+to meet the celebrated editor, and escort him into town. There was
+a military company, a brass band, and a six-horse wagon-load of
+beautiful damsels in milk-white dresses, representing all the
+States in the Union. It was nearly dark now, but the delegation was
+amply provided with torches, and bonfires blazed all along the road
+to Placerville.</p>
+<p>The citizens met the coach in the outskirts of Mud Springs, and
+Mr. Monk reined in his foam-covered steeds.</p>
+<p>"Is Mr. Greeley on board?" asked the chairman of the
+committee.</p>
+<p>"<i>He was, a few miles back</i>!" said Mr. Monk. "Yes," he
+added, looking down through the hole which the fearful jolting had
+made in the coach-roof, "Yes, I can see him! He is there!"</p>
+<p>"Mr. Greeley," said the chairman of the committee, presenting
+himself at the window of the coach, "Mr. Greeley, sir! We are come
+to most cordially welcome you, sir!--Why, God bless me, sir, you
+are bleeding at the nose!"</p>
+<p>"I've got my orders!" cried Mr. Monk. "My orders is as follows:
+Git him there by seving! It wants a quarter to seving. Stand out of
+the way!"</p>
+<p>"But, sir," exclaimed the committee-man, seizing the off-leader
+by the reins, "Mr. Monk, we are come to escort him into town! Look
+at the procession, sir, and the brass-band, and the people, and the
+young women, sir!"</p>
+<p>"<i>I've got my orders</i>!" screamed Mr. Monk. "My orders don't
+say nothin' about no brass bands and young women. My orders says,
+'Git him there by seving.' Let go them lines! Clear the way there!
+Whoo-ep! Keep your seat, Horace!" and the coach dashed wildly
+through the procession, upsetting a portion of the brass band, and
+violently grazing the wagon which contained the beautiful young
+women in white.</p>
+<p>Years hence, gray-haired men who were little boys in this
+procession will tell their grandchildren how this stage tore
+through Mud Springs, and how Horace Greeley's bald head ever and
+anon showed itself like a wild apparition above the coach-roof.</p>
+<p>Mr. Monk was on time. There is a tradition that Mr. Greeley was
+very indignant for a while: then he laughed and finally presented
+Mr. Monk with a brand-new suit of clothes. Mr. Monk himself is
+still in the employ of the California Stage Company, and is rather
+fond of relating a story that has made him famous all over the
+Pacific coast. But he says he yields to no man in his admiration
+for Horace Greeley.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="THOMAS_BROWNE"></a>
+<h2>SIR THOMAS BROWNE</h2>
+<h3>(1605-1682)</h3>
+<center>BY FRANCIS BACON</center>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-w.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>hen Sir Thomas Browne, in the last decade of his life, was asked
+to furnish data for the writing of his memoirs in Wood's
+'Athen&aelig; Oxonienses,' he gave in a letter to his friend Mr.
+Aubrey in the fewest words his birthplace and the places of his
+education, his admission as "Socius Honorarius of the College of
+Physitians in London," the date of his being knighted, and the
+titles of the four books or tracts which he had printed; and ended
+with "Have some miscellaneous tracts which may be published."</p>
+<p>This account of himself, curter than many an epitaph, and
+scantier in details than the requirements of a census-taker's
+blank, may serve, with many other signs that one finds scattered
+among the pages of this author, to show his rare modesty and
+effacement of his physical self. He seems, like some other
+thoughtful and sensitive natures before and since, averse or at
+least indifferent to being put on record as an eating, digesting,
+sleeping, and clothes-wearing animal, of that species of which his
+contemporary Sir Samuel Pepys stands as the classical instance, and
+which the newspaper interviewer of our own day--that "fellow who
+would vulgarize the Day of Judgment"--has trained to the most
+noxious degree of offensiveness.</p>
+<p class="rgt"><img src="images/browne_t.jpg" width="45%" alt=
+""><br>
+<b>Sir Thomas Browne</b></p>
+<p>Sir Thomas felt, undoubtedly, that having admitted that select
+company--"fit audience though few"--who are students of the
+'Religio Medici' to a close intimacy with his highest mental
+processes and conditions, his "separable accidents," affairs of
+assimilation and secretion as one may say, were business between
+himself and his grocer and tailor, his cook and his laundress.</p>
+<p>The industrious research of Mr. Simon Wilkin, who in 1836
+produced the completest edition (William Pickering, London) of the
+literary remains of Sir Thomas Browne, has gathered from all
+sources--his own note-books, domestic and friendly correspondence,
+allusions of contemporary writers and the works of subsequent
+biographers--all that we are likely, this side of Paradise, to know
+of this great scholar and admirable man.</p>
+<p>The main facts of his life are as follows. He was born in the
+Parish of St. Michael's Cheap, in London, on the 19th of October,
+1605 (the year of the Gunpowder Plot). His father, as is
+apologetically admitted by a granddaughter, Mrs. Littleton, "was a
+tradesman, a mercer, though a gentleman of a good family in
+Cheshire" (<i>generosa familia</i>, says Sir Thomas's own epitaph).
+That he was the parent of his son's temperament, a devout man with
+a leaning toward mysticism in religion, is shown by the charming
+story Mrs. Littleton tells of him, exhibiting traits worthy of the
+best ages of faith, and more to be expected in the father of a
+medi&aelig;val saint than in a prosperous Cheapside mercer, whose
+son was to be one of the most learned and philosophical physicians
+of the age of Harvey and Sydenham:--"His father used to open his
+breast when he was asleep and kiss it in prayers over him, as 'tis
+said of Origen's father, that the Holy Ghost would take possession
+there." Clearly, it was with reverent memory of this good man that
+Sir Thomas, near the close of his own long life, wrote:--"Among thy
+multiplied acknowledgments, lift up one hand unto heaven that thou
+wert born of honest parents; that modesty, humility, patience, and
+veracity lay in the same egg and came into the world with
+thee."</p>
+<p>This loving father, of whom one would fain know more, died in
+the early childhood of his son Thomas. He left a handsome estate of
+&pound;9,000, and a widow not wholly inconsolable with her third
+portion and a not unduly deferred second marriage to a titled
+gentleman, Sir Thomas Button,--a knight so scantily and at the same
+time so variously described, as "a worthy person who had great
+places," and "a bad member" of "mutinous and unworthy carriage,"
+that one is content to leave him as a problematical character.</p>
+<p>The boy Thomas Browne being left to the care of guardians, his
+estate was despoiled, though to what extent does not appear; nor
+can it be considered greatly deplorable, since it did not prevent
+his early schooling at that ancient and noble foundation of
+Winchester, nor in 1623 his entrance into Pembroke College, Oxford,
+and in due course his graduation in 1626 as bachelor of arts. With
+what special assistance or direction he began his studies in
+medical science, cannot now be ascertained; but after taking his
+degree of master of arts in 1629, he practiced physic for about two
+years in some uncertain place in Oxfordshire. He then began a
+course of travel, unusually extensive for that day. His stepfather
+upon occasion of his official duties under the government "shewed
+him all Ireland in some visitation of the forts and castles." It is
+improbable that Ireland at that time long detained a traveler
+essentially literary in his tastes. Browne betook himself to France
+and Italy, where he appears to have spent about two years, residing
+at Montpellier and Padua, then great centres of medical learning,
+with students drawn from most parts of Christendom. Returning
+homeward through Holland, he received the degree of doctor of
+medicine from the University of Leyden in 1633, and settled in
+practice at Halifax, England.</p>
+<p>At this time--favored probably by the leisure which largely
+attends the beginning of a medical career, but which is rarely so
+laudably or productively employed,--he wrote the treatise 'Religio
+Medici,' which more than any other of his works has established his
+fame and won the affectionate admiration of thoughtful readers.
+This production was not printed until seven years later, although
+some unauthorized manuscript copies, more or less faulty, were in
+circulation. When in 1642 "it arrived in a most depraved copy at
+the press," Browne felt it necessary to vindicate himself by
+publishing a correct edition, although, he protests, its original
+"intention was not publick: and being a private exercise directed
+to myself, what is delivered therein was rather a memorial unto me
+than an example or rule unto any other."</p>
+<p>In 1636 he removed to Norwich and permanently established
+himself there in the practice of physic. There in 1641 he married
+Dorothy Mileham, a lady of good family in Norfolk; thereby not only
+improving his social connections, but securing a wife "of such
+symmetrical proportion to her worthy husband both in the graces of
+her body and mind, that they seemed to come together by a kind of
+natural magnetism." Such at least was the view of an intimate
+friend of more than forty years, Rev. John Whitefoot, in the
+'Minutes' which, at the request of the widow, he drew up after Sir
+Thomas's death, and which contain the most that is known of his
+personal appearance and manners. Evidently the marriage was a happy
+one for forty-one years, when the Lady Dorothy was left
+<i>m&aelig;stissima conjux</i>, as her husband's stately epitaph,
+rich with many an <i>issimus</i>, declares. Twelve children were
+born of it; and though only four of them survived their parents,
+such mortality in carefully tended and well-circumstanced families
+was less remarkable than it would be now, when two centuries more
+of progress in medical science have added security and length to
+human life.</p>
+<p>The good mother--had she not endeared herself to the modern
+reader by the affectionate gentleness and the quaint glimpses of
+domestic life that her family letters reveal--would be irresistible
+by the ingeniously bad spelling in which she reveled, transgressing
+even the wide limits then allowed to feminine heterography.</p>
+<p>It is noteworthy that Dr. Browne's professional prosperity was
+not impaired by the suspicion which early attached to him, and soon
+deepened into conviction, that he was addicted to literary
+pursuits. He was in high repute as a physician. His practice was
+extensive, and he was diligent in it, as also in those works of
+literature and scientific investigation which occupied all
+"snatches of time," he says, "as medical vacations and the
+fruitless importunity of uroscopy would permit." His large family
+was liberally reared; his hospitality and his charities were
+ample.</p>
+<p>In 1646 he printed his second book, the largest and most operose
+of all his productions: the 'Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Inquiries
+into Vulgar and Common Errors' the work evidently of the
+<i>hor&aelig; subseciv&aelig;</i> of many years. In 1658 he gave to
+the public two smaller but important and most characteristic works,
+'Hydriotaphia' and 'The Garden of Cyrus.' Beside these publications
+he left many manuscripts which appeared posthumously; the most
+important of them, for its size and general interest, being
+'Christian Morals.'</p>
+<p>When Sir Thomas's long life drew to its close, it was with all
+the blessings "which should accompany old age." His domestic life
+had been one of felicity. His eldest and only surviving son, Edward
+Browne, had become a scholar after his father's own heart; and
+though not inheriting his genius, was already renowned in London,
+one of the physicians to the King, and in a way to become, as
+afterward he did, President of the College of Physicians. All his
+daughters who had attained womanhood had been well married. He
+lived in the society of the honorable and learned, and had received
+from the King the honor of knighthood<a name=
+"FNanchor1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1">[1]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a>
+As for this business of the knighting, one hesitates fully to adopt
+Dr. Johnson's remark that Charles II. "had skill to discover
+excellence and virtue to reward it, at least with such honorary
+distinctions as cost him nothing." A candid observer of the walk
+and conversation of this illustrious monarch finds room for doubt
+that he was an attentive reader or consistent admirer of the
+'Religio Medici,' or 'Christian Morals'; and though his own
+personal history might have contributed much to a complete
+catalogue of Vulgar Errors, Browne's treatise so named did not
+include divagations from common decency in its scope, and so may
+have failed to impress the royal mind. The fact is that the King on
+his visit to Norwich, looking about for somebody to knight,
+intended, as usual on such occasions, to confer the title on the
+mayor of the city; but this functionary,--some brewer or grocer
+perhaps, of whom nothing else than this incident is
+recorded,--declined the honor, whereupon the gap was stopped with
+Dr. Browne.</blockquote>
+<p>Mr. John Evelyn, carrying out a long and cherished plan of
+seeing one whom he had known and admired by his writings, visited
+him at Norwich in 1671. He found Sir Thomas among fit surroundings,
+"his whole house and garden being a paradise and cabinet of
+rarities, and that of the best collections, especially medails,
+books, plants, and natural things<a name="FNanchor2"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_2">[2]</a>." Here we have the right background and
+accessories for Whitefoot's portrait of the central figure:--</p>
+<blockquote>"His complexion and hair ... answerable to his name,
+his stature moderate, and habit of body neither fat nor lean but
+[Greek: eusarkos;] ... never seen to be transported with mirth or
+dejected with sadness; always cheerful, but rarely merry at any
+sensible rate; seldom heard to break a jest, and when he did, ...
+apt to blush at the levity of it: his gravity was natural without
+affectation. His modesty ... visible in a natural habitual blush,
+which was increased upon the least occasion, and oft discovered
+without any observable cause.... So free from loquacity or much
+talkativeness, that he was something difficult to be engaged in any
+discourse; though when he was so, it was always singular and never
+trite or vulgar."</blockquote>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor2">[2]</a>
+These two distinguished authors were of congenial tastes, and both
+cultivated the same Latinistic literary diction. Their meeting must
+have occasioned a copious effusion of those "long-tailed words in
+osity and ation" which both had so readily at command or made to
+order. It is regrettable that Evelyn never completed a work
+entitled 'Elysium Brittannicum' which he planned, and to which
+Browne contributed a chapter 'Of Coronary Plants.' It would have
+taken rank with its author's 'Sylva' among English
+classics.</blockquote>
+<p>A man of character so lofty and self-contained might be expected
+to leave a life so long, honorable, and beneficent with becoming
+dignity. Sir Thomas's last sickness, a brief but very painful one,
+was "endured with exemplary patience founded upon the Christian
+philosophy," and "with a meek, rational, and religious courage,"
+much to the edification of his friend Whitefoot. One may see even a
+kind of felicity in his death, falling exactly on the completion of
+his seventy-seventh year.</p>
+<p>He was buried in the church of St. Peter Mancroft, where his
+monument still claims regard as chief among the <i>memorabilia</i>
+of that noble sanctuary<a name="FNanchor3"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_3">[3]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor3">[3]</a>
+In the course of repairs, "in August, 1840, his coffin was broken
+open by a pickaxe; the bones were found in good preservation, the
+fine auburn hair had not lost its freshness." It is painful to
+relate that the cranium was removed and placed in the pathological
+museum of the Norwich Hospital, labeled as "the gift of" some
+person (name not recalled), whose own cranium is probably an object
+of interest solely to its present proprietor. "Who knows the fate
+of his own bones? ... We insult not over their ashes," says Sir
+Thomas. The curator of the museum feels that he has a clever joke
+on the dead man, when with a grin he points to a label bearing
+these words from the 'Hydriotaphia':--"To be knaved out of our
+graves, to have our skulls made drinking-bowls, and our bones
+turned into pipes to delight and sport our enemies, are tragical
+abominations escaped in burning burials."</blockquote>
+<p>At the first appearance of Browne's several publications, they
+attracted that attention from the learned and thoughtful which they
+have ever since retained. The 'Religio Medici' was soon translated
+into several modern languages as well as into Latin, and became the
+subject of curiously diverse criticism. The book received the
+distinction of a place in the Roman 'Index Expurgatorius,' while
+from various points of view its author was regarded as a Romanist,
+an atheist, a deist, a pantheist, and as bearing the number 666
+somewhere about him.</p>
+<p>A worthy Quaker, a fellow-townsman, was so impressed by his tone
+of quietistic mysticism that he felt sure the philosophic doctor
+was guided by "the inward light," and wrote, sending a godly book,
+and proposing to clinch his conversion in a personal interview.
+Such are the perils that environ the man who not only repeats a
+creed in sincerity, but ventures to do and to utter his own
+thinking about it.</p>
+<p>From Browne's own day to the present time his critics and
+commentators have been numerous and distinguished; one of the most
+renowned among them being Dr. Johnson, whose life of the author,
+prefixed to an edition of the 'Christian Morals' in 1756, is a fine
+specimen of that facile and effective hack-work of which Johnson
+was master. In that characteristic way of his, half of patronage,
+half of reproof, and wholly pedagogical, he summons his subject to
+the bar of his dialectics, and according to his lights administers
+justice. He admits that Browne has "great excellencies" and
+"uncommon sentiments," and that his scholarship and science are
+admirable, but strongly condemns his style: "It is vigorous, but
+rugged; it is learned, but pedantic; it is deep, but obscure; it
+strikes, but does not please; it commands, but does not allure; his
+tropes are harsh and his combinations uncouth."</p>
+<p>Behemoth prescribing rules of locomotion to the swan! By how
+much would English letters have been the poorer if Browne had
+learned his art of Johnson!</p>
+<p>Notwithstanding such objurgations, some have supposed that the
+style of Johnson, perhaps without conscious intent, was founded
+upon that of Browne. A tone of oracular authority, an academic
+Latinism sometimes disregarding the limitations of the unlearned
+reader, an elaborate balancing of antitheses in the same
+period,--these are qualities which the two writers have in common.
+But the resemblance, such as it is, is skin-deep. Johnson is a
+polemic by nature, and at his best cogent and triumphant in
+argument. His thought is carefully kept level with the apprehension
+of the ordinary reader, while arrayed in a verbal pomp simulating
+the expression of something weighty and profound. Browne is
+intuitive and ever averse to controversy, feeling, as he
+exquisitely says, that "many have too rashly charged the troops of
+error and remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth. A man may
+be in as just possession of the truth as of a city, and yet be
+forced to surrender." Calmly philosophic, he writes for kindred
+minds, and his concepts satisfying his own intellect, he delivers
+them with as little passion as an &AElig;olian harp answering the
+wind, and lingers not for applause or explanation. His being</p>
+<blockquote>"Those thoughts that wander through
+eternity,"</blockquote>
+<p>he means that we too shall "have a glimpse of incomprehensibles,
+and thoughts of things which thoughts but tenderly touch."</p>
+<p>How grandly he rounds his pregnant paragraphs with phrases which
+for stately and compulsive rhythm, sonorous harmony, and sweetly
+solemn cadences, are almost matchless in English prose, and lack
+only the mechanism of metre to give them the highest rank as
+verse.</p>
+<p>"Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the
+grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor
+omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infancy of his nature;" "When
+personations shall cease, and histrionism of happiness be over;
+when reality shall rule, and all shall be as they shall be
+forever:"--such passages as these, and the whole of the 'Fragment
+on Mummies,' one can scarcely recite without falling into something
+of that chant which the blank verse of Milton and Tennyson seems to
+enforce.</p>
+<p>That the 'Religio Medici' was the work of a gentleman before his
+thirtieth year, not a recluse nor trained in a cloister, but active
+in a calling which keeps closest touch with the passions and
+frailties of humanity, seems to justify his assertion, "I have
+shaken hands with delight [<i>sc.</i> by way of parting] in my warm
+blood and canicular days." So uniformly lofty and dignified is its
+tone, and so austere its morality, that the book might be taken for
+the fruit of those later and sadder years that bring the
+philosophic mind. Its frank confessions and calm analysis of motive
+and action have been compared with Montaigne's: if Montaigne had
+been graduated after a due education in Purgatory, or if his
+pedigree had been remotely crossed with a St. Anthony and he had
+lived to see the <i>fluctus decumanus</i> gathering in the tide of
+Puritanism, the likeness would have been closer.</p>
+<p>"The 'Religio Medici,'" says Coleridge, "is a fine portrait of a
+handsome man in his best clothes." There is truth in the criticism,
+and if there is no color of a sneer in it, it is entirely true. Who
+does not feel, when following Browne into his study or his garden,
+that here is a kind of cloistral retreat from the common places of
+the outside world, that the handsome man is a true gentleman and a
+noble friend, and that his best clothes are his every-day wear?</p>
+<p>This aloofness of Browne's, which holds him apart "in the still
+air of delightful studies," is no affectation; it is an innate
+quality. He thinks his thoughts in his own way, and "the style is
+the man" never more truly than with him. One of his family letters
+mentions the execution of Charles I. as a "horrid murther," and
+another speaks of Cromwell as a usurper; but nowhere in anything
+intended for the public eye is there an indication that he lived in
+the most tumultuous and heroic period of English history. Not a
+word shows that Shakespeare was of the generation just preceding
+his, nor that Milton and George Herbert and Henry Vaughan, numerous
+as are the parallels in their thought and feeling and in his, were
+his contemporaries. Constant and extensive as are his excursions
+into ancient literature, it is rare for him to make any reference
+to writers of his own time.</p>
+<p>Yet with all his delight in antiquity and reverence for the
+great names of former ages, he is keen in the quest for new
+discoveries. His commonplace books abound in ingenious queries and
+minute observations regarding physical facts, conceived in the very
+spirit of our modern school:--"What is the use of dew-claws in
+dogs?" He does not instantly answer, as a schoolboy in this
+Darwinian day would, "To carry out an analogy;" but the mere asking
+of the question sets him ahead of his age. See too his curious
+inquiries into the left-footedness of parrots and left-handedness
+of certain monkeys and squirrels. The epoch-making announcement of
+his fellow-physician Harvey he quickly appreciates at its true
+value: "his piece 'De Circul. Sang.,' which discovery I prefer to
+that of Columbus." And here again a truly surprising suggestion of
+the great results achieved a century and two centuries later by
+Jenner and Pasteur--concerning canine madness, "whether it holdeth
+not better at second than at first hand, so that if a dog bite a
+horse, and that horse a man, the evil proves less considerable." He
+is the first to observe and describe that curious product of the
+decomposition of flesh known to modern chemists as adipocere.</p>
+<p>He is full of eager anticipation of the future. "Join sense unto
+reason," he cries, "and experiment unto speculation, and so give
+life unto embryon truths and verities yet in their chaos.... What
+libraries of new volumes after-times will behold, and in what a new
+world of knowledge the eyes of our posterity may be happy, a few
+ages may joyfully declare."</p>
+<p>But acute and active as our author's perceptions were, they did
+not prevent his sharing the then prevalent theory which assigned to
+the devil, and to witches who were his ministers, an important part
+in the economy of the world. This belief affords so easy a solution
+of some problems otherwise puzzling, that this degenerate age may
+look back with envy upon those who held it in serene and
+comfortable possession.</p>
+<p>It is to be regretted, however, that the eminent Lord Chief
+Justice Hale in 1664, presiding at the trial for witchcraft of two
+women, should have called Dr. Browne, apparently as <i>amicus
+curi&aelig;</i>, to give his view of the fits which were supposed
+to be the work of the witches. He was clearly of the opinion that
+the Devil had even more to do with that case than he has with most
+cases of hysteria; and consequently the witches, it must be said,
+fared no better in Sir Matthew Hale's court than many of their kind
+in various parts of Christendom about the same time. But it would
+be unreasonable for us to hold the ghost of Sir Thomas deeply
+culpable because, while he showed in most matters an exceptionally
+enlightened liberality of opinion and practice, in this one
+particular he declined to deny the scientific dictum of previous
+ages and the popular belief of his own time.</p>
+<p>The mental attitude of reverent belief in its symbolic value, in
+which this devout philosopher contemplated the material world, is
+that of many of those who have since helped most to build the
+structure of Natural Science. The rapturous exclamation of
+Linn&aelig;us, "My God, I think thy thoughts after thee!" comes
+like an antiphonal response by "the man of flowers" to these
+passages in the 'Religio Medici':--"This visible world is but a
+picture of the invisible, wherein, as in a portrait, things are not
+truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some real
+substance in that invisible fabric." "Things are really true as
+they correspond unto God's conception; and have so much verity as
+they hold of conformity unto that intellect, in whose idea they had
+their first determinations."</p>
+<p class="sign"><img src="images/sign-185.jpg" width="60%" alt=
+""></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="BROWNE11"></a>
+<h3>FROM THE 'RELIGIO MEDICI'</h3>
+<br>
+<p>I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of
+an opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not agreeing with me
+in that from which within a few days I should dissent myself. I
+have no genius to disputes in religion, and have often thought it
+wisdom to decline them, especially upon a disadvantage, or when the
+cause of truth might suffer in the weakness of my patronage. Where
+we desire to be informed, 'tis good to contest with men above
+ourselves; but to confirm and establish our opinions, 'tis best to
+argue with judgments below our own, that the frequent spoils and
+victories over their reasons may settle in ourselves an esteem and
+confirmed opinion of our own. Every man is not a proper champion
+for truth, nor fit to take up the gauntlet in the cause of verity:
+many from the ignorance of these maxims, and an inconsiderate zeal
+for truth, have too rashly charged the troops of error, and remain
+as trophies unto the enemies of truth. A man may be in as just
+possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender;
+'tis therefore far better to enjoy her with peace, than to hazard
+her on a battle: if therefore there rise any doubts in my way, I do
+forget them, or at least defer them, till my better settled
+judgment and more manly reason be able to resolve them; for I
+perceive every man's own reason is his best Oedipus, and will, upon
+a reasonable truce, find a way to loose those bonds wherewith the
+subtleties of error have enchained our more flexible and tender
+judgments. In philosophy, where truth seems double-faced, there is
+no man more paradoxical than myself: but in divinity I love to keep
+the road; and though not in an implicit, yet an humble faith,
+follow the great wheel of the Church, by which I move, not
+reserving any proper poles or motion from the epicycle of my own
+brain: by these means I leave no gap for heresy, schisms, or
+errors.</p>
+<p>As for those wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties in
+religion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they
+never stretched the <i>pia mater</i> of mine: methinks there be not
+impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith; the deepest
+mysteries ours contains have not only been illustrated, but
+maintained, by syllogism and the rule of reason. I love to lose
+myself in a mystery, to pursue my reason to an <i>O altitudo!</i>
+'Tis my solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those
+involved enigmas and riddles of the Trinity, with Incarnation and
+Resurrection. I can answer all the objections of Satan and my
+rebellious reason with that odd resolution I learned of Tertullian,
+"Certum est quia impossible est." I desire to exercise my faith in
+the difficultest point; for to credit ordinary and visible objects
+is not faith, but persuasion. Some believe the better for seeing
+Christ's sepulchre; and when they have seen the Red Sea, doubt not
+of the miracle. Now contrarily, I bless myself and am thankful that
+I live not in the days of miracles, that I never saw Christ nor his
+disciples; I would not have been one of those Israelites that
+passed the Red Sea, nor one of Christ's patients on whom he wrought
+his wonders: then had my faith been thrust upon me; nor should I
+enjoy that greater blessing pronounced to all that believe and saw
+not. 'Tis an easy and necessary belief, to credit what our eye and
+sense hath examined: I believe he was dead and buried, and rose
+again; and desire to see him in his glory, rather than to
+contemplate him in his cenotaph or sepulchre. Nor is this much to
+believe; as we have reason, we owe this faith unto history: they
+only had the advantage of a bold and noble faith who lived before
+his coming, who upon obscure prophecies and mystical types could
+raise a belief and expect apparent impossibilities.</p>
+<p>In my solitary and retired imagination,</p>
+<blockquote>"Neque enim cum lectulus aut me<br>
+Porticus excepit, desum mihi"--</blockquote>
+<p>I remember I am not alone, and therefore forget not to
+contemplate Him and his attributes who is ever with me, especially
+those two mighty ones, His wisdom and eternity: with the one I
+recreate, with the other I confound my understanding; for who can
+speak of eternity without a solecism, or think thereof without an
+ecstasy? Time we may comprehend: it is but five days older than
+ourselves, and hath the same horoscope with the world; but to
+retire so far back as to apprehend a beginning, to give such an
+infinite start forward as to conceive an end in an essence that we
+affirm hath neither the one nor the other, it puts my reason to St.
+Paul's sanctuary: my philosophy dares not say the angels can do it;
+God hath not made a creature that can comprehend him; it is a
+privilege of his own nature: <i>I am that I am</i>, was his own
+definition unto Moses; and it was a short one, to confound
+mortality, that durst question God or ask him what he was. Indeed
+he only is; all others have and shall be; but in eternity there is
+no distinction of tenses; and therefore that terrible term
+<i>predestination</i>, which hath troubled so many weak heads to
+conceive, and the wisest to explain, is in respect to God no
+prescious determination of our states to come, but a definitive
+blast of his will already fulfilled, and at the instant that he
+first decreed it; for to his eternity, which is indivisible and all
+together, the last trump, is already sounded, the reprobates in the
+flame and the blessed in Abraham's bosom. St. Peter speaks modestly
+when he saith, a thousand years to God are but as one day; for to
+speak like a philosopher, those continued instances of time which
+flow into a thousand years make not to him one moment: what to us
+is to come, to his eternity is present, his whole duration being
+but one permanent point, without succession, parts, flux, or
+division.</p>
+<p>The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but studied and
+contemplated by man; 'tis the debt of our reason we owe unto God,
+and the homage we pay for not being beasts; without this, the world
+is still as though it had not been, or as it was before the sixth
+day, when as yet there was not a creature that could conceive or
+say there was a world. The wisdom of God receives small honor from
+those vulgar heads that rudely stare about, and with a gross
+rusticity admire his works: those highly magnify him whose
+judicious inquiry into his acts, and deliberate research into his
+creatures, return the duty of a devout and learned admiration.</p>
+<p>"Natura nihil agit frustra," is the only indisputable axiom in
+philosophy; there are no grotesques in nature; not anything framed
+to fill up empty cantons and unnecessary spaces: in the most
+imperfect creatures, and such as were not preserved in the ark,
+but, having their seeds and principles in the womb of nature, are
+everywhere where the power of the sun is--in these is the wisdom of
+His hand discovered; out of this rank Solomon chose the object of
+his admiration; indeed, what reason may not go to school to the
+wisdom of bees, ants, and spiders? what wise hand teacheth them to
+do what reason cannot teach us? Ruder heads stand amazed at those
+prodigious pieces of nature--whales, elephants, dromedaries, and
+camels; these, I confess, are the colossi and majestic pieces of
+her hand: but in these narrow engines there is more curious
+mathematics; and the civility of these little citizens more neatly
+sets forth the wisdom of their Maker. Who admires not
+Regio-Montanus his fly beyond his eagle, or wonders not more at the
+operation of two souls in those little bodies, than but one in the
+trunk of a cedar? I could never content my contemplation with those
+general pieces of wonder, the flux and reflux of the sea, the
+increase of the Nile, the conversion of the needle to the north;
+and have studied to match and parallel those in the more obvious
+and neglected pieces of nature, which without further travel I can
+do in the cosmography of myself: we carry with us the wonders we
+seek without us; there is all Africa and her prodigies in us; we
+are that bold and adventurous piece of nature which he that studies
+wisely learns in a compendium, what others labor at in a divided
+piece and endless volume.</p>
+<p>Thus there are two books from whence I collect my divinity:
+besides that written one of God, another of his servant nature,
+that universal and public manuscript that lies expansed unto the
+eyes of all; those that never saw him in the one have discovered
+him in the other. This was the Scripture and Theology of the
+heathens: the natural motion of the sun made them more admire him
+than its supernatural station did the children of Israel; the
+ordinary effect of nature wrought more admiration in them than in
+the other all his miracles: surely the heathens knew better how to
+join and read these mystical letters than we Christians, who cast a
+more careless eye on these common hieroglyphics and disdain to suck
+divinity from the flowers of nature. Nor do I so forget God as to
+adore the name of nature; which I define not, with the schools, to
+be the principle of motion and rest, but that straight and regular
+line, that settled and constant course the wisdom of God hath
+ordained the actions of his creatures, according to their several
+kinds. To make a revolution every day is the nature of the sun,
+because of that necessary course which God hath ordained it, from
+which it cannot swerve but by a faculty from that voice which first
+did give it motion. Now this course of nature God seldom alters or
+perverts, but, like an excellent artist, hath so contrived his work
+that with the selfsame instrument, without a new creation, he may
+effect his obscurest designs. Thus he sweeteneth the water with a
+wood, preserveth the creatures in the ark, which the blast of his
+mouth might have as easily created; for God is like a skillful
+geometrician, who when more easily, and with one stroke of his
+compass, he might describe or divide a right line, had yet rather
+to do this in a circle or longer way, according to the constituted
+and forelaid principles of his art: yet this rule of his he doth
+sometimes pervert to acquaint the world with his prerogative, lest
+the arrogancy of our reason should question his power and conclude
+he could not. And thus I call the effects of nature the works of
+God, whose hand and instrument she only is; and therefore to
+ascribe his actions unto her is to devolve the honor of the
+principal agent upon the instrument; which if with reason we may
+do, then let our hammers rise up and boast they have built our
+houses, and our pens receive the honor of our writing. I hold there
+is a general beauty in the works of God, and therefore no deformity
+in any kind of species whatsoever: I cannot tell by what logic we
+call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly, they being created in
+those outward shapes and figures which best express those actions
+of their inward forms. And having passed that general visitation of
+God, who saw that all that he had made was good, that is,
+conformable to his will, which abhors deformity, and is the rule of
+order and beauty: there is no deformity but in monstrosity, wherein
+notwithstanding there is a kind of beauty, nature so ingeniously
+contriving the irregular parts that they become sometimes more
+remarkable than the principal fabric. To speak yet more narrowly,
+there was never anything ugly or misshapen but the chaos; wherein,
+notwithstanding, to speak strictly, there was no deformity, because
+no form, nor was it yet impregnate by the voice of God; now nature
+is not at variance with art, nor art with nature, they being both
+servants of his providence: art is the perfection of nature: were
+the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos;
+nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things
+are artificial; for nature is the art of God.</p>
+<p>I have heard some with deep sighs lament the lost lines of
+Cicero; others with as many groans deplore the combustion of the
+library of Alexandria; for my own part, I think there be too many
+in the world, and could with patience behold the urn and ashes of
+the Vatican, could I, with a few others, recover the perished
+leaves of Solomon. I would not omit a copy of Enoch's Pillars had
+they many nearer authors than Josephus, or did not relish somewhat
+of the fable. Some men have written more than others have spoken:
+Pineda quotes more authors in one work than are necessary in a
+whole world. Of those three great inventions in Germany, there are
+two which are not without their incommodities. It is not a
+melancholy <i>utinam</i> of my own, but the desires of better
+heads, that there were a general synod; not to unite the
+incompatible difference of religion, but for the benefit of
+learning, to reduce it, as it lay at first, in a few and solid
+authors; and to condemn to the fire those swarms and millions of
+rhapsodies begotten only to distract and abuse the weaker judgments
+of scholars, and to maintain the trade and mystery of
+typographers.</p>
+<p>Again, I believe that all that use sorceries, incantations, and
+spells are not witches, or, as we term them, magicians. I conceive
+there is a traditional magic not learned immediately from the
+Devil, but at second hand from his scholars, who, having once the
+secret betrayed, are able, and do empirically practice without his
+advice, they both proceeding upon the principles of nature; where
+actives aptly conjoined to disposed passives will under any master
+produce their effects. Thus, I think at first a great part of
+philosophy was witchcraft, which being afterward derived to one
+another, proved but philosophy, and was indeed no more but the
+honest effects of nature: what invented by us is philosophy,
+learned from him is magic. We do surely owe the discovery of many
+secrets to the discovery of good and bad angels. I could never pass
+that sentence of Paracelsus without an asterisk or annotation:
+"Ascendens astrum multa revelat qu&aelig;rentibus magnalia
+natur&aelig;, i.e., opera Dei." I do think that many mysteries
+ascribed to our own inventions have been the courteous revelations
+of spirits,--for those noble essences in heaven bear a friendly
+regard unto their fellow natures on earth; and therefore believe
+that those many prodigies and ominous prognostics which forerun the
+ruins of States, princes, and private persons are the charitable
+premonitions of good angels, which more careless inquiries term but
+the effects of chance and nature.</p>
+<p>Now, besides these particular and divided spirits there may be
+(for aught I know) an universal and common spirit to the whole
+world. It was the opinion of Plato, and it is yet of the Hermetical
+philosophers: if there be a common nature that unites and ties the
+scattered and divided individuals into one species, why may there
+not be one that unites them all? However, I am sure there is a
+common spirit that plays within us, yet makes no part of us: and
+that is the Spirit of God, the fire and scintillation of that noble
+and mighty essence which is the life and radical heat of spirits
+and those essences that know not the virtue of the sun; a fire
+quite contrary to the fire of hell: this is that gentle heat that
+brooded on the waters, and in six days hatched the world; this is
+that irradiation that dispels the mists of hell, the clouds of
+horror, fear, sorrow, despair; and preserves the region of the mind
+in serenity: whosoever feels not the warm gale and gentle
+ventilation of this spirit (though I feel his pulse) I dare not say
+he lives; for truly without this, to me there is no heat under the
+tropic; nor any light, though I dwelt in the body of the sun.</p>
+<p>I believe that the whole frame of a beast doth perish, and is
+left in the same state after death as before it was materialled
+unto life: that the souls of men know neither contrary nor
+corruption; that they subsist beyond the body, and outlive death by
+the privilege of their proper natures, and without a miracle; that
+the souls of the faithful, as they leave earth, take possession of
+heaven: that those apparitions and ghosts of departed persons are
+not the wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks of devils,
+prompting and suggesting us into mischief, blood, and villainy;
+instilling and stealing into our hearts that the blessed spirits
+are not at rest in their graves, but wander solicitous of the
+affairs of the world: but that those phantasms appear often, and do
+frequent cemeteries, charnel-houses, and churches, it is because
+those are the dormitories of the dead, where the Devil, like an
+insolent champion, beholds with pride the spoils and trophies of
+his victory in Adam.</p>
+<p>This is that dismal conquest we all deplore, that makes us so
+often cry, "Adam, quid fecisti?" I thank God I have not those
+strait ligaments, or narrow obligations to the world, as to dote on
+life, or be convulsed and tremble at the name of death: not that I
+am insensible of the dread and horror thereof; or by raking into
+the bowels of the deceased, continual sight of anatomies,
+skeletons, or cadaverous reliques, like vespilloes or grave-makers,
+I am become stupid or have forgot the apprehension of mortality;
+but that marshaling all the horrors, and contemplating the
+extremities thereof, I find not anything therein able to daunt the
+courage of a man, much less a well-resolved Christian; and
+therefore am not angry at the error of our first parents, or
+unwilling to bear a part of this common fate, and like the best of
+them to die--that is, to cease to breathe, to take a farewell of
+the elements, to be a kind of nothing for a moment, to be within
+one instant of a spirit. When I take a full view and circle of
+myself without this reasonable moderator and equal piece of
+justice, Death, I do conceive myself the miserablest person extant:
+were there not another life that I hope for, all the vanities of
+this world should not entreat a moment's breath from me; could the
+Devil work my belief to imagine I could never die, I would not
+outlive that very thought. I have so abject a conceit of this
+common way of existence, this retaining to the sun and elements, I
+cannot think this to be a man, or to live according to the dignity
+of humanity. In expectation of a better, I can with patience
+embrace this life, yet in my best meditations do often defy death:
+I honor any man that contemns it, nor can I highly love any that is
+afraid of it: this makes me naturally love a soldier, and honor
+those tattered and contemptible regiments that will die at the
+command of a sergeant. For a pagan there may be some motives to be
+in love with life; but for a Christian to be amazed at death, I see
+not how he can escape this dilemma--that he is too sensible of this
+life, or hopeless of the life to come.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>I am naturally bashful; nor hath conversation, age, or travel
+been able to effront or enharden me: yet I have one part of modesty
+which I have seldom discovered in another, that is (to speak truly)
+I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof: 'tis the very
+disgrace and ignominy of our natures that in a moment can so
+disfigure us that our nearest friends, wife, and children, stand
+afraid and start at us. The birds and beasts of the field, that
+before in a natural fear obeyed us, forgetting all allegiance,
+begin to prey upon us. This very conceit hath in a tempest disposed
+and left me willing to be swallowed up in the abyss of waters,
+wherein I had perished unseen, unpitied, without wondering eyes,
+tears of pity, lectures of mortality, and none had said, "Quantum
+mutatus ab illo!" Not that I am ashamed of the anatomy of my parts,
+or can accuse nature for playing the bungler in any part of me, or
+my own vicious life for contracting any shameful disease upon me,
+whereby I might not call myself as wholesome a morsel for the worms
+as any.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Men commonly set forth the torments of hell by fire and the
+extremity of corporal afflictions, and describe hell in the same
+method that Mahomet doth heaven. This indeed makes a noise, and
+drums in popular ears: but if this be the terrible piece thereof,
+it is not worthy to stand in diameter with heaven, whose happiness
+consists in that part that is best able to comprehend it--that
+immortal essence, that translated divinity and colony of God, the
+soul. Surely, though we place hell under earth, the Devil's walk
+and purlieu is about it; men speak too popularly who place it in
+those flaming mountains which to grosser apprehensions represent
+hell. The heart of man is the place the Devil dwells in: I feel
+sometimes a hell within myself; Lucifer keeps his court in my
+breast; Legion is revived in me. There are as many hells as
+Anaxarchus conceited worlds: there was more than one hell in
+Magdalen, when there were seven devils, for every devil is an hell
+unto himself; he holds enough of torture in his own <i>ubi</i>, and
+needs not the misery of circumference to afflict him; and thus a
+distracted conscience here is a shadow or introduction unto hell
+hereafter. Who can but pity the merciful intention of those hands
+that do destroy themselves? the Devil, were it in his power, would
+do the like; which being impossible, his miseries are endless, and
+he suffers most in that attribute wherein he is impassible, his
+immortality.</p>
+<p>I thank God, and with joy I mention it, I was never afraid of
+hell, nor never grew pale at the description of that place; I have
+so fixed my contemplations on heaven, that I have almost forgot the
+idea of hell, and am afraid rather to lose the joys of the one than
+endure the misery of the other: to be deprived of them is a perfect
+hell, and needs, methinks, no addition to complete our afflictions.
+That terrible term hath never detained me from sin, nor do I owe
+any good action to the name thereof. I fear God, yet am not afraid
+of him; his mercies make me ashamed of my sins, before his
+judgments afraid thereof; these are the forced and secondary method
+of his wisdom, which he useth but as the last remedy, and upon
+provocation: a course rather to deter the wicked than incite the
+virtuous to his worship. I can hardly think there was ever any
+scared into heaven; they go the fairest way to heaven that would
+serve God without a hell; other mercenaries, that crouch unto him
+in fear of hell, though they term themselves the servants, are
+indeed but the slaves of the Almighty.</p>
+<p>That which is the cause of my election I hold to be the cause of
+my salvation, which was the mercy and <i>beneplacit</i> of God,
+before I was, or the foundation of the world. "Before Abraham was,
+I am," is the saying of Christ; yet is it true in some sense, if I
+say it of myself; for I was not only before myself, but Adam--that
+is, in the idea of God, and the decree of that synod held from all
+eternity: and in this sense, I say, the world was before the
+creation, and at an end before it had a beginning; and thus was I
+dead before I was alive; though my grave be England, my dying place
+was Paradise; and Eve miscarried of me before she conceived of
+Cain.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Now for that other virtue of charity, without which faith is a
+mere notion and of no existence, I have ever endeavored to nourish
+the merciful disposition and humane inclination I borrowed from my
+parents, and regulate it to the written and prescribed laws of
+charity: and if I hold the true anatomy of myself, I am delineated
+and naturally framed to such a piece of virtue; for I am of a
+constitution so general that it consorts and sympathizeth with all
+things: I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy, in diet,
+humor, air, anything. I wonder not at the French for their dishes
+of frogs, snails, and toadstools; nor at the Jews for locusts and
+grasshoppers; but being amongst them, make them my common viands,
+and I find they agree with my stomach as well as theirs. I could
+digest a salad gathered in a churchyard as well as in a garden. I
+cannot start at the presence of a serpent, scorpion, lizard, or
+salamander: at the sight of a toad or viper I find in me no desire
+to take up a stone to destroy them. I feel not in myself those
+common antipathies that I can discover in others; those national
+repugnances do not touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the
+French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch: but where I find their actions
+in balance with my countrymen's, I honor, love, and embrace them in
+the same degree. I was born in the eighth climate, but seem for to
+be framed and constellated unto all: I am no plant that will not
+prosper out of a garden; all places, all airs, make unto me one
+country; I am in England, everywhere, and under any meridian; I
+have been shipwrecked, yet am not enemy with the sea or winds; I
+can study, play or sleep in a tempest. In brief, I am averse from
+nothing: my conscience would give me the lie if I should absolutely
+detest or hate any essence but the Devil; or so at least abhor
+anything but that we might come to composition. If there be any
+among those common objects of hatred I do contemn and laugh at, it
+is that great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion--the multitude:
+that numerous piece of monstrosity which, taken asunder, seem men
+and the reasonable creatures of God, but confused together, make
+but one great beast and a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra:
+it is no breach of charity to call these fools; it is the style all
+holy writers have afforded them, set down by Solomon in canonical
+Scripture, and a point of our faith to believe so. Neither in the
+name of multitude do I only include the base and minor sort of
+people: there is a rabble even amongst the gentry, a sort of
+plebeian heads, whose fancy moves with the same wheel as these; men
+in the same level with mechanics, though their fortunes do somewhat
+gild their infirmities, and their purses compound for their
+follies.</p>
+<p>I must give no alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to
+fulfill and accomplish the will and command of my God: I draw not
+my purse for his sake that demands it, but His that enjoined it; I
+believe no man upon the rhetoric of his miseries, nor to content
+mine own commiserating disposition; for this is still but moral
+charity, and an act that oweth more to passion than reason. He that
+relieves another upon the bare suggestion and bowels of pity doth
+not this so much for his sake as for his own; for by compassion we
+make others' misery our own, and so, by relieving them, we relieve
+ourselves also. It is as erroneous a conceit to redress other men's
+misfortunes upon the common considerations of merciful natures,
+that it may be one day our own case; for this is a sinister and
+politic kind of charity, whereby we seem to bespeak the pities of
+men in the like occasions. And truly I have observed that those
+professed eleemosynaries, though in a crowd or multitude, do yet
+direct and place their petitions on a few and selected persons:
+there is surely a physiognomy which those experienced and master
+mendicants observe, whereby they instantly discover a merciful
+aspect, and will single out a face wherein they spy the signatures
+and marks of mercy. For there are mystically in our faces certain
+characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he
+that cannot read ABC may read our natures. I hold moreover that
+there is a phytognomy, or physiognomy, not only of men, but of
+plants and vegetables; and in every one of them some outward
+figures which hang as signs or bushes of their inward forms. The
+finger of God hath left an inscription upon all his works, not
+graphical or composed of letters, but of their several forms,
+constitutions, parts and operations, which, aptly joined together,
+do make one word that doth express their natures. By these letters
+God calls the stars by their names; and by this alphabet Adam
+assigned to every creature a name peculiar to its nature. Now there
+are, besides these characters in our faces, certain mystical
+figures in our hands, which I dare not call mere dashes, strokes
+<i>&agrave; la vol&eacute;e</i>, or at random, because delineated
+by a pencil that never works in vain; and hereof I take more
+particular notice, because I carry that in mine own hand which I
+could never read of or discover in another. Aristotle, I confess,
+in his acute and singular book of physiognomy, hath made no mention
+of chiromancy; yet I believe the Egyptians, who were nearer
+addicted to those abstruse and mystical sciences, had a knowledge
+therein, to which those vagabond and counterfeit Egyptians did
+after pretend, and perhaps retained a few corrupted principles
+which sometimes might verify their prognostics.</p>
+<p>It is the common wonder of all men, how, among so many millions
+of faces, there should be none alike. Now, contrary, I wonder as
+much how there should be any: he that shall consider how many
+thousand several words have been carelessly and without study
+composed out of twenty-four letters; withal, how many hundred lines
+there are to be drawn in the fabric of one man, shall easily find
+that this variety is necessary; and it will be very hard that they
+shall so concur as to make one portrait like another. Let a painter
+carelessly limn out a million of faces, and you shall find them all
+different; yea, let him have his copy before him, yet after all his
+art there will remain a sensible distinction; for the pattern or
+example of everything is the perfectest in that kind, whereof we
+still come short, though we transcend or go beyond it, because
+herein it is wide, and agrees not in all points unto its copy. Nor
+doth the similitude of creatures disparage the variety of nature,
+nor any way confound the works of God. For even in things alike
+there is diversity; and those that do seem to accord do manifestly
+disagree. And thus is man like God; for in the same things that we
+resemble him we are utterly different from him. There was never
+anything so like another as in all points to concur; there will
+ever some reserved difference slip in, to prevent the identity,
+without which two several things would not be alike, but the same,
+which is impossible.</p>
+<p>Naturally amorous of all that is beautiful, I can look a whole
+day with delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of an
+horse. It is my temper, and I like it the better, to affect all
+harmony; and sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent
+note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an
+instrument: for there is music wherever there is harmony, order,
+or, proportion: and thus far we may maintain <i>the music of the
+spheres</i>; for those well-ordered motions and regular paces,
+though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding
+they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatsoever is harmonically
+composed, delights in harmony, which makes me much distrust the
+symmetry of those heads which declaim against all church music. For
+myself, not only from my obedience, but my particular genius, I do
+embrace it: for even that vulgar and tavern music, which makes one
+man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion and a
+profound contemplation of the First Composer; there is something in
+it of divinity more than the ear discovers: it is an hieroglyphical
+and shadowed lesson of the whole world and creatures of God; such a
+melody to the ear as the whole world, well understood, would afford
+the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony
+which intellectually sounds in the ears of God. It unties the
+ligaments of my frame, takes me to pieces, dilates me out of
+myself, and by degrees, methinks, resolves me into heaven. I will
+not say, with Plato, the soul is an harmony, but harmonical, and
+hath its nearest sympathy unto music; thus some, whose temper of
+body agrees and humors the constitution of their souls, are born
+poets, though indeed all are naturally inclined unto rhythm.</p>
+<p>There is surely a nearer apprehension of anything that delights
+us in our dreams than in our waked senses: without this, I were
+unhappy; for my awaked judgment discontents me, ever whispering
+unto me that I am from my friend; but my friendly dreams in the
+night requite me, and make me think I am within his arms. I thank
+God for my happy dreams, as I do for my good rest, for there is a
+satisfaction in them unto reasonable desires, and such as can be
+content with a fit of happiness; and surely it is not a melancholy
+conceit to think we are all asleep in this world, and that the
+conceits of this life are as mere dreams to those of the next; as
+the phantasms of the night to the conceits of the day. There is an
+equal delusion in both, and the one doth but seem to be the emblem
+or picture of the other; we are somewhat more than ourselves in our
+sleeps, and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of
+the soul. It is the ligation of sense, but the liberty of reason;
+and our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleeps.
+At my nativity my ascendant was the watery sign of Scorpius; I was
+born in the planetary hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of
+that leaden planet in me. I am no way facetious, nor disposed for
+the mirth and galliardize of company; yet in one dream I can
+compose a whole comedy, behold the action, and apprehend the jests,
+and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof. Were my memory as
+faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study but in
+my dreams, and this time also would I choose for my devotions; but
+our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted
+understandings that they forget the story, and can only relate to
+our awaked souls a confused and broken tale of that that hath
+passed. Aristotle, who hath written a singular tract of sleep, hath
+not, methinks, thoroughly defined it; nor yet Galen, though he seem
+to have corrected it: for those noctambuloes and night-walkers,
+though in their sleep do yet enjoy the action of their senses; we
+must therefore say that there is something in us that is not in the
+jurisdiction of Morpheus; and that those abstracted and ecstatic
+souls do walk about in their own corps, as spirits with the bodies
+they assume, wherein they seem to hear, see, and feel, though
+indeed the organs are destitute of sense, and their natures of
+those faculties that should inform them. Thus it is observed that
+men sometimes, upon the hour of their departure, do speak and
+reason above themselves. For then the soul, beginning to be freed
+from the ligaments of the body, begins to reason like herself, and
+to discourse in a strain above mortality.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNE12"></a>
+<h3>FROM 'CHRISTIAN MORALS'</h3>
+<br>
+<p>When thou lookest upon the imperfections of others, allow one
+eye for what is laudable in them, and the balance they have from
+some excellency, which may render them considerable. While we look
+with fear or hatred upon the teeth of the viper, we may behold his
+eye with love. In venomous natures something may be amiable:
+poisons afford anti-poisons: nothing is totally or altogether
+uselessly bad. Notable virtues are sometimes dashed with notorious
+vices, and in some vicious tempers have been found illustrious acts
+of virtue, which makes such observable worth in some actions of
+King Demetrius, Antonius, and Ahab, as are not to be found in the
+same kind in Aristides, Numa, or David. Constancy, generosity,
+clemency, and liberality have been highly conspicuous in some
+persons not marked out in other concerns for example or imitation.
+But since goodness is exemplary in all, if others have not our
+virtues, let us not be wanting in theirs; nor, scorning them for
+their vices whereof we are free, be condemned by their virtues
+wherein we are deficient. There is dross, alloy, and embasement in
+all human tempers; and he flieth without wings, who thinks to find
+ophir or pure metal in any. For perfection is not, like light,
+centred in any one body; but, like the dispersed seminalities of
+vegetables at the creation, scattered through the whole mass of the
+earth, no place producing all, and almost all some. So that 'tis
+well if a perfect man can be made out of many men, and to the
+perfect eye of God, even out of mankind. Time, which perfects some
+things, imperfects also others. Could we intimately apprehend the
+ideated man, and as he stood in the intellect of God upon the first
+exertion by creation, we might more narrowly comprehend our present
+degeneration, and how widely we are fallen from the pure exemplar
+and idea of our nature: for after this corruptive elongation, from
+a primitive and pure creation we are almost lost in degeneration;
+and Adam hath not only fallen from his Creator, but we ourselves
+from Adam, our Tycho and primary generator.</p>
+<p>If generous honesty, valor, and plain dealing be the cognizance
+of thy family or characteristic of thy country, hold fast such
+inclinations sucked in with thy first breath, and which lay in the
+cradle with thee. Fall not into transforming degenerations, which
+under the old name create a new nation. Be not an alien in thine
+own nation; bring not Orontes into Tiber; learn the virtues, not
+the vices, of thy foreign neighbors, and make thy imitation by
+discretion, not contagion. Feel something of thyself in the noble
+acts of thy ancestors, and find in thine own genius that of thy
+predecessors. Rest not under the expired merits of others; shine by
+those of thine own. Flame not, like the central fire which
+enlighteneth no eyes, which no man seeth, and most men think there
+is no such thing to be seen. Add one ray unto the common lustre;
+add not only to the number, but the note of thy generation; and
+prove not a cloud, but an asterisk in thy region.</p>
+<p>Since thou hast an alarum in thy breast, which tells thee thou
+hast a living spirit in thee above two thousand times in an hour,
+dull not away thy days in slothful supinity and the tediousness of
+doing nothing. To strenuous minds there is an inquietude in
+overquietness and no laboriousness in labor; and to tread a mile
+after the slow pace of a snail, or the heavy measures of the lazy
+of Brazilia, were a most tiring penance, and worse than a race of
+some furlongs at the Olympics. The rapid courses of the heavenly
+bodies are rather imitable by our thoughts than our corporeal
+motions; yet the solemn motions of our lives amount unto a greater
+measure than is commonly apprehended. Some few men have surrounded
+the globe of the earth; yet many, in the set locomotions and
+movements of their days, have measured the circuit of it, and
+twenty thousand miles have been exceeded by them. Move
+circumspectly, not meticulously, and rather carefully solicitous
+than anxiously solicitudinous. Think not there is a lion in the
+way, nor walk with leaden sandals in the paths of goodness; but in
+all virtuous motions let prudence determine thy measures. Strive
+not to run, like Hercules, a furlong in a breath: festination may
+prove precipitation; deliberating delay may be wise cunctation, and
+slowness no slothfulness.</p>
+<p>Despise not the obliquities of younger ways, nor despair of
+better things whereof there is yet no prospect. Who would imagine
+that Diogenes, who in his younger days was a falsifier of money,
+should, in the after course of his life, be so great a contemner of
+metal? Some negroes, who believe the resurrection, think that they
+shall rise white. Even in this life regeneration may imitate
+resurrection; our black and vicious tinctures may wear off, and
+goodness clothe us with candor. Good admonitions knock not always
+in vain. There will be signal examples of God's mercy, and the
+angels must not want their charitable rejoices for the conversion
+of lost sinners. Figures of most angles do nearest approach unto
+circles, which have no angles at all. Some may be near unto
+goodness who are conceived far from it; and many things happen not
+likely to ensue from any promises of antecedencies. Culpable
+beginnings have found commendable conclusions, and infamous courses
+pious retractations. Detestable sinners have proved exemplary
+converts on earth, and may be glorious in the apartment of Mary
+Magdalen in heaven. Men are not the same through all divisions of
+their ages: time, experience, self-reflections, and God's mercies,
+make in some well-tempered minds a kind of translation before
+death, and men to differ from themselves as well as from other
+persons. Hereof the old world afforded many examples to the infamy
+of latter ages, wherein men too often live by the rule of their
+inclinations; so that, without any astral prediction, the first day
+gives the last: men are commonly as they were; or rather, as bad
+dispositions run into worser habits, the evening doth not crown,
+but sourly conclude, the day.</p>
+<p>If the Almighty will not spare us according to his merciful
+capitulation at Sodom; if his goodness please not to pass over a
+great deal of bad for a small pittance of good, or to look upon us
+in the lump, there is slender hope for mercy, or sound presumption
+of fulfilling half his will, either in persons or nations: they who
+excel in some virtues being so often defective in others; few men
+driving at the extent and amplitude of goodness, but computing
+themselves by their best parts, and others by their worst, are
+content to rest in those virtues which others commonly want. Which
+makes this speckled face of honesty in the world; and which was the
+imperfection of the old philosophers and great pretenders unto
+virtue; who, well declining the gaping vices of intemperance,
+incontinency, violence, and oppression, were yet blindly peccant in
+iniquities of closer faces; were envious, malicious, contemners,
+scoffers, censurers, and stuffed with vizard vices, no less
+depraving the ethereal particle and diviner portion of man. For
+envy, malice, hatred, are the qualities of Satan, close and dark
+like himself; and where such brands smoke, the soul cannot be
+white. Vice may be had at all prices; expensive and costly
+iniquities, which make the noise, cannot be every man's sins; but
+the soul may be foully inquinated at a very low rate, and a man may
+be cheaply vicious to the perdition of himself.</p>
+<p>Having been long tossed in the ocean of the world, he will by
+that time feel the in-draught of another, unto which this seems but
+preparatory and without it of no high value. He will experimentally
+find the emptiness of all things, and the nothing of what is past;
+and wisely grounding upon true Christian expectations, finding so
+much past, will wholly fix upon what is to come. He will long for
+perpetuity, and live as though he made haste to be happy. The last
+may prove the prime part of his life, and those his best days which
+he lived nearest heaven.</p>
+<p>Live happy in the Elysium of a virtuously composed mind, and let
+intellectual contents exceed the delights wherein mere pleasurists
+place their paradise. Bear not too slack reins upon pleasure, nor
+let complexion or contagion betray thee unto the exorbitancy of
+delight. Make pleasure thy recreation or intermissive relaxation,
+not thy Diana, life, and profession. Voluptuousness is as
+insatiable as covetousness. Tranquillity is better than jollity,
+and to appease pain than to invent pleasure. Our hard entrance into
+the world, our miserable going out of it, our sicknesses,
+disturbances, and sad rencounters in it, do clamorously tell us we
+came not into the world to run a race of delight, but to perform
+the sober acts and serious purposes of man; which to omit were
+foully to miscarry in the advantage of humanity, to play away an
+uniterable life, and to have lived in vain. Forget not the capital
+end, and frustrate not the opportunity of once living. Dream not of
+any kind of metempsychosis or transanimation, but into thine own
+body, and that after a long time; and then also unto wail or bliss,
+according to thy first and fundamental life. Upon a curricle in
+this world depends a long course of the next, and upon a narrow
+scene here an endless expansion hereafter. In vain some think to
+have an end of their beings with their lives. Things cannot get out
+of their natures, or be, or not be, in despite of their
+constitutions. Rational existences in heaven perish not at all, and
+but partially on earth; that which is thus once, will in some way
+be always; the first living human soul is still alive, and all Adam
+hath found no period.</p>
+<p>Since the stars of heaven do differ in glory; since it hath
+pleased the Almighty hand to honor the north pole with lights above
+the south; since there are some stars so bright that they can
+hardly be looked upon, some so dim that they can scarcely be seen,
+and vast numbers not to be seen at all even by artificial eyes;
+read thou the earth in heaven and things below from above. Look
+contentedly upon the scattered difference of things, and expect not
+equality in lustre, dignity, or perfection, in regions or persons
+below; where numerous numbers must be content to stand like
+lacteous or nebulous stars, little taken notice of, or dim in their
+generations. All which may be contentedly allowable in the affairs
+and ends of this world, and in suspension unto what will be in the
+order of things hereafter, and the new system of mankind which will
+be in the world to come; when the last may be the first, and the
+first the last; when Lazarus may sit above C&aelig;sar, and the
+just, obscure on earth, shall shine like the sun in heaven; when
+personations shall cease, and histrionism of happiness be over;
+when reality shall rule, and all shall be as they shall be
+forever.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNE13"></a>
+<h3>FROM 'HYDRIOTAPHIA, OR URN-BURIAL'</h3>
+<br>
+<p>In the Jewish Hypog&aelig;um and subterranean cell at Rome was
+little observable beside the variety of lamps and frequent draughts
+of the holy candlestick. In authentic draughts of Antony and
+Jerome, we meet with thigh bones and death's-heads; but the
+cemeterial cells of ancient Christians and martyrs were filled with
+draughts of Scripture stories; not declining the flourishes of
+cypress, palms, and olive, and the mystical figures of peacocks,
+doves, and cocks; but literately affecting the portraits of Enoch,
+Lazarus, Jonas, and the vision of Ezekiel, as hopeful draughts and
+hinting imagery of the resurrection--which is the life of the grave
+and sweetens our habitations in the land of moles and pismires.</p>
+<p>The particulars of future beings must needs be dark unto ancient
+theories, which Christian philosophy yet determines but in a cloud
+of opinions. A dialogue between two infants in the womb concerning
+the state of this world, might handsomely illustrate our ignorance
+of the next, whereof methinks we yet discourse in Plato's den, and
+are but embryon philosophers.</p>
+<p>Pythagoras escapes, in the fabulous hell of Dante, among that
+swarm of philosophers, wherein, whilst we meet with Plato and
+Socrates, Cato is to be found in no lower place than Purgatory.
+Among all the set, Epicurus is most considerable, whom men make
+honest without an Elysium, who contemned life without encouragement
+of immortality, and making nothing after death, yet made nothing of
+the king of terrors.</p>
+<p>Were the happiness of the next world as closely apprehended as
+the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live; and unto such
+as consider none hereafter, it must be more than death to die,
+which makes us amazed at those audacities that durst be nothing and
+return into their chaos again. Certainly, such spirits as could
+contemn death, when they expected no better being after, would have
+scorned to live had they known any. And therefore we applaud not
+the judgments of Machiavel that Christianity makes men cowards, or
+that with the confidence of but half dying, the despised virtues of
+patience and humility have abased the spirits of men, which pagan
+principles exalted; but rather regulated the wildness of
+audacities, in the attempts, grounds, and eternal sequels of death,
+wherein men of the boldest spirits are often prodigiously
+temerarious. Nor can we extenuate the valor of ancient martyrs, who
+contemned death in the uncomfortable scene of their lives, and in
+their decrepit martyrdoms did probably lose not many months of
+their days, or parted with life when it was scarce worth the
+living; for (beside that long time past holds no consideration unto
+a slender time to come) they had no small disadvantage from the
+constitution of old age, which naturally makes men fearful, and
+complexionally superannuated from the bold and courageous thoughts
+of youth and fervent years. But the contempt of death from corporal
+animosity promoteth not our felicity. They may sit in the orchestra
+and noblest seats of heaven who have held up shaking hands in the
+fire, and humanly contended for glory.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, Epicurus lies deep in Dante's hell, wherein we meet
+with tombs inclosing souls which denied their immortalities. But
+whether the virtuous heathen, who lived better than he spake, or,
+erring in the principles of himself, yet lived above philosophers
+of more specious maxims, lie so deep as he is placed; at least so
+low as not to rise against Christians who, believing or knowing
+that truth, have lastingly denied it in their practice and
+conversation--were a query too sad to insist on.</p>
+<p>But all or most apprehensions rested in opinions of some future
+being, which, ignorantly or coldly believed, begat those perverted
+conceptions, ceremonies, sayings, which Christians pity or laugh
+at. Happy are they which live not in that disadvantage of time,
+when men could say little for futurity but from reason; whereby the
+noblest minds fell often upon doubtful deaths and melancholy
+dissolutions. With those hopes Socrates warmed his doubtful spirits
+against that cold potion; and Cato, before he durst give the fatal
+stroke, spent part of the night in reading the immortality of
+Plato, thereby confirming his wavering hand unto the animosity of
+that attempt.</p>
+<p>It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to
+tell him he is at the end of his nature; or that there is no
+farther state to come, unto which this seems progressional, and
+otherwise made in vain. Without this accomplishment, the natural
+expectation and desire of such a state were but a fallacy in
+nature. Unsatisfied considerators would quarrel at the justice of
+their constitutions, and rest content that Adam had fallen lower;
+whereby, by knowing no other original, and deeper ignorance of
+themselves, they might have enjoyed the happiness of inferior
+creatures, who in tranquillity possess their constitutions, as
+having not the apprehension to deplore their own natures; and being
+framed below the circumference of these hopes, or cognition of
+better being, the wisdom of God hath necessitated their
+contentment. But the superior ingredient and obscured part of
+ourselves, whereto all present felicities afford no resting
+contentment, will be able at last to tell us we are more than our
+present selves, and evacuate such hopes in the fruition of their
+own accomplishments....</p>
+<p>But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and
+deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of
+perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the pyramids?
+Erostratus lives that burnt the Temple of Diana; he is almost lost
+that built it. Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse,
+confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by
+the advantage of our good names, since bad have equal durations;
+and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon. Who knows
+whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more
+remarkable persons forgot than any that stand remembered in the
+known account of time? Without the favor of the everlasting
+register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and
+Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.</p>
+<p>Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to
+be as though they had not been; to be found in the register of God,
+not in the record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the first
+story, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living
+century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live.
+The night of time far surpasseth the day; and who knows when was
+the equinox? Every hour adds unto that current arithmetic, which
+scarce stands one moment. And since death must be the Lucina of
+life, and even pagans could doubt whether thus to live were to die;
+since our longest sun sets at right declensions, and makes but
+winter arches, and therefore it cannot be long before we lie down
+in darkness, and have our light in ashes<a name=
+"FNanchor4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4">[4]</a>; since the brother of
+death daily haunts us with dying mementos, and time, that grows old
+itself, bids us hope no long duration, diuturnity is a dream and
+folly of expectation.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor4">[4]</a>
+According to the custom of the Jews, who placed a lighted wax
+candle in a pot of ashes by the corpse.</blockquote>
+<p>Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion
+shares with memory a great part even of our living beings. We
+slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of
+affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no
+extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into
+stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities; miseries are
+slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no
+unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful
+of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature, whereby we digest
+the mixture of our few and evil days, and our delivered senses not
+relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw
+by the edge of repetitions. A great part of antiquity contented
+their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration of their souls; a
+good way to continue their memories, while, having the advantage of
+plural successions, they could not but act something remarkable in
+such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their passed
+selves, making accumulation of glory unto their last durations.
+Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing,
+were content to recede into the common being, and make one particle
+of the public soul of all things, which was no more than to return
+into their unknown and divine original again. Egyptian ingenuity
+was more unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in sweet
+consistencies to attend the return of their souls. But all was
+vanity, feeding the wind and folly. The Egyptian mummies, which
+Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is
+become merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for
+balsams....</p>
+<p>There is nothing strictly immortal but immortality. Whatever
+hath no beginning may be confident of no end, which is the peculiar
+of that necessary essence that cannot destroy itself, and the
+highest strain of omnipotency to be so powerfully constituted, as
+not to suffer even from the power of itself. All others have a
+dependent being, and within the reach of destruction. But the
+sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates all earthly glory,
+and the quality of either state after death makes a folly of
+posthumous memory. God, who can only destroy our souls, and hath
+assured our resurrection, either of our bodies or names hath
+directly promised no duration. Wherein there is so much of chance,
+that the boldest expectants have found unhappy frustration; and to
+hold long subsistence seems but a scape in oblivion. But man is a
+noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave,
+solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting
+ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his nature....</p>
+<p>Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.
+A small fire sufficeth for life; great flames seemed too little
+after death, while men vainly affected pyres, and to burn like
+Sardanapalus. But the wisdom of funeral laws found the folly of
+prodigal blazes, and reduced undoing fires into the rule of sober
+obsequies, wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood,
+pitch, a mourner, and an urn....</p>
+<p>While some have studied monuments, others have studiously
+declined them; and some have been so vainly boisterous, that they
+durst not acknowledge their graves; wherein Alaricus seems more
+subtle, who had a river turned to hide his bones at the bottom.
+Even Sylla, who thought himself safe in his urn, could not prevent
+revenging tongues, and stones thrown at his monument. Happy are
+they whom privacy makes innocent, who deal so with men in this
+world that they are not afraid to meet them in the next; who when
+they die make no commotion among the dead, and are not touched with
+that poetical taunt of Isaiah.</p>
+<p>Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of
+vainglory and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity. But the most
+magnanimous resolution rests in the Christian religion, which
+trampleth upon pride and sits on the neck of ambition, humbly
+pursuing that infallible perpetuity unto which all others must
+diminish their diameters, and be poorly seen in angles of
+contingency.</p>
+<p>Pious spirits, who passed their days in raptures of futurity,
+made little more of this world than the world that was before it,
+while they lay obscure in the chaos of preordination and night of
+their forebeings. And if any have been so happy as truly to
+understand Christian annihilation, ecstasis, exolution,
+liquefaction, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, gustation of
+God, and ingression into the divine shadow, they have already had a
+handsome anticipation of heaven; the glory of the world is surely
+over, and the earth in ashes unto them.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNE14"></a>
+<h3>FROM 'A FRAGMENT ON MUMMIES'</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Wise Egypt, prodigal of her embalmments, wrapped up her princes
+and great commanders in aromatical folds, and, studiously
+extracting from corruptible bodies their corruption, ambitiously
+looked forward to immortality; from which vainglory we have become
+acquainted with many remnants of the old world, who could discourse
+unto us of the great things of yore, and tell us strange tales of
+the sons of Mizraim and ancient braveries of Egypt. Wonderful
+indeed are the preserves of time, which openeth unto us mummies
+from crypts and pyramids, and mammoth bones from caverns and
+excavations; whereof man hath found the best preservation,
+appearing unto us in some sort fleshly, while beasts must be fain
+of an osseous continuance.</p>
+<p>In what original this practice of the Egyptians had root, divers
+authors dispute; while some place the origin hereof in the desire
+to prevent the separation of the soul by keeping the body
+untabified, and alluring the spiritual part to remain by sweet and
+precious odors. But all this was but fond inconsideration. The
+soul, having broken its ..., is not stayed by bands and cerecloths,
+nor to be recalled by Sabaean odors, but fleeth to the place of
+invisibles, the <i>ubi</i> of spirits, and needeth a surer than
+Hermes's seal to imprison it to its medicated trunk, which yet
+subsists anomalously in its indestructible case, and, like a widow
+looking for her husband, anxiously awaits its return....</p>
+<p>That mummy is medicinal, the Arabian Doctor Haly delivereth, and
+divers confirms; but of the particular uses thereof, there is much
+discrepancy of opinion. While Hofmannus prescribes the same to
+epileptics, Johan de Muralto commends the use thereof to gouty
+persons; Bacon likewise extols it as a stiptic, and Junkenius
+considers it of efficacy to resolve coagulated blood. Meanwhile, we
+hardly applaud Francis the First of France, who always carried
+mummies with him as a panacea against all disorders; and were the
+efficacy thereof more clearly made out, scarce conceive the use
+thereof allowable in physic, exceeding the barbarities of Cambyses,
+and turning old heroes unto unworthy potions. Shall Egypt lend out
+her ancients unto chirurgeons and apothecaries, and Cheops and
+Psammitticus be weighed unto us for drugs? Shall we eat of Chamnes
+and Amosis in electuaries and pills, and be cured by cannibal
+mixtures? Surely, such diet is dismal vampirism, and exceeds in
+horror the black banquet of Domitian, not to be paralleled except
+in those Arabian feasts, wherein Ghoules feed horribly.</p>
+<p>But the common opinion of the virtues of mummy bred great
+consumption thereof, and princes and great men contended for this
+strange panacea, wherein Jews dealt largely, manufacturing mummies
+from dead carcasses and giving them the names of kings, while
+specifics were compounded from crosses and gibbet leavings. There
+wanted not a set of Arabians who counterfeited mummies so
+accurately that it needed great skill to distinguish the false from
+the true. Queasy stomachs would hardly fancy the doubtful potion,
+wherein one might so easily swallow a cloud for his Juno, and
+defraud the fowls of the air while in conceit enjoying the
+conserves of Canopus....</p>
+<p>For those dark caves and mummy repositories are Satan's abodes,
+wherein he speculates and rejoices on human vainglory, and keeps
+those kings and conquerors, whom alive he bewitched, whole for that
+great day when he will claim his own, and marshal the kings of
+Nilus and Thebes in sad procession unto the pit.</p>
+<p>Death, that fatal necessity which so many would overlook or
+blinkingly survey, the old Egyptians held continually before their
+eyes. Their embalmed ancestors they carried about at their
+banquets, as holding them still a part of their families, and not
+thrusting them from their places at feasts. They wanted not
+likewise a sad preacher at their tables to admonish them daily of
+death,--surely an unnecessary discourse while they banqueted in
+sepulchres. Whether this were not making too much of death, as
+tending to assuefaction, some reason there is to doubt; but certain
+it is that such practices would hardly be embraced by our modern
+gourmands, who like not to look on faces of <i>mortua</i>, or be
+elbowed by mummies.</p>
+<p>Yet in those huge structures and pyramidal immensities, of the
+builders whereof so little is known, they seemed not so much to
+raise sepulchres or temples to death as to contemn and disdain it,
+astonishing heaven with their audacities, and looking forward with
+delight to their interment in those eternal piles. Of their living
+habitations they made little account, conceiving of them but as
+<i>hospitia</i>, or inns, while they adorned the sepulchres of the
+dead, and, planting thereon lasting bases, defied the crumbling
+touches of time and the misty vaporousness of oblivion. Yet all
+were but Babel vanities. Time sadly overcometh all things, and is
+now dominant, and sitteth upon a sphinx, and looketh unto Memphis
+and old Thebes, while his sister Oblivion reclineth semisomnous on
+a pyramid, gloriously triumphing, making puzzles of Titanian
+erections, and turning old glories into dreams. History sinketh
+beneath her cloud. The traveler, as he paceth amazedly through
+those deserts, asketh of her, Who builded them? and she mumbleth
+something, but what it is he heareth not.</p>
+<p>Egypt itself is now become the land of obliviousness, and
+doteth. Her ancient civility is gone, and her glory hath vanished
+as a phantasma. Her youthful days are over, and her face hath
+become wrinkled and tetric. She poreth not upon the heavens;
+astronomy is dead unto her, and knowledge maketh other cycles.
+Canopus is afar off, Memnon resoundeth not to the sun, and Nilus
+heareth strange voices. Her monuments are but hieroglyphically
+sempiternal. Osiris and Anubis, her averruncous deities, have
+departed, while Orus yet remains dimly shadowing the principle of
+vicissitude and the effluxion of things, but receiveth little
+oblation.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNE15"></a>
+<h3>FROM 'A LETTER TO A FRIEND'</h3>
+<br>
+<p>He was willing to quit the world alone and altogether, leaving
+no earnest behind him for corruption or after-grave, having small
+content in that common satisfaction to survive or live in another,
+but amply satisfied that his disease should die with himself, nor
+revive in a posterity to puzzle physic, and make sad mementos of
+their parent hereditary....</p>
+<p>In this deliberate and creeping progress unto the grave, he was
+somewhat too young and of too noble a mind to fall upon that stupid
+symptom, observable in divers persons near their journey's end, and
+which may be reckoned among the mortal symptoms of their last
+disease; that is, to become more narrow-minded, miserable, and
+tenacious, unready to part with anything when they are ready to
+part with all, and afraid to want when they have no time to spend;
+meanwhile physicians, who know that many are mad but in a single
+depraved imagination, and one prevalent decipiency, and that beside
+and out of such single deliriums a man may meet with sober actions
+and good sense in Bedlam, cannot but smile to see the heirs and
+concerned relations gratulating themselves on the sober departure
+of their friends; and though they behold such mad covetous
+passages, content to think they die in good understanding, and in
+their sober senses.</p>
+<p>Avarice, which is not only infidelity but idolatry, either from
+covetous progeny or questuary education, had no root in his breast,
+who made good works the expression of his faith, and was big with
+desires unto public and lasting charities; and surely, where good
+wishes and charitable intentions exceed abilities, theorical
+beneficency may be more than a dream. They build not castles in the
+air who would build churches on earth; and though they leave no
+such structures here, may lay good foundations in heaven. In brief,
+his life and death were such that I could not blame them who wished
+the like, and almost to have been himself: almost, I say; for
+though we may wish the prosperous appurtenances of others, or to be
+another in his happy accidents, yet so intrinsical is every man
+unto himself that some doubt may be made whether any would exchange
+his being, or substantially become another man.</p>
+<p>He had wisely seen the world at home and abroad, and thereby
+observed under what variety men are deluded in the pursuit of that
+which is not here to be found. And although he had no opinion of
+reputed felicities below, and apprehended men widely out in the
+estimate of such happiness, yet his sober contempt of the world
+wrought no Democratism or Cynicism, no laughing or snarling at it,
+as well understanding there are not felicities in this world to
+satisfy a serious mind; and therefore, to soften the stream of our
+lives, we are fain to take in the reputed contentions of this
+world, to unite with the crowd in their beatitudes, and to make
+ourselves happy by consortion, opinion, or co-existimation: for
+strictly to separate from received and customary felicities, and to
+confine unto the rigor of realities, were to contract the
+consolation of our beings unto too uncomfortable
+circumscriptions.</p>
+<p>Not to be content with life is the unsatisfactory state of those
+who destroy themselves; who, being afraid to live, run blindly upon
+their own death, which no man fears by experience: and the Stoics
+had a notable doctrine to take away the fear thereof; that is, in
+such extremities, to desire that which is not to be avoided, and
+wish what might be feared; and so made evils voluntary and to suit
+with their own desires, which took off the terror of them.</p>
+<p>But the ancient martyrs were not encouraged by such fallacies,
+who, though they feared not death, were afraid to be their own
+executioners; and therefore thought it more wisdom to crucify their
+lusts than their bodies, to circumcise than stab their hearts, and
+to mortify than kill themselves.</p>
+<p>His willingness to leave this world about that age when most men
+think they may best enjoy it, though paradoxical unto worldly ears,
+was not strange unto mine, who have so often observed that many,
+though old, oft stick fast unto the world, and seem to be drawn
+like Cacus's oxen, backward with great struggling and reluctancy
+unto the grave. The long habit of living makes mere men more hardly
+to part with life, and all to be nothing, but what is to come. To
+live at the rate of the old world, when some could scarce remember
+themselves young, may afford no better digested death than a more
+moderate period. Many would have thought it an happiness to have
+had their lot of life in some notable conjunctures of ages past;
+but the uncertainty of future times hath tempted few to make a part
+in ages to come. And surely, he that hath taken the true altitude
+of things, and rightly calculated the degenerate state of this age,
+is not like to envy those that shall live in the next, much less
+three or four hundred years hence, when no man can comfortably
+imagine what face this world will carry; and therefore, since every
+age makes a step unto the end of all things, and the Scripture
+affords so hard a character of the last times, quiet minds will be
+content with their generations, and rather bless ages past than be
+ambitious of those to come.</p>
+<p>Though age had set no seal upon his face, yet a dim eye might
+clearly discover fifty in his actions; and therefore, since wisdom
+is the gray hair, and an unspotted life old age, although his years
+came short, he might have been said to have held up with longer
+livers, and to have been Solomon's old man. And surely if we deduct
+all those days of our life which we might wish unlived, and which
+abate the comfort of those we now live, if we reckon up only those
+days which God hath accepted of our lives, a life of good years
+will hardly be a span long; the son in this sense may outlive the
+father, and none be climacterically old. He that early arriveth
+unto the parts and prudence of age is happily old without the
+uncomfortable attendants of it; and 'tis superfluous to live unto
+gray hairs, when in a precocious temper we anticipate the virtues
+of them. In brief, he cannot be accounted young who outliveth the
+old man. He that hath early arrived unto the measure of a perfect
+stature in Christ, hath already fulfilled the prime and longest
+intention of his being; and one day lived after the perfect rule of
+piety is to be preferred before sinning immortality.</p>
+<p>Although he attained not unto the years of his predecessors, yet
+he wanted not those preserving virtues which confirm the thread of
+weaker constitutions. <i>Cautelous</i> chastity and <i>crafty</i>
+sobriety were far from him; those jewels were <i>paragon</i>,
+without flaw, hair, ice, or cloud in him: which affords me a hint
+to proceed in these good wishes and few mementos unto you.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNE16"></a>
+<h3>SOME RELATIONS WHOSE TRUTH WE FEAR</h3>
+<center>From 'Pseudoxia Epidemica'</center>
+<br>
+<p>Many other accounts like these we meet sometimes in history,
+scandalous unto Christianity, and even unto humanity; whose
+verities not only, but whose relations, honest minds do deprecate.
+For of sins heteroclital, and such as want either name or
+precedent, there is ofttimes a sin even in their histories. We
+desire no records of such enormities; sins should be accounted new,
+that so they may be esteemed monstrous. They amit of monstrosity as
+they fall from their rarity; for men count it venial to err with
+their forefathers, and foolishly conceive they divide a sin in its
+society. The pens of men may sufficiently expatiate without these
+singularities of villainy; for as they increase the hatred of vice
+in some, so do they enlarge the theory of wickedness in all. And
+this is one thing that may make latter ages worse than were the
+former; for the vicious examples of ages past poison the curiosity
+of these present, affording a hint of sin unto seducible spirits,
+and soliciting those unto the imitation of them, whose heads were
+never so perversely principled as to invent them. In this kind we
+commend the wisdom and goodness of Galen, who would not leave unto
+the world too subtle a theory of poisons; unarming thereby the
+malice of venomous spirits, whose ignorance must be contented with
+sublimate and arsenic. For surely there are subtler venerations,
+such as will invisibly destroy, and like the basilisks of heaven.
+In things of this nature silence commendeth history: 'tis the
+veniable part of things lost; wherein there must never rise a
+Pancirollus, nor remain any register but that of hell.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="WILLIAM_BROWNE"></a>
+<h2>WILLIAM BROWNE</h2>
+<h3>(1591-1643)</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-a.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>mong the English poets fatuous for their imaginative
+interpretation of nature, high rank must be given to William
+Browne, who belongs in the list headed by Spenser, and including
+Thomas Lodge, Michael Drayton, Nicholas Breton, George Wither, and
+Phineas Fletcher. Although he shows skill and charm of style in
+various kinds of verse, his name rests chiefly upon his largest
+work, 'Britannia's Pastorals.' This is much wider in scope than the
+title suggests, if one follows the definition given by Pope in his
+'Discourse on Pastoral Poetry.' He says:--"A Pastoral is an
+imitation of the action of a shepherd or one considered under that
+character. The form of this imitation is dramatic, or narrated, or
+mixed of both; the fable simple, the manners not too polite nor too
+rustic; the thoughts are plain, yet admit a little quickness and
+passion.... If we would copy Nature, it may be useful to take this
+Idea along with us: that Pastoral is an image of what they call the
+Golden Age. So that we are not to describe our shepherds as
+shepherds at this day really are, but as they may be conceived then
+to have been when the best of men followed the employment.... We
+must therefore use some illusion to render a Pastoral delightful,
+and this consists in exposing the best side only of a shepherd's
+life, and in concealing its miseries."</p>
+<p>In his 'Shepherd's Pipe,' a series of 'Eclogues' Browne follows
+this plan; but 'Britannia's Pastorals' contains rambling stories of
+Hamadryads and Oreads; figures which are too shadowy to seem real,
+yet stand in exquisite woodland landscapes. When the story passes
+to the yellow sands and "froth-girt rocks," washed by the crisped
+and curling waves from "Neptune's silver, ever-shaking breast," or
+when it touches the mysteries of the ocean world, over which
+"Thetis drives her silver throne," the poet's fancy is as delicate
+as when he revels in the earthy smell of the woods, where the
+leaves, golden and green, hide from sight the feathered choir;
+where glow the hips of scarlet berries; where is heard the dropping
+of nuts; and where the active bright-eyed squirrels leap from tree
+to tree.</p>
+<p>The loves, hardships, and adventures of Marina, Celadyne,
+Redmond, Fida, Philocel, Aletheia, Metanoia, and Amintas do not
+hold the reader from delight in descriptions of the blackbird and
+dove calling from the dewy branches; crystal streams lisping
+through banks purple with violets, rosy with eglantine, or sweet
+with wild thyme; thickets where the rabbits hide; sequestered nooks
+on which the elms and alders throw long shadows; circles of green
+grass made by dancing elves; rounded hills shut in by oaks, pines,
+birches, and laurel, where shepherds pipe on oaten straws, or
+shag-haired satyrs frolic and sleep; and meadows, whose carpets of
+cowslip and mint are freshened daily by nymphs pouring out gentle
+streams from crystal urns. Every now and then, huntsmen in green
+dash through his sombre woods with their hounds in full cry;
+anglers are seated by still pools, shepherds dance around the
+May-pole, and shepherdesses gather flowers for garlands. Gloomy
+caves appear, surrounded by hawthorn and holly that "outdares cold
+winter's ire," and sheltering old hermits, skilled in simples and
+the secret power of herbs. Sometimes the poet describes a choir
+where the tiny wren sings the treble, Robin Redbreast the mean, the
+thrush the tenor, and the nightingale the counter-tenor, while
+droning bees fill in the bass; and shows us fairy haunts and
+customs with a delicacy only equaled by Drayton and Herrick.</p>
+<p>Several lyric songs of high order are scattered through the
+'Pastorals,' and the famous 'Palinode on Man' is imbedded in the
+Third Book as follows:--</p>
+<blockquote>"I truly know<br>
+How men are born and whither they shall go;<br>
+I know that like to silkworms of one year,<br>
+Or like a kind and wronged lover's tear,<br>
+Or on the pathless waves a rudder's dint,<br>
+Or like the little sparkles of a flint,<br>
+Or like to thin round cakes with cost perfum'd,<br>
+Or fireworks only made to be consum'd:<br>
+I know that such is man, and all that trust<br>
+In that weak piece of animated dust.<br>
+The silkworm droops, the lover's tears soon shed,<br>
+The ship's way quickly lost, the sparkle dead;<br>
+The cake burns out in haste, the firework's done,<br>
+And man as soon as these as quickly gone."</blockquote>
+<p>Little is known of Browne's life. He was a native of Tavistock,
+Devonshire; born, it is thought, in 1591, the son of Thomas Browne,
+who is supposed by Prince in his 'Worthies of Devon' to have
+belonged to a knightly family. According to Wood, who says "he had
+a great mind in a little body," he was sent to Exeter College,
+Oxford, "about the beginning of the reign of James I." Leaving
+Oxford without a degree, he was admitted in 1612 to the Inner
+Temple, London, and a little later he is discovered at Oxford,
+engaged as private tutor to Robert Dormer, afterward Earl of
+Carnarvon. In 1624 he received his degree of Master of Arts from
+Oxford. He appears to have settled in Dorking, and after 1640
+nothing more is heard of him. Wood thinks he died in 1645, but
+there is an entry in the Tavistock register, dated March 27th,
+1643, and reading "William Browne was buried" on that day. That he
+was devoted to the streams, dales, and downs of his native
+Devonshire is shown in the Pastorals, where he sings:--</p>
+<blockquote>"Hail, thou my native soil! thou bless&egrave;d
+plot<br>
+Whose equal all the world affordeth not!<br>
+Show me who can, so many crystal rills,<br>
+Such sweet-cloth'd valleys or aspiring hills;<br>
+Such wood-ground, pastures, quarries, wealthy mines;<br>
+Such rocks in whom the diamond fairly shines."</blockquote>
+<p>And in another place he says:--</p>
+<blockquote>"And Tavy in my rhymes<br>
+Challenge a due; let it thy glory be<br>
+That famous Drake and I were born by thee."</blockquote>
+<p>The First Book of 'Britannia's Pastorals' was written before its
+author was twenty, and was published in 1631. The Second Book
+appeared in 1616, and both were reprinted in 1625. The Third Book
+was not published during Browne's life. The 'Shepherd's Pipe' was
+published in 1614, and 'The Inner Temple Masque,' written on the
+story of Ulysses and Circe, for representation in 1614, was first
+published in Thomas Davies's edition of Browne's works (3 vols.,
+1772). Two critical editions of value have been brought out in
+recent years: one by W. Carew Hazlitt (London, 1868-69); and the
+other by Gordon Goodwin and A.H. Bullen (1894).</p>
+<p>"In the third song of the Second Book," says Mr. Bullen in his
+preface,--</p>
+<blockquote>"There is a description of a delightful grove, perfumed
+with 'odoriferous buds and herbs of price,' where fruits hang in
+gallant clusters from the trees, and birds tune their notes to the
+music of running water; so fair a pleasaunce<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'that you are fain<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where you last walked to turn and
+walk again.'</blockquote>
+<br>
+A generous reader might apply that description to Browne's poetry;
+he might urge that the breezes which blew down these leafy alleys
+and over those trim parterres were not more grateful than the
+fragrance exhaled from the 'Pastorals'; that the brooks and birds
+babble and twitter in the printed page not less blithely than in
+that western Paradise. What so pleasant as to read of May-games,
+true-love knots, and shepherds piping in the shade? of pixies and
+fairy-circles? of rustic bridals and junketings? of angling,
+hunting the squirrel, nut-gathering? Of such subjects William
+Browne treats, singing like the shepherd in the 'Arcadia,' as
+though he would never grow old. He was a happy poet. It was his
+good fortune to grow up among wholesome surroundings whose gracious
+influences sank into his spirit. He loved the hills and dales round
+Tavistock, and lovingly described them in his verse. Frequently he
+indulges in descriptions of sunrise and sunset; they leave no vivid
+impression, but charm the reader by their quiet beauty. It cannot
+be denied that his fondness for simple, homely images sometimes led
+him into sheer fatuity; and candid admirers must also admit that,
+despite his study of simplicity, he could not refrain from hunting
+(as the manner was) after far-fetched outrageous
+conceits."</blockquote>
+<p>Browne is a poet's poet. Drayton, Wither, Herbert, and John
+Davies of Hereford, wrote his praises. Mrs. Browning includes him
+in her 'Vision of Poets,' where she says:--</p>
+<blockquote>"Drayton and Browne,--with smiles they drew<br>
+From outward Nature, still kept new<br>
+From their own inward nature true."</blockquote>
+<p>Milton studied him carefully, and just as his influence is
+perceived in the work of Keats, so is it found in 'Comus' and in
+'Lycidas.' Browne acknowledges Spenser and Sidney as his masters,
+and his work shows that he loved Chaucer and Shakespeare.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNE21"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>CIRCE'S CHARM</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Song from the 'Inner Temple
+Masque'<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Son of Erebus and night,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hie away; and aim thy flight<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where consort none other fowl<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Than the bat and sullen owl;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where upon thy limber grass,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Poppy and mandragoras,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With like simples not a few,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hang forever drops of dew;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where flows Lethe without coil<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Softly like a stream of oil.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hie thee hither, gentle sleep:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With this Greek no longer keep.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thrice I charge thee by my wand,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thrice with moly from my hand<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Do I touch Ulysses's eyes,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And with the jaspis: then arise,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sagest
+Greek!</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="illus-2514.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/illus-2514.jpg"><img src=
+"images/illus-2514.jpg" width="80%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b><i>Circe</i>.</b><br>
+Photogravure from a Painting by E Burne-Jones.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNE22"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>THE HUNTED
+SQUIRREL</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;From 'Britannia's Pastorals'<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Then as a nimble squirrel from the
+wood<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ranging the hedges for his filbert
+food<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sits pertly on a bough, his brown
+nuts cracking,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And from the shell the sweet white
+kernel taking;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Till with their crooks and bags a
+sort of boys<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To share with him come with so great
+a noise<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That he is forced to leave a nut nigh
+broke,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And for his life leap to a neighbor
+oak,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thence to a beach, thence to a row of
+ashes;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Whilst through the quagmires and red
+water plashes<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The boys run dabbling through thick
+and thin;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;One tears his hose, another breaks
+his shin;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This, torn and tattered, hath with
+much ado<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Got by the briars; and that hath lost
+his shoe;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This drops his band; that headlong
+falls for haste;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Another cries behind for being
+last:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With sticks and stones and many a
+sounding holloa<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The little fool with no small sport
+they follow,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Whilst he from tree to tree, from
+spray to spray<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gets to the woods and hides him in
+his dray.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNE23"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>AS CAREFUL MERCHANTS
+DO EXPECTING STAND</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;From 'Britannia's Pastorals'<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As careful merchants do expecting
+stand,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;After long time and merry
+gales of wind,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Upon the place where their brave
+ships must land,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So wait I for the vessel
+of my mind.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Upon a great adventure is it
+bound,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Whose safe return will
+valued be at more<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Than all the wealthy prizes which
+have crowned<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The golden wishes of an
+age before.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Out of the East jewels of worth she
+brings;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The unvalued diamond of
+her sparkling eye<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Wants in the treasures of all
+Europe's kings;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And were it mine, they
+nor their crowns should buy.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The sapphires ring&egrave;d on her
+panting breast<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Run as rich veins of ore
+about the mold,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And are in sickness with a pale
+possessed;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So true for them I should
+disvalue gold.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The melting rubies on her cherry
+lip<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Are of such power to
+hold, that as one day<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cupid flew thirsty by, he stooped to
+sip:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And, fastened there,
+could never get away.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The sweets of Candy are no sweets to
+me<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where hers I taste: nor
+the perfumes of price,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Robbed from the happy shrubs of
+Araby,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As her sweet breath so
+powerful to entice.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O hasten then! and if thou be not
+gone<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Unto that wicked traffic
+through the main,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My powerful sigh shall quickly drive
+thee on,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And then begin to draw
+thee back again.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If, in the mean, rude waves have it
+opprest,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;It shall suffice, I ventured at the
+best.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNE24"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>SONG OF THE
+SIRENS</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;From 'The Inner Temple Masque'<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Steer hither, steer your
+wing&egrave;d pines,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All beaten mariners!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Here lie love's undiscovered
+mines,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A prey to passengers:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Perfumes far sweeter than the
+best<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Which make the Phoenix's urn and
+nest.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Fear not your ships,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nor any to oppose you save our
+lips,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But come on shore,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where no joy dies till love hath
+gotten more.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For swelling waves our panting
+breasts,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where never storms
+arise,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Exchange, and be awhile our
+guests:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For stars, gaze on our
+eyes.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The compass love shall hourly
+sing,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And as he goes about the ring,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We will not miss<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To tell each point he nameth with a
+kiss.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Then come on shore,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where no joy dies till love hath
+gotten more.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNE25"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>AN EPISTLE ON
+PARTING</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;From 'Epistles'<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dear soul, the time is come, and we
+must part;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet, ere I go, in these lines read my
+heart:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A heart so just, so loving, and so
+true,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So full of sorrow and so full of
+you,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That all I speak or write or pray or
+mean,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And, which is all I can, all that I
+dream,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Is not without a sigh, a thought of
+you,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And as your beauties are, so are they
+true.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Seven summers now are fully spent and
+gone,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Since first I loved, loved you, and
+you alone;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And should mine eyes as many hundreds
+see,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet none but you should claim a right
+in me;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A right so placed that time shall
+never hear<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of one so vowed, or any loved so
+dear.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When I am gone, if ever prayers moved
+you,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Relate to none that I so well have
+loved you:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For all that know your beauty and
+desert,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Would swear he never loved that knew
+to part.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Why part we then? That spring, which
+but this day<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Met some sweet river, in his bed can
+play,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And with a dimpled cheek smile at
+their bliss,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who never know what separation
+is.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The amorous vine with wanton
+interlaces<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Clips still the rough elm in her kind
+embraces:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Doves with their doves sit billing in
+the groves,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And woo the lesser birds to sing
+their loves:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Whilst hapless we in griefful absence
+sit,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet dare not ask a hand to lessen
+it.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNE26"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>SONNETS TO
+C&AElig;LIA</b><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Fairest, when by the rules of
+palmistry,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You took my hand to try
+if you could guess,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;By lines therein, if any wight there
+be<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ordained to make me know
+some happiness:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I wished that those char&aacute;cters
+could explain,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Whom I will never wrong
+with hope to win;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or that by them a copy might be
+ta'en,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;By you alone what
+thoughts I have within.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But since the hand of nature did not
+set<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(As providently loath to
+have it known)<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The means to find that hidden
+alphabet,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Mine eyes shall be the
+interpreters alone:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;By them conceive my thoughts, and
+tell me, fair,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; If now you see her that doth love
+me, there.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Were't not for you, here should my
+pen have rest,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And take a long leave of
+sweet poesy;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Britannia's swains, and rivers far by
+west,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Should hear no more my
+oaten melody.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet shall the song I sung of them
+awhile<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Unperfect lie, and make
+no further known<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The happy loves of this our pleasant
+Isle,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Till I have left some
+record of mine own.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You are the subject now, and, writing
+you,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I well may versify, not
+poetize:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Here needs no fiction; for the graces
+true<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And virtues clip not with
+base flatteries.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Here should I write what you deserve
+of praise;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Others might wear, but I should win,
+the bays.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Fairest, when I am gone, as now the
+glass<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of Time is marked how
+long I have to stay,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let me entreat you, ere from hence I
+pass,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Perhaps from you for ever
+more away,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Think that no common love hath fired
+my breast,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No base desire, but
+virtue truly known,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Which I may love, and wish to have
+possessed,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Were you the highest as
+fairest of any one.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Tis not your lovely eye enforcing
+flames,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nor beauteous red beneath
+a snowy skin,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That so much binds me yours, or makes
+your fame's,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As the pure light and
+beauty shrined within:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet outward parts I must affect of
+duty,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As for the smell we like the rose's
+beauty.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="BROWNELL"></a>
+<h2>HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL</h2>
+<h3>(1820-1872)</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-t.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>his poet, prominent among those who gained their chief
+inspiration from the stirring events of the Civil War, was born in
+Providence, Rhode Island, February 6th, 1820, and died in East
+Hartford, Connecticut, October 31st, 1872. He was graduated at
+Trinity College, Hartford, studied law, and was admitted to the
+bar; but instead of the legal profession adopted that of a teacher,
+and made his home in Hartford, which was the residence of his
+uncle, the Bishop of Connecticut. Although Mr. Brownell soon became
+known as a writer of verse, both grave and humorous, it was not
+till the coming on of the Civil War that his muse found truest and
+noblest expression. With a poet's sensitiveness he foresaw the
+coming storm, and predicted it in verse that has the ring of an
+ancient prophet; and when the crash came he sang of the great deeds
+of warriors in the old heroic strain. Many of these poems, like
+'Annus Memorabilis' and 'Coming,' were born of the great passion of
+patriotism which took possession of him, and were regarded only as
+the visions of a heated imagination. But when the storm burst it
+was seen that he had the true vision. As the dreadful drama
+unrolled, Brownell rose to greater issues, and became the war-poet
+<i>par excellence</i>, the vigorous chronicler of great
+actions.</p>
+<p>He was fond of the sea, and ardently longed for the opportunity
+to witness, if not to participate in, a sea-fight. His desire was
+gratified in a singular way. He had printed in a Hartford paper a
+very felicitous versification of Farragut's 'General Orders' in the
+fight at the mouth of the Mississippi. This attracted Farragut's
+attention, and he took steps to learn the name of the author. When
+it was given, Commodore Farragut (he was not then Admiral) offered
+Mr. Brownell the position of master's-mate on board the Hartford,
+and attached the poet to him in the character of a private
+secretary. Thus he was present at the fight of Mobile Bay. After
+the war he accompanied the Admiral in his cruise in European
+waters.</p>
+<p>Although Brownell was best known to the country by his
+descriptive poems, 'The River Fight' and 'The Bay Fight,' which
+appear in his volume of collected works, 'War Lyrics,' his title to
+be considered a true poet does not rest upon these only. He was
+unequal in his performance and occasionally was betrayed by a
+grotesque humor into disregard of dignity and finish; but he had
+both the vision and the lyric grace of the builder of lasting
+verse.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNELL01"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>ANNUS
+MEMORABILIS</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(CONGRESS, 1860-61)<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Stand strong and calm as Fate! not a
+breath of scorn or hate--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of taunt for the base, or
+of menace for the strong--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Since our fortunes must be sealed on
+that old and famous Field<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where the Right is set in
+battle with the Wrong.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Tis coming, with the loom of Khamsin
+or Simoom,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The tempest that shall
+try if we are of God or no--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Its roar is in the sky,--and they
+there be which cry,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Let us cower, and the
+storm may over-blow."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Now, nay! stand firm and fast! (that
+was a spiteful blast!)<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This is not a war of men,
+but of Angels Good and Ill--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Tis hell that storms at heaven--'tis
+the black and deadly Seven,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sworn 'gainst the Shining
+Ones to work their damn&egrave;d will!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How the Ether glooms and burns, as
+the tide of combat turns,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the smoke and dust
+above it whirl and float!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;It eddies and it streams--and,
+certes, oft it seems<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As the Sins had the
+Seraphs fairly by the throat.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But we all have read (in that Legend
+grand and dread),<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How Michael and his host
+met the Serpent and his crew--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Naught has reached us of the
+Fight--but if I have dreamed aright,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Twas a loud one and a
+long, as ever thundered through!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Right stiffly, past a doubt, the
+Dragon fought it out,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And his Angels, each and
+all, did for Tophet their devoir--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;There was creak of iron wings, and
+whirl of scorpion stings,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hiss of bifid tongues,
+and the Pit in full uproar!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But, naught thereof enscrolled, in
+one brief line 'tis told<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(Calm as dew the
+Apocalyptic Pen),<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That on the Infinite Shore their
+place was found no more.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;God send the like on this
+our earth! Amen.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Houghton, Mifflin and Company,
+Boston.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="BROWNELL02"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>WORDS FOR THE
+'HALLELUJAH CHORUS'</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Old John Brown lies a-moldering in
+the grave,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Old John Brown lies slumbering in his
+grave--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But John Brown's soul is marching
+with the brave,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;His
+soul is marching on.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Glory,
+glory, hallelujah!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Glory,
+glory, hallelujah!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Glory,
+glory, hallelujah!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;His
+soul is marching on.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He has gone to be a soldier in the
+Army of the Lord;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He is sworn as a private in the ranks
+of the Lord,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He shall stand at Armageddon with his
+brave old sword,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When
+Heaven is marching on.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He shall file in front where the
+lines of battle form,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He shall face to front when the
+squares of battle form--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Time with the column, and charge in
+the storm,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where
+men are marching on.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ah, foul Tyrants! do ye hear him
+where he comes?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ah, black traitors! do ye know him as
+he comes,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In thunder of the cannon and roll of
+the drums,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As
+we go marching on?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Men may die, and molder in the
+dust--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Men may die, and arise again from
+dust,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shoulder to shoulder, in the ranks of
+the Just,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When
+Heaven is marching on.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Glory,
+glory, hallelujah!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Glory,
+glory, hallelujah!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Glory,
+glory, hallelujah!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;His
+soul is marching on.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNELL03"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>COMING</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(APRIL, 1861)<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;World, are thou 'ware of a storm?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hark to the
+ominous sound;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How the far-off gales their battle
+form,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the great
+sea-swells feel ground!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;It comes, the Typhoon of Death--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nearer and
+nearer it comes!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The horizon thunder of
+cannon-breath<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the roar
+of angry drums!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hurtle, Terror sublime!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Swoop o'er
+the Land to-day--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So the mist of wrong and crime,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The breath of our Evil Time<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Be swept, as
+by fire, away!</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNELL04"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>PSYCHAURA</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The wind of an autumn midnight<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Is moaning around my
+door--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The curtains wave at the window,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The carpet lifts on the
+floor.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;There are sounds like startled
+footfalls<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In the distant chambers
+now,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the touching of airy ringers<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Is busy on hand and
+brow.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Tis thus, in the Soul's dark
+dwelling--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;By the moody host
+unsought--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Through the chambers of memory
+wander<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The invisible airs of
+thought.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For it bloweth where it listeth,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With a murmur loud or
+low;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Whence it cometh--whither it
+goeth--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;None tell us, and none
+may know.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Now wearying round the portals<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of the vacant, desolate
+mind--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As the doors of a ruined mansion,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That creak in the cold
+night wind.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And anon an awful memory<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sweeps over it fierce and
+high--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Like the roar of a mountain
+forest<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When the midnight gale
+goes by.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Then its voice subsides in
+wailing,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And, ere the dawning of
+day,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Murmuring fainter and fainter,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In the distance dies
+away.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNELL05"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>SUSPIRIA
+NOCTIS</b><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Reading, and reading--little is the
+gain<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Long dwelling with the
+minds of dead men leaves.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;List rather to the melancholy
+rain,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Drop--dropping
+from the eaves.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Still the old tale--how hardly worth
+the telling!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hark to the wind!--again
+that mournful sound,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That all night long, around this
+lonely dwelling,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Moans
+like a dying hound.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="ELIZABETH_BROWNING"></a>
+<h2>ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING</h2>
+<h3>(1809-1861)</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-i.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>t is interesting to step back sixty years into the lives of Miss
+Mitford and her "dear young friend Miss Barrett," when the
+<i>-esses</i> of "authoresses" and "poetesses" and "editresses" and
+"hermitesses" make the pages sibilant; when 'Books of Beauty,' and
+'Keepsakes,' and the extraordinary methods of "Finden's Tableaux"
+make us wonder that literature survived; when Mr. Kenyon, taking
+Miss Mitford "to the giraffes and the Diorama," called for "Miss
+Barrett, a hermitess in Gloucester Place, who reads Greek as I do
+French, who has published some translations from &AElig;schylus,
+and some most striking poems,"--"Our sweet Miss Barrett! to think
+of virtue and genius is to think of her." Of her own life Mrs.
+Browning writes:--"As to stories, my story amounts to the
+knife-grinder's, with nothing at all for a catastrophe. A bird in a
+cage would have as good a story; most of my events and nearly all
+my intense pleasure have passed in my thoughts."</p>
+<p class="rgt"><img src="images/browning_e.jpg" width="45%" alt=
+""><br>
+<b>Mrs. Browning</b></p>
+<p>She was born at Burn Hall, Durham, on March 6th, 1809, and
+passed a happy childhood and youth in her father's country house at
+Hope End, Herefordshire. She was remarkably precocious, reading
+Homer in the original at eight years of age. She said that in those
+days "the Greeks were her demigods. She dreamed more of Agamemnon
+than of Moses, her black pony." "I wrote verses very early, at
+eight years old and earlier. But what is less common, the early
+fancy turned into a will, and remained with me." At seventeen years
+of age she published the 'Essay on Mind,' and translated the
+'Prometheus' of &AElig;schylus. Some years later the family removed
+to London, and here Elizabeth, on account of her continued delicate
+health, was kept in her room for months at a time. The shock
+following on the death of her brother, who was drowned before her
+eyes in Torquay, whither she had gone for rest, completely
+shattered her physically. Now her life of seclusion in her London
+home began. For years she lay upon a couch in a large, comfortably
+darkened room, seeing only the immediate members of her family and
+a few privileged friends, and spending her days in writing and
+study, "reading," Miss Mitford says, "almost every book worth
+reading in almost every language." Here Robert Browning met her.
+They were married in 1846, against the will of her father. Going
+abroad immediately, they finally settled in Florence at the Casa
+Guidi, made famous by her poem bearing the same name. Their home
+became the centre of attraction to visitors in Florence, and many
+of the finest minds in the literary and artistic world were among
+their friends. Hawthorne, who visited them, describes Mrs. Browning
+as "a pale, small person, scarcely embodied at all, at any rate
+only substantial enough to put forth her slender fingers to be
+grasped, and to speak with a shrill yet sweet tenuity of voice. It
+is wonderful to see how small she is, how pale her cheek, how
+bright and dark her eyes. There is not such another figure in the
+world, and her black ringlets cluster down in her neck and make her
+face look whiter." She died in Florence on the 30th of June, 1861,
+and the citizens of Florence placed a tablet to her memory on the
+walls of Casa Guidi.</p>
+<p>The life and personality of Elizabeth Barrett Browning seem to
+explain her poetry. It is a life "without a catastrophe," except
+perhaps to her devoted father. And it is to this father's devotion
+that some of Mrs. Browning's poetical sins are due; for by him she
+was so pampered and shielded from every outside touch, that all the
+woes common to humanity grew for her into awful tragedies. Her life
+was abnormal and unreal,--an unreality that passed more or less
+into everything she did. Indeed, her resuscitation after meeting
+Robert Browning would mount into a miracle, unless it were realized
+that nothing in her former life had been quite as woful as it
+seemed. That Mrs. Browning was "a woman of real genius," even
+Edward Fitzgerald allowed; and in speaking of Shelley, Walter
+Savage Landor said, "With the exception of Burns, he [Shelley] and
+Keats were inspired with a stronger spirit of poetry than any other
+poet since Milton. I sometimes fancy that Elizabeth Barrett
+Browning comes next." This is very high praise from very high
+authority, but none too high for Mrs. Browning, for her best work
+has the true lyric ring, that spontaneity of thought and expression
+which comes when the singer forgets himself in his song and becomes
+tuneful under the stress of the moment's inspiration. All of Mrs.
+Browning's work is buoyed up by her luxurious and overflowing
+imagination. With all its imperfections of technique, its lapses of
+taste and faults of expression, it always remains poetry, throbbing
+with passion and emotion and rich in color and sound. She wrote
+because she must. Her own assertions notwithstanding, one cannot
+think of Mrs. Browning as sitting down in cold blood to compose a
+poem according to fixed rules of art. This is the secret of her
+shortcomings, as it is also the source of her strength, and in her
+best work raises her high above those who, with more technical
+skill, have less of the true poet's divine fire and overflowing
+imagination.</p>
+<p>So in the 'Sonnets from the Portuguese,' written at a time when
+her woman's nature was thrilled to its very depths by the love of
+her "most gracious singer of high poems," and put forth as
+translations from another writer and tongue--in these her
+imperfections drop away, and she soars to marvelous heights of
+song. Such a lyric outburst as this, which reveals with magnificent
+frankness the innermost secrets of an ardently loving woman's
+heart, is unequaled in literature. Here the woman-poet is strong
+and sane; here she is free from obscurity and mannerism, and from
+grotesque rhymes. She has stepped out from her life of visions and
+of morbid woes into a life of wholesome reality and of "sweet
+reasonableness." Their literary excellence is due also to the fact
+that in the sonnet Mrs. Browning was held to a rigid form, and was
+obliged to curb her imagination and restrain her tendency to
+diffuseness of expression. Mr. Saintsbury goes so far as to say
+that the sonnet beginning--</p>
+<blockquote>"If thou wilt love me, let it be for naught<br>
+Except for love's sake only--"</blockquote>
+<p>does not fall far short of Shakespeare.</p>
+<p>'Aurora Leigh' gives rise to the old question, Is it advisable
+to turn a three-volume novel into verse? Yet Landor wrote about
+it:--"I am reading a poem full of thought and fascinating with
+fancy--Mrs. Browning's (Aurora Leigh.) In many places there is the
+wild imagination of Shakespeare.... I am half drunk with it. Never
+did I think I should have a good draught of poetry again." Ruskin
+somewhere considered it the greatest poem of the nineteenth
+century, "with enough imagination to set up a dozen lesser poets";
+and Stedman calls it "a representative and original creation:
+representative in a versatile, kaleidoscopic presentment of modern
+life and issues; original, because the most idiosyncratic of its
+author's poems. An audacious speculative freedom pervades it, which
+smacks of the New World rather than the Old.... 'Aurora Leigh' is a
+mirror of contemporary life, while its learned and beautiful
+illustrations make it almost a handbook of literature and the
+arts.... Although a most uneven production, full of ups and downs,
+of capricious or prosaic episodes, it nevertheless contains poetry
+as fine as its author has given us elsewhere, and enough spare
+inspiration to set up a dozen smaller poets. The flexible verse is
+noticeably her own, and often handled with as much spirit as
+freedom." Mrs. Browning herself declared it the most mature of her
+works, "and the one into which my highest convictions upon life and
+art have entered." Consider this:--</p>
+<blockquote>"For 'tis not in mere death that men die most:<br>
+And after our first girding of the loins<br>
+In youth's fine linen and fair broidery,<br>
+To run up-hill and meet the rising sun,<br>
+We are apt to sit tired, patient as a fool,<br>
+While others gird us with the violent bands<br>
+Of social figments, feints, and formalisms,<br>
+Reversing our straight nature, lifting up<br>
+Our base needs, keeping down our lofty thoughts,<br>
+Head downwards on the cross-sticks of the world.<br>
+Yet He can pluck us from that shameful cross.<br>
+God, set our feet low and our foreheads high,<br>
+And teach us how a man was made to walk!"</blockquote>
+<p>Or this:--</p>
+<blockquote>"I've waked and slept through many nights and days<br>
+Since then--but still that day will catch my breath<br>
+Like a nightmare. There are fatal days, indeed,<br>
+In which the fibrous years have taken root<br>
+So deeply, that they quiver to their tops<br>
+Whene'er you stir the dust of such a day."</blockquote>
+<p>Again:--</p>
+<blockquote>"Passion is<br>
+But something suffered after all--<br>
+. . . . . While Art<br>
+<br>
+Sets action on the top of suffering."</blockquote>
+<p>And this:--</p>
+<blockquote>"Nothing is small!<br>
+No lily-muffled hum of summer-bee<br>
+But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;<br>
+No pebble at your foot but proves a sphere:<br>
+. . . . . Earth's crammed with Heaven,<br>
+And every common bush afire with God;<br>
+But only he who sees, takes off his shoes."</blockquote>
+<p>Among Mrs. Browning's smaller poems, 'Crowned and Buried' is,
+notwithstanding serious defects of technique, one of the most
+virile things she has written; indeed, some of her finest lines are
+to be found in it. In 'The Cry of the Children' and in 'Cowper's
+Grave' the pathos is most true and deep. 'Lord Walter's Wife' is an
+even more courageous vindication of the feminine essence than
+'Aurora Leigh'; and her 'Vision of Poets' is said to "vie in beauty
+with Tennyson's own." The fine thought and haunting beauty of 'A
+Musical Instrument,' with its matchless climax, need not be dwelt
+on.</p>
+<p>During her fifteen years' residence in Florence she threw
+herself with great enthusiasm into Italian affairs, and wrote some
+political poems of varying merit, whose interest necessarily faded
+away when the occasion passed. But among those poems inspired by
+the struggle for freedom, 'Casa Guidi Windows' comes close to the
+'Sonnets from the Portuguese' and 'Aurora Leigh,' and holds an
+enduring place for its high poetry, its musical, sonorous verse,
+and the sustained intellectual vigor of composition. Her volume of
+'Last Poems' contains, among much inferior matter, some of her
+finest and most touching work, as 'A Musical Instrument,' 'The
+Forced Recruit,' and 'Mother and Poet,' Peter Bayne says of her in
+his 'Great Englishwomen':--"In melodiousness and splendor of poetic
+gift Mrs. Browning stands ... first among women. She may not have
+the knowledge of life, the insight into character, the
+comprehensiveness of some, but we must all agree that a poet's far
+more essential qualities are hers: usefulness, fervor, a noble
+aspiration, and above all a tender, far-reaching nature, loving and
+beloved, and touching the hearts of her readers with some virtue
+from its depths. She seemed even in her life something of a spirit;
+and her view of life's sorrow and shame, of its hearty and eternal
+hope, is something like that which one might imagine a spirit's to
+be." Whether political, or sociological, or mystical, or
+sentimental, or impossible, there is about all that Mrs. Browning
+has written an enduring charm of picturesqueness, of romance, and
+of a pure enthusiasm for art. "Art for Art," she cries,</p>
+<blockquote>"And good for God, himself the essential Good!<br>
+We'll keep our aims sublime, our eyes erect,<br>
+Although our woman-hands should shake and fail."</blockquote>
+<p>This was her achievement--her hands did not fail!</p>
+<p>Her husband's words will furnish, perhaps, the best conclusion
+to this slight study:--"You are wrong," he said, "quite wrong--she
+has genius; I am only a painstaking fellow. Can't you imagine a
+clever sort of angel who plots and plans, and tries to build up
+something,--he wants to make you see it as he sees it, shows you
+one point of view, carries you off to another, hammering into your
+head the thing he wants you to understand; and whilst this bother
+is going on, God Almighty turns you off a little star--that's the
+difference between us. The true creative power is hers, not
+mine."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING01E"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>A MUSICAL
+INSTRUMENT</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;WHAT was he doing, the great god
+Pan,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Down in the reeds by the river?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Spreading
+ruin and scattering ban,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Splashing and paddling with hoofs of
+a goat,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And breaking the golden lilies
+afloat<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With the
+dragon-fly on the river.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He tore out a reed, the great god
+Pan,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;From the
+deep, cool bed of the river.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The limpid water turbidly ran,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the broken lilies a-dying
+lay,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the dragon-fly had fled away,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ere he
+brought it out of the river.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;High on the shore sat the great god
+Pan,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While
+turbidly flowed the river,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And hacked and hewed as a great god
+can,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With his hard bleak steel at the
+patient reed,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Till there was not a sign of the leaf
+indeed<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To prove it
+fresh from the river.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He cut it short, did the great god
+Pan,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(How tall it
+stood in the river!)<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Then drew the pith, like the heart of
+a man,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Steadily from the outside ring,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And notched the poor, dry, empty
+thing<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In holes as
+he sat by the river.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"This is the way," laughed the great
+god Pan,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(Laughed
+while he sat by the river,)<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"The only way, since gods began<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To make sweet music, they could
+succeed."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in
+the reed,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He blew in
+power by the river.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Piercing
+sweet by the river!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The sun on the hill forgot to
+die,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the lilies revived, and the
+dragon-fly<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Came back to
+dream on the river.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet half a beast is the great god
+Pan,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To laugh as
+he sits by the river,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Making a poet out of a man:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The true gods sigh for the cost and
+the pain,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For the reed which grows nevermore
+again<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As a reed
+with the reeds in the river.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING02E"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>MY HEART AND I</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Enough! we're tired, my heart and
+I.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We sit beside the
+headstone thus,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And wish that name were
+carved for us.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The moss reprints more tenderly<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The hard types of the
+mason's knife,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As heaven's sweet life
+renews earth's life<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With which we're tired, my heart and
+I.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You see we're tired, my heart and
+I.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We dealt with books, we
+trusted men,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And in our own blood
+drenched the pen,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As if such colors could not fly.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We walked too straight
+for fortune's end,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We loved too true to
+keep a friend:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;At last we're tired, my heart and
+I.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How tired we feel, my heart and
+I!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We seem of no use in the
+world;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Our fancies hang gray
+and uncurled<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;About men's eyes indifferently;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Our voice, which
+thrilled you so, will let<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; You sleep; our tears are
+only wet:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What do we here, my heart and I?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So tired, so tired, my heart and
+I!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It was not thus in that
+old time<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; When Ralph sat with me
+'neath the lime<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To watch the sunset from the sky.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "Dear love, you're
+looking tired," he said;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I, smiling at him, shook
+my head:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Tis now we're tired, my heart and
+I.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So tired, so tired, my heart and
+I!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Though now none takes me
+on his arm<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To fold me close and
+kiss me warm<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Till each quick breath end in a
+sigh<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of happy languor. Now,
+alone,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We lean upon this
+graveyard stone,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Uncheered, unkissed, my heart and
+I.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Tired out we are, my heart and I.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Suppose the world
+brought diadems<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To tempt us, crusted
+with loose gems<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of powers and pleasures? Let it
+try.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We scarcely care to look
+at even<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A pretty child, or God's
+blue heaven,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We feel so tired, my heart and I.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet who complains? My heart and
+I?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In this abundant earth,
+no doubt,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Is little room for
+things worn out:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Disdain them, break them, throw them
+by!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And if, before the days
+grew rough,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We <i>once</i> were
+loved, used,--well enough<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I think we've fared, my heart and
+I.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING03E"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>FROM 'CATARINA TO
+CAMOENS'</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[Dying in his absence abroad, and
+referring to the poem in which he<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;recorded the sweetness of her
+eyes.]<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;On the door you will not enter<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I have gazed
+too long: adieu!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hope withdraws her
+"peradventure";<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Death is near me,--and not
+<i>you!</i><br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Come, O
+lover,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Close and
+cover<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;These poor eyes you called, I
+ween,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Sweetest eyes were ever seen!"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When I heard you sing that burden<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In my vernal days and
+bowers,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Other praises disregarding,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I but hearkened that of
+yours,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Only
+saying<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In
+heart-playing,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Blessed eyes mine eyes have
+been,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If the sweetest HIS have seen!"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But all changes. At this vesper<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cold the sun shines down
+the door.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If you stood there, would you
+whisper,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Love, I love you," as
+before,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Death
+pervading<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Now and
+shading<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Eyes you sang of, that yestreen,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As the sweetest ever seen?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yes, I think, were you beside
+them,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Near the bed I die
+upon,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Though their beauty you denied
+them,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As you stood there
+looking down,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You would
+truly<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Call them
+duly,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For the love's sake found
+therein,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Sweetest eyes were ever seen."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And if <i>you</i> looked down upon
+them,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And if <i>they</i> looked
+up to <i>you</i>,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All the light which has foregone
+them<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Would be gathered back
+anew;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They would
+truly<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Be as
+duly<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Love-transformed to beauty's
+sheen,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Sweetest eyes were ever seen."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But, ah me! you only see me,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In your thoughts of
+loving man,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Smiling soft, perhaps, and
+dreamy,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Through the wavings of my
+fan;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And
+unweeting<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Go
+repeating<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In your revery serene,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Sweetest eyes were ever seen."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O my poet, O my prophet!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When you praised their
+sweetness so,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Did you think, in singing of it,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That it might be near to
+go?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Had you
+fancies<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;From their
+glances,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That the grave would quickly
+screen<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Sweetest eyes were ever seen"?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No reply. The fountain's warble<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In the courtyard sounds
+alone.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As the water to the marble<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So my heart falls with a
+moan<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;From
+love-sighing<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To this
+dying.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Death forerunneth Love to win<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Sweetest eyes were ever seen."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Will</i> you come? When I'm
+departed<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where all sweetnesses are
+hid,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where thy voice, my
+tender-hearted,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Will not lift up either
+lid,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cry, O
+lover,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Love is
+over!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cry, beneath the cypress green,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Sweetest eyes were ever seen!"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When the Angelus is ringing,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Near the convent will you
+walk,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And recall the choral singing<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Which brought angels down
+our talk?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Spirit-shriven<br>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I viewed
+heaven,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Till you smiled--"Is earth
+unclean,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sweetest eyes were ever seen?"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When beneath the palace-lattice<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You ride slow as you have
+done,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And you see a face there that is<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Not the old familiar
+one,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Will you
+oftly<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Murmur
+softly,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Here ye watched me morn and
+e'en,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sweetest eyes were ever seen"?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When the palace-ladies, sitting<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Round your gittern, shall
+have said,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Poets, sing those verses written<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For the lady who is dead,"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Will you
+tremble,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet
+dissemble,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or sing hoarse, with tears
+between,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Sweetest eyes were ever seen"?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Sweetest eyes!" How sweet in
+flowings<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The repeated cadence
+is!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Though you sang a hundred poems,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Still the best one would
+be this.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I can hear
+it<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Twixt my
+spirit<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the earth-noise intervene,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Sweetest eyes were ever seen!"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But--but <i>now</i>--yet
+unremov&egrave;d<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Up to heaven they glisten
+fast;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You may cast away, beloved,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In your future all my
+past:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Such old
+phrases<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;May be
+praises<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For some fairer bosom-queen--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Sweetest eyes were ever seen!"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Eyes of mine, what are ye doing?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Faithless, faithless,
+praised amiss<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If a tear be, on your showing,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dropped for any hope of
+HIS!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Death has
+boldness<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Besides
+coldness,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If unworthy tears demean<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Sweetest eyes were ever seen."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I will look out to his future;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I will bless it till it
+shine.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Should he ever be a suitor<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Unto sweeter eyes than
+mine,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sunshine gild
+them,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Angels shield
+them,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Whatsoever eyes terrene<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Be</i> the sweetest HIS have
+seen.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING04E"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>THE SLEEP</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"He giveth his beloved sleep."--Ps.
+cxxvii. 2<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;OF ALL the thoughts of God that
+are<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Borne inward into souls
+afar<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Along the Psalmist's
+music deep,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Now tell me if that any is,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For gift or grace, surpassing
+this--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"He giveth his beloved sleep."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What would we give to our
+beloved?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The hero's heart to be unmoved.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The poet's star-tuned
+harp to sweep,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The patriot's voice to teach and
+rouse,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The monarch's crown to light the
+brows?--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He giveth his
+belov&egrave;d sleep.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What do we give to our beloved?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A little faith all undisproved,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A little dust to
+overweep,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And bitter memories to make<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The whole earth blasted for our
+sake.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He giveth his beloved
+sleep.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Sleep soft, beloved!" we sometimes
+say,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who have no tune to charm away<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sad dreams that through
+the eyelids creep;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But never doleful dream again<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shall break the happy slumber
+when<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He giveth his
+belov&egrave;d sleep.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O earth, so full of dreary
+noises!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O men with wailing in your
+voices!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O delv&egrave;d gold the
+wailers heap!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O strife, O curse, that o'er it
+fall!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;God strikes a silence through you
+all,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And giveth his beloved
+sleep.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;His dews drop mutely on the hill,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;His cloud above it saileth still,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Though on its slope men
+sow and reap;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;More softly than the dew is shed,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or cloud is floated overhead,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He giveth his
+belov&egrave;d sleep.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ay, men may wonder while they
+scan<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A living, thinking, feeling man<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Confirmed in such a rest
+to keep;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But angels say,--and through the
+word<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I think their happy smile is
+<i>heard</i>,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"He giveth his
+belov&egrave;d sleep."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For me, my heart that erst did go<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Most like a tired child at a
+show,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That sees through tears
+the mummers leap,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Would now its wearied vision
+close,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Would childlike on His love
+repose<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who giveth his
+belov&egrave;d sleep.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And friends, dear friends, when it
+shall be<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That this low breath is gone from
+me,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And round my bier ye come
+to weep,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let one most loving of you all<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Say, "Not a tear must o'er her
+fall!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He giveth his
+belov&egrave;d sleep."</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING05E"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>THE CRY OF THE
+CHILDREN</b><br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I</blockquote>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Do ye hear the children weeping, O my
+brothers,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ere the
+sorrow comes with years?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They are leaning their young heads
+against their mothers,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And
+<i>that</i> cannot stop their tears.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The young lambs are bleating in the
+meadows;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The young birds are
+chirping in the nest;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The young fawns are playing with the
+shadows;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The young flowers are
+blowing toward the west:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But the young, young children, O my
+brothers!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They are
+weeping bitterly.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They are weeping in the playtime of
+the others,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In the
+country of the free.<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;II</blockquote>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Do you question the young children in
+their sorrow,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Why their
+tears are falling so?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The old man may weep for his
+To-morrow<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Which is lost
+in Long-Ago;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The old tree is leafless in the
+forest;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The old year is ending in
+the frost;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The old wound, if stricken, is the
+sorest;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The old hope is hardest
+to be lost:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But the young, young children, O my
+brothers!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Do you ask
+them why they stand<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Weeping sore before the bosoms of
+their mothers,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In our happy
+Fatherland?<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;III</blockquote>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They look up with their pale and
+sunken faces;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And their
+looks are sad to see,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For the man's hoary anguish draws and
+presses<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Down the
+cheeks of infancy.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Your old earth," they say, "is very
+dreary;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Our young feet," they
+say, "are very weak;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Few paces have we taken, yet are
+weary;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Our grave-rest is very
+far to seek.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ask the aged why they weep, and not
+the children;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For the
+outside earth is cold,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And we young ones stand without in
+our bewildering,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the
+graves are for the old."<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;IV</blockquote>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"True," say the children, "it may
+happen<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That we die
+before our time:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Little Alice died last year; her
+grave is shapen<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Like a
+snowball in the rime.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We looked into the pit prepared to
+take her:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Was no room for any work
+in the close clay,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;From the sleep wherein she lieth none
+will wake her,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Crying, 'Get up, little
+Alice! it is day.'<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If you listen by that grave, in sun
+and shower,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With your ear down,
+little Alice never cries.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Could we see her face, be sure we
+should not know her,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For the smile has time
+for growing in her eyes;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And merry go her moments, lulled and
+stilled in<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The shroud by the
+kirk-chime.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;It is good when it happens," say the
+children,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"That we die
+before our time."<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;V</blockquote>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Alas, alas, the children! They are
+seeking<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Death in
+life, as best to have.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They are binding up their hearts away
+from breaking<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With a
+cerement from the grave.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Go out, children, from the mine and
+from the city;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sing out, children, as
+the little thrushes do;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Pluck your handfuls of the
+meadow-cowslips pretty;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Laugh aloud, to feel your
+fingers let them through.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But they answer, "Are your cowslips
+of the meadows<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Like our
+weeds anear the mine?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Leave us quiet in the dark of the
+coal-shadows,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;From your
+pleasures fair and fine.<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;VI</blockquote>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"For oh!" say the children, "we are
+weary,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And we cannot
+run or leap;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If we cared for any meadows, it were
+merely<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To drop down
+in them, and sleep.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Our knees tremble sorely in the
+stooping;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We fall upon our faces,
+trying to go;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And, underneath our heavy eyelids
+drooping,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The reddest flower would
+look as pale as snow;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For all day we drag our burden
+tiring,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Through the
+coal-dark, underground;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or all day we drive the wheels of
+iron<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In the
+factories, round and round.<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;VII</blockquote>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"For all-day the wheels are droning,
+turning;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Their wind
+comes in our faces,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Till our hearts turn, our heads with
+pulses burning,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the walls
+turn in their places.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Turns the sky in the high window
+blank and reeling,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Turns the long light that
+drops adown the wall,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Turn the black flies that crawl along
+the ceiling,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All are turning, all the
+day, and we with all.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And all day the iron wheels are
+droning,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And sometimes
+we could pray,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'O ye wheels' (breaking out in a mad
+moaning),<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Stop! be
+silent for to-day!'"<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;VIII</blockquote>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ay. be silent! Let them hear each
+other breathing<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For a moment,
+mouth to mouth;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let them touch each other's hands, in
+a fresh wreathing<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of their
+tender human youth;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let them feel that this cold metallic
+motion<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Is not all the life God
+fashions or reveals;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let them prove their living souls
+against the notion<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That they live in you, or
+tinder you, O wheels!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Still all day the iron wheels go
+onward,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Grinding life
+down from its mark;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the children's souls, which God
+is calling sunward,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Spin on
+blindly in the dark.<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;IX</blockquote>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Now tell the poor young children, O
+my brothers,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To look up to
+Him, and pray;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So the bless&egrave;d One who
+blesseth all the others<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Will bless
+them another day.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They answer, "Who is God, that he
+should hear us<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While the rushing of the
+iron wheels is stirred?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When we sob aloud, the human
+creatures near us<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Pass by, hearing not, or
+answer not a word;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And <i>we</i> hear not (for the
+wheels in their resounding)<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Strangers
+speaking at the door.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Is it likely God, with angels singing
+round him,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hears our
+weeping any more?<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;X</blockquote>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Two words, indeed, of praying we
+remember;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And at
+midnight's hour of harm,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Our Father,' looking upward in the
+chamber,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We say softly
+for a charm.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We know no other words except 'Our
+Father';<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And we think that, in
+some pause of angels' song,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;God may pluck them with the silence
+sweet to gather,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And hold both within his
+right hand, which is strong.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Our Father!' If he heard us, he
+would surely<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(For they
+call him good and mild)<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Answer, smiling down the steep world
+very purely,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Come and
+rest with me, my child.'<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;XI</blockquote>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"But no!" say the children, weeping
+faster,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"He is
+speechless as a stone;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And they tell us, of his image is the
+master<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who commands
+us to work on.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Go to!" say the children,--"up in
+heaven,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dark, wheel-like, turning
+clouds are all we find.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Do not mock us: Grief has made us
+unbelieving:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We look up for God; but
+tears have made us blind."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Do you hear the children weeping and
+disproving,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O my
+brothers, what ye preach?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For God's possible is taught by his
+world's loving--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the
+children doubt of each.<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;XII</blockquote>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And well may the children weep before
+you!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They are
+weary ere they run;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They have never seen the sunshine,
+nor the glory<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Which is
+brighter than the sun.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They know the grief of man, without
+its wisdom;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They sink in man's
+despair, without its calm;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Are slaves, without the liberty in
+Christdom;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Are martyrs, by the pang
+without the palm;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Are worn as if with age, yet
+unretrievingly<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The harvest of its
+memories cannot reap;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Are orphans of the earthly love and
+heavenly--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let them
+weep! let them weep!<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;XIII</blockquote>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They look up with their pale and
+sunken faces,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And their
+look is dread to see.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For they mind you of their angels in
+high places,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With eyes
+turned on Deity.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"How long," they say, "how long, O
+cruel nation,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Will you stand, to move
+the world on a child's heart,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Stifle down with a mailed heel its
+palpitation,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And tread onward to your
+throne amid the mart?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Our blood splashes upward, O
+gold-heaper,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And your
+purple shows your path;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But the child's sob in the silence
+curses deeper<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Than the
+strong man in his wrath!"</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING06E"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>MOTHER AND
+POET</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[On Laura Savio of Turin, a poetess
+and patriot, whose sons were killed<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;at Ancona and Gaeta.]<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;DEAD! One of them shot by the sea in
+the east,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And one of them shot in
+the west by the sea.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dead! both my boys! When you sit at
+the feast,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And are wanting a great
+song for Italy free,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let none look
+at <i>me</i>!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet I was a poetess only last
+year,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And good at my art, for a
+woman, men said:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But <i>this</i> woman, <i>this</i>,
+who is agonized here,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The east sea and west sea
+rhyme on in her head<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Forever
+instead.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What art can a woman be good at? Oh,
+vain!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What art <i>is</i> she
+good at, but hurting her breast<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With the milk-teeth of babes, and a
+smile at the pain?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ah, boys, how you hurt!
+you were strong as you prest,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And I proud
+by that test.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What art's for a woman? To hold on
+her knees<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Both darlings! to feel
+all their arms round her throat<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cling, strangle a little! to sew by
+degrees,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And 'broider the
+long-clothes and neat little coat;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To dream and
+to dote.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To teach them.... It stings there!
+<i>I</i> made them indeed<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Speak plain the word
+<i>country. I</i> taught them, no doubt,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That a country's a thing men should
+die for at need.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I prated of liberty,
+rights, and about<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The tyrant
+cast out.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And when their eyes flashed ... O my
+beautiful eyes! ...<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I exulted; nay, let them
+go forth at the wheels<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of the guns, and denied not. But then
+the surprise<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When one sits quite
+alone! Then one weeps, then one kneels.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;God, how the
+house feels!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;At first, happy news came, in gay
+letters moiled<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With my kisses, of
+camp-life and glory, and how<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They both loved me; and soon, coming
+home to be spoiled,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In return would fan off
+every fly from my brow<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With their
+green laurel-bough.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;There was triumph at Turin: "Ancona
+was free!"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And some one came out of
+the cheers in the street,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With a face pale as stone, to say
+something to me.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My Guido was dead! I fell
+down at his feet,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While they
+cheered in the street.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I bore it; friends soothed me; my
+grief looked sublime<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As the ransom of Italy.
+One boy remained<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To be leant on and walked with,
+recalling the time<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When the first grew
+immortal, while both of us strained<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the height
+<i>he</i> had gained.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And letters still came; shorter,
+sadder, more strong,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Writ now but in one
+hand:--"I was not to faint,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;One loved me for two; would be with
+me ere long:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And <i>Viva l'Italia</i>
+he died for, our saint,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who forbids
+our complaint."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My Nanni would add, "he was safe, and
+aware<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of a presence that turned
+off the balls,--was imprest<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;It was Guido himself, who knew what I
+could bear,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And how 'twas impossible,
+quite dispossest,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To live on
+for the rest."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;On which, without pause, up the
+telegraph-line<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Swept smoothly the next
+news from Gaeta,--"<i>Shot.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Tell his mother</i>." Ah, ah! "his,"
+"their" mother, not "mine":<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No voice says, "<i>My</i>
+mother," again to me. What!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You think
+Guido forgot?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Are souls straight so happy, that,
+dizzy with heaven,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They drop earth's
+affections, conceive not of woe?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I think not! Themselves were too
+lately forgiven<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Through that Love and
+that Sorrow which reconciled so<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Above and
+Below.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O Christ of the seven wounds, who
+look'dst through the dark<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the face of thy
+mother! Consider, I pray,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How we common mothers stand desolate,
+mark,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Whose sons, not being
+Christs, die with eyes turned away,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And no last
+word to say!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Both boys dead? but that's out of
+nature. We all<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Have been patriots, yet
+each house must always keep one.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to
+a wall;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And when Italy's made,
+for what end is it done,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If we have
+not a son?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta's taken, what
+then?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When the fair wicked
+queen sits no more at her sport<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of the fire-balls of death crashing
+souls out of men;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When the guns of Cavalli
+with final retort<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Have cut the
+game short;<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When Venice and Rome keep their new
+jubilee;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When your flag takes all
+heaven for its white, green, and red:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When <i>you</i> have your country
+from mountain to sea,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When King Victor has
+Italy's crown on his head,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(And I have
+my dead)--<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What then? Do not mock me. Ah, ring
+your bells low<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And burn your lights
+faintly! <i>My</i> country is <i>there</i>.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Above the star pricked by the last
+peak of snow:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My Italy's THERE, with my
+brave civic pair,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To
+disfranchise despair!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Forgive me. Some women bear children
+in strength,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And bite back the cry of
+their pain in self-scorn;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But the birth-pangs of nations will
+wring us at length<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Into wail such as this,
+and we sit on forlorn<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When the
+man-child is born.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dead! One of them shot by the sea in
+the east,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And one of them shot in
+the west by the sea.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Both! both my boys! If in keeping the
+feast<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You want a great song for
+your Italy free,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let none look
+at <i>me</i>!</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING07E"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>A COURT LADY</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Her hair was tawny with gold; her
+eyes with purple were dark;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Her cheeks' pale opal burnt with a
+red and restless spark.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Never was lady of Milan nobler in
+name and in race;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Never was lady of Italy fairer to see
+in the face.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Never was lady on earth more true as
+woman and wife,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Larger in judgment and instinct,
+prouder in manners and life.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;She stood in the early morning, and
+said to her maidens, "Bring<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That silken robe made ready to wear
+at the court of the King.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Bring me the clasps of diamond,
+lucid, clear of the mote;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Clasp me the large at the waist, and
+clasp me the small at the throat.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Diamonds to fasten the hair, and
+diamonds to fasten the sleeves,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Laces to drop from their rays, like a
+powder of snow from the eaves."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gorgeous she entered the sunlight,
+which gathered her up in a flame,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While, straight in her open carriage,
+she to the hospital came.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In she went at the door, and gazing
+from end to end,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Many and low are the pallets; but
+each is the place of a friend."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Up she passed through the wards, and
+stood at a young man's bed;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bloody the band on his brow, and
+livid the droop of his head.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Art thou a Lombard, my brother?
+Happy art thou!" she cried,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And smiled like Italy on him: he
+dreamed in her face--and died.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Pale with his passing soul, she went
+on still to a second:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He was a grave hard man, whose years
+by dungeons were reckoned.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Wounds in his body were sore, wounds
+in his life were sorer.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Art thou a Romagnole?" Her eyes
+drove lightnings before her.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Austrian and priest had joined to
+double and tighten the cord<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Able to bind thee, O strong one, free
+by the stroke of a sword.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Now be grave for the rest of us,
+using the life overcast<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To ripen our wine of the present (too
+new) in glooms of the past."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Down she stepped to a pallet where
+lay a face like a girl's,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Young, and pathetic with dying,--a
+deep black hole in the curls.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Art thou from Tuscany, brother? and
+seest thou, dreaming in pain,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thy mother stand in the piazza,
+searching the list of the slain?"<br>
+<br>
+Kind as a mother herself, she touched his cheeks with her
+hands:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Blessed is she who has borne thee,
+although she should weep as<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+she stands."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;On she passed to a Frenchman, his arm
+carried off by a ball:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Kneeling: "O more than my brother!
+how shall I thank thee for all?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Each of the heroes around us has
+fought for his land and line;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But thou hast fought for a stranger,
+in hate of a wrong not thine.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Happy are all free peoples, too
+strong to be dispossest,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But blessed are those among nations
+who dare to be strong for the<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;rest."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ever she passed on her way, and came
+to a couch where pined<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;One with a face from Venetia, white
+with a hope out of mind.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Long she stood and gazed, and twice
+she tried at the name;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But two great crystal tears were all
+that faltered and came.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Only a tear for Venice? She turned as
+in passion and loss,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And stooped to his forehead and
+kissed it, as if she were kissing<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;the cross.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Faint with that strain of heart, she
+moved on then to another,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Stern and strong in his death: "And
+dost thou suffer, my brother?"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Holding his hands in hers: "Out of
+the Piedmont lion<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cometh the sweetness of freedom!
+sweetest to live or to die on."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Holding his cold rough hands: "Well,
+oh well have ye done<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In noble, noble Piedmont, who would
+not be noble alone."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Back he fell while she spoke. She
+rose to her feet with a spring.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"That was a Piedmontese! and this is
+the court of the King!"</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING08E"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>THE PROSPECT</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Methinks we do as fretful children
+do,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Leaning their faces on
+the window-pane<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To sigh the glass dim
+with their own breath's stain,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And shut the sky and landscape from
+their view;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And thus, alas! since God the maker
+drew<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A mystic separation
+'twixt those twain,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The life beyond us and
+our souls in pain,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We miss the prospect which we are
+called unto<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;By grief we are fools to use. Be
+still and strong,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O man, my brother! hold thy sobbing
+breath,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And keep thy soul's large
+window pure from wrong;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That so, as life's appointment
+issueth,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thy vision may be clear
+to watch along<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The sunset consummation-lights of
+death.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING09E"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>DE PROFUNDIS</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The face which, duly as the sun,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Rose up for me with life begun,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To mark all bright hours of the
+day<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With daily love, is dimmed away--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And yet my days go on, go
+on.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The tongue which, like a stream,
+could run<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Smooth music from the roughest
+stone,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And every morning with "Good day"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Make each day good, is hushed
+away--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And yet my days go on, go
+on.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The heart which, like a staff, was
+one<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For mine to lean and rest upon,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The strongest on the longest day,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With steadfast love is caught
+away--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And yet my days go on, go
+on.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The world goes whispering to its
+own,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"This anguish pierces to the
+bone."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And tender friends go sighing
+round,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"What love can ever cure this
+wound?"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My days go on, my days go
+on.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The past rolls forward on the sun<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And makes all night. O dreams
+begun,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Not to be ended! Ended bliss!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And life, that will not end in
+this!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My days go on, my days go
+on.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Breath freezes on my lips to
+moan:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As one alone, once not alone,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I sit and knock at Nature's door,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Heart-bare, heart-hungry, very
+poor,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Whose desolated days go
+on.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I knock and cry--Undone, undone!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Is there no help, no
+comfort--none?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No gleaning in the wide
+wheat-plains<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where others drive their loaded
+wains?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My vacant days go on, go
+on.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This Nature, though the snows be
+down,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thinks kindly of the bird of
+June.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The little red hip on the tree<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Is ripe for such. What is for me,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Whose days so winterly go
+on?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No bird am I to sing in June,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And dare not ask an equal boon.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Good nests and berries red are
+Nature's<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To give away to better
+creatures--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And yet my days go on, go
+on.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>I</i> ask less kindness to be
+done--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Only to loose these pilgrim-shoon<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(Too early worn and grimed) with
+sweet<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cool deathly touch to these tired
+feet,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Till days go out which
+now go on.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Only to lift the turf unmown<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;From off the earth where it has
+grown,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Some cubit-space, and say,
+"Behold,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Creep in, poor Heart, beneath that
+fold,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Forgetting how the days
+go on."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A Voice reproves me thereupon,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;More sweet than Nature's, when the
+drone<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of bees is sweetest, and more
+deep,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Than when the rivers overleap<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The shuddering pines, and
+thunder on.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;God's Voice, not Nature's--night and
+noon<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He sits upon the great white
+throne,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And listens for the creature's
+praise.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What babble we of days and days?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Dayspring he, whose
+days go on!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He reigns above, he reigns alone:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Systems burn out and leave his
+throne:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Fair mists of seraphs melt and
+fall<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Around him, changeless amid all--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ancient of days, whose
+days go on!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He reigns below, he reigns
+alone--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And having life in love forgone<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Beneath the crown of sovran
+thorns,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He reigns the jealous God. Who
+mourns<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or rules with HIM, while
+days go on?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;By anguish which made pale the
+sun,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I hear him charge his saints that
+none<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Among the creatures anywhere<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Blaspheme against him with
+despair,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;However darkly days go
+on.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Take from my head the thorn-wreath
+brown:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No mortal grief deserves that
+crown.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O supreme Love, chief misery,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The sharp regalia are for
+<i>Thee</i>,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Whose days eternally go
+on!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For us, ... whatever's undergone,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thou knowest, willest what is
+done.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Grief may be joy misunderstood:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Only the Good discerns the good.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I trust Thee while my
+days go on.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Whatever's lost, it first was
+won!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We will not struggle nor impugn.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Perhaps the cup was broken here<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That Heaven's new wine might show
+more clear.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I praise Thee while my
+days go on.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I praise Thee while my days go
+on;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I love Thee while my days go on!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Through dark and dearth, through fire
+and frost,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With emptied arms and treasure
+lost,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I thank Thee while my
+days go on!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And, having in thy life-depth
+thrown<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Being and suffering (which are
+one),<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As a child drops some pebble
+small<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Down some deep well, and hears it
+fall<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Smiling--so I! THY DAYS
+GO ON!</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING10E"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>THE CRY OF THE
+HUMAN</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"There is no God," the foolish
+saith,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But none, "There is no
+sorrow;"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And nature oft the cry of faith<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In bitter need will
+borrow:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Eyes which the preacher could not
+school<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;By wayside graves are
+raised;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And lips say, "God be pitiful,"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who ne'er said, "God be
+praised."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Be
+pitiful, O God.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The tempest stretches from the
+steep<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The shadow of its
+coming;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The beasts grow tame, and near us
+creep,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As help were in the
+human:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet while the cloud-wheels roll and
+grind,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We spirits tremble
+under!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The hills have echoes; but we
+find<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No answer for the
+thunder.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Be
+pitiful, O God!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The battle hurtles on the
+plains--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Earth feels new scythes
+upon her:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We reap our brothers for the
+wains,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And call the
+harvest--honor.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Draw face to face, front line to
+line,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;One image all
+inherit:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Then kill, curse on, by that same
+sign,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Clay, clay,--and spirit,
+spirit.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Be
+pitiful, O God!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We meet together at the feast--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To private mirth betake
+us--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We stare down in the winecup,
+lest<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Some vacant chair should
+shake us!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We name delight, and pledge it
+round--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"It shall be ours
+to-morrow!"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;God's seraphs! do your voices
+sound<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As sad in naming
+sorrow?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Be
+pitiful, O God!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We sit together, with the skies,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The steadfast skies,
+above us;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We look into each other's eyes,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"And how long will you
+love us?"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The eyes grow dim with prophecy,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The voices, low and
+breathless--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Till death us part!"--O words, to
+be<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Our <i>best</i> for love
+the deathless!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Be
+pitiful, dear God!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We tremble by the harmless bed<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of one loved and
+departed--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Our tears drop on the lips that
+said<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Last night, "Be
+stronger-hearted!"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O God,--to clasp those fingers
+close,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And yet to feel so
+lonely!--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To see a light upon such brows,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Which is the daylight
+only!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Be
+pitiful, O God!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The happy children come to us,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And look up in our
+faces;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They ask us--Was it thus, and
+thus,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When we were in their
+places?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We cannot speak--we see anew<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The hills we used to live
+in,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And feel our mother's smile press
+through<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The kisses she is
+giving.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Be
+pitiful, O God!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We pray together at the kirk,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For mercy, mercy,
+solely--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hands weary with the evil work,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We lift them to the
+Holy!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The corpse is calm below our
+knee--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Its spirit bright before
+Thee--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Between them, worse than either,
+we<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Without the rest of
+glory!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Be
+pitiful, O God!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And soon all vision waxeth dull--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Men whisper, "He is
+dying;"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We cry no more, "Be pitiful!"--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We have no strength for
+crying:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No strength, no need! Then, Soul of
+mine,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Look up and triumph
+rather--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lo! in the depth of God's Divine,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Son adjures the
+Father--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;BE
+PITIFUL, O GOD!</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING11E"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>ROMANCE OF THE SWAN'S
+NEST</b><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Little Ellie sits
+alone<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Mid the beeches of a meadow,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; By a stream-side on the
+grass;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And the trees are
+showering down<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Doubles of their leaves in
+shadow,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; On her shining hair and
+face.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; She has thrown her
+bonnet by;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And her feet she has been dipping<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the shallow water's
+flow--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Now she holds them
+nakedly<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In her hands, all sleek and
+dripping,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; While she rocketh to and
+fro.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Little Ellie sits
+alone,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the smile she softly uses<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Fills the silence like a
+speech;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; While she thinks what
+shall be done,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the sweetest pleasure
+chooses,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For her future within
+reach.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Little Ellie in her
+smile<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Chooseth--"I will have a lover,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Riding on a steed of
+steeds!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; He shall love me without
+guile;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And to <i>him</i> I will discover<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That swan's nest among
+the reeds.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "And the steed shall be
+red-roan.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the lover shall be noble,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; With an eye that takes
+the breath.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And the lute he plays
+upon<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shall strike ladies into trouble,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As his sword strikes men
+to death.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "And the steed it shall
+be shod<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All in silver, housed in
+<i>azure</i>,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And the mane shall swim
+the wind:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And the hoofs along the
+sod<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shall flash onward and keep
+measure,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Till the shepherds look
+behind.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "But my lover will not
+prize<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All the glory that he rides in,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; When he gazes in my
+face.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; He will say, 'O Love,
+thine eyes<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Build the shrine my soul abides
+in;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And I kneel here for thy
+grace.'<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "Then, ay, then--he
+shall kneel low,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With the red-roan steed anear
+him,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Which shall seem to
+understand--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Till I answer, 'Rise and
+go!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For the world must love and fear
+him<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Whom I gift with heart
+and hand.'<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "Then he will arise so
+pale,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I shall feel my own lips tremble<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; With a <i>yes</i> I must
+not say--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Nathless maiden-brave,
+'Fare well,'<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I will utter, and dissemble--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 'Light to-morrow with
+to-day.'<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "Then he'll ride among
+the hills<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the wide world past the river,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; There to put away all
+wrong:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To make straight
+distorted wills,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And to empty the broad quiver<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Which the wicked bear
+along.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "Three times shall a
+young foot-page<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Swim the stream and climb the
+mountain<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And kneel down beside my
+feet--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 'Lo! my master sends
+this gage,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lady, for thy pity's counting!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What wilt thou exchange
+for it?'<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "And the first time I
+will send<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A white rosebud for a guerdon,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And the second time, a
+glove:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But the third time--I
+may bend<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;From my pride, and
+answer--'Pardon--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; If he come to take my
+love.'<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "Then the young
+foot-page will run--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Then my lover will ride faster,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Till he kneeleth at my
+knee:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 'I am a duke's eldest
+son!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thousand serfs do call me
+master,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But, O Love, I love but
+<i>thee!</i><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"He will kiss me on the
+mouth<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Then; and lead me as a lover<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Through the crowds that
+praise his deeds;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And when soul-tied by one
+troth,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Unto <i>him</i> I will discover<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That swan's nest among
+the reeds."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Little Ellie, with her
+smile<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Not yet ended, rose up gayly,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Tied the bonnet, donned
+the shoe--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And went homeward, round
+a mile,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Just to see, as she did daily,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What more eggs were with
+the <i>two</i>.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Pushing through the
+elm-tree copse<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Winding by the stream,
+light-hearted,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where the osier pathway
+leads--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Past the boughs she
+stoops--and stops!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lo! the wild swan had deserted--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And a rat had gnawed the
+reeds.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ellie went home sad and
+slow:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If she found the lover ever,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With his red-roan steed
+of steeds,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sooth I know not! but I
+know<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;She could never show him--never,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That swan's nest among
+the reeds!</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING12E"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>THE BEST THING IN THE
+WORLD</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;WHAT'S the best thing in the
+world?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; June-rose by May-dew
+impearled;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sweet south-wind, that
+means no rain;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Truth, not cruel to a friend;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Pleasure, not in haste to end;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Beauty, not self-decked and
+curled<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Till its pride is over-plain;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Light, that never makes you wink;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Memory, that gives no pain;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Love, when <i>so</i> you're loved
+again.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What's the best thing in the
+world?--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Something out of it, I
+think.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING13E"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>SONNETS FROM THE
+PORTUGUESE</b><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Unlike are we, unlike, O princely
+Heart!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Unlike our uses and our
+destinies.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Our ministering two
+angels look surprise<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;On one another as they strike
+athwart<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink
+thee, art<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A guest for queens to
+social pageantries,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With gages from a hundred
+brighter eyes<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Than tears even can make mine, to
+play thy part<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of chief musician. What
+hast <i>thou</i> to do<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With looking from the lattice-lights
+at me,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A poor, tired, wandering
+singer, singing through<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The dark, and leaning up a cypress
+tree?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The chrism is on thine
+head; on mine the dew:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And Death must dig the level where
+these agree.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thou hast thy calling to some
+palace-floor,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Most gracious singer of
+high poems, where<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The dancers will break
+footing, from the care<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of watching up thy pregnant lips for
+more.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And dost thou lift this house's
+latch, too poor<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For hand of thine? and
+canst thou think, and bear<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To let thy music drop
+here unaware<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In folds of golden fulness at my
+door?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Look up, and see the
+casement broken in,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The bats and owlets builders in the
+roof!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My cricket chirps against
+thy mandolin.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hush, call no echo up in further
+proof<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of desolation! there's a
+voice within<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That weeps--as thou must sing--alone,
+aloof.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What can I give thee back, O
+liberal<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And princely giver, who
+hast brought the gold<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And purple of thine
+heart, unstained, untold,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And laid them on the outside of the
+wall<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For such as I to take or leave
+withal,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In unexpected largesse?
+Am I cold,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ungrateful, that for
+these most manifold<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;High gifts, I render nothing back at
+all?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Not so; not cold, but
+very poor instead.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ask God, who knows. For frequent
+tears have run<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The colors from my life,
+and left so dead<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And pale a stuff, it were not fitly
+done<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To give the same as
+pillow to thy head.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Go farther! let it serve to trample
+on.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If thou must love me, let it be for
+naught<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Except for love's sake
+only. Do not say<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "I love her for her
+smile, her look, her way<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of speaking gently, for a trick of
+thought<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That falls in well with mine, and
+certes brought<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A sense of pleasant ease
+on such a day:"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For these things in
+themselves, beloved, may<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Be changed, or change for thee; and
+love so wrought<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; May be unwrought so.
+Neither love me for<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thine own dear pity's wiping my
+cheeks dry:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A creature might forget
+to weep, who bore<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thy comfort long, and lose thy love
+thereby.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But love me for love's
+sake, that evermore<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thou mayst love on through love's
+eternity.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;First time he kissed me, he but only
+kissed<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The fingers of this hand
+wherewith I write;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And ever since it grew
+more clean and white,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Slow to world-greetings, quick with
+its "Oh list!"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When the angels speak. A ring of
+amethyst<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I could not wear here
+plainer to my sight<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Than that first kiss.
+The second passed in height<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The first, and sought the forehead,
+and half missed,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Half falling on the
+hair. Oh, beyond meed!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That was the chrism of love, which
+love's own crown<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; With sanctifying
+sweetness did precede.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The third upon my lips was folded
+down<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In perfect purple state;
+since when, indeed,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I have been proud, and said "My love,
+my own!"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I LIVED with visions for my
+company,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Instead of men and
+women, years ago,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And found them gentle
+mates, nor thought to know<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A sweeter music than they played to
+me.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But soon their trailing purple was
+not free<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of this world's dust,
+their lutes did silent grow,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And I myself grew faint
+and blind below<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Their vanishing eyes. Then THOU didst
+come--to be,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Beloved, what they
+seemed. Their shining fronts,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Their songs, their splendors (better,
+yet the same,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As river-water hallowed
+into fonts),<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Met in thee, and from out thee
+overcame<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; My soul with
+satisfaction of all wants,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Because God's gifts put man's best
+dreams to shame.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;BELOVED, my beloved, when I think<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That thou wast in the
+world a year ago,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What time I sat alone
+here in the snow,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And saw no footprint, heard the
+silence sink<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No moment at thy voice, but, link by
+link,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Went counting all my
+chains as if that so<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; They never could fall
+off at any blow<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Struck by thy possible hand--why,
+thus I drink<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of life's great cup of
+wonder! Wonderful,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Never to feel thee thrill the day or
+night<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; With personal act or
+speech, nor ever cull<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Some prescience of thee with the
+blossoms white<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thou sawest growing!
+Atheists are as dull,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who cannot guess God's presence out
+of sight.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;BECAUSE thou hast the power and
+own'st the grace<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To look through and
+behind this mask of me,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; (Against which years
+have beat thus blanchingly<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With their rains!) and behold my
+soul's true face,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The dim and weary witness of life's
+race;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Because thou hast the
+faith and love to see,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Through that same soul's
+distracting lethargy,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The patient angel waiting for his
+place<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the new heavens;
+because nor sin nor woe,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nor God's infliction, nor death's
+neighborhood,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Nor all which others
+viewing, turn to go,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nor all which makes me tired of all,
+self-viewed,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Nothing repels
+thee.--Dearest, teach me so<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To pour out gratitude, as thou dost,
+good!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I THANK all who have loved me in
+their hearts,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; With thanks and love
+from mine. Deep thanks to all<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Who paused a little near
+the prison-wall,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To hear my music in its louder
+parts,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ere they went onward, each one to the
+mart's<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Or temple's occupation,
+beyond call.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But thou, who in my
+voice's sink and fall,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When the sob took it, thy divinest
+Art's<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Own instrument didst
+drop down at thy foot,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To hearken what I said between my
+tears,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Instruct me how to thank
+thee!--Oh, to shoot<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My soul's full meaning into future
+years,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That <i>they</i> should
+lend it utterance, and salute<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Love that endures! with Life that
+disappears!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How do I love thee? Let me count the
+ways.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I love thee to the depth
+and breadth and height<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My soul can reach, when
+feeling out of sight<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For the ends of Being and Ideal
+Grace.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I love thee to the level of every
+day's<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Most quiet need, by sun
+and candle-light.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I love thee freely, as
+men strive for Right;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I love thee purely, as they turn from
+Praise;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I love thee with the
+passion put to use<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In my old griefs, and with my
+childhood's faith;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I love thee with a love I
+seemed to lose<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With my lost saints,--I love thee
+with the breath,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Smiles, tears, of all my
+life!--and if God choose,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I shall but love thee better after
+death.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING14E"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>A FALSE STEP</b><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sweet, thou hast trod on a heart.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Pass! there's a world
+full of men;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And women as fair as thou art<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Must do such things now and then.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thou only hast stepped unaware,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Malice, not one can
+impute;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And why should a heart have been
+there<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In the way of a fair
+woman's foot?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;It was not a stone that could
+trip,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Nor was it a thorn that
+could rend:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Put up thy proud underlip!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Twas merely the heart of
+a friend.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And yet peradventure one day<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thou, sitting alone at
+the glass,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Remarking the bloom gone away,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where the smile in its
+dimplement was,<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And seeking around thee in vain<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;From hundreds who
+flattered before,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Such a word as,--"Oh, not in the
+main<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Do I hold thee less
+precious,--but more!"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thou'lt sigh, very like, on thy
+part:--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Of all I have known or
+can know,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I wish I had only that Heart<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I trod upon, ages
+ago!"</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING15E"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>A CHILD'S THOUGHT OF
+GOD</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They say that God lives very
+high!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But if you look above the
+pines<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You cannot see our God. And why?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And if you dig down in the mines<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You never see him in the
+gold,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Though, from him, all that's glory
+shines.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;God is so good, he wears a fold<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of heaven and earth
+across his face--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Like secrets kept, for love,
+untold.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But still I feel that his embrace<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Slides down by thrills,
+through all things made,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Through sight and sound of every
+place:<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As if my tender mother laid<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;On my shut lids her
+kisses' pressure,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Half-waking me at night; and said<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Who kissed you through
+the dark, dear guesser?"</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING16E"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>CHEERFULNESS TAUGHT BY
+REASON</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I think we are too ready with
+complaint<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In this fair world of
+God's. Had we no hope<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Indeed beyond the zenith
+and the slope<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of yon gray blank of sky, we might be
+faint<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To muse upon eternity's
+constraint<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Round our aspirant souls.
