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 Success and its conditions / 
 
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SU.C^E^S 
 
 ITS 00:N"DITIO]SrS 
 
 EDWIN p. WHIPPLE. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 JAMES E. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 
 
 Lai£ Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 
 
 1877. 
 
/^Eo\ 
 
 RNELL 
 UNIVERSITY 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S71, 
 
 BY JAMES K. OSGOOD & CO., 
 
 in the Office of the Idbraiian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 University Prbss : Welch, Bigelow, & Co , 
 Cambridge. 
 
EDWm p. WHIPPLE'S WRITLNGS. 
 
 SUCCESS AND ITS CONDITIONS. 
 
 1 volume. ISmo. 8160. 
 
 LITEEATXJRE AND LIFE. 
 iTolome. 16mo. 81.50. 
 
 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. 
 2volamea. 16ii^o. 83.00. 
 
 CHARACTER AND CHARACTERISTIC AIEN. 
 
 1 TOlume. 16mo. 8 1.60. 
 
 THE LITERATURE OF THE AGE OP ELIZABETH. 
 
 iTolume. 16ino. 81.50. 
 
 In uniform Tolnxaes, sold separatelx or together. 
 
 JAMES B. OSGOOD & CO., Publishers, 
 
 WlHTHKOP SQUAKB, BOSTOH. 
 
CO]S"TE]^TS. 
 
 — »— 
 
 Page 
 
 Young Men in Histoet 1 
 
 The Ethics of Populaeitt 31 
 
 Geit 57 
 
 The Vital and the Mechanical .... 94 
 
 The Economy of Invective 114 
 
 The Sale of Souls 156 
 
 The Teicks of Imagination 185 
 
 Cheerfulness 194 
 
 Mental and Moeal Paupeeism 221 
 
 V The Genius oi* Dickens 250 
 
 Shoddy - 273 
 
 ■J John A. Andeew 306 
 
PEEFAOE. 
 
 The Essays in this volume were written at va- 
 rious periods during the past twenty-five years. 
 In collecting them, the author finds that they 
 more or less refer to the conditions of success, in 
 the various departments' of hfe ; and he has ac- 
 cordingly given this title to the book. The lead- 
 ing idea is, that nothing really succeeds which is 
 not based on reality ; that sham, in a large sense, 
 is never successful ; that in the life of the individ- 
 ual, as in the more comprehensive life of the state, 
 pretension is nothing and power is everything. It 
 is universally admitted that " truth is mighty and 
 will prevail." The writer has tried to illustrate a 
 less familiar maxim, that truth is mighty and has 
 prevailed. Abstract truth, entirely disconnected 
 from human life and the substance of human char- 
 acter, is doubtless something for the realization of 
 which we must look to the future ; relative truth, 
 the truth which inheres in things and persons, and 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 which continually tests pretension by performance, 
 prevails from day to day, and is the vital force 
 which impels the world forward. We are so 
 abundantly supplied with the commonplaces of 
 perfection, that we are tempted to forget the im- 
 perfections of human beings. In the Essays on 
 " Young Men in History," " The Vital and the 
 Mechanical," "Grit," "Shoddy," "The Ethics 
 of Popularity," " Mental and Moral Pauperism," 
 not to mention others, the author has attempted to 
 state the vital conditions of success, that is, the 
 truth which really prevails. With the tenderest 
 regard for ideals, he has desired to discriminate 
 between their assertion and their realization. 
 Possibly his statements, in some cases, may have 
 the extravagance and injustice of epigragi ; but he 
 still trusts that the idea may be perceived through 
 all the exaggerated modes of its expression. Dis- 
 believing in truisms, he would most emphatically 
 profess his belief in truths ; and he hopes that, in 
 urging, every argument and illustration against^ 
 " the madness of extremes," in inculcating the 
 principles of vital moderation, he has said nothing 
 which should offend any true reformer and philan- 
 thropist. 
 
YOUNG MEN IN HISTOEY. 
 
 HiSTOET is an imperfect record of nations and races, 
 diverse in their position and capacities, but identical in 
 nature and one in destiny. Viewed comprehensively, 
 its individuals and events comprise the incidents of an 
 uncompleted biography of man, a biography long, ob- 
 scure, full of puzzling facts for thought to interpret, and 
 more puzzling breaks for thought to bridge, but, on the 
 whole, exhibiting man as moving and man as moving 
 forward. If we scrutinize the character of this pro- 
 gress, we shall find that the forces which propel society 
 in the direction of improvement, and the ideas we form 
 of the nature of that improvement, are the forces and 
 the ideas of youth. The world, indeed, moves under 
 the impulses of youth to realize the ideals of youth. 
 It has youth for its beginning and youth for its end ; 
 for youth is alive, and progress is but the movement 
 of life to attain fuller, higher, and more vivid life. 
 Youth, too, is nearer to those celestial fountains of 
 existence whence inspiration pours into the heart and 
 1 
 
Z TOTING MEN IN HISTORY. 
 
 light streams into the brain. Indeed,- all the qualities 
 which constitute the life of the soul, and which preserve 
 in vigor and health even the practical faculties of the 
 mind, — freshness, ardor, generosity, love, hope, faith, 
 courage, cheer, — all these youth feels stirring and 
 burning in its own breast, and aches to see fulfilled in 
 the common experience of the race. But in age these 
 fine raptures are apt to be ridiculed as the amiable 
 follies of juvenile illusions. In parting, however, with 
 what it derides as illusions, does not, age part with the 
 whole of joy and by far the most important element of 
 wisdom ? The world it so sagaciously aims to inaugu- 
 rate, what is it but a stationary and decrepit world, — 
 a world which would soon decay, and drop into the 
 abyss of nothingness, were it not for the rejuvenating 
 vitality poured into it by the youth it cynically de- 
 spises? True wisdom, indeed, springs from the wide 
 brain which is fed from the deep heart ; and it is only 
 when age warms its withering conceptions at the mem- 
 ory of its youthful fire, when it makes experience serve 
 aspiration, and knowledge illumine the difficult paths 
 through which thoughts thread their way into facts, — 
 it is only then that age becomes broadly and nobly 
 wise. 
 
 If we thus discern in the sentiments and faculties of 
 youth the animating and impelling soul of historical 
 
YOUNG MEN IN HISTORY. 3 
 
 events, — if, wherever in history we mark a great move- 
 ment of humanity, we commonly detect a young man at 
 its head or at its heart, — we must still, I admit, dis- 
 criminate between youth and young men, between the 
 genial action of youthful qualities and the imperfections 
 and perversions of youthful character. Youth we com- 
 monly represent under the image of morn, — clear, 
 fresh, cheerful, radiant, the green sward trembling and 
 gleaming with ecstasy as the rising sun transfigures its 
 dew-drops into diamonds ; but then morn is sometimes 
 black with clouds, and foul with vapors, and terrible 
 with tempests. In treating, therefore, of the position 
 and influence of young men in history, let us begin 
 with those in whom the energies of youth were early 
 perverted from their appropriate objects, and fell under 
 the dominion of sensual appetites or malignant pas- 
 sions. 
 
 And first, it is important we should bear in mind, 
 that, in this misdirection of youth, all that constitutes 
 the spirit, the power, the charm of youth is extin- 
 guished. The young man becomes prematurely old. 
 We have all witnessed that saddest of spectacles, the 
 petulant child developing into the rufiian boy, and hur- 
 rying into the ruflBan man, — rude, hard-natured, swag- 
 gering, and self-willed, a darkness over his conscience, 
 a glare over his appetites, insensible to duty or affec- 
 
4 YOUNG MEN IN HISTORT. 
 
 tion, and only tamed into decencies by the chains of 
 restraint which an outraged community binds on his im- 
 pulses. Now give this young savage arbitrary power, 
 let him inherit the empire of the world, remove all 
 restraints on his will, and allow him to riot in the mad 
 caprices of sensuality and malevolence, and he makes 
 his ominous appearance in history as a Caligula, a 
 Domitian, a Nero. More fit for a madhouse than a 
 throne, his advent is the signal of a despotism controlled 
 by no guiding principles, but given over to that spirit 
 of freak and mischief which springs from the union of 
 the boy's -brain with the man's appetites ; and his fate 
 is to have that craze of the faculties and delirium of 
 the sensations which he calls his life abruptly closed by 
 suicide or assassination : by suicide, when he has be- 
 come intolerable to himself; by assassination, when, as 
 is more common, he has become intolerable to the 
 world. Evil, however, as history shows him, it must 
 still be said that his career does not exhibit the con- 
 sistent depravity and systematic wickedness which char- 
 acterize some of the Roman Emperors of maturer 
 years ; and even the giddy ferocities of the youthful 
 Nero can be contemplated with less horror than the 
 Satanic depth of malignity which morosely brooded 
 over shadowy plans of gigantic crime in the dark spirit 
 of the aged Tiberius. 
 
YOUNG MEN IN HISTOET. 5 
 
 This ruffian type of the young man is rarely ex- 
 hibited on the historical theatre in its full combination 
 of animal fury with mental feebleness. In most young 
 men who acquire prominence in the history of the 
 world there is some genius, however dashed it may 
 be with depravity; and genius is itself an inlet of 
 youth, checks the downward drag of the spiritual into 
 the animal nature, intensi^es appetites into passions, 
 and lends impetus to daring ambition, if it does not 
 always purify the motives which prompt its exercise. 
 This genius divorced froin wisdom, scornful of moral 
 obligations, and ravenous for notoriety, is especially 
 marked by wilfulness, presumptuous self-assertion, the 
 curse and plague-spot of the perverted soul. Alcibiades 
 in politics and Byron in literature are among its most 
 conspicuous examples. Their defiance of ruje was not 
 the confident daring which comes from the vision of 
 genius, but' the disdainful audacity which springs from 
 its wilfulness. Alcibiades, a name closely connected 
 with the events which resulted in the ruin of the 
 Athenian empire, was perhaps the most variously ac- 
 complished of all those young men of genius who have 
 squandered their genius in the attempt to make it in- 
 solently dominant over justice and reason. Graceful, 
 beautiful, brave, eloquent, and afiluent, the pupil of 
 Socrates, the darling of the Athenian democracy, lav- 
 
6 YOUNG MEN IN HISTOET. 
 
 ishly endowed by Nature with the faculties of the great 
 statesman and the great captain, with every power and 
 every opportunity to make himself the pride and glory 
 of his country, he was still so governed by an imp of 
 boyish perversity and -presumption, that he renounced 
 the ambition of being the first statesman of Athens in 
 order to show himself its most restless, impudent, and 
 unscrupulous trickster ; and, subjecting all pubUc ob- 
 jects to the freaks of his own vanity and selfishness, 
 ever ready to resent opposition to his whim with trea- 
 son against the state, he stands 'in history a curious 
 spectacle of transcendent gifts belittled by profligacy of. 
 character, the falsest, keenest, most mischievous, and 
 most magnificent demagogue the world has ever seen. 
 
 If we turn from Alcibiades the politician to Byron 
 the poet, we have a no less memorable instance of intel- 
 lectual power early linked with moral perversity and 
 completely bewitched and bedevilled by presumptuous 
 egotism. What, in consequence, was his career ? Pet- 
 ulant, passionate, self-willed, impatient of all external 
 direction, the slave and victim of the momentfs impulse, 
 ^ yet full of the energies and visions of genius, this arro- 
 gant stripling passes by quick leaps from boyhood into 
 the vices of age, and, after a short experience of the 
 worst side of life, comes out a scoffer and a misanthrope, 
 fills the world with his gospel of desperation and de- 
 
YOUNG MEN IN HISTORY. 7 
 
 spair, and, after preaching disgust of existence and 
 contempt of mankind as the wisdom gleaned from his 
 excesses, he dies, worn out and old, at thirty-six. 
 
 Now neither in Byron's works nor in Byron's life do 
 we recognize the spirit of youth, — the spirit which 
 elevates as well as stimulates, which cheers as well as 
 inflames. Compare him in this respect with a man of 
 vaster imagihation and mightier nature, — compare him 
 with Edmund Burke, in what we call Burke's old age ; 
 and as you read one of Burke's immortal pamphlets, 
 composed just before his death, do you not feel your 
 blood kindle and your mind expand, as you come into 
 communion with that bright and broad intellect, compe- 
 tent to grapple with the most complicated relations of 
 European politics, — with that audacious will, whose 
 purposes glow- with immortal life, — and especially with 
 - that large and noble soul, rich in experience, rich in 
 wisdom, but richer still in the freshness, the ardor, the 
 eloquence, the chivalrous daring of youth ? Byron is 
 old at twenty-five 5 Burke is young at sixty-six. 
 
 The spirit of youth may thus, as in the case of 
 Byron, be burnt out of the young man by the egotism 
 of passion ; but it may also be frozen up in his breast 
 by the egotism of opinion. "Woe to the young shoulders 
 afflicted with the conceit that they support old heads ! 
 When this mental disease assumes the form of flip- 
 
8 TOUNG MEN IN HISTORY. 
 
 pancy, it renders a young person happily unconscious 
 that Nature has any stores of wisdom which she has 
 not thought fit to deposit in his cranium, or that his 
 mind can properly assume any other attitude towards 
 an opponent than that of placid and pitying contempt. 
 
 But this intellectual presumption, ridiculous in its 
 flippant or pompous, becomes terrible in its malignant, 
 expression. Thus, the headstrong young men who 
 pushed the French Revolution of 1789 into the excesses 
 of the Reign of Terror were well-intentioned reformers, 
 driven into crime by the fanaticism of mental conceit. 
 This is especially true of Robespierre and St. Just. 
 Their hearts were hardened through their heads. The 
 abstract notions of freedom and philanthropy were im- 
 bedded in their brains as truths, without being rooted 
 in their characters as sentiments ; and into the form of 
 these inexorable notions they, aimed to shape France. 
 They were of course opposed by human nature. Op- 
 position made them personally cruel, because it made 
 them intellectually remorseless. "With no instincts of 
 humanity to guide their ideas of its rights, it was but 
 natural that ofiFended pride of opinion should fester into 
 that malignant passion which puts relentlessness into 
 the will. Everything apd everybody that opposed the 
 onward movement of the great cause ought, they con- 
 ceived, to be removed. The readiest way to remove 
 
YOUNG MEN IN HISTORY. 9 
 
 them was by tyranny, terror, and murder ; for . the 
 swiftest method of answering objections is to knock out 
 the brains that propound them. All the instituted 
 rights of men were accordingly violated in the fierce 
 desire to establish the abstract rights of man. A gov- 
 ernment founded _ on reason was to be created by a 
 preliminary and provisional government founded on the 
 guillotine. The ideals of Rousseau were to be realized 
 by practices learned in the school of Draco ; and a 
 celestial democracy of thought was to spring from a 
 demonized democracy of fact. Now we are acciis- 
 tomed to call these wretches young men. But there 
 was no youth in them. Young in respect to age, their 
 intellectually irritated egotism made them as bigoted, 
 as inhuman, and as soulless as old familiars of the In- 
 quisition. 
 
 In truth, the real young man of that Revolution, as 
 of our own Revolution, was Lafayette. His convictions 
 regarding the rights of man were essentially the same 
 as those held by Robespierre and St. Just ; but they 
 were convictions that grew out of the inherent geniality, 
 benevolence, and rectitude of his nature, and were ac- 
 cordingly guided and limited in their application by the 
 sanity and sweetness of the sentiments whence they 
 drew their vitality. Whilst they made him capable of 
 any self-sacrifice for freedom and humanity, they made 
 
10 YOUNG MEN IN HISTOET. 
 
 him incapable of crime ; and misfortune and failure 
 never destroyed his faith in freedom, because his faith- 
 in freedom had not been corrupted by experience in 
 blood. 
 
 In Nero and Caligula, in Alcibiades and Byron, in 
 Robespierre and St. Just, we have attempted to sketch 
 the leading perversions of youthful energy and intelli- 
 gence. Let us now proceed, to exhibit their more 
 wholesomej and, we trust, their more natural action. 
 And first, in respect to the emotions, these may all be 
 included in the single word " enthusiasm," or that impul- 
 sive force which liberates the mental powers from the 
 ice of timidity as Spring unloosens the streams from 
 the grasp of Winter, and sends them forth in a rejoic- 
 ing rush. The mind of youth, when impelled by this 
 original strength and enthusiasm of Nature, is keen, 
 eager, inquisitive, intense, audacious, rapidly assimilat- 
 ing facts into faculties and knowledge into power, and 
 above all teeming with that joyous fulness of creative 
 life which ra'diates thoughts as inspirations, and magne- 
 tizes as well as informs. Now the limit of this youth 
 of mind observation decides to be commonly between 
 thirty-five and forty ; but still it is not so properly 
 marked by years as by the arrest of this glkd mental 
 growth and development. In some men, like Bacon 
 and Burke, it is not arrested at sixty. The only sign 
 
YOUNG MEN IN HISTORY. H 
 
 of age, indeed, which is specially worth considering, is 
 the mental sign ; and this is that gradual disintegration 
 of the mind's vital powers by which intelligence is 
 separated from force, and experience from ability. Ex- 
 perience detached from active power is no longer fac- 
 ulty of doing, but mere memory of what has been done ; 
 and principles accordingly subside into precedents, in- 
 tuitions into arguments, and alertness of will into calcu- 
 lation of risks. The highest quality of mind, the quality 
 which stamps it as an immortal essence, namely, that 
 power, the fused compound of all other powers, which 
 sends its eagle glance over a whole fi^ld of particulars, 
 penetrates and grasps all related objects in one devour- 
 ing conception, -and flashes a vivid insight of the only 
 right thing to be done amid a thousand possible courses 
 of action, — the power, in short, which gives confidence 
 to will because it gives certainty to vision, and is as 
 much removed from recklessness as from irresolution, 
 — this power fades in mental age into that pausing, 
 comparing, generalizing, indecisive intelligence, which, 
 however wise and valuable it may be in those matters 
 where success is not the prize of speed, is imbecile in 
 those conjunctures of affairs where events march faster 
 than the mind can syllogize, and to think and act a 
 moment too late is defeat and ruin. 
 
 It is for this reason that the large portion of history 
 
12 TOUNO MEN IN mSTOBf. 
 
 which relates to war is so much the history of the 
 triumphs of young men. Thus, Scipio was twenty-nine 
 when he gained the Battle of Zana; Charles the 
 Twelfth, nineteen when he gained the Battle of Narva; 
 Cond^, twenty-two when he gained the Battle of RocroL 
 At thirty-six, Scipio the younger was the conqueror of 
 Carthage ; at thirty-six, Cortes was the conqueror of 
 Mexico ; at thirty, Charlemagne was master of France 
 and Germany ; at thirty-two, Clive had established the 
 British power in .India. Hannibal, the greatest of 
 military commanders, was only thirty, when, at Cann», 
 he dealt an almost annihilating blow at the republic of 
 Kome ; and Napoleon was only twenty-seven, when, on 
 the plains of Italy, he outgeneralled and defeated, one 
 after another, the veterah marshals of Austria. And 
 in respect to the wars which grew out of the French 
 Eevolution, what are they but the record of old gener- 
 als beaten" by young generals ? And it will not do to 
 say, that the young generals were victorious merely in 
 virtue of their superiority in courage, energy, and dash ; 
 for they evinced a no less decisive superiority in com- 
 mon-sense and judgment, — that is, in instantaneous 
 command of all their resources in the moment of peril, 
 in quickness to detect the enemy's weak points, and, 
 above all, in resolute sagacity to send the full strength 
 of the arm to second at once the piercing glance of the 
 
YOUNG MEN IN HISTOKT. 13 
 
 eye. The old generals, to be sure, boasted more pro- 
 fessional experience, but, having ossified their expe- 
 rience into pedantic maxims, they had less professional 
 skill. After their armies had been ignominiously 
 routed by the harebrained young fellows opposed to 
 them, they could easily prove, that, by the rules of 
 war, they had been most improperly beaten ; but their 
 young opponents, whose eager minds had transmuted 
 the rules of war into instincts of intelligence, were 
 indrfferent to the scandal of violating the etiquette of 
 fighting, provided thereby they gained the object of 
 fighting. They had, in fact, the quality which the old 
 generals absurdly claimed, namely, practical sagacity, 
 or, as the Yankee phrased it, " the knack of hitting it 
 about right the first time." 
 
 "We cannot, of course, leave the subject of young 
 military commanders without a reference to Alexander 
 of'Macedon, in many respects the greatest young man 
 that ever, as with the fury of the untamable forces of 
 Nature, broke into history. But even in the " Macedo- 
 nian madman," as he is called, it will be found that 
 fury obeyed sagacity. A colossal soul, in whom bar-, 
 baric passions urged gigantic powers to the accomplish- 
 ment of insatiable desires, he seems, on the first view, 
 to be given over to the wildest ecstasies of imaginative 
 pride ; but we are soon dazzled and confounded by the 
 
14 YOUNG MEN IN mSTORT. 
 
 irresistible energy, the cool, clear, fertile, forecasting 
 intelligence, with which he pursues and realizes his 
 vast designs of glory and dominion. Strong and arro- 
 gant as the fabled Achilles, with a military genius 
 which allies him to Caesar and Napoleon, he was tor- 
 tured by aspirations more devouring than theirs; for, 
 exalted in his own conception above humanity by his 
 constant success in performing what other men de- 
 clared impossible, he aimed to conquer the world, 
 not merely to be obeyed as its ruler, but worshipped as 
 its god. But this self-deified genius, who could find 
 nothing on our planet capable of withstanding his 
 power, was mortal, and died, by what seemed mere 
 accident, at the age of thirty-two, — died, the master of 
 an empire, conquered by himself, covering two millions 
 and a half of square miles, — died, in the full vigor of 
 his faculties, at the time his brain was teeming with 
 magnificent schemes of assimilating the populations of 
 Europe and Asia, and of remaking man after his own 
 image by stamping the nature of Alexander on the 
 mind and feelings of the world. 
 
 One incident, the type of his career, has passed into 
 the most familiar of proverbs. When, in his invasion 
 of Asia, he arrived at Gordium, he was arrested, not by 
 an army, but by something mightier than an army, 
 — namely, a superstition. Here was the rude wagon 
 
TOUNG MEN IN HISTORY. 15 
 
 of Gordius, the yoke of which was fastened to the pole 
 by a cord so entangled that no human wit or patience 
 could untwist it ; yet the oracle had declared that the 
 empire of Asia was reserved to him alone by whom it 
 thould be untied. After vainly attempting to overcome 
 its difficulties with his fingers, Alexander impatiently 
 cut it with his sword. The multitude applauded the 
 solution ; he soon made it good by deeds ; and, in 
 action, yo]uth has ever since shown its judgment, as 
 well as its tigor, in thus annihilating seemingly hope- 
 less perplexities, by cutting Gordian knots. 
 
 In passing from the field of battle to the field of 
 politics, from young men as warriors to young men as 
 statesmen, we must bear in mind that high political 
 station, unless a man is born to it, is rarely reached by 
 political genius, until political genius has been tried by 
 years and tested by events. At the time Mr. Cal- 
 houn's influence was greatest, at the time it was said 
 that " when he took snuff all South Carolina sneezed," 
 he was really not so great a man as when he was 
 struggling for eminence. Statesmen are thus forces 
 long before they are leaders of party, prime-ministers, 
 and presidents ; but are not the energies employed in 
 preparing the way for new laws and new policies of 
 more historic significance than the mere outward form 
 of their enactment and inauguration? Thus, it re- 
 
16 TOUNS MEN IN HISTOET. 
 
 quired thirty-five years of effort and agitatioa before 
 the old Earl Grey of 1832 could accomplish the scheme 
 of Parliamentary reform eagerly pressed by the young 
 Mr. Grey of 1797. The young Chatham, when he 
 was merely " that terrible comet of horse," whose 
 rising to speak in the House of Commons was said to 
 give Sir Kobert Walpole "a pain in the back,''' — when, 
 in his own sarcastic phrase, he "was guilty of the 
 atrocious crime of being a young man," — was still day 
 by day building himself up in the heart and imagination 
 of the English people, and laboriously opening the 
 path to power of the old Chatham, whose vehement 
 soul was all alive with the energies of youth, though 
 lodged in the shattered frame of age. And he, so 
 familiarly known to the American people as old John 
 Adams, — did he lose in mature life a single racy or 
 splenetic characteristic of the young statesman of the 
 Colonial period ? Is there, indeed, any break in that 
 unity of nature which connects the second President 
 of the United States with the child John Adams, the 
 boy John Adams, the tart, blunt, and bold, the sagacious 
 and self-reliant, young Mr. Adams, the plague and ter- 
 ror of the Tories of Massachusetts ? And his all-accom- 
 plished rival and adversary, Alexander Hamilton, — is 
 he not substantially the same at twenty-five as at forty- 
 five ? Though he has not yet iijiprinted his mind on the 
 
YOUNG MEN IN HISTORY. 17 
 
 constitution and practical working of the government, the 
 qualities are stiU there : — the poised nature whose vigor 
 is almost hidden in its harmony ; the power of infusing 
 into other minds ideas- which they seem to originate ; 
 the wisdom, the moderation, the self-command, the 
 deep thought which explores principles, the compre- 
 hensive thought which regards refations, the fertile 
 thought which devises measures, — all are there as un- 
 mistakably at twenty-five as on that miserable day, 
 when, 'in the tried completeness of his powers, the 
 greatest of American statesmen died by the hand of 
 the greatest of American reprobates. 
 
 But there are also in history four examples of men 
 who seem to have been statesmen from the nursery, — 
 who early took a leading part in great designs which 
 affected the whole course of human affairs, ^ — and 
 whom octogenarians like Nesselrode and Palmerston 
 would be compelled to call statesmen of the first class. 
 These are Octavius Caesar, more successful in the arts 
 of policy than even the great Julius, never guilty of 
 youthful indiscretion, or, we are sorry to say, of youth- 
 ful virtue ; Maurice of Saxony, the preserver of the 
 Reformed religion in Germany, in that memorable 
 contest in which his youthful sagacity proved more 
 than a match for the veteran craft of Charles the 
 Fifth ; the second William of Orange, the preserver of 
 2 
 
18 YOUNG MEN IN HISTOET. 
 
 the liberties of Europe against the ambition of Louis 
 XIV., and who, as a child, may be said to have prat- 
 tled treaties and lisped despatches ; and William Pitt, 
 Prime-Minister of England at the age of twenty-four, 
 and stereotyped on the French imagination as he whose 
 guineas were nearly as potent as Napoleon's guns. 
 
 But it is not so much by eminent examples of young 
 statesmen as it is by the general influence of young 
 men in resisting the corrupting tendencies of politics, 
 that their influence in the social state is to be measured. 
 They oppose the tendency of political life to deprave 
 political character, to make it cold, false, selfish, dis- 
 trustful, abandoned to the greed of power and the 
 greed of gain. They interfere with' the projects of those 
 venerable politicians who are continually appealing to 
 the public to surrender, bit by bit, its humanity, its 
 morality, its Christianity, for what are ludicrously mis- 
 named practical advantages, and who slowly sap the 
 moral vitality of a people through an insinuating appeal 
 to their temporary interests. The heart of a nation 
 may be eaten out by this process, without its losing any 
 external signs of prosperity and strength ; but the pro- 
 cess itself is resisted, and the nation kept alive and 
 impelled forward, by the purifying, though disturbing 
 forces, which come from the generous sentiments and 
 fervid aspirations of youth. Wise old heads may sneer 
 
TOUNG MEN IN HISTORY. 19 
 
 as much as they please at the idea of heart in politics ; 
 but if history teaches anything, it teaches that human 
 progress is possible only because the benevolent instincts 
 of the heart are permanent, while the reasonings of the 
 head are shifting. " When God," says Montesquieu, 
 " endowed human beings with brains, he did not intend 
 to guaranty them." And the sarcasm of the French 
 philosopher is fully justified, when we reflect that noth- 
 ing mean, base, or cruel has ever been done in this 
 world, which has not been supported by arguments. 
 To the mere head every historical event, whether it be 
 infamous or glorious, is like the case at Istw which 
 attracted the attention of the Irish barrister. " It was," 
 he said, " a very pretty case, and he should like a fee 
 of a hundred pounds to argue it either way." Who is 
 there, indeed, who has not heard the most atrocious 
 measures recommended by the most convincing argu- 
 ments ? Why, the persecutions of the early Christians, 
 the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Spanish Inquisi- 
 tion, the Eeign of Terror, the institution of Slavery, the 
 coup d'etat of Louis Napoleon, are under the condem- 
 nation of history from no lack of arguments in their 
 favor which it might puzzle a plain man to answer. 
 But opinion in such matters is not determined by 
 arguments, but by instincts. God, in his wrath, has 
 not left this world to the mercy of the subtlest dialecti- 
 
20 TOUNfi MEN IN HISTORY, 
 
 cian ; and all arguments are happily transitory in their 
 eflfect, when they contradict the primal intuitions of 
 conscience and the inborn sentiments of the heart 
 And if wicked institutions, laboriously organized by 
 dominant tyranny and priestcraft, and strong with the 
 might, not merely of bad passions, but of perverted 
 learning and prostituted logic, — if these have been 
 swept away in the world's advancing movement, it has 
 been by the gradual triumph of indestructible sentiments 
 pf freedom and humanity, kept fresh and bright in the 
 souls of the young ! 
 
 And in the baptism 'of fire and blood through which 
 our politics have passed to their purification, who can 
 fitly estimate our indebtedness to the young men who 
 made American history the history of so much ardent 
 patriotism and heroic achievement ? When the civili- 
 zation of the country prepared to engage in a death- 
 grapple with its barbarism, — when the most benefi- 
 cent of all governments was threatened by the bases': 
 ■ of all conspiracies, the most infamous of all treasons, 
 the most thievish of all rebellions, — and when that 
 government was sustained by the most glorious up- 
 rising that ever surged up from the heart of a great 
 people to defend the cause of liberty and honesty and 
 law, — did not the hot tide of that universal patriotism 
 sparkle and seethe and glow with special intensity in the 
 
YOUNG MEN IN HISTORY. 21 
 
 bf easts of our young men ? Did you ever hear from them 
 that contented ignominy was Christian peace ? Did not 
 meanness, falsehood, fraud, tyranny, treason, find in 
 them, not apologetic critics, but terrible and full-armed 
 foes ? Transient defeat, — what did it, but add new 
 fiery stimulants to energies bent on an ultimate triumph ? 
 To hint to them that Davis would succeed, was not only 
 recreancy to freedom, but blasphemy against God. 
 Better, to their impassioned patriotism, that their blood 
 should be poured forth in an unstinted stream, — 
 better that they, and all of us, should be pushed into that 
 ocean whose astonished waves first felt the keel of the 
 Mayflower, as she bore her precious freight to Plymouth 
 Rock, — than that America should consent to be under 
 the insolent domination of a perjured horde of slave- 
 holders and liberticides. But that consent should never 
 be given, and that consent could never be extorted. 
 Minds, like theirs, which had been nurtured on the 
 principles of constitutional freedom, — hearts, like theirs, 
 which had caught inspiration from the heroes and mar- 
 tyrs of liberty, — good right arms, like theirs, which 
 wielded the implements of war as readily as the imple- 
 ments of labor, all scouted the very thought of such 
 unutterable abasement. By the patriotism which abhors 
 treason, by the fortitude which endures privation, by 
 the intrepidity which faces death, they proved them- 
 
22 T0TJN6 MEN IN HISTOUT. 
 
 selves worthy of the great continent they inhabit, by 
 showing themselves capable of upholding the principles 
 it represents. , 
 
 In passing from the sphere of politics to the serener 
 region of literature, art, science, and philosophy, there 
 is an increasing difficulty in estimating youth by years 
 and an increasing necessity to estimate it by qualities. 
 One thing, however, is certain, — that the invention of 
 new methods, the discovery of new truth, and the crea- 
 tion of new beauty, — intellectual acts which are among 
 the most important of historical events, — -'all belong to 
 that thoroughly live condition of mind which we have 
 called young. In this sense of youth, it may be said 
 that Eaphael, the greatest painter of moral beauty, and 
 Titian, the greatest painter of sensuous beauty, were 
 both almost equally young, though Raphael died at 
 thirty-seven, while Titian was prematurely cut off by 
 the plague when he was only a hundred. These, of 
 course, Are the extreme cases. But, it may be asked, 
 were not the greatest poems of the world, the " Iliad " 
 of Homer, the " Divina Commedia " of Dante, the 
 " Paradise Lost " of Milton, the creations of compara- 
 tive old age ? The answer to this question is, that each 
 was probably organized round a youthful conception, 
 and all were coextensive with the whole growth. and 
 development of their creators. Thus, we do not call 
 
YOUNG MEN IN HISTORY. 23 
 
 Milton old when he produced " Paradise Lost," but 
 when this mental growth was arrested ; and accordingly 
 "Paradise Regained" and " Samson Agonistes," works 
 produced after his prime, are comparatively bleak and 
 bare products of a withering imagination and a shrunk- 
 en personality. 
 
 But, confining the matter to the mere question of 
 years, it may be said, that, allowing for some indi- 
 vidual exceptions, the whole history of the human intel- 
 lect will bear out the general assertion, that the power 
 in which great natures culminate, and which fixes fatal 
 limits to their loftiest aspirations, namely, that flashing 
 conceptive and combining genius which fuses force and 
 insight in one executive intelligence, which seizes sali- 
 ent points and central ideas, which darts in an instant 
 along the whole line of analogies and relations, which 
 leaps with joyous daring the vast mental spaces that 
 separate huddled facts from harmonizing laws, — that 
 this power, to say the least, rarely grows after thirty- 
 five or forty. The mental stature is then reached, 
 though it may not dwindle and be dwarfed until long 
 afterwards. Thus, Shakespeare completed '' Hamlet " 
 when he was about thirty-six. Mozart, the Shake- 
 speare of composers, died at thirty-six. But why enu- 
 merate .' Amid the scores of instances which must 
 crowd into every mind, let us select five men, of espe- 
 
24 TOUNG MEN IN HISTORY. 
 
 cial historic significance, and who are commonly imaged 
 to our minds with heads silvered over with age, — let 
 us take Goethe in poetry, Newton in science, Bacon in 
 philosophy, Columbus in discovery. Watt in mechanics. 
 Now, how stand the facts ? This greatest works of 
 Goethe were conceived and partly executed when he 
 was a young man ; and if age found him more widely 
 and worldly wise, it found him weak in creative passion, 
 and, as a poet, living on the interest of his youthful con- 
 ceptions. Newton, in whose fertUe and capacious -intel- 
 lect the dim, nebulous elements of truth were condensed 
 by patient thinking into the completed star, discovered 
 the most universal of all natural laws, the law of gravi- 
 tation, before he was twenty-five, though an error of 
 observation, not his own, prevented him from demon- 
 strating it until he was forty. Bacon had " vast con- 
 templative ends," and had taken "all knowledge for 
 his province," had deeply meditated new methods and 
 audaciously doubted old ones, before the incipient beard 
 had begun timidly to peep from his youthful chin. The 
 great conception of Columbus sprang from the thoughts 
 and studies of his youth ; and it was the radiance shed 
 from this conception which gave him fortitude to bear 
 the slow martyrdom of poverty,, contempt, and sickness 
 of heart, which embittered the toiling years preceding 
 its late realization. The steam-engine was invented by 
 
YOUNG MEN IN mSTOHT. 25 
 
 James Watt before he was thirty ; but then "Watt was 
 a thinker from his cradle. Everybody will recollect 
 his grandmother's reproof of what she called his idle- 
 ness, at the time his boyish brain was busy wiih medi- 
 tations destined to ripen in the most marvellous and 
 revolutionizing of all industrial inventions, — an inven- 
 tion which, of itself alone, has given Great Britain an 
 additional productive power equal to ten millions of 
 workmen, at the cost of only a halfpenny a day, — an 
 invention which supplies the motive power by which a 
 single county in England is enabled to produce fabrics 
 representing the labor of twenty-one millions of men, — 
 an invention which, combined with others, annually, in 
 England, weaves into cloth a length of cotton thread 
 equal to fifty-one times the distance between the earth 
 and the sun, five thousand millions of miles, — an in- 
 vention which created the wealth by which England 
 was enabled to fight or subsidize the whole continent 
 of Europe from 1793 to 1815, and which made that 
 long war really a contest between the despotic power 
 of Napoleon Bonaparte and the productive genius of 
 James Watt. All this vast and teeming future was 
 hidden from the good grandmother, as she saw the boy 
 idling over the teakettle. " James," she said, " I never 
 saw such an idle young fellow as you are. Do take a 
 book and employ yourself usefully. For the last half- 
 
26 YOUNG MEN IN BISTORT. 
 
 hour jovt bare not spoken a single word. Do you 
 know what you have been doing all this time ? Why^ 
 you have taken oflf, and replaced, and taken off again, 
 the teapot lid, and you have held alternately in the 
 steam, first a saucer and then a spoon ; and you have 
 busied yourself in examining and collecting together the 
 little drops formed by the condensation of the steam on 
 the surface of the china and the silver. Now are you 
 not ashamed to waste your time in this disgraceful man- 
 ner ? " Was ever idleness so productive before ? 
 
 If we -turn from intellectual powers to sentiments, 
 which are the soul of powers, we shall find renewed 
 proofs that the spirit wEich animates the kingdoms of 
 mind is the youthful spirit of health and hope and ener- 
 gy and cheer. In the regretful tenderness with which 
 all great thinkers have looked back upon their youth, 
 do not we detect the source of their most kindUng in- 
 spirations? Time may have impaired their energies, 
 clipped their aspirations, deadened their faith ; but 
 there, away off in the past, is the gladdening vision 
 of their youthful years; there the joyous tumult of 
 impulses and aims ; there the grand and generous af- 
 fections ; th^re the sweet surprise of swift-springing 
 thoughts from never-failing fountains ; there the pure 
 love of truth and beauty which sent their minds speed- 
 ing out beyond the limits of positive knowledge ; and 
 
YOUNG MEN IN HISTORY. 27 
 
 there the thrills of ecstasy as new worlds opened on 
 their view. What, to them, is the assured possession 
 of fame, compared with that direct perception of truth 
 and that immediate consciousness of power ? 
 
 But the question arises. Cannot this youth be pre- 
 served, or, at least, perpetually renewed? We have 
 seen, in this rapid glance at history, that it is preserved 
 as long as the mind retains its hold on the life of 
 things ; and we have seen, both in men of action and 
 in men of meditation, this hold weakened by age. But 
 would -it be weakened, if the loftiest meditation issued 
 in deeds instead of thoughts? Would youth depart, 
 if the will acted on the same high level that the mind 
 conceived ? This, also, is a question which has been 
 historically answered. It has been answered by heroes, 
 reformers, saints, and martyrs, — by men who have de- 
 monstrated, that, the higher the life, the more distant the 
 approaches of age, — by men whose souls on earth have 
 glanced into that region of spiritual ideas and spiritual 
 persons where youth is perpetual, where ecstasy is no 
 transient mood, but a permanent condition, and where 
 dwell the awful forces which radiate immortal life into 
 the will. In these men, contemplation, refusing to abide 
 in the act by which it mounts above the world, reacts 
 with tenfold force on the world. Using human ends 
 simply as divine means, they wield war, statesmanship, 
 
28 YOUNG MEN IN HISTORY. 
 
 literature, art, science, and philosophy with almost su- 
 perhuman energy in the service of supernatural ideas', 
 and history gleams with an intenser significance as it 
 records this imperfect passage, through human agents, 
 of the life of God into the life of man. The subject is 
 too vast, the agents too various and numerous, to be 
 more than hinted here ; and in the limitation of our 
 theme, not only to the young in years, but to the male 
 in sex, we are precluded from celebrating one who 
 stands in history as perhaps the loveliest human em- 
 bodiment of all that is most winning and inspiring in 
 youth, — one whose celestial elevation of sentiment, 
 ecstatic ardor of imagination, and power at once to melt 
 the heart and amaze the_ understanding, will forever 
 associate the saintliest heroic genius with the name of 
 Joan of Arc. But among the crowd of great men in 
 this exalted sphere of influence, let us select one who 
 was the head and heart of the most memorable move- 
 ment of modern times, — the Germain peasant, Martin 
 Luther. With a nature originally rougher, more earth- 
 born, and of less genial goodness than that of Joan of 
 Arc, but with a shaping imagination of the same realiz- 
 ing intensity, the beautiful myths of Romish superstition, 
 which her innocent soul transfigured into gracious min- 
 istering spirits of seraphic might and seraphic tender- 
 ness, glared in upon his more morbid spiritual vision as 
 
TOITNG MEN IN HISTORY. 29 
 
 menacing angels, or grinning imps, or scoffing fiends. 
 But still the tortured soul toiled sturdily on through the 
 anguish of its self-created hells, the mind crazed and 
 shattered, the heart hungry for peace, the will resolute 
 that it should have no peace until it found peace in truth. 
 Yet, out of this prodigious mental and moral anarchy, 
 with its devil's dance of dogmas and delusions, the young 
 Luther organized, before he was thirty, the broadest, 
 raciest, and strongest character that ever put on the 
 armor and hurled the bolts of the Church Militant. 
 Casting doubt and fear under his feet, and growing 
 more practically efficient as he grew more morally 
 exalted, at the age of thirty-seven he had hooted out 
 of Germany the knavish agent of a deistical Pope, — 
 had nailed to the Wittenberg Church his intellectual 
 defiance of the theory of Indulgences, — had cast the 
 excommunication and decretals of the Pontiff into the 
 flames, — and, before the principalities and powers of 
 the Empire, one German against all Germany, had 
 simply and sublimely indicated the identity of his doc- 
 trine with his nature, by declaring that he not merely 
 would not, but could not, recant.' 
 
 And whom could he n6t recant? Does not this 
 question point to Him who is the central Person and 
 Power of the past eighteen hundred years of history ? 
 — to Him who will be the central Person and Power 
 
30 TOUNo MEN ra HISrOET. 
 
 of the whole future of history ? — to Him who came 
 into the world in the form of a young man, and whom 
 a youug man announced, crying in the wilderness ? — 
 to Him who clasps in his thought and in Jiis lore the 
 whole Iiumanity whose troubled aonals history recounts, 
 and who divinized the spirit of youth when He as- 
 sumed its form ? 
 
THE ETHICS OF POPULAEITT. 
 
 The relation between the people and the amusers, 
 teachers, and leaders of the people is in continual danger 
 0(f being withdrawn from-the operation of .those moral la\ys 
 which govern the, other relations of life, and perverted 
 from being a means of mutual benefit into a source c)f 
 mutual corruption. The idea is misohievously prevalent, 
 that the true method of reaching the heart and brain of 
 the people is to ignore the best sentiments of the heart 
 and the beat thoughts of the brain j that to hit hard it is 
 necessary to strike low ; and that all successful appeals 
 to the masses suppose in the .orator a previous elision of 
 the first letter of the word. Thi? language, in the mouth 
 of the quack and the rogue, is so perfectly in character 
 that it is needless to waste surprise on its utterance. 
 They do after their kind. But there seems to be a 
 growing disposition on the part of men reputed wise and 
 honest to adopt this scoundrel ethics ; to believe that 
 the quack and rogue are right in their methods, and 
 only wrong in their objects ; and that the true way to 
 
32 THE ETHICS OF POPULAEITT. 
 
 do good to the people is to adapt everything good to 
 their supposed mental and moral condition. From the 
 success of quacks and rogues it is hastily inferred' that 
 the people are rude, coarse, credulous, prejudiced, illit- 
 erate, and sensual ; that they are strong in their appe- 
 tites, weak in their minds, incompetent to feel grand 
 sentiments or receive great ideas, but still capable of 
 being pushed in the right direction, provided the appeal 
 is made in words which they can understand, to motives 
 which they can appreciate. This, being interpreted, 
 means that to advance the noblest cause in popular esti- 
 mation, it is necessary that a yery little reason and con- 
 science should be mixed with a great deal of nonsense, 
 imposture, and slang. 
 
 Now we will not, just now, consider the question 
 whether those who talk and think in this way are not 
 impelled more by the desire of the people's applause 
 than the desire of the people's good. "We will not even 
 pause to stigmatize the scepticism in regard to the 
 power of high principles, the disbelief equally in man 
 and God, which is implied in a proposition to vulgarize 
 and debase patriotism, art, science, letters, manners, mor- 
 als, and religion, for the purpose of giving them a force 
 and effectiveness which it seems they sadly lack in 
 themselves. It is sufficient to say, at the outset, that 
 the whole scheme proceeds ou the principle of libelling 
 
THE ETHICS OF POPULARITY. 33 
 
 the democracy it would uplift. Contempt and insult are 
 in the premises, even if such a non ^sequitur as philan- 
 thropy can be found in the conclusions. The theory 
 degrades humanity ; the practice degrades taste, intel- 
 lect, and jnorals. Among the virtues that such a rnethod 
 of influence will develop in the people, is it not the very 
 madness of impudence to suppose that, gratitude will be 
 one ? And, to clench the argument, what right has any 
 man who is systematically and on principle a trickster, 
 a deceiver, or a buflfbon — even if he is so for the glory 
 of God and the good of mankind — what right has he to 
 assume a complacent superiority over the common peo- 
 ple in intellect and morals ? 
 
 We are, therefore, opposed to the principle on which 
 this mode of obtaining popular favor is based, and to all 
 the applications of the principle to social life, politics, 
 literature, morals, and religion; and we purpose, in 
 some desultory remarks on the Ethics of Popularity, to 
 consider the tendencies, and show the impotence for 
 good, of all influence exercised on low levels of feeling 
 and character. - One preliminary observation, which 
 must occur to every mind that reflects on the subject, 
 will make our path clear and easy to tread. It ;s this, 
 that while everybody affects to see the necessity of 
 " popularizing " truth for somebody, nobody seems to 
 admit its necessity for himself.^ Go into a, political 
 3 
 
34 THE ETHICS OF POPULAEITT. 
 
 meeting in any part of the United States, and each 
 man, if questioned, will be likely to tell you that the 
 slang and bombast of the orator he cheers are necessary 
 as a means of influencing the unintelligent and unedu- 
 cated portion of the audience, though he disregards and 
 despises them himself. Each person is troubled at the 
 fat-wittedness of his neighbor, and the danger to the 
 country if the other party gets his neighbor's vote ; but 
 he is serenely conscious of his own inteUigence. Mutual 
 distrust thus begets mutu^ deception. It is the old &ice 
 over again of Bulwer's ragged corporal, who, as he 
 chuckles over his own personal scepticism, still conde- 
 scendingly admits that " religion is a very -good thing for 
 the poor ! " 
 
 We, of course, concede that this refusal of every per^ 
 son, who feels within him thie impatient stir of the least 
 feeling of manliness, to be plunged into the "lower 
 classes," does not prove that he is not really influenced. 
 Pride, vanity, the sense of shame, the sense of his own 
 importance, a certain inward shrinking at hearing in 
 public, or seeing in print, what he might utter himself 
 among coarse companions, — all these prevent him from 
 confessing that he approves what may secretly ^ve him 
 pleasure and satisfaction. But the fact of his denying 
 that he is moved shows that there is no need of striking 
 so low in order to hit his taste ; that he has in him 
 
THE ETHIGS OF POPULARITY. 35 
 
 gomething which would thrill at a nobler appeal, and 
 take in a more eonnecj:ed logic; that, in short, he is 
 being corrupted through the very process by which his 
 teacher aims to mept the demands of his presumed. cor- 
 ruption. This last is the point which must especially be 
 emphasized. The question relates to the vehicle which 
 should, be employed in. conveying thoughts, principles, 
 and purposes, mental and moral life, -from a superior 
 into an inferior mind. That the vehicle should be home- 
 ly even to vulgarity, is the opinion of many men of not 
 dishonest intentions. But if the things to be conveyed 
 are vulgarized in the process, do they not part with 
 their nature, and become something eke ? Even admit- 
 ting that the end sanctifies the means, the question still 
 comes up. Do the means really lead to the end that is 
 proposed in the means ? Now, by the law of association, 
 the feelings and thoughts which .are called up are those 
 suggested by the words, and not those .which .were con- 
 templated by the, speaker. The result is that the person 
 influenced is injuriously influenced. Morality and intel- 
 ligence, are in his mind lowered to the plane, and mixed 
 with the baser matter, of sensations and appetites. But 
 the man of superior mind is also insensibly corrupted, 
 for in materializing his conceptions and sensualizing his 
 sentiments, in order to make them coarsely obvious, he 
 gradually becomes possessed by the imp he only intend- 
 
36 THE ETHICS OF POPULAKITT. 
 
 ed to use ; and he is in danger of descending by degrees 
 to the level of those shallow, conceited, desperately 
 " knowing " pretenders to practical wisdom, who, on 
 the strength of a little education and a not disreputable 
 social position, think themselves the natural managers 
 and leaders of " the populace " ; who wheedle and flatter 
 the multitude they despise ; who are sycophants, with 
 the hope^that servility will enable them to feed fat their 
 vanity and greed ; who mistake the superficial passions 
 which occasionally agitate the public mind for the great 
 elements of popular power ; and who, profoundly igno- 
 rant of the real character of the people, believe them to 
 be as stupid as they know themselves to be knavish. 
 
 Disbelieving, therefore, equally in the policy and hon- 
 esty of the falsehood that tricks for benevolence, and 
 the falsehood that tricks for gain, we think that all men 
 are entitled to the best that any men have to give ; and 
 we fear, in the last analysis, it will generally be found 
 that those who have faith in falsehood come, in the end, 
 to look upon the commonalty more as weak brethren to 
 be preyed upon than as weak brethren to be lifted up. 
 Sanctity itself is to be suspected when it winks. With 
 one hand in the people's pockets, and the other lifted to 
 heaven to attest the purity of its purpose, — that is the 
 attitude in which the imagination delights to contemplate 
 the tricky friend of man. 
 
THE ETHICS OF POPULARITY. 37 
 
 And this last image naturally brings us to that por- 
 tion of the subject which treats of the equivocal methods 
 of obtaining popularity in politics. The most obvious 
 example here is the demagogue ; horror and hatred of 
 him have been _ stereotyped in the commonplaces of 
 many generations ; so that, at last, he has himself been 
 compelled to join in the general cry of disgust, and is 
 commonly recognized from his giving the loudest hiss 
 when his craft is named. Still political writers continue 
 to make the mistake of classing him among democrats. 
 Never was classification more absurd and inaccurate. 
 It is true that, as a monarchy implies not merely the 
 loyalist but the courtier, so a democracy implies not 
 merely the citizen but the demagogue. But the dem- 
 agogue is the courtier, accommodating himselif to a 
 change of position. He is not a democrat who goes too 
 far, but he is a democrat emancipated from democracy. 
 He is not a democrat joerverted but a democrat invert- 
 ed. He has a profound distrust of the people bred from 
 his success in deluding the people, and is at heart and 
 from reflection a believer- in despotism. In the com- 
 pany of select friends, over the nuts and wine, he does 
 not hesitate tocomplain of the injustice he receives from 
 the pens of conservative writers on the science of gov- 
 ernment ; and as John Wilkes privately vindicated him- 
 self from the disgrace of being a Wilkesite, so he scorns 
 
■38 THE ETHICS OF POPULARITY. 
 
 in his confidential hours the imputation of being a -dem- 
 ocrat. It is bad enough, he says, for a reduced gentle- 
 man to be compelled to get his living by such a trade 
 as his ; why insult his intelligence by imputing fanati- 
 cism to his motives? He is willing to be Captain 
 .^ok ; but why discredit his firmness of mind by insin- 
 uating that he has any feelings of tenderness for the 
 ;pigeon he plucks? 
 
 The significant fact, however, in the biography of the 
 .demagogue is, that he commonly -commences public life 
 as a simpleton, and the process by which he is devel- 
 oped into the rogue is one which will .well repay inves- 
 tigation. In his youth, his pinched brain and shallow 
 sensibilities are filled with the notion that he must 
 " popularize " political knowledge in order that he may 
 reach " the great heart of the people." He begins with 
 bombast if he ends with blarney. Sense, information, 
 logic, he is early taught to believe that the people can- 
 not understand ; he is by no means certain that he 
 could use them if they did ; but he feels swelling within 
 him an eloquence of the soul which he thinks must do 
 the business if he can obtain an occasion for its utter- 
 ance. As his speech is a caricature of -eloquence, 
 nothing but caricature can suggest a notion of its power. 
 The popular .imagination, supposed to be gravely in- 
 fluenced by his rhodomontade, has, on the contrary, been 
 
THE ETHICS OP POPlTLAEITy. 89 
 
 singularly fertile in inventions whieh hold it up to 
 mirthful contempt. Two examples will suffice. Some- 
 times it is a great idea which, like Irving's Dutch bur- 
 gomaster, the orator has caught by the tail. His mind 
 is filled with its sound, and he aims to sound it into the 
 mental ear of the audience with a most sonorous indif- 
 ference to the sense. " There is not," he shouts, " a 
 man, woman, or dhild, in this house, of fifty years old or 
 upward, through whose brains this idea has not been 
 thundering for centuries ! " Sometimes it is a great 
 principle which, though on the occasion of his pressing 
 it into service applies merely to the election of town 
 clerk, he labors to trace historically and geographically 
 from " the fall of Adam to that of Niagara." Kindling 
 as he rushes on, he informs his auditors, "that by this 
 principle the pyramids of Egypt were builded ; and it 
 was this principle which enabled Washington with his 
 whole army to march through a life devoted to the best 
 interests of his country ! "' By degrees he finds that 
 this naive and innocent nonsense fails of its purpose. 
 His shallow enthusiasm oozes out. He slips gradually 
 into the clutches of thorough-paced politicians, who 
 teach him mischief and the use of "the wires." The 
 confused resources of his little brain are imperceptibly 
 harmonized and condensed into low cunning and brazen 
 efirontery ; and before many years he can congratulate 
 
40 THE ETHICS OP POPULAEITT. 
 
 himself on his shrewd escape from all illusions, and on 
 his success in reaching that perfect profligacy of mind 
 and character which marks the finished demagogue. 
 
