[I CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY PS 1927 C S O 9 ne i900 VerSi,y Ubrary The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022004604 Cbomae; Wcntmott^ ItfggbuEoit* WORKS. Newly arranged. 7 vols. i2mo, each, $2.00. i Cheerful Yesterdays. z. Contemporaries. 3. Army Life in a Black: Regiment. 4. Women and the Alphabet. 5. Studies in Romance. 6. Outdoor Studebs ; and Poems. 7. Studies in History and Letters. TRAVELLERS AND OUTLAWS. i6mo, $1.50. OLDPORT DAYS. i6mo, $1.50. THE PROCESSION OF THE FLOWERS. $1.25. THE AFTERNOON LANDSCAPE. Poems and Translations. $ 1.00. THE MONARCH OF DREAMS. i8mo, 50 cents. WENDELL PHILLIPS. 4to, paper, 25 cents. MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. In the American Men of Letters Series. i6mo, J1.50. HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. In American Men of Letters Series. (In preparation?) EDITED WITH MRS. E. H> BIGELOW. AMERICAN SONNETS. i8mo, $1.25. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, Boston and New York. THE WRITINGS OP THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON VOLUME VII /ApapoB/njc. Proclus, Hymn III. I. 2 'A 1857. Motley Correspondence, i. 203. THE NEW WORLD 245 and should be viewed accordingly ; as if one should talk of there being only a schism be- tween an oak-tree and its seedling, and should try to correct the unhappy separation by trowel and gardener's wax. He certainly did not ac- cept the theory sometimes so earnestly advo- cated among us, of a " cosmopolitan tribunal," which always turns out to mean a tribunal where all other nations are to be admitted to the jury-box, while America is to get no further than the prisoners' dock. Irving would have made as short work with such a cosmopolitan tribunal as did Alice in Wonderland with the jury-box of small quadrupeds, when she refused to obey the king's order that all persons over a mile high should leave the court-room. At any rate, Irving must have meant some- thing by the remark. What could he have meant? What is this touchstone that the American press must apply to the history and the thought of the world ? The touchstone, I should unhesitatingly reply, of the Declaration of Independence ; or rather, perhaps, of those five opening words into which the essence of the Declaration of Independence was concen- trated ; the five words within which, as Lincoln said, Jefferson embodied an eternal truth. " All men are created equal ; " — that is, equally men. 246 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS From this simple assumption flowed all that is distinctive in American society. From it resulted, as a political inference, universal suf- frage ; that is, a suffrage constantly tending to be universal, although it still leaves out one half the human race. This universal suffrage is inevitably based on the doctrine of human equality, as further interpreted by Franklin's remark that the poor man has an equal right to the suffrage with the rich man, "and more need," because he has fewer ways in which to protect himself. But it is not true, as even such acute European observers as M. Scherer and Sir Henry Maine assume, that "democracy is but a form of government ; " for democracy has just as distinct a place in society, and, above all, in the realm of literature. The touchstone there applied is just the same, and it consists in the essential dignity and value of the individual man. The distinctive attitude of the American press must lie, if anywhere, in its recognition of this individual importance and worth. The five words of Jefferson — words which Matthew Arnold pronounced " not solid," thus prove themselves solid enough to sustain not merely the government of sixty or seventy mil- lion people, but their literature. Instead of avoiding, with Goethe, the common, das Ge- meinde, American literature must freely seek THE NEW WORLD 247 the common ; its fiction must record not queens and Cleopatras alone, but the emotion in the heart of the schoolgirl and the sempstress ; its history must record, not only great generals, but the nameless boys whose graves people with undying memories every soldiers' cemetery from Arlington to Chattanooga. And Motley the pupil was not unworthy of Irving from whom the suggestion came. His " Dutch Republic " was written in this Amer- ican spirit. William the Silent remains in our memory as no more essentially a hero than John Haring, who held single-handed his submerged dike against an army ; and Philip of Burgundy and his knights of the Golden Fleece are painted as far less important than John Coster, the Antwerp apothecary, printing his little grammar with movable types. Motley wrote from England, in the midst of an intoxicating social success, that he never should wish Amer- ica "to be anglicized in the aristocratic sense" of the term ; 1 and he described the beautiful English country-seats as "paradises very per- verting to the moral and politico-economical sense," and sure to "pass away, one of these centuries, in the general progress of humanity." 2 And he afterwards said the profoundest thing ever uttered in regard to our Civil War, when 1 Carresp., ii. 294. 2 Ibid., ii. 280. 248 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS he said that it was not, in the ordinary sense, " a military war," 1 but a contest of two principles. Wendell Phillips once told me that as the anti- slavery contest made him an American, so Europe made Motley one ; and when the two young aristocrats met after years of absence, they both found that they had thus experienced religion. When we pass to other great American au- thors, we see that Emerson lifted his voice and spoke even to the humblest of the people of the intrinsic dignity of man : — " God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more ; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor. " I will have never a noble, No lineage counted great ; Fishers and choppers and ploughmen Shall constitute a state. " To-day unbind the captive, So only are ye unbound ; Lift up a people from the dust, Trump of their rescue, sound ! " Pay ransom to the owner, And fill the bag to the brim. Who is the owner ? The slave is owner, And ever was. Pay him.'' 1 Corresp., ii. 82. THE NEW WORLD 249 That poem was not written for a few culti- vated people only. I heard it read to an armed regiment of freed slaves, standing silent with dusky faces, having the solemn arches of the live oaks above them, each tree draped with long festoons of gray moss across its hundred feet of shade. Never reader had an audience more serious, more thoughtful. The words which to others are literature, to them were life. And all that early transcendental school which did so much to emancipate and national- ize American literature, did it by recognizing this same fact. From the depth of their so-called idealism they recognized the infinite value of the individual man. Thoreau, who has been so incorrectly and even cruelly described as a man who spurned his fellows, wrote that noble sen- tence, forever refuting such critics, "What is nature, without a human life passing within her? Many joys and many sorrows are the lights and shadows in which she shines most beautiful." Hawthorne came nearest to a por- trayal of himself in that exquisite prose-poem of "The Threefold Destiny," in which the world- weary man returns to his native village and finds all his early dreams fulfilled in the life beside his own hearthstone. Margaret Fuller Ossoli wrote the profoundest phrase of criticism which has yet proceeded from any American 250 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS critic, when she said that in a work of fiction we need to hear the excuses that men make to themselves for their worthlessness. And now that this early ideal movement has passed by, the far wider movement which is establishing American fiction, not in one local- ity alone, but on a field broad as the continent, unconsciously recognizes this one principle, — the essential dignity and worth of the individ- ual man. This is what enables it to dispense with the toy of royalty and the mechanism of separate classes, and to reach human nature itself. When we look at the masters of Eng- lish fiction, Scott and Jane Austen, we notice that in scarcely one of their novels does one person ever swerve on the closing page from the precise social position he has held from the beginning. Society in their hands is fixed, not fluid. Of course, there are a few concealed heirs, a few revealed strawberry leaves, but never any essential change. I can recall no real social promotion in all the Waverley novels except where Halbert Glendinning weds the maid of Avenel, and there the tutelary genius disappears singing, — " The churl is lord, the maid is bride," — and it proved necessary for Scott to write a sequel, explaining that the marriage was on the THE NEW WORLD 251 whole a rather unhappy one, and that luckily they had no children. Not that Scott did not appreciate with the keenest zest his own Jean- nie Deanses and Dandie Dinmonts, but they must keep their place ; it is not human nature they vindicate, but peasant virtues. But from the moment American fiction came upon the scene, it brought a change. Peasant virtue vanishes when the peasant is a possible president, and what takes its place is individual manhood, irrespective of social position. The heroes who successively conquered Europe in the hands of American authors were of low estate, — a backwoodsman, a pilot, a negro slave, a lamplighter; to which gallery Bret Harte added the gambler, and the authors of " Democracy " and the " Bread- Winners " flung in the politician. In all these figures social dis- tinctions disappear : " a man 's a man for a' that." And so of our later writers, Miss Wil- kins in New England, Miss Murfree in Ten- nessee, Mr. Cable in Louisiana, Mr. Howe in Kansas, Dr. Eggleston in Indiana, Julien Gor- don in New York, all represent the same im- pulse ; all recognize that " all men are created equal" in Jefferson's sense, because all recog- nize the essential and inalienable value of the individual man. It would be, of course, absurd to claim that 252 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS America represents the whole of this tendency, for the tendency is a part of that wave of demo- cratic feeling which is overflowing the world. But Dickens, who initiated the movement in English fiction, was unquestionably influenced by that very American life which he disliked and caricatured, and we have since seen a similar impulse spread through other countries. In the Russian, the Norwegian, the Spanish, the Italian fiction, we now rarely find a plot turning on some merely conventional difference between the social positions of hero and hero- ine. In England the change has been made more slowly than elsewhere, so incongruous is it in the midst of a society which still, in the phrase of Brander Matthews, accepts dukes. Indeed, it is curious to observe that for a time it was found necessary, in the earlier stages of the transition, to label the hero with his precise social position ; — as " Steven Lawrence, Yeo- man," "John Halifax, Gentleman," — whereas in America it would have been left for the reader to find out whether John Halifax was or was not a gentleman, and no label would have been thought needful. And I hasten to add, what I should not al- ways have felt justified in saying, that this American tendency comes to its highest point and is best indicated in the later work of Mr. THE NEW WORLD 253 Howells. Happy is that author whose final admirers are, as heroes used to say, " the cap- tives of his bow and spear," the men from whom he met his earlier criticism. Happy is that man who has the patience to follow, like Cicero, his own genius, and not to take the opinions of others for his guide. And the ear- lier work of Mr. Howells — that is, everything before "The Rise of Silas Lapham," "Annie Kilburn," and "The Hazard of New Fortunes " — falls now into its right place; its alleged thinness becomes merely that of the painter's sketches and studies before his maturer work begins. As the Emperor Alaric felt always an unseen power drawing him on to Rome, so Howells has evidently felt a magnet drawing him on to New York, and it was not until he set up his canvas there that it had due pro- portions. My friend James Parton used to say that students must live in New England, where there were better libraries, but that "loafers and men of genius" should live in New York. To me personally it seems a high price to pay for the privileges either of genius or of loafing, but it is well that Howells has at last paid it for the sake of the results. It is impossible to deny that he as a critic has proved himself sometimes narrow, and has rejected with too great vehemence that which lay out- 254 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS side of his especial domain. It is not neces- sary, because one prefers apples, to condemn oranges ; and he has sometimes needed the caution of the old judge to the young one : " Beware how you give reasons for your deci- sions ; for, while your decisions will usually be right, your reasons will very often be wrong." But as he has become touched more and more with the enthusiasm of humanity, he has grown better than his reasons, far better than his criti- cisms ; and it is with him and with the school he represents that the hope of American litera- just now rests. The reason why he finds no delicate shading or gradation of character un- important is that he represents the dignity and importance of the individual man. It must always be remembered that in litera- ture, alone of all arts, place is of secondary im- portance, for its masterpieces can be carried round the world in one's pockets. We need to go to Europe to see the great galleries, to hear the music of Wagner, but the boy who reads ^Eschylus and Horace and Shakespeare by his pine-knot fire has at his command the essence of all universities, so far as literary training goes. But even were this otherwise, we must remember that libraries, galleries, and buildings are all secondary to that great human life of which they are only the secretions or append- THE NEW WORLD 255 ages. " My Madonnas " — thus wrote to' me that recluse woman of genius, Emily Dickinson — " are the women who pass my house to their work, bearing Saviors in their arms." Words wait on thoughts, thoughts on life ; and after these, technical training is an easy thing. "The art of composition," wrote Thoreau, "is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them." What are the two unmistakable rifle-shots in American literature thus far ? John Brown's speech in the court- room and Lincoln's Gettysburg address. Yielding to no one in the desire to see our land filled with libraries, with galleries, with museums, with fine buildings, I must still main- tain that all those things are secondary to that vigorous American life, which is destined to assimilate and digest them all. We are still in allegiance to Europe for a thousand things ; — clothes, art, scholarship. For many years we must yet go to Europe, as did Robinson Crusoe to his wreck, for the very materials of living. But materials take their value from him who uses them, and that wreck would have long since passed from memory had there not been a Robinson Crusoe. I am willing to be cen- sured for too much national self-confidence, for it is still true that we, like the young Cicero, 256 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS need that quality. Goethe's world-literature is, no doubt, the ultimate aim, but a strong national literature must come first. The new book must express the spirit of the New World. We need some repressing, no doubt, and every European newspaper is free to apply it ; we listen with exemplary meekness to every little European lecturer who comes to enlighten us, in words of one syllable, as to what we knew very well before. We need something of repression, but much more of stimulus. So Spenser's Brito- mart, when she entered the enchanted hall, found above four doors in succession the in- scription, " Be bold ! be bold ! be bold ! be bold ! " and only over the fifth door was the inscription, needful but wholly subordinate, " Be not too bold ! " A CONTEMPORANEOUS POSTERITY There is an American ntovel, now pretty effectually forgotten, which yet had the rare honor of contributing one permanent phrase to English literature. I remember well the sur- prise produced, in my boyhood, by the appear- ance of " Stanley ; or, The Recollections of a Man of the World." It was so crammed with miscellaneous literary allusion and criticism, after the fashion of those days, that it was at- tributed by some critics to Edward Everett, then the standing representative of omniscience in our Eastern States. This literary material was strung loosely upon a plot wild and improbable enough for Brockden Brown, and yet vivid enough to retain a certain charm, for me at least, even until this day. It was this plot, perhaps, which led the late James T. Fields to maintain that Maturin was the author of the novel in question ; but it is now known to have been the production of Horace Binney Wallace of Philadelphia, then a youth of twenty-one. In this book occurs the sentence : " Byron's European fame is the best earnest of his im- 258 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS mortality, for a foreign nation is a kind of con- temporaneous posterity." 