+But since the scope<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Must widen early, is it
+well to droop<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For a few days consumed in loss and
+taint?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O pusillanimous Heart, be
+comforted,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And like a cheerful
+traveler, take the road,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Singing beside the hedge. What if the
+bread<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Be bitter in thine inn,
+and thou unshod<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To meet the flints?--At least it may
+be said,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Because the way is
+<i>short</i>, I thank thee, God!"</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="ROBERT_BROWNING"></a>
+<h2>ROBERT BROWNING</h2>
+<h3>(1812-1889)</h3>
+<center>BY E.L. BURLINGAME</center>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-r.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>obert Browning was born at Camberwell on May 7th, 1812, the son
+and grandson of men who held clerkships in the Bank of England--the
+one for more than forty and the other for full fifty years. His
+surroundings were apparently typical of English moderate
+prosperity, and neither they, nor his good but undistinguished
+family traditions, furnish any basis for the theorizing of
+biographers, except indeed in a single point. His grandmother was a
+West Indian Creole, and though only of the first generation to be
+born away from England, seems, from the restless and adventurous
+life led by her brother, to have belonged to a family of the
+opposite type from her husband's. Whether this crossing of the
+imaginative, Westward-Ho strain of the English blood with the
+home-keeping type has to do with the production of such intensely
+vitalized temperaments as Robert Browning's, is the only question
+suggested by his ancestry. It is noticeable that his father wished
+to go to a university, then to become an artist--- both ambitions
+repressed by the grandfather; and that he took up his bank
+official's career unwillingly. He seems to have been anything but a
+man of routine; to have had keen and wide interests outside of his
+work; to have been a great reader and book collector, even an
+exceptional scholar in certain directions; and to have kept till
+old age a remarkable vivacity, with unbroken health--altogether a
+personality thoroughly sympathetic with that of his son, to whom
+this may well have been the final touch of a prosperity calculated
+to shake all traditional ideas of a poet's youth.</p>
+<p>Browning's education was exceptional, for an English boy's. He
+left school at fourteen, and after that was taught by tutors at
+home, except that at eighteen he took a Greek course at the London
+University. His training seems to have been unusually thorough for
+these conditions, though largely self-directed; it may be supposed
+that his father kept a sympathetic and intelligent guidance, wisely
+not too obvious. But in the main it is clear that from a very early
+age, Browning had deliberately and distinctly in view the idea of
+making literature the pursuit of his life, and that he troubled
+himself seriously with nothing that did not help to that end; while
+into everything that did he seems to have thrown himself with
+precocious intensity. Individual anecdotes of his precocity are
+told by his biographers; but they are flat beside the general fact
+of the depth and character of his studies, and superfluous of the
+man who had written 'Pauline' at twenty-one and 'Paracelsus' at
+twenty-two. At eighteen he knew himself as a poet, and encountered
+no opposition in his chosen career from his father, whose "kindness
+we must seek," as Mrs. Sutherland Orr says, "not only in this
+first, almost inevitable assent to his son's becoming a writer, but
+in the subsequent unfailing readiness to support him in his
+literary career. 'Paracelsus,' 'Sordello,' and the whole of 'Bells
+and Pomegranates' were published at his father's expense, and,
+incredible as it appears, brought him no return." An aunt, Mrs.
+Silverthorne, paid the costs of the earlier 'Pauline.'</p>
+<p>From this time of his earliest published work ('Pauline' was
+issued without his name in 1833) that part of the story of his life
+known to the public, in spite of two or three more or less
+elaborate biographies, is mainly the history of his writings and
+the record of his different residences, supplemented by less than
+the usual number of personal anecdotes, to which neither
+circumstance nor temperament contributed material. He had nothing
+of the attitude of the recluse, like Tennyson; but while healthily
+social and a man of the world about him, he was not one of whom
+people tell "reminiscences" of consequence, and he was in no sense
+a public personality. Little of his correspondence has appeared in
+print; and it seems probable that he will be fortunate, to an even
+greater degree than Thackeray, in living in his works and escaping
+the "ripping up" of the personal chronicler.</p>
+<p>He traveled occasionally in the next few years, and in 1838 and
+again in 1844 visited Italy. In that year, or early in 1845, he
+became engaged to Miss Elizabeth Barrett, their acquaintance
+beginning through a friend,--her cousin,--and through letters from
+Browning expressing admiration for her poems. Miss Barrett had then
+been for some years an invalid from an accident, and an enforced
+recluse; but in September 1846 they were married without the
+knowledge of her father, and almost immediately afterward (she
+leaving her sick room to join him) went to Paris and then to Italy,
+where they lived first in Genoa and afterward in Florence, which
+with occasional absences was their home for fourteen years. Mrs.
+Browning died there, at Casa Guidi, in June 1861. Browning left
+Florence some time afterward, and in spite of his later visits to
+Italy, never returned there. He lived again in London in the
+winter, but most of his summers were spent in France, and
+especially in Brittany. About 1878 he formed the habit of going to
+Venice for the autumn, which continued with rare exceptions to the
+end of his life. There in 1888 his son, recently married, had made
+his home; and there on the 12th of December, 1889, Robert Browning
+died. He was buried in Westminster Abbey on the last day of the
+year.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="browning_r.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/browning_r.jpg"><img src=
+"images/browning_r.jpg" width="45%" alt=""></a></p>
+<p>'Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession,' Browning's first
+published poem, was a psychological self-analysis, perfectly
+characteristic of the time of life at which he wrote it,--very
+young, full of excesses of mood, of real exultation, and somewhat
+less real depression--the "confession" of a poet of twenty-one,
+intensely interested in the ever-new discovery of his own nature,
+its possibilities, and its relations. It rings very true, and has
+no decadent touch in it:--</p>
+<blockquote>"I am made up of an intensest life<br>
+... a principle of restlessness<br>
+Which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel,
+all--"</blockquote>
+<p>this is the note that stays in the reader's mind. But the poem
+is psychologically rather than poetically noteworthy--except as all
+beginnings are so; and Browning's statement in a note in his
+collected poems that he "acknowledged and retained it with extreme
+repugnance," shows how fully he recognized this.</p>
+<p>In 'Paracelsus,' his next long poem, published some two years
+later, the strength of his later work is first definitely felt.
+Taking for theme the life of the sixteenth-century physician,
+astrologer, alchemist, conjuror,--compound of Faust and Cagliostro,
+mixture of truth-seeker, charlatan, and dreamer,--Browning makes of
+it the history of the soul of a feverish aspirant after the
+finality of intellectual power, the knowledge which should be for
+man the key to the universe; the tragedy of its failure, and the
+greater tragedy of its discovery of the barrenness of the effort,
+and the omission from its scheme of life of an element without
+which power was impotent.</p>
+<blockquote>"Yet, constituted thus and thus endowed,<br>
+I failed; I gazed on power till I grew blind.<br>
+Power--I could not take my eyes from that;<br>
+That only I thought should be preserved, increased.<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+I learned my own deep error: love's undoing<br>
+Taught me the worth of love in man's estate,<br>
+And what proportion love should hold with power<br>
+In his right constitution; love preceding<br>
+Power, and with much power always much more love."</blockquote>
+<p>'Paracelsus' is the work of a man still far from maturity; but
+it is Browning's first use of a type of poem in which his powers
+were to find one of their chief manifestations--a psychological
+history, told with so slight an aid from "an external machinery of
+incidents" (to use his own phrase), or from conventional dramatic
+arrangement, as to constitute a form virtually new.</p>
+<p>This was to be notably the method of 'Sordello,' which appeared
+in 1840. In a note written twenty-three years later to his friend
+Milsand, and prefixed as a dedication to 'Sordello' in his
+collected works, he defined the form and its reason most
+exactly:--"The historical decoration was purposely of no more
+importance than a background requires, and my stress lay on the
+incidents in the development of a soul; little else is worth
+study." This poem, with its "historical decoration" or "background"
+from the Guelf and Ghibelline struggles in Italy, carries out this
+design in a fashion that defies description or characterization.
+With its inexhaustible wealth of psychological suggestion, its
+interwoven discussion of the most complex problems of life and
+thought, its metaphysical speculation, it may well give pause to
+the reader who makes his first approach to Browning through it, and
+send him back,--if he begins, as is likely, with the feeling of one
+challenged to an intellectual task,--baffled by the intricacy of
+its ways and without a comprehension of what it contains or leads
+to. Mr. Augustine Birrell says of it:--</p>
+<blockquote>"We have all heard of the young architect who forgot to
+put a staircase in his house, which contained fine rooms but no way
+of getting into them. 'Sordello' is a poem without a staircase. The
+author, still in his twenties, essayed a high thing. For his
+subject<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>'He singled out<br>
+Sordello compassed murkily about<br>
+With ravage of six long sad hundred years.'</blockquote>
+<br>
+"He partially failed; and the British public, with its accustomed
+generosity, and in order, I suppose, to encourage the others, has
+never ceased girding at him because, forty-two years ago, he
+published at his own charges a little book of two hundred and fifty
+pages, which even such of them as were then able to read could not
+understand."</blockquote>
+<p>With 'Sordello,' however, ended for many years--until he may
+perhaps be said to have taken it up in a greatly disciplined and
+more powerful form in 'The Ring and the Book' and others--this type
+and this length of the psychological poem for Browning; and now
+began that part of his work which is his best gift to English
+literature.</p>
+<p>Four years before the publication of 'Sordello' he had written
+one play, 'Strafford,' of which the name sufficiently indicates the
+subject, which had been put upon the stage with some success by
+Macready;--the forerunner of a noble series of poems in dramatic
+form, most conveniently mentioned here together, though not always
+in chronological order. They were 'The Blot on the 'Scutcheon,'
+perhaps the finest of those actually fitted for the stage;
+'Colombe's Birthday'; 'King Victor and King Charles'; 'The Return
+of the Druses'; 'Luria'; 'A Soul's Tragedy'; 'In a Balcony';
+and,--though less on the conventional lines of a play than the
+others,--perhaps the finest dramatic poem of them all, 'Pippa
+Passes,' which, among the earlier (it was published in 1841), is
+also among the finest of all Browning's works, and touches the very
+highest level of his powers.</p>
+<p>Interspersed with these during the fifteen years between 1840
+and 1855, and following them during the next five, appeared the
+greater number of the single shorter poems which make his most
+generally recognized, his highest, and his unquestionably permanent
+title to rank among the first of English poets. Manifestly, it is
+impossible and needless to recall any number of these here by even
+the briefest description; and merely to enumerate the chief among
+them would be to repeat a familiar catalogue, except as they
+illustrate the points of a later general consideration.</p>
+<p>Finally, to complete the list of Browning's works, reference is
+necessary to the group of books of his later years: the two
+self-called narrative poems, 'The Ring and the Book,' with its vast
+length, and 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country,' its fellow in method if
+not in extent. Mr. Birrell (it is worth while to quote him again,
+as one who has not merged the appreciator in the adulator) calls
+'The Ring and the Book' "a huge novel in 20,000 lines--told after
+the method not of Scott, but of Balzac; it tears the hearts out of
+a dozen characters; it tells the same story from ten different
+points of view. It is loaded with detail of every kind and
+description: you are let off nothing." But he adds later:--"If you
+are prepared for this, you will have your reward; for the style,
+though rugged and involved, is throughout, with the exception of
+the speeches of counsel, eloquent and at times superb: and as for
+the matter--if your interest in human nature is keen, curious,
+almost professional; if nothing man, woman, or child has been,
+done, or suffered, or conceivably can be, do, or suffer, is without
+interest for you; if you are fond of analysis, and do not shrink
+from dissection--you will prize 'The Ring and the Book' as the
+surgeon prizes the last great contribution to comparative anatomy
+or pathology."</p>
+<p>This is the key of the matter: the reader who has learned,
+through his greater work, to follow with interest the very analytic
+exercises, and as it were <i>tours de force</i> of Browning's mind,
+will prize 'The Ring and the Book' and 'Red Cotton Nightcap
+Country'; even he will prize but little the two 'Adventures of
+Balaustion,' 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau,' 'The Inn Album,' and
+one or two others of the latest works in the same <i>genre</i>. But
+he can well do without them, and still have the inexhaustible
+left.</p>
+<p>The attitude of a large part of his own generation toward
+Browning's poetry will probably be hardly understood by the future,
+and is not easy to comprehend even now for those who have the whole
+body of his work before them. It is intelligible enough that the
+"crude preliminary sketch" 'Pauline' should have given only the
+bare hint of a poet to the few dozen people who saw that it was out
+of the common; that 'Paracelsus' should have carried the
+information,--though then, beyond a doubt, to only a small circle;
+and especially that 'Sordello,' a clear call to a few, should have
+sounded to even an intelligent many like an exercise in intricacy,
+and to the world at large like something to which it is useless to
+listen. Or, to look at the other end of his career, it is not
+extraordinary that the work of his last period--'The Ring and the
+Book,' 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country,'--those wonderful minute
+studies of human motive, made with the highly specialized skill of
+the psychical surgeon and with the confidence of another Balzac in
+the reader's following power--should always remain more or less
+esoteric literature. But when it is remembered that between these
+lie the most vivid and intensely dramatic series of short poems in
+English,--those grouped in the unfortunately diverse editions of
+his works under the rubrics 'Men and Women,' 'Dramatic Lyrics,'
+'Dramatic Romances,' 'Dramatis Person&aelig;,' and the rest, as
+well as larger masterpieces of the broad appeal of 'Pippa Passes,'
+'A Blot on the 'Scutcheon,' or 'In a Balcony,'--it is hard to
+understand, and will be still harder fifty years hence, why
+Browning has not become the familiar and inspiring poet of a vastly
+larger body of readers. Undoubtedly a large number of intelligent
+persons still suspect a note of affectation in the man who declares
+his full and intense enjoyment--not only his admiration--of
+Browning; a suspicion showing not only the persistence of the
+Sordello-born tradition of "obscurity," but the harm worked by
+those commentators who approach him as a problem. Not all
+commentators share this reproach; but as Browning makes Bishop
+Blougram say:--</p>
+<blockquote>"Even your prime men who appraise their kind<br>
+Are men still, catch a wheel within a wheel,<br>
+See more in a truth than the truth's simple self--<br>
+Confuse themselves--"</blockquote>
+<p>and beyond question such persons are largely responsible for the
+fact that for some time to come, every one who speaks of Browning
+to a general audience will feel that he has some cant to clear
+away. If he can make them read this body of intensely human,
+essentially simple and direct dramatic and lyrical work, he will
+help to bring about the time when the once popular attitude will
+seem as unjustifiable as to judge Goethe only by the second part of
+'Faust.'</p>
+<p>The first great characteristic of Browning's poetry is
+undoubtedly the essential, elemental quality of its humanity--a
+trait in which it is surpassed by no other English poetry but that
+of Shakespeare. It can be subtile to a degree almost fantastic (as
+can Shakespeare's to an extent that familiarity makes us forget);
+but this is in method. The stuff of it--the texture of the fabric
+which the swift and intricate shuttle is weaving--is always
+something in which the human being is vitally, not merely
+aesthetically interested. It deals with no shadows, and indeed with
+few abstractions, except those that form a part of vital
+problems--a statement which may provoke the scoffer, but will be
+found to be true.</p>
+<p>A second characteristic, which, if not a necessary result of
+this first, would at least be impossible without it, is the extent
+to which Browning's poetry produces its effect by suggestion rather
+than by elaboration; by stimulating thought, emotion, and the
+aesthetic sense, instead of seeking to satisfy any one of
+these--especially instead of contenting itself with only soothing
+the last. The comparison of his poetry with--for
+instance--Tennyson's, in this respect, is instructive; if it is
+possibly unjust to both.</p>
+<p>And a third trait in Browning--to make an end of a dangerously
+categorical attempt to characterize him--follows logically from
+this second; its extreme compactness and concentration. Browning
+sometimes dwells long--even dallies--over an idea, as does
+Shakespeare; turns it, shows its every facet; and even then it is
+noticeable, as with the greater master, that every individual
+phrase with which he does so is practically exhaustive of the
+suggestiveness of that particular aspect. But commonly he crowds
+idea upon idea even in his lyrics, and--strangely enough--without
+losing the lyric quality; each thought pressed down to its very
+essence, and each with that germinal power that makes the reading
+of him one of the most stimulating things to be had from
+literature. His figures especially are apt and telling in the very
+minimum of words; they say it all, like the unsurpassable
+Shakespearean example of "the dyer's hand"; and the more you think
+of them, the more you see that not a word could be added or taken
+away.</p>
+<p>It may be said that this quality of compactness is common to all
+genius, and of the very essence of all true poetry; but Browning
+manifested it in a way of his own, such as to suggest that he
+believed in the subordination of all other qualities to it; even of
+melody, for instance, as may be said by his critics and admitted in
+many cases by even his strongest admirers. But all things are not
+given to one, even among the giants; and Browning's force with its
+measure of melody (which is often great) has its place among
+others' melody with its measure of force. Open at random: here are
+two lines in 'A Toccata of Galuppi's,' not deficient in melody by
+any means:--</p>
+<blockquote>"Dear dead women--with such hair, too: what's become of
+all the gold<br>
+Used to hang and brush their bosoms?--I feel chilly and grown
+old."</blockquote>
+<p>This is not Villon's 'Ballad of Dead Ladies,' nor even
+Tennyson's 'Dream of Fair Women'; but a master can still say a good
+deal in two lines.</p>
+<p>What is called the "roughness" of Browning's verse is at all
+events never the roughness that comes from mismanagement or
+disregard of the form chosen. He has an unerring ear for time and
+quantity; and his subordination to the laws of his metre is
+extraordinary in its minuteness. Of ringing lines there are many;
+of broadly sonorous or softly melodious ones but few; and
+especially (if one chooses to go into details of technic) he seems
+curiously without that use of the broad vowels which underlies the
+melody of so many great passages of English poetry. Except in the
+one remarkable instance of 'How we Carried the Good News from Ghent
+to Aix,' there is little onomatopoeia, and almost no note of the
+flute; no "moan of doves in immemorial elms" or "lucent sirops
+tinct with cinnamon." On the other hand, in his management of
+metres like that of 'Love Among the Ruins,' for instance, he shows
+a different side; the pure lyrics in 'Pippa Passes' and elsewhere
+sing themselves; and there are memorable cadences in some of the
+more meditative poems, like 'By the Fireside.'</p>
+<p>The vividness and vigor and truth of Browning's embodiments of
+character come, it is needless to say, from the same power that has
+created all great dramatic work,--the capacity for incarnating not
+a quality or an ideal, but the mixture and balance of qualities
+that make up the real human being. There is not a walking phantom
+among them, or a lay-figure to hang sentiment on. A writer in the
+New Review said recently that of all the poets he remembered, only
+Shakespeare and Browning never drew a prig. It is this complete
+absence of the false note that gives to certain of Browning's poems
+the finality which is felt in all consummate works of art, great
+and small; the sense that they convey, if not the last word, at
+least the last necessary word, on their subject. 'Andrea del Sarto'
+is in its way the whole problem of the artist-ideal, the weak will
+and the inner failure, in all times and guises; and at the other
+end of the gamut, nobody will ever need again to set forth Bishop
+Blougram's attitude, or even that of Mr. Sludge the Medium. Of the
+informing, almost exuberant vitality of all the lyric and dramatic
+poems, it is needless to speak; that fairly leaps to meet the
+reader at every page of them, and a quality of it is their
+essential optimism.</p>
+<blockquote>"What is he buzzing in my ears?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Now that I come to die.<br>
+Do I view the world as a vale of tears?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Ah, reverend sir, not I!"</blockquote>
+<p>The world was never a vale of tears to Robert Browning, man or
+poet; but a world of men and women, with plenty of red corpuscles
+in their blood.</p>
+<p class="sign"><img src="images/sign-275.jpg" width="60%" alt=
+""></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING01R"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>ANDREA DEL
+SARTO</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;CALLED "THE FAULTLESS PAINTER"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But do not let us quarrel any
+more;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No, my Lucrezia! bear with me for
+once:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sit down and all shall happen as you
+wish.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You turn your face, but does it bring
+your heart?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I'll work then for your friend's
+friend, never fear,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Treat his own subject after his own
+way?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Fix his own time, accept too his own
+price,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And shut the money into this small
+hand<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When next it takes mine. Will it?
+tenderly?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Oh, I'll content him,--but to-morrow,
+Love!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I often am much wearier than you
+think,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This evening more than usual: and it
+seems<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As if--forgive now--should you let me
+sit<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Here by the window, with your hand in
+mine,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And look a. half-hour forth on
+Fiesole,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Both of one mind, as married people
+use,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Quietly, quietly the evening
+through,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I might get up to-morrow to my
+work<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us
+try.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To-morrow, how you shall be glad for
+this!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Your soft hand is a woman of
+itself,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And mine, the man's bared breast she
+curls inside.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Don't count the time lost, neither:
+you must serve<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For each of the five pictures we
+require;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;It saves a model. So! keep looking
+so--My<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;serpentining beauty, rounds on
+rounds!--How<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;could you ever prick those perfect
+ears,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Even to put the pearl there! oh, so
+sweet--My<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;face, my moon, my everybody's
+moon,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Which everybody looks on and calls
+his,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And I suppose is looked on by in
+turn,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While she looks--no one's: very dear,
+no less.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You smile? why, there's my picture
+ready made;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;There's what we painters call our
+harmony!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A common grayness silvers
+everything,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All in a twilight, you and I
+alike--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You at the point of your first pride
+in me<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(That's gone, you know)--but I at
+every point,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My youth, my hope, my art being all
+toned down<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;There's the bell clinking from the
+chapel-top;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That length of convent-wall across
+the way<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Holds the trees safer, huddled more
+inside;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The last monk leaves the garden; days
+decrease,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And autumn grows, autumn in
+everything.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Eh? the whole seems to fall into a
+shape,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As if I saw alike my work and
+self<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And all that I was born to be and
+do,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A twilight piece. Love, we are in
+God's hand.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How strange now looks the life he
+makes us lead;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So free we seem, so fettered fast we
+are!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I feel he laid the fetter: let it
+lie!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This chamber, for example--turn your
+head--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All that's behind us! You don't
+understand<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nor care to understand about my
+art,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But you can hear at least when people
+speak:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And that cartoon, the second from the
+door--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;It is the thing, Love! so such things
+should be;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Behold Madonna!--I am bold to
+say,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I can do with my pencil what I
+know,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What I see, what at bottom of my
+heart<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I wish for, if I ever wish so
+deep--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Do easily, too--when I say
+perfectly,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are
+judge,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who listened to the Legate's talk
+last week;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And just as much they used to say in
+France,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;At any rate 'tis easy, all of it!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No sketches first, no studies, that's
+long past:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I do what many dream of, all their
+lives--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dream? strive to do, and agonize to
+do,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And fail in doing. I could count
+twenty such<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;On twice your fingers, and not leave
+this town,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who strive--you don't know how the
+others strive<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To paint a little thing like that you
+smeared<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Carelessly passing with your robes
+afloat,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet do much less, so much less, Some
+One says,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(I know his name, no matter)--so much
+less!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am
+judged.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;There burns a truer light of God in
+them,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In their vexed, beating, stuffed, and
+stopped-up brain,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on
+to prompt<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This low-pulsed forthright
+craftsman's hand of mine.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Their works drop groundward, but
+themselves, I know,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Reach many a time a heaven that's
+shut to me,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Enter and take their place there sure
+enough,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Though they come back and cannot tell
+the world.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My works are nearer heaven, but I sit
+here.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The sudden blood of these men! at a
+word--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Praise them, it boils; or blame them,
+it boils too.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I, painting from myself and to
+thyself,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Know what I do, am unmoved by men's
+blame<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or their praise either. Somebody
+remarks<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Morello's outline there is wrongly
+traced,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;His hue mistaken: what of that? or
+else,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Rightly traced and well ordered: what
+of that?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Speak as they please, what does the
+mountain care?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ah, but a man's reach should exceed
+his grasp,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or what's a heaven for? All is
+silver-gray,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Placid and perfect with my art: the
+worse!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I know both what I want and what
+might gain;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And yet how profitless to know, to
+sigh<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Had I been two, another and
+myself,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Our head would have o'erlooked the
+world" No doubt.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yonder's a work now, of that famous
+youth<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Urbinate who died five years
+ago.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;('Tis copied, George Vasari sent it
+me.)<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Well, I can fancy how he did it
+all,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Pouring his soul, with kings and
+popes to see,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Reaching, that heaven might so
+replenish him,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Above and through his art--for it
+gives way:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That arm is wrongly put--and there
+again--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A fault to pardon in the drawing's
+lines,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Its body, so to speak; its soul is
+right;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He meant right--that, a child may
+understand.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Still, what an arm! and I could alter
+it:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But all the play, the insight, and
+the stretch--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Out of me, out of me! And wherefore
+out?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Had you enjoined them on me, given me
+soul,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We might have risen to Rafael, I and
+you.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nay, Love, you did give all I asked,
+I think--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;More than I merit, yes, by many
+times.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But had you--oh, with the same
+perfect brow,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And perfect eyes, and more than
+perfect mouth<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the low voice my soul hears, as a
+bird<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The fowler's pipe, and follows to the
+snare--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Had you, with these, these same, but
+brought a mind!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Some women do so. Had the mouth there
+urged<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"God and the glory! never care for
+gain.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The present by the future, what is
+that?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Live for fame, side by side with
+Agnolo!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Rafael is waiting: up to God, all
+three!"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I might have done it for you. So it
+seems:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Perhaps not. All is as God
+overrules.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Beside, incentives come from the
+soul's self;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The rest avail not. Why do I need
+you?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What wife had Rafael, or has
+Agnolo?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In this world, who can do a thing,
+will not;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And who would do it, cannot, I
+perceive:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet the will's somewhat--somewhat,
+too, the power--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And thus we half-men struggle. At the
+end,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;God, I conclude, compensates,
+punishes.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Tis safer for me, if the award be
+strict,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That I am something underrated
+here,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Poor this long while,--despised, to
+speak the truth.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I dared not, do you know, leave home
+all day,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For fear of chancing on the Paris
+lords.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The best is when they pass and look
+aside;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But they speak sometimes: I must bear
+it all.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Well may they speak! That Francis,
+that first time,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And that long festal year at
+Fontainebleau!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I surely then could sometimes leave
+the ground,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Put on the glory, Rafael's daily
+wear,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In that humane great monarch's golden
+look,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;One finger in his beard or twisted
+curl<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Over his mouth's good mark that made
+the smile,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;One arm about my shoulder, around my
+neck,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The jingle of his gold chain in my
+ear,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I painting proudly with his breath on
+me,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All his court round him, seeing with
+his eyes,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Such frank French eyes, and such a
+fire of souls<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Profuse, my hand kept plying by those
+hearts,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And best of all, this, this, this
+face beyond,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This in the background, waiting on my
+work,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To crown the issue with a last
+reward!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A good time, was it not, my kingly
+days,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And had you not grown restless ...
+but I know--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Tis done and past; 'twas right, my
+instinct said;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Too live the life grew, golden and
+not gray;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And I'm the weak-eyed bat no sun
+should tempt<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Out of the grange whose four walls
+make his world.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How could it end in any other
+way?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You called me, and I came home to
+your heart.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The triumph was to have ended there;
+then, if<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I reached it ere the triumph, what is
+lost?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let my hands frame your face in your
+hair's gold,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You beautiful Lucrezia that are
+mine!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Rafael did this, Andrea painted
+that;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Roman's is the better when you
+pray,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But still the other Virgin was his
+wife"--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Men will excuse me. I am glad to
+judge<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Both pictures in your presence;
+clearer grows<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My better fortune, I resolve to
+think,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God
+lives,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Said one day Agnolo, his very
+self,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Rafael--I have known it all these
+years--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(When the young man was flaming out
+his thoughts<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Upon a palace wall for Rome to
+see,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Too lifted up in heart because of
+it)<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Friend, there's a certain sorry
+little scrub<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Goes up and down our Florence, none
+cares how,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who, were he set to plan and
+execute<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As you are, pricked on by your popes
+and kings,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Would bring the sweat into that brow
+of yours!"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Rafael's!--and indeed the arm is
+wrong.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I hardly dare ... yet, only you to
+see,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Give the chalk here--quick, thus the
+line should go!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ay, but the soul! he's Rafael! rub it
+out!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Still, all I care for, if he spoke
+the truth,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(What he? why, who but Michel
+Agnolo?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Do you forget already words like
+those?)<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If really there was such a chance so
+lost,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Is, whether you're--not grateful--but
+more pleased.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Well, let me think so. And you smile
+indeed!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This hour has been an hour! Another
+smile?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If you would sit thus by me every
+night,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I should work better--do you
+comprehend?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I mean that I should earn more, give
+you more.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;See, it is settled dusk now: there's
+a star;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Morello's gone, the watch lights show
+the wall,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The cue-owls speak the name we call
+them by.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Come from the window, love,--come in,
+at last,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Inside the melancholy little
+house<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We built to be so gay with. God is
+just.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;King Francis may forgive me: oft at
+nights<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When I look up from painting, eyes
+tired out,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The walls become illumined, brick
+from brick<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce
+bright gold,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That gold of his I did cement them
+with!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let us but love each other. Must you
+go?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That cousin here again? he waits
+outside?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Must see you--you, and not with me?
+Those loans?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;More gaming debts to pay? you smiled
+for that?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Well, let smiles buy me! have you
+more to spend?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While hand and eye and something of a
+heart<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Are left me, work's my ware, and
+what's it worth?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I'll pay my fancy. Only let me
+sit<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The gray remainder of the evening
+out,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Idle, you call it, and muse
+perfectly<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How I could paint were I but back in
+France,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;One picture, just one more--the
+Virgin's face,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Not yours this time! I want you at my
+side<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To hear them--that is, Michel
+Agnolo--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Judge all I do and tell you of its
+worth.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Will you? To-morrow satisfy your
+friend.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I take the subjects for his
+corridor,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Finish the portrait out of
+hand--there, there,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And throw him in another thing or
+two<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If he demurs: the whole should prove
+enough<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To pay for this same cousin's freak.
+Beside,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What's better, and what's all I care
+about,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Get you the thirteen send for the
+ruff!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Love, does that please you? Ah, but
+what does he,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The cousin! what does he to please
+you more?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I am grown peaceful as old age
+to-night.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I regret little, I would change still
+less.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Since there my past life lies, why
+alter it?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The very wrong to Francis!--it is
+true<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I took his coin, was tempted and
+complied,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And built this house and sinned, and
+all is said.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My father and my mother died of
+want.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Well, had I riches of my own? you
+see<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How one gets rich! Let each one bear
+his lot.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They were born poor, lived poor, and
+poor they died;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And I have labored somewhat in my
+time<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And not been paid profusely. Some
+good son<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Paint my two hundred pictures--let
+him try!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No doubt, there's something strikes a
+balance. Yes,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You loved me quite enough, it seems
+to-night.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This must suffice me here. What would
+one have?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one
+more chance--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Four great walls in the New
+Jerusalem,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Meted on each side by the angel's
+reed,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo, and
+me<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To cover--the three first without a
+wife,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While I have mine! So still they
+overcome--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Because there's still Lucrezia,--as I
+choose.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Again the cousin's whistle! Go, my
+love.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING02R"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>A TOCCATA OF
+GALUPPI'S</b><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O GALLUPI, Baldassaro, this is very
+sad to find!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I can hardly misconceive
+you; it would prove me deaf and blind:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But although I take your meaning,
+'tis with such a heavy mind!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Have you come with your old music,
+and here's all the good it brings?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What, they lived once thus at Venice
+where the merchants were the kings,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where Saint Mark's is, where the
+Doges used to wed the sea with rings?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ay, because the sea's the street
+there; and 'tis arched by--what you call--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shylock's bridge with houses on it,
+where they kept the carnival:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I was never out of England--it's as
+if I saw it all.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Did young people take their pleasure
+when the sea was warm in May?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Balls and masks begun at midnight,
+burning ever to mid-day,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When they made up fresh adventures
+for the morrow, do you say?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so
+round and lips so red,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;On her neck the small face buoyant,
+like a bell-flower on its bed,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O'er the breast's superb abundance
+where a man might base his head?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Well, and it was graceful of them:
+they'd break talk off and afford--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;She to bite her mask's black velvet,
+he to finger on his sword,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While you sat and played Toccatas,
+stately at the clavichord!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What? Those lesser thirds so
+plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Told them something? Those
+suspensions, those solutions--"Must we die?"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Those commiserating sevenths--"Life
+might last! we can but try!"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Were you happy?" "Yes."--"And are
+you still as happy?" "Yes. And you?"--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Then, more kisses!" "Did <i>I</i>
+stop them, when a million seemed so few?"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hark, the dominant's persistence till
+it must be answered to!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So, an octave struck the answer. Oh,
+they praised you, I dare say!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Brave Galuppi! that was music! good
+alike at grave and gay!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I can always leave off talking when I
+hear a master play!"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Then they left you for their
+pleasure; till in due time, one by one,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Some with lives that came to nothing,
+some with deeds as well undone,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Death stepped tacitly, and took them
+where they never see the sun.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But when I sit down to reason, think
+to take my stand nor swerve,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While I triumph o'er a secret wrung
+from nature's close reserve,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In you come with your cold music till
+I creep through every nerve.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket,
+creaking where a house was burned.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Dust and ashes, dead and done with,
+Venice spent what Venice earned.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The soul, doubtless, is
+immortal--where a soul can be discerned.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Yours for instance: you know
+physics, something of geology,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Mathematics are your pastime; souls
+shall rise in their degree;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Butterflies may dread
+extinction,--you'll not die, it cannot be!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"As for Venice and her people, merely
+born to bloom and drop,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Here on earth they bore their
+fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What of soul was left, I wonder, when
+the kissing had to stop?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Dust and ashes!" So you creak it,
+and I want the heart to scold.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dear dead women, with such hair,
+too--what's become of all the gold<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Used to hang and brush their bosoms?
+I feel chilly and grown old.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING03R"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>CONFESSIONS</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What is he buzzing in my ears?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Now that I come to
+die<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Do I view the world as a vale of
+tears?"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ah, reverend sir, not
+I!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What I viewed there once,--what I
+viewed again<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where the physic bottles
+stand<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;On the table's edge,--is a suburb
+lane,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With a wall to my bedside
+hand.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That lane sloped, much as the bottles
+do,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;From a house you could
+descry<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O'er the garden wall: is the curtain
+blue,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or green to a healthy
+eye?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To mine, it serves for the old June
+weather<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Blue above lane and
+wall;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And that farthest bottle labeled
+"Ether"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Is the house o'ertopping
+all.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;At a terrace, somewhat near the
+stopper,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; There watched for me,
+one June,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A girl: I know, sir, it's
+improper,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; My poor mind's out of
+tune.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Only, there was a way--you crept<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Close by the side, to
+dodge<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Eyes in the house, two eyes
+except:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; They styled their house
+"The Lodge"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What right had a lounger up their
+lane?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But by creeping very
+close,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With the good wall's help,--their
+eyes might strain<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And stretch themselves
+to O's,<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet never catch her and me
+together,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As she left the attic
+there,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;By the rim of the bottle labeled
+"Ether,"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And stole from stair to
+stair,<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And stood by the rose-wreathed gate.
+Alas,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We loved, sir--used to
+meet:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How sad and bad and mad it was--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But then, how it was
+sweet!</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING04R"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>LOVE AMONG THE
+RUINS</b><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where the quiet-colored end of
+evening smiles,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Miles
+and miles,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;On the solitary pastures
+where our sheep<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Half
+asleep<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Tinkle homeward through the twilight,
+stray or stop<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As
+they crop--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Was the site once of a city great and
+gay<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(So
+they say);<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of our country's very capital, its
+prince,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Ages since,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Held his court in, gathered councils,
+wielding far<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Peace or war.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Now,--the country does not even boast
+a tree,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+As you see;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To distinguish slopes of verdure,
+certain rills<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+From the hills<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Intersect and give a name to (else
+they run<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Into one).<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where the domed and daring palace
+shot in spires<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Up like fires<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a
+wall<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Bounding all,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Made of marble, men might march on
+nor be pressed,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Twelve abreast.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And such plenty and perfection, see,
+of grass<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Never was!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Such a carpet as this summer-time
+o'erspreads<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+And imbeds<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Every vestige of the city, guessed
+alone,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Stock or stone--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where a multitude of men breathed joy
+and woe<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Long ago;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lust of glory pricked their hearts
+up, dread of shame<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Struck them tame;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And that glory and that shame alike,
+the gold<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Bought and sold.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Now,--the single little turret that
+remains<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+On the plains,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;By the caper overrooted, by the
+gourd<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Overscored,<br>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While the patching houseleek's head
+of blossom winks<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Through
+the chinks--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Marks the basement whence a tower in
+ancient time<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sprang
+sublime,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And a burning ring, all round, the
+chariots traced<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As
+they raced,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the monarch and his minions and
+his dames<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Viewed
+the games.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And I know--while thus the
+quiet-colored eve<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Smiles
+to leave<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To their folding all our
+many-tinkling fleece<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In
+such peace,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the slopes and rills in
+undistinguished gray<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Melt
+away--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That a girl with eager eyes and
+yellow hair<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Waits
+me there<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In the turret whence the charioteers
+caught soul<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For
+the goal,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When the king looked, where she looks
+now, breathless, dumb,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Till
+I come.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But he looked upon the city every
+side,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Far
+and wide,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All the mountains topped with
+temples, all the glades<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Colonnades,<br>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All the causeys, bridges,
+aqueducts,--and then,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All
+the men!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When I do come, she will speak not,
+she will stand,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Either
+hand<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;On my shoulder, give her eyes the
+first embrace<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of
+my face,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight
+and speech<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Each
+on each.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In one year they sent a million
+fighters forth<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;South
+and North,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And they built their gods a brazen
+pillar high<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As
+the sky,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet reserved a thousand chariots in
+full force--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gold,
+of course.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O heart! O blood that freezes, blood
+that burns!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Earth's
+returns<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For whole centuries of folly, noise,
+and sin!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shut them in,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With their triumphs and their glories
+and the rest!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Love is
+best.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING05R"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>A GRAMMARIAN'S
+FUNERAL</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;SHORTLY AFTER THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING
+IN EUROPE<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let us begin and carry up this
+corpse,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Singing together.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Leave we the common crofts, the
+vulgar thorpes,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Each in its tether,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sleeping safe in the bosom of the
+plain,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cared-for till
+cock-crow:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Look out if yonder be not day
+again<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Rimming the rock-row!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That's the appropriate country;
+there, man's thought,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Rarer, intenser,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it
+ought,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Chafes in the censer.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Leave we the unlettered plain its
+herd and crop;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Seek we sepulture<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;On a tall mountain, citied to the
+top,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Crowded with culture!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All the peaks soar, but one the rest
+excels:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Clouds overcome it;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No, yonder sparkle is the
+citadel's<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Circling its summit.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thither our path lies; wind we up the
+heights!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Wait ye the warning?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Our low life was the level's and the
+night's:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He's for the morning.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Step to a tune, square chests, erect
+each head,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Ware the beholders!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This is our master, famous, calm, and
+dead,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Borne on our
+shoulders.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling
+thorpe and croft,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Safe from the
+weather!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He whom we convoy to his grave
+aloft,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Singing together,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He was a man born with thy face and
+throat,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lyric Apollo!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Long he lived nameless: how should
+spring take note<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Winter would follow?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Till lo, the little touch, and youth
+was gone!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cramped and
+diminished,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Moaned he, "New measures, other feet
+anon!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My dance is
+finished"?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No, that's the world's way: (keep the
+mountain side,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Make for the city!)<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He knew the signal, and stepped on
+with pride<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Over men's pity;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Left play for work, and grappled with
+the world<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bent on escaping:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"What's in the scroll," quoth he,
+"thou keepest furled?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Show me their
+shaping,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Theirs who most studied man, the bard
+and sage,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Give!" so he gowned
+him,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Straight got by heart that book to
+its last page;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Learned, we found
+him.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes
+like lead.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Accents uncertain:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Time to taste life," another would
+have said,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Up with the
+curtain!"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This man said rather, "Actual life
+comes next?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Patience a moment!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Grant I have mastered learning's
+crabbed text,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Still there's the
+comment.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let me know all! Prate not of most or
+least,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Painful or easy!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up
+the feast,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ay, nor feel queasy."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Oh, such a life as he resolved to
+live,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When he had learned
+it,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When he had gathered all books had to
+give!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sooner, he spurned
+it.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Image the whole, then execute the
+parts--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Fancy the fabric<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Quite, ere you build, ere steel
+strike fire from quartz,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ere mortar dab brick!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(Here's the town-gate reached;
+there's the market-place<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gaping before us.)<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yea, this in him was the peculiar
+grace:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(Hearten our chorus!)<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That before living he'd learn how to
+live--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No end to learning:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Earn the means first--God surely will
+contrive<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Use for our earning.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Others mistrust and say, "But time
+escapes!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Live now or never!"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He said, "What's time? Leave Now for
+dogs and apes!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Man has Forever."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Back to his book then: deeper drooped
+his head;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Calculus</i> racked
+him;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of
+lead;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Tussis</i> attacked
+him.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Now, master, take a little
+rest!"--not he!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(Caution redoubled!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Step two abreast, the way winds
+narrowly!)<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Not a whit troubled,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Back to his studies, fresher than at
+first,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Fierce as a dragon<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred
+thirst)<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sucked at the flagon.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Oh, if we draw a circle
+premature,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Heedless of far gain,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Greedy for quick returns of profit,
+sure<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bad is our bargain!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Was it not great? did not he throw on
+God<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(He loves the
+burthen)--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;God's task to make the heavenly
+period<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Perfect the earthen?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Did not he magnify the mind, show
+clear<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Just what it all
+meant?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He would not discount life, as fools
+do here<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Paid by installment.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He ventured neck or nothing--heaven's
+success<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Found, or earth's
+failure:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Wilt thou trust death or not?" He
+answered, "Yes!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hence with life's pale
+lure!"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That low man seeks a little thing to
+do,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sees it and does it:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This high man, with a great thing to
+pursue,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dies ere he knows it.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That low man goes on adding one to
+one,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;His hundred's soon
+hit:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This high man, aiming at a
+million,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Misses an unit.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That, has the world here--should he
+need the next.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let the world mind
+him!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This, throws himself on God, and
+unperplexed<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Seeking shall find
+him.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So, with the throttling hands of
+death at strife,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ground he at grammar;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Still, through the rattle, parts of
+speech were rife:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While he could
+stammer<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He settled <i>Hoti's</i>
+business--let it be!--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Properly based
+<i>Oun</i>--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic
+<i>De</i>,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dead from the waist
+down.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Well, here's the platform, here's the
+proper place:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hail to your
+purlieus,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All ye highfliers of the feathered
+race,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Swallows and curlews!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Here's the top-peak; the multitude
+below<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Live, for they can,
+there:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This man decided not to Live but
+Know--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bury this man there?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Here--here's his place, where meteors
+shoot, clouds form,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lightnings are
+loosened,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Stars come and go! Let joy break with
+the storm,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Peace let the dew
+send!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lofty designs must close in like
+effects:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Loftily lying,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Leave him--still loftier than the
+world suspects,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Living and
+dying.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING06R"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>MY LAST
+DUCHESS</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;FERRARA<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That's my last Duchess painted on the
+wall,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Looking as if she were alive. I
+call<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That piece a wonder, now: Fr&agrave;
+Pandolf's hands<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Worked busily a day, and there she
+stands.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Will't please you sit and look at
+her? I said<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Fr&agrave; Pandolf" by design: for
+never read<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Strangers like you that pictured
+countenance,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The depth and passion of its earnest
+glance,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But to myself they turned (since none
+puts by<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The curtain I have drawn for you, but
+I),<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And seemed as they would ask me, if
+they durst,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How such a glance came there; so, not
+the first<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir,
+'twas not<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Her husband's presence only, called
+that spot<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of joy into the Duchess' cheek:
+perhaps<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Fr&agrave; Pandolf chanced to say,
+"Her mantle laps<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Over my lady's wrists too much," or
+"Paint<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Must never hope to reproduce the
+faint<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Half-flush that dies along her
+throat;" such stuff<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Was courtesy, she thought, and cause
+enough<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For calling up that spot of joy. She
+had<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A heart--how shall I say?--too soon
+made glad,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Too easily impressed: she liked
+whate'er<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;She looked on, and her looks went
+everywhere.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her
+breast,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The dropping of the daylight in the
+West,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The bough of cherries some officious
+fool<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Broke in the orchard for her, the
+white mule<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;She rode with round the terrace,--all
+and each<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Would draw from her alike the
+approving speech,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or blush, at least. She thanked
+men,--good! but thanked<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Somehow--I know not how--as if she
+ranked<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old
+name<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to
+blame<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This sort of trifling? Even had you
+skill<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In speech (which I have not) to make
+your will<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Quite clear to such an one, and say,
+"Just this<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or that in you disgusts me; here you
+miss,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or there exceed the mark,"--and if
+she let<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly
+set<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made
+excuse,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;E'en then would be some stooping; and
+I choose<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Never to stoop. O sir! she smiled, no
+doubt,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When'er I passed her; but who passed
+without<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Much the same smile? This grew; I
+gave commands;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Then all smiles stopped together.
+There she stands<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As if alive. Will't please you rise?
+We'll meet<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The company below, then. I
+repeat,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Count your master's known
+munificence<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Is ample warrant that no just
+pretense<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of mine for dowry will be
+disallowed;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Though his fair daughter's self, as I
+avowed<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll
+go<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Together down, sir. Notice Neptune,
+though,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Taming a sea-horse, thought a
+rarity,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in
+bronze for me!</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING07R"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>UP AT A VILLA--DOWN IN
+THE CITY</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(As DISTINGUISHED BY AN ITALIAN
+PERSON OF QUALITY)<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Had I but plenty of money, money
+enough and to spare,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The house for me, no doubt, were a
+house in the city-square;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ah, such a life, such a life, as one
+leads at the window there!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Something to see, by Bacchus,
+something to hear, at least!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;There, the whole day long, one's life
+is a perfect feast;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While up at a villa one lives, I
+maintain it, no more than a beast.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Well, now, look at our villa! stuck
+like the horn of a bull<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Just on a mountain edge as bare as
+the creature's skull,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Save a mere shag of a bush with
+hardly a leaf to pull!--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;scratch my own, sometimes, to see if
+the hair's turned wool.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But the city, oh the city--the square
+with the houses! Why!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They are stone-faced, white as a
+curd; there's something to take the eye!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Houses in four straight lines, not a
+single front awry;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You watch who crosses and gossips,
+who saunters, who hurries by;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Green blinds, as a matter of course,
+to draw when the sun gets high;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the shops with fanciful signs
+which are painted properly.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What of a villa? Though winter be
+over in March by rights,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall
+have withered well off the heights;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You've the brown-plowed land before,
+where the oxen steam and wheeze,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the hills over-smoked behind by
+the faint gray olive-trees.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Is it better in May, I ask you?
+You've summer all at once;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In a day he leaps complete with a few
+strong April suns.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat,
+scarce risen three fingers well,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The wild tulip, at end of its tube,
+blows out its great red bell<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Like a thin clear bubble of blood,
+for the children to pick and sell.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Is it ever hot in the square? There's
+a fountain to spout and splash!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In the shade it sings and springs; in
+the shine such foam-bows flash<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;On the horses with curling
+fish-tails, that prance and paddle and pash<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Round the lady atop in her
+conch--fifty gazers do not abash,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Though all that she wears is some
+weeds round her waist in a sort of sash.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All the year long at the villa,
+nothing to see though you linger,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Except yon cypress that points like
+death's lean lifted forefinger.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Some think fireflies pretty, when
+they mix i' the corn and mingle,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or thrid the stinking hemp till the
+stalks of it seem a-tingle.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Late August or early September, the
+stunning cicala is shrill,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the bees keep their tiresome
+whine round the resinous firs on the hill.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Enough of the seasons,--I spare you
+the months of the fever and chill.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ere you open your eyes in the city,
+the bless&egrave;d church-bells begin;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No sooner the bells leave off than
+the diligence rattles in:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You get the pick of the news, and it
+costs you never a pin.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;By and by there's the traveling
+doctor gives pills, lets blood, draws teeth,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or the Pulcinella-trumpet breaks up
+the market beneath.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;At the post-office such a scene
+picture--the new play, piping hot!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And a notice how, only this morning,
+three liberal thieves were shot.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Above it, behold the Archbishop's
+most fatherly of rebukes,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And beneath, with his crown and his
+lion, some little new law of the Duke's!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to
+the Reverend Don So-and-so<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca,
+St. Jerome, and Cicero,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"And moreover" (the sonnet goes
+rhyming), "the skirts of St. Paul has reached,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Having preached us those six
+Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever he preached."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Noon strikes,--here sweeps the
+procession! our Lady borne smiling and smart,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With a pink gauze gown all spangles,
+and seven swords stuck in her heart!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Bang-whang-whang</i> goes the
+drum, <i>tootle-te-tootle</i> the fife;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No keeping one's haunches still: it's
+the greatest pleasure in life.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But bless you, it's dear--it's dear!
+fowls, wine, at double the rate;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They have clapped a new tax upon
+salt, and what oil pays passing the gate<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;It's a horror to think of. And so,
+the villa for me, not the city!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Beggars can scarcely be choosers: but
+still--ah, the pity, the pity!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Look, two and two go the priests,
+then the monks with cowls and sandals,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And then penitents dressed in white
+shirts, a-holding the yellow candles;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;One, he carries a flag up straight,
+and another a cross with handles,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the Duke's guard brings up the
+rear, for the better prevention of scandals:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Bang-whang-whang</i> goes the
+drum, <i>tootle-te-tootle</i> the fife,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Oh, a day in the city-square, there
+is no such pleasure in life!</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING08R"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>IN THREE DAYS</b><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So, I shall see her in three days<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And just one night,--but nights are
+short,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Then two long hours, and that is
+morn.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;See how I come, unchanged,
+unworn--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Feel, where my life broke off from
+thine,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How fresh the splinters keep and
+fine,--Only<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;a touch and we combine!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Too long, this time of year, the
+days!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But nights--at least the nights are
+short,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As night shows where her one moon
+is,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A hand's-breadth of pure light and
+bliss,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So, life's night gives my lady
+birth<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And my eyes hold her! What is
+worth<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The rest of heaven, the rest of
+earth?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O loaded curls, release your
+store<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of warmth and scent, as once
+before<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The tingling hair did, lights and
+darks<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Outbreaking into fairy sparks<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When under curl and curl I pried<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;After the warmth and scent
+inside,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Through lights and darks how
+manifold--The<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;dark inspired, the light
+controlled!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As early Art embrowned the gold.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What great fear--should one say,
+"Three days<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That change the world might change as
+well<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Your fortune; and if joy delays,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Be happy that no worse befell."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What small fear--if another says,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Three days and one short night
+beside<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;May throw no shadow on your ways;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But years must teem with change
+untried,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With chance not easily defied,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With an end somewhere
+undescried."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No fear!--or if a fear be born<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This minute, it dies out in
+scorn.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Fear? I shall see her in three
+days<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And one night,--now the nights are
+short,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Then just two hours, and that is
+morn.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING09R"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>IN A YEAR</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Never any more,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; While I
+live,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Need I hope to see his face<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As
+before.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Once his love grown chill,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Mine may
+strive:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bitterly we re-embrace,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Single
+still.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Was it something said,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Something
+done,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Vexed him? was it touch of hand,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Turn of
+head?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Strange! that very way<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Love
+begun:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I as little understand<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Love's
+decay.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When I sewed or drew,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I recall<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How he looked as if I sung,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sweetly
+too.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If I spoke a word,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; First of
+all<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Up his cheek the color sprung,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Then he
+heard.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sitting by my side,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; At my
+feet,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So he breathed but air I
+breathed,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Satisfied!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I, too, at love's brim<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Touched the
+sweet:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I would die if death bequeathed<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sweet to
+him.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Speak, I love thee best!"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; He
+exclaimed:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Let thy love my own foretell!"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I
+confessed:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Clasp my heart on thine<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Now
+unblamed,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Since upon thy soul as well<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Hangeth
+mine!"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Was it wrong to own,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Being
+truth?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Why should all the giving prove<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; His
+alone?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I had wealth and ease,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Beauty,
+youth:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Since my lover gave me love,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I gave
+these.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That was all I meant,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To be
+just,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the passion I had raised<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To
+content.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Since he chose to change<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Gold for
+dust,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If I gave him what he praised<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Was it
+strange?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Would he loved me yet,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; On and
+on,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While I found some way
+undreamed--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Paid my
+debt!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gave more life and more,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Till all
+gone,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He should smile--"She never
+seemed<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Mine
+before.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"What, she felt the while,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Must I
+think?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Love's so different with us men!"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; He should
+smile:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Dying for my sake--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; White and
+pink!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Can't we touch these bubbles then<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But they
+break?"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dear, the pang is brief,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Do thy
+part,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Have thy pleasure! How perplexed<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Grows
+belief!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Well, this cold clay clod<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Was man's
+heart:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Crumble it, and what comes next?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Is it
+God?</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING10R"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>EVELYN HOPE</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sit and watch by her
+side an hour.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That is her book-shelf, this her
+bed:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; She plucked that piece
+of geranium-flower,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Beginning to die too, in the
+glass:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Little has yet been
+changed, I think;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The shutters are shut, no light may
+pass<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Save two long rays
+through the hinge's chink.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sixteen years old when she died!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Perhaps she had scarcely
+heard my name;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;It was not her time to love;
+beside,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Her life had many a hope
+and aim,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Duties enough and little cares,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And now was quiet, now
+astir,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Till God's hand beckoned
+unawares--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And the sweet white brow
+is all of her.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What, your soul was pure
+and true,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The good stars met in your
+horoscope,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Made you of spirit,
+fire, and dew<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And just because I was thrice as
+old,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And our paths in the
+world diverged so wide,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Each was naught to each, must I be
+told?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We were fellow mortals,
+naught beside?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No, indeed! for God above<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Is great to grant, as
+mighty to make,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And creates the love to reward the
+love:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I claim you still, for
+my own love's sake!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Delayed it may be for more lives
+yet,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Through worlds I shall
+traverse, not a few;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Much is to learn, much to forget<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Ere the time be come for
+taking you.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But the time will come,--at last it
+will,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; When, Evelyn Hope, what
+meant (I shall say)<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In the lower earth, in the years long
+still,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That body and soul so
+pure and gay?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Why your hair was amber, I shall
+divine,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And your mouth of your
+own geranium's red--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And what would you do with me, in
+fine,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the new life come in
+the old one's stead?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I have lived (I shall say) so much
+since then,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Given up myself so many
+times,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gained me the gains of various
+men,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Ransacked the ages,
+spoiled the climes;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full
+scope,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Either I missed or
+itself missed me:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And I want and find you, Evelyn
+Hope!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What is the issue? let
+us see!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I loved you, Evelyn, all the
+while!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; My heart seemed full as
+it could hold;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;There was place and to spare for the
+frank young smile,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And the red young mouth,
+and the hair's young gold.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So hush,--I will give you this leaf
+to keep;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; See, I shut it inside
+the sweet cold hand!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;There, that is our secret: go to
+sleep!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; You will wake, and
+remember, and understand.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING11R"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>PROSPICE</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Fear death?--to feel the fog in my
+throat,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The mist in
+my face,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When the snows begin, and the blasts
+denote<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I am nearing
+the place,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The power of the night, the press of
+the storm,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The post of
+the foe;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where he stands, the Arch-Fear in a
+visible form,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Yet the
+strong man must go:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For the journey is done and the
+summit attained,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And the
+barriers fall,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Though a battle's to fight ere the
+guerdon be gained,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The reward
+of it all.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I was ever a fighter, so--one fight
+more,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The best and
+the last!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I would hate that death bandaged my
+eyes, and forbore,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And bade me
+creep past.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No! let me taste the whole of it,
+fare like my peers<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The heroes
+of old,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad
+life's arrears<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of pain,
+darkness, and cold.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For sudden the worst turns the best
+to the brave,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The black
+minute's at end,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the elements' rage, the
+fiend-voices that rave,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Shall
+dwindle, shall blend,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shall change, shall become first a
+peace out of pain,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Then a
+light, then thy breast,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp
+thee again,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And with God
+be the rest!</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING12R"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>THE PATRIOT</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;AN OLD STORY<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;It was roses, roses, all the way,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; With myrtle mixed in my path like
+mad:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The house-roofs seemed to heave and
+sway,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The church-spires flamed, such flags
+they had,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A year ago on this very day.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The air broke into a mist with
+bells,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The old walls rocked with the crowd
+and cries.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Had I said, "Good folk, mere noise
+repels--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But give me your sun from yonder
+skies"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They had answered, "And afterward,
+what else?"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Alack, it was I who leaped at the
+sun<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To give it my loving friends to
+keep!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Naught man could do have I left
+undone;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And you see my harvest, what I
+reap<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This very day, now a year is run.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;There's nobody on the housetops
+now--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Just a palsied few at the windows
+set;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For the best of the sight is, all
+allow,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; At the Shambles' Gate--or, better
+yet,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;By the very scaffold's foot, I
+trow.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I go in the rain, and, more than
+needs,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A rope cuts both my wrists
+behind;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And I think, by the feel, my forehead
+bleeds,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For they fling, whoever has a
+mind,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Stones at me for my year's
+misdeeds.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thus I entered, and thus I go!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In triumphs, people have dropped
+down dead.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Paid by the world, what dost thou
+owe<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Me?"--God might question; now
+instead,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Tis God shall repay: I am safer
+so.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNING13R"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>ONE WORD MORE</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To E.B.B.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;London, September, 1855<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;There they are, my fifty men and
+women,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Naming me the fifty poems
+finished!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Take them, Love, the book and me
+together:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where the heart lies, let the brain
+lie also.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Raphael made a century of
+sonnets,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Made and wrote them in a certain
+volume<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dinted with the silver-pointed
+pencil<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Else he only used to draw
+Madonnas:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;These, the world might view--but one,
+the volume.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who that one, you ask? Your heart
+instructs you.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Did she live and love it all her
+lifetime?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Did she drop, his lady of the
+sonnets,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Die and let it drop beside her
+pillow,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where it lay in place of Raphael's
+glory,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Raphael's cheek so duteous and so
+loving--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cheek the world was wont to hail a
+painter's,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Raphael's cheek, her love had turned
+a poet's?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You and I would rather read that
+volume<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(Taken to his beating bosom by
+it),<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lean and list the bosom-beats of
+Raphael,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Would we not? than wonder at
+Madonnas--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Her, San Sisto names, and Her,
+Foligno,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Her, that visits Florence in a
+vision,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Her, that's left with lilies in the
+Louvre--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Seen by us and all the world in
+circle.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You and I will never read that
+volume.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Guido Reni like his own eye's
+apple<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Guarded long the treasure-book and
+loved it.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Guido Reni dying, all Bologna<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cried, and the world cried too, "Ours
+the treasure!"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Suddenly, as rare things will, it
+vanished.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dante once prepared to paint an
+angel:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Whom to please? You whisper
+"Beatrice."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While he mused and traced it and
+retraced it,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(Peradventure with a pen corroded<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Still by drops of that hot ink he
+dipped for<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When, his left hand i' the hair o'
+the wicked,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Back he held the brow and pricked its
+stigma,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bit into the live man's flesh for
+parchment,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Loosed him, laughed to see the
+writing rankle,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let the wretch go festering through
+Florence)--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dante, who loved well because he
+hated,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hated wickedness that hinders
+loving,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dante standing, studying his
+angel--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In there broke the folk of his
+Inferno.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Says he--"Certain people of
+importance"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(Such he gave his daily dreadful line
+to)<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Entered and would seize, forsooth,
+the poet."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Says the poet--"Then I stopped my
+painting."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You and I would rather see that
+angel<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Painted by the tenderness of
+Dante--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Would we not?--than read a fresh
+Inferno.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You and I will never see that
+picture.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While he mused on love and
+Beatrice,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While he softened o'er his outlined
+angel,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In they broke, those "people of
+importance";<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We and Bice bear the loss
+forever.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's
+picture?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This: no artist lives and loves, that
+longs not<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Once, and only once, and for one
+only,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(Ah, the prize!) to find his love a
+language<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Fit and fair and simple and
+sufficient--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Using nature that's an art to
+others,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Not, this one time, art that's turned
+his nature.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ay, of all the artists living,
+loving,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;None but would forego his proper
+dowry.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Does he paint? he fain would write a
+poem:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Does he write? he fain would paint a
+picture:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Put to proof art alien to the
+artist's,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Once, and only once, and for one
+only,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So to be the man and leave the
+artist,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's
+sorrow.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Wherefore? Heaven's gift takes
+earth's abatement!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He who smites the rock and spreads
+the water,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bidding drink and live a crowd
+beneath him,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Even he the minute makes immortal<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Proves perchance but mortal in the
+minute,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Desecrates belike the deed in
+doing.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While he smites, how can he but
+remember<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So he smote before, in such a
+peril,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When they stood and mocked--"Shall
+smiting help us?"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When they drank and sneered--"A
+stroke is easy!"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When they wiped their mouths and went
+their journey,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Throwing him for thanks--"But drought
+was pleasant."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thus old memories mar the actual
+triumph;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thus the doing savors of
+disrelish;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thus achievement lacks a gracious
+somewhat;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O'er-importuned brows becloud the
+mandate,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Carelessness or consciousness--the
+gesture.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For he bears an ancient wrong about
+him,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sees and knows again those phalanxed
+faces,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hears, yet one time more, the
+'customed prelude--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"How shouldst thou, of all men,
+smite, and save us?"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Guesses what is like to prove the
+sequel--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Egypt's flesh-pots--nay, the drought
+was better."<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Oh, the crowd must have emphatic
+warrant!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Theirs the Sinai-forehead's cloven
+brilliance,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Right-arm's rod-sweep, tongue's
+imperial fiat.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Never dares the man put off the
+prophet.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Did he love one face from out the
+thousands<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(Were she Jethro's daughter, white
+and wifely,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Were she but the &AElig;thiopian
+bondslave),<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He would envy yon dumb patient
+camel,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Keeping a reserve of scanty water<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Meant to save his own life in the
+desert;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ready in the desert to deliver<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(Kneeling down to let his breast be
+opened)<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hoard and life together for his
+mistress.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I shall never, in the years
+remaining,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you
+statues.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Make you music that should
+all-express me;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So it seems: I stand on my
+attainment.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This of verse alone, one life allows
+me;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Verse and nothing else have I to give
+you.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Other heights in other lives, God
+willing:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All the gifts from all the heights,
+your own, Love!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet a semblance of resource avails
+us--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shade so finely touched, love's sense
+must seize it.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Take these lines, look lovingly and
+nearly,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lines I write the first time and the
+last time.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He who works in fresco, steals a
+hair-brush,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Curbs the liberal hand, subservient
+proudly,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in
+little,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Makes a strange art of an art
+familiar,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Fills his lady's missal-marge with
+flowerets.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He who blows through bronze may
+breathe through silver,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Fitly serenade a slumbrous
+princess.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He who writes may write for once as I
+do.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Love, you saw me gather men and
+women,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Live or dead or fashioned by my
+fancy,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Enter each and all, and use their
+service,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Speak from every mouth,--the speech a
+poem.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hardly shall I tell my joys and
+sorrows,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hopes and fears, belief and
+disbelieving:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I am mine and yours--the rest be all
+men's,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Karshish, Cleon, Norbert, and the
+fifty.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let me speak this once in my true
+person,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Not as Lippo, Roland, or Andrea,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Though the fruit of speech be just
+this sentence:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Pray you, look on these, my men and
+women,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Take and keep my fifty poems
+finished;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where my heart lies, let my brain lie
+also!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Poor the speech; be how I speak, for
+all things.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Not but that you know me! Lo, the
+moon's self!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Here in London, yonder late in
+Florence,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Still we find her face, the
+thrice-transfigured.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Curving on a sky imbrued with
+color,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Drifted over Fiesole by twilight,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Came she, our new crescent of a
+hair's-breadth.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Full she flared it, lamping
+Samminiato,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Rounder 'twixt the cypresses and
+rounder,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Perfect till the nightingales
+applauded.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Now, a piece of her old self,
+impoverished,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hard to greet, she traverses the
+house-roofs,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hurries with unhandsome thrift of
+silver,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Goes dispiritedly, glad to
+finish.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What, there's nothing in the moon
+noteworthy?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nay: for if that moon could love a
+mortal,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Use to charm him (so to fit a
+fancy),<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All her magic ('tis the old sweet
+mythos).<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;She would turn a new side to her
+mortal,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman,
+steersman--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Blank to Zoroaster on his
+terrace,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Blind to Galileo on his turret,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats--him,
+even!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Think, the wonder of the moonstruck
+mortal--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When she turns round, comes again in
+heaven,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Opens out anew for worse or
+better!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Proves she like some portent of an
+iceberg<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Swimming full upon the ship it
+founders,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hungry with huge teeth of splintered
+crystals?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Proves she as the paved work of a
+sapphire<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Seen by Moses when he climbed the
+mountain?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Climbed and saw the very God, the
+Highest,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Stand upon the paved work of a
+sapphire.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Like the bodied heaven in his
+clearness<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shone the stone, the sapphire of that
+paved work,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When they ate and drank and saw God
+also!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What were seen? None knows, none ever
+shall know.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Only this is sure--the sight were
+other,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Not the moon's same side, born late
+in Florence,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dying now impoverished here in
+London.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;God be thanked, the meanest of his
+creatures<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Boasts two soul-sides, one to face
+the world with,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;One to show a woman when he loves
+her!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This I say of me, but think of you,
+Love!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This to you--yourself my moon of
+poets!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ah, but that's the world's side,
+there's the wonder;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thus they see you, praise you, think
+they know you!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;There, in turn I stand with them and
+praise you--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Out of my own self, I dare to phrase
+it.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But the best is when I glide from out
+them,<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cross a step or two of dubious
+twilight,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Come out on the other side, the
+novel<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Silent silver lights and darks
+undreamed of,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where I hush and bless myself with
+silence.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Oh, their Rafael of the dear
+Madonnas,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Oh, their Dante of the dread
+Inferno,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Wrote one song--and in my brain I
+sing it,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Drew one angel--borne, see, on my
+bosom!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;R.B.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="BROWNSON"></a>
+<h2>ORESTES AUGUSTUS BROWNSON</h2>
+<h3>(1803-1876)</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-o.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>restes Brownson, in his time, was a figure of striking
+originality and influence in American literature and American
+political, philosophical, and religious discussion. His career was
+an exceptional one; for he was connected with some of the most
+important contemporaneous movements of thought, and passed through
+several distinct phases: Presbyterianism, Universalism,
+Socialism--of a mild and benevolent kind, not to be confused with
+the later fiery and destructive socialism of "the Reds"; afterward
+sympathizing somewhat with the aims and tendencies of the New
+England Transcendentalists; a close intellectual associate of Ralph
+Waldo Emerson; then the apostle of a "new Christianity"--finally
+becoming a Roman Catholic.</p>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/brownson.jpg" width="45%" alt=
+""><br>
+<b>Orestes Brownson</b></p>
+<p>Coming of old Connecticut stock on his father's side, he was
+born in Vermont, September 16th, 1803; and, notwithstanding that he
+was brought up in poverty on a farm with small opportunity for
+education, contrived in later years to make himself a thorough
+scholar in various directions, mastering several languages,
+acquiring a wide knowledge of history, reading deeply in
+philosophy, and developing marked originality in setting forth new
+philosophical views. His bent in childhood was strongly religious;
+and he even believed, at that period of his life, that he held long
+conversations with the sacred personages of Holy Scripture. Yet
+while in manhood he devoted many years and much of his energy to
+preaching, his character was aggressive and his tone controversial,
+he however revealed many traits of real gentleness and humility,
+and the mixture of rugged strength and tenderness in his character
+and his work won him a large following in whatever position he
+took.</p>
+<p>He performed the remarkable feat, when the support of American
+letters was slight, of founding and conducting almost
+single-handed, from 1838 to 1843, his famous Quarterly Review,
+which was a power in the land. He started it again in 1844 as
+'Brownson's Quarterly Review,' and resumed it thirty years later in
+still a third series. He died in 1876 at Detroit, much of his
+active career having been passed in Boston, and some of his later
+years at Seton Hall, New Jersey.</p>
+<p>His various changes of belief have often been taken as an index
+of vacillation; but a simple and candid study of his writings shows
+that such changes were merely the normal progress of an intensely
+earnest and sincere mind, which never hesitated to avow its honest
+convictions nor to admit its errors. This is the quality which
+gives Brownson his vitality as a mind and an author; and he will be
+found to be consistent with conscience throughout.</p>
+<p>His writings are forceful, eloquent, and lucid in style, with a
+Websterian massiveness that does not detract from their charm. They
+fill twenty volumes, divided into groups of essays on Civilization,
+Controversy, Religion, Philosophy, Scientific Theories, and Popular
+Literature, which cover a great and fascinating variety of topics
+in detail. Brownson was an intense and patriotic American, and his
+national quality comes out strongly in his extended treatise 'The
+American Republic' (1865). The best known of his other works is a
+candid, vigorous, and engaging autobiography entitled 'The Convert'
+(1853).</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BROWNSON01"></a>
+<h3>SAINT-SIMONISM</h3>
+<center>From 'The Convert'</center>
+<br>
+<p>If I drew my doctrine of Union in part from the eclecticism of
+Cousin, I drew my views of the Church and of the reorganization of
+the race from the Saint-Simonians,--a philo-sophico-religious or a
+politico-philosophical sect that sprung up in France under the
+Restoration, and figured largely for a year or two under the
+monarchy of July. Their founder was Claude Henri, Count de
+Saint-Simon, a descendant of the Due de Saint-Simon, well known as
+the author of the 'Memoirs.' He was born in 1760, entered the army
+at the age of seventeen, and the year after came to this country,
+where he served with distinction in our Revolutionary War under
+Bouilli&eacute;. After the peace of 1783 he devoted two years to
+the study of our people and institutions, and then returned to
+France. Hardly had he returned before he found himself in the midst
+of the French Revolution, which he regarded as the practical
+application of the principles or theories adopted by the reformers
+of the sixteenth century and popularized by the philosophers of the
+eighteenth. He looked upon that revolution, we are told, as having
+only a destructive mission--necessary, important, but inadequate to
+the wants of humanity; and instead of being carried away by it as
+were most of the young men of his age and his principles, he set
+himself at work to amass materials for the erection of a new social
+edifice on the ruins of the old, which should stand and improve in
+solidity, strength, grandeur, and beauty forever.</p>
+<p>The way he seems to have taken to amass these materials was to
+engage with a partner in some grand speculations for the
+accumulation of wealth,--and speculations too, it is said, not of
+the most honorable or even the most honest character. His plans
+succeeded for a time, and he became very rich, as did many others
+in those troublous times; but he finally met with reverses, and
+lost all but the wrecks of his fortune. He then for a number of
+years plunged into all manner of vice, and indulged to excess in
+every species of dissipation; not, we are told, from love of vice,
+any inordinate desire, or any impure affection, but for the holy
+purpose of preparing himself by his experience for the great work
+of redeeming man and securing for him a Paradise on earth. Having
+gained all that experience could give him in the department of
+vice, he then proceeded to consult the learned professors of
+L'&Eacute;cole Polytechnique for seven or ten years, to make
+himself master of science, literature, and the fine arts in all
+their departments, and to place himself at the level of the last
+attainments of the race. Thus qualified to be the founder of a new
+social organization, he wrote several books, in which he deposited
+the germs of his ideas, or rather the germs of the future; most of
+which have hitherto remained unpublished.</p>
+<p>But now that he was so well qualified for his work he found
+himself a beggar, and had as yet made only a single disciple. He
+was reduced to despair and attempted to take his own life; but
+failed, the ball only grazing his sacred forehead. His faithful
+disciple was near him, saved him, and aroused him into life and
+hope. When he recovered he found that he had fallen into a gross
+error. He had been a materialist, an atheist, and had discarded all
+religious ideas as long since outgrown by the human race. He had
+proposed to organize the human race with materials furnished by the
+senses alone, and by the aid of positive science. He owns his
+fault, and conceives and brings forth a new Christianity, consigned
+to a small pamphlet entitled 'Nouveau Christianisme,' which was
+immediately published. This done, his mission was ended, and he
+died May 19th, 1825, and I suppose was buried.</p>
+<p>Saint-Simon, the preacher of a new Christianity, very soon
+attracted disciples, chiefly from the pupils of the Polytechnic
+School; ardent and lively young men, full of enthusiasm, brought up
+without faith in the gospel and yet unable to live without religion
+of some sort. Among the active members of the sect were at one time
+Pierre Leroux, Jules and Michel Chevalier, Lerminier, [and] my
+personal friend Dr. Poyen, who initiated me and so many others in
+New England into the mysteries of animal magnetism. Dr. Poyen was,
+I believe, a native of the island of Guadeloupe: a man of more
+ability than he usually had credit for, of solid learning, genuine
+science, and honest intentions. I knew him well and esteemed him
+highly. When I knew him his attachment to the new religion was much
+weakened, and he often talked to me of the old Church, and assured
+me that he felt at times that he must return to her bosom. I owe
+him many hints which turned my thoughts toward Catholic principles,
+and which, with God's grace, were of much service to me. These and
+many others were in the sect; whose chiefs, after the death of its
+founder, were--Bazard, a Liberal and a practical man, who killed
+himself; and Enfantin, who after the dissolution of the sect sought
+employment in the service of the Viceroy of Egypt, and occupies now
+some important post in connection with the French railways.</p>
+<p>The sect began in 1826 by addressing the working classes; but
+their success was small. In 1829 they came out of their narrow
+circle, assumed a bolder tone, addressed themselves to the general
+public, and became in less than eighteen months a Parisian
+<i>mode</i>. In 1831 they purchased the Globe newspaper, made it
+their organ, and distributed gratuitously five thousand copies
+daily. In 1832 they had established a central propagandism in
+Paris, and had their missionaries in most of the departments of
+France. They attacked the hereditary peerage, and it fell; they
+seemed to be numerous and strong, and I believed for a moment in
+their complete success. They called their doctrine a religion,
+their ministers priests, and their organization a church; and as
+such they claimed to be recognized by the State, and to receive
+from it a subvention as other religious denominations [did]. But
+the courts decided that Saint-Simonism was not a religion and its
+ministers were not religious teachers. This decision struck them
+with death. Their prestige vanished. They scattered, dissolved in
+thin air, and went off, as Carlyle would say, into endless vacuity,
+as do sooner or later all shams and unrealities.</p>
+<p>Saint-Simon himself, who as presented to us by his disciples is
+a half-mythic personage, seems, so far as I can judge by those of
+his writings that I have seen, to have been a man of large ability
+and laudable intentions; but I have not been able to find any new
+or original thoughts of which he was the indisputable father. His
+whole system, if system he had, is summed up in the two maxims
+"Eden is before us, not behind us" (or the Golden Age of the poets
+is in the future, not in the past), and "Society ought to be so
+organized as to tend in the most rapid manner possible to the
+continuous moral, intellectual, and physical amelioration of the
+poorer and more numerous classes." He simply adopts the doctrine of
+progress set forth with so much flash eloquence by Condorcet, and
+the philanthropic doctrine with regard to the laboring classes, or
+the people, defended by Barbeuf and a large section of the French
+Revolutionists. His religion was not so much as the
+Theophilanthropy attempted to be introduced by some members of the
+French Directory: it admitted God in name, and in name did not deny
+Jesus Christ, but it rejected all mysteries, and reduced religion
+to mere socialism. It conceded that Catholicity had been the true
+Church down to the pontificate of Leo X., because down to that time
+its ministers had taken the lead in directing the intelligence and
+labors of mankind, had aided the progress of civilization, and
+promoted the well-being of the poorer and more numerous classes.
+But since Leo X., who made of the Papacy a secular principality, it
+had neglected its mission, had ceased to labor for the poorer and
+more numerous classes, had leagued itself with the ruling orders,
+and lent all its influence to uphold tyrants and tyranny. A new
+church was needed; a church which should realize the ideal of Jesus
+Christ, and tend directly and constantly to the moral, physical,
+and social amelioration of the poorer and more numerous
+classes,--in other words, the greatest happiness in this life of
+the greatest number, the principle of Jeremy Bentham and his
+Utilitarian school.</p>
+<p>His disciples enlarged upon the hints of the master, and
+attributed to him ideas which he never entertained. They endeavored
+to reduce his hints to a complete system of religion, philosophy,
+and social organization. Their chiefs, I have said, were Amand
+Bazard and Barth&eacute;lemy Prosper Enfantin....</p>
+<p>Bazard took the lead in what related to the external, political,
+and economical organization, and Enfantin in what regarded doctrine
+and worship. The philosophy or theology of the sect or school was
+derived principally from Hegel, and was a refined Pantheism. Its
+Christology was the unity, not union, of the divine and human; and
+the Incarnation symbolized the unity of God and man, or the
+Divinity manifesting himself in humanity, and making humanity
+substantially divine,--the very doctrine in reality which I myself
+had embraced even before I had heard of the Saint-Simonians, if not
+before they had published it. The religious organization was
+founded on the doctrine of the progressive nature of man, and the
+maxim that all institutions should tend in the most speedy and
+direct manner possible to the constant amelioration of the moral,
+intellectual, and physical condition of the poorer and more
+numerous classes. Socially men were to be divided into three
+classes,--artists, <i>savans</i>, and industrials or working men,
+corresponding to the psychological division of the human faculties.
+The soul has three powers or faculties,--to love, to know, and to
+act. Those in whom the love-faculty is predominant belong to the
+class of artists, those in whom the knowledge-faculty is
+predominant belong to the class of <i>savans</i>, the scientific
+and the learned, and in fine, those in whom the act-faculty
+predominates belong to the industrial class. This classification
+places every man in the social category for which he is fitted, and
+to which he is attracted by his nature. These several classes are
+to be hierarchically organized under chiefs or priests, who are
+respectively priests of the artists, of the scientific, and of the
+industrials, and are, priests and all, to be subjected to a supreme
+Father, <i>P&egrave;re Supr&eacute;me</i>, and a Supreme Mother,
+<i>M&egrave;re Supr&eacute;me</i>.</p>
+<p>The economical organization is to be based on the maxims, "To
+each one according to his capacity," and "To each capacity
+according to its work." Private property is to be retained, but its
+transmission by inheritance or testamentary disposition must be
+abolished. The property is to be held by a tenure resembling that
+of gavel-kind. It belongs to the community, and the priests,
+chiefs, or brehons, as the Celtic tribes call them, to distribute
+it for life to individuals, and to each individual according to his
+capacity. It was supposed that in this way the advantages of both
+common and individual property might be secured. Something of this
+prevailed originally in most nations, and a reminiscence of it
+still exists in the village system among the Slavonic tribes of
+Russia and Poland; and nearly all jurists maintain that the
+testamentary right by which a man disposes of his goods after his
+natural death, as well as that by which a child inherits from the
+parent, is a municipal, not a natural right.</p>
+<p>The most striking feature in the Saint-Simonian scheme was the
+rank and position it assigned to woman. It asserted the absolute
+equality of the sexes, and maintained that either sex is incomplete
+without the other. Man is an incomplete individual without woman.
+Hence a religion, a doctrine, a social institution founded by one
+sex alone is incomplete, and can never be adequate to the wants of
+the race or a definite order. This idea was also entertained by
+Frances Wright, and appears to be entertained by all our Women's
+Rights folk of either sex. The old civilization was masculine, not
+male and female as God made man. Hence its condemnation. The
+Saint-Simonians, therefore, proposed to place by the side of their
+sovereign Father at the summit of their hierarchy a sovereign
+Mother. The man to be sovereign Father they found; but a woman to
+be sovereign Mother, <i>M&egrave;re Supr&ecirc;me</i>, they found
+not. This caused great embarrassment, and a split between Bazard
+and Enfantin. Bazard was about marrying his daughter, and he
+proposed to place her marriage under the protection of the existing
+French laws. Enfantin opposed his doing so, and called it a sinful
+compliance with the prejudices of the world. The Saint-Simonian
+society, he maintained, was a State, a kingdom within itself, and
+should be governed by its own laws and its own chiefs without any
+recognition of those without. Bazard persisted, and had the
+marriage of his daughter solemnized in a legal manner, and for
+aught I know, according to the rites of the Church. A great scandal
+followed. Bazard charged Enfantin with denying Christian marriage,
+and with holding loose notions on the subject. Enfantin replied
+that he neither denied nor affirmed Christian marriage; that in
+enacting the existing law on the subject man alone had been
+consulted, and he could not recognize it as law till woman had
+given her consent to it. As yet the society was only provisionally
+organized, inasmuch as they had not yet found the <i>M&egrave;re
+Supr&ecirc;me</i>. The law on marriage must emanate conjointly from
+the Supreme Father and the Supreme Mother, and it would be
+irregular and a usurpation for the Supreme Father to undertake
+alone to legislate on the subject. Bazard would not submit, and
+went out and shot himself. Most of the politicians abandoned the
+association; and P&egrave;re Enfantin, almost in despair,
+dispatched twelve apostles to Constantinople to find in the Turkish
+harems the Supreme Mother. After a year they returned and reported
+that they were unable to find her; and the society, condemned by
+the French courts as immoral, broke up, and broke up because no
+woman could be found to be its mother. And so they ended, having
+risen, flourished, and decayed in less than a single decade.</p>
+<p>The points in the Saint-Simonian movement that arrested my
+attention and commanded my belief were what it will seem strange to
+my readers could ever have been doubted,--its assertion of a
+religious future for the human race, and that religion, in the
+future as well as in the past, must have an organization, and a
+hierarchical organization. Its classification of men according to
+the predominant psychological faculty in each, into artists,
+savans, and industrials, struck me as very well; and the maxims "To
+each according to his capacity," and "To each capacity according to
+its works," as evidently just, and desirable if practicable. The
+doctrine of the Divinity in Humanity, of progress, of no essential
+antagonism between the spiritual and the material, and of the duty
+of shaping all institutions for the speediest and continuous moral,
+intellectual, and physical amelioration of the poorer and more
+numerous classes, I already held. I was rather pleased than
+otherwise with the doctrine with regard to property, and thought it
+a decided improvement on that of a community of goods. The doctrine
+with regard to the relation of the sexes I rather acquiesced in
+than approved. I was disposed to maintain, as the Indian said, that
+"woman is the weaker canoe," and to assert my marital prerogatives;
+but the equality of the sexes was asserted by nearly all my
+friends, and I remained generally silent on the subject, till some
+of the admirers of Harriet Martineau and Margaret Fuller began to
+scorn equality and to claim for woman superiority. Then I became
+roused, and ventured to assert my masculine dignity.</p>
+<p>It is remarkable that most reformers find fault with the
+Christian law of marriage, and propose to alter the relations which
+God has established both in nature and the gospel between the
+sexes; and this is generally the rock on which they split. Women do
+not usually admire men who cast off their manhood or are
+unconscious of the rights and prerogatives of the stronger sex; and
+they admire just as little those "strong-minded women" who strive
+to excel only in the masculine virtues. I have never been persuaded
+that it argues well for a people when its women are men and its men
+women. Yet I trust I have always honored and always shall honor
+woman. I raise no question as to woman's equality or inequality
+with man, for comparisons cannot be made between things not of the
+same kind. Woman's sphere and office in life are as high, as holy,
+as important as man's, but different; and the glory of both man and
+woman is for each to act well the part assigned to each by Almighty
+God.</p>
+<p>The Saint-Simonian writings made me familiar with the idea of a
+hierarchy, and removed from my mind the prejudices against the
+Papacy generally entertained by my countrymen. Their proposed
+organization, I saw, might be good and desirable if their priests,
+their Supreme Father and Mother, could really be the wisest, the
+best,--not merely the nominal but the real chiefs of society. Yet
+what security have I that they will be? Their power was to have no
+limit save their own wisdom and love, but who would answer for it
+that these would always be an effectual limit? How were these
+priests or chiefs to be designated and installed in their office?
+By popular election? But popular election often passes over the
+proper man and takes the improper. Then as to the assignment to
+each man of a capital proportioned to his capacity to begin life
+with, what certainty is there that the rules of strict right will
+be followed? that wrong will not often be done, both voluntarily
+and involuntarily? Are your chiefs to be infallible and impeccable?
+Still the movement interested me, and many of its principles took
+firm hold of me and held me for years in a species of mental
+thraldom; insomuch that I found it difficult, if not impossible,
+either to refute them or to harmonize them with other principles
+which I also held, or rather which held me, and in which I detected
+no unsoundness. Yet I imbibed no errors from the Saint-Simonians;
+and I can say of them as of the Unitarians,--they did me no harm,
+but were in my fallen state the occasion of much good to me.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="BRUNETIERE"></a>
+<h2>FERDINAND BRUNETI&Egrave;RE</h2>
+<h3>(1849-)</h3>
+<center>BY ADOLPHE COHN</center>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-f.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>erdinand Bruneti&egrave;re, the celebrated French literary
+critic, was born in Toulon, the great military Mediterranean
+sea-port of France, in the year 1849. His studies were begun in the
+college of his native city and continued in Paris, in the
+Lyc&eacute;e Louis le Grand, where in the class of philosophy he
+came under Professor &Eacute;mile Charles, by whose original and
+profound though decidedly sad way of thinking he was powerfully
+influenced. His own ambition then was to become a teacher in the
+University of France, an ambition which seemed unlikely to be ever
+realized, as he failed to secure admission to the celebrated
+&Eacute;cole Normale Sup&eacute;rieure, in the competitive
+examination which leads up to that school. Strangely enough, about
+fifteen years later he was, though not in possession of any very
+high University degree, appointed to the Professorship of French
+Literature in the school which he had been unable to enter as a
+scholar, and his appointment received the hearty indorsement of all
+the leading educational authorities in France.</p>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/brunetiere.jpg" width="45%" alt=
+""><br>
+<b>Ferdiand Bruneti&egrave;re</b></p>
+<p>For several years after leaving the Lyc&eacute;e Louis le Grand,
+while completing his literary outfit by wonderfully extensive
+reading, Ferdinand Bruneti&egrave;re lived on stray orders for work
+for publishers. He seldom succeeded in getting these, and when he
+got any they were seldom filled. Thus he happened to be
+commissioned by the firm of Germer, Bailli&egrave;re and Company to
+write a history of Russia, which never was and to all appearances
+never will be written. The event which determined the direction of
+his career was the acceptance by the Revue des Deux Mondes, in
+1875, of an article upon contemporary French novelists.
+Fran&ccedil;ois Buloz, the energetic and imperious founder and
+editor of the world-famed French bi-monthly, felt that he had found
+in the young critic the man whom French literary circles had been
+waiting for, and who was to be Sainte-Beuve's successor; and
+Fran&ccedil;ois Buloz was a man who seldom made mistakes.</p>
+<p>French literary criticism was just then at a very low ebb.
+Sainte-Beuve had been dead about five years; his own
+contemporaries, Edmond Sch&eacute;rer for instance, were getting
+old and discouraged; the new generation seemed to be turning
+unanimously, in consequence of the disasters of the Franco-German
+war and of the Revolution of September, 1870, to military or
+political activity. The only form of literature which had power to
+attract young writers was the novel, which they could fill with the
+description of all the passions then agitating the public mind.
+That a man of real intellectual strength should then give his
+undivided attention to pure literature seemed a most unlikely
+phenomenon; but all had to acknowledge that the unlikely had
+happened, soon after Ferdinand Bruneti&egrave;re had become the
+regular literary critic of the Revue des Deux Mondes.</p>
+<p>Fortunately the new critic did not undertake to walk in the
+footsteps of Sainte-Beuve. In the art of presenting to the reader
+the marrow of a writer's work, of making the writer himself known
+by the description of his surroundings, the narrative of his life,
+the study of the forces by which he was influenced, the illustrious
+author of the 'Causeries du Lundi' remains to this day without a
+rival or a continuator. Ferdinand Bruneti&egrave;re had a different
+conception of the duties of a literary critic. The one fault with
+which thoughtful readers were apt to charge Sainte-Beuve was, that
+he failed to pass judgment upon the works and writers; and this
+failure was often, and not altogether unjustly, ascribed to a
+certain weakness in his grasp of principles, a certain
+faint-heartedness whenever it became necessary to take sides. Any
+one who studies Bruneti&egrave;re can easily see that from the
+start his chief concern was to make it impossible for any one to
+charge him with the same fault. He came in with a set of principles
+which he has since upheld with remarkable steadfastness and
+courage. In an age when nearly every one was turning to the future
+and advocating the doctrine and the necessity of progress, when the
+chief fear of most men was that they should appear too much afraid
+of change, Bruneti&egrave;re proclaimed time and again that there
+was no safety for any nation or set of men except in a staunch
+adherence to tradition. He bade his readers turn their minds away
+from the current literature of the day, and take hold of the
+exemplars of excellence handed down to us by the great men of the
+past. Together with tradition he upheld authority, and therefore
+preferred to all others the period in which French literature and
+society had most willingly submitted to authority, that is, the
+seventeenth century and the reign of Louis XIV. When compelled to
+speak of the literature of the day, he did it in no uncertain
+tones. His book 'The Naturalistic Novel' consists of a series of
+articles in which he studies Zola and his school, upholding the old
+doctrine that there are things in life which must be kept out of
+the domain of art and cannot be therein introduced without lowering
+the ideal of man. Between the naturalistic and the idealistic novel
+he unhesitatingly declares for the latter, and places George Sand
+far above the author of 'L'Assommoir.'</p>
+<p>But the great success of his labors cannot be said to have been
+due solely or even mainly to the principles he advocated. Other
+critics have appeared since--Messrs. Jules Lema&icirc;tre and
+Anatole France, for instance,--who antagonize almost everything
+that he defends and defend almost everything that he antagonizes,
+and whose success has hardly been inferior to his. Neither is it
+due to any charm in his style. Bruneti&egrave;re's sentences are
+compact,--indeed, strongly knit together,--but decidedly heavy and
+at times even clumsy. What he has to say he always says strongly,
+but not gracefully. He has a remarkable appreciation of the value
+of the words of the French language, but his arrangement of them is
+seldom free from mannerisms. What, then, has made him the foremost
+literary critic of the present day? The answer is, knowledge and
+sincerity. No writer of the present day, save perhaps Anatole
+France, is so accurately informed of every fact that bears upon
+literary history. Every argument he brings forward is supported by
+an array of incontrovertible facts that is simply appalling. No one
+can argue with him who does not first subject himself to the
+severest kind of training, go through a mass of tedious reading,
+become familiar with dates to the point of handling them as nimbly
+as a bank clerk handles the figures of a check list. And all this
+comes forward in Bruneti&egrave;re's articles in the most natural,
+we had almost said casual way. The fact takes its place unheralded
+in the reasoning. It is there because it has to be there, not
+because the writer wishes to make a display of his wonderful
+knowledge; and thus it happens that Ferdinand Bruneti&egrave;re's
+literary articles are perhaps the most instructive ones ever
+written in the French language. They are moreover admirably
+trustworthy. It would never come to this author's mind to hide a
+fact that goes against any of his theories. He feels so sure of
+being in the right that he is always willing to give his opponents
+all that they can possibly claim.</p>
+<p>Of late years, moreover, it must be acknowledged that
+Bruneti&egrave;re's mind has given signs of remarkable broadening.
+Under the influence of the doctrine of evolution, he has undertaken
+to class all literary facts as the great naturalists of the day
+have classed the facts of physiology, and to show that literary
+forms spring from each other by way of transformation in the same
+way as do the forms of animal or vegetable life. Already three
+works have been produced by him since he entered upon this new line
+of development: a history of literary criticism in France, which
+forms the first and hitherto only published volume of a large work,
+(The Evolution of Literary Forms); a work on the French drama, (The
+Periods of the French Theatre); and a treatise on modern French
+poetry, (The Evolution of French Lyric Poetry during the Nineteenth
+Century.) The second and last of these were first delivered by
+their author from the professor's chair or the lecturer's platform,
+where he has managed to display some of the greatest gifts of the
+public speaker. Most of M. Bruneti&egrave;re's literary articles
+have been collected in book form under the following
+titles:--(Questions of Criticism) (2 vols.), (History and
+Criticism) (3 vols.), (Critical Studies on the History of French
+Literature) (6 vols.), (The Naturalistic Novel) (1 vol.).</p>
+<p>At various times remarkable addresses have been delivered by him
+on public occasions, in which he has often represented the French
+Academy since his election to that illustrious body. Unfortunately
+his productive literary activity has slackened of late. In 1895 he
+was called to the editorship of the Revue des Deux Mondes, and
+since his assumption of this responsible editorial position he has
+published only two or three articles, bearing upon moral and
+educational questions.</p>
+<p>To pass final judgment upon a man whose development is far from
+completed is an almost impossible task. Still it may be said that
+with the exception of Sainte-Beuve's (Causeries du Lundi) and
+(Nouveaux Lundis,) nothing exists that can teach the reader so much
+about the history of French literature as Bruneti&egrave;re's
+works. The doctrinal side, to which the author himself undoubtedly
+attaches the greatest importance, will strike the reader as often
+very questionable. Too often Bruneti&egrave;re seems in his
+judgments to be quite unconsciously actuated by a dislike of the
+accepted opinion of the present day. His love of the past bears a
+look of defiance of the present, not calculated to win the reader's
+assent. But even this does not go without its good side. It gives
+to Bruneti&egrave;re's judgments a unity which is seldom if ever
+found in the works of those whose chief labors have been spent in
+the often ungrateful task of making a hurried public acquainted
+with the uninterrupted stream of literary production.</p>
+<p class="sign"><img src="images/sign-316.jpg" width="60%" alt=
+""></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRUNETIERE01"></a>
+<h3>TAINE AND PRINCE NAPOLEON</h3>
+<br>
+<p>For the last five or six months, since it has been known that a
+prince, nephew, cousin, and son of emperors or kings formerly very
+powerful, had proposed to answer the libel, as he calls it, written
+by M. Taine about Napoleon, we have been awaiting this reply with
+an impatience, a curiosity which were equally justified,--although
+for very different reasons,--by M. Taine's reputation, by the
+glorious name of his antagonist, by the greatness, and finally the
+national interest of the subject.</p>
+<p>The book has just appeared; and if we can say without flattery
+that it has revealed to us in the Prince a writer whose existence
+we had not suspected, it is because we must at once add that
+neither in its manner nor in its matter is the book itself what it
+might have been. Prince Napoleon did not wish to write a 'Life of
+Napoleon,' and nobody expected that of him,--for after all, and for
+twenty different reasons, even had he wished it he could not have
+done it. But to M. Taine's Napoleon, since he did not find in him
+the true Napoleon, since he declared him to be as much against
+nature as against history, he could, and we expected that he would,
+have opposed his own Napoleon. By the side of the "inventions of a
+writer whose judgment had been misled and whose conscience had been
+obscured by passion,"--these are his own words,--he could have
+restored, as he promised in his 'Introduction,' "the man and his
+work in their living reality." And in our imaginations, on which M.
+Taine's harsh and morose workmanship had engraven the features of a
+modern Malatesta or modern Sforza, <i>he</i> could at last
+substitute for them, as the inheritor of the name and the dynastic
+claims, the image of the founder of contemporary France, of the god
+of war. Unfortunately, instead of doing so, it is M. Taine himself,
+it is his analytical method, it is the witnesses whom M. Taine
+chose as his authorities, that Prince Napoleon preferred to assail,
+as a scholar in an Academy who descants upon the importance of the
+genuineness of a text, and moreover with a freedom of utterance and
+a pertness of expression which on any occasion I should venture to
+pronounce decidedly insulting.</p>
+<p>For it is a misfortune of princes, when they do us the honor of
+discussing with us, that they must observe a moderation, a reserve,
+a courtesy greater even than our own. It will therefore be
+unanimously thought that it ill became Prince Napoleon to address
+M. Taine in a tone which M. Taine would decline to use in his
+answer, out of respect for the very name which he is accused of
+<i>slandering</i>. It will be thought also that it ill became him,
+when speaking of Miot de Melito, for instance, or of many other
+servants of the imperial government, to seem to ignore that princes
+also are under an obligation to those who have served them well.
+Perhaps even it may be thought that it poorly became him, when
+discussing or contradicting the 'Memoirs of Madame de
+R&eacute;musat,' to forget under what auspices the remains of his
+uncle, the Emperor, were years ago carried in his city of Paris.
+But what will be thought especially is, that he had something else
+to do than to split hairs in discussion of evidences; that he had
+something far better to say, more peremptory and to the point, and
+more literary besides, than to call M. Taine names, to hurl at him
+the epithets of "Entomologist, Materialist, Pessimist, Destroyer of
+Reputations, Iconoclast," and to class him as a
+"d&eacute;boulonneur" among those who, in 1871, pulled down the
+Colonne Vend&ocirc;me.</p>
+<p>Not, undoubtedly, that M. Taine--and we said so ourselves more
+than once with perfect freedom--if spending much patience and
+conscientiousness in his search for documents, has always displayed
+as much critical spirit and discrimination in the use he made of
+them. We cannot understand why in his 'Napoleon' he accepted the
+testimony of Bourrienne, for instance, any more than recently, in
+his 'Revolution,' that of George Duval, or again, in his 'Ancien
+R&eacute;gime,' that of the notorious Soulavic. M. Taine's
+documents as a rule are not used by him as a foundation for his
+argument; no, he first takes his position, and then he consults his
+library, or he goes to the original records, with the hope of
+finding those documents that will support his reasoning. But
+granting that, we must own that though different from M. Taine's,
+Prince Napoleon's historical method is not much better; that though
+in a different manner and in a different direction, it is neither
+less partial nor less passionate: and here is a proof of it.</p>
+<p>Prince Napoleon blames M. Taine for quoting "eight times"
+'Bourrienne's Memoirs,' and then, letting his feelings loose, he
+takes advantage of the occasion and cruelly besmirches Bourrienne's
+name. Does he tell the truth or not? is he right at the bottom? I
+do not know anything about it; I do not <i>wish</i> to know
+anything; I do not need it, since I <i>know</i>, from other
+sources, that 'Bourrienne's Memoirs' are hardly less spurious than,
+say, the 'Souvenirs of the Marquise de Cr&eacute;qui' or the
+'Memoirs of Monsieur d'Artagnan.' But if these so-called 'Memoirs'
+are really not his, what has Bourrienne himself to do here? and
+suppose the former secretary of the First Consul to have been,
+instead of the shameless embezzler whom Prince Napoleon so fully
+and so uselessly describes to us, the most honest man in the world,
+would the 'Memoirs' be any more reliable, since it is a fact that
+<i>he</i> wrote nothing? ...</p>
+<p>And now I cannot but wonder at the tone in which those who
+contradict M. Taine, and especially Prince Napoleon himself,
+condescend to tell him that he lacks that which would be needed in
+order to speak of Napoleon or the Revolution. But who is it, then,
+that <i>has</i> what is needed in order to judge Napoleon?
+Frederick the Great, or Catherine II., perhaps,--as Napoleon
+himself desired, "his peers"; or in other words, those who, born as
+he was for war and government, can only admire, justify, and
+glorify themselves in him. And who will judge the Revolution?
+Danton. we suppose, or Robespierre,--that is, the men who were the
+Revolution itself. No: the real judge will be the average opinion
+of men; the force that will create, modify, correct this average
+opinion, the historians will be; and among the historians of our
+time, in spite of Prince Napoleon, it will be M. Taine for a large
+share.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRUNETIERE02"></a>
+<h3>THE LITERATURES OF FRANCE, ENGLAND, AND GERMANY</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Twice at least in the course of their long history, it is known
+that the literature and even the language of France has exerted
+over the whole of Europe an influence, whose universal character
+other languages perhaps more harmonious,--Italian for
+instance,--and other literatures more original in certain respects,
+like English literature, have never possessed. It is in a purely
+French form that our medi&aelig;val poems, our 'Chansons de Geste,'
+our 'Romances of the Round Table,' our <i>fabliaux</i> themselves,
+whencesoever they came,--Germany or Tuscany, England or Brittany,
+Asia or Greece,--conquered, fascinated, charmed, from one end of
+Europe to the other, the imaginations of the Middle Ages. The
+amorous languor and the subtlety of our "courteous poetry" are
+breathed no less by the madrigals of Shakespeare himself than by
+Petrarch's sonnets; and after such a long lapse of time we still
+discover something that comes from us even in the Wagnerian drama,
+for instance in 'Parsifal' or in 'Tristan and Isolde.' A long time
+later, in a Europe belonging entirely to classicism, from the
+beginning of the seventeenth to the end of the eighteenth century,
+during one hundred and fifty years or even longer, French
+literature possessed a real sovereignty in Italy, in Spain, in
+England, and in Germany. Do not the names of Algarotti, Bettinelli,
+Beccaria, Filengieri, almost belong to France? What shall I say of
+the famous Gottschedt? Shall I recall the fact that in his
+victorious struggle against Voltaire, Lessing had to call in
+Diderot's assistance? And who ignores that if Rivarol wrote his
+'Discourse upon the Universality of the French Language,' it can be
+charged neither to his vanity nor to our national vanity, since he
+was himself half Italian, and the subject had been proposed by the
+Academy of Berlin?</p>
+<p>All sorts of reasons have been given for this universality of
+French literature: some were statistical, if I may say so, some
+geographical, political, linguistic. But the true one, the good
+one, is different: it must be found in the supremely sociable
+character of the literature itself. If at that time our great
+writers were understood and appreciated by everybody, it is because
+they were addressing everybody, or better, because they were
+speaking to all concerning the interests of all. They were
+attracted neither by exceptions nor by peculiarities: they cared to
+treat only of man in general, or as is also said, of the universal
+man, restrained by the ties of human society; and their very
+success shows that below all that distinguishes, say, an Italian
+from a German, this universal man whose reality has so often been
+discussed, persists and lives, and though constantly changing never
+loses his own likeness....</p>
+<p>In comparison with the literature of France, thus defined and
+characterized by its sociable spirit, the literature of England is
+an individualistic literature. Let us put aside, as should be done,
+the generation of Congreve and Wycherley, perhaps also the
+generation of Pope and Addison,--to which, however, we ought not to
+forget that Swift also belonged;--it seems that an Englishman never
+writes except in order to give to himself the external sensation of
+his own personality. Thence his <i>humor</i>, which may be defined
+as the expression of the pleasure he feels in thinking like nobody
+else. Thence, in England, the plenteousness, the wealth, the
+amplitude of the lyric vein; it being granted that
+<i>individualism</i> is the very spring of lyric poetry, and that
+an ode or an elegy is, as it were, the involuntary surging, the
+outflowing of what is most intimate, most secret, most peculiar in
+the poet's soul. Thence also the <i>eccentricity</i> of all the
+great English writers when compared with the rest of the nation, as
+though they became conscious of themselves only by distinguishing
+themselves from those who claim to differ from them least. But is
+it not possible to otherwise characterize the literature of
+England? It will be easily conceived that I dare not assert such a
+thing; all I say here is, that I cannot better express the
+differences which distinguish that literature from our own.</p>
+<p>That is also all I claim, in stating that the essential
+character of the literature of Germany is, that it is
+<i>philosophical</i>. The philosophers there are poets, and the
+poets are philosophers. Goethe is to be found no more, or no less,
+in his 'Theory of Colors' or in his 'Metamorphosis of Plants,' than
+in his 'Divan' or his 'Faust'; and lyrism, if I may use this trite
+expression, "is overflowing" in Schleiermacher's theology and in
+Schelling's philosophy. Is this not perhaps at least one of the
+reasons of the inferiority of the German drama? It is surely the
+reason of the depth and scope of Germanic poetry. Even in the
+masterpieces of German literature it seems that there is mixed
+something indistinct, or rather mysterious, <i>suggestive</i> in
+the extreme, which leads us to thought by the channel of the dream.
+But who has not been struck by what, under a barbarous terminology,
+there is of attractive, and as such of eminently poetical, of
+realistic and at the same time idealistic, in the great systems of
+Kant and Fichte, Hegel and Schopenhauer? Assuredly nothing is
+further removed from the character of our French literature. We can
+here understand what the Germans mean when they charge us with a
+lack of depth. Let them forgive us if <i>we</i> do not blame their
+literature for not being the same as ours.</p>
+<p>For it is good that it be thus, and for five or six hundred
+years this it is that has made the greatness not only of European
+literature, but of Western civilization itself; I mean that which
+all the great nations, after slowly elaborating it, as it were, in
+their national isolation, have afterwards deposited in the common
+treasury of the human race. Thus, to this one we owe the sense of
+mystery, and we might say the revelation of what is beautiful, in
+that which remains obscure and cannot be grasped. To another we owe
+the sense of art, and what may be called the appreciation of the
+power of form. A third one has handed to us what was most heroic in
+the conception of chivalrous honor. And to another, finally, we owe
+it that we know what is both most ferocious and noblest, most
+wholesome and most to be feared, in human pride. The share that
+belongs to us Frenchmen was, in the meanwhile, to bind, to fuse
+together, and as it were to unify under the idea of the general
+society of mankind, the contradictory and even hostile elements
+that may have existed in all that. No matter whether our inventions
+and ideas were, by their origin, Latin or Romance, Celtic or
+Gallic, Germanic even, if you please, the whole of Europe had
+borrowed them from us in order to adapt them to the genius of its
+different races. Before re-admitting them in our turn, before
+adopting them after they had been thus transformed, we asked only
+that they should be able to serve the progress of reason and of
+humanity. What was troublous in them we clarified; what was
+corrupting we corrected; what was local we generalized; what was
+excessive we brought down to the proportions of mankind. Have we
+not sometimes also lessened their grandeur and altered their
+purity? If Corneille has undoubtedly brought nearer to us the still
+somewhat barbaric heroes of Guillem de Castro, La Fontaine, when
+imitating the author of the Decameron, has made him more indecent
+than he is in his own language; and if the Italians have no right
+to assail Moli&egrave;re for borrowing somewhat from them, the
+English may well complain that Voltaire failed to understand
+Shakespeare. But it is true none the less that in disengaging from
+the particular man of the North or the South this idea of a
+universal man, for which we have been so often reviled,--if any one
+of the modern literatures has breathed in its entirety the spirit
+of the public weal and of civilization, it is the literature of
+France. And this ideal cannot possibly be as empty as has too often
+been asserted; since, as I endeavored to show, from Lisbon to
+Stockholm and from Archangel to Naples, it is its manifestations
+that foreigners have loved to come across in the masterpieces, or
+better, in the whole sequence of the history of our literature.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="BRUNO"></a>
+<h2>GIORDANO BRUNO</h2>
+<h3>(1548-1600)</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-f.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>illippo Bruno, known as Giordano Bruno, was born at Nola, near
+Naples, in 1548. This was eight years after the death of
+Copernicus, whose system he eagerly espoused, and ten years before
+the birth of Bacon, with whom he associated in England. Of an
+ardent, poetic temperament, he entered the Dominican order in
+Naples at the early age of sixteen, doubtless attracted to
+conventual life by the opportunities of study it offered to an
+eager intellect. Bruno had been in the monastery nearly thirteen
+years when he was accused of heresy in attacking some of the dogmas
+of the Church. He fled first to Rome and then to Northern Italy,
+where he wandered about for three seasons from city to city,
+teaching and writing. In 1579 he arrived at Geneva, then the
+stronghold of the Calvinists. Coming into conflict with the
+authorities there on account of his religious opinions, he was
+thrown into prison. He escaped and went to Toulouse, at that time
+the literary centre of Southern France, where he lectured for a
+year on Aristotle. His restless spirit, however, drove him on to
+Paris. Here he was made professor extraordinary at the
+Sorbonne.</p>
+<p>Although his teachings were almost directly opposed to the
+philosophic tenets of the time, attacking the current dogmas, and
+Aristotle, the idol of the schoolmen, yet such was the power of
+Bruno's eloquence and the charm of his manner that crowds flocked
+to his lecture-room, and he became one of the most popular foreign
+teachers the university had known. Under pretense of expounding the
+writings of Thomas Aquinas, he set forth his own philosophy. He
+also spoke much on the art of memory, amplifying the writings of
+Raymond Lully; and these principles, formulated by the monk of the
+thirteenth century and taken up again by the free-thinkers of the
+sixteenth, are the basis of all the present-day mnemonics.</p>
+<p>But Bruno went even further. He attracted the attention of King
+Henry III. of France, who in 1583 introduced him to the French
+ambassador to England, Castelnuovo di Manvissi&egrave;re. Going to
+London, he spent three years in the family of this nobleman, more
+as friend than dependent. They were the happiest, or at least the
+most restful years of his stormy life. England was just then
+entering on the glorious epoch of her Elizabethan literature. Bruno
+came into the brilliant court circles, meeting even the Queen, who
+cordially welcomed all men of culture, especially the Italians. The
+astute monk reciprocated her good-will by paying her the customary
+tribute of flattery. He won the friendship of Sir Philip Sidney, to
+whom he dedicated two of his books, and enjoyed the acquaintance of
+Spenser, Sir Fulke Greville, Dyer, Harvey, Sir William Temple,
+Bacon, and other wits and poets of the day.</p>
+<p>At that time--somewhere about 1580--Shakespeare was still
+serving his apprenticeship as playwright, and had perhaps less
+claim on the notice of the observant foreigner than his elder
+contemporaries. London was still a small town, where the news of
+the day spread rapidly, and where, no doubt, strangers were as
+eagerly discussed as they are now within narrow town limits.
+Bruno's daring speculations could not remain the exclusive property
+of his own coterie. And as Shakespeare had the faculty of absorbing
+all new ideas afloat in the air, he would hardly have escaped the
+influence of the teacher who proclaimed in proud self-confidence
+that he was come to arouse men out of their theological stagnation.
+His influence on Bacon is more evident, because of their friendly
+associations. Bruno lectured at Oxford, but the English university
+found less favor in his eyes than English court life. Pedantry had
+indeed set its fatal mark on scholarship, not only on the Continent
+but in England. Aristotle was still the god of the pedants of that
+age, and dissent from his teaching was heavily punished, for the
+dry dust of learning blinded the eyes of the scholastics to new
+truths.</p>
+<p>Bruno, the knight-errant of these truths, devoted all his life
+to scourging pedantry, and dissented <i>in toto</i> from the idol
+of the schools. No wonder he and Oxford did not agree together. He
+wittily calls her "the widow of sound learning," and again, "a
+constellation of pedantic, obstinate ignorance and presumption,
+mixed with a clownish incivility that would tax the patience of
+Job." He lashed the shortcomings of English learning in 'La Cena
+delle Ceneri' (Ash Wednesday Conversation). But Bruno's roving
+spirit, and perhaps also his heterodox tendencies, drove him at
+last from England, and for the next five years he roamed about
+Germany, leading the life of the wandering scholars of the time,
+always involved in conflicts and controversies with the
+authorities, always antagonistic to public opinion. Flying in the
+face of the most cherished traditions, he underwent the common
+experience of all prophets: the minds he was bent on awakening
+refused to be aroused.</p>
+<p>Finally he was invited by Zuone Mocenigo of Venice to teach him
+the higher and secret learning. The Venetian supposed that Bruno,
+with more than human erudition, possessed the art of conveying
+knowledge into the heads of dullards. Disappointed in this
+expectation, he quarreled with his teacher, and in a spirit of
+revenge picked out of Bruno's writings a mass of testimony
+sufficient to convict him of heresy. This he turned over to the
+Inquisitor at Venice, Bruno was arrested, convicted, and sent to
+the Inquisition in Rome. When called upon there to recant, he
+replied, "I ought not to recant, and I will not recant." He was
+accordingly confined in prison for seven years, then sentenced to
+death. On hearing the warrant he said, "It may be that you fear
+more to deliver this judgment than I to bear it." On February 17th,
+1600, he was burned at the stake in the Campo de' Fiori at Rome. He
+remained steadfast to the end, saying, "I die a martyr, and
+willingly." His ashes were cast into the Tiber. Two hundred and
+fifty-nine years afterwards, his statue was unveiled on the very
+spot where he suffered; and the Italian government is bringing out
+(1896) the first complete edition, the 'National Edition,' of his
+works.</p>
+<p>In their substance Bruno's writings belong to philosophy rather
+than to literature, although they are still interesting both
+historically and biographically as an index of the character of the
+man and of the temper of the time. Many of the works have either
+perished or are hidden away in inaccessible archives. For two
+hundred years they were tabooed, and as late as 1836 forbidden to
+be shown in the public library of Dresden. He published twenty-five
+works in Latin and Italian, and left many others incomplete, for in
+all his wanderings he was continually writing. The eccentric titles
+show his desire to attract attention: as 'The Work of the Great
+Key,' 'The Exploration of the Thirty Seals,' etc. The first extant
+work is 'Il Candelajo' (The Taper), a comedy which in its license
+of language and manner vividly reflects the time. In the dedication
+he discloses his philosophy: 'Time takes away everything and gives
+everything.' The 'Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante' (Expulsion of
+the Triumphant Beast), the most celebrated of his works, is an
+attack on the superstitions of the day, a curious medley of
+learning, imagination, and buffoonery. 'Degl' Eroici Furori' (The
+Heroic Enthusiasts) is the most interesting to modern readers, and
+in its majestic exaltation and poetic imagery is a true product of
+Italian culture.</p>
+<p>Bruno was evidently a man of vast intellect and of immense
+erudition. His philosophic speculations comprehended not only the
+ancient thought, and that current at his time, but also reached out
+toward the future and the results of modern science. He perceived
+some of the facts which were later formulated in the theory of
+evolution. "The mind of man differs from that of lower animals and
+of plants not in quality but only in quantity.... Each individual
+is the resultant of innumerable individuals. Each species is the
+Starting point for the next.... No individual is the same to-day as
+yesterday."</p>
+<p>Not only in this divination of coming truths is he modern, but
+also in his methods of investigation. Reason was to him the guide
+to truth. In a study of him Lewes says:--"Bruno was a true
+Neapolitan child--as ardent as its soil ... as capricious as its
+varied climate. There was a restless energy which fitted him to
+become the preacher of a new crusade--urging him to throw a haughty
+defiance in the face of every authority in every country,--an
+energy which closed his wild adventurous career at the stake." He
+was distinguished also by a rich fancy, a varied humor, and a
+chivalrous gallantry, which constantly remind us that the
+intellectual athlete is an Italian, and an Italian of the sixteenth
+century.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRUNO01"></a>
+<h3>A DISCOURSE OF POETS</h3>
+<center>From 'The Heroic Enthusiasts'</center>
+<br>
+<p><i>Cicada</i>--Say, what do you mean by those who vaunt
+themselves of myrtle and laurel?</p>
+<p><i>Tansillo</i>--Those may and do boast of the myrtle who sing
+of love: if they bear themselves nobly, they may wear a crown of
+that plant consecrated to Venus, of which they know the potency.
+Those may boast of the laurel who sing worthily of things
+pertaining to heroes, substituting heroic souls for speculative and
+moral philosophy, praising them and setting them as mirrors and
+exemplars for political and civil actions.</p>
+<p><i>Cicada</i>--There are then many species of poets and
+crowns?</p>
+<p><i>Tansillo</i>--Not only as many as there are Muses, but a
+great many more; for although genius is to be met with, yet certain
+modes and species of human ingenuity cannot be thus classified.</p>
+<p><i>Cicada</i>--There are certain schoolmen who barely allow
+Homer to be a poet, and set down Virgil, Ovid, Martial, Hesiod,
+Lucretius, and many others as versifiers, judging them by the rules
+of poetry of Aristotle.</p>
+<p><i>Tansillo</i>--Know for certain, my brother, that such as
+these are beasts. They do not consider that those rules serve
+principally as a frame for the Homeric poetry, and for other
+similar to it; and they set up one as a great poet, high as Homer,
+and disallow those of other vein and art and enthusiasm, who in
+their various kinds are equal, similar, or greater.</p>
+<p><i>Cicada</i>--So that Homer was not a poet who depended upon
+rules, but was the cause of the rules which serve for those who are
+more apt at imitation than invention, and they have been used by
+him who, being no poet, yet knew how to take the rules of Homeric
+poetry into service, so as to become, not a poet or a Homer, but
+one who apes the Muse of others?</p>
+<p><i>Tansillo</i>--Thou dost well conclude that poetry is not born
+in rules, or only slightly and accidentally so: the rules are
+derived, from the poetry, and there are as many kinds and sorts of
+true rules as there are kinds and sorts of true poets.</p>
+<p><i>Cicada</i>--How then are the true poets to be known?</p>
+<p><i>Tansillo</i>--By the singing of their verses: in that singing
+they give delight, or they edify, or they edify and delight
+together.</p>
+<p><i>Cicada</i>--To whom then are the rules of Aristotle
+useful?</p>
+<p><i>Tansillo</i>--To him who, unlike Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, and
+others, could not sing without the rules of Aristotle, and who,
+having no Muse of his own, would coquette with that of Homer.</p>
+<p><i>Cicada</i>--Then they are wrong, those stupid pedants of our
+days, who exclude from the number of poets those who do not use
+words and metaphors conformable to, or whose principles are not in
+union with, those of Homer and Virgil; or because they do not
+observe the custom of invocation, or because they weave one history
+or tale with another, or because they finish the song with an
+epilogue on what has been said and a prelude on what is to be said,
+and many other kinds of criticism and censure; from whence it seems
+they would imply that they themselves, if the fancy took them,
+could be the true poets: and yet in fact they are no other than
+worms, that know not how to do anything well, but are born only to
+gnaw and befoul the studies and labors of others; and not being
+able to attain celebrity by their own virtue and ingenuity, seek to
+put themselves in the front, by hook or by crook, through the
+defects and errors of others.</p>
+<p><i>Tansillo</i>--There are as many sorts of poets as there are
+sentiments and ideas; and to these it is possible to adapt
+garlands, not only of every species of plant, but also of other
+kinds of material. So the crowns of poets are made not only of
+myrtle and of laurel, but of vine leaves for the white-wine verses,
+and of ivy for the bacchanals; of olive for sacrifice and laws; of
+poplar, of elm, and of corn for agriculture; of cypress for
+funerals, and innumerable others for other occasions; and if it
+please you, also of the material signified by a good fellow when he
+exclaimed:</p>
+<blockquote>"O Friar Leek! O Poetaster!<br>
+That in Milan didst buckle on thy wreath<br>
+Composed of salad, sausage, and the pepper-caster."</blockquote>
+<p><i>Cicada</i>--Now surely he of divers moods, which he exhibits
+in various ways, may cover himself with the branches of different
+plants, and may hold discourse worthily with the Muses; for they
+are his aura or comforter, his anchor or support, and his harbor,
+to which he retires in times of labor, of agitation, and of storm.
+Hence he cries:--"O Mountain of Parnassus, where I abide; Muses,
+with whom I converse; Fountain of Helicon, where I am nourished;
+Mountain, that affordest me a quiet dwelling-place; Muses, that
+inspire me with profound doctrines; Fountain, that cleansest me;
+Mountain, on whose ascent my heart uprises; Muses, that in
+discourse revive my spirits; Fountain, whose arbors cool my
+brows,--change my death into life, my cypress to laurels, and my
+hells into heavens: that is, give me immortality, make me a poet,
+render me illustrious!"</p>
+<p><i>Tansillo</i>--Well; because to those whom Heaven favors, the
+greatest evils turn to greatest good; for needs or necessities
+bring forth labors and studies, and these most often bring the
+glory of immortal splendor.</p>
+<p><i>Cicada</i>--For to die in one age makes us live in all the
+rest.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRUNO02"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>CANTICLE OF THE
+SHINING ONES</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A Tribute to English Women, from 'The
+Nolan'<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Nothing I envy, Jove, from this thy
+sky,"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Spake Neptune thus, and
+raised his lofty crest.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"God of the waves," said Jove, "thy
+pride runs high;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What more wouldst add to
+own thy stern behest?"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Thou," spake the god, "dost rule the
+fiery span,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The circling spheres, the
+glittering shafts of day;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Greater am I, who in the realm of
+man<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Rule Thames, with all his
+Nymphs in fair array.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"In this my breast I hold the
+fruitful land,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The vasty reaches of the
+trembling sea;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And what in night's bright dome, or
+day's, shall stand<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Before these radiant
+maids who dwell with me?"<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Not thine," said Jove, "god of the
+watery mount,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To exceed my lot; but
+thou my lot shalt share:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thy heavenly maids among my stars
+I'll count,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And thou shalt own the
+stars beyond compare!"</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRUNO03"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>THE SONG OF THE NINE
+SINGERS</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[<i>The first sings and plays the
+cithern</i>.]<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O cliffs and rocks! O thorny woods! O
+shore!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O hills and dales! O valleys, rivers,
+seas!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How do your new-discovered beauties
+please?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O Nymph, 'tis yours the guerdon
+rare,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If now the open skies shine fair;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O happy wanderings, well spent and
+o'er!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[<i>The second sings and plays to his
+mandolin</i>.]<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O happy wanderings, well spent and
+o'er!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Say then, O Circe, these heroic
+tears,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;These griefs, endured through tedious
+months and years,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Were as a grace divine bestowed<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If now our weary travail is no
+more.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[<i>The third sings and plays to his
+lyre</i>.]<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If now our weary travail is no
+more!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If this sweet haven be our destined
+rest,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Then naught remains but to be
+blest,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To thank our God for all his
+gifts,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who from our eyes the veil
+uplifts,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where shines the light upon the
+heavenly shore,<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[<i>The fourth sings to the
+viol</i>.]<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where shines the light upon the
+heavenly shore!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O blindness, dearer far than others'
+sight!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O sweeter grief than earth's most
+sweet delight!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For ye have led the erring soul<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;By gradual steps to this fair
+goal,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And through the darkness into light
+we soar.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[<i>The fifth sings to a Spanish
+timbrel</i>.]<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And through the darkness into light
+we soar!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To full fruition all high thought is
+brought,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With such brave patience that ev'n
+we<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;At least the only path can see,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And in his noblest work our God
+adore.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[<i>The sixth sings to a
+lute</i>.]<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And in his noblest work our God
+adore!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;God doth not will joy
+should to joy succeed,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nor ill shall be of other
+ill the seed;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But in his
+hand the wheel of fate<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Turns, now
+depressed and now elate,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Evolving day from night for
+evermore.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[<i>The seventh sings to the Irish
+harp</i>.]<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Evolving day from night for
+evermore!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And as yon robe of
+glorious nightly fire<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Pales when the morning
+beams to noon aspire,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thus He who
+rules with law eternal,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Creating
+order fair diurnal,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Casts down the proud and doth exalt
+the poor.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[<i>The eighth plays with a viol and
+bow</i>.]<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Casts down the proud and doth exalt
+the poor!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And with an
+equal hand maintains<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The boundless
+worlds which He sustains,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And scatters
+all our finite sense<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;At thought of
+His omnipotence,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Clouded awhile, to be revealed once
+more.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[<i>The ninth plays upon the
+rebeck</i>.]<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Clouded awhile, to be revealed once
+more!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thus neither
+doubt nor fear avails;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O'er all the
+incomparable End prevails,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O'er fair
+champaign and mountain,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O'er
+river-brink and fountain,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And o'er the shocks of seas and
+perils of the shore.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Translation of Isa
+Blagden.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRUNO04"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>OF IMMENSITY</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;From Frith's 'Life of Giordano
+Bruno'<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Tis thou, O Spirit, dost within my
+soul<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This weakly thought with
+thine own life amend;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Rejoicing, dost thy rapid
+pinions lend<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Me, and dost wing me to that lofty
+goal<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where secret portals ope and fetters
+break,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And thou dost grant me,
+by thy grace complete,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Fortune to spurn, and death; O high
+retreat,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Which few attain, and
+fewer yet forsake!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Girdled with gates of brass in every
+part,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Prisoned and bound in
+vain, 'tis mine to rise<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Through sparkling fields
+of air to pierce the skies,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sped and accoutred by no doubting
+heart,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Till, raised on clouds of
+contemplation vast,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Light, leader, law, Creator, I attain
+at last.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRUNO05"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>LIFE WELL LOST</b><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Winged by desire and thee, O dear
+delight!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As still the vast and
+succoring air I tread,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So, mounting still, on
+swifter pinions sped,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I scorn the world, and heaven
+receives my flight.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And if the end of Ikaros be nigh,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I will submit, for I
+shall know no pain:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And falling dead to
+earth, shall rise again;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What lowly life with such high death
+can vie?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Then speaks my heart from out the
+upper air,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Whither dost lead me? sorrow and
+despair<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Attend the rash." and thus I make
+reply:--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Fear thou no fall, nor
+lofty ruin sent;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Safely divide the clouds,
+and die content,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When such proud death is dealt thee
+from on high."</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRUNO06"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>PARNASSUS
+WITHIN</b><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O heart, 'tis you my chief Parnassus
+are,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where for my safety I
+must ever climb.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My wing&egrave;d thoughts
+are Muses, who from far<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bring gifts of beauty to
+the court of Time;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And Helicon, that fair unwasted
+rill,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Springs newly in my tears
+upon the earth,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And by those streams and nymphs, and
+by that hill,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;It pleased the gods to
+give a poet birth.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No favoring hand that comes of lofty
+race,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No priestly unction, nor
+the grant of kings,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Can on me lay such lustre and such
+grace,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nor add such heritage;
+for one who sings<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hath a crowned head, and by the
+sacred bay,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;His heart, his thoughts, his tears,
+are consecrate alway.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRUNO07"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>COMPENSATION</b><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The moth beholds not death as forth
+he flies<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Into the splendor of the
+living flame;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The hart athirst to crystal water
+hies,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nor heeds the shaft, nor
+fears the hunter's aim;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The timid bird, returning from
+above<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To join his mate, deems
+not the net is nigh;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Unto the light, the fount, and to my
+love,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Seeing the flame, the
+shaft, the chains, I fly;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So high a torch, love-lighted in the
+skies,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Consumes my soul; and
+with this bow divine<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of piercing sweetness what
+terrestrial vies?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This net of dear delight
+doth prison mine;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And I to life's last day have this
+desire--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Be mine thine arrows, love, and mine
+thy fire.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRUNO08"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>LIFE FOR SONG</b><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Come Muse, O Muse, so often scorned
+by me,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The hope of sorrow and
+the balm of care,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Give to me speech and song, that I
+may be<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Unchid by grief; grant me such graces
+rare<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As other ministering
+souls may never see<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who boast thy laurel, and thy myrtle
+wear.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I know no joy wherein thou hast not
+part,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My speeding wind, my
+anchor, and my goal,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Come, fair Parnassus, lift thou up my
+heart;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Come, Helicon, renew my
+thirsty soul.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A cypress crown, O Muse, is thine to
+give,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And pain eternal: take
+this weary frame,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Touch me with fire, and this my death
+shall live<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;On all men's lips and in undying
+fame.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="BRYANT"></a>
+<h2>WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT</h2>
+<h3>(1794-1878)</h3>
+<center>BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP</center>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-d.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>istinguished as he was by the lofty qualities of his verse,
+William Cullen Bryant held a place almost unique in American
+literature, by the union of his activity as a poet with his
+eminence as a citizen and an influential journalist, throughout an
+uncommonly long career. Two traits still further define the
+peculiarity of his position--his precocious development, and the
+evenness and sustained vigor of all his poetic work from the
+beginning to the end. He began writing verse at the age of eight;
+at ten he made contributions in this kind to the county gazette,
+and produced a finished and effective rhymed address, read at his
+school examination, which became popular for recitation; and in his
+thirteenth year, during the Presidency of Thomas Jefferson, he
+composed a political satire, 'The Embargo.' This, being published,
+was at first supposed by many to be the work of a man, attracted
+much attention and praise, and passed into a second edition with
+other shorter pieces.</p>
+<p>But these, while well wrought in the formal eighteenth-century
+fashion, showed no special originality. It was with 'Thanatopsis,'
+written in 1811, when he was only seventeen, that his career as a
+poet of original and assured strength began. 'Thanatopsis' was an
+inspiration of the primeval woods of America, of the scenes that
+surrounded the writer in youth. At the same time it expressed with
+striking independence and power a fresh conception of "the
+universality of Death in the natural order." As has been well said,
+"it takes the idea of death out of its theological aspects and
+restores it to its proper place in the vast scheme of things. This
+in itself was a mark of genius in a youth of his time and place."
+Another American poet, Stoddard, calls it the greatest poem ever
+written by so young a man. The author's son-in-law and biographer,
+Parke Godwin, remarks upon it aptly, "For the first time on this
+continent a poem was written destined to general admiration and
+enduring fame;" and this indeed is a very significant point, that
+it began the history of true poetry in the United States,--a fact
+which further secured to Bryant his exceptional place. The poem
+remains a classic of the English language, and the author himself
+never surpassed the high mark attained in it; although the balanced
+and lasting nature of his faculty is shown in a pendant to this
+poem, which he created in his old age and entitled 'The Flood of
+Years.' The last is equal to the first in dignity and finish, but
+is less original, and has never gained a similar fame.</p>
+<p>Another consideration regarding Bryant is, that representing a
+modern development of poetry under American inspiration, he was
+also a descendant of the early Massachusetts colonists, being
+connected with the Pilgrim Fathers through three ancestral lines.
+Born at Cummington, Massachusetts, November 3d, 1794, the son of a
+stalwart but studious country physician of literary tastes, he
+inherited the strong religious feeling of this ancestry, which was
+united in him with a deep and sensitive love of nature. This led
+him to reflect in his poems the strength and beauty of American
+landscape, vividly as it had never before been mirrored; and the
+blending of serious thought and innate piety with the sentiment for
+nature so reflected gave a new and impressive result.</p>
+<p>Like many other long-lived men, Bryant suffered from delicate
+health in the earlier third of his life: there was a tendency to
+consumption in his otherwise vigorous family stock. He read much,
+and was much interested in Greek literature and somewhat influenced
+by it. But he also lived a great deal in the open air, rejoiced in
+the boisterous games and excursions in the woods with his brothers
+and sisters, and took long rambles alone among the hills and wild
+groves; being then, as always afterwards, an untiring walker. After
+a stay of only seven months at Williams College, he studied law,
+which he practiced for some eight years in Plainfield and Great
+Barrington. In the last-named village he was elected a tithingman,
+charged with the duty of keeping order in the churches and
+enforcing the observance of Sunday. Chosen town clerk soon
+afterwards, at a salary of five dollars a year, he kept the records
+of the town with his own hand for five years, and also served as
+justice of the peace with power to hear cases in a lower court.
+These biographical items are of value, as showing his close
+relation to the self-government of the people in its simpler forms,
+and his early practical familiarity with the duties of a trusted
+citizen.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, however, he kept on writing at intervals, and in 1821
+read before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard a long poem, 'The
+Ages,' a kind of composition more in favor at that period than in
+later days, being a general review of the progress of man in
+knowledge and virtue. With the passage of time it has not held its
+own as against some of his other poems, although it long enjoyed a
+high reputation; but its success on its original hearing was the
+cause of his bringing together his first volume of poems, hardly
+more than a pamphlet, in the same year. It made him famous with the
+reading public of the United States, and won some recognition in
+England. In this little book were contained, besides 'The Ages' and
+'Thanatopsis,' several pieces which have kept their hold upon
+popular taste; such as the well-known lines 'To a Waterfowl' and
+the 'Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood.'</p>
+<br>
+<a name="bryant.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/bryant.jpg"><img src=
+"images/bryant.jpg" width="45%" alt=""></a></p>
+<p>The year of its publication also brought into the world Cooper's
+'The Spy,' Irving's 'Sketch Book' and 'Bracebridge Hall,' with
+various other significant volumes, including Channing's early
+essays and Daniel Webster's great Plymouth Oration. It was evident
+that a native literature was dawning brightly; and as Bryant's
+productions now came into demand, and he had never liked the
+profession of law, he quitted it and went to New York in 1825,
+there to seek a living by his pen as "a literary adventurer." The
+adventure led to ultimate triumph, but not until after a long term
+of dark prospects and hard struggles.</p>
+<p>Even in his latest years Bryant used to declare that his
+favorite among his poems--although it is one of the least
+known--was 'Green River'; perhaps because it recalled the scenes of
+young manhood, when he was about entering the law, and contrasted
+the peacefulness of that stream with the life in which he would
+be</p>
+<blockquote>"Forced to drudge for the dregs of men,<br>
+And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen,<br>
+And mingle among the jostling crowd,<br>
+Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud."</blockquote>
+<p>This might be applied to much of his experience in New York,
+where he edited the New York Review and became one of the editors,
+then a proprietor, and finally chief editor of the Evening Post. A
+great part of his energies now for many years was given to his
+journalistic function, and to the active outspoken discussion of
+important political questions; often in trying crises and at the
+cost of harsh unpopularity. Success, financial as well as moral,
+came to him within the next quarter-century, during which laborious
+interval he had likewise maintained his interest and work in pure
+literature and produced new poems from time to time in various
+editions.</p>
+<p>From this point on until his death, June 12th, 1878, in his
+eighty-fourth year, he was the central and commanding figure in the
+enlarging literary world of New York. His newspaper had gained a
+potent reputation, and it brought to bear upon public affairs a
+strong influence of the highest sort. Its editorial course and
+tone, as well as the earnest and patriotic part taken by Bryant in
+popular questions and national affairs, without political ambition
+or office-holding, had established him as one of the most
+distinguished citizens of the metropolis, no less than its most
+renowned poet. His presence and co-operation were indispensable in
+all great public functions or humanitarian and intellectual
+movements. In 1864 his seventieth birthday was celebrated at the
+Century Club with extraordinary honors. In 1875, again, the two
+houses of the State Legislature at Albany paid him the compliment,
+unprecedented in the annals of American authorship, of inviting him
+to a reception given to him in their official capacity. Another
+mark of the abounding esteem in which he was held among his
+fellow-citizens was the presentation to him in 1876 of a rich
+silver vase, commemorative of his life and works. He was now a
+wealthy man; yet his habits of life remained essentially unchanged.
+His tastes were simple, his love of nature was still ardent; his
+literary and editorial industry unflagging.</p>
+<p>Besides his poems, Bryant wrote two short stories for 'Tales of
+the Glauber Spa'; and published 'Letters of a Traveler' in 1850, as
+a result of three journeys to Europe and the Orient, together with
+various public addresses. His style as a writer of prose is clear,
+calm, dignified, and denotes exact observation and a wide range of
+interests. So too his editorial articles in the Evening Post, some
+of which have been preserved in his collected writings, are couched
+in serene and forcible English, with nothing of the sensational or
+the colloquial about them. They were a fitting medium of expression
+for his firm conscientiousness and integrity as a journalist.</p>
+<p>But it is as a poet, and especially by a few distinctive
+compositions, that Bryant will be most widely and deeply held in
+remembrance. In the midst of the exacting business of his career as
+an editor, and many public or social demands upon his time, he
+found opportunity to familiarize himself with portions of German
+and Spanish poetry, which he translated, and to maintain in the
+quietude of his country home in Roslyn, Long Island, his old
+acquaintance with the Greek and Latin classics. From this continued
+study there resulted naturally in 1870 his elaborate translation of
+Homer's Iliad, which was followed by that of the Odyssey in 1871.
+These scholarly works, cast in strong and polished blank verse, won
+high praise from American critics, and even achieved a popular
+success, although they were not warmly acclaimed, in England. Among
+literarians they are still regarded as in a manner standards of
+their kind. Bryant, in his long march of over sixty-five years
+across the literary field, was witness to many new developments in
+poetic writing, in both his own and other countries. But while he
+perceived the splendor and color and rich novelty of these, he held
+in his own work to the plain theory and practice which had guided
+him from the start. "The best poetry," he still believed--"that
+which takes the strongest hold of the general mind, not in one age
+only but in all ages--is that which is always simple and always
+luminous." He did not embody in impassioned forms the sufferings,
+emotions, or problems of the human kind, but was disposed to
+generalize them, as in 'The Journey of Life,' the 'Hymn of the
+City,' and 'The Song of the Sower,' it is characteristic that two
+of the longer poems, 'Sella' and 'The Little People of the Snow,'
+which are narratives, deal with legends of an individual human life
+merging itself with the inner life of nature, under the form of
+imaginary beings who dwell in the snow or in water. On the other
+hand, one of his eulogists observes that although some of his
+contemporaries went much beyond him in fullness of insight and
+nearness to the great conflicts of the age, "he has certainly not
+been surpassed, perhaps not been approached, by any writer since
+Wordsworth, in that majestic repose and that self-reliant
+simplicity which characterized the morning stars of song." In 'Our
+Country's Call,' however, one hears the ring of true martial
+enthusiasm; and there is a deep patriotic fervor in 'O Mother of a
+Mighty Race.' The noble and sympathetic homage paid to the typical
+womanhood of a genuine woman of every day, in 'The Conqueror's
+Grave,' reveals also great underlying warmth and sensitiveness of
+feeling. 'Robert of Lincoln,' and 'The Planting of the Apple-Tree'
+are both touched with a lighter mood of joy in nature, which
+supplies a contrast to his usual pensiveness.</p>
+<p>Bryant's venerable aspect in old age--with erect form, white
+hair, and flowing snowy beard--gave him a resemblance to Homer; and
+there was something Homeric about his influence upon the literature
+of his country, in the dignity with which he invested the poetic
+art and the poet's relation to the people.</p>
+<p class="sign"><img src="images/sign-339.png" width="60%" alt=
+""></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>[All Bryant's poems were originally published by D. Appleton and
+Company.]</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRYANT01"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>THANATOPSIS</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To him who in the love of Nature
+holds<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Communion with her visible forms, she
+speaks<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A various language; for his gayer
+hours<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;She has a voice of gladness, and a
+smile<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And eloquence of beauty, and she
+glides<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Into his darker musings, with a
+mild<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And healing sympathy, that steals
+away<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Their sharpness ere he is aware. When
+thoughts<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of the last bitter hour come like a
+blight<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Over thy spirit, and sad images<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of the stern agony, and shroud, and
+pall,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And breathless darkness, and the
+narrow house,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Make thee to shudder, and grow sick
+at heart;--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Go forth, under the open sky, and
+list<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Nature's teachings, while from all
+around--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Earth and her waters, and the depths
+of air--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Comes a still voice:--<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet
+a few days, and thee<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The all-beholding sun shall see no
+more<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In all his course; nor yet in the
+cold ground,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where thy pale form was laid, with
+many tears,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall
+exist<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thy image. Earth, that nourished
+thee, shall claim<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thy growth, to be resolved to earth
+again,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And, lost each human trace,
+surrendering up<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thine individual being, shalt thou
+go<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To mix for ever with the
+elements,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To be a brother to the insensible
+rock<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And to the sluggish clod, which the
+rude swain<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Turns with his share, and treads
+upon. The oak<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shall send his roots abroad, and
+pierce thy mold.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet not to thine eternal
+resting-place<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst
+thou wish<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt
+lie down<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With patriarchs of the infant
+world--with kings,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The powerful of the earth--the wise,
+the good,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages
+past,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All in one mighty sepulchre. The
+hills<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Rock-ribbed and ancient as the
+sun,--the vales<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Stretching in pensive quietness
+between;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The venerable woods--rivers that
+move<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In majesty, and the complaining
+brooks<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That make the meadows green; and,
+poured round all,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Old Ocean's gray and melancholy
+waste,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Are but the solemn decorations
+all<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of the great tomb of man. The golden
+sun,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The planets, all the infinite host of
+heaven,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Are shining on the sad abodes of
+death,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Through the still lapse of ages. All
+that tread<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The globe are but a handful to the
+tribes<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That slumber in its bosom.--Take the
+wings<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of morning, pierce the Barcan
+wilderness,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or lose thyself in the continuous
+woods<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no
+sound<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Save his own dashings--yet the dead
+are there;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And millions in those solitudes,
+since first<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The flight of years began, have laid
+them down<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In their last sleep--the dead reign
+there alone.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So shalt thou rest; and what if thou
+withdraw<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In silence from the living, and no
+friend<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Take note of thy departure? All that
+breathe<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Will share thy destiny. The gay will
+laugh<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When thou art gone, the solemn brood
+of care<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Plod on, and each one as before will
+chase<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;His favorite phantom; yet all these
+shall leave<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Their mirth and their employments,
+and shall come<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And make their bed with thee. As the
+long train<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of ages glides away, the sons of
+men,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The youth in life's fresh spring and
+he who goes<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In the full strength of years, matron
+and maid,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The speechless babe and the
+gray-headed man--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shall one by one be gathered to thy
+side,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;By those who in their turn shall
+follow them.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So live, that when thy
+summons comes to join<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The innumerable caravan which
+moves<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To that mysterious realm where each
+shall take<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;His chamber in the silent halls of
+death,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at
+night,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Scourged to his dungeon; but,
+sustained and soothed<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;By an unfaltering trust, approach thy
+grave<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Like one who wraps the drapery of his
+couch<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;About him, and lies down to pleasant
+dreams.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRYANT02"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>THE CROWDED
+STREET</b><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let me move slowly through the
+street,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Filled with an
+ever-shifting train,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Amid the sound of steps that beat<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The murmuring walks like
+autumn rain.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How fast the flitting figures
+come!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The mild, the fierce, the
+stony face--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Some bright with thoughtless smiles,
+and some<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where secret tears have
+lost their trace.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They pass to toil, to strife, to
+rest--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To halls in which the
+feast is spread--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To chambers where the funeral
+guest<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In silence sits beside
+the dead.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And some to happy homes repair,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where children, pressing
+cheek to cheek,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With mute caresses shall declare<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The tenderness they
+cannot speak.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And some, who walk in calmness
+here,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shall shudder as they
+reach the door<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where one who made their dwelling
+dear,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Its flower, its light, is
+seen no more.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Youth, with pale cheek and slender
+frame,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And dreams of greatness
+in thine eye!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Go'st thou to build an early
+name,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or early in the task to
+die?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Keen son of trade, with eager
+brow!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who is now fluttering in
+thy snare?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thy golden fortunes, tower they
+now,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or melt the glittering
+spires in air?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who of this crowd to-night shall
+tread<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The dance till daylight
+gleam again?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who sorrow o'er the untimely
+dead?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who writhe in throes of
+mortal pain?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Some, famine-struck, shall think how
+long<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The cold dark hours, how
+slow the light;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And some who flaunt amid the
+throng<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shall hide in dens of
+shame to-night.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Each where his tasks or pleasures
+call,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They pass, and heed each
+other not.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;There is Who heeds, Who holds them
+all<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In His large love and
+boundless thought.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;These struggling tides of life, that
+seem<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In wayward, aimless
+course to tend,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Are eddies of the mighty stream<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That rolls to its
+appointed end.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;D. Appleton and Company, New
+York.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRYANT03"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>THE DEATH OF THE
+FLOWERS</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The melancholy days are come, the
+saddest of the year,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of wailing winds, and naked woods,
+and meadows brown and sere.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Heaped in the hollows of the grove,
+the autumn leaves lie dead;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They rustle to the eddying gust, and
+to the rabbit's tread.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The robin and the wren are flown, and
+from the shrubs the jay,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And from the wood-top calls the crow
+through all the gloomy day.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where are the flowers, the fair young
+flowers, that lately sprang and stood<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In brighter light and softer airs, a
+beauteous sisterhood?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Alas! they all are in their graves;
+the gentle race of flowers<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Are lying in their lowly beds, with
+the fair and good of ours.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The rain is falling where they lie,
+but the cold November rain<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Calls not from out the gloomy earth
+the lovely ones again.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The wind-flower and the violet, they
+perished long ago,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the brier-rose and the orchis
+died amid the summer glow;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But on the hills the golden-rod, and
+the aster in the wood,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the yellow sunflower by the
+brook, in autumn beauty stood,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Till fell the frost from the clear
+cold heaven, as falls the plague on men,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the brightness of their smile was
+gone from upland, glade, and glen.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And now, when comes the calm mild
+day, as still such days will come,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To call the squirrel and the bee from
+out their winter home;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When the sound of dropping nuts is
+heard, though all the trees are still,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And twinkle in the smoky light the
+waters of the rill,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The south-wind searches for the
+flowers whose fragrance late he bore,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And sighs to find them in the wood
+and by the stream no more.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And then I think of one who in her
+youthful beauty died,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The fair meek blossom that grew up
+and faded by my side.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In the cold moist earth we laid her,
+when the forests cast the leaf,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And we wept that one so lovely should
+have a life so brief;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet not unmeet it was that one like
+that young friend of ours,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So gentle and so beautiful, should
+perish with the flowers.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRYANT04"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>THE CONQUEROR'S
+GRAVE</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Within this lowly grave a Conqueror
+lies,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And yet the monument
+proclaims it not,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nor round the sleeper's
+name hath chisel wrought<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The emblems of a fame that never
+dies,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ivy and amaranth, in a graceful
+sheaf,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Twined with the laurel's fair,
+imperial leaf.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A simple name
+alone,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the great
+world unknown,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Is graven here, and wild-flowers
+rising round,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Meek meadow-sweet and violets of the
+ground,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lean lovingly against the
+humble stone.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Here, in the quiet earth, they laid
+apart<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No man of iron mold and
+bloody hands,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who sought to wreak upon
+the cowering lands<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The passions that consumed his
+restless heart:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But one of tender spirit and delicate
+frame,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Gentlest, in
+mien and mind,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of gentle
+womankind,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Timidly shrinking from the breath of
+blame;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;One in whose eyes the smile of
+kindness made<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Its haunts, like flowers
+by sunny brooks in May,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet, at the thought of others' pain,
+a shade<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of sweeter sadness chased
+the smile away.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nor deem that when the hand that
+molders here<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Was raised in menace, realms were
+chilled with fear,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And armies mustered at
+the sign, as when<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Clouds rise on clouds before the
+rainy East--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gray captains leading
+bands of veteran men<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And fiery youths to be the vulture's
+feast.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Not thus were waged the mighty wars
+that gave<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The victory to her who fills this
+grave:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Alone her
+task was wrought,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Alone the
+battle fought;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Through that long strife her constant
+hope was staid<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;On God alone, nor looked for other
+aid.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;She met the hosts of Sorrow with a
+look<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That altered not beneath
+the frown they wore,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And soon the lowering brood were
+tamed, and took<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Meekly her gentle rule,
+and frowned no more.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Her soft hand put aside the assaults
+of wrath,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And
+calmly broke in twain<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+fiery shafts of pain,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And rent the nets of passion from her
+path.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;By that victorious hand
+despair was slain.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With love she vanquished hate and
+overcame<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Evil with good, in her Great Master's
+name.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Her glory is not of this shadowy
+state,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Glory that with the
+fleeting season dies;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But when she entered at the sapphire
+gate<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What joy was radiant in
+celestial eyes!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How heaven's bright depths with
+sounding welcomes rung,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And flowers of heaven by shining
+hands were flung!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And
+He who long before,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Pain,
+scorn, and sorrow bore,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Mighty Sufferer, with aspect
+sweet,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Smiled on the timid stranger from his
+seat;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He who returning,
+glorious, from the grave,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dragged Death disarmed,
+in chains, a crouching slave.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;See, as I linger here, the sun grows
+low;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cool airs are murmuring
+that the night is near.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O gentle sleeper, from the grave I
+go,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Consoled though sad, in
+hope and yet in fear.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Brief is the time, I know,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+The warfare scarce begun;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet all may win the triumphs thou
+hast won.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Still flows the fount whose waters
+strengthened thee;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The victors' names are
+yet too few to fill<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Heaven's mighty roll; the glorious
+armory<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That ministered to thee,
+is open still.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRYANT05"></a>
+<blockquote>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>THE-BATTLE-FIELD</b><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Once this soft turf, this rivulet's
+sands,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Were trampled by a
+hurrying crowd,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And fiery hearts and armed hands<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Encountered in the
+battle-cloud.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ah! never shall the land forget<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How gushed the life-blood
+of her brave--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gushed, warm with hope and courage
+yet,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Upon the soil they sought
+to save.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Now all is calm, and fresh, and
+still;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Alone the chirp of
+flitting bird,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And talk of children on the hill,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And bell of wandering
+kine are heard.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No solemn host goes trailing by<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The black-mouthed gun and
+staggering wain;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Men start not at the battle-cry--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Oh, be it never heard
+again!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Soon rested those who fought; but
+thou<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who minglest in the
+harder strife<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For truths which men receive not
+now,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thy warfare only ends
+with life.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A friendless warfare! lingering
+long<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Through weary day and
+weary year;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A wild and many-weaponed throng<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hang on thy front, and
+flank, and rear.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet nerve thy spirit to the
+proof,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And blench not at thy
+chosen lot;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The timid good may stand aloof,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The sage may frown--yet
+faint thou not.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nor heed the shaft too surely
+cast,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The foul and hissing bolt
+of scorn;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For with thy side shall dwell, at
+last,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The victory of endurance
+born.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise
+again--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The eternal years of God
+are hers;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But Error, wounded, writhes in
+pain,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And dies among his
+worshipers.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yea, though thou lie upon the
+dust,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When they who helped thee
+flee in fear,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Die full of hope and manly trust,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Like those who fell in
+battle here!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Another hand thy sword shall
+wield,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Another hand the standard
+wave,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Till from the trumpet's mouth is
+pealed<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The blast of triumph o'er
+thy grave.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;D. Appleton and Company, New
+York.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRYANT06"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>TO A WATERFOWL</b><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Whither, 'midst falling dew,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While
+glow the heavens with the last steps of day,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Far through their rosy depths dost
+thou pursue<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thy
+solitary way?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Vainly
+the fowler's eye<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Might mark thy distant flight to do
+thee wrong,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As, darkly painted on the crimson
+sky,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thy
+figure floats along,<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Seek'st
+thou the plashy brink<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of weedy lake, or marge of river
+wide,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or where the rocking billows rise and
+sink<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;On
+the chafed ocean-side?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;There
+is a Power whose care<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Teaches thy way along that pathless
+coast--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The desert and illimitable air--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lone
+wandering, but not lost.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All
+day thy wings have fanned,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;At that far height, the cold thin
+atmosphere,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome
+land,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Though
+the dark night is near.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And
+soon that toil shall end;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Soon shalt thou find a summer home,
+and rest,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And scream among thy fellows; reeds
+shall bend,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Soon,
+o'er thy sheltered nest.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thou'rt
+gone, the abyss of heaven<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my
+heart<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast
+given,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And
+shall not soon depart.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He
+who, from zone to zone,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Guides through the boundless sky thy
+certain flight,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In the long way that I must tread
+alone,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Will
+lead my steps aright.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRYANT07"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>ROBERT OF
+LINCOLN</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Merrily swinging on brier and
+weed,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Near to the nest of his
+little dame,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Over the mountain-side or mead,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Robert of Lincoln is
+telling his name:--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bob-o'-link,
+bob-o'-link,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Spink, spank,
+spink;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Snug and safe is that nest of
+ours,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hidden among the summer flowers.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Chee,
+chee, chee.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Wearing a bright black
+wedding-coat;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;White are his shoulders and white his
+crest.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hear him call in his
+merry note:--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bob-o'-link,
+bob-o'-link,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Spink, spank,
+spink;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Look what a nice new coat is
+mine,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sure there was never a bird so
+fine.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Chee,
+chee, chee.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Pretty and quiet, with
+plain brown wings,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Passing at home a patient life,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Broods in the grass while
+her husband sings:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bob-o'-link,
+bob-o'-link,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Spink, spank,
+spink:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Brood, kind creature; you need not
+fear<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thieves and robbers while I am
+here.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Chee,
+chee, chee.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Modest and shy as a nun is she;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;One weak chirp is her
+only note.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Braggart and prince of braggarts is
+he,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Pouring boasts from his
+little throat:--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bob-o'-link,
+bob-o'-link,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Spink, spank,
+spink:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Never was I afraid of man;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you
+can!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Chee,
+chee, chee.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Six white eggs on a bed of hay,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Flecked with purple, a
+pretty sight!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;There as the mother sits all day,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Robert is singing with
+all his might:--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bob-o'-link,
+bob-o'-link,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Spink, spank,
+spink;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nice good wife, that never goes
+out,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Keeping house while I frolic
+about.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Chee,
+chee, chee.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Soon as the little ones chip the
+shell,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Six wide mouths are open
+for food;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Robert of Lincoln bestirs him
+well,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gathering seeds for the
+hungry brood.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bob-o'-link,
+bob-o'-link,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Spink, spank,
+spink;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This new life is likely to be<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hard for a gay young fellow like
+me.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Chee,
+chee, chee.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Robert of Lincoln at length is
+made<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sober with work, and
+silent with care;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Off is his holiday garment laid,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Half forgotten that merry
+air:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bob-o'-link,
+bob-o'-link,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Spink, spank,
+spink;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nobody knows but my mate and I<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where our nest and our nestlings
+lie.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Chee,
+chee, chee.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Summer wanes; the children are
+grown;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Fun and frolic no more he
+knows;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Robert of Lincoln's a humdrum
+crone;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Off he flies, and we sing
+as he goes:--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bob-o'-link,
+bob-o'-link,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Spink, spank,
+spink;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When you can pipe that merry old
+strain,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Robert of Lincoln, come back
+again.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Chee,
+chee, chee.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>1855</i></blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRYANT08"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>JUNE</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I gazed upon the glorious sky<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the green mountains
+round;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And thought that when I came to
+lie<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;At rest within the
+ground,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Twere pleasant that in flowery
+June,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When brooks send up a cheerful
+tune<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And groves a joyous
+sound,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The sexton's hand, my grave to
+make,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The rich green mountain turf should
+break.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A cell within the frozen mold,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A coffin borne through
+sleet,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And icy clods above it rolled,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While fierce the tempests
+beat--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Away! I will not think of these:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Blue be the sky and soft the
+breeze,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Earth green beneath the
+feet,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And be the damp mold gently
+pressed<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Into my narrow place of rest.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;There through the long, long summer
+hours<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The golden light should
+lie,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And thick young herbs and groups of
+flowers<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Stand in their beauty
+by;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The oriole should build and tell<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;His love-tale close beside my
+cell;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The idle butterfly<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Should rest him there, and there be
+heard<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The housewife bee and
+humming-bird.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And what if cheerful shouts at
+noon<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Come, from the village
+sent,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or songs of maids beneath the
+moon,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With fairy laughter
+blent?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And what if, in the evening
+light,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Betrothed lovers walk in sight<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of my low monument?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I would the lovely scene around<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Might know no sadder sight nor
+sound.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I know that I no more should see<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The season's glorious
+show,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nor would its brightness shine for
+me,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nor its wild music
+flow;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But if, around my place of sleep.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The friends I love should come to
+weep,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They might not haste to
+go.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Soft airs, and song, and light, and
+bloom,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Should keep them lingering by my
+tomb.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;These to their softened hearts should
+bear<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The thought of what has
+been,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And speak of one who cannot share<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The gladness of the
+scene;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Whose part in all the pomp that
+fills<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The circuit of the summer hills<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Is--that his grave is
+green;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And deeply would their hearts
+rejoice<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To hear again his living
+voice.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRYANT09"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>TO THE FRINGED
+GENTIAN</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thou blossom, bright with autumn
+dew,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And colored with the heaven's own
+blue,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That openest when the quiet light<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Succeeds the keen and frosty
+night;<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thou comest not when violets lean<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O'er wandering brooks and springs
+unseen,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or columbines, in purple dressed,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden
+nest.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thou waitest late, and com'st
+alone,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When woods are bare and birds are
+flown,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And frost and shortening days
+portend<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The aged Year is near his end.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Look through its fringes to the
+sky,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Blue--blue--as if that sky let
+fall<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A flower from its cerulean wall.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I would that thus, when I shall
+see<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The hour of death draw near to
+me,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hope, blossoming within my heart,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;May look to heaven as I depart.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;D. Appleton and Company, New
+York.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRYANT10"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>THE FUTURE
+LIFE</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How shall I know thee in the sphere
+which keeps<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The disembodied spirits
+of the dead,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When all of thee that time could
+wither sleeps<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And perishes among the
+dust we tread?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For I shall feel the sting of
+ceaseless pain<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If there I meet thy
+gentle presence not;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nor hear the voice I love, nor read
+again<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In thy serenest eyes the
+tender thought.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Will not thy own meek heart demand me
+there?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That heart whose fondest
+throbs to me were given?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My name on earth was ever in thy
+prayer,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And wilt thou never utter
+it in heaven?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In meadows fanned by heaven's
+life-breathing wind,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In the resplendence of
+that glorious sphere,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And larger movements of the
+unfettered mind,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Wilt thou forget the love
+that joined us here?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The love that lived through all the
+stormy past,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And meekly with my
+harsher nature bore,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And deeper grew, and tenderer to the
+last,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shall it expire with
+life, and be no more?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A happier lot than mine, and larger
+light,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Await thee there; for
+thou hast bowed thy will<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In cheerful homage to the rule of
+right,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And lovest all, and
+renderest good for ill.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For me, the sordid cares in which I
+dwell<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shrink and consume my
+heart, as heat the scroll;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And wrath has left its scar--that
+fire of hell<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Has left its frightful
+scar upon my soul.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet though thou wear'st the glory of
+the sky,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Wilt thou not keep the
+same beloved name,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The same fair thoughtful brow, and
+gentle eye,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lovelier in heaven's
+sweet climate, yet the same?<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shalt thou not teach me, in that
+calmer home,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The wisdom that I learned
+so ill in this--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The wisdom which is love--till I
+become<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thy fit companion in that
+land of bliss?<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;D. Appleton and Company, New
+York.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRYANT11"></a>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>TO THE PAST</b><br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thou
+unrelenting Past!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Stern are the fetters round thy dark
+domain,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And
+fetters, sure and fast,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hold all that enter thy unbreathing
+reign.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Far
+in thy realm withdrawn<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Old empires sit in sullenness and
+gloom,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And
+glorious ages gone<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lie deep within the shadows of thy
+womb.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Childhood,
+with all its mirth,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Youth, Manhood, Age, that draws us to
+the ground,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And
+last, Man's Life on earth,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Glide to thy dim dominions, and are
+bound.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thou
+hast my better years,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thou hast my earlier friends--the
+good, the kind--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yielded
+to thee with tears--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The venerable form, the exalted
+mind.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My
+spirit yearns to bring<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The lost ones back; yearns with
+desire intense,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And
+struggles hard to wring<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy
+captives thence.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In
+vain!--Thy gates deny<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All passage save to those who hence
+depart.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nor
+to the streaming eye<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thou givest them back, nor to the
+broken heart.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In
+thy abysses hide<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Beauty and excellence unknown. To
+thee<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Earth's
+wonder and her pride<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Are gathered, as the waters to the
+sea.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Labors
+of good to man,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Unpublished charity, unbroken
+faith;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Love,
+that 'midst grief began,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And grew with years, and faltered not
+in death.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Full
+many a mighty name<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lurks in thy depths, unuttered,
+unrevered.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With
+thee are silent Fame,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Forgotten Arts, and Wisdom
+disappeared.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thine
+for a space are they.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet thou shalt yield thy treasures up
+at last;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thy
+gates shall yet give way,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable
+Past!<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All
+that of good and fair<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Has gone into thy womb from earliest
+time<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shall
+then come forth, to wear<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The glory and the beauty of its
+prime.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They
+have not perished--no!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Kind words, remembered voices once so
+sweet,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Smiles,
+radiant long ago,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And features, the great soul's
+apparent seat:<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All
+shall come back. Each tie<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of pure affection shall be knit
+again:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Alone
+shall Evil die,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy
+reign.<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And
+then shall I behold<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Him by whose kind paternal side I
+sprung;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And
+her who, still and cold,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Fills the next grave--the beautiful
+and young.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;D. Appleton and Company, New
+York.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="BRYCE"></a>
+<h2>JAMES BRYCE</h2>
+<h3>(1838-)</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-j.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>ames Bryce was born at Belfast, Ireland, of Scotch and Irish
+parents. He studied at the University of Glasgow and later at
+Oxford, where he graduated with high honors in 1862, and where
+after some years of legal practice he was appointed Regius
+Professor of Civil Law in 1870. He had already established a high
+reputation as an original and accurate historical scholar by his
+prize essay on the 'Holy Roman Empire' (1864), which passed through
+many editions, was translated into German, French, and Italian, and
+remains to-day a standard work and the best known work on the
+subject, Edward A. Freeman said on the appearance of the work that
+it had raised the author at once to the rank of a great historian.
+It has done more than any other treatise to clarify the vague
+notions of historians as to the significance of the imperial idea
+in the Middle Ages, and its importance as a factor in German and
+Italian politics; and it is safe to say that there is scarcely a
+recent history of the period that does not show traces of its
+influence. The scope of this work being juristic and philosophical,
+it does not admit of much historical narrative, and the style is
+lucid but not brilliant. It is not in fact as a historian that Mr.