 But there are many persons who would be shocked 
 if they were called demagogues, yet who in pohtics 
 pursue a line of conduct which they admit would prove 
 them to be rogues if followed out in any other part of 
 the business of life. There are men, irreproachable as 
 merchants and lawyers, and whose word in all ordinary 
 matters is as good as their bond, who have convinced 
 themselves that public lying is very different from pri- 
 vate lying; that the domain of politics is a neutral 
 ground into which ethics only penetrate to intrude ; 
 that nothing there is properly moral or immoral, but 
 simply M«-moral ; that expediency and management are 
 there the proper substitutes for principle ; that to act on 
 rigid notions in partisan disputes would be simply to 
 deliver over the country into the hands of political 
 hacks and knaves ; and that, provided the object to be 
 gained is just and patriotic, it is little matter how base 
 may be the means. In their complacent consciousness 
 of superior wisdom they seem to look upon the people 
 as they would look upon a wild beast, who must be 
 coaxed because too strong to be caged or chained. 
 They are false, hypocritical, constrained by no scruples, 
 because, if they may be believed, they are compelled to 
 
THE ETHICS OP POPULARITY. 41 
 
 submit to the necessities which give popularity, and the 
 power and influence which accompany popularity, to 
 loud professions which pander to popular prejudice. 
 They despise what they profess; they despise those 
 who believe their professions ; and yet they somehow 
 escape despising themselves for making such professions. 
 They elude self-contempt by self-deception ; for they 
 flatter themselves it is not interest or ambition but 
 patriotism which makes -them deceivers ; and they 
 never dream of supposing that interest and ambition 
 may obscure their perceptions of the public good, as 
 much as an assumed passion, prejudice, and ignorance 
 may obscure the perceptions of the people. 
 
 The conceit of these earthly providences would doubt- 
 less be mortified, if the fact could be insinuated into 
 their dull perceptions that they are rather below than 
 above the great majority of the people, of whom they 
 assume the contemptuous guardianship. Their notion 
 of the common mind and heart is the result of no exer- 
 cise of wide sympathies or sagacious insight, but is the 
 product of pharisaic superciliousness acting on mental 
 isolation. By adopting, to some degree, the arts of the 
 demagogue, they acquire a certain kind of pppularity ; 
 but this popularity rather disgraces them than the peo- 
 ple ; for the people, when undeceived, can justly say 
 that they had no reason to suppose that respectable 
 
4-2 THE ETHICS OF POPULARITY. 
 
 men, conventionally honest and religious, would etoop 
 m their public capat^ty to act the part of cheats and 
 liars. And we really believe if these politicians had 
 liie courage and the feith to be more candid they would 
 be more popular. If ^ey really knew those they 
 address, they would discover that their influence was as 
 superficial as their wanagemeiit was mean and their 
 eloquence was ridiculous. There are doubtless knaves 
 and fools among the people, and such politicians as we 
 are considering are doing aU they can to add to th^ 
 number ; but the knaves and fools are still in a minority 
 so leati that no politician who aims si high positions 
 can be shrewdly advised who builds his hopes on them. 
 In spite of the clash and conflict of interests and pas- 
 sions in politics, there is still enough clear perception 
 left in the most excited masses to recognize and respect 
 great qualities of mind and character ; and these would 
 bear more sway than they do if demagogues scampish, 
 and demagogues conceited, were not so incessantly 
 engaged in perverting the people they pretend to teach, 
 and in turning, as far as they are able, the noblest -and 
 most important branch of public education, the education 
 of a democracy in the art and science of government, 
 into a school of vulgarity, falsehood, scurrility, and fac- 
 tion, — a school in which government is taught as a 
 trick. That the people desire something better is 
 
THE ETHICS OF POPULARITY. 43 
 
 proved by the success of those who give them some- 
 thing better ; and were it not for the trickery used in 
 jM^imary meetings, the men who seek to deprave them 
 would rarely represent them. Tell the tmth to the 
 people ; give them fair statements, consecutive reason- 
 ing, honest advice, give them wit that is not personality, 
 humor that is not buffoonery, eloquence that is not rho- 
 dbmontade, before you assert that they can appreciate 
 nothing in argument but fallacies, and nothing in lan- 
 guage but balderdash. It can hardly be said that our 
 people disregard refinement, when .the most popular 
 orator of the country, the man who drew the greatest 
 crowds, was Mr. Everett, who was almost prudish in 
 his elaborated elegance and studied grace. It can hard- 
 ly be said that any people lack the instincts of conscience 
 and the intuitions of reason, while history proves that, 
 in every controversy with their oppressors, they have 
 had the right of conscience and the right of reason on 
 their side. ' 
 
 If we pass from politics to literature, we find that it, 
 too, has its professors of popularity, who aim to acquire 
 influence on low levels, from the same seeming mistrust 
 that the masses who read are gifted with brains to un- 
 derstand and taste to discriminate. Literature, with 
 most of "these writers, is not so much an art or a profes- 
 sion as it is a mechanical employment. They are arti- 
 
44 THE ETHICS OF POPULAEITT. 
 
 sans engaged in the manufacture of books, not artists 
 engaged in the creation of works. They are anxious to 
 supply the market with whatever it needs, and espe- 
 cially with the latest styles of " gent's clothing " for 
 the mind. Some, like Dumas in Franee, are master- 
 manufacturers, who put their own names to the pro- 
 ductions of many hands. A few of these writers have 
 genius, a considerable number have talent, and a larger 
 number still have an eflfrontery of mediocrity which 
 they think more than compensates for the lack of 
 either. All aim to exercise the privileges of popularity, 
 but are indifferent to its responsibilities. They vex 
 themselves little with curious speculations in regard to 
 the kind of effect they produce on the minds of their 
 readers, provided the effect is such as to elicit money 
 from their pockets. If any critical exceptions are taken 
 either to the form or substance of their productions, 
 they excuse themselves with the plea that they do not 
 write to exhibit their talents, or to add to the classics of 
 literature, but to hit the public taste, and that the public 
 taste is coarse and uncultivated. It never seems to have 
 occurred to these modest penmen that, like great poets, 
 they have "created the taste by which they are en- 
 joyed." 
 
 The usual appellation given to this kind of job- 
 writing is " popular literature." As for the popularity 
 
THE ETHICS OF POPULARITY. 45 
 
 we will not now dispute it, but we contend that it is 
 no literature at all. The real literature of a people is 
 the best and highest literature they have produced as a 
 race or a nation. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Mil- 
 ton, Dryden, POpe, Cowper, Wordsworth, and Byron ; 
 Hooker, Bacon, Taylor, South, Barrow, Burke, and 
 "Warburton ; Fielding, Smollett, Richardson, Fanny 
 Burney, Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Reade, and George 
 Eliot, — not to mention scores of others in all depart- 
 ments of English letters, — are as much the product of 
 the English people, as much form a portion of their 
 common inheritance of glory, as their laws, institutions, 
 manners, or any other organic outgrowth of their na- 
 tional mind and character. It was wittily said of Vol- 
 taire, that if France had not existed he would have 
 created it. In fact France created him, and without 
 France there could have been no such combination of 
 talents and dispositions as made up the individuality we 
 call Voltaire. Especially is this principle true of our 
 Saxon or semi-Saxon race. Its literature contains the 
 finest spirit and essence of its character; is something 
 to which all the people have contributed ; and is the 
 mode by which the real history of the people's life, the 
 history which no annals can recount, is mentally trans- 
 mitted from age to age. If we could conceive of Eng- 
 land as sunk beneath the sea she has ruled, and that no 
 
46 THE ETHICS OF POPULARITY. 
 
 vestige or record of her was left except passages of her 
 literature, embodying her reason, imagination, and the 
 true English personality of her various authors, we 
 could still infer from these the existence of a, mighty 
 and peculiar people, whose geaius had culminated in 
 such marvels of be^tnty and power. The thing we call 
 the " genius of the people " is expressed in every indi- 
 vidual genius born of that people ; and every one of the 
 people has latent in him the subtle freemasonry by 
 which he can detect the common genius as condensed 
 in its special embodiment, be the embodiment Sopho- 
 cles, or Dante, or Calderon, or Shakespeare, or Goethe. 
 To give all honor to the individual, and none to the 
 people from whom he draws his vitality, acquires his- 
 experience, and assimilates his faculties, is to fall into 
 that atheism which disregards the cause, in admiration 
 of the effect. 
 
 Now the literature which thus holds up to a people 
 a glass wherein they see a magic reflection of them- 
 selves — of themselves as they appear lifted into the 
 world of art — is the true popular literature. Evety 
 man of English blood and English speech, whether he 
 live in England or the United States, has vested I'ights 
 in the literature of England. It was created for him, 
 and his nature suffers a loss if it be not enjoyed by 
 him. Every American also has a special interest in 
 
THE ETHICS OP POPTLAEITT. 4'J 
 
 the literatnre which smacks of the soil, impersonates 
 the genius, embodies the ideas, and gives form to the 
 aspirations of his native land. These two literatures, 
 English and American, are the proper mental food, 
 not merely of scholars and men of literary taste, but 
 of the whole reading public of the country. For every 
 purpose of knowledge, of excitement, of amusement, 
 for wit, humor, passion, understanding, reason, imagi- 
 nation, for all that calls into exercise the deepest 
 powers of thought, and for all that gives exquisite en- 
 tertainment to minds jaded by labor, the good books in 
 the English language will be found amply sufficient, 
 and will meet every variety of culture and please every 
 variety of taste. 
 
 But between these good books and a portion of the 
 reading public are interposed books which have no 
 roots in the national heart and brain, and which have 
 little merit even as literary manufactures, but which 
 still claim to be better adapted to the public wants than 
 moi-e artistic compositions. Such are a crowd of so- 
 called romances and novels, whose professed object is 
 to stimulate and amuse the popular mind. The first 
 question to be considered is, are they calculated to 
 serve their purpose as well as better books of the 
 same class ? 
 
 Fortunately the two most popular novelists of the 
 
48 THE ETHICS OP POPUI/AKITT. 
 
 world, Scott and Dickens, have saved us the trouble of 
 debating this question. They- have penetrated into the 
 lowest strata of readers, and their success proves that 
 the people err, in respect to other great novelists, more 
 from ignorance of the existence of their works than 
 from incapacity to appreciate genius. A large portion 
 of the people read at haphazard what is nearest at 
 hand, or what is thrust in their faces. They crave fic- 
 tion, and- snatch at the coarse fare which, if it does not 
 please the palate, at least allays the pangs of hunger ; 
 but they still recognize the gulf which separates " Ivan- 
 hoe " and " David Copperfield " from " The Murderer's 
 Doom" and "The Pirate's Leman." They have no 
 familiarity with literary history and the sliding-scale of 
 reputations, or they would know and eagerly read all 
 those novelists who have best succeeded in imparting 
 power and conveying a knowledge of human nature and 
 human life through a process of delicious mental enter- 
 tainment. It is therefore an insult to the people to 
 declare that bad novelists produce monstrosities under 
 necessities imposed by low popular tastes, rather than 
 under necessities imposed by their own mediocrity of 
 mind. 
 
 It is true that, as far as these writers exercise any 
 influence, their influence is mischievous. Nobody can 
 read their books without having his taste, and all those 
 
THE ETHICS OF POPULAKITY. 49 
 
 fine moralities which depend on taste, insensibly cor- 
 rupted. But in what we have said we desired to distin- 
 guish between a necessity which exists of itself, and a 
 necessity which is created in order to be met. Novels 
 have become so important a branch of literature, — so 
 much mental and moral power is engaged in the pro- 
 duction of good ones, and so great is their value as rep- 
 resentations of human life — that it is provoking to 
 think that so large a portion of the public, with the 
 best and the most entertaining novels at their command, 
 should be deluded into reading the worst and the most 
 tiresome, — novels which have no charm of style, no 
 felicity in the invention and conduct of a story, no vivid 
 painting of scenery or manners, no power of conceiving 
 and consistently developing character, no insight into 
 the affections, sentiments, passions, and thoughts of 
 human nature, and especially no effect in peopling the 
 mind with new friends and acquaintances, ideal in their 
 mode of existence, but intensely real to the heart and 
 imagination whose wants and aspirations they imperson- 
 ate, and whose sentiments they both purify and please. 
 A person whose brain is filled with these " beings of the 
 mind " is attended by a crowd of inspirers and comfort- 
 ers, who cling to him when other friends desert him, — 
 who soothe, cheer, animate, and enrich his existence, — 
 and from whose joyous and invigorating company all 
 4 
 
50 THE ETHICS -OP POPULARITY. 
 
 mean and base feelings slink ashamed away. But there 
 is nothing genial and satisfying- in the society with 
 which bad novelists would fill the imagination. Bur- 
 glars, highwaymen, murderers, pirates, and assassins are 
 their heroes. Their poverty of mind is such that they 
 can produce no eflFects, no " thrilling " incidents, but by 
 a continual use of the coarsest stimulants of romance. 
 They bear about the same relation, to novelists of 
 genius which the mob of mouthers brought by Rachel 
 to this country bore to herself. One glance of her eye, 
 one movement of her finger, even her simple presence 
 on the stage, was more eloquent of power than the 
 loudest declamation and most frantic gestures of the 
 actors around her. In- her absence many simple people 
 might have supposed that the latter were good perform- 
 ers ; they doubtless screamed and gesticulated for the 
 purpose of hitting the public taste ; but the moment 
 she appeared the presence of genius was universally 
 felt ; her slightest motion was watched with eager inter- 
 est; and the least-educated observer appreciated the 
 art by which passion was shown as it cumulated as well 
 as when it culminated. There is a story of a simple 
 countryman who went for the first time in his life to 
 the theatre, and who happened to go the night that Mac- 
 ready played Othello. After the performance was over, 
 he was asked how he liked the actors. He was, of 
 
THE ETHICS OF POPULARITY. 51 
 
 course, delighted with them all ; " but," he added, hes- 
 itatingly, as if he were exhibiting his ignorance in the 
 remark, " it seems to me that the nigger there played 
 better than any of 'em I " 
 
 But the obnoxious methods of acquiring popularity 
 inA wielding influence which we have stigmatized in 
 their application to politics and literature become doub- 
 ly offensive when applied to morals aud religion. The 
 history of the Christian religion presents but too many 
 examples of this rage for adapcing spiritual truth to 
 unspiritual perceptions, and thus turning the trutli into 
 a lie. Early in its history it had numerous shrewd and 
 politic disciples, wiser than their Master, who had more 
 faith in themselves tlian in him, or in the simple power 
 of his doctrines. They conceived that principles must 
 be depraved in order to be effective against depravity; 
 that the Devil must be fought with the Devil's own 
 weapons ; and that as paga«ism could not be at once 
 overcome it must be compromised with. The Roman 
 Catholic Church has always been singularly fertile in 
 these " popularizers " of theology. The result was 
 seen at the time of the Reformation. The abstract 
 doctrines of that church and the concrete religion of the 
 people were essentially different. The doctrines had 
 been so accommodated in practice to ignorance and bru- 
 tality that Christianity had been at last accommodated 
 
52 THE ETHICS OF POPULARITY. 
 
 into a kind of fetichism. Read some great Catholic 
 doctor on the theory of indulgences, and you are struck 
 with the sublimity of the conception and the marvellous 
 reach and subtlety of thought with which it is devel- 
 oped. A sincerely religious mind might be attracted 
 by it. But follow Tetzel as he traverses Germany and 
 " popularizes " the theory, and a spectacle is presented 
 which Barnum himself, in his palmiest days of humbug, 
 would shrink from with disgust and horror. Yet Tetzel 
 )s but the type of many a loud-mouthed, foul-moutlied 
 combination of fanatic and charlatan, who, in Protestant 
 countries, thinks th^t the New Testament is too super- 
 one in its language for the multitude, and must be trans- 
 lated into the vernacular of the pothouse in order to 
 do its perfect work. 
 
 Again : it would be unjust to the large minds of the 
 .early Puritans to suppose that they broke off from the 
 Church of England for the mere ceremonial trifles which 
 are usually set down in histories as the cause of the great 
 English schism. They were practical men, who looked 
 at the practical effect among the people of ceremonies 
 in themselves harmless. They saw, or thought they 
 saw, that the religion of the people was fast being pop- 
 ularized by the underlings of that church into a worldly 
 religion of " cakos and ale." If we read Hooker, it is 
 difficult to resist a feeling of contempt for the narrow- 
 
THE ETHICS OF POPULAEITT. 53 
 
 ness of heart and understanding of the Puritans ; for in 
 Hooker we see sweetness, dignity, and sanctity ex- 
 quisitely blended with vast erudition and comprehensive 
 intelligence. But if, in imagination, we call up an 
 English rural district of the time of Elizabeth, we can 
 detect in the concrete religion of its humbler classes 
 what it really was which roused the Puritan wrath 
 against the Church. The populaiized theology was 
 not the theology which is set down in the works of the 
 great English divines. The Puritan clearly discerned 
 that the theory of the Church of Kome and the Church 
 of England was to spiritualize the senses. He would 
 deserve the gravest condemnation had he objected to 
 the theory or the discipline which really effected it. 
 But he believed that instead of spiritualizing the senses, 
 the practical operation of their systems was to sensual- 
 ize the soul ; and therefore he fought against them with 
 all his heart arid strength. He may have been mis- 
 taken, but this does not affect the motive of his opposi- 
 tion. 
 
 The Puritan churches, again, have also suffered 
 much by having their austere spirituality mimicked by 
 impudent pretenders to sanctity, who, while they hardly 
 seem to belong to the same species as Watts and Dod- 
 dridge, still profess to hold the same doctrines, and to 
 be redeemed by the same grace; men who carnalize 
 
54 THE ETHICS OF POPULAETrT. 
 
 every spiritual truth they touch, and call their profane 
 quackery by the name of divine influence. They are 
 tolerated because they are supposed capable of benefiting 
 minds which better men cannot reach. Ah ! this com- 
 plicity of well-meaning piety with pious frauds, — this 
 half-faith that men of coarse appetites, whose talk is of 
 the Spirit, but whose influence b of the flesh, can save 
 £ouls, — this is the curse of all churches ! And what is 
 the result ? The result is that multitudes connected 
 with Christian churches understand Christianity, and 
 mentally and morally live it, in a sense" which would 
 shock pastors if they subjected the minds of their flock 
 to searching psychological tests. The whole mischief 
 comes from an attempt to adapt the doctrine to the 
 comprehension of the people instead of lifting the peo- 
 ple to the comprehension of the doctrine. We unhap- 
 pily have in this country two glaring examples of the 
 thorough application of the general principle of adapta- 
 tion. There were a large number of persons who pro- 
 fessed to-disbelieve in spiritual existence. This excited 
 other persons, who had a peculiar flexibility of the toes, 
 to convert them into Spiritualists, by making spirits 
 palpably knock and rap. Such evidence could not be 
 resisted ; it was palpable to the coarsest common-sense ; 
 and Spiritualism accordingly became a religion. But 
 does any man, not of the faith, believe that the converts 
 
THE ETHICS OF POPULARITY. 65 
 
 are any the less materialists than they were before? 
 Spirituality has been "popularized," but materialists 
 have not been spiritualized. Again : there were quite 
 a considerable number of persons who disliked Chris- 
 tianity because it restrained their appetites. A religion 
 was accordingly extemporized, pretending to be of 
 divine origin, allowing these gentlemen as many wives 
 as they desired. They eagerly professed it ; and now, 
 in their conceit of superior piety, they thunder Billings- 
 gate at the immorality and irreligion of the Christian 
 world. But Spiritualism and Mormonism are only 
 logical results of the principle that men are, in matters 
 of religion; to be addressed on the low level of their 
 characters ; in other words, that religion, to be efficient, 
 must be vulgarized in order to be popularized. We 
 are told by missionaries of a savage tribe, every word 
 of whose language is associated with some obscene idea. 
 Is it proper to adapt Christianity to their language ? 
 
 The fallacy, however, in all those theories of influence, 
 which are the delight of self-styled practical men, has 
 its root in a radical misconception of the philosophy of 
 influence. It is character that influences, and the in- 
 fluence, in quality and force, corresponds to the man 
 who exercises it. A person of strong animal nature 
 who foams out religious phrases in a seeming ecstasy 
 of inspiration radiates an animal electricity into his 
 
56 THE ETHICS OF POPULARITY. 
 
 audience, and nothing else, for the good reason that 
 nothing else is in him. On the contrary, a man of high 
 spiritual character, like Barrow or Jonathan Edwards, 
 or Channing, by his presence, as well as by his utler- 
 ance, makes himself felt as a spiritual force and foun- 
 tain ol spiritual influence. He may not be speaking of 
 religion, and yet his simplest conversation produces a 
 religious impression. His words feel their way surely" 
 along those mysterious avenues which lead to the in- 
 most recesses of the soul. The listener is conscious that 
 he is face to face with spiritual qualities which shine by 
 their own light and warm by their own heat A man 
 must thus "put on the Lord Jesus Christ" before he 
 can preach him. No mere religious feelings, much less 
 no mere religious Sensations, will suffice. The grace 
 of God must be organized in sentiment, in principle, in 
 faculty, in will, in the man. Give this reality of reli- 
 gious life, and there is no need of trick or spasm to 
 make it understood and to make it efficient. It trans- 
 figures the homeliest diction of Bunyan into more than 
 poetic beauty, and streams through the roughest denun- 
 ciations of Luther the spirit of tenderness and love. 
 All clumsy external imitations of the power fail to pro- 
 duce any good influence ; for tliey are not it, and by it 
 alone can men be raised and purified. 
 
GEIT. 
 
 There is an influential form of practical force, com- 
 pounded of strong will, strong sense, and strong egotism, 
 which long waited for a strong monosyllable to announce 
 its nature. Facts of character, indeed, are never at 
 rest until they have become terms of language ; and 
 that pefeuliar thing which is not exactly courage or 
 heroism, but which unmistakably is " Grit," has coined 
 its own word to blurt out its own quality. If the word 
 has not yet pushed its way into classic usage, or effected- 
 a lodgement in the dictionaries, the force it names is no 
 less a reality of the popular consciousness, and the 
 word itself no less a part of popular speech. Men who 
 possessed the thing were just the men to snub elegance 
 and stun propriety by giving it an inelegant, though 
 vitally appropriate name. There is defiance in its 
 very sound. The_ word is used by vast numbers of 
 people to express their highest ideal of manliness, 
 which is "real grit." It is impossible for anybody to 
 acquire the reputation it confers by the most dexterous 
 
58 GEIT. 
 
 mimicry of its outside expressions ; for a swift analysis, 
 which drives directly to the heart of the man, instantly 
 detects the impostor behind the braggart, and curtly 
 declares him to lack " the true grit." The word is so 
 close to the thing it names, has so much pith and point, 
 is so tart on the tongue, and so stings the ear with its 
 meaning, that foreigners ignorant of the language might 
 at once feel its significance by its griding utterance as 
 it is shot impatiently through the resisting teeth. 
 
 Grit is in the grain of character. It may generally 
 be described as heroism-materialized, — spirit and will 
 thrust into heart, brain, and backbone, so as to form part 
 of the physical substance of the man. The feeling with 
 which it rushes into consciousness is akin to physical 
 sensation ; and the whole body — every nerve, muscle, 
 and drop of blood — ;- is thrilled with purpose and pas-' 
 sion. " Spunk " does not express it ; for " spunk," 
 besides being petite in itself, is courage in effervescence 
 rather than courage in essence. A person usually cow- 
 ardly may be kicked or bullied into the exhibition of 
 spunk ; but the man of grit carries in his presence a 
 power which spares him the necessity of resenting 
 insult ; for insult sneaks away from his look. It is not 
 mere " pluck " ; for pluck also comes b'y fits and starts, 
 and can be disconnected from the other elements of 
 character. A tradesman once had the pluck to demand 
 
GEIT. 59 
 
 of Talleyrand, at the time that trickster-statesman was 
 at the height of his power, when he intended to pay his, 
 bill ; but he was instantly extinguished by the impas- 
 sive insolence of Talleyrand's answer,— !•" My. faith, 
 how curious you are ! " Considered as an ' efficient 
 force, it is sometimes below heroism, sometimes above 
 it : below heroism, when heroism is the permanent con- 
 dition of the soul; above heroism, when heroism is 
 simply the soul's transient mood. Thus, Demosthenes 
 had flashes of splendid heroism, but his valor depended 
 on his genius being kindled, — his brave actions flaming 
 out from' mental ecstasy rather than intrepid character. 
 The moment his will dropped from its eminence of 
 impassioned thoi:(ght, he was scared by dangers which 
 common soldiers faced with, gay indifference. Erskine, 
 the great advocate, was a hero at the bar ; but when he 
 entered the House of Commons, there was' something in 
 the fixed imperiousness and scorn of Pitt which made 
 him feel inwardly weak and fluttered. Erskine had 
 'flashes of heroism ; Pitt had consistent and persisitent 
 grit. If we may take the judgment of Sir Sydney 
 Smith, Wellington had more grit than Napoleon had 
 heroism. Just before the Battle of Waterloo, Sir 'Syd- 
 ney, at Paris, was told that the Duke had decided to 
 keep his position at all events.. " Oh ! " he exclaimed, 
 " if the Duke has said that, of course t' other fellow 
 must give way." 
 
60 GRIT. 
 
 And this is essentially the sign of grit, that, when it 
 appears, t' other fellow or t' other opinion must give 
 way. Its power comes from its tough hold on the real, 
 and the surly boldness with which it utters and acts it 
 out. Thus, in social life, it puts itself in rude opposition 
 to all those substitutes for reality which the weakness 
 and hypocrisy and courtesy of men find necessary for 
 their mutual defence. It denies that it has ever sur- 
 rendered its original rights and aboriginal force, or that 
 it has assented to the social compact. When it goes 
 into any company of civilized persons, its pugnacity is 
 roused by seeing that social life does not rest on the 
 vigor of the persons who compose it, but on the author- 
 ity of certain rules and manners to which all are re- 
 quired to conform. These appear to grit as external de- 
 fences, thrown up to protect elegant feebleness against 
 any direct collision with positive character, and to keep 
 men and women at a respectful distance from ladies and 
 gentlemen. Life is carried on there at one or more 
 removes from the realities of life, on this principle, that 
 " I won't speak the truth of you if you won't speak the 
 truth of me " ; and the name of this principle is polite- 
 ness. It is impolite to tell foolish men that they are 
 foolish, mean men that they are mean, wicked men that 
 they are wicked, traitorous men that they are traitors ; 
 for smooth lies cement what impolite veracities would 
 
GKIT. 61 
 
 shatter. The system, it is contended, on the whole, 
 civilizes the individuals whose natures it may repress, 
 and is better than a sincerity which would set them by 
 the ears, and put a veto on all social intercourse what- 
 ever. But strong as may be the argument in favor of 
 the system, it is certainly as important that it should be 
 assailed as that it should exist, and that it should be 
 assailed from within ; for, carried out unchecked to its 
 last consequences, it results in sinking its victims into 
 the realm of vapors and vacuity, its representative being 
 the all-accomplished London man of fashion who com- 
 mitted suicide to save himself from the bore of dressing 
 and undressing. Besides, in " good society,'' so called, - 
 the best sentiments and ideas can sometimes get ex- 
 pression only through the form of bad manners. It is 
 charming to be in a circle where human nature is 
 pranked out in purple and fine linen, and where you 
 sometimes see manners as beautiful as the masterpieces 
 of the arts ; yet some people cannot get rid of the 
 uneasy consciousness that a subtle tyranny pervades 
 the room and ties the tongue, — that philanthropy is 
 impolite, that heroism is ungenteel, that truth, honor, 
 freedom, humanity, strongly ■ asserted, are marks of a 
 vulgar mind ; and many a person, daring enough to de- 
 fend his opinions anyVhere else by speech or by the 
 sword, quails in the parlor before Some supercilious 
 coxcomb, 
 
62 GRIT. 
 
 " Weak in his watery smile 
 And educated whisker," 
 
 who can still tattle to the ^rls that the reTormer is " no 
 gentleman." 
 
 Now how different all this is, when a man of, social 
 grit thrusts himself into a drawing-room, and with an 
 easy audacity tosses out disagreeable facts and unfash- 
 ionable truths, the porcelain crashing as his words fall, 
 and saying everything that no gentleman ought to say, 
 indifferent to the titter or terror of the women and the 
 offended looks and ' frightened stare of the men. How 
 the gilded lies vanish in his presence ! How he states, 
 contradicts, confutes ! how he smashes through pro- 
 prieties to realities, flooding the room with his aggres- 
 sive vitality, mastering by main force a position in the 
 most exclusive set, and, by being perfectly indifferent 
 to their opinion, making it impossible for them to put 
 him down ! He thus becomes a social power by becom- 
 ing a social rebel, ^ persecutes conventional politeness 
 into submission to rude veracity, — establishes an autoc- 
 racy of man over the gentleman, — and practises a 
 kind of " Come-Outerism," while insisting on enjoying 
 all the advantages of Go-Interism. Ben Jonson in the 
 age of Elizabeth, Samuel Johnson in the last century, 
 Carlyle and Brougham in the present, are prominent 
 examples of this somewhat insolent manhood in the 
 
GEIT. 63 
 
 presence ,of social forms. It is, however, one of the 
 rarest, as it is one of the ugliest, kinds of human 
 strength ; it requires, perhaps, in its combination, full 
 as many defects as merits ; and how difficult is its justi- 
 fiable exercise we see in the career of so illustrious a 
 philanthropist as Wilberforce, — a man whose speech 
 in Parliament showed no lack of vivid conceptions and 
 smiting words, a man whom no threats of personal vio- 
 lence could intimidate, and who would cheerfully have 
 risked his life for his cause, yet still a man who could 
 never forget that he was a Tory and a gentleman, who 
 had no grit before lords and ladies, whose Abolitionism 
 was not sufficieintly blunt and downright in the good 
 company of cabinet ministers, whose sensitive nature 
 flinched at the thought of being conscientiously impolite 
 and heroically ill-natured, and whose manners were thus 
 frequently in the way of the full efficiency of his morals. 
 In many respects a hero, in all respects benevolent, he 
 still was not, like Romilly, a man of grit. Politeness 
 has been defined as benevolence in small things. To 
 be benevolent in great Hhii^gs, decorum must sometimes 
 yield to duty ; and Draco, though in the king's drawing- 
 room, and loyally supporting in Parliament the meas- 
 ures of the ministry, is still Draco, even if cruelty in 
 him has learned the dialect of fashion and clothed itself 
 in the privileges of the genteel. 
 
64 GBIT. 
 
 Proceeding from, social life to business life, we shall 
 find that it is this unamiable, but indomitable quality 
 of grit which not only acquires fortunes, but preserves 
 them after they ha^e been acquired. The ruin -which 
 overtakes so many merchants is due not so much to 
 their lack of business talent as to their lack of business 
 nerve. How many lovable persons we see in trade, 
 endowed with brilhant capacities, but cursed with yield- 
 ing dispositions, — who are resolute in no business habits 
 and fixed in no business principles, — who are prone to 
 follow the instincts of a weak good-nature against the 
 ominous hints of a clear intelligence, now obliging this 
 friend by indorsing an unsafe note, and then pleasing 
 that neighbor by sharing his risk in a hopeless specula- 
 tion, -r- and who, after all the capital they have earned 
 by their industry and sagacity has been sunk in benevo- 
 lent attempts to assist blundering or plundering inca- 
 pacity, are doomed, in their bankruptcy, to be the mark 
 of bitter taunts from growling creditors and insolent 
 pity from a gossiping public. Much has been said 
 about the pleasures of a good conscience ; and among 
 these I reckon the act of that man who, having wick- 
 edly lent certain moneys to a casual acquaintance, was 
 in the end called upon to advance a sura which tran- 
 scended his honest means, with a dark hint, that, if the 
 money was refused, there was but one thing for the 
 
GEIT. 65 
 
 casual Jfcquaintance to do, — that is, to commit suicide. 
 The person thus solicited, in a transient fit of moral 
 enthusiasm, caught at the hint, and with great earnest- 
 ness advised the casual acquaintance to do it, on the 
 ground that it was the only reparation he could make 
 to the numerous persons he had swindled. And this 
 advice was given with no fear that the guilt of that 
 gentleman's blood would lie on his soul, for the mission 
 of that gentleman was to continue his existence by suck- 
 ing out the life of others, and his last thought was to 
 destroy his own ; and it is hardly necessary to announce 
 that he is still alive and sponging. Indeed, a coura- 
 geous merchant must ever be ready to face the fact 
 that he will be called a curmudgeon, if he will not ruin 
 himself to please others, and a weak fool if he does. 
 Many a fortune has melted away in the hesitating ut- 
 terance of the placable " Yes^" which might have been 
 saved by the unhesitating utterance of the implacable 
 " No ! " Indeed, in business, the perfection of grit is 
 this power of saying •" No," and saying it with such 
 wrathful emphasis that the whole race of vampires and 
 harpies are scared from your counting-roOm, and your 
 reputation as unenterprising, unbearable niggard is fully 
 established among all borrowers of money never meant 
 to be repaid, and all projectors of schemes intended for 
 the benefit of the projectors alone. At the expense of 
 5 
 
bb GHIT. 
 
 a little temporary obloquy, a man can thus conquer the 
 right to mind his own business ; and having done this, 
 he has shown his possession of that nerve which, in his 
 business, puts inexorable purpose into clear conceptions, 
 follows out a plan of opera,tions with sturdy intelligence, 
 and conducts to fortune by the road of real enterprise. 
 Many others may evince equal shrewdness in framing 
 a project, but they hesitate, become timid, become con- 
 fused, at some step in its development. Their character 
 is not strong enough to back up their intellect. But 
 the iron-like tenacity of the merchant of grit holds on 
 to the successful end. 
 
 You can watch the operation of this quality in every- 
 day business transactions. Tour man of grit seems 
 never deficient in news of the markets, though he may 
 employ no telegraph-operator. Thus, about two years 
 ago, a great Boston holder of flour went to considerable 
 expense in obtaining special intelligence, which would, 
 when generally known, carry flour up to ten dollars and 
 a half a barrel. Another dealer, suspecting something, 
 went to him and said, " What do you say flour 's worth 
 to-day?" "Oh," was the careless answer, "I suppose 
 it might bring ten dollars." " Well," retorted the 
 querist, gruffly, "I've got five thousand barrels on 
 hand, and I should like to see the man who would give 
 me ten dollars a barrel for it!" "I will," said the 
 
GRIT. 67 
 
 other quickly, disclosing his secret by the eagerness of 
 his manner. " Well," was the reply, " all I can say is, 
 then, that I have seen the man." 
 
 The importance of this quality as a business power 
 is most apparent in those frightful panics which period- 
 ically occur in our country, and which sometimes tax 
 the people more severely than wars and standing ar- 
 mies. In regard to one of the last of these financial 
 hurricanes, that of 1857, there can be little doubt, that, 
 if the acknowledged holders of financial power had been 
 men of real grit, it might have been averted ; there can 
 be as little doubt, that, when it burst, if they had been 
 men of real grit, it might have been made less disas- 
 trous. But they kept nearly all their sails set up to 
 the point of danger, and when the tempest was on them 
 ignominiously took to their boats and abandoned the 
 ship. And as for the crew and passengers, it was the 
 old spectacle of a shipwreck, — individuals squabbling to 
 get a plank, instead of combining to construct a raft. 
 • Indeed, there was something pitiable in the state of 
 things which that panic revealed in the business cen- 
 tres of the country. -Common sense seemed to be dis- 
 owned by mutual consent ; an infectious fear went 
 shivering from man to man ; and a strange fascination 
 led people to increase by suspicions and reports the 
 peril which threatened their own destruction. Men, 
 
68 
 
 GEIT. 
 
 being thus thrown back upon the resources of character, 
 were put to terrible tests. As the intellect cannot act 
 when the will is paralyzed, many a merchant, whose 
 debts really bore no proportion to his property, was 
 seen sitting, like the French prisoner in the iron cage 
 whose sides were hourly contracting, stupidly gazing at 
 the bars which were closing in upon him, and feeling in ' 
 advance the pang of the iron which was to cut into his 
 flesh and crush his bones. 
 
 In invigorating contrast to the panic-smitten, we had 
 the privilege to witness many an example of the grit- 
 inspired. Then it was that the grouty, taciturn, obsti- 
 nate trader, so unpopular in ordinary times, showed the 
 stuff he was made of. Then his bearing was cheer and 
 hope to all who looked upon him. How he girded him- 
 self for the fight, resolved, if he died, to die hard! 
 How he tugged with obstacles as if they were personal 
 affronts, and hurled them to the right and to the left! 
 How grandly, amid the chatter of the madmen about 
 him, came his few words of sense and sanity ! And 
 then his brain, brightened, not bewildered, by the dan- 
 ger, how clear and alert it was, how fertile in expe- 
 dients, how firm in principles, with a glance that piercedN 
 through the ignorant present to the future, seeing as 
 calmly and judging as accurately in the tempest as it 
 had in the sunshine. Never losing heart and never 
 
GRIT. 69 
 
 losing head, with as strong a grip on his honor as on 
 his property, detesting the very thought of failure, 
 knowing that he might be broken to pieces, but deter- 
 mined that he would not weakly "go to pieces,'' he 
 performed the greatest service to the community, as 
 well as to himself, by resolutely, at any sacrifice, paying 
 his debts when they became due. It is a pity that such, 
 austere Luthers of commerce, trade-militant instead of 
 church-militant, who meet hard times with a harder 
 will, had not a little beauty in their toughness, so that 
 grit, lifted to heroism, would allure aifection as well as 
 enforce respect. But their sense is so rigid, their integ- 
 rity sogruiF, and their courage so unjoyous, that all the 
 genial graces fly their companionship ; and a libertine 
 Sheridan, with Ancient Pistol's motto of " Base is the 
 slave that pays," will often be more popular, even 
 among the creditor portion of the public, than these 
 crabbed heroes, and, if need be, surly martyrs, of mer- 
 cantile honesty and personal honor. 
 
 In regard to public life, and the influence of this rough 
 manliness in politics, it is a matter of daily observation, 
 that, in the strife of parties and principles, bafckbone 
 without brains will carry it against brains without back- 
 bone. A politician weakly and amiably in the right is 
 no match for a politician tenaciously and pugnaciously 
 in the wrong. You cannot, by tying an opinion to a 
 
10 GRIT. 
 
 man's tongue, make him the representative of that opin- 
 ion ; and at the close of any battle for principles, his 
 name will be found neither among the dead nor among 
 the wounded, but among the missing. The true motto 
 for a party is neither " Measures, not men," nor " Men, 
 not measures," but " Measures in men," — measures 
 which are in their blood as wdl as in their brain and 
 on their lips. Wellington said that Napoleon's presence 
 in the French army was equivalent to forty thousand 
 additional soldiers ; ' and in a legislative assembly, Mi- 
 rabeau and John Adams and John Qnincy Adams are 
 not simply persons who hold a single vote, but forces 
 whose power thrills through the whole mass of voters. 
 Mean natures always feel a sort of terror before great 
 natures ; and many a base thought has been unuttered, 
 many a sneaking vote withheld, through the fear, in- 
 spired by the rebuking presence of one noble man. 
 
 Opinions embodied in men, and thus made aggressive 
 and militant, are the opinions which mark the union of 
 thought with grit. A politician of this class is not con- . 
 tent to comprehend and wield the elements of power 
 already existing in a community, but he aims to make 
 his individual conviction and purpose dominant over 
 the convictions and purposes of the accredited exponents 
 of public opinion. He cares little about his unpopular- 
 ity at the start, and doggedly persists in his course 
 
CEIT. 71 
 
 against obstaclea which seem insurmountable. A great, 
 but mischievous example of this power appeared in 
 our own generation in the person of Mr. Calhoun, a 
 statesman who stamped his individual mind on the pol- 
 icy and thinking of the country more definitely, perhaps, 
 than any statesman since Hamilton, though his influence 
 has, on the whole, been as evil as Hamilton's was, on 
 the whole, beneficent. Keen-sighted, far-sighted, and 
 inflexible, Mr. Calhoun clearly saw the logical founda- 
 tions and logical results of the institution of Slavery ; 
 and though at first called an abstractionist and a fanatic 
 by the looser thinkers of his own region, his inexorable 
 argumentation, conquering by degrees politicians who 
 could reason, made itself felt at last among poltticjans 
 who could not, reason ; and the conclusions of his logic 
 were adopted by thousands whose brains would have 
 broken in the attempt to follow its processes. One of 
 those rare deductive reasoners whose audacity marches 
 abreast th.eir genius, he would have been willing to 
 fight to the last gasp for a conclusion, which he had 
 laboriously reached by rigid deduction through a score 
 of intermediate steps, from premises in themselves 
 repugnant to the primal instincts both of reason and 
 humanity. Always ready to meet anybody in argument, 
 he detested all reasoners who attempted to show the 
 fallacy of his argument by pointing out the dangerous 
 
72 GRIT. 
 
 results to which it led. In this he sometimes brought 
 to mind that inflexible professor of the deductive meth- 
 od who was timidly informed that Jiis principles, if car- 
 ried out, would split the world to pieces. " Let it split," 
 was his careless answer ; " there are enough more plan- 
 ets." By pure intellectual grit, he thus effected a rev- 
 olution in the ideas and sentiments of the South, and 
 through the South made his mind act on the policy of 
 the nation. Our civil war had its root in the princi- 
 ples he advocated. Never flinching from any logical 
 consequence of his principles, Mr. Calhoun did not rest 
 until through him religion, morality, statesmanship, the 
 Constitution of the United States, the constitution of 
 man, were all bound in black. Chattel slavery, the 
 most nonsensical as well as detestable of oppressions, 
 was, to him, the most beneficent contrivance of human 
 wisdom. He called it an institution : Mr. Emerson 
 has more happily styled it a destitution. At last the 
 chains of his iron logic were heard clanking on the 
 whole Southern intellect. Reasoning the most masterly 
 was employed to annihilate the first principles of reason ; 
 the understanding of man was insanely placed in direct 
 antagpnisra to his moral instincts ; and finally the 
 astounding conclusion was reached, that the- Creator of 
 mankind has his pet races, — that God himself scouts 
 bis colored children, and nicknames them " Niggers." 
 
GRIT. '13 
 
 It is delicious to watch the exulting and somewhat 
 contemptuous audacity with which he huriies to the 
 unforeseen conclusion those who have once been simple 
 enough to admit hi,s premises. Towards men who have 
 some logical capacity his tone is that of respectful impa- 
 tience ; but as he goads on the reluctant and resentful 
 victims of his reasoning, who loiter and limp painfully 
 in the steps of his rapid deductions, he seems to say, 
 with ironic scorn, " A little faster, my poor cripples ! " 
 
 ' So confident was Mr. Calhoun in his capacity to 
 demonstrate the validity of his horrible creed, that he 
 was ever eager to measure swords with the most accom- 
 plished of his antagonists in the duel of debate. And it 
 must be said that he despised all the subterfuges and 
 evasions by which, in ordinary controversies, the real 
 question is dodged, and went directly to the heart of the 
 matter, — a resolute intellect, burning to grapple with 
 another resolute intellect in a vital encounter. In 
 common legislative debates, on the contrary, there is no 
 vital encounter. The exasperated opponents, personally 
 courageous, but deficient in clear and fixed ideas, mu- • 
 tually contrive to avoid the things essential to be dis- 
 cussed, while wantoning in all the forms of discussion. 
 They assert, brag, browbeat, dogmatize, domineer, pum- 
 mel each other with the argumentum ad hominem, and 
 abundantly prove that they stand for opposite opinions ; 
 
74 GEIT. 
 
 we watch them as we watch the feints and hits of a 
 couple of pugilists in the ring ; but after the sparring is 
 over, we find that neither the Southern champion nor the 
 Northern bruiser has touched the inner reality of the 
 question to decide which they stripped themselves for 
 the fight. In regard to the intellectual issue, they are 
 like two bullies enveloping themselves in an immense 
 concealing dust of arrogant words, and, as they fearfully 
 retreat from personal collision, shouting furiously to 
 each other, " Let me get at him ! " And this is what 
 is commonly called grit in politics, — abundant back- 
 bone to face persons, deficient brain-bone to encounter 
 principles. 
 
 Not so was it when two debaters like Mr. Calhoun 
 and Mr. "Webster engaged in the contest of argument. 
 Take, for example, as specimens of pure mental manli- 
 ness, their speeches in the Senate, in 1833, on the 
 question whether or not the Constitution is a (Compact 
 between sovereign States. Give Mr. Calhoun those 
 two words, "compact" and "sovereign," and he con- 
 ducts you logically to Nullification and to all the conse- 
 quences of Nullification. Andrew Jackson, a man in 
 his kind, of indomitable resolution, intended to arrest 
 the argument at a convenient point by the sword, and 
 thus save himself the bother of going farther in the 
 chain of inferences than he pleased. Mr. Webster 
 
GRIT. 15 
 
 grappled with the argument and with the man ; and 
 it is curious to watch that spectacle of a meeting be- 
 tween two such hostile minds. Each is confident of 
 the strength of his own position ; each is eager for a 
 close hug of dialectics. Far from avoiding therpoint, they 
 drive directly towards it, clearing their essential proposi- 
 tions from mutual misconception by the sharpest analysis 
 and exactesf statement. To get theii: minds near each 
 other, to think close to the subject, to feel the griding con- 
 tact of pure intellect with pure intellect, and, as spiritual 
 beings, to conduct the war of reason with spiritual weap- 
 ons, — this is their ambition. Conventionally courteous 
 to each other, they are really in the deadliest antagonism ; 
 for their contest is the tug and strain of soul with soul, 
 and each feels that defeat would be worse than death. 
 No nervous ifritation, no hard words, no passionate re- 
 criminations, no flinching from unexpected difficulties, 
 no substitution 6f declamatory sophisms for rigorous in- 
 ferences, — but close, calm, ruthless grapple of thought 
 with thought. To each, at the time, life seems to de- 
 pend on the issue, — not merely the life which a sword- 
 cut or pistol-bullet can destroy, but immortal life, the life 
 of immaterial minds and personalities, thus brought into 
 spiritual feud. They know very well, that, whatever 
 be the real result, the Webster-men will give the vic- 
 tory of argument to Webster, the Calhoun-men the 
 
■76 GEIT. 
 
 victory of argument to Calhoun; but that consideration 
 does not enter their thoughts as they prepare to close 
 in that combat which is to determine, not to the world, 
 but to each other, which is the stronger intellect, and 
 which is in the right. Few ever appreciate great men 
 in this hostile attitude, not of their passions, but of their 
 minds ; and those who do it the least are their furious 
 partisans. Most people are contented with the argu- 
 ment that tells, and are apt to be bored with the argu- 
 ment which refutes ; but a true reasoner despises even 
 his success, if he feels that two persons, himself and 
 his opponent, know that he is. in the wi-ong. And the 
 strain on the whole being in this contest of intellect 
 with intellect, and the reluctance with which the most 
 combative enter it unless they are consciously strong, 
 is well illustrated by Dr. Johnson's remark to some 
 friends, when sickness had relaxed the tough fibre of 
 his brain, — " If that fellow Burke were here now, he 
 would kill me." 
 
 A peculiar kind of grit, not falling under any of the 
 special expressions I have noted, yet partaking in 
 some degree of all, is illustrated in the character of 
 , General Grant. Without an atom of pretension or 
 rhetoric, with none of the external signs of energy 
 and intrepidity, making no parade of the immovable 
 purpose, iron nerve, and silent, penetrating intelligence 
 
GRIT. 77 
 
 God has put into him, his tranquil greatness is hidden 
 from superficial scrutiny behind a cigar, as President 
 Lincoln's was behind a joke. When anybody tried to 
 coax, cajole, overawe, browbeat, or deceive Lincoln, the 
 President nursed his leg, and was reminded of a story ; 
 when anybody tries the same game with Grant, the 
 General listens and — smokes. If you try to wheedle 
 out of him his plans for a campaign, he stolidly smokes ; 
 if you call him an imbecile and a blunderer, he blandly 
 lights another cigar ; if you praise him as the greatest 
 general living, he placidly returns the puff from his 
 regalia; and if you tell him he should run for the 
 Presidency, it does not disturb the equanimity with 
 which he inhales and exhales the unsubstantiEil vapor 
 which typifies the politician's promises. While you are 
 wondering what kind of man this creature without a 
 tongue is, you are suddenly electrified with the news 
 of some splendid victory, proving that behind the cigar, 
 and behind the face discharged of all tell-tale expres- 
 sion, is the best brain to plan and the strongest heart 
 to dare among the generals of the Eepublic. 
 
 It 'is curious to mark a variation of this intellectual 
 hardihood and personal force when the premises are 
 not in the solidities, but in the oddities of thought and 
 character, and whim stands stiffly up to the remotest 
 inferences which may be deduced from its insanest 
 
78 GRIT. 
 
 freaks of individual opinion. Thus it is said that in 
 one of our country towns there is an old gentleman 
 who is an eccentric hater of women ; and this crotchet 
 of his character he carries to its extreme logical conse- 
 quences. Not content with general declamation against 
 the sex, he turns eagerly, the moment he receives the 
 daily newspaper, to the list of deaths ; and if he sees 
 the death of a woman recorded, he gleefully exclaims, 
 " Good ! good ! there 's another of 'em gone ! " 
 
 We have heard of a man who had conceived a vio- 
 lent eccentric prejudice against negroes; and he was 
 not content with chiming in with the usual cant of 
 the prejudice, thaf they ought not to be allowed in our 
 churches and in our railroad-cars, but vociferated, that, 
 if he had his way, they should not be allowed in 
 Africa! The advantage of grit in this respect is in 
 its annihilating a pr^udice by presenting a vivid vision 
 of its theoretical consequences. Carlyle has an eccen- 
 tric hatred of the eighteenth century, its manners, 
 morals, politics, religion, and men. He has expressed 
 this in various ways for thirty years; but in laa last 
 work, the " Life of Frederick the Great," his prejudice 
 reached its logical climax in the assertion, that the 
 only sensible thing the eighteenth century ever did 
 was blowing out its own brains in the French Revo- 
 lution. 
 
6EIT. 79 
 
 Again, in discussion, some men have felicity in reply- 
 ing to a question, others a felicity in replying to the 
 motive which prompted the question. In one case you 
 get an answer addressed to your understanding; in 
 the other, an answer which smites like a slap in the 
 face. Thus, when a pert sceptic asked Martin Luther 
 where God was before he created heaven, Martin 
 stunned his querist with the retort, "He was build- 
 ing hell for such idle, presumptuous, fluttering, and in- 
 quisitive spirits as you." And everybody will recollect 
 the story of the self-complacent cardinal who went to 
 confess to a holy monk, and thought by self-accusation 
 to get the reputation of a saint. 
 
 " I have been guilty of every kind of sin,'' snivelled 
 the cardinal. 
 
 " It is a solemn fact," replied the impassive monk. 
 
 " I have indulged in pride, ambition, malice, and re- 
 venge," groaned the cardinal. 
 
 " It is too true," answered the monk. 
 
 " Why, you fool," exclaimed the enraged dignitary, 
 " you don't imagine that I mean all this to the letter ! " 
 
 " Ho ! ho ! " said the monk, " so you have been a 
 liar, too, have you ? " 
 
 ,This relentless rebuker of shams furnishes us with a 
 good transition to another department of the subject, 
 namely, moral hardihood, or grit organized in con- 
 
80 GRIT. 
 
 science, and applying the most rigorous laws of ethics 
 to the practical affairs of life. Now there is a wide 
 difference between moral men, so , called, and men 
 moralized, — between men who lazily adopt and lazily 
 practise the conventional moral proprieties of the time, 
 and men transformed into the image of inexorable, 
 unmerciful moral ideas, men in whom moral maxims 
 appear organized as moral might. There are thou- 
 sands who are prodigal of moral and benevolent opin- 
 ions, and honestly eloquent in loud professions of what 
 they would do in case circumstances called upon them 
 to act ; but when the occasion is suddenly thrust upon 
 them, when temptation, leering into every comer and 
 crevice of their weak and selfish natures, connects the 
 notion of virtue with the reality of sacrifice, then, in 
 that sharp pinch, they become suddenly apprised of 
 the difference between rhetoric and rectitude, and find 
 that their speeches have be^n far ahead of their powers 
 of performance.' Thus, in one of Gerald Griffin's 
 novels, there is a scene in which a young Irish student, 
 fresh from his scholastic ethics, amazes the company at 
 his father's fable, who are all devout believers in the 
 virtues of the hair-trigger, by an eloquent declamation 
 against the folly and the sin of duelling. At last one 
 of the set gets sufficient breath to call him a coward. 
 The hot Irish blood is up in an instant, a tumbler is 
 
GRIT. 81 
 
 thrown at the head of the doubter of his courage, and 
 in ten seconds the young moralist is crossing swords 
 with his antagonist in a duel. 
 