1 Few widely quoted phrases have had, I fancy, less foundation. It is convenient to imagine that an ocean or a mountain barrier, or even a line of custom-houses, may furnish a sieve that shall sift all true reputations from the chaff ; but in fact, I suspect, whatever whims may vary or unsettle immediate reputations on the spot, these disturbing influences are only redistrib- uted, not abolished, by distance. Whether we look to popular preference or to the judgment of high authorities, the result is equally baf- fling. Napoleon Bonaparte preferred Ossian, it is said, to Shakespeare ; and Voltaire placed the latter among the minor poets, viewing him at best as we now view Marlowe, as the author of an occasional mighty line. It was after Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu had been asked to hear Vol- taire demolish Shakespeare at an evening party in Paris that she made her celebrated answer, when the host expressed the hope that she had not been pained by the criticism : " Why should I be pained ? I have not the honor to be among the intimate friends of M. de Voltaire." Even at this day the French journalists are quite be- wildered by the " Pall Mall Gazette's " lists of English immortals ; and ask who Tennyson is, i ii. 89. A CONTEMPORANEOUS POSTERITY 259 and what plays Ruskin has written. Those who happened, like myself, to be in Paris dur- ing the Exposition of 1878 remember well the astonishment produced in the French mind by the discovery that any pictures were painted in England ; and the French Millet was at that time almost as little known in London as was his almost namesake, the English Millais, in Paris. If a foreign nation represented poster- ity, neither of these eminent artists appeared then to have a chance of lasting fame. When we see the intellectual separation thus maintained between England and France, with only the width of the Channel between them, we can understand the separation achieved by the Atlantic, even where there is no essential difference of language. M. Taine tries to con- vince Frenchmen that the forty English "im- mortals " selected by the readers of the " Pall Mall Gazette " are equal, taken together, to the French Academicians. "You do not know them, you say?" he goes on. "That is not a sufficient reason. The English, and all who speak English,- know them well, but, on the other hand, know little of our men of letters." After this a French paper, reprinting a similar English list, added comments on the names, like this, "Robert Browning, the Scotch poet." There is probably no better manual of universal 260 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS knowledge than the great French dictionary of Larousse. When people come with miscella- neous questions to the Harvard College librari- ans, they often say in return, " Have you looked in Larousse ? " Now, when one looks in La- rousse to see who Robert Browning was, one finds the statement that the genius of Browning is more analogous to that of his American con- temporaries, " Emerton, Wendell Holmes, and Bigelow," than to that of any English poet (" celle de n'importe quel poete anglais "). This transformation of Emerson into Emerton, and of Lowell, probably, to Bigelow, is hardly more extraordinary than to link together three such dissimilar poets, and compare Browning to all three of them, or, indeed, to either of the three. Yet it gives us the high-water mark of what " contemporaneous posterity " has to offer. The criticism of another nation can, no doubt, offer some advantages of its own — a fresh pair of eyes and freedom from cliques ; but a foreigner can be no judge of local coloring, whether in nature or manners. The mere knowledge of the history of a nation may be essential to a knowledge of its art. So far as literature goes, the largest element of foreign popularity lies naturally in some kin- ship of language. Reputation follows the line of least resistance. The Germanic races take A CONTEMPORANEOUS POSTERITY 261 naturally to the literature of their own con- geners, and so with the Latin. As these last have had precedence in organizing the social life of the world, so they still retain it in their literary sway. The French tongue, in particu- lar, while ceasing to be the vehicle of all trav- elling intercourse, is still the second language of all the world. A Portuguese gentleman said once to a friend of mine in Fayal that he was studying French " in order to have something to read." All the empire of Great Britain, cir- cling the globe, affords to her poets or novel- ists but a petty and insular audience compared with that addressed by Balzac or Victor Hugo. A Roman Catholic convert from America, going from Paris to Rome, and having audience with a former pope, is said to have been a little dis- mayed when his Holiness instantly inquired, with eager solicitude, as to the rumored illness of Paul de Kock — the milder Zola of the last generation. In contemporaneous fame, then, the mere accident of nationality and language plays an enormous part ; but this accident will clearly have nothing to do with the judgment of posterity. If any foreign country could stand for a con- temporaneous posterity, one would think it might be a younger nation judging an older one. Yet how little did the American reputa- 262 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS tions of fifty years ago afford any sure predic- tion of permanent fame in respect to English writers ! True, we gave early recognition to Carlyle and Tennyson, but scarcely greater than to authors now faded or fading into obscurity, — Milnes (Lord Houghton), Sterling, Trench, Alford, and Bailey. No English poem, it was said, ever sold through so many American edi- tions as "Festus" ; nor was Tupper's "Prover- bial Philosophy " far behind it. Translators and publishers quarrelled bitterly for the privilege of translating Frederika Bremer's novels ; but our young people, who already stand for poster- ity, hardly recall her name. I asked a Swedish commissioner at our Centennial Exhibition in 1876, "Is Miss Bremer still read in Sweden ?" He shook his head ; and when I asked, "Who has replaced her ? " he said, " Bret Harte and Mark Twain." It seemed the irony of fame; and there is no guaranty that this reversed national compliment will, any more than our recognition, of her, predict the judgment of the future. If this uncertainty exists when the New World judges the Old, of which it knows some- thing, the insecurity must be greater when the Old World judges the New, of which it knows next to nothing. If the multiplicity of trans- lations be any test, Mrs. Stowe's contemporary A CONTEMPORANEOUS POSTERITY 263 fame, the world over, has been unequalled in literature ; but will any one now say that this surely predicts the judgment of posterity ? Consider the companion instances. Next to " Uncle Tom's Cabin " ranked for a season, doubtless, in European favor, that exceedingly commonplace novel, " The Lamplighter," whose very name is now almost forgotten at home. It is impossible to say what law enters into such successes as this last ; but one of the most obvious demands made by all foreign conterS- porary judgment is that an American book should supply to a jaded public the element of the unexpected. Europe demands from Amer- ica not so much a new thought and purpose, as some new dramatis persona ; that an author should exhibit a wholly untried type, — an In- dian, as Cooper; a negro, as Mrs. Stowe; a mountaineer, as Miss Murfree ; a California gambler, as Bret Harte ; a rough or roustabout, as Whitman. There are commonly two ways to eminent social success for an American in foreign so- ciety, — to be more European than Europeans themselves, or else to surpass all other Ameri- cans in some amusing peculiarity which for- eigners suppose to be American. It is much the same in literature. Lady Morgan, describ- ing the high society of Dublin in her day, 264 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS speaks of one man as a great favorite who always entered every drawing-room by turning a somersault. This is one way of success for an American book ; but the other way, which is at least more dignified, is rarely successful except when combined with personal residence and private acquaintance. Down to the year 1880 Lowell was known in England, almost exclusively, as the author of the "Biglow Pa- pers," and was habitually classed with Arte- mus Ward and Josh Billings, except that his audience was smaller. The unusual experience of a diplomatic appointment first unveiled to the English mind the all-accomplished Lowell whom we mourn. In other cases, as with Pres- cott and Motley, there was the mingled attrac- tion of European manners and a European subject. But a simple and home-loving Amer- ican, who writes upon the themes furnished by his own nation, without pyrotechnics or fantas- tic spelling, is apt to seem to the English mind quite uninteresting. There is nothing which ordinarily interests Europeans less than an Americanism unaccompanied by a war-whoop. The " Saturday Review," wishing to emphasize its contempt for Henry Ward Beecher, finally declares that one would turn from him with relief even to the poems of Whittier. There could hardly have been a more ex- A CONTEMPORANEOUS POSTERITY 265 haustive proof of this local limitation or chau- vinisme than I myself noticed at a London dinner-party some years ago. Our host was an Oxford professor, and the company was an emi- nent one. Being hard pressed about American literature, I had said incidentally that a great deal of intellectual activity in America was occupied, and rightly, by the elucidation of our own history, — a thing, I added, which inspired almost no interest in England. This fact be- ing disputed, I said, " Let us take a test case. We have in America an historian superior to Motley in labors, in originality of treatment, and in style. If he had, like Motley, first gone abroad for a subject, and then for a residence, his European fame would have equalled Mot- ley's. As it is, probably not a person present except our host will recognize his name." When I mentioned Francis Parkman, the pre- diction was fulfilled. All, save the host — a man better acquainted with the United States, perhaps, than any living Englishman — con- fessed utter ignorance : an ignorance shared, it seems, by the only English historian of Amer- ican literature, Professor Nichol, who actually does not allude to Parkman. It seems to me that we had better, in view of such facts, dis- miss the theory that a foreign nation is a kind of contemporaneous posterity. DO WE NEED A LITERARY CENTRE ? In the latter days of the last French Empire some stir was made by a book claiming that Paris was already the capital of the world — Paris capitale du monde. Mr. Lowell afterward made claims rather more moderate for London, suggesting that a time may come when the English-speaking race will practically control the planet, having London for its centre, with all roads leading to it, as they once led to Rome. But it is plain that in making this esti- mate Mr. Lowell overlooked some very essen- tial factors — for instance, himself. If ancient Rome had borrowed for its most important literary addresses an orator from Paphlagonia, who was not even a Roman citizen, it would plainly have ceased to be the Rome of our rev- erence ; and yet this is what has repeatedly been done in London by the selection of Mr. Lowell. Or if the province of Britain had fur- nished a periodical publication — an Acta Eru- ditorurh, let us say — which had been regularly reprinted in Rome with a wider circulation than any metropolitan issue, then Rome would again have ceased to be Rome ; and yet this is what DO WE NEED A LITERARY CENTRE? 267 is done in London every month by the Amer- ican illustrated magazines. It is clear, then, that London is not the exclusive intellectual centre of the English-speaking world, nor is there the slightest evidence that it is becoming more and more such a centre. On the contrary, one hears in England a prolonged groan over an imagined influence the other way. "I have long felt," wrote Sir Frederick Elliot to Sir Henry Taylor from London (December 20, 1877), "that the most certain of political tendencies in England is what, for want of a better name, I will call the Yankeeizing tendency." But apart from these suggestions as to London, Mr. Lowell has urged and urged strongly the need of a national capital. He has expressed the wish for "a focus of intellectual, moral, and material activ- ity," "a common head, as well as a common body." In this he erred only, as it seems to me, in applying too readily to our vaster conditions the standards and traditions of much smaller countries. If it be true, as was once said pub- licly by our eloquent English-born clergyman in New York, Dr. Rainsford, that America is a branch which is rapidly becoming the main stem, then the fact may as well be recognized. As in our political system, so in literature, we may need a new plan of structure for that which is to embrace a continent — a system of coordi- 268 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS nate states instead of a centralized empire. Our literature, like our laws, will probably proceed not from one focus, but from many. To one looking across from London or Paris this would seem impossible, for while living in a great city you come to feel as if that spot were all the world, and all else must be abandoned, as Cher- buliez's heroine says, to the indiscreet curiosity of geographers. But when you again look at that city from across the ocean, you perceive how easily it may cramp and confine those who live in it, and you are grateful for elbow-room and fresh air. Nothing smaller than a conti- nent can really be large enough to give space for the literature of the future. It is to be considered that in this age great cities do not exhibit, beyond a certain point, the breadth of atmosphere that one expects from a world's capital. On the contrary, we find in Paris, in Berlin, in London, a certain curious narrowness, an immense exaggeration of its own petty and local interests. We meet there individual men of extraordinary know- ledge in this or that direction, but the inter- change of thought and feeling seems to lie within a ring-fence. A good test of this is in the recent books of " reminiscences " or " re- membrances " by accomplished men who have lived for years in the most brilliant circles of DO WE NEED A LITERARY CENTRE? 