+Bryce is best known, but rather as a jurist, a politician, and a
+student of institutions.</p>
+<p class="rgt"><img src="images/bryce.jpg" width="45%" alt=""><br>
+<b>James Bryce</b></p>
+<p>The most striking characteristic of the man is his versatility;
+a quality which in his case has not been accompanied by its usual
+defects, for his achievements in one field seem to have made him no
+less conscientious in others, while they have given him that
+breadth of view which is more essential than any special training
+to the critic of men and affairs. For the ten years that followed
+his Oxford appointment he contributed frequently to the magazines
+on geographical, social, and political topics. His vacations he
+spent in travel and in mountain climbing, of which he gave an
+interesting narrative in 'Transcaucasia and Ararat' (1877). In 1880
+he entered active politics, and was elected to Parliament in the
+Liberal interest. He has continued steadfast in his support of the
+Liberal party and of Mr. Gladstone, whose Home Rule policy he has
+heartily seconded. In 1886 he became Gladstone's Under-Secretary of
+Foreign Affairs, and in 1894 was appointed President of the Board
+of Trade.</p>
+<p>The work by which he is best known in this country, the
+'American Commonwealth' (1888), is the fruit of his observations
+during three visits to the United States, and of many years of
+study. It is generally conceded to be the best critical analysis of
+American institutions ever made by a foreign author. Inferior in
+point of style to De Tocqueville's 'Democracy in America,' it far
+surpasses that book in amplitude, breadth of view, acuteness of
+observation, and minuteness of information; besides being half a
+century later in date, and therefore able to set down accomplished
+facts where the earlier observer could only make forecasts. His
+extensive knowledge of foreign countries, by divesting him of
+insular prejudice, fitted him to handle his theme with
+impartiality, and his experience in the practical workings of
+British institutions gave him an insight into the practical defects
+and benefits of ours. That he has a keen eye for defects is
+obvious, but his tone is invariably sympathetic; so much so, in
+fact, that Goldwin Smith has accused him of being somewhat "hard on
+England" in some of his comparisons. The faults of the book pertain
+rather to the manner than to the matter. He does not mislead, but
+sometimes wearies, and in some portions of the work the frequent
+repetitions, the massing of details, and the absence of compact
+statement tend to obscure the general drift of his argument and to
+add unduly to the bulkiness of his volumes.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRYCE01"></a>
+<h3>THE POSITION OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES</h3>
+<center>From 'The American Commonwealth'</center>
+<br>
+<p>Social intercourse between youths and maidens is everywhere more
+easy and unrestrained than in England or Germany, not to speak of
+France. Yet there are considerable differences between the Eastern
+cities, whose usages have begun to approximate to those of Europe,
+and other parts of the country. In the rural districts, and
+generally all over the West, young men and girls are permitted to
+walk together, drive together, go out to parties and even to public
+entertainments together, without the presence of any third person
+who can be supposed to be looking after or taking charge of the
+girl. So a girl may, if she pleases, keep up a correspondence with
+a young man, nor will her parents think of interfering. She will
+have her own friends, who when they call at her house ask for her,
+and are received by her, it may be alone; because they are not
+deemed to be necessarily the friends of her parents also, nor even
+of her sisters.</p>
+<p>In the cities of the Atlantic States it is now thought scarcely
+correct for a young man to take a young lady out for a solitary
+drive; and in few sets would he be permitted to escort her alone to
+the theatre. But girls still go without chaperons to dances, the
+hostess being deemed to act as chaperon for all her guests; and as
+regards both correspondence and the right to have one's own circle
+of acquaintances, the usage even of New York or Boston allows more
+liberty than does that of London or Edinburgh. It was at one time,
+and it may possibly still be, not uncommon for a group of young
+people who know one another well to make up an autumn "party in the
+woods." They choose some mountain and forest region, such as the
+Adirondack Wilderness west of Lake Champlain, engage three or four
+guides, embark with guns and fishing-rods, tents, blankets, and a
+stock of groceries, and pass in boats up the rivers and across the
+lakes of this wild country through sixty or seventy miles of
+trackless forest, to their chosen camping-ground at the foot of
+some tall rock that rises from the still crystal of the lake. Here
+they build their bark hut, and spread their beds of the elastic and
+fragrant hemlock boughs; the youths roam about during the day,
+tracking the deer, the girls read and work and bake the corn-cakes;
+at night there is a merry gathering round the fire, or a row in the
+soft moonlight. On these expeditions brothers will take their
+sisters and cousins, who bring perhaps some lady friends with them;
+the brothers' friends will come too; and all will live together in
+a fraternal way for weeks or months, though no elderly relative or
+married lady be of the party.</p>
+<p>There can be no doubt that the pleasure of life is sensibly
+increased by the greater freedom which transatlantic custom
+permits; and as the Americans insist that no bad results have
+followed, one notes with regret that freedom declines in the places
+which deem themselves most civilized. American girls have been, so
+far as a stranger can ascertain, less disposed to what are called
+"fast ways" than girls of the corresponding classes in England, and
+exercise in this respect a pretty rigorous censorship over one
+another. But when two young people find pleasure in one another's
+company, they can see as much of each other as they please, can
+talk and walk together frequently, can show that they are mutually
+interested, and yet need have little fear of being misunderstood
+either by one another or by the rest of the world. It is all a
+matter of custom. In the West, custom sanctions this easy
+friendship; in the Atlantic cities, so soon as people have come to
+find something exceptional in it, constraint is felt, and a
+conventional etiquette like that of the Old World begins to replace
+the innocent simplicity of the older time, the test of whose merit
+may be gathered from the universal persuasion in America that happy
+marriages are in the middle and upper ranks more common than in
+Europe, and that this is due to the ampler opportunities which
+young men and women have of learning one another's characters and
+habits before becoming betrothed. Most girls have a larger range of
+intimate acquaintances than girls have in Europe, intercourse is
+franker, there is less difference between the manners of home and
+the manners of general society. The conclusions of a stranger are
+in such matters of no value; so I can only repeat that I have never
+met any judicious American lady who, however well she knew the Old
+World, did not think that the New World customs conduced more both
+to the pleasantness of life before marriage, and to constancy and
+concord after it.</p>
+<p>In no country are women, and especially young women, so much
+made of. The world is at their feet. Society seems organized for
+the purpose of providing enjoyment for them. Parents, uncles,
+aunts, elderly friends, even brothers, are ready to make their
+comfort and convenience bend to the girls' wishes. The wife has
+fewer opportunities for reigning over the world of amusements,
+because except among the richest people she has more to do in
+household management than in England, owing to the scarcity of
+servants; but she holds in her own house a more prominent if not a
+more substantially powerful position than in England or even in
+France. With the German <i>haus-frau</i>, who is too often content
+to be a mere housewife, there is of course no comparison. The best
+proof of the superior place American ladies occupy is to be found
+in the notions they profess to entertain of the relations of an
+English married pair. They talk of the English wife as little
+better than a slave; declaring that when they stay with English
+friends, or receive an English couple in America, they see the wife
+always deferring to the husband and the husband always assuming
+that his pleasure and convenience are to prevail. The European
+wife, they admit, often gets her own way, but she gets it by
+tactful arts, by flattery or wheedling or playing on the man's
+weaknesses; whereas in America the husband's duty and desire is to
+gratify the wife, and render to her those services which the
+English tyrant exacts from his consort. One may often hear an
+American matron commiserate a friend who has married in Europe,
+while the daughters declare in chorus that they will never follow
+the example. Laughable as all this may seem to English women, it is
+perfectly true that the theory as well as the practice of conjugal
+life is not the same in America as in England. There are
+overbearing husbands in America, but they are more condemned by the
+opinion of the neighborhood than in England. There are exacting
+wives in England, but their husbands are more pitied than would be
+the case in America. In neither country can one say that the
+principle of perfect equality reigns; for in America the balance
+inclines nearly, though not quite, as much in favor of the wife as
+it does in England in favor of the husband. No one man can have a
+sufficiently large acquaintance in both countries to entitle his
+individual opinion on the results to much weight. So far as I have
+been able to collect views from those observers who have lived in
+both countries, they are in favor of the American practice, perhaps
+because the theory it is based on departs less from pure equality
+than does that of England. These observers do not mean that the
+recognition of women as equals or superiors makes them any better
+or sweeter or wiser than Englishwomen; but rather that the
+principle of equality, by correcting the characteristic faults of
+men, and especially their selfishness and vanity, is more conducive
+to the concord and happiness of a home. They conceive that to make
+the wife feel her independence and responsibility more strongly
+than she does in Europe tends to brace and expand her character;
+while conjugal affection, usually stronger in her than in the
+husband, inasmuch as there are fewer competing interests, saves her
+from abusing the precedence yielded to her. This seems to be true;
+but I have heard others maintain that the American system, since it
+does not require the wife habitually to forego her own wishes,
+tends, if not to make her self-indulgent and capricious, yet
+slightly to impair the more delicate charms of character; as it is
+written, "It is more blessed to give than to receive."</p>
+<p>A European cannot spend an evening in an American drawing-room
+without perceiving that the attitude of men to women is not that
+with which he is familiar at home. The average European man has
+usually a slight sense of condescension when he talks to a woman on
+serious subjects. Even if she is his superior in intellect, in
+character, in social rank, he thinks that as a man he is her
+superior, and consciously or unconsciously talks down to her. She
+is too much accustomed to this to resent it, unless it becomes
+tastelessly palpable. Such a notion does not cross an American's
+mind. He talks to a woman just as he would to a man; of course with
+more deference of manner, and with a proper regard to the topics
+likely to interest her, but giving her his intellectual best,
+addressing her as a person whose opinion is understood by both to
+be worth as much as his own. Similarly an American lady does not
+expect to have conversation made to her: it is just as much her
+duty or pleasure to lead it as the man's is; and more often than
+not she takes the burden from him, darting along with a gay
+vivacity which puts to shame his slower wits.</p>
+<p>It need hardly be said that in all cases where the two sexes
+come into competition for comfort, the provision is made first for
+women. In railroads the end car of the train, being that farthest
+removed from the smoke of the locomotive, is often reserved for
+them (though men accompanying a lady are allowed to enter it); and
+at hotels their sitting-room is the best and sometimes the only
+available public room, ladyless guests being driven to the bar or
+the hall. In omnibuses and horse-cars (tram-cars), it was formerly
+the custom for a gentleman to rise and offer his seat to a lady if
+there were no vacant place. This is now less universally done. In
+New York and Boston (and I think also in San Francisco), I have
+seen the men keep their seats when ladies entered; and I recollect
+one occasion when the offer of a seat to a lady was declined by
+her, on the ground that as she had chosen to enter a full car she
+ought to take the consequences. It was (I was told in Boston) a
+feeling of this kind that had led to the discontinuance of the old
+courtesy: when ladies constantly pressed into the already crowded
+vehicles, the men, who could not secure the enforcement of the
+regulations against over-crowding, tried to protect themselves by
+refusing to rise. It is sometimes said that the privileges yielded
+to American women have disposed them to claim as a right what was
+only a courtesy, and have told unfavorably upon their manners. I
+know of several instances, besides this one of the horse-cars,
+which might seem to support the criticism, but cannot on the whole
+think it well founded. The better-bred women do not presume on
+their sex, and the area of good breeding is always widening. It
+need hardly be said that the community at large gains by the
+softening and restraining influence which the reverence for
+womanhood diffuses. Nothing so quickly incenses the people as any
+insult offered to a woman. Wife-beating, and indeed any kind of
+rough violence offered to women, is far less common among the
+rudest class than it is in England. Field work or work at the
+pit-mouth of mines is seldom or never done by women in America; and
+the American traveler who in some parts of Europe finds women
+performing severe manual labor, is revolted by the sight in a way
+which Europeans find surprising.</p>
+<p>In the farther West, that is to say, beyond the Mississippi, in
+the Rocky Mountain and Pacific States, one is much struck by what
+seems the absence of the humblest class of women. The trains are
+full of poorly dressed and sometimes (though less frequently)
+rough-mannered men. One discovers no women whose dress or air marks
+them out as the wives, daughters, or sisters of these men, and
+wonders whether the male population is celibate, and if so, why
+there are so many women. Closer observation shows that the wives,
+daughters, and sisters are there, only their attire and manner are
+those of what Europeans would call middle-class and not
+working-class people. This is partly due to the fact that Western
+men affect a rough dress. Still one may say that the remark so
+often made, that the masses of the American people correspond to
+the middle class of Europe, is more true of the women than of the
+men; and is more true of them, in the rural districts and in the
+West than it is of the inhabitants of Atlantic cities. I remember
+to have been dawdling in a book-store in a small town in Oregon
+when a lady entered to inquire if a monthly magazine, whose name
+was unknown to me, had yet arrived. When she was gone I asked the
+salesman who she was, and what was the periodical she wanted. He
+answered that she was the wife of a railway workman, that the
+magazine was a journal of fashions, and that the demand for such
+journals was large and constant among women of the wage-earning
+class in the town. This set me to observing female dress more
+closely; and it turned out to be perfectly true that the women in
+these little towns were following the Parisian fashions very
+closely, and were in fact ahead of the majority of English ladies
+belonging to the professional and mercantile classes. Of course in
+such a town as I refer to, there are no domestic servants except in
+the hotels (indeed, almost the only domestic service to be had in
+the Pacific States was till very recently that of Chinese), so
+these votaries of fashion did all their own housework and looked
+after their own babies.</p>
+<p>Three causes combine to create among American women an average
+of literary taste and influence higher than that of women in any
+European country. These are the educational facilities they enjoy,
+the recognition of the equality of the sexes in the whole social
+and intellectual sphere, and the leisure which they possess as
+compared with men. In a country where men are incessantly occupied
+at their business or profession, the function of keeping up the
+level of culture devolves upon women. It is safe in their hands.
+They are quick and keen-witted, less fond of open-air life and
+physical exertion than English women are, and obliged by the
+climate to pass a greater part of their time under shelter from the
+cold of winter and the sun of summer. For music and for the
+pictorial arts they do not yet seem to have formed so strong a
+taste as for literature; partly perhaps owing to the fact that in
+America the opportunities of seeing and hearing masterpieces,
+except indeed operas, are rarer than in Europe. But they are eager
+and assiduous readers of all such books and periodicals as do not
+presuppose special knowledge in some branch of science or learning,
+while the number who have devoted themselves to some special study
+and attained proficiency in it is large. The fondness for
+sentiment, especially moral and domestic sentiment, which is often
+observed as characterizing American taste in literature, seems to
+be mainly due to the influence of women, for they form not only the
+larger part of the reading public, but an independent-minded part,
+not disposed to adopt the canons laid down by men, and their
+preferences count for more in the opinions and predilections of the
+whole nation than is the case in England. Similarly the number of
+women who write is infinitely larger in America than in Europe.
+Fiction, essays, and poetry are naturally their favorite provinces.
+In poetry more particularly, many whose names are quite unknown in
+Europe have attained wide-spread fame.</p>
+<p>Some one may ask how far the differences between the position of
+women in America and their position in Europe are due to democracy?
+or if not to this, then to what other cause?</p>
+<p>They are due to democratic feeling, in so far as they spring
+from the notion that all men are free and equal, possessed of
+certain inalienable rights and owing certain corresponding duties.
+This root idea of democracy cannot stop at defining men as male
+human beings, any more than it could ultimately stop at defining
+them as white human beings. For many years the Americans believed
+in equality with the pride of discoverers as well as with the
+fervor of apostles. Accustomed to apply it to all sorts and
+conditions of men, they were naturally the first to apply it to
+women also; not indeed as respects politics, but in all the social
+as well as legal relations of life. Democracy is in America more
+respectful of the individual, less disposed to infringe his freedom
+or subject him to any sort of legal or family control, than it has
+shown itself in Continental Europe; and this regard for the
+individual inured to the benefit of women. Of the other causes that
+have worked in the same direction, two may be mentioned. One is the
+usage of the Congregationalist, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches,
+under which a woman who is a member of the congregation has the
+same rights in choosing a deacon, elder, or pastor, as a man has.
+Another is the fact that among the westward-moving settlers women
+were at first few in number, and were therefore treated with
+special respect. The habit then formed was retained as the
+communities grew, and propagated itself all over the country.</p>
+<p>What have been the results on the character and usefulness of
+women themselves?</p>
+<p>Favorable. They have opened to them a wider life and more
+variety of career. While the special graces of the feminine
+character do not appear to have suffered, there has been produced a
+sort of independence and a capacity for self-help which are
+increasingly valuable as the number of unmarried women increases.
+More resources are open to an American woman who has to lead a
+solitary life, not merely in the way of employment, but for the
+occupation of her mind and tastes, than to a European spinster or
+widow; while her education has not rendered the American wife less
+competent for the discharge of household duties.</p>
+<p>How has the nation at large been affected by the development of
+this new type of womanhood, or rather perhaps of this variation on
+the English type?</p>
+<p>If women have on the whole gained, it is clear that the nation
+gains through them. As mothers they mold the character of their
+children; while the function of forming the habits of society and
+determining its moral tone rests greatly in their hands. But there
+is reason to think that the influence of the American system tells
+directly for good upon men as well as upon the whole community. Men
+gain in being brought to treat women as equals, rather than as
+graceful playthings or useful drudges. The respect for women which
+every American man either feels, or is obliged by public sentiment
+to profess, has a wholesome effect on his conduct and character,
+and serves to check the cynicism which some other peculiarities of
+the country foster. The nation as a whole owes to the active
+benevolence of its women, and their zeal in promoting social
+reforms, benefits which the customs of Continental Europe would
+scarcely have permitted women to confer. Europeans have of late
+years begun to render a well-deserved admiration to the brightness
+and vivacity of American ladies. Those who know the work they have
+done and are doing in many a noble cause will admire still more
+their energy, their courage, their self-devotion. No country seems
+to owe more to its women than America does, nor to owe to them so
+much of what is best in social institutions and in the beliefs that
+govern conduct.</p>
+<p>By permission of James Bryce and the Macmillan Company.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRYCE02"></a>
+<h3>THE ASCENT OF ARARAT</h3>
+<center>From 'Trans-Caucasia and Ararat'</center>
+<br>
+<p>About 1 A.M. we got off, thirteen in all, and made straight
+across the grassy hollows for the ridges which trend up towards the
+great cone, running parallel in a west-north-westerly direction,
+and inclosing between them several long narrow depressions, hardly
+deep enough to be called valleys. The Kurds led the way, and at
+first we made pretty good progress. The Cossacks seemed fair
+walkers, though less stalwart than the Kurds; the pace generally
+was better than that with which Swiss guides start. However, we
+were soon cruelly undeceived. In twenty-five minutes there came a
+steep bit, and at the top of it they flung themselves down on the
+grass to rest. So did we all. Less than half a mile farther, down
+they dropped again, and this time we were obliged to give the
+signal for resuming the march. In another quarter of an hour they
+were down once more, and so it continued for the rest of the way.
+Every ten minutes' walking--it was seldom steep enough to be called
+actual climbing--was followed by seven or eight minutes of sitting
+still, smoking and chattering. How they did chatter! It was to no
+purpose that we continued to move on when they sat down, or that we
+rose to go before they had sufficiently rested. They looked at one
+another, so far as I could make out by the faint light, and
+occasionally they laughed; but they would not and did not stir till
+such time as pleased themselves. We were helpless. Impossible to go
+on alone; impossible also to explain to them why every moment was
+precious, for the acquaintance who had acted as interpreter had
+been obliged to stay behind at Sardarbulakh, and we were absolutely
+without means of communication with our companions. One could not
+even be angry, had there been any use in that, for they were
+perfectly good-humored. It was all very well to beckon them, or
+pull them by the elbow, or clap them on the back; they thought this
+was only our fun, and sat still and chattered all the same. When it
+grew light enough to see the hands of a watch, and mark how the
+hours advanced while the party did not, we began for a second time
+to despair of success.</p>
+<p>About 3 A.M. there suddenly sprang up from behind the Median
+mountains the morning star, shedding a light such as no star ever
+gave in these northern climes of ours,--a light that almost
+outshone the moon. An hour later it began to pale in the first
+faint flush of yellowish light that spread over the eastern heaven;
+and first the rocky masses above us, then Little Ararat, throwing
+behind him a gigantic shadow, then the long lines of mountains
+beyond the Araxes, became revealed, while the wide Araxes plain
+still lay dim and shadowy below. One by one the stars died out as
+the yellow turned to a deeper glow that shot forth in long
+streamers, the rosy fingers of the dawn, from the horizon to the
+zenith. Cold and ghostly lay the snows on the mighty cone; till at
+last there came upon their topmost slope, six thousand feet above
+us, a sudden blush of pink. Swiftly it floated down the eastern
+face, and touched and kindled the rocks just above us. Then the sun
+flamed out, and in a moment the Araxes valley and all the hollows
+of the savage ridges we were crossing were flooded with
+overpowering light.</p>
+<p>It was nearly six o'clock, and progress became easier now that
+we could see our way distinctly. The Cossacks seemed to grow
+lazier, halting as often as before and walking less briskly; in
+fact, they did not relish the exceeding roughness of the jagged
+lava ridges along whose tops or sides we toiled. I could willingly
+have lingered here myself; for in the hollows, wherever a little
+soil appeared, some interesting plants were growing, whose
+similarity to and difference from the Alpine species of Western
+Europe alike excited one's curiosity. Time allowed me to secure
+only a few; I trusted to get more on the way back, but this turned
+out to be impossible. As we scrambled along a ridge above a long
+narrow winding glen filled with loose blocks, one of the Kurds
+suddenly swooped down like a vulture from the height on a spot at
+the bottom, and began peering and grubbing among the stones. In a
+minute or two he cried out, and the rest followed; he had found a
+spring, and by scraping in the gravel had made a tiny basin out of
+which we could manage to drink a little. Here was a fresh cause of
+delay: everybody was thirsty, and everybody must drink; not only
+the water which, as we afterwards saw, trickled down hither under
+the stones from a snow-bed seven hundred feet higher, but the water
+mixed with some whisky from a flask my friend carried, which even
+in this highly diluted state the Cossacks took to heartily. When at
+last we got them up and away again, they began to waddle and
+strangle; after a while two or three sat down, and plainly gave us
+to see they would go no farther. By the time we had reached a
+little snow-bed whence the now strong sun was drawing a stream of
+water, and halted on the rocks beside it for breakfast, there were
+only two Cossacks and the four Kurds left with us, the rest having
+scattered themselves about somewhere lower down. We had no idea
+what instructions they had received, nor whether indeed they had
+been told anything except to bring us as far as they could, to see
+that the Kurds brought the baggage, and to fetch us back again,
+which last was essential for Jaafar's peace of mind. We concluded
+therefore that if left to themselves they would probably wait our
+return; and the day was running on so fast that it was clear there
+was no more time to be lost in trying to drag them along with
+us.</p>
+<p>Accordingly I resolved to take what I wanted in the way of food,
+and start at my own pace. My friend, who carried more weight, and
+had felt the want of training on our way up, decided to come no
+farther, but wait about here, and look out for me towards
+nightfall. We noted the landmarks carefully,--the little snow-bed,
+the head of the glen covered with reddish masses of stone and
+gravel; and high above it, standing out of the face of the great
+cone of Ararat, a bold peak or rather projecting tooth of black
+rock, which our Cossacks called the Monastery, and which, I suppose
+from the same fancied resemblance to a building, is said to be
+called in Tatar Tach Kilissa, "the church rock." It is doubtless an
+old cone of eruption, about thirteen thousand feet in height, and
+is really the upper end of the long ridge we had been following,
+which may perhaps represent a lava flow from it, or the edge of a
+fissure which at this point found a vent.</p>
+<p>It was an odd position to be in: guides of two different races,
+unable to communicate either with us or with one another: guides
+who could not lead and would not follow; guides one-half of whom
+were supposed to be there to save us from being robbed and murdered
+by the other half, but all of whom, I am bound to say, looked for
+the moment equally simple and friendly, the swarthy Iranian as well
+as the blue-eyed Slav.</p>
+<p>At eight o'clock I buckled on my canvas gaiters, thrust some
+crusts of bread, a lemon, a small flask of cold tea, four
+hard-boiled eggs, and a few meat lozenges into my pocket, bade
+good-by to my friend, and set off. Rather to our surprise, the two
+Cossacks and one of the Kurds came with me, whether persuaded by a
+pantomime of encouraging signs, or simply curious to see what would
+happen. The ice-axe had hugely amused the Cossacks all through.
+Climbing the ridge to the left, and keeping along its top for a
+little way, I then struck across the semi-circular head of a wide
+glen, in the middle of which, a little lower, lay a snow-bed over a
+long steep slope of loose broken stones and sand. This slope, a
+sort of talus or "screen" as they say in the Lake country, was
+excessively fatiguing from the want of firm foothold; and when I
+reached the other side, I was already so tired and breathless,
+having been on foot since midnight, that it seemed almost useless
+to persevere farther. However, on the other side I got upon solid
+rock, where the walking was better, and was soon environed by a
+multitude of rills bubbling down over the stones from the
+stone-slopes above. The summit of Little Ararat, which had for the
+last two hours provokingly kept at the same apparent height above
+me, began to sink, and before ten o'clock I could look down upon
+its small flat top, studded with lumps of rock, but bearing no
+trace of a crater. Mounting steadily along the same ridge, I saw at
+a height of over thirteen thousand feet, lying on the loose blocks,
+a piece of wood about four feet long and five inches thick,
+evidently cut by some tool, and so far above the limit of trees
+that it could by no possibility be a natural fragment of one.
+Darting on it with a glee that astonished the Cossack and the Kurd,
+I held it up to them, and repeated several times the word "Noah."
+The Cossack grinned; but he was such a cheery, genial fellow that I
+think he would have grinned whatever I had said, and I cannot be
+sure that he took my meaning, and recognized the wood as a fragment
+of the true Ark. Whether it was really gopher wood, of which
+material the Ark was built, I will not undertake to say, but am
+willing to submit to the inspection of the curious the bit which I
+cut off with my ice-axe and brought away. Anyhow, it will be hard
+to prove that it is not gopher wood. And if there be any remains of
+the Ark on Ararat at all,--a point as to which the natives are
+perfectly clear,--here rather than the top is the place where one
+might expect to find them, since in the course of ages they would
+get carried down by the onward movement of the snow-beds along the
+declivities. This wood, therefore, suits all the requirements of
+the case. In fact, the argument is for the case of a relic
+exceptionally strong: the Crusaders who found the Holy Lance at
+Antioch, the archbishop who recognized the Holy Coat at Treves, not
+to speak of many others, proceeded upon slighter evidence. I am,
+however, bound to admit that another explanation of the presence of
+this piece of timber on the rocks of this vast height did occur to
+me. But as no man is bound to discredit his own relic, and such is
+certainly not the practice of the Armenian Church, I will not
+disturb my readers' minds or yield to the rationalizing tendencies
+of the age by suggesting it.</p>
+<p>Fearing that the ridge by which we were mounting would become
+too precipitous higher up, I turned off to the left, and crossed a
+long, narrow snow-slope that descended between this ridge and
+another line of rocks more to the west. It was firm, and just steep
+enough to make steps cut in the snow comfortable, though not
+necessary; so the ice-axe was brought into use. The Cossack who
+accompanied me--there was but one now, for the other Cossack had
+gone away to the right some time before, and was quite lost to
+view--had brought my friend's alpenstock, and was developing a
+considerable capacity for wielding it. He followed nimbly across;
+but the Kurd stopped on the edge of the snow, and stood peering and
+hesitating, like one who shivers on the plank at a bathing-place,
+nor could the jeering cries of the Cossack induce him to venture on
+the treacherous surface. Meanwhile, we who had crossed were
+examining the broken cliff which rose above us. It looked not
+exactly dangerous, but a little troublesome, as if it might want
+some care to get over or through. So after a short rest I stood up,
+touched my Cossack's arm, and pointed upward. He reconnoitred the
+cliff with his eye, and shook his head. Then, with various gestures
+of hopefulness, I clapped him on the back, and made as though to
+pull him along. He looked at the rocks again and pointed, to them,
+stroked his knees, turned up and pointed to the soles of his boots,
+which certainly were suffering from the lava, and once more
+solemnly shook his head. This was conclusive: so I conveyed to him
+my pantomime that he had better go back to the bivouac where my
+friend was, rather than remain here alone, and that I hoped to meet
+him there in the evening; took an affectionate farewell, and turned
+towards the rocks. There was evidently nothing for it but to go on
+alone. It was half-past ten o'clock, and the height about thirteen
+thousand six hundred feet, Little Ararat now lying nearly one
+thousand feet below the eye.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Not knowing how far the ridge I was following might continue
+passable, I was obliged to stop frequently to survey the rocks
+above, and erect little piles of stone to mark the way. This not
+only consumed time, but so completely absorbed the attention that
+for hours together I scarcely noticed the marvelous landscape
+spread out beneath, and felt the solemn grandeur of the scenery far
+less than many times before on less striking mountains. Solitude at
+great heights, or among majestic rocks or forests, commonly stirs
+in us all deep veins of feeling, joyous or saddening, or more often
+of joy and sadness mingled. Here the strain on the observing senses
+seemed too great for fancy or emotion to have any scope. When the
+mind is preocupied by the task of the moment, imagination is
+checked. This was a race against time, in which I could only scan
+the cliffs for a route, refer constantly to the watch, husband my
+strength by morsels of food taken at frequent intervals, and
+endeavor to conceive how a particular block or bit of slope which
+it would be necessary to recognize would look when seen the other
+way in descending....</p>
+<p>All the way up this rock-slope, which proved so fatiguing that
+for the fourth time I had almost given up hope, I kept my eye fixed
+on its upper end to see what signs there were of crags or
+snow-fields above. But the mist lay steadily at the point where the
+snow seemed to begin, and it was impossible to say what might be
+hidden behind that soft white curtain. As little could I conjecture
+the height I had reached by looking around, as one so often does on
+mountain ascents, upon other summits; for by this time I was
+thousands of feet above Little Ararat, the next highest peak
+visible, and could scarcely guess how many thousands. From this
+tremendous height it looked more like a broken obelisk than an
+independent summit twelve thousand eight hundred feet in height.
+Clouds covered the farther side of the great snow basin, and were
+seething like waves about the savage pinnacles, the towers of the
+Jinn palace, which guard its lower margin, and past which my upward
+path had lain. With mists to the left and above, and a range of
+black precipices cutting off all view to the right, there came a
+vehement sense of isolation and solitude, and I began to understand
+better the awe with which the mountain silence inspires the Kurdish
+shepherds. Overhead the sky had turned from dark blue to an intense
+bright green, a color whose strangeness seemed to add to the weird
+terror of the scene. It wanted barely an hour to the time when I
+had resolved to turn back; and as I struggled up the crumbling
+rocks, trying now to right and now to left, where the foothold
+looked a little firmer, I began to doubt whether there was strength
+enough left to carry me an hour higher. At length the rock-slope
+came suddenly to an end, and I stepped out upon the almost level
+snow at the top of it, coming at the same time into the clouds,
+which naturally clung to the colder surfaces. A violent west wind
+was blowing, and the temperature must have been pretty low, for a
+big icicle at once enveloped the lower half of my face, and did not
+melt till I got to the bottom of the cone four hours afterwards.
+Unluckily I was very thinly clad, the stout tweed coat reserved for
+such occasions having been stolen on a Russian railway. The only
+expedient to be tried against the piercing cold was to tighten in
+my loose light coat by winding around the waist a Spanish
+<i>faja</i>, or scarf, which I had brought up to use in case of
+need as a neck wrapper. Its bright purple looked odd enough in such
+surroundings, but as there was nobody there to notice, appearances
+did not much matter. In the mist, which was now thick, the eye
+could pierce only some thirty yards ahead; so I walked on over the
+snow five or six minutes, following the rise of its surface, which
+was gentle, and fancying there might still be a good long way to
+go. To mark the backward track I trailed the point of the ice-axe
+along behind me in the soft snow, for there was no longer any
+landmark; all was cloud on every side. Suddenly to my astonishment
+the ground began to fall away to the north; I stopped; a puff of
+wind drove off the mists on one side, the opposite side to that by
+which I had come, and showed the Araxes plain at an abysmal depth
+below. It was the top of Ararat.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BRYCE03"></a>
+<h3>THE WORK OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE</h3>
+<center>From 'The Holy Roman Empire'</center>
+<br>
+<p>No one who reads the history of the last three hundred years--no
+one, above all, who studies attentively the career of Napoleon--can
+believe it possible for any State, however great her energy and
+material resources, to repeat in modern Europe the part of ancient
+Rome; to gather into one vast political body races whose national
+individuality has grown more and more marked in each successive
+age. Nevertheless, it is in great measure due to Rome and to the
+Roman Empire of the Middle Ages that the bonds of national union
+are on the whole both stronger and nobler than they were ever
+before. The latest historian of Rome [Mommsen], after summing up
+the results to the world of his hero's career, closes his treatise
+with these words:</p>
+<blockquote>"There was in the world as C&aelig;sar found it the
+rich and noble heritage of past centuries, and an endless abundance
+of splendor and glory; but little soul, still less taste, and least
+of all, joy in and through life. Truly it was an old world, and
+even C&aelig;sar's genial patriotism could not make it young again.
+The blush of dawn returns not until the night has fully descended.
+Yet with him there came to the much-tormented races of the
+Mediterranean a tranquil evening after a sultry day; and when after
+long historical night the new day broke once more upon the peoples,
+and fresh nations in free self-guided movement began their course
+toward new and higher aims, many were found among them in whom the
+seed of C&aelig;sar had sprung up,--many who owed him, and who owe
+him still, their national individuality."</blockquote>
+<p>If this be the glory of Julius, the first great founder of the
+Empire, so is it also the glory of Charles, the second founder, and
+of more than one among his Teutonic successors. The work of the
+medi&aelig;val Empire was self-destructive; and it fostered, while
+seeming to oppose, the nationalities that were destined to replace
+it. It tamed the barbarous races of the North and forced them
+within the pale of civilization. It preserved the arts and
+literature of antiquity. In times of violence and oppression, it
+set before its subjects the duty of rational obedience to an
+authority whose watchwords were peace and religion. It kept alive,
+when national hatreds were most bitter, the notion of a great
+European Commonwealth. And by doing all this, it was in effect
+abolishing the need for a centralizing and despotic power like
+itself; it was making men capable of using national independence
+aright; it was teaching them to rise to that conception of
+spontaneous activity, and a freedom which is above law but not
+against it, to which national independence itself, if it is to be a
+blessing at all, must be only a means. Those who mark what has been
+the tendency of events since A.D. 1789, and who remember how many
+of the crimes and calamities of the past are still but half
+redressed, need not be surprised to see the so-called principle of
+nationalities advocated with honest devotion as the final and
+perfect form of political development. But such undistinguishing
+advocacy is after all only the old error in a new shape. If all
+other history did not bid us beware the habit of taking the
+problems and the conditions of our own age for those of all time,
+the warning which the Empire gives might alone be warning enough.
+From the days of Augustus down to those of Charles V., the whole
+civilized world believed in its existence as a part of the eternal
+fitness of things, and Christian theologians were not behind
+heathen poets in declaring that when it perished the world would
+perish with it. Yet the Empire is gone, and the world remains, and
+hardly notes the change.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="BUCKLAND"></a>
+<h2>FRANCIS TREVELYAN BUCKLAND</h2>
+<h3>(1826-1880)</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-c.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>ertainly, among the most useful of writers are the popularizers
+of science; those who can describe in readable, picturesque fashion
+those wonders and innumerable inhabitants of the world which the
+Dryasdusts discover, but which are apt to escape the attention of
+idlers or of the busy workers in other fields. Sometimes--not
+often--the same man unites the capacities of a patient and accurate
+investigator and of an accomplished narrator. To such men the field
+of enjoyment is boundless, as is the opportunity to promote the
+enjoyment of others.</p>
+<p>One of these two-sided men was Francis Trevelyan Buckland,
+popularly known as "Frank" Buckland, and so called in some of his
+books. His father, William Buckland,--at the time of the son's
+birth canon of Christ College, Oxford, and subsequently Dean of
+Westminster,--was the well-known geologist. As the father's life
+was devoted to the study of the inorganic, so that of the son was
+absorbed in the investigation of the organic world. He never tired
+of watching the habits of living creatures of all kinds; he lived
+as it were in a menagerie and it is related that his numerous
+callers were accustomed to the most familiar and impertinent
+demonstrations on the part of his monkeys and various other pets.
+He was an expert salmon-fisher, and his actual specialty was
+fishes; but he could not have these about him so conveniently as
+some other forms of life, and he extended his studies and specimens
+widely beyond ichthyology.</p>
+<p>Buckland was born December 17th, 1826, and died December 19th,
+1880. Brought up in a scientific atmosphere, he was all his life
+interested in the same subjects. Educated as a physician and
+surgeon and distinguished for his anatomical skill, his training
+fitted him for the careful investigation which is necessary on the
+part of the biologist. He was fortunate too in receiving in early
+middle life the government appointment of Inspector of Salmon
+Fisheries, and so being enabled to devote himself wholly to his
+favorite pursuits. In this position he was unwearied in his efforts
+to develop pisciculture, and to improve the apparatus used by the
+fishermen, interesting himself also in the condition of themselves
+and their families.</p>
+<p>He was always writing. He was a very frequent contributor to The
+Field from its foundation in 1856, and subsequently to Land and
+Water, a periodical which he started in 1866, and to other
+periodicals. He published a number of volumes, made up in great
+part from his contributions to periodicals, most of them of a
+popular character and full of interesting information. Among those
+which are best known are the 'Curiosities of Natural History'
+(1857-72); the 'Log-Book of a Fisherman and Geologist' (1875); a
+'Natural History of British Fishes' (1881); and 'Notes and Jottings
+from Animal Life,' which was not issued until 1882, though the
+material was selected by himself.</p>
+<p>Buckland was of a jovial disposition, and always sure to see the
+humorous side of the facts which were presented to him; and in his
+social life he was extremely unconventional, and inclined to merry
+pranks. His books are as delightful as was their writer. They are
+records of accurate, useful, eye-opening details as to fauna, all
+the world over. They are written with a brisk, sincere informality
+that suggest the lively talker rather than the writer. He takes us
+a-walking in green lanes and woods, and a-wading in brooks and
+still pools--not drawing us into a class-room or a study. He enters
+into the heart and life of creatures, and shows us how we should do
+the same. A lively humor is in all his popular pages. He instructs
+while smiling; and he is a savant while a light-hearted friend. Few
+English naturalists are as genial--not even White of Selborne--and
+few as wide in didactics. To know him is a profit indeed; but just
+as surely a pleasure.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BUCKLAND01"></a>
+<h3>A HUNT IN A HORSE-POND</h3>
+<center>From 'Curiosities of Natural History'</center>
+<br>
+<p>Well, let us have a look at the pond-world; choose a dry place
+at the side, and fix our eyes steadily upon the dirty water: what
+shall we see? Nothing at first; but wait a minute or two: a little
+round black knob appears in the middle; gradually it rises higher
+and higher, till at last you can make out a frog's head, with his
+great eyes staring hard at you, like the eyes of the frog in the
+woodcut facing &AElig;sop's fable of the frog and the bull. Not a
+bit of his body do you see: he is much too cunning for that; he
+does not know who or what you are; you may be a heron, his mortal
+enemy, for aught he knows. You move your arm: he thinks it is the
+heron's bill coming; down he goes again, and you see him not: a few
+seconds, he regains courage and reappears, having probably
+communicated the intelligence to the other frogs; for many big
+heads and many big eyes appear, in all parts of the pond, looking
+like so many hippopotami on a small scale. Soon a conversational
+"Wurk; wurk, wurk," begins: you don't understand it; luckily,
+perhaps, as from the swelling in their throats it is evident that
+the colony is outraged by the intrusion, and the remarks passing
+are not complimentary to the intruder. These frogs are all
+respectable, grown-up, well-to-do frogs, and they have in this pond
+duly deposited their spawn, and then, hard-hearted creatures! left
+it to its fate; it has, however, taken care of itself, and is now
+hatched, at least that part of it which has escaped the hands of
+the gipsies, who not unfrequently prescribe baths of this natural
+jelly for rheumatism....</p>
+<p>In some places, from their making this peculiar noise, frogs
+have been called "Dutch nightingales." In Scotland, too, they have
+a curious name, Paddock or Puddick; but there is poetical authority
+for it:--</p>
+<blockquote>"The water-snake whom fish and paddocks feed,<br>
+With staring scales lies poisoned."--DRYDEN.</blockquote>
+<p>Returning from the University of Giessen, I brought with me
+about a dozen green tree-frogs, which I had caught in the woods
+near the town. The Germans call them <i>laub-frosch,</i> or
+leaf-frog; they are most difficult things to find, on account of
+their color so much resembling the leaves on which they live. I
+have frequently heard one singing in a small bush, and though I
+have searched carefully, have not been able to find him: the only
+way is to remain quite quiet till he again begins his song. After
+much ambush-work, at length I collected a dozen frogs and put them
+in a bottle. I started at night on my homeward journey by the
+diligence, and I put the bottle containing the frogs into the
+pocket inside the diligence. My fellow-passengers were sleepy old
+smoke-dried Germans: very little conversation took place, and after
+the first mile every one settled himself to sleep, and soon all
+were snoring. I suddenly awoke with a start, and found all the
+sleepers had been roused at the same moment. On their sleepy faces
+were depicted fear and anger. What had woke us all up so suddenly?
+The morning was just breaking, and my frogs, though in the dark
+pocket of the coach, had found it out; and with one accord, all
+twelve of them had begun their morning song. As if at a given
+signal, they one and all of them began to croak as loud as ever
+they could. The noise their united concert made, seemed, in the
+closed compartment of the coach, quite deafening. Well might the
+Germans look angry: they wanted to throw the frogs, bottle and all,
+out of the window; but I gave the bottle a good shaking, and made
+the frogs keep quiet. The Germans all went to sleep again, but I
+was obliged to remain awake, to shake the frogs when they began to
+croak. It was lucky that I did so, for they tried to begin their
+concert again two or three times. These frogs came safely to
+Oxford; and the day after their arrival, a stupid housemaid took
+off the top of the bottle to see what was inside; one of the frogs
+croaked at that instant, and so frightened her that she dared not
+put the cover on again. They all got loose in the garden, where I
+believe the ducks ate them, for I never heard or saw them
+again.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BUCKLAND02"></a>
+<h3>ON RATS</h3>
+<center>From 'Curiosities of Natural History'</center>
+<br>
+<p>On one occasion, when a boy, I recollect secretly borrowing an
+old-fashioned flint gun from the bird-keeper of the farm to which I
+had been invited. I ensconced myself behind the door of the
+pig-sty, determined to make a victim of one of the many rats that
+were accustomed to disport themselves among the straw that formed
+the bed of the farmer's pet bacon-pigs. In a few minutes out came
+an old patriarchal-looking rat, who, having taken a careful survey,
+quietly began to feed. After a long aim, bang went the gun--I fell
+backwards, knocked down by the recoil of the rusty old piece of
+artillery. I did not remain prone long, for I was soon roused by
+the most unearthly squeaks, and a dreadful noise as of an
+infuriated animal madly rushing round and round the sty. Ye gods!
+what had I done? I had not surely, like the tailor in the old song
+of the 'Carrion Crow,'</p>
+<blockquote>"Shot and missed my mark,<br>
+And shot the old sow right bang through the heart."</blockquote>
+<p>But I had nearly performed a similar sportsman-like feat. There
+was poor piggy, the blood flowing in streamlets from several small
+punctures in that part of his body destined, at no very distant
+period, to become ham; in vain attempting, by dismal cries and by
+energetic waggings of his curly tail, to appease the pain of the
+charge of small shot which had so unceremoniously awaked him from
+his porcine dreams of oatmeal and boiled potatoes. But where was
+the rat? He had disappeared unhurt; the buttocks of the unfortunate
+pig, the rightful owner of the premises, had received the charge of
+shot intended to destroy the daring intruder.</p>
+<p>To appease piggy's wrath I gave him a bucketful of food from the
+hog-tub; and while he was thus consoling his inward self, wiped off
+the blood from the wounded parts, and said nothing about it to
+anybody. No doubt, before this time, some frugal housewife has been
+puzzled and astonished at the unwonted appearance of a charge of
+small shot in the centre of the breakfast ham which she procured
+from Squire Morland, of Sheepstead, Berks.</p>
+<p>Rats are very fond of warmth, and will remain coiled up for
+hours in any snug retreat where they can find this very necessary
+element of their existence. The following anecdote well illustrates
+this point:--</p>
+<p>My late father, when fellow of Corpus College, Oxford, many
+years ago, on arriving at his rooms late one night, found that a
+rat was running about among the books and geological specimens,
+behind the sofa, under the fender, and poking his nose into every
+hiding-place he could find. Being studiously inclined, and wishing
+to set to work at his books, he pursued him, armed with the poker
+in one hand, and a large dictionary, big enough to crush any rat,
+in the other; but in vain; Mr. Rat was not to be caught,
+particularly when such "arma scholastica" were used.</p>
+<p>No sooner had the studies recommenced than the rat resumed his
+gambols, squeaking and rushing about the room like a mad creature.
+The battle was renewed, and continued at intervals, to the
+destruction of all studies, till quite a late hour at night, when
+the pursuer, angry and wearied, retired to his adjoining bedroom;
+though he listened attentively he heard no more of the enemy, and
+soon fell asleep. In the morning he was astonished to find
+something warm lying on his chest; carefully lifting up the
+bed-clothes, he discovered his tormentor of the preceding night
+quietly and snugly ensconced in a fold in the blanket, and taking
+advantage of the bodily warmth of his two-legged adversary. These
+two lay looking daggers at each other for some minutes, the one
+unwilling to leave his warm berth, the other afraid to put his hand
+out from under the protection of the coverlid, particularly as the
+stranger's aspect was anything but friendly, his little sharp teeth
+and fierce little black eyes seeming to say, "Paws off from me, if
+you please!"</p>
+<p>At length, remembering the maxim that "discretion is the better
+part of valor"--the truth of which, I imagine, rats understand as
+well as most creatures,--he made a sudden jump off the bed,
+scuttled away into the next room, and was never seen or heard of
+afterwards....</p>
+<p>Rats are not selfish animals: having found out where the feast
+is stored, they will kindly communicate the intelligence to their
+friends and neighbors. The following anecdote will confirm this
+fact. A certain worthy old lady named Mrs. Oke, who resided at
+Axminster several years ago, made a cask of sweet wine, for which
+she was celebrated, and carefully placed it on a shelf in the
+cellar. The second night after this event she was frightened almost
+to death by a strange unaccountable noise in the said cellar. The
+household was called up and a search made, but nothing was found to
+clear up the mystery. The next night, as soon as the lights were
+extinguished and the house quiet, this dreadful noise was heard
+again. This time it was most alarming: a sound of squeaking,
+crying, knocking, pattering feet; then a dull scratching sound,
+with many other such ghostly noises, which continued throughout the
+livelong night. The old lady lay in bed with the candle alight,
+pale and sleepless with fright, anon muttering her prayers, anon
+determined to fire off the rusty old blunderbuss that hung over the
+chimneypiece. At last the morning broke, and the cock began to
+crow. "Now," thought she, "the ghosts must disappear." To her
+infinite relief, the noise really did cease, and the poor
+frightened dame adjusted her nightcap and fell asleep. Great
+preparations had she made for the next night; farm servants armed
+with pitchforks slept in the house; the maids took the family
+dinner-bell and the tinder-box into their rooms; the big dog was
+tied to the hall-table. Then the dame retired to her room, not to
+sleep, but to sit up in the arm-chair by the fire, keeping a drowsy
+guard over the neighbor's loaded horse-pistols, of which she was
+almost as much afraid as she was of the ghost in the cellar. Sure
+enough, her warlike preparations had succeeded; the ghost was
+certainly frightened; not a noise, not a sound, except the heavy
+snoring of the bumpkins and the rattling of the dog's chain in the
+hall, could be heard. She had gained a complete victory; the ghost
+was never heard again on the premises, and the whole affair was
+soon forgotten. Some weeks afterward some friends dropped in to
+take a cup of tea and talk over the last piece of gossip. Among
+other things the wine was mentioned, and the maid sent to get some
+from the cellar. She soon returned, and gasping for breath, rushed
+into the room, exclaiming, "'Tis all gone, ma'am;" and sure enough
+it was all gone. "The ghost has taken it"--not a drop was left,
+only the empty cask remained; the side was half eaten away, and
+marks of sharp teeth were visible round the ragged margins of the
+newly made bungholes.</p>
+<p>This discovery fully accounted for the noise the ghost had made,
+which caused so much alarm. The aboriginal rats in the dame's
+cellar had found out the wine, and communicated the joyful news to
+all the other rats in the parish; they had assembled there to enjoy
+the fun, and get very tipsy (which, judging from the noise they
+made, they certainly did) on this treasured cask of wine. Being
+quite a family party, they had finished it in two nights; and
+having got all they could, like wise rats they returned to their
+respective homes, perfectly unconscious that their merry-making had
+nearly been the death of the rightful owner and "founder of the
+feast." They had first gnawed out the cork, and got as much as they
+could: they soon found that the more they drank the lower the wine
+became. Perseverance is the motto of the rat; so they set to work
+and ate away the wood to the level of the wine again. This they
+continued till they had emptied the cask; they must then have got
+into it and licked up the last drains, for another and less
+agreeable smell was substituted for that of wine. I may add that
+this cask, with the side gone, and the marks of the rats' teeth, is
+still in my possession.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BUCKLAND03"></a>
+<h3>SNAKES AND THEIR POISON</h3>
+<center>From 'Curiosities of Natural History'</center>
+<br>
+<p>Be it known to any person to whose lot it should fall to rescue
+a person from the crushing folds of a boa-constrictor, that it is
+no use pulling and hauling at the centre of the brute's body; catch
+hold of the tip of his tail,--he can then be easily unwound,--he
+cannot help himself;--he "must" come off. Again, if you wish to
+kill a snake, it is no use hitting and trying to crush his head.
+The bones of the head are composed of the densest material,
+affording effectual protection to the brain underneath: a wise
+provision for the animal's preservation; for were his skull
+brittle, his habit of crawling on the ground would render it very
+liable to be fractured. The spinal cord runs down the entire length
+of the body; this being wounded, the animal is disabled or killed
+instanter. Strike therefore his tail, and not his head; for at his
+tail the spinal cord is but thinly covered with bone, and suffers
+readily from injury. This practice is applicable to eels. If you
+want to kill an eel, it is not much use belaboring his head:
+strike, however, his tail two or three times against any hard
+substance, and he is quickly dead.</p>
+<p>About four years ago I myself, in person, had painful experience
+of the awful effects of snake's poison. I have received a dose of
+the cobra's poison into my system; luckily a minute dose, or I
+should not have survived it. The accident happened in a very
+curious way. I was poisoned by the snake but not bitten by him. I
+got the poison second-hand. Anxious to witness the effects of the
+poison of the cobra upon a rat, I took up a couple in a bag alive
+to a certain cobra. I took one rat out of the bag and put him into
+the cage with the snake. The cobra was coiled up among the stones
+in the centre of the cage, apparently asleep. When he heard the
+noise of the rat falling into the cage, he just looked up and put
+out his tongue, hissing at the same time. The rat got in a corner
+and began washing himself, keeping one eye on the snake, whose
+appearance he evidently did not half like. Presently the rat ran
+across the snake's body, and in an instant the latter assumed his
+fighting attitude. As the rat passed the snake, he made a dart, but
+missing his aim, hit his nose a pretty hard blow against the side
+of the cage. This accident seemed to anger him, for he spread out
+his crest and waved it to and fro in the beautiful manner peculiar
+to his kind. The rat became alarmed and ran near him again. Again
+cobra made a dart, and bit him, but did not, I think, inject any
+poison into him, the rat being so very active; at least, no
+symptoms of poisoning were shown. The bite nevertheless aroused the
+ire of the rat, for he gathered himself for a spring, and measuring
+his distance, sprang right on to the neck of the cobra, who was
+waving about in front of him. This plucky rat, determined to die
+hard, gave the cobra two or three severe bites in the neck, the
+snake keeping his body erect all this time, and endeavoring to turn
+his head round so as to bite the rat who was clinging on like the
+old man in 'Sindbad the Sailor.' Soon, however, cobra changed his
+tactics. Tired, possibly, with sustaining the weight of the rat, he
+lowered his head, and the rat, finding himself again on terra
+firma, tried to run away: not so; for the snake, collecting all his
+force, brought down his erected poison-fangs, making his head tell
+by its weight in giving vigor to the blow, right on to the body of
+the rat.</p>
+<p>This poor beast now seemed to know that the fight was over and
+that he was conquered. He retired to a corner of the cage and began
+panting violently, endeavoring at the same time to steady his
+failing strength with his feet. His eyes were widely dilated, and
+his mouth open as if gasping for breath. The cobra stood erect over
+him, hissing and putting out his tongue as if conscious of victory.
+In about three minutes the rat fell quietly on his side and
+expired; the cobra then moved off and took no further notice of his
+defunct enemy. About ten minutes afterward the rat was hooked out
+of the cage for me to examine. No external wound could I see
+anywhere, so I took out my knife and began taking the skin off the
+rat. I soon discovered two very minute punctures, like small
+needle-holes, in the side of the rat, where the fangs of the snake
+had entered. The parts between the skin and the flesh, and the
+flesh itself, appeared as though affected with mortification, even
+though the wound had not been inflicted above a quarter of an hour,
+if so much.</p>
+<p>Anxious to see if the skin itself was affected, I scraped away
+the parts on it with my finger-nail. Finding nothing but the
+punctures, I threw the rat away and put the knife and skin in my
+pocket, and started to go away. I had not walked a hundred yards
+before all of a sudden I felt just as if somebody had come behind
+me and struck me a severe blow on the head and neck, and at the
+same time I experienced a most acute pain and sense of oppression
+at the chest, as though a hot iron had been run in and a
+hundred-weight put on the top of it. I knew instantly, from what I
+had read, that I was poisoned; I said as much to my friend, a most
+intelligent gentleman, who happened to be with me, and told him if
+I fell to give me brandy and "eau de luce," words which he kept
+repeating in case he might forget them. At the same time I enjoined
+him to keep me going, and not on any account to allow me to lie
+down.</p>
+<p>I then forgot everything for several minutes, and my friend
+tells me I rolled about as if very faint and weak. He also informs
+me that the first thing I did was to fall against him, asking if I
+looked seedy. He most wisely answered, "No, you look very well." I
+don't think he thought so, for his own face was as white as a
+ghost; I recollect this much. He tells me my face was of a
+greenish-yellow color. After walking or rather staggering along for
+some minutes, I gradually recovered my senses and steered for the
+nearest chemist's shop. Rushing in, I asked for eau de luce. Of
+course he had none, but my eye caught the words "Spirit, ammon.
+co.," or hartshorn, on a bottle. I reached it down myself, and
+pouring a large quantity into a tumbler with a little water, both
+of which articles I found on a soda-water stand in the shop, drank
+it off, though it burnt my mouth and lips very much. Instantly I
+felt relief from the pain at the chest and head. The chemist stood
+aghast, and on my telling him what was the matter, recommended a
+warm bath. If I had then followed his advice these words would
+never have been placed on record. After a second draught at the
+hartshorn bottle, I proceeded on my way, feeling very stupid and
+confused. On arriving at my friend's residence close by, he kindly
+procured me a bottle of brandy, of which I drank four large
+wine-glasses one after the other, but did not feel the least tipsy
+after the operation. Feeling nearly well, I started on my way home,
+and then for the first time perceived a most acute pain under the
+nail of the left thumb: this pain also ran up the arm. I set to
+work to suck the wound, and then found out how the poison had got
+into the system. About an hour before I examined the dead rat I had
+been cleaning the nail with a penknife, and had slightly separated
+the nail from the skin beneath. Into this little crack the poison
+had got when I was scraping the rat's skin to examine the wound.
+How virulent, therefore, must the poison of the cobra be! It had
+already been circulated in the body of the rat, from which I had
+imbibed it second-hand!</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BUCKLAND04"></a>
+<h3>MY MONKEY JACKO</h3>
+<center>From 'Curiosities of Natural History'</center>
+<br>
+<p>After some considerable amount of bargaining (in which amusing,
+sometimes animated, not to say exciting exhibition of talent,
+Englishmen generally get worsted by the Frenchmen, as was the case
+in the present instance), Jacko became transferred, chain, tail and
+all, to his new English master. Having arrived at the hotel, it
+became a question as to what was to become of Jacko while his
+master was absent from home. A little closet, opening into the wall
+of the bedroom, offered itself as a temporary prison. Jacko was
+tied up <i>securely</i>--alas! how vain are the thoughts of
+man!--to one of the row of pegs that were fastened against the
+wall. As the door closed on him his wicked eyes seemed to say,
+"I'll do some mischief now;" and sure enough he did, for when I
+came back to release him, like &AElig;neas,</p>
+<blockquote>"Obstupni, steteruntque com&aelig; et vox fancibus
+h&aelig;sit<a name="FNanchor5"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_5">[5]</a>."</blockquote>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor5">[5]</a>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Aghast, astonished, and struck dumb
+with fear,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I stood; like bristles rose my
+stiffened hair."--DRYDEN.</blockquote>
+<p>The walls, that but half an hour previously were covered with a
+finely ornamented paper, now stood out in the bold nakedness of
+lath and plaster; the relics on the floor showed that the little
+wretch's fingers had by no means been idle. The pegs were all
+loosened, the individual peg to which his chain had been fastened,
+torn completely from its socket, that the destroyer's movements
+might not be impeded, and an unfortunate garment that happened to
+be hung up in the closet was torn to a thousand shreds. If ever
+Jack Sheppard had a successor, it was this monkey. If he had tied
+the torn bits of petticoat together and tried to make his escape
+from the window, I don't think I should have been much
+surprised....</p>
+<p>It was, after Jacko's misdeeds, quite evident that he must no
+longer be allowed full liberty; and a lawyer's blue bag, such as
+may be frequently seen in the dreaded neighborhood of the Court of
+Chancery,--filled, however, more frequently with papers and
+parchment than with monkeys,--was provided for him; and this
+receptacle, with some hay placed at the bottom for a bed, became
+his new abode. It was a movable home, and therein lay the
+advantage; for when the strings of it were tied there was no mode
+of escape. He could not get his hands through the aperture at the
+end to unfasten them, the bag was too strong for him to bite his
+way through, and his ineffectual efforts to get out only had the
+effect of making the bag roll along the floor, and occasionally
+make a jump up into the air; forming altogether an exhibition which
+if advertised in the present day of wonders as "le bag vivant,"
+would attract crowds of delighted and admiring citizens.</p>
+<p>In the bag aforesaid he traveled as far as Southampton on his
+road to town. While taking the ticket at the railway station,
+Jacko, who must needs see everything that was going on, suddenly
+poked his head out of the bag and gave a malicious grin at the
+ticket-giver. This much frightened the poor man, but with great
+presence of mind,--quite astonishing under the circumstances,--he
+retaliated the insult: "Sir, that's a dog; you must pay for it
+accordingly." In vain was the monkey made to come out of the bag
+and exhibit his whole person; in vain were arguments in full
+accordance with the views of Cuvier and Owen urged eagerly,
+vehemently, and without hesitation (for the train was on the point
+of starting), to prove that the animal in question was not a dog,
+but a monkey. A dog it was in the peculiar views of the official,
+and three-and-sixpence was paid. Thinking to carry the joke further
+(there were just a few minutes to spare), I took out from my pocket
+a live tortoise I happened to have with me, and showing it, said,
+"What must I pay for this, as you charge for <i>all</i> animals?"
+The employ&eacute; adjusted his specs, withdrew from the desk to
+consult with his superior; then returning, gave the verdict with a
+grave but determined manner, "No charge for them, sir: them be
+insects."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="BUCKLE"></a>
+<h2>HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE</h2>
+<h3>(1821-1862)</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-h.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>enry Thomas Buckle was born at Lee, in Kent, on November 24th,
+1821, the son of a wealthy London merchant. A delicate child, he
+participated in none of the ordinary sports of children, but sat
+instead for hours listening to his mother's reading of the Bible
+and the 'Arabian Nights.' She had a great influence on his early
+development. She was a Calvinist, deeply religious, and Buckle
+himself in after years acknowledged that to her he owed his faith
+in human progress through the dissemination and triumph of truth,
+as well as his taste for philosophic speculations and his love for
+poetry. His devotion to her was lifelong. Owing to his feeble
+health he passed but a few years at school, and did not enter
+college. Nor did he know much, in the scholar's sense, of books.
+Till he was nearly eighteen the 'Arabian Nights,' the 'Pilgrim's
+Progress' and Shakespeare constituted his chief reading.</p>
+<p>But he was fond of games of mental skill, and curiously enough,
+first gained distinction, not in letters but at the chessboard, and
+in the course of his subsequent travels he challenged and defeated
+the champions of Europe. He was concerned for a short time in
+business; but being left with an independent income at the death of
+his father, he resolved to devote himself to study. He traveled for
+a year on the Continent, learning on the spot the languages of the
+countries he passed through. In time he became an accomplished
+linguist, reading nineteen languages and conversing fluently in
+seven.</p>
+<p>By the time he was nineteen he had resolved to write a great
+historic work, of a nature not yet attempted by any one. To prepare
+himself for this monumental labor, and to make up for past
+deficiencies, he settled in London; and, apparently single-handed
+and without the advice or help of tutors or professional men,
+entered upon that course of voluminous reading on which his
+erudition rests.</p>
+<p>He is a singular instance of a self-taught man, without
+scientific or academic training, producing a work that marks an
+epoch in historical literature. With a wonderful memory, he had,
+like Macaulay, the gift of getting the meaning and value of a book
+by simply glancing over the pages. On an average he could read with
+intelligent comprehension three books in a working day of eight
+hours, and in time mastered his library of twenty-two thousand
+volumes, indexing every book on the back, and transcribing many
+pages into his commonplace-books. In this way he spent fifteen
+years of study in collecting his materials.</p>
+<p>The first volume of his introduction to the 'History of
+Civilization in England' appeared in 1857, and aroused an
+extraordinary interest because of the novelty and audacity of its
+statements. It was both bitterly attacked and enthusiastically
+praised, as it antagonized or attracted its readers. Buckle became
+the intellectual hero of the hour. The second volume appeared in
+May, 1861. And now, worn out by overwork, his delicate nerves
+completely unstrung by the death of his mother, who had remained
+his first and only love, he left England for the East, in company
+with the two young sons of a friend. In Palestine he was stricken
+with typhoid fever, and died at Damascus on May 29th, 1862. His
+grave is marked by a marble tomb with the inscription from the
+Arabic:--</p>
+<blockquote>"The written word remains long after the writer;<br>
+The writer is resting under the earth, but his works
+endure."</blockquote>
+<p>Three volumes of 'Miscellanies and Posthumous Works,' edited by
+Helen Taylor, were published in 1872. Among these are a lecture on
+'Woman,' delivered before the Royal Institution,--Buckle's single
+and very successful attempt at public speaking,--and a Review of
+Mill's 'Liberty,' one of the finest contemporary appreciations of
+that thinker. But he wrote little outside his 'History,' devoting
+himself with entire singleness of purpose to his life-work.</p>
+<p>The introduction to the 'History of Civilization in England' has
+been aptly called the "fragment of a fragment." When as a mere
+youth he outlined his work, he overestimated the extremest
+accomplishment of a single mind, and did not clearly comprehend the
+vastness of the undertaking. He had planned a general history of
+civilization; but as the material increased on his hands he was
+forced to limit his project, and finally decided to confine his
+work to a consideration of England from the middle of the sixteenth
+century. In February, 1853, he wrote to a friend:--</p>
+<blockquote>"I have been long convinced that the progress of every
+people is regulated by principles--or as they are called, laws--as
+regular and as certain as those which govern the physical world. To
+discover these laws is the object of my work.... I propose to take
+a general survey of the moral, intellectual, and legislative
+peculiarities of the great countries of Europe; and I hope to point
+out the circumstances under which these peculiarities have arisen.
+This will lead to a perception of certain relations between the
+various stages through which each people have progressively passed.
+Of these <i>general</i> relations I intend to make a
+<i>particular</i> application; and by a careful analysis of the
+history of England, show how they have regulated our civilization,
+and how the successive and apparently the arbitrary forms of our
+opinions, our literature, our laws, and our manners, have naturally
+grown out of their antecedents."</blockquote>
+<p>This general scheme was adhered to in the published history, and
+he supported his views by a vast array of illustrations and proofs.
+The main ideas advanced in the Introduction--for he did not live to
+write the body of the work, the future volumes to which he often
+pathetically refers--these ideas may be thus stated:--First:
+Nothing had yet been done toward discovering the principles
+underlying the character and destiny of nations, to establish a
+basis for a science of history,--a task which Buckle proposed to
+himself. Second: Experience shows that nations are governed by laws
+as fixed and regular as the laws of the physical world. Third:
+Climate, soil, food, and the aspects of nature are the primary
+causes in forming the character of a nation. Fourth: The
+civilization within and without Europe is determined by the fact
+that in Europe man is stronger than nature, and here alone has
+subdued her to his service; whereas on the other continents nature
+is the stronger and man has been subdued by her. Fifth: The
+continually increasing influence of mental laws and the continually
+diminishing influence of physical laws characterize the advance of
+European civilization. Sixth: The mental laws regulating the
+progress of society can only be discovered by such a comprehensive
+survey of facts as will enable us to eliminate disturbances;
+namely, by the method of averages. Seventh: Human progress is due
+to intellectual activity, which continually changes and expands,
+rather than to moral agencies, which from the beginnings of society
+have been more or less stationary. Eighth: In human affairs in
+general, individual efforts are insignificant, and great men work
+for evil rather than for good, and are moreover merely incidental
+to their age. Ninth: Religion, literature, art, and government
+instead of being causes of civilization, are merely its products.
+Tenth: The progress of civilization varies directly as
+skepticism--the disposition to doubt, or the "protective
+spirit"--the disposition to maintain without examination
+established beliefs and practices, predominates.</p>
+<p>The new scientific methods of Darwin and Mill were just then
+being eagerly discussed in England; and Buckle, an alert student
+and great admirer of Mill, in touch with the new movements of the
+day, proposed, "by applying to the history of man those methods of
+investigation which have been found successful in other branches of
+knowledge, and rejecting all preconceived notions which could not
+bear the test of those methods," to remove history from the
+condemnation of being a mere series of arbitrary facts, or a
+biography of famous men, or the small-beer chronicle of court
+gossip and intrigues, and to raise it to the level of an exact
+science, subject to mental laws as rigid and infallible as the laws
+of nature:--</p>
+<blockquote>"Instead of telling us of those things which alone have
+any value--instead of giving us information respecting the progress
+of knowledge and the way in which mankind has been affected by the
+diffusion of that knowledge ... the vast majority of historians
+fill their works with the most trifling and miserable details....
+In other great branches of knowledge, observation has preceded
+discovery; first the facts have been registered and then their laws
+have been found. But in the study of the history of man, the
+important facts have been neglected and the unimportant ones
+preserved. The consequence is, that whoever now attempts to
+generalize historical phenomena must collect the facts as well as
+conduct the generalization."</blockquote>
+<p>Buckle's ideal of the office and acquirements of the historian
+was of the highest. He must indeed possess a synthesis of the whole
+range of human knowledge to explain the progress of man. By
+connecting history with political economy and statistics, he strove
+to make it exact. And he exemplified his theories by taking up
+branches of scientific investigation hitherto considered entirely
+outside the province of the historian. He first wrote history
+scientifically, pursuing the same methods and using the same kinds
+of proofs as the scientific worker. The first volume excited as
+much angry discussion as Darwin's 'Origin of Species' had done in
+its day. The boldness of its generalizations, its uncompromising
+and dogmatic tone, irritated more than one class of readers. The
+chapters on Spain and on Scotland, with their strictures on the
+religions of those countries, containing some of the most brilliant
+passages in the book, brought up in arms against him both Catholics
+and Presbyterians. Trained scientists blamed him for encroaching on
+their domains with an insufficient knowledge of the phenomena of
+the natural world, whence resulted a defective logic and vague
+generalizations.</p>
+<p>It is true that Buckle was not trained in the methods of the
+schools; that he labored under the disadvantage of a self-taught,
+solitary worker, not receiving the friction of other vigorous
+minds; and that his reading, if extensive, was not always wisely
+chosen, and from its very amount often ill-digested. He had
+knowledge rather than true learning, and taking this knowledge at
+second hand, often relied on sources that proved either
+untrustworthy or antiquated, for he lacked the true relator's fine
+discrimination, that weighs and sifts authorities and rejects the
+inadequate. Malicious critics declared that all was grist that came
+to his mill. Yet his popularity with that class of readers whom he
+did not shock by his disquisitions on religions and morals, or make
+distrustful by his sweeping generalizations and scientific
+inaccuracies, is due to the fact that his book appeared at the
+right moment: for the time was really come to make history
+something more than a chronicle of detached facts and anecdotes.
+The scientific spirit was awake, and demanded that human action,
+like the processes of nature, be made the subject of general law.
+The mind of Buckle proved fruitful soil for those germs of thought
+floating in the air, and he gave them visible form in his history.
+If he was not a leader, he was a brilliant formulator of thought,
+and he was the first to put before the reading world, then ready to
+receive them, ideas and speculations till now belonging to the
+student. For he wrote with the determination to be intelligible to
+the general reader. It detracts nothing from the permanent value of
+his work thus to state its genesis, for this is merely to apply to
+it his own methods.</p>
+<p>Moreover, a perpetual charm lies in his clear, limpid English, a
+medium perfectly adapted to calm exposition or to impassioned
+rhetoric. Whatever the defects of Buckle's system: whatever the
+inaccuracies that the advance of thirty years of patient scientific
+labors can easily point out; however sweeping his generalization;
+or however dogmatic his assertions, the book must be allowed high
+rank among the works that set men thinking, and must thus be
+conceded to possess enduring value.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BUCKLE01"></a>
+<h3>MORAL VERSUS INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLES IN HUMAN PROGRESS</h3>
+<center>From the 'History of Civilization in England'</center>
+<br>
+<p>There is unquestionably nothing to be found in the world which
+has undergone so little change as those great dogmas of which moral
+systems are composed. To do good to others; to sacrifice for their
+benefit your own wishes; to love your neighbor as yourself; to
+forgive your enemies; to restrain your passions; to honor your
+parents; to respect those who are set over you,--these and a few
+others are the sole essentials of morals: but they have been known
+for thousands of years, and not one jot or tittle has been added to
+them by all the sermons, homilies, and text-books which moralists
+and theologians have been able to produce. But if we contrast this
+stationary aspect of moral truths with the progressive aspect of
+intellectual truths, the difference is indeed startling. All the
+great moral systems which have exercised much influence have been
+fundamentally the same; all the great intellectual systems have
+been fundamentally different. In reference to our moral conduct,
+there is not a single principle now known to the most cultivated
+Europeans which was not likewise known to the ancients. In
+reference to the conduct of our intellect, the moderns have not
+only made the most important additions to every department of
+knowledge that the ancients ever attempted to study, but besides
+this they have upset and revolutionized the old methods of inquiry;
+they have consolidated into one great scheme all those resources of
+induction which Aristotle alone dimly perceived; and they have
+created sciences, the faintest idea of which never entered the mind
+of the boldest thinker antiquity produced.</p>
+<p>These are, to every educated man, recognized and notorious
+facts; and the inference to be drawn from them is immediately
+obvious. Since civilization is the product of moral and
+intellectual agencies, and since that product is constantly
+changing, it evidently cannot be regulated by the stationary agent;
+because, when surrounding circumstances are unchanged, a stationary
+agent can only produce a stationary effect. The only other agent is
+the intellectual one; and that this is the real mover may be proved
+in two distinct ways: first because, being as we have already seen
+either moral or intellectual, and being as we have also seen not
+moral, it must be intellectual; and secondly, because the
+intellectual principle has an activity and a capacity for
+adaptation which, as I undertake to show, is quite sufficient to
+account for the extraordinary progress that during several
+centuries Europe has continued to make.</p>
+<p>Such are the main arguments by which my view is supported; but
+there are also other and collateral circumstances which are well
+worthy of consideration. The first is, that the intellectual
+principle is not only far more progressive than the moral
+principle, but is also far more permanent in its results. The
+acquisitions made by the intellect are, in every civilized country,
+carefully preserved, registered in certain well-understood
+formulas, and protected by the use of technical and scientific
+language; they are easily handed down from one generation to
+another, and thus assuming an accessible, or as it were a tangible
+form, they often influence the most distant posterity, they become
+the heirlooms of mankind, the immortal bequest of the genius to
+which they owe their birth. But the good deeds effected by our
+moral faculties are less capable of transmission; they are of a
+more private and retiring character: while as the motives to which
+they owe their origin are generally the result of self-discipline
+and of self-sacrifice, they have to be worked out by every man for
+himself; and thus, begun by each anew, they derive little benefit
+from the maxims of preceding experience, nor can they well be
+stored up for the use of future moralists. The consequence is that
+although moral excellence is more amiable, and to most persons more
+attractive, than intellectual excellence, still it must be
+confessed that looking at ulterior results, it is far less active,
+less permanent, and as I shall presently prove, less productive of
+real good. Indeed, if we examine the effects of the most active
+philanthropy and of the largest and most disinterested kindness, we
+shall find that those effects are, comparatively speaking,
+short-lived; that there is only a small number of individuals they
+come in contact with and benefit; that they rarely survive the
+generation which witnessed their commencement; and that when they
+take the more durable form of founding great public charities, such
+institutions invariably fall, first into abuse, then into decay,
+and after a time are either destroyed or perverted from their
+original intention, mocking the effort by which it is vainly
+attempted to perpetuate the memory even of the purest and most
+energetic benevolence.</p>
+<p>These conclusions are no doubt very unpalatable; and what makes
+them peculiarly offensive is, that it is impossible to refute them.
+For the deeper we penetrate into this question, the more clearly
+shall we see the superiority of intellectual acquisitions over
+moral feeling. There is no instance on record of an ignorant man
+who, having good intentions and supreme power to enforce them, has
+not done far more evil than good. And whenever the intentions have
+been very eager, and the power very extensive, the evil has been
+enormous. But if you can diminish the sincerity of that man, if you
+can mix some alloy with his motives, you will likewise diminish the
+evil which he works. If he is selfish as well as ignorant, it will
+often happen [that] you may play off his vice against his
+ignorance, and by exciting his fears restrain his mischief. If,
+however, he has no fear, if he is entirely unselfish, if his sole
+object is the good of others, if he pursues that object with
+enthusiasm, upon a large scale, and with disinterested zeal, then
+it is that you have no check upon him, you have no means of
+preventing the calamities which in an ignorant age an ignorant man
+will be sure to inflict. How entirely this is verified by
+experience, we may see in studying the history of religious
+persecution. To punish even a single man for his religious tenets
+is assuredly a crime of the deepest dye; but to punish a large body
+of men, to persecute an entire sect, to attempt to extirpate
+opinions which, growing out of the state of society in which they
+arise, are themselves a manifestation of the marvelous and
+luxuriant fertility of the human mind,--to do this is not only one
+of the most pernicious, but one of the most foolish acts that can
+possibly be conceived. Nevertheless it is an undoubted fact that an
+overwhelming majority of religious persecutors have been men of the
+purest intentions, of the most admirable and unsullied morals. It
+is impossible that this should be otherwise. For they are not
+bad-intentioned men who seek to enforce opinions which they believe
+to be good. Still less are they bad men who are so regardless of
+temporal considerations as to employ all the resources of their
+power, not for their own benefit, but for the purpose of
+propagating a religion which they think necessary to the future
+happiness of mankind. Such men as these are not bad, they are only
+ignorant; ignorant of the nature of truth, ignorant of the
+consequences of their own acts. But in a moral point of view their
+motives are unimpeachable. Indeed, it is the very ardor of their
+sincerity which warms them into persecution. It is the holy zeal by
+which they are fired that quickens their fanaticism into a deadly
+activity. If you can impress any man with an absorbing conviction
+of the supreme importance of some moral or religious doctrine; if
+you can make him believe that those who reject that doctrine are
+doomed to eternal perdition; if you then give that man power, and
+by means of his ignorance blind him to the ulterior consequences of
+his own act,--he will infallibly persecute those who deny his
+doctrine; and the extent of his persecution will be regulated by
+the extent of his sincerity. Diminish the sincerity, and you will
+diminish the persecution; in other words, by weakening the virtue
+you may check the evil. This is a truth of which history furnishes
+such innumerable examples, that to deny it would be not only to
+reject the plainest and most conclusive arguments, but to refuse
+the concurrent testimony of every age. I will merely select two
+cases, which, from the entire difference in their circumstances,
+are very apposite as illustrations: the first being from the
+history of Paganism, the other from the history of Christianity;
+and both proving the inability of moral feelings to control
+religious persecution.</p>
+<p>I. The Roman emperors, as is well known, subjected the early
+Christians to persecutions which, though they have been
+exaggerated, were frequent and very grievous. But what to some
+persons must appear extremely strange, is, that among the active
+authors of these cruelties we find the names of the best men who
+ever sat on the throne; while the worst and most infamous princes
+were precisely those who spared the Christians, and took no heed of
+their increase. The two most thoroughly depraved of all the
+emperors were certainly Commodus and Elagabalus; neither of whom
+persecuted the new religion, or indeed adopted any measures against
+it. They were too reckless of the future, too selfish, too absorbed
+in their own infamous pleasures, to mind whether truth or error
+prevailed; and being thus indifferent to the welfare of their
+subjects, they cared nothing about the progress of a creed which
+they, as Pagan emperors, were bound to regard as a fatal and
+impious delusion. They therefore allowed Christianity to run its
+course, unchecked by those penal laws which more honest but more
+mistaken rulers would assuredly have enacted. We find, accordingly,
+that the great enemy of Christianity was Marcus Aurelius; a man of
+kindly temper, and of fearless, unflinching honesty, but whose
+reign was characterized by a persecution from which he would have
+refrained had he been less in earnest about the religion of his
+fathers. And to complete the argument, it may be added that the
+last and one of the most strenuous opponents of Christianity who
+occupied the throne of the C&aelig;sars was Julian; a prince of
+eminent probity, whose opinions are often attacked, but against
+whose moral conduct even calumny itself has hardly breathed a
+suspicion.</p>
+<p>II. The second illustration is supplied by Spain; a country of
+which it must be confessed, that in no other have religiuos
+feelings exercised such sway over the affairs of men. No other
+European nation has produced so many ardent and disinterested
+missionaries, zealous self-denying martyrs, who have cheerfully
+sacrificed their lives in order to propagate truths which they
+thought necessary to be known. Nowhere else have the spiritual
+classes been so long in the ascendant; nowhere else are the people
+so devout, the churches so crowded, the clergy so numerous. But the
+sincerity and honesty of purpose by which the Spanish people, taken
+as a whole, have always been marked, have not only been unable to
+prevent religious persecution, but have proved the means of
+encouraging it. If the nation had been more lukewarm, it would have
+been more tolerant. As it was, the preservation of the faith became
+the first consideration; and everything being sacrificed to this
+one object, it naturally happened that zeal begat cruelty, and the
+soil was prepared in which the Inquisition took root and
+flourished. The supporters of that barbarous institution were not
+hypocrites, but enthusiasts. Hypocrites are for the most part too
+supple to be cruel. For cruelty is a stern and unbending passion;
+while hypocrisy is a fawning and flexible art, which accommodates
+itself to human feelings, and flatters the weakness of men in order
+that it may gain its own ends. In Spain, the earnestness of the
+nation, being concentrated on a single topic, carried everything
+before it; and hatred of heresy becoming a habit, persecution of
+heresy was thought a duty. The conscientious energy with which that
+duty was fulfilled is seen in the history of the Spanish Church.
+Indeed, that the inquisitors were remarkable for an undeviating and
+uncorruptible integrity may be proved in a variety of ways, and
+from different and independent sources of evidence. This is a
+question to which I shall hereafter return; but there are two
+testimonies which I cannot omit, because, from the circumstances
+attending them, they are peculiarly unimpeachable. Llorente, the
+great historian of the Inquisition, and its bitter enemy, had
+access to its private papers: and yet, with the fullest means of
+information, he does not even insinuate a charge against the moral
+character of the inquisitors; but while execrating the cruelty of
+their conduct, he cannot deny the purity of their intentions.
+Thirty years earlier, Townsend, a clergyman of the Church of
+England, published his valuable work on Spain: and though, as a
+Protestant and an Englishman, he had every reason to be prejudiced
+against the infamous system which he describes, he also can bring
+no charge against those who upheld it; but having occasion to
+mention its establishment at Barcelona, one of its most important
+branches, he makes the remarkable admission that all its members
+are men of worth, and that most of them are of distinguished
+humanity.</p>
+<p>These facts, startling as they are, form a very small part of
+that vast mass of evidence which history contains, and which
+decisively proves the utter inability of moral feelings to diminish
+religious persecution. The way in which the diminution has been
+really effected by the mere progress of intellectual acquirements
+will be pointed out in another part of this volume; when we shall
+see that the great antagonist of intolerance is not humanity, but
+knowledge. It is to the diffusion of knowledge, and to that alone,
+that we owe the comparative cessation of what is unquestionably the
+greatest evil men have ever inflicted on their own species. For
+that religious persecution is a greater evil than any other, is
+apparent, not so much from the enormous and almost incredible
+number of its known victims, as from the fact that the unknown must
+be far more numerous, and that history gives no account of those
+who have been spared in the body in order that they might suffer in
+the mind. We hear much of martyrs and confessors--of those who were
+slain by the sword, or consumed in the fire: but we know little of
+that still larger number who by the mere threat of persecution have
+been driven into an outward abandonment of their real opinions; and
+who, thus forced into an apostasy the heart abhors, have passed the
+remainder of their lives in the practice of a constant and
+humiliating hypocrisy. It is this which is the real curse of
+religious persecution. For in this way, men being constrained to
+mask their thoughts, there arises a habit of securing safety by
+falsehood, and of purchasing impunity with deceit. In this way
+fraud becomes a necessary of life; insincerity is made a daily
+custom; the whole tone of public feeling is vitiated, and the gross
+amount of vice and of error fearfully increased. Surely, then, we
+have reason to say that, compared to this, all other crimes are of
+small account; and we may well be grateful for that increase of
+intellectual pursuits which has destroyed an evil that some among
+us would even now willingly restore.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BUCKLE02"></a>
+<h3>THE MYTHICAL ORIGIN OF HISTORY</h3>
+<center>From the 'History of Civilization in England'</center>
+<br>
+<p>At a very early period in the progress of a people, and long
+before they are acquainted with the use of letters, they feel the
+want of some resource which in peace may amuse their leisure, and
+in war may stimulate their courage. This is supplied to them by the
+invention of ballads; which form the groundwork of all historical
+knowledge, and which, in one shape or another, are found among some
+of the rudest tribes of the earth. They are for the most part sung
+by a class of men whose particular business it is thus to preserve
+the stock of traditions. Indeed, so natural is this curiosity as to
+past events that there are few nations to whom these bards or
+minstrels are unknown. Thus, to select a few instances, it is they
+who have preserved the popular traditions, not only of Europe, but
+also of China, Tibet, and Tartary; likewise of India, of Scinde, of
+Beloochistan, of Western Asia, of the islands of the Black Sea, of
+Egypt, of Western Africa, of North America, of South America, and
+of the islands in the Pacific.</p>
+<p>In all these countries, letters were long unknown, and as a
+people in that state have no means of perpetuating their history
+except by oral tradition, they select the form best calculated to
+assist their memory; and it will, I believe, be found that the
+first rudiments of knowledge consist always of poetry, and often of
+rhyme. The jingle pleases the ear of the barbarian, and affords a
+security that he will hand it down to his children in the
+unimpaired state in which he received it. This guarantee against
+error increases still further the value of these ballads; and
+instead of being considered as a mere amusement, they rise to the
+dignity of judicial authorities. The allusions contained in them
+are satisfactory proofs to decide the merits of rival families, or
+even to fix the limits of those rude estates which such a society
+can possess. We therefore find that the professed reciters and
+composers of these songs are the recognized judges in all disputed
+matters; and as they are often priests, and believed to be
+inspired, it is probably in this way that the notion of the divine
+origin of poetry first arose. These ballads will of course vary
+according to the customs and temperaments of the different nations,
+and according to the climate to which they are accustomed. In the
+south they assume a passionate and voluptuous form; in the north
+they are rather remarkable for their tragic and warlike character.
+But notwithstanding these diversities, all such productions have
+one feature in common: they are not only founded on truth, but
+making allowance for the colorings of poetry, they are all strictly
+true. Men who are constantly repeating songs which they constantly
+hear, and who appeal to the authorized singers of them as final
+umpires in disputed questions, are not likely to be mistaken on
+matters in the accuracy of which they have so lively an
+interest.</p>
+<p>This is the earliest and most simple of the various stages
+through which history is obliged to pass. But in the course of
+time, unless unfavorable circumstances intervene, society advances;
+and among other changes, there is one in particular of the greatest
+importance. I mean the introduction of the art of writing, which,
+before many generations are passed, must effect a complete
+alteration in the character of the national traditions. The manner
+in which, this occurs has, so far as I am aware, never been pointed
+out; and it will therefore be interesting to attempt to trace some
+of its details.</p>
+<p>The first and perhaps the most obvious consideration is, that
+the introduction of the art of writing gives permanence to the
+national knowledge, and thus lessens the utility of that oral
+information in which all the acquirements of an unlettered people
+must be contained. Hence it is that as a country advances the
+influence of tradition diminishes, and traditions themselves become
+less trustworthy. Besides this, the preservers of these traditions
+lose in this stage of society much of their former reputation.
+Among a perfectly unlettered people, the singers of ballads are, as
+we have already seen, the sole depositaries of those historical
+facts on which the fame, and often the property, of their
+chieftains principally depend. But when this same nation becomes
+acquainted with the art of writing, it grows unwilling to intrust
+these matters to the memory of itinerant singers, and avails itself
+of its new art to preserve them in a fixed and material form. As
+soon as this is effected, the importance of those who repeat the
+national traditions is sensibly diminished. They gradually sink
+into an inferior class, which, having lost its old reputation, no
+longer consists of those superior men to whose abilities it owed
+its former fame. Thus we see that although without letters there
+can be no knowledge of much importance, it is nevertheless true
+that their introduction is injurious to historical traditions in
+two distinct ways: first by weakening the traditions, and secondly
+by weakening the class of men whose occupation it is to preserve
+them.</p>
+<p>But this is not all. Not only does the art of writing lessen the
+number of traditionary truths, but it directly encourages the
+propagation of falsehoods. This is effected by what may be termed a
+principle of accumulation, to which all systems of belief have been
+deeply indebted. In ancient times, for example, the name of
+Hercules was given to several of those great public robbers who
+scourged mankind, and who, if their crimes were successful as well
+as enormous, were sure after their death to be worshiped as heroes.
+How this appellation originated is uncertain; but it was probably
+bestowed at first on a single man, and afterwards on those who
+resembled him in the character of their achievements. This mode of
+extending the use of a single name is natural to a barbarous
+people, and would cause little or no confusion, as long as the
+tradition of the country remained local and unconnected. But as
+soon as these traditions became fixed by a written language, the
+collectors of them, deceived by the similarity of name, assembled
+the scattered facts, and ascribing to a single man these
+accumulated exploits, degraded history to the level of a miraculous
+mythology. In the same way, soon after the use of letters was known
+in the North of Europe, there was drawn up by Saxo Grammaticus the
+life of the celebrated Ragnar Lodbrok. Either from accident or
+design, this great warrior of Scandinavia, who had taught England
+to tremble, had received the same name as another Ragnar, who was
+prince of Jutland about a hundred years earlier. This coincidence
+would have caused no confusion as long as each district preserved a
+distinct and independent account of its own Ragnar. But by
+possessing the resource of writing, men became able to consolidate
+the separate trains of events, and as it were, fuse two truths into
+one error. And this was what actually happened. The credulous Saxo
+put together the different exploits of both Ragnars, and ascribing
+the whole of them to his favorite hero, has involved in obscurity
+one of the most interesting parts of the early history of
+Europe.</p>
+<p>The annals of the North afford another curious instance of this
+source of error. A tribe of Finns called Qu&aelig;ns occupied a
+considerable part of the eastern coast of the Gulf of Bothnia.
+Their country was known as Qu&aelig;nland; and this name gave rise
+to a belief that to the north of the Baltic there was a nation of
+Amazons. This would easily have been corrected by local knowledge:
+but by the use of writing, the flying rumor was at once fixed; and
+the existence of such a people is positively affirmed in some of
+the earliest European histories. Thus too &Aring;bo, the ancient
+capital of Finland, was called Turku, which in the Swedish language
+means a market-place. Adam of Bremen, having occasion to treat of
+the countries adjoining the Baltic, was so misled by the word Turku
+that this celebrated historian assures his readers that there were
+Turks in Finland.</p>
+<p>To these illustrations many others might be added, showing how
+mere names deceived the early historians, and gave rise to
+relations which were entirely false, and might have been rectified
+on the spot; but which, owing to the art of writing, were carried
+into distant countries and thus placed beyond the reach of
+contradiction. Of such cases, one more may be mentioned, as it
+concerns the history of England. Richard I., the most barbarous of
+our princes, was known to his contemporaries as the Lion; an
+appellation conferred upon him on account of his fearlessness and
+the ferocity of his temper. Hence it was said that he had the heart
+of a lion; and the title Coeur de Lion not only became indissolubly
+connected with his name, but actually gave rise to a story,
+repeated by innumerable writers, according to which he slew a lion
+in a single combat. The name gave rise to the story; the story
+confirmed the name: and another fiction was added to that long
+series of falsehoods of which history mainly consisted during the
+Middle Ages.</p>
+<p>The corruptions of history, thus naturally brought about by the
+mere introduction of letters, were in Europe aided by an additional
+cause. With the art of writing, there was in most cases also
+communicated a knowledge of Christianity; and the new religion not
+only destroyed many of the Pagan traditions, but falsified the
+remainder by amalgamating them with monastic legends. The extent to
+which this was carried would form a curious subject for inquiry;
+but one or two instances of it will perhaps be sufficient to
+satisfy the generality of readers.</p>
+<p>Of the earliest state of the great Northern nations we have
+little positive evidence; but several of the lays in which the
+Scandinavian poets related the feats of their ancestors or of their
+contemporaries are still preserved; and notwithstanding their
+subsequent corruption, it is admitted by the most competent judges
+that they embody real and historical events. But in the ninth and
+tenth centuries, Christian missionaries found their way across the
+Baltic, and introduced a knowledge of their religion among the
+inhabitants of Northern Europe. Scarcely was this effected when the
+sources of history began to be poisoned. At the end of the eleventh
+century Saemund Sigfusson, a Christian priest, gathered the popular
+and hitherto unwritten histories of the North into what is called
+the "Elder Edda"; and he was satisfied with adding to his
+compilation the corrective of a Christian hymn. A hundred years
+later there was made another collection of the native histories;
+but the principle which I have mentioned, having had a longer time
+to operate, now displayed its effects still more clearly. In this
+second collection, which is known by the name of the 'Younger
+Edda,' there is an agreeable mixture of Greek, Jewish, and
+Christian fables; and for the first time in the Scandinavian
+annals, we meet with the widely diffused fiction of a Trojan
+descent.</p>
+<p>If by way of further illustration we turn to other parts of the
+world, we shall find a series of facts confirming this view. We
+shall find that in those countries where there has been no change
+of religion, history is more trustworthy and connected than in
+those countries where such a change has taken place. In India,
+Brahmanism, which is still supreme, was established at so early a
+period that its origin is lost in the remotest antiquity. The
+consequence is that the native annals have never been corrupted by
+any new superstition, and the Hindus are possessed of historic
+traditions more ancient than can be found among any other Asiatic
+people. In the same way, the Chinese have for upwards of two
+thousand years preserved the religion of Fo, which is a form of
+Buddhism. In China, therefore, though the civilization has never
+been equal to that of India, there is a history, not indeed as old
+as the natives would wish us to believe, but still stretching back
+to several centuries before the Christian era, from whence it has
+been brought down to our own times in an uninterrupted succession.
+On the other hand, the Persians, whose intellectual development was
+certainly superior to that of the Chinese, are nevertheless without
+any authentic information respecting the early transactions of
+their ancient monarchy. For this I can see no possible reason
+except the fact that Persia, soon after the promulgation of the
+Koran, was conquered by the Mohammedans, who completely subverted
+the Parsee religion and thus interrupted the stream of the national
+traditions. Hence it is that, putting aside the myths of the
+Zendavesta, we have no native authorities for Persian history of
+any value, until the appearance in the eleventh century of the Shah
+Nameh; in which, however, Firdusi has mingled the miraculous
+relations of those two religions by which his country had been
+successively subjected. The result is, that if it were not for the
+various discoveries which have been made, of monuments,
+inscriptions, and coins, we should be compelled to rely on the
+scanty and inaccurate details in the Greek writers for our
+knowledge of the history of one of the most important of the
+Asiatic monarchies.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="BUFFON"></a>
+<h2>GEORGE LOUIS LE CLERC BUFFON</h2>
+<h3>(1707-1788)</h3>
+<center>BY SPENCER TROTTER</center>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-a.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>science becomes part of the general stock of knowledge only
+after it has entered into the literature of a people. The bare
+skeleton of facts must be clothed with the flesh and blood of
+imagination, through the humanizing influence of literary
+expression, before it can be assimilated by the average
+intellectual being. The scientific investigator is rarely endowed
+with the gift of weaving the facts into a story that will charm,
+and the man of letters is too often devoid of that patience which
+is the chief virtue of the scientist. These gifts of the gods are
+bestowed upon mankind under the guiding genius of the division of
+labor. The name of Buffon will always be associated with natural
+history, though in the man himself the spirit of science was
+conspicuously absent. In this respect he was in marked contrast
+with his contemporary Linn&aelig;us, whose intellect and labor laid
+the foundations of much of the scientific knowledge of to-day.</p>
+<p class="rgt"><img src="images/buffon.jpg" width="45%" alt=""><br>
+<b>Buffon</b></p>
+<p>George Louis le Clerc Buffon was born on the 7th of September,
+1707, at Montbar, in Burgundy. His father, Benjamin le Clerc, who
+was possessed of a fortune, appears to have bestowed great care and
+liberality on the education of his son. While a youth Buffon made
+the acquaintance of a young English nobleman, the Duke of Kingston,
+whose tutor, a man well versed in the knowledge of physical
+science, exerted a profound influence on the future career of the
+young Frenchman. At twenty-one Buffon came into his mother's
+estate, a fortune yielding an annual income of &pound;12,000. But
+this wealth did not change his purpose to gain knowledge. He
+traveled through Italy, and after living for a short period in
+England returned to France and devoted his time to literary work.
+His first efforts were translations of two English works of
+science--Hale's 'Vegetable Statics' and Newton's 'Fluxions'; and he
+followed these with various studies in the different branches of
+physical science.</p>
+<p>The determining event in his life, which led him to devote the
+rest of his years to the study of natural history, was the death of
+his friend Du Fay, the Intendant of the Jardin du Roi (now the
+Jardin des Plantes), who on his death-bed recommended Buffon as his
+successor. A man of letters, Buffon saw before him the opportunity
+to write a natural history of the earth and its inhabitants; and he
+set to work with a zeal that lasted until his death in 1788, at the
+age of eighty-one. His great work, 'L'Histoire Naturelle,' was the
+outcome of these years of labor, the first edition being complete
+in thirty-six quarto volumes.</p>
+<p>The first fifteen volumes of this great work, published between
+the years 1749 and 1767, treated of the theory of the earth, the
+nature of animals, and the history of man and viviparous
+quadrupeds; and was the joint work of Buffon and Daubenton, a
+physician of Buffon's native village. The scientific portion of the
+work was done by Daubenton, who possessed considerable anatomical
+knowledge, and who wrote accurate descriptions of the various
+animals mentioned. Buffon, however, affected to ignore the work of
+his co-laborer and reaped the entire glory, so that Daubenton
+withdrew his services. Later appeared the nine volumes on birds, in
+which Buffon was aided by the Abb&eacute; Sexon. Then followed the
+'History of Minerals' in five volumes, and seven volumes of
+'Supplements,' the last one of which was published the year after
+Buffon's death.</p>
+<p>One can hardly admire the personal character of Buffon. He was
+vain and superficial, and given to extravagant speculations. He is
+reported to have said, "I know but five great geniuses--Newton,
+Bacon, Leibnitz, Montesquieu, and myself." His natural vanity was
+undoubtedly fostered by the adulation which he received from those
+in authority. He saw his own statue placed in the cabinet of Louis
+XVI., with the inscription "Majestati Natur&aelig; par ingenium."
+Louis XV. bestowed upon him a title of nobility, and crowned heads
+"addressed him in language of the most exaggerated compliment."
+Buffon's conduct and conversation were marked throughout by a
+certain coarseness and vulgarity that constantly appear in his
+writings. He was foppish and trifling, and affected religion though
+at heart a disbeliever.</p>
+<p>The chief value of Buffon's work lies in the fact that it first
+brought the subject of natural history into popular literature.
+Probably no writer of the time, with the exception of Voltaire and
+Rousseau, was so widely read and quoted as Buffon. But the gross
+inaccuracy which pervaded his writings, and the visionary theories
+in which he constantly indulged, gave the work a less permanent
+value than it might otherwise have attained. Buffon detested the
+scientific method, preferring literary finish to accuracy of
+statement. Although the work was widely translated, and was the
+only popular natural history of the time, there is little of it
+that is worthy of a place in the world's best literature. It is
+chiefly as a relic of a past literary epoch, and as the pioneer
+work in a new literary field, that Buffon's writings appeal to us.
+They awakened for the first time a wide interest in natural
+history, though their author was distinctly <i>not</i> a
+naturalist.</p>
+<p>Arabella Buckley has said of Buffon and his writings that though
+"he often made great mistakes and arrived at false conclusions,
+still he had so much genius and knowledge that a great part of his
+work will always remain true." Cuvier has left us a good memoir of
+Buffon in the 'Biographic Universelle.'</p>
+<p class="sign"><img src="images/sign-403.jpg" width="60%" alt=
+""></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BUFFON01"></a>
+<h3>NATURE</h3>
+<center>From the 'Natural History'</center>
+<br>
+<p>So with what magnificence Nature shines upon the earth! A pure
+light extending from east to west gilds successively the
+hemispheres of the globe. An airy transparent element surrounds it;
+a warm and fruitful heat animates and develops all its germs of
+life; living and salutary waters tend to their support and
+increase; high points scattered over the lands, by arresting the
+airy vapors, render these sources inexhaustible and always fresh;
+gathered into immense hollows, they divide the continents. The
+extent of the sea is as great as that of the land. It is not a cold
+and sterile element, but another empire as rich and populated as
+the first. The finger of God has marked the boundaries. When the
+waters encroach upon the beaches of the west, they leave bare those
+of the east. This enormous mass of water, itself inert, follows the
+guidance of heavenly movements. Balanced by the regular
+oscillations of ebb and flow, it rises and falls with the planet of
+night; rising still higher when concurrent with the planet of day,
+the two uniting their forces during the equinoxes cause the great
+tides. Our connection with the heavens is nowhere more clearly
+indicated. From these constant and general movements result others
+variable and particular: removals of earth, deposits at the bottom
+of water forming elevations like those upon the earth's surface,
+currents which, following the direction of these mountain ranges,
+shape them to corresponding angles; and rolling in the midst of the
+waves, as waters upon the earth, are in truth the rivers of the
+sea.</p>
+<p>The air, too, lighter and more fluid than water, obeys many
+forces: the distant action of sun and moon, the immediate action of
+the sea, that of rarefying heat and of condensing cold, produce in
+it continual agitations. The winds are its currents, driving before
+them and collecting the clouds. They produce meteors; transport the
+humid vapors of maritime beaches to the land surfaces of the
+continents; determine the storms; distribute the fruitful rains and
+kindly dews; stir the sea; agitate the mobile waters, arrest or
+hasten the currents; raise floods; excite tempests. The angry sea
+rises toward heaven and breaks roaring against immovable dikes,
+which it can neither destroy nor surmount.</p>
+<p>The land elevated above sea-level is safe from these irruptions.
+Its surface, enameled with flowers, adorned with ever fresh
+verdure, peopled with thousands and thousands of differing species
+of animals, is a place of repose; an abode of delights, where man,
+placed to aid nature, dominates all other things, the only one who
+can know and admire. God has made him spectator of the universe and
+witness of his marvels. He is animated by a divine spark which
+renders him a participant in the divine mysteries; and by whose
+light he thinks and reflects, sees and reads in the book of the
+world as in a copy of divinity.</p>
+<p>Nature is the exterior throne of God's glory. The man who
+studies and contemplates it rises gradually towards the interior
+throne of omniscience. Made to adore the Creator, he commands all
+the creatures. Vassal of heaven, king of earth, which he ennobles
+and enriches, he establishes order, harmony, and subordination
+among living beings. He embellishes Nature itself; cultivates,
+extends, and refines it; suppresses its thistles and brambles, and
+multiplies its grapes and roses.</p>
+<p>Look upon the solitary beaches and sad lands where man has never
+dwelt: covered--or rather bristling--with thick black woods on all
+their rising ground, stunted barkless trees, bent, twisted, falling
+from age; near by, others even more numerous, rotting upon heaps
+already rotten,--stifling, burying the germs ready to burst forth.
+Nature, young everywhere else, is here decrepit. The land
+surmounted by the ruins of these productions offers, instead of
+flourishing verdure, only an incumbered space pierced by aged
+trees, loaded with parasitic plants, lichens, agarics--impure
+fruits of corruption. In the low parts is water, dead and stagnant
+because undirected; or swampy soil neither solid nor liquid, hence
+unapproachable and useless to the habitants both of land and of
+water. Here are swamps covered with rank aquatic plants nourishing
+only venomous insects and haunted by unclean animals. Between these
+low infectious marshes and these higher ancient forests extend
+plains having nothing in common with our meadows, upon which weeds
+smother useful plants. There is none of that fine turf which seems
+like down upon the earth, or of that enameled lawn which announces
+a brilliant fertility; but instead an interlacement of hard and
+thorny herbs which seem to cling to each other rather than to the
+soil, and which, successively withering and impeding each other,
+form a coarse mat several feet thick. There are no roads, no
+communications, no vestiges of intelligence in these wild places.
+Man, obliged to follow the paths of savage beasts and to watch
+constantly lest he become their prey, terrified by their roars,
+thrilled by the very silence of these profound solitudes, turns
+back and says:--</p>
+<p>Primitive nature is hideous and dying; I, I alone, can make it
+living and agreeable. Let us dry these swamps; converting into
+streams and canals, animate these dead waters by setting them in
+motion. Let us use the active and devouring element once hidden
+from us, and which we ourselves have discovered; and set fire to
+this superfluous mat, to these aged forests already half consumed,
+and finish with iron what fire cannot destroy! Soon, instead of
+rush and water-lily from which the toad compounds his venom, we
+shall see buttercups and clover, sweet and salutary herbs. Herds of
+bounding animals will tread this once impracticable soil and find
+abundant, constantly renewed pasture. They will multiply, to
+multiply again. Let us employ the new aid to complete our work; and
+let the ox, submissive to the yoke, exercise his strength in
+furrowing the land. Then it will grow young again with cultivation,
+and a new nature shall spring up under our hands.</p>
+<p>How beautiful is cultivated Nature when by the cares of man she
+is brilliantly and pompously adorned! He himself is the chief
+ornament, the most noble production; in multiplying himself he
+multiplies her most precious gem. She seems to multiply herself
+with him, for his art brings to light all that her bosom conceals.
+What treasures hitherto ignored! What new riches! Flowers, fruits,
+perfected grains infinitely multiplied; useful species of animals
+transported, propagated, endlessly increased; harmful species
+destroyed, confined, banished; gold, and iron more necessary than
+gold, drawn from the bowels of the earth; torrents confined; rivers
+directed and restrained; the sea, submissive and comprehended,
+crossed from one hemisphere to the other; the earth everywhere
+accessible, everywhere living and fertile; in the valleys, laughing
+prairies; in the plains, rich pastures or richer harvests; the
+hills loaded with vines and fruits, their summits crowned by useful
+trees and young forests; deserts changed to cities inhabited by a
+great people, who, ceaselessly circulating, scatter themselves from
+centres to extremities; frequent open roads and communications
+established everywhere like so many witnesses of the force and
+union of society; a thousand other monuments of power and glory:
+proving that man, master of the world, has transformed it, renewed
+its whole surface, and that he shares his empire with Nature.</p>
+<p>However, he rules only by right of conquest, and enjoys rather
+than possesses. He can only retain by ever-renewed efforts. If
+these cease, everything languishes, changes, grows disordered,
+enters again into the hands of Nature. She retakes her rights;
+effaces man's work; covers his most sumptuous monuments with dust
+and moss; destroys them in time, leaving him only the regret that
+he has lost by his own fault the conquests of his ancestors. These
+periods during which man loses his domain, ages of barbarism when
+everything perishes, are always prepared by wars and arrive with
+famine and depopulation. Man, who can do nothing except in numbers,
+and is only strong in union, only happy in peace, has the madness
+to arm himself for his unhappiness and to fight for his own ruin.
+Incited by insatiable greed, blinded by still more insatiable
+ambition, he renounces the sentiments of humanity, turns all his
+forces against himself, and seeking to destroy his fellow, does
+indeed destroy himself. And after these days of blood and carnage,
+when the smoke of glory has passed away, he sees with sadness that
+the earth is devastated, the arts buried, the nations dispersed,
+the races enfeebled, his own happiness ruined, and his power
+annihilated.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BUFFON02"></a>
+<h3>THE HUMMING-BIRD</h3>
+<center>From the 'Natural History'</center>
+<br>
+<p>Of all animated beings this is the most elegant in form and the
+most brilliant in colors. The stones and metals polished by our
+arts are not comparable to this jewel of Nature. She has placed it
+least in size of the order of birds, <i>maxime miranda in
+minimis</i>. Her masterpiece is the little humming-bird, and upon
+it she has heaped all the gifts which the other birds may only
+share. Lightness, rapidity, nimbleness, grace, and rich apparel all
+belong to this little favorite. The emerald, the ruby, and the
+topaz gleam upon its dress. It never soils them with the dust of
+earth, and in its a&euml;rial life scarcely touches the turf an
+instant. Always in the air, flying from flower to flower, it has
+their freshness as well as their brightness. It lives upon their
+nectar, and dwells only in the climates where they perennially
+bloom.</p>
+<p>All kinds of humming-birds are found in the hottest countries of
+the New World. They are quite numerous and seem to be confined
+between the two tropics, for those which penetrate the temperate
+zones in summer only stay there a short time. They seem to follow
+the sun in its advance and retreat; and to fly on the wing of
+zephyrs after an eternal spring.</p>
+<p>The smaller species of the humming-birds are less in size than
+the great fly wasp, and more slender than the drone. Their beak is
+a fine needle and their tongue a slender thread. Their little black
+eyes are like two shining points, and the feathers of their wings
+so delicate that they seem transparent. Their short feet, which
+they use very little, are so tiny one can scarcely see them. They
+alight only at night, resting in the air during the day. They have
+a swift continual humming flight. The movement of their wings is so
+rapid that when pausing in the air, the bird seems quite
+motionless. One sees him stop before a blossom, then dart like a
+flash to another, visiting all, plunging his tongue into their
+hearts, flattening them with his wings, never settling anywhere,
+but neglecting none. He hastens his inconstancies only to pursue
+his loves more eagerly and to multiply his innocent joys. For this
+light lover of flowers lives at their expense without ever
+blighting them. He only pumps their honey, and to this alone his
+tongue seems destined.</p>
+<p>The vivacity of these small birds is only equaled by their
+courage, or rather their audacity. Sometimes they may be seen
+chasing furiously birds twenty times their size, fastening upon
+their bodies, letting themselves be carried along in their flight,
+while they peck them fiercely until their tiny rage is satisfied.
+Sometimes they fight each other vigorously. Impatience seems their
+very essence. If they approach a blossom and find it faded, they
+mark their spite by hasty rending of the petals. Their only voice
+is a weak cry, "<i>screp, screp</i>," frequent and repeated, which
+they utter in the woods from dawn, until at the first rays of the
+sun they all take flight and scatter over the country.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="BULWER"></a>
+<h2>EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON</h2>
+<h3>(1803-1873)</h3>
+<center>BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE</center>
+<br>
+<p class="par"><img src="images/letter-t.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>he patrician in literature is always an interesting spectacle.
+We are prone to regard his performance as a test of the worth of
+long descent and high breeding. If he does well, he vindicates the
+claims of his caste; if ill, we infer that inherited estates and
+blue blood are but surface advantages, leaving the effective brain
+unimproved, or even causing deterioration. But the argument is
+still open; and whether genius be the creature of circumstance or
+divinely independent, is a question which prejudice rather than
+evidence commonly decides.</p>
+<p>Certainly literature tries men's souls. The charlatan must
+betray himself. Genius shines through all cerements. On the other
+hand, genius may be nourished, and the charlatan permeates all
+classes. The truth probably is that an aristocrat is quite as apt
+as a plebeian to be a good writer. Only since there are fewer of
+the former than of the latter, and since, unlike the last, the
+first are seldom forced to live by their brains, there are more
+plebeian than aristocratic names on the literary roll of honor.
+Admitting this, the instance of the writer known as "Bulwer" proves
+nothing one way or the other. At all events, not, Was he a genius
+because he was a, patrician? but, Was he a genius at all? is the
+inquiry most germane to our present purpose.</p>
+<p>An aristocrat of aristocrats undoubtedly he was, though it
+concerns us not to determine whether the blood of Plantagenet kings
+and Norman conquerors really flowed in his veins. On both father's
+and mother's side he was thoroughly well connected. Heydon Hall in
+Norfolk was the hereditary home of the Norman Bulwers; the Saxon
+Lyttons had since the Conquest lived at Knebworth in Derbyshire.
+The historic background of each family was honorable, and when the
+marriage of William Earle Bulwer with Elizabeth Barbara Lytton
+united them, it might be said that in their offspring England found
+her type.</p>
+<p>Edward, being the youngest son, had little money, but he
+happened to have brains. He began existence delicate and
+precocious. Culture, with him, set in almost with what he would
+have termed the "consciousness of his own identity," and the
+process never intermitted: in fact, appearances to the contrary
+notwithstanding, his spiritual and intellectual emancipation was
+hindered by many obstacles; for, an ailing child, he was petted by
+his mother, and such germs of intelligence (verses at seven years
+old, and the like) as he betrayed were trumpeted as prodigies. He
+was spoilt so long before he was ripe that it is a marvel he ever
+ripened at all. Many years must pass before vanity could be
+replaced in him by manly ambition; a vein of silliness is traceable
+through his career almost to the end. He expatiated in the falsetto
+key; almost never do we hear in his voice that hearty bass note so
+dear to plain humanity. In his pilgrimage toward freedom he had to
+wrestle not only with flesh-and-blood mothers, uncles, and wives,
+<i>et id genus omne</i>, but with the more subtle and vital ideas,
+superstitions, and prejudices appertaining to his social station.
+His worst foes were not those of his household merely, but of his
+heart. The more arduous achievement of such a man is to see his
+real self and believe in it. There are so many misleading
+purple-velvet waistcoats, gold chains, superfine sentiments, and
+blue-blooded affiliations in the way, that the true nucleus of so
+much decoration becomes less accessible than the needle in the
+hay-stack. It is greatly to Bulwer's credit that he stuck valiantly
+to his quest, and nearly, if not quite, ran down his game at last.
+His intellectual record is one of constant progress, from childhood
+to age.</p>
+<p>Whether his advance in other respects was as uniform does not
+much concern us. He was unhappy with his wife, and perhaps they
+even threw things at each other at table, the servants looking on.
+Nothing in his matrimonial relations so much became him as his
+conduct after their severance: he held his tongue like a man, in
+spite of the poor lady's shrieks and clapper-clawings. His
+whimsical, hair-splitting conscientiousness is less admirable. A
+healthy conscience does not whine--it creates. No one cares to know
+what a man thinks of his own actions. No one is interested to learn
+that Bulwer meant 'Paul Clifford' to be an edifying work, or that
+he married his wife from the highest motives. We do not take him so
+seriously: we are satisfied that he wrote the story first and
+discovered its morality afterwards; and that lofty motives would
+not have united him to Miss Rosina Doyle Wheeler had she not been
+pretty and clever. His hectic letters to his mamma; his Byronic
+struttings and mouthings over the grave of his schoolgirl
+lady-love; his eighteenth-century comedy-scene with Caroline Lamb;
+his starched-frill participation in the Fred Villiers duel at
+Boulogne,--how silly and artificial is all this! There is no
+genuine feeling in it: he attires himself in tawdry sentiment as in
+a flowered waistcoat. What a difference between him, at this
+period, and his contemporary Benjamin Disraeli, who indeed
+committed similar inanities, but with a saturnine sense of humor
+cropping out at every turn which altered the whole complexion of
+the performance. We laugh at the one, but with the other.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="bulwer.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/bulwer.jpg"><img src=
+"images/bulwer.jpg" width="45%" alt=""></a></p>
+<br>
+<p>Of course, however, there was a man hidden somewhere in Edward
+Bulwer's perfumed clothes and mincing attitudes, else the world had
+long since forgotten him. Amidst his dandyism, he learned how to
+speak well in debate and how to use his hands to guard his head; he
+paid his debts by honest hard work, and would not be dishonorably
+beholden to his mother or any one else. He posed as a blighted
+being, and invented black evening-dress; but he lived down the
+scorn of such men as Tennyson and Thackeray, and won their respect
+and friendship at last. He aimed high, according to his lights,
+meant well, and in the long run did well too.</p>
+<p>The main activities of his life--and from start to finish his
+energy was great--were in politics and in literature. His political
+career covers about forty years, from the time he took his degree
+at Cambridge till Lord Derby made him a peer in 1866. He
+accomplished nothing of serious importance, but his course was
+always creditable: he began as a sentimental Radical and ended as a
+liberal Conservative; he advocated the Crimean War; the Corn Laws
+found him in a compromising humor; his record as Colonial Secretary
+offers nothing memorable in statesmanship. The extraordinary
+brilliancy of his brother Henry's diplomatic life throws Edward's
+achievements into the shade. There is nothing to be ashamed of, but
+had he done nothing else he would have been unknown. But
+literature, first seriously cultivated as a means of livelihood,
+outlasted his political ambitions, and his books are to-day his
+only claim to remembrance. They made a strong impression at the
+time they were written, and many are still read as much as ever, by
+a generation born after his death. Their popularity is not of the
+catchpenny sort; thoughtful people read them, as well as the great
+drove of the undiscriminating. For they are the product of thought:
+they show workmanship; they have quality; they are carefully made.
+If the literary critic never finds occasion to put off the shoes
+from his feet as in the sacred presence of genius, he is constantly
+moved to recognize with a friendly nod the presence of sterling
+talent. He is even inclined to think that nobody else ever had so
+much talent as this little red-haired, blue-eyed, high-nosed,
+dandified Edward Bulwer; the mere mass of it lifts him at times to
+the levels where genius dwells, though he never quite shares their
+nectar and ambrosia. He as it were catches echoes of the talk of
+the Immortals,--the turn of their phrase, the intonation of their
+utterance,--and straightway reproduces it with the fidelity of the
+phonograph. But, as in the phonograph, we find something lacking;
+our mind accepts the report as genuine, but our ear affirms an
+unreality; this is reproduction, indeed, but not creation. Bulwer
+himself, when his fit is past, and his critical faculty re-awakens,
+probably knows as well as another that these labored and
+meritorious pages of his are not graven on the eternal adamant. But
+they are the best he can do, and perhaps there is none better of
+their kind. They have a right to be; for while genius may do harm
+as well as good, Bulwer never does harm, and in spite of sickly
+sentiment and sham philosophy, is uniformly instructive, amusing,
+and edifying.</p>
+<p>"To love her," wrote Dick Steele of a certain great dame, "is a
+liberal education;" and we might almost say the same of the reading
+of Bulwer's romances. He was learned, and he put into his books all
+his learning, as well as all else that was his. They represent
+artistically grouped, ingeniously lighted, with suitable
+acompaniments of music and illusion--the acquisitions of his
+intellect, the sympathies of his nature, and the achievements of
+his character.</p>
+<p>He wrote in various styles, making deliberate experiments in one
+after another, and often hiding himself completely in anonymity. He
+was versatile, not deep. Robert Louis Stevenson also employs
+various styles; but with him the changes are intuitive--they are
+the subtle variations in touch and timbre which genius makes, in
+harmony with the subject treated. Stevenson could not have written
+'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' in the same tune and key as 'Treasure
+Island'; and the music of 'Marxheim' differs from both. The reason
+is organic: the writer is inspired by his theme, and it passes
+through his mind with a lilt and measure of its own. It makes its
+own style, just as a human spirit makes its own features and gait;
+and we know Stevenson through all his transformations only by dint
+of the exquisite distinction and felicity of word and phrase that
+always characterize him. Now, with Bulwer there is none of this
+lovely inevitable spontaneity. He costumes his tale arbitrarily,
+like a stage-haberdasher, and invents a voice to deliver it withal.
+'The Last Days of Pompeii' shall be mouthed out grandiloquently;
+the incredibilities of 'The Coming Race' shall wear the guise of
+na&iuml;ve and artless narrative; the humors of 'The Caxtons' and
+'What Will He Do with It?' shall reflect the mood of the sagacious,
+affable man of the world, gossiping over the nuts and wine; the
+marvels of 'Zanoni' and 'A Strange Story' must be portrayed with a
+resonance and exaltation of diction fitted to their transcendental
+claims. But between the stark mechanism of the Englishman and the
+lithe, inspired felicity of the Scot, what a difference!</p>
+<p>Bulwer's work may be classified according to subject, though not
+chronologically. He wrote novels of society, of history, of
+mystery, and of romance. In all he was successful, and perhaps felt
+as much interest in one as in another. In his own life the study of
+the occult played a part; he was familiar with the contemporary
+fads in mystery and acquainted with their professors. "Ancient"
+history also attracted him, and he even wrote a couple of volumes
+of a 'History of Athens.' In all his writing there is a tendency to
+lapse into a discussion of the "Ideal and the Real," aiming always
+at the conclusion that the only true Real is the Ideal. It was this
+tendency which chiefly aroused the ridicule of his critics, and
+from the 'Sredwardlyttonbulwig' of Thackeray to the 'Condensed
+Novels' burlesque of Bret Harte, they harp upon that facile string,
+The thing satirized is after all not cheaper than the satire. The
+ideal <i>is</i> the true real; the only absurdity lies in the pomp
+and circumstance wherewith that simple truth is introduced. There
+<i>is</i> a 'Dweller on the Threshold,' but it, or he, is nothing
+more than that doubt concerning the truth of spiritual things which
+assails all beginners in higher speculation, and there was no need
+to call it or him by so formidable a name. A sense of humor would
+have saved Bulwer from almost all his faults, and have endowed him
+with several valuable virtues into the bargain; but it was not born
+in him, and with all his diligence he never could beget it.</p>
+<p>The domestic series, of which 'The Caxtons' is the type, are the
+most generally popular of his works, and are likely to be so
+longest. The romantic vein ('Ernest Maltravers,' 'Alice, or the
+Mysteries,' etc.) are in his worst style, and are now only in
+existence as books because they are members of "the edition," It is
+doubtful if any human being has read one of them through in twenty
+years. Such historical books as 'The Last Days of Pompeii' are not
+only well constructed dramatically, but are painfully accurate in
+details, and may still be read for information as well as for
+pleasure. The 'Zanoni' species is undeniably interesting. The weird
+traditions of the 'Philosopher's Stone' and the 'Elixir of Life'
+can never cease to fascinate human souls, and all the paraphernalia
+of magic are charming to minds weary of the matter-of-factitude of
+current existence. The stories are put together with Bulwer's
+unfailing cleverness, and in all external respects neither Dumas
+nor Balzac has done anything better in this kind: the trouble is
+that these authors compel our belief, while Bulwer does not. For,
+once more, he lacks the magic of genius and the spirit of style
+which are immortally and incommunicably theirs, without which no
+other magic can be made literarily effective.</p>
+<p>'Pelham,' written at twenty-five years of age, is a creditable
+boy's book; it aims to portray character as well as to develop
+incidents, and in spite of the dreadful silliness of its
+melodramatic passages it has merit. Conventionally it is more
+nearly a work of art than that other famous boy's book, Disraeli's
+'Vivian Grey,' though the latter is alive and blooming with the
+original literary charm which is denied to the other. Other
+characteristic novels of his are 'The Last Days of Pompeii,'
+'Ernest Maltravers,' 'Zanoni,' 'The Caxtons,' 'My Novel,' 'What
+Will He Do with It?' 'A Strange Story,' 'The Coming Race,' and
+'Kenelm Chillingly,' the last of which appeared in the year of the
+author's death, 1873. The student who has read these books will
+know all that is worth knowing of Bulwer's work. He wrote upwards
+of fifty substantial volumes, and left a mass of posthumous
+material besides. Of all that he did, the most nearly satisfactory
+thing is one of the last, 'Kenelm Chillingly.' In style, persons,
+and incidents it is alike charming: it subsides somewhat into the
+inevitable Bulwer sentimentality towards the end--a silk purse
+cannot be made out of a sow's ear; but the miracle was never nearer
+being accomplished than in this instance. Here we see the
+thoroughly equipped man of letters doing with apparent ease what
+scarce five of his contemporaries could have done at all. The book
+is lightsome and graceful, yet it touches serious thoughts: most
+remarkable of all, it shows a suppleness of mind and freshness of
+feeling more to be expected in a youth of thirty than in a veteran
+of threescore and ten. Bulwer never ceased to grow; and what is
+better still, to grow away from his faults and towards
+improvement.</p>
+<p>But in comparing him with others, we must admit that he had
+better opportunities than most. His social station brought him in
+contact with the best people and most pregnant events of his time;
+and the driving poverty of youth having established him in the
+novel-writing habit, he thereafter had leisure to polish and expand
+his faculty to the utmost. No talent of his was folded up in a
+napkin: he did his best and utmost with all he had. Whereas the
+path of genius is commonly tortuous and hard-beset: and while we
+are always saying of Shakespeare, or Thackeray, or Shelley, or
+Keats, or Poe, "What wonders they would have done had life been
+longer or fate kinder to them!"--of Bulwer we say, "No help was
+wanting to him, and he profited by all; he got out of the egg more
+than we had believed was in it!" Instead of a great faculty hobbled
+by circumstance, we have a small faculty magnified by occasion and
+enriched by time.</p>
+<p>Certainly, as men of letters go, Bulwer must be accounted
+fortunate. The long inflamed row of his domestic life apart, all
+things went his way. He received large sums for his books; at the
+age of forty, his mother dying, he succeeded to the Knebworth
+estate; three-and-twenty years later his old age (if such a man
+could be called old) was consoled by the title of Lord Lytton. His
+health was never robust, and occasionally failed; but he seems to
+have been able to accomplish after a fashion everything that he
+undertook; he was "thorough," as the English say. He lived in the
+midst of events; he was a friend of the men who made the age, and
+saw them make it, lending a hand himself too when and where he
+could. He lived long enough to see the hostility which had opposed
+him in youth die away, and honor and kindness take its place. Let
+it be repeated, his aims were good. He would have been candid and
+un-selfconscious had that been possible for him; and perhaps the
+failure was one of manner rather than of heart.--Yes, he was a
+fortunate man.</p>
+<p>His most conspicuous success was as a play-writer. In view of
+his essentially dramatic and historic temperament, it is surprising
+that he did not altogether devote himself to this branch of art;
+but all his dramas were produced between his thirty-third and his
+thirty-eighth years. The first--'La Duchesse de la Valliere' was
+not to the public liking; but 'The Lady of Lyons,' written in two
+weeks, is in undiminished favor after near sixty years; and so are
+'Richelieu' and 'Money.' There is no apparent reason why Bulwer
+should not have been as prolific a stage-author as Moli&egrave;re
+or even Lope de Vega. But we often value our best faculties
+least.</p>
+<p>'The Coming Race,' published anonymously and never acknowledged
+during his life, was an unexpected product of his mind, but is
+useful to mark his limitations. It is a forecast of the future, and
+proves, as nothing else could so well do, the utter absence in
+Bulwer of the creative imagination. It is an invention, cleverly
+conceived, mechanically and rather tediously worked out, and
+written in a style astonishingly commonplace. The man who wrote
+that book (one would say) had no heaven in his soul, nor any
+pinions whereon to soar heavenward. Yet it is full of thought and
+ingenuity, and the central conception of "vrii" has been much
+commended. But the whole concoction is tainted with the deadness of
+stark materialism, and we should be unjust, after all, to deny
+Bulwer something loftier and broader than is discoverable here. In
+inventing the narrative he depended upon the weakest element in his
+mental make-up, and the result could not but be dismal. We like to
+believe that there was better stuff in him than he himself ever
+found; and that when he left this world for the next, he had
+sloughed off more dross than most men have time to accumulate.</p>
+<p class="sign"><img src="images/sign-417.jpg" width="60%" alt=
+""></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BULWER01"></a>
+<h3>THE AMPHITHEATRE</h3>
+<center>From 'The Last Days of Pompeii'</center>
+<br>
+<p>On the upper tier (but apart from the male spectators) sat the
+women, their gay dresses resembling some gaudy flowerbed; it is
+needless to add that they were the most talkative part of the
+assembly; and many were the looks directed up to them, especially
+from the benches appropriated to the young and the unmarried men.
+On the lower seats round the arena sat the more high-born and
+wealthy visitors--the magistrates and those of senatorial or
+equestrian dignity: the passages which, by corridors at the right
+and left, gave access to these seats, at either end of the oval
+arena, were also the entrances for the combatants. Strong palings
+at these passages prevented any unwelcome eccentricity in the
+movements of the beasts, and confined them to their appointed prey.
+Around the parapet which was raised above the arena, and from which
+the seats gradually rose, were gladiatorial inscriptions, and
+paintings wrought in fresco, typical of the entertainments for
+which the place was designed. Throughout the whole building wound
+invisible pipes, from which, as the day advanced, cooling and
+fragrant showers were to be sprinkled over the spectators. The
+officers of the amphitheatre were still employed in the task of
+fixing the vast awning (or <i>velaria</i>) which covered the whole,
+and which luxurious invention the Campanians arrogated to
+themselves: it was woven of the whitest Apulian wool, and
+variegated with broad stripes of crimson. Owing either to some
+inexperience on the part of the workmen or to some defect in the
+machinery, the awning, however, was not arranged that day so
+happily as usual; indeed, from the immense space of the
+circumference, the task was always one of great difficulty and
+art--so much so that it could seldom be adventured in rough or
+windy weather. But the present day was so remarkably still that
+there seemed to the spectators no excuse for the awkwardness of the
+artificers; and when a large gap in the back of the awning was
+still visible, from the obstinate refusal of one part of the
+velaria to ally itself with the rest, the murmurs of discontent
+were loud and general.</p>
+<p>The sedile Pansa, at whose expense the exhibition was given,
+looked particularly annoyed at the defect, and vowed bitter
+vengeance on the head of the chief officer of the show, who,
+fretting, puffing, perspiring, busied himself in idle orders and
+unavailing threats.</p>
+<p>The hubbub ceased suddenly--the operators desisted--the crowd
+were stilled--the gap was forgotten--for now, with a loud and
+warlike flourish of trumpets, the gladiators, marshaled in
+ceremonious procession, entered the arena. They swept round the
+oval space very slowly and deliberately, in order to give the
+spectators full leisure to admire their stern serenity of
+feature--their brawny limbs and various arms, as well as to form
+such wagers as the excitement of the moment might suggest.</p>
+<p>"Oh!" cried the widow Fulvia to the wife of Pansa, as they
+leaned down from their lofty bench, "do you see that gigantic
+gladiator? how drolly he is dressed!"</p>
+<p>"Yes," said the aedile's wife with complacent importance, for
+she knew all the names and qualities of each combatant: "he is a
+retiarius or netter; he is armed only, you see, with a
+three-pronged spear like a trident, and a net; he wears no armor,
+only the fillet and the tunic. He is a mighty man, and is to fight
+with Sporus, yon thick-set gladiator, with the round shield and
+drawn sword but without body armor; he has not his helmet on now,
+in order that you may see his face--how fearless it is! By-and-by
+he will fight with his visor down."</p>
+<p>"But surely a net and a spear are poor arms against a shield and
+sword?"</p>
+<p>"That shows how innocent you are, my dear Fulvia: the retiarius
+has generally the best of it."</p>
+<p>"But who is yon handsome gladiator, nearly naked--is it not
+quite improper? By Venus! but his limbs are beautifully
+shaped!"</p>
+<p>"It is Lydon, a young untried man! he has the rashness to fight
+yon other gladiator similarly dressed, or rather
+undressed--Tetraides. They fight first in the Greek fashion, with
+the cestus; afterward they put on armor, and try sword and
+shield."</p>
+<p>"He is a proper man, this Lydon; and the women, I am sure, are
+on his side."</p>
+<p>"So are not the experienced bettors: Clodius offers three to one
+against him."</p>
+<p>"Oh, Jove! how beautiful!" exclaimed the widow, as two
+gladiators, armed <i>cap-&agrave;-pie,</i> rode round the arena on
+light and prancing steeds. Resembling much the combatants in the
+tilts of the middle age, they bore lances and round shields
+beautifully inlaid; their armor was woven intricately with bands of
+iron, but it covered only the thighs and the right arms; short
+cloaks extending to the seat gave a picturesque and graceful air to
+their costume; their legs were naked with the exception of sandals,
+which were fastened a little above the ankle. "Oh, beautiful! Who
+are these?" asked the widow.</p>
+<p>"The one is named Berbix: he has conquered twelve times. The
+other assumes the arrogant Nobilior. They are both Gauls."</p>
+<p>While thus conversing, the first formalities of the show were
+over. To these succeeded a feigned combat with wooden swords
+between the various gladiators matched against each other. Among
+these the skill of two Roman gladiators, hired for the occasion,
+was the most admired; and next to them the most graceful combatant
+was Lydon. This sham contest did not last above an hour, nor did it
+attract any very lively interest except among those connoisseurs of
+the arena to whom art was preferable to more coarse excitement; the
+body of the spectators were rejoiced when it was over, and when the
+sympathy rose to terror. The combatants were now arranged in pairs,
+as agreed beforehand; their weapons examined; and the grave sports
+of the day commenced amid the deepest silence--broken only by an
+exciting and preliminary blast of warlike music.</p>
+<p>It was often customary to begin the sports by the most cruel of
+all; and some bestiarius, or gladiator appointed to the beasts, was
+slain first as an initiatory sacrifice. But in the present instance
+the experienced Pansa thought better that the sanguinary drama
+should advance, not decrease, in interest; and accordingly the
+execution of Olinthus and Glaucus was reserved for the last. It was
+arranged that the two horsemen should first occupy the arena; that
+the foot gladiators, paired off, should then be loosed
+indiscriminately on the stage; that Glaucus and the lion should
+next perform their part in the bloody spectacle; and the tiger and
+the Nazarene be the grand finale. And in the spectacles of Pompeii,
+the reader of Roman history must limit his imagination, nor expect
+to find those vast and wholesale exhibitions of magnificent
+slaughter with which a Nero or a Caligula regaled the inhabitants
+of the Imperial City. The Roman shows, which absorbed the more
+celebrated gladiators and the chief proportion of foreign beasts,
+were indeed the very reason why in the lesser towns of the empire
+the sports of the amphitheatre were comparatively humane and rare;
+and in this as in other respects, Pompeii was the miniature, the
+microcosm of Rome. Still, it was an awful and imposing spectacle,
+with which modern times have, happily, nothing to compare; a vast
+theatre, rising row upon row, and swarming with human beings, from
+fifteen to eighteen thousand in number, intent upon no fictitious
+representation--no tragedy of the stage--but the actual victory or
+defeat, the exultant life or the bloody death, of each and all who
+entered the arena!</p>
+<p>The two horsemen were now at either extremity of the lists (if
+so they might be called), and at a given signal from Pansa the
+combatants started simultaneously as in full collision, each
+advancing his round buckler, each poising on high his sturdy
+javelin; but just when within three paces of his opponent, the
+steed of Berbix suddenly halted, wheeled round, and, as Nobilior
+was borne rapidly by, his antagonist spurred upon him. The buckler
+of Nobilior, quickly and skillfully extended, received a blow which
+otherwise would have been fatal.</p>
+<p>"Well done, Nobilior!" cried the pr&aelig;tor, giving the first
+vent to the popular excitement.</p>
+<p>"Bravely struck, my Berbix!" answered Clodius from his seat.</p>
+<p>And the wild murmur, swelled by many a shout, echoed from side
+to side.</p>
+<p>The visors of both the horsemen were completely closed (like
+those of the knights in after times), but the head was nevertheless
+the great point of assault; and Nobilior, now wheeling his charger
+with no less adroitness than his opponent, directed his spear full
+on the helmet of his foe. Berbix raised his buckler to shield
+himself, and his quick-eyed antagonist, suddenly lowering his
+weapon, pierced him through the breast. Berbix reeled and fell.</p>
+<p>"Nobilior! Nobilior!" shouted the populace.</p>
+<p>"I have lost ten sestertia," said Clodius, between his
+teeth.</p>
+<p>"<i>Habet</i>!" (He has it) said Pansa deliberately.</p>
+<p>The populace, not yet hardened into cruelty, made the signal of
+mercy: but as the attendants of the arena approached, they found
+the kindness came too late; the heart of the Gaul had been pierced,
+and his eyes were set in death. It was his life's blood that flowed
+so darkly over the sand and sawdust of the arena.</p>
+<p>"It is a pity it was so soon over--there was little enough for
+one's trouble," said the widow Fulvia.</p>
+<p>"Yes--I have no compassion for Berbix. Any one might have seen
+that Nobilior did but feint. Mark, they fix the fatal hook to the
+body--they drag him away to the spoliarium--they scatter new sand
+over the stage! Pansa regrets nothing more than that he is not rich
+enough to strew the arena with borax and cinnabar, as Nero used to
+do."</p>
+<p>"Well, if it has been a brief battle, it is quickly succeeded.
+See my handsome Lydon on the arena--ay, and the net-bearer too, and
+the swordsmen! Oh, charming!"</p>
+<p>There were now on the arena six combatants: Niger and his net,
+matched against Sporus with his shield and his short broad-sword;
+Lydon and Tetraides, naked save by a cincture round the waist, each
+armed only with a heavy Greek cestus; and two gladiators from Rome,
+clad in complete steel, and evenly matched with immense bucklers
+and pointed swords.</p>
+<p>The initiatory contest between Lydon and Tetraides being less
+deadly than that between the other combatants, no sooner had they
+advanced to the middle of the arena than as by common consent the
+rest held back, to see how that contest should be decided, and wait
+till fiercer weapons might replace the cestus ere they themselves
+commenced hostilities. They stood leaning on their arms and apart
+from each other, gazing on the show, which, if not bloody enough
+thoroughly to please the populace, they were still inclined to
+admire because its origin was of their ancestral Greece.</p>
+<p>No persons could at first glance have seemed less evenly matched
+than the two antagonists. Tetraides, though no taller than Lydon,
+weighed considerably more; the natural size of his muscles was
+increased, to the eyes of the vulgar, by masses of solid flesh;
+for, as it was a notion that the contest of the cestus fared
+easiest with him who was plumpest, Tetraides had encouraged to the
+utmost his hereditary predisposition to the portly. His shoulders
+were vast, and his lower limbs thick-set, double-jointed, and
+slightly curved outward, in that formation which takes so much from
+beauty to give so largely to strength. But Lydon, except that he
+was slender even almost to meagreness, was beautifully and
+delicately proportioned; and the skillful might have perceived that
+with much less compass of muscle than his foe, that which he had
+was more seasoned--iron and compact. In proportion, too, as he
+wanted flesh, he was likely to possess activity; and a haughty
+smile on his resolute face, which strongly contrasted with the
+solid heaviness of his enemy's, gave assurance to those who beheld
+it and united their hope to their pity; so that despite the
+disparity of their seeming strength, the cry of the multitude was
+nearly as loud for Lydon as for Tetraides.</p>
+<p>Whoever is acquainted with the modern prize-ring--whoever has
+witnessed the heavy and disabling strokes which the human fist,
+skillfully directed, hath the power to bestow--may easily
+understand how much that happy facility would be increased by a
+band carried by thongs of leather round the arm as high as the
+elbow, and terribly strengthened about the knuckles by a plate of
+iron, and sometimes a plummet of lead. Yet this, which was meant to
+increase, perhaps rather diminished, the interest of the fray; for
+it necessarily shortened its duration. A very few blows,
+successfully and scientifically planted, might suffice to bring the
+contest to a close; and the battle did not, therefore, often allow
+full scope for the energy, fortitude, and dogged perseverance that
+we technically style <i>pluck</i>, which not unusually wins the day
+against superior science, and which heightens to so painful a
+delight the interest in the battle and the sympathy for the
+brave.</p>
+<p>"Guard thyself!" growled Tetraides, moving nearer and nearer to
+his foe, who rather shifted round him than receded.</p>
+<p>Lydon did not answer, save by a scornful glance of his quick,
+vigilant eye. Tetraides struck--it was as the blow of a smith on a
+vise; Lydon sank suddenly on one knee--the blow passed over his
+head. Not so harmless was Lydon's retaliation; he quickly sprang to
+his feet, and aimed his cestus full on the broad chest of his
+antagonist. Tetraides reeled--the populace shouted.</p>
+<p>"You are unlucky to-day," said Lepidus to Clodius: "you have
+lost one bet; you will lose another."</p>
+<p>"By the gods! my bronzes go to the auctioneer if that is the
+case. I have no less than a hundred sestertia upon Tetraides. Ha,
+ha! see how he rallies! That was a home stroke: he has cut open
+Lydon's shoulder.--A Tetraides!--a Tetraides!"</p>
+<p>"But Lydon is not disheartened. By Pollux! how well he keeps his
+temper! See how dextrously he avoids those hammer-like
+hands!--dodging now here, now there--circling round and round. Ah,
+poor Lydon! he has it again."</p>
+<p>"Three to one still on Tetraides! What say you, Lepidus?"</p>
+<p>"Well--nine sestertia to three--be it so! What! again Lydon. He
+stops--he gasps for breath. By the gods, he is down! No--he is
+again on his legs. Brave Lydon! Tetraides is encouraged--he laughs
+loud--he rushes on him."</p>
+<p>"Fool--success blinds him--he should be cautious. Lydon's eye is
+like a lynx's!" said Clodius, between his teeth.</p>
+<p>"Ha, Clodius! saw you that? Your man totters! Another blow--he
+falls--he falls!"</p>
+<p>"Earth revives him then. He is once more up; but the blood rolls
+down his face."</p>
+<p>"By the Thunderer! Lydon wins it. See how he presses on him!
+That blow on the temple would have crushed an ox! it <i>has</i>
+crushed Tetraides. He falls again--he cannot
+move--<i>habet</i>!--<i>habet</i>!"</p>
+<p>"<i>Habet</i>!" repeated Pansa. "Take them out and give them the
+armor and swords." ...</p>
+<p>While the contest in the amphitheatre had thus commenced, there
+was one in the loftier benches for whom it had assumed indeed a
+poignant, a stifling interest. The aged father of Lydon, despite
+his Christian horror of the spectacle, in his agonized anxiety for
+his son had not been able to resist being the spectator of his
+fate. Once amid a fierce crowd of strangers, the lowest rabble of
+the populace, the old man saw, felt nothing but the form, the
+presence of his brave son! Not a sound had escaped his lips when
+twice he had seen him fall to the earth; only he had turned paler,
+and his limbs trembled. But he had uttered one low cry when he saw
+him victorious; unconscious, alas! of the more fearful battle to
+which that victory was but a prelude.</p>
+<p>"My gallant boy!" said he, and wiped his eyes.</p>
+<p>"Is he thy son?" said a brawny fellow to the right of the
+Nazarene: "he has fought well; let us see how he does by-and-by.
+Hark! he is to fight the first victor. Now, old boy, pray the gods
+that that victor be neither of the Romans! nor, next to them, the
+giant Niger."</p>
+<p>The old man sat down again and covered his face. The fray for
+the moment was indifferent to him--Lydon was not one of the
+combatants. Yet, yet, the thought flashed across him--the fray was
+indeed of deadly interest--the first who fell was to make way for
+Lydon! He started, and bent down, with straining eyes and clasped
+hands, to view the encounter.</p>
+<p>The first interest was attracted toward the combat of Niger with
+Sporus; for this spectacle of contest, from the fatal result which
+usually attended it, and from the great science it required in
+either antagonist, was always peculiarly inviting to the
+spectators.</p>
+<p>They stood at a considerable distance from each other. The
+singular helmet which Sporus wore (the visor of which was down)
+concealed his face; but the features of Niger attracted a fearful
+and universal interest from their compressed and vigilant ferocity.
+Thus they stood for some moments, each eying each, until Sporus
+began slowly and with great caution to advance, holding his sword
+pointed, like a modern fencer's, at the breast of his foe. Niger
+retreated as his antagonist advanced, gathering up his net with his
+right hand and never taking his small, glittering eye from the
+movements of the swordsman. Suddenly, when Sporus had approached
+nearly at arm's length, the retiarius threw himself forward and
+cast his net. A quick inflection of body saved the gladiator from
+the deadly snare; he uttered a sharp cry of joy and rage and rushed
+upon Niger; but Niger had already drawn in his net, thrown it
+across his shoulders, and now fled around the lists with a
+swiftness which the <i>secutor</i><a name="FNanchor6"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_6">[6]</a> in vain endeavored to equal. The people
+laughed and shouted aloud to see the ineffectual efforts of the
+broad-shouldered gladiator to overtake the flying giant; when at
+that moment their attention was turned from these to the two Roman
+combatants.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor6">[6]</a>
+So called from the office of that tribe of gladiators in
+<i>following</i> the foe the moment the net was cast, in order to
+smite him ere he could have time to re-arrange it.</blockquote>
+<p>They had placed themselves at the onset face to face, at the
+distance of modern fencers from each other; but the extreme caution
+which both evinced at first had prevented any warmth of engagement,
+and allowed the spectators full leisure to interest themselves in
+the battle between Sporus and his foe. But the Romans were now
+heated into full and fierce encounter: they
+pushed--returned--advanced on--retreated from each other, with all
+that careful yet scarcely perceptible caution which characterizes
+men well experienced and equally matched. But at this moment
+Eumolpus, the older gladiator, by that dextrous back-stroke which
+was considered in the arena so difficult to avoid, had wounded
+Nepimus in the side. The people shouted; Lepidus turned pale.</p>
+<p>"Ho!" said Clodius, "the game is nearly over. If Eumolpus rights
+now the quiet fight, the other will gradually bleed himself
+away."</p>
+<p>"But, thank the gods! he does <i>not</i> fight the backward
+fight. See!--he presses hard upon Nepimus. By Mars! but Nepimus had
+him there! the helmet rang again!--Clodius, I shall win!"</p>
+<p>"Why do I ever bet but at the dice?" groaned Clodius to
+himself;--"or why cannot one cog a gladiator?"</p>
+<p>"A Sporus!--a Sporus!" shouted the populace, as Niger, now
+having suddenly paused, had again cast his net, and again
+unsuccessfully. He had not retreated this time with sufficient
+agility--the sword of Sporus had inflicted a severe wound upon his
+right leg; and, incapacitated to fly, he was pressed hard by the
+fierce swordsman. His great height and length of arm still
+continued, however, to give him no despicable advantages; and
+steadily keeping his trident at the front of his foe, he repelled
+him successfully for several minutes.</p>
+<p>Sporus now tried by great rapidity of evolution to get round his
+antagonist, who necessarily moved with pain and slowness. In so
+doing he lost his caution--he advanced too near to the
+giant--raised his arm to strike, and received the three points of
+the fatal spear full in his breast! He sank on his knee. In a
+moment more the deadly net was cast over him,--he struggled against
+its meshes in vain; again--again--again he writhed mutely beneath
+the fresh strokes of the trident--his blood flowed fast through the
+net and redly over the sand. He lowered his arms in acknowledgment
+of defeat.</p>
+<p>The conquering retiarius withdrew his net, and leaning on his
+spear, looked to the audience for their judgment. Slowly, too, at
+the same moment, the vanquished gladiator rolled his dim and
+despairing eyes around the theatre. From row to row, from bench to
+bench, there glared upon him but merciless and unpitying eyes.</p>
+<p>Hushed was the roar--the murmur! The silence was dread, for in
+it was no sympathy; not a hand--no, not even a woman's hand--gave
+the signal of charity and life! Sporus had never been popular in
+the arena; and lately the interest of the combat had been excited
+on behalf of the wounded Niger. The people were warmed into
+blood--the <i>mimic</i> fight had ceased to charm; the interest had
+mounted up to the desire of sacrifice and the thirst of death!</p>
+<p>The gladiator felt that his doom was sealed; he uttered no
+prayer--no groan. The people gave the signal of death! In dogged
+but agonized submission he bent his neck to receive the fatal
+stroke. And now, as the spear of the retiarius was not a weapon to
+inflict instant and certain death, there stalked into the arena a
+grim and fatal form, brandishing a short, sharp sword, and with
+features utterly concealed beneath its visor. With slow and
+measured step this dismal headsman approached the gladiator, still
+kneeling--laid the left hand on his humbled crest--drew the edge of
+the blade across his neck--turned round to the assembly, lest, in
+the last moment, remorse should come upon them; the dread signal
+continued the same; the blade glittered brightly in the
+air--fell--and the gladiator rolled upon the sand: his limbs
+quivered--were still--he was a corpse.</p>
+<p>His body was dragged at once from the arena through the gate of
+death, and thrown into the gloomy den termed technically the
+"spoliarium." And ere it had well reached that destination the
+strife between the remaining combatants was decided. The sword of
+Eumolpus had inflicted the death-wound upon the less experienced
+combatant. A new victim was added to the receptacle of the
+slain.</p>
+<p>Throughout that mighty assembly there now ran a universal
+movement; the people breathed more freely and settled themselves in
+their seats. A grateful shower was cast over every row from the
+concealed conduits. In cool and luxurious pleasure they talked over
+the late spectacle of blood. Eumolpus removed his helmet and wiped
+his brows; his close-curled hair and short beard, his noble Roman
+features and bright dark eye, attracted the general admiration. He
+was fresh, unwounded, unfatigued.</p>
+<p>The &aelig;dile paused, and proclaimed aloud that as Niger's
+wound disabled him from again entering the arena, Lydon was to be
+the successor to the slaughtered Nepimus and the new combatant of
+Eumolpus.</p>
+<p>"Yet, Lydon," added he, "if thou wouldst decline the combat with
+one so brave and tried, thou mayst have full liberty to do so.
+Eumolpus is not the antagonist that was originally decreed for
+thee. Thou knowest best how far thou canst cope with him. If thou
+failest, thy doom is honorable death; if thou conquerest, out of my
+own purse I will double the stipulated prize."</p>
+<p>The people shouted applause. Lydon stood in the lists; he gazed
+around; high above he beheld the pale face, the straining eyes of
+his father. He turned away irresolute for a moment. No! the
+conquest of the cestus was not sufficient--he had not yet won the
+prize of victory--his father was still a slave!</p>
+<p>"Noble &aelig;dile!" he replied, in a firm and deep tone, "I
+shrink not from this combat. For the honor of Pompeii, I demand
+that one trained by its long-celebrated lanista shall do battle
+with this Roman."</p>
+<p>The people shouted louder than before.</p>
+<p>"Four to one against Lydon!" said Clodius to Lepidus.</p>
+<p>"I would not take twenty to one! Why, Eumolpus is a very
+Achilles, and this poor fellow is but a tyro!"</p>
+<p>Eumolpus gazed hard on the face of Lydon: he smiled; yet the
+smile was followed by a slight and scarce audible sigh--a touch of
+compassionate emotion, which custom conquered the moment the heart
+acknowledged it.</p>
+<p>And now both, clad in complete armor, the sword drawn, the visor
+closed, the two last combatants of the arena (ere man, at least,
+was matched with beast) stood opposed to each other.</p>
+<p>It was just at this time that a letter was delivered to the
+pr&aelig;tor by one of the attendants of the arena; he removed the
+cincture--glanced over it for a moment--his countenance betrayed
+surprise and embarrassment. He re-read the letter, and then
+muttering,--"Tush! it is impossible!--the man must be drunk, even
+in the morning, to dream of such follies!"--threw it carelessly
+aside and gravely settled himself once more in the attitude of
+attention to the sports.</p>
+<p>The interest of the public was wound up very high. Eumolpus had
+at first won their favor; but the gallantry of Lydon, and his
+well-timed allusion to the honor of the Pompeiian lanista, had
+afterward given the latter the preference in their eyes.</p>
+<p>"Holla, old fellow!" said Medon's neighbor to him. "Your son is
+hardly matched; but never fear, the editor will not permit him to
+be slain--no, nor the people neither: he has behaved too bravely
+for that. Ha! that was a home thrust!--well averted by Pollux! At
+him again, Lydon!--they stop to breathe! What art thou muttering,
+old boy?"</p>
+<p>"Prayers!" answered Medon, with a more calm and hopeful mien
+than he had yet maintained.</p>
+<p>"Prayers!--trifles! The time for gods to carry a man away in a
+cloud is gone now. Ha! Jupiter, what a blow! Thy side--thy
+side!--take care of thy side, Lydon!"</p>
+<p>There was a convulsive tremor throughout the assembly. A fierce
+blow from Eumolpus, full on the crest, had brought Lydon to his
+knee.</p>
+<p>"<i>Habet</i>!--he has it!" cried a shrill female voice; "he has
+it!"</p>
+<p>It was the voice of the girl who had so anxiously anticipated
+the sacrifice of some criminal to the beasts.</p>
+<p>"Be silent, child!" said the wife of Pansa, haughtily. "<i>Non
+habet!</i>--he is <i>not</i> wounded!"</p>
+<p>"I wish he were, if only to spite old surly Medon," muttered the
+girl.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile Lydon, who had hitherto defended himself with great
+skill and valor, began to give way before the vigorous assaults of
+the practiced Roman; his arm grew tired, his eye dizzy, he breathed
+hard and painfully. The combatants paused again for breath.</p>
+<p>"Young man," said Eumolpus, in a low voice, "desist; I will
+wound thee slightly--then lower thy arm; thou hast propitiated the
+editor and the mob--thou wilt be honorably saved!"</p>
+<p>"And my father still enslaved!" groaned Lydon to himself. "No!
+death or his freedom."</p>
+<p>At that thought, and seeing that, his strength not being equal
+to the endurance of the Roman, everything depended on a sudden and
+desperate effort, he threw himself fiercely on Eumolpus; the Roman
+warily retreated--Lydon thrust again--Eumolpus drew himself
+aside--the sword grazed his cuirass--Lydon's breast was
+exposed--the Roman plunged his sword through the joints of the
+armor, not meaning however to inflict a deep wound; Lydon, weak and
+exhausted, fell forward, fell right on the point; it passed through
+and through, even to the back. Eumolpus drew forth his blade; Lydon
+still made an effort to regain his balance--his sword left his
+grasp--he struck mechanically at the gladiator with his naked hand
+and fell prostrate on the arena. With one accord, &aelig;dile and
+assembly made the signal of mercy; the officers of the arena
+approached, they took off the helmet of the vanquished. He still
+breathed; his eyes rolled fiercely on his foe; the savageness he
+had acquired in his calling glared from his gaze and lowered upon
+the brow, darkened already with the shades of death; then with a
+convulsive groan, with a half-start, he lifted his eyes above. They
+rested not on the face of the &aelig;dile nor on the pitying brows
+of the relenting judges. He saw them not; they were as if the vast
+space was desolate and bare; one pale agonizing face alone was all
+he recognized--one cry of a broken heart was all that, amid the
+murmurs and the shouts of the populace, reached his ear. The
+ferocity vanished from his brow; a soft, tender expression of
+sanctifying but despairing filial love played over his
+features--played--waned--darkened! His face suddenly became locked
+and rigid, resuming its former fierceness. He fell upon the
+earth.</p>
+<p>"Look to him," said the &aelig;dile; "he has done his duty!"</p>
+<p>The officers dragged him off to the spoliarium.</p>
+<p>"A true type of glory, and of its fate!" murmured Arbaces to
+himself; and his eye, glancing around the amphitheatre, betrayed so
+much of disdain and scorn that whoever encountered it felt his
+breath suddenly arrested, and his emotions frozen into one
+sensation of abasement and of awe.</p>
+<p>Again rich perfumes were wafted around the theatre; the
+attendants sprinkled fresh sand over the arena.</p>
+<p>"Bring forth the lion and Glaucus the Athenian," said the
+&aelig;dile.</p>
+<p>And a deep and breathless hush of overwrought interest and
+intense (yet strange to say not unpleasing) terror lay like a
+mighty and awful dream over the assembly.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>The door swung gratingly back--the gleam of spears shot along
+the wall.</p>
+<p>"Glaucus the Athenian, thy time has come," said a loud and clear
+voice; "the lion awaits thee."</p>
+<p>"I am ready," said the Athenian. "Brother and co-mate, one last
+embrace! Bless me--and farewell!"</p>
+<p>The Christian opened his arms; he clasped the young heathen to
+his breast; he kissed his forehead and cheek; he sobbed aloud; his
+tears flowed fast and hot over the features of his new friend.</p>
+<p>"Oh! could I have converted thee, I had not wept. Oh that I
+might say to thee, 'We two shall sup this night in Paradise!'"</p>
+<p>"It may be so yet," answered the Greek with a tremulous voice,
+"They whom death parts now may yet meet beyond the grave; on the
+earth--oh! the beautiful, the beloved earth, farewell for ever!
+Worthy officer, I attend you."</p>
+<p>Glaucus tore himself away; and when he came forth into the air,
+its breath, which though sunless was hot and arid, smote
+witheringly upon him. His frame, not yet restored from the effects
+of the deadly draught, shrank and trembled. The officers supported
+him.</p>
+<p>"Courage!" said one; "thou art young, active, well knit. They
+give thee a weapon! despair not, and thou mayst yet conquer."</p>
+<p>Glaucus did not reply; but ashamed of his infirmity, he made a
+desperate and convulsive effort and regained the firmness of his
+nerves. They anointed his body, completely naked save by a cincture
+round the loins, placed the stilus (vain weapon!) in his hand, and
+led him into the arena.</p>
+<p>And now when the Greek saw the eyes of thousands and tens of
+thousands upon him, he no longer felt that he was mortal. All
+evidence of fear, all fear itself, was gone. A red and haughty
+flush spread over the paleness of his features; he towered aloft to
+the full of his glorious stature. In the elastic beauty of his
+limbs and form; in his intent but unfrowning brow; in the high
+disdain and in the indomitable soul which breathed visibly, which
+spoke audibly, from his attitude, his lip, his eye,--he seemed the
+very incarnation, vivid and corporeal, of the valor of his land; of
+the divinity of its worship: at once a hero and a god!</p>
+<p>The murmur of hatred and horror at his crime which had greeted
+his entrance died into the silence of involuntary admiration and
+half-compassionate respect; and with a quick and convulsive sigh,
+that seemed to move the whole mass of life as if it were one body,
+the gaze of the spectators turned from the Athenian to a dark
+uncouth object in the centre of the arena. It was the grated den of
+the lion.</p>
+<p>"By Venus, how warm it is!" said Fulvia, "yet there is no sun.
+Would that those stupid sailors could have fastened up that gap in
+the awning!"</p>
+<p>"Oh, it is warm indeed. I turn sick--I faint!" said the wife of
+Pansa; even her experienced stoicism giving way at the struggle
+about to take place.</p>
+<p>The lion had been kept without food for twenty-four hours, and
+the animal had, during the whole morning, testified a singular and
+restless uneasiness, which the keeper had attributed to the pangs
+of hunger. Yet its bearing seemed rather that of fear than of rage;
+its roar was painful and distressed; it hung its head--snuffed the
+air through the bars--then lay down--started again--and again
+uttered its wild and far-resounding cries. And now in its den it
+lay utterly dumb and mute, with distended nostrils forced hard
+against the grating, and disturbing, with a heaving breath, the
+sand below on the arena.</p>
+<p>The editor's lip quivered, and his cheek grew pale; he looked
+anxiously around--hesitated--delayed; the crowd became impatient.
+Slowly he gave the sign; the keeper, who was behind the den,
+cautiously removed the grating, and the lion leaped forth with a
+mighty and glad roar of release. The keeper hastily retreated
+through the grated passage leading from the arena, and left the
+lord of the forest--and his prey.</p>
+<p>Glaucus had bent his limbs so as to give himself the firmest
+posture at the expected rush of the lion, with his small and
+shining weapon raised on high, in the faint hope that <i>one</i>
+well-directed thrust (for he knew that he should have time but for
+<i>one</i>) might penetrate through the eye to the brain of his
+grim foe.</p>
+<p>But to the unutterable astonishment of all, the beast seemed not
+even aware of the presence of the criminal.</p>
+<p>At the first moment of its release it halted abruptly in the
+arena, raised itself half on end, snuffing the upward air with
+impatient signs, then suddenly it sprang forward, but not on the
+Athenian. At half-speed it circled round and round the space,
+turning its vast head from side to side with an anxious and
+perturbed gaze, as if seeking only some avenue of escape; once or
+twice it endeavored to leap up the parapet that divided it from the
+audience, and on falling, uttered rather a baffled howl than its
+deep-toned and kingly roar. It evinced no sign either of wrath or
+hunger; its tail drooped along the sand, instead of lashing its
+gaunt sides; and its eye, though it wandered at times to Glaucus,
+rolled again listlessly from him. At length, as if tired of
+attempting to escape, it crept with a moan into its cage, and once
+more laid itself down to rest.</p>
+<p>The first surprise of the assembly at the apathy of the lion
+soon grew converted into resentment at its cowardice; and the
+populace already merged their pity for the fate of Glaucus into
+angry compassion for their own disappointment.</p>
+<p>The editor called to the keeper:--"How is this? Take the goad,
+prick him forth, and then close the door of the den."</p>
+<p>As the keeper, with some fear but more astonishment, was
+preparing to obey, a loud cry was heard at one of the entrances of
+the arena; there was a confusion, a bustle--voices of remonstrance
+suddenly breaking forth, and suddenly silenced at the reply. All
+eyes turned in wonder at the interruption, toward the quarter of
+the disturbance; the crowd gave way, and suddenly Sallust appeared
+on the senatorial benches, his hair
+disheveled--breathless--heated--half exhausted. He cast his eyes
+hastily round the ring. "Remove the Athenian!" he cried; "haste--he
+is innocent! Arrest Arbaces the Egyptian--HE is the murderer of
+Ap&aelig;cides!"</p>
+<br>
+<a name="illus-2718.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/illus-2718.jpg"><img src=
+"images/illus-2718.jpg" width="45%" alt=""></a></p>
+<center><b><i>In The Arena,</i></b><br>
+Photogravure from a Drawing by Frank Kirchbach.<br>
+<br>
+"Glaucus had bent his limbs so as to give himself the firmest
+posture at<br>
+the expected rush of the lion, with his small and shining
+weapon<br>
+raised on high, in the faint hope that <i>one</i> well-directed
+thrust<br>
+(for he knew that he should have time but for <i>one</i>)<br>
+might penetrate through the eye to the brain of<br>
+his grim foe. But to the unutterable astonishment<br>
+of all, the beast seemed not<br>
+even aware of the presence of the<br>
+criminal."</center>
+<p>"Art thou mad, O Sallust!" said the pr&aelig;tor, rising from
+his seat. "What means this raving?"</p>
+<p>"Remove the Athenian!--Quick! or his blood be on your head.
+Pr&aelig;tor, delay, and you answer with your own life to the
+Emperor! I bring with me the eye-witness to the death of the priest
+Ap&aelig;cides. Room there, stand back, give way. People of
+Pompeii, fix every eye upon Arbaces; there he sits! Room there for
+the priest Calenus!"</p>
+<p>Pale, haggard, fresh from the jaws of famine and of death, his
+face fallen, his eyes dull as a vulture's, his broad frame gaunt as
+a skeleton, Calenus was supported into the very row in which
+Arbaces sat. His releasers had given him sparingly of food; but the
+chief sustenance that nerved his feeble limbs was revenge!</p>
+<p>"The priest Calenus--Calenus!" cried the mob. "It is he? No--it
+is a dead man!"</p>
+<p>"It is the priest Calenus," said the pr&aelig;tor, gravely.
+"What hast thou to say?"</p>
+<p>"Arbaces of Egypt is the murderer of Ap&aelig;cides, the priest
+of Isis; these eyes saw him deal the blow. It is from the dungeon
+into which he plunged me--it is from the darkness and horror of a
+death by famine--that the gods have raised me to proclaim his
+crime! Release the Athenian--<i>he</i> is innocent!"</p>
+<p>"It is for this, then, that the lion spared him, A miracle! a
+miracle!" cried Pansa.</p>
+<p>"A miracle! a miracle!" shouted the people; "remove the
+Athenian--<i>Arbaces to the lion</i>."</p>
+<p>And that shout echoed from hill to vale--from coast to
+sea--<i>Arbaces to the lion</i>.</p>
+<p>"Officers, remove the accused Glaucus--remove, but guard him
+yet," said the pr&aelig;tor. "The gods lavish their wonders upon
+this day."</p>
+<p>As the pr&aelig;tor gave the word of release, there was a cry of
+joy: a female voice, a child's voice; and it was of joy! It rang
+through the heart of the assembly with electric force; it was
+touching, it was holy, that child's voice. And the populace echoed
+it back with sympathizing congratulation.</p>
+<p>"Silence!" said the grave pr&aelig;tor; "who is there?"</p>
+<p>"The blind girl--Nydia," answered Sallust; "it is her hand that
+has raised Calenus from the grave, and delivered Glaucus from the
+lion."</p>
+<p>"Of this hereafter," said the pr&aelig;tor. "Calenus, priest of
+Isis, thou accusest Arbaces of the murder of Ap&aelig;cides?"</p>
+<p>"I do!"</p>
+<p>"Thou didst behold the deed?"</p>
+<p>"Pr&aelig;tor--with these eyes--"</p>
+<p>"Enough at present--the details must be reserved for more
+suiting time and place. Arbaces of Egypt, thou hearest the charge
+against thee--thou hast not yet spoken--what hast thou to say?"</p>
+<p>The gaze of the crowd had been long riveted on Arbaces; but not
+until the confusion which he had betrayed at the first charge of
+Sallust and the entrance of Calenus had subsided. At the shout,
+"Arbaces to the lion!" he had indeed trembled, and the dark bronze
+of his cheek had taken a paler hue. But he had soon recovered his
+haughtiness and self-control. Proudly he returned the angry glare
+of the countless eyes around him; and replying now to the question
+of the pr&aelig;tor, he said, in that accent so peculiarly tranquil
+and commanding which characterized his tones:--</p>
+<p>"Pr&aelig;tor, this charge is so mad that it scarcely deserves
+reply. My first accuser is the noble Sallust--the most intimate
+friend of Glaucus! My second is a priest: I revere his garb and
+calling--but, people of Pompeii! ye know somewhat of the character
+of Calenus--he is griping and gold-thirsty to a proverb; the
+witness of such men is to be bought! Pr&aelig;tor, I am
+innocent!"</p>
+<p>"Sallust," said the magistrate, "where found you Calenus?"</p>
+<p>"In the dungeons of Arbaces."</p>
+<p>"Egyptian," said the pr&aelig;tor, frowning, "thou didst, then,
+dare to imprison a priest of the gods--and wherefore?"</p>
+<br>
+<a name="illus-2720.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/illus-2720.jpg"><img src=
+"images/illus-2720.jpg" width="40%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>Nydia</b><br>
+The blind flower-girl of Bulwer's Last Days of Pompeii.<br>
+Photogravure from a Painting by C. Von Bodenhausen.</p>
+<br>
+<p>"Hear me," answered Arbaces, rising calmly, but with agitation
+visible in his face. "This man came to threaten that he would make
+against me the charge he has now made, unless I would purchase his
+silence with half my fortune; I remonstrated--in vain. Peace
+there--let not the priest interrupt me! Noble pr&aelig;tor--and ye,
+O people! I was a stranger in the land--I knew myself innocent of
+crime--but the witness of a priest against me might yet destroy me.
+In my perplexity I decoyed him to the cell whence he has been
+released, on pretense that it was the coffer-house of my gold. I
+resolved to detain him there until the fate of the true criminal
+was sealed and his threats could avail no longer; but I meant no
+worse. I may have erred--but who among ye will not acknowledge the
+equity of self-preservation? Were I guilty, why was the witness of
+this priest silent at the trial?--<i>then</i> I had not detained or
+concealed him. Why did he not proclaim my guilt when I proclaimed
+that of Glaucus? Pr&aelig;tor, this needs an answer. For the rest,
+I throw myself on your laws. I demand their protection. Remove
+hence the accused and the accuser. I will willingly meet, and
+cheerfully abide by the decision of, the legitimate tribunal. This
+is no place for further parley."</p>
+<p>"He says right." said the pr&aelig;tor. "Ho! guards--remove
+Arbaces--guard Calenus! Sallust, we hold you responsible for your
+accusation. Let the sports be resumed."</p>
+<p>"What!" cried Calenus, turning round to the people, "shall Isis
+be thus contemned? Shall the blood of Ap&aelig;cides yet cry for
+vengeance? Shall justice be delayed now, that it may be frustrated
+hereafter? Shall the lion be cheated of his lawful prey? A god! a
+god!--I feel the god rush to my lips! <i>To the lion--to the lion
+with Arbaces</i>!"</p>
+<p>His exhausted frame could support no longer the ferocious malice
+of the priest; he sank on the ground in strong convulsions; the
+foam gathered to his mouth; he was as a man, indeed, whom a
+supernatural power had entered! The people saw, and shuddered.</p>
+<p>"It is a god that inspires the holy man! <i>To the lion with the
+Egyptian</i>!"</p>
+<p>With that cry up sprang, on moved, thousands upon thousands.
