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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lectures and Essays, by Goldwin Smith
+
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+Title: Lectures and Essays
+
+Author: Goldwin Smith
+
+Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6570]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on December 28, 2002]
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LECTURES AND ESSAYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Tonya Allen, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+This file was produced from images generously made available by the
+Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions.
+
+
+
+
+
+LECTURES AND ESSAYS
+
+BY
+
+GOLDWIN SMITH
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE.
+
+These papers have been reprinted for friends who sometimes ask for the
+back numbers of periodicals in which they appeared. The great public is
+sick of reprints, and with good reason.
+
+The volume might almost have been called Contributions to Canadian
+Literature, for of the papers not originally published in Canada several
+were reproduced in Canadian journals. Political subjects have been
+excluded both to keep a volume intended for friends free from anything
+of a party character and because the writer looks forward to putting the
+thoughts scattered over his political essays and reviews into a more
+connected form.
+
+The papers on 'The Early Years of the Conqueror of Quebec,' 'A
+Wirepuller of Kings,' 'A True Captain of Industry' and 'Early Years of
+Abraham Lincoln' can hardly pretend to be more than accounts of books to
+which they relate, but they interested some of their readers at the time
+and there are probably not many copies of the books in Canada. All the
+papers have been revised, so that they do not appear here exactly as
+they were in the periodicals from which they are reprinted.
+
+TORONTO, Feb. 16, 1881
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS (_Contemporary Review_)
+
+THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND (_Contemporary Review._)
+
+THE GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (_Canadian Monthly_)
+
+THE LAMPS OF FICTION (_A Speech on the Centenary of the Birth of Sir
+Walter Scott_)
+
+AN ADDRESS TO THE OXFORD SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND ART
+
+THE ASCENT OF MAN (_Macmillan's Magazine._)
+
+THE PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION (_Macmillan's Magazine._)
+
+THE LABOUR MOVEMENT (_Canadian Monthly._)
+
+WHAT IS CULPABLE LUXURY? (_Canadian Monthly._)
+
+A TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY (_Canadian Monthly._)
+
+A WIREPULLER OF KINGS (_Canadian Monthly._)
+
+THE EARLY YEARS OF THE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC (_Toronto Nation._)
+
+FALKLAND AND THE PURITANS (_Contemporary Review._)
+
+THE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN (_Toronto Mail_)
+
+ALFREDUS REX FUNDATOR (_Canadian Monthly_)
+
+THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME (_MacMillan's Magazine_)
+
+AUSTEN LEIGH'S MEMOIR OF JANE AUSTEN (_New York Nation_)
+
+PATTISON'S MILTON (_New York Nation_)
+
+CLERIDGE'S LIFE OF KEBLE (_New York Nation_)
+
+
+
+
+THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS
+
+
+Rome was great in arms, in government, in law. This combination was the
+talisman of her august fortunes. But the three things, though blended in
+her, are distinct from each other, and the political analyst is called
+upon to give a separate account of each. By what agency was this State,
+out of all the States of Italy, out of all the States of the world,
+elected to a triple pre-eminence, and to the imperial supremacy of
+which, it was the foundation? By what agency was Rome chosen as the
+foundress of an empire which we regard almost as a necessary step in
+human development, and which formed the material, and to no small extent
+the political matrix of modern Europe, though the spiritual life of our
+civilization is derived from another source? We are not aware that this
+question has ever been distinctly answered, or even distinctly
+propounded. The writer once put it to a very eminent Roman antiquarian,
+and the answer was a quotation from Virgil--
+
+  "Hoc nemus, hunc, inquit, frondoso vertice clivum
+  Quis deus incertum est, habitat Deus; Arcades ipsum
+  Credunt se vidisae Jovem cum saepe nigrantem
+  AEgida concuteret dextra nimbosque cieret."
+
+This perhaps was the best answer that Roman patriotism, ancient or
+modern, could give; and it certainly was given in the best form. The
+political passages of Virgil, like some in Lucan and Juvenal, had a
+grandeur entirely Roman with which neither Homer nor any other Greek has
+anything to do. But historical criticism, without doing injustice to the
+poetical aspect of the mystery, is bound to seek a rational solution.
+Perhaps in seeking the solution we may in some measure supply, or at
+least suggest the mode of supplying, a deficiency which we venture to
+think is generally found in the first chapters of histories. A national
+history, as it seems to us, ought to commence with a survey of the
+country or locality, its geographical position, climate, productions,
+and other physical circumstances as they bear on the character of the
+people. We ought to be presented, in short, with a complete description
+of the scene of the historic drama, as well as with an account of the
+race to which the actors belong. In the early stages of his development,
+at all events, man is mainly the creature of physical circumstances; and
+by a systematic examination of physical circumstances we may to some
+extent cast the horoscope of the infant nation as it lies in the arms of
+Nature.
+
+That the central position of Rome, in the long and narrow peninsula of
+Italy, was highly favourable to her Italian dominion, and that the
+situation of Italy was favourable to her dominion over the countries
+surrounding the Mediterranean, has been often pointed out. But we have
+yet to ask what launched Rome in her career of conquest, and still more,
+what rendered that career so different from those of ordinary
+conquerors? What caused the Empire of Rome to be so durable? What gives
+it so high an organization? What made it so tolerable, and even in some
+cases beneficent to her subjects? What enabled it to perform services so
+important in preparing the way for a higher civilization?
+
+About the only answer that we get to these questions is _race_. The
+Romans, we are told, were by nature a peculiarly warlike race. "They
+were the wolves of Italy," says Mr. Merivale, who may be taken to
+represent fairly the state of opinion on this subject. We are presented
+in short with the old fable of the Twins suckled by the She-wolf in a
+slightly rationalized form. It was more likely to be true, if anything,
+in its original form, for in mythology nothing is so irrational as
+rationalization. That unfortunate She-wolf with her Twins has now been
+long discarded by criticism as a historical figure; but she still
+obtrudes herself as a symbolical legend into the first chapter of Roman
+history, and continues to affect the historian's imagination and to give
+him a wrong bias at the outset. Who knows whether the statue which we
+possess is a real counterpart of the original? Who knows what the
+meaning of the original statue was? If the group was of great antiquity,
+we may be pretty sure that it was not political or historic, but
+religious; for primaeval art is the handmaid of religion; historic
+representation and political portraiture belong generally to a later
+age. We cannot tell with certainty even that the original statue was
+Roman: it may have been brought to Rome among the spoils of some
+conquered city, in which case it would have no reference to Roman
+history at all. We must banish it entirely from our minds, with all the
+associations and impressions which cling to it, and we must do the same
+with regard to the whole of that circle of legends woven out of
+misinterpreted monuments or customs, with the embellishments of pure
+fancy, which grouped itself round the apocryphal statues of the seven
+kings in the Capitol, aptly compared by Arnold to the apocryphal
+portraits of the early kings of Scotland in Holyrood and those of the
+mediaeval founders of Oxford in the Bodleian. We must clear our minds
+altogether of these fictions; they are not even ancient: they came into
+existence at a time when the early history of Rome was viewed in the
+deceptive light of her later achievements; when, under the influence of
+altered circumstances, Roman sentiment had probably undergone a
+considerable change; and when, consequently, the national imagination no
+longer pointed true to anything primaeval.
+
+Race, when tribal peculiarities are once formed, is a most important
+feature in history; those who deny this and who seek to resolve
+everything, even in advanced humanity, into the influence of external
+circumstances or of some particular external circumstance, such as food,
+are not less one-sided or less wide of the truth than those who employ
+race as the universal solution. Who can doubt that between the English
+and the French, between the Scotch and the Irish, there are differences
+of character which have profoundly affected and still affect the course
+of history? The case is still stronger if we take races more remote from
+each other, such as the English and the Hindoo. But the further we
+inquire, the more reason there appears to be for believing that
+peculiarities of race are themselves originally formed by the influence
+of external circumstances on the primitive tribe; that, however marked
+and ingrained they may be, they are not congenital and perhaps not
+indelible. Englishmen and Frenchmen are closely assimilated by
+education; and the weaknesses of character supposed to be inherent in
+the Irish gradually disappear under the more benign influences of the
+New World. Thus, by ascribing the achievements of the Romans to the
+special qualities of their race, we should not be solving the problem,
+but only stating it again in other terms.
+
+But besides this, the wolf theory halts in a still more evident manner.
+The foster-children of the she-wolf, let them have never so much of
+their foster-mother's milk in them, do not do what the Romans did, and
+they do precisely what the Romans did not. They kill, ravage, plunder--
+perhaps they conquer and even for a time retain their conquests--but
+they do not found highly organized empires, they do not civilize, much
+less do they give birth to law. The brutal and desolating domination of
+the Turk, which after being long artificially upheld by diplomacy, is at
+last falling into final ruin, is the type of an empire founded by the
+foster-children of the she-wolf. Plunder, in the animal lust of which
+alone it originated, remains its law, and its only notion of imperial
+administration is a coarse division, imposed by the extent of its
+territory, into satrapies, which, as the central dynasty, enervated by
+sensuality, loses its force, revolt, and break up the empire. Even the
+Macedonian, pupil of Aristotle though he was, did not create an empire
+at all comparable to that created by the Romans. He overran an immense
+extent of territory, and scattered over a portion of it the seed of an
+inferior species of Hellenic civilization, but he did not organize it
+politically, much less did he give it, and through it the world, a code
+of law. It at once fell apart into a number of separate kingdoms, the
+despotic rulers of which were Sultans with a tinge of Hellenism, and
+which went for nothing in the political development of mankind.
+
+What if the very opposite theory to that of the she-wolf and her foster-
+children should be true? What if the Romans should have owed their
+peculiar and unparalleled success to their having been at first not more
+warlike, but less warlike than their neighbours? It may seem a paradox,
+but we suspect in their imperial ascendency is seen one of the earliest
+and not least important steps in that gradual triumph of intellect over
+force, even in war, which has been an essential part of the progress of
+civilization. The happy day may come when Science in the form of a
+benign old gentleman with a bald head and spectacles on nose, holding
+some beneficent compound in his hand, will confront a standing army and
+the standing army will cease to exist. That will be the final victory of
+intellect. But in the meantime, our acknowledgments are due to the
+primitive inventors of military organization and military discipline.
+They shivered Goliath's spear. A mass of comparatively unwarlike
+burghers, unorganized and undisciplined, though they may be the hope of
+civilization from their mental and industrial qualities, have as little
+of collective as they have of individual strength in war; they only get
+in each other's way, and fall singly victims to the prowess of a
+gigantic barbarian. He who first thought of combining their force by
+organization, so as to make their numbers tell, and who taught them to
+obey officers, to form regularly for action, and to execute united
+movements at the word of command, was, perhaps, as great a benefactor of
+the species as he who grew the first corn, or built the first canoe.
+
+What is the special character of the Roman legends, so far as they
+relate to war? Their special character is, that they are legends not of
+personal prowess but of discipline. Rome has no Achilles. The great
+national heroes, Camillus, Cincinnatus, Papirius, Cursor, Fabius
+Maximus, Manlius are not prodigies of personal strength and valour, but
+commanders and disciplinarians. The most striking incidents are
+incidents of discipline. The most striking incident of all is the
+execution by a commander of his own son for having gained a victory
+against orders. "_Disciplinam militarem_," Manlius is made to say,
+"_qua stetit ad hanc diem Romana res._" Discipline was the great
+secret of Roman ascendency in war. It is the great secret of all
+ascendency in war. Victories of the undisciplined over the disciplined,
+such as Killiecrankie and Preston Pans, are rare exceptions which only
+prove the rule. The rule is that in anything like a parity of personal
+prowess and of generalship discipline is victory. Thrice Rome
+encountered discipline equal or superior to her own. Pyrrhus at first
+beat her, but there was no nation behind him, Hannibal beat her, but his
+nation did not support him; she beat the army of Alexander, but the army
+of Alexander when it encountered her, like that of Frederic at Jena, was
+an old machine, and it was commanded by a man who was more like Tippoo
+Sahib than the conqueror of Darius.
+
+But how came military discipline to be so specially cultivated by the
+Romans? We can see how it came to be specially cultivated by the Greeks:
+it was the necessity of civic armies, fighting perhaps against warlike
+aristocracies; it was the necessity of Greeks in general fighting
+against the invading hordes of the Persian. We can see how it came to be
+cultivated among the mercenaries and professional soldiers of Pyrrhus
+and Hannibal. But what was the motive power in the case of Rome?
+Dismissing the notion of occult qualities of race, we look for a
+rational explanation in the circumstances of the plain which was the
+cradle of the Roman Empire.
+
+It is evident that in the period designated as that of the kings, when
+Rome commenced her career of conquest, she was, for that time and
+country, a great and wealthy city. This is proved by the works of the
+kings, the Capitoline Temple, the excavation for the Circus Maximus, the
+Servian Wall, and above all the Cloaca Maxima. Historians have indeed
+undertaken to give us a very disparaging picture of the ancient Rome,
+which they confidently describe as nothing more than a great village of
+shingle-roofed cottages thinly scattered over a large area. We ask in
+vain what are the materials for this description. It is most probable
+that the private buildings of Rome under the kings were roofed with
+nothing better than shingle, and it is very likely that they were mean
+and dirty, as the private buildings of Athens appear to have been, and
+as those of most of the great cities of the Middle Ages unquestionably
+were. But the Cloaca Maxima is in itself conclusive evidence of a large
+population, of wealth, and of a not inconsiderable degree of
+civilization. Taking our stand upon this monument, and clearing our
+vision entirely of Romulus and his asylum, we seem dimly to perceive the
+existence of a deep prehistoric background, richer than is commonly
+supposed in the germs of civilization,--a remark which may in all
+likelihood be extended to the background of history in general. Nothing
+surely can be more grotesque than the idea of a set of wolves, like the
+Norse pirates before their conversion to Christianity, constructing in
+their den the Cloaca Maxima.
+
+That Rome was comparatively great and wealthy is certain. We can hardly
+doubt that she was a seat of industry and commerce, and that the theory
+which represents her industry and commerce as having been developed
+subsequently to her conquests is the reverse of the fact. Whence, but
+from industry and commerce, could the population and the wealth have
+come? Peasant farmers do not live in cities, and plunderers do not
+accumulate. Rome had around her what was then a rich and peopled plain;
+she stood at a meeting-place of nationalities; she was on a navigable
+river, yet out of the reach of pirates; the sea near her was full of
+commerce, Etruscan, Greek, and Carthaginian. Her first colony was Ostia,
+evidently commercial and connected with salt-works, which may well have
+supplied the staple of her trade. Her patricians were financiers and
+money-lenders. We are aware that a different turn has been given to this
+part of the story, and that the indebtedness has been represented as
+incurred not by loans of money, but by advances of farm stock. This,
+however, completely contradicts the whole tenor of the narrative, and
+especially what is said about the measures for relieving the debtor by
+reducing the rate of interest and by deducting from the principal debt
+the interest already paid. The narrative as it stands, moreover, is
+supported by analogy. It has a parallel in the economical history of
+ancient Athens, and in the "scaling of debts," to use the American
+equivalent for _Seisachtheia_, by the legislation of Solon. What
+prevents our supposing that usury, when it first made its appearance on
+the scene, before people had learned to draw the distinction between
+crimes and defaults, presented itself in a very coarse and cruel form?
+True, the currency was clumsy, and retained philological traces of a
+system of barter; but without commerce there could have been no currency
+at all.
+
+Even more decisive is the proof afforded by the early political history
+of Rome. In that wonderful first decade of Livy there is no doubt enough
+of Livy himself to give him a high place among the masters of fiction.
+It is the epic of a nation of politicians, and admirably adapted for the
+purposes of education as the grand picture of Roman character and the
+richest treasury of Roman sentiment. But we can hardly doubt that in the
+political portion there is a foundation of fact; it is too
+circumstantial, too consistent in itself, and at the same time too much
+borne out by analogy, to be altogether fiction. The institutions which
+we find existing in historic times must have been evolved by some such
+struggle between the orders of patricians and plebeians as that which
+Livy presents to us. And these politics, with their parties and sections
+of parties, their shades of political character, the sustained interest
+which they imply in political objects, their various devices and
+compromises, are not the politics of a community of peasant farmers,
+living apart each on his own farm and thinking of his own crops: they
+are the politics of the quick-witted and gregarious population of an
+industrial and commercial city. They are politics of the same sort as
+those upon which the Palazzo Vecchio looked down in Florence. That
+ancient Rome was a republic there can be no doubt. Even the so-called
+monarchy appears clearly to have been elective; and republicanism may be
+described broadly with reference to its origin, as the government of the
+city and of the artisan, while monarchy and aristocracy are the
+governments of the country and of farmers.
+
+The legend which ascribes the assembly of centuries to the legislation
+of Servius probably belongs to the same class as the legend which
+ascribes trial by jury and the division of England into shires to the
+legislation of Alfred. Still the assembly of centuries existed; it was
+evidently ancient, belonging apparently to a stratum of institutions
+anterior to the assembly of tribes; and it was a constitution
+distributing political power and duties according to a property
+qualification which, in the upper grades, must, for the period, have
+been high, though measured by a primitive currency. The existence of
+such qualifications, and the social ascendency of wealth which the
+constitution implies, are inconsistent with the theory of a merely
+agricultural and military Rome. Who would think of framing such a
+constitution, say, for one of the rural districts of France?
+
+Other indications of the real character of the prehistoric Rome might be
+mentioned. The preponderance of the infantry and the comparative
+weakness of the cavalry is an almost certain sign of democracy, and of
+the social state in which democracy takes its birth--at least in the
+case of a country which did not, like Arcadia or Switzerland, preclude
+by its nature the growth of a cavalry force, but on the contrary was
+rather favourable to it. Nor would it be easy to account for the strong
+feeling of attachment to the city which led to its restoration when it
+had been destroyed by the Gauls, and defeated the project of a migration
+to Veii, if Rome was nothing but a collection of miserable huts, the
+abodes of a tribe of marauders. We have, moreover, the actual traces of
+an industrial organization in the existence of certain guilds of
+artisans, which may have been more important at first than they were
+when the military spirit had become thoroughly ascendant.
+
+Of course when Rome had once been drawn into the career of conquest, the
+ascendency of the military spirit would be complete; war, and the
+organization of territories acquired in war, would then become the great
+occupation of her leading citizens; industry and commerce would fall
+into disesteem, and be deemed unworthy of the members of the imperial
+race. Carthage would no doubt have undergone a similar change of
+character, had the policy which was carried to its greatest height by
+the aspiring house of Barcas succeeded in converting her from a trading
+city into the capital of a great military empire. So would Venice, had
+she been able to carry on her system of conquest in the Levant and of
+territorial aggrandisement on the Italian mainland. The career of Venice
+was arrested by the League of Cambray. On Carthage the policy of
+military aggrandisement, which was apparently resisted by the sage
+instinct of the great merchants while it was supported by the
+professional soldiers and the populace, brought utter ruin; while Rome
+paid the inevitable penalty of military despotism. Even when the Roman
+nobles had become a caste of conquerors and proconsuls, they retained
+certain mercantile habits; unlike the French aristocracy, and
+aristocracies generally, they were careful keepers of their accounts,
+and they showed a mercantile talent for business, as well as a more than
+mercantile hardness, in their financial exploitation of the conquered
+world. Brutus and his contemporaries were usurers like the patricians of
+the early times. No one, we venture to think, who has been accustomed to
+study national character, will believe that the Roman character was
+formed by war alone: it was manifestly formed by war combined with
+business.
+
+To what an extent the later character of Rome affected national
+tradition, or rather fiction, as to her original character, we see from
+the fable which tells us that she had no navy before the first Punic
+war, and that when compelled to build a fleet by the exigencies of that
+war, she had to copy a Carthaginian war galley which had been cast
+ashore, and to train her rowers by exercising them on dry land. She had
+a fleet before the war with Pyrrhus, probably from the time at which she
+took possession of Antium, if not before; and her first treaty with
+Carthage even if it is to be assigned to the date to which Mommsen, and
+not to that which Polybius assigns it, shows that before 348 B.C. she
+had an interest in a wide sea-board, which must have carried with it
+some amount of maritime power.
+
+Now this wealthy, and, as we suppose, industrial and commercial city was
+the chief place, and in course of time became the mistress and
+protectress, of a plain large for that part of Italy, and then in such a
+condition as to be tempting to the spoiler. Over this plain on two sides
+hung ranges of mountains inhabited by hill tribes, Sabines, AEquians,
+Volscians, Hernicans, with the fierce and restless Samnite in the rear.
+No doubt these hill tribes raided on the plain as hill tribes always do;
+probably they were continually being pressed down upon it by the
+migratory movements of other tribes behind them. Some of them seem to
+have been in the habit of regularly swarming, like bees, under the form
+of the _Ver Sacrum_. On the north, again, were the Etruscan hill
+towns, with their lords, pirates by sea, and probably marauders by land;
+for the period of a more degenerate luxury and frivolity may be regarded
+as subsequent to their subjugation by the Romans; at any rate, when they
+first appear upon the scene they are a conquering race. The wars with
+the AEqui and Volsci have been ludicrously multiplied and exaggerated by
+Livy; but even without the testimony of any historian, we might assume
+that there would be wars with them and with the other mountaineers, and
+also with the marauding Etruscan chiefs. At the same time, we may be
+sure that, in personal strength and prowess, the men of the plain and of
+the city would be inferior both to the mountaineers and to those
+Etruscan chiefs whose trade was war. How did the men of the plain and of
+the city manage to make up for this inferiority, to turn the scale of
+force in their favour, and ultimately to subdue both the mountaineers
+and Etruscans? In the conflict with the mountaineers, something might be
+done by that superiority of weapons which superior wealth would afford.
+But more would be done by military organization and discipline. To
+military organization and discipline the Romans accordingly learnt to
+submit themselves, as did the English Parliamentarians after the
+experience of Edgehill, as did the democracy of the Northern States of
+America after the experience of the first campaign. At the same time the
+Romans learned the lesson so momentous, and at the same time so
+difficult for citizen soldiers, of drawing the line between civil and
+military life. The turbulent democracy of the former, led into the
+field, doffed the citizen, donned the soldier; and obeyed the orders of
+a commander whom as citizens they detested, and whom when they were led
+back to the forum at the end of the summer campaign they were ready
+again to oppose and to impeach. No doubt all this part of the history
+has been immensely embellished by the patriotic imagination, the heroic
+features have been exaggerated, the harsher features softened though not
+suppressed. Still it is impossible to question the general fact. The
+result attests the process. The Roman legions were formed in the first
+instance of citizen soldiers, who yet had been made to submit to a rigid
+discipline, and to feel that in that submission lay their strength.
+When, to keep up the siege of Veii, military pay was introduced, a step
+was taken in the transition from a citizen soldiery to a regular army,
+such as the legions ultimately became, with its standing discipline of
+the camp; and that the measure should have been possible is another
+proof that Rome was a great city, with a well-supplied treasury, not a
+collection of mud huts. No doubt the habit of military discipline
+reacted on the political character of the people, and gave it the
+strength and self-control which were so fatally wanting in the case of
+Florence.
+
+The line was drawn, under the pressure of a stern necessity, between
+civil and military life, and between the rights and duties of each. The
+power of the magistrate, jealously limited in the city, was enlarged to
+absolutism for the preservation of discipline in the field. But the
+distinction between the king or magistrate and the general, and between
+the special capacities required for the duties of each, is everywhere of
+late growth. We may say the same of departmental distinctions
+altogether. The executive, the legislative, the judicial power, civil
+authority and military command, all lie enfolded in the same primitive
+germ. The king, or the magistrate who takes his place, is expected to
+lead the people in war as well as to govern them in peace. In European
+monarchies this idea still lingers, fortified no doubt by the personal
+unwillingness of the kings to let the military power go out of their
+hands. Nor in early times is the difference between the qualifications
+of a ruler and those of a commander so great as it afterwards became;
+the business of the State is simple, and force of character is the main
+requisite in both cases. Annual consulships must have been fatal to
+strategical experience, while, on the other hand, they would save the
+Republic from being tied to an unsuccessful general. But the storms of
+war which broke on Rome from all quarters soon brought about the
+recognition of special aptitude for military command in the appointment
+of dictators. As to the distinction between military and naval ability,
+it is of very recent birth: Blake, Prince Rupert, and Monk were made
+admirals because they had been successful as generals, just as Hannibal
+was appointed by Antiochus to the command of a fleet.
+
+At Preston Pans, as before at Killiecrankie, the line of the Hanoverian
+regulars was broken by the headlong charge of the wild clans, for which
+the regulars were unprepared. Taught by the experience of Preston Pans,
+the Duke of Cumberland at Culloden formed in three lines, so as to
+repair a broken front. The Romans in like manner formed in three lines--
+_hastati_, _principes_, and _triarii_--evidently with the
+same object. Our knowledge of the history of Roman tactics does not
+enable us to say exactly at what period this formation began to
+supersede the phalanx, which appears to have preceded it, and which is
+the natural order of half-disciplined or imperfectly armed masses, as we
+see in the case of the army formed by Philip out of the Macedonian
+peasantry, and again in the case of the French Revolutionary columns. We
+cannot say, therefore, whether this formation in three lines is in any
+way traceable to experience dearly bought in wars with Italian
+highlanders, or to a lesson taught by the terrible onset of the Gaul.
+Again, the punctilious care in the entrenchment of the camp, even for a
+night's halt, which moved the admiration of Pyrrhus and was a material
+part of Roman tactics, was likely to be inculcated by the perils to
+which a burgher army would be exposed in carrying on war under or among
+hills where it would be always liable to the sudden attack of a swift,
+sure-footed, and wily foe. The habit of carrying a heavy load of
+palisades on the march would be a part of the same necessity.
+
+Even from the purely military point of view, then, the She-wolf and the
+Twins seem to us not appropriate emblems of Roman greatness. A better
+frontispiece for historians of Rome, if we mistake not, would be some
+symbol of the patroness of the lowlands and their protectress against
+the wild tribes of the highlands. There should also be something to
+symbolize the protectress of Italy against the Gauls, whose irruptions
+Rome, though defeated at Allia, succeeded ultimately in arresting and
+hurling back, to the general benefit of Italian civilization which, we
+may be sure, felt very grateful to her for that service, and remembered
+it when her existence was threatened by Hannibal, with Gauls in his
+army. Capua, though not so well situated for the leadership of Italy,
+might have played the part of Rome; but the plain which she commanded,
+though very rich, was too small, and too closely overhung by the fatal
+hills of the Samnite, under whose dominion she fell. Rome had space to
+organize a strong lowland resistance to the marauding highland powers.
+It seems probable that her hills were not only the citadel but the
+general refuge of the lowlanders of those parts, when forced to fly
+before the onslaught of the highlanders, who were impelled by successive
+wars of migration to the plains. The Campagna affords no stronghold or
+rallying point but those hills, which may have received a population of
+fugitives like the islands of Venice. The city may have drawn part of
+its population and some of its political elements from this source. In
+this sense the story of the Asylum may possibly represent a fact, though
+it has itself nothing to do with history.
+
+Then, as to imperial organization and government. Superiority in these
+would naturally flow from superiority in civilization, and in previous
+political training, the first of which Rome derived from her comparative
+wealth and from the mental characteristics of a city population; the
+second she derived from the long struggle through which the rights of
+the plebeians were equalized with those of the patricians, and which
+again must have had its ultimate origin in geographical circumstance
+bringing together different elements of population. Cromwell was a
+politician and a religious leader before he was a soldier; Napoleon was
+a soldier before he was a politician: to this difference between the
+moulds in which their characters were cast may be traced, in great
+measure, the difference of their conduct when in power, Cromwell
+devoting himself to political and ecclesiastical reform, while Napoleon
+used his supremacy chiefly as the means of gratifying his lust for war.
+There is something analogous in the case of imperial nations. Had the
+Roman, when he conquered the world been like the Ottoman, like the
+Ottoman he would probably have remained. His thirst for blood slaked, he
+would simply have proceeded to gratify his other animal lusts; he would
+have destroyed or consumed everything, produced nothing, delivered over
+the world to a plundering anarchy of rapacious satraps, and when his
+sensuality had overpowered his ferocity, he would have fallen in his
+turn before some horde whose ferocity was fresh, and the round of war
+and havoc would have commenced again. The Roman destroyed and consumed a
+good deal; but he also produced not a little: he produced, among other
+things, first in Italy, then in the world at large, the Peace of Rome
+indispensable to civilization, and destined to be the germ and precursor
+of the Peace of Humanity.
+
+In two respects, however, the geographical circumstances of Rome appear
+specially to have prepared her for the exercise of universal empire. In
+the first place, her position was such as to bring her into contact from
+the outset with a great variety of races. The cradle of her dominion was
+a sort of ethnological microcosm. Latins, Etruscans, Greeks, Campanians,
+with all the mountain races and the Gauls, make up a school of the most
+diversified experience, which could not fail to open the minds of the
+future masters of the world. How different was this education from that
+of a people which is either isolated, like the Egyptians, or comes into
+contact perhaps in the way of continual border hostility with a single
+race! What the exact relations of Rome with Etruria were in the earliest
+times we do not know, but evidently they were close; while between the
+Roman and the Etruscan character the difference appears to have been as
+wide as possible. The Roman was pre-eminently practical and business-
+like, sober-minded, moral, unmystical, unsacerdotal, much concerned with
+present duties and interests, very little concerned about a future state
+of existence, peculiarly averse from human sacrifices and from all wild
+and dark superstitions. The Etruscan, as he has portrayed himself to us
+in his tombs, seems to have been, in his later development at least, a
+mixture of Sybaritism with a gloomy and almost Mexican religion, which
+brooded over the terrors of the next world, and sought in the constant
+practice of human sacrifice a relief from its superstitious fear. If the
+Roman could tolerate the Etruscans, be merciful to them, and manage them
+well, he was qualified to deal in a statesmanlike way with the
+peculiarities of almost any race, except those whose fierce nationality
+repelled all management whatever. In borrowing from the Etruscans some
+of their theological lore and their system of divination, small as the
+value of the things borrowed was, the Roman, perhaps, gave an earnest of
+the receptiveness which led him afterwards, in his hour of conquest, to
+bow to the intellectual ascendency of the conquered Greek, and to become
+a propagator of Greek culture, though partly in a Latinized form, more
+effectual than Alexander and his Orientalized successors.
+
+In the second place, the geographical circumstances of Rome, combined
+with her character, would naturally lead to the foundation of colonies
+and of that colonial system which formed a most important and beneficent
+part of her empire. We have derived the name colony from Rome; but her
+colonies were just what ours are not, military outposts of the empire,
+_propugnacula imperii_. Political depletion and provision for needy
+citizens were collateral, but it would seem, in early times at least,
+secondary objects. Such outposts were the means suggested by Nature,
+first of securing those parts of the plain which were beyond the
+sheltering range of the city itself, secondly of guarding the outlets of
+the hills against the hill tribes, and eventually of holding down the
+tribes in the hills themselves. The custody of the passes is especially
+marked as an object by the position of many of the early colonies. When
+the Roman dominion extended to the north of Italy, the same system was
+pursued, in order to guard against incursions from the Alps. A
+conquering despot would have planted mere garrisons under military
+governors, which would not have been centres of civilization, but
+probably of the reverse. The Roman colonies, bearing onwards with them
+the civil as well as the military life of the Republic, were, with the
+general system of provincial municipalities of which they constituted
+the core, to no small extent centres of civilization, though doubtless
+they were also to some extent instruments of oppression. "Where the
+Roman conquered he dwelt," and the dwelling of the Roman was, on the
+whole, the abode of a civilizing influence. Representation of
+dependencies in the sovereign assembly of the imperial country was
+unknown, and would have been impracticable. Conquest had not so far put
+off its iron nature. In giving her dependencies municipal institutions
+and municipal life, Rome did the next best thing to giving them
+representation. A Roman province with its municipal life was far above a
+satrapy, though far below a nation.
+
+Then how came Rome to be the foundress and the great source of law?
+This, as we said before, calls for a separate explanation. An
+explanation we do not pretend to give, but merely a hint which may
+deserve notice in looking for the explanation. In primitive society, in
+place of law, in the proper sense of the term, we find only tribal
+custom, formed mainly by the special exigencies of tribal self-
+preservation, and confined to the particular tribe. When Saxon and Dane
+settle down in England side by side under the treaty made between Alfred
+and Guthurm, each race retains the tribal custom which serves it as a
+criminal law. A special effort seems to be required in order to rise
+above this custom to that conception of general right or expediency
+which is the germ of law as a science. The Greek, sceptical and
+speculative as he was, appears never to have quite got rid of the notion
+that there was something sacred in ancestral custom, and that to alter
+it by legislation was a sort of impiety. We in England still conceive
+that there is something in the breast of the judge, and the belief is a
+lingering shadow of the tribal custom, the source of the common law. Now
+what conditions would be most favourable to this critical effort, so
+fraught with momentous consequences to humanity? Apparently a union of
+elements belonging to different tribes such as would compel them, for
+the preservation of peace and the regulation of daily intercourse, to
+adopt some common measure of right. It must be a union, not a conquest
+of one tribe by another, otherwise the conquering tribe would of course
+keep its own customs, as the Spartans did among the conquered people of
+Laconia. Now it appears likely that these conditions were exactly
+fulfilled by the primaeval settlements on the hills of Rome. The hills
+are either escarped by nature or capable of easy escarpment, and seem
+originally to have been little separate fortresses, by the union of
+which the city was ultimately formed. That there were tribal differences
+among the inhabitants of the different hills is a belief to which all
+traditions and all the evidence of institutions point, whether we
+suppose the difference to have been great or not and whatever special
+theory we may form as to the origin of the Roman people. If the germ of
+law, as distinguished from custom, was brought into existence in this
+manner, it would be fostered and expanded by the legislative exigencies
+of the political and social concordat between the two orders, and also
+by those arising out of the adjustment of relations with other races in
+the course of conquest and colonization.
+
+Roman law had also, in common with Roman morality, the advantage of
+being comparatively free from the perverting influences of tribal
+superstition. [Footnote: From religious perversion Roman law was
+eminently free: but it could not be free from perverting influences of a
+social kind; so that we ought to be cautious, for instance, in borrowing
+law on any subject concerning the relations between the sexes from the
+corrupt society of the Roman Empire.] Roman morality was in the main a
+rational rule of duty, the shortcomings and aberrations of which arose
+not from superstition, but from narrowness of perception, peculiarity of
+sphere, and the bias of national circumstance. The auguries, which were
+so often used for the purposes of political obstruction or intrigue,
+fall under the head rather of trickery than of superstition.
+
+Roman law in the same manner was a rule of expediency, rightly or
+wrongly conceived, with comparatively little tincture of religion. In
+this again we probably see the effect of a fusion of tribes upon the
+tribal superstitions. "Rome," it has been said, "had no mythology." This
+is scarcely an overstatement; and we do not account for the fact by
+saying that the Romans were unimaginative, because it is not the
+creative imagination that produces a mythology, but the impression made
+by the objects and forces of nature on the minds of the forefathers of
+the tribe.
+
+A more tenable explanation, at all events, is that just suggested, the
+disintegration of mythologies by the mixture of tribes. A part of the
+Roman religion--the worship of such abstractions as Fides, Fortuna,
+Salus, Concordia, Bellona, Terminus--even looks like a product of the
+intellect posterior to the decay of the mythologies, which we may be
+pretty sure were physical. It is no doubt true that the formalities
+which were left--hollow ceremonial, auguries, and priesthoods which were
+given without scruple, like secular offices, to the most profligate men
+of the world--were worse than worthless in a religious point of view.
+But historians who dwell on this fail to see that the real essence of
+religion, a belief in the power of duty and of righteousness, that
+belief which afterwards took the more definite form of Roman Stoicism,
+had been detached by the dissolution of the mythologies, and exerted its
+force, such as that force was, independently of the ceremonial, the
+sacred chickens, and the dissipated high priests. In this sense the
+tribute paid by Polybius to the religious character of the Romans is
+deserved; they had a higher sense of religious obligation than the
+Greeks; they were more likely than the Greeks, the Phoenicians, or any
+of their other rivals, to swear and disappoint not, though it were to
+their own hindrance; and this they owed, as we conceive, not to an
+effort of speculative intellect, which in an early stage of society
+would be out of the question, but to some happy conjunction of
+circumstances such as would be presented by a break-up of tribal
+mythologies, combined with influences favourable to the formation of
+strong habits of political and social duty. Religious art was
+sacrificed; that was the exclusive heritage of the Greek; but superior
+morality was on the whole the heritage of the Roman, and if he produced
+no good tragedy himself, he furnished characters for Shakespeare and
+Corneille.
+
+Whatever set the Romans free, or comparatively free, from the tyranny of
+tribal religion may be considered as having in the same measure been the
+source of the tolerance which was so indispensable a qualification for
+the exercise of dominion over a polytheistic world. They waged no war on
+"the gods of the nations," or on the worshippers of those gods as such.
+They did not set up golden images after the fashion of Nebuchadnezzar.
+In early times they seem to have adopted the gods of the conquered, and
+to have transported them to their own city. In later times they
+respected all the religions except Judaism and Druidism, which assumed
+the form of national resistance to the empire, and worships which they
+deemed immoral or anti-social, and which had intruded themselves into
+Rome.
+
+Another grand step in the development of law is the severance of the
+judicial power from the legislative and the executive, which permits the
+rise of jurists, and of a regular legal profession. This is a slow
+process. In the stationary East, as a rule, the king has remained the
+supreme judge. At Athens, the sovereign people delegated its judicial
+powers to a large committee, but it got no further; and the judicial
+committee was hardly more free from political passion, or more competent
+to decide points of law, than the assembly itself. In England the House
+of Lords still, formally at least, retains judicial functions. Acts of
+attainder were a yet more primitive as well as more objectionable relic
+of the times in which the sovereign power, whether king, assembly, or
+the two combined, was ruler, legislator, and judge all in one. We shall
+not attempt here to trace the process by which this momentous separation
+of powers and functions was to a remarkable extent accomplished in
+ancient Rome. But we are pretty safe in saying that the _praetor
+peregrinus_ was an important figure in it, and that it received a
+considerable impulse from the exigencies of a jurisdiction between those
+who as citizens came under the sovereign assembly and the aliens or
+semi-aliens who did not.
+
+Whether the partial explanations of the mystery of Roman greatness which
+we have here suggested approve themselves to the reader's judgment or
+not, it may at least be said for them that they are _verae causae_,
+which is not the case with the story of the foster-wolf, or anything
+derived from it, any more than with the story of the prophetic
+apparitions of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill.
+
+With regard to the public morality of the Romans, and to their conduct
+and influence as masters of the world, the language of historians seems
+to us to leave something to be desired. Mommsen's tone, whenever
+controverted questions connected with international morality and the law
+of conquest arise, is affected by his Prussianism; it betokens the
+transition of the German mind from the speculative and visionary to the
+practical and even more than practical state; it is premonitory not only
+of the wars with Austria and France, but of a coming age in which the
+forces of natural selection are again to operate without the restraints
+imposed by religion, and the heaviest fist is once more to make the law.
+In the work of Ihne we see a certain recoil from Mommsen, and at the
+same time an occasional inconsistency and a want of stability in the
+principle of judgment. Our standard ought not to be positive but
+relative. It was the age of force and conquest, not only with the Romans
+but with all nations; _hospes_ was _hostis_. A perfectly
+independent development of Greeks, Romans, Etruscans, Phoenicians, and
+all the other nationalities, might perhaps have been the best thing for
+humanity. But this was out of the question; in that stage of the world's
+existence contact was war, and the end of war was conquest or
+destruction, the first of which was at all events preferable to the
+second. What empire then can we imagine which would have done less harm
+or more good than the Roman? Greek intellect showed its superiority in
+speculative politics as in all other departments of speculation, but as
+a practical politician the Greek was not self-controlled or strong, and
+he would never have bestowed on the provinces of his empire local self-
+government and municipal life; besides, the race, though it included
+wonderful varieties in itself, was, as a race, intensely tribal, and
+treated persistently all other races as barbarians. It would have
+deprived mankind of Roman law and politics, as well as of that vast
+extension of the Roman aedileship which covered the world with public
+works beneficent in themselves and equally so as examples; whereas the
+Roman had the greatness of soul to do homage to Greek intellect, and,
+notwithstanding an occasional Mummius, preserved all that was of the
+highest value in Greek civilization, better perhaps than it would have
+been preserved by the tyrants and condottieri of the Greek decadence. As
+to a Semitic Empire, whether in the hands of Syrians or Carthaginians,
+with their low Semitic craft, their Moloch-worships and their
+crucifixions,--the very thought fills us with horror. It would have
+been a world-wide tyranny of the strong box, into which all the products
+of civilization would have gone. _Parcere subjectis_ was the rule
+of Rome as well as _debellare superbos_; and while all conquest is
+an evil, the Roman was the most clement and the least destructive of
+conquerors. This is true of him on the whole, though he sometimes was
+guilty of thoroughly primaeval cruelty. He was the great author of the
+laws of war as well as of the laws of peace. That he not seldom, when
+his own interest was concerned, put the mere letter of the social law in
+place of justice, and that we are justly revolted on these occasions by
+his hypocritical observance of forms, is very true: nevertheless, his
+scrupulosity and the language of the national critics in these cases
+prove the existence of at least a rudimentary conscience. No compunction
+for breach of international law or justice we may be sure ever visited
+the heart of Tiglath-Pileser. Cicero's letter of advice to his brother
+on the government of a province may seem a tissue of truisms now, though
+Warren Hastings and Sir Elijah Impey would hardly have found it so, but
+it is a landmark in the history of civilization. That the Roman Republic
+should die, and that a colossal and heterogeneous empire should fall
+under the rule of a military despot, was perhaps a fatal necessity; but
+the despotism long continued to be tempered, elevated, and rendered more
+beneficent by the lingering spirit of the Republic; the liberalism of
+Trajan and the Antonines was distinctly republican nor did Sultanism
+finally establish itself before Diocletian. Perhaps we may number among
+the proofs of the Roman's superiority the capacity shown so far as we
+know first by him of being touched by the ruin of a rival. We may be
+sure that no Assyrian conqueror even affected to weep over the fall of a
+hostile city however magnificent and historic. On the whole it must be
+allowed that physical influences have seldom done better for humanity
+than they did in shaping the imperial character and destinies of Rome.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND
+
+[Footnote: The writer some time ago gave a lecture before the Royal
+Institution on "The Influence of Geographical Circumstances on Political
+Character," using Rome and England as illustrations. It may perhaps be
+right to say that the present paper, which touches here and there on
+matters of political opinion, is not identical with the latter portion
+of that lecture.]
+
+
+Two large islands lie close to that Continent which has hitherto been
+selected by Nature as the chief seat of civilization. One island is much
+larger than the other, and the larger island lies between the smaller
+and the Continent. The larger island is so placed as to receive primaeval
+immigration from three quarters--from France, from the coast of Northern
+Germany and the Low Countries, and from Scandinavia, the transit being
+rendered somewhat easier in the last case by the prevailing winds and by
+the little islands which Scotland throws out, as resting-places and
+guides for the primaeval navigator, into the Northern Sea. The smaller
+island, on the other hand, can hardly receive immigration except through
+the larger, though its southern ports look out, somewhat ominously to
+the eye of history, towards Spain. The western and northern parts of the
+larger island are mountainous, and it is divided into two very unequal
+parts by the Cheviot Hills and the mosses of the Border. In the larger
+island are extensive districts well suited for grain. The climate of
+most of the smaller is too wet for grain and good only for pasture. The
+larger island is full of minerals and coal, of which the smaller island
+is almost destitute. These are the most salient features of the scene of
+English history, and, with a temperate climate, the chief physical
+determinants of English destiny.
+
+What, politically speaking, are the special attributes of an island? In
+the first place, it is likely to be settled by a bold and enterprising
+race. Migration by land under the pressure of hunger or of a stronger
+tribe, or from the mere habit of wandering, calls for no special effort
+of courage or intelligence on the part of the nomad. Migration by sea
+does: to go forth on a strange element at all, courage is required; but
+we can hardly realize the amount of courage required to go voluntarily
+out of sight of land. The first attempts at ship-building also imply
+superior intelligence, or an effort by which the intelligence will be
+raised. Of the two great races which make up the English nation, the
+Celtic had only to pass a channel which you can see across, which
+perhaps in the time of the earliest migration did not exist. But the
+Teutons, who are the dominant race and have supplied the basis of the
+English character and institutions, had to pass a wider sea. From
+Scandinavia, especially, England received, under the form of
+freebooters, who afterwards became conquerors and settlers, the very
+core and sinews of her maritime population, the progenitors of the
+Blakes and Nelsons. The Northman, like the Phoenician, had a country too
+narrow for him, and timber for ship-building at hand. But the land of
+the Phoenician was a lovely land, which bound him to itself; and
+wherever he moved his heart still turned to the pleasant abodes of
+Lebanon and the sunlit quays of Tyre. Thus he became a merchant, and the
+father of all who have made the estranging sea a highway and a bond
+between nations, more than atoning by the service thus rendered to
+humanity, for his craft, his treachery, his cruelty, and his Moloch-
+worship. The land of the Scandinavian was not a lovely land, though it
+was a land suited to form strong arms, strong hearts, chaste natures,
+and, with purity, strength of domestic affection. He was glad to
+exchange it for a sunnier dwelling-place, and thus, instead of becoming
+a merchant, he became the founder of Norman dynasties in Italy, France,
+and England. We are tempted to linger over the story of these primaeval
+mariners, for nothing equals it in romance. In our day Science has gone
+before the most adventurous barque, limiting the possibilities of
+discovery, disenchanting the enchanted Seas, and depriving us for ever
+of Sinbad and Ulysses. But the Phoenician and the Northman put forth
+into a really unknown world. The Northman, moreover, was so far as we
+know the first ocean sailor. If the story of the circumnavigation of
+Africa by the Phoenicians is true, it was an astonishing enterprise, and
+almost dwarfs modern voyages of discovery. Still it would be a coasting
+voyage, and the Phoenician seems generally to have hugged the land. But
+the Northman put freely out into the wild Atlantic, and even crossed it
+before Columbus, if we may believe a legend made specially dear to the
+Americans by the craving of a new country for antiquities. It has been
+truly said, that the feeling of the Greek, mariner as he was, towards
+the sea, remained rather one of fear and aversion, intensified perhaps
+by the treacherous character of the squally AEgean; but the Northman
+evidently felt perfectly at home on the ocean, and rode joyously, like a
+seabird, on the vast Atlantic waves.
+
+Not only is a race which comes by sea likely to be peculiarly vigorous,
+self-reliant, and inclined, when settled, to political liberty, but the
+very process of maritime migration can scarcely fail to intensify the
+spirit of freedom and independence. Timon or Genghis Khan, sweeping on
+from land to land with the vast human herd under his sway, becomes more
+despotic as the herd grows larger by accretion, and the area of its
+conquests is increased. But a maritime migration is a number of little
+joint stock enterprises implying limited leadership, common counsels,
+and a good deal of equality among the adventurers. We see in fact that
+the Saxon immigration resulted in the foundation of a number of small
+communities which, though they were afterwards fused into seven or eight
+petty kingdoms and ultimately into one large kingdom, must, while they
+existed, have fostered habits of local independence and self-government.
+Maritime migration would also facilitate the transition from the tribe
+to the nation, because the ships could hardly be manned on purely tribal
+principles; the early Saxon communities in England appear in fact to
+have been semi-tribal, the local bond predominating over the tribal,
+though a name with a tribal termination is retained. Room would scarcely
+be found in the ships for a full proportion of women; the want would be
+supplied by taking the women of the conquered country; and thus tribal
+rules of exclusive intermarriage, and all barriers connected with them,
+would be broken down.
+
+Another obvious attribute of an island is freedom from invasion. The
+success of the Saxon invaders may be ascribed to the absence of strong
+resistance. The policy of Roman conquest, by disarming the natives, had
+destroyed their military character, as the policy of British conquest
+has done in India, where races which once fought hard against the
+invader under their native princes, such as the people of Mysore, are
+now wholly unwarlike. Anything like national unity, or power of co-
+operation against a foreign enemy, had at the same time been extirpated
+by a government which divided that it might command. The Northman in his
+turn owed his success partly to the want of unity among the Saxon
+principalities, partly and principally to the command of the sea which
+the Saxon usually abandoned to him, and which enabled him to choose his
+own point of attack, and to baffle the movements of the defenders. When
+Alfred built a fleet, the case was changed.
+
+William of Normandy would scarcely have succeeded, great as his armament
+was, had it not been for the diversion effected in his favour by the
+landing of the Scandinavian pretender in the North, and the failure of
+provisions in Harold's Channel fleet, which compelled it to put into
+port. Louis of France was called in as a deliverer by the barons who
+were in arms against the tyranny of John; and it is not necessary to
+discuss the Tory description of the coming of William of Orange as a
+conquest of England by the Dutch. Bonaparte threatened invasion, but
+unhappily was unable to invade: unhappily we say, because if he had
+landed in England he would assuredly have there met his doom; the
+Russian campaign would have been antedated with a more complete result,
+and all the after-pages in the history of the Arch-Brigand would have
+been torn from the book of fate. England is indebted for her political
+liberties in great measure to the Teutonic character, but she is also in
+no small measure indebted to this immunity from invasion which has
+brought with it a comparative immunity from standing armies. In the
+Middle Ages the question between absolutism and that baronial liberty
+which was the germ and precursor of the popular liberty of after-times
+turned in great measure upon the relative strength of the national
+militia and of the bands of mercenaries kept in pay by overreaching
+kings. The bands of mercenaries brought over by John proved too strong
+for the patriot barons, and would have annulled the Great Charter, had
+not national liberty found a timely and powerful, though sinister,
+auxiliary in the ambition of the French. Prince Charles I. had no
+standing army, the troops taken into pay for the wars with Spain and
+France had been disbanded before the outbreak of the Revolution; and on
+that occasion the nation was able to overthrow the tyranny without
+looking abroad for assistance. But Charles II. had learned wisdom from
+his father's fate; he kept up a small standing army; and the Whigs,
+though at the crisis of the Exclusion Bill they laid their hands upon
+their swords, never ventured to draw them, but allowed themselves to be
+proscribed, their adherents to be ejected from the corporations, and
+their leaders to be brought to the scaffold. Resistance was in the same
+way rendered hopeless by the standing army of James II., and the
+patriots were compelled to stretch their hands for aid to William of
+Orange. Even so, it might have gone hard with them if James's soldiers,
+and above all Churchill, had been true to their paymaster. Navies are
+not political; they do not overthrow constitutions; and in the time of
+Charles I. it appears that the leading seamen were Protestant, inclined
+to the side of the Parliament. Perhaps Protestantism had been rendered
+fashionable in the navy by the naval wars with Spain.
+
+A third consequence of insular position, especially in early times, is
+isolation. An extreme case of isolation is presented by Egypt, which is
+in fact a great island in the desert. The extraordinary fertility of the
+valley of the Nile produced an early development, which was afterwards
+arrested by its isolation, the isolation being probably intensified by
+the jealous exclusiveness of a powerful priesthood which discouraged
+maritime pursuits. The isolation of England, though comparatively
+slight, has still been an important factor in her history. She underwent
+less than the Continental provinces the influence of Roman Conquest.
+Scotland and Ireland escaped it altogether, for the tide of invasion,
+having flowed to the foot of the Grampians, soon ebbed to the line
+between the Solway and the Tyne. Britain has no monuments of Roman power
+and civilization like those which have been left in Gaul and Spain, and
+of the British Christianity of the Roman period hardly a trace,
+monumental or historical, remains. By the Saxon conquest England was
+entirely severed for a time from the European system. The missionary of
+ecclesiastical Rome recovered what the legionary had lost. Of the main
+elements of English character political and general, five were brought
+together when Ethelbert and Augustine met on the coast of Kent. The king
+represented Teutonism; the missionary represented Judaism, Christianity,
+imperial and ecclesiastical Rome. We mention Judaism as a separate
+element, because, among other things, the image of the Hebrew monarchy
+has certainly entered largely into the political conceptions of
+Englishmen, perhaps at least as largely as the image of Imperial Rome. A
+sixth element, classical Republicanism, came in with the Reformation,
+while the political and social influence of science is only just
+beginning to be felt. Still, after the conversion of England by
+Augustine, the Church, which was the main organ of civilization, and
+almost identical with it in the early Middle Ages, remained national;
+and to make it thoroughly Roman and Papal, in other words to assimilate
+it completely to the Church of the Continent, was the object of
+Hildebrand in promoting the enterprise of William. Roman and Papal the
+English Church was made, yet not so thoroughly so as completely to
+destroy its insular and Teutonic character. The Archbishop of Canterbury
+was still _Papa alterius orbis_; and the struggle for national
+independence of the Papacy commenced in England long before the struggle
+for doctrinal reform. The Reformation broke up the confederated
+Christendom of the Middle Ages, and England was then thrown back into an
+isolation very marked, though tempered by her sympathy with the
+Protestant party on the Continent. In later times the growth of European
+interests, of commerce, of international law, of international
+intercourse, of the community of intellect and science, has been
+gradually building again, on a sounder foundation than that of the Latin
+Church, the federation of Europe, or rather the federation of mankind.
+The political sympathy of England with Continental nations, especially
+with France, has been increasing of late in a very marked manner, the
+French Revolution of 1830 told at once upon the fortunes of English
+Reform, and the victory of the Republic over the reactionary attempt of
+May was profoundly felt by both parties in England. Placed too close to
+the Continent not to be essentially a part of the European system,
+England has yet been a peculiar and semi-independent part of it. In
+European progress she has often acted as a balancing and moderating
+power. She has been the asylum of vanquished ideas and parties. In the
+seventeenth century, when absolutism and the Catholic reaction prevailed
+on the Continent, she was the chief refuge of Protestantism and
+political liberty. When the French Revolution swept Europe, she threw
+herself into the anti-revolutionary scale. The tricolor has gone nearly
+round the world, at least nearly round Europe; but on the flag of
+England still remains the religious symbol of the era before the
+Revolution.
+
+The insular arrogance of the English character is a commonplace joke. It
+finds, perhaps, its strongest expression in the saying of Milton that
+the manner of God is to reveal things first to His Englishmen. It has
+made Englishmen odious even to those who, like the Spaniards, have
+received liberation or protection from English hands. It stimulated the
+desperate desire to see France rid of the "Goddams" which inspired Joan
+of Arc. For an imperial people it is a very unlucky peculiarity, since
+it precludes not only fusion but sympathy and almost intercourse with
+the subject races. The kind heart of Lord Elgin, when he was Governor-
+General of India, was shocked by the absolute want of sympathy or bond
+of any kind, except love of conquest, between the Anglo-Indian and the
+native, and the gulf apparently, instead of being filled up, now yawns
+wider than ever.
+
+It is needless to dwell on anything so obvious as the effect of an
+insular position in giving birth to commerce and developing the
+corresponding elements of political character. The British Islands are
+singularly well placed for trade with both hemispheres; in them, more
+than in any other point, may be placed the commercial centre of the
+world. It may be said that the nation looked out unconsciously from its
+cradle to an immense heritage beyond the Atlantic. France and Spain
+looked the same way, and became competitors with England for ascendancy
+in the New World, but England was more maritime, and the most maritime
+was sure to prevail. Canada was conquered by the British fleet. To the
+commerce and the maritime enterprise of former days, which were mainly
+the results of geographical position, has been added within the last
+century the vast development of manufactures produced by coal and steam,
+the parents of manufactures, as well as the expansion of the iron trade
+in close connection with manufactures. Nothing can be more marked than
+the effect of industry on political character in the case of England.
+From being the chief seat of reaction, the North has been converted by
+manufactures into the chief seat of progress. The Wars of the Roses were
+not a struggle of political principle; hardly even a dynastic struggle;
+they had their origin partly in a patriotic antagonism to the foreign
+queen and to her foreign councils; but they were in the main a vast
+faction-fight between two sections of an armed and turbulent nobility
+turned into buccaneers by the French wars, and, like their compeers all
+over Europe, bereft, by the decay of Catholicism, of the religious
+restraints with which their morality was bound up. Yet the Lancastrian
+party, or rather the party of Margaret of Anjou and her favourites, was
+the more reactionary, and it had the centre of its strength in the
+North, whence Margaret drew the plundering and devastating host which
+gained for her the second battle of St. Albans and paid the penalty of
+its ravages in the merciless slaughter of Towton. The North had been
+kept back in the race of progress by agricultural inferiority, by the
+absence of commerce with the Continent, and by border wars with
+Scotland. In the South was the seat of prosperous industry, wealth, and
+comparative civilization, and the banners of the Southern cities were in
+the armies of the House of York. The South accepted the Reformation,
+while the North was the scene of the Pilgrimage of Grace. Coming down to
+the Civil War in the time of Charles I., we find the Parliament strong
+in the South and East, where are still the centres of commerce and
+manufactures, even the iron trade, which has its smelting works in
+Sussex. In the North the feudal tie between landlord and tenant, and the
+sentiment of the past, preserve much of their force, and the great power
+in those parts is the Marquis of Newcastle, at once great territorial
+lord of the Middle Ages and elegant _grand seigneur_ of the
+Renaissance, who brings into the field a famous regiment of his own
+retainers. In certain towns, such as Bradford and Manchester, there are
+germs of manufacturing industry, and these form the sinews of the
+Parliamentarian party in the district which is headed by the Fairfaxes.
+But in the Reform movement which extended through the first half of the
+present century, the geographical position of parties was reversed; the
+swarming cities of the North were then the great centres of Liberalism
+and the motive power of Reform; while the South, having by this time
+fallen into the hands of great landed proprietors, was Conservative. The
+stimulating effect of populous centres on opinion is a very familiar
+fact; even in the rural districts it is noticed by canvassers at
+elections that men who work in gangs are generally more inclined to the
+Liberal side than those who work separately.
+
+In England, however, the agricultural element always has been and
+remains a full counterpoise to the manufacturing and commercial element.
+Agricultural England is not what Pericles called Attica, a mere suburban
+garden, the embellishment of a queenly city. It is a substantive
+interest and a political power. In the time of Charles I. it happened
+that, owing to the great quantity of land thrown into the market in
+consequence of the confiscation of the monastic estates, which had
+slipped through the fingers of the spendthrift courtiers to whom they
+were at first granted, small freeholders were very numerous in the
+South, and these men like the middle class in the towns, being strong
+Protestants, went with the Parliament against the Laudian reaction in
+religion. But land in the hands of great proprietors is Conservative,
+especially when it is held under entails and connected with hereditary
+nobility; and into the hands of great proprietors the land of England
+has now entirely passed. The last remnant of the old yeomen freeholders
+departed in the Cumberland Statesmen, and the yeoman freeholder in
+England is now about as rare as the other. Commerce has itself assisted
+the process by giving birth to great fortunes, the owners of which are
+led by social ambition to buy landed estates, because to land the odour
+of feudal superiority still clings, and it is almost the necessary
+qualification for a title. The land has also actually absorbed a large
+portion of the wealth produced by manufactures, and by the general
+development of industry; the estates of Northern landowners especially
+have enormously increased in value, through the increase of population,
+not to mention the not inconsiderable appropriation of commercial wealth
+by marriage. Thus the Conservative element retains its predominance, and
+it even seems as though the land of Milton, Vane, Cromwell, and the
+Reformers of 1832, might after all become, politically as well as
+territorially, the domain of a vast aristocracy of landowners, and the
+most reactionary instead of the most progressive country in Europe.
+
+Before the repeal of the Corn Laws there was a strong antagonism of
+interest between the landowning aristocracy and the manufacturers of the
+North, but that antagonism is now at an end; the sympathy of wealth has
+taken its place; the old aristocracy has veiled its social pride and
+learned to conciliate the new men, who on their part are more than
+willing to enter the privileged circle. This junction is at present the
+great fact of English politics, and was the main cause of the overthrow
+of the Liberal Government in 1874. The growth of the great cities itself
+seems likely, as the number of poor householders increases, to furnish
+Reaction with auxiliaries in the shape of political Lazzaroni capable of
+being organized by wealth in opposition to the higher order of workmen
+and the middle class. In Harrington's "Oceana," there is much nonsense,
+but it rises at least to the level of Montesquieu in tracing the
+intimate connection of political power, even under elective
+institutions, with wealth in land.
+
+Hitherto, the result of the balance between the landowning and
+commercial elements has been steadiness of political progress, in
+contrast on the one hand to the commercial republics of Italy, whose
+political progress was precocious and rapid but shortlived, and on the
+other hand to great feudal kingdoms where commerce was comparatively
+weak. England, as yet, has taken but few steps backwards. It remains to
+be seen what the future may bring under the changed conditions which we
+have just described. English commerce, moreover, may have passed its
+acme. Her insular position gave Great Britain during the Napoleonic
+wars, with immunity from invasion, a monopoly of manufactures and of the
+carrying trade. This element of her commercial supremacy is transitory,
+though others, such as the possession of coal, are not.
+
+Let us now consider the effects of the division between the two islands
+and of those between different parts of the larger island. The most
+obvious effect of these is tardy consolidation, which is still indicated
+by the absence of a collective name for the people of the three
+kingdoms. The writer was once rebuked by a Scotchman for saying
+"England" and "English," instead of saying "Great Britain" and
+"British." He replied that the rebuke was just, but that we must say
+"British and Irish." The Scot had overlooked his poor connections.
+
+We always speak of Anglo-Saxons and identify the extension of the
+Colonial Empire with that of the Anglo-Saxon race. But even if we assume
+that the Celts of England and of the Scotch Lowlands were exterminated
+by the Saxons, taking all the elements of Celtic population in the two
+islands together, they must bear a very considerable proportion to the
+Teutonic element. That large Irish settlements are being formed in the
+cities of Northern England is proved by election addresses coquetting
+with Home Rule. In the competition of the races on the American
+Continent the Irish more than holds its own. In the age of the steam-
+engine the Scotch Highlands, the mountains of Cumberland and
+Westmoreland, of Wales, of Devonshire, and Cornwall, are the asylum of
+natural beauty, of poetry and hearts which seek repose from the din and
+turmoil of commercial life. In the primaeval age of conquest they, with
+seagirt Ireland, were the asylum of the weaker race. There the Celt
+found refuge when Saxon invasion swept him from the open country of
+England and from the Scotch Lowlands. There he was preserved with his
+own language, indicating by its variety of dialects the rapid flux and
+change of unwritten speech; with his own Christianity, which was that of
+Apostolic Britain; with his un-Teutonic gifts and weaknesses, his
+lively, social, sympathetic nature, his religious enthusiasm,
+essentially the same in its Calvinistic as in its Catholic guise, his
+superstition, his clannishness, his devotion to chiefs and leaders, his
+comparative indifference to institutions, and lack of natural aptitude
+for self-government.
+
+The further we go in these inquiries the more reason there seems to be
+for believing that the peculiarities of races are not congenital, but
+impressed by primaeval circumstance. Not only the same moral and
+intellectual nature, but the same primitive institutions, are found in
+all the races that come under our view; they appear alike in Teuton,
+Celt, and Semite. That which is not congenital is probably not
+indelible, so that the less favoured races, placed under happier
+circumstances, may in time be brought to the level of the more favoured,
+and nothing warrants inhuman pride of race. But it is surely absurd to
+deny that peculiarities of race, when formed, are important factors in
+history. Mr. Buckle, who is most severe upon the extravagances of the
+race theory, himself runs into extravagances not less manifest in a
+different direction. He connects the religious character of the
+Spaniards with the influence of apocryphal volcanoes and earthquakes,
+whereas it palpably had its origin in the long struggle with the Moors.
+He, in like manner, connects the theological tendencies of the Scotch
+with the thunderstorms which he imagines (wrongly, if we may judge by
+our own experience) to be very frequent in the Highlands, whereas Scotch
+theology and the religious habits of the Scotch generally were formed in
+the Lowlands and among the Teutons, not among the Celts.
+
+The remnant of the Celtic race in Cornwall and West Devon was small, and
+was subdued and half incorporated by the Teutons at a comparatively
+early period; yet it played a distinct and a decidedly Celtic part in
+the Civil War of the seventeenth century. It played a more important
+part towards the close of the following century by giving itself almost
+in a mass to John Wesley. No doubt the neglect of the remote districts
+by the Bishops of Exeter and their clergy left Wesley a clear field; but
+the temperament of the people was also in his favour. Anything fervent
+takes with the Celt, while he cannot abide the religious compromise
+which commends itself to the practical Saxon.
+
+In the Great Charter there is a provision in favour of the Welsh, who
+were allied with the Barons in insurrection against the Crown. The
+Barons were fighting for the Charter, the Welshmen only for their
+barbarous and predatory independence. But the struggle for Welsh
+independence helped those who were struggling for the Charter; and the
+remark may be extended in substance to the general influence of Wales on
+the political contest between the Crown and the Barons. Even under the
+House of Lancaster, Llewellyn was faintly reproduced in Owen Glendower.
+The powerful monarchy of the Tudors finally completed the annexation.
+But isolation survived independence. The Welshman remained a Celt and
+preserved his language and his clannish spirit, though local magnates,
+such as the family of Wynn, filled the place in his heart once occupied
+by the chief. Ecclesiastically he was annexed, but refused to be
+incorporated, never seeing the advantage of walking in the middle path
+which the State Church of England had traced between the extremes of
+Popery and Dissent. He took Methodism in a Calvinistic and almost wildly
+enthusiastic form. In this respect his isolation is likely to prove far
+more important than anything which Welsh patriotism strives to
+resuscitate by Eisteddfodds. In the struggle, apparently imminent,
+between the system of Church Establishments and religious equality,
+Wales furnishes a most favourable battle-ground to the party of
+Disestablishment.
+
+The Teutonic realm of England was powerful enough to subdue, if not to
+assimilate, the remnants of the Celtic race in Wales and their other
+western hills of refuge. But the Teutonic realm of Scotland was not
+large or powerful enough to subdue the Celts of the Highlands, whose
+fastnesses constituted in geographical area the greater portion of the
+country. It seems that in the case of the Highlands, as in that of
+Ireland, Teutonic adventurers found their way into the domain of the
+Celts and became chieftains, but in becoming chieftains they became
+Celts. Down to the Hanoverian times the chain of the Grampians which
+from the Castle of Stirling is seen rising like a wall over the rich
+plain, divided from each other two nationalities, differing totally in
+ideas, institutions, habits, and costume, as well as in speech, and the
+less civilized of which still regarded the more civilized as alien
+intruders, while the more civilized regarded the less civilized as
+robbers. Internally, the topographical character of the Highlands was
+favourable to the continuance of the clan system, because each clan
+having its own separate glen, fusion was precluded, and the progress
+towards union went no further than the domination of the more powerful
+clans over the less powerful. Mountains also preserve the general
+equality and brotherhood which are not less essential to the
+constitution of the clan than devotion to the chief, by preventing the
+use of that great minister of aristocracy, the horse. At Killiecrankie
+and Prestonpans the leaders of the clan and the humblest clansman still
+charged on foot side by side. Macaulay is undoubtedly right in saying
+that the Highland risings against William III. and the first two Georges
+were not dynastic but clan movements. They were in fact the last raids
+of the Gael upon the country which had been wrested from him by the
+Sassenach. Little cared the clansman for the principles of Filmer or
+Locke, for the claims of the House of Stuart or for those of the House
+of Brunswick. Antipathy to the Clan Campbell was the nearest approach to
+a political motive. Chiefs alone, such as the unspeakable Lovat, had
+entered as political _condottieri_ into the dynastic intrigues of
+the period, and brought the claymores of their clansmen to the standard
+of their patron, as Indian chiefs in the American wars brought the
+tomahawks of their tribes to the standard of France or England. Celtic
+independence greatly contributed to the general perpetuation of anarchy
+in Scotland, to the backwardness of Scotch civilization, and to the
+abortive weakness of the Parliamentary institutions. Union with the more
+powerful kingdom at last supplied the force requisite for the taming of
+the Celt. Highlanders, at the bidding of Chatham's genius, became the
+soldiers, and are now the pet soldiers, of the British monarchy. A
+Hanoverian tailor with improving hand shaped the Highland plaid, which
+had originally resembled the simple drapery of the Irish kern, into a
+garb of complex beauty, well suited for fancy balls. The power of the
+chiefs and the substance of the clan system were finally swept away,
+though the sentiment lingers, even in the Transatlantic abodes of the
+clansmen, and is prized, like the dress, as a remnant of social
+picturesqueness in a prosaic and levelling age. The hills and lakes--at
+the thought of which even Gibbon shuddered--are the favourite retreats
+of the luxury which seeks in wildness refreshment from civilization.
+After Culloden, Presbyterianism effectually made its way into the
+Highlands, of which a great part had up to that time been little better
+than heathen; but it did not fail to take a strong tinge of Celtic
+enthusiasm and superstition.
+
+Of all the lines of division in Great Britain, the most important
+politically has been that which is least clearly traced by the hand of
+nature. The natural barriers between England and Scotland were not
+sufficient to prevent the extension of the Saxon settlements and
+kingdoms across the border. In the name of the Scotch capital we have a
+monument of a union before that of 1603. That the Norman Conquest did
+not include the Saxons of the Scotch Lowlands was due chiefly to the
+menacing attitude of Danish pretenders, and the other military dangers
+which led the Conqueror to guard himself on the north by a broad belt of
+desolation. Edward I., in attempting to extend his feudal supremacy over
+Scotland, may well have seemed to himself to have been acting in the
+interest of both nations, for a union would have put an end to border
+war, and would have delivered the Scotch in the Lowlands from the
+extremity of feudal oppression, and the rest of the country from a
+savage anarchy, giving them in place of those curses by far the best
+government of the time. The resistance came partly from mere barbarism,
+partly from Norman adventurers, who were no more Scotch than English,
+whose aims were purely selfish, and who would gladly have accepted
+Scotland as a vassal kingdom from Edward's hand. But the annexation
+would no doubt have formidably increased the power of the Crown, not
+only by extending its dominions, but by removing that which was a
+support often of aristocratic anarchy in England, but sometimes of
+rudimentary freedom. Had the whole island fallen under one victorious
+sceptre, the next wielder of that sceptre, under the name of the great
+Edward's wittold son, would have been Piers Gaveston. But what no
+prescience on the part of any one in the time of Edward I. could
+possibly have foreseen was the inestimable benefit which disunion and
+even anarchy indirectly conferred on the whole island in the shape of a
+separate Scotch Reformation. Divines, when they have exhausted their
+reasonings about the rival forms of Church government, will probably
+find that the argument which had practically most effect in determining
+the question was that of the much decried but in his way sagacious James
+I., "No bishop, no king!" In England the Reformation was semi-Catholic;
+in Sweden it was Lutheran; but in both countries it was made by the
+kings, and in both Episcopacy was retained. Where the Reformation was
+the work of the people, more popular forms of Church government
+prevailed. In Scotland the monarchy, always weak, was at the time of the
+Reformation practically in abeyance, and the master of the movement was
+emphatically a man of the people. As to the nobles, they seem to have
+thought only of appropriating the Church lands, and to have been willing
+to leave to the nation the spiritual gratification of settling its own
+religion. Probably they also felt with regard to the disinherited
+proprietors of the Church lands that "stone dead had no fellow." The
+result was a democratic and thoroughly Protestant Church, which drew
+into itself the highest energies, political as well as religious, of a
+strong and great-hearted people, and by which Laud and his confederates,
+when they had apparently overcome resistance in England, were as Milton
+says, "more robustiously handled." If the Scotch auxiliaries did not win
+the decisive battle of Marston Moor, they enabled the English
+Parliamentarians to fight and win it. During the dark days of the
+Restoration, English resistance to tyranny was strongly supported on the
+ecclesiastical side by the martyr steadfastness of the Scotch till the
+joint effort triumphed in the Revolution. It is singular and sad to find
+Scotland afterwards becoming one vast rotten borough managed in the time
+of Pitt by Dundas, who paid the borough-mongers by appointments in
+India, with calamitous consequences to the poor Hindoo. But the
+intensity of the local evil perhaps lent force to the revulsion, and
+Scotland has ever since been a distinctly Liberal element in British
+politics, and seems now likely to lead the way to a complete measure of
+religious freedom.
+
+Nature to a great extent fore-ordained the high destiny of the larger
+island, to at least an equal extent she fore-ordained the sad destiny of
+the smaller island. Irish history, studied impartially, is a grand
+lesson in political charity; so clear is it that in these deplorable
+annals the more important part was played by adverse circumstance, the
+less important by the malignity of man. That the stronger nation is
+entitled by the law of force to conquer its weaker neighbour and to
+govern the conquered in its own interest is a doctrine which civilized
+morality abhors; but in the days before civilized morality, in the days
+when the only law was that of natural selection, to which philosophy, by
+a strange counter-revolution seems now inclined to return, the smaller
+island was almost sure to be conquered by the possessors of the larger,
+more especially as the smaller, cut off from the Continent by the
+larger, lay completely within its grasp. The map, in short, tells us
+plainly that the destiny of Ireland was subordinated to that of Great
+Britain. At the same time, the smaller island being of considerable size
+and the channel of considerable breadth, it was likely that the
+resistance would be tough and the conquest slow. The unsettled state of
+Ireland, and the half-nomad condition in which at a comparatively late
+period its tribes remained, would also help to protract the bitter
+process of subjugation; and these again were the inevitable results of
+the rainy climate, which, while it clothed the island with green and
+made pasture abundant, forbade the cultivation of grain. Ireland and
+Wales alike appear to have been the scenes of a precocious civilization,
+merely intellectual and literary in its character, and closely connected
+with the Church, though including also a bardic element derived from the
+times before Christianity, the fruits of which were poetry, fantastic
+law-making, and probably the germs of scholastic theology, combined, in
+the case of Ireland, with missionary enterprise and such ecclesiastical
+architecture as the Round Towers. But cities there were none, and it is
+evident that the native Church with difficulty sustained her higher life
+amidst the influences and encroachments of surrounding barbarism. The
+Anglo-Norman conquest of Ireland was a supplement to the Norman conquest
+of England; and, like the Norman conquest of England, it was a religious
+as well as a political enterprise. As Hildebrand had commissioned
+William to bring the national Church of England into complete submission
+to the See of Rome, so Adrian, by the Bull which is the stumbling-block
+of Irish Catholics, granted Ireland to Henry upon condition of his
+reforming, that is, Romanizing, its primitive and schismatic Church.
+Ecclesiastical intrigue had already been working in the same direction,
+and had in some measure prepared the way for the conqueror by disposing
+the heads of the Irish clergy to receive him as the emancipator of the
+Church from the secular oppression and imposts of the chiefs. But in the
+case of England, a settled and agricultural country, the conquest was
+complete and final; the conquerors formed everywhere a new upper class
+which, though at first alien and oppressive, became in time a national
+nobility, and ultimately blended with the subject race. In the case of
+Ireland, though the Septs were easily defeated by the Norman soldiery,
+and the formal submission of their chiefs was easily extorted, the
+conquest was neither complete nor final. In their hills and bogs the
+wandering Septs easily evaded the Norman arms. The Irish Channel was
+wide; the road lay through North Wales, long unsubdued, and, even when
+subdued, mutinous, and presenting natural obstacles to the passage of
+heavy troops; the centre of Anglo-Norman power was far away in the
+south-east of England, and the force of the monarchy was either
+attracted to Continental fields or absorbed by struggles with baronial
+factions. Richard II., coming to a throne which had been strengthened
+and exalted by the achievements of his grandfather, seems in one of his
+moods of fitful ambition to have conceived the design of completing the
+conquest of Ireland, and he passed over with a great power; but his fate
+showed that the arm of the monarchy was still too short to reach the
+dependency without losing hold upon the imperial country. As a rule, the
+subjugation of Ireland during the period before the Tudors was in effect
+left to private enterprise, which of course confined its efforts to
+objects of private gain, and never thought of undertaking the systematic
+subjugation of native fortresses in the interest of order and
+civilization. Instead of a national aristocracy the result was a
+military colony or Pale, between the inhabitants of which and the
+natives raged a perpetual border war, as savage as that between the
+settlers at the Cape and the Kaffirs, or that between the American
+frontierman and the Red Indian. The religious quarrel was and has always
+been secondary in importance to the struggle of the races for the land.
+In the period following the conquest it was the Pale that was
+distinctively Romanist; but when at the Reformation the Pale became
+Protestant the natives, from antagonism of race, became more intensely
+Catholic, and were drawn into the league of Catholic powers on the
+Continent, in which they suffered the usual fate of the dwarf who goes
+to battle with the giant. By the strong monarchy of the Tudors the
+conquest of Ireland was completed with circumstances of cruelty
+sufficient to plant undying hatred in the breasts of the people. But the
+struggle for the land did not end there, instead of the form of conquest
+it took that of confiscation, and was waged by the intruder with the
+arms of legal chicane. In the form of eviction it has lasted to the
+present hour; and eviction in Ireland is not like eviction in England,
+where great manufacturing cities receive and employ the evicted; it is
+starvation or exile. Into exile the Irish people have gone by millions,
+and thus, though neither maritime nor by nature colonists, they have had
+a great share in the peopling of the New World. The cities and railroads
+of the United States are to a great extent the monuments of their
+labour. In the political sphere they have retained the weakness produced
+by ages of political serfage, and are still the _debris_ of broken
+clans, with little about them of the genuine republican, apt blindly to
+follow the leader who stands to them as a chief, while they are
+instinctively hostile to law and government as their immemorial
+oppressors in their native land. British statesmen, when they had
+conceded Catholic emancipation and afterwards Disestablishment, may have
+fancied that they had removed the root of the evil. But the real root
+was not touched till Parliament took up the question of the land, and
+effected a compromise which may perhaps have to be again revised before
+complete pacification is attained.
+
+In another way geography has exercised a sinister influence on the
+fortunes of Ireland. Closely approaching Scotland, the northern coast of
+Ireland in course of time invited Scotch immigration, which formed as it
+were a Presbyterian Pale. If the antagonism between the English
+Episcopalian and the Irish Catholic was strong, that between the Scotch
+Presbyterian and the Irish Catholic was stronger. To the English
+Episcopalian the Irish Catholic was a barbarian and a Romanist; to the
+Scotch Presbyterian he was a Canaanite and an idolater. Nothing in
+history is more hideous than the conflict in the north of Ireland in the
+time of Charles I. This is the feud which has been tenacious enough of
+its evil life to propagate itself even in the New World, and to renew in
+the streets of Canadian cities the brutal and scandalous conflicts which
+disgrace Belfast. On the other hand, through the Scotch colony, the
+larger island has a second hold upon the smaller. Of all political
+projects a federal union of England and Ireland with separate
+Parliaments under the same Crown seems the most hopeless, at least if
+government is to remain parliamentary; it may be safely said that the
+normal relation between the two Parliaments would be collision, and
+collision on a question of peace or war would be disruption. But an
+independent Ireland might be a feasible as well as natural object of
+Irish aspiration if it were not for the strength, moral as well as
+numerical, of the two intrusive elements. How could the Catholic
+majority be restrained from legislation which the Protestant minority
+would deem oppressive? And how could the Protestant minority, being as
+it is more English or Scotch than Irish, be restrained from stretching
+its hands to England or Scotland for aid? It is true that if scepticism
+continues to advance at its present rate, the lines of religious
+separation may be obliterated or become too faint to exercise a great
+practical influence, and the bond of the soil may then prevail. But the
+feeling against England which is the strength of Irish Nationalism is
+likely to subside at the same time.
+
+Speculation on unfulfilled contingencies is not invariably barren. It is
+interesting at all events to consider what would have been the
+consequences to the people of the two islands, and humanity generally,
+if a Saxon England and a Celtic Ireland had been allowed to grow up and
+develop by the side of each other untouched by Norman conquest. In the
+case of Ireland we should have been spared centuries of oppression which
+has profoundly reacted, as oppression always does, on the character of
+the oppressor; and it is difficult to believe that the Isle of Saints
+and of primitive Universities would not have produced some good fruits
+of its own. In the Norman conquest of England historical optimism sees a
+great political and intellectual blessing beneath the disguise of
+barbarous havoc and alien tyranny. The Conquest was the continuation of
+the process of migratory invasions by which the nations of modern Europe
+were founded, from restless ambition and cupidity, when it had ceased to
+be beneficent. It was not the superposition of one primitive element of
+population on another, to the ultimate advantage, possibly, of the
+compound; but the destruction of a nationality, the nationality of
+Alfred and Harold, of Bede and AElfric. The French were superior in
+military organization; that they had superior gifts of any kind, or that
+their promise was higher than that of the native English, it would not
+be easy to prove. The language, we are told, is enriched by the
+intrusion of the French element. If it was enriched it was shattered;
+and the result is a mixture so heterogeneous as to be hardly available
+for the purposes of exact thought, while the language of science is
+borrowed from the Greek, and as regards the unlearned mass of the people
+is hardly a medium of thought at all. There are great calamity in
+history, though their effects may in time be worked off, and they may be
+attended by some incidental good. Perhaps the greatest calamity in
+history were the wars of Napoleon, in which some incidental good may
+nevertheless be found.
+
+To the influences of geographical position, soil, and race is to be
+added, to complete the account of the physical heritage, the influence
+of climate. But in the case of the British Islands we must speak not of
+climate, but of climates, for within the compass of one small realm are
+climates moist and comparatively dry, warm and cold, bracing and
+enervating, the results of special influences the range of which is
+limited. Civilized man to a great extent makes a climate for himself;
+his life in the North is spent mainly indoors, where artificial heat
+replaces the sun. The idea which still haunts us, that formidable vigour
+and aptitude for conquest are the appanage of Northern races, is a
+survival from the state in which the rigour of nature selected and
+hardened the destined conquerors of the Roman Empire. The stoves of St.
+Petersburg are as enervating as the sun of Naples, and in the struggle
+between the Northern and Southern States of America not the least
+vigorous soldiers were those who came from Louisiana. In the barbarous
+state the action of a Northern climate as a force of natural selection
+must be tremendous. Of the races which peopled the British Islands the
+most important had already undergone that action in their original
+abodes. They would, however, still feel the beneficent influence of a
+climate on the whole eminently favourable to health and to activity;
+bracing, yet not so rigorous as to kill those tender plants of humanity
+which often bear in them the most precious germs of civilization,
+neither confining the inhabitant too much to the shelter of his
+dwelling, nor, as the suns of the South are apt to do, drawing him too
+much from home. The climate and the soil together formed a good school
+for the character of the young nation, as they exacted the toil of the
+husbandman and rewarded it. Of the varieties of temperature and weather
+within the island the national character still bears the impress, though
+in a degree always decreasing as the assimilating agencies of
+civilization make their way. Irrespectively of the influence of special
+employments, and perhaps even of peculiarity of race, mental vigour,
+independence, and reasoning power are always ascribed to the people of
+the North. Variety, in this as in other respects, would naturally
+produce a balance of tendencies in the nation conductive to moderation
+and evenness of progress.
+
+The islands are now the centre of an Empire which to some minds seems
+more important than the islands themselves. An empire it is called, but
+the name is really applicable only to India. The relation of England to
+her free colonies is not in the proper sense of the term imperial, while
+her relation to such dependencies as Gibraltar and Malta is military
+alone. Colonization is the natural and entirely beneficent result of
+general causes, obvious enough and already mentioned, including that
+power of self-government, fostered by the circumstances of the
+colonizing country, which made the character and destiny of New England
+so different from those of New France.
+
+Equally natural was the choice of the situation for the original
+colonies on the shore of the New World. The foundation of the Australian
+Colonies, on the other hand, was determined by political accident,
+compensation for the loss of the American Colonies being sought on the
+other side of the globe. It will perhaps be thought hereafter that the
+quarrel with New England was calamitous in its consequences as well as
+in itself, since it led to the diversion of British emigration from
+America, where it supplied, in a democracy of mixed but not uncongenial
+races, the necessary element of guidance and control, to Australia,
+where, as there must be a limit to its own multiplication, it may
+hereafter have to struggle for mastery with swarming multitudes of
+Chinese, almost as incurable of incorporation with it as the negro.
+India and the other conquered dependencies are the fruits of strength as
+a war power at sea combined with weakness on land. Though not so
+generally noticed, the second of these two factors has not been less
+operative than the first. Chatham attacked France in her distant
+dependencies when he had failed to make any impression on her own
+coasts. Still more clearly was Chatham's son, the most incapable of war
+ministers, driven to the capture of sugar islands by his inability to
+take part, otherwise than by subsidies, in the decisive struggle on the
+Continental fields. This may deserve the attention of those who do not
+think it criminal to examine the policy of Empire. Outlying pawns picked
+up by a feeble chessplayer merely because he could not mate the king do
+not at first sight necessarily commend themselves as invaluable
+possessions. Carthage and Venice were merely great commercial cities,
+which, when they entered on a career of conquest, were compelled at once
+to form armies of mercenaries, and to incur all the evil consequences by
+which the employment of those vile and fatal instruments of ambition is
+attended. England being, not a commercial city, but a nation, and a
+nation endowed with the highest military qualities, has escaped the fell
+necessity except in the case of India; and India, under the reign of the
+Company, and even for some time after its legal annexation to the Crown,
+was regarded and treated almost as a realm in another planet, with an
+army, a political system, and a morality of its own. But now it appears
+that the wrongs of the Hindoo are going to be avenged, as the wrongs of
+the conquered have often been, by their moral effect upon the conqueror.
+A body of barbarian mercenaries has appeared upon the European scene as
+an integral part of the British army, while the reflex influence of
+Indian Empire upon the political character and tendencies of the
+imperial nation is too manifest to be any longer overlooked. England now
+stands where the paths divide, the one leading by industrial and
+commercial progress to increase of political liberty; the other, by a
+career of conquest, to the political results in which such a career has
+never yet failed to end. At present the influences in favour of taking
+the path of conquest seemed to preponderate, [Footnote: Written in
+1878.] and the probability seems to be that the leadership of political
+progress, which has hitherto belonged to England and has constituted the
+special interest of her history, will, in the near future, pass into
+other hands.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
+
+[Footnote: In this lecture free use has been made of recent writers--
+Mitchell, Chapman, Vehse, Freytag and Ranke, as well as of the older
+authorities. To Chapman's excellent Life of Gustavus Adolphus we are
+under special obligations. In some passages it has been closely
+followed. Colonel Mitchell has also supplied some remarks and touches,
+such as are to be found only in a military writer.]
+
+AN EPISODE OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.
+
+
+The Thirty Years' War is an old story, but its interest has been
+recently revived. The conflict between Austria and German Independence
+commenced in the struggle of the Protestant Princes against Charles V.,
+and, continued on those battle-fields, was renewed and decided at
+Sadowa. At Sadowa Germany was fighting for unity as well as for
+independence. But in the Thirty Years' War it was Austria that with her
+Croats, the Jesuits who inspired her councils, and her Spanish allies,
+sought to impose a unity of death, against which Protestant Germany
+struggled, preserving herself for a unity of life which, opened by the
+victories of Frederick the Great, and, more nobly promoted by the great
+uprising of the nation against the tyranny of Napoleon, was finally
+accomplished at Sadowa, and ratified against French jealousy at Sedan.
+Costly has been the achievement; lavish has been the expenditure of
+German blood, severe the sufferings of the German people. It is the lot
+of all who aspire high--no man or nation ever was dandled into
+greatness.
+
+The Thirty Years' War was a real world-contest. Austria and Spain drew
+after them all the powers of reaction; all the powers of liberty and
+progress were arrayed on the other side. The half-barbarous races that
+lay between civilized Europe and Turkey mingled in the conflict: Turkey
+herself was drawn diplomatically into the vortex. In the mines of Mexico
+and Peru the Indian toiled to furnish both the Austrian and Spanish
+hosts. The Treaty of Westphalia, which concluded the struggle, long
+remained the Public Law of Europe.