269 London. Each day is depicted as a string of pearls, but with only the names of the pearls mentioned; the actual jewels are not forthcom- ing. A man breakfasts with one circle of wits and sages, lunches with another, dines with a third ; and all this intellectual affluence yields him for his diary perhaps a single anecdote or repartee no better than are to be found by dozens in the corners of American country newspapers. It recalls what a clever American artist once told me, that he had dined tri- umphantly through three English counties, and brought away a great social reputation, on the strength of the stories in one old " Farmer's Almanac" which he had put in his trunk to protect some books on leaving home. The very excess or congestion of intellect in a great city seems to defeat itself; there is no time or strength left for .anything beyond the most superficial touch-and-go intercourse ; it is persi- flage carried to the greatest perfection, but you get little more. A great metropolis is moreover disappoint- ing, because, although it may furnish great men, its literary daily bread is inevitably sup- plied by small men, who revolve round the larger ones, and who are even less interesting to the visitor than the same class at home. There is something amusing in the indifference 270 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS of every special neighborhood to all literary gossip except its own. For instance, one might well have supposed that the admiration of Eng- lishmen for Longfellow might inspire an intel- ligent desire to know something of his daily interests, of his friendships and pursuits ; yet when his Memoirs appeared, all English critics pronounced these things exceedingly uninter- esting ; while much smaller gossip about much smaller people, in the Hayward Memoirs, was found by these same critics to be an important addition to the history of the times. It is an absolute necessity for every nation, as for every age, to insist on setting its own standard, even to the resolute readjustment of well-established reputations. So long as it does not, it will find itself overawed and depressed, not so much by the greatness of some metropolis, as by its lit- tleness. It is the calamity of a large city that its smallest men appear to themselves important simply because they dwell there ; just as Trav- ers, the New York wit, explained his stutter- ing more in that city than in Baltimore, on the ground that it was a larger place. The London literary journals seem to an American visitor to be largely filled with Epistolcs obscurorum virorum ; and when I attended, some years since, the first meetings of the Association DO WE NEED A LITERARY CENTRE? 271 Litteraire Internationale in Paris, it was impos- sible not to be impressed by the multitude of minor literary personages, among whom a writer so mediocre as Edmond About towered as a giant. But no doubts of their own supreme importance to the universe appeared to beset these young gentlemen : — " How many thousand never heard the name Of Sidney or of Spenser, or their books ? And yet brave fellows, and presume of fame, And think to bear down all the world with looks." One was irresistibly reminded, in their society, of these lines of old Daniel ; or of the comfort- able self-classification of another Frenchman, M. Vestris, the dancer, who always maintained that there were but three really great men in Europe — Voltaire, Frederick II., and himself. We talk about small places as being Little Ped- lingtons, but it sometimes seems as if the Great Pedlingtons were the smallest, after all, because there is nobody to teach them humility. Little Pedlington at least shows itself apologetic and even uneasy ; that is what saves it to reason and common-sense. But fancy a Parisian apolo- gizing for Paris ! The great fear of those who demand an intel- lectual metropolis is provincialism ; but we must remember that the word is used in two wholly different senses, which have nothing in com- 272 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS mon. What an American understands by pro- vincialism is best to' be seen in the little French town, some imaginary Tarascon or Carcas- sonne, where the notary and the physician and the rentiers sit and play dominoes and feebly disport themselves in a benumbed world of petty gossip. But what the Parisian or the Londoner assumes to be provincial among us turns out to be an American tpwn, perhaps of the same size, but which has already its schools and its public library well established, and is now aiming at a gallery of art and a conserva- tory of music. To confound these opposite extremes under one name is like confounding childhood and second childhood ; the one re- presenting all promise, the other all despair. Mr. Henry James, who proves his innate kind- ness of heart by the constancy with which he is always pitying somebody, turns the full fervor of his condolence on Hawthorne for dwelling amid the narrowing influences of a Concord atmosphere. But if those influences gave us "The Scarlet Letter" and Emerson's "Essays," does it not seem a pity that we cannot extend that same local atmosphere, as President Lin- coln proposed to do with Grant's whiskey, to some of our other generals ? The dweller in a metropolis has the advan- tage, if such it be, of writing immediately for DO WE NEED A LITERARY CENTRE? 273 a few thousand people, all whose prejudices he knows and perhaps shares. He writes to a picked audience ; but he who dwells in a • coun- try without a metropolis has the immeasurably greater advantage of writing for an audience which is, so to speak, unpicked, and which, therefore, includes the picked one, as an apple includes its core. One does not need to be a very great author in America to find that his voice is heard across a continent — a thing more stimulating and more impressive to the imagi- nation than the morning drum-beat of Great Britain. In a few years the humblest of the next generation of writers will be appealing to a possible constituency of a hundred millions. He who writes for a metropolis may uncon- sciously share its pettiness ; he who writes for a hundred millions must feel some expansion in his thoughts, even though his and theirs be still crude. Keats asked his friend to throw a copy of " Endymion " into the heart of the African desert ; is it not better to cast your book into a vaster region that is alive with men ? Cliques lose their seeming importance where one has the human heart at his door. That calamity which Fontenelle mourned, the loss of so many good things by their being spoken only into the ear of some fool, can never happen to what is written for a whole continent. There 274 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS will be a good auditor somewhere, and the further off, the more encouraging. When your sister or your neighbor praises your work, they may be suspected of partiality ; when the news- papers commend, the critic may be very friendly or very juvenile ; but when the post brings you a complimentary letter from a new-born village in Colorado, you become conscious of an audi- ence. Now, suppose the intellectual aspirations of that frontier village to be so built up by schools, libraries, and galleries that it shall be a centre of thought and civilization for the whole of Colorado, — a State which is in itself about the size of Great Britain or Italy, and half the size of Germany or France, — and we shall have a glimpse at a state of things worth more than a national metropolis. The collec- tive judgment of a series of smaller tribunals like this will ultimately be worth more to an author, or to a literature, than that of London or Paris. History gives us, in the Greek states, the Italian republics, the German uni- versity towns, some examples of such a concur- rent intellectual jurisdiction ; but they missed the element of size, the element of democratic freedom, the element of an indefinite future. All these are ours. THE EQUATION OF FAME The aim of all criticism is really to solve the equation of fame and to find what literary work is of real value. For convenience, the critic assumes the attitude of infallibility. He really knows better in his own case, being commonly an author also. The curious thing is that, by a sort of comity of the profession, the critic who is an author assumes that other critics are infallible also, or at least a body worthy of vast deference. He is as sensitive to the praise or blame of his contemporaries as he would have them toward himself. He bows his head before the " London Press " or the " New York Press " as meekly as if he did not know full well that these august bodies are made up of just such weak and unstable mortals as he knows himself to be. At the Savile Club in London an American is introduced to some beardless youth, and presently, when some slash- ing criticism is mentioned, in the "Academy" or the " Saturday Review," the fact incidentally comes out that his companion happened to write that very article. "Never again," the visitor thinks, " shall I be any more awed by what I 276 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS read in those periodicals than if it had appeared in my village newspaper at home." But he goes his way, and in a month is looking with as much deference as ever for the " verdict of the London Press." It seems a tribute to the greatness of our common nature, that the most ordinary individuals have weight with us as soon as there are enough of them to get to- gether in a jury-box, or even in a newspaper office, and pronounce a decision. As Chan- cellor Oxenstiern sent the young man on his travels to see with how little wisdom the world was governed, so it is worth while for every young writer to visit New York or London, that he may see with how little serious consideration his work will be criticised. The only advan- tage conferred by added years in authorship is that one learns this lesson a little better, though the oldest author never learns it very well. But apart from all drawbacks in the way of haste and shallowness, there is a profounder difficulty which besets the most careful critical work. It inevitably takes the color of the time ; its study of the stars is astrology, not astronomy, to adopt Thoreau's distinction. Heine points out, in his essay on German Romanticism, that we greatly err in supposing that Goethe's early fame bore much comparison with his deserts. He was, indeed, praised for THE EQUATION OF FAME 277 "Werther" and "Gotz von Berlichingen," but the romances of August La Fontaine were in equal demand, and the latter, being a volu- minous writer, was much more in men's mouths. The poets of the period were Wieland and Ramler ; while Kotzebue and Iffland ruled the stage. Even forty years ago, I remember well it was considered an open subject of discussion, whether Goethe or Schiller was the greater name ; and Professor Felton of Harvard Uni- versity took the pains to translate a long his- tory of German literature by Menzel, the one object of which was to show that Goethe was quite a secondary figure, and not destined to any lasting reputation. It was one of the objections to Margaret Fuller, in the cultivated Cambridge circle of that day, that she spoke disrespectfully of Menzel in the " Dial," and called him a Philistine — the first introduction into English, so far as I know, of that word since familiarized by Arnold and others. We fancy France to be a place where, if governments are changeable, literary fame, fortified by academies, rests on sure ground. But Th6ophile Gautier, in the preface to his " Les Grotesques," says just the contrary. He declares that in Paris all praise or blame is overstated, because, in order to save the trouble of a serious opinion, they take up one writer 278 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS temporarily in order to get rid of the rest. " There are," he goes on, " strange fluctuations in reputations, and aureoles change heads. After death, illuminated foreheads are extin- guished and obscure brows grow bright. Pos- terity means night for some, dawn to others." Who would to-day believe, he asks, that the obscure writer Chapelain passed for long years as the greatest poet, not alone of France, but the whole world ("le plus grand poete, non seulement de France, mais du monde entier "), and that nobody less potent than the Duchesse de Longueville would have dared to go to sleep over his poem of " La Pucelle " ? Yet this was in the time of Corneille, Racine, Moliere, and La Fontaine. Heine points out that it is not enough for a poet to utter his own sympathies ; he must also reach those of his audience. The audience, he thinks) is often like some hungry Bedouin Arab in the desert, who thinks he has found a sack of pease and opens it eagerly ; but, alas ! they are only pearls ! With what discontent did the audience of Emerson's day inspect his pre- cious stones ! Even now Matthew Arnold shakes his head over them, and finds Long, fellow's pleasing little poem of " The Bridge " worth the whole of Emerson. When we con- sider that Byron once accepted meekly his own THE EQUATION OF FAME 279 alleged inferiority to Rogers, and that Southey ranked himself with Milton and Virgil, and only with half-reluctant modesty placed him- self below Homer ; that Miss Anna Seward and her contemporaries habitually spoke of Hayley as " the Mighty Bard," and passed over without notice Hayley's eccentric dependent, William Blake ; that but two volumes of Thoreau's writ- ings were published, greatly to his financial loss, during his lifetime, and eight others, with four biographies of him, since his death ; that Willis's writings came into instant accept- ance, while Hawthorne's, according to their early publisher, attracted " no attention what- ever ; " that Willis indeed boasted to Longfel- low of making ten thousand dollars a year by his pen, when Longfellow wished that he could earn one tenth of that amount, — we must cer- tainly admit that the equation of fame may require many years for its solution. Fuller says in his " Holy State " that " learning hath gained most by those books on which the print- ers have lost ; " and if this is true of learning, it is far truer of that incalculable and often perplexing gift called genius. Young Americans write back from London that they wish they had gone there in the palmy days of literary society — in the days when Dickens and Thackeray were yet alive, 280 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS and when Tennyson and Browning were in their prime, instead of waiting until later times, when Rider Haggard and Alfred Austin are regarded, they say, as serious and important authors. But just so men looked back in long- ing from that earlier day to the period of Scott and Wordsworth, and so further and further and further. It is easy for older men to recall when Thackeray and Dickens were in some measure obscured by now forgotten contem- poraries, like Harrison Ainsworth and G. P. R. James, and when one was gravely asked whether he preferred Tennyson to Sterling or Trench or Alford or Faber or Mjlnes. It is to me one of the most vivid reminiscences of my Harvard College graduation (in 1841) that, having rashly ventured upon a commence- ment oration whose theme was "Poetry in an Unpoetical Age," I closed with an urgent ap- peal to young poets to " lay down their Spenser and Tennyson," and look into life for them- selves. Professor Edward T. Channing, then the highest literary authority in New England, paused in amazement with uplifted pencil over this combination of names. " You mean," he said, "that they should neither defer to the highest authority nor be influenced by the low- est ? " When I persisted, with the zeal of seventeen, that I had no such meaning, but THE EQUATION OF FAME 281 regarded them both as among the gods, he said good-naturedly, " Ah ! that is a different thing. I wish you to say what you think. I regard Tennyson as a great calf, but you are entitled to your own opinion." The oration met with much applause at certain passages, including this one ; and the applause was just, for these passages were written by my elder sister, who had indeed suggested the subject of the whole address. But I fear that its only value to pos- terity will consist in the remark it elicited from the worthy professor ; this comment af- fording certainly an excellent milestone for Tennyson's early reputation. It is worth while to remember, also, that this * theory of calf hood, like most of the early criti- cisms on Tennyson, had a certain foundation in the affectations and crudities of these first fruits, long since shed and ignored. That was in the period of the two thin volumes, with their poem on the author's room, now quotable from memory only : — " Oh, darling room, my heart's delight ! Dear room, the apple of my sight ! With thy two couches, soft and white, There is no room so exquisite, No little room so warm and bright, Wherein to read, wherein to write." I do not count it to the discredit of my mentor, after the lapse of half a century, that he dis- 282 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS cerned in this something which it is now the fashion to call "veal." Similar lapses helped to explain the early underestimate of the Lake school of poets in England, and Margaret Ful- ler's early criticisms on Lowell. On the other hand, it is commonly true that authors tempo- rarily elevated, in the first rude attempts to solve the equation of fame, have afforded some reason, however inadequate, for their over-ap- preciation. Theophile Gautier, in the essay already quoted, says that no man entirely dupes his epoch, and there is always some basis for the shallowest reputations, though what is truly admirable may find men insensible for a time. And Joubert, always profounder than Gautier, while admitting that popularity varies with the ' period (" la vogue des livres depend du gout des