 But the characteristic of moral grit is equality with 
 the occasions which exact its exercise. It is morality 
 with thews and sinews and blood and passions, — mo- 
 rality made man, and eager to put its phrases to the 
 test of action. It gives and takes hard blows, — aims 
 not only to be upright in deed, but downright in word, 
 — silences with a " Thus saith the Lord " all palliations 
 of convenient sins, — scowls ominously at every attempt 
 to reconcile the old feud between the right and the 
 expedient and make them socially shake hands, — and 
 when cant taints the air, clears it with good wholesome 
 rage and execration. -On the virtues of this stubborn 
 conscientiousness it is nefedless to dilate ; its limitations 
 spring from its tendency to disconnect morality from 
 mercy, and law from love, — its too frequent substitu- 
 tion of moral antipathies for moral insight, — and its 
 habit of describing individual men, not as they are in 
 themselves, but as they appear to its offended con- 
 science. Understanding sin better than it understands 
 sinners, it sometimes sketches phantoms rather than 
 paints portraits, ^ identifies the weakly wicked with 
 the extreme of Satanic wickedness, — and in its as- 
 saults, pitches at its adversaries rather than really 
 6 
 
82 ^ GRIT. 
 
 pitches into them. But, in a large moral view, the 
 light of intellectual perception should shine far in 
 advance of the 'heat of ethical invective, and an ounce 
 of characterization is worth a ton of imprecations. In- 
 deed, moral grit, relatively admirable as it is, partakes 
 of the inherent defect of other and lower kinds of grit, 
 inasmuch as its force is apt to be as unsympathetic as 
 it is uncompromising, as ungracious as it is invincible. 
 It drives rather than draws, cufiTs rather than coaxes. 
 Intolerant of human infirmity, it is likewise often intol- 
 erant of all forms of human excellence which do not 
 square with its own conceptions of right ; and its phi- 
 lanthropy in the abstract is apt to secrete a subtile 
 misanthropy in the concrete. Brave, unselfish, self-sac- 
 rificing, and flinching from no consequences which its 
 principles may bring upon itself, it flinches from no 
 consequences which they may bring upon others ; and 
 its attitude towards the laws and customs of instituted 
 imperfection is almost as sourly belligerent as towards 
 those of instituted iniquity. 
 
 Men of this austere and somewhat crabbed rectitude 
 may be found in every department of life, but they are 
 most prominent and most efficient when they engage in 
 the reform of abuses, whether those abuses be in man- 
 ners, institutions, or religion ; and here they never 
 shrink from the rough, rude work of the cause they 
 
GRIT. 83. 
 
 espouse. They are commonly adored by their followers, 
 commonly execrated by their opponents; but they 
 receive the execration as the most convincing proof 
 ~ that they have performed their duties, as the shrieks 
 of the wounded testify to the certainty of the shots. 
 Indeed, they take a kind of grim delight in so pointing 
 their invective that the adversaries of their principles 
 are turned into enemies of their persons, and scout at 
 all fame which does not spring from obloquy. As they 
 thus exist in a state of war, the gentler elements of 
 their being fall into the background ; the bitterness of 
 the strife works into their souls, and gives to their con- 
 scientious wrath a certain Puritan pitilessness of temper 
 and tone. In the thick of the fight, their battle-cry, is, 
 " No quarter to the enemies of God and man ! " — and 
 as, unfortunately, there are few men who, tried by their 
 standards, are friends of man, population very palpably 
 thins as the lava-tide of their invective sweeps over it, 
 and to the mental eye men disappear as man emerges. 
 
 The gulf which yawns between uncompromising moral 
 obligation and compromising human conduct is so im- 
 mense that these fierce servants of the Lord seem to be 
 fanatics and visionaries. ' But history demonstrates that 
 they are among the most practical of all the forces 
 which work in human affairs ; for, without taking into 
 account the response which their inflexible morality 
 
■84 GKIT. 
 
 finds in the breasts of inflexibly moral men, their mo- 
 rality, in its application to common life, often becomes 
 materialized, and shows an intimate connection with 
 the most ordinary human appetites and passions. They 
 commune with the mass of men through the subtil^ 
 freemasonry of discontent. Compelled to hurl the 
 thunderbolts of the moral law against injustice in pos- 
 session, they unwittingly set fire to injustice smouldering 
 in unrealized passions ; and their speech is translated and 
 transformed, in its passage into the public mind, into 
 some such shape as this : " These few persons who are 
 dominant in Church and State, and who, while you 
 physically and spiritually starve, are fed fat by the pro- 
 ducts of your labor and the illusions of your superstition, 
 are powerful and prosperous, not from any virtue in 
 themselves, but from the violation of those laws which 
 God has ordained for the beneficent government of the 
 universe. Their property and their power are the 
 signs, not of their merits, but of their sins." The 
 instinctive love of property and power are thus ad- 
 dressed to overturn the present possessors of property 
 and power ; and the vices of men are unconsciously 
 enlisted in the service of the regeneration of man. 
 The motives which impel whole masses of the commu- 
 nity are commonly different from the motives of those 
 reformers who urge the community to revolt ; and their 
 
GRIT. 85 
 
 fervent denunciations of injustice bring to their side 
 thousands of men who, perhaps unconsciously to them- 
 selves, only desire a chance to be unjust. The annals 
 of all emancipations, revolutions, and reformations are 
 disfigured by this fact. Better than what they supplant, 
 their good is still relative, not absolute. 
 
 In the history of religious reforms, few men better 
 illustrate this hard moral manliness, as distinguished 
 from the highest moral heroism, than the sturdy Scotch 
 reformer, John Knox. Tenacious, pugnacious, thor- 
 oughly honest and thoroughly earnest, superior to all 
 physical and moral fear, destitute equally of fine senti- 
 ments and weak emotions, blurting out unwelcome 
 opinions to queens as readily as to peasants, and in 
 words which hit and hurt like knocks with the fist, he 
 is one of those large, but somewhat coarse-grained 
 natures, that influence rude' populations by having so 
 much in~ common with them, and in which the piety of 
 the Christian, the thought of the Protestant, and the 
 zeal of the martyr are curiously blended with the 
 ferocity of the demagogue. Jenny Geddes, at the 
 time when Archbishop Laud attempted to force Episco- 
 s. pacy upon Scotland, is a fair specimen of the kind of 
 
 character which the teachings and the pi'actice of such 
 a man would tend to produce in a nation. This rustic 
 heroine was present when the new bishop, hateful to 
 
86 GRIT. 
 
 Presbyterian eyes, began the service, with the smooth 
 Baying, " Let us read the Collect of the Day." Jenny 
 rose in wrath, and cried out to the surpliced official of 
 the Lord, "Thou foul thief, wilt thou say-mass at my 
 lug?" and hurled her stool at his head. Then rose 
 cries of " A Pope ! a Pope ! Stone him ! " And " the 
 worship' of the Lord in Episcopal decency and order " 
 was ignominiously stopped. And in the next reign, 
 when the same thing was attempted, the Covenanters, 
 the true spiritual descendants of Knox, opposed to 
 the most brutal persecution a fierce, morose heroism, 
 strangely compounded of barbaric passion and Christian 
 fortitude. They were the most perfect specimens of 
 pure moral grit the world has ever seen. In the great 
 theological humorist of - the nineteenth century, the 
 Reverend Sydney Smith, the legitimate intellectual 
 successor of the Reverend Rabelais and the Reverend 
 Swift and the Reverend Sterne, their sullen intrepidity 
 excites a mingled feeling, in which fun strives with 
 admiration. In arguing against all intolerance, the in- 
 tolerance of the church to which he belonged as well 
 as the intolerance of the churches to which he was 
 opposed, he said that persecution and bloodshed had no 
 effect in preventing the Scotch, " that metaphysical peo- 
 ple, from going to heaven in their true way instead of 
 our true way " ; and then comes the humorous saUy : 
 
SRIT. 8t 
 
 •' With a little oatmeal for food and a little sulphur for 
 friction, allaying cutaneous irritation with one hand 
 and grasping his Calvinistical creed with the other, 
 Sawney ran away to the flinty hills, sung his psalm out 
 of tune his dwn way, and listened to his sermon of two 
 hours long, amid the rough and imposing melancholy 
 of the tallest thistles." But from the graver historian, 
 developing the historic significance of their determined 
 resistance to the insolent claims of ecclesiastical au- 
 thority, their desperate hardihood elicits a more fitting 
 tribute. " Hunted down," he says, " like wild beasts, 
 tortured till their bones were beaten flat, imprisoned by 
 hundreds, hanged by scores, exposed at one time to the 
 license of soldiers from England, abandoned at another 
 time to the mercy of bands of marauders from the 
 Highlands, they still stood at bay in a mood so savage 
 that the boldest and mightiest oppressor could not but 
 dread the audacity of their despair." - 
 
 But the man who, in modern times, stands out most 
 prominently as the representative of this tough physical 
 and moral fibre is Oliver Cromwell, the greatest of 
 that class of Puritans who combined the intensest re- 
 ligious passions with the powers of the soldier and the 
 statesman, and who, in some wild way, reconciled their 
 austere piety with remorseless eiBciency in the world 
 of facts. After all the materials for an accurate judg- 
 
88 GKIT. 
 
 ment of Cromwell which have been collected by the 
 malice of his libellers and the veneration of his pai-ti- 
 sans, he is still a puzzle to psychologists ; for no one, 
 so far, has bridged the space which separates the seem- 
 ing anarchy of his mind from the executive decision 
 of his conduct. A coarse, strong, massive English na- 
 ture, thoroughly impregnated with Hebrew thought and 
 Hebrew passion, — democratic in his sympathy with 
 the rudest political and religious feelings of his party, 
 autocratic in the consciousness of superior abilities and 
 tyrannic will, — emancipated from the illusions of van- 
 ity, but not from those of ambition and pride, — shrink- 
 ing from no duty and no policy from the fear of oblo- 
 quy or the fear of death, — a fanatic and a politician, 
 — a demagogue and a dictator, — seeking the kingdom 
 of heaven, but determined to take the kingdom of Eng- 
 land by the way, — believing in God, believing in him- 
 self, and believing in his Ironsides, — clothing spiritual 
 faith in physical force, and backing dogmas and prayers 
 with pikes and cannon, — anxious at once that his troops 
 should trust in God and keep their powder dry, — with 
 a mind deep indeed, but distracted by internal conflicts, 
 and prolific only in enormous, half-shaped ideas, which 
 stammer into expression at once obscure and ominous, the 
 language a strange compound of the slang of the camp 
 and the mystic phrases of inspired prophets and apos- 
 
GKIT. 89 
 
 ties, — we still feel throughout, that, whatever may be 
 the contradictions of his character, they are not such as 
 to impair the ruthless energy of his will. "Whatever 
 he dared to think he dared to do. No practical emer- 
 gency ever found him deficient either in sagacity or 
 resolution, however it might have found him, deficient 
 in mercy. He overrode the moral judgments of ordi- 
 nary men as fiercely as he overrode their physical 
 resistance, crushing prejudices as well as Parliaments, 
 ideas as well as armies ; and whether his task was to 
 cut off the head of an unmanageable king,- or disperse 
 an unmanageable legislative assembly, or massacre an 
 unmanageable Irish garrison, or boldly establish him- 
 self as the uncontrolled supreme authority of the land, 
 he ever did it thoroughly and unrelentingly, and could 
 always throw the responsibility of the deed on the God 
 of battles and the God of Cromwell. In all this we 
 observe the operation of ti colossal practical force rather 
 than an ideal power, of grit rather than heroism. 
 However much he may command that portion of our 
 sympathies which thrill at the touch of vigorous action, 
 there are other sentiments of our being which detect 
 something partial, vulgar, and repulsive even in his 
 undisputed greatness. 
 
 In truth, grit, in its highest forms, is not a form of 
 courage deserving of unmixed respect and admiration. 
 
90 GBIT. 
 
 Admitting its immense practical influence in public and 
 private life, conceding its value in the rough, direct 
 struggle of person with person and opinioDS with insti- 
 tutions, it is still by no means the top and crown of 
 heroic character; for it lacks the element of beauty 
 and the element of sympathy ; it is individual, misodal, 
 bigoted, relative to occasions; and its force has no 
 necessary connection with grandeur, generosity, and en- 
 largement of soul. Even in great men, like Cromwell, 
 there is something in its aspect which is harsh, ngly, 
 haggard, and ungenial ; even in them it is strong by 
 the stifling of many a generous thought and tolerant 
 feeling; and when it descends to animate sterile and 
 stunted natures, endowed with sufficient will to make 
 their meanness or malignity efficient, its unfiruitful force 
 ' is absolutely hateful. It has done good work for the 
 cause of truth and right ; but it has also done bad work 
 for the cause of falsehood and wrong : for evil has its 
 grit as well as virtue. As it lacks, suppresses, or sub- 
 ordinates imagination, it is shorn of an important por- 
 tion of a complete manhood ; for it not only loses the 
 perception of beauty, but the power of passing into 
 other minds. It never takes the point of view of the 
 persons it opposes ; its object is victory, not insight ; 
 and it thus fails in that modified mercy to men which 
 springs from an interior knowledge of their characterst 
 
GEIT. 91 
 
 Even when it Is the undaunted force through which 
 moral wrath expresses its hatred of injustice and wrong, 
 its want of imaginative perception makes it somewhat 
 caricature the sinners it inveighs against. It converts 
 imperfect or immoral men into perfect demons, which 
 humanity as well as reason refuses to accept; and it 
 is therefore not surprising that the prayer of its indig- 
 nant morality sometimes is, " Almighty God, condemn 
 them, for they know what they do! " But we cannot 
 forget that there sounds down the ages, from the sad- 
 dest and most triumphant of all martyrdoms, a diflFerent 
 and a diviner prayer, — " Father, forgive them, for they 
 know not what they do ! " 
 
 Indeed, however much we may he struck with the 
 startling immediateness of effect which follows the exer- 
 cise of practical force, we must not forget the immense 
 agency in human affairs of the ideal powers of the soul. 
 These work creatively from within to mould character, 
 not only inflaming great passions, but touching the 
 springs of pity, tenderness, gentleness, and love,— 
 above all, infusing that wide-reaching sympathy which 
 sends the individual out of the grit-guarded fortress of 
 his personality into the wide plain of the race. The 
 culmination of these ideal powers is in genius and 
 heroism, which draw their inspiration from spirit- 
 ual sources, and radiate it in thoughts beautifully 
 
92 GRIT. 
 
 large and deeds beautifully brave. They do not merely 
 exert power, they communicate it. If you are over- 
 come by a man of grit, he insolently makes you con- 
 scious of your own weakness. If you are overcome by 
 genius and heroism, you are made participants in their 
 strength ; for they overcome only to invigorate and 
 uplift. They sweep on their gathering disciples to the 
 object they have in view, by making "it an object of 
 'affection as well as duty. Their power to allure and 
 to attract is not lost even when their goal is the stake or 
 the cross. They never, in transient ignominy and pain, 
 lose sight and feeling of the beauty and bliss inseparably 
 associated with goodness and virtue ; and the happiest 
 death-beds have often been on the rack or in the flame 
 of the hero-martyr. And they are also, in their results, 
 great practical influences; for they break down the 
 walls which separate man from man, — by magnani- 
 mous thought or magnanimous act shame us out of our 
 bitter personal contentions, and flash the sentiment of 
 a common "nature into our individual hatreds and oppo- 
 sitions. As grit decomposes society into an aggregate 
 of strong and weak persons, genius and heroism unite 
 them in one humanity. Thus, not many years ago, we 
 were all battling about the higher law and the law to 
 return fugitive slaves. It was argument against argu- 
 ment, passion against passion, person against person, 
 
GRIT. 93 
 
 grit against grit. The notions advanced regarding vir- 
 tue and vice, justice and injustice, humanity and in- 
 humanity, were as difiFerent as if the controversy had 
 not been between men and men, but between men and 
 cattle. There were no signs among the combatants 
 that they had the common reason and the common 
 instincts of a common nature. Then came a woman of 
 genius, who refused to credit the horrible conceit that 
 the diversity was essential, who resolutely believed that 
 the human heart was a unit, and whose glance, piercing 
 the mist of opinions and interests, saw in the deep and 
 universal sources of humane and human action the 
 exact point where her blow would tell ; and in a novel * 
 unexampled in the annals of literature for popular 
 effect, shook the whole public reason and public con- 
 science of the country, by the most searching of all 
 appeals to its heart and imagination. 
 
 * " Uncle Tom's Cabin." 
 
THE VITAL AND THE MECHAmCAL. 
 
 It may be universally affirmed that everything hav- 
 ing shape either grows or is put together, is a living 
 organism or a contrived machine ; and the radical dis- 
 tinction between minds in all the modes of their opera- 
 tion, and between things in all the forms of, their man- 
 ifestation, is expressed in the antithesis of vitality and 
 mechanism. To suggest, in a manner necessarily im- 
 perfect and rambling, some of the important conse- 
 quences involved in this distinction, is the object of the 
 present essay. 
 
 And first, in regard to minds, it may be asked, to 
 what faculties and operations of the intelligence do you 
 apply the term " vital," as distinguished from other fac- 
 ulties and operations indicated as mechanical ? The 
 answer to this question may be spiritually true without 
 being metaphysically exact, and we shall hazard a brief 
 one. The soul of man in its essential nature is a vital 
 unit and person, capable of growth through an assimila- 
 tion of external objects ; and its faculties and acquire- 
 
THE VITAL AND THE MECHANICAL. 95 
 
 ments are all related to its primitive personality, as the 
 leaves, branches, and trunk of a tree to its root. In the 
 tree there are sometimes dead branches and withered 
 leaves, which constitute a part of the tree's external 
 form without participating in the tree's internal life. 
 The same thing occurs in the human mind. Faculties, 
 originally springing from the soul's vital personality, 
 become disconnected from it, lose all the sap and juice 
 of life, and dwindle from vital into mechanical powers. 
 The customary vocabulary of metaphysics evinces the 
 extent of this decay in its division of the mind into 
 parts, each part with a separate name and performing a 
 different office. It is plain that no organism, vegetable, 
 animal, or human, admits of such a classification of 
 parts, for the fundamental principle of organisms is unity 
 in variety, each part implying the whole, growing out of 
 a common centre and source, and dying the moment it is 
 separated. When, therefore, we say that the mind has 
 faculties which are not vitally related to each other, that 
 the whole mind is not present in every act, that there 
 are processes of thought in which a particular faculty 
 operates on its own account, we assert the existence of 
 death in the mind ; what is worse, the assertion is true ; 
 and what is still worse, this mental death often passes 
 for wisdom and common sense, and mental life is 
 stigmatized as fanaticism. 
 
ab THE VITAL AND THE MECHANICAL. 
 
 Now, this antithesis of life and death, vitality and 
 mechanism, the conception of the spirit of things and 
 the perception of the forms of things, is a distinction 
 available in every department of human thought and 
 action, and divides minds into two distinct classes, the 
 living and the lifeless. The test of the live mind is, 
 that it communicates life. The only sign here of pos- 
 session is communication ; and life it cannot possess 
 unless -life it communicates. Spiritual life implies a 
 combination of force and insight, an indissoluble union 
 of will and intelligence, in which will sees and intelli- 
 gence acts. A mental operation, in the true meaning of 
 the phrase, is a vital movement of the mind; and al- 
 though this movement is called a conception or an act 
 according as it refers to meditation or practice, it can- 
 not in either case be a conception without being an act, 
 or an act without being a conception. Conception, in 
 the last analysis, is as truly an act of the mind as voli- 
 tion ; both are expressions of one undivided unit and 
 person ; and the only limit of conception, the limit 
 which prevented Kepler from conceiving the law of 
 gravitation, and Ben Jonson from conceiving the char- 
 acter of Falstaff, is a limitation of will, of personality, 
 of individual power, of that innate force which is always 
 the condition and the companion of insight. All the 
 vital movements of the mind are acts, whether the pro- 
 
THE VITAL AND THE MECHANICAL. 97 
 
 duct be a book or a battle ; and that is a singular philos- 
 ophy of the will which calls Conde's charge at Kocroi 
 an act, and withholds the name from Shakespeare's con- 
 ception of Othello. 
 
 As this spiritual force is ever the characteristic oi^ 
 vital thought, such thought is both light and heat, kin- 
 dles as well as informs, and acts potently on other minds 
 by imparting life as well as knowledge. There are 
 many books which contain more information than Par- 
 adise Lost, but Paradise Lost stimulates, dilates, and 
 enriches our minds by communicating to them the very 
 substance of thought, while the other books may leave 
 us as poor and weak as they found us, with the addition 
 only of some names and forms of things which we did 
 not know before. The great difference, therefore, between 
 a vital and mechanical mind is this, that from one you 
 obtain the realities of things, and from the other the 
 mere appearances ; one influences, the other only gives 
 information ; one increases our power, the other does 
 little more than increase our words. The action of a 
 live mind upon other minds is chiefly an influence, and 
 the true significance of influence is that it pierces 
 through all the formal frippery of opinion and specula- 
 tion lying on the surface of consciousness, and touches 
 the tingling and throbbing nerve at its centre and soul ; 
 rousing the mind's dormant activity, breathing into it 
 7 
 
98 THE VITAL AND THE MECHANICAL. 
 
 new motives and fresh vigor, and making it strong as 
 well as wise. As regards the common afiairs of the 
 world, this influence is as the blast of an archangel's 
 trumpet, waking us from the death of sloth and custom. 
 In the fire of our newly kindled energies the mean and 
 petty interests in which our thoughts were ensnared 
 -wither and consume ; and, discerning vitalities where 
 before we only perceived semblances, a strangeness 
 comes over the trite, a new meaning gleams through 
 old appearances, and the forms of common objects are 
 transfigured, as viewed in the vivid vision of that rap- 
 turous life. Then, and only then, do we realize how 
 awful and how bright is the consciousness of a living 
 soul; then immortality becomes a faith, and death a 
 delusion ; then magnanimous resolves in the heart send 
 generous blood mantling into the cheek ; and virtue, 
 knowledge, genius, heroism, appear possibilities to the 
 lazy coward who, an hour before, whined about his 
 destiny in the hopeless imbecility of weakness. Al- 
 though this still and deep ecstasy, this feeling of power 
 and awe, is to most minds only a transient elevation, it 
 is still a revelation of the vital within them, which 
 should at least keep alive a sublime discontent with the 
 sluggish apathy of their common existence. " Show 
 me," says Burke, " a contented slave and I will show 
 you a degraded man," — a sentence right from the 
 
THE VITAL AND THE MECHANICAL. 99 
 
 heart of an illustrious man, whose own mind glowed 
 with life and energy to the verge of the tomb, and who 
 never knew the slavery of that sleep of mental death, 
 which withers and dries up the very fountains of life 
 in the soul. 
 
 The usual phrases by which criticism discriminates 
 vital from mechanical minds, are impassioned imagi- 
 nation and logical understanding. This vocabulary, 
 though open to objections, as not going to the root of 
 the matter, is still available for our purpose. It draws 
 a definite line between genius and talent. The man of 
 impassioned imagination is vital in every part. The 
 primitive spiritual energy at the centre of his personal- 
 ity permeates, as with warm life-blood, the whole of his 
 being, vivifying, connecting, fusing into unity, all his 
 faculties, so that his thought comes from him as an act, 
 and is endowed with a penetrating and animating as 
 well as enlightening power. The thoughts of Plato, 
 Dante, Bacon, Shakespeare, Newton, Milton, Burke, not 
 to mention others, are actors in the world, communi- 
 cating life, forming character, revealing truth, genetating 
 energy in recipient minds. These men possess under- 
 standing as far as that J;erm expresses an operation of 
 the mind, but understanding with them is in living 
 connection with imagination and emotion ; they never 
 use it as an exclusive power in themselves, they never 
 
100 THE VITAL AND THE MECHANICAL. 
 
 address it as an exclusive power in others. To under- 
 stand -a thing in its external qualities and internal spirit 
 requires the joint operation of all the faculties ; and no 
 fact is ever thoroughly understood by the understanding, 
 for it is the person that understands, not the faculty, 
 and the person understands only by the exercise of his 
 whole force and insight The man of understanding, so 
 called, simply perceives the forms of things and their 
 relations ;,the man of impassioned imagination, perceiv- 
 ing forms and -divining spirit, conceives the life of things 
 and their relations. The antithesis runs through the whole 
 realm of thought and fact. The man of understanding, 
 when he rises out of sensations, simply reaches abstrac- 
 tions ; and in the abstract there is no life. Ideas and 
 principles belong as much to the concrete, to substantial 
 existence, as the facts of sensation ; the law of gravita- 
 tion is a reality no less than the planet Jupiter ; but to 
 the man of mechanical understanding, ideas subside into" 
 mere opinions, and principles into generalities ; and as 
 by the very process of his thinking he disconnects, and 
 deadens by discomiection, the powers by which he thinks, 
 he cannot exercise, conceive, or communicate life, can- 
 not invent, discover, create, combine. This is evident 
 from the nature of the mind, and it is proved by history. 
 In art, religion, science, philosophy, politics, the minds 
 that organize are organic miuds, not mechanical under- 
 stancliiio's. 
 
THE VITAL AND THE MECHANICAL. 101 
 
 The principle we have indicated applies to all matters 
 of human concern, the simplest as well as the most 
 complicated. Let us first take a familiar instance from 
 ordinary life. In the common intercourse of society we 
 are all painfully conscious of the dominion of the me- 
 chanical, prescribing manner, proscribing nature. In 
 the Siberian atmosphere of most social assemblies the 
 soul congeals. The tendency to isolation of mind from 
 mind, and heart from heart, is most apparent in the 
 contrivances by which society brings its members bodily 
 together, — the formal politeness excluding the courtesy 
 it mimics. Hypocrisy, artifice, non-expression of the 
 reality in persons, — these are apt to be the charac- 
 teristics of that dreary solitude which passes under the^ 
 exquisitely ironical appellation of " good society." The 
 universal destiny of men and women who engage in 
 this game of fashion as the business of life is frivolity or 
 ennui. "They either fritter to pieces or are bored to death. 
 Nothing so completely wastes away the vitality of the 
 mind, and converts a person into a puppet, as this sub- 
 stitution of the verb " to appear," for the verb " to be." 
 Whatever is graceful in manner, carriage, and conversa- 
 tion is natural ; but the art of politeness, as commonly 
 practised, is employed to deaden rather than develop 
 nature, from its ambition to reduce the finer instincts to 
 mechanical forms. In the very term of" gentleman " there 
 
102 THE VITAL AND THE MECHANICAL. 
 
 is something exceedingly winning and beautiful, express- 
 ing as it does a fine union of intelligence and cotirtesy ; 
 but in genteel society the word too often means nothing 
 more than foppish, emptiness, and Sir Philip Sidney 
 gives way to Beau Nash. 
 
 Even here, however, the moment a person with a 
 genius for society appears, it is curious to see how 
 quickly the different elements are fused together, by 
 a few flashes of genuine social inspiration. Conven- 
 tion is at once abolished, each heart finds a tongue, 
 giggling turns into merriment, conversation occurs 
 and prattle ceasesj and a party is really organized. 
 A little sincerity of this sort in social intercourse would 
 infinitely beautify life. 
 
 But in respect to philosophy and science, it may 
 be asked. Does not the mechanical understanding hold 
 undisputed sway in these ? Has impassioned imagina- 
 tion anything to do with metaphysics, mathematics, 
 natural philosophy, with the observation and the rea- 
 soning of the philosopher who deals with facts and 
 laws ? The answer to this question is an ecnphatic yes. 
 That roused, energetic, and energizing state of mind 
 which we have designated as impassioned imagina- 
 tion is as much the characteristic of Newton as of 
 Homer. The facts, direction, and object are different, 
 but the faculty is, the same. A man of science with- 
 
The vital and the mechanical. 103 
 
 out a scientific imagination, vital and creative like 
 the poetical imagination, belongs to the second or 
 third class of scientific men, the Hayleys and Haynes 
 Baileys of science. Men of mechanical understand- 
 ings never discover laws and principles, but simply 
 repeat and apply the discoveries of their betters. 
 Nothing but the fresh, and .vigorous inspiration which 
 comes from the grasp of ideas could enable such men 
 as Kepler and Newton to master the prodigious mass 
 of drudgery through which ran the path which led 
 to their objects ; for genius alone is really victorious 
 over drudgery, and refuses to submit to the weariness 
 and deferred: hope which attend upon vast designs. 
 Indeed, in following the processes of scientific reason- 
 ing, whether inductive or deductive, we are always 
 conscious of an element of beauty in the impression 
 left on the mind, an element which "we never ex- 
 perience in following the steps of the merely formal 
 logician. Take the discussion, for instance, between 
 Butler and Clarke on the a priori argument for the 
 existence of God, and no reader who attends to the 
 progress of the reasoning can fail to feel the same 
 inner sense touched which is more palpably addressed 
 by the poet. All the great thinkers, indeed, in all the 
 branches of speculative and physical science, are 
 vital thinkers, and their thoughts are never abstract 
 
104 THE VITAL AND THE MECHANICAL. 
 
 generalities, but always concrete conceptions, en- 
 dowed with the power to work on other minds, and 
 to generate new thought. Bacon, the greatest name 
 in the philosophy of science, was so jealous of the 
 benumbing and deadening effect of all formal and 
 mechanical arrangement of scientific truth, . that he 
 repeatedly condemns all systematization of science, and 
 in his Natural Philosophy followed his own precepts. 
 In the Advancement of Learning he says : " As young 
 men, when they knit and shape perfectly do seldom 
 grow to a further stature, so knowledge, while it is 
 in aphorisms and observations, it is in growth ; but 
 when it is once comprehended in exact methods, it 
 may perchance be further polished and illustrated, 
 and accommodated for use and practice; but it in- 
 creases no more in bulk and substance." And again 
 he remarks : " The worst and most absurd sort of 
 triflers_are those who have pent the whole art in strict 
 methods and narrow systems, which men commonly 
 cry up for their regularity and style." In illustra- 
 tion of this we may adduce Whewell's celebrated 
 works. The History and Philosophy of the Inductive 
 Sciences. Here are great learning, logical arrange- 
 ment, a complete superficial comprehension of the 
 whole subject ; but life is wanting. Most of the great 
 discoveries and inventions with which such a book 
 
THE VITAL AND THE MECHANICAL 105 
 
 would naturally deal have been made since the pub- 
 lication of Bacon's Novum Organon ; but more mental 
 nutriment and inspiration, more to advance the cause 
 of science, can be found in one page of the Novum 
 Organon than in Whewell's whole five volumes. 
 Such is the difference between a vital and mechanical 
 " mind in the histoiy and philosophy of science ; and 
 the difference is more observable still when we 
 come to consider the deep and constant enthusiasm, 
 the persisting, penetrating genius of the practical 
 discoverer, as contrasted with the cold and imcrea- 
 tive memory-monger and reasoning machine, who 
 too often passes himself off as the real savant. The 
 only great man of science who has detailed his pro- 
 cesses in connection with his emotions is Kepler, and 
 everybody has heard of the " sacred fury " with which 
 he assaulted the fortresses in which Nature long con- 
 cealed her laws. His page flames with images and 
 exclamations. His operations to conquer the mystery 
 in the motions of the planet Mars are military. His 
 object is, as he says, " to triumph over Mars, and 
 to prepare for him, as one altogether vanquished, 
 tabular prisons and equated eccentric fetters." When 
 "the enemy left at home a despised captive, had 
 burst all the chains of the equations, and broken forth 
 of the prisons of the tables,'' and it was " buzzed 
 
106 THE VITAL AND THE MECHANICAL. 
 
 here and there that the ■ victory is vain," the war 
 rages " anew as violently as before," and he " sud- 
 denly brings into the field a new reserve of phys- 
 ical reasonings on the rout and dispersion of the 
 veterans." A poet can thus vitalize mathematics, 
 and " create a soul under the ribs " of physical death. 
 
 In politics and government, the most practical ob- 
 jects of hura^n interest, the men who organize insti- 
 tutions and wisely conduct affairs are men of vital 
 minds ; while the whole brood of ignorant and scampish 
 politicians, whose vulgar tact is but a caricature of 
 insight, arid who are as great proficients in ruining 
 nations as statesmen are in advancing them, are men of 
 mechanical minds. In politics, perhaps, more practical 
 injury has resulted from the dominion of formal dunces, 
 than in any other department of human affairs, — poli- 
 tics being the great field of action for all speculators in 
 public nonsense, for all men whose incompetency to 
 handle things would be quickly discovered in any other 
 profession. But a great statesman, no less than a great 
 poet, discerns the life of things in virtue of having him- 
 self a live mind, and, not content with observing men 
 and events, divines events in their principles, and thus 
 reads the future. When he proposes a scheme of legis- 
 lation, all its results exist in his mind as possibilities, 
 and if an effect is produced not calculated in the con- 
 
THE VITAL AND THE MECHANICAL. lOY 
 
 ception, he is so far to be accounted a blunderer, not a 
 statesman. Perhaps of all the statesmen that ever 
 lived, Edmund Burke had this power of reading events 
 in principles in the greatest perfection ; and certainly 
 there are few English poets who can be said to equal 
 him in impassioned imagination. This imagination was 
 not, as is commonly asserted, a companion and illus- 
 trator of his understanding, appending pretty images 
 to strong arguments, but it included understanding in 
 itself, and was both impetus and insight to his grandly 
 comprehensive and grandly energetic mind. Fox, Pitt, 
 and all the politicians of his time, were, in comparison 
 with him, men of mechanical intellects, constantly mis- 
 conceiving events ; mere experimenters, surprised at 
 results which they should have predicted. There is 
 something mortifying in the reflection that, in free 
 countries, the people have not yet arrived at the truth, 
 that great criminality as well as great impudence is 
 involved in the exercise of political power without polit- 
 ical capacity. A politician in high station, without in- 
 sight and foresight, and thus blind in both eyes, is an 
 impostor of the worst kind, and should be dealt with as 
 such. 
 
 In art and literature the doctrine of vital powers lies 
 at the base of all criticism which is not mere gibberish. 
 It- is now commonly understood that the creative pre- 
 
108 THE VITAL AND THE MECHANICAL, 
 
 cedes the critical; that critical laws were originally- 
 generalized from poetic works ; and that a poem is to 
 be judged by the living law or central idea by which it. 
 is organized, which law or idea is as the acorn to the 
 oak, and determines the form of the poem. The power 
 and reach of the poet's mind is measured by hia con- 
 ception of organic ideas, of ideas which, when once 
 grasped, are principles whence poems necessarily grow, 
 and are eventually realized in works. The universality 
 of Shakespeare is but a power of vital conception, not 
 limited to one or two ideas, but ranging victoriously 
 over the world of ideas. These celestial seeds, once 
 planted in a poetic nature, germinate and grow into 
 forms of individual being, whose loveliness and power 
 shame our actual men and actual society by a revela- 
 tion of the real and the permanent. Chaucer, Shake- 
 speare, Spenser, Milton, "Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shel- 
 ley, in virtue of their power to realize and localize the 
 ideal, give us " poor humans " a kind of spiritual world 
 on earth. 
 
 The schoolmasters of letters, those gentlemen who 
 frame laws of taste, and manufacture cultivated men, 
 commonly display a notable oversight instead of insight 
 of the distinction between vital and mechanical mind?, 
 between authors who impart power and authors who 
 impart information. They judge the value of a book 
 
THE VITAL AND THE MECHANICAL, 109 
 
 by its external form instead of its internal substance, 
 and altogether overlook the only important office of 
 reading and study, which plainly is the acceleration of 
 our faculties through an increase of mind. Mind is in- 
 creased by receiving the mental life of a' book, and 
 assimilating it with our own nature, not by hoarding up 
 information in the memory. Books thus read enrich and 
 enlarge the mind, stimulating, inflaming, concentratiilg 
 its activity ; and though without this reception of ex- 
 ternal life a man may be odd, he cannot be original. 
 The, greatest genius 'is he who consumes the most knowl- 
 edge, and converts it into mind. But a mechanical 
 intellect merely attaches the husks of things to his 
 memory, and eats nothing. It is for this reason that 
 heavy heads, laden with unfertilizing opinions and dead 
 facts which never pass down into the vitalities of their 
 being, are such terrific bores. Considering literature 
 not as food but as luggage, they cram their brains to 
 starve their intelligence, — and woe to the youth whom 
 they pretend to instruct and I'wform ! A tru& teacher 
 shduld penetrate to whatever is vital in his pupil, and 
 develop that by the light and heat of his own intelli- 
 gence, — like the inspiring master described by Barry 
 Cornwall's enthusiast : — 
 
 " He was like the sun, giving me light ; 
 Pouring into the caves of my young brain 
 Knowledge from his bright fountains." 
 
110 THE VITAL AND THE MECHANICAL. 
 
 A man who reads live books keeps himself alive, has 
 a constant sense of what life means and what mind is. 
 In reading Milton, a power is communicated to us 
 which, for the time, gives us the feeling of a capacity 
 for doing anything, from writing Hamlet to whipping 
 
 Tom Hyer. " My , sir," said the artist who had 
 
 been devouring Chapman's Homer, " when I went into 
 the street, after reading that book, men seemed to be 
 ten feet high*" This exaltation of intelligence is simply 
 a movement of our consciousness from the mechanical 
 to the vital state, and to those whose common existence 
 is in commonplaces such an exaltation occasions a shock 
 of surprise akin to fear. 
 
 In an art very closely connected with one of the 
 highest forms of literature, the art of acting, we have 
 another illustration of the fundamental antithesis, in 
 processes and in results, between vitality and mechan- 
 ism. Few, even among noted performers, have minds 
 to conceive the characters they play; and it conse- 
 quently is a rare thing to see a character really em- 
 bodied and ensouled on the stage. The usual method 
 is to give it piece by piece, and part by part, and the 
 impression left on the audience is not the idea of a 
 person, but an aggregation of personal peculiarities. 
 Mr. Macready, for instance, has voice, action, under- 
 standing, grace of manner, felicity in points ; but each 
 
THE VITAL AND THE MECHANICAL. Ill 
 
 is mechanical. Hia mind is hard and unfusible, never 
 melts and runs into the mould of the individuality he 
 personates, never imparts to the audience the peculiar 
 life and meaning embodied by his author. His energy 
 is not vital, but nervous ; his mode of arriving at char- 
 acter is rather logical than imaginative. He studies 
 the text of Hamlet, infers with great precision of argu- 
 ment the character from the text, and plays the infer- 
 ence. The elder Booth, on the contrary, who of all 
 actors had the most force and refinement of imagina- 
 tion, conceived Hamlet as a person, preserved the unity 
 of the person through all the variety in which it is 
 manifested, and seemed really to pass out of himself 
 into the character. Macready left the impression of 
 variety, but of a variety not drawn out of one fertile 
 and comprehensive individuality: Booth gave, the indi- 
 viduality with such power that we could easily conceive 
 of even a greater variety in its expression without dan- 
 ger to its unity. The impression which Macready's 
 Hamlet left on the mind was an impression of Mr. 
 Macready's brilliant and versatile acting : the impres- 
 sion which Booth stamped on the imagination was the 
 profound melancholy of Hamlet, underlying all his 
 brilliancy and versatility. A man witnessed Booth's 
 personation of Macbeth, Hamlet, Lear, and Othello 
 with great delight, and with great accession of knowl- 
 
112' THE VITAL AND THE MECHANICAL. 
 
 edge, after readiag the deep Shakespearian criticism of 
 Goethe, Schlegel, and Coleridge ; but every one feels it 
 would be unjust to bring Macready to the test of such 
 exacting principles. 
 
 In these desultory remarks on a variety of suggested 
 topics, we have attempted to illustrate the radical dis- 
 tinction between vitality and mechanism, impassioned 
 imagination and logical understanding, the communica- 
 tion of mental life and the imparting of lifeless informa- 
 tion, as that distinction applies to all things which 
 occupy human attention and stimulate human effort. 
 We have indicated, in a gossiping way, the dangerous 
 ease with which the mechanical supersedes the vital in 
 those departments of knowledge and affairs which ori^- 
 nated in the mind's creative and organizing energy, — in 
 society, in governments, in laws, literature, and institu- 
 tions, in ethical, mental, and physical science ; and have 
 tried to show that such a usurpation of torpor over activ- 
 ity dulls and deadens the soul, makes existence a weak- 
 ness and weariness, and mocks our eyes vith nothing but 
 the show and semblance of power. A man of mechan- 
 ical understanding can but exist his fourscore years and 
 ten, and a dreary time he has of it at that, bored and 
 boring all his few and tiresome years ; but a live mind 
 has the powter of wonderfully condensing time, and lives 
 a hundred common years in one. From the phenom- 
 
THE VITAL AND THE MECHANICAL 113 
 
 ena presented by men of genius we can affirm the" soul's 
 immortality, because they give some evidence of the, 
 joy, the ecstasy, involved in' the idea of life ; but to a 
 mechanicar being, endowed with a spark of vitality suf- 
 ficient only to sting him with rebuking possibilities, an 
 endless existence would be but an endless ennui. The 
 ground for hope is, that man, using as he may aU the 
 resource of stupid cunning, cannot kill the germ of life 
 which lies buried in him ; hatred and pride, the sins 
 of the heart, may eat into it, and his " pernicious soul ' 
 seem, like lago's, to " rot half a grain a day " ; mech- 
 anism, the sin of the head, may withdraw itself into 
 " good common sense,'' and contentedly despise the joy- 
 ous power of vital action ; ■ but still the immortal 
 principle constituting the Person survives, — patient, 
 watchful, persistent, unconquerable, refusing to capitu- 
 late, refusing to die. 
 
THE ECONOMY OF INTECTIVE. 
 
 It has become the settled policy of most civilized 
 countries that Some portion of its members should be 
 set up as objects of scorn and hatred to the rest, and 
 indignation is accordingly fast being organized into 
 an institution. Among our people especially, — a peo- 
 ple delighting in the use of strong words independent 
 of the occasions which should call them forth, — there 
 is a constantly increasing disposition to revel in the 
 rhetoric of execration, and to find an innocent enjoy- 
 ment in the demolishment of character. Every man in 
 the country has his vocabulary of hot and stinging 
 words; and however scantily furnished may be his 
 head in other respects, it can always boast of a good 
 stock of big, bouncing adjectives, to be tossed miscella- 
 neously among his fellow-citizens, to avenge the least 
 slight to his vanity, or to the thing he calls his opinion. 
 It is to be regretted, however, that widely difiFused as 
 is the taste for invective, it has made but imperfect 
 approaches to the dignity of an art; and the very 
 
THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 115 
 
 prodigality with which its terms are squandered has 
 tended to degrade it into a mere dance of words. 
 Expressions which have done great execution in old 
 times, when used on fitting occasions, have now lost all 
 their force through the frequency of their misapplica- 
 tion ; and the word-warrior, in the full blast of his 
 sounding cannonade, is mournfully made aware that 
 his seeming balls are as ineffective as blank cartridges. 
 And thus many an aspiring wordling of invective, whose 
 forcibly feeble expletives indicate an ambition to merit 
 the flattering cognomen of Curser-General of the 
 Human Race, is really unworthy to do the denuncia- 
 tion of a debating clulj. 
 
 Now it is very apparent that, with this genius for 
 finding fault, and disposition to inveigh, so diffused 
 among the people, it is a great evil not to have the 
 principles of invective better understood. This igno- 
 rance comes from no lack of terms, for the dictionaries 
 having been fully sacked for sarcasm, and the fish- 
 markets explored for slang, we have suffered of late 
 rather from a glut than a scarcity of vituperative words. 
 The essential difficulty to be met is therefore that 
 which relates to the mode of wielding weapons noto- 
 riously in our possession ; and this mode we propose to 
 indicate by guiding maxims and appropriate illustra- 
 tions. The spendthrifts of invective having failed to 
 
116 THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 
 
 achieve their objects, let us examine the subtler and 
 more searching process of the economists. 
 
 It was a remark of Lord Brougham, made many- 
 years ago, that what strikes the reader of the great 
 Greek orators most strongly is their abstinent use 
 of their prodigious faculties of expression ; and it has 
 been said of Fox that he hesitated in debate, not from 
 the scarcity but from the multitude of hiS' words. In- 
 deed every orator of invective has found that selection 
 and compression are the conditions of rhetorical eflfec- 
 tiveness ; and that the torrent and tempest of his rage 
 spent itself in vain, unless there flashed from it at last 
 one lightning word or phrase, charged with the elec- 
 tricity of imaginative passion, and smiting its object 
 with a power which both irradiated and shattered it. 
 This condensation evinces that intellect and character 
 are working with sensibility, and it is never the prize 
 of the mere word-piler, no matter how richly he may 
 be arrayed in the spoils of the dictionaries. It indicates 
 a mental vision of the exact point where the blow may 
 be dealt with overwhelming effect, and a resolute con- 
 centration of all the mind's forces in hurling the bolt 
 its fusing passion forges. To wander from the point, 
 to expend energy on a multiplicity of particulars, to 
 wanton in a stupid succession of abusive epithets, and 
 blow the trumpet of an imbecile fury, and especially to 
 
THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 117 
 
 launch general terms of opprobrium which have no 
 individual application to the peculiarities of the person 
 assailed, — all this is to exhibit the scattering rage of 
 the shrew instead of the concentrated- vehemence of 
 the orator. That indifference to the meaning of words, 
 which induces some newspaper editors to assail their 
 puniest opponents with invective copied from Cicero , 
 against Verres, or Burke against Hastings, betrays as 
 ludicrous a conception of the power of terms as that 
 displayed by Lord Campbell's legal friend, who, enraged 
 that his client should persist in refusing. to settle his 
 case by arbitration, burst out upon him in open court 
 
 with this stunning remarls : " You infernal rascal, 
 
 if you don't settle this matter as his honor proposes, and 
 as I and my learned brother wish, I shall be compelled 
 to use strong language to you." 
 
 The purpose of invective being to hold up a person, 
 or class, or institution, to contempt or execration, it is 
 obvious that, to distinguish it from mere abuse, it is 
 necessary that the character of the invective should 
 vary with the variety of its objects. Between con- 
 tempt and execration there are many degrees of scorn- 
 ful feeling, answering to the degrees of folly and crime 
 ill the conduct of individuals ; and the end of invective 
 being attained only when it is felicitously adapted to 
 the character of the thing or person assailed, a discrim- 
 
118 THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 
 
 ination of traits and an economy of epithets are of the 
 first importance. Many splendid specimens of verbal 
 joinery, welded together with all the energy of per- 
 sonal hatred, have been ineffective from the fact that the 
 orator, blinded by his passions, and eager simply to 
 demolish his opponent, has missed his mark by blun- 
 dering in bis analysis ; aiming, perhaps, to awaken in 
 the minds of the audience a feeling of detestation and 
 horror toward one who was the proper subject only of 
 dislike or contempt; and ending therefore in accom- 
 plishing nothing, by beginning with an attempt to ac- 
 complish too much. Such magnificent monstrosities of 
 railing have only the effect to make men's minds caUous 
 to vituperation. Fox made this mistake in his assaults 
 on Lord North's administration, during the American 
 war. He was continually threatening the " noble lord 
 in the blue ribbon " with impeachment. He would have 
 the noble lord's head. The noble lord should expiate 
 his crimes on the block. The noble lord, in the mean 
 time, placidly smiled at all this fury, and sometimes 
 sweetly slept in his seat while Fox was brandishing the 
 axe of metaphor over his head. The only instance in 
 which he used this favorite figure with any rhetorical 
 effect was after the surrender of Cornwallis at Tork- 
 town. In the debate on the king's speech announcing 
 that event, Fox, feeling that it would be the death- 
 
THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 119 
 
 blow of the ministers, and that all would soon be in his 
 power, played his invective with a vehemence at once 
 dazzling and pointed. The war, he said, would fill the 
 future historian of the country with shame and horror ; 
 and, he added, with a significant glance at the minis- 
 terial benches, " its effects would soon be felt on our scaf- 
 folds:' 
 
 In an examination and classification of the different 
 kinds of invective, we shall refer first to that light 
 and fleering contempt which performs the ofiice of 
 the most overwhelming scorn without seeming to go 
 beyond the bounds of good-nature. Vehement and 
 earnest speakers are very apt to fall victims to this 
 delicate instrument of wit, the stroke having the unex- 
 pectedness of lightning from a blue sky. Lord North, 
 who .possessed none of the grandeur' and impassioned 
 declamation of his Whig opponents, kept his ground in 
 debate chiefly by a dexterous use of this weapon. 
 Burke and Fox once furiously objected in the House 
 of Commons to his calling, in a public document, the 
 insurgent colonists by the name of rebels. "Very 
 well," replied North, " if it will please you better, I will 
 call them gentlemen of the opposition over the water ! " 
 Lord Thurlow, in a debate in the House of Lords, 
 utterly crushed a noble opponent by one fleering refer- 
 ence to his statements. The point was of some impor- 
 
120 THE ECONOMY OF INVECTITB, 
 
 tance, as the latter testified to what had been said at a 
 meeting of opposition noblemen in a celebrated political 
 tavern. Thurlow lightly touched the evidence in tiis 
 way : " As to what the noble and learned lord says he 
 heard at the alehouse " — it is hardly necessary to quote 
 further ; the victory was obtained without any elaborate 
 argument. Brougham was not celebrated for the deli- 
 cacy of his satire, or the ingenuity of his innuendoes ; 
 but there is one passage in his speeches in which he has 
 given the lie to an adversary with singular grace. Lord 
 Melbourne flatly denied one of Brougham's imputations 
 on his government, which it was for the interest of the 
 latter's argument to sustain, without directly accusing 
 Melbourne of falsehood. " My noble friend," he said, 
 " though but a novice in office, made the denial with a 
 glibness and readiness that might have done honor to 
 those inveterate habits of official assertion, only ac- 
 quired by those who are born at Whitehall and bred in 
 Downing Street." 
 
 This element of unexpectedness in thought or state- 
 ment is a charm of invective not confined to legislative 
 debates. Hazlitt's most stinging allusion to GiflFord is 
 conveyed in a demure sentence, which has almost the 
 form of a compliment. "The low-bred, self-taught 
 man, the pedant, and the dependent on the great, con- 
 tribute to form the Editor of the Quarterly Review. 
 
THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 121 
 
 He is admirably qualified for tliis situation by a happy 
 combination of defects, natural and acquired." Tlie 
 keenest criticism on Harriet Martineau's book on Ani- 
 mal Magnetism was the remark of the London wit, who 
 was asked what was the doctrine it inculcated. He re- 
 plied, " The doctrine seems to be this ; there is no God, 
 and Harriet is his prophet." Macaulay's positiveness 
 of assertion on the most obscure points of history and 
 policy is well known to all his multitudinous readers. 
 Lord Melbourfle, who combined great accomplishments 
 and unerring political shrewdness with the scepticism 
 of a Hume, and the languid airs of a Brummell, once 
 hit off this universal dogmatism of the great essayist 
 with inimitable tact. '' I wish," said he, " that I knew 
 anything as well as Tom Macaulay knows everything." 
 Next in order to this cool and jaunty mode of attain- 
 ing the purposes of invective without exhibiting its 
 form, we may particularize the epigrammatic mode of 
 denunciation. Vituperation in epigrams is commonly 
 the most pleasing expression of the art, because it 
 enables the benevolent reader to detach the wit from 
 the object of it, and at least gives Romeo's consolation 
 to the sufferer himself: — 
 
 " You cut my head off with a golden axe, 
 And smile upon the blow that slays me." 
 
 Macaulay has contributed luoie of this kind of invec- 
 
122 THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 
 
 live to English literature than any other author, with 
 the exception, perhaps, of Pope. In his History of the 
 Revolution of 1668, he makes the most essentially dis- 
 gusting characters, the rats, rogues, and liberticides of 
 politics, objects of ideal interest by the peculiar beauty 
 with which he racks and riddles them with epigrammatic 
 scorn. "We think, however, that the attentive reader of 
 the book will find that the object of invective is not per- 
 fectly attained. The men he assails, the Sunderlands 
 and Rochesters and Marlboroughs, are certainly hateful 
 characters ; but still we do not exactly hate them. 
 Who can hate what is made the occasion of so much 
 deliciously pungent wit ? Folly, bigotry, and crime 
 seem artistically to justify their existence, when thus 
 proved to have in them a nature so flexible to the 
 moulds of epigram and the racks of antithesis. 
 