+
+Half religious, half political, in its character, this war stands midway
+between the religious wars of the sixteenth century, and the political
+wars of the eighteenth. France took the political view; and, while she
+crushed her own Huguenots at home, supported the German Protestants
+against the House of Austria. Even the Pope, Urban VIII., more
+politician than churchman, more careful of Peter's patrimony than of
+Peter's creed, went with France to the Protestant side. With the
+princes, as usual, political motives were the strongest, with the people
+religious motives. The politics were to a sad extent those of
+Machiavelli and the Jesuit; but above the meaner characters who crowd
+the scene rise at least two grand forms.
+
+In a military point of view, the Thirty Years' War will bear no
+comparison with that which has just run its marvellous course. The
+armies were small, seldom exceeding thirty thousand. Tilly thought forty
+thousand the largest number which a general could handle, while Von
+Moltke has handled half a million. There was no regular commissariat,
+there were no railroads, there were no good roads, there were no
+accurate maps, there was no trained staff. The general had to be
+everything and to do everything himself. The financial resources of the
+powers were small: their regular revenues soon failed; and they had to
+fly for loans to great banking houses, such as that of the Fuggers at
+Augsburgh, so that the money power became the arbiter even of Imperial
+elections. The country on which the armies lived was soon eaten up by
+their rapine. Hence the feebleness of the operations, the absence of
+anything which Von Moltke would call strategy: and hence again the cruel
+length of the war, a whole generation of German agony.
+
+But if the war was weak, not so were the warriors. On the Imperial side
+especially, they were types of a class of men, the most terrible
+perhaps, as well as the vilest, who ever plied the soldier's trade: of
+those mercenary bands, _soldados_, in the literal and original
+sense of the term, free companions, _condottieri_, lansquenets, who
+came between the feudal militia and the standing armies of modern times.
+In the wars of Italy and the Low Countries, under Alva and Parma and
+Freundsberg, these men had opened new abysses of cruelty and lust in
+human nature. They were the lineal representatives of the Great
+Companies which ravaged France in the time of Edward III. They were near
+of kin to the buccaneers, and Scott's Bertram Risingham is the portrait
+of a lansquenet as well as of a rover of the Spanish Main. Many of them
+were Croats, a race well known through all history in the ranks of
+Austrian tyranny, and Walloons, a name synonymous with that of hired
+butcher and marauder.
+
+But with Croats and Walloons were mingled Germans, Spaniards, Italians,
+Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, outcasts of every land, bearing the
+devil's stamp on faces of every complexion, blaspheming in all European
+and some non-European tongues. Their only country was the camp; their
+cause booty; their king the bandit general who contracted for their
+blood. Of attachment to religious principle they had usually just enough
+to make them prefer murdering and plundering in the name of the Virgin
+to murdering and plundering in the name of the Gospel, but outcasts of
+all nominal creeds were found together in their camps. Even the dignity
+of hatred was wanting to their conflicts, for they changed sides without
+scruple, and the comrade of yesterday was the foeman of to-day, and
+again the comrade of the morrow. The only moral salt which kept the
+carcass of their villainy from rotting was a military code of honour,
+embodying the freemasonry of the soldier's trade and having as one of
+its articles the duel with all the forms--an improvement at any rate
+upon assassination. A stronger contrast there cannot be than that
+between these men and the citizen soldiers whom Germany the other day
+sent forth to defend their country and their hearths. The soldier had a
+language of his own, polyglot as the elements of the band, and garnished
+with unearthly oaths: and the void left by religion in his soul was
+filled with wild superstitions, bullet charming and spells against
+bullets, the natural reflection in dark hearts of the blind chance which
+since the introduction of firearms seemed to decide the soldier's fate.
+Having no home but the camp, he carried with him his family, a she wolf
+and her cubs, cruel and marauding as himself; and the numbers and
+unwieldiness of every army were doubled by a train of waggons full of
+women and children sitting on heaps of booty. It was not, we may guess,
+as ministering angels that these women went among the wounded after a
+battle. The chiefs made vast fortunes. Common soldiers sometimes drew a
+great prize; left the standard for a time and lived like princes; but
+the fiend's gold soon found its way back to the giver through the Jews
+who prowled in the wake of war, or at the gambling table which was the
+central object in every camp. When fortune smiled, when pay was good,
+when a rich city had been stormed, the soldier's life was in its way a
+merry one; his camp was full of roystering revelry; he, his lady and his
+charger glittered with not over-tasteful finery, the lady sometimes with
+finery stripped from the altars. Then, glass in hand he might joyously
+cry, "The sharp sword is my farm and plundering is my plough; earth is
+my bed, the sky my covering, this cloak is my house, this wine my
+paradise;" or chant the doggerel stave which said that "when a soldier
+was born three boors were given him, one to find him food, another to
+find him a comely lass, a third to go to perdition in his stead." But
+when the country had been eaten up, when the burghers held the city
+stoutly, when the money-kings refused to advance the war kings any more
+gold, the soldier shared the miseries which he inflicted, and, unless he
+was of iron, sank under his hardships, unpitied by his stronger
+comrades; for the rule of that world was woe to the weak. Terrible then
+were the mutinies. Fearful was the position of the commander. We cannot
+altogether resist the romance which attaches to the life of these men,
+many a one among whom could have told a tale as wild as that with which
+Othello, the hero of their tribe, won his Desdemona, in whose love he
+finds the countercharm of his wandering life. But what sort of war such
+a soldiery made, may be easily imagined. Its treatment of the people and
+the country wherever it marched, as minutely described by trustworthy
+witnesses, was literally fiendish. Germany did not recover the effects
+for two hundred years.
+
+A century had passed since the first preaching of Luther. Jesuitism,
+working from its great seminary at Ingoldstadt, and backed by Austria,
+had won back many, especially among the princes and nobility, to the
+Church of Rome; but in the main the Germans, like the other Teutons,
+were still Protestant even in the hereditary domains of the House of
+Austria. The rival religions stood facing each other within the nominal
+unity of the Empire, in a state of uneasy truce and compromise,
+questions about ecclesiastical domains and religious privileges still
+open; formularies styled of concord proving formularies of discord; no
+mediating authority being able to make church authority and liberty of
+private judgment, Reaction and Progress, the Spirit of the Past and the
+Spirit of the Future lie down in real peace together. The Protestants
+had formed an Evangelical Union, their opponents a Catholic League, of
+which Maximilian, Elector of Bavaria, a pupil of the Jesuits, was chief.
+The Protestants were ill prepared for the struggle. There was fatal
+division between the Lutherans and the Calvinists, Luther himself having
+said in his haste that he hated a Calvinist more than a Papist. The
+great Protestant princes were lukewarm and weak-kneed: like the Tudor
+nobility of England, they clung much more firmly to the lands which they
+had taken from the Catholics than to the faith in the name of which the
+lands were taken; and as powers of order, naturally alarmed by the
+disorders which attended the great religious revolution, they were
+politically inclined to the Imperial side. The lesser nobility and
+gentry, staunch Protestants for the most part, had shown no capacity for
+vigorous and united action since their premature attempt under Arnold
+Von Sickingen. On the peasantry, also staunch Protestants, still weighed
+the reaction produced by the Peasants' war and the excesses of the
+Anabaptists. In the free cities there was a strong burgher element ready
+to fight for Protestantism and liberty; but even in the free cities
+wealth was Conservative, and to the Rothschilds of the day the cause
+which offered high interest and good security was the cause of Heaven.
+
+The smouldering fire burst into a flame in Bohemia, a kingdom of the
+House of Austria, and a member of the Empire, but peopled by hot,
+impulsive Sclavs, jealous of their nationality, as well as of their
+Protestant faith--Bohemia, whither the spark of Wycliffism had passed
+along the electric chain of common universities by which mediaeval
+Christendom was bound, and where it had kindled first the martyr fire of
+John Huss and Jerome of Prague, then the fiercer conflagration of the
+Hussite war. In that romantic city by the Moldau, with its strange, half
+Oriental beauty, where Jesuitism now reigns supreme, and St. John
+Nepemuch is the popular divinity, Protestantism and Jesuitism then lay
+in jealous neighbourhood, Protestantism supported by the native
+nobility, from anarchical propensity as well as from religious
+conviction; Jesuitism patronized and furtively aided by the intrusive
+Austrian power. From the Emperor Rudolph II., the Protestants had
+obtained a charter of religious liberties. But Rudolph's successor,
+Ferdinand II., was the Philip II. of Germany in bigotry, though not in
+cruelty. In his youth, after a pilgrimage to Loretto, he had vowed at
+the feet of the Pope to restore Catholicism at the hazard of his life.
+He was a pupil of the Jesuits, almost worshipped priests, was
+passionately devoted to the ceremonies of his religion, delighting even
+in the functions of an acolyte, and, as he said, preferred a desert to
+an empire full of heretics. He had, moreover, before his accession to
+the throne, come into collision with Protestantism where it was
+triumphant, and had found in its violence too good an excuse for his
+bigotry. It was inevitable that as King of Bohemia he should attempt to
+narrow the Protestant liberties. The hot Czech blood took fire, the
+fierceness of political turbulence mingled with that of religious zeal,
+and at a council held at Prague, in the old palace of the Bohemian
+kings, Martiniz and Slavata, the most hated of Ferdinand's creatures,
+were thrown out of a window in what was called good Bohemian fashion,
+and only by a marvellous accident escaped with their lives. The first
+blow was struck, the signal was given for thirty years of havoc.
+Insurrection flamed up in Bohemia. At the head of the insurgents, Count
+Thurn rushed on Vienna. The Emperor was saved only by a miracle, as
+Jesuitism averred,--as Rationalism says, by the arrival of Dampierre's
+Imperial horse. He suffered a fright which must have made him more than
+ever prefer a desert to an empire full of heretics. By a vote of the
+States of Bohemia the crown was taken from Ferdinand and offered to
+Frederic, Elector Palatine. Frederic was married to the bright and
+fascinating Princess Elizabeth of England, the darling of Protestant
+hearts; other qualifications for that crown of peril he had none. But in
+an evil hour he accepted the offer. Soon his unfitness appeared. A
+foreigner, he could not rein the restive and hard mouthed Czech
+nobility, a Calvinist and a pupil of the Huguenots, he unwisely let
+loose Calvinist iconoclasm among a people who clung to their ancient
+images though they had renounced their ancient faith. Supinely he
+allowed Austria and the Catholic League to raise their Croats and
+Walloons with the ready aid, so valuable in that age of unready finance,
+of Spanish gold. Supinely he saw the storm gather and roll towards him.
+Supinely he lingered in his palace, while on the White Hill, a name
+fatal in Protestant annals, his army, filled with his own
+discouragement, was broken by the combined forces of the Empire, under
+Bucquoi, and of the Catholic League, under Count Tilly. Still there was
+hope in resistance, yet Frederic fled. He was in great danger, say his
+apologists. It was to face a great danger, and show others how to face
+it, that he had come there. Let a man, before he takes the crown of
+Bohemia, look well into his own heart. Then followed a scaffold scene
+like that of Egmont and Horn, but on a larger scale. Ferdinand, it
+seems, hesitated to shed blood, but his confessor quelled his scruples.
+Before the City Hall of Prague, and near the Thein Church, bearing the
+Hussite emblems of the chalice and sword, amidst stern military pomp,
+the Emperor presiding in the person of his High Commissioner, twenty-
+four victims of high rank were led forth to death. Just as the
+executions commenced a bright rainbow spanned the sky. To the victims it
+seemed an assurance of Heaven's mercy. To the more far-reaching eye of
+history it may seem to have been an assurance that, dark as the sky then
+was, the flood of Reaction should no more cover the earth. But dark the
+sky was: the counter-reformation rode on the wings of victory, and with
+ruthless cruelty, through Bohemia, through Moravia, through Austria
+Proper, which had shown sympathy with the Bohemian revolt. The lands of
+the Protestant nobility were confiscated, the nobility itself crushed;
+in its place was erected a new nobility of courtiers, foreigners,
+military adventurers devoted to the Empire and to Catholicism, the seed
+of the Metternichs.
+
+For ten years the tide ran steadily against Protestantism and German
+Independence. The Protestants were without cohesion, without powerful
+chiefs. Count Mansfeldt was a brilliant soldier, with a strong dash of
+the robber. Christian of Brunswick was a brave knight errant, fighting,
+as his motto had it, for God and for Elizabeth of Bohemia. But neither
+of them had any great or stable force at his back, and if a ray of
+victory shone for a moment on their standards, it was soon lost in
+gloom. In Frederick, ex-king of Bohemia, was no help; and his charming
+queen could only win for him hearts like that of Christian of Brunswick.
+The great Protestant Princes of the North, Saxony and Brandenburgh, twin
+pillars of the cause that should have been, were not only lukewarm,
+timorous, superstitiously afraid of taking part against the Emperor, but
+they were sybarites, or rather sots, to whose gross hearts no noble
+thought could find its way. Their inaction was almost justified by the
+conduct of the Protestant chiefs, whose councils were full of folly and
+selfishness, whose policy seemed mere anarchy, and who too often made
+war like buccaneers. The Evangelical Union, in which Lutheranism and
+political quietism prevailed, refused its aid to the Calvinist and
+usurping King of Bohemia. Among foreign powers, England was divided in
+will, the nation being enthusiastically for Protestantism and Elizabeth
+of Bohemia, while the Court leant to the side of order and hankered
+after the Spanish marriage. France was not divided in will: her single
+will was that of Richelieu, who, to weaken Austria, fanned the flame of
+civil war in Germany, as he did in England, but lent no decisive aid.
+Bethlem Gabor, the Evangelical Prince of Transylvania, led semi-
+barbarous hosts, useful as auxiliaries, but incapable of bearing the
+main brunt of the struggle; and he was trammelled by his allegiance to
+his suzerain, the Sultan. The Catholic League was served by a first-rate
+general in the person of Tilly; the Empire by a first-rate general and
+first-rate statesman in the person of Wallenstein. The Palatinate was
+conquered, and the Electorate was transferred by Imperial fiat to
+Maximilian of Bavaria, the head of the Catholic League, whereby a
+majority was given to the Catholics in the hitherto equally-divided
+College of Electors. An Imperial Edict of Restitution went forth,
+restoring to Catholicism all that it had lost by conversion within the
+last seventy years. Over all Germany, Jesuits and Capuchins swarmed with
+the mandates of reaction in their hands. The King of Denmark tardily
+took up arms only to be overthrown by Tilly at Lutter, and again at
+Wolgast by Wallenstein. The Catholic and Imperial armies were on the
+northern seas. Wallenstein, made Admiral of the Empire, was preparing a
+basis of maritime operations against the Protestant kingdoms of
+Scandinavia, against the last asylum of Protestantism and Liberty in
+Holland. Germany, with all its intellect and all its hopes, was on the
+point of becoming a second Spain. Teutonism was all but enslaved to the
+Croat. The double star of the House of Austria seemed with baleful
+aspect to dominate in the sky, and to threaten with extinction European
+liberty and progress. One bright spot alone remained amidst the gloom.
+By the side of the brave burghers who beat back the Prince of Parma from
+the cities of Holland, a place must be made in history for the brave
+burghers who beat back Wallenstein from Stralsund, after he had sworn,
+in his grand, impious way, that he would take it though it were bound by
+a chain to Heaven. The eyes of all Protestants were turned, says
+Richelieu, like those of sailors, towards the North. And from the North
+a deliverer came. On Midsummer day, 1630, a bright day in the annals of
+Protestantism, of Germany, and, as Protestants and Germans must believe,
+of human liberty and progress, Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, landed
+at Penemunde, on the Pomeranian coast, and knelt down on the shore to
+give thanks to God for his safe passage; then showed at once his
+knowledge of the art of war and of the soldier's heart, by himself
+taking spade in hand, and commencing the entrenchment of his camp.
+Gustavus was the grandson of that Gustavus Vasa who had broken at once
+the bonds of Denmark and of Rome, and had made Sweden independent and
+Lutheran. He was the son of that Charles Vasa who had defeated the
+counter-reformation. Devoted from his childhood to the Protestant cause,
+hardily trained in a country where even the palace was the abode of
+thrift and self-denial, his mind enlarged by a liberal education, in
+regard for which, amidst her poverty, as in general character and habits
+of her people, his Sweden greatly resembled Scotland; his imagination
+stimulated by the wild scenery, the dark forests, the starry nights of
+Scandinavia; gifted by nature both in mind and body; the young king had
+already shown himself a hero. He had waged grim war with the powers of
+the icy north; he bore several scars, proofs of a valour only too great
+for the vast interests which depended on his life; he had been a
+successful innovator in tactics, or rather a successful restorer of the
+military science of the Romans. But the best of his military innovations
+were discipline and religion. His discipline redeemed the war from
+savagery, and made it again, so far as war, and war in that iron age
+could be, a school of humanity and self-control. In religion he was
+himself not an ascetic saint, there is one light passage at least in his
+early life: and at Augsburg they show a ruff plucked from his neck by a
+fair Augsburger at the crisis of a very brisk flirtation. But he was
+devout, and he inspired his army with his devotion. The traveller is
+still struck with the prayer and hymn which open and close the march of
+the soldiers of Gustavus. Schools for the soldiers' children were held
+in his camp. It is true that the besetting sin of the Swedes, and of all
+dwellers in cold countries, is disclosed by the article in his military
+code directed against the drunkenness of army chaplains.
+
+Sir Thomas Roe, the most sagacious of the English diplomatists of that
+age, wrote of Gustavus to James I.--"The king hath solemnly protested
+that he will not depose arms till he hath spoken one word for your
+majesty in Germany (that was his own phrase), and glory will contend
+with policy in his resolution; for he hath unlimited thoughts, and is
+the likeliest instrument for God to work by in Europe. We have often
+observed great alterations to follow great spirits, as if they were
+fitted for the times. Certainly, _ambit fortunam Caesaris_: he
+thinks the ship cannot sink that carries him, and doth thus oblige
+prosperity."
+
+Gustavus justified his landing in Germany by a manifesto setting forth
+hostile acts of the Emperor against him in Poland. No doubt there was a
+technical _casus belli_. But, morally, the landing of Gustavus was
+a glorious breach of the principle of non-intervention. He came to save
+the world. He was not the less a fit instrument for God to work by
+because it was likely that he would rule the world when he had saved it.
+
+"A snow king!" tittered the courtiers of Vienna, "he will soon melt
+away." He soon began to prove to them, both in war and diplomacy, that
+his melting would be slow. Richelieu at last ventured on a treaty of
+alliance. Charles I., now on the throne of England, and angry at having
+been jilted by Spain, also entered into a treaty, and sent British
+auxiliaries, who, though soon reduced in numbers by sickness, always
+formed a substantial part of the armies of Gustavus, and in battle and
+storm earned their full share of the honour of his campaigns. Many
+British volunteers had already joined the standard of Mansfeldt and
+other Protestant chiefs; and if some of these men were mere soldiers of
+the Dugald Dalghetty type, some were the Garibaldians of their day, and
+brought back at once enthusiasm and military skill from German
+battlefields to Marston and Naseby. Diplomacy, aided by a little gentle
+pressure, drew Saxony and Brandenburgh to the better cause, now that the
+better cause was so strong. But while they dallied and haggled one more
+great disaster was added to the sum of Protestant calamity. Magdeburgh,
+the queen of Protestant cities, the citadel of North German liberty,
+fell--fell with Gustavus and rescue near--and nameless atrocities were
+perpetrated by the ferocious bands of the Empire on innocents of all
+ages and both sexes, whose cry goes up against bloodthirsty fanaticism
+for ever. A shriek of horror rang through the Protestant world, not
+without reproaches against Gustavus, who cleared himself by words, and
+was soon to clear himself better by deeds.
+
+Count Tilly was now in sole command on the Catholic and Imperial side.
+Wallenstein had been dismissed. A military Richelieu, an absolutist in
+politics, an indifferentist in religion, caring at least for the
+religious quarrel only as it affected the political question, he aimed
+at crushing the independence of all the princes, Catholic as well as
+Protestant, and making the Emperor, or rather Wallenstein in the name of
+the Imperial devotee, as much master of Germany as the Spanish king was
+of Spain. But the disclosure of this policy, and the towering pride of
+its author had alarmed the Catholic princes, and produced a reaction
+similar to that caused by the absolutist encroachments of Charles V.
+Aided by the Jesuits, who marked in Wallenstein a statesman whose policy
+was independent of theirs, and who, if not a traitor to the faith, was
+at least a bad persecutor, Maximilian and his confederates forced the
+Emperor to remove Wallenstein from command. The great man received the
+bearers of the mandate with stately courtesy, with princely hospitality,
+showed them that he had read in the stars the predominance of Maximilian
+over Ferdinand, slightly glanced at the Emperor's weakness, then
+withdrew to that palace at Prague, so like its mysterious lord, so regal
+and so fantastic in its splendour, yet so gloomy, so jealously guarded,
+so full of the spirit of dark ambition, so haunted by the shadow of the
+dagger. There he lay, watching the storm that gathered in the North,
+scanning the stars and waiting for his hour.
+
+When the Swedes and Saxons, under Gustavus and the Elector of Saxony,
+drew near to the Imperial army under Tilly, in the neighbourhood of
+Leipsic, there was a crisis, a thrill of worldwide expectation, as when
+the Armada approached the shores of England; as when the allies met the
+forces of Louis XIV. at Blenheim, as when, on those same plains of
+Leipsic, the uprisen nations advanced to battle against Napoleon. Count
+Tilly's military genius fell short only of the highest. His figure was
+one which showed that war had become a science, and that the days of the
+Paladins were past. He was a little old man, with a broad wrinkled
+forehead, hollow cheeks, a long nose and projecting chin, grotesquely
+attired in a slashed doublet of green satin, with a peaked hat and a
+long red feather hanging down behind. His charger was a grey pony, his
+only weapon a pistol, which it was his delight to say he had never fired
+in the thirty pitched fields which he had fought and won. He was a
+Walloon by birth, a pupil of the Jesuits, a sincere devotee, and could
+boast that he had never yielded to the allurements of wine or women, as
+well as that he had never lost a battle. His name was now one of horror,
+for he was the captor of Magdeburg, and if he had not commanded the
+massacre, or, as it was said, jested at it, he could not be acquitted of
+cruel connivance. That it was the death of his honour to survive the
+butchery which he ought to have died, if necessary, in resisting sword
+in hand, is a soldier's judgment on his case. At his side was
+Pappenheim, another pupil of the Jesuits, the Dundee of the thirty
+years' war, with all the devotion, all the loyalty, all the ferocity of
+the Cavalier, the most fiery and brilliant of cavalry officers, the
+leader of the storming column at Magdeburg.
+
+In those armies the heavy cavalry was the principal arm. The musket was
+an unwieldy matchlock fired from a rest, and without a bayonet, so that
+in the infantry regiments it was necessary to combine pikemen with the
+musketeers. Cannon there were of all calibres and with a whole
+vocabulary of fantastic names, but none capable of advancing and
+manoeuvring with troops in battle. The Imperial troops were formed in
+heavy masses. Gustavus, taking his lesson from the Roman legion, had
+introduced a more open order--he had lightened the musket, dispensed
+with the rest, given the musketeer a cartridge box instead of the
+flapping bandoleer. He had trained his cavalry, instead of firing their
+carbines and wheeling, to charge home with the sword. He had created a
+real field artillery of imperfect structure, but which told on the
+Imperial masses.
+
+The harvest had been reaped, and a strong wind blew clouds of dust over
+the bare autumn fields, when Count Tilly formed the victorious veterans
+of the Empire, in what was called Spanish order--infantry in the centre,
+cavalry on the flanks--upon a rising ground overlooking the broad plain
+of Breitenfeldt. On him marched the allies in two columns--Gustavus with
+the Swedes upon the right, the Elector with his Saxons on the left. As
+they passed a brook in front of the Imperial position, Pappenheim dashed
+upon them with his cavalry, but was driven back, and the two columns
+deployed upon the plain. The night before the battle Gustavus had dreamt
+that he was wrestling with Tilly, and that Tilly bit him in the left
+arm, but that he overpowered Tilly with his right arm. That dream came
+through the Gate of Horn, for the Saxons who formed the left wing were
+raw troops, but victory was sure to the Swede. Soldiers of the old
+school proudly compare the shock of charging armies at Leipsic with
+modern battles, which they call battles of skirmishers with armies in
+reserve. However this may be, all that day the plain of Breitenfeldt was
+filled with the fierce eddies of a hand-to-hand struggle between mail-
+clad masses, their cuirasses and helmets gleaming fitfully amidst the
+clouds of smoke and dust, the mortal shock of the charge and the deadly
+ring of steel striking the ear with a distinctness impossible in modern
+battle. Tilly with his right soon shattered the Saxons, but his centre
+and left were shattered by the unconquerable Swede. The day was won by
+the genius of the Swedish king, by the steadiness with which his troops
+manoeuvred, and the promptness with which they formed a new front when
+the defeat of the Saxons exposed their left, by the rapidity of their
+fire and by the vigour with which their cavalry charged. The victory was
+complete. At sunset four veteran Walloon regiments made a last stand for
+the honour of the Empire, and with difficulty bore off their redoubtable
+commander from his first lost field. Through all Protestant Europe flew
+the tidings of a great deliverance and the name of a great deliverer.
+
+On to Vienna cried hope and daring then. On to Vienna; history still
+regretfully repeats the cry. Gustavus judged otherwise--and whatever his
+reason was we may be sure it was not weak. Not to the Danube therefore
+but to the Main and Rhine the tide of conquest rolled. The Thuringian
+forest gleams with fires that guide the night march of the Swede.
+Frankfort the city of empire opens her gates to him who will soon come
+as the hearts of all men divine not as a conqueror in the iron garb of
+war but as the elect of Germany to put on the imperial crown. In the
+cellars of the Prince Bishop of Bamberg and Wurtzburg the rich wine is
+broached for heretic lips. Protestantism everywhere uplifts its head,
+the Archbishop of Mainz, chief of the Catholic persecutors becomes a
+fugitive in his turn. Jesuit and Capuchin must cower or fly. All
+fortresses are opened by the arms of Gustavus, all hearts are opened by
+his gracious manner, his winning words, his sunny smile. To the people
+accustomed to a war of massacre and persecution he came as from a better
+world a spirit of humanity and toleration. His toleration was politic no
+doubt but it was also sincere. So novel was it that a monk finding
+himself not butchered or tortured thought the king's faith must be weak
+and attempted his conversion. His zeal was repaid with a gracious smile.
+Once more on the Lech Tilly crossed the path of the thunderbolt.
+Dishonoured at Magdeburg, defeated at Leipsic, the old man seems to have
+been weary of life, his leg shattered by a cannon hall he was borne
+dying from the field and left the Imperial cause headless as well as
+beaten. Gustavus is in Augsburgh, the queen of German commerce, the city
+of the Fuggers with their splendid and romantic money kingdom, the city
+of the Confession. He is in Munich, the capital of Maximilian and the
+Catholic League. His allies the Saxons are in Prague. A few marches more
+and he will dictate peace at Vienna with all Germany at his back. A few
+marches more the Germans will be a Protestant nation under a Protestant
+chief and many a dark page will be torn from the book of fate.
+
+Ferdinand and Maximilian had sought counsel of the dying Tilly. Tilly
+had given them counsel bitter but inevitable. Dissembling their hate and
+fear they called like trembling necromancers when they invoke the fiend
+upon the name of power. The name of Wallenstein gave new life to the
+Imperial cause under the very ribs of death. At once he stood between
+the Empire and destruction with an army of 50,000 men, conjured, as it
+were, out of the earth by the spell of his influence alone. All whose
+trade was war came at the call of the grand master of their trade. The
+secret of Wallenstein's ambition is buried in his grave, but the man
+himself was the prince of adventurers, the ideal chief of mercenary
+bands, the arch contractor for the hireling's blood. His character was
+formed in a vast political gambling house, a world given up to pillage
+and the strong hand, an Eldorado of confiscations. Of the lofty dreamer
+portrayed in the noble dramatic poem of Schiller, there is little trace
+in the intensely practical character of the man. A scion of a good
+Bohemian house, poor himself, but married to a rich wife, whose wealth
+was the first step in the ladder of his marvellous fortunes, Wallenstein
+had amassed immense domains by the purchase of confiscated estates, a
+traffic redeemed from meanness only by the vastness of the scale on
+which he practised it, and the loftiness of the aim which he had in
+view. Then he took to raising and commanding mercenary troops, improving
+on his predecessors in that trade by doubling the size of his army, on
+the theory, coolly avowed by him, that a large army would subsist by its
+command of the country, where a small army would starve. But all was
+subservient to his towering ambition, and to a pride which has been
+called theatrical, and which often wore an eccentric garb, but which his
+death scene proves to have been the native grand infirmity of the man.
+He walked in dark ways and was unscrupulous and ruthless when on the
+path of his ambition; but none can doubt the self sustaining force of
+his lonely intellect, his power of command, the spell which his
+character cast over the fierce and restless spirits of his age. Prince-
+Duke of Friedland, Mecklenburgh, and Sagan, Generalissimo of the armies
+of the House of Austria,--to this height had the landless and obscure
+adventurer risen, in envy's despite, as his motto proudly said, not by
+the arts of a courtier or a demagogue, but by strength of brain and
+heart, in a contest with rivals whose brains and hearts were strong.
+Highest he stood among the uncrowned heads of Europe, and dreaded by the
+crowned. We wonder how the boisterous soldiers can have loved a chief
+who was so far from being a comrade, a being so disdainful and reserved,
+who at the sumptuous table kept by his officers never appeared, never
+joined in the revelry, even in the camp lived alone, punished intrusion
+on his haughty privacy as a crime. But his name was victory and plunder;
+he was lavishly munificent, as one who knew that those who play a deep
+game must lay down heavy stakes, his eye was quick to discern, his hand
+prompt to reward the merit of the buccaneer; and those who followed his
+soaring fortunes knew that they would share them. If he was prompt to
+reward, he was also stern in punishment, and a certain arbitrariness
+both in reward and punishment made the soldier feel that the commander's
+will was law. If Wallenstein was not the boon companion of the
+mercenaries, he was their divinity, and he was himself essentially one
+of them--even his superstition was theirs, and filled the same void of
+faith in his as in their hearts; though, while the common soldier raised
+the fiend to charm bullets, or bought spells and amulets of a quack at
+Nuremburg or Augsburg, Seni, the first astrologer of the age, explored
+the sympathizing stars for the august destiny of the Duke of Friedland.
+Like Uriel and Satan in Paradise Lost, Gustavus and Wallenstein stood
+opposed to each other. On one side was the enthusiast, on the other the
+mighty gamester, playing the great game of his life without emotion, by
+intensity of thought alone. On one side was the crusader, on the other
+the indifferentist, without faith except in his star. On the one side
+was as much good, perhaps, as has ever appeared in the form of a
+conqueror, on the other side the majesty of evil. Gustavus was young,
+his frame was vigorous and active, though inclined to corpulence, his
+complexion fair, his hair golden, his eye blue and merry, his
+countenance frank as day, and the image of a heart which had felt the
+kindest influences of love and friendship. Wallenstein was past his
+prime, his frame was tall, spare, somewhat bowed by pain, his complexion
+dark, his eye black and piercing, his look that of a man who trod
+slippery paths with deadly rivals at his side, and of whose many letters
+not one is to a friend. But, opposites in all else, the two champions
+were well matched in power. Perhaps there is hardly such another duel in
+history. Such another there would have been if Strafford had lived to
+encounter Cromwell.
+
+The market for the great adventurer's services having risen so high, the
+price which he asked was large--a principality in hand, a province to be
+conquered, supreme command of the army which he had raised. The court
+suggested that if the emperor's son, the King of Hungary, were put over
+Wallenstein's head, his name would be a tower of strength, but
+Wallenstein answered with a blasphemous frankness which must have made
+the ears of courtiers tingle. He would be emperor of the army; he would
+be emperor in the matter of confiscations. The last article shows how he
+won the soldier's heart. Perhaps in framing his terms, he gave something
+to his wounded pride. If he did, the luxury cost him dear, for here he
+trod upon the serpent that stung his life.
+
+The career of Gustavus was at once arrested, and he took shelter against
+the storm in an entrenched camp protected by three hundred cannon under
+the walls of Nuremberg--Nuremberg the eldest daughter of the German
+Reformation, the Florence of Germany in art, wealth and freedom, then
+the beautiful home of early commerce, now its romantic tomb. The
+desolation of her grass-grown streets dates from that terrible day. The
+Swedish lines were scarcely completed when Wallenstein appeared with all
+his power, and sweeping past, entrenched himself four miles from his
+enemy in a position the key of which were the wooded hill and old castle
+of the Altenberg. Those who chance to visit that spot may fancy there
+Wallenstein's camp as it is in Schiller, ringing with the boisterous
+revelry of its wild and motley bands. And they may fancy the sudden
+silence, the awe of men who knew no other awe, as in his well-known
+dress, the laced buff coat with crimson scarf, and the grey hat with
+crimson plume, Wallenstein rode by. Week after week and month after
+month these two heavy clouds of war hung close together, and Europe
+looked for the bursting of the storm. But famine was to do Wallenstein's
+work; and by famine and the pestilence, bred by the horrible state of
+the camp, at last his work was done. The utmost limit of deadly inaction
+for the Swedes arrived. Discipline and honour gave way, and could
+scarcely be restored by the passionate eloquence of Gustavus. Oxenstiern
+brought large reinforcements; and on the 24th August Wallenstein saw--
+with grim pleasure he must have seen--Gustavus advancing to attack him
+in his lines. By five hundred at a time--there was room for no more in
+the narrow path of death--the Swedes scaled the flashing and thundering
+Altenberg. They scaled it again and again through a long summer's day.
+Once it was all but won. But at evening the Nurembergers saw their hero
+and protector retiring, for the first time defeated, from the field. Yet
+Gustavus had not lost the confidence of his soldiers. He had shared
+their danger and had spared their blood. In ten hours' hard fighting he
+had lost only 2,000 men. But Wallenstein might well shower upon his
+wounded soldiers the only balm for the wounds of men fighting without a
+country or a cause. He might well write to the emperor: "The King of
+Sweden has blunted his horns a good deal. Henceforth the title of
+Invincible belongs not to him, but to your Majesty." No doubt Ferdinand
+thought it did.
+
+Gustavus now broke up and marched on Bavaria, abandoning the great
+Protestant city, with the memory of Magdeburg in his heart. But
+Nuremberg was not to share the fate of Magdeburg. The Imperial army was
+not in a condition to form the siege. It had suffered as much as that of
+Gustavus. That such troops should have been held together in such
+extremity proves their general's power of command. Wallenstein soon
+gladdened the eyes of the Nurembergers by firing his camp, and declining
+to follow the lure into Bavaria, marched on Saxony, joined another
+Imperial army under Pappenheim and took Leipsic.
+
+To save Saxony Gustavus left Bavaria half conquered. As he hurried to
+the rescue, the people on his line of march knelt to kiss the hem of his
+garment, the sheath of his delivering sword, and could scarcely be
+prevented from adoring him as a god. His religious spirit was filled
+with a presentiment that the idol in which they trusted would be soon
+laid low. On the 14th of November he was leaving a strongly entrenched
+camp, at Naumberg, where the Imperialists fancied, the season being so
+far advanced, he intended to remain, when news reached his ear like the
+sight which struck Wellington's eye as it ranged over Marmont's army on
+the morning of Salamanca. [Footnote: We owe the parallel, we believe, to
+an article by Lord Ellesmere, in the _Quarterly Review_.] The
+impetuous Pappenheim, ever anxious for separate command, had persuaded
+an Imperial council of war to detach him with a large force against
+Halle. The rest of the Imperialists, under Wallenstein, were quartered
+in the villages around Lutzen, close within the king's reach, and
+unaware of his approach. "The Lord," cried Gustavus, "has delivered him
+into my hand," and at once he swooped upon his prey.
+
+"Break up and march with every man and gun. The enemy is advancing
+hither. He is already at the pass by the hollow road." So wrote
+Wallenstein to Pappenheim. The letter is still preserved, stained with
+Pappenheim's life-blood. But, in that mortal race, Pappenheim stood no
+chance. Halle was a long day's march off, and the troopers, whom
+Pappenheim could lead gallantly, but could not control, after taking the
+town had dispersed to plunder. Yet the Swede's great opportunity was
+lost. Lutzen, though in sight, proved not so near as flattering guides
+and eager eyes had made it. The deep-banked Rippach, its bridge all too
+narrow for the impetuous columns, the roads heavy from rain, delayed the
+march. A skirmish with some Imperial cavalry under Isolani wasted
+minutes when minutes were years; and the short November day was at an
+end when the Swede reached the plain of Lutzen.
+
+No military advantage marks the spot where the storm overtook the Duke
+of Friedland. He was caught like a traveller in a tempest off a
+shelterless plain, and had nothing for it but to bide the brunt. What
+could be done with ditches, two windmills, a mud wall, a small canal, he
+did, moving from point to point during the long night; and before
+morning all his troops, except Pappenheim's division, had come in and
+were in line.
+
+When the morning broke a heavy fog lay on the ground. Historians have
+not failed to remark that there is a sympathy in things, and that the
+day was loath to dawn which was to be the last day of Gustavus. But if
+Nature sympathized with Gustavus, she chose a bad mode of showing her
+sympathy, for while the fog prevented the Swedes from advancing, part of
+Pappenheim's corps arrived. After prayers, the king and all his army
+sang Luther's hymn, "Our God is a strong tower"--the Marseillaise of the
+militant Reformation. Then Gustavus mounted his horse, and addressed the
+different divisions, adjuring them by their victorious name, by the
+memory of the Breitenfeld, by the great cause whose issue hung upon
+their swords, to fight well for that cause, for their country and their
+God. His heart was uplifted at Lutzen, with that Hebrew fervour which
+uplifted the heart of Cromwell at Dunbar. Old wounds made it irksome to
+him to wear a cuirass. "God," he said, "shall be my armour this day".
+
+Wallenstein has been much belied if he thought of anything that morning
+more religious than the order of battle, which has been preserved, drawn
+up by his own hand, and in which his troops are seen still formed in
+heavy masses, in contrast to the lighter formations of Gustavus. He was
+carried down his lines in a litter being crippled by gout, which the
+surgeons of that day had tried to cure by cutting into the flesh. But
+when the action began, he placed his mangled foot in a stirrup lined
+with silk, and mounted the small charger, the skin of which is still
+shown in the deserted palace of his pride. We may be sure that
+confidence sat undisturbed upon his brow; but in his heart he must have
+felt that though he had brave men around him, the Swedes, fighting for
+their cause under their king, were more than men; and that in the
+balance of battle then held out, his scale had kicked the beam. There
+can hardly be a harder trial for human fortitude than to command in a
+great action on the weaker side. Villeneuve was a brave man, though an
+unfortunate admiral, but he owned that his heart sank within him at
+Trafalgar when he saw Nelson bearing down.
+
+"God with us," was the Swedish battle cry. On the other side the words
+"Jesu-Maria" passed round, as twenty-five thousand of the most godless
+and lawless ruffians the world ever saw, stood to the arms which they
+had imbrued in the blood not of soldiers only, but of women and children
+of captured towns. Doubtless many a wild Walloon and savage Croat, many
+a fierce Spaniard and cruel Italian, who had butchered and tortured at
+Magdeburg, was here come to bite the dust. These men were children of
+the camp and the battlefield, long familiar with every form of death,
+yet, had they known what a day was now before them, they might have felt
+like a recruit on the morning of his first field. Some were afterwards
+broken or beheaded for misconduct before the enemy; others earned rich
+rewards. Most paid, like men of honour, the price for which they were
+allowed to glut every lust and revel in every kind of crime.
+
+At nine the sky began to clear, straggling shots told that the armies
+were catching sight of each other, and a red glare broke the mist, where
+the Imperialists had set fire to Lutzen to cover their right. At ten
+Gustavus placed himself at the head of his cavalry. War has now changed;
+and the telescope is the general's sword. Yet we cannot help feeling
+that the gallant king, who cast in his own life with the lives of the
+peasants he had drawn from their Swedish homes, is a nobler figure than
+the great Emperor who, on the same plains, two centuries afterwards,
+ordered to their death the masses of youthful valour sent by a ruthless
+conscription to feed the vanity of a heart of clay. The Swedes, after
+the manner of war in that fierce and hardy age, fell at once with their
+main force on the whole of the Imperial line. On the left, after a
+murderous struggle, they gained ground and took the enemy's guns. But on
+the right the Imperialists held firm, and while Gustavus was carrying
+victory with him to that quarter, Wallenstein restored the day upon the
+right. Again Gustavus hurried to that part of the field. Again the
+Imperialists gave way, and Gustavus, uncovering his head, thanked God
+for his victory. At this moment it seems the mist returned. The Swedes
+were confused and lost their advantage. A horse, too well known, ran
+riderless down their line, and when their cavalry next advanced, they
+found the stripped and mangled body of their king. According to the most
+credible witness, Gustavus who had galloped forward to see how his
+advantage might be best followed up, got too near the enemy, was shot
+first in the arm, then in the back, and fell from his horse. A party of
+Imperial cuirassiers came up, and learning from the wounded man himself
+who he was, finished the work of death. They then stripped the body for
+proofs of their great enemy's fate and relics of the mighty slain. Dark
+reports of treason were spread abroad, and one of these reports followed
+the Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, who was with Gustavus that day, through his
+questionable life to his unhappy end. In those times a great man could
+scarcely die without suspicion of foul play, and in all times men are
+unwilling to believe that a life on which the destiny of a cause or a
+nation hangs can be swept away by the blind, indiscriminate hand of
+common death.
+
+Gustavus dead, the first thought of his officers was retreat; and that
+thought was his best eulogy. Their second thought was revenge. Yet so
+great was the discouragement that one Swedish colonel refused to
+advance, and Bernard of Saxe-Weimar cut him down with his own hand.
+Again the struggle began, and with all the morning's fury. Wallenstein
+had used his respite well. He knew that his great antagonist was dead,
+and that he was now the master-spirit on the field. And with friendly
+night near, and victory within his grasp, he directed in person the most
+desperate combat, prodigal of the life on which, according to his
+enemies, his treasonable projects hung. Yet the day was again going
+against him, when the remainder of Pappenheim's corps arrived, and the
+road was once more opened to victory by a charge which cost Pappenheim
+his own life. At four o'clock the battle was at its last gasp. The
+carnage had been fearful on both sides, and as fearful was the
+exhaustion. For six hours almost every man in both armies had borne the
+terrible excitement of mortal combat with pike and sword; and four times
+that excitement had been strained by general charges to its highest
+pitch. The Imperialists held their ground, but confused and shattered;
+their constancy sustained only by that commanding presence which still
+moved along their lines, unhurt, grazed and even marked by the storm of
+death through which he rode. Just as the sun was setting, the Swedes
+made the supreme effort which heroism alone can make. Then Wallenstein
+gave the signal for retreat, welcome to the bravest, and as darkness
+fell upon the field, the shattered masses of the Imperialists drew off
+slowly and sullenly into the gloom. Slowly and sullenly they drew off,
+leaving nothing to the victor except some guns of position; but they had
+not gone far when they fell into the disorganization of defeat.
+
+The judgment of a cause by battle is dreadful. Dreadful it must have
+seemed to all who were within sight or hearing of the field of Lutzen
+when that battle was over. But it is not altogether irrational and
+blind. Providence does not visibly interpose in favour of the right. The
+stars in their courses do not now fight for the good cause. At Lutzen
+they fought against it. But the good cause is its own star. The strength
+given to the spirit of the Swedes by religious enthusiasm, the strength
+given to their bodies by the comparative purity of their lives, enabled
+them, when the bravest and hardiest ruffians were exhausted in spirit
+and body, to make that last effort which won the day.
+
+_Te Deum_ was sung at Vienna and Madrid, and with good reason. For
+Vienna and Madrid the death of Gustavus was better than any victory. For
+humanity, if the interests of humanity were not those of Vienna and
+Madrid, it was worse than any defeat. But for Gustavus himself, was it
+good to die glorious and stainless, but before his hour? Triumph and
+empire, it is said, might have corrupted the soul which up to that time
+had been so pure and true. It was, perhaps, well for him that he was
+saved from temptation. A deeper morality replies that what was bad for
+Gustavus' cause and for his kind, could not be good for Gustavus; and
+that whether he were to stand or fall in the hour of temptation, he had
+better have lived his time and done his work. We, with our small
+philosophy, can make allowance for the greater dangers of the higher
+sphere; and shall we arrogate to ourselves a larger judgment and ampler
+sympathies than we allow to God? Yet Gustavus was happy. Among soldiers
+and statesmen, if there is a greater, there is hardly a purer name. He
+had won not only honour but love, and the friend and comrade was as much
+bewailed as the deliverer and the king. In him his Sweden appeared for
+the first and last time with true glory on the scene of universal
+history. In him the spirit of the famous house of Vasa rose to the first
+heroic height. It was soon to mount to madness in Christina and Charles
+XII.
+
+Not till a year had passed could Sweden bring herself to consign the
+remains of her Gustavus to the dust. Then came a hero's funeral, with
+pomp not unmeaning, with trophies not unbecoming the obsequies of a
+Christian warrior, and for mourners the sorrowing nations. In early
+youth Gustavus had loved the beautiful Ebba Brahe, daughter of a Swedish
+nobleman, and she had returned his love. But etiquette and policy
+interposed, and Gustavus married Eleanor, a princess of Brandenburg,
+also renowned for beauty. The widowed Queen of Gustavus, though she had
+loved him with a fondness too great for their perfect happiness,
+admitted his first love to a partnership in her grief, and sent Ebba
+with her own portrait the portrait of him who was gone where, if love
+still is, there is no more rivalry in love.
+
+The death of Gustavus was the death of his great antagonist. Gustavus
+gone, Wallenstein was no longer indispensable, and he was far more
+formidable than ever. Lutzen had abated nothing either of his pride or
+power. He went forth again from Prague to resume command in almost
+imperial pomp. The army was completely in his hands. He negotiated as an
+independent power, and was carrying into effect a policy of his own,
+which seems to have been one of peace for the empire with amnesty and
+toleration, and which certainly crossed the policy of the Jesuits and
+Spain, now dominant in the Imperial councils. No doubt the great
+adventurer also intended that his own grandeur should be augmented and
+secured. Whether his proceedings gave his master just cause for alarm
+remains a mystery. The word, however, went forth against him, and in
+Austrian fashion, a friendly correspondence being kept up with him when
+he had been secretly deposed and his command transferred to another.
+Finding himself denounced and outlawed, he resolved to throw himself on
+the Swedes. He had arrived at Eger, a frontier fortress of Bohemia. It
+was a night apt for crime, dark and stormy, when Gordon, a Scotch
+Calvinist, in the Imperial service (for Wallenstein's camp welcomed
+adventurers of all creeds), and commandant of Eger, received the most
+faithful of Wallenstein's officers, Terzka, Kinsky, Illo and Neumann, at
+supper in the citadel. The social meal was over, the wine cup was going
+round; misgiving, if any misgiving there was, had yielded to comradeship
+and good cheer, when the door opened and death, in the shape of a party
+of Irish troopers, stalked in. The conspirators sprang from the side of
+their victims, and shouting, "Long live the Emperor," ranged themselves
+with drawn swords against the wall, while the assassins overturned the
+table and did their work. Wallenstein, as usual, was not at the banquet.
+He was, indeed, in no condition for revelry. Gout had shattered his
+stately form, reduced his bold handwriting to a feeble scrawl, probably
+shaken his powerful mind, though it could rally itself, as at Lutzen,
+for a decisive hour; and, perhaps, if his enemies could have waited, the
+course of nature might have spared them the very high price which they
+paid for his blood. He had just dismissed his astrologer, Seni, into
+whose mouth the romance of history does not fail to put prophetic
+warnings, his valet was carrying away the golden salver, on which his
+night draught had been brought to him, and he was about to lie down,
+when he was drawn to the window by the noise of Butler's regiment
+surrounding his quarters, and by the shrieks of the Countesses Terzka
+and Kinsky, who were wailing for their murdered husbands. A moment
+afterwards the Irish Captain Devereux burst into the room, followed by
+his fellow-assassins shouting, "Rebels, rebels!" Devereux himself, with
+a halbert in his hand, rushed up to Wallenstein, and cried, "Villain,
+you are to die!" True to his own majesty the great man spread out his
+arms, received the weapon in his breast, and fell dead without a word.
+But as thought at such moments is swift, no doubt he saw it all--saw the
+dark conclave of Italians and Spaniards sitting at Vienna--knew that the
+murderer before him was the hand and not the head--read at once his own
+doom and the doom of his grand designs for Germany and Friedland. His
+body was wrapped in a carpet, carried in Gordon's carriage to the
+citadel, and there left for a day with those of his murdered friends in
+the court-yard, then huddled into a hastily constructed coffin, the legs
+of the corpse being broken to force it in. Different obsequies from
+those of Gustavus, but perhaps equally appropriate, at least equally
+characteristic of the cause which the dead man served.
+
+Did Friedland desire to be more than Friedland, to unite some shadow of
+command with the substance, to wear some crown of tinsel, as well as the
+crown of power? We do not know, we know only that his ways were dark,
+that his ambition was vast, and that he was thwarting the policy of the
+Jesuits and Spain. Great efforts were made in vain to get up a case
+against his memory; recourse was had to torture, the use of which always
+proves that no good evidence is forthcoming; absurd charges were
+included in the indictment, such as that of having failed to pursue and
+destroy the Swedish army after Lutzen. The three thousand masses which
+Ferdinand caused to be sung for Wallenstein's soul, whether they
+benefited his soul or not, have benefited his fame, for they seem like
+the weak self-betrayal of an uneasy conscience, vainly seeking to stifle
+infamy and appease the injured shade. Assassination itself condemns all
+who take part in it or are accomplices in it, and Ferdinand, who
+rewarded the assassins of Wallenstein, was at least an accomplice after
+the fact. Vast as Wallenstein's ambition was, even for him age and gout
+must have begun to close the possibilities of life, and he cannot have
+been made restless by the pangs of abortive genius, for he had played
+the grandest part upon the grandest stage. He had done enough, it would
+seem, to make repose welcome, and his retirement would not have been
+dull. Often in his letters his mind turns from the camp and council to
+his own domains, his rising palaces, his farms, his gardens, his
+schools, his manufactures, the Italian civilization which the student of
+Padua was trying to create in Bohemian wilds, the little empire in the
+administration of which he showed that he might have been a good Emperor
+on a larger scale. Against his Imperial master he is probably entitled
+at least to a verdict of not proven, and to the sympathy due to vast
+services requited by murder. Against accusing humanity his plea is far
+weaker, or rather he has no plea but one of extenuation. If there is a
+gloomy majesty about him the fascination of which we cannot help owning,
+if he was the noblest spirit that served evil, still it was evil that he
+served. The bandit hordes which he led were the scourges of the
+defenceless people, and in making war support war he set the evil
+example which was followed by Napoleon on a greater scale, and perhaps
+with more guilt, because in a more moral age. If in any measure he fell
+a martyr to a policy of toleration, his memory may be credited with the
+sacrifice. His toleration was that of indifference, not that of a
+Christian; yet the passages of his letters in which he pleads for milder
+methods of conversion, and claims for widows an exemption from the
+extremities of persecution, seem preserved by his better angel to shed a
+ray of brightness on his lurid name. Of his importance in history there
+can be no doubt. Take your stand on the battle field of Lutzen. To the
+North all was rescued by Gustavus, to the South all was held till
+yesterday by the darker genius of Wallenstein.
+
+Like the mystic bark in the Mort d'Arthur, the ship which carried the
+remains of Gustavus from the German shore bore away heroism as well as
+the hero. Gustavus left great captains in Bernard of Weimar, Banner,
+Horn, Wrangel and Tortensohn; in the last, perhaps, a captain equal to
+himself. He left in Oxenstierna the greatest statesman and diplomatist
+of the age. But the guiding light, the grand aim, the ennobling
+influence were gone. The Swedes sank almost to the level of the vile
+element around, and a torture used by the buccaneers to extract
+confessions of hidden treasure bore the name of the Swedish draught. The
+last grand figure left the scene in Wallenstein. Nothing remained but
+mean ferocity and rapine, coarse filibustering among the soldiers, among
+the statesmen and diplomatists filibustering a little more refined. All
+high motives and interests were dead. The din of controversy which at
+the outset accompanied the firing of the cannon, and proved that the
+cannon was being fired in a great cause, had long since sunk into
+silence. Yet for fourteen years after the death of Wallenstein this
+soulless, aimless drama of horror and agony dragged on. Every part of
+Germany was repeatedly laid under heavy war contributions, and swept
+through by pillage, murder, rape and arson. For thirty years all
+countries, even those of the Cossack and the Stradiot, sent their worst
+sons to the scene of butchery and plunder. It may be doubted whether
+such desolation ever fell upon any civilized and cultivated country.
+When the war began Germany was rich and prosperous, full of smiling
+villages, of goodly cities, of flourishing universities, of active
+industry, of invention and discovery, of literature and learning, of
+happiness, of progress, of national energy and hope. At its close she
+was a material and moral wilderness. In a district, selected as a fair
+average specimen of the effects of the war, it is found that of the
+inhabitants three-fourths, of the cattle four-fifths had perished. For
+thirty years the husbandman never sowed with any confidence that he
+should reap; the seed-corn was no doubt often consumed by the reckless
+troopers or the starving peasantry; and if foreign countries had been
+able to supply food there were no railroads to bring it. The villages
+through whole provinces were burnt or pulled down to supply materials
+for the huts of the soldiery; the people hid themselves in dens and
+caves of the earth, took to the woods and mountains, where many of them
+remained swelling the multitude of brigands. When they could they
+wreaked upon the lansquenets a vengeance as dreadful as what they had
+suffered, and were thus degraded to the same level of ferocity. Moral
+life was broken up. The Germany of Luther with its order and piety and
+domestic virtue, with its old ways and customs, even with its fashions
+of dress and furniture, perished almost as though it had been swallowed
+by an earthquake. The nation would hardly have survived had it not been
+for the desperate tenacity with which the peasant clung to his own soil,
+and the efforts of the pastors, men of contracted views, of dogmatic
+habits of mind, and of a somewhat narrow and sour morality, but staunch
+and faithful in the hour of need, who continued to preach and pray
+amidst blackened ruins to the miserable remnants of their flocks, and
+sustained something of moral order and of social life.
+
+Hence in the succeeding centuries, the political nullity of the German
+nation, the absence of any strong popular element to make head against
+the petty despotism of the princes, and launch Germany in the career of
+progress. Hence the backwardness and torpor of the Teutonic race in its
+original seat, while elsewhere it led the world. Hence, while England
+was producing Chathams and Burkes, Germany was producing the great
+musical composers. Hence when the movement came it was rather
+intellectual than political, rather a movement of the universities than
+of the nation.
+
+At last, nothing being left for the armies to devour, the masters of the
+armies began to think of peace. The diplomatists went to work, and in
+true diplomatic fashion. Two years they spent in formalities and
+haggling, while Germany was swarming with disbanded lansquenets. It was
+then that old Oxenstierna said to his son, who had modestly declined an
+ambassadorship on the ground of inexperience, "Thou knowest not, my son,
+with how little wisdom the world is governed." The object of all the
+parties to the negotiations was acquisition of territory at the expense
+of their neighbours, and the treaty of Westphalia, though, as we have
+said, it was long the Public Law of Europe, was an embodiment, not of
+principles of justice or of the rights of nations, but of the relative
+force and cunning of what are happily called the powers. France
+obtained, as the fruit of the diplomatic skill with which she had
+prolonged the agony of Germany, a portion of the territory which she has
+recently disgorged. The independence of Germany was saved; and though it
+was not a national independence, but an independence of petty
+despotisms, it was redemption from Austrian and Jesuit bondage for the
+present, with the hope of national independence in the future. When
+Gustavus broke the Imperial line at Lutzen, Luther and Loyola might have
+turned in their graves. Luther had still two centuries and a half to
+wait, so much difference in the course of history, in spite of all our
+philosophies and our general laws, may be made by an arrow shot at a
+venture, a wandering breath of pestilence, a random bullet, a wreath of
+mist lingering on one of the world's battlefields. But Luther has
+conquered at last. Would that he had conquered by other means than war--
+war with all its sufferings, with all its passions, with the hatred, the
+revenge, the evil pride which it leaves behind it. But he has conquered,
+and his victory opens a new and, so far as we can see, a happier era for
+Europe.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAMPS OF FICTION
+
+_Spoken on the Centenary of the Birth of Sir Walter Scott_
+
+
+Ruskin has lighted seven lamps of Architecture, to guide the steps of
+the architect in the worthy practice of his art. It seems time that some
+lamps should be lighted to guide the steps of the writer of Fiction.
+Think what the influence of novelists now is, and how some of them use
+it! Think of the multitudes who read nothing but novels, and then look
+into the novels which they read! I have seen a young man's whole library
+consisting of thirty or forty of those paper-bound volumes, which are
+the bad tobacco of the mind. In England, I looked over three railway
+book-stalls in one day. There was hardly a novel by an author of any
+repute on one of them. They were heaps of nameless garbage, commended by
+tasteless, flaunting woodcuts, the promise of which was no doubt well
+kept within. Fed upon such food daily, what will the mind of a nation
+be? I say that there is no flame at which we can light the Lamp of
+Fiction purer or brighter than the genius of him in honour to whose
+memory we are assembled here to-day. Scott does not moralize. Heaven be
+praised that he does not. He does not set a moral object before him, nor
+lay down moral rules. But his heart, brave, pure and true, is a law to
+itself; and by studying what he does we may find the law for all who
+follow his calling. If seven lamps have been lighted for architecture,
+Scott will light as many for fiction.
+
+I. _The Lamp of Reality_.--The novelist must ground his work in
+faithful study of human nature. There was a popular writer of romances,
+who, it was said, used to go round to the fashionable watering-places to
+pick up characters. That was better than nothing. There is another
+popular writer who, it seems, makes voluminous indices of men and
+things, and draws on them for his material. This also is better than
+nothing. For some writers, and writers dear to the circulating libraries
+too, might, for all that appeals in their works, lie in bed all day, and
+write by night under the excitement of green tea. Creative art, I
+suppose, they call this, and it is creative with a vengeance. Not so,
+Scott. The human nature which he paints, he had seen in all its phases,
+gentle and simple, in burgher and shepherd, Highlander, Lowlander,
+Borderer, and Islesman; he had come into close contact with it, he had
+opened it to himself by the talisman of his joyous and winning presence;
+he had studied it thoroughly with a clear eye and an all-embracing
+heart. When his scenes are laid in the past, he has honestly studied the
+history. The history of his novels is perhaps not critically accurate,
+not up to the mark of our present knowledge, but in the main it is sound
+and true--sounder and more true than that of many professed historians,
+and even than that of his own historical works, in which he sometimes
+yields to prejudice, while in his novels he is lifted above it by his
+loyalty to his art.
+
+II. _The Lamp of Ideality_.--The materials of the novelist must be
+real; they must be gathered from the field of humanity by his actual
+observation. But they must pass through the crucible of the imagination;
+they must be idealized. The artist is not a photographer, but a painter.
+He must depict not persons but humanity, otherwise he forfeits the
+artist's name, and the power of doing the artist's work in our hearts.
+When we see a novelist bring out a novel with one or two good
+characters, and then, at the fatal bidding of the booksellers, go on
+manufacturing his yearly volume, and giving us the same character or the
+same few characters over and over again, we may be sure that he is
+without the power of idealization. He has merely photographed what he
+has seen, and his stock is exhausted. It is wonderful what a quantity of
+the mere lees of such writers, more and more watered down, the libraries
+go on complacently circulating, and the reviews go on complacently
+reviewing. Of course, this power of idealization is the great gift of
+genius. It is that which distinguishes Homer, Shakespeare, and Walter
+Scott, from ordinary men. But there is also a moral effort in rising
+above the easy work of mere description to the height of art. Need it be
+said that Scott is thoroughly ideal as well as thoroughly real? There
+are vague traditions that this man and the other was the original of
+some character in Scott. But who can point out the man of whom a
+character in Scott is a mere portrait? It would be as hard as to point
+out a case of servile delineation in Shakespeare. Scott's characters are
+never monsters or caricatures. They are full of nature; but it is
+universal nature. Therefore they have their place in the universal
+heart, and will keep that place for ever. And mark that even in his
+historical novels he is still ideal. Historical romance is a perilous
+thing. The fiction is apt to spoil the fact, and the fact the fiction;
+the history to be perverted and the romance to be shackled: daylight to
+kill dreamlight, and dreamlight to kill daylight. But Scott takes few
+liberties with historical facts and characters; he treats them, with the
+costume and the manners of the period, as the background of the picture.
+The personages with whom he deals freely, are the Peverils and the
+Nigels; and these are his lawful property, the offspring of his own
+imagination, and belong to the ideal.
+
+III. _The Lamp of Impartiality_.--The novelist must look on
+humanity without partiality or prejudice. His sympathy, like that of the
+historian, must be unbounded, and untainted by sect or party. He must
+see everywhere the good that is mixed with evil, the evil that is mixed
+with good. And this he will not do, unless his heart is right. It is in
+Scott's historical novels that his impartiality is most severely tried
+and is most apparent; though it is apparent in all his works.
+Shakespeare was a pure dramatist; nothing but art found a home in that
+lofty, smooth, idealistic brow. He stands apart not only from the
+political and religious passions but from the interests of his time,
+seeming hardly to have any historical surroundings, but to shine like a
+planet suspended by itself in the sky. So it is with that female
+Shakespeare in miniature, Miss Austen. But Scott took the most intense
+interest in the political struggles of his time. He was a fiery
+partisan, a Tory in arms against the French Revolution. In his account
+of the coronation of George IV. a passionate worship of monarchy breaks
+forth, which, if we did not know his noble nature, we might call
+slavish. He sacrificed, ease, and at last life, to his seignorial
+aspirations. On one occasion he was even carried beyond the bounds of
+propriety by his opposition to the Whig chief. The Cavalier was his
+political ancestor, the Covenanter the ancestor of his political enemy.
+The idols which the Covenanting iconoclast broke were his. He would have
+fought against the first revolution under Montrose, and against the
+second under Dundee. Yet he is perfectly, serenely just to the opposite
+party. Not only is he just, he is sympathetic. He brings out their
+worth, their valour, such grandeur of character as they have, with all
+the power of his art, making no distinction in this respect between
+friend and foe. If they have a ridiculous side he uses it for the
+purposes of his art, but genially, playfully, without malice. If there
+was a laugh left in the Covenanters, they would have laughed at their
+own portraits as painted by Scott. He shows no hatred of anything but
+wickedness itself. Such a novelist is a most effective preacher of
+liberality and charity; he brings our hearts nearer to the Impartial
+Father of us all.
+
+IV. _The Lamp of Impersonality_.--Personality is lower than
+partiality. Dante himself is open to the suspicion of partiality: it is
+said, not without apparent ground, that he puts into hell all the
+enemies of the political cause, which, in his eyes, was that of Italy
+and God. A legend tells that Leonardo da Vinci was warned that his
+divine picture of the Last Supper would fade, because he had introduced
+his personal enemy as Judas, and thus desecrated art by making it serve
+personal hatred. The legend must be false, Leonardo had too grand a
+soul. A wretched woman in England, at the beginning of the last century,
+Mrs. Manley, systematically employed fiction as a cover for personal
+libel; but such an abuse of art as this could be practiced or
+countenanced only by the vile. Novelists, however, often debase fiction
+by obtruding their personal vanities, favouritisms, fanaticisms and
+antipathies. We had, the other day, a novel, the author of which
+introduced himself almost by name as a heroic character, with a
+description of his own personal appearance, residence, and habits as
+fond fancy painted them to himself. There is a novelist, who is a man of
+fashion, and who makes the age of the heroes in his successive novels
+advance with his own, so that at last we shall have irresistible
+fascination at seven score years and ten. But the commonest and the most
+mischievous way in which personality breaks out is pamphleteering under
+the guise of fiction. One novel is a pamphlet against lunatic asylums,
+another against model prisons, a third against the poor law, a fourth
+against the government offices, a fifth against trade unions. In these
+pretended works of imagination facts are joined in support of a crotchet
+or an antipathy with all the license of fiction; calumny revels without
+restraint, and no cause is served but that of falsehood and injustice. A
+writer takes offence at the excessive popularity of athletic sports;
+instead of bringing out an accurate and conscientious treatise to
+advocate moderation, he lets fly a novel painting the typical boating
+man as a seducer of confiding women, the betrayer of his friend, and the
+murderer of his wife. Religious zealots are very apt to take this method
+of enlisting imagination, as they think, on the side of truth. We had
+once a high Anglican novel in which the Papist was eaten alive by rats,
+and the Rationalist and Republican was slowly seethed in molten lead,
+the fate of each being, of course, a just judgment of heaven on those
+who presumed to differ from the author. Thus the voice of morality is
+confounded with that of tyrannical petulance and self-love. Not only is
+Scott not personal, but we cannot conceive his being so. We cannot think
+it possible that he should degrade his art by the indulgence of egotism,
+or crotchets, or petty piques. Least of all can we think it possible
+that his high and gallant nature should use art as a cover for striking
+a foul blow.
+
+V. _The Lamp of Purity_--I heard Thackeray thank Heaven for the
+purity of Dickens. I thanked Heaven for the purity of a greater than
+Dickens--Thackeray himself. We may all thank Heaven for the purity of
+one still greater than either, Sir Walter Scott. I say still greater
+morally, as well as in power as an artist, because in Thackeray there is
+cynicism, though the more genial and healthy element predominates; and
+cynicism, which is not good in the great writer, becomes very bad in the
+little reader. We know what most of the novels were before Scott. We
+know the impurity, half-redeemed, of Fielding, the unredeemed impurity
+of Smollett, the lecherous leer of Sterne, the coarseness even of Defoe.
+Parts of Richardson himself could not be read by a woman without a
+blush. As to French novels, Carlyle says of one of the most famous of
+the last century that after reading it you ought to wash seven times in
+Jordan; but after reading the French novels of the present day, in which
+lewdness is sprinkled with sentimental rosewater, and deodorized, but by
+no means disinfected, your washings had better be seventy times seven.
+There is no justification for this; it is mere pandering, under whatever
+pretence, to evil propensities; it makes the divine art of Fiction
+"procuress to the Lords of Hell," If our established morality is in any
+way narrow and unjust, appeal to Philosophy, not to Comus; and remember
+that the mass of readers are not philosophers. Coleridge pledges himself
+to find the deepest sermons under the filth of Rabelais; but Coleridge
+alone finds the sermons while everybody finds the filth. Impure novels
+have brought and are bringing much misery on the world. Scott's purity
+is not that of cloistered innocence and inexperience, it is the manly
+purity of one who had seen the world, mingled with men of the world,
+known evil as well as good; but who, being a true gentleman, abhorred
+filth, and teaches us to abhor it too.
+
+VI. _The Lamp of Humanity_.--One day we see the walls placarded
+with the advertising woodcut of a sensation novel, representing a girl
+tied to a table and a man cutting off her feet into a tub. Another day
+we are allured by a picture of a woman sitting at a sewing-machine and a
+man seizing her behind by the hair, and lifting a club to knock her
+brains out. A French novelist stimulates your jaded palate by
+introducing a duel fought with butchers' knives by the light of
+lanterns. One genius subsists by murder, as another does by bigamy and
+adultery. Scott would have recoiled from the blood as well as from the
+ordure, he would have allowed neither to defile his noble page. He knew
+that there was no pretence for bringing before a reader what is merely
+horrible, that by doing so you only stimulate passions as low as
+licentiousness itself--the passions which were stimulated by the
+gladiatorial shows in degraded Rome, which are stimulated by the bull-
+fights in degraded Spain, which are stimulated among ourselves by
+exhibitions the attraction of which really consists in their imperilling
+human life. He knew that a novelist had no right even to introduce the
+terrible except for the purpose of exhibiting human heroism, developing
+character, awakening emotions which when awakened dignify and save from
+harm. It is want of genius and of knowledge of their craft that drives
+novelists to outrage humanity with horrors. Miss Austen can interest and
+even excite you as much with the little domestic adventures of Emma as
+some of her rivals can with a whole Newgate calendar of guilt and gore.
+
+VII. _The Lamp of Chivalry_.--Of this briefly. Let the writer of
+fiction give us humanity in all its phases, the comic as well as the
+tragic, the ridiculous as well as the sublime; but let him not lower the
+standard of character or the aim of life. Shakespeare does not. We
+delight in his Falstaffs and his clowns as well as in his Hamlets and
+Othellos, but he never familiarizes us with what is base and mean. The
+noble and chivalrous always holds its place as the aim of true humanity
+in his ideal world. Perhaps Dickens is not entirely free from blame in
+this respect; perhaps Pickwickianism has in some degree familiarized the
+generation of Englishmen who have been fed upon it with what is not
+chivalrous, to say the least, in conduct, as it unquestionably has with
+slang in conversation. But Scott, like Shakespeare, wherever the thread
+of his fiction may lead him, always keeps before himself and us the
+highest ideal which he knew, the ideal of a gentleman. If anyone says
+these are narrow bounds wherein to confine fiction I answer there has
+been room enough within them for the highest tragedy, the deepest
+pathos, the broadest humour, the widest range of character, the most
+moving incident, that the world has ever enjoyed. There has been room
+within them for all the kings of pure and healthy fiction--for Homer,
+Shakespeare, Cervantes, Moliere, Scott. "Farewell Sir Walter," says
+Carlyle at the end of his essay, "farewell Sir Walter, pride of all
+Scotchmen. Scotland has said farewell to her mortal son. But all
+humanity welcomes him as Scotland's noblest gift to her and crowns him
+as on this day one of the heirs of immortality."
+
+
+
+
+AN ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE OXFORD SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND ART AT THE
+DISTRIBUTION OF PRIZES
+
+
+LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,
+
+You will not expect me, in complying with the custom which requires your
+Chairman to address a few words to you before distributing the prizes,
+to give you instruction about Art or Science. One who was educated, as I
+was, under the old system, can hardly see without a pang the improvement
+that has been made in education since his time. In a public school, in
+my day, you learned nothing of Science, Art, or Music. Having received
+nothing, I have nothing to give. Fortunately, the only thing of
+importance to be said this evening can be said without technical
+knowledge of any kind. The School of Art needs better accommodation. The
+financial details will be explained to you by those who are more
+conversant with them than I am. I will only say that parsimony in this
+matter on the part of the government or other public bodies will, in my
+humble opinion, be unwise. I am not for a lavish expenditure of public
+money, even on education. It would be a misfortune if parental duty were
+to be cast on the State, and parents were to be allowed to forget that
+they are bound to provide their children with education as well as with
+bread. But it seems that at this moment the soundest and even the most
+strictly commercial policy would counsel liberality in providing for the
+National Schools of Art and Science. England is labouring under
+commercial depression. Of the works in the manufacturing districts, many
+are running half time, and some, I fear, are likely, if things do not
+mend, to stop. When I was there the other day gloom was on all faces.
+Some people seem to think that the bad time will pass away of itself,
+and that a good time will come again like a new moon. It is a
+comfortable but a doubtful doctrine. And suppose the good time does not
+come again, the outlook for those masses and their employers is dark. A
+friend of mine, who is a manufacturer, said to me the other day that he
+had been seeing the ruins of a feudal castle, and that the sight set him
+thinking if factories should ever, like feudal castles, fall into decay,
+what their ruins would be like? They would be unromantic no doubt, even
+by moonlight. But much worse than the ruins of buildings would be the
+ruin among the people. Imagine these swarming multitudes, or any large
+proportion of them, left by the failure of employment without bread. It
+would be something like a chronic Indian famine. The wealth of England
+is unparalleled, unapproached in commercial history. Add Carthage to
+Tyre, Venice to Carthage, Amsterdam to Venice, you will not make
+anything like a London. Ten thousand pounds paid for a pair of china
+vases. A Roman noble under the Empire might have rivalled this, but the
+wealth of the Roman nobles was not the fruit of industry, it was the
+plunder of the world. You can hardly imagine how those who come fresh
+from a new country like Canada, or parts of the United States--a land
+just redeemed from the wilderness, with all its untrimmed roughness, its
+fields half tilled and full of stumps, its snake fences, and the charred
+pines which stand up gaunt monuments of forest fires--are impressed, I
+might almost say ravished, by the sight of the lovely garden which
+unlimited wealth expended on a limited space has made of England. This
+country, too, has an immense capital invested in the funds and
+securities of foreign nations, and in this way draws tribute from the
+world, though, unhappily, we are being made sensible of the fact that
+money lent to a foreign government is lent to a debtor on whom you
+cannot distrain. But the sources of this fabulous prosperity, are they
+inexhaustible? In part, we may hope they are. A maritime position,
+admirably adapted for trading with both hemispheres, a race of first-
+rate seamen, masses of skilled labour, vast accumulations of machinery
+and capital--these are advantages not easily lost. And there is still in
+England good store of coal and iron. Not so stable, however, is the
+advantage given to England by the effects of the Napoleonic war, which
+for the time crushed all manufactures and mercantile marines but hers.
+Now, the continental nations are developing manufactures and mercantile
+marines of their own. You go round asking them to alter their tariffs,
+so as to enable you to recover their markets, and almost all of them
+refuse; about the only door you have really succeeded in getting opened
+to you is that of France, and this was opened, not by the nation, but by
+an autocrat, who had diplomatic purposes of his own. The _Times_,
+indeed, in a noteworthy article the other day, undertook to prove that a
+great manufacturing and trading nation might lose its customers without
+being much the worse for it, but this seems too good to be true; I fancy
+Yorkshire and Lancashire would say so. Is it not that very margin of
+profit of which _The Times_ speaks so lightly, which, being
+accumulated, has created the wealth of England? Your manufacturers are
+certainly under the impression that they want markets, and the loss of
+the great American market seems to them a special matter of concern. It
+is doubtful whether that market would be restored to them even by an
+alteration of the tariff. The coal in the great American coal fields is
+much nearer the surface, and consequently more cheaply worked, than the
+coal in England; iron is as plentiful, and it is near the coal; labour,
+which has been much dearer there, is now falling to the English level.
+Tariff or no tariff, America will probably keep her own market for the
+heavier and coarser goods. But there is still a kind of goods, in the
+production of which the old country will long have a great advantage. I
+mean the lighter, finer, and more elegant goods, the products of
+cultivated taste and of trained skill in design--that very kind of
+goods, in short, the character of which these Schools of Art are
+specially intended to improve. Industry and invention the new world has
+in as ample a measure as the old; invention in still ampler measure, for
+the Americans are a nation of inventors; but cultivated taste and its
+special products will long be the appanage of old countries. It will be
+long before anything of that kind will pass current in the new world
+without the old world stamp. Adapt your industry in some degree to
+changed requirements; acquire those finer faculties which the Schools of
+Design aim at cultivating, but which, in the lucrative production of the
+coarser goods, have hitherto been comparatively neglected, and you may
+recover a great American market; it is doubtful whether you will in any
+other way. Therefore, I repeat, to stint the Art and Science Schools
+would seem bad policy. I may add that it would be specially bad policy
+here in Oxford, where, under the auspices of a University which is now
+extending its care to Art as well as Science, it would seem that the
+finer industries, such as design applied to furniture, decoration of all
+kinds, carving, painted glass, bookbinding, ought in time to do
+particularly well. If you wish to prosper, cultivate your speciality;
+the rule holds good for cities as well as for men.
+
+There are some, perhaps, who dislike to think of Art in connection with
+anything like manufacture. Let us, then, call it design, and keep the
+name of art for the higher pursuit. Your Instructor presides, I believe,
+with success, and without finding his duties clash, over a school, the
+main object of which is the improvement of manufactures, and another
+school dedicated to the higher objects of aesthetic cultivation. The name
+manufacture reminds you of machines, and you may dislike machines and
+think there is something offensive to artists in their products. Well, a
+machine does not produce, or pretend to produce, poetry or sculpture; it
+pretends to clothe thousands of people who would otherwise go naked. It
+is itself often a miracle of human intellect. It works unrestingly that
+humanity may have a chance to rest. If it sometimes supersedes higher
+work, it far more often, by relieving man of the lowest work, sets him
+free for the higher. Those heaps of stones broken by the hammer of a
+poor wretch who bends over his dull task through the weary day by the
+roadside, scantily clad, in sharp frost perhaps or chilling showers, are
+they more lovely to a painter's eye than if they had been broken,
+without so much human labour and suffering, by a steam stone-crusher? No
+one doubts the superior interest belonging to any work however
+imperfect, of individual mind; but if we were not to use a pair of tongs
+that did not bear the impress of individual mind, millionaires might
+have tongs, but the rest of us would put on coals with our fingers.
+After all, what is a machine but a perfect tool? The Tyrian loom was a
+machine, though it was worked by hand and not by steam; and if the
+Tyrian had known the power loom, depend upon it he would have used it.
+Without machines, the members of this School might all be grinding their
+corn with hand mills, instead of learning Art. Common humanity must use
+manufactured articles; even uncommon humanity will find it difficult to
+avoid using them, unless it has the courage of its convictions to the
+same extent as George Fox, the Quaker, who encased himself in an entire
+suit of home-made leather, bearing the impress of his individual mind;
+and defied a mechanical and degenerate world. The only practical
+question is whether the manufactures shall be good or bad, well-designed
+or ill; South Kensington answers, that if training can do it, they shall
+be good and well designed.
+
+There are the manufacturing multitudes of England; they must have work,
+and find markets for their work; if machines and the Black Country are
+ugly, famine would be uglier still. I have no instruction to give you,
+and you would not thank me for wasting your time with rhetorical praise
+of art, even if I had all the flowers of diction at my command. To me,
+as an outer barbarian, it seems that some of the language on these
+subjects is already pretty high pitched. I have thought so even in
+reading that one of Mr. Addington Symond's most attractive volumes about
+Italy which relates to Italian art. Art is the interpreter of beauty,
+and perhaps beauty, if we could penetrate to its essence, might reveal
+to us something higher than itself. But Art is not religion, nor is
+connoisseurship priesthood. To happiness Art lends intensity and
+elevation; but in affliction, in ruin, in the wreck of affection how
+much can Phidias and Raphael do for you? A poet makes Goethe say to a
+sceptical and perplexed world, "Art still has truth, take refuge there."
+It would be a poor refuge for most of us; it was so even for the great
+Goethe; for with all his intellectual splendour, his character never
+rose above a grandiose and statuesque self-love; he behaved ill to his
+country, ill to women. Instead of being religion, Art seems, for its own
+perfection, to need religion--not a system of dogma, but a faith. This,
+probably, we all feel when we look at the paintings in the Church of
+Assisi or in the Arena Chapel at Padua. Perhaps those paintings also
+gain something by being in the proper place for religious art, a Church.
+Since the divorce of religious art from religion, it has been common to
+see a Crucifixion hung over a sideboard. That age was an age of faith;
+and so most likely was the glorious age of Greek art in its way. Ours is
+an age of doubt, an age of doubt and of strange cross currents and
+eddies of opinion, ultra scepticism penning its books in the closet
+while the ecclesiastical forms of the Middle Ages stalk the streets. Art
+seems to feel the disturbing influence like the rest of life. Poetry
+feels it less than other arts, because there is a poetry of doubt and
+Tennyson is its poet. Art is expression, and to have high expression you
+must have something high to express. In the pictures at our exhibitions
+there may be great technical skill; I take it for granted there is; but
+in the subject surely there is a void, an appearance of painful seeking
+for something to paint, and finding very little. When you come to a
+great picture of an Egyptian banquet in the days of the Pharaohs, you
+feel that the painter must have had a long way to go for something to
+paint. Certainly this age is not indifferent to beauty. The art movement
+is in every house; everywhere you see some proof of a desire to possess
+not mere ornament but something really rare and beautiful. The influence
+transmutes children's picture books and toys. I turned up the other day
+a child's picture book of the days of my childhood; probably it had been
+thought wonderfully good in its time; and what a thing it was. Some day
+our doubts may be cleared up; our beliefs may be settled; faith may come
+again; life may recover its singleness and certainty of aim; poetry may
+gush forth once more as fresh as Homer, and the art of the future may
+appear. What is most difficult to conceive, perhaps, is the sculpture of
+the future; because it is hardly possible that the moderns should ever
+have such facilities as the ancients had for studying the human form. In
+presence of the overwhelming magnificence of the sculpture in the
+museums of Rome and Naples, one wonders how Canova and Co. can have
+looked with any complacency on their own productions. There seems reason
+by the way to think that these artists worked not each by himself, but
+in schools and brotherhoods with mutual aid and sympathy; and this is an
+advantage equally within the reach of modern art. Meantime, though the
+Art of the future delays to come, modern life is not all hideous. There
+are many things, no doubt, such as the Black Country and the suburbs of
+our cities, on which the eye cannot rest with pleasure. But Paris is not
+hideous. There may be in the long lines of buildings too much of the
+autocratic monotony of the Empire, but the city, as a whole, is the
+perfect image of a brilliant civilization. From London beauty is almost
+banished by smoke and fog, which deny to the poor architect ornament,
+colour, light and shadow, leaving him nothing but outline. No doubt
+besides the smoke and fog there is a fatality. There is a fatality which
+darkly impels us to place on our finest site, and one of the finest in
+Europe, the niggard facade and inverted teacup dome of the National
+Gallery; to temper the grandeurs of Westminster by the introduction of
+the Aquarium, with Mr. Hankey's Tower of Babel in the near distance; to
+guard against any too-imposing effect which the outline of the Houses of
+Parliament might have by covering them with minute ornament, sure to be
+blackened and corroded into one vast blotch by smoke; to collect the art
+wonders of Pigtail Place; to make the lions in Trafalgar Square lie like
+cats on a hearth-rug, instead of supporting themselves on a slope by
+muscular action, like the lions at Genoa; to perch a colossal equestrian
+statue of the Duke of Wellington, arrayed in his waterproof cape, and
+mounted on a low-shouldered hack instead of a charger, on the top of an
+arch, by way of perpetual atonement to France for Waterloo; and now to
+think of planting an obelisk of the Pharaohs on a cab-stand. An obelisk
+of the Pharaohs in ancient Rome was an august captive, symbolizing the
+university of the Roman Empire, but an obelisk of the Pharaohs in London
+symbolizes little more than did the Druidical ring of stones which an
+English squire of my acquaintance purchased in one of the Channel
+Islands and set up in his English park. As to London we must console
+ourselves with the thought that if life outside is less poetic than it
+was in the days of old, inwardly its poetry is much deeper. If the house
+is less beautiful the home is more so. Even a house in what Tennyson
+calls the long unlovely street is not utterly unlovely when within it
+dwell cultivated intellect, depth of character and tenderness of
+affection. However the beauty of English life is in the country and
+there it may challenge that of Italian palaces. America is supposed to
+be given over to ugliness. There are a good many ugly things there and
+the ugliest are the most pretentious. As it is in society so it is in
+architecture. America is best when she is content to be herself. An
+American city with its spacious streets all planted with avenues of
+trees with its blocks of buildings far from unimpeachable probably in
+detail yet stately in the mass with its wide spreading suburbs where
+each artizan has his neat looking house in his own plot of ground and
+light and air and foliage with its countless church towers and spires
+far from faultless yet varying the outline might not please a painters
+eye but it fills your mind with a sense of well rewarded industry of
+comfort and even opulence shared by the toiling man of a prosperous,
+law-loving, cheerful, and pious life. I cannot help fancying that
+Turner, whose genius got to the soul of everything, would have made
+something of even in American city. The cities of the Middle Ages were
+picturesquely huddled within walls for protection from the violence of
+the feudal era, the cities of the New World spread wide in the security
+of an age of law and a continent of peace. At Cleveland in Ohio there is
+a great street called Euclid Avenue, lined with villas each standing in
+its own grounds and separated from each other and from the street only
+by a light iron fencing instead of the high brick wall with which the
+Briton shuts out his detested kind. The villas are not vast or
+suggestive of over-grown plutocracy, they are suggestive of moderate
+wealth, pleasant summers, cheerful winters and domestic happiness. I
+hardly think you would call Euclid Avenue revolting. I say it with the
+diffidence of conscious ignorance but I should not be much afraid to
+show you one or two buildings that our Professor of Architecture at
+Cornell University has put up for us on a bluff over Cayuga Lake, on a
+site which you would certainly admit to be magnificent. If I could have
+ventured on any recommendation concerning Art, I should have pleaded
+before the Royal Commission for a Chair of Architecture here. It might
+endow us with some forms of beauty; it might at all events endow us with
+rules for building a room in which you can be heard, one in which you
+can breathe, and a chimney which would not smoke. I said that in America
+the most pretentious buildings were the worst. Another source of failure
+in buildings, in dress, and not in these alone, is servile imitation of
+Europe. In northern America the summer is tropical, the winter is
+arctic. A house ought to be regular and compact in shape, so as to be
+easily warmed from the centre, with a roof of simple construction, high
+pitched, to prevent the snow from lodging, and large eaves to throw it
+off,--this for the arctic winter, for the tropical summer you want ample
+verandas, which, in fact, are the summer sitting rooms. An American
+house built in this way is capable at least of the beauty which belongs
+to fitness. But as you see Parisian dresses under an alien sky, so you
+see Italian villas with excrescences which no stove can warm, and Tudor
+mansions with gables which hold all the snow. It is needless to say what
+is the result, when the New World undertakes to reproduce not only the
+architecture of the Old World, but that of classical Greece and Rome, or
+that of the Middle Ages. Jefferson, who was a classical republican,
+taught a number of his fellow citizens to build their homes like Doric
+temples, and you may imagine what a Doric temple freely adapted to
+domestic purposes must be. But are these attempts to revive the past
+very successful anywhere? We regard as a decided mistake the revived
+classicism of the last generation. May not our revived mediaevalism be
+regarded as a mistake by the generation that follows us? We could all
+probably point to some case in which the clashing of mediaeval beauties
+with modern requirements has produced sad and ludicrous results. There
+is our own museum; the best, I suppose, that could be done in the way of
+revival; the work of an architect whom the first judges deemed a man of
+genius. In that, ancient form and modern requirements seem everywhere at
+cross purposes. Nobody can deny that genius is impressed upon the upper
+part of the front, which reminds one of a beautiful building in an
+Italian city, though the structure at the side recalls the mind to
+Glastonbury, and the galaxy of chimneys has certainly no parallel in
+Italy. The front ought to stand in a street, but as it stands in a field
+its flanks have to be covered by devices which are inevitably weak. What
+is to be done with the back always seems to me one of the darkest
+enigmas of the future. The basement is incongruously plain and bare, in
+the street it would perhaps be partly hidden by the passengers. Going
+in, you find a beautiful mediaeval court struggling hard for its life
+against a railway station and a cloister, considerately offering you a
+shady walk or shelter from the weather round a room. Listen to the
+multitudinous voices of Science and you will hear that the conflict
+extends to practical accommodation. We all know it was not the fault of
+the architect, it was the fault of adverse exigencies which came into
+collision with his design, but this only strengthens the moral of the
+building against revivals. Two humble achievements, if we had chosen
+were certainly within our reach,--perfect adaptation to our object and
+inoffensive dignity. Every one who has a heart, however ignorant of
+architecture he may be, feels the transcendent beauty and poetry of the
+mediaeval churches. For my part I look up with admiration, as fervent as
+any one untrained in art can, to those divine creations of old religion
+which soar over the smoke and din of our cities into purity and
+stillness and seem to challenge us, with all our wealth and culture and
+science and mechanical power, to produce their peer till the age of
+faith shall return. Not Greek Art itself springing forth in its
+perfection from the dark background of primaeval history, seems to me a
+greater miracle than these. How poor beside the lowliest of them in
+religious effect in romance, in everything but size and technical skill,
+is any pile of neo-paganism even I will dare to say, St. Peter's. Yet
+for my part, deeply as I am moved by the religious architecture of the
+Middle Ages, I cannot honestly say that I ever felt the slightest
+emotion in any modern Gothic church. I will even own that, except where
+restoration rids us of the unchristian exclusiveness of pews, I prefer
+the unrestored churches, with something of antiquity about them, to the
+restored. There is a spell in mediaeval Art which has had power to
+bewitch some people into trying, or wishing to try, or fancying that
+they wish to try or making believe to fancy that they wish to try, to
+bring back the Middle Ages. You may hear pinings for the return of an
+age of force from gentle aestheticists, who, if the awe of force did
+return, would certainly be crushed like eggshells. There is a well-known
+tale by Hans Andersen, that great though child-like teacher, called the
+"Overshoes of Fortune." A gentleman, at an evening party, has been
+running down modern society and wishing he were in the heroic Middle
+Ages. In going away he unwittingly puts on the fairy overshoes, which
+have the gift of transporting the wearer at once to any place and time
+where he wishes to be. Stepping out he finds his own wish fulfilled--he
+is in the Middle Ages. There is no gas, the street is pitch dark, he is
+up to his ankles in mud, he is nearly knocked into the kennel by a
+mediaeval bishop returning from a revel with his roystering train, when
+he wants to cross the river there is no bridge; and after vainly
+inquiring his way in a tavern full of very rough customers, he wishes
+himself in the moon, and to the moon appropriately he goes. Mediaevalism
+can hardly be called anything but a rather enfeebling dream. If it were
+a real effort to live in the Middle Ages, your life would be one
+perpetual prevarication. You would be drawn by the steam engine to
+lecture against steam; you would send eloquent invectives against
+printing to the press, and you would be subsisting meanwhile on the
+interest of investments which the Middle Ages would have condemned as
+usury. If you were like some of the school, you would praise the golden
+silence of the Dark Ages and be talking all the time. And surely the
+hourly failure to act up to your principles, the hourly and conscious
+apostacy from your ideal, could beget nothing in the character but
+hollowness and weakness. No student of history can fail to see the moral
+interest of the Middle Ages, any more than an artist can fail to see
+their aesthetic interest. There were some special types of noble
+character then, of which, when they were done with, nature broke the
+mould. But the mould is broken, and it is broken for ever. Through
+aesthetic pining for a past age, we may become unjust to our own, and
+thus weaken our practical sense of duty, and lessen our power of doing
+good. I will call the age bad when it makes me so, is a wise saying, and
+worth all our visionary cynicism, be it never so eloquent. To say the
+same thing in other words, our age will be good enough for most of us,
+if there is genuine goodness in ourselves. Rousseau fancied he was
+soaring above his age, not into the thirteenth century, but into the
+state of nature, while he was falling miserably below his own age in all
+the common duties and relations of life; and he was a type, not of
+enthusiasts, for enthusiasm leads to action, but of mere social
+dreamers. Where there is duty, there is poetry, and tragedy too, in
+plenty, though it be in the most prosaic row of dingy little brick
+houses with clothes hanging out to dry, or rather to be wetted, behind
+them, in all Lancashire. We have commercial fraud now, too much of it;
+and the declining character of English goods is a cause of their
+exclusion from foreign markets, as well as hostile tariffs; so that
+everything South Kensington can do to uphold good and genuine work will
+be of the greatest advantage to the English trade. But if anyone
+supposes that there was no commercial fraud in the Middle Ages, let him
+study the commercial legislation of England for that period, and his
+mind will be satisfied, if he has a mind to be satisfied and not only a
+fancy to run away with him. There was fraud beneath the cross of the
+Crusader, and there was forgery in the cell of the Monk. In comparing
+the general quality of work we must remember that it is the best work of
+those times that has survived. I think I could prove from history that
+mediaeval floors sometimes gave way even when there was no St. Dunstan
+there. You will recollect that the floor miraculously fell in at a
+synod, and killed all St. Dunstan's opponents; but sceptics, who did not
+easily believe in miracles, whispered that the Saint from his past
+habits, knew how to handle tools. We are told by those whose creed is
+embodied in "Past and Present" that this age is one vast anarchy,
+industrial and social; and that nothing but military discipline--that is
+the perpetual cry--will restore us to anything like order as workers or
+as men. Well, there are twenty thousand miles of railway in the three
+kingdoms, forming a system as complex as it is vast. I am told that at
+one junction, close to London, the trains pass for some hours at the
+rate of two in five minutes. Consider how that service is done by the
+myriads of men employed, and this in all seasons and weathers in
+overwhelming heat, in numbing cold, in blinding storm, in midnight
+darkness. Is not this an army pretty well disciplined, though its object
+is not bloodshed? If we see masses full of practical energy and good
+sense, but wanting in culture, let us take our culture to them, and
+perhaps they will give us some of their practical energy and good sense
+in return. Without that Black Country industry, all begrimed and sweaty,
+our fine culture could not exist. Everything we use, nay, our veriest
+toy represents lives spent for us in delving beneath the dark and
+perilous mine, in battling with the wintry sea, in panting before the
+glowing forge, in counting the weary hours over the monotonous and
+unresting loom, lives of little value, one could think, if there were no
+hereafter. Let us at least be kind. I go to Saltaire. I find a noble
+effort made by a rich man who kept his heart above wealth, Titus Salt--
+he was a baronet, but we will spare him, as we spare Nelson, the
+derogatory prefix--to put away what is dark and evil in factory life. I
+find a little town, I should have thought not unpleasant to the eye, and
+certainly not unpleasant to the heart, where labour dwells in pure air,
+amidst beautiful scenery, with all the appliances of civilization, with
+everything that can help it to health, morality, and happiness. I find a
+man, who might, if he pleased, live idly in the lap of luxury, working
+like a horse in the management of this place, bearing calmly not only
+toil and trouble, but perverseness and ingratitude. Surely, aesthetic
+culture would be a doubtful blessing if it made us think or speak
+unsympathetically and rudely of Saltaire. Four hundred thousand people
+at Manchester are without pure water. They propose to get it from
+Thirlmere. For this they are denounced in that sort of language which is
+called strong, but the use of which is a sure proof of weakness, for
+irritability was well defined by Abernethy as debility in a state of
+excitement. Let us spare, whenever they can be spared, history and
+beauty; they are a priceless part of the heritage of a great industrial
+nation, and one which lost can never be restored. The only difference I
+ever had with my fellow-citizens in Oxford during a pretty long
+residence, arose out of my opposition to a measure which would have
+marred the historic character and the beauty of our city, while I was
+positively assured on the best authority that it was commercially
+inexpedient. If Thirlmere can be spared, spare Thirlmere; but if it is
+really needed to supply those masses with a necessary of life, the
+loveliest lake by which poet or artist ever wandered could not be put to
+a nobler use. I am glad in this to follow the Bishop of Manchester, who
+is not made of coarse clay, though he cares for the health as well as
+for the religion of his people. A schism between aesthetic Oxford and
+industrial Lancashire would be a bad thing for both; and South
+Kensington, which, while it teaches art, joins hands with industry,
+surely does well. It is needless to debate before this audience the
+question whether there is any essential antagonism between art or
+esthetic culture, and the tendencies of an age of science. An accidental
+antagonism there may be, an essential antagonism there cannot be. What
+is science but truth, and why should not truth and beauty live together?