siecles "), tells us also that only what is excel- lent is held in lasting memory ("la memoire n'aime que ce qui est excellent"), and winds up his essay on the qualities of the writer with the pithy motto, "Excel and you will live" (" Excelle et tu vivras ") ! AN AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT The recent assertion of the London corre- spondent of the "New York Tribune," that Englishmen like every American to be an Amer- ican, has a curious interest in connection with some remarks of the late Matthew Arnold, which seem to look in an opposite direction. Lord Houghton once told me that the earlier American guests in London society were often censured as being too English in appearance and manner, and as wanting in a distinctive flavor of Americanism. He instanced Ticknor and Sumner; and we can all remember that there were at first similar criticisms on Lowell. It is indeed a form of comment to which all Americans are subject in England, if they have the ill-luck to have color in their cheeks and not to speak very much through their noses ; in that case they are apt to pass for English- men by no wish of their own, and to be sus- pected of a little double-dealing when they has- ten to reveal their birthplace. It very often turns out that the demand for a distinctive Americanism really seeks only the external peculiarities that made Joaquin Miller and Buf- 284 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS falo Bill popular ; an Americanism that can at any moment be annihilated by a pair of scis- sors. It is something, no doubt, to be allowed even such an amount of nationality as this ; and Washington Irving attributed the English curi- osity about him to the fact that he held a quill in his fingers instead of sticking it in his hair, as was expected. But it would seem that Mr. Arnold, on the other hand, disapproved the attempt to set up any claim whatever to a distinctive American temperament; and he has twice held up one of our own authors for reprobation as having asserted that the American is, on the whole, of lighter build and has "a drop more of nervous fluid" than the Englishman. This is not the way, he thinks, in which a serious literature is to be formed. But it turns out that .the im- mediate object of the writer of the objection- able remark was not to found a literature, but simply to utter a physiological caution ; the object of the essay in which it occurs — one called "The Murder of the Innocents" * — being simply to caution this more nervous race against overworking their children in school ; an aim which was certainly as far as possible from what Mr. Arnold calls " tall talk and self-glorifica- tion." If a nation is not to be saved by point- 1 Out-Door Papers, p. 104. AN AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT 285 ing out its own physiological perils, what is to save it ? As a matter of fact, it will be generally claimed by Americans, I fancy, that whatever else their much-discussed nation may have, it has at least developed a temperament for itself ; " an ill-favored thing, but mine own," as Touch- stone says of Audrey. There is no vanity or self-assertion involved in this, any more than when a person of blonde complexion claims not to be a brunette or a brunette meekly insists upon not being regarded as fair-haired. If the American is expected to be in all respects the duplicate of the Englishman, and is only charged with inexpressible inferiority in quality and size, let us know it ; but if two hundred and fifty years of transplantation under a new sky and in new conditions have made any difference in the type, let us know that also. In truth, the difference is already so marked that Mr. Arnold himself concedes it at every step in his argument, and has indeed stated it in very much the same terms which an American would have employed. In a paper entitled " From Easter to August," a he says frankly : " Our countrymen [namely, the English], with a thou- sand good qualities, are really perhaps a good deal wanting in lucidity and flexibility ; " and 1 Nineteenth Century for September, 1887. 286 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS again in the same essay : " The whole Ameri- can nation may be called intelligent ; that is, quick." This would seem to be conceding the very point at issue between himself and the American writer whom he is criticising. The same difference of temperament, in the direction of a greater quickness — what the wit of Edmund Quincy once designated as " specific levity " — on the part of Americans is certainly very apparent to every one of us who visits England ; and not infrequently makes itself perceptible, even without a surgical oper- ation, to our English visitors. Professor Tyn- dall is reported to have said — and if he did not say it, some one else pointed it out for him — that, whereas in his London scientific lectures he always had to repeat his explanations three times ; first telling his audience in advance what his experiments were to accomplish, then ' during the process explaining what was being accomplished, and then at last recapitulating what had actually been done ; he found it best, in America, to omit one, if not two, of these expositions. In much the same way, the direc- tor of a company of English comedians com- plained to a friend of mine that American audi- ences laughed a great deal too soon for them, and took the joke long before it was properly elucidated. In the same way, an American AN AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT 287 author, who had formerly been connected with the " St. Nicholas " magazine, was told by a London publisher that the plan of it was all wrong. "These pages of riddles at the end, for instance : no child would ever guess them." And though the American assured him that they were guessed regularly every month in twenty thousand families, the Englishman still shook his head. Certainly the difference be- tween the national temperament will be doubted by no American public speaker in England who has had one of his hearers call upon him the next morning to express satisfaction in the clever anecdote which it had taken his English auditor a night's meditation to comprehend. It is impossible to overrate the value, in developing an independent national feeling in America, of the prolonged series of rather un- amiable criticisms that have proceeded from the English press and public men since the days of Mrs. Trollope and down to our own day. It has de-colonized us ; and all the long agony of the Civil War, when all the privileged classes in England, after denouncing us through long years for tolerating slavery, turned and de- nounced us yet more bitterly for abolishing it at the cost of our own heart's blood, only completed the emancipation. The way out of provincialism is to be frankly and even brutally 288 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS criticised ; we thus learn not merely to see our own faults, which is comparatively easy, but to put our own measure on the very authority that condemns us ; voir le monde, c'est juger les juges. We thus learn to trust our own tem- perament ; to create our own methods ; or, at least to select our own teachers. At this mo- ment we go to France for our art and to Ger- many for our science as completely as if there were no such nation as England in the world.' In literature, the tie is far closer with what used to be called the mother country, and this because of the identity of language. All retro- spective English literature — that is, all litera- ture more than a century or two old - — is com- mon to the two countries. All contemporary literature cannot yet be judged, because it is contemporary. The time may come when not a line of current English poetry may remain except the four quatrains hung up in St. Mar- garet's Church, and when the Matthew Arnold of Macaulay's imaginary New Zealand may find with surprise that Whittier and Lowell produced something more worthy of that acci- dental immortality than Browning or Tenny- son. The time may come when a careful study of even the despised American newspapers may reveal them to have been in one respect nearer to a high civilization than any of their Euro- AN AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT 289 pean compeers ; since the leading American literary journals criticise their own contributors with the utmost freedom, while there does not seem to be a journal in London or Paris that even attempts that courageous candor. To dwell merely on the faults and follies of a nascent nation is idle ; vitality is always hope- ful. To complain that a nation's very strength carries with it plenty of follies and excesses is, as Joubert says, to ask for a breeze that shall have the attribute of not blowing ("demander du vent qui n'ait point de mobility "). THE SHADOW OF EUROPE When the first ocean steamers crossed the Atlantic, about 1838, Willis predicted that they would only make American literature more provincial, by bringing Europe so much nearer than before. Yet Emerson showed that there was an influence at work more potent than steamers, and the colonial spirit in our literature began to diminish from his time. In the days of those first ocean voyages, the favorite literary journal of cultivated Americans was the New York " Albion," which was conducted expressly for English residents on this continent ; and it was considered a piece of American audacity when Horace Greeley called Margaret Fuller to New York, that the " Tribune " might give to our literature an organ of its own. Later, on the establishment of " Putnam's Magazine," in 1853, I remember that Mr. Charles Anderson Dana, then assistant editor of the " New York Tribune," predicted to me the absolute failure of the whole enterprise. " Either an American magazine will command no respect," he said, " or it must be better than " Blackwood " or "Fraser," which is an absurd supposition." But THE SHADOW OF EUROPE 291 either of our great illustrated magazines has now more readers in England than"Fraser" or "Blackwood" had then in America ; and to this extent Willis's prediction is unfulfilled, and the shadow of Europe is lifted, not deepened, over our literature. But in many ways the glamour of foreign superiority still holds ; and we still see much of the old deferential attitude prevail- ing. Prince Albert said of Germany, in 1859, that its rock ahead was self-sufficiency. In our own country, as to literature and science, to say nothing of art, our rock ahead is not self-suffi- ciency, but self-depreciation. Men still smile at the congressman who said, " What have we to do with Europe ? " but I sometimes wish, for the credit of the craft, that it had been a liter- ary man who said it. After all, it was only a rougher paraphrase of Napoleon's equally trenchant words : " Cette vieille Europe m'en- nuie." The young American who goes to London, and finds there the most agreeable literary society in the world, because the most central- ized and compact, can hardly believe at first that the authors around him are made of the same clay with those whom he has often jostled on the sidewalk at home. He finds himself dividing his scanty hours between celebrated writers on the one side, and great historic 292 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS remains on the other ; as I can remember, one day, to have weighed a visit to Darwin against one to York Minster, and later to have post- poned Stonehenge, which seemed likely to endure, for Tennyson, who perhaps might not. The young American sees in London, to quote Willis again, "whole shelves of his library walking about in coats and gowns," and they seem for the moment far more interesting than the similar shelves in home-made garments behind him. He is not cured until he is some day startled with the discovery that there are cultivated foreigners to whom his own world is foreign, and therefore fascinating ; men who think the better of him for having known Mark Twain, and women who are unwearied in their curiosity about the personal ways of Longfel- low. Nay, when I once mentioned to that fine old Irish gentleman, the late Richard D. Webb, at his house in Dublin, that I had felt a thrill of pleasure on observing the street sign, denot- ing Fishamble Lane, at Cork, and recalling the ballad about "Misthress Judy McCarty, of Fishamble Lane," he pleased me by saying that he had felt just so in New York, when he saw the name of Madison Square, and thought of Miss Flora McFlimsey. So our modest conti- nent had already its storied heroines and its hallowed ground ! THE SHADOW OF EUROPE 293 There are, undoubtedly, points in which Europe, and especially England, has still the advantage of America ; such, for instance, as weekly journalism. In regard to printed books there is also still an advantage in quantity, but not in quality ; while in magazine literature the balance seems to incline just now the other way. I saw it claimed confidently, not long since, that the English magazines had " more solid value " than our own ; but this solidity now consists, I should say, more in the style than in the matter, and is a doubtful benefit, like solidity in a pudding. When the writer whom I quote went on to cite the saying of a young girl, that she could always understand an American periodical, but never opened an English one without something unintelligible, it seemed to me a bit of evidence whose bearing was quite uncertain. It reminded me of a delightful old lady, well known to me, who, when taxed by her daughter with reading a book quite beyond her comprehension, replied : " But where is the use of reading a book that you can understand ? It does you no good." As a matter of fact, the English magazines are commonly not magazines at all, in the American sense. Mr. M. D. Conway once well said that the "Contemporary Review" and the " Fort- nightly " were simply circular letters addressed 294 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS by a few cultivated gentlemen to those belonging to the same club. It is not until a man knows himself to be writing for a hundred thousand readers that he is compelled to work out his abstrusest thought into clearness, just as a suf- ficient pressure transforms opaque snow into pellucid ice. In our great American magazines, history and science have commonly undergone this process, and the reader may be gratified, not ashamed, at comprehending them. The best remedy for too profound a defer- ence toward European literary work is to test the author on some ground with which we in America cannot help being familiar. It is this which makes a book of travels among us, or even a lecturing trip, so perilous for a foreign reputation ; and among the few who can bear this test — as De Tocqueville, Von Hoist, the Comte de Paris — it is singularly rare to find an Englishman. If the travellers have been thus unfortunate, how much more those who have risked themselves on cis-Atlantic themes without travelling. No living English writer stood higher in America than Sir Henry Maine until we watched him as he made the perilous transition from "Ancient Law" to modern " Popular Government," and saw him approach- ing what he himself admits to be the most im- portant theme in modern history, with appar- THE SHADOW OF EUROPE 295 ently but some half-dozen authorities to draw upon, — the United States Constitution, the "Federalist," and two or three short biogra- phies. Had an American written on the most unimportant period of the most insignificant German principality with a basis of reading no larger, we should have wished that his national- ity had been kept a secret. It is not strange, on such a method, that Maine should inform us that the majority of the present state gov- ernments were formed before the Union, and that only half the original thirteen colonies ■ held slaves. So Mr. John A. Doyle, writing an extended history of American colonization, put into his first volume a map making the lines of all the early grants run north and south instead of east and west ; and this having. been received with polite incredulity, gave us another map depicting the New England colonies in 1700, with Plymouth still delineated as a separate government, although it had been united with Massachusetts eight years before that date. When a lady in a London drawing-room sends, by a returning New Yorker, an urgent message to her cousin at Colorado Springs, we rather enjoy it, and call it only pretty Fanny's way ; she is not more ignorant of North American geography than we ourselves may be of that of South America. But when we find that Eng- 296 