 The same remark applies in a great degree to the 
 epigrammatic severity of his critical and historical 
 essays. The element of beauty is in almost all of his 
 invective, and we are too much delighted to be enraged. • 
 He complains, for instance, that no sacrifices were made 
 at the Revolution ; and so far the reader is also disposed 
 to complain ; but then he adds, " except the sacrifice 
 wliich Churchill made of honor, and Anne of natural 
 affection " ; and this almost reconciles us to the fact. 
 Not even in his History- does he attack Marlborough 
 
THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 123 
 
 with more zest than in his early essay on Hallam's 
 Constitutional History of England. In speaking of the 
 almost universal corruption and inconstancy of the pol- 
 iticians of the time of William the Third, he remarks : 
 " It may well be conceived that, at such a time, such a 
 nature as that of Marlborough would riot in the very 
 luxury of baseness. His former treason, thoroughly 
 furnished 1vith all that makes infamy exquisite, placed 
 him, indeed, under the disadvantage which attends 
 every artist from the time that he produces a master- 
 piece. Yet his second great stroke may excite wonder, 
 even in those who appreciate all the merit of the first. 
 Lest his admirers should be able to say that, at the 
 time of the Revolution, he betrayed his king from any 
 other than selfish motives, he now proceeded to betray 
 his country." This is really too good to be true. 
 
 The drawback on the excellence of most epigrammatic 
 invective is the obviousness of its exaggeration. It 
 depends for its effect on flashing a truth into the mind 
 through a process of splendid caricature ; of surprising 
 us, as it were, into contempt or hatred. South, in his 
 sermons, has more of the energy of real passion in his 
 vituperative epigrams than either Pope or Macaulay, 
 and accordingly the heartiness of his hatreds gives his 
 wit more real severity than the sparkling remorselessness 
 of their elaborate indignation. Tlie arrow not only hits 
 
124 THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 
 
 the victim, but it is buried in his flesh. We perceive 
 the truth which South exaggerates at the very moment 
 its wit tingles on our risibilities ; and hardly have the 
 opportunity, as in Macaulay, of enjoying the epigram 
 apart from the individual or class it is intended to pierce. 
 Occasionally Macaulay hits upon an author whose book 
 defies his powers of scornful depreciation, and is really 
 worse than epigram can represent it. He who has 
 attempted to struggle through the Life of Warren Hast- 
 ings, by the Rev. Mr. Gleig, is painfully sensible of the 
 shortcomings even of the statements of scorn. " This 
 book," says Macaulay, " seems to have been manufac- 
 tured in pursuance of a contract, by which the represen- 
 tatives of Warren Hastings, on the one part, agreed to fur- 
 nish papers, and Mr. Gleig, on the other part, agreed to 
 furnish praise. It is but just to say that the covenants 
 have been faithfully kept on both sides ; and the result 
 is before us in the form of three big bad volumes, full 
 of undigested correspondence and undiscerning panegyr- 
 ic." And we may here add that those lovers of Shake- 
 speare who have been bored by his officious commenta- 
 tors of the last generation, hardly perceive any exag- 
 geration in the remark of a late critic, that they were 
 men " of fifth-rate scholarship and first-rate incapacity." 
 We may mention, in connection with the method of in- 
 vective by epigram, a peculiar variety of it which springs 
 
THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 125 
 
 directly from personal character, and is racy with the 
 insolence of a forcible will. It is commonly disingenuous, 
 for it aims to defeat its antagonist by belittling still 
 more those who are naturally little. Thus Sydney 
 Smith justifies his assault on a man of moderate abili- 
 ties, whose purposes he considered as mischievous as 
 they most assuredly were well-mearring, in this exqui- 
 site sttain of arrogance : " I do not attack him from a 
 love of glory, but from a love of utility ; as a burgomas- 
 ter hunts a rat in a Dutch dike, for fear it would flood a 
 province.'' Burke is a great master of this lofty con- 
 temptuousness. The English sympathizers with the first 
 French Revolution made so many confident speeches, 
 and passed so many brave resolutions, that they were 
 considered to be greater in influence and numbers than 
 they really were. In the scornful sentences of Burke 
 they were made to dwindle into ludicrous insignificance. 
 " Because, " he said, " half a dozen grasshoppers under 
 a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, 
 whilst thousands of great cattle reposing under the Brit- 
 ish oak chew the cud, and are silent, pray do not 
 imagine that those who make the noise are the only 
 inhabitants of the field ; that, of course, they are many 
 in number; or that, after all, they are other than the 
 little, shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and 
 troublesome, insects of the hour." In his celebrated 
 
126 THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 
 
 attack on the Duke of Bedford, Burke's object" is to 
 degrade the whole House of Russell, by emphasizing 
 the corruption, servihty, and rapacity of its founder. 
 Knowing that all England was aware of the patriots 
 who had been Connected with it, he acutely makes that 
 fact a deviation from the natural character of the family 
 by remarking that'" it is little to be doubted that several 
 of his forefathers, in that long series, have degenerated 
 into honor and virtue." The Duke was, in Burke's 
 phrase, " tainted " with French principles. Burke, in 
 one sarcastic passage, holds up the simplicity of his 
 folly to the pitying contempt of the reader. These. 
 French philosophers, he says, " consider men in their 
 experiments no more than they do mice in an air-pump, 
 or in a recipient of mephitic gas. Whatever his Grace 
 may think of himself, they look upon him, and every- 
 thing that belongs to him, with no more regard than 
 they do upon the whiskers of that little long-tailed 
 animal, that has been long the game of the grave, 
 demure, insidious, spring-nailed, velvet-pawed, green- 
 eyed philosophei-, whether going upon two legs or four." 
 Fine as all this is, every reader of the Letter to a 
 Noble Lord, from which the extract is made, should 
 understand that the Duke of Bedford, thus scornfully 
 attacked, was really a man of much intelligence, of 
 great liberality of sentiment, and of spotless honor. 
 
THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 127 
 
 Grattan, of all the great Irish orators, was master of 
 the most condensed, fiery, and annihilating invective. 
 But he understood also the effect of the contemptuous 
 method. The best illustration of his use of it is his 
 reply to an obscure but aspiring opponent, who, in the 
 Irish House of Commons, assailed him in a stupidly scur- 
 rilous speech, with the hope of drawing upon himself 
 the invective which had so often smitten Flood and 
 Fitzgibbon. But Grattan had too lofty a sense of his 
 own importance to waste his wrath on so vulgar and 
 inconsiderable an opponent. He declined to give his 
 defamer the celebrity of having provoked the rage of 
 Grattan. Accordingly, rising in his seat, he simply 
 said, " I shall make no other remark on the personalities 
 of the honorable member who has just spoken, than 
 merely to say that, as he rose without a friend, so' he 
 has certainly sat down without having made an enemy." 
 
 Macaulay has as great a genius for contempt as for 
 execration, and loves to wanton in the assertion of per- 
 sonal superiority. His reference to Lord Ellenbor- 
 ough, the tory Governor-General of India, whose florid 
 and ranting proclamations moved his scorn, is perhaps 
 his best stroke in this way of traducing. The reports 
 of Barere to the French Assembly were popularly 
 styled Carmagnoles. Macaulay describes them as 
 " composed of puns, interjections, Ossianic rants, rhet- 
 
128 THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 
 
 oric worthy only of a school-boy, scurrility worthy only 
 of a fish-wife," — and thinks, after all this, that his 
 description has fallen short of the truth. He then 
 coolly and candidly adds : " A few months ago we 
 should have had some difficulty in conveying to an 
 English reader an exact notion of the state papers to 
 which this appellation (Carmagnoles) was given. For- 
 tunately, a noble and distinguished person, whom her 
 Majesty's ministers have thought qualified to fill the 
 most important post in the empire, has made our task 
 easy. Whoever has read Lord Ellenborough's procla- 
 mations is able to form a complete idea of a Cannag- 
 nole." A little more obviously exaggerated in its 
 contempt, is the reference Macaulay ouce made to Sir 
 Harcourt Lees, a bigoted tory, who was continually 
 warning England of political dangers to be apprehended 
 from the machinations of the English Roman Catholics. 
 Speaking of the perjuries of Titus Gates, in the legal 
 murders which attended the pretended Popish plot 
 extemporized in Charles the Second's reign, Macaulay 
 says that a belief in that plot " has long passed from 
 statesmen to aldermen, from aldermen to clergymen, 
 from clergymen to old women, and from old women to 
 Sir Harcourt Lees." Perhaps in the same class with 
 these examples belongs the ingenious paradox with 
 which Macaulay brings his hatred of Barere to the 
 
THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 129 
 
 climax of depreciation. In alluding to the sensuality 
 of that Frendh terrorist, he takes occasion to express 
 a certain satisfaction in surveying him in the sties of 
 vice, after having witnessed his activity in the shambles 
 of murder. "An immoderate appetite for sensual 
 gratifications is undoubtedly a blemish on the fame of 
 Henry the Fourth, of Lord Somers, and of Mr. Fox. 
 But the vices of honest men are the virtues of Barere." 
 Sometimes mean and small natures are placed in cir- 
 cumstances which enable them to perform great crimes ; 
 and in that case it is difficult to inveigh against them in 
 such a manner as not to give the culprit the credit of 
 possessing a certain diabolical , greatness of character 
 corresponding to the enormity of his offences, and of 
 thus lifting a mere vulgar villain into a Satanic respect- 
 ability. The power, therefore, of assailing a criminal 
 of this order, so that our horror of his deeds shall be 
 combined with a contempt for himself, is as necessary 
 as it is rare. Macaulay.has succeeded in achieving 
 this with a certain degree of excellence, in his lono- 
 biographical diatribe against Barere. Sheridan owed 
 to his partial success in this difficult branch of his art a 
 great deal of the fame which followed his renowned 
 speech on the question of Hastings's impeachment. But 
 the most masterly exhibition of this power we have ever 
 met with in literature is the portrait of Paul Benfield in 
 9 
 
130 THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 
 
 Burke's speech on the Nabob of Arcot's debts, the great- 
 est oration in the whole range of English eloquence. 
 Neither in Macaulay's article nor in Sheridan's speech 
 is the combination of contempt with horror strictly 
 orgaoic. The composition is continually exhibiting 
 marks of the artifice, the mechanical tricks, of the 
 rhetorician. In Burke it is vital in every part, every 
 sentence feeling its way in flame to the inward seat of 
 two opposite emotions, and forcing the reader at last 
 into an explosion of mingled hisses and curses. The 
 same effect is produced, but in" a less degree of intensity, 
 in Burke's description of Sir Elijah Impey, in his speech- 
 es on the impeachment of Hastings. He tries the 
 method also on Hastings himself, but he does "not con- 
 vince the reader that Hastings is the proper object of 
 contempt in the same sense in which he is the proper 
 object of horror. 
 
 In all we have previously said on the subject of 
 invective, we have implied- that the blow, whether 
 prompted by contempt, or passion, or malice, must be 
 dealt with coolness and deliberation to produce its 
 intended effect. The emotional element in it should 
 not be so predominant as to confuse instead of sharp- 
 ening and brightening the intellectual faculties. In- 
 deed, all passion which does not pass through the 
 intellect before it passes out -at its object, — which does 
 
THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIYE. 131 
 
 not give force and impetus to a rational purpose, — 
 soon shatters itself into foam. The practical business 
 of invective is therefore best done, except on rare 
 occasions, by that method which implies the greatest 
 self-possession in the writer or orator,, namely, the 
 ironical ; for irony eats and burns its way through the 
 toughest hide to the inmost seat of sensibility, and 
 hardly admits of a successful reply. In the debates 
 of political assemblies it is rare to find -good quotable 
 specimens of its felicitous use, specimens in which every 
 ^ separate sentence is vigorous, while the continuity of 
 the mockery is sustained through the whole perform- 
 ance. One of the best instances of it which we can 
 at present bring to mind is a passage in Brougham's 
 speech on Catholic Emancipation, made in 1825 in the 
 House of Commons. Brougham had personal as well 
 as political grounds for hating Lord Chancellor Eldon ; 
 and Eldon was generally believed to be the chief up- 
 holder in the English cabinet of the old system of 
 excluding Catholics from political privileges.. The 
 point selected by Brougham for attack was the chan- 
 cellor's attachment to the emoluments of his office, it 
 being thought that he clung with more force to the 
 woolsack than to the party principles which originally 
 placed Him in it. After holding the lOfHce for over 
 twenty yearSj he seems to have imagined that he pos- 
 
132 THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 
 
 sessed a life interest in it. Brougham, in view-of this, 
 advised that portion of the cabinet in favor of Catholic 
 emancipation to act according to their convictions, re- 
 gardless of the Lord Chancellor's opposition. " What," 
 he exclaimed, " is the ground of their alarm ? Are 
 they apprehensive that the result would be the resigna- 
 tion of any of their colleagues? Do they think that 
 any one of their coadjators, some man of splendid 
 talents, of profound learning, of unwearied industry, 
 would give up his place ? Do they think he would 
 resign his office ? that he would quit the Great Seal ? 
 Prince Hohenloe is nothing to the man who could 
 effect such a miracle ! .... A more superfluous fear 
 than that of such an event never crossed the wildest 
 visionary in his dreams. Indeed, sir, I cannot refrain 
 from saying that I think the right honorable gentlemen 
 opposite greatly' underrate the steadiness of mind of 
 the noble and learned individual in question. I think 
 they underrate the firmness and courage with which he 
 bears, and will continue to bear, the burdens of his 
 high and important station. In these qualities the 
 noble and learned lord has never been equalled, has 
 never been paralleled. Nothing can equal the forbear- 
 ance which he has manifested. Nothing can equal the 
 constancy with which he has borne the thwarts that 
 he has lately received on the question of trade. His 
 
THE ECONOMY OP INTECTIVE. 133 
 
 patience under such painful circumstances can be 
 rivalled only by ,the fortitude with which he bears the 
 prolonged distress of the suitors in his own court. But 
 to apprehend that any defeat would induce him to quit 
 office, is one of the vainest fears, one of the most fan- 
 tastical apprehensions, that was ever entertained by 
 man. Let him be tried. In his generous mind, ex- 
 panded as it has -been by his long official career, 
 there is no propensity so strong as a love for the ser- 
 vice of his country. He is no doubt convinced that, 
 the higher the office, the more unjustifiable it is to 
 abandon it. The more splendid the emoluments of a 
 situation, the more extensive its patronage, the more 
 he is persuaded that it is not allowed to a wise and 
 good man to tear himself away from it." Here the 
 irony, unlike that which we admire in the master- 
 pieces of Swift, is all hot with passion ; yet, hot as 
 it is, it never becomes merely passionate, never loses 
 its hold upon its object, but with a cautious fierceness 
 penetrates through all of Eldon's defences, and insinu- 
 ates its sharp sting into his weakest point. We know 
 from his diary that the old politician felt this attack 
 with more than ordinary sensibility. In the midst of 
 his anger, however, he could not help smiling at the 
 exquisite appositeness of some of the hits. 
 
 At times this irony slides into a thinly disguised per- 
 
134 THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 
 
 sonal allusion, and is the cover of the most insulting 
 scorn. The encounter of Curran with Judge Robinson 
 is one of the most celebrated, examples on record. 
 Robinson owed his, elevation to his sycophancy to power, 
 and especially to his composition of certain miserably 
 written political pamphlets, the only recommendation of 
 which was their venomous personality. Curran, when 
 a young man, and struggling with poverty, had a case 
 to argue in this judge's court, and, in controverting a 
 position taken by the opposing counsel, remarked that 
 he had " studied all his law books, and could not find a 
 single case where the pripciple contended for was es- 
 tablished." " I suspect, sir," interrupted the judge, — 
 " I suspect that your law library is rather contracted." 
 Curran, feeling that this was intended as a sneer at his 
 poverty, looked the judge steadily in the face, and said : 
 " It is true, my lord, that I am poor, and the circum- 
 stance has rather curtailed my library ; my books are 
 not numerous, but they are select, and I hope have 
 been perused with proper dispositions. I have prepared 
 myself for this high profession rather by the study of 
 a few good books than by the composition of a great 
 many had ones. I am not ashamed of my poverty, but 
 I should be of my wealth, could I stoop to acquire it 
 by servility and corruption. If I rise not to rank, I 
 shall at least be honest ; and should I ever cease to be 
 
THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 135 
 
 SO, many an example shows me ' that an ill-acquired 
 elevation, by making me the more conspicuous, would 
 only make me the more universally and the more noto- 
 riously contemptible." The attack was felt both by the 
 audience and the judge, but it stunned the judicial 
 bully at which it was directed so completely that he 
 offered no opposition. To have committed Curran for 
 contempt of court would have been to acknowledge the 
 application of the sarcasm ; and all that the judge could 
 do was to allow the advocate to proceed unrebuked, and 
 never afterward to provoke his wrath. 
 
 The sneer and the ready sarcasm are exceedingly 
 usefui instruments of the debater, especially after he 
 has been made the object of declamatory accusation, 
 and cannot, at the moment, retort upon his opponent in 
 a similar style of invective. Thus, when the managers 
 of the impeachment of Hastings were justly repre- 
 hended for the harshness of their language, Burke 
 sneeringly retorted : " The commons of Great Britain, 
 my lords, are a rustic people; a tone of rusticity is 
 therefore the proper accent of their managers. We 
 are not acquainted with the urbanity and politeness of 
 extortion, and the sentimental delicacies of bribery and 
 corruption." Macaulay, several years ago, devoted a 
 vacation to explore, in Hansard, the varying course of 
 Sir Kobert Peel; and then came into the House of 
 
136 THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. , 
 
 Commons and delivered a vehement speech, in which 
 he probed, with remorseless accuracy, all the incon- 
 sistencies of' " the right honorable gentleman at the 
 head of the government." Sir Robert made no elabo- 
 rate defence, but carried the House with him by the 
 simple retort, that the " member for Edinburgh had dis- 
 charged upon him the hoarded venom of a three months 
 'preparation^ Macaulay, perhaps, had his revenge 
 when Peel brought in the Maynooth College bill, by 
 which the patronage of the government was extended 
 to a Catholic university. Macaulay took the -ground 
 that the measure was a whig one ; that the former whig 
 government saw its necessity, and lost their places by 
 persisting in it;, and that Feel and his party had come 
 into power solely by exciting a popular prejudice 
 against a policy which they were now compelled to 
 adopt. " But," he added, " shall we vote against our 
 own principles because the bill is brought in by our 
 opponents. No; for that would be to sacrifice the 
 remaining public character" of the country." Brough- 
 am, in his great speech on the abuses of Irish law, 
 sustained hjs charges by evidence obtained from an 
 intercepted letter of some Irish dignitary, which had 
 long been before the public. Peel, in his reply, as- 
 sailed Brougham severely for relying on evidence thus 
 meanly procured, and declaimed with much heat on the' 
 
THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 137 
 
 atrocity of stealing and printing private letters. Never 
 was moral indignation more unfortunate in its results ;' 
 and it would almost seem as if Brougham had tjuoted 
 the letter for the purpose of tempting his adversary into 
 the very line of remark he pursued. It was notorious 
 that the ministry, and Peel among them, had sustained 
 the charge against Queen Caroline by evidence pro- 
 cured in the very manner thus vehemently denounced ; 
 arid Broughamjs retort was overwhelming. He cor- 
 dially concurred in every sentiment that Peel had ex- 
 pressed ; he joined in Peel's condemnation of the mode 
 in which the letter was obtained ;^he said that he would 
 have disdained to quote it had it not been before the 
 public for a year, and universally received as part of 
 the news of the day ; and then, rapidly glancing from 
 the subject of Irish law to the trial of Queen Caroline, 
 he poured into the occupants of the treasury bench the 
 most galling discharge of the hot shot of- sarcasm and 
 invective that they had winced under for years. They 
 were self-convicted on their own principles ; they were 
 at the mercy of the most merciless of debaters; and he 
 taught them a lesson on the danger of announcing gen-, 
 eral propositions relating to honor and ethics, of which 
 they must have preserved an acute recoUection to the 
 day of their deaths. 
 
 But Burke, in this as in other departments of invec* 
 
138 THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 
 
 tive, bears off the palm. The exquisitely stinging sar- 
 casms with which he alluded to the tears shed by Lord 
 Thurlow on the king's sickness are familiar to all 
 readers. Perhaps, however, his greatest achievement 
 in retort, combining scorn, passion, and imagination with 
 the keenest argument, is his answer to those advocates 
 of Hastings who adduced the fact that the people of 
 Benares had erected a temple to the memory of Hast- 
 ings, as proof that be had not plundered and oppressed 
 them. The statement created a sensation in the House 
 of Commons in favor of the accused governor-general, 
 and an effective reply appeared impossible. Burke, 
 with inimitable coolness of manner, rose and said that 
 there was nothing in the incident which should aston- 
 ish anybody. " He knew something of the mythol- 
 ogy of the Brahmins. He knew as they worshipped 
 s6me gods from love, so they worshipped others from 
 fear. He knew that they erected shrines not only to 
 the benignant deities of light and plenty, but also to 
 the fiends who preside over small-pox and murder. 
 Nor did he at all dispute the right of Mr. Hastings 
 to^ be admitted into such a Pantheon." 
 
 The most common mode of invective among raw 
 advocates and debaters is the direct personal assault ; 
 but its failures are almost as common as its practice. 
 It demands something more than acuteness in detecting 
 
THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 139 
 
 faults and command of vituperative words in exposing 
 them. It requires depth of thought and depth of senti- 
 ment -as well as depth of passion ; in short, it demands 
 a certain greatness of character. "It makes," says 
 Emerson, "a great diflference in the force of a sen- 
 tence whether a man be behind it or no." This is 
 especially true of the sentences of an orator who con- 
 centrates his energies for a personal attack. Chat- 
 ham's eloquence is charged throughout with this force 
 of personal manhood. In his youth he was aptly 
 described as " that terrible cornet of horse, whose 
 scowl gave Sir Robert Walpole a pain in the back.'' 
 The mere presence of such a man in a legislative as- 
 sembly is more di-eaded by meanness and corruption 
 than the invective of less powerful natures. Lord 
 Camden could not compare in understanding or ac- 
 quirements with the all-accomplished Mansfield ; yet 
 in the House of Lords he so bore him down by the 
 energy of his will and the force of his sentiments, that 
 Mansfield repeatedly cowed before his vehemence, and, 
 in the question of the law of libel, absolutely showed 
 the white feather. The younger Pitt, who inherited 
 the courage and arrogance if he did not inherit the 
 genius of his great father, possessed this force in large 
 measure, and frequently silenced able debaters by a 
 few words and looks of bitter disdain. Erskine, the 
 
140 THE ECONOMY OP INVECTIVE. 
 
 most accpmpHshed advocate and orator of the English 
 bar, and whose resolute courage had been proved in 
 many an encounter in Westminster Hall, always quailed 
 before Pitt in the House of Commons. " The fact is, 
 Erskine," said Sheridan to him, "you are afraid of 
 Pitt, and that is the flabby part of your character." 
 
 The eloquence of this kind of invective must there- 
 fore exist " in the man, in the subject, and in the occa- 
 sion '' ; and it never rises above the level of the orator's 
 . personal character. Most of the stuff we read as speci- 
 mens of it is not invective at all, but a mere mush of 
 flaring words. The least characteristic form of it is 
 found in vigorous, written composition, where the man 
 assailed is not palpably before the assailant. We will 
 quote a specimen of it from Macaulay's Barere, an 
 article which has already furnished us with a number 
 of quotations. In alluding to the constancy with which 
 Barere hated England as the only consistent thing in 
 his charactel", the cunning essayist at first joyously con- 
 gratulates himself on the fact. " It is possible," he says, 
 " that our inclinations may bias our judgment, but we 
 think we do not flatter ourselves when we say that 
 Barere's aversion to our country was a sentiment as 
 deep and constant as his mind was capable of enter- 
 taining." But this is only a stealthy, ironical introduc- 
 tion to the cumulative wrath which explodes at the 
 
THE ECONOMY OF INTECTITE. 141 
 
 conclusion of the long paragraph. " It was hut little 
 that he could do to -promote the honor of our country, 
 and that little he did strenuously and constantly. 
 Renegade, murderer, traitor, slave, coward, liar, slan- 
 derer, hack-writer, police spy, — the one small service 
 he could do to England was to hate her ; and such as 
 he may all who hate her be ! " 
 
 This is perfect of its kind ; still the wrath does not 
 really burn up from the heart. We say in reading it, 
 " By our Lady, these be brave words " ; but the essen- 
 tial heat of moral passion is wanting. The same ver- 
 dict must be pronounced on many verbal severities in 
 the poetry of Byron and Moore. The invective, for 
 example, launched against the traitor in The Fire Wor- 
 shippers is effective only upon the ear. After denoun- 
 cing all miseries upon him in this life, the rhyme pro- 
 ceeds, — 
 
 " And when from earth his spirit flies, 
 
 Just Prophet ! let the damned one dwell 
 Full in the sight of Paradise, 
 Beholding heaven and, feeling hell ! " 
 
 This is so raw, and the artiiice so evident, that it is cal- 
 culated to cast ominous conjecture on the poet's depth 
 of feeling. Bui'ke sometimes offends in this way, being 
 simply witty where the intention is to be severe. Thus 
 in speaking of the infidel revolutionists of France he 
 
142 THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 
 
 remarks : " They do not believe a great deal in the 
 miracles of piety ; but it cannot be questioned that they 
 have an undoubted faith in the prodigies of sacrilege." 
 This is very diflFerent from those passages on their enor- 
 mities in which his soul springs at them from the impe- 
 tus of passion ; as when he says, " They have tigers 
 to fall upon animated strength. They have hyenas to 
 prey upon carcasses." 
 
 In the personal invective of the Irish orators there is 
 generally real sensibility enough, but it is apt to rush 
 into exaggerated abuse. To be sure, it is understood 
 all the while that if offence is taken, the orator is willing 
 to give satisfaction to injured honor on another field, 
 and is as ready with his hair-triggers as with his tongue. 
 This somewhat modifies our sense of the injustice im- 
 plied in the unrestrained vituperation of Grattan and 
 Curran. The victims of it know that the accuracy of 
 the accusations will be sustained by pistols sis well as 
 arguments, if they choose to challenge. One of the 
 grandest specimens of this order of eloquence is Cur- 
 ran's terrific assault on Lord Clare, a tirade glowing 
 with all the energy of hatred, and in which enmity 
 seems to sharpen analysis. Every bad point in the 
 chancellor's character is acutely perceived and relent- 
 Jessly exposed. " In this very chamber," said Curran, 
 " did the chancellor and judges sit, with all the gravity 
 
THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 143 
 
 and affected attention to arguments in favor of that lib- 
 erty which they had conspired to destroy. But to what 
 end, my lords, offer arguments to such men ? A little 
 and a peevish mind may be exasperated, but how shall 
 it be corrected, — by refutation ? How fruitless would it 
 have been to represent to that wretched chancellor that 
 he was betraying those rights he was sworn to main- 
 tain ; that he was involving a government in disgrace, 
 and a kingdom in panic and consternation ; that he was 
 violating every sacred duty and every solemn engage- 
 ment that hinds . him to himself, his country, and his 
 God ? Alas ! my lords, by what argument could any 
 man hope to reclaim or to dissuade a mean, illiberal, and 
 unprincipled minion of authority, induced by his profli- 
 gacy to undertake and bound by his avarice and vanity 
 to persevere ? He probably would have replied to the 
 most unanswerable arguments by some curt, contumelious 
 apothegm, delivered with the fretful smile of irritated 
 self-sufficiency and disconcerted arrogance ; or even if 
 he could be dragged by his fears to a consideration of 
 the question, by what miracle could the pygmy capacity 
 of a stunted pedant be enlarged to a reception of the 
 subject ?" The fine rhetorical appropriateness in ihe 
 use of the word " miracle," in the last sentence, cannot 
 fail to be appreciated by every reader who catches the 
 tone of the whole contemptuously defiant invective. 
 
144 THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 
 
 This style of denunciation, however, is not the sever- 
 est. Its unreined impetuosity does not actually have 
 the effect of one occasional smiting sentence from Fox, 
 or Burke, or Webster. No orator practises a more 
 rigid economy in his invective than Webster ; for invec- 
 tive is not a natural exercise of a mind whose leading 
 characteristics are sober depth of feeling and tolerant 
 comprehensiveness of thought ; but when he does in- 
 veigh, he inveighs with all the might of his character, — 
 and then " beware the anger of a patient man." There 
 is at such times a cruel and blinding glitter in his eye, 
 and a metallic tone in his voice, ominous of the descend- 
 ing bolts that blast whatever they strike. No quotations 
 from his speeches can convey to one who has not heard 
 him in the Senate an adequate idea of the electric force 
 of his words on such occasions. Every expression is 
 instinct with the life and character of the man, and the 
 fusing and condensing vitality of his mind. Among 
 many splendid examples, let us select one not generally 
 known, — that passage in which he assails the congres- 
 sional manufacturer of the notable phrase, " the natural 
 hatred of the poor to the rich." " Sir," exclaimed the 
 orator, " I pronounce the author of such sentiments to 
 be guilty of attempting a detestable fraud on the com- 
 munity ; a double fraud ; a fraud which is to cheat 
 men out of their property, and out of the earnings of 
 
THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 145 
 
 their labor, by first cheating them out of their under- 
 standings Whoever has the wickedness to con- 
 ceive, and the hardihood to avow, a purpose to break 
 down what has been found, in forty years' experience, 
 essential to the protection of all' interests, by arraying 
 one class against another, and by acting on such a prin- 
 ciple as that the poor always hate the rich, shows him- 
 self the reckless enemy of all. An enemy to his whole 
 country, to all classes, and to every man in it, he de- 
 serves to be marked especially as the poor man's curse ! " 
 The unfortunate object of this swift, fierce, explosive 
 series of sentences might have appropriately referred 
 to the Calista of the old dramatist, for terras to express 
 the workings of his shame and anger : — 
 
 " I have endured you with an ear of fire ; 
 Your tongue has struck hot irons on my face! " 
 
 Lord Thurlow's answer to the taunt of the Duke of 
 Grafton on his want of noble birth is a magnificent spe- 
 cimen of personal invective combined with lofty self- 
 assertion. Its effect in the House of Lords was over- 
 whelming, and may have, been all the more appreciated 
 by the Talbots, Bedfords, Howards, and Devonshires, 
 from the fact that Grafton's ancestor owed his existence 
 to the fact that Charles the Second had a mistress as 
 well as a wife. " The noble duke," said Thurlow, 
 10 
 
146 THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 
 
 " cannot look before him, or behind him, or on either 
 side of him, without seeing some noble peer, who owes 
 his seat in this House to his successful exertions in the 
 profession to which I belong. Does he not feel that it 
 is as honorable to owe it to. these, as to being the acci- 
 dent of an accident ? . . . . No man venerates the 
 peerage more than I do ; but, my lords, I must say 
 that the peerage solicited me, not I the peerage. Nay, 
 more, — I can say, and will say, that as a Peer of 
 Parliament, as Speaker of this Right Honorable House, 
 as Keeper of the Great Seal, as Lord High Chancellor 
 of England, nay, even in that character alone, in which 
 the noble duke would think it an affront to be consid- 
 ered, but which character none can deny me, — as a 
 MAN, I am, at this time, as much respected as the 
 proudest peer I now look down upon." A burst like 
 this, thundered out in an aristocratic and supercilious 
 assembly, and so forcibly done as to confound at the 
 moment all distinctions of birth, should entitle swearing 
 Lord Thurlow, rough and profane as he was, to a place 
 among the benefactors of the race. 
 
 All the instances of personal invective we have so 
 far quoted not only contain ,but display passion. Now 
 an orator who wields uncontrolled dominion over all 
 modes of denunciation is aware that there are occasions 
 which demand a certain poised majesty and repose of 
 
THE ECONOMY OP INVECTIVE. 147 
 
 accusing statement, so that the most criminal charges 
 shall have the appearance of being free from all that 
 exaggeration which clings to the utterances of passion. 
 In the renowned opening speech of Burke in the im- 
 peachment of Hastings, he has, in the body of the 
 speech, exhausted almost every kind of impassioned 
 invective ; but he reservfes his greatest effort for the 
 conclusion. Abandoning the indignant humanity prop- 
 er to him as a man, he almost assumes the position 
 of an accusing angel at the end, where, condensing with 
 deep and stern emphasis the various offences of Hast- 
 ings, he urges his laboring words solemnly up to that 
 climax of crime, which cannot be read without a thrill 
 through the inmost soul. This passage is generally 
 known by the version of it in the essays of Macaulay, 
 who, in his article on Warren Hastings, transposes and 
 translates it into Macaulayese, so that while it m'ay gain 
 something in liveliness and brilliancy, it loses the 
 peculiar dignity, majesty, and real moral power im- 
 pressed upon it by Burke. " Therefore," concludes 
 the orator, after a speech of three days, — " therefore, 
 it is with confidence, that, ordered by the Commons, I 
 impeach Warren Hastings of high crimes and misde- 
 meanors. I impeach him in the name of the Commons 
 of Great Britain in parliament assembled, whose par- 
 liamentary trust he has betrayed. I impeach him in 
 
148 THE ECONOMY OP INVECTIYE. 
 
 the name of all the Commons of Great Britain, whose 
 national character he has dishonored. I impeach him 
 in the name of the people of India, whose laws, right's, 
 and liberties he has subverted, whose property he has 
 destroyed, whose country he has laid waste and deso- 
 late. I impeach him in the name, and by virtue of 
 those eternal laws of justice which he has violated. I 
 impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which 
 he has cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed in both 
 sexes, in every age, rank, and condition of life." It 
 would seem as if Macaulay's ear could not detect the 
 surging undertone of this simple and sublime conclu- 
 sion, and accordingly labored to give it that point and 
 pas,sionate emphasis which Burke labored to avoid. 
 Poe made rather bad work in correcting the sentences 
 of Macaulay ; but that act was modesty itself compared 
 with Macaulay's assuming to correct the sentences of 
 Burke ; for the sentences of Burke always evince the 
 plastic hand of his flexible and comprehensive genius, 
 varying in form, method, and rhythm with every varia- 
 tion in his streaming thoughts and boiling passions. 
 
 Webster occasionally reaches this majestic dignity 
 and majesty in invective, and impresses it with a might 
 peculiarly his own. His grand allusion to the crime of 
 the Emperor Nicholas, in relation to Kossuth, is famil- 
 iar to all American readers. That passage in one of 
 
THE ECONOMY OF INTECTIVE. 149' 
 
 his earlier speeches, in which he assails the crowned 
 liberticides of the Holy Alliance, is equally powerful 
 and equally well known. But this order of invective, 
 noble as it is, is still, perhaps, not the very highest 
 which human eloquence can reach. There occasionally 
 flashes from great natures an awful invective, shot 
 forth from an impassioned imagination in the rapture 
 and ecstasy of moral indignation, which burns its mark 
 upon our souls more durably than any impress which 
 the most majestic reason leaves. Our first example 
 will be from Burke. Addressing the-lords in the Hast- 
 ings impeachment, he exclaimed, " We call upon your 
 lordships to join us ; and we have no doubt that you will 
 feel the same sympathy that we feel, or (which I carinot 
 persuade my Sfiul to think, or my mouth to utter) TOU 
 
 WILL BE IDENTIFIED WITH THE CRIMINAL WHOSE 
 CRIMES YOU EXCUSE, AND ROLLED WITH HIM IN ALL 
 
 THE POLLUTION OP Indian guilt, from genera- 
 tion TO GENERATION." It was at this time known to 
 Burke, and their lordships knew it was known, that 
 the verdict of the court he addressed would be in favor 
 of Hastings ; a fact which gives additional force to 
 the tremendous image of infamy with which he con- 
 cludes. Again, in the House of Commons, in his 
 speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts, he charged the 
 Prime Minister Pitt and his administration, not only 
 
150 THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 
 
 with conniving at Indian oppression, but with assisting 
 in it for political objects. There was, he said, "a 
 coalition between the men of intrigue in India and the 
 minister of intrigue in England." Kindling as he pro- 
 ceeded in unveiling the iniquity of the system, and 
 especially in exhibiting the corruption of a certain elec- 
 tion contest, " managed upon Indian principles for an 
 Indian interest," he at last broke through all bounds of 
 parliamentary decorum. " This," he shouted, — " this 
 was the golden cup of abominations ; this the chalice of 
 the fornications of- rapine, usury, and oppression, which 
 was held out by the gorgeous Indian harlot ; which so 
 many of the people, so many of the nobles of this land, 
 had drained to the very dregs. Do you think that no 
 reckoning was to follow this lewd debauch? that no 
 payment was to be demanded for this riot of public 
 drunkenness and national prostitution ? " 
 
 Even grander and more rapturous than these are 
 some of the images of Luther and Milton, in those 
 controversial works in which their imaginations, set on 
 fire by their passions, produced prodigies of invective, 
 so made up of religion and rage, so divinely scurrilous, 
 as to make the reader sometimes hesitate whether he 
 shall applaud them as soarings of inspired souls, or 
 stigmatize them as outpourings of fanatical zeal. 
 "Whether strictly justifiable or not, they are assuredly 
 
THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 151 
 
 most invigorating, and sweep us along with the force 
 of a mountain-torrent. From Luther we , have no 
 space to quote, or we should favor our readers with 
 some remarks of his on Henry the Eighth, which speak 
 to kings in a way that kings had never been spoken to 
 before, and which republican courtesy might be shocked 
 to hear applied to them even now. From Milton, 
 whose prose is unequalled for vitality and splendor in 
 English literature, we cannot resist the temptation of 
 making one extract, as the fit conclusion and climax of 
 all our citations of invective. After asserting for God's 
 church the right to exercise the power of Excommuni- 
 cation, he thus assails those degenerate priests who 
 would make this " sacred censure " a matter of mer- 
 chandise : " As for the fogging proctorage of money — 
 with such an eye as struck Gehazi with leprosy, and 
 Simon Magus with a curse, so does she look, and so 
 threaten her fiery whip against that barking den of 
 thieves that dare thus baffle, and buy and sell, the awful 
 and majestic wrinkles of her hrow" It is but just to 
 add, that Milton, in his paroxysms of imaginative rage, 
 seems not so much to attack persons as crimes ; and 
 though names are attached to his severities, we see no 
 evidence that he realized them to his mind as men. 
 
 In these loose remarks on the general subject of 
 invective, we think that we have indicated what it is, if 
 
152 THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 
 
 not by critical analysis, at least by illustrative quotations, 
 witty, fleering, sneering, sarcastic, ironical, indignant, 
 or denunciatory. We have attempted to show that 
 vigorous thought and genuine feeling are the powers 
 which put meaning into its words, and give them the 
 force to wound. Some quiet, tender-hearted, and ob- 
 scure Christian people, who can find no pleasure in the 
 infliction of pain, may here insinuate an objection to 
 invective itself, and call it a needlessly cruel method of 
 punishing follies and offences. But this is to wander 
 from the point. There appears to be now no question 
 even among religious controversialists and benevolent 
 reformers, that to fret, and tease, and pierce, and stab, 
 and hack, with all sorts of moral stilettoes and spiritual 
 tomahawks is a warlike operation of the mind to be 
 cultivated, commended, and reconciled to the principles 
 of philanthropy and the doctrines of religion. Every 
 American has within him a bill of rights, and among 
 the most precious of these is his right to inveigh. " If 
 my stomach cannot stand gin, it is no stomach for me," 
 said the valiant toper to his warning physician ; and 
 we would humbly suggest that any attempt to represent 
 the doctrine of charity as opposed to the practice of 
 mental pugnacity, will result in the sacrifice of the for- 
 mer rather than the latter, and deluge the land with 
 infidelity. 
 
THE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 153 
 
 That there is not much danger of so presumptuous, aa 
 antithesis between religion and railing being attempted, 
 will be evident to any one who has followed the process 
 of an animated theological controversy, and observed 
 the satisfaction with which the reverend victor held up 
 the scalp of his opponent as proof of his prowess. We 
 all appreciate the bland spirit of that Western clergyman 
 who, after giving an impudent parishioner a severe 
 drubbing, came into church on the succeeding Sunday 
 with a nonresistant sermon, in which, after beautifully 
 inculcating the maxims of meekness and peace, he 
 closed with this astounding information to his audience : 
 " All this, my friends, is very well ; but still, if any of 
 you attempt to cave in my head, you '11 find that I 'm 
 thar!" The intellectual application of this elegant 
 and benevolent saying will be felt by,^ all professors of 
 sarcastic ethics and denunciatory theology. All public 
 personages, therefore, whether politicians, statesmen, 
 penny-a-liners, lawyers, patriots, reformers, or philan- ■ 
 thropists — all gentlemen engaged in the business of 
 picking the pockets of the people, and all engaged in 
 the business of warning the people not to have their 
 pockets picked, — seem to agree, in the midst of their 
 delightful animosities, in stoutly averring, " We do well 
 to be angry " ; ^nd accordingly the only thing worthy 
 of being debated relates to the best means and methods 
 
154 I'HE ECONOMY OF INVECTIVE. 
 
 of doing their anger welL A great reform is certainly 
 needed in this respect, or else the whole cause of invec- 
 tive will be discredited. It would be well to have the 
 subject more attended to in our seminaries of education 
 where, we are informed, ingenuous youth, gifted with a 
 latent genius for hating and decrying their fellows, are 
 suffered to run wild in mere oaths and vulgarities, instead 
 of having their denunciatory faculties well disciplined ; 
 and, accordingly, when they grow up, and becomepoli- 
 ticians and philanthropists, their style of contempt and 
 execration betrays their want of early and orderly cul- 
 ture. Perhaps it would be well to have in every 
 village some paid functionary who will consent, for a 
 reasonable salary, to combine in himself all varieties .of 
 folly and crime, and thus, theoretically bedizzened with 
 infamy, to set hi;iiself up as a mark for the whole pop- 
 ulation to practise upon. It is also of the first impor- 
 tance that a chair of invective be established in all our 
 colleges, filled by a professor who combines practical 
 experience of the subject with a knowledge of all the 
 eloquence of vituperation from Demosthenes to Burke ; 
 and perhaps the most appropriate subject on which the 
 students should first air their vocabulary, and the most 
 worthy of such an honor, would be the college itself, its 
 professors, its government, and its prescribed course of 
 studies. And if the writer of this unpretending essay 
 
THE ECONOMT OF INVECTIVE." 155 
 
 can feel that, without drawing down upon himself any 
 of the invective he would cheerfully see invoked upon 
 others, he has done anything for the great cause he has 
 feebly illustrated, he will have that benign satisfaction 
 which comes from the serene consciousness of having 
 aided, no matter how humbly, in that noble enterprise 
 which is to make the world a more uncomfortable resi- 
 dence than ever before, by giving contempt a subtler 
 venom, sarcasm a sharper point, scorn a more poisonous 
 sting, hatred a more overwhelming vehemence, and 
 invective a more universal dominion. 
 
THE SALE OF SOULS. 
 
 It has always been to us a matter of wonder that, 
 in an age which has treated with such scientific depth 
 and accuracy all questions of commerce, so little atten- 
 tion should have been given to a branch of traffic 
 which is most extensively carried on, and the material 
 of which is owned by every human being. The polit- 
 ical economy of Soul-selling has, indeed, no existence 
 as a positive science; and, consequently, though the 
 li-ansactions are both numerous and notorious, they 
 seem to proceed on no settled principles, refer to no 
 definite measure of value, and are conducted on no 
 philosophic perception of the laws of exchange. A 
 certain diffidence in regard to such a stringent discus- 
 sion of the subject as would lead to a thorough inves- 
 tigation of its facts and principles is perhaps natural 
 to the most experienced traders in the article, for every 
 person is so disagreeably constituted by nature that he 
 cannotdispose of himself, even at a great bargain, without 
 feeling a sharp shame reprovingly tingle in his blood ; 
 
THE SALE OF SOULS. 167 
 
 atr'd lie is accordingly more likely to conceal the terms 
 of the transaction, than to exhibit them for the benefit 
 of the public. Much as we honor the modesty which 
 prompts such a concealment, we cannot but deplore its 
 injurious results, for it involves in almost hopeless con- 
 fusion a very important branch of the business of life. 
 The sale of the soul is, with many, their- first commer- 
 cial transaction ; and history and' biography ate full of 
 examples where inexperienced youthful impulse has 
 clinched the bargain at a scandalously inadequate price. 
 In a great many cases, too, this is the original intro- 
 duction to all those professions in which the commercial 
 spirit obtains and rules, and accordingly it is often the 
 radical and primary element of commerce, to which all 
 after transactions fall into relations. It has long been 
 understood that what are called the prizes of life are 
 held by a certain Personage, whose chief external pecu- 
 liarity is caught in a glance at his feet ; but who, ip 
 every other respect, is as pleasant a gentleman as one 
 would wish to meet on a summer's day. He is, how- 
 ever, deeper than he seems ; is limited in his means ; 
 practises a rigid economy of his expenditure; drives 
 hard bargains ; and was never known to pay more for 
 the article he desires than the owner exacted. It is 
 for his interest that there should be no well-understood 
 market-price for virtue and the hope of heaven, because 
 
158 THE SALE OP SOULS. 
 
 established prices are tlie great equalizers of trade, and 
 gaard the most ignorant merchant from the cunning of 
 the most intelligent. The soul of a country bumpkin 
 is worth as much to him as the soul of a Don Juan ; 
 yet everybody is aware of the cruel inequality in the 
 amount of Satanic cash paid for each. The transaction 
 with Don Juan has been written out by Moliere and set 
 to music by Mozart, and the whole race of opera-goers 
 has had an opportunity to judge of its processes and 
 results ; but relatively excellent as that account un- 
 doubtedly is, it still has the rawness of the original 
 legend, without any scientific elimination of its latent 
 laws and practical principles. Another recorded trans- 
 action is of German origin, and passed between the 
 Personage we have mentioned and a Doctor Faustus. 
 This is so interesting to scholars, who may be naturally 
 desirous of knowing the extreme limit of their value in 
 the current coin of worldly gratification, that we are 
 happy to indicate an account of it worthy of reliance. 
 "We would warn them not to trust the old legend at 
 all, it being so overgrown with iuonkish moss as to 
 furnish no guiding maxims. The terms of the real 
 bargain were taken down in short-hand by Goethe, who 
 availed himSelf of the occasion to drive at the same 
 time a quiet trade for himself. Faustus, at the time 
 he was visited by the illustrious Personage in question, 
 
THE SALE OF SOULS. 159 
 
 had discovered that his mind had in it a desire after 
 knowledge beyond the search of its faculties, and 
 accordingly he had become soul-sick, or sick of his 
 soul, and was ready to sell out to his senses, provided 
 thereby he could quench the thirst of his longings in 
 the stream of enjoyment. The very desperation of his 
 case, however, dictated conditions which were his sal- 
 vation. Following the masterly report of Goethe, we 
 find that he held Mephistopheles (an assumed name 
 for an unmentionable one) to this contract: "If thou 
 canst ever flatteringly delude me into being pleased 
 with myself, if thou canst cheat me with enjoyment, 
 be that day my last If ever I say to the pass- 
 ing moment, ' Stay, thou art so fair ! ' then mayst thou 
 cast me into chains ; then will I readily perish ; then 
 may be the death-bell toll ; then thou art free from thy 
 service." Mephistopheles tried his hand at this prob- 
 lem, and whirled Faustus through some pretty varieties 
 of, to him, hitherto untried being ; but there was an 
 indestructible something in the scholar's nature which 
 declined saying to the passing moment, " Stay ! " The 
 frippery of life could not entangle him, -its sensuality 
 could not' drown him ; and Mephistopheles had the 
 inexpressible mortification to see him slip through his 
 fingers in the end. Thus this, the only accurately re- 
 corded sale, proved a sell. 
 
160 THE SALE OF SOULS. 
 
 But it must not be supposefl that in all, or, perhaps; 
 in these days, in any cases, the soul-seller comes face 
 to face with the great soul-buyer. That Personage 
 has agencies established throughout society, and the 
 moment the desire to sell arises in any human breast, 
 an authorized deputy is found in any man's next neigh- 
 bbr. It is, indeed, astonishing to notice in what a sum- 
 mary manner a Satanic commission is extemporized. 
 You are conversing with an acquaintance of many 
 years' standing, in whose words and acts you never dis- 
 covered the scent of brimstone ; and suddenly, as by 
 magic, when the talk slips upon certain subjects, he 
 stands before you a fully accredited plenipotentiary and 
 ambassador extraordinary of the pit, ready to treat on 
 weightiest matters, and renewi.ig to you his tempting 
 assurances of distinguished consideration. We shall, 
 therefore, in what suggestions we have to make on the 
 subject before us, leave out any reference to the ulti- 
 mate receiver of the article sold, supposing that all 
 readers will consider him an impersonal force, in the 
 nominative case understood. 
 
 The Sale of Souls is a business procedure going on 
 every day, among persons widely diflfering in age, dis- 
 positions, talents, and character; to write comprehen- 
 sively of it, therefore, we are compelled to survey it 
 in many aspects, and to trace its operation in various 
 
THE SALE or SOULS. 161 ' 
 
 departments of life. We purpose to give an account 
 sales (errors and omissions excepted) of transactions 
 where the object obtained is senspal enjoyment, social 
 position, money, political elevation, or general worldly 
 success. And first we are somewhat startled by the 
 fact that, in an act of commerce over which selfishness 
 presides, self is the article sold. The peculiarity of 'a 
 human being consists in his personality ; and any man 
 who owns this is ethically held to have a richer pos- 
 session than the universe can give. Practically, how- 
 ever, it tas proved one of the cheapest articles which 
 nature produces; and, in a majority of instances, has 
 less exchangeable value than an acre of corn or pota- 
 toes. The cause of this is in some degree owing to 
 combinations on the part of purchasers, but principally 
 to a continual glut in the market. The holders of the 
 commodity exhibit in general no foresight, insight, or 
 common knowledge of the law of supply and demand ; 
 but tumble, in upon 'Change like a flock of drunkards, 
 and barter away their inheritance with absurd reckless- 
 ness to the first bidder they meet. When to this original 
 folly is added the risk to' the purchaser of buying dam- 
 aged goods, or goods which have already been sold over 
 and over again, we need not wonder at that complica- 
 tion of the subject, which renders it extremely difficult 
 for a philanthropist to lay down such rules to " selves ° 
 11 
 
162 THE SALB OF SOULS. 
 
 in the market as will enable them to get their proper 
 price. Nothing is more common than to see the trans- 
 fer made in, early youth, and the " immediate jewel " 
 of the soul squandered away upon the mere nuts and 
 raisins of boyhood ; so that when the child arrives at 
 the age of reason, and casts a comprehensive glance 
 over the many prizes within the reach of overreaching, 
 he discovers with ingenuous shame that he has parted 
 with his whole stock in trade. Next in the order of 
 indiscretion is the sale which is made for a few of the 
 bonbons of the senses, and self is hurried off for a few 
 bottles of Jersey champagne, — which is emphatically 
 " The Devil's wine." A more enlarged view of society 
 soon shows the foolish young sensualist that a judicious 
 selfishness, a short " masterly inactivity " as to seizing 
 the poisoned cider, would have given him a chance at 
 least to bid his soul, in the great auction of sensuality, 
 for the choicest distillations of Burgundian orchards and 
 vineyards of the Rhine. Such prodigals of their souls 
 meet one every day in the streets, sucking, with vacant 
 stare, diminutive canes, and troubling the lover of good 
 bargains for mankind with a suspicion that, small as 
 was their price, pity for the sold should be modified 
 with pity for the purchaser. But, perhaps, even when 
 the bargain is for the best things which sensuality has 
 in its keeping, the transaction is of doubtful .propriety. 
 
THE SALE OF -SOULS. ' 163 
 
 It is claimed for sensual indulgence, that it is a uni- 
 versal ready-reckoner of enjoyment; and as it seems 
 to offer the greatest amount of pleasure with the least 
 possible exertion, it is worthy of self-SAcn&ce, or sur- 
 render of self to it. "So the ear of Denmark is 
 abused." The truth is that this fallacy was originally 
 forged, ahd is now industriously circulated, not by those 
 who wish to sell souls dear, but by those who desire to 
 buy souls cheap. The mind is so constituted as to see 
 in the palace of the sensualist nothing but the sty of 
 a hog ; and a disreputable opinion clings to sins of the 
 senses, which makes every judicious speculator in mo- 
 rality hesitate long before he invests his soul in them.' 
 
 Besides, we have quite a ghastly series of records, 
 which should act as warnings against this dfsposition 
 of selfhood. Among many others, we may refer to 
 the biographies of two noble lords, Eochester and 
 Byron. Rochester made what would be called a fair^ 
 bargain in early life, and, for a few years, ran quite a 
 picturesque career of debauchery; but the result was 
 shame, misery, death, and a damnatory octodecimo 
 volume by Bishop Gilbert Burnet; which last comes 
 near being an argument against all spiritual trafficking 
 whatever, so full is it of groans and devils of an azure 
 tint. Every man of this century knows what a fuss 
 Byron made about his youthful indiscretion, and how 
 
164 THE SALE OF SOULS. 
 
 the metrical records of his attempts to annul the con- 
 tract are fitly denominated "The Literature of Des- 
 peration." We can see him now as he appeared at 
 Venice in 1818 or 1819, haggard, wan, truculent, dis- 
 dainful, and (literally) devilish handsome, — : looking like 
 an angel who had sold out ! 
 