+They rushed from the heights; they poured down in the direction of
+the Egyptian. In vain did the &aelig;dile command; in vain did the
+pr&aelig;tor lift his voice and proclaim the law. The people had
+been already rendered savage by the exhibition of blood; they
+thirsted for more; their superstition was aided by their ferocity.
+Aroused, inflamed by the spectacle of their victims, they forgot
+the authority of their rulers. It was one of those dread popular
+convulsions common to crowds wholly ignorant, half free and half
+servile, and which the peculiar constitution of the Roman provinces
+so frequently exhibited. The power of the pr&aelig;tor was a reed
+beneath the whirlwind; still, at his word the guards had drawn
+themselves along the lower benches, on which the upper classes sat
+separate from the vulgar. They made but a feeble barrier; the waves
+of the human sea halted for a moment, to enable Arbaces to count
+the exact moment of his doom! In despair, and in a terror which
+beat down even pride, he glanced his eye over the rolling and
+rushing crowd; when, right above them, through the wide chasm which
+had been left in the velaria, he beheld a strange and awful
+apparition; he beheld, and his craft restored his courage!</p>
+<p>He stretched his hand on high; over his lofty brow and royal
+features there came an expression, of unutterable solemnity and
+command.</p>
+<p>"Behold!" he shouted with a voice of thunder, which stilled the
+roar of the crowd: "behold how the gods protect the guiltless! The
+fires of the avenging Orcus burst forth against the false witness
+of my accusers!"</p>
+<p>The eyes of the crowd followed the gesture of the Egyptian, and
+beheld with dismay a vast vapor shooting from the summit of
+Vesuvius in the form of a gigantic pine-tree; the trunk,
+blackness--the branches fire!--a fire that shifted and wavered in
+its hues with every moment, now fiercely luminous, now of a dull
+and dying red, that again blazed terrifically forth with
+intolerable glare!</p>
+<p>There was a dead, heart-sunken silence; through which there
+suddenly broke the roar of the lion, which was echoed back from
+within the building by the sharper and fiercer yells of its
+fellow-beast. Dread seers were they of the Burden of the
+Atmosphere, and wild prophets of the wrath to come!</p>
+<p>Then there arose on high the universal shrieks of women; the men
+stared at each other, but were dumb. At that moment they felt the
+earth shake under their feet; the walls of the theatre trembled;
+and beyond in the distance they heard the crash of falling roofs;
+an instant more, and the mountain cloud seemed to roll toward them,
+dark and rapid, like a torrent; at the same time it cast forth from
+its bosom a shower of ashes mixed with vast fragments of burning
+stone! over the crushing vines, over the desolate streets, over the
+amphitheatre itself; far and wide, with many a mighty splash in the
+agitated sea, fell that awful shower!</p>
+<p>No longer thought the crowd of justice or of Arbaces; safety for
+themselves was their sole thought. Each turned to fly--each
+dashing, pressing, crushing against the other. Trampling recklessly
+over the fallen, amid groans and oaths and prayers and sudden
+shrieks, the enormous crowd vomited itself forth through the
+numerous passages. Whither should they fly? Some, anticipating a
+second earthquake, hastened to their homes to load themselves with
+their more costly goods and escape while it was yet time; others,
+dreading the showers of ashes that now fell fast, torrent upon
+torrent, over the streets, rushed under the roofs of the nearest
+houses, or temples, or sheds--shelter of any kind--for protection
+from the terrors of the open air. But darker, and larger, and
+mightier, spread the cloud above them. It was a sudden and more
+ghastly Night rushing upon the realm of Noon!</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="BULWER02"></a>
+<h3>KENELM AND LILY</h3>
+<center>From 'Kenelm Chillingly'</center>
+<br>
+<p>The children have come,--some thirty of them, pretty as English
+children generally are, happy in the joy of the summer sunshine,
+and the flower lawns, and the feast under cover of an awning
+suspended between chestnut-trees and carpeted with sward.</p>
+<p>No doubt Kenelm held his own at the banquet, and did his best to
+increase the general gayety, for whenever he spoke the children
+listened eagerly, and when he had done they laughed mirthfully.</p>
+<p>"The fair face I promised you," whispered Mrs. Braefield, "is
+not here yet. I have a little note from the young lady to say that
+Mrs. Cameron does not feel very well this morning, but hopes to
+recover sufficiently to come later in the afternoon."</p>
+<p>"And pray who is Mrs. Cameron?"</p>
+<p>"Ah! I forgot that you are a stranger to the place. Mrs. Cameron
+is the aunt with whom Lily resides. Is it not a pretty name,
+Lily?"</p>
+<p>"Very! emblematic of a spinster that does not spin, with a white
+head and a thin stalk."</p>
+<p>"Then the name belies my Lily; as you will see."</p>
+<p>The children now finished their feast and betook themselves to
+dancing, in an alley smoothed for a croquet-ground and to the sound
+of a violin played by the old grandfather of one of the party.
+While Mrs. Braefield was busying herself with forming the dance,
+Kenelm seized the occasion to escape from a young nymph of the age
+of twelve, who had sat next to him at the banquet and taken so
+great a fancy to him that he began to fear she would vow never to
+forsake his side,--and stole away undetected.</p>
+<p>There are times when the mirth of others only saddens us,
+especially the mirth of children with high spirits, that jar on our
+own quiet mood. Gliding through a dense shrubbery, in which, though
+the lilacs were faded, the laburnum still retained here and there
+the waning gold of its clusters, Kenelm came into a recess which
+bounded his steps and invited him to repose. It was a circle, so
+formed artificially by slight trellises, to which clung parasite
+roses heavy with leaves and flowers. In the midst played a tiny
+fountain with a silvery murmuring sound; at the background,
+dominating the place, rose the crests of stately trees, on which
+the sunlight shimmered, but which rampired out all horizon beyond.
+Even as in life do the great dominant passions--love, ambition,
+desire of power, or gold, or fame, or knowledge--form the proud
+background to the brief-lived flowerets of our youth, lift our eyes
+beyond the smile of their bloom, catch the glint of a loftier
+sunbeam, and yet--and yet--exclude our sight from the lengths and
+the widths of the space which extends behind and beyond them.</p>
+<p>Kenelm threw himself on the turf beside the fountain. From afar
+came the whoop and the laugh of the children in their sports or
+their dance. At the distance their joy did not sadden him--he
+marveled why; and thus, in musing reverie, thought to explain the
+why to himself.</p>
+<p>"The poet," so ran his lazy thinking, "has told us that
+'distance lends enchantment to the view,' and thus compares to the
+charm of distance the illusion of hope. But the poet narrows the
+scope of his own illustration. Distance lends enchantment to the
+ear as well as to the sight; nor to these bodily senses alone.
+Memory, no less than hope, owes its charm to 'the far away.'</p>
+<p>"I cannot imagine myself again a child when I am in the midst of
+yon noisy children. But as their noise reaches me here, subdued and
+mellowed; and knowing, thank Heaven! that the urchins are not
+within reach of me, I could readily dream myself back into
+childhood and into sympathy with the lost playfields of school.</p>
+<p>"So surely it must be with grief: how different the terrible
+agony for a beloved one just gone from earth, to the soft regret
+for one who disappeared into heaven years ago! So with the art of
+poetry: how imperatively, when it deals with the great emotions of
+tragedy, it must remove the actors from us, in proportion as the
+emotions are to elevate, and the tragedy is to please us by the
+tears it draws! Imagine our shock if a poet were to place on the
+stage some wise gentleman with whom we dined yesterday, and who was
+discovered to have killed his father and married his mother. But
+when Oedipus commits those unhappy mistakes nobody is shocked.
+Oxford in the nineteenth century is a long way off from Thebes
+three thousand or four thousand years ago.</p>
+<p>"And," continued Kenelm, plunging deeper into the maze of
+metaphysical criticism, "even where the poet deals with persons and
+things close upon our daily sight--if he would give them poetic
+charm he must resort to a sort of moral or psychological distance;
+the nearer they are to us in external circumstance, the farther
+they must be in some internal peculiarities. Werter and Clarissa
+Harlowe are described as contemporaries of their artistic creation,
+and with the minutest details of an apparent realism; yet they are
+at once removed from our daily lives by their idiosyncrasies and
+their fates. We know that while Werter and Clarissa are so near to
+us in much that we sympathize with them as friends and kinsfolk,
+they are yet as much remote from us in the poetic and idealized
+side of their natures as if they belonged to the age of Homer; and
+this it is that invests with charm the very pain which their fate
+inflicts on us. Thus, I suppose, it must be in love. If the love we
+feel is to have the glamor of poetry, it must be love for some one
+morally at a distance from our ordinary habitual selves; in short,
+differing from us in attributes which, however near we draw to the
+possessor, we can never approach, never blend, in attributes of our
+own; so that there is something in the loved one that always
+remains an ideal--a mystery--'a sun-bright summit mingling with the
+sky!'" ...</p>
+<p>From this state, half comatose, half unconscious, Kenelm was
+roused slowly, reluctantly. Something struck softly on his
+cheek--again a little less softly; he opened his eyes--they fell
+first upon two tiny rosebuds, which, on striking his face, had
+fallen on his breast; and then looking up, he saw before him, in an
+opening of the trellised circle, a female child's laughing face.
+Her hand was still uplifted, charged with another rosebud; but
+behind the child's figure, looking over her shoulder and holding
+back the menacing arm, was a face as innocent but lovelier far--the
+face of a girl in her first youth, framed round with the blossoms
+that festooned the trellis. How the face became the flowers! It
+seemed the fairy spirit of them.</p>
+<p>Kenelm started and rose to his feet. The child, the one whom he
+had so ungallantly escaped from, ran towards him through a wicket
+in the circle. Her companion disappeared.</p>
+<p>"Is it you?" said Kenelm to the child--"you who pelted me so
+cruelly? Ungrateful creature! Did I not give you the best
+strawberries in the dish, and all my own cream?"</p>
+<p>"But why did you run away and hide yourself when you ought to be
+dancing with me?" replied the young lady, evading, with the
+instinct of her sex, all answer to the reproach she had
+deserved.</p>
+<p>"I did not run away; and it is clear that I did not mean to hide
+myself, since you so easily found me out. But who was the young
+lady with you? I suspect she pelted me too, for <i>she</i> seems to
+have run away to hide herself."</p>
+<p>"No, she did not pelt you; she wanted to stop me, and you would
+have had another rosebud--oh, so much bigger!--if she had not held
+back my arm. Don't you know her--don't you know Lily?"</p>
+<p>"No; so that is Lily? You shall introduce me to her."</p>
+<p>By this time they had passed out of the circle through the
+little wicket opposite the path by which Kenelm had entered, and
+opening at once on the lawn. Here at some distance the children
+were grouped; some reclined on the grass, some walking to and fro,
+in the interval of the dance....</p>
+<p>Before he had reached the place, Mrs. Braefield met him.</p>
+<p>"Lily is come!"</p>
+<p>"I know it--I have seen her."</p>
+<p>"Is not she beautiful?"</p>
+<p>"I must see more of her if I am to answer critically; but before
+you introduce me, may I be permitted to ask who and what is
+Lily?"</p>
+<p>Mrs. Braefield paused a moment before she answered, and yet the
+answer was brief enough not to need much consideration She is a
+Miss Mordaunt, an orphan; and as I before told you, resides with
+her aunt, Mrs. Cameron, a widow. They have the prettiest cottage
+you ever saw on the banks of the river, or rather rivulet, about a
+mile from this place. Mrs. Cameron is a very good, simple-hearted
+woman. As to Lily, I can praise her beauty only with safe
+conscience, for as yet she is a mere child--her mind quite
+unformed."</p>
+<p>"Did you ever meet any man, much less any woman, whose mind was
+formed?" muttered Kenelm. "I am sure mine is not, and never will be
+on this earth."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Braefield did not hear this low-voiced observation. She was
+looking about for Lily; and perceiving her at last as the children
+who surrounded her were dispersing to renew the dance, she took
+Kenelm's arm, led him to the young lady, and a formal introduction
+took place.</p>
+<p>Formal as it could be on those sunlit swards, amidst the joy of
+summer and the laugh of children. In such scene and such
+circumstance, formality does not last long. I know not how it was,
+but in a very few minutes Kenelm and Lily had ceased to be
+strangers to each other. They found themselves seated apart from
+the rest of the merry-makers, on the bank shadowed by lime-trees;
+the man listening with downcast eyes, the girl with mobile shifting
+glances, now on earth, now on heaven, and talking freely,
+gayly--like the babble of a happy stream, with a silvery dulcet
+voice and a sparkle of rippling smiles.</p>
+<p>No doubt this is a reversal of the formalities of well-bred life
+and conventional narrating thereof. According to them, no doubt, it
+is for the man to talk and the maid to listen; but I state the
+facts as they were, honestly. And Lily knew no more of the
+formalities of drawing-room life than a skylark fresh from its nest
+knows of the song-teacher and the cage. She was still so much of a
+child. Mrs. Braefield was right--her mind was still so
+unformed.</p>
+<p>What she did talk about in that first talk between them that
+could make the meditative Kenelm listen so mutely, so intently, I
+know not; at least I could not jot it down on paper. I fear it was
+very egotistical, as the talk of children generally is--about
+herself and her aunt and her home and her friends--all her friends
+seemed children like herself, though younger--Clemmy the chief of
+them. Clemmy was the one who had taken a fancy to Kenelm. And
+amidst all the ingenuous prattle there came flashes of a quick
+intellect, a lively fancy--nay, even a poetry of expression or of
+sentiment. It might be the talk of a child, but certainly not of a
+silly child.</p>
+<p>But as soon as the dance was over, the little ones again
+gathered round Lily. Evidently she was the prime favorite of them
+all; and as her companions had now become tired of dancing, new
+sports were proposed, and Lily was carried off to "Prisoner's
+Base."</p>
+<p>"I am very happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Chillingly,"
+said a frank, pleasant voice; and a well-dressed, good-looking man
+held out his hand to Kenelm.</p>
+<p>"My husband," said Mrs. Braefield with a certain pride in her
+look.</p>
+<p>Kenelm responded cordially to the civilities of the master of
+the house, who had just returned from his city office, and left all
+its cares behind him. You had only to look at him to see that he
+was prosperous and deserved to be so. There were in his countenance
+the signs of strong sense, of good-humor--above all, of an active,
+energetic temperament. A man of broad smooth forehead, keen hazel
+eyes, firm lips and jaw; with a happy contentment in himself, his
+house, the world in general, mantling over his genial smile, and
+outspoken in the metallic ring of his voice.</p>
+<p>"You will stay and dine with us, of course," said Mr. Braefield;
+"and unless you want very much to be in town to-night, I hope you
+will take a bed here."</p>
+<p>Kenelm hesitated.</p>
+<p>"Do stay at least till to-morrow," said Mrs. Braefield. Kenelm
+hesitated still; and while hesitating, his eyes rested on Lily,
+leaning on the arm of a middle-aged lady, and approaching the
+hostess--evidently to take leave.</p>
+<p>"I cannot resist so tempting an invitation," said Kenelm, and he
+fell back a little behind Lily and her companion.</p>
+<p>"Thank you much for so pleasant a day," said Mrs. Cameron to the
+hostess. "Lily has enjoyed herself extremely. I only regret we
+could not come earlier."</p>
+<p>"If you are walking home," said Mr. Braefield, "let me accompany
+you. I want to speak to your gardener about his heart's-ease--it is
+much finer than mine."</p>
+<p>"If so," said Kenelm to Lily, "may I come too? Of all flowers
+that grow, heart's-ease is the one I most prize."</p>
+<p>A few minutes afterward Kenelm was walking by the side of Lily
+along the banks of a little stream tributary to the Thames; Mrs.
+Cameron and Mr. Braefield in advance, for the path only held two
+abreast.</p>
+<p>Suddenly Lily left his side, allured by a rare butterfly--I
+think it is called the Emperor of Morocco--that was sunning its
+yellow wings upon a group of wild reeds. She succeeded in capturing
+this wanderer in her straw hat, over which she drew her sun-veil.
+After this notable capture she returned demurely to Kenelm's
+side.</p>
+<p>"Do you collect insects?" said that philosopher, as much
+surprised as it was his nature to be at anything.</p>
+<p>"Only butterflies," answered Lily; "they are not insects, you
+know; they are souls."</p>
+<p>"Emblems of souls, you mean--at least so the Greeks prettily
+represented them to be."</p>
+<p>"No, real souls--the souls of infants that die in their cradles
+unbaptized; and if they are taken care of, and not eaten by birds,
+and live a year, then they pass into fairies."</p>
+<p>"It is a very poetical idea, Miss Mordaunt, and founded on
+evidence quite as rational as other assertions of the metamorphosis
+of one creature into another. Perhaps you can do what the
+philosophers cannot--tell me how you learned a new idea to be an
+incontestable fact?"</p>
+<p>"I don't know," replied Lily, looking very much puzzled:
+"perhaps I learned it in a book, or perhaps I dreamed it."</p>
+<p>"You could not make a wiser answer if you were a philosopher.
+But you talk of taking care of butterflies: how do you do that? Do
+you impale them on pins stuck into a glass case?"</p>
+<p>"Impale them! How can you talk so cruelly? You deserve to be
+pinched by the fairies."</p>
+<p>"I am afraid," thought Kenelm, compassionately, "that my
+companion has no mind to be formed; what is euphoniously called 'an
+innocent.'"</p>
+<p>He shook his head and remained silent.</p>
+<p>Lily resumed--"I will show you my collection when we get
+home--they seem so happy. I am sure there are some of them who know
+me--they will feed from my hand. I have only had one die since I
+began to collect them last summer."</p>
+<p>"Then you have kept them a year; they ought to have turned into
+fairies."</p>
+<p>"I suppose many of them have. Of course I let out all those that
+had been with me twelve months--they don't turn to fairies in the
+cage, you know. Now I have only those I caught this year, or last
+autumn; the prettiest don't appear till the autumn."</p>
+<p>The girl here bent her uncovered head over the straw hat, her
+tresses shadowing it, and uttered loving words to the prisoner.
+Then again she looked up and around her, and abruptly stopped and
+exclaimed:--</p>
+<p>"How can people live in towns--how can people say they are ever
+dull in the country? Look," she continued, gravely and
+earnestly--"look at that tall pine-tree, with its long branch
+sweeping over the water; see how, as the breeze catches it, it
+changes its shadow, and how the shadow changes the play of the
+sunlight on the brook:--</p>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Wave your tops, ye pines;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; With every plant, in sign of worship
+wave.'<br>
+<p>What an interchange of music there must be between Nature and a
+poet!"</p>
+<p>Kenelm was startled. This "an innocent!"--this a girl who had no
+mind to be formed! In that presence he could not be cynical; could
+not speak of Nature as a mechanism, a lying humbug, as he had done
+to the man poet. He replied gravely:--</p>
+<p>"The Creator has gifted the whole universe with language, but
+few are the hearts that can interpret it. Happy those to whom it is
+no foreign tongue, acquired imperfectly with care and pain, but
+rather a native language, learned unconsciously from the lips of
+the great mother. To them the butterfly's wing may well buoy into
+heaven a fairy's soul!"</p>
+<p>When he had thus said, Lily turned, and for the first time
+attentively looked into his dark soft eyes; then instinctively she
+laid her light hand on his arm, and said in a low voice, "Talk
+on--talk thus; I like to hear you."</p>
+<p>But Kenelm did not talk on. They had now arrived at the
+garden-gate of Mrs. Cameron's cottage, and the elder persons in
+advance paused at the gate and walked with them to the house.</p>
+<br>
+<p>End of Volume VI.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Library Of The World's Best
+Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6, by Various
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,18378 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Library Of The World's Best Literature,
+Ancient And Modern, Vol 6, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: October 5, 2004 [EBook #13623]
+
+Language: English
+
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORLD'S BEST LITERATURE ***
+
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+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
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+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
+
+Connoisseur Edition
+
+VOL. VI.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+ALCEE FORTIER, LIT.D.,
+   Professor of the Romance Languages,
+   TULANE UNIVERSITY, New Orleans, La.
+
+WILLIAM P. TRENT, M.A.,
+   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, Ill.
+
+WILLIAM T. HARRIS, LL.D.,
+   United States Commissioner of Education,
+   BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D.C.
+
+MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN, A.M., LL.D.,
+   Professor of Literature in the
+   CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA, Washington, D.C.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+VOL. VI
+
+                                                   LIVED          PAGE
+
+THE ABBE DE BRANTOME (Pierre de Bourdeille)      1527-1614        2319
+  The Dancing of Royalty ('Lives of Notable Women')
+  The Shadow of a Tomb ('Lives of Courtly Women')
+  M. le Constable Anne de Montmorency ('Lives of Distinguished Men and
+    Great Captains')
+  Two Famous Entertainments ('Lives of Courtly Women')
+
+FREDRIKA BREMER                                  1801-1865        2328
+  A Home-Coming ('The Neighbors')
+  The Landed Proprietor ('The Home')
+  A Family Picture (same)
+
+CLEMENS BRENTANO                                 1778-1842        2343
+  The Nurse's Watch
+  The Castle in Austria
+
+ELISABETH BRENTANO (Bettina von Arnim)           1785-1859        2348
+  Dedication: To Goethe ('Goethe's Correspondence with a Child')
+  Letter to Goethe
+  Bettina's Last Meeting with Goethe (Letter to Her Niece)
+  In Goethe's Garden
+
+JOHN BRIGHT                                      1811-1889        2354
+  From Speech on the Corn Laws (1843)
+  From Speech on Incendiarism in Ireland (1844)
+  From Speech on Non-Recognition of the Southern Confederacy (1861)
+  From Speech on the State of Ireland (1866)
+  From Speech on the Irish Established Church (1868)
+
+BRILLAT-SAVARIN                                  1755-1826        2365
+
+  From 'Physiology of Taste': The Privations; On the Love of Good
+    Living; On People Fond of Good Living
+
+CHARLOTTE BRONTE AND HER SISTERS                 1816-1855        2381
+  Jane Eyre's Wedding-Day ('Jane Eyre')
+  Madame Beck ('Villette')
+  A Yorkshire Landscape ('Shirley')
+  The End of Heathcliff (Emily Bronte's 'Wuthering Heights')
+
+PHILLIPS BROOKS                                  1835-1893        2417
+  O Little Town of Bethlehem
+  Personal Character ('Essays and Addresses')
+  The Courage of Opinions (same)
+  Literature and Life (same)
+
+CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN                           1771-1810        2425
+  Wieland's Statement ('Wieland')
+
+JOHN BROWN                                       1810-1882        2437
+  Marjorie Fleming ('Spare Hours')
+  Death of Thackeray (same)
+
+CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE (Artemus Ward)             1834-1867        2461
+                BY CHARLES F. JOHNSON
+  Edwin Forrest as Othello
+  High-Handed Outrage at Utica
+  Affairs Round the Village Green
+  Mr. Pepper ('Artemus Ward: His Travels')
+  Horace Greeley's Ride to Placerville (same)
+
+SIR THOMAS BROWNE                                1605-1682        2473
+                BY FRANCIS BACON
+  From the 'Religio Medici'
+  From 'Christian Morals'
+  From 'Hydriotaphia, or Urn-Burial'
+  From 'A Fragment on Mummies'
+  From 'A Letter to a Friend'
+  Some Relations Whose Truth We Fear ('Pseudoxia Epidemica')
+
+WILLIAM BROWNE                                   1591-1643        2511
+  Circe's Charm ('Inner Temple Masque')
+  The Hunted Squirrel ('Britannia's Pastorals')
+  As Careful Merchants Do Expecting Stand (same)
+  Song of the Sirens ('Inner Temple Masque')
+  An Epistle on Parting
+  Sonnets to Caelia
+
+HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL                            1820-1872        2519
+  Annus Memorabilis
+  Words for the 'Hallelujah Chorus'
+  Coming
+  Psychaura
+  Suspiria Noctis
+
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING                       1809-1861        2523
+  A Musical Instrument
+  My Heart and I
+  From 'Catarina to Camoens'
+  The Sleep
+  The Cry of the Children
+  Mother and Poet
+  A Court Lady
+  The Prospect
+  De Profundis
+  The Cry of the Human
+  Romance of the Swan's Nest
+  The Best Thing in the World
+  Sonnets from the Portuguese
+  A False Step
+  A Child's Thought of God
+  Cheerfulness Taught by Reason
+
+ROBERT BROWNING                                  1812-1889        2557
+                BY E. L. BURLINGAME
+  Andrea del Sarto
+  A Toccata of Galuppi's
+  Confessions
+  Love among the Ruins
+  A Grammarian's Funeral
+  My Last Duchess
+  Up at a Villa--Down in the City
+  In Three Days
+  In a Year
+  Evelyn Hope
+  Prospice
+  The Patriot
+  One Word More
+
+ORESTES AUGUSTUS BROWNSON                        1803-1876        2594
+  Saint-Simonism ('The Convert')
+
+FERDINAND BRUNETIERE                             1849-            2603
+                BY ADOLPHE COHN
+  Taine and Prince Napoleon
+  The Literatures of France, England, and Germany
+
+GIORDANO BRUNO                                   1548-1600        2613
+  A Discourse of Poets ('The Heroic Enthusiasts')
+  Canticle of the Shining Ones: A Tribute to English Women ('The Nolan')
+  Song of the Nine Singers
+  Of Immensity
+  Life Well Lost
+  Parnassus Within
+  Compensation
+  Life for Song
+
+WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT                            1794-1878        2623
+                BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP
+  Thanatopsis
+  The Crowded Street
+  Death of the Flowers
+  The Conqueror's Grave
+  The Battle-Field
+  To a Water-fowl
+  Robert of Lincoln
+  June
+  To the Fringed Gentian
+  The Future Life
+  To the Past
+
+JAMES BRYCE                                      1838-            2643
+  Position of Women in the United States ('The American Commonwealth')
+  Ascent of Ararat ('Trans-Caucasia and Ararat')
+  The Work of the Roman Empire ('The Holy Roman Empire')
+
+FRANCIS TREVELYAN BUCKLAND                       1826-1880        2661
+  A Hunt in a Horse-Pond ('Curiosities of Natural History')
+  On Rats (same)
+  Snakes and their Poison (same)
+  My Monkey Jacko (same)
+
+HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE                              1821-1862        2673
+  Moral versus Intellectual Principles in Human Progress ('History of
+    Civilization in England')
+  Mythical Origin of History (same)
+
+GEORGE LOUIS LE CLERC BUFFON                     1707-1788        2689
+                BY SPENCER TROTTER
+  Nature ('Natural History')
+  The Humming-Bird (same)
+
+EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON                             1803-1873        2697
+                BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE
+  The Amphitheatre ('The Last Days of Pompeii')
+  Kenelm and Lily ('Kenelm Chillingly')
+
+
+
+
+FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+VOLUME VI
+
+                                                 PAGE
+
+"Les Satyres" (Colored Plate)            Frontispiece
+Charlotte Bronte (Portrait)                      2382
+Phillips Brooks (Portrait)                       2418
+"The Holy Child of Bethlehem" (Photogravure)     2420
+"Circe" (Photogravure)                           2514
+Robert Browning (Portrait)                       2558
+William Cullen Bryant (Portrait)                 2624
+Edward Bulwer-Lytton (Portrait)                  2698
+"In the Arena" (Photogravure)                    2718
+"Nydia" (Photogravure)                           2720
+
+
+VIGNETTE PORTRAITS
+
+Abbe de Brantome
+Fredrika Bremer
+Elisabeth Brentano
+John Bright
+Brillat-Savarin
+Charles Brockden Brown
+John Brown
+Charles Farrar Browne
+Sir Thomas Browne
+Elizabeth Barrett Browning
+Orestes Augustus Brownson
+Ferdinand Brunetiere
+James Bryce
+George Louis le Clere Buffon
+
+
+
+THE ABBE DE BRANTOME
+
+(PIERRE DE BOURDEILLE)
+
+(1527-1614)
+
+Every historian of the Valois period is indebted to Brantome for
+preserving the atmosphere and detail of the brilliant life in which he
+moved as a dashing courtier, a military adventurer, and a gallant
+gentleman of high degree. He was not a professional scribe, nor a
+student; but he took notes unconsciously, and in the evening of his life
+turned back the pages of his memory to record the scenes through which
+he had passed and the characters which he had known. He has been termed
+the "valet de chambre" of history; nevertheless the anecdotes scattered
+through his works will ever be treasured by all students and historians
+of that age of luxury and magnificence, art and beauty, beneath which
+lay the fermentation of great religious and political movements,
+culminating in the struggle between the Huguenots and Catholics.
+
+[Illustration: ABBE DE BRANTOME]
+
+Brantome was the third son of the Vicomte de Bourdeille, a Perigord
+nobleman, whose family had lived long in Guienne, and whose aristocratic
+lineage was lost in myth. Upon the estate stood the Abbey of Brantome,
+founded by Charlemagne, and this Henry II. gave to young Pierre de
+Bourdeille in recognition of the military deeds of his brother, Jean de
+Bourdeille, who lost his life in service. Thereafter the lad was to sign
+his name as the Reverend Father in God, Messire Pierre de Bourdeille,
+Abbe de Brantome. Born in the old chateau in 1527, he was destined for
+the church, but abandoned this career for arms. At an early age he was
+sent to court as page to Marguerite, sister of Francis I. and Queen of
+Navarre; after her death in 1549, he went to Paris to study at the
+University. His title of Abbe being merely honorary, he served in the
+army under Francois de Guise, Duke of Lorraine, and became Gentleman of
+the Chamber to Charles IX. His career extended through the reigns of
+Henry II., Francis II., Charles IX., Henry III., and Henry IV., to that
+of Louis XIII. With the exception of diplomatic missions, service on
+the battle-field, and voyages for pleasure, he spent his life at court.
+
+About 1594 he retired to his estate, where until his death on July 15th,
+1614, he passed his days in contentions with the monks of Brantome, in
+lawsuits with his neighbors, and in writing his books: 'Lives of the
+Illustrious Men and Great Captains of France'; 'Lives of Illustrious
+Ladies'; 'Lives of Women of Gallantry'; 'Memoirs, containing anecdotes
+connected with the Court of France'; 'Spanish Rodomontades'; a 'Life' of
+his father, Francois de Bourdeille; a 'Funeral Oration' on his sister
+in-law; and a dialogue in verse, entitled 'The Tomb of Madame de
+Bourdeille.' These were not published until long after his death, first
+appearing in Leyden about 1665, at the Hague in 1740, and in Paris in
+1787. The best editions are by Fourcault (7 vols., Paris, 1822); by
+Lacour and Merimee (3 vols., 1859); and Lalande (10 vols., 1865-'81).
+
+What Brantome thought of himself may be seen by glancing at that portion
+of the "testament mystique" which relates to his writings:--
+
+     "I will and expressly charge my heirs that they cause to be
+     printed the books which I have composed by my talent and
+     invention. These books will be found covered with velvet,
+     either black, green or blue, and one larger volume, which is
+     that of the Rodomontades, covered with velvet, gilt outside
+     and curiously bound. All have been carefully corrected. There
+     will be found in these books excellent things, such as
+     stories, histories, discourses, and witty sayings, which I
+     flatter myself the world will not disdain to read when once
+     it has had a sight of them. I direct that a sum of money be
+     taken from my estate sufficient to pay for the printing
+     thereof, which certainly cannot be much; for I have known
+     many printers who would have given money rather than charged
+     any for the right of printing them. They print many things
+     without charge which are not at all equal to mine. I will
+     also that the said impression shall be in large type, in
+     order to make the better appearance, and that they should
+     appear with the Royal Privilege, which the King will readily
+     grant. Also care must be taken that the printers do not put
+     on the title-page any supposititious name instead of mine.
+     Otherwise, I should be defrauded of the glory which is my
+     due."
+
+The old man delighted in complimenting himself and talking about his
+"grandeur d'ame." This greatness of soul may be measured from the
+command he gave his heirs to annoy a man who had refused to swear homage
+to him, "it not being reasonable to leave at rest this little wretch,
+who descends from a low family, and whose grandfather was nothing but a
+notary." He also commands his nieces and nephews to take the same
+vengeance upon his enemies "as I should have done in my green and
+vigorous youth, during which I may boast, and I thank God for it, that I
+never received an injury without being revenged on the author of it."
+
+Brantome writes like a "gentleman of the sword," with dash and _elan_,
+and as one, to use his own words, who has been "toujours trottant,
+traversant, et vagabondant le monde" (always trotting, traversing, and
+tramping the world). Not in the habit of a vagabond, however, for the
+balls, banquets, tournaments, masques, ballets, and wedding-feasts which
+he describes so vividly were occasions for the display of sumptuous
+costumes; and Messire Pierre de Bourdeille doubtless appeared as elegant
+as any other gallant in silken hose, jeweled doublet, flowing cape, and
+long rapier. What we value most are his paintings of these festive
+scenes, and the vivid portraits which he has left of the Valois women,
+who were largely responsible for the luxuries and the crimes of the
+period: women who could step without a tremor from a court-masque to a
+massacre; who could toy with a gallant's ribbons and direct the blow of
+an assassin; and who could poison a rival with a delicately perfumed
+gift. Such a court Brantome calls the "true paradise of the world,
+school of all honesty and virtue, ornament of France." We like to hear
+about Catherine de' Medici riding with her famous "squadron of Venus":
+"You should have seen forty or fifty dames and demoiselles following
+her, mounted on beautifully accoutred hackneys, their hats adorned with
+feathers which increased their charm, so well did the flying plumes
+represent the demand for love or war. Virgil, who undertook to describe
+the fine apparel of Queen Dido when she went out hunting, has by no
+means equaled that of our Queen and her ladies."
+
+Charming, too, are such descriptions as "the most beautiful ballet that
+ever was, composed of sixteen of the fairest and best-trained dames and
+demoiselles, who appeared in a silvered rock where they were seated in
+niches, shut in on every side. The sixteen ladies represented the
+sixteen provinces of France. After having made the round of the hall for
+parade as in a camp, they all descended, and ranging themselves in the
+form of a little oddly contrived battalion, some thirty violins began a
+very pleasant warlike air, to which they danced their ballet." After an
+hour the ladies presented the King, the Queen-Mother, and others with
+golden plaques, on which were engraved "the fruits and singularities of
+each province," the wheat of Champagne, the vines of Burgundy, the
+lemons and oranges of Provence, etc. He shows us Catherine de' Medici,
+the elegant, cunning Florentine; her beautiful daughters, Elizabeth of
+Spain and Marguerite de Valois; Diana of Poitiers, the woman of eternal
+youth and beauty; Jeanne d'Albret, the mother of Henry IV.; Louise de
+Vaudemont; the Duchesse d'Etampes; Marie Touchet; and all their
+satellites,--as they enjoyed their lives.
+
+Very valuable are the data regarding Mary Stuart's departure from France
+in 1561. Brantome was one of her suite, and describes her grief when
+the shores of France faded away, and her arrival in Scotland, where on
+the first night she was serenaded by Psalm-tunes with a most villainous
+accompaniment of Scotch music. "He! quelle musique!" he exclaims, "et
+quel repos pour la nuit!"
+
+But of all the gay ladies Brantome loves to dwell upon, his favorites
+are the two Marguerites: Marguerite of Angouleme, Queen of Navarre, the
+sister of Francis I., and Marguerite, daughter of Catherine de' Medici
+and wife of Henry IV. Of the latter, called familiarly "La Reine
+Margot," he is always writing. "To speak of the beauty of this rare
+princess," he says, "I think that all that are, or will be, or have ever
+been near her are ugly."
+
+Brantome has been a puzzle to many critics, who cannot explain his
+"contradictions." He had none. He extolled wicked and immoral characters
+because he recognized only two merits,--aristocratic birth and hatred of
+the Huguenots. He is well described by M. de Barante, who
+says:--"Brantome expresses the entire character of his country and of
+his profession. Careless of the difference between good and evil; a
+courtier who has no idea that anything can be blameworthy in the great,
+but who sees and narrates their vices and their crimes all the more
+frankly in that he is not very sure whether what he tells be good or
+bad; as indifferent to the honor of women as he is to the morality of
+men; relating scandalous things with no consciousness that they are
+such, and almost leading his reader into accepting them as the simplest
+things in the world, so little importance does he attach to them;
+terming Louis XI., who poisoned his brother, the _good_ King Louis,
+calling women whose adventures could hardly have been written by any pen
+save his own, _honnetes dames_."
+
+Brantome must therefore not be regarded as a chronicler who revels in
+scandals, although his pages reek with them; but as the true mirror of
+the Valois court and the Valois period.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE DANCING OF ROYALTY
+
+From 'Lives of Notable Women'
+
+Ah! how the times have changed since I saw them together in the
+ball-room, expressing the very spirit of the dance! The King always
+opened the grand ball by leading out his sister, and each equaled the
+other in majesty and grace. I have often seen them dancing the Pavane
+d'Espagne, which must be performed with the utmost majesty and grace.
+The eyes of the entire court were riveted upon them, ravished by this
+lovely scene; for the measures were so well danced, the steps so
+intelligently placed, the sudden pauses timed so accurately and making
+so elegant an effect, that one did not know what to admire most,--the
+beautiful manner of moving, or the majesty of the halts, now expressing
+excessive gayety, now a beautiful and haughty disdain. Who could dance
+with such elegance and grace as the royal brother and sister? None, I
+believe; and I have watched the King dancing with the Queen of Spain and
+the Queen of Scotland, each of whom was an excellent dancer.
+
+I have seen them dance the 'Pazzemezzo d'Italie,' walking gravely
+through the measures, and directing their steps with so graceful and
+solemn a manner that no other prince nor lady could approach them in
+dignity. This Queen took great pleasure in performing these grave
+dances; for she preferred to exhibit dignified grace rather than to
+express the gayety of the Branle, the Volta, and the Courante. Although
+she acquired them quickly, she did not think them worthy of her majesty.
+
+I always enjoyed seeing her dance the Branle de la Torche, or du
+Flambeau. Once, returning from the nuptials of the daughter of the King
+of Poland, I saw her dance this kind of a Branle at Lyons before the
+assembled guests from Savoy, Piedmont, Italy, and other places; and
+every one said he had never seen any sight more captivating than this
+lovely lady moving with grace of motion and majestic mien, all agreeing
+that she had no need of the flaming torch which she held in her hand;
+for the flashing light from her brilliant eyes was sufficient to
+illuminate the set, and to pierce the dark veil of Night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE SHADOW OF A TOMB
+
+From 'Lives of Courtly Women'
+
+Once I had an elder brother who was called Captain Bourdeille, one of
+the bravest and most valiant soldiers of his time. Although he was my
+brother, I must praise him, for the record he made in the wars brought
+him fame. He was the _gentilhomme de France_ who stood first in the
+science and gallantry of arms. He was killed during the last siege of
+Hesdin. My brother's parents had destined him for the career of letters,
+and accordingly sent him at the age of eighteen to study in Italy, where
+he settled in Ferrara because of Madame Renee de France, Duchess of
+Ferrara, who ardently loved my mother. He enjoyed life at her court,
+and soon fell deeply in love with a young French widow,--Mademoiselle de
+La Roche,--who was in the suite of Madame de Ferrara.
+
+They remained there in the service of love, until my father, seeing that
+his son was not following literature, ordered him home. She, who loved
+him, begged him to take her with him to France and to the court of
+Marguerite of Navarre, whom she had served, and who had given her to
+Madame Renee when she went to Italy upon her marriage. My brother, who
+was young, was greatly charmed to have her companionship, and conducted
+her to Pau. The Queen was glad to welcome her, for the young widow was
+handsome and accomplished, and indeed considered superior in _esprit_ to
+the other ladies of the court.
+
+After remaining a few days with my mother and grandmother, who were
+there, my brother visited his father. In a short time he declared that
+he was disgusted with letters, and joined the army, serving in the wars
+of Piedmont and Parma, where he acquired much honor in the space of five
+or six months; during which time he did not revisit his home. At the end
+of this period he went to see his mother at Pau. He made his reverence
+to the Queen of Navarre as she returned from vespers; and she, who was
+the best princess in the world, received him cordially, and taking his
+hand, led him about the church for an hour or two. She demanded news
+regarding the wars of Piedmont and Italy, and many other particulars, to
+which my brother replied so well that she was greatly pleased with him.
+He was a very handsome young man of twenty-four years. After talking
+gravely and engaging him in earnest conversation, walking up and down
+the church, she directed her steps toward the tomb of Mademoiselle de La
+Roche, who had been dead for three months. She stopped here, and again
+took his hand, saying, "My cousin" (thus addressing him because a
+daughter of D'Albret was married into our family of Bourdeille; but of
+this I do not boast, for it has not helped me particularly), "do you not
+feel something move below your feet?"
+
+"No, Madame," he replied.
+
+"But reflect again, my cousin," she insisted.
+
+My brother answered, "Madame, I feel nothing move. I stand upon a solid
+stone."
+
+"Then I will explain," said the Queen, "without keeping you longer in
+suspense, that you stand upon the tomb and over the body of your poor
+dearly-loved Mademoiselle de La Roche, who is interred here; and that
+our friends may have sentiment for us at our death, render a pious
+homage here. You cannot doubt that the gentle creature, dying so
+recently, must have been affected when you approached. In remembrance I
+beg you to say a paternoster and an Ave Maria and a de profundis, and
+sprinkle holy water. Thus you will win the name of a very faithful lover
+and a good Christian."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+M. LE CONSTABLE ANNE DE MONTMORENCY
+
+From 'Lives of Distinguished Men and Great Captains'
+
+He never failed to say and keep up his paternosters every morning,
+whether he remained in the house, or mounted his horse and went out to
+the field to join the army. It was a common saying among the soldiers
+that one must "beware the paternosters of the Constable." For as
+disorders were very frequent, he would say, while mumbling and muttering
+his paternosters all the time, "Go and fetch that fellow and hang me him
+up to this tree;" "Out with a file of harquebusiers here before me this
+instant, for the execution of this man!" "Burn me this village
+instantly!" "Cut me to pieces at once all these villain peasants, who
+have dared to hold this church against the king!" All this without ever
+ceasing from his paternosters till he had finished them--thinking that
+he would have done very wrong to put them off to another time; so
+conscientious was he!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TWO FAMOUS ENTERTAINMENTS
+
+From 'Lives of Courtly Women'
+
+I have read in a Spanish book called 'El Viaje del Principe' (The Voyage
+of the Prince), made by the King of Spain in the Pays-Bas in the time of
+the Emperor Charles, his father, about the wonderful entertainments
+given in the rich cities. The most famous was that of the Queen of
+Hungary in the lovely town of Bains, which passed into a proverb, "Mas
+bravas que las festas de Bains" (more magnificent than the festivals of
+Bains). Among the displays which were seen during the siege of a
+counterfeit castle, she ordered for one day a fete in honor of the
+Emperor her brother, Queen Eleanor her sister, and the gentlemen and
+ladies of the court.
+
+Toward the end of the feast a lady appeared with six Oread-nymphs,
+dressed as huntresses in classic costumes of silver and green,
+glittering with jewels to imitate the light of the moon. Each one
+carried a bow and arrows in her hand and wore a quiver on her shoulder;
+their buskins were of cloth of silver. They entered the hall, leading
+their dogs after them, and placed on the table in front of the Emperor
+all kinds of venison pasties, supposed to have been the spoils of the
+chase. After them came the Goddess of Shepherds and her six nymphs,
+dressed in cloth of silver, garnished with pearls. They wore
+knee-breeches beneath their flowing robes, and white pumps, and brought
+in various products of the dairy.
+
+Then entered the third division--Pomona and her nymphs--bearing fruit of
+all descriptions. This goddess was the daughter of Donna Beatrix
+Pacheco, Countess d'Autremont, lady-in-waiting to Queen Eleanor, and was
+but nine years old. She was now Madame l'Admirale de Chastillon, whom
+the Admiral married for his second wife. Approaching with her
+companions, she presented her gifts to the Emperor with an eloquent
+speech, delivered so beautifully that she received the admiration of the
+entire assembly, and all predicted that she would become a beautiful,
+charming, graceful, and captivating lady. She was dressed in cloth of
+silver and white, with white buskins, and a profusion of precious
+stones--emeralds, colored like some of the fruit she bore. After making
+these presentations, she gave the Emperor a Palm of Victory, made of
+green enamel, the fronds tipped with pearls and jewels. This was very
+rich and gorgeous. To Queen Eleanor she gave a fan containing a mirror
+set with gems of great value. Indeed, the Queen of Hungary showed that
+she was a very excellent lady, and the Emperor was proud of a sister
+worthy of himself. All the young ladies who impersonated these mythical
+characters were selected from the suites of France, Hungary, and Madame
+de Lorraine; and were therefore French, Italian, Flemish, German, and of
+Lorraine. None of them lacked beauty.
+
+At the same time that these fetes were taking place at Bains, Henry II.
+made his entree in Piedmont and at his garrisons in Lyons, where were
+assembled the most brilliant of his courtiers and court ladies. If the
+representation of Diana and her chase given by the Queen of Hungary was
+found beautiful, the one at Lyons was more beautiful and complete. As
+the king entered the city, he saw obelisks of antiquity to the right and
+left, and a wall of six feet was constructed along the road to the
+courtyard, which was filled with underbrush and planted thickly with
+trees and shrubbery. In this miniature forest were hidden deer and
+other animals.
+
+As soon as his Majesty approached, to the sound of horns and trumpets
+Diana issued forth with her companions, dressed in the fashion of a
+classic nymph with her quiver at her side and her bow in her hand. Her
+figure was draped in black and gold sprinkled with silver stars, the
+sleeves were of crimson satin bordered with gold, and the garment,
+looped up above the knee, revealed her buskins of crimson satin covered
+with pearls and embroidery. Her hair was entwined with magnificent
+strings of rich pearls and gems of much value, and above her brow was
+placed a crescent of silver, surrounded by little diamonds. Gold could
+never have suggested half so well as the shining silver the white light
+of the real crescent. Her companions were attired in classic costumes
+made of taffetas of various colors, shot with gold, and their ringlets
+were adorned with all kinds of glittering gems....
+
+Other nymphs carried darts of Brazil-wood tipped with black and white
+tassels, and carried horns and trumpets suspended by ribbons of white
+and black. When the King appeared, a lion, which had long been under
+training, ran from the wood and lay at the feet of the Goddess, who
+bound him with a leash of white and black and led him to the king,
+accompanying her action with a poem of ten verses, which she delivered
+most beautifully. Like the lion--so ran the lines--the city of Lyons lay
+at his Majesty's feet, gentle, gracious, and obedient to his command.
+This spoken, Diana and her nymphs made low bows and retired.
+
+Note that Diana and her companions were married women, widows, and young
+girls, taken from the best society in Lyons, and there was no fault to
+be found with the way they performed their parts. The King, the princes,
+and the ladies and gentlemen of the court were ravished. Madame de
+Valentinois, called Diana of Poitiers,--whom the King served and in
+whose name the mock chase was arranged,--was not less content.
+
+
+
+FREDRIKA BREMER
+
+(1801-1865)
+
+Fredrika Bremer was born at Tuorla Manor-house, near Abo, in Finland, on
+the 17th of August, 1801. In 1804 the family removed to Stockholm, and
+two years later to a large estate at Arsta, some twenty miles from the
+capital, which was her subsequent home. At Arsta the father of Fredrika,
+who had amassed a fortune in the iron industry in Finland, set up an
+establishment in accord with his means. The manor-house, built two
+centuries before, had become in some parts dilapidated, but it was
+ultimately restored and improved beyond its original condition. From its
+windows on one side the eye stretched over nearly five miles of meadows,
+fields, and villages belonging to the estate.
+
+[Illustration: FREDRIKA BREMER]
+
+In spite of its surroundings, however, Fredrika's childhood was not a
+happy one. Her mother was severe and impatient of petty faults, and the
+child's mind became embittered. Her father was reserved and melancholy.
+Fredrika herself was restless and passionate, although of an
+affectionate nature. Among the other children she was the ugly duckling,
+who was misunderstood, and whose natural development was continually
+checked and frustrated. Her talents were early exhibited in a variety of
+directions. Her first verses, in French, to the morn, were written at
+the age of eight. Subsequently she wrote comedies for home production,
+prose and verse of all sorts, and kept a journal, which has been
+preserved. In 1821 the whole family went on a tour abroad, from which
+they did not return until the following year, having visited in the
+meantime Germany, Switzerland, and France, and spent the winter in
+Paris. This year among new scenes and surroundings seems to have brought
+home to Fredrika, upon the resumption of her old life in the country,
+its narrowness and its isolation. She was entirely shut off from all
+desired activity; her illusions vanished one by one. "I was conscious,"
+she says in her short autobiography, "of being born with powerful wings,
+but I was conscious of their being clipped;" and she fancied that they
+would remain so.
+
+Her attention, however, was fortunately attracted from herself to the
+poor and sick in the country round about; and she presently became to
+the whole region a nurse and a helper, denying herself all sorts of
+comforts that she might give them to others, and braving storm and
+hunger on her errands of mercy. In order to earn money for her charities
+she painted miniature portraits of the Crown Princess and the King, and
+secretly sold them. Her desire to increase the small sums she thus
+gained induced her to seek a publisher for a number of sketches she had
+written. Her brother readily disposed of the manuscript for a hundred
+rix-dollars; and her first book, 'Teckningar ur Hvardagslifvet'
+(Sketches of Every-day Life), appeared in 1828, but without the name of
+the author, of whose identity the publisher himself was left in
+ignorance. The book was received with such favor that the young author
+was induced to try again; and what had originally been intended as a
+second volume of the 'Sketches' appeared in 1830 as 'Familjen H.' (The
+H. Family). Its success was immediate and unmistakable. It not only was
+received with applause, but created a sensation, and Swedish literature
+was congratulated on the acquisition of a new talent among its writers.
+
+The secret of Fredrika's authorship--which had as yet not been confided
+even to her parents--was presently revealed to the poet (and later
+bishop) Franzen, an old friend of the family. Shortly afterward the
+Swedish Academy, of which Franzen was secretary, awarded her its lesser
+gold medal as a sign of appreciation. A third volume met with even
+greater success than its predecessors, and seemed definitely to point
+out the career which she subsequently followed; and from this time until
+the close of her life she worked diligently in her chosen field. She
+rapidly acquired an appreciative public in and out of Sweden. Many of
+her novels and tales were translated into various languages, several of
+them appearing simultaneously in Swedish and English. In 1844 the
+Swedish Academy awarded her its great gold medal of merit.
+
+Several long journeys abroad mark the succeeding years: to Denmark and
+America from 1848 to 1857; to Switzerland, Belgium, France, Italy,
+Palestine, and Greece, from 1856 to 1861; to Germany in 1862, returning
+the same year. The summer months of 1864 she spent at Arsta, which since
+1853 had passed out of the hands of the family. She removed there the
+year after, and died there on the 31st of December.
+
+Fredrika Bremer's most successful literary work was in the line of her
+earliest writings, descriptive of the every-day life of the middle
+classes. Her novels in this line have an unusual charm of expression,
+whose definable elements are an unaffected simplicity and a certain
+quiet humor which admirably fits the chosen _milieu_. Besides the ones
+already mentioned, 'Presidentens Doettrar' (The President's Daughters),
+'Grannarna' (The Neighbors), 'Hemmet' (The Home), 'Nina,' and others,
+cultivated this field. Later she drifted into "tendency" fiction, making
+her novels the vehicles for her opinions on important public questions,
+such as religion, philanthropy, and above all the equal rights of women.
+These later productions, of which 'Hertha' and 'Syskonlif' are the most
+important, are far inferior to her earlier work. She had, however, the
+satisfaction of seeing the realization of several of the movements which
+she had so ardently espoused: the law that unmarried women in Sweden
+should attain their majority at twenty-five years of age; the
+organization at Stockholm of a seminary for the education of woman
+teachers; and certain parliamentary reforms.
+
+In addition to her novels and short stories, she wrote some verse,
+mostly unimportant, and several books of travel, among them 'Hemmen i ny
+Verlden' (Homes in the New World), containing her experiences of
+America; 'Life in the Old World'; and 'Greece and the Greeks.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A HOME-COMING
+
+From 'The Neighbors'
+
+LETTER I.--FRANCISCA W. TO MARIA M.
+
+ROSENVIK, 1st June, 18.
+
+Here I am now, dear Maria, in my own house and home, at my own
+writing-table, and with my own Bear. And who then is Bear? no doubt you
+ask. Who else should he be but my own husband? I call him _Bear_
+because--it so happens. I am seated at the window. The sun is setting.
+Two swans are swimming in the lake, and furrow its clear mirror. Three
+cows--_my cows_--are standing on the verdant margin, quiet, fat, and
+pensive, and certainly think of nothing. What excellent cows they are!
+Now the maid is coming up with the milk-pail. Delicious milk in the
+country! But what is not good in the country? Air and people, food and
+feelings, earth and sky, everything there is fresh and cheering.
+
+Now I must introduce you to my place of abode--no! I must begin farther
+off. Upon yonder hill, from which I first beheld the valley in which
+Rosenvik lies (the hill is some miles in the interior of Smaaland) do
+you descry a carriage covered with dust? In it are seated Bear and his
+wedded wife. The wife is looking out with curiosity, for before her lies
+a valley so beautiful in the tranquillity of evening! Below are green
+groves which fringe mirror-clear lakes, fields of standing corn bend in
+silken undulations round gray mountains, and white buildings glance amid
+the trees. Round about, pillars of smoke are shooting up vertically from
+the wood-covered hills to the serene evening sky. This seems to indicate
+the presence of volcanoes, but in point of fact it is merely the
+peaceful labor of the husbandmen burning the vegetation, in order to
+fertilize the soil. At all events, it is an excellent thing, and I am
+delighted, bend forward, and am just thinking about a happy family in
+nature,--Paradise, and Adam and Eve,--when suddenly Bear puts his great
+paws around me, and presses me so that I am near giving up the ghost,
+while, kissing me, he entreats me to "be comfortable here." I was a
+little provoked; but when I perceived the heartfelt intention of the
+embrace, I could not but be satisfied.
+
+In this valley, then, was my permanent home: here my new family was
+living; here lay Rosenvik; here I was to live with my Bear. We descended
+the hill, and the carriage rolled rapidly along the level way. Bear told
+me the names of every estate, both in the neighborhood and at a
+distance. I listened as if I were dreaming, but was roused from my
+reverie when he said with a certain stress, "_Here_ is the residence of
+_ma chere mere_," and the carriage drove into a courtyard, and stopped
+before a large and fine stone house.
+
+"What, are we going to alight here?" "Yes, my love." This was by no
+means an agreeable surprise to me. I would gladly have first driven to
+my own home, there to prepare myself a little for meeting my husband's
+stepmother, of whom I was a little afraid, from the accounts I had heard
+of that lady, and the respect Bear entertained for her. This visit
+appeared entirely _mal apropos_ to me, but Bear has his own ideas, and I
+perceived from his manner that it was not expedient then to offer any
+resistance.
+
+It was Sunday, and on the carriage drawing up, the tones of a violin
+became audible to me. "Aha!" said Bear, "so much the better;" made a
+ponderous leap from the carriage, and lifted me out. Of hat-cases and
+packages, no manner of account was to be taken. Bear took my hand,
+ushered me up the steps into the magnificent hall, and dragged me toward
+the door from whence the sounds of music and dancing were heard. "See,"
+thought I, "now I am to dance in this costume forsooth!" I wished to go
+into some place where I could shake the dust from my nose and my bonnet;
+where I could at least view myself in a mirror. Impossible! Bear,
+leading me by the arm, assured me that I looked "most charming," and
+entreated me to mirror myself in his eyes. I then needs must be so
+discourteous as to reply that they were "too small." He protested that
+they were only the clearer, and opened the door to the ball-room. "Well,
+since you lead me to the ball, you shall also dance with me, you Bear!"
+I exclaimed in the gayety of despair, so to speak. "With delight!" cried
+Bear, and at the same moment we found ourselves in the salon.
+
+My alarm diminished considerably when I perceived in the spacious room
+only a crowd of cleanly attired maids and serving-men, who were sweeping
+merrily about with one another. They were so busied with dancing as
+scarcely to observe us. Bear then conducted me to the upper end of the
+apartment; and there, on a high seat, I saw a tall and strong lady of
+about fifty, who was playing on a violin with zealous earnestness, and
+beating time with her foot, which she stamped with energy. On her head
+she wore a remarkable and high-projecting cap of black velvet, which I
+will call a helmet, because that word occurred to my mind at the very
+first view I had of her, and I know no one more appropriate. She looked
+well, but singular. It was the lady of General Mansfelt, my husband's
+stepmother, _ma chere mere!_
+
+She speedily cast her large dark-brown eyes on me, instantly ceased
+playing, laid aside the violin, and drew herself up with a proud
+bearing, but an air of gladness and frankness. Bear led me towards her.
+I trembled a little, bowed profoundly, and kissed _ma chere mere's_
+hand. She kissed my forehead, and for a while regarded me with such a
+keen glance, that I was compelled to abase my eyes, on which she again
+kissed me most cordially on lips and forehead, and embraced me almost as
+lustily as Bear had. Now it was Bear's turn; he kissed the hand of _ma
+chere mere_ right respectfully; she however offered him her cheek, and
+they appeared very friendly. "Be welcome, my dear friends!" said _ma
+chere mere_, with a loud, masculine voice. "It was handsome in you to
+come to me before driving to your own home. I thank you for it. I would
+indeed have given you a better reception had I been prepared; at all
+events, I know that 'Welcome is the best cheer.' I hope, my friends, you
+stay the evening here?" Bear excused us, said that we desired to get
+home soon, that I was fatigued from the journey, but that we would not
+drive by Carlsfors without paying our respects to _ma chere mere_.
+
+"Well, very good, well, very good!" said _ma chere mere_, with
+satisfaction; "we will shortly talk further about that in the chamber
+there; but first I must say a few words to the people here. Hark ye,
+good friends!" and _ma chere mere_ knocked with the bow on the back of
+the violin, till a general silence ensued in the salon. "My children,"
+she pursued in a solemn manner, "I have to tell you--a plague upon you!
+will you not be still there, at the lower end?--I have to inform you
+that my dear son, Lars Anders Werner, has now led home, as his wedded
+wife, this Francisca Buren whom you see at his side. Marriages are made
+in heaven, my children, and we will supplicate heaven to complete its
+work in blessing this conjugal pair. We will this evening together drink
+a bumper to their prosperity. That will do! Now you can continue your
+dancing, my children. Olof, come you here, and do your best in playing."
+
+While a murmur of exultation and congratulations went through the
+assembly, _ma chere mere_ took me by the hand, and led me, together with
+Bear, into another room. Here she ordered punch and glasses to be
+brought in. In the interim she thrust her two elbows on the table,
+placed her clenched hands under her chin, and gazed steadfastly at me,
+but with a look which was rather gloomy than friendly. Bear, perceiving
+that _ma chere mere's_ review embarrassed me, broached the subject of
+the harvest or rural affairs. _Ma chere mere_ vented a few sighs, so
+deep that they rather resembled groans, appeared to make a violent
+effort to command herself, answered Bear's questions, and on the arrival
+of the punch, drank to us, saying, with a serious look and voice, "Son
+and son's wife, your health!" On this she grew more friendly, and said
+in a tone of pleasantry, which beseemed her very well, "Lars Anders, I
+don't think people can say you have bought the calf in the sack. Your
+wife does not by any means look in bad case, and has a pair of eyes to
+buy fish with. Little she is, it is true; but 'Little and bold is often
+more than a match for the great.'"
+
+I laughed, so did _ma chere mere_ also; I began to understand her
+character and manner. We gossiped a little while together in a lively
+manner, and I recounted some little adventures of travel, which amused
+her exceedingly. After the lapse of an hour, we arose to take leave, and
+_ma chere mere_ said, with a really charming smile, "I will not detain
+you this evening, delighted as I am to see you. I can well imagine that
+home is attractive. Stay at home to-morrow, if you will; but the day
+after to-morrow come and dine with me. As to the rest, you know well
+that you are at all times welcome. Fill now your glasses, and come and
+drink the folks' health. Sorrow we should keep to ourselves, but share
+joy in common."
+
+We went into the dancing-room with full glasses, _ma chere mere_ leading
+the way as herald. They were awaiting us with bumpers, and _ma chere
+mere_ addressed the people something in this strain:--"We must not
+indeed laugh until we get over the brook; but when we set out on the
+voyage of matrimony with piety and good sense, then may be applied the
+adage that 'Well begun is half won'; and on that, my friends, we will
+drink a skoal to this wedded pair you see before you, and wish that both
+they and their posterity may ever 'sit in the vineyard of our
+Lord.' Skoal!"
+
+"Skoal! skoal!" resounded from every side. Bear and I emptied our
+glasses, and went about and shook a multitude of people by the hand,
+till my head was all confusion. When this was over, and we were
+preparing to prosecute our journey, _ma chere mere_ came after us on the
+steps with a packet or bundle in her hand, and said in a friendly
+manner, "Take this cold roast veal with you, children, for breakfast
+to-morrow morning. After that, you must fatten and consume your own
+calves. But forget not, daughter-in-law, that I get back my napkin. No,
+you shan't carry it, dear child, you have enough to do with your bag and
+mantle. Lars Anders shall carry the roast veal." And as if Lars Anders
+had been still a little boy, she charged him with the bundle, showed him
+how he was to carry it, and Bear did as she said. Her last words were,
+"Forget not that I get my napkin again!" I looked with some degree of
+wonder at Bear; but he smiled, and lifted me into the carriage.
+
+THE LANDED PROPRIETOR
+
+From 'The Home'
+
+Louise possessed the quality of being a good listener in a higher degree
+than any one else in the family, and therefore she heard more than any
+one else of his Excellency; but not of him only, for Jacobi had always
+something to tell her, always something to consult her about; and in
+case she were not too much occupied with her thoughts about the weaving,
+he could always depend upon the most intense sympathy, and the best
+advice both with regard to moral questions and economical arrangements,
+dress, plans for the future, and so forth. He also gave her good
+advice--which however was very seldom followed--when she was playing
+Postilion; he also drew patterns for her tapestry work, and was very
+fond of reading aloud to her--but novels rather than sermons.
+
+But he was not long allowed to sit by her side alone; for very soon a
+person seated himself at her other side whom we will call the _Landed
+Proprietor_, as he was chiefly remarkable for the possession of a large
+estate in the vicinity of the town.
+
+The Landed Proprietor seemed to be disposed to dispute with the
+Candidate--let us continue to call him so, as we are all, in one way or
+the other, Candidates in this world--the place which he possessed. The
+Landed Proprietor had, besides his estate, a very portly body; round,
+healthy-looking cheeks; a pair of large gray eyes, remarkable for their
+want of expression; and a little rosy mouth, which preferred mastication
+to speaking, which laughed without meaning, and which now began to
+direct to "Cousin Louise"--for he considered himself related to the
+Lagman--several short speeches, which we will recapitulate in the
+following chapter, headed
+
+STRANGE QUESTIONS
+
+"Cousin Louise, are you fond of fish--bream for instance?" asked the
+Landed Proprietor one evening, as he seated himself by the side of
+Louise, who was busy working a landscape in tapestry.
+
+"Oh, yes! bream is a very good fish," answered she, phlegmatically,
+without looking up.
+
+"Oh, with red-wine sauce, delicious! I have splendid fishing on my
+estate, Oestanvik. Big fellows of bream! I fish for them myself."
+
+"Who is the large fish there?" inquired Jacobi of Henrik, with an
+impatient sneer; "and what is it to him if your sister Louise is fond of
+bream or not?"
+
+"Because then she might like him too, _mon cher_! A very fine and solid
+fellow is my cousin Thure of Oestanvik. I advise you to cultivate his
+acquaintance. What now, Gabrielle dear, what now, your Highness?"
+
+"What is that which--"
+
+"Yes, what is it? I shall lose my head over that riddle. Mamma dear,
+come and help your stupid son!"
+
+"No, no! Mamma knows it already. She must not say it!" exclaimed
+Gabrielle with fear.
+
+"What king do you place above all other kings, Magister?" asked Petrea
+for the second time,--having this evening her "raptus" of questioning.
+
+"Charles the Thirteenth," answered the Candidate, and listened for what
+Louise was going to reply to the Landed Proprietor.
+
+"Do you like birds, Cousin Louise?" asked the Landed Proprietor.
+
+"Oh yes, particularly the throstle," answered Louise.
+
+"Well,--I am glad of that!" said the Landed Proprietor. "On my estate,
+Oestanvik, there is an immense quantity of throstles. I often go out
+with my gun, and shoot them for my dinner. Piff, paff! with two shots I
+have directly a whole dishful."
+
+Petrea, who was asked by no one "Do you like birds, cousin?" and who
+wished to occupy the Candidate, did not let herself be deterred by his
+evident confusion, but for the second time put the following
+question:--"Do you think, Magister, that people before the Flood were
+really worse than they are nowadays?"
+
+"Oh, much, much better," answered the Candidate.
+
+"Are you fond of roasted hare, Cousin Louise?" asked the Landed
+Proprietor.
+
+"Are you fond of roasted hare, Magister?" whispered Petrea waggishly to
+Jacobi.
+
+"Brava, Petrea!" whispered her brother to her.
+
+"Are you fond of cold meat, Cousin Louise?" asked the Landed
+Proprietor, as he was handing Louise to the supper-table.
+
+"Are you fond of Landed Proprietor?" whispered Henrik to her as she left
+it.
+
+Louise answered just as a cathedral would have answered: she looked very
+solemn and was silent.
+
+After supper Petrea was quite excited, and left nobody alone who by any
+possibility could answer her. "Is reason sufficient for mankind? What is
+the ground of morals? What is properly the meaning of 'revelation'? Why
+is everything so badly arranged in the State? Why must there be rich and
+poor?" etc., etc.
+
+"Dear Petrea!" said Louise, "what use can there be in asking those
+questions?"
+
+It was an evening for questions; they did not end even when the company
+had broken up.
+
+"Don't you think, Elise," said the Lagman to his wife when they were
+alone, "that our little Petrea begins to be disagreeable with her
+continual questioning and disputing? She leaves no one in peace, and is
+stirred up herself the whole time. She will make herself ridiculous if
+she keeps on in this way."
+
+"Yes, if she does keep on so. But I have a feeling that she will change.
+I have observed her very particularly for some time, and do you know, I
+think there is really something very uncommon in that girl."
+
+"Yes, yes, there is certainly something uncommon in her. Her liveliness
+and the many games and schemes which she invents--"
+
+"Yes, don't you think they indicate a decided talent for the fine arts?
+And then her extraordinary thirst for learning: every morning, between
+three and four o'clock, she gets up in order to read or write, or to
+work at her compositions. That is not at all a common thing. And may not
+her uneasiness, her eagerness to question and dispute, arise from a sort
+of intellectual hunger? Ah, from such hunger, which many women must
+suffer throughout their lives, from want of literary food,--from such an
+emptiness of the soul arise disquiet, discontent, nay, innumerable
+faults."
+
+"I believe you are right, Elise," said the Lagman, "and no condition in
+life is sadder, particularly in more advanced years. But this shall not
+be the lot of our Petrea--that I will promise. What do you think now
+would benefit her most?"
+
+"My opinion is that a serious and continued plan of study would assist
+in regulating her mind. She is too much left to herself with her
+confused tendencies, with her zeal and her inquiry. I am too ignorant
+myself to lead and instruct her, you have too little time, and she has
+no one here who can properly direct her young and unregulated mind.
+Sometimes I almost pity her, for her sisters don't understand at all
+what is going on within her, and I confess it is often painful to
+myself; I wish I were more able to assist her. Petrea needs some ground
+on which to take her stand. Her thoughts require more firmness; from the
+want of this comes her uneasiness. She is like a flower without roots,
+which is moved about by wind and waves."
+
+"She shall take root, she shall find ground as sure as it is to be found
+in the world," said the Lagman, with a serious and beaming eye, at the
+same time striking his hand on the book containing the law of West
+Gotha, so that it fell to the ground. "We will consider more of this,
+Elise," continued he: "Petrea is still too young for us to judge with
+certainty of her talents and tendencies. But if they turn out to be what
+they appear, then she shall never feel any hunger as long as I live and
+can procure bread for my family. You know my friend, the excellent
+Bishop B----: perhaps we can at first confide our Petrea to his
+guidance. After a few years we shall see; she is still only a child.
+Don't you think that we ought to speak to Jacobi, in order to get him to
+read and converse with her? Apropos, how is it with Jacobi? I imagine
+that he begins to be too attentive to Louise."
+
+"Well, well! you are not so far wrong; and even our cousin Thure of
+Oestanvik,--have you perceived anything there?"
+
+"Yes, I did perceive something yesterday evening; what the deuce was his
+meaning with those stupid questions he put to her? 'Does cousin like
+this?' or 'Is cousin fond of that?' I don't like that at all myself.
+Louise is not yet full-grown, and already people come and ask her, 'Does
+cousin like--?' Well, it may signify very little after all, which would
+perhaps please me best. What a pity, however, that our cousin is not a
+little more manly; for he has certainly got a most beautiful estate, and
+so near us."
+
+"Yes, a pity; because, as he is at present, I am almost sure Louise
+would find it impossible to give him her hand."
+
+"You do not believe that her inclination is toward Jacobi?"
+
+"To tell the truth, I fancy that this is the case."
+
+"Nay, that would be very unpleasant and very unwise: I am very fond of
+Jacobi, but he has nothing and is nothing."
+
+"But, my dear, he may get something and become something; I confess,
+dear Ernst, that I believe he would suit Louise better for a husband
+than any one else we know, and I would with pleasure call him my son."
+
+"Would you, Elise? then I must also prepare myself to do the same. You
+have had most trouble and most labor with the children, it is therefore
+right that you should decide in their affairs."
+
+"Ernst, you are so kind!"
+
+"Say just, Elise; not more than just. Besides, it is my opinion that our
+thoughts and inclinations will not differ much. I confess that Louise
+appears to me to be a great treasure, and I know of nobody I could give
+her to with all my heart; but if Jacobi obtains her affections, I feel
+that I could not oppose their union, although it would be painful to me
+on account of his uncertain prospects. He is really dear to me, and we
+are under great obligations to him on account of Henrik; his excellent
+heart, his honesty, and his good qualities, will make him as good a
+citizen as a husband and father, and I consider him to be one of the
+most agreeable men to associate with daily. But, God bless me! I speak
+as if I wished the union, but that is far from my desire: I would much
+rather keep my daughters at home, so long as they find themselves happy
+with me; but when girls grow up, there is never any peace to depend on.
+I wish all lovers and questioners a long way off. Here we could live
+altogether as in a kingdom of heaven, now that we have got everything in
+such order. Some small improvements may still be wanted, but this will
+be all right if we are only left in peace. I have been thinking that we
+could so easily make a wardrobe here: do you see on this side of the
+wall--don't you think if we were to open--What! are you asleep
+already, my dear?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Louise was often teased about Cousin Thure; Cousin Thure was often
+teased about Cousin Louise. He liked very much to be teased about his
+Cousin Louise, and it gave him great pleasure to be told that Oestanvik
+wanted a mistress, that he himself wanted a good wife, and that Louise
+Frank was decidedly one of the wisest and most amiable girls in the
+whole neighborhood, and of the most respectable family. The Landed
+Proprietor was half ready to receive congratulations on his betrothal.
+What the supposed bride thought about the matter, however, is difficult
+to divine. Louise was certainly always polite to her "Cousin Thure," but
+more indifference than attachment seemed to be expressed in this
+politeness; and she declined, with a decision astonishing to many a
+person, his constantly repeated invitations to make a tour to Oestanvik
+in his new landau drawn by "my chestnut horses," four-in-hand. It was
+said by many that the agreeable and friendly Jacobi was much nearer to
+Louise's heart than the rich Landed Proprietor. But even towards Jacobi
+her behavior was so uniform, so quiet, and so unconstrained that nobody
+knew what to think. Very few knew so well as we do that Louise
+considered it in accordance with the dignity of a woman to show perfect
+indifference to the attentions or _doux propos_ of men, until they had
+openly and fully explained themselves. She despised coquetry to that
+degree that she feared everything which had the least appearance of it.
+Her young friends used to joke with her upon her strong notions in this
+respect, and often told her that she would remain unmarried.
+
+"That may be!" answered Louise calmly.
+
+One day she was told that a gentleman had said, "I will not stand up for
+any girl who is not a little coquettish!"
+
+"Then he may remain sitting!" answered Louise, with a great deal of
+dignity.
+
+Louise's views with regard to the dignity of woman, her serious and
+decided principles, and her manner of expressing them, amused her young
+friends, at the same time that they inspired them with great regard for
+her, and caused many little contentions and discussions in which Louise
+fearlessly, though not without some excess, defended what was right.
+These contentions, which began in merriment, sometimes ended quite
+differently.
+
+A young and somewhat coquettish married lady felt herself one day
+wounded by the severity with which Louise judged the coquetry of her
+sex, particularly of married ladies, and in revenge she made use of some
+words which awakened Louise's astonishment and anger at the same time.
+An explanation followed between the two, the consequence of which was a
+complete rupture between Louise and the young lady, together with an
+altered disposition of mind in the former, which she in vain attempted
+to conceal. She had been unusually joyous and lively during the first
+days of her stay at Axelholm; but she now became silent and thoughtful,
+often absent; and some people thought that she seemed less friendly than
+formerly towards the Candidate, but somewhat more attentive to the
+Landed Proprietor, although she constantly declined his invitation "to
+take a tour to Oestanvik."
+
+The evening after this explanation took place, Elise was engaged with
+Jacobi in a lively conversation in the balcony.
+
+"And if," said Jacobi, "if I endeavor to win her affections, oh, tell
+me! would her parents, would her mother see it without displeasure? Ah,
+speak openly with me; the happiness of my life depends upon it!"
+
+"You have my approval and my good wishes," answered Elise; "I tell you
+now what I have often told my husband, that I should very much like to
+call you my son!"
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Jacobi, deeply affected, falling on his knees and
+pressing Elise's hand to his lips: "oh, that every act in my life might
+prove my gratitude, my love--!"
+
+At this moment Louise, who had been looking for her mother, approached
+the balcony; she saw Jacobi's action and heard his words. She withdrew
+quickly, as if she had been stung by a serpent.
+
+From this time a great change was more and more perceptible in her.
+Silent, shy, and very pale, she moved about like a dreaming person in
+the merry circle at Axelholm, and willingly agreed to her mother's
+proposal to shorten her stay at this place.
+
+Jacobi, who was as much astonished as sorry at Louise's sudden
+unfriendliness towards him, began to think the place was somehow
+bewitched, and wished more than once to leave it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A FAMILY PICTURE
+
+From 'The Home'
+
+The family is assembled in the library; tea is just finished. Louise, at
+the pressing request of Gabrielle and Petrea, lays out the cards in
+order to tell the sisters their fortune. The Candidate seats himself
+beside her, and seems to have made up his mind to be a little more
+cheerful. But then "the object" looks more like a cathedral than ever.
+The Landed Proprietor enters, bows, blows his nose, and kisses the hand
+of his "gracious aunt."
+
+_Landed Proprietor_--Very cold this evening; I think we shall have
+frost.
+
+_Elise_--It is a miserable spring; we have just read a melancholy
+account of the famine in the northern provinces; these years of dearth
+are truly unfortunate.
+
+_Landed Proprietor_--Oh yes, the famine up there. No, let us talk of
+something else; that is too gloomy. I have had my peas covered with
+straw. Cousin Louise, are you fond of playing Patience? I am very fond
+of it myself; it is so composing. At Oestanvik I have got very small
+cards for Patience; I am quite sure you would like them, Cousin Louise.
+
+The Landed Proprietor seats himself on the other side of Louise. The
+Candidate is seized with a fit of curious shrugs.
+
+_Louise_--This is not Patience, but a little conjuring by means of which
+I can tell future things. Shall I tell your fortune, Cousin Thure?
+
+_Landed Proprietor_--Oh yes! do tell my fortune; but don't tell me
+anything disagreeable. If I hear anything disagreeable in the evening, I
+always dream of it at night. Tell me now from the cards that I shall
+have a pretty little wife;--a wife beautiful and amiable as
+Cousin Louise.
+
+_The Candidate (with an expression in his eyes as if he would send the
+Landed Proprietor head-over-heels to Oestanvik)_--I don't know whether
+Miss Louise likes flattery.
+
+_Landed Proprietor (who takes no notice of his rival)_--Cousin Louise,
+are you fond of blue?
+
+_Louise_--Blue? It is a pretty color; but I almost like green better.
+
+_Landed Proprietor_--Well, that's very droll; it suits exceedingly well.
+At Oestanvik my drawing-room furniture is blue; beautiful light-blue
+satin. But in my bedroom I have green moreen. Cousin Louise, I
+believe really--
+
+The Candidate coughs as though he were going to be suffocated, and
+rushes out of the room. Louise looks after him and sighs, and afterwards
+sees in the cards so many misfortunes for Cousin Thure that he is
+quite frightened. "The peas frosted!"--"conflagration in the
+drawing-room"--and at last "a basket" ["the mitten"]. The Landed
+Proprietor declares still laughingly that he will not receive "a
+basket." The sisters smile and make their remarks.
+
+
+
+CLEMENS BRENTANO
+
+(1778-1842)
+
+The intellectual upheaval in Germany at the beginning of this century
+brought a host of remarkable characters upon the literary stage, and
+none more gifted, more whimsical, more winning than Clemens Brentano,
+the erratic son of a brilliant family. Born September 8th, 1778, at
+Ehrenbreitstein, Brentano spent his youth among the stimulating
+influences which accompanied the renaissance of German culture. His
+grandmother, Sophie de la Roche, had been the close friend of Wieland,
+and his mother the youthful companion of Goethe. Clemens, after a vain
+attempt to follow in the mercantile footsteps of his father, went to
+Jena, where he met the Schlegels; and here his brilliant but unsteady
+literary career began.
+
+In 1803 he married the talented Sophie Mareau, but three years later his
+happiness was terminated by her death. His next matrimonial venture was,
+however, a failure: an elopement in 1808 with the daughter of a
+Frankfort banker was quickly followed by a divorce, and he thereafter
+led the uncontrolled life of an errant poet. Among his early writings,
+published under the pseudonym of 'Marie,' were several satires and
+dramas and a novel entitled 'Godwi,' which he himself called "a romance
+gone mad." The meeting with Achim von Arnim, who subsequently married
+his sister Bettina, decided his fate: he embarked in literature once and
+for all in close association with Von Arnim. Together they compiled a
+collection of several hundred folk-songs of the sixteenth, seventeenth,
+and eighteenth centuries, under the name of 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn' (The
+Boy's Wonderhorn), 1806-1808. That so musical a people as the Germans
+should be masters of lyric poetry is but natural,--every longing, every
+impression, every impulse gushes into song; and in 'Des Knaben
+Wunderhorn' we hear the tuneful voices of a naive race, singing what
+they have seen or dreamed or felt during three hundred years. The work
+is dedicated to Goethe, who wrote an almost enthusiastic review of it
+for the Literary Gazette of Jena. "Every lover or master of musical
+art," he says, "should have this volume upon his piano."
+
+The 'Wunderhorn' was greeted by the German public with extraordinary
+cordiality. It was in fact an epoch-making work, the pioneer in the new
+field of German folk poetry. It carried out in a purely national spirit
+the efforts which Herder had made in behalf of the folk-songs of all
+peoples. It revealed the spirit of the time. 1806 was the year of the
+battle of Jena, and Germany in her hour of deepest humiliation gave ear
+to the encouraging voices from out her own past. "The editors of the
+'Wunderhorn,'" said their friend Goerres, "have deserved of their
+countrymen a civic crown, for having saved from destruction what yet
+remained to be saved;" and on this civic crown the poets' laurels are
+still green.
+
+Brentano's contagious laughter may even now be heard re-echoing through
+the pages of his book on 'The Philistine' (1811). His dramatic power is
+evinced in the broadly conceived play 'Die Gruendung Prags' (The Founding
+of Prague: 1815); but it is upon two stories, told in the simple style
+of the folk-tale, that his widest popularity is founded. 'Die Geschichte
+vom braven Casperl und der schoenen Annerl' (The Story of Good Casper and
+Pretty Annie) and his fable of 'Gockel, Hinkel, und Gackeleia,' both of
+the year 1838, are still an indispensable part of the reading of every
+German boy and girl.
+
+Like his brilliant sister, Brentano is a fascinating figure in
+literature. He was amiable and winning, full of quips and cranks, and
+with an inexhaustible fund of stories. Astonishing tales of adventure,
+related with great circumstantiality of detail, and of which he himself
+was the hero, played an important part in his conversation. Tieck once
+said he had never known a better improvisatore than Brentano, nor one
+who could "lie more gracefully."
+
+When Brentano was forty years of age a total change came over his life.
+The witty and fascinating man of the world was transformed into a pious
+and gloomy ascetic. The visions of the stigmatized nun of Duelmen,
+Katharina Emmerich, attracted him, and he remained under her influence
+until her death in 1824. These visions he subsequently published as the
+'Life of the Virgin Mary.' The eccentricities of his later years
+bordered upon insanity. He died in the Catholic faith in the year 1842.
+
+        THE NURSE'S WATCH
+
+        From 'The Boy's Wonderhorn'
+
+
+             The moon it shines,
+               My darling whines;
+     The clock strikes twelve:--God cheer
+             The sick both far and near.
+                 God knoweth all;
+               Mousy nibbles in the wall;
+             The clock strikes one:--like day,
+             Dreams o'er thy pillow play.
+                   The matin-bell
+               Wakes the nun in convent cell;
+             The clock strikes two:--they go
+               To choir in a row.
+                 The wind it blows,
+                 The cock he crows;
+             The clock strikes three:--the wagoner
+             In his straw bed begins to stir.
+               The steed he paws the floor,
+               Creaks the stable door;
+             The clock strikes four:--'tis plain
+             The coachman sifts his grain.
+         The swallow's laugh the still air shakes,
+                   The sun awakes;
+     The clock strikes five:--the traveler must be gone,
+             He puts his stockings on.
+               The hen is clacking,
+               The ducks are quacking;
+             The clock strikes six:--awake, arise,
+             Thou lazy hag; come, ope thy eyes.
+               Quick to the baker's run;
+               The rolls are done;
+             The clock strikes seven:--
+             'Tis time the milk were in the oven.
+               Put in some butter, do,
+               And some fine sugar, too;
+             The clock strikes eight:--
+         Now bring my baby's porridge straight.
+
+     Englished by Charles T. Brooks.
+
+     THE CASTLE IN AUSTRIA
+
+     From 'The Boy's Wonderhorn'
+
+
+     There lies a castle in Austria,
+       Right goodly to behold,
+     Walled tip with marble stones so fair,
+       With silver and with red gold.
+
+     Therein lies captive a young boy,
+       For life and death he lies bound,
+     Full forty fathoms under the earth,
+       'Midst vipers and snakes around.
+
+     His father came from Rosenberg,
+       Before the tower he went:--
+     "My son, my dearest son, how hard
+       Is thy imprisonment!"
+
+     "O father, dearest father mine,
+       So hardly I am bound,
+     Full forty fathoms under the earth,
+       'Midst vipers and snakes around!"
+
+     His father went before the lord:--
+       "Let loose thy captive to me!
+     I have at home three casks of gold,
+       And these for the boy I'll gi'e."
+
+     "Three casks of gold, they help you not:
+       That boy, and he must die!
+     He wears round his neck a golden chain;
+       Therein doth his ruin lie."
+
+     "And if he thus wear a golden chain,
+       He hath not stolen it; nay!
+     A maiden good gave it to him
+       For true love, did she say."
+
+     They led the boy forth from the tower,
+       And the sacrament took he:--
+     "Help thou, rich Christ, from heaven high,
+       It's come to an end with me!"
+
+     They led him to the scaffold place,
+        Up the ladder he must go:--
+     "O headsman, dearest headsman, do
+       But a short respite allow!"
+
+     "A short respite I must not grant;
+       Thou wouldst escape and fly:
+     Reach me a silken handkerchief
+       Around his eyes to tie."
+
+     "Oh, do not, do not bind mine eyes!
+       I must look on the world so fine;
+     I see it to-day, then never more,
+       With these weeping eyes of mine."
+
+     His father near the scaffold stood,
+       And his heart, it almost rends:--
+     "O son, O thou my dearest son,
+       Thy death I will avenge!"
+
+     "O father, dearest father mine!
+       My death thou shalt not avenge:
+     'Twould bring to my soul but heavy pains;
+       Let me die in innocence.
+
+     "It is not for this life of mine,
+       Nor for my body proud;
+     'Tis but for my dear mother's sake:
+       At home she weeps aloud."
+
+     Not yet three days had passed away,
+       When an angel from heaven came down:
+     "Take ye the boy from the scaffold away;
+       Else the city shall sink under ground!"
+
+     And not six months had passed away,
+       Ere his death was avenged amain;
+     And upwards of three hundred men
+       For the boy's life were slain.
+
+     Who is it that hath made this lay,
+       Hath sung it, and so on?
+     That, in Vienna in Austria,
+       Three maidens fair have done.
+
+
+
+ELISABETH BRENTANO (BETTINA VON ARNIM)
+
+(1785-1859)
+
+No picture of German life at the beginning of this century would be
+complete which did not include the distinguished women who left their
+mark upon the time. Among these Bettina von Arnim stands easily
+foremost. There was something triumphant in her nature, which in her
+youth manifested itself in her splendid enthusiasm for the two great
+geniuses who dominated her life,--Goethe and Beethoven,--and which, in
+the lean years when Germany was overclouded, maintained itself by an
+inexhaustible optimism. Her merry willfulness and wit covered a warm
+heart and a vigorous mind; and both of her great idols understood her
+and took her seriously.
+
+[Illustration: ELISABETH BRENTANO]
+
+Elisabeth Brentano was the daughter of Goethe's friend, Maximiliane de
+la Roche. She was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1785, and was brought
+up after the death of her mother under the somewhat peculiar influence
+of the highly-strung Caroline von Guenderode. Through her filial intimacy
+with Goethe's mother, she came to know the poet; and out of their
+friendship grew the correspondence which formed the basis of Bettina's
+famous book, 'Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde' (Goethe's
+Correspondence with a Child). She attached herself with unbounded
+enthusiasm to Goethe, and he responded with affectionate tact. To him
+Bettina was the embodiment of the loving grace and willfulness
+of 'Mignon.'
+
+In 1811 these relations were interrupted, owing to Bettina's attitude
+toward Goethe's wife. In the same year she married Achim von Arnim, one
+of the most refined poets and noblest characters of that brilliant
+circle. The marriage was an ideal one; each cherished and delighted in
+the genius of the other, but in 1831 the death of Von Arnim brought this
+happiness to an end. Goethe died in the following year, and Germany went
+into mourning. Then in 1835 Bettina appeared before the world for the
+first time as an authoress, in 'Goethe's Correspondence with a Child.'
+The dithyrambic exaltation, the unrestrained but beautiful enthusiasm of
+the book came like an electric shock. Into an atmosphere of spiritual
+stagnation, these letters brought a fresh access of vitality and hope.
+Bettina's old friendly relations with Goethe had been resumed later in
+life, and in a letter written to her niece she gives a charming account
+of the visit to the poet in 1824, which proved to be her last. This
+letter first saw the light in 1896, and an extract from it has been
+included below.
+
+The inspiration which went out from Bettina's magnetic nature was
+profound. She had her part in every great movement of her time, from the
+liberation of Greece to the fight with cholera in Berlin. During the
+latter, her devotion to the cause of the suffering poor in Berlin opened
+her eyes to the miseries of the common people; and she wrote a work full
+of indignant fervor, 'Dies Buch gehoert dem Koenig' (This Book belongs to
+the King), in consequence of which her welcome at the court of Frederick
+William IV. grew cool. A subsequent book, written in a similar vein, was
+suppressed. But Bettina's love of the people, as of every cause in which
+she was interested, was genuine and not to be quenched; she acted upon
+the maxim once expressed by Emerson, "Every brave heart must treat
+society as a child, and never allow it to dictate." Emerson greatly
+admired Bettina, and Louisa M. Alcott relates that she first made
+acquaintance with the famous 'Correspondence' when in her girlhood she
+was left to browse in Emerson's library. Bettina's influence was most
+keenly felt by the young, and she had the youth of Germany at her feet.
+She died in 1859.
+
+There is in Weimar a picture in which are represented the literary men
+of the period, grouped as in Raphael's School of Athens, with Goethe and
+Schiller occupying the centre. Upon the broad steps which lead to the
+elevation where they are standing, is the girlish figure of Bettina
+bending forward and holding a laurel wreath in her hand. This is the
+position which she occupies in the history of German literature.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+DEDICATION: TO GOETHE
+
+From 'Goethe's Correspondence with a Child'
+
+Thou, who knowest love, and the refinement of sentiment, oh how
+beautiful is everything in thee! How the streams of life rush through
+thy sensitive heart, and plunge with force into the cold waves of thy
+time, then boil and bubble up till mountain and vale flush with the glow
+of life, and the forests stand with glistening boughs upon the shore of
+thy being, and all upon which rests thy glance is filled with happiness
+and life! O God, how happy were I with thee! And were I winging my
+flight far over all times, and far over thee, I would fold my pinions
+and yield myself wholly to the domination of thine eyes.
+
+Men will never understand thee, and those nearest to thee will most
+thoroughly disown and betray thee; I look into the future, and I hear
+them cry, "Stone him!" Now, when thine own inspiration, like a lion,
+stands beside thee and guards thee, vulgarity ventures not to approach
+thee. Thy mother said recently, "The men to-day are all like Gerning,
+who always says, 'We, the superfluous learned';" and she speaks truly,
+for he is superfluous. Rather be dead than superfluous! But I am not so,
+for I am thine, because I recognize thee in all things. I know that when
+the clouds lift themselves up before the sun-god, they will soon be
+depressed by his fiery hand; I know that he endures no shadow except
+that which his own fame seeks; the rest of consciousness will overshadow
+thee. I know, when he descends in the evening, that he will again appear
+in the morning with golden front. Thou art eternal, therefore it is good
+for me to be with thee.
+
+When, in the evening, I am alone in my dark room, and the neighbors'
+lights are thrown upon my wall, they sometimes light up thy bust; or
+when all is silent in the city, here and there a dog barks or a cock
+crows: I know not why, but it seems something beyond human to me; I know
+what I shall do to still my pain.
+
+I would fain speak with thee otherwise than with words; I would fain
+press myself to thy heart. I feel that my soul is aflame. How fearfully
+still is the air before the storm! So stand now my thoughts, cold and
+silent, and my heart surges like the sea. Dear, dear Goethe! A
+reminiscence of thee breaks the spell; the signs of fire and warfare
+sink slowly down in my sky, and thou art like the in-streaming
+moonlight. Thou art great and glorious, and better than all that I have
+ever known and experienced up to this time. Thy whole life is so good!
+
+TO GOETHE
+
+CASSEL, August 13th, 1807.
+
+Who can interpret and measure what is passing within me? I am happy now
+in remembrance of the past, which I scarcely was when that past was the
+present. To my sensitive heart the surprise of being with thee, the
+coming and going and returning in a few blessed days--this was all like
+clouds flitting across my heaven; through my too near presence I feared
+it might be darkened by my shadow, as it is ever darker when it nears
+the earth; now, in the distance, it is mild and lofty and ever clear.
+
+I would fain press thy dear hand with both of mine to my bosom, and say
+to thee, "How peace and content have come to me since I have
+known thee!"
+
+I know that the evening has not come when life's twilight gathers in my
+heart: oh, would it were so! Would that I had lived out my days, that my
+wishes and joys were fulfilled, and that they could all be heaped upon
+thee, that thou mightst be therewith decked and crowned as with
+evergreen bays.
+
+When I was alone with thee on that evening I could not comprehend thee:
+thou didst smile at me because I was moved, and laughed at me because I
+wept; but why? And yet it was thy laughter, the _tone_ of thy laughter,
+which moved me to tears; and I am content, and see, under the cloak of
+this riddle, roses burst forth which spring alike from sadness and joy.
+Yes, thou art right, prophet: I shall yet with light heart struggle up
+through jest and mirth; I shall weary myself with struggling as I did in
+my childhood (ah, it seems as if it were but yesterday!) when with the
+exuberance of joy I wandered through the blossoming fields, pulling up
+the flowers by the roots and throwing them into the water. But I wish to
+seek rest in a warm, firm earnestness, and there at hand standest thou,
+smiling prophet!
+
+I say to thee yet once more: Whoever in this wide world understands what
+is passing within me, who, am so restful in thee, so silent, so
+unwavering in my feeling? I could, like the mountains, bear nights and
+days in the past without disturbing thee in thy reflections! And yet
+when at times the wind bears the fragrance and the germs together from
+the blossoming world up to the mountain heights, they will be
+intoxicated with delight as I was yesterday. Then I loved the world,
+then I was as glad as a gushing, murmuring spring in which the sun for
+the first time shines.
+
+Farewell, sublime one who blindest and intimidatest me! From this steep
+rock upon which my love has in life-danger ventured, I cannot clamber
+down. I cannot think of descending, for I should break my neck in
+the attempt.
+
+BETTINA'S LAST MEETING WITH GOETHE
+
+From a Letter to her Niece in 1824, first published in 1896
+
+IN THE evening I was alone again with Goethe. Had any one observed us,
+he would have had something to tell to posterity. Goethe's peculiarities
+were exhibited to the full: first he would growl at me, then to make it
+all up again he would caress me, with the most flattering words. His
+bottle of wine he kept in the adjoining room, because I had reproached
+him for his drinking the night before: on some pretext or other he
+disappeared from the scene half a dozen times in order to drink a glass.
+I pretended to notice nothing; but at parting I told him that twelve
+glasses of wine wouldn't hurt him, and that he had had only six. "How do
+you know that so positively?" he said. "I heard the gurgle of the bottle
+in the next room, and I heard you drinking, and then you have betrayed
+yourself to me, as Solomon in the Song of Songs betrayed himself to his
+beloved, by your breath." "You are an arrant rogue," he said; "now take
+yourself off," and he brought the candle to light me out. But I sprang
+in front of him and knelt upon the threshold of the room. "Now I shall
+see if I can shut you in, and whether you are a good spirit or an evil
+one, like the rat in Faust; I kiss this threshold and bless it, for over
+it daily passes the most glorious human spirit and my best friend."
+"Over you and your love I shall never pass," he answered, "it is too
+dear to me; and around your spirit I creep so" (and he carefully paced
+around the spot where I was kneeling), "for you are too artful, and it
+is better to keep on good terms with you." And so he dismissed me with
+tears in his eyes. I remained standing in the dark before his door, to
+gulp down my emotion. I was thinking that this door, which I had closed
+with my own hand, had separated me from him in all probability forever.
+Whoever comes near him must confess that his genius has partly passed
+into goodness; the fiery sun of his spirit is transformed at its setting
+into a soft purple light.
+
+
+     IN GOETHE'S GARDEN
+
+     I from this hillock all my world survey!
+       Yon vale, bedecked by nature's fairy fingers,
+       Where the still by-road picturesquely lingers,
+     The cottage white whose quaint charms grace the way--
+     These are the scenes that o'er my heart hold sway.
+
+     I from this hillock all my world survey!
+       Though I ascend to heights fair lands dividing,
+       Where stately ships I see the ocean riding,
+     While cities gird the view in proud array,
+     Naught prompts my heart's impulses to obey.
+
+     I from this hillock all my world survey!
+       And could I stand while Paradise descrying,
+       Still for these verdant meads should I be sighing,
+     Where thy dear roof-peaks skirt the verdant way:
+     Beyond these bounds my heart longs not to stray.
+
+
+
+JOHN BRIGHT
+
+(1811-1889)
+
+John Bright was the modern representative of the ancient Tribunes of the
+people or Demagogues (in the original and perfectly honorable sense);
+and a full comparison of his work and position with those of the Cleons
+or the Gracchi would almost be an outline of the respective peoples,
+polities, and problems. He was a higher type of man and politician than
+Cleon,--largely because the English aristocracy is not an unpatriotic
+and unprincipled clique like the Athenian, ready to use any weapon from
+murder down or to make their country a province of a foreign empire
+rather than give up their class monopoly of power; but like his
+prototype he was a democrat by nature as well as profession, the welfare
+of the common people at once his passion and his political livelihood,
+full of faith that popular instincts are both morally right and
+intellectually sound, and all his own instincts and most of his labors
+antagonistic to those of the aristocracy. It is a phase of the same fact
+to say that he also represented the active force of religious feeling in
+politics, as opposed to pure secular statesmanship.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN BRIGHT]
+
+The son of a Quaker manufacturer of Rochdale, England, and born near
+that place November 16th, 1811, he began his public career when a mere
+boy as a stirring and effective temperance orator, his ready eloquence
+and intense earnestness prevailing over an ungraceful manner and a bad
+delivery; he wrought all his life for popular education and for the
+widest extension of the franchise; and being a Quaker and a member of
+the Peace Society, he opposed all war on principle, fighting the Crimean
+War bitterly, and leaving the Gladstone Cabinet in 1882 on account of
+the bombardment of Alexandria. He was retired from the service of the
+public for some time on account of his opposition to the Crimean War;
+but Mr. Gladstone, who differed from him on this point, calls it the
+action of his life most worthy of honor. He was perhaps the most warlike
+opponent of war ever high in public life; the pugnacious and aggressive
+agitator, pouring out floods of fiery oratory to the effect that nobody
+ought to fight anybody, was a curious paradox.
+
+He was by far the most influential English friend of the North in the
+Civil War, and the magic of his eloquence and his name was a force of
+perhaps decisive potency in keeping the working classes on the same
+side; so that mass meetings of unemployed laborers with half-starving
+families resolved that they would rather starve altogether than help to
+perpetuate slavery in America. He shares with Richard Cobden the credit
+of having obtained free trade for England: Bright's thrilling oratory
+was second only to Cobden's organizing power in winning the victory, and
+both had the immense weight of manufacturers opposing their own class.
+That he opposed the game laws and favored electoral reform is a matter
+of course.
+
+Mr. Bright entered on an active political career in 1839, when he joined
+the Anti-Corn-Law League. He first became a member of Parliament in
+1843, and illustrates a most valuable feature of English political
+practice. When a change of feeling in one place prevented his
+re-election, he selected another which was glad to honor itself by
+having a great man represent it, so that the country was not robbed of a
+statesman by a village faction; and there being no spoils system, he did
+not have to waste his time in office-jobbing to keep his seat. He sat
+first for Durham, then for Manchester, and finally for Birmingham,
+remaining in public life over forty years; and never had to make a
+"deal" or get any one an office in all that period.
+
+He was in Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet from 1868 to 1870, and again from 1873
+to 1882. On the Home Rule question the two old friends and long
+co-workers divided; Mr. Bright, with more than half the oldest and
+sincerest friends of liberty and haters of oppression in England,
+holding the step to be political suicide for the British Empire.
+
+As an orator, Mr. Bright stood in a sense alone. He was direct and
+logical; he carefully collected and massed his facts, and used strong,
+homely Saxon English, and short crisp words; he was a master of telling
+epigram whose force lay in its truth as much as in its humor. Several
+volumes of his speeches have been published: 'On Public Affairs'; 'On
+Parliamentary Reform'; 'On Questions of Public Policy'; 'On the American
+Question,' etc. His life has been written by Gilchrist, Smith,
+Robertson, and others. He died March 27th, 1889.
+
+FROM THE SPEECH ON THE CORN LAWS (1843)
+
+It must not be supposed, because I wish to represent the interest of the
+many, that I am hostile to the interest of the few.
+
+But is it not perfectly certain that if the foundation of the most
+magnificent building be destroyed and undermined, the whole fabric
+itself is in danger? Is it not certain, also, that the vast body of the
+people who form the foundation of the social fabric, if they are
+suffering, if they are trampled upon, if they are degraded, if they are
+discontented, if "their hands are against every man, and every man's
+hands are against them," if they do not flourish as well, reasonably
+speaking, as the classes who are above them because they are richer and
+more powerful,--then are those classes as much in danger as the working
+classes themselves?
+
+There never was a revolution in any country which destroyed the great
+body of the people. There have been convulsions of a most dire character
+which have overturned old-established monarchies and have hurled thrones
+and sceptres to the dust. There have been revolutions which have brought
+down most powerful aristocracies, and swept them from the face of the
+earth forever, but never was there a revolution yet which destroyed the
+people. And whatever may come as a consequence of the state of things in
+this country, of this we may rest assured: that the common people, that
+the great bulk of our countrymen will remain and survive the shock,
+though it may be that the Crown and the aristocracy and the Church may
+be leveled with the dust, and rise no more. In seeking to represent the
+working classes, and in standing up for their rights and liberties, I
+hold that I am also defending the rights and liberties of the middle and
+richer classes of society. Doing justice to one class cannot inflict
+injustice on any other class, and "justice and impartiality to all" is
+what we all have a right to from government. And we have a right to
+clamor; and so long as I have breath, so long will I clamor against the
+oppression which I see to exist, and in favor of the rights of the great
+body of the people....
+
+What is the condition in which we are? I have already spoken of Ireland.
+You know that hundreds of thousands meet there, week after week, in
+various parts of the country, to proclaim to all the world the tyranny
+under which they suffer. You know that in South Wales, at this moment,
+there is an insurrection of the most extraordinary character going on,
+and that the Government is sending, day after day, soldiers and
+artillery amongst the innocent inhabitants of that mountainous country
+for the purpose of putting down the insurrection thereby raised and
+carried on. You know that in the Staffordshire ironworks almost all the
+workmen are now out and in want of wages, from want of employment and
+from attempting to resist the inevitable reduction of wages which must
+follow restriction upon trade. You know that in August last, Lancashire
+and Yorkshire rose in peaceful insurrection to proclaim to the world,
+and in face of Heaven, the wrongs of an insulted and oppressed people. I
+know that my own neighborhood is unsettled and uncomfortable. I know
+that in your own city your families are suffering. Yes, I have been to
+your cottages and seen their condition. Thanks to my canvass of Durham,
+I have been able to see the condition of many honest and independent--or
+ought-to-be-independent--and industrious artisans. I have seen even
+freemen of your city sitting, looking disconsolate and sad. Their hands
+were ready to labor; their skill was ready to produce all that their
+trade demanded. They were as honest and industrious as any man in this
+assembly, but no man hired them. They were in a state of involuntary
+idleness, and were driving fast to the point of pauperism. I have seen
+their wives, too, with three or four children about them--one in the
+cradle, one at the breast. I have seen their countenances, and I have
+seen the signs of their sufferings. I have seen the emblems and symbols
+of affliction such as I did not expect to see in this city. Ay! and I
+have seen those little children who at not a distant day will be the men
+and women of this city of Durham; I have seen their poor little wan
+faces and anxious looks, as if the furrows of old age were coming upon
+them before they had escaped from the age of childhood. I have seen all
+this in this city, and I have seen far more in the neighborhood from
+which I have come. You have seen, in all probability, people from my
+neighborhood walking your streets and begging for that bread which the
+Corn Laws would not allow them to earn.
+
+     "Bread-taxed weaver, all can see
+     What the tax hath done for thee,
+     And thy children, vilely led,
+     Singing hymns for shameful bread,
+     Till the stones of every street
+     Know their little naked feet."
+
+This is what the Corn Law does for the weavers of my neighborhood, and
+for the weavers and artisans of yours....
+
+FROM THE SPEECH ON INCENDIARISM IN IRELAND (1844)
+
+The great and all-present evil of the rural districts is this--you have
+too many people for the work to be done, and you, the landed
+proprietors, are alone responsible for this state of things; and to
+speak honestly, I believe many of you know it. I have been charged with
+saying out-of-doors that this House is a club of land-owners legislating
+for land-owners. If I had not said it, the public must long ago have
+found out that fact. My honorable friend the member for Stockport on one
+occasion proposed that before you passed a law to raise the price of
+bread, you should consider how far you had the power to raise the rates
+of wages. What did you say to that? You said that the laborers did not
+understand political economy, or they would not apply to Parliament to
+raise wages; that Parliament could not raise wages. And yet the very
+next thing you did was to pass a law to raise the price of produce of
+your own land, at the expense of the very class whose wages you
+confessed your inability to increase.
+
+What is the condition of the county of Suffolk? Is it not notorious that
+the rents are as high as they were fifty years ago, and probably much
+higher? But the return for the farmer's capital is much lower, and the
+condition of the laborer is very much worse. The farmers are subject to
+the law of competition, and rents are thereby raised from time to time
+so as to keep their profits down to the lowest point, and the laborers
+by the competition amongst them are reduced to the point below which
+life cannot be maintained. Your tenants and laborers are being devoured
+by this excessive competition, whilst you, their magnanimous landlords,
+shelter yourselves from all competition by the Corn Law yourselves have
+passed, and make the competition of all other classes serve still more
+to swell your rentals. It was for this object the Corn Law was passed,
+and yet in the face of your countrymen you dare to call it a law for the
+protection of native industry....
+
+Again, a rural police is kept up by the gentry; the farmers say for the
+sole use of watching game and frightening poachers, for which formerly
+they had to pay watchers. Is this true, or is it not? I say, then, you
+care everything for the rights--and for something beyond the rights--of
+your own property, but you are oblivious to its duties. How many lives
+have been sacrificed during the past year to the childish infatuation of
+preserving game? The noble lord, the member for North Lancashire, could
+tell of a gamekeeper killed in an affray on his father's estate in that
+county. For the offense one man was hanged, and four men are now on
+their way to penal colonies. Six families are thus deprived of husband
+and father, that this wretched system of game-preserving may be
+continued in a country densely peopled as this is. The Marquis of
+Normanby's gamekeeper has been murdered also, and the poacher who shot
+him only escaped death by the intervention of the Home Secretary. At
+Godalming, in Surrey, a gamekeeper has been murdered; and at Buckhill,
+in Buckinghamshire, a person has recently been killed in a poaching
+affray. This insane system is the cause of a fearful loss of life; it
+tends to the ruin of your tenantry, and is the fruitful cause of the
+demoralization of the peasantry. But you are caring for the rights of
+property; for its most obvious duties you have no concern. With such a
+policy, what can you expect but that which is now passing before you?
+
+It is the remark of a beautiful writer that "to have known nothing but
+misery is the most portentous condition under which human nature can
+start on its course." Has your agricultural laborer ever known anything
+but misery? He is born in a miserable hovel, which in mockery is termed
+a house or a home; he is reared in penury: he passes a life of hopeless
+and unrequited toil, and the jail or the union house is before him as
+the only asylum on this side of the pauper's grave. Is this the result
+of your protection to native industry? Have you cared for the laborer
+till, from a home of comfort, he has but a hovel for shelter? and have
+you cherished him into starvation and rags? I tell you what your boasted
+protection is--it is a protection of native idleness at the expense of
+the impoverishment of native industry.
+
+FROM THE SPEECH ON NON-RECOGNITION OF THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY (1861)
+
+I advise you, and I advise the people of England, to abstain from
+applying to the United States doctrines and principles which we never
+apply to our own case. At any rate, they [the Americans] have never
+fought "for the balance of power" in Europe. They have never fought to
+keep up a decaying empire. They have never squandered the money of their
+people in such a phantom expedition as we have been engaged in. And now,
+at this moment, when you are told that they are going to be ruined by
+their vast expenditure,--why, the sum that they are going to raise in
+the great emergency of this grievous war is not greater than what we
+raise every year during a time of peace.
+
+They say they are not going to liberate slaves. No; the object of the
+Washington government is to maintain their own Constitution and to act
+legally, as it permits and requires. No man is more in favor of peace
+than I am; no man has denounced war more than I have, probably, in this
+country; few men in their public life have suffered more obloquy--I had
+almost said, more indignity--in consequence of it. But I cannot for the
+life of me see, upon any of those principles upon which States are
+governed now,--I say nothing of the literal word of the New
+Testament,--I cannot see how the state of affairs in America, with
+regard to the United States government, could have been different from
+what it is at this moment. We had a Heptarchy in this country, and it
+was thought to be a good thing to get rid of it, and have a united
+nation. If the thirty-three or thirty-four States of the American Union
+can break off whenever they like, I can see nothing but disaster and
+confusion throughout the whole of that continent. I say that the war, be
+it successful or not, be it Christian or not, be it wise or not, is a
+war to sustain the government and to sustain the authority of a great
+nation; and that the people of England, if they are true to their own
+sympathies, to their own history, and to their own great act of 1834, to
+which reference has already been made, will have no sympathy with those
+who wish to build up a great empire on the perpetual bondage of millions
+of their fellow-men.
+
+FROM THE SPEECH ON THE STATE OF IRELAND (1866)
+
+I think I was told in 1849, as I stood in the burial ground at
+Skibbereen, that at least four hundred people who had died of famine
+were buried within the quarter of an acre of ground on which I was then
+looking. It is a country, too, from which there has been a greater
+emigration by sea within a given time than has been known at any time
+from any other country in the world. It is a country where there has
+been, for generations past, a general sense of wrong, out of which has
+grown a chronic state of insurrection; and at this very moment when I
+speak, the general safeguard of constitutional liberty is withdrawn, and
+we meet in this hall, and I speak here to-night, rather by the
+forbearance and permission of the Irish executive than under the
+protection of the common safeguards of the rights and liberties of the
+people of the United Kingdom.
+
+I venture to say that this is a miserable and a humiliating picture to
+draw of this country. Bear in mind that I am not speaking of Poland
+suffering under the conquest of Russia. There is a gentleman, now a
+candidate for an Irish county, who is very great upon the wrongs of
+Poland; but I have found him always in the House of Commons taking sides
+with that great party which has systematically supported the wrongs of
+Ireland. I am not speaking of Hungary, or of Venice as she was under the
+rule of Austria, or of the Greeks under the dominion of the Turk; but I
+am speaking of Ireland--part of the United Kingdom--part of that which
+boasts itself to be the most civilized and the most Christian nation in
+the world. I took the liberty recently, at a meeting in Glasgow, to say
+that I believed it was impossible for a class to govern a great nation
+wisely and justly. Now, in Ireland there has been a field in which all
+the principles of the Tory party have had their complete experiment and
+development. You have had the country gentleman in all his power. You
+have had any number of Acts of Parliament which the ancient Parliament
+of Ireland or the Parliament of the United Kingdom could give him. You
+have had the Established Church supported by the law, even to the
+extent, not many years ago, of collecting its revenues by the aid of
+military force. In point of fact, I believe it would be impossible to
+imagine a state of things in which the Tory party should have a more
+entire and complete opportunity for their trial than they have had
+within the limits of this island. And yet what has happened? This,
+surely: that the kingdom has been continually weakened, that the harmony
+of the empire has been disturbed, and that the mischief has not been
+confined to the United Kingdom, but has spread to the colonies....
+
+I am told--you can answer it if I am wrong--that it is not common in
+Ireland now to give leases to tenants, especially to Catholic tenants.
+If that be so, then the security for the property rests only upon the
+good feeling and favor of the owner of the land; for the laws, as we
+know, have been made by the land-owners, and many propositions for the
+advantage of the tenants have unfortunately been too little considered
+by Parliament. The result is that you have bad farming, bad
+dwelling-houses, bad temper, and everything bad connected with the
+occupation and cultivation of land in Ireland. One of the results--a
+result the most appalling--is this, that your population is fleeing your
+country and seeking refuge in a distant land. On this point I wish to
+refer to a letter which I received a few days ago from a most esteemed
+citizen of Dublin. He told me that he believed that a very large portion
+of what he called the poor, amongst Irishmen, sympathized with any
+scheme or any proposition that was adverse to the Imperial Government.
+He said further that the people here are rather in the country than of
+it, and that they are looking more to America than they are looking to
+England. I think there is a good deal in that. When we consider how many
+Irishmen have found a refuge in America, I do not know how we can wonder
+at that statement. You will recollect that when the ancient Hebrew
+prophet prayed in his captivity, he prayed with his window open towards
+Jerusalem. You know that the followers of Mohammed, when they pray, turn
+their faces towards Mecca. When the Irish peasant asks for food and
+freedom and blessing, his eye follows the setting sun, the aspirations
+of his heart reach beyond the wide Atlantic, and in spirit he grasps
+hands with the great Republic of the West. If this be so, I say then
+that the disease is not only serious, but it is desperate; but desperate
+as it is, I believe there is a certain remedy for it if the people and
+Parliament of the United Kingdom are willing to apply it....
+
+I believe that at the root of a general discontent there is in all
+countries a general grievance and general suffering. The surface of
+society is not incessantly disturbed without a cause. I recollect in the
+poem of the greatest of Italian poets, he tells us that as he saw in
+vision the Stygian lake, and stood upon its banks, he observed the
+constant commotion upon the surface of the pool, and his good instructor
+and guide explained to him the cause of it:--
+
+     "This, too, for certain know, that underneath
+     The water dwells a multitude, whose sighs
+     Into these bubbles make the surface heave,
+     As thine eye tells thee wheresoe'er it turn."
+
+And I say that in Ireland, for generations back, the misery and the
+wrongs of the people have made their sign, and have found a voice in
+constant insurrection and disorder. I have said that Ireland is a
+country of many wrongs and of many sorrows. Her past lies almost in
+shadow. Her present is full of anxiety and peril. Her future depends on
+the power of her people to substitute equality and justice for
+supremacy, and a generous patriotism for the spirit of faction. In the
+effort now making in Great Britain to create a free representation of
+the people you have the deepest interest. The people never wish to
+suffer, and they never wish to inflict injustice. They have no sympathy
+with the wrong-doer, whether in Great Britain or in Ireland; and when
+they are fairly represented in the Imperial Parliament, as I hope they
+will one day be, they will speedily give an effective and final answer
+to that old question of the Parliament of Kilkenny--"How comes it to
+pass that the King has never been the richer for Ireland?"
+
+FROM THE SPEECH ON THE IRISH ESTABLISHED CHURCH
+
+(1868)
+
+I am one of those who do not believe that the Established Church of
+Ireland--of which I am not a member--would go to absolute ruin, in the
+manner of which many of its friends are now so fearful. There was a
+paper sent to me this morning, called 'An Address from the Protestants
+of Ireland to their Protestant Brethren of Great Britain.' It is dated
+"5, Dawson Street," and is signed by "John Trant Hamilton, T.A. Lefroy,
+and R.W. Gamble." The paper is written in a fair and mild, and I would
+even say,--for persons who have these opinions,--in a kindly and just
+spirit. But they have been alarmed, and I would wish, if I can, to offer
+them consolation. They say they have no interest in protecting any
+abuses of the Established Church, but they protest against their being
+now deprived of the Church of their fathers. Now, I am quite of opinion
+that it would be a most monstrous thing to deprive the Protestants of
+the Church of their fathers; and there is no man in the world who would
+more strenuously resist even any step in that direction than I would,
+unless it were Mr. Gladstone, the author of the famous resolutions. The
+next sentence goes on to say, "We ask for no ascendancy." Having read
+that sentence, I think that we must come to the conclusion that these
+gentlemen are in a better frame of mind than we thought them to be in. I
+can understand easily that these gentlemen are very sorry and doubtful
+as to the depths into which they are to be plunged; but I disagree with
+them in this--that I think there would still be a Protestant Church in
+Ireland when all is done that Parliament has proposed to do. The only
+difference will be, that it will not then be an establishment--that it
+will have no special favor or grant from the State--that it will stand
+in relation to the State just as your Church does, and just as the
+churches of the majority of the people of Great Britain at this moment
+stand. There will then be no Protestant bishops from Ireland to sit in
+the House of Lords; but he must be the most enthusiastic Protestant and
+Churchman who believes that there can be any advantage to his Church and
+to Protestantism generally in Ireland from such a phenomenon.
+
+
+
+BRILLAT-SAVARIN
+
+(1755-1826)
+
+Brillat-Savarin was a French magistrate and legislator, whose reputation
+as man of letters rests mainly upon a single volume, his inimitable
+'Physiologie du Gout'. Although writing in the present century, he was
+essentially a Frenchman of the old regime, having been born in 1755 at
+Belley, almost on the border-line of Savoy, where he afterwards gained
+distinction as an advocate. In later life he regretted his native
+province chiefly for its figpeckers, superior in his opinion to ortolans
+or robins, and for the cuisine of the innkeeper Genin, where "the
+old-timers of Belley used to gather to eat chestnuts and drink the new
+white wine known as _vin bourru_"
+
+[Illustration: Brillat-Savarin]
+
+After holding various minor offices in his department, Savarin became
+mayor of Belley in 1793; but the Reign of Terror soon forced him to flee
+to Switzerland and join the colony of French refugees at Lausanne.
+Souvenirs of this period are frequent in his 'Physiologie du Gout', all
+eminently gastronomic, as befits his subject-matter, but full of
+interest, as showing his unfailing cheerfulness amidst the vicissitudes
+and privations of exile. He fled first to Dole, to "obtain from the
+Representative Prot a safe-conduct, which was to save me from going to
+prison and thence probably to the scaffold," and which he ultimately
+owed to Madame Prot, with whom he spent the evening playing duets, and
+who declared, "Citizen, any one who cultivates the fine arts as you do
+cannot betray his country!" It was not the safe-conduct, however, but an
+unexpected dinner which he enjoyed on his route, that made this a
+red-letter day to Savarin:--"What a good dinner!--I will not give the
+details, but an honorable mention is due to a _fricassee_ of chicken, of
+the first order, such as cannot be found except in the provinces, and so
+richly dowered with truffles that there were enough to put new life into
+old Tithonus himself."
+
+The whole episode is told in Savarin's happiest vein, and well-nigh
+justifies his somewhat complacent conclusion that "any one who, with a
+revolutionary committee at his heels, could so conduct himself,
+assuredly has the head and the heart of a Frenchman!"
+
+Natural scenery did not appeal to Savarin; to him Switzerland meant the
+restaurant of the Lion d'Argent, at Lausanne, where "for only 15 _batz_
+we passed in review three complete courses;" the _table d'hote_ of the
+Rue de Rosny; and the little village of Moudon, where the cheese
+_fondue_ was so good. Circumstances, however, soon necessitated his
+departure for the United States, which he always gratefully remembered
+as having afforded him "an asylum, employment, and tranquillity." For
+three years he supported himself in New York, giving French lessons and
+at night playing in a theatre orchestra. "I was so comfortable there,"
+he writes, "that in the moment of emotion which preceded departure, all
+that I asked of Heaven (a prayer which it has granted) was never to know
+greater sorrow in the Old World than I had known in the New." Returning
+to France in 1796, Savarin settled in Paris, and after holding several
+offices under the Directory, became a Judge in the Cour de Cassation,
+the French court of last resort, where he remained until his death
+in 1826.
+
+Although an able and conscientious magistrate, Savarin was better
+adapted to play the kindly friend and cordial host than the stern and
+impartial judge. He was a convivial soul, a lover of good cheer and
+free-handed hospitality; and to-day, while almost forgotten as a jurist,
+his name has become immortalized as the representative of gastronomic
+excellence. His 'Physiologic du Gout'--"that _olla podrida_ which defies
+analysis," as Balzac calls it--belongs, like Walton's 'Compleat Angler',
+or White's 'Selborne', among those unique gems of literature, too rare
+in any age, which owe their subtle and imperishable charm primarily to
+the author's own delightful personality. Savarin spent many years of
+loving care in polishing his manuscript, often carrying it to court with
+him, where it was one day mislaid, but--luckily for future generations
+of epicures--was afterward recovered. The book is a charming badinage, a
+bizarre ragout of gastronomic precepts and spicy anecdote, doubly
+piquant for its prevailing tone of mock seriousness and intentional
+grandiloquence.
+
+In emulation of the poet Lamartine, Savarin divided his subject into
+'Meditations', of which the seventh is consecrated to the 'Theory of
+Frying', and the twenty-first to 'Corpulence'. In the familiar aphorism,
+"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are", he strikes his
+key-note; man's true superiority lies in his palate! "The pleasure of
+eating we have in common with the animals; the pleasure of the table is
+peculiar to the human species." Gastronomy he proclaims the chief of all
+sciences: "It rules life in its entirety; for the tears of the new-born
+infant summon the breast of its nurse, and the dying man still receives
+with some pleasure the final potion, which, alas, he is not destined to
+digest." Occasionally he affects an epic strain, invoking Gasteria,
+"the tenth muse, who presides over the pleasures of taste." "It is the
+fairest of the Muses who inspires me: I will be clearer than an oracle,
+and my precepts will traverse the centuries." Beneath his pen, soup,
+"the first consolation of the needy stomach," assumes fresh dignity; and
+even the humble fowl becomes to the cook "what the canvas is to the
+painter, or the cap of Fortunatus to the charlatan." But like the worthy
+epicure that he was, Savarin reserved his highest flights of eloquence
+for such rare and toothsome viands as the _Poularde fine de Bresse_, the
+pheasant, "an enigma of which the key-word is known only to the adepts,"
+a _saute_ of truffles, "the diamonds of the kitchen," or, best of all,
+truffled turkeys, "whose reputation and price are ever on the increase!
+Benign stars, whose apparition renders the gourmands of every category
+sparkling, radiant, and quivering!" But the true charm of the book lies
+in Savarin's endless fund of piquant anecdotes, reminiscences of bygone
+feasts, over which the reader's mouth waters. Who can read without a
+covetous pang his account of 'The Day at Home with the Bernadins,' or of
+his entertainment of the Dubois brothers, of the _Rue du Bac_, "a bonbon
+which I have put into the reader's mouth to recompense him for his
+kindness in having read me with pleasure"?
+
+'Physiologic du Gout' was not published until 1825, and then
+anonymously, presumably because he thought its tone inconsistent with
+his dignity as magistrate. It would almost seem that he had a
+presentiment of impending death, for in the midst of his brightest
+'Varietes' he has incongruously inserted a dolorous little poem, the
+burden of each verse being "Je vais mourir." The 'Physiologic du Gout'
+is now accessible to English readers in the versions of R.E. Anderson
+(London, 1877), and in a later one published in New York; but there is a
+subtle flavor to the original which defies translation.
+
+
+
+FROM THE 'PHYSIOLOGY OF TASTE'
+
+THE PRIVATIONS
+
+First parents of the human species, whose gormandizing is historic, you
+who fell for the sake of an apple, what would you not have done for a
+turkey with truffles? But there were in the terrestrial Paradise neither
+cooks nor confectioners.
+
+How I pity you!
+
+Mighty kings, who laid proud Troy in ruins, your valor will be handed
+down from age to age; but your table was poor. Reduced to a rump of beef
+and a chine of pork, you were ever ignorant of the charms of the
+_matelote_ and the delights of a fricassee of chicken.
+
+How I pity you!
+
+Aspasia, Chloe, and all of you whose forms the chisel of the Greeks
+immortalized, to the despair of the belles of to-day, never did your
+charming mouths enjoy the smoothness of a meringue _a la vanille_ or _a
+la rose_; hardly did you rise to the height of a spice-cake.
+
+How I pity you!
+
+Gentle priestesses of Vesta, at one and the same time burdened with so
+many honors and menaced with such horrible punishments, would that you
+might at least have tasted those agreeable syrups which refresh the
+soul, those candied fruits which brave the seasons, those perfumed
+creams, the marvel of our day!
+
+How I pity you!
+
+Roman financiers, who made the whole known universe pay tribute, never
+did your far-famed banquet-halls witness the appearance of those
+succulent jellies, the delight of the indolent, nor those varied ices
+whose cold would brave the torrid zone.
+
+How I pity you!
+
+Invincible paladins, celebrated by flattering minstrels, when you had
+cleft in twain the giants, set free the ladies, and exterminated armies,
+never, alas! never did a dark-eyed captive offer you the sparkling
+champagne, the malmsey of Madeira, the liqueurs, creation of this great
+century: you were reduced to ale or to some cheap herb-flavored wine.
+
+How I pity you!
+
+Crosiered and mitred abbots, dispensers of the favors of heaven; and
+you, terrible Templars, who donned your armor for the extermination of
+the Saracens,--you knew not the sweetness of chocolate which restores,
+nor the Arabian bean which promotes thought.
+
+How I pity you!
+
+Superb chatelaines, who during the loneliness of the Crusades raised
+into highest favor your chaplains and your pages, you never could share
+with them the charms of the biscuit and the delights of the macaroon.
+
+How I pity you!
+
+And lastly you, gastronomers of 1825, who already find satiety in the
+lap of abundance, and dream of new preparations, you will not enjoy
+those discoveries which the sciences have in store for the year 1900,
+such as esculent minerals and liqueurs resulting from a pressure of a
+hundred atmospheres; you will not behold the importations which
+travelers yet unborn shall cause to arrive from that half of the globe
+which still remains to be discovered or explored.
+
+How I pity you!
+
+
+
+ON THE LOVE OF GOOD LIVING
+
+I have consulted the dictionaries under the word _gourmandise_, and am
+by no means satisfied with what I find. The love of good living seems to
+be constantly confounded with gluttony and voracity; whence I infer that
+our lexicographers, however otherwise estimable, are not to be classed
+with those good fellows amongst learned men who can put away gracefully
+a wing of partridge, and then, by raising the little finger, wash it
+down with a glass of Lafitte or Clos-Vougeot.
+
+They have utterly forgot that social love of good eating which combines
+in one, Athenian elegance, Roman luxury, and Parisian refinement. It
+implies discretion to arrange, skill to prepare; it appreciates
+energetically, and judges profoundly. It is a precious quality, almost
+deserving to rank as a virtue, and is very certainly the source of much
+unqualified enjoyment.
+
+_Gourmandise_, or the love of good living, is an impassioned, rational,
+and habitual preference for whatever flatters the sense of taste. It is
+opposed to excess; therefore every man who eats to indigestion, or makes
+himself drunk, runs the risk of being erased from the list of its
+votaries. _Gourmandise_ also comprises a love for dainties or tit-bits;
+which is merely an analogous preference, limited to light, delicate, or
+small dishes, to pastry, and so forth. It is a modification allowed in
+favor of the women, or men of feminine tastes.
+
+Regarded from any point of view, the love of good living deserves
+nothing but praise and encouragement. Physically, it is the result and
+proof of the digestive organs being healthy and perfect. Morally, it
+shows implicit resignation to the commands of Nature, who, in ordering
+man to eat that he may live, gives him appetite to invite, flavor to
+encourage, and pleasure to reward.
+
+From the political economist's point of view, the love of good living is
+a tie between nations, uniting them by the interchange of various
+articles of food which are in constant use. Hence the voyage from Pole
+to Pole of wines, sugars, fruits, and so forth. What else sustains the
+hope and emulation of that crowd of fishermen, huntsmen, gardeners, and
+others who daily stock the most sumptuous larders with the results of
+their skill and labor? What else supports the industrious army of cooks,
+pastry-cooks, confectioners, and many other food-preparers, with all
+their various assistants? These various branches of industry derive
+their support in a great measure from the largest incomes, but they also
+rely upon the daily wants of all classes.
+
+As society is at present constituted, it is almost impossible to
+conceive of a race living solely on bread and vegetables. Such a nation
+would infallibly be conquered by the armies of some flesh-eating race
+(like the Hindoos, who have been the prey of all those, one after
+another, who cared to attack them), or else it would be converted by the
+cooking of the neighboring nations, as ancient history records of the
+Boeotians, who acquired a love for good living after the battle
+of Leuctra.
+
+Good living opens out great resources for replenishing the public purse:
+it brings contributions to town-dues, to the custom-house, and other
+indirect contributions. Everything we eat is taxed, and there is no
+exchequer that is not substantially supported by lovers of good living.
+Shall we speak of that swarm of cooks who have for ages been annually
+leaving France, to improve foreign nations in the art of good living?
+Most of them succeed; and in obedience to an instinct which never dies
+in a Frenchman's heart, bring back to their country the fruits of their
+economy. The sum thus imported is greater than might be supposed, and
+therefore they, like the others, will be honored by posterity.
+
+But if nations were grateful, then Frenchmen, above all other races,
+ought to raise a temple and altars to "Gourmandise." By the treaty of
+November, 1815, the allies imposed upon France the condition of paying
+thirty millions sterling in three years, besides claims for compensation
+and various requisitions, amounting to nearly as much more. The
+apprehension, or rather certainty, became general that a national
+bankruptcy must ensue, more especially as the money was to be paid
+in specie.
+
+"Alas!" said all who had anything to lose, as they saw the fatal
+tumbril pass to be filled in the Rue Vivienne, "there is our money
+emigrating in a lump; next year we shall fall on our knees before a
+crown-piece; we are about to fall into the condition of a ruined man;
+speculations of every kind will fail; it will be impossible to borrow;
+there will be nothing but weakness, exhaustion, civil death."
+
+These terrors were proved false by the result; and to the great
+astonishment of all engaged in financial matters, the payments were made
+without difficulty, credit rose, loans were eagerly caught at, and
+during all the time this "superpurgation" lasted, the balance of
+exchange was in favor of France. In other words, more money came into
+the country than went out of it.
+
+What is the power that came to our assistance? Who is the divinity that
+worked this miracle? The love of good living.
+
+When the Britons, Germans, Teutons, Cimmerians, and Scythians made their
+irruption into France, they brought a rare voracity, and stomachs of no
+ordinary capacity. They did not long remain satisfied with the official
+cheer which a forced hospitality had to supply them with. They aspired
+to enjoyments of greater refinement; and soon the Queen City was nothing
+but a huge refectory. Everywhere they were seen eating, those
+intruders--in the restaurants, the eating-houses, the inns, the taverns,
+the stalls, and even in the streets. They gorged themselves with flesh,
+fish, game, truffles, pastry, and especially with fruit. They drank with
+an avidity equal to their appetite, and always ordered the most
+expensive wines, in the hope of finding in them some enjoyment hitherto
+unknown, and seemed quite astonished when they were disappointed.
+Superficial observers did not know what to think of this menagerie
+without bounds or limits; but your genuine Parisian laughed and rubbed
+his hands. "We have them now!" said he; "and to-night they'll have paid
+us back more than was counted out to them this morning from the public
+treasury!"
+
+That was a lucky time for those who provide for the enjoyments of the
+sense of taste. Very made his fortune; Achard laid the foundation of
+his; Beauvilliers made a third; and Madame Sullot, whose shop in the
+Palais Royal was a mere box of a place, sold as many as twelve thousand
+tarts a day.
+
+The effect still lasts. Foreigners flow in from all quarters of Europe
+to renew during peace the delightful habits which they contracted
+during the war. They must come to Paris, and when they are there, they
+must be regaled at any price. If our funds are in favor, it is due not
+so much to the higher interest they pay, as to the instinctive
+confidence which foreigners cannot help placing in a people amongst whom
+every lover of good living finds so much happiness.
+
+Love of good living is by no means unbecoming in women. It agrees with
+the delicacy of their organization, and serves as a compensation for
+some pleasures which they are obliged to abstain from, and for some
+hardships to which nature seems to have condemned them. There is no more
+pleasant sight than a pretty _gourmande_ under arms. Her napkin is
+nicely adjusted; one of her hands rests on the table, the other carries
+to her mouth little morsels artistically carved, or the wing of a
+partridge which must be picked. Her eyes sparkle, her lips are glossy,
+her talk is cheerful, all her movements graceful; nor is there lacking
+some spice of the coquetry which accompanies all that women do. With so
+many advantages, she is irresistible, and Cato the Censor himself could
+not help yielding to the influence.
+
+The love of good living is in some sort instinctive in women, because it
+is favorable to beauty. It has been proved, by a series of rigorously
+exact observations, that by a succulent, delicate, and choice regimen,
+the external appearances of age are kept away for a long time. It gives
+more brilliancy to the eye, more freshness to the skin, more support to
+the muscles; and as it is certain in physiology that wrinkles, those
+formidable enemies of beauty, are caused by the depression of muscle, it
+is equally true that, other things being equal, those who understand
+eating are comparatively four years younger than those ignorant of that
+science. Painters and sculptors are deeply impenetrated with this truth;
+for in representing those who practice abstinence by choice or duty as
+misers or anchorites, they always give them the pallor of disease, the
+leanness of misery, and the wrinkles of decrepitude.
+
+Good living is one of the main links of society, by gradually extending
+that spirit of conviviality by which different classes are daily brought
+closer together and welded into one whole; by animating the
+conversation, and rounding off the angles of conventional inequality. To
+the same cause we can also ascribe all the efforts a host makes to
+receive his guests properly, as well as their gratitude for his pains so
+well bestowed. What disgrace should ever be heaped upon those senseless
+feeders who, with unpardonable indifference, swallow down morsels of
+the rarest quality, or gulp with unrighteous carelessness some
+fine-flavored and sparkling wine.
+
+As a general maxim: Whoever shows a desire to please will be certain of
+having a delicate compliment paid him by every well-bred man.
+
+Again, when shared, the love of good living has the most marked
+influence on the happiness of the conjugal state. A wedded pair with
+this taste in common have once a day at least a pleasant opportunity of
+meeting. For even when they sleep apart (and a great many do so), they
+at least eat at the same table, they have a subject of conversation
+which is ever new, they speak not only of what they are eating, but also
+of what they have eaten or will eat, of dishes which are in vogue, of
+novelties, etc. Everybody knows that a familiar chat is delightful.
+
+Music, no doubt, has powerful attractions for those who are fond of it,
+but one must set about it--it is an exertion. Besides, one sometimes has
+a cold, the music is mislaid, the instruments are out of tune, one has a
+fit of the blues, or it is a forbidden day. Whereas, in the other case,
+a common want summons the spouses to table, the same inclination keeps
+them there; they naturally show each other these little attentions as a
+proof of their wish to oblige, and the mode of conducting their meals
+has a great share in the happiness of their lives.
+
+This observation, though new in France, has not escaped the notice of
+Richardson, the English moralist. He has worked out the idea in his
+novel 'Pamela,' by painting the different manner in which two married
+couples finish their day. The first husband is a lord, an eldest son,
+and therefore heir to all the family property; the second is his younger
+brother, the husband of Pamela, who has been disinherited on account of
+his marriage, and lives on half-pay in a state but little removed from
+abject poverty.
+
+The lord and lady enter their dining-room by different doors, and salute
+each other coldly, though they have not met the whole day before.
+Sitting down at a table which is magnificently covered, surrounded by
+lackeys in brilliant liveries, they help themselves in silence, and eat
+without pleasure. As soon, however, as the servants have withdrawn, a
+sort of conversation is begun between the pair, which quickly shows a
+bitter tone, passing into a regular fight, and they rise from the table
+in a fury of anger, and go off to their separate apartments to reflect
+upon the pleasures of a single life.
+
+The younger brother, on the contrary, is, on reaching his unpretentious
+home, received with a gentle, loving heartiness and the fondest
+caresses. He sits down to a frugal meal, but everything he eats is
+excellent; and how could it be otherwise? It is Pamela herself who has
+prepared it all. They eat with enjoyment, talking of their affairs,
+their plans, their love for each other. A half-bottle of Madeira serves
+to prolong their repast and conversation, and soon after they retire
+together, to forget in sleep their present hardships, and to dream of a
+better future.
+
+All honor to the love of good living, such as it is the purpose of this
+book to describe, so long as it does not come between men and their
+occupations or duties! For, as all the debaucheries of a Sardanapalus
+cannot bring disrespect upon womankind in general, so the excesses of a
+Vitellius need not make us turn our backs upon a well-appointed banquet.
+Should the love of good living pass into gluttony, voracity,
+intemperance, it then loses its name and advantages, escapes from our
+jurisdiction, and falls within that of the moralist to ply it with good
+counsel, or of the physician who will cure it by his remedies.
+
+ON PEOPLE FOND OF GOOD LIVING
+
+There are individuals to whom nature has denied a refinement of organs,
+or a continuity of attention, without which the most succulent dishes
+pass unobserved. Physiology has already recognized the first of these
+varieties, by showing us the tongue of these unhappy ones, badly
+furnished with nerves for inhaling and appreciating flavors. These
+excite in them but an obtuse sentiment; such persons are, with regard to
+objects of taste, what the blind are with regard to light. The second
+class are the absent-minded, chatterboxes, persons engrossed in business
+or ambition, and others who seek to occupy themselves with two things at
+once, and eat only to be filled. Such, for example, was Napoleon; he was
+irregular in his meals, and ate fast and badly. But there again was to
+be traced that absolute will which he carried into everything he did.
+The moment appetite was felt, it was necessary that it should be
+satisfied; and his establishment was so arranged that, in any place and
+at any hour, chicken, cutlets, and coffee might be forthcoming at
+a word.
+
+There is a privileged class of persons who are summoned to the
+enjoyments of taste by a physical and organic predisposition. I have
+always believed in physiognomy and phrenology. Men have inborn
+tendencies; and since there are some who come into the world seeing,
+hearing, and walking badly, because they are short-sighted, deaf, or
+crippled, why should there not be others who are specially predisposed
+to experience a certain series of sensations? Moreover, even an
+ordinary observer will constantly discover faces which bear the
+unmistakable imprint of a ruling passion--such as superciliousness,
+self-satisfaction, misanthropy, sensuality, and many others. Sometimes,
+no doubt, we meet with a face that expresses nothing; but when the
+physiognomy has a marked stamp it is almost always a true index. The
+passions act upon the muscles, and frequently, although a man says
+nothing, the various feelings by which he is moved can be read in his
+face. By this tension, if in the slightest degree habitual, perceptible
+traces are at last left, and the physiognomy thus assumes its permanent
+and recognizable characteristics.
+
+Those predisposed to epicurism are for the most part of middling height.
+They are broad-faced, and have bright eyes, small forehead, short nose,
+fleshy lips, and rounded chin. The women are plump, chubby, pretty
+rather than beautiful, with a slight tendency to fullness of figure. It
+is under such an exterior that we must look for agreeable guests. They
+accept all that is offered them, eat without hurry, and taste with
+discrimination. They never make any haste to get away from houses where
+they have been well treated, but stay for the evening, because they know
+all the games and other after-dinner amusements.
+
+Those, on the contrary, to whom nature has denied an aptitude for the
+enjoyments of taste, are long-faced, long-nosed, and long-eyed: whatever
+their stature, they have something lanky about them. They have dark,
+lanky hair, and are never in good condition. It was one of them who
+invented trousers. The women whom nature has afflicted with the same
+misfortune are angular, feel themselves bored at table, and live on
+cards and scandal.
+
+This theory of mine can be verified by each reader from his own personal
+observation. I shall give an instance from my own personal experience:--
+
+Sitting one day at a grand banquet, I had opposite me a very pretty
+neighbor, whose face showed the predisposition I have described.
+Leaning to the guest beside me, I said quietly that from her
+physiognomy, the young lady on the other side of the table must be fond
+of good eating. "You must be mad!" he answered; "she is but fifteen at
+most, which is certainly not the age for such a thing. However, let
+us watch."
+
+At first, things were by no means in my favor, and I was somewhat afraid
+of having compromised myself, for during the first two courses the young
+lady quite astonished me by her discretion, and I suspected we had
+stumbled upon an exception, remembering that there are some for every
+rule. But at last the dessert came,--a dessert both magnificent and
+abundant,--and my hopes were again revived. Nor did I hope in vain: not
+only did she eat of all that was offered her, but she even got dishes
+brought to her from the farthest parts of the table. In a word, she
+tasted everything, and my neighbor at last expressed his astonishment
+that the little stomach could hold so many things. Thus was my diagnosis
+verified, and once again science triumphed.
+
+Whilst I was writing the above, on a fine winter's evening, M. Cartier,
+formerly the first violinist at the Opera, paid me a visit, and sat down
+at the fireside. Being full of my subject, I said, after looking at him
+attentively for some time, "How does it happen, my dear professor, that
+you are no epicure, when you have all the features of one?" "I was one,"
+he replied, "and among the foremost; but now I refrain." "On principle,
+I suppose?" said I; but all the answer I had was a sigh, like one of Sir
+Walter Scott's--that is to say, almost a groan.
+
+As some are gourmands by predestination, so others become so by their
+state in society or their calling. There are four classes which I should
+signalize by way of eminence: the moneyed class, the doctors, men of
+letters, and the devout.
+
+Inequality of condition implies inequality of wealth, but inequality of
+wealth does not imply inequality of wants; and he who can afford every
+day a dinner sufficient for a hundred persons is often satisfied by
+eating the thigh of a chicken. Hence the necessity for the many devices
+of art to reanimate that ghost of an appetite by dishes which maintain
+it without injury, and caress without stifling it.
+
+The causes which act upon doctors are very different, though not less
+powerful. They become epicures in spite of themselves, and must be made
+of bronze to resist the seductive power of circumstances. The "dear
+doctor" is all the more kindly welcomed that health is the most precious
+of boons; and thus they are always waited for with impatience and
+received with eagerness. Some are kind to them from hope, others from
+gratitude. They are fed like pet pigeons. They let things take their
+course, and in six months the habit is confirmed, and they are gourmands
+past redemption.
+
+I ventured one day to express this opinion at a banquet in which, with
+eight others, I took a part, with Dr. Corvisart at the head of the
+table. It was about the year 1806.
+
+"You!" cried I, with the inspired tone of a Puritan preacher; "you are
+the last remnant of a body which formerly covered the whole of France.
+Alas! its members are annihilated or widely scattered. No more
+_fermiers-generaux_, no abbes nor knights nor white-coated friars. The
+members of your profession constitute the whole gastronomic body.
+Sustain with firmness that great responsibility, even if you must share
+the fate of the three hundred Spartans at the Pass of Thermopylae."
+
+At the same dinner I observed the following noteworthy fact. The doctor,
+who, when in the mood, was a most agreeable companion, drank nothing but
+iced champagne; and therefore in the earlier part of the dinner, whilst
+others were engaged in eating, he kept talking loudly and telling
+stories. But at dessert, on the contrary, and when the general
+conversation began to be lively, he became serious, silent, and
+sometimes low-spirited.
+
+From this observation, confirmed by many others, I have deduced the
+following theorem:--"Champagne, though at first exhilarating, ultimately
+produces stupefying effects;" a result, moreover, which is a well-known
+characteristic of the carbonic acid which it contains.
+
+Whilst I have the university doctors under my grasp, I must, before I
+die, reproach them with the extreme severity which they use towards
+their patients. As soon as one has the misfortune to fall into their
+hands, he must undergo a whole litany of prohibitions, and give up
+everything that he is accustomed to think agreeable. I rise up to oppose
+such interdictions, as being for the most part useless. I say useless,
+because the patient never longs for what is hurtful. A doctor of
+judgment will never lose sight of the instinctive tendency of our
+inclinations, or forget that if painful sensations are naturally fraught
+with danger, those which are pleasant have a healthy tendency. We have
+seen a drop of wine, a cup of coffee, or a thimbleful of liqueur, call
+up a smile to the most Hippocratic face.
+
+Those severe prescribers must, moreover, know very well that their
+prescriptions remain almost always without result. The patient tries to
+evade the duty of taking them; those about him easily find a good excuse
+for humoring him, and thus his death is neither hastened nor retarded.
+In 1815 the medical allowance of a sick Russian would have made a
+drayman drunk, and that of an Englishman was enough for a Limousin. Nor
+was any diminution possible, for there were military inspectors
+constantly going round our hospitals to examine the supply and the
+consumption.
+
+I am the more confident in announcing my opinion because it is based
+upon numerous facts, and the most successful practitioners have used a
+system closely resembling it.
+
+Canon Rollet, who died some fifty years ago, was a hard drinker,
+according to the custom of those days. He fell ill, and the doctor's
+first words were a prohibition of wine in any form. On his very next
+visit, however, our physician found beside the bed of his patient the
+_corpus delicti_ itself, to wit, a table covered with a snow-white
+cloth, a crystal cup, a handsome-looking bottle, and a napkin to wipe
+the lips. At this sight he flew into a violent passion and spoke of
+leaving the house, when the wretched canon cried to him in tones of
+lamentation, "Ah, doctor, remember that in forbidding me to drink, you
+have not forbidden me the pleasure of looking at the bottle!"
+
+The physician who treated Montlusin of Pont de Veyle was still more
+severe, for not only did he forbid the use of wine to his patient, but
+also prescribed large doses of water. Shortly after the doctor's
+departure, Madame Montlusin, anxious to give full effect to the medical
+orders and assist in the recovery of her husband's health, offered him a
+large glass of the finest and clearest water. The patient took it with
+docility, and began to drink it with resignation; but stopping short at
+the first mouthful, he handed back the glass to his wife. "Take it, my
+dear," said he, "and keep it for another time; I have always heard it
+said that we should not trifle with remedies."
+
+In the domain of gastronomy the men of letters are near neighbors to the
+doctors. A hundred years ago literary men were all hard drinkers. They
+followed the fashion, and the memoirs of the period are quite edifying
+on that subject. At the present day they are gastronomes, and it is a
+step in the right direction. I by no means agree with the cynical
+Geoffroy, who used to say that if our modern writings are weak, it is
+because literary men now drink nothing stronger than lemonade. The
+present age is rich in talents, and the very number of books probably
+interferes with their proper appreciation; but posterity, being more
+calm and judicial, will see amongst them much to admire, just as we
+ourselves have done justice to the masterpieces of Racine and Moliere,
+which were received by their contemporaries with coldness.
+
+Never has the social position of men of letters been more pleasant than
+at present. They no longer live in wretched garrets; the fields of
+literature are become more fertile, and even the study of the Muses has
+become productive. Received on an equality in any rank of life, they no
+longer wait for patronage; and to fill up their cup of happiness, good
+living bestows upon them its dearest favors. Men of letters are invited
+because of the good opinion men have of their talents; because their
+conversation has, generally speaking, something piquant in it, and also
+because now every dinner-party must as a matter of course have its
+literary man.
+
+Those gentlemen always arrive a little late, but are welcomed, because
+expected. They are treated as favorites so that they may come again, and
+regaled that they may shine; and as they find all this very natural, by
+being accustomed to it they become, are, and remain gastronomes.
+
+Finally, amongst the most faithful in the ranks of gastronomy we must
+reckon many of the devout--i.e., those spoken of by Louis XIV. and
+Moliere, whose religion consists in outward show;--nothing to do with
+those who are really pious and charitable.
+
+Let us consider how this comes about. Of those who wish to secure their
+salvation, the greater number try to find the most pleasant road. Men
+who flee from society, sleep on the ground, and wear hair-cloth next the
+skin, have always been, and must ever be, exceptions. Now there are
+certain things unquestionably to be condemned, and on no account to be
+indulged in--as balls, theatres, gambling, and other similar amusements;
+and whilst they and all that practice them are to be hated, good living
+presents itself insinuatingly in a thoroughly orthodox guise.
+
+By right divine, man is king of nature, and all that the earth produces
+was created for him. It is for him that the quail is fattened, for him
+that Mocha possesses so agreeable an aroma, for him that sugar has such
+wholesome properties. How then neglect to use, within reasonable limits,
+the good things which Providence presents to us; especially if we
+continue to regard them as things that perish with the using, especially
+if they raise our thankfulness towards the Author of all!
+
+Other equally strong reasons come to strengthen these. Can we be too
+hospitable in receiving those who have charge of our souls, and keep us
+in the way of safety? Should those meetings with so excellent an object
+not be made pleasant, and therefore frequent?
+
+Sometimes, also, the gifts of Comus arrive unsought--perhaps a souvenir
+of college days, a present from an old friend, a peace-offering from a
+penitent or a college chum recalling himself to one's memory. How refuse
+to accept such offerings, or to make systematic use of them? It is
+simply a necessity.
+
+The monasteries were real magazines of charming dainties, which is one
+reason why certain connoisseurs so bitterly regret them. Several of the
+monastic orders, especially that of St. Bernard, made a profession of
+good cheer. The limits of gastronomic art have been extended by the
+cooks of the clergy, and when M. de Pressigni (afterwards Archbishop of
+Besancon) returned from the Conclave at the election of Pius VI., he
+said that the best dinner he had had in Rome was at the table of the
+head of the Capuchins.
+
+We cannot conclude this article better than by honorably mentioning two
+classes of men whom we have seen in all their glory, and whom the
+Revolution has eclipsed--the chevaliers and the abbes. How they enjoyed
+good living, those dear old fellows! That could be told at a glance by
+their nervous nostrils, their clear eyes, their moist lips and mobile
+tongues. Each class had at the same time its own special manner of
+eating: the chevalier having something military and dignified in his air
+and attitude; while the abbe gathered himself together, as it were, to
+be nearer his plate, with his right hand curved inward like the paw of a
+cat drawing chestnuts from the fire, whilst in every feature was shown
+enjoyment and an indefinable look of close attention.
+
+So far from good living being hurtful to health, it has been
+arithmetically proved by Dr. Villerme in an able paper read before the
+Academie des Sciences, that other things being equal, the gourmands live
+longer than ordinary men.
+
+
+
+CHARLOTTE BRONTE AND HER SISTERS
+
+(1816-1855)
+
+The least that can be said of Charlotte Bronte is that she is a unique
+figure in literature. Nowhere else do we find another personality
+combining such extraordinary qualities of mind and heart,--qualities
+strangely contrasted, but still more strangely harmonized. At times they
+are baffling, but always fascinating. Nowhere else do we find so
+intimate an association of the personality of the author with the work,
+so thorough an identification with it of the author's life, even to the
+smaller details. So true is this in the case of Charlotte Bronte that
+the four novels 'Jane Eyre,' 'Shirley,' 'Villette,' and 'The Professor'
+might with some justice be termed 'Charlotte Bronte; her life and her
+friends.' Her works were in large part an expression of herself; at
+times the best expression of herself--of her actual self in experience
+and of her spiritual self in travail and in aspiration. It is manifestly
+impossible therefore to consider the works of Charlotte Bronte with
+justice apart from herself. A correct understanding of her books can be
+obtained only from a study of her remarkable personality and of the sad
+circumstances of her life.
+
+Public interest in Charlotte Bronte was first roused in 1847. In October
+of that year there appeared in London a novel that created a sensation,
+the like of which had not been known since the publication of
+'Waverley.' Its stern and paradoxical disregard for the conventional,
+its masculine energy, and its intense realism, startled the public, and
+proclaimed to all in accents unmistakable that a new, strange, and
+splendid power had come into literature, "but yet a woman."
+
+And with the success of 'Jane Eyre' came a lively curiosity to know
+something of the personality of the author. This was not gratified for
+some time. There were many conjectures, all of them far amiss. The
+majority of readers asserted confidently that the work must be that of a
+man; the touch was unmistakably masculine. In some quarters it met with
+hearty abuse. The Quarterly Review, in an article still notorious for
+its brutality, condemned the book as coarse, and stated that if 'Jane
+Eyre' were really written by a woman, she must be an improper woman, who
+had forfeited the society of her sex. This was said in December, 1848,
+of one of the noblest and purest of womankind. It is not a matter of
+surprise that the identity of this audacious speculator was not
+revealed. The recent examination into the topic by Mr. Clement Shorter
+seems, however, to fix the authorship of the notice on Lady Eastlake, at
+that time Miss Driggs.
+
+But hostile criticism of the book and its mysterious author could not
+injure its popularity. The story swept all before it--press and public.
+Whatever might be the source, the work stood there and spoke for itself
+in commanding terms. At length the mystery was cleared. A shrewd
+Yorkshireman guessed and published the truth, and the curious world knew
+that the author of 'Jane Eyre' was the daughter of a clergyman in the
+little village of Haworth, and that the literary sensation of the day
+found its source in a nervous, shrinking, awkward, plain, delicate young
+creature of thirty-one years of age, whose life, with the exception of
+two years, had been spent on the bleak and dreary moorlands of
+Yorkshire, and for the most part in the narrow confines of a grim gray
+stone parsonage. There she had lived a pinched and meagre little life,
+full of sadness and self-denial, with two sisters more delicate than
+herself, a dissolute brother, and a father her only parent,--a stern and
+forbidding father. This was no genial environment for an author, even if
+helpful to her vivid imagination. Nor was it a temporary condition; it
+was a permanent one. Nearly all the influences in Charlotte Bronte's
+life were such as these, which would seem to cramp if not to stifle
+sensitive talent. Her brother Branwell (physically weaker than herself,
+though unquestionably talented, and for a time the idol and hope of the
+family) became dissipated, irresponsible, untruthful, and a
+ne'er-do-weel, and finally yielding to circumstances, ended miserably a
+life of failure.
+
+But Charlotte Bronte's nature was one of indomitable courage, that
+circumstances might shadow but could not obscure. Out of the meagre
+elements of her narrow life she evolved works that stand among the
+imperishable things of English literature. It is a paradox that finds
+its explanation only in a statement of natural sources, primitive,
+bardic, the sources of the early epics, the sources of such epics as
+Caedmon and Beowulf bore. She wrote from a sort of necessity; it was in
+obedience to the commanding authority of an extraordinary genius,--a
+creative power that struggled for expression,--and much of her work
+deserves in the best and fullest sense the term "inspired."
+
+[Illustration: Charlotte Bronte]
+
+The facts of her life are few in number, but they have a direct and
+significant bearing on her work. She was born at Thornton, in the parish
+of Bradford, in 1816. Four years later her father moved to Haworth, to
+the parsonage now indissolubly associated with her name, and there Mr.
+Bronte entered upon a long period of pastorate service, that only
+ended with his death. Charlotte's mother was dead. In 1824 Charlotte and
+two older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, went to a school at Cowan's
+Bridge. It was an institution for clergymen's children, a vivid picture
+of which appears in 'Jane Eyre.' It was so badly managed and the food
+was so poor that many of the children fell sick, among them Maria
+Bronte, who died in 1825. Elizabeth followed her a few months later, and
+Charlotte returned to Haworth, where she remained for six years, then
+went to school at Roe Head for a period of three years. She was offered
+the position of teacher by Miss Wooler, the principal at Roe Head, but
+considering herself unfit to teach, she resolved to go to Brussels to
+study French. She spent two years there, and it was there that her
+intimate and misconstrued friendship for M. Heger developed. The
+incidents of that period formed the material of a greater portion of her
+novel 'Villette,' filled twenty-two volumes of from sixty to one hundred
+pages of fine writing, and consisted of some forty complete novelettes
+or other stories and childish "magazines."
+
+On returning to Haworth, she endeavored, together with her sister Emily,
+to establish a school at their home. But pupils were not to be had, and
+the outlook was discouraging. Two periods of service as governess, and
+the ill health that had followed, had taught Charlotte the danger that
+threatened her. Her experiences as a governess in the Sedgwick family
+were pictured by-and-by in 'Jane Eyre.' In a letter to Miss Ellen
+Nussey, written at this time, she gives a dark vignette of her
+situation.
+
+With her two sisters Emily and Anne she lived a quiet and retired life.
+The harsh realities about them, the rough natures of the Yorkshire
+people, impelled the three sisters to construct in their home an ideal
+world of their own, and in this their pent-up natures found expression.
+Their home was lonely and gloomy. Mr. Clement K. Shorter, in his recent
+study of the novelist and her family, says that the house is much the
+same to-day, though its immediate surroundings are brightened.
+He writes:
+
+"One day Emily confided to Charlotte that she had written some verses.
+Charlotte answered with a similar confidence, and then Anne acknowledged
+that she too had been secretly writing. This mutual confession brought
+about a complete understanding and sympathy, and from that time on the
+sisters worked together--reading their literary productions to one
+another and submitting to each other's criticism."
+
+This was however by no means Charlotte's first literary work. She has
+left a catalogue of books written by her between 1829 and 1830. Her
+first printed work however appeared in a volume of 'Poems' by Acton,
+Ellis, and Currer Bell, published in 1846 at the expense of the authors.
+Under these names the little book of the Bronte sisters went forth to
+the world, was reviewed with mild favor in some few periodicals, and was
+lost to sight.
+
+Then came a period of novel-writing. As a result, Emily Bronte's
+'Wuthering Heights,' Anne Bronte's 'Agnes Grey,' and Charlotte Bronte's
+'The Professor' set out together to find a publisher. The last-named was
+unsuccessful; but on the day it was returned to her, Charlotte Bronte
+began writing 'Jane Eyre.' That first masterpiece was shaped during a
+period of sorrow and discouragement. Her father was ill and in danger of
+losing his eyesight. Her brother Bran well was sinking into the slough
+of disgrace. No wonder 'Jane Eyre' is not a story of sunshine and roses.
+She finished the story in 1847, and it was accepted by the publishers
+promptly upon examination.
+
+After its publication and the sensation produced, Charlotte Bronte
+continued her literary work quietly, and unaffected by the furore she
+had aroused. A few brief visits to London, where attempts were made to
+lionize her,--very much to her distaste,--a few literary friendships,
+notably those with Thackeray, George Henry Lewes, Mrs. Gaskell, and
+Harriet Martineau, were the only features that distinguished her
+literary life from the simple life she had always led and continued to
+lead at Haworth. She was ever busy, if not ever at her desk. Success had
+come; she was sane in the midst of it. She wrote slowly and only as she
+felt the impulse, and when she knew she had found the proper impression.
+In 1849 'Shirley' was published. In 1853 appeared 'Villette,' her last
+finished work, and the one considered by herself the best.
+
+In 1854 she married her father's curate, Mr. A.B. Nicholls. She had lost
+her brother Branwell and her two sisters Emily and Anne. Sorrow upon
+sorrow had closed like deepening shadows about her. All happiness in
+life for her had apparently ended, when this marriage brought a brief
+ray of sunshine. It was a happy union, and seemed to assure a period of
+peace and rest for the sorely tried soul. Only a few short months,
+however, and fate, as if grudging her even the bit of happiness, snapped
+the slender threads of her life and the whole sad episode of her
+existence was ended. She died March 31st, 1855, leaving her husband and
+father to mourn together in the lonely parsonage. She left a literary
+fragment--the story entitled 'Emma,' which was published with an
+introduction by Thackeray.
+
+Such are the main facts of this reserved life of Charlotte Bronte. Are
+they dull and commonplace? Some of them are indeed inexpressibly sad.
+Tragedy is beneath all the bitter chronicle. The sadness of her days can
+be appreciated by all who read her books. Through all her stories there
+is an intense note, especially in treating the pathos of existence, that
+is unmistakably subjective. There is a keen perception of the darker
+depths of human nature that could have been revealed to a human heart
+only by suffering and sorrow.
+
+She did not allow sadness, however, to crush her spirit. She was neither
+morbid nor melancholy, but on the contrary Charlotte was cheerful and
+pleasant in disposition and manner. She was a loving sister and devoted
+daughter, patient and obedient to a parent who afterwards made obedience
+a severe hardship. There were other sides to her character. She was not
+always calm. She was not ever tender and a maker of allowances. But who
+is such? And she had good reason to be impatient with the world as
+she found it.
+
+Her character and disposition are partially reflected in 'Jane Eyre.'
+The calm, clear mind, the brave, independent spirit are there. But a
+fuller and more accurate picture of her character may be found in Lucy
+Snowe, the heroine of 'Villette.' Here we find especially that note of
+hopelessness that predominated in Charlotte's character. Mrs. Gaskell,
+in her admirable biography of Charlotte Bronte, has called attention to
+this absence of hope in her nature. Charlotte indeed never allowed
+herself to look forward to happy issues. She had no confidence in the
+future. The pressure of grief apparently crushed all buoyancy of
+expectation. It was in this attitude that when literary success greeted
+her, she made little of it, scarcely allowing herself to believe that
+the world really set a high value on her work. Throughout all the
+excitement that her books produced, she was almost indifferent. Brought
+up as she had been to regard literary work as something beyond the
+proper limits of her sex, she never could quite rid herself of the
+belief that in writing successfully, she had made of herself not so much
+a literary figure as a sort of social curiosity. Nor was that idea
+wholly foreign to her time.
+
+Personally Charlotte Bronte was not unattractive. Though somewhat too
+slender and pale, and plain of feature, she had a pleasant expression,
+and her homelier features were redeemed by a strong massive forehead,
+luxuriant glossy hair, and handsome eyes. Though she had little faith in
+her powers of inspiring affection, she attracted people strongly and was
+well beloved by her friends. That she could stir romantic sentiment too
+was attested by the fact that she received and rejected three proposals
+of marriage from as many suitors, before her acceptance of Mr. Nicholls.
+
+Allusion has been made to the work of Charlotte's two sisters, Emily and
+Anne. Of the two Emily is by far the more remarkable, revealing in the
+single novel we have from her pen a genius as distinct and individual as
+that of her more celebrated sister. Had she lived, it is more than
+likely that her literary achievements would have rivaled Charlotte's.
+
+Emily Bronte has always been something of a puzzle to biographers. She
+was eccentric, an odd mixture of bashful reserve and unexpected spells
+of frankness, sweet, gentle, and retiring in disposition, but possessed
+of great courage. She was two years younger than Charlotte, but taller.
+She was slender, though well formed, and was pale in complexion, with
+great gray eyes of remarkable beauty. Emily's literary work is to be
+found in the volume of "Poems" of her sisters, her share in that work
+being considered superior in imaginative quality and in finish to that
+of the others; and in the novel "Wuthering Heights," a weird, horrid
+story of astonishing power, written when she was twenty-eight years of
+age. Considered purely as an imaginative work, "Wuthering Heights" is
+one of the most remarkable stories in English literature, and is worthy
+to be ranked with the works of Edgar A. Poe. Many will say that it might
+better not have been written, so utterly repulsive is it, but others
+will value it as a striking, though distorted, expression of
+unmistakable genius. It is a ghastly and gruesome creation. Not one
+bright ray redeems it. It deals with the most evil characters and the
+most evil phases of human experience. But it fascinates. Heathcliff, the
+chief figure in the book, is one of the greatest villains in
+fiction,--an abhorrent creature,--strange, monstrous, Frankensteinesque.
+
+Anne Bronte is known by her share in the book of "Poems" and by two
+novels, "Agnes Gray" and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," both of which
+are disappointing. The former is based on the author's experiences as a
+governess, and is written in the usual placid style of romances of the
+time. "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" found its suggestion in the wretched
+career of Branwell Bronte, and presents a sad and depressing picture of
+a life of degradation. The book was not a success, and would no doubt
+have sunk long ago into oblivion but for its association with the novels
+of Emily and Charlotte.