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS lish scholars of established reputation betray, in treating of this country, defects of method that seem hopeless, what reverence is left for those who keep on ground that we do not know? In time, the shadow of Europe must, lose something of its impressiveness. Dr. Creighton, in his preface to the English " His- torical Review," counts in all Americans as merely so many " outlying English ; " but it is time to recognize that American literature is not, and never again can be, merely an outly- ing portion of the literature of England. ON TAKING OURSELVES SERIOUSLY Tolstoi says, in " Anna Karenina," that no nation will ever come to anything unless it at- taches some importance to itself. (" Les seules nations qui aient de l'avenir, les seules qu'on puisse nommer historiques, sont celles qui sen- tent l'importance et le valeur de leur institu- tions.") It is curious that ours seems to be the only contemporary nation which is denied this simple privilege of taking itself seriously. What is criticised in us is not so much that our social life is inadequate, as that we find it worth studying ; not so much that our literature is insufficient, as that we think it, in Matthew Arnold's disdainful phrase, " important." In short, we are denied not merely the pleasure of being attractive to other people, which can easily be spared, but the privilege that is usu- ally conceded to the humblest, of being at least interesting to ourselves. The bad results of this are very plain. They are, indeed, so great that the evils which were supposed to come to our literature, for instance, from the absence of international copyright, seem trivial in comparison. The very persons 298 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS who are working the hardest to elevate our civ- ilization are constantly called from their duties, and, what is worse, are kept in a constant state of subdued exasperation, by the denial of their very right to do these duties. " My work," says Emerson, " may be of no importance, but I must not think it of no importance if I would do it well." Those of us who toiled for years to remove from this nation the stain of slavery, remember how, when the best blood of our kin- dred was lavished to complete the sacrifice, all the intellectual society of England turned upon us and reproached us for the deed. "The greatest war of principle which has been waged in this generation," wrote Motley in one of his letters, " was of no more interest to her, except as it bore upon the cotton question, than the wretched little squabbles of Mexico or South America." 1 And so those Americans who are spending their lives in the effort to remove the very defects visible in our letters, our arts, our literature, are met constantly by the insolent assumption, not that these drawbacks exist, but that they are not worth removing. How magnificent, for instance, is the work constantly done among us, by private and pub- lic munificence in the support of libraries and schools. Carlyle, in one of his early journals, 1 Letters, i. 373. ON TAKING OURSELVES SERIOUSLY 299 deplores that while every village around him has its place to lock up criminals, not one has a public library. In the State of Massachusetts this condition of things is coming to be reversed, since many villages have no jail, and free libra- ries will soon be universal. The writer is at this moment one of the trustees of three admirable donations just given by a young man under thirty-five to the city of his birth, — a city hall, a public library, and a manual training school. He is not a man of very large fortune, as for- tunes go, and his personal expenditures are on a very modest scale ; he keeps neither yachts nor race-horses ; his name never appears in the lists of fashionables, summer or winter ; but he simply does his duty to American civilization in this way. There are multitudes of others, all over the land, who do the same sort of thing ; they are the most essentially indigenous and American type we have, and their strength is in this, that they find their standard of action not abroad, but at home ; they take their nation seriously. Yet this, which should be the thing that most appeals to every foreign observer, is, on the contrary, the very thing which the average foreign observer finds most offensive. " Do not tell me only," says Matthew Arnold, "... of the great and growing number of your churches and schools, libraries and news- 300 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS papers ; tell me also if your civilization — which is the grand name you give to all this develop- ment — tell me if your civilization is interest- ing" Set aside the fact of transfer across an ocean ; set aside the spectacle of a self-governing peo- ple ; if there is no interest in the spectacle of a nation of sixty million people laboring with all its might to acquire the means and appliances of civilized life, then there is nothing interest- ing on earth. A hundred years hence, the wonder will be, not that we Americans attached so much importance, at this stage, to these efforts of ours, but that even we appreciated their importance so little. If the calculations of Canon Zincke are correct, in his celebrated pamphlet, the civilization which we are organ- izing is the great civilization of the future. He computes that in 1980 the English-speaking population of the globe will be, at the present rate of progress, one billion ; and that of this number, eight hundred million will dwell in the United States. Now, all the interest we take in our schools, colleges, libraries, galleries, is but preliminary work in founding this great future civilization. Toils and sacrifices for this end may be compared, as Longfellow compares the secret studies of an author, to the sub- merged piers of a bridge : they are out of sight, ON TAKING OURSELVES SERIOUSLY 301 but without them no structure can endure. If American society is really unimportant, and is foredoomed to fail, all these efforts will go with it ; but if it has a chance of success, these are to be its foundations. If they are to be laid, they must be laid seriously. " No man can do anything well," says Emerson, "who does not think that what he does is the centre of the visible universe." There is a prevailing theory, which seems to me largely flavored with cant, that we must accept with the utmost humility all foreign criticism, because it represents a remoter tri- bunal than our own. But the fact still remains, that while some things in art and literature are best judged from a distance, other things — including the whole department of local color- ing — can be only judged near home. The better the work is done, in this aspect, the more essential it is that it should be viewed with knowledge. Looking at some marine sketches by a teacher of a good deal of note, the other day, I was led to point out the fact that she had given her schooner a jib, but had attached it to no bowsprit, and had anchored a whole fleet of dories by the stern instead of the bow. When I called the artist's attention to these peculiarities, the simple answer was : " I know nothing whatever about boats. I painted only 302 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS what I saw, or thought I saw." In the same way one can scarcely open a foreign criticism on an American book without seeing that, however good may be the abstract canons of criticism adopted, the detailed comment is as confused as if a landsman were writing about seamanship. When, for instance, a vivacious Londoner like Mr. Andrew Lang attempts to deal with that profound imaginative creation, Arthur Dimmesdale, in the " Scarlet Letter," he fails to comprehend him from an obvious and perhaps natural want of acquaintance with the whole environment of the man. To Mr. Lang he is simply a commonplace clerical Love- lace, a dissenting minister caught in a shabby intrigue. But if this clever writer had known the Puritan clergy as we know them, the high- priests of a Jewish theocracy, with the whole work of God in a strange land resting on their shoulders, he would have comprehended the awful tragedy in this tortured soul, and would have seen in him the profoundest and most minutely studied of all Hawthorne's characteri- zations. The imaginary offender for whom that great author carried all winter, as Mrs. Haw- thorne told me, "a knot in his forehead," is not to be viewed as if his tale were a mere chapter out of the " Memoires de Casanova." When, at the beginning of this century, Isaiah ON TAKING OURSELVES SERIOUSLY 303 Thomas founded the American Antiquarian So- ciety, he gave it as one of his avowed objects "that the library should contain a complete collection of the works of American authors." There was nothing extravagant, at that time, in the supposition that a single library of mod- erate size might do this ; and the very impos- sibility of such an inclusion, at this day, is in part the result of the honest zeal with which Isaiah Thomas recognized the " importance " of our nascent literature. A disparaging opin- ion of any of these American books, or of all of them, does no more harm than the opinion of Pepys, that "Comus " was "an insipid, ridic- ulous play." In many cases the opinion will be well deserved ; in few cases will it do any permanent harm. Since Emerson, we have ceased to be colonial, and have therefore ceased to be over-sensitive. The only danger is that, Emerson being dead, there should be a slight reaction toward colonial diffidence once more ; that we should again pass through the apolo- getic period ; that we should cease for a time to take ourselves seriously. A COSMOPOLITAN STANDARD It has lately become the fashion in the United States to talk of the cosmopolitan standard as the one thing needful ; to say that formerly American authors were judged by their own local tribunals, but henceforth they must be appraised by the world's estimate. The trouble is that for most of those who reason in this way, cosmopolitanism does not really mean the world's estimate, but only the judgment of Europe — a judgment in which America itself is to have no voice. Like the trade-winds which so terrified the sailors of Columbus, it blows only from the eastward. There is no manner of objection to cosmopolitanism, if the word be taken in earnest. There is something fine in the thought of a federal republic of let- ters, a vast literary tribunal of nations, in which each nation has a seat ; but this is just the kind of cosmopolitanism which these critics do not seek. They seek merely a far-off judgment, and this is no better than a local tribunal ; in some respects it is worse. The remotest stand- ard of judgment that I ever encountered was that of the late Professor Ko-Kun-Hua, of Har- A COSMOPOLITAN STANDARD 305 vard University. There was something deli- cious in looking into his serene and inscrutable face, and in trying to guess at the operations of a highly trained mind, to which the laurels of Plato and Shakespeare were as absolutely unimportant as those of the Sweet Singer of Michigan ; yet the tribunal which he afforded could hardly be called cosmopolitan. He un- doubtedly stood, however, for the oldest civili- zation ; and it seemed trivial to turn from his serene Chinese indifference, and attend to chil- dren of a day like the " Revue des Deux Mondes " and the " Saturday Review." If we are to recognize a remote tribunal, let us by all means prefer one that has some maturity about it. But it is worth while to remember that, as a matter of fact, the men who created the Ameri- can government gave themselves very little con- cern about cosmopolitanism, but simply went about their own work. They took hints from older nations, and especially from the mother country, but they acknowledged no jurisdiction there. The consensus of the civilized world, then and for nearly a century after, viewed the American government as a mere experiment, and republican institutions as a bit of short- lived folly ; yet the existence of the new nation gave it a voice henceforth in every tribunal call- 306 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS ing itself cosmopolitan. Henceforth that word includes the judgment of the New World on the Old, as well as that of the Old World on the New ; and when we construe literary cosmo- politanism in the same way, we shall be on as firm ground in literature as in government. So long as we look merely outside of ourselves for a standard, we are as weak as if we looked merely inside of ourselves; probably weaker, for timidity is weaker than even the arrogance of strength. There is no danger that the for- eign judgment will not duly assert itself; the danger is that our own self -estimate will be too apologetic. What with courtesy and good- nature, and a lingering of the old colonialism, we are not yet beyond the cringing period in our literary judgment. The obeisance of all good society in London before a successful cir- cus-manager from America was only a shade more humiliating than the reverential attention visible in the American press when Matthew Arnold was kind enough to stand on tiptoe upon our lecture platform and apply his little mea- suring-tape to the great shade of Emerson. I should like to see in our literature some of the honest self-assertion shown by Senator Tracy of Litchfield, Connecticut, during Washington's administration, in his reply to the British min- ister's praises of Mrs. Oliver Wolcott's beauty. A COSMOPOLITAN STANDARD 307 "Your countrywoman," said the Englishman, "would be admired at the Court of St. James." " Sir," said Tracy, " she is admired even on Litchfield Hill." In that recent book of aphorisms which has given a fresh impulse to the fading fame of Dr. Channing, he points out that the hope of the world lies in the fact that parents can not make of their children what they will. It is equally true of parent nations. How easily we accept the little illusions offered us by our elders in the world's literature, almost forgetting that two and two make four, in the innocent delight with which they inspire us ! In re-reading Scott's " Old Mortality " the other day, I was pleased to find myself still carried away by the author's own grandiloquence, where he describes the approach of Claverhouse and his men to the castle of Tillietudlem. " The train was long and imposing, for there were about two hundred and fifty horse upon the march." Two hundred and fifty ! Yet I read it for the moment with as little demur at these trivial statistics as if our own Sheridan had never ridden out of Win- chester at the head of ten thousand cavalry. It is the same with all literature : we are asked to take Europe at Europe's own valuation, and then to take America at Europe's valuation also; and whenever we speak of putting an 308 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS American valuation upon the four quarters of the globe, we are told that this will not do; this is not cosmopolitan. We are too easily misled, in exhorting Ameri- can authors to a proper humility, because we forget that the invention of printing has in a manner placed all nations on a level. Litera- ture is the only art whose choicest works are easily transportable. Once secure a public library in every town, — a condition now in pro- cess of fulfilment in our older American States, — and every bright boy or girl has a literary Louvre and Vatican at command. Given a taste for literature, and there are at hand all the masters of the art — Plato and Homer, Cicero and Horace, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe. Travel is still needed, but not for books — only for other forms of art, for variety of acquaint- anceship, and for the habit of dealing with men and women of many nationalities. The most fastidious American in Europe should not look with shame, but with pride and hope, upon those throngs of his fellow-countrymen whom he sees crowding the art galleries of Europe, looking about them as ignorantly, if you please, as the German barbarians when they entered Rome. It is not so hard to gain culture ; the thing almost impossible to obtain, unless it be born in us, is the spirit of initiative, of self-confidence. A COSMOPOLITAN STANDARD 309 That is the gift with which great nations begin ; we now owe our chief knowledge of Roman literature and art to the descendants of those Northern barbarians. And it must be kept in view, finally, that a cosmopolitan tribunal is at best but a court of appeal, and is commonly valuable in proportion as the courts of preliminary jurisdiction have done their duty. The best preparation for going