 After these experiments, made almost for the pro- 
 fessed purpose of testing the theory we have been com- 
 bating, it would be insulting to oflfer,' to any man of 
 reading and intelligence, the thing ironically styled 
 _ pleasure as the price of his soul. We will accordingly 
 proceed immediately to the next article in the world's 
 wares, commonly supposed to have an exchangeable 
 value equal to the worth of a human heart and will ; 
 and this is social position. It must be admitted that 
 many soulless gentlemen and ladies whom we meet in 
 -society appear satisfied with their bargain, and contrive 
 to exist very pleasantly without feeling the want of 
 what they have parted with. So far it would seem 
 that an exact exchange of values had occurred, and the 
 transaction, accordingly, to be a legitimate commercial 
 operation ; and having nothing to do in this scientific 
 inquiry with any principles but those of trade, we would 
 not dogmatize ethically on the matter, and assert that 
 particular individuals we might name had been cheat- 
 ed. They have the frippery they desire, and are not 
 
THE SALE or SOULS. 165 
 
 troubled withr the individuality they have sold. Still 
 we would diffidently suggest that it is the extreme 
 smallness of the soul which justifies the transaction to 
 the economist, and what would be a high price for 
 Brummell would be scandalously low for Bacon. Our 
 criticism refers to individuals who are worth more than 
 they get, and who might make a much better trade if ~ 
 • they went to other shops. " Good Society " is a phan- 
 tom- which lures many a man of talents and virtue into 
 ft nonsensical sacrifice of self, for the conversation of 
 pygmies and the sympathy of flats. Besides^ it is dis- 
 gracefully true, that sometimes the sale is made, not for 
 the individual himself, but for his dependants. A mer- 
 chant, for instance, lives (mornings and evenings) in a 
 splendid house, accustoms his wife and children to a 
 certain style of living, and toils all day, in a hot and 
 dingy counting-house, among centipedes and wharf-rats, 
 to keep up " the establishment." He does not enjoy his 
 mode of living, but his " darters " do. At last comes a 
 panic ; he is on the verge of bankruptcy ; he sees, in 
 imagination, his house under the hammer, and hfs 
 daughters keeping infant schools; and just then in 
 steps a plausible gentleman who makes him aware 
 that there is other property besides ships and mer- 
 chandise. He finds that honor, truth, conscience, 
 self-proprietorship, are marketable commodities; and 
 
166 THE §ALE OF SOULS. 
 
 after some qualms, he sella them for the means of pay 
 ing his debts, and keeping his position "m good society." 
 He knows that he is a liar, a swindler, and a cheat, and, 
 moreover, has an impertinent something in his own 
 breast, which is continually twitting him with the fact ; 
 but he lives in his old house, and his children have the 
 inestimable privilege of concluding that education in 
 laborious indolence, which constitutes the paradise of 
 the dandy and the flirt. Now against such a foolish 
 traffic as this we enter our protest on indisputable 
 maxims of political economy ; and it is not so uncommon 
 as the fair tenants of good sqciety suppose. 
 
 To sell out a man's intellectual and moral being for 
 social position we may therefore style a blunder ; but 
 can we say the same of the sale for money ? Is not 
 this, on the whole, the great commercial transaction of 
 the age, and of all ages ? In truth, so much has been 
 said, re-said, and gainsaid on the subject, and respecta- 
 ble and intelligent men differ so widely in their view of 
 it, that it cannot be disposed of by bawling out a few 
 ethical maxims. The framers of moral generalities 
 against selling souls for money have commonly been 
 men who have purchased the leisure to moralize by 
 going through the ' very operalion they condemn. 
 Seneca is one of these equivocal generators of truisms 
 which have no personal foundation in truth. Caasar 
 
THE SALE OF SOULS'. 167 
 
 Borgia, Richard the Third, and Captain Kidd could 
 have written " Morals " as good as Seneca's. "We 
 shall not, therefore, assert anything which implies a 
 disrespect for money, as we desire to offend no preju- 
 dices by blaspheming the religion of the community, — 
 of course, meaning by religion that concrete paganism • 
 which really obtains in the life and manners of most 
 civilized nations. We are willing to receive as gospel 
 a shrewd remark gleaned from the conversation of an 
 eminent American philosopher, " that no man is as rich 
 as all men ought to be " ; and by thus candidly admit- 
 ting the worth of wealth we hope to discuss the sub- 
 ject without any suspicion of fanaticism. 
 
 But conceding, for the sake of argument, that money 
 is a mercantile equivalent for souls, all thoughtful men 
 will agree in asserting that the consideration should be 
 large and solid, and consequently agree in condemning 
 the bargains commonly made. It is mournful to notice 
 the lack of sagacity evinced by the generality of traders 
 when they come to turn their spiritual commodity into 
 cash. Impelled by a short-sighted avarice, they make 
 tremendous sacrifices of honesty and character for a few 
 pennies, and are doubtless ticketed, on certain .subter- 
 ranean day-books, as bought " docf-chenp." To such 
 prodigals we might say, Sell if you will sell, but, for the 
 dignity of human nature, exact high prices ! To a man 
 
168 THE SALE OF SOITLS. 
 
 of letters, .especially, who may be holding off in 
 hopes of a rise in the article, nothing can be more 
 irritating than the frequent spectacle of authors whose 
 souls are literally " not above ninepences,'' -^ who will 
 squander honor, truth, perception of character, sympa- 
 thy with all that is pure and high in ideal being, in 
 short, a writer's whole stock in trade, to the cunning 
 hucksters of ninepenny pamphlets ; thus running the 
 risk of damnation in both worlds for the paltriest con- 
 sideration, when a little judgment might have given 
 them the chance of a life, death, and burial in octavos. 
 
 " Virtue, I grant you, is an idle boast ; 
 But shall the dignity of vice be lost? " 
 
 But passing over the common herd of those self- 
 selling traders , who make blundering bargains in the 
 market of souls, let us now survey that cool and judi- 
 cious class of spiritual merchants, who scrutinize the 
 whole field of commerce with a keen and comprehensive 
 glance, and pay out their souls in cautious instalments, 
 rigorously exacting their full market worth, and receiv- 
 ing a quid pro quo for every elevated sentiment, every 
 instinct of humanity, every grace of intelligence, as 
 they part with it. Such men we occasionally meet in 
 business life ; men who have not one atom of soul, but 
 have sold the last immortal grain of it for hard cash. 
 
THE SALE OP SOULS. 169" 
 
 They have received the millions they desired ; but 
 have, they made a good bargain? The difficulty with 
 their case comes from their having no capacities for 
 enjoyment left after the sale. Coarse, callous, witliout 
 sympathy, without affection, without frankness and 
 generosity of feeling, dull even in their senses, despising 
 human nature, and looking upon their fellow-creaturt-s 
 simply as possible victims of their all-grasping extortion,' 
 it would seem as though they had deliberately shut up, 
 one by one, all the sources of enjoyment, and had, 
 coiled up in their breasts, a snake-like avarice, which 
 must eventually sting them to death. Some men find 
 happiness in gluttony and in drunkenness ; but no deli- 
 cate viands can touch their taste with the thrill of 
 pleasure, and what generosity there is in wine steadily 
 refuses to impart its glow to their shrivelled hearts. 
 Some men find delight in poetry, painting, sculpture, 
 music, in philosophy, history, science, in the exercise of 
 benevolent and social affections, in observing the forms 
 or in communing with the spirit of nature ; but Old 
 Hunks has no sense for these ; can no more detect 
 their beauty than a man without the sense of smell can 
 detect the fragrance of a rose ; and, seeing in them 
 nothing which should arrest the attention of a shrewd 
 trader, he scorns all who do. As for religion, he pays 
 his pew-tax, and consents to be bored by an occasional 
 
170 THE SALE OF SOULS. 
 
 eermon of a Sunday forenoon ; but his real church is 
 the counting-house, his real Bible is the Commercial 
 List, his real god is gold. Such being the case, we 
 must pronounce the bargain a bad one, and we cannot 
 advise the merchant, who may now be hesitating, to 
 clinch it, and add one more slave to its ignoble army 
 of martyrs. 
 
 But, it may he asked, admitting that a gradual 
 selling out of the soul in the tortuous transactions of 
 commerce is an unprofitable operation, is not money 
 made, at one fell swoop, in a lucky marriage, an 
 excellent mode of self-selling? With a cordial sym- 
 pathy for necessitous young men, and an appreciation 
 of the inherent difficulties in the way of their get- 
 ting an honest livelihood, we must give a negative 
 answer. It is, on the whole, worse than theft and 
 hack-writing, and should not be practised by ingenuous 
 youth as long as any other means of overreaching are 
 within their capacities. Without italicising the brazen 
 falsehood and perjury implied in the act of sale, it has 
 the peculiar unmanliness of being a traflSc in impulses. 
 To go through the form of selling the power of loving a 
 virtuous woman is fatal to the whole of character. If 
 a man cannot disinterestedly love a woman, he cannot 
 love anything else; it indicates a disposition which 
 would sell country, mankind, and religion, anything and 
 
THE SALE OP SOULS. 171 
 
 everything which human nature prizes ; casts doubt on 
 all professions of principle or love a person might after- 
 ward make ; and indicates a nature so ignoble as to be 
 incapable even of great vices. Should these considera- 
 tions, however, have no weight with dandies, penniless 
 and eager for selling out, we cannot too strongly im- 
 press on their minds the caution, not to take rumors of 
 great fortunes for facts. In a youthful country like 
 ours, where the very excess of speculation generates 
 thousands of unprofitable_ enterprises, and a large por- 
 tion of the nominal wealth of the citizens is in worthless 
 or depreciated stocks, heiresses as well as heirs are 
 difficult of detection. Fathers of families are commonly 
 shrewder than fortune-hunters ; and, in a majority of 
 cases, the latter find themselves egregiously taken in, 
 and compelled to work hard all their lives to support 
 wives whom they do not love, and perhaps fathers-in- 
 law whom they absolutely detest. Look sharp, there- 
 fore, O disciple of Cupid-Mammon, that thy beloved one 
 has her fortune well invested ; demand a schedule of 
 her property, and examine the locality of her multitV' 
 dinous acres ; and if you see Erie estimated at par, and 
 Eastern townships reckoned at so much a foot, break 
 off the match in a burst of honest indignation at her 
 deceit, and carry thy valuable person to a property 
 made up of less uncertain items. " Not whom you 
 
1'72 THE SALE OF SOULS. 
 
 marry, but how much you marry," is the real question 
 among the Hon. Tom Shuffletons of every age. 
 
 So far our references to the~traffic in souls have been 
 confined to private speculators, who trade for the 
 world's lower prizes, and whose actions find no record 
 in history or the newspapers. Let us now mount fb a 
 higher and more dignified region, where the traffic is 
 conducted on systematic principles, and where a person 
 has the power of selling not only himself but the people 
 he represents, and of pocketing the price of both. 
 This is a beautiful department of commerce, and one 
 which an economical philosopher lingers over wilh 
 delight. It is almost needless to state that we allude 
 to the science and art of politics, or the maxims and 
 methods of selling souls to a government, a party, or a 
 mob. The guiding principle of this science has a 
 geometrical precision of definition, and may be thus 
 expressed : The nearest road ,to ofiices of trust and 
 honor is by the short cut of dishonor ; and " many 
 there be that go in thereat." 
 
 The advantage held by politics over all other profes- 
 sions, in respect to the matter under consideration, is 
 the absence of trickery on the part of the purchasers. 
 Every man who is disposed to trade receives the full 
 political value of his heart and brain, his conscience and 
 will, his character and means of influence ; and he 
 
THE SALE OF SOULS. It 3 
 
 occasionally has the opportunity of fixing his own 
 price, and selling himself at a premium which is some- 
 times ruinously high to the buyer. Prices, of course, 
 vary according to the amount of moral, or intellectual 
 reputation a man has to sell. There are exigencies in 
 parties and administrations, when a powerful opposition 
 debater, with a great influence in the country, can 
 have anything which his egotism dictates, can, in fact, 
 take all the point out of a celebrated epigram by realiz- 
 ing its fantastic conditions : — 
 
 " The best speculation which the market affords 
 
 To any enlightened lover of pelf, 
 ' Is to buy Addington up at the price he is worth, 
 
 And sell him at that which he puts on himself." 
 
 The elder Pitt had repeated opportunities to sell out 
 at his own estimate of his worth, and declined them. 
 Henry Fox, his rival in the House of Commons, pos- 
 sessed sufficient intelligence to entitle him to mafce 
 terms equally as good, had not his moral character and 
 reputation for patriotism been damaged ; and therefore 
 when he sold himself to Newcastle, he had to be con- 
 tent with lucrative offices without high official position. 
 Had Pitt thought proper to trade with Newcastle, he 
 would have sold not only his own impassioned genius 
 but three quarters of the unrepresented Commons of 
 England, whom that genius had captivated. It is im- 
 
174 THE SALE OF SOULS. 
 
 portant, therefore, to have, in the game of politics, a 
 large capital of human beings and national interests to 
 trade with, and the more general the reputation for 
 virtue and patriotism, the higher the compensation. 
 The old Iri^ way was admirable, although our ad- 
 miration for the trading politicians of that country 
 must be modified by the fact that they had vast ma- 
 terials for the extempore production of patriots, which 
 other countries do not enjoy. The mass of the Irish 
 people were in a state of inexpressible wretchedness, 
 and the government policy was to prornote English in- 
 terests with little or no regard to the welfare of the 
 swindled Celts. Now nothing was easier than for a 
 bright young fellow to operate on the capital which the 
 national misery supplied him with, — to storm in the 
 Irish House of Commons until his vehemence and tal- 
 ent attracted the Lord-Lieutenant's notice, — and then 
 to exchange the liberty of invective for an office or a 
 pension. A few men like Curran would not trade ; 
 and he and others like him are accordingly not found 
 in the list of Irish Chancellors, Chief-Justices, and the 
 like ; though Curran, by holding out, eventually became 
 honestly Master of the Rolls. The privilege of being 
 a minister of justice was purchased by betraying the 
 country ; and all lucrative judgeships were held by 
 apostate patriots. Curran said quite pathetically, in 
 
THE SALE OP SOULS. 175 
 
 speaking of Ireland, " I might have sold her ; I could 
 not redeem her." 
 
 But the history of English politics affords the great- 
 est number of maxims applicable to all possible forms 
 and modes of political trading ; and we would earnestly 
 advise our American aspirants for high or low placesi 
 to give their days and nights to the study of the Eng.- 
 lish records, which are, indeed, the very classics of cor- 
 ruption. A modest and moderate politician, who de- 
 sires merely a snug sinecure, or some two hundred 
 dollars a vote, will find "wondrous great contentment" 
 in the biographies of Sir Robert Walpole and the 
 Duke of Newcastle ; but a restless, ambitiovfe, rule-or- 
 ruin statesman should model himself on Shaftesbury, 
 the subtlest, readiest, most impudent, most audacious, 
 and most intelligent of demagogues. It has been as- 
 serted that Walpole disbelieved in patriotism. This is 
 bu? one of the many libels levelled at that wise and vir- 
 tuous statesman. During . his administration the op- 
 position was overflowing with vehement lovers of their 
 country ; and Walpole purchased patriotism too often 
 to doubt its existence. No man ever paid more ready 
 money for honor, virtue, and truth than he ; and it is a 
 base iklsehood to impute a scepticism to him which 
 every day of his official life contradicted. Not only were 
 politicians paid for their votes, tongues, and souls, but 
 
116 THE SALE OF SOULS. 
 
 the period of his long rule was the paradise of hack- 
 writers. Walpole could not see that the puhlic good, 
 or his own political good, required that he should give 
 pensions and places to the eminent poets and novelists 
 of the age, and therefore, philosophically indiflferent to 
 their wants, he very properly left them to starve ; but 
 bold and ready political pens, prompt in the profun- 
 dities of party and in the elegances of slang, he freely 
 patronized. The glory is due to him of having organ- 
 ized corruption' into a system, and of fixing a market 
 value to every faculty of mind and every twinge of 
 conscience. 
 
 Of the diflferent modes of selling out in the English 
 system, we have space to consider only two, — the sim- 
 ple and the complicated. There are not many men of 
 genius among English traders, and accordingly the sim- 
 ple method is the most practised among them. It con- 
 sists — if we may believe that light of English divinity, 
 the Rev. Sydney Smith — in going to the First Lord 
 of the Treasury, soul in hand, and saying to that amia- 
 ble functionary, " How much will you give me for 
 this ? " The First Lord, being a gentleman, declines 
 to avail himself of the petty artifices used to cheapen 
 goods ; and, after scrutinizing the soul thus brought to 
 his market, accurately estimates the fraction of respect- 
 ability, intelligence, and influence it represents, — states 
 
THE SALE OF SOULS. IT'? 
 
 the sum he will pay, — insinuates blandly that the treas» 
 ury is conducted on the " one-price " system, — and, to 
 ■ satisfy the proprietor of the article that he makes a fair 
 bargain, ciphers out to him its exact political value to 
 the administration, over which his or her Majesty has 
 called him (the First Lord) to preside. It is said of 
 Lord Stowell that, after making some unsuccessful 
 investments in land, he returned gladly to the funds, 
 and was accustomed ever after to speak of " the beauti- 
 ful simplicity of the three per cents " ; and certainly 
 the method of corruption we have detailed has the 
 same charm of beauty and simplicity. It works very 
 well, too, in a majority of cases, because the First Lord, 
 in addition to the secret-service money, has all the 
 offices of the empire in his gift, lay and clerical, from 
 archbishoprics' and lord chancellorships to the lowest 
 positions in the collection of the revenue, and can there- 
 fore pay full prices for all souls which are offered. 
 But the complexity occurs when the person who de- 
 sires to sell scorns the honest and equitable bargain 
 proposed to him, and undertakes the task of raising his 
 political value by -rushing into factious opposition, and 
 exhibiting the utmost intensity of hatred in order to 
 show the worth of his friendship. Many politic states- 
 men, celebrated for their conservatism, began their ca- 
 reer in " the sedition line " ; and after establishing such 
 12 
 
I'rS THE SALE OF SOULS. 
 
 a reputation for revolutionary tendencies as to give 
 them a large capital in popular support, compelled the 
 irritated First Lord to come to their own terms, and 
 place them in positions -where they too could plunder 
 the public. Indeed, it is of the first importance that 
 every young man of genius, who takes up the business 
 of politics, should understand the most complicated of 
 the Anglo-Saxon methods of raising the price of polit- 
 ical honor, in order that he may escape the moderate 
 compensation awarded to the mere jobber in corruption. 
 If he possess commanding talents, popular manners, 
 and an eloquence which sways the masses, he may be 
 sure that the administration of the day will not be 
 willing to pay him even his actual worth. The old 
 campaigners of his party, grasping at ambassadorships, 
 secretaryships, and lucrative offices in the postal and 
 revenue departments, are naturally jealous of aspiring 
 young men who evince a disposition to leap at once to 
 a share in the leadership of party, by the right divine 
 of energy and genius. Now if the penetrating obser- 
 vation of Falstaff, after the affair on Gad's Hill, be an 
 indisputable maxim, if it be true as that knight affirms, 
 that " young men must live," the only course for them 
 to take is boldly to extemporize honest scruples on some 
 minor political question ; proceed to organize their 
 share of popular favor into a capital of dissent ; and, 
 
THE SALE OF SOULS. 179 
 
 boldly denouncing their old associates as traitors and 
 tyrants, to stfart a schismatical political church of their 
 own. The next election will prove their value by 
 showing an astounding number of scattering votes ; and 
 then is the time for them to trade. We have known 
 politicians of this sort who received enormous premiums 
 on their par value, by such felicitous strokes and strikes 
 for higher wages. The English, being an essentially 
 practical people, understand this perfectly. Thus Sir 
 Thomas Wentworth, in the troubles of Charles's reign, 
 began with the popular parliamentary party, and, in the 
 height of his power and influence, sold out to the king, 
 became prime minister. Earl of Strafford, and real 
 ruler of England. To be sure. Sir Thomas came to 
 his end on the gibbet, but then all politicians have to 
 run risks, and he who is scared by such trifles, existing 
 only in poientia, ia unfit for the august infamy of suc- 
 cessful ratting. A true, inbred, self-seeking, self-selling 
 politician should be as indifferent to a nation's wrath, 
 as he is to its welfare and its curses ; should, indeed, 
 pursue his own interest with a steady aim, and .allow the 
 community to take care of itself." Why, Lord Fopping- 
 ton could say, in reference simply to the requirements 
 of fashion, that he would not.break an engagement be 
 had made with a lady for the salvation of mankind ; 
 and if we do not mistake, he buttressed this saying with 
 
180 THE SALE OF SOULS. 
 
 his exquisite oath of " stap my vitals ! " Now is it to 
 be tolerated, that the salvation of mankind should stand 
 in the way of the ehlarged and intelligent selfishness of 
 the knowing politician, when even Lord Foppington 
 could brush it aside with such beautiful nonchalance f 
 If every one looks out for himself, we are proverbially 
 instructed who it is that will look out for all. 
 
 So far we have surveyed only the bright side of the 
 picture, and we must now reluctantly glance at the 
 dark one. Strange as it may appear to many am- 
 bitious and indurated professors of practical politics, it 
 is still a fact that there exists in the human breast a 
 sense of honor, which is often acutely lacera'ted when 
 forced into this sale of the soul by the more intelligent 
 powers of our nature ; and there are instances where 
 weak men have been killed by the shame and remorse 
 which succeeded- the consummation of the bargain. 
 The most notable instance is that of Charles Torke, sec- 
 ond son of the great Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, and 
 the heir of his mind and legal disposition. Charles was 
 perhaps the most accomplished lawyer of his day ; and, 
 after receiving about a hundred thousand guineas in 
 fees and retainers, and establishing a professional em- 
 inence which qualified him for the highest honors of 
 the law, his heart began to yearn for the chancellor- 
 ship. The holder of this office in Great Britain is the 
 
THE SALE OF SOULS. 181 
 
 Keeper of the King's Conscience, but to reach the bliss 
 of having in custody so precious a moral sense as that, 
 the aspirant has often to go through a preliminary sac- 
 , rifice of his own. Bacon had done this without much 
 inward disquiet, and why should not Charles Yorke ? 
 Charles, however, was a man of stainless honor as well 
 as splendid talents, and his political connection was 
 with the Rockingham whigs. When Lord Camden, 
 the chancellor in possession, a man who had space in 
 his heart not only for the king's conscience but for a 
 larger one of his own, delivered his celebrated tirade 
 against his colleagues, for their foolish and tyrannical 
 course in American affairs, the Chatham and Rocking- 
 ham whigs took the ground that there could not be 
 found an eminent lawyer in England to take Lord 
 Camden's place, should the administration dismiss him 
 for his, honesty and patriotism ; and they denounced 
 beforehand the man who should accept the office as 
 a wretch lost to all shame and self-respect, and a fit ob- 
 ject for the scorn of the lowest of mankind. This style 
 of rhetoric, coming from Yorke's own, political friends, 
 sorely scared away his ambition ; and therefore when 
 Camden was dismissed, and the chancellorship offered 
 to Yorke, he declined the perilous honor he so desired 
 to clutch. The king, however, was determined to have 
 his soul, and obtained it. At a private audience, Yorke 
 
182 THE SALE OF SOULS. 
 
 was cajoled into the belief that he could accept the of- 
 fice without any sacrifice of principle, — the entreaties 
 and promises of the king admirably co-operating with 
 his own ravenous hunger for the place to produce such 
 a hallucination in his mind. With the seals in his car- 
 riage he drove to his brother's house, where a few 
 prominent whigs had an informal meeting, and to the 
 amazement of them all informed them that he had ac- 
 cepted Lord Camden's oflSce ; and he was proceeding 
 to jiistify his conduct, when he was interrupted by a 
 torrent of -reproaches, in which his brother hotly joined, 
 and found himself suddenly transferred from the class 
 of honest men into the class of rats, apostates, and liber- 
 ticides. Had Torke possessed the firmness of charac- 
 ter proper to his peculiar position, he would have had 
 the usual consolation of trading politicians. Smiling 
 blandly at the railings of the "outs," he would have 
 gone to receive the congratulations of the " ins " ; and, 
 possessed' of the most honorable and lucrative office in 
 the gift of the crown, would have despised all that the 
 polite scorn of Rockingham and the thundering denun- 
 ciation of Chatham could urge against him, as he sat 
 on his long-sought and dearly earned woolsack. But 
 Torke was not a man of such hardy, constitutional, im- 
 perturbable effrontery. Shocked and gi-ieved in his 
 inmost soul, he went to his home, passed the night in an 
 
THE SALE OF SOULS. 183 
 
 agony of shame, fell desperately sick, and on the 
 third day of his new honors died, it is supposed, by 
 his own hand. 
 
 We might extend these remarks to descriptions of 
 other soul-sales, where the value received is notoriety, 
 or fame, or some other phantom having no visible em- 
 bodiment; but we must conclude. Throughout our 
 observations we have preserved a temper so cool and 
 reasonable, and have traversed regions sacred to rhetor- 
 ical horse-racing with a gait so staid and mercantile, 
 that we think we have really earned the right to be 
 a little moral at the end. This right, however, we 
 waive, and prefer that the facts and principles we have 
 stated should be tried by their intrinsic merits, without 
 being clouded with any vapors of sensibility. Our own 
 opinion, after a candid examination of the whole matter, 
 is decidedly against the common belief, that there is 
 anything in the world which is equivalent in worth to 
 the value of a soul"; and we accordingly believe that 
 all sales, from the commencement of creation to the 
 present enlightened period, have been mistakes. The 
 balance of popular authority, however, is so much 
 agaiilst us that we hold the opinion with becoming 
 modesty ; and the utmost that we can hope from the 
 publication of this discourse is to furnish maxims which 
 may guide sellers into bargains relatively good. The 
 
184 THE SALE OF SOULS. 
 
 dignity of human nature demands that a stop be put 
 to transactions where souls are absolutely thrown away 
 for less than thirty pieces of silver ; and we hope at 
 least that there will be established among mankind 
 an esp7-it de corps, by the healthy operation of which 
 no man will disgrace himself by cutting under the mar- 
 ket price, and selling his selfhood for less than its fair 
 commercial value, as established by Act of Congress. 
 
THE TEICKS OF IMAGINATIOK. 
 
 There is a power in the human mind, specially indi- 
 cated in the productions of dramatic genius, by which 
 the mind itself parts, for the time, with its own indi- 
 viduality, informs an imagined character, works under 
 the limitations of the new person it creatively animates, 
 and feels, thinks, and wills from thence. When the 
 power is possessed in its greatest force and flexibility, 
 as in Shakespeare, this movement of Protean intelli- 
 gence passes rapidly from one character to another, — 
 the mind of the creator slipping readily into different 
 moulds, now animating Hamlet, now the grave-digger 
 who " chaffs " him, and going from one to ihe other, or 
 returning to its own native form, with an alertness 
 which fills every thoughtful critic's mind with as much 
 amazement as admiration. The wonder is, not so much 
 " how the poet gets into another nature as how he gets 
 out; not that he can be Lear at one moment, butihat 
 he can be the Fool the next ; not that he possesses, but 
 that he is not possessed. For Shakespeare, unlike 
 
186 THE TRICKS OF IMAGINATION. 
 
 most dramatists, imaginatively becomes what he creates. 
 Without this vital embodiment he could not represent 
 beings different from himself with such marvellous 
 closeness to reality. The deepest and most terrible 
 passions, and moods and dispositions so rooted -that they 
 cannot be changed without disorganizing wholly the 
 characters in which they inhere, he passes into and out 
 of with an Ariel-like swiftness which it makes the mind 
 dizzy to contemplate. The power, then, of becoming 
 so many different persons, and seeing life from so many 
 diflfferent points of view, is greater than the greatest 
 result and example of its exercise. 
 
 The same power in kind, however less it may be in 
 degree, is one of the commonest comforts or curses of 
 common life, only it pauses at one imagined character, 
 and finds a difficulty in escaping from the trap the 
 mind has itself set. A large proportion of human 
 beings live not so much in themselves as in what they 
 desire to be. They create what is called an ideal char- 
 acter, in an ideal form, whose perfections compensate 
 in some degree for the imperfections of their own. 
 This pet creation is their solace if indulged in as a 
 mere recreation of thought, but is apt to be a torment 
 when it both stimulates and mocks the effort after its 
 realization. A great part of the discontent observable 
 in what are called practical men proceeds from the fact 
 
THE TRICKS or IMAGINATION. 187 
 
 that, with all their seeming prosperity, they are con- 
 tinually thrown back exhausted on themselves, from 
 the desperate attempt to reach an impracticable aim. 
 Their selfishness is not so much for self as for that 
 " other self " glowing in their imaginations, — a "bodi- 
 less creation " which they would endow with thews and 
 sinews, and which, in their case, fantasy is, very " cun- 
 ning " in. People generally^ even the vainest and 
 proudest, do not so much value themselves as their 
 ideals ; and Mrs. Malaprop's definition of Cerberus as 
 " two gentleman at once,'' is an absurdity which very 
 well describes the ordinary experience of mankind. 
 Both Shakespeare's cheerfulness and humility came 
 from the ease with which he could pass from one 
 "other self" to another, without being imprisoned in 
 the one he had realized, or mocked by the one he could 
 clutch at but not seize. 
 
 In ordinary men the pressure of practical life is so 
 strong and continuous that imagination never gets pos- 
 session of them to the extent of making them lose 
 that sense of the actual relations of things which is 
 called common sense. Men educate each other in rea- 
 son by contact or collision, and keep each other sane 
 by the very conflict of their separate hobbies. Society 
 as a whole is the deadly enemy of the particular 
 crotchet of each, and solitude is plmost the only condi- 
 
X88 THE TRICKS OF IMAGINATION. 
 
 tion in which the acorn of conceit can grow to the 
 oak of perfect self-delusion. But some persons have 
 the power to create a mental and moral solitude in the 
 \exj midst of social commotion, and lose all thread of 
 connection with the cumulative reason of the race at 
 the time they are in constant contact with it In con- 
 versing with them one finds he can appeal to no com- 
 mon standard in manners, politics, literature, morals, or 
 religion, and that in respect to them there is no sense 
 which can be called common. These unfortunates are 
 really " possessed." The imagination which is momen- 
 tarily real to the great dramatist is permanently real to 
 them. Pegasus rides them "instead of they Pegasus. - 
 Few of them are persons of genius sufficiently intense 
 to make their delusion contagious, and so infect other 
 minds as to form a sect, party, or clique which shall 
 satisfy their fury for influence. The vast majority are 
 doomed to wander through the world, lunatics whom 
 no benevolent hospital encloses, cursed as fanatics or 
 snubbed as bores. There is something pathetic in their 
 innocent surprise that the rest of the world are not 
 made after their image. They have more faith in their 
 nonsense than the wise have in their sense. They tire 
 out the understandings they cannot convince. It is 
 safer to agree with than to argue with them ; and they 
 occasionally have the satisfaction of parading the spoils 
 
THE TRICKS OF IMAGINATION. 189 
 
 of their boredom as the victories of their " idea." At 
 their appearance doors instinctively shut, ears refuse 
 to do their office, coat-buttons even are relentlessly 
 sacrificed to deprive them of a point of support. A 
 crotchet rooted in a mediocre brain is, indeed, the most 
 fearful of all "tremendous engines of social oppres- 
 sion " ; but perhaps our anger at the bore might be 
 softened into pity, if we looked at him as a dramatist, 
 caught and imprisoned in his first act of imaginative 
 creation. 
 
 It is perhaps in the region of religious illusions, that 
 the pranks of imagination produce the most grotesque 
 results. Anything which takes, for its support the sanc- 
 tion of religion has a more powerful impulse and auxili- 
 ary than can be derived from the teachings of con- 
 science. An absurd or inhuman religions crotchet is the 
 most mischievous of all forms of imaginative possession, 
 and it is unfortunately the most common, and the most 
 likely to be connected with some genius. Ecclesias- 
 tical history records facts which seem incredible. Thus 
 in the fourth century a powerful but perverse sectary 
 imbibed the' idea that the air was filled with unholy 
 legions, and that we inhaled devils at every breath. 
 Brooding over this fantasy, it gradually became to him 
 the most important and reasonable of truths, and he 
 started a new heresy, — that of the Messalians, — which 
 
190 THE TRICKS OF IMAGINATION. 
 
 made spitting a religious exercise, in the hope of cast- 
 ing out the devils thus breathed in. In travelling in 
 our steamboats and railroad cars, one sometimes sus- 
 pects that this belief has numerous American disciples, 
 as it is "the only religion whose rites are there scrupu- 
 lously observed, and as the constant invocation of its 
 worshippers appears to be, " Expectoration, heavenly 
 Maid, descend ! " 
 
 But every now and then we are startled by some 
 outbreak of theological oddity in quarters where it 
 might be least expected. Thus Dr. Edward Beecher 
 justly enjoyed the reputation of a sound theological 
 scholar, endowed with vigorous powers of reasoning 
 and strong practical sense, at the time when he pub- 
 lished a book which proved that, for years, a strange 
 theory regarding the mystery of Original Sin was tak- 
 ing shape in his mind, and throwing all the doctrines 
 of his creed, into relations to it. This theory was that 
 men pre-existed in another state, as something like 
 devils, before they were born into this as children ; and 
 that the origin of their sin was to be sought in a pre- 
 vious condition of existence of which they had lost the 
 memory. In Dr. South's phrase, " they were not so 
 much born as damned into the world," — a bold ex- 
 pression in which the English divine attempted to con- 
 vey a vivid notion of the fate of children born of vicious 
 
' THE TEICKS OF IMAGINATION. 191 
 
 parents, but which Dr. Beecher stated as sober truth, 
 applicable to aU mankind.' Now it is not to be sup- 
 posed that such a conception took possession at once 
 of such a mind. It must have appeared at first as 
 wild to the originator as it did to the public to which 
 at a later period he communicated it. The strange 
 idea,"however, like a misshapen child which first troub- 
 les, then kindles, then absorbs its parents' affections, 
 grew day by day more familiar to the thinker's intelli- 
 gence, and at last became therein an accustomed guest, 
 with nothing in its features to affront reason or sbock 
 humane feeling. But it is the law of the growth of 
 such mental excrescences that they become tolerated 
 oddities in few minds which they do not eventually 
 master and transform. What is' called reason adapts 
 itself tb their unreason ; what is called conscience 
 gradually accepts their ethics ; and when, on their 
 publication to the world, they draw forth a protest in- 
 the name of the general reason and the general con- 
 science, their originators discover that their whole 
 mental and moral being is out of relation with their 
 fellows. Ideas, which have become so domesticated in 
 their thoughts as to appear truisms, they are surprised 
 to find affect others as the most monstrous of para- 
 doxes ; and, in the storm of derision or invective which 
 beats down upon their heads, they find they have been 
 
192 THE TRICKS OF IMAGINATION. 
 
 tricked out of their fellowship with the mind of the 
 race in following a phantom of their own creation. 
 They have reversed the legend of Saturn, in being 
 devoured by their own offspring. 
 
 The greatest thinkers commonly suppress all their 
 processes which end in error, but we know from Kep- 
 ler's account of the succession of campaigns he under- 
 took against the planet Mars, what vagaries the most 
 powerful intellects are liable to fall into, and we know 
 also that they prove themselves powerful by the readi- 
 ness with which they discard what observation shows 
 to be unsound. While Newton was on the trail of 
 his discoveries, it is calculated that his fertile imagina- 
 tion conceived thousands of ingenious theories which 
 his solid judgment quickly rejected, and that his steady 
 pursuit of his " objective point " was not diverted into 
 by-paths by the captivating temptations which sprung 
 from the very activity of his intelligence. Such men 
 possess theories, but they are not possessed hy them. 
 This settled mental government, which austerely sub- 
 dues the anarchy of thoughts and impressions, and 
 relentlessly court-martials and hangs each prominent 
 rebel against fact and reason which fancy breeds, is 
 what every person requires, however humble may be 
 his capacjty. Where it is absent, no one can foretell 
 the possible aberrations of the most mediocre and 
 
THE TRICKS OF IMAGINATION. 193 
 
 seemingly practical mind. However confidently we 
 may speak of the fundamental principles of human 
 belief, and the unvarying intuitions of common sense, 
 experience teaches us that the intelligence can be cor- 
 rupted almost as readily as tne heart, aud that absurdi- 
 ties which we at first instinctively deride, can, by 
 familiarity, not only lose the character of lies, but 
 expel from the understanding its regulating truths. 
 And this belief in unrealities created by the imagina- 
 tion is also specially the characteristic of imaginatipna 
 of a low grade, and rarely infects men of comprehen- 
 sive genius in which imagination rises to the force and 
 dignity of creative art. Smith, Jones, and Bobinson 
 are its victims rather than Homer^ Shakespeare, and 
 Goethe. 
 
 13 
 
CHEEEFULNESS. 
 
 In the United States, Cheerfulness does not occupy 
 a high place either among the pleasures or duties of 
 life. Discontent, indeed, is a prominent characteristic 
 of our age and nation, visible in. our virtues as well as 
 our vices, in our morals as well as our manners, in our 
 philanthropy as well as our selfishness and greed. 
 This discontent, though good as an occasional sting 
 and spur, tends to weaken and distort activity the 
 moment it becomes a chronic disease of the mind; 
 and as all healthy action, physical, intellectual, and 
 moral, depends primarily on cheerfulness, and as every 
 duty, whether it be to follow a plough or to die at the 
 stake, should be done in a cheerful spirit, the explora- 
 tion of the sources and conditions of this most vigor- 
 ous, exhilarating, and creative of the virtues may be 
 as useful as the exposition of any topic of science or 
 system of prudential art. It would seem that, to 
 intelligent beings, there should be as much interest 
 gather round the analysis of the soul of a man as 
 
CHEERFULNESS. 195 
 
 the anatomy of the fin of a fish, and that as much 
 attention is due to the question, " How to get life ? " 
 as to the question, " How to get a living ? " 
 
 And first it may be said that in the absence of this 
 cheerfulness, — this clear, bracing, sparkling atmos- 
 phere of the mind, — industry, learning, genius, and 
 virtue are robbed of their greatest right and shorn 
 of their most endearing charm ; for happiness, with- 
 out being their aim, should be their source and end. 
 God is glorified, not by our groans, but our thanks- 
 givings ; and all good thought and good action claim a 
 natural alliance with good cheer. There must be 
 something defective, morbid, one-sided, or excessive in 
 the thought that inaugurates despair, in the action 
 that ends in self-disgust ; for rightly sings the poet 
 that 
 
 " Every gift of noble origin 
 Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath." 
 
 Let us then inquire what are the sources and con- 
 ditions of cheerfulness ; what are the easy frailties 
 which retard, what are the difficult virtues which 
 aid, its accomplishment ; how, if it spring from a 
 natural sweetness and felicity of disposition, it can be 
 preserved amidst the fret and stir of daily life ; how, 
 if it be not an original gift and grace of Nature, what 
 mental and moral discipline will instil into the soul 
 
196 CHEERFULNESS. 
 
 its precious cordial and balm. In attempting to 
 answer these questions, we shall confine our remarks 
 to the mental causes of cheerfulness, — the physical 
 causes being implied ; although we think, as a general 
 rule, the body is more often disordered by the mind 
 than the mind by the body, and that the indigestion, 
 to which some ingenious materialists are wont to refer 
 all misanthropy and dejection, is more likely to be 
 caused by. those dismal moods than to cause them, and 
 has often yielded to the witchery of fun, or, at least, 
 to a judicious mixture of diet and Dickens, after resist- 
 ing the craftiest siege of physic. 
 
 Cheerfulness, then, is a state or mood of mind con- 
 sisting either in the equilibrium and harmonious inter- 
 * 
 
 action of the mind's powers and passions, or in the 
 sly infusion of humor into the substance of character. 
 Its predominant feeling is one of inward content, 
 complacency, and repose ; but its content is not self- 
 content ; its complacency is not self-complacency ; 
 and its repose has none of that apathetic negation of 
 all sympathy which we observe in the sleek and self- 
 ish serenity of those frilled and lavendered pliarisees, 
 who show so much Christian resignation to the mis- 
 fortunes, and exhibit such exemplary fortitude in 
 euduring the miseries, that fall on their neighbors. 
 Its virtues are modesty, hope, faith, courage, charity, 
 
CHEERFULNESS. 197 
 
 love, — all those qualities which give beneficence to 
 the heart aild comprehensiveness to the brain ; which 
 calm inordinate passions, adjust our expectations to 
 our circumstances, moderate the infinitude of" selfish 
 desires, and, above all, instil that delicious sense of 
 nearness to the mysterious fountains of joy. Now 
 there seem to be some persons, the favorites of for- 
 tune and darlings of nature, who are born cheerful. 
 " A star danced " at their birth. It is no superficial 
 risibility, but a bountiful and beneficent soul that 
 sparkles in their eyes and- smiles on their lips. Their 
 inborn geniality amounts to- genius, — the rare and 
 difficult genius which creates sweet and wholesome 
 character, and radiates cheer. The thunder-cloud 
 over their heads never darkens their comforting vis- 
 ion of the sunlight beyond. The hard problems which 
 puzzle sadder intellects, and the great bullying miser- 
 ies which overthrow and trample on more despairing 
 spirits, never perplex their faith or crush their ener- 
 gies ; for, with an insight that acts like instinct, they 
 detect the soul of good hid in the show of evil, and 
 are let into the secret of that sacred alchemy by which 
 patience transmutes calamity into wisdom and power. 
 This pure happiness of being, thus seated deep in the 
 heart of their natures, realizes the meditative poet'a 
 ideal of growth in genial virtue ; for 
 
198 CHEERFIfLNESS. 
 
 " It can so inform 
 The mind that is within them, so impress 
 With quietness and beauty, and so feed 
 With lofty thoughts, tliat neither evil tongues, 
 Eash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, 
 Nor greetings where no kindness Is, nor all 
 The dreary intercourse of daily life, 
 Can e'er prevail against them, or destroy 
 Their cheerful faith that all which they behold 
 Is full of blessings." 
 
 But this ^eniu3 of good-nature is perhaps as rare 
 as any other form of genius. Cheerfubiess, in most 
 cheerful people, is the rich and satisfying result of 
 strenuous discipline ; and to attain this, as to attain 
 other blessings, the proverb holds good of " No pains, 
 no gains ; no sweat, no sweet." The first aim of such 
 a discipline will, of course, be to implant a desire for 
 the object ; to hold up to lore and emulation the wise 
 and beautiful and winning content that finds a home 
 in glad and genial spirit^; and, especially, to teach 
 'that this all-embracing sunniness of soul comes to us 
 by a series of steps, the light gradually gaining on the 
 gloom, until darkness is slowly dispelled by dawn 
 and dawn by day, and we greet the full sunrise at 
 last with a psean as exulting as that in which Brown- 
 ing's pure-souled maiden pours out her ecstasy to the 
 morning air : — 
 
CHEERFULNESS. 199 
 
 " Day ! 
 
 Faster and more fast, 
 
 O'er Night's brim, Day boils at last ; 
 
 Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim, 
 , Where spurting and supprest it lay — 
 
 For not a froth-flake touched the rim 
 
 Of yonder gap in the solid gray 
 
 Of the eastern cloud, an hour away ; 
 
 But forth one wavelet, then another, curled. 
 
 Till the whole sunrise, not to be supprest, 
 
 Rose, reddened, and its seething breast 
 
 Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world ! " 
 
 Here, however, at the very threshold of the subject, 
 and as if to give us the lie, starts up that surly and 
 savage theory of life which connects hopefulness with, 
 foolishness, and sourly resolves all intelligence into 
 spleen. Here we come plump against that very large, 
 very respectable, and very knowing class of misan- 
 thropes who rejoice in the name of Grumblers, — per- 
 sons who are so sure that the world is going to ruin, 
 that they resent every attempt to comfort them as an 
 insult to their sagacity, and accordingly seek their 
 chief consolation in being inconsolable, their chief 
 pleasure in being displeased. Their raven croak 
 drowns all melodies of lark and linnet. Indeed, like 
 Jacques, " They can suck melancholy out of a song, as 
 a weazel sucks eggs." It is to them we are doubtless 
 Indebted for that phrase which includes all our actions 
 
200 CHEERFULNESS. 
 
 and all the circumstances of, our being in this world, 
 under the general term of " the concerns of life." 
 Doleful and crabbed, their conversation is a succession 
 of ominous prophecies emitted in a series of growls. 
 Mad at the infatuation of those simpletons who insist 
 on feeling cheered by cheerful things, they gruffly hint 
 of the tempests which are cradled in the sunshine 
 and the calm. You meet one of them in the street, 
 and in a gush of delight at the heavenliness of the 
 weather, venture the suggestion that it is a fine day. 
 " Yes," he replies, " one of those infernal storm-breed- 
 ers ! " Such a creature having no other comfort than 
 a kind of fretful satisfaction in finding fault, you make 
 hin) hopelessly miserable when you leave him no shad- 
 ow of a cause for complaint. Thus Charles Lamb 
 speaks of one of his companions who, in the game of 
 whist, was always grumbling because he had so few 
 trumps. By some artifice in dealing, the whole thir- 
 teen were once given him, in the hope that some sound 
 of glee might be audible through his instinctive grunt ; 
 but after examining his hand attentively, he looked 
 more wretched than ever. " Well, Tom," said Lamb, 
 " have n't you got enough trumps now ? " " Yes," 
 was the growling answer, " but I v'e got no other 
 cards ! " 
 
 Indeed, discontent, in the confirmed grumbler, is 
 
, CHEERFULNESS. 201 
 
 literally a complaint, — a settled disease of the mind. 
 All his perceptions of nature and life being twisted and 
 distorted into the shape of his own wretched fancies, he 
 can see nothing as it is. Obstinate in absurdity, you 
 cannot tempt or coax him into sense. " He is as stiff 
 as a poker," said a friend of one of these unreasonable 
 and unreasoning dogmatists. " Stiff as a poker ! " 
 ■was the reply; "why, he would set an example to a 
 poker ! " Dejection in the heart is thus apt to become 
 stupidity in the head ; and against stupidity " heaven 
 and earth fight in vain." In fact, the grumbler culti- 
 vates his crabbed folly as a conscientious duty, and 
 swaggers and swells on the strength of it, as if. to be a 
 snarling bore was to reach the summit of human 
 excellence, and to grow in stupidity was to grow in 
 grace. " Sir," said Dr. Johnson in reference to one of 
 this class, — " sir. Sherry is dull, naturally dull ; but he 
 must have taken a great deal of pains to become what 
 we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity is not in 
 nature, sir. I am willing to allow him all the merit 
 for it he can claim." 
 
 Closely connected with this grumbling spirit, though 
 often supetior to its baser qualities, is that mood of the 
 mind, made up of pride and dejection, which has been 
 aptly named sulkiness, — a bog in which the souls of 
 some men seem to flounder about during the whole 
 
202 
 
 CHEERFULNESS. 
 
 term of their lives, with sympathies resolutely shut to 
 all the approaches of kindliness and cheer. There they 
 abide, in the soul's " muggy " weather, " sucking," as 
 Coleridge says, " the paws of their own self-impor- 
 tance," and finding, we may add, but little juice and 
 nutriment therein. The word, and the uaamiable 
 mood it expresses, seem both to have had their birth 
 in England. " There is nothing," says Sydney Smith, . 
 in his sharp, sweet way, " which an Englishman en- 
 joys more than the pleasure of sulkiness, — of not 
 being forced to hear a word from anybody which may 
 occasion to him the necessity of replying. It is not 
 so much that Mr. Bull disdains to talk, as that Mr. 
 Bull has nothing to say. His forefathers have been 
 out of spirits for six or seven hundred years, and, see- 
 ing nothing but fog and vapor, he is out of spirits too ; 
 and when there is no selling or buying, or no business 
 to settle, he prefers being alone and looking at the fire. 
 If any gentleman was in distress he would lend a 
 helping hand ; but he thinks it no part of good neigh- 
 borhood to talk to a person because he happens to be 
 near him. In short, with many excellent qualities, it 
 must be acknowledged that the English are the most 
 disagreeable of the nations of Europe, — more surly 
 and morose, with less disposition to please, to exert 
 themselves for the good of society, to make small sac- 
 
CHEEEFHLNESS. 203 
 
 rifices, and to put themselves out of the way. They 
 are content with Magna Charta and trial by jury ; 
 and think they are not bound to excel the world in 
 small behavior, if they are superior to them in great 
 institutions." 
 
 In our own country, which, with a certain exquisite 
 irony, we are fond of calling the " happiest " country 
 in the world, we are preserved by our eager, insatiable 
 activity from so stolid a fault as sulkiness ; but this ac- 
 tivity^ though it may indicate large powers of mind and 
 ■great energies of will, does not evince their harmonious 
 combination, and the restless and curious spirit of the 
 nation is vexed with the demon of nervous discontent. 
 This discontent, as it affects some persons, is owing to 
 the flood of new opinions which has been poured into 
 the public mind, — opinions which satirize the facts of 
 our daily life, without infusing into the will and the 
 moral sentiments the vigor requisite to change them, 
 and demand the exercise of energies which they have 
 not the power to evoke. Hence that fretful impatience 
 with the actual which comes from the union of vague 
 aspiration with feeble purpose, — largeness of mental 
 view with limitation of moral power. Such persons 
 should he more, or know less. 
 
 Another source of individual and national cheer- 
 fulness, too often disregarded in our country, is the 
 
204 CHEEEFTJLNESS. 
 
 trained capacity to take pleasure in little things, — 
 to bend our whole energies to the progressive realiza- 
 tion of moderate but ascending aims, — and to regulate 
 those passions of pride, vanity, envy, avarice, and 
 ambiiion which poison the sources of action. This 
 power of enjoyment proceeds from right ideas as well 
 as from right sentiments. It evinces that breadth and 
 penetration of , understanding by which objects are seen 
 in their real dimensions and natural relations, with the 
 occasional harshness of the truth softened by the sense of 
 beauty and the sense of humor. We then perceive the ■ 
 world as it is, and, what is more, we perceive our own 
 modest place in it ; and, in our gratitude for what we 
 have, lose all feeling of discontent for what we have 
 not. But in America each individual is prone to be 
 more impressed with his deserts than his duties or his 
 capacity to compass his deserts ; and nowhere else is 
 mediocrity subject to such agonies of baffled desire. 
 Our business, driving along through a storm of panics, 
 too often proves to us that " going ahead too fast " real- 
 ly means going backward, and is continually producing 
 those desperate pinches in the money-markets in 
 which the debtor's troubled heart stamps on his face that 
 look of ruin, which, to the shrewd banker, says as 
 plainly, " Don't trust me," as his lips say, " Do lend 
 me ! " But still the eager and headlong rush proceeds, 
 
CHEERFULNESS. 205 
 
 — every merchant ravenous to be an Asfor, every 
 politician a Clay, every clergyman a Channing, every 
 showman — O, help us, genius of anti-climax ! — a 
 Barnum ! Continually nettled by the failure of our 
 selfish aspirations, yve resent as injustice the disappoint- 
 ments of our vanity and greed ; and are apt to feel, 
 when foiled in expectations it was foolish to have 
 ever cherished, something of the irritated self-suffi- 
 ciency of that monarch whom Montaigpe mentions, 
 who, on the sudden death of an only child, iiidicated to 
 Providence his sense and resentment of the injury by 
 abolishing in his dominions the Christian religion for a 
 fortnight ! 
 