+
+In studying the work of Charlotte Bronte, the gifted older sister of the
+group, one of the first of the qualities that impress the reader is her
+actual creative power. To one of her imaginative power, the simplest
+life was sufficient, the smallest details a fund of material. Mr.
+Swinburne has called attention to the fact that Charlotte Bronte's
+characters are individual creations, not types constructed out of
+elements gathered from a wide observation of human nature, and that they
+are _real_ creations; that they compel our interest and command our
+assent because they are true, inevitably true. Perhaps no better example
+of this individualism could be cited than Rochester. The character is
+unique. It is not a type, nor has it even a prototype, like so many of
+Charlotte Bronte's characters. Gossip insisted at one time that the
+author intended to picture Thackeray in Rochester, but this is
+groundless. Rochester is an original creation. The character of Jane
+Eyre, too, while reflecting something of the author's nature, was
+distinctly individual; and it is interesting to note here that with Jane
+Eyre came a new heroine into fiction, a woman of calm, clear reason, of
+firm positive character, and what was most novel, a plain woman, a
+homely heroine.
+
+"Why is it," Charlotte had once said, "that heroines must always be
+beautiful?" The hero of romance was always noble and handsome, the
+heroine lovely and often insipid, and the scenes set in an atmosphere of
+exaggerated idealism. Against this idealism Charlotte Bronte revolted.
+Her effort was always toward realism.
+
+In her realism she reveals a second characteristic scarcely less marked
+than her creative powers,--an extraordinary faculty of observation. She
+saw the essence, the spirit of things, and the simplest details of life
+revealed to her the secrets of human nature. What she had herself seen
+and felt--the plain rugged types of Yorkshire character, the wild
+scenery of the moorlands--she reflected with living truth. She got the
+real fact out of every bit of material in humanity and nature that her
+simple life afforded her. And where her experience could not afford her
+the necessary material, she drew upon some mysterious resources in her
+nature, which were apparently not less reliable than actual experience.
+On being asked once how she could describe so accurately the effects of
+opium as she does in 'Villette,' she replied that she knew nothing of
+opium, but that she had followed the process she always adopted in cases
+of this kind. She had thought intently on the matter for many a night
+before falling asleep; till at length, after some time, she waked in the
+morning with all clear before her, just as if she had actually gone
+through the experience, and then could describe it word for word as
+it happened.
+
+Her sensitiveness to impressions of nature was exceedingly keen. She had
+what Swinburne calls "an instinct for the tragic use of landscape." By
+constant and close observation during her walks she had established a
+fellowship with nature in all her phases; learning her secrets from the
+voices of the night, from the whisper of the trees, and from the eerie
+moaning of the moorland blasts. She studied the cold sky, and had
+watched the "coming night-clouds trailing low like banners drooping."
+
+Other qualities that distinguish her work are purity, depth and ardor of
+passion, and spiritual force and fervor. Her genius was lofty and noble,
+and an exalted moral quality predominates in her stories. She was
+ethical as sincerely as she was emotional.
+
+We have only to consider her technique, in which she is
+characteristically original. This originality is noticeable especially
+in her use of words. There is a sense of fitness that often surprises
+the reader. Words at times in her hands reveal a new power and
+significance. In the choice of words Charlotte Bronte was scrupulous.
+She believed that there was just one word fit to express the idea or
+shade of meaning she wished to convey, and she never admitted a
+substitute, sometimes waiting days until the right word came. Her
+expressions are therefore well fitted and forcible. Though the
+predominant key is a serious one, there is nevertheless considerable
+humor in Charlotte Bronte's work. In 'Shirley' especially we find many
+happy scenes, and much wit in repartee. And yet, with all these merits,
+one will find at times her style to be lame, stiff, and crude, and even
+when strongest, occasionally coarse. Not infrequently she is
+melodramatic and sensational. But through it all there is that pervading
+sense of reality and it redeems these defects.
+
+Of the unusual, the improbable, the highly colored in Charlotte Bronte's
+books we shall say little. In criticizing works so true to life and
+nature as these, one should not be hasty. We feel the presence of a
+seer. Some one once made an objection in Charlotte Bronte's presence to
+that part of 'Jane Eyre' in which she hears Rochester's voice calling to
+her at a great crisis in her life, he being many miles distant from her
+at the time. Charlotte caught her breath and replied in a low
+voice:--"But it is a true thing; it really happened." And so it might be
+said of Charlotte Bronte's work as a whole:--"It is a true thing; it
+really happened."
+
+JANE EYRE'S WEDDING DAY
+
+From 'Jane Eyre'
+
+Sophie came at seven to dress me. She was very long indeed in
+accomplishing her task; so long that Mr. Rochester--grown, I suppose,
+impatient of my delay--sent up to ask why I did not come. She was just
+fastening my veil (the plain square of blonde, after all) to my hair
+with a brooch; I hurried from under her hands as soon as I could.
+
+"Stop!" she cried in French, "Look at yourself in the mirror; you have
+not taken one peep."
+
+So I turned at the door. I saw a robed and veiled figure, so unlike my
+usual self that it seemed almost the image of a stranger.
+
+"Jane!" called a voice, and I hastened down. I was received at the foot
+of the stairs by Mr. Rochester. "Lingerer," he said, "my brain is on
+fire with impatience; and you tarry so long!"
+
+He took me into the dining-room, surveyed me keenly all over, pronounced
+me "fair as a lily, and not only the pride of his life, but the desire
+of his eyes"; and then, telling me he would give me but ten minutes to
+eat some breakfast, he rang the bell. One of his lately hired servants,
+a footman, answered it.
+
+"Is John getting the carriage ready?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Is the luggage brought down?"
+
+"They are bringing it down, sir."
+
+"Go you to the church; see if Mr. Wood" (the clergyman) "and the clerk
+are there; return and tell me."
+
+The church, as the reader knows, was but just beyond the gates; the
+footman soon returned.
+
+"Mr. Wood is in the vestry, sir, putting on his surplice."
+
+"And the carriage?"
+
+"The horses are harnessing."
+
+"We shall not want it to go to church; but it must be ready the moment
+we return--all the boxes and luggage arranged and strapped on, and the
+coachman in his seat."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Jane, are you ready?"
+
+I rose. There were no groomsmen, no bridesmaids, no relatives to wait
+for or marshal; none but Mr. Rochester and I. Mrs. Fairfax stood in the
+hall as we passed. I would fain have spoken to her, but my hand was held
+by a grasp of iron; I was hurried along by a stride I could hardly
+follow; and to look at Mr. Rochester's face was to feel that not a
+second of delay would be tolerated for any purpose. I wondered what
+other bridegroom ever looked as he did--so bent up to a purpose, so
+grimly resolute; or who, under such steadfast brows, ever revealed such
+flaming and flashing eyes.
+
+I know not whether the day was fair or foul; in descending the drive I
+gazed neither on sky nor earth; my heart was with my eyes, and both
+seemed migrated into Mr. Rochester's frame. I wanted to see the
+invisible thing on which, as we went along, he appeared to fasten a
+glance fierce and fell. I wanted to feel the thoughts whose force he
+seemed breasting and resisting.
+
+At the churchyard wicket he stopped; he discovered I was quite out of
+breath.
+
+"Am I cruel in my love?" he said. "Delay an instant; lean on me, Jane."
+
+And now I can recall the picture of the gray old house of God rising
+calm before me, of a rook wheeling around the steeple, of a ruddy
+morning sky beyond. I remember something, too, of the green
+grave-mounds; and I have not forgotten, either, two figures of
+strangers, straying among the low hillocks, and reading the mementos
+graven on the few mossy headstones. I noticed them because as they saw
+us they passed around to the back of the church; and I doubted not they
+were going to enter by the side aisle door and witness the ceremony. By
+Mr. Rochester they were not observed; he was earnestly looking at my
+face, from which the blood had, I dare say, momentarily fled; for I felt
+my forehead dewy and my cheeks and lips cold. When I rallied, which I
+soon did, he walked gently with me up the path to the porch.
+
+We entered the quiet and humble temple; the priest waited in his white
+surplice at the lowly altar, the clerk beside him. All was still; two
+shadows only moved in a remote corner. My conjecture had been correct;
+the strangers had slipped in before us, and they now stood by the vault
+of the Rochesters, their backs toward us, viewing through the rails the
+old time-stained marble tomb, where a kneeling angel guarded the remains
+of Damer de Rochester, slain at Marston Moor in the time of the civil
+wars, and of Elizabeth his wife.
+
+Our place was taken at the communion-rails. Hearing a cautious step
+behind me, I glanced over my shoulder; one of the strangers--a
+gentleman, evidently--was advancing up the chancel. The service began.
+The explanation of the intent of matrimony was gone through: and then
+the clergyman came a step farther forward, and bending slightly toward
+Mr. Rochester, went on:--
+
+"I require and charge you both (as ye will answer at the dreadful day of
+judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed) that if
+either of you know any impediment why ye may not lawfully be joined
+together in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well assured that
+so many as are coupled together otherwise than God's word doth allow are
+not joined together by God, neither is their matrimony lawful."
+
+He paused, as the custom is. When is the pause after that sentence ever
+broken by reply? Not, perhaps, once in a hundred years. And the
+clergyman, who had not lifted his eyes from his book, and had held his
+breath but for a moment, was proceeding; his hand was already stretched
+toward. Mr. Rochester, as his lips unclosed to ask, "Wilt thou have this
+woman for thy wedded wife?"--when a distinct and near voice said, "The
+marriage cannot go on: I declare the existence of an impediment."
+
+The clergyman looked up at the speaker and stood mute: the clerk did the
+same; Mr. Rochester moved slightly, as if an earthquake had rolled under
+his feet; taking a firmer footing, and not turning his head or eyes, he
+said, "Proceed!"
+
+Profound silence fell when he had uttered that word, with deep but low
+intonation. Presently Mr. Wood said, "I cannot proceed without some
+investigation into what has been asserted, and evidence of its truth or
+falsehood."
+
+"The ceremony is quite broken off," subjoined the voice behind us. "I am
+in a condition to prove my allegation; an insuperable impediment to this
+marriage exists."
+
+Mr. Rochester heard, but heeded not; he stood stubborn and rigid; making
+no movement but to possess himself of my hand. What a hot and strong
+grasp he had!--and how like quarried marble was his pale, firm, massive
+front at this moment! How his eye shone, still, watchful, and yet
+wild beneath!
+
+Mr. Wood seemed at a loss. "What is the nature of the impediment?" he
+asked. "Perhaps it may be got over--explained away?"
+
+"Hardly," was the answer: "I have called it insuperable, and I speak
+advisedly."
+
+The speaker came forward and leaned on the rails. He continued, uttering
+each word distinctly, calmly, steadily, but not loudly.
+
+"It simply consists in the existence of a previous marriage. Mr.
+Rochester has a wife now living."
+
+My nerves vibrated to those low-spoken words as they had never vibrated
+to thunder; my blood felt their subtle violence as it had never felt
+frost or fire; but I was collected, and in no danger of swooning. I
+looked at Mr. Rochester; I made him look at me. His whole face was
+colorless rock; his eye was both spark and flint. He disavowed nothing;
+he seemed as if he would defy all things. Without speaking, without
+smiling, without seeming to recognize in me a human being, he only
+twined my waist with his arm and riveted me to his side.
+
+"Who are you?" he asked of the intruder.
+
+"My name is Briggs, a solicitor of ---- Street, London."
+
+"And you would thrust on me a wife?"
+
+"I would remind you of your lady's existence, sir, which the law
+recognizes if you do not."
+
+"Favor me with an account of her--with her name, her parentage, her
+place of abode."
+
+"Certainly." Mr. Briggs calmly took a paper from his pocket, and read
+out in a sort of official, nasal voice:--
+
+"I affirm and can prove that on the 20th of October, A.D.--" (a date of
+fifteen years back), "Edward Fairfax Rochester, of Thornfield Hall, in
+the county of ----, and of Ferndean Manor, in ---- shire, England, was
+married to my sister, Bertha Antoinetta Mason, daughter of Jonas Mason,
+merchant, and of Antoinetta his wife, a Creole, at ---- church, Spanish
+Town, Jamaica. The record of the marriage will be found in the register
+of that church--a copy of it is now in my possession. Signed,
+Richard Mason."
+
+"That, if a genuine document, may prove I have been married, but it does
+not prove that the woman mentioned therein as my wife is still living."
+
+"She was living three months ago," returned the lawyer.
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I have a witness to the fact whose testimony even you, sir, will
+scarcely controvert."
+
+"Produce him--or go to hell!"
+
+"I will produce him first--he is on the spot: Mr. Mason, have the
+goodness to step forward."
+
+Mr. Rochester, on hearing the name, set his teeth: he experienced, too,
+a sort of strong convulsive quiver; near to him as I was, I felt the
+spasmodic movement of fury or despair run through his frame.
+
+The second stranger, who had hitherto lingered in the background, now
+drew near; a pale face looked over the solicitor's shoulder--yes, it was
+Mason himself. Mr. Rochester turned and glared at him. His eye, as I
+have often said, was a black eye--it had now a tawny, nay, a bloody
+light in its gloom; and his face flushed--olive cheek and hueless
+forehead received a glow, as from spreading, ascending heart-fire; and
+he stirred, lifted his strong arm; he could have struck Mason--dashed
+him on the church floor--shocked by ruthless blow the breath from his
+body; but Mason shrank away, and cried faintly, "Good God!" Contempt
+fell cool on Mr. Rochester--his passion died as if a blight had
+shriveled it up; he only asked, "What have _you_ to say?"
+
+An inaudible reply escaped Mason's white lips.
+
+"The devil is in it if you cannot answer distinctly. I again demand,
+what have _you_ to say?"
+
+"Sir--sir," interrupted the clergyman, "do not forget you are in a
+sacred place." Then addressing Mason, he inquired gently, "Are you
+aware, sir, whether or not this gentleman's wife is still living?"
+
+"Courage," urged the lawyer; "speak out."
+
+"She is now living at Thornfield Hall," said Mason, in more articulate
+tones. "I saw her there last April. I am her brother."
+
+"At Thornfield Hall!" ejaculated the clergyman. "Impossible! I am an old
+resident in this neighborhood, sir, and I never heard of a Mrs.
+Rochester at Thornfield Hall."
+
+I saw a grim smile contort Mr. Rochester's lip, and he muttered, "No, by
+God! I took care that none should hear of it, or of her under that
+name." He mused; for ten minutes he held counsel with himself: he formed
+his resolve, and announced it:--"Enough; all shall bolt out at once,
+like a bullet from the barrel. Wood, close your book and take off your
+surplice; John Green" (to the clerk) "leave the church: there will be no
+wedding to-day." The man obeyed.
+
+Mr. Rochester continued hardily and recklessly:--"Bigamy is an ugly
+word! I meant, however, to be a bigamist; but fate has out-manoeuvred
+me, or Providence has checked me--perhaps the last. I am little better
+than a devil at this moment; and as my pastor there would tell me,
+deserve no doubt the sternest judgments of God, even to the quenchless
+fire and deathless worm.
+
+"Gentlemen, my plan is broken up! what this lawyer and his client say is
+true: I have been married, and the woman to whom I was married lives!
+You say you never heard of a Mrs. Rochester at the house up yonder,
+Wood; but I dare say you have many a time inclined your ear to gossip
+about the mysterious lunatic kept there under watch and ward. Some have
+whispered to you that she is my bastard half-sister; some, my cast-off
+mistress: I now inform you that she is my wife, whom I married fifteen
+years ago--Bertha Mason by name; sister of this resolute personage who
+is now, with his quivering limbs and white cheeks, showing you what a
+stout heart men may bear. Cheer up, Dick! never fear me! I'd almost as
+soon strike a woman as you. Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad
+family--idiots and maniacs through three generations! Her mother, the
+Creole, was both a mad-woman and a drunkard!--as I found out after I had
+wed the daughter; for they were silent on family secrets before. Bertha,
+like a dutiful child, copied her parent in both points. I had a charming
+partner--pure, wise, modest; you can fancy I was a happy man. I went
+through rich scenes! Oh! my experience has been heavenly, if you only
+knew it! But I owe you no further explanation. Briggs, Wood, Mason, I
+invite you all to come up to the house and visit Mrs. Poole's patient,
+and _my wife_! You shall see what sort of a being I was cheated into
+espousing, and judge whether or not I had a right to break the compact,
+and seek sympathy with something at least human. This girl," he
+continued, looking at me, "knew no more than you, Wood, of the
+disgusting secret: she thought all was fair and legal, and never dreamed
+that she was going to be entrapped into a feigned union with a defrauded
+wretch, already bound to a bad, mad, and imbruted partner! Come, all of
+you, follow."
+
+Still holding me fast, he left the church: the three gentlemen came
+after. At the front door of the hall we found the carriage.
+
+"Take it back to the coach-house, John," said Mr. Rochester, coolly: "it
+will not be wanted to-day."
+
+At our entrance, Mrs. Fairfax, Adele, Sophie, Leah, advanced to meet and
+greet us.
+
+"To the right-about--every soul!" cried the master: "away with your
+congratulations! Who wants them? Not I! they are fifteen years
+too late!"
+
+He passed on and ascended the stairs, still holding my hand, and still
+beckoning the gentlemen to follow him; which they did. We mounted the
+first staircase, passed up the gallery, proceeded to the third story:
+the low black door, opened by Mr. Rochester's master-key, admitted us to
+the tapestried room, with its great bed and its pictorial cabinet.
+
+"You know this place, Mason," said our guide; "she bit and stabbed you
+here."
+
+He lifted the hangings from the wall, uncovering the second door; this
+too he opened. In a room without a window there burned a fire, guarded
+by a high and strong fender, and a lamp suspended from the ceiling by a
+chain. Grace Poole bent over the fire, apparently cooking something in a
+saucepan. In the deep shade, at the further end of the room, a figure
+ran backward and forward. What it was, whether beast or human being, one
+could not at first sight tell; it groveled, seemingly, on all fours; it
+snatched and growled like some strange wild animal; but it was covered
+with clothing; and a quantity of dark grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid
+its head and face.
+
+"Good morning, Mrs. Poole," said Mr. Rochester. "How are you? and how is
+your charge to-day?"
+
+"We're tolerable, sir, I thank you," replied Grace, lifting the boiling
+mess carefully on to the hob: "rather snappish, but not 'rageous."
+
+A fierce cry seemed to give the lie to her favorable report: the clothed
+hyena rose up, and stood tall on its hind feet.
+
+"Ah, sir, she sees you!" exclaimed Grace: "you'd better not stay."
+
+"Only a few moments, Grace; you must allow me a few moments."
+
+"Take care then, sir! for God's sake, take care!"
+
+The maniac bellowed; she parted her shaggy locks from her visage, and
+gazed wildly at her visitors. I recognized well that purple face--those
+bloated features. Mrs. Poole advanced.
+
+"Keep out of the way," said Mr. Rochester, thrusting her aside; "she has
+no knife now, I suppose? and I'm on my guard."
+
+"One never knows what she has, sir, she is so cunning; it is not in
+mortal discretion to fathom her craft."
+
+"We had better leave her," whispered Mason.
+
+"Go to the devil!" was his brother-in-law's recommendation.
+
+"'Ware!" cried Grace. The three gentlemen retreated simultaneously. Mr.
+Rochester flung me behind him; the lunatic sprang and grappled his
+throat viciously, and laid her teeth to his cheek; they struggled. She
+was a big woman, in stature almost equaling her husband, and corpulent
+besides; she showed virile force in the contest--more than once she
+almost throttled him, athletic as he was. He could have settled her with
+a well-planted blow; but he would not strike her; he would only wrestle.
+At last he mastered her arms; Grace Poole gave him a cord, and he
+pinioned them behind her; with more rope, which was at hand, he bound
+her to a chair. The operation was performed amid the fiercest yells and
+the most convulsive plunges. Mr. Rochester then turned to the
+spectators; he looked at them with a smile both acrid and desolate.
+
+"That is _my wife_," said he. "Such is the sole conjugal embrace I am
+ever to know--such are the endearments which are to solace my leisure
+hours! And _this_ is what I wished to have" (laying his hand on my
+shoulder): "this young girl, who stands so grave and quiet at the mouth
+of hell, looking collectedly at the gambols of a demon. I wanted her
+just as a change, after that fierce ragout. Wood and Briggs, look at the
+difference. Compare these clear eyes with the red balls yonder--this
+face with that mask--this form with that bulk; then judge me, priest of
+the Gospel and man of the law, and remember, with what judgment ye judge
+ye shall be judged! Off with you now: I must shut up my prize."
+
+We all withdrew. Mr. Rochester stayed a moment behind us, to give some
+further order to Grace Poole. The solicitor addressed me as he descended
+the stair.
+
+"You, madam," said he, "are cleared from all blame; your uncle will be
+glad to hear it--if indeed he should be still living--when Mr. Mason
+returns to Madeira."
+
+"My uncle? What of him? Do you know him?"
+
+"Mr. Mason does; Mr. Eyre has been the Funchal correspondent of his
+house for some years. When your uncle received your letter intimating
+the contemplated union between yourself and Mr. Rochester, Mr. Mason,
+who was staying at Madeira to recruit his health, on his way back to
+Jamaica happened to be with him. Mr. Eyre mentioned the intelligence;
+for he knew that my client here was acquainted with a gentleman of the
+name of Rochester. Mr. Mason, astonished and distressed, as you may
+suppose, revealed the real state of matters. Your uncle, I am sorry to
+say, is now on a sick-bed; from which, considering the nature of his
+disease--decline--and the stage it has reached, it is unlikely he will
+ever rise. He could not then hasten to England himself, to extricate you
+from the snare into which you had fallen, but he implored Mr. Mason to
+lose no time in taking steps to prevent the false marriage. He referred
+him to me for assistance, I used all dispatch, and am thankful I was not
+too late: as you, doubtless, must be also. Were I not morally certain
+that your uncle will be dead ere you reach Madeira, I would advise you
+to accompany Mr. Mason back; but as it is, I think you had better remain
+in England till you can hear further, either from or of Mr. Eyre. Have
+we anything else to stay for?" he inquired of Mr. Mason.
+
+"No, no; let us be gone," was the anxious reply; and without waiting to
+take leave of Mr. Rochester, they made their exit at the hall door. The
+clergyman stayed to exchange a few sentences, either of admonition or
+reproof, with his haughty parishioner: this duty done, he too departed.
+
+I heard him go as I stood at the half-open door of my own room, to which
+I had now withdrawn. The house cleared, I shut myself in, fastened the
+bolt that none might intrude, and proceeded--not to weep, not to mourn,
+I was yet too calm for that, but--mechanically to take off the
+wedding-dress, and replace if by the stuff gown I had worn yesterday, as
+I thought for the last time. I then sat down: I felt weak and tired. I
+leaned my arms on a table, and my head dropped on them. And now I
+thought: till now I had only heard, seen, moved--followed up and down
+where I was led or dragged--watched event rush on event, disclosure open
+beyond disclosure; but _now I thought_.
+
+The morning had been a quiet morning enough--all except the brief scene
+with the lunatic. The transaction in the church had not been noisy;
+there was no explosion of passion, no loud altercation, no dispute, no
+defiance or challenge, no tears, no sobs: a few words had been spoken, a
+calmly pronounced objection to the marriage made; some stern, short
+questions put by Mr. Rochester; answers, explanations given, evidence
+adduced; an open admission of the truth had been uttered by my master:
+then the living proof had been seen; the intruders were gone, and
+all was over.
+
+I was in my own room as usual--just myself, without obvious change;
+nothing had smitten me, or scathed me, or maimed me. And yet where was
+the Jane Eyre of yesterday? where was her life? where were her
+prospects?
+
+Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman--almost a bride--was
+a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were
+desolate. A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December
+storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples; drifts crushed
+the blowing roses; on hay-field and corn-field lay a frozen shroud;
+lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless
+with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy
+and fragrant as groves between the tropics, now spread waste, wild, and
+white as pine forests in wintry Norway.
+
+My hopes were all dead--struck with a subtle doom, such as in one night
+fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my
+cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark,
+chill, livid corpses that could never revive. I looked at my love, that
+feeling which was my master's--which he had created: it shivered in my
+heart, like a suffering child in a cold cradle; sickness and anguish had
+seized it; it could not seek Mr. Rochester's arms--it could not derive
+warmth from his breast. Oh, never more could it turn to him; for faith
+was blighted--confidence destroyed! Mr. Rochester was not to me what he
+had been; for he was not what I had thought him. I would not ascribe
+vice to him; I would not say he had betrayed me: but the attribute of
+stainless truth was gone from his idea; and from his presence I must go;
+_that_ I perceived well. When--how--whither, I could not yet discern;
+but he himself, I doubted not, would hurry me from Thornfield. Real
+affection, it seemed, he could not have for me; it had been only fitful
+passion; that was balked; he would want me no more. I should fear even
+to cross his path now: my view must be hateful to him. Oh, how blind had
+been my eyes! how weak my conduct!
+
+MADAME BECK
+
+(From 'Villette')
+
+"You ayre Engliss?" said a voice at my elbow. I almost bounded, so
+unexpected was the sound; so certain had I been of solitude.
+
+No ghost stood beside me, nor anything of spectral aspect; merely a
+motherly, dumpy little woman, in a large shawl, a wrapping-gown, and a
+clean, trim, nightcap.
+
+I said I was English, and immediately, without further prelude, we fell
+to a most remarkable conversation. Madame Beck (for Madame Beck it was;
+she had entered by a little door behind me, and being shod with the
+shoes of silence, I had heard neither her entrance nor approach)--Madame
+Beck had exhausted her command of insular speech when she said "You ayre
+Engliss," and she now proceeded to work away volubly in her own tongue.
+I answered in mine. She partly understood me, but as I did not at all
+understand her--though we made together an awful clamor (anything like
+madame's gift of utterance I had not hitherto heard or imagined)--we
+achieved little progress. She rang, ere long, for aid; which arrived in
+the shape of a "maitresse," who had been partly educated in an Irish
+convent, and was esteemed a perfect adept in the English language. A
+bluff little personage this maitresse was--Labasse-courienne from top to
+toe: and how she did slaughter the speech of Albion! However, I told her
+a plain tale, which she translated. I told her how I had left my own
+country, intent on extending my knowledge and gaining my bread; how I
+was ready to turn my hand to any useful thing, provided it was not wrong
+or degrading: how I would be a child's nurse or a lady's-maid, and would
+not refuse even housework adapted to my strength. Madame heard this; and
+questioning her countenance, I almost thought the tale won her ear.
+
+"Il n'y a que les Anglaises pour ces sortes d'entreprises," said she:
+"sont-elles done intrepides, ces femmes-la!"
+
+She asked my name, my age; she sat and looked at me--not pityingly, not
+with interest: never a gleam of sympathy or a shade of compassion
+crossed her countenance during the interview. I felt she was not one to
+be led an inch by her feelings: grave and considerate, she gazed,
+consulting her judgment and studying my narrative....
+
+In the dead of night I suddenly awoke. All was hushed, but a white
+figure stood in the room--Madame in her night-dress. Moving without
+perceptible sound, she visited the three children in the three beds; she
+approached me; I feigned sleep, and she studied me long. A small
+pantomime ensued, curious enough. I dare say she sat a quarter of an
+hour on the edge of my bed, gazing at my face. She then drew nearer,
+bent close over me; slightly raised my cap, and turned back the border
+so as to expose my hair; she looked at my hand lying on the bed-clothes.
+This done, she turned to the chair where my clothes lay; it was at the
+foot of the bed. Hearing her touch and lift them, I opened my eyes with
+precaution, for I own I felt curious to see how far her taste for
+research would lead her. It led her a good way: every article did she
+inspect. I divined her motive for this proceeding; viz., the wish to
+form from the garments a judgment respecting the wearer, her station,
+means, neatness, etc. The end was not bad, but the means were hardly
+fair or justifiable. In my dress was a pocket; she fairly turned it
+inside out; she counted the money in my purse; she opened a little
+memorandum-book, coolly perused its contents, and took from between the
+leaves a small plaited lock of Miss Marchmont's gray hair. To a bunch of
+three keys, being those of my trunk, desk, and work-box, she accorded
+special attention: with these, indeed, she withdrew a moment to her own
+room. I softly rose in my bed and followed her with my eye: these keys,
+reader, were not brought back till they had left on the toilet of the
+adjoining room the impress of their wards in wax. All being thus done
+decently and in order, my property was returned to its place, my clothes
+were carefully refolded. Of what nature were the conclusions deduced
+from this scrutiny? Were they favorable or otherwise? Vain question.
+Madame's face of stone (for of stone in its present night-aspect it
+looked: it had been human, and as I said before, motherly, in the salon)
+betrayed no response.
+
+Her duty done--I felt that in her eyes this business was a duty--she
+rose, noiseless as a shadow: she moved toward her own chamber; at the
+door she turned, fixing her eyes on the heroine of the bottle, who still
+slept and loudly snored. Mrs. Svini (I presume this was Mrs. Svini,
+Anglice or Hibernice Sweeny)--Mrs. Sweeny's doom was in Madame Beck's
+eye--an immutable purpose that eye spoke: madame's visitations for
+shortcomings might be slow, but they were sure. All this was very
+un-English: truly I was in a foreign land....
+
+When attired, Madame Beck appeared a personage of a figure rather short
+and stout, yet still graceful in its own peculiar way: that is, with the
+grace resulting from proportion of parts. Her complexion was fresh and
+sanguine, not too rubicund; her eye, blue and serene; her dark silk
+dress fitted her as a French sempstress alone can make a dress fit; she
+looked well, though a little bourgeoise, as bourgeoise indeed she was. I
+know not what of harmony pervaded her whole person; and yet her face
+offered contrast too: its features were by no means such as are usually
+seen in conjunction with a complexion of such blended freshness and
+repose: their outline was stern; her forehead was high but narrow; it
+expressed capacity and some benevolence, but no expanse; nor did her
+peaceful yet watchful eye ever know the fire which is kindled in the
+heart or the softness which flows thence. Her mouth was hard: it could
+be a little grim; her lips were thin. For sensibility and genius, with
+all their tenderness and temerity, I felt somehow that madame would be
+the right sort of Minos in petticoats.
+
+In the long run, I found that she was something else in petticoats too.
+Her name was Modeste Maria Beck, nee Kint: it ought to have been
+Ignacia. She was a charitable woman, and did a great deal of good. There
+never was a mistress whose rule was milder. I was told that she never
+once remonstrated with the intolerable Mrs. Sweeny [the heroine's
+predecessor], despite her tipsiness, disorder, and general neglect; yet
+Mrs. Sweeny had to go, the moment her departure became convenient. I was
+told too that neither masters nor teachers were found fault with in that
+establishment: yet both masters and teachers were often changed; they
+vanished and others filled their places, none could well explain how.
+
+The establishment was both a pensionnat and an externat: the externes or
+day-pupils exceeded one hundred in number; the boarders were about a
+score. Madame must have possessed high administrative powers: she ruled
+all these, together with four teachers, eight masters, six servants, and
+three children, managing at the same time to perfection the pupil's
+parents and friends; and that without apparent effort, without bustle,
+fatigue, fever, or any symptom of undue excitement; occupied she always
+was--busy, rarely. It is true that madame had her own system for
+managing and regulating this mass of machinery; and a very pretty system
+it was: the reader has seen a specimen of it in that small affair of
+turning my pocket inside out and reading my private memoranda.
+_Surveillance, espionnage_, these were her watchwords.
+
+Still, madame knew what honesty was, and liked it--that is, when it did
+not obtrude its clumsy scruples in the way of her will and interest. She
+had a respect for "Angleterre"; and as to "les Anglaises," she would
+have the women of no other country about her own children, if she
+could help it.
+
+Often in the evening, after she had been plotting and counter-plotting,
+spying and receiving the reports of spies all day, she would come up to
+my room, a trace of real weariness on her brow, and she would sit down
+and listen while the children said their little prayers to me in
+English: the Lord's Prayer and the hymn beginning "Gentle Jesus," these
+little Catholics were permitted to repeat at my knee; and when I had put
+them to bed, she would talk to me (I soon gained enough French to be
+able to understand and even answer her) about England and Englishwomen,
+and the reason for what she was pleased to term their superior
+intelligence, and, more real and reliable probity. Very good sense she
+often showed; very sound opinions she often broached: she seemed to know
+that keeping girls in distrustful restraint, in blind ignorance, and
+under a surveillance that left them no moment and no corner for
+retirement, was not the best way to make them grow up honest and modest
+women; but she averred that ruinous consequences would ensue if any
+other method were tried with Continental children--they were so
+accustomed to restraint that relaxation, however guarded, would be
+misunderstood and fatally presumed on: she was sick, she would declare,
+of the means she had to use, but use them she must; and after
+discoursing, often with dignity and delicacy, to me, she would move away
+on her "souliers de silence," and glide ghost-like through the house,
+watching and spying everywhere, peering through every key-hole,
+listening behind every door.
+
+After all, madame's system was not bad--let me do her justice. Nothing
+could be better than all her arrangements for the physical well-being of
+her scholars. No minds were overtasked; the lessons were well
+distributed and made incomparably easy to the learner; there was a
+liberty of amusement and a provision for exercise which kept the girls
+healthy; the food was abundant and good: neither pale nor puny faces
+were anywhere to be seen in the Rue Fossette. She never grudged a
+holiday; she allowed plenty of time for sleeping, dressing, washing,
+eating: her method in all these matters was easy, liberal, salutary, and
+rational; many an austere English schoolmistress would do vastly well to
+imitate it--and I believe many would be glad to do so, if exacting
+English parents would let them.
+
+As Madame Beck ruled by espionage, she of course had her staff of spies;
+she perfectly knew the quality of the tools she used, and while she
+would not scruple to handle the dirtiest for a dirty occasion--flinging
+this sort from her like refuse rind? after the orange has been duly
+squeezed--I have known her fastidious in seeking pure metal for clean
+uses; and when once a bloodless and rustless instrument was found, she
+was careful of the prize, keeping it in silk and cotton-wool. Yet woe be
+to the man or woman who relied on her one inch beyond the point where it
+was her interest to be trustworthy; interest was the master-key of
+madame's nature--the mainspring of her motives--the alpha and omega of
+her life. I have seen her _feelings_ appealed to, and I have smiled in
+half-pity, half-scorn at the appellants. None ever gained her ear
+through that channel, or swayed her purpose by that means. On the
+contrary, to attempt to touch her heart was the surest way to rouse her
+antipathy, and to make of her a secret foe. It proved to her that she
+had no heart to be touched: it reminded her where she was impotent and
+dead. Never was the distinction between charity and mercy better
+exemplified than in her. While devoid of sympathy, she had a sufficiency
+of rational benevolence: she would give in the readiest manner to people
+she had never seen--rather, however, to classes than to individuals.
+"Pour les pauvres" she opened her purse freely--against the _poor man_,
+as a rule, she kept it closed. In philanthropic schemes, for the benefit
+of society at large, she took a cheerful part; no private sorrow touched
+her: no force or mass of suffering concentrated in one heart had power
+to pierce hers. Not the agony of Gethsemane, not the death on Calvary,
+could have wrung from her eyes one tear.
+
+I say again, madame was a very great and a very capable woman. That
+school offered for her powers too limited a sphere: she ought to have
+swayed a nation; she should have been the leader of a turbulent
+legislative assembly. Nobody could have browbeaten her, none irritated
+her nerves, exhausted her patience, or overreached her astuteness. In
+her own single person, she could have comprised the duties of a first
+minister and a superintendent of police. Wise, firm, faithless, secret,
+crafty, passionless; watchful and inscrutable; acute and
+insensate--withal perfectly decorous--what more could be desired?
+
+
+
+
+
+A YORKSHIRE LANDSCAPE
+
+From 'Shirley'
+
+"Miss Keeldar, just stand still now, and look down at Nunneley dale and
+wood."
+
+They both halted on the green brow of the Common. They looked down on
+the deep valley robed in May raiment; on varied meads, some pearled with
+daisies and some golden with kingcups: to-day all this young verdure
+smiled clear in sunlight; transparent emerald and amber gleams played
+over it. On Nunnwood--the sole remnant of antique British forest in a
+region whose lowlands were once all sylvan chase, as its highlands were
+breast-deep heather--slept the shadow of a cloud; the distant hills were
+dappled, the horizon was shaded and tinted like mother-of-pearl; silvery
+blues, soft purples, evanescent greens and rose-shades, all melting into
+fleeces of white cloud, pure as azury snow, allured the eye with a
+remote glimpse of heaven's foundations. The air blowing on the brow was
+fresh and sweet and bracing.
+
+"Our England is a bonnie island," said Shirley, "and Yorkshire is one of
+her bonniest nooks."
+
+"You are a Yorkshire girl too?"
+
+"I am--Yorkshire in blood and birth. Five generations of my race sleep
+under the aisles of Briarfield Church: I drew my first breath in the old
+black hall behind us."
+
+Hereupon Caroline presented her hand, which was accordingly taken and
+shaken. "We are compatriots," said she.
+
+"Yes," agreed Shirley, with a grave nod.
+
+"And that," asked Miss Keeldar, pointing to the forest--"that is
+Nunnwood?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Were you ever there?"
+
+"Many a time."
+
+"In the heart of it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What is it like?"
+
+"It is like an encampment of forest sons of Anak. The trees are huge and
+old. When you stand at their roots, the summits seem in another region:
+the trunks remain still and firm as pillars, while the boughs sway to
+every breeze. In the deepest calm their leaves are never quite hushed,
+and in a high wind a flood rushes--a sea thunders above you."
+
+"Was it not one of Robin Hood's haunts?"
+
+"Yes, and there are mementos of him still existing. To penetrate into
+Nunnwood, Miss Keeldar, is to go far back into the dim days of old. Can
+you see a break in the forest, about the centre?"
+
+"Yes, distinctly."
+
+"That break is a dell--a deep hollow cup, lined with turf as green and
+short as the sod of this Common: the very oldest of the trees, gnarled
+mighty oaks, crowd about the brink of this dell; in the bottom lie the
+ruins of a nunnery.
+
+"We will go--you and I alone, Caroline--to that wood, early some fine
+summer morning, and spend a long day there. We can take pencils and
+sketch-books, and any interesting reading-book we like; and of course we
+shall take something to eat. I have two little baskets, in which Mrs.
+Gill, my house-keeper, might pack our provisions, and we could each
+carry our own. It would not tire you too much to walk so far?"
+
+"Oh, no; especially if we rested the whole day in the wood; and I know
+all the pleasantest spots. I know where we could get nuts in nutting
+time; I know where wild strawberries abound; I know certain lonely,
+quite untrodden glades, carpeted with strange mosses, some yellow as if
+gilded, some a sober gray, some gem-green. I know groups of trees that
+ravish the eye with their perfect, picture-like effects: rude oak,
+delicate birch, glossy beech, clustered in contrast; and ash-trees,
+stately as Saul, standing isolated; and superannuated wood-giants clad
+in bright shrouds of ivy."
+
+THE END OF HEATHCLIFF
+
+From Emily Bronte's 'Wuthering Heights'
+
+For some days after that evening Mr. Heathcliff shunned meeting us at
+meals; yet he would not consent formally to exclude Hareton and Cathy.
+He had an aversion to yielding so completely to his feelings, choosing
+rather to absent himself; and eating once in twenty-four hours seemed
+sufficient sustenance for him.
+
+One night, after the family were in bed, I heard him go down-stairs and
+out at the front door; I did not hear him re-enter, and in the morning I
+found he was still away. We were in April then, the weather was sweet
+and warm, the grass as green as showers and sun could make it, and the
+two dwarf apple-trees near the southern wall in full bloom.
+
+After breakfast, Catherine insisted on my bringing a chair and sitting
+with my work under the fir-trees at the end of the house; and she
+beguiled Hareton, who had recovered from his accident, to dig and
+arrange her little garden, which was shifted to that corner by the
+influence of Joseph's complaints.
+
+I was comfortably reveling in the spring fragrance around, and the
+beautiful soft blue overhead, when my young lady, who had run down near
+the gate to procure some primrose roots for a border, returned only half
+laden, and informed us that Mr. Heathcliff was coming in.
+
+"And he spoke to me," she added with a perplexed look.
+
+"What did he say?" asked Hareton.
+
+"He told me to begone as fast as I could," she answered. "But he looked
+so different from his usual look that I stopped a moment to stare
+at him."
+
+"How?" he inquired.
+
+"Why, almost bright and cheerful--no, almost nothing--_very much_
+excited, and wild, and glad!" she replied.
+
+"Night-walking amuses him, then," I remarked, affecting a careless
+manner; in reality as surprised as she was, and anxious to ascertain the
+truth of her statement--for to see the master looking glad would not be
+an every-day spectacle; I framed an excuse to go in.
+
+Heathcliff stood at the open door--he was pale, and he trembled; yet
+certainly he had a strange joyful glitter in his eyes, that altered the
+aspect of his whole face.
+
+"Will you have some breakfast?" I said. "You must be hungry, rambling
+about all night!"
+
+I wanted to discover where he had been; but I did not like to ask
+directly.
+
+"No, I'm not hungry," he answered, averting his head, and speaking
+rather contemptuously, as if he guessed I was trying to divine the
+occasion of his good humor.
+
+I felt perplexed--I didn't know whether it were not a proper opportunity
+to offer a bit of admonition.
+
+"I don't think it right to wander out of doors," I observed, "instead of
+being in bed; it is not wise, at any rate, this moist season. I daresay
+you'll catch a bad cold, or a fever--you have something the matter
+with you now!"
+
+"Nothing but what I can bear," he replied, "and with the greatest
+pleasure, provided you'll leave me alone--get in, and don't annoy me."
+
+I obeyed; and in passing, I saw he breathed as fast as a cat.
+
+"Yes!" I reflected to myself, "we shall have a fit of illness. I cannot
+conceive what he has been doing!"
+
+That noon he sat down to dinner with us, and received a heaped-up plate
+from my hands, as if he intended to make amends for previous fasting.
+
+"I've neither cold nor fever, Nelly," he remarked, in allusion to my
+morning speech. "And I'm ready to do justice to the food you give me."
+
+He took his knife and fork, and was going to commence eating, when the
+inclination appeared to become suddenly extinct. He laid them on the
+table, looked eagerly toward the window, then rose and went out. We saw
+him walking to and fro in the garden, while we concluded our meal; and
+Earnshaw said he'd go and ask why he would not dine; he thought we had
+grieved him some way.
+
+"Well, is he coming?" cried Catherine, when he returned.
+
+"Nay," he answered; "but he's not angry: he seemed rare and pleased
+indeed; only I made him impatient by speaking to him twice: and then he
+bid me be off to you; he wondered how I could want the company of
+anybody else."
+
+I set his plate to keep warm on the fender; and after an hour or two he
+re-entered, when the room was clear, in no degree calmer: the same
+unnatural--it was unnatural!--appearance of joy under his black brows;
+the same bloodless hue; and his teeth visible now and then in a kind of
+smile; his frame shivering, not as one shivers with chill or weakness,
+but as a tight-stretched cord vibrates--a strong thrilling, rather than
+trembling.
+
+"I will ask what is the matter," I thought, "or who should?" And I
+exclaimed, "Have you heard any good news, Mr. Heathcliff? You look
+uncommonly animated."
+
+"Where should good news come from to me?" he said. "I'm animated with
+hunger; and seemingly I must not eat."
+
+"Your dinner is here," I returned: "why won't you get it?"
+
+"I don't want it now," he muttered hastily. "I'll wait till supper. And,
+Nelly, once for all, let me beg you to warn Hareton and the other away
+from me. I wish to be troubled by nobody--I wish to have this place
+to myself."
+
+"Is there some new reason for this banishment?" I inquired. "Tell me why
+you are so queer, Mr. Heathcliff. Where were you last night? I'm not
+putting the question through idle curiosity, but--"
+
+"You are putting the question through very idle curiosity," he
+interrupted, with a laugh. "Yet I'll answer it. Last night I was on the
+threshold of hell. To-day I am within sight of my heaven--I have my eyes
+on it--hardly three feet to sever me. And now you'd better go. You'll
+neither see nor hear anything to frighten you if you refrain
+from prying."
+
+Having swept the hearth and wiped the table, I departed more perplexed
+than ever. He did not quit the house again that afternoon, and no one
+intruded on his solitude till at eight o'clock I deemed it proper,
+though unsummoned, to carry a candle and his supper to him.
+
+He was leaning against the ledge of an open lattice, but not looking
+out; his face was turned to the interior gloom. The fire had smoldered
+to ashes; the room was filled with the damp, mild air of the cloudy
+evening; and so still, that not only the murmur of the beck down
+Gimmerton was distinguishable, but its ripples, and its gurgling over
+the pebbles, or through the large stones which it could not cover.
+
+I uttered an ejaculation of discontent at seeing the dismal grate, and
+commenced shutting the casements, one after another, till I came to his.
+
+"Must I close this?" I asked, in order to rouse him, for he would not
+stir.
+
+The light flashed on his features as I spoke. O Mr. Lockwood, I cannot
+express what a terrible start I got by the momentary view! Those deep
+black eyes! That smile and ghastly paleness! It appeared to me not Mr.
+Heathcliff, but a goblin; and in my terror I let the candle bend toward
+the wall, and it left me in darkness.
+
+"Yes, close it," he replied in his familiar voice. "There, that is pure
+awkwardness! Why did you hold the candle horizontally? Be quick, and
+bring another."
+
+I hurried out in a foolish state of dread, and said to Joseph, "The
+master wishes you to take him a light and rekindle the fire." For I dare
+not go in myself again just then.
+
+Joseph rattled some fire into the shovel and went; but he brought it
+back immediately, with the supper tray in his other hand, explaining
+that Mr. Heathcliff was going to bed, and he wanted nothing to eat
+till morning.
+
+We heard him mount the stairs directly. He did not proceed to his
+ordinary chamber, but turned into that with the paneled bed; its window,
+as I mentioned before, is wide enough for anybody to get through, and it
+struck me that he plotted another midnight excursion, which he had
+rather we had no suspicion of.
+
+"Is he a ghoul, or a vampire?" I mused. I had read of such hideous
+incarnate demons. And then I set myself to reflect how I had tended him
+in infancy, and watched him grow to youth, and followed him almost
+through his whole course, and what nonsense it was to yield to that
+sense of horror.
+
+"But where did he come from, the little dark thing, harbored by a good
+man to his bane?" muttered Superstition, as I dozed into
+unconsciousness. And I began, half dreaming, to weary myself with
+imagining some fit parentage for him: and repeating my waking
+meditations I tracked his existence over again, with grim variations; at
+last picturing his death and funeral; of which all I can remember is
+being exceedingly vexed at having the task of dictating an inscription
+for his monument, and consulting the sexton about it; and as he had no
+surname, and we could not tell his age, we were obliged to content
+ourselves with the single word "Heathcliff." That came true--we were. If
+you enter the kirkyard, you'll read on his headstone only that, and the
+date of his death. Dawn restored me to common-sense. I rose, and went
+into the garden, as soon as I could see, to ascertain if there were any
+foot-marks under his window. There were none.
+
+"He has staid at home," I thought, "and he'll be all right to-day!"
+
+I prepared breakfast for the household, as was my usual custom, but told
+Hareton and Catherine to get theirs ere the master came down, for he lay
+late. They preferred taking it out of doors, under the trees, and I set
+a little table to accommodate them.
+
+On my re-entrance I found Mr. Heathcliff below. He and Joseph were
+conversing about some farming business; he gave clear, minute directions
+concerning the matter discussed, but he spoke rapidly, and turned his
+head continually aside, and had the same excited expression, even more
+exaggerated.
+
+When Joseph quitted the room, he took his seat in the place he generally
+chose, and I put a basin of coffee before him. He drew it nearer, and
+then rested his arms on the table, and looked at the opposite wall, as I
+supposed surveying one particular portion, up and down, with glittering,
+restless eyes, and with such eager interest that he stopped breathing
+during half a minute together.
+
+"Come now," I exclaimed, pushing some bread against his hand, "eat and
+drink that while it is hot. It has been waiting near an hour."
+
+He didn't notice me, and yet he smiled. I'd rather have seen him gnash
+his teeth than smile so.
+
+"Mr. Heathcliff! master!" I cried. "Don't, for God's sake, stare as if
+you saw an unearthly vision."
+
+"Don't, for God's sake, shout so loud," he replied. "Turn round and tell
+me, are we by ourselves?"
+
+"Of course," was my answer, "of course we are!"
+
+Still I involuntarily obeyed him, as if I were not quite sure. With a
+sweep of his hand he cleared a vacant space in front among the breakfast
+things, and leaned forward to gaze more at his ease.
+
+Now I perceived he was not looking at the wall; for when I regarded him
+alone, it seemed exactly that he gazed at something within two yards'
+distance. And, whatever it was, it communicated apparently both pleasure
+and pain in exquisite extremes; at least the anguished yet raptured
+expression of his countenance suggested that idea.
+
+The fancied object was not fixed either; his eyes pursued it with
+unwearied vigilance, and even in speaking to me, were never weaned away.
+
+I vainly reminded him of his protracted abstinence from food. If he
+stirred to touch anything in compliance with my entreaties--if he
+stretched his hand out to get a piece of bread--his fingers clenched
+before they reached it, and remained on the table, forgetful of
+their aim.
+
+I sat, a model of patience, trying to attract his absorbed attention
+from its engrossing speculation till he grew irritable and got up,
+asking why I would not allow him to have his own time in taking his
+meals? and saying that on the next occasion I needn't wait--I might set
+the things down and go. Having uttered these words, he left the house,
+slowly sauntered down the garden path, and disappeared through the gate.
+
+The hours crept anxiously by: another evening came. I did not retire to
+rest till late, and when I did I could not sleep. He returned after
+midnight, and instead of going to bed, shut himself into the room
+beneath. I listened and tossed about, and finally dressed and descended.
+It was too irksome to lie up there, harassing my brain with a hundred
+idle misgivings.
+
+I distinguished Mr. Heathcliff's step, restlessly measuring the floor;
+and he frequently broke the silence by a deep inspiration, resembling a
+groan. He muttered detached words also; the only one I could catch was
+the name of Catherine, coupled with some wild term of endearment or
+suffering, and spoken as one would speak to a person present--low and
+earnest, and wrung from the depth of his soul.
+
+I had not courage to walk straight into the apartment; but I desired to
+divert him from his revery, and therefore fell foul of the kitchen fire;
+stirred it and began to scrape the cinders. It drew him forth sooner
+than I expected. He opened the door immediately, and said:--
+
+"Nelly, come here--is it morning? Come in with your light."
+
+"It is striking four," I answered; "you want a candle to take
+upstairs--you might have lighted one at this fire."
+
+"No, I don't wish to go upstairs," he said. "Come in, and kindle _me_ a
+fire, and do anything there is to do about the room."
+
+"I must blow the coals red first, before I can carry any," I replied,
+getting a chair and the bellows.
+
+He roamed to and fro, meantime, in a state approaching distraction, his
+heavy sighs succeeding each other so thick as to leave no space for
+common breathing between.
+
+"When day breaks, I'll send for Green," he said; "I wish to make some
+legal inquiries of him, while I can bestow a thought on those matters,
+and while I can act calmly. I have not written my will yet, and how to
+leave my property I cannot determine! I wish I could annihilate it from
+the face of the earth."
+
+"I would not talk so, Mr. Heathcliff," I interposed. "Let your will be a
+while--you'll be spared to repent of your many injustices yet! I never
+expected that your nerves would be disordered--they are, at present,
+marvelously so, however; and almost entirely through your own fault. The
+way you've passed these last three days might knock up a Titan. Do take
+some food and some repose. You need only look at yourself in a glass to
+see how you require both. Your cheeks are hollow and your eyes
+bloodshot, like a person starving with hunger and going blind with loss
+of sleep."
+
+"It is not my fault that I cannot eat or rest," he replied. "I assure
+you it is through no settled designs. I'll do both as soon as I possibly
+can. But you might as well bid a man struggling in the water rest within
+arm's-length of the shore! I must reach it first, and then I'll rest.
+Well, never mind Mr. Green; as to repenting of my injustices, I've done
+no injustice, and I repent of nothing. I'm too happy, and yet I'm not
+happy enough. My soul's bliss kills my body, but does not
+satisfy itself."
+
+"Happy, master?" I cried. "Strange happiness! If you would hear me
+without being angry, I might offer some advice that would make
+you happier."
+
+"What is that?" he asked. "Give it."
+
+"You are aware, Mr. Heathcliff," I said, "that from the time you were
+thirteen years old you have lived a selfish, unchristian life: and
+probably hardly had a Bible in your hands during all that period. You
+must have forgotten the contents of the book, and you may not have space
+to search it now. Could it be hurtful to send for some one--some
+minister of any denomination, it does not matter which--to explain it,
+and show you how very far you have erred from its precepts, and how
+unfit you will be for its heaven, unless a change takes place before
+you die?"
+
+"I'm rather obliged than angry, Nelly," he said, "for you remind me of
+the manner that I desire to be buried in. It is to be carried to the
+churchyard in the evening. You and Hareton may, if you please, accompany
+me--and mind, particularly, to notice that the sexton obeys my
+directions concerning the two coffins! No minister need come; nor need
+anything be said over me. I tell you, I have nearly attained _my_
+heaven; and that of others is altogether unvalued and uncoveted by me!"
+
+"And supposing you persevered in your obstinate fast, and died by that
+means, and they refused to bury you in the precincts of the kirk?" I
+said, shocked at his godless indifference. "How would you like it?"
+
+"They won't do that," he replied; "if they did, you must have me removed
+secretly; and if you neglect it, you shall prove practically that the
+dead are not annihilated!"
+
+As soon as he heard the other members of the family stirring, he retired
+to his den, and I breathed freer. But in the afternoon, while Joseph and
+Hareton were at their work, he came into the kitchen again, and with a
+wild look bid me come and sit in the house--he wanted somebody with him.
+
+I declined, telling him plainly that his strange talk and manner
+frightened me, and I had neither the nerve nor the will to be his
+companion alone.
+
+"I believe you think me a fiend!" he said, with his dismal laugh;
+"something too horrible to live under a decent roof!"
+
+Then turning to Catherine, who was there, and who drew behind me at his
+approach, he added, half sneeringly:--
+
+"Will _you_ come, chuck? I'll not hurt you. No! to you I've made myself
+worse than the devil. Well, there is _one_ who won't shrink from my
+company! By God! she's relentless. Oh, damn it! It's unutterably too
+much for flesh and blood to bear, even mine."
+
+He solicited the society of no one more. At dusk he went into his
+chamber. Through the whole night, and far into the morning, we heard him
+groaning and murmuring to himself. Hareton was anxious to enter, but I
+bid him fetch Mr. Kenneth, and he should go in and see him.
+
+When he came, and I requested admittance and tried to open the door, I
+found it locked; and Heathcliff bid us be damned. He was better, and
+would be left alone; so the doctor went away.
+
+The following evening was very wet; indeed, it poured down till
+day-dawn; and as I took my morning walk round the house, I observed the
+master's window swinging open, and the rain driving straight in.
+
+"He cannot be in bed," I thought: "those showers would drench him
+through! He must be either up or out. But I'll make no more ado; I'll go
+boldly, and look!"
+
+Having succeeded in obtaining entrance with another key, I ran to
+unclose the panels, for the chamber was vacant--quickly pushing them
+aside, I peeped in. Mr. Heathcliff was there--laid on his back. His eyes
+met mine, so keen and fierce that I started; and then he seemed
+to smile.
+
+I could not think him dead--but his face and throat were washed with
+rain; the bed-clothes dripped, and he was perfectly still. The lattice,
+flapping to and fro, had grazed one hand that rested on the sill--no
+blood trickled from the broken skin, and when I put my fingers to it I
+could doubt no more--he was dead and stark!
+
+I hasped the window; I combed his long, black hair from his forehead; I
+tried to close his eyes--to extinguish, if possible, that frightful,
+lifelike exultation, before any one else beheld it. They would not
+shut--they seemed to sneer at my attempts, and his parted lips and sharp
+white teeth sneered too! Taken with another fit of cowardice, I cried
+out for Joseph. Joseph shuffled up and made a noise, but resolutely
+refused to meddle with him. "Th' divil's harried off his soul," he
+cried, "and he muh hev his carcass intuh t' bargain, for ow't aw care!
+Ech! what a wicked un he looks, grinning at death!" and the old sinner
+grinned in mockery.
+
+I thought he intended to cut a caper round the bed; but suddenly
+composing himself, he fell on his knees and raised his hands, and
+returned thanks that the lawful master and the ancient stock were
+restored to their rights.
+
+I felt stunned by the awful event; and my memory unavoidably recurred to
+former times with a sort of oppressive sadness. But poor Hareton, the
+most wronged, was the only one that really suffered much. He sat by the
+corpse all night, weeping in bitter earnest. He pressed its hand, and
+kissed the sarcastic, savage face that every one else shrank from
+contemplating; and bemoaned him with that strong grief which springs
+naturally from a generous heart, though it be tough as tempered steel.
+
+Kenneth was perplexed to pronounce of what disorder the master died. I
+concealed the fact of his having swallowed nothing for four days,
+fearing it might lead to trouble; and then, I am persuaded, he did not
+abstain on purpose: it was the consequence of his strange illness, not
+the cause.
+
+We buried him, to the scandal of the whole neighborhood, as he had
+wished. Earnshaw and I, the sexton, and six men to carry the coffin,
+comprehended the whole attendance.
+
+The six men departed when they had let it down into the grave: we stayed
+to see it covered. Hareton, with a streaming face, dug green sods and
+laid them over the brown mold himself. At present it is as smooth and
+verdant as its companion mounds--and I hope its tenant sleeps as
+soundly. But the country folks, if you asked them, would swear on their
+Bibles that he _walks_. There are those who speak to having met him near
+the church, and on the moor, and even within this house. Idle tales,
+you'll say, and so say I. Yet that old man by the kitchen fire affirms
+he has seen "two on 'em" looking out of his chamber window on every
+rainy night since his death--and an odd thing happened to me about a
+month ago.
+
+I was going to the grange one evening--a dark evening threatening
+thunder--and, just at the turn of the Heights, I encountered a little
+boy with a sheep and two lambs before him. He was crying terribly, and I
+supposed the lambs were skittish and would not be guided.
+
+"What is the matter, my little man?" I asked.
+
+"They's Heathcliff and a woman yonder, under t' nab," he blubbered, "un'
+aw darnut pass 'em."
+
+I saw nothing, but neither the sheep nor he would go on, so I bid him
+take the road lower down. He probably raised the phantoms from thinking,
+as he traversed the moors alone, on the nonsense he had heard his
+parents and companions repeat; yet still I don't like being out in the
+dark now, and I don't like being left by myself in this grim house. I
+cannot help it; I shall be glad when they leave it and shift to
+the Grange!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"They are going to the Grange, then?" I said.
+
+"Yes," answered Mrs. Dean, "as soon as they are married; and that will
+be on New Year's day."
+
+"And who will live here then?"
+
+"Why, Joseph will take care of the house, and perhaps a lad to keep him
+company. They will live in the kitchen, and the rest will be shut up."
+
+"For the use of such ghosts as choose to inhabit it," I observed.
+
+"No, Mr. Lockwood," said Nelly, shaking her head. "I believe the dead
+are at peace, but it is not right to speak of them with levity."
+
+At that moment the garden gate swung to; the ramblers were returning.
+
+"_They_ are afraid of nothing," I grumbled, watching their approach
+through the window. "Together they would brave Satan and all
+his legions."
+
+As they stepped upon the door-stones, and halted to take a last look at
+the moon, or more correctly at each other, by her light, I felt
+irresistibly impelled to escape them again; and pressing a remembrance
+into the hands of Mrs. Dean, and disregarding her expostulations at my
+rudeness, I vanished through the kitchen, as they opened the house-door;
+and so should have confirmed Joseph in his opinion of his
+fellow-servant's gay indiscretions, had he not fortunately recognized me
+for a respectable character by the sweet ring of a sovereign at
+his feet.
+
+My walk home was lengthened by a diversion in the direction of the kirk.
+When beneath its walls, I perceived decay had made progress even in
+seven months--many a window showed black gaps deprived of glass; and
+slates jutted off, here and there, beyond the right line of the roof, to
+be gradually worked off in coming autumn storms.
+
+I sought, and soon discovered, the three headstones on the slope next
+the moor--the middle one, gray, and half buried in the heath--Edgar
+Linton's only harmonized by the turf and moss creeping up its
+foot--Heathcliff's still bare.
+
+I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths
+fluttering among the heath and harebells; listened to the soft wind
+breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine
+unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.
+
+
+
+PHILLIPS BROOKS
+
+(1835-1893)
+
+Phillips Brooks was born in Boston, Massachusetts, December 13th, 1835,
+and died there January 23d, 1893. He inherited the best traditions of
+New England history, being on the paternal side the direct descendant of
+John Cotton, and his mother's name, Phillips, standing for high learning
+and distinction in the Congregational church. Born at a time when the
+orthodox faith was fighting its bitterest battle with Unitarianism, his
+parents accepted the dogmas of the new theology, and had him baptized by
+a Unitarian clergyman. But while refusing certain dogmas of the orthodox
+church, they were the more thrown back for spiritual support upon the
+internal evidences of evangelical Christianity. "Holding still," says
+the Rev. Arthur Brooks, "in a greater or less degree, and with more or
+less precision, to the old statements, they counted the great fact that
+these statements enshrined more precious truth than any other."
+Transition to the Episcopal church was easy; the mother became an
+Episcopalian, and Phillips Brooks received all his early training in
+that communion. But heredity had its influence, and in after-life the
+great Bishop said that the Episcopal church could reap the fruits of the
+long and bitter controversy which divided the New England church, only
+as it discerned the spiritual worth of Puritanism, and the value of its
+contributions to the history of religious thought and character.
+
+Such were the early surroundings of the man, and the subsequent
+influences of his life tended to foster this liberal spirit. For such a
+purpose, Boston itself was a good place to live in: it was too large to
+be wholly provincial, and it was not so large that the individual was
+lost; and at that time it was moreover the literary centre of America.
+When Phillips Brooks entered Harvard, he came into an atmosphere of
+intense intellectual activity. James Walker was the president of the
+college, and Lowell, Holmes, Agassiz, and Longfellow were among the
+professors. He graduated with honor in 1855, and soon after entered the
+Episcopal theological seminary at Alexandria, Virginia.
+
+The transition from Harvard to this college was an abrupt one. The
+standards of the North and South were radically different. The theology
+of the Church in Virginia, while tolerant to that of other
+denominations, was uncompromisingly hostile to what it regarded as
+heterodox.
+
+When the War was declared he threw himself passionately into the cause
+of the Union. Yet his affection for his Southern classmates, men from
+whom he so widely differed, broadened that charity that was one of his
+finest characteristics, a charity that respected conviction
+wherever found.
+
+No man, in truth, ever did so much to remove prejudice against a Church
+that had never been popular in New England. To the old Puritan dislike
+of Episcopacy and distrust of the English Church as that of the
+oppressors of the colony, was added a sense of resentment toward its
+sacerdotal claims and its assumption of ecclesiastical supremacy. But he
+nevertheless protested against the claim by his own communion to the
+title of "The American Church," he preached occasionally in other
+pulpits, he even had among his audiences clergymen of other
+denominations, and he was able to reconcile men of different creeds into
+concord on what is essential in all. The breadth and depth of his
+teaching attracted so large a following that he increased the strength
+of the Episcopal Church in America far more than he could have done by
+carrying on an active propaganda in its behalf. Under his pastorate
+Trinity Church, Boston, became the centre of some of the most vigorous
+Christian activity in America.
+
+His first charge was the Church of the Advent, in Philadelphia; in two
+years he became rector of Holy Trinity Church in the same city. In 1869
+he was called to Trinity Church, Boston, of which he was rector until
+his election as bishop of Massachusetts in 1891.
+
+It is impossible to give an idea of Phillips Brooks without a word about
+his personality, which was almost contradictory. His commanding figure,
+his wit, the charm of his conversation, and a certain boyish gayety and
+naturalness, drew people to him as to a powerful magnet. He was one of
+the best known men in America; people pointed him out to strangers in
+his own city as they pointed out the Common and the Bunker Hill
+monument. When he went to England, where he preached before the Queen,
+men and women of all classes greeted him as a friend. They thronged the
+churches where he preached, not only to hear him but to see him. Many
+stories are told of him; some true, some more or less apocryphal, all
+proving the affectionate sympathy existing between him and his kind. It
+was said of him that as soon as he entered a pulpit he was absolutely
+impersonal. There was no trace of individual experience or theological
+conflict by which he might be labeled. He was simply a messenger of the
+truth as he held it, a mouthpiece of the gospel as he believed it had
+been delivered to him.
+
+[Illustration: PHILIPS BROOKS.]
+
+Although in his seminary days his sermons were described as vague and
+unpractical, Phillips Brooks was as great a preacher when under thirty
+years of age as he was at any later time. His early sermons,
+delivered to his first charge in Philadelphia, displayed the same
+individuality, the same force and completeness and clearness of
+construction, the same deep, strong undertone of religious thought, as
+his great discourses preached in Westminster Abbey six months before his
+death. His sentences are sonorous; his style was characterized by a
+noble simplicity, impressive, but without a touch showing that dramatic
+effect was strained for.
+
+He passionately loved nature in all her aspects, and traveled widely in
+search of the picturesque; but he used his experience with reserve, and
+his illustrations are used to explain human life. His power of painting
+a picture in a few bold strokes appears strikingly in the great sermon
+on the 'Lesson of the Life of Saul,' where he contrasts early promise
+and final failure; and in that other not less remarkable presentation of
+the vision of Saint Peter. His treatment of Bible narratives is not a
+translation into the modern manner, nor is it an adaptation, but a
+poetical rendering, in which the flavor of the original is not lost
+though the lesson is made contemporary. And while he did not transcribe
+nature upon his pages, his sermons are not lacking in decoration. He
+used figures of speech and drew freely on history and art for
+illustrations, but not so much to elucidate his subject as to ornament
+it. His essays on social and literary subjects are written with the aim
+of directness of statement, pure and simple; but the stuff of which his
+sermons are woven is of royal purple.
+
+The conviction that religious sentiment should penetrate the whole life
+showed itself in Phillips Brooks's relation to literature. "Truth bathed
+in light and uttered in love makes the new unit of power," he says in
+his essay on literature. It was his task to mediate between literature
+and theology, and restore theology to the place it lost through the
+abstractions of the schoolmen. What he would have done if he had devoted
+himself to literature alone, we can only conjecture by the excellence of
+his style in essays and sermons. They show his poetical temperament; and
+his little lyric 'O Little Town of Bethlehem' will be sung as long as
+Christmas is celebrated. His essays show more clearly even than his
+sermons his opinions on society, literature, and religion. They place
+him where he belongs, in that "small transfigured band the world cannot
+tame,"--the world of Cranmer, Jeremy Taylor, Robertson, Arnold, Maurice.
+His paper on Dean Stanley discloses his theological views as openly as
+do his addresses on 'Heresies and Orthodoxy.'
+
+As might be expected of one who, in the word's best sense, was so
+thoroughly a man, he had great influence with young men and was one of
+the most popular of Harvard preachers. It was his custom for thirty
+alternate years to go abroad in the summer, and there, as in America, he
+was regarded as a great pulpit orator. He took a large view of social
+questions and was in sympathy with all great popular movements. His
+advancement to the episcopate was warmly welcomed by all parties, except
+one branch of his own church with which his principles were at variance,
+and every denomination delighted in his elevation as if he were the
+peculiar property of each.
+
+He published several volumes of sermons. His works include 'Lectures on
+Preaching' (New York, 1877), 'Sermons' (1878-81), 'Bohlen Lectures'
+(1879), 'Baptism and Confirmation' (1880), 'Sermons Preached in English
+Churches' (1883), 'The Oldest Schools in America' (Boston, 1885),
+'Twenty Sermons' (New York, 1886), 'Tolerance' (1887), 'The Light of the
+World, and Other Sermons' (1890), and 'Essays and Addresses' (1894). His
+'Letters of Travel' show him to be an accurate observer, with a large
+fund of spontaneous humor. No letters to children are so delightful as
+those in this volume.
+
+
+
+
+     O LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM
+
+
+     O little town of Bethlehem,
+       How still we see thee lie!
+     Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
+       The silent stars go by.
+     Yet in thy dark streets shineth
+       The everlasting Light;
+     The hopes and fears of all the years
+       Are met in thee to-night.
+
+     O morning stars, together
+       Proclaim the holy birth!
+     And praises sing to God the King,
+       And peace to men on earth.
+     For Christ is born of Mary,
+       And gathered all above;
+     While mortals sleep the angels keep
+       Their watch of wondering love.
+
+     How silently, how silently,
+       The wondrous gift is given!
+     So God imparts to human hearts
+       The blessings of his heaven.
+     No ear may hear his coming;
+       But in this world of sin,
+     Where meek souls will receive him still,
+       The dear Christ enters in.
+
+Where children pure and happy
+       Pray to the blessed Child,
+     Where Misery cries out to thee,
+       Son of the Mother mild;
+     Where Charity stands watching,
+       And Faith holds wide the door,
+     The dark night wakes; the glory breaks,
+       And Christmas comes once more.
+
+     O holy Child of Bethlehem,
+       Descend to us, we pray!
+     Cast out our sin and enter in;
+       Be born in us to-day.
+     We hear the Christmas angels
+       The great glad tidings tell;
+     O come to us, abide with us,
+       Our Lord Emmanuel!
+
+     Copyrighted by E.P. Dutton and Company, New York.
+[Illustration]
+
+_THE HOLY CHILD OF BETHLEHEM_.
+
+Photogravure from a Painting by H. Havenith.
+
+"Where children pure and happy Pray to the blessed Child."
+
+
+
+PERSONAL CHARACTER
+
+From 'Essays and Addresses'
+
+As one looks around the world, and as one looks around our own land
+to-day, he sees that the one thing we need in high places--the thing
+whose absence, among those who hold the reins of highest power, is
+making us all anxious with regard to the progress of the country--is
+personal character. The trouble is not what we hold to be mistaken ideas
+with regard to policies of government, but it is the absence of lofty
+and unselfish character. It is the absence of the complete consecration
+of a man's self to the public good; it is the willingness of men to
+bring their personal and private spites into spheres whose elevation
+ought to shame such things into absolute death; the tendencies of men,
+even of men whom the nation has put in very high places indeed, to count
+those high places their privileges, and to try to draw from them, not
+help for humanity and the community over which they rule, but their own
+mean personal private advantage.
+
+If there is any power that can elevate human character: if there is any
+power which, without inspiring men with a supernatural knowledge with
+regard to policies of government; without making men solve all at once,
+intuitively, the intricacies of problems of legislation with which they
+are called upon to deal; without making men see instantly to the very
+heart of every matter; if there is any power which could permeate to the
+very bottom of our community, which would make men unselfish and
+true--why, the errors of men, the mistakes men might make in their
+judgment, would not be an obstacle in the way of the progress of this
+great nation in the work which God has given her to do. They would make
+jolts, but nothing more. Or in the course which God has appointed her to
+run she would go to her true results. There is no power that man has
+ever seen that can abide; there is no power of which man has ever
+dreamed that can regenerate human character except religion; and till
+the Christian religion, which is the religion of this land--till the
+Christian religion shall have so far regenerated human character in this
+land that multitudes of men shall act under its high impulses and
+principles, so that the men who are not inspired with them shall be
+shamed at least into an outward conformity with them, there is no
+security for the great final continuance of the nation.
+
+Copyrighted by E.P. Dutton and Company, New York.
+
+
+
+THE COURAGE OF OPINIONS
+
+From 'Essays and Addresses'
+
+We have spoken of physical courage, or the courage of nerves; of moral
+courage, or the courage of principles. Besides these there is
+intellectual courage, or the courage of opinions. Let me say a few words
+upon that, for surely there is nothing which we more need to understand.
+
+The ways in which people form their opinions are most remarkable. Every
+man, when he begins his reasonable life, finds certain general opinions
+current in the world. He is shaped by these opinions in one way or
+another, either directly or by reaction. If he is soft and plastic, like
+the majority of people, he takes the opinions that are about him for his
+own. If he is self-asserting and defiant, he takes the opposite of these
+opinions and gives to them his vehement adherence. We know the two kinds
+well, and as we ordinarily see them, the fault which is at the root of
+both is intellectual cowardice. One man clings servilely to the old
+ready-made opinions which he finds, because he is afraid of being
+called rash and radical; another rejects the traditions of his people
+from fear of being thought fearful, and timid, and a slave. The results
+are very different: one is the tame conservative and the other is the
+fiery iconoclast; but I beg you to see that the cause in both cases is
+the same. Both are cowards. Both are equally removed from that brave
+seeking of the truth which is not set upon either winning or avoiding
+any name, which will take no opinion for the sake of conformity and
+reject no opinion for the sake of originality; which is free,
+therefore--free to gather its own convictions, a slave neither to any
+compulsion nor to any antagonism. Tell me, have you never seen two
+teachers, one of them slavishly adopting old methods because he feared
+to be called "imitator," the other crudely devising new plans because he
+was afraid of seeming conservative, both of them really cowards, neither
+of them really thinking out his work? ...
+
+The great vice of our people in their relation to the politics of the
+land is cowardice. It is not lack of intelligence: our people know the
+meaning of political conditions with wonderful sagacity. It is not low
+morality: the great mass of our people apply high standards to the acts
+of public men. But it is cowardice. It is the disposition of one part of
+our people to fall in with current ways of working, to run with the
+mass; and of another part to rush headlong into this or that new scheme
+or policy of opposition, merely to escape the stigma of conservatism.
+
+
+
+LITERATURE AND LIFE
+
+From 'Essays and Addresses'
+
+Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the
+work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.
+The forests are full of trees before the sea is thick with ships. So the
+world abounds in life before men begin to reason and describe and
+analyze and sing, and literature is born. The fact and the action must
+come first. This is true in every kind of literature. The mind and its
+workings are before the metaphysician. Beauty and romance antedate the
+poet. The nations rise and fall before the historian tells their story.
+Nature's profusion exists before the first scientific book is written.
+Even the facts of mathematics must be true before the first diagram is
+drawn for their demonstration.
+
+To own and recognize this priority of life is the first need of
+literature. Literature which does not utter a life already existent,
+more fundamental than itself, is shallow and unreal. I had a schoolmate
+who at the age of twenty published a volume of poems called
+'Life-Memories.' The book died before it was born. There were no real
+memories, because there had been no life. So every science which does
+not utter investigated fact, every history which does not tell of
+experience, every poetry which is not based upon the truth of things,
+has no real life. It does not perish; it is never born. Therefore men
+and nations must live before they can make literature. Boys and girls do
+not write books. Oregon and Van Diemen's Land produce no literature:
+they are too busy living. The first attempts at literature of any
+country, as of our own, are apt to be unreal and imitative and
+transitory, because life has not yet accumulated and presented itself in
+forms which recommend themselves to literature. The wars must come, the
+clamorous problems must arise, the new types of character must be
+evolved, the picturesque social complication must develop, a life must
+come, and then will be the true time for a literature.... Literature
+grows feeble and conceited unless it ever recognizes the priority and
+superiority of life, and stands in genuine awe before the greatness of
+the men and of the ages which have simply lived.
+
+
+
+CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN (1771-1810)
+
+Not only was Brockden Brown the first American man-of-letters
+proper,--one writing for a living before we had any real literature of
+our own,--but his work possessed a genuine power and originality which
+gives it some claim to remembrance for its own sake. And it is fair
+always to remember that a given product from a pioneer indicates a far
+greater endowment than the same from one of a group in a more developed
+age. The forerunner lacks not one thing only, but many things, which
+help his successors. He lacks the mental friction from, the emulation
+of, the competition with, other writers; he lacks the stimulus and
+comfort of sympathetic companionship; he lacks an audience to spur him
+on, and a market to work for; lacks labor-saving conventions, training,
+and an environment that heartens him instead of merely tolerating him.
+Like Robinson Crusoe, he must make his tools before he can use them. A
+meagre result may therefore be a proof of great abilities.
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES B. BROWN]
+
+The United States in 1800 was mentally and morally a colony of Great
+Britain still. A few hundred thousand white families scattered over
+about as many square miles of territory, much of it refractory
+wilderness with more refractory inhabitants; with no cities of any size,
+and no communication save by wretched roads or by sailing vessels; no
+rich old universities for centres of culture, and no rich leisured
+society to enjoy it; the energies of the people perforce absorbed in
+subduing material obstacles, or solidifying a political experiment
+disbelieved in by the very men who organized it;--neither time nor
+materials existed then for an independent literary life, which is the
+growth of security and comfort and leisure if it embraces a whole
+society, or of endowed college foundations and an aristocracy if it is
+only of the few. Hence American society took its literary meals at the
+common table of the English-speaking race, with little or no effort at a
+separate establishment. There was much writing, but mostly polemic or
+journalistic. When real literature was attempted, it consisted in
+general of imitations of British essays, or fiction, or poetry; and in
+the last two cases not even imitations of the best models in either. The
+essays were modeled on Addison; the poetry on the heavy imitators of
+Pope's heroics; the fiction either on the effusive sentimentalists who
+followed Richardson, or on the pseudo-Orientalists like Walpole and
+Lewis, or on the pseudo-mediaevalists like Mrs. Roche and Mrs. Radcliffe.
+This sort of work filled the few literary periodicals of the day, but
+was not read enough to make such publications profitable even then, and
+is pretty much all unreadable now.
+
+Charles Brockden Brown stands in marked contrast to these second-hand
+weaklings, not only by his work but still more by his method and temper.
+In actual achievement he did not quite fulfill the promise of his early
+books, and cannot be set high among his craft. He was an inferior
+artist; and though he achieved naturalism of matter, he clung to the
+theatrical artificiality of style which was in vogue. But if he had
+broken away from all traditions, he could have gained no hearing
+whatever; he died young--twenty years more might have left him a much
+greater figure; and he wrought in disheartening loneliness of spirit.
+His accomplishment was that of a pioneer. He was the first American
+author to see that the true field for his fellows was America and not
+Europe. He realized, as the genius of Chateaubriand realized at almost
+the same moment, the artistic richness of the material which lay to hand
+in the silent forest vastnesses, with their unfamiliar life of man and
+beast, and their possibilities of mystery enough to satisfy the most
+craving. He was not the equal of the author of 'The Natchez' and
+'Atala'; but he had a fresh and daring mind. He turned away from both
+the emotional orgasms and the stage claptrap of his time, to break
+ground for all future American novelists. He antedated Cooper in the
+field of Indian life and character; and he entered the regions of mystic
+supernaturalism and the disordered human brain in advance of
+Hawthorne and Poe.
+
+That his choice of material was neither chance nor blind instinct, but
+deliberate judgment and insight, is shown by the preface to 'Edgar
+Huntly,' in which he sets forth his views:--
+
+     "America has opened new views to the naturalist and
+     politician, but has seldom furnished themes to the
+     moral-pointer. That new springs of action and new motives of
+     curiosity should operate, that the field of investigation
+     opened to us by our own country should differ essentially
+     from those which exist in Europe, may be readily conceived.
+     The sources of amusement to the fancy and instruction to the
+     heart that are peculiar to ourselves are equally numerous and
+     inexhaustible. It is the purpose of this work to profit by
+     some of these sources, to exhibit a series of adventures
+     growing out of the conditions of our country, and connected
+     with one of the most common and wonderful diseases of the
+     human frame. Puerile superstition and exploded manners,
+     Gothic castles and chimeras, are the materials usually
+     employed for this end. The incidents of Indian hostility and
+     the perils of the Western wilderness are far more suitable,
+     and for a native of America to overlook these would admit of
+     no apology. These therefore are in part the ingredients of
+     this tale."
+
+Brown's was an uneventful career. He was much given to solitary rambles
+and musings, varied by social intercourse with a few congenial friends
+and the companionship of his affectionate family, and later, many hours
+spent at his writing-desk or in an editorial chair.
+
+He was born January 17th, 1771, in Philadelphia, of good Quaker stock. A
+delicate boyhood, keeping him away from the more active life of youths
+of his own age, fostered, a love for solitude and a taste for reading.
+He received a good classical education; but poor health prevented him
+from pursuing his studies at college. At his family's wish he entered a
+law office instead; but the literary instinct was strong within him.
+Literature at this time was scarcely considered a profession. Magazine
+circulations were too limited for publishers to pay for contributions,
+and all an author usually got or expected to get was some copies to
+distribute among his friends. To please his prudent home circle, Brown
+dallied for a while with the law; but a visit to New York, where he was
+cordially received by the members of the "Friendly Club," opened up
+avenues of literary work to him, and he removed to New York in 1796 to
+devote himself to it.
+
+The first important work he produced was 'Wieland: or the
+Transformation' (1798). It shows at the outset Brown's characteristic
+traits--independence of British materials and methods. It is in
+substance a powerful tale of ventriloquism operating on an unbalanced
+and superstitious mind. Its psychology is acute and searching; the
+characterization realistic and effective. His second book, 'Ormond: or
+the Secret Witness' (1799), does not reach the level of 'Wieland.' It is
+more conventional, and not entirely independent of foreign models,
+especially Godwin, whom Brown greatly admired. A rapid writer, he soon
+had the MS. of his next novel in the hands of the publisher. The first
+part of 'Arthur Mervyn: or Memoirs of the Year 1793' came out in 1799,
+and the second part in 1800. It is the best known of his six novels.
+Though the scene is laid in Philadelphia, Brown embodied in it his
+experience of the yellow fever which raged in New York in 1799. The
+passage describing this epidemic can stand beside Defoe's or Poe's or
+Manzoni's similar descriptions, for power in setting forth the horrors
+of the plague.
+
+In the same year with the first volume of 'Arthur Mervyn' appeared
+'Edgar Huntly: or Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker.' Here he deals with the
+wild life of nature, the rugged solitudes, and the redskins, the field
+in which he was followed by Cooper. A thrilling scene in which a
+panther is chief actor was long familiar to American children in their
+school reading-books.
+
+In 1801 came out his last two novels, 'Clara Howard: In a Series of
+Letters,' and 'Jane Talbot.' They are a departure from his previous
+work: instead of dealing with uncanny subjects they treat of quiet
+domestic and social life. They show also a great advance on his previous
+books in constructive art. In 1799 Brown became editor of the Monthly
+Magazine and American Review, and contributed largely to it.
+
+In the autumn of 1801 he returned to Philadelphia, to assume the
+editorship of Conrad's Literary Magazine and American Review. The duties
+of this office suspended his own creative work, and he did not live to
+take up again the novelist's stylus. In 1806 he became editor of the
+Annual Register. His genuine literary force is best proved by the fact
+that whatever periodical he took in charge, he raised its standard of
+quality and made it a success for the time.
+
+He died in February, 1810. The work to which he had given the greater
+part of his time and strength, especially toward the end of his life,
+was in its nature not only transitory, but not of a sort to keep his
+name alive. The magazines were children of a day, and the editor's
+repute as such could hardly survive them long. The fame which belongs to
+Charles Brockden Brown, grudgingly accorded by a country that can ill
+afford to neglect one of its earliest, most devoted, and most original
+workers, rests on his novels. Judged by standards of the present day,
+these are far from faultless. The facts are not very coherent, the
+diction is artificial in the fashion of the day. But when all is said,
+Brown was a rare story-teller; he interested his readers by the novelty
+of his material, and he was quite objective in its treatment, never
+obtruding his own personality. 'Wieland,' 'Edgar Huntly,' and 'Arthur
+Mervyn,' the trilogy of his best novels, are not to be contemned; and he
+has the distinction of being in very truth the pioneer of
+_American_ letters.
+
+
+
+WIELAND'S STATEMENT
+
+Theodore Wieland, the prisoner at the bar, was now called upon for his
+defense. He looked around him for some time in silence, and with a mild
+countenance. At length he spoke:--
+
+It is strange: I am known to my judges and my auditors. Who is there
+present a stranger to the character of Wieland? Who knows him not as a
+husband, as a father, as a friend? Yet here am I arraigned as a
+criminal. I am charged with diabolical malice; I am accused of the
+murder of my wife and my children!
+
+It is true, they were slain by me; they all perished by my hand. The
+task of vindication is ignoble. What is it that I am called to
+vindicate? and before whom?
+
+You know that they are dead, and that they were killed by me. What more
+would you have? Would you extort from me a statement of my motives? Have
+you failed to discover them already? You charge me with malice: but your
+eyes are not shut; your reason is still vigorous; your memory has not
+forsaken you. You know whom it is that you thus charge. The habits of
+his life are known to you; his treatment of his wife and his offspring
+is known to you; the soundness of his integrity and the unchangeableness
+of his principles are familiar to your apprehension: yet you persist in
+this charge! You lead me hither manacled as a felon; you deem me worthy
+of a vile and tormenting death!
+
+Who are they whom I have devoted to death? My wife--the little ones that
+drew their being from me--that creature who, as she surpassed them in
+excellence, claimed a larger affection than those whom natural
+affinities bound to my heart. Think ye that malice could have urged me
+to this deed? Hide your audacious fronts from the scrutiny of heaven.
+Take refuge in some cavern unvisited by human eyes. Ye may deplore your
+wickedness or folly, but ye cannot expiate it.
+
+Think not that I speak for your sakes. Hug to your hearts this
+detestable infatuation. Deem me still a murderer, and drag me to
+untimely death. I make not an effort to dispel your illusion; I utter
+not a word to cure you of your sanguinary folly: but there are probably
+some in this assembly who have come from far; for their sakes, whose
+distance has disabled them from knowing me, I will tell what I have
+done, and why.
+
+It is needless to say that God is the object of my supreme passion. I
+have cherished in his presence a single and upright heart. I have
+thirsted for the knowledge of his will. I have burnt with ardor to
+approve my faith and my obedience. My days have been spent in searching
+for the revelation of that will; but my days have been mournful, because
+my search failed. I solicited direction; I turned on every side where
+glimmerings of light could be discovered. I have not been wholly
+uninformed; but my knowledge has always stopped short of certainty.
+Dissatisfaction has insinuated itself into all my thoughts. My purposes
+have been pure, my wishes indefatigable; but not till lately were these
+purposes thoroughly accomplished and these wishes fully gratified.
+
+I thank Thee, my Father, for Thy bounty; that Thou didst not ask a less
+sacrifice than this; that Thou placedst me in a condition to testify my
+submission to Thy will! What have I withheld which it was Thy pleasure
+to exact? Now may I, with dauntless and erect eye, claim my reward,
+since I have given Thee the treasure of my soul.
+
+I was at my own house; it was late in the evening; my sister had gone to
+the city, but proposed to return. It was in expectation of her return
+that my wife and I delayed going to bed beyond the usual hour; the rest
+of the family, however, were retired. My mind was contemplative and
+calm--not wholly devoid of apprehension on account of my sister's
+safety. Recent events, not easily explained, had suggested the existence
+of some danger; but this danger was without a distinct form in our
+imagination, and scarcely ruffled our tranquillity.
+
+Time passed, and my sister did not arrive. Her house is at some distance
+from mine, and though her arrangements had been made with a view of
+residing with us, it was possible that through forgetfulness, or the
+occurrence of unforeseen emergencies, she had returned to her
+own dwelling.
+
+Hence it was conceived proper that I should ascertain the truth by going
+thither. I went. On my way my mind was full of those ideas which related
+to my intellectual condition. In the torrent of fervid conceptions I
+lost sight of my purpose. Sometimes I stood still; sometimes I wandered
+from my path, and experienced some difficulty, on recovering from my fit
+of musing, to regain it.
+
+The series of my thoughts is easily traced. At first every vein beat
+with raptures known only to the man whose parental and conjugal love is
+without limits, and the cup of whose desires, immense as it is,
+overflows with gratification. I know not why emotions that were
+perpetual visitants should now have recurred with unusual energy. The
+transition was not new from sensations of joy to a consciousness of
+gratitude. The Author of my being was likewise the dispenser of every
+gift with which that being was embellished. The service to which a
+benefactor like this was entitled could not be circumscribed. My social
+sentiments were indebted to their alliance with devotion for all their
+value. All passions are base, all joys feeble, all energies malignant,
+which are not drawn from this source.
+
+For a time my contemplations soared above earth and its inhabitants. I
+stretched forth my hands; I lifted my eyes, and exclaimed, "Oh, that I
+might be admitted to thy presence! that mine were the supreme delight of
+knowing Thy will and of performing it!--the blissful privilege of direct
+communication with Thee, and of listening to the audible enunciation of
+Thy pleasure!
+
+"What task would I not undertake, what privation would I not cheerfully
+endure, to testify my love of Thee? Alas! Thou hidest Thyself from my
+view; glimpses only of Thy excellence and beauty are afforded me. Would
+that a momentary emanation from Thy glory would visit me! that some
+unambiguous token of Thy presence would salute my senses!"
+
+In this mood I entered the house of my sister. It was vacant. Scarcely
+had I regained recollection of the purpose that brought me hither.
+Thoughts of a different tendency had such an absolute possession of my
+mind, that the relations of time and space were almost obliterated from
+my understanding. These wanderings, however, were restrained, and I
+ascended to her chamber. I had no light, and might have known by
+external observation that the house was without any inhabitant. With
+this, however, I was not satisfied. I entered the room, and the object
+of my search not appearing, I prepared to return. The darkness required
+some caution in descending the stair. I stretched out my hand to seize
+the balustrade, by which I might regulate my steps. How shall I describe
+the lustre which at that moment burst upon my vision?
+
+I was dazzled. My organs were bereaved of their activity. My eyelids
+were half closed, and my hands withdrawn from the balustrade. A nameless
+fear chilled my veins, and I stood motionless. This irradiation did not
+retire or lessen. It seemed as if some powerful effulgence covered me
+like a mantle. I opened my eyes and found all about me luminous and
+glowing. It was the element of heaven that flowed around. Nothing but a
+fiery stream was at first visible; but anon a shrill voice from behind
+called upon me to attend.
+
+I turned. It is forbidden to describe what I saw: words, indeed, would
+be wanting to the task. The lineaments of that Being whose veil was now
+lifted and whose visage beamed upon my sight, no hues of pencil or of
+language can portray. As it spoke, the accents thrilled to my
+heart:--"Thy prayers are heard. In proof of thy faith, render me thy
+wife. This is the victim I choose. Call her hither, and here let her
+fall." The sound and visage and light vanished at once.
+
+What demand was this? The blood of Catharine was to be shed! My wife was
+to perish by my hand! I sought opportunity to attest my virtue. Little
+did I expect that a proof like this would have been demanded.
+
+"My wife!" I exclaimed: "O God! substitute some other victim. Make me
+not the butcher of my wife. My own blood is cheap. This will I pour out
+before Thee with a willing heart; but spare, I beseech Thee, this
+precious life, or commission some other than her husband to perform the
+bloody deed."
+
+In vain. The conditions were prescribed; the decree had gone forth, and
+nothing remained but to execute it. I rushed out of the house and across
+the intermediate fields, and stopped not till I entered my own parlor.
+My wife had remained here during my absence, in anxious expectation of
+my return with some tidings of her sister. I had none to communicate.
+For a time I was breathless with my speed. This, and the tremors that
+shook my frame, and the wildness of my looks, alarmed her. She
+immediately suspected some disaster to have happened to her friend, and
+her own speech was as much overpowered by emotion as mine. She was
+silent, but her looks manifested her impatience to hear what I had to
+communicate. I spoke, but with so much precipitation as scarcely to be
+understood; catching her at the same time by the arm, and forcibly
+pulling her from her seat.
+
+"Come along with me; fly; waste not a moment; time will be lost, and the
+deed will be omitted. Tarry not, question not, but fly with me."
+
+This deportment added afresh to her alarms. Her eyes pursued mine, and
+she said, "What is the matter? For God's sake, what is the matter? Where
+would you have me go?"
+
+My eyes were fixed upon her countenance while she spoke. I thought upon
+her virtues; I viewed her as the mother of my babes; as my wife. I
+recalled the purpose for which I thus urged her attendance. My heart
+faltered, and I saw that I must rouse to this work all my faculties. The
+danger of the least delay was imminent.
+
+I looked away from her, and, again exerting my force, drew her toward
+the door. "You must go with me; indeed you must."
+
+In her fright she half resisted my efforts, and again exclaimed, "Good
+heaven! what is it you mean? Where go? What has happened? Have you
+found Clara?"
+
+"Follow me and you will see," I answered, still urging her reluctant
+steps forward.
+
+"What frenzy has seized you? Something must needs have happened. Is she
+sick? Have you found her?"
+
+"Come and see. Follow me and know for yourself."
+
+Still she expostulated and besought me to explain this mysterious
+behavior. I could not trust myself to answer her, to look at her; but
+grasping her arm, I drew her after me. She hesitated, rather through
+confusion of mind than from unwillingness to accompany me. This
+confusion gradually abated, and she moved forward, but with irresolute
+footsteps and continual exclamations of wonder and terror. Her
+interrogations of "What was the matter?" and "Whither was I going?" were
+ceaseless and vehement.
+
+It was the scope of my efforts not to think; to keep up a conflict and
+uproar in my mind in which all order and distinctness should be lost; to
+escape from the sensations produced by her voice. I was therefore
+silent. I strove to abridge this interval by haste, and to waste all my
+attention in furious gesticulations.
+
+In this state of mind we reached my sister's door. She looked at the
+windows and saw that all was desolate. "Why come we here? There is
+nobody here. I will not go in."
+
+Still I was dumb; but, opening the door, I drew her into the entry. This
+was the allotted scene; here she was to fall. I let go her hand, and
+pressing my palms against my forehead, made one mighty effort to work up
+my soul to the deed.
+
+In vain; it would not be; my courage was appalled, my arms nerveless. I
+muttered prayers that my strength might be aided from above. They
+availed nothing.
+
+Horror diffused itself over me. This conviction of my cowardice, my
+rebellion, fastened upon me, and I stood rigid and cold as marble. From
+this state I was somewhat relieved by my wife's voice, who renewed her
+supplications to be told why we come hither and what was the fate of my
+sister....
+
+The fellness of a gloomy hurricane but faintly resembled the discord
+that reigned in my mind. To omit this sacrifice must not be; yet my
+sinews had refused to perform it. No alternative was offered. To rebel
+against the mandate was impossible; but obedience would render me the
+executioner of my wife. My will was strong, but my limbs refused
+their office.
+
+That accents and looks so winning should disarm me of my resolution was
+to be expected. My thoughts were thrown anew into anarchy. I spread my
+hand before my eyes that I might not see her, and answered only by
+groans. She took my other hand between hers, and pressing it to her
+heart, spoke with that voice which had ever swayed my will and wafted
+away sorrow:--
+
+"My friend! my soul's friend! tell me thy cause of grief. Do I not merit
+to partake with thee in thy cares? Am I not thy wife?"
+
+This was too much. I broke from her embrace and retired to a corner of
+the room. In this pause, courage was once more infused into me. I
+resolved to execute my duty. She followed me, and renewed her passionate
+entreaties to know the cause of my distress. I raised my head and
+regarded her with steadfast looks. I muttered something about death, and
+the injunctions of my duty. At these words she shrunk back, and looked
+at me with a new expression of anguish. After a pause, she clasped her
+hands, and exclaimed:---
+
+"O Wieland! Wieland! God grant that I am mistaken! but something surely
+is wrong. I see it; it is too plain; thou art undone--lost to me and to
+thyself." At the same time she gazed on my features with intensest
+anxiety, in hope that different symptoms would take place. I replied to
+her with vehemence:--
+
+"Undone! No; my duty is known, and I thank my God that my cowardice is
+now vanquished and I have power to fulfill it. Catharine, I pity the
+weakness of thy nature; I pity thee, but must not spare. Thy life is
+claimed from my hands; thou must die!"
+
+Fear was now added to her grief. "What mean you? Why talk you of death?
+Bethink yourself, Wieland; bethink yourself, and this fit will pass. Oh,
+why came I hither? Why did you drag me hither?"
+
+"I brought thee hither to fulfill a divine command. I am appointed thy
+destroyer, and destroy thee I must." Saying this, I seized her wrists.
+She shrieked aloud, and endeavored to free herself from my grasp; but
+her efforts were vain.
+
+"Surely, surely, Wieland, thou dost not mean it. Am I not thy wife? and
+wouldst thou kill me? Thou wilt not; and yet--I see--thou art Wieland no
+longer! A fury resistless and horrible possesses thee. Spare
+me--spare--help--help--"
+
+Till her breath was stopped she shrieked for help, for mercy. When she
+could speak no longer, her gestures, her looks appealed to my
+compassion. My accursed hand was irresolute and tremulous. I meant thy
+death to be sudden, thy struggles to be brief. Alas! my heart was
+infirm, my resolves mutable. Thrice I slackened my grasp, and life kept
+its hold, though in the midst of pangs. Her eyeballs started from their
+sockets. Grimness and distortion took the place of all that used to
+bewitch me into transport and subdue me into reverence. I was
+commissioned to kill thee, but not to torment thee with the foresight of
+thy death; not to multiply thy fears and prolong thy agonies. Haggard
+and pale and lifeless, at length thou ceasedst to contend with
+thy destiny.
+
+This was the moment of triumph. Thus had I successfully subdued the
+stubbornness of human passions: the victim which had been demanded was
+given; the deed was done past recall.
+
+I lifted the corpse in my arms and laid it on the bed. I gazed upon it
+with delight. Such was the elation of my thoughts that I even broke into
+laughter. I clapped my hands and exclaimed, "It is done! My sacred duty
+is fulfilled! To that I have sacrificed, O my God, Thy last and best
+gift, my wife!"
+
+For a while I thus soared above frailty. I imagined I had set myself
+forever beyond the reach of selfishness; but my imaginations were false.
+This rapture quickly subsided. I looked again at my wife. My joyous
+ebullitions vanished, and I asked myself who it was whom I saw.
+Methought it could not be Catharine. It could not be the woman who had
+lodged for years in my heart; who had slept nightly in my bosom; who had
+borne in her womb, who had fostered at her breast, the beings who called
+me father; whom I have watched with delight, and cherished with a
+fondness ever new and perpetually growing; it could not be the same.
+Where was her bloom? These deadly and blood-suffused orbs but ill
+resemble the azure and ecstatic tenderness of her eyes. The lucid stream
+that meandered over that bosom, the glow of love that was wont to sit
+upon that cheek, are much unlike these livid stains and this hideous
+deformity. Alas! these were the traces of agony; the gripe of the
+assassin had been here!
+
+I will not dwell upon my lapse into desperate and outrageous sorrow. The
+breath of heaven that sustained me was withdrawn, and I sunk into _mere
+man_. I leaped from the floor; I dashed my head against the wall; I
+uttered screams of horror; I panted after torment and pain. Eternal fire
+and the bickerings of hell, compared with what I felt, were music and a
+bed of roses.
+
+I thank my God that this degeneracy was transient--that He deigned once
+more to raise me aloft. I thought upon what I had done as a sacrifice to
+duty, and _was calm_. My wife was dead; but I reflected that though this
+source of human consolation was closed, yet others were still open. If
+the transports of a husband were no more, the feelings of a father had
+still scope for exercise. When remembrance of their mother should excite
+too keen a pang, I would look upon them and _be comforted_.
+
+While I revolved these ideas, new warmth flowed in upon my heart. I was
+wrong. These feelings were the growth of selfishness. Of this I was not
+aware; and to dispel the mist that obscured my perceptions, a new
+effulgence and a new mandate were necessary. From these thoughts I was
+recalled by a ray that was shot into the room. A voice spake like that
+which I had before heard:--"Thou hast done well. But all is not
+done--the sacrifice is incomplete--thy children must be offered--they
+must perish with their mother!--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thou, Omnipotent and Holy! Thou knowest that my actions were conformable
+to Thy will. I know not what is crime; what actions are evil in their
+ultimate and comprehensive tendency, or what are good. Thy knowledge, as
+Thy power, is unlimited. I have taken Thee for my guide, and cannot err.
+To the arms of Thy protection I intrust my safety. In the awards of Thy
+justice I confide for my recompense.
+
+Come death when it will, I am safe. Let calumny and abhorrence pursue me
+among men; I shall not be defrauded of my dues. The peace of virtue and
+the glory of obedience will be my portion hereafter.
+
+
+
+JOHN BROWN
+
+(1810-1882)
+
+John Brown, the son of a secession-church minister, was born in Biggar,
+Lanarkshire, Scotland, September 22d, 1810, and died in Edinburgh, May
+11th, 1882. He was educated at the Edinburgh High School and at the
+University, and graduated in medicine in 1833. For a time he was a
+surgeon's assistant to the great Dr. Syme, the man of whom he said "he
+never wasted a drop of ink or blood," and whose character he has drawn
+in one of his most charming biographies. When he began to practice for
+himself he gradually "got into a good connection," and his patients made
+him their confidant and adviser. He was considered a fine doctor too,
+for he had remarkable common-sense, and was said to be unerring in
+diagnosis.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN BROWN]
+
+Dr. Brown did not, as is commonly believed, dislike his profession; but
+later on he took a view of it which seemed non-progressive, and his
+success as a writer no doubt interfered with his practice. His friend
+Professor Masson draws a pleasant picture of him when he first settled
+in practice, as a dark-haired man with soft, fine eyes and a benignant
+manner, the husband of a singularly beautiful woman, and much liked and
+sought after in the social circles of Edinburgh. This was partly owing
+to the charm of his conversation, and partly to the literary reputation
+he had achieved through some articles on the Academy exhibition and on
+local artists. Though he had little technical training, he had an eye
+for color and form, an appreciation of the artist's meaning, and an
+instinct for discovering genius, as in the case of Noel Paton and David
+Scott. He soon became an authority among artists, and he gave a new
+impulse to national art.
+
+He contributed largely to the North British Review. In 1855 he published
+'Horae Subsceivae,' which contained, among medical biography and
+medico-literary papers, the immortal Scotch idyl, 'Rab and his Friends.'
+Up to this time the unique personality of the doctor, with its
+delightful mixture of humor and sympathy, was known only to his own
+circle. The appearance of 'Rab and his Friends' revealed it to the
+world. Brief as it is in form, and simple in outline, Scotland has
+produced nothing so full of pure, pathetic genius since Scott.
+
+Another volume of 'Horae Subsceivae' appeared two years after, and some
+selections from it, and others from unpublished manuscript, were printed
+separately in the volume entitled 'Spare Hours.' They met with instant
+and unprecedented success. In a short time ten thousand copies of
+'Minchmoor' and 'James the Doorkeeper' were sold, fifteen thousand
+copies of 'Pet Marjorie,' and 'Rab' had reached its fiftieth thousand.
+With all this success and praise, and constantly besought by publishers
+for his work, he could not be persuaded that his writings were of any
+permanent value, and was reluctant to publish. In 1882 appeared a third
+volume of the 'Horae Subsceivae,' which included all his writings. A few
+weeks after its publication he died.
+
+The Doctor's medical essays, which are replete with humor, are written
+in defense of his special theory, the distinction between the active and
+the speculative mind. He thought there was too much science and too
+little intuitive sagacity in the world, and looked back longingly to the
+old-time common-sense, which he believed modern science had driven away.
+His own mind was anti-speculative, although he paid just tributes to
+philosophy and science and admired their achievements. He stigmatized
+the speculations of the day as the "lust of innovation." But the reader
+cares little for the opinions of Dr. Brown as arguments: his subject is
+of little consequence if he will but talk. By the charm of his
+story-telling these dead Scotch doctors are made to live again. The
+death-bed of Syme, for instance, is as pathetic as the wonderful paper
+on Thackeray's death; and to-day many a heart is sore for 'Pet
+Marjorie,' the ten-year-old child who died in Scotland almost a hundred
+years ago.
+
+As an essayist, Dr. Brown belongs to the followers of Addison and
+Charles Lamb, and he blends humor, pathos, and quiet hopefulness with a
+grave and earnest dignity. He delighted, not like Lamb "in the habitable
+parts of the earth," but in the lonely moorlands and pastoral hills,
+over which his silent, stalwart shepherds walked with swinging stride.
+He had a keen appreciation for anything he felt to be excellent: his
+usual question concerning a stranger, either in literature or life, was
+"Has he wecht, sir?"--quoting Dr. Chalmers; and when he wanted to give
+the highest praise, he said certain writing was "strong meat." He had a
+warm enthusiasm for the work of other literary men: an artist himself,
+he was quick to appreciate and seize upon the witty thing or the
+excellent thing wherever he found it, and he was eager to share his
+pleasure with the whole world. He reintroduced to the public Henry
+Vaughn, the quaint seventeenth-century poet; he wrote a sympathetic
+memoir of Arthur Hallam; he imported 'Modern Painters,' and enlightened
+Edinburgh as to its merits. His art papers were what Walter Pater would
+call "appreciations,"--that is to say, he dwelt upon the beauties of
+what he described rather than upon the defects. What he did not admire
+he left alone.
+
+As the author of 'Rab' loved the lonely glens on Minchmoor and in the
+Enterkin, or where Queen Mary's "baby garden" shows its box-row border
+among the Spanish chestnuts of Lake Monteith, so he loved the Scottish
+character, "bitter to the taste and sweet to the diaphragm": "Jeemes"
+the beadle, with his family worship when he himself was all the family;
+the old Aberdeen Jacobite people; Miss Stirling Graham of Duntrune, who
+in her day bewitched Edinburgh; Rab, Ailie, and Bob Ainslie. His
+characters are oddities, but are drawn without a touch of cynicism. What
+an amount of playful, wayward nonsense lies between these pages, and
+what depths of melancholy under the fun! Like Sir Walter, he had a great
+love for dogs, and never went out unaccompanied by one or two of them.
+They are the heroes of several of his sketches.
+
+Throughout the English-speaking world, he was affectionately known as
+Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh. He stood aloof from political and
+ecclesiastical controversies, and was fond of telling a story to
+illustrate how little reasoning went to forming partisans. A minister
+catechizing a raw plowboy, after asking the first question, "Who made
+you?" and getting the answer "God," asked him, "How do you know that God
+made you?" After some pause and head-scratching, the reply came, "Weel,
+sir, it's the clash [common talk] o' the kintry." "Ay," Brown added,
+"I'm afraid that a deal of our belief is founded on just 'the clash o'
+the kintry.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MARJORIE FLEMING
+
+From 'Spare Hours'
+
+One November afternoon in 1810--the year in which 'Waverley' was resumed
+and laid aside again, to be finished off, its last two volumes in three
+weeks, and made immortal in 1814; and when its author, by the death of
+Lord Melville, narrowly escaped getting a civil appointment in
+India--three men, evidently lawyers, might have been seen escaping like
+schoolboys from the Parliament House, and speeding arm-in-arm down Bank
+Street and the Mound in the teeth of a surly blast of sleet.
+
+The three friends sought the _bield_ of the low wall old Edinburgh boys
+remember well, and sometimes miss now, as they struggle with the stout
+west wind....
+
+The third we all know. What has he not done for every one of us? Who
+else ever, except Shakespeare, so diverted mankind, entertained and
+entertains a world so liberally, so wholesomely? We are fain to say not
+even Shakespeare, for his is something deeper than diversion, something
+higher than pleasure; and yet who would care to split this hair?
+
+Had any one watched him closely before and after the parting, what a
+change he would see! The bright, broad laugh, the shrewd, jovial word,
+the man of the Parliament House and of the world; and next step, moody,
+the light of his eye withdrawn, as if seeing things that were invisible;
+his shut mouth like a child's, so impressionable, so innocent, so sad;
+he was now all within, as before he was all without; hence his brooding
+look. As the snow blattered in his face, he muttered, "How it raves and
+drifts! On-ding o' snaw,--ay, that's the word,--on-ding--" He was now at
+his own door, "Castle Street, No. 39." He opened the door and went
+straight to his den; that wondrous workshop, where in one year, 1823,
+when he was fifty-two, he wrote 'Peveril of the Peak,' 'Quentin
+Durward,' and 'St. Ronan's Well,' besides much else. We once took the
+foremost of our novelists--the greatest, we would say, since Scott--into
+this room, and could not but mark the solemnizing effect of sitting
+where the great magician sat so often and so long, and looking out upon
+that little shabby bit of sky, and that back green where faithful dog
+Camp lies.
+
+He sat down in his large green morocco elbow-chair, drew himself close
+to his table, and glowered and gloomed at his writing apparatus, "a very
+handsome old box, richly carved, lined with crimson velvet, and
+containing ink-bottles, taper-stand, etc., in silver, the whole in such
+order that it might have come from the silversmith's window half an hour
+before." He took out his paper, then starting up angrily, said, "'Go
+spin, you jade, go spin.' No, d---- it, it won't do,--
+
+     "'My spinnin' wheel is auld and stiff,
+       The rock o't wunna stand, sir;
+     To keep the temper-pin in tiff
+       Employs ower aft my hand, sir.'
+
+I am off the fang. I can make nothing of 'Waverley' to-day; I'll awa'
+to Marjorie. Come wi' me, Maida, you thief." The great creature rose
+slowly, and the pair were off, Scott taking a _maud_ (a plaid) with him.
+"White as a frosted plum-cake, by jingo!" said he, when he got to the
+street. Maida gamboled and whisked among the snow, and his master strode
+across to Young Street, and through it to 1 North Charlotte Street, to
+the house of his dear friend, Mrs. William Keith, of Corstorphine Hill;
+niece of Mrs. Keith of Ravelston, of whom he said at her death, eight
+years after, "Much tradition, and that of the best, has died with this
+excellent old lady, one of the few persons whose spirits, and
+_cleanliness_ and freshness of mind and body, made old age lovely and
+desirable."
+
+Sir Walter was in that house almost every day, and had a key, so in he
+and the hound went, shaking themselves in the lobby. "Marjorie!
+Marjorie!" shouted her friend, "where are ye, my bonnie wee croodlin'
+doo?" In a moment a bright, eager child of seven was in his arms, and he
+was kissing her all over. Out came Mrs. Keith. "Come your ways in,
+Wattie." "No, not now. I am going to take Marjorie wi' me, and you may
+come to your tea in Duncan Roy's sedan, and bring the bairn home in your
+lap." "Tak' Marjorie, and it _on-ding o' snaw_!" said Mrs. Keith. He
+said to himself, "On-ding,'--that's odd,--that is the very word. Hoot,
+awa'! look here," and he displayed the corner of his plaid, made to hold
+lambs [the true shepherd's plaid, consisting of two breadths sewed
+together, and uncut at one end, making a poke or _cul-de-sac_]. "Tak'
+your lamb," said she, laughing at the contrivance, and so the Pet was
+first well happit up, and then put, laughing silently, into the plaid
+neuk, and the shepherd strode off with his lamb,--Maida gamboling
+through the snow, and running races in her mirth.
+
+Didn't he face "the angry airt," and make her bield his bosom, and into
+his own room with her, and lock the door, and out with the warm rosy
+little wifie, who took it all with great composure! There the two
+remained for three or more hours, making the house ring with their
+laughter; you can fancy the big man's and Maidie's laugh. Having made
+the fire cheery, he set her down in his ample chair, and standing
+sheepishly before her, began to say his lesson, which happened to
+be,--"Ziccotty, diccotty, dock, the mouse ran up the clock; the clock
+struck one, down the mouse ran, ziccotty, diccotty, dock." This done
+repeatedly till she was pleased, she gave him his new lesson, gravely
+and slowly, timing it upon her small fingers,--he saying it after her,--
+
+     "Wonery, twoery, tickery, seven;
+     Alibi, crackaby, ten and eleven;
+     Pin, pan, musky dan;
+     Tweedle-um, twoddle-um, twenty-wan;
+     Eerie, orie, ourie,
+     You, are, out."
+
+He pretended to great difficulty, and she rebuked him with most comical
+gravity, treating him as a child. He used to say that when he came to
+Alibi Crackaby he broke down, and Pin-Pan, Musky-Dan, Tweedle-um
+Twoddle-um made him roar with laughter. He said Musky-Dan especially was
+beyond endurance, bringing up an Irishman and his hat fresh from the
+Spice Islands and odoriferous Ind; she getting quite bitter in her
+displeasure at his ill behavior and stupidness.
+
+Then he would read ballads to her in his own glorious way, the two
+getting wild with excitement over 'Gil Morrice' or the 'Baron of
+Smailholm'; and he would take her on his knee, and make her repeat
+Constance's speech in 'King John,' till he swayed to and fro, sobbing
+his fill....
+
+Scott used to say that he was amazed at her power over him, saying to
+Mrs. Keith, "She's the most extraordinary creature I ever met with, and
+her repeating of Shakespeare overpowers me as nothing else does."
+
+Thanks to the unforgetting sister of this dear child, who has much of
+the sensibility and fun of her who has been in her small grave these
+fifty and more years, we have now before us the letters and journals of
+Pet Marjorie,--before us lies and gleams her rich brown hair, bright and
+sunny as if yesterday's, with the words on the paper, "Cut out in her
+last illness," and two pictures of her by her beloved Isabella, whom she
+worshiped; there are the faded old scraps of paper, hoarded still, over
+which her warm breath and her warm little heart had poured themselves;
+there is the old water-mark, "Lingard, 1808." The two portraits are very
+like each other, but plainly done at different times; it is a chubby,
+healthy face, deep-set, brooding eyes, as eager to tell what is going on
+within as to gather in all the glories from without; quick with the
+wonder and the pride of life; they are eyes that would not be soon
+satisfied with seeing; eyes that would devour their object, and yet
+childlike and fearless. And that is a mouth that will not be soon
+satisfied with love; it has a curious likeness to Scott's own, which has
+always appeared to us his sweetest, most mobile and speaking feature.
+
+There she is, looking straight at us as she did at him,--fearless and
+full of love, passionate, wild, willful, fancy's child.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was an old servant, Jeanie Robertson, who was forty years in her
+grandfather's family. Marjorie Fleming--or as she is called in the
+letters and by Sir Walter, Maidie--was the last child she kept. Jeanie's
+wages never exceeded L3 a year, and when she left service she had saved
+L40. She was devotedly attached to Maidie, rather despising and
+ill-using her sister Isabella, a beautiful and gentle child. This
+partiality made Maidie apt at times to domineer over Isabella. "I
+mention this," writes her surviving sister, "for the purpose of telling
+you an instance of Maidie's generous justice. When only five years old,
+when walking in Raith grounds, the two children had run on before, and
+old Jeanie remembered they might come too near a dangerous mill-lade.
+She called to them to turn back. Maidie heeded her not, rushed all the
+faster on, and fell, and would have been lost, had her sister not pulled
+her back, saving her life, but tearing her clothes. Jeanie flew on
+Isabella to 'give it her' for spoiling her favorite's dress; Maidie
+rushed in between, crying out, 'Pay (whip) Maidie as much as you like,
+and I'll not say one word; but touch Isy, and I'll roar like a bull!'
+Years after Maidie was resting in her grave, my mother used to take me
+to the place, and told the story always in the exact same words." This
+Jeanie must have been a character. She took great pride in exhibiting
+Maidie's brother William's Calvinistic acquirements when nineteen months
+old, to the officers of a militia regiment then quartered in Kirkcaldy.
+This performance was so amusing that it was often repeated, and the
+little theologian was presented by them with a cap and feathers.
+Jeanie's glory was "putting him through the carritch" (catechism) in
+broad Scotch, beginning at the beginning with "Wha made ye, ma bonnie
+man?" For the correctness of this and the three next replies, Jeanie had
+no anxiety; but the tone changed to menace, and the closed _nieve_
+(fist) was shaken in the child's face as she demanded, "Of what are you
+made?" "DIRT," was the answer uniformly given. "Wull ye never learn to
+say _dust_, ye thrawn deevil?" with a cuff from the opened hand, was the
+as inevitable rejoinder.
+
+Here is Maidie's first letter, before she was six, the spelling
+unaltered, and there are no "commoes."
+
+"MY DEAR ISA--I now sit down to answer all your kind and beloved letters
+which you was so good as to write to me. This is the first time I ever
+wrote a letter in my Life. There are a great many Girls in the Square
+and they cry just like a pig when we are under the painfull necessity of
+putting it to Death. Miss Potune a Lady of my acquaintance praises me
+dreadfully. I repeated something out of Dean Swift and she said I was
+fit for the stage and you may think I was primmed up with majestick
+Pride but upon my word I felt myselfe turn a little birsay--birsay is a
+word which is a word that William composed which is as you may suppose a
+little enraged. This horrid fat simpliton says that my Aunt is
+beautifull which is intirely impossible for that is not her nature."
+
+What a peppery little pen we wield! What could that have been out of the
+sardonic Dean? what other child of that age would have used "beloved" as
+she does? This power of affection, this faculty of _be_loving, and wild
+hunger to be beloved, comes out more and more. She periled her all upon
+it, and it may have been as well--we know, indeed, that it was far
+better--for her that this wealth of love was so soon withdrawn to its
+one only infinite Giver and Receiver. This must have been the law of her
+earthly life. Love was indeed "her Lord and King"; and it was perhaps
+well for her that she found so soon that her and our only Lord and King
+Himself is Love. Here are bits from her Diary at Braehead:--
+
+"The day of my existence here has been delightful and enchanting. On
+Saturday I expected no less than three well-made Bucks the names of whom
+is here advertised. Mr. Geo. Crakey [Craigie], and Wm. Keith and Jn.
+Keith--the first is the funniest of every one of them. Mr. Crakey and I
+walked to Crakyhall [Craigiehall] hand in hand in Innocence and
+matitation [meditation] sweet thinking on the kind love which flows in
+our tender hearted mind which is overflowing with majestic pleasure no
+one was ever so polite to me in the hole state of my existence. Mr.
+Craky you must-know is a great Buck and pretty good-looking."
+
+"I am at Ravelston enjoying nature's fresh air. The birds are singing
+sweetly--the calf doth frisk and nature shows her glorious face."
+
+Here is a confession:
+
+"I confess I have been very more like a little young divil than a
+creature for when Isabella went up stairs to teach me religion and my
+multiplication and to be good and all my other lessons I stamped with my
+foot and threw my new hat which she had made on the ground and was sulky
+and was dreadfully passionate, but she never whiped me but said Marjory
+go into another room and think what a great crime you are committing
+letting your temper git the better of you. But I went so sulkily that
+the Devil got the better of me but she never never never whips me so
+that I think I would be the better of it and the next time that I behave
+ill I think she should do it for she never does it.... Isabella has
+given me praise for checking my temper for I was sulky even when she was
+kneeling an hole hour teaching me to write."
+
+Our poor little wifie, _she_ has no doubts of the personality of the
+Devil!--"Yesterday I behave extremely ill in God's most holy church for
+I would never attend myself nor let Isabella attend which was a great
+crime for she often, often tells me that when to or three are geathered
+together God is in the midst of them, and it was the very same Divil
+that tempted Job that tempted me I am sure; but he resisted Satan though
+he had boils and many many other misfortunes which I have escaped.... I
+am now going to tell you the horible and wretched plaege that my
+multiplication gives me you can't conceive it the most Devilish thing is
+8 times 8 and 7 times 7 it is what nature itself cant endure."
+
+This is delicious; and what harm is there in her "Devilish"? it is
+strong language merely; even old Rowland Hill used to say "he grudged
+the Devil those rough and ready words." "I walked to that delightful
+place Crakyhall with a delightful young man beloved by all his friends
+especially by me his loveress, but I must not talk any more about him
+for Isa said it is not proper for to speak of gentalmen but I will never
+forget him! ... I am very very glad that satan has not given me boils
+and many other misfortunes--In the holy bible these words are written
+that the Devil goes like a roaring lyon in search of his pray but the
+lord lets us escape from him but we" (_pauvre petite_!) "do not strive
+with this awfull Spirit.... To-day I pronounced a word which should
+never come out of a lady's lips it was that I called John a Impudent
+Bitch. I will tell you what I think made me in so bad a humor is I got
+one or two of that bad sina [senna] tea to-day,"--a better excuse for
+bad humor and bad language than most.
+
+She has been reading the Book of Esther:--"It was a dreadful thing that
+Haman was hanged on the very gallows which he had prepared for Mordecai
+to hang him and his ten sons thereon and it was very wrong and cruel to
+hang his sons for they did not commit the crime; _but then Jesus was not
+then come to teach us to be merciful_." This is wise and beautiful,--has
+upon it the very dew of youth and holiness. Out of the mouths of babes
+and sucklings He perfects his praise.
+
+"This is Saturday and I am very glad of it because I have play half the
+Day and I get money too but alas I owe Isabella 4 pence for I am finned
+2 pence whenever I bite my nails. Isabella is teaching me to make
+simmecoling nots of interrigations peorids commoes, etc.... As this is
+Sunday I will meditate upon Senciable and Religious subjects. First I
+should be very thankful I am not a beggar."
+
+This amount of meditation and thankfulness seems to have been all she
+was able for.
+
+"I am going to-morrow to a delightfull place, Braehead by name,
+belonging to Mrs. Crraford, where there is ducks cocks hens bubblyjocks
+2 dogs 2 cats and swine which is delightful. I think it is shocking to
+think that the dog and cat should bear them" (this is a meditation
+physiological) "and they are drowned after all. I would rather have a
+man-dog than a woman-dog, because they do not bear like woman-dogs; it
+is a hard case--it is shocking. I came here to enjoy natures delightful
+breath it is sweeter than a fial of rose oil."
+
+Braehead is the farm the historical Jock Howison asked and got from our
+gay James the Fifth, "the gudeman o' Ballengiech," as a reward for the
+services of his flail when the King had the worst of it at Cramond Brig
+with the gipsies. The farm is unchanged in size from that time, and
+still in the unbroken line of the ready and victorious thrasher.
+Braehead is held on the condition of the possessor being ready to
+present the King with a ewer and basin to wash his hands, Jock having
+done this for his unknown king after the _splore_; and when George the
+Fourth came to Edinburgh, this ceremony was performed in silver
+at Holyrood.
+
+It is a lovely neuk, this Braehead, preserved almost as it was two
+hundred years ago. "Lot and his wife," mentioned by Maidie,--two
+quaintly cropped yew-trees,--still thrive; the burn runs as it did in
+her time, and sings the same quiet tune,--as much the same and as
+different as _Now_ and _Then_. The house is full of old family relics
+and pictures, the sun shining on them through the small deep windows
+with their plate-glass; and there, blinking at the sun and chattering
+contentedly, is a parrot, that might, for its looks of eld, have been in
+the ark, and domineered over and _deaved_ the dove. Everything about the
+place is old and fresh.
+
+This is beautiful:--"I am very sorry to say that I forgot God--that is
+to say I forgot to pray to-day and Isabella told me that I should be
+thankful that God did not forget me--if he did, O what would become of
+me if I was in danger and God not friends with me--I must go to
+unquenchable fire and if I was tempted to sin--how could I resist it O
+no I will never do it again--no no--if I can help it." (Canny wee
+wifie!) "My religion is greatly falling off because I dont pray with so
+much attention when I am saying my prayers, and my charecter is lost
+among the Braehead people. I hope I will be religious again--but as for
+regaining my charecter I despare for it." [Poor little "habit
+and repute"!]
+
+Her temper, her passion, and her "badness" are almost daily confessed
+and deplored:--"I will never again trust to my own power, for I see that
+I cannot be good without God's assistance--. I will not trust in my own
+selfe, and Isa's health will be quite ruined by me--it will indeed."
+"Isa has giving me advice, which is, that when I feel Satan beginning to
+tempt me, that I flea him and he would flea me." "Remorse is the worst
+thing to bear, and I am afraid that I will fall a marter to it."
+
+Poor dear little sinner!--Here comes the world again:--"In my travels I
+met with a handsome lad named Charles Balfour Esq., and from him I got
+ofers of marage--offers of marage, did I say? Nay plenty heard me." A
+fine scent for "breach of promise"!
+
+This is abrupt and strong:--"The Divil is curced and all works. 'Tis a
+fine work 'Newton on the profecies.' I wonder if there is another book
+of poems comes near the Bible. The Divil always girns at the sight of
+the Bible." "Miss Potune" (her "simpliton" friend) "is very fat; she
+pretends to be very learned. She says she saw a stone that dropt from
+the skies; but she is a good Christian."
+
+Here come her views on church government:--"An Anni-babtist is a thing I
+am not a member of--I am a Pisplekan (Episcopalian) just now, and" (O
+you little Laodicean and Latitudinarian!) "a Prisbeteran at
+Kirkcaldy"--_(Blandula! Vagula! coelum et animum mutas quoe trans mare_
+[i.e., _trans Bodotriam] curris!_)--"my native town."
+
+"Sentiment is not what I am acquainted with as yet, though I wish it,
+and should like to practise it" (!) "I wish I had a great, great deal of
+gratitude in my heart, in all my body." There is a new novel published,
+named 'Self-Control' (Mrs. Brunton's)--"a very good maxim forsooth!"
+
+This is shocking:--"Yesterday a marrade man, named Mr. John Balfour,
+Esq., offered to kiss me, and offered to marry me, though the man" (a
+fine directness this!) "was espused, and his wife was present and said
+he must ask her permission; but he did not. I think he was ashamed and
+confounded before 3 gentelman--Mr. Jobson and 2 Mr. Kings." "Mr.
+Banesters" (Bannister's) "Budjet is to-night; I hope it will be a good
+one. A great many authors have expressed themselves too sentimentally."
+You are right, Marjorie. "A Mr. Burns writes a beautiful song on Mr.
+Cunhaming, whose wife desarted him--truly it is a most beautiful one."
+"I like to read the Fabulous historys, about the histerys of Robin,
+Dickey, flapsay, and Peccay, and it is very amusing, for some were good
+birds and others bad, but Peccay was the most dutiful and obedient to
+her parients." "Thomson is a beautiful author, and Pope, but nothing to
+Shakespear, of which I have a little knolege. 'Macbeth' is a pretty
+composition, but awful one." "The 'Newgate Calender' is very
+instructive." (!)
+
+"A sailor called here to say farewell; it must be dreadful to leave his
+native country when he might get a wife; or perhaps me, for I love him
+very much. But O I forgot, Isabella forbid me to speak about love." This
+antiphlogistic regimen and lesson is ill to learn by our Maidie, for
+here she sins again:--"Love is a very papithatick thing" (it is almost a
+pity to correct this into pathetic), "as well as troublesome and
+tiresome--but O Isabella forbid me to speak of it."
+
+Here are her reflections on a pineapple:--"I think the price of a
+pineapple is very dear: it is a whole bright goulden guinea, that might
+have sustained a poor family." Here is a new vernal simile:--"The hedges
+are sprouting like chicks from the eggs when they are newly hatched or,
+as the vulgar say, _clacked_". "Doctor Swift's works are very funny; I
+got some of them by heart." "Moreheads sermons are I hear much praised,
+but I never read sermons of any kind; but I read novelettes and my
+Bible, and I never forget it, or my prayers." Brava, Marjorie!
+
+She seems now, when still about six, to have broken out into song:--
+
+     EPHIBOL [EPIGRAM OR EPITAPH--WHO KNOWS WHICH?] ON MY DEAR
+     LOVE ISABELLA.
+
+     "Here lies sweet Isabel in bed,
+     With a night-cap on her head;
+     Her skin is soft, her face is fair,
+     And she has very pretty hair;
+     She and I in bed lies nice,
+     And undisturbed by rats or mice.
+     She is disgusted with Mr. Worgan,
+     Though he plays upon the organ.
+     Her nails are neat, her teeth are white,
+     Her eyes are very, very bright.
+     In a conspicuous town she lives,
+     And to the poor her money gives.
+     Here ends sweet Isabella's story,
+     And may it be much to her glory."
+
+Here are some bits at random:--
+
+     "Of summer I am very fond,
+     And love to bathe into a pond:
+     The look of sunshine dies away,
+     And will not let me out to play;
+     I love the morning's sun to spy
+     Glittering through the casement's eye;
+     The rays of light are very sweet,
+     And puts away the taste of meat;
+     The balmy breeze comes down from heaven,
+     And makes us like for to be living."
+
+"The casawary is an curious bird, and so is the gigantic crane, and the
+pelican of the wilderness, whose mouth holds a bucket of fish and water.
+Fighting is what ladies is not qualyfied for, they would not make a good
+figure in battle or in a duel. Alas! we females are of little use to our
+country. The history of all the malcontents as ever was hanged is
+amusing." Still harping on the Newgate Calendar!
+
+"Braehead is extremely pleasant to me by the companie of swine, geese,
+cocks, etc., and they are the delight of my soul."
+
+"I am going to tell you of a melancholy story. A young turkie of two or
+three months old, would you believe it, the father broke its leg, and he
+killed another! I think he ought to be transported or hanged."
+
+"Queen Street is a very gay one, and so is Princes Street, for all the
+lads and lasses, besides bucks and beggars, parade there"
+
+"I should like to see a play very much, for I never saw one in all my
+life, and don't believe I ever shall; but I hope I can be content
+without going to one. I can be quite happy without my desire
+being granted."
+
+"Some days ago Isabella had a terrible fit of the toothake, and she
+walked with a long night-shift at dead of night like a ghost, and I
+thought she was one. She prayed for nature's sweet restorer--balmy
+sleep--but did not get it--a ghostly figure indeed she was, enough to
+make a saint tremble. It made me quiver and shake from top to toe.
+Superstition is a very mean thing, and should be despised and shunned."
+
+Here is her weakness and her strength again:--"In the love-novels all
+the heroines are very desperate. Isabella will not allow me to speak
+about lovers and heroins, and 'tis too refined for my taste." "Miss
+Egward's [Edgeworth's] tails are very good, particularly some that are
+very much adapted for youth (!) as Laz Laurance and Tarelton, False
+Keys, etc., etc."
+
+"Tom Jones and Gray's Elegey in a country churchyard are both excellent,
+and much spoke of by both sex, particularly by the men." Are our
+Marjories now-a-days better or worse, because they cannot read 'Tom
+Jones' unharmed? More better than worse; but who among them can repeat
+Gray's 'Lines on a Distant Prospect of Eton College' as could
+our Maidie?
+
+Here is some more of her prattle:--"I went into Isabella's bed to make
+her smile like the Genius Demedicus [the Venus de' Medicis] or the
+statute in an ancient Greece, but she fell asleep in my very face, at
+which my anger broke forth, so that I awoke her from a comfortable nap.
+All was now hushed up again, but again my anger burst forth at her
+biding me get up."
+
+She begins thus loftily,--
+
+     "Death the righteous love to see,
+     But from it doth the wicked flee."
+
+Then suddenly breaks off [as if with laughter],--
+
+"I am sure they fly as fast as their legs can carry them!"
+
+     "There is a thing I love to see,
+     That is our monkey catch a flee."
+
+     "I love in Isa's bed to lie,
+     Oh, such a joy and luxury!
+     The bottom of the bed I sleep,
+     And with great care within I creep;
+     Oft I embrace her feet of lillys,
+     But she has goton all the pillys.
+     Her neck I never can embrace,
+     But I do hug her feet in place."
+
+How childish and yet how strong and free is her use of words!--"I lay at
+the foot of the bed because Isabella said I disturbed her by continial
+fighting and kicking, but I was very dull, and continially at work
+reading the Arabian Nights, which I could not have done if I had slept
+at the top. I am reading the Mysteries of Udolpho. I am much interested
+in the fate of poor, poor Emily."
+
+Here is one of her swains:--
+
+     "Very soft and white his cheeks,
+     His hair is red, and gray his breeks;
+     His tooth is like the daisy fair,
+     His only fault is in his hair."
+
+This is a higher flight:--
+
+     DEDICATED TO MRS. H. CRAWFORD BY THE AUTHOR, M. F.
+
+     "Three turkeys fair their last have breathed,
+     And now this world forever leaved;
+     Their father, and their mother too,
+     They sigh and weep as well as you;
+     Indeed, the rats their bones have crunched,
+     Into eternity theire laanched.
+     A direful death indeed they had,
+     As wad put any parent mad;
+     But she was more than usual calm:
+     She did not give a single dam."
+
+This last word is saved from all sin by its tender age, not to speak of
+the want of the _n_. We fear "she" is the abandoned mother, in spite of
+her previous sighs and tears.
+
+"Isabella says when we pray we should pray fervently, and not rattel
+over a prayer--for that we are kneeling at the foot-stool of our Lord
+and Creator, who saves us from eternal damnation, and from
+unquestionable fire and brimston."
+
+She has a long poem on Mary Queen of Scots:--
+
+     "Queen Mary was much loved by all,
+     Both by the great and by the small,
+     But hark! her soul to heaven doth rise?
+     And I suppose she has gained a prize;
+     For I do think she would not go
+     Into the _awful_ place below.
+     There is a thing that I must tell--
+     Elizabeth went to fire and hell!
+     He who would teach her to be civil,
+     It must be her great friend, the divil!"
+
+She hits off Darnley well:--
+
+     "A noble's son,--a handsome lad,--
+     By some queer way or other, had
+     Got quite the better of her heart;
+     With him she always talked apart:
+     Silly he was, but very fair;
+     A greater buck was not found there."
+
+"By some queer way or other": is not this the general case and the
+mystery, young ladies and gentlemen? Goethe's doctrine of "elective
+affinities" discovered by our Pet Maidie!
+
+     SONNET TO A MONKEY
+
+     O lively, O most charming pug:
+     Thy graceful air and heavenly mug!
+     The beauties of his mind do shine,
+     And every bit is shaped and fine.
+     Your teeth are whiter than the snow;
+     Your a great buck, your a great beau;
+     Your eyes are of so nice a shape,
+     More like a Christian's than an ape;
+     Your cheek is like the rose's blume;
+     Your hair is like the raven's plume;
+     His nose's cast is of the Roman:
+     He is a very pretty woman.
+     I could not get a rhyme for Roman,
+     So was obliged to call him woman.
+
+This last joke is good. She repeats it when writing of James the Second
+being killed at Roxburgh:--
+
+     He was killed by a cannon splinter,
+     Quite in the middle of the winter;
+     Perhaps it was not at that time,
+     But I can get no other rhyme.
+
+Here is one of her last letters, dated Kirkcaldy, 12th October, 1811.
+You can see how her nature is deepening and enriching:--
+
+     MY DEAR MOTHER--You will think that I entirely forget you but
+     I assure you that you are greatly mistaken. I think of you
+     always and often sigh to think of the distance between us two
+     loving creatures of nature. We have regular hours for all our
+     occupations first at 7 o'clock we go to the dancing and come
+     home at 8 we then read our Bible and get our repeating and
+     then play till ten then we get our music till 11 when we get
+     our writing and accounts we sew from 12 till 1 after which I
+     get my gramer and then work till five. At 7 we come and knit
+     till 8 when we dont go to the dancing. This is an exact
+     description. I must take a hasty farewell to her whom I love,
+     reverence and doat on and who I hope thinks the same of
+
+     MARJORY FLEMING.
+
+     P.S.--An old pack of cards (!) would be very exceptible.
+
+This other is a month earlier:--
+
+     "MY DEAR LITTLE MAMA--I was truly happy to hear that you were
+     all well. We are surrounded with measles at present on every
+     side, for the Herons got it, and Isabella Heron was near
+     Death's Door, and one night her father lifted her out of bed,
+     and she fell down as they thought lifeless. Mr. Heron said,
+     'That lassie's deed noo'--'I'm no deed yet.' She then threw
+     up a big worm nine inches and a half long. I have begun
+     dancing, but am not very fond of it, for the boys strikes and
+     mocks me.--I have been another night at the dancing; I like
+     it better. I will write to you as often as I can; but I am
+     afraid not every week. _I long for you with the longings of a
+     child to embrace you--to fold you in my arms. I respect you
+     with all the respect due to a mother. You don't know how I
+     love you. So I shall remain, your loving child_,
+
+     M. FLEMING."
+
+What rich involution of love in the words marked! Here are some lines to
+her beloved Isabella, in July, 1811:--
+
+     "There is a thing that I do want--
+     With you these beauteous walks to haunt;
+     We would be happy if you would
+     Try to come over if you could.
+     Then I would all quite happy be
+     _Now and for all eternity_.
+     My mother is so very sweet,
+     _And checks my appetite to eat_;
+     My father shows us what to do;
+     But O I'm sure that I want you.
+     I have no more of poetry;
+     O Isa do remember me,
+     And try to love your Marjory."
+
+In a letter from "Isa" to
+
+     "Miss Muff Maidie Marjory Fleming,
+     favored by Rare Rear-Admiral Fleming,"
+
+she says:--"I long much to see you, and talk over all our old stories
+together, and to hear you read and repeat. I am pining for my old friend
+Cesario, and poor Lear, and wicked Richard. How is the dear
+Multiplication table going on? are you still as much attached to 9 times
+9 as you used to be?"
+
+But this dainty, bright thing is about to flee,--to come "quick to
+confusion." The measles she writes of seized her, and she died on the
+19th of December, 1811. The day before her death, Sunday, she sat up in
+bed, worn and thin, her eye gleaming as with the light of a coming
+world, and with a tremulous, old voice repeated the lines by
+Burns,--heavy with the shadow of death, and lit with the fantasy of the
+judgment-seat,--the publican's prayer in paraphrase:--
+
+     Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene
+
+It is more affecting than we care to say to read her mother's and
+Isabella Keith's letters, written immediately after her death. Old and
+withered, tattered and pale, they are now: but when you read them, how
+quick, how throbbing with life and love! how rich in that language of
+affection which only women and Shakespeare and Luther can use,--that
+power of detaining the soul over the beloved object and its loss....
+
+In her first letter to Miss Keith, Mrs. Fleming says of her dead
+Maidie:--"Never did I behold so beautiful an object. It resembled the
+finest wax-work. There was in the countenance an expression of sweetness
+and serenity which seemed to indicate that the pure spirit had
+anticipated the joys of heaven ere it quitted the mortal frame. To tell
+you what your Maidie said of you would fill volumes; for you were the
+constant theme of her discourse, the subject of her thoughts, and ruler
+of her actions. The last time she mentioned you was a few hours before
+all sense save that of suffering was suspended, when she said to Dr.
+Johnstone, 'If you will let me out at the New Year, I will be quite
+contented.' I asked what made her so anxious to get out then. 'I want to
+purchase a New Year's gift for Isa Keith with the sixpence you gave me
+for being patient in the measles; and I would like to choose it myself.'
+I do not remember her speaking afterwards, except to complain of her
+head, till just before she expired, when she articulated, 'O
+mother! mother!'"
+
+Do we make too much of this little child, who has been in her grave in
+Abbotshall. Kirkyard these fifty and more years? We may of her
+cleverness,--not of her affectionateness, her nature. What a picture the
+_animosa infans_ gives us of herself, her vivacity, her passionateness,
+her precocious love-making, her passion for nature, for swine, for all
+living things, her reading, her turn for expression, her satire, her
+frankness, her little sins and rages, her great repentances. We don't
+wonder Walter Scott carried her off in the neuk of his plaid, and
+played himself with her for hours....
+
+We are indebted for the following--and our readers will be not unwilling
+to share our obligations--to her sister:--"Her birth was 15th January,
+1803; her death 19th December, 1811. I take this from her Bibles. I
+believe she was a child of robust health, of much vigor of body, and
+beautifully formed arms, and until her last illness, never was an hour
+in bed. She was niece to Mrs. Keith, residing in No. 1 North Charlotte
+Street, who was _not_ Mrs. Murray Keith, although very intimately
+acquainted with that old lady....
+
+"As to my aunt and Scott, they were on a very intimate footing. He asked
+my aunt to be godmother to his eldest daughter Sophia Charlotte. I had a
+copy of Miss Edgeworth's 'Rosamond' and 'Harry and Lucy' for long, which
+was 'a gift to Marjorie from Walter Scott,' probably the first edition
+of that attractive series, for it wanted 'Frank,' which is always now
+published as part of the series under the title of 'Early Lessons.' I
+regret to say these little volumes have disappeared."
+
+Sir Walter was no relation of Marjorie's, but of the Keiths, through the
+Swintons; and like Marjorie, he stayed much at Ravelstone in his early
+days, with his grand-aunt Mrs. Keith....
+
+We cannot better end than in words from this same pen:--"I have to ask
+you to forgive my anxiety in gathering up the fragments of Marjorie's
+last days, but I have an almost sacred feeling to all that pertains to
+her. You are quite correct in stating that measles were the cause of her
+death. My mother was struck by the patient quietness manifested by
+Marjorie during this illness, unlike her ardent, impulsive nature; but
+love and poetic feeling were unquenched. When lying very still, her
+mother asked her if there was anything she wished: 'Oh yes! if you would
+just leave the room door open a wee bit, and play 'The Land o' the
+Leal,' and I will lie and _think_, and enjoy myself' (this is just as
+stated to me by her mother and mine). Well, the happy day came, alike to
+parents and child, when Marjorie was allowed to come forth from the
+nursery to the parlor. It was Sabbath evening, and after tea. My father,
+who idolized this child, and never afterwards in my hearing mentioned
+her name, took her in his arms; and while walking up and down the room,
+she said, 'Father, I will repeat something to you; what would you
+like?' He said, 'Just choose yourself, Maidie.' She hesitated for a
+moment between the paraphrase 'Few are thy days, and full of woe,' and
+the lines of Burns already quoted, but decided on the latter, a
+remarkable choice for a child. The repeating these lines seemed to stir
+up the depths of feeling in her soul. She asked to be allowed to write a
+poem; there was a doubt whether it would be right to allow her, in case
+of hurting her eyes. She pleaded earnestly, 'Just this once;' the point
+was yielded, her slate was given her, and with great rapidity she wrote
+an address of fourteen lines, 'To her loved cousin on the author's
+recovery,' her last work on earth:--
+
+     'Oh! Isa, pain did visit me,
+     I was at the last extremity;
+     How often did I think of you,
+     I wished your graceful form to view,
+     To clasp you in my weak embrace,
+     Indeed I thought I'd run my race:
+     Good care, I'm sure, was of me taken,
+     But still indeed I was much shaken.
+     At last I daily strength did gain,
+     And oh! at last, away went pain;
+     At length the doctor thought I might
+     Stay in the parlor all the night;
+     I now continue so to do;
+     Farewell to Nancy and to you.'
+
+She went to bed apparently well, awoke in the middle of the night with
+the old cry of woe to a mother's heart, 'My head, my head!' Three days
+of the dire malady 'water in the head' followed, and the end came."
+
+     "Soft, silken primrose, fading timelessly!"
+
+It is needless, it is impossible to add anything to this; the fervor,
+the sweetness, the flush of poetic ecstasy, the lovely and glowing eye,
+the perfect nature of that bright and warm intelligence, that darling
+child; Lady Nairne's words, and the old tune, stealing up from the
+depths of the human heart, deep calling unto deep, gentle and strong
+like the waves of the great sea hushing themselves to sleep in the dark;
+the words of Burns touching the kindred chord; her last numbers, "wildly
+sweet," traced with thin and eager fingers, already touched by the last
+enemy and friend,--_moriens canit_,--and that love which is so soon to
+be her everlasting light, is her song's burden to the end.
+
+     "She set as sets the morning star, which goes
+     Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides
+     Obscured among the tempests of the sky,
+     But melts away into the light of heaven."
+
+THE DEATH OF THACKERAY
+
+From 'Spare Hours'
+
+We cannot resist here recalling one Sunday evening in December, when he
+was walking with two friends along the Dean road, to the west of
+Edinburgh,--one of the noblest outlets to any city. It was a lovely
+evening,--such a sunset as one never forgets: a rich dark bar of cloud
+hovered over the sun, going down behind the Highland hills, lying bathed
+in amethystine bloom; between this cloud and the hills there was a
+narrow slip of the pure ether, of a tender cowslip color, lucid, and as
+if it were the very body of heaven in its clearness; every object
+standing out as if etched upon the sky. The northwest end of
+Corstorphine Hill, with its trees and rocks, lay in the heart of this
+pure radiance, and there a wooden crane, used in the quarry below, was
+so placed as to assume the figure of a cross; there it was,
+unmistakable, lifted up against the crystalline sky. All three gazed at
+it silently. As they gazed, he gave utterance in a tremulous, gentle,
+and rapid voice, to what all were feeling, in the word "CALVARY!" The
+friends walked on in silence, and then turned to other things. All that
+evening he was very gentle and serious, speaking, as he seldom did, of
+divine things,--of death, of sin, of eternity, of salvation; expressing
+his simple faith in God and in his Savior.
+
+There is a passage at the close of the 'Roundabout Paper' No. 23, 'De
+Finibus,' in which a sense of the ebb of life is very marked; the whole
+paper is like a soliloquy. It opens with a drawing of Mr. Punch, with
+unusually mild eye, retiring for the night; he is putting out his
+high-heeled shoes, and before disappearing gives a wistful look into the
+passage, as if bidding it and all else good-night. He will be in bed,
+his candle out, and in darkness, in five minutes, and his shoes found
+next morning at his door, the little potentate all the while in his
+final sleep. The whole paper is worth the most careful study; it reveals
+not a little of his real nature, and unfolds very curiously the secret
+of his work, the vitality and abiding power of his own creations; how he
+"invented a certain Costigan, out of scraps, heel-taps, odds and ends of
+characters," and met the original the other day, without surprise, in a
+tavern parlor. The following is beautiful: "Years ago I had a quarrel
+with a certain well-known person (I believed a statement regarding him
+which his friends imparted to me, and which turned out to be quite
+incorrect). To his dying day that quarrel was never quite made up. I
+said to his brother, 'Why is your brother's soul still dark against me?
+_It is I who ought to be angry and unforgiving, for I was in the
+wrong_.'" _Odisse quem laeseris_ was never better contravened. But what
+we chiefly refer to now is the profound pensiveness of the following
+strain, as if written with a presentiment of what was not then very far
+off:--"Another Finis written; another milestone on this journey from
+birth to the next world. Sure it is a subject for solemn cogitation.
+Shall we continue this story-telling business, and be voluble to the end
+of our age?" "Will it not be presently time, O prattler, to hold your
+tongue?" And thus he ends:--
+
+"Oh, the sad old pages, the dull old pages; oh, the cares, the _ennui_,
+the squabbles, the repetitions, the old conversations over and over
+again! But now and again a kind thought is recalled, and now and again a
+dear memory. Yet a few chapters more, and then the last; after which,
+behold Finis itself comes to an end, and the Infinite begins."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He had been suffering on Sunday from an old and cruel enemy. He fixed
+with his friend and surgeon to come again on Tuesday, but with that
+dread of anticipated pain which is a common condition of sensibility and
+genius, he put him off with a note from "yours unfaithfully, W.M.T." He
+went out on Wednesday for a little, and came home at ten. He went to his
+room, suffering much, but declining his man's offer to sit with him. He
+hated to make others suffer. He was heard moving, as if in pain, about
+twelve, on the eve of--
+
+     "That happy morn
+     Wherein the Son of Heaven's eternal King,
+     Of wedded maid and virgin-mother born,
+     Our great redemption from above did bring."
+
+Then all was quiet, and then he must have died--in a moment. Next
+morning his man went in, and opening the windows found his master dead,
+his arms behind his head, as if he had tried to take one more breath. We
+think of him as of our Chalmers, found dead in like manner: the same
+childlike, unspoiled, open face; the same gentle mouth; the same
+spaciousness and softness of nature; the same look of power. What a
+thing to think of,--his lying there alone in the dark, in the midst of
+his own mighty London; his mother and his daughters asleep, and, it may
+be, dreaming of his goodness. God help them, and us all! What would
+become of us, stumbling along this our path of life, if we could not, at
+our utmost need, stay ourselves on Him?
+
+Long years of sorrow, labor, and pain had killed him before his time. It
+was found after death how little life he had to live. He looked always
+fresh, with that abounding silvery hair, and his young, almost infantine
+face, but he was worn to a shadow, and his hands wasted as if by eighty
+years. With him it is the end of Ends; finite is over and, infinite
+begun. What we all felt and feel can never be so well expressed as in
+his own words of sorrow for the early death of Charles Buller:--
+
+     "Who knows the inscrutable design?
+        Blest He who took and He who gave!
+      Why should your mother, Charles, not mine,
+        Be weeping at her darling's grave?
+      We bow to heaven that willed it so,
+        That darkly rules the fate of all,
+      That sends the respite or the blow,
+        That's free to give or to recall."
+
+
+
+CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE (ARTEMUS WARD)
+
+(1834-1867)
+
+BY CHARLES F. JOHNSON
+
+Charles Farrar Brown, better known to the public of thirty years ago
+under his pen-name of Artemus Ward, was born in the little village of
+Waterford, Maine, on the 26th day of April, 1834. Waterford is a quiet
+village of about seven hundred inhabitants, lying among the foot-hills
+of the White Mountains. When Browne was a child it was a station on the
+western stage-route, and an important depot for lumbermen's supplies.
+Since the extension of railroads northerly and westerly from the
+seaboard, it has however shared the fate of many New England villages in
+being left on one side of the main currents of commercial activity, and
+gradually assuming a character of repose and leisure, in many regards
+more attractive than the life and bustle of earlier days. Many persons
+are still living there who remember the humorist as a quaint and tricksy
+boy, alternating between laughter and preternatural gravity, and of a
+surprising ingenuity in devising odd practical jokes in which good
+nature so far prevailed that even the victims were too much amused to be
+very angry.
+
+[Illustration: Charles F. Browne]
+
+On both sides, he came from original New England stock; and although he
+was proud of his descent from a very ancient English family, in
+deference to whom he wrote his name with the final "e," he felt greater
+pride in his American ancestors, and always said that they were genuine
+and primitive Yankees,--people of intelligence, activity, and integrity
+in business, but entirely unaffected by new-fangled ideas. It is
+interesting to notice that Browne's humor was hereditary on the paternal
+side, his father especially being noted for his quaint sayings and
+harmless eccentricities. His cousin Daniel many years later bore a
+strong resemblance to what Charles had been, and he too possessed a
+kindred humorous faculty and told a story in much the same solemn
+manner, bringing out the point as if it were something entirely
+irrelevant and unimportant and casually remembered. The subject of this
+sketch, however, was the only member of the family in whom a love for
+the droll and incongruous was a controlling disposition. As is
+frequently the case, a family trait was intensified in one individual to
+the point where talent passes over into genius.
+
+On his mother's side, too, Browne was a thorough-bred New-Englander. His
+maternal grandfather, Mr. Calvin Farrar, was a man of influence in town
+and State, and was able to send two of his sons to Bowdoin College. I
+have mentioned Browne's parentage because his humor is so essentially
+American. Whether this consists in a peculiar gravity in the humorous
+attitude towards the subject, rather than playfulness, or in a tendency
+to exaggerated statement, or in a broad humanitarian standpoint, or in a
+certain flavor given by a blending of all these, it is very difficult to
+decide. Probably the peculiar standpoint is the distinguishing note, and
+American humor is a product of democracy.
+
+Humor is as difficult of definition as is poetry. It is an intimate
+quality of the mind, which predisposes a man to look for remote and
+unreal analogies and to present them gravely as if they were valid. It
+sees that many of the objects valued by men are illusions, and it
+expresses this conviction by assuming that other manifest trifles are
+important. It is the deadly enemy of sentimentality and affectation, for
+its vision is clear. Although it turns everything topsy-turvy in sport,
+its world is not a chaos nor a child's play-ground, for humor is based
+on keen perception of truth. There is no method--except the highest
+poetic treatment--which reveals so distinctly the falsehoods and
+hypocrisies of the social and economic order as the _reductio ad
+absurdum_ of humor; for all human institutions have their ridiculous
+sides, which astonish and amuse us when pointed out, but from viewing
+which we suddenly become aware of relative values before misunderstood.
+But just as poetry may degenerate into a musical collection of words and
+painting into a decorative association of colors, so humor may
+degenerate into the merely comic or amusing. The laugh which true humor
+arouses is not far removed from tears. Humor indeed is not always
+associated with kindliness, for we have the sardonic humor of Carlyle
+and the savage humor of Swift; but it is naturally dissociated from
+egotism, and is never more attractive than when, as in the case of
+Charles Lamb and Oliver Goldsmith, it is based on a loving and generous
+interest in humanity.
+
+Humor, must rest on a broad human foundation, and cannot be narrowed to
+the notions of a certain class. But in most English humor,--as indeed in
+all English literature except the very highest,--the social class to
+which the writer does not belong is regarded _ab extra_. In Punch, for
+instance, not only are servants always given a conventional set of
+features, but they are given conventional minds, and the jokes are based
+on a hypothetical conception of personality. Dickens was a great
+humorist, and understood the nature of the poor because he had been one
+of them; but his gentlemen and ladies are lay figures. Thackeray's
+studies of the flunky are capital; but he studies him _qua flunky_, as a
+naturalist might study an animal, and hardly ranks him _sub specie
+humanitatis_. But to the American humorist all men are primarily men.
+The waiter and the prince are equally ridiculous to him, because in each
+he finds similar incongruities between the man and his surroundings; but
+in England there is a deep impassable gulf between the man at the table
+and the man behind his chair. This democratic independence of external
+and adventitious circumstance sometimes gives a tone of irreverence to
+American persiflage, and the temporary character of class distinctions
+in America undoubtedly diminishes the amount of literary material "in
+sight" but when, as in the case of Browne and Clemens, there is in the
+humorist's mind a basis of reverence for things and persons that are
+really reverend, it gives a breadth and freedom to the humorous
+conception that is distinctively American.
+
+We put Clemens and Browne in the same line, because in reading a page of
+either we feel at once the American touch. Browne of course is not to be
+compared to Clemens in affluence or in range in depicting humorous
+character-types; but it must be remembered that Clemens has lived thirty
+active years longer than his predecessor did. Neither has written a line
+that he would wish to blot for its foul suggestion, or because it
+ridiculed things that were lovely and of good report. Both were educated
+in journalism, and came into direct contact with the strenuous and
+realistic life of labor. And to repeat, though one was born and bred
+west of the Mississippi and the other far "down east," both are
+distinctly American. Had either been born and passed his childhood
+outside our magic line, this resemblance would not have existed. And yet
+we cannot say precisely wherein this likeness lies, nor what caused it;
+so deep, so subtle, so pervading is the influence of nationality. But
+their original expressions of the American humorous tone are worth ten
+thousand literary echoes of Sterne or Lamb or Dickens or Thackeray.
+
+The education of young Browne was limited to the strictly preparatory
+years. At the age of thirteen he was forced by the death of his father
+to try to earn his living. When about fourteen, he was apprenticed to a
+Mr. Rex, who published a paper at Lancaster, New Hampshire. He remained
+there about a year, then worked on various country papers, and finally
+passed three years in the printing-house of Snow and Wilder, Boston. He
+then went to Ohio, and after working for some months on the Tiffin
+Advertiser, went to Toledo, where he remained till the fall of 1857.
+Thence he went to Cleveland, Ohio, as local editor of the Plain Dealer.
+Here appeared the humorous letters signed "Artemus Ward" and written in
+the character of an itinerant showman. In 1860 he went to New York as
+editor of the comic journal Vanity Fair.
+
+His reputation grew steadily, and his first volume, 'Artemus Ward, His
+Book,' was brought out in 1862. In 1863 he went to San Francisco by way
+of the Isthmus and returned overland. This journey was chronicled in a
+short volume, 'Artemus Ward, His Travels.' He had already undertaken a
+career of lecturing, and his comic entertainments, given in a style
+peculiarly his own, became very popular. The mimetic gift is frequently
+found in the humorist; and Browne's peculiar drawl, his profound gravity
+and dreamy, far-away expression, the unexpected character of his jokes
+and the surprise with which he seemed to regard the audience, made a
+combination of a delightfully quaint absurdity. Browne himself was a
+very winning personality, and never failed to put his audience in good
+humor. None who knew him twenty-nine years ago think of him without
+tenderness. In 1866 he visited England, and became almost as popular
+there as lecturer and writer for Punch. He died from a pulmonary trouble
+in Southampton, March 6th, 1867, being not quite thirty-three years old.
+He was never married.
+
+When we remember that a large part of Browne's mature life was taken up
+in learning the printer's trade, in which he became a master, we must
+decide that he had only entered on his career as humorous writer. Much
+of what he wrote is simply amusing, with little depth or power of
+suggestion; it is comic, not humorous. He was gaining the ear of the
+public and training his powers of expression. What he has left consists
+of a few collections of sketches written for a daily paper. But the
+subjoined extracts will show, albeit dimly, that he was more than a
+joker, as under the cap and bells of the fool in Lear we catch a glimpse
+of the face of a tender-hearted and philosophic friend. Browne's nature
+was so kindly and sympathetic, so pure and manly, that after he had
+achieved a reputation and was relieved from immediate pecuniary
+pressure, he would have felt an ambition to do some worthy work and take
+time to bring out the best that was in him. As it is, he had only tried
+his 'prentice hand. Still, the figure of the old showman, though not
+very solidly painted, is admirably done. He is a sort of sublimated and
+unoffensive Barnum; perfectly consistent, permeated with his
+professional view of life, yet quite incapable of anything underhand or
+mean; radically loyal to the Union, appreciative of the nature of his
+animals, steady in his humorous attitude toward life: and above all, not
+a composite of shreds and patches, but a personality. Slight as he is,
+and unconscious and unpracticed as is the art that went to his creation,
+he is one of the humorous figures of all literature; and old Sir John
+Falstaff, Sir Roger de Coverley, Uncle Toby, and Dr. Primrose will not
+disdain to admit him into their company; for he too is a man, not an
+abstraction, and need not be ashamed of his parentage nor doubtful of
+his standing among the "children of the men of wit."
+
+
+
+EDWIN FORREST AS OTHELLO
+
+Durin a recent visit to New York the undersined went to see Edwin
+Forrest. As I am into the moral show biziness myself I ginrally go to
+Barnum's moral museum, where only moral peeple air admitted, partickly
+on Wednesday arternoons. But this time I thot I'd go and see Ed. Ed has
+bin actin out on the stage for many years. There is varis 'pinions about
+his actin, Englishmen ginrally bleevin that he's far superior to Mister
+Macready; but on one pint all agree, & that is that Ed draws like a
+six-ox team. Ed was actin at Niblo's Garding, which looks considerable
+more like a parster than a garding, but let that pars. I sot down in the
+pit, took out my spectacles and commenced peroosin the evenin's bill.
+The awjince was all-fired large & the boxes was full of the elitty of
+New York. Several opery glasses was leveled at me by Gotham's fairest
+darters, but I didn't let on as tho I noticed it, tho mebby I did take
+out my sixteen-dollar silver watch & brandish it round more than was
+necessary. But the best of us has our weaknesses & if a man has gewelry
+let him show it. As I was peroosin the bill a grave young man who sot
+near me axed me if I'd ever seen Forrest dance the Essence of Old
+Virginny. "He's immense in that," sed the young man. "He also does a
+fair champion jig," the young man continnered, "but his Big Thing is the
+Essence of Old Virginny." Sez I, "Fair youth, do you know what I'd do
+with you if you was my sun?"
+
+"No," sez he.
+
+"Wall," sez I, "I'd appint your funeral to-morrow arternoon, & the
+_korps should be ready_. You're too smart to live on this yerth."
+
+He didn't try any more of his capers on me. But another pussylanermuss
+individooul in a red vest and patent leather boots told me his name was
+Bill Astor & axed me to lend him 50 cents till early in the mornin. I
+told him I'd probly send it round to him before he retired to his
+virtoous couch, but if I didn't he might look for it next fall as soon
+as I'd cut my corn. The orchestry was now fiddling with all their might
+& as the peeple didn't understan anything about it they applaudid
+versifrusly. Presently old Ed cum out. The play was Otheller or More of
+Veniss. Otheller was writ by Wm. Shakspeer. The seene is laid in Veniss.
+Otheller was a likely man & was a ginral in the Veniss army. He eloped
+with Desdemony, a darter of the Hon. Mr. Brabantio, who represented one
+of the back districks in the Veneshun legislater. Old Brabantio was as
+mad as thunder at this & tore round considerable, but finally cooled
+down, tellin Otheller, howsoever, that Desdemony had come it over her
+par, & that he had better look out or she'd come it over him likewise.
+Mr. and Mrs. Otheller git along very comfortable-like for a spell. She
+is sweet-tempered and lovin--a nice, sensible female, never goin in for
+he-female conventions, green cotton umbrellers, and pickled beats.
+Otheller is a good provider and thinks all the world of his wife. She
+has a lazy time of it, the hird girl doin all the cookin and washin.
+Desdemony in fact don't have to git the water to wash her own hands
+with. But a low cuss named Iago, who I bleeve wants to git Otheller out
+of his snug government birth, now goes to work & upsets the Otheller
+family in most outrajus stile. Iago falls in with a brainless youth
+named Roderigo & wins all his money at poker. (Iago allers played foul.)
+He thus got money enuff to carry out his onprincipled skeem. Mike
+Cassio, a Irishman, is selected as a tool by Iago. Mike was a clever
+feller & a orficer in Otheller's army. He liked his tods too well,
+howsoever, & they floored him as they have many other promisin young
+men. Iago injuces Mike to drink with him, Iago slily throwin his whiskey
+over his shoulder. Mike gits as drunk as a biled owl & allows that he
+can lick a yard full of the Veneshun fancy before breakfast, without
+sweatin a hair. He meets Roderigo & proceeds for to smash him. A feller
+named Mentano undertakes to slap Cassio, when that infatooated person
+runs his sword into him. That miserble man, Iago, pretends to be very
+sorry to see Mike conduck hisself in this way & undertakes to smooth the
+thing over to Otheller, who rushes in with a drawn sword & wants to know
+what's up. Iago cunningly tells his story & Otheller tells Mike that he
+thinks a good deal of him but that he cant train no more in his
+regiment. Desdemony sympathises with poor Mike & interceds for him with
+Otheller. Iago makes him bleeve she does this because she thinks more of
+Mike than she does of hisself. Otheller swallers Iagos lyin tail & goes
+to makin a noosence of hisself ginrally. He worries poor Desdemony
+terrible by his vile insinuations & finally smothers her to deth with a
+piller. Mrs. Iago comes in just as Otheller has finished the fowl deed &
+givs him fits right & left, showin him that he has been orfully gulled
+by her miserble cuss of a husband. Iago cums in & his wife commences
+rakin him down also, when he stabs her. Otheller jaws him a spell & then
+cuts a small hole in his stummick with his sword. Iago pints to
+Desdemony's deth bed & goes orf with a sardonic smile onto his
+countenance. Otheller tells the peple that he has dun the state some
+service & they know it; axes them to do as fair a thing as they can for
+him under the circumstances, & kills hisself with a fish-knife, which is
+the most sensible thing he can do. This is a breef skedule of the
+synopsis of the play.
+
+Edwin Forrest is a grate acter. I thot I saw Otheller before me all the
+time he was actin &, when the curtin fell, I found my spectacles was
+still mistened with salt-water, which had run from my eyes while poor
+Desdemony was dyin. Betsy Jane--Betsy Jane! let us pray that our
+domestic bliss may never be busted up by a Iago!