abroad is to know the worth of what one has seen at home. I remember to have been im- pressed with a little sense of dismay, on first nearing the shores of Europe, at the thought of what London and Paris might show me in the way of great human personalities ; but I said to myself, " To one who has heard Emer- son lecture, and Parker preach, and Garrison thunder, and Phillips persuade, there is no rea- son why Darwin or Victor Hugo should pass for more than mortal ; " and accordingly they did not. We shall not prepare ourselves for a cos- mopolitan standard by ignoring our own great names or undervaluing the literary tradition that has produced them. When Stuart Newton, the artist, was asked, on first arriving in London from America, whether he did not enjoy the change, he answered honestly, " I here see such society occasionally as I saw at home all the time." At this day the self-respecting American 3io STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS sometimes hears admissions in Europe which make him feel that we are already creating a standard, not waiting to be judged by one. The most variously accomplished literary critic in England, the late Mark Pattison, once said to me of certain American books then lately pub- lished, " Is such careful writing appreciated in the United States ? It would not be in Eng- land." On the shores of a new continent, then, there was already a standard which was in one respect better than the cosmopolitan. THE LITERARY PENDULUM "After all," said the great advocate Rufus Choate, " a book is the only immortality." That was the lawyer's point of view ; but the author knows that, even after the book is pub- lished, the immortality is often still to seek. In the depressed moods of the advocate or the statesman, he is apt to imagine himself as writ- ing a book ; and when this is done, it is easy enough to carry the imagination a step further and to make the work a magnificent success ; just as, if you choose to fancy yourself a for- eigner, it is as easy to be a duke as a tinker. But the professional author is more often like Christopher Sly, whose dukedom is in dreams ; and he is fortunate if he does not say of his own career with Christopher : " A very excel- lent piece of work, good madam lady. Would 't were done ! " In our college days we are told that men change, while books remain unchanged. But in a very few years we find that the circle of books alters as swiftly and strangely as that of the men who write or the boys who read them. When the late Dr. Walter Channing, of Boston, 312 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS was revisiting in old age his birthplace, New- port, R. I., he requested me to take him to the Redwood Library, of which he had been libra- rian some sixty years before. He presently asked the librarian, with an eagerness at first inexplicable, for a certain book, whose name I had never before heard. With some difficulty the custodian hunted it up, entombed beneath other dingy folios in a dusty cupboard. Nobody, he said, had ever before asked for it during his administration. " Strange ! " said Dr. Channing, turning over the leaves. " This was in my time the show-book of the collection; people came here purposely to see it." He closed it with a sigh, and it was replaced in its crypt. Dr. Channing is dead, the librarian who unearthed the book is since dead, and I have forgotten its very title. In all coming time, probably, its repose will be as undisturbed as that of Hans Andersen's forgotten Christmas-tree in the gar- ret. Did, then, the authorship of that book give to its author so very substantial a hold on im- mortality ? But there is in literary fame such a thing as recurrence — a swing of the pendulum which at first brings despair to the young author, yet yields him at last his only consolation. " L'eter- nit6 est une pendule," wrote Jacques Bridaine, that else forgotten Frenchman whose phrase THE LITERARY PENDULUM 313 gave Longfellow the hint of his "Old Clock on the Stairs." When our professors informed us that books were a permanent treasure, those of us who were studious at once pinched our- selves to buy books ; but the authors for whom we made economies in our wardrobe are now as obsolete, very likely, as the garments that we exchanged for them. No undergraduate would now take off my hands at half price, probably, the sets of Landor's " Imaginary Conversations " and Coleridge's " Literary Remains," which it once seemed worth a month of threadbare el- bows to possess. I lately called the attention of a professor of philology to a tolerably full set of Thomas Taylor's translations, and found that he had never heard of even the name of that ser- vant of obscure learning. In college we studied Cousin and Jouffroy, and he who remembers the rise and fall of that ambitious school of French eclectics can hardly be sure of the per- manence of Herbert Spencer, the first man since their day who has undertaken to explain the whole universe of being. How we used to read Hazlitt, whose very name is so forgotten that an accomplished author has lately duplicated the title of his most remarkable book, " Liber Amoris," without knowing that it had ever been used ! What a charm Irving threw about the literary career of Roscoe ; but who now recog- 314 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS nizes his name ? Ardent youths, eager to com- bine intellectual and worldly success, fed them- selves in those days on " Pelham " and " Vivian Grey ; " but these works are not now even in- cluded in " Courses of Reading " — that last infirmity of noble fames. One may look in vain through the vast mausoleum of Bartlett's " Dictionary of Quotations " for even that one maxim in respect to costume, which was " Pel- ham's " bid for immortality. Literary fame is, then, by no means a fixed increment, but a series of vibrations of the pen- dulum. Happy is that author who comes to be benefited by an actual return of reputation — - as athletes get beyond the period of breathless- ness, and come to their "second wind." Yet this is constantly happening. Emerson, visit- ing Landor in 1847, wrote in his diary, "He pestered me with Southey — but who is Southey ? " Now, Southey had tasted fame more promptly than his greater contemporaries, and liked the taste so well that he held his own poems far superior to those of Words- worth, and wrote of them, " With Virgil, with Tasso, with Homer, there are fair grounds of comparison." Then followed a period during which the long shades of oblivion seemed to have closed over the author of " Madoc " and "Kehama." Behold! in 1886 the " Pall Mall THE LITERARY PENDULUM 315 Gazette," revising through " the best critics " Sir James Lubbock's " Hundred Best Books," dethrones Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, Lamb, and Landor ; omits them all, and reinstates the for- gotten Southey once more. Is this the final award of fate ? No : it is simply the inevitable swing of the pendulum. Southey, it would seem, is to have two in- nings ; perhaps one day it will yet be Hayley's turn. "Would it please you very much," asks Warrington of Pendennis, " to have been the author of Hayley's verses ? " Yet Hayley was, in his day, as Southey testifies, "by popular election the king of the English poets ; " and he was held so important a personage, that he received, what probably no other author ever has won, a large income for the last twelve years of his life in return for the prospective copyright of his posthumous memoirs. Miss Anna Seward, writing in 1786, ranks him, with the equally forgotten Mason, as " the two fore- most poets of the day ; " she calls Hayley's poems " magnolias, roses, and amaranths," and pronounces his esteem a distinction greater than monarchs hold it in their power to bestow. But probably nine out of ten who shall read these lines will have to consult a biographical diction- ary to find out who Hayley was ; while his odd prottgt, William Blake, whom the fine ladies of 3i6 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS the day wondered at Hayley for patronizing, has since become a favorite in literature and art. So strong has been the recent swing of the pendulum in favor of what is called realism in fiction, it is very possible that if Hawthorne's "Twice-told Tales " were to appear for the first time to-morrow they would attract no more attention than they did more than fifty years ago. Mr. Stockton has lately made a similar suggestion as to the stories of Edgar Poe. Per- haps this gives half a century as the approximate measure of the variations of fate — the peri- odicity of the pendulum. On the other hand, Jane Austen, who was for many years regarded by readers as an author suited to desolate islands or long and tedious illnesses, has now come to be the founder of a school ; and must look down benignly from heaven to see the brightest minds assiduously at work upon that " little bit of ivory, two inches square " by which she sym- bolized her novels. Then comes in, as an alter- ative, the strong Russian tribe, claimed by real- ists as real, by idealists as ideal, and perhaps forcing the pendulum in a new direction. No- thing, surely, since Hawthorne's death, has given us so much of the distinctive flavor of his genius as Tourgueneff's extraordinary " Poems in Prose " in the admirable version of Mrs. T. S. Perry. THE LITERARY PENDULUM 317 But the question, after all, recurs : Why should we thus be slaves of the pendulum ? Why should we not look at these vast varia- tions of taste more widely, and, as it were, as- tronomically, to borrow Thoreau's phrase ? In the mind of a healthy child there is no incon- gruity between fairy tales and the Rollo Books ; and he passes without disquiet from the fancied heart-break of a tin soldier to Jonas mending an old rat-trap in the barn. Perhaps, after all, the literary fluctuation occurs equally in this case and in ours, but under different conditions. It may be that, in the greater mobility of the child's nature, the pendulum can swing to and fro in half a second of time and without the consciousness of effort; while in the case of older readers, the same vibration takes half a century of time and the angry debate of a thousand journals. THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 1 Our true religious life begins when we dis- cover that there is an Inner Light, not infallible but invaluable, which " lighteth every man that cometh into the world." Then we have some- thing to steer by ; and it is chiefly this, and not an anchor, that we need. The human soul, like any other noble vessel, was not built to be anchored, but to sail. An anchorage may, in- deed, be at times a temporary need, in order to make some special repairs, or to take fresh cargo in ; yet the natural destiny of both ship and soul is not the harbor, but the ocean ; to cut with even keel the vast and beautiful ex- panse ; to pass from island on to island of more 1 This essay was originally written during a winter spent on the island of Fayal, 1855-56, being then intended as a chapter in a larger work, which was never completed. It was read as a lecture some years later in a course conducted by the Free Religious Association in Boston ; and was then printed, with some additions, in pamphlet form. It has since gone through various editions, in America and England, and is still doing service as a tract in the " Unity Mission " series, published in Chicago. A special edition was also printed for the " Parliament of Religions " held at Chicago, in September, 1893. A French translation, by Mrs. Maria E. McKaye, ap- peared at Paris in 1898. THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 319 than Indian balm, or to continents fairer than Columbus won ; or, best of all, steering close to the wind, to extract motive power from the greatest obstacles. Men forget the eternity through which they have yet to sail, when they talk of anchoring here upon this bank and shoal of time. It would be a tragedy to see the ship- ping of the world whitening the seas no more, and idly riding at anchor in Atlantic ports ; but it would be more tragic to see a world of souls fascinated into a fatal repose and renouncing their destiny of motion. And as with individuals, so with communi- ties. The great historic religions of the world are not so many stranded hulks left to perish. The most conspicuous among them are yet full of life and activity. All over the world the divine influence moves men. There is a sym- pathy in religions, and this sympathy is shown alike in their origin, their records, and their career. I have worshipped in an evangelical church when thousands rose to their feet at the motion of one hand. I have worshipped in a Roman Catholic church when the lifting of one finger broke the motionless multitude into twinkling motion, till the magic sign was made, and all was still. But I never for an instant have supposed that this concentrated moment of devotion was more holy or more beautiful 320 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS than when one cry from a minaret hushes a Mohammedan city to prayer; or, when, at sunset, the low invocation, " Oh ! the gem in the lotus — oh ! the gem in the lotus," goes murmuring, like the cooing of many doves, across the vast surface of Thibet. True, " the gem in the lotus" means nothing to us, but it has for those who use it a meaning as signifi- cant as "the Lamb of God," for it is a symbol of aspiration. Every year brings new knowledge of the religions of the world, and every step in know- ledge brings out the sympathy between them. They all show similar aims, symbols, forms, weaknesses, and aspirations. Looking at these points of unity, we might say that under many forms there is but one religion, whose essential creed is the Fatherhood of God and the Bro- therhood of Man, — disguised by corruptions, symbolized by mythologies, ennobled by virtues, degraded by vices, but still the same. Or if, passing to a closer analysis, we dwell rather on the shades of difference, we shall find in these varying faiths the several instruments which perform what Cudworth calls "the Symphony of Religions." And though some may stir like drums, and others soothe like flutes, and others like violins command the whole range of soft- ness and of strength, yet they are all alike in- THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 321 struments, and nothing in any one of them is so wondrous as the great laws of sound which control them all. "Amid so much war and contest and variety of opinion," said Maximus Tyrius, "you will find one consenting conviction in every land, that there is one God, the King and Father of all." "God being one," said Aristotle, "only receives various names from the various mani- festations we perceive." "Sovereign God," said Cleanthes, in that sublime prayer which Paul quoted, "whom men invoke under many names, and who rulest alone, ... it is to thee that all nations should address themselves, for we are all thy children." " It is of little con- sequence," says Seneca, "by what name you call the first Nature, the divine Reason that presides over the universe and fills all parts of it. He is still the same God. We Stoics some- times call him Father Bacchus, because he is the Universal Life that animates Nature ; some- times Mercury, because he is the Eternal Rea- son, Order, and Wisdom. You may give him as many names as you please, provided you allow but one sole principle universally." St. Augustine readily accepts these interpretations. "It was one God," he says, "the universal Cre- ator and Sustainer, who in the ethereal spaces was called Jupiter ; in the sea, Neptune ; in the 322 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS sun, Phcebus ; in the fire, Vulcan ; in the vin- tage, Bacchus; in the harvest, Ceres; in the forests, Diana; in the sciences, Minerva." So Origen, the Christian Father, frankly says that no man can be blamed for calling God's name in Egyptian, or in Scythian, or in such other language as he best knows. 