 So wide-Spread is this discontent, that a talent for 
 unhappiness is fast getting to be a source of distinc- 
 tion ; and among the many tones in the hubbub of 
 universal talk, the voice that quickliest arrests atten- 
 tion is the voice that wails, snarls, groans, shrieks, 
 howls, or hisses. Our best qualities and our best 
 people are apt to catch the infection of this screaming 
 forcible-feebleness, and to lose their power to cheer in 
 their passion to declaim. Even our religious people, 
 paralyzed, seemingly, by a contemplation of the works 
 of Satan, are not celebrated for entering into the joy 
 of their Lord. Our morality, the moment it sets about 
 the work of reform, has a strong impulse to become 
 
206 CHEERFULNESS. 
 
 grim, haggard, and screechy ; and even the loftier vir- 
 tues are prone to put on a vinegar aspect, and to de- 
 press rather than exhilarate. Our benevolence, for 
 instance, sometimes labors most conscientiously to 
 make itself unamiable, diffuses unhappiness from the 
 best of motives, and, growing sour and shrewish by its 
 contact with suffering or contemplation of wrong, dis- 
 penses as much gall to its opponents as it does balm to 
 the afflicted and oppressed. It seems to find a satur- 
 nine satisfaction in fastening its attention on the dark- 
 est side of life. If there be anything base or brutal in 
 the foulest dens of metropolitan iniquity, see how 
 eagerly it seizes it, emphasizes it, detaches it from its 
 relations, talks about jt, writes, about it, throws it into 
 the faces and stamps it on the imaginations of young 
 and old, in the hope, we may suppose, of invigorating 
 the sense of right by corrupting the sense of beauty, 
 and converting us into philanthropists by a process 
 which begins by disgusting us with human nature. 
 Scenes of misery and sin thus occupying the most 
 conspicuous places in the picture gallery of the mind, 
 it is not surprising that many humane people, aghast 
 at the contemplation, should gradually associate cheer- 
 fulness with selfishness, and dutifully determine that 
 nothing but wretchedness shall escape from their 
 tongues and encamp on their faces. This morbid 
 
CHEERFULNESS. 207 
 
 benevolence, first adopted as a duty, soon resolves it- 
 self into a taste ; and then they hunt eagerly on the 
 trail of oflfences, to gather fresh topics of horrifying 
 scandal, and every new batch of crimes furnishes addi- 
 tional material for their ghastly gossip. And, to crown 
 all, in exploring the causes of the wickedness and 
 wretchedness which oppress their imaginations, they 
 have a strange proclivity to hit on those things which 
 are capable in themselves of affording innocent pleasure, 
 and too often think their purpose is attained when they 
 have pasted a thundering " Thou shalt not ! " on all 
 amusements and recreations. 
 
 jNow this ascetic acid in our morality and religion 
 must be modified by an aesthetic element, or- we strip 
 from virtue and duty and devotion the " awful " loveli- 
 ness, by which they attract as well as command, in- 
 spire as well as warn, cheer as well as threaten. It is 
 as dangerous to morality as it is destructive to cheer- 
 fulness to make virtue the husky and haggard thing it 
 is so often held up to be ; and accordingly, in the for- 
 mation of harmonious character, great stress is to be 
 laid on the education of the sense of beauty. There is 
 nothing that cheers so much as this. The contempla- 
 tion of beauty in nature, in art, in literature, in human 
 charactei-, diffuses through our being a soothing and 
 subtle joy, by which the "^heart's anxious and aching 
 
208 eHEERFULNESS. 
 
 cares are softly smiled away. Infuse into the purpose 
 with which you follow the various employments and 
 professions of life, no matter how humble they may 
 be, this sense of beauty, and you are transformed at 
 once from an artisan into an artist. The discontent 
 you feel with the work you are compelled to do comes 
 from your doing it in the spirit of a drudge. Do it in 
 the spirit of an artist, with a perception of the beauty 
 which inheres in all honest work, and the drudgery 
 will disappear in delight. It is the spirit in which we 
 work, not the work itself, which lends dignity to labor ; 
 and many a field has been ploughed, many a house has 
 been built, in a grander spirit than has sometimes at- 
 tended the government of empires and the creation of 
 epics. The cheerfulness which comes from the beau- 
 tiful performance of such secluded duties disclaims all 
 aid from mere animal spirits, and attaches itself reso- 
 lutely to what is immortal in our being. It is, as 
 South would say, " a masculine and severe thing ; the 
 recreation of the, judgment, the jubilee of reason; fill- 
 ing the soul, as God fills the universe, silently and 
 without noise ! " 
 
 We have thus gone over some of the sources and 
 causes of cheerfulness, and attempted to state a few of 
 the leading principles, the disregard of which causes so 
 much fret and discontent. It is the infirmity of us all 
 
CHEERFULNESS. 209 
 
 that we rarely discover these principles, obvious as 
 they are, until we have bitter experience of the con- 
 sequences of their violation ; in this somewhat resem- 
 bling that astute Irish pilot who assured the captain 
 of the ship that he knew all the rocks on the coast ; 
 " And that," he said, as the vessel struck and split, ^- 
 " that is, one of 'em ! " Still we must be allowed, 
 even if the information be of no ethical use, to proceed 
 to state the great crowning principle of growth in 
 cheerful character, including, as it does, those which 
 have been already considered, and suggesting many 
 more, — a principle which would repay the minutest 
 and most extensive scrutiny, but which we have only 
 space rapidly to indicate. This relates, of course, to 
 the Food of the mind, — the daily bread of thought, 
 emotion, and experience which the mind eats, and 
 converts into the blood and bone and sinew of charac- 
 ter. This, more than anything else, determines our 
 destiny for gladness or for gloom. The chief sources 
 of this mental food are external nature, society, and 
 the various forms of literature and art. All these 
 have their cheerful and invigorating or dark and de- 
 pressing phase, according to the disposition we bring 
 to the feast. 
 
 Nature is an inexhaustible fountain of clieer, — not, 
 indeed, as seen and felt by those whose simple object 
 14 
 
210 CHEERFtfLNESS. 
 
 is to make her yield a certain amount of com and 
 potatoes for the body, but by those who also regard her 
 as the dear and gracious mother, teeming with food for 
 the brain and heart of her children. Communion with 
 her sights, sounds, colors, and forms, — the hierogly- 
 phics of God, — and with the inner spirit, which gives 
 them life, meaning, and language to the soul, — closeness 
 to her mighty heart, and contact with her informing 
 mind, — this is the love of nature which inspires, heals, 
 refreshes, sublimes, and cheers. And happy are they, 
 whose characters grow and ripen under her genial 
 ministries, and who, in the words of a great poet, 
 speaking from his own deep experience, can testify 
 " of pleasures lying upon the unfolding intellect plen- 
 teously as morning dew-drops ; of knowledge inhaled 
 insensibly like the fragrance ; of dispositions stealing 
 into the spirit like music from unknown quarters ; of 
 images uncalled for and rising up like exhalations ; of 
 hopes plucked like beautiful wild-flowers &om the 
 ruined tombs that border the highways of antiquity, to 
 make a garland for a living forehead ; in a word, of 
 Nature as a teacher of truth through joy and through 
 gladness, and as a creatress of the faculties through a 
 process of smoothness and delight." 
 
 But hastening from this attractive theme, whose 
 fulness of wealth we have barely hinted, let us hazard 
 
0HEEEFULNES3. 211 
 
 a remark or two on the nature of the mental food we 
 derive from social life. Here, in the intercourse of 
 conversation, there is not only the expression of thoughts 
 and feelings, but the direct passage of mind into mind, 
 and characters, accordingly, are mutually fed and 
 formed. In conversation, to use a violent image, we 
 eat each other up, and this intellectual cannibalism 
 results, if the conversation be good, in an increase of 
 mental substance to all. Mr. "Webster was accustomed 
 to place conversation above all the other means and imple- 
 ments by which knowledge is obtained and dispositions 
 infused. How important, theil, that this great element 
 of culture should be cheerful, sympathetic, enlivening, 
 the graceful play of knowledge, the festivity of intelli- 
 gence, instead of being the sour, egotistic, sulky, or friv- 
 olous thing into which it is so often perverted. A grum- 
 bler or bigot in this intercourse should recollect that he is 
 spoiling the temper of others, in parading his own, and 
 that a voluminous catalogue of his aches and pains, or 
 a fierce outburst of his prejudices and hatreds, is hardly 
 needed to gratify the civil curiosity that inquires after 
 his health, or the polite tolerance that asks his opinion. 
 And, in reference to this matter of health,- there are 
 some persons, bores by instinct and profession, who 
 carry into their conversation a strong flavor of opodel- 
 doc and catnip-tea ; who convert everybody with whom 
 
212 CHEERFULNESS, 
 
 they talk into a consulting physician; and who are 
 never so happy as when they are blessed with some 
 lucky influenza or ague, which will furnish them with 
 a constant topic of edifying and attractive discourse. 
 Thus it is related of Mr. Webster, that being once in a 
 great Western city, waiting for the cars, he was entreat- 
 ed by the Mayor to devote the hour he had on his 
 hands to the business of being introduced to the citi- 
 zens. Somewhat reluctantly, being jaded by travel, 
 Mr. Webster consented. The first gentleman led up 
 was Mr. Janes, — a thousand closely treading on his 
 heels, all anxious to take the great man by the hand, 
 and only an hour for the whole to do it in. "Mr. 
 Webster," said the Mayor, " allow me to introduce to 
 you Mr. Janes, one of our most distinguished citizens." 
 " How do you do, Mr. Janes ? " said Mr. Webster, 
 in a tone not calculated to attract much confidence. 
 "The truth is, Mr. Webster," replied Mr. Janes, "I 
 am not very well." " I hope nothing serious is the 
 matter," sternly answered Mr. Webster. "Well, I 
 don't know that, Mr. Webster. I think it 's rheumatiz, 
 but my wife — " Here the Mayor rapidly interposed 
 with the next citizen : " Mr. Webster, this is Mr. 
 Smith " ; and thus, for the poor satisfaction of shaking 
 hands with Mr. Smith, Mr. Webster was doubtless 
 rendered wretched to the end of his days, through the 
 
CHEERFULNESS. 213 
 
 profound ignorance in which he was left as to the 
 exact nature of Mr. Janes's complaint. 
 
 But of all the expedients to make the heart lean, the 
 brain gauzy, and to thin life down into the consistency 
 of a cambric kerchief, the most successful is the little 
 talk and tattle which, in some charmed circles, is 
 courteously styled conversation. How human beings 
 can live on such meagre fare, — how continue existence 
 in such a famine of topics and on such a short allow- 
 ance of sense, — is a great question, if philosophy could 
 only search it out. All we know is that such men and 
 women there are, who will go on dwindling in this way 
 from fifteen to fourscore, and never a hint on their tomb- 
 stones that they died at last of consumption of the head 
 and marasmus of the heart! The whole universe of 
 God, spreading out its splendors and terrors, pleading 
 for their attention, and they wonder " where Mrs. Some- 
 body got that divine ribbon in her bonnet ! " The 
 whole world of literature, through its thousand trumps 
 of fame, adjuring them to regard its garnered stores of 
 emotion and thought, and they think, " It 's high time, 
 if John intends to marry Sarah, for him to pop the 
 question ! " When, to be sure, this frippery is spiced 
 with a little envy and malice, and prepares its small 
 dishes of scandal and nice bits of detraction, it becomes 
 endowed with a slightly venomous vitality, which does 
 
214 
 
 CHEERFULNESS. 
 
 pretty well, in the absence of soul, to carry on the 
 machinery of living, if not the reality of life. Seriously, 
 however, this levity of being, whether 'innocent or ma- 
 levolent, which thus splits the mind up into chips and 
 splinters of thought, and leaves it vacant of substance 
 and sap, is it not one, out of many nobler cause,s, of the 
 rumored lack of cheerfulness in American women ? — 
 a fact of which we know nothing except from the 
 melodious wail, alternating with melodramatic shrieks, 
 that comes up from so large a portion of our best 
 feminine literature. The men, of course, are great 
 rascals, and deprive women of their rights, and circum- 
 scribe the sphere of their influence, and hypocritically 
 sonnetize Desderaonas of the kitchen and Imogens of 
 the nursery, and are, besides, as superficial as they are 
 wicked, — all that is freely granted ; but still, is it not 
 possible that women, the autocratic rulers at least of 
 social life, can make it a' little better subserve its great 
 purpose of educating and enriching the mind without 
 any loss to its more festive grace and airier charm? 
 
 But leaving a topic which is fast treading on the 
 perilous edges of impertinence, let us pass to the con- 
 sideration of books, the third source of our mental food. 
 Here the influences springing from a communiop with 
 nature and intercourse with society are recast by the 
 mind of genius in the form of literature. This literature, 
 
CHEERFULNESS. 215 
 
 in the varieties of its spirit and depth, contains three 
 special forms of genius, according as nature, or society, 
 or both, contributed to build them up. Thus Words- 
 worth has derived his inspiration and his nutriment 
 almost exclusively from a communion with external 
 nature ; JPope, Swift, Walpole, Chesterfield, and Thack- 
 eray have derived theirs almost as exclusively from an 
 intercourse with society; while Chaucer, Cervantes, 
 Shakespeare, Goethe, and Scott combine the two. Au- 
 thors of this last plass have the most robust health of 
 mind, and dispense the most invigorating cheer. But 
 there is still another class, composed of men of large 
 but diseased powers and passions, who perversely mis- 
 conceive both nature and social life, distorting and dis- 
 coloring them with the morbid peculiarities of their own 
 minds. These authors belong to the Satanic or the 
 sentimental school, according as their inspiration is 
 mixed with a wilful pride or insatiable vanity ; and 
 though their genius may intensely stir the soul for the 
 time, they in the end deform or debilitate it. They 
 represent the grumbler, the sulker, the caustic abstrac- 
 tionist, the unregulated, inharmonious mind and discon- 
 tented heart, as vitalized and exaggerated, — as trans- 
 figured by the light, and mighty with the powers, and 
 tyrannous with the influence, of impassioned genius. 
 They are, indeed, bitter fountains of mental disease and 
 
216 CHEERFULNESS. 
 
 gloom ; yet as long as people will go to literature as to 
 a sort of gilded dram-shop of the brain, and love to 
 read books that stimulate only to leave them v^eak and 
 miserable, just so long will such authors continue to be 
 the most popular. The two great European leaders of 
 this school of Satanic sentimentality are Bousseau and 
 .Byron, — men whose powers and accomplishments have . 
 never been too highly lauded, and the cheerlessness oSJ 
 whose sentiments, the informing and directing soul of 
 their powers, has never been adequately probed and 
 exposed. Each was afflicted with the ravenous desire 
 to re.-create the world after his own image, and stamp 
 on nature and man " Jean Jacques, his mark," " Noel 
 Byron, his seal." How mean appears their self-exag- 
 gerating disregard of all the laws and limitations of our 
 being, when compared with the lofty composure with 
 which Wordsworth modestly contents his ambition for 
 influence : — 
 
 "Still glides the stream, and shall forever glide:. 
 The form remains, the function never dies : 
 But we, the great, the mighty, and the wise, 
 We men, who in our morn of life, defied 
 The elements, must perish. Be it so: 
 Content if something from our hands have power 
 To live, and act, and Ae/p the future hour: 
 And if, as toward the silent tomb we go, 
 Through hope, through love, and Faith's transcendent dower, 
 We feel that we are gi-eater than we know." 
 
CHEERFULNESS. 21t 
 
 It is not necessary to cheerful writing that it should 
 be witty writing or even humorous writing. There is 
 more inward joy to be derived from Thomson's Seasons 
 or Barrow's Sermons than from Pope's insidiously 
 misanthropic satires, or Hood's subtly pathetic extrava- 
 ganzas. Cheerfulness is a characteristic of all great 
 writers whose thoughts and imaginations have their 
 spring in primitive feeUngs and affections, which are 
 sound, vigorous, and unspotted .with discontent and 
 misanthropy. Thus Wordsworth, who never made but 
 one joke in his life, -r- and the wit of man has so far 
 labored in vain to see the point even of that, — is still 
 as essentially cheerful in his sylvan serenity of mood, 
 as that audacious, riotous, and profound buffoon, Rabe- 
 lais, who, like old Fortunatus, is " all felicity up the 
 brims." There is often in pathos a gentle and refining 
 melancholy, a tender sadness, which does not sadden. 
 The visionary splendors of Spenser's romantic muse 
 are as capable of infusing comfort into despairing imagi- 
 nations, as Montaigne's chirping practical wisdom is 
 of expelling crotchety notions from snarled and tangled 
 intellects. The fire of Milton's genius burns away the 
 mists and vapors of the soul as readily as they are 
 chased away by Ariosto's more graceful and gleeful 
 enchantments. The tempest-like passions that rend 
 the breasts of Lear, Macbeth, and Othello are spiritual 
 
218 
 
 CHEERFULNESS. 
 
 tonics. In short, where there is health in the senses 
 and the soul of the writer, there is cheer ; and, what is 
 more, the sunlike radiation of cheer. 
 
 Young writers who believe^ with Shelley, that most 
 men 
 
 " Are cradled into poetry by wrong, 
 And learn in suffering what they teach in song," 
 
 but who forget that such experience, passed through 
 the dissolving imagination of robust natures, comes out 
 in the form of beauty, are apt to get up an anguish to 
 sing about ; to make their particular grievance their 
 whole stock in trade ; and, mendicants for sympathy, to 
 pass round the hat to collect such coppers of compassion 
 and small change of tears as tender hearts can spare to 
 relieve their puny and puerile miseries. If any good 
 friend to them and to good letters would just hint that 
 the greatest poets are the most cheerful, they would as 
 quickly - affect vivacity as they now worship gloom. 
 Sterne states that when he visited Paris, in 1767, he 
 found th^t every French woman of fashion went through 
 three stages : first, she was a coquette ; then, as her 
 charms began to fade, a deist ; then, as she caught a 
 glimpse of the grave, a devotee. One lady, who ought, 
 he says, to have been a deist for some five years before 
 he had the honor of making her acquaintance, ex- 
 pressed to him her fear that she was beginning to 
 
CHEEEPULNESS. 219 
 
 doubt the truth of the Christian religion. Sterne 
 looked in her face, where beauty was palpably on the 
 wane, and, as if he were overcome by its loveliness, 
 said, " Madam, it is too soon — too soon ! " She, over- 
 joyed, dropped.the deist, reassumed the coquette, and 
 reported all over Paris that Mr. Sterne had said 
 more for revealed religion in half an hour than all the 
 Encyclopffidiasts ■ had ever said against it. Now the 
 affectation of misery in half the sentimental poetry 
 that spoils the spirits of its readers is capable of a con- 
 version as instantaneous as the affectation of deism in 
 Sterne's faded coquette ; for this much at least is to be 
 said for human nature, that men will adopt sense as read - 
 ily as nonsense, provided it flatters their vanity as well. 
 It would be needless to recapitulate the sources of 
 cheerfulness, as we have endeavored to set them forth 
 through many pages. . In conclusion it may be said 
 that we should specially watch and wait for those 
 precious moments, not common to the most bountifully 
 endowed natures, but coming at intervals to all, when 
 Heaven seems graciously revealed to our minds, — 
 when, through inlets of -inspiration suddenly opened, 
 stream thoughts and sentiments which, for the time, 
 make existence ecstasy ! Fix these moods in the 
 memory, hoard them in the heart, assimilate them 
 to the very substance of the soul ; for they can en- 
 
220 
 
 CHEERFULNESS. 
 
 dear life, and make it beautiful and sweet, long after 
 their imparadising rapture has faded into " the light 
 of common day.'' " Hold," says the Eastern proverb, 
 — " hold all the skirts of thy mantle extended when 
 Heaven is raining gold ! " 
 
MENTAL AKD MOEAL PAUPEEISM. 
 
 Maxims which address the understandings of men 
 through their vanity are rarely subjected to that pro- 
 cess of analysis which humbles and disenchants ; and 
 the maxims which parade the doctrine of human pro- 
 gress furnish nutriment so delicious to individual com- 
 placency that they often seriously interfere with 
 individual improvement. Thus we are never wearied 
 in asserting thafthe thoughts of all original thinkers 
 become the property of the race ; that a victory for 
 conscience and reason once won is never lost ; that 
 the philosopher of five centuries ago would be amazed 
 at the truths now taught in our common schools ;. and 
 that even if the great men of the past were giants, and 
 we are pygmies, we are still pygmies perched on the 
 shoulders of giants,, and can see farther than they. 
 
 But in the lazy satisfaction of contemplating state- 
 ments so consoling as these, we are tempted to forget 
 that the difference between the man who thinks and 
 lives and the man who repeats and vegetates — be- 
 
222 MENTAL AND MORAL PAUPERISM. 
 
 tween the man of character and the man of routine — 
 is a difference of immense moment ; that the truisms 
 into which we translate the wisdom and virtue of past 
 ages are deprived, in the process of translation, of the 
 life and flavor of the originals ; and that though we 
 may succeed to the discoveries and creations of genius, 
 we do not thereby succeed to its faculties and inspira- 
 tions. The truth is, that the real question relates to 
 our mental and moral condition ; to our moods, capaci- 
 ties, and wills ; to our depth or shallowness, our ele- 
 vation or meanness as men ; and we must strip our 
 minds of all the fine phrases which cover and adorn 
 our essential nature, and unflinchingly gaze . at the 
 image of ourselves faithfully reflected in conscious- 
 ness and conscience, before we bluster about progress 
 and assert our superiority to the past. 
 
 Perhaps the chief source of our delusion proceeds 
 from the fact that we possess the accumulated wisdom 
 of the world in books, and that in reading these we 
 seem to have mastered the knowledge of sixty cen- 
 turies of men. Who can doubt that we know more 
 than Bacon, when we may know all that Bacon knew, 
 and all that has been added to knowledge since Bacon 
 lived? But, in respect even to knowledge, few of us 
 have entered upon our inheritance, not because we 
 have neglected to study and acquire, but because we 
 
MENTAL AND MORAL PAUPERISM. 223 
 
 are feeble in our perceptions, and mentally incom- 
 petent to grasp what is preserved in our books. The 
 difficulty of putting a great mind into a little one is as 
 insuperable now as at the time of the Pharaohs. 
 Truly to know is vividly to reproduce. No deep 
 thought, no comprehensive generalization, ever really 
 penetrated into a shallow or pinched intellect ; no 
 generous and heroic action was ever domesticated in 
 a mean heart. We chatter about these matters, but 
 their life and substance are hidden from us. Knowl- 
 edge, like religion, nlust be " experienced," in order to 
 be known. The objective progress of arts, sciences, 
 and letters may be perfectly consistent w.ith our indi- 
 vidual ignorance and incapacity. The science of 
 metaphysics has advanced since Socrates, but to how 
 many praters on the philosophy of the human mind 
 is Socrates still an impenetrable mystery ? How many 
 of our politicians and patriots can be said to know 
 anything at all of the character of Washington ? Each 
 man's levity, bigotry, ignorance, vice, or littleness 
 erects a wall of adamant between himself and what- 
 ever is profound, comprehensive, wise, good, or great. 
 He knows nothing and appreciates nothing which he 
 has not earned the right to know and appreciate. He 
 is blind to the signs of that subtle freemasonry by 
 which thought communicates with thought. The ideas 
 
224 MENTAL AND MOKAL PAUPERISM. 
 
 of genius and the deeds of heroes and saints refuse 
 to house in his commonplaces ; and though he may 
 stmt in the "foremost files of time," and tickle his 
 vanity with the conceit of living in the world's most 
 enlightened period, and survey with pitying derision 
 the mistakes of dead sages and the credulities of his- 
 toric martyrs, he is still inexorably consigned, by a 
 chronology of the soul that flouts at the ordinary dis- 
 tinctions of time, to his due place among the lower 
 natures of an elder age. 
 
 This fact of the incommunicability of thought, 
 except to minds that think ; of aspirations, except to 
 natures that aspire ; and the resolute refusal of vital 
 ideas to acknowledge mechanical truisms for their 
 representatives, makes the problem less puzzling of 
 the assumed discrepancy between the convictions of 
 men and their actions. This discrepancy is rather 
 apparent than real, for the convictions of men are to be 
 deduced from their actions and lives, and not sought 
 in the opinions to, which their understandings indo- 
 lently assent, but which- their hearts repudiate and 
 their wills decline to adopt. Opinions are not ideas, 
 but the mere outside appearances of ideas. All ideas 
 deserving the name generally have their roots in the 
 nature of the thinker. They are appetites, passions, 
 sentiments, or aspirations in an intellectual form,— 
 
HBNTAL AND MORAL PAnPEKISSI. 225 
 
 the account which intelligence renders to a man of 
 the instincts which prompt his conduct. His id«as he 
 obtains through his nature or character ; his opinions 
 through his eyes and ears ; and opinions never deepen 
 into ideas, and become ingrafted, into character, unless 
 he has some affinities with the objects to which they 
 relate. The hypocrisy of life consists in living in a 
 low order of ideas for pleasure, while we are prompted 
 by vaaity to sport a high order of opinions for show. 
 Crises, publie or private, which call for immediate 
 action, at once determine what we really think by 
 demonstrating what we really are, and the majorities 
 for reason, right, and truth then dwindle into small 
 minorities indeed. 
 
 If, then, we expel from our minds all opinions which 
 are " under the safeguards of vanity " ; if we resolutely 
 try the age we live in by vital tests, and refuse to be 
 deluded by declamation, we shall find that there really 
 exists beneath the fair appearances of our social life an 
 immense amount of what may be called Intellectual 
 and Moral Pauperism, — a pauperism as worthy to 
 be probed to its sources by the philosopher, as are the 
 more ordinary and visible forms of it, which specially 
 attract the attention of the economist. We. call it 
 Pauperism, because we can hit upon no more expres- 
 sive term to designate the poor, meagre, feeble, stinted, 
 15 
 
226 MENTAL AND MORAL PAtTPERISM. 
 
 and dependent natures who crowd the almshouses and 
 hospitals of the world of mind ; who scramble for the 
 crumbs which fall from the tables of richer intellects ; 
 who, from defect of mental life, are .incompetent to 
 get their own mental living ; and who, while they 
 appear outwardly independent and self-sufScing, in- 
 wardly beg and creep and cringe. It is hardly neces- 
 sary to add that these paupers are not confined to what 
 are styled the poorer classes, but that their indigence 
 and inefficiency peep out from respectable silk and 
 broadcloth, and stare at us from prominent positions in 
 society, politics, and the learned professions. Strive as 
 they may to conceal their bankruptcy of nature by a 
 certain intellectual smirk and swagger, in which con- 
 ceit apes capacity, the fact still becomes fatally mani- 
 fest the moment that circumstances demand the reality 
 and refuse, the semblance of ability. And then how 
 many men there are who have lost all feeling of inde- 
 pendence, — men who cannot stand upright ; whose 
 knees bend at the presence of rough power ; who are 
 victims of the last word or the last argument ; who lean 
 by instinct on more vigorous natures ; who crawl at the 
 feet of leaders by whom they have been pushed or 
 bullied into certain cliques, sects, or parties, and, men- 
 tally and morally prostrated, are paupers confessed ! 
 There are two modes of accounting for this wide- 
 
MENTAL AND MORAt PAUPEEISM. 22^ 
 
 spread mendicity of soul. It may be referred to origi- 
 nal defect or littleness of individual nature issuing 
 naturally in self-sufficient or servile insuificiency. This 
 theory makes stupidity an important element in the 
 plan of Divine Providence, and implies that God 
 creates some souls with, the intention that, in this world, 
 they shall dwindle rather than develop. Another and 
 far more hopeful view of the matter refers this pau-' 
 perism to mistakes and misdirections in the education 
 of the mind ; for however great may be the original 
 differences in power among individuals, they are still 
 differences of degree and not of kind. The weakest, 
 stupidest, and most barren of human beings was in 
 childhood a fresh and living force; and he has still 
 buried within him an unquenchable principle of vitality, 
 which allies him in kind to Shakespeare and Newton, 
 however covered up this principle may be now by layer 
 on layer of deadening habits. If this were suddenly 
 stung into activity, the man would leap out of his 
 cerements of prejudice, custom, and sorry self-content, 
 and be transformed from a dull digesting machine into 
 a living person. Such a resurrection actually occurs 
 when some fortunate incident, be it of agony or rapture, 
 speaks the abrupt and startling word which cuts its 
 way to the sleeping soul, and compels it to wake. But 
 it could have needed no electric shock to bring it to 
 
228 MENTAL AND MOBAL PAUPERISM. 
 
 life, if it had observed the genial conditions of life from 
 the beginning. God made the person ; his own folly> 
 or more frequently the folly of others, early paralyzed 
 his power, and turned him into that bundle of sensa- 
 tions, memories, and habits which we are obliging 
 enough to dignify with the name of man. 
 
 If every created soul has thus an indestructible indi- 
 viduality, capable of indefinite growth, or, at least, capa- 
 ble of growing into the moral and mental stature of 
 man or woman, the causes which weaken this individual 
 force, and arrest this growth, are directly traceable to 
 a violation of the laws of mind, in the modes or acci- 
 dents of education. Education, in its largest sense, 
 includes, of course, all the influences which operate on 
 the mind from infancy ; but even in its restricted appli- 
 cation to the school and the college, it is heavily re- 
 sponsible for the processes by which mental forces are 
 turned into mental paupers. One hardly has patience 
 in thinking of the many ingenious devices of conscien- 
 tious pedants to murder the minds given them to 
 develop. With a very imperfect notion of what an 
 immortal being is ; with no delicate perception of the 
 peculiarities of youthful intelligence ; and, in their con- 
 ceit of practicality, scorning as metaphysical the ideas 
 of education drawn by common sense from an analysis 
 of the human mind ; they persist in .an erroneous 
 
MENTAL AND MORAL PAUPERISM. 229 
 
 system of culture, which multiplies impediments to 
 intellectual development under the pretence of furnish- 
 ing aids. "My schoolmaster," says Carlyle, "was a 
 good Latin scholar, and of the human mind he knew 
 this much, — that it had a faculty called memory, which 
 might be reached through the muscular integument by 
 the appliance of birchen rods." Vigorous natures break 
 through these impediments ; contrive to assert their 
 individuality; and at last leave the schools with the 
 possibility of being men, if not scholars. Youths of 
 genius are therefore commonly saved to the world in 
 spite of all contrivances to make them dunces; but, 
 then, what risks are often run ! Martin Luther, for 
 example, was a person who could not have been con- 
 veniently spared in the sixteenth century ; but that- 
 Martin Luther was not killed, morally, mentally, and 
 physically, before he was sixteen, was owing to no 
 lack of effort on the part of his teachers to commit 
 homicide, but to the immense resisting vitality of his 
 own character. There is hardly a poet, artist, philoso- 
 pher, or man of science, mentioned in the history of 
 the human intellect, whose genius was not opposed by 
 parents, guardians, or teachers. In these cases Nature 
 seems to have triumphed by direct interposition; to 
 have insisted on her darlings having their rights; and 
 encouraged disobedience, secrecy, falsehood, even flight 
 
230 MENTAL AND MORAL PAUPERISM. 
 
 from home and occasional vagabondism, rather than 
 the world should lose what it cost her so much pains 
 to produce. But it is too apt to be otherwise with 
 those whose minds require intelligent and careful cul- 
 ture, and who are not originally strong enough to over- 
 come obstacles to their development. They have 
 enough in them to make them, under proper training, 
 solid, intelligent, capable, self-helping men ; under im- 
 proper training, they are cramme(f and flagellated 
 through " a course of study," and afterward sink slowly 
 into the pauper plass of sterile and stunted natures. 
 
 The fundamental defect of this improper training is 
 its perverse misconception of the purpose of teaching. 
 The pedagogue does not condescend to look into the 
 brain and heart of his pupil, but strives to remake him 
 after his own image, or the image of certain idolized 
 rules. He thinks his duty is performed when the au- 
 thorized processes have been gone through, resembling 
 the doctor in the well-known epigram, who blisters, 
 bleeds, and sweats all who call for his professional ser- 
 vices, and is supremely indifferent to their fate, in case 
 they have the bad taste to die under such regular 
 treatment. He would doubtless prefer to have his 
 pupil turn out a Tully rather than a Titmouse or a 
 Toots ; but if nothing comes of him it is because there 
 is nothing in him. He is never weary of repeating 
 
MENTAL AND MORAL PAtTPEKISM. 231 
 
 that his business is " to give instruction, and not to give 
 brains," and thus commonly contrives to elude tiie 
 responsibility of quenching the soul of his pupil by 
 questioning its existence. But it would be far more 
 ■ reasonable to seek for the cause of his failure in the 
 error of his system ; and this error we believe to consist 
 in not subordinating the acquisition of knowledge to the 
 formation of faculties. To crush the growing faculty 
 by cramming ft is not the way to make scholars, though 
 it may be the way to make scholastic imbeciles. Let 
 us take an instance in which a seeming success is 
 achieved. Numerous facts and principles are tied to 
 the mind, instead of being infused into the mind, and 
 the result is paraded as an educated man ; but the 
 moment this educated man comes into practical life, 
 we find that he has information without being really 
 informed ; that he has thoughts without being endowed 
 with the po\Yer of thinking ; and that, in capacity to 
 guide and influence others, or to stand on his own legs 
 in a contest with others, he is no man at all. With 
 seeming learning and talents, he lacks the quality 
 which austerely tests the reality of both ; that is, he 
 lacks ability, — the power of originating intelligent 
 action. 
 
 It is curious how this divorce between the active and 
 receptive powers results in the weakening of both. If 
 
232 MENTAL AND. MORAL PAUPERISM. 
 
 we take any number of so-eaUed educated men who 
 belong to the destitute, non-producing dass, in the 
 sphere of intellect, we shall find that they have one 
 psychological biography. Their first perceptions, 33 
 children, were fresh and eager, capable of taking in 
 knowledge judiciously adapted to their wants, and of 
 assimilating it into active power. Everything indicated 
 a mental condition in which the nature would grow and 
 expand as nutriment was provided for it. But these 
 perceptions were early blunted^ and their vital connec- 
 tion with the will early severed, in a well-intentioned 
 attempt to overwork delicate powers, and to substitute 
 the image of the schoolmaster for the image of God. 
 The first timid peeping forth of independent thought, 
 like the head of the turtle from its shell, was cowed by 
 the pedagogue's ferule, and swiftly drawn in. For the 
 direct communion of the person with things was sub- 
 stituted the packing the memory with the names of 
 things. The will withered as the verbal information 
 accumulated. All the weapons in the armory of knowl- 
 edge were successively placed by the side of the pupils, 
 but each weapon was obtained at the expense of fur- 
 ther enfeebling the arms which were to wield it, The 
 result was to make them memories, but not men. They 
 passed into the world, and found a master in every 
 sturdy soul that looked out upon them from a pair of 
 
MENTAL ANB MOEAL PAUPEEISM. 233 
 
 human eyes. Thus they soon diseovered their insuffi- 
 ciency of will; what is still concealed from them is 
 their shallowness of intellect. They read Homer and 
 ^sohylus, Dante and Tasso, Schiller and Goethe, 
 Chaucer, Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, and Burke, and 
 believe their receptive powers at least to be as broad 
 as human reason and imagination. Never was there 
 a greater mistake. They receive no more than what 
 their dwindled natures enable them to receive, and 
 that is a slight exaltation of themselves. The writers 
 read by their eyes are really sealed books to their 
 minds. Great sentiments, great imaginations, great 
 ideas, great men, are shorn of their proportions, are cut 
 down to dwarfish size, in the process of getting them 
 into their small and feeble characters. There is noth- 
 ing in them which gives an answering thrill to ampli- 
 tude of thought and heroism of action. The moment 
 they begin to prattle about their "favorite authors," 
 we become aware of their incapacity to feel or to know 
 what they read. The essential thing in history, poetry, 
 philosophy, science, sKps away from their thin percep- 
 tions ; and men of taste, as they assume to be, many a 
 Scotch plough-boy, humming a song of Burns, is deeper 
 in the mystery of creative art than they can ever be. 
 Rich natures, then, cannot even be perceived by pauper 
 natures. The mind that is unfed is also unstored. 
 
234 MENTAL AND MORAL PATJPEKISM. 
 
 These intellectual paupers are sometimes writers; 
 but they were taught to write according to the rules of 
 rhetoric, and early directed to form their style on the 
 best models ; that is, to avoid words and phrases which 
 conveyed what they felt and knew, for words and 
 phrases which conveyed what Addison, or Croldsmith, 
 or Burke felt and knew. Style in this way was early 
 disconnected with character, and made an end in itself. 
 The matter with which" literature deals was overlooked 
 in order to pay a more scrupulous attention to its form. 
 Composition was thus made a discipline of falsehood. 
 Words were divorced from things. Vulgarity being 
 the great rhetorical sin, a superficial elegance was pur- 
 chased at the expense of all naturalness. "With every 
 elegant sentence a new incrustation was laid on the 
 soul, and an additional veil drawn before realities ; and 
 writing, instead of being an invigorating contest with 
 the difficulties of expression, in which the whole nature 
 is actively engaged, was degraded into machine labor. 
 Now these men, thus absurdly taught to extinguish 
 emotions and skulk from thoughts, to suppress them- 
 selves instead of to express themselves, may origi- 
 nally have had sentiments, passions, and ideas stir- 
 ring within them to convey which in words would 
 have been a joyous exercise of power, provided they 
 could have been permitted to use the words which 
 
MENTAL AND MOEAL PATJPEEISM. 235 
 
 sprang from this direct impression of things ; but being 
 under tuition, and not having sufficient rude, aborigi- 
 nal force of mind to revolt against authority, they were 
 polished into imbecility and trained into pauperism. 
 They make tolerable "fine writers," but for the real 
 business of literature they are impotent. Declining, 
 from an exquisite feeling of propriety, to announce a 
 purpose or utter a truth, their euphonious sentences 
 drop on unheeding ears from the absence of vitality and 
 meaning in the music. Keal books, embody real men, 
 and intellectual influence is the work of forces, not of 
 phantoms. 
 
 This system of emptying words of life becomes of 
 great practical importance when we reflect that a large 
 portion of the mental food of the people, whether it 
 be thought or husks of thought, comes from contem- 
 porary literature and addresses from the pulpit. Per- 
 sons, mentally poor, fly to literature to be mentally en- 
 riched; persons, spiritually poor, go to church to be 
 spiritually enriched; but it is too often their fate to 
 - come away from both the same paupers they were 
 before. The minister's brain is often the " poor-box " 
 of the church. The object of establishing the thou- 
 sands on thousands of pulpits Jn the United States ig, 
 we suppose, the religious education and inspiration of 
 the millions who crowd the pews. It is expected every 
 
236 MENTAL AND MORAL PAUPEEISM. 
 
 week that from the clergymen will be radiated an im- 
 mense stream of religious vitality into the wills of the 
 congregations. The^known effects produced by great 
 preachers in imparting religions power as well as com- 
 municating religious knowledge, demonstrate the &ct 
 of the possibility of spiritual influence. But to be a 
 conductor of life one must have life ; to break through 
 the inward defences of sin and selfishness, and make 
 words feel their way surely to the springs of motive, 
 one must have a vigorous nature imparting^ itself in 
 vigorous speech. Now how far does the rhetorical 
 training of clergymen of average force qualify them 
 for this work? The tendency of this training is un- 
 doubtedly to denude language of its vitality by viewing 
 it as something to be learned apart from the soul of 
 thought, sentiment, and voliticw, of which language is 
 naturally the body. Style is taught as if words were 
 not windows but window-screens of natures. The 
 future pastor is told to seek his words, not in the 
 depths of his own heart and brain, where they are 
 quivering with the spirit of the ideas and emotions 
 there just starting into being, but to seek for them in 
 Hooker, or Taylor, or Baxter, or Doddridge, or the 
 dictionary. He goes to masters of expression in order 
 to be the slave of their expression. His individuality is 
 consequently impoverished with every addition to his 
 
MENTAL AND MORAL PAUPERISM. 237 
 
 vocabulary. The gulf between himself and his words 
 widens with his increased dexterity in marshalling them. 
 By the time he is qualified to preach, his style has 
 acquired its finishing touch of accurate, fluent, and 
 elegant impotence. What he is in himself nobody 
 -knows. ' He may be conscientious and devout ; he may 
 be a debauchee and a scofier ; the only certain thing 
 about the matter is, that the sermon is not the man. 
 Instead of looking directly at the spiritual condition of 
 his flock, and driving the thought or appeal right home 
 to their hearts in words instinct with an awful meaning 
 and a resolute purpose, he clearly and smoothly states 
 certain doctrines, illustrates them v/ith fade images and 
 stereotyped examples, and enforces them with the hard 
 and brittle declamation of false feeling. "Where is the 
 dying man speaking to dying men ? In fact, there is no 
 man at all ; no person, no thought, no perception, but a 
 mechanical Understanding, gifted with some learning, 
 and a large array of dead words. Is it not frightful 
 that this theological pauper should trifle with such 
 themes as the salvation and damnation of souls .'' 
 
 If, as we contend, a vast amount of original force 
 and possible intelligence is lost to the world by bad 
 modes of education, — if so many of our educated men 
 have been swindled out of their brains, and made into 
 moral paupers by pedants and pedagogues, — and if 
 
238 MENTAL AND MORAL PAtFPERISlf. 
 
 all this evil is attempted to be ignored and obscured 
 by lusty crowing and cackling about the triumph of 
 progressive ideas and the world's enlightenment, it is 
 well for thoughtful eyes to look facts steadily in thfe 
 face, and sternly insist on holding to the fundamental 
 principles of real improvement. Progress is an excel- 
 lent thing for the world ; the conceit of progress is the 
 worst of all things for individuals ; and as the progress 
 of the world depends on the progress of individuals, 
 the conceit of it becomes a dangerous obstacle to the 
 reality. Passing, then, from the consideration of the 
 stunted and indigent natures we have been compelled 
 to observe in some of the " highly educated " classes, 
 we come to the mental pauperism revealed in a scru- 
 tiny of the common mind. Now the raw material out 
 of which individualized intelligence is made is there in 
 profusion, but much of it lies in confused heaps. "We 
 have a right to expect that an intelligent people like 
 our own should be able to observe a series of facts, 
 make at least a single application of a principle, and 
 take one or two steps in analysis ; yet there are signs 
 all about us that a great many are incompetent to do 
 these simple acts. Take the catch-words of politics. 
 They would cease to be so ruinously influential, if, 
 after having served to tickle a prejudice, they were 
 submitted to the slightest probe of analysis. Politi- 
 
MENTAL AND MORAL PAUPERISM. 239 
 
 cians cunningly enough conclude that the effort will 
 not be made, but the vote be determined not by the 
 brain but the ears. Again, with what docile withhold- 
 ing of the analytic faculty do the cheated constituents 
 of a political rat receive his voluble reasons for his 
 change of position ! The rogue knows that all who 
 sift his excuses know him to be a rogue, but he- relies 
 -confidently on the absence of the sifting disposition or 
 the sifting power in the majority of his partisans. 
 
 In regard to observation, which seems to be the 
 easiest of mental operations, we are taught by experi- 
 ence to rank it among the rarest. There is every 
 reason to suppose that the success of the innumerable 
 fanaticisms and impostures which afflict society is 
 directly owing to the absence of this power among 
 their victims. Practical men, running over with " com- 
 mon sense,'' are as likely to be duped as the most 
 credulous ; for, ridiculing the notion that men with 
 good eyes cannot see what passes under their view, 
 they have a conceit of possessing the power. But 
 it is the mind that really sees, and unless that has 
 been- trained to scrutinize objects, to distrust the first 
 impressions of the senses, and to recognize the necessity 
 of some scientific mental discipline, it is at the mercy 
 of every impudent conjurer who pretends to work 
 miracles. The characteristic of correct observation is 
 
240 MENTAL AND MORAL PAUPERISM. 
 
 that it intelligently looks, not stupidly stares, at what 
 is new or surprising, and it looks long enough and 
 sharply enough to distinguish what is real from what 
 is apparent. The eye it fastens on a series of facts is 
 an eye that analyzes, disposes, and combines in observ- 
 ing. The great characteristic of incorrect observation 
 is that it confounds facts with the appearances of facts, 
 and dogmatizes immediately on what it seems to see. 
 Its eyesight has no quality of insight or foresight? 
 Let us take in Ulustration the delusion which is ab- 
 surdly named Spiritualism. Now whether the phe- 
 nomena of this portentous satire on our mental enlight- 
 enment be real or only apparent, there can be no 
 doubt that the way they have been investigated has 
 been enfeebling and corrupting to the popular mind. 
 It ia certain that no man who has a just idea of spirit- 
 uality can recognize any spirits, celestial or diabolic, 
 in the agents who rap on the tables. It is certain >that 
 the phenomena, as interpreted, contradict known laws 
 of the mind, and known laws of the material world. 
 It is certain that the inherent improbability of the 
 alleged facts would make a real observer investigate 
 in, the critical spirit of one who was aiming to de- 
 tect an imposition ; for it is notorious that nothing 
 confuses observation so much as an antecedent willing- 
 ness to believe the marvels which it is the object of 
 
MENTAL AND MORAL PAUPERISM. 241 
 
 observation rigidly to test. It might be supposed, ia 
 view of these considerations, that practical men would 
 hesitate to receive as final the testimony of their eyes, 
 especially as the conditions under which the wonders 
 are performed are conditions which easily admit of 
 deception, and that they do hot actually see as well as 
 they think they see. Yet men who pride themselves 
 on their common sense are constantly deluded into a 
 belief in impossibilities, and call their confident credu- 
 lity self-reliance and superiority to scientific prejudice ! 
 It is true they are self-reliant to the extent of disregard- 
 ing and despising the judgments of competent observers, 
 but such self-reliance is allied to the firmness which 
 was praised in a certain American statesman, — " the 
 firmness," as it appeared to an opponent, " of ten jack- 
 asses " ; and this self-reliance does not prevent them 
 from having the most abject reliance on the assertions 
 of those whose vanity or interest it is to mystify and 
 dupe them. Indeed, whatever view may be taken of 
 the assumed facts of Spiritualism, it is certain that they 
 have not been observed by their believers. If the fac- 
 ulty of observation had been fairly exercised, the 
 worst effects of Spiritualism would not have occurred, 
 namely, its effects in pauperizing the mind, — in making 
 it close shut to the most obvious truth, and wide open 
 to the most ridiculous error, — sceptical in the wrong 
 16 
 
242 MENTAL AND MOKAL PAUPERISM. 
 
 direction and believing in the wrong direcfion, and 
 leaning for spiritual support on a nonsensical material- 
 ism whose tendency is to corrupt as well as to befool. 
 
 Mental pauperism is sometimes the. cause, sometimes 
 the effect, of moral pauperism. Both are ultimately 
 resolved into a violation of the same principle. Con- 
 science and intelligence are enriched when they are in 
 immediate communion with the realities which cor- 
 respond to conscience and intelligence ; but once cut off 
 from the mind the supplies of vitahty it receives from 
 the perception of real facts and principles, and the 
 result is sterility of intellect and imbecility of wilL 
 Now, there is no lack of a certain kind of morality, — 
 voluble on all tongues, and buzzing in all ears. Does 
 not everybody admit axioms of morals which in former 
 ages were strenuously denied ? Is it not the pride of 
 every citizen that he lives in a moral community ? 
 But the real question relates not to moral truisms, the 
 prevalence of which has occasioned an exaggerated 
 estimate of the moral progress of mankind, but to 
 moral power. It is the absence of power which makes 
 the moral pauper; and the absence of power to act 
 morally is closely connected with the absence of power 
 to perceive morally ; for moral principles, vitally -ap- 
 prehended by the intellect, infuse moral strength into 
 the will. The persons who lack moral life have but 
 
MENTAL AND MORAL PAUPERISM. 243 
 
 the shallowest pretences to moral perception. They 
 have no feeling or knowledge of the serene strength, 
 the still, deep rapture of the mind really open to the 
 awful beauty of those laws and principles which are 
 divinely ordered for the regulation of human conduct. 
 This vision of goodness creates the love of what is 
 noble and right ; and the will is urged in the direction 
 of duty by inclination. Mechanical morality is deprived 
 of this power," because the pinched or haggard face 
 which Virtue presents to it is less attractive than the 
 painted countenance of Vice. Here we have the rea- 
 son of the feeble hold of commonplace morality on the 
 general mind. It yields to appetite, to interest, to 
 almost every passion, because it presents no induce- 
 ments to self-denial. It is a form of words representing 
 no overpowering reality ; and good words are no match 
 for bad things. 
 
 Now it would be easy to subject the apparent moral- 
 ity in our social life — m our manners, customs, and 
 politics — to an analysis which would reveal great 
 hollowness and dearth in its decencies and proprieties. 
 But we have only space to consider one of the most 
 successful of the many mimicries of moral power. 
 This consists in the union of moral truisms with h-ri- 
 tated sensibilities. - It passes under the name of enthu- 
 siasm for moral ideas, and if it were what it assumes to 
 
244 MENTAL AND MOKAL PAtTPEEISM. 
 
 be, it would alter the constitution of our society with 
 great rapidity, for the men and women who are thought 
 to possess it are- to be counted by thousands. A few 
 persons of real moral energy start reforms, and form 
 associations to promote them ; but it is a great mistake 
 to suppose that all the members are on a moral level 
 with the objects and principles they are associated to 
 promote, or that they perceive the dignity and eleva- 
 tion of the truths they repeat. The associations are 
 merely mechanical aggregations of individuals, while 
 the sins and stupidities they oppose are oi'ganized facts, 
 with deep and tough roots in perverted human nature ; 
 and being thus follies and immoralities organized in 
 human beings, they will only yield to morality and wis- 
 dom organized in human beings. Now the circum- 
 stance of being connected with an Association, and 
 assenting to its principles and objects, does not give 
 this morality and wisdom. But it may give a right to 
 indulge in moral declamation, and accordingly many 
 thin and acrid natures, whose spleen is anxious to wear 
 the mask of righteous indignation, join the association 
 for the purpose of finding a consecrated mode of grati- 
 fying their bad temper. Invective, of course, is not 
 in itself wrong. Indeed it is matter of indifference 
 whether a man of moral power smites or smiles ; 
 through the humor and through the wrath the rich 
 
MENTAL AND MOEAL PAUPEEISM. 245 
 
 ethical force of his nature finds an equal vent, and 
 works an equal good; but this is not so in men of 
 moral opinions, who have never penetrated into the 
 heart of moral ideas, and whose hatred of wickedness 
 is simply the snarl of an irritated brain. Is not much 
 that passes for moral fervor simply an assault on base- 
 ness, selfishness, and wrong, by characterless opinions 
 embodied in bullying words? Yet so many of these 
 are incessantly hissing and exploding over people's 
 heads, that many are deceived by the noise into an 
 impression that a real reformation is in progress. But 
 invective, though it may be used by a Luther, does not 
 make a Luther. The words became in hi^ case " half- 
 battles," because the soul of the warrior burned and 
 blazed in them. He hurled his inkstand at the devil 
 , with some efiect ; but it is not thence to be supposed 
 that his modern imitators, though darkening the air 
 with their inkstands, will succeed in blotting Satan out 
 of existence. Penury of thought and poverty of power 
 derive no more efficiency from words that curse than 
 from words that creep ; and it is doubtful if the " king- 
 dom of this world " can be upset by a blast from the 
 dictionaries. It is especially doubtful at the present 
 time, when, fire being taken out of language and fussi- 
 ness put in, the most potent words — somewhat over- 
 worked, it is true, by editors and orators — can be had 
 
246 MENTAL AND MORAL PADTERISM. 
 
 for a song in Worcester's or "Webster's verbal bazars, 
 and are known to buzz or rattle by a ruminating public 
 unregarded and stingless. Occasionally, however, you 
 may even now catch some timorous, indecisive conser- 
 vator of things as they are, and by tattooing him with 
 furious invective piping hot from Burke,, and Teutonic 
 truculencies fresh from Carlyle, — by writing " traitor 
 to humanity " on his forehead, and pasting " assassin " 
 on his back, — and by showing the poor, trembling 
 innocent, orphaned of his mother wit, how closely he 
 resembles Nero and Tiberius, Sir Eobert Filmer as he 
 wrote and Captain Kidd "as he sailed," — you may 
 turn him from being a pauper repeater of the truisms 
 of conservatism into a pauper repeater of the truisms 
 of j-eform. But the forcible portion of the public, 
 thoroughly acclimated to this " fitful fever of abuse," 
 heed it not. The whole business of moral word-piling, 
 indeed, has been altogether overdone ; terms have lost 
 their old, destructive significance; whole classes are 
 most serenely indifferent to a rhetoric of contempt and 
 execration which stigmatizes them as criminals worse 
 than robbers and murderers ; and the rogues and liber- 
 tibides of the land promise to have everything their 
 own way, if we can oppose them with no forces more 
 efiicient than are found in our phrases. 
 
 In this rapid sketch of some of the forms which pau* 
 
MENTAL AND MORAL PAUPERISM. 247 
 
 perism assumes in the sphere of intellect and morals, 
 we have described a mendicity as real as that which is 
 clothed in rags, and begs for food and shelter. The 
 survey compels us to the conclusion, that there is noth- 
 ing in social and educational arrangements, nothing in 
 the instrumentalities of reform, nothing in the mere 
 presence of unappropriated knowledge, which can com- 
 pensate for the lack of primitive, individual life, issuing, 
 in individualized force and intelligence, in constant 
 contact with substantial realities. We have seen how 
 much want and indigence, how much impotence of will 
 and poverty of intellect, — what dearth of ideas, inca- 
 pacity of self-support, and parasitical leaning upon 
 others, — may exist under our most flaring shows of 
 opulence. We have also seen how impossible it is for 
 men who are mentally and morally barren to do more 
 than mimic the words and actions of the wise and good ; 
 for a power which works with the certainty of fate 
 keeps their souls in almshouses, though their bodies be 
 in palaces and their lips talk in the phrases of Paradise. 
 Such men can rise out of their pauper condition only 
 when their natures are lifted into the comprehension and 
 experience of the intellectual and spiritual verities, the 
 names of which are now so glib on their tongues. And 
 when we speak of verities, we by no means intend to 
 confine the meaning of the word to the laws and facts 
 
24:8 MEKTAL AND MORAL PAUPERISM. 
 
 of art, literature,' science, morals, and religion, but to 
 include also the laws which regulate the most practical 
 affairs. In this country it is impossible for any defect 
 to exist in the mind of the nation without its being felt 
 in the business of the nation; and a scrutiny of the 
 business of the nation reveals a most portentous igno- 
 rance and violation of the most obvious principles of 
 trade. Doubtless there is an immense moral and 
 mental energy exercised in our commerce, manufac- 
 tures, and general industrial enterprises; but there is 
 also visible much recklessness, stupidity, and poverty 
 of intelligence. This pauperism in the business mind is 
 the cause of the frequent financial panics which plunge 
 the creators of capital and the creators of debt into a 
 common bankruptcy, — Nature, when she cannot im- 
 press a neglected truth in her higher manifestations of 
 power, being perfectly willing to write it out in dollars 
 and cents. The country is altogether too prolific in So- 
 called merchants, manufacturers, and railroad specula- 
 tors, who are incompetent to understand a single fact 
 or law of trade, who cannot comprehend or apply a 
 single principle of political economy, who have neither 
 insight nor foresight, and whose " smartness '' consists 
 in a most notable superiority to common honesty and 
 common decency, in their attempts to escape from the 
 difficulties into which they are led by a blind and blun- 
 
MENTAL AND MORAL PAUPERISM. 249 
 
 dering desire to make money. These paupers have 
 their " ups and downs," but they commonly contrive to 
 live in comparative afl3.uence by a succession of failures. 
 They are supported by the real creators of wealth, just 
 as much as if they depended on the pot)r-rates instead 
 of depending on their impudence and folly. By our 
 system of credit they " get trusted." Now when a 
 merchant trusts another he intends to trust qualities of 
 character ; he trusts a supposed veracity, honesty, pru- 
 dence, and skill ; but the event too often proves that he 
 has trusted a thoughtless, flashy, incompetent, weak- 
 witted, thoroughly bankrupt, and pauperized nature. 
 It is impossible to compute the vast injury that this 
 kind of business-man does to the interests of the coun- 
 try, and the effect his nonsense has in paralyzing or 
 ruining the enterprises of better men ; we simply draw 
 the conclusion (hat the same pauperism and leanness of 
 soul, which is so calamitous in all the other departments 
 of human thought and effort, works some of its worst 
 ravages when its blundering inability of perception and 
 forecast is perversely active in the complicated and sen- 
 sitive system of commercial and industrial phenomena. 
 