+Is an artist a worse painter of the human body from being a good
+anatomist? Then why should he be a worse painter of nature generally,
+because he knows her secrets, or because they are being explored in his
+time? Would he render moonlight better if he believed the moon was a
+green cheese? Art and Science dwelt together well enough in the minds of
+Leonardo da Vinci and Michael Angelo. In the large creative mind there
+is room for both; though the smaller and merely perceptive mind being
+fixed on one may sometimes not have room for the other. True, the
+perfect concord of art and science, like that of religion and science,
+may be still to come, and come, we hope, both concords will. One word
+more before we distribute the prizes. A system of prizes is a system of
+competition, and to competition some object. We can readily sympathise
+with their objection. Work done from love of the subject, or from a
+sense of duty, is better than work done for a prize, and, moreover, we
+cherish the hope that co-operation, not competition, will be the
+ultimate principle of industry, and the final state of man. But nothing
+hinders that, in working for a prize as in working for your bread, you
+may, at the same time, be working from sense of duty and love of the
+subject, and though co-operation may be our final state, competition is
+our present. Here the competition is at least fair. There can hardly be
+any doubt that the prize system often calls into activity powers of
+doing good work which would otherwise have lain dormant, and if it does
+this it is useful to the community, though the individual needs to be on
+his guard against its drawbacks in himself. In reading the Life of Lord
+Althorp the other day I was struck with the fact, for a fact, I think,
+it evidently was, that England had owed one of her worthiest and most
+useful statesmen to a college competition, which aroused him to a sense
+of his own powers, and of the duty of using them, whereas he would
+otherwise never have risen above making betting books and chronicling
+the performances of foxhounds. Perhaps about the worst consequence of
+the prize system, against which, I have no doubt, your Instructor
+guards, is undue discouragement on the part of those who do not win the
+prize. And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, I wish you were to receive your
+rewards from a hand which would lend them any additional value. But
+though presented by me they have been awarded by good judges; and as
+they have been awarded to you, I have no doubt you have deserved them
+well.
+
+
+
+
+THE ASCENT OF MAN.
+
+
+Science and criticism have raised the veil of the Mosaic cosmogony and
+revealed to us the physical origin of man. We see that, instead of being
+created out of the dust of the earth by Divine fiat, he has in all
+probability been evolved out of it by a process of development through a
+series of intermediate forms.
+
+The discovery is, of course, unspeakably momentous. Among other things
+it seems to open to us a new view of morality, and one which, if it is
+verified by further investigation, can hardly fail to produce a great
+change in philosophy. Supposing that man has ascended from a lower
+animal form, there appears to be ground at least for surmising that
+vice, instead of being a diabolical inspiration or a mysterious element
+of human nature, is the remnant of the lower animal not yet eliminated;
+while virtue is the effort, individual and collective, by which that
+remnant is being gradually worked off. The acknowledged connection of
+virtue with the ascendency of the social over the selfish desires and
+tendencies seems to correspond with this view; the nature of the lower
+animals being, so far as we can see, almost entirely selfish, and
+admitting no regard even for the present interests of their kind, much
+less for its interests in the future. The doubtful qualities, and "last
+infirmities of noble minds," such as ambition and the love of fame, in
+which the selfish element is mingled with one not wholly selfish, and
+which commend themselves at least by their refinement, as contrasted
+with the coarseness of the merely animal vices, may perhaps be regarded
+as belonging to the class of phenomena quaintly designated by some
+writers as "pointer facts," and as marking the process of transition. In
+what morality consists, no one has yet succeeded in making clear. Mr.
+Sidgwick's recent criticism of the various theories leads to the
+conviction that not one of them affords a satisfactory basis for a
+practical system of ethics. If our lower nature can be traced to an
+animal origin, and can be shown to be in course of elimination, however
+slow and interrupted, this at all events will be a solid fact, and one
+which must be the starting-point of any future system of ethics. Light
+would be at once thrown by such a discovery on some parts of the subject
+which have hitherto been involved in impenetrable darkness. Of the vice
+of cruelty for example no rational account, we believe, has yet been
+given; it is connected with no human appetite, and seems to gratify no
+human object of desire; but if we can be shown to have inherited it from
+animal progenitors, the mystery of its existence is at least in part
+explained. In the event of this surmise being substantiated, moral
+phantasms, with their mediaeval trappings, would for ever disappear;
+individual responsibility would be reduced within reasonable limits; the
+difficulty of the question respecting free will would shrink to
+comparatively narrow proportions; but it does not seem likely that the
+love of virtue and the hatred of vice would be diminished; on the
+contrary, it seems likely that they would be practically intensified,
+while a more practical direction would certainly be given to the science
+of ethics as a system of moral training and a method of curing moral
+disease.
+
+It is needless to say how great has been the influence of the doctrine
+of Evolution, or rather perhaps of the method of investigation to which
+it has given birth, upon the study of history, especially the history of
+institutions. Our general histories will apparently have to be almost
+rewritten from that point of view. It is only to be noted, with regard
+to the treatment of history, that the mere introduction of a physical
+nomenclature, however elaborate and apparently scientific, does not make
+anything physical which before was not so, or exclude from human
+actions, of which history is the aggregate, any element not of a
+physical kind. We are impressed, perhaps, at first with a sense of new
+knowledge when we are told that human history is "an integration of
+matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; during which the matter
+passes from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent
+heterogeneity, and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel
+transformation." But a little reflection suggests to us that such a
+philosophy is vitiated by the assumption involved in the word "matter,"
+and that the philosophy of history is in fact left exactly where it was
+before. The superior complexity of high civilization is a familiar
+social fact which gains nothing in clearness by the importation of
+mechanical or physiological terms.
+
+We must also be permitted to bear in mind that evolution, though it may
+explain everything else, cannot explain itself. What is the origin of
+the movement, and by what power the order of development is prescribed,
+are questions yet unsolved by physical science. That the solution, if it
+could be supplied, would involve anything arbitrary, miraculous, or at
+variance with the observed order of things, need not be assumed; but it
+might open a new view of the universe, and dissipate for ever the merely
+mechanical accounts of it. In the meantime we may fairly enter a caveat
+against the tacit insinuation of an unproved solution. Science can
+apparently give no reason for assuming that the first cause, and that
+which gives the law to development, is a blind force rather than an
+archetypal idea. The only origination within our experience is that of
+human action, where the cause is an idea. Science herself, in fact,
+constantly assumes an analogous cause for the movements of the universe
+in her use of the word "law," which necessarily conveys the notion, not
+merely of observed co-existence and sequence, but of the intelligent and
+consistent action of a higher power, on which we rely in reasoning from
+the past to the future, as we do upon consistency in the settled conduct
+of a man.
+
+Unspeakably momentous, however, we once more admit, the discovery is,
+and great is the debt of gratitude due to its illustrious authors. Yet
+it seems not unreasonable to ask whether in some respects we are not too
+much under its immediate influence, and whether the revolution of
+thought, though destined ultimately to be vast, may not at present have
+somewhat overpassed its bounds. Is it not possible that the physical
+origin of man may be just now occupying too large a space in our minds
+compared with his ulterior development and his final destiny? With our
+eyes fixed on the "Descent," newly disclosed to us, may we not be losing
+sight of the _Ascent_ of man?
+
+There seems in the first place, to be a tendency to treat the origin of
+a being as finally decisive of its nature and destiny. From the language
+sometimes used, we should almost suppose that rudiments alone were real,
+and that all the rest was mere illusion. An eminent writer on the
+antiquities of jurisprudence intimates his belief that the idea of human
+brotherhood is not coeval with the race, and that primitive communities
+were governed by sentiments of a very different kind. His words are at
+once pounced upon as a warrant for dismissing the idea of human
+brotherhood from our minds, and substituting for it some other social
+principles, the character of which has not yet been definitely
+explained, though it is beginning in some quarters pretty distinctly to
+appear. But surely this is not reasonable. There can be no reason why
+the first estate of man, which all allow to have been his lowest estate,
+should claim the prerogative of furnishing his only real and
+indefeasible principles of action. Granting that the idea of human
+brotherhood was not aboriginal--granting that it came into the world at
+a comparatively late period, still it has come, and having come, it is
+as real and seems as much entitled to consideration as inter-tribal
+hostility and domestic despotism were in their own day. That its advent
+has not been unattended by illusions and aberrations is a fact which
+does not cancel its title to real existence under the present
+conditions, and with the present lights of society, any more than in
+annuls the great effects upon the actions of men and the course of
+history which the idea has undeniably produced. Human brotherhood was
+not a part of a primaeval revelation; it may not have been an original
+institution; but it seems to be a real part of a development, and it may
+be a part of a plan. That the social principles of certain anti-
+philanthropic works are identical with those which governed the actions
+of mankind in a primaeval and rudimentary state, when man had only just
+emerged from the animal, and have been since worked off by the foremost
+races in the course of development, is surely rather an argument against
+the paramount and indefeasible authority of those principles than in
+favour of it. It tends rather to show that their real character is that
+of a relapse, or, as the physiologists call it, a reversion. When there
+is a vast increase of wealth, of sensual enjoyment, and of the
+selfishness which is apt to attend them, it is not marvellous that such
+reversions should occur.
+
+Another eminent writer appears to think that he has put an end to
+metaphysical theology, and perhaps to metaphysics and theology
+altogether, by showing that "being," and the cognate words, originally
+denoted merely physical perceptions. But so, probably, did all language.
+So did "spirit," so did "geist," so did "power," so did even "sweet
+reasonableness," and "the not us which makes for righteousness." Other
+perceptions or ideas have gradually come, and are now denoted by the
+words which at first denoted physical perceptions only. Why have not
+these last comers as good a claim to existence as the first? Suppose the
+intellectual nature of man has unfolded, and been brought, as it
+conceivably may, into relations with something in the universe beyond
+the mere indications of the five bodily senses--why are we bound to
+mistrust the results of this unfolding? We might go still further back,
+and still lower, than to language denoting merely physical perceptions.
+We might go back to inarticulate sounds and signs; but this does not
+invalidate the reality of the perceptions afterwards expressed in
+articulate language. It seems not very easy to distinguish, in point of
+trustworthiness of source, between the principles of metaphysics and the
+first principles of mathematics, or to say, if we accept the deductions
+in one case, why we should not accept them in the other. It is
+conceivable at least, we venture to repeat, that the development of
+man's intellectual nature may have enabled him to perceive other things
+than those which he perceives by means of his five bodily senses; and
+metaphysics, once non-existent, may thus have come into legitimate
+existence. Man, if the doctrine of evolution is true, was once a
+creature with only bodily senses; nay, at a still earlier stage, he was
+matter devoid even of bodily sense; now he has arrived--through the
+exercise of his bodily senses it may be--at something beyond bodily
+sense, at such notions as _being, essence, existence_: he reasons
+upon these notions, and extends the scope of his once merely physical
+vocabulary so as to comprehend them. Why should he not? If we are to be
+anchored hard and fast to the signification of primaeval language, how
+are we to obtain an intellectual basis for "the not us which makes for
+righteousness?" Do not the anti-metaphysicists themselves unconsciously
+metaphysicize? Does not their fundamental assumption--that the knowledge
+received through our bodily senses alone is trustworthy--involve an
+appeal to a mental necessity as much as anything in metaphysics, whether
+the mental necessity in this case be real or not?
+
+Again, the great author of the Evolution theory himself, in his
+_Descent of Man_, has given us an account of morality which
+suggests a remark of the same kind. He seems to have come to the
+conclusion that what is called our moral sense is merely an indication
+of the superior permanency of social compared with personal impressions.
+Morality, if we take his explanation as complete and final, is reduced
+to tribal self-preservation subtilized into etiquette; an etiquette
+which, perhaps, a sceptical voluptuary, wishing to remove the obstacles
+to a life of enjoyment, might think himself not unreasonable in treating
+as an illusion. This, so far as appears, is the explanation offered of
+moral life, with all its beauty, its tenderness, its heroism, its self-
+sacrifice; to say nothing of spiritual life with its hopes and
+aspirations, its prayers and fanes. Such an account even of the origin
+of morality seems rather difficult to receive. Surely, even in their
+most rudimentary condition, virtue and vice must have been distinguished
+by some other characteristic than the relative permanency of two
+different sets of impressions. There is a tendency, we may venture to
+observe, on the part of eminent physicists, when they have carefully
+investigated and explained what seems to them the most important and
+substantial subjects of inquiry, to proffer less careful explanations of
+matters which to them seem secondary and less substantial, though
+possibly to an intelligence surveying the drama of the world from
+without the distinctly human portion of it might appear more important
+than the rest. Eminent physicists have been known, we believe, to
+account summarily for religion as a surviving reminiscence of the
+serpent which attacked the ancestral ape and the tree which sheltered
+him from the attack, so that Newton's religious belief would be a
+concomitant of his remaining trace of a tail. It was assumed that
+primaeval religion was universally the worship of the serpent and of the
+tree. This assumption was far from being correct; but, even if it had
+been correct, the theory based on it would surely have been a very
+summary account of the phenomena of religious life.
+
+However, supposing the account of the origin of the moral sense and of
+moral life, given in _The Descent of Man_, to be true, it is an
+account of the origin only. Though profoundly significant, as well as
+profoundly interesting, it is not more significant, compared with the
+subsequent development, than is the origin of physical life compared
+with the subsequent history of living beings. Suppose a mineralogist or
+a chemist were to succeed in discovering the exact point at which
+inorganic matter gave birth to the organic; his discovery would be
+momentous and would convey to us a most distinct assurance of the method
+by which the governing power of the universe works: but would it qualify
+the mineralogist or the chemist to give a full account of all the
+diversities of animal life, and of the history of man? Heroism, self-
+sacrifice, the sense of moral beauty, the refined affections of
+civilized men, philanthropy, the desire of realizing a high moral ideal,
+whatever else they may be, are not tribal self-preservation subtilized
+into etiquette; nor are they adequately explained by reference to the
+permanent character of one set of impressions and the occasional
+character of another set. Between the origin of moral life and its
+present manifestation has intervened something so considerable as to
+baffle any anticipation of the destiny of humanity which could have been
+formed for a mere inspection of the rudiments. We may call this
+intervening force circumstance, if we please, provided we remember that
+calling it circumstance does not settle its nature, or exclude the
+existence of a power acting through circumstance as the method of
+fulfilling a design.
+
+Whatever things may have been in their origin, they are what they are,
+both in themselves and in regard to their indications respecting other
+beings or influences the existence of which may be implied in theirs.
+The connection between the embryo and the adult man, with his moral
+sense and intelligence, and all that these imply, is manifest, as well
+as the gradual evolution of the one out of the other, and a conclusive
+argument is hence derived against certain superstitions or fantastic
+beliefs; but the embryo is not a man, neither is the man an embryo. A
+physiologist sets before us a set of plates showing the similarity
+between the embryo of Newton and that of his dog Diamond. The inference
+which he probably expects us to draw is that there is no essential
+difference between the philosopher and the dog. But surely it is at
+least as logical to infer, that the importance of the embryo and the
+significance of embryological similarities may not be so great as the
+physiologist is disposed to believe.
+
+So with regard to human institutions. The writer on legal antiquities
+before mentioned finds two sets of institutions which are now directly
+opposed to each other, and between the respective advocates of which a
+controversy has been waged. He proposes to terminate that controversy by
+showing that though the two rival systems in their development are so
+different, in their origin they were the same. This seems very clearly
+to bring home to us the fact that, important as the results of an
+investigation of origins are, there is still a limit to their
+importance.
+
+Again, while we allow no prejudice to stand in the way of our acceptance
+of Evolution, we may fairly call upon Evolution to be true to itself. We
+may call upon it to recognise the possibility of development in the
+future as well as the fact of development in the past, and not to shut
+up the hopes and aspirations of our race in a mundane egg because the
+mundane egg happens to be the special province of the physiologist. The
+series of developments has proceeded from the inorganic to the organic,
+from the organic upwards to moral and intellectual life. Why should it
+be arrested there? Why should it not continue its upward course and
+arrive at a development which might be designated as spiritual life?
+Surely the presumption is in favour of a continued operation of the law.
+Nothing can be more arbitrary than the proceeding of Comte, who, after
+tracing humanity, as he thinks, through the Theological and Metaphysical
+stages into the Positive, there closes the series and assumes that the
+Positive stage is absolutely final. How can he be sure that it will not
+be followed, for example, by one in which man will apprehend and commune
+with the Ruler of the Universe, not through mythology or dogma, but
+through Science? He may have had no experience of such a phase of human
+existence, nor may he be able at present distinctly to conceive it. But
+had he lived in the Theological or the Metaphysical era he would have
+been equally without experience of the Positive, and have had the same
+difficulty in conceiving its existence. His finality is an assumption
+apparently without foundation.
+
+By Spiritual Life we do not mean the life of a disembodied spirit, or
+anything supernatural and anti-scientific, but a life the motives of
+which are beyond the world of sense, and the aim of which is an ideal,
+individual and collective, which may be approached but cannot be
+attained under our present conditions, and the conception of which
+involves the hope of an ulterior and better state. The Positivists
+themselves often use the word "spiritual," and it may be assumed that
+they mean by it something higher in the way of aspiration than what is
+denoted by the mere term moral, though they may not look forward to any
+other state of being than this.
+
+We do not presume, of course, in these few pages to broach any great
+question, our only purpose being to point out a possible aberration or
+exaggeration of the prevailing school of thought. But it must surely be
+apparent to the moral philosopher, no less than to the student of
+history, that at the time of the appearance of Christianity, a crisis
+took place in the development of humanity which may be not unfitly
+described as the commencement of Spiritual Life. The change was not
+abrupt. It had been preceded and heralded by the increasing spirituality
+of the Hebrew religion, especially in the teachings of the prophets, by
+the spiritualization of Greek philosophy, and perhaps by the sublimation
+of Roman duty; but it was critical and decided. So much is admitted even
+by those who deplore the advent of Christianity as a fatal historical
+catastrophe, which turned away men's minds from the improvement of their
+material condition to the pursuit of a chimerical ideal. Faith, Hope,
+and Charity, by which the Gospel designates the triple manifestation of
+spiritual life, are new names for new things; for it is needless to say
+that in classical Greek the words have nothing like their Gospel
+signification. It would be difficult, we believe, to find in any Greek
+or Roman writer an expression of hope for the future of humanity. The
+nearest approach to such a sentiment, perhaps, is in the political
+Utopianism of Plato. The social ideal is placed in a golden age which
+has irretrievably passed away. Virgil's Fourth Eclogue, even if it were
+a more serious production than it is, seems to refer to nothing more
+than the pacification of the Roman Empire and the restoration of its
+material prosperity by Augustus. But Christianity, in the Apocalypse, at
+once breaks forth into a confident prediction of the ultimate triumph of
+good over evil, and of the realization of the ideal.
+
+The moral aspiration--the striving after an ideal of character, personal
+and social, the former in and through the latter--seems to be the
+special note of the life, institutions, literature, and art of
+Christendom. Christian Fiction, for example, is pervaded by an interest
+in the development and elevation of character for which we look in vain
+in the _Arabian Nights_, where there is no development of
+character, nothing but incident and adventure. Christian sculpture,
+inferior perhaps in workmanship to that of Phidias, derives its superior
+interest from its constant suggestion of a spiritual ideal. The
+Christian lives, in a manner, two lives, an outward one of necessary
+conformity to the fashions and ordinances of the present world; an inner
+one of protest against the present world and anticipation of an ideal
+state of things; and this duality is reproduced in the separate
+existence of the spiritual society or Church, submitting to existing
+social arrangements, yet struggling to transcend them, and to transmute
+society by the realization of the Christian's social ideal. With this is
+necessarily connected a readiness to sacrifice present to future good,
+and the interests of the present to future good, and the interests of
+the present world to those of the world of hope. Apart from this, the
+death of Christ (and that of Socrates also), instead of being an
+instance of "sweet reasonableness," would be out of the pale of reason
+altogether.
+
+It is perhaps the absence of an ideal that prevents our feeling
+satisfied with Utilitarianism. The Utilitarian definition of morality
+has been so much enlarged, and made to coincide so completely with
+ordinary definitions in point of mere extent, that the difference
+between Utilitarianism and ordinary Moral Philosophy seems to have
+become almost verbal. Yet we feel that there is something wanting. There
+is no ideal of character. And where there is no ideal of character there
+can hardly be such a thing as a sense of moral beauty. A Utilitarian
+perhaps would say that perfect utility is beauty. But whatever may be
+the case with material beauty, moral beauty at all events seems to
+contain an element not identical with the satisfaction produced by the
+appearance of perfect utility, but suggestive of an unfulfilled ideal.
+
+Suppose spiritual life necessarily implies the expectation of a Future
+State, has physical science anything to say against that expectation?
+Physical Science is nothing more than the perceptions of our five bodily
+senses registered and methodized. But what are these five senses?
+According to physical science itself, nerves in a certain stage of
+evolution. Why then should it be assumed that their account of the
+universe, or of our relations to it, is exhaustive and final? Why
+should it be assumed that these are the only possible organs of
+perception, and that no other faculties or means of communication with
+the universe can ever in the course of evolution be developed in man?
+Around us are animals absolutely unconscious, so far as we can discern,
+of that universe which Science has revealed to us. A sea anemone, if it
+can reflect, probably feels as confident that it perceives everything
+capable of being perceived as the man of science. The reasonable
+supposition, surely, is that though Science, so far as it goes, is real,
+and the guide of our present life, its relation to the sum of things is
+not much more considerable than that of the perceptions of the lower
+orders of animals. That our notions of the universe have been so vastly
+enlarged by the mere invention of astronomical instruments is enough in
+itself to suggest the possibility of further and infinitely greater
+enlargement. To our bodily senses, no doubt, and to physical science,
+which is limited by them, human existence seems to end with death; but
+if there is anything in our nature which tells us, with a distinctness
+and persistency equal to those of our sensible perceptions, that hope
+and responsibility extend beyond death, why is this assurance not as
+much to be trusted as that of the bodily sense itself? There is
+apparently no ultimate criterion of truth, whether physical or moral,
+except our inability, constituted as we are to believe otherwise; and
+this criterion seems to be satisfied by a universal and ineradicable
+moral conviction as well as by a universal and irresistible impression
+of sense.
+
+We are enjoined, some times with a vehemence approaching that of
+ecclesiastical anathema, to refuse to consider anything which lies
+beyond the range of experience. By experience is meant the perceptions
+of our bodily senses, the absolute completeness and finality of which,
+we must repeat, is an assumption, the warrant for which must at all
+events be produced from other authority than that of the senses
+themselves. On this ground we are called upon to discard, as worthy of
+nothing but derision, the ideas of eternity and infinity. But to
+dislodge these ideas from our minds is impossible; just as impossible as
+it is to dislodge any idea that has entered through the channels of the
+senses; and this being so, it is surely conceivable that they may not be
+mere illusions, but real extensions of our intelligence beyond the
+domain of mere bodily sense, indicating an upward progress of our
+nature. Of course if these ideas correspond to reality, physical
+science, though true as far as it goes, cannot be the whole truth, or
+even bear any considerable relation to the whole truth, since it
+necessarily presents Being as limited by space and time.
+
+Whither obedience to the dictates of the higher part of our nature will
+ultimately carry us, we may not be able, apart from Revelation, to say;
+but there seems no substantial reason for refusing to believe that it
+carries us towards a better state. Mere ignorance, arising from the
+imperfection of our perceptive powers, of the mode in which we shall
+pass into that better state, or of its precise relation to our present
+existence, cannot cancel an assurance, otherwise valid, of our general
+destiny. A transmutation of humanity, such as we can conceive to be
+brought about by the gradual prevalence of higher motives of action, and
+the gradual elimination thereby of what is base and brutish, is surely
+no more incredible than the actual development of humanity, as it is
+now, out of a lower animal form or out of inorganic matter.
+
+What the bearing of the automatic theory of human nature would be upon
+the hopes and aspirations of man, or on moral philosophy generally, it
+might be difficult, no doubt, to say. But has any one of the
+distinguished advocates of the automatic theory ever acted on it, or
+allowed his thoughts to be really ruled by it for a moment? What can be
+imagined more strange than an automaton suddenly becoming conscious of
+its own automatic character, reasoning and debating about it
+automatically, and coming automatically to the conclusion that the
+automatic theory of itself is true? Nor is there any occasion here to
+entangle ourselves in the controversy about Necessarianism. If the race
+can act progressively on higher and more unselfish motives, as history
+proves to be the fact, there can be nothing in the connection between
+our actions and their antecedents inconsistent with the ascent of man.
+Jonathan Edwards is undoubtedly right in maintaining that there is a
+connection between every human action and its antecedents. But the
+nature of the connection remains a mystery. We learn its existence not
+from inspection, but from consciousness, and this same consciousness
+tells us that the connection is not such as to preclude the existence of
+liberty of choice, moral aspiration, moral effort, moral responsibility,
+which are the contradictories of Necessarianism. The terms _cause and
+effect_, and others of that kind, which the imperfection of
+psychological language compels us to use in speaking of the mental
+connection between action and its antecedents, are steeped from their
+employment in connection with physical science, in physical association,
+and the import with them into the moral sphere the notion of physical
+enchainment, for which the representations of consciousness, the sole
+authority, afford no warrant whatever.
+
+Another possible source of serious aberration, we venture to think, will
+be found in the misapplication of the doctrine of _survivals_. Some
+lingering remains of its rudimentary state in the shape of primaeval
+superstitions or fancies continue to adhere to a developed, and matured
+belief; and hence it is inferred, or at least the inference is
+suggested, that the belief itself is nothing but a "survival," and
+destined in the final triumph of reason to pass away. The belief in the
+immortality of the soul, for example, is found still connected in the
+lower and less advanced minds with primaeval superstitions and fancies
+about ghosts and other physical manifestations of the spirit world, as
+well as with funeral rites and modes of burial indicating irrational
+notions as to the relations of the body to the spirit. But neither these
+nor any special ideas as to the nature of future rewards and punishments
+or the mode of transition from the present to the future state, are
+really essential parts of the belief. They are the rudimentary
+imaginations and illusions of which the rational belief is gradually
+working itself clear. The basis of the rational belief in the
+immortality of the soul, or, to speak more correctly, in the continuance
+of our spiritual existence after death is the conviction, common, so far
+as we know, to all the higher portions of humanity, and apparently
+ineradicable, that our moral responsibility extends beyond the grave;
+that we do not by death terminate the consequences of our actions, or
+our relations to those to whom we have done good or evil; and that to
+die the death of the righteous is better than to have lived a life of
+pleasure even with the approbation of an undiscerning world. So far from
+growing weaker, this conviction appears to grow practically stronger
+among the most highly educated and intelligent of mankind, though they
+may have cast off the last remnant of primitive or medieval
+superstition, and though they may have ceased to profess belief in any
+special form of the doctrine. The Comtists certainly have not got rid of
+it, since they have devised a subjective immortality with a retributive
+distinction between the virtuous and the wicked; to say nothing of their
+singular proposal that the dead should be formally judged by the
+survivors, and buried, according to the judgment passed upon them, in
+graves of honour or disgrace.
+
+With regard to religion generally there is the same tendency to
+exaggerate the significance of "survivals," and to neglect, on the other
+hand, the phenomena of disengagement. Because the primitive fables and
+illusions which long adhere to religion are undeniably dying out, it is
+asserted, or suggested, that religion itself is dying. Religion is
+identified with mythology. But mythology is merely the primaeval matrix
+of religion. Mythology is the embodiment of man's childlike notions as
+to the universe in which he finds himself, and the powers which for good
+or evil influence his lot; and, when analysed, it is found beneath all
+its national variations to be merely based upon a worship of the sun,
+the moon, and the forces of Nature. Religion is the worship and service
+of a moral God and a God who is worshipped and served by virtue. We can
+distinctly see, in Greek literature for instance, religion disengaging
+itself from mythology. In Homer the general element is mythology,
+capable of being rendered more or less directly into simple nature-
+worship, childish, non-moral, and often immoral. But when Hector says
+that he holds omens of no account, and that the best omen of all is to
+fight for one's country, he shows an incipient reliance on a Moral
+Power. The disengagement of religion from mythology is of course much
+further advanced and more manifest when we come to Plato; while the
+religious faith, instead of being weaker, has become infinitely
+stronger, and is capable of supporting the life and the martyrdom of
+Socrates. When Socrates and Plato reject the Homeric mythology, it is
+not because they are sceptics but because Homer is a child.
+
+But it is in the Old Testament that the process of disengagement and the
+growth of a moral out of a ceremonial religion are most distinctly
+seen:--
+
+  "'Wherewith shall I come before Jahveh,
+  And bow myself down before God on high?
+  Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
+  With the sacrifice of calves of a year old?
+  --Will Jahveh be pleased with thousands of rams,
+  With ten thousands of rivers of oil?
+  Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,
+  The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?'
+  '--He hath showed thee, O man, what is good,
+  And what Jahveh doth require of thee;
+  What but to do justly to love mercy,
+  And to walk humbly with thy God?'"
+
+Here no doubt is a belief in the efficacy of sacrifice, even of human
+sacrifice, even of the sacrifice of the first-born. But it is a receding
+and dying belief; while the belief in the power of justice, mercy,
+humility, moral religion in short, is prevailing over it and taking its
+place.
+
+So it is again in the New Testament with regard to spiritual life and
+the miraculous. Spiritual life commenced in a world full of belief in
+the miraculous, and it did not at once break with that belief. But it
+threw the miraculous into the background and anticipated its decline,
+presaging that it would lose its importance and give place finally to
+the spiritual. "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels,
+and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling
+cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all
+mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I
+could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.... Charity
+never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether
+there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall
+vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that
+which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done
+away." Clearly the writer of this believes in prophecies, in tongues, in
+mysteries. But clearly, also, he regards them as both secondary and
+transient, while he regards charity as primary and eternal.
+
+It may be added that the advent of spiritual life did at once produce a
+change in the character of the miraculous itself, divested it of its
+fantastic extravagance, and infused into it a moral element. The Gospel
+miracles, almost without exception, have a moral significance, and can
+without incongruity be made the text of moral discourses to this day. An
+attempt to make Hindoo or Greek miracles the text of moral discourses
+would produce strange results.
+
+Compared with the tract of geological, and still more with that of
+astronomical time, spiritual life has not been long in our world; and we
+need not wonder if the process of disengagement from the environments of
+the previous state of humanity is as yet far from complete Political
+religions and persecution, for instance, did not come into the world
+with Christ; they are survivals of an earlier stage of human progress.
+The Papacy, the great political Church of mediaeval Europe, is the
+historical continuation of the State religion of Rome and the
+Pontificate of the Roman emperors. The Greek Church is the historical
+continuation of the Eastern offset of the same system. The national
+State Churches are the historical continuations of the tribal religions
+and priesthoods of the Northern tribes. We talk of the conversion of the
+Barbarians, but in point of fact it was the chief of the tribe that was
+converted, or rather that changed his religious allegiance, sometimes by
+treaty (as in the case of Guthrum), and carried his tribe with him into
+the allegiance of the new God. Hence the new religion, like the old, was
+placed upon the footing of a tribal, and afterwards of a state,
+religion; heresy was treason; and the state still lent the aid of the
+secular arm to the national priesthood for the repression of rebellion
+against the established faith. But since the Reformation the process of
+disengagement has been rapidly going on; and in the North American
+communities, which are the latest developments of humanity, the
+connection between Church and State has ceased to exist, without any
+diminution of the strength of the religious sentiment
+
+Whether there is anything deserving of attention in these brief remarks
+or not, one thing may safely be affirmed: it is time that the question
+as to the existence of a rational basis for religion and the reality of
+spiritual life should be studied, not merely with a view of overthrowing
+the superstitions of the past, but of providing, if possible, a faith
+for the present and the future. The battle of criticism and science
+against superstition has been won, as every open-minded observer of the
+contest must be aware, though the remnants of the broken host still
+linger on the field. It is now time to consider whether religion must
+perish with superstition, or whether the death of superstition may not
+be the new birth of religion. Religion survived the fall of Polytheism;
+it is surely conceivable that it may survive the fall of
+Anthropomorphism, and that the desperate struggle which is being waged
+about the formal belief in "Personality," may be merely the sloughing
+off of something that when it is gone, will be seen to have not been
+vital to religion.
+
+There are some who would deter us from inquiring into anything beyond
+the range of sensible experience, and especially from any inquiry into
+the future existence of the soul, which they denounce as utterly
+unpractical, and compare with obsolete and fruitless inquiries into the
+state of the soul before birth. We have already challenged the exclusive
+claim of the five bodily senses to be the final sources of knowledge;
+and we may surely add that it is at least as practical to inquire into
+the destiny as it is to inquire into the origin of man.
+
+If the belief in God and in a Future State is true, it will prevail. The
+cloud will pass away and the sun will shine out again. But in the
+meantime society may have "a bad quarter of an hour." Without
+exaggerating the influence of the belief in Future Reward and
+Punishment, or of any form of it, on the actions of ordinary men, we may
+safely say that the sense of responsibility to a higher power, and of
+the constant presence of an all-seeing Judge, has exercised an
+influence, the removal of which would be greatly felt. Materialism has
+in fact already begun to show its effects on human conduct and on
+society. They may perhaps be more visible in communities where social
+conduct depends greatly on individual conviction and motive, than in
+communities which are more ruled by tradition and bound together by
+strong class organizations; though the decay of morality will perhaps be
+ultimately more complete and disastrous in the latter than in the
+former. God and future retribution being out of the question, it is
+difficult to see what can restrain the selfishness of an ordinary man,
+and induce him, in the absence of actual coercion, to sacrifice his
+personal desires to the public good. The service of Humanity is the
+sentiment of a refined mind conversant with history; within no
+calculable time is it likely to overrule the passions and direct the
+conduct of the mass. And after all, without God or spirit, what is
+"Humanity"? One school of science reckons a hundred and fifty different
+species of man. What is the bond of unity between all these species and
+wherein consists the obligation to mutual love and help? A zealous
+servant of science told Agassiz that the age of real civilization would
+have begun when you could go out and shoot a man for scientific
+purposes. _Apparent dirae facies_. We begin to perceive, looming
+through the mist, the lineaments of an epoch of selfishness compressed
+by a government of force.
+
+
+
+
+PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION
+
+
+There appears to be a connection between the proposed substitutes for
+religion and the special training of their several authors. Historians
+tender us the worship of Humanity, professors of physical science tender
+us Cosmic Emotion. Theism might almost retort the apologue of the
+specter of the Brocken.
+
+The only organized cultus without a God, at present before us, is that
+of Comte. This in all its parts--its high priesthood, its hierarchy, its
+sacraments, its calendar, its hagiology, its literary canon, its
+ritualism, and we may add, in its fundamentally intolerant and
+inquisitorial character--is an obvious reproduction of the Church of
+Rome, with humanity in place of God, great men in place of the saints,
+the Founder of Comtism in place of the Founder of Christianity, and even
+a sort of substitute for the Virgin in the shape of womanhood typified
+by Clotilde de Vaux. There is only just the amount of difference which
+would be necessary in order to escape servile imitation. We have
+ourselves witnessed a case of alternation between the two systems which
+testified to the closeness of their affinity. The Catholic Church has
+acted on the imagination of Comte at least as powerfully as Sparta acted
+on that of Plato. Nor is Comtism, any more than Plato's _Republic_
+and other Utopias, exempt from the infirmity of claiming finality for a
+flight of the individual imagination. It would shut up mankind for ever
+in a stereotyped organization which is the vision of a particular
+thinker. In this respect it seems to us to be at a disadvantage compared
+with Christianity, which, as presented, in the Gospels, does not pretend
+to organize mankind ecclesiastically or politically, but simply supplies
+a new type of character, and a new motive power, leaving government,
+ritual and organization of every kind to determine themselves from age
+to age. Comte's prohibition of inquiry into the composition of the
+stars, which his priesthood, had it been installed in power, would
+perhaps have converted into a compulsory article of faith, is only a
+specimen of his general tendency (the common tendency, as we have said,
+of all Utopias) to impose on human progress the limits of his own mind.
+Let his hierarchy become masters of the world, and the effect would
+probably be like that produced by the ascendency of a hierarchy
+(enlightened no doubt for its time) in Egypt, a brief start forward
+followed by consecrated immobility for ever.
+
+Lareveillere Lepaux, a member of the French Directory, invented a new
+religion of Theo-philanthropy which seems in fact to have been an
+organized Rousseauism. He wished to impose it on France but finding that
+in spite of his passionate endeavours he made but little progress he
+sought the advice of Talleyrand. "I am not surprised" said Talleyrand
+"at the difficulty you experience. It is no easy matter to introduce a
+new religion. But I will tell you what I recommend you to do. I
+recommend you to be crucified and to rise again on the third day." We
+cannot say whether Lareveillere made any proselytes but if he did their
+number cannot have been much smaller than the reputed number of the
+religious disciples of Comte. As a philosophy, Comtism has found its
+place and exercised its share of influence among the philosophies of the
+time but as a religious system it appears to make little way. It is the
+invention of a man not the spontaneous expression of the beliefs and
+feelings of mankind. Any one with a tolerably lively imagination might
+produce a rival system with as little practical effect. Roman
+Catholicism was at all events a growth not an invention.
+
+Cosmic Emotion, though it does not affect to be an organized system, is
+the somewhat sudden creation of individual minds set at work apparently
+by the exigencies of a particular situation and on that account
+suggestive _prima facie_ of misgivings similar to those suggested
+by the invention of Comte.
+
+Now is the worship of Humanity or Cosmic Emotion really a substitute for
+religion? That is the only question which we wish in these few pages to
+ask. We do not pretend here to inquire what is or what is not true in
+itself.
+
+Religion teaches that we have our being in a Power whose character and
+purposes are indicated to us by our moral nature, in whom we are united
+and by the union made sacred to each other, whose voice conscience
+however generated, is whose eye is always upon us, sees all our acts,
+and sees them as they are morally, without reference to worldly success
+or to the opinion of the world, to whom at death we return, and our
+relations to whom, together with his own nature, are an assurance that
+according as we promote or fail to promote his design by self
+improvement and the improvement of our kind, it will be well or ill for
+us in the sum of things. This is a hypothesis evidently separable from
+belief in a revelation, and from any special theory respecting the next
+world, as well as from all dogma and ritual. It may be true or false in
+itself, capable of demonstration or incapable. We are concerned here
+solely with its practical efficiency, compared with that of the proposed
+substitutes. It is only necessary to remark, that there is nothing about
+the religious hypothesis as here stated, miraculous, supernatural, or
+mysterious, except so far as those epithets may be applied to anything
+beyond the range of bodily sense, say the influence of opinion or
+affection. A universe self-made, and without a God, is at least as great
+a mystery as a universe with a God; in fact the very attempt to conceive
+it in the mind produces a moral vertigo which is a bad omen for the
+practical success of Cosmic Emotion.
+
+For this religion are the service and worship of Humanity likely to be a
+real equivalent in any respect, as motive power, as restraint, or as
+comfort? Will the idea of life in God be adequately replaced by that of
+an interest in the condition and progress of Humanity, as they may
+affect us and be influenced by our conduct, together with the hope of
+human gratitude and fear of human reprobation after death, which the
+Comtists endeavor to organize into a sort of counterpart of the Day of
+Judgment?
+
+It will probably be at once conceded that the answer must be in the
+negative as regards the immediate future and the mass of mankind. The
+simple truths of religion are intelligible to all, and strike all minds
+with equal force, though they may not have the same influence with all
+moral natures. A child learns them perfectly at its mother's knee.
+Honest ignorance in the mine, on the sea, at the forge, striving to do
+its coarse and perilous duty, performing the lowliest functions of
+humanity, contributing in the humblest way to human progress, itself
+scarcely sunned by a ray of what more cultivated natures would deem
+happiness, takes in as fully as the sublimest philosopher the idea of a
+God who sees and cares for all, who keeps account of the work well done
+or the kind act, marks the secret fault, and will hereafter make up to
+duty for the hardness of its present lot. But a vivid interest--such an
+interest as will act both as a restraint and as a comfort--in the
+condition and future of humanity can surely exist only in those who have
+a knowledge of history sufficient to enable them to embrace the unity of
+the past, and an imagination sufficiently cultivated to glow with
+anticipation of the future. For the bulk of mankind the humanity
+worshippers point of view seems unattainable at least within any
+calculable time.
+
+As to posthumous reputation good or evil it is and always must be the
+appendage of a few marked men. The plan of giving it substance by
+instituting separate burial places for the virtuous and the wicked is
+perhaps not very seriously proposed. Any such plan involves the fallacy
+of a sharp division where there is no clear moral line besides
+postulating not only an unattainable knowledge of men's actions but a
+knowledge still more manifestly unattainable of their hearts. Yet we
+cannot help thinking that on the men of intellect to whose teaching the
+world is listening this hope of posthumous reputation, or to put it more
+plainly, of living in the gratitude and affection of their kind by means
+of their scientific discoveries and literary works exercises an
+influence of which they are hardly conscious, it prevents them from
+fully feeling the void which the annihilation of the hope of future
+existence leaves in the hearts of ordinary men.
+
+Besides so far as we are aware no attempt has yet been made to show us
+distinctly what humanity is and wherein its holiness consists. If the
+theological hypothesis is true and all men are united in God, humanity
+is a substantial reality, but otherwise we fail to see that it is any
+thing more than a metaphysical abstraction converted into an actual
+entity by philosophers who are not generally kind to metaphysics. Even
+the unity of the species is far from settled, science still debates
+whether there is one race of men or whether there are more than a
+hundred. Man acts on man no doubt, but he also acts on other animals,
+and other animals on him. Wherein does the special unity or the special
+bond consist? Above all what constitutes the holiness? Individual men
+are not holy, a large proportion of them are very much the reverse. Why
+is the aggregate holy? Let the unit be a complex phenomenon, an organism
+or whatever name science may give it, what multiple of it will be a
+rational object of worship?
+
+For our own part we cannot conceive worship being offered by a sane
+worshipper to any but a conscious being, in other words to a person. The
+fetish worshipper himself probably invests his fetish with a vague
+personality such as would render it capable of propitiation. But how
+can we invest with a collective personality the fleeting generations of
+mankind? Even the sum of mankind is never complete, much less are the
+units blended into a personal whole, or as it has been called a colossal
+man.
+
+There is a gulf here, as it seems to us, which cannot be bridged, and
+can barely be hidden from view by the retention of religious
+phraseology. In truth, the anxious use of that phraseology betrays
+weakness, since it shows that you cannot do without the theological
+associations which cling inseparably to religious terms.
+
+You look forward to a closer union, a more complete brotherhood of man,
+an increased sacredness of the human relation. Some things point that
+way; some things point the other way. Brotherhood has hardly a definite
+meaning without a father; sacredness can hardly be predicated without
+anything which consecrates. We can point to an eminent writer who tells
+you that he detests the idea of brotherly love altogether; that there
+are many of his kind whom, so far from loving, he hates, and that he
+would like to write his hatred with a lash upon their backs. Look again
+at the severe Prussianism which betrays itself in the New Creed of
+Strauss. Look at the oligarchy of enlightenment and enjoyment which
+Renan, in his _Moral Reform of France_, proposes to institute for
+the benefit of a select circle, with sublime indifference to the lot of
+the vulgar, who, he says, "must subsist on the glory and happiness of
+others." This does not look much like a nearer approach to a brotherhood
+of man than is made by the Gospel. We are speaking, of course, merely of
+the comparative moral efficiency of religion and the proposed
+substitutes for it, apart from the influence exercised over individual
+conduct by the material needs and other non-theological forces of
+society.
+
+For the immortality of the individual soul, with the influences of that
+belief, we are asked to substitute the immortality of the race. But
+here, in addition to the difficulty of proving the union and
+intercommunion of all the members, we are met by the objection that
+unless we live in God, the race, in all probability, is not immortal.
+That our planet and all it contains will come to an end appears to be
+the decided opinion of science. This "holy" being, our relation to which
+is to take the place of our relation to an Eternal Father, by the
+adoration of which we are to be sustained and controlled, if it exist at
+all, is as ephemeral compared with eternity as a fly. We shall be told
+that we ought to be content with an immortality extending through tens
+of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of years. To the
+_argumentum ad verecundiam_ there is no reply. But will this banish
+the thought of ultimate annihilation? Will it prevent a man, when he is
+called upon to make some great sacrifice for the race, from saying to
+himself, that, whether he makes the sacrifice or not, one day all will
+end in nothing?
+
+Evidently these are points which must be made quite clear before you
+can, with any prospect of success, call upon men either to regard
+Humanity with the same feelings with which they have regarded God, or to
+give up their own interest or enjoyment for the future benefit of the
+race. The assurance derived from the fondness felt by parents for their
+offspring, and the self-denying efforts made for the good of children,
+will hardly carry us very far, even supposing it certain that parental
+love would remain unaffected by the general change. It is evidently a
+thing apart from the general love of Humanity. Nobody was ever more
+extravagantly fond of his children, or made greater efforts for them,
+than Alexander Borgia.
+
+It has been attempted, however, with all the fervour of conviction, and
+with all the force of a powerful style, to make us see not only that we
+have this corporal immortality as members of the "colossal man," but
+that we may look forward to an actual though impersonal existence in the
+shape of the prolongation through all future time of the consequences of
+our lives. It might with equal truth be said that we have enjoyed an
+actual though impersonal existence through all time past in our
+antecedents. But neither in its consequences nor in its antecedents can
+anything be said to live except by a figure. The characters and actions
+of men surely will never be influenced by such a fanciful use of
+language as this! Our being is consciousness; with consciousness our
+being ends, though our physical forces may be conserved, and traces of
+our conduct--traces utterly indistinguishable--may remain. That with
+which we are not concerned cannot affect us either presently or by
+anticipation; and with that of which we shall never be conscious, we
+shall never feel that we are concerned. Perhaps if the authors of this
+new immortality would tell us what they understand by non-existence, we
+might be led to value more highly by contrast the existence which they
+propose for a soul when it has ceased to think or feel, and for an
+organism when it has been scattered to the winds.
+
+They would persuade us that their impersonal and unconscious immortality
+is a brighter hope than an eternity of personal and conscious existence,
+the very thought of which they say is torture. This assumes, what there
+seems to be no ground for assuming, that eternity is an endless
+extension of time; and, in the same way, that infinity is a boundless
+space. It is more natural to conceive of them as emancipation
+respectively from time and space, and from the conditions which time and
+space involve; and among the conditions of time may apparently be
+reckoned the palling of pleasure or of existence by mere temporal
+protraction. Even as we are, sensual pleasure palls; so does the merely
+intellectual: but can the same be said of the happiness of virtue and
+affection? It is urged, too, that by exchanging the theological
+immortality for one of physical and social consequences, we get rid of
+the burden of self, which otherwise we should drag for ever. But surely
+in this there is a confusion of self with selfishness. Selfishness is
+another name for vice. Self is merely consciousness. Without a self, how
+can there be self-sacrifice? How can the most unselfish motive exist if
+there is nothing to be moved? "He that findeth his life, shall lose it;
+and he that loseth his life, shall find it," is not a doctrine of
+selfishness, but it implies a self. We have been rebuked in the words of
+Frederick to his grenadiers--"Do you want to live for ever?" The
+grenadiers might have answered, "Yes; and therefore we are ready to
+die."
+
+It is not when we think of the loss of anything to which a taint of
+selfishness can adhere--it is not even when we think of intellectual
+effort cut short for ever by death just as the intellect has ripened and
+equipped itself with the necessary knowledge--that the nothingness of
+this immortality of conservated forces is most keenly felt: it is when
+we think of the miserable end of affection. How much comfort would it
+afford anyone bending over the deathbed of his wife to know that forces
+set free by her dissolution will continue to mingle impersonally and
+indistinguishably with forces set free by the general mortality?
+Affection, at all events, requires personality. One cannot love a group
+of consequences, even supposing that the filiation could be distinctly
+presented to the mind. Pressed by the hand of sorrow craving for
+comfort, this Dead Sea fruit crumbles into ashes, paint it with
+eloquence as you will.
+
+Humanity, it seems to us, is a fundamentally Christian idea, connected
+with the Christian view of the relations of men to their common Father
+and of their spiritual union in the Church. In the same way the idea of
+the progress of Humanity seems to us to have been derived from the
+Christian belief in the coming of the Kingdom of God through the
+extension of the Church, and to that final triumph of good over evil
+foretold in the imagery of the Apocalypse. At least the founders of the
+Religion of Humanity will admit that the Christian Church is the matrix
+of theirs so much their very nomenclature proves and we would fain ask
+them to review the process of disengagement and see whether the essence
+has not been left behind.
+
+No doubt there are influences at work in modern civilisation which tend
+to the strengthening of the sentiment of humanity by making men more
+distinctly conscious of their position as members of a race. On the
+other hand the unreflecting devotion of the tribesman which held
+together primitive societies dies. Man learns to reason and calculate
+and when he is called upon to immolate himself to the common interest of
+the race he will consider what the common interest of the race when he
+is dead and gone will be to him and whether he will ever be repaid for
+his sacrifice.
+
+Of Cosmic Emotion it will perhaps be fair to say that it is proposed as
+a substitute for religious emotion rather than as a substitute for
+religion since nothing has been said about embodying it in a cult. It
+comes to us commended by glowing quotations from Mr. Swinburne and Walt
+Whitman and we cannot help admitting that for common hearts it stands in
+need of the commendation. The transfer of affection from an all loving
+Father to an adamantine universe is a process for which we may well seek
+all the aid that the witchery of poetry can supply. Unluckily we are
+haunted by the consciousness that the poetry itself is blindly ground
+out by the same illimitable mill of evolution which grinds out Virtue
+and affection. We are by no means sure that we understand what Cosmic
+Emotion is even after leading an exposition of its nature by no ungifted
+hand. Its symbola so to speak are the feelings produced by the two
+objects of Kant's peculiar reverence--the stars of heaven and the moral
+faculty of man. But after all these are only like anything else
+aggregations of molecules in a certain stage of evolution. To the
+unscientific eye they may be awful because they are mysterious, but let
+science analyse them and then awfulness disappears. If the interaction
+of all parts of the material universe is complete we fail to see why one
+object or one feeling is more cosmic than another. However we will not
+dwell on that which as we have already confessed we do not feel sure
+that we rightly apprehend. What we do clearly see is that to have cosmic
+emotion or cosmic anything you must have a cosmos. You must be assured
+that the universe is a cosmos and not a chaos. And what assurance of
+this can materialism or any non theological system give? Law is a
+theological term, it implies a lawgiver or a governing intelligence of
+some kind. Science can tell us nothing but facts, single or accumulated
+as experience, which would not make a law though they had been observed
+through myriads of years. Law is a theological term, and cosmos is
+equally so, if it may not rather be said to be a Greek name for the
+aggregate of laws. For order implies intelligent selection and
+arrangement. Our idea of order would not be satisfied by a number of
+objects falling by mere chance into a particular figure, however
+intricate and regular. All the arguments which have been used against
+design seem to tell with equal force against order. We have no other
+universe wherewith we can compare this, so as to assure ourselves that
+this universe is not a chaos, but a cosmos. Both on the earth and in the
+heavens we see much that is not order, but disorder; not cosmos, but
+acosmia. If we divine, nevertheless, that order reigns, and that there
+is design beneath the seemingly undesigned, and good beneath the
+appearance of evil, it is by virtue of something not dreamed of in the
+philosophy of materialism.
+
+Have we really come to this, that the world has no longer any good
+reason for believing in a God or a life beyond the grave? If so, it is
+difficult to deny that with regard to the great mass of mankind up to
+this time Schopenhauer and the Pessimists are right, and existence has
+been a cruel misadventure. The number of those who have suffered
+lifelong oppression, disease, or want, who have died deaths of torture
+or perished miserably by war, is limited though enormous; but probably
+there have been few lives in which the earthly good has not been
+outweighed by the evil. The future may bring increased means of
+happiness, though those who are gone will not be the better for them;
+but it will bring also increase of sensibility, and the consciousness of
+hopeless imperfection and miserable futility will probably become a
+distinct and growing cause of pain. It is doubtful even whether, after
+such a raising of Mokanna's veil, faith in everything would not expire
+and human effort cease. Still we must face the situation: there can be
+no use in self-delusion. In vain we shall seek to cheat our souls and to
+fill a void which cannot be filled by the manufacture of artificial
+religions and the affectation of a spiritual language to which, however
+persistently and fervently it may be used, no realities correspond. If
+one of these cults could get itself established, in less than a
+generation it would become hollower than the hollowest of
+ecclesiasticisms. Probably not a few of the highest natures would
+withdraw themselves from the dreary round of self mockery by suicide,
+and if a scientific priesthood attempted to close that door by
+sociological dogma or posthumous denunciation the result would show the
+difference between the practical efficacy of a religion with a God and
+that of a cult of "Humanity" or "Space."
+
+Shadows and figments, as they appear to us to be in themselves these
+attempts to provide a substitute for religion are of the highest
+importance, as showing that men of great powers of mind, who have
+thoroughly broken loose not only from Christianity but from natural
+religion and in some cases placed themselves in violent antagonism to
+both, are still unable to divest themselves of the religious sentiment
+or to appease its craving for satisfaction. There being no God, they
+find it necessary, as Voltaire predicted it would be, to invent one, not
+for the purposes of police (they are far above such sordid Jesuitism),
+but as the solution of the otherwise hopeless enigma of our spiritual
+nature. Science takes cognizance of all phenomena, and this apparently
+ineradicable tendency of the human mind is a phenomenon like the rest.
+The thoroughgoing Materialist, of course, escapes all these
+philosophical exigencies, but he does it by denying Humanity as well as
+God and reducing the difference between the organism of the human animal
+and that of any other animal to a mere question of complexity. Still,
+even in this quarter, there has appeared of late a disposition to make
+concessions on the subject of human volition hardly consistent with
+Materialism. Nothing can be more likely than that the impetus of great
+discoveries has carried the discoverers too far.
+
+Perhaps with the promptings of the religious sentiment there is combined
+a sense of the immediate danger with which the failure of the religious
+sanction threatens social order and morality. As we have said already,
+the men of whom we specially speak are far above anything like social
+Jesuitism. We have not a doubt but they would regard with abhorrence any
+schemes of oligarchic illuminism for guarding the pleasures of the few
+by politic deception of the multitude. But they have probably begun to
+lay to heart the fact that the existing morality, though not dependent
+on any special theology, any special view of the relations between soul
+and body, or any special theory of future rewards and punishments, is
+largely dependent on a belief in the indefeasible authority of
+conscience, and in that without which conscience can have no
+indefeasible authority--the presence of a just and all-seeing God. It
+may be true that in primaeval society these beliefs are found only in the
+most rudimentary form, and, as social sanctions, are very inferior in
+force to mere gregarious instincts or the pressure of tribal need. But
+man emerges from the primaeval state, and when he does, he demands a
+reason for his submission to moral law. That the leaders of the anti-
+theological movement in the present day are immoral, nobody but the most
+besotted fanatic would insinuate; no candid antagonist would deny that
+some of them are in every respect the very best of men. The fearless
+love of truth is usually accompanied by other high qualities; and
+nothing could be more unlikely than that natures disposed to virtue,
+trained under good influences, peculiarly sensitive to opinion and
+guarded by intellectual tastes, would lapse into vice as soon as the
+traditional sanction was removed. But what is to prevent the withdrawal
+of the traditional sanction from producing its natural effect upon the
+morality of the mass of mankind? The commercial swindler or the
+political sharper, when the divine authority of conscience is gone, will
+feel that he has only the opinion of society to reckon with, and he
+knows how to reckon with the opinion of society. If Macbeth is ready,
+provided he can succeed in this world, to "jump the life to come," much
+more ready will villainy be to "jump" the bad consequences of its
+actions to humanity when its own conscious existence shall have closed.
+Rate the practical effect of religious beliefs as low and that of social
+influences as high as you may, there can surely be no doubt that
+morality has received some support from the authority of an inward
+monitor regarded as the voice of God. The worst of men would have wished
+to die the death of the righteous; he would have been glad, if he could,
+when death approached, to cancel his crimes; and the conviction, or
+misgiving, which this implied, could not fail to have some influence
+upon the generality of mankind, though no doubt the influence was
+weakened rather than strengthened by the extravagant and incredible form
+in which the doctrine of future retribution was presented by the
+dominant theology.
+
+The denial of the existence of God and of a Future State, in a word, is
+the dethronement of conscience; and society will pass, to say the least,
+through a dangerous interval before social science can fill the vacant
+throne. Avowed scepticism is likely to be disinterested and therefore to
+be moral; it is among the unavowed sceptics and conformists to political
+religions that the consequences of the change may be expected to appear.
+
+But more than this, the doctrines of Natural Selection and the Survival
+of the Fittest are beginning to generate a morality of their own, with
+the inevitable corollary that the proof of superior fitness is to
+survive--to survive either by force or cunning, like the other animals
+which by dint of force or cunning have come out victorious from the
+universal war and asserted for themselves a place in nature. The
+"irrepressible struggle for empire" is formally put forward by public
+writers of the highest class as the basis and the rule of the conduct of
+this country towards other nations; and we may be sure that there is not
+an entire absence of connection between the private code of a school and
+its international conceptions. The feeling that success covers
+everything seems to be gaining ground and to be overcoming, not merely
+the old conventional rules of honour, but moral principle itself. Both
+in public and private there are symptoms of an approaching failure of
+the motive power which has hitherto sustained men both in self-
+sacrificing effort and in courageous protest against wrong, though as
+yet we are only at the threshold of the great change, and established
+sentiment long survives, in the masses, that which originally gave it
+birth. Renan says, probably with truth, that had the Second Empire
+remained at peace, it might have gone on forever; and in the history of
+this country the connection between political effort and religion has
+been so close that its dissolution, to say the least, can hardly fail to
+produce a critical change in the character of the nation. The time may
+come, when, as philosophers triumphantly predict, men, under the
+ascendancy of science, will act for the common good, with the same
+mechanical certainty as bees; though the common good of the human hive
+would perhaps not be easy to define. But in the meantime mankind, or
+some portions of it, may be in danger of an anarchy of self-interest,
+compressed for the purpose of political order, by a despotism of force.
+
+That science and criticism, acting--thanks to the liberty of opinion won
+by political effort--with a freedom never known before, have delivered
+us from a mass of dark and degrading superstitions, we own with
+heartfelt thankfulness to the deliverers, and in the firm conviction
+that the removal of false beliefs, and of the authorities or
+institutions founded on them, cannot prove in the end anything but a
+blessing to mankind. But at the same time the foundations of general
+morality have inevitably been shaken, and a crisis has been brought on
+the gravity of which nobody can fail to see, and nobody but a fanatic of
+Materialism can see without the most serious misgiving.
+
+There has been nothing in the history of man like the present situation.
+The decadence of the ancient mythologies is very far from affording a
+parallel. The connection of those mythologies with morality was
+comparatively slight. Dull and half-animal minds would hardly be
+conscious of the change which was partly veiled from them by the
+continuance of ritual and state creeds; while in the minds of Plato and
+Marcus Aurelius it made place for the development of a moral religion.
+The Reformation was a tremendous earthquake: it shook down the fabric of
+mediaeval religion, and as a consequence of the disturbance in the
+religious sphere filled the world with revolutions and wars. But it left
+the authority of the Bible unshaken, and men might feel that the
+destructive process had its limit, and that adamant was still beneath
+their feet. But a world which is intellectual and keenly alive to the
+significance of these questions, reading all that is written about them
+with almost passionate avidity, finds itself brought to a crisis the
+character of which any one may realize by distinctly presenting to
+himself the idea of existence without a God.
+
+
+
+
+THE LABOUR MOVEMENT
+
+_(This Lecture was delivered before the Mechanics' Institute of
+Montreal, and the Literary Society of Sherbrooke, and published in the
+CANADIAN MONTHLY, December, 1872. The allusions to facts and events must
+be read with reference to the date.)_
+
+
+We are in the midst of an industrial war which is extending over Europe
+and the United States, and has not left Canada untouched. It is not
+wonderful that great alarm should prevail, or that, in panic-stricken
+minds, it should assume extravagant forms. London deprived of bread by a
+bakers' strike, or of fuel by a colliers' strike, is a serious prospect;
+so is the sudden stoppage of any one of the wheels in the vast and
+complicated machine of modern industry. People may be pardoned for
+thinking that they have fallen on evil times, and that they have a dark
+future before them. Yet, those who have studied industrial history know
+that the present disturbance is mild compared with the annals of even a
+not very remote past. The study of history shows us where we are, and
+whither things are tending. Though it does not diminish the difficulties
+of the present hour, it teaches us to estimate them justly, to deal with
+them calmly and not to call for cavalry and grapeshot because one
+morning we are left without hot bread.
+
+One of the literary janissaries of the French Empire thought to prove
+that the working class had no rights against the Bonapartes, by showing
+that the first free labourers were only emancipated slaves. One would
+like to know what he supposed the first Bonapartes were. However though
+his inference was not worth much, except against those who are pedantic
+enough, to vouch parchment archives for the rights and interests of
+humanity, he was in the right as to the fact. Labour first appears in
+history as a slave, treated like a beast of burden, chained to the door-
+post of a Roman master, or lodged in the underground manstables
+(ergastula) on his estate, treated like a beast, or worse than a beast,
+recklessly worked out and then cast forth to die, scourged, tortured,
+flung in a moment of passion to feed the lampreys, crucified for the
+slightest offence or none. "Set up a cross for the slave," cries the
+Roman matron, in, Juvenal. "Why, what has the slave done?" asks her
+husband.
+
+One day labour strikes; finds a leader in Spartacus, a slave devoted as
+a gladiator to the vilest of Roman pleasures; wages a long and terrible
+servile war. The revolt is put down at last, after shaking the
+foundations of the state. Six thousand slaves are crucified along the
+road from Rome to Capua. Labour had its revenge, for slavery brought the
+doom of Rome.
+
+In the twilight of history, between the fall of Rome and the rise of the
+new nationalities, we dimly see the struggle going on. There is a great
+insurrection of the oppressed peasantry, under the name of Bagaudae, in
+Gaul. When the light dawns, a step has been gained. Slavery has been
+generally succeeded by serfdom. But serfdom is hard. The peasantry of
+feudal Normandy conspire against their cruel lords, hold secret
+meetings, the ominous name _commune_ is heard. But the conspiracy
+is discovered and suppressed with the fiendish ferocity with which panic
+inspires a dominant class, whether in Normandy or Jamaica. Amidst the
+religious fervour of the Crusades again breaks out a wild labour
+movement, that of the Pastoureaux, striking for equality in the name of
+the Holy Spirit, which, perhaps, they had as good a right to use as some
+who deemed their use of it profane. This is in the country, among the
+shepherds and ploughmen. In the cities labour has congregated numbers,
+mutual intelligence, union on its side; it is constantly reinforced by
+fugitives from rural serfdom; it builds city walls, purchases or extorts
+charters of liberty. The commercial and manufacturing cities of Italy,
+Germany, Flanders, become the cradles of free industry, and, at the same
+time, of intellect, art, civilization. But these are points of light
+amidst the feudal darkness of the rural districts. In France, for
+example, the peasantry are cattle; in time of peace crushed with forced
+labour, feudal burdens, and imposts of all kinds; in time of war driven,
+in unwilling masses, half-armed and helpless, to the shambles.
+Aristocratic luxury, gambling, profligate wars--Jacques Bonhomme pays
+for them all. At Crecy and Poictiers, the lords are taken prisoners;
+have to provide heavy ransoms, which, being debts of honour, like
+gambling debts, are more binding than debts of honesty. But Jacques
+Bonhomme's back is broad, it will bear everything. Broad as it is, it
+will not bear this last straw. The tidings of Flemish freedom have,
+perhaps, in some way reached his dull ear, taught him that bondage is
+not, as his priest, no doubt, assures him it is, a changeless ordinance
+of God, that the yoke, though strong, may be broken. He strikes, arms
+himself with clubs, knives, ploughshares, rude pikes, breaks out into a
+Jacquerie, storms the castles of the oppressor, sacks, burns, slays with
+the fury of a wild beast unchained. The lords are stupefied. At last
+they rally and bring their armour, their discipline, their experience in
+war, the moral ascendency of a master-class to bear. The English
+gentlemen, in spite of the hostilities, only half suspended, between the
+nations, join the French gentlemen against the common enemy. Twenty
+thousand peasants are soon cut down, but long afterwards the butchery
+continues. Guillaume Callet, the leader of the Jacquerie, a very crafty
+peasant, as he is called by the organs of the lords, is crowned with a
+circlet of red-hot iron.
+
+In England, during the same period serfdom, we know not exactly how, is
+breaking up. There is a large body of labourers working for hire. But in
+the midst of the wars of the great conqueror, Edward III., comes a
+greater conqueror, the plague called the Black Death, which sweeps away,
+some think, a third of the population of Europe. The number of labourers
+is greatly diminished. Wages rise. The feudal parliament passes an Act
+to compel labourers, under penalties, to work at the old rates. This Act
+is followed by a train of similar Acts, limiting wages and fixing in the
+employers' interest the hours of work, which, in the pages of
+imaginative writers, figure as noble attempts made by legislators of a
+golden age to regulate the relations between employer and employed on
+some higher principle than that of contract. The same generous spirit,
+no doubt, dictated the enactment prohibiting farm labourers from
+bringing up their children to trades, lest hands should be withdrawn
+from the land-owner's service. Connected with the Statutes of Labourers,
+are those bloody vagrant laws, in which whipping, branding, hanging are
+ordained as the punishment of vagrancy by lawgivers, many of whom were
+themselves among the idlest and most noxious vagabonds in the country,
+and the authors of senseless wars which generated a mass of vagrancy, by
+filling the country with disbanded soldiers. In the reign of Richard
+II., the poll tax being added to other elements of class discord, labour
+strikes, takes arms under Wat Tyler, demands fixed rents, tenant right
+in an extreme form, and the total abolition of serfage. A wild religious
+communism bred of the preachings of the more visionary among the
+Wycliffites mingles in the movement with the sense of fiscal and
+industrial wrong. "When Adam delved and Eve span, where was then the
+gentleman?" is the motto of the villeins, and it is one of more
+formidable import than any utterance of peasant orators at Agricultural
+Labourers' meetings in the present day. Then come fearful scenes of
+confusion, violence and crime. London is in the power of hordes
+brutalized by oppression. High offices of state, high ecclesiastics are
+murdered. Special vengeance falls on the lawyers, as the artificers who
+forged the cunning chains of feudal iniquity. The rulers, the troops,
+are paralyzed by the aspect of the sea of furious savagery raging round
+them. The boy king, by a miraculous exhibition of courageous self-
+possession, saves the State; but he is compelled to grant general
+charters of manumission, which, when the danger is over, the feudal
+parliament forces him by a unanimous vote to repudiate. Wholesale
+hanging of serfs, of course, follows the landlords' victory.
+
+The rising under Jack Cade, in the reign of Henry VI., was rather
+political than industrial. The demands of the insurgents, political
+reform and freedom of suffrage, show that progress had been made in the
+condition and aspirations of the labouring class. But with the age of
+the Tudors came the final breakup in England of feudalism, as well as of
+Catholicism, attended by disturbances in the world of labour, similar to
+those which have attended the abolition of slavery in the Southern
+States. This is the special epoch of the sanguinary vagrancy laws, the
+most sanguinary of which was framed by the hand of Henry VIII. The new
+nobility of courtiers and upstarts, who had shared with the king the
+plunder of the monasteries, were hard landlords of course; they robbed
+the people of their rights of common, and swept away homesteads and
+cottages, to make room for sheep farms, the wool trade being the great
+source of wealth in those days. By the spoliation of the monasteries,
+the great alms-houses of the Middle Ages, the poor had also been left
+for a time without the relief, which was given them again in a more
+regular form by the Poor Law of Elizabeth. Hence in the reign of Edward
+VI., armed strikes again, in different parts of the kingdom. In the
+West, the movement was mainly religious; but in the Eastern countries,
+under Kett of Norfolk, it was agrarian. Kett's movement after a brief
+period of success, during which the behaviour of the insurgents and
+their leader was very creditable, was put down by the disciplined
+mercenaries under the command of the new aristocracy, and its
+suppression was of course followed by a vigorous use of the gallows. No
+doubt the industrial conservatives of those days were as frightened, as
+angry, and as eager for strong measures as their successors are now: but
+the awkwardness of the newly liberated captive, in the use of his limbs
+and eyes, is due not to his recovered liberty, but to the narrowness and
+darkness of the dungeon in which he has been immured.
+
+In Germany, at the same epoch, there was not merely a local rising, but
+a wide-spread and most terrible peasants' war. The German peasantry had
+been ground down beyond even an hereditary bondsman's power of endurance
+by their lords generally, and by the Prince Bishop and other spiritual
+lords in particular. The Reformation having come with a gospel of truth,
+love, spiritual brotherhood, the peasants thought it might also have
+brought some hope of social justice. The doctors of divinity had to
+inform them that this was a mistake. But they took the matter into their
+own hands and rose far and wide, the fury of social and industrial war
+blending with the wildest fanaticism, the most delirious ecstacy, the
+darkest imposture. Once more there are stormings and burnings of feudal
+castles, massacring of their lords. Lords are roasted alive, hunted like
+wild beasts in savage revenge for the cruelty of the game laws. Munzer,
+a sort of peasant Mahomet, is at the head of the movement. Under him it
+becomes Anabaptist, Antinomian, Communist. At first he and his followers
+sweep the country with a whirlwind of terror and destruction: but again
+the lords rally, bring up regular troops. The peasants are brought to
+bay on their last hill side, behind a rampart formed of their waggons.
+Their prophet assures them that the cannon-balls will fall harmless into
+his cloak. The cannon-balls take their usual course: a butchery, then a
+train of torturings and executions follows, the Prince Bishop, among
+others, adding considerably to the whiteness of the Church's robe.
+Luther is accused of having incited the ferocity of the lords against
+those, who, it is alleged, had only carried his own principles to an
+extreme. But in the first place Luther never taught Anabaptism or
+anything that could logically lead to it; and in the second place,
+before he denounced the peasants, he tried to mediate and rebuke the
+tyranny of the lords. No man deserves more sympathy than a great
+reformer, who is obliged to turn against the excesses of his own party.
+He becomes the object of fierce hatred on one side, of exulting derision
+on the other; yet he is no traitor, but alone loyal to his conscience
+and his cause.
+
+The French Revolution was a political movement among the middle class in
+the cities, but among the peasantry in the country it was an agrarian
+and labour movement, and the dismantling of chateaux, and chasing away
+of their lords which then took place were a renewal of the struggle
+which had given birth to the Jacquerie, the insurrection of Wat Tyler,
+and the Peasants' War. This time the victory remained with the peasant,
+and the lord returned no more.
+
+In England, long after the Tudor period, industrial disturbances took
+place, and wild communistic fancies welled up from the depths of a
+suffering world of labour, when society was stirred by political and
+religious revolution. Under the Commonwealth, communists went up on the
+hill side, and began to break ground for a poor man's Utopia; and the
+great movement of the Levellers, which had in it an economical as well
+as a political element, might have overturned society, if it had not
+been quelled by the strong hand of Cromwell. But in more recent times,
+within living memory, within the memory of many here there were labour
+disturbances in England, compared with which the present industrial war
+is mild. [Footnote: For the following details, see Martineau's "History
+of the Peace."] In 1816, there were outbreaks among the suffering
+peasantry which filled the governing classes with fear. In Suffolk
+nightly fires of incendiaries blazed in every district, thrashing
+machines were broken or burnt in open day, mills were attacked. At
+Brandon large bodies of workmen assembled to prescribe a maximum price
+of grain and meat, and to pull down the houses of butchers and bakers.
+They bore flags with the motto, "Bread or Blood". Insurgents from the
+Fen Country, a special scene of distress, assembled at Littleport,
+attacked the house of a magistrate in the night, broke open shops,
+emptied the cellars of public-houses, marched on Ely, and filled the
+district for two days and nights with drunken rioting and plunder. The
+soldiery was called in; there was an affray in which blood flowed on
+both sides, then a special commission and hangings to close the scene.
+Distressed colliers in Staffordshire and Wales assembled by thousands,
+stopped works, and were with difficulty diverted from marching to
+London. In 1812, another stain of blood was added to the sanguinary
+criminal code of those days by the Act making death the penalty for the
+destruction of machinery. This was caused by the Luddite outrages, which
+were carried on in the most systematic manner, and on the largest scale
+in Nottingham and the adjoining counties. Bodies of desperadoes, armed
+and disguised, went forth under a leader, styled General Ludd, who
+divided them into bands, and aligned to each band its work of
+destruction. Terror reigned around; the inhabitants were commanded to
+keep in their houses and put out their lights on pain of death. In the
+silence of night houses and factories were broken open, machines
+demolished, unfinished work scattered on the highways. The extent and
+secrecy of the conspiracy baffled the efforts of justice and the death
+penalty failed to put the system down. Even the attempts made to relieve
+distress became new sources of discontent and a soup kitchen riot at
+Glasgow led to a two days conflict between the soldiery and the mob. In
+1818, a threatening mass of Manchester spinners, on strike came into
+bloody collision with the military. Then there were rick burnings,
+farmers patrolling all night long, gibbets erected on Pennenden heath,
+and bodies swinging on them, bodies of boys, eighteen or nineteen years
+old. Six labourers of Dorsetshire, the most wretched county in England,
+were sentenced to seven years' transportation nominally for
+administering an illegal oath, really for Unionism. Thereupon all the
+trades made a menacing demonstration, marched to Westminster, thirty
+thousand strong, with a petition for the release of the labourers.
+London was in an agony of fear, the Duke of Wellington prepared for a
+great conflict, pouring in troops and bringing up artillery from
+Woolwich. In 1840, again there were formidable movements, and society
+felt itself on the crust of a volcano. Threatening letters were sent to
+masters, rewards offered for firing mills, workmen were beaten, driven
+out of the country, burned with vitriol, and, there was reason to fear,
+murdered. Great masses of operatives collected for purposes of
+intimidation, shopkeepers were pillaged, collisions again took place
+between the people and the soldiery. Irish agrarianism meanwhile
+prevailed, in a far more deadly form than at present. And these
+industrial disturbances were connected with political disturbances
+equally formidable, with Chartism, Socialism, Cato Street conspiracies,
+Peterloo massacres, Bristol riots.
+
+Now the present movement even in England, where there is so much
+suffering and so much ignorance, has been marked by a comparative
+absence of violence, and comparative respect for law. Considering what
+large bodies of men have been out on strike, how much they have endured
+in the conflict, and what appeals have been made to their passions, it
+is wonderful how little of actual crime or disturbance there has been.
+There were the Sheffield murders the disclosure of which filled all the
+friends of labour with shame and sorrow, all the enemies of labour with
+malignant exultation. But we should not have heard so much of the
+Sheffield murders if such things had been common. Sheffield is an
+exceptional place; some of the work there is deadly, life is short and
+character is reckless. Even at Sheffield, a very few, out of the whole
+number of trades, were found to have been in any way implicated. The
+denunciation of the outrages by the trades through England generally,
+was loud and sincere; an attempt was made, of course, to fix the guilt
+on all the Unions, but this was a hypocritical libel. It was stated, in
+one of our Canadian journals, the other day, that Mr. Roebuck had lost
+his seat for Sheffield, by protesting against Unionist outrage. Mr.
+Roebuck lost his seat for Sheffield by turning Tory. The Trades'
+candidate, by whom Mr. Roebuck was defeated, was Mr. Mundella, a
+representative of whom any constituency may be proud, a great employer
+of labour, and one who has done more than any other man of his class in
+England to substitute arbitration for industrial war, and to restore
+kindly relations between the employers and the employed. To Mr. Mundella
+the support of Broadhead and the criminal Unionists was offered, and by
+him it was decisively rejected.
+
+The public mind has been filled with hideous fantasies, on the subject
+of Unionism, by sensation novelists like Mr. Charles Reade and Mr.
+Disraeli, the latter of whom has depicted the initiation of a working
+man into a Union with horrid rites, in a lofty and spacious room, hung
+with black cloth and lighted with tapers, amidst skeletons, men with
+battle axes, rows of masked figures in white robes, and holding torches;
+the novice swearing an awful oath on the Gospel, to do every act which
+the heads of the society enjoin, such as the chastisement of "nobs," the
+assassination of tyrannical masters, and the demolition of all mills
+deemed incorrigible by the society. People may read such stuff for the
+sake of amusement and excitement, if they please; but they will fall
+into a grave error if they take it for a true picture of the Amalgamated
+Carpenters or the Amalgamated Engineers. Besides, the Sheffield outrages
+were several years old at the time of their discovery. They belong,
+morally, to the time when the unions of working men being forbidden by
+unfair laws framed in the masters' interest were compelled to assume the
+character of conspiracies; when, to rob a union being no theft,
+unionists could hardly be expected to have the same respect as the
+better protected interests for public justice; when, moreover, the
+mechanics, excluded from political rights, could scarcely regard
+Government as the impartial guardian of their interests, or the
+governing classes as their friends. Since the legalization of the
+unions, the extension of legal security to their funds and the admission
+of the mechanics to the suffrage there has been comparatively little of
+unionist crime.
+
+I do not say that there has been none. I do not say that there is none
+now. Corporate selfishness of which Trade Unions after all are
+embodiments seldom keeps quite clear of criminality. But the moral
+dangers of corporate selfishness are the same in all associations and in
+all classes. The Pennsylvanian iron master who comes before our
+Commissions of Inquiry to testify against Unionist outrage in
+Pennsylvania where a very wild and roving class of workmen are managed
+by agents who probably take little thought for the moral condition of
+the miner--this iron master I say is himself labouring through his paid
+organs in the press, through his representatives in Congress, and by
+every means in his power to keep up hatred of England and bad relations
+between the two countries at the constant risk of war because it suits
+the interest of his Protectionist Ring. The upper classes of Europe in
+the same spirit applauded what they called the salvation of society by
+the _coup d'etat_, the massacre on the Boulevards and the lawless
+deportation of the leaders of the working men in France. In the main
+however I repeat the present movement has been legal and pacific and so
+long as there is no violence, so long as no weapons but those of
+argument are employed, so long as law and reason reign, matters are sure
+to come right in the end. The result may not be exactly what we wish
+because we may wish to take too much for ourselves and to give our
+fellow men too little, but it will be just and we cannot deliberately
+desire more. If the law is broken by the Unionists, if violence or
+intimidation is employed by them instead of reason, let the Government
+protect the rights of the community and let the community strengthen the
+hands of the Government for that purpose.
+
+Perhaps you will say that I have forgotten the International and the
+Commune. There is undoubtedly a close connection between the labour
+movement and democracy, between the struggle for industrial and the
+struggle for political emancipation, as there is a connection between
+both and Secularism, the frank form assumed among the working men by
+that which is concealed and conformist Scepticism among the upper class.
+In this respect the present industrial crisis resembles those of the
+past which as we have seen were closely connected with religious and
+political revolutions. In truth the whole frame of humanity generally
+moves at once. With the International, however, as an organ of political
+incendiarism, labour had very little to do. The International was, in
+its origin, a purely industrial association, born of Prince Albert's
+International Exhibition, which held a convention at Geneva, where
+everybody goes pic-nicing, for objects which, though chimerical, were
+distinctly economical, and free from any taint of petroleum. But a band
+of political conspirators got hold of the organization and used it, or
+at least, so much of it as they could carry with them, for a purpose
+entirely foreign to the original intent. Mark, too, that it was not so
+much labour or even democracy that charged the mine which blew up Paris,
+as the reactionary Empire, which, like reaction in countries more nearly
+connected with us than France, played the demagogue for its own ends,
+set the labourers against the liberal middle class, and crowded Paris
+with operatives, bribed by employment on public works. I detest all
+conspiracy, whether it be that of Ignatius Loyola, or that of Karl Marx-
+-not by conspiracy, not by dark and malignant intrigue, is society to be
+reformed, but by open, honest and kindly appeals to the reason and
+conscience of mankind. Yet, let us be just, even to the Commune. The
+destruction of the column at the Place Vendome was not a good act; but
+if it was in any measure the protest of labour against war, it was a
+better act than ever was done by the occupant of that column. On that
+column it was that, when Napoleon's long orgy of criminal glory was
+drawing to a close, the hand of misery and bereavement wrote "Monster,
+if all the blood you have shed could be collected in this square, you
+might drink without stooping." Thiers is shooting the Communists;
+perhaps justly, though humanity will be relieved when the gore ceases to
+trickle, and vengeance ends its long repast. But Thiers has himself been
+the literary arch-priest of Napoleon and of war: of all the incendiaries
+in France, he has been the worst.