1 To say that different races worship different Gods is like saying that they are warmed by different suns. The names differ, but the sun is the same, and so is God. As there is but one source of light and warmth, so there is but one source of religion. To this all nations testify alike. We have yet but a part of our Holy Bible. The time will come when, as in the Middle Ages, all pious books will be called sacred scriptures, Scripturcz Sacrce. From the most remote portions of the earth, from the Vedas and the Sagas, from Plato and Zoroaster, Confucius and Mohammed, from the Emperor Marcus Antoninus and the slave Epictetus.from learned Alexandrians and the ignorant Galla negroes, there will be gathered hymns and 1 This is Cudworth's interpretation, but he has rather strained the passage, which must be that beginning, OiSiy oiv olfuu Suupipeiv (Adv. Celsum, v.). The passages from Aris- totle and Cleanthes are in Stobjeus. See, also, Maximus Tyrius, Diss. i. : ®ebs e?s irivrav f3ap, Kal i\dv8payiros. Lucan, Pharsalia, i. 60, 61 : — " Tunc genus bumauum positis sibi consulat armis Inque vicem gens omnis amet." Cicero, De Legibus, i. 15 : " Nam haec nascuntur ex eo, quia THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 333 This sympathy of religions extends even to the loftiest virtues, — the forgiveness of inju- ries, the love of enemies, and the overcoming of evil with good. " It is declared in our Ved and Codes of Law," says Ram Mohun Roy, " that mercy is the root of virtue." Buddha said, " A man who foolishly does me wrong, I will return to him the protection of my ungrudging love ; the more evil comes from him, the more good shall go from me." " Hatred," says the Bud- dhist Dhammapada, or " Path of Virtue," " does not cease by hatred at any time ; hatred ceases by love ; this is an old rule." "To overwhelm evil with good is good, and to resist evil by evil is evil," says a Mohammedan manual of ethics. " Turn not away from a sinner, but look on him with compassion," says Sadi's " Gulistan." " If thine enemy hunger, give him bread to eat ; if he thirst, give him water to drink," said the Hebrew proverb. " He who commits injustice natura propensi sumus ad diligendos homines, quod funda- mentum juris est." Also De Republica, iii. 7, 7 (fragment) : " Quae virtus, prater ceteras, tota se ad alienas porrigit mili- tates et explicat." Marcus Antoninus, vii. 31 : $l\i\oov rbv taiOpdmivov yivos. Epictetus, bk. iii. c. xxiv. : "Oti S micr/tos oZtos fiia it6\ls iffrl . >. . iriivra 5e ipi\wv /Aeffrk, irpwroi/ fiev ®€wv, elm koX avBponrwv, (pvati irpbs hW^Xois tpkeKofievwv. Compare Cicero, De Nat. Deorum (ii. § lxii.) : "Est enim mundus quasi communis Deorum, atque hominum domus, aut urbs utrorumque." 334 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it," said Plato, and adds, " It is never right to return an injury." "No one will dare main- tain," said Aristotle, " that it is better to do injustice than to bear it." " We should do good to our enemy," said Cleobulus, " and make him our friend." " Speak not evil to a friend, nor even to an enemy," said Pittacus, one of the Seven Wise Men. " It is more beautiful," said Valerius Maximus, "to overcome injury by the power of kindness than to oppose to it the ob- stinacy of hatred." Maximus Tyrius has a spe- cial chapter on the treatment of injuries, and concludes, " If he who injures does wrong, he who returns the injury does equally wrong." Plutarch, in his essay, " How to profit by our enemies," bids us sympathize with them in affliction and aid their needs. " A philosopher, when smitten, must love those who smite him, as if he were the father, the brother, of all men," said Epictetus. " It is peculiar to man," said Marcus Antoninus, "to even love those who do wrong. . . . Ask thyself daily to how many ill-minded persons thou hast shown a kind disposition." He compares the wise and humane soul to a spring of pure water which blesses even him who curses it ; as the Oriental story likens such a soul to the sandalwood tree, THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 335 which imparts its fragrance even to the axe that cuts it down. 1 How it cheers and enlarges us to hear of these great thoughts and know that the Divine has never been without a witness on earth ! How it must sadden the soul to disbelieve them ! Worse yet, to be in a position where it is necessary to hope that they may not be cor- rectly reported, — that one by one they may be explained away. A prosecuting attorney 1 Ram Mohun Roy, Conference on Burning Widows (Cal- cutta, 1818), p. 27 ; Beal's Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese, p. 193 ; Dhammapada (tr. by Max Muller), in Ro- ger's Buddhagosha's Parables, also in Max Miiller's Lectures on the Science of Religion (Am. ed.), p. 194 ; Akhlak-p-falaly (tr. by Thompson), p. 441 ; Sadi's Gulistan (tr. by Ross), p. 240; (tr. by Gladwin, Am. ed.), p. 209; Proverbs xxv. 21. Plato, Gorgias, § 35 : 'Ac! rbv aSutovvra rod oiSucov/icvov i.8\u&- repov etvai. Crilo, § 10 : 'fly ovUexore dpOas %x ovros oirre tov aSucetp oSre tov avTatiuceiv. (Plato devotes much of the first book of his Republic to refuting with great elaboration those who allege that it is right to injure an enemy.) Cleobulus, in Diog. Laertius, bk. i. § 91 : "E\ey4 re rov . Pit- tacus in Diog. Laertius, bk. i. § 78 : QiXov fib Xeyeiv Kaxas, aWh /iMjSe i%9p6v. Val. Maximus, iv. 2, 4 : " Quia speciosius aliquanto injuria? beneficiis vincuntur quam mutui odii pertr nacia pensantur.'' Max. Tyrius, Diss, xviii. ; Kol pfyv ei 6 hiutav KaKws iroieT, & hvriiroiwv KaKols ovdev %ttov irotei Kaicus, nhv a/jLvyTjrai. Plutarch's Morals (tr. by Goodwin, i. 293). Epic- tetus, bk. vii. c. 22 : AalpeaBai Sef avrbv, as fvov, Kol StupSfievov (piAeiv aiTobs robs Salpovras, us Tmrepa tt&vtwv, as lifie\. Marcus Antoninus, Medit., v. 31 : Els Haovs 5e ayvdfiovas eiyvd* fuav iyepov. vii. 22 : "ISioc hvQp&mov K ^ a> **"«" ifo/nlff- 8-qaav, o'tov iv "EWyffi fiev ^wKp&TTis Kal 'Hpdic\eiTos Kal ol 6/Aotoi avTois, k. t. \. Justin Martyr, Apol., i. 46 Upbs 8e Kal in i avrbs 9ebs afitpoiv rail/ StaBrtKaiv xoprpybs 6 Kal TTJs 'EWiiviKrjs 79> 9 2 > Richardson's Great Desert, ii. 63, 129; John- THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 345 The one unpardonable sin is exclusiveness. Any form of religion is endangered when we ston's Abyssinia, i. 267 ; Allen's Niger Expedition, i. 383 ; Du Chaillu, Ashango Land, xiii. 129. Barth, passim, espe- cially (i. 310, Am. ed.): "That continual struggle, which al- ways continuing further and further, seems destined to over- power the nations at the very equator, if Christianity does not presently step in to dispute the ground with it." He says " that a great part of the Berbers of the desert were once Christians, and that they afterwards changed their religion and adopted Islam " (i. 197, 198). He represents the slave mer- chants of the interior as complaining that the Mohammedans of Tunis have abolished slavery, but that Christians still con- tinue it (i. 465). " It is difficult to decide how a Christian government is to deal with these countries, where none but Mohammedans maintain any sort of government" (ii. 196). " There is a. vital principle in Islam, which has only to be brought out by a reformer to accomplish great things " (i, 164). Reade, in his Savage Africa, discusses the subject fully in a closing chapter, and concludes thus : " Mohammed, a ser- vant of God, redeemed the eastern world. His followers are now redeeming Africa. . . . Let us aid the Mohammedans in their great work, the redemption of Africa. ... In every Mohammedan town there is a public school and a public library." He complains that Christianity utterly fails to check theft, but Mohammedanism stops it entirely (pp. 135, 579, English ed.). For Asiatic Mohammedanism, see S/eeman's Recollections, ii. 164, and compare Tennent's Christianity in Ceylon, p. 330, and Max Mviller's Chips from a German Workshop, ii. 351. Since the above note was written, this whole subject has been exhaustively treated by R. Bosworth Smith, M. A., Assistant Master in Harrow School, in the first of his admir- able Lectures before the Royal Institution of Great Britain, on " Mohammed and Mohammedanism" (pp. 49-66, Am. ed.). 346 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS bring it to the test of practical results, for none can yet bear that test. There never existed a person, a book, or an institution, which did not share, however distantly, the merits and the drawbacks of its rivals. Granting all that can be established as to the debt of the world to the very best dispensation, the fact still remains, that there is not a single maxim, or idea, or application, or triumph, that any one religion can claim as exclusively its own. Neither faith, nor love, nor truth, nor disinterestedness, nor forgiveness, nor patience, nor peace, nor equal- ity, nor education, nor missionary effort, nor prayer, nor honesty, nor the sentiment of bro- therhood, nor reverence for woman, nor the spirit of humility, nor the fact of martyrdom, nor any other good thing, is monopolized by any form of faith. All religions recognize, more or less remotely, these principles ; all do something to exemplify, something to dishonor them. Travelers find that virtue is in a seem- ing minority in all other countries, and forget that they have left it in a minority at home. A Hindoo girl, astonished at the humanity of a British officer toward her father, declared her, surprise that any one could display so much kindness who did not believe in the God Vishnu. Rev. J. R. Wolf, an English missionary, met a Buddhist who readily offered to believe in Jesus THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 347 Christ if the missionary would believe in Buddha. Gladwin, in his "Persian Classics," narrates a scene which occurred in his presence between a Jew and a Mohammedan. The Mohammedan said in wrath, "If this deed of conveyance is not authentic, may God cause me to die a Jew." The Jew said, " I make my oath on the Penta- teuch, and if I swear falsely I am a Moham- medan like you." What religion stands highest in its moral results, if not Christianity? Yet Christendom has produced the slave-trader as well as the saint. If we say that Christendom was not truly represented by the slaves in the hold of John Newton's slave-ship, but only by his pious meditations in the cabin, then we must admit that Buddhism is not be judged merely by its prostrations before Fo, but by the learning of its lamaseries and the beneficence of its people. Keshub Chunder Sen goes from India to Eng- land, and implores Christians to cease demoral- izing the young Hindoos by teaching them the use of strong drink. " Man after man dies," he says, "and people sometimes compute the re- sults of English education by the number of deaths that actually take place, every month and year, through intemperance." The greater humanity of Hindoos towards animals has been, according to Dr. Hedge, a serious embarrass- 348 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS .ment to our .missionaries. Men interrupt the missionaries in China, Coffin tells us, by asking them why, if their doctrines are true, Christian nations forced opium on an unwilling emperor, who refused to the last to receive money from the traffic ; and it is well known that Gutzlaff, a missionary, accompanied the English ships, as interpreter, on that occasion. 1 What a history has been our treatment of the American Indians ! " Instead of virtues," said Cadwallader Colden, writing as early as 1727, "we have taught them vices that they were entirely free from before that time." The delegation from the Society of Friends reported, in 1869, that an Indian chief brought a young Indian before a white commissioner to give evi- dence, and the commissioner hesitated a little in receiving a part of the testimony, when the chief said with great emphasis, " Oh ! you may 1 Keskub Chunder Sen in England, by S. D. Collett, p. 265, also pp. 152, 221, etc.; Hedge's Primeval World of Hebrew Tradition, p. 83 ; Coffin's New Way round the World, pp. 270, 308, 361 ; Williams's Middle Kingdom, ii. 529, 544. Mr. Williams states that the Chinese emperor caused to be destroyed 20,291 chests of opium, and calls the act " a soli- tary instance in the history of the world of a pagan monarch preferring to destroy what would injure his own subjects, than to fill his pockets with its sale." Dr. Jeffreys was told by a Mussulman in India, speaking of a certain tribe, that he knew they were Christians " from their being nearly all drunkards.'' British Army in India, by Jeffreys, p. 19, THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 349 believe what he says : he tells the truth : he. has never seen a white man before ! " In Southey's "Wesley" there is an account of an Indian whom Wesley met in Georgia, and who thus summed up his objections to Christianity: " Christian much drunk ! Christian beat man ! Christian tell lies ! Devil Christian ! Me no Christian ! " 1 What then ? All other religions 1 Colden's History of the Five Indian Nations (dedication). He says also, " We have reason to be ashamed that those infidels, by our conversation and neighborhood, are become worse than they were before they knew us." It appears from this book (as from other witnesses), that one of the worst crimes now practised by Indians has sprung up since that day, being certainly countenanced by the brutalities practised by whites towards Indian women. Colden says : " I have been assured that there is not an instance of their offering the least violence to the chastity of any woman that was their captive." Vol. i. p. 9, 3d ed. [It is probable, however, that different tribes have always differed in this respect. Com- pare Parkman's Pontiac, ii. 236 ; Southey's Wesley, chap, iii. ; Report of Joint Delegation of the Society of Friends, 1869.] The Indians whom Catlin took with him to England could not be made to understand why missionaries were sent from London to convert the red men, when there was so much more vice and suffering in London than In the Indian country. They said : " The people around ns can all read the good book, and they can understand all the black coats say ; and still'we find they'are not so honest and so good people as ours ; this we are sure of. . . . We believe that the Great Spirit has made our religion for us and white man's religion for white men. Their sins we believe are much greater than ours ; and perhaps the Great Spirit has thought it best to give them a different religion." Catlin's Indians in Europe, i. 164 ; ii. 40 ; also ii. 6i, 71. 350 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS show the same discrepancy between belief and practice, and each is safe till it begins to tra- duce the rest. Test each sect by its best or its worst as you will, by its high-water mark of virtue or its low-water mark of vice. But false- hood begins when you measure the ebb of any other religion against the flood-tide of your own. There is a noble and a base side to every history. The same religion varies in different soils. Christianity is not the same in England and Italy ; in Armenia and in Ethiopia ; in the Protestant and Catholic cantons of Switzer- land ; in Massachusetts and in Utah. Neither is Buddhism the same in China, in Thibet, and in Ceylon ; nor Mohammedanism in Turkey and in Persia. We have no right to pluck the best fruit from one tree, the worst from an- other, and then say that the tree is known by its fruits. I say again, Christianity has, on the whole, produced the highest results of all, in manners, in arts, in virtue. Yet when Chris- tianity had been five centuries in the world, the world's only hope seemed to be in the superior strength and purity of Pagan races. " Can we wonder," wrote Salvian (a. d. 400), "if our lands have been given over to the barbarians by God ? since that which we have polluted by our profligacy the barbarians have cleansed by their THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 351 chastity." 1 At the end of its first thousand years, Christianity could only show Europe at its lowest ebb of civilization, in a state which Guizot calls " death by the extinction of every faculty." The barbarians had only deteriorated since their conversion ; the great empires were falling to pieces ; and the only bright spot in Europe was Mohammedan Spain, whose univer- sities taught all Christendom science, as its knights taught chivalry. Even at the end of fifteen hundred years, the Turks, having con- quered successively Jerusalem and Constanti- nople, seemed altogether the most powerful nation of the world ; their empire was com- pared to the Roman empire ; they were gaining all the time. You will find everywhere — in Luther's " Table-talk," for instance — how weak Christendom seemed against them in the mid- dle of the sixteenth century ; and. Lord Bacon, yet later, describes them in his " Essays " as the only warlike nation' in Europe except the Span- iards. But the art of printing had been dis- covered, and that other new world, America ; the study of Greek literature was reviving the intellect of Europe, and the tide had begun to turn. For four hundred years it has been safe 1 " Cum ea qua; Romani polluerant fomicatione, nunc mun- dent barbari castitate." Salvian, De Gubern. Dei, ed. 1623, p. 254, quoted in Gilly's Vigilantius, p. 360. 