THE GENIUS OF DICKENS. 
 
 Notwithstanding the prominence given to the 
 idea and sentiment of humanity in the works of the 
 leading English poets and romancers of the time, it 
 is doubtful if a genuine flesh-and-blood sympathy with 
 human beings is a characteristic of contemporary litera- 
 ture. Liberality of opinion, and a democratic disdain 
 of class distinctions, are in the fashion ; but that cos- 
 mopolitan acceptance and genial delineation of the 
 varieties of human nature, which we find in the Tory 
 Sir Walter, are not specially observable in the works 
 of literary liberals. Their liberalism is didactic rather 
 than dramatic. Tennyson is a man of ideas and ideals, 
 and introduces us only to the " first society " of the 
 intellect and imagination. Browning has the dramatic 
 power without the dramatic feeling ; and what sympa- 
 thies he has are directed to persons and themes which 
 excite the antipathies of average readers. In both we 
 are conscious of a certain intellectual superciliousness, 
 a dainty withdi^awal fi'om the common and vulgar in 
 
THE-SENinS OF DICKENS. 251 
 
 human life, ua implied appeal to the higher class of 
 cultivated minds alone. They seem to think the human 
 race so fine a thing in itself, that most of the individuals 
 who compose it ought to be ashamed of themselves for 
 not being capable of loftier virtues or more impressive 
 depravities. They love, in fact, their notions of the 
 possibilities of humanity, rather than humanity itself. 
 Like nature, as complained of by the painter, real 
 human beings are apt to "put them out." Among 
 novelists, Thackeray is tolerant, but then his tolera- 
 tion is essentially contemptuous of its objects ; Kings- 
 ley, with all his vehement pretences to comprehension, 
 only succeeds in individualizing his pet theories of 
 men and women, and makes coxcombs even of his 
 bullies ; and George Eliot, who in general compass of 
 intellect excels all contemporary romancers, and whose 
 nicety and force of characterization are, in her own 
 walk, so admirable, still appears to consider humanity 
 with profound pity rather than confident hope, and 
 leaves on the minds of her readers an impression of 
 -sadness which her large charity is powerless to over- 
 come. It is curious that Carlyle, the most illiberal of 
 modern writers, a man who loses no occasion to vent 
 his scorn on whole races and nations, and who con- 
 siders all the philanthropic opinions, enterprises, and 
 tendencies of the age to be but signs of a prevailing 
 
252 THE GENIUS OF DICKENS. 
 
 infectious cant, should still possess more dramatic sym- 
 pathy and insight, more appreciation of humble, homely 
 worth, and more solid power of characterization, than 
 the great body of the liberal thinkers who look upon 
 his misanthropic generalities with disgust or horror. 
 
 Alone among his contemporaries, Charles Dickens 
 seems to possess that instinctive sympathy with what- 
 ever is human and humane which is the fundamental 
 condition of genial and varied characterization. In 
 ' impersonated abstractions of humanity which satisfy 
 our ideal of human nature, he may be exceeded; in 
 individualities which make us in love with our kind, he 
 is unapproached. Tennyson has written one poem, 
 " Enoch Arden," in which his beautiful genius has 
 dealt with humble life ; but though the sentiment js 
 fine, and the diction austerely simple, the characters 
 and the scenes are as remote from actual existence, as 
 any of those in the "Idyls of the King." If Enoch 
 Arden be compared with Peggotty, in " David Copper- 
 field," the diflference between the two methods of char- 
 acterization becomes at once evident. So intense and 
 real is Dickens's conception, so strong his hold on the 
 noble elements in Peggotty's being, that he can ven- 
 ture to represent hira in all the uncouthness of his 
 person, his language, and liis surroundings. Through 
 his strange, confused, ungraramatical, "vulgar" speech 
 
THE GENIUS OF DICKENS. 253 
 
 shines the soul of the man ; and this makes his jargon 
 as dignified as the periods of Burke. If Tennyson had 
 attempted a similar feat in " Enoch Arden," the result 
 would have been an ignominious failure. 
 
 The nature of a writer determines the character of 
 his creations. Though the terms " subjective " and 
 "objective" now play a prominent part in criticism, 
 and are good to indicate loose distinctions between 
 classes of minds, it is important to remember that all 
 creative minds are subjective, — that the subjective 
 includes everything in nature and human life, which 
 such minds> vilally perceive, absorb into their own 
 being, and literally make their own. In' the case of 
 Dickens, gifted though he be with wonderfully acnte 
 powers of external observation, this is obviously the 
 fact, for no writer stamps the character of his genius 
 on everything he writes more plainly than he. It is 
 impossible to mistake his style, his method, his senti- 
 ment, his humor, his characters. His observing power, 
 when extended beyond the range of his sympathies, 
 becomes " objective," it is true, but ceases to be crea- 
 tive. In his genuine productions he not only embodies 
 all that he knows, but communicates all that he is. 
 The reality of his personages comes from the vividness"^ 
 of his conceptions, and not from any photographic 
 quality in his method of representation. Observation 
 
254 THE GENIUS OF DICKENS. 
 
 affords him materials; but he always modifies these 
 materials, and often works them up into the most fan- 
 . tastic shapes. Individuals, incidents, scenery, the very 
 pavement of his streets, the very bricks of his houses, 
 the very furniture of his apartments, are all haunted 
 by Dickens's spirit. To read one of his romances is to 
 see everything through the author's eyes; the most 
 familiar objects take an air of strangeness when sur- 
 veyed through such a medium ; and the interest excited 
 by the view has always in it a kind of fascination. 
 •We may dissent, criticise, protest, but still his clutch on 
 our attention is never relaxed. 
 
 -The weird imagination which thus penetrates his 
 books is, however, but a single element of his nature, 
 and indeed would not exercise so great a charm over 
 so many classes of readers, were it not connected with 
 such warmth of heart, keenness of observation, richness 
 of humor, and controlling common-sense. In the foun- 
 dation of his character, Dickens agrees with the ma- 
 jority of well-meaning mankind. He has no paradoxes 
 in morality to push, no scientific view of human nature 
 to sustain, no philosophy of society to illustrate, no mis- 
 sion to accomplish. His general opinions are those of 
 a man of sound sense and wholesome sensibility ; his 
 general attitude towards the world is that of one who 
 sympathizes and enjoys; his test of worth is amfa- 
 
THE GENITTS OF DICKENS. 255 
 
 bility ; his cure for every form of mental and moral 
 disease is the old one of work. Nobody ever thinks 
 of going to his writings for light on such moral prob- 
 lems as are opened in Hamlet and Faust. Intellectu- 
 ally, he seems incapable of generalization. Judged by 
 his feelings and perceptions, no writer of his time seems 
 so broad j judged by his philosophical comprehension 
 of laws, few seem so narrow. The whole system of 
 English jurisprudence, the whole machinery of civil 
 administration, the most clearly demonstrated princi- 
 ples of political economy, appear worthless or mis- . 
 chievous to his eyes, when his attention is concentrated 
 on cases where -they bear hard on individuals. He 
 looks on such matters as humane men of ungeneral- 
 izing minds ordinarily do, though he gives to their com- 
 plaints a voice which is heard wherever the English 
 language penetrates. It would be in vain to search his 
 writings for a single example in which he views a sub- 
 ject affecting the welfare of society in all its relations. 
 The moment his sense is shocked and his sensibilities 
 stirred, his reflective reason almost ceases to act, but 
 his humor, his imagination, his conscience are all in 
 motion. The systematic study of anything appears 
 abhorrent to his feelings ; and even in such a matter as 
 the training of youth in the grammar of languages he 
 has some of Susan Nipper's own indignation at " them 
 
256 THE GENIUS OF DICKENS. 
 
 Blimbers." So entirely is he absorbed by the per- 
 ception of the moment, that often in the same book we 
 have characters exhibiting exactly opposite traits, who 
 are equally satirized. Thus in " Bleak House," Mrs. 
 Jellyby is a philanthropist who subordinates the care 
 of her family to the welfare of Borrioboola-Gha ; but 
 in that romance we also have Mr. Vholes, who is 
 not less ridiculed and contemned for subordinating the 
 welfare of the public to the support of "his three 
 daughters at home, and his venerable father in the 
 Vale of Taunton " ; and there is just as much reason 
 why reformers should laugh at Mr. Vholes, as that 
 conservatives should shake their sides over Mrs. Jel- 
 lyby^ Thetruth is, that no organizations and no per- 
 sons can stand this method of judging of them by 
 their weak points, and the detection of weak points is 
 of the very life of Dickens's humorous perception. 
 
 And this limitation of Dickens's intellect is also a 
 limitation of his power of characterization. Because 
 his genius personifies everything it touches, we must 
 not, on that account, accept all its products as persons. 
 /There are scores of people in his novels who are "hit 
 oflf," rather than delineated, and are discriminated from 
 the mere names of persons in didactic satire only by 
 that strong individualizing tendency in his mind which 
 makes him give consciousness even to inanimate things. 
 
THE GENIUS OF DICKENS. 251 
 
 and which one critic goes so far as to call "literary 
 Fetichism.'' The professional guests at Mr. Merdle's 
 dinner-parties, in " Little Dorrit," the Veneerings and 
 their associates, in " Our Mutual Friend," the company 
 that gathers in Sir Leicester Dedlock's country-seat, in 
 " Bleak House," are three among twenty mstances which 
 must readily occur to every reader. In these he indi- 
 Yiduali^es the tone of the society he satirizes, rather 
 than attempts to portray its individual members. This 
 habit of sketchy characterization, in which the char- 
 acter is only shown by some external peculiarity or 
 vice of opinion, and his interior life is entirely over- 
 looked, is the ordinary mode in which Dickens's satir- 
 ical talent is displayed, and it overloads his books with 
 impersonated sarcasms. All these, however, may be 
 deducted from his stories, and still leave him richer 
 m solid characterizations than any half-dozen of his 
 contemporaries combined. 
 
 Indeed, when Dickens resolutely sets to work to 
 embody an imagined nature, he ever makes it self- 
 Bubsistent, and inwardly as well as outwardly known. 
 His joy in some of these creations is so great, he floods 
 them with such an abounding wealth of life, he makes 
 them so intensely real to his own mind, and treats 
 them so much like companions of his heart's hilarious 
 hours, that the very excess of his characterizing power 
 17 
 
258 THE GENIUS OF DICKENS. 
 
 has led some critics to deny to him its possession. He 
 so surcharges his characters with vitality that they 
 seem like persons who have taken something to 
 drink ; and, as they burst into the more decorous 
 society delineated by other English novelists, there is a 
 cry raised for the critical police. This exaggeration, 
 however, is not caricature, for caricature never gives 
 the impression of reality; and even in our age of 
 historic doubts we have yet to learn of the sceptical 
 Betsey Prig who has had the audacity to doubt the 
 existence and reality of Tony "Weller, of John Willet, 
 of Mr. Squeers, of Eichard Swiveller, of Edward Guttle, 
 of Sarah Gamp, of Wilkins Micawber, of Mr. Boffin, or 
 any other of Dickens's quaint specimens of human 
 nature which he has overcharged with humorous 
 vitality. Dickens caricatures only when his special 
 object is to satirize ; and the characters which illustrate 
 his satirical genius we have already admitted to have 
 no real natures. In his true province of characteriza- 
 tion, he is certainly peculiar, for his personages are 
 not only original but originals. As a general thing, he 
 does not develop his characters, but conceives them in 
 their entirety at 'once, and the situations and incidents 
 in which they successively appear simply furnish occa- 
 sions for their expression. Their appearance, opinions, 
 manners, and even their phrases, he makes identical with 
 
THE GENIUS OF DICKENS. 259 
 
 their natures. He gives a queer application to the 
 transcendental principle that " the soul does the body 
 make," and supplies an external peculiarity for every 
 "inward trait. Beings which have no existence out of 
 his own mind, he yet sees them in their bodily shape 
 and motions as clearly as he sees his familiar acquaint- 
 ances. Their unconscious actions are recorded with 
 the accuracy of a witness who testifies under oath. 
 He was evidently near Miss Brass when that grim 
 spinster was questioned as to the plot in which she 
 and her brother had been engaged, and noticed that, 
 before she answered, she " took two or three pinches 
 of snuff, and, having by this time very little left, trav- 
 elled round and round the box with her forefinger and 
 thumb, scraping up another." Most observers of Mr. 
 Squeers's habits when drunk would have been satisfied 
 with stating that he went to bed with his boots on ; 
 but Dickens adds, " and with his umbrella under his 
 arm." "When Uriah Heep is present, we are not only 
 constantly reminded that he is " 'umble," but we are 
 forced to note " the snaky undulation pervading his 
 frame from his chin to his boots," " his shadowless red 
 eyes, which look as if they had scorched their lashes 
 oif," and the frequency with which he grinds " the 
 palms of his hands against each other, as if to squeeze 
 them warm and dry, besides often wiping them, in a 
 
260 THE GENITTS OP DICKENS. ' 
 
 Stealthy way, with a podset-handkerchief." Indeed, 
 so close and minute, as well as vivid, is Dickens's 
 method of delineation, that it is impossible not to per- 
 ceive and realize his creations. The critic who decries 
 them as caricatures must be conscious, all the time, 
 that they are more real to him than the carefully 
 drawn characters he praises in other novelists of the 
 time. Besides, they have a strange attraction to the 
 mind, and are objects of love or hatred, like actual men 
 and women. A large number of excellently drawn 
 persons in modern fiction are uninteresting or common- 
 place in themselves, and hardly reward the labor ex- 
 pended on their delineation. In reading Anthony 
 TroUope, for instance, one feels that, here is an author 
 who will never fail for subjects as long as the kingdom 
 of Great Britain and Ireland contains thirty millions 
 of people, " mostly bores," and as long as he has his 
 , mental daguerreotype machine in order. But the 
 poetical, the humorous, the tragic, or the pathetic ele- 
 ment is never absent in Dickens's characterization, to 
 make his delineations captivating to the heart and 
 imagination, and give the reader a sense of having 
 escaped from whatever in the actual world is dull and 
 wearisome. A free abounding life also animates his 
 pages; and the subtle scepticism as to the worth of 
 existence itself, which infects Thackeray's narratives. 
 
THE GENIUS OF DICKENS. 261 
 
 and makes us close Lis most entertaining novels wjth 
 a jaded feeling, is entirely absent from those of Dick- 
 ens. 
 
 The impression left by all Dickens's books is not' 
 only humane but humanizing. He is a philanthropist, 
 both positively and negatively. He makes us interest- 
 ed in the most ignorant, credulous, foolish, or grotesque 
 personages, simply by the goodness of heart he puts 
 into them ; and h6 makes us dislike the proudest, high- 
 est, most cultivated, and most beautiful, provided they 
 are tainted with selflsh indifference to their kind. His" 
 imagination so delights in lovely embodiments of disin- 
 terestedness, that we are sometimes tempted to class 
 him with philanthropic sentimentalists, idly fondling 
 images of excellence impossible of realization ; but we 
 read a few pages on, and find him the intrepid practical 
 assailapt of everything in life which he considers mean, 
 base, exclusive, illiberal, unjust, and inhuman. 
 
 The humor, the pathos, the power of weird descrip- 
 tion, the power of, tragic representation, in Dickens, 
 seem but th.e efforts of one faculty of imagination, as it 
 is directed by different sentiments, and acts on different 
 materials. His superabundant humor, though quotable' 
 in sentences, depends for its full appreciation on a 
 knowledge of the. personages from whom it comes and 
 the incidents which call it forth. But it also has some- 
 
262 THE GENIUS OF DICKENS. 
 
 thing odd, droll, unexpected, and incalculable in itself, 
 which always marks it as the product of one pecuUac 
 and creative mind. When Mrs. Crupp, David Cop- 
 perfleld's laundress, is asked by that young gentleman 
 how she knows that love is the cause of his restlessness 
 and bad spirits, she, slightly boozy with David's brandy, 
 solemnly replies, " Mr. Copperfull, I 'm a mother my- 
 self." Venus, the artist in bones and amateur in 
 skeletons, who lends such ghastly drollery to so many 
 scenes in " Our Mutual Friend," says to the imperti- 
 nent boy who chaffi him : " Don't sauce me in the 
 wicious pride of your youth ; don't hit me, because you 
 see I 'm down. You 've no idea how small you 'd 
 come out, if I had the articulating of you.'' When 
 Jerry Cruncher, suspected by Mr. Lorry of having 
 passed his nights in digging up bodies for the doctors, 
 is asked by his employer what he has been besides a 
 messenger, he conceives the luminous idea of replying, 
 " Agricultooral character." Mr. Swiveller, informed 
 by. the Marchioness that Miss Brass calls him a funny 
 fellow, does not consider the description derogatory to 
 his dignity, because, he says, " Old King Cole was 
 himself a merry old soul, if we may put any faith in 
 the pages of history." Mr. Vincent Crummies, wishing 
 to do justice to the dramatic powers of Miss Henrietta 
 Petowker, of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, closes 
 
THE GENIUS OF DICKENS. 263 
 
 his eulogy with the climax : . " She 's the only sylph 
 lever saw who could stand upon one leg, and play the 
 tambourine on her knee, like a sylph." Mr. Wemmick, 
 when he invites Pip to dine with him, remarks : " Yon 
 don't object to an aged parent, I hope. Because I 
 have got an aged parent at my place." Mr. Wegg 
 charges Mr. Boffin more for reading poetry to him than 
 he does prose, for " when a person comes to grind off 
 poetry, night after night, it is but right he should 
 expect to be paid for its weakening effect on his mind." 
 The " young man of the name of Guppy," in his mem- 
 orable proposal of marriage to Esther Summerson, 
 mentions as one of the advantages she would receive 
 from the alliance, that his mother "is eminently cal- 
 culated to be a mother-in-law."- Mr. Dennis, the 
 hangman, when desirous of propitiating the sentimental 
 and scraggy Miss Miggs, addresses her by the endear- 
 ing appellation of " My sugar stick." The Augustus 
 of Miss Pecksniff runs off on the morning of his in- 
 tended marriage with that meek maideri, and, as soon 
 as he is safe on board ship^ writes to her : '' Ere this 
 reaches you, the undersigned will be — if not a corpse 
 — on the way to Van Diemen's Land. Send not in 
 pursuit ! I never will be taken alive ! " And the 
 immense humor of bringing a man of Mr. Boffin's 
 mind and experience into contact with such a book as 
 
264 THE GENIUS OF DICKENS. 
 
 Gibbon's " Decline and Fall " could only have occurred 
 to Dickens. The blank wonder of such a guileless soul 
 in listening to the recital of the crimes of the Roman 
 Emperors is delicious. " Wegg takes it easy," he says, 
 contemplatively, "but, upon my soul, to an old bird 
 like myself, these arescarers ! " 
 
 Among Dickens's characters there are few which he 
 seems to delight in more than those in which goodness 
 of heart ,is combined with imperfection of intellect or 
 expression. His books swarm with persons represent- 
 ing every degree of mental defect and obstruction, from 
 craziness like Miss Flite's to inexpressibility like Cap- 
 tain Cuttle's. Among these "that innocentest creeter 
 Toots " is one of the most richly ludicrous; From the 
 time we first meet him at Dr. Blimber's, " keeping a 
 ring in his waistcoat-pocket to put on his little finger 
 by stealth when the pupils went out walking," and 
 devoting his energies in school hours to writing " long 
 letters to himself from persons of distinction, addressed 
 ' P. Toots, Esquire, Brighton, Sussex,' and preserving 
 them in his desk with great care," he is the most 
 lovable of all specimens of arrested development. 
 There is something infantile even in his attempts to be 
 "fast," such as his high times with Feeder, B. A., 
 when, in the latter's room, with the doors locked, they 
 crammed their noses with snuff, endured surprising 
 
THE GENIUS OP DICKENS. 265 
 
 torments of sneezing with the constancy of martyrs, 
 and, drinking table beer at intervals, "felt all the 
 glories of dissipation." Nothing could better show 
 Dickens's perception of the humor which lies in the 
 incongruous, than his giving this innocent, whose brain 
 stutters as well as his tongue, a prize-fighter like " the 
 Chicken " for a companion, and a champion of his rival, 
 like Captain Cuttle, for a confidant. His confessions 
 to the Captain of his love for Florence Dombey are 
 delicious specimens of the combination of intellectual 
 impotence with the tender passion. " The hollow 
 crowd," he says, " when they see me with the Chicken, 
 and characters of distinction like that, suppose me to 
 be happy ; but I 'm wretched." " If you could see my 
 legs when I take my boots off, you 'd form some idea 
 of what unrequited affection is." " If, by the sacrifice 
 of all my property, I could get transmigi-ated into Miss 
 Dombey's dog — I — I really think I should never 
 leave off wagging my tail." The struggle between his 
 jealousy and his good-will, when he sees Walter after 
 the latter's shipwreck, at last ends in the fear that he 
 " must have got very wet," and the hope that he 
 " did n't take any cold." The marriage of this affec- 
 tionate weakling to such a tart, swift, and efficient per- 
 sonage as Susan Nipper is itself a stroke of humorous 
 genius. 
 
266 THE GENIUS OP DICKENS. 
 
 Charles Townshend said of the Due de Nivernais, 
 ■who came over from France as a sort of envoy, that he 
 was " the preliminaries of a man sent over to arrange 
 the preliminaries of a peace." Dickens has great skill 
 in drawing such persons. His Cousin Feenix is 
 " the preliminaries of a man " ; and so are Mr. Spark- 
 ler, Mr. Guppy, Mr. Snagsby, and a score of others 
 that might be named. He is equally felicitous in 
 representing the preliminaries of a woman, and of 
 varying the character while he preserves the type. 
 Indeed, his sharpness of mental sight enables him to 
 fix and embody almost every variety of average mind, 
 from the rapid, quick-witted, ever-alert Inspector 
 Bucket of the Detective, whose brain is in perpetual 
 motion, all the. way down to old John Willet, who has 
 but a flicker of intelligence, who lives on one notion for 
 nearly as long a period as it takes him to acquire it, 
 and who, after seven years of cogitation on the fact that 
 his son Joe has " lost his arm among the Salwanners 
 where the war is," dies at last with the edifying 
 announcement that he is himself " going to the Salwan- 
 ners." It is hopeless to attempt to give instances, on 
 account of the very abundance of the illustrations, 
 though we may say that, low down in the mental scale, 
 "Mr. F.'s Aunt," who has such a desire to have 
 Arthur Clenman brought " for'ard " in order that she 
 
THE GENIUS OF DICKENS. 267 
 
 may " chuck him out o' winder," is a specimen of 
 inscrutable imbecility calculated to awaken the pro- 
 foundest reflections. 
 
 In regard to Dickens's serious characterization, and 
 his dealings with the deeper passions, a distinguished 
 French critic, M. Taine, has sneered at his respect for 
 the proprieties, and contrasted his timidity with the 
 boldness of Balzac and George Sand, especially in th^ 
 analysis and representation of the passion of love. It 
 -is true , that Dickens is excluded, like other English 
 novelists, from the full exhibition of the allurements 
 which lead to the aberrations of this passion ; but what 
 critic but a French one could have emphasized this 
 deference for decorum, as if it shut him out altogether 
 from the field of strong emotions ? It does not exclude 
 him from the minutest internal scrutiny and complete 
 representation of the great body of the generous and 
 the malignant passions. No Frenchman, even, could 
 say that he was not sufficiently frank, exact, particular, 
 and thorough in his exhibitions of pride,, envy, .fear, 
 vanity, malice, hatred, duplicity, jealousy, avarice, re- 
 venge, wrath, and remorse. He has threaded the intri- 
 cacies of these, with the peneti'ation of a psychologist, 
 while he has combined their action and varied their 
 expression according to the modifications they receive 
 from individual character. He has not won the repu- 
 
268 THE GENIUS OF DICKENS. 
 
 tation of being the most genial, pathetic, and humane 
 of contemporary novelists by declining to describe some 
 of the most tragic scenes that romancer ever imagined, 
 and to represent some of the most hateful forms of 
 humanity which romancer ever drew. Fagin, Noah 
 Claypole, Ralph Nickleby, Arthur Gride, Quilp, 
 Dombey, Carker, Pecksniff, Jonas Chuzzlewit, Uriah 
 Heep, Grandfather Smallweed, Eigaud, Rogue Rider- 
 hood, Bradley Headstone, the ghastly and gushing Mrs. 
 Skewton, the weird and relentless Miss Havisham, 
 could never have been shaped by a man who had not 
 closely studied the fiercest, harshest, meanest, and bas- 
 est passions of human nature, or who hesitated to follow 
 intrepidly out their full logical effects on character and 
 conduct. Often grotesque in his tragedy, he is never 
 wanting in intensity and vividness. The chapter in 
 " Oliver Twist " entitled " The Jew's last Night alive," 
 the description of Jonas Chuzzlewit's flight and arrest 
 after his murder of 'Kgg, and the account of Bradley • 
 Headstone'-s feelings and reflections after his murderous 
 assault on Eugene, are a few among many specimens 
 of that minute and exact inspection of criminal spirits 
 with which he so frequently both appalls and fascinates 
 his reader. His antipathy to malignant natures con- 
 trasts strangely with the air of scientific indifference 
 with which Balzac regards them ; but it seems to give 
 
THE GENIUS OF DICKENS. 269 
 
 him even more power to penetrate into their souls. 
 He is there as a hiassed observer, detesting what he 
 depicts ; but his insight seems to be sharpened by his 
 abhorrence. They are altogether out of the pale of 
 his instinctive sympathies, but yet he is drawn to them 
 by a kind of attraction like that which sustains the 
 detective on the track of the felon. If he errs at all, - 
 he errs in making them too repulsive for the purposes 
 of art. 
 
 In the representation of love, Dickens is masterly 
 only in exhibiting its affectionate side, and in this no 
 contemporary, English or French, approaches him. 
 His favorite heroines, Agnes Wickfield, Lucie Manette, 
 Florence Dombey, Esther Sunamerson, Little Dorrit, 
 Lizzie Hexam, are models of self-devoted, all-enduring, 
 all-sacrificing affection, in respect both to sentiment and 
 principle. Illustrating as they do the heroism of ten- 
 derness, the most beautiful and pathetic scenes in his 
 ■works draw from them their inspiration. It may be 
 that they are too perfect to be altogether real ; it may 
 be that, as specimens of genuine characterization, they 
 are inferior to Dora Spenlow, or little Miss Wren, or 
 Bella Wilfer, in whom affection is connected with some 
 kind of infirmity; but still, so intensely are they con- 
 ceived, so unbounded is their wealth of love, that their 
 reality, if questioned by the head, is accepted undoubt^ 
 
270 THE GENIUS OF DICKENS. 
 
 ingly by the heart. Every home they enter is made 
 the better for such ideal visitants, and the fact that 
 they are domesticated by so many thousands of fire- 
 sides shows that they are not the mere airy nothings 
 of sentimentalizing benevolence, but have in them the 
 substance of humanity, and the attractive force of indi- 
 vidual life. The love of such beings, if not the grand 
 passion of the heroines of George Sand, is purifying as 
 well as pure, and places their delineator among benefac- 
 tors. Filial love, in its tenderest idealization, is what 
 they primarily represent, but from this flow all gentle, 
 kindly, generous, compassionate, and grateful emotions. 
 Their pathetic beauty melts the insensibility of the 
 most hardened cynic. Florence at the death-bed of little 
 Paul Dombey, or flying from her father to the shelter 
 of the Little Midshipman, or returning to him in his 
 day of ruin and despair; — Esther Summerson, when 
 for the first time she is enfolded in a mother's embrace, 
 or when, at the end of her long pursuit in the track 
 of Lady Dedlock's flight, she passes to the gate of the 
 burial-ground, stoops down, lifts the heavy head, " puts 
 the long, dank hair aside," and sees her mother cold 
 and dead ; — Lucie Manette in that wonderful scene in 
 Dufarge's garret, where she recalls her father to con- 
 scious life ; — Little Dorrit in all the touching incidents 
 which bring out the delicacy and depth of her shelter- 
 
THE GENIUS OF DICKENS. 2'rl 
 
 ing affection for the broken prisoner of the Marshalsea ; 
 — these are but a few among many instances of that 
 searching pathos of Dickens which irresistibly affects 
 the great body of his readers, and even forces unwilling 
 tears from hostile critics. 
 
 Why, then, it may be asked, is Dickens not to be 
 ranked with the greatest masters of characterization ? 
 The objection as to his exaggerated manner of repre- 
 sentation we have found to be superficial, as his ex- 
 aggeration rather increases than diminishes our sense 
 of the reality of his personages; the true objection 
 is to his matter. Great characterization consists in 
 the creation and representation of great natures ; and 
 the natures which Dickens creates may be original, 
 strange, wild, criminal, humorous, lovable, pathetic, or 
 good, but they are never grejit. The material of 
 which they are composed is the common stuff of 
 humanity, even when it is worked up into uncommon 
 forms. His individualizing imagination can give per- 
 sonality to everything coming within the range of his 
 thoughts, sentiments, and perceptions; but that range 
 does not include the realm of ideas, or the conflict and 
 complication of passions in persons of large intellects as 
 well as strong sensibility. The element of thought is 
 comparatively lacking in his creations. Captain Cuttle 
 is as vividly depicted as Falstaff, but the Captain 
 
272 THK GENIUS OF DICKENS. 
 
 would be a bore as a constant companion, while we 
 can coticeive of Falstaff as everlastingly fertile in new 
 mental combinations, and as never losing his power to 
 Stimulate and amuse. Esther Summerson is, like Imo- 
 gen, an individualized ideal of womanhood: but 
 Esther's mind never passes beyond a certain homely 
 sense, while Imogen is the perfection of imagination 
 and intelligence as well as of tenderness, and we feel 
 that, though she should live a thousand years, she 
 would never exhaust her capacity of thinking, any 
 more than her capacity of loving. But if Dickens's 
 genius never goes beyond a certain limit of observation, 
 nor rises above a certain level of thought, it has still 
 peopled the imagination, and touched and gladdened 
 the hearts, of so many thousands of readers, that it 
 seems ungenerous to subject him to tests he does not 
 court, and ungrateful to note the shortcomings of a 
 power which in itself is so joyous, humane, and benefi- 
 ceat. 
 
SHODDY. 
 
 Afteb the firing on Fort Sumter had proved the ma- 
 lignity of the Rebel feeling, there was a general burst 
 of patriotism out of the depths of the nation's heroic 
 heart, which seemingly swept into its current and over- 
 whelmed in its flood every mean prejudice and huck- 
 stering policy and selfish impulse on the surface of the 
 public mind ; but, events soon proved that while honest 
 men were eager to sacrifice everything for thg country, 
 knaves were scheming to make money out of the coun- 
 try's necessities, and coolly seizuig on the very disin- 
 terestedness of their nobler neighbors as an excellent 
 occasion to, glut their ravenous greed. The marvels 
 of moral inspiration all round them, emancipating men 
 from tl^e dominion of mercenary motives, only seemed 
 to sharpen their vulpine minds and intensify their 
 wolfish instincts ; and to prey on the patriotism they 
 disdained to emulate became the one object of their 
 ambition. To pillage the government which they 
 would not defend, and swindle the soldiers whose 
 18 
 
2*14: SHODDY. 
 
 breasts shielded them from pillage, seemed a proper 
 exercise of their peculiar gifts, while the nation, realiz- 
 ing the vision of the poet, " was rousing herself, like a 
 strong man out of his sleep, and shaking her invincible 
 locks." Soon came the cry frota the camps that cheats 
 at home were thriving on the miseries of the volun- 
 teers ; that the soldier starved in order that the con- 
 tractor might feast; especially that the defenders 
 of the nation, hurrying from their homes to insure 
 safely to the homes of their plunderers, were so sleazily 
 clothed that they were literally " left naked to their 
 enemies"; and a word of ominous and infamous sig- 
 nificance, a word in which is concentrated more wratb 
 and wretchedness than any other in the vocabulary of 
 the camp, the word " shoddy," flew into general circu- 
 lation, to embody the soldier's anathema on the sol- 
 dier's scourge. 
 
 But it seems to us that a word of such ill repute 
 should not be confined' to one class of offences, but 
 should be extended to follies, errors, vices, and policies 
 which, though they boast of softer names, illdstrate the 
 same essential quality. For what is the essential 
 characteristic of shoddy clothing ? Is it not this, that 
 it will not tpear ? In its outside appearance it mimics 
 good cloth, but use quickly reduces it to its elemental 
 rags. Now, it might be asked, have we, in our expe- 
 
SHODDY. 275 
 
 rience during the past ten years, been deceived by no 
 other plausible mockeries of reality than shoddy uni- 
 forms ? Have we not all, more or less, been wearing 
 shoddy clothing on our minds and consciences ? Have 
 we not seen it fall into shreds and tatters with perhaps 
 only a week's use. And have we not quickly replaced 
 the sleazy garment of opinion and prejudice with one 
 only a little less " ready made," anxious at all events 
 not to be clad in the well-woven cloth of enduring 
 principle.' Is shoddy, in fact, anything more than 
 a superficial symbol of a deep-seated moral disease ? 
 Shoddy in business everybody detects and denounces ; 
 let us see if we have not been fooled as much by shod- 
 dy politics, shoddy generalship, shoddy literature, shod- 
 dy ethics, and — shall we say it ? — shoddy religion. 
 In all these great instrumentalities of individual and 
 national well-being have we always selected those which 
 will stand the test of experience, — which will wear ? 
 And first for Our politics, and our politics in connec- 
 tion with the Confederate War. If there ever was an 
 occasion in the history of nations when the national 
 heart should have given depth and sagacity to the 
 national mind, when principle should have been identi- 
 fied with policy and impassioned purpose with practical 
 performance, it was on the breaking out of that contest 
 in which a perjured horde of slaveholders and liberti- 
 
276 SHODDY. 
 
 iddes attempted to destroy a republic anfl give the law 
 to a continent The crime was patent. It was stig- 
 matized by all codes as the blackest of all iniquities. 
 Yet through what confusing and slippery expedients 
 did our policy stagger and stumble on before we 
 reached the principle which should have guided us at 
 the start ! One is reminded of the story of the English- 
 man, who, riding in a remote Devonshire lane, came 
 upon a swampy-looking place, and said to a rustic who 
 was near, " I say, is there a good firm bottom here ? " 
 " O yeas, sir," was the reply, " that there be." He 
 rode on, and soon plunged up to the horse's girths. 
 " HiHoa, you rascal, did n''t you tell me there was a 
 good firm bottom ? " " Soa there be, sir, when you come 
 to it, but yon beant half-ways to the bottom yet." 
 That we might have avoided the swamp altogether 
 is one of the plainest teachings of our exasperating 
 ..experience in the mud! We were driven into ideas 
 by the drift of events, instead of shaping events by 
 the insight and foresight of ideas. The fault was in no 
 particular man, but in the public mind, which could be 
 taught to distrust shoddy maxims and shoddy expe- 
 dients by no masters less austere than disaster and 
 defeat. 
 
 Perhaps the most mischievous of these maxims was 
 that which attempted to conceal the real nature of the 
 
SHODDY. 211 
 
 late civil war by inculcating a superficial view of 
 slavery, its real cause. There is, it may be said here, 
 a class of persons who resent the intrusion into politics 
 of a moral principle. They believe it has no business 
 there, and they fear it will bite them ; they go for the 
 dear, old comfortable shams and lies on which, as they 
 think, the safety of society reposes ; and accordingly it 
 is common even now to hear intelligent and worthy 
 people assert that the whole outburst, which rent the 
 continent like a convulsion of nature, was produced by 
 a few Southern nullifiers aad a few Northern aboli- 
 tionists ; and that if Calhoun and his set and Garrison 
 and his set had been hanged at the start, honest men, 
 who did n't care a straw for the matter they squabbled 
 about, would have trudged peacefully on in their honest 
 business, unvexed by any disturbance. Such reasoning 
 as this seems founded on the precedent of the honest 
 Hibernian, who, sweating at his work, indignantly 
 smashed the thermometer, and then boasted that he 
 had "killed the baste which made the weather so 
 hot ! " Indeed, this theory of the cause of the war 
 seems to us as reasonable as it would be to seek the 
 cause of an eruption of Vesuvius in a piece of the 
 lava shot from its flaming mouth. The war was not 
 only produced by slavery, but it was a perfectly logical 
 and necessary result of the development of the princi- 
 
278 SHODDY. 
 
 pies inherent in that peculiar institution. Indeed, the 
 principles on which a society is organized ever dictate 
 tlie course both of its politics and politicians. Men are 
 but the accidents and instruments of the system; and 
 the course adopted by the leaders of t^e Southern 
 slave aristocracy was one into which they were forced 
 by the necessities of their system, and which we North- 
 erners would have folloy^ed had we been in their place, 
 and had we agreed in their views. Calhoun and 
 McDuffie, Davis, Yancey, Toombs, and Mason, were 
 but top twigs of that Upas-tree whose roots ran under 
 the whole Southern soil. 
 
 If, then, we fasten our attention on the development 
 of this system of slavery, passing over the persons acci- 
 dentally connected with it, we shall find, independent 
 of all philanthropic considerations, that its death was 
 from the start the condition of national life ; that it 
 was more important to kill it than to hang them ; and 
 that it would be better that a thousand Jefferson Da- 
 vises should live than that one infectious vice of 
 slavery should be allowed to survive its legal aboli- 
 tion. The people of the States early discovered that 
 the country was a geographical unit, and should be, 
 for all general purposes, a political unit. The nation, 
 an infant Hercules in all but this, that it did not 
 strangle the serpents that strayed into its cradle, com- 
 
SHODDY. 219 
 
 promised vwith slavery on the implied condition that it, 
 should creep into a corner and die, giving little prac- 
 tical heed to the poisonous vitality of its animating 
 principle. Accordingly, the Constitution, which seem- 
 ingly made North and South one people, did not pre- 
 vent the growth of those organic gerins which really 
 made them two communities, — communities guided by 
 different ideas, impelled by different passions, a thou- 
 sand miles apart in space, a thousand years apart in 
 time, and sure to clash the moment they really came 
 together, and the grown giant of Freedom met the 
 grown giant of Slavery face to face. The terms of 
 the written Constitution could only postpone the un- 
 avoidable collision ; for written constitutions are effi- 
 cient only when they reflect the unwritten laws of 
 national habits, customs, sentiments, ideas, and charac- 
 ter ; and in their practical administration they are ever 
 bent into the service of the great organic forces of the 
 national life. In our country this is done by a process 
 of legislative and judicial "interpretation" and "con- 
 struction " ; but these words could conceal from no 
 intelligent politician the fact that the Constitution has 
 repeatedly changed, without being constitutionally 
 " amended," even if the shriek of the defeated party, 
 that the Constitution was violated, did not constantly 
 inform us of it. Now the method by wliich the 
 
280 SHODDY. 
 
 Southern section of the United States changed the 
 Constitution was by forcing its own ideas into the 
 words of that instrument, — dosing it, in fact, with 
 " plantation bitters," — and then threatening secession 
 in case its construction was denied. It plainly said that 
 it would- belong to no government it could not rule, 
 and dignified this impudence by calling it by the name 
 of Southern Rights. Every instructed man knew that, 
 entirely independent of the Constitution, the " i%ht8 " 
 of the South were recognized only so far as the 
 "power" of the South was felt in Congress, and, in 
 consequence of its power in Congress, on the decisions 
 of the Supreme Court. 
 
 But why would the Southern States belong to no 
 government they could not rule ? It was because the 
 South had sacrificed the interests of all other classes 
 of Southern society to the slaveholding class ; had 
 , organized its local governments on the basis of slavery ; 
 had fully committed itself to all the measures, no 
 matter how absurd and atrocious, which that system 
 dictated; and well knew that, if it could not wield the 
 forces of the national government in aid of the institu- 
 tion of slavery, they would inevitably be directed 
 against it. For the law which limits the profitable- 
 ness of slave labor is as inexorable as any other law 
 of political economy. It demands, against the interests 
 
SHODDY. 281 
 
 and rights of human nature itself, that population shall 
 be scanty and the area of territory large ; and, as popu- 
 lation increases, it exacts that the territory shall be 
 correspondingly extended. The perpetuity of slavery 
 was therefore inextricably connected with its spread, 
 its indefinite preservation with its indefinite extension. 
 To limit it was to ask it to die by inches. Calhoun 
 long ago said that, if it perished at all, it would perish 
 in a convulsion. The cry of " Liberty national, slavery 
 local," contained its doom, for " liberty national " would, 
 without touching, a local law, have eventually made 
 liberty local, by the peaceful operation of the law of 
 population. But slavery national, which was necessary 
 for its continued existence, made the free States accom- 
 plices in its extension ; and it was inevitable that this 
 fact should rouse a twofold opposition at the North, — 
 an opposition of interest against the increase of the 
 political power of slavery, and an opposition of con- 
 science against its iniquity. As the development of 
 slavery was the necessity of its existence, so the devel- 
 opment of an opposition to it was a necessity of the 
 existence of freedom. The conflict came in the natu- 
 ral order of events. Individual statesmen may have 
 postponed or hastened, but they could neither produce 
 nor prevent it. -Its causes were down deep in the 
 - instincts, passions, and ideas of the two societies which 
 
282 SHODDY. 
 
 it brought into collision. Compromise and concession, 
 though carried to their most cowardly extremes, would 
 at last have been compelled to face demands which 
 would have stung cowardice itself into the utterance 
 of a heroic "No!" 
 
 Think of it ; the nation, homogeneous but for one 
 institution, became heterogeneous through that institu- 
 tion. We could easily mould into our free system 
 Irishmen, Germans, Danes, Swedes, Italians, even 
 Chinamen, but we could not mould slaveholders into it. 
 A form of labor was more than a match for the assim- 
 ilating genius which was peacefully fusing into one 
 grand nationality the most various and discordant races. 
 It was therefore inevitable that we must remove what 
 refused to be assimilated, or be assimilated by it. It 
 was a dragon in the path of our national progress, and 
 our only choice lay between slaying the monster and 
 being devoured by it ! 
 
 The opposition to slavery, because of its principle, 
 was confined to a few. The opposition to the logical 
 development of that principle in slavery extension 
 included large and continually increasing masses of 
 the population. But if the death-grapple of the two 
 principles had not occurred on that question, had con- 
 cession or compromise patched up that cause of disturb- 
 ance, it would have occurred on some other demand 
 
SHODDY. 283 
 
 of slavery, — such as the reopening of the slave-trade, 
 — on which no concession or compromise was possible ; 
 for it is not to be supposed that we could have gone 
 on forever, in keeping the favor of the South, as the 
 patient wife of the legend kept the favor of her 
 husband, by doing all that pleased him and enduring 
 all that displeased her. The fundamental fact to be 
 considered is this, that the South, having come to the 
 conclusion that its great interest was slavery, having 
 bullied Southern ethics, philosophy, and' religion into 
 declaring that slavery was reasonable and right, and 
 having debauched education into a school where moral 
 darkness was, on this point, taught as a duty, it was 
 bound to stop at no absurdity and no atrocity which 
 were logical steps in the development of its organic 
 principle. It therefore seems to us that all our at- 
 tempts, in the early part of the war, to blink the 
 radical facts and principles of the case, to substitute 
 plausibilities for realities, to shirk the grim duty for 
 the amiable counterfeit, and to pour ever anew the 
 waters of concession into the bottomless buckets of 
 expediency, — that all these were but indications that 
 the element of shoddy was in our politics. The cloth 
 looked well, but it could not and was not made to 
 stand the wear and tear of experience. 
 
 The essential mischief of this shoddy clothing for 
 
284 SHODDY. -- 
 
 the popular mind is due, in a. great degree, to the 
 name it assumes. It eludes the -grip of thought by 
 calling itself common sense. If its object were to ■ 
 distinguish itself thus from real sense, its modesty 
 might be commended ; but when its purpose palpably 
 is to point the finger at all clear perception and sound, 
 thinking, its impudence merits the rod. Common 
 sense, in its just meaning, is that sense which one mind 
 holds in common with all others. It is thus the 
 intellectual bond of the human race. It is the effect 
 of a combination of the instincts of the general reason 
 with the results of the general experience. We all 
 cry " halves " in it. • It is my sense because it is yours, 
 and yours because it is mine. Sydney Smith playfully 
 says that common sense was invented by Socrates, 
 that philosopher having been one of its most conspicu- 
 ous exemplars, in conducting the contest of practical 
 sagacity against stupid prejudice and illusory beliefs. 
 It is also of the essence of common sense, that it 
 understands that occasions will not wait, and must 
 be seized at the instant they occur. We all remember 
 the story of the negro soldier who, ia one of our 
 Western battles, came up with a retreating Rebel 
 officer and bade him surrender. " I never will surren- 
 der to a nigger," was the haughty reply. " Very 
 sorry, massa," said the negro, pointing his rifle at him, 
 
SHODDY. 285 
 
 " must kill you den ; have n't time to go back and 
 get a white man." TherS is wisdom in this for certain 
 of our politicians, who have let some splendid opportu- 
 nities slip, in their fastidious taste for white men to do 
 the business. 
 
 The meaning of common sense, then, is plain ; but 
 how often do we use the -term as a cover for common 
 nonsense, the nonsense which one mind has in common 
 with others ; or, what is worse, as a convenient phrase 
 to impart dignity to any narrow opinion or obstinate 
 misjudgment or foolish crotchet, which we may person- 
 ally pamper and pride ourselves upon, and thus give 
 to our private whim the character of a universal 
 belief. This shoddy common sense is the most detest- 
 able of all forms of nonsense. For example, a philo- 
 sopiiic statesman, with the sense to search into the 
 law of events, offends my superficial notions or party 
 creed, and I answer him with a passionate or pitying, 
 " Pooh ! the fellow has no common sense ! " Another, 
 comprehensively grasping a dozen or fifty facts and 
 relations, links them in a chain of reasoning which 
 I have n't the brains to follow ; and, holding fast to 
 my one fact, and making that the measure of all things, 
 I shout, " Abstractionist ! no common sense ! " Anoth- 
 er still thinks it is folly to let your enemies have 
 the exclusive advantage of the labor and the lives 
 
286 SHODDT. 
 
 of those who are naturally your friends, and that the 
 negro's vote may be as necessary to our safety as the 
 negro's musket has proved to be ; and I, in my lofty 
 scorn of " niggers," taunt him with the question : 
 " Now, you miserable fanatic, why don't you take a 
 comttion-sense view of the matter ? " In this way 
 I may do all I can to expel sense from the world, 
 and put nonsense in its place, while I am perhaps 
 all the while felicitating myself that human reason 
 is my debtor, and that with my decease wisdom will 
 make her disastrous exit from an unappreciating 
 world. 
 
 Now in a republican government this mass of error, 
 wilfulness, passion, narro<r-mindedness, self-conceit, 
 and self-deceit, which calls itself common sense, insists 
 on having itself respected by the administration and 
 represented in it. President Lincoln, that miracle 
 and martyr of clemency, who not only seemed to have 
 no malignity in his own nature, but to lack the percep- 
 tion of it in others, early took the ground that he 
 must not only obey the impulses of the heroic popular 
 heart, but must defer to whatever wrong-headedness 
 there might be in the prejudiced popular mind. Well, 
 we were indulged in that meanest and most expensive 
 of all luxuries, — we had our prejudices petted; and 
 it cost us millions of treasure and torrents of blood ! 
 
SHODDY. 28 '7 
 
 There was a time, during the war, when domestic 
 defeat and foreign intervention threatened our Repub- 
 lic with extinction ; and had it been destroyed, its 
 epitaph in history would have been, " Died of want 
 of will and want of brains ! " 
 
 See also how this shoddy element was projected 
 into our generalship as well as into our statesmanship. 
 Our military leaders were captains and colonels sud- 
 denly raised to be commanders of great armies ; and 
 we immediately treated them as though they were 
 extemporized Napoleons and Fredericks. Our civil 
 war, indeed, stands out from all other wars in history 
 as having given birth to the " edited " Major-General ; 
 that is, to the hero created by the newspaper corre- 
 spondent. " We keeps a poet," said the proprietors 
 of Day and Martin's blacking ; " We keeps a reporter," 
 might have been said by the manufactured celebrities 
 of some of our camps. But the rarity of the highest 
 military genius was unaffected by these generous 
 puffers of mediocrity. Though the world has been 
 fighting ever since it was created, it has succeeded 
 in producing only five generals of the first class, 
 namely, Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Frederick, and 
 Napoleon ; and certainly our war has not added a 
 sixth to the list. On the sea, however, it may be 
 iaid "we had, in Farragut, the most skilful and heroic 
 
288 SHODDY. 
 
 naval commander of all time, — the maa who did the 
 
 most difficult things ever done with ships, with the 
 
 most marvellous combination of science, genius, and 
 
 dash; 
 
 " The Viking of our Western clime, 
 Who made his ^mast a throne ! " 
 
 To generals of the more numerous second class, the 
 Scipios, the Pompeys, the Wallensteins, the Turennes, 
 the Condes, the Marlboroughs, the "Wellingtons, we 
 have probably added two. Grant and Sherman; and 
 Grant we thought a blunderer, and Sherman we 
 thought insane, at the time we looked at men and 
 things through shoddy spectacles. But a man may not 
 be even a general of the second class, and yet be a man 
 of great ability, and fully competent to lead an army 
 to victory. The trouble with us was that, after the 
 £ist disappointment of our unreasonable expectations, 
 we fell into the habit of judging our generals, not by 
 their generalship, but by the notions they entertained 
 on certain matters connected with the passions of con- 
 servatism or the passions of philanthropy, and we 
 turned even our camps into debating societies, discuss- 
 ing the merits of their chairman, the general in com- 
 mand. The question whether a commander had the 
 resolution and the resource, the quick eye, steady hand, 
 and fertile brain of the accomplished soldier, was sub- 
 
SHODDY. 289 
 
 ordinated to the question whether be was "sound on 
 the goose." Nobody could behave so badly but he 
 had a party ready to prove that his failures showed 
 more genius than other men's triumphs ^ and the in- 
 competents perfectly understood the game. Thus one 
 general was defeated in a battle, and he hastened to 
 inform us that he went for " the vigorous prosecution 
 of the war"; another surrendered a great strategic 
 point, and he vehemently asserted his intention never 
 to surrender " the principle of emancipation " ; another 
 lost a campaign, and then enlightened us by an elabo- 
 rate essay on " the constitutional rights of the South.'' 
 !Now we have a democratic bitterness of contempt 
 against that custom in corrupt monarchies of putting 
 the favorite of the monarch, or the favorite of the 
 monarch's favorite, at the head of the force which is 
 to sustain the honor of the nation, as when Louis the 
 Fifteenth's Madame de Pompadour sent Prince Sou- 
 bise, with a large French army, to be ignominiously 
 routed at Rosbach by Frederick the Great; but we 
 do the same thing when we force on an administration 
 a general whose competency for command consists in 
 his being a reflection of our party feelings and a cour- 
 tier of the people. 
 