+
+Edwin Forrest makes money actin out on the stage. He gits five hundred
+dollars a nite & his board & washin. I wish I had such a Forrest in
+my Garding!
+
+Copyrighted by G.W. Dillingham and Company, New York.
+
+HIGH-HANDED OUTRAGE AT UTICA
+
+In the fall of 1856 I showed my show in Utiky, a trooly grate sitty in
+the State of New York.
+
+The people gave me a cordyal recepshun. The press was loud in her
+prases.
+
+1 day as I was givin a descripshun of my Beests and Snaiks in my usual
+flowry stile, what was my skorn & disgust to see a big burly feller walk
+up to the cage containin my wax figgers of the Lord's Last Supper, and
+cease Judas Iscariot by the feet and drag him out on the ground. He then
+commenced fur to pound him as hard as he cood.
+
+"What under the son are you abowt?" cried I.
+
+Sez he, "What did you bring this pussylanermus cuss here fur?" & he hit
+the wax figger another tremenjus blow on the hed.
+
+Sez I, "You egrejus ass that air's a wax figger--a representashun of the
+false 'Postle."
+
+Sez he, "That's all very well fur you to say, but I tell you, old man,
+that Judas Iscariot can't show hisself in Utiky with impunerty by a darn
+site!" with which observashun he kaved in Judassis hed. The young man
+belonged to 1 of the first famerlies in Utiky. I sood him and the Joory
+brawt in a verdick of Arson in the 3d degree.
+
+Copyrighted by G.W. Dillingham and Company, New York.
+
+AFFAIRS ROUND THE VILLAGE GREEN
+
+And where are the friends of my youth? I have found one of 'em,
+certainly. I saw him ride in a circus the other day on a bareback horse,
+and even now his name stares at me from yonder board-fence in green and
+blue and red and yellow letters. Dashington, the youth with whom I used
+to read the able orations of Cicero, and who as a declaimer on
+exhibition days used to wipe the rest of us boys pretty handsomely
+out--well, Dashington is identified with the halibut and cod interests
+--drives a fish-cart, in fact, from a certain town on the coast back
+into the interior. Hurburtson--the utterly stupid boy--the lunkhead who
+never had his lesson, he's about the ablest lawyer a sister State can
+boast. Mills is a newspaper man, and is just now editing a Major General
+down South. Singlingson, the sweet-faced boy whose face was always
+washed and who was never rude, _he_ is in the penitentiary for putting
+his uncle's autograph to a financial document. Hawkins, the clergyman's
+son, is an actor; and Williamson, the good little boy who divided his
+bread and butter with the beggar-man, is a failing merchant, and makes
+money by it. Tom Slink, who used to smoke Short Sixes and get acquainted
+with the little circus boys, is popularly supposed to be the proprietor
+of a cheap gaming establishment in Boston, where the beautiful but
+uncertain prop is nightly tossed. Be sure the Army is represented by
+many of the friends of my youth, the most of whom have given a good
+account of themselves.
+
+But Chalmerson hasn't done much. No, Chalmerson is rather of a failure.
+He plays on the guitar and sings love-songs. Not that he is a bad man--a
+kinder-hearted creature never lived, and they say he hasn't yet got over
+crying for his little curly-haired sister who died ever so long ago. But
+he knows nothing about business, politics, the world, and those things.
+He is dull at trade--indeed, it is the common remark that "Everybody
+cheats Chalmerson." He came to the party the other evening and brought
+his guitar. They wouldn't have him for a tenor in the opera, certainly,
+for he is shaky in his upper notes; but if his simple melodies didn't
+gush straight from the heart! why, even my trained eyes were wet! And
+although some of the girls giggled, and some of the men seemed to pity
+him, I could not help fancying that poor Chalmerson was nearer heaven
+than any of us all.
+
+Copyrighted by G. W. Dillingham and Company.
+
+MR. PEPPER
+
+From 'Artemus Ward: His Travels'
+
+My arrival at Virginia City was signalized by the following incident:--
+
+I had no sooner achieved my room in the garret of the International
+Hotel than I was called upon by an intoxicated man, who said he was an
+Editor. Knowing how rare it is for an Editor to be under the blighting
+influence of either spirituous or malt liquors, I received this
+statement doubtfully. But I said:
+
+"What name?"
+
+"Wait!" he said, and went out.
+
+I heard him pacing unsteadily up and down the hall outside.
+
+In ten minutes he returned, and said, "Pepper!"
+
+Pepper was indeed his name. He had been out to see if he could remember
+it, and he was so flushed with his success that he repeated it joyously
+several times, and then, with a short laugh, he went away.
+
+I had often heard of a man being "so drunk that he didn't know what town
+he lived in," but here was a man so hideously inebriated that he didn't
+know what his name was.
+
+I saw him no more, but I heard from him. For he published a notice of my
+lecture, in which he said that I had _a dissipated air!_
+
+HORACE GREELEY'S RIDE TO PLACERVILLE
+
+From 'Artemus Ward: His Travels'
+
+When Mr. Greeley was in California, ovations awaited him at every town.
+He had written powerful leaders in the Tribune in favor of the Pacific
+Railroad, which had greatly endeared him to the citizens of the Golden
+State. And therefore they made much of him when he went to see them.
+
+At one town the enthusiastic populace tore his celebrated white coat to
+pieces and carried the pieces home to remember him by.
+
+The citizens of Placerville prepared to fete the great journalist,
+and an extra coach with extra relays of horses was chartered
+of the California Stage Company to carry him from Folsom to
+Placerville--distance, forty miles. The extra was in some way delayed,
+and did not leave Folsom until late in the afternoon. Mr. Greeley was to
+be feted at seven o'clock that evening by the citizens of Placerville,
+and it was altogether necessary that he should be there by that time. So
+the Stage Company said to Henry Monk, the driver of the extra, "Henry,
+this great man must be there by seven to-night." And Henry answered,
+"The great man shall be there."
+
+The roads were in an awful state, and during the first few miles out of
+Folsom slow progress was made.
+
+"Sir," said Mr. Greeley, "are you aware that I must be in Placerville at
+seven o'clock to-night?"
+
+"I've got my orders!" laconically replied Henry Monk.
+
+Still the coach dragged slowly forward.
+
+"Sir," said Mr. Greeley, "this is not a trifling matter. I _must_ be
+there at seven!"
+
+Again came the answer, "I've got my orders!"
+
+But the speed was not increased, and Mr. Greeley chafed away another
+half-hour; when, as he was again about to remonstrate with the driver,
+the horses suddenly started into a furious run, and all sorts of
+encouraging yells filled the air from the throat of Henry Monk.
+
+"That is right, my good fellow," said Mr. Greeley. "I'll give you ten
+dollars when we get to Placerville. Now we are going!"
+
+They were indeed, and at a terrible speed.
+
+Crack, crack! went the whip, and again "that voice" split the air, "Get
+up! Hi-yi! G'long! Yip-yip."
+
+And on they tore over stones and ruts, up hill and down, at a rate of
+speed never before achieved by stage horses.
+
+Mr. Greeley, who had been bouncing from one end of the stage to the
+other like an India-rubber ball, managed to get his head out of the
+window, when he said:--
+
+"Do-on't-on't-on't you-u-u think we-e-e-e shall get there by seven if we
+do-on't-on't go so fast?"
+
+"I've got my orders!" That was all Henry Monk said. And on tore the
+coach.
+
+It was becoming serious. Already the journalist was extremely sore from
+the terrible jolting--and again his head "might have been seen from
+the window."
+
+"Sir," he said, "I don't care-care-air if we _don't_ get there at
+seven."
+
+"I've got my orders!" Fresh horses--forward again, faster than
+before--over rocks and stumps, on one of which the coach narrowly
+escaped turning a summerset.
+
+"See here!" shrieked Mr. Greeley, "I don't care if we don't get there at
+all."
+
+"I've got my orders! I work fer the California Stage Company, I do.
+That's wot I _work_ fer. They said, 'Get this man through by seving.'
+An' this man's goin' through, you bet! Gerlong! Whoo-ep!"
+
+Another frightful jolt, and Mr. Greeley's bald head suddenly found its
+way through the roof of the coach, amidst the crash of small timbers and
+the ripping of strong canvas.
+
+"Stop, you--maniac!" he roared.
+
+Again answered Henry Monk:--
+
+"I've got my orders! _Keep your seat, Horace!_"
+
+At Mud Springs, a village a few miles from Placerville, they met a large
+delegation of the citizens of Placerville, who had come out to meet the
+celebrated editor, and escort him into town. There was a military
+company, a brass band, and a six-horse wagon-load of beautiful damsels
+in milk-white dresses, representing all the States in the Union. It was
+nearly dark now, but the delegation was amply provided with torches, and
+bonfires blazed all along the road to Placerville.
+
+The citizens met the coach in the outskirts of Mud Springs, and Mr. Monk
+reined in his foam-covered steeds.
+
+"Is Mr. Greeley on board?" asked the chairman of the committee.
+
+"_He was, a few miles back_!" said Mr. Monk. "Yes," he added, looking
+down through the hole which the fearful jolting had made in the
+coach-roof, "Yes, I can see him! He is there!"
+
+"Mr. Greeley," said the chairman of the committee, presenting himself at
+the window of the coach, "Mr. Greeley, sir! We are come to most
+cordially welcome you, sir!--Why, God bless me, sir, you are bleeding at
+the nose!"
+
+"I've got my orders!" cried Mr. Monk. "My orders is as follows: Git him
+there by seving! It wants a quarter to seving. Stand out of the way!"
+
+"But, sir," exclaimed the committee-man, seizing the off-leader by the
+reins, "Mr. Monk, we are come to escort him into town! Look at the
+procession, sir, and the brass-band, and the people, and the young
+women, sir!"
+
+"_I've got my orders_!" screamed Mr. Monk. "My orders don't say nothin'
+about no brass bands and young women. My orders says, 'Git him there by
+seving.' Let go them lines! Clear the way there! Whoo-ep! Keep your
+seat, Horace!" and the coach dashed wildly through the procession,
+upsetting a portion of the brass band, and violently grazing the wagon
+which contained the beautiful young women in white.
+
+Years hence, gray-haired men who were little boys in this procession
+will tell their grandchildren how this stage tore through Mud Springs,
+and how Horace Greeley's bald head ever and anon showed itself like a
+wild apparition above the coach-roof.
+
+Mr. Monk was on time. There is a tradition that Mr. Greeley was very
+indignant for a while: then he laughed and finally presented Mr. Monk
+with a brand-new suit of clothes. Mr. Monk himself is still in the
+employ of the California Stage Company, and is rather fond of relating a
+story that has made him famous all over the Pacific coast. But he says
+he yields to no man in his admiration for Horace Greeley.
+
+
+
+SIR THOMAS BROWNE
+
+(1605-1682)
+
+BY FRANCIS BACON
+
+When Sir Thomas Browne, in the last decade of his life, was asked to
+furnish data for the writing of his memoirs in Wood's 'Athenae
+Oxonienses,' he gave in a letter to his friend Mr. Aubrey in the fewest
+words his birthplace and the places of his education, his admission as
+"Socius Honorarius of the College of Physitians in London," the date of
+his being knighted, and the titles of the four books or tracts which he
+had printed; and ended with "Have some miscellaneous tracts which may be
+published."
+
+This account of himself, curter than many an epitaph, and scantier in
+details than the requirements of a census-taker's blank, may serve, with
+many other signs that one finds scattered among the pages of this
+author, to show his rare modesty and effacement of his physical self. He
+seems, like some other thoughtful and sensitive natures before and
+since, averse or at least indifferent to being put on record as an
+eating, digesting, sleeping, and clothes-wearing animal, of that species
+of which his contemporary Sir Samuel Pepys stands as the classical
+instance, and which the newspaper interviewer of our own day--that
+"fellow who would vulgarize the Day of Judgment"--has trained to the
+most noxious degree of offensiveness.
+
+[Illustration: SIR THOMAS BROWNE]
+
+Sir Thomas felt, undoubtedly, that having admitted that select
+company--"fit audience though few"--who are students of the 'Religio
+Medici' to a close intimacy with his highest mental processes and
+conditions, his "separable accidents," affairs of assimilation and
+secretion as one may say, were business between himself and his grocer
+and tailor, his cook and his laundress.
+
+The industrious research of Mr. Simon Wilkin, who in 1836 produced the
+completest edition (William Pickering, London) of the literary remains
+of Sir Thomas Browne, has gathered from all sources--his own note-books,
+domestic and friendly correspondence, allusions of contemporary writers
+and the works of subsequent biographers--all that we are likely, this
+side of Paradise, to know of this great scholar and admirable man.
+
+The main facts of his life are as follows. He was born in the Parish of
+St. Michael's Cheap, in London, on the 19th of October, 1605 (the year
+of the Gunpowder Plot). His father, as is apologetically admitted by a
+granddaughter, Mrs. Littleton, "was a tradesman, a mercer, though a
+gentleman of a good family in Cheshire" (_generosa familia_, says Sir
+Thomas's own epitaph). That he was the parent of his son's temperament,
+a devout man with a leaning toward mysticism in religion, is shown by
+the charming story Mrs. Littleton tells of him, exhibiting traits worthy
+of the best ages of faith, and more to be expected in the father of a
+mediaeval saint than in a prosperous Cheapside mercer, whose son was to
+be one of the most learned and philosophical physicians of the age of
+Harvey and Sydenham:--"His father used to open his breast when he was
+asleep and kiss it in prayers over him, as 'tis said of Origen's father,
+that the Holy Ghost would take possession there." Clearly, it was with
+reverent memory of this good man that Sir Thomas, near the close of his
+own long life, wrote:--"Among thy multiplied acknowledgments, lift up
+one hand unto heaven that thou wert born of honest parents; that
+modesty, humility, patience, and veracity lay in the same egg and came
+into the world with thee."
+
+This loving father, of whom one would fain know more, died in the early
+childhood of his son Thomas. He left a handsome estate of L9,000, and a
+widow not wholly inconsolable with her third portion and a not unduly
+deferred second marriage to a titled gentleman, Sir Thomas Button,--a
+knight so scantily and at the same time so variously described, as "a
+worthy person who had great places," and "a bad member" of "mutinous and
+unworthy carriage," that one is content to leave him as a problematical
+character.
+
+The boy Thomas Browne being left to the care of guardians, his estate
+was despoiled, though to what extent does not appear; nor can it be
+considered greatly deplorable, since it did not prevent his early
+schooling at that ancient and noble foundation of Winchester, nor in
+1623 his entrance into Pembroke College, Oxford, and in due course his
+graduation in 1626 as bachelor of arts. With what special assistance or
+direction he began his studies in medical science, cannot now be
+ascertained; but after taking his degree of master of arts in 1629, he
+practiced physic for about two years in some uncertain place in
+Oxfordshire. He then began a course of travel, unusually extensive for
+that day. His stepfather upon occasion of his official duties under the
+government "shewed him all Ireland in some visitation of the forts and
+castles." It is improbable that Ireland at that time long detained a
+traveler essentially literary in his tastes. Browne betook himself to
+France and Italy, where he appears to have spent about two years,
+residing at Montpellier and Padua, then great centres of medical
+learning, with students drawn from most parts of Christendom. Returning
+homeward through Holland, he received the degree of doctor of medicine
+from the University of Leyden in 1633, and settled in practice at
+Halifax, England.
+
+At this time--favored probably by the leisure which largely attends the
+beginning of a medical career, but which is rarely so laudably or
+productively employed,--he wrote the treatise 'Religio Medici,' which
+more than any other of his works has established his fame and won the
+affectionate admiration of thoughtful readers. This production was not
+printed until seven years later, although some unauthorized manuscript
+copies, more or less faulty, were in circulation. When in 1642 "it
+arrived in a most depraved copy at the press," Browne felt it necessary
+to vindicate himself by publishing a correct edition, although, he
+protests, its original "intention was not publick: and being a private
+exercise directed to myself, what is delivered therein was rather a
+memorial unto me than an example or rule unto any other."
+
+In 1636 he removed to Norwich and permanently established himself there
+in the practice of physic. There in 1641 he married Dorothy Mileham, a
+lady of good family in Norfolk; thereby not only improving his social
+connections, but securing a wife "of such symmetrical proportion to her
+worthy husband both in the graces of her body and mind, that they seemed
+to come together by a kind of natural magnetism." Such at least was the
+view of an intimate friend of more than forty years, Rev. John
+Whitefoot, in the 'Minutes' which, at the request of the widow, he drew
+up after Sir Thomas's death, and which contain the most that is known of
+his personal appearance and manners. Evidently the marriage was a happy
+one for forty-one years, when the Lady Dorothy was left _maestissima
+conjux_, as her husband's stately epitaph, rich with many an _issimus_,
+declares. Twelve children were born of it; and though only four of them
+survived their parents, such mortality in carefully tended and
+well-circumstanced families was less remarkable than it would be now,
+when two centuries more of progress in medical science have added
+security and length to human life.
+
+The good mother--had she not endeared herself to the modern reader by
+the affectionate gentleness and the quaint glimpses of domestic life
+that her family letters reveal--would be irresistible by the ingeniously
+bad spelling in which she reveled, transgressing even the wide limits
+then allowed to feminine heterography.
+
+It is noteworthy that Dr. Browne's professional prosperity was not
+impaired by the suspicion which early attached to him, and soon
+deepened into conviction, that he was addicted to literary pursuits. He
+was in high repute as a physician. His practice was extensive, and he
+was diligent in it, as also in those works of literature and scientific
+investigation which occupied all "snatches of time," he says, "as
+medical vacations and the fruitless importunity of uroscopy would
+permit." His large family was liberally reared; his hospitality and his
+charities were ample.
+
+In 1646 he printed his second book, the largest and most operose of all
+his productions: the 'Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Inquiries into Vulgar
+and Common Errors' the work evidently of the _horae subsecivae_ of many
+years. In 1658 he gave to the public two smaller but important and most
+characteristic works, 'Hydriotaphia' and 'The Garden of Cyrus.' Beside
+these publications he left many manuscripts which appeared posthumously;
+the most important of them, for its size and general interest, being
+'Christian Morals.'
+
+When Sir Thomas's long life drew to its close, it was with all the
+blessings "which should accompany old age." His domestic life had been
+one of felicity. His eldest and only surviving son, Edward Browne, had
+become a scholar after his father's own heart; and though not inheriting
+his genius, was already renowned in London, one of the physicians to the
+King, and in a way to become, as afterward he did, President of the
+College of Physicians. All his daughters who had attained womanhood had
+been well married. He lived in the society of the honorable and learned,
+and had received from the King the honor of knighthood[1].
+
+[Footnote 1: As for this business of the knighting, one hesitates fully
+to adopt Dr. Johnson's remark that Charles II. "had skill to discover
+excellence and virtue to reward it, at least with such honorary
+distinctions as cost him nothing." A candid observer of the walk and
+conversation of this illustrious monarch finds room for doubt that he
+was an attentive reader or consistent admirer of the 'Religio Medici,'
+or 'Christian Morals'; and though his own personal history might have
+contributed much to a complete catalogue of Vulgar Errors, Browne's
+treatise so named did not include divagations from common decency in its
+scope, and so may have failed to impress the royal mind. The fact is
+that the King on his visit to Norwich, looking about for somebody to
+knight, intended, as usual on such occasions, to confer the title on the
+mayor of the city; but this functionary,--some brewer or grocer perhaps,
+of whom nothing else than this incident is recorded,--declined the
+honor, whereupon the gap was stopped with Dr. Browne.]
+
+Mr. John Evelyn, carrying out a long and cherished plan of seeing one
+whom he had known and admired by his writings, visited him at Norwich in
+1671. He found Sir Thomas among fit surroundings, "his whole house and
+garden being a paradise and cabinet of rarities, and that of the best
+collections, especially medails, books, plants, and natural things[2]."
+Here we have the right background and accessories for Whitefoot's
+portrait of the central figure:--
+
+     "His complexion and hair ... answerable to his name, his
+     stature moderate, and habit of body neither fat nor lean but
+     [Greek: eusarkos;] ... never seen to be transported with
+     mirth or dejected with sadness; always cheerful, but rarely
+     merry at any sensible rate; seldom heard to break a jest, and
+     when he did, ... apt to blush at the levity of it: his
+     gravity was natural without affectation. His modesty ...
+     visible in a natural habitual blush, which was increased upon
+     the least occasion, and oft discovered without any observable
+     cause.... So free from loquacity or much talkativeness, that
+     he was something difficult to be engaged in any discourse;
+     though when he was so, it was always singular and never trite
+     or vulgar."
+
+[Footnote 2: These two distinguished authors were of congenial tastes,
+and both cultivated the same Latinistic literary diction. Their meeting
+must have occasioned a copious effusion of those "long-tailed words in
+osity and ation" which both had so readily at command or made to order.
+It is regrettable that Evelyn never completed a work entitled 'Elysium
+Brittannicum' which he planned, and to which Browne contributed a
+chapter 'Of Coronary Plants.' It would have taken rank with its author's
+'Sylva' among English classics.]
+
+A man of character so lofty and self-contained might be expected to
+leave a life so long, honorable, and beneficent with becoming dignity.
+Sir Thomas's last sickness, a brief but very painful one, was "endured
+with exemplary patience founded upon the Christian philosophy," and
+"with a meek, rational, and religious courage," much to the edification
+of his friend Whitefoot. One may see even a kind of felicity in his
+death, falling exactly on the completion of his seventy-seventh year.
+
+He was buried in the church of St. Peter Mancroft, where his monument
+still claims regard as chief among the _memorabilia_ of that noble
+sanctuary[3].
+
+[Footnote 3: In the course of repairs, "in August, 1840, his coffin was
+broken open by a pickaxe; the bones were found in good preservation, the
+fine auburn hair had not lost its freshness." It is painful to relate
+that the cranium was removed and placed in the pathological museum of
+the Norwich Hospital, labeled as "the gift of" some person (name not
+recalled), whose own cranium is probably an object of interest solely to
+its present proprietor. "Who knows the fate of his own bones? ... We
+insult not over their ashes," says Sir Thomas. The curator of the museum
+feels that he has a clever joke on the dead man, when with a grin he
+points to a label bearing these words from the 'Hydriotaphia':--"To be
+knaved out of our graves, to have our skulls made drinking-bowls, and
+our bones turned into pipes to delight and sport our enemies, are
+tragical abominations escaped in burning burials."]
+
+At the first appearance of Browne's several publications, they attracted
+that attention from the learned and thoughtful which they have ever
+since retained. The 'Religio Medici' was soon translated into several
+modern languages as well as into Latin, and became the subject of
+curiously diverse criticism. The book received the distinction of a
+place in the Roman 'Index Expurgatorius,' while from various points of
+view its author was regarded as a Romanist, an atheist, a deist, a
+pantheist, and as bearing the number 666 somewhere about him.
+
+A worthy Quaker, a fellow-townsman, was so impressed by his tone of
+quietistic mysticism that he felt sure the philosophic doctor was guided
+by "the inward light," and wrote, sending a godly book, and proposing to
+clinch his conversion in a personal interview. Such are the perils that
+environ the man who not only repeats a creed in sincerity, but ventures
+to do and to utter his own thinking about it.
+
+From Browne's own day to the present time his critics and commentators
+have been numerous and distinguished; one of the most renowned among
+them being Dr. Johnson, whose life of the author, prefixed to an edition
+of the 'Christian Morals' in 1756, is a fine specimen of that facile and
+effective hack-work of which Johnson was master. In that characteristic
+way of his, half of patronage, half of reproof, and wholly pedagogical,
+he summons his subject to the bar of his dialectics, and according to
+his lights administers justice. He admits that Browne has "great
+excellencies" and "uncommon sentiments," and that his scholarship and
+science are admirable, but strongly condemns his style: "It is vigorous,
+but rugged; it is learned, but pedantic; it is deep, but obscure; it
+strikes, but does not please; it commands, but does not allure; his
+tropes are harsh and his combinations uncouth."
+
+Behemoth prescribing rules of locomotion to the swan! By how much would
+English letters have been the poorer if Browne had learned his art
+of Johnson!
+
+Notwithstanding such objurgations, some have supposed that the style of
+Johnson, perhaps without conscious intent, was founded upon that of
+Browne. A tone of oracular authority, an academic Latinism sometimes
+disregarding the limitations of the unlearned reader, an elaborate
+balancing of antitheses in the same period,--these are qualities which
+the two writers have in common. But the resemblance, such as it is, is
+skin-deep. Johnson is a polemic by nature, and at his best cogent and
+triumphant in argument. His thought is carefully kept level with the
+apprehension of the ordinary reader, while arrayed in a verbal pomp
+simulating the expression of something weighty and profound. Browne is
+intuitive and ever averse to controversy, feeling, as he exquisitely
+says, that "many have too rashly charged the troops of error and remain
+as trophies unto the enemies of truth. A man may be in as just
+possession of the truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender."
+Calmly philosophic, he writes for kindred minds, and his concepts
+satisfying his own intellect, he delivers them with as little passion as
+an AEolian harp answering the wind, and lingers not for applause or
+explanation. His being
+
+     "Those thoughts that wander through eternity,"
+
+he means that we too shall "have a glimpse of incomprehensibles, and
+thoughts of things which thoughts but tenderly touch."
+
+How grandly he rounds his pregnant paragraphs with phrases which for
+stately and compulsive rhythm, sonorous harmony, and sweetly solemn
+cadences, are almost matchless in English prose, and lack only the
+mechanism of metre to give them the highest rank as verse.
+
+"Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave,
+solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting
+ceremonies of bravery in the infancy of his nature;" "When personations
+shall cease, and histrionism of happiness be over; when reality shall
+rule, and all shall be as they shall be forever:"--such passages as
+these, and the whole of the 'Fragment on Mummies,' one can scarcely
+recite without falling into something of that chant which the blank
+verse of Milton and Tennyson seems to enforce.
+
+That the 'Religio Medici' was the work of a gentleman before his
+thirtieth year, not a recluse nor trained in a cloister, but active in a
+calling which keeps closest touch with the passions and frailties of
+humanity, seems to justify his assertion, "I have shaken hands with
+delight [_sc._ by way of parting] in my warm blood and canicular days."
+So uniformly lofty and dignified is its tone, and so austere its
+morality, that the book might be taken for the fruit of those later and
+sadder years that bring the philosophic mind. Its frank confessions and
+calm analysis of motive and action have been compared with Montaigne's:
+if Montaigne had been graduated after a due education in Purgatory, or
+if his pedigree had been remotely crossed with a St. Anthony and he had
+lived to see the _fluctus decumanus_ gathering in the tide of
+Puritanism, the likeness would have been closer.
+
+"The 'Religio Medici,'" says Coleridge, "is a fine portrait of a
+handsome man in his best clothes." There is truth in the criticism, and
+if there is no color of a sneer in it, it is entirely true. Who does not
+feel, when following Browne into his study or his garden, that here is a
+kind of cloistral retreat from the common places of the outside world,
+that the handsome man is a true gentleman and a noble friend, and that
+his best clothes are his every-day wear?
+
+This aloofness of Browne's, which holds him apart "in the still air of
+delightful studies," is no affectation; it is an innate quality. He
+thinks his thoughts in his own way, and "the style is the man" never
+more truly than with him. One of his family letters mentions the
+execution of Charles I. as a "horrid murther," and another speaks of
+Cromwell as a usurper; but nowhere in anything intended for the public
+eye is there an indication that he lived in the most tumultuous and
+heroic period of English history. Not a word shows that Shakespeare was
+of the generation just preceding his, nor that Milton and George Herbert
+and Henry Vaughan, numerous as are the parallels in their thought and
+feeling and in his, were his contemporaries. Constant and extensive as
+are his excursions into ancient literature, it is rare for him to make
+any reference to writers of his own time.
+
+Yet with all his delight in antiquity and reverence for the great names
+of former ages, he is keen in the quest for new discoveries. His
+commonplace books abound in ingenious queries and minute observations
+regarding physical facts, conceived in the very spirit of our modern
+school:--"What is the use of dew-claws in dogs?" He does not instantly
+answer, as a schoolboy in this Darwinian day would, "To carry out an
+analogy;" but the mere asking of the question sets him ahead of his age.
+See too his curious inquiries into the left-footedness of parrots and
+left-handedness of certain monkeys and squirrels. The epoch-making
+announcement of his fellow-physician Harvey he quickly appreciates at
+its true value: "his piece 'De Circul. Sang.,' which discovery I prefer
+to that of Columbus." And here again a truly surprising suggestion of
+the great results achieved a century and two centuries later by Jenner
+and Pasteur--concerning canine madness, "whether it holdeth not better
+at second than at first hand, so that if a dog bite a horse, and that
+horse a man, the evil proves less considerable." He is the first to
+observe and describe that curious product of the decomposition of flesh
+known to modern chemists as adipocere.
+
+He is full of eager anticipation of the future. "Join sense unto
+reason," he cries, "and experiment unto speculation, and so give life
+unto embryon truths and verities yet in their chaos.... What libraries
+of new volumes after-times will behold, and in what a new world of
+knowledge the eyes of our posterity may be happy, a few ages may
+joyfully declare."
+
+But acute and active as our author's perceptions were, they did not
+prevent his sharing the then prevalent theory which assigned to the
+devil, and to witches who were his ministers, an important part in the
+economy of the world. This belief affords so easy a solution of some
+problems otherwise puzzling, that this degenerate age may look back with
+envy upon those who held it in serene and comfortable possession.
+
+It is to be regretted, however, that the eminent Lord Chief Justice Hale
+in 1664, presiding at the trial for witchcraft of two women, should have
+called Dr. Browne, apparently as _amicus curiae_, to give his view of
+the fits which were supposed to be the work of the witches. He was
+clearly of the opinion that the Devil had even more to do with that case
+than he has with most cases of hysteria; and consequently the witches,
+it must be said, fared no better in Sir Matthew Hale's court than many
+of their kind in various parts of Christendom about the same time. But
+it would be unreasonable for us to hold the ghost of Sir Thomas deeply
+culpable because, while he showed in most matters an exceptionally
+enlightened liberality of opinion and practice, in this one particular
+he declined to deny the scientific dictum of previous ages and the
+popular belief of his own time.
+
+The mental attitude of reverent belief in its symbolic value, in which
+this devout philosopher contemplated the material world, is that of many
+of those who have since helped most to build the structure of Natural
+Science. The rapturous exclamation of Linnaeus, "My God, I think thy
+thoughts after thee!" comes like an antiphonal response by "the man of
+flowers" to these passages in the 'Religio Medici':--"This visible world
+is but a picture of the invisible, wherein, as in a portrait, things are
+not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some real
+substance in that invisible fabric." "Things are really true as they
+correspond unto God's conception; and have so much verity as they hold
+of conformity unto that intellect, in whose idea they had their first
+determinations."
+
+[Illustration: Signature: Fr's. Bacon]
+
+
+
+FROM THE 'RELIGIO MEDICI'
+
+I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an
+opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not agreeing with me in that
+from which within a few days I should dissent myself. I have no genius
+to disputes in religion, and have often thought it wisdom to decline
+them, especially upon a disadvantage, or when the cause of truth might
+suffer in the weakness of my patronage. Where we desire to be informed,
+'tis good to contest with men above ourselves; but to confirm and
+establish our opinions, 'tis best to argue with judgments below our own,
+that the frequent spoils and victories over their reasons may settle in
+ourselves an esteem and confirmed opinion of our own. Every man is not a
+proper champion for truth, nor fit to take up the gauntlet in the cause
+of verity: many from the ignorance of these maxims, and an
+inconsiderate zeal for truth, have too rashly charged the troops of
+error, and remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth. A man may be in
+as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to
+surrender; 'tis therefore far better to enjoy her with peace, than to
+hazard her on a battle: if therefore there rise any doubts in my way, I
+do forget them, or at least defer them, till my better settled judgment
+and more manly reason be able to resolve them; for I perceive every
+man's own reason is his best Oedipus, and will, upon a reasonable truce,
+find a way to loose those bonds wherewith the subtleties of error have
+enchained our more flexible and tender judgments. In philosophy, where
+truth seems double-faced, there is no man more paradoxical than myself:
+but in divinity I love to keep the road; and though not in an implicit,
+yet an humble faith, follow the great wheel of the Church, by which I
+move, not reserving any proper poles or motion from the epicycle of my
+own brain: by these means I leave no gap for heresy, schisms, or errors.
+
+As for those wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties in
+religion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they never
+stretched the _pia mater_ of mine: methinks there be not impossibilities
+enough in religion for an active faith; the deepest mysteries ours
+contains have not only been illustrated, but maintained, by syllogism
+and the rule of reason. I love to lose myself in a mystery, to pursue my
+reason to an _O altitudo!_ 'Tis my solitary recreation to pose my
+apprehension with those involved enigmas and riddles of the Trinity,
+with Incarnation and Resurrection. I can answer all the objections of
+Satan and my rebellious reason with that odd resolution I learned of
+Tertullian, "Certum est quia impossible est." I desire to exercise my
+faith in the difficultest point; for to credit ordinary and visible
+objects is not faith, but persuasion. Some believe the better for seeing
+Christ's sepulchre; and when they have seen the Red Sea, doubt not of
+the miracle. Now contrarily, I bless myself and am thankful that I live
+not in the days of miracles, that I never saw Christ nor his disciples;
+I would not have been one of those Israelites that passed the Red Sea,
+nor one of Christ's patients on whom he wrought his wonders: then had my
+faith been thrust upon me; nor should I enjoy that greater blessing
+pronounced to all that believe and saw not. 'Tis an easy and necessary
+belief, to credit what our eye and sense hath examined: I believe he was
+dead and buried, and rose again; and desire to see him in his glory,
+rather than to contemplate him in his cenotaph or sepulchre. Nor is this
+much to believe; as we have reason, we owe this faith unto history: they
+only had the advantage of a bold and noble faith who lived before his
+coming, who upon obscure prophecies and mystical types could raise a
+belief and expect apparent impossibilities.
+
+In my solitary and retired imagination,
+
+     "Neque enim cum lectulus aut me
+     Porticus excepit, desum mihi"--
+
+I remember I am not alone, and therefore forget not to contemplate Him
+and his attributes who is ever with me, especially those two mighty
+ones, His wisdom and eternity: with the one I recreate, with the other I
+confound my understanding; for who can speak of eternity without a
+solecism, or think thereof without an ecstasy? Time we may comprehend:
+it is but five days older than ourselves, and hath the same horoscope
+with the world; but to retire so far back as to apprehend a beginning,
+to give such an infinite start forward as to conceive an end in an
+essence that we affirm hath neither the one nor the other, it puts my
+reason to St. Paul's sanctuary: my philosophy dares not say the angels
+can do it; God hath not made a creature that can comprehend him; it is a
+privilege of his own nature: _I am that I am_, was his own definition
+unto Moses; and it was a short one, to confound mortality, that durst
+question God or ask him what he was. Indeed he only is; all others have
+and shall be; but in eternity there is no distinction of tenses; and
+therefore that terrible term _predestination_, which hath troubled so
+many weak heads to conceive, and the wisest to explain, is in respect to
+God no prescious determination of our states to come, but a definitive
+blast of his will already fulfilled, and at the instant that he first
+decreed it; for to his eternity, which is indivisible and all together,
+the last trump, is already sounded, the reprobates in the flame and the
+blessed in Abraham's bosom. St. Peter speaks modestly when he saith, a
+thousand years to God are but as one day; for to speak like a
+philosopher, those continued instances of time which flow into a
+thousand years make not to him one moment: what to us is to come, to his
+eternity is present, his whole duration being but one permanent point,
+without succession, parts, flux, or division.
+
+The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but studied and
+contemplated by man; 'tis the debt of our reason we owe unto God, and
+the homage we pay for not being beasts; without this, the world is still
+as though it had not been, or as it was before the sixth day, when as
+yet there was not a creature that could conceive or say there was a
+world. The wisdom of God receives small honor from those vulgar heads
+that rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity admire his works:
+those highly magnify him whose judicious inquiry into his acts, and
+deliberate research into his creatures, return the duty of a devout and
+learned admiration.
+
+"Natura nihil agit frustra," is the only indisputable axiom in
+philosophy; there are no grotesques in nature; not anything framed to
+fill up empty cantons and unnecessary spaces: in the most imperfect
+creatures, and such as were not preserved in the ark, but, having their
+seeds and principles in the womb of nature, are everywhere where the
+power of the sun is--in these is the wisdom of His hand discovered; out
+of this rank Solomon chose the object of his admiration; indeed, what
+reason may not go to school to the wisdom of bees, ants, and spiders?
+what wise hand teacheth them to do what reason cannot teach us? Ruder
+heads stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature--whales,
+elephants, dromedaries, and camels; these, I confess, are the colossi
+and majestic pieces of her hand: but in these narrow engines there is
+more curious mathematics; and the civility of these little citizens more
+neatly sets forth the wisdom of their Maker. Who admires not
+Regio-Montanus his fly beyond his eagle, or wonders not more at the
+operation of two souls in those little bodies, than but one in the trunk
+of a cedar? I could never content my contemplation with those general
+pieces of wonder, the flux and reflux of the sea, the increase of the
+Nile, the conversion of the needle to the north; and have studied to
+match and parallel those in the more obvious and neglected pieces of
+nature, which without further travel I can do in the cosmography of
+myself: we carry with us the wonders we seek without us; there is all
+Africa and her prodigies in us; we are that bold and adventurous piece
+of nature which he that studies wisely learns in a compendium, what
+others labor at in a divided piece and endless volume.
+
+Thus there are two books from whence I collect my divinity: besides that
+written one of God, another of his servant nature, that universal and
+public manuscript that lies expansed unto the eyes of all; those that
+never saw him in the one have discovered him in the other. This was the
+Scripture and Theology of the heathens: the natural motion of the sun
+made them more admire him than its supernatural station did the children
+of Israel; the ordinary effect of nature wrought more admiration in them
+than in the other all his miracles: surely the heathens knew better how
+to join and read these mystical letters than we Christians, who cast a
+more careless eye on these common hieroglyphics and disdain to suck
+divinity from the flowers of nature. Nor do I so forget God as to adore
+the name of nature; which I define not, with the schools, to be the
+principle of motion and rest, but that straight and regular line, that
+settled and constant course the wisdom of God hath ordained the actions
+of his creatures, according to their several kinds. To make a revolution
+every day is the nature of the sun, because of that necessary course
+which God hath ordained it, from which it cannot swerve but by a faculty
+from that voice which first did give it motion. Now this course of
+nature God seldom alters or perverts, but, like an excellent artist,
+hath so contrived his work that with the selfsame instrument, without a
+new creation, he may effect his obscurest designs. Thus he sweeteneth
+the water with a wood, preserveth the creatures in the ark, which the
+blast of his mouth might have as easily created; for God is like a
+skillful geometrician, who when more easily, and with one stroke of his
+compass, he might describe or divide a right line, had yet rather to do
+this in a circle or longer way, according to the constituted and
+forelaid principles of his art: yet this rule of his he doth sometimes
+pervert to acquaint the world with his prerogative, lest the arrogancy
+of our reason should question his power and conclude he could not. And
+thus I call the effects of nature the works of God, whose hand and
+instrument she only is; and therefore to ascribe his actions unto her is
+to devolve the honor of the principal agent upon the instrument; which
+if with reason we may do, then let our hammers rise up and boast they
+have built our houses, and our pens receive the honor of our writing. I
+hold there is a general beauty in the works of God, and therefore no
+deformity in any kind of species whatsoever: I cannot tell by what
+logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly, they being created in
+those outward shapes and figures which best express those actions of
+their inward forms. And having passed that general visitation of God,
+who saw that all that he had made was good, that is, conformable to his
+will, which abhors deformity, and is the rule of order and beauty: there
+is no deformity but in monstrosity, wherein notwithstanding there is a
+kind of beauty, nature so ingeniously contriving the irregular parts
+that they become sometimes more remarkable than the principal fabric. To
+speak yet more narrowly, there was never anything ugly or misshapen but
+the chaos; wherein, notwithstanding, to speak strictly, there was no
+deformity, because no form, nor was it yet impregnate by the voice of
+God; now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature, they
+being both servants of his providence: art is the perfection of nature:
+were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos;
+nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are
+artificial; for nature is the art of God.
+
+I have heard some with deep sighs lament the lost lines of Cicero;
+others with as many groans deplore the combustion of the library of
+Alexandria; for my own part, I think there be too many in the world, and
+could with patience behold the urn and ashes of the Vatican, could I,
+with a few others, recover the perished leaves of Solomon. I would not
+omit a copy of Enoch's Pillars had they many nearer authors than
+Josephus, or did not relish somewhat of the fable. Some men have written
+more than others have spoken: Pineda quotes more authors in one work
+than are necessary in a whole world. Of those three great inventions in
+Germany, there are two which are not without their incommodities. It is
+not a melancholy _utinam_ of my own, but the desires of better heads,
+that there were a general synod; not to unite the incompatible
+difference of religion, but for the benefit of learning, to reduce it,
+as it lay at first, in a few and solid authors; and to condemn to the
+fire those swarms and millions of rhapsodies begotten only to distract
+and abuse the weaker judgments of scholars, and to maintain the trade
+and mystery of typographers.
+
+Again, I believe that all that use sorceries, incantations, and spells
+are not witches, or, as we term them, magicians. I conceive there is a
+traditional magic not learned immediately from the Devil, but at second
+hand from his scholars, who, having once the secret betrayed, are able,
+and do empirically practice without his advice, they both proceeding
+upon the principles of nature; where actives aptly conjoined to disposed
+passives will under any master produce their effects. Thus, I think at
+first a great part of philosophy was witchcraft, which being afterward
+derived to one another, proved but philosophy, and was indeed no more
+but the honest effects of nature: what invented by us is philosophy,
+learned from him is magic. We do surely owe the discovery of many
+secrets to the discovery of good and bad angels. I could never pass that
+sentence of Paracelsus without an asterisk or annotation: "Ascendens
+astrum multa revelat quaerentibus magnalia naturae, i.e., opera Dei." I do
+think that many mysteries ascribed to our own inventions have been the
+courteous revelations of spirits,--for those noble essences in heaven
+bear a friendly regard unto their fellow natures on earth; and therefore
+believe that those many prodigies and ominous prognostics which forerun
+the ruins of States, princes, and private persons are the charitable
+premonitions of good angels, which more careless inquiries term but the
+effects of chance and nature.
+
+Now, besides these particular and divided spirits there may be (for
+aught I know) an universal and common spirit to the whole world. It was
+the opinion of Plato, and it is yet of the Hermetical philosophers: if
+there be a common nature that unites and ties the scattered and divided
+individuals into one species, why may there not be one that unites them
+all? However, I am sure there is a common spirit that plays within us,
+yet makes no part of us: and that is the Spirit of God, the fire and
+scintillation of that noble and mighty essence which is the life and
+radical heat of spirits and those essences that know not the virtue of
+the sun; a fire quite contrary to the fire of hell: this is that gentle
+heat that brooded on the waters, and in six days hatched the world; this
+is that irradiation that dispels the mists of hell, the clouds of
+horror, fear, sorrow, despair; and preserves the region of the mind in
+serenity: whosoever feels not the warm gale and gentle ventilation of
+this spirit (though I feel his pulse) I dare not say he lives; for truly
+without this, to me there is no heat under the tropic; nor any light,
+though I dwelt in the body of the sun.
+
+I believe that the whole frame of a beast doth perish, and is left in
+the same state after death as before it was materialled unto life: that
+the souls of men know neither contrary nor corruption; that they subsist
+beyond the body, and outlive death by the privilege of their proper
+natures, and without a miracle; that the souls of the faithful, as they
+leave earth, take possession of heaven: that those apparitions and
+ghosts of departed persons are not the wandering souls of men, but the
+unquiet walks of devils, prompting and suggesting us into mischief,
+blood, and villainy; instilling and stealing into our hearts that the
+blessed spirits are not at rest in their graves, but wander solicitous
+of the affairs of the world: but that those phantasms appear often, and
+do frequent cemeteries, charnel-houses, and churches, it is because
+those are the dormitories of the dead, where the Devil, like an insolent
+champion, beholds with pride the spoils and trophies of his victory
+in Adam.
+
+This is that dismal conquest we all deplore, that makes us so often cry,
+"Adam, quid fecisti?" I thank God I have not those strait ligaments, or
+narrow obligations to the world, as to dote on life, or be convulsed and
+tremble at the name of death: not that I am insensible of the dread and
+horror thereof; or by raking into the bowels of the deceased, continual
+sight of anatomies, skeletons, or cadaverous reliques, like vespilloes
+or grave-makers, I am become stupid or have forgot the apprehension of
+mortality; but that marshaling all the horrors, and contemplating the
+extremities thereof, I find not anything therein able to daunt the
+courage of a man, much less a well-resolved Christian; and therefore am
+not angry at the error of our first parents, or unwilling to bear a part
+of this common fate, and like the best of them to die--that is, to cease
+to breathe, to take a farewell of the elements, to be a kind of nothing
+for a moment, to be within one instant of a spirit. When I take a full
+view and circle of myself without this reasonable moderator and equal
+piece of justice, Death, I do conceive myself the miserablest person
+extant: were there not another life that I hope for, all the vanities of
+this world should not entreat a moment's breath from me; could the Devil
+work my belief to imagine I could never die, I would not outlive that
+very thought. I have so abject a conceit of this common way of
+existence, this retaining to the sun and elements, I cannot think this
+to be a man, or to live according to the dignity of humanity. In
+expectation of a better, I can with patience embrace this life, yet in
+my best meditations do often defy death: I honor any man that contemns
+it, nor can I highly love any that is afraid of it: this makes me
+naturally love a soldier, and honor those tattered and contemptible
+regiments that will die at the command of a sergeant. For a pagan there
+may be some motives to be in love with life; but for a Christian to be
+amazed at death, I see not how he can escape this dilemma--that he is
+too sensible of this life, or hopeless of the life to come.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am naturally bashful; nor hath conversation, age, or travel been able
+to effront or enharden me: yet I have one part of modesty which I have
+seldom discovered in another, that is (to speak truly) I am not so much
+afraid of death, as ashamed thereof: 'tis the very disgrace and ignominy
+of our natures that in a moment can so disfigure us that our nearest
+friends, wife, and children, stand afraid and start at us. The birds and
+beasts of the field, that before in a natural fear obeyed us, forgetting
+all allegiance, begin to prey upon us. This very conceit hath in a
+tempest disposed and left me willing to be swallowed up in the abyss of
+waters, wherein I had perished unseen, unpitied, without wondering eyes,
+tears of pity, lectures of mortality, and none had said, "Quantum
+mutatus ab illo!" Not that I am ashamed of the anatomy of my parts, or
+can accuse nature for playing the bungler in any part of me, or my own
+vicious life for contracting any shameful disease upon me, whereby I
+might not call myself as wholesome a morsel for the worms as any.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Men commonly set forth the torments of hell by fire and the extremity of
+corporal afflictions, and describe hell in the same method that Mahomet
+doth heaven. This indeed makes a noise, and drums in popular ears: but
+if this be the terrible piece thereof, it is not worthy to stand in
+diameter with heaven, whose happiness consists in that part that is best
+able to comprehend it--that immortal essence, that translated divinity
+and colony of God, the soul. Surely, though we place hell under earth,
+the Devil's walk and purlieu is about it; men speak too popularly who
+place it in those flaming mountains which to grosser apprehensions
+represent hell. The heart of man is the place the Devil dwells in: I
+feel sometimes a hell within myself; Lucifer keeps his court in my
+breast; Legion is revived in me. There are as many hells as Anaxarchus
+conceited worlds: there was more than one hell in Magdalen, when there
+were seven devils, for every devil is an hell unto himself; he holds
+enough of torture in his own _ubi_, and needs not the misery of
+circumference to afflict him; and thus a distracted conscience here is a
+shadow or introduction unto hell hereafter. Who can but pity the
+merciful intention of those hands that do destroy themselves? the Devil,
+were it in his power, would do the like; which being impossible, his
+miseries are endless, and he suffers most in that attribute wherein he
+is impassible, his immortality.
+
+I thank God, and with joy I mention it, I was never afraid of hell, nor
+never grew pale at the description of that place; I have so fixed my
+contemplations on heaven, that I have almost forgot the idea of hell,
+and am afraid rather to lose the joys of the one than endure the misery
+of the other: to be deprived of them is a perfect hell, and needs,
+methinks, no addition to complete our afflictions. That terrible term
+hath never detained me from sin, nor do I owe any good action to the
+name thereof. I fear God, yet am not afraid of him; his mercies make me
+ashamed of my sins, before his judgments afraid thereof; these are the
+forced and secondary method of his wisdom, which he useth but as the
+last remedy, and upon provocation: a course rather to deter the wicked
+than incite the virtuous to his worship. I can hardly think there was
+ever any scared into heaven; they go the fairest way to heaven that
+would serve God without a hell; other mercenaries, that crouch unto him
+in fear of hell, though they term themselves the servants, are indeed
+but the slaves of the Almighty.
+
+That which is the cause of my election I hold to be the cause of my
+salvation, which was the mercy and _beneplacit_ of God, before I was, or
+the foundation of the world. "Before Abraham was, I am," is the saying
+of Christ; yet is it true in some sense, if I say it of myself; for I
+was not only before myself, but Adam--that is, in the idea of God, and
+the decree of that synod held from all eternity: and in this sense, I
+say, the world was before the creation, and at an end before it had a
+beginning; and thus was I dead before I was alive; though my grave be
+England, my dying place was Paradise; and Eve miscarried of me before
+she conceived of Cain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now for that other virtue of charity, without which faith is a mere
+notion and of no existence, I have ever endeavored to nourish the
+merciful disposition and humane inclination I borrowed from my parents,
+and regulate it to the written and prescribed laws of charity: and if I
+hold the true anatomy of myself, I am delineated and naturally framed to
+such a piece of virtue; for I am of a constitution so general that it
+consorts and sympathizeth with all things: I have no antipathy, or
+rather idiosyncrasy, in diet, humor, air, anything. I wonder not at the
+French for their dishes of frogs, snails, and toadstools; nor at the
+Jews for locusts and grasshoppers; but being amongst them, make them my
+common viands, and I find they agree with my stomach as well as theirs.
+I could digest a salad gathered in a churchyard as well as in a garden.
+I cannot start at the presence of a serpent, scorpion, lizard, or
+salamander: at the sight of a toad or viper I find in me no desire to
+take up a stone to destroy them. I feel not in myself those common
+antipathies that I can discover in others; those national repugnances do
+not touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian,
+Spaniard, or Dutch: but where I find their actions in balance with my
+countrymen's, I honor, love, and embrace them in the same degree. I was
+born in the eighth climate, but seem for to be framed and constellated
+unto all: I am no plant that will not prosper out of a garden; all
+places, all airs, make unto me one country; I am in England, everywhere,
+and under any meridian; I have been shipwrecked, yet am not enemy with
+the sea or winds; I can study, play or sleep in a tempest. In brief, I
+am averse from nothing: my conscience would give me the lie if I should
+absolutely detest or hate any essence but the Devil; or so at least
+abhor anything but that we might come to composition. If there be any
+among those common objects of hatred I do contemn and laugh at, it is
+that great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion--the multitude: that
+numerous piece of monstrosity which, taken asunder, seem men and the
+reasonable creatures of God, but confused together, make but one great
+beast and a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra: it is no breach of
+charity to call these fools; it is the style all holy writers have
+afforded them, set down by Solomon in canonical Scripture, and a point
+of our faith to believe so. Neither in the name of multitude do I only
+include the base and minor sort of people: there is a rabble even
+amongst the gentry, a sort of plebeian heads, whose fancy moves with the
+same wheel as these; men in the same level with mechanics, though their
+fortunes do somewhat gild their infirmities, and their purses compound
+for their follies.
+
+I must give no alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfill
+and accomplish the will and command of my God: I draw not my purse for
+his sake that demands it, but His that enjoined it; I believe no man
+upon the rhetoric of his miseries, nor to content mine own commiserating
+disposition; for this is still but moral charity, and an act that oweth
+more to passion than reason. He that relieves another upon the bare
+suggestion and bowels of pity doth not this so much for his sake as for
+his own; for by compassion we make others' misery our own, and so, by
+relieving them, we relieve ourselves also. It is as erroneous a conceit
+to redress other men's misfortunes upon the common considerations of
+merciful natures, that it may be one day our own case; for this is a
+sinister and politic kind of charity, whereby we seem to bespeak the
+pities of men in the like occasions. And truly I have observed that
+those professed eleemosynaries, though in a crowd or multitude, do yet
+direct and place their petitions on a few and selected persons: there is
+surely a physiognomy which those experienced and master mendicants
+observe, whereby they instantly discover a merciful aspect, and will
+single out a face wherein they spy the signatures and marks of mercy.
+For there are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in
+them the motto of our souls, wherein he that cannot read ABC may read
+our natures. I hold moreover that there is a phytognomy, or physiognomy,
+not only of men, but of plants and vegetables; and in every one of them
+some outward figures which hang as signs or bushes of their inward
+forms. The finger of God hath left an inscription upon all his works,
+not graphical or composed of letters, but of their several forms,
+constitutions, parts and operations, which, aptly joined together, do
+make one word that doth express their natures. By these letters God
+calls the stars by their names; and by this alphabet Adam assigned to
+every creature a name peculiar to its nature. Now there are, besides
+these characters in our faces, certain mystical figures in our hands,
+which I dare not call mere dashes, strokes _a la volee_, or at random,
+because delineated by a pencil that never works in vain; and hereof I
+take more particular notice, because I carry that in mine own hand which
+I could never read of or discover in another. Aristotle, I confess, in
+his acute and singular book of physiognomy, hath made no mention of
+chiromancy; yet I believe the Egyptians, who were nearer addicted to
+those abstruse and mystical sciences, had a knowledge therein, to which
+those vagabond and counterfeit Egyptians did after pretend, and perhaps
+retained a few corrupted principles which sometimes might verify their
+prognostics.
+
+It is the common wonder of all men, how, among so many millions of
+faces, there should be none alike. Now, contrary, I wonder as much how
+there should be any: he that shall consider how many thousand several
+words have been carelessly and without study composed out of twenty-four
+letters; withal, how many hundred lines there are to be drawn in the
+fabric of one man, shall easily find that this variety is necessary; and
+it will be very hard that they shall so concur as to make one portrait
+like another. Let a painter carelessly limn out a million of faces, and
+you shall find them all different; yea, let him have his copy before
+him, yet after all his art there will remain a sensible distinction; for
+the pattern or example of everything is the perfectest in that kind,
+whereof we still come short, though we transcend or go beyond it,
+because herein it is wide, and agrees not in all points unto its copy.
+Nor doth the similitude of creatures disparage the variety of nature,
+nor any way confound the works of God. For even in things alike there is
+diversity; and those that do seem to accord do manifestly disagree. And
+thus is man like God; for in the same things that we resemble him we are
+utterly different from him. There was never anything so like another as
+in all points to concur; there will ever some reserved difference slip
+in, to prevent the identity, without which two several things would not
+be alike, but the same, which is impossible.
+
+Naturally amorous of all that is beautiful, I can look a whole day with
+delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of an horse. It is my
+temper, and I like it the better, to affect all harmony; and sure there
+is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes,
+far sweeter than the sound of an instrument: for there is music wherever
+there is harmony, order, or, proportion: and thus far we may maintain
+_the music of the spheres_; for those well-ordered motions and regular
+paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding
+they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatsoever is harmonically
+composed, delights in harmony, which makes me much distrust the
+symmetry of those heads which declaim against all church music. For
+myself, not only from my obedience, but my particular genius, I do
+embrace it: for even that vulgar and tavern music, which makes one man
+merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion and a profound
+contemplation of the First Composer; there is something in it of
+divinity more than the ear discovers: it is an hieroglyphical and
+shadowed lesson of the whole world and creatures of God; such a melody
+to the ear as the whole world, well understood, would afford the
+understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony which
+intellectually sounds in the ears of God. It unties the ligaments of my
+frame, takes me to pieces, dilates me out of myself, and by degrees,
+methinks, resolves me into heaven. I will not say, with Plato, the soul
+is an harmony, but harmonical, and hath its nearest sympathy unto music;
+thus some, whose temper of body agrees and humors the constitution of
+their souls, are born poets, though indeed all are naturally inclined
+unto rhythm.
+
+There is surely a nearer apprehension of anything that delights us in
+our dreams than in our waked senses: without this, I were unhappy; for
+my awaked judgment discontents me, ever whispering unto me that I am
+from my friend; but my friendly dreams in the night requite me, and make
+me think I am within his arms. I thank God for my happy dreams, as I do
+for my good rest, for there is a satisfaction in them unto reasonable
+desires, and such as can be content with a fit of happiness; and surely
+it is not a melancholy conceit to think we are all asleep in this world,
+and that the conceits of this life are as mere dreams to those of the
+next; as the phantasms of the night to the conceits of the day. There is
+an equal delusion in both, and the one doth but seem to be the emblem or
+picture of the other; we are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps,
+and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It
+is the ligation of sense, but the liberty of reason; and our waking
+conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleeps. At my nativity my
+ascendant was the watery sign of Scorpius; I was born in the planetary
+hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me.
+I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of
+company; yet in one dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the
+action, and apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits
+thereof. Were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I
+would never study but in my dreams, and this time also would I choose
+for my devotions; but our grosser memories have then so little hold of
+our abstracted understandings that they forget the story, and can only
+relate to our awaked souls a confused and broken tale of that that hath
+passed. Aristotle, who hath written a singular tract of sleep, hath not,
+methinks, thoroughly defined it; nor yet Galen, though he seem to have
+corrected it: for those noctambuloes and night-walkers, though in their
+sleep do yet enjoy the action of their senses; we must therefore say
+that there is something in us that is not in the jurisdiction of
+Morpheus; and that those abstracted and ecstatic souls do walk about in
+their own corps, as spirits with the bodies they assume, wherein they
+seem to hear, see, and feel, though indeed the organs are destitute of
+sense, and their natures of those faculties that should inform them.
+Thus it is observed that men sometimes, upon the hour of their
+departure, do speak and reason above themselves. For then the soul,
+beginning to be freed from the ligaments of the body, begins to reason
+like herself, and to discourse in a strain above mortality.
+
+FROM 'CHRISTIAN MORALS'
+
+When thou lookest upon the imperfections of others, allow one eye for
+what is laudable in them, and the balance they have from some
+excellency, which may render them considerable. While we look with fear
+or hatred upon the teeth of the viper, we may behold his eye with love.
+In venomous natures something may be amiable: poisons afford
+anti-poisons: nothing is totally or altogether uselessly bad. Notable
+virtues are sometimes dashed with notorious vices, and in some vicious
+tempers have been found illustrious acts of virtue, which makes such
+observable worth in some actions of King Demetrius, Antonius, and Ahab,
+as are not to be found in the same kind in Aristides, Numa, or David.
+Constancy, generosity, clemency, and liberality have been highly
+conspicuous in some persons not marked out in other concerns for example
+or imitation. But since goodness is exemplary in all, if others have not
+our virtues, let us not be wanting in theirs; nor, scorning them for
+their vices whereof we are free, be condemned by their virtues wherein
+we are deficient. There is dross, alloy, and embasement in all human
+tempers; and he flieth without wings, who thinks to find ophir or pure
+metal in any. For perfection is not, like light, centred in any one
+body; but, like the dispersed seminalities of vegetables at the
+creation, scattered through the whole mass of the earth, no place
+producing all, and almost all some. So that 'tis well if a perfect man
+can be made out of many men, and to the perfect eye of God, even out of
+mankind. Time, which perfects some things, imperfects also others. Could
+we intimately apprehend the ideated man, and as he stood in the
+intellect of God upon the first exertion by creation, we might more
+narrowly comprehend our present degeneration, and how widely we are
+fallen from the pure exemplar and idea of our nature: for after this
+corruptive elongation, from a primitive and pure creation we are almost
+lost in degeneration; and Adam hath not only fallen from his Creator,
+but we ourselves from Adam, our Tycho and primary generator.
+
+If generous honesty, valor, and plain dealing be the cognizance of thy
+family or characteristic of thy country, hold fast such inclinations
+sucked in with thy first breath, and which lay in the cradle with thee.
+Fall not into transforming degenerations, which under the old name
+create a new nation. Be not an alien in thine own nation; bring not
+Orontes into Tiber; learn the virtues, not the vices, of thy foreign
+neighbors, and make thy imitation by discretion, not contagion. Feel
+something of thyself in the noble acts of thy ancestors, and find in
+thine own genius that of thy predecessors. Rest not under the expired
+merits of others; shine by those of thine own. Flame not, like the
+central fire which enlighteneth no eyes, which no man seeth, and most
+men think there is no such thing to be seen. Add one ray unto the common
+lustre; add not only to the number, but the note of thy generation; and
+prove not a cloud, but an asterisk in thy region.
+
+Since thou hast an alarum in thy breast, which tells thee thou hast a
+living spirit in thee above two thousand times in an hour, dull not away
+thy days in slothful supinity and the tediousness of doing nothing. To
+strenuous minds there is an inquietude in overquietness and no
+laboriousness in labor; and to tread a mile after the slow pace of a
+snail, or the heavy measures of the lazy of Brazilia, were a most tiring
+penance, and worse than a race of some furlongs at the Olympics. The
+rapid courses of the heavenly bodies are rather imitable by our
+thoughts than our corporeal motions; yet the solemn motions of our lives
+amount unto a greater measure than is commonly apprehended. Some few men
+have surrounded the globe of the earth; yet many, in the set locomotions
+and movements of their days, have measured the circuit of it, and twenty
+thousand miles have been exceeded by them. Move circumspectly, not
+meticulously, and rather carefully solicitous than anxiously
+solicitudinous. Think not there is a lion in the way, nor walk with
+leaden sandals in the paths of goodness; but in all virtuous motions let
+prudence determine thy measures. Strive not to run, like Hercules, a
+furlong in a breath: festination may prove precipitation; deliberating
+delay may be wise cunctation, and slowness no slothfulness.
+
+Despise not the obliquities of younger ways, nor despair of better
+things whereof there is yet no prospect. Who would imagine that
+Diogenes, who in his younger days was a falsifier of money, should, in
+the after course of his life, be so great a contemner of metal? Some
+negroes, who believe the resurrection, think that they shall rise white.
+Even in this life regeneration may imitate resurrection; our black and
+vicious tinctures may wear off, and goodness clothe us with candor. Good
+admonitions knock not always in vain. There will be signal examples of
+God's mercy, and the angels must not want their charitable rejoices for
+the conversion of lost sinners. Figures of most angles do nearest
+approach unto circles, which have no angles at all. Some may be near
+unto goodness who are conceived far from it; and many things happen not
+likely to ensue from any promises of antecedencies. Culpable beginnings
+have found commendable conclusions, and infamous courses pious
+retractations. Detestable sinners have proved exemplary converts on
+earth, and may be glorious in the apartment of Mary Magdalen in heaven.
+Men are not the same through all divisions of their ages: time,
+experience, self-reflections, and God's mercies, make in some
+well-tempered minds a kind of translation before death, and men to
+differ from themselves as well as from other persons. Hereof the old
+world afforded many examples to the infamy of latter ages, wherein men
+too often live by the rule of their inclinations; so that, without any
+astral prediction, the first day gives the last: men are commonly as
+they were; or rather, as bad dispositions run into worser habits, the
+evening doth not crown, but sourly conclude, the day.
+
+If the Almighty will not spare us according to his merciful capitulation
+at Sodom; if his goodness please not to pass over a great deal of bad
+for a small pittance of good, or to look upon us in the lump, there is
+slender hope for mercy, or sound presumption of fulfilling half his
+will, either in persons or nations: they who excel in some virtues being
+so often defective in others; few men driving at the extent and
+amplitude of goodness, but computing themselves by their best parts, and
+others by their worst, are content to rest in those virtues which others
+commonly want. Which makes this speckled face of honesty in the world;
+and which was the imperfection of the old philosophers and great
+pretenders unto virtue; who, well declining the gaping vices of
+intemperance, incontinency, violence, and oppression, were yet blindly
+peccant in iniquities of closer faces; were envious, malicious,
+contemners, scoffers, censurers, and stuffed with vizard vices, no less
+depraving the ethereal particle and diviner portion of man. For envy,
+malice, hatred, are the qualities of Satan, close and dark like himself;
+and where such brands smoke, the soul cannot be white. Vice may be had
+at all prices; expensive and costly iniquities, which make the noise,
+cannot be every man's sins; but the soul may be foully inquinated at a
+very low rate, and a man may be cheaply vicious to the perdition
+of himself.
+
+Having been long tossed in the ocean of the world, he will by that time
+feel the in-draught of another, unto which this seems but preparatory
+and without it of no high value. He will experimentally find the
+emptiness of all things, and the nothing of what is past; and wisely
+grounding upon true Christian expectations, finding so much past, will
+wholly fix upon what is to come. He will long for perpetuity, and live
+as though he made haste to be happy. The last may prove the prime part
+of his life, and those his best days which he lived nearest heaven.
+
+Live happy in the Elysium of a virtuously composed mind, and let
+intellectual contents exceed the delights wherein mere pleasurists place
+their paradise. Bear not too slack reins upon pleasure, nor let
+complexion or contagion betray thee unto the exorbitancy of delight.
+Make pleasure thy recreation or intermissive relaxation, not thy Diana,
+life, and profession. Voluptuousness is as insatiable as covetousness.
+Tranquillity is better than jollity, and to appease pain than to invent
+pleasure. Our hard entrance into the world, our miserable going out of
+it, our sicknesses, disturbances, and sad rencounters in it, do
+clamorously tell us we came not into the world to run a race of delight,
+but to perform the sober acts and serious purposes of man; which to omit
+were foully to miscarry in the advantage of humanity, to play away an
+uniterable life, and to have lived in vain. Forget not the capital end,
+and frustrate not the opportunity of once living. Dream not of any kind
+of metempsychosis or transanimation, but into thine own body, and that
+after a long time; and then also unto wail or bliss, according to thy
+first and fundamental life. Upon a curricle in this world depends a long
+course of the next, and upon a narrow scene here an endless expansion
+hereafter. In vain some think to have an end of their beings with their
+lives. Things cannot get out of their natures, or be, or not be, in
+despite of their constitutions. Rational existences in heaven perish not
+at all, and but partially on earth; that which is thus once, will in
+some way be always; the first living human soul is still alive, and all
+Adam hath found no period.
+
+Since the stars of heaven do differ in glory; since it hath pleased the
+Almighty hand to honor the north pole with lights above the south; since
+there are some stars so bright that they can hardly be looked upon, some
+so dim that they can scarcely be seen, and vast numbers not to be seen
+at all even by artificial eyes; read thou the earth in heaven and things
+below from above. Look contentedly upon the scattered difference of
+things, and expect not equality in lustre, dignity, or perfection, in
+regions or persons below; where numerous numbers must be content to
+stand like lacteous or nebulous stars, little taken notice of, or dim in
+their generations. All which may be contentedly allowable in the affairs
+and ends of this world, and in suspension unto what will be in the order
+of things hereafter, and the new system of mankind which will be in the
+world to come; when the last may be the first, and the first the last;
+when Lazarus may sit above Caesar, and the just, obscure on earth, shall
+shine like the sun in heaven; when personations shall cease, and
+histrionism of happiness be over; when reality shall rule, and all shall
+be as they shall be forever.
+
+FROM 'HYDRIOTAPHIA, OR URN-BURIAL'
+
+In the Jewish Hypogaeum and subterranean cell at Rome was little
+observable beside the variety of lamps and frequent draughts of the holy
+candlestick. In authentic draughts of Antony and Jerome, we meet with
+thigh bones and death's-heads; but the cemeterial cells of ancient
+Christians and martyrs were filled with draughts of Scripture stories;
+not declining the flourishes of cypress, palms, and olive, and the
+mystical figures of peacocks, doves, and cocks; but literately affecting
+the portraits of Enoch, Lazarus, Jonas, and the vision of Ezekiel, as
+hopeful draughts and hinting imagery of the resurrection--which is the
+life of the grave and sweetens our habitations in the land of moles
+and pismires.
+
+The particulars of future beings must needs be dark unto ancient
+theories, which Christian philosophy yet determines but in a cloud of
+opinions. A dialogue between two infants in the womb concerning the
+state of this world, might handsomely illustrate our ignorance of the
+next, whereof methinks we yet discourse in Plato's den, and are but
+embryon philosophers.
+
+Pythagoras escapes, in the fabulous hell of Dante, among that swarm of
+philosophers, wherein, whilst we meet with Plato and Socrates, Cato is
+to be found in no lower place than Purgatory. Among all the set,
+Epicurus is most considerable, whom men make honest without an Elysium,
+who contemned life without encouragement of immortality, and making
+nothing after death, yet made nothing of the king of terrors.
+
+Were the happiness of the next world as closely apprehended as the
+felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live; and unto such as
+consider none hereafter, it must be more than death to die, which makes
+us amazed at those audacities that durst be nothing and return into
+their chaos again. Certainly, such spirits as could contemn death, when
+they expected no better being after, would have scorned to live had they
+known any. And therefore we applaud not the judgments of Machiavel that
+Christianity makes men cowards, or that with the confidence of but half
+dying, the despised virtues of patience and humility have abased the
+spirits of men, which pagan principles exalted; but rather regulated the
+wildness of audacities, in the attempts, grounds, and eternal sequels of
+death, wherein men of the boldest spirits are often prodigiously
+temerarious. Nor can we extenuate the valor of ancient martyrs, who
+contemned death in the uncomfortable scene of their lives, and in their
+decrepit martyrdoms did probably lose not many months of their days, or
+parted with life when it was scarce worth the living; for (beside that
+long time past holds no consideration unto a slender time to come) they
+had no small disadvantage from the constitution of old age, which
+naturally makes men fearful, and complexionally superannuated from the
+bold and courageous thoughts of youth and fervent years. But the
+contempt of death from corporal animosity promoteth not our felicity.
+They may sit in the orchestra and noblest seats of heaven who have held
+up shaking hands in the fire, and humanly contended for glory.
+
+Meanwhile, Epicurus lies deep in Dante's hell, wherein we meet with
+tombs inclosing souls which denied their immortalities. But whether the
+virtuous heathen, who lived better than he spake, or, erring in the
+principles of himself, yet lived above philosophers of more specious
+maxims, lie so deep as he is placed; at least so low as not to rise
+against Christians who, believing or knowing that truth, have lastingly
+denied it in their practice and conversation--were a query too sad to
+insist on.
+
+But all or most apprehensions rested in opinions of some future being,
+which, ignorantly or coldly believed, begat those perverted conceptions,
+ceremonies, sayings, which Christians pity or laugh at. Happy are they
+which live not in that disadvantage of time, when men could say little
+for futurity but from reason; whereby the noblest minds fell often upon
+doubtful deaths and melancholy dissolutions. With those hopes Socrates
+warmed his doubtful spirits against that cold potion; and Cato, before
+he durst give the fatal stroke, spent part of the night in reading the
+immortality of Plato, thereby confirming his wavering hand unto the
+animosity of that attempt.
+
+It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him
+he is at the end of his nature; or that there is no farther state to
+come, unto which this seems progressional, and otherwise made in vain.
+Without this accomplishment, the natural expectation and desire of such
+a state were but a fallacy in nature. Unsatisfied considerators would
+quarrel at the justice of their constitutions, and rest content that
+Adam had fallen lower; whereby, by knowing no other original, and deeper
+ignorance of themselves, they might have enjoyed the happiness of
+inferior creatures, who in tranquillity possess their constitutions, as
+having not the apprehension to deplore their own natures; and being
+framed below the circumference of these hopes, or cognition of better
+being, the wisdom of God hath necessitated their contentment. But the
+superior ingredient and obscured part of ourselves, whereto all present
+felicities afford no resting contentment, will be able at last to tell
+us we are more than our present selves, and evacuate such hopes in the
+fruition of their own accomplishments....
+
+But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals
+with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who
+can but pity the founder of the pyramids? Erostratus lives that burnt
+the Temple of Diana; he is almost lost that built it. Time hath spared
+the epitaph of Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we
+compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad
+have equal durations; and Thersites is like to live as long as
+Agamemnon. Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there
+be not more remarkable persons forgot than any that stand remembered in
+the known account of time? Without the favor of the everlasting
+register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and
+Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.
+
+Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as
+though they had not been; to be found in the register of God, not in the
+record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the first story, and the
+recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of
+the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far
+surpasseth the day; and who knows when was the equinox? Every hour adds
+unto that current arithmetic, which scarce stands one moment. And since
+death must be the Lucina of life, and even pagans could doubt whether
+thus to live were to die; since our longest sun sets at right
+declensions, and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be
+long before we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes[4];
+since the brother of death daily haunts us with dying mementos, and
+time, that grows old itself, bids us hope no long duration, diuturnity
+is a dream and folly of expectation.
+
+[Footnote 4: According to the custom of the Jews, who placed a lighted
+wax candle in a pot of ashes by the corpse.]
+
+Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with
+memory a great part even of our living beings. We slightly remember our
+felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart
+upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or
+themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce
+callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which
+notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to
+come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature,
+whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and our
+delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows
+are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions. A great part of antiquity
+contented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration of their
+souls; a good way to continue their memories, while, having the
+advantage of plural successions, they could not but act something
+remarkable in such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their
+passed selves, making accumulation of glory unto their last durations.
+Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were
+content to recede into the common being, and make one particle of the
+public soul of all things, which was no more than to return into their
+unknown and divine original again. Egyptian ingenuity was more
+unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in sweet consistencies to attend
+the return of their souls. But all was vanity, feeding the wind and
+folly. The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice
+now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and
+Pharaoh is sold for balsams....
+
+There is nothing strictly immortal but immortality. Whatever hath no
+beginning may be confident of no end, which is the peculiar of that
+necessary essence that cannot destroy itself, and the highest strain of
+omnipotency to be so powerfully constituted, as not to suffer even from
+the power of itself. All others have a dependent being, and within the
+reach of destruction. But the sufficiency of Christian immortality
+frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after
+death makes a folly of posthumous memory. God, who can only destroy our
+souls, and hath assured our resurrection, either of our bodies or names
+hath directly promised no duration. Wherein there is so much of chance,
+that the boldest expectants have found unhappy frustration; and to hold
+long subsistence seems but a scape in oblivion. But man is a noble
+animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing
+nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of
+bravery in the infamy of his nature....
+
+Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. A small
+fire sufficeth for life; great flames seemed too little after death,
+while men vainly affected pyres, and to burn like Sardanapalus. But the
+wisdom of funeral laws found the folly of prodigal blazes, and reduced
+undoing fires into the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so
+mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an urn....
+
+While some have studied monuments, others have studiously declined them;
+and some have been so vainly boisterous, that they durst not acknowledge
+their graves; wherein Alaricus seems more subtle, who had a river turned
+to hide his bones at the bottom. Even Sylla, who thought himself safe in
+his urn, could not prevent revenging tongues, and stones thrown at his
+monument. Happy are they whom privacy makes innocent, who deal so with
+men in this world that they are not afraid to meet them in the next; who
+when they die make no commotion among the dead, and are not touched with
+that poetical taunt of Isaiah.
+
+Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vainglory and
+wild enormities of ancient magnanimity. But the most magnanimous
+resolution rests in the Christian religion, which trampleth upon pride
+and sits on the neck of ambition, humbly pursuing that infallible
+perpetuity unto which all others must diminish their diameters, and be
+poorly seen in angles of contingency.
+
+Pious spirits, who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made
+little more of this world than the world that was before it, while they
+lay obscure in the chaos of preordination and night of their forebeings.
+And if any have been so happy as truly to understand Christian
+annihilation, ecstasis, exolution, liquefaction, transformation, the
+kiss of the spouse, gustation of God, and ingression into the divine
+shadow, they have already had a handsome anticipation of heaven; the
+glory of the world is surely over, and the earth in ashes unto them.
+
+FROM 'A FRAGMENT ON MUMMIES'
+
+Wise Egypt, prodigal of her embalmments, wrapped up her princes and
+great commanders in aromatical folds, and, studiously extracting from
+corruptible bodies their corruption, ambitiously looked forward to
+immortality; from which vainglory we have become acquainted with many
+remnants of the old world, who could discourse unto us of the great
+things of yore, and tell us strange tales of the sons of Mizraim and
+ancient braveries of Egypt. Wonderful indeed are the preserves of time,
+which openeth unto us mummies from crypts and pyramids, and mammoth
+bones from caverns and excavations; whereof man hath found the best
+preservation, appearing unto us in some sort fleshly, while beasts must
+be fain of an osseous continuance.
+
+In what original this practice of the Egyptians had root, divers authors
+dispute; while some place the origin hereof in the desire to prevent the
+separation of the soul by keeping the body untabified, and alluring the
+spiritual part to remain by sweet and precious odors. But all this was
+but fond inconsideration. The soul, having broken its ..., is not stayed
+by bands and cerecloths, nor to be recalled by Sabaean odors, but fleeth
+to the place of invisibles, the _ubi_ of spirits, and needeth a surer
+than Hermes's seal to imprison it to its medicated trunk, which yet
+subsists anomalously in its indestructible case, and, like a widow
+looking for her husband, anxiously awaits its return....
+
+That mummy is medicinal, the Arabian Doctor Haly delivereth, and divers
+confirms; but of the particular uses thereof, there is much discrepancy
+of opinion. While Hofmannus prescribes the same to epileptics, Johan de
+Muralto commends the use thereof to gouty persons; Bacon likewise extols
+it as a stiptic, and Junkenius considers it of efficacy to resolve
+coagulated blood. Meanwhile, we hardly applaud Francis the First of
+France, who always carried mummies with him as a panacea against all
+disorders; and were the efficacy thereof more clearly made out, scarce
+conceive the use thereof allowable in physic, exceeding the barbarities
+of Cambyses, and turning old heroes unto unworthy potions. Shall Egypt
+lend out her ancients unto chirurgeons and apothecaries, and Cheops and
+Psammitticus be weighed unto us for drugs? Shall we eat of Chamnes and
+Amosis in electuaries and pills, and be cured by cannibal mixtures?
+Surely, such diet is dismal vampirism, and exceeds in horror the black
+banquet of Domitian, not to be paralleled except in those Arabian
+feasts, wherein Ghoules feed horribly.
+
+But the common opinion of the virtues of mummy bred great consumption
+thereof, and princes and great men contended for this strange panacea,
+wherein Jews dealt largely, manufacturing mummies from dead carcasses
+and giving them the names of kings, while specifics were compounded from
+crosses and gibbet leavings. There wanted not a set of Arabians who
+counterfeited mummies so accurately that it needed great skill to
+distinguish the false from the true. Queasy stomachs would hardly fancy
+the doubtful potion, wherein one might so easily swallow a cloud for his
+Juno, and defraud the fowls of the air while in conceit enjoying the
+conserves of Canopus....
+
+For those dark caves and mummy repositories are Satan's abodes, wherein
+he speculates and rejoices on human vainglory, and keeps those kings and
+conquerors, whom alive he bewitched, whole for that great day when he
+will claim his own, and marshal the kings of Nilus and Thebes in sad
+procession unto the pit.
+
+Death, that fatal necessity which so many would overlook or blinkingly
+survey, the old Egyptians held continually before their eyes. Their
+embalmed ancestors they carried about at their banquets, as holding them
+still a part of their families, and not thrusting them from their places
+at feasts. They wanted not likewise a sad preacher at their tables to
+admonish them daily of death,--surely an unnecessary discourse while
+they banqueted in sepulchres. Whether this were not making too much of
+death, as tending to assuefaction, some reason there is to doubt; but
+certain it is that such practices would hardly be embraced by our modern
+gourmands, who like not to look on faces of _mortua_, or be elbowed
+by mummies.
+
+Yet in those huge structures and pyramidal immensities, of the builders
+whereof so little is known, they seemed not so much to raise sepulchres
+or temples to death as to contemn and disdain it, astonishing heaven
+with their audacities, and looking forward with delight to their
+interment in those eternal piles. Of their living habitations they made
+little account, conceiving of them but as _hospitia_, or inns, while
+they adorned the sepulchres of the dead, and, planting thereon lasting
+bases, defied the crumbling touches of time and the misty vaporousness
+of oblivion. Yet all were but Babel vanities. Time sadly overcometh all
+things, and is now dominant, and sitteth upon a sphinx, and looketh
+unto Memphis and old Thebes, while his sister Oblivion reclineth
+semisomnous on a pyramid, gloriously triumphing, making puzzles of
+Titanian erections, and turning old glories into dreams. History sinketh
+beneath her cloud. The traveler, as he paceth amazedly through those
+deserts, asketh of her, Who builded them? and she mumbleth something,
+but what it is he heareth not.
+
+Egypt itself is now become the land of obliviousness, and doteth. Her
+ancient civility is gone, and her glory hath vanished as a phantasma.
+Her youthful days are over, and her face hath become wrinkled and
+tetric. She poreth not upon the heavens; astronomy is dead unto her, and
+knowledge maketh other cycles. Canopus is afar off, Memnon resoundeth
+not to the sun, and Nilus heareth strange voices. Her monuments are but
+hieroglyphically sempiternal. Osiris and Anubis, her averruncous
+deities, have departed, while Orus yet remains dimly shadowing the
+principle of vicissitude and the effluxion of things, but receiveth
+little oblation.
+
+
+
+FROM 'A LETTER TO A FRIEND'
+
+He was willing to quit the world alone and altogether, leaving no
+earnest behind him for corruption or after-grave, having small content
+in that common satisfaction to survive or live in another, but amply
+satisfied that his disease should die with himself, nor revive in a
+posterity to puzzle physic, and make sad mementos of their parent
+hereditary....
+
+In this deliberate and creeping progress unto the grave, he was somewhat
+too young and of too noble a mind to fall upon that stupid symptom,
+observable in divers persons near their journey's end, and which may be
+reckoned among the mortal symptoms of their last disease; that is, to
+become more narrow-minded, miserable, and tenacious, unready to part
+with anything when they are ready to part with all, and afraid to want
+when they have no time to spend; meanwhile physicians, who know that
+many are mad but in a single depraved imagination, and one prevalent
+decipiency, and that beside and out of such single deliriums a man may
+meet with sober actions and good sense in Bedlam, cannot but smile to
+see the heirs and concerned relations gratulating themselves on the
+sober departure of their friends; and though they behold such mad
+covetous passages, content to think they die in good understanding, and
+in their sober senses.
+
+Avarice, which is not only infidelity but idolatry, either from covetous
+progeny or questuary education, had no root in his breast, who made good
+works the expression of his faith, and was big with desires unto public
+and lasting charities; and surely, where good wishes and charitable
+intentions exceed abilities, theorical beneficency may be more than a
+dream. They build not castles in the air who would build churches on
+earth; and though they leave no such structures here, may lay good
+foundations in heaven. In brief, his life and death were such that I
+could not blame them who wished the like, and almost to have been
+himself: almost, I say; for though we may wish the prosperous
+appurtenances of others, or to be another in his happy accidents, yet so
+intrinsical is every man unto himself that some doubt may be made
+whether any would exchange his being, or substantially become
+another man.
+
+He had wisely seen the world at home and abroad, and thereby observed
+under what variety men are deluded in the pursuit of that which is not
+here to be found. And although he had no opinion of reputed felicities
+below, and apprehended men widely out in the estimate of such happiness,
+yet his sober contempt of the world wrought no Democratism or Cynicism,
+no laughing or snarling at it, as well understanding there are not
+felicities in this world to satisfy a serious mind; and therefore, to
+soften the stream of our lives, we are fain to take in the reputed
+contentions of this world, to unite with the crowd in their beatitudes,
+and to make ourselves happy by consortion, opinion, or co-existimation:
+for strictly to separate from received and customary felicities, and to
+confine unto the rigor of realities, were to contract the consolation of
+our beings unto too uncomfortable circumscriptions.
+
+Not to be content with life is the unsatisfactory state of those who
+destroy themselves; who, being afraid to live, run blindly upon their
+own death, which no man fears by experience: and the Stoics had a
+notable doctrine to take away the fear thereof; that is, in such
+extremities, to desire that which is not to be avoided, and wish what
+might be feared; and so made evils voluntary and to suit with their own
+desires, which took off the terror of them.
+
+But the ancient martyrs were not encouraged by such fallacies, who,
+though they feared not death, were afraid to be their own executioners;
+and therefore thought it more wisdom to crucify their lusts than their
+bodies, to circumcise than stab their hearts, and to mortify than kill
+themselves.
+
+His willingness to leave this world about that age when most men think
+they may best enjoy it, though paradoxical unto worldly ears, was not
+strange unto mine, who have so often observed that many, though old, oft
+stick fast unto the world, and seem to be drawn like Cacus's oxen,
+backward with great struggling and reluctancy unto the grave. The long
+habit of living makes mere men more hardly to part with life, and all to
+be nothing, but what is to come. To live at the rate of the old world,
+when some could scarce remember themselves young, may afford no better
+digested death than a more moderate period. Many would have thought it
+an happiness to have had their lot of life in some notable conjunctures
+of ages past; but the uncertainty of future times hath tempted few to
+make a part in ages to come. And surely, he that hath taken the true
+altitude of things, and rightly calculated the degenerate state of this
+age, is not like to envy those that shall live in the next, much less
+three or four hundred years hence, when no man can comfortably imagine
+what face this world will carry; and therefore, since every age makes a
+step unto the end of all things, and the Scripture affords so hard a
+character of the last times, quiet minds will be content with their
+generations, and rather bless ages past than be ambitious of those
+to come.
+
+Though age had set no seal upon his face, yet a dim eye might clearly
+discover fifty in his actions; and therefore, since wisdom is the gray
+hair, and an unspotted life old age, although his years came short, he
+might have been said to have held up with longer livers, and to have
+been Solomon's old man. And surely if we deduct all those days of our
+life which we might wish unlived, and which abate the comfort of those
+we now live, if we reckon up only those days which God hath accepted of
+our lives, a life of good years will hardly be a span long; the son in
+this sense may outlive the father, and none be climacterically old. He
+that early arriveth unto the parts and prudence of age is happily old
+without the uncomfortable attendants of it; and 'tis superfluous to live
+unto gray hairs, when in a precocious temper we anticipate the virtues
+of them. In brief, he cannot be accounted young who outliveth the old
+man. He that hath early arrived unto the measure of a perfect stature in
+Christ, hath already fulfilled the prime and longest intention of his
+being; and one day lived after the perfect rule of piety is to be
+preferred before sinning immortality.
+
+Although he attained not unto the years of his predecessors, yet he
+wanted not those preserving virtues which confirm the thread of weaker
+constitutions. _Cautelous_ chastity and _crafty_ sobriety were far from
+him; those jewels were _paragon_, without flaw, hair, ice, or cloud in
+him: which affords me a hint to proceed in these good wishes and few
+mementos unto you.
+
+
+
+SOME RELATIONS WHOSE TRUTH WE FEAR
+
+From 'Pseudoxia Epidemica'
+
+Many other accounts like these we meet sometimes in history, scandalous
+unto Christianity, and even unto humanity; whose verities not only, but
+whose relations, honest minds do deprecate. For of sins heteroclital,
+and such as want either name or precedent, there is ofttimes a sin even
+in their histories. We desire no records of such enormities; sins should
+be accounted new, that so they may be esteemed monstrous. They amit of
+monstrosity as they fall from their rarity; for men count it venial to
+err with their forefathers, and foolishly conceive they divide a sin in
+its society. The pens of men may sufficiently expatiate without these
+singularities of villainy; for as they increase the hatred of vice in
+some, so do they enlarge the theory of wickedness in all. And this is
+one thing that may make latter ages worse than were the former; for the
+vicious examples of ages past poison the curiosity of these present,
+affording a hint of sin unto seducible spirits, and soliciting those
+unto the imitation of them, whose heads were never so perversely
+principled as to invent them. In this kind we commend the wisdom and
+goodness of Galen, who would not leave unto the world too subtle a
+theory of poisons; unarming thereby the malice of venomous spirits,
+whose ignorance must be contented with sublimate and arsenic. For surely
+there are subtler venerations, such as will invisibly destroy, and like
+the basilisks of heaven. In things of this nature silence commendeth
+history: 'tis the veniable part of things lost; wherein there must never
+rise a Pancirollus, nor remain any register but that of hell.
+
+
+
+WILLIAM BROWNE
+
+(1591-1643)
+
+Among the English poets fatuous for their imaginative interpretation of
+nature, high rank must be given to William Browne, who belongs in the
+list headed by Spenser, and including Thomas Lodge, Michael Drayton,
+Nicholas Breton, George Wither, and Phineas Fletcher. Although he shows
+skill and charm of style in various kinds of verse, his name rests
+chiefly upon his largest work, 'Britannia's Pastorals.' This is much
+wider in scope than the title suggests, if one follows the definition
+given by Pope in his 'Discourse on Pastoral Poetry.' He says:--"A
+Pastoral is an imitation of the action of a shepherd or one considered
+under that character. The form of this imitation is dramatic, or
+narrated, or mixed of both; the fable simple, the manners not too polite
+nor too rustic; the thoughts are plain, yet admit a little quickness and
+passion.... If we would copy Nature, it may be useful to take this Idea
+along with us: that Pastoral is an image of what they call the Golden
+Age. So that we are not to describe our shepherds as shepherds at this
+day really are, but as they may be conceived then to have been when the
+best of men followed the employment.... We must therefore use some
+illusion to render a Pastoral delightful, and this consists in exposing
+the best side only of a shepherd's life, and in concealing its
+miseries."
+
+In his 'Shepherd's Pipe,' a series of 'Eclogues' Browne follows this
+plan; but 'Britannia's Pastorals' contains rambling stories of
+Hamadryads and Oreads; figures which are too shadowy to seem real, yet
+stand in exquisite woodland landscapes. When the story passes to the
+yellow sands and "froth-girt rocks," washed by the crisped and curling
+waves from "Neptune's silver, ever-shaking breast," or when it touches
+the mysteries of the ocean world, over which "Thetis drives her silver
+throne," the poet's fancy is as delicate as when he revels in the earthy
+smell of the woods, where the leaves, golden and green, hide from sight
+the feathered choir; where glow the hips of scarlet berries; where is
+heard the dropping of nuts; and where the active bright-eyed squirrels
+leap from tree to tree.
+
+The loves, hardships, and adventures of Marina, Celadyne, Redmond, Fida,
+Philocel, Aletheia, Metanoia, and Amintas do not hold the reader from
+delight in descriptions of the blackbird and dove calling from the dewy
+branches; crystal streams lisping through banks purple with violets,
+rosy with eglantine, or sweet with wild thyme; thickets where the
+rabbits hide; sequestered nooks on which the elms and alders throw long
+shadows; circles of green grass made by dancing elves; rounded hills
+shut in by oaks, pines, birches, and laurel, where shepherds pipe on
+oaten straws, or shag-haired satyrs frolic and sleep; and meadows, whose
+carpets of cowslip and mint are freshened daily by nymphs pouring out
+gentle streams from crystal urns. Every now and then, huntsmen in green
+dash through his sombre woods with their hounds in full cry; anglers are
+seated by still pools, shepherds dance around the May-pole, and
+shepherdesses gather flowers for garlands. Gloomy caves appear,
+surrounded by hawthorn and holly that "outdares cold winter's ire," and
+sheltering old hermits, skilled in simples and the secret power of
+herbs. Sometimes the poet describes a choir where the tiny wren sings
+the treble, Robin Redbreast the mean, the thrush the tenor, and the
+nightingale the counter-tenor, while droning bees fill in the bass; and
+shows us fairy haunts and customs with a delicacy only equaled by
+Drayton and Herrick.
+
+Several lyric songs of high order are scattered through the 'Pastorals,'
+and the famous 'Palinode on Man' is imbedded in the Third Book as
+follows:--
+
+     "I truly know
+     How men are born and whither they shall go;
+     I know that like to silkworms of one year,
+     Or like a kind and wronged lover's tear,
+     Or on the pathless waves a rudder's dint,
+     Or like the little sparkles of a flint,
+     Or like to thin round cakes with cost perfum'd,
+     Or fireworks only made to be consum'd:
+     I know that such is man, and all that trust
+     In that weak piece of animated dust.
+     The silkworm droops, the lover's tears soon shed,
+     The ship's way quickly lost, the sparkle dead;
+     The cake burns out in haste, the firework's done,
+     And man as soon as these as quickly gone."
+
+Little is known of Browne's life. He was a native of Tavistock,
+Devonshire; born, it is thought, in 1591, the son of Thomas Browne, who
+is supposed by Prince in his 'Worthies of Devon' to have belonged to a
+knightly family. According to Wood, who says "he had a great mind in a
+little body," he was sent to Exeter College, Oxford, "about the
+beginning of the reign of James I." Leaving Oxford without a degree, he
+was admitted in 1612 to the Inner Temple, London, and a little later he
+is discovered at Oxford, engaged as private tutor to Robert Dormer,
+afterward Earl of Carnarvon. In 1624 he received his degree of Master of
+Arts from Oxford. He appears to have settled in Dorking, and after 1640
+nothing more is heard of him. Wood thinks he died in 1645, but there is
+an entry in the Tavistock register, dated March 27th, 1643, and reading
+"William Browne was buried" on that day. That he was devoted to the
+streams, dales, and downs of his native Devonshire is shown in the
+Pastorals, where he sings:--
+
+     "Hail, thou my native soil! thou blessed plot
+     Whose equal all the world affordeth not!
+     Show me who can, so many crystal rills,
+     Such sweet-cloth'd valleys or aspiring hills;
+     Such wood-ground, pastures, quarries, wealthy mines;
+     Such rocks in whom the diamond fairly shines."
+
+And in another place he says:--
+
+     "And Tavy in my rhymes
+     Challenge a due; let it thy glory be
+     That famous Drake and I were born by thee."
+
+The First Book of 'Britannia's Pastorals' was written before its author
+was twenty, and was published in 1631. The Second Book appeared in 1616,
+and both were reprinted in 1625. The Third Book was not published during
+Browne's life. The 'Shepherd's Pipe' was published in 1614, and 'The
+Inner Temple Masque,' written on the story of Ulysses and Circe, for
+representation in 1614, was first published in Thomas Davies's edition
+of Browne's works (3 vols., 1772). Two critical editions of value have
+been brought out in recent years: one by W. Carew Hazlitt (London,
+1868-69); and the other by Gordon Goodwin and A.H. Bullen (1894).
+
+"In the third song of the Second Book," says Mr. Bullen in his
+preface,--
+
+     "There is a description of a delightful grove, perfumed with
+     'odoriferous buds and herbs of price,' where fruits hang in
+     gallant clusters from the trees, and birds tune their notes
+     to the music of running water; so fair a pleasaunce
+
+          'that you are fain
+          Where you last walked to turn and walk again.'
+
+     A generous reader might apply that description to Browne's
+     poetry; he might urge that the breezes which blew down these
+     leafy alleys and over those trim parterres were not more
+     grateful than the fragrance exhaled from the 'Pastorals';
+     that the brooks and birds babble and twitter in the printed
+     page not less blithely than in that western Paradise. What so
+     pleasant as to read of May-games, true-love knots, and
+     shepherds piping in the shade? of pixies and fairy-circles?
+     of rustic bridals and junketings? of angling, hunting the
+     squirrel, nut-gathering? Of such subjects William Browne
+     treats, singing like the shepherd in the 'Arcadia,' as though
+     he would never grow old. He was a happy poet. It was his good
+     fortune to grow up among wholesome surroundings whose
+     gracious influences sank into his spirit. He loved the hills
+     and dales round Tavistock, and lovingly described them in his
+     verse. Frequently he indulges in descriptions of sunrise and
+     sunset; they leave no vivid impression, but charm the reader
+     by their quiet beauty. It cannot be denied that his fondness
+     for simple, homely images sometimes led him into sheer
+     fatuity; and candid admirers must also admit that, despite
+     his study of simplicity, he could not refrain from hunting
+     (as the manner was) after far-fetched outrageous conceits."
+
+Browne is a poet's poet. Drayton, Wither, Herbert, and John Davies of
+Hereford, wrote his praises. Mrs. Browning includes him in her 'Vision
+of Poets,' where she says:--
+
+     "Drayton and Browne,--with smiles they drew
+     From outward Nature, still kept new
+     From their own inward nature true."
+
+Milton studied him carefully, and just as his influence is perceived in
+the work of Keats, so is it found in 'Comus' and in 'Lycidas.' Browne
+acknowledges Spenser and Sidney as his masters, and his work shows that
+he loved Chaucer and Shakespeare.
+
+
+
+     CIRCE'S CHARM
+
+     Song from the 'Inner Temple Masque'
+
+
+     Son of Erebus and night,
+     Hie away; and aim thy flight
+     Where consort none other fowl
+     Than the bat and sullen owl;
+     Where upon thy limber grass,
+     Poppy and mandragoras,
+     With like simples not a few,
+     Hang forever drops of dew;
+     Where flows Lethe without coil
+     Softly like a stream of oil.
+     Hie thee hither, gentle sleep:
+     With this Greek no longer keep.
+     Thrice I charge thee by my wand,
+     Thrice with moly from my hand
+     Do I touch Ulysses's eyes,
+     And with the jaspis: then arise,
+       Sagest Greek!
+
+_CIRCE_.
+
+Photogravure from a Painting by E Burne-Jones.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+     THE HUNTED SQUIRREL
+
+     From 'Britannia's Pastorals'
+
+
+     Then as a nimble squirrel from the wood
+     Ranging the hedges for his filbert food
+     Sits pertly on a bough, his brown nuts cracking,
+     And from the shell the sweet white kernel taking;
+     Till with their crooks and bags a sort of boys
+     To share with him come with so great a noise
+     That he is forced to leave a nut nigh broke,
+     And for his life leap to a neighbor oak,
+     Thence to a beach, thence to a row of ashes;
+     Whilst through the quagmires and red water plashes
+     The boys run dabbling through thick and thin;
+     One tears his hose, another breaks his shin;
+     This, torn and tattered, hath with much ado
+     Got by the briars; and that hath lost his shoe;
+     This drops his band; that headlong falls for haste;
+     Another cries behind for being last:
+     With sticks and stones and many a sounding holloa
+     The little fool with no small sport they follow,
+     Whilst he from tree to tree, from spray to spray
+     Gets to the woods and hides him in his dray.
+
+
+
+
+     AS CAREFUL MERCHANTS DO EXPECTING STAND
+
+     From 'Britannia's Pastorals'
+
+
+     As careful merchants do expecting stand,
+       After long time and merry gales of wind,
+     Upon the place where their brave ships must land,
+       So wait I for the vessel of my mind.
+
+     Upon a great adventure is it bound,
+       Whose safe return will valued be at more
+     Than all the wealthy prizes which have crowned
+       The golden wishes of an age before.
+
+     Out of the East jewels of worth she brings;
+       The unvalued diamond of her sparkling eye
+     Wants in the treasures of all Europe's kings;
+       And were it mine, they nor their crowns should buy.
+
+     The sapphires ringed on her panting breast
+       Run as rich veins of ore about the mold,
+     And are in sickness with a pale possessed;
+       So true for them I should disvalue gold.
+
+     The melting rubies on her cherry lip
+       Are of such power to hold, that as one day
+     Cupid flew thirsty by, he stooped to sip:
+       And, fastened there, could never get away.
+
+     The sweets of Candy are no sweets to me
+       Where hers I taste: nor the perfumes of price,
+     Robbed from the happy shrubs of Araby,
+       As her sweet breath so powerful to entice.
+
+     O hasten then! and if thou be not gone
+       Unto that wicked traffic through the main,
+     My powerful sigh shall quickly drive thee on,
+       And then begin to draw thee back again.
+
+     If, in the mean, rude waves have it opprest,
+     It shall suffice, I ventured at the best.
+
+
+
+
+     SONG OF THE SIRENS
+
+     From 'The Inner Temple Masque'
+
+
+     Steer hither, steer your winged pines,
+       All beaten mariners!
+     Here lie love's undiscovered mines,
+       A prey to passengers:
+     Perfumes far sweeter than the best
+     Which make the Phoenix's urn and nest.
+       Fear not your ships,
+     Nor any to oppose you save our lips,
+       But come on shore,
+     Where no joy dies till love hath gotten more.
+
+     For swelling waves our panting breasts,
+       Where never storms arise,
+     Exchange, and be awhile our guests:
+       For stars, gaze on our eyes.
+     The compass love shall hourly sing,
+     And as he goes about the ring,
+       We will not miss
+     To tell each point he nameth with a kiss.
+       Then come on shore,
+     Where no joy dies till love hath gotten more.
+
+
+
+     AN EPISTLE ON PARTING
+
+     From 'Epistles'
+
+
+     Dear soul, the time is come, and we must part;
+     Yet, ere I go, in these lines read my heart:
+     A heart so just, so loving, and so true,
+     So full of sorrow and so full of you,
+     That all I speak or write or pray or mean,--
+     And, which is all I can, all that I dream,--
+     Is not without a sigh, a thought of you,
+     And as your beauties are, so are they true.
+     Seven summers now are fully spent and gone,
+     Since first I loved, loved you, and you alone;
+     And should mine eyes as many hundreds see,
+     Yet none but you should claim a right in me;
+     A right so placed that time shall never hear
+     Of one so vowed, or any loved so dear.
+     When I am gone, if ever prayers moved you,
+     Relate to none that I so well have loved you:
+     For all that know your beauty and desert,
+     Would swear he never loved that knew to part.
+     Why part we then? That spring, which but this day
+     Met some sweet river, in his bed can play,
+     And with a dimpled cheek smile at their bliss,
+     Who never know what separation is.
+     The amorous vine with wanton interlaces
+     Clips still the rough elm in her kind embraces:
+     Doves with their doves sit billing in the groves,
+     And woo the lesser birds to sing their loves:
+     Whilst hapless we in griefful absence sit,
+     Yet dare not ask a hand to lessen it.
+
+
+
+
+     SONNETS TO CAELIA
+
+
+     Fairest, when by the rules of palmistry,
+       You took my hand to try if you could guess,
+     By lines therein, if any wight there be
+       Ordained to make me know some happiness:
+     I wished that those characters could explain,
+       Whom I will never wrong with hope to win;
+     Or that by them a copy might be ta'en,
+       By you alone what thoughts I have within.
+     But since the hand of nature did not set
+       (As providently loath to have it known)
+     The means to find that hidden alphabet,
+       Mine eyes shall be the interpreters alone:
+     By them conceive my thoughts, and tell me, fair,
+      If now you see her that doth love me, there.
+
+     Were't not for you, here should my pen have rest,
+       And take a long leave of sweet poesy;
+     Britannia's swains, and rivers far by west,
+       Should hear no more my oaten melody.
+     Yet shall the song I sung of them awhile
+       Unperfect lie, and make no further known
+     The happy loves of this our pleasant Isle,
+       Till I have left some record of mine own.
+     You are the subject now, and, writing you,
+       I well may versify, not poetize:
+     Here needs no fiction; for the graces true
+       And virtues clip not with base flatteries.
+     Here should I write what you deserve of praise;
+     Others might wear, but I should win, the bays.
+
+     Fairest, when I am gone, as now the glass
+       Of Time is marked how long I have to stay,
+     Let me entreat you, ere from hence I pass,
+       Perhaps from you for ever more away,--
+     Think that no common love hath fired my breast,
+       No base desire, but virtue truly known,
+     Which I may love, and wish to have possessed,
+       Were you the highest as fairest of any one.
+     'Tis not your lovely eye enforcing flames,
+       Nor beauteous red beneath a snowy skin,
+     That so much binds me yours, or makes your fame's,
+       As the pure light and beauty shrined within:
+     Yet outward parts I must affect of duty,
+     As for the smell we like the rose's beauty.
+
+
+
+HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL
+
+(1820-1872)
+
+This poet, prominent among those who gained their chief inspiration from
+the stirring events of the Civil War, was born in Providence, Rhode
+Island, February 6th, 1820, and died in East Hartford, Connecticut,
+October 31st, 1872. He was graduated at Trinity College, Hartford,
+studied law, and was admitted to the bar; but instead of the legal
+profession adopted that of a teacher, and made his home in Hartford,
+which was the residence of his uncle, the Bishop of Connecticut.
+Although Mr. Brownell soon became known as a writer of verse, both grave
+and humorous, it was not till the coming on of the Civil War that his
+muse found truest and noblest expression. With a poet's sensitiveness he
+foresaw the coming storm, and predicted it in verse that has the ring of
+an ancient prophet; and when the crash came he sang of the great deeds
+of warriors in the old heroic strain. Many of these poems, like 'Annus
+Memorabilis' and 'Coming,' were born of the great passion of patriotism
+which took possession of him, and were regarded only as the visions of a
+heated imagination. But when the storm burst it was seen that he had the
+true vision. As the dreadful drama unrolled, Brownell rose to greater
+issues, and became the war-poet _par excellence_, the vigorous
+chronicler of great actions.
+
+He was fond of the sea, and ardently longed for the opportunity to
+witness, if not to participate in, a sea-fight. His desire was gratified
+in a singular way. He had printed in a Hartford paper a very felicitous
+versification of Farragut's 'General Orders' in the fight at the mouth
+of the Mississippi. This attracted Farragut's attention, and he took
+steps to learn the name of the author. When it was given, Commodore
+Farragut (he was not then Admiral) offered Mr. Brownell the position of
+master's-mate on board the Hartford, and attached the poet to him in the
+character of a private secretary. Thus he was present at the fight of
+Mobile Bay. After the war he accompanied the Admiral in his cruise in
+European waters.
+
+Although Brownell was best known to the country by his descriptive
+poems, 'The River Fight' and 'The Bay Fight,' which appear in his volume
+of collected works, 'War Lyrics,' his title to be considered a true poet
+does not rest upon these only. He was unequal in his performance and
+occasionally was betrayed by a grotesque humor into disregard of dignity
+and finish; but he had both the vision and the lyric grace of the
+builder of lasting verse.
+
+
+     ANNUS MEMORABILIS
+
+     (CONGRESS, 1860-61)
+
+
+     Stand strong and calm as Fate! not a breath of scorn or hate--
+       Of taunt for the base, or of menace for the strong--
+     Since our fortunes must be sealed on that old and famous Field
+       Where the Right is set in battle with the Wrong.
+     'Tis coming, with the loom of Khamsin or Simoom,
+       The tempest that shall try if we are of God or no--
+     Its roar is in the sky,--and they there be which cry,
+       "Let us cower, and the storm may over-blow."
+     Now, nay! stand firm and fast! (that was a spiteful blast!)
+       This is not a war of men, but of Angels Good and Ill--
+     'Tis hell that storms at heaven--'tis the black and deadly Seven,
+       Sworn 'gainst the Shining Ones to work their damned will!
+     How the Ether glooms and burns, as the tide of combat turns,
+       And the smoke and dust above it whirl and float!
+     It eddies and it streams--and, certes, oft it seems
+       As the Sins had the Seraphs fairly by the throat.
+     But we all have read (in that Legend grand and dread),
+       How Michael and his host met the Serpent and his crew--
+     Naught has reached us of the Fight--but if I have dreamed aright,
+       'Twas a loud one and a long, as ever thundered through!
+     Right stiffly, past a doubt, the Dragon fought it out,
+       And his Angels, each and all, did for Tophet their devoir--
+     There was creak of iron wings, and whirl of scorpion stings,
+       Hiss of bifid tongues, and the Pit in full uproar!
+     But, naught thereof enscrolled, in one brief line 'tis told
+       (Calm as dew the Apocalyptic Pen),
+     That on the Infinite Shore their place was found no more.
+       God send the like on this our earth! Amen.
+
+     Copyrighted by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston.
+
+
+     WORDS FOR THE 'HALLELUJAH CHORUS'
+
+     Old John Brown lies a-moldering in the grave,
+     Old John Brown lies slumbering in his grave--
+     But John Brown's soul is marching with the brave,
+               His soul is marching on.
+
+                 Glory, glory, hallelujah!
+                 Glory, glory, hallelujah!
+                 Glory, glory, hallelujah!
+                 His soul is marching on.
+
+     He has gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord;
+     He is sworn as a private in the ranks of the Lord,--
+     He shall stand at Armageddon with his brave old sword,
+               When Heaven is marching on.
+
+     He shall file in front where the lines of battle form,
+     He shall face to front when the squares of battle form--
+     Time with the column, and charge in the storm,
+               Where men are marching on.
+
+     Ah, foul Tyrants! do ye hear him where he comes?
+     Ah, black traitors! do ye know him as he comes,
+     In thunder of the cannon and roll of the drums,
+               As we go marching on?
+
+     Men may die, and molder in the dust--
+     Men may die, and arise again from dust,
+     Shoulder to shoulder, in the ranks of the Just,
+               When Heaven is marching on.
+
+                 Glory, glory, hallelujah!
+                 Glory, glory, hallelujah!
+                 Glory, glory, hallelujah!
+                 His soul is marching on.
+
+
+     COMING
+
+     (APRIL, 1861)
+
+
+     World, are thou 'ware of a storm?
+         Hark to the ominous sound;
+     How the far-off gales their battle form,
+         And the great sea-swells feel ground!
+
+     It comes, the Typhoon of Death--
+         Nearer and nearer it comes!
+     The horizon thunder of cannon-breath
+         And the roar of angry drums!
+
+     Hurtle, Terror sublime!
+         Swoop o'er the Land to-day--
+     So the mist of wrong and crime,
+     The breath of our Evil Time
+         Be swept, as by fire, away!
+
+
+
+     PSYCHAURA
+
+     The wind of an autumn midnight
+       Is moaning around my door--
+     The curtains wave at the window,
+       The carpet lifts on the floor.
+
+     There are sounds like startled footfalls
+       In the distant chambers now,
+     And the touching of airy ringers
+       Is busy on hand and brow.
+
+     'Tis thus, in the Soul's dark dwelling--
+       By the moody host unsought--
+     Through the chambers of memory wander
+       The invisible airs of thought.
+
+     For it bloweth where it listeth,
+       With a murmur loud or low;
+     Whence it cometh--whither it goeth--
+       None tell us, and none may know.
+
+     Now wearying round the portals
+       Of the vacant, desolate mind--
+     As the doors of a ruined mansion,
+       That creak in the cold night wind.
+
+     And anon an awful memory
+       Sweeps over it fierce and high--
+     Like the roar of a mountain forest
+       When the midnight gale goes by.
+
+     Then its voice subsides in wailing,
+       And, ere the dawning of day,
+     Murmuring fainter and fainter,
+       In the distance dies away.
+
+
+     SUSPIRIA NOCTIS
+
+
+     Reading, and reading--little is the gain
+       Long dwelling with the minds of dead men leaves.
+     List rather to the melancholy rain,
+             Drop--dropping from the eaves.
+
+     Still the old tale--how hardly worth the telling!
+       Hark to the wind!--again that mournful sound,
+     That all night long, around this lonely dwelling,
+             Moans like a dying hound.
+
+
+
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
+
+(1809-1861)
+
+It is interesting to step back sixty years into the lives of Miss
+Mitford and her "dear young friend Miss Barrett," when the _-esses_ of
+"authoresses" and "poetesses" and "editresses" and "hermitesses" make
+the pages sibilant; when 'Books of Beauty,' and 'Keepsakes,' and the
+extraordinary methods of "Finden's Tableaux" make us wonder that
+literature survived; when Mr. Kenyon, taking Miss Mitford "to the
+giraffes and the Diorama," called for "Miss Barrett, a hermitess in
+Gloucester Place, who reads Greek as I do French, who has published some
+translations from AEschylus, and some most striking poems,"--"Our sweet
+Miss Barrett! to think of virtue and genius is to think of her." Of her
+own life Mrs. Browning writes:--"As to stories, my story amounts to the
+knife-grinder's, with nothing at all for a catastrophe. A bird in a cage
+would have as good a story; most of my events and nearly all my intense
+pleasure have passed in my thoughts."
+
+[Illustration: Mrs. Browning]
+
+She was born at Burn Hall, Durham, on March 6th, 1809, and passed a
+happy childhood and youth in her father's country house at Hope End,
+Herefordshire. She was remarkably precocious, reading Homer in the
+original at eight years of age. She said that in those days "the Greeks
+were her demigods. She dreamed more of Agamemnon than of Moses, her
+black pony." "I wrote verses very early, at eight years old and earlier.
+But what is less common, the early fancy turned into a will, and
+remained with me." At seventeen years of age she published the 'Essay on
+Mind,' and translated the 'Prometheus' of AEschylus. Some years later the
+family removed to London, and here Elizabeth, on account of her
+continued delicate health, was kept in her room for months at a time.
+The shock following on the death of her brother, who was drowned before
+her eyes in Torquay, whither she had gone for rest, completely shattered
+her physically. Now her life of seclusion in her London home began. For
+years she lay upon a couch in a large, comfortably darkened room, seeing
+only the immediate members of her family and a few privileged friends,
+and spending her days in writing and study, "reading," Miss Mitford
+says, "almost every book worth reading in almost every language." Here
+Robert Browning met her. They were married in 1846, against the will of
+her father. Going abroad immediately, they finally settled in Florence
+at the Casa Guidi, made famous by her poem bearing the same name. Their
+home became the centre of attraction to visitors in Florence, and many
+of the finest minds in the literary and artistic world were among their
+friends. Hawthorne, who visited them, describes Mrs. Browning as "a
+pale, small person, scarcely embodied at all, at any rate only
+substantial enough to put forth her slender fingers to be grasped, and
+to speak with a shrill yet sweet tenuity of voice. It is wonderful to
+see how small she is, how pale her cheek, how bright and dark her eyes.
+There is not such another figure in the world, and her black ringlets
+cluster down in her neck and make her face look whiter." She died in
+Florence on the 30th of June, 1861, and the citizens of Florence placed
+a tablet to her memory on the walls of Casa Guidi.
+
+The life and personality of Elizabeth Barrett Browning seem to explain
+her poetry. It is a life "without a catastrophe," except perhaps to her
+devoted father. And it is to this father's devotion that some of Mrs.
+Browning's poetical sins are due; for by him she was so pampered and
+shielded from every outside touch, that all the woes common to humanity
+grew for her into awful tragedies. Her life was abnormal and unreal,--an
+unreality that passed more or less into everything she did. Indeed, her
+resuscitation after meeting Robert Browning would mount into a miracle,
+unless it were realized that nothing in her former life had been quite
+as woful as it seemed. That Mrs. Browning was "a woman of real genius,"
+even Edward Fitzgerald allowed; and in speaking of Shelley, Walter
+Savage Landor said, "With the exception of Burns, he [Shelley] and Keats
+were inspired with a stronger spirit of poetry than any other poet since
+Milton. I sometimes fancy that Elizabeth Barrett Browning comes next."
+This is very high praise from very high authority, but none too high for
+Mrs. Browning, for her best work has the true lyric ring, that
+spontaneity of thought and expression which comes when the singer
+forgets himself in his song and becomes tuneful under the stress of the
+moment's inspiration. All of Mrs. Browning's work is buoyed up by her
+luxurious and overflowing imagination. With all its imperfections of
+technique, its lapses of taste and faults of expression, it always
+remains poetry, throbbing with passion and emotion and rich in color and
+sound. She wrote because she must. Her own assertions notwithstanding,
+one cannot think of Mrs. Browning as sitting down in cold blood to
+compose a poem according to fixed rules of art. This is the secret of
+her shortcomings, as it is also the source of her strength, and in her
+best work raises her high above those who, with more technical skill,
+have less of the true poet's divine fire and overflowing imagination.
+
+So in the 'Sonnets from the Portuguese,' written at a time when her
+woman's nature was thrilled to its very depths by the love of her "most
+gracious singer of high poems," and put forth as translations from
+another writer and tongue--in these her imperfections drop away, and she
+soars to marvelous heights of song. Such a lyric outburst as this, which
+reveals with magnificent frankness the innermost secrets of an ardently
+loving woman's heart, is unequaled in literature. Here the woman-poet is
+strong and sane; here she is free from obscurity and mannerism, and from
+grotesque rhymes. She has stepped out from her life of visions and of
+morbid woes into a life of wholesome reality and of "sweet
+reasonableness." Their literary excellence is due also to the fact that
+in the sonnet Mrs. Browning was held to a rigid form, and was obliged to
+curb her imagination and restrain her tendency to diffuseness of
+expression. Mr. Saintsbury goes so far as to say that the sonnet
+beginning--
+
+     "If thou wilt love me, let it be for naught
+     Except for love's sake only--"
+
+does not fall far short of Shakespeare.
+
+'Aurora Leigh' gives rise to the old question, Is it advisable to turn a
+three-volume novel into verse? Yet Landor wrote about it:--"I am
+reading a poem full of thought and fascinating with fancy--Mrs.
+Browning's (Aurora Leigh.) In many places there is the wild imagination
+of Shakespeare.... I am half drunk with it. Never did I think I should
+have a good draught of poetry again." Ruskin somewhere considered it the
+greatest poem of the nineteenth century, "with enough imagination to set
+up a dozen lesser poets"; and Stedman calls it "a representative and
+original creation: representative in a versatile, kaleidoscopic
+presentment of modern life and issues; original, because the most
+idiosyncratic of its author's poems. An audacious speculative freedom
+pervades it, which smacks of the New World rather than the Old....
+'Aurora Leigh' is a mirror of contemporary life, while its learned and
+beautiful illustrations make it almost a handbook of literature and the
+arts.... Although a most uneven production, full of ups and downs, of
+capricious or prosaic episodes, it nevertheless contains poetry as fine
+as its author has given us elsewhere, and enough spare inspiration to
+set up a dozen smaller poets. The flexible verse is noticeably her own,
+and often handled with as much spirit as freedom." Mrs. Browning
+herself declared it the most mature of her works, "and the one into
+which my highest convictions upon life and art have entered."
+Consider this:--
+
+     "For 'tis not in mere death that men die most:
+     And after our first girding of the loins
+     In youth's fine linen and fair broidery,
+     To run up-hill and meet the rising sun,
+     We are apt to sit tired, patient as a fool,
+     While others gird us with the violent bands
+     Of social figments, feints, and formalisms,
+     Reversing our straight nature, lifting up
+     Our base needs, keeping down our lofty thoughts,
+     Head downwards on the cross-sticks of the world.
+     Yet He can pluck us from that shameful cross.
+     God, set our feet low and our foreheads high,
+     And teach us how a man was made to walk!"
+
+Or this:--
+
+     "I've waked and slept through many nights and days
+     Since then--but still that day will catch my breath
+     Like a nightmare. There are fatal days, indeed,
+     In which the fibrous years have taken root
+     So deeply, that they quiver to their tops
+     Whene'er you stir the dust of such a day."
+
+Again:--
+
+     "Passion is
+     But something suffered after all--
+     . . . . . While Art
+
+     Sets action on the top of suffering."
+
+And this:--
+
+     "Nothing is small!
+     No lily-muffled hum of summer-bee
+     But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;
+     No pebble at your foot but proves a sphere:
+     . . . . . Earth's crammed with Heaven,
+     And every common bush afire with God;
+     But only he who sees, takes off his shoes."
+
+Among Mrs. Browning's smaller poems, 'Crowned and Buried' is,
+notwithstanding serious defects of technique, one of the most virile
+things she has written; indeed, some of her finest lines are to be found
+in it. In 'The Cry of the Children' and in 'Cowper's Grave' the pathos
+is most true and deep. 'Lord Walter's Wife' is an even more courageous
+vindication of the feminine essence than 'Aurora Leigh'; and her 'Vision
+of Poets' is said to "vie in beauty with Tennyson's own." The fine
+thought and haunting beauty of 'A Musical Instrument,' with its
+matchless climax, need not be dwelt on.
+
+During her fifteen years' residence in Florence she threw herself with
+great enthusiasm into Italian affairs, and wrote some political poems of
+varying merit, whose interest necessarily faded away when the occasion
+passed. But among those poems inspired by the struggle for freedom,
+'Casa Guidi Windows' comes close to the 'Sonnets from the Portuguese'
+and 'Aurora Leigh,' and holds an enduring place for its high poetry, its
+musical, sonorous verse, and the sustained intellectual vigor of
+composition. Her volume of 'Last Poems' contains, among much inferior
+matter, some of her finest and most touching work, as 'A Musical
+Instrument,' 'The Forced Recruit,' and 'Mother and Poet,' Peter Bayne
+says of her in his 'Great Englishwomen':--"In melodiousness and splendor
+of poetic gift Mrs. Browning stands ... first among women. She may not
+have the knowledge of life, the insight into character, the
+comprehensiveness of some, but we must all agree that a poet's far more
+essential qualities are hers: usefulness, fervor, a noble aspiration,
+and above all a tender, far-reaching nature, loving and beloved, and
+touching the hearts of her readers with some virtue from its depths. She
+seemed even in her life something of a spirit; and her view of life's
+sorrow and shame, of its hearty and eternal hope, is something like that
+which one might imagine a spirit's to be." Whether political, or
+sociological, or mystical, or sentimental, or impossible, there is about
+all that Mrs. Browning has written an enduring charm of picturesqueness,
+of romance, and of a pure enthusiasm for art. "Art for Art," she cries,
+
+     "And good for God, himself the essential Good!
+     We'll keep our aims sublime, our eyes erect,
+     Although our woman-hands should shake and fail."
+
+This was her achievement--her hands did not fail!
+
+Her husband's words will furnish, perhaps, the best conclusion to this
+slight study:--"You are wrong," he said, "quite wrong--she has genius; I
+am only a painstaking fellow. Can't you imagine a clever sort of angel
+who plots and plans, and tries to build up something,--he wants to make
+you see it as he sees it, shows you one point of view, carries you off
+to another, hammering into your head the thing he wants you to
+understand; and whilst this bother is going on, God Almighty turns you
+off a little star--that's the difference between us. The true creative
+power is hers, not mine."
+
+
+     A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT
+
+     WHAT was he doing, the great god Pan,
+     Down in the reeds by the river?
+         Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
+     Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
+     And breaking the golden lilies afloat
+         With the dragon-fly on the river.
+
+     He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
+         From the deep, cool bed of the river.
+     The limpid water turbidly ran,
+     And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
+     And the dragon-fly had fled away,
+         Ere he brought it out of the river.
+
+     High on the shore sat the great god Pan,
+         While turbidly flowed the river,
+     And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
+     With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
+     Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
+         To prove it fresh from the river.
+
+     He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
+         (How tall it stood in the river!)
+     Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
+     Steadily from the outside ring,
+     And notched the poor, dry, empty thing
+         In holes as he sat by the river.
+
+     "This is the way," laughed the great god Pan,
+         (Laughed while he sat by the river,)
+     "The only way, since gods began
+     To make sweet music, they could succeed."
+     Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
+         He blew in power by the river.
+
+     Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan,
+         Piercing sweet by the river!
+     Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
+     The sun on the hill forgot to die,
+     And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
+         Came back to dream on the river.
+
+     Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
+         To laugh as he sits by the river,
+     Making a poet out of a man:
+     The true gods sigh for the cost and the pain,--
+     For the reed which grows nevermore again
+         As a reed with the reeds in the river.
+
+
+     MY HEART AND I
+
+     Enough! we're tired, my heart and I.
+        We sit beside the headstone thus,
+        And wish that name were carved for us.
+     The moss reprints more tenderly
+        The hard types of the mason's knife,
+        As heaven's sweet life renews earth's life
+     With which we're tired, my heart and I.
+
+     You see we're tired, my heart and I.
+        We dealt with books, we trusted men,
+        And in our own blood drenched the pen,
+     As if such colors could not fly.
+        We walked too straight for fortune's end,
+        We loved too true to keep a friend:
+     At last we're tired, my heart and I.
+
+     How tired we feel, my heart and I!
+        We seem of no use in the world;
+        Our fancies hang gray and uncurled
+     About men's eyes indifferently;
+        Our voice, which thrilled you so, will let
+        You sleep; our tears are only wet:
+     What do we here, my heart and I?
+
+     So tired, so tired, my heart and I!
+        It was not thus in that old time
+        When Ralph sat with me 'neath the lime
+     To watch the sunset from the sky.
+        "Dear love, you're looking tired," he said;
+        I, smiling at him, shook my head:
+     'Tis now we're tired, my heart and I.
+
+     So tired, so tired, my heart and I!
+        Though now none takes me on his arm
+        To fold me close and kiss me warm
+     Till each quick breath end in a sigh
+        Of happy languor. Now, alone,
+        We lean upon this graveyard stone,
+     Uncheered, unkissed, my heart and I.
+
+     Tired out we are, my heart and I.
+        Suppose the world brought diadems
+        To tempt us, crusted with loose gems
+     Of powers and pleasures? Let it try.
+        We scarcely care to look at even
+        A pretty child, or God's blue heaven,
+     We feel so tired, my heart and I.
+
+     Yet who complains? My heart and I?
+        In this abundant earth, no doubt,
+        Is little room for things worn out:
+     Disdain them, break them, throw them by!
+        And if, before the days grew rough,
+        We _once_ were loved, used,--well enough
+     I think we've fared, my heart and I.
+
+
+     FROM 'CATARINA TO CAMOENS'
+
+     [Dying in his absence abroad, and referring to the poem in which he
+     recorded the sweetness of her eyes.]
+
+     On the door you will not enter
+         I have gazed too long: adieu!
+       Hope withdraws her "peradventure";
+     Death is near me,--and not _you!_
+         Come, O lover,
+         Close and cover
+     These poor eyes you called, I ween,
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen!"
+
+     When I heard you sing that burden
+       In my vernal days and bowers,
+     Other praises disregarding,
+       I but hearkened that of yours,
+         Only saying
+         In heart-playing,
+     "Blessed eyes mine eyes have been,
+     If the sweetest HIS have seen!"
+
+     But all changes. At this vesper
+       Cold the sun shines down the door.
+     If you stood there, would you whisper,
+       "Love, I love you," as before,--
+         Death pervading
+         Now and shading
+     Eyes you sang of, that yestreen,
+     As the sweetest ever seen?
+
+     Yes, I think, were you beside them,
+       Near the bed I die upon,
+     Though their beauty you denied them,
+       As you stood there looking down,
+         You would truly
+         Call them duly,
+     For the love's sake found therein,
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen."
+
+     And if _you_ looked down upon them,
+       And if _they_ looked up to _you_,
+     All the light which has foregone them
+       Would be gathered back anew;
+         They would truly
+         Be as duly
+     Love-transformed to beauty's sheen,
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen."
+
+     But, ah me! you only see me,
+       In your thoughts of loving man,
+     Smiling soft, perhaps, and dreamy,
+       Through the wavings of my fan;
+         And unweeting
+         Go repeating
+     In your revery serene,
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen."
+
+     O my poet, O my prophet!
+       When you praised their sweetness so,
+     Did you think, in singing of it,
+       That it might be near to go?
+         Had you fancies
+         From their glances,
+     That the grave would quickly screen
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen"?
+
+     No reply. The fountain's warble
+       In the courtyard sounds alone.
+     As the water to the marble
+       So my heart falls with a moan
+         From love-sighing
+         To this dying.
+     Death forerunneth Love to win
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen."
+
+     _Will_ you come? When I'm departed
+       Where all sweetnesses are hid,
+     Where thy voice, my tender-hearted,
+       Will not lift up either lid,
+         Cry, O lover,
+         Love is over!
+     Cry, beneath the cypress green,
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen!"
+
+     When the Angelus is ringing,
+       Near the convent will you walk,
+     And recall the choral singing
+       Which brought angels down our talk?
+         Spirit-shriven
+         I viewed heaven,
+     Till you smiled--"Is earth unclean,
+     Sweetest eyes were ever seen?"
+
+     When beneath the palace-lattice
+       You ride slow as you have done,
+     And you see a face there that is
+       Not the old familiar one,
+         Will you oftly
+         Murmur softly,
+     "Here ye watched me morn and e'en,
+     Sweetest eyes were ever seen"?
+
+     When the palace-ladies, sitting
+       Round your gittern, shall have said,
+     "Poets, sing those verses written
+     For the lady who is dead,"
+         Will you tremble,
+         Yet dissemble,
+     Or sing hoarse, with tears between,
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen"?
+
+     "Sweetest eyes!" How sweet in flowings
+       The repeated cadence is!
+     Though you sang a hundred poems,
+       Still the best one would be this.
+         I can hear it
+         'Twixt my spirit
+     And the earth-noise intervene,--
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen!"
+
+     But--but _now_--yet unremoved
+       Up to heaven they glisten fast;
+     You may cast away, beloved,
+       In your future all my past:
+         Such old phrases
+         May be praises
+     For some fairer bosom-queen--
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen!"
+
+     Eyes of mine, what are ye doing?
+       Faithless, faithless, praised amiss
+     If a tear be, on your showing,
+       Dropped for any hope of HIS!
+         Death has boldness
+         Besides coldness,
+     If unworthy tears demean
+     "Sweetest eyes were ever seen."
+
+     I will look out to his future;
+       I will bless it till it shine.
+     Should he ever be a suitor
+       Unto sweeter eyes than mine,
+         Sunshine gild them,
+         Angels shield them,
+     Whatsoever eyes terrene
+     _Be_ the sweetest HIS have seen.
+
+
+     THE SLEEP
+
+     "He giveth his beloved sleep."--Ps. cxxvii. 2
+
+     OF ALL the thoughts of God that are
+       Borne inward into souls afar
+       Along the Psalmist's music deep,
+     Now tell me if that any is,
+     For gift or grace, surpassing this--
+     "He giveth his beloved sleep."
+
+     What would we give to our beloved?
+     The hero's heart to be unmoved.
+       The poet's star-tuned harp to sweep,
+     The patriot's voice to teach and rouse,
+     The monarch's crown to light the brows?--
+       He giveth his beloved sleep.
+
+     What do we give to our beloved?
+     A little faith all undisproved,
+       A little dust to overweep,
+     And bitter memories to make
+     The whole earth blasted for our sake.
+       He giveth his beloved sleep.
+
+     "Sleep soft, beloved!" we sometimes say,
+     Who have no tune to charm away
+       Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep;
+     But never doleful dream again
+     Shall break the happy slumber when
+       He giveth his beloved sleep.
+
+     O earth, so full of dreary noises!
+     O men with wailing in your voices!
+       O delved gold the wailers heap!
+     O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall!
+     God strikes a silence through you all,
+       And giveth his beloved sleep.
+
+     His dews drop mutely on the hill,
+     His cloud above it saileth still,
+       Though on its slope men sow and reap;
+     More softly than the dew is shed,
+     Or cloud is floated overhead,
+       He giveth his beloved sleep.
+
+     Ay, men may wonder while they scan
+     A living, thinking, feeling man
+       Confirmed in such a rest to keep;
+     But angels say,--and through the word
+     I think their happy smile is _heard_,--
+       "He giveth his beloved sleep."
+
+     For me, my heart that erst did go
+     Most like a tired child at a show,
+       That sees through tears the mummers leap,
+     Would now its wearied vision close,
+     Would childlike on His love repose
+       Who giveth his beloved sleep.
+
+     And friends, dear friends, when it shall be
+     That this low breath is gone from me,
+       And round my bier ye come to weep,
+     Let one most loving of you all
+     Say, "Not a tear must o'er her fall!
+       He giveth his beloved sleep."
+
+
+     THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN
+
+     I
+
+     Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
+         Ere the sorrow comes with years?
+     They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,
+         And _that_ cannot stop their tears.
+     The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
+       The young birds are chirping in the nest;
+     The young fawns are playing with the shadows;
+       The young flowers are blowing toward the west:
+     But the young, young children, O my brothers!
+         They are weeping bitterly.
+     They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
+         In the country of the free.
+
+     II
+
+     Do you question the young children in their sorrow,
+         Why their tears are falling so?
+     The old man may weep for his To-morrow
+         Which is lost in Long-Ago;
+     The old tree is leafless in the forest;
+       The old year is ending in the frost;
+     The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest;
+       The old hope is hardest to be lost:
+     But the young, young children, O my brothers!
+         Do you ask them why they stand
+     Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,
+         In our happy Fatherland?
+
+     III
+
+     They look up with their pale and sunken faces;
+         And their looks are sad to see,
+     For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses
+         Down the cheeks of infancy.
+     "Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary;
+       Our young feet," they say, "are very weak;
+     Few paces have we taken, yet are weary;
+       Our grave-rest is very far to seek.
+     Ask the aged why they weep, and not the children;
+         For the outside earth is cold,
+     And we young ones stand without in our bewildering,
+         And the graves are for the old."
+
+     IV
+
+     "True," say the children, "it may happen
+         That we die before our time:
+     Little Alice died last year; her grave is shapen
+         Like a snowball in the rime.
+     We looked into the pit prepared to take her:
+       Was no room for any work in the close clay,
+     From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her,
+       Crying, 'Get up, little Alice! it is day.'
+     If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower,
+       With your ear down, little Alice never cries.
+     Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,
+       For the smile has time for growing in her eyes;
+     And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in
+       The shroud by the kirk-chime.
+     It is good when it happens," say the children,
+         "That we die before our time."
+
+     V
+
+     Alas, alas, the children! They are seeking
+         Death in life, as best to have.
+     They are binding up their hearts away from breaking
+         With a cerement from the grave.
+     Go out, children, from the mine and from the city;
+       Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do;
+     Pluck your handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty;
+       Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through.
+     But they answer, "Are your cowslips of the meadows
+         Like our weeds anear the mine?
+     Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows,
+         From your pleasures fair and fine.
+
+     VI
+
+     "For oh!" say the children, "we are weary,
+         And we cannot run or leap;
+     If we cared for any meadows, it were merely
+         To drop down in them, and sleep.
+     Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping;
+       We fall upon our faces, trying to go;
+     And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping,
+       The reddest flower would look as pale as snow;
+     For all day we drag our burden tiring,
+         Through the coal-dark, underground;
+     Or all day we drive the wheels of iron
+         In the factories, round and round.
+
+     VII
+
+     "For all-day the wheels are droning, turning;
+         Their wind comes in our faces,
+     Till our hearts turn, our heads with pulses burning,
+         And the walls turn in their places.
+     Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling,
+       Turns the long light that drops adown the wall,
+     Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling,--
+       All are turning, all the day, and we with all.
+     And all day the iron wheels are droning,
+         And sometimes we could pray,
+     'O ye wheels' (breaking out in a mad moaning),
+         'Stop! be silent for to-day!'"
+
+     VIII
+
+     Ay. be silent! Let them hear each other breathing
+         For a moment, mouth to mouth;
+     Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing
+         Of their tender human youth;
+     Let them feel that this cold metallic motion
+       Is not all the life God fashions or reveals;
+     Let them prove their living souls against the notion
+       That they live in you, or tinder you, O wheels!
+     Still all day the iron wheels go onward,
+         Grinding life down from its mark;
+     And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward,
+         Spin on blindly in the dark.
+
+     IX
+
+     Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers,
+         To look up to Him, and pray;
+     So the blessed One who blesseth all the others
+         Will bless them another day.
+     They answer, "Who is God, that he should hear us
+       While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred?
+     When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us
+       Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word;
+     And _we_ hear not (for the wheels in their resounding)
+         Strangers speaking at the door.
+     Is it likely God, with angels singing round him,
+         Hears our weeping any more?
+
+     X
+
+     "Two words, indeed, of praying we remember;
+         And at midnight's hour of harm,
+     'Our Father,' looking upward in the chamber,
+         We say softly for a charm.
+     We know no other words except 'Our Father';
+       And we think that, in some pause of angels' song,
+     God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather,
+       And hold both within his right hand, which is strong.
+     'Our Father!' If he heard us, he would surely
+         (For they call him good and mild)
+     Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely,
+         'Come and rest with me, my child.'
+
+     XI
+
+     "But no!" say the children, weeping faster,
+         "He is speechless as a stone;
+     And they tell us, of his image is the master
+         Who commands us to work on.
+     Go to!" say the children,--"up in heaven,
+       Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find.
+     Do not mock us: Grief has made us unbelieving:
+       We look up for God; but tears have made us blind."
+     Do you hear the children weeping and disproving,
+         O my brothers, what ye preach?
+     For God's possible is taught by his world's loving--
+         And the children doubt of each.
+
+     XII
+
+     And well may the children weep before you!
+         They are weary ere they run;
+     They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory
+         Which is brighter than the sun.
+     They know the grief of man, without its wisdom;
+       They sink in man's despair, without its calm;
+     Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom;
+       Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm;
+     Are worn as if with age, yet unretrievingly
+       The harvest of its memories cannot reap;
+     Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly--
+         Let them weep! let them weep!
+
+     XIII
+
+     They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
+         And their look is dread to see.
+     For they mind you of their angels in high places,
+         With eyes turned on Deity.
+     "How long," they say, "how long, O cruel nation,
+       Will you stand, to move the world on a child's heart,--
+     Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,
+       And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?
+     Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper,
+         And your purple shows your path;
+     But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper
+         Than the strong man in his wrath!"
+
+
+     MOTHER AND POET
+
+     [On Laura Savio of Turin, a poetess and patriot, whose sons
+     were killed at Ancona and Gaeta.]
+
+     DEAD! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
+       And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
+     Dead! both my boys! When you sit at the feast,
+       And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
+         Let none look at _me_!
+
+     Yet I was a poetess only last year,
+       And good at my art, for a woman, men said:
+     But _this_ woman, _this_, who is agonized here,--
+       The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head
+         Forever instead.
+
+     What art can a woman be good at? Oh, vain!
+       What art _is_ she good at, but hurting her breast
+     With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain?
+       Ah, boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you prest,
+         And I proud by that test.
+
+     What art's for a woman? To hold on her knees
+       Both darlings! to feel all their arms round her throat
+     Cling, strangle a little! to sew by degrees,
+       And 'broider the long-clothes and neat little coat;
+         To dream and to dote.
+
+     To teach them.... It stings there! _I_ made them indeed
+       Speak plain the word _country. I_ taught them, no doubt,
+     That a country's a thing men should die for at need.
+       I prated of liberty, rights, and about
+         The tyrant cast out.
+
+     And when their eyes flashed ... O my beautiful eyes! ...
+       I exulted; nay, let them go forth at the wheels
+     Of the guns, and denied not. But then the surprise
+       When one sits quite alone! Then one weeps, then one kneels.
+         God, how the house feels!
+
+     At first, happy news came, in gay letters moiled
+       With my kisses, of camp-life and glory, and how
+     They both loved me; and soon, coming home to be spoiled,
+       In return would fan off every fly from my brow
+         With their green laurel-bough.
+
+     There was triumph at Turin: "Ancona was free!"
+       And some one came out of the cheers in the street,
+     With a face pale as stone, to say something to me.
+       My Guido was dead! I fell down at his feet,
+         While they cheered in the street.
+
+     I bore it; friends soothed me; my grief looked sublime
+       As the ransom of Italy. One boy remained
+     To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time
+       When the first grew immortal, while both of us strained
+         To the height _he_ had gained.
+
+     And letters still came; shorter, sadder, more strong,
+       Writ now but in one hand:--"I was not to faint,--
+     One loved me for two; would be with me ere long:
+       And _Viva l'Italia_ he died for, our saint,
+         Who forbids our complaint."
+
+     My Nanni would add, "he was safe, and aware
+       Of a presence that turned off the balls,--was imprest
+     It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear,
+       And how 'twas impossible, quite dispossest,
+         To live on for the rest."
+
+     On which, without pause, up the telegraph-line
+       Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta,--"_Shot.
+     Tell his mother_." Ah, ah! "his," "their" mother, not "mine":
+       No voice says, "_My_ mother," again to me. What!
+         You think Guido forgot?
+
+     Are souls straight so happy, that, dizzy with heaven,
+       They drop earth's affections, conceive not of woe?
+     I think not! Themselves were too lately forgiven
+       Through that Love and that Sorrow which reconciled so
+         The Above and Below.
+
+     O Christ of the seven wounds, who look'dst through the dark
+       To the face of thy mother! Consider, I pray,
+     How we common mothers stand desolate, mark,--
+       Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned away,
+         And no last word to say!
+
+     Both boys dead? but that's out of nature. We all
+       Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one.
+     'Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall;
+       And when Italy's made, for what end is it done,
+         If we have not a son?
+
+     Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta's taken, what then?
+       When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport
+     Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men;
+       When the guns of Cavalli with final retort
+         Have cut the game short;
+
+     When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee;
+       When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green, and red:
+     When _you_ have your country from mountain to sea,
+       When King Victor has Italy's crown on his head,
+         (And I have my dead)--
+
+     What then? Do not mock me. Ah, ring your bells low
+       And burn your lights faintly! _My_ country is _there_.
+     Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow:
+       My Italy's THERE, with my brave civic pair,
+         To disfranchise despair!
+
+     Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength,
+       And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn;
+     But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length
+       Into wail such as this, and we sit on forlorn
+         When the man-child is born.
+
+     Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
+       And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
+     Both! both my boys! If in keeping the feast
+       You want a great song for your Italy free,
+         Let none look at _me_!
+
+
+     A COURT LADY
+
+     Her hair was tawny with gold; her eyes with purple were dark;
+     Her cheeks' pale opal burnt with a red and restless spark.
+
+     Never was lady of Milan nobler in name and in race;
+     Never was lady of Italy fairer to see in the face.
+
+     Never was lady on earth more true as woman and wife,
+     Larger in judgment and instinct, prouder in manners and life.
+
+     She stood in the early morning, and said to her maidens, "Bring
+     That silken robe made ready to wear at the court of the King.
+
+     "Bring me the clasps of diamond, lucid, clear of the mote;
+     Clasp me the large at the waist, and clasp me the small at the throat.
+
+     "Diamonds to fasten the hair, and diamonds to fasten the sleeves,
+     Laces to drop from their rays, like a powder of snow from the eaves."
+
+     Gorgeous she entered the sunlight, which gathered her up in a flame,
+     While, straight in her open carriage, she to the hospital came.
+
+     In she went at the door, and gazing from end to end,--
+     "Many and low are the pallets; but each is the place of a friend."
+
+     Up she passed through the wards, and stood at a young man's bed;
+     Bloody the band on his brow, and livid the droop of his head.
+
+     "Art thou a Lombard, my brother? Happy art thou!" she cried,
+     And smiled like Italy on him: he dreamed in her face--and died.
+
+     Pale with his passing soul, she went on still to a second:
+     He was a grave hard man, whose years by dungeons were reckoned.
+
+     Wounds in his body were sore, wounds in his life were sorer.
+     "Art thou a Romagnole?" Her eyes drove lightnings before her.
+
+     "Austrian and priest had joined to double and tighten the cord
+     Able to bind thee, O strong one, free by the stroke of a sword.
+
+     "Now be grave for the rest of us, using the life overcast
+     To ripen our wine of the present (too new) in glooms of the past."
+
+     Down she stepped to a pallet where lay a face like a girl's,
+     Young, and pathetic with dying,--a deep black hole in the curls.
+
+     "Art thou from Tuscany, brother? and seest thou, dreaming in pain,
+     Thy mother stand in the piazza, searching the list of the slain?"
+
+Kind as a mother herself, she touched his cheeks with her hands:
+     "Blessed is she who has borne thee, although she should weep as
+                she stands."
+
+     On she passed to a Frenchman, his arm carried off by a ball:
+     Kneeling: "O more than my brother! how shall I thank thee for all?
+
+     "Each of the heroes around us has fought for his land and line;
+     But thou hast fought for a stranger, in hate of a wrong not thine.
+
+     "Happy are all free peoples, too strong to be dispossest,
+     But blessed are those among nations who dare to be strong for the
+     rest."
+
+     Ever she passed on her way, and came to a couch where pined
+     One with a face from Venetia, white with a hope out of mind.
+
+     Long she stood and gazed, and twice she tried at the name;
+     But two great crystal tears were all that faltered and came.
+
+     Only a tear for Venice? She turned as in passion and loss,
+     And stooped to his forehead and kissed it, as if she were kissing
+     the cross.
+
+     Faint with that strain of heart, she moved on then to another,
+     Stern and strong in his death: "And dost thou suffer, my brother?"
+
+     Holding his hands in hers: "Out of the Piedmont lion
+     Cometh the sweetness of freedom! sweetest to live or to die on."
+
+     Holding his cold rough hands: "Well, oh well have ye done
+     In noble, noble Piedmont, who would not be noble alone."
+
+     Back he fell while she spoke. She rose to her feet with a spring.
+     "That was a Piedmontese! and this is the court of the King!"
+
+
+     THE PROSPECT
+
+     Methinks we do as fretful children do,
+        Leaning their faces on the window-pane
+        To sigh the glass dim with their own breath's stain,
+     And shut the sky and landscape from their view;
+     And thus, alas! since God the maker drew
+        A mystic separation 'twixt those twain,--
+        The life beyond us and our souls in pain,--
+     We miss the prospect which we are called unto
+     By grief we are fools to use. Be still and strong,
+     O man, my brother! hold thy sobbing breath,
+       And keep thy soul's large window pure from wrong;
+     That so, as life's appointment issueth,
+       Thy vision may be clear to watch along
+     The sunset consummation-lights of death.
+
+
+     DE PROFUNDIS
+
+     The face which, duly as the sun,
+     Rose up for me with life begun,
+     To mark all bright hours of the day
+     With daily love, is dimmed away--
+       And yet my days go on, go on.
+
+     The tongue which, like a stream, could run
+     Smooth music from the roughest stone,
+     And every morning with "Good day"
+     Make each day good, is hushed away--
+       And yet my days go on, go on.
+
+     The heart which, like a staff, was one
+     For mine to lean and rest upon,
+     The strongest on the longest day,
+     With steadfast love is caught away--
+       And yet my days go on, go on.
+
+     The world goes whispering to its own,
+     "This anguish pierces to the bone."
+     And tender friends go sighing round,
+     "What love can ever cure this wound?"
+       My days go on, my days go on.
+
+     The past rolls forward on the sun
+     And makes all night. O dreams begun,
+     Not to be ended! Ended bliss!
+     And life, that will not end in this!
+       My days go on, my days go on.
+
+     Breath freezes on my lips to moan:
+     As one alone, once not alone,
+     I sit and knock at Nature's door,
+     Heart-bare, heart-hungry, very poor,
+       Whose desolated days go on.
+
+     I knock and cry--Undone, undone!
+     Is there no help, no comfort--none?
+     No gleaning in the wide wheat-plains
+     Where others drive their loaded wains?
+       My vacant days go on, go on.
+
+     This Nature, though the snows be down,
+     Thinks kindly of the bird of June.
+     The little red hip on the tree
+     Is ripe for such. What is for me,
+       Whose days so winterly go on?
+
+     No bird am I to sing in June,
+     And dare not ask an equal boon.
+     Good nests and berries red are Nature's
+     To give away to better creatures--
+       And yet my days go on, go on.
+
+     _I_ ask less kindness to be done--
+     Only to loose these pilgrim-shoon
+     (Too early worn and grimed) with sweet
+     Cool deathly touch to these tired feet,
+       Till days go out which now go on.
+
+     Only to lift the turf unmown
+     From off the earth where it has grown,
+     Some cubit-space, and say, "Behold,
+     Creep in, poor Heart, beneath that fold,
+       Forgetting how the days go on."
+
+     A Voice reproves me thereupon,
+     More sweet than Nature's, when the drone
+     Of bees is sweetest, and more deep,
+     Than when the rivers overleap
+       The shuddering pines, and thunder on.
+
+     God's Voice, not Nature's--night and noon
+     He sits upon the great white throne,
+     And listens for the creature's praise.
+     What babble we of days and days?
+       The Dayspring he, whose days go on!
+
+     He reigns above, he reigns alone:
+     Systems burn out and leave his throne:
+     Fair mists of seraphs melt and fall
+     Around him, changeless amid all--
+       Ancient of days, whose days go on!
+
+     He reigns below, he reigns alone--
+     And having life in love forgone
+     Beneath the crown of sovran thorns,
+     He reigns the jealous God. Who mourns
+       Or rules with HIM, while days go on?
+
+     By anguish which made pale the sun,
+     I hear him charge his saints that none
+     Among the creatures anywhere
+     Blaspheme against him with despair,
+       However darkly days go on.
+
+     Take from my head the thorn-wreath brown:
+     No mortal grief deserves that crown.
+     O supreme Love, chief misery,
+     The sharp regalia are for _Thee_,
+       Whose days eternally go on!
+
+     For us, ... whatever's undergone,
+     Thou knowest, willest what is done.
+     Grief may be joy misunderstood:
+     Only the Good discerns the good.
+       I trust Thee while my days go on.
+
+     Whatever's lost, it first was won!
+     We will not struggle nor impugn.
+     Perhaps the cup was broken here
+     That Heaven's new wine might show more clear.
+       I praise Thee while my days go on.
+
+     I praise Thee while my days go on;
+     I love Thee while my days go on!
+     Through dark and dearth, through fire and frost,
+     With emptied arms and treasure lost,
+       I thank Thee while my days go on!
+
+     And, having in thy life-depth thrown
+     Being and suffering (which are one),
+     As a child drops some pebble small
+     Down some deep well, and hears it fall
+       Smiling--so I! THY DAYS GO ON!
+
+
+     THE CRY OF THE HUMAN
+
+     "There is no God," the foolish saith,
+       But none, "There is no sorrow;"
+     And nature oft the cry of faith
+       In bitter need will borrow:
+     Eyes which the preacher could not school
+       By wayside graves are raised;
+     And lips say, "God be pitiful,"
+       Who ne'er said, "God be praised."
+               Be pitiful, O God.
+
+     The tempest stretches from the steep
+       The shadow of its coming;
+     The beasts grow tame, and near us creep,
+       As help were in the human:
+     Yet while the cloud-wheels roll and grind,
+       We spirits tremble under!
+     The hills have echoes; but we find
+       No answer for the thunder.
+               Be pitiful, O God!
+
+     The battle hurtles on the plains--
+       Earth feels new scythes upon her:
+     We reap our brothers for the wains,
+       And call the harvest--honor.
+     Draw face to face, front line to line,
+       One image all inherit:
+     Then kill, curse on, by that same sign,
+       Clay, clay,--and spirit, spirit.
+               Be pitiful, O God!
+
+     We meet together at the feast--
+       To private mirth betake us--
+     We stare down in the winecup, lest
+       Some vacant chair should shake us!
+     We name delight, and pledge it round--
+       "It shall be ours to-morrow!"
+     God's seraphs! do your voices sound
+       As sad in naming sorrow?
+               Be pitiful, O God!
+
+     We sit together, with the skies,
+       The steadfast skies, above us;
+     We look into each other's eyes,
+       "And how long will you love us?"
+     The eyes grow dim with prophecy,
+       The voices, low and breathless--
+     "Till death us part!"--O words, to be
+       Our _best_ for love the deathless!
+               Be pitiful, dear God!
+
+     We tremble by the harmless bed
+       Of one loved and departed--
+     Our tears drop on the lips that said
+       Last night, "Be stronger-hearted!"
+     O God,--to clasp those fingers close,
+       And yet to feel so lonely!--
+     To see a light upon such brows,
+       Which is the daylight only!
+               Be pitiful, O God!
+
+     The happy children come to us,
+       And look up in our faces;
+     They ask us--Was it thus, and thus,
+       When we were in their places?
+     We cannot speak--we see anew
+       The hills we used to live in,
+     And feel our mother's smile press through
+       The kisses she is giving.
+               Be pitiful, O God!
+
+     We pray together at the kirk,
+       For mercy, mercy, solely--
+     Hands weary with the evil work,
+       We lift them to the Holy!
+     The corpse is calm below our knee--
+       Its spirit bright before Thee--
+     Between them, worse than either, we
+       Without the rest of glory!
+               Be pitiful, O God!
+
+     And soon all vision waxeth dull--
+       Men whisper, "He is dying;"
+     We cry no more, "Be pitiful!"--
+       We have no strength for crying:
+     No strength, no need! Then, Soul of mine,
+       Look up and triumph rather--
+     Lo! in the depth of God's Divine,
+       The Son adjures the Father--
+               BE PITIFUL, O GOD!
+
+
+
+     ROMANCE OF THE SWAN'S NEST
+
+
+        Little Ellie sits alone
+     'Mid the beeches of a meadow,
+        By a stream-side on the grass;
+        And the trees are showering down
+     Doubles of their leaves in shadow,
+        On her shining hair and face.
+
+        She has thrown her bonnet by;
+     And her feet she has been dipping
+        In the shallow water's flow--
+        Now she holds them nakedly
+     In her hands, all sleek and dripping,
+        While she rocketh to and fro.
+
+        Little Ellie sits alone,
+     And the smile she softly uses
+        Fills the silence like a speech;
+        While she thinks what shall be done,
+     And the sweetest pleasure chooses,
+        For her future within reach.
+
+        Little Ellie in her smile
+     Chooseth--"I will have a lover,
+        Riding on a steed of steeds!
+        He shall love me without guile;
+     And to _him_ I will discover
+        That swan's nest among the reeds.
+
+        "And the steed shall be red-roan.
+     And the lover shall be noble,
+        With an eye that takes the breath.
+        And the lute he plays upon
+     Shall strike ladies into trouble,
+        As his sword strikes men to death.
+
+        "And the steed it shall be shod
+     All in silver, housed in _azure_,
+        And the mane shall swim the wind:
+        And the hoofs along the sod
+     Shall flash onward and keep measure,
+        Till the shepherds look behind.
+
+        "But my lover will not prize
+     All the glory that he rides in,
+        When he gazes in my face.
+        He will say, 'O Love, thine eyes
+     Build the shrine my soul abides in;
+        And I kneel here for thy grace.'
+
+        "Then, ay, then--he shall kneel low,
+     With the red-roan steed anear him,
+        Which shall seem to understand--
+        Till I answer, 'Rise and go!
+     For the world must love and fear him
+        Whom I gift with heart and hand.'
+
+        "Then he will arise so pale,
+     I shall feel my own lips tremble
+        With a _yes_ I must not say--
+        Nathless maiden-brave, 'Fare well,'
+     I will utter, and dissemble--
+        'Light to-morrow with to-day.'
+
+        "Then he'll ride among the hills
+     To the wide world past the river,
+        There to put away all wrong:
+        To make straight distorted wills,
+     And to empty the broad quiver
+        Which the wicked bear along.
+
+        "Three times shall a young foot-page
+     Swim the stream and climb the mountain
+        And kneel down beside my feet--
+        'Lo! my master sends this gage,
+     Lady, for thy pity's counting!
+        What wilt thou exchange for it?'
+
+        "And the first time I will send
+     A white rosebud for a guerdon,
+        And the second time, a glove:
+        But the third time--I may bend
+     From my pride, and answer--'Pardon--
+        If he come to take my love.'
+
+        "Then the young foot-page will run--
+     Then my lover will ride faster,
+        Till he kneeleth at my knee:
+        'I am a duke's eldest son!
+     Thousand serfs do call me master,--
+        But, O Love, I love but _thee!_
+
+       "He will kiss me on the mouth
+     Then; and lead me as a lover
+       Through the crowds that praise his deeds;
+       And when soul-tied by one troth,
+     Unto _him_ I will discover
+       That swan's nest among the reeds."
+
+       Little Ellie, with her smile
+     Not yet ended, rose up gayly,
+       Tied the bonnet, donned the shoe--
+       And went homeward, round a mile,
+     Just to see, as she did daily,
+       What more eggs were with the _two_.
+
+       Pushing through the elm-tree copse
+     Winding by the stream, light-hearted,
+       Where the osier pathway leads--
+       Past the boughs she stoops--and stops!
+     Lo! the wild swan had deserted--
+       And a rat had gnawed the reeds.
+
+       Ellie went home sad and slow:
+     If she found the lover ever,
+       With his red-roan steed of steeds,
+       Sooth I know not! but I know
+     She could never show him--never,
+       That swan's nest among the reeds!
+
+
+
+     THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD
+
+     WHAT'S the best thing in the world?
+        June-rose by May-dew impearled;
+        Sweet south-wind, that means no rain;
+     Truth, not cruel to a friend;
+     Pleasure, not in haste to end;
+     Beauty, not self-decked and curled
+     Till its pride is over-plain;
+     Light, that never makes you wink;
+     Memory, that gives no pain;
+     Love, when _so_ you're loved again.
+     What's the best thing in the world?--
+     Something out of it, I think.
+
+
+     SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE
+
+
+     Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!
+       Unlike our uses and our destinies.
+       Our ministering two angels look surprise
+     On one another as they strike athwart
+     Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art
+       A guest for queens to social pageantries,
+       With gages from a hundred brighter eyes
+     Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part
+       Of chief musician. What hast _thou_ to do
+     With looking from the lattice-lights at me,
+       A poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through
+     The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?
+       The chrism is on thine head; on mine the dew:
+     And Death must dig the level where these agree.
+
+     Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor,
+       Most gracious singer of high poems, where
+       The dancers will break footing, from the care
+     Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.
+     And dost thou lift this house's latch, too poor
+       For hand of thine? and canst thou think, and bear
+       To let thy music drop here unaware
+     In folds of golden fulness at my door?
+       Look up, and see the casement broken in,
+     The bats and owlets builders in the roof!
+       My cricket chirps against thy mandolin.
+     Hush, call no echo up in further proof
+       Of desolation! there's a voice within
+     That weeps--as thou must sing--alone, aloof.
+
+     What can I give thee back, O liberal
+       And princely giver, who hast brought the gold
+       And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold,
+     And laid them on the outside of the wall
+     For such as I to take or leave withal,
+       In unexpected largesse? Am I cold,
+       Ungrateful, that for these most manifold
+     High gifts, I render nothing back at all?
+       Not so; not cold, but very poor instead.
+     Ask God, who knows. For frequent tears have run
+       The colors from my life, and left so dead
+     And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done
+       To give the same as pillow to thy head.
+     Go farther! let it serve to trample on.
+
+     If thou must love me, let it be for naught
+        Except for love's sake only. Do not say
+        "I love her for her smile, her look, her way
+     Of speaking gently, for a trick of thought
+     That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
+        A sense of pleasant ease on such a day:"
+        For these things in themselves, beloved, may
+     Be changed, or change for thee; and love so wrought
+        May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
+     Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry:
+        A creature might forget to weep, who bore
+     Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby.
+        But love me for love's sake, that evermore
+     Thou mayst love on through love's eternity.
+
+     First time he kissed me, he but only kissed
+        The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;
+        And ever since it grew more clean and white,
+     Slow to world-greetings, quick with its "Oh list!"
+     When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst
+        I could not wear here plainer to my sight
+        Than that first kiss. The second passed in height
+     The first, and sought the forehead, and half missed,
+        Half falling on the hair. Oh, beyond meed!
+     That was the chrism of love, which love's own crown
+        With sanctifying sweetness did precede.
+     The third upon my lips was folded down
+        In perfect purple state; since when, indeed,
+     I have been proud, and said "My love, my own!"
+
+     I LIVED with visions for my company,
+        Instead of men and women, years ago,
+        And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know
+     A sweeter music than they played to me.
+     But soon their trailing purple was not free
+        Of this world's dust, their lutes did silent grow,
+        And I myself grew faint and blind below
+     Their vanishing eyes. Then THOU didst come--to be,
+        Beloved, what they seemed. Their shining fronts,
+     Their songs, their splendors (better, yet the same,
+        As river-water hallowed into fonts),
+     Met in thee, and from out thee overcame
+        My soul with satisfaction of all wants,
+     Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.
+
+     BELOVED, my beloved, when I think
+        That thou wast in the world a year ago,
+        What time I sat alone here in the snow,
+     And saw no footprint, heard the silence sink
+     No moment at thy voice, but, link by link,
+        Went counting all my chains as if that so
+        They never could fall off at any blow
+     Struck by thy possible hand--why, thus I drink
+        Of life's great cup of wonder! Wonderful,
+     Never to feel thee thrill the day or night
+        With personal act or speech, nor ever cull
+     Some prescience of thee with the blossoms white
+        Thou sawest growing! Atheists are as dull,
+     Who cannot guess God's presence out of sight.
+
+     BECAUSE thou hast the power and own'st the grace
+        To look through and behind this mask of me,
+        (Against which years have beat thus blanchingly
+     With their rains!) and behold my soul's true face,
+     The dim and weary witness of life's race;
+        Because thou hast the faith and love to see,
+        Through that same soul's distracting lethargy,
+     The patient angel waiting for his place
+        In the new heavens; because nor sin nor woe,
+     Nor God's infliction, nor death's neighborhood,
+        Nor all which others viewing, turn to go,
+     Nor all which makes me tired of all, self-viewed,--
+        Nothing repels thee.--Dearest, teach me so
+     To pour out gratitude, as thou dost, good!
+
+     I THANK all who have loved me in their hearts,
+        With thanks and love from mine. Deep thanks to all
+        Who paused a little near the prison-wall,
+     To hear my music in its louder parts,
+     Ere they went onward, each one to the mart's
+        Or temple's occupation, beyond call.
+        But thou, who in my voice's sink and fall,
+     When the sob took it, thy divinest Art's
+        Own instrument didst drop down at thy foot,
+     To hearken what I said between my tears,
+        Instruct me how to thank thee!--Oh, to shoot
+     My soul's full meaning into future years,
+        That _they_ should lend it utterance, and salute
+     Love that endures! with Life that disappears!
+
+     How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
+       I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
+       My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
+     For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace.
+     I love thee to the level of every day's
+       Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
+       I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
+     I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise;
+       I love thee with the passion put to use
+     In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith;
+       I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
+     With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,
+       Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and if God choose,
+     I shall but love thee better after death.
+
+
+
+     A FALSE STEP
+
+
+     Sweet, thou hast trod on a heart.
+        Pass! there's a world full of men;
+      And women as fair as thou art
+     Must do such things now and then.
+
+     Thou only hast stepped unaware,--
+       Malice, not one can impute;
+     And why should a heart have been there
+       In the way of a fair woman's foot?
+
+     It was not a stone that could trip,
+        Nor was it a thorn that could rend:
+     Put up thy proud underlip!
+       'Twas merely the heart of a friend.
+
+     And yet peradventure one day
+       Thou, sitting alone at the glass,
+     Remarking the bloom gone away,
+       Where the smile in its dimplement was,
+
+     And seeking around thee in vain
+       From hundreds who flattered before,
+     Such a word as,--"Oh, not in the main
+       Do I hold thee less precious,--but more!"
+
+     Thou'lt sigh, very like, on thy part:--
+       "Of all I have known or can know,
+     I wish I had only that Heart
+       I trod upon, ages ago!"
+
+
+     A CHILD'S THOUGHT OF GOD
+
+     They say that God lives very high!
+       But if you look above the pines
+     You cannot see our God. And why?
+
+     And if you dig down in the mines
+       You never see him in the gold,
+     Though, from him, all that's glory shines.