+
+The Trade Unions are new things in industrial history. The guilds of the
+Middle Ages, with which the unions are often identified, were
+confederations of all engaged in the trade, masters as well as men,
+against outsiders. The Unions are confederations of the men against the
+masters. They are the offspring of an age of great capitalists,
+employing large bodies of hired workmen. The workmen, needy, and obliged
+to sell their labour without reserve, that they might eat bread, found
+themselves, in their isolation, very much at the mercy of their masters,
+and resorted to union as a source of strength. Capital, by collecting in
+the centres of manufacture masses of operatives who thus became
+conscious of their number and their force, gave birth to a power which
+now countervails its own. To talk of a war of labour against capital
+generally would, of course, be absurd. Capital is nothing but the means
+of undertaking any industrial or commercial enterprise, of setting up an
+Allan line of steamships or setting up a costermonger's cart. We might
+as well talk of a war of labour against water power.
+
+Capital is the fruit of labour past, the condition of labour present,
+without it no man could do a stroke of work, at least of work requiring
+tools or food for him who uses them. Let us dismiss from our language
+and our minds these impersonations, which though mere creatures of fancy
+playing with abstract nouns end by depraving our sentiments and
+misdirecting our actions, let us think and speak of capital impersonally
+and sensibly as an economical force and as we would think and speak of
+the force of gravitation. Relieve the poor word of the big _c_,
+which is a greatness thrust upon it, its tyranny, and the burning hatred
+of its tyranny will at once cease. Nevertheless, the fact remains that a
+working man standing alone, and without a breakfast for himself or his
+family, is not in a position to obtain the best terms from a rich
+employer, who can hold out as long as he likes or hire other labour on
+the spot. Whether Unionism has had much effect in producing a general
+rise of wages is very doubtful. Mr. Brassey's book, "Work and Wages,"
+goes far to prove that it has not, and that while, on the one hand, the
+unionists have been in a fool's paradise, the masters, on the other,
+have been crying out before they were hurt. No doubt the general rise of
+wages is mainly and fundamentally due to natural causes: the
+accumulation of capital, the extension of commercial enterprise, and the
+opening up of new countries, which have greatly increased the
+competition for labour, and consequently, raised the price, while the
+nominal price of labour as well as of all other commodities has been
+raised by the influx of gold. What Unionism, as I think, has evidently
+effected, is the economical emancipation of the working man. It has
+rendered him independent instead of dependent, and, in some cases almost
+a serf, as he was before. It has placed him on an equal footing with his
+employer, and enabled him to make the best terms for himself in every
+respect. There is no employer who does not feel that this is so, or whom
+Mr. Brassey's statistics, or any statistics, would convince that it is
+not.
+
+Fundamentally, value determines the price the community will give for
+any article, or any kind of work, just so much as it is worth. But there
+is no economical deity who, in each individual case, exactly adjusts the
+price to the value; we may make a good or a bad bargain, as many of us
+know to our cost. One source of bad bargains is ignorance. Before
+unions, which have diffused the intelligence of the labour market, and
+by so doing have equalized prices, the workman hardly knew the rate of
+wages in the next town. If this was true of the mechanic, it was still
+more true of the farm labourer. Practically speaking, the farm labourers
+in each parish of England, ignorant of everything beyond the parish,
+isolated and, therefore, dependent, had to take what the employers chose
+to give them. And what the employers chose to give them over large
+districts was ten shillings a week for themselves and their families,
+out of which they paid, perhaps, eighteen-pence for rent. A squire the
+other day, at a meeting of labourers, pointed with pride, and no doubt,
+with honest pride, to a labourer who had brought up a family of twelve
+children on twelve shillings a week I will venture to say the squire
+spent as much on any horse in his stables. Meat never touched the
+peasant's lips, though game, preserved for his landlord's pleasure, was
+running round his cottage. His children could not be educated, because
+they were wanted, almost from their infancy, to help in keeping the
+family from starving, as stonepickers, or perambulating scarecrows. His
+abode was a hovel, in which comfort, decency, morality could not dwell;
+and it was mainly owing to this cause that, as I have heard an
+experienced clergyman say, even the people in the low quarters of cities
+were less immoral than the rural poor. How the English peasants lived on
+such wages as they had, was a question which puzzled the best informed.
+How they died was clear enough; as penal paupers in a union workhouse.
+Yet Hodge's back, like that of Jacques Bonhomme, in France, bore
+everything, bore the great war against Republican France; for the
+squires and rectors, who made that war for class purposes, got their
+taxes back in increased rents and tithes. How did the peasantry exist,
+what was their condition in those days when wheat was at a hundred, or
+even a hundred and thirty shillings? They were reduced to a second
+serfage. They became in the mass parish paupers, and were divided, like
+slaves, among the employers of each parish. Men may be made serfs, and
+even slaves by other means than open force, in a country where, legally,
+all are free, where the impossibility of slavery is the boast of the
+law. Of late benevolence has been, abroad in the English parish,
+almsgiving and visiting have increased, good landlords have taken up
+cottage improvements. There have been harvest-homes, at which the young
+squires have danced with cottagers. But now Hodge has taken the matter
+into his own hands, and it seems not without effect. In a letter which I
+have seen, a squire says, "Here the people are all contented; we (the
+employers) have seen the necessity of raising their wages." Conservative
+journals begin to talk of measures for the compulsory improvement of
+cottages, for limiting ground game, giving tenant right to farmers,
+granting the franchise to rural householders. Yes, in consequence,
+partly, at least of this movement, the dwellings and the general
+conditions of the English peasantry will be improved, the game laws will
+be abolished; the farmers pressed upon from below, and in their turn
+pressing upon those above, will demand and obtain tenant right; and the
+country, as well as the city householders will be admitted to the
+franchise, which, under the elective system, is at once the only
+guarantee for justice to him and for his loyalty to the State. And when
+the country householder has the suffrage there will soon be an end of
+those laws of primogeniture and entail, which are deemed so
+Conservative, but are in fact most revolutionary, since they divorce the
+nation from its own soil. And then there will be a happier and a more
+United England in country as well as in town: the poor law, the hateful,
+degrading, demoralizing poor law will cease to exist; the huge poor-
+house will no longer darken the rural landscape with its shadow, in
+hideous contrast with the palace. Suspicion and hatred will no more
+cower and mutter over the cottage hearth, or round the beer-house fire:
+the lord of the mansion will no longer be like the man in Tennyson
+slumbering while a lion is always creeping nearer. Lord Malmesbury is
+astonished at this disturbance. He always thought the relation between
+the lord and the pauper peasant was the happiest possible; he cannot
+conceive what people mean by proposing a change. But then Lord
+Malmesbury was placed at rather a delusive point of view. If he knew the
+real state of Hodge's heart he would rejoice in the prospect of a
+change, not only for Hodge's sake, but, as he is no doubt a good man,
+for his own. England will be more religious, too, as well as happier and
+more harmonious, let the clergy be well assured of it. Social injustice
+especially when backed by the Church, is unfavourable to popular
+religion.
+
+The general rise of wages may at first bring economical disturbance and
+pressure on certain classes, but, in the end, it brings general
+prosperity, diffused civilization, public happiness, security to
+society, which can never be secure while the few are feasting and the
+many are starving. In the end, also, it brings an increase of
+production, and greater plenty. Not that we can assent, without reserve,
+to the pleasant aphorism, that increase of wages, in itself, makes a
+better workman, which is probably true only where the workman has been
+under-fed, as in the case of the farm labourers of England. But the
+dearness of labour leads to the adoption of improved methods of
+production, and especially to the invention of machinery, which gives
+back to the community what it has paid in increased wages a hundred or a
+thousand fold. In Illinois, towards the close of the war, a large
+proportion of the male population had been drafted or volunteered,
+labour had become scarce and wages had risen, but the invention of
+machinery had been so much stimulated that the harvest that year was
+greater than it had ever been before. Machinery will now be used to a
+greater extent on the English farms; more will be produced by fewer
+hands, labourers will be set free for the production of other kinds,
+perhaps for the cultivation of our North-West, and the British peasant
+will rise from the industrial and intellectual level of a mere labourer
+to that of the guider of a machine. Machinery worked by relays of men
+is, no doubt, one of the principal solutions of our industrial problems,
+and of the social problems connected with them. Some seem to fancy that
+it is the universal solution; but we cannot run reaping machines in the
+winter or in the dark.
+
+High wages, and the independence of the labourers, compel economy of
+labour. Economize labour, cries Lord Derby, the cool-headed mentor of
+the rich; we must give up our second under-butler. When the labourer is
+dependent, and his wages are low, the most precious of commodities, that
+commodity the husbanding of which is the chief condition of increased
+production, and of the growth of national wealth, is squandered with
+reckless prodigality. Thirty years the labourers of Egypt wrought by
+gangs of a hundred thousand at a time to build the great Pyramid which
+was to hold a despot's dust. Even now, when everybody is complaining of
+the dearness of labour, and the insufferable independence of the working
+class, a piece of fine lace, we are told, consumes the labour of seven
+persons, each employed on a distinct portion of the work; and the
+thread, of exquisite fineness, is spun in dark rooms underground, not
+without injury, we may suppose, to the eyesight or health of those
+employed. So that the labour movement does not seem to have yet trenched
+materially even on the elegancies of life. Would it be very detrimental
+to real civilization if we were forced, by the dearness of labour, to
+give up all the trades in which human life or health is sacrificed to
+mere fancy? In London, the bakers have struck. They are kept up from
+midnight to noon, sometimes far even into the afternoon, sleepless, or
+only snatching broken slumbers, that London may indulge its fancy for
+hot bread, which it would be much better without. The result of the
+strike probably will be, besides relief to the bakers themselves, which
+has already been in part conceded, a more wholesome kind of bread, such
+as will keep fresh and palatable through the day, and cleaner baking;
+for the wretchedness of the trade has made it vile and filthy, as is the
+case in other trades besides that of the bakers. Many an article of mere
+luxury, many a senseless toy, if our eyes could be opened, would be seen
+to bear the traces of human blood and tears. We are like the Merchant
+Brothers in Keats:--
+
+  "With her two brothers this fair lady dwelt,
+  Enriched from ancestral merchandize,
+  And for them many a weary hand did swelt
+  In torch-lit mines and noisy factories,
+  And many once proud-quivered loins did melt
+  In blood from stinging whip; with hollow eyes
+  Many all day in dazzling river stood
+  To take the rich-ored driftings of the flood."
+
+  "For them the Ceylon diver held his breath,
+  And went all naked to the hungry shark;
+  For them his ears gushed blood; for them in death
+  The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark
+  Lay pierced with darts; for them alone did seethe
+  A thousand men in troubles wide and dark:
+  Half ignorant, they turned an easy wheel
+  That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel."
+
+Among other economies of labour, if this movement among the English
+peasantry succeeds and spreads to other countries, then will come an
+economy of soldiers' blood. Pauperism has been the grand recruiting
+serjeant. Hodge listed and went to be shot or scourged within an inch of
+his life for sixpence a day, because he was starving; but he will not
+leave five shillings for sixpence. Even in former days, the sailor,
+being somewhat better off than the peasant, could only be forced into
+the service by the press gang, a name the recollection of which ought to
+mitigate our strictures on the encroaching tendencies of the working
+class. There will be a strike, or a refusal of service equivalent to a
+strike in this direction also. It will be requisite to raise the
+soldier's pay; the maintenance of standing armies will become a costly
+indulgence. I have little faith in international champagne, or even in
+Geneva litigation as a universal antidote to war: war will cease or be
+limited to necessary occasions, when the burden of large standing armies
+becomes too great to be borne.
+
+The strike of the English colliers again, though it causes great
+inconvenience, may have its good effect. It may be a strong indication
+that mining in England is getting very deep, and that the nation must
+exorcise a strict economy in the use of coal, the staple of its wealth
+and greatness. The lot of the colliers, grubbling all day underground
+and begrimed with dirt, is one of the hardest; the sacrifice of their
+lives by accidents is terribly large; and we may well believe that the
+community needs a lesson in favour of these underground toilers, which
+could be effectually taught only by some practical manifestation of
+their discontent.
+
+To the labour movement, mainly, we owe those efforts to establish better
+relations between the employer and the employed, which are known by the
+general name of co-operation. The Comtists, in the name of their
+autocrat, denounce the whole co-operative system as rotten. Their plan,
+if you get to the bottom of it, is in fact a permanent division of the
+industrial world into capitalists. And workmen; the capitalists
+exercising a rule controlled only by the influence of philosophers; the
+workmen remaining in a perpetual state of tutelage, not to say of
+babyhood. A little acquaintance with this continent would probably
+dissipate notions of a permanent division of classes, or a permanent
+tutelage of any class. It is true that great commercial enterprises
+require the guidance of superior intelligence with undivided counsels as
+well as a large capital, and that co-operative mills have failed or
+succeeded only in cases where very little policy and very little capital
+were required. As to co-operative stores, they are co-operative only in
+a very different sense: combinative would be a more accurate term; and
+the department in which they seem likely to produce an alteration, is
+that of retail trade, an improvement in the conditions of which,
+economical and moral, is assuredly much needed. But if we are told that
+it is impossible to give the workmen an interest in the enterprise, so
+as, to make him work more willingly avoid waste and generally identify
+him self with his employer the answer is that the thing has been done
+both in England and here. An artisan working for him self and selling
+the produce of his individual skill has an interest and a pride in his
+work for which it would seem desirable to find if possible some
+substitute in the case of factory hands whose toil otherwise is mere
+weariness. The increased scale of commercial enterprise however is in
+itself advantageous in this respect. In great works where an army of
+workmen is employed at Saltaire or in the Platt works at Oldham there
+must be many grades of promotion and many subordinate places of trust
+and emolument to which the workmen may rise by industry and probity
+without capital of his own.
+
+The general effect of the labour movement has been as I have said the
+industrial emancipation of the workmen. It has perhaps had an effect
+more general still. Aided by the general awakening of social sentiment
+and of the feeling of social responsibility, it has practically opened
+our eyes to the fact that a nation and humanity at large is a community
+the good things of which all are entitled to share while all must share
+the evil things. It has forcibly dispelled the notion in which the rich
+indolently acquiesced that enjoyment leisure culture refined affection
+high civilization are the destined lot of the few while the destined lot
+of the many is to support the privileged existence of the few by
+unremitting coarse and jobless toil. Society has been taught that it
+must at least endeavour to be just. The old ecclesiastical props of
+privilege are gone. There is no use any longer in quoting or misquoting
+Scripture to prove that God wills the mass of mankind to be always poor
+and always dependent on the rich. The very peasant has now broken that
+spell and will no longer believe the rector if he tells him that this
+world belongs to the squire and that justice is put off to the next. The
+process of mental emancipation has been assisted by the bishop who was
+so rash as to suggest that rural agitators should be ducked in a horse
+pond. Hodge has determined to find out for himself by a practical
+experiment what the will of God really is. No doubt this is an imperfect
+world and is likely to remain so for our time at least; we must all work
+on in the hope that if we do our duty it will be well for us in the sum
+of things and that when the far off goal of human effort is at last
+reached, every faithful servant of humanity will have his part in the
+result; if it were not so, it would be better to be a brute, with no
+unfulfilled aspirations, than a man. But I repeat, the religion of
+privilege has lost its power to awe or to control, and if society wishes
+to rest on a safe foundation, it must show that it is at least trying to
+be just.
+
+Wealth, real wealth, has hardly as yet much reason to complain of any
+encroachment of the labour movement on its rights. When did it command
+such means and appliances of pleasure, such satisfaction for every
+appetite and every fancy, as it commands now? When did it rear such
+enchanted palaces of luxury as it is rearing in England at the present
+day? Well do I remember one of those palaces, the most conspicuous
+object for miles round. Its lord was, I daresay, consuming the income of
+some six hundred of the poor labouring families round him. The thought
+that you are spending on yourself annually the income of six hundred
+labouring families seems to me about as much as a man with a heart and a
+brain can bear. Whatever the rich man desires, the finest house, the
+biggest diamond, the reigning beauty for his wife, social homage, public
+honours, political power, is ready at his command. Does he fancy a seat
+in the British House of Commons, the best club in London, as it has been
+truly called? All other claims, those of the public service included, at
+once give way. I remember a question arising about a nomination for a
+certain constituency (a working man's constituency, by the way), which
+was cut short by the announcement that the seat was wanted by a local
+millionaire. When the name of the millionaire was mentioned, surprise
+was expressed. Has he, it was asked, any political knowledge or
+capacity, any interest in public affairs, any ambition? The answer was
+"None." "Then why does he want the seat?" "He does not want it." "Then
+why does he take it?" "Because his wife does." Cleopatra, as the story
+goes, displayed her mad prodigality by melting a pearl in a cup, out of
+which she drank to Antony. But this modern money-queen could throw into
+her cup of pleasure, to give it a keener zest, a share in the government
+of the greatest empire in the world.
+
+If the movement, by transferring something from the side of profits to
+that of wages, checks in any measure the growth of these colossal
+fortunes, it will benefit society and diminish no man's happiness. I say
+it without the slightest feeling of asceticism, and in the conviction
+that wealth well made and well spent is as pure as the rill that runs
+from the mountain side.
+
+Real chiefs of industry have generally a touch of greatness in them and
+no nobleman of the peerage clings more to his tinsel than do nature's
+noblemen to simplicity of life. Mr. Brassey with his millions never
+could be induced to increase his establishment his pride and pleasure
+were in the guidance of industry and the accomplishment of great works.
+But in the hands of the heirs of these men colossal fortunes become
+social nuisances waste labour breed luxury create unhappiness by
+propagating factitious wants too often engender vice and are injurious
+for the most part to real civilization. The most malignant feelings
+which enter into the present struggle have been generated especially in
+England by the ostentation of idle wealth in contrast with surrounding
+poverty. No really high nature covets such a position as that of a
+luxurious and useless millionaire. Communism as a movement is a mistake
+but there is a communism which is deeply seated in the heart of every
+good man and which makes him feel that the hardest of all labour is
+idleness in a world of toil and that the bitterest of all bread is that
+which is eaten by the sweat of another man's brow.
+
+The pressure is hardest not on those who are really rich but on those
+who have hitherto on account of their education and the intellectual
+character of their callings been numbered with the rich and who are
+still clinging to the skirts of wealthy society. The best thing which
+those who are clinging to the skirts of wealthy society can do is to let
+go. They will find that they have not far to fall and they will rest on
+the firm ground of genuine respectability and solid comfort. By keeping
+up then culture they will preserve their social grade far better than by
+struggling for a precarious footing among those whose habits they cannot
+emulate and whose hospitalities they cannot return. Then income will be
+increased by the whole cost of the efforts which they now make it the
+sacrifice of comforts and often of necessaries to maintain the
+appearances of wealth. British grandees may be good models for our
+millionaires but what most of us want are models of the art of enjoying
+life thoroughly and nobly without ostentation and at a moderate cost. It
+is by people of the class of which I am speaking that the servant
+difficulty that doleful but ever recurring theme is most severely felt.
+Nor would I venture to hold out much hope that the difficulty will
+become less. It is not merely industrial out social. There is a growing
+repugnance to anything like servitude which makes the female democracy
+prefer the independence of the factory to the subordination of the
+kitchen, however good the wages and however kind the mistress may be. We
+must look to inventions for saving labour, which might be adopted in
+houses to a greater extent than they are now. Perhaps when the work has
+been thus lightened and made less coarse, families may find "help," in
+the true sense, among their relatives, or others in need of a home, who
+would be members of the family circle. Homes and suitable employment
+might thus be afforded to women who are now pining in enforced idleness,
+and sighing for Protestant nunneries, while the daily war with Bridget
+would be at an end.
+
+I would not make light of these inconveniences or of the present
+disturbance of trade. The tendency of a moment may be good, and yet it
+may give society a very bad quarter of an hour. Nor would I attempt to
+conceal the errors and excesses of which the unions have been guilty,
+and into which, as organs of corporate selfishness, they are always in
+danger of running. Industrial history has a record against the
+workingman as well as against the master. The guilds of the Middle Ages
+became tyrannical monopolies and leagues against society, turned
+callings open to all into mysteries confined to a privileged few, drove
+trade and manufactures from the cities where they reigned to places free
+from their domination. This probably was the cause of the decay of
+cities which forms the burden of complaint in the preambles to Acts of
+Parliament, in the Tudor period. Great guilds oppressed little guilds:
+strong commercial cities ruled by artisans oppressed their weaker
+neighbours of the same class. No one agency has done so much to raise
+the condition of the workingman as machinery; yet the workingman
+resisted the introduction of machinery, rose against it, destroyed it,
+maltreated its inventors. There is a perpetual warning in the name of
+Hargreaves, the workingman who, by his inventive genius, provided
+employment for millions of his fellows, and was by them rewarded with
+outrage and persecution.
+
+Flushed with confidence at the sight of their serried phalanxes and
+extending lines, the unionists do like most people invested with
+unwonted power; they aim at more than is possible or just. They fancy
+that they can put the screw on the community, almost without limit. But
+they will soon find out their mistake. They will learn it from those
+very things which are filling the world with alarm--the extension of
+unionism, and the multiplication of strikes. The builder strikes against
+the rest of the community, including the baker, then the baker strikes
+against the builder and the collier strikes against them both. At first
+the associated trades seem to have it all their own way. But the other
+trades learn the secret of association. Everybody strikes against
+everybody else, the price of all articles rises as much as anybody's
+wages, and thus when the wheel has come full circle, nobody is much the
+gainer. In fact long before the wheel has come full circle the futility
+of a universal strike will be manifest to all. The world sees before it
+a terrible future of unionism ever increasing in power and tyranny, but
+it is more likely that in a few years unionism as an instrument for
+forcing up wages will have ceased to exist. In the meantime the working
+classes will have impressed upon themselves by a practical experiment
+upon the grandest scale and of the most decisive kind the fact that they
+are consumers as well as producers, payers of wages as well as receivers
+of wages, members of a community as well as workingmen.
+
+The unionists will learn also after a few trials that the community
+cannot easily be cornered, at least that it cannot easily be cornered
+more than once by unions any more than by gold rings at New York or pork
+rings at Chicago. It may apparently succumb once being unable to do
+without its bread or its newspapers or to stop buildings already
+contracted for and commenced, but it instinctively prepares to defend
+itself against a repetition of the operation. It limits consumption or
+invents new modes of production, improves machinery, encourages non
+union men, calls in foreigners, women, Chinese. In the end the corner
+results in loss. Cornering on the part of workingmen is not a bit worse
+than cornering on the part of great financiers; in both cases alike it
+is as odious as anything can be, which is not actually criminal; but
+depend upon it a bad time is coming for corners of all kinds.
+
+I speak of the community as the power with which the strikers really
+have to deal. The master hires or organizes the workmen, but the
+community purchases their work; and though the master when hard pressed
+may in his desperation give more for the work than it is worth rather
+than at once take his capital out of the trade the community will let
+the trade go to ruin without compunction rather than give more for the
+article than it can afford. Some of the colliers in England, we are
+informed, have called upon the masters to reduce the price of coal,
+offering at the same time to consent to a reduction of their own wages.
+A great fact has dawned upon their minds. Note too that democratic
+communities have more power of resistance to unionist extortion than
+others, because they are more united, have a keener sense of mutual
+interest, and are free from political fear. The way in which Boston,
+some years ago, turned to and beat a printers' strike, was a remarkable
+proof of this fact.
+
+Combination may enable, and, as I believe, has enabled the men in
+particular cases to make a fairer bargain with the masters, and to get
+the full market value of their labour, but neither combination nor any
+other mode of negotiating can raise the value of labour or of any other
+article to the consumer, and that which cannot raise the value cannot
+permanently raise the price.
+
+All now admit that strikes peaceably conducted are lawful. Nevertheless,
+they may sometimes be anti-social and immoral. Does any one doubt it?
+Suppose by an accident to machinery, or the falling in of a mine, a
+number of workmen have their limbs broken. One of their mates runs for
+the surgeon, and the surgeon puts his head out of the window and says--
+"the surgeons are on strike." Does this case much differ from that of
+the man who, in his greed, stops the wheel of industry which he is
+turning, thereby paralysing the whole machine, and spreading not only
+confusion, but suffering, and perhaps starvation among multitudes of his
+fellows? Language was held by some unionist witnesses, before the Trades
+Union Commission, about their exclusive regard for their own interests,
+and their indifference to the interests of society, which was more frank
+than philanthropic, and more gratifying to their enemies than to their
+friends. A man who does not care for the interests of society will find,
+to his cost, that they are his own, and that he is a member of a body
+which cannot be dismembered. I spoke of the industrial objects of the
+International as chimerical. They are worse than chimerical. In its
+industrial aspect, the International was an attempt to separate the
+interests of a particular class of workers throughout the world from
+those of their fellow workers, and to divide humanity against itself.
+Such attempts can end only in one way.
+
+There are some who say, in connection with this question, that you are
+at liberty to extort anything you can from your fellow men, provided you
+do not use a pistol; that you are at liberty to fleece the sailor who
+implores you to save him from a wreck, or the emigrant who is in danger
+of missing his ship. I say that this is a moral robbery, and that the
+man would say so himself if the same thing were done to him.
+
+A strike is a war, so is a lock out, which is a strike on the other
+side. They are warrantable, like other wars, when justice cannot be
+obtained, or injustice prevented by peaceful means, and in such cases
+only. Mediation ought always to be tried first and it will often be
+effectual, for the wars of carpenters and builders, as well as the wars
+of emperors, often arise from passion more than from interest, and
+passion may be calmed by mediation. Hence the magnitude of the unions,
+formidable as it seems, has really a pacific effect; passion is commonly
+personal or local, and does not affect the central government of a union
+extending over a whole nation. The governments of great unions have
+seldom recommended strikes. A strike or lock-out, I repeat, is an
+industrial war, and when the war is over there ought to be peace.
+Constant bad relations between the masters and the men, a constant
+attitude of mutual hostility and mistrust, constant threats of striking
+upon one side, and of locking out upon the other, are ruinous to the
+trade, especially if it depends at all upon foreign orders, as well as
+destructive of social comfort. If the state of feeling and the bearing
+of the men toward the masters, remain what they now are in some English
+trades, kind-hearted employers who would do their best to improve the
+condition of the workman, and to make him a partaker in their
+prosperity, will be driven from the trade, and their places will be
+taken by men with hearts of flint who will fight the workman by force
+and fraud, and very likely win. We have seen the full power of
+associated labour, the full power of associated capital has yet to be
+seen. We shall see it when instead of combinations of the employers in a
+single trade, which seldom hold together, employers in all trades learn
+to combine.
+
+We must not forget that industrial wars, like other wars, however just
+and necessary, give birth to men whose trade is war, and who, for the
+purpose of their trade are always inflaming the passions which lead to
+war. Such men I have seen on both sides of the Atlantic, and most
+hateful pests of industry and society they are. Nor must we forget that
+Trade Unions, like other communities, whatever their legal constitutions
+may be, are apt practically to fall into the hands of a small minority
+of active spirits, or even into those of a single astute and ambitious
+man.
+
+Murder, maiming and vitriol throwing are offences punishable by law. So
+are, or ought to be, rattening and intimidation. But there are ways less
+openly criminal of interfering with the liberty of non-union men. The
+liberty of non-union men, however, must be protected. Freedom of
+contract is the only security which the community has against systematic
+extortion; and extortion, practised on the community by a Trade Union,
+is just as bad as extortion practised by a feudal baron in his robber
+hold. If the unions are not voluntary they are tyrannies, and all
+tyrannies in the end will be overthrown.
+
+The same doom awaits all monopolies and attempts to interfere with the
+free exercise of any lawful trade or calling, for the advantage of a
+ring of any kind, whether it be a great East India Company, shutting the
+gates of Eastern commerce on mankind, or a little Bricklayers' Union,
+limiting the number of bricks to be carried in a hod. All attempts to
+restrain or cripple production in the interest of a privileged set of
+producers; all trade rules preventing work from being done in the best,
+cheapest and most expeditious way; all interference with a man's free
+use of his strength and skill on pretence that he is beating his mates,
+or on any other pretence, all exclusions of people from lawful callings
+for which they are qualified; all apprenticeships not honestly intended
+for the instruction of the apprentice, are unjust and contrary to the
+manifest interests of the community, including the misguided monopolists
+themselves. All alike will, in the end, be resisted and put down. In
+feudal times the lord of the manor used to compel all the people to use
+his ferry, sell on his fair ground, and grind their corn at his mill. By
+long and costly effort humanity has broken the yoke of old Privilege,
+and it is not likely to bow its neck to the yoke of the new.
+
+Those who in England demanded the suffrage for the working man, who
+urged, in the name of public safety, as well as in that of justice, that
+he should be brought within the pale of the constitution, have no reason
+to be ashamed of the result. Instead of voting for anarchy and public
+pillage, the working man has voted for economy, administrative reform,
+army reform, justice to Ireland, public education. But no body of men
+ever found political power in their hands without being tempted to make
+a selfish use of it. Feudal legislatures, as we have seen, passed laws
+compelling workmen to give more work, or work that was worth more, for
+the same wages. Working men's legislatures are now disposed to pass laws
+compelling employers, that is, the community, to give the same wages for
+less work. Some day, perhaps, the bakers will get power into their hands
+and make laws compelling us to give the same price for a smaller loaf.
+What would the Rochdale pioneers, or the owners of any other co-
+operative store, with a staff of servants say if a law were passed
+compelling them to give the same wages for less service? This is not
+right, and it cannot stand. Demagogues who want your votes will tell you
+that it can stand, but those who are not in that line must pay you the
+best homage in their power by speaking the truth. And if I may venture
+to offer advice never let the cause of labour be mixed up with the game
+of politicians. Before you allow a man to lead you in trade questions be
+sure that he has no eye to your votes. We have a pleasing variety of
+political rogues but perhaps, there is hardly a greater rogue among them
+than the working man's friend.
+
+Perhaps you will say as much or more work is done with the short hours.
+There is reason to hope that it in some cases it may be so. But then the
+employer will see his own interest, free contract will produce the
+desired result, there will be no need of compulsory law.
+
+I sympathize heartily with the general object of the nine hours
+movement, of the early closing movement, and all movements of that kind.
+Leisure well spent is a condition of civilization, and now we want all
+to be civilized, not only a few. But I do not believe it possible to
+regulate the hours of work by law with any approach to reason or
+justice. One kind of work is more exhausting than another, one is
+carried on in a hot room, another in a cool room, one amidst noise
+wearing to the nerves, another in stillness. Time is not a common
+measure of them all. The difficulty is increased if you attempt to make
+one rule for all nations disregarding differences of race and climate.
+Besides how in the name of justice, can we say that the man with a wife
+and children to support, shall not work more if he pleases than the
+unmarried man who chooses to be content with less pay and to have more
+time for enjoyment? Medical science pronounces, we are told, that it is
+not good for a man to work more than eight hours. But supposing this to
+be true and true of all kinds of work, this as has been said before is
+an imperfect world and it is to be feared that we cannot guarantee any
+man against having more to do than his doctor would recommend. The small
+tradesman, whose case receives no consideration because he forms no
+union, often perhaps generally has more than is good for him of anxiety,
+struggling and care as well as longer business hours, than medical
+science would prescribe. Pressure on the weary brain is, at least, as
+painful as pressure on the weary muscle; many a suicide proves it; yet
+brains must be pressed or the wheels of industry and society would stand
+still. Let us all, I repeat, get as much leisure as we fairly and
+honestly can; but with all due respect for those who hold the opposite
+opinion, I believe that the leisure must be obtained by free arrangement
+in each ease, as it has already in the case of early closing, not by
+general law.
+
+I cannot help regarding industrial war in this new world, rather as an
+importation than as a native growth. The spirit of it is brought over by
+British workmen, who have been fighting the master class in their former
+home. In old England, the land of class distinctions, the masters are a
+class, economically as well as socially, and they are closely allied
+with a political class, which till lately engrossed power and made laws
+in the interest of the employer. Seldom does a man in England rise from
+the ranks, and when he does, his position in an aristocratic society is
+equivocal, and he never feels perfectly at home. Caste runs from the
+peerage all down the social scale. The bulk of the land has been
+engrossed by wealthy families, and the comfort and dignity of freehold
+proprietorship are rarely attainable by any but the rich. Everything
+down to the railway carriages, is regulated by aristocracy; street cars
+cannot run because they would interfere with carriages, a city cannot be
+drained because a park is in the way. The labourer has to bear a heavy
+load of taxation, laid on by the class wars of former days. In this new
+world of ours, the heel taps of old-world flunkeyism are sometimes
+poured upon us, no doubt; as, on the other hand, we feel the reaction
+from the old-world servility in a rudeness of self assertion on the part
+of the democracy which is sometimes rather discomposing, and which we
+should be glad to see exchanged for the courtesy of settled self-
+respect. But on the whole, class distinctions are very faint. Half,
+perhaps two-thirds, of the rich men you meet here have risen from the
+ranks, and they are socially quite on a level with the rest. Everything
+is really open to industry. Every man can at once invest his savings in
+a freehold. Everything is arranged for the convenience of the masses.
+Political power is completely in the hands of the people. There are no
+fiscal legacies of an oligarchic past. If I were one of our emigration
+agents, I should not dwell so much on wages, which in fact are being
+rapidly equalized, as on what wages will buy in Canada--the general
+improvement of condition, the brighter hopes, the better social
+position, the enlarged share of all the benefits which the community
+affords. I should show that we have made a step here at all events
+towards being a community indeed. In such a land I can see that there
+may still be need of occasional combinations among the working men to
+make better bargains with their employers, but I can see no need for the
+perpetual arraying of class against class or for a standing apparatus of
+industrial war.
+
+There is one more point which must be touched with tenderness but which
+cannot be honestly passed over in silence. It could nowhere be mentioned
+less invidiously than under the roof of an institution which is at once
+an effort to create high tastes in working men and a proof that such
+tastes can be created. The period of transition from high to low wages
+and from incessant toil to comparative leisure must be one of peril to
+masses whom no Mechanics Institute or Literary Society as yet counts
+among its members. It is the more so because there is abroad in all
+classes a passion for sensual enjoyment and excitement produced by the
+vast development of wealth and at the same time as I suspect by the
+temporary failure of those beliefs which combat the sensual appetites
+and sustain our spiritual life. Colliers drinking champagne. The world
+stands aghast. Well, I see no reason why a collier should not drink
+champagne if he can afford it as well as a Duke. The collier wants and
+perhaps deserves it more if he has been working all the week underground
+and at risk of his life. Hard labour naturally produces a craving for
+animal enjoyment and so does the monotony of the factory unrelieved by
+interest in the work. But what if the collier cannot afford the
+champagne or if the whole of his increase of wages is wasted on it while
+his habitation remains a hovel, everything about him is still as filthy,
+comfortless and barbarous as ever and (saddest of all) his wife and
+children are no better off, perhaps are worse off than before? What if
+his powers of work are being impaired by debauchery and he is thus
+surely losing the footing which he has won on the higher round of the
+industrial ladder and lapsing back into penury and despair? What if
+instead of gaining he is really losing in manhood and real independence?
+I see nothing shocking in the fact that a mechanic's wages are now equal
+to those of a clergyman, or an officer in the army who has spent perhaps
+thousands of dollars on his education. Every man has a right to whatever
+his labour will fetch. But I do see something shocking in the appearance
+of the highly paid mechanic, whenever hard times come, as a mendicant at
+the door of a man really poorer than himself. Not only that English
+poor-law, of which we spoke, but all poor-laws, formal or informal, must
+cease when the labourer has the means, with proper self-control and
+prudence, of providing for winter as well as summer, for hard times as
+well as good times, for his family as well as for himself. The tradition
+of a by-gone state of society must be broken. The nominally rich must no
+longer be expected to take care of the nominally poor. The labourer has
+ceased to be in any sense a slave. He must learn to be, in every sense,
+a man.
+
+It is much easier to recommend our neighbours to change their habits
+than to change our own, yet we must never forget, in discussing the
+question between the working man and his employer, or the community,
+that a slight change in the habits of the working men, in England at
+least, would add more to their wealth, their happiness and their hopes,
+than has been added by all the strikes, or by conflicts of any kind. In
+the life of Mr. Brassey, we are told that the British workman in
+Australia has great advantages, but wastes them all in drink. He does
+this not in Australia alone. I hate legislative interference with
+private habits, and I have no fancies about diet. A citizen of Maine,
+who has eaten too much pork, is just as great a transgressor against
+medical rules, and probably just as unamiable, as if he had drunk too
+much whisky. But when I have seen the havoc--the ever increasing havoc--
+which drink makes with the industry, the vigour, the character of the
+British workman, I have sometimes asked myself whether in that case
+extraordinary measures might not be justified by the extremity of its
+dangers.
+
+The subject is boundless. I might touch upon perils distinct from
+Unionism, which threaten industry, especially that growing dislike of
+manual labour which prevails to an alarming extent in the United States,
+and which some eminent economists are inclined to attribute to errors in
+the system of education in the common schools. I might speak of the
+duties of government in relation to these disturbances, and of the
+necessity, for this as well as other purposes, of giving ourselves a
+government of all and for all, capable of arbitrating impartially
+between conflicting interests as the recognised organ of the common
+good. I might speak, too, of the expediency of introducing into popular
+education a more social element, of teaching less rivalry and
+discontent, more knowledge of the mutual duties of different members of
+the community and of the connection of those duties with our happiness.
+But I must conclude. If I have thrown no new light upon the subject, I
+trust that I have at least tried to speak the truth impartially, and
+that I have said nothing which can add to the bitterness of the
+industrial conflict, or lead any of my hearers to forget that above all
+Trade Unions, and above all combinations of every kind, there is the
+great union of Humanity.
+
+
+
+
+"WHAT IS CULPABLE LUXURY?"
+
+
+A phrase in a lecture on "The Labour Movement," published in the
+_Canadian Monthly_, has been the inconsiderable cause of a
+considerable controversy in the English press and notably of a paper by
+the eminent economist and moralist Mr. W.R. Greg, entitled "What is
+Culpable Luxury?" in the _Contemporary Review_.
+
+The passage of the lecture in which the phrase occurred was: "Wealth,
+real wealth, has hardly as yet much reason to complain of any
+encroachment of the Labour Movement on its rights. When did it command
+such means and appliances of pleasure, such satisfaction for every
+appetite and every fancy, as it commands now? When did it rear such
+enchanted palaces of luxury as it is rearing in England at the present
+day? Well do I remember one of those palaces, the most conspicuous
+object for miles round. _Its lord was I dare say consuming the income
+of some six hundred of the poor labouring families round him_. The
+thought that you are spending on yourself annually the income of six
+hundred labouring families seems to me about as much as a man with a
+heart and a brain can bear. Whatever the rich man desires, the finest
+house, the biggest diamond, the reigning beauty for his wife, social
+homage, public honour, political power, is ready at his command" &c, &c.
+
+The words in italics have been separated from the context and taken as
+an attack on wealth. But the whole passage is a defence of labour
+against the charge of encroachment brought against it by wealth. I argue
+that, if the labouring man gets rather more than he did, the
+inequalities of fortune and the privileges of the rich are still great
+enough. In the next paragraph I say that "wealth well made and well
+spent is as pure as the rill that runs from the mountain side." An
+invidious turn has also been given to the expression "the income of six
+hundred labouring families," as though it meant that the wealthy idler
+is robbing six hundred labouring families of their income. It means no
+more than that the income which he is spending on himself is as large as
+six hundred of their incomes put together.
+
+Mr. Greg begins with what he calls a retort courteous. He says that if
+the man with L30 000 is doing this sad thing so is the man with L3000 or
+L300 and everyone who allows himself anything beyond the necessaries of
+life; nay, that the labouring man when he lights his pipe or drinks his
+dram is as well as the rest consuming the substance of one poorer than
+himself. This argument appears to its framer irrefutable and a retort to
+which there can be no rejoinder. I confess my difficulty is not so much
+in refuting it as in seeing any point in it at all. What parallel can
+there be between an enormous and a very moderate expenditure or between
+prodigious luxury and ordinary comfort? If a man taxes me with having
+squandered fifty dollars on a repast is it an irrefutable retort to tell
+him that he has spent fifty cents? The limited and rational expenditure
+of an industrious man produces no evils economical, social or moral. I
+contend in the lecture that the unlimited and irrational expenditure of
+idle millionaires does; that it wastes labour, breeds luxury, creates
+unhappiness by propagating factitious wants, too often engenders vice
+and is injurious for the most part to real civilization. I have
+observed and I think with truth that the most malignant feelings which
+enter into the present struggle between classes have been generated by
+the ostentation of idle wealth in contrast with surrounding poverty. It
+would of course be absurd to say this of a man living on a small income
+in a modest house and in a plain way.
+
+If I had said that property or all property beyond a mere sustenance is
+theft there would be force in Mr. Greg's retort, but as I have said or
+implied nothing more than that extravagant luxury is waste and
+contrasted with surrounding poverty grates on the feelings, especially
+when those who waste are idle and those who want are the hardest working
+labourers in the world, I repeat that I can see no force in the retort
+at all.
+
+Mr. Greg proceeds to analyse the expenditure of the millionaire and to
+maintain that its several items are laudable.
+
+First he defends pleasure grounds, gardens, shrubberies and deer parks.
+But he defends them on the ground that they are good things for the
+community and thereby admits my principle. It is only against wasteful
+self indulgence that I have anything to say. No doubt, says Mr. Greg,
+if the land of a country is all occupied and cultivated, and if no more
+land is easily accessible, and if the produce of other lands is not
+procurable in return for manufactured articles of exchange, then a
+proprietor who shall employ a hundred acres in growing wine for his own
+drinking, which might or would otherwise be employed in growing wheat or
+other food for twenty poor families who can find no other field for
+their labour, may fairly be said to be consuming, spending on himself,
+the sustenance of those families. If, again, he, in the midst of a
+swarming population unable to find productive or remunerative
+occupation, insists upon keeping a considerable extent of ground in
+merely ornamental walks and gardens, and, therefore, useless as far as
+the support of human life is concerned, he may be held liable to the
+same imputation--even though the wages he pays to the gardeners in the
+one case, and the vine-dressers in the other, be pleaded in mitigation
+of the charge. Let the writer of this only allow, as he must, that the
+moral, social and political consequences of expenditure are to be taken
+into account as well as the economical consequences, and he will be
+entirely at one with the writer whom he supposes himself to be
+confuting. I have never said, or imagined, that "all land ought to be
+producing food." I hold that no land in England is better employed than
+that of the London parks and the gardens of the Crystal Palace, though I
+could not speak so confidently with regard to a vast park from which all
+are excluded but its owner. Mr. Greg here again takes up what seems to
+me the strange position that to condemn excess is to condemn moderation.
+He says that whatever is said against the great parks and gardens of the
+most luxurious millionaire may equally be said against a tradesman's
+little flower-garden, or the plot of ornamental ground before the
+cottage windows of a peasant. I must again say that, so far from
+regarding this argument as irrefutable, I altogether fail to discover
+its cogency. The tradesman's little bit of green, the peasant's flower-
+bed, are real necessities of a human soul. Can the same thing be said of
+a pleasure-ground which consumes the labour of twenty men, and of which
+the object is not to refresh the weariness of labour but to distract the
+vacancy of idleness?
+
+Mr. Greg specially undertakes the defence of deer-parks. But his ground
+is that the deer-forests which were denounced as unproductive have been
+proved to be the only mode of raising the condition and securing the
+well-being of the ill-fed population. If so, "humanitarians" are ready
+to hold up both hands in favour of deer-forests. Nay, we are ready to do
+the same if the pleasure yielded by the deer-forests bears any
+reasonable proportion to the expense and the agricultural sacrifice,
+especially if the sportsman is a worker recruiting his exhausted brain,
+not a sybarite killing time.
+
+From parks and pleasure-grounds Mr. Greg goes on to horses; and here it
+is the same thing over again. The apologist first sneers at those who
+object to the millionaire's stud, then lets in the interest of the
+community as a limiting principle, and ends by saying: "We may then
+allow frankly and without demur, that if he (the millionaire) maintains
+more horses than he needs or can use, his expenditure thereon is
+strictly pernicious and indefensible, precisely in the same way as it
+would be if he burnt so much hay and threw so many bushels of oats into
+the fire. He is destroying human food." Now Mr. Greg has only to
+determine whether a man who is keeping a score or more of carriage and
+saddle horses, is "using" them or not. If he is, "humanitarians" are
+perfectly satisfied.
+
+Finally Mr. Greg comes to the case of large establishments of servants.
+And here, having set out with intentions most adverse to my theory, he
+"blesses it altogether." "Perhaps," he says, "of all the branches of a
+wealthy nobleman's expenditure, that which will be condemned with most
+unanimity, and defended with most difficulty, is the number of
+ostentatious and unnecessary servants it is customary to maintain. For
+this practice I have not a word to say. It is directly and indirectly
+bad. It is bad for all parties. Its reflex action on the masters
+themselves is noxious; it is mischievous to the flunkies who are
+maintained in idleness, and in enervating and demoralizing luxury; it is
+pernicious to the community at large, and especially to the middle and
+upper middle classes, whose inevitable expenditure in procuring fit
+domestic service--already burdensomely great--is thereby oppressively
+enhanced, till it has become difficult not only to find good household
+servants at moderate wages, but to find servants who will work
+diligently and faithfully for any wages at all."
+
+How will Mr. Greg keep up the palaces, parks, and studs, when he has
+taken away the retinues of servants? If he does not take care, he will
+find himself wielding the bosom of sumptuary reform in the most sweeping
+manner before he is aware of it. But let me respectfully ask him, who
+can he suppose objects to any expenditure except on the ground that it
+is directly and indirectly bad; bad for all parties, noxious to the
+voluptuary himself, noxious to all about him, and noxious to the
+community? So long as a man does no harm to himself or to anyone else, I
+for one see no objection to his supping like a Roman Emperor, on
+pheasants' tongues, or making shirt-studs of Koh-i-noors.
+
+"It is charity," says Mr. Greg, hurling at the system of great
+establishments his last and bitterest anathema--"It is charity, and
+charity of the bastard sort--charity disguised as ostentation. It feeds,
+clothes, and houses a number of people in strenuous and pretentious
+laziness. If almshouses are noxious and offensive to the economic mind,
+then, by parity of reasoning, superfluous domestics are noxious also."
+And so it would seem, by parity of reasoning, or rather _a
+fortiori_, as being fed, clothed, and housed far more expensively,
+and in far more strenuous and pretentious laziness, are the superfluous
+masters of flunkeys. The flunkey does some work, at all events enough to
+prevent him from becoming a mere fattened animal. If he is required to
+grease and powder his head, he does work, as it seems to me, for which
+he may fairly claim a high remuneration.
+
+As I have said already, let Mr. Greg take in the moral, political, and
+social evils of luxury, as well as the material waste, and I flatter
+myself that there will be no real difference between his general view of
+the responsibilities of wealth and mine. He seems to be as convinced as
+I am that there is no happiness in living in strenuous and pretentious
+laziness by the sweat of other men's brows.
+
+Nor do I believe that even the particular phrase which has been deemed
+so fraught with treason to plutocracy would, if my critic examined it
+closely, seem to him so very objectionable. His own doctrine, it is
+true, sounds severely economical. He holds that "the natural man and the
+Christian" who should be moved by his natural folly and Christianity to
+forego a bottle of champagne in order to relieve a neighbour in want of
+actual food, would do a thing "distinctly criminal and pernicious."
+Still I presume he would allow, theoretically, as I am very sure he
+would practically, a place to natural sympathy. He would not applaud a
+banquet given in the midst of a famine, although it might be clearly
+proved that the money spent by the banqueters was their own, that those
+who were perishing of famine had not been robbed of it, that their
+bellies were none the emptier because those of the banqueters were full,
+and that the cookery gave a stimulus to gastronomic art. He would not,
+even, think it wholly irrational that the gloom of the work-house
+should cast a momentary shadow on the enjoyments of the palace. I should
+also expect him to understand the impression that a man of "brain," even
+one free from any excessive tenderness of "heart," would not like to see
+a vast apparatus of luxury, and a great train of flunkeys devoted to his
+own material enjoyment--that he would feel it as a slur on his good
+sense, as an impeachment of his mental resources, and of his command of
+nobler elements of happiness, and even as a degradation of his manhood.
+There was surely something respectable in the sentiment which made Mr.
+Brassey refuse, however much his riches might increase, to add to his
+establishment. There is surely something natural in the tendency, which
+we generally find coupled with greatness, to simplicity of life. A
+person whom I knew had dined with a millionaire _tete-a-tete_, with
+six flunkeys standing round the table. I suspect that a man of Mr.
+Greg's intellect and character, in spite of his half-ascetic hatred of
+plush, would rather have been one of the six than one of the two.
+
+While, however, I hope that my view of these matters coincides
+practically with that of Mr. Greg far more than he supposes, I must
+admit that there may be a certain difference of sentiment behind. Mr.
+Greg describes the impressions to which I have given currency as a
+confused compound of natural sympathy, vague Christianity, and dim
+economic science. Of the confusion, vagueness and dimness of our views,
+of course we cannot be expected to be conscious; but I own that I defer,
+in these matters, not only to natural feeling, but to the ethics of
+rational Christianity. I still adhere to the Christian code for want of
+a better, the Utilitarian system of morality being, so far as I can see,
+no morality at all, in the ordinary sense of the term, as it makes no
+appeal to our moral nature, our conscience, or whatever philosophers
+choose to call the deepest part of humanity. Of course, therefore, I
+accept as the fundamental principle of human relations, and of all
+science concerning them, the great Christian doctrine that "we are every
+one members one of another" As a consequence of this doctrine I hold
+that the wealth of mankind is morally a common store; that we are
+morally bound to increase it as much, and to waste it as little, as we
+can, that of the two it is happier to be underpaid than to be overpaid;
+and that we shall all find it so in the sum of things. There is nothing
+in such a view in the least degree subversive of the legal rights of
+property, which the founders of Christianity distinctly recognised in
+their teaching, and strengthened practically by raising the standard of
+integrity; nothing adverse to active industry or good business habits;
+nothing opposed to economic science as the study of the laws regulating
+the production and distribution of wealth; nothing condemnatory of
+pleasure, provided it be pleasure which opens the heart, as I suppose
+was the case with the marriage feast at Cana, not the pleasure which
+closes the heart, as I fear was the case with the "refined luxury" of
+the Marquis of Steyne.
+
+If this is superstition, all that I can say is that I have read Strauss,
+Renan, Mr. Greg on the "Creed of Christendom," and all the eminent
+writers I could hear of on that side, and that I am not conscious of any
+bias to the side of orthodoxy, at least I have not given satisfaction to
+the orthodox classes.
+
+Christianity, of course, in common with other systems, craves a
+reasonable construction. Plato cannot afford to have his apologues
+treated as histories. In "Joshua Davidson," a good man is made to turn
+away from Christianity because he finds that his faith will not
+literally remove a mountain and cast it into the sea. But he had omitted
+an indispensable preliminary. He ought first to have exactly compared
+the bulk of his faith with that of a grain of Palestinian mustard seed.
+Mr. Greg makes sport of the text "He that hath two coats let him impart
+to him that hath none," which he says he heard in his youth, but without
+ever considering its present applicability. Yet in the next paragraph
+but one he gives it a precise and a very important application by
+pronouncing that a man is not at liberty to grow wine for himself on
+land which other people need for food. I fail to see how the principle
+involved in this passage, and others of a similar tendency which I have
+quoted from Mr. Greg's paper, differ from that involved in Gospel texts
+which, if I were to quote them would grate strangely upon his ear. The
+texts comprise a moral sanction; but Mr. Greg must have some moral
+sanction when he forbids a man to do that which he is permitted to do by
+law. Christianity, whatever its source and authority, was addressed at
+first to childlike minds, and what its antagonists have to prove is not
+that its forms of expression or even of thought are adapted to such
+minds, but that its principles, when rationally applied to a more
+advanced state of society, are unsound. Rightly understood it does not
+seem to me to enjoin anything eccentric or spasmodic, to bid you enact
+primitive Orientalism in the streets of London, thrust fraternity upon
+writers in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, or behave generally as if the
+"Kingdom of God" were already come. Your duty as a Christian is done if
+you help its coming according to the circumstances of your place in
+society and the age in which you live.
+
+Of course, in subscribing to the Christian code of ethics, one lays
+oneself open to "retorts corteous" without limit. But so one does in
+subscribing to any code, or accepting any standard, whether moral or of
+any other kind.
+
+I do not see on what principle Mr. Greg would justify, if he does
+justify, any sort of charitable benefactions. Did not Mr. Peabody give
+his glass of champagne to a man in need? He might have spent all his
+money on himself if he had been driven to building Chatsworths, and
+hanging their walls with Raffaelles. How will he escape the reproach of
+having done what was criminal and pernicious? And what are we to say of
+the conduct of London plutocrats who abetted his proceedings by their
+applause though they abstained from following his example? Is there any
+apology for them at all but one essentially Christian? Not that
+Christianity makes any great fuss over munificence, or gives political
+economy reasonable ground for apprehension on that score. Plutocracy
+deifies Mr. Peabody; Christianity measures him and pronounces his
+millions worth less than the widow's mite.
+
+In my lecture I have applied my principles, or tried to apply them,
+fairly to the mechanic as well as to the millionaire. I have deprecated,
+as immoral, a resort to strikes solely in the interest of the strikers,
+without regard to the general interests of industry and of the community
+at large. What has my critic to say, from the moral point of view, to
+the gas stokers who leave London in the dark, or the colliers who, in
+struggling to raise their own wages, condemn the ironworkers to "clamm"
+for want of coal?
+
+I would venture to suggest that Mr. Greg somewhat overrates in his paper
+the beneficence of luxury as an agent in the advancement of
+civilization. "Artificial wants," he says, "what may be termed
+extravagant wants, the wish to possess something beyond the bare
+necessaries of existence; the taste for superfluities and luxuries
+first, the desire for refinements and embellishments next; the craving
+for the higher enjoyments of intellect and art as the final stage--these
+are the sources and stimulants of advancing civilization. It is these
+desires, these needs, which raise mankind above mere animal existence,
+which, in time and gradually, transform the savage into the cultured
+citizen of intelligence and leisure. Ample food once obtained, he begins
+to long for better, more varied, more succulent food; the richer
+nutriment leads on to the well-stored larder and the well-filled cellar,
+and culminates in the French cook." The love of truth, the love of
+beauty, the effort to realize a high type of individual character, and a
+high social ideal, surely these are elements of progress distinct from
+gastronomy, and from that special chain of gradual improvement which
+culminates in the French cook. It may be doubted whether French cookery
+does always denote the acme of civilization. Perhaps in the case of the
+typical London Alderman, it denotes something like the acme of
+barbarism, for the barbarism of the elaborate and expensive glutton
+surely exceeds that of the child of nature who gorges himself on the
+flesh which he has taken in hunting: not to mention that the child of
+nature costs humanity nothing, whereas the gourmand devours the labour
+of the French cook and probably that of a good many assistants and
+purveyors.
+
+The greatest service is obviously rendered by any one who can improve
+human food. "The man is what he eats," is a truth though somewhat too
+broadly stated. But then the improvement must be one ultimately if not
+immediately accessible to mankind in general. That which requires a
+French cook is accessible only to a few.
+
+Again, in setting forth the civilizing effects of expenditure, Mr. Greg,
+I think, rather leaves out of sight those of frugality. The Florentines,
+certainly the leaders of civilization in their day, were frugal in their
+personal habits, and by that frugality accumulated the public wealth
+which produced Florentine art, and sustained a national policy eminently
+generous and beneficent for its time.
+
+Moreover, in estimating the general influence of great fortunes, Mr.
+Greg seems to take a rather sanguine view of the probable character and
+conduct of their possessors. He admits that a broad-acred peer or
+opulent commoner "may spend his L30,000 a year in such a manner as to be
+a curse, a reproach, and an object of contempt to the community,
+demoralizing and disgusting all around him, doing no good to others, and
+bringing no real enjoyment to himself." But he appears to think that the
+normal case, and the one which should govern our general views and
+policy upon the subject, is that of a man "of refined taste and
+intellect expanded to the requirements of his position, managing his
+property with care and judgment, so as to set a feasible example to less
+wealthy neighbours; prompt to discern and to aid useful undertakings, to
+succour striving merit, unearned suffering, and overmatched energy."
+"Such a man," he says, in a concluding burst of eloquence, "if his
+establishment in horses and servants is not immoderate, although he
+surrounds himself with all that art can offer to render life beautiful
+and elegant though he gathers round him the best productions of the
+intellect of all countries and ages, though his gardens and his park are
+models of curiosity and beauty, though he lets his ancestral trees rot
+in their picturesque mutility instead of converting them into profitable
+timber, and disregards the fact that his park would be more productive
+if cut up into potato plots though, in fine he lives in the very height
+of elegant, refined and tasteful luxury--I should hesitate to denounce
+as consuming on himself the incomes of countless labouring families, and
+I should imagine that he might lead his life of temperate and thoughtful
+joy quietly conscious that his liberal expenditure enabled scores of
+these families as well as artists and others to exist in comfort and
+without either brain or heart giving way under the burdensome
+reflection."
+
+It must be by a slip of the pen such as naturally occurs amidst the glow
+of an enthusiastic description that the writer speaks of people as
+enabling others to subsist by their expenditure. It is clear that people
+can furnish subsistence to themselves or others only by production. A
+rich idler may appear to give bread to an artist or opera girl but the
+bread really comes not from the idler but from the workers who pay his
+rents; the idler is at most the channel of distribution. The munificence
+of monarchs who generously lavish the money of the taxpayer is a
+familiar case of the same fallacy. This is the illusion of the Irish
+peasant whose respect for the spendthrift "gentleman" and contempt for
+the frugal "sneak" Mr. Greg honours with a place among the serious
+elements of an economical and social problem.
+
+But not to dwell on what is so obvious how many let me ask, of the
+possessors of inherited wealth in England or in any other country,
+fulfil or approach Mr. Greg's ideal? I confess that, as regards the mass
+of the English squires the passage seems to me almost satire. Refined
+taste and expanded intellect, promptness to discern and aid striving
+merit and unearned suffering, life surrounded with all that art can do
+to render it beautiful and elegant, the best productions of intellect
+gathered from all intellects and ages--I do not deny that Mr. Greg has
+seen all this, but I can hardly believe that he has seen it often, and I
+suspect that there are probably people not unfamiliar with the abodes of
+great landowners who have never seen it at all. Not to speak of artists
+and art, what does landed wealth do for popular education? It appears
+from the Popular Education Report of 1861 (p. 77) that in a district
+taken as a fair specimen, the sum of L4,518, contributed by voluntary
+subscription towards the support of 168 schools, was derived from the
+following sources:
+
+169 clergymen contributed L1,782 or L10 10 0 each
+399 landowners    "        2,127 "    5  6 0  "
+2l7 occupiers     "          200 "      18 6  "
+102 householders  "          181 "    1 15 6  "
+141 other persons "          228 "    1 12 4  "
+
+The rental of the 399 landowners was estimated at, L650,000 a year.
+Judging from the result of my own observations, I should not have been
+at all surprised if a further analysis of the return had shown that not
+only the contributions of the clergy but those of retired professional
+men and others with limited incomes were, in proportion, far greater
+than those of the leviathans of wealth.
+
+To play the part of Mr. Greg's ideal millionaire, a man must have not
+only a large heart but a cultivated mind; and how often are educators
+successful in getting work out of boys or youths who know that they have
+not to make their own bread?
+
+In my lecture I have drawn a strong distinction, though Mr. Greg has not
+observed it, between hereditary wealth and that which, however great,
+and even, compared with the wages of subordinate producers, excessive,
+is earned by industry. Wealth earned by industry is, for obvious
+reasons, generally much more wisely and beneficially spent than
+hereditary wealth. The self-made millionaire must at all events, have an
+active mind. The late Mr. Brassey was probably one man in a hundred even
+among self-made millionaires; among hereditary millionaires he would
+have been one in a thousand. Surely we always bestow especial praise on
+one who resists the evil influences of hereditary wealth, and surely our
+praise is deserved.
+
+The good which private wealth has done in the way of patronizing
+literature and art is, I am convinced, greatly overrated. The beneficent
+patronage of Lorenzo di Medici is, like that of Louis XIV., a
+chronological and moral fallacy. What Lorenzo did was, in effect, to
+make literature and art servile and in some cases to taint them with the
+propensities of a magnificent debauchee. It was not Lorenzo, nor any
+number of Lorenzos, that made Florence, with her intellect and beauty,
+but the public spirit, the love of the community, the intensity of civic
+life, in which the interest of Florentine history lies. The decree of
+the Commune for the building of the Cathedral directs the architect to
+make a design "of such noble and extreme magnificence that the industry
+and skill of men shall be able to invent nothing grander or more
+beautiful," since it had been decided in Council that no plan should be
+accepted "unless the conception was such as to render the work worthy of
+an ambition which had become very great, inasmuch as it resulted from
+the continued desires of a great number of citizens united in one sole
+will."
+
+I believe, too, that the munificence of a community is generally wiser
+and better directed than that of private benefactors. Nothing can be
+more admirable than the munificence of rich men in the United States.
+But the drawback in the way of personal fancies and crochets is so great
+that I sometimes doubt whether future generations will have reason to
+thank the present, especially as the reverence of the Americans for
+property is so intense that they would let a dead founder breed any
+pestilence rather than touch the letter of his will.
+
+Politically, no one can have lived in the New World without knowing that
+a society in which wealth is distributed rests on an incomparably safer
+foundation than one in which it is concentrated in the hands of a few.
+British plutocracy has its cannoneer; but if the cannoneer happens to
+take fancies into his head the "whiff of grapeshot" goes the wrong way.
+
+Socially, I do not know whether Mr. Greg has been led to consider the
+extent to which artificial desires, expensive fashions, and conventional
+necessities created by wealth, interfere with freedom of intercourse and
+general happiness. The _Saturday Review_ says:
+
+"All classes of Her Majesty's respectable subjects are always doing
+their best to keep up appearances, and a very hard struggle many of us
+make of it. Thus a mansion in Belgrave Square ought to mean a corpulent
+hall-porter, a couple of gigantic footmen, a butler and an under-butler
+at the very least, if the owner professes to live op to his social
+dignities. If our house is in Baker or Wimpole street, we must certainly
+have a manservant in sombre raiment to open our door, with a hobbledehoy
+or a buttons to run his superior's messages. In the smart, although
+somewhat dismal, small squares in South Kensington and the Western
+suburbs, the parlourmaid must wear the freshest of ribbons and trimmest
+of bows, and be resplendent in starch and clean coloured muslins. So it
+goes on, as we run down the gamut of the social scale; our ostentatious
+expenditure must be in harmony throughout with the stuccoed facade
+behind which we live, or the staff of domestics we parade. We are aware,
+of course, as our incomes for the most part are limited, and as we are
+all of us upon our mettle in the battle of life that we must pinch
+somewhere if appearances are to be kept up. We do what we can in secret
+towards balancing the budget. We retrench on our charities, save on our
+coals, screw on our cabs, drink the sourest of Bordeaux instead of more
+generous vintages, dispense with the cream which makes tea palatable,
+and systematically sacrifice substantial comforts that we may swagger
+successfully in the face of a critical and carping society. But with
+the most of us if our position is an anxious one; it is of our own
+making and if we dared to be eccentrically rational it might be very
+tolerable."
+
+Nor is this the worst. The worst is the exclusion from society of the
+people who do not choose to torture and degrade themselves in order to
+keep up appearances and who are probably the best people of all. The
+interference of wealth and its exigencies with social enjoyment is I
+suspect a heavy set off against squirearchical patronage of intellect
+and art.
+
+Those who believe that the distribution of wealth is more favourable to
+happiness and more civilizing than its concentration will of course vote
+against laws which tend to artificial concentration of wealth such as
+those of primogeniture and entail. This they may do without advocating
+public plunder though it suits plutocratic writers to confound the two.
+For my own part I do not feel bound to pay to British plutocracy a
+respect which British plutocracy does not pay to humanity. Some of its
+organs are beginning to preach doctrines revolting to a Christian and to
+any man who has not banished from his heart the love of his kind and we
+have seen it when its class passions were excited show a temper as cruel
+as that of any Maratist or Petroleuse. But so far from attacking the
+institution of property [Footnote: The _Saturday Review_ some time
+ago charged me with proposing to confiscate the increase in the value of
+land. I never said anything of the kind nor anything I believe that
+could easily be mistaken for it.] I have as great a respect for it as
+any millionaire can have and as sincerely accept and uphold it as the
+condition of our civilization. There is nothing inconsistent with this
+in the belief that among the better part of the race property is being
+gradually modified by duty or in the surmise that before humanity
+reaches its distant goal property and duty will alike be merged in
+affection.
+
+
+
+
+A TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY.
+
+
+The vast works of the railway and steamboat age called into existence,
+besides the race of great engineers, a race of great organizers and
+directors of industry, who may be generally termed Contractor. Among
+these no figure was more conspicuous than that of Mr. Brassey, a life of
+whom has just been published by Messrs. Bell and Daldy. Its author is
+Mr. Helps, whose name is a guarantee for the worthy execution of the
+work. And worthily executed it is, in spite of a little Privy Council
+solemnity in the reflections, and a little "State Paper" in the style.
+The materials were collected in an unusual way--by examining the
+persons who had acted under Mr. Brassey, or knew him well, and taking
+down their evidence in shorthand. The examination was conducted by Mr.
+Brassey, jun., who prudently declined to write the biography himself,
+feeling that a son could not speak impartially of his father. The result
+is that we have materials for a portrait, which not only is very
+interesting in itself but, by presenting the image of beneficence in an
+employer, may help to mediate between capital and labour in a time of
+industrial war.
+
+Mr. Helps had been acquainted with Mr. Brassey, and had once received a
+visit from him on official business of difficulty and importance. He
+expected, he says, to see a hard, stern, soldierly sort of person,
+accustomed to sway armies of working-men in an imperious fashion.
+Instead of this he saw an elderly gentleman of very dignified appearance
+and singularly graceful manners--"a gentleman of the old school." "He
+stated his case, no, I express myself wrongly; he did _not_ state
+his case, he _understated_ it; and there are few things more
+attractive in a man than that he should be inclined to understate rather
+than overstate his own case." Mr. Brassey was also very brief, and when
+he went away, Mr. Helps, knowing well the matter in respect to which his
+visitor had a grievance, thought that, if it had been his own case, he
+should hardly have been able to restrain himself so well, and speak with
+so little regard to self-interest, as Mr. Brassey had done. Of all the
+persons whom Mr. Helps had known, he thought Mr. Brassey most resembled
+that perfect gentleman and excellent public man, Lord Herbert of Lea.
+
+Mr. Helps commences his work with a general portrait. According to this
+portrait, the most striking feature in Mr. Brassey's character was
+trustfulness, which he carried to what might appear an extreme. He chose
+his agents with care, but, having chosen them, placed implicit
+confidence in them, trusting them for all details, and judging by
+results. He was very liberal in the conduct of business. His temperament
+was singularly calm and equable, not to be discomposed by success or
+failure, easily throwing off the burden of care, and, when all had been
+done that could be done, awaiting the result with perfect equanimity. He
+was very delicate in blaming, his censure being always of the gentlest
+kind, evidently reluctant, and on that account going more to the heart.
+His generosity made him exceedingly popular with his subordinates and
+work-men, who looked forward to his coming among them as a festive
+event; and, when any disaster occurred in the works, the usual parts of
+employer and employed were reversed--the employer it was who framed the
+excuses and comforted the employed. He was singularly courteous, and
+listened to everybody with respect; so that it was a marked thing when
+he went so far as to say of a voluble and empty chatterer, that "the
+peas were overgrowing the stick." His presence of mind was great; he had
+in an eminent degree, as his biographer remarks, what Napoleon called
+"two o'clock in the morning courage," being always ready, if called up
+in the middle of the night, to meet any urgent peril; and his faculties
+were stimulated, not overcome, by danger. He had a perfect hatred of
+contention, and would not only refuse to take any questionable
+advantage, but would rather even submit to be taken advantage of--a
+generosity which turned to his account. In the execution of any
+undertaking, his anxiety was that the work should be done quickly and
+done well. Minor questions, unprovided for by specific contract, he left
+to be settled afterwards. In his life he had only one regular law-suit.
+It was in Spain, about the Mataro line, and into this he was drawn by
+his partner against his will. He declared that he would never have
+another, "for in nineteen cases out of twenty you either gain nothing at
+all, or what you do gain does not compensate you for the worry and
+anxiety the lawsuit occasions you." In case of disputes between his
+agents and the engineers, he quietly settled the question by reference
+to the "gangers."
+
+In order to find the key to Mr. Brassey's character, his biographer took
+care to ascertain what was his "ruling passion." He had none of the
+ordinary ambitions for rank, title, or social position. "His great
+ambition--his ruling passion--was to win a high reputation for skill,
+integrity, and success in the difficult vocation of a contractor for
+public works; to give large employment to his fellow-countrymen; by
+means of British labour and British skill to knit together foreign
+countries; and to promote civilization, according to his view of it,
+throughout the world." "Mr. Brassey," continues Mr. Helps, "was, in
+brief, a singularly trustful, generous, large-hearted, dexterous, ruling
+kind of personage; blessed with a felicitous temperament for bearing the
+responsibility of great affairs." In the military age he might have been
+a great soldier, a Turenne or a Marlborough, if he could have broken
+through the aristocratic barrier which confined high command to the
+privileged few; in the industrial age he found a more beneficent road to
+distinction, and one not limited to the members of a caste.
+
+Mr. Brassey's family is stated by his biographer to have come over with
+the Conqueror. If Mr. Brassey attached any importance to his pedigree
+(of which there is no appearance) it is to be hoped that he was able to
+make it out more clearly than most of those who claim descent from
+companions of the Conqueror. Long after the Conquest--so long, indeed,
+as England and Normandy remained united under one crown--there was a
+constant flow of Norman immigration into England, and England swarms
+with people bearing Norman or French names, whose ancestors were
+perfectly guiltless of the bloodshed of Hastings, and made their
+entrance into the country as peaceful traders, and, perhaps, in even
+humbler capacities. What is certain is that the great contractor sprang
+from a line of those small landed proprietors, once the pillars of
+England's strength, virtue and freedom, who, in the old country have
+been "improved off the face of the earth" by the great landowners, while
+they live again on the happier side of the Atlantic. A sound morality,
+freedom from luxury, and a moderate degree of culture, are the heritage
+of the scion of such a stock. Mr. Brassey was brought up at home till he
+was twelve years old, when he was sent to school at Chester. At sixteen
+he was articled to a surveyor, and as an initiation into great works, he
+helped, as a pupil, to make the surveys for the then famous Holyhead
+road. His master, Mr. Lawton, saw his worth, and ultimately took him
+into partnership. The firm set up at Birkenhead, then a very small
+place, but destined to a greatness which, it seems, Mr. Lawton had the
+shrewdness to discern. At Birkenhead Mr. Brassey did well, of course;
+and there, after a time, he was brought into contact with George
+Stephenson, and by him at once appreciated and induced to engage in
+railways. The first contract which he obtained was for the Pembridge
+Viaduct, between Stafford and Wolverhampton, and for this he was enabled
+to tender by the liberality of his bankers, whose confidence, like that
+of all with whom he came into contact, he had won. Railway-making was at
+that time a new business, and a contractor was required to meet great
+demands upon his organizing power; the system of sub-contracts, which so
+much facilitates the work, being then only in its infancy. From George
+Stephenson Mr. Brassey passed to Mr. Locke, whose great coadjutor he
+speedily became. And now the question arose whether he should venture to
+leave his moorings at Birkenhead and launch upon the wide sea of
+railroad enterprise. His wife is said, by a happy inspiration, to have
+decided him in favour of the more important and ambitious sphere. She
+did so at the sacrifice of her domestic comfort; for in the prosecution
+of her husband's multifarious enterprises they changed their residence
+eleven times in the next thirteen years, several times to places abroad;
+and little during those years did his wife and family see of Mr.
+Brassey.
+
+A high place in Mr. Brassey's calling had now been won, and it had been
+won not by going into rings or making corners, but by treading steadily
+the steep path of honour. Mr. Locke was accused of unduly favouring Mr.
+Brassey. Mr. Helps replies that the partiality of a man like Mr. Locke
+must have been based on business grounds. It was found that when Mr.
+Brassey had undertaken a contract, the engineer-in-chief had little to
+do in the way of supervision. Mr. Locke felt assured that the bargain
+would be not only exactly but handsomely fulfilled, and that no excuse
+would be pleaded for alteration or delay. After the fall of a great
+viaduct it was suggested to Mr. Brassey that, by representing his case,
+he might obtain a reduction of his loss. "No," was his reply, "I have
+contracted to make and maintain the road, and nothing shall prevent
+Thomas Brassey from being as good as his word."
+
+As a contractor on a large scale, and especially as a contractor for
+foreign railroads, Mr. Brassey was led rapidly to develop the system of
+sub-contracting. His mode of dealing with his sub-contractors, however,
+was peculiar. They did not regularly contract with him, but he appointed
+them their work, telling them what price he should give for it. They
+were ready to take his word, knowing that they would not suffer by so
+doing. The sub-contractor who had made a bad bargain, and found himself
+in a scrape, anxiously looked for the coming of Mr. Brassey. "Mr.
+Brassey," says one of the witnesses examined for this biography, "came,
+saw how matters stood, and invariably satisfied the man. If a cutting
+taken to be clay turned out after a very short time to be rock, the sub-
+contractor would be getting disheartened, yet he still persevered,
+looking to the time when Mr. Brassey should come. He came, walking along
+the line as usual with a number of followers, and on coming to the
+cutting he looked round, counted the number of waggons at the work,
+scanned the cutting, and took stock of the nature of the stuff. "This is
+very hard," said he to the sub-contractor. "Yes, it is a pretty deal
+harder than I bargained for." Mr. Brassey would linger behind, allowing
+the others to go on, and then commence the following conversation: "What
+is your price for this cutting?" "So much a yard, Sir." "It is very
+evident you are not getting it out for that price. Have you asked for
+any advance to be made to you for this rock?" "Yes, sir, but I can make
+no sense of them." "If you say that your price is so much, it is quite
+clear that you do not do it for that. I am glad that you have persevered
+with it; but I shall not alter your price, it must remain as it is; but
+the rock must be measured for you twice. Will that do for you?" "Yes,
+very well indeed, and I am very much obliged to you, Sir." "Very well,
+go on; you have done very well in persevering, and I shall look to you
+again." One of these tours of inspection would often cost Mr. Brassey a
+thousand pounds."
+
+Mr. Brassey, like all men who have done great things in the practical
+world, knew his way to men's hearts. In his tours along the line he
+remembered even the navvies, and saluted them by their names.
+
+He understood the value of the co-operative principle as a guarantee for
+hearty work. His agents were made partakers in his success, and he
+favoured the butty-gang system--that of letting work to a gang of a
+dozen men, who divide the pay, allowing something extra to the head of
+the gang.
+
+Throughout his life it was a prime object with him to collect around him
+a good staff of well-tried and capable men. He chose well, and adhered
+to his choice. If a man failed in one line, he did not cast him off, but
+tried him in another. It was well known in the labour market that be
+would never give a man up if he could help it. He did not even give men
+up when they had gone to law with him. In the appendix is a letter
+written by him to provide employment for a person who "had by some means
+got into a suit or reference against him," but whom he described as
+"knowing his work well." In hard times he still kept his staff together
+by subdividing the employment.
+
+Those social philosophers who delight in imagining that there is no
+engineering skill, or skill of any kind, in England, have to account for
+the fact that a large proportion of the foreign railways are of British
+construction. The lines built by Mr. Brassey form an imposing figure not
+only on the map of England, but on those of Europe, North and South
+America, and Australia. The Paris and Rouen Railway was the first of the
+series. In passing to the foreign scene of action new difficulties had
+to be encountered, including that of carrying over, managing and housing
+large bodies of British navvies; and Mr. Brassey's administrative powers
+were further tried and more conspicuously developed. The railway army,
+under its commander-in-chief, was now fully organized. "If," says Mr.
+Helps, "we look at the several persons and classes engaged, they may be
+enumerated thus:--There were the engineers of the company or of the
+government who were promoters of the line. There were the principal
+contractors, whose work had to satisfy these engineers; and there were
+the agents of the contractors to whom were apportioned the several
+lengths of the line. These agents had the duties, in some respects, of a
+commissary-general in an army; and for the work to go on well, it was
+necessary that they should be men of much intelligence and force of
+character. Then there were the various artizans, such as bricklayers and
+masons, whose work, of course, was principally that of constructing the
+culverts, bridges, stations, tunnels and viaducts, to which points of
+the work the attention of the agents had to be carefully directed.
+Again, there were the sub-contractors, whose duties I have enumerated,
+and under them were the gangers, the corporals, as it were, in this
+great army, being the persons who had the control of small bodies of
+workmen, say twenty or more. Then came the great body of navvies, the
+privates of the army, upon whose endurance and valour so much depended."
+
+There is a striking passage in one of the Erckmann-Chatrian novels,
+depicting the French army going into action, with its vast bodies of
+troops of all arms moving over the whole field, marshalled by perfect
+discipline and wielded by the single will of Napoleon. The army of
+industry when in action also presented a striking appearance in its way.
+I think, says one of Mr. Brassey's time keepers with professional
+enthusiasm, as fine a spectacle as any man could witness who is
+accustomed to look at work is to see a cutting in full operation with
+about twenty waggons being filled, every man at his post, and every man
+with his shirt open working in the heat of the day, the ganger walking
+about and everything going like clockwork. Such an exhibition of
+physical power attracted many French gentlemen who came on to the
+cuttings at Paris and Rouen and looking at the English workmen with
+astonishment said _Mon Dieu, les Anglais comme ils travaillent!_
+Another thing that called forth remark was the complete silence that
+prevailed amongst the men. It was a fine sight to see the Englishmen
+that were there with their muscular arms and hands hairy and brown.
+
+The army was composed of elements as motley as ever met under any
+commander. On the Paris and Rouen Railway eleven languages were spoken--
+English, Erse, Gaelic, Welsh, French, German, Belgian (Flemish), Dutch,
+Piedmontese, Spanish, and Polish. A common lingo naturally sprang up
+like the Pigeon English of China. But in the end it seems many of the
+navvies learnt to speak French pretty well. We are told that at first
+the mode in which the English instructed the French was of a very
+original character. They pointed to the earth to be moved or the waggon
+to be filled said the word d--n emphatically, stamped their feet and
+somehow or other their instructions thus conveyed were generally
+comprehended by the foreigners. It is added however that this form of
+instruction was only applicable in very simple cases.
+
+The English navvy was found to be the first workman in the world. Some
+navvies utterly distanced in working power the labourers of all other
+countries. The French at first earned only two francs a day to the
+Englishman's four and a half, but with better living, more instruction,
+and improved tools (for the French tools were very poor at first) the
+Frenchmen came to earn four francs. In the severe and dangerous work of
+mining, however the Englishman maintained his superiority in nerve and
+steadiness. The Piedmontese were very good hands especially for cutting
+rock and at the same time well conducted, sober and saving. The
+Neapolitans would not take any heavy work, but they seem to have been
+temperate and thrifty. The men from Lucca ranked midway between the
+Piedmontese and the Neapolitans. The Germans proved less enduring than
+the French; those employed, however, were mostly Bavarians. The Belgians
+were good labourers. In the mode of working, the foreign labourers had
+of course much to learn from the English, whose experience in railway-
+making had taught them the most compendious processes for moving earth.
+
+Mr. Hawkshaw, the engineer, however says, as to the relative cost of
+unskilled labour in different countries: "I have come to the conclusion
+that its cost is much the same in all. I have had personal experience in
+South America, in Russia, and in Holland, as well as in my own country,
+and, as consulting engineer to some of the Indian and other foreign
+railways. I am pretty well acquainted with the value of Hindoo and other
+labour; and though an English labourer will do a larger amount of work
+than a Creole or a Hindoo, yet you have to pay them proportionately
+higher wages. Dutch labourers are, I think, as good as English, or
+nearly so; and Russian workmen are docile and easily taught, and readily
+adopt every method shown to them to be better than their own."
+
+The "navvies," though rough, seem not to have been unmanageable. There
+are no trades' unions among them, and they seldom strike. Brandy being
+cheap in France, they were given to drink, which was not the French
+habit: but their good nature, and the freedom with which they spent
+their money, made them popular, and even the _gendarmes_ soon found
+out the best way of managing them. They sometimes, but not generally,
+got unruly on pay day. They came to their foreign work without wife or
+family. The unmarried often took foreign wives. It is pleasant to hear
+that those who had wives and families in England sent home money
+periodically to them; and that they all sent money often to their
+parents. They sturdily kept their English habits and their English
+dress, with the high-low boots laced up, if they could possibly get them
+made.
+
+The multiplicity of schemes now submitted to Mr. Brassey brought out his
+powers of calculation and mental arithmetic, which appear to have been
+very great. After listening to a multitude of complicated details, he
+would arrive mentally in a few seconds at the approximate cost of a
+line. He made little use of notes, trusting to his memory, which,
+naturally strong, was strengthened by habit. Dealing with hundreds of
+people, he kept their affairs in his head and at every halt in his
+journeys even for a quarter of an hour at a railway station he would sit
+down and write letters of the clearest kind. His biographer says that he
+was one of the greatest letter writers ever known.
+
+If he ever got into serious difficulties it was not from miscalculation
+but from financial embarrassment which in 1866 pressed upon him in such
+a manner and with such severity that his property of all kinds was
+largely committed and he weathered the storm only by the aid of the
+staunch friends whom his high qualities and honourable conduct had
+wedded to his person and his fortunes. In the midst of his difficulties
+he pushed on his works to their conclusion with his characteristic
+rapidity. His perseverance supported his reputation and turned the
+wavering balance in his favour. The daring and vigorous completion of
+the Lemberg and Czarnovitz works especially had this good effect and an
+incident in connection with them showed the zeal and devotion which Mr.
+Brassey's character inspired. The works were chiefly going on at Lemberg
+five hundred miles from Vienna and the difficulty was, how to get the
+money to pay the men from Vienna to Lemberg, the intervening country
+being occupied by the Austrian and Prussian armies. Mr. Brassey's
+coadjutor and devoted friend Mr. Ofenheim, Director General of the
+Company, undertook to do it. He was told there was no engine but he
+found an old engine in a shed. Next he wanted an engine driver and he
+found one but the man said that he had a wife and children and that he
+would not go. His reluctance was overcome by the promise of a high
+reward for himself and a provision in case of death for his wife and
+family. The two jumped on the old engine and got up steam. They then
+started and ran at the rate of forty or fifty miles an hour between the
+sentinels of the opposing armies who were so surprised, Mr. Ofenheim
+says, that they had not time to shoot him. His only fear was that there
+might be a rail up somewhere. But he got to Lemberg and paid the men who
+would otherwise have gone home, leaving the line unfinished for the
+winter. The Emperor of Austria might well ask, Who is this Mr. Brassey,
+the English contractor for whom men are to be found who work with such
+zeal and risk their lives? In recognition of a power which the Emperor
+had reason to envy he sent Mr. Brassey the Cross of the Iron Crown.
+
+It was only in Spain, the land where two and two make five, that Mr.
+Brassey's powers of calculation failed him. He and his partners lost
+largely upon the Bilbao railway. It seems that there was a mistake as to
+the nature of the soil, and that the climate proved wetter than was
+expected. But the firm also forgot to allow for the ecclesiastical
+calendar, and the stoppage of work on the numberless fete days. There
+were, however, other difficulties peculiarly Spanish,--antediluvian
+finance, antediluvian currency, the necessity of sending pay under a
+guard of clerks armed with revolvers, and the strange nature of the
+people whom it was requisite to employ--one of them, a Carlist chief,
+living in defiance of the Government with a tail of ruffians like
+himself, who, when you would not transact business as he wished,
+"bivouacked" with his tail round your office and threatened to "kill you
+as he would a fly." Mr. Brassey managed notwithstanding to illustrate
+the civilizing power of railways by teaching the Basques the use of
+paper money.
+
+Minor misfortunes of course occurred, such as the fall of the Barentin
+Viaduct on the Rouen and Havre railway, a brick structure one hundred
+feet high and a third of a mile in length, which had just elicited the
+praise of the Minister of Public Works. Rapid execution in bad weather,
+and inferior mortar, were the principal causes of this accident. By
+extraordinary effort the viaduct was built in less than six months, a
+display of energy and resource which the company acknowledged by an
+allowance of L1,000. On the Bilbao railway some of the works were
+destroyed by very heavy rains. The agent telegraphed to Mr. Brassey to
+come at once, as a bridge had been washed down. There hours afterwards
+came a telegraph announcing that a large bank was carried away, and next
+morning another saying that the rain continued and more damage had been
+done. Mr. Brassey, turning to a friend, said, laughing: "I think I had
+better wait till I hear that the wind has ceased, so that when I do go I
+may see what is _left_ of the works, and estimate all the disasters
+at once, and so save a second journey."
+
+Mr. Brassey's business rapidly developed to an immense extent, and,
+instead of being contractor for one or two lines, he became a sort of
+contractor-in-chief, and a man to be consulted by all railway
+proprietors. In thirty-six years be executed no less than one hundred
+and seventy railway and other contracts. In his residence, as in his
+enterprises, he now became cosmopolitan, and lived a good deal on the
+rail. He had the physical power to bear this life. His brother-in-law
+says, "I have known him come direct from France to Rugby having left
+Havre the night before--he would have been engaged in the office the
+whole day." He would then come down to Rugby by the mail train at
+twelve o'clock, and it was his common practice to be on the works by six
+o'clock the next morning. He would frequently walk from Rugby to
+Nuneaton, a distance of sixteen miles. Having arrived at Nuneaton in the
+afternoon he would proceed the same night by road to Tamworth, and the
+next morning he would be out on the road so soon that he had the
+reputation among his staff of being the first man on the works. He used
+to proceed over the works from Tamworth to Stafford, walking the greater
+part of the distance, and would frequently proceed that same evening to
+Lancaster in order to inspect the works there in progress, under the
+contract which he had for the execution of the railway from Lancaster to
+Carlisle.
+
+In constructing the Great Northern Railway the difficulties of the Fen
+Country were met and surmounted. Mr. Brassey's chief agent in this was
+Mr. Ballard, a man self raised from the ranks of labour but indebted for
+the eminence which he ultimately attained to Mr. Brassey's
+discrimination in selecting him for the arduous undertaking. He has
+borne interesting testimony to his superior's comprehensiveness and
+rapidity of view, the directness with which he went to the important
+point, disregarding secondary matters and economizing his time and
+thought.
+
+The Italian Railway enterprises of Mr. Brassey owed their origin to the
+economical genius of Count Cavour and their execution drew from the
+Count the declaration that Mr. Brassey was one of the most remarkable
+men he knew; clear-headed, cautious, yet very enterprising and
+fulfilling his engagements faithfully. "We never," said the Count, "had
+a difficulty with him." And he added that Mr. Brassey would make a
+splendid minister of public works. Mr. Brassey took shares gallantly,
+and, when their value had risen most generously resigned them with a
+view to enabling the government to interest Piedmontese investors in the
+undertaking. So far was he from being a maker of corners. It is justly
+remarked that these Piedmontese railroads constructed by English
+enterprise were a most important link in the chain of events which
+brought about the emancipation and unification of Italy.
+
+Mr. Brassey has left on record the notable remark that the railway from
+Turin to Novara was completed for about the same money as was spent in
+obtaining the Bill for the railway from London to York. If the history
+of railway bills in the British Parliament, of which this statement
+gives us an inkling, could be disclosed, it would probably be one of the
+most scandalous revelations in commercial history. The contests which
+led to such ruinous expense and to so much demoralization, both of
+Parliament and of the commercial world, were a consequence of adopting
+the system of uncontrolled competition in place of that of government
+control. Mr. Brassey was in favour of the system of government control.