352 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS for Christendom to be boastful, but if at any time during the fifteen hundred years previous the comparison had been made, the boasting would have been the other way. It is unsafe to claim a monopoly of merit on the basis of facts that cover four centuries out of nineteen. Let us not be misled by a hasty vanity, lest some new incursion of barbarians teach us, as it taught the early Christians, to be humble. We see what Christianity has done for Eu- rope ; but we do not remember how much Europe has done for Christianity." 1 Take away the influence of race and climate ; take away Greek literature and Mohammedan chiv- alry and the art of printing ; set the decline of Christianity in Asia and Africa against its gain in Europe and America, — and, whatever supe- riority may be left, it affords no basis for any 1 " Neither history nor more recent experience can furnish any example of the long retention of pure Christianity by a people themselves rude and unenlightened. In all the nations of Europe, embracing every period since the second century, Christianity must be regarded as having taken the hue and complexion of the social state with which it was incorporated, presenting itself unsullied, contaminated, or corrupted, in sympathy with the enlightenment or ignorance or debasement of those by whom it had been originally embraced. The rapid and universal degeneracy of the early Asiatic churches is associated with the decline of education and the intellec- tual decay of the communities among whom they were estab- lished." Tennent's Christianity in Ceylon, p. 273. THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 353 exclusive claims. 1 The recent scientific advances of the age are a brilliant theme for the rheto- rician ; but those who make these advances appear very little disposed to ascribe them to the influence of any form of religion. Indeed it is only very lately that the claim of superiority in civilization and the arts of life has been made in behalf of Christianity. Down to the time of the Reformation it was usual to contrast the intellectual and practical superior- ity of the heathen with the purely spiritual claims of the church. Ruskin complains that in Raphael's decorations of the Vatican he con- cedes Philosophy and Poetry to the ancients, and claims only Theology for the moderns. "From the beginning of the world," said Luther, "there have always been among the heathens higher and rarer people, of greater and more exalted understanding, more excellent diligence and skill in all arts, than among Christians, or the people of God." "Do we excel in intellect, in learning, in decency of morals ? " said Me- 1 For the influence of Mohammedanism on the revival of letters in Europe, see Andres, Origine di ogni litteratura; Jourdain, Recherches critiques sur les traductions latines d'Aristote ; Schmolders, Ecoles Philosophiques entre les Arabes ; Forster, Mohammedanism Unveiled ; Urquhart, Pil- lars of Hercules ; Lecky's Rationalism, ii. 284 ; Humboldt's Cosmos, ii. xvii. 579, 584, 594; Neander's Church History (Am. tr.), iv. 301. 354 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS lanchthbn. " By no means. But we excel in the true knowledge and worship and adoration of God." "The church has always been ac- customed," says the Roman Catholic Digby, "to see genius and learning in the ranks op- posed to her." 1 Historically, of course, we are Christians, and can enjoy the advantage which that better training has given, just as the favored son of a king may enjoy his special advantages and yet admit that the less favored are also sons. The name of Christianity only ceases to excite re- spect when it is used to represent any false or exclusive claims, or when it takes the place of the older and grander words, " Religion " and " Virtue." When we fully comprehend the sym- pathy of religions we shall deal with other faiths on fairer terms. We shall cease trying to free men from one superstition by inviting them into another. The true missionaries are men inside each religion who have outgrown its limitations. But no Christian missionary has ever yet • consented to meet the man of other religions upon the common ground of 1 " Quid igitur nos antecellimus ? Num ingenio, doctrina, morum moderatione illos superamus? Nequaqum. Sed vera Dei agnitione, invocatione et celebratione prsestamus." Melanchthon, quoted by Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, (Eng. tr.), p. 284. He also cites the passage from Luther. Digby's Ages of Faith (Am. ed.), ii. 84. THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 355 Theism. In Bishop Heber's time, the Hindoo reformer Swamee Narain was teaching purity and peace, the unity of God, and the abolition of caste. Many thousands of men followed his teachings, and whole villages and districts were raised from the worst immorality by his labors, as the Bishop himself, bears witness. But the good Bishop seems to have despaired of him as soon as Swamee Narain refused conversion to Christianity, making the objection that God was not incarnated in one man, but in many. Then there was Ram Mohun Roy, sixty years ago, who argued from the Vedas against idola- try, caste, and the burning of widows. He also refused to be called a Christian, and the missionaries denounced him. Now comes Ke- shub Chunder Sen, with his generous utter- ances : " We profess the universal and absolute religion, whose cardinal doctrines are the Fa- therhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, and which accepts the truths of all scriptures, and honors the prophets of all nations." The movement reaches thousands whom no foreign influence could touch ; yet the Methodist mis- sionaries denounce it in the name of Christ. It is the same with our treatment of the Jews. According to Bayard Taylor, Christendom con- verts annually three of four Jews in Jerusalem, at a cost of $20,000 each ; and yet the reformed 356 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS Jews in America have already gone in advance of the most liberal Christian sects in their width of religious sympathy. " The happiness of man," says Rabbi Wise, speaking for them, " depends on no creed and no book ; it depends on the dominion of truth, which is the Redeemer and Saviour, the Messiah and the King of Glory." i It is our happiness to live in a time when all religions are at last outgrowing their mytholo- gies, and emancipated men are stretching out their hands to share together " the luxury of a religion that does not degrade." The progres- sive Brahmoes of India, the Mohammedan students in London, the Jewish radicals . in America, are teaching essentially the same prin- ciples, seeking the same ends, with the most enlightened Christian reformers. The Jewish congregations in Baltimore were the first to con- tribute for the education of the freedmen ; the 1 Rabbi Wise's remarks may be found in the Report of the Free Religious Association for 1869, p. 118. For Swamee Narain, see Heber's Journal, ii. 109-121 (Am. ed.). For Ram Mohun Roy, see his translation of the Sama Veda (Calcutta, 1816), his two tracts on the burning of widows (Calcutta, 1818, 1820), and other pamphlets. Victor Jacquemont wrote of him from Calcutta in 1830, " II n'est pas Chretien quoi qu'on en dise. . . . Les honnetes Anglais l'execrent parce que, di- sent ils, c'est un affreux deiste." Lettres, i. 288. Keshub Chunder Sen complains of his own treatment by the mission- aries (Collet, 302, 375). , THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 357 Buddhist temple, in San Francisco, was the first edifice of that city draped in mourning after the murder of President Lincoln ; the Parsees of the East sent contributions to the Sanitary Commission. The great religions of the world are but larger sects ; they come together, like the lesser sects, for works of benevolence ; they share the same aspirations, and every step in the progress of each brings it nearer to all the rest. For most of us in Amer- ica, the door out of superstition and sin may be called Christianity ; that is our historical name for it ; it is the accident of a birthplace. But other nations find other outlets ; they must pass through their own doors, not through ours ; and all will come at last upon the broad ground of God's providing, which bears no man's name. The reign of heaven on earth will not be called the Kingdom of Christ or of Buddha, — it will be called the Church of God, or the Common- wealth of Man. I do not wish to belong to a religion only, but to the religion ; it must not include less than the piety of the world. If one insists on being exclusive, where shall he find a home ? What hold has any Protes- tant sect among us on a thoughtful mind ? They are too little, too new, too inconsistent, too feeble. What are these children of a day com- pared with that magnificent Church of Rome, 358 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS which counts its years by centuries, and its votaries by millions, and its martyrs by myri- ads ; with kings for confessors and nations for converts ; carrying to all the earth one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and claiming for itself no less title than the Catholic, the Universal ? Yet in conversing with Catholics one is again repelled by the comparative juvenility, and modernness, and scanty numbers of their church. It claims to be elder brother of our little sects, doubtless, and seems to have most of the family fortune. But the whole fortune is so small ! and even the elder brother is so " young! The Romanist himself ignores tradi- tions more vast than his own, antiquity more remote, a literature of piety more grand. His temple suffocates : give us a shrine still wider ; something than this Catholicism more catholic ; not the Church of Rome, but of God and Man ; a Pantheon, not a Parthenon ; the true semper, ubique, et ab omnibus ; the Religion of the Ages, Natural Religion. I was once in a Portuguese cathedral when, after the three days of mourning, in Holy Week, came the final day of Hallelujah. The great church had looked dim and sad, with the innumerable windows closely curtained, since the moment when the symbolical bier of Jesus was borne to its symbolical tomb beneath the THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS 359 High Altar, while the three mystic candles blazed above it. There had been, agony and beating of cheeks in the darkness, while ghostly processions moved through the aisles, and fear- ful transparencies were unrolled from the pul- pit. The priests kneeled in gorgeous robes, chanting, with their heads resting on the altar steps ; the multitude hung expectant on their words. Suddenly burst forth a new chant, " Gloria in Excelsis ! " In that instant every curtain was rolled aside, the cathedral was bathed in glory, the organs clashed, the bells chimed, flowers were thrown from the galleries, little birds were let loose, friends embraced and greeted one another, and we looked down upon a tumultuous sea of faces, all floating in a sun- lit haze. And yet, I thought, the whole of this sublime transformation consisted in letting in the light of day! These priests and attend- ants, each stationed at his post, had only re- moved the darkness they themselves had made. Unveil these darkened windows, but remove also these darkening walls ; the temple itself is but a lingering shadow of that gloom. Instead of its stifling incense, give us God's pure air, and teach us that the broadest religion is the best. THE WORD PHILANTHROPY Some writer on philology has said that there is more to be learned from language itself than from all that has been written by its aid. It is often possible to reconstruct some part of the moral attitude of a race, through a single word of its language ; and this essay will simply offer an illustration of that process. In the natural sciences, the method is famil- iar. For instance, it was long supposed that the mammoth and the cave-bear had perished from the earth before man appeared. No argu- ment from the occasional intermixture of their bones with man's was quite conclusive. But when there was dug up a drawing of the cave- bear on slate, and a rude carving of the living mammoth, mane and all, on a tusk of the animal itself, then doubt vanished, and the question was settled. Thoreau has remarked that " some circumstantial evidence may be very strong, as where you find a live trout in the milk-pan." 1 This essay appeared originally in a volume called Free- dom and Fellowship in Religion published by the Free Reli- gious Association. THE WORD PHILANTHROPY 361 These discoveries in palaeontology were quite as conclusive. Now what is true in palaeontology is true in philology as well. When a word comes into ex- istence, its meaning is carved on the language that holds it ; if you find the name of a certain virtue written in a certain tongue, then the race which framed that language knew that virtue. This may be briefly illustrated by the history of the word " Philanthropy." This word, it is known, came rather late into the English tongue. When the Pilgrim Fathers stepped on Plymouth Rock, in 1620, though they may have been practising what the word meant, there were few among them to whom its sound was familiar, and perhaps none who habitually used it. It is not in Chaucer, Spenser, or Shake- speare. It is not even in the English Bible, first published in 161 1 ; and the corresponding Greek word, occuring three times in the original, is rendered in each case by a circumlocution. It does not appear in that pioneer English Diction- ary, Minsheu's " Guide to the Tongues," as first published in 16 17. It does not appear in the Spanish Dictionary of the same Minsheu, in 1623. But two years later than this, in the second edition of his " Guide to the Tongues " (1625), it appears as follows, among the new words distinguished by a dagger : — 362 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS "Philanthropic ; Humanitie, a loving of men." Then follow the Greek and Latin words, as sources of derivation. This is the first appearance in print, so far as my knowledge goes, of the word " Philanthro- pic" But Lord Bacon, publishing in the same year (1625) his essay on "Goodness, and Good- ness of Heart," — the thirteenth of the series of his essays, as now constituted, and occupying the place of an essay on "Friendship," which stood thirteenth in the previous editions, — uses the word in its Greek form only, and in a way that would seem to indicate, but for the evidence of Minsheu, that it had not yet been Anglicized. His essay opens thus : " I take goodness in this sense, the affecting of the weal of men, which is what the Greeks call Philanthropia ; and the word Humanity, as it is used, is a little too light to express it." The next author who uses the word is Jeremy Taylor. It is true that in his "Holy Dying" (165 1 ), when translating the dying words of Cyrus from Xenophon's " Cyropsedia," he ren- ders the word <^iXa.vQpumo% " a lover of mankind," citing the original Greek in the margin. 1 But in Taylor's sermons, published two years later (1653), there occur the first instances known to 1 Xen., Cyrop., viii. 7. 25. Taylor's Holy Dying, c. ii. § 3, par. 2. THE WORD PHILANTHROPY 363 me, after Minsheu, of the use of the Anglicized word. Jeremy Taylor speaks of "that godlike excellency, a philanthropy and love to all man- kind;" and again, of "the philanthropy of God." 1 The inference would seem to be that while this word had now become familiar, at least among men of learning, the corresponding words "philanthropic" and "philanthropist" were not equally well known. If they had been, Jeremy Taylor would probably have used either the one or the other, in translating the words attributed to Cyrus. So slowly did the word take root, indeed, that when so learned a writer as Dryden used it, nearly seventy years after Minsheu, he still did it with an apology, and with especial reference to the Greek author on whom he was comment- ing. For when, in 1693, Sir Henry Steere published a poor translation of Polybius and Dryden was employed to write the preface, he said : — "This philanthropy (which we have not a proper word in English to express) is everywhere manifest in our author, and from hence pro- ceeded that divine rule which he gave to Scipio, 1 Taylor's Sermons, vol. iii. Sermons I and II. (Cited in Richardson's Dictionary.) In his sermon entitled Via In- tettigentce, he quotes