+
+     God is so good, he wears a fold
+       Of heaven and earth across his face--
+     Like secrets kept, for love, untold.
+
+     But still I feel that his embrace
+       Slides down by thrills, through all things made,
+     Through sight and sound of every place:
+
+     As if my tender mother laid
+       On my shut lids her kisses' pressure,
+     Half-waking me at night; and said
+       "Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser?"
+
+
+     CHEERFULNESS TAUGHT BY REASON
+
+     I think we are too ready with complaint
+       In this fair world of God's. Had we no hope
+       Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope
+     Of yon gray blank of sky, we might be faint
+     To muse upon eternity's constraint
+       Round our aspirant souls. But since the scope
+       Must widen early, is it well to droop
+     For a few days consumed in loss and taint?
+     O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted,--
+       And like a cheerful traveler, take the road,
+     Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread
+       Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod
+     To meet the flints?--At least it may be said,
+       "Because the way is _short_, I thank thee, God!"
+
+
+
+ROBERT BROWNING
+
+(1812-1889)
+
+BY E.L. BURLINGAME
+
+Robert Browning was born at Camberwell on May 7th, 1812, the son and
+grandson of men who held clerkships in the Bank of England--the one for
+more than forty and the other for full fifty years. His surroundings
+were apparently typical of English moderate prosperity, and neither
+they, nor his good but undistinguished family traditions, furnish any
+basis for the theorizing of biographers, except indeed in a single
+point. His grandmother was a West Indian Creole, and though only of the
+first generation to be born away from England, seems, from the restless
+and adventurous life led by her brother, to have belonged to a family of
+the opposite type from her husband's. Whether this crossing of the
+imaginative, Westward-Ho strain of the English blood with the
+home-keeping type has to do with the production of such intensely
+vitalized temperaments as Robert Browning's, is the only question
+suggested by his ancestry. It is noticeable that his father wished to go
+to a university, then to become an artist--- both ambitions repressed by
+the grandfather; and that he took up his bank official's career
+unwillingly. He seems to have been anything but a man of routine; to
+have had keen and wide interests outside of his work; to have been a
+great reader and book collector, even an exceptional scholar in certain
+directions; and to have kept till old age a remarkable vivacity, with
+unbroken health--altogether a personality thoroughly sympathetic with
+that of his son, to whom this may well have been the final touch of a
+prosperity calculated to shake all traditional ideas of a poet's youth.
+
+Browning's education was exceptional, for an English boy's. He left
+school at fourteen, and after that was taught by tutors at home, except
+that at eighteen he took a Greek course at the London University. His
+training seems to have been unusually thorough for these conditions,
+though largely self-directed; it may be supposed that his father kept a
+sympathetic and intelligent guidance, wisely not too obvious. But in the
+main it is clear that from a very early age, Browning had deliberately
+and distinctly in view the idea of making literature the pursuit of his
+life, and that he troubled himself seriously with nothing that did not
+help to that end; while into everything that did he seems to have thrown
+himself with precocious intensity. Individual anecdotes of his
+precocity are told by his biographers; but they are flat beside the
+general fact of the depth and character of his studies, and superfluous
+of the man who had written 'Pauline' at twenty-one and 'Paracelsus' at
+twenty-two. At eighteen he knew himself as a poet, and encountered no
+opposition in his chosen career from his father, whose "kindness we must
+seek," as Mrs. Sutherland Orr says, "not only in this first, almost
+inevitable assent to his son's becoming a writer, but in the subsequent
+unfailing readiness to support him in his literary career. 'Paracelsus,'
+'Sordello,' and the whole of 'Bells and Pomegranates' were published at
+his father's expense, and, incredible as it appears, brought him no
+return." An aunt, Mrs. Silverthorne, paid the costs of the earlier
+'Pauline.'
+
+From this time of his earliest published work ('Pauline' was issued
+without his name in 1833) that part of the story of his life known to
+the public, in spite of two or three more or less elaborate biographies,
+is mainly the history of his writings and the record of his different
+residences, supplemented by less than the usual number of personal
+anecdotes, to which neither circumstance nor temperament contributed
+material. He had nothing of the attitude of the recluse, like Tennyson;
+but while healthily social and a man of the world about him, he was not
+one of whom people tell "reminiscences" of consequence, and he was in no
+sense a public personality. Little of his correspondence has appeared in
+print; and it seems probable that he will be fortunate, to an even
+greater degree than Thackeray, in living in his works and escaping the
+"ripping up" of the personal chronicler.
+
+He traveled occasionally in the next few years, and in 1838 and again in
+1844 visited Italy. In that year, or early in 1845, he became engaged to
+Miss Elizabeth Barrett, their acquaintance beginning through a
+friend,--her cousin,--and through letters from Browning expressing
+admiration for her poems. Miss Barrett had then been for some years an
+invalid from an accident, and an enforced recluse; but in September 1846
+they were married without the knowledge of her father, and almost
+immediately afterward (she leaving her sick room to join him) went to
+Paris and then to Italy, where they lived first in Genoa and afterward
+in Florence, which with occasional absences was their home for fourteen
+years. Mrs. Browning died there, at Casa Guidi, in June 1861. Browning
+left Florence some time afterward, and in spite of his later visits to
+Italy, never returned there. He lived again in London in the winter, but
+most of his summers were spent in France, and especially in Brittany.
+About 1878 he formed the habit of going to Venice for the autumn, which
+continued with rare exceptions to the end of his life. There in 1888
+his son, recently married, had made his home; and there on the 12th
+of December, 1889, Robert Browning died. He was buried in Westminster
+Abbey on the last day of the year.
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING.]
+
+'Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession,' Browning's first published poem,
+was a psychological self-analysis, perfectly characteristic of the time
+of life at which he wrote it,--very young, full of excesses of mood, of
+real exultation, and somewhat less real depression--the "confession" of
+a poet of twenty-one, intensely interested in the ever-new discovery of
+his own nature, its possibilities, and its relations. It rings very
+true, and has no decadent touch in it:--
+
+     "I am made up of an intensest life
+      ... a principle of restlessness
+     Which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel, all--"
+
+this is the note that stays in the reader's mind. But the poem is
+psychologically rather than poetically noteworthy--except as all
+beginnings are so; and Browning's statement in a note in his collected
+poems that he "acknowledged and retained it with extreme repugnance,"
+shows how fully he recognized this.
+
+In 'Paracelsus,' his next long poem, published some two years later, the
+strength of his later work is first definitely felt. Taking for theme
+the life of the sixteenth-century physician, astrologer, alchemist,
+conjuror,--compound of Faust and Cagliostro, mixture of truth-seeker,
+charlatan, and dreamer,--Browning makes of it the history of the soul of
+a feverish aspirant after the finality of intellectual power, the
+knowledge which should be for man the key to the universe; the tragedy
+of its failure, and the greater tragedy of its discovery of the
+barrenness of the effort, and the omission from its scheme of life of an
+element without which power was impotent.
+
+     "Yet, constituted thus and thus endowed,
+     I failed; I gazed on power till I grew blind.
+     Power--I could not take my eyes from that;
+     That only I thought should be preserved, increased.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     I learned my own deep error: love's undoing
+     Taught me the worth of love in man's estate,
+     And what proportion love should hold with power
+     In his right constitution; love preceding
+     Power, and with much power always much more love."
+
+'Paracelsus' is the work of a man still far from maturity; but it is
+Browning's first use of a type of poem in which his powers were to find
+one of their chief manifestations--a psychological history, told with so
+slight an aid from "an external machinery of incidents" (to use his own
+phrase), or from conventional dramatic arrangement, as to constitute a
+form virtually new.
+
+This was to be notably the method of 'Sordello,' which appeared in 1840.
+In a note written twenty-three years later to his friend Milsand, and
+prefixed as a dedication to 'Sordello' in his collected works, he
+defined the form and its reason most exactly:--"The historical
+decoration was purposely of no more importance than a background
+requires, and my stress lay on the incidents in the development of a
+soul; little else is worth study." This poem, with its "historical
+decoration" or "background" from the Guelf and Ghibelline struggles in
+Italy, carries out this design in a fashion that defies description or
+characterization. With its inexhaustible wealth of psychological
+suggestion, its interwoven discussion of the most complex problems of
+life and thought, its metaphysical speculation, it may well give pause
+to the reader who makes his first approach to Browning through it, and
+send him back,--if he begins, as is likely, with the feeling of one
+challenged to an intellectual task,--baffled by the intricacy of its
+ways and without a comprehension of what it contains or leads to. Mr.
+Augustine Birrell says of it:--
+
+     "We have all heard of the young architect who forgot to put a
+     staircase in his house, which contained fine rooms but no way
+     of getting into them. 'Sordello' is a poem without a
+     staircase. The author, still in his twenties, essayed a high
+     thing. For his subject
+
+     'He singled out
+     Sordello compassed murkily about
+     With ravage of six long sad hundred years.'
+
+     "He partially failed; and the British public, with its
+     accustomed generosity, and in order, I suppose, to encourage
+     the others, has never ceased girding at him because,
+     forty-two years ago, he published at his own charges a little
+     book of two hundred and fifty pages, which even such of them
+     as were then able to read could not understand."
+
+With 'Sordello,' however, ended for many years--until he may perhaps be
+said to have taken it up in a greatly disciplined and more powerful form
+in 'The Ring and the Book' and others--this type and this length of the
+psychological poem for Browning; and now began that part of his work
+which is his best gift to English literature.
+
+Four years before the publication of 'Sordello' he had written one play,
+'Strafford,' of which the name sufficiently indicates the subject, which
+had been put upon the stage with some success by Macready;--the
+forerunner of a noble series of poems in dramatic form, most
+conveniently mentioned here together, though not always in chronological
+order. They were 'The Blot on the 'Scutcheon,' perhaps the finest of
+those actually fitted for the stage; 'Colombe's Birthday'; 'King Victor
+and King Charles'; 'The Return of the Druses'; 'Luria'; 'A Soul's
+Tragedy'; 'In a Balcony'; and,--though less on the conventional lines of
+a play than the others,--perhaps the finest dramatic poem of them all,
+'Pippa Passes,' which, among the earlier (it was published in 1841), is
+also among the finest of all Browning's works, and touches the very
+highest level of his powers.
+
+Interspersed with these during the fifteen years between 1840 and 1855,
+and following them during the next five, appeared the greater number of
+the single shorter poems which make his most generally recognized, his
+highest, and his unquestionably permanent title to rank among the first
+of English poets. Manifestly, it is impossible and needless to recall
+any number of these here by even the briefest description; and merely to
+enumerate the chief among them would be to repeat a familiar catalogue,
+except as they illustrate the points of a later general consideration.
+
+Finally, to complete the list of Browning's works, reference is
+necessary to the group of books of his later years: the two self-called
+narrative poems, 'The Ring and the Book,' with its vast length, and 'Red
+Cotton Nightcap Country,' its fellow in method if not in extent. Mr.
+Birrell (it is worth while to quote him again, as one who has not merged
+the appreciator in the adulator) calls 'The Ring and the Book' "a huge
+novel in 20,000 lines--told after the method not of Scott, but of
+Balzac; it tears the hearts out of a dozen characters; it tells the same
+story from ten different points of view. It is loaded with detail of
+every kind and description: you are let off nothing." But he adds
+later:--"If you are prepared for this, you will have your reward; for
+the style, though rugged and involved, is throughout, with the exception
+of the speeches of counsel, eloquent and at times superb: and as for the
+matter--if your interest in human nature is keen, curious, almost
+professional; if nothing man, woman, or child has been, done, or
+suffered, or conceivably can be, do, or suffer, is without interest for
+you; if you are fond of analysis, and do not shrink from dissection--you
+will prize 'The Ring and the Book' as the surgeon prizes the last great
+contribution to comparative anatomy or pathology."
+
+This is the key of the matter: the reader who has learned, through his
+greater work, to follow with interest the very analytic exercises, and
+as it were _tours de force_ of Browning's mind, will prize 'The
+Ring and the Book' and 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country'; even he will
+prize but little the two 'Adventures of Balaustion,' 'Prince
+Hohenstiel-Schwangau,' 'The Inn Album,' and one or two others of the
+latest works in the same _genre_. But he can well do without them, and
+still have the inexhaustible left.
+
+The attitude of a large part of his own generation toward Browning's
+poetry will probably be hardly understood by the future, and is not easy
+to comprehend even now for those who have the whole body of his work
+before them. It is intelligible enough that the "crude preliminary
+sketch" 'Pauline' should have given only the bare hint of a poet to the
+few dozen people who saw that it was out of the common; that
+'Paracelsus' should have carried the information,--though then, beyond a
+doubt, to only a small circle; and especially that 'Sordello,' a clear
+call to a few, should have sounded to even an intelligent many like an
+exercise in intricacy, and to the world at large like something to which
+it is useless to listen. Or, to look at the other end of his career, it
+is not extraordinary that the work of his last period--'The Ring and the
+Book,' 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country,'--those wonderful minute studies of
+human motive, made with the highly specialized skill of the psychical
+surgeon and with the confidence of another Balzac in the reader's
+following power--should always remain more or less esoteric literature.
+But when it is remembered that between these lie the most vivid and
+intensely dramatic series of short poems in English,--those grouped in
+the unfortunately diverse editions of his works under the rubrics 'Men
+and Women,' 'Dramatic Lyrics,' 'Dramatic Romances,' 'Dramatis Personae,'
+and the rest, as well as larger masterpieces of the broad appeal of
+'Pippa Passes,' 'A Blot on the 'Scutcheon,' or 'In a Balcony,'--it is
+hard to understand, and will be still harder fifty years hence, why
+Browning has not become the familiar and inspiring poet of a vastly
+larger body of readers. Undoubtedly a large number of intelligent
+persons still suspect a note of affectation in the man who declares his
+full and intense enjoyment--not only his admiration--of Browning; a
+suspicion showing not only the persistence of the Sordello-born
+tradition of "obscurity," but the harm worked by those commentators who
+approach him as a problem. Not all commentators share this reproach; but
+as Browning makes Bishop Blougram say:--
+
+     "Even your prime men who appraise their kind
+     Are men still, catch a wheel within a wheel,
+     See more in a truth than the truth's simple self--
+     Confuse themselves--"
+
+and beyond question such persons are largely responsible for the fact
+that for some time to come, every one who speaks of Browning to a
+general audience will feel that he has some cant to clear away. If he
+can make them read this body of intensely human, essentially simple and
+direct dramatic and lyrical work, he will help to bring about the time
+when the once popular attitude will seem as unjustifiable as to judge
+Goethe only by the second part of 'Faust.'
+
+The first great characteristic of Browning's poetry is undoubtedly the
+essential, elemental quality of its humanity--a trait in which it is
+surpassed by no other English poetry but that of Shakespeare. It can be
+subtile to a degree almost fantastic (as can Shakespeare's to an extent
+that familiarity makes us forget); but this is in method. The stuff of
+it--the texture of the fabric which the swift and intricate shuttle is
+weaving--is always something in which the human being is vitally, not
+merely aesthetically interested. It deals with no shadows, and indeed
+with few abstractions, except those that form a part of vital
+problems--a statement which may provoke the scoffer, but will be found
+to be true.
+
+A second characteristic, which, if not a necessary result of this first,
+would at least be impossible without it, is the extent to which
+Browning's poetry produces its effect by suggestion rather than by
+elaboration; by stimulating thought, emotion, and the aesthetic sense,
+instead of seeking to satisfy any one of these--especially instead of
+contenting itself with only soothing the last. The comparison of his
+poetry with--for instance--Tennyson's, in this respect, is instructive;
+if it is possibly unjust to both.
+
+And a third trait in Browning--to make an end of a dangerously
+categorical attempt to characterize him--follows logically from this
+second; its extreme compactness and concentration. Browning sometimes
+dwells long--even dallies--over an idea, as does Shakespeare; turns it,
+shows its every facet; and even then it is noticeable, as with the
+greater master, that every individual phrase with which he does so is
+practically exhaustive of the suggestiveness of that particular aspect.
+But commonly he crowds idea upon idea even in his lyrics, and--strangely
+enough--without losing the lyric quality; each thought pressed down to
+its very essence, and each with that germinal power that makes the
+reading of him one of the most stimulating things to be had from
+literature. His figures especially are apt and telling in the very
+minimum of words; they say it all, like the unsurpassable Shakespearean
+example of "the dyer's hand"; and the more you think of them, the more
+you see that not a word could be added or taken away.
+
+It may be said that this quality of compactness is common to all genius,
+and of the very essence of all true poetry; but Browning manifested it
+in a way of his own, such as to suggest that he believed in the
+subordination of all other qualities to it; even of melody, for
+instance, as may be said by his critics and admitted in many cases by
+even his strongest admirers. But all things are not given to one, even
+among the giants; and Browning's force with its measure of melody (which
+is often great) has its place among others' melody with its measure of
+force. Open at random: here are two lines in 'A Toccata of Galuppi's,'
+not deficient in melody by any means:--
+
+     "Dear dead women--with such hair, too: what's become of all the gold
+     Used to hang and brush their bosoms?--I feel chilly and grown old."
+
+This is not Villon's 'Ballad of Dead Ladies,' nor even Tennyson's 'Dream
+of Fair Women'; but a master can still say a good deal in two lines.
+
+What is called the "roughness" of Browning's verse is at all events
+never the roughness that comes from mismanagement or disregard of the
+form chosen. He has an unerring ear for time and quantity; and his
+subordination to the laws of his metre is extraordinary in its
+minuteness. Of ringing lines there are many; of broadly sonorous or
+softly melodious ones but few; and especially (if one chooses to go into
+details of technic) he seems curiously without that use of the broad
+vowels which underlies the melody of so many great passages of English
+poetry. Except in the one remarkable instance of 'How we Carried the
+Good News from Ghent to Aix,' there is little onomatopoeia, and almost
+no note of the flute; no "moan of doves in immemorial elms" or "lucent
+sirops tinct with cinnamon." On the other hand, in his management of
+metres like that of 'Love Among the Ruins,' for instance, he shows a
+different side; the pure lyrics in 'Pippa Passes' and elsewhere sing
+themselves; and there are memorable cadences in some of the more
+meditative poems, like 'By the Fireside.'
+
+The vividness and vigor and truth of Browning's embodiments of character
+come, it is needless to say, from the same power that has created all
+great dramatic work,--the capacity for incarnating not a quality or an
+ideal, but the mixture and balance of qualities that make up the real
+human being. There is not a walking phantom among them, or a lay-figure
+to hang sentiment on. A writer in the New Review said recently that of
+all the poets he remembered, only Shakespeare and Browning never drew a
+prig. It is this complete absence of the false note that gives to
+certain of Browning's poems the finality which is felt in all consummate
+works of art, great and small; the sense that they convey, if not the
+last word, at least the last necessary word, on their subject. 'Andrea
+del Sarto' is in its way the whole problem of the artist-ideal, the weak
+will and the inner failure, in all times and guises; and at the other
+end of the gamut, nobody will ever need again to set forth Bishop
+Blougram's attitude, or even that of Mr. Sludge the Medium. Of the
+informing, almost exuberant vitality of all the lyric and dramatic
+poems, it is needless to speak; that fairly leaps to meet the reader at
+every page of them, and a quality of it is their essential optimism.
+
+     "What is he buzzing in my ears?
+       Now that I come to die.
+     Do I view the world as a vale of tears?
+       Ah, reverend sir, not I!"
+
+The world was never a vale of tears to Robert Browning, man or poet; but
+a world of men and women, with plenty of red corpuscles in their blood.
+
+[Illustration: E.L. Burlingame signature]
+
+
+     ANDREA DEL SARTO
+
+     CALLED "THE FAULTLESS PAINTER"
+
+     But do not let us quarrel any more;
+     No, my Lucrezia! bear with me for once:
+     Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.
+     You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?
+     I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear,
+     Treat his own subject after his own way?
+     Fix his own time, accept too his own price,
+     And shut the money into this small hand
+     When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly?
+     Oh, I'll content him,--but to-morrow, Love!
+     I often am much wearier than you think,--
+     This evening more than usual: and it seems
+     As if--forgive now--should you let me sit
+     Here by the window, with your hand in mine,
+     And look a. half-hour forth on Fiesole,
+     Both of one mind, as married people use,
+     Quietly, quietly the evening through,
+     I might get up to-morrow to my work
+     Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try.
+     To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this!
+     Your soft hand is a woman of itself,
+     And mine, the man's bared breast she curls inside.
+     Don't count the time lost, neither: you must serve
+     For each of the five pictures we require;
+     It saves a model. So! keep looking so--My
+     serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds!--How
+     could you ever prick those perfect ears,
+     Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet--My
+     face, my moon, my everybody's moon,
+     Which everybody looks on and calls his,
+     And I suppose is looked on by in turn,
+     While she looks--no one's: very dear, no less.
+     You smile? why, there's my picture ready made;
+     There's what we painters call our harmony!
+     A common grayness silvers everything,--
+     All in a twilight, you and I alike--
+     You at the point of your first pride in me
+     (That's gone, you know)--but I at every point,
+     My youth, my hope, my art being all toned down
+     To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole.
+     There's the bell clinking from the chapel-top;
+     That length of convent-wall across the way
+     Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside;
+     The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease,
+     And autumn grows, autumn in everything.
+     Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape,
+     As if I saw alike my work and self
+     And all that I was born to be and do,
+     A twilight piece. Love, we are in God's hand.
+     How strange now looks the life he makes us lead;
+     So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!
+     I feel he laid the fetter: let it lie!
+     This chamber, for example--turn your head--
+     All that's behind us! You don't understand
+     Nor care to understand about my art,
+     But you can hear at least when people speak:
+     And that cartoon, the second from the door--
+     It is the thing, Love! so such things should be;
+     Behold Madonna!--I am bold to say,
+     I can do with my pencil what I know,
+     What I see, what at bottom of my heart
+     I wish for, if I ever wish so deep--
+     Do easily, too--when I say perfectly,
+     I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge,
+     Who listened to the Legate's talk last week;
+     And just as much they used to say in France,
+     At any rate 'tis easy, all of it!
+     No sketches first, no studies, that's long past:
+     I do what many dream of, all their lives--
+     Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,
+     And fail in doing. I could count twenty such
+     On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,
+     Who strive--you don't know how the others strive
+     To paint a little thing like that you smeared
+     Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,--
+     Yet do much less, so much less, Some One says,
+     (I know his name, no matter)--so much less!
+     Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
+     There burns a truer light of God in them,
+     In their vexed, beating, stuffed, and stopped-up brain,
+     Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt
+     This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.
+     Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,
+     Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me,
+     Enter and take their place there sure enough,
+     Though they come back and cannot tell the world.
+     My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.
+     The sudden blood of these men! at a word--
+     Praise them, it boils; or blame them, it boils too.
+     I, painting from myself and to thyself,
+     Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame
+     Or their praise either. Somebody remarks
+     Morello's outline there is wrongly traced,
+     His hue mistaken: what of that? or else,
+     Rightly traced and well ordered: what of that?
+     Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?
+     Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
+     Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-gray,
+     Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!
+     I know both what I want and what might gain;
+     And yet how profitless to know, to sigh
+     "Had I been two, another and myself,
+     Our head would have o'erlooked the world" No doubt.
+     Yonder's a work now, of that famous youth
+     The Urbinate who died five years ago.
+     ('Tis copied, George Vasari sent it me.)
+     Well, I can fancy how he did it all,
+     Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see,
+     Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,
+     Above and through his art--for it gives way:
+     That arm is wrongly put--and there again--
+     A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines,
+     Its body, so to speak; its soul is right;
+     He meant right--that, a child may understand.
+     Still, what an arm! and I could alter it:
+     But all the play, the insight, and the stretch--
+     Out of me, out of me! And wherefore out?
+     Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul,
+     We might have risen to Rafael, I and you.
+     Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think--
+     More than I merit, yes, by many times.
+     But had you--oh, with the same perfect brow,
+     And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth
+     And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird
+     The fowler's pipe, and follows to the snare--
+     Had you, with these, these same, but brought a mind!
+     Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged
+     "God and the glory! never care for gain.
+     The present by the future, what is that?
+     Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo!
+     Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!"
+     I might have done it for you. So it seems:
+     Perhaps not. All is as God overrules.
+     Beside, incentives come from the soul's self;
+     The rest avail not. Why do I need you?
+     What wife had Rafael, or has Agnolo?
+     In this world, who can do a thing, will not;
+     And who would do it, cannot, I perceive:
+     Yet the will's somewhat--somewhat, too, the power--
+     And thus we half-men struggle. At the end,
+     God, I conclude, compensates, punishes.
+     'Tis safer for me, if the award be strict,
+     That I am something underrated here,
+     Poor this long while,--despised, to speak the truth.
+     I dared not, do you know, leave home all day,
+     For fear of chancing on the Paris lords.
+     The best is when they pass and look aside;
+     But they speak sometimes: I must bear it all.
+     Well may they speak! That Francis, that first time,
+     And that long festal year at Fontainebleau!
+     I surely then could sometimes leave the ground,
+     Put on the glory, Rafael's daily wear,
+     In that humane great monarch's golden look,--
+     One finger in his beard or twisted curl
+     Over his mouth's good mark that made the smile,
+     One arm about my shoulder, around my neck,
+     The jingle of his gold chain in my ear,
+     I painting proudly with his breath on me,
+     All his court round him, seeing with his eyes,
+     Such frank French eyes, and such a fire of souls
+     Profuse, my hand kept plying by those hearts,--
+     And best of all, this, this, this face beyond,
+     This in the background, waiting on my work,
+     To crown the issue with a last reward!
+     A good time, was it not, my kingly days,
+     And had you not grown restless ... but I know--
+     'Tis done and past; 'twas right, my instinct said;
+     Too live the life grew, golden and not gray;
+     And I'm the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt
+     Out of the grange whose four walls make his world.
+     How could it end in any other way?
+     You called me, and I came home to your heart.
+     The triumph was to have ended there; then, if
+     I reached it ere the triumph, what is lost?
+     Let my hands frame your face in your hair's gold,
+     You beautiful Lucrezia that are mine!
+     "Rafael did this, Andrea painted that;
+     The Roman's is the better when you pray,
+     But still the other Virgin was his wife"--
+     Men will excuse me. I am glad to judge
+     Both pictures in your presence; clearer grows
+     My better fortune, I resolve to think,
+     For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives,
+     Said one day Agnolo, his very self,
+     To Rafael--I have known it all these years--
+     (When the young man was flaming out his thoughts
+     Upon a palace wall for Rome to see,
+     Too lifted up in heart because of it)
+     "Friend, there's a certain sorry little scrub
+     Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how,
+     Who, were he set to plan and execute
+     As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings,
+     Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!"
+     To Rafael's!--and indeed the arm is wrong.
+     I hardly dare ... yet, only you to see,
+     Give the chalk here--quick, thus the line should go!
+     Ay, but the soul! he's Rafael! rub it out!
+     Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth,
+     (What he? why, who but Michel Agnolo?
+     Do you forget already words like those?)
+     If really there was such a chance so lost,--
+     Is, whether you're--not grateful--but more pleased.
+     Well, let me think so. And you smile indeed!
+     This hour has been an hour! Another smile?
+     If you would sit thus by me every night,
+     I should work better--do you comprehend?
+     I mean that I should earn more, give you more.
+     See, it is settled dusk now: there's a star;
+     Morello's gone, the watch lights show the wall,
+     The cue-owls speak the name we call them by.
+     Come from the window, love,--come in, at last,
+     Inside the melancholy little house
+     We built to be so gay with. God is just.
+     King Francis may forgive me: oft at nights
+     When I look up from painting, eyes tired out,
+     The walls become illumined, brick from brick
+     Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright gold,
+     That gold of his I did cement them with!
+     Let us but love each other. Must you go?
+     That cousin here again? he waits outside?
+     Must see you--you, and not with me? Those loans?
+     More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for that?
+     Well, let smiles buy me! have you more to spend?
+     While hand and eye and something of a heart
+     Are left me, work's my ware, and what's it worth?
+     I'll pay my fancy. Only let me sit
+     The gray remainder of the evening out,
+     Idle, you call it, and muse perfectly
+     How I could paint were I but back in France,
+     One picture, just one more--the Virgin's face,
+     Not yours this time! I want you at my side
+     To hear them--that is, Michel Agnolo--
+     Judge all I do and tell you of its worth.
+     Will you? To-morrow satisfy your friend.
+     I take the subjects for his corridor,
+     Finish the portrait out of hand--there, there,
+     And throw him in another thing or two
+     If he demurs: the whole should prove enough
+     To pay for this same cousin's freak. Beside,
+     What's better, and what's all I care about,
+     Get you the thirteen send for the ruff!
+     Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he,
+     The cousin! what does he to please you more?
+
+     I am grown peaceful as old age to-night.
+     I regret little, I would change still less.
+     Since there my past life lies, why alter it?
+     The very wrong to Francis!--it is true
+     I took his coin, was tempted and complied,
+     And built this house and sinned, and all is said.
+     My father and my mother died of want.
+     Well, had I riches of my own? you see
+     How one gets rich! Let each one bear his lot.
+     They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they died;
+     And I have labored somewhat in my time
+     And not been paid profusely. Some good son
+     Paint my two hundred pictures--let him try!
+     No doubt, there's something strikes a balance. Yes,
+     You loved me quite enough, it seems to-night.
+     This must suffice me here. What would one have?
+     In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance--
+     Four great walls in the New Jerusalem,
+     Meted on each side by the angel's reed,
+     For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo, and me
+     To cover--the three first without a wife,
+     While I have mine! So still they overcome--
+     Because there's still Lucrezia,--as I choose.
+
+     Again the cousin's whistle! Go, my love.
+
+
+
+     A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S
+
+
+     O GALLUPI, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!
+     I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind:
+     But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind!
+
+     Have you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings?
+     What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the
+                kings,
+     Where Saint Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with
+                rings?
+
+     Ay, because the sea's the street there; and 'tis arched by--what
+                you call--
+     Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival:
+     I was never out of England--it's as if I saw it all.
+
+     Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?
+     Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day,
+     When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?
+
+     Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red,--
+     On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed,
+     O'er the breast's superb abundance where a man might base his head?
+
+     Well, and it was graceful of them: they'd break talk off and afford--
+     She to bite her mask's black velvet, he to finger on his sword,
+     While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord!
+
+     What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on
+                sigh,
+     Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions--"Must
+                we die?"
+     Those commiserating sevenths--"Life might last! we can but try!"
+
+     "Were you happy?" "Yes."--"And are you still as happy?"
+                "Yes. And you?"--
+     "Then, more kisses!" "Did _I_ stop them, when a million seemed so few?"
+     Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be answered to!
+
+     So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!
+     "Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!
+     I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!"
+
+     Then they left you for their pleasure; till in due time, one by one,
+     Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,
+     Death stepped tacitly, and took them where they never see the sun.
+
+     But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve,
+     While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve,
+     In you come with your cold music till I creep through every nerve.
+
+     Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned.
+     "Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned.
+     The soul, doubtless, is immortal--where a soul can be discerned.
+
+     "Yours for instance: you know physics, something of geology,
+     Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;
+     Butterflies may dread extinction,--you'll not die, it cannot be!
+
+     "As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,
+     Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop;
+     What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?
+
+     "Dust and ashes!" So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.
+     Dear dead women, with such hair, too--what's become of all the gold
+     Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.
+
+
+
+
+     CONFESSIONS
+
+     What is he buzzing in my ears?
+       "Now that I come to die
+     Do I view the world as a vale of tears?"
+       Ah, reverend sir, not I!
+
+     What I viewed there once,--what I viewed again
+       Where the physic bottles stand
+     On the table's edge,--is a suburb lane,
+       With a wall to my bedside hand.
+
+     That lane sloped, much as the bottles do,
+       From a house you could descry
+     O'er the garden wall: is the curtain blue,
+       Or green to a healthy eye?
+
+     To mine, it serves for the old June weather
+       Blue above lane and wall;
+     And that farthest bottle labeled "Ether"
+       Is the house o'ertopping all.
+
+     At a terrace, somewhat near the stopper,
+        There watched for me, one June,
+     A girl: I know, sir, it's improper,
+        My poor mind's out of tune.
+
+     Only, there was a way--you crept
+        Close by the side, to dodge
+     Eyes in the house, two eyes except:
+        They styled their house "The Lodge"
+
+     What right had a lounger up their lane?
+        But by creeping very close,
+     With the good wall's help,--their eyes might strain
+        And stretch themselves to O's,
+
+     Yet never catch her and me together,
+        As she left the attic there,
+     By the rim of the bottle labeled "Ether,"
+        And stole from stair to stair,
+
+     And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas,
+        We loved, sir--used to meet:
+     How sad and bad and mad it was--
+        But then, how it was sweet!
+
+
+
+     LOVE AMONG THE RUINS
+
+
+     Where the quiet-colored end of evening smiles,
+               Miles and miles,
+       On the solitary pastures where our sheep
+               Half asleep
+     Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray or stop
+               As they crop--
+     Was the site once of a city great and gay
+               (So they say);
+     Of our country's very capital, its prince,
+                Ages since,
+     Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
+                Peace or war.
+
+     Now,--the country does not even boast a tree,
+                As you see;
+     To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills
+                From the hills
+     Intersect and give a name to (else they run
+                Into one).
+     Where the domed and daring palace shot in spires
+                Up like fires
+     O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall
+                Bounding all,
+     Made of marble, men might march on nor be pressed,
+                Twelve abreast.
+
+     And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass
+                Never was!
+     Such a carpet as this summer-time o'erspreads
+                And imbeds
+     Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,
+                Stock or stone--
+     Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe
+                Long ago;
+     Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame
+                Struck them tame;
+     And that glory and that shame alike, the gold
+                Bought and sold.
+
+     Now,--the single little turret that remains
+                On the plains,
+     By the caper overrooted, by the gourd
+           Overscored,
+     While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks
+           Through the chinks--
+     Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time
+           Sprang sublime,
+     And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced
+           As they raced,
+     And the monarch and his minions and his dames
+           Viewed the games.
+
+     And I know--while thus the quiet-colored eve
+           Smiles to leave
+     To their folding all our many-tinkling fleece
+           In such peace,
+     And the slopes and rills in undistinguished gray
+           Melt away--
+     That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair
+           Waits me there
+     In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul
+           For the goal,
+     When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb,
+           Till I come.
+
+     But he looked upon the city every side,
+           Far and wide,
+     All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades
+           Colonnades,
+     All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,--and then,
+           All the men!
+     When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
+           Either hand
+     On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
+           Of my face,
+     Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
+           Each on each.
+
+     In one year they sent a million fighters forth
+           South and North,
+     And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
+           As the sky,
+     Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force--
+           Gold, of course.
+     O heart! O blood that freezes, blood that burns!
+           Earth's returns
+     For whole centuries of folly, noise, and sin!
+       Shut them in,
+     With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!
+       Love is best.
+
+
+
+     A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL
+
+     SHORTLY AFTER THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING IN EUROPE
+
+     Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
+       Singing together.
+     Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes,
+       Each in its tether,
+     Sleeping safe in the bosom of the plain,
+       Cared-for till cock-crow:
+     Look out if yonder be not day again
+       Rimming the rock-row!
+     That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought,
+       Rarer, intenser,
+     Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,
+       Chafes in the censer.
+     Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop;
+       Seek we sepulture
+     On a tall mountain, citied to the top,
+       Crowded with culture!
+     All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels:
+       Clouds overcome it;
+     No, yonder sparkle is the citadel's
+       Circling its summit.
+     Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights!
+       Wait ye the warning?
+     Our low life was the level's and the night's:
+       He's for the morning.
+     Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head,
+       'Ware the beholders!
+     This is our master, famous, calm, and dead,
+       Borne on our shoulders.
+
+     Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft,
+       Safe from the weather!
+     He whom we convoy to his grave aloft,
+       Singing together,
+     He was a man born with thy face and throat,
+       Lyric Apollo!
+     Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note
+       Winter would follow?
+     Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone!
+       Cramped and diminished,
+     Moaned he, "New measures, other feet anon!
+       My dance is finished"?
+     No, that's the world's way: (keep the mountain side,
+       Make for the city!)
+     He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride
+       Over men's pity;
+     Left play for work, and grappled with the world
+       Bent on escaping:
+     "What's in the scroll," quoth he, "thou keepest furled?
+       Show me their shaping,
+     Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage,--
+       Give!" so he gowned him,
+     Straight got by heart that book to its last page;
+       Learned, we found him.
+     Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead.
+       Accents uncertain:
+     "Time to taste life," another would have said,
+       "Up with the curtain!"
+     This man said rather, "Actual life comes next?
+       Patience a moment!
+     Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text,
+       Still there's the comment.
+     Let me know all! Prate not of most or least,
+       Painful or easy!
+     Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up the feast,
+       Ay, nor feel queasy."
+     Oh, such a life as he resolved to live,
+       When he had learned it,
+     When he had gathered all books had to give!
+       Sooner, he spurned it.
+     Image the whole, then execute the parts--
+       Fancy the fabric
+     Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz,
+       Ere mortar dab brick!
+
+     (Here's the town-gate reached; there's the market-place
+       Gaping before us.)
+     Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace:
+       (Hearten our chorus!)
+     That before living he'd learn how to live--
+       No end to learning:
+     Earn the means first--God surely will contrive
+       Use for our earning.
+     Others mistrust and say, "But time escapes!
+       Live now or never!"
+     He said, "What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes!
+       Man has Forever."
+     Back to his book then: deeper drooped his head;
+       _Calculus_ racked him;
+     Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead;
+       _Tussis_ attacked him.
+     "Now, master, take a little rest!"--not he!
+       (Caution redoubled!
+     Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!)
+       Not a whit troubled,
+     Back to his studies, fresher than at first,
+       Fierce as a dragon
+     He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst)
+       Sucked at the flagon.
+
+     Oh, if we draw a circle premature,
+       Heedless of far gain,
+     Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure
+       Bad is our bargain!
+     Was it not great? did not he throw on God
+       (He loves the burthen)--
+     God's task to make the heavenly period
+       Perfect the earthen?
+     Did not he magnify the mind, show clear
+       Just what it all meant?
+     He would not discount life, as fools do here
+       Paid by installment.
+     He ventured neck or nothing--heaven's success
+       Found, or earth's failure:
+     "Wilt thou trust death or not?" He answered, "Yes!
+       Hence with life's pale lure!"
+     That low man seeks a little thing to do,
+       Sees it and does it:
+     This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
+       Dies ere he knows it.
+     That low man goes on adding one to one,
+       His hundred's soon hit:
+     This high man, aiming at a million,
+       Misses an unit.
+     That, has the world here--should he need the next.
+       Let the world mind him!
+     This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed
+       Seeking shall find him.
+     So, with the throttling hands of death at strife,
+       Ground he at grammar;
+     Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife:
+       While he could stammer
+     He settled _Hoti's_ business--let it be!--
+       Properly based _Oun_--
+     Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic _De_,
+       Dead from the waist down.
+
+     Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place:
+       Hail to your purlieus,
+     All ye highfliers of the feathered race,
+       Swallows and curlews!
+     Here's the top-peak; the multitude below
+       Live, for they can, there:
+     This man decided not to Live but Know--
+       Bury this man there?
+     Here--here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
+       Lightnings are loosened,
+     Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,
+       Peace let the dew send!
+     Lofty designs must close in like effects:
+       Loftily lying,
+     Leave him--still loftier than the world suspects,
+       Living and dying.
+
+
+     MY LAST DUCHESS
+
+     FERRARA
+
+
+     That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
+     Looking as if she were alive. I call
+     That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's hands
+     Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
+     Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
+     "Fra Pandolf" by design: for never read
+     Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
+     The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
+     But to myself they turned (since none puts by
+     The curtain I have drawn for you, but I),
+     And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
+     How such a glance came there; so, not the first
+     Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
+     Her husband's presence only, called that spot
+     Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
+     Fra Pandolf chanced to say, "Her mantle laps
+     Over my lady's wrists too much," or "Paint
+     Must never hope to reproduce the faint
+     Half-flush that dies along her throat;" such stuff
+     Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
+     For calling up that spot of joy. She had
+     A heart--how shall I say?--too soon made glad,
+     Too easily impressed: she liked whate'er
+     She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
+     Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast,
+     The dropping of the daylight in the West,
+     The bough of cherries some officious fool
+     Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
+     She rode with round the terrace,--all and each
+     Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
+     Or blush, at least. She thanked men,--good! but thanked
+     Somehow--I know not how--as if she ranked
+     My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
+     With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
+     This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
+     In speech (which I have not) to make your will
+     Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
+     Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
+     Or there exceed the mark,"--and if she let
+     Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
+     Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,--
+     E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
+     Never to stoop. O sir! she smiled, no doubt,
+     When'er I passed her; but who passed without
+     Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
+     Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
+     As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
+     The company below, then. I repeat,
+     The Count your master's known munificence
+     Is ample warrant that no just pretense
+     Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
+     Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
+     At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
+     Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
+     Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
+     Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
+
+
+     UP AT A VILLA--DOWN IN THE CITY
+
+     (As DISTINGUISHED BY AN ITALIAN PERSON OF QUALITY)
+
+
+     Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
+     The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
+     Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!
+
+     Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
+     There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast;
+     While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast.
+
+     Well, now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull
+     Just on a mountain edge as bare as the creature's skull,
+     Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull!--
+     scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's turned wool.
+
+     But the city, oh the city--the square with the houses! Why!
+     They are stone-faced, white as a curd; there's something to take the
+                eye!
+     Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry;
+     You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by;
+     Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high;
+     And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.
+
+     What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights,
+     'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the
+                heights;
+     You've the brown-plowed land before, where the oxen steam and
+                wheeze,
+     And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray olive-trees.
+
+     Is it better in May, I ask you? You've summer all at once;
+     In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns.
+     'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well,
+     The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell
+     Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell.
+
+     Is it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to spout and splash!
+     In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows flash
+     On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle and
+                pash
+     Round the lady atop in her conch--fifty gazers do not abash,
+     Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort
+                of sash.
+
+     All the year long at the villa, nothing to see though you linger,
+     Except yon cypress that points like death's lean lifted forefinger.
+     Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix i' the corn and mingle,
+     Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle.
+     Late August or early September, the stunning cicala is shrill,
+     And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs on
+                the hill.
+     Enough of the seasons,--I spare you the months of the fever and
+                chill.
+
+     Ere you open your eyes in the city, the blessed church-bells begin;
+     No sooner the bells leave off than the diligence rattles in:
+     You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin.
+     By and by there's the traveling doctor gives pills, lets blood, draws
+                teeth,
+     Or the Pulcinella-trumpet breaks up the market beneath.
+     At the post-office such a scene picture--the new play, piping hot!
+     And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot.
+     Above it, behold the Archbishop's most fatherly of rebukes,
+     And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little new law of
+                the Duke's!
+     Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don So-and-so
+     Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, St. Jerome, and Cicero,
+     "And moreover" (the sonnet goes rhyming), "the skirts of St. Paul
+                has reached,
+     Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever
+                he preached."
+     Noon strikes,--here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling
+                and smart,
+     With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her
+                heart!
+     _Bang-whang-whang_ goes the drum, _tootle-te-tootle_ the fife;
+     No keeping one's haunches still: it's the greatest pleasure in life.
+
+     But bless you, it's dear--it's dear! fowls, wine, at double the rate;
+     They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil pays passing
+                the gate
+     It's a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, not the city!
+     Beggars can scarcely be choosers: but still--ah, the pity, the pity!
+     Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with cowls and
+                sandals,
+     And then penitents dressed in white shirts, a-holding the yellow
+                candles;
+     One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a cross with handles,
+     And the Duke's guard brings up the rear, for the better prevention
+                of scandals:
+     _Bang-whang-whang_ goes the drum, _tootle-te-tootle_ the fife,
+     Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!
+
+
+
+     IN THREE DAYS
+
+
+     So, I shall see her in three days
+     And just one night,--but nights are short,--
+     Then two long hours, and that is morn.
+     See how I come, unchanged, unworn--
+     Feel, where my life broke off from thine,
+     How fresh the splinters keep and fine,--Only
+     a touch and we combine!
+
+     Too long, this time of year, the days!
+     But nights--at least the nights are short,
+     As night shows where her one moon is,
+     A hand's-breadth of pure light and bliss,
+     So, life's night gives my lady birth
+     And my eyes hold her! What is worth
+     The rest of heaven, the rest of earth?
+
+     O loaded curls, release your store
+     Of warmth and scent, as once before
+     The tingling hair did, lights and darks
+     Outbreaking into fairy sparks
+     When under curl and curl I pried
+     After the warmth and scent inside,
+     Through lights and darks how manifold--The
+     dark inspired, the light controlled!
+     As early Art embrowned the gold.
+
+     What great fear--should one say, "Three days
+     That change the world might change as well
+     Your fortune; and if joy delays,
+     Be happy that no worse befell."
+     What small fear--if another says,
+     "Three days and one short night beside
+     May throw no shadow on your ways;
+     But years must teem with change untried,
+     With chance not easily defied,
+     With an end somewhere undescried."
+     No fear!--or if a fear be born
+     This minute, it dies out in scorn.
+     Fear? I shall see her in three days
+     And one night,--now the nights are short,--
+     Then just two hours, and that is morn.
+
+
+     IN A YEAR
+
+     Never any more,
+          While I live,
+     Need I hope to see his face
+          As before.
+     Once his love grown chill,
+          Mine may strive:
+     Bitterly we re-embrace,
+          Single still.
+
+     Was it something said,
+          Something done,
+     Vexed him? was it touch of hand,
+          Turn of head?
+     Strange! that very way
+          Love begun:
+     I as little understand
+          Love's decay.
+
+     When I sewed or drew,
+          I recall
+     How he looked as if I sung,--
+          Sweetly too.
+     If I spoke a word,
+          First of all
+     Up his cheek the color sprung,
+          Then he heard.
+
+     Sitting by my side,
+          At my feet,
+     So he breathed but air I breathed,
+          Satisfied!
+     I, too, at love's brim
+          Touched the sweet:
+     I would die if death bequeathed
+          Sweet to him.
+
+     "Speak, I love thee best!"
+          He exclaimed:
+     "Let thy love my own foretell!"
+          I confessed:
+     "Clasp my heart on thine
+          Now unblamed,
+     Since upon thy soul as well
+          Hangeth mine!"
+
+     Was it wrong to own,
+          Being truth?
+     Why should all the giving prove
+          His alone?
+     I had wealth and ease,
+          Beauty, youth:
+     Since my lover gave me love,
+          I gave these.
+
+     That was all I meant,--
+          To be just,
+     And the passion I had raised
+          To content.
+     Since he chose to change
+          Gold for dust,
+     If I gave him what he praised
+          Was it strange?
+     Would he loved me yet,
+          On and on,
+     While I found some way undreamed--
+          Paid my debt!
+     Gave more life and more,
+          Till all gone,
+     He should smile--"She never seemed
+          Mine before.
+
+     "What, she felt the while,
+          Must I think?
+     Love's so different with us men!"
+          He should smile:
+     "Dying for my sake--
+          White and pink!
+     Can't we touch these bubbles then
+          But they break?"
+
+     Dear, the pang is brief,
+          Do thy part,
+     Have thy pleasure! How perplexed
+          Grows belief!
+     Well, this cold clay clod
+          Was man's heart:
+     Crumble it, and what comes next?
+          Is it God?
+
+
+     EVELYN HOPE
+
+     Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead!
+        Sit and watch by her side an hour.
+     That is her book-shelf, this her bed:
+        She plucked that piece of geranium-flower,
+     Beginning to die too, in the glass:
+        Little has yet been changed, I think;
+     The shutters are shut, no light may pass
+        Save two long rays through the hinge's chink.
+
+     Sixteen years old when she died!
+        Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name;
+     It was not her time to love; beside,
+        Her life had many a hope and aim,
+     Duties enough and little cares,
+        And now was quiet, now astir,
+     Till God's hand beckoned unawares--
+        And the sweet white brow is all of her.
+
+     Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope?
+        What, your soul was pure and true,
+     The good stars met in your horoscope,
+        Made you of spirit, fire, and dew
+     And just because I was thrice as old,
+        And our paths in the world diverged so wide,
+     Each was naught to each, must I be told?
+        We were fellow mortals, naught beside?
+
+     No, indeed! for God above
+        Is great to grant, as mighty to make,
+     And creates the love to reward the love:
+        I claim you still, for my own love's sake!
+     Delayed it may be for more lives yet,
+        Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few;
+     Much is to learn, much to forget
+        Ere the time be come for taking you.
+
+     But the time will come,--at last it will,
+        When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say)
+     In the lower earth, in the years long still,
+        That body and soul so pure and gay?
+     Why your hair was amber, I shall divine,
+        And your mouth of your own geranium's red--
+     And what would you do with me, in fine,
+        In the new life come in the old one's stead?
+
+     I have lived (I shall say) so much since then,
+        Given up myself so many times,
+     Gained me the gains of various men,
+        Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes;
+     Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope,
+        Either I missed or itself missed me:
+     And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope!
+        What is the issue? let us see!
+
+     I loved you, Evelyn, all the while!
+        My heart seemed full as it could hold;
+     There was place and to spare for the frank young smile,
+        And the red young mouth, and the hair's young gold.
+     So hush,--I will give you this leaf to keep;
+        See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand!
+     There, that is our secret: go to sleep!
+        You will wake, and remember, and understand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     PROSPICE
+
+     Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat,
+          The mist in my face,
+     When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
+          I am nearing the place,
+     The power of the night, the press of the storm,
+          The post of the foe;
+     Where he stands, the Arch-Fear in a visible form,
+          Yet the strong man must go:
+     For the journey is done and the summit attained,
+          And the barriers fall,
+     Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
+          The reward of it all.
+     I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more,
+          The best and the last!
+     I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
+          And bade me creep past.
+     No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
+          The heroes of old,
+     Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
+          Of pain, darkness, and cold.
+     For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
+          The black minute's at end,
+     And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
+          Shall dwindle, shall blend,
+     Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
+          Then a light, then thy breast,
+     O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
+          And with God be the rest!
+
+
+
+     THE PATRIOT
+
+     AN OLD STORY
+
+
+     It was roses, roses, all the way,
+      With myrtle mixed in my path like mad:
+     The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,
+      The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,
+     A year ago on this very day.
+
+     The air broke into a mist with bells,
+      The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries.
+     Had I said, "Good folk, mere noise repels--
+      But give me your sun from yonder skies"
+     They had answered, "And afterward, what else?"
+
+     Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun
+      To give it my loving friends to keep!
+     Naught man could do have I left undone;
+      And you see my harvest, what I reap
+     This very day, now a year is run.
+
+     There's nobody on the housetops now--
+      Just a palsied few at the windows set;
+     For the best of the sight is, all allow,
+      At the Shambles' Gate--or, better yet,
+     By the very scaffold's foot, I trow.
+
+     I go in the rain, and, more than needs,
+      A rope cuts both my wrists behind;
+     And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds,
+      For they fling, whoever has a mind,
+     Stones at me for my year's misdeeds.
+
+     Thus I entered, and thus I go!
+      In triumphs, people have dropped down dead.
+     "Paid by the world, what dost thou owe
+      Me?"--God might question; now instead,
+     'Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.
+
+
+
+     ONE WORD MORE
+
+     To E.B.B.
+
+     London, September, 1855
+
+
+     There they are, my fifty men and women,
+     Naming me the fifty poems finished!
+     Take them, Love, the book and me together:
+     Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.
+
+     Raphael made a century of sonnets,
+     Made and wrote them in a certain volume
+     Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil
+     Else he only used to draw Madonnas:
+     These, the world might view--but one, the volume.
+     Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you.
+     Did she live and love it all her lifetime?
+     Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets,
+     Die and let it drop beside her pillow,
+     Where it lay in place of Raphael's glory,
+     Raphael's cheek so duteous and so loving--
+     Cheek the world was wont to hail a painter's,
+     Raphael's cheek, her love had turned a poet's?
+
+     You and I would rather read that volume
+     (Taken to his beating bosom by it),
+     Lean and list the bosom-beats of Raphael,
+     Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas--
+     Her, San Sisto names, and Her, Foligno,
+     Her, that visits Florence in a vision,
+     Her, that's left with lilies in the Louvre--
+     Seen by us and all the world in circle.
+
+     You and I will never read that volume.
+     Guido Reni like his own eye's apple
+     Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it.
+     Guido Reni dying, all Bologna
+     Cried, and the world cried too, "Ours the treasure!"
+     Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.
+
+     Dante once prepared to paint an angel:
+     Whom to please? You whisper "Beatrice."
+     While he mused and traced it and retraced it,
+     (Peradventure with a pen corroded
+     Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for
+     When, his left hand i' the hair o' the wicked,
+     Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma,
+     Bit into the live man's flesh for parchment,
+     Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle,
+     Let the wretch go festering through Florence)--
+     Dante, who loved well because he hated,
+     Hated wickedness that hinders loving,
+     Dante standing, studying his angel--
+     In there broke the folk of his Inferno.
+     Says he--"Certain people of importance"
+     (Such he gave his daily dreadful line to)
+     "Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet."
+     Says the poet--"Then I stopped my painting."
+
+     You and I would rather see that angel
+     Painted by the tenderness of Dante--
+     Would we not?--than read a fresh Inferno.
+
+     You and I will never see that picture.
+     While he mused on love and Beatrice,
+     While he softened o'er his outlined angel,
+     In they broke, those "people of importance";
+     We and Bice bear the loss forever.
+
+     What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's picture?
+     This: no artist lives and loves, that longs not
+     Once, and only once, and for one only,
+     (Ah, the prize!) to find his love a language
+     Fit and fair and simple and sufficient--
+     Using nature that's an art to others,
+     Not, this one time, art that's turned his nature.
+     Ay, of all the artists living, loving,
+     None but would forego his proper dowry.
+     Does he paint? he fain would write a poem:
+     Does he write? he fain would paint a picture:
+     Put to proof art alien to the artist's,
+     Once, and only once, and for one only,
+     So to be the man and leave the artist,
+     Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow.
+
+     Wherefore? Heaven's gift takes earth's abatement!
+     He who smites the rock and spreads the water,
+     Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him,
+     Even he the minute makes immortal
+     Proves perchance but mortal in the minute,
+     Desecrates belike the deed in doing.
+     While he smites, how can he but remember
+     So he smote before, in such a peril,
+     When they stood and mocked--"Shall smiting help us?"
+     When they drank and sneered--"A stroke is easy!"
+     When they wiped their mouths and went their journey,
+     Throwing him for thanks--"But drought was pleasant."
+     Thus old memories mar the actual triumph;
+     Thus the doing savors of disrelish;
+     Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat;
+     O'er-importuned brows becloud the mandate,
+     Carelessness or consciousness--the gesture.
+     For he bears an ancient wrong about him,
+     Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces,
+     Hears, yet one time more, the 'customed prelude--
+     "How shouldst thou, of all men, smite, and save us?"
+     Guesses what is like to prove the sequel--
+     "Egypt's flesh-pots--nay, the drought was better."
+
+     Oh, the crowd must have emphatic warrant!
+     Theirs the Sinai-forehead's cloven brilliance,
+     Right-arm's rod-sweep, tongue's imperial fiat.
+     Never dares the man put off the prophet.
+
+     Did he love one face from out the thousands
+     (Were she Jethro's daughter, white and wifely,
+     Were she but the AEthiopian bondslave),
+     He would envy yon dumb patient camel,
+     Keeping a reserve of scanty water
+     Meant to save his own life in the desert;
+     Ready in the desert to deliver
+     (Kneeling down to let his breast be opened)
+     Hoard and life together for his mistress.
+
+     I shall never, in the years remaining,
+     Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues.
+     Make you music that should all-express me;
+     So it seems: I stand on my attainment.
+     This of verse alone, one life allows me;
+     Verse and nothing else have I to give you.
+     Other heights in other lives, God willing:
+     All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love!
+
+     Yet a semblance of resource avails us--
+     Shade so finely touched, love's sense must seize it.
+     Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly,
+     Lines I write the first time and the last time.
+     He who works in fresco, steals a hair-brush,
+     Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly,
+     Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little,
+     Makes a strange art of an art familiar,
+     Fills his lady's missal-marge with flowerets.
+     He who blows through bronze may breathe through silver,
+     Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess.
+     He who writes may write for once as I do.
+
+     Love, you saw me gather men and women,
+     Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy,
+     Enter each and all, and use their service,
+     Speak from every mouth,--the speech a poem.
+     Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows,
+     Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving:
+     I am mine and yours--the rest be all men's,
+     Karshish, Cleon, Norbert, and the fifty.
+     Let me speak this once in my true person,
+     Not as Lippo, Roland, or Andrea,
+     Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence:
+     Pray you, look on these, my men and women,
+     Take and keep my fifty poems finished;
+     Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also!
+     Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things.
+
+     Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon's self!
+     Here in London, yonder late in Florence,
+     Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured.
+     Curving on a sky imbrued with color,
+     Drifted over Fiesole by twilight,
+     Came she, our new crescent of a hair's-breadth.
+     Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato,
+     Rounder 'twixt the cypresses and rounder,
+     Perfect till the nightingales applauded.
+     Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished,
+     Hard to greet, she traverses the house-roofs,
+     Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver,
+     Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish.
+     What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy?
+     Nay: for if that moon could love a mortal,
+     Use to charm him (so to fit a fancy),
+     All her magic ('tis the old sweet mythos).
+     She would turn a new side to her mortal,
+     Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman--
+     Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,
+     Blind to Galileo on his turret,
+     Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats--him, even!
+     Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal--
+     When she turns round, comes again in heaven,
+     Opens out anew for worse or better!
+     Proves she like some portent of an iceberg
+     Swimming full upon the ship it founders,
+     Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals?
+     Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire
+     Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain?
+     Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu
+     Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest,
+     Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire.
+     Like the bodied heaven in his clearness
+     Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work,
+     When they ate and drank and saw God also!
+
+     What were seen? None knows, none ever shall know.
+     Only this is sure--the sight were other,
+     Not the moon's same side, born late in Florence,
+     Dying now impoverished here in London.
+     God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
+     Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,
+     One to show a woman when he loves her!
+
+     This I say of me, but think of you, Love!
+     This to you--yourself my moon of poets!
+     Ah, but that's the world's side, there's the wonder;
+     Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you!
+     There, in turn I stand with them and praise you--
+     Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it.
+     But the best is when I glide from out them,
+
+     Cross a step or two of dubious twilight,
+     Come out on the other side, the novel
+     Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of,
+     Where I hush and bless myself with silence.
+
+     Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,
+     Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno,
+     Wrote one song--and in my brain I sing it,
+     Drew one angel--borne, see, on my bosom!
+
+     R.B.
+
+
+
+ORESTES AUGUSTUS BROWNSON
+
+(1803-1876)
+
+Orestes Brownson, in his time, was a figure of striking originality and
+influence in American literature and American political, philosophical,
+and religious discussion. His career was an exceptional one; for he was
+connected with some of the most important contemporaneous movements of
+thought, and passed through several distinct phases: Presbyterianism,
+Universalism, Socialism--of a mild and benevolent kind, not to be
+confused with the later fiery and destructive socialism of "the Reds";
+afterward sympathizing somewhat with the aims and tendencies of the New
+England Transcendentalists; a close intellectual associate of Ralph
+Waldo Emerson; then the apostle of a "new Christianity"--finally
+becoming a Roman Catholic.
+
+[Illustration: ORESTES BROWNSON]
+
+Coming of old Connecticut stock on his father's side, he was born in
+Vermont, September 16th, 1803; and, notwithstanding that he was brought
+up in poverty on a farm with small opportunity for education, contrived
+in later years to make himself a thorough scholar in various directions,
+mastering several languages, acquiring a wide knowledge of history,
+reading deeply in philosophy, and developing marked originality in
+setting forth new philosophical views. His bent in childhood was
+strongly religious; and he even believed, at that period of his life,
+that he held long conversations with the sacred personages of Holy
+Scripture. Yet while in manhood he devoted many years and much of his
+energy to preaching, his character was aggressive and his tone
+controversial, he however revealed many traits of real gentleness and
+humility, and the mixture of rugged strength and tenderness in his
+character and his work won him a large following in whatever position
+he took.
+
+He performed the remarkable feat, when the support of American letters
+was slight, of founding and conducting almost single-handed, from 1838
+to 1843, his famous Quarterly Review, which was a power in the land. He
+started it again in 1844 as 'Brownson's Quarterly Review,' and resumed
+it thirty years later in still a third series. He died in 1876 at
+Detroit, much of his active career having been passed in Boston, and
+some of his later years at Seton Hall, New Jersey.
+
+His various changes of belief have often been taken as an index of
+vacillation; but a simple and candid study of his writings shows that
+such changes were merely the normal progress of an intensely earnest and
+sincere mind, which never hesitated to avow its honest convictions nor
+to admit its errors. This is the quality which gives Brownson his
+vitality as a mind and an author; and he will be found to be consistent
+with conscience throughout.
+
+His writings are forceful, eloquent, and lucid in style, with a
+Websterian massiveness that does not detract from their charm. They fill
+twenty volumes, divided into groups of essays on Civilization,
+Controversy, Religion, Philosophy, Scientific Theories, and Popular
+Literature, which cover a great and fascinating variety of topics in
+detail. Brownson was an intense and patriotic American, and his national
+quality comes out strongly in his extended treatise 'The American
+Republic' (1865). The best known of his other works is a candid,
+vigorous, and engaging autobiography entitled 'The Convert' (1853).
+
+
+
+
+
+SAINT-SIMONISM
+
+From 'The Convert'
+
+If I drew my doctrine of Union in part from the eclecticism of Cousin,
+I drew my views of the Church and of the reorganization of the
+race from the Saint-Simonians,--a philo-sophico-religious or a
+politico-philosophical sect that sprung up in France under the
+Restoration, and figured largely for a year or two under the monarchy of
+July. Their founder was Claude Henri, Count de Saint-Simon, a descendant
+of the Due de Saint-Simon, well known as the author of the 'Memoirs.' He
+was born in 1760, entered the army at the age of seventeen, and the
+year after came to this country, where he served with distinction in our
+Revolutionary War under Bouillie. After the peace of 1783 he devoted two
+years to the study of our people and institutions, and then returned to
+France. Hardly had he returned before he found himself in the midst of
+the French Revolution, which he regarded as the practical application of
+the principles or theories adopted by the reformers of the sixteenth
+century and popularized by the philosophers of the eighteenth. He looked
+upon that revolution, we are told, as having only a destructive
+mission--necessary, important, but inadequate to the wants of humanity;
+and instead of being carried away by it as were most of the young men of
+his age and his principles, he set himself at work to amass materials
+for the erection of a new social edifice on the ruins of the old, which
+should stand and improve in solidity, strength, grandeur, and
+beauty forever.
+
+The way he seems to have taken to amass these materials was to engage
+with a partner in some grand speculations for the accumulation of
+wealth,--and speculations too, it is said, not of the most honorable or
+even the most honest character. His plans succeeded for a time, and he
+became very rich, as did many others in those troublous times; but he
+finally met with reverses, and lost all but the wrecks of his fortune.
+He then for a number of years plunged into all manner of vice, and
+indulged to excess in every species of dissipation; not, we are told,
+from love of vice, any inordinate desire, or any impure affection, but
+for the holy purpose of preparing himself by his experience for the
+great work of redeeming man and securing for him a Paradise on earth.
+Having gained all that experience could give him in the department of
+vice, he then proceeded to consult the learned professors of L'Ecole
+Polytechnique for seven or ten years, to make himself master of science,
+literature, and the fine arts in all their departments, and to place
+himself at the level of the last attainments of the race. Thus qualified
+to be the founder of a new social organization, he wrote several books,
+in which he deposited the germs of his ideas, or rather the germs of the
+future; most of which have hitherto remained unpublished.
+
+But now that he was so well qualified for his work he found himself a
+beggar, and had as yet made only a single disciple. He was reduced to
+despair and attempted to take his own life; but failed, the ball only
+grazing his sacred forehead. His faithful disciple was near him, saved
+him, and aroused him into life and hope. When he recovered he found that
+he had fallen into a gross error. He had been a materialist, an atheist,
+and had discarded all religious ideas as long since outgrown by the
+human race. He had proposed to organize the human race with materials
+furnished by the senses alone, and by the aid of positive science. He
+owns his fault, and conceives and brings forth a new Christianity,
+consigned to a small pamphlet entitled 'Nouveau Christianisme,' which
+was immediately published. This done, his mission was ended, and he
+died May 19th, 1825, and I suppose was buried.
+
+Saint-Simon, the preacher of a new Christianity, very soon attracted
+disciples, chiefly from the pupils of the Polytechnic School; ardent and
+lively young men, full of enthusiasm, brought up without faith in the
+gospel and yet unable to live without religion of some sort. Among the
+active members of the sect were at one time Pierre Leroux, Jules and
+Michel Chevalier, Lerminier, [and] my personal friend Dr. Poyen, who
+initiated me and so many others in New England into the mysteries of
+animal magnetism. Dr. Poyen was, I believe, a native of the island of
+Guadeloupe: a man of more ability than he usually had credit for, of
+solid learning, genuine science, and honest intentions. I knew him well
+and esteemed him highly. When I knew him his attachment to the new
+religion was much weakened, and he often talked to me of the old Church,
+and assured me that he felt at times that he must return to her bosom. I
+owe him many hints which turned my thoughts toward Catholic principles,
+and which, with God's grace, were of much service to me. These and many
+others were in the sect; whose chiefs, after the death of its founder,
+were--Bazard, a Liberal and a practical man, who killed himself; and
+Enfantin, who after the dissolution of the sect sought employment in the
+service of the Viceroy of Egypt, and occupies now some important post in
+connection with the French railways.
+
+The sect began in 1826 by addressing the working classes; but their
+success was small. In 1829 they came out of their narrow circle, assumed
+a bolder tone, addressed themselves to the general public, and became in
+less than eighteen months a Parisian _mode_. In 1831 they purchased the
+Globe newspaper, made it their organ, and distributed gratuitously five
+thousand copies daily. In 1832 they had established a central
+propagandism in Paris, and had their missionaries in most of the
+departments of France. They attacked the hereditary peerage, and it
+fell; they seemed to be numerous and strong, and I believed for a moment
+in their complete success. They called their doctrine a religion, their
+ministers priests, and their organization a church; and as such they
+claimed to be recognized by the State, and to receive from it a
+subvention as other religious denominations [did]. But the courts
+decided that Saint-Simonism was not a religion and its ministers were
+not religious teachers. This decision struck them with death. Their
+prestige vanished. They scattered, dissolved in thin air, and went off,
+as Carlyle would say, into endless vacuity, as do sooner or later all
+shams and unrealities.
+
+Saint-Simon himself, who as presented to us by his disciples is a
+half-mythic personage, seems, so far as I can judge by those of his
+writings that I have seen, to have been a man of large ability and
+laudable intentions; but I have not been able to find any new or
+original thoughts of which he was the indisputable father. His whole
+system, if system he had, is summed up in the two maxims "Eden is before
+us, not behind us" (or the Golden Age of the poets is in the future, not
+in the past), and "Society ought to be so organized as to tend in the
+most rapid manner possible to the continuous moral, intellectual, and
+physical amelioration of the poorer and more numerous classes." He
+simply adopts the doctrine of progress set forth with so much flash
+eloquence by Condorcet, and the philanthropic doctrine with regard to
+the laboring classes, or the people, defended by Barbeuf and a large
+section of the French Revolutionists. His religion was not so much as
+the Theophilanthropy attempted to be introduced by some members of the
+French Directory: it admitted God in name, and in name did not deny
+Jesus Christ, but it rejected all mysteries, and reduced religion to
+mere socialism. It conceded that Catholicity had been the true Church
+down to the pontificate of Leo X., because down to that time its
+ministers had taken the lead in directing the intelligence and labors of
+mankind, had aided the progress of civilization, and promoted the
+well-being of the poorer and more numerous classes. But since Leo X.,
+who made of the Papacy a secular principality, it had neglected its
+mission, had ceased to labor for the poorer and more numerous classes,
+had leagued itself with the ruling orders, and lent all its influence to
+uphold tyrants and tyranny. A new church was needed; a church which
+should realize the ideal of Jesus Christ, and tend directly and
+constantly to the moral, physical, and social amelioration of the poorer
+and more numerous classes,--in other words, the greatest happiness in
+this life of the greatest number, the principle of Jeremy Bentham and
+his Utilitarian school.
+
+His disciples enlarged upon the hints of the master, and attributed to
+him ideas which he never entertained. They endeavored to reduce his
+hints to a complete system of religion, philosophy, and social
+organization. Their chiefs, I have said, were Amand Bazard and
+Barthelemy Prosper Enfantin....
+
+Bazard took the lead in what related to the external, political, and
+economical organization, and Enfantin in what regarded doctrine and
+worship. The philosophy or theology of the sect or school was derived
+principally from Hegel, and was a refined Pantheism. Its Christology was
+the unity, not union, of the divine and human; and the Incarnation
+symbolized the unity of God and man, or the Divinity manifesting himself
+in humanity, and making humanity substantially divine,--the very
+doctrine in reality which I myself had embraced even before I had heard
+of the Saint-Simonians, if not before they had published it. The
+religious organization was founded on the doctrine of the progressive
+nature of man, and the maxim that all institutions should tend in the
+most speedy and direct manner possible to the constant amelioration of
+the moral, intellectual, and physical condition of the poorer and more
+numerous classes. Socially men were to be divided into three
+classes,--artists, _savans_, and industrials or working men,
+corresponding to the psychological division of the human faculties. The
+soul has three powers or faculties,--to love, to know, and to act. Those
+in whom the love-faculty is predominant belong to the class of artists,
+those in whom the knowledge-faculty is predominant belong to the class
+of _savans_, the scientific and the learned, and in fine, those in whom
+the act-faculty predominates belong to the industrial class. This
+classification places every man in the social category for which he is
+fitted, and to which he is attracted by his nature. These several
+classes are to be hierarchically organized under chiefs or priests, who
+are respectively priests of the artists, of the scientific, and of the
+industrials, and are, priests and all, to be subjected to a supreme
+Father, _Pere Supreme_, and a Supreme Mother, _Mere Supreme_.
+
+The economical organization is to be based on the maxims, "To each one
+according to his capacity," and "To each capacity according to its
+work." Private property is to be retained, but its transmission by
+inheritance or testamentary disposition must be abolished. The property
+is to be held by a tenure resembling that of gavel-kind. It belongs to
+the community, and the priests, chiefs, or brehons, as the Celtic tribes
+call them, to distribute it for life to individuals, and to each
+individual according to his capacity. It was supposed that in this way
+the advantages of both common and individual property might be secured.
+Something of this prevailed originally in most nations, and a
+reminiscence of it still exists in the village system among the Slavonic
+tribes of Russia and Poland; and nearly all jurists maintain that the
+testamentary right by which a man disposes of his goods after his
+natural death, as well as that by which a child inherits from the
+parent, is a municipal, not a natural right.
+
+The most striking feature in the Saint-Simonian scheme was the rank and
+position it assigned to woman. It asserted the absolute equality of the
+sexes, and maintained that either sex is incomplete without the other.
+Man is an incomplete individual without woman. Hence a religion, a
+doctrine, a social institution founded by one sex alone is incomplete,
+and can never be adequate to the wants of the race or a definite order.
+This idea was also entertained by Frances Wright, and appears to be
+entertained by all our Women's Rights folk of either sex. The old
+civilization was masculine, not male and female as God made man. Hence
+its condemnation. The Saint-Simonians, therefore, proposed to place by
+the side of their sovereign Father at the summit of their hierarchy a
+sovereign Mother. The man to be sovereign Father they found; but a woman
+to be sovereign Mother, _Mere Supreme_, they found not. This caused
+great embarrassment, and a split between Bazard and Enfantin. Bazard was
+about marrying his daughter, and he proposed to place her marriage under
+the protection of the existing French laws. Enfantin opposed his doing
+so, and called it a sinful compliance with the prejudices of the world.
+The Saint-Simonian society, he maintained, was a State, a kingdom within
+itself, and should be governed by its own laws and its own chiefs
+without any recognition of those without. Bazard persisted, and had the
+marriage of his daughter solemnized in a legal manner, and for aught I
+know, according to the rites of the Church. A great scandal followed.
+Bazard charged Enfantin with denying Christian marriage, and with
+holding loose notions on the subject. Enfantin replied that he neither
+denied nor affirmed Christian marriage; that in enacting the existing
+law on the subject man alone had been consulted, and he could not
+recognize it as law till woman had given her consent to it. As yet the
+society was only provisionally organized, inasmuch as they had not yet
+found the _Mere Supreme_. The law on marriage must emanate conjointly
+from the Supreme Father and the Supreme Mother, and it would be
+irregular and a usurpation for the Supreme Father to undertake alone to
+legislate on the subject. Bazard would not submit, and went out and shot
+himself. Most of the politicians abandoned the association; and Pere
+Enfantin, almost in despair, dispatched twelve apostles to
+Constantinople to find in the Turkish harems the Supreme Mother. After a
+year they returned and reported that they were unable to find her; and
+the society, condemned by the French courts as immoral, broke up, and
+broke up because no woman could be found to be its mother. And so they
+ended, having risen, flourished, and decayed in less than a
+single decade.
+
+The points in the Saint-Simonian movement that arrested my attention and
+commanded my belief were what it will seem strange to my readers could
+ever have been doubted,--its assertion of a religious future for the
+human race, and that religion, in the future as well as in the past,
+must have an organization, and a hierarchical organization. Its
+classification of men according to the predominant psychological faculty
+in each, into artists, savans, and industrials, struck me as very well;
+and the maxims "To each according to his capacity," and "To each
+capacity according to its works," as evidently just, and desirable if
+practicable. The doctrine of the Divinity in Humanity, of progress, of
+no essential antagonism between the spiritual and the material, and of
+the duty of shaping all institutions for the speediest and continuous
+moral, intellectual, and physical amelioration of the poorer and more
+numerous classes, I already held. I was rather pleased than otherwise
+with the doctrine with regard to property, and thought it a decided
+improvement on that of a community of goods. The doctrine with regard to
+the relation of the sexes I rather acquiesced in than approved. I was
+disposed to maintain, as the Indian said, that "woman is the weaker
+canoe," and to assert my marital prerogatives; but the equality of the
+sexes was asserted by nearly all my friends, and I remained generally
+silent on the subject, till some of the admirers of Harriet Martineau
+and Margaret Fuller began to scorn equality and to claim for woman
+superiority. Then I became roused, and ventured to assert my
+masculine dignity.
+
+It is remarkable that most reformers find fault with the Christian law
+of marriage, and propose to alter the relations which God has
+established both in nature and the gospel between the sexes; and this is
+generally the rock on which they split. Women do not usually admire men
+who cast off their manhood or are unconscious of the rights and
+prerogatives of the stronger sex; and they admire just as little those
+"strong-minded women" who strive to excel only in the masculine virtues.
+I have never been persuaded that it argues well for a people when its
+women are men and its men women. Yet I trust I have always honored and
+always shall honor woman. I raise no question as to woman's equality or
+inequality with man, for comparisons cannot be made between things not
+of the same kind. Woman's sphere and office in life are as high, as
+holy, as important as man's, but different; and the glory of both man
+and woman is for each to act well the part assigned to each by
+Almighty God.
+
+The Saint-Simonian writings made me familiar with the idea of a
+hierarchy, and removed from my mind the prejudices against the Papacy
+generally entertained by my countrymen. Their proposed organization, I
+saw, might be good and desirable if their priests, their Supreme Father
+and Mother, could really be the wisest, the best,--not merely the
+nominal but the real chiefs of society. Yet what security have I that
+they will be? Their power was to have no limit save their own wisdom and
+love, but who would answer for it that these would always be an
+effectual limit? How were these priests or chiefs to be designated and
+installed in their office? By popular election? But popular election
+often passes over the proper man and takes the improper. Then as to the
+assignment to each man of a capital proportioned to his capacity to
+begin life with, what certainty is there that the rules of strict right
+will be followed? that wrong will not often be done, both voluntarily
+and involuntarily? Are your chiefs to be infallible and impeccable?
+Still the movement interested me, and many of its principles took firm
+hold of me and held me for years in a species of mental thraldom;
+insomuch that I found it difficult, if not impossible, either to refute
+them or to harmonize them with other principles which I also held, or
+rather which held me, and in which I detected no unsoundness. Yet I
+imbibed no errors from the Saint-Simonians; and I can say of them as of
+the Unitarians,--they did me no harm, but were in my fallen state the
+occasion of much good to me.
+
+
+
+FERDINAND BRUNETIERE
+
+(1849-)
+
+BY ADOLPHE COHN
+
+Ferdinand Brunetiere, the celebrated French literary critic, was born in
+Toulon, the great military Mediterranean sea-port of France, in the year
+1849. His studies were begun in the college of his native city and
+continued in Paris, in the Lycee Louis le Grand, where in the class of
+philosophy he came under Professor Emile Charles, by whose original and
+profound though decidedly sad way of thinking he was powerfully
+influenced. His own ambition then was to become a teacher in the
+University of France, an ambition which seemed unlikely to be ever
+realized, as he failed to secure admission to the celebrated Ecole
+Normale Superieure, in the competitive examination which leads up to
+that school. Strangely enough, about fifteen years later he was, though
+not in possession of any very high University degree, appointed to the
+Professorship of French Literature in the school which he had been
+unable to enter as a scholar, and his appointment received the hearty
+indorsement of all the leading educational authorities in France.
+
+[Illustration: Ferdiand Brunetiere]
+
+For several years after leaving the Lycee Louis le Grand, while
+completing his literary outfit by wonderfully extensive reading,
+Ferdinand Brunetiere lived on stray orders for work for publishers. He
+seldom succeeded in getting these, and when he got any they were seldom
+filled. Thus he happened to be commissioned by the firm of Germer,
+Bailliere and Company to write a history of Russia, which never was and
+to all appearances never will be written. The event which determined the
+direction of his career was the acceptance by the Revue des Deux Mondes,
+in 1875, of an article upon contemporary French novelists. Francois
+Buloz, the energetic and imperious founder and editor of the world-famed
+French bi-monthly, felt that he had found in the young critic the man
+whom French literary circles had been waiting for, and who was to be
+Sainte-Beuve's successor; and Francois Buloz was a man who seldom
+made mistakes.
+
+French literary criticism was just then at a very low ebb. Sainte-Beuve
+had been dead about five years; his own contemporaries, Edmond Scherer
+for instance, were getting old and discouraged; the new generation
+seemed to be turning unanimously, in consequence of the disasters of the
+Franco-German war and of the Revolution of September, 1870, to military
+or political activity. The only form of literature which had power to
+attract young writers was the novel, which they could fill with the
+description of all the passions then agitating the public mind. That a
+man of real intellectual strength should then give his undivided
+attention to pure literature seemed a most unlikely phenomenon; but all
+had to acknowledge that the unlikely had happened, soon after Ferdinand
+Brunetiere had become the regular literary critic of the Revue des
+Deux Mondes.
+
+Fortunately the new critic did not undertake to walk in the footsteps of
+Sainte-Beuve. In the art of presenting to the reader the marrow of a
+writer's work, of making the writer himself known by the description of
+his surroundings, the narrative of his life, the study of the forces by
+which he was influenced, the illustrious author of the 'Causeries du
+Lundi' remains to this day without a rival or a continuator. Ferdinand
+Brunetiere had a different conception of the duties of a literary
+critic. The one fault with which thoughtful readers were apt to charge
+Sainte-Beuve was, that he failed to pass judgment upon the works and
+writers; and this failure was often, and not altogether unjustly,
+ascribed to a certain weakness in his grasp of principles, a certain
+faint-heartedness whenever it became necessary to take sides. Any one
+who studies Brunetiere can easily see that from the start his chief
+concern was to make it impossible for any one to charge him with the
+same fault. He came in with a set of principles which he has since
+upheld with remarkable steadfastness and courage. In an age when nearly
+every one was turning to the future and advocating the doctrine and the
+necessity of progress, when the chief fear of most men was that they
+should appear too much afraid of change, Brunetiere proclaimed time and
+again that there was no safety for any nation or set of men except in a
+staunch adherence to tradition. He bade his readers turn their minds
+away from the current literature of the day, and take hold of the
+exemplars of excellence handed down to us by the great men of the past.
+Together with tradition he upheld authority, and therefore preferred to
+all others the period in which French literature and society had most
+willingly submitted to authority, that is, the seventeenth century and
+the reign of Louis XIV. When compelled to speak of the literature of the
+day, he did it in no uncertain tones. His book 'The Naturalistic Novel'
+consists of a series of articles in which he studies Zola and his
+school, upholding the old doctrine that there are things in life which
+must be kept out of the domain of art and cannot be therein introduced
+without lowering the ideal of man. Between the naturalistic and the
+idealistic novel he unhesitatingly declares for the latter, and places
+George Sand far above the author of 'L'Assommoir.'
+
+But the great success of his labors cannot be said to have been due
+solely or even mainly to the principles he advocated. Other critics have
+appeared since--Messrs. Jules Lemaitre and Anatole France, for
+instance,--who antagonize almost everything that he defends and defend
+almost everything that he antagonizes, and whose success has hardly been
+inferior to his. Neither is it due to any charm in his style.
+Brunetiere's sentences are compact,--indeed, strongly knit
+together,--but decidedly heavy and at times even clumsy. What he has to
+say he always says strongly, but not gracefully. He has a remarkable
+appreciation of the value of the words of the French language, but his
+arrangement of them is seldom free from mannerisms. What, then, has made
+him the foremost literary critic of the present day? The answer is,
+knowledge and sincerity. No writer of the present day, save perhaps
+Anatole France, is so accurately informed of every fact that bears upon
+literary history. Every argument he brings forward is supported by an
+array of incontrovertible facts that is simply appalling. No one can
+argue with him who does not first subject himself to the severest kind
+of training, go through a mass of tedious reading, become familiar with
+dates to the point of handling them as nimbly as a bank clerk handles
+the figures of a check list. And all this comes forward in Brunetiere's
+articles in the most natural, we had almost said casual way. The fact
+takes its place unheralded in the reasoning. It is there because it has
+to be there, not because the writer wishes to make a display of his
+wonderful knowledge; and thus it happens that Ferdinand Brunetiere's
+literary articles are perhaps the most instructive ones ever written in
+the French language. They are moreover admirably trustworthy. It would
+never come to this author's mind to hide a fact that goes against any of
+his theories. He feels so sure of being in the right that he is always
+willing to give his opponents all that they can possibly claim.
+
+Of late years, moreover, it must be acknowledged that Brunetiere's mind
+has given signs of remarkable broadening. Under the influence of the
+doctrine of evolution, he has undertaken to class all literary facts as
+the great naturalists of the day have classed the facts of physiology,
+and to show that literary forms spring from each other by way of
+transformation in the same way as do the forms of animal or vegetable
+life. Already three works have been produced by him since he entered
+upon this new line of development: a history of literary criticism in
+France, which forms the first and hitherto only published volume of a
+large work, (The Evolution of Literary Forms); a work on the French
+drama, (The Periods of the French Theatre); and a treatise on modern
+French poetry, (The Evolution of French Lyric Poetry during the
+Nineteenth Century.) The second and last of these were first delivered
+by their author from the professor's chair or the lecturer's platform,
+where he has managed to display some of the greatest gifts of the public
+speaker. Most of M. Brunetiere's literary articles have been collected
+in book form under the following titles:--(Questions of Criticism) (2
+vols.), (History and Criticism) (3 vols.), (Critical Studies on the
+History of French Literature) (6 vols.), (The Naturalistic Novel)
+(1 vol.).
+
+At various times remarkable addresses have been delivered by him on
+public occasions, in which he has often represented the French Academy
+since his election to that illustrious body. Unfortunately his
+productive literary activity has slackened of late. In 1895 he was
+called to the editorship of the Revue des Deux Mondes, and since his
+assumption of this responsible editorial position he has published only
+two or three articles, bearing upon moral and educational questions.
+
+To pass final judgment upon a man whose development is far from
+completed is an almost impossible task. Still it may be said that with
+the exception of Sainte-Beuve's (Causeries du Lundi) and (Nouveaux
+Lundis,) nothing exists that can teach the reader so much about the
+history of French literature as Brunetiere's works. The doctrinal side,
+to which the author himself undoubtedly attaches the greatest
+importance, will strike the reader as often very questionable. Too often
+Brunetiere seems in his judgments to be quite unconsciously actuated by
+a dislike of the accepted opinion of the present day. His love of the
+past bears a look of defiance of the present, not calculated to win the
+reader's assent. But even this does not go without its good side. It
+gives to Brunetiere's judgments a unity which is seldom if ever found in
+the works of those whose chief labors have been spent in the often
+ungrateful task of making a hurried public acquainted with the
+uninterrupted stream of literary production.
+
+TAINE AND PRINCE NAPOLEON
+
+For the last five or six months, since it has been known that a prince,
+nephew, cousin, and son of emperors or kings formerly very powerful, had
+proposed to answer the libel, as he calls it, written by M. Taine about
+Napoleon, we have been awaiting this reply with an impatience, a
+curiosity which were equally justified,--although for very different
+reasons,--by M. Taine's reputation, by the glorious name of his
+antagonist, by the greatness, and finally the national interest of
+the subject.
+
+The book has just appeared; and if we can say without flattery that it
+has revealed to us in the Prince a writer whose existence we had not
+suspected, it is because we must at once add that neither in its manner
+nor in its matter is the book itself what it might have been. Prince
+Napoleon did not wish to write a 'Life of Napoleon,' and nobody expected
+that of him,--for after all, and for twenty different reasons, even had
+he wished it he could not have done it. But to M. Taine's Napoleon,
+since he did not find in him the true Napoleon, since he declared him to
+be as much against nature as against history, he could, and we expected
+that he would, have opposed his own Napoleon. By the side of the
+"inventions of a writer whose judgment had been misled and whose
+conscience had been obscured by passion,"--these are his own words,--he
+could have restored, as he promised in his 'Introduction,' "the man and
+his work in their living reality." And in our imaginations, on which M.
+Taine's harsh and morose workmanship had engraven the features of a
+modern Malatesta or modern Sforza, _he_ could at last substitute for
+them, as the inheritor of the name and the dynastic claims, the image of
+the founder of contemporary France, of the god of war. Unfortunately,
+instead of doing so, it is M. Taine himself, it is his analytical
+method, it is the witnesses whom M. Taine chose as his authorities, that
+Prince Napoleon preferred to assail, as a scholar in an Academy who
+descants upon the importance of the genuineness of a text, and moreover
+with a freedom of utterance and a pertness of expression which on any
+occasion I should venture to pronounce decidedly insulting.
+
+For it is a misfortune of princes, when they do us the honor of
+discussing with us, that they must observe a moderation, a reserve, a
+courtesy greater even than our own. It will therefore be unanimously
+thought that it ill became Prince Napoleon to address M. Taine in a tone
+which M. Taine would decline to use in his answer, out of respect for
+the very name which he is accused of _slandering_. It will be thought
+also that it ill became him, when speaking of Miot de Melito, for
+instance, or of many other servants of the imperial government, to seem
+to ignore that princes also are under an obligation to those who have
+served them well. Perhaps even it may be thought that it poorly became
+him, when discussing or contradicting the 'Memoirs of Madame de
+Remusat,' to forget under what auspices the remains of his uncle, the
+Emperor, were years ago carried in his city of Paris. But what will be
+thought especially is, that he had something else to do than to split
+hairs in discussion of evidences; that he had something far better to
+say, more peremptory and to the point, and more literary besides, than
+to call M. Taine names, to hurl at him the epithets of "Entomologist,
+Materialist, Pessimist, Destroyer of Reputations, Iconoclast," and to
+class him as a "deboulonneur" among those who, in 1871, pulled down the
+Colonne Vendome.
+
+Not, undoubtedly, that M. Taine--and we said so ourselves more than once
+with perfect freedom--if spending much patience and conscientiousness in
+his search for documents, has always displayed as much critical spirit
+and discrimination in the use he made of them. We cannot understand why
+in his 'Napoleon' he accepted the testimony of Bourrienne, for instance,
+any more than recently, in his 'Revolution,' that of George Duval, or
+again, in his 'Ancien Regime,' that of the notorious Soulavic. M.
+Taine's documents as a rule are not used by him as a foundation for his
+argument; no, he first takes his position, and then he consults his
+library, or he goes to the original records, with the hope of finding
+those documents that will support his reasoning. But granting that, we
+must own that though different from M. Taine's, Prince Napoleon's
+historical method is not much better; that though in a different manner
+and in a different direction, it is neither less partial nor less
+passionate: and here is a proof of it.
+
+Prince Napoleon blames M. Taine for quoting "eight times" 'Bourrienne's
+Memoirs,' and then, letting his feelings loose, he takes advantage of
+the occasion and cruelly besmirches Bourrienne's name. Does he tell the
+truth or not? is he right at the bottom? I do not know anything about
+it; I do not _wish_ to know anything; I do not need it, since I _know_,
+from other sources, that 'Bourrienne's Memoirs' are hardly less spurious
+than, say, the 'Souvenirs of the Marquise de Crequi' or the 'Memoirs of
+Monsieur d'Artagnan.' But if these so-called 'Memoirs' are really not
+his, what has Bourrienne himself to do here? and suppose the former
+secretary of the First Consul to have been, instead of the shameless
+embezzler whom Prince Napoleon so fully and so uselessly describes to
+us, the most honest man in the world, would the 'Memoirs' be any more
+reliable, since it is a fact that _he_ wrote nothing? ...
+
+And now I cannot but wonder at the tone in which those who contradict M.
+Taine, and especially Prince Napoleon himself, condescend to tell him
+that he lacks that which would be needed in order to speak of Napoleon
+or the Revolution. But who is it, then, that _has_ what is needed in
+order to judge Napoleon? Frederick the Great, or Catherine II.,
+perhaps,--as Napoleon himself desired, "his peers"; or in other words,
+those who, born as he was for war and government, can only admire,
+justify, and glorify themselves in him. And who will judge the
+Revolution? Danton. we suppose, or Robespierre,--that is, the men who
+were the Revolution itself. No: the real judge will be the average
+opinion of men; the force that will create, modify, correct this average
+opinion, the historians will be; and among the historians of our time,
+in spite of Prince Napoleon, it will be M. Taine for a large share.
+
+
+
+THE LITERATURES OF FRANCE, ENGLAND, AND GERMANY
+
+Twice at least in the course of their long history, it is known that the
+literature and even the language of France has exerted over the whole of
+Europe an influence, whose universal character other languages perhaps
+more harmonious,--Italian for instance,--and other literatures more
+original in certain respects, like English literature, have never
+possessed. It is in a purely French form that our mediaeval poems, our
+'Chansons de Geste,' our 'Romances of the Round Table,' our _fabliaux_
+themselves, whencesoever they came,--Germany or Tuscany, England or
+Brittany, Asia or Greece,--conquered, fascinated, charmed, from one end
+of Europe to the other, the imaginations of the Middle Ages. The
+amorous languor and the subtlety of our "courteous poetry" are breathed
+no less by the madrigals of Shakespeare himself than by Petrarch's
+sonnets; and after such a long lapse of time we still discover something
+that comes from us even in the Wagnerian drama, for instance in
+'Parsifal' or in 'Tristan and Isolde.' A long time later, in a Europe
+belonging entirely to classicism, from the beginning of the seventeenth
+to the end of the eighteenth century, during one hundred and fifty years
+or even longer, French literature possessed a real sovereignty in Italy,
+in Spain, in England, and in Germany. Do not the names of Algarotti,
+Bettinelli, Beccaria, Filengieri, almost belong to France? What shall I
+say of the famous Gottschedt? Shall I recall the fact that in his
+victorious struggle against Voltaire, Lessing had to call in Diderot's
+assistance? And who ignores that if Rivarol wrote his 'Discourse upon
+the Universality of the French Language,' it can be charged neither to
+his vanity nor to our national vanity, since he was himself half
+Italian, and the subject had been proposed by the Academy of Berlin?
+
+All sorts of reasons have been given for this universality of French
+literature: some were statistical, if I may say so, some geographical,
+political, linguistic. But the true one, the good one, is different: it
+must be found in the supremely sociable character of the literature
+itself. If at that time our great writers were understood and
+appreciated by everybody, it is because they were addressing everybody,
+or better, because they were speaking to all concerning the interests of
+all. They were attracted neither by exceptions nor by peculiarities:
+they cared to treat only of man in general, or as is also said, of the
+universal man, restrained by the ties of human society; and their very
+success shows that below all that distinguishes, say, an Italian from a
+German, this universal man whose reality has so often been discussed,
+persists and lives, and though constantly changing never loses his own
+likeness....
+
+In comparison with the literature of France, thus defined and
+characterized by its sociable spirit, the literature of England is an
+individualistic literature. Let us put aside, as should be done, the
+generation of Congreve and Wycherley, perhaps also the generation of
+Pope and Addison,--to which, however, we ought not to forget that Swift
+also belonged;--it seems that an Englishman never writes except in order
+to give to himself the external sensation of his own personality.
+Thence his _humor_, which may be defined as the expression of the
+pleasure he feels in thinking like nobody else. Thence, in England, the
+plenteousness, the wealth, the amplitude of the lyric vein; it being
+granted that _individualism_ is the very spring of lyric poetry, and
+that an ode or an elegy is, as it were, the involuntary surging, the
+outflowing of what is most intimate, most secret, most peculiar in the
+poet's soul. Thence also the _eccentricity_ of all the great English
+writers when compared with the rest of the nation, as though they became
+conscious of themselves only by distinguishing themselves from those who
+claim to differ from them least. But is it not possible to otherwise
+characterize the literature of England? It will be easily conceived that
+I dare not assert such a thing; all I say here is, that I cannot better
+express the differences which distinguish that literature from our own.
+
+That is also all I claim, in stating that the essential character of the
+literature of Germany is, that it is _philosophical_. The philosophers
+there are poets, and the poets are philosophers. Goethe is to be found
+no more, or no less, in his 'Theory of Colors' or in his 'Metamorphosis
+of Plants,' than in his 'Divan' or his 'Faust'; and lyrism, if I may use
+this trite expression, "is overflowing" in Schleiermacher's theology and
+in Schelling's philosophy. Is this not perhaps at least one of the
+reasons of the inferiority of the German drama? It is surely the reason
+of the depth and scope of Germanic poetry. Even in the masterpieces of
+German literature it seems that there is mixed something indistinct, or
+rather mysterious, _suggestive_ in the extreme, which leads us to
+thought by the channel of the dream. But who has not been struck by
+what, under a barbarous terminology, there is of attractive, and as such
+of eminently poetical, of realistic and at the same time idealistic, in
+the great systems of Kant and Fichte, Hegel and Schopenhauer? Assuredly
+nothing is further removed from the character of our French literature.
+We can here understand what the Germans mean when they charge us with a
+lack of depth. Let them forgive us if _we_ do not blame their literature
+for not being the same as ours.
+
+For it is good that it be thus, and for five or six hundred years this
+it is that has made the greatness not only of European literature, but
+of Western civilization itself; I mean that which all the great nations,
+after slowly elaborating it, as it were, in their national isolation,
+have afterwards deposited in the common treasury of the human race.
+Thus, to this one we owe the sense of mystery, and we might say the
+revelation of what is beautiful, in that which remains obscure and
+cannot be grasped. To another we owe the sense of art, and what may be
+called the appreciation of the power of form. A third one has handed to
+us what was most heroic in the conception of chivalrous honor. And to
+another, finally, we owe it that we know what is both most ferocious and
+noblest, most wholesome and most to be feared, in human pride. The share
+that belongs to us Frenchmen was, in the meanwhile, to bind, to fuse
+together, and as it were to unify under the idea of the general society
+of mankind, the contradictory and even hostile elements that may have
+existed in all that. No matter whether our inventions and ideas were, by
+their origin, Latin or Romance, Celtic or Gallic, Germanic even, if you
+please, the whole of Europe had borrowed them from us in order to adapt
+them to the genius of its different races. Before re-admitting them in
+our turn, before adopting them after they had been thus transformed, we
+asked only that they should be able to serve the progress of reason and
+of humanity. What was troublous in them we clarified; what was
+corrupting we corrected; what was local we generalized; what was
+excessive we brought down to the proportions of mankind. Have we not
+sometimes also lessened their grandeur and altered their purity? If
+Corneille has undoubtedly brought nearer to us the still somewhat
+barbaric heroes of Guillem de Castro, La Fontaine, when imitating the
+author of the Decameron, has made him more indecent than he is in his
+own language; and if the Italians have no right to assail Moliere for
+borrowing somewhat from them, the English may well complain that
+Voltaire failed to understand Shakespeare. But it is true none the less
+that in disengaging from the particular man of the North or the South
+this idea of a universal man, for which we have been so often
+reviled,--if any one of the modern literatures has breathed in its
+entirety the spirit of the public weal and of civilization, it is the
+literature of France. And this ideal cannot possibly be as empty as has
+too often been asserted; since, as I endeavored to show, from Lisbon to
+Stockholm and from Archangel to Naples, it is its manifestations that
+foreigners have loved to come across in the masterpieces, or better, in
+the whole sequence of the history of our literature.
+
+
+
+GIORDANO BRUNO
+
+(1548-1600)
+
+Fillippo Bruno, known as Giordano Bruno, was born at Nola, near Naples,
+in 1548. This was eight years after the death of Copernicus, whose
+system he eagerly espoused, and ten years before the birth of Bacon,
+with whom he associated in England. Of an ardent, poetic temperament, he
+entered the Dominican order in Naples at the early age of sixteen,
+doubtless attracted to conventual life by the opportunities of study it
+offered to an eager intellect. Bruno had been in the monastery nearly
+thirteen years when he was accused of heresy in attacking some of the
+dogmas of the Church. He fled first to Rome and then to Northern Italy,
+where he wandered about for three seasons from city to city, teaching
+and writing. In 1579 he arrived at Geneva, then the stronghold of the
+Calvinists. Coming into conflict with the authorities there on account
+of his religious opinions, he was thrown into prison. He escaped and
+went to Toulouse, at that time the literary centre of Southern France,
+where he lectured for a year on Aristotle. His restless spirit, however,
+drove him on to Paris. Here he was made professor extraordinary at
+the Sorbonne.
+
+Although his teachings were almost directly opposed to the philosophic
+tenets of the time, attacking the current dogmas, and Aristotle, the
+idol of the schoolmen, yet such was the power of Bruno's eloquence and
+the charm of his manner that crowds flocked to his lecture-room, and he
+became one of the most popular foreign teachers the university had
+known. Under pretense of expounding the writings of Thomas Aquinas, he
+set forth his own philosophy. He also spoke much on the art of memory,
+amplifying the writings of Raymond Lully; and these principles,
+formulated by the monk of the thirteenth century and taken up again by
+the free-thinkers of the sixteenth, are the basis of all the present-day
+mnemonics.
+
+But Bruno went even further. He attracted the attention of King Henry
+III. of France, who in 1583 introduced him to the French ambassador to
+England, Castelnuovo di Manvissiere. Going to London, he spent three
+years in the family of this nobleman, more as friend than dependent.
+They were the happiest, or at least the most restful years of his stormy
+life. England was just then entering on the glorious epoch of her
+Elizabethan literature. Bruno came into the brilliant court circles,
+meeting even the Queen, who cordially welcomed all men of culture,
+especially the Italians. The astute monk reciprocated her good-will by
+paying her the customary tribute of flattery. He won the friendship of
+Sir Philip Sidney, to whom he dedicated two of his books, and enjoyed
+the acquaintance of Spenser, Sir Fulke Greville, Dyer, Harvey, Sir
+William Temple, Bacon, and other wits and poets of the day.
+
+At that time--somewhere about 1580--Shakespeare was still serving his
+apprenticeship as playwright, and had perhaps less claim on the notice
+of the observant foreigner than his elder contemporaries. London was
+still a small town, where the news of the day spread rapidly, and where,
+no doubt, strangers were as eagerly discussed as they are now within
+narrow town limits. Bruno's daring speculations could not remain the
+exclusive property of his own coterie. And as Shakespeare had the
+faculty of absorbing all new ideas afloat in the air, he would hardly
+have escaped the influence of the teacher who proclaimed in proud
+self-confidence that he was come to arouse men out of their theological
+stagnation. His influence on Bacon is more evident, because of their
+friendly associations. Bruno lectured at Oxford, but the English
+university found less favor in his eyes than English court life.
+Pedantry had indeed set its fatal mark on scholarship, not only on the
+Continent but in England. Aristotle was still the god of the pedants of
+that age, and dissent from his teaching was heavily punished, for the
+dry dust of learning blinded the eyes of the scholastics to new truths.
+
+Bruno, the knight-errant of these truths, devoted all his life to
+scourging pedantry, and dissented _in toto_ from the idol of the
+schools. No wonder he and Oxford did not agree together. He wittily
+calls her "the widow of sound learning," and again, "a constellation of
+pedantic, obstinate ignorance and presumption, mixed with a clownish
+incivility that would tax the patience of Job." He lashed the
+shortcomings of English learning in 'La Cena delle Ceneri' (Ash
+Wednesday Conversation). But Bruno's roving spirit, and perhaps also his
+heterodox tendencies, drove him at last from England, and for the next
+five years he roamed about Germany, leading the life of the wandering
+scholars of the time, always involved in conflicts and controversies
+with the authorities, always antagonistic to public opinion. Flying in
+the face of the most cherished traditions, he underwent the common
+experience of all prophets: the minds he was bent on awakening refused
+to be aroused.
+
+Finally he was invited by Zuone Mocenigo of Venice to teach him the
+higher and secret learning. The Venetian supposed that Bruno, with more
+than human erudition, possessed the art of conveying knowledge into the
+heads of dullards. Disappointed in this expectation, he quarreled with
+his teacher, and in a spirit of revenge picked out of Bruno's writings
+a mass of testimony sufficient to convict him of heresy. This he turned
+over to the Inquisitor at Venice, Bruno was arrested, convicted, and
+sent to the Inquisition in Rome. When called upon there to recant, he
+replied, "I ought not to recant, and I will not recant." He was
+accordingly confined in prison for seven years, then sentenced to death.
+On hearing the warrant he said, "It may be that you fear more to deliver
+this judgment than I to bear it." On February 17th, 1600, he was burned
+at the stake in the Campo de' Fiori at Rome. He remained steadfast to
+the end, saying, "I die a martyr, and willingly." His ashes were cast
+into the Tiber. Two hundred and fifty-nine years afterwards, his statue
+was unveiled on the very spot where he suffered; and the Italian
+government is bringing out (1896) the first complete edition, the
+'National Edition,' of his works.
+
+In their substance Bruno's writings belong to philosophy rather than to
+literature, although they are still interesting both historically and
+biographically as an index of the character of the man and of the temper
+of the time. Many of the works have either perished or are hidden away
+in inaccessible archives. For two hundred years they were tabooed, and
+as late as 1836 forbidden to be shown in the public library of Dresden.
+He published twenty-five works in Latin and Italian, and left many
+others incomplete, for in all his wanderings he was continually writing.
+The eccentric titles show his desire to attract attention: as 'The Work
+of the Great Key,' 'The Exploration of the Thirty Seals,' etc. The first
+extant work is 'Il Candelajo' (The Taper), a comedy which in its license
+of language and manner vividly reflects the time. In the dedication he
+discloses his philosophy: 'Time takes away everything and gives
+everything.' The 'Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante' (Expulsion of the
+Triumphant Beast), the most celebrated of his works, is an attack on the
+superstitions of the day, a curious medley of learning, imagination, and
+buffoonery. 'Degl' Eroici Furori' (The Heroic Enthusiasts) is the most
+interesting to modern readers, and in its majestic exaltation and poetic
+imagery is a true product of Italian culture.
+
+Bruno was evidently a man of vast intellect and of immense erudition.
+His philosophic speculations comprehended not only the ancient thought,
+and that current at his time, but also reached out toward the future and
+the results of modern science. He perceived some of the facts which were
+later formulated in the theory of evolution. "The mind of man differs
+from that of lower animals and of plants not in quality but only in
+quantity.... Each individual is the resultant of innumerable
+individuals. Each species is the Starting point for the next.... No
+individual is the same to-day as yesterday."
+
+Not only in this divination of coming truths is he modern, but also in
+his methods of investigation. Reason was to him the guide to truth. In a
+study of him Lewes says:--"Bruno was a true Neapolitan child--as ardent
+as its soil ... as capricious as its varied climate. There was a
+restless energy which fitted him to become the preacher of a new
+crusade--urging him to throw a haughty defiance in the face of every
+authority in every country,--an energy which closed his wild adventurous
+career at the stake." He was distinguished also by a rich fancy, a
+varied humor, and a chivalrous gallantry, which constantly remind us
+that the intellectual athlete is an Italian, and an Italian of the
+sixteenth century.
+
+
+
+A DISCOURSE OF POETS
+
+From 'The Heroic Enthusiasts'
+
+_Cicada_--Say, what do you mean by those who vaunt themselves of myrtle
+and laurel?
+
+_Tansillo_--Those may and do boast of the myrtle who sing of love: if
+they bear themselves nobly, they may wear a crown of that plant
+consecrated to Venus, of which they know the potency. Those may boast of
+the laurel who sing worthily of things pertaining to heroes,
+substituting heroic souls for speculative and moral philosophy, praising
+them and setting them as mirrors and exemplars for political and
+civil actions.
+
+_Cicada_--There are then many species of poets and crowns?
+
+_Tansillo_--Not only as many as there are Muses, but a great many more;
+for although genius is to be met with, yet certain modes and species of
+human ingenuity cannot be thus classified.
+
+_Cicada_--There are certain schoolmen who barely allow Homer to be a
+poet, and set down Virgil, Ovid, Martial, Hesiod, Lucretius, and many
+others as versifiers, judging them by the rules of poetry of Aristotle.
+
+_Tansillo_--Know for certain, my brother, that such as these are beasts.
+They do not consider that those rules serve principally as a frame for
+the Homeric poetry, and for other similar to it; and they set up one as
+a great poet, high as Homer, and disallow those of other vein and art
+and enthusiasm, who in their various kinds are equal, similar,
+or greater.
+
+_Cicada_--So that Homer was not a poet who depended upon rules, but was
+the cause of the rules which serve for those who are more apt at
+imitation than invention, and they have been used by him who, being no
+poet, yet knew how to take the rules of Homeric poetry into service, so
+as to become, not a poet or a Homer, but one who apes the Muse
+of others?
+
+_Tansillo_--Thou dost well conclude that poetry is not born in rules, or
+only slightly and accidentally so: the rules are derived, from the
+poetry, and there are as many kinds and sorts of true rules as there are
+kinds and sorts of true poets.
+
+_Cicada_--How then are the true poets to be known?
+
+_Tansillo_--By the singing of their verses: in that singing they give
+delight, or they edify, or they edify and delight together.
+
+_Cicada_--To whom then are the rules of Aristotle useful?
+
+_Tansillo_--To him who, unlike Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, and others, could
+not sing without the rules of Aristotle, and who, having no Muse of his
+own, would coquette with that of Homer.
+
+_Cicada_--Then they are wrong, those stupid pedants of our days, who
+exclude from the number of poets those who do not use words and
+metaphors conformable to, or whose principles are not in union with,
+those of Homer and Virgil; or because they do not observe the custom of
+invocation, or because they weave one history or tale with another, or
+because they finish the song with an epilogue on what has been said and
+a prelude on what is to be said, and many other kinds of criticism and
+censure; from whence it seems they would imply that they themselves, if
+the fancy took them, could be the true poets: and yet in fact they are
+no other than worms, that know not how to do anything well, but are born
+only to gnaw and befoul the studies and labors of others; and not being
+able to attain celebrity by their own virtue and ingenuity, seek to put
+themselves in the front, by hook or by crook, through the defects and
+errors of others.
+
+_Tansillo_--There are as many sorts of poets as there are sentiments and
+ideas; and to these it is possible to adapt garlands, not only of every
+species of plant, but also of other kinds of material. So the crowns of
+poets are made not only of myrtle and of laurel, but of vine leaves for
+the white-wine verses, and of ivy for the bacchanals; of olive for
+sacrifice and laws; of poplar, of elm, and of corn for agriculture; of
+cypress for funerals, and innumerable others for other occasions; and if
+it please you, also of the material signified by a good fellow when he
+exclaimed:
+
+     "O Friar Leek! O Poetaster!
+     That in Milan didst buckle on thy wreath
+     Composed of salad, sausage, and the pepper-caster."
+
+_Cicada_--Now surely he of divers moods, which he exhibits in various
+ways, may cover himself with the branches of different plants, and may
+hold discourse worthily with the Muses; for they are his aura or
+comforter, his anchor or support, and his harbor, to which he retires in
+times of labor, of agitation, and of storm. Hence he cries:--"O Mountain
+of Parnassus, where I abide; Muses, with whom I converse; Fountain of
+Helicon, where I am nourished; Mountain, that affordest me a quiet
+dwelling-place; Muses, that inspire me with profound doctrines;
+Fountain, that cleansest me; Mountain, on whose ascent my heart uprises;
+Muses, that in discourse revive my spirits; Fountain, whose arbors cool
+my brows,--change my death into life, my cypress to laurels, and my
+hells into heavens: that is, give me immortality, make me a poet, render
+me illustrious!"
+
+_Tansillo_--Well; because to those whom Heaven favors, the greatest
+evils turn to greatest good; for needs or necessities bring forth labors
+and studies, and these most often bring the glory of immortal splendor.
+
+_Cicada_--For to die in one age makes us live in all the rest.
+
+
+
+     CANTICLE OF THE SHINING ONES
+
+     A Tribute to English Women, from 'The Nolan'
+
+
+     "Nothing I envy, Jove, from this thy sky,"
+       Spake Neptune thus, and raised his lofty crest.
+     "God of the waves," said Jove, "thy pride runs high;
+       What more wouldst add to own thy stern behest?"
+
+     "Thou," spake the god, "dost rule the fiery span,
+       The circling spheres, the glittering shafts of day;
+     Greater am I, who in the realm of man
+       Rule Thames, with all his Nymphs in fair array.
+
+     "In this my breast I hold the fruitful land,
+       The vasty reaches of the trembling sea;
+     And what in night's bright dome, or day's, shall stand
+       Before these radiant maids who dwell with me?"
+
+     "Not thine," said Jove, "god of the watery mount,
+       To exceed my lot; but thou my lot shalt share:
+     Thy heavenly maids among my stars I'll count,
+       And thou shalt own the stars beyond compare!"
+
+
+     THE SONG OF THE NINE SINGERS
+
+     [_The first sings and plays the cithern_.]
+
+     O cliffs and rocks! O thorny woods! O shore!
+     O hills and dales! O valleys, rivers, seas!
+     How do your new-discovered beauties please?
+     O Nymph, 'tis yours the guerdon rare,
+     If now the open skies shine fair;
+     O happy wanderings, well spent and o'er!
+
+     [_The second sings and plays to his mandolin_.]
+
+     O happy wanderings, well spent and o'er!
+     Say then, O Circe, these heroic tears,
+     These griefs, endured through tedious months and years,
+     Were as a grace divine bestowed
+     If now our weary travail is no more.
+
+     [_The third sings and plays to his lyre_.]
+
+     If now our weary travail is no more!
+     If this sweet haven be our destined rest,
+     Then naught remains but to be blest,
+     To thank our God for all his gifts,
+     Who from our eyes the veil uplifts,
+     Where shines the light upon the heavenly shore,
+
+     [_The fourth sings to the viol_.]
+
+     Where shines the light upon the heavenly shore!
+     O blindness, dearer far than others' sight!
+     O sweeter grief than earth's most sweet delight!
+     For ye have led the erring soul
+     By gradual steps to this fair goal,
+     And through the darkness into light we soar.
+
+     [_The fifth sings to a Spanish timbrel_.]
+
+     And through the darkness into light we soar!
+     To full fruition all high thought is brought,
+     With such brave patience that ev'n we
+     At least the only path can see,
+     And in his noblest work our God adore.
+
+     [_The sixth sings to a lute_.]
+
+     And in his noblest work our God adore!
+       God doth not will joy should to joy succeed,
+       Nor ill shall be of other ill the seed;
+         But in his hand the wheel of fate
+         Turns, now depressed and now elate,
+     Evolving day from night for evermore.
+
+     [_The seventh sings to the Irish harp_.]
+
+     Evolving day from night for evermore!
+       And as yon robe of glorious nightly fire
+       Pales when the morning beams to noon aspire,
+         Thus He who rules with law eternal,
+         Creating order fair diurnal,
+     Casts down the proud and doth exalt the poor.
+
+     [_The eighth plays with a viol and bow_.]
+
+     Casts down the proud and doth exalt the poor!
+         And with an equal hand maintains
+         The boundless worlds which He sustains,
+         And scatters all our finite sense
+         At thought of His omnipotence,
+     Clouded awhile, to be revealed once more.
+
+     [_The ninth plays upon the rebeck_.]
+
+     Clouded awhile, to be revealed once more!
+         Thus neither doubt nor fear avails;
+         O'er all the incomparable End prevails,
+         O'er fair champaign and mountain,
+         O'er river-brink and fountain,
+     And o'er the shocks of seas and perils of the shore.
+
+     Translation of Isa Blagden.
+
+
+
+     OF IMMENSITY
+
+     From Frith's 'Life of Giordano Bruno'
+
+
+     'Tis thou, O Spirit, dost within my soul
+       This weakly thought with thine own life amend;
+       Rejoicing, dost thy rapid pinions lend
+     Me, and dost wing me to that lofty goal
+     Where secret portals ope and fetters break,
+       And thou dost grant me, by thy grace complete,
+     Fortune to spurn, and death; O high retreat,
+       Which few attain, and fewer yet forsake!
+     Girdled with gates of brass in every part,
+       Prisoned and bound in vain, 'tis mine to rise
+       Through sparkling fields of air to pierce the skies,
+     Sped and accoutred by no doubting heart,
+     Till, raised on clouds of contemplation vast,
+     Light, leader, law, Creator, I attain at last.
+
+
+
+
+     LIFE WELL LOST
+
+
+     Winged by desire and thee, O dear delight!
+       As still the vast and succoring air I tread,
+       So, mounting still, on swifter pinions sped,
+     I scorn the world, and heaven receives my flight.
+     And if the end of Ikaros be nigh,
+       I will submit, for I shall know no pain:
+       And falling dead to earth, shall rise again;
+     What lowly life with such high death can vie?
+     Then speaks my heart from out the upper air,
+     "Whither dost lead me? sorrow and despair
+     Attend the rash." and thus I make reply:--
+       "Fear thou no fall, nor lofty ruin sent;
+       Safely divide the clouds, and die content,
+     When such proud death is dealt thee from on high."
+
+
+
+     PARNASSUS WITHIN
+
+
+     O heart, 'tis you my chief Parnassus are,
+       Where for my safety I must ever climb.
+       My winged thoughts are Muses, who from far
+       Bring gifts of beauty to the court of Time;
+     And Helicon, that fair unwasted rill,
+       Springs newly in my tears upon the earth,
+     And by those streams and nymphs, and by that hill,
+       It pleased the gods to give a poet birth.
+     No favoring hand that comes of lofty race,
+       No priestly unction, nor the grant of kings,
+     Can on me lay such lustre and such grace,
+       Nor add such heritage; for one who sings
+     Hath a crowned head, and by the sacred bay,
+     His heart, his thoughts, his tears, are consecrate alway.
+
+
+
+
+     COMPENSATION
+
+
+     The moth beholds not death as forth he flies
+       Into the splendor of the living flame;
+     The hart athirst to crystal water hies,
+       Nor heeds the shaft, nor fears the hunter's aim;
+     The timid bird, returning from above
+       To join his mate, deems not the net is nigh;
+     Unto the light, the fount, and to my love,
+       Seeing the flame, the shaft, the chains, I fly;
+     So high a torch, love-lighted in the skies,
+       Consumes my soul; and with this bow divine
+     Of piercing sweetness what terrestrial vies?
+       This net of dear delight doth prison mine;
+     And I to life's last day have this desire--
+     Be mine thine arrows, love, and mine thy fire.
+
+
+
+
+     LIFE FOR SONG
+
+
+     Come Muse, O Muse, so often scorned by me,
+       The hope of sorrow and the balm of care,--
+     Give to me speech and song, that I may be
+     Unchid by grief; grant me such graces rare
+       As other ministering souls may never see
+     Who boast thy laurel, and thy myrtle wear.
+     I know no joy wherein thou hast not part,
+       My speeding wind, my anchor, and my goal,
+     Come, fair Parnassus, lift thou up my heart;
+       Come, Helicon, renew my thirsty soul.
+     A cypress crown, O Muse, is thine to give,
+       And pain eternal: take this weary frame,
+     Touch me with fire, and this my death shall live
+     On all men's lips and in undying fame.
+
+
+
+WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
+
+(1794-1878)
+
+BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP
+
+Distinguished as he was by the lofty qualities of his verse, William
+Cullen Bryant held a place almost unique in American literature, by the
+union of his activity as a poet with his eminence as a citizen and an
+influential journalist, throughout an uncommonly long career. Two traits
+still further define the peculiarity of his position--his precocious
+development, and the evenness and sustained vigor of all his poetic work
+from the beginning to the end. He began writing verse at the age of
+eight; at ten he made contributions in this kind to the county gazette,
+and produced a finished and effective rhymed address, read at his school
+examination, which became popular for recitation; and in his thirteenth
+year, during the Presidency of Thomas Jefferson, he composed a political
+satire, 'The Embargo.' This, being published, was at first supposed by
+many to be the work of a man, attracted much attention and praise, and
+passed into a second edition with other shorter pieces.
+
+But these, while well wrought in the formal eighteenth-century fashion,
+showed no special originality. It was with 'Thanatopsis,' written in
+1811, when he was only seventeen, that his career as a poet of original
+and assured strength began. 'Thanatopsis' was an inspiration of the
+primeval woods of America, of the scenes that surrounded the writer in
+youth. At the same time it expressed with striking independence and
+power a fresh conception of "the universality of Death in the natural
+order." As has been well said, "it takes the idea of death out of its
+theological aspects and restores it to its proper place in the vast
+scheme of things. This in itself was a mark of genius in a youth of his
+time and place." Another American poet, Stoddard, calls it the greatest
+poem ever written by so young a man. The author's son-in-law and
+biographer, Parke Godwin, remarks upon it aptly, "For the first time on
+this continent a poem was written destined to general admiration and
+enduring fame;" and this indeed is a very significant point, that it
+began the history of true poetry in the United States,--a fact which
+further secured to Bryant his exceptional place. The poem remains a
+classic of the English language, and the author himself never surpassed
+the high mark attained in it; although the balanced and lasting nature
+of his faculty is shown in a pendant to this poem, which he created in
+his old age and entitled 'The Flood of Years.' The last is equal to the
+first in dignity and finish, but is less original, and has never gained
+a similar fame.
+
+Another consideration regarding Bryant is, that representing a modern
+development of poetry under American inspiration, he was also a
+descendant of the early Massachusetts colonists, being connected with
+the Pilgrim Fathers through three ancestral lines. Born at Cummington,
+Massachusetts, November 3d, 1794, the son of a stalwart but studious
+country physician of literary tastes, he inherited the strong religious
+feeling of this ancestry, which was united in him with a deep and
+sensitive love of nature. This led him to reflect in his poems the
+strength and beauty of American landscape, vividly as it had never
+before been mirrored; and the blending of serious thought and innate
+piety with the sentiment for nature so reflected gave a new and
+impressive result.
+
+Like many other long-lived men, Bryant suffered from delicate health in
+the earlier third of his life: there was a tendency to consumption in
+his otherwise vigorous family stock. He read much, and was much
+interested in Greek literature and somewhat influenced by it. But he
+also lived a great deal in the open air, rejoiced in the boisterous
+games and excursions in the woods with his brothers and sisters, and
+took long rambles alone among the hills and wild groves; being then, as
+always afterwards, an untiring walker. After a stay of only seven months
+at Williams College, he studied law, which he practiced for some eight
+years in Plainfield and Great Barrington. In the last-named village he
+was elected a tithingman, charged with the duty of keeping order in the
+churches and enforcing the observance of Sunday. Chosen town clerk soon
+afterwards, at a salary of five dollars a year, he kept the records of
+the town with his own hand for five years, and also served as justice of
+the peace with power to hear cases in a lower court. These biographical
+items are of value, as showing his close relation to the self-government
+of the people in its simpler forms, and his early practical familiarity
+with the duties of a trusted citizen.
+
+Meanwhile, however, he kept on writing at intervals, and in 1821 read
+before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard a long poem, 'The Ages,' a
+kind of composition more in favor at that period than in later days,
+being a general review of the progress of man in knowledge and virtue.
+With the passage of time it has not held its own as against some of his
+other poems, although it long enjoyed a high reputation; but its success
+on its original hearing was the cause of his bringing together his first
+volume of poems, hardly more than a pamphlet, in the same year. It made
+him famous with the reading public of the United States, and won some
+recognition in England. In this little book were contained, besides 'The
+Ages' and 'Thanatopsis,' several pieces which have kept their hold upon
+popular taste; such as the well-known lines 'To a Waterfowl' and the
+'Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood.'
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.]
+
+The year of its publication also brought into the world Cooper's 'The
+Spy,' Irving's 'Sketch Book' and 'Bracebridge Hall,' with various other
+significant volumes, including Channing's early essays and Daniel
+Webster's great Plymouth Oration. It was evident that a native
+literature was dawning brightly; and as Bryant's productions now came
+into demand, and he had never liked the profession of law, he quitted it
+and went to New York in 1825, there to seek a living by his pen as "a
+literary adventurer." The adventure led to ultimate triumph, but not
+until after a long term of dark prospects and hard struggles.
+
+Even in his latest years Bryant used to declare that his favorite among
+his poems--although it is one of the least known--was 'Green River';
+perhaps because it recalled the scenes of young manhood, when he was
+about entering the law, and contrasted the peacefulness of that stream
+with the life in which he would be
+
+     "Forced to drudge for the dregs of men,
+     And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen,
+     And mingle among the jostling crowd,
+     Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud."
+
+This might be applied to much of his experience in New York, where he
+edited the New York Review and became one of the editors, then a
+proprietor, and finally chief editor of the Evening Post. A great part
+of his energies now for many years was given to his journalistic
+function, and to the active outspoken discussion of important political
+questions; often in trying crises and at the cost of harsh unpopularity.
+Success, financial as well as moral, came to him within the next
+quarter-century, during which laborious interval he had likewise
+maintained his interest and work in pure literature and produced new
+poems from time to time in various editions.
+
+From this point on until his death, June 12th, 1878, in his
+eighty-fourth year, he was the central and commanding figure in the
+enlarging literary world of New York. His newspaper had gained a potent
+reputation, and it brought to bear upon public affairs a strong
+influence of the highest sort. Its editorial course and tone, as well as
+the earnest and patriotic part taken by Bryant in popular questions and
+national affairs, without political ambition or office-holding, had
+established him as one of the most distinguished citizens of the
+metropolis, no less than its most renowned poet. His presence and
+co-operation were indispensable in all great public functions or
+humanitarian and intellectual movements. In 1864 his seventieth birthday
+was celebrated at the Century Club with extraordinary honors. In 1875,
+again, the two houses of the State Legislature at Albany paid him the
+compliment, unprecedented in the annals of American authorship, of
+inviting him to a reception given to him in their official capacity.
+Another mark of the abounding esteem in which he was held among his
+fellow-citizens was the presentation to him in 1876 of a rich silver
+vase, commemorative of his life and works. He was now a wealthy man; yet
+his habits of life remained essentially unchanged. His tastes were
+simple, his love of nature was still ardent; his literary and editorial
+industry unflagging.
+
+Besides his poems, Bryant wrote two short stories for 'Tales of the
+Glauber Spa'; and published 'Letters of a Traveler' in 1850, as a result
+of three journeys to Europe and the Orient, together with various public
+addresses. His style as a writer of prose is clear, calm, dignified, and
+denotes exact observation and a wide range of interests. So too his
+editorial articles in the Evening Post, some of which have been
+preserved in his collected writings, are couched in serene and forcible
+English, with nothing of the sensational or the colloquial about them.
+They were a fitting medium of expression for his firm conscientiousness
+and integrity as a journalist.
+
+But it is as a poet, and especially by a few distinctive compositions,
+that Bryant will be most widely and deeply held in remembrance. In the
+midst of the exacting business of his career as an editor, and many
+public or social demands upon his time, he found opportunity to
+familiarize himself with portions of German and Spanish poetry, which he
+translated, and to maintain in the quietude of his country home in
+Roslyn, Long Island, his old acquaintance with the Greek and Latin
+classics. From this continued study there resulted naturally in 1870 his
+elaborate translation of Homer's Iliad, which was followed by that of
+the Odyssey in 1871. These scholarly works, cast in strong and polished
+blank verse, won high praise from American critics, and even achieved a
+popular success, although they were not warmly acclaimed, in England.
+Among literarians they are still regarded as in a manner standards of
+their kind. Bryant, in his long march of over sixty-five years across
+the literary field, was witness to many new developments in poetic
+writing, in both his own and other countries. But while he perceived the
+splendor and color and rich novelty of these, he held in his own work to
+the plain theory and practice which had guided him from the start. "The
+best poetry," he still believed--"that which takes the strongest hold of
+the general mind, not in one age only but in all ages--is that which is
+always simple and always luminous." He did not embody in impassioned
+forms the sufferings, emotions, or problems of the human kind, but was
+disposed to generalize them, as in 'The Journey of Life,' the 'Hymn of
+the City,' and 'The Song of the Sower,' it is characteristic that two of
+the longer poems, 'Sella' and 'The Little People of the Snow,' which are
+narratives, deal with legends of an individual human life merging itself
+with the inner life of nature, under the form of imaginary beings who
+dwell in the snow or in water. On the other hand, one of his eulogists
+observes that although some of his contemporaries went much beyond him
+in fullness of insight and nearness to the great conflicts of the age,
+"he has certainly not been surpassed, perhaps not been approached, by
+any writer since Wordsworth, in that majestic repose and that
+self-reliant simplicity which characterized the morning stars of song."
+In 'Our Country's Call,' however, one hears the ring of true martial
+enthusiasm; and there is a deep patriotic fervor in 'O Mother of a
+Mighty Race.' The noble and sympathetic homage paid to the typical
+womanhood of a genuine woman of every day, in 'The Conqueror's Grave,'
+reveals also great underlying warmth and sensitiveness of feeling.
+'Robert of Lincoln,' and 'The Planting of the Apple-Tree' are both
+touched with a lighter mood of joy in nature, which supplies a contrast
+to his usual pensiveness.
+
+Bryant's venerable aspect in old age--with erect form, white hair, and
+flowing snowy beard--gave him a resemblance to Homer; and there was
+something Homeric about his influence upon the literature of his
+country, in the dignity with which he invested the poetic art and the
+poet's relation to the people.
+
+[Illustration: Signature: George Parsons Lathrop]
+
+[All Bryant's poems were originally published by D. Appleton and
+Company.]
+
+
+
+     THANATOPSIS
+
+     To him who in the love of Nature holds
+     Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
+     A various language; for his gayer hours
+     She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
+     And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
+     Into his darker musings, with a mild
+     And healing sympathy, that steals away
+     Their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts
+     Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
+     Over thy spirit, and sad images
+     Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
+     And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
+     Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;--
+     Go forth, under the open sky, and list
+     To Nature's teachings, while from all around--
+     Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--
+     Comes a still voice:--
+
+                         Yet a few days, and thee
+     The all-beholding sun shall see no more
+     In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
+     Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
+     Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
+     Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
+     Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
+     And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
+     Thine individual being, shalt thou go
+     To mix for ever with the elements,
+     To be a brother to the insensible rock
+     And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
+     Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
+     Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.
+
+       Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
+     Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
+     Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
+     With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings,
+     The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good,
+     Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
+     All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
+     Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,--the vales
+     Stretching in pensive quietness between;
+     The venerable woods--rivers that move
+     In majesty, and the complaining brooks
+     That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
+     Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,--
+     Are but the solemn decorations all
+     Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
+     The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
+     Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
+     Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
+     The globe are but a handful to the tribes
+     That slumber in its bosom.--Take the wings
+     Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
+     Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
+     Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
+     Save his own dashings--yet the dead are there;
+     And millions in those solitudes, since first
+     The flight of years began, have laid them down
+     In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone.
+
+     So shalt thou rest; and what if thou withdraw
+     In silence from the living, and no friend
+     Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
+     Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
+     When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
+     Plod on, and each one as before will chase
+     His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
+     Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
+     And make their bed with thee. As the long train
+     Of ages glides away, the sons of men,--
+     The youth in life's fresh spring and he who goes
+     In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
+     The speechless babe and the gray-headed man--
+     Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
+     By those who in their turn shall follow them.
+
+       So live, that when thy summons comes to join
+     The innumerable caravan which moves
+     To that mysterious realm where each shall take
+     His chamber in the silent halls of death,
+     Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
+     Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed
+     By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
+     Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
+     About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
+
+
+
+
+     THE CROWDED STREET
+
+
+     Let me move slowly through the street,
+       Filled with an ever-shifting train,
+     Amid the sound of steps that beat
+       The murmuring walks like autumn rain.
+
+     How fast the flitting figures come!
+       The mild, the fierce, the stony face--
+     Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some
+       Where secret tears have lost their trace.
+
+     They pass to toil, to strife, to rest--
+       To halls in which the feast is spread--
+     To chambers where the funeral guest
+       In silence sits beside the dead.
+
+     And some to happy homes repair,
+       Where children, pressing cheek to cheek,
+     With mute caresses shall declare
+       The tenderness they cannot speak.
+
+     And some, who walk in calmness here,
+       Shall shudder as they reach the door
+     Where one who made their dwelling dear,
+       Its flower, its light, is seen no more.
+
+     Youth, with pale cheek and slender frame,
+       And dreams of greatness in thine eye!
+     Go'st thou to build an early name,
+       Or early in the task to die?
+
+     Keen son of trade, with eager brow!
+       Who is now fluttering in thy snare?
+     Thy golden fortunes, tower they now,
+       Or melt the glittering spires in air?
+
+     Who of this crowd to-night shall tread
+       The dance till daylight gleam again?
+     Who sorrow o'er the untimely dead?
+       Who writhe in throes of mortal pain?
+
+     Some, famine-struck, shall think how long
+       The cold dark hours, how slow the light;
+     And some who flaunt amid the throng
+       Shall hide in dens of shame to-night.
+
+     Each where his tasks or pleasures call,
+       They pass, and heed each other not.
+     There is Who heeds, Who holds them all
+       In His large love and boundless thought.
+
+     These struggling tides of life, that seem
+       In wayward, aimless course to tend,
+     Are eddies of the mighty stream
+       That rolls to its appointed end.
+
+
+     D. Appleton and Company, New York.
+
+
+     THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS
+
+     The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
+     Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.
+     Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
+     They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.
+     The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,
+     And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.
+
+     Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang
+                and stood
+     In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
+     Alas! they all are in their graves; the gentle race of flowers
+     Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.
+     The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain
+     Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.
+
+     The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,
+     And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;
+     But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,
+     And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood,
+     Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague
+                on men,
+     And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland, glade, and
+                glen.
+
+     And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will
+                come,
+     To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home;
+     When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are
+                still,
+     And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,
+     The south-wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he
+                bore,
+     And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.
+
+     And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died,
+     The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side.
+     In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forests cast the leaf,
+     And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief;
+     Yet not unmeet it was that one like that young friend of ours,
+     So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.
+
+
+     THE CONQUEROR'S GRAVE
+
+     Within this lowly grave a Conqueror lies,
+       And yet the monument proclaims it not,
+       Nor round the sleeper's name hath chisel wrought
+     The emblems of a fame that never dies,--
+     Ivy and amaranth, in a graceful sheaf,
+     Twined with the laurel's fair, imperial leaf.
+         A simple name alone,
+         To the great world unknown,
+     Is graven here, and wild-flowers rising round,
+     Meek meadow-sweet and violets of the ground,
+       Lean lovingly against the humble stone.
+
+     Here, in the quiet earth, they laid apart
+       No man of iron mold and bloody hands,
+       Who sought to wreak upon the cowering lands
+     The passions that consumed his restless heart:
+     But one of tender spirit and delicate frame,
+          Gentlest, in mien and mind,
+          Of gentle womankind,
+     Timidly shrinking from the breath of blame;
+     One in whose eyes the smile of kindness made
+       Its haunts, like flowers by sunny brooks in May,
+     Yet, at the thought of others' pain, a shade
+       Of sweeter sadness chased the smile away.
+
+     Nor deem that when the hand that molders here
+     Was raised in menace, realms were chilled with fear,
+       And armies mustered at the sign, as when
+     Clouds rise on clouds before the rainy East--
+       Gray captains leading bands of veteran men
+     And fiery youths to be the vulture's feast.
+     Not thus were waged the mighty wars that gave
+     The victory to her who fills this grave:
+         Alone her task was wrought,
+         Alone the battle fought;
+     Through that long strife her constant hope was staid
+     On God alone, nor looked for other aid.
+
+     She met the hosts of Sorrow with a look
+       That altered not beneath the frown they wore,
+     And soon the lowering brood were tamed, and took
+       Meekly her gentle rule, and frowned no more.
+     Her soft hand put aside the assaults of wrath,
+             And calmly broke in twain
+             The fiery shafts of pain,
+     And rent the nets of passion from her path.
+       By that victorious hand despair was slain.
+     With love she vanquished hate and overcame
+     Evil with good, in her Great Master's name.
+
+     Her glory is not of this shadowy state,
+       Glory that with the fleeting season dies;
+     But when she entered at the sapphire gate
+       What joy was radiant in celestial eyes!
+     How heaven's bright depths with sounding welcomes rung,
+     And flowers of heaven by shining hands were flung!
+             And He who long before,
+             Pain, scorn, and sorrow bore,
+     The Mighty Sufferer, with aspect sweet,
+     Smiled on the timid stranger from his seat;
+       He who returning, glorious, from the grave,
+       Dragged Death disarmed, in chains, a crouching slave.
+
+     See, as I linger here, the sun grows low;
+       Cool airs are murmuring that the night is near.
+     O gentle sleeper, from the grave I go,
+       Consoled though sad, in hope and yet in fear.
+            Brief is the time, I know,
+            The warfare scarce begun;
+     Yet all may win the triumphs thou hast won.
+     Still flows the fount whose waters strengthened thee;
+       The victors' names are yet too few to fill
+     Heaven's mighty roll; the glorious armory
+       That ministered to thee, is open still.
+
+
+
+
+     THE-BATTLE-FIELD
+
+
+     Once this soft turf, this rivulet's sands,
+       Were trampled by a hurrying crowd,
+     And fiery hearts and armed hands
+       Encountered in the battle-cloud.
+
+     Ah! never shall the land forget
+       How gushed the life-blood of her brave--
+     Gushed, warm with hope and courage yet,
+       Upon the soil they sought to save.
+
+     Now all is calm, and fresh, and still;
+       Alone the chirp of flitting bird,
+     And talk of children on the hill,
+       And bell of wandering kine are heard.
+
+     No solemn host goes trailing by
+       The black-mouthed gun and staggering wain;
+     Men start not at the battle-cry--
+       Oh, be it never heard again!
+
+     Soon rested those who fought; but thou
+       Who minglest in the harder strife
+     For truths which men receive not now,
+       Thy warfare only ends with life.
+
+     A friendless warfare! lingering long
+       Through weary day and weary year;
+     A wild and many-weaponed throng
+       Hang on thy front, and flank, and rear.
+
+     Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof,
+       And blench not at thy chosen lot;
+     The timid good may stand aloof,
+       The sage may frown--yet faint thou not.
+
+     Nor heed the shaft too surely cast,
+       The foul and hissing bolt of scorn;
+     For with thy side shall dwell, at last,
+       The victory of endurance born.
+
+     Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again--
+       The eternal years of God are hers;
+     But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
+       And dies among his worshipers.
+
+     Yea, though thou lie upon the dust,
+       When they who helped thee flee in fear,
+     Die full of hope and manly trust,
+       Like those who fell in battle here!
+
+     Another hand thy sword shall wield,
+       Another hand the standard wave,
+     Till from the trumpet's mouth is pealed
+       The blast of triumph o'er thy grave.
+
+
+     D. Appleton and Company, New York.
+
+
+
+     TO A WATERFOWL
+
+
+     Whither, 'midst falling dew,
+             While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
+     Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue
+             Thy solitary way?
+
+             Vainly the fowler's eye
+     Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
+     As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
+             Thy figure floats along,
+
+             Seek'st thou the plashy brink
+     Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
+     Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
+             On the chafed ocean-side?
+
+             There is a Power whose care
+     Teaches thy way along that pathless coast--
+     The desert and illimitable air--
+             Lone wandering, but not lost.
+
+             All day thy wings have fanned,
+     At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere,
+     Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
+             Though the dark night is near.
+
+             And soon that toil shall end;
+     Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
+     And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,
+             Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.
+
+             Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven
+     Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart
+     Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given,
+             And shall not soon depart.
+
+             He who, from zone to zone,
+     Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
+     In the long way that I must tread alone,
+             Will lead my steps aright.
+
+
+     ROBERT OF LINCOLN
+
+     Merrily swinging on brier and weed,
+       Near to the nest of his little dame,
+     Over the mountain-side or mead,
+       Robert of Lincoln is telling his name:--
+         Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+         Spink, spank, spink;
+     Snug and safe is that nest of ours,
+     Hidden among the summer flowers.
+           Chee, chee, chee.
+
+     Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest,
+       Wearing a bright black wedding-coat;
+     White are his shoulders and white his crest.
+       Hear him call in his merry note:--
+         Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+         Spink, spank, spink;
+     Look what a nice new coat is mine,
+     Sure there was never a bird so fine.
+           Chee, chee, chee.
+
+     Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife,
+       Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings,
+     Passing at home a patient life,
+       Broods in the grass while her husband sings:
+         Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+         Spink, spank, spink:
+     Brood, kind creature; you need not fear
+     Thieves and robbers while I am here.
+           Chee, chee, chee.
+
+     Modest and shy as a nun is she;
+       One weak chirp is her only note.
+     Braggart and prince of braggarts is he,
+       Pouring boasts from his little throat:--
+         Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+         Spink, spank, spink:
+     Never was I afraid of man;
+     Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can!
+           Chee, chee, chee.
+
+     Six white eggs on a bed of hay,
+       Flecked with purple, a pretty sight!
+     There as the mother sits all day,
+       Robert is singing with all his might:--
+         Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+         Spink, spank, spink;
+     Nice good wife, that never goes out,
+     Keeping house while I frolic about.
+           Chee, chee, chee.
+
+     Soon as the little ones chip the shell,
+       Six wide mouths are open for food;
+     Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well,
+       Gathering seeds for the hungry brood.
+         Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+         Spink, spank, spink;
+     This new life is likely to be
+     Hard for a gay young fellow like me.
+           Chee, chee, chee.
+
+     Robert of Lincoln at length is made
+       Sober with work, and silent with care;
+     Off is his holiday garment laid,
+       Half forgotten that merry air:
+         Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+         Spink, spank, spink;
+     Nobody knows but my mate and I
+     Where our nest and our nestlings lie.
+           Chee, chee, chee.
+
+     Summer wanes; the children are grown;
+       Fun and frolic no more he knows;
+     Robert of Lincoln's a humdrum crone;
+       Off he flies, and we sing as he goes:--
+         Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+         Spink, spank, spink;
+     When you can pipe that merry old strain,
+     Robert of Lincoln, come back again.
+           Chee, chee, chee.
+
+
+     _1855_
+
+
+     JUNE
+
+     I gazed upon the glorious sky
+       And the green mountains round;
+     And thought that when I came to lie
+       At rest within the ground,
+     'Twere pleasant that in flowery June,
+     When brooks send up a cheerful tune
+       And groves a joyous sound,
+     The sexton's hand, my grave to make,
+     The rich green mountain turf should break.
+
+     A cell within the frozen mold,
+       A coffin borne through sleet,
+     And icy clods above it rolled,
+       While fierce the tempests beat--
+     Away! I will not think of these:
+     Blue be the sky and soft the breeze,
+       Earth green beneath the feet,
+     And be the damp mold gently pressed
+     Into my narrow place of rest.
+
+     There through the long, long summer hours
+       The golden light should lie,
+     And thick young herbs and groups of flowers
+       Stand in their beauty by;
+     The oriole should build and tell
+     His love-tale close beside my cell;
+       The idle butterfly
+     Should rest him there, and there be heard
+     The housewife bee and humming-bird.
+
+     And what if cheerful shouts at noon
+       Come, from the village sent,
+     Or songs of maids beneath the moon,
+       With fairy laughter blent?
+     And what if, in the evening light,
+     Betrothed lovers walk in sight
+       Of my low monument?
+     I would the lovely scene around
+     Might know no sadder sight nor sound.
+
+     I know that I no more should see
+       The season's glorious show,
+     Nor would its brightness shine for me,
+       Nor its wild music flow;
+     But if, around my place of sleep.
+     The friends I love should come to weep,
+       They might not haste to go.
+     Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom,
+     Should keep them lingering by my tomb.
+
+     These to their softened hearts should bear
+       The thought of what has been,
+     And speak of one who cannot share
+       The gladness of the scene;
+     Whose part in all the pomp that fills
+     The circuit of the summer hills
+       Is--that his grave is green;
+     And deeply would their hearts rejoice
+     To hear again his living voice.
+
+
+     TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN
+
+     Thou blossom, bright with autumn dew,
+     And colored with the heaven's own blue,
+     That openest when the quiet light
+     Succeeds the keen and frosty night;
+
+     Thou comest not when violets lean
+     O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
+     Or columbines, in purple dressed,
+     Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest.
+
+     Thou waitest late, and com'st alone,
+     When woods are bare and birds are flown,
+     And frost and shortening days portend
+     The aged Year is near his end.
+
+     Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
+     Look through its fringes to the sky,
+     Blue--blue--as if that sky let fall
+     A flower from its cerulean wall.
+
+     I would that thus, when I shall see
+     The hour of death draw near to me,
+     Hope, blossoming within my heart,
+     May look to heaven as I depart.
+
+
+     D. Appleton and Company, New York.
+
+
+     THE FUTURE LIFE
+
+     How shall I know thee in the sphere which keeps
+       The disembodied spirits of the dead,
+     When all of thee that time could wither sleeps
+       And perishes among the dust we tread?
+
+     For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain
+       If there I meet thy gentle presence not;
+     Nor hear the voice I love, nor read again
+       In thy serenest eyes the tender thought.
+
+     Will not thy own meek heart demand me there?
+       That heart whose fondest throbs to me were given?
+     My name on earth was ever in thy prayer,
+       And wilt thou never utter it in heaven?
+
+     In meadows fanned by heaven's life-breathing wind,
+       In the resplendence of that glorious sphere,
+     And larger movements of the unfettered mind,
+       Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here?
+
+     The love that lived through all the stormy past,
+       And meekly with my harsher nature bore,
+     And deeper grew, and tenderer to the last,
+       Shall it expire with life, and be no more?
+
+     A happier lot than mine, and larger light,
+       Await thee there; for thou hast bowed thy will
+     In cheerful homage to the rule of right,
+       And lovest all, and renderest good for ill.
+
+     For me, the sordid cares in which I dwell
+       Shrink and consume my heart, as heat the scroll;
+     And wrath has left its scar--that fire of hell
+       Has left its frightful scar upon my soul.
+
+     Yet though thou wear'st the glory of the sky,
+       Wilt thou not keep the same beloved name,
+     The same fair thoughtful brow, and gentle eye,
+       Lovelier in heaven's sweet climate, yet the same?
+
+     Shalt thou not teach me, in that calmer home,
+       The wisdom that I learned so ill in this--
+     The wisdom which is love--till I become
+       Thy fit companion in that land of bliss?
+
+
+     D. Appleton and Company, New York.
+
+
+     TO THE PAST
+
+           Thou unrelenting Past!
+     Stern are the fetters round thy dark domain,
+           And fetters, sure and fast,
+     Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.
+
+           Far in thy realm withdrawn
+     Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom,
+           And glorious ages gone
+     Lie deep within the shadows of thy womb.
+
+           Childhood, with all its mirth,
+     Youth, Manhood, Age, that draws us to the ground,
+           And last, Man's Life on earth,
+     Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound.
+
+           Thou hast my better years,
+     Thou hast my earlier friends--the good, the kind--
+           Yielded to thee with tears--
+     The venerable form, the exalted mind.
+
+           My spirit yearns to bring
+     The lost ones back; yearns with desire intense,
+           And struggles hard to wring
+     Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence.
+
+           In vain!--Thy gates deny
+     All passage save to those who hence depart.
+           Nor to the streaming eye
+     Thou givest them back, nor to the broken heart.
+
+           In thy abysses hide
+     Beauty and excellence unknown. To thee
+           Earth's wonder and her pride
+     Are gathered, as the waters to the sea.
+
+           Labors of good to man,
+     Unpublished charity, unbroken faith;
+           Love, that 'midst grief began,
+     And grew with years, and faltered not in death.
+
+           Full many a mighty name
+     Lurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevered.
+           With thee are silent Fame,
+     Forgotten Arts, and Wisdom disappeared.
+
+           Thine for a space are they.
+     Yet thou shalt yield thy treasures up at last;
+           Thy gates shall yet give way,
+     Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past!
+
+           All that of good and fair
+     Has gone into thy womb from earliest time
+           Shall then come forth, to wear
+     The glory and the beauty of its prime.
+
+           They have not perished--no!
+     Kind words, remembered voices once so sweet,
+           Smiles, radiant long ago,
+     And features, the great soul's apparent seat:
+
+           All shall come back. Each tie
+     Of pure affection shall be knit again:
+           Alone shall Evil die,
+     And sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign.
+
+           And then shall I behold
+     Him by whose kind paternal side I sprung;
+           And her who, still and cold,
+     Fills the next grave--the beautiful and young.
+
+
+     D. Appleton and Company, New York.
+
+
+
+JAMES BRYCE
+
+(1838-)
+
+James Bryce was born at Belfast, Ireland, of Scotch and Irish parents.
+He studied at the University of Glasgow and later at Oxford, where he
+graduated with high honors in 1862, and where after some years of legal
+practice he was appointed Regius Professor of Civil Law in 1870. He had
+already established a high reputation as an original and accurate
+historical scholar by his prize essay on the 'Holy Roman Empire' (1864),
+which passed through many editions, was translated into German, French,
+and Italian, and remains to-day a standard work and the best known work
+on the subject, Edward A. Freeman said on the appearance of the work
+that it had raised the author at once to the rank of a great historian.
+It has done more than any other treatise to clarify the vague notions of
+historians as to the significance of the imperial idea in the Middle
+Ages, and its importance as a factor in German and Italian politics; and
+it is safe to say that there is scarcely a recent history of the period
+that does not show traces of its influence. The scope of this work being
+juristic and philosophical, it does not admit of much historical
+narrative, and the style is lucid but not brilliant. It is not in fact
+as a historian that Mr. Bryce is best known, but rather as a jurist, a
+politician, and a student of institutions.
+
+[Illustration: JAMES BRYCE]
+
+The most striking characteristic of the man is his versatility; a
+quality which in his case has not been accompanied by its usual defects,
+for his achievements in one field seem to have made him no less
+conscientious in others, while they have given him that breadth of view
+which is more essential than any special training to the critic of men
+and affairs. For the ten years that followed his Oxford appointment he
+contributed frequently to the magazines on geographical, social, and
+political topics. His vacations he spent in travel and in mountain
+climbing, of which he gave an interesting narrative in 'Transcaucasia
+and Ararat' (1877). In 1880 he entered active politics, and was elected
+to Parliament in the Liberal interest. He has continued steadfast in
+his support of the Liberal party and of Mr. Gladstone, whose Home Rule
+policy he has heartily seconded. In 1886 he became Gladstone's
+Under-Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and in 1894 was appointed President
+of the Board of Trade.
+
+The work by which he is best known in this country, the 'American
+Commonwealth' (1888), is the fruit of his observations during three
+visits to the United States, and of many years of study. It is generally
+conceded to be the best critical analysis of American institutions ever
+made by a foreign author. Inferior in point of style to De Tocqueville's
+'Democracy in America,' it far surpasses that book in amplitude, breadth
+of view, acuteness of observation, and minuteness of information;
+besides being half a century later in date, and therefore able to set
+down accomplished facts where the earlier observer could only make
+forecasts. His extensive knowledge of foreign countries, by divesting
+him of insular prejudice, fitted him to handle his theme with
+impartiality, and his experience in the practical workings of British
+institutions gave him an insight into the practical defects and benefits
+of ours. That he has a keen eye for defects is obvious, but his tone is
+invariably sympathetic; so much so, in fact, that Goldwin Smith has
+accused him of being somewhat "hard on England" in some of his
+comparisons. The faults of the book pertain rather to the manner than to
+the matter. He does not mislead, but sometimes wearies, and in some
+portions of the work the frequent repetitions, the massing of details,
+and the absence of compact statement tend to obscure the general drift
+of his argument and to add unduly to the bulkiness of his volumes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE POSITION OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES
+
+From 'The American Commonwealth'
+
+Social intercourse between youths and maidens is everywhere more easy
+and unrestrained than in England or Germany, not to speak of France. Yet
+there are considerable differences between the Eastern cities, whose
+usages have begun to approximate to those of Europe, and other parts of
+the country. In the rural districts, and generally all over the West,
+young men and girls are permitted to walk together, drive together, go
+out to parties and even to public entertainments together, without the
+presence of any third person who can be supposed to be looking after or
+taking charge of the girl. So a girl may, if she pleases, keep up a
+correspondence with a young man, nor will her parents think of
+interfering. She will have her own friends, who when they call at her
+house ask for her, and are received by her, it may be alone; because
+they are not deemed to be necessarily the friends of her parents also,
+nor even of her sisters.
+
+In the cities of the Atlantic States it is now thought scarcely correct
+for a young man to take a young lady out for a solitary drive; and in
+few sets would he be permitted to escort her alone to the theatre. But
+girls still go without chaperons to dances, the hostess being deemed to
+act as chaperon for all her guests; and as regards both correspondence
+and the right to have one's own circle of acquaintances, the usage even
+of New York or Boston allows more liberty than does that of London or
+Edinburgh. It was at one time, and it may possibly still be, not
+uncommon for a group of young people who know one another well to make
+up an autumn "party in the woods." They choose some mountain and forest
+region, such as the Adirondack Wilderness west of Lake Champlain, engage
+three or four guides, embark with guns and fishing-rods, tents,
+blankets, and a stock of groceries, and pass in boats up the rivers and
+across the lakes of this wild country through sixty or seventy miles of
+trackless forest, to their chosen camping-ground at the foot of some
+tall rock that rises from the still crystal of the lake. Here they build
+their bark hut, and spread their beds of the elastic and fragrant
+hemlock boughs; the youths roam about during the day, tracking the deer,
+the girls read and work and bake the corn-cakes; at night there is a
+merry gathering round the fire, or a row in the soft moonlight. On these
+expeditions brothers will take their sisters and cousins, who bring
+perhaps some lady friends with them; the brothers' friends will come
+too; and all will live together in a fraternal way for weeks or months,
+though no elderly relative or married lady be of the party.
+
+There can be no doubt that the pleasure of life is sensibly increased by
+the greater freedom which transatlantic custom permits; and as the
+Americans insist that no bad results have followed, one notes with
+regret that freedom declines in the places which deem themselves most
+civilized. American girls have been, so far as a stranger can ascertain,
+less disposed to what are called "fast ways" than girls of the
+corresponding classes in England, and exercise in this respect a pretty
+rigorous censorship over one another. But when two young people find
+pleasure in one another's company, they can see as much of each other as
+they please, can talk and walk together frequently, can show that they
+are mutually interested, and yet need have little fear of being
+misunderstood either by one another or by the rest of the world. It is
+all a matter of custom. In the West, custom sanctions this easy
+friendship; in the Atlantic cities, so soon as people have come to find
+something exceptional in it, constraint is felt, and a conventional
+etiquette like that of the Old World begins to replace the innocent
+simplicity of the older time, the test of whose merit may be gathered
+from the universal persuasion in America that happy marriages are in the
+middle and upper ranks more common than in Europe, and that this is due
+to the ampler opportunities which young men and women have of learning
+one another's characters and habits before becoming betrothed. Most
+girls have a larger range of intimate acquaintances than girls have in
+Europe, intercourse is franker, there is less difference between the
+manners of home and the manners of general society. The conclusions of a
+stranger are in such matters of no value; so I can only repeat that I
+have never met any judicious American lady who, however well she knew
+the Old World, did not think that the New World customs conduced more
+both to the pleasantness of life before marriage, and to constancy and
+concord after it.
+
+In no country are women, and especially young women, so much made of.
+The world is at their feet. Society seems organized for the purpose of
+providing enjoyment for them. Parents, uncles, aunts, elderly friends,
+even brothers, are ready to make their comfort and convenience bend to
+the girls' wishes. The wife has fewer opportunities for reigning over
+the world of amusements, because except among the richest people she has
+more to do in household management than in England, owing to the
+scarcity of servants; but she holds in her own house a more prominent if
+not a more substantially powerful position than in England or even in
+France. With the German _haus-frau_, who is too often content to be a
+mere housewife, there is of course no comparison. The best proof of the
+superior place American ladies occupy is to be found in the notions they
+profess to entertain of the relations of an English married pair. They
+talk of the English wife as little better than a slave; declaring that
+when they stay with English friends, or receive an English couple in
+America, they see the wife always deferring to the husband and the
+husband always assuming that his pleasure and convenience are to
+prevail. The European wife, they admit, often gets her own way, but she
+gets it by tactful arts, by flattery or wheedling or playing on the
+man's weaknesses; whereas in America the husband's duty and desire is to
+gratify the wife, and render to her those services which the English
+tyrant exacts from his consort. One may often hear an American matron
+commiserate a friend who has married in Europe, while the daughters
+declare in chorus that they will never follow the example. Laughable as
+all this may seem to English women, it is perfectly true that the theory
+as well as the practice of conjugal life is not the same in America as
+in England. There are overbearing husbands in America, but they are more
+condemned by the opinion of the neighborhood than in England. There are
+exacting wives in England, but their husbands are more pitied than would
+be the case in America. In neither country can one say that the
+principle of perfect equality reigns; for in America the balance
+inclines nearly, though not quite, as much in favor of the wife as it
+does in England in favor of the husband. No one man can have a
+sufficiently large acquaintance in both countries to entitle his
+individual opinion on the results to much weight. So far as I have been
+able to collect views from those observers who have lived in both
+countries, they are in favor of the American practice, perhaps because
+the theory it is based on departs less from pure equality than does that
+of England. These observers do not mean that the recognition of women as
+equals or superiors makes them any better or sweeter or wiser than
+Englishwomen; but rather that the principle of equality, by correcting
+the characteristic faults of men, and especially their selfishness and
+vanity, is more conducive to the concord and happiness of a home. They
+conceive that to make the wife feel her independence and responsibility
+more strongly than she does in Europe tends to brace and expand her
+character; while conjugal affection, usually stronger in her than in the
+husband, inasmuch as there are fewer competing interests, saves her from
+abusing the precedence yielded to her. This seems to be true; but I have
+heard others maintain that the American system, since it does not
+require the wife habitually to forego her own wishes, tends, if not to
+make her self-indulgent and capricious, yet slightly to impair the more
+delicate charms of character; as it is written, "It is more blessed to
+give than to receive."
+
+A European cannot spend an evening in an American drawing-room without
+perceiving that the attitude of men to women is not that with which he
+is familiar at home. The average European man has usually a slight sense
+of condescension when he talks to a woman on serious subjects. Even if
+she is his superior in intellect, in character, in social rank, he
+thinks that as a man he is her superior, and consciously or
+unconsciously talks down to her. She is too much accustomed to this to
+resent it, unless it becomes tastelessly palpable. Such a notion does
+not cross an American's mind. He talks to a woman just as he would to a
+man; of course with more deference of manner, and with a proper regard
+to the topics likely to interest her, but giving her his intellectual
+best, addressing her as a person whose opinion is understood by both to
+be worth as much as his own. Similarly an American lady does not expect
+to have conversation made to her: it is just as much her duty or
+pleasure to lead it as the man's is; and more often than not she takes
+the burden from him, darting along with a gay vivacity which puts to
+shame his slower wits.
+
+It need hardly be said that in all cases where the two sexes come into
+competition for comfort, the provision is made first for women. In
+railroads the end car of the train, being that farthest removed from the
+smoke of the locomotive, is often reserved for them (though men
+accompanying a lady are allowed to enter it); and at hotels their
+sitting-room is the best and sometimes the only available public room,
+ladyless guests being driven to the bar or the hall. In omnibuses and
+horse-cars (tram-cars), it was formerly the custom for a gentleman to
+rise and offer his seat to a lady if there were no vacant place. This is
+now less universally done. In New York and Boston (and I think also in
+San Francisco), I have seen the men keep their seats when ladies
+entered; and I recollect one occasion when the offer of a seat to a lady
+was declined by her, on the ground that as she had chosen to enter a
+full car she ought to take the consequences. It was (I was told in
+Boston) a feeling of this kind that had led to the discontinuance of the
+old courtesy: when ladies constantly pressed into the already crowded
+vehicles, the men, who could not secure the enforcement of the
+regulations against over-crowding, tried to protect themselves by
+refusing to rise. It is sometimes said that the privileges yielded to
+American women have disposed them to claim as a right what was only a
+courtesy, and have told unfavorably upon their manners. I know of
+several instances, besides this one of the horse-cars, which might seem
+to support the criticism, but cannot on the whole think it well founded.
+The better-bred women do not presume on their sex, and the area of good
+breeding is always widening. It need hardly be said that the community
+at large gains by the softening and restraining influence which the
+reverence for womanhood diffuses. Nothing so quickly incenses the people
+as any insult offered to a woman. Wife-beating, and indeed any kind of
+rough violence offered to women, is far less common among the rudest
+class than it is in England. Field work or work at the pit-mouth of
+mines is seldom or never done by women in America; and the American
+traveler who in some parts of Europe finds women performing severe
+manual labor, is revolted by the sight in a way which Europeans find
+surprising.
+
+In the farther West, that is to say, beyond the Mississippi, in the
+Rocky Mountain and Pacific States, one is much struck by what seems the
+absence of the humblest class of women. The trains are full of poorly
+dressed and sometimes (though less frequently) rough-mannered men. One
+discovers no women whose dress or air marks them out as the wives,
+daughters, or sisters of these men, and wonders whether the male
+population is celibate, and if so, why there are so many women. Closer
+observation shows that the wives, daughters, and sisters are there, only
+their attire and manner are those of what Europeans would call
+middle-class and not working-class people. This is partly due to the
+fact that Western men affect a rough dress. Still one may say that the
+remark so often made, that the masses of the American people correspond
+to the middle class of Europe, is more true of the women than of the
+men; and is more true of them, in the rural districts and in the West
+than it is of the inhabitants of Atlantic cities. I remember to have
+been dawdling in a book-store in a small town in Oregon when a lady
+entered to inquire if a monthly magazine, whose name was unknown to me,
+had yet arrived. When she was gone I asked the salesman who she was, and
+what was the periodical she wanted. He answered that she was the wife of
+a railway workman, that the magazine was a journal of fashions, and that
+the demand for such journals was large and constant among women of the
+wage-earning class in the town. This set me to observing female dress
+more closely; and it turned out to be perfectly true that the women in
+these little towns were following the Parisian fashions very closely,
+and were in fact ahead of the majority of English ladies belonging to
+the professional and mercantile classes. Of course in such a town as I
+refer to, there are no domestic servants except in the hotels (indeed,
+almost the only domestic service to be had in the Pacific States was
+till very recently that of Chinese), so these votaries of fashion did
+all their own housework and looked after their own babies.
+
+Three causes combine to create among American women an average of
+literary taste and influence higher than that of women in any European
+country. These are the educational facilities they enjoy, the
+recognition of the equality of the sexes in the whole social and
+intellectual sphere, and the leisure which they possess as compared with
+men. In a country where men are incessantly occupied at their business
+or profession, the function of keeping up the level of culture devolves
+upon women. It is safe in their hands. They are quick and keen-witted,
+less fond of open-air life and physical exertion than English women are,
+and obliged by the climate to pass a greater part of their time under
+shelter from the cold of winter and the sun of summer. For music and for
+the pictorial arts they do not yet seem to have formed so strong a taste
+as for literature; partly perhaps owing to the fact that in America the
+opportunities of seeing and hearing masterpieces, except indeed operas,
+are rarer than in Europe. But they are eager and assiduous readers of
+all such books and periodicals as do not presuppose special knowledge in
+some branch of science or learning, while the number who have devoted
+themselves to some special study and attained proficiency in it is
+large. The fondness for sentiment, especially moral and domestic
+sentiment, which is often observed as characterizing American taste in
+literature, seems to be mainly due to the influence of women, for they
+form not only the larger part of the reading public, but an
+independent-minded part, not disposed to adopt the canons laid down by
+men, and their preferences count for more in the opinions and
+predilections of the whole nation than is the case in England. Similarly
+the number of women who write is infinitely larger in America than in
+Europe. Fiction, essays, and poetry are naturally their favorite
+provinces. In poetry more particularly, many whose names are quite
+unknown in Europe have attained wide-spread fame.
+
+Some one may ask how far the differences between the position of women
+in America and their position in Europe are due to democracy? or if not
+to this, then to what other cause?
+
+They are due to democratic feeling, in so far as they spring from the
+notion that all men are free and equal, possessed of certain inalienable
+rights and owing certain corresponding duties. This root idea of
+democracy cannot stop at defining men as male human beings, any more
+than it could ultimately stop at defining them as white human beings.
+For many years the Americans believed in equality with the pride of
+discoverers as well as with the fervor of apostles. Accustomed to apply
+it to all sorts and conditions of men, they were naturally the first to
+apply it to women also; not indeed as respects politics, but in all the
+social as well as legal relations of life. Democracy is in America more
+respectful of the individual, less disposed to infringe his freedom or
+subject him to any sort of legal or family control, than it has shown
+itself in Continental Europe; and this regard for the individual inured
+to the benefit of women. Of the other causes that have worked in the
+same direction, two may be mentioned. One is the usage of the
+Congregationalist, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches, under which a
+woman who is a member of the congregation has the same rights in
+choosing a deacon, elder, or pastor, as a man has. Another is the fact
+that among the westward-moving settlers women were at first few in
+number, and were therefore treated with special respect. The habit then
+formed was retained as the communities grew, and propagated itself all
+over the country.
+
+What have been the results on the character and usefulness of women
+themselves?
+
+Favorable. They have opened to them a wider life and more variety of
+career. While the special graces of the feminine character do not appear
+to have suffered, there has been produced a sort of independence and a
+capacity for self-help which are increasingly valuable as the number of
+unmarried women increases. More resources are open to an American woman
+who has to lead a solitary life, not merely in the way of employment,
+but for the occupation of her mind and tastes, than to a European
+spinster or widow; while her education has not rendered the American
+wife less competent for the discharge of household duties.