+"He was of opinion that the French policy, which did not admit the
+principle of free competition, was not only more calculated to serve the
+interests of the shareholders, but more favourable to the public. He
+moreover considered that a multiplicity of parallel lines of
+communication between the same termini, and the uncontrolled competition
+in regard to the service of trains, such as exists in England, did not
+secure so efficient a service for the public as the system adopted in
+France." Mr. Thomas Brassey says that he remembers that his father, when
+travelling in France, would constantly point out the superiority of the
+arrangements, and express his regret that the French policy had not been
+adopted in England. "He thought that all the advantage of cheap service
+and of sufficiently frequent communication, which were intended to be
+secured for the British public under a system of free competition, would
+have been equally well secured by adopting the foreign system, and
+giving a monopoly to the interest of railway communication in a given
+district to one company; and then limiting the exercise of that monopoly
+by watchful supervision on the part of the State in the interests of the
+public." With regard to extensions, he thought that the government might
+have secured sufficient compulsory powers. There can be no sort of doubt
+that this sort of policy would have saved England an enormous amount of
+pecuniary loss, personal distress and public demoralization. It is a
+policy, it will be observed, of government regulation, not of government
+subsidies or construction by government. It of course implies the
+existence of an administration capable of regulating a railway system,
+and placed above the influence of jobbery and corruption.
+
+For the adoption of the policy of free competition Sir Robert Peel was
+especially responsible. He said, in his own defence, that he had not at
+his command power to control those undertakings. Mr. Helps assumes
+rather characteristically that he meant official power, and draws a
+moral in favour of the extension of the civil service. But there is no
+doubt that Peel really meant Parliamentary power. The railway men in the
+Parliament were too strong for him and compelled him to throw overboard
+the scheme of government control framed by his own committee under the
+presidency of Lord Dalhousie. The moral to be drawn therefore is not
+that of civil service extension, but that of the necessity of guarding
+against Parliamentary rings in legislation concerning public works.
+
+Of all Mr. Brassey's undertakings not one was superior in importance to
+that with which Canadians are best acquainted--the Grand Trunk Railway,
+with the Victoria Bridge. It is needless here to describe this
+enterprise, or to recount the tragic annals of the loss brought on
+thousands of shareholders, which financially speaking was its calamitous
+sequel. The severest part of the undertaking was the Victoria Bridge.
+"The first working season there," says one of the chief agents, "was a
+period of difficulty, trouble and disaster." The agents of the
+contractors had no experience of the climate. There were numerous
+strikes among the workmen. The cholera committed dreadful ravages in the
+neighbourhood. In one case, out of a gang of two hundred men, sixty were
+sick at one time, many of whom ultimately died. The shortness of the
+working season in this country involved much loss of time. It was seldom
+that the setting of the masonry was fairly commenced before the middle
+of August, and it was certain that all work must cease at the end of
+November. Then there were the shoving of the ice at the beginning and
+breaking up of the frosts, and the collisions between floating rafts 250
+feet long and the staging erected for putting together the tubes. Great
+financial difficulties were experienced in consequence of the Crimean
+war. The mechanical difficulties were also immense, and called for
+extraordinary efforts both of energy and invention. The bridge, however,
+was completed, as had been intended, in December, 1859 and formally
+opened by the Prince of Wales in the following year. "The devotion and
+energy of the large number of workmen employed," says Mr. Hodges, "can
+hardly be praised too highly. Once brought into proper discipline, they
+worked as we alone can work against difficulties. They have left behind
+them in Canada an imperishable monument of British skill, pluck, science
+and perseverance in this bridge, which they not only designed, but
+constructed."
+
+The whole of the iron for the tubes was prepared at Birkenhead, but so
+well prepared that, in the centre tube, consisting of no less than
+10,309 pieces, in which nearly half a million of holes were punched, not
+one plate required alteration, neither was there a plate punched wrong.
+The faculty of invention, however, was developed in the British
+engineers and workmen by the air of the New World. A steam-traveller was
+made and sent out by one of the most eminent firms in England, after two
+years of experiments and an outlay of some thousands of pounds, which
+would never do much more than move itself about, and at last had to be
+laid aside as useless. But the same descriptions and drawings having
+been shown to Mr. Chaffey, one of the sub-contractors, who "had been in
+Canada a sufficient length of time to free his genius from the cramped
+ideas of early life," a rough and ugly machine was constructed, which
+was soon working well. The same increase of inventiveness, according to
+Mr. Hodges, was visible in the ordinary workman, when transferred from
+the perfect but mechanical and cramping routine of British industry, to
+a country where he has to mix trades and turn his hands to all kinds of
+work. "In England he is a machine, but as soon as he gets out to the
+United States he becomes an intellectual being." Comparing the German
+with the British mechanic, Mr. Hodges says, "I do not think that a
+German is a better man than an Englishman; but I draw this distinction
+between them, that when a German leaves school he begins to educate
+himself, but the Englishman does not, for, as soon as he casts off the
+thraldom of school, he learns nothing more unless he is forced to do it,
+and if he is forced to do it, he will then beat the German. An
+Englishman acts well when he is put under compulsion by circumstances."
+
+Labour being scarce, a number of French-Canadians were, at Mr.
+Brassey's suggestion, brought up in organized gangs, each having an
+Englishman or an American as their leader. We are told, however, that
+they proved useless except for very light work. "They could ballast, but
+they could not excavate. They could not even ballast as the English
+navvy does, continuously working at filling for the whole day. The only
+way in which they could be useful was by allowing them to fill the
+waggons, and then ride out with the ballast train to the place where the
+ballast was tipped, giving them an opportunity of resting. Then the
+empty waggon went back again to be filled and so alternately resting
+during the work; in that way, they did very much more. They would work
+fast for ten minutes and then they were 'done.' This was not through
+idleness but physical weakness. They are small men, and they are a class
+who are not well fed. They live entirely on vegetable food, and they
+scarcely ever taste meat." It is natural to suppose that the want of
+meat is the cause of their inefficiency. Yet the common farm labourer in
+England, who does a very hard and long day's work, hardly tastes meat,
+in many counties, the year round.
+
+In the case of the Crimean railway, private enterprise came, in a
+memorable manner, to the assistance of a government overwhelmed by
+administrative difficulties. A forty years peace had rusted the
+machinery of the war department, while the machinery of railway
+construction was in the highest working order. Sir John Burgoyne, the
+chief of the engineering staff, testified that it was impossible to
+overrate the services rendered by the railway, or its effects in
+shortening the time of the siege, and alleviating the fatigues and
+sufferings of the troops. The disorganization of the government
+department was accidental and temporary, as was subsequently proved by
+the success of the Abyssinian expedition, and, indeed, by the closing
+period of the Crimean war itself, when the British army was well
+supplied, while the French administration broke down. On the other hand
+the resources of private industry, on which the embarrassed government
+drew, are always there; and their immense auxiliary power would be at
+once manifested if England should become involved in a dangerous war. It
+should be remembered, too, that the crushing war expenditure in time of
+peace, which alarmists always advocate, would prevent the growth of
+those resources, and deprive England of the "sinews of war."
+
+The Danish railways brought the British navvy again into comparison with
+his foreign rivals. Mr. Rowan, the agent of Messrs. Peto and Brassey,
+was greatly pleased with his Danish labourers, but, on being pressed,
+said, "No man is equal to the British navvy; but the Dane, from his
+steady, constant labour, is a good workman, and a first-class one will
+do nearly as much work in a day as an Englishman." The Dane takes time:
+his habit is in summer to begin work at four in the morning, and
+continue till eight in the evening, taking five intervals of rest.
+
+The Danish engineers, in Mr. Rowan's judgment, are over-educated, and,
+as a consequence, wanting in decisiveness. "They have been in the habit
+of applying to their masters for everything, finding out nothing for
+themselves; the consequence is that they are children, and cannot form a
+judgment. It is the same in the North of Germany; the great difficulty
+is that you cannot get them to come to a decision. They want always to
+inquire and to investigate, and they never come to a result." This
+evidence must have been given some years ago, for of late it has been
+made pretty apparent that the investigations and inquiries of the North
+Germans do not prevent their coming to a decision, or that decision from
+leading to a result. Mr. Helps seizes the opportunity for a thrust at
+the system of competitive examination, which has taken from the heads of
+departments the power of "personal selection." The answer to him is
+Sedan. A bullet through your heart is the strongest proof which logic
+can afford that the German, from whose rifle it comes, was not prevented
+by his knowledge of the theory of projectiles from marking his man with
+promptness and taking a steady aim. That over-exertion of the intellect
+in youth does a man harm, is a true though not a very fruitful
+proposition; but knowledge does not destroy decisiveness: it only turns
+it from the decisiveness of a bull into the decisiveness of a man. Which
+nations do the great works? The educated nations, or Mexico and Spain?
+
+The Australian railways brought out two facts, one gratifying, the other
+the reverse. The gratifying fact was that the unlimited confidence which
+Mr. Brassey reposed in his agents was repaid by their zeal and fidelity
+in his service. The fact which was the reverse of gratifying was, that
+the great advantage which the English Labourer gains in Australia, from
+the higher wages and comparative cheapness of living, is counteracted by
+his love of drink.
+
+The Argentine Railway had special importance and interest, in opening up
+a vast and most fruitful and salubrious region to European emigration.
+Those territories offer room and food for myriads. "The population of
+Russia, that hard-featured country, is about 75,000,000, the population
+of the Argentine Republic, to which nature has been so bountiful, and in
+which she is so beautiful, is about 1,000,000." If ever government in
+the South American States becomes more settled, we shall find them
+formidable rivals.
+
+The Indian Railways are also likely to be a landmark in the history of
+civilization. They unite that vast country and its people, both
+materially and morally, break down caste, bring the natives from all
+parts to the centres of instruction, and distribute the produce of the
+soil evenly and rapidly, so as to mitigate famines. The Orissa famine
+would never have occurred, had Mr. Brassey's works been there. What
+effect the railways will ultimately have on British rule is another
+question. They multiply the army by increasing the rapidity of
+transport, but, on the other hand, they are likely to diminish that
+division among the native powers on which the Empire is partly based.
+Rebellion may run along the railway line as well as command.
+
+There were periods in Mr. Brassey's career during which he and his
+partners were giving employment to 80,000 persons, upon works requiring
+seventeen millions of capital for their completion. It is also
+satisfactory to know, that in the foreign countries and colonies over
+which his operations extended, he was instrumental in raising the wages
+and condition of the working class, as well as in affording to the
+_elite_ of that class opportunities for rising to higher positions.
+
+His remuneration for all this, though in the aggregate very large, was
+by no means excessive. Upon seventy-eight millions of money laid out in
+the enterprises which he conducted, he retained two millions and a half,
+that is as nearly as possible three per cent. The rest of his fortune
+consisted of accumulations. Three per cent. was not more than a fair
+payment for the brain-work, the anxiety and the risk. The risk, it must
+be recollected, was constant, and there were moments at which, if Mr.
+Brassey had died, he would have been found comparatively poor. His
+fortune was made, not by immoderate gains upon any one transaction, but
+by reasonable profits in a business which was of vast extent, and owed
+its vast extent to a reputation, fairly earned by probity, energy and
+skill. We do not learn that he figured in any lobby, or formed a member
+of any ring. Whether he was a Norman or not, he was too much a
+gentleman, in the best sense of the term, to crawl to opulence by low
+and petty ways. He left no stain on the escutcheon of a captain of
+industry.
+
+Nor when riches increased did he set his heart upon them. His heart was
+set on the work rather than on the pay. The monuments and enterprise of
+his skill were more to him than the millions. He seems even to have been
+rather careless in keeping his accounts. He gave away freely--as much as
+L200,000, it is believed--in the course of his life. His accumulations
+arose not from parsimony but from the smallness of his personal
+expenses. He hated show and luxury, and kept a moderate establishment,
+which the increase of his wealth never induced him to extend. He seems
+to have felt a singular diffidence as to his capacity for aristocratic
+expenditure. The conversation turning one day on the immense fortunes of
+certain noblemen, he said, "I understand it is easy and natural enough
+for those who are born and brought up to it, to spend L50,000 or even
+L150,000 a year; but I should be very sorry to have to undergo the
+fatigue of even spending L30,000 a year. I believe such a job as that
+would drive me mad." He felt an equally strange misgiving as to his
+capacity for aristocratic idleness. "It requires a special education,"
+he said, "to be idle, or to employ the twenty-four hours, in a rational
+way, without any calling or occupation. To live the life of a gentleman,
+one must have been brought up to it. It is impossible for a man who has
+been engaged in business pursuits the greater part of his life to
+retire; if he does so, he soon discovers that he has made a great
+mistake. I shall not retire, but if for some good reason, I should be
+obliged to do so, it would be to a farm. There I would bring up stock
+which I would cause to be weighed every day, ascertaining at the same
+time their daily cost, as against the increasing weight. I should then
+know when to sell and start again with another lot."
+
+Of tinsel, which sometimes is as corrupting to vulgar souls as money,
+this man seems to have been as regardless as he was of pelf. He received
+the Cross of the Iron Crown from the Emperor of Austria. He accepted
+what was graciously offered, but he said that, as an Englishman, he did
+not know what good Crosses were to him. The circumstance reminded him
+that he had received other Crosses, but he had to ask his agent what
+they were, and where they were. He was told that they were the Legion of
+Honour of France, and the Chevaliership of Italy; but the Crosses could
+not be found. Duplicates were procured to be taken to Mrs. Brassey, who,
+her husband remarked, would be glad to possess them all.
+
+Such millionaires would do unmixed good in the world; but unfortunately
+they are apt to die and leave their millions, and the social influence
+which the millions confer, to "that unfeathered two-legged thing, a
+son." This is by no means said with a personal reference. On the
+contrary, it is evident that Mr. Brassey was especially fortunate in his
+heir. We find some indication of this in a chapter towards the close of
+Mr. Helps' volume, in which are thrown together the son's miscellaneous
+recollections of the father. The chapter affords further proof that the
+great contractor was not made of the same clay as the Fisks and
+Vanderbilts--that he was not a mere market-rigger and money-grubber--but
+a really great man, devoted to a special calling. He is represented by
+his son as having taken a lively interest in a wide and varied range of
+subjects--engineering subjects especially as a matter of course, but not
+engineering subjects alone. He studied countries and their people,
+evincing the utmost interest in Chicago, speculating on the future
+industrial prosperity of Canada, and imparting the results of his
+observations admirably when he got home. Like all great men, he had a
+poetic element in his character. He loved the beauties of nature, and
+delighted in mountain scenery. He was a great sight-seer, and when he
+visited a city on business, went through its churches, public buildings,
+and picture-galleries, as assiduously as a tourist. For half an hour he
+stood gazing with delight on the Maison Carree, at Nismes. For sculpture
+and painting he had a strong taste, and the Venus of Milo "was a joy to
+him." He had a keen eye for beauty, shapeliness and comeliness
+everywhere, in porcelain, in furniture, in dress, in a well built yacht,
+in a well appointed regiment of horse. Society, too, he liked, in spite
+of his simplicity of habits; loved to gather his friends around his
+board, and was always a genial host. For literature he had no time, but
+he enjoyed oratory, and liked to hear good reading. He used to test his
+son's progress in reading, at the close of each half year, by making him
+read aloud a chapter of the Bible. His good sense confined his ambition
+to his proper sphere, and prevented him from giving ear to any
+solicitations to go into politics, which he had not leisure to study,
+and which he knew ought not to be handled by ignorance. His own leanings
+were Conservative; but his son, who is a Liberal, testifies that his
+father never offered him advice on political matters, or remonstrated
+with him on a single vote which he gave in the House of Commons. It is
+little to the discredit of a man so immersed in business that he should
+have been fascinated, as he was, by the outward appearance of perfect
+order presented by the French Empire and by the brilliancy of its
+visible edifice, not discerning the explosive forces which its policy
+was all the time accumulating in the dark social realms below; though
+the fact that he, with all his natural sagacity, did fall into this
+tremendous error, is a warning to railway and steamboat politicians.
+
+Mr. Brassey's advice was often sought by parents who had sons to start
+in the world. "As usual, a disposition was shewn to prefer a career
+which did not involve the apparent degradation of learning a trade
+practically, side by side with operatives in a workshop. But my father,
+who had known, by his wide experience, the immense value of a technical
+knowledge of a trade or business as compared with general educational
+advantages of the second order, and who knew how much more easy it is to
+earn a living as a skilful artisan than as a clerk, possessing a mere
+general education, always urged those who sought his advice to begin by
+giving to their sons a practical knowledge of a trade."
+
+"My father," says Mr. Brassey, junior, "ever mindful of his own
+struggles and efforts in early life, evinced at all times the most
+anxious disposition to assist young men to enter upon a career. The
+small loans which he advanced for this purpose, and the innumerable
+letters which he wrote in the hope of obtaining for his young clients
+help or employment in other quarters, constitute a bright and most
+honourable feature in his life." His powers of letter-writing were
+enormous, and, it seems to us, were exercised even to excess. So much
+writing would, at least, in the case of any ordinary man, have consumed
+too much of the energy which should be devoted to thought. His
+correspondence was brought with his luncheon basket when he was shooting
+on the moors. After a long day's journey he sat down in the coffee room
+of the hotel, and wrote thirty-two letters before he went to bed. He
+never allowed a letter, even a begging letter, to remain unanswered;
+and, says his son, "the same benignity and courtesy which marked his
+conduct in every relation of life, pervaded his whole correspondence."
+"In the many volumes of his letters which are preserved, I venture to
+affirm that there is not the faintest indication of an ungenerous or
+unkindly sentiment--not a sentence which is not inspired by the spirit
+of equity and justice, and by universal charity to mankind."
+
+By the same authority we are assured that "Mr. Brassey was of a
+singularly patient disposition in dealing with all ordinary affairs of
+life. We know how, whenever a hitch occurs in a railway journey, a great
+number of passengers become irritated, almost to a kind of foolish
+frenzy. He always took these matters most patiently. He well knew that
+no persons are so anxious to avoid such detentions as the officials
+themselves, and never allowed himself to altercate with a helpless guard
+or distracted station-master."
+
+The only blemish which the son can recollect in the father's character,
+is a want of firmness in blaming when blame was due, and an incapacity
+of refusing a request or rejecting a proposal strongly urged by others.
+The latter defect was, in his son's judgment, the cause of the greatest
+disasters which he experienced as a man of business. Both defects were
+closely allied to virtues--extreme tenderness of heart and consideration
+for the feelings of others.
+
+"He was graceful," says Mr. Brassey, junior, in conclusion, "in every
+movement, always intelligent in observation, with an excellent command
+of language, and only here and there betrayed, by some slight
+provincialisms, in how small a degree he had in early life enjoyed the
+educational advantages of those with whom his high commercial position
+in later years placed him in constant communication. But these things
+are small in comparison to the greater points of character by which he
+seemed to me to be distinguished. In all he said or did, he showed
+himself to be inspired by that chivalry of heart and mind which must
+truly ennoble him who possesses it, and without which one cannot be a
+perfect gentleman."
+
+Mention has been made of his great generosity. One of his old agents
+having lost all his earnings, Mr. Brassey gave him several new missions,
+that be might have a chance of recovering himself. But the agent died
+suddenly, and his wife nearly at the same time, leaving six orphan
+children without provision. Mr. Brassey gave up, in their favour, a
+policy of insurance which he held as security for several thousands,
+and, in addition, headed a subscription list for them with a large sum.
+It seems that his delicacy in giving was equal to his generosity; that
+of his numberless benefactions, very few were published in subscription
+lists, and that his right hand seldom knew what his left hand did.
+
+His refinement was of the truly moral kind, and of the kind that tells
+on others. Not only was coarse and indecent language checked in his
+presence, but the pain he evinced at all outbreaks of unkind feeling,
+and at manifestation of petty jealousies, operated strongly in
+preventing any such displays from taking place before him. As one who
+was the most intimate with him observed, "his people seemed to enter
+into a higher atmosphere when they were in his presence, conscious, no
+doubt, of the intense dislike which he had of everything that was mean,
+petty, or contentious."
+
+Mr. Helps tells us that the tender-heartedness which pervaded Mr.
+Brassey's character was never more manifested than on the occasion of
+any illness of his friends. At the busiest period of his life he would
+travel hundreds of miles to be at the bedside of a sick or dying friend.
+In his turn he experienced, in his own last illness, similar
+manifestations of affectionate solicitude. Many of the persons, we are
+told, who had served him in foreign countries and at home, came from
+great distances solely for the chance of seeing once more their old
+master whom they loved so much. They were men of all classes, humble
+navvies as well as trusted agents. They would not intrude upon his
+illness, but would wait for hours in the hall, in the hope of seeing him
+borne to his carriage, and getting a shake of the hand or a sign of
+friendly recognition. "The world," remarks Mr. Helps, "is after all not
+so ungrateful as it is sometimes supposed to be; those who deserve to be
+loved generally are loved, having elicited the faculty of loving which
+exists to a great extent in all of us."
+
+"Mr. Brassey," we are told, "had ever been a very religious man. His
+religion was of that kind which most of us would desire for ourselves--
+utterly undisturbed by doubts of any sort, entirely tolerant, not built
+upon small or even upon great differences of belief. He clung resolutely
+and with entire hopefulness to that creed, and abode by that form of
+worship, in which he had been brought up as a child." The religious
+element in his character was no doubt strong, and lay at the root of his
+tender-heartedness and his charity as well as of the calm resignation
+with which he met disaster, and his indifference to gain. At the time of
+a great panic, when things were at the worst, he only said: "Never mind,
+we must be content with a little less, that is all." This was when he
+supposed himself to have lost a million. The duty of religious inquiry,
+which he could not perform himself, he would no doubt have recognised in
+those to whose lot it falls to give their fellow-men assurance of
+religious truth.
+
+Mr. Brassey's wife said of him that "he was a most unworldly man." This
+may seem a strange thing to say of a great contractor and a millionaire.
+Yet, in the highest sense, it was true. Mr. Brassey was not a monk; his
+life was passed in the world, and in the world's most engrossing, and,
+as it proves in too many cases, most contaminating business. Yet, if the
+picture of him presented to us be true, he kept himself "unspotted from
+the world."
+
+His character is reflected in the portrait which forms the frontispiece
+to the biography, and on which those who pursue his calling will do well
+sometimes to look.
+
+
+
+
+A WIREPULLER OF KINGS.
+
+[Footnote: Memoirs of Baron Stockmar. By his son, Baron E. Von Stockmar.
+Translated from the German by G. A. M. Edited by F. Max Muller. In two
+volumes. London: Longman's, Green and Co.]
+
+
+Some of our readers will remember that there was at one time a great
+panic in England about the unconstitutional influence of Prince Albert,
+and that, connected with Prince Albert's name in the invectives of a
+part of the press, was that of the intimate friend, constant guest, and
+trusted adviser of the Royal Family, Baron Stockmar. The suspicion was
+justified by the fact in both cases; but in the case of Baron Stockmar,
+as well as in that of Prince Albert, the influence appears to have been
+exercised on the whole for good. Lord Aberdeen, who spoke his mind with
+the sincerity and simplicity of a perfectly honest man, said of
+Stockmar; "I have known men as clever, as discreet, as good, and with as
+good judgment; but I never knew any one who united all these qualities
+as he did." Melbourne was jealous of his reputed influence, but
+testified to his sense and worth. Palmerston disliked, we may say hated,
+him; but he declared him the only disinterested man of the kind he had
+ever known.
+
+Stockmar was a man of good family, who originally pursued the profession
+of medicine, and having attracted the notice of Prince Leopold of Saxe
+Coburg, the husband of Princess Charlotte, and afterwards king of the
+Belgians, was appointed physician in ordinary to that Prince upon his
+marriage. When, in course of time, he exchanged the functions of
+physician in ordinary for those of wirepuller in ordinary, he found that
+the time passed in medical study had not been thrown away. He said
+himself, "It was a clever stroke to have originally studied medicine;
+without the knowledge thus acquired, without the psychological and
+physiological experiences thus obtained, my _savoir faire_ would
+often have gone a-begging." It seems also that he practised politics on
+medical principles, penetrating a political situation, or detecting a
+political disease, by the help of single expressions or acts, after the
+manner of medical diagnosis, and in his curative treatment endeavouring
+to remove as far as possible every pathological impediment, so that the
+healing moral nature might be set free, and social and human laws resume
+their restorative power. He might have graduated as a politician in a
+worse school.
+
+He was not able to cure himself of dyspepsia and affections of the eye,
+which clung to him through life, the dyspepsia producing fluctuation of
+spirits, and occasional hypochondria, which, it might have been thought,
+would seriously interfere with his success as a court favourite. "At one
+time he astonished the observer by his sanguine, bubbling, provoking,
+unreserved, quick, fiery or humorous, cheerful, even unrestrainedly gay
+manner, winning him by his hearty open advances where he felt himself
+attracted and encouraged to confidence; at other times he was all
+seriousness, placidity, self-possession, cool circumspection, methodical
+consideration, prudence, criticism, even irony and scepticism." Such is
+not the portrait which imagination paints of the demeanour of a court
+favourite. But Stockmar had one invaluable qualification for the part--
+he had conscientiously made up his mind that it is a man's duty in life
+to endure being bored.
+
+The favour of a Prince of Saxe Coburg would not in itself have been
+fortune. A certain Royal Duke was, as everybody who ever had the honour
+of being within earshot of him knew, in the habit of thinking aloud. It
+was said that at the marriage of a German prince with an English
+princess, at which the Duke was present, when the bridegroom pronounced
+the words: "With all my worldly goods I thee endow," a voice from the
+circle responded, "The boots you stand in are not paid for." But as it
+was sung of the aggrandizement of Austria in former days--
+
+  "Let others war, do thou, blest Austria, wed,"
+
+so the house of Saxe Coburg may be said in later days to have been
+aggrandized by weddings. The marriage of his patron with the presumptive
+heiress to the Crown of England was the beginning of Stockmar's
+subterranean greatness.
+
+The Princess Charlotte expressed herself to Stockmar with regard to the
+character of her revered parents in the following "pithy" manner:--"My
+mother was bad, but she could not have become as bad as she was if my
+father had not been infinitely worse." The Regent was anxious to have
+the Princess married for two reasons, in the opinion of the judicious
+author of this memoir--because he wanted to be rid of his daughter, and
+because when she married she would form less of a link between him and
+his wife. Accordingly, when she was eighteen, hints were given her
+through the court physician, Sir Henry Halford (such is the course of
+royal love), that if she would have the kindness to fix her affections
+on the hereditary Prince of Orange (afterwards King William II. of the
+Netherlands), whom she had never seen, it would be exceedingly
+convenient. The Prince came over to England, and, by the help of a
+"certain amount of artful precipitation on the part of the father," the
+pair became formally engaged. The Princess said at first that she did
+not think her betrothed "by any means so disagreeable as she had
+expected." In time, however, this ardour of affection abated. The Prince
+was a baddish subject, and he had a free-and-easy manner, and wanted
+tact and refinement. He returned to London from some races seated on the
+outside of a coach, and in a highly excited state. Worst of all, he
+lodged at his tailor's. The engagement was ultimately broken off by a
+difficulty with regard to the future residence of the couple, which
+would evidently have become more complicated and serious if the Queen of
+the Netherlands had ever inherited the Crown of England. The Princess
+was passionately opposed to leaving her country. The Regent and his
+ministers tried to keep the poor girl in the dark, and get her into a
+position from which there would be no retreat. But she had a temper and
+a will of her own; and her recalcitration was assisted by the
+Parliamentary Opposition, who saw in the marriage a move of Tory policy,
+and by her mother, who saw in it something agreeable to her husband. Any
+one who wishes to see how diplomatic lovers quarrel will find
+instruction in these pages.
+
+The place left vacant by the rejected William was taken by Prince
+Leopold, with whom Stockmar came to England. In Stockmar's Diary of May
+5th, 1806, is the entry:--"I saw the sun (that of royalty we presume,
+not the much calumniated sun of Britain) for the first time at Oatlands.
+Baron Hardenbroek, the Prince's equerry, was going into the breakfast-
+room. I followed him, when he suddenly signed to me with his hand to
+stay behind; but she had already seen me and I her. '_Aha,
+docteur_,' she said, '_entrez_.' She was handsomer than I had
+expected, with most peculiar manners, her hands generally folded behind
+her, her body always pushed forward, never standing quiet, from time to
+time stamping her foot, laughing a great deal and talking still more. I
+was examined from head to foot, without, however, losing my countenance.
+My first impression was not favourable. In the evening she pleased me
+more. Her dress was simple and in good taste." The Princess took to the
+doctor, and, of course, he took to her. A subsequent entry in his Diary
+is:--"The Princess is in good humour, and then she pleases easily. I
+thought her dress particularly becoming; dark roses in her hair, a short
+light blue dress without sleeves, with a low round collar, a white
+puffed out Russian chemisette, the sleeves of lace. I have never seen
+her in any dress which was not both simple and in good taste." She seems
+to have improved under the influence of her husband, whom his physician
+calls "a manly prince and a princely man." In her manners there was some
+room for improvement, if we may judge from her treatment of Duke Prosper
+of Aremburg, who was one of the guests at a great dinner recorded in the
+Diary:--"Prosper is a hideous little mannikin, dressed entirely in
+black, with a large star. The Prince presented him to the Princess, who
+was at the moment talking to the Minister Castlereagh. She returned the
+duke's two profound continental bows by a slight nod of the head,
+without looking at him or saying a word to him, and brought her elbow so
+close to him that he could not move. He sat looking straight before him
+with some, though not very marked, embarrassment. He exchanged now and
+then a few words in French with the massive and mighty Lady Castlereagh,
+by whose side he looked no larger than a child. When he left, the
+Princess dismissed him in the same manner in which she had welcomed him,
+and broke into a loud laugh before he was fairly out of the room."
+
+Stockmar's position in the little court was not very flattering or
+agreeable. The members of the household hardly regarded the poor German
+physician as their equal; and if one or two of the men were pleasant,
+the lady who constituted their only lawful female society, Mrs.
+Campbell, Lady-in-Waiting to the Princess, was, in her ordinary moods,
+decidedly the reverse. Stockmar, however, in drawing a piquant portrait
+of her, has recorded the extenuating circumstances that she had once
+been pretty, that she had had bitter experiences with men, and that, in
+an illness during a seven months' sea-voyage, she had been kept alive
+only on brandy and water. Col. Addenbrooke, the equerry to the Princess,
+is painted in more favourable colours, his only weak point being "a weak
+stomach, into which he carefully crams a mass of the most incongruous
+things, and then complains the next day of fearful headache." What a
+power of evil is a man who keeps a diary!
+
+Greater personages than Mrs. Campbell and Colonel Addenbrooke passed
+under the quick eye of the humble medical attendant, and were
+photographed without being aware of it.
+
+"_The Queen Mother_ (Charlotte, wife of George III.). 'Small and
+crooked, with a true mulatto face.'
+
+"_The Regent._ 'Very stout, though of a fine figure; distinguished
+manners; does not talk half as much as his brothers; speaks tolerably
+good French. He ate and drank a good deal at dinner. His brown scratch
+wig not particularly becoming.'
+
+"_The Duke of York_, the eldest son of the Regent's brothers.
+'Tall, with immense _embonpoint_, and not proportionately strong
+legs; he holds himself in such a way that one is always afraid he will
+tumble over backwards; very bald, and not a very intelligent face: one
+can see that eating, drinking, and sensual pleasure are everything to
+him. Spoke a good deal of French, with a bad accent.'
+
+"_Duchess of York_, daughter of Frederick William II. of Prussia.
+'A little animated woman, talks immensely, and laughs still more. No
+beauty, mouth and teeth bad. She disfigures herself still more by
+distorting her mouth and blinking her eyes. In spite of the Duke's
+various infidelities, their matrimonial relations are good. She is quite
+aware of her husband's embarrassed circumstances, and is his prime
+minister and truest friend; so that nothing is done without her help. As
+soon as she entered the room, she looked round for the Banker Greenwood,
+who immediately came up to her with the confidentially familiar manner
+which the wealthy go-between assumes towards grand people in embarrassed
+circumstances. At dinner the Duchess related that her royal father had
+forced her as a girl to learn to shoot, as he had observed she had a
+great aversion to it. At a grand _chasse_ she had always fired with
+closed eyes, because she could not bear to see the sufferings of the
+wounded animals. When the huntsmen told her that in this way she ran the
+risk of causing the game more suffering through her uncertain aims, she
+went to the King and asked if he would excuse her from all sport in
+future if she shot a stag dead. The King promised to grant her request
+if she could kill two deer, one after the other, with out missing; which
+she did.'
+
+"_Duke of Clarence_ (afterwards King William IV.). 'The smallest
+and least good-looking of the brothers, decidedly like his mother; as
+talkative as the rest.'
+
+"_Duke of Kent_ (father of Queen Victoria). 'A large, powerful man;
+like the King, and as bald as any one can be. The quietest of all the
+Dukes I have seen; talks slowly and deliberately; is kind and
+courteous.'
+
+"_Duke of Cumberland_ (afterwards King Ernest Augustus of Hanover).
+'A tall, powerful man, with a hideous face; can't see two inches before
+him; one eye turned quite out of its place.'
+
+"_Duke of Cambridge_ (the youngest son of George III.). 'A good-
+looking man, with a blonde wig; is partly like his father, partly like
+his mother. Speaks French and German very well, but like English, with
+such rapidity, that he carries off the palm in the family art.'
+
+"_Duke of Gloucester._ 'Prominent, meaningless eyes; without being
+actually ugly, a very unpleasant face, with an animal expression; large
+and stout, but with weak, helpless legs. He wears a neckcloth thicker
+than his head.'
+
+"_Wellington_, 'Middle height, neither stout nor thin; erect
+figure, not stiff, not very lively, though more so than I expected, and
+yet in every movement repose. Black hair, simply cut, strongly mixed
+with grey: not a very high forehead, immense hawk's nose, tightly
+compressed lips, strong massive under jaw. After he had spoken for some
+time in the anteroom with the Royal Family, he came straight to the two
+French singers, with whom he talked in a very friendly manner, and then
+going round the circle, shook hands with all his acquaintance. He was
+dressed entirely in black, with the Star of the Order of the Garter and
+the Maria Theresa Cross. He spoke to all the officers present in an open
+friendly way, though but briefly. At table he sat next the Princess. He
+ate and drank moderately, and laughed at times most heartily, and
+whispered many things to the Princess' ear, which made her blush and
+laugh.'
+
+"_Lord Anglesea_, (the General). 'Who lost a leg at Waterloo; a
+tall, well-made man; wild, martial face, high forehead, with a large
+hawk's nose, which makes a small deep angle where it joins the forehead.
+A great deal of ease in his manners. Lauderdale [Footnote: Lord
+Lauderdale, d. 1339; the friend of Fox; since 1807, under the Tories, an
+active member of the Opposition.] told us later that it was he who
+brought Lady Anglesea the intelligence that her husband had lost his leg
+at Waterloo. Contrary to his wishes she had been informed of his
+arrival, and, before he could say a word, she guessed that he had
+brought her news of her husband, screamed out, "He is dead!" and fell
+into hysterics. But when he said, "Not in the least; here is a letter
+from him," she was so wonderfully relieved that she bore the truth with
+great composure. He also related that, not long before the campaign,
+Anglesea was having his portrait taken, and the picture was entirely
+finished except one leg. Anglesea sent for the painter and said to him,
+"You had better finish the leg now. I might not bring it back with me."
+He lost that very leg.'
+
+"_The Minister. Lord Castlereagh_. 'Of middle height; a very
+striking and at the same time handsome face; his manners are very
+pleasant and gentle, yet perfectly natural. One misses in him a certain
+culture which one expects in a statesman of his eminence. He speaks
+French badly, in fact execrably, and not very choice English. [Footnote:
+Lord Byron, in the introduction to the sixth and the eighth cantos of
+"Don Juan" says, "It is the first time since the Normans that England
+has been insulted by a minister (at least) who could not speak English,
+and that Parliament permitted itself to be dictated to in the language
+of Mrs. Malaprop."] The Princess rallied him on the part he played in
+the House of Commons as a bad speaker, as against the brilliant orators
+of the Opposition, which he acknowledged merrily, and with a hearty
+laugh. I am sure there is a great deal of thoughtless indifference in
+him, and that this has sometimes been reckoned to him as statesmanship
+of a high order.'"
+
+In proof of Castlereagh's bad French we are told in a note that, having
+to propose the health of the ladies at a great dinner, he did it in the
+words--"Le bel sexe partoutte dans le monde."
+
+Though looked down upon at the second table, Stockmar had thoroughly
+established himself in the confidence and affection of the Prince and
+Princess. He had become the Prince's Secretary, and in Leopold's own
+words "the most valued physician of his soul and body"--wirepuller, in
+fact, to the destined wirepuller of Royalty in general.
+
+Perhaps his gratification at having attained this position may have lent
+a roseate tint to his view of the felicity of the Royal couple, which he
+paints in rapturous terms, saying that nothing was so great as their
+love--except the British National Debt. There is, however, no reason to
+doubt that the union of Leopold and Charlotte was one of the happy
+exceptions to the general character of Royal marriages. Its tragic end
+plunged a nation into mourning. Stockmar, with a prudence on which
+perhaps he reflects with a little too much satisfaction, refused to have
+anything to do with the treatment of the Princess from the commencement
+of her pregnancy. He thought he detected mistakes on the part of the
+English physicians, arising from the custom then prevalent in England of
+lowering the strength of the expectant mother by bleeding, aperients,
+and low diet, a regimen which was carried on for months. The Princess,
+in fact, having been delivered of a dead son after a fifty hours'
+labour, afterwards succumbed to weakness. It fell to Stockmar's lot to
+break the news to the Prince, who was overwhelmed with sorrow. At the
+moment of his desolation Leopold exacted from Stockmar a promise that he
+would never leave him. Stockmar gave the promise, indulging at the same
+time his sceptical vein by expressing in a letter to his sister his
+doubt whether the Prince would remain of the same mind. This scepticism
+however did not interfere with his devotion. "My health is tolerable,
+for though I am uncommonly shaken, and shall be yet more so by the
+sorrow of the Prince, still I feel strong enough, even stronger than I
+used to be. I only leave the Prince when obliged by pressing business. I
+dine alone with him and sleep in his room. Directly he wakes in the
+night I get up and sit talking by his bedside till he falls asleep
+again. I feel increasingly that unlooked for trials are my portion in
+life, and that there will be many more of them before life is over. I
+seem to be here more to care for others than for myself, and I am well
+content with this destiny."
+
+Sir Richard Croft, the accoucheur of the Princess, overwhelmed by the
+calamity, committed suicide. "Poor Croft," exclaims the cool and
+benevolent Stockmar, "does not the whole thing look like some malicious
+temptation, which might have overcome even some one stronger than you?
+The first link in the chain of your misery was nothing but an especially
+honourable and desirable event in the course of your profession. You
+made a mistake in your mode of treatment; still, individual mistakes are
+here so easy. Thoughtlessness and excessive reliance on your own
+experience, prevented you from weighing deeply the course to be followed
+by you. When the catastrophe had happened, doubts, of course, arose in
+your mind as to whether you ought not to have acted differently, and
+these doubts, coupled with the impossibility of proving your innocence
+to the public, even though you were blameless, became torture to you.
+Peace to thy ashes, on which no guilt rests save that thou wert not
+exceptionally wise or exceptionally strong."
+
+Leopold was inclined to go home, but remained in England by the advice
+of Stockmar, who perceived that, in the first place, there would be
+something odious in the Prince's spending his English allowance of
+L50,000 a year on the Continent, and in the second place, that a good
+position in England would be his strongest vantage ground in case of any
+new opening presenting itself elsewhere.
+
+About this time another birth took place in the Royal Family under
+happier auspices. The Duke of Kent was married to the widowed Princess
+of Leiningen, a sister of Prince Leopold. The Duke was a Liberal in
+politics, on bad terms with his brothers, and in financial difficulties
+which prevented his living in England. Finding, however, that his
+Duchess was likely to present him with an heir who would also be the
+heir to the Crown, and being very anxious that the child should be born
+in England, he obtained the means of coming home through friends, after
+appealing to his brothers in vain. Shortly after his return "a pretty
+little princess, plump as a partridge," was born. In the same year the
+Duke died. His widow, owing to his debts, was left in a very
+uncomfortable position. Her brother Leopold enabled her to return to
+Kensington, where she devoted herself to the education of her child--
+Queen Victoria.
+
+The first opening which presented itself to Leopold was the Kingdom of
+Greece, which was offered him by "The Powers." After going pretty far he
+backed out, much to the disgust of "The Powers," who called him "Marquis
+Peu-a-peu" (the nickname given him by George IV.) and said that "he had
+no colour," and that he wanted the English Regency. The fact seems to be
+that he and his Stockmar, on further consideration of the enterprise,
+did not like the look of it. Neither of them, especially Stockmar,
+desired a "crown of thorns," which their disinterested advisers would
+have had them take on heroic and ascetic principles. Leopold was rather
+attracted by the poetry of the thing: Stockmar was not. "For the poetry
+which Greece would have afforded, I am not inclined to give very much.
+Mortals see only the bad side of things they have, and the good side of
+the things they have not. That is the whole difference between Greece
+and Belgium, though I do not mean to deny that when the first King of
+Greece shall, after all manner of toils, have died, his life may not
+furnish the poet with excellent matter for an epic poem." The
+philosophic creed of Stockmar was that "the most valuable side of life
+consists in its negative conditions,"--in other words in freedom from
+annoyance, and in the absence of "crowns of thorns."
+
+The candidature of Leopold for the Greek Throne coincided with the
+Wellington Administration, and the active part taken by Stockmar gave
+him special opportunities of studying the Duke's political character
+which he did with great attention. His estimate of it is low.
+
+"The way in which Wellington would preserve and husband the rewards of
+his own services and the gifts of fortune, I took as the measure of the
+higher capabilities of his mind. It required no long time, however, and
+no great exertion, to perceive that the natural sobriety of his
+temperament, founded upon an inborn want of sensibility, was unable to
+withstand the intoxicating influence of the flattery by which he was
+surrounded. The knowledge of himself became visibly more and more
+obscured. The restlessness of his activity, and his natural lust for
+power, became daily more ungovernable.
+
+"Blinded by the language of his admirers, and too much elated to
+estimate correctly his own powers, he impatiently and of his own accord
+abandoned the proud position of the victorious general to exchange it
+for the most painful position which a human being can occupy--viz., the
+management of the affairs of a great nation with insufficient mental
+gifts and inadequate knowledge. He had hardly forced himself upon the
+nation as Prime Minister, intending to add the glory of a statesman to
+that of a warrior when he succeeded, by his manner of conducting
+business, in shaking the confidence of the people. With laughable
+infatuation he sedulously employed every opportunity of proving to the
+world the hopeless incapacity which made it impossible for him to seize
+the natural connection between cause and effect. With a rare
+_naivete_ he confessed publicly and without hesitation the mistaken
+conclusions he had come to in the weightiest affairs of State; mistakes
+with the commonest understanding could have discovered, which filled the
+impartial with pitying astonishment, and caused terror and consternation
+even among the host of his flatterers and partisans. Yet, so great and
+so strong was the preconceived opinion of the people in his favour, that
+only the irresistible proofs furnished by the man's own actions could
+gradually shake this opinion. It required the full force and obstinacy
+of this strange self-deception in Wellington, it required the full
+measure of his activity and iron persistency, in order at last, by a
+perpetual reiteration of errors and mistakes, to create in the people
+the firm conviction that the Duke of Wellington was one of the least
+adroit and most mischievous Ministers that England ever had."
+
+Stockmar formed a more favourable opinion afterwards, when the Duke had
+ceased to be a party leader, and become the Nestor of the State. But it
+must be allowed that Wellington's most intimate associates and warmest
+friends thought him a failure as a politician. To the last he seemed
+incapable of understanding the position of a constitutional minister,
+and talked of sacrificing his convictions in order to support the
+Government, as though he were not one of the Government that was to be
+supported. Nor did he ever appreciate the force of opinion or the nature
+of the great European movement with which he had to deal.
+
+It seems clear from Stockmar's statement, that Wellington used his
+influence over Charles X to get the Martignac Ministry, which was
+moderately liberal, turned out and Polignac made Minister. In this he
+doubly blundered. In the first place Polignac was not friendly but
+hostile to England, and at once began to intrigue against her; in the
+second place he was a fool, and by his precipitate rashness brought on
+the second French Revolution, which overthrew the ascendency of the
+Duke's policy in Europe, and had no small influence in overthrowing the
+ascendency of his party in England. It appears that the Duke was as much
+impressed with the "honesty" of Talleyrand, as he was with the "ability"
+of Polignac.
+
+A certain transitional phase of the European Revolution created a brisk
+demand for kings who would "reign without governing." Having backed out
+of Greece, Leopold got Belgium. And here we enter, in these Memoirs, on
+a series of chapters giving the history of the Belgian Question, with
+all its supplementary entanglements, as dry as saw-dust, and scarcely
+readable, we should think, at the present day, even to diplomatists,
+much less to mortal men. Unfortunately the greater part of the two
+volumes is taken up with similar dissertations on various European
+questions, while the personal touches, and details which Stockmar could
+have given us in abundance, are few and far between. We seldom care much
+for his opinions on European questions even when the questions
+themselves are still alive and the sand-built structures of diplomacy
+have not been swept away by the advancing tide of revolution. The
+sovereigns whose wirepuller he was were constitutional, and themselves
+exercised practically very little influence on the course of events.
+
+In the Belgian question however, he seems to have really played an
+active part. We get from him a strong impression of the restless vanity
+and unscrupulous ambition of France. We learn also that Leopold
+practised very early in the day the policy which assured him a quiet
+reign--that of keeping his trunk packed and letting the people
+understand that if they were tired of him he was ready to take the next
+train and leave them to enjoy the deluge.
+
+Stockmar found employment especially suited to him in settling the
+question of Leopold's English annuity, which was given up on the Price's
+election to the Crown of Belgium, but with certain reservations, upon
+which the Radicals made attacks, Sir Samuel Whalley, a physician leading
+the van. In the course of the struggle Stockmar received a
+characteristic letter from Palmerston.
+
+"March 9,1834
+
+"MY DEAR BARON,--I have many apologies to make to you for not having
+sooner acknowledged the receipt of the papers you sent me last week, and
+for which I am much obliged to you. The case seems to me as clear as day
+and without meaning to question the omnipotence of Parliament, which it
+is well known can do anything but turn men into women and women into
+men, I must and shall assert that the House of Commons have no more
+right to enquire into the details of those debts and engagements, which
+the King of the Belgians considers himself bound to satisfy before he
+begins to make his payments into the Exchequer, than they have to ask
+Sir Samuel Whalley how he disposed of the fees which his mad patients
+used to pay him before he began to practise upon the foolish
+constituents who have sent him to Parliament. There can be no doubt
+whatever that we must positively resist any such enquiry, and I am very
+much mistaken in my estimate of the present House of Commons if a large
+majority do not concur in scouting so untenable a proposition.
+
+"My dear Baron,
+
+"Yours sincerely,
+
+"PALMERSTON
+
+"The Baron de Stockmar"
+
+That the House of Commons cannot turn women into men is a position not
+so unquestioned now as it was in Palmerston's day.
+
+Stockmar now left England for a time, but he kept his eye on English
+affairs, to his continued interest in which we owe it seems, the
+publication of a rather curious document, the existence of which in
+manuscript was, however, well known. It is a Memoir of King William IV.,
+purporting to be drawn up by himself, and extending over the eventful
+years of 1830-35 'King William's style,' says the uncourtly biographer,
+"abounds to overflowing in what is called in England Parliamentary
+circumlocution, in which, instead of direct, simple expressions,
+bombastic paraphrases are always chosen, which become in the end
+intolerably prolix and dull, and are enough to drive a foreigner to
+despair." The style is indeed august; but the real penman is not the
+King, whose strong point was not grammatical composition, but some
+confidant, very likely Sir Herbert Taylor, who was employed by the King
+to negotiate with the "waverers" in the House of Lords, and get the
+Reform Bill passed without a swamping creation of peers. The Memoir
+contains nothing of the slightest historical importance. It is
+instructive only as showing how completely a constitutional king may be
+under the illusion of his office--how complacently he may fancy that he
+is himself guiding the State, when he is in fact merely signing what is
+put before him by his advisers, who are themselves the organs of the
+majority in Parliament. Old William, Duke of Gloucester, the king's
+uncle, being rather weak in intellect, was called "Silly Billy." When
+King William IV. gave his assent to the Reform Bill, the Duke, who knew
+his own nickname, cried "Who's Silly Billy now?" It would have been more
+difficult from the Conservative point of view to answer that question if
+the King had possessed the liberty of action which in his Memoir he
+imagines himself to possess.
+
+The year 1836 opened a new field to the active beneficence of Stockmar.
+"The approaching majority, and probably not distant accession to the
+throne, of Princess Victoria of England, engaged the vigilant and far-
+sighted care of her uncle, King Leopold. At the same time he was already
+making preparations for the eventual execution of a plan, which had long
+formed the subject of the wishes of the Coburg family, to wit, the
+marriage of the future Queen of England with his nephew, Prince Albert
+of Coburg." Stockmar was charged with the duty of standing by the
+Princess, as her confidential adviser, at the critical moment of her
+coming of age, which might also be that of her accession to the throne.
+Meanwhile King Leopold consulted with him as to the manner in which
+Prince Albert should make acquaintance with his cousin, and how he
+"should be prepared for his future vocation." This is pretty broad, and
+a little lets down the expressions of intense affection for the Queen
+and unbounded admiration of Prince Albert with which Stockmar overflows.
+However, a feeling may be genuine though its source is not divine.
+
+Stockmar played his part adroitly. He came over to England, slipped into
+the place of private Secretary to the Queen, and for fifteen months
+"continued his noiseless, quiet activity, without any publicly defined
+position." The marriage was brought about and resulted, as we all know,
+in perfect happiness till death entered the Royal home.
+
+Stockmar was evidently very useful in guiding the Royal couple through
+the difficulties connected with the settlement of the Prince's income
+and his rank, and with the Regency Bill. His idea was that questions
+affecting the Royal family should be regarded as above party, and in
+this he apparently induced the leaders of both parties to acquiesce,
+though they could not perfectly control their followers. The connection
+with the Whigs into which the young Queen had been drawn by attachment
+to her political mentor, Lord Melbourne, had strewn her path with
+thorns. The Tory party was bitterly hostile to the Court. If Sir Charles
+Dilke and Mr. Odger wish to provide themselves with material for retorts
+to Tory denunciations of their disloyalty, they cannot do better than
+look up the speeches and writings of the Tory party during the years
+1835-1841. What was called the Bedchamber Plot, in 1839, had rendered
+the relations between the Court and the Conservative leaders still more
+awkward, and Stockmar appears to have done a real service in smoothing
+the way for the formation of the Conservative Ministry in 1841.
+
+Stockmar, looking at Peel from the Court point of view, was at first
+prejudiced against him, especially on account of his having, in
+deference probably to the feelings of his party against the Court, cut
+down the Prince Consort's allowance. All the more striking is the
+testimony which, after long acquaintance, the Baron bears to Peel's
+character and merits as a statesman.
+
+"Peel's mind and character rested on moral foundations, which I have not
+seen once shaken, either in his private or his public life. From these
+foundations rose that never-failing spring of fairness, honesty,
+kindness, moderation and regard for others, which Peel showed to all
+men, and under all circumstances. On these foundations grew that love of
+country which pervaded his whole being, which knew of but one object--
+the true welfare of England of but one glory and one reward for each
+citizen, viz., to have contributed something towards that welfare. Such
+love of country admits of but one ambition, and hence the ambition of
+that man was as pure as his heart. To make every sacrifice for that
+ambition, which the fates of his country demand from everyone, he
+considered his most sacred duty, and he has made these sacrifices,
+however difficult they might have been to him. Wherein lay the real
+difficulty of those sacrifices will perhaps hereafter be explained by
+those who knew the secret of the political circumstances and the
+personal character of the men with whom he was brought in contact; and
+who would not think of weighing imponderable sacrifices on the balance
+of vulgar gain.
+
+"The man whose feelings for his own country rested on so firm a
+foundation could not be dishonest or unfair towards foreign countries.
+The same right understanding, fairness, and moderation, which he evinced
+in his treatment of internal affairs, guided Peel in his treatment of
+all foreign questions. The wish frequently expressed by him, to see the
+welfare of all nations improved, was thoroughly sincere. He knew France
+and Italy from his own observation, and he had studied the political
+history of the former with great industry. For Germany he had a good
+will, nay, a predilection, particularly for Prussia.
+
+"In his private life, Peel was a real pattern. He was the most loving,
+faithful, conscientious husband, father, and brother, unchanging and
+indulgent to his friends, and always ready to help his fellow-citizens
+according to his power.
+
+"Of the vulnerable parts of his character his enemies may have many
+things to tell. What had been observed by all who came into closer
+contact with him, could not escape my own observation. I mean his too
+great prudence, caution, and at times, extreme reserve, in important as
+well as in unimportant matters, which he showed, not only towards more
+distant, but even towards his nearer acquaintances. If he was but too
+often sparing of words, and timidly cautious in oral transactions, he
+was naturally still more so in his written communications. The fear
+never left him that he might have to hear an opinion once expressed, or
+a, judgment once uttered by him, repeated by the wrong man, and in the
+wrong place, and misapplied. His friends were sometimes in despair over
+this peculiarity. To his opponents it supplied an apparent ground for
+suspicion and incrimination. It seemed but too likely that there was a
+doubtful motive for such reserve, or that it was intended to cover
+narrowness and weakness of thought and feeling, or want of enterprise
+and courage. To me also this peculiarity deemed often injurious to
+himself and to the matter in hand; and I could not help being sometimes
+put out by it, and wishing from the bottom of my heart that he could
+have got rid of it. But when one came to weigh the acts of the man
+against his manner, the disagreeable impression soon gave way. I quickly
+convinced myself, that this, to me, so objectionable a trait was but an
+innate peculiarity; and that in a sphere of activity where thoughtless
+unreserve and _laisser aller_ showed themselves in every possible
+form, Peel was not likely to find any incentive, or to form a resolution
+to overcome, in this point, his natural disposition.
+
+"I have been told, or I have read it somewhere, that Peel was the most
+successful type of political mediocrity. In accepting this estimate of
+my departed friend as perfectly true, I ask Heaven to relieve all
+Ministers, within and without Europe, of their superiority, and to endow
+them with Peel's mediocrity: and I ask this for the welfare of all
+nations, and in the firm conviction that ninety-nine hundredths of the
+higher political affairs can be properly and successfully conducted by
+such Ministers only as possess Peel's mediocrity: though I am willing to
+admit that the remaining hundredth may, through the power and boldness
+of a true genius, be brought to a particularly happy, or, it may be, to
+a particularly unhappy, issue."
+
+Of the late Lord Derby, on the other hand, Stockmar speaks with the
+greatest contempt, calling him "a frivolous aristocrat who delighted in
+making mischief. "It does not appear whether the two men ever came into
+collision with each other, but if they did, Lord Derby was likely enough
+to leave a sting.
+
+Stockmar regularly spent a great part of each year with the English
+Royal Family. Apartments were appropriated to him in each of the Royal
+residences, and he lived with the Queen and Prince on the footing of an
+intimate, or rather of a member, and almost the father, of the family.
+Indeed, he used a familiarity beyond that of any friend or relative.
+Having an objection to taking leave, he was in the habit of disappearing
+without notice, and leaving his rooms vacant when the fancy took him.
+Then we are told, letters complaining of his faithlessness would follow
+him, and in course of time others urging his return. Etiquette, the
+highest of all laws, was dispensed within his case. After dining with
+the Queen, when Her Majesty had risen from table, and after holding a
+circle had sat down again to tea, Stockmar would generally be seen
+walking straight through the drawing-room and returning to his
+apartment, there to study his own comfort. More than this, when Mordecai
+became the King's favorite, he was led forth on the royal steed,
+apparelled in the royal robe, and with the royal crown upon his head. A
+less demonstrative and picturesque, but not less signal or significant,
+mark of Royal favor was bestowed on Stockmar. In his case tights were
+dispensed with, and he was allowed to wear trousers, which better suited
+his thin legs. We believe this exemption to be without parallel, though
+we have heard of a single dispensation being granted, after many
+searchings of heart, in a case where the invitation had been sudden, and
+the mystic garment did not exist, and also of a more melancholy case, in
+which the garment was split in rushing down to dinner, and its wearer
+was compelled to appear in the forbidden trousers, and very late,
+without the possibility of explaining what had occurred.
+
+Notwithstanding the enormous power indicated by his privileged nether
+limbs, Stockmar remained disinterested. A rich Englishman, described as
+an author, and member of Parliament, called upon him one day, and
+promised to give him L10,000 if he would further his petition to the
+Queen for a peerage. Stockmar replied, "I will now go into the next
+room, in order to give you time. If upon my return I still find you
+here, I shall have you turned out by the servants."
+
+We are told that the Baron had little intercourse with any circles but
+those of the court--a circumstance which was not likely to diminish any
+bad impressions that might prevail with regard to his secret influence.
+Among his intimate friends in the household was his fellow-countryman
+Dr. Pratorius, "who ever zealously strengthened the Prince's
+inclinations in the sense which Stockmar desired, and always insisted
+upon the highest moral considerations." Nature, in the case of the
+doctor; had not been so lavish of personal beauty as of moral
+endowments. The Queen was once reading the Bible with her daughter, the
+little Princess Victoria. They came to the passage, "God created man in
+his own image, in the image of God created He him." "O Mamma," cried the
+Princess, "not Dr. Pratorius!"
+
+Stockmar's administrative genius effected a reform in the Royal
+household, and as appears from his memorandum, not before there was
+occasion for it. "The housekeepers, pages, housemaids, etc., are under
+the authority of the Lord Chamberlain; all the footmen, livery-porters
+and under-butlers, by the strangest anomaly, under that of Master of the
+Horse, at whose office they are clothed and paid; and the rest of the
+servants, such as the clerk of the kitchen, the cooks, the porters,
+etc., are under the jurisdiction of the Lord Steward. Yet these
+ludicrous divisions extend not only to persons, but likewise to things
+and actions. The Lord Steward, for example, finds the fuel and lays the
+fire, and the Lord Chamberlain lights it. It was under this state of
+things that the writer of this paper, having been sent one day by Her
+present Majesty to Sir Frederick Watson, then the Master of the
+Household, to complain that the dining-room was always cold, was gravely
+answered: 'You see, properly speaking, it is not our fault, for the Lord
+Steward lays the fire only, and the Lord Chamberlain lights it.' In the
+same manner the Lord Chamberlain provides all the lamps, and the Lord
+Steward must clean, trim and light them. If a pane of glass or the door
+in a cupboard in the scullery requires mending, it cannot now be done
+without the following process: A requisition is prepared and signed by
+the chief cook, it is then countersigned by the clerk of the kitchen,
+then it is taken to be signed by the Master of the Household, thence it
+is taken to the Lord Chamberlain's office, where it is authorized, and
+then laid before the Clerk of the Works under the office of Woods and
+Forests; and consequently many a window and cupboard have remained
+broken for months" Worse than this--"There is no one who attends to the
+comforts of the Queen's guests on their arrival at the Royal residence.
+When they arrive at present there is no one prepared to show them to or
+from their apartments; there is no gentleman in the palace who even
+knows where they are lodged, and there is not even a servant who can
+perform this duty, which is attached to the Lord Chamberlain's
+department. It frequently happens at Windsor that some of the visitors
+are at a loss to find the drawing-room, and, at night, if they happen to
+forget the right entrance from the corridor, they wander for an hour
+helpless, and unassisted. There is nobody to apply to in such a case,
+for it is not in the department of the Master of the Household, and the
+only remedy is to send a servant, if one can be found, to the porter's
+lodge, to ascertain the apartment in question." People were rather
+surprised when the boy Jones was discovered, at one o'clock in the
+morning, under the sofa in the room adjoining Her Majesty's bedroom. But
+it seems nobody was responsible--not the Lord Chamberlain, who was in
+Staffordshire, and in whose department the porters were not; not the
+Lord Steward, who was in London, and had nothing to do with the pages
+and attendants nearest to the royal person; not the Master of the
+Household, who was only a subordinate officer in the Lord Steward's
+department. So the King of Spain, who was roasted to death because the
+right Lord-in-Waiting could not be found to take him from the fire, was
+not without a parallel in that which calls itself the most practical of
+nations. Stockmar reformed the system by simply inducing each of the
+three great officers, without nominally giving up his authority (which
+would have shaken the foundations of the Monarchy), to delegate so much
+of it as would enable the fire to be laid and lighted by the same power.
+We fancy, however, that even since the Stockmarian reconstruction, we
+have heard of guests finding themselves adrift in the corridors of
+Windsor. There used to be no bells to the rooms, it being assumed that
+in the abode of Royalty servants, were always within call, a theory
+which would have been full of comfort to any nervous gentleman, who, on
+the approach of the royal dinner hour, might happen to find himself left
+with somebody else's small clothes.
+
+In 1854 came the outbreak of public feeling against Prince Albert and
+Stockmar, as his friend and adviser, to which we have referred at the
+beginning of this article. The Prince's lamented death caused such a
+reaction of feeling in his favor that it is difficult now to recall to
+recollection the degree of unpopularity under which he at one time
+laboured. Some of the causes of this unpopularity are correctly stated
+by the author of the present memoir. The Prince was a foreigner, his
+ways were not those of Englishmen, he did not dress like an Englishman,
+shake hands like an Englishman. He was suspected of "Germanizing"
+tendencies, very offensive to high churchmen, especially in philosophy
+and religion. He displeased the Conservatives by his Liberalism, the
+coarser Radicals by his pietism and culture. He displeased the fast set
+by his strict morality; they called him slow, because he did not bet,
+gamble, use bad language, keep an opera dancer. With more reason he
+displeased the army by meddling, under the name of a too courtly
+Commander-in-Chief, with professional matters which he could not
+understand. But there was a cause of his unpopularity scarcely
+appreciable by the German author of this memoir. He had brought with him
+the condescending manner of a German Prince. The English prefer a frank
+manner; they will bear a high manner in persons of sufficient rank, but
+a condescending manner they will not endure; nor will any man or woman
+but those who live in a German Court. So it was, however, that the
+Prince, during his life, though respected by the people for his virtues,
+and by men of intellect for his culture, was disliked and disparaged by
+"Society," and especially by the great ladies who are at the head of it.
+The Conservatives, male and female, had a further grudge against him as
+the reputed friend of Peel, who was the object of their almost demoniac
+hatred.
+
+The part of a Prince Consort is a very difficult one to play. In the
+case of Queen Anne's husband, Prince George of Denmark, nature solved
+the difficulty by not encumbering his Royal Highness with any brains.
+But Prince Albert had brains, and it was morally impossible that he
+should not exercise a power not contemplated by the Constitution. He did
+so almost from the first, with the full knowledge and approbation of the
+Ministers, who had no doubt the sense to see what could not be avoided
+had better be recognised and kept under control. But in 1851 the Court
+quarrelled with Palmerston, who was dismissed from office, very
+properly, for having, in direct violation of a recent order of the
+Queen, communicated to the French Ambassador his approval of the coup
+d'etat, without the knowledge of Her Majesty or the Cabinet. In 1854
+came the rupture with Russia, which led to the Crimean war. Palmerston,
+in correspondence with his friend the French Emperor, was working for a
+war, with a separate French alliance. Prince Albert, in conjunction with
+Aberdeen, was trying to keep the Four Powers together, and by their
+combined action to avert a war. Palmerston and his partizans appealed
+through the press to the people, among whom the war feeling was growing
+strong, against the unconstitutional influence of the Prince Consort and
+his foreign advisers. Thereupon arose a storm of insane suspicion and
+fury which almost recalled the fever of the Popish Plot. Thousands of
+Londoners collected round the Tower to see the Prince's entry into the
+State Prison, and dispersed only upon being told that the Queen had said
+that if her husband was sent to prison she would go with him. Reports
+were circulated of a pamphlet drawn up under Palmerston's eye, and
+containing the most damning proofs of the Prince's guilt, the
+publication of which it was said the Prince had managed to prevent, but
+of which six copies were still in existence. The pamphlet was at last
+printed _in extenso_ in the _Times_, and the bottled lightning
+proved to be ditchwater. Of course Stockmar, the "spy," the "agent of
+Leopold," did not escape denunciation, and though it was proved he had
+been at Coburg all the time, people persisted in believing he was
+concealed about the Court, coming out only at night. The outcry was led
+by the _Morning Post_, Lord Palmerston's personal organ, and the
+_Morning Advertiser_, the bellicose and truly British journal of
+the Licensed Victuallers; but these were supported by the Conservative
+press, and by some Radical papers. A debate in Parliament broke the
+waterspout as quickly as it had been formed. The people had complained
+with transports of rage that the Prince Consort exercised an influence
+unrecognised by the Constitution in affairs of State. They were
+officially assured that he _did_; and they at once declared
+themselves perfectly satisfied.
+
+Our readers would not thank us for taking them again through the
+question of the Spanish marriages, a transaction which Stockmar viewed
+in the only way in which the most criminal and the filthiest of
+intrigues could be viewed by an honest man and a gentleman; or through
+the question of German unity, on which his opinions have been at once
+ratified and deprived of their practical interest by events. The last
+part of his life he passed in Germany, managing German Royalties,
+especially the Prince and Princess Frederick William of Prussia, for
+whom he had conceived a profound affection. His presence, we are told,
+was regarded by German statesmen and magnates as "uncanny," and Count
+K., on being told that it was Stockmar with whom an acquaintance had
+just crossed a bridge, asked the acquaintance why he had not pitched the
+Baron into the river. That Stockmar did not deserve such a fate, the
+testimony cited at the beginning of this paper is sufficient to prove.
+He was the unrecognised Minister of Constitutional Sovereigns who
+wanted, besides their regular Parliamentary advisers, a personal adviser
+to attend to the special interests of royalty. It was a part somewhat
+clandestine, rather equivocal, and not exactly such as a very proud man
+would choose. But Stockmar was called to it by circumstances, he was
+admirably adapted for it, and if it sometimes led him further than he
+was entitled or qualified to go, he played it on the whole very well.
+
+
+
+
+THE EARLY YEARS OF THE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC
+
+
+A discussion which was raised some time ago by a very pleasant article
+of Professor Wilson in the _Canadian Monthly_ disclosed the fact
+that Wright's "Life of Wolfe," though it had been published some years,
+was still very little known. It is not only the best but the only
+complete life of the soldier, so memorable in Canadian annals, whom
+Chatham's hand launched on our coast, a thunderbolt of war, and whose
+victory decided that the destiny of this land of great possibilities
+should be shaped not by French but by British hands. Almost all that is
+known about Wolfe is here, and it is well told. Perhaps the biographer
+might have enhanced the interest of the figure by a more vivid
+presentation of its historic surroundings. It is when viewed in
+comparison with an age which was generally one of unbelief, of low aims,
+of hearts hardened by vice, of blunted affections, of coarse excesses,
+and in the military sphere one of excesses more than usually coarse, of
+professional ignorance and neglect of duty among the officers, while the
+habits of the rank and file were those depicted in Hogarth's _March to
+Finckley_ that the life of this aspiring, gentle, affectionate, pure
+and conscientious soldier shines forth against the dark background like
+a star.
+
+Squerryes Court, near Westerham, in Kent, is an ample and pleasant
+mansion in the Queen Anne style, which has long been in the possession
+of the Warde family--they are very particular about the _e_. In
+later times it was the abode of a memorable character in his way--old
+John Warde, the "Father of Fox-hunting." There it was that the greatest
+of all fox-hunters, Asheton Smithe, when on a visit to John Warde, rode
+Warde's horse _Blue Ruin_ over a frozen country through a fast run
+of twenty-five minutes and killed his fox. On the terrace stands a
+monument. It marks the spot where in 1741, James Wolfe, the son of
+Lieut-Col. Wolfe, of Westerham, then barely fourteen years of age, was
+playing with two young Wardes, when the father of the playmates
+approached and handed him a large letter "On His Majesty's Service"
+which, on being opened, was found to contain his commission in the army.
+We may be sure that the young face flushed with undisguised emotion.
+There cannot be a greater contrast than that which the frank, impulsive
+features, sanguine complexion, and blue eyes of Wolfe present to the
+power expressed in the commanding brow, the settled look, and the evil
+eye [Footnote: The late Lord Russell, who had seen Napoleon at Elba,
+used to say that there was something very evil in his eye.] of Napoleon.
+
+James Wolfe was a delicate child, and though he grew energetic and
+fearless, never grew strong, or ceased to merit the interest which
+attaches to a gallant spirit in a weak frame. He escaped a public
+school, and without any forfeiture of the manliness which public schools
+are supposed exclusively to produce, retained his home affections and
+his tenderness of heart. He received the chief part of his literary
+education in a school at Greenwich, where his parents resided, and he at
+all events learned enough Latin to get himself a dinner, in his first
+campaign on the Continent, by asking for it in that language. He is
+grateful to his schoolmaster, Mr. Stebbings, and speaks of him with
+affection in afterlife. But no doubt his military intelligence, as well
+as his military tastes, was gained by intercourse with his father, a
+real soldier, who had pushed his way by merit in an age of corrupt
+patronage, and was Adjutant-General to Lord Cathcart's forces in 1740.
+Bred in a home of military duty, the young soldier saw before him a
+worthy example of conscientious attention to all the details of the
+profession--not only to the fighting of battles, but to the making of
+the soldiers with whom battles are to be fought.
+
+Walpole's reign of peace was over, the "Patriots" had driven the nation
+into war, and the trade of Colonel Wolfe and his son was again in
+request. Before he got his commission, and when he was only thirteen
+years-and a-half old, the boy's ardent spirit led him to embark with his
+father as a volunteer in the ill-fated expedition to Carthagena.
+Happily, though he assured his mother that he was "in a very good state
+of health," his health was so far from being good that they were obliged
+to put him on shore at Portsmouth. Thus he escaped that masterpiece of
+the military and naval administration of the aristocracy, to the horrors
+of which his frail frame would undoubtedly have succumbed. His father
+saw the unspeakable things depicted with ghastly accuracy by Smollett,
+and warned his son never, if he could help it, to go on joint
+expeditions of the two services--a precept which the soldier of an
+island power would have found it difficult to observe.
+
+Wolfe's mother had struggled to prevent her boy from going, and appealed
+to his love of her. It was a strong appeal, for he was the most dutiful
+of sons. The first in the series of his letters is one written to her on
+this occasion, assuring her of his affection and promising to write to
+her by every ship he meets. She kept all his letters from this one to
+the last written from the banks of the St. Lawrence. They are in the
+stiff old style, beginning "Dear Madam," and signed "dutiful;" but they
+are full of warm feeling, scarcely interrupted by a little jealousy of
+temper which there appears to have been on the mother's side.
+
+Wolfe's first commission was in his father's regiment of marines, but he
+never served as a marine. He could scarcely have done so, for to the end
+of his life, he suffered tortures from sea-sickness. He is now an Ensign
+in Duroure's regiment of foot. We see him a tall slender boy of fifteen,
+in scarlet coat, folded back from the breast after the old fashion in
+broad lapels to display its white or yellow lining, breeches and
+gaiters, with his young face surmounted by a wig and a cocked hat edged
+with gold lace, setting off, colours in hand, with his regiment for the
+war in the Low Countries. If he missed seeing aristocratic management at
+Carthagena, he shall see aristocratic and royal strategy at Dettingen.
+His brother Ned, a boy still more frail than himself, but emulous of his
+military ardour, goes in another regiment on the same expedition.
+
+The regiment was accidentally preceded by a large body of troops of the
+other sex, who landing unexpectedly by themselves at Ostend caused some
+perplexity to the Quartermaster. The home affections must have been
+strong which could keep a soldier pure in those days.
+
+The regiment was at first quartered at Ghent, where, amidst the din of
+garrison riot and murderous brawls, we hear the gentle sound of Wolfe's
+flute, and where he studies the fortifications, already anxious to
+prepare himself for the higher walks of his profession. From Ghent the
+army moved to the actual scene of war in Germany, suffering of course on
+the march from the badness of the commissariat. Wolfe's body feels the
+fatigue and hardship. He "never comes into quarters without aching hips
+and thighs." But he is "in the greatest spirits in the world." "Don't
+tell me of a constitution" he said afterwards, when a remark was made on
+the weakness of a brother officer, "he has good spirits, and good
+spirits will carry a man through everything."
+
+All the world knows into what a position His Martial Majesty King George
+II., with the help of sundry persons of quality, styling themselves
+generals, got the British army at Dettingen, and how the British soldier
+fought his way out of the scrape. Wolfe was in the thick of it, and his
+horse was shot under him. His first letter is to his mother--"I take the
+very first opportunity I can to acquaint you that my brother and self
+escaped in the engagement we had with the French, the 16th June last,
+and, thank God, are as well as ever we were in our lives, after not only
+being canonnaded two hours and three quarters, and fighting with small
+arms two hours and one quarter, but lay the two following nights upon
+our arms, whilst it rained for about twenty hours in the same time; yet
+are ready and as capable to do the same again." But this letter is
+followed by one to his father, which seems to us to rank among the
+wonders of literature. It is full of fire and yet as calm as a dispatch,
+giving a complete, detailed, and masterly account of the battle, and
+showing that the boy kept his head, and played the part of a good
+officer as well as of a brave soldier in his first field. The cavalry
+did indifferently, and there is a sharp soldiery criticism on the cause
+of its failure. But the infantry did better.
+
+"The third and last attack was made by the foot on both sides. We
+advanced towards one another; our men in high spirits, and very
+impatient for fighting, being elated with beating the French Horse, part
+of which advanced towards us, while the rest attacked our Horse, but
+were soon driven back by the great fire we gave them. The Major and I
+(for we had neither Colonel nor Lieutenant-Colonel), before they came
+near, were employed in begging and ordering the men not to fire at too
+great a distance, but to keep it till the enemy should come near us; but
+to little purpose. The whole fired when they thought they could reach
+them, which had like to have ruined us. We did very little execution
+with it. As soon as the French saw we presented they all fell down, and
+when we had fired they got up and marched close to us in tolerable good
+order, and gave us a brisk fire, which put us into some disorder and
+made us give way a little, particularly ours and two or three more
+regiments who were in the hottest of it. However, we soon rallied again,
+and attacked them again with great fury, which gained us a complete
+victory, and forced the enemy to retire in great haste."
+
+Edward distinguished himself, too. "I sometimes thought I had lost poor
+Ned, when I saw arms and legs and heads beat off close by him. He is
+called 'The old Soldier,' and very deservedly." Poor "Old Soldier," his
+career was as brief as that of a shooting star. Next year he dies, not
+by sword or bullet, but of consumption hastened by hardships--dies alone
+in a foreign land, "often calling on those who were dear to him;" his
+brother, though within reach, being kept away by the calls of duty and
+by ignorance of the danger. The only comfort was that he had a faithful
+servant, and that as he shared with his brother the gift of winning
+hearts, brother officers were likely to be kind. James, writing to their
+mother, some time after, shed tears over the letter.
+
+Though only sixteen, Wolfe had acted as Adjutant to his regiment at
+Dettingen. He was regularly appointed Adjutant a few days after. His
+father, as we have seen, had been an Adjutant-General. Even under the
+reign of Patronage there was one chance for merit. Patronage could not
+do without adjutants. From this time, Wolfe, following in his father's
+footsteps, seems to have given his steady attention to the
+administrative and, so far as his very scanty opportunities permitted,
+to the scientific part of his profession.
+
+Happily for him, he was not at Fontenoy. But he was at Laffeldt, and saw
+what must have been a grand sight for a soldier--the French infantry
+coming down from the heights in one vast column, ten battalions in front
+and as many deep, to attack the British position in the village. After
+all, it was not by the British, but by the Austrians and Dutch, that
+Laffeldt was lost. We have no account of the battle from Wolfe's pen.
+But he was wounded, and it is stated, on what authority his biographer
+does not tell us, that he was thanked by the Commander-in-Chief. Four
+years afterwards he said of his old servant, Roland: "He came to me at
+the hazard of his life, in the last action, with offers of his service,
+took off my cloak, and brought a fresh horse, and would have continued
+close by me had I not ordered him to retire. I believe he was slightly
+wounded just at that time, and the horse he held was shot likewise. Many
+a time has he pitched my tent and made the bed ready to receive me, half
+dead with fatigue, and this I owe to his diligence."
+
+But between Dettingen and Laffeldt, Wolfe had been called to serve on a
+different scene. The Patriots, in bringing on a European war, had
+renewed the Civil War at home. Attached to the army sent against the
+Pretender, Wolfe (now major), fought under "Hangman Hawley," in the
+blundering and disastrous hustle at Falkirk, and, on a happier day,
+under Cumberland at Culloden. Some years afterwards he revisited the
+field of Culloden, and he has recorded his opinion that there also
+"somebody blundered," though he refrains from saying who. The mass of
+the rebel army, he seems to think, ought not to have been allowed to
+escape. These campaigns were a military curiosity. The Roman order of
+battle, evidently intended to repair a broken front, was perhaps a
+lesson taught the Roman tacticians on the day when their front was
+broken by the rush of the Celtic clans at Allia. That rush produced the
+same effect on troops unaccustomed to it and unprepared for it at
+Killiecrankie, and again at Preston Pans and Falkirk. At Culloden the
+Duke of Cumberland formed so as to repair a broken front, and when the
+rush came, but few of the Highlanders got beyond the second line.
+Killiecrankie and Preston Pans tell us nothing against Discipline.
+
+There is an apocryphal anecdote of the Duke's cruelty and of Wolfe's
+humanity towards the wounded after the battle,--"Wolfe, shoot me that
+Highland scoundrel who thus dares to look on us with such contempt and
+insolence." "My commission is at your Royal Highness's disposal, but I
+never can consent to become an executioner." The anecdotist adds that
+from that day Wolfe declined in the favour and confidence of the
+Commander-in-Chief. But it happens that Wolfe did nothing of the kind.
+On the other hand, Mr. Wright does not doubt, nor is there any ground
+for doubting, the identity of the Major Wolfe who, under orders,
+relieves a Jacobite lady, named Gordon, of a considerable amount of
+stores and miscellaneous property accumulated in her house, but
+according to her own account belonging partly to other people; among
+other things, of a collection of pictures to make room for which, as she
+said, she had been obliged to send away her son, who was missing at that
+critical juncture. The duty was a harsh one, but seems, by Mrs. Gordon's
+own account, not to have been harshly performed. If any property that
+ought to have been restored was kept, it was kept not by Wolfe but by
+"Hangman Hawley." Still one could wish to see Wolfe fighting on a
+brighter field than Culloden, and engaged in a work more befitting a
+soldier than the ruthless extirpation of rebellion which ensued.
+
+The young soldier is now thoroughly in love with his profession. "A
+battle gained," he says, "is, I believe the highest joy mankind is
+capable of receiving to him who commands; and his merit must be equal to
+his success if it works no change to his disadvantage." He dilates on
+the value of war as a school of character. "We have all our passions and
+affections roused and exercised, many of which must have wanted their
+proper employment had not suitable occasions obliged us to exert them.
+Few men are acquainted with the degrees of their own courage till danger
+prove them, and are seldom justly informed how far the love of honour
+and dread of shame are superior to the love of life." But now peace
+comes, the sword is consigned to rust, and in promotion Patronage
+resumes its sway. "In these cooler times the parliamentary interest and
+weight of particular families annihilate all other pretensions." The
+consequence was, of course, that when the hotter times returned they
+found the army officered by fine gentlemen, and its path, as Napier
+says, was like that of Satan in "Paradise Lost" through chaos to death.
+
+Wolfe would fain have gone abroad (England affording no schools) to
+complete his military and general education; but the Duke of
+Cumberland's only notion of military education was drill; so Wolfe had
+to remain with his regiment. It was quartered in Scotland, and besides
+the cankering inaction to which the gallant spirit was condemned, Scotch
+quarters were not pleasant in those days. The country was socially as
+far from London as Norway. The houses were small, dirty, unventilated,
+devoid of any kind of comfort; and habits and manners were not much
+better than the habitations. Perhaps Wolfe saw the Scotch society of
+those days through an unfavourable medium, at all events he did not find
+it charming. "The men here," he writes from Glasgow, "are civil,
+designing, and treacherous, with their immediate interest always in
+view; they pursue trade with warmth and a necessary mercantile spirit,
+arising from the baseness of their other qualifications. The women
+coarse, cold and cunning, for ever enquiring after men's circumstances;
+they make that the standing of their good breeding." Even the sermons
+failed to please. "I do several things in my character of commanding
+officer which I should never think of in any other; for instance, I'm
+every Sunday at the Kirk, an example justly to be admired. I would not
+lose two hours of a day if it would not answer some end. When I say
+'lose two hours,' I must complain to you that the generality of Scotch
+preachers are excessive blockheads, so truly and obstinately dull, that
+they seem to shut out knowledge at every entrance." If Glasgow and Perth
+were bad, still worse were dreary Banff and barbarous Inverness. The
+Scotch burghers, their ladies, and the preachers are entitled to the
+benefit of the remark that the Scotch climate greatly affected Wolfe's
+sensitive frame, and that he took a wrong though established method of
+keeping out the cold and damp. When there is nothing in the way of
+action to lift the soul above the clay his spirits, as he admits rise
+and fall with the weather and his impressions vary with them. "I'm sorry
+to say that my writings are greatly influenced by the state of my body
+or mind at the time of writing and I'm either happy or ruined by my last
+night's rest or from sunshine or light and sickly air; such infirmity is
+the mortal frame subject to."
+
+Inverness was the climax of discomfort, coarseness and dulness, as well
+as a centre of disaffection. Quarters there in those days must have been
+something like quarters in an Indian village, with the Scotch climate
+superadded. The houses were hovels, worse and more fetid than those at
+Perth. Even when it was fine there was no amusement but shooting
+woodcocks at the risk of rheumatism. When the rains poured down and the
+roads were broken up there was no society, not even a newspaper, nothing
+to be done but to eat coarse food and sleep in bad beds. If there was a
+laird in the neighbourhood he was apt to be some 'Bumper John' whose
+first act of hospitality was to make you drunk. "I wonder how long a man
+moderately inclined that way would require in a place like this to wear
+out his love for arms and soften his martial spirit. I believe the
+passion would be something diminished in less than ten years and the
+gentleman be contented to be a little lower than Caesar in the list to
+get rid of the encumbrance of greatness."
+
+It is in his dreary quarters at Inverness at the dead of night perhaps
+with a Highland tempest howling outside that the future conqueror of
+Quebec thus moralizes on his own condition and prospects in a letter to
+his mother:
+
+"The winter wears away, so do our years and so does life itself, and it
+matters little where a man passes his days and what station he fills or
+whether he be great or considerable but it imports him something to look
+to his manner of life. This day am I twenty five years of age, and all
+that time is as nothing. When I am fifty (if it so happens) and look
+back, it will be the same, and so on to the last hour. But it is worth a
+moment's consideration that one may be called away on a sudden unguarded
+and unprepared, and the oftener these thoughts are entertained the less
+will be the dread or fear of death. You will judge by this sort of
+discourse that it is the dead of night when all is quiet and at rest,
+and one of those intervals wherein men think of what they really are and
+what they really should be, how much is expected and how little
+performed. Our short duration here and the doubts of the hereafter
+should awe the most flagitious, if they reflected on them. The little
+taken in for meditation is the best employed in all their lives for if
+the uncertainty of our state and being is then brought before us who is
+there that will not immediately discover the inconsistency of all his
+behaviour and the vanity of all his pursuits? And yet, we are so mixed
+and compounded that, though I think seriously this minute, and lie down
+with good intentions, it is likely I may rise with my old nature, or
+perhaps with the addition of some new impertinence, and be the same
+wandering lump of idle errors that I have ever been.
+
+"You certainly advise me well. You have pointed out the only way where
+there can be no disappointment, and comfort that will never fail us,
+carrying men steadily and cheerfully in their journey, and a place of
+rest at the end. Nobody can be more persuaded of it than I am; but
+situation, example, the current of things, and our natural weakness,
+draw me away with the herd, and only leave me just strength enough to
+resist the worst degree of our iniquities. There are times when men fret
+at trifles and quarrel with their toothpicks. In one of these ill-habits
+I exclaim against the present condition, and think it is the worst of
+all; but coolly and temperately it is plainly the best. Where there is
+most employment and least vice, there one should wish to be. There is a
+meanness and a baseness not to endure with patience the little
+inconveniences we are subject to; and to know no happiness but in one
+spot, and that in ease, in luxury, in idleness, seems to deserve our
+contempt. There are young men amongst us that have great revenues and
+high military stations, that repine at three months' service with their
+regiments if they go fifty miles from home. Soup and _venaison_ and
+turtle are their supreme delight and joy,--an effeminate race of
+coxcombs, the future leaders of our armies, defenders and protectors of
+our great and free nation!
+
+"You bid me avoid Fort William, because you believe it still worse than
+this place. That will not be my reason for wishing to avoid it; but the
+change of conversation; the fear of becoming a mere ruffian; and of
+imbibing the tyrannical principles of an absolute commander, or, giving
+way insensibly to the temptations of power, till I become proud,
+insolent and intolerable;--these considerations will make me wish to
+leave the regiment before the next winter, and always if it could be so
+after eight months duty; that by frequenting men above myself I may know
+my true condition, and by discoursing with the other sex may learn some
+civility and mildness of carriage, but never pay the price of the last
+improvement with the loss of reason. Better be a savage of some use than
+a gentle, amorous puppy, obnoxious to all the world. One of the wildest
+of wild clans is a worthier being than a perfect Philander."
+
+Wolfe, it must be owned, does not write well. He has reason to envy, as
+he does, the grace of the female style. He is not only ungrammatical,
+which, in a familiar letter, is a matter of very small consequence, but
+somewhat stilted. Perhaps it was like the "Madam," the fashion of the
+Johnsonian era. Yet beneath the buckram you always feel that there is a
+heart. Persons even of the same profession are cast in very different
+moulds; and the mould of Wolfe was as different as possible from that of
+the Iron Duke.
+
+Wolfe's dreary garrison leisures in Scotland, however, were not idle.
+His books go with him, and he is doing his best to cultivate himself,
+both professionally and generally. He afterwards recommends to a friend,
+evidently from his own experience, a long list of military histories and
+other works ancient and modern. The ancients he read in translations.
+His range is wide and he appreciates military genius in all its forms.
+"There is an abundance of military knowledge to be picked out of the
+lives of Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII., King of Sweden, and of
+Zisca the Bohemian, and if a tolerable account could be got of the
+exploits of Scanderbeg, it would be inestimable, for he excels all the
+officers ancient and modern in the conduct of a small defensive army."
+At Louisburg, Wolfe put in practice, with good effect, a manoeuvre which
+he had learned from the Carduchi in Xenophon, showing perhaps by this
+reproduction of the tactics employed two thousand years before by a
+barbarous tribe, that in the so-called art of war there is a large
+element which is not progressive. Books will never make a soldier, but
+Wolfe, as a military student, had the advantage of actual experience of
+war. Whenever he could find a teacher, he studied mathematics, zealously
+though apparently not with delight. "I have read the mathematics till I
+am grown perfectly stupid, and have algebraically worked away the little
+portion of understanding that was allowed to me. They have not even left
+me the qualities of a coxcomb for I can neither laugh nor sing nor talk
+an hour upon nothing. The latter of these is a sensible loss, for it
+excludes a gentleman from all good company and makes him entirely unfit
+for the conversation of the polite world." "I don't know how the
+mathematics may assist the judgment, but they have a great tendency to
+make men dull. I who am far from being sprightly even in my gaiety, am
+the very reverse of it at this time." Certainly to produce sprightliness
+is neither the aim nor the general effect of mathematics. That while
+military education was carried on, general culture was not wholly
+neglected, is proved by the famous exclamation about Gray's Elegy, the
+most signal homage perhaps that a poet ever received. At Glasgow, where
+there is a University, Wolfe studies mathematics in the morning, in the
+afternoon he endeavours to regain his lost Latin.