 Those who watched the surface of our "society" 
 during the progress of the late civil war were wont to 
 19 
 
290 SHODDT. 
 
 make themselves mad or merry over the sudden rush 
 into social eminence of new millionn aires. The old 
 aristocracy of wealth tried to distinguish itself from 
 these parvenus of Plutus, these mushrooms of Mam- 
 mon, by fixing on them, the nickname of the aristoc- 
 racy of shoddy, refusing to be softened by the glint of 
 its satin or the dazzle of its diamonds. Fashion, as 
 the supercilious custodian of manners and civilization, 
 lifted its eye-glass to survey these bold intruders from 
 unknown depths in the social scale, and pronouncied 
 them barbaric, though in broadcloth, and savage, though 
 in silks. It is well, perhaps, to receive with caution 
 this verdict of dandyism ; for of all adepts in imperti- 
 nence the most- accomplished are the nominal professors 
 of politeness. We all originally came from- the woods ; 
 it is hard to eradicate from any of us the old taste for 
 the tattoo and the war-paint ; and the moment money 
 gets into our pockets, it somehow or another breaks 
 out in ornaments on our persons, without always giving 
 refinement to our manners. Hence the prodigies of 
 vulgar ostentation which accompanied and followed the 
 horrors of our battle-fields, and the fierce scramble for 
 wealth which threw into stronger contrast the sacrifices 
 of our patriotism. The larger portion of this new 
 wealth, however, has been the production of individual 
 genius and enterprise ; and has not only more than 
 
SHODDY. 291 
 
 offset the waste of war, but it. supplied war with one 
 of her two main sinews of " iron and gold." The true 
 shoddy wealth is that which has been acquired by dis- 
 honest practices and reckless speculations, and which, 
 though it has transferred money from one individual to 
 another, and generally from the honest man to the 
 trickster, has not added a dollar to the wealth of the 
 nation. The actors in some of these so-called " enter- 
 prises " bring to mind the anecdote of the man who 
 professed his intention to go West and open a jew- 
 eller's shop. "What is your capital?" he was asked. 
 " A crow-bar," was his reply i " can't I open a jewel- 
 ler's shop with that ? " The last ten years have been 
 fertile in examples of this burglary calling itself busi- 
 ness. The .swindling shoddy companies which have 
 been started for the mere purpose of plunder put to 
 shame the inferior contrivances of professional thieves. 
 A French agrarian theorizer- defined property as theft. 
 Could he have come to the United States, he might 
 have pointed to some fortunes which verify his defini- 
 tion to the letter. This speculation appeared all the 
 worse when it followed in the path of our armies, and ' 
 put on airs of patriotism, while it dabbled in cotton and 
 sugar. " How did you get this fine house, these splen- 
 did grounds, these superb horses ? " was asked of a 
 patriot who had left the army. " O, you know I went 
 
292 SHODDY. 
 
 out to New Orleans as adjutant of that regiment, and 
 had opportunities to operate in sugar. Made a fine 
 thing of it, I can tell you ! Had n't a cent when I left, 
 apd am now worth a hundred thousand dollars." 
 "But what made you leave the army?" "O, when 
 Lincoln issued that infernal Proclamation of Emanci- 
 pation I threw up my commission ! I was n't a going 
 to fight for them blasted niggers !" We are happy to 
 say that this gentleman still enjoys his well-earned 
 fortune ! 
 
 But a. great many of the sudden fortunes made by 
 the war were the results of the development of new 
 sources of national wealth. Petroleum, for instance, 
 in ' spite of all the rascalities connected with it, has 
 grown, since the war began, from comparatively noth- 
 ing to an annual product of some thirty millions ; and 
 to the future historian of our society no story will be 
 more significant than that told of the yOung woman, 
 who, being reproved by a despairing lover for rejecting 
 him three days after she had pledged to him her heart 
 and hand, answered loftily, " Why, since I accepted 
 you, dad's struck ile!" Now the "dads "that strike 
 " ile " are infinitely of more importance to the coun- 
 try than the dandies who set" fashions. There is a 
 wretched cant current in certain circles, which professes 
 a kind of sentimental horror of the material advance- 
 
SHODDY, 293 
 
 ment of the nation at the expense of its intellectual 
 progress ; but it will be generally found that this gen- 
 teel contempt of wealth is one of, the luxuries of the 
 rich, and is drawled out by biases in purple, not by 
 workers in homespun. Seneca, with two millions out 
 at usury, can afford to chant the praises of poverty ; 
 but for our own part, we prefer the fine extravagance 
 of that philosopher, who declared "that no man was 
 as rich as all men ought to be." For what does com- 
 petency, in the long run, mean ? It means, to all 
 reasonable beings, cleanliness of person, decency of 
 dress, courtesy of manners, opportunities for education, 
 the delights of leisure, and the bliss of giving. 
 
 The truth is that all countries, even England, France, 
 and America, are, when their population is considered 
 as a whole, relatively poor. The creation of wealth 
 has nowhere much more than kept pace with the in- 
 crease of population, and therefore no people has as yet 
 attained that position of physical comfort which would 
 allow free play to their intellectual and moral energies. 
 In this country, where nearly forty millions of inhab- 
 itants are -spread over a territory of over three millions 
 of square miles, there is hope that, by the application 
 of science and inventive art, of capital and labor, to 
 the unbounded, undeveloped wealth of the nation, the 
 people, as a people, may get ahead of their daily neces- 
 
294 SHODDY. 
 
 sities, force nature to yield greater products with less 
 manual toil, substitute more and more labor-doing ma- 
 chines for laborers, and lift the whole population to a 
 condition of material well-being which will literally 
 make them masters of the situation. Once establish a 
 people on this vantage-ground, and they will develop 
 an amount of morality and creative intelligence, which 
 will not only solve the problem of Malthus, but pre- 
 vent them from ever falling back into poverty and 
 destitution. It is for this reason that we cannot do 
 too much honor to the creators of new wealth, to the 
 Watts, the Arkwrights, the Stephensons, the Fultons, 
 the Whitneys, the Goodyears, the Howes, the Bige- 
 lows, and the whole glorious brotherhood of industrial 
 inventors. They outweigh in importance all the so- 
 called cultivated society in the world, for, without them, 
 cultivated society could have no existence. Take, for 
 example, Henry Cort, the " Tubal Cain of England," 
 whose machines created the iron manufacture of Great 
 Britain. It is computed that his inventions have 
 added £ 600,000,000 to the wealth of that nation, — 
 a sum which is about five hundred millions of dollars 
 more than our present national debt. What English 
 lord, what English statesman, what leader of fashion, 
 can afford to sneer at such a record as that ? Again, 
 Bessamer's process of making steel, a comparatively 
 
SHODDY. 295 
 
 recent invention, is said to have added £ 200,000,000 
 to the wealth of Great Britain. The name of William 
 Pitt, the haughty antagonist of Napoleon, occupies in 
 history a more eminent position than that of James 
 Watt, the inventor of the steam-engine, who gave to 
 Great Britain a power now representing a force equal 
 to the manual labor of four hundred millions of men, 
 or twice the number of male workmen on the face of 
 the globe ; but it always seemed to us that the pecu- 
 liarity of Pitt, the uninventive head of " his Majesty's 
 government " for so many years, consisted in this, that, 
 with all his extravagance, he could not squander the 
 national wealth as fast as James Watt created it. His 
 part in developing the national resources, high " as 
 history estimates it, reminds one of the statement in 
 Scott's novel of "The Pirate," that Mordaunt and 
 Magnus Troil sat down to drink brandy and water, — 
 that is, adds Scott, Magnus drank the brandy and 
 Mordaunt the water. 
 
 Of the enormous undeveloped resources of the 
 United States it is difficult to speak without an ap- 
 pearance of exaggeration. The taxable value, which 
 all men of property well know is always far below 
 the exchangeable value, of all the property in the 
 United States was, in 1860, in round numbers, 
 $ 16,100,000,000, showing a rate of increase, in ten 
 
296 SHODDY. 
 
 years, of a fraction over one hundred and twenty-six per 
 cent. It has been computed that if this rate is preserved 
 through the next four decades, the taxable value of the 
 United States would, in 1870, be $ 36,500,000,000 ; in 
 1880, $82,800,000,000; in 1890, $ 187,300,000,000; 
 in 1900, $ 423,300,000,000 ; — an increase of wealth 
 which wilj be over eight times our estimated increase 
 in population. ^Vast as these sums appear, drowning 
 in their sound all shoddy groans over our predicted 
 financial ruin, and making our big debt of two billions 
 and a half shrink by comparison into dwarf-like di- 
 mensions, there is no reason that they should not 
 be realized, provided the brain of tHe nation adequately 
 seconds its hands, Massachusetts, with an area of 
 only 7,800 square miles, bow owns a seventeenth 
 of the whoje taxable property of the nation. If the 
 other StateSj with greater natural advantages, should 
 increase, during the next thirty years, so that their 
 wealth should bear the same proportion to the square 
 mile of territory which the wealth of Massachusetts 
 now does, the property of the nation in 1900 will 
 be $ 415,000,000,000. Massachusetts now has ma- 
 chines which are said to represent the labor of a 
 hundred millions of men. When the Constitution was 
 established, and the South was granted representation 
 in Congress according to three fifths of its labor-doing 
 
SHpDDY. 29t 
 
 machines, the slaves, it was not dreamed that in less 
 than ninety years one State would have labor-doing 
 machines nearly equal to three times the population 
 of both North and South, and equal to thirty times 
 the whole slave population. Indeed, only let us have 
 here an increasing throng of inventors of new methods 
 for economizing labor, and discoverers and openers 
 of new sources of national wealth, only let us have 
 industry, skill, science, and genius combined, and the 
 future of this continent is secure. We don't care if 
 these industrial inventors are individually selfish, for 
 we know they cannot help being benefactors of the 
 community. We don't grudge their being individually 
 rich, for we know that for every dollar they retain for 
 themselves they give hundreds of thousands to the 
 nation. And even if some of them be cursed with 
 a foolish love of display, bespangle their clumsy 
 persons with costly trinkets, and build palaces which 
 only make their unpalatial manners more conspicuous, 
 we still feel no temptation to taunt them as shoddy 
 aristocrats ; for beneath their weaknesses we discern 
 minds which rightly claim our admiration and grat- 
 itude, — miijds that force from niggard Nature her 
 hoarded treasures, minds that wring from reluctant 
 Nature her dearest secrets. 
 
 In passing to the consideration of the shoddy ele- 
 
298 SHODDY. 
 
 ment in literature, the first thing which arrests the 
 attention is the romance of rascality and the novel 
 of sensation. The authors of these seem to plunge 
 into the records of the criminal courts in search of 
 their plots and characters, and such " swells " as 
 Pelham and Pendennis give place to ruffians of the 
 swell mob. The two chief elements of interest are 
 bigamy and murder. In the old sentimental novel 
 the heroine went through three ' volumes of diffi- 
 culties to get one husband ; no*, as in Miss Brad- 
 don's " Aurora Floyd," she begins with two, and 
 devotes her energies through the three volumes to 
 the getting rid of the superfluous one. And then the 
 indifference to human life displayed by these romancers 
 really demands the attention of the literary police. 
 Tlius if a character is in their way, or if they get tired 
 of him, they coolly run him through the body with 
 a goose-quill, and literally blot him out of existence, 
 thus furnishing a new proof that " the pen is mightier 
 than the sword." All their power is of the blood- 
 letting, brain-shattering, teeth-gnashing, and interjec- 
 tional sort. Strange that in a war so prolific in hero- 
 ism as that we have gone through, with the news- 
 papers crammed with incidents that exceed in interest 
 the marvels of fiction, there should be found any class 
 of our society that should go to such horrible trash 
 
SHODDY. 299 
 
 as the literature of yellow covers for mental excitement ! 
 Nothing lives in literature hut that which has in it 
 the vitality of creative art ; and it would be safe 
 advice to the young to read nothing but what is old. 
 In this way they would at least avoid being swindled 
 by the perishable shoddy of the mind, which now woos 
 their attention in the slop-shops of letters. The stuff 
 will not wear ; and if a person could only see his own 
 mind, with the rags of these suits hanging loose on 
 his thoughts and affections, he would start back 
 amazed at the intellectual scarecrow he was made 
 to appear. 
 
 But we fear the term " shoddy " cannot be confined 
 to this kind of literature, but must be extended to 
 many weak though well-intentioned volumes which 
 propose a moral and religious aim. These books have 
 fl pgJnfuUy childish and " do-me-good " air, and, while 
 they evince a parrot-like memory of moral truisms 
 and religious phrases, are without an atom of moral 
 vitality and spiritual might. They superficialize the 
 most important principles, are the mere shoddy cov- 
 ering of commonplace morality and lip religion, the 
 text-books whence are drawn the ethics of weaklings 
 and the theology of hypocrites. Good books are never 
 written by " goodies " ; and great ideas which represent 
 the deepest facts of life, and which, when wielded by 
 
300 SHODDY. 
 
 gtrong souls, communicate inspiration to the heart and 
 power to the will, are soon shorn of their vitality, and 
 dwindle into mere mockeries of spiritual experience, 
 when manufactured mechanically for the religious 
 market. 
 
 The literature of religioij, so rich in works of re- 
 ligious genius, is strangely neglected in our day for 
 the latest lifeless production of religious mediocrity. 
 In this department of literature, as in all other de^ 
 partments, the test to be applied is vitality, — the posi- 
 tive communication to the recipient mind of new life 
 and energy, so that the increase of power keeps pace 
 with the increase of knowledge, and the intelligence is 
 not only broadened and brightened, but the whole na- 
 ture kindled, invigorated, and cheered. All moral 
 books that do not do this are but the flimsy fabrica- 
 tions of shoddy, and, in Dr. Bushnell's phrase, may 
 produce Christian mushrooms, but never Christian 
 men. In seeing one of these sleazy professors of out- 
 side piety and inside nervelessness, one is inclined to 
 exclaim with the satirist, " Tliere is a point, sir, where 
 religion ceases to be a virtue, and that is just the point 
 where you take it up." 
 
 This superficial morality and religion looks all the 
 more feeble when we consider the grim practical, prob- 
 lem to be solved by Christianity. The question 
 
SHODDY. 301 
 
 whether human life is a blessing is, should we take 
 the votes of all human beings on the point, still a mat- 
 ter of controversy. Is the statement doubted? Let 
 us refer, in confirmation of it, to a historical fact which 
 appears to us of the profoundest significance. Seven 
 centuries before the Christian era a prince of one of 
 the royal families of India, having exhausted, in his 
 twenty-ninth year, all the pleasures of the world, and 
 having in him one of the deepest, most CQmprehensive, 
 and most creative of human intellects, suddenly aban- 
 doned in disgust his palace, his family, his treasures, 
 and his state ; took the name of Gotama, which means, 
 " he who kills the senses " ; became 9 religious mendi- 
 cant ;" walked about in a shroud taken from the dead 
 body of a female slave ; taught, preached, and gathered 
 about him a body of enthusiastic disciples, bound to- 
 gether by the most efiicient of all ecclesiastical organ- 
 izations ; dictated or inspired works which, as now 
 published by the Chinese government in four lan- 
 guages, occupy eight hundred volumes ; and died at 
 the age of eighty, the founder of the Buddhist religion. 
 Compared with this man, Mahomet was an ignorant 
 and ferocious barbarian ; and the proudest names in 
 Western philosophy lose a little of their lustre when 
 placed by the side of this thinker, who grappled with 
 the greatest problems of existence witb the mightiest 
 
302 SHODDY. 
 
 force of conception and reasoning. Aa a pliilosopher, 
 he anticipated both the idealism of Berkeley and the 
 positivism of Comte ; as a political thinker, he antici- 
 pated the noblest truth of our " Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence," and twenty-five hundred years ago taught, 
 against the caste system oi India, the doctrine of the 
 equality of men ; and, in that region of influence, high- 
 er than that in which either philosophy or statesman- 
 ship works, he founded a religion which is now pro- 
 fessed by two fifths of the human race, and which thus 
 exceeds, in the number of its votaries, that of any 
 other religion in the world. Buddhism has been cor- 
 rupted by a fantastic mythology, but its essential prin- 
 ciple, derived from its founder's disgust of existence, is, 
 that life is not worth living, and that the extinction of 
 life is the highest reward of virtue. To pass, in the 
 next 'world, through various penal or purifying trans- 
 migrations, until you reach the bliss of Nirwana, or 
 mere nothingness and nonentity, that is the Buddhist 
 religion. "We have said that it was professed by two 
 fifths of the human race, but its fundamental principle, 
 that life is not worth living, is believed, if not pro- 
 fessed, by a large majority of mankind. Not to speak 
 of the hundreds of wailing books which misanthropic 
 genius has contributed to all modern literatures, not to 
 remind the reader that the Buddhist Byron is the most 
 
SHODDY. 303 
 
 popular British poet of the century, that person must 
 have been singularly blessed with cheerful companions 
 who has not met followers of Gotama among the nom- 
 inal believers in Christ. The infection of the doctrine 
 as an interpretation of human experience is so great, 
 that comparatively few have altogether escaped its in- 
 fluence. In basing his religion on this disease of hu- 
 man nature, Gotama showed profounder sagacity than 
 that evinced by any other founder of a false religion ; 
 and in the East this disease presented its most despair- 
 ing phase, for there weariness of life was associated 
 both with the satiety of the rich and the wretchedness 
 of the poor. 
 
 But whence comes this disgust of life ? We answer, 
 from the comparative absence of life. No man feels it 
 who feels the abounding reality of spiritual existence 
 glowing within him ; for rightly sings the po^t, 
 
 " Whatever crazy sorrow saith, 
 \ No life that breathes with human breath 
 ' Has ever trnly longed for death. 
 
 " ' T is life, whereof our nerves are scant, 
 life, not death, for which we pant ; 
 More life, and fuller, that we want ! " 
 
 But this disgust of life comes with the decay of vital- 
 ity ; it comes with the experience that the inward 
 
304 SHODDY. 
 
 strength is weak before the outward obstacle ; it comes 
 with the cares, perplexities, sorrows, failures, disap- 
 pointments, deceptions, and ennui of the world. How, 
 — and here is the essential question, — how is this 
 vitality to be preserved and increased ? The answer 
 is. Activity for an object ; for the mind grows by the 
 vigorous assimilatiop of food which is external to the 
 mind, and eats itself into leanness and imbecility when 
 forced back on itself for nutriment. But, it may be 
 objected, do not most men exercise activity for objects? 
 Yes, but the objects belong to that large class of things 
 which allure in the pursuit, but do not satisfy in the 
 possession. In other words, they do not wear, — they 
 are shoddy. Hence dissatisfaction, discontent, disber 
 lief, mental weariness, moral disgust. Now the Chris- 
 tian religion, the religion of life, is, in its spirit and 
 essence, the exact opposite of Buddhism, the religion of 
 death. When it is the object of the mind's activity, it 
 overcomes disgust of life by the positive communica- 
 tion of life. But what if your Christian teaching is 
 lifeless ? "What if you eat husks instead of bread ? 
 What if the Christian books you read are not reser- 
 voirs of spiritual vitality, but receptacles of juiceless 
 commonplaces ? You will then be Buddhists, though 
 you may boast of sending missionaries to Birmah'and 
 thank Heaven you were born in a Christian land ; for 
 
SHODDY. 305 
 
 shoddy is shoddy all the world over, and the vital 
 laws which make existence" a blessing or a plague can- 
 not be balked. 
 
 Thus, in whatevter direction we look, we detect this 
 pernicious element at work, waging continual war 
 against the creative forces of civilization. In politics, 
 it substitutes expedients for principles ; in generalship, 
 bulletins for abilities ; in society, manners for merit ; 
 in business, trick for enterprise ; in literature, form for 
 substance and puerilities for power; in morals and 
 religion, truisms for truths, shadows for substance, 
 memory for insight, the discipline of death for the com- 
 munication of life. In all it shows itself capable of pro- 
 ducing nothing which is not a tissue of woven lies, and 
 which does not drop into dishonored rags as soon as it 
 is put to the test of use. And it is not the least of the 
 compensations of the terrible war through which we 
 have pas'sed that it has taught us, in letters of fire and 
 blood, the pohcy of freedom, the expediency of justice, 
 the worth of reality, and the worthlessness of shams ! 
 
 20 
 
JOHK A. ANDEEtP".* 
 
 I AM not so presumptuous, Mr. Mayor and Grentle- 
 men of the City Council, as to rise here with the 
 intention to pronounce a eulogy on him whose sudden 
 death sent such a shock of grieved surprise through 
 the nation, for the universal sense of bereavement is 
 the only fitting eulogy of the virtues and abilities whose 
 departure it mourns. My more modest purpose is to 
 attempt, as well as I can, to account for the influence 
 he exerted during his life, and for the peculiar pre- 
 ciousness of the memory he has left behind him. It 
 is generally felt that since the death "of Lincoln the 
 country has not been called upon to lament so great a 
 public loss ; and a simple statement of the qualities of 
 mind and character which made him so honored and 
 so endeared is, therefore, better than all panegyric. 
 
 John Albion Andrew was, in the best sense of 
 the word, well born. He came of that good New 
 
 * Address delivered before the City Council of Boston, NoTember 
 26, 1867. 
 
JOHN A. ANDREW. SOT 
 
 England stock in which conscience seems to be as 
 hereditary as intelligence, and in which the fine cumu- 
 lative results of the moral struggles and triumphs of 
 many generations of honest lives appear to be trans- 
 mitted as a spiritual inheritance. Born in Windham, 
 Maine, on May 31st, 1818, at the time Maine was a 
 part of Massachusetts, his genial nature was developed 
 in the atmosphere of a singularly genial home. The 
 power of attaching others to him began in his cradle, 
 and did not end when all that was mortal of him was 
 tenderly consigned to the grave. Free from envy, 
 jealousy, covetousness, and the other vices of disposi- 
 tion which isolate the person in himself, his sympathies 
 were not obstructed in their natural outlet, and he 
 early laid the foundation of his comprehensiveness of 
 mind in his comprehensiveness of heart. He was not 
 a bright boy in the sense of having that superficial 
 perception and ready memory by which lessons are 
 rapidly learned ; but if his mental growth was slow it 
 was sturdy, and what he acquired went to build up 
 faculty and to pass as a force into character. At 
 Bowdoin College, from which he was graduated in the 
 class of 1837, he was indifferent to academic honors, 
 and was surpassed in scholarship by many whom he 
 obviously surpassed in all the qualities of intellectual 
 manhood. His ambition at the age of nineteen had 
 
308 JOHN A. ANDREW. 
 
 maturity in it, showing none of that passion for promi- 
 nence which the young are apt to mistake for the 
 deeper impulse which gradually lifts men to eminence. 
 He took life in a large and leisurely way, unvexed by 
 the fret and sting of unsatisfied vanities, and less anx- 
 ious to shine in the estimation of others than to stand 
 well in his own. Choosing the law for his profession, 
 he came to' this city to study it in the office of Heniy 
 H. Fuller, and in 1840 was admitted to the bar. 
 
 As a" lawyer he rose but slowly into practice, and 
 developed only by degrees those powers which eventu- 
 ally placed him in the front rank of his profession. 
 There are some prodigies of legal learning and skill 
 whoTiave not only mastered the law, but been mas- 
 tered by it. Their human nature seems lost in their 
 legal nature. But it was the law of Andrew's mind, 
 that his character should keep on a level with his 
 acquirements, and that the man should never be 
 merged in the professional man. The freshness, elas- 
 ticity, and independence, the joyousness and the sturdi- 
 ness, of his individuality, increased with the increase 
 of his knowledge and experience. He showed, from 
 the first, that he could, in Sir Edward Coke's, phrase, 
 " toil terribly." We have the testimony of his per- 
 sonal and professional friend, Mr. Chandler, that no 
 man at the bar ever studied harder ; that he looked up 
 
JOHN A. ANDREW. 809 
 
 his cases with great care and zeal ; that he was quick 
 to seize points, and tenacious to hold them; that he 
 was recognized at the bar as a dangerous opponent 
 before he had acquired much outside reputation as a 
 lawyer ; that he tried a case with " courage, perse- 
 verance, spirit, and a dash of old-fashioned but manly 
 temper " ; and that he probably never lost a client 
 who had' once employed him. It is impossible to 
 overrate the influence of this austere legal training 
 in making him the great power in the State he finally 
 became, for it was the union of the lawyer with the 
 philanthropist that eventually produced the statesman. 
 
 And in passing from the lawyer to the philanthro- 
 pist we find no break in the integrity of the man. 
 His philanthropy was born of the two deepest elements 
 of his being, beneficence and conscience, his love of 
 Lis kind, and his sense of duty to his kind ; and 
 both had received Christian baptism. The virtues 
 which Christianity enjoins he cultivated with a simple 
 faith in their absolute excellence and authority, which 
 was astonishing in a busy layman; and the" difficulty 
 of classing him exclusively with any denomination 
 of Christians, is due to the fact that though he held 
 decided doctrines, he so subordinated theological doc- 
 trines to Christian virtues, that wherever the spirit 
 of Christianity was, there was his church. The dis- 
 
310 - JOHN A. ANDREW. 
 
 tinction between Unitarian and Trinitarian, between 
 Protestant and Catholic, vanished the moment he 
 recognized in another that love of God which comes 
 out in service to man. During all the years he was 
 toiling as a lawyer, he found time to give his thought, 
 his eloquence, and his learning, — he found time, I 
 should more properly say, to give himself, ^io all 
 societies which contemplated the relief of the poor, 
 the reform of the criminal, and the succor of the 
 oppressed. Few men were connected with so many 
 unfashionable and unpopular causes. Indeed it was 
 only sufficient to know that alliance with any party 
 or philanthropic cause was considered to involve some 
 loss of social caste or business patronage, to be pretty 
 sure that Joha A. Andrew was allied with it. And 
 opposition and obloquy could not embitter his spirit. 
 He was amused rather than exasperated at the idea 
 that, in a Christian community, it could be considered, 
 even by fops, a mark of vulgarity to apply Christian 
 principles to politics and affairs. The champion of 
 many causes, he escaped the narrowing influences 
 which might have resulted from his exclusive devotion 
 to any particular one, whilst his robustness of moral 
 health saved him from all sentimentality, sanctimo- 
 niousness, and cant. Moral sentimentality is to moral 
 sentiment what indolent revery is to executive 
 
JOHN A. ANDREW. 311 
 
 thought. Sentiment is known by its being concen- 
 trated on the object which calls it forth. Sentimen- 
 tality, the epicurism of heart, is content to fondle its 
 benevolent feelings, and shrinks from entering into 
 the rough fight which the feelings were given to sus- 
 tain. Now Andrew's sentiment was ever thoroughly 
 vital, and impelled his -whole moral force outward to 
 a palpable object, to secure a practical good. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to refer to any instances of 
 his public displays as a reformer, for what was 
 obloquy then is glory now. The march- of American 
 society is so swift that the paradox of yesterday 
 becomes the truism of to-day, and the short course 
 of one life suffices to give a man the distinction of 
 being mobbed by the same generation by which he 
 is crowned. Even in conservative England, Lord 
 Eldon, the type of toryism, and overloaded with 
 wealth and honors, could, in his Old age, as he saw 
 Brougham and Denman rise to the highest judicial 
 positions, Ironically regret that he had not himself 
 " begun in the sedition line." Without derogating 
 from the honor of the reformer, "without abating a 
 tittle of the gratitude we owe to him, we must still 
 remember that his assailants are his assistants, and 
 that his views generally reach the public mind and 
 conscience through the ill-meant machinations of his 
 
312 JOHN A. ANDREW. 
 
 enemies. To be slandered is, in this country, to be 
 famous, and if you wish to keep an innovator obscure, 
 the only policy to be followed is the policy of silence. 
 Andrew, doubtless, enjoyed his share of the advantages 
 of that publicity which is the direct result of being 
 roundly abused, but there was one precious element 
 in his beneficence which evaded this kind of renown. 
 He loved not only to promote noble causes, but to 
 assist, elevate, counsel, and console individuals. Had 
 God not taken him to himself with such suddenness, 
 he would have felt the full consolation of the Scottish 
 heroine's words, that when death comes, " it isna what 
 we ha dune for oursells, but what we ha dune for 
 others, that we think on maist pleasantly." The 
 humblest offices of the philanthropist were dear to 
 his kindly heart. The same instinct of humanity 
 which impelled him to ,the platform led him to the 
 Sunday school and the conference meeting, to the 
 pauper's sick-bed and the prisoner's cell, to the cham- 
 ber of the stricken mourner and the hiding-place of 
 the fugitive slave. The lame, the halt, and the blind, 
 morally as well as physically, he did not treat with 
 the insolent condescension of a superior being, but 
 with the cordial sympathy of a Christian brother. 
 The soldier of justice became with these a minister 
 of mercy, for he never visited them merely from that 
 
JOHN A. ANDREW. 313 
 
 hard sense of duty which often further impoverishes 
 and afflicts the poverty and a;ffliction it coldly designs 
 to serve. In the presence of the poor, the ignorant, 
 and the depraved, his countenance, like that of the 
 good father of Solomon's house, in Bacon's New 
 Atlantis, " was as the countenance of one who pities 
 men." His great human sympathy and his massive 
 manly sense communicated to them new life and 
 energy, touching and unsealing in their breasts the 
 springs of resolution and self-help, and flooding them 
 with chee#, — soul-cheer. These services to humanity 
 were such as made no public noise, but their obscure 
 record here is in " the red-leaved tables " of grateful 
 human hearts, and we may be sure that their '^eternal 
 blazon " is where he reads them now ! 
 
 But if this sympathy with his kind was, on its serious 
 side, so true and strong, it was no less humane on its 
 humorous side. His large nature embraced the ludi- 
 crous aspects of life and character as well as their 
 solemn phase, and his humorous insight softened the 
 austerity of his moral insight. A man of ideas, he 
 still had little of the intolerance so often linked with 
 fervid convictions, and in dealing with human affairs 
 he always allowed for human nature. Now -without 
 ludicrous perception, toleration, to an earnest liian, is 
 impossible, for he cannot detect the line which sep- 
 
314 JOHN A. ANDREW. 
 
 arates folly and weakness from knavery and crime; 
 he cannot distinguish between opinions and persons ; 
 above all, he cannot get into the hearts of men, where 
 the strange tragi-eomedy of human life is rehearsed. 
 Andrew knew very well that the world was not com- 
 posed of Andrews, and he did not insist that it should 
 be composed of Andrews. He was not only tolerant 
 of other individualities, but he took pleasure in the 
 peculiarities which distinguished them from himself. 
 Brought up in a New England country town, where 
 individualities are strongly marked, where even oddi- 
 ties and eccentrics are still " neighbors," and endowed 
 with that peculiar neighborly feeling which is unknown 
 to our cities, he early slid easily into fellowship with 
 those whose natures as well as opinions differed from 
 his own. A "character" was to him an object of 
 the intens.est enjoyment, and anecdotes, which illus- 
 trated or embodied character, he delighted both to hear 
 and to tell. The flash and the' sting of wit, the swift 
 jest launched at a thing or person, did not specially 
 please him ; but a stroke -or trait of humor, which let 
 light into the moral constitution of an individual, and 
 which enabled him humorously to sympathize withthe 
 frailty at which he laughed, filled him with the sun- 
 niest exhilaration. His keen sense of humor, indeed, 
 was the most satisfying of all the methods by which he 
 
JOHN A. ANDREW. 316 
 
 obtained his wide knowledge of men, for it gave him 
 the power to see clear through imperfect characters 
 without despising them, and saved his sagacity from 
 that hard, cynical contemptuousness which is apt to 
 poison worldly shrewdness when divorced from love. 
 It was delicious to observe the smiling knowingness 
 in his eyes, the laughing glow shed all over his 
 face, when he touched on some example of human 
 littleness, or weakness^ or prejudice, or hypocrisy ; and 
 if he himself was the intended victim of the bigotry or 
 artifice, it did not seem to take much from his relish 
 of the humor of the thing. Indeed, in the reach of 
 its humorous no less than its serious sympathies, our 
 Andrew's heart, in the philosopher's noble image, " was 
 not an island cut off from other men's lands, but a 
 continent which joined to them." 
 
 It is important thus- to emphasize the essential hu- 
 manity of his sentiments, in order to appreciate the 
 sweetness which penetrated his force. But it must not 
 be supposed that his tenderness or his toleration made 
 him compliant in making him humane. His tender- 
 ness did not render him incapable of that moral wrath 
 which is frequently the indispensable condition of 
 moral might. Still less did his toleration relax the 
 tough fibre of his individual integrity. If Massachu- 
 setts aver produced a man who was thoroughly incor- 
 
316 JOHN A. ANDKET. 
 
 ruptible, who was insensible to bribes presented to 
 vanity, prejudice, and ambition as well as to interest, 
 and whom all the powers of the world could not push 
 or persuade into a dishonest action, that man was 
 John A. Andrew. This integrity he prized beyond all 
 earthly goods and all earthly blessings. It was the 
 rock on which his character was built, and it could not 
 be unfixed without bringing down the whole fabric of 
 hijS being into cureless ruin. To doubt its genuine- 
 ness were not only infamous but ridiculous. It re- 
 mains with us, though he has left us, and as an 
 inspiring and monitory moral force it still pleads, warns, 
 animates, commands, crying to every man, in high or 
 huipble stq.tion, " Tl^ough all things else' fail, hold fast 
 to your integrity " ; 
 
 " Make it a darling like yonr preoions eye ; 
 To lose or give 't away, were suck perdition 
 As nothing else could match." 
 
 And this integrity ran through his mental as well 
 as his moral being. The genuineness of his nature re- 
 volted at all pretension and falseness in matters mtel- 
 lectual, no less than in matters moral. He trained his 
 perceptions to be sure and keen ; he sought to see 
 things as they are in themselves, and not as they are 
 transformed by our amiable desires ; and truth of fact 
 was as necessary to him as truth . of principle. He 
 
JOHN A. ANDREW. 317 
 
 knew, indeed, that thoughts can be converted into facts 
 only by a clear previous perception.of the facts which 
 the thoughts are directed to modify or supplant ; and 
 that, to shape things as they should be, they must first 
 be seen exactly as they are. Hence the sound sense 
 at the base of his mind, the " large round about sense," 
 which sometimes startled and sometimes vejced those 
 who expected and predicted that his action, on certain 
 occasions, would be decided by his feelings rather than 
 by his judgment. He was full of that mother wit 
 which average New-Englanders demand in the man 
 they trust. The very ^' set " of his head on his shoul- 
 ders inspired men w'th confidence, for it told them that 
 the fervor of his sentiments was not more evident than 
 the sobriety and massiveness of his mind. His under- 
 standing was not only broad, bjit it kept broadening, 
 rapidly adapting itself to unexpected exigencies, and 
 ever as comprehensive as the occasion which called 
 for its exercise. The more complicated a question be- 
 came, the wider its bearings, the more the subtility of 
 his intellect sharpened to seize its elusive points, the 
 more the scope of his intellect enlarged to grasp its re- 
 moter relations. He always surprised his most admir- 
 ing friends by his equality with every emergency as it 
 arose, and he even extorted from political opponents 
 the grumbling confession that " the fanatic " really had 
 
318 JOHN A. ANDREW. 
 
 in him, somehow or other, the sagacity and the decis- 
 ion of the statesman. 
 
 Finally, Governor Andrew had that kindling and 
 animating quality which we call Soul. This pervaded 
 sentiment, conscience, understanding, character, with its 
 subtle but potent essence. This ran, like life-blood, 
 through all " the veins of his intellectual frame." 
 This brought him into direct contact with principles, 
 and opened tg him the vital sources of inspiration. 
 This supplied to patience and to hope that gi'eat " Army 
 of Reserve " which repeated defeats could not exhaust. 
 This glorified the hardest as well as the humblest toil 
 with a shining motive, and, to use his own favorite quo- 
 tation, 
 
 " Made drudgery divine ; 
 Who sweeps a room as for God's law, 
 Makes that and the action fine." 
 
 And this communicated to his whole nature that power 
 of magnetizing others, which comes from no extent of 
 learning, no breadth of understanding, no heat of mere 
 passion, but is the attribute of a commanding personal- 
 ity alone. This magnetism made his acts and words 
 efficient because it made i Ihem contagious, and people 
 caught from him, as by spiritual infection, courage and 
 wisdom, patriotism and philanthropy, confidence in 
 principle and trust in God. 
 
JOHN A. ANDREW. 319 
 
 That sucli a man should be made Governor of Mas- 
 sachusetts was of course an inevitable incident in the 
 logic of events. He could not have prevented it had 
 he tried. But the exact time at which he was elected 
 had in it something providential. Never did the Ship 
 of State more need such firmness, wisdom, forecast, 
 and energy at the helm. 
 
 " Each petty hand 
 Can steer a ship becalmed ; but he that will 
 Govern and carry her to her ends, must know 
 His tides, his currents ; how to shift his sails ; 
 What she will bear in foul, what in fair weathers ; 
 What her springs are, her leaks, and how to stop them ; 
 What strands, what shelves, what rocks do threaten her ; 
 The forces and the natures of all winds. 
 Gusts, storms, and tempests ; when her keel ploughs hell, 
 And deck knocks heaven ; then to manage her 
 Becomes the name and office of a pilot." 
 
 And such a pilot Governor Andrew proved himself 
 to be. Knowing, as he did, the philosophy of the 
 slave system, and knowing, also, the purposes of its 
 champions, the Slaveholders' Eebellion could not take 
 him by surprise. As early as the middle of December, 
 1860, he had visited Washington, conversed familiarly 
 with the leading public men of the South, and clearly 
 perceived that all the movements relating to compro- 
 mise were but scenes in a clumsily acted political farce. 
 
320 JOHN A. ANDREW. 
 
 He looked straight through all the plausibilities to the 
 realities of the situation, and returned to Boston as 
 much convinced that the Sputh meant war, as he was 
 on the day when the first gun fired on Sumter woke 
 everybody to the fact. From his insight sprang his 
 foresight. It was mainly through his exertions that 
 the active militia of Massachusetts were placed on a 
 war footing, ready to march at the first word of com- 
 mand. You all remember with what sagacity this was 
 done, and you all remember, too, with what sneers and 
 gibes his forecast was then rewarded. His general 
 order to the militia was promulgated in January, 1861, 
 and the memorable 12th of April, which opened the 
 costliest and bloodiest of civil wars, found him all pre- 
 pared. He received his telegram from Washington, 
 for troops, on Monday, April 15. He was able to say 
 that by nine o'clock on the next Sunday morning, 
 " the whole number of regiments demanded from Mas- 
 sachusetts were already either in Washington, or in 
 Fortress Monroe, or on their way to the defence of 
 the Capital." It was at midnight on the 19 th of April, 
 after the exhausting labors of the day, that he wrote, 
 at his own house, the despatch to the mayor of Balti- 
 more, which has so endeared him to the popular heart. 
 " I pray you," he wrote, " to cause the bodies of our 
 Massachusetts soldiers, dead in Baltimore, to be imme- 
 
JOHN A. ANDREW. 321 
 
 diately laid out, preserved with ice, and tenderly, sent 
 forward by express to me." His activity during the 
 first month of the war was not more marked than his 
 mental self-possession. The rush and whirl of events 
 did not hurry him from his balance. Overwhelmed 
 with all sorts of propositions, recommendations, pro- 
 posals, pertinent and impertinent, such as might be 
 expected in an emergency when the confusion of men's 
 minds was as great as the warmth of their sentiments, 
 the Governor stood firm and calm, listening, analyzing, 
 deciding, quick to detect what was judicious, proof 
 against all the generosities of unreason. No one was 
 more impassioned than he, — no one was more serene 
 and self-centred. He was all alive, soul and body, 
 heart and brain, and being all alive, his intellect showed 
 its clearness and grasp as well as his sensibility its fire - 
 and impulse. " There is nothing," we are told, " more 
 terrible than activity without insight," and the Gov- 
 ernor's activity was_ identical with his insight. He 
 decided swiftly and he decided surely. The rarest 
 quality of comprehensive statesmanship, the readiness 
 to assume responsibility, seemed native to his intrepid 
 intelligence. " Immediately," — he writes to Presi- 
 dent Lincoln on the 3d of May, — " on receiving 
 your Proclamation, we took up the war, and have 
 carried on our part of it, in the spirit in which we 
 21 
 
322 JOHN A. 'andbew*. 
 
 believe the Administration and the American people 
 intend to act, namely, as if there was not an inch of 
 red tape in the world." So thoroughly kindled was 
 his whole nature that when, a few days later, he 
 addressed the Legislature, in its extra session, his 
 rapid recital of the powers he had assumed, and the 
 work he had done, combined the explicitness of a 
 business document with something of the lyric rush 
 of an ode of triumph. 
 
 This unwearied fire of soul burned steadily within 
 him during the whole five years of heroic eflTort and 
 heroic toil, which made his administration such an 
 epoch in the history of the State. He knew that the 
 disease of which he eventually died might strike him 
 at any moment. Three months before he entered 
 on his glorious career as governor, he was warned 
 by his physician that any over-exertion of brain would 
 endanger his health, and probably his life. He was 
 notoriously as regardless of the warning as a brave 
 soldier, going to battle, would be regardless of the 
 admonition that he might be hit by a bullet. The" 
 care that a man takes of his health should of course 
 be subordinate to his se"Hge of duty. Considerations 
 of hygiene did not enter into the soul of William 
 of Orange, doing that which he knew would reduce 
 him to an " asthmatic skeleton " ; into the soul of 
 
JOHN A. ANDREW. 323 
 
 Milton, doing that which he knew would deprive him 
 of his sight ; into the soul of Latimer, doing that 
 which he knew would lead him to the stake. On the 
 same principle. Governor Andrew felt that he was 
 at his post, not to take care of himself, but to look 
 after the rights and interests of others ; and indeed, 
 any man who evades the duty of the hour in order 
 to save himself for some future great occasion is a 
 man to whom no great occasion will ever come. 
 
 Taking thus his life in his hand, he, in the most 
 emphatic sense of the phrase, " enlisted for the war." 
 To perform every duty as it rose or as it was antici- 
 pated, was both his labor and his delight. " The only 
 question," he said, " which I can entertain, is what 
 to do ; and when that question is answered, the other 
 is, what next to do." The record of that heroic activity 
 is too long to be recited here. There is no time even 
 to allude to more than a few of its shining results. 
 The mere statement of the fact that Massachusetts, 
 during the war, contributed nearly a hundred and 
 sixty thousand men to the army and navy, and expend- 
 ed nearly twenty-eight millions -of dollars from her 
 own treasury, shows how laborious and how sagacious 
 must have been the exertions of her executive head. 
 But the details of all this work, the wear and tear 
 of heart and brain they involved, the minute super- 
 
324 JOHN A. ANDREW. 
 
 vision they required, the audacity and the tact demandi- 
 ed for their skilful management, the fret, anxiety, 
 perplexity, disappointment, which were their too com- 
 mon accompaniments, — who shall estimate them ? 
 The Governor drudged in the service of a clear-seeing, 
 far-seeing statesmanship, but the drudgery was still 
 exhausting to body and mind. And then the preju- 
 dices he had to overcome I He saw from the first 
 that the war must destroy slavery, and he urged the 
 issuing of the Presidential Proclamation of Eman- 
 cipation before it came. What cries from prudent 
 patriots that he was perilling the cause by his wish 
 to give it a new moral stimulant ! He saw front 
 the first that the negroes should have a part in the 
 war which was sure to emancipate them, and he was 
 the first Northern Governor to organize black regi- 
 ments. What gibes from fathers of families whose 
 sons his policy saved from the draft ! In the fourteen 
 or fifteen thousand military appointments he made, 
 how often must he have wounded the self-esteem of 
 disappointed applicants, and how bitter was often their 
 resentment ! And in addition to his labors - in the 
 State itself, it is to be remembered that his duties 
 called him frequently to Washington to press the 
 settlement of State claims on the National Government, 
 to enforce his views of public policy on the National 
 
JOHN A. ANDREW. 325 
 
 Administration, and especially to insist that no just 
 Qomplaints of hiS: Massachusetts regiments should be 
 left unrelieved. 
 
 But while he thus showed himself so indefatigable 
 in all matters relating to the war, no Governor that 
 Massachusetts ever had did more to promote those 
 interests which are commonlj supposed ' to flourish 
 beat in times of peace. The great uprising. and awaken- 
 ing of the public intelligence and conscience, which 
 thrilled tbe meanest hearts and narrowest minds with 
 unaccustomed throbs of generous sentiment, enabled 
 him to get some bad laws repealed and many good 
 ones enacted. The act which discriminated between 
 native and foreign citizens, called the " Two Years' 
 Amendment," was struck from the Statute -Book. 
 The noble measure of organizing a Board of State 
 Charities was initiated and put in operation. The 
 legal limitation of the rate of interest on money was 
 shown to be unsound by unanswerable arguments. 
 All the questions relating to divorce, and the abolition 
 of the death penalty, were pushed anew on the atten- 
 tion of the Legislature. The finances of the State 
 were reorganized. The paramount interests of indus- 
 try, in all departments, agricultural, manufacturing, 
 and mechanical, were advanced by judicious legisla- 
 tion. The great heart of the Governor glowed with 
 
.326 JOHN A. ANDREW. 
 
 the ambition to make the productive energies of the 
 State more than offset all the waste of war, and no 
 miser ever gloated over additions to his own wealth' 
 as this magistrate, honorably poor, rejoiced, in his 
 messages, over every addition to the wealth of the 
 community. But he was not solicitous merely for 
 the material advancement of the State, — he was not 
 even content with the passage of measures which 
 contemplated the moral improvement of the people. 
 He desired that Massachusetts, in all the straits of 
 war, should be true to her traditional aspirations for 
 intellectual renown. The scholars who urged on him 
 the wants of her colleges, the men of science who 
 called his attention to the claims of the Institute of 
 Technology and the' Natural History Society, found 
 in him the most sympathetic of listeners and most 
 cordial of friends. And it was mainly through his 
 impelling counsel that the State gave large and liberal 
 aid to an institution of pure science, — to that com- 
 prehensive Museum of Comparative Zoology, which, 
 when completed in the spirit in which it has been 
 i)egun, will embody, in visible related forms, the 
 thoughts and facts teeming in the mind of Agassiz. 
 
 A Governor thus active in so many directions, and 
 who made himself felt in every department of the 
 administration of -State affairs, must have been gifted 
 
JOHN A. ANDREW. 327 
 
 with an energetic will. That this did not degenerate 
 into wilfulness and obstinacy is shown by the fact that 
 he could readily learn from other minds, and that there 
 was what New-Englanders call "^ive " to his own. 
 He not only listened to advice, but he had the tact to 
 distinguish and to seek out the individuals most com- 
 petent to offer it. The nobler qualities of will, its 
 persistency and tenacity, he had in full measure, and 
 these made him, in all times of panic and senseless 
 clamor, "a Pillar steadfast in the storm." No one 
 better illustrated 'Franklin's maxim : " Eesolve to per- 
 form what you ought ; perform without fail what you 
 resolve." He was of course thought to be obstinate 
 by those who brought their own obstinacy into conflict 
 with his determination, for his will in such cases could 
 not be broken down. Sometimes, it must be admitted, 
 he very violently disregarded the politician's motto, 
 that a public- man ought to refuse a request as if he 
 were conferring a favor. . It was .hard to say to an 
 applicant for oflBce, as he is reported once to have 
 said, " Sir, I have patiently listened to all you have 
 urged in behalf of your claims, and I must frankly 
 tell you that your chance of getting the place is about 
 as great as your chance of being killed by lightning on 
 the top of Mount Washington in January." At other 
 times this slight roughness, never without a touch of 
 
328 JOBN A. ANDEEW. 
 
 humor in it, was but the vigorous assertion of his 
 willingness on all occasions to assume the responsi- 
 bility of his acts. When entreated by many political 
 and personal friends to withdraw his objections to an 
 appointment, on the ground that if he persisted in 
 them he would raise a clamor in his own party, he 
 replied : " Throw the responsibility on me alone. If 
 I: am willing to take the devil by the horns, what need 
 you care?" 
 
 But his admirable patience never felt these little 
 irritations in cases where humanity was concerned. 
 He was a democrat through and through, feeling him- 
 self on an equality with, all, but never putting on airs 
 of condescension to any. " I know not," he once said, 
 " what record of sin awaits me in the next world, but 
 this I know, that I was never mean enough to despise 
 a man because he was poor, or because he was igno- 
 rant, or ^because he was black." Sir Frederic Bruce, 
 the British Minister, once called upon him at the 
 State House, and found the room nearly filled with 
 colored women, who had come to the Governor to 
 obtain news of fathers, brothers, and sons, enlisted in 
 the black regiments of Massachusetts. Sir Frederic 
 waited, while the Governor, with kindly patience, lis- 
 tened to complaints, answered questions, gave advice, 
 and tried to infuse consolation and cheer into the 
 
JOHN A. ANDKET. 329 
 
 hearts of his humble friends. After these interviews 
 were all over, the turn of the British Minister came, 
 and he was a man with the nobility of soul to appre- 
 ciate what he had witnessed. Clasping the Governor 
 by the hand, he declared, that, whatever might be the 
 advantages of a republican government, he had never 
 believed that it could assume a paternal character, but 
 what he had just seen proved to him how much he had 
 been mistaken. Indeed this -paternal feeling and pa- 
 ternal care of the Governor for the brave " boys " of 
 all the Massachusetts regiments had the homeliness 
 and heartiness of personal affection. His agents were 
 in all camps looking after their rights and interests. 
 Pinched by cold or wilted by heat, in all straits of 
 hunger and privation, their strength was never so far 
 gone as to prevent' their raising a ringing cheer for 
 Governor Andrew. They knew that his pride gloried 
 in every achievement of their valor ; they knew, too, 
 that his indignation glowed, white-hot, at every story 
 of their wrongs. He could not endure the thought 
 of their being exposed to needless suffering by any 
 oversight or blundering on the. part "of the authorities. 
 Eeceiving, in the depth of winter, an urgent request 
 from the "War Office that a regiment, not yet properly 
 equipped, should be sent immediately to Washington, 
 he despatched it on the assurance that all its wants 
 
330 JOHN A. ANDREW. 
 
 should be supplied on its arrival. Hearing that it 
 had been stopped on the way, and that it was under- 
 going cruel privations, he started instantly foi- the 
 camp^ determined at least to share the misery he might 
 not be able to relieve; and he would not budge an 
 inch until the regiment was sent on to its destination. 
 Indeed he would have blushed to enter heaven, carry- 
 ing thither the thought that he had regarded his own 
 comfort rather than the least duty he owed to the 
 poorest soldier-citizen. 
 
 And when peace came it was found that he, who in 
 the darkest periods of the war had never once lost 
 heart or hope, was entirely uncorrupted by the pas- 
 sions which war commonly leaves behind it. His 
 noble Valedictory Address to the Legislature, bearing 
 on every page the marks of a broad, sagacious, mag- 
 nanimous statesmanship, shows that the strife had 
 given no obliquity to his understanding, had ' left no 
 feeling of vengeance in his heart. The growth of his 
 mind and nature was remarkable during those five 
 years in which he had the opportunity to condense the 
 experience and almost the work of fifty. When he 
 left office he was unmistakably one of the first states- 
 men in the laiid. Not the least striking sign of the 
 raassiveness and integrity of his character was the fact 
 that its great leading features were so stamped on the 
 
JOHN A. ANDEE-W. 331 
 
 public mind that slanders could not injure his reputa- 
 tion. As soon as the lie was launched, as soon as the 
 imputation was made, everybody felt that it did not 
 fit, — that it was not " in keeping " with the individu-. 
 ality. He commonly laughed at it himself, as he 
 would have laughed at any other incongruity. Once 
 the vivid image on the public mind seemed for a mo- 
 ment blurred ; it was, however, graven too deep and 
 strong to be effaced. But his character was not 
 merely original, it was originating. He belonged to 
 that class of statesmen of genius who help to shape 
 the history of their times, and whose characters melt 
 into ' the current of creative forces which determine 
 events. He had that wisdom which results from the 
 vital assimilation of large experience, and which, in 
 practical affairs, operates with some of the celerity of 
 instinct and some of the certainty of intuition. Do 
 you object that he made mistakes ? Of course he 
 made mistakes. " The age of miracles has passed." 
 But it is as true of the statesman as of the general, 
 that he is the best who makes the fewest, and Gov- 
 ernor Andrew's mistakes are almost forgotten 'in the 
 throng of his wise acts and judgments. In fine, it is 
 to the honor of Massachusetts that, in such a man the 
 State was felt to be individualized ; and in respect to 
 the two statues which Massachusetts is to place in the 
 
332 JOHN A. ANDEEW. 
 
 Capitol at Washington, it is certainly fit thdt the statue 
 of the greatest of her governors should stand by the 
 side of the statue of her first 
 
 It was in the height of his reputation and the matu- 
 rity of his powers, withdrawn from public office but 
 full in the public eye, with conspicuous abilities seem- 
 ingly destined to be exercised in the loftiest place, 
 and with that noble ambition, which comes from the 
 consciousness of tested capacity for great affairs, that 
 his career of usefulness, of duty, of glory, was suddenly 
 but gently arrested. There was no lingering disease ; 
 there was no slow decay : 
 
 " God'8 finger touched him, and he slept." 
 
 Asleep but still alive ! Thou whose soul on earth 
 pierced the veil which separates the present from the 
 future life, — thou who didst ever act from large per- 
 ceptions of the whole height and reach of thy being, 
 
 — thou who wert warm with the affections and wise 
 with the thoughts which take hold of the life immortal, 
 
 — we cannot associate thee with the name of death ! 
 The feeling of every citizen that he had met a personal 
 loss, the tears streaming from the eyes of stricken, 
 friends, the pomp of funeral pageantry which bore 
 witness to the mourning of a great State, — these 
 showed how much love and reverence followed thy 
 
JOHN A. ANDEEW. 333 
 
 mortal frame to the grave ; but what the grave could 
 not enclose, what Death himself could not disintegrate, 
 the solid substance of thy firm-knit character, — that 
 remains to thee, and to us, a possession forever ! 
 
 TBE END. 
 
 Cambridge : Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 
 
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