+
+How has the nation at large been affected by the development of this new
+type of womanhood, or rather perhaps of this variation on the
+English type?
+
+If women have on the whole gained, it is clear that the nation gains
+through them. As mothers they mold the character of their children;
+while the function of forming the habits of society and determining its
+moral tone rests greatly in their hands. But there is reason to think
+that the influence of the American system tells directly for good upon
+men as well as upon the whole community. Men gain in being brought to
+treat women as equals, rather than as graceful playthings or useful
+drudges. The respect for women which every American man either feels, or
+is obliged by public sentiment to profess, has a wholesome effect on his
+conduct and character, and serves to check the cynicism which some other
+peculiarities of the country foster. The nation as a whole owes to the
+active benevolence of its women, and their zeal in promoting social
+reforms, benefits which the customs of Continental Europe would scarcely
+have permitted women to confer. Europeans have of late years begun to
+render a well-deserved admiration to the brightness and vivacity of
+American ladies. Those who know the work they have done and are doing in
+many a noble cause will admire still more their energy, their courage,
+their self-devotion. No country seems to owe more to its women than
+America does, nor to owe to them so much of what is best in social
+institutions and in the beliefs that govern conduct.
+
+By permission of James Bryce and the Macmillan Company.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE ASCENT OF ARARAT
+
+From 'Trans-Caucasia and Ararat'
+
+About 1 A.M. we got off, thirteen in all, and made straight across the
+grassy hollows for the ridges which trend up towards the great cone,
+running parallel in a west-north-westerly direction, and inclosing
+between them several long narrow depressions, hardly deep enough to be
+called valleys. The Kurds led the way, and at first we made pretty good
+progress. The Cossacks seemed fair walkers, though less stalwart than
+the Kurds; the pace generally was better than that with which Swiss
+guides start. However, we were soon cruelly undeceived. In twenty-five
+minutes there came a steep bit, and at the top of it they flung
+themselves down on the grass to rest. So did we all. Less than half a
+mile farther, down they dropped again, and this time we were obliged to
+give the signal for resuming the march. In another quarter of an hour
+they were down once more, and so it continued for the rest of the way.
+Every ten minutes' walking--it was seldom steep enough to be called
+actual climbing--was followed by seven or eight minutes of sitting
+still, smoking and chattering. How they did chatter! It was to no
+purpose that we continued to move on when they sat down, or that we rose
+to go before they had sufficiently rested. They looked at one another,
+so far as I could make out by the faint light, and occasionally they
+laughed; but they would not and did not stir till such time as pleased
+themselves. We were helpless. Impossible to go on alone; impossible also
+to explain to them why every moment was precious, for the acquaintance
+who had acted as interpreter had been obliged to stay behind at
+Sardarbulakh, and we were absolutely without means of communication with
+our companions. One could not even be angry, had there been any use in
+that, for they were perfectly good-humored. It was all very well to
+beckon them, or pull them by the elbow, or clap them on the back; they
+thought this was only our fun, and sat still and chattered all the same.
+When it grew light enough to see the hands of a watch, and mark how the
+hours advanced while the party did not, we began for a second time to
+despair of success.
+
+About 3 A.M. there suddenly sprang up from behind the Median mountains
+the morning star, shedding a light such as no star ever gave in these
+northern climes of ours,--a light that almost outshone the moon. An hour
+later it began to pale in the first faint flush of yellowish light that
+spread over the eastern heaven; and first the rocky masses above us,
+then Little Ararat, throwing behind him a gigantic shadow, then the long
+lines of mountains beyond the Araxes, became revealed, while the wide
+Araxes plain still lay dim and shadowy below. One by one the stars died
+out as the yellow turned to a deeper glow that shot forth in long
+streamers, the rosy fingers of the dawn, from the horizon to the zenith.
+Cold and ghostly lay the snows on the mighty cone; till at last there
+came upon their topmost slope, six thousand feet above us, a sudden
+blush of pink. Swiftly it floated down the eastern face, and touched and
+kindled the rocks just above us. Then the sun flamed out, and in a
+moment the Araxes valley and all the hollows of the savage ridges we
+were crossing were flooded with overpowering light.
+
+It was nearly six o'clock, and progress became easier now that we could
+see our way distinctly. The Cossacks seemed to grow lazier, halting as
+often as before and walking less briskly; in fact, they did not relish
+the exceeding roughness of the jagged lava ridges along whose tops or
+sides we toiled. I could willingly have lingered here myself; for in the
+hollows, wherever a little soil appeared, some interesting plants were
+growing, whose similarity to and difference from the Alpine species of
+Western Europe alike excited one's curiosity. Time allowed me to secure
+only a few; I trusted to get more on the way back, but this turned out
+to be impossible. As we scrambled along a ridge above a long narrow
+winding glen filled with loose blocks, one of the Kurds suddenly swooped
+down like a vulture from the height on a spot at the bottom, and began
+peering and grubbing among the stones. In a minute or two he cried out,
+and the rest followed; he had found a spring, and by scraping in the
+gravel had made a tiny basin out of which we could manage to drink a
+little. Here was a fresh cause of delay: everybody was thirsty, and
+everybody must drink; not only the water which, as we afterwards saw,
+trickled down hither under the stones from a snow-bed seven hundred feet
+higher, but the water mixed with some whisky from a flask my friend
+carried, which even in this highly diluted state the Cossacks took to
+heartily. When at last we got them up and away again, they began to
+waddle and strangle; after a while two or three sat down, and plainly
+gave us to see they would go no farther. By the time we had reached a
+little snow-bed whence the now strong sun was drawing a stream of water,
+and halted on the rocks beside it for breakfast, there were only two
+Cossacks and the four Kurds left with us, the rest having scattered
+themselves about somewhere lower down. We had no idea what instructions
+they had received, nor whether indeed they had been told anything except
+to bring us as far as they could, to see that the Kurds brought the
+baggage, and to fetch us back again, which last was essential for
+Jaafar's peace of mind. We concluded therefore that if left to
+themselves they would probably wait our return; and the day was running
+on so fast that it was clear there was no more time to be lost in trying
+to drag them along with us.
+
+Accordingly I resolved to take what I wanted in the way of food, and
+start at my own pace. My friend, who carried more weight, and had felt
+the want of training on our way up, decided to come no farther, but wait
+about here, and look out for me towards nightfall. We noted the
+landmarks carefully,--the little snow-bed, the head of the glen covered
+with reddish masses of stone and gravel; and high above it, standing out
+of the face of the great cone of Ararat, a bold peak or rather
+projecting tooth of black rock, which our Cossacks called the Monastery,
+and which, I suppose from the same fancied resemblance to a building, is
+said to be called in Tatar Tach Kilissa, "the church rock." It is
+doubtless an old cone of eruption, about thirteen thousand feet in
+height, and is really the upper end of the long ridge we had been
+following, which may perhaps represent a lava flow from it, or the edge
+of a fissure which at this point found a vent.
+
+It was an odd position to be in: guides of two different races, unable
+to communicate either with us or with one another: guides who could not
+lead and would not follow; guides one-half of whom were supposed to be
+there to save us from being robbed and murdered by the other half, but
+all of whom, I am bound to say, looked for the moment equally simple and
+friendly, the swarthy Iranian as well as the blue-eyed Slav.
+
+At eight o'clock I buckled on my canvas gaiters, thrust some crusts of
+bread, a lemon, a small flask of cold tea, four hard-boiled eggs, and a
+few meat lozenges into my pocket, bade good-by to my friend, and set
+off. Rather to our surprise, the two Cossacks and one of the Kurds came
+with me, whether persuaded by a pantomime of encouraging signs, or
+simply curious to see what would happen. The ice-axe had hugely amused
+the Cossacks all through. Climbing the ridge to the left, and keeping
+along its top for a little way, I then struck across the semi-circular
+head of a wide glen, in the middle of which, a little lower, lay a
+snow-bed over a long steep slope of loose broken stones and sand. This
+slope, a sort of talus or "screen" as they say in the Lake country, was
+excessively fatiguing from the want of firm foothold; and when I reached
+the other side, I was already so tired and breathless, having been on
+foot since midnight, that it seemed almost useless to persevere farther.
+However, on the other side I got upon solid rock, where the walking was
+better, and was soon environed by a multitude of rills bubbling down
+over the stones from the stone-slopes above. The summit of Little
+Ararat, which had for the last two hours provokingly kept at the same
+apparent height above me, began to sink, and before ten o'clock I could
+look down upon its small flat top, studded with lumps of rock, but
+bearing no trace of a crater. Mounting steadily along the same ridge, I
+saw at a height of over thirteen thousand feet, lying on the loose
+blocks, a piece of wood about four feet long and five inches thick,
+evidently cut by some tool, and so far above the limit of trees that it
+could by no possibility be a natural fragment of one. Darting on it with
+a glee that astonished the Cossack and the Kurd, I held it up to them,
+and repeated several times the word "Noah." The Cossack grinned; but he
+was such a cheery, genial fellow that I think he would have grinned
+whatever I had said, and I cannot be sure that he took my meaning, and
+recognized the wood as a fragment of the true Ark. Whether it was really
+gopher wood, of which material the Ark was built, I will not undertake
+to say, but am willing to submit to the inspection of the curious the
+bit which I cut off with my ice-axe and brought away. Anyhow, it will be
+hard to prove that it is not gopher wood. And if there be any remains of
+the Ark on Ararat at all,--a point as to which the natives are perfectly
+clear,--here rather than the top is the place where one might expect to
+find them, since in the course of ages they would get carried down by
+the onward movement of the snow-beds along the declivities. This wood,
+therefore, suits all the requirements of the case. In fact, the argument
+is for the case of a relic exceptionally strong: the Crusaders who found
+the Holy Lance at Antioch, the archbishop who recognized the Holy Coat
+at Treves, not to speak of many others, proceeded upon slighter
+evidence. I am, however, bound to admit that another explanation of the
+presence of this piece of timber on the rocks of this vast height did
+occur to me. But as no man is bound to discredit his own relic, and such
+is certainly not the practice of the Armenian Church, I will not disturb
+my readers' minds or yield to the rationalizing tendencies of the age by
+suggesting it.
+
+Fearing that the ridge by which we were mounting would become too
+precipitous higher up, I turned off to the left, and crossed a long,
+narrow snow-slope that descended between this ridge and another line of
+rocks more to the west. It was firm, and just steep enough to make steps
+cut in the snow comfortable, though not necessary; so the ice-axe was
+brought into use. The Cossack who accompanied me--there was but one now,
+for the other Cossack had gone away to the right some time before, and
+was quite lost to view--had brought my friend's alpenstock, and was
+developing a considerable capacity for wielding it. He followed nimbly
+across; but the Kurd stopped on the edge of the snow, and stood peering
+and hesitating, like one who shivers on the plank at a bathing-place,
+nor could the jeering cries of the Cossack induce him to venture on the
+treacherous surface. Meanwhile, we who had crossed were examining the
+broken cliff which rose above us. It looked not exactly dangerous, but a
+little troublesome, as if it might want some care to get over or
+through. So after a short rest I stood up, touched my Cossack's arm, and
+pointed upward. He reconnoitred the cliff with his eye, and shook his
+head. Then, with various gestures of hopefulness, I clapped him on the
+back, and made as though to pull him along. He looked at the rocks again
+and pointed, to them, stroked his knees, turned up and pointed to the
+soles of his boots, which certainly were suffering from the lava, and
+once more solemnly shook his head. This was conclusive: so I conveyed to
+him my pantomime that he had better go back to the bivouac where my
+friend was, rather than remain here alone, and that I hoped to meet him
+there in the evening; took an affectionate farewell, and turned towards
+the rocks. There was evidently nothing for it but to go on alone. It was
+half-past ten o'clock, and the height about thirteen thousand six
+hundred feet, Little Ararat now lying nearly one thousand feet below
+the eye.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not knowing how far the ridge I was following might continue passable, I
+was obliged to stop frequently to survey the rocks above, and erect
+little piles of stone to mark the way. This not only consumed time, but
+so completely absorbed the attention that for hours together I scarcely
+noticed the marvelous landscape spread out beneath, and felt the solemn
+grandeur of the scenery far less than many times before on less striking
+mountains. Solitude at great heights, or among majestic rocks or
+forests, commonly stirs in us all deep veins of feeling, joyous or
+saddening, or more often of joy and sadness mingled. Here the strain on
+the observing senses seemed too great for fancy or emotion to have any
+scope. When the mind is preocupied by the task of the moment,
+imagination is checked. This was a race against time, in which I could
+only scan the cliffs for a route, refer constantly to the watch, husband
+my strength by morsels of food taken at frequent intervals, and endeavor
+to conceive how a particular block or bit of slope which it would be
+necessary to recognize would look when seen the other way in
+descending....
+
+All the way up this rock-slope, which proved so fatiguing that for the
+fourth time I had almost given up hope, I kept my eye fixed on its upper
+end to see what signs there were of crags or snow-fields above. But the
+mist lay steadily at the point where the snow seemed to begin, and it
+was impossible to say what might be hidden behind that soft white
+curtain. As little could I conjecture the height I had reached by
+looking around, as one so often does on mountain ascents, upon other
+summits; for by this time I was thousands of feet above Little Ararat,
+the next highest peak visible, and could scarcely guess how many
+thousands. From this tremendous height it looked more like a broken
+obelisk than an independent summit twelve thousand eight hundred feet in
+height. Clouds covered the farther side of the great snow basin, and
+were seething like waves about the savage pinnacles, the towers of the
+Jinn palace, which guard its lower margin, and past which my upward path
+had lain. With mists to the left and above, and a range of black
+precipices cutting off all view to the right, there came a vehement
+sense of isolation and solitude, and I began to understand better the
+awe with which the mountain silence inspires the Kurdish shepherds.
+Overhead the sky had turned from dark blue to an intense bright green, a
+color whose strangeness seemed to add to the weird terror of the scene.
+It wanted barely an hour to the time when I had resolved to turn back;
+and as I struggled up the crumbling rocks, trying now to right and now
+to left, where the foothold looked a little firmer, I began to doubt
+whether there was strength enough left to carry me an hour higher. At
+length the rock-slope came suddenly to an end, and I stepped out upon
+the almost level snow at the top of it, coming at the same time into the
+clouds, which naturally clung to the colder surfaces. A violent west
+wind was blowing, and the temperature must have been pretty low, for a
+big icicle at once enveloped the lower half of my face, and did not melt
+till I got to the bottom of the cone four hours afterwards. Unluckily I
+was very thinly clad, the stout tweed coat reserved for such occasions
+having been stolen on a Russian railway. The only expedient to be tried
+against the piercing cold was to tighten in my loose light coat by
+winding around the waist a Spanish _faja_, or scarf, which I had brought
+up to use in case of need as a neck wrapper. Its bright purple looked
+odd enough in such surroundings, but as there was nobody there to
+notice, appearances did not much matter. In the mist, which was now
+thick, the eye could pierce only some thirty yards ahead; so I walked on
+over the snow five or six minutes, following the rise of its surface,
+which was gentle, and fancying there might still be a good long way to
+go. To mark the backward track I trailed the point of the ice-axe along
+behind me in the soft snow, for there was no longer any landmark; all
+was cloud on every side. Suddenly to my astonishment the ground began to
+fall away to the north; I stopped; a puff of wind drove off the mists on
+one side, the opposite side to that by which I had come, and showed the
+Araxes plain at an abysmal depth below. It was the top of Ararat.
+
+
+
+THE WORK OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
+
+From 'The Holy Roman Empire'
+
+No one who reads the history of the last three hundred years--no one,
+above all, who studies attentively the career of Napoleon--can believe
+it possible for any State, however great her energy and material
+resources, to repeat in modern Europe the part of ancient Rome; to
+gather into one vast political body races whose national individuality
+has grown more and more marked in each successive age. Nevertheless, it
+is in great measure due to Rome and to the Roman Empire of the Middle
+Ages that the bonds of national union are on the whole both stronger and
+nobler than they were ever before. The latest historian of Rome
+[Mommsen], after summing up the results to the world of his hero's
+career, closes his treatise with these words:
+
+     "There was in the world as Caesar found it the rich and noble
+     heritage of past centuries, and an endless abundance of
+     splendor and glory; but little soul, still less taste, and
+     least of all, joy in and through life. Truly it was an old
+     world, and even Caesar's genial patriotism could not make it
+     young again. The blush of dawn returns not until the night
+     has fully descended. Yet with him there came to the
+     much-tormented races of the Mediterranean a tranquil evening
+     after a sultry day; and when after long historical night the
+     new day broke once more upon the peoples, and fresh nations
+     in free self-guided movement began their course toward new
+     and higher aims, many were found among them in whom the seed
+     of Caesar had sprung up,--many who owed him, and who owe him
+     still, their national individuality."
+
+If this be the glory of Julius, the first great founder of the Empire,
+so is it also the glory of Charles, the second founder, and of more than
+one among his Teutonic successors. The work of the mediaeval Empire was
+self-destructive; and it fostered, while seeming to oppose, the
+nationalities that were destined to replace it. It tamed the barbarous
+races of the North and forced them within the pale of civilization. It
+preserved the arts and literature of antiquity. In times of violence and
+oppression, it set before its subjects the duty of rational obedience to
+an authority whose watchwords were peace and religion. It kept alive,
+when national hatreds were most bitter, the notion of a great European
+Commonwealth. And by doing all this, it was in effect abolishing the
+need for a centralizing and despotic power like itself; it was making
+men capable of using national independence aright; it was teaching them
+to rise to that conception of spontaneous activity, and a freedom which
+is above law but not against it, to which national independence itself,
+if it is to be a blessing at all, must be only a means. Those who mark
+what has been the tendency of events since A.D. 1789, and who remember
+how many of the crimes and calamities of the past are still but half
+redressed, need not be surprised to see the so-called principle of
+nationalities advocated with honest devotion as the final and perfect
+form of political development. But such undistinguishing advocacy is
+after all only the old error in a new shape. If all other history did
+not bid us beware the habit of taking the problems and the conditions of
+our own age for those of all time, the warning which the Empire gives
+might alone be warning enough. From the days of Augustus down to those
+of Charles V., the whole civilized world believed in its existence as a
+part of the eternal fitness of things, and Christian theologians were
+not behind heathen poets in declaring that when it perished the world
+would perish with it. Yet the Empire is gone, and the world remains, and
+hardly notes the change.
+
+
+
+FRANCIS TREVELYAN BUCKLAND
+
+(1826-1880)
+
+Certainly, among the most useful of writers are the popularizers of
+science; those who can describe in readable, picturesque fashion those
+wonders and innumerable inhabitants of the world which the Dryasdusts
+discover, but which are apt to escape the attention of idlers or of the
+busy workers in other fields. Sometimes--not often--the same man unites
+the capacities of a patient and accurate investigator and of an
+accomplished narrator. To such men the field of enjoyment is boundless,
+as is the opportunity to promote the enjoyment of others.
+
+One of these two-sided men was Francis Trevelyan Buckland, popularly
+known as "Frank" Buckland, and so called in some of his books. His
+father, William Buckland,--at the time of the son's birth canon of
+Christ College, Oxford, and subsequently Dean of Westminster,--was the
+well-known geologist. As the father's life was devoted to the study of
+the inorganic, so that of the son was absorbed in the investigation of
+the organic world. He never tired of watching the habits of living
+creatures of all kinds; he lived as it were in a menagerie and it is
+related that his numerous callers were accustomed to the most familiar
+and impertinent demonstrations on the part of his monkeys and various
+other pets. He was an expert salmon-fisher, and his actual specialty was
+fishes; but he could not have these about him so conveniently as some
+other forms of life, and he extended his studies and specimens widely
+beyond ichthyology.
+
+Buckland was born December 17th, 1826, and died December 19th, 1880.
+Brought up in a scientific atmosphere, he was all his life interested in
+the same subjects. Educated as a physician and surgeon and distinguished
+for his anatomical skill, his training fitted him for the careful
+investigation which is necessary on the part of the biologist. He was
+fortunate too in receiving in early middle life the government
+appointment of Inspector of Salmon Fisheries, and so being enabled to
+devote himself wholly to his favorite pursuits. In this position he was
+unwearied in his efforts to develop pisciculture, and to improve the
+apparatus used by the fishermen, interesting himself also in the
+condition of themselves and their families.
+
+He was always writing. He was a very frequent contributor to The Field
+from its foundation in 1856, and subsequently to Land and Water, a
+periodical which he started in 1866, and to other periodicals. He
+published a number of volumes, made up in great part from his
+contributions to periodicals, most of them of a popular character and
+full of interesting information. Among those which are best known are
+the 'Curiosities of Natural History' (1857-72); the 'Log-Book of a
+Fisherman and Geologist' (1875); a 'Natural History of British Fishes'
+(1881); and 'Notes and Jottings from Animal Life,' which was not issued
+until 1882, though the material was selected by himself.
+
+Buckland was of a jovial disposition, and always sure to see the
+humorous side of the facts which were presented to him; and in his
+social life he was extremely unconventional, and inclined to merry
+pranks. His books are as delightful as was their writer. They are
+records of accurate, useful, eye-opening details as to fauna, all the
+world over. They are written with a brisk, sincere informality that
+suggest the lively talker rather than the writer. He takes us a-walking
+in green lanes and woods, and a-wading in brooks and still pools--not
+drawing us into a class-room or a study. He enters into the heart and
+life of creatures, and shows us how we should do the same. A lively
+humor is in all his popular pages. He instructs while smiling; and he is
+a savant while a light-hearted friend. Few English naturalists are as
+genial--not even White of Selborne--and few as wide in didactics. To
+know him is a profit indeed; but just as surely a pleasure.
+
+
+
+A HUNT IN A HORSE-POND
+
+From 'Curiosities of Natural History'
+
+Well, let us have a look at the pond-world; choose a dry place at the
+side, and fix our eyes steadily upon the dirty water: what shall we see?
+Nothing at first; but wait a minute or two: a little round black knob
+appears in the middle; gradually it rises higher and higher, till at
+last you can make out a frog's head, with his great eyes staring hard at
+you, like the eyes of the frog in the woodcut facing AEsop's fable of the
+frog and the bull. Not a bit of his body do you see: he is much too
+cunning for that; he does not know who or what you are; you may be a
+heron, his mortal enemy, for aught he knows. You move your arm: he
+thinks it is the heron's bill coming; down he goes again, and you see
+him not: a few seconds, he regains courage and reappears, having
+probably communicated the intelligence to the other frogs; for many big
+heads and many big eyes appear, in all parts of the pond, looking like
+so many hippopotami on a small scale. Soon a conversational "Wurk; wurk,
+wurk," begins: you don't understand it; luckily, perhaps, as from the
+swelling in their throats it is evident that the colony is outraged by
+the intrusion, and the remarks passing are not complimentary to the
+intruder. These frogs are all respectable, grown-up, well-to-do frogs,
+and they have in this pond duly deposited their spawn, and then,
+hard-hearted creatures! left it to its fate; it has, however, taken care
+of itself, and is now hatched, at least that part of it which has
+escaped the hands of the gipsies, who not unfrequently prescribe baths
+of this natural jelly for rheumatism....
+
+In some places, from their making this peculiar noise, frogs have been
+called "Dutch nightingales." In Scotland, too, they have a curious name,
+Paddock or Puddick; but there is poetical authority for it:--
+
+     "The water-snake whom fish and paddocks feed,
+     With staring scales lies poisoned."--DRYDEN.
+
+Returning from the University of Giessen, I brought with me about a
+dozen green tree-frogs, which I had caught in the woods near the town.
+The Germans call them _laub-frosch,_ or leaf-frog; they are most
+difficult things to find, on account of their color so much resembling
+the leaves on which they live. I have frequently heard one singing in a
+small bush, and though I have searched carefully, have not been able to
+find him: the only way is to remain quite quiet till he again begins his
+song. After much ambush-work, at length I collected a dozen frogs and
+put them in a bottle. I started at night on my homeward journey by the
+diligence, and I put the bottle containing the frogs into the pocket
+inside the diligence. My fellow-passengers were sleepy old smoke-dried
+Germans: very little conversation took place, and after the first mile
+every one settled himself to sleep, and soon all were snoring. I
+suddenly awoke with a start, and found all the sleepers had been roused
+at the same moment. On their sleepy faces were depicted fear and anger.
+What had woke us all up so suddenly? The morning was just breaking, and
+my frogs, though in the dark pocket of the coach, had found it out; and
+with one accord, all twelve of them had begun their morning song. As if
+at a given signal, they one and all of them began to croak as loud as
+ever they could. The noise their united concert made, seemed, in the
+closed compartment of the coach, quite deafening. Well might the Germans
+look angry: they wanted to throw the frogs, bottle and all, out of the
+window; but I gave the bottle a good shaking, and made the frogs keep
+quiet. The Germans all went to sleep again, but I was obliged to remain
+awake, to shake the frogs when they began to croak. It was lucky that I
+did so, for they tried to begin their concert again two or three times.
+These frogs came safely to Oxford; and the day after their arrival, a
+stupid housemaid took off the top of the bottle to see what was inside;
+one of the frogs croaked at that instant, and so frightened her that she
+dared not put the cover on again. They all got loose in the garden,
+where I believe the ducks ate them, for I never heard or saw them again.
+
+
+
+ON RATS
+
+From 'Curiosities of Natural History'
+
+On one occasion, when a boy, I recollect secretly borrowing an
+old-fashioned flint gun from the bird-keeper of the farm to which I had
+been invited. I ensconced myself behind the door of the pig-sty,
+determined to make a victim of one of the many rats that were accustomed
+to disport themselves among the straw that formed the bed of the
+farmer's pet bacon-pigs. In a few minutes out came an old
+patriarchal-looking rat, who, having taken a careful survey, quietly
+began to feed. After a long aim, bang went the gun--I fell backwards,
+knocked down by the recoil of the rusty old piece of artillery. I did
+not remain prone long, for I was soon roused by the most unearthly
+squeaks, and a dreadful noise as of an infuriated animal madly rushing
+round and round the sty. Ye gods! what had I done? I had not surely,
+like the tailor in the old song of the 'Carrion Crow,'
+
+     "Shot and missed my mark,
+     And shot the old sow right bang through the heart."
+
+But I had nearly performed a similar sportsman-like feat. There was poor
+piggy, the blood flowing in streamlets from several small punctures in
+that part of his body destined, at no very distant period, to become
+ham; in vain attempting, by dismal cries and by energetic waggings of
+his curly tail, to appease the pain of the charge of small shot which
+had so unceremoniously awaked him from his porcine dreams of oatmeal
+and boiled potatoes. But where was the rat? He had disappeared unhurt;
+the buttocks of the unfortunate pig, the rightful owner of the premises,
+had received the charge of shot intended to destroy the daring intruder.
+
+To appease piggy's wrath I gave him a bucketful of food from the
+hog-tub; and while he was thus consoling his inward self, wiped off the
+blood from the wounded parts, and said nothing about it to anybody. No
+doubt, before this time, some frugal housewife has been puzzled and
+astonished at the unwonted appearance of a charge of small shot in the
+centre of the breakfast ham which she procured from Squire Morland, of
+Sheepstead, Berks.
+
+Rats are very fond of warmth, and will remain coiled up for hours in any
+snug retreat where they can find this very necessary element of their
+existence. The following anecdote well illustrates this point:--
+
+My late father, when fellow of Corpus College, Oxford, many years ago,
+on arriving at his rooms late one night, found that a rat was running
+about among the books and geological specimens, behind the sofa, under
+the fender, and poking his nose into every hiding-place he could find.
+Being studiously inclined, and wishing to set to work at his books, he
+pursued him, armed with the poker in one hand, and a large dictionary,
+big enough to crush any rat, in the other; but in vain; Mr. Rat was not
+to be caught, particularly when such "arma scholastica" were used.
+
+No sooner had the studies recommenced than the rat resumed his gambols,
+squeaking and rushing about the room like a mad creature. The battle was
+renewed, and continued at intervals, to the destruction of all studies,
+till quite a late hour at night, when the pursuer, angry and wearied,
+retired to his adjoining bedroom; though he listened attentively he
+heard no more of the enemy, and soon fell asleep. In the morning he was
+astonished to find something warm lying on his chest; carefully lifting
+up the bed-clothes, he discovered his tormentor of the preceding night
+quietly and snugly ensconced in a fold in the blanket, and taking
+advantage of the bodily warmth of his two-legged adversary. These two
+lay looking daggers at each other for some minutes, the one unwilling to
+leave his warm berth, the other afraid to put his hand out from under
+the protection of the coverlid, particularly as the stranger's aspect
+was anything but friendly, his little sharp teeth and fierce little
+black eyes seeming to say, "Paws off from me, if you please!"
+
+At length, remembering the maxim that "discretion is the better part of
+valor"--the truth of which, I imagine, rats understand as well as most
+creatures,--he made a sudden jump off the bed, scuttled away into the
+next room, and was never seen or heard of afterwards....
+
+Rats are not selfish animals: having found out where the feast is
+stored, they will kindly communicate the intelligence to their friends
+and neighbors. The following anecdote will confirm this fact. A certain
+worthy old lady named Mrs. Oke, who resided at Axminster several years
+ago, made a cask of sweet wine, for which she was celebrated, and
+carefully placed it on a shelf in the cellar. The second night after
+this event she was frightened almost to death by a strange unaccountable
+noise in the said cellar. The household was called up and a search made,
+but nothing was found to clear up the mystery. The next night, as soon
+as the lights were extinguished and the house quiet, this dreadful noise
+was heard again. This time it was most alarming: a sound of squeaking,
+crying, knocking, pattering feet; then a dull scratching sound, with
+many other such ghostly noises, which continued throughout the livelong
+night. The old lady lay in bed with the candle alight, pale and
+sleepless with fright, anon muttering her prayers, anon determined to
+fire off the rusty old blunderbuss that hung over the chimneypiece. At
+last the morning broke, and the cock began to crow. "Now," thought she,
+"the ghosts must disappear." To her infinite relief, the noise really
+did cease, and the poor frightened dame adjusted her nightcap and fell
+asleep. Great preparations had she made for the next night; farm
+servants armed with pitchforks slept in the house; the maids took the
+family dinner-bell and the tinder-box into their rooms; the big dog was
+tied to the hall-table. Then the dame retired to her room, not to sleep,
+but to sit up in the arm-chair by the fire, keeping a drowsy guard over
+the neighbor's loaded horse-pistols, of which she was almost as much
+afraid as she was of the ghost in the cellar. Sure enough, her warlike
+preparations had succeeded; the ghost was certainly frightened; not a
+noise, not a sound, except the heavy snoring of the bumpkins and the
+rattling of the dog's chain in the hall, could be heard. She had gained
+a complete victory; the ghost was never heard again on the premises, and
+the whole affair was soon forgotten. Some weeks afterward some friends
+dropped in to take a cup of tea and talk over the last piece of gossip.
+Among other things the wine was mentioned, and the maid sent to get some
+from the cellar. She soon returned, and gasping for breath, rushed into
+the room, exclaiming, "'Tis all gone, ma'am;" and sure enough it was all
+gone. "The ghost has taken it"--not a drop was left, only the empty cask
+remained; the side was half eaten away, and marks of sharp teeth were
+visible round the ragged margins of the newly made bungholes.
+
+This discovery fully accounted for the noise the ghost had made, which
+caused so much alarm. The aboriginal rats in the dame's cellar had found
+out the wine, and communicated the joyful news to all the other rats in
+the parish; they had assembled there to enjoy the fun, and get very
+tipsy (which, judging from the noise they made, they certainly did) on
+this treasured cask of wine. Being quite a family party, they had
+finished it in two nights; and having got all they could, like wise rats
+they returned to their respective homes, perfectly unconscious that
+their merry-making had nearly been the death of the rightful owner and
+"founder of the feast." They had first gnawed out the cork, and got as
+much as they could: they soon found that the more they drank the lower
+the wine became. Perseverance is the motto of the rat; so they set to
+work and ate away the wood to the level of the wine again. This they
+continued till they had emptied the cask; they must then have got into
+it and licked up the last drains, for another and less agreeable smell
+was substituted for that of wine. I may add that this cask, with the
+side gone, and the marks of the rats' teeth, is still in my possession.
+
+
+
+SNAKES AND THEIR POISON
+
+From 'Curiosities of Natural History'
+
+Be it known to any person to whose lot it should fall to rescue a person
+from the crushing folds of a boa-constrictor, that it is no use pulling
+and hauling at the centre of the brute's body; catch hold of the tip of
+his tail,--he can then be easily unwound,--he cannot help himself;--he
+"must" come off. Again, if you wish to kill a snake, it is no use
+hitting and trying to crush his head. The bones of the head are
+composed of the densest material, affording effectual protection to the
+brain underneath: a wise provision for the animal's preservation; for
+were his skull brittle, his habit of crawling on the ground would render
+it very liable to be fractured. The spinal cord runs down the entire
+length of the body; this being wounded, the animal is disabled or killed
+instanter. Strike therefore his tail, and not his head; for at his tail
+the spinal cord is but thinly covered with bone, and suffers readily
+from injury. This practice is applicable to eels. If you want to kill an
+eel, it is not much use belaboring his head: strike, however, his tail
+two or three times against any hard substance, and he is quickly dead.
+
+About four years ago I myself, in person, had painful experience of the
+awful effects of snake's poison. I have received a dose of the cobra's
+poison into my system; luckily a minute dose, or I should not have
+survived it. The accident happened in a very curious way. I was poisoned
+by the snake but not bitten by him. I got the poison second-hand.
+Anxious to witness the effects of the poison of the cobra upon a rat, I
+took up a couple in a bag alive to a certain cobra. I took one rat out
+of the bag and put him into the cage with the snake. The cobra was
+coiled up among the stones in the centre of the cage, apparently asleep.
+When he heard the noise of the rat falling into the cage, he just looked
+up and put out his tongue, hissing at the same time. The rat got in a
+corner and began washing himself, keeping one eye on the snake, whose
+appearance he evidently did not half like. Presently the rat ran across
+the snake's body, and in an instant the latter assumed his fighting
+attitude. As the rat passed the snake, he made a dart, but missing his
+aim, hit his nose a pretty hard blow against the side of the cage. This
+accident seemed to anger him, for he spread out his crest and waved it
+to and fro in the beautiful manner peculiar to his kind. The rat became
+alarmed and ran near him again. Again cobra made a dart, and bit him,
+but did not, I think, inject any poison into him, the rat being so very
+active; at least, no symptoms of poisoning were shown. The bite
+nevertheless aroused the ire of the rat, for he gathered himself for a
+spring, and measuring his distance, sprang right on to the neck of the
+cobra, who was waving about in front of him. This plucky rat, determined
+to die hard, gave the cobra two or three severe bites in the neck, the
+snake keeping his body erect all this time, and endeavoring to turn his
+head round so as to bite the rat who was clinging on like the old man in
+'Sindbad the Sailor.' Soon, however, cobra changed his tactics. Tired,
+possibly, with sustaining the weight of the rat, he lowered his head,
+and the rat, finding himself again on terra firma, tried to run away:
+not so; for the snake, collecting all his force, brought down his
+erected poison-fangs, making his head tell by its weight in giving vigor
+to the blow, right on to the body of the rat.
+
+This poor beast now seemed to know that the fight was over and that he
+was conquered. He retired to a corner of the cage and began panting
+violently, endeavoring at the same time to steady his failing strength
+with his feet. His eyes were widely dilated, and his mouth open as if
+gasping for breath. The cobra stood erect over him, hissing and putting
+out his tongue as if conscious of victory. In about three minutes the
+rat fell quietly on his side and expired; the cobra then moved off and
+took no further notice of his defunct enemy. About ten minutes afterward
+the rat was hooked out of the cage for me to examine. No external wound
+could I see anywhere, so I took out my knife and began taking the skin
+off the rat. I soon discovered two very minute punctures, like small
+needle-holes, in the side of the rat, where the fangs of the snake had
+entered. The parts between the skin and the flesh, and the flesh itself,
+appeared as though affected with mortification, even though the wound
+had not been inflicted above a quarter of an hour, if so much.
+
+Anxious to see if the skin itself was affected, I scraped away the parts
+on it with my finger-nail. Finding nothing but the punctures, I threw
+the rat away and put the knife and skin in my pocket, and started to go
+away. I had not walked a hundred yards before all of a sudden I felt
+just as if somebody had come behind me and struck me a severe blow on
+the head and neck, and at the same time I experienced a most acute pain
+and sense of oppression at the chest, as though a hot iron had been run
+in and a hundred-weight put on the top of it. I knew instantly, from
+what I had read, that I was poisoned; I said as much to my friend, a
+most intelligent gentleman, who happened to be with me, and told him if
+I fell to give me brandy and "eau de luce," words which he kept
+repeating in case he might forget them. At the same time I enjoined him
+to keep me going, and not on any account to allow me to lie down.
+
+I then forgot everything for several minutes, and my friend tells me I
+rolled about as if very faint and weak. He also informs me that the
+first thing I did was to fall against him, asking if I looked seedy. He
+most wisely answered, "No, you look very well." I don't think he thought
+so, for his own face was as white as a ghost; I recollect this much. He
+tells me my face was of a greenish-yellow color. After walking or rather
+staggering along for some minutes, I gradually recovered my senses and
+steered for the nearest chemist's shop. Rushing in, I asked for eau de
+luce. Of course he had none, but my eye caught the words "Spirit, ammon.
+co.," or hartshorn, on a bottle. I reached it down myself, and pouring a
+large quantity into a tumbler with a little water, both of which
+articles I found on a soda-water stand in the shop, drank it off, though
+it burnt my mouth and lips very much. Instantly I felt relief from the
+pain at the chest and head. The chemist stood aghast, and on my telling
+him what was the matter, recommended a warm bath. If I had then followed
+his advice these words would never have been placed on record. After a
+second draught at the hartshorn bottle, I proceeded on my way, feeling
+very stupid and confused. On arriving at my friend's residence close by,
+he kindly procured me a bottle of brandy, of which I drank four large
+wine-glasses one after the other, but did not feel the least tipsy after
+the operation. Feeling nearly well, I started on my way home, and then
+for the first time perceived a most acute pain under the nail of the
+left thumb: this pain also ran up the arm. I set to work to suck the
+wound, and then found out how the poison had got into the system. About
+an hour before I examined the dead rat I had been cleaning the nail with
+a penknife, and had slightly separated the nail from the skin beneath.
+Into this little crack the poison had got when I was scraping the rat's
+skin to examine the wound. How virulent, therefore, must the poison of
+the cobra be! It had already been circulated in the body of the rat,
+from which I had imbibed it second-hand!
+
+MY MONKEY JACKO
+
+From 'Curiosities of Natural History'
+
+After some considerable amount of bargaining (in which amusing,
+sometimes animated, not to say exciting exhibition of talent, Englishmen
+generally get worsted by the Frenchmen, as was the case in the present
+instance), Jacko became transferred, chain, tail and all, to his new
+English master. Having arrived at the hotel, it became a question as to
+what was to become of Jacko while his master was absent from home. A
+little closet, opening into the wall of the bedroom, offered itself as a
+temporary prison. Jacko was tied up _securely_--alas! how vain are the
+thoughts of man!--to one of the row of pegs that were fastened against
+the wall. As the door closed on him his wicked eyes seemed to say, "I'll
+do some mischief now;" and sure enough he did, for when I came back to
+release him, like AEneas,
+
+     "Obstupni, steteruntque comae et vox fancibus haesit[5]."
+
+[Footnote 5:
+     "Aghast, astonished, and struck dumb with fear,
+     I stood; like bristles rose my stiffened hair."--DRYDEN.
+]
+
+The walls, that but half an hour previously were covered with a finely
+ornamented paper, now stood out in the bold nakedness of lath and
+plaster; the relics on the floor showed that the little wretch's fingers
+had by no means been idle. The pegs were all loosened, the individual
+peg to which his chain had been fastened, torn completely from its
+socket, that the destroyer's movements might not be impeded, and an
+unfortunate garment that happened to be hung up in the closet was torn
+to a thousand shreds. If ever Jack Sheppard had a successor, it was this
+monkey. If he had tied the torn bits of petticoat together and tried to
+make his escape from the window, I don't think I should have been much
+surprised....
+
+It was, after Jacko's misdeeds, quite evident that he must no longer be
+allowed full liberty; and a lawyer's blue bag, such as may be frequently
+seen in the dreaded neighborhood of the Court of Chancery,--filled,
+however, more frequently with papers and parchment than with
+monkeys,--was provided for him; and this receptacle, with some hay
+placed at the bottom for a bed, became his new abode. It was a movable
+home, and therein lay the advantage; for when the strings of it were
+tied there was no mode of escape. He could not get his hands through the
+aperture at the end to unfasten them, the bag was too strong for him to
+bite his way through, and his ineffectual efforts to get out only had
+the effect of making the bag roll along the floor, and occasionally make
+a jump up into the air; forming altogether an exhibition which if
+advertised in the present day of wonders as "le bag vivant," would
+attract crowds of delighted and admiring citizens.
+
+In the bag aforesaid he traveled as far as Southampton on his road to
+town. While taking the ticket at the railway station, Jacko, who must
+needs see everything that was going on, suddenly poked his head out of
+the bag and gave a malicious grin at the ticket-giver. This much
+frightened the poor man, but with great presence of mind,--quite
+astonishing under the circumstances,--he retaliated the insult: "Sir,
+that's a dog; you must pay for it accordingly." In vain was the monkey
+made to come out of the bag and exhibit his whole person; in vain were
+arguments in full accordance with the views of Cuvier and Owen urged
+eagerly, vehemently, and without hesitation (for the train was on the
+point of starting), to prove that the animal in question was not a dog,
+but a monkey. A dog it was in the peculiar views of the official, and
+three-and-sixpence was paid. Thinking to carry the joke further (there
+were just a few minutes to spare), I took out from my pocket a live
+tortoise I happened to have with me, and showing it, said, "What must I
+pay for this, as you charge for _all_ animals?" The employe adjusted his
+specs, withdrew from the desk to consult with his superior; then
+returning, gave the verdict with a grave but determined manner, "No
+charge for them, sir: them be insects."
+
+
+
+HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE
+
+(1821-1862)
+
+Henry Thomas Buckle was born at Lee, in Kent, on November 24th, 1821,
+the son of a wealthy London merchant. A delicate child, he participated
+in none of the ordinary sports of children, but sat instead for hours
+listening to his mother's reading of the Bible and the 'Arabian Nights.'
+She had a great influence on his early development. She was a Calvinist,
+deeply religious, and Buckle himself in after years acknowledged that to
+her he owed his faith in human progress through the dissemination and
+triumph of truth, as well as his taste for philosophic speculations and
+his love for poetry. His devotion to her was lifelong. Owing to his
+feeble health he passed but a few years at school, and did not enter
+college. Nor did he know much, in the scholar's sense, of books. Till he
+was nearly eighteen the 'Arabian Nights,' the 'Pilgrim's Progress' and
+Shakespeare constituted his chief reading.
+
+But he was fond of games of mental skill, and curiously enough, first
+gained distinction, not in letters but at the chessboard, and in the
+course of his subsequent travels he challenged and defeated the
+champions of Europe. He was concerned for a short time in business; but
+being left with an independent income at the death of his father, he
+resolved to devote himself to study. He traveled for a year on the
+Continent, learning on the spot the languages of the countries he passed
+through. In time he became an accomplished linguist, reading nineteen
+languages and conversing fluently in seven.
+
+By the time he was nineteen he had resolved to write a great historic
+work, of a nature not yet attempted by any one. To prepare himself for
+this monumental labor, and to make up for past deficiencies, he settled
+in London; and, apparently single-handed and without the advice or help
+of tutors or professional men, entered upon that course of voluminous
+reading on which his erudition rests.
+
+He is a singular instance of a self-taught man, without scientific or
+academic training, producing a work that marks an epoch in historical
+literature. With a wonderful memory, he had, like Macaulay, the gift of
+getting the meaning and value of a book by simply glancing over the
+pages. On an average he could read with intelligent comprehension three
+books in a working day of eight hours, and in time mastered his library
+of twenty-two thousand volumes, indexing every book on the back, and
+transcribing many pages into his commonplace-books. In this way he
+spent fifteen years of study in collecting his materials.
+
+The first volume of his introduction to the 'History of Civilization in
+England' appeared in 1857, and aroused an extraordinary interest because
+of the novelty and audacity of its statements. It was both bitterly
+attacked and enthusiastically praised, as it antagonized or attracted
+its readers. Buckle became the intellectual hero of the hour. The second
+volume appeared in May, 1861. And now, worn out by overwork, his
+delicate nerves completely unstrung by the death of his mother, who had
+remained his first and only love, he left England for the East, in
+company with the two young sons of a friend. In Palestine he was
+stricken with typhoid fever, and died at Damascus on May 29th, 1862. His
+grave is marked by a marble tomb with the inscription from the Arabic:--
+
+     "The written word remains long after the writer;
+     The writer is resting under the earth, but his works endure."
+
+Three volumes of 'Miscellanies and Posthumous Works,' edited by Helen
+Taylor, were published in 1872. Among these are a lecture on 'Woman,'
+delivered before the Royal Institution,--Buckle's single and very
+successful attempt at public speaking,--and a Review of Mill's
+'Liberty,' one of the finest contemporary appreciations of that thinker.
+But he wrote little outside his 'History,' devoting himself with entire
+singleness of purpose to his life-work.
+
+The introduction to the 'History of Civilization in England' has been
+aptly called the "fragment of a fragment." When as a mere youth he
+outlined his work, he overestimated the extremest accomplishment of a
+single mind, and did not clearly comprehend the vastness of the
+undertaking. He had planned a general history of civilization; but as
+the material increased on his hands he was forced to limit his project,
+and finally decided to confine his work to a consideration of England
+from the middle of the sixteenth century. In February, 1853, he wrote to
+a friend:--
+
+     "I have been long convinced that the progress of every people
+     is regulated by principles--or as they are called, laws--as
+     regular and as certain as those which govern the physical
+     world. To discover these laws is the object of my work.... I
+     propose to take a general survey of the moral, intellectual,
+     and legislative peculiarities of the great countries of
+     Europe; and I hope to point out the circumstances under which
+     these peculiarities have arisen. This will lead to a
+     perception of certain relations between the various stages
+     through which each people have progressively passed. Of these
+     _general_ relations I intend to make a _particular_
+     application; and by a careful analysis of the history of
+     England, show how they have regulated our civilization, and
+     how the successive and apparently the arbitrary forms of our
+     opinions, our literature, our laws, and our manners, have
+     naturally grown out of their antecedents."
+
+This general scheme was adhered to in the published history, and he
+supported his views by a vast array of illustrations and proofs. The
+main ideas advanced in the Introduction--for he did not live to write
+the body of the work, the future volumes to which he often pathetically
+refers--these ideas may be thus stated:--First: Nothing had yet been
+done toward discovering the principles underlying the character and
+destiny of nations, to establish a basis for a science of history,--a
+task which Buckle proposed to himself. Second: Experience shows that
+nations are governed by laws as fixed and regular as the laws of the
+physical world. Third: Climate, soil, food, and the aspects of nature
+are the primary causes in forming the character of a nation. Fourth: The
+civilization within and without Europe is determined by the fact that in
+Europe man is stronger than nature, and here alone has subdued her to
+his service; whereas on the other continents nature is the stronger and
+man has been subdued by her. Fifth: The continually increasing influence
+of mental laws and the continually diminishing influence of physical
+laws characterize the advance of European civilization. Sixth: The
+mental laws regulating the progress of society can only be discovered by
+such a comprehensive survey of facts as will enable us to eliminate
+disturbances; namely, by the method of averages. Seventh: Human progress
+is due to intellectual activity, which continually changes and expands,
+rather than to moral agencies, which from the beginnings of society have
+been more or less stationary. Eighth: In human affairs in general,
+individual efforts are insignificant, and great men work for evil rather
+than for good, and are moreover merely incidental to their age. Ninth:
+Religion, literature, art, and government instead of being causes of
+civilization, are merely its products. Tenth: The progress of
+civilization varies directly as skepticism--the disposition to doubt, or
+the "protective spirit"--the disposition to maintain without examination
+established beliefs and practices, predominates.
+
+The new scientific methods of Darwin and Mill were just then being
+eagerly discussed in England; and Buckle, an alert student and great
+admirer of Mill, in touch with the new movements of the day, proposed,
+"by applying to the history of man those methods of investigation which
+have been found successful in other branches of knowledge, and rejecting
+all preconceived notions which could not bear the test of those
+methods," to remove history from the condemnation of being a mere series
+of arbitrary facts, or a biography of famous men, or the small-beer
+chronicle of court gossip and intrigues, and to raise it to the level
+of an exact science, subject to mental laws as rigid and infallible as
+the laws of nature:--
+
+     "Instead of telling us of those things which alone have any
+     value--instead of giving us information respecting the
+     progress of knowledge and the way in which mankind has been
+     affected by the diffusion of that knowledge ... the vast
+     majority of historians fill their works with the most
+     trifling and miserable details.... In other great branches of
+     knowledge, observation has preceded discovery; first the
+     facts have been registered and then their laws have been
+     found. But in the study of the history of man, the important
+     facts have been neglected and the unimportant ones preserved.
+     The consequence is, that whoever now attempts to generalize
+     historical phenomena must collect the facts as well as
+     conduct the generalization."
+
+Buckle's ideal of the office and acquirements of the historian was of
+the highest. He must indeed possess a synthesis of the whole range of
+human knowledge to explain the progress of man. By connecting history
+with political economy and statistics, he strove to make it exact. And
+he exemplified his theories by taking up branches of scientific
+investigation hitherto considered entirely outside the province of the
+historian. He first wrote history scientifically, pursuing the same
+methods and using the same kinds of proofs as the scientific worker. The
+first volume excited as much angry discussion as Darwin's 'Origin of
+Species' had done in its day. The boldness of its generalizations, its
+uncompromising and dogmatic tone, irritated more than one class of
+readers. The chapters on Spain and on Scotland, with their strictures on
+the religions of those countries, containing some of the most brilliant
+passages in the book, brought up in arms against him both Catholics and
+Presbyterians. Trained scientists blamed him for encroaching on their
+domains with an insufficient knowledge of the phenomena of the natural
+world, whence resulted a defective logic and vague generalizations.
+
+It is true that Buckle was not trained in the methods of the schools;
+that he labored under the disadvantage of a self-taught, solitary
+worker, not receiving the friction of other vigorous minds; and that his
+reading, if extensive, was not always wisely chosen, and from its very
+amount often ill-digested. He had knowledge rather than true learning,
+and taking this knowledge at second hand, often relied on sources that
+proved either untrustworthy or antiquated, for he lacked the true
+relator's fine discrimination, that weighs and sifts authorities and
+rejects the inadequate. Malicious critics declared that all was grist
+that came to his mill. Yet his popularity with that class of readers
+whom he did not shock by his disquisitions on religions and morals, or
+make distrustful by his sweeping generalizations and scientific
+inaccuracies, is due to the fact that his book appeared at the right
+moment: for the time was really come to make history something more than
+a chronicle of detached facts and anecdotes. The scientific spirit was
+awake, and demanded that human action, like the processes of nature, be
+made the subject of general law. The mind of Buckle proved fruitful soil
+for those germs of thought floating in the air, and he gave them visible
+form in his history. If he was not a leader, he was a brilliant
+formulator of thought, and he was the first to put before the reading
+world, then ready to receive them, ideas and speculations till now
+belonging to the student. For he wrote with the determination to be
+intelligible to the general reader. It detracts nothing from the
+permanent value of his work thus to state its genesis, for this is
+merely to apply to it his own methods.
+
+Moreover, a perpetual charm lies in his clear, limpid English, a medium
+perfectly adapted to calm exposition or to impassioned rhetoric.
+Whatever the defects of Buckle's system: whatever the inaccuracies that
+the advance of thirty years of patient scientific labors can easily
+point out; however sweeping his generalization; or however dogmatic his
+assertions, the book must be allowed high rank among the works that set
+men thinking, and must thus be conceded to possess enduring value.
+
+
+
+MORAL VERSUS INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLES IN HUMAN PROGRESS
+
+From the 'History of Civilization in England'
+
+There is unquestionably nothing to be found in the world which has
+undergone so little change as those great dogmas of which moral systems
+are composed. To do good to others; to sacrifice for their benefit your
+own wishes; to love your neighbor as yourself; to forgive your enemies;
+to restrain your passions; to honor your parents; to respect those who
+are set over you,--these and a few others are the sole essentials of
+morals: but they have been known for thousands of years, and not one jot
+or tittle has been added to them by all the sermons, homilies, and
+text-books which moralists and theologians have been able to produce.
+But if we contrast this stationary aspect of moral truths with the
+progressive aspect of intellectual truths, the difference is indeed
+startling. All the great moral systems which have exercised much
+influence have been fundamentally the same; all the great intellectual
+systems have been fundamentally different. In reference to our moral
+conduct, there is not a single principle now known to the most
+cultivated Europeans which was not likewise known to the ancients. In
+reference to the conduct of our intellect, the moderns have not only
+made the most important additions to every department of knowledge that
+the ancients ever attempted to study, but besides this they have upset
+and revolutionized the old methods of inquiry; they have consolidated
+into one great scheme all those resources of induction which Aristotle
+alone dimly perceived; and they have created sciences, the faintest idea
+of which never entered the mind of the boldest thinker antiquity
+produced.
+
+These are, to every educated man, recognized and notorious facts; and
+the inference to be drawn from them is immediately obvious. Since
+civilization is the product of moral and intellectual agencies, and
+since that product is constantly changing, it evidently cannot be
+regulated by the stationary agent; because, when surrounding
+circumstances are unchanged, a stationary agent can only produce a
+stationary effect. The only other agent is the intellectual one; and
+that this is the real mover may be proved in two distinct ways: first
+because, being as we have already seen either moral or intellectual, and
+being as we have also seen not moral, it must be intellectual; and
+secondly, because the intellectual principle has an activity and a
+capacity for adaptation which, as I undertake to show, is quite
+sufficient to account for the extraordinary progress that during several
+centuries Europe has continued to make.
+
+Such are the main arguments by which my view is supported; but there are
+also other and collateral circumstances which are well worthy of
+consideration. The first is, that the intellectual principle is not only
+far more progressive than the moral principle, but is also far more
+permanent in its results. The acquisitions made by the intellect are, in
+every civilized country, carefully preserved, registered in certain
+well-understood formulas, and protected by the use of technical and
+scientific language; they are easily handed down from one generation to
+another, and thus assuming an accessible, or as it were a tangible form,
+they often influence the most distant posterity, they become the
+heirlooms of mankind, the immortal bequest of the genius to which they
+owe their birth. But the good deeds effected by our moral faculties are
+less capable of transmission; they are of a more private and retiring
+character: while as the motives to which they owe their origin are
+generally the result of self-discipline and of self-sacrifice, they
+have to be worked out by every man for himself; and thus, begun by each
+anew, they derive little benefit from the maxims of preceding
+experience, nor can they well be stored up for the use of future
+moralists. The consequence is that although moral excellence is more
+amiable, and to most persons more attractive, than intellectual
+excellence, still it must be confessed that looking at ulterior results,
+it is far less active, less permanent, and as I shall presently prove,
+less productive of real good. Indeed, if we examine the effects of the
+most active philanthropy and of the largest and most disinterested
+kindness, we shall find that those effects are, comparatively speaking,
+short-lived; that there is only a small number of individuals they come
+in contact with and benefit; that they rarely survive the generation
+which witnessed their commencement; and that when they take the more
+durable form of founding great public charities, such institutions
+invariably fall, first into abuse, then into decay, and after a time are
+either destroyed or perverted from their original intention, mocking the
+effort by which it is vainly attempted to perpetuate the memory even of
+the purest and most energetic benevolence.
+
+These conclusions are no doubt very unpalatable; and what makes them
+peculiarly offensive is, that it is impossible to refute them. For the
+deeper we penetrate into this question, the more clearly shall we see
+the superiority of intellectual acquisitions over moral feeling. There
+is no instance on record of an ignorant man who, having good intentions
+and supreme power to enforce them, has not done far more evil than good.
+And whenever the intentions have been very eager, and the power very
+extensive, the evil has been enormous. But if you can diminish the
+sincerity of that man, if you can mix some alloy with his motives, you
+will likewise diminish the evil which he works. If he is selfish as well
+as ignorant, it will often happen [that] you may play off his vice
+against his ignorance, and by exciting his fears restrain his mischief.
+If, however, he has no fear, if he is entirely unselfish, if his sole
+object is the good of others, if he pursues that object with enthusiasm,
+upon a large scale, and with disinterested zeal, then it is that you
+have no check upon him, you have no means of preventing the calamities
+which in an ignorant age an ignorant man will be sure to inflict. How
+entirely this is verified by experience, we may see in studying the
+history of religious persecution. To punish even a single man for his
+religious tenets is assuredly a crime of the deepest dye; but to punish
+a large body of men, to persecute an entire sect, to attempt to
+extirpate opinions which, growing out of the state of society in which
+they arise, are themselves a manifestation of the marvelous and
+luxuriant fertility of the human mind,--to do this is not only one of
+the most pernicious, but one of the most foolish acts that can possibly
+be conceived. Nevertheless it is an undoubted fact that an overwhelming
+majority of religious persecutors have been men of the purest
+intentions, of the most admirable and unsullied morals. It is impossible
+that this should be otherwise. For they are not bad-intentioned men who
+seek to enforce opinions which they believe to be good. Still less are
+they bad men who are so regardless of temporal considerations as to
+employ all the resources of their power, not for their own benefit, but
+for the purpose of propagating a religion which they think necessary to
+the future happiness of mankind. Such men as these are not bad, they are
+only ignorant; ignorant of the nature of truth, ignorant of the
+consequences of their own acts. But in a moral point of view their
+motives are unimpeachable. Indeed, it is the very ardor of their
+sincerity which warms them into persecution. It is the holy zeal by
+which they are fired that quickens their fanaticism into a deadly
+activity. If you can impress any man with an absorbing conviction of the
+supreme importance of some moral or religious doctrine; if you can make
+him believe that those who reject that doctrine are doomed to eternal
+perdition; if you then give that man power, and by means of his
+ignorance blind him to the ulterior consequences of his own act,--he
+will infallibly persecute those who deny his doctrine; and the extent of
+his persecution will be regulated by the extent of his sincerity.
+Diminish the sincerity, and you will diminish the persecution; in other
+words, by weakening the virtue you may check the evil. This is a truth
+of which history furnishes such innumerable examples, that to deny it
+would be not only to reject the plainest and most conclusive arguments,
+but to refuse the concurrent testimony of every age. I will merely
+select two cases, which, from the entire difference in their
+circumstances, are very apposite as illustrations: the first being from
+the history of Paganism, the other from the history of Christianity; and
+both proving the inability of moral feelings to control religious
+persecution.
+
+I. The Roman emperors, as is well known, subjected the early Christians
+to persecutions which, though they have been exaggerated, were frequent
+and very grievous. But what to some persons must appear extremely
+strange, is, that among the active authors of these cruelties we find
+the names of the best men who ever sat on the throne; while the worst
+and most infamous princes were precisely those who spared the
+Christians, and took no heed of their increase. The two most thoroughly
+depraved of all the emperors were certainly Commodus and Elagabalus;
+neither of whom persecuted the new religion, or indeed adopted any
+measures against it. They were too reckless of the future, too selfish,
+too absorbed in their own infamous pleasures, to mind whether truth or
+error prevailed; and being thus indifferent to the welfare of their
+subjects, they cared nothing about the progress of a creed which they,
+as Pagan emperors, were bound to regard as a fatal and impious delusion.
+They therefore allowed Christianity to run its course, unchecked by
+those penal laws which more honest but more mistaken rulers would
+assuredly have enacted. We find, accordingly, that the great enemy of
+Christianity was Marcus Aurelius; a man of kindly temper, and of
+fearless, unflinching honesty, but whose reign was characterized by a
+persecution from which he would have refrained had he been less in
+earnest about the religion of his fathers. And to complete the argument,
+it may be added that the last and one of the most strenuous opponents of
+Christianity who occupied the throne of the Caesars was Julian; a prince
+of eminent probity, whose opinions are often attacked, but against whose
+moral conduct even calumny itself has hardly breathed a suspicion.
+
+II. The second illustration is supplied by Spain; a country of which it
+must be confessed, that in no other have religiuos feelings exercised
+such sway over the affairs of men. No other European nation has produced
+so many ardent and disinterested missionaries, zealous self-denying
+martyrs, who have cheerfully sacrificed their lives in order to
+propagate truths which they thought necessary to be known. Nowhere else
+have the spiritual classes been so long in the ascendant; nowhere else
+are the people so devout, the churches so crowded, the clergy so
+numerous. But the sincerity and honesty of purpose by which the Spanish
+people, taken as a whole, have always been marked, have not only been
+unable to prevent religious persecution, but have proved the means of
+encouraging it. If the nation had been more lukewarm, it would have
+been more tolerant. As it was, the preservation of the faith became the
+first consideration; and everything being sacrificed to this one object,
+it naturally happened that zeal begat cruelty, and the soil was prepared
+in which the Inquisition took root and flourished. The supporters of
+that barbarous institution were not hypocrites, but enthusiasts.
+Hypocrites are for the most part too supple to be cruel. For cruelty is
+a stern and unbending passion; while hypocrisy is a fawning and flexible
+art, which accommodates itself to human feelings, and flatters the
+weakness of men in order that it may gain its own ends. In Spain, the
+earnestness of the nation, being concentrated on a single topic, carried
+everything before it; and hatred of heresy becoming a habit, persecution
+of heresy was thought a duty. The conscientious energy with which that
+duty was fulfilled is seen in the history of the Spanish Church. Indeed,
+that the inquisitors were remarkable for an undeviating and
+uncorruptible integrity may be proved in a variety of ways, and from
+different and independent sources of evidence. This is a question to
+which I shall hereafter return; but there are two testimonies which I
+cannot omit, because, from the circumstances attending them, they are
+peculiarly unimpeachable. Llorente, the great historian of the
+Inquisition, and its bitter enemy, had access to its private papers: and
+yet, with the fullest means of information, he does not even insinuate a
+charge against the moral character of the inquisitors; but while
+execrating the cruelty of their conduct, he cannot deny the purity of
+their intentions. Thirty years earlier, Townsend, a clergyman of the
+Church of England, published his valuable work on Spain: and though, as
+a Protestant and an Englishman, he had every reason to be prejudiced
+against the infamous system which he describes, he also can bring no
+charge against those who upheld it; but having occasion to mention its
+establishment at Barcelona, one of its most important branches, he makes
+the remarkable admission that all its members are men of worth, and that
+most of them are of distinguished humanity.
+
+These facts, startling as they are, form a very small part of that vast
+mass of evidence which history contains, and which decisively proves the
+utter inability of moral feelings to diminish religious persecution. The
+way in which the diminution has been really effected by the mere
+progress of intellectual acquirements will be pointed out in another
+part of this volume; when we shall see that the great antagonist of
+intolerance is not humanity, but knowledge. It is to the diffusion of
+knowledge, and to that alone, that we owe the comparative cessation of
+what is unquestionably the greatest evil men have ever inflicted on
+their own species. For that religious persecution is a greater evil than
+any other, is apparent, not so much from the enormous and almost
+incredible number of its known victims, as from the fact that the
+unknown must be far more numerous, and that history gives no account of
+those who have been spared in the body in order that they might suffer
+in the mind. We hear much of martyrs and confessors--of those who were
+slain by the sword, or consumed in the fire: but we know little of that
+still larger number who by the mere threat of persecution have been
+driven into an outward abandonment of their real opinions; and who, thus
+forced into an apostasy the heart abhors, have passed the remainder of
+their lives in the practice of a constant and humiliating hypocrisy. It
+is this which is the real curse of religious persecution. For in this
+way, men being constrained to mask their thoughts, there arises a habit
+of securing safety by falsehood, and of purchasing impunity with deceit.
+In this way fraud becomes a necessary of life; insincerity is made a
+daily custom; the whole tone of public feeling is vitiated, and the
+gross amount of vice and of error fearfully increased. Surely, then, we
+have reason to say that, compared to this, all other crimes are of small
+account; and we may well be grateful for that increase of intellectual
+pursuits which has destroyed an evil that some among us would even now
+willingly restore.
+
+
+
+THE MYTHICAL ORIGIN OF HISTORY
+
+From the 'History of Civilization in England'
+
+At a very early period in the progress of a people, and long before they
+are acquainted with the use of letters, they feel the want of some
+resource which in peace may amuse their leisure, and in war may
+stimulate their courage. This is supplied to them by the invention of
+ballads; which form the groundwork of all historical knowledge, and
+which, in one shape or another, are found among some of the rudest
+tribes of the earth. They are for the most part sung by a class of men
+whose particular business it is thus to preserve the stock of
+traditions. Indeed, so natural is this curiosity as to past events that
+there are few nations to whom these bards or minstrels are unknown.
+Thus, to select a few instances, it is they who have preserved the
+popular traditions, not only of Europe, but also of China, Tibet, and
+Tartary; likewise of India, of Scinde, of Beloochistan, of Western Asia,
+of the islands of the Black Sea, of Egypt, of Western Africa, of North
+America, of South America, and of the islands in the Pacific.
+
+In all these countries, letters were long unknown, and as a people in
+that state have no means of perpetuating their history except by oral
+tradition, they select the form best calculated to assist their memory;
+and it will, I believe, be found that the first rudiments of knowledge
+consist always of poetry, and often of rhyme. The jingle pleases the ear
+of the barbarian, and affords a security that he will hand it down to
+his children in the unimpaired state in which he received it. This
+guarantee against error increases still further the value of these
+ballads; and instead of being considered as a mere amusement, they rise
+to the dignity of judicial authorities. The allusions contained in them
+are satisfactory proofs to decide the merits of rival families, or even
+to fix the limits of those rude estates which such a society can
+possess. We therefore find that the professed reciters and composers of
+these songs are the recognized judges in all disputed matters; and as
+they are often priests, and believed to be inspired, it is probably in
+this way that the notion of the divine origin of poetry first arose.
+These ballads will of course vary according to the customs and
+temperaments of the different nations, and according to the climate to
+which they are accustomed. In the south they assume a passionate and
+voluptuous form; in the north they are rather remarkable for their
+tragic and warlike character. But notwithstanding these diversities, all
+such productions have one feature in common: they are not only founded
+on truth, but making allowance for the colorings of poetry, they are all
+strictly true. Men who are constantly repeating songs which they
+constantly hear, and who appeal to the authorized singers of them as
+final umpires in disputed questions, are not likely to be mistaken on
+matters in the accuracy of which they have so lively an interest.
+
+This is the earliest and most simple of the various stages through which
+history is obliged to pass. But in the course of time, unless
+unfavorable circumstances intervene, society advances; and among other
+changes, there is one in particular of the greatest importance. I mean
+the introduction of the art of writing, which, before many generations
+are passed, must effect a complete alteration in the character of the
+national traditions. The manner in which, this occurs has, so far as I
+am aware, never been pointed out; and it will therefore be interesting
+to attempt to trace some of its details.
+
+The first and perhaps the most obvious consideration is, that the
+introduction of the art of writing gives permanence to the national
+knowledge, and thus lessens the utility of that oral information in
+which all the acquirements of an unlettered people must be contained.
+Hence it is that as a country advances the influence of tradition
+diminishes, and traditions themselves become less trustworthy. Besides
+this, the preservers of these traditions lose in this stage of society
+much of their former reputation. Among a perfectly unlettered people,
+the singers of ballads are, as we have already seen, the sole
+depositaries of those historical facts on which the fame, and often the
+property, of their chieftains principally depend. But when this same
+nation becomes acquainted with the art of writing, it grows unwilling to
+intrust these matters to the memory of itinerant singers, and avails
+itself of its new art to preserve them in a fixed and material form. As
+soon as this is effected, the importance of those who repeat the
+national traditions is sensibly diminished. They gradually sink into an
+inferior class, which, having lost its old reputation, no longer
+consists of those superior men to whose abilities it owed its former
+fame. Thus we see that although without letters there can be no
+knowledge of much importance, it is nevertheless true that their
+introduction is injurious to historical traditions in two distinct ways:
+first by weakening the traditions, and secondly by weakening the class
+of men whose occupation it is to preserve them.
+
+But this is not all. Not only does the art of writing lessen the number
+of traditionary truths, but it directly encourages the propagation of
+falsehoods. This is effected by what may be termed a principle of
+accumulation, to which all systems of belief have been deeply indebted.
+In ancient times, for example, the name of Hercules was given to several
+of those great public robbers who scourged mankind, and who, if their
+crimes were successful as well as enormous, were sure after their death
+to be worshiped as heroes. How this appellation originated is
+uncertain; but it was probably bestowed at first on a single man, and
+afterwards on those who resembled him in the character of their
+achievements. This mode of extending the use of a single name is natural
+to a barbarous people, and would cause little or no confusion, as long
+as the tradition of the country remained local and unconnected. But as
+soon as these traditions became fixed by a written language, the
+collectors of them, deceived by the similarity of name, assembled the
+scattered facts, and ascribing to a single man these accumulated
+exploits, degraded history to the level of a miraculous mythology. In
+the same way, soon after the use of letters was known in the North of
+Europe, there was drawn up by Saxo Grammaticus the life of the
+celebrated Ragnar Lodbrok. Either from accident or design, this great
+warrior of Scandinavia, who had taught England to tremble, had received
+the same name as another Ragnar, who was prince of Jutland about a
+hundred years earlier. This coincidence would have caused no confusion
+as long as each district preserved a distinct and independent account of
+its own Ragnar. But by possessing the resource of writing, men became
+able to consolidate the separate trains of events, and as it were, fuse
+two truths into one error. And this was what actually happened. The
+credulous Saxo put together the different exploits of both Ragnars, and
+ascribing the whole of them to his favorite hero, has involved in
+obscurity one of the most interesting parts of the early history
+of Europe.
+
+The annals of the North afford another curious instance of this source
+of error. A tribe of Finns called Quaens occupied a considerable part of
+the eastern coast of the Gulf of Bothnia. Their country was known as
+Quaenland; and this name gave rise to a belief that to the north of the
+Baltic there was a nation of Amazons. This would easily have been
+corrected by local knowledge: but by the use of writing, the flying
+rumor was at once fixed; and the existence of such a people is
+positively affirmed in some of the earliest European histories. Thus too
+Abo, the ancient capital of Finland, was called Turku, which in the
+Swedish language means a market-place. Adam of Bremen, having occasion
+to treat of the countries adjoining the Baltic, was so misled by the
+word Turku that this celebrated historian assures his readers that there
+were Turks in Finland.
+
+To these illustrations many others might be added, showing how mere
+names deceived the early historians, and gave rise to relations which
+were entirely false, and might have been rectified on the spot; but
+which, owing to the art of writing, were carried into distant countries
+and thus placed beyond the reach of contradiction. Of such cases, one
+more may be mentioned, as it concerns the history of England. Richard
+I., the most barbarous of our princes, was known to his contemporaries
+as the Lion; an appellation conferred upon him on account of his
+fearlessness and the ferocity of his temper. Hence it was said that he
+had the heart of a lion; and the title Coeur de Lion not only became
+indissolubly connected with his name, but actually gave rise to a story,
+repeated by innumerable writers, according to which he slew a lion in a
+single combat. The name gave rise to the story; the story confirmed the
+name: and another fiction was added to that long series of falsehoods of
+which history mainly consisted during the Middle Ages.
+
+The corruptions of history, thus naturally brought about by the mere
+introduction of letters, were in Europe aided by an additional cause.
+With the art of writing, there was in most cases also communicated a
+knowledge of Christianity; and the new religion not only destroyed many
+of the Pagan traditions, but falsified the remainder by amalgamating
+them with monastic legends. The extent to which this was carried would
+form a curious subject for inquiry; but one or two instances of it will
+perhaps be sufficient to satisfy the generality of readers.
+
+Of the earliest state of the great Northern nations we have little
+positive evidence; but several of the lays in which the Scandinavian
+poets related the feats of their ancestors or of their contemporaries
+are still preserved; and notwithstanding their subsequent corruption, it
+is admitted by the most competent judges that they embody real and
+historical events. But in the ninth and tenth centuries, Christian
+missionaries found their way across the Baltic, and introduced a
+knowledge of their religion among the inhabitants of Northern Europe.
+Scarcely was this effected when the sources of history began to be
+poisoned. At the end of the eleventh century Saemund Sigfusson, a
+Christian priest, gathered the popular and hitherto unwritten histories
+of the North into what is called the "Elder Edda"; and he was satisfied
+with adding to his compilation the corrective of a Christian hymn. A
+hundred years later there was made another collection of the native
+histories; but the principle which I have mentioned, having had a longer
+time to operate, now displayed its effects still more clearly. In this
+second collection, which is known by the name of the 'Younger Edda,'
+there is an agreeable mixture of Greek, Jewish, and Christian fables;
+and for the first time in the Scandinavian annals, we meet with the
+widely diffused fiction of a Trojan descent.
+
+If by way of further illustration we turn to other parts of the world,
+we shall find a series of facts confirming this view. We shall find that
+in those countries where there has been no change of religion, history
+is more trustworthy and connected than in those countries where such a
+change has taken place. In India, Brahmanism, which is still supreme,
+was established at so early a period that its origin is lost in the
+remotest antiquity. The consequence is that the native annals have never
+been corrupted by any new superstition, and the Hindus are possessed of
+historic traditions more ancient than can be found among any other
+Asiatic people. In the same way, the Chinese have for upwards of two
+thousand years preserved the religion of Fo, which is a form of
+Buddhism. In China, therefore, though the civilization has never been
+equal to that of India, there is a history, not indeed as old as the
+natives would wish us to believe, but still stretching back to several
+centuries before the Christian era, from whence it has been brought down
+to our own times in an uninterrupted succession. On the other hand, the
+Persians, whose intellectual development was certainly superior to that
+of the Chinese, are nevertheless without any authentic information
+respecting the early transactions of their ancient monarchy. For this I
+can see no possible reason except the fact that Persia, soon after the
+promulgation of the Koran, was conquered by the Mohammedans, who
+completely subverted the Parsee religion and thus interrupted the stream
+of the national traditions. Hence it is that, putting aside the myths of
+the Zendavesta, we have no native authorities for Persian history of any
+value, until the appearance in the eleventh century of the Shah Nameh;
+in which, however, Firdusi has mingled the miraculous relations of those
+two religions by which his country had been successively subjected. The
+result is, that if it were not for the various discoveries which have
+been made, of monuments, inscriptions, and coins, we should be compelled
+to rely on the scanty and inaccurate details in the Greek writers for
+our knowledge of the history of one of the most important of the Asiatic
+monarchies.
+
+
+
+GEORGE LOUIS LE CLERC BUFFON
+
+(1707-1788)
+
+BY SPENCER TROTTER
+
+A science becomes part of the general stock of knowledge only after it
+has entered into the literature of a people. The bare skeleton of facts
+must be clothed with the flesh and blood of imagination, through the
+humanizing influence of literary expression, before it can be
+assimilated by the average intellectual being. The scientific
+investigator is rarely endowed with the gift of weaving the facts into a
+story that will charm, and the man of letters is too often devoid of
+that patience which is the chief virtue of the scientist. These gifts of
+the gods are bestowed upon mankind under the guiding genius of the
+division of labor. The name of Buffon will always be associated with
+natural history, though in the man himself the spirit of science was
+conspicuously absent. In this respect he was in marked contrast with his
+contemporary Linnaeus, whose intellect and labor laid the foundations of
+much of the scientific knowledge of to-day.
+
+[ILLUSTRATION: BUFFON]
+
+George Louis le Clerc Buffon was born on the 7th of September, 1707, at
+Montbar, in Burgundy. His father, Benjamin le Clerc, who was possessed
+of a fortune, appears to have bestowed great care and liberality on the
+education of his son. While a youth Buffon made the acquaintance of a
+young English nobleman, the Duke of Kingston, whose tutor, a man well
+versed in the knowledge of physical science, exerted a profound
+influence on the future career of the young Frenchman. At twenty-one
+Buffon came into his mother's estate, a fortune yielding an annual
+income of L12,000. But this wealth did not change his purpose to gain
+knowledge. He traveled through Italy, and after living for a short
+period in England returned to France and devoted his time to literary
+work. His first efforts were translations of two English works of
+science--Hale's 'Vegetable Statics' and Newton's 'Fluxions'; and he
+followed these with various studies in the different branches of
+physical science.
+
+The determining event in his life, which led him to devote the rest of
+his years to the study of natural history, was the death of his friend
+Du Fay, the Intendant of the Jardin du Roi (now the Jardin des Plantes),
+who on his death-bed recommended Buffon as his successor. A man of
+letters, Buffon saw before him the opportunity to write a natural
+history of the earth and its inhabitants; and he set to work with a zeal
+that lasted until his death in 1788, at the age of eighty-one. His great
+work, 'L'Histoire Naturelle,' was the outcome of these years of labor,
+the first edition being complete in thirty-six quarto volumes.
+
+The first fifteen volumes of this great work, published between the
+years 1749 and 1767, treated of the theory of the earth, the nature of
+animals, and the history of man and viviparous quadrupeds; and was the
+joint work of Buffon and Daubenton, a physician of Buffon's native
+village. The scientific portion of the work was done by Daubenton, who
+possessed considerable anatomical knowledge, and who wrote accurate
+descriptions of the various animals mentioned. Buffon, however, affected
+to ignore the work of his co-laborer and reaped the entire glory, so
+that Daubenton withdrew his services. Later appeared the nine volumes on
+birds, in which Buffon was aided by the Abbe Sexon. Then followed the
+'History of Minerals' in five volumes, and seven volumes of
+'Supplements,' the last one of which was published the year after
+Buffon's death.
+
+One can hardly admire the personal character of Buffon. He was vain and
+superficial, and given to extravagant speculations. He is reported to
+have said, "I know but five great geniuses--Newton, Bacon, Leibnitz,
+Montesquieu, and myself." His natural vanity was undoubtedly fostered by
+the adulation which he received from those in authority. He saw his own
+statue placed in the cabinet of Louis XVI., with the inscription
+"Majestati Naturae par ingenium." Louis XV. bestowed upon him a title of
+nobility, and crowned heads "addressed him in language of the most
+exaggerated compliment." Buffon's conduct and conversation were marked
+throughout by a certain coarseness and vulgarity that constantly appear
+in his writings. He was foppish and trifling, and affected religion
+though at heart a disbeliever.
+
+The chief value of Buffon's work lies in the fact that it first brought
+the subject of natural history into popular literature. Probably no
+writer of the time, with the exception of Voltaire and Rousseau, was so
+widely read and quoted as Buffon. But the gross inaccuracy which
+pervaded his writings, and the visionary theories in which he constantly
+indulged, gave the work a less permanent value than it might otherwise
+have attained. Buffon detested the scientific method, preferring
+literary finish to accuracy of statement. Although the work was widely
+translated, and was the only popular natural history of the time, there
+is little of it that is worthy of a place in the world's best
+literature. It is chiefly as a relic of a past literary epoch, and as
+the pioneer work in a new literary field, that Buffon's writings appeal
+to us. They awakened for the first time a wide interest in natural
+history, though their author was distinctly _not_ a naturalist.
+
+Arabella Buckley has said of Buffon and his writings that though "he
+often made great mistakes and arrived at false conclusions, still he had
+so much genius and knowledge that a great part of his work will always
+remain true." Cuvier has left us a good memoir of Buffon in the
+'Biographic Universelle.'
+
+[Illustration: Signature: Spencer Trotter]
+
+
+
+NATURE
+
+From the 'Natural History'
+
+So with what magnificence Nature shines upon the earth! A pure light
+extending from east to west gilds successively the hemispheres of the
+globe. An airy transparent element surrounds it; a warm and fruitful
+heat animates and develops all its germs of life; living and salutary
+waters tend to their support and increase; high points scattered over
+the lands, by arresting the airy vapors, render these sources
+inexhaustible and always fresh; gathered into immense hollows, they
+divide the continents. The extent of the sea is as great as that of the
+land. It is not a cold and sterile element, but another empire as rich
+and populated as the first. The finger of God has marked the boundaries.
+When the waters encroach upon the beaches of the west, they leave bare
+those of the east. This enormous mass of water, itself inert, follows
+the guidance of heavenly movements. Balanced by the regular oscillations
+of ebb and flow, it rises and falls with the planet of night; rising
+still higher when concurrent with the planet of day, the two uniting
+their forces during the equinoxes cause the great tides. Our connection
+with the heavens is nowhere more clearly indicated. From these constant
+and general movements result others variable and particular: removals of
+earth, deposits at the bottom of water forming elevations like those
+upon the earth's surface, currents which, following the direction of
+these mountain ranges, shape them to corresponding angles; and rolling
+in the midst of the waves, as waters upon the earth, are in truth the
+rivers of the sea.
+
+The air, too, lighter and more fluid than water, obeys many forces: the
+distant action of sun and moon, the immediate action of the sea, that of
+rarefying heat and of condensing cold, produce in it continual
+agitations. The winds are its currents, driving before them and
+collecting the clouds. They produce meteors; transport the humid vapors
+of maritime beaches to the land surfaces of the continents; determine
+the storms; distribute the fruitful rains and kindly dews; stir the sea;
+agitate the mobile waters, arrest or hasten the currents; raise floods;
+excite tempests. The angry sea rises toward heaven and breaks roaring
+against immovable dikes, which it can neither destroy nor surmount.
+
+The land elevated above sea-level is safe from these irruptions. Its
+surface, enameled with flowers, adorned with ever fresh verdure, peopled
+with thousands and thousands of differing species of animals, is a place
+of repose; an abode of delights, where man, placed to aid nature,
+dominates all other things, the only one who can know and admire. God
+has made him spectator of the universe and witness of his marvels. He is
+animated by a divine spark which renders him a participant in the divine
+mysteries; and by whose light he thinks and reflects, sees and reads in
+the book of the world as in a copy of divinity.
+
+Nature is the exterior throne of God's glory. The man who studies and
+contemplates it rises gradually towards the interior throne of
+omniscience. Made to adore the Creator, he commands all the creatures.
+Vassal of heaven, king of earth, which he ennobles and enriches, he
+establishes order, harmony, and subordination among living beings. He
+embellishes Nature itself; cultivates, extends, and refines it;
+suppresses its thistles and brambles, and multiplies its grapes
+and roses.
+
+Look upon the solitary beaches and sad lands where man has never dwelt:
+covered--or rather bristling--with thick black woods on all their rising
+ground, stunted barkless trees, bent, twisted, falling from age; near
+by, others even more numerous, rotting upon heaps already
+rotten,--stifling, burying the germs ready to burst forth. Nature, young
+everywhere else, is here decrepit. The land surmounted by the ruins of
+these productions offers, instead of flourishing verdure, only an
+incumbered space pierced by aged trees, loaded with parasitic plants,
+lichens, agarics--impure fruits of corruption. In the low parts is
+water, dead and stagnant because undirected; or swampy soil neither
+solid nor liquid, hence unapproachable and useless to the habitants both
+of land and of water. Here are swamps covered with rank aquatic plants
+nourishing only venomous insects and haunted by unclean animals. Between
+these low infectious marshes and these higher ancient forests extend
+plains having nothing in common with our meadows, upon which weeds
+smother useful plants. There is none of that fine turf which seems like
+down upon the earth, or of that enameled lawn which announces a
+brilliant fertility; but instead an interlacement of hard and thorny
+herbs which seem to cling to each other rather than to the soil, and
+which, successively withering and impeding each other, form a coarse mat
+several feet thick. There are no roads, no communications, no vestiges
+of intelligence in these wild places. Man, obliged to follow the paths
+of savage beasts and to watch constantly lest he become their prey,
+terrified by their roars, thrilled by the very silence of these profound
+solitudes, turns back and says:--
+
+Primitive nature is hideous and dying; I, I alone, can make it living
+and agreeable. Let us dry these swamps; converting into streams and
+canals, animate these dead waters by setting them in motion. Let us use
+the active and devouring element once hidden from us, and which we
+ourselves have discovered; and set fire to this superfluous mat, to
+these aged forests already half consumed, and finish with iron what fire
+cannot destroy! Soon, instead of rush and water-lily from which the toad
+compounds his venom, we shall see buttercups and clover, sweet and
+salutary herbs. Herds of bounding animals will tread this once
+impracticable soil and find abundant, constantly renewed pasture. They
+will multiply, to multiply again. Let us employ the new aid to complete
+our work; and let the ox, submissive to the yoke, exercise his strength
+in furrowing the land. Then it will grow young again with cultivation,
+and a new nature shall spring up under our hands.
+
+How beautiful is cultivated Nature when by the cares of man she is
+brilliantly and pompously adorned! He himself is the chief ornament, the
+most noble production; in multiplying himself he multiplies her most
+precious gem. She seems to multiply herself with him, for his art brings
+to light all that her bosom conceals. What treasures hitherto ignored!
+What new riches! Flowers, fruits, perfected grains infinitely
+multiplied; useful species of animals transported, propagated, endlessly
+increased; harmful species destroyed, confined, banished; gold, and iron
+more necessary than gold, drawn from the bowels of the earth; torrents
+confined; rivers directed and restrained; the sea, submissive and
+comprehended, crossed from one hemisphere to the other; the earth
+everywhere accessible, everywhere living and fertile; in the valleys,
+laughing prairies; in the plains, rich pastures or richer harvests; the
+hills loaded with vines and fruits, their summits crowned by useful
+trees and young forests; deserts changed to cities inhabited by a great
+people, who, ceaselessly circulating, scatter themselves from centres to
+extremities; frequent open roads and communications established
+everywhere like so many witnesses of the force and union of society; a
+thousand other monuments of power and glory: proving that man, master of
+the world, has transformed it, renewed its whole surface, and that he
+shares his empire with Nature.
+
+However, he rules only by right of conquest, and enjoys rather than
+possesses. He can only retain by ever-renewed efforts. If these cease,
+everything languishes, changes, grows disordered, enters again into the
+hands of Nature. She retakes her rights; effaces man's work; covers his
+most sumptuous monuments with dust and moss; destroys them in time,
+leaving him only the regret that he has lost by his own fault the
+conquests of his ancestors. These periods during which man loses his
+domain, ages of barbarism when everything perishes, are always prepared
+by wars and arrive with famine and depopulation. Man, who can do nothing
+except in numbers, and is only strong in union, only happy in peace, has
+the madness to arm himself for his unhappiness and to fight for his own
+ruin. Incited by insatiable greed, blinded by still more insatiable
+ambition, he renounces the sentiments of humanity, turns all his forces
+against himself, and seeking to destroy his fellow, does indeed destroy
+himself. And after these days of blood and carnage, when the smoke of
+glory has passed away, he sees with sadness that the earth is
+devastated, the arts buried, the nations dispersed, the races enfeebled,
+his own happiness ruined, and his power annihilated.
+
+THE HUMMING-BIRD
+
+From the 'Natural History'
+
+Of all animated beings this is the most elegant in form and the most
+brilliant in colors. The stones and metals polished by our arts are not
+comparable to this jewel of Nature. She has placed it least in size of
+the order of birds, _maxime miranda in minimis_. Her masterpiece is the
+little humming-bird, and upon it she has heaped all the gifts which the
+other birds may only share. Lightness, rapidity, nimbleness, grace, and
+rich apparel all belong to this little favorite. The emerald, the ruby,
+and the topaz gleam upon its dress. It never soils them with the dust of
+earth, and in its aerial life scarcely touches the turf an instant.
+Always in the air, flying from flower to flower, it has their freshness
+as well as their brightness. It lives upon their nectar, and dwells only
+in the climates where they perennially bloom.
+
+All kinds of humming-birds are found in the hottest countries of the New
+World. They are quite numerous and seem to be confined between the two
+tropics, for those which penetrate the temperate zones in summer only
+stay there a short time. They seem to follow the sun in its advance and
+retreat; and to fly on the wing of zephyrs after an eternal spring.
+
+The smaller species of the humming-birds are less in size than the great
+fly wasp, and more slender than the drone. Their beak is a fine needle
+and their tongue a slender thread. Their little black eyes are like two
+shining points, and the feathers of their wings so delicate that they
+seem transparent. Their short feet, which they use very little, are so
+tiny one can scarcely see them. They alight only at night, resting in
+the air during the day. They have a swift continual humming flight. The
+movement of their wings is so rapid that when pausing in the air, the
+bird seems quite motionless. One sees him stop before a blossom, then
+dart like a flash to another, visiting all, plunging his tongue into
+their hearts, flattening them with his wings, never settling anywhere,
+but neglecting none. He hastens his inconstancies only to pursue his
+loves more eagerly and to multiply his innocent joys. For this light
+lover of flowers lives at their expense without ever blighting them. He
+only pumps their honey, and to this alone his tongue seems destined.
+
+The vivacity of these small birds is only equaled by their courage, or
+rather their audacity. Sometimes they may be seen chasing furiously
+birds twenty times their size, fastening upon their bodies, letting
+themselves be carried along in their flight, while they peck them
+fiercely until their tiny rage is satisfied. Sometimes they fight each
+other vigorously. Impatience seems their very essence. If they approach
+a blossom and find it faded, they mark their spite by hasty rending of
+the petals. Their only voice is a weak cry, "_screp, screp_," frequent
+and repeated, which they utter in the woods from dawn, until at the
+first rays of the sun they all take flight and scatter over the country.
+
+
+
+EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
+
+(1803-1873)
+
+BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE
+
+The patrician in literature is always an interesting spectacle. We are
+prone to regard his performance as a test of the worth of long descent
+and high breeding. If he does well, he vindicates the claims of his
+caste; if ill, we infer that inherited estates and blue blood are but
+surface advantages, leaving the effective brain unimproved, or even
+causing deterioration. But the argument is still open; and whether
+genius be the creature of circumstance or divinely independent, is a
+question which prejudice rather than evidence commonly decides.
+
+Certainly literature tries men's souls. The charlatan must betray
+himself. Genius shines through all cerements. On the other hand, genius
+may be nourished, and the charlatan permeates all classes. The truth
+probably is that an aristocrat is quite as apt as a plebeian to be a
+good writer. Only since there are fewer of the former than of the
+latter, and since, unlike the last, the first are seldom forced to live
+by their brains, there are more plebeian than aristocratic names on the
+literary roll of honor. Admitting this, the instance of the writer known
+as "Bulwer" proves nothing one way or the other. At all events, not, Was
+he a genius because he was a, patrician? but, Was he a genius at all? is
+the inquiry most germane to our present purpose.
+
+An aristocrat of aristocrats undoubtedly he was, though it concerns us
+not to determine whether the blood of Plantagenet kings and Norman
+conquerors really flowed in his veins. On both father's and mother's
+side he was thoroughly well connected. Heydon Hall in Norfolk was the
+hereditary home of the Norman Bulwers; the Saxon Lyttons had since the
+Conquest lived at Knebworth in Derbyshire. The historic background of
+each family was honorable, and when the marriage of William Earle Bulwer
+with Elizabeth Barbara Lytton united them, it might be said that in
+their offspring England found her type.
+
+Edward, being the youngest son, had little money, but he happened to
+have brains. He began existence delicate and precocious. Culture, with
+him, set in almost with what he would have termed the "consciousness of
+his own identity," and the process never intermitted: in fact,
+appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, his spiritual and
+intellectual emancipation was hindered by many obstacles; for, an ailing
+child, he was petted by his mother, and such germs of intelligence
+(verses at seven years old, and the like) as he betrayed were trumpeted
+as prodigies. He was spoilt so long before he was ripe that it is a
+marvel he ever ripened at all. Many years must pass before vanity could
+be replaced in him by manly ambition; a vein of silliness is traceable
+through his career almost to the end. He expatiated in the falsetto key;
+almost never do we hear in his voice that hearty bass note so dear to
+plain humanity. In his pilgrimage toward freedom he had to wrestle not
+only with flesh-and-blood mothers, uncles, and wives, _et id genus
+omne_, but with the more subtle and vital ideas, superstitions, and
+prejudices appertaining to his social station. His worst foes were not
+those of his household merely, but of his heart. The more arduous
+achievement of such a man is to see his real self and believe in it.
+There are so many misleading purple-velvet waistcoats, gold chains,
+superfine sentiments, and blue-blooded affiliations in the way, that the
+true nucleus of so much decoration becomes less accessible than the
+needle in the hay-stack. It is greatly to Bulwer's credit that he stuck
+valiantly to his quest, and nearly, if not quite, ran down his game at
+last. His intellectual record is one of constant progress, from
+childhood to age.
+
+Whether his advance in other respects was as uniform does not much
+concern us. He was unhappy with his wife, and perhaps they even threw
+things at each other at table, the servants looking on. Nothing in his
+matrimonial relations so much became him as his conduct after their
+severance: he held his tongue like a man, in spite of the poor lady's
+shrieks and clapper-clawings. His whimsical, hair-splitting
+conscientiousness is less admirable. A healthy conscience does not
+whine--it creates. No one cares to know what a man thinks of his own
+actions. No one is interested to learn that Bulwer meant 'Paul Clifford'
+to be an edifying work, or that he married his wife from the highest
+motives. We do not take him so seriously: we are satisfied that he wrote
+the story first and discovered its morality afterwards; and that lofty
+motives would not have united him to Miss Rosina Doyle Wheeler had she
+not been pretty and clever. His hectic letters to his mamma; his Byronic
+struttings and mouthings over the grave of his schoolgirl lady-love; his
+eighteenth-century comedy-scene with Caroline Lamb; his starched-frill
+participation in the Fred Villiers duel at Boulogne,--how silly and
+artificial is all this! There is no genuine feeling in it: he attires
+himself in tawdry sentiment as in a flowered waistcoat. What a
+difference between him, at this period, and his contemporary Benjamin
+Disraeli, who indeed committed similar inanities, but with a saturnine
+sense of humor cropping out at every turn which altered the whole
+complexion of the performance. We laugh at the one, but with
+the other.
+
+[Illustration: BULWER-LYTTON.]
+
+Of course, however, there was a man hidden somewhere in Edward Bulwer's
+perfumed clothes and mincing attitudes, else the world had long since
+forgotten him. Amidst his dandyism, he learned how to speak well in
+debate and how to use his hands to guard his head; he paid his debts by
+honest hard work, and would not be dishonorably beholden to his mother
+or any one else. He posed as a blighted being, and invented black
+evening-dress; but he lived down the scorn of such men as Tennyson and
+Thackeray, and won their respect and friendship at last. He aimed high,
+according to his lights, meant well, and in the long run did well too.
+
+The main activities of his life--and from start to finish his energy was
+great--were in politics and in literature. His political career covers
+about forty years, from the time he took his degree at Cambridge till
+Lord Derby made him a peer in 1866. He accomplished nothing of serious
+importance, but his course was always creditable: he began as a
+sentimental Radical and ended as a liberal Conservative; he advocated
+the Crimean War; the Corn Laws found him in a compromising humor; his
+record as Colonial Secretary offers nothing memorable in statesmanship.
+The extraordinary brilliancy of his brother Henry's diplomatic life
+throws Edward's achievements into the shade. There is nothing to be
+ashamed of, but had he done nothing else he would have been unknown. But
+literature, first seriously cultivated as a means of livelihood,
+outlasted his political ambitions, and his books are to-day his only
+claim to remembrance. They made a strong impression at the time they
+were written, and many are still read as much as ever, by a generation
+born after his death. Their popularity is not of the catchpenny sort;
+thoughtful people read them, as well as the great drove of the
+undiscriminating. For they are the product of thought: they show
+workmanship; they have quality; they are carefully made. If the literary
+critic never finds occasion to put off the shoes from his feet as in the
+sacred presence of genius, he is constantly moved to recognize with a
+friendly nod the presence of sterling talent. He is even inclined to
+think that nobody else ever had so much talent as this little
+red-haired, blue-eyed, high-nosed, dandified Edward Bulwer; the mere
+mass of it lifts him at times to the levels where genius dwells, though
+he never quite shares their nectar and ambrosia. He as it were catches
+echoes of the talk of the Immortals,--the turn of their phrase, the
+intonation of their utterance,--and straightway reproduces it with the
+fidelity of the phonograph. But, as in the phonograph, we find something
+lacking; our mind accepts the report as genuine, but our ear affirms an
+unreality; this is reproduction, indeed, but not creation. Bulwer
+himself, when his fit is past, and his critical faculty re-awakens,
+probably knows as well as another that these labored and meritorious
+pages of his are not graven on the eternal adamant. But they are the
+best he can do, and perhaps there is none better of their kind. They
+have a right to be; for while genius may do harm as well as good, Bulwer
+never does harm, and in spite of sickly sentiment and sham philosophy,
+is uniformly instructive, amusing, and edifying.
+
+"To love her," wrote Dick Steele of a certain great dame, "is a liberal
+education;" and we might almost say the same of the reading of Bulwer's
+romances. He was learned, and he put into his books all his learning, as
+well as all else that was his. They represent artistically grouped,
+ingeniously lighted, with suitable acompaniments of music and
+illusion--the acquisitions of his intellect, the sympathies of his
+nature, and the achievements of his character.
+
+He wrote in various styles, making deliberate experiments in one after
+another, and often hiding himself completely in anonymity. He was
+versatile, not deep. Robert Louis Stevenson also employs various styles;
+but with him the changes are intuitive--they are the subtle variations
+in touch and timbre which genius makes, in harmony with the subject
+treated. Stevenson could not have written 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' in
+the same tune and key as 'Treasure Island'; and the music of 'Marxheim'
+differs from both. The reason is organic: the writer is inspired by his
+theme, and it passes through his mind with a lilt and measure of its
+own. It makes its own style, just as a human spirit makes its own
+features and gait; and we know Stevenson through all his transformations
+only by dint of the exquisite distinction and felicity of word and
+phrase that always characterize him. Now, with Bulwer there is none of
+this lovely inevitable spontaneity. He costumes his tale arbitrarily,
+like a stage-haberdasher, and invents a voice to deliver it withal. 'The
+Last Days of Pompeii' shall be mouthed out grandiloquently; the
+incredibilities of 'The Coming Race' shall wear the guise of naive and
+artless narrative; the humors of 'The Caxtons' and 'What Will He Do with
+It?' shall reflect the mood of the sagacious, affable man of the world,
+gossiping over the nuts and wine; the marvels of 'Zanoni' and 'A Strange
+Story' must be portrayed with a resonance and exaltation of diction
+fitted to their transcendental claims. But between the stark mechanism
+of the Englishman and the lithe, inspired felicity of the Scot, what a
+difference!
+
+Bulwer's work may be classified according to subject, though not
+chronologically. He wrote novels of society, of history, of mystery, and
+of romance. In all he was successful, and perhaps felt as much interest
+in one as in another. In his own life the study of the occult played a
+part; he was familiar with the contemporary fads in mystery and
+acquainted with their professors. "Ancient" history also attracted him,
+and he even wrote a couple of volumes of a 'History of Athens.' In all
+his writing there is a tendency to lapse into a discussion of the "Ideal
+and the Real," aiming always at the conclusion that the only true Real
+is the Ideal. It was this tendency which chiefly aroused the ridicule of
+his critics, and from the 'Sredwardlyttonbulwig' of Thackeray to the
+'Condensed Novels' burlesque of Bret Harte, they harp upon that facile
+string, The thing satirized is after all not cheaper than the satire.
+The ideal _is_ the true real; the only absurdity lies in the pomp and
+circumstance wherewith that simple truth is introduced. There _is_ a
+'Dweller on the Threshold,' but it, or he, is nothing more than that
+doubt concerning the truth of spiritual things which assails all
+beginners in higher speculation, and there was no need to call it or him
+by so formidable a name. A sense of humor would have saved Bulwer from
+almost all his faults, and have endowed him with several valuable
+virtues into the bargain; but it was not born in him, and with all his
+diligence he never could beget it.
+
+The domestic series, of which 'The Caxtons' is the type, are the most
+generally popular of his works, and are likely to be so longest. The
+romantic vein ('Ernest Maltravers,' 'Alice, or the Mysteries,' etc.) are
+in his worst style, and are now only in existence as books because they
+are members of "the edition," It is doubtful if any human being has read
+one of them through in twenty years. Such historical books as 'The Last
+Days of Pompeii' are not only well constructed dramatically, but are
+painfully accurate in details, and may still be read for information as
+well as for pleasure. The 'Zanoni' species is undeniably interesting.
+The weird traditions of the 'Philosopher's Stone' and the 'Elixir of
+Life' can never cease to fascinate human souls, and all the
+paraphernalia of magic are charming to minds weary of the
+matter-of-factitude of current existence. The stories are put together
+with Bulwer's unfailing cleverness, and in all external respects neither
+Dumas nor Balzac has done anything better in this kind: the trouble is
+that these authors compel our belief, while Bulwer does not. For, once
+more, he lacks the magic of genius and the spirit of style which are
+immortally and incommunicably theirs, without which no other magic can
+be made literarily effective.
+
+'Pelham,' written at twenty-five years of age, is a creditable boy's
+book; it aims to portray character as well as to develop incidents, and
+in spite of the dreadful silliness of its melodramatic passages it has
+merit. Conventionally it is more nearly a work of art than that other
+famous boy's book, Disraeli's 'Vivian Grey,' though the latter is alive
+and blooming with the original literary charm which is denied to the
+other. Other characteristic novels of his are 'The Last Days of
+Pompeii,' 'Ernest Maltravers,' 'Zanoni,' 'The Caxtons,' 'My Novel,'
+'What Will He Do with It?' 'A Strange Story,' 'The Coming Race,' and
+'Kenelm Chillingly,' the last of which appeared in the year of the
+author's death, 1873. The student who has read these books will know all
+that is worth knowing of Bulwer's work. He wrote upwards of fifty
+substantial volumes, and left a mass of posthumous material besides. Of
+all that he did, the most nearly satisfactory thing is one of the last,
+'Kenelm Chillingly.' In style, persons, and incidents it is alike
+charming: it subsides somewhat into the inevitable Bulwer sentimentality
+towards the end--a silk purse cannot be made out of a sow's ear; but the
+miracle was never nearer being accomplished than in this instance. Here
+we see the thoroughly equipped man of letters doing with apparent ease
+what scarce five of his contemporaries could have done at all. The book
+is lightsome and graceful, yet it touches serious thoughts: most
+remarkable of all, it shows a suppleness of mind and freshness of
+feeling more to be expected in a youth of thirty than in a veteran of
+threescore and ten. Bulwer never ceased to grow; and what is better
+still, to grow away from his faults and towards improvement.
+
+But in comparing him with others, we must admit that he had better
+opportunities than most. His social station brought him in contact with
+the best people and most pregnant events of his time; and the driving
+poverty of youth having established him in the novel-writing habit, he
+thereafter had leisure to polish and expand his faculty to the utmost.
+No talent of his was folded up in a napkin: he did his best and utmost
+with all he had. Whereas the path of genius is commonly tortuous and
+hard-beset: and while we are always saying of Shakespeare, or Thackeray,
+or Shelley, or Keats, or Poe, "What wonders they would have done had
+life been longer or fate kinder to them!"--of Bulwer we say, "No help
+was wanting to him, and he profited by all; he got out of the egg more
+than we had believed was in it!" Instead of a great faculty hobbled by
+circumstance, we have a small faculty magnified by occasion and
+enriched by time.
+
+Certainly, as men of letters go, Bulwer must be accounted fortunate. The
+long inflamed row of his domestic life apart, all things went his way.
+He received large sums for his books; at the age of forty, his mother
+dying, he succeeded to the Knebworth estate; three-and-twenty years
+later his old age (if such a man could be called old) was consoled by
+the title of Lord Lytton. His health was never robust, and occasionally
+failed; but he seems to have been able to accomplish after a fashion
+everything that he undertook; he was "thorough," as the English say. He
+lived in the midst of events; he was a friend of the men who made the
+age, and saw them make it, lending a hand himself too when and where he
+could. He lived long enough to see the hostility which had opposed him
+in youth die away, and honor and kindness take its place. Let it be
+repeated, his aims were good. He would have been candid and
+un-selfconscious had that been possible for him; and perhaps the failure
+was one of manner rather than of heart.--Yes, he was a fortunate man.
+
+His most conspicuous success was as a play-writer. In view of his
+essentially dramatic and historic temperament, it is surprising that he
+did not altogether devote himself to this branch of art; but all his
+dramas were produced between his thirty-third and his thirty-eighth
+years. The first--'La Duchesse de la Valliere' was not to the public
+liking; but 'The Lady of Lyons,' written in two weeks, is in
+undiminished favor after near sixty years; and so are 'Richelieu' and
+'Money.' There is no apparent reason why Bulwer should not have been as
+prolific a stage-author as Moliere or even Lope de Vega. But we often
+value our best faculties least.
+
+'The Coming Race,' published anonymously and never acknowledged during
+his life, was an unexpected product of his mind, but is useful to mark
+his limitations. It is a forecast of the future, and proves, as nothing
+else could so well do, the utter absence in Bulwer of the creative
+imagination. It is an invention, cleverly conceived, mechanically and
+rather tediously worked out, and written in a style astonishingly
+commonplace. The man who wrote that book (one would say) had no heaven
+in his soul, nor any pinions whereon to soar heavenward. Yet it is full
+of thought and ingenuity, and the central conception of "vrii" has been
+much commended. But the whole concoction is tainted with the deadness of
+stark materialism, and we should be unjust, after all, to deny Bulwer
+something loftier and broader than is discoverable here. In inventing
+the narrative he depended upon the weakest element in his mental
+make-up, and the result could not but be dismal. We like to believe that
+there was better stuff in him than he himself ever found; and that when
+he left this world for the next, he had sloughed off more dross than
+most men have time to accumulate.
+
+[Illustration: Signature:]
+
+THE AMPHITHEATRE
+
+From 'The Last Days of Pompeii'
+
+On the upper tier (but apart from the male spectators) sat the women,
+their gay dresses resembling some gaudy flowerbed; it is needless to add
+that they were the most talkative part of the assembly; and many were
+the looks directed up to them, especially from the benches appropriated
+to the young and the unmarried men. On the lower seats round the arena
+sat the more high-born and wealthy visitors--the magistrates and those
+of senatorial or equestrian dignity: the passages which, by corridors at
+the right and left, gave access to these seats, at either end of the
+oval arena, were also the entrances for the combatants. Strong palings
+at these passages prevented any unwelcome eccentricity in the movements
+of the beasts, and confined them to their appointed prey. Around the
+parapet which was raised above the arena, and from which the seats
+gradually rose, were gladiatorial inscriptions, and paintings wrought in
+fresco, typical of the entertainments for which the place was designed.
+Throughout the whole building wound invisible pipes, from which, as the
+day advanced, cooling and fragrant showers were to be sprinkled over the
+spectators. The officers of the amphitheatre were still employed in the
+task of fixing the vast awning (or _velaria_) which covered the whole,
+and which luxurious invention the Campanians arrogated to themselves: it
+was woven of the whitest Apulian wool, and variegated with broad stripes
+of crimson. Owing either to some inexperience on the part of the workmen
+or to some defect in the machinery, the awning, however, was not
+arranged that day so happily as usual; indeed, from the immense space of
+the circumference, the task was always one of great difficulty and
+art--so much so that it could seldom be adventured in rough or windy
+weather. But the present day was so remarkably still that there seemed
+to the spectators no excuse for the awkwardness of the artificers; and
+when a large gap in the back of the awning was still visible, from the
+obstinate refusal of one part of the velaria to ally itself with the
+rest, the murmurs of discontent were loud and general.
+
+The sedile Pansa, at whose expense the exhibition was given, looked
+particularly annoyed at the defect, and vowed bitter vengeance on the
+head of the chief officer of the show, who, fretting, puffing,
+perspiring, busied himself in idle orders and unavailing threats.
+
+The hubbub ceased suddenly--the operators desisted--the crowd were
+stilled--the gap was forgotten--for now, with a loud and warlike
+flourish of trumpets, the gladiators, marshaled in ceremonious
+procession, entered the arena. They swept round the oval space very
+slowly and deliberately, in order to give the spectators full leisure to
+admire their stern serenity of feature--their brawny limbs and various
+arms, as well as to form such wagers as the excitement of the moment
+might suggest.
+
+"Oh!" cried the widow Fulvia to the wife of Pansa, as they leaned down
+from their lofty bench, "do you see that gigantic gladiator? how drolly
+he is dressed!"
+
+"Yes," said the aedile's wife with complacent importance, for she knew
+all the names and qualities of each combatant: "he is a retiarius or
+netter; he is armed only, you see, with a three-pronged spear like a
+trident, and a net; he wears no armor, only the fillet and the tunic. He
+is a mighty man, and is to fight with Sporus, yon thick-set gladiator,
+with the round shield and drawn sword but without body armor; he has not
+his helmet on now, in order that you may see his face--how fearless it
+is! By-and-by he will fight with his visor down."
+
+"But surely a net and a spear are poor arms against a shield and sword?"
+
+"That shows how innocent you are, my dear Fulvia: the retiarius has
+generally the best of it."
+
+"But who is yon handsome gladiator, nearly naked--is it not quite
+improper? By Venus! but his limbs are beautifully shaped!"
+
+"It is Lydon, a young untried man! he has the rashness to fight yon
+other gladiator similarly dressed, or rather undressed--Tetraides. They
+fight first in the Greek fashion, with the cestus; afterward they put on
+armor, and try sword and shield."
+
+"He is a proper man, this Lydon; and the women, I am sure, are on his
+side."
+
+"So are not the experienced bettors: Clodius offers three to one against
+him."
+
+"Oh, Jove! how beautiful!" exclaimed the widow, as two gladiators, armed
+_cap-a-pie,_ rode round the arena on light and prancing steeds.
+Resembling much the combatants in the tilts of the middle age, they
+bore lances and round shields beautifully inlaid; their armor was woven
+intricately with bands of iron, but it covered only the thighs and the
+right arms; short cloaks extending to the seat gave a picturesque and
+graceful air to their costume; their legs were naked with the exception
+of sandals, which were fastened a little above the ankle. "Oh,
+beautiful! Who are these?" asked the widow.
+
+"The one is named Berbix: he has conquered twelve times. The other
+assumes the arrogant Nobilior. They are both Gauls."
+
+While thus conversing, the first formalities of the show were over. To
+these succeeded a feigned combat with wooden swords between the various
+gladiators matched against each other. Among these the skill of two
+Roman gladiators, hired for the occasion, was the most admired; and next
+to them the most graceful combatant was Lydon. This sham contest did not
+last above an hour, nor did it attract any very lively interest except
+among those connoisseurs of the arena to whom art was preferable to more
+coarse excitement; the body of the spectators were rejoiced when it was
+over, and when the sympathy rose to terror. The combatants were now
+arranged in pairs, as agreed beforehand; their weapons examined; and the
+grave sports of the day commenced amid the deepest silence--broken only
+by an exciting and preliminary blast of warlike music.
+
+It was often customary to begin the sports by the most cruel of all; and
+some bestiarius, or gladiator appointed to the beasts, was slain first
+as an initiatory sacrifice. But in the present instance the experienced
+Pansa thought better that the sanguinary drama should advance, not
+decrease, in interest; and accordingly the execution of Olinthus and
+Glaucus was reserved for the last. It was arranged that the two horsemen
+should first occupy the arena; that the foot gladiators, paired off,
+should then be loosed indiscriminately on the stage; that Glaucus and
+the lion should next perform their part in the bloody spectacle; and the
+tiger and the Nazarene be the grand finale. And in the spectacles of
+Pompeii, the reader of Roman history must limit his imagination, nor
+expect to find those vast and wholesale exhibitions of magnificent
+slaughter with which a Nero or a Caligula regaled the inhabitants of the
+Imperial City. The Roman shows, which absorbed the more celebrated
+gladiators and the chief proportion of foreign beasts, were indeed the
+very reason why in the lesser towns of the empire the sports of the
+amphitheatre were comparatively humane and rare; and in this as in
+other respects, Pompeii was the miniature, the microcosm of Rome. Still,
+it was an awful and imposing spectacle, with which modern times have,
+happily, nothing to compare; a vast theatre, rising row upon row, and
+swarming with human beings, from fifteen to eighteen thousand in number,
+intent upon no fictitious representation--no tragedy of the stage--but
+the actual victory or defeat, the exultant life or the bloody death, of
+each and all who entered the arena!
+
+The two horsemen were now at either extremity of the lists (if so they
+might be called), and at a given signal from Pansa the combatants
+started simultaneously as in full collision, each advancing his round
+buckler, each poising on high his sturdy javelin; but just when within
+three paces of his opponent, the steed of Berbix suddenly halted,
+wheeled round, and, as Nobilior was borne rapidly by, his antagonist
+spurred upon him. The buckler of Nobilior, quickly and skillfully
+extended, received a blow which otherwise would have been fatal.
+
+"Well done, Nobilior!" cried the praetor, giving the first vent to the
+popular excitement.
+
+"Bravely struck, my Berbix!" answered Clodius from his seat.
+
+And the wild murmur, swelled by many a shout, echoed from side to side.
+
+The visors of both the horsemen were completely closed (like those of
+the knights in after times), but the head was nevertheless the great
+point of assault; and Nobilior, now wheeling his charger with no less
+adroitness than his opponent, directed his spear full on the helmet of
+his foe. Berbix raised his buckler to shield himself, and his quick-eyed
+antagonist, suddenly lowering his weapon, pierced him through the
+breast. Berbix reeled and fell.
+
+"Nobilior! Nobilior!" shouted the populace.
+
+"I have lost ten sestertia," said Clodius, between his teeth.
+
+"_Habet_!" (He has it) said Pansa deliberately.
+
+The populace, not yet hardened into cruelty, made the signal of mercy:
+but as the attendants of the arena approached, they found the kindness
+came too late; the heart of the Gaul had been pierced, and his eyes were
+set in death. It was his life's blood that flowed so darkly over the
+sand and sawdust of the arena.
+
+"It is a pity it was so soon over--there was little enough for one's
+trouble," said the widow Fulvia.
+
+"Yes--I have no compassion for Berbix. Any one might have seen that
+Nobilior did but feint. Mark, they fix the fatal hook to the body--they
+drag him away to the spoliarium--they scatter new sand over the stage!
+Pansa regrets nothing more than that he is not rich enough to strew the
+arena with borax and cinnabar, as Nero used to do."
+
+"Well, if it has been a brief battle, it is quickly succeeded. See my
+handsome Lydon on the arena--ay, and the net-bearer too, and the
+swordsmen! Oh, charming!"
+
+There were now on the arena six combatants: Niger and his net, matched
+against Sporus with his shield and his short broad-sword; Lydon and
+Tetraides, naked save by a cincture round the waist, each armed only
+with a heavy Greek cestus; and two gladiators from Rome, clad in
+complete steel, and evenly matched with immense bucklers and
+pointed swords.
+
+The initiatory contest between Lydon and Tetraides being less deadly
+than that between the other combatants, no sooner had they advanced to
+the middle of the arena than as by common consent the rest held back, to
+see how that contest should be decided, and wait till fiercer weapons
+might replace the cestus ere they themselves commenced hostilities. They
+stood leaning on their arms and apart from each other, gazing on the
+show, which, if not bloody enough thoroughly to please the populace,
+they were still inclined to admire because its origin was of their
+ancestral Greece.
+
+No persons could at first glance have seemed less evenly matched than
+the two antagonists. Tetraides, though no taller than Lydon, weighed
+considerably more; the natural size of his muscles was increased, to the
+eyes of the vulgar, by masses of solid flesh; for, as it was a notion
+that the contest of the cestus fared easiest with him who was plumpest,
+Tetraides had encouraged to the utmost his hereditary predisposition to
+the portly. His shoulders were vast, and his lower limbs thick-set,
+double-jointed, and slightly curved outward, in that formation which
+takes so much from beauty to give so largely to strength. But Lydon,
+except that he was slender even almost to meagreness, was beautifully
+and delicately proportioned; and the skillful might have perceived that
+with much less compass of muscle than his foe, that which he had was
+more seasoned--iron and compact. In proportion, too, as he wanted
+flesh, he was likely to possess activity; and a haughty smile on his
+resolute face, which strongly contrasted with the solid heaviness of his
+enemy's, gave assurance to those who beheld it and united their hope to
+their pity; so that despite the disparity of their seeming strength, the
+cry of the multitude was nearly as loud for Lydon as for Tetraides.
+
+Whoever is acquainted with the modern prize-ring--whoever has witnessed
+the heavy and disabling strokes which the human fist, skillfully
+directed, hath the power to bestow--may easily understand how much that
+happy facility would be increased by a band carried by thongs of leather
+round the arm as high as the elbow, and terribly strengthened about the
+knuckles by a plate of iron, and sometimes a plummet of lead. Yet this,
+which was meant to increase, perhaps rather diminished, the interest of
+the fray; for it necessarily shortened its duration. A very few blows,
+successfully and scientifically planted, might suffice to bring the
+contest to a close; and the battle did not, therefore, often allow full
+scope for the energy, fortitude, and dogged perseverance that we
+technically style _pluck_, which not unusually wins the day against
+superior science, and which heightens to so painful a delight the
+interest in the battle and the sympathy for the brave.
+
+"Guard thyself!" growled Tetraides, moving nearer and nearer to his foe,
+who rather shifted round him than receded.
+
+Lydon did not answer, save by a scornful glance of his quick, vigilant
+eye. Tetraides struck--it was as the blow of a smith on a vise; Lydon
+sank suddenly on one knee--the blow passed over his head. Not so
+harmless was Lydon's retaliation; he quickly sprang to his feet, and
+aimed his cestus full on the broad chest of his antagonist. Tetraides
+reeled--the populace shouted.
+
+"You are unlucky to-day," said Lepidus to Clodius: "you have lost one
+bet; you will lose another."
+
+"By the gods! my bronzes go to the auctioneer if that is the case. I
+have no less than a hundred sestertia upon Tetraides. Ha, ha! see how he
+rallies! That was a home stroke: he has cut open Lydon's shoulder.--A
+Tetraides!--a Tetraides!"
+
+"But Lydon is not disheartened. By Pollux! how well he keeps his temper!
+See how dextrously he avoids those hammer-like hands!--dodging now here,
+now there--circling round and round. Ah, poor Lydon! he has it again."
+
+"Three to one still on Tetraides! What say you, Lepidus?"
+
+"Well--nine sestertia to three--be it so! What! again Lydon. He
+stops--he gasps for breath. By the gods, he is down! No--he is again on
+his legs. Brave Lydon! Tetraides is encouraged--he laughs loud--he
+rushes on him."
+
+"Fool--success blinds him--he should be cautious. Lydon's eye is like a
+lynx's!" said Clodius, between his teeth.
+
+"Ha, Clodius! saw you that? Your man totters! Another blow--he falls--he
+falls!"
+
+"Earth revives him then. He is once more up; but the blood rolls down
+his face."
+
+"By the Thunderer! Lydon wins it. See how he presses on him! That blow
+on the temple would have crushed an ox! it _has_ crushed Tetraides. He
+falls again--he cannot move--_habet_!--_habet_!"
+
+"_Habet_!" repeated Pansa. "Take them out and give them the armor and
+swords." ...
+
+While the contest in the amphitheatre had thus commenced, there was one
+in the loftier benches for whom it had assumed indeed a poignant, a
+stifling interest. The aged father of Lydon, despite his Christian
+horror of the spectacle, in his agonized anxiety for his son had not
+been able to resist being the spectator of his fate. Once amid a fierce
+crowd of strangers, the lowest rabble of the populace, the old man saw,
+felt nothing but the form, the presence of his brave son! Not a sound
+had escaped his lips when twice he had seen him fall to the earth; only
+he had turned paler, and his limbs trembled. But he had uttered one low
+cry when he saw him victorious; unconscious, alas! of the more fearful
+battle to which that victory was but a prelude.
+
+"My gallant boy!" said he, and wiped his eyes.
+
+"Is he thy son?" said a brawny fellow to the right of the Nazarene: "he
+has fought well; let us see how he does by-and-by. Hark! he is to fight
+the first victor. Now, old boy, pray the gods that that victor be
+neither of the Romans! nor, next to them, the giant Niger."
+
+The old man sat down again and covered his face. The fray for the moment
+was indifferent to him--Lydon was not one of the combatants. Yet, yet,
+the thought flashed across him--the fray was indeed of deadly
+interest--the first who fell was to make way for Lydon! He started, and
+bent down, with straining eyes and clasped hands, to view the
+encounter.
+
+The first interest was attracted toward the combat of Niger with Sporus;
+for this spectacle of contest, from the fatal result which usually
+attended it, and from the great science it required in either
+antagonist, was always peculiarly inviting to the spectators.
+
+They stood at a considerable distance from each other. The singular
+helmet which Sporus wore (the visor of which was down) concealed his
+face; but the features of Niger attracted a fearful and universal
+interest from their compressed and vigilant ferocity. Thus they stood
+for some moments, each eying each, until Sporus began slowly and with
+great caution to advance, holding his sword pointed, like a modern
+fencer's, at the breast of his foe. Niger retreated as his antagonist
+advanced, gathering up his net with his right hand and never taking his
+small, glittering eye from the movements of the swordsman. Suddenly,
+when Sporus had approached nearly at arm's length, the retiarius threw
+himself forward and cast his net. A quick inflection of body saved the
+gladiator from the deadly snare; he uttered a sharp cry of joy and rage
+and rushed upon Niger; but Niger had already drawn in his net, thrown it
+across his shoulders, and now fled around the lists with a swiftness
+which the _secutor_[6] in vain endeavored to equal. The people laughed
+and shouted aloud to see the ineffectual efforts of the broad-shouldered
+gladiator to overtake the flying giant; when at that moment their
+attention was turned from these to the two Roman combatants.
+
+[Footnote 6: So called from the office of that tribe of gladiators in
+_following_ the foe the moment the net was cast, in order to smite him
+ere he could have time to re-arrange it.]
+
+They had placed themselves at the onset face to face, at the distance of
+modern fencers from each other; but the extreme caution which both
+evinced at first had prevented any warmth of engagement, and allowed the
+spectators full leisure to interest themselves in the battle between
+Sporus and his foe. But the Romans were now heated into full and fierce
+encounter: they pushed--returned--advanced on--retreated from each
+other, with all that careful yet scarcely perceptible caution which
+characterizes men well experienced and equally matched. But at this
+moment Eumolpus, the older gladiator, by that dextrous back-stroke which
+was considered in the arena so difficult to avoid, had wounded Nepimus
+in the side. The people shouted; Lepidus turned pale.
+
+"Ho!" said Clodius, "the game is nearly over. If Eumolpus rights now the
+quiet fight, the other will gradually bleed himself away."
+
+"But, thank the gods! he does _not_ fight the backward fight. See!--he
+presses hard upon Nepimus. By Mars! but Nepimus had him there! the
+helmet rang again!--Clodius, I shall win!"
+
+"Why do I ever bet but at the dice?" groaned Clodius to himself;--"or
+why cannot one cog a gladiator?"
+
+"A Sporus!--a Sporus!" shouted the populace, as Niger, now having
+suddenly paused, had again cast his net, and again unsuccessfully. He
+had not retreated this time with sufficient agility--the sword of Sporus
+had inflicted a severe wound upon his right leg; and, incapacitated to
+fly, he was pressed hard by the fierce swordsman. His great height and
+length of arm still continued, however, to give him no despicable
+advantages; and steadily keeping his trident at the front of his foe, he
+repelled him successfully for several minutes.
+
+Sporus now tried by great rapidity of evolution to get round his
+antagonist, who necessarily moved with pain and slowness. In so doing he
+lost his caution--he advanced too near to the giant--raised his arm to
+strike, and received the three points of the fatal spear full in his
+breast! He sank on his knee. In a moment more the deadly net was cast
+over him,--he struggled against its meshes in vain; again--again--again
+he writhed mutely beneath the fresh strokes of the trident--his blood
+flowed fast through the net and redly over the sand. He lowered his arms
+in acknowledgment of defeat.
+
+The conquering retiarius withdrew his net, and leaning on his spear,
+looked to the audience for their judgment. Slowly, too, at the same
+moment, the vanquished gladiator rolled his dim and despairing eyes
+around the theatre. From row to row, from bench to bench, there glared
+upon him but merciless and unpitying eyes.
+
+Hushed was the roar--the murmur! The silence was dread, for in it was no
+sympathy; not a hand--no, not even a woman's hand--gave the signal of
+charity and life! Sporus had never been popular in the arena; and lately
+the interest of the combat had been excited on behalf of the wounded
+Niger. The people were warmed into blood--the _mimic_ fight had ceased
+to charm; the interest had mounted up to the desire of sacrifice and the
+thirst of death!
+
+The gladiator felt that his doom was sealed; he uttered no prayer--no
+groan. The people gave the signal of death! In dogged but agonized
+submission he bent his neck to receive the fatal stroke. And now, as the
+spear of the retiarius was not a weapon to inflict instant and certain
+death, there stalked into the arena a grim and fatal form, brandishing a
+short, sharp sword, and with features utterly concealed beneath its
+visor. With slow and measured step this dismal headsman approached the
+gladiator, still kneeling--laid the left hand on his humbled crest--drew
+the edge of the blade across his neck--turned round to the assembly,
+lest, in the last moment, remorse should come upon them; the dread
+signal continued the same; the blade glittered brightly in the
+air--fell--and the gladiator rolled upon the sand: his limbs
+quivered--were still--he was a corpse.
+
+His body was dragged at once from the arena through the gate of death,
+and thrown into the gloomy den termed technically the "spoliarium." And
+ere it had well reached that destination the strife between the
+remaining combatants was decided. The sword of Eumolpus had inflicted
+the death-wound upon the less experienced combatant. A new victim was
+added to the receptacle of the slain.
+
+Throughout that mighty assembly there now ran a universal movement; the
+people breathed more freely and settled themselves in their seats. A
+grateful shower was cast over every row from the concealed conduits. In
+cool and luxurious pleasure they talked over the late spectacle of
+blood. Eumolpus removed his helmet and wiped his brows; his close-curled
+hair and short beard, his noble Roman features and bright dark eye,
+attracted the general admiration. He was fresh, unwounded, unfatigued.
+
+The aedile paused, and proclaimed aloud that as Niger's wound disabled
+him from again entering the arena, Lydon was to be the successor to the
+slaughtered Nepimus and the new combatant of Eumolpus.
+
+"Yet, Lydon," added he, "if thou wouldst decline the combat with one so
+brave and tried, thou mayst have full liberty to do so. Eumolpus is not
+the antagonist that was originally decreed for thee. Thou knowest best
+how far thou canst cope with him. If thou failest, thy doom is honorable
+death; if thou conquerest, out of my own purse I will double the
+stipulated prize."
+
+The people shouted applause. Lydon stood in the lists; he gazed around;
+high above he beheld the pale face, the straining eyes of his father.
+He turned away irresolute for a moment. No! the conquest of the cestus
+was not sufficient--he had not yet won the prize of victory--his father
+was still a slave!
+
+"Noble aedile!" he replied, in a firm and deep tone, "I shrink not from
+this combat. For the honor of Pompeii, I demand that one trained by its
+long-celebrated lanista shall do battle with this Roman."
+
+The people shouted louder than before.
+
+"Four to one against Lydon!" said Clodius to Lepidus.
+
+"I would not take twenty to one! Why, Eumolpus is a very Achilles, and
+this poor fellow is but a tyro!"
+
+Eumolpus gazed hard on the face of Lydon: he smiled; yet the smile was
+followed by a slight and scarce audible sigh--a touch of compassionate
+emotion, which custom conquered the moment the heart acknowledged it.
+
+And now both, clad in complete armor, the sword drawn, the visor closed,
+the two last combatants of the arena (ere man, at least, was matched
+with beast) stood opposed to each other.
+
+It was just at this time that a letter was delivered to the praetor by
+one of the attendants of the arena; he removed the cincture--glanced
+over it for a moment--his countenance betrayed surprise and
+embarrassment. He re-read the letter, and then muttering,--"Tush! it is
+impossible!--the man must be drunk, even in the morning, to dream of
+such follies!"--threw it carelessly aside and gravely settled himself
+once more in the attitude of attention to the sports.
+
+The interest of the public was wound up very high. Eumolpus had at first
+won their favor; but the gallantry of Lydon, and his well-timed allusion
+to the honor of the Pompeiian lanista, had afterward given the latter
+the preference in their eyes.
+
+"Holla, old fellow!" said Medon's neighbor to him. "Your son is hardly
+matched; but never fear, the editor will not permit him to be slain--no,
+nor the people neither: he has behaved too bravely for that. Ha! that
+was a home thrust!--well averted by Pollux! At him again, Lydon!--they
+stop to breathe! What art thou muttering, old boy?"
+
+"Prayers!" answered Medon, with a more calm and hopeful mien than he had
+yet maintained.
+
+"Prayers!--trifles! The time for gods to carry a man away in a cloud is
+gone now. Ha! Jupiter, what a blow! Thy side--thy side!--take care of
+thy side, Lydon!"
+
+There was a convulsive tremor throughout the assembly. A fierce blow
+from Eumolpus, full on the crest, had brought Lydon to his knee.
+
+"_Habet_!--he has it!" cried a shrill female voice; "he has it!"
+
+It was the voice of the girl who had so anxiously anticipated the
+sacrifice of some criminal to the beasts.
+
+"Be silent, child!" said the wife of Pansa, haughtily. "_Non habet!_--he
+is _not_ wounded!"
+
+"I wish he were, if only to spite old surly Medon," muttered the girl.
+
+Meanwhile Lydon, who had hitherto defended himself with great skill and
+valor, began to give way before the vigorous assaults of the practiced
+Roman; his arm grew tired, his eye dizzy, he breathed hard and
+painfully. The combatants paused again for breath.
+
+"Young man," said Eumolpus, in a low voice, "desist; I will wound thee
+slightly--then lower thy arm; thou hast propitiated the editor and the
+mob--thou wilt be honorably saved!"
+
+"And my father still enslaved!" groaned Lydon to himself. "No! death or
+his freedom."
+
+At that thought, and seeing that, his strength not being equal to the
+endurance of the Roman, everything depended on a sudden and desperate
+effort, he threw himself fiercely on Eumolpus; the Roman warily
+retreated--Lydon thrust again--Eumolpus drew himself aside--the sword
+grazed his cuirass--Lydon's breast was exposed--the Roman plunged his
+sword through the joints of the armor, not meaning however to inflict a
+deep wound; Lydon, weak and exhausted, fell forward, fell right on the
+point; it passed through and through, even to the back. Eumolpus drew
+forth his blade; Lydon still made an effort to regain his balance--his
+sword left his grasp--he struck mechanically at the gladiator with his
+naked hand and fell prostrate on the arena. With one accord, aedile and
+assembly made the signal of mercy; the officers of the arena approached,
+they took off the helmet of the vanquished. He still breathed; his eyes
+rolled fiercely on his foe; the savageness he had acquired in his
+calling glared from his gaze and lowered upon the brow, darkened already
+with the shades of death; then with a convulsive groan, with a
+half-start, he lifted his eyes above. They rested not on the face of the
+aedile nor on the pitying brows of the relenting judges. He saw them not;
+they were as if the vast space was desolate and bare; one pale
+agonizing face alone was all he recognized--one cry of a broken heart
+was all that, amid the murmurs and the shouts of the populace, reached
+his ear. The ferocity vanished from his brow; a soft, tender expression
+of sanctifying but despairing filial love played over his
+features--played--waned--darkened! His face suddenly became locked and
+rigid, resuming its former fierceness. He fell upon the earth.
+
+"Look to him," said the aedile; "he has done his duty!"
+
+The officers dragged him off to the spoliarium.
+
+"A true type of glory, and of its fate!" murmured Arbaces to himself;
+and his eye, glancing around the amphitheatre, betrayed so much of
+disdain and scorn that whoever encountered it felt his breath suddenly
+arrested, and his emotions frozen into one sensation of abasement and
+of awe.
+
+Again rich perfumes were wafted around the theatre; the attendants
+sprinkled fresh sand over the arena.
+
+"Bring forth the lion and Glaucus the Athenian," said the aedile.
+
+And a deep and breathless hush of overwrought interest and intense (yet
+strange to say not unpleasing) terror lay like a mighty and awful dream
+over the assembly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The door swung gratingly back--the gleam of spears shot along the wall.
+
+"Glaucus the Athenian, thy time has come," said a loud and clear voice;
+"the lion awaits thee."
+
+"I am ready," said the Athenian. "Brother and co-mate, one last embrace!
+Bless me--and farewell!"
+
+The Christian opened his arms; he clasped the young heathen to his
+breast; he kissed his forehead and cheek; he sobbed aloud; his tears
+flowed fast and hot over the features of his new friend.
+
+"Oh! could I have converted thee, I had not wept. Oh that I might say to
+thee, 'We two shall sup this night in Paradise!'"
+
+"It may be so yet," answered the Greek with a tremulous voice, "They
+whom death parts now may yet meet beyond the grave; on the earth--oh!
+the beautiful, the beloved earth, farewell for ever! Worthy officer, I
+attend you."
+
+Glaucus tore himself away; and when he came forth into the air, its
+breath, which though sunless was hot and arid, smote witheringly upon
+him. His frame, not yet restored from the effects of the deadly
+draught, shrank and trembled. The officers supported him.
+
+"Courage!" said one; "thou art young, active, well knit. They give thee
+a weapon! despair not, and thou mayst yet conquer."
+
+Glaucus did not reply; but ashamed of his infirmity, he made a desperate
+and convulsive effort and regained the firmness of his nerves. They
+anointed his body, completely naked save by a cincture round the loins,
+placed the stilus (vain weapon!) in his hand, and led him into
+the arena.
+
+And now when the Greek saw the eyes of thousands and tens of thousands
+upon him, he no longer felt that he was mortal. All evidence of fear,
+all fear itself, was gone. A red and haughty flush spread over the
+paleness of his features; he towered aloft to the full of his glorious
+stature. In the elastic beauty of his limbs and form; in his intent but
+unfrowning brow; in the high disdain and in the indomitable soul which
+breathed visibly, which spoke audibly, from his attitude, his lip, his
+eye,--he seemed the very incarnation, vivid and corporeal, of the valor
+of his land; of the divinity of its worship: at once a hero and a god!
+
+The murmur of hatred and horror at his crime which had greeted his
+entrance died into the silence of involuntary admiration and
+half-compassionate respect; and with a quick and convulsive sigh, that
+seemed to move the whole mass of life as if it were one body, the gaze
+of the spectators turned from the Athenian to a dark uncouth object in
+the centre of the arena. It was the grated den of the lion.
+
+"By Venus, how warm it is!" said Fulvia, "yet there is no sun. Would
+that those stupid sailors could have fastened up that gap in
+the awning!"
+
+"Oh, it is warm indeed. I turn sick--I faint!" said the wife of Pansa;
+even her experienced stoicism giving way at the struggle about to
+take place.
+
+The lion had been kept without food for twenty-four hours, and the
+animal had, during the whole morning, testified a singular and restless
+uneasiness, which the keeper had attributed to the pangs of hunger. Yet
+its bearing seemed rather that of fear than of rage; its roar was
+painful and distressed; it hung its head--snuffed the air through the
+bars--then lay down--started again--and again uttered its wild and
+far-resounding cries. And now in its den it lay utterly dumb and mute,
+with distended nostrils forced hard against the grating, and disturbing,
+with a heaving breath, the sand below on the arena.
+
+The editor's lip quivered, and his cheek grew pale; he looked anxiously
+around--hesitated--delayed; the crowd became impatient. Slowly he gave
+the sign; the keeper, who was behind the den, cautiously removed the
+grating, and the lion leaped forth with a mighty and glad roar of
+release. The keeper hastily retreated through the grated passage leading
+from the arena, and left the lord of the forest--and his prey.
+
+Glaucus had bent his limbs so as to give himself the firmest posture at
+the expected rush of the lion, with his small and shining weapon raised
+on high, in the faint hope that _one_ well-directed thrust (for he knew
+that he should have time but for _one_) might penetrate through the eye
+to the brain of his grim foe.
+
+But to the unutterable astonishment of all, the beast seemed not even
+aware of the presence of the criminal.
+
+At the first moment of its release it halted abruptly in the arena,
+raised itself half on end, snuffing the upward air with impatient signs,
+then suddenly it sprang forward, but not on the Athenian. At half-speed
+it circled round and round the space, turning its vast head from side to
+side with an anxious and perturbed gaze, as if seeking only some avenue
+of escape; once or twice it endeavored to leap up the parapet that
+divided it from the audience, and on falling, uttered rather a baffled
+howl than its deep-toned and kingly roar. It evinced no sign either of
+wrath or hunger; its tail drooped along the sand, instead of lashing its
+gaunt sides; and its eye, though it wandered at times to Glaucus, rolled
+again listlessly from him. At length, as if tired of attempting to
+escape, it crept with a moan into its cage, and once more laid itself
+down to rest.
+
+The first surprise of the assembly at the apathy of the lion soon grew
+converted into resentment at its cowardice; and the populace already
+merged their pity for the fate of Glaucus into angry compassion for
+their own disappointment.
+
+The editor called to the keeper:--"How is this? Take the goad, prick him
+forth, and then close the door of the den."
+
+As the keeper, with some fear but more astonishment, was preparing to
+obey, a loud cry was heard at one of the entrances of the arena; there
+was a confusion, a bustle--voices of remonstrance suddenly breaking
+forth, and suddenly silenced at the reply. All eyes turned in
+wonder at the interruption, toward the quarter of the disturbance; the
+crowd gave way, and suddenly Sallust appeared on the senatorial benches,
+his hair disheveled--breathless--heated--half exhausted. He cast his
+eyes hastily round the ring. "Remove the Athenian!" he cried; "haste--he
+is innocent! Arrest Arbaces the Egyptian--HE is the murderer of
+Apaecides!"
+
+[Illustration: _IN THE ARENA,_ Photogravure from a Drawing by Frank
+Kirchbach.
+
+"Glaucus had bent his limbs so as to give himself the firmest posture at
+the expected rush of the lion, with his small and shining weapon raised
+on high, in the faint hope that _one_ well-directed thrust (for he knew
+that he should have time but for _one_) might penetrate through the eye
+to the brain of his grim foe. But to the unutterable astonishment of
+all, the beast seemed not even aware of the presence of the criminal." ]
+
+[Illustration: Untitled]
+
+"Art thou mad, O Sallust!" said the praetor, rising from his seat. "What
+means this raving?"
+
+"Remove the Athenian!--Quick! or his blood be on your head. Praetor,
+delay, and you answer with your own life to the Emperor! I bring with me
+the eye-witness to the death of the priest Apaecides. Room there, stand
+back, give way. People of Pompeii, fix every eye upon Arbaces; there he
+sits! Room there for the priest Calenus!"
+
+Pale, haggard, fresh from the jaws of famine and of death, his face
+fallen, his eyes dull as a vulture's, his broad frame gaunt as a
+skeleton, Calenus was supported into the very row in which Arbaces sat.
+His releasers had given him sparingly of food; but the chief sustenance
+that nerved his feeble limbs was revenge!
+
+"The priest Calenus--Calenus!" cried the mob. "It is he? No--it is a
+dead man!"
+
+"It is the priest Calenus," said the praetor, gravely. "What hast thou to
+say?"
+
+"Arbaces of Egypt is the murderer of Apaecides, the priest of Isis; these
+eyes saw him deal the blow. It is from the dungeon into which he plunged
+me--it is from the darkness and horror of a death by famine--that the
+gods have raised me to proclaim his crime! Release the Athenian--_he_ is
+innocent!"
+
+"It is for this, then, that the lion spared him, A miracle! a miracle!"
+cried Pansa.
+
+"A miracle! a miracle!" shouted the people; "remove the
+Athenian--_Arbaces to the lion_."
+
+And that shout echoed from hill to vale--from coast to sea--_Arbaces to
+the lion_.
+
+"Officers, remove the accused Glaucus--remove, but guard him yet," said
+the praetor. "The gods lavish their wonders upon this day."
+
+As the praetor gave the word of release, there was a cry of joy: a female
+voice, a child's voice; and it was of joy! It rang through the heart of
+the assembly with electric force; it was touching, it was holy, that
+child's voice. And the populace echoed it back with sympathizing
+congratulation.
+
+"Silence!" said the grave praetor; "who is there?"
+
+"The blind girl--Nydia," answered Sallust; "it is her hand that has
+raised Calenus from the grave, and delivered Glaucus from the lion."
+
+"Of this hereafter," said the praetor. "Calenus, priest of Isis, thou
+accusest Arbaces of the murder of Apaecides?"
+
+"I do!"
+
+"Thou didst behold the deed?"
+
+"Praetor--with these eyes--"
+
+"Enough at present--the details must be reserved for more suiting time
+and place. Arbaces of Egypt, thou hearest the charge against thee--thou
+hast not yet spoken--what hast thou to say?"
+
+The gaze of the crowd had been long riveted on Arbaces; but not until
+the confusion which he had betrayed at the first charge of Sallust and
+the entrance of Calenus had subsided. At the shout, "Arbaces to the
+lion!" he had indeed trembled, and the dark bronze of his cheek had
+taken a paler hue. But he had soon recovered his haughtiness and
+self-control. Proudly he returned the angry glare of the countless eyes
+around him; and replying now to the question of the praetor, he said, in
+that accent so peculiarly tranquil and commanding which characterized
+his tones:--
+
+"Praetor, this charge is so mad that it scarcely deserves reply. My first
+accuser is the noble Sallust--the most intimate friend of Glaucus! My
+second is a priest: I revere his garb and calling--but, people of
+Pompeii! ye know somewhat of the character of Calenus--he is griping and
+gold-thirsty to a proverb; the witness of such men is to be bought!
+Praetor, I am innocent!"
+
+"Sallust," said the magistrate, "where found you Calenus?"
+
+"In the dungeons of Arbaces."
+
+"Egyptian," said the praetor, frowning, "thou didst, then, dare to
+imprison a priest of the gods--and wherefore?"
+
+[Illustration: NYDIA The blind flower-girl of Bulwer's Last Days of
+Pompeii. Photogravure from a Painting by C. Von Bodenhausen.]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Hear me," answered Arbaces, rising calmly, but with agitation visible
+in his face. "This man came to threaten that he would make against me
+the charge he has now made, unless I would purchase his silence with
+half my fortune; I remonstrated--in vain. Peace there--let not the
+priest interrupt me! Noble praetor--and ye, O people! I was a stranger in
+the land--I knew myself innocent of crime--but the witness of a
+priest against me might yet destroy me. In my perplexity I decoyed him
+to the cell whence he has been released, on pretense that it was the
+coffer-house of my gold. I resolved to detain him there until the fate
+of the true criminal was sealed and his threats could avail no longer;
+but I meant no worse. I may have erred--but who among ye will not
+acknowledge the equity of self-preservation? Were I guilty, why was the
+witness of this priest silent at the trial?--_then_ I had not detained
+or concealed him. Why did he not proclaim my guilt when I proclaimed
+that of Glaucus? Praetor, this needs an answer. For the rest, I throw
+myself on your laws. I demand their protection. Remove hence the accused
+and the accuser. I will willingly meet, and cheerfully abide by the
+decision of, the legitimate tribunal. This is no place for
+further parley."
+
+"He says right." said the praetor. "Ho! guards--remove Arbaces--guard
+Calenus! Sallust, we hold you responsible for your accusation. Let the
+sports be resumed."
+
+"What!" cried Calenus, turning round to the people, "shall Isis be thus
+contemned? Shall the blood of Apaecides yet cry for vengeance? Shall
+justice be delayed now, that it may be frustrated hereafter? Shall the
+lion be cheated of his lawful prey? A god! a god!--I feel the god rush
+to my lips! _To the lion--to the lion with Arbaces_!"
+
+His exhausted frame could support no longer the ferocious malice of the
+priest; he sank on the ground in strong convulsions; the foam gathered
+to his mouth; he was as a man, indeed, whom a supernatural power had
+entered! The people saw, and shuddered.
+
+"It is a god that inspires the holy man! _To the lion with the
+Egyptian_!"
+
+With that cry up sprang, on moved, thousands upon thousands. They rushed
+from the heights; they poured down in the direction of the Egyptian. In
+vain did the aedile command; in vain did the praetor lift his voice and
+proclaim the law. The people had been already rendered savage by the
+exhibition of blood; they thirsted for more; their superstition was
+aided by their ferocity. Aroused, inflamed by the spectacle of their
+victims, they forgot the authority of their rulers. It was one of those
+dread popular convulsions common to crowds wholly ignorant, half free
+and half servile, and which the peculiar constitution of the Roman
+provinces so frequently exhibited. The power of the praetor was a reed
+beneath the whirlwind; still, at his word the guards had drawn
+themselves along the lower benches, on which the upper classes sat
+separate from the vulgar. They made but a feeble barrier; the waves of
+the human sea halted for a moment, to enable Arbaces to count the exact
+moment of his doom! In despair, and in a terror which beat down even
+pride, he glanced his eye over the rolling and rushing crowd; when,
+right above them, through the wide chasm which had been left in the
+velaria, he beheld a strange and awful apparition; he beheld, and his
+craft restored his courage!
+
+He stretched his hand on high; over his lofty brow and royal features
+there came an expression, of unutterable solemnity and command.
+
+"Behold!" he shouted with a voice of thunder, which stilled the roar of
+the crowd: "behold how the gods protect the guiltless! The fires of the
+avenging Orcus burst forth against the false witness of my accusers!"
+
+The eyes of the crowd followed the gesture of the Egyptian, and beheld
+with dismay a vast vapor shooting from the summit of Vesuvius in the
+form of a gigantic pine-tree; the trunk, blackness--the branches
+fire!--a fire that shifted and wavered in its hues with every moment,
+now fiercely luminous, now of a dull and dying red, that again blazed
+terrifically forth with intolerable glare!
+
+There was a dead, heart-sunken silence; through which there suddenly
+broke the roar of the lion, which was echoed back from within the
+building by the sharper and fiercer yells of its fellow-beast. Dread
+seers were they of the Burden of the Atmosphere, and wild prophets of
+the wrath to come!
+
+Then there arose on high the universal shrieks of women; the men stared
+at each other, but were dumb. At that moment they felt the earth shake
+under their feet; the walls of the theatre trembled; and beyond in the
+distance they heard the crash of falling roofs; an instant more, and the
+mountain cloud seemed to roll toward them, dark and rapid, like a
+torrent; at the same time it cast forth from its bosom a shower of ashes
+mixed with vast fragments of burning stone! over the crushing vines,
+over the desolate streets, over the amphitheatre itself; far and wide,
+with many a mighty splash in the agitated sea, fell that awful shower!
+
+No longer thought the crowd of justice or of Arbaces; safety for
+themselves was their sole thought. Each turned to fly--each dashing,
+pressing, crushing against the other. Trampling recklessly over the
+fallen, amid groans and oaths and prayers and sudden shrieks, the
+enormous crowd vomited itself forth through the numerous passages.
+Whither should they fly? Some, anticipating a second earthquake,
+hastened to their homes to load themselves with their more costly goods
+and escape while it was yet time; others, dreading the showers of ashes
+that now fell fast, torrent upon torrent, over the streets, rushed under
+the roofs of the nearest houses, or temples, or sheds--shelter of any
+kind--for protection from the terrors of the open air. But darker, and
+larger, and mightier, spread the cloud above them. It was a sudden and
+more ghastly Night rushing upon the realm of Noon!
+
+
+
+KENELM AND LILY
+
+From 'Kenelm Chillingly'
+
+The children have come,--some thirty of them, pretty as English children
+generally are, happy in the joy of the summer sunshine, and the flower
+lawns, and the feast under cover of an awning suspended between
+chestnut-trees and carpeted with sward.
+
+No doubt Kenelm held his own at the banquet, and did his best to
+increase the general gayety, for whenever he spoke the children listened
+eagerly, and when he had done they laughed mirthfully.
+
+"The fair face I promised you," whispered Mrs. Braefield, "is not here
+yet. I have a little note from the young lady to say that Mrs. Cameron
+does not feel very well this morning, but hopes to recover sufficiently
+to come later in the afternoon."
+
+"And pray who is Mrs. Cameron?"
+
+"Ah! I forgot that you are a stranger to the place. Mrs. Cameron is the
+aunt with whom Lily resides. Is it not a pretty name, Lily?"
+
+"Very! emblematic of a spinster that does not spin, with a white head
+and a thin stalk."
+
+"Then the name belies my Lily; as you will see."
+
+The children now finished their feast and betook themselves to dancing,
+in an alley smoothed for a croquet-ground and to the sound of a violin
+played by the old grandfather of one of the party. While Mrs. Braefield
+was busying herself with forming the dance, Kenelm seized the occasion
+to escape from a young nymph of the age of twelve, who had sat next to
+him at the banquet and taken so great a fancy to him that he began to
+fear she would vow never to forsake his side,--and stole away
+undetected.
+
+There are times when the mirth of others only saddens us, especially the
+mirth of children with high spirits, that jar on our own quiet mood.
+Gliding through a dense shrubbery, in which, though the lilacs were
+faded, the laburnum still retained here and there the waning gold of its
+clusters, Kenelm came into a recess which bounded his steps and invited
+him to repose. It was a circle, so formed artificially by slight
+trellises, to which clung parasite roses heavy with leaves and flowers.
+In the midst played a tiny fountain with a silvery murmuring sound; at
+the background, dominating the place, rose the crests of stately trees,
+on which the sunlight shimmered, but which rampired out all horizon
+beyond. Even as in life do the great dominant passions--love, ambition,
+desire of power, or gold, or fame, or knowledge--form the proud
+background to the brief-lived flowerets of our youth, lift our eyes
+beyond the smile of their bloom, catch the glint of a loftier sunbeam,
+and yet--and yet--exclude our sight from the lengths and the widths of
+the space which extends behind and beyond them.
+
+Kenelm threw himself on the turf beside the fountain. From afar came the
+whoop and the laugh of the children in their sports or their dance. At
+the distance their joy did not sadden him--he marveled why; and thus, in
+musing reverie, thought to explain the why to himself.
+
+"The poet," so ran his lazy thinking, "has told us that 'distance lends
+enchantment to the view,' and thus compares to the charm of distance the
+illusion of hope. But the poet narrows the scope of his own
+illustration. Distance lends enchantment to the ear as well as to the
+sight; nor to these bodily senses alone. Memory, no less than hope, owes
+its charm to 'the far away.'
+
+"I cannot imagine myself again a child when I am in the midst of yon
+noisy children. But as their noise reaches me here, subdued and
+mellowed; and knowing, thank Heaven! that the urchins are not within
+reach of me, I could readily dream myself back into childhood and into
+sympathy with the lost playfields of school.
+
+"So surely it must be with grief: how different the terrible agony for a
+beloved one just gone from earth, to the soft regret for one who
+disappeared into heaven years ago! So with the art of poetry: how
+imperatively, when it deals with the great emotions of tragedy, it must
+remove the actors from us, in proportion as the emotions are to elevate,
+and the tragedy is to please us by the tears it draws! Imagine our shock
+if a poet were to place on the stage some wise gentleman with whom we
+dined yesterday, and who was discovered to have killed his father and
+married his mother. But when Oedipus commits those unhappy mistakes
+nobody is shocked. Oxford in the nineteenth century is a long way off
+from Thebes three thousand or four thousand years ago.
+
+"And," continued Kenelm, plunging deeper into the maze of metaphysical
+criticism, "even where the poet deals with persons and things close upon
+our daily sight--if he would give them poetic charm he must resort to a
+sort of moral or psychological distance; the nearer they are to us in
+external circumstance, the farther they must be in some internal
+peculiarities. Werter and Clarissa Harlowe are described as
+contemporaries of their artistic creation, and with the minutest details
+of an apparent realism; yet they are at once removed from our daily
+lives by their idiosyncrasies and their fates. We know that while Werter
+and Clarissa are so near to us in much that we sympathize with them as
+friends and kinsfolk, they are yet as much remote from us in the poetic
+and idealized side of their natures as if they belonged to the age of
+Homer; and this it is that invests with charm the very pain which their
+fate inflicts on us. Thus, I suppose, it must be in love. If the love we
+feel is to have the glamor of poetry, it must be love for some one
+morally at a distance from our ordinary habitual selves; in short,
+differing from us in attributes which, however near we draw to the
+possessor, we can never approach, never blend, in attributes of our own;
+so that there is something in the loved one that always remains an
+ideal--a mystery--'a sun-bright summit mingling with the sky!'" ...
+
+From this state, half comatose, half unconscious, Kenelm was roused
+slowly, reluctantly. Something struck softly on his cheek--again a
+little less softly; he opened his eyes--they fell first upon two tiny
+rosebuds, which, on striking his face, had fallen on his breast; and
+then looking up, he saw before him, in an opening of the trellised
+circle, a female child's laughing face. Her hand was still uplifted,
+charged with another rosebud; but behind the child's figure, looking
+over her shoulder and holding back the menacing arm, was a face as
+innocent but lovelier far--the face of a girl in her first youth, framed
+round with the blossoms that festooned the trellis. How the face became
+the flowers! It seemed the fairy spirit of them.
+
+Kenelm started and rose to his feet. The child, the one whom he had so
+ungallantly escaped from, ran towards him through a wicket in the
+circle. Her companion disappeared.
+
+"Is it you?" said Kenelm to the child--"you who pelted me so cruelly?
+Ungrateful creature! Did I not give you the best strawberries in the
+dish, and all my own cream?"
+
+"But why did you run away and hide yourself when you ought to be dancing
+with me?" replied the young lady, evading, with the instinct of her sex,
+all answer to the reproach she had deserved.
+
+"I did not run away; and it is clear that I did not mean to hide myself,
+since you so easily found me out. But who was the young lady with you? I
+suspect she pelted me too, for _she_ seems to have run away to
+hide herself."
+
+"No, she did not pelt you; she wanted to stop me, and you would have had
+another rosebud--oh, so much bigger!--if she had not held back my arm.
+Don't you know her--don't you know Lily?"
+
+"No; so that is Lily? You shall introduce me to her."
+
+By this time they had passed out of the circle through the little wicket
+opposite the path by which Kenelm had entered, and opening at once on
+the lawn. Here at some distance the children were grouped; some reclined
+on the grass, some walking to and fro, in the interval of the dance....
+
+Before he had reached the place, Mrs. Braefield met him.
+
+"Lily is come!"
+
+"I know it--I have seen her."
+
+"Is not she beautiful?"
+
+"I must see more of her if I am to answer critically; but before you
+introduce me, may I be permitted to ask who and what is Lily?"
+
+Mrs. Braefield paused a moment before she answered, and yet the answer
+was brief enough not to need much consideration She is a Miss Mordaunt,
+an orphan; and as I before told you, resides with her aunt, Mrs.
+Cameron, a widow. They have the prettiest cottage you ever saw on the
+banks of the river, or rather rivulet, about a mile from this place.
+Mrs. Cameron is a very good, simple-hearted woman. As to Lily, I can
+praise her beauty only with safe conscience, for as yet she is a mere
+child--her mind quite unformed."
+
+"Did you ever meet any man, much less any woman, whose mind was formed?"
+muttered Kenelm. "I am sure mine is not, and never will be on
+this earth."
+
+Mrs. Braefield did not hear this low-voiced observation. She was looking
+about for Lily; and perceiving her at last as the children who
+surrounded her were dispersing to renew the dance, she took Kenelm's
+arm, led him to the young lady, and a formal introduction took place.
+
+Formal as it could be on those sunlit swards, amidst the joy of summer
+and the laugh of children. In such scene and such circumstance,
+formality does not last long. I know not how it was, but in a very few
+minutes Kenelm and Lily had ceased to be strangers to each other. They
+found themselves seated apart from the rest of the merry-makers, on the
+bank shadowed by lime-trees; the man listening with downcast eyes, the
+girl with mobile shifting glances, now on earth, now on heaven, and
+talking freely, gayly--like the babble of a happy stream, with a silvery
+dulcet voice and a sparkle of rippling smiles.
+
+No doubt this is a reversal of the formalities of well-bred life and
+conventional narrating thereof. According to them, no doubt, it is for
+the man to talk and the maid to listen; but I state the facts as they
+were, honestly. And Lily knew no more of the formalities of drawing-room
+life than a skylark fresh from its nest knows of the song-teacher and
+the cage. She was still so much of a child. Mrs. Braefield was
+right--her mind was still so unformed.
+
+What she did talk about in that first talk between them that could make
+the meditative Kenelm listen so mutely, so intently, I know not; at
+least I could not jot it down on paper. I fear it was very egotistical,
+as the talk of children generally is--about herself and her aunt and her
+home and her friends--all her friends seemed children like herself,
+though younger--Clemmy the chief of them. Clemmy was the one who had
+taken a fancy to Kenelm. And amidst all the ingenuous prattle there came
+flashes of a quick intellect, a lively fancy--nay, even a poetry of
+expression or of sentiment. It might be the talk of a child, but
+certainly not of a silly child.
+
+But as soon as the dance was over, the little ones again gathered round
+Lily. Evidently she was the prime favorite of them all; and as her
+companions had now become tired of dancing, new sports were proposed,
+and Lily was carried off to "Prisoner's Base."
+
+"I am very happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Chillingly," said a
+frank, pleasant voice; and a well-dressed, good-looking man held out his
+hand to Kenelm.
+
+"My husband," said Mrs. Braefield with a certain pride in her look.
+
+Kenelm responded cordially to the civilities of the master of the house,
+who had just returned from his city office, and left all its cares
+behind him. You had only to look at him to see that he was prosperous
+and deserved to be so. There were in his countenance the signs of strong
+sense, of good-humor--above all, of an active, energetic temperament. A
+man of broad smooth forehead, keen hazel eyes, firm lips and jaw; with a
+happy contentment in himself, his house, the world in general, mantling
+over his genial smile, and outspoken in the metallic ring of his voice.
+
+"You will stay and dine with us, of course," said Mr. Braefield; "and
+unless you want very much to be in town to-night, I hope you will take a
+bed here."
+
+Kenelm hesitated.
+
+"Do stay at least till to-morrow," said Mrs. Braefield. Kenelm hesitated
+still; and while hesitating, his eyes rested on Lily, leaning on the arm
+of a middle-aged lady, and approaching the hostess--evidently to
+take leave.
+
+"I cannot resist so tempting an invitation," said Kenelm, and he fell
+back a little behind Lily and her companion.
+
+"Thank you much for so pleasant a day," said Mrs. Cameron to the
+hostess. "Lily has enjoyed herself extremely. I only regret we could not
+come earlier."
+
+"If you are walking home," said Mr. Braefield, "let me accompany you. I
+want to speak to your gardener about his heart's-ease--it is much finer
+than mine."
+
+"If so," said Kenelm to Lily, "may I come too? Of all flowers that grow,
+heart's-ease is the one I most prize."
+
+A few minutes afterward Kenelm was walking by the side of Lily along the
+banks of a little stream tributary to the Thames; Mrs. Cameron and Mr.
+Braefield in advance, for the path only held two abreast.
+
+Suddenly Lily left his side, allured by a rare butterfly--I think it is
+called the Emperor of Morocco--that was sunning its yellow wings upon a
+group of wild reeds. She succeeded in capturing this wanderer in her
+straw hat, over which she drew her sun-veil. After this notable capture
+she returned demurely to Kenelm's side.
+
+"Do you collect insects?" said that philosopher, as much surprised as it
+was his nature to be at anything.
+
+"Only butterflies," answered Lily; "they are not insects, you know; they
+are souls."
+
+"Emblems of souls, you mean--at least so the Greeks prettily represented
+them to be."
+
+"No, real souls--the souls of infants that die in their cradles
+unbaptized; and if they are taken care of, and not eaten by birds, and
+live a year, then they pass into fairies."
+
+"It is a very poetical idea, Miss Mordaunt, and founded on evidence
+quite as rational as other assertions of the metamorphosis of one
+creature into another. Perhaps you can do what the philosophers
+cannot--tell me how you learned a new idea to be an incontestable fact?"
+
+"I don't know," replied Lily, looking very much puzzled: "perhaps I
+learned it in a book, or perhaps I dreamed it."
+
+"You could not make a wiser answer if you were a philosopher. But you
+talk of taking care of butterflies: how do you do that? Do you impale
+them on pins stuck into a glass case?"
+
+"Impale them! How can you talk so cruelly? You deserve to be pinched by
+the fairies."
+
+"I am afraid," thought Kenelm, compassionately, "that my companion has
+no mind to be formed; what is euphoniously called 'an innocent.'"
+
+He shook his head and remained silent.
+
+Lily resumed--"I will show you my collection when we get home--they seem
+so happy. I am sure there are some of them who know me--they will feed
+from my hand. I have only had one die since I began to collect them
+last summer."
+
+"Then you have kept them a year; they ought to have turned into
+fairies."
+
+"I suppose many of them have. Of course I let out all those that had
+been with me twelve months--they don't turn to fairies in the cage, you
+know. Now I have only those I caught this year, or last autumn; the
+prettiest don't appear till the autumn."
+
+The girl here bent her uncovered head over the straw hat, her tresses
+shadowing it, and uttered loving words to the prisoner. Then again she
+looked up and around her, and abruptly stopped and exclaimed:--
+
+"How can people live in towns--how can people say they are ever dull in
+the country? Look," she continued, gravely and earnestly--"look at that
+tall pine-tree, with its long branch sweeping over the water; see how,
+as the breeze catches it, it changes its shadow, and how the shadow
+changes the play of the sunlight on the brook:--
+
+     'Wave your tops, ye pines;
+      With every plant, in sign of worship wave.'
+
+What an interchange of music there must be between Nature and a poet!"
+
+Kenelm was startled. This "an innocent!"--this a girl who had no mind to
+be formed! In that presence he could not be cynical; could not speak of
+Nature as a mechanism, a lying humbug, as he had done to the man poet.
+He replied gravely:--
+
+"The Creator has gifted the whole universe with language, but few are
+the hearts that can interpret it. Happy those to whom it is no foreign
+tongue, acquired imperfectly with care and pain, but rather a native
+language, learned unconsciously from the lips of the great mother. To
+them the butterfly's wing may well buoy into heaven a fairy's soul!"
+
+When he had thus said, Lily turned, and for the first time attentively
+looked into his dark soft eyes; then instinctively she laid her light
+hand on his arm, and said in a low voice, "Talk on--talk thus; I like to
+hear you."
+
+But Kenelm did not talk on. They had now arrived at the garden-gate of
+Mrs. Cameron's cottage, and the elder persons in advance paused at the
+gate and walked with them to the house.
+
+
+End of Volume VI.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Library Of The World's Best
+Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6, by Various
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