+
+Nor in training himself did he neglect to train his soldiers. He had
+marked with bitterness of heart the murderous consequence to which
+neglect of training had led in the beginning of every war. Probably he
+had the army of Frederick before his eyes. His words on musketry
+practice may still have an interest. "Marksmen are nowhere so necessary
+as in a mountainous country; besides, firing at objects teaches the
+soldiers to level incomparably, makes the recruit steady, and removes
+the foolish apprehension that seizes young soldiers when they first load
+their arms with bullets. We fire, first singly, then by files, one, two,
+three, or more, then by ranks, and lastly by platoons; and the soldiers
+see the effects of their shots, especially at a mark or upon water. We
+shoot obliquely and in different situations of ground, from heights
+downwards and contrariwise."
+
+Military education and attention to the details of the profession were
+not very common under the Duke of Wellington. They were still less
+common under the Duke of Cumberland. Before he was thirty, Wolfe was a
+great military authority, and what was required of Chatham, in his case,
+was not so much the eye to discern latent merit, as the boldness to
+promote merit over the head of rank.
+
+In a passage just quoted Wolfe expresses his fear lest command should
+make him tyrannical. He was early tried by the temptation of power. He
+became Lieut.-Colonel at twenty-five; but in the absence of his Colonel
+he had already been in command at Stirling when he was only twenty-
+three. This was in quarters where he was practically despotic. He does
+not fail in his letters to pour out his heart on his situation.
+"Tomorrow Lord George Sackville goes away, and I take upon me the
+difficult and troublesome employment of a commander. You can't conceive
+how difficult a thing it is to keep the passions within bounds, when
+authority and immaturity go together: to endeavour at a character which
+has every opposition from within, and that the very condition of the
+blood is a sufficient obstacle to. Fancy you see me that must do justice
+to good and bad; reward and punish with an equal unbiassed hand; one
+that is to reconcile the severity of discipline with the dictates of
+humanity, one that must study the tempers and dispositions of many men,
+in order to make their situation easy and agreeable to them, and should
+endeavour to oblige all without partiality; a mark set up for everybody
+to observe and judge of; and last of all, suppose one employed in
+discouraging vice, and recommending the reverse, at the turbulent age of
+twenty-three, when it is possible I may have as great a propensity that
+way as any of the men that I converse with." He had difficulties of
+character to contend with, as well as difficulties of age. His temper
+was quick; he knew it. "My temper is much too warm, and sudden
+resentment forces out expressions and even actions that are neither
+justifiable nor excusable, and perhaps I do not conceal the natural heat
+so much as I ought to do." He even felt that he was apt to misconstrue
+the intentions of those around him, and to cherish groundless
+prejudices. "I have that wicked disposition of mind that whenever I know
+that people have entertained a very ill opinion, I imagine they never
+change. From whence one passes easily to an indifference about them, and
+then to dislike, and though I flatter myself that I have the seeds of
+justice strong enough to keep from doing wrong, even to an enemy, yet
+there lurks a hidden poison in the heart that it is difficult to root
+out. It is my misfortune to catch fire on a sudden, to answer letters
+the moment I receive them, when they touch me sensibly, and to suffer
+passion to dictate my expressions more than my reason. The next day,
+perhaps, would have changed this, and earned more moderation with it.
+Every ill turn of my life has had this haste and first impulse of the
+moment for its cause, and it proceeds from pride." Solitary command and
+absence from the tempering influences of general society were, as he
+keenly felt, likely to aggravate his infirmities. Yet he proves not only
+a successful but a popular commander, and he seems never to have lost
+his friends. The "seeds of justice" no doubt were really strong, and the
+transparent frankness of his character, its freedom from anything like
+insidiousness or malignity, must have had a powerful effect in
+dispelling resentment.
+
+His first regimental minute, of which his biographer gives us an
+abstract, evinces a care for his men which must have been almost
+startling in the days of "Hangman Hawley." He desires to be acquainted
+in writing with the men and the companies they belong to, and as soon as
+possible with their characters, that he may know the proper objects to
+encourage, and those over whom it will be necessary to keep a strict
+hand. The officers are enjoined to visit the soldiers' quarters
+frequently; now and then to go round between nine and eleven o'clock at
+night, and not trust to sergeants' reports. They are also requested to
+watch the looks of the privates, and observe whether any of them were
+paler than usual, that the reason might be inquired into and proper
+means used to restore them to their former vigour. Subalterns are told
+that "a young officer should not think he does too much." But firmness,
+and great firmness, must have been required, as well as watchfulness and
+kindness. His confidential expressions with regard to the state of the
+army are as strong as words can make them. "I have a very mean opinion
+of the Infantry in general. I know their discipline to be bad and their
+valour precarious. They are easily put into disorder and hard to recover
+out of it. They frequently kill their officers in their fear and murder
+one another in their confusion." "Nothing, I think, can hurt their
+discipline--it is at its worst. They shall drink and swear, plunder and
+murder, with any troops in Europe, the Cossacks and Calmucks themselves
+not excepted." "If I stay much longer with the regiment I shall be
+perfectly corrupt; the officers are loose and profligate and the
+soldiers are very devils." He brought the 67th, however, into such a
+condition that it remained a model regiment for years after he was gone.
+
+Nor were the duties of a commanding officer in Scotland at that period
+merely military. In the Highlands especially, he was employed in
+quenching the smoking embers of rebellion, and in re-organizing the
+country after the anarchy of civil war. Disarming had to be done, and
+suppression of the Highland costume, which now marks the Queen's
+favourite regiment, but then marked a rebel. This is bad, as well as
+unworthy, work for soldiers, who have not the trained self-command which
+belongs to a good police, and for which the Irish Constabulary are as
+remarkable as they are for courage and vigour. Even Wolfe's sentiments
+contracted a tinge of cruelty from his occupation. In one of his
+subsequent letters he avows a design which would have led to the
+massacre of a whole clan. "Would you believe that I am so bloody?" We do
+not believe that he was so bloody, and are confident that the design, if
+it was ever really formed, would not have been carried into effect. But
+the passage is the most painful one in his letters. The net result of
+his military administration, however, was that the people at Inverness
+were willing to celebrate the Duke of Cumberland's birthday, though they
+were not willing to comply with the insolent demand of Colonel Lord
+Bury, who had come down to take the command for a short time, that they
+should celebrate it on the anniversary of Culloden. It is a highly
+probable tradition that the formation of Highland regiments was
+suggested by Wolfe.
+
+In a passage which we have quoted Wolfe glances at the awkward and
+perilous position in which a young commander was placed in having to
+control the moral habits of officers his equals in age, and to rebuke
+the passions which mutinied in his own blood. He could hardly be
+expected to keep himself immaculate. But he is always struggling to do
+right and repentant when he does wrong. "We use a very dangerous freedom
+and looseness of speech among ourselves; this by degrees makes
+wickedness and debauchery less odious than it should be, if not
+familiar, and sets truth, religion, and virtue at a great distance. I
+hear things every day said that would shock your ears, and often say
+things myself that are not fit to be repeated, perhaps without any ill
+intention, but merely by the force of custom. The best that can be
+offered in our defence is that some of us see the evil and wish to avoid
+it." Among the very early letters there is one to his brother about
+"pretty mantua makers," etc, but it is evidently nothing but a nominal
+deference to the military immorality of the age. Once when on a short
+visit to London, and away from the restraining responsibilities of his
+command, Wolfe, according to his own account, lapsed into debauchery.
+"In that short time I committed more imprudent acts than in all my life
+before I lived in the idlest, [most] dissolute, abandoned manner that
+could be conceived, and that not out of vice, which is the most
+extraordinary part of it. I have escaped at length and am once more
+master of my reason, and hereafter it shall rule my conduct; at least I
+hope so." Perhaps the lapse may have been worse by contrast than in
+itself. The intensity of pure affection which pervades all Wolfe's
+letters is sufficient proof that he had never abandoned himself to
+sensuality to an extent sufficient to corrupt his heart. The age was
+profoundly sceptical, and if the scepticism had not spread to the army
+the scoffing had. Wolfe more than once talks lightly of going to church
+as a polite form; but he appears always to have a practical belief in
+God.
+
+It is worthy of remark that a plunge into London dissipation follows
+very close upon the disappointment of an honourable passion. Wolfe had a
+certain turn of mind which favoured matrimony "prodigiously," and he had
+fallen very much in love with Miss Lawson, Maid of Honour to the
+Princess of Wales. But the old General and Mrs. Wolfe opposed the match
+--apparently on pecuniary grounds. "They have their eye upon one of
+L30,000." Miss Lawson had only L12,000. Parents had more authority then
+than they have now, Wolfe was exceedingly dutiful, and he allowed the
+old people, on whom, from the insufficiency of his pay, he was still
+partly dependent, to break off the affair. Such at least seems to have
+been the history of its termination. The way in which Wolfe records the
+catastrophe, it must be owned, is not very romantic. "This last
+disappointment in love has changed my natural disposition to such a
+degree that I believe it is now possible that I might prevail upon
+myself not to refuse twenty or thirty thousand pounds, if properly
+offered. Rage and despair do not commonly produce such reasonable
+effects; nor are they the instruments to make a man's fortune by but in
+particular cases." It was long, however, before he could think of Miss
+Lawson without a pang, and the sight of her portrait, he tells us, takes
+away his appetite for some days.
+
+At seven and twenty Wolfe left Scotland, having already to seven years'
+experience of warfare added five years' experience of difficult command.
+He is now able to move about a little and open his mind, which has been
+long cramped by confinement in Highland quarters. He visits an old uncle
+in Ireland, and, as one of the victors of Culloden, views with special
+interest that field of the Boyne, where in the last generation Liberty
+and Progress had triumphed over the House of Stuart. "I had more
+satisfaction in looking at this spot than in all the variety that I have
+met with; and perhaps there is not another piece of ground in the world
+that I could take so much pleasure to observe." Then, though with
+difficulty, he obtained the leave of the pipe-clay Duke to go to Paris.
+There he saw the hollow grandeur of the decaying monarchy and the
+immoral glories of Pompadour. "I was yesterday at Versailles, a cold
+spectator of what we commonly call splendour and magnificence. A
+multitude of men and women were assembled to bow and pay their
+compliments in the most submissive manner to a creature of their own
+species." He went into the great world, to which he gains admission with
+an ease which shows that he has a good position, and tries to make up
+his leeway in the graces by learning to fence, dance, and ride. He
+wishes to extend his tour and see the European armies; but the Duke
+inexorably calls him back to pipe-clay. It is proposed to him that he
+should undertake the tutorship of the young Duke of Richmond on a
+military tour through the Low Countries. But he declines the offer. "I
+don't think myself quite equal to the task, and as for the pension that
+might follow, it is very certain that it would not become me to accept
+it. I can't take money from any one but the King, my master, or from
+some of his blood."
+
+Back, therefore, to England and two years more of garrison duty there.
+Quartered in the high-perched keep of Dover where "the winds rattle
+pretty loud" and cut off from the world without, as he says, by the
+absence of newspapers or coffee houses, he employs the tedious hours in
+reading while his officers waste them in piquet. The ladies in the town
+below complain through Miss Brett to Mrs. Wolfe of the unsociality of
+the garrison. "Tell Nannie Brett's ladies," Wolfe replies, "that if they
+lived as loftily and as much in the clouds as we do, their appetites for
+dancing or anything else would not be so keen. If we dress, the wind
+disorders our curls; if we walk, we are in danger of our legs; if we
+ride, of our necks." Afterwards, however, he takes to dancing to please
+the ladies and apparently grows fond of it.
+
+Among the High Tories of Devonshire he has to do a little more of the
+work of pacification in which he had been employed in the Highlands. "We
+are upon such terms with the people in general that I have been forced
+to put on all my address, and employ my best skill to conciliate
+matters. It begins to work a little favourably, but not certainly,
+because the perverseness of these folks, built upon their disaffection,
+makes the task very difficult. We had a little ball last night, to
+celebrate His Majesty's birthday--purely military; that is the men were
+all officers except one. The female branches of the Tory families came
+readily enough, but not one man would accept the invitation because it
+was the King's birthday. If it had not fallen in my way to see such an
+instance of folly I should not readily be brought to conceive it." He
+has once more to sully a soldier's sword by undertaking police duty
+against the poor Gloucestershire weavers, who are on strike, and, as he
+judges, not without good cause. "This expedition carries me a little out
+of my road and a little in the dirt.... I hope it will turn out a good
+recruiting party, for the people are so oppressed, so poor and so
+wretched, that they will perhaps hazard a knock on the pate for bread
+and clothes and turn soldiers through sheer necessity."
+
+Chatham and glory are now at hand; and the hero is ready for the hour--
+_Sed mors atra caput nigra, circumvolat umbra_. "Folks are
+surprised to see the meagre, decaying, consumptive figure of the son,
+when the father and mother preserve such good looks; and people are not
+easily persuaded that I am one of the family. The campaigns of 1743, '4,
+'5, '6, and '7 stripped me of my bloom, and the winters in Scotland and
+at Dover have brought me almost to old age and infirmity, and this
+without any remarkable intemperance. A few years more or less are of
+very little consequence to the common run of men, and therefore I need
+not lament that I am perhaps somewhat nearer my end than others of my
+time. I think and write upon these points without being at all moved. It
+is not the vapours, but a desire I have to be familiar with those ideas
+which frighten and terrify the half of mankind that makes me speak upon
+the subject of my dissolution."
+
+The biographer aptly compares Wolfe to Nelson. Both were frail in body,
+aspiring in soul, sensitive, liable to fits of despondency, sustained
+against all weaknesses by an ardent zeal for the public service, and
+gifted with the same quick eye and the same intuitive powers of command.
+But it is also a just remark that there was more in Nelson of the love
+of glory, more in Wolfe of the love of duty. "It is no time to think of
+what is convenient or agreeable; that service is certainly the best in
+which we are the most useful. For my part I am determined never to give
+myself a moment's concern about the nature of the duty which His Majesty
+is pleased to order us upon; and whether it is by sea or by land that we
+are to act in obedience to his commands, I hope that we shall conduct
+ourselves so as to deserve his approbation. It will be sufficient
+comfort to you, too, as far as my person is concerned, at least it will
+be a reasonable consolation, to reflect that the Power which has
+hitherto preserved me may, if it be his pleasure, continue to do so; if
+not, that it is but a few days or a few years more or less, and that
+those who perish in their duty and in the service of their country die
+honourably. I hope I shall have resolution and firmness enough to meet
+every appearance of danger without great concern, and not be over
+solicitous about the event." "I have this day signified to Mr. Pitt that
+he may dispose of my slight carcass as he pleases, and that I am ready
+for any undertaking within the reach and compass of my skill and
+cunning. I am in a very bad condition both with the gravel and
+rheumatism; but I had much rather die than decline any kind of service
+that offers itself: if I followed my own taste it would lead me into
+Germany, and if my poor talent was consulted they should place me in the
+cavalry, because nature has given me good eyes and a warmth of temper to
+follow the first impressions. However, it is not our part to choose but
+to obey."
+
+All know that the way in which Mr. Pitt pleased to dispose of the
+"slight carcass" was by sending it to Rochefort, Louisburg, Quebec.
+Montcalm, when he found himself dying, shut himself up with his
+Confessor and the Bishop of Quebec, and to those who came to him for
+orders said "I have business that must be attended to of greater moment
+than your ruined garrison and this wretched country." Wolfe's last words
+were, "Tell Colonel Baxter to march Webb's regiment down to Charles
+River, to cut off their retreat from the Bridge. Now, God be praised, I
+will die in peace."
+
+
+
+
+FALKLAND AND THE PURITANS
+
+[Footnote: Published in the _Contemporary Review_ as a reply to Mr.
+Matthew Arnold's Essay on Falkland.]
+
+
+We have the most unfeigned respect for the memory of Falkland. Carlyle's
+sneer at him has always seemed to us about the most painful thing in the
+writings of Carlyle. Our knowledge of his public life is meagre, and is
+derived mainly from a writer under whose personal influence he acted,
+who is specially responsible for the most questionable step that he
+took, and on whose veracity, with regard to this portion of the history
+not much reliance can be placed. But we cannot doubt his title to our
+admiration and our love. Of his character as a friend, as a host, and as
+the centre of a literary circle, we have a picture almost peerless in
+social history. He seems to have presented in a very attractive form the
+combination--rare now, though not rare in that age, especially among the
+great Puritan chiefs--of practical activity and military valour with
+high culture and a serious interest in great questions. Of his fine
+feelings as a man of honour we have more than one proof. We have proof
+equally strong of his self-sacrificing devotion to his country; though
+in this he stood not alone: with his blood on the field of Newbury
+mingled that of many an English yeoman, whose cheeks were as wet when he
+left his Puritan home to die for the religion and liberties of England
+as were those of Lord Falkland when he left the "lime-trees and violets"
+of Great Tew.
+
+Of political moderation, if it means merely steering a middle course
+between two extremes, the praise is cheap, and would be shared by
+Falkland with many weak and with many dishonest men. It may, without
+disparagement, be remarked of him that his rank as a nobleman was almost
+sufficient in itself, without any special soundness of understanding or
+calmness of temperament, to prevent him from throwing himself headlong
+either into an absolutist reaction which was identified with the
+ascendency of upstart favourites, and contemners of the old nobility, or
+into a popular revolution which soon disclosed its tendency to come into
+collision with the privileged order, and which ended its parricidal
+career by leaving England, during some of the most glorious years of her
+history, destitute of a House of Lords. But as an adherent, and no doubt
+a deliberate adherent, of Constitutional Monarchy, Falkland was in that
+which in the upshot proved to be the right line of English progress,
+though by no means the right line of progress for the whole world. The
+Commonwealth is the ideal of America, where it is practicable, and it
+alone. Constitutional Monarchy, as Falkland rightly judged, was the
+highest attainable ideal for England, at any rate in that day. Of
+attaining that ideal, of doing anything considerable towards its
+attainment, or towards its defence against the powers of absolutist
+reaction whose triumph would have rendered its attainment for ever
+impossible, he was no more capable than he was of performing the labours
+of Hercules.
+
+In this he bears some resemblance to a man of incomparably greater
+intellect than his. The fame of Bacon as a philosopher has eclipsed his
+importance as a politician. But his ideal of an enlightened monarchy,
+invested with plenary power, but always using its power in conformity
+with law, and having a Verulam at its right hand, not only is grand and
+worthy of the majestic intelligence from which it sprang, but is
+entitled to a good deal of sympathy, when we consider how wanting in
+enlightenment, how rough, how uncertain, how provoking to a trained and
+instructed statesman the action of parliaments composed of country
+gentlemen and meeting at long intervals, in an age when there were no
+political newspapers or other general organs of political information,
+could not fail sometimes to be. But Bacon, hampered by enfeebling
+selfishness, as Falkland was by more generous defects, was incapable of
+taking a single step toward the realization of his august vision, and
+the result was, a miserable fall from the ethereal height to the feet of
+a Somerset and a Buckingham.
+
+As a theologian, Falkland appears to have been a Chillingworth on a very
+small scale. It does not seem to us that Principal Tulloch, in his
+interesting chapter on him, succeeds in putting him higher. But he
+shared, with Chillingworth and Hales, the spirit of liberality and
+toleration, for which both were nobly conspicuous, though Hales did not
+show himself a very uncompromising champion of his principles when he
+accepted preferment from the hands of their arch-enemy, Laud. The
+learned men and religious philosophers whom Falkland gathered round him
+at Tew, were among the best and foremost thinkers of their age: the
+beauty of the group is marred, perhaps, only by the sinister intrusion
+of Sheldon.
+
+Mr. Matthew Arnold, in the very graceful sketch of Falkland's life
+published by him in aid of the Falkland Memorial, has endowed his
+favourite character with gifts far rarer and more memorable than those
+of which we have spoken; with an extraordinary largeness and lucidity of
+mind, with almost divine superiority to party narrowness and bias, with
+conceptions anticipative of the most advanced philosophy of modern
+times. He quotes the Dean of Westminster as affirming that "Falkland is
+the founder, or nearly the founder, of the best and most enlightening
+tendencies of the Church of England"--a statement which breeds
+reflection as to the character of the Church of England during the
+previous century, in the course of which its creed and liturgy were
+formed. The evidence of these transactions lies wide; much of it is
+still in the British Museum; and it may be possible to produce something
+sufficient to sustain Falkland on the pinnacle on which Mr. Arnold and
+the Dean of Westminster have placed him. But we cannot help surmising
+that he has in some measure undergone the process which, in an age
+prolific in historic fancies as well as pre-eminent in historic
+research, has been undergone by almost every character in history--that
+of being transmuted by a loving biographer, and converted into a sort of
+ventriloquial apparatus through which the biographer preaches to the
+present from the pulpit of the past. The philosophy ascribed to Falkland
+is, we suspect, partly that of a teacher who was then in the womb of
+time. We should not be extreme to mark this, if the praise of Falkland
+had not been turned to the dispraise and even to the vilification of men
+who are at least as much entitled to reverent treatment at the hands of
+Englishmen as he is, and at the same time of a large body of English
+citizens at the present day, who are the objects, we venture to think,
+of a somewhat fanciful and somewhat unmeasured antipathy. Those who
+subscribe to the Falkland Testimonial are collectively set down by Mr.
+Arnold as the "amiable"--those who do not subscribe as the "unamiable."
+Few, we trust, would be so careful of their money and so careless of
+their reputation for moral beauty as to refuse to pay a guinea for a
+certificate of amiability countersigned by Mr. Matthew Arnold. Yet even
+the amiable might hesitate to take part in erecting a monument to the
+honour of Falkland, if it was at the same time to be a monument to the
+dishonour, of Luther, Gustavus, Walsingham, Sir John Eliot, Pym,
+Hampden, Cromwell, Vane, and Milton. As to the Nonconformists, their
+contributions are probably not desired: otherwise, accustomed to not
+very courteous treatment though they are, it would still be imprudent to
+warn them that their own "hideousness" was to be carved in the same
+marble with the beauty of Lord Falkland.
+
+On Luther, Hampden, and Cromwell, Mr. Arnold expressly bestows the name
+of "Philistine," and if he bestows it on these he can hardly abstain
+from bestowing it on the rest of those we have named. Milton, at all
+events, has identified himself with Cromwell as thoroughly as one man
+ever identified himself with another, and whatever aspersion is cast on
+"Worcester's laureate wreath" must fall equally on the intermingling
+bays. We may say this without pretending to know what the exact meaning
+of "Philistine" now is. Originally, no doubt, it pointed to some
+specific defect on the part of those with regard to whom it was used,
+and possibly also on the part of those who used it. But with the fate
+which usually attends the cant phrase of a clique, it seems to be
+degenerating, by lavish application, into something which irritates
+without conveying any definite instruction. As Luther did not live under
+the same conditions as Heinrich Heine, perfect ethical identity was
+hardly to be expected. "Simpleton" and "savage" have the advantage of
+being intelligible to all, and when introduced into discussion with
+grace, perhaps they may be urbane.
+
+It is useless to attempt, without authentic materials, to fill in the
+faint outline of an historic figure. But judging from such indications
+as we have, we should be inclined to say that Falkland, instead of being
+a man of extraordinarily serene and well-balanced mind, was rather
+excitable and impulsive. His tones and gestures are vehement; where
+another man would be content to protest against what he thought an
+undeserved act of homage by simply keeping his hat on, Falkland rams his
+down upon his head with both his hands. He goes most ardently with the
+popular party through the early stages of the revolution; then he
+somewhat abruptly breaks away from it, disgusted with its defects,
+though they certainly did not exceed those of other parties under the
+same circumstances, and feeling in himself no power to control it and
+keep it in the right path. He is under the influence of others, first of
+Hampden and then of Hyde, to an extent hardly compatible with the
+possession of a mind of first-rate power. When he is taxed with
+inconsistency for going round upon the Bill for removing the Bishops
+from Parliament, his plea is that at the time when he voted for the Bill
+"he had been persuaded by that worthy gentleman (Hampden) to believe
+many things which he had since found to be untrue, and therefore he had
+changed his opinion in many particulars as well to things as persons."
+Hampden himself would hardly have been led by anybody's persuasions on
+the great question of the day. Clarendon tells us that his friend, from
+his experience of the Short Parliament, "contracted such a reverence for
+Parliaments that he thought it really impossible they could ever produce
+mischief or inconvenience to the kingdom." We always regard with some
+suspicion Clarendon's artful touches, otherwise we should say that there
+is a pretty brusque change from this unbounded reverence for the Short
+Parliament to an appearance in arms against its successor, especially as
+the leader and soul of both Parliaments was Pym.
+
+In the prosecution of Strafford, Falkland showed such ardour that, as
+Clarendon intimates, those who knew him not ascribed his behaviour to
+personal resentment. His lips formulated the very doctrine so fatal to
+the great accused, that a number of acts severally not amounting to high
+treason might cumulatively support the charge. "How many haires'
+breadths makes a tall man and how many makes a little man, noe man can
+well say, yet we know a tall man when we see him from a low man; soe
+'tis in this,--how many illegal acts make a treason is not certainly
+well known, but we well know it when we see." Mr. Arnold says that
+"alone amongst his party Falkland raised his voice against pressing
+forward Strafford's impeachment with unfair or vindictive haste." That
+is to say, when Pym proposed to the House, sitting with closed doors, at
+once to carry up the impeachment to the Lords and demand the arrest of
+Strafford without delay, Falkland, moved by his great, and, in all
+ordinary cases, laudable respect for regularity of proceeding, proposed
+first to have the charges formally drawn up by a committee. Falkland's
+proposal was almost fatuous; it proves that the grand difference between
+him and Pym was that Pym was a great man of action and that he was not.
+It would have been about as rational to suggest that the lighted match
+should not be taken out of the hand of Guy Fawkes till a committee had
+formally reported on the probable effects of gunpowder if ignited in
+large quantities beneath the chamber in which the Parliament was
+sitting. Strafford would not have respected forms in the midst of what
+he must have well known was a revolution. He would probably have struck
+at the Commons if they had not struck at him; certainly he would have
+placed himself beyond their reach; and the promptness of Pym's decision
+saved the party and the country. No practical injustice was done by
+wresting the sword out of Strafford's hand and putting him in safe
+keeping till the charges could be drawn up in form, as they immediately
+were. Falkland himself in proposing a committee avowed his conviction
+that the grounds for the impeachment were perfectly sufficient. His name
+does not appear among the Straffordians; and had he opposed the Bill of
+Attainder it seems morally certain that Clarendon would have told us so.
+The strength of this presumption is not impaired by any vague words of
+Baxter coupling the name of Falkland with that of Digby as a seceder
+from the party on the occasion of the Bill. Had Falkland voted with
+Digby, his name would have appeared in the same list. That he felt
+qualms and wavered at the last is very likely; but it is almost certain
+that he voted for the Bill. There is some reason for believing that he
+took the sterner, though probably more constitutional, line, on the
+question of allowing the accused to be heard by counsel. But the
+evidence is meagre and doubtful; and the difficulty of reading it aright
+has been increased by the discovery that Pym and Hampden themselves were
+against proceeding by Bill, and in favour of demanding judgment on the
+impeachment. It seems certain, however, that Falkland pleaded against
+extending the consequences of the Act of Attainder to Strafford's
+children, and in this he showed himself a true gentleman.
+
+Again, in the case of Laud, Mr. Arnold wishes to draw a strong line
+between the conduct of his favourite and that of the savage "Puritans."
+He says that Falkland "refused to concur in Laud's impeachment." If he
+did, we must say he acted very inconsistently, for in his speech in
+favour of the Bishops' Bill he violently denounced Laud as a
+participator in Strafford's treason:--
+
+"We shall find both of them to have kindled and blown the common fire of
+both nations, to have both sent and maintained that book (of Canons) of
+which the author, no doubt, hath long since wished with Nero, _Utinam
+nescissem literas!_ and of which more than one kingdom hath cause to
+wish that when he wrote that he had rather burned a library, though of
+the value of Ptolemy's. We shall find them to have been the first and
+principal cause of the breach, I will not say of, but since, the
+pacification of Berwick. We shall find them to have been the almost sole
+abettors of my Lord Strafford, whilst he was practising upon another
+kingdom that manner of government which he intended to settle in this;
+where he committed so many mighty and so manifest enormities and
+oppressions as the like have not been committed by any governor in any
+government since Verras left Sicily; and after they had called him over
+from being Deputy of Ireland to be in a manner Deputy of England (all
+things here being goverend by a junctillo and the junctillo goverend by
+him) to have assisted him in the giving such counsels and the pursuing
+such courses, as it is a hard and measuring cost whether they were more
+unwise, more unjust, or more unfortunate, and which had infallibly been
+our destruction if by the grace of God their share had not been a small
+in the subtilty of serpents as in the innocency of doves."
+
+We are not aware, however, of the existence of any positive proof that
+Falkland did "refuse to concur" in the impeachment of Laud. There is
+nothing, we believe, but the general statement of Clarendon that his
+friend regarded with horror the storm gathering against the archbishop,
+which the words of Falkland himself, just quoted, seem sufficient to
+disprove. Mr. Arnold tells us that "Falkland disliked Laud; he had a
+natural antipathy to his heat, fussiness, and arbitrary temper." He had
+an antipathy to a good deal more in Laud than this, and expressed his
+dislike in language which showed that he was himself not deficient in
+heat when his religious feelings were aroused. He accused Laud and the
+ecclesiastics of his party of having "destroyed unity under pretence of
+uniformity;" of having "brought in Superstition and Scandal under the
+titles of Reverence and Decency;" of having "defiled the Church by
+adorning the churches," of having "destroyed as much of the Gospel as
+they could without themselves being destroyed by the law." He compared
+them to the hen in AEsop, fed too fat to lay eggs, and to dogs in the
+manger, who would neither preach nor let others preach. He charged them
+with checking instruction in order to introduce that religion which
+accounts ignorance the mother of devotion. He endorsed the common belief
+that one of them was a Papist at heart, and that only regard for his
+salary prevented him from going over to Rome. All this uttered to a
+Parliament in such a mood would hardly be in favour of gentle dealing
+with the archbishop. But Pym and Hampden, as Clarendon himself admits,
+never intended to proceed to extremities against the old man; they were
+satisfied with having put him in safe keeping and removed him from the
+councils of the King. When they were gone, the Presbyterians, to whom
+the leadership of the Revolution then passed, took up the impeachment
+and brought Laud to the block.
+
+The parts were distributed among the leaders. To Falkland was entrusted
+the prosecution of the Lord Keeper Finch; and this part he performed in
+a style which thoroughly identifies him with the other leaders, and with
+the general spirit of the movement at this stage of the Revolution. No
+man, so far as we can see, did more to set the stone rolling; it was not
+likely that, with his slender force, he would be able to stop it at once
+in mid career.
+
+In contrasting Falkland's line of conduct with that of the "Puritans,"
+on the question of the Bishops' Bill and of the impeachment of Laud, Mr.
+Arnold indicates his impression that all Puritans were on principle
+enemies, and as a matter of course fanatical enemies, of Episcopacy. But
+he will find that at this time many Puritans were Low Church
+Episcopalians, wishing only to moderate the pretensions and curb the
+authority of the Bishops. Episcopacy is not one of the grievances
+protested against in the Millenary Petition Sir John Eliot appears to
+have been as strong an Erastian as Mr. Arnold could desire.
+
+It seems to us hardly possible to draw a sharp line of distinction in
+any respect, except that of practical ability, between Falkland and
+Hampden. Falkland failed to understand, while Hampden understood, the
+character of the King and the full peril of the situation; that was the
+real difference between the two men. The political and ecclesiastical
+ideal of both in all probability was pretty much the same. Mr. Arnold
+chooses to describe Hampden as "seeking the Lord about militia or ship-
+money," and he undertakes to represent Jesus as "whispering to him with
+benign disdain." Sceptics, to disprove the objective reality of the
+Deity, allege that every man makes God in his own image. They might
+perhaps find an indirect confirmation of their remark in the numerous
+lives and portraitures of Christ which have appeared of late years, each
+entirely different from the rest, and each stamped clearly enough with
+the impress of an individual mind. But where has Hampden spoken of
+himself as "seeking the Lord about militia or ship-money?" He appears to
+have been a highly-educated man of the world. In one of his few
+remaining letters there are recommendations to a friend, who had
+consulted him about the education of his sons, which seem to blend
+regard for religion with enlightened liberality of view. If he prayed
+for support and guidance in his undertakings, surely he did no more than
+Mr. Arnold himself practically recommends people to do when he urges
+them to join the Established Church of England. Even should Mr. Arnold
+light on an authentic instance of Scripture phraseology used by Hampden,
+or any other Puritan chief, in a way which would now be against good
+taste, his critical and historical sense will readily make allowance for
+the difference between the present time and the time when the Bible was
+a newly-recovered book, and when its language, on the believer's lips
+and to the believer's ears, was still fresh as the dew of the morning.
+
+It would be even more difficult to separate Falkland's general character
+from that of Pym, of whose existence Mr. Arnold has shown himself
+conscious by once mentioning his name. The political philosophy of Pym's
+speeches is most distinctly constitutional, and we do not see that in
+point of breadth or dignity they leave much to be desired, while they
+unquestionably express, in the fullest manner, the mind of a leader of
+the Puritan party.
+
+Whoever contrasts Falkland with the Puritans will have to encounter the
+somewhat untoward fact that in his speech against the High Church
+Bishops, Falkland, if he does not actually call himself a Puritan, twice
+identifies the Puritan cause with his own. Among the bad objects which
+he accuses the clergy of advocating in their sermons is "the demolishing
+of Puritanism and propriety" Again he cries--
+
+"Alas! they whose ancestors in the darkest times excommunicated the
+breakers of Magna Charta do now by themselves, and their adherents, both
+write, preach, plot, and act against it, by encouraging Dr. Beale, by
+preferring Dr. Mainwaring, appearing forward for monopolies and ship-
+money, and if any were slow and backward to comply, blasting both them
+and their preferment with the utmost expression of their hatred--the
+title of Puritans."
+
+These words may help to make Mr. Arnold aware, when he mows down the
+Puritan party with some trenchant epithet, how wide the sweep of his
+scythe is, and the same thing will be still more distinctively brought
+before him by a perusal (if he has not already perused it) of the
+chapter on the subject in Mr. Sandford's "Studies and Illustrations of
+the Great Rebellion." It can hardly be necessary to remind him, or any
+one else, of the portrait of one who was a most undoubted Puritan, drawn
+by Lucy Hutchinson. If this portrait betrays the hand of a wife,
+Clarendon's portrait of Falkland betrays the hand of a friend, and even
+a beloved husband is not more likely to be the object of exaggerated,
+though sincere praise, than the social head and the habitual host of a
+circle of literary men. At all events Lucy Hutchinson is painting what
+she thought a perfect Puritan would be; and her picture presents to us,
+not a coarse, crop-eared, and snuffling fanatic, but a highly
+accomplished, refined, gallant, and most "amiable," though religious and
+seriously-minded gentleman. The Spencerian school of sentiment seems to
+Mr. Arnold very lovely compared with the men of the New Model Army and
+their ways. In the general of the New Model Army, Sir Thomas Fairfax, he
+has a distinct, and we venture to say very worthy, pupil of that school.
+
+Over the most questionable as well as the most momentous passage in
+Falkland's public life, his admirer passes with a graceful literary
+movement. Falkland was sworn in as a Privy Councillor three days before,
+and as Secretary of State, four days after, the attempt of the King to
+seize the Five Members. He was thus, in outward appearance at least,
+brought into calamitous connection with an act which, as Clarendon sees,
+was the signal for civil war. Clarendon vehemently disclaims for himself
+and his two friends any knowledge of the King's design. So far as the
+more violent part of the proceeding is concerned, we can easily believe
+him; a woman mad with vindictive arrogance inspired it, and nobody
+except a madman would have been privy to it; but it is not so easy to
+believe him with regard to the impeachment, which was in fact an attempt
+to take the lives of the King's enemies by arraigning them before a
+political tribunal, hostile to them and favourable to their accuser,
+instead of bringing them to a fair and legal trial before a jury. By
+accepting the Secretaryship, Falkland at all events assumed a certain
+measure of responsibility after the fact for a proceeding which, we
+repeat, rendered civil war inevitable, because it must have convinced
+the popular leaders that to put faith in Charles with such councillors
+as he had about him would be insanity; and that if they allowed
+Parliament to rise and the Kong to resume the power of the sword, not
+only would all their work of reform be undone, but the fate of Sir John
+Eliot would be theirs. Clarendon owns that Hampden's carriage from that
+day was changed, implying that up to that day it had been temperate; and
+the insinuation that, beneath the cloak of apparent moderation, Hampden
+had been secretly breathing counsels of violence into the minds of
+others deserves no attention, when it comes from a hostile source. Of
+the purity of Falkland's motives we entertain not the shadow of a doubt;
+but we venture to think that it is very questionable whether he did
+right, and this not only on grounds of technical constitutionalism,
+which in the present day would render imperative the retirement of a
+Minister whose advice had been so flagrantly disregarded, but on grounds
+of the most broadly practical kind. He forfeited for ever, not only any
+influence which he might have retained over the popular leaders, and any
+access which he might have had to them in their more pacific mood, but
+probably all real control over the King. Charles was the very last man
+whom you could afford to allow in the slightest degree to tamper with
+your honour. It is surely conceivable that the recollection of an
+unfortunate step, and the sense of a false position, may have mingled
+with the sorrow caused by the public calamities in the melancholy which
+drove Falkland to cast away his life.
+
+In the Civil War Falkland was always "ingeminating _Peace, Peace_".
+Our hearts are with him, but it was of no use. It is an unhappy part of
+civil wars that there can be no real peace till one party has succumbed:
+compromise only leads to a renewal of the conflict. There is sense as
+well as dignity in the deliberate though mournful acceptance of
+necessity, and the determination to play out the part which could not be
+declined, expressed in the letter written at the outbreak of the
+conflict by the Parliamentarian, Sir William Waller, to a personal
+friend in the other camp:
+
+"My affections to you are so unchangeable that hostility itself cannot
+violate my friendship to your person; but I must be true to the cause
+wherein I serve. The great God, who is the searcher of my heart, knows
+with what reluctance I go upon this service, and with what perfect
+hatred I look upon a war without an enemy. The God of peace, in His good
+time, sent us peace, and in the meantime fit us to receive it! We are
+both on the stage, and we must act the parts that are assigned us in
+this tragedy. Let us do it in a way of honour, and without personal
+animosities."
+
+A man in this frame of mind, we submit, was likely to get to the end of
+a civil war more speedily than a man in the mood, amiable as it was, of
+Falkland.
+
+Perhaps, after all, the failure, the inevitable failure of Falkland's
+passionate pleadings for peace may have saved him from a worse doom than
+death on the field even of civil war. In the case of the Five Members,
+the King had shown how little regard he had, at least how little regard
+the mistress of his councils had, for the honour of his advisers. The
+pair might have used Falkland to lure by the pledge of his high
+character the leaders of the Parliament into the acceptance of a treaty?
+which the King, with his notions of divine right, and the Queen with her
+passionate love of absolute power, would, there can be little doubt,
+have violated as soon as the army of the Parliament had been disbanded,
+and the power of the sword had returned into the King's hands. Falkland
+might have even seen the scaffold erected, through the prostitution of
+his own honour, for the men whose ardent associate he had been in the
+overthrow of government by prerogative and in the impeachment of
+Strafford.
+
+Flinging epithets at Cromwell is a very harmless indulgence of
+sentiment. His memory has passed unscathed even through the burning
+eloquence which, from the pulpit of the Restoration, denounced him as
+"wearing a bad hat, and that not paid for." Since research has placed
+him before us as he really was, the opinion has been gaining ground that
+he was about the greatest human force ever directed to a moral purpose;
+and in that sense, about the greatest man, take him all in all, that
+ever trod the scene of history. If his entire devotion to his cause, his
+valour, his magnanimity, his clemency, his fidelity to the public
+service, his domestic excellence and tenderness are not "conduct," all
+we can say is, so much the worse for "conduct." The type to which his
+character belonged, in common with the whole series of historic types,
+had in it something that was special and transitory, combined with much
+that, so far as we see, was universal and will endure for ever. It is in
+failing to note the special and transitory element, and the limitations
+which it imposed on the hero's greatness, that Carlyle's noble biography
+runs into poetry, and departs from historic truth. To supply this defect
+is the proper work of rational criticism; but the criticism which begins
+with "Philistine" is not likely to be very rational.
+
+The objection urged by Bolingbroke against Cromwell's foreign policy, on
+the ground that to unite with France, which was gaining strength,
+against Spain, which was beginning to decline, was not the way to
+maintain the balance of power in Europe, is once more reproduced as
+though it had not been often brought forward and answered. Cromwell was
+not bound to trouble his head about such a figment of a special
+diplomacy as the balance of power any more than Shakespeare was bound to
+trouble his head about Voltaire's rules for the drama. He was the chief
+and the defender of Protestantism, and as such he was naturally led to
+ally himself with France, which was comparatively liberal, against
+Spain, which was the great organ of the Catholic reaction. An alliance
+with Spain was a thing impossible for a Puritan. Looking to the narrower
+interest of England, much more was to be gained by a war with Spain than
+by a war with France, because by a war with Spain an entrance was forced
+for English enterprise through the barriers which Spanish monopoly had
+raised against commercial enterprise in America. The security of England
+appears, in Cromwell's judgment, to have depended on her intrinsic
+strength, which no one can doubt that, under extraordinary
+disadvantages, he immensely increased, rather than on the maintenance of
+a European equilibrium which, as the number of the powers increased,
+became palpably impracticable. It may be added, that the incipient
+decline of the double-headed House of Austria, if it is visible to our
+eyes as we trace back the course of events, can hardly have been visible
+to any eye at that time, and, what is still more to the purpose, that
+the dangerous ascendency of Louis XIV. resulted in great measure from
+the betrayal of England by Charles II., and would have been impossible
+had, we will not say a second Cromwell, but a Protestant or patriotic
+monarch, sat on the Protector's throne.
+
+Bolingbroke suggests, and Mr. Arnold embraces the suggestion, that
+Charles I., by making war on France, showed himself more sagacious with
+regard to foreign policy than Cromwell. But Mr. Arnold, in recommending
+Bolingbroke's philosophy to a generation which he thinks has too much
+neglected it, has discreetly warned us to let his history alone. Charles
+I., or rather Buckingham, in whose hands Charles was a puppet, made war
+on Spain, though in the most incapable manner, and with a most
+ignominious result: he at one time lent the French Government English
+ships to be used against the Protestants of Rochelle, whose resistance,
+apart from the religious question, was the one great obstacle to the
+concentration of the French power; and though he subsequently quarrelled
+with France, few will believe--assuredly Clarendon did not believe--that
+among the motives for the change, policy of any kind predominated over
+the passions and the vanity of the favourite. That Cromwell would have
+lent a steady and effective support to the Protestants, and thus have
+prevented the concentration of the French power, is as certain as any
+unfulfilled contingency can be.
+
+Mr. Arnold is evidently anxious to bring Bolingbroke into fashion. "Hear
+Bolingbroke upon the success of Puritanism." Hear Lovelace on Dr.
+Johnson; one critic would be about as edifying as the other.
+Bolingbroke, a sceptical writer and a scoffer at Anglican doctrine, to
+say nothing about his morals, allied himself for party purposes with the
+fanatical clergy of the Anglican Establishment, well represented by
+Sacheverel, and, to gratify his allies, passed as Minister persecuting
+laws, about the last of the series, against Nonconformists. This,
+perhaps, is a proof in a certain way, of philosophic largeness of view.
+But if Bolingbroke is to be commended to ingenuous youth as a guide
+superior to party narrowness or bias, it may be well to remember the
+passage of his letter to Sir William Wyndham, in which he very frankly
+describes his own aims, and those of his confederates on their accession
+to office, admitting that "the principal spring of their actions was to
+have the government of the State in their hands, and that their
+principal views were the conservation of this power, great employments
+to themselves, and great opportunities of rewarding those who had helped
+to raise them, and of hurting those who stood in opposition to them;"
+though he has the grace to add that with these considerations of party
+and private interest were intermingled some which had for their object
+the public good. In another place he avows that he and his party
+designed "to fill the employments of the kingdom down to the meanest
+with Tories," by which they would have anticipated, and, indeed, by
+anticipation outdone, the vilest and most noxious proceeding of the
+coarsest demagogue who ever climbed to power on the shoulders of faction
+in the United States. It may be instructive to compare with this the
+principles upon which public employments were distributed by Cromwell.
+
+It would be out of place to discuss the whole question of the
+Protector's administration by way of reply to a passing thrust of
+antipathy. But when judgment is pronounced on his external policy, his
+critics ought not to leave out of consideration the Union of Scotland
+and Ireland with England, successfully accomplished by him, repealed by
+the Restoration, and, like not a few of his other measures, revived and
+ratified by posterity, after a delay fraught with calamitous
+consequences in both cases, and which, in the case of Ireland, may
+perhaps even yet prove fatal.
+
+We cannot help remarking, however, that the ecclesiastical policy of the
+Protectorate was one which it would be most inconsistent on the part of
+Mr. Arnold and those who hold the same view with him to decry. It was a
+national church (to prevent the hasty abolition of which, seems to have
+been Cromwell's main reason for dissolving the Barebones Parliament)
+with the largest possible measure of comprehension. To us the weak
+points of such a policy appear manifest enough, but by Mr. Arnold and
+those of his way of thinking it ought, if we mistake not, to be
+respected as an anticipation of their own deal.
+
+Of one great and irretrievable error Cromwell was guilty--he died before
+his hour. That his government was taking root is clear from the bearing
+of Mazarin and Don Lewis De Haro, sufficiently cool judges, towards the
+Stuart Pretender. The Restoration was a reaction not against the
+Protectorate but against the military anarchy which ensued. Had Cromwell
+lived ten years longer, or had his marshals been true to his successor,
+to his cause, and to their own fortunes, there would have been an end of
+the struggle against Stuart prerogative, the spirit of Laud would have
+been laid for ever; the temporal power of ecclesiastics would have
+troubled no more; the Union with Scotland and Ireland would have
+remained unbroken; and the genuine representation of the people embodied
+in the Instrument of Government would have continued to exist, in the
+place of rotten boroughs, the sources of oligarchy and corruption, of
+class government and class wars. Let us philosophize about general
+causes as much as we will, untoward accidents occur: the loss of Pym and
+Hampden in the early part of the Revolution, and that of Cromwell at its
+close, may be fairly reckoned as accidents, and they were untoward in
+the highest degree.
+
+No doubt, while Falkland fits perfectly into the line of English
+progress and takes his place with obvious propriety among the Saints of
+Constitutionalism in the vestibule of the House of Commons, while even
+Hampden finds admission as the opponent of ship-money, the kind veil of
+oblivion being drawn over the part he played as a leader in the
+Revolution, Cromwell, though his hold over the hearts of the English
+people is growing all the time, remains in an uncovenanted condition.
+The problem of his statue is still, and, so far as England is concerned,
+seems likely long to be, unsolved. Put him high or low, in the line of
+kings or out of it, he is hopelessly incongruous, incommensurable, and
+out of place. He is in fact the man of the New World; his institutions
+in the main embody the organic principles of New World society: at
+Washington, not at Westminster should be his statue.
+
+What Puritanism did for England, and what credit is due to it as an
+element of English character, are questions which cannot be settled by
+mere assertion, on our side at least. In its highest development, and at
+the period of its greatest men, it was militant, and everything militant
+is sure to bear evil traces of the battle. For that reason Christianity
+has always been in favour of peace and goodwill; let the Regius
+Professor of Theology at Oxford, in his Christian philosophy of war, be
+as ingenious and as admirable as he may. But sometimes it is necessary
+to accept the arbitrament of the sword. It was necessary at Marathon, on
+the plain of Tours, on the waters which bore the Armada, at Lutzen, at
+Marston, at Leipsic, at Gettysburg. Darius, the Moors, Philip II.,
+Wallenstein, Prince Rupert, Bonaparte, the Slave-owners, did not offer
+you the opportunity which you would so gladly have embraced, of a
+tranquil and amicable discussion among lime-trees and violets. On each
+occasion the cause of human progress drew along with it plenty of mud
+and slime, nevertheless it was the cause of human progress. On each
+occasion the wrong side no doubt had its Falklands, nevertheless it was
+the wrong side.
+
+In the beginning of the seventeenth century the Reformation was brought
+to the verge of destruction. When Wallenstein sat down before Stralsund
+everything was gone but England, Holland, Sweden, and some cantons of
+Switzerland. In England the stream of reaction was running strong;
+Holland could not have stood by herself; Sweden was nothing as a power,
+though it turned out that she had a man. Fortunately the Lambeth Popedom
+and the Royal Supremacy prevented the English division of the army of
+Reaction from getting into line with the other divisions and compelled
+it to accept decisive battle on a separate field against the most
+formidable soldiers of the Reformation. These soldiers saved
+Protestantism, which was their first object, and they saved English
+liberty into the bargain. We who have come after can stand by the
+battlefield, pouncet-box in hand, and sniff and sneer as much as we
+will.
+
+Great Tew was an anticipation, for ever beautiful and memorable, of the
+time when all swords shall be sheathed, and the world shall have entered
+into final peace. But in its philosophy there were, as the world then
+was, two defects; it did not reach the people, and it was incapable of
+protecting its own existence. Laud himself did not care to crush it; he
+was an ecclesiastical despot rather than a theological bigot; he had a
+genuine respect for learned men; he preferred winning them by gracious
+words and preferment to coercing them with the pillory and the shears.
+But had Laud's system prevailed, there would soon have been an end of
+the philosophy of Great Tew. Mr. Arnold points to the free thought of
+Bacon. Nobody in those days scented mischief in the inductive
+philosophy, while in politics and religion Bacon was scrupulously
+orthodox. Cromwell's faith was a narrower and coarser thing by far than
+that of the inmates of the "college in a purer air;" but it brought
+religion and morality--not the most genial or rational morality, but
+still morality--into the cottage as well as into the manor-house, and it
+was able to protect its own existence When it had mounted to power in
+the person of its chief, the opinions of Great Tew, and all opinions
+that would abstain from trying to overthrow the Government and restore
+the tyranny, enjoyed practically larger and more assured liberty than
+they had ever enjoyed in England before or were destined to enjoy for
+many a year to come. Falkland, says Mr. Arnold, was in the grasp of
+_fatality, hence the transcendent interest that attaches to him_.
+Cromwell, happily for his cause and for his country, was, or felt
+himself to be, not in the grasp of fatality but in the hand of God.
+
+Might we not have done just as well without Puritanism? Might not some
+other way have been found of preserving the serious element in English
+character and saving English liberty from those who were conspiring for
+its destruction? Such questions as these may be asked without end, and
+they may be answered by any one who is endowed with a knowledge of men
+who were never born, and of events that have never happened. Might not a
+way have been found of rescuing the great interests of humanity without
+Greek resistance to Persian invasion, or German resistance to the
+tyranny of Bonaparte? Suppose in place of the Puritan chiefs there had
+been raised up by miracle a set of men at once consummate soldiers and
+perfect philosophers, who would have fought and won the battle without
+being heated by the conflict. Suppose, to prevent the necessity of any
+conflict at all, Charles, Strafford, and Laud had voluntarily abandoned
+their designs. As it was, Puritanism did, and alone could do, the work.
+What the Renaissance would have been without Puritan morality we can
+pretty well guess from the experience of Italy. It would have probably
+been like the life of Lorenzo--vice, filthy vice, decorated with art and
+with elegant philosophy; an academy under the same roof with a brothel.
+There were ages before morality, and there have been ages between the
+moralities. There was, in England, an age between the decline of the
+Catholic morality and the rise of the Puritan, marked by a laxity of
+conduct, public and private, which was partly redeemed but not
+neutralized by Elizabethan genius and enterprise. No doubt when the
+revival came, there was a High Church as well as a Puritan morality, and
+that fact ought always to be borne in mind; but the High Church morality
+was inextricably bound up with sacerdotal superstition and with absolute
+government; it had no hold on the people; and it found itself
+suspiciously at home in the Court of James, in the households of
+Somerset and Buckingham, and in the tribunal which lent itself to the
+divorce of Essex.
+
+That the Puritan Revolution was followed by a sacerdotal and sensualist
+reaction is too true: all revolutions are followed by reactions; it is
+one great reason for avoiding them. But let it be remembered, first,
+that the disbanded soldiers of the Commonwealth and the other relics of
+the Puritan party still remained the most moral and respectable element
+in the country; and secondly, that the period of lassitude which follows
+great efforts, whether of men or nations, is not altogether the
+condemnation of the effort, but partly the weakness of humanity. Nations
+as well as men, if they aim high, must sometimes overstrain themselves,
+and weariness must ensue. Nor did the Commonwealth of England come to
+nothing, though in a society not half emancipated from feudalism it was
+premature, and therefore, at the time, a failure. It opened a glimpse of
+a new order of things: it was the first example of a great national
+republic, the republics of antiquity having been at once city republics
+and republics of slave-owners: it not only heralded but, to some extent,
+prepared the American and even the French Revolution. In its sublime
+death-song, chanted by the great Puritan poet, our ears catch the
+accents of a hope that did not die.
+
+The Restoration was the end of the Puritan party, which thenceforth
+separated into two portions, the high political element taking the form
+of Whiggism, while the more religious element was represented in
+subsequent history by the Nonconformists. Under the Marian reaction
+Protestantism had been saved, and the errors which it had committed in
+its hour of ascendency had been redeemed by the champions, drawn mostly
+from the humbler classes, who suffered for it at the stake. Under the
+Restoration it was again saved, and the errors which it had once more
+committed in the hour of political triumph were once more redeemed by
+martyrs of the same class, whose sufferings in the noisome and
+pestilential prisons of that day were probably not much less severe than
+the pangs of those who died by fire. Both in the Marian and in the
+Restoration martyrs of Protestantism there was no doubt much that was
+irrational and unattractive; yet the record of their services to
+humanity remains, and will remain; let the free-thought of modern times,
+for which their self-devoting loyalty to such truth as they knew made
+way, be grateful or ungrateful to them as it will.
+
+The relations of Nonconformity, with which we must couple Scotch
+Presbyterianism, its partner in fundamental doctrine, its constant ally
+in the conflict, and fellow-sufferer in the hour of adversity, to
+English religion, morality, industry, education, philanthropy, science,
+and to the English civilization in general, would be a most important
+and instructive chapter in English history, but we are hardly called
+upon to attempt to write it in refutation of jocose charges of
+"hideousness" and "immense ennui." A sufficient answer to such quips and
+cranks will be found, we believe, within the same covers with Mr.
+Arnold's "Falkland," in the shape of an article on the Pulpit, by Mr.
+Baldwin Brown, which in tone and culture appears to us a fit companion
+for any other paper in the journal.
+
+That Nonconformity has been political is true. Fortunately for the
+liberties of England it has had to struggle for civil right in order to
+obtain religious freedom. No doubt in the course of the conflict it has
+contracted a certain gloominess of character, and shown an unamiable
+side. Treat men with persistent and insolent injustice, strip them of
+their rights as citizens, put on them a social brand, compel them to pay
+for the maintenance of the pulpits from which their religion is
+assailed, and you will run a very great risk of souring their tempers.
+But without rehearsing disagreeable details, we may say generally that
+whoever should undertake to prove that the Established Church had not
+been, from the hour of her birth down to the last general election, at
+least as political as the Free Churches, and at least as responsible for
+the evils which political religion has brought upon the nation, would
+show considerable confidence in his powers of dealing with history.
+Could he find a parallel on the side of the Established Church to the
+magnanimous loyalty to national interests shown by Nonconformists, in
+rejecting the bribe offered them by James II., and supporting their
+persecutors against an illegal toleration? Could he find a parallel on
+the side of the Nonconformists to the conduct of the Established Church,
+in turning round, the moment the victory had been won by Nonconformist
+aid, and recommencing the persecution of the Nonconformists?
+
+We fully agree with Mr. Arnold, however, in thinking that political
+Nonconformity is an evil. There are two known modes of getting rid of
+it--the Spanish Inquisition and religious equality. Mr. Arnold seems to
+think that there is yet a third--general submission, in matters
+theological and ecclesiastical, to the gentle sway of Beau Nash.
+
+Religious equality in the United States may not be perfect unity, it may
+not be the height of culture or of grace, but at all events it is peace.
+Ultramontanism there, as everywhere else, is aggressive, and a source of
+disturbance; and, on the other hand, in the struggle against slavery,
+political and religious elements were inevitably intermingled, but as a
+rule politics are kept perfectly clear of religion. Saving in the case
+of Roman Catholicism, we cannot call to mind a single instance of a
+serious appeal in an election to sectarian feeling. Much as we have
+heard of the two candidates for the Presidency, we could not at this
+moment tell to what Church either of them belongs. Where no Church is
+privileged, there can be no cause for jealousy. The Churches dwell side
+by side, without disturbing the State with any quarrels; they are all
+alike loyal to the government; they unite in supporting a system of
+popular education which generally includes a certain element of
+unsectarian religion, they combine for social and philanthropic objects;
+they testify, by their common celebration of national thanksgivings and
+fasts their unity at all events as portions of the same Christian
+nation. So far as we know, controversy between them is very rare; there
+is more of it within the several Churches between their own more
+orthodox and more liberal members. In none does it rage more violently
+than in the Episcopal Church, though, under religious equality,
+irreconcilable disagreement on religious questions leads to seccession,
+not to mutual lawsuits and imprisonments.
+
+Mr. Arnold says in praise of Falkland that "he was profoundly serious."
+We presume he means not only that Falkland treated great questions in a
+serious way, without unseasonable quizzing, but that he was, in the
+words quoted from Clarendon in the next sentence, "a precise lover of
+truth, and superior to all possible temptations for its violation." The
+temptations, we presume, would have included those of taste or fancy, as
+well as those of the more obvious kind; and Falkland's paramount regard
+for truth would have extended to all his fellow-men as well as to
+himself and his own intellectual circle. He would never, we are
+confident, have advised any human being to separate religion from truth,
+he would never have suffered himself to intimate that truth was the
+property of a select circle, while "poetry" was good enough for the
+common people, he would never have encouraged thousands of clergymen,
+educated men with sensitive consciences, to go on preaching to their
+flocks from the pulpit, on grounds of social convenience, doctrines
+which they repudiated in the study, and derided in the company of
+cultivated men, he would never have exhorted people to enter from
+aesthetic considerations a spiritual society of which, in the same
+breath, he proclaimed the creeds to be figments, the priesthood to be an
+illusion, the sacred narratives to be myths, and the Triune God to be a
+caricature of Lord Shaftesbury multiplied by three. If he had done so,
+and if his propagandism had been successful, we suspect he would soon
+have produced an anarchy, not only religious but social, compared with
+which the most chaotic periods of the Revolution would have been harmony
+and order. In the days of the Antonines, to which Gibbon looks back so
+wistfully, opinion had little influence; the organic forces of society
+were of a more primitive and a coarser kind. In modern times if a writer
+could succeed in separating truth from religion, he would shake the
+pillars of the moral and social as well as the intellectual world.
+
+That religion is inseparable from truth is the strong and special
+tradition of the Nonconformists. Their history has been a long struggle
+for the rights of conscience against spurious authority, an authority
+which we believe Mr. Arnold holds to be spurious as well as they. This
+is not altogether a bad start in the pursuit of the truth for which the
+world now craves, and which, we cordially admit, lies beyond the
+existing creed of any particular Church. At all events, it would seem
+improvident to merge such an element of religious inquiry in that of
+which the tradition is submission to spurious authority, whatever
+advantages the latter may have in social, literary, and aesthetic
+respects. Not a generation has yet passed since the admission of
+Nonconformists to the Universities; and more than a generation is needed
+in order to attain the highest culture. Give the Free Churches time, and
+let us see whether they have not something better to give us in return
+than "hideousness" and "immense ennui."
+
+
+
+
+THE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
+
+
+Our readers need not be afraid that we are going to bore them with the
+Slavery Question or the Civil War. We deal here not with the Martyr
+President, but with Abe Lincoln in embryo, leaving the great man at the
+entrance of the grand scene. Mr. Ward H. Lamon has published a biography
+[Footnote: The Life of Abraham Lincoln from his Birth to his
+Inauguration as President. By Ward H. Lamon. Boston: James R. Osgood &
+Co. 1872] which enables us to do this, and which, besides containing a
+good deal that is amusing, is a curious contribution to political
+science, as illustrating, by a world-renowned instance, the origin of
+the species Politician. The materials for it appear to be drawn from the
+most authentic sources, and to have been used with diligence, though in
+point of form the book leaves something to be desired. We trust it and
+the authorities quoted in it for our facts.
+
+After the murder, criticism, of course, was for a time impossible.
+Martyrdom was followed by canonization, and the popular heart could not
+be blamed for overflowing in hyperbole. The fallen chief "was
+Washington, he was Moses, and there were not wanting even those who
+likened him to the God and Redeemer of all the earth. These latter
+thought they discovered in his early origin, his kindly nature, his
+benevolent precepts, and the homely anecdotes in which he taught the
+people, strong points of resemblance between him and the Divine Son of
+Mary." A halo of myth naturally gathered round the cradle of this new
+Moses--for we will not pursue the more extravagant and offensive
+parallel which may serve as a set-off against that which was drawn by
+English Royalists between the death of Charles I. and the Crucifixion.
+Among other fables, it was believed that the President's family had fled
+from Kentucky to Indiana to escape the taint of Slavery. Thomas Lincoln,
+the father of Abraham, was migratory enough, but the course of his
+migrations was not determined by high moral motives, and we may safely
+affirm that had he ever found himself among the fleshpots of Egypt, he
+would have stayed there, however deep the moral darkness might have
+been. He was a thriftless "ne'er do weel," who had very commonplace
+reasons for wandering away from the miserable, solitary farm in
+Kentucky, on which his child first formed a sad acquaintance with life
+and nature, and which, as it happened, was not in the slave-owning
+region of the State. His decision appears to have been hastened by a
+"difficulty," in which he bit off his antagonist's nose--an incident to
+which it would be difficult to find a parallel in the family histories
+of Scripture heroes, or even in those of the Sainted Fathers of the
+Republic. He drifted to Indiana, and in a spot which was then an almost
+untrodden wilderness, built a _casa santa_, which his connection,
+Dennis Hanks, calls "that darned little half-faced camp"--a dwelling
+enclosed on three sides and open on the fourth, without a floor, and
+called a camp, it seems, because it was made of poles, not of logs. He
+afterwards exchanged the "camp" for the more ambitious "cabin," but his
+cabin, was "a rough, rough log one," made of unhewn timber, and without
+floor, door or window. In this "rough, rough," abode, his lanky, lean-
+visaged, awkward and somewhat pensive though strong, hearty and patient
+son Abraham had a "rough, rough" life, and underwent experiences which,
+if they were not calculated to form a Pitt or a Turgot, were calculated
+to season an American politician, and make him a winner in the tough
+struggle for existence, as well as to identify him with the people,
+faithful representation of whose aims, sentiments, tastes, passions and
+prejudices was the one thing needful to qualify him for obtaining the
+prize of his ambition. "For two years Lincoln (the father) continued to
+live alone in the old way. He did not like to farm, and he never got
+much of his land under cultivation. His principal crop was corn; and
+this, with the game which a rifleman so expert would easily take from
+the woods around him, supplied his table." It does not appear that he
+employed any of his mechanical skill in completing and furnishing his
+own cabin. It has already been stated that the latter had no window,
+door or floor. "But the furniture, if it might be called furniture, was
+even worse than the house. Three-legged stools served for chairs. A
+bedstead was made of poles stuck in the cracks of the logs in one corner
+of the cabin, while the other end rested in the crotch of a forked stick
+stuck in the earthen floor. On these were laid some boards, and on the
+boards a shake-down of leaves, covered with skins and old petticoats.
+The table was a hewed puncheon supported by four legs. They had a few
+pewter and tin dishes to eat from, but the most minute inventory of
+their effects makes no mention of knives or forks. Their cooking
+utensils were a Dutch oven and a skillet. Abraham slept in the loft, to
+which he ascended by means of pins driven into holes in the wall." Of
+his father's disposition, Abraham seems to have inherited at all events
+the dislike to labour, though his sounder moral nature prevented him
+from being an idler. His tendency to politics came from the same element
+of character as his father's preference for the rifle. In after life we
+are told his mind "was filled with gloomy forebodings and strong
+apprehensions of impending evil, mingled with extravagant visions of
+personal grandeur and power." His melancholy, characterized by all his
+friends as "terrible," was closely connected with the cravings of his
+demagogic ambition, and the root of both was in him from a boy.
+
+In the Indiana cabin Abraham's mother, whose maiden name was Nancy
+Hanks, died, far from medical aid, of the epidemic called milk sickness.
+She was preceded in death by her relatives, the Sparrows, who had
+succeeded the Lincolns in the "camp," and by many neighbours, whose
+coffins Thomas Lincoln made out of "green lumber cut with a whip saw."
+Upon Nancy's death he took to his green lumber again and made a box for
+her. "There were about twenty persons at her funeral. They took her to
+the summit of a deeply wooded knoll, about half a mile south-east of the
+cabin, and laid her beside the Sparrows. If there were any burial
+ceremonies, they were of the briefest. But it happened that a few months
+later an itinerant preacher, named David Elkin, whom the Lincolns had
+known in Kentucky, wandered into the settlement, and he either
+volunteered or was employed to preach a sermon, which should commemorate
+the many virtues and pass over in silence the few frailties of the poor
+woman who slept in the forest. Many years later the bodies of Levi Hall
+and his wife (relatives), were deposited in the same earth with that of
+Mr. Lincoln. The graves of two or three children, belonging to a
+neighbour's family, are also near theirs. They are all crumbled, sunken
+and covered with wild vines in deep and tangled mats. The great trees
+were originally cut away to make a small cleared space for this
+primitive graveyard; but the young dogwoods have sprung up unopposed in
+great luxuriance, and in many instances the names of pilgrims to the
+burial place of the great Abraham Lincoln's mother are carved on their
+bark. With this exception, the spot is wholly unmarked. The grave never
+had a stone, nor even a board, at its head or its foot, and the
+neighbours still dispute as to which of these unsightly hollows contains
+the ashes of Nancy Lincoln." If Democracy in the New World sometimes
+stones the prophets, it is seldom guilty of building their sepulchres.
+Out of sight, off the stump, beyond the range of the interviewer, heroes
+and martyrs soon pass from the mind of a fast-living people; and weeds
+may grow out of the dust of Washington. But in this case what neglect
+has done good taste would have dictated; it is well that the dogwoods
+are allowed to grow unchecked over the wilderness grave.
+
+Thirteen months after the death of his Nancy, Thomas Lincoln went to
+Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and suddenly presented himself to Mrs. Sally
+Johnston, who had in former days rejected him for a better match, but
+had become a widow. "Well, Mrs. Johnston, I have no wife and you have no
+husband, I came a purpose to marry you. I knowed you from a gal and you
+knowed me from a boy. I have no time to lose, and if you are willin',
+let it be done straight off." "Tommy, I know you well, and have no
+objection to marrying you; but I cannot do it straight off, as I owe
+some debts that must first be paid." They were married next morning, and
+the new Mrs. Lincoln, who owned, among other wondrous household goods, a
+bureau that cost forty dollars, and who had been led, it seems, to
+believe that her new husband was reformed and a prosperous farmer, was
+conveyed with her bureau to the smiling scene of his reformation and
+prosperity. Being, however, a sensible Christian woman, she made the
+best of a bad bargain, got her husband to put down a floor and hang
+doors and windows, made things generally decent, and was very kind to
+the children, especially to Abe, to whom she took a great liking, and
+who owed to his good stepmother what other heroes have owed to their
+mothers. "From that time on," according to his garrulous relative,
+Dennis Hanks, "he appeared to lead a new life." It seems to have been
+difficult to extract from him "for campaign purposes" the incidents of
+his life before it took this happy turn.
+
+He described his own education in a Congressional handbook as
+"defective." In Kentucky he occasionally trudged with his little sister,
+rather as an escort than as a school-fellow, to a school four miles off,
+kept by one Caleb Hazel, who could teach reading and writing after a
+fashion, and a little arithmetic, but whose great qualification for his
+office lay in his power and readiness "to whip the big boys." So far the
+American respect for popular education as the key to success in life
+prevailed even in those wilds, and in such a family as that of Thomas
+Lincoln.
+
+Under the auspices of his new mother, Abraham began attending school
+again. The master was one Crawford, who taught not only reading, writing
+and arithmetic, but "manners." One of the scholars was made to retire,
+and re-enter "as a polite gentleman enters a drawing room," after which
+he was led round by another scholar and introduced to all "the young
+ladies and gentlemen." The polite gentleman who entered the drawing room
+and was introduced as Mr. Abraham Lincoln, is thus depicted: "He was
+growing at a tremendous rate, and two years later attained his full
+height of six feet four inches. He was long, wiry and strong, while his
+big feet and hands and the length of his arms and legs were out of all
+proportion to his small trunk and head. His complexion was very swarthy,
+and Mr. Gentry says that his skin was shrivelled and yellow even then.
+He wore low shoes, buckskin breeches, linsey woolsey shirt, and a cap
+made of the skin of an opossum or a coon. The breeches clung close to
+his thighs and legs, but parted by a large space to meet the tops of his
+shoes. Twelve inches remained uncovered, and exposed that much of
+shinbone, sharp, blue and narrow." At a subsequent period, when charged
+by a Democratic rival with being "a Whig aristocrat," he gave a minute
+and touching description of the breeches. "I had only one pair," he
+said, "and they were buckskin. And if you know the nature of buckskin
+when wet and dried by the sun they will shrink; and mine kept shrinking
+until they left several inches of my legs bare between the tops of my
+socks and the lower part of my breeches, and whilst I was growing taller
+they were becoming shorter, and so much tighter that they left a blue
+streak around my legs, which can be seen to this day."
+
+Mr. Crawford, it seems, was a martinet in spelling, and one day he was
+going to punish a whole class for failing to spell _defied_, when
+Lincoln telegraphed the right letter to a young lady by putting his
+finger with a significant smile to his eye. Many years later, however,
+and after his entrance into public life, Lincoln himself spelt
+_apology_ with a double p, _planning_ with a single n, and
+_very_ with a double r. His schooling was very irregular, his
+school days hardly amounting to a year in all, and such education as he
+had was picked up afterwards by himself. His appetite for mental food,
+however, was always strong, and he devoured all the books, few and not
+very select, which could be found in the neighbourhood of "Pigeon
+Creek." Equally strong was his passion for stump oratory, the taste for
+which pervades the American people, even in the least intellectual
+districts, as the taste for church festivals pervades the people of
+Spain, or the taste for cricket the people of England. Abe's neighbour,
+John Romine, says, "he was awful lazy. He worked for me; was always
+reading and thinking; used to get mad at him. He worked for me in 1829,
+pulling fodder. I say Abe was awful lazy, he would laugh and talk, and
+crack jokes all the time, didn't love work, but did dearly love his
+pay." He liked to lie under a shade tree, or up in the loft of the cabin
+and read, cipher, or scribble. At night he ciphered by the light of the
+fire on the wooden fire shovel. He practised stump oratory by repeating
+the sermons, and sometimes by preaching himself to his brothers and
+sister. His gifts in the rhetorical line were high; when it was
+announced in the harvest field that Abe had taken the stump, work was at
+an end. The lineaments of the future politician distinctly appear in the
+dislike of manual labour as well as in the rest. We shall presently have
+Lincoln's own opinion on that point.
+
+Abe's first written composition appears to have been an essay against
+cruelty to animals, a theme the choice of which was at once indicative
+of his kindness of heart and practically judicious, since the young
+gentlemen in the neighbourhood were in the habit of catching terrapins
+and putting hot coals upon their backs. The essay appears not to have
+been preserved, and we cannot say whether its author succeeded in
+explaining that ethical mystery--the love of cruelty in boys.
+
+In spite of his laziness, Abe was greatly in demand at hog-killing time,
+notwithstanding, or possibly in consequence of which, he contracted a
+peculiarly tender feeling towards swine, and in later life would get off
+his horse to help a struggling hog out of the mire or to save a little
+pig from the jaws of an unnatural mother.
+
+Society in the neighbourhood of Pigeon Creek was of the thorough
+backwoods type; as coarse as possible, but hospitable and kindly, free
+from cant and varnish, and a better school of life than of manners,
+though, after all, the best manners are learnt in the best school of
+life, and the school of life in which Abe studied was not the worst. He
+became a leading favourite, and his appearance, towering above the other
+hunting shirts, was always the signal for the fun to begin. His nature
+seems to have been, like many others, open alike to cheerful and to
+gloomy impressions. A main source of his popularity was the fund of
+stories to which he was always adding, and to which in after life, he
+constantly went for solace, under depression or responsibility, as
+another man would go to his cigar or snuff box. The taste was not
+individual but local, and natural to keen-witted people who had no other
+food for their wits. In those circles "the ladies drank whiskey-toddy,
+while the men drank it straight." Lincoln was by no means fond of drink,
+but in this, as in every thing else, he followed the great law of his
+life as a politician, by falling in with the humour of the people. One
+cold night be and his companions found an acquaintance lying dead-drunk
+in a puddle. All but Lincoln were disposed to let him lie where he was,
+and freeze to death. But Abe "bent his mighty frame, and taking the man
+in his long arms, carried him a great distance to Dennis Hanks' cabin.
+There he built a fire, warmed, rubbed and nursed him through the entire
+night, his companions having left him alone in his merciful task." His
+real kindness of heart is always coming out in the most striking way,
+and it was not impaired even by civil war.
+
+Though sallow-faced, Lincoln had a very good constitution, but his frame
+hardly bespoke great strength: he was six feet four and large-boned, but
+narrow chested, and had almost a consumptive appearance. His strength,
+nevertheless, was great. We are told that harnessed with ropes and
+straps he could lift a box of stones weighing from a thousand to twelve
+hundred pounds. But that he could raise a cask of whiskey in his arms
+standing upright, and drink out of the bung-hole, his biographer does
+not believe. The story is no doubt a part of the legendary halo which
+has gathered round the head of the martyr. In wrestling, of which he was
+very fond, he had not his match near Pigeon Creek, and only once found
+him anywhere else. He was also formidable as a pugilist. But he was no
+bully; on the contrary, he was peaceable and chivalrous in a rough way.
+His chivalry once displayed itself in a rather singular fashion. He was
+in the habit, among other intellectual exercises, of writing satires on
+his neighbours in the form of chronicles, the remains of which, unlike
+any known writings of Moses, or even of Washington, are "too indecent
+for publication." In one of these he assailed the Grigsbys, who had
+failed to invite him to a brilliant wedding. The Grigsby blood took
+fire, and a fight was arranged. But when they came to the ring, Lincoln,
+deeming the Grigsby champion too much overmatched, magnanimously
+substituted for himself his less puissant stepbrother, John Johnston,
+who was getting well pounded when Abe, on pretence of foul play,
+interfered, seized Grigsby by the neck, flung him off and cleared the
+ring. He then "swung a whiskey bottle over his head, and swore that he
+was the big buck of the lick,"--a proposition which it seems, the other
+bucks of the lick, there assembled in large numbers, did not feel
+themselves called upon to dispute.
+
+That Abraham Lincoln should have said, when a bare-legged boy, that he
+intended to be President of the United States, is not remarkable. Every
+boy in the United States says it; soon, perhaps, every girl will be able
+to say it, and then human happiness will be complete. But Lincoln was
+really carrying on his political education. Dennis Hanks is asked how he
+and Lincoln acquired their knowledge. "We learned," he replies, "by
+sight, scent and hearing. We heard all that was said, and talked over
+and over the questions heard; wore them slick, greasy and threadbare.
+Went to political and other speeches and gatherings, as you do now; we
+would hear all sides and opinions, talk them over, discuss them,
+agreeing or disagreeing. Abe, as I said before, was originally a
+Democrat after the order of Jackson; so was his father, so we all
+were.... He preached, made speeches, read for us, explained to us,
+&c.... Abe was a cheerful boy, a witty boy; was humorous always,
+sometimes would get sad, not very often.... Lincoln would frequently
+make political and other speeches; he was calm, logical and clear
+always. He attended trials, went to court always, read the Revised
+Statutes of Indiana, dated 1824, heard law speeches, and listened to law
+trials. Lincoln was lazy, a very lazy man. He was always reading,
+scribbling, writing, ciphering, writing poetry, and the like.... In
+Gentryville, about one mile west of Thomas Lincoln's farm, Lincoln would
+go and tell his jokes and stories, &c., and was so odd, original and
+humorous and witty, that all the people in town would gather around him.
+He would keep them there till midnight. I would get tired, want to go
+home, cuss Abe most heartily. Abe was a good talker, a good reader, and
+was a kind of newsboy." One or two articles written by Abe found their
+way into obscure journals, to his infinite gratification. His foot was
+on the first round of the ladder. It is right to say that his culture
+was not solely political, and that he was able to astonish the natives
+of Gentryville by explaining that when the sun appeared to set, it "was
+we did the sinking and not the sun."
+
+Abe was tired of his home, as a son of Thomas Lincoln might be, without
+disparagement to his filial piety; and he was glad to get off with a
+neighbour on a commercial trip down the river to New Orleans. The trip
+was successful in a small way, and Abe soon after repeated it with other
+companions. He shewed his practical ingenuity in getting the boat off a
+dam, and perhaps still more signally in quieting some restive hogs by
+the simple expedient of sewing up their eyes. In the first trip the
+great emancipator came in contact with the negro in a way that did not
+seem likely to prepossess him in favour of the race. The boat was
+boarded by negro robbers, who were repulsed only after a fray in which
+Abe got a scar which he carried to the grave. But he saw with his own
+eyes slaves manacled and whipped at New Orleans; and though his
+sympathies were not far-reaching, the actual sight of suffering never
+failed to make an impression on his mind. "In 1841," he says, in a
+letter to a friend, "you and I had together a tedious low-water trip on
+a steamboat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well
+do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio, there were on board
+ten or a dozen slaves shackled together with irons. That sight was a
+continued torment to me, and I see something like it every time I touch
+the Ohio or any other slave border." A negrophilist he never became. "I
+protest," he said afterwards, when engaged in the slavery controversy,
+"against the counterfeit logic which concludes that because I do not
+want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I
+need not have her for either. I can just leave her alone. In some
+respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat
+the bread which she earns with her own hands she is my equal and the
+equal of all others." It would be difficult to put the case better.
+
+While Abraham Lincoln was trading to New Orleans his father, Thomas
+Lincoln, was on the move again. This time he migrated to Illinois, and
+there again shifted from place to place, gathering no moss, till he died
+as thriftless and poor as he had lived. We have, in later years, an
+application from him to his son for money, to which the son responds in
+a tone which implies some doubt as to the strict accuracy of the ground
+on which the old gentleman's request was preferred. Their relations were
+evidently not very affectionate, though there is nothing unfilial in
+Abe's conduct. Abraham himself drifted to Salem on the Sangamon, in
+Illinois, twenty miles north-west of Springfield, where he became clerk
+in a new store, set up by Denton Offutt, with whom he had formed a
+connection in one of his trips to New Orleans. Salem was then a village
+of a dozen houses, and the little centre of a society very like that of
+Pigeon Creek and its neighbourhood, but more decidedly western. We are
+told that "here Mr. Lincoln became acquainted with a class of men the
+world never saw the like of before or since. They were large men,--large
+in body and large in mind; hard to whip and never to be fooled. They
+were a bold, daring and reckless set of men; they were men of their own
+mind,--believed what was demonstrable, were men of great common sense.
+With these men Mr. Lincoln was thrown; with them he lived and with them
+he moved and almost had his being. They were sceptics all--scoffers
+some. These scoffers were good men, and their scoffs were protests
+against theology,--loud protests against the follies of Christianity;
+they had never heard of theism and the new and better religious thoughts
+of this age. Hence, being natural sceptics and being bold, brave men
+they uttered their thoughts freely.... They were on all occasions, when
+opportunity offered, debating the various questions of Christianity
+among themselves; they took their stand on common sense and on their own
+souls; and though their arguments were rude and rough, no man could
+overthrow their homely logic. They riddled all divines, and not
+unfrequently made them sceptics,--disbelievers as bad as themselves.
+They were a jovial, healthful, generous, true and manly set of people."
+It is evident that W. Herndon, the speaker, is himself a disbeliever in
+Christianity, and addicted to the "newer and better thought of this
+age." He gives one specimen, which we have omitted for fear of shocking
+our readers, of the theological criticism of these redoubtable logicians
+of nature; and we are inclined to infer from it that the divines whom
+they "riddled" and converted to scepticism must have been children of
+nature as well as themselves. The passage, however, is a life-like,
+though idealized, portrait of the Western man; and the tendency to
+religious scepticism of the most daring kind is as truly ascribed to him
+as the rest.
+
+It seems to be proved by conclusive evidence that Mr. Lincoln shared the
+sentiments of his companions, and that he was never a member of any
+Church, a believer in the divinity of Christ, or a Christian of any
+denomination. He is described as an avowed, an open freethinker,
+sometimes bordering on atheism, going extreme lengths against Christian
+doctrines, and "shocking" men whom it was probably not very easy to
+shock. He even wrote a little work on "Infidelity," attacking
+Christianity in general, and especially the belief that Jesus was the
+Son of God; but the manuscript was destroyed by a prescient friend, who
+knew that its publication would ruin the writer in the political market.
+There is reason to believe that Burns contributed to Lincoln's
+scepticism, but he drew it more directly from Volney, Paine, Hume and
+Gibbon. His fits of downright atheism appear to have been transient; his
+settled belief was theism with a morality which, though he was not aware
+of it, he had really derived from the Gospel. It is needless to say that
+the case had never been rationally presented to him, and that his
+decision against Christianity would prove nothing, even if his mind had
+been more powerful than it was. His theism was not strong enough to save
+him from deep depression under misfortune; and we heard, on what we
+thought at the time good authority, that after Chancellorsville, he
+actually meditated suicide. Like many sceptics, he was liable to
+superstition, especially to the superstition of self-consciousness, a
+conviction that he was the subject of a special decree made by some
+nameless and mysterious power. Even from a belief in apparitions he was
+not free. "It was just after my election, in 1860," he said to his
+Secretary, John Hay, "when the news had been coming in thick and fast
+all day, and there had been a great 'hurrah, boys!' so that I was well
+tired, I went home to rest, throwing myself upon a lounge in my chamber.
+Opposite to where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass upon it; and,
+on looking in that glass, I saw myself reflected nearly at full length;
+but my face, I noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the tip of
+the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I
+was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the
+glass; but the illusion vanished. On lying down again I saw it a second
+time--plainer, if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of
+the faces was a little paler--say five shades--than the other. I got up
+and the thing melted away; and I went off and in the excitement of the
+hour forgot all about it,--nearly, but not quite, for the thing would
+once in a while come up and give me a little pang, as though something
+uncomfortable had happened. When I went home I told my wife about it;
+and in a few days afterwards I tried the experiment again, when, sure
+enough, the thing came back again; but I never succeeded in bringing the
+ghost back after that, though I once tried very industriously, to show
+it to my wife, who was worried about it somewhat. She thought it was 'a
+sign' that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the
+paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life
+through the last term." The apparition is, of course, easily explained
+by reference to a generally morbid temperament and a specially excited
+fancy. The impression which it made on the mind of a sceptic, noted for
+never believing in anything which was not actually submitted to his
+senses, is an instance of the tendency of superstition to creep into the
+void left in the heart by faith, and as such may be classed with the
+astrological superstitions of the Roman Empire, and of that later age of
+religious and moral infidelity of which the prophet was Machiavelli. But
+if Mr. John Hay has faithfully repeated Lincoln's words, a point upon
+which we may have our doubts without prejudice to Mr. Hay's veracity,
+Mrs. Lincoln's interpretation of the vision is, to say the least, a very
+curious coincidence.
+
+The flower of the heroic race in the neighbourhood of Salem, were the
+"Clary's Grove boys," whose chief and champion was Jack Armstrong.
+"Never," we are assured, "was there a more generous parcel of ruffians
+than those over whom Jack held sway." It does not appear, however, that
+the term ruffian is altogether misplaced. The boys were in the habit of
+"initiating" candidates for admission to society at New Salem. "They
+first bantered the gentleman to run a foot race, jump, pitch the mall,
+or wrestle; and if none of these propositions seemed agreeable to him,
+they would request to know what he would do in case another gentleman
+should pull his nose or squirt tobacco juice in his face. If he did not
+seem entirely decided in his views as to what should be done in such a
+contingency, perhaps he would be nailed in a hogshead and rolled down
+New Salem hill, perhaps his ideas would be brightened by a brief ducking
+in the Sangamon; or perhaps he would be scoffed, kicked and cuffed by a
+great number of persons in concert, until he reached the confines of the
+village, and then turned adrift as being unfit company for the people of
+that settlement." If the stranger consented to race or wrestle, it was
+arranged that there should be foul play, which would lead to a fight; a
+proper display of mettle in which was accepted as a proof of the
+"gentleman's" fitness for society. Abe escaped initiation, his length
+and strength of limb being apparently deemed satisfactory evidence of
+his social respectability. But Clary's Grove was at last brought down
+upon him by the indiscretion of his friend and admirer, Offutt, who was
+already beginning to run him for President, and whose vauntings of his
+powers made a trial of strength inevitable. A wrestling match was
+contrived between Lincoln and Jack Armstrong, and money, jackknives and
+whiskey were freely staked on the result. Neither combatant could throw
+the other, and Abe proposed to Jack to "quit." But Jack, goaded on by
+his partisans, resorted to a "foul," upon which Abe's righteous wrath
+blazed up, and taking the champion of Clary's Grove by the throat he
+"shook him like a child." A fight was impending, and Abe, his back
+planted against Offutt's store, was facing a circle of foes, when a
+mediator appeared. Jack Armstrong was so satisfied of the strength of
+Abe's arm, that he at once declared him the best fellow that ever came
+into the settlement, and the two thenceforth reigned conjointly over the
+roughs and bullies of New Salem. Abe seems always to have used his power
+humanely and to have done his best to substitute arbitration for war. A
+strange man coming into the settlement, on being beset as usual by
+Clary's Grove and insulted by Jack Armstrong, knocked the bully down
+with a stick. Jack being as strong as two of him was going to "whip him
+badly," when Abe interposed, "Well Jack, what did you say to the man?"
+Jack repeated his words. "And what would you do if you were in a strange
+place and you were called a d--d liar?" "Whip him, by ---." "Then that
+man has done to you no more than you have done to him." Jack
+acknowledged the golden rule and "treated" his intended victim. If there
+were ever dissensions between the two "Caesars" of Salem, it was because
+Jack "in the abundance of his animal spirits" was addicted to nailing
+people in barrels and rolling them down the hill, while Abe was always
+on the side of mercy.
+
+Abe's popularity grew apace; his ambition grew with it; it is
+astonishing how readily and freely the plant sprouts upon that soil. He
+was at this time carrying on his education evidently with a view to
+public life. Books were not easily found. He wanted to study English
+Grammar, considering that accomplishment desirable for a statesman; and,
+being told that there was a grammar in a house six miles from Salem, he
+left his breakfast at once and walked off to borrow it. He would slip
+away into the woods and spend hours in study and thinking. He sat up
+late at night, and as light was expensive, made a blaze of shavings in
+the cooper's shop. He waylaid every visitor to New Salem who had any
+pretence to scholarship, and extracted explanations of things which he
+did not understand. It does not appear that the work of Adam Smith, or
+any work upon political economy, currency, or any financial subject fell
+into the hands of the student who was destined to conduct the most
+tremendous operations in the whole history of finance.
+
+The next episode in Lincoln's life which may be regarded as a part of
+his training was the command of a company of militia in the "Black Hawk"
+war. Black Hawk was an Indian Chief of great craft and power, and,
+apparently, of fine character, who had the effrontery to object to being
+improved off the face of creation, an offence which he aggravated by an
+hereditary attachment to the British. At a muster of the Sangamon
+company at Clary's Grove, Lincoln was elected captain. The election was
+a proof of his popularity, but he found it rather hard to manage his
+constituents in the field. One morning on the march the Captain
+commanded his orderly to form the company for parade; but when the
+orderly called "parade," the men called "parade" too, but could not fall
+into line. They had found their way to the officers' liquor the evening
+before. The regiment had to march and leave the company behind. About
+ten o'clock the company set out to follow; but when it had marched two
+miles "the drunken ones lay down and slept their drink off." Lincoln,
+who seems to have been perfectly blameless, was placed under arrest and
+condemned to carry a wooden sword; but it does not appear that any
+notice was taken of the conduct of that portion of the sovereign people
+which lay down drunk on the march when the army was advancing against
+the enemy. Something like this was probably the state of things in the
+Northern army at the beginning of the civil war, before discipline had
+been enforced by disaster. The campaign opened with a cleverly-won
+victory on the part of Black Hawk, and a rapid retrograde movement on
+the part of the militia, as to which we will be content to say with Mr.
+Lamon, "of drunkenness no public account makes any mention, and
+individual cowardice is never to be imputed to American troops."
+Ultimately, however, Black Hawk was overpowered and most of his men met
+their doom in attempting to retreat across the Mississippi. "During this
+short Indian campaign," says one who took part in it, "we had some hard
+times, often hungry; but we had a great deal of sport, especially at
+nights--foot racing, some horse racing, jumping, telling anecdotes, in
+which Lincoln beat all, keeping up a constant laughter and good humour
+all the time, among the soldiers some card-playing and wrestling in
+which Lincoln took a prominent part. I think it safe to say he was never
+thrown in a wrestle. While in the army he kept a handkerchief tied
+around him all the time for wrestling purposes, and loved the sport as
+well as any one could. He was seldom if ever beat jumping. During the
+campaign Lincoln himself was always ready for an emergency. He endured
+hardships like a good soldier; he never complained, nor did he fear
+dangers. When fighting was expected or danger apprehended, Lincoln was
+the first to say 'Let's go.' He had the confidence of every man of his
+company, and they strictly obeyed his orders at a word. His company was
+all young men, and full of sport." The assertion as to the strict and
+uniform obedience of the company at its captain's word, requires, as we
+have seen, some qualification in a democratic sense. Whether Lincoln was
+ever beaten in wrestling is also one of the moot points of history.
+
+In the course of this campaign one Mr. Thompson, whose fame as a
+wrestler was great throughout the west, accepted Lincoln's challenge.
+Great excitement prevailed, and Lincoln's company and backers "put up
+all their portable property and some perhaps not their own, including
+knives, blankets, tomahawks, and all the necessary articles of a
+soldier's outfit." As soon as Lincoln laid hold of his antagonist he
+found that he had got at least his match, and warned his friends of that
+unwelcome fact. He was thrown once fairly, and a second time fell with
+Thompson on the top of him. "We were taken by surprise," candidly says
+Mr. Green, "and being unwilling to put with our property and lose our
+bets, got up an excuse as to the result. We declared the fall a kind of
+a dog-fall--did so apparently angrily." A fight was about to begin, when
+Lincoln rose up and said, "Boys, the man actually threw me once fair,
+broadly so; and the second time, this very fall, he threw me fairly,
+though not so apparently so." This quelled the disturbance.
+
+On the same authority we are told that Lincoln gallantly interfered to
+save the life of a poor old Indian who had thrown himself on the mercy
+of the soldiers, and whom, notwithstanding that he had a pass, they were
+proceeding to slay. The anecdote wears a somewhat melodramatic aspect;
+but there is no doubt of Lincoln's humanity, or of his readiness to
+protest against oppression and cruelty when they actually fell under his
+notice. It was also in keeping with his character to insist firmly on
+the right of his militiamen to the same rations and pay as the regulars,
+and to draw the legal line sharply and clearly when the regular officers
+exceeded their authority in the exercise of command.
+
+Returning to New Salem, Lincoln, having served his apprenticeship as a
+clerk, commenced storekeeping on his own account. An opening was made
+for him by the departure of Mr. Radford, the keeper of a grocery, who,
+having offended the Clary's Grove boys, they "selected a convenient
+night for breaking in his windows and gutting his establishment." From
+his ruins rose the firm of Lincoln & Berry. Doubt rests on the great
+historic question whether Lincoln sold liquor in his store, and on that
+question still more agonizing to a sensitive morality--whether he sold
+it by the dram. The points remain, we are told, and will forever remain
+undetermined. The only fact in which history can repose with certainty
+is that some liquor must have been _given_ away, since nobody in
+the neighbourhood of Clary's Grove could keep store without offering the
+customary dram to the patrons of the place. When taxed on the platform
+by his rival, Douglas, with having sold liquor, Mr. Lincoln replied that
+if he figured on one side of the counter, Douglas figured on the other.
+"As a storekeeper," says Mr. Ellis, "Mr. Lincoln wore flax and tow linen
+pantaloons--I thought about five inches too short in the legs--and
+frequently he had but one suspender, no vest or coat. He had a calico
+shirt such as he had in the Black Hawk War; coarse brogues, tan-colour;
+blue yarn socks, a straw hat, old style, and without a band." It is
+recorded that he preferred dealing with men and boys, and disliked to
+wait on the ladies. Possibly, if his attire has been rightly described,
+the ladies, even the Clary's Grove ladies, may have reciprocated the
+feeling.
+
+In storekeeping, however, Mr. Lincoln did not prosper; neither
+storekeeping nor any other regular business or occupation was congenial
+to his character. He was born to be a politician. Accordingly he began
+to read law, with which he combined surveying, at which we are assured
+he made himself "expert" by a six weeks' course of study. They mix
+trades a little in the West. We expected on turning the page to find
+that Mr. Lincoln had also taken up surgery and performed the Caesarean
+operation. The few law books needed for Western practice were supplied
+to him by a kind friend at Springfield, and according to a witness who
+has evidently an accurate memory for details, "he went to read law in
+1832 or 1833 barefooted, seated in the shade of a tree and would grind
+around with the shade, just opposite Berry's grocery store, a few feet
+south of the door, occasionally lying flat on his back and putting his
+feet up the tree." Evidently, whatever he read, especially of a
+practical kind, he made thoroughly his own. It is needless to say that
+he did not become a master of scientific jurisprudence, but it seems
+that he did become an effective Western advocate. What is more, there is
+conclusive testimony to the fact that he was--what has been scandalously
+alleged to be rare, even in the United States--an honest lawyer. "Love
+of justice and fair play," says one of his brothers of the bar, "was his
+predominant trait. I have often listened to him when I thought he would
+state his case out of Court. It was not in his nature to assume or
+attempt to bolster up a false position. He would abandon his case first.
+He did so in the case of _Buckmaster for the use of Durham v. Beener &
+Arthur_, in our Supreme Court, in which I happened to be opposed to
+him. Another gentleman, less fastidious, took Mr. Lincoln's place and
+gained the case." His power as an advocate seems to have depended on his
+conviction that the right was on his side. "Tell Harris it's no use to
+_waste money on me_; in that case, he'll get beat." In a larceny
+case he took those who were counsel with him for the defence aside and
+said, "If you can say anything for the man do it. I can't. If I attempt
+it, the jury will see that I think he is guilty and convict him of
+course." In another case he proved an account for his client, who,
+though he did not know it, was a rogue. The counsel on the other side
+proved a receipt. By the time he had done Lincoln was missing; and on
+the Court sending for him, he replied, "Tell the judge I can't come; my
+hands are dirty, and I came over to clean them." Mr. Herndon, who
+visited Lincoln's office on business, gives the following reminiscence:
+--"Mr. Lincoln was seated at his table, listening very attentively to a
+man who was talking earnestly in a low tone. After the would-be client
+had stated the facts of the case, Mr. Lincoln replied, 'yes, there is no
+reasonable doubt but that I can gain your case for you. I can set a
+whole neighbourhood at logger heads; I can distress a widowed mother and
+her six fatherless children, and thereby get for you six hundred
+dollars, which rightly belongs, it appears to me, as much to the woman
+and her children as it does to you. You must remember that some things
+that are legally right are not morally right. I shall not take your case
+but will give you a bit of advice, for which I will charge you nothing.
+You seem to be a sprightly, energetic man. I would advise you to try
+your hand at making six hundred dollars in some other way.'" On one
+occasion, however, Lincoln, we believe it must be admitted, resorted to
+sharp practice. William Armstrong, the son of Jack Armstrong, of Clary's
+Grove, inheriting, as it seems, the "abundant animal spirits" of his
+father, committed, as was universally believed, a very brutal murder at
+a camp meeting, and being brought to trial was in imminent peril of the
+halter. Lincoln volunteered to defend him. The witness whose testimony
+bore hardest on the prisoner swore that he saw the murder committed by
+the light of the moon. Lincoln put in an almanac, which, on reference
+being made to it showed that at the time stated by the witness there was
+no moon. This broke down the witness and the prisoner was acquitted. It
+was not observed at the moment that the almanac was one of the year
+previous to the murder; and therefore morally a fabrication. Herculean
+efforts are made to prove that _two_ almanacs were produced and
+that Mr. Lincoln was innocent of any deception. But the best plea, we
+conceive, is, that Mr. Lincoln had rocked William Armstrong in the
+cradle.
+
+There is one part of Lincoln's early life which, though scandal may
+batten on it, we shall pass over lightly, we mean that part which
+relates to his love affairs and his marriage. Criticism, and even
+biography, should respect as far as possible the sanctuary of affection.
+That a man has dedicated his life to the service of the public is no
+reason why the public should be licensed to amuse itself by playing with
+his heart-strings. Not only as a storekeeper, but in every capacity, Mr.
+Lincoln was far more happy in his relations with men than with women. He
+however loved, and loved deeply, Ann Rutledge, who appears to have been
+entirely worthy of his attachment, and whose death at the moment when
+she would have felt herself at liberty to marry him threw him into a
+transport of grief, which threatened his reason and excited the gravest
+apprehensions of his friends. In stormy weather especially he would rave
+piteously, crying that "he could never be reconciled to have the snow,
+rains and storms to beat upon her grave." This first love he seems never
+to have forgotten. He next had an affair, not so creditable to him, with
+a Miss Owens, of whom, after their rupture, he wrote things which he had
+better have left unwritten. Finally, he made a match of which the world
+has heard more than enough, though the Western Boy was too true a
+gentleman to let it hear anything about the matter from his lips. It is
+enough to say that this man was not wanting in that not inconsiderable
+element of worth, even of the worth of statesmen, strong and pure
+affection.
+
+"If ever," said Abraham Lincoln, "American society and the United States
+Government are demoralized and overthrown, it will come from the
+voracious desire of office--this wriggle to live without toil, from
+which I am not free myself." These words ought to be written up in the
+largest characters in every schoolroom in the United States. The
+confession with which they conclude is as true as the rest. Mr. Lincoln,
+we are told, took no part in the promotion of local enterprises,
+railroads, schools, churches, asylums. The benefits he proposed for his
+fellow men were to be accomplished by political means alone "Politics
+were his world--a world filled with hopeful enchantments. Ordinarily he
+disliked to discuss any other subject." "In the office," says his
+partner, Mr. Herndon, "he sat down or spilt himself (_sic_) on his
+lounge, read aloud, told stories, talked politics--never science, art,
+literature, railroad gatherings, colleges, asylums, hospitals, commerce,
+education, progress--nothing that interested the world generally, except
+politics." "He seldom," says his present biographer, "took an active
+part in local or minor elections, or wasted his power to advance a
+friend. He did nothing out of mere gratitude, and forgot the devotion of
+his warmest partisans, as soon as the occasion for their services had
+passed. What they did for him was quietly appropriated as the reward of
+superior merit, calling for no return in kind." We are told that while
+he was "wriggling," he was in effect boarded and clothed for some years
+by his friend, Hon. W. Butler, at Springfield, and that, when in power,
+he refused to exercise his patronage in favour of his friend. On that
+occasion, his biographer tells us, that he considered his patronage a
+solemn trust. We give him credit for a conscientiousness above the
+ordinary level of his species on this as well as on other subjects. But
+his sense of the solemn character of his trust, though it prevented him
+from giving a petty place to the old friend who had helped him in the
+day of his need, did not prevent him, as President, from sometimes
+paying for support by a far more questionable use of the highest
+patronage in his gift.
+
+The fact is not that the man was by nature wanting in gratitude or in
+any kindly quality, on the contrary, he seems to have abounded in them
+all. But the excitement of the game was so intense that it swallowed up
+all other considerations and emotions. In a dead season of politics, his
+depression was extreme. "He said gloomily, despairingly, sadly, 'How
+hard, oh! how hard it is to die and leave one's country no better than
+if one had never lived for it. This world is dead to hope, deaf to its
+own death-struggle.'" Possibly this is the way in which "wriggling"
+politicians generally put the case to themselves.
+
+Lincoln's fundamental principle was devotion to the popular will. In his
+address to the people of Sangamon County, he says, "while acting as
+their representative I shall be governed by their will on all subjects
+upon which I have the means of knowing what their will is, and upon all
+others I will do what my own judgment teaches me will advance their
+interests." "'It is a maxim,' with many politicians, just to keep along
+even with the humour of the people right or wrong." "This maxim," adds
+the biographer, "Mr. Lincoln held then, as ever since, in very high
+estimation." It may occur to some enquiring minds to ask what, upon
+those principles, is the use of having representation at all, and
+whether it would not be better to let the people themselves vote
+directly on all questions without interposing a representative to
+diminish their sense of responsibility, to say nothing of the sacrifice
+of the representative's conscience, which, in the cases of the statesmen
+here described, was probably not very great. With regard to Slavery,
+however, Mr. Lincoln showed forecast, if not conscientious independence.
+He stepped forth in advance of the sentiments of his party, and to his
+political friends appeared rash in the extreme.
+
+Lincoln's first attempt to get elected to the State Legislature was
+unsuccessful. It however brought him the means of "doing something for
+his country," and partly averting the "death-struggle of the world," in
+the shape of the postmastership of New Salem. The business of the office
+was not on a large scale, for it was carried on in Mr. Lincoln's hat--an
+integument of which it is recorded, that he refused to give it to a
+conjurer to play the egg trick in, "not from respect for his own hat,
+but for the conjurer's eggs." The future President did not fail to
+signalize his first appearance as an administrator by a sally of the
+jocularity which was always struggling with melancholy in his mind. A
+gentleman of the place, whose education had been defective, was in the
+habit of calling two or three times a day at the post-office, and
+ostentatiously inquiring for letters. At last he received a letter,
+which, being unable to read himself, he got the postmaster to read for
+him before a large circle of friends. It proved to be from a negro lady
+engaged in domestic service in the South, recalling the memory of a
+mutual attachment, with a number of incidents more delectable than
+sublime. It is needless to say that the postmaster, by a slight
+extension of the sphere of his office, had written the letter as well as
+delivered it.
+
+In a second candidature the aspirant was more successful, and he became
+one of nine representatives of Sangamon County, in the State Legislature
+of Illinois, who, being all more than six feet high, were called "The
+Long Nine." With his Brobdingnagian colleagues Abraham plunged at once
+into the "internal improvement system," and distinguished himself above
+his fellows by the unscrupulous energy and strategy with which he urged
+through the Legislature a series of bubble schemes and jobs. Railroads
+and other improvements, especially improvements of river navigation,
+were voted out of all proportion to the means or credit of the then
+thinly-peopled State. To set these little matters in motion, a loan of
+eight millions of dollars was authorized, and to complete the canal from
+Chicago to Peru, another loan of four millions of dollars was voted at
+the same session, two hundred thousand dollars being given as a gratuity
+to those counties which seemed to have no special interest in any of the
+foregoing projects. Work on all these roads was to commence, not only at
+the same time, but at both ends of each road and at all the river-
+crossings. There were as yet no surveys of any route, no estimates, no
+reports of engineers, or even unprofessional viewers. "Progress was not
+to wait on trifles; capitalists were supposed to be lying in wait to
+catch these precious bonds; the money would be raised in a twinkling,
+and being applied with all the skill of a hundred De Witt Clintons--a
+class of gentlemen at that time extremely numerous and obtrusive--the
+loan would build railroads, the railroads would build cities, cities
+would create farms, foreign capital would rush in to so inviting a
+field, the lands would be taken up with marvellous celerity, and the
+land tax going into a sinking fund, that, with some tolls and certain
+sly speculations to be made by the State, would pay principal and
+interest of debt without even a cent of taxation upon the people. In
+short, everybody was to be enriched, while the munificence of the State
+in selling its credit and spending the proceeds, would make its empty
+coffers overflow with ready money. It was a dark stroke of
+statesmanship, a mysterious device in finance, which, whether from being
+misunderstood or mismanaged, bore from the beginning fruits the very
+reverse of those it had promised." We seem here to be reading the
+history of more than one great railway enterprise undertaken by
+politicians without the red tape preliminaries of surveying or framing
+estimates, progress not deigning to wait upon trifles. This system of
+policy gave fine scope for the talents of the "log-roller," here defined
+as an especially wily and persuasive person, who could depict the merits
+of his scheme with roseate but delusive eloquence, and who was said to
+carry a gourd of "possum fat"--wherewith he "greased and swallowed" his
+prey. One of the largest of these gourds was carried by "honest Abe,"
+who was especially active in "log-rolling" a bill for the removal of the
+seat of government from Vandalia to Springfield, at a virtual cost to
+the State of about six millions of dollars, which we were told would
+have purchased all the real estate in the town three times over. "Thus
+by log-rolling on the loud measure, by multiplying railroads, by
+terminating these roads at Alton, that Alton might become a great city
+in opposition to St. Louis; by distributing money to some of the
+counties to be wasted by the County Commissioners, and by giving the
+seat of government to Springfield--was the whole State bought up and
+bribed to approve the most senseless and disastrous policy which ever
+crippled the energies of a young country." We are told, and do not
+doubt, that Mr. Lincoln shared the popular delusion; but we are also
+told, and are equally sure, that "even if he had been unhappily
+afflicted with individual scruples of his own he would have deemed it
+but simple duty to obey the almost unanimous voice of his constituency."
+In other words, he would have deemed it his duty to pander to the
+popular madness by taking a part in financial swindling. Yet he and his
+principal confederates obtained afterwards high places of honour and
+trust. A historian of Illinois calls them "spared monuments of popular
+wrath, evincing how safe it is to be a politician, but how disastrous it
+may be to the country to keep along with the present fervour of the
+people." It is instructive as well as just to remember that all this
+time the man was strictly, nay sensitively, honourable in his private
+dealings, that he was regarded by his fellows as a paragon of probity,
+that his word was never questioned, that of personal corruption calumny
+itself, so far as we are aware, never dared to accuse him. Politics, it
+seems, may be a game apart, with rules of its own which supersede
+morality.
+
+Considering that, as we said before, this man was destined to preside
+over the most tremendous operations in the whole history of finance, it
+is especially instructive to see what was the state of his mind on
+economical subjects. He actually proposed to pass a usury law, having
+arrived, it appears, at the sage conviction that while to pay the
+current rent for the use of a house or the current fee for the services
+of a lawyer is perfectly proper, to pay the current price for money is
+to "allow a few individuals to levy a direct tax on the community." But
+this is an ordinary illusion. Abraham Lincoln's illusions went far
+beyond it. He actually proposed so to legislate that in cases of extreme
+necessity there might "always be found means to cheat the law, while in
+all other cases it would have its intended effect." He proposed in fact
+absurdity qualified by fraud, the established practice of which would,
+no doubt, have had a most excellent effect in teaching the citizens to
+reverence and the Courts to uphold the law. As President, when told that
+the finances were low, he asked whether the printing machine had given
+out, and he suggested, as a special temptation to capitalists, the issue
+of a class of bonds which should be exempt from seizure for debt. It may
+safely be said that the burden of the United States debt was ultimately
+increased fifty per cent through sheer ignorance of the simplest
+principles of economy and finance on the part of those by whom it was
+contracted.
+
+Lincoln's style, both as a speaker and a writer, ultimately became
+plain, terse, and with occasional faults of taste, caused by imperfect
+education, pure as well as effective. His Gettysburg address and some of
+his State Papers are admirable in their way. Saving one very flat
+expression, the address has no superior in literature. But it was
+impossible that the oratory of a rising politician, especially in the
+West, should be free from spread-eagleism. Scattered through these pages
+we find such gems as the following:--
+
+"All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the
+treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a
+Bonaparte for a commander, could not, by force, take a drink from the
+Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years!"
+... "Accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the every-day news of
+the times. They have pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana;
+they are neither peculiar to the eternal (?) snows of the former, nor to
+the burning sun of the latter." ... "That we improve to the last, that
+we revered his name to the last, that during his long sleep we permitted
+no hostile foot to pass or desecrate his resting-place, shall be that
+which to learn the last trump shall awaken our Washington." Washington's
+mind, when he rises from his grave at the Last Day, will be immediately
+relieved by the information that no Britisher has ever trodden on his
+bones.
+
+In debate he was neither bitter nor personal in the bad sense, though he
+had a good deal of caustic humour and knew how to make an effective use
+of it.
+
+Passing from State politics to those of the Union, and elected to
+Congress as a Whig, a party to which he had gradually found his way from
+his original position as a "nominal Jackson man," Mr. Lincoln stood
+forth in vigorous though discreet and temperate opposition to the
+Mexican War.
+
+Some extra charges made by General Cass upon the Treasury for expenses
+in a public mission, afforded an opportunity for a hit at the great
+Democratic "war-horse." "I have introduced," said Lincoln, "General
+Cass's name here chiefly to show the wonderful physical capacity of the
+man. They show that he not only did the labour of several men at the
+same _time_, but that he often did it at several _places_,
+many hundred miles apart _at the same time_. And in eating, too,
+his capacities are shown to be quite as wonderful. From October, 1821,
+to May, 1822, he ate ten rations a day in Michigan, ten rations a day
+here in Washington, and nearly five dollars' worth a day besides, partly
+on the road between the two places. And then there is an important
+discovery in his example, the art of being paid for what one eats,
+instead of having to pay for it. Hereafter if any nice young man should
+owe a bill which he cannot pay in any other way, he can just board it
+out. Mr. Speaker, we have all heard of the animal standing in doubt
+between two stacks of hay, and starving to death. The like of that could
+never happen to General Cass. Place the stacks a thousand miles apart,
+he would stand stock still midway between them, and eat them both at
+once; and the green grass along the line would be apt to suffer some at
+the same time. By all means make him President, gentlemen. He will feed
+you bounteously, if--if there is any left after he has helped himself."
+
+Great events were by this time beginning to loom on the political
+horizon. The Missouri Compromise was broken. Parties commenced slowly
+but surely to divide themselves into Pro-slavery and Anti-slavery. The
+"irrepressible conflict" was coming on, though none of the American
+politicians--not even the author of that famous phrase--distinctly
+recognised its advent. Lincoln seems to have been sincerely opposed to
+slavery, though he was not an Abolitionist. But he was evidently led
+more and more to take anti-slavery ground by his antagonism to Douglas,
+who occupied a middle position, and tried to gain at once the support of
+the South and that of the waverers at the North, by theoretically
+supporting the extension of slavery, yet practically excluding it from
+the territories by the doctrine of squatters' sovereignty. Lincoln had
+to be very wary in angling for the vote of the Abolitionists, who had
+recently been the objects of universal obloquy, and were still offensive
+to a large section of the Republican party. On one occasion, the
+opinions which he propounded by no means suited the Abolitionists, and
+"they required him to change them forthwith. _He thought it would be
+wise to do so considering the peculiar circumstances of his case_;
+but, before committing himself finally, he sought an understanding with
+Judge Logan. He told the judge what he was disposed to do, and said he
+would act upon the inclination if the judge would not regard it as
+treading on his toes. The judge said he was opposed to the doctrine
+proposed, but for the sake of the cause on hand he would cheerfully risk
+his toes. _And so the Abolitionists were accommodated._ Mr. Lincoln
+quietly made the pledge, and they voted for him." He came out, however,
+square enough, and in the very nick of time with his "house divided
+against itself" speech, which took the wind out of the sails of Seward
+with his "irrepressible conflict." Douglas, whom Lincoln regarded with
+intense personal rivalry, was tripped up by a string of astute
+interrogations, the answers to which hopelessly embroiled him with the
+South. Lincoln's campaign against Douglas for the Senatorship greatly
+and deservedly enhanced his reputation as a debater, and he became
+marked out as the Western candidate for the Republican nomination to the
+Presidency. A committee favourable to his claims sent to him to make a
+speech at New York. He arrived "in a sleek and shining suit of new
+black, covered with very apparent creases and wrinkles acquired by being
+packed too closely and too long in his little valise." Some of his
+supporters must have moralized on the strange apparition which their
+summons had raised. His speech, however, made before an immense audience
+at the Cooper Institute, was most successful. And as a display of
+constitutional logic it is a very good speech. It fails, as the speeches
+of these practical men one and all did fail, their "common sense" and
+"shrewdness" notwithstanding, in clear perception of the great facts
+that two totally different systems of society had been formed, one in
+the Slave States and the other in the Free, and that political
+institutions necessarily conform themselves to the social character of
+the people. Whether the Civil War could, by any men or means, have been
+arrested, it would be hard to say; but assuredly stump orators, even the
+very best of them, were not the men to avert it. At that great crisis no
+saviour appeared. On May 10th, in the eventful year 1860, the Republican
+State Convention of Illinois, by acclamation, and amidst great
+enthusiasm, nominated Lincoln for the Presidency. One who saw him
+receive the nomination says, "I then thought him one of the most
+diffident and most plagued of men I ever saw." We may depend upon it,
+however, that his diffidence of manner was accompanied by no reluctance
+of heart. The splendid prize which he had won had been the object of his
+passionate desire. In the midst of the proceedings the door of the
+wigwam opened, and Lincoln's kinsman, John Hanks, entered, with "two
+small triangular 'heart-rails,' surmounted by a banner with the
+inscription, 'Two rails from a lot made by Abraham Lincoln and John
+Hanks in the Sangamon bottom, in the year 1830'." The bearer of the
+rails, we are told, was met "with wild and tumultuous cheers," and "the
+whole scene was simply tempestuous and bewildering."
+
+The Democrats, of course, did not share the delight. An old man, out of
+Egypt, (the southern end of Illinois) came up to Mr. Lincoln, and said.
+"So you're Abe Lincoln?" "That's my name, sir." "They say you're a self-
+made man." "Well, yes what there is of me is self-made." "Well, all I
+have got to say," observed the old Egyptian, after a careful survey of
+the statesman, "is, that it was a d--n bad job." This seems to be the
+germ of the smart reply to the remark that Andrew Johnson was a self-
+made man, "that relieves the Almighty of a very heavy responsibility."
+
+The nomination of the State Convention of Illinois was accepted after a
+very close and exciting contest between Lincoln and Seward by the
+convention of the Republican party assembled at Chicago. The proceedings
+seem to have been disgraceful. A large delegation of roughs, we are
+told, headed by Tom Shyer, the pugilist, attended for Seward. The
+Lincoln party, on the other side, spent the whole night in mustering
+their "loose fellows," and at daylight the next morning packed the
+wigwam, so that the Seward men were unable to get in.
+
+Another politician was there nominally as a candidate, but really only
+to sell himself for a seat in the Cabinet. When he claimed the
+fulfilment of the bond, Lincoln's conscience, or at least his regard for
+his own reputation, struggled hard. "All that I am in the world--the
+Presidency and all else--I owe to that opinion of me which the people
+express when they call me 'honest old Abe.' Now, what will they think of
+their honest Abe when he appoints this man to be his familiar adviser?"
+What they might have said with truth was that Abe was still honest but
+politics were not.
+
+Widely different was the training undergone for the leadership of the
+people by the Pericles of the American Republic from that undergone by
+the Pericles of Athens, or by any group of statesmen before him, Greek,
+Roman, or European. In this point of view, Mr. Lamon's book is a most
+valuable addition to the library of political science. The advantages
+and the disadvantages of Lincoln's political education are manifest at a
+glance. He was sure to produce something strong, genuine, practical, and
+entirely in unison with the thoughts and feelings of a people which,
+like the Athenians in the days of Pericles, was to be led, not governed.
+On the other hand, it necessarily left the statesman without the special
+knowledge necessary for certain portions of his work, such as finance,
+which was detestably managed during Lincoln's Presidency, without the
+wisdom which flows from a knowledge of the political world and of the
+past, without elevation, and comprehensiveness of view. It was fortunate
+for Lincoln that the questions with which he had to deal, and with which
+his country and the world proclaim him to have dealt, on the whole,
+admirably well, though not in their magnitude and importance, were
+completely within his ken, and had been always present to his mind.
+Reconstruction would have made a heavier demand on the political science
+of Clary's Grove. But that task was reserved for other hands.
+
+
+
+
+ALFREDUS REX FUNDATOR
+
+
+A few weeks ago an Oxford College celebrated the thousandth anniversary
+of its foundation by King Alfred. [Footnote: We keep the common
+spelling, though AElfred is more correct. It is impossible, in deference
+to antiquarian preciseness, to change the spelling of all these names,
+which are now imbedded in the English classics.]
+
+The college which claims this honour is commonly called University
+College, though its legal name is _Magna Aula Universitatis_. The
+name "University College" causes much perplexity to visitors. They are
+with difficulty taught by the friend who is lionizing them to
+distinguish it from the University. But the University of Oxford is a
+federation of colleges, of which University College is one, resembling
+in all respects the rest of the sisterhood, being, like them, under the
+federal authority of the University, retaining the same measure of
+college right, conducting the domestic instruction and discipline of its
+students through its own officers, but sending them to the lecture rooms
+of the University Professors for the higher teaching, and to the
+University examination rooms to be examined for their degrees. The
+college is an ample and venerable pile, with two towered gateways, each
+opening into a quadrangle, its front stretching along the High Street,
+on the side opposite St. Mary's Church. The darkness of the stone seems
+to bespeak immemorial antiquity, but the style, which is the later
+Gothic characteristic of Oxford, and symbolical of its history, shows
+that the buildings really belong to the time of the Stuarts. "That
+building must be very old, Sir," said an American visitor to the master
+of the college, pointing to its dark front. "Oh, no," was the master's
+reply, "the colour deceives you; that building is not more than two
+hundred years old." In invidious contrast to this mass, debased but
+imposing in its style, the pedantic mania for pure Gothic which marks
+the Neo-catholic reaction in Oxford, and which will perhaps hereafter be
+derided as we deride the classic mania of the last century, has led Mr.
+Gilbert Scott to erect a pure Gothic library. This building, moreover,
+has nothing in its form to bespeak its purpose, but resembles a chapel.
+Over the gateway of the larger quadrangle is a statue, in Roman costume,
+of James II.; one of the few memorials of the ejected tyrant, who in his
+career of reaction visited the college and had two rooms on the east
+side of the quadrangle fitted up for the performance of mass. Obadiah
+Walker, the master of the college, had turned Papist, and became one of
+the leaders of the reaction, in the overthrow of which he was involved,
+the fall of his master and the ruin of his party being announced to him
+by the boys singing at his window--"Ave Maria, old Obadiah." In the same
+quadrangle are the chambers of Shelley, and the room to which he was
+summoned by the assembled college authorities to receive, with his
+friend Hogg, sentence of expulsion for having circulated an atheistical
+treatise. In the ante-chapel is the florid monument of Sir William
+Jones. But the modern divinities of the college are the two great legal
+brothers, Lord Eldon and Lord Stowell, whose colossal statues
+fraternally united are conspicuous in the library, whose portraits hang
+side by side in the hall, whose medallion busts greet you at the
+entrance to the Common Room. Pass by these medallions, and look into the
+Common Room itself, with panelled walls, red curtains, polished mahogany
+table, and generally cozy aspect, whither after the dinner in hall the
+fellows of the college retire to sip their wine and taste such social
+happiness as the rule of celibacy permits. Over that ample fire-place,
+round the blaze of which the circle is drawn in the winter evenings, you
+will see the marble bust, carved by no mean hand, of an ancient king,
+and underneath it are the words _Alfredus Rex Fundator_.
+
+Alas! both traditions--the tradition that Alfred founded the University
+of Oxford, and the tradition that he founded University College--are
+devoid of historical foundation. Universities did not exist in Alfred's
+days. They were developed centuries later out of the monastery schools.
+When Queen Elizabeth was on a visit to Cambridge, a scholar delivered
+before her an oration, in which he exalted the antiquity of his own
+university at the expense of that of the University of Oxford. The
+University of Oxford was roused to arms. In that uncritical age any
+antiquarian weapon which the fury of academical patriotism could supply
+was eagerly grasped, and the reputation of the great antiquary Camden is
+somewhat compromised with regard to an interpolation in Asser's Life of
+Alfred, which formed the chief documentary support of the Oxford case.
+The historic existence of both the English universities dawns in the
+reign of the scholar king, and the restorer of order and prosperity
+after the ravages of the conquest and the tyranny of Rufus--Henry I. In
+that reign the Abbot of Croyland, to gain money for the rebuilding of
+his abbey, set up a school where, we are told, Priscian's grammar,
+Aristotle's logic with the commentaries of Porphyry and Averroes, Cicero
+and Quintilian as masters of rhetoric, were taught after the manner of
+the school of Orleans. In the following reign a foreign professor,
+Vacarius, roused the jealousy of the English monarchy and baronage by
+teaching Roman law in the schools of Oxford. The thirteenth century,
+that marvellous and romantic age of mediaeval religion and character,
+mediaeval art, mediaeval philosophy, was also the palmy age of the
+universities. Then Oxford gloried in Groseteste, at once paragon and
+patron of learning, church reformer and champion of the national church
+against Roman aggression; in his learned and pious friend, Adam de
+Marisco; and in Roger Bacon, the pioneer and proto-martyr of physical
+science. Then, with Paris, she was the great seat of that school
+philosophy, wonderful in its subtlety as well as in its aridity, which,
+albeit it bore no fruit itself, trained the mind of Europe for more
+fruitful studies, and was the original product of mediaeval Christendom,
+though its forms of thought were taken from the deified Stagyrite, and
+it was clothed in the Latin language, though in a form of that language
+so much altered and debased from the classical as to become, in fact, a
+literary vernacular of the Middle Ages. Then her schools, her church
+porches, her very street corners, every spot where a professor could
+gather an audience, were thronged with the aspiring youth who had
+flocked, many of them begging their way out of the dark prison-house of
+feudalism, to what was then, in the absence of printing, the sole centre
+of intellectual light. Then Oxford, which in later times became from the
+clerical character of the headships and fellowships the great organ of
+reaction, was the great organ of progress, produced the political songs
+which embodied, with wonderful force, the principles of free government,
+and sent her students to fight under the banner of the university in the
+army of Simon de Montfort.
+
+It was in the thirteenth century that University College was really
+founded. The founder was William of Durham, an English ecclesiastic who
+had studied in the University of Paris. The universities were, like the
+church, common to all the natives of Latin Christendom, that
+ecclesiastical and literary federation of the European States, which,
+afterwards broken up by the Reformation, is now in course of
+reconstruction through uniting influences of a new kind. William of
+Durham bequeathed to the University a fund for the maintenance of
+students in theology. The university purchased with the fund a house in
+which these students were maintained, and which was styled the Great
+Hall of the University, in contra-distinction to the multitude of little
+private halls or hospices in which students lived, generally under the
+superintendence of a graduate who was their teacher. The hall or college
+was under the visitorship of the University; but this visitorship being
+irksome, and a dispute having arisen in the early part of the last
+century whether it was to be exercised by the University at large, in
+convocation, or by the theological faculty only, the college set up a
+claim to be a royal foundation of the time of King Alfred, the reputed
+founder of the University, and thus exempt from any visitorship but that
+of the Crown. It was probably not very difficult to convince a
+Hanoverian court of law that the visitorship of an Oxford college ought
+to be transferred from the Jacobite university to the Crown; and so it
+came to pass that the Court of King's Bench solemnly ratified as a fact
+what historical criticism pronounces to be a baseless fable. The case in
+favour of William of Durham as the founder is so clear, that the
+antiquaries are ready to burst with righteous indignation, and one
+almost enjoys the intensity of their wrath.
+
+The Great Hall of the University was not, when first founded, a perfect
+college. It was only a house for some eight or ten graduates in arts who
+were studying divinity. The first perfect college was founded by Walter
+de Merton, the Chancellor of Henry III., to whom is due the conception
+of uniting the anti-monastic pursuit of secular learning with monastic
+seclusion and discipline, for the benefit of that multitude of young
+students who had hitherto dwelt at large in the city under little or no
+control, and often showed, by their faction fights and other outrages,
+that they contained the quintessence of the nation's turbulence as well
+as of its intellectual activity and ambition. The quaint old quadrangle
+of Merton, called, nobody seems to know why, "Mob" Quad, may be regarded
+as the cradle of collegiate life in England, and indeed in Europe.
+
+Still University College is the oldest foundation of learning now
+existing in England; and therefore it may be not inappropriately
+dedicated to the memory of the king who was the restorer of our
+intellectual life as well as the preserver of our religion and our
+institutions. Mr. Freeman, as the stern minister of fact, would, no
+doubt, cast down the bust of Alfred from the Common Room chimney-piece
+and set up that of William of Durham, if a likeness of him could be
+found, in its place. But it may be doubted whether William of Durham, if
+he were alive, would do the same.
+
+Marcus Aurelius, Alfred and St. Louis, are the three examples of perfect
+virtue on a throne. But the virtue of St. Louis is deeply tainted with
+asceticism; and with the sublimated selfishness on which asceticism is
+founded, he sacrifices everything and everybody--sacrifices national
+interests, sacrifices the lives of the thousands of his subjects whom he
+drags with him in his chimerical crusades--to the good of his own soul.
+The Reflections of Marcus Aurelius will be read with ever increasing
+admiration by all who have learned to study character, and to read it in
+its connection with history. Alone in every sense, without guidance or
+support but that which he found in his own breast, the imperial Stoic
+struggled serenely, though hopelessly, against the powers of evil which
+were dragging heathen Rome to her inevitable doom. Alfred was a
+Christian hero, and in his Christianity he found the force which bore
+him, through calamity apparently hopeless, to victory and happiness.
+
+It must be owned that the materials for the history of the English king
+are not very good. His biography by Bishop Asser, his counsellor and
+friend, which forms the principal authority, is panegyrical and
+uncritical, not to mention that a doubt rests on the authenticity of
+some portions of it. But in the general picture there are a consistency
+and a sobriety, which, combined with its peculiarity, commend it to us
+as historical. The leading acts of Alfred's life are, of course, beyond
+doubt. And as to his character, he speaks to us himself in his works,
+and the sentiments which he expresses perfectly correspond with the
+physiognomy of the portrait.
+
+We have called him a Christian hero. He was the victorious champion of
+Christianity against Paganism. This is the real significance of the
+struggle and of his character. The Northmen, or, as we loosely term
+them, the Danes, are called by the Saxon chroniclers the Pagans. As to
+race, the Northman, like the Saxon, was a Teuton, and the institutions,
+and the political and social tendencies of both, were radically the
+same.
+
+It has been said that Christianity enervated the English and gave them
+over into the hands of the fresh and robust sons of nature. Asceticism
+and the abuse of monachism enervated the English. Asceticism taught the
+spiritual selfishness which flies from the world and abandons it to ruin
+instead of serving God by serving humanity. Kings and chieftains, under
+the hypocritical pretence of exchanging a worldly for an angelic life,
+buried themselves in the indolence, not seldom in the sensuality, of the
+cloister, when they ought to have been leading their people against the
+Dane. But Christianity formed the bond which held the English together,
+and the strength of their resistance. It inspired their patriot martyrs,
+it raised up to them a deliverer at their utmost need. The causes of
+Danish success are manifest; superior prowess and valour, sustained by
+more constant practice in war, of which the Saxon had probably had
+comparatively little since the final subjection of the Celt and the
+union of the Saxon kingdoms under Egbert; the imperfect character of
+that union, each kingdom retaining its own council and its own
+interests; and above all the command of the sea, which made the invaders
+ubiquitous, while the march of the defenders was delayed, and their
+junction prevented, by the woods and morasses of the uncleared island,
+in which the only roads worthy of the name were those left by the
+Romans.
+
+It would be wrong to call the Northmen mere corsairs, or even to class
+them with piratical states such as Cilicia of old, or Barbary in more
+recent times. Their invasions were rather to be regarded as an after-act
+of the great migration of the Germanic tribes, one of the last waves of
+the flood which overwhelmed the Roman Empire, and deposited the germs of
+modern Christendom. They were, and but for the defensive energy of the
+Christianized Teuton would have been, to the Saxon what the Saxon had
+been to the Celt, whose sole monuments in England now are the names of
+hills and rivers, the usual epitaph of exterminated races. Like the
+Saxons the Northmen came by sea, untouched by those Roman influences,
+political and religious, by which most of the barbarians had been more
+or less transmuted before their actual irruption into the Empire. If
+they treated all the rest of mankind as their prey, this was the
+international law of heathendom, modified only by a politic humanity in
+the case of the Imperial Roman, who preferred enduring dominion to blood
+and booty. With Christianity came the idea, even now imperfectly
+realized, of the brotherhood of man. The Northmen were a memorable race,
+and English character, especially its maritime element, received in them
+a momentous addition. In their northern abodes they had undergone, no
+doubt, the most rigorous process of national selection. The sea-roving
+life, to which they were driven by the poverty of their soil, as the
+Scandinavian of our day is driven to emigration, intensified in them the
+vigour, the enterprise, and the independence of the Teuton. As has been
+said before, they were the first ocean sailors; for the Phoenicians,
+though adventurous had crept along the shore; and the Greeks and Romans
+had done the same. The Northman, stouter of heart than they, put forth
+into mid Atlantic. American antiquarians are anxious to believe in a
+Norse discovery of America. Norse colonies were planted in Greenland
+beyond what is now the limit of human habitation; and when a power grew
+up in his native seats which could not be brooked by the Northman's love
+of freedom, he founded amidst the unearthly scenery of Iceland a
+community which brought the image of a republic of the Homeric type far
+down into historic times. His race, widely dispersed in its course of
+adventure, and everywhere asserting its ascendancy, sat on the thrones
+of Normandy, Apulia, Sicily, England, Ireland, and even Russia, and gave
+heroic chiefs to the crusaders. The pirates were not without heart
+towards each other, nor without a rudimentary civilization, which
+included on the one hand a strong regard for freehold property in land,
+and on the other a passionate love of heroic days. Their mythology was
+the universal story of the progress of the sun and the changes of the
+year, but in a northern version, wild with storms and icebergs, gloomy
+with the darkness of Scandinavian winters. Their religion was a war
+religion, the lord of their hearts a war god; their only heaven was that
+of the brave, their only hell that of the coward; and the joys of
+Paradise were a renewal of the fierce combat and the fierce carouse of
+earth. Some of them wound themselves up on the eve of battle to a frenzy
+like that of a Malay running amuck. But this was, at all events, a
+religion of action, not of ceremonial or spell; and it quelled the fear
+of death. In some legends of the Norse mythology there is a humorous
+element which shows freedom of spirit; while in others, such as the
+legend of the death of Balder, there is a pathos not uncongenial to
+Christianity. The Northmen were not priest-ridden. Their gods were not
+monstrous and overwhelming forces like the hundred-handed idols of the
+Hindu, but human forms, their own high qualities idealized, like the
+gods of the Greek, though with Scandinavian force in place of Hellenic
+grace.
+
+Converted to Christianity, the Northman transferred his enthusiasm, his
+martial prowess and his spirit of adventure from the service of Odin to
+that of Christ, and became a devotee and a crusader. But in his
+unconverted state he was an exterminating enemy of Christianity; and
+Christianity was the civilization as well as the religion of England.
+
+Scarcely had the Saxon kingdom been united by Egbert, when the barks of
+the Northmen appeared, filling the English Charlemagne, no doubt, with
+the same foreboding sorrow with which they had filled his Frankish
+prototype and master. In the course of the half century which followed,
+the swarms of rovers constantly increased, and grew more pertinacious
+and daring in their attacks. Leaving their ships they took horses,
+extended their incursions inland, and formed in the interior of the
+country strongholds, into which they brought the plunder of the
+district. At last they in effect conquered the North and Midland, and
+set up a satrap king, as the agent of their extortion. They seem, like
+the Franks of Clovis, to have quartered themselves as "guests" upon the
+unhappy people of the land. The monasteries and churches were the
+special objects of their attacks, both as the seats of the hated
+religion, and as the centres of wealth; and their sword never spared a
+monk. Croyland, Peterborough, Huntingdon and Ely, were turned to blood-
+stained ashes. Edmund, the Christian chief of East Anglia, found a
+martyrdom, of which one of the holiest and most magnificent of English
+abbeys was afterwards the monument. The brave Algar, another East
+Anglian chieftain, having taken the holy sacrament with all his
+followers on the eve of battle, perished with them in a desperate
+struggle, overcome by the vulpine cunning of the marauders. Among the
+leaders of the Northmen were the terrible brothers Ingrar and Ubba,
+fired, if the Norse legend may be trusted, by revenge as well as by the
+love of plunder and horror; for they were the sons of that Ragnar
+Lodbrok who had perished in the serpent tower of the Saxon Ella. When
+Alfred appeared upon the scene, Wessex itself, the heritage of the house
+of Cerdic and the supreme kingdom, was in peril from the Pagans, who had
+firmly entrenched themselves at Reading, in the angle between the Thames
+and Kennet, and English Christianity was threatened with destruction.
+
+A younger but a favourite child, Alfred was sent in his infancy by his
+father to Rome to receive the Pope's blessing. He was thus affiliated,
+as it were, to that Roman element, ecclesiastical and political, which,
+combined with the Christian and Teutonic elements, has made up English
+civilization. But he remained through life a true Teuton. He went a
+second time, in company with his father, to Rome, still a child, yet old
+enough, especially if he was precocious, to receive some impressions
+from the city of historic grandeur, ancient art, ecclesiastical order,
+centralized power. There is a pretty legend, denoting the docility of
+the boy and his love of learning, or at least of the national lays; but
+he was also a hunter and a warrior. From his youth he had a thorn in his
+flesh, in the shape of a mysterious disease, perhaps epilepsy, to which
+monkish chroniclers have given an ascetic and miraculous turn; and this
+enhances our sense of the hero's moral energy in the case of Alfred, as
+in that of William III.
+
+As "Crown Prince," to use the phrase of a German writer, Alfred took
+part with his elder brother, King Ethelbert, in the mortal struggle
+against the Pagans, then raging around Reading and along the rich valley
+through which the 'Great Western Railway' now runs, and where a Saxon
+victory is commemorated by the White Horse, which forms the subject of a
+little work by Thomas Hughes, a true representative, if any there be, of
+the liegemen and soldiers of King Alfred. When Ethelbert was showing
+that in him at all events Christianity was not free from the ascetic
+taint, by continuing to hear mass in his tent when the moment had come
+for decisive action, Alfred charged up-hill "like a wild boar" against
+the heathen, and began a battle which, his brother at last coming up,
+ended in a great victory. The death of Ethelbert, in the midst of the
+crisis, placed the perilous crown on Alfred's head. Ethelbert left
+infant sons, but the monarchy was elective, though one of the line of
+Cerdic was always chosen; and those were the days of the real king, the
+ruler judge, and captain of the people, not of what Napoleon called the
+_cochon a l'engrais a cinq millions par an_. In pitched battles,
+eight of which were fought in rapid succession, the English held their
+own; but they were worn out, and at length could no longer be brought
+into the field. Whether a faint monkish tradition of the estrangement of
+the people by unpopular courses on the part of the young king has any
+substance of truth we cannot say.
+
+Utter gloom now settled down upon the Christian king and people. Had
+Alfred yielded to his inclinations, he would probably have followed the
+example of his brother-in-law, Buhred of Mercia, and sought a congenial
+retreat amidst the churches and libraries of Rome; asceticism would have
+afforded him a pretext for so doing; but he remained at the post of
+duty. Athelney, a little island in the marshes of Somersetshire--then
+marshes, now drained and a fruitful plain--to which he retired with the
+few followers left him, has been aptly compared to the mountains of
+Asturias, which formed the last asylum of Christianity in Spain. A jewel
+with the legend in Anglo-Saxon, "Alfred caused me to be made," was found
+near the spot, and is now in the University Museum at Oxford. A similar
+island in the marshes of Cambridgeshire formed the last rallying point
+of English patriotism against the Norman Conquest. Of course, after the
+deliverance, a halo of legends gathered around Athelney. The legends of
+the king disguised as a peasant in the cottage of the herdsman, and of
+the king disguised as a harper in the camp of the Dane, are familiar to
+childhood. There is also a legend of the miraculous appearance of the
+great Saxon Saint Cuthbert. The king in his extreme need had gone to
+fish in a neighbouring stream, but had caught nothing, and was trying to
+comfort himself by reading the Psalms, when a poor man came to the door
+and begged for a piece of bread. The king gave him half his last loaf
+and the little wine left in the pitcher. The beggar vanished; the loaf
+was unbroken, the pitcher brimful of wine; and fishermen came in
+bringing a rich haul of fish from the river. In the night St. Cuthbert
+appeared to the king in a dream and promised him victory. We see at
+least what notion the generations nearest to him had of the character of
+Alfred.
+
+At last the heart of the oppressed people turned to its king, and the
+time arrived for a war of liberation. But on the morrow of victory
+Alfred compromised with the Northmen. He despaired, it seems, of their
+final expulsion, and thought it better, if possible, to make them
+Englishmen and Christians, and, to convert them into a barrier against
+their foreign and heathen brethren. We see in this politic moderation at
+once a trait of national character and a proof that the exploits of
+Alfred are not mythical. By the treaty of Wedmore, the northeastern part
+of England became the portion of the Dane, where he was to dwell in
+peace with the Saxon people, and in allegiance to their king, but under
+his own laws--an arrangement which had nothing strange in it when law
+was only the custom of the tribe. As a part of the compact, Guthorm led
+over his Northmen from the allegiance of Odin to that of Christ, and was
+himself baptized by the Christian name of Athelstan. When religions were
+national, or rather tribal, conversions were tribal too. The Northmen of
+East Anglia had not so far put off their heathen propensities or their
+savage perfidy as to remain perfectly true to their covenant: but, on
+the whole, Alfred's policy of compromise and assimilation was
+successful. A new section of heathen Teutonism was incorporated into
+Christendom, and England absorbed a large Norse population whose
+dwelling-place is still marked by the names of places, and perhaps in
+some measure by the features and character of the people. In the
+fishermen of Whitby, for example, a town with a Danish name, there is a
+peculiarity which is probably Scandinavian.
+
+The transaction resembled the cession of Normandy to Rolf and his
+followers by the Carlovingian King of France. But the cession of
+Normandy marked the dissolution of the Carlovingian monarchy: from the
+cession of East Anglia to Guthorm dates a regeneration of the monarchy
+of Cerdic.
+
+Alfred had rescued the country. But the country which he had rescued was
+a wreck. The Church, the great organ of civilization as well as of
+spiritual life, was ruined. The monasteries were in ashes. The monks of
+St. Cuthbert were wandering from place to place, with the relics of the
+great northern Saint. The worship of Woden seemed on the point of
+returning. The clergy had exchanged the missal and censer for the
+battle-axe, and had become secularized and brutalized by the conflict.
+The learning of the Order was dead. The Latin language, the tongue of
+the Church, of literature, of education, was almost extinct. Alfred
+himself says that he could not recollect a priest, south of the Thames,
+who understood the Latin service or could translate a document from the
+Latin when he became king. Political institutions were in an equal state
+of disorganization. Spiritual, intellectual, civil life--everything was
+to be restored; and Alfred undertook to restore everything. No man in
+these days stands alone, or towers in unapproachable superiority above
+his fellows. Nor can any man now play all the parts. A division of
+labour has taken place in all spheres. The time when the missionaries at
+once converted and civilized the forefathers of European Christendom,
+when Charlemagne or Alfred was the master spirit in everything, has
+passed away, and with it the day of hero-worship, of rational hero-
+worship, has departed, at least for the European nations. The more
+backward races may still need, and have reason to venerate, a Peter the
+Great.
+
+Alfred had to do everything almost with his own hands. He was himself
+the inventor of the candle-clock which measured his time, so unspeakably
+precious, and of the lantern of transparent horn which protected the
+candle-clock against the wind in the tent, or the lodging scarcely more
+impervious to the weather than a tent, which in those times sheltered
+the head of wandering royalty. Far and wide he sought for men, like a
+bee in quest of honey, to condense a somewhat prolix trope of his
+biographer. An embassy of bishops, priests and religious laymen, with
+great gifts, was sent to the Archbishop of Rheims, within whose diocese
+the famous Grimbald resided, to persuade him to allow Grimbald to come
+to England, and with difficulty the ambassadors prevailed, Alfred
+promising to treat Grimbald with distinguished honour during the rest of
+his life. It is touching to see what a price the king set upon a good
+and able man. "I was called," says Asser, "from the western extremity of
+Wales. I was led to Sussex, and first saw the king in the royal mansion
+of Dene. He received me with kindness, and amongst other conversation,
+earnestly besought me to devote myself to his service, and to become his
+companion. He begged me to give up my preferments beyond the Severn,
+promising to bestow on me still richer preferments in their place."
+Asser said that he was unwilling to quit, merely for worldly honour, the
+country in which he had been brought up and ordained. "At least,"
+replied the king, "give me half your time. Pass six months of the year
+with me and the rest in Wales." Asser still hesitated. The king repeated
+his solicitations, and Asser promised to return within half a year; the
+time was fixed for his visit, and on the fourth day of their interview
+he left the king and went home.
+
+In order to restore civilization, it was necessary above all things to
+reform the Church. "I have often thought," says Alfred, "what wise men
+there were once among the English people, both clergy and laymen, and
+what blessed times those were when the people were governed by kings who
+obeyed God and His gospels, and how they maintained peace, virtue and
+good order at home, and even extended them beyond their own country; how
+they prospered in battle as well as in wisdom, and how zealous the
+clergy were in teaching and learning, and in all their sacred duties;
+and how people came hither from foreign countries to seek for
+instruction, whereas now, when we desire it, we can only obtain it from
+abroad." It is clear that the king, unlike the literary devotees of
+Scandinavian paganism, looked upon Christianity as the root of the
+greatness, and even of the military force, of the nation.
+
+In order to restore the Church again, it was necessary above all things
+to refound the monasteries. Afterwards--society having become settled,
+religion being established, and the Church herself having acquired fatal
+wealth--these brotherhoods sank into torpor and corruption; but while
+the Church was still a missionary in a spiritual and material
+wilderness, waging a death struggle with heathenism and barbarism, they
+were the indispensable engines of the holy war. The re-foundation of
+monasteries, therefore, was one of Alfred's first cares; and he did not
+fail, in token of his pious gratitude, to build at Athelney a house of
+God which was far holier than the memorial abbey afterwards built by the
+Norman Conqueror at Battle. The revival of monasticism among the
+English, however, was probably no easy task, for their domestic and
+somewhat material nature never was well suited to monastic life. The
+monastery schools, the germs, as has been already said, of our modern
+universities and colleges, were the King's main organs in restoring
+education; but he had also a school in his palace for the children of
+the nobility and the royal household. It was not only clerical education
+that he desired to promote. His wish was "that all the free-born youth
+of his people, who possessed the means, might persevere in learning so
+long as they had no other work to occupy them, until they could
+perfectly read the English scriptures; while such as desired to devote
+themselves to the service of the Church might be taught Latin." No doubt
+the wish was most imperfectly fulfilled, but still it was a noble wish.
+We are told the King himself was often present at the instruction of the
+children in the palace school. A pleasant calm after the storms of
+battle with the Dane!
+
+Oxford (Ousen-ford, the ford of the Ouse) was already a royal city; and
+it may be conjectured that, amidst the general restoration of learning
+under Alfred, a school of some sort would be opened there. This is the
+only particle of historical foundation for the academic legend which
+gave rise to the recent celebration. Oxford was desolated by the Norman
+Conquest, and anything that remained of the educational institution of
+Alfred was in all probability swept away.
+
+Another measure, indispensable to the civilizer as well as to the church
+reformer in those days, was to restore the intercourse with Rome, and
+through her with continental Christendom, which had been interrupted by
+the troubles. The Pope, upon Alfred's accession, had sent him gifts and
+a piece of the Holy Cross. Alfred sent embassies to the Pope, and made a
+voluntary annual offering, to obtain favourable treatment for his
+subjects at Rome. But, adopted child of Rome, and naturally attached to
+her as the centre of ecclesiastical order and its civilizing influences
+though he was, and much as he was surrounded by ecclesiastical friends
+and ministers, we trace in him no ultramontanism, no servile submission
+to priests. The English Church, so far as we can see, remains national,
+and the English King remains its head.
+
+Not only with Latin but with Eastern Christendom, Alfred, if we may
+trust the contemporary Saxon chronicles, opened communication. As
+Charlemagne, in the spirit partly perhaps of piety, partly of ambition,
+had sent an embassy with proofs of his grandeur to the Caliph of Bagdad;
+as Louis XIV., in the spirit of mere ambition, delighted to receive an
+embassy from Siam; so Alfred, in a spirit of piety unmixed, sent
+ambassadors to the traditional Church of St. Thomas in India: and the
+ambassadors returned, we are told, with perfumes and precious stones as
+the memorials of their journey, which were long preserved in the
+churches. "This was the first intercourse," remarks Pauli, "that took
+place between England and Hindostan."
+
+All nations are inclined to ascribe their primitive institutions to some
+national founder, a Lycurgus, a Theseus, a Romulus. It is not necessary
+now to prove that Alfred did not found trial by jury, or the frank-
+pledge, or that he was not the first who divided the kingdom into
+shires, hundreds, or tithings. The part of trial by jury which has been
+politically of so much importance, its popular character, as opposed to
+arbitrary trial by a royal or imperial officer--that of which the
+preservation, amidst the general prevalence of judicial imperialism, has
+been the glory of England--was simply Teutonic; so was the frank-pledge,
+the rude machinery for preserving law and order by mutual responsibility
+in the days before police; so were the hundreds and the tithings,
+rudimentary institutions marking the transition from the clan to the
+local community or canton. The shires probably marked some stage in the
+consolidation of the Saxon settlements; at all events they were ancient
+divisions which Alfred can at most only have reconstituted in a revised
+form after the anarchy.
+
+He seems, however, to have introduced a real and momentous innovation by
+appointing special judges to administer a more regular justice than that
+which was administered in the local courts of the earls and bishops, or
+even in the national assembly. In this respect he was the imitator,
+probably the unconscious imitator, of Charlemagne, and the precursor of
+Henry II., the institutor of our Justices in Eyre. The powers and
+functions of the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, lie at
+first enfolded in the same germ, and are alike exercised by the king,
+or, as in the case of the ancient republics, by the national assembly.
+It is a great step when the special office of the judiciary is separated
+from the rest. It is a great step also when uniformity of justice is
+introduced. Probably, however, these judges, like the itinerant justices
+of Henry II., were administrative as well as judicial officers; or, in
+the terms of our modern polity, they were delegates of the Home Office
+as well as of the Central Courts of Law.
+
+In his laws, Alfred, with the sobriety and caution on which the
+statesmen of his race have prided themselves, renounces the character of
+an innovator, fearing, as he says, that his innovations might not be
+accepted by those who would come after him. His code, if so inartificial
+a document can be dignified with the name, is mainly a compilation from
+the laws of his Saxon predecessors. We trace, however, an advance from
+the barbarous system of weregeld, or composition for murder and other
+crimes as private wrongs, towards a State system of criminal justice. In
+totally forbidding composition for blood, and asserting that
+indefeasible sanctity of human life which is the essential basis of
+civilization, the code of Moses stands contrasted with other primaeval
+codes. Alfred, in fact, incorporated an unusually large amount of the
+Mosaic and Christian elements, which blend with Germanic customs and the
+relics of Roman law, in different proportions, to make up the various
+codes of the early Middle Ages, called the Laws of the Barbarians. His
+code opens with the Ten Commandments, followed by extracts from Exodus,
+containing the Mosaic law respecting the relations between masters and
+servants, murder and other crimes, and the observance of holy days, and
+the Apostolic Epistle from Acts xv 23-29. Then is added Matthew vii. 12,
+"Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them."
+"By this one Commandment," says Alfred, "a man shall know whether he
+does right, and he will then require no other law-book." This is not the
+form of a modern Act of Parliament, but legislation in those days was as
+much preaching as enactment; it often resembled in character the Royal
+Proclamation against Vice and Immorality.
+
+Alfred's laws unquestionably show a tendency to enforce loyalty to the
+king, and to enhance the guilt of treason, which, in the case of an
+attempt on the king's life, is punished with death and confiscation,
+instead of the old composition by payment of the royal weregeld. Hence
+he has been accused of imperializing and anti-Teutonic tendencies; he
+had even the misfortune to be fixed upon as a prototype by Oxford
+advocates of the absolutism of Charles I. There is no ground for the
+charge, so far at least as Alfred's legislation or any known measure of
+his government is concerned. The kingly power was the great source of
+order and justice amidst that anarchy, the sole rallying point and bond
+of union for the imperilled nation; to maintain it, and protect from
+violence the life of its holder, was the duty of a patriot law-giver:
+and as the authority of a Saxon king depended in great measure on his
+personal character and position, no doubt the personal authority of
+Alfred was exceptionally great. But he continued to govern by the advice
+of the national council; and the fundamental principles of the Teutonic
+polity remained unimpaired by him, and were transmitted intact to his
+successors. His writings breathe a sense of the responsibilities of
+rulers and a hatred of tyranny. He did not even attempt to carry further
+the incorporation of the subordinate kingdoms with Wessex; but ruled
+Mercia as a separate state by the hand of his brother-in-law, and left
+it to its own national council or witan. Considering his circumstances,
+and the chaos from which his government had emerged, it is wonderful
+that he did not centralize more. He was, we repeat, a true Teuton, and
+entirely worthy of his place in the Germanic Walhalla.
+
+The most striking proof of his multifarious activity of mind, and of the
+unlimited extent of the task which his circumstances imposed upon him,
+as well as of his thoroughly English character, is his undertaking to
+give his people a literature in their own tongue. To do this he had
+first to educate himself--to educate himself at an advanced age, after
+a life of fierce distraction, and with the reorganization of his
+shattered kingdom on his hands. In his boyhood he had got by heart Saxon
+lays, vigorous and inspiring, but barbarous; he had learned to read, but
+it is thought that he had not learned to write. "As we were one day
+sitting in the royal chamber," says Asser, "and were conversing as was
+our wont, it chanced that I read him a passage out of a certain book.
+After he had listened with fixed attention, and expressed great delight,
+he showed me the little book which he always carried about with him, and
+in which the daily lessons, psalms and prayers, were written, and begged
+me to transcribe that passage into his book." Asser assented, but found
+that the book was already full, and proposed to the king to begin
+another book, which was soon in its turn filled with extracts. A portion
+of the process of Alfred's education is recorded by Asser. "I was
+honourably received at the royal mansion, and at that time stayed eight
+months in the king's court. I translated and read to him whatever books
+he wished which were within our reach; for it was his custom, day and
+night, amidst all his afflictions of mind and body, to read books
+himself or have them read to him by others." To original composition
+Alfred did not aspire; he was content with giving his people a body of
+translations of what he deemed the best authors; here again showing his
+royal good sense. In the selection of his authors, he showed liberality
+and freedom from Roman, ecclesiastical, imperialist, or other bias. On
+the one hand he chooses for the benefit of the clergy whom he desired to
+reform, the "Pastoral Care" of the good Pope, Gregory the Great, the
+author of the mission which had converted England to Christianity; but
+on the other hand he chooses the "Consolations of Philosophy," the chief
+work of Boethius, the last of the Romans, and the victim of the cruel
+jealousy of Theodoric. Of Boethius Hallam says "Last of the classic
+writers, in style not impure, though displaying too lavishly that poetic
+exuberance which had distinguished the two or three preceding centuries;
+in elevation of sentiment equal to any of the philosophers; and mingling
+a Christian sanctity with their lessons, he speaks from his prison in
+the swan-like tones of dying eloquence. The philosophy which consoled
+him in bonds was soon required in the sufferings of a cruel death.
+Quenched in his blood, the lamp he had trimmed with a skilful hand gave
+no more light; the language of Tully and Virgil soon ceased to be
+spoken; and many ages were to pass away before learned diligence
+restored its purity, and the union of genius with imitation taught a few
+modern writers to 'surpass in eloquence' the Latinity of Boethius."
+Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English, the highest product of
+that memorable burst of Saxon intellect which followed the conversion,
+and a work, not untainted by miracle and legend, yet most remarkable for
+its historical qualities as well as for its mild and liberal
+Christianity, is balanced in the king's series of translations by the
+work of Orosius, who wrote of general and secular history, though with a
+religious object. In the translation of Orosius, Alfred has inserted a
+sketch of the geography of Germany, and the reports of explorations made
+by two mariners under his auspices among the natives dwelling on the
+coasts of the Baltic and the North Sea--further proof of the variety of
+his interests and the reach of his mind.
+
+In his prefaces, and in his amplifications and interpolations of the
+philosophy of Boethius, Alfred comes before us an independent author,
+and shows us something of his own mind on theology, on philosophy, on
+government, and generally as to the estate of man. To estimate these
+passages rightly, we must put ourselves back into the anarchical and
+illiterate England of the ninth century, and imagine a writer, who, if
+we could see him, would appear barbarous and grotesque, as would all his
+equipments and surroundings, and one who had spent his days in a
+desperate struggle with wolfish Danes, seated at his literary work in
+his rude Saxon mansion, with his candle-clock protected by the horn
+lantern against the wind. The utterances of Alfred will then appear
+altogether worthy of his character and his deeds. He always emphasizes
+and expands passages which speak either of the responsibilities of
+rulers or of the nothingness of earthly power; and the reflections are
+pervaded by a pensiveness which reminds us of Marcus Aurelius. The
+political world had not much advanced when, six centuries after Alfred,
+it arrived at Machiavelli.
+
+There is an especial sadness in the tone of some words respecting the
+estate of kings, their intrinsic weakness, disguised only by their royal
+trains, the mutual dread that exists between them and those by whom they
+are surrounded, the drawn sword that always hangs over their heads, "as
+to me it ever did." We seem to catch a glimpse of some trials, and
+perhaps errors, not recorded by Asser or the chroniclers.
+
+In his private life Alfred appears to have been an example of conjugal
+fidelity and manly purity, while we see no traces of the asceticism
+which was revered by the superstition of the age of Edward the
+Confessor. His words on the value and the claims of a wife, if not up to
+the standard of modern sentiment, are at least instinct with genuine
+affection.
+
+The struggle with the Northmen was not over. Their swarms came again, in
+the latter part of Alfred's reign, from Germany, whence they had been
+repulsed, and from France, which they had exhausted by their ravages.
+But the king's generalship foiled them and compelled them to depart.
+Seeing where their strength lay, he built a regular fleet to encounter
+them on their own element, and he may be called the founder of the Royal
+Navy.
+
+His victory was decisive. The English monarchy rose from the ground in
+renewed strength, and entered on a fresh lease of greatness. A line of
+able kings followed Alfred. His son and successor, Edward, inherited his
+vigour. His favourite grandson, Athelstan, smote the Dane and the Scot
+together at Brunanburgh, and awoke by his glorious victory the last
+echoes of Saxon song. Under Edgar the greatness of the monarchy reached
+its highest pitch, and it embraced the whole island under its imperial
+ascendancy. At last its hour came; but when Canute founded a Danish
+dynasty he and his Danes were Christians.
+
+"This I can now truly say, that so long as I have lived I have striven
+to live worthily, and after my death to leave my memory to my
+descendants in good works." If the king who wrote those words did not
+found a university or a polity, he restored and perpetuated the
+foundations of English institutions, and he left what is almost as
+valuable as any institution--a great and inspiring example of public
+duty.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME
+
+
+"Has humanity such forces at its command wherewith to combat vice and
+baseness, that each school of virtue can afford to repel the aid of the
+rest, and to maintain that it alone is entitled to the praise of
+courage, of goodness, and of resignation?" Such is the rebuke
+administered by M. Renan to the Christians who refuse to recognise the
+martyrs of Stoicism under the Roman Empire. My eye fell upon the words
+when I had just laid down Professor Mommsen's harsh judgment of the last
+defenders of the Republic, and they seemed to me applicable to this case
+also.
+
+It is needless to say that there has been a curious change of opinion as
+to the merits of these men who, a century ago, were political saints of
+the Liberal party, but whom in the present day Liberal writers are
+emulously striving, with Dante, to thrust down into the nethermost hell.
+Dante puts Brutus and Cassius in hell not because he knows the real
+history of their acts, or because he is qualified to judge of the moral
+and political conditions under which they acted, but simply because he
+is a Ghibelin, and they slew the head of the Holy Roman Empire; and the
+present change of opinion arises, in the main, not from the discovery of
+any new fact, or from the better sifting of those already known, but
+from the prevalence of new sentiments--Imperialism of different shades,
+Bonapartist or Positivist, and perhaps also hero-worship, which of
+course fixes upon Caesar. Positivism and Hero-worship are somewhat
+incongruous allies, for Hero-worship is evidently the least scientific,
+while Positivism aims at being the most scientific, of all the theories
+of history.
+
+We are judging the opponents of Caesar, it seems to me, under the
+dominion of exaggerated notions of the beneficence of the Empire which
+Caesar founded, of its value as a political model, of its connection with
+the life of modern civilization, and of the respect, not to say
+devotion, due to the memory of its founder. Let us try to cast off for
+an hour the influence of these modern sentiments, and put the whole
+group of ancient figures back into its place in ancient history.
+
+The Empire was a necessity at the time when it came--granted. But a
+necessity of what sort? Was it a necessity created by an upward effort,
+by an elevation of humanity, or by degradation and decline? In the
+former case you may pass the same sentence upon those who opposed its
+coming which is passed upon those who crucified Christ, or who, like
+Philip II., opposed the Reformation in the spirit of bigoted reaction.
+But in the latter case they must be charged, not with moral blindness or
+depravity, but only with the lack of that clearness of sight which leads
+men and parties at the right moment, or even in anticipation of the
+right moment, to despair; and such perspicacity, to say the least, is a
+highly scientific quality, requiring perhaps, to make it respectable and
+safe, a more exact knowledge of historical sequences than we even now
+possess. Even now we determine these historical necessities by our
+knowledge of the result. It was a necessity, given all the conditions--
+the treachery of Ephialtes included--that the Persians should force the
+pass of Thermopylae. But the Three Hundred could not know all the
+conditions. Even if they had, would they have done right in giving way?
+They fell, but their spirits fought again at Salamis.
+
+To me it appears that the Empire was a necessity of the second kind;
+that it was an inevitable concession to incurable evil, not a new
+development of good. The Roman morality, the morality which had produced
+and sustained the Republic, was now in a state of final and irremediable
+decay. That morality was narrow and imperfect, or rather it was
+rudimentary, a feeble and transient prototype of the sounder and more
+enduring morality which was soon to be born into the world. It was the
+morality of devotion to a single community, and in fact consisted mainly
+of the performance of duty to that community in war. But it was real and
+energetic after its measure and its own time. It produced a type of
+character, which, if reproduced now, would be out of date and even
+odious, but which stands in history dignified and imposing even to the
+last. Nor was it without elements of permanent value. It contributed
+largely to the patriotism of the seventeenth century, a patriotism which
+has now perhaps become obsolete in its turn, and is superseded in our
+aspirations by an ideal with less of right and self-assertion, with more
+of duty and of social affection, yet did good service against the
+Stuarts. The Roman morality, together with dignity of character,
+produced as usual simplicity of life. It produced a reverence for the
+majesty of law, the voice of the community. It produced relations
+between the sexes, and domestic relations generally, far indeed below
+the ideal, yet decidedly above those which commonly existed in the pagan
+world. It produced a high degree of self-control and of abstinence from
+vices which prevailed elsewhere. It produced fruits of intellect, some
+original, especially in the political sphere, others merely borrowed
+from Greece, yet evincing on the part of the borrower a power of
+appreciating the superior excellence of another, and that a conquered
+nation, the value of which, as breaking through the iron boundary of
+national self-love, has perhaps not received sufficient notice. What was
+of most consequence to the world at large and to history, it produced,
+though probably not so much in the way of obedience to recognised
+principle as of noble instinct, a signal mitigation of Conquest, which
+was then the universal habit, but from being extermination and
+destruction, at best slavery or forcible transplantation, became under
+the Romans a supremacy, imposed indeed by force, and at the cost of much
+suffering, yet, in a certain sense civilizing, and not exercised wholly
+without regard for the good of the subject races. Thus that political
+unity of the nations round the Mediterranean was brought about, which
+was the necessary precursor and protector of a union of a better kind. A
+measure of the same praise is due to Alexander, who was a conqueror of
+the higher order for a similar reason--namely, that though a Macedonian
+prince, he was imbued with the ideas and the morality of the Greek
+republics. But Alexander was a single man, and he could not accomplish
+what was accomplished in a succession of generations by the corporate
+energies and virtues of the Roman Senate.
+
+The conditions under which this morality had maintained itself were now
+gone. It depended on the circumstances of a small community, long
+engaged in a struggle for existence with powerful and aggressive
+neighbours, the Latin, the Etruscan, the Samnite, and the Gaul; entering
+in turn, when its own safety had been secured, on a career of conquest,
+still in a certain sense defensive, since every neighbour was in those
+days an enemy; and continuing to task to the utmost the citizen's
+devotion to the State, the virtues of command and obedience necessary to
+victory, and the frugality necessary to supply the means of great
+national efforts; while luxury was kept at bay, though the means of
+indulging it had begun to flow in, by the check of national danger and
+the counter-attraction of military glory. But all this was at an end
+when Carthage and Macedon were overthrown. National danger and the
+necessity for national effort being removed, self-devotion failed,
+egotism broke loose, and began to revel in the pillage and oppression of
+a conquered world. The Roman character was corrupted, as the Spartan
+character was corrupted when Sparta, from being a camp in the midst of
+hostile Helots, became a dominant power and sent out governors to
+subject states; though the corruption in the case of Sparta was far more
+rapid, because Spartan excellence was more exclusively military, more
+formal and more obsolete. The mass of the Romans ceased to perform
+military duty, and there being no great public duty except military duty
+to be performed, there remained no school of public virtue. Such public
+virtue as there was lingered, though in a degraded form round the eagles
+of the standing armies, to which the duties of the citizen-soldier were
+now consigned; and the soldiery thus acquired not only the power but the
+right of electing the emperors, the best of whom, in fact, after
+Augustus, were generally soldiers. The ruling nation became a city
+rabble, the vices of which were but little tempered by the fitful
+intervention of the enfranchised communities of Italy. Of this rabble,
+political adventurers bought the consulships, which led to the
+government of provinces, and wrung out of the unhappy provincials the
+purchase money and a fortune for themselves besides. These fortunes
+begot colossal luxury and a general reign of vice. Violence mingling
+with corruption in the elections was breeding a complete anarchy in
+Rome. Roman religion, to which, if we believe Polybius, we must ascribe
+a real influence in the maintenance of morality, was at the same time
+undermined by the sceptical philosophy of Greece, and by contact with
+conflicting religions, the spectacle of which had its effect in
+producing the scepticism of Montaigne.
+
+The empire itself was on the point of dissolution. In empires founded by
+single conquerors, such as those of the East, when corruption has made
+the reigning family its prey, the satraps make themselves independent.
+The empire of Alexander was divided among his generals. The empire of
+the conquering republic of Rome, the republic itself having succumbed to
+vices analagous to the corruption of a reigning family, was about to be
+broken up by the great military chiefs. Pompey had already, in fact,
+carved out for himself a separate kingdom in Spain, which with its
+legions he had got permanently into his own hands. Thus the unity of the
+civilized portion of humanity, so indispensable to the future of the
+race, would have been lost. Nor was there any remedy but one.
+Representation of the provinces was out of the question. Supposing it
+possible that a single assembly could have been formed out of all these
+different races and tongues, the representation of the conquered would
+have been the abdication of the conqueror, and abdication was a step for
+which the lazzaroni of the so-called democratic party were as little
+prepared as the haughtiest aristocrat in Rome. A world of egotism,
+without faith or morality, could be held together only by force, which
+presented itself in the person of the ablest, most daring, and most
+unscrupulous adventurer of the time. If faith should again fail, and the
+world again be reduced to a mass of egotism, the same sort of government
+will again, be needed. In fact, we are at this moment rather in danger
+of something of the kind, and these revivals of Caesarism are not wholly
+out of season. But in any other case to propose to society such a model
+would be treason to humanity.
+
+The abandonment of military duty by the Roman people had, among other
+things, made slavery more immoral than ever, because there was no longer
+any semblance of a division of labour: the master could no longer be
+said to defend the slave in war while the slave supported him by labour
+at home. Becoming more immoral, slavery became more cruel. The six
+thousand crosses erected on the road from Capua to Rome after the
+Servile War were the terrible proof.
+
+As to the existence of an oligarchy in the bosom of the dominant
+republic, this would in itself have been no great evil to the subject
+world, to which it mattered little whether its tyrants were a hundred or
+a hundred thousand; just as to the unenfranchised in modern communities
+it matters little whether the enfranchised class be large or small. In
+fact, the broader the basis of a tyranny, the more fearless and
+unscrupulous, generally speaking, the tyranny is.
+
+We need not overstate the case. If we do we shall tarnish the laurels of
+Caesar, who would have shown no genius in killing the republic had the
+republic been already dead. There was still respect for the law and the
+constitution. Pompey's hesitation when supreme power was within his
+grasp, Caesar's own pause at the Rubicon, are proofs of it. The civil
+wars of Marius and Sulla had fearfully impaired, in the eyes of Romans,
+but they had not utterly destroyed, the majesty of Rome. There were
+still great characters--characters which you may dislike, but of which
+you can never rationally speak with contempt--and there must have been
+some general element of worth in which these characters were formed. If
+the recent administration of the Senate had not been glorious, still,
+from a Roman point of view, it had not been disastrous: the revolt of
+the slaves and the insurrection in Spain had been quelled; Mithridates
+had been conquered; the pirates, though for a time their domination
+accused the feebleness of the government, had at length been put down.
+The only great military calamity of recent date was the defeat of
+Crassus, whose unprovoked and insane invasion of Parthia was the error,
+not of the Senate, but of the Triumvirate. Legions were forthcoming for
+the conquest of Gaul, and a large reserve of treasure was found in the
+sacred treasure-house when it was broken open by Caesar. Bad governors of
+provinces, Verres, Fonteius, Gabinius, were impeached and punished.
+Lucullus, autocrat and voluptuary as he was, governed his province well.
+So did Cicero, if we may take his own word for it. We may, at all
+events, take his own word for this, that he was anxious to be thought to
+have ruled with purity and justice, which proves that purity and justice
+were not quite out of fashion. The old Roman spirit still struggled
+against luxury, and we find Cicero suffering from indigestion, caused by
+a supper of vegetables at the house of a wealthy friend, whose excellent
+cook had developed all the resources of gastronomic art in struggling
+with the restrictions imposed by a sumptuary law. There was intellectual
+life, and all the civilized tastes and half-moral qualities which the
+existence of intellectual life implies. In spite of the sanguinary
+anarchy which often broke out in the Roman streets, Cicero, the most
+cultivated and the least combative of men, when in exile or in his
+province, sighs for the capital as a Frenchman sighs for Paris. In
+short, if we consider the case fairly, we shall admit, I believe, that,
+besides the force of memory and of old allegiance, there was enough of
+worth and of apparent hope left, not only to excuse republican
+illusions, but probably to make it a duty to try the issue with fate. I
+say probably, and, after all, how can we presume to speak with certainty
+of a situation so distant from us in time, and so imperfectly recorded?
+
+The great need of the world was public virtue--the spirit of self-
+sacrifice for the common good. This the empire could not possibly call
+into being. The public virtue of the ancient world resided in the
+nationalities which the conquering republic had broken up, and of which
+the empire only sealed the doom. The empire could never call forth even
+the lowest form of public virtue, loyalty to the hereditary right of a
+royal family, because the empire never presented itself as a right, but
+merely as a personal power. The idea of legitimacy, I apprehend never
+connected itself with these dynasts who were, in fact, a series of
+usurpers, veiling their usurpation under republican forms. When the
+spirit which leads man to sacrifice himself to the good of the community
+appeared again it appeared in associations and notably in one great
+association formed not by the empire but independently of it in
+antagonism to its immorality, and in spite of its persecutions.
+Accidentally the empire assisted the extension of the great Christian
+association by completing the overthrow of the national religions, but
+the main part of this work had been done by the republic and it was the
+merit neither of the republic nor of the empire.
+
+It is said with confidence that the empire vastly improved the
+government of the provinces, and that on this account it was a great
+blessing to the world. I do not believe that any nation had then
+attained, I do not believe that any nation has now attained, and I doubt
+whether any nation ever will attain, such a point of morality as to be
+able to govern other nations for the benefit of the governed. I will say
+nothing about our Christian policy in India, but let those who rate
+French morality so highly, consider what French tutelage is to the
+people of Algeria. But supposing the task undertaken, the question which
+is the best organ of imperial government--an assembly or an autocrat--is
+a curious one. I am disposed to think that, taking the average of
+assemblies and the average of autocrats, there is more hope in the
+assembly, because in the assembly opinion must have some force. The
+autocrat is in a certain sense, raised above the dominant nation and its
+interests, but, after all, he is one of that nation, he lives in it, and
+subsists by its support. Even in the time of Augustus, if we may trust
+Dion Cassius Licinius the Governor of Gaul, was guilty of corruptions
+and peculations curiously resembling those of Verres, from whom he seems
+to have borrowed the device of tampering with the calendar for the
+purpose of fiscal fraud, and when the provinces complained, the Emperor
+hushed up the matter, partly to avoid scandal, partly because Licinius
+was cunning enough to pretend that his peculations had been intended to
+cut the sinews of revolt, and that his spoils were reserved for the
+imperial exchequer. The rebellions of Vindex and Civilis seem to prove
+that even Caesar's favourite province was not happy. Spain was
+misgoverned by the deputies both of Julius and Augustus. In Britain, the
+history of the revolt of the Iceni shews that neither the extortions of
+Roman usurers, nor the brutalities of Roman officers, had ended with the
+republic. The blood tax of the conscription appears also to have been
+cruelly exacted. The tribute of largesses and shows which the empire,
+though supposed to be lifted high above all partialities, paid to the
+Roman populace, was drawn almost entirely from the provinces. Emperors
+who coined money with the tongue of the informer and the sword of the
+executioner, were not likely to abstain from selling governorships; and,
+in fact, Seneca intimates that under bad emperors governorships were
+sold. Of course, the tyranny was felt most at Rome, where it was
+present; but when Caligula or Caracalla made a tour in the provinces, it
+was like the march of the pestilence. The absence of a regular
+bureaucracy, practically controlling, as the Russian bureaucracy does,
+the personal will of the Emperor, must have made government better under
+Trajan, but much worse under Nero. The aggregation of land in the hands
+of a few great land-holders evidently continued, and under this system
+the garden of Italy became a desert. The decisive fact, however, is that
+the provinces decayed, and that when the barbarians arrived, all power
+of resistance was gone. That the empire was consciously levelling and
+cosmopolitan, surely cannot be maintained. Actium was a Roman victory
+over the gods of the nations. Augustus, who must have known something
+about the system, avowedly aimed at restoring the number, the purity,
+the privileged exclusiveness of the dominant race. His legislation was
+an attempt to regenerate old Rome; and the political odes of the court
+poet are full of that purpose. That the empire degraded all that had
+once been noble in Rome is true; but the degradation of what had once
+been noble in Rome was not the regeneration of humanity. The vast slave
+population was no more elevated by the ascendency of the freedmen of the
+imperial household than the female sex was elevated by the ascendancy of
+Messalina.
+
+That intellect declined under the emperors, and that the great writers
+of its earlier period, Tacitus included, were really legacies of the
+Republic, cannot be denied; and surely it is a pregnant fact. The empire
+is credited with Roman law. But the Roman law was ripe for codification
+in the time of the first Caesar. The leading principles of the civil law
+seem by that time to have been in existence. Unquestionably the great
+step had been taken of separating law as a science from consecrated
+custom, and of calling into existence regular law courts and what was
+tantamount to a legal profession. The mere evolution of the system from
+its principles required no transcendant effort; and the idea of
+codification must have been something less than divine, or it could not
+have been compassed by the intellect of Justinian. The criminal law of
+the empire, with its arbitrary courts, its secret procedure, its elastic
+law of treason, and its practice of torture, was the scourge of Europe
+till it was encountered and overthrown by the jury system, a
+characteristic offspring of the Teutonic mind.
+
+Tolerant the empire was, at least if you did not object to having the
+statue of Caligula set up in your Holy of Holies, and this toleration
+fostered the growth of a new religion. But it is needless to say that,
+in this respect, the politicians of the empire only inherited the
+negative virtue of those of the republic.
+
+As to private morality, we may surely trust the common authorities--
+Juvenal, Suetonius, Petronius Arbiter--supported as they are by the
+evidence of the museums. There was one family, at least, whose colossal
+vices and crimes afforded a picture in the deepest sense tragic,
+considering their tremendous effect on the lot and destinies of
+humanity.
+
+It is a glorious dream, this of an autocrat, the elect of humanity,
+raised above all factions and petty interests, armed with absolute power
+to govern well, agreeing exactly with all our ideas, giving effect to
+all our schemes of beneficence, and dealing summarily with our
+opponents; but it does not come through the "horngate" of history, at
+least not of the history of the Roman empire.
+
+The one great service which the empire performed to humanity was this:
+it held together, as nothing else could have held together, the nations
+of the civilized world, and thus rendered possible a higher unity of
+mankind.
+
+I ventured to note, as one of the sources of illusion, a somewhat
+exaggerated estimate of the amount and value of the Roman element
+transfused by the empire into modern civilization. The theory of
+continuity, suggested by the discoveries of physical science, is
+prevailing also in history. A historical theory is to me scientific, not
+because it is suggested by physical science, but because it fits the
+historical facts. It may be true that there are no cataclysms in
+history, but still there are great epochs. In fact, there are great
+epochs, even in the natural history of the world; there were periods at
+which organization and life began to exist. There may have been a time
+at which a still further effort was made, and spiritual life also was
+brought into being. Things which do not come suddenly or abruptly, may
+nevertheless be new. A great sensation has been created by an article in
+the _Quarterly_, on "The Talmud," which purports to shew that the
+teachings of Christianity were, in fact, only those of Pharisaism. The
+organ of orthodoxy, in publishing that article, was rather like our
+great mother Eve in Milton, who "knew not eating death." But after all,
+Pharisaism crucified Christianity, and probably it was not for
+plagiarism. Supposing we adopt the infiltration theory of the Barbarian
+conquests, and discard that of a sudden deluge of invasion, it remains
+certain, unless all contemporary writers were much mistaken, that some
+very momentous change did, after all, occur. Catholicism and Feudalism
+were the life of the Middle Ages. Catholicism, though it had grown up
+under the Empire, and at last subjugated it, was not of it. As to
+Feudalism, it is possible, no doubt, to find lands held on condition of
+military service under the Roman empire as well as under the Ottoman
+empire, and in other military states. But is it possible to find
+anything like the social hierarchy of Feudalism, its code of mutual
+rights and duties, or the political and social characters which it
+formed?
+
+In France and Spain, much of the Roman province survived, but in
+England, not the least influential of the group of modern nations, it
+was, as we have every reason to believe, completely erased by the Saxon
+invaders, who came fresh from the seats of their barbarism, hating
+cities and city life, and ignorant of the majesty of Rome. If a Roman
+element afterwards found its way into England with the Norman conquest,
+it was rather ecclesiastical than imperial, and those who brought it
+were Scandinavians to the core. Alfred had been at Rome in his boyhood,
+it is true, and may have brought away some ideas of central dominion;
+but his laws open with a long quotation, not from the Pandects, but from
+the New Testament--his character is altogether that of a Christian, not
+of a Roman ruler, and if he had any political model before him, it was,
+probably, at least as much the Hebrew monarchy as the military despotism
+of the Caesars. Many of the Roman cities remained, and with them their
+municipal governments, and hence it is assumed that municipal government
+altogether is Roman. But there was a municipal government in the Saxon
+capital, and evidently there must be wherever large cities exist with
+any degree of independence. The Roman law was, at all events so far lost
+in the early part of the Middle Ages when Christendom was in process of
+formation that the study of it afterwards seemed new. Roman literature
+influenced that of mediaeval Christendom down to about the end of the
+twelfth century. Our writers of the time of Henry II. compose in half
+classical Latin and affect classical elegancies of style. But then comes
+a philosophy which in spite of its worship of Aristotle is essentially
+an original creation of the mediaeval and Catholic mind couched in a
+language Latin indeed but almost as remote from classical Latin as
+German itself: the tongue in truth of a new intellectual world. Open
+Aquinas and ask yourself how much is left of the language or the mind of
+Rome. The eye of the antiquary sees the Basilica in the Cathedral, but
+what essential resemblance does the Roman place of judicature and
+business bear to that marvellous and fantastic poetry of religion
+writing its hymns in stone? In the same manner the Roman _castra_
+are traceable in the form as well as the designation of the mediaeval
+_castella_. But what resemblance did the feudal militia bear to the
+legionaries? And what became of the Roman art of war till it was revived
+by Gustavus Adolphus? The outward mould of Christendom the Roman empire
+was and that it was so gives it great dignity and interest, but it was
+no more. The life came from the German forest the life of life from the
+peasantry of Galilee the least Romanized perhaps of the populations
+beneath the sway of Rome.
+
+The founder of the Roman empire was a very great man. With such genius
+and such fortune it is not surprising that he should be made an idol. In
+intellectual stature he was at least an inch higher than his fellows
+which is in itself enough to confound all our notions of right and
+wrong. He had the advantage of being a statesman before he was a soldier
+whereas Napoleon was a soldier before he was a statesman. His ambition
+coincided with the necessity of the world which required to be held
+together by force, and therefore his empire endured for four hundred, or
+if we include its eastern offset, for fourteen hundred years, while that
+of Napoleon crumbled to pieces in four. But unscrupulous ambition was
+the root of his character. It was necessary in fact to enable him to
+trample down the respect for legality which still hampered other men. To
+connect him with any principle seems to me impossible. He came forward,
+it is true, as the leader of what is styled the democratic party, and in
+that sense the empire which he founded may be called democratic. But to
+the gamblers who brought their fortunes to that vast hazard table, the
+democratic and aristocratic parties were merely _rouge_ and
+_noir_. The social and political equity, the reign of which we
+desire to see was, in truth, unknown to the men of Caesar's time. It is
+impossible to believe that there was an essential difference of
+principle between one member of the triumvirate and another. The great
+adventurer had begun by getting deeply into debt, and had thus in fact
+bound himself to overthrow the republic. He fomented anarchy to prepare
+the way for his dictatorship. He shrank from no accomplice however
+tainted, not even from Catiline; from no act however profligate or even
+inhuman. Abusing his authority as a magistrate, for party purposes, he
+tries to put to a cruel and ignominious death Rabirius, an aged and
+helpless man, for an act done in party warfare thirty years before. The
+case of Vettius is less clear, but Dr. Mommsen, at all events, seems to
+have little doubt that Caesar was privy to the subornation of this
+perjurer, and when his perjuries had broken down, to his assassination.
+Dr. Mommsen owns that there was a dark period in the life of the great
+man; in that darkness it could scarcely be expected that the Republicans
+should see light.
+
+The noblest feature in Caesar's character was his clemency. But we are
+reminded that it was ancient, not modern clemency, when we find numbered
+among the signal instances of it his having cut the throats of the
+pirates before he hanged them, and his having put to death without
+torture (_simplici morte punivit_) a slave suspected of conspiring
+against his life. Some have gone so far as to speak of him as the
+incarnation of humanity. But where in the whole history of Roman
+conquest will you find a more ruthless conqueror? A million of Gauls, we
+are told, perished by the sword. Multitudes were sold into slavery. The
+extermination of the Eburones went to the verge even of ancient license.
+The gallant Vercingetorix, who had fallen into Caesar's hands under
+circumstances which would have touched any but a depraved heart, was
+kept by him a captive for six years, and butchered in cold blood on the
+day of the triumph. The sentiment of humanity was at that time
+undeveloped. Be it so, but then we must not call Caesar the incarnation
+of humanity.
+
+Vast plans are ascribed to Caesar at the time of his death, and it seems
+to be thought that a world of hopes for humanity perished when he fell.
+But if he had lived and acted for another century what could he have
+done with those moral and political materials but found what he did
+found--a military and sensualist empire? A multitude of projects are
+attributed to him by writers who we must remember are late and who make
+him ride a fairy charger with feet like the hands of a man. Some of
+these projects are really great, such as the codification of the law and
+measures for the encouragement of intellect and science; others are
+questionable, such as the restoration of commercial cities from which
+commerce had retired; others, great works to be accomplished by an
+unlimited command of men and money, are the common dreams of every
+Nebuchadnezzar. What we know if we know anything of his intentions is
+that he was about to set out on a campaign against the Parthians in
+whose plains this prototype of Napoleon might perhaps have found a
+torrid Moscow. No great advance of humanity can take place without a
+great moral effort excited by higher moral desires. The masters of the
+legions can only set in action by their fiat material forces. Even these
+they often misdirect; but if the empire could have given every man
+Nero's golden house the inhabitants might still have been as unhappy as
+Nero.
+
+It is not doubtful that Caesar was a type of the sensuality of his age.
+His worshippers even feel it necessary to gird at characters deficient
+in sensual passion with a friskiness which is a little amusing when you
+connect it with the spectacles and the blameless life of a learned
+professor. So gifted a nature will absorb a good deal of mere sensual
+vice, it is true, but a sensualist could hardly be a pure and noble
+organ of humanity. In this I have the Positivists with me. Even in
+Caesar's lifetime the world had a taste of the vicissitudes of empire
+while he was revelling in the palace of Cleopatra and leaving affairs to
+Antony and Dolabella. Perhaps the satiety of the voluptuary had
+something to do with the recklessness with which at the last he
+neglected to guard his life. He was the greatest patron of gladiatorial
+shows and signalized his accession to power by magnificent scenes of
+carnage in the arena--a strange dawn for the day of a new civilization.
+Must we not a little doubt the consistency of his policy and even his
+insight when we find him after all this enacting sumptuary laws?
+
+Still Caesar was a very great man and he played a dazzling part, as all
+men do who come just at the fall of an old system, when society is as
+clay in the hands of the potter, and found a new system in its place,
+while the less dazzling task of making the new system work, by probity
+and industry, and of restoring the shattered allegiance of a people to
+its institutions, descends upon unlaurelled heads. But that the men of
+his time were bound to recognise in him a Messiah, to use the phrase of
+the Emperor of the French, and that those who opposed him were Jews
+crucifying their Saviour, is an impression which I venture to think will
+in time subside. No golden scales were hung out in heaven to shew the
+republicans that the balance of Divine will had turned, and that their
+duty was submission. "Momentumque fuit mutatus Curio rerum--" The only
+sign vouchsafed to them was the conversion of an unprincipled debauchee.
+
+They have, therefore, a fair claim to be judged each upon the merits of
+his case, and not in the lump as enemies of the human race; and to judge
+them fairly is a good exercise in historical morality. The three
+principal names in the party are those of Cato, Cicero, and Marcus
+Brutus. Pompey, though the nominal chief of the republicans, may rather,
+as Dr Mommsen truly says, be called the first military monarch of Rome.
+There is a vigorous portrait of him, from the republican point of view,
+by Lucan, who, though detestable as an epic poet, sometimes in his
+political passages, and especially in his characters, shews himself the
+countryman of Tacitus. Pompey is there described with truth as combining
+the desire of supreme power with a lingering respect for the
+constitution. The great aristocrat is painted as simple in his habits of
+life, and his household as uncorrupted by the fortunes of its lord--the
+last relics of the control imposed by the spirit of the republic on
+private luxury, which was soon to be released by the Empire from all
+restraint and carried to the most revolting height.
+
+Marcus Cato was the one man whom, living and dead, Caesar evidently
+dreaded. The Dictator even assailed his memory in a brace of pamphlets
+entitled Anti-Cato, of the quality of which we have one or two
+specimens, in Plutarch, from which we should infer that they were
+scurrilous and slanderous to the last degree; a proof that even Caesar
+could feel fear, and that in Caesar, too, fear was mean. Dr Mommsen
+throws himself heartily into Caesar's antipathy, and can scarcely speak
+of Cato without something like loss of temper. The least uncivil thing
+which he says of him, is that he was a Don Quixote, with Favonius for
+his Sancho. The phrase is not a happy one, since Sancho is not the
+caricature but the counterfoil of Don Quixote; Don Quixote being spirit
+without sense and Sancho sense without spirit. Imperialism, if it could
+see itself, is in fact a world of Sanchos and it would not be the less
+so if every Sancho of the number were master of the whole of physical
+science, and used it to cook his food. Of the two court poets of Caesar's
+successor, one makes Cato preside over the spirits of the good in the
+Elysian fields, while the other speaks with respect, at all events, of
+the soul which remained unconquered in a conquered world--"Et cuneta
+terrarum subacta praeter atrocem animum Catonis." Paterculus, an officer
+of Tiberius and a thorough Caesarian, calls Cato a man of ideal virtue
+("homo virtuti simillimus") who did right not for appearance sake, but
+because it was not in his nature to do wrong. When the victor is thus
+overawed by the shade of the vanquished, the vanquished can hardly have
+been a "fool." Contemporaries may be mistaken as to the merits of a
+character, but they cannot well be mistaken as to the space which it
+occupied in their own eyes. Sallust, the partizan of Marius and Caesar,
+who had so much reason to hate the senatorial party, speaks of Caesar and
+Cato as the two mighty opposites of his time, and in an elaborate
+parallel ascribes to Caesar the qualities which secure the success of the
+adventurer; to Cato those which make up the character of the patriot. It
+is a mistake to regard Cato the younger as merely an unseasonable
+repetition of Cato the elder. His inspiration came not from a Roman, but
+from a Greek school, which, with all its errors and absurdities, and in
+spite of the hypocrisy of many of its professors, really aimed highest
+in the formation of character; and the practical teachings and
+aspirations of which, embodied in the Reflections of Marcus Aurelius, it
+is impossible to study without profound respect for the force of moral
+conception and the depth of moral insight which they sometimes display.
+Cato went to Greece to sit at the feet of a Greek teacher in a spirit
+very different from the national pride of his ancestor. It is this which
+makes his character interesting: it was an attempt at all events to
+grasp and hold fast a high rule of life in an age when the whole moral
+world was sinking in a vortex of scoundrelism, and faith in morality,
+public or private, had been lost. Of course the character is formal, and
+in some respects even grotesque. But you may trace formalism, if you
+look closely enough, in every life led by a rule; in everything in fact
+between the purest spiritual impulse on one side and abandoned
+sensuality on the other.
+
+Attempts to revive old Roman simplicity of dress and habits in the age
+of Lucullus, were no doubt futile enough: yet this is only the
+symbolical garb of the Hebrew prophet. The scene is in ancient Rome, not
+in the smoking-room of the House of Commons. The character as painted by
+Plutarch, who seems to have drawn from the writings of contemporaries,
+is hard of course, but not cynical. Cato was devoted to his brother
+Caepio, and when Caepio died, forgot all his Stoicism in the passionate
+indulgence of his grief, and all his frugality in lavishing gold and
+perfumes on the funeral. Caesar in "Anti-Cato" accused him of sifting the
+ashes for the gold, which, says Plutarch, is like charging Hercules with
+cowardice. Where the sensual appetites are repressed, whatever may be
+the theory of life, the affections are pretty sure to be strong, unless
+they are nipped by some such process as is undergone by a monk. Cato's
+resignation of his fruitful wife to a childless friend, revolting as it
+is to our sense, betokens not so much brutality in him as coarseness of
+the conjugal relations at Rome. Evidently the man had the power of
+touching the hearts of others. His soldiers, though he has given them no
+largesses, and indulged them in no license, when he leaves them, strew
+their garments under his feet. His friends at Utica linger at the peril
+of their lives to give him a sumptuous funeral. He affected conviviality
+like Socrates. He seems to have been able to enjoy a joke too at his own
+expense. He can laugh when Cicero ridicules his Stoicism in a speech;
+and when in a province he meets the inhabitants of a town turning out,
+and thinks at first that it is in his own honour, but soon finds that it
+is in honour of a much greater man, the confidential servant of Pompey,
+at first his dignity is outraged, but his anger soon gives place to
+amusement. That his public character was perfectly pure, no one seems to
+have doubted; and there is a kindliness in his dealings with the
+dependants of Rome which shews that had he been an emperor he would have
+been such an emperor as Trajan--a man whom he probably resembled, both
+in the goodness of his intentions and in the limited powers of his mind.
+Impracticable, of course, in a certain sense he was; but his part was
+that of a reformer, and to compromise with the corruption against which
+he was contending would have been to lose the only means of influence,
+which, having no military force and no party, he possessed--the
+unquestioned integrity of his character. He is said by Dr. Mommsen to
+have been incapable of even conceiving a policy. By policy I suppose is
+meant one of those brilliant schemes of ambition with which some
+literary men are fond of identifying themselves, fancying, it seems,
+that thereby they themselves after their measure play the Caesar. The
+policy which Cato conceived was simply that of purifying and preserving
+the Republic. So far, at all events, he had an insight into the
+situation, that he knew the real malady of the State to be want of
+public spirit, which he did his best to supply. And the fact is, that he
+did more than once succeed in a remarkable way in stemming the tide of
+corruption. Though every instinct bade him struggle to the last, he had
+sense enough to see the state of the case, and to advise that, to avert
+anarchy, supreme power should be put into the hands of Pompey, whose
+political superstition, if not his loyalty, there was good reason to
+trust. When at last civil war broke out, Cato went into it like
+Falkland, crying "peace;" he set his face steadily against the excesses
+and cruelties of his party; and when he saw the field of Dyrrhaeium
+covered with his slain enemies, he covered his face and wept. He wept a
+Roman over Romans, but humanity will not refuse the tribute of his
+tears. After Pharsalus he cherished no illusion, as Dr Mommsen himself
+admits, and though he determined himself to fall fighting, he urged no
+one else to resistance: he felt that the duty of an ordinary citizen was
+done. His terrible march over the African desert shewed high powers of
+command, as we shall see by comparing it with the desert march of
+Napoleon. Dr. Mommsen ridicules his pedantry in refusing, on grounds of
+loyalty, to take the commandership-in-chief over the head of a superior
+in rank. Cato was fighting for legality, and the spirit of legality was
+the soul of his cause. But besides this, he was himself without
+experience of war; and by declining the nominal command he retained the
+real control. He remained master to the last of the burning vessel. Our
+morality will not approve of his voluntary death; but then our morality
+would give him a sufficient motive for living, even if he was to be
+bound to the car of the conqueror. Looking to Roman opinion, he probably
+did what honour dictated; and those who prefer honour to life are not so
+numerous that we can afford to speak of them with scorn. "The fool,"
+says Dr Mommsen, when the drama of the republic closes with Cato's
+death--"The fool spoke the Epilogue" Whether Cato was a fool or not, it
+was not he that spoke the Epilogue. The Epilogue was spoken by Marcus
+Aurelius, whose principles, political as well as philosophical, were
+identical with those for which Cato gave his life. All that time the
+Stoic and Republican party lived, sustained by the memory of its
+martyrs, and above them all by that of Cato. At first it struggled
+against the Empire; at last it accepted it, and when the world was weary
+of Caesars, assumed the government and gave humanity the respite of the
+Antonines. The doctrine of continuity is valid for all parties alike,
+and the current of public virtue was not cut off by Pharsalus. On the
+whole, remote as the character of Cato is in some respects from our
+sympathies, absurd as it would be if taken as a model for our imitation,
+I recognise it as a proof of the reality and indestructibility of moral
+force, even when pitted against the masters of thirty legions.
+
+Against Cicero, again, Dr. Mommsen is so bitter, he is so determined to
+suppress as well as to degrade him, that it would be difficult even to
+make out from his pages who and what the once divine Tully was. Much of
+Dr. Mommsen's dashing criticism on Cicero's writings appears just,
+though we might trust the critic more if we did not find him in the next
+page evading the unwelcome duty of criticising Caesar's "Bellum Civile,"
+under cover of some sentimental remarks about the difference between
+hope and fulfilment in a great soul. Cicero was no philosopher, in the
+highest sense of the term; yet it is not certain that he did not do some
+service to humanity by promulgating, in eloquent language, a pretty high
+and liberal morality, which both modified monkish ethics, and, when
+monkish ethics fell, and brought down Christian ethics in their fall,
+did something to supply the void. The Orations, even the great
+Philippic, I must confess I could never enjoy. But all orations, read
+long after their delivery, are like spent missiles, wingless and cold:
+they retain the deformities of passion, without the fire. A speech
+embodying great principles may live with the principles which it
+embodies; otherwise happy are the orators whose speeches are lost. The
+Letters it is not so easy to give up, especially when we consider of how
+many graceful and pleasant compositions of the same kind, of how many
+self-revelations, which have brought the hearts of men nearer to each
+other, those letters have been the model. That, however, which pleases
+most in Cicero is that he is, for his age, a thoroughly and pre-
+eminently civilized man. He hates gladiatorial shows; he despises even
+the tasteless pageantry of the Roman theatre; he heartily loves books;
+he is saving up all his earnings to buy a coveted library for his old
+age; he has a real enthusiasm for great writers; he breaks through
+national pride, and feels sincerely grateful to the Greeks as the
+authors; of civilization, rogues though he knew them to be in his time;
+he mourns, albeit with an apology, over the death of a slave; his slaves
+evidently are attached to him, and are faithful to him at the last; he
+writes to his favourite freedman with all the warmth of equal
+friendship. In his writings--in the "De Legibus," for instance--you
+will find principles of humanity far more comprehensive than those by
+which the policy of the empire was moulded. His tastes were pure and
+refined, and though he multiplied his villas, and decorated them with
+cost and elegance, it is certain that he was perfectly free alike from
+the prodigal ostentation and from the debauchery of the time indeed his
+vast intellectual industry implies a temperate life. For the game-
+preserving tendencies of the great oligarchs, he had a hearty dislike
+and contempt; in spite of the ill-looking, though obscure, episode of
+his divorce from his wife Terentia, he was evidently a man of strong
+family affections, the natural adjuncts of moral purity; he is
+inconsolable for the death of his daughter, spends days in melancholy
+wandering in the woods, and finds consolation only in erecting a temple
+to the beloved shade. His faults of character, both in private and
+public, are glaring, and the only thing to be said in excuse of his
+vanity is that it is so frank, and says plainly, "Puff me," not "Puff me
+not." As a political adventurer of the higher class, pushing his way
+under an aristocratic government by his talents and his training,
+received in course of time into the ranks of the aristocracy, yet never
+one of them, he will bear comparison with Burke. He resembles Burke,
+too, in his religious constitutionalism and reverence for the wisdom of
+political ancestors and perhaps his hope of creating a party at once
+conservative and reforming, by a combination of the moneyed interest
+with the aristocracy, was not much more chimerical than Burke's hope of
+creating a party at once conservative and reforming out of the materials
+of Whiggism. Each of the two men affected a balanced, and in the literal
+sense, a trimming policy, as opposed to one of abstract principle,
+Burke, perhaps, from temperament, Cicero from necessity. Impeachments at
+Rome in Cicero's time were no doubt the regular stepping-stones of
+rising politicians; nevertheless, the accuser of Verres may fairly be
+credited with some, at least, of the genuine sentiment which impelled
+the accuser of Warren Hastings. We must couple with the Verrines the
+admirable letter of the orator to his brother Quintus on the government
+of a province, and his own provincial administration, which, as was said
+before, appears to have been excellent. Cicero rose, not as an adherent
+of the aristocracy, but as their opponent, and the assailant, a bold
+assailant, of the tyranny of Sulla. He was brought to the front in
+politics, as Sallust avers, by his merit, in spite of his birth and
+social position, when the mortal peril of the Catilinarian conspiracy
+was gathering round the state, and necessity called for the man, and not
+the game-preserver. His conduct in that hour of supreme peril is
+ridiculously overpraised by himself. Not only so, but he begs a friend
+in plain terms to write a history of it and to exaggerate. Now, it is
+denounced as brutal tyranny and judicial murder. But those who hold this
+language have new lights on the subject of Catiline. I confess that on
+me these new lights have not dawned; I still believe Catiline to have
+been a terrible anarchist, coming forth from the abyss of debauchery,
+ruin, and despair, which lay beneath: the great fortunes of Rome. The
+land of Caesar Borgia has produced such men in more than one period of
+history. The alleged illegality of the execution was made the stalking-
+horse of a party move, and scrupulous legality found a champion and an
+avenger in Clodius. On his return from exile, Cicero was received with
+the greatest enthusiasm by the whole population of Italy, a fact which
+Dr. Mommsen is inclined to explain away, but which we should, perhaps,
+accept as the key to some other facts in Cicero's history. The Italians
+were probably the most respectable of the political elements, and it
+seems they not only looked up to their fellow-provincial with pride,
+but saw in him a statesman who was saving their homesteads from a reign
+of terror. That Cicero had the general support of the Italians was quite
+enough to make his adherence an object of serious consideration to
+Caesar, though Dr. Mommsen persists in interpolating into the relations
+of the two men the contempt which he feels, and which he fancies Caesar
+must have felt, for an advocate. Surely, however, it is a mistake to
+think that oratory was not even in those days a real power at Rome. Can
+a greater platitude be conceived than railing at a statesman of
+antiquity for having been a rhetorician? Was not Pericles a rhetorician?
+Was not Caesar himself a rhetorician? Did he not learn rhetoric from the
+same master as Cicero? Some day we may be ruled by political science;
+but rhetoric was, at all events, an improvement on mere force. The
+situation at Rome had now become essentially military; and Cicero having
+no military force at his command could not really control the situation.
+
+His attempts to control it exposed him to all the miscarriages and all
+the indignities which such an attempt is sure to entail. He was a vessel
+of earthenware, or rather of very fragile porcelain, swimming among
+vessels of brass. Self-respect would perhaps have prescribed
+retirement from public life; but, to say nothing of his egotism, he had
+done too much to retire. Egotistical he was in the highest degree, and
+that failing made all his humiliations doubly ignominious; but still, I
+think, if you judge him candidly, you wilt see that he really loved his
+country, and that his greatest object of desire was, as he himself says,
+to live in the grateful memory of after-times; not the highest of all
+aims, but higher than that of the political adventurer. When the civil
+war came, his perplexity was painful, and he betrayed it with his usual
+want of reticence. In that, as in other respects, his character is the
+direct opposite of that of the "gloomy sporting man," whose ways Louis
+Napoleon, it is said, avowed that he had studied during his exile in
+England, and followed with profit as a conspirator in France. Cicero and
+Cato knew too well that Pompey had "licked the sword of Sulla;" but they
+knew also, by long experience of his political character, that he shrank
+from doing the last violence to the constitution. On the other hand, all
+men expected that Caesar, who had formerly given himself out as the
+political heir of Marius, who had restored the trophies of Marius, and
+had undertaken the conquest of Gaul, evidently as a continuation of the
+victories of Marius, descending upon Italy with an army partly
+consisting of barbarians and trained in the most ferocious warfare,
+would renew the Marian reign of terror. This fear put all Italy at first
+on Pompey's side. Caesar had not yet revealed his nobler and more
+glorious self. Even Curio told Cicero, in an interview, the object of
+which was to draw Cicero to the Caesarian side, that Caesar's clemency was
+merely policy, not in his nature. The best security against the bloody
+excesses of a victorious party at that moment, undoubtedly, was the
+presence of Marcus Cato in the camp of Pompey. After Pharsalus, Cicero
+submitted like many men of sterner mould. This departure of the advocate
+from the Pompeian camp is surrounded by Dr. Mommsen with circumstances
+of ridicule, for which, on reference to what I suppose to be the
+authorities, I can find no historical foundation. The fiercer Pompeians
+very nearly killed him for refusing to stay and command them; his life
+was in fact only saved by the intrepid moderation of Cato; and this is
+surely not a proof that they deemed his presence worthless. Once more,
+orators were not ridiculous in the eyes of antiquity. Cicero accepted,
+and, in a certain sense, served under the dictatorate of Caesar; though
+he afterwards rejoiced when it was overthrown, and the constitution, the
+idol of his political worship, was restored; just as we may suppose a
+French constitutionalist, not of stern mould, yet not dishonest,
+accepting and serving under the empire, yet rejoicing at the restoration
+of constitutional government. In the interval, between the death of
+Caesar and Philippi, he was really the soul and the main support of the
+Restoration. I have said what I think of the Philippics; but there can
+be no doubt that they told, or that Brutus and Cassius thought them,
+worth at least a legion.
+
+Cicero met death with a physical courage, which there is no reason to
+believe that he wanted in life. His cowardice was political; his fears
+were for his position and reputation. If Cato survived in the tradition
+of public virtue, so did Cicero in the tradition of culture, which saved
+the empire of the Caesars from being an empire of Moguls. The culture of
+a republic saved Caesar himself from being a mere Timur, and set him
+after his victory to reforming calendars and endowing science, instead
+of making pyramids of heads. Is it absurd to suppose that the great
+soldier, who was also a great man of letters, had more respect for
+intellect without military force than his literary admirers, and that he
+really wished to adorn his monarchy by allying to it the leading man of
+intellect of the time?
+
+Our accounts of Marcus Brutus are not very clear. Appian confounds
+Marcus with Decimus; and it appears not unlikely that "Et tu Brute," if
+it was said at all, was said to Decimus, who was a special favourite of
+Caesar, and was named in his will. Marcus seems to have been a man of
+worth after his fashion; a patriot of the narrow Roman type, reproduced
+in later days by Fletcher of Saltoun, whose ideal republic was an
+oligarchy, and who did not shrink from proposing to settle the
+proletariat difficulty by making the common people slaves. This is quite
+compatible with the fact revealed to us in the letters of Cicero, that
+Brutus was implicated, through his agents, in the infamous practice of
+lending money to provincials at exorbitant interest, and abusing the
+power of the Imperial Governments to exact the debt. One can imagine a
+West Indian slave-owner, dealing with negroes through his agent
+according to the established custom, and yet being a good citizen in
+England.
+
+Cicero, though he suffered from the imperious temper of Brutus, speaks
+of him as one of those, the sight of whom banished his fears and
+anxieties for the republic. That the most famous and most terrible act
+of this man's life was an act of republican fanaticism, not of selfish
+ambition, is proved by his refusing, with magnanimous imprudence, to
+make all sure, as the more worldly spirits about him suggested, by
+cutting off Antony and the outer leading partisans of Caesar, and by his
+permitting public honours to be done to the corpse of the man whom he
+had immolated to civil duty. One almost shrinks from speaking of the
+death of Caesar; so much modern nonsense on both sides has been talked
+about this, the most tragic, the most piteous, and at the same time the
+most inevitable event of ancient story. Peculiar phases of society have
+their peculiar sentiments, with reference to which events must be
+explained. The greased cartridges were the real account of the Indian
+mutiny. Caesar was slain because he had shown that he was going to assume
+the title of king. Cicero speaks the literal truth, when he says: that
+the real murderer was Antony, and the fatal day the day of the
+Lupercalia, when Antony offered and Caesar faintly put aside the crown. A
+dictator they would have borne, a king they would not bear, neither then
+nor for ages afterwards; because the title of king to their minds spoke
+not of a St. Louis, or an Edward I., or even a Louis XIV., but of the
+unutterable degradation of the Oriental slave. To use a homely image, if
+you put your leg in the way of a cannon ball which seems spent, but is
+still rolling, you will suffer by the experiment. This is exactly what
+Caesar, in the giddiness of victory and supremacy, did, and the
+consequence was as certain as it was deplorable. The republican
+sentiment seemed to him to have entirely lost its force, so that he
+might spurn it with impunity; whereas, it had in it still enough of the
+momentum gathered through centuries of republican training and glory to
+destroy him, to restore the republic for a brief period, and to make
+victory doubtful at Phillipi. He began by celebrating a triumph over his
+fellow-citizens, against the generous tradition of Rome: in that triumph
+he displayed pictures of the tragic deaths of Cato and other Roman
+chiefs, which disgusted even the populace; he sported with the curule
+offices, the immemorial objects of republican reverence, so wantonly
+that he might almost as well have given a consulship to his horse; he
+flooded the Senate with soldiers and barbarians; he forced a Roman
+knight to appear upon the stage: at last, craving, as natures destitute
+of a high controlling principle do crave, for the form as well as the
+substance of power, he put out his hand to grasp a crown. The feeling on
+that subject was not only of terrible strength, but was actually
+embodied in a law by which the state solemnly armed the hand of the
+private citizen against any man who should attempt to make himself a
+king. How completely Caesar's insight failed him is proved by the general
+acquiescence or apathy with which his fall was received, the subdued
+tone in which even his warm friend Marius speaks of it, and the
+readiness with which his own soldiers and officers served under the
+restored republic. We have nothing to do here with any problem of modern
+ethics respecting military usurpation and tyrannicide, two things which
+must always stand together in the court of morality. Tyrannicide, like
+suicide, was the rule of the ancient world, and would have been
+acknowledged by Caesar himself, before he grasped supreme power, as an
+established duty. And certainly morality would stretch its bounds to
+include anything really necessary to protect the Greek and Italian
+republics, with the treasures which they bore in them for humanity, from
+the barbarous lust of power which was always lying in wait to devour
+them. I have said that the spirits of Cato and Cicero lived and worked
+after their deaths. So I suspect did that of Brutus. The Caesars had no
+God, no fear of public opinion at home, no general sentiment of
+civilized nations to control their tyranny. They had only the shadow of
+a hand armed with a dagger. One shrewd observer of the times at least,
+if I mistake not, had profited by the lesson of Caesar's folly and fate.
+To the constitutional demeanour and personal moderation of Augustus the
+world owes an epoch of grandeur of a certain kind, and an example of
+true dignity in the use of power. And Augustus, I suspect, had studied
+his part at the foot of Pompey's statue.
+
+Plutarch parallels Cato with Phocion, Demosthenes with Cicero, Brutus
+with Dion--the Dion whose history inspired the poem of Wordsworth. Greek
+republicanism, too, had its fatal hour; but we do not pour scorn and
+contumely on those who strove to prolong the life of Athens beyond the
+term assigned by fate. The case of Athens, a single independent state,
+was no doubt different from that of Rome with so many subject nations
+under her sway. Still in each case there was the commonwealth, standing
+in glorious contrast to the barbarous despotisms of other nations, the
+highest social and political state which humanity had known or for ages
+afterwards was to know. And this light of civilization was, so far as
+the last republicans could see, not only to be eclipsed for a time or
+put out, as now in a single nation, while it burns on in others, but to
+be swallowed up in hopeless night.
+
+Mr. Charles Norton in the notes to his recent translation of the "Vita
+Nuova" of Dante quotes a decree made by the commonwealth of Florence for
+the building of the cathedral.
+
+"Whereas it is the highest interest of a people of illustrious origin so
+to proceed in their affairs that men may perceive from their external
+works that their doings are at once wise and magnanimous, it is
+therefore ordered that Arnulf, architect of our commune, prepare the
+model or design for the rebuilding of Santa Reparata with such supreme
+and lavish magnificence, that neither the industry nor the capacity of
+man shall be able to devise anything more grand or more beautiful,
+inasmuch as the most judicious in this city have pronounced the opinion,
+in public and private conferences, that no work of the commune should be
+undertaken unless the design be such as to make it correspond with a
+heart which is of the greatest nature because composed of the spirit of
+many citizens united together in one single will." [Footnote: In his
+later and very valuable work on _Church Building in the Middle
+Ages_, Mr. Norton casts doubt on the authenticity of the decree. It
+is genuine at all events, as an expression of Florentine sentiment, if
+not as an extract from the archives.]
+
+Let Imperialism, legitimist or democratic, match that! Florence, too,
+had her political vices, many and grave, she tyrannized over Pisa and
+other dependants, there was faction in her councils, anarchy, bloody
+anarchy, in her streets, for her, too, the hour of doom arrived, and the
+conspiracy of the Pazzi was as much an anachronism as that of the
+republicans who slew Caesar. But Florence had that heart composed of the
+united spirits of many citizens out of which came all that the world
+admires and loves in the works of the Florentine. She produced, though
+she exiled Dante. That which followed was more tranquil, more orderly
+perhaps, materially speaking, not less happy, but it had no heart at
+all.
+
+
+
+
+AUSTEN-LEIGH'S MEMOIR OF JANE AUSTEN
+
+[Footnote: "A Memoir of Jane Austen. By her nephew, J. E. Austen-Leigh,
+Vicar of Bray, Berks." London: Richard Bentley; New York: Scribner,
+Welford & Co.]
+
+
+The walls of our cities were placarded, the other day, with an
+advertisement of a new sensational novel, the flaring woodcut of which
+represented a girl tied down upon a table, and a villain preparing to
+cut off her feet. If this were the general taste, there would be no use
+in talking about Jane Austen. But if you ask at the libraries you will
+find that her works are still taken out; so that there must still be a
+faithful few who, like ourselves, will have welcomed the announcement of
+a Memoir of the authoress of "Pride and Prejudice," "Mansfield Park,"
+and "Emma."
+
+If Jane Austen's train of admirers has not been so large as those of
+many other novelists, it has been first-rate in quality. She has been
+praised--we should rather say, loved by all, from Walter Scott to
+Guizot, whose love was the truest fame. Her name has often been coupled
+with that of Shakespeare, to whom Macaulay places her second in the nice
+discrimination of shades of character. The difference between the two
+minds in degree is, of course, immense; but both belong to the same rare
+kind. Both are really creative; both purely artistic; both have the
+marvellous power of endowing the products of their imagination with a
+life, as it were, apart from their own. Each holds up a perfectly clear
+and undistorting mirror--Shakespeare to the moral universe, Jane Austen
+to the little world in which she lived. In the case of neither does the
+personality of the author ever come between the spectator and the drama.
+Vulgar criticism calls Jane Austen's work Dutch painting. Miniature
+painting would be nearer the truth; she speaks of herself as working
+with a fine brush on a piece of ivory two inches wide. Dutch painting
+implies the selection of subjects in themselves low and uninteresting,
+for the purpose of displaying the skill of a painter, who can interest
+by the mere excellence of his imitation. Jane Austen lived in the
+society of English country gentlemen and their families as they were in
+the last century--a society affluent, comfortable, domestic, rather
+monotonous, without the interest which attaches to the struggles of
+labour without tragic events or figures seldom, in fact rising
+dramatically above the level of sentimental comedy, but presenting
+nevertheless, its varieties of character, its vicissitudes, its moral
+lessons--in a word, its humanity. She has painted it as it was, in all
+its features the most tragic as well as the most comic, avoiding only
+melodrama. "In all the important preparations of the mind, she (Miss
+Bertram) was complete, being prepared for matrimony by a hatred of home,
+restraint and tranquillity, by the misery of disappointed affection and
+contempt of the man she was to marry; the rest might wait." This is not
+the touch of Gerard Douw. An undertone of irony, never obtrusive but
+everywhere perceptible, shows that the artist herself knew very well
+that she was not painting gods and Titans, and keeps everything on the
+right level.
+
+Jane Austen, then, was worthy of a memoir. But it was almost too late to
+write one. Like Shakespeare, she was too artistic to be autobiographic.
+She was never brought into contact with men of letters, and her own fame
+was almost posthumous, so that nobody took notes. She had been fifty
+years in her grave when her nephew, the Rev J. E. Austen-Leigh, the
+youngest of the mourners who attended her funeral, undertook to make a
+volume of his own recollections, those of one or two other surviving
+relatives, and a few letters. Of 230 pages, in large print, and with a
+margin the vastness of which requires to be relieved by a rod rubric,
+not above a third is really biography, the rest is genealogy,
+description of places, manners, and customs, critical disquisition,
+testimonies of admirers. Still, thanks to the real capacity of the
+biographer, and to the strong impression left by a character of
+remarkable beauty on his mind, we catch a pretty perfect though faint
+outline of the figure which was just hovering on the verge of memory,
+and in a few years more would, like the figure of Shakespeare, have been
+swallowed up in night.
+
+Jane Austen was the flower of a stock, full, apparently, through all its
+branches, of shrewd sense and caustic humour, which in her were combined
+with the creative imagination. She was born in 1775, at Steventon, in
+Hampshire, a country parish, of which her father was the rector. A
+village of cottages at the foot of a gentle slope, an old church with
+its coeval yew, an old manor-house, an old parsonage all surrounded by
+tall elms, green meadows, hedgerows full of primroses and wild
+hyacinths--such was the scene in which Jane Austen grew. It is the
+picture which rises in the mind of every Englishman when he thinks of
+his country. Around dwelt the gentry, more numerous and, if coarser and
+duller, more home-loving and less like pachas than they are now, when
+the smaller squires and yeomen have been swallowed up in the growing
+lordships of a few grandees who spend more than half their time in
+London or in other seats of politics or pleasure. Not far off was a
+country town, a "Meriton," the central gossiping place of the
+neighbourhood, and the abode of the semi-genteel. If a gentleman like
+Mr. Woodhouse lives equivocally close to the town, his "place" is
+distinguished by a separate name. There was no resident squire at
+Steventon, the old manor-house being let to a tenant, so that Jane's
+father was at once parson and squire. "That house (Edmund Bertram's
+parsonage) may receive such an air as to make its owner be set down as
+the great landowner of the parish by every creature travelling the road,
+especially as there is no real squire's house to dispute the point, a
+circumstance, between ourselves, to enhance the value of such a
+situation in point of privilege and advantage beyond all calculation."
+Her father having from old age resigned Steventon when Jane was six and
+twenty, she afterwards lived for a time with her family at Bath, a great
+watering-place, and the scene of the first part of "Northanger Abbey;"
+at Lyme, a pretty little sea-bathing place on the coast of Dorset, on
+the "Cobb" of which takes place the catastrophe of "Persuasion;" and at
+Southampton, now a great port, then a special seat of gentility.
+Finally, she found a second home with her widowed mother and her sister
+at Chawton, another village in Hampshire.
+
+"In person," says Jane's biographer, "she was very attractive. Her
+figure was rather tall and slender, her step light and firm, and her
+whole appearance expressive of health and animation. In complexion, she
+was a clear brunette, with a rich colour; she had full round cheeks,
+with mouth and nose small and well formed; bright hazel eyes (it is a
+touch of the woman, then, when Emma is described as having _the true
+hazel eye_), and brown hair forming natural curls close round her
+face." The sweetness and playfulness of "Dear Aunt Jane" are fresh after
+so many years in the memories of her nephew and nieces, who also
+strongly attest the sound sense and sterling excellence of character
+which lay beneath. She was a special favourite with children, for whom
+she delighted to exercise her talent in improvising fairy-tales. Unknown
+to fame, uncaressed save by family affection, and, therefore, unspoilt,
+while writing was her delight, she kept it in complete subordination to
+the duties of life, which she performed with exemplary conscientiousness
+in the house of mourning as well as in the house of feasting. Even her
+needlework was superfine. We doubt not that, if the truth was known, she
+was a good cook.
+
+She calls herself "the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever
+dared to be an authoress;" but this is a nominal tribute to the jealousy
+of female erudition which then prevailed, and at which she sometimes
+glances, though herself very far from desiring a masculine education for
+women. In fact, she was well versed in English literature, read French
+with ease, and knew something of Italian--German was not thought of in
+those days. She had a sweet voice, and sang to her own accompaniment
+simple old songs which still linger in her nephew's ear. Her favourite
+authors were Johnson, whose strong sense was congenial to her, while she
+happily did not allow him to infect her pure and easy style, Cowper,
+Richardson and Crabbe. She said that, if she married at all, she should
+like to be Mrs. Crabbe. And besides Crabbe's general influence, which is
+obvious, we often see his special touch in her writings:
+
+"Emma's spirits were mounted up quite to happiness. Everything wore a
+different air. James and his horses seemed not half so sluggish as
+before. When she looked at the hedges, she thought the elder at least
+must soon be coming out; and, when she turned round to Harriet, she saw
+something like a look of spring--a tender smile even there."
+
+Jane was supremely happy in her family relations, especially in the love
+of her elder sister, Cassandra, from whom she was inseparable. Of her
+four brothers, two were officers in the Royal Navy. How she watched
+their career, how she welcomed them home from the perils not only of the
+sea but of war (for it was the time of the great war with France), she
+has told us in painting the reception of William Price by his sister
+Fanny, in "Mansfield Park." It is there that she compares conjugal and
+fraternal love, giving the preference in one respect to the latter,
+because with brothers and sisters "all the evil and good of the earliest
+years can be gone over again, and every former united pain and pleasure
+retraced with the fondest recollection: an advantage this, a
+strengthener of love, in which even the conjugal tie is beneath the
+fraternal." It was, perhaps, because she was so happy in the love of her
+brothers and sisters, as well as because she was wedded to literature,
+that she was content, in spite of her good looks, to assume the symbolic
+cap of perpetual maidenhood at an unusually early age.
+
+Thus she grew in a spot as sunny, as sheltered, and as holy as do the
+violets which her biographer tells us abound beneath the south wall of
+Steventon church. It was impossible that she should have the experiences
+of Miss Bronte or Madame Sand, and without some experience the most
+vivid imagination cannot act, or can act only in the production of mere
+chimeras. To forestall Miss Braddon in the art of criminal
+phantasmagoria might have been within Jane's power by the aid of strong
+green tea, but would obviously have been repugnant to her nature. We
+must not ask her, then, for the emotions and excitements which she could
+not possibly afford. The character of Emma is called commonplace. It is
+commonplace in the sense in which the same term might be applied to any
+normal beauty of nature--to a well-grown tree or to a perfectly
+developed flower. She is, as Mr. Weston says, "the picture of grown-up
+health." "There is health not merely in her bloom, but in her air, her
+gait, her glance." She has been brought up like Jane Austen herself, in
+a pure English household, among loving relations and good old servants.
+Her feet have been in the path of domestic and neighbourly duty, quiet
+as the path which leads to the village church. It has been impossible
+for strong temptations or fierce passions to come near her. Yet men
+accustomed to the most exciting struggles, to the most powerful emotions
+of parliamentary life, have found an interest, equal to the greatest
+ever created by a sensation novel, in the little scrapes and adventures
+into which her weakness betrays her, and in the process by which her
+heart is gradually drawn away from objects apparently more attractive to
+the robust nature in union with which she is destined to find strength
+as well as happiness.
+
+With more justice may Jane Austen be reproached with having been too
+much influenced by the prejudices of the somewhat narrow and somewhat
+vulgarly aristocratic, or rather plutocratic, society in which she
+lived. Her irony and her complete dramatic impersonality render it
+difficult to see how far this goes; but certainly it goes further than
+we could wish. Decidedly she believes in gentility, and in its intimate
+connection with affluence and good family; in its incompatibility with
+any but certain very refined and privileged kinds of labour; in the
+impossibility of finding a gentleman in a trader, much more in a yeoman
+or mechanic. "The yeomanry are precisely the order of people with whom I
+feel I can have nothing to do; a degree or two lower, and a creditable
+appearance, might interest me; I might hope to be useful to their
+families in some way or other; but a farmer can need none of my help,
+and is, therefore, in one sense, as much above my notice as in every
+other he is below it." This is said by Emma--by Emma when she is trying
+to deter her friend from marrying a yeoman, it is true, but still by
+Emma. The picture of the coarseness of poverty in the household of
+Fanny's parents in "Mansfield Park" is truth, but it is hard truth, and
+needs some counterpoise. Both in the case of Fanny Price and in that of
+Frank Churchill, the entire separation of a child from its own home for
+the sake of the worldly advantages furnished by an adoptive home of a
+superior class, is presented too much as a part of the order of nature.
+The charge of acquiescence in the low standard of clerical duty
+prevalent in the Establishment of that day is well founded, though
+perhaps not of much importance. Of more importance is the charge which
+might be made, with equal justice, of acquiescence in somewhat low and
+coarse ideas of the relations between the sexes, and of the destinies
+and proper aspirations of young women. "Mr. Collins, to be sure, was
+neither sensible nor agreeable; his society was irksome, and his
+attachment to her must be imaginary; but still he would be her husband.
+Without thinking highly either of men or matrimony, marriage had always
+been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated
+young women of small fortune; and, however uncertain of giving
+happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want. This
+preservative she had now attained; and at the age of twenty-seven,
+without having ever been handsome, she felt all the good-luck of it."
+This reflection is ascribed to Charlotte Lucas, an inferior character,
+but still thought worthy to be the heroine's bosom friend.
+
+Jane's first essays in composition were burlesques on the fashionable
+manners of the day; whence grew "Northanger Abbey," with its anti-
+heroine, Catharine Morley, "roving and wild, hating constraint and
+cleanliness, and loving nothing so much as rolling down the green slope
+at the back of the house," and with its exquisite travestie of the
+"Mysteries of Udolpho." But she soon felt her higher power. Marvellous
+to say, she began "Pride and Prejudice" in 1796, before she was twenty-
+one years old, and completed it in the following year. "Sense and
+Sensibility" and "Northanger Abbey" immediately followed; it appears,
+with regard to the latter, that she had already visited Bath, though it
+was not till afterwards that she resided there. But she published
+nothing--not only so, but it seems that she entirely suspended
+composition--till 1809, when her family settled at Chawton. Here she
+revised for the press what she had written, and wrote "Mansfield Park,"
+"Emma" and "Persuasion." "Persuasion," whatever her nephew and
+biographer may say, and however Dr. Whewell may have fired up at the
+suggestion, betrays an enfeeblement of her faculties, and tells of
+approaching death. But we still see in it the genuine creative power
+multiplying new characters; whereas novelists who are not creative, when
+they have exhausted their original fund of observations, are forced to
+subsist by exaggeration of their old characters, by aggravated
+extravagances of plot, by multiplied adulteries and increased carnage.
+
+"Pride and Prejudice," when first offered to Cadell, was declined by
+return of post. The fate of "Northanger Abbey" was still more
+ignominious: it was sold for ten pounds to a Bath publisher, who, after
+keeping it many years in his drawer, was very glad to return it and get
+back his ten pounds. No burst of applause greeted the works of Jane
+Austen like that which greeted the far inferior works of Miss Burney.
+_Crevit occulto velut arbor oevo fama_. A few years ago, the verger
+of Winchester cathedral asked a visitor who desired to be shown her
+tomb, "what there was so particular about that lady that so many people
+wanted to see where she was buried?" Nevertheless, she lived to feel
+that "her own dear children" were appreciated, if not by the vergers,
+yet in the right quarters, and to enjoy a quiet pleasure in the
+consciousness of her success. One tribute she received which was
+overwhelming. It was intimated to her by authority that His Royal
+Highness, the Prince Regent, had read her novels with pleasure, and that
+she was at liberty to dedicate the next to him. More than this, the
+Royal Librarian, Mr. Clarke, of his own motion apparently, did her the
+honour to suggest that, changing her style for a higher, she should
+write "a historical romance in illustration of the august house of
+Cobourg," and dedicate it to Prince Leopold. She answered in effect
+that, if her life depended on it, she could not be serious for a whole
+chapter. Let it be said, however, for the Prince Regent, that underneath
+his royalty and his sybaritism, there was, at first, something of a
+better and higher nature, which at last was entirely stifled by them.
+His love for Mrs. Fitzherbert was not merely sensual, and Heliogabalus
+would not have been amused by the novels of Miss Austen.
+
+Jane was never the authoress but when she was writing her novels; and in
+the few letters with which this memoir is enriched there is nothing of
+point or literary effort, and very little of special interest. We find,
+however, some pleasant and characteristic touches.
+
+"Charles has received L30 for his share of the privateer, and expects
+L10 more; but of what avail is it to take prizes if he lays out the
+produce in presents to his sisters? He has been buying gold chains and
+topaz crosses for us. He must be well scolded."
+
+"Poor Mrs. Stent! It has been her lot to be always in the way; but we
+must be merciful, for perhaps in time we may come to be Mrs. Stents
+ourselves, unequal to anything and unwelcome to everybody."
+
+"We (herself and Miss A.) afterwards walked together for an hour on the
+Cobb; she is very conversable in a common way; I do not perceive wit or
+genius, but she has sense and some degree of taste, and her manners are
+very engaging. _She seems to like people rather too easily."_
+
+Of her own works, or rather of the characters of her own creation, her
+Elizabeths and Emmas, Jane speaks literally as a parent. They are her
+"dear children." "I must confess that I think her (Elizabeth) as
+delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able
+to tolerate those who do not like _her_ at least I do not know."
+This is said in pure playfulness; there is nothing in the letters like
+real egotism or impatience of censure.
+
+At the age of forty-two, in the prime of intellectual life, with "Emma"
+just out and "Northanger Abbey" coming, and in the midst of domestic
+affection and happiness, life must have been sweet to Jane Austen. She
+resigned it, nevertheless, with touching tranquillity and meekness. In
+1816, it appears, she felt her inward malady, and began to go round her
+old haunts in a manner which seemed to indicate that she was bidding
+them farewell. In the next year, she was brought for medical advice to a
+house in the Close of Winchester, and there, surrounded to the last by
+affection and to the last ardently returning it, she died. Her last
+words were her answer to the question whether there was anything she
+wanted--_"Nothing but death."_ Those who expect religious language
+in season and out of season have inferred from the absence of it in Jane
+Austen's novels that she was indifferent to religion. The testimony of
+her nephew is positive to the contrary; and he is a man whose word may
+be believed.
+
+Those who died in the Close were buried in the cathedral. It is
+therefore by mere accident that Jane Austen rests among princes and
+princely prelates in that glorious and historic fane. But she deserves
+at least her slab of black marble in the pavement there. She possessed a
+real and rare gift, and she rendered a good account of it. If the censer
+which she held among the priests of art was not of the costliest, the
+incense was of the purest. If she cannot be ranked with the very
+greatest masters of fiction, she has delighted many, and none can draw
+from her any but innocent delight.
+
+
+
+
+PATTISON'S MILTON
+
+[Footnote: "English Men of Letters. Edited by John Morley Milton. By
+Mark Pattison B.D., Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford." London,
+Macmillan, New York: Harper & Bros., 1879]
+
+
+John Bright once asked a friend who was the greatest of Englishmen and
+the friend hesitating answered his own question by saying, "Milton,
+because he above all others, combined the greatness of the writer with
+the greatness of the citizen." Professor Masson in his Life and Times of
+Milton, has embodied the conception of the character indicated by this
+remark, but he has run into the extreme of incorporating a complete
+narrative of the Revolution with the biography of Milton, so that the
+historical portion of the work overlays instead of illuminating the
+biographical, and the chapters devoted specially to the life seem to the
+reader interpolations, and not always welcome interpolations, in an
+intensely interesting history of the times. But now comes a biographer
+in whose eyes the life of Milton the citizen is a mere episode, and not
+only a mere episode but a lamentable and humiliating episode, in the
+life of Milton the poet. Milton's life, says Mr. Pattison "is a drama in
+three acts. The first discovers him in the calm and peaceful retirement
+of Horton, of which 'L'Allegro,' 'Il Penseroso,' and 'Lycidas' are the
+expression. In the second act he is breathing the foul and heated
+atmosphere of party passion and religious hate, generating the lurid
+fires which glare in the battailous canticles of his prose pamphlets.
+The three great poems--'Paradise Lost,' 'Paradise Regained,' and
+'Samson Agonistes'--are the utterance of his final period of solitary
+and Promethean grandeur, when, blind, destitute, friendless, he
+testified of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, alone
+before a fallen world." As to the struggle to which Milton, with
+Cromwell, Vane Pym, Hampden, Selden, and Chillingworth, gave his life,
+it is in the eyes of his present biographer, an ignoble "fray," a
+"biblical brawl," and its fruits in the way of theological discussion
+are nothing but "garbage." To write his Defence of the English People
+Milton deliberately sacrificed his eyesight, his doctor having warned
+him that he would lose his one remaining eye if he persisted in using it
+for book work. "The choice lay before me," he says, "between dereliction
+of a supreme duty and loss of eyesight. In such a case I could not
+listen to the physician, not if AEsculapius himself had spoken from his
+sanctuary; I could not but obey that inward monitor, I know not what,
+that spoke to me from Heaven. I considered with myself that many had
+purchased less good with worse ill, as they who gave their lives to reap
+only glory, and I thereupon concluded to employ the little remaining
+eyesight I was to enjoy in doing this, the greatest service to the
+common weal it was in my power to render." Mr. Pattison has quoted this
+passage, and no doubt he silently appreciates the heroism which breathes
+through it; but the "supreme duty" of which it speaks appears to him
+only a "prostitution of faculties" and a "poor delusion." Milton, he
+thinks, ought to have kept entirely aloof from the brawl and remained
+quiet either in the intellectual circles of Italy or in the delicious
+seclusion of his library at Horton, leaving liberty, truth, and
+righteousness to drown or to be saved from drowning by other hands than
+his. In "plunging into the fray" the poet miserably derogated from his
+superior position as a literary man, and the result was a dead loss to
+him and to the world. We are sure that we do not state Mr. Pattison's
+view more strongly than it is stated in his own pages.
+
+The views of all of us, including Professor Masson, on such a question
+are sure to be more or less idiosyncratic, and those of the present
+biographer have not escaped the general liability. They seem, at least,
+aptly to represent a mood prevalent just now among eminent men of the
+literary class in England, particularly at the universities. These men
+have been tossed on the waves of Ritualism, tossed on the waves of the
+reaction from Ritualism; some of them have been personally battered in
+both controversies; they have attained no certainty, but rather arrived
+at the conclusion that no certainty is attainable; they are weary and
+disgusted; such of them as have been enthusiasts in politics have been
+stripped of their illusions in that line also, and have fallen back on
+the conviction that everything must be left to evolve itself, and that
+there is nothing to be done. They have withdrawn into the sanctuary of
+critical learning and serene art, abjuring all theology and politics,
+and, above all, abjuring controversy of all kinds as utterly vulgar and
+degrading, though, as might be expected, they are sometimes
+controversial and even rather tart in an indirect way, and without being
+conscious of it themselves. Mr. Pattison's air when he comes into
+contact with the politics or theology of Milton's days is like that of a
+very seasick passenger at the sight of a pork chop. Nor does he fail to
+reflect the Necessarianism of the circle. "That in selecting a
+scriptural subject," he says, "Milton was not, in fact, exercising any
+choice, but was determined by his circumstances, is only what must be
+said of all choosing." Criticism fastidiously erudite, a study of art
+religiously and almost mystically profound, are fruits of this
+intellectual seclusion of chosen spirits from the coarse and ruffling
+world for which that world has reason to be grateful. It is not likely
+Milton would have chosen a writer of this school as his biographer, but
+few men would choose their own biographers well.
+
+Milton has at all events found in Mr. Pattison a biographer whose
+narrative is throughout extremely pleasant, interesting and piquant, the
+piquancy being enhanced for those who have the key to certain sly hits,
+such as that at "the peculiar form of credulity which makes perverts (to
+Roman Catholicism) think that everyone is about to follow their
+example," which carries us back to the time when the head of
+Tractarianism having gone over to Rome, was waiting anxiously, but in
+vain, for the tail to join it. The facts had already been collected by
+the diligence of Professor Masson, but Mr. Pattison uses them in a style
+which places beyond a doubt his own familiarity with the subject.
+Through the moral judgments there runs, as we think, and as we should
+have expected, a somewhat lofty conception of the privileges of
+intellect and of the value of literary objects compared with others, but
+with this qualification the reflections will probably be deemed sensible
+and sound. The unfortunate relations between Milton and his first wife
+are treated as we think all readers will say, at once with delicacy and
+justice. The literary criticisms are of a high order and such as only
+comprehensive learning combined with trained taste could produce,
+whether you entirely enter into all of them or not (and criticism has
+not yet been reduced to a certain rule) you cannot fail to gain from
+them increase of insight and enjoyment. They are often expressed in
+language of great beauty:
+
+"The rapid purification of Milton's taste will be best perceived by
+comparing 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso' of uncertain date but written
+after 1632 with the 'Ode on the Nativity,' written 1629. The Ode,
+notwithstanding its foretaste of Milton's grandeur, abounds in frigid
+conceits, from which the two later pieces are free. The Ode is frosty,
+as written in winter within the four walls of a college-chamber. The two
+idyls breathe the free air of spring and summer and of the fields around
+Horton. They are thoroughly naturalistic; the choicest expression our
+language has yet found of the first charm of country life, not as that
+life is lived by the peasant, but as it is felt by a young and lettered
+student, issuing at early dawn or at sunset into the fields from his
+chamber and his books. All rural sights and sounds and smells are here
+blended in that ineffable combination which once or twice perhaps in our
+lives has saluted our young senses, before their perceptions were
+blunted by alcohol, by lust or ambition, or diluted by the social
+distractions of great cities."
+
+This will not be found to be a _purpureus pannus_. Nor does it much
+detract from the grace of the work that of the "asyntactic disorder" of
+which Mr. Pattison accuses Milton's prose, some examples may be found in
+his own. Grammatical irregularities in a really good writer, as Mr.
+Pattison undoubtedly is, often prove merely that his mind is more intent
+on the matter than on the form.
+
+"Paradise Lost" is the subject of a learned, luminous, and to us very
+instructive dissertation. It is truly said that of the adverse criticism
+which we meet with on the poem "much resolves itself into a refusal on
+the part of the critic to make that initial abandonment to the
+conditions which the poet demands: a determination to insist that his
+heaven, peopled with deities, dominations, principalities, and powers,
+shall have the same material laws which govern our planetary system."
+There is one criticism, however, which cannot be so resolved, and on
+which, as it appears to us the most serious of all, we should have liked
+very much to hear Mr. Pattison. It is said that Lord Thurlow and another
+lawyer were crossing Hounslow Heath in a post-chaise when a tremendous
+thunder-storm came on; that the other lawyer said that it reminded him
+of the battle in "Paradise Lost" between the devil and the angels, and
+that Thurlow roared, with a blasphemous oath, "Yes, and I wish the devil
+had won." Persons desirous of sustaining the religious reputation of the
+legal profession add that his companion jumped out of the chaise in the
+rain and ran away over the heath. For our part, we have never found
+nearly so much difficulty in any of the incongruities connected with the
+relations between spirit and matter, or in any confusion of the
+Copernican with the Ptolemaic system, as in the constant wrenching of
+our moral sympathies, which the poet demands for the Powers of Good, but
+which his own delineation of Satan, as a hero waging a Promethean war
+against Omnipotence, compels us to give to the Powers of Evil. Perhaps a
+word or two might have been said about the relations of "Paradise Lost"
+to other "epics." It manifestly belongs not to the same class of poems
+as the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," or even the "AEneid." Dobson's Latin
+translation of it is about the greatest feat ever performed in modern
+Latin verse, and it shows by a crucial experiment how little Milton
+really has in common with Virgil. "Paradise Lost" seems to us far more
+akin to the Greek tragedy than to the Homeric poems or the "AEneid." In
+the form of a Greek drama it was first conceived. Its verse is the
+counterpart of the Greek iambic, not of the Greek or Latin hexameter.
+Had the laborious Dobson turned it into Greek iambics instead of turning
+it into Latin hexameters, we suspect the real affinity would have
+appeared.
+
+Looking upon the life of Milton the politician merely as a sad and
+ignominious interlude in the life of Milton the poet, Mr. Pattison
+cannot be expected to entertain the idea that the poem is in any sense
+the work of the politician. Yet we cannot help thinking that the tension
+and elevation which Milton's nature had undergone in the mighty
+struggle, together with the heroic dedication of his faculties to the
+most serious objects, must have had not a little to do both with the
+final choice of his subject and with the tone of his poem. "The great
+Puritan epic" could hardly have been written by any one but a militant
+Puritan. Had Milton abjured the service of his cause, as his biographer
+would have had him do, he might have given us an Arthurian romance or
+some other poem of amusement. We even think it not impossible that he
+might have never produced a great poem at all, but have let life slip
+away in elaborate preparation without being able to fix upon a theme or
+brace himself to the effort of composition. If Milton's participation in
+a political battle fought to save at once the political and spiritual
+life of England was degrading, Dante's participation in the faction
+fight between the Guelphs and Ghibellines must have been still more so;
+yet if Dante had been a mere man of leisure would he have written the
+"Divina Commedia"? Who are these sublime artists in poetry that are
+pinnacled so high above the "frays" and "brawls" of vulgar humanity? The
+best of them, we suppose (writers for the stage being out of the
+question) is Goethe. Shelley, Wordsworth, and Byron were all distinctly
+poets of the Revolution, or of the Counter-Revolution, and if you could
+remove from them the political element, you would rob them of half their
+force and interest. The great growths of poetry have coincided with the
+great bursts of national life, and the great bursts of national life
+have hitherto been generally periods of controversy and struggle.
+
+Art itself, in its highest forms, has been the expression of faith. We
+have now people who profess to cultivate art as art for its own sake;
+but they have hardly produced anything which the world accepts as great,
+though they have supplied some subjects for _Punch_. "He that
+loseth his life shall preserve it." Milton was ready to lose his
+literary life by sacrificing the remains of his eyesight to a cause
+which, upon the whole, humanity has accepted as its own; and it was
+preserved to him in a work which will never die. Mr. Pattison points to
+a short poem written by Milton when his pen was chiefly employed in
+serving the Commonwealth as indication that Milton "did not inwardly
+forfeit the peace which passeth all understanding." Why should a man
+forfeit that peace when he is doing with his whole soul that which he
+conscientiously believes to be his highest duty?
+
+Over Milton's pamphlets Mr. Pattison can of course only wring his hands.
+He is at liberty to wring his hands as much as he pleases over the
+personalities which sullied the controversy with Salmasius; but these
+are a small part of the matter, particularly when they are viewed in
+connection with the habits of a time which was at once much rougher in
+phrase, though perhaps not more malicious, than ours, and given to
+servile imitation of Greek and Latin oratory. To point his moral more
+keenly, Mr. Pattison denies that Milton was ever effective as a
+political writer. Yet the Council of State, who can have looked to
+nothing but effectiveness, and were pretty good judges of it, specially
+invited Milton to answer "Eikon Basilike" and to plead the cause of the
+Regicide Republic against Salmasius in the court of European opinion.
+Mr. Pattison himself (p. 135) allows that on the Continent Milton was
+renowned as the answerer of Salmasius and the vindicator of liberty; and
+he proceeds to quote the statement of Milton's nephew that learned
+foreigners could not leave London without seeing his uncle. But the
+biographer has evidently laid down beforehand in his own mind general
+laws which are fatal to all pamphlets as pamphlets, without
+consideration of their particular merits. "There are," he says,
+"examples of thought having been influenced by books. But such books
+have been scientific, not rhetorical." If it were not rude to
+contradict, we should have said that the influence exercised in politics
+by scientific treatises had been as nothing in the aggregate compared
+with that exercised by pamphlets, speeches, and, in later times, by the
+newspaper press. What does Mr. Pattison say to Burke's "Reflections on
+the French Revolution," to Paine's "Common Sense," to the tracts written
+by Halifax and Defoe at the time of the Revolution? Neither thought nor
+action is his epigrammatic condemnation of Milton's political writings,
+but an appeal which stirs men to action is surely both. Again of
+"Eikonoklastes" we are told that "it is like _all answers_,
+worthless as a book." Bentley's "Phalaris" is an answer, Demosthenes'
+"De Corona" is an answer. As a rule no doubt the form is a bad one, but
+an answer may embody principles and knowledge as well as show literary
+skill, reasoning power, and courteous self-control, which after all are
+not worthless though they are worth far less than some other things.
+These discussions so odious and contemptible in Mr. Pattison's eyes,
+what are they but the processes of thought through which a nation or
+humanity works its way to political truth? Even books scientific in form
+such as Hobbes's "Leviathan" or Harrington's "Oceana" are but registered
+results of a long discussion. "Eikon Basilike" was doing infinite
+mischief to the cause of the Commonwealth, and how could it have been
+met except by a critical reply? "Eikonoklastes" was thought, though it
+was not exact science, and so far as it told it was action, though it
+was not a pike or a musket.
+
+This portion of Mr. Pattison's work is thickly sown with aphorisms to
+which no one who does not share his special mood can without
+qualification assent. No good man can with impunity addict himself to
+party, and the best men will suffer most because their conviction of the
+goodness of their cause is deeper. But when one with the sensibility of
+a poet throws himself into the excitements of a struggle he is certain
+to lose his balance. The endowment of feeling and imagination which
+qualifies him to be the ideal interpreter of life unfits him for
+participation in that real life through the manoeuvres and compromises
+of which reason is the only guide and where imagination is as much
+misplaced as it would be in a game of chess. In this there is an element
+of truth but there is also something to which we are inclined to demur.
+If by party is meant mere faction, plainly no man can addict himself to
+it with impunity. But when the English nation was struggling in the
+grasp of a court and a prelacy which sought to reduce it to the level of
+Spain, no Englishman as it seems to us could with impunity perch himself
+aloft in a palace of art while peasants were shedding their blood to
+make him free. Especially do we question the soundness of the sentiment
+expressed in the last clause. Why is real life to be abandoned by every
+man of feeling and imagination and given over to the men of manoeuvre and
+compromise? Is not this the sentiment of the monkish ascetic coming back
+to us in another form and enjoining us to make ourselves eunuchs for the
+Kingdom of Art's sake? Cromwell, Vane, Hampden, and Pym were not men of
+manoeuvre and compromise, they had plenty of feeling and imagination,
+though in them these qualities gave birth not to poetry, but to high
+political or religious aspirations and grand social ideals. The theory
+of Milton's biographer is that an active interest in public affairs is
+fatal to excellence in literature or in art; and this theory seems to be
+confuted as signally as possible by the facts of Milton's life.
+
+It is curious to see how completely at variance Milton's own sentiment
+is with that of his biographer and how little he foresaw what Mr.
+Pattison would say about him. In the _Defensio Secunda_ he defends
+himself against the charge not of over activity but of inaction. "I can
+easily repel," he says, "any imputation of want of courage or of want of
+zeal. For though I did not share the toils or perils of the war I was
+engaged in a service not less hazardous to myself and more beneficial to
+my fellow citizens; nor in the adverse turns of our affairs, did I ever
+betray any symptoms of pusillanimity and dejection; or show myself more
+afraid than became me of malice or of death: For since from my youth I
+was devoted to the pursuits of literature, and my mind has always been
+stronger than my body, I did not court the labours of a camp, in which
+any common person would have been of more service than myself, but
+resorted to that employment in which my exertions were likely to be of
+most avail. Thus, with the better part of my frame I contributed as much
+as possible to the good of my country, and to the success of the
+glorious cause in which we were engaged; and I thought that if God
+willed the success of such glorious achievements, it was equally
+agreeable to his will that there should be others by whom those
+achievements should be recorded with dignity and elegance; and that the
+truth, which had been defended by arms, should also be defended by
+reason; which is the best and only legitimate means of defending it.
+Hence, while I applaud those who were victorious in the field, I will
+not complain of the province which was assigned me; but rather
+congratulate myself upon it, and thank the author of all good for having
+placed me in a station, which may be an object of envy to others rather
+than of regret to myself." Here is a culprit who entirely mistakes the
+nature of his offence and instead of apologizing for what he has done
+apologizes for not having done more. Nor so far as we are aware is there
+in Milton's writings the slightest trace of sorrow for the misemployment
+of his best years or consciousness of the ruin which it had wrought in
+his genius as a poet.
+
+In the same spirit Mr. Pattison continually represents the end of
+Milton's public life as "the irretrievable discomfiture of all his
+hopes, aims, and aspirations," his labour as "being swept away without a
+trace of it being left," and the latter part of his life as utter
+"wretchedness." The failure of selfish schemes often makes men wretched.
+The failure of unselfish aspirations may make a man sad, but can never
+make him wretched, and Milton was not wretched when he was writing
+"Paradise Lost." He would not have been wretched even if the
+discomfiture of his hopes for the Commonwealth had been as final and as
+irretrievable as his biographer supposes. But Milton knew that though
+disastrous it was not final or irretrievable. He had implicit confidence
+in the indestructibility of moral force, and he "bated no jot of heart
+or hope." He could see the limits of the reaction and he knew that,
+though great and calamitous in proportion to the errors of the
+Republican party, it had not changed in a day the character and
+fundamental tendencies of the nation. He would note that the Star
+Chamber, the Court of High Commission, the Council of the North, the
+legislative functions once usurped by the Privy Council, were not
+restored, and that no attempt was made to govern without a parliament.
+He found himself the defender of regicide, not free from peril, indeed,
+yet protected by public opinion, while, in general, narrow bounds were
+set to the bloodthirsty vengeance of the Cavaliers. He lived to witness
+the actual turn of the tide. Six years before his death the Triple
+Alliance was formed, and in the year of his death the Cabal Ministry
+fell. At worst, his case would have been that of a soldier killed in an
+unfortunate crisis of a battle which in the end was won, but he fell, if
+not with the shout of victory in his ears, with the inspiring signs of a
+general advance around him. If we take remoter ages into our view, the
+triumph of Milton is still more manifest. The cause to which he gave his
+life and his genius is forever exalted and dignified by his name. The
+notion that the Cavaliers were the men of culture and that the Puritans
+were the uncultivated has been a hundred times confuted, though it
+reappears in the discourses of Mr. Matthew Arnold, and, what is much
+more astonishing, in this work of Mr. Pattison. But in a party of action
+great defect of culture would be amply redeemed by the possession of a
+Milton.
+
+
+
+
+COLERIDGE'S LIFE OF KEBLE.
+
+[Footnote: A Memoir of the Rev. J. Keble, M.A., late Vicar of Hursley,
+by the Right Hon. Sir J.T. Coleridge, D.C.L., Oxford and London: James
+Parker & Co., 1869.]
+
+
+SIR JOHN COLERIDGE, the writer of this "Life of Keble," was for many
+years one of the Judges of the Court of Queen's Bench, is now a Privy
+Councillor, and may be regarded almost as the lay head of the High
+Church party in England. Sharing Keble's opinions, and entering into all
+his feelings, he is at the same time himself always a man of the world
+and a man of sense. Add to these qualifications his intimate and
+lifelong friendship with the subject of his work, and we have reason to
+expect a biography at once appreciative and judicial. Such a biography,
+in fact, we have; one full of sympathy, yet free from exaggeration, and
+a good lesson to biographers in general. The intimacy of the friendship
+between the writer and his subject might have interfered with his
+impartiality and repelled our confidence if the case had been more
+complex and had made greater demands on the inflexibility of the judge.
+But in the case of a character and a life so perfectly simple, pure, and
+transparent as the character and the life of Keble, there was but one
+thing to be said.
+
+The author of "The Christian Year" was the son of a country clergyman of
+the Church of England, and was educated at home by his father, so that
+he missed, or, as he would probably have said himself, escaped, the
+knowledge of minds differently trained from his own which a boy cannot
+help picking up at an English public school. At a very early age he
+became a scholar of Corpus Christi, a very small and secluded college of
+the High Church and High Tory University of Oxford. As the scholarships
+led to fellowships--the holders of which were required to be in holy
+orders--and to church preferment, almost all the scholars were destined
+for the clerical profession. Of Keble's student friendships one only
+seems to have been formed outside the walls of his own college, and this
+was with Miller, a student of Worcester College, who afterwards became a
+High Church clergyman. Among the students destined for the Anglican
+priesthood in the Junior Common Room of Corpus Christi College, there
+was indeed one whose presence strikes us like the apparition of Turnus
+in the camp of AEneas--Thomas Arnold. Arnold was already Arnold, and he
+succeeded in drawing the young champions of the divine right of kings
+and priests into a struggle against the divine right of tutors which
+'secured the liberty of the subject' at Corpus--the question at issue
+between the subject and the ruler being by which of two clocks, one of
+which was always five minutes before the other, the recitations should
+begin. The friendship between Arnold and Keble, however, was merely
+personal, Arnold evidently never exercised the slightest influence over
+Keble's mind, and even in this 'great rebellion'--the only rebellion,
+great or small, of his life--Keble was induced to take part, as he has
+expressly recorded, at the instigation of Coleridge, a middle term
+between Arnold and himself. The college teachers were all clergymen and
+the university curriculum in their days was regulated and limited by
+clerical ascendancy, and consisted of the Aristotelian and Butlerian
+philosophy, classics, and pure mathematics, without modern history or
+physical science. The remarkable precocity of Keble's intellect enabled
+him to graduate with the highest honours both in classics and
+mathematics at an age almost miraculously early even when allowance is
+made for the comparative youthfulness of students in general in those
+days. He was at once elected a Fellow of Oriel, and translated to the
+Senior Common Room of the College--another clerical society consisting
+of men for the most part considerably his seniors, among whom, in spite
+of the presence of Whately, High Church principles probably predominated
+already, and were destined soon to predominate in the most extreme
+sense, for the college presently became the focus of the Ritualistic and
+Romanizing movement. Thus, up to twenty-three, Keble's life had been
+that of a sort of acolyte, and though not ascetic (for his nature
+appears to have been always genial and mirthful), entirely clerical in
+its environments and its aspirations. At twenty-three he took orders,
+and put round his neck, with the white tie of Anglican priesthood, the
+Thirty-nine Articles, the whole contents of the Anglican Prayer Book and
+all the contradictions between those two standards of belief. For some
+time he held a tutorship in his college then he went down to a country
+living in the neighbourhood of a cathedral city, where he spent the rest
+of his days. His character was so sweet and gentle that he could not
+fail to be naturally disposed to toleration. He even goes the length of
+saying that some profane libellers whom his friend Coleridge was going
+to prosecute, were not half so dangerous enemies to religion as some
+wicked worldly-minded Christians. But it is no wonder, and implies no
+derogation from his charity, that he should have regarded the progress
+of opinions different from his own as a mediaeval monk would have
+regarded the progress of an army of Saracens or a horde of Avars. His
+poetic sympathies could not hinder him from disliking the rebel and
+Puritan Milton.
+
+Thus it was impossible that he should be in a very broad sense a poet of
+humanity. His fundamental conception of the world was essentially
+mediaeval, his ideal was that of cloistered innocence or, still better,
+the innocence of untempted and untried infancy. For such perfection his
+Lyra Innocentium was strung. When his friend is thinking of the
+profession of the law, he conjures him to forego the brilliant visions
+which tempted him in that direction for "visions far more brilliant and
+more certain too, more brilliant in their results, inasmuch as the
+salvation of one soul is worth more than the framing the Magna Charta of
+a thousand worlds, more certain to take place since temptations are
+fewer and opportunities everywhere to be found. These words remind us of
+a passage in one of Massillon's sermons, preached on the delivery of
+colours to a regiment, in which the bishop after dwelling on the
+hardships and sufferings which soldiers are called upon to endure,
+intimates that a small part of those hardships and sufferings, undergone
+in performance of a monastic vow, would merit the kingdom of heaven. If
+souls are to be saved by real moral influences, Sir John Coleridge has
+probably saved a good many more souls as a religious judge and man of
+the world than he would have saved as the rector of a country parish,
+and if character is formed by moral effort, he has probably formed a
+much higher character by facing temptation than he would have done by
+flying from it. Keble himself, in his Morning Hymn, has a passage in a
+different strain, but the sentiment which really prevailed with him was
+probably that embodied in his advice to his friend.
+
+Whatever of grace, worth, or beneficence there could be in the half
+cloistered life of an Oxford fellow of those days or in the rural and
+sacerdotal life of a High Church rector, there was in the life of Keble
+at Oriel, and afterwards at Hursley. The best spirit of such a life
+together with the image of a character rivalling in spiritual beauty,
+after its kind that of Ken or Leighton, is found in Keble's poetry, and
+for this we may be, as hundreds of thousands have been, thankful.
+
+The biographer declines to enter into a critical examination of the
+"Christian Year," but he confidently predicts its indefinite reign,
+founding his prediction on the causes of its original success. He justly
+describes it, in effect as rather a poetical manual of devotion than a
+book of poetry for continuous reading It is in truth, so completely out
+of the category of ordinary poetry that to estimate its poetic merits
+would be a very difficult task. Sir John Coleridge indicates this, when
+he cites as an appropriate tribute to the excellence of the book the
+practice of the clergyman who used, every Sunday afternoon instead of a
+sermon to read and interpret to his congregation the poem of the
+Christian Year for the day. The object of the present publication says
+the Preface will be attained if any person find assistance from it in
+bringing his own thoughts and feelings into more entire unison with
+those recommended and exemplified in the Prayer Book. This connection
+with the Prayer Book and with the Anglican Calendar, while it has given
+the book an immense circulation necessarily limits its range and
+interest. Yet those who care least for being brought into unison with
+the Prayer Book fully admit that the "Christian Year" gives proof of
+real poetic power. Keble himself, as his biographer attests, had a very
+humble opinion of his own work, seldom read it hated to hear it praised
+consented with great difficulty to its glorification by sumptuous
+editions. It was his saintly humility suggests the biographer which made
+him feel that the book which flowed from his own heart would inevitably
+be taken for a faithful likeness of himself, that he would thus be
+exhibiting himself in favourable colours and be in danger of incurring
+the woe pronounced on those who win the good opinion of the world. If
+this account be true it is another proof of the mediaeval and half
+monastic mould in which Keble's religious character was cast.
+
+The comparative failure of the "Lyra Innocentium" is probably to be
+attributed not only to its inferiority in intrinsic merit but to the
+fact that whereas the "Christian Year" has as little of a party
+character as any work of devotion written by an Anglican and High Church
+clergyman could have, the "Lyra Innocentium" was the work of a leading
+party man. The interval between the two publications had been filled by
+a great reactionary movement among the clergy, one of the back-streams
+to that current of Liberalism, which setting in after the termination of
+the great French war, not only swept away the Rotten boroughs and the
+other political bulwarks of Tory dominion but threatened to sweep away
+the privileges of the Established Church, and compelled Churchmen to
+look out for a basis independent of State support. Keble was the
+associate of Hurrell Froude, Newman Pusey and the other great
+Tractarians. A sermon which he preached before the University of Oxford
+was regarded by Newman as the beginning of the movement. He contributed
+to the Tracts for the Times, though as a controversialist he was never
+powerful, sweetness not strength being the characteristic of his mind.
+He gradually embraced, as it seems to us, all the principles which sent
+his fellow Tractarians over to Rome. The posthumous alteration made in
+the Christian Year by his direction shows that he held a doctrine
+respecting the Eucharist not practically distinguishable from the Roman
+doctrine of Transubstantiation. A poem intended to appear in the "Lyra
+Apostolica" but suppressed at the time in deference to the wishes of
+cautious friends and now published by his biographer proves that he was,
+as a Protestant putting it plainly would say, an advanced Mariolater. He
+was a thoroughgoing sacerdotalist and believer in the authority of the
+Church in matters of opinion. He mourned over the abandonment of
+auricular confession. He regarded the cessation of prayers for the souls
+of dead founders and benefactors as a lamentable concession to
+Protestant prejudice. Like his associates he repudiated the very name of
+Protestant. He deemed the state of the Church of England with regard to
+orthodoxy most deplorable--two prelates having distinctly denied an
+article of the Apostles Creed and matters going on altogether so that it
+was very difficult for a Catholic Christian to remain in that communion.
+Why then did he not with Newman and the rest accept the logical
+conclusions of his premises and go to the place to which his principles
+belonged? His was not a character to be influenced by any worldly
+motives or even by that sense of ecclesiastical position which perhaps
+has sometimes had its influence in making Romanizing leaders of the
+Anglican clergy unwilling to merge their party and their leadership in
+the Church of Rome. There was nothing in his nature which would have
+recoiled from any self abnegation or submission. The real answer is we
+believe that Keble was a married man. We can hardly imagine him making
+love. His marriage was no doubt one not of passion but of affection, as
+small a departure from the sacerdotal ideal as it was possible for a
+marriage to be. Still, he was married and tenderly attached to his good
+wife. Thus it was probably not any subtle distinction between Real
+Presence and Transubstantiation, not misgivings as to the exact degree
+of worship to be paid to the Virgin, not doubts as to the limits of the
+personal infallibility of the Pope or objections to practical abuses in
+the Church of Rome--which kept Keble and has kept many a Romanizing
+clergyman of the Anglican Church from becoming a Roman Catholic. Nor is
+the reason when analysed one of which Anglican philosophy need be
+ashamed for to the pretentions of sacerdotal asceticism the best answer
+is domestic love.
+
+Keble stopped his ears with wax against the siren appeal of his seceding
+chief John Henry Newman and refused at first to read the Essay on
+Development. When at last he was drawn into the controversy he
+constructed for his own satisfaction and that of other waverers who
+looked up to him for support and guidance an argument founded on the
+Butlerian principle of probability as the guide of life. But Butler,
+with all deference to his great name be it said, imports into questions
+of conscience and into the spiritual domain a principle really
+applicable only to worldly concerns. A man will invest his money or take
+any other step in relation to his worldly affairs as he thinks the
+chances are in his favour, but he cannot be satisfied with a mere
+preponderance of chances that he possesses vital truth and that he will
+escape everlasting condemnation. The analogy drawn by Keble between the
+late recognition of the Prayer Book instead of the too Protestant
+Articles as the real canon of the Anglican faith and the lateness of the
+Christian Revelation in the world's history was an application of the
+analogical method of reasoning which showed to what strange uses that
+method might be put.
+
+It is singular but consistent with our theory as to the real nature of
+the tie which prevented Keble from joining the secession that he should
+have determined if compelled to leave the Church of England (a
+contingency which from the growth of heresy in that Church he distinctly
+contemplated) to go not into the communion of the Church of Rome but out
+of all communion whatever. He would have gone we suppose into some limbo
+like the phantom Church of the Nonjurors. It is difficult to see how
+such a course can have logically commended itself to the mind of any
+member of the theological school which held that the individual reason
+afforded no sort of standing ground and that the one thing indispensable
+to salvation was visible communion with the true Church.
+
+Sir John Coleridge deals with the question as to the posthumous
+alteration in "The Christian Year" the discovery of which caused so much
+scandal among its Protestant admirers and brought to a stand, it was
+said, the subscription for a memorial college in honour of its author.
+It is made clearly to appear that the alteration was in accordance with
+Keble's expressed desire, and the suspicion which was cast upon his
+executors and those who were about him in his last moments is proved to
+be entirely unfounded. But, on the other hand, we cannot think that the
+biographer (or rather Keble, who speaks for himself in this matter) will
+be successful in convincing many people that the alteration was merely
+verbal. The mental interpolation of "only" after "not" in the words "not
+in the Hands," is surely a _tour de force_, and it must be
+remembered that the passage occurs in the lines on the "Gunpowder
+Treason," and is evidently pointed against the Roman Catholic doctrine
+of the Eucharist. The Roman Catholics do not deny that the Eucharist is
+received "in the heart," but the Protestants deny that it is is received
+"in the hands" at all, and the vast majority of Keble's readers could
+not fail to construe the passage as an assertion of the Protestant
+doctrine. Sir John Coleridge does not confront the real difficulty,
+because he does not give the two versions side by side, or exhibit the
+passage in its context. A more natural account of the matter is
+suggested by a letter of Keble, written when he was contemplating the
+publication of the "Lyra Innocentium," and included in the present
+memoir. In that letter he says:
+
+"No doubt, there would be the difference in tone which you take notice
+of between this and the former book, for when I wrote that, I did not
+understand (to mention no more points) either the doctrine of Repentance
+_or that of the Holy Eucharist_, as held, _e. g._, by Bishop
+Ken, nor that of Justification, and such points as these must surely
+make a great difference. But may it please God to preserve me from
+writing so unreally and deceitfully as I did then, and if I could tell
+you the whole of my shameful history, you would join with all your heart
+in this prayer."
+
+The biographer, while he proves his integrity by giving us the letter,
+of course protests against our taking seriously the self accusations of
+a saint. We certainly shall not take seriously any charge of
+deceitfulness against Keble, whether made by himself or by any other
+human being, but he was liable, to a certain extent, like all other
+human beings, to self-deception. His opinions, like those of his
+associates, on theological questions in general and on the question of
+the Eucharist in particular, had been moving rapidly in a Romanizing
+direction during the interval between the publication of "The Christian
+Year" and that of the "Lyra Innocentium." In the passage just quoted, we
+see that he was conscious of this, but it was not unnatural that he
+should sometimes forget it, and that he should then put upon the words
+in "The Christian Year" a construction in conformity with his opinions
+as they were in their most advanced stage. It is strange, however, that
+he and the rest of his party, if they were even dimly and at intervals
+conscious of the fact that their own creed had undergone so much change,
+should still have been able to take the ground of immutability and
+infallibility in their controversies with other parties and churches.
+
+It has been almost forgotten that Keble held for ten years a (non-
+resident) Professorship of Poetry at Oxford. His lectures were
+unfortunately written, as the rule of the Chair then was, in Latin. He
+thought of translating them, and Sir John Coleridge seems still to hold
+that the task would be worth undertaking. For the examples, which are
+taken from the Greek and Latin poets, it would be necessary to
+substitute translations or examples taken from the modern poets. Mr.
+Gladstone chooses, the apt epithet when he calls the lectures "refined."
+Refinement rather than vigour or depth was always the attribute of
+Keble's productions. His view of poetry, however, as the vent for
+overcharged feelings or an imagination oppressed by its own fulness--as
+a _vis medica_, to use his own expression--if it does not cover the
+whole ground, well deserves attention among other theories.
+
+To the discredit, perhaps, rather of the dogmatic spirit than of either
+of the persons concerned, religious differences were allowed to
+interfere with he personal friendship formed in youth between Keble and
+Arnold. With this single and slight exception, Keble's character in
+every relation--as friend, son, husband, tutor, pastor--seems to have
+been all that the admirers of "The Christian Year" can expect or desire.
+The current of his life, but for the element of theological controversy
+and perplexity which slightly disturbed his later days, would have been
+limpid and tranquil as that of any rivulet in the quiet scene where the
+years of his Christian ministry were passed. He and his wife, the
+partner of all his thoughts and labours, and the mirror and partaker of
+the beauty of his character, died almost on the same day; she dying
+last, and rejoicing that her husband was spared the pain of being the
+survivor.
+
+  "Within these walls [of the Church] each fluttering guest
+  Is gently lured to one safe nest--
+  Without 'tis moaning and unrest."
+
+The writer of those lines perfectly as well as beautifully realized his
+ideal.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lectures and Essays, by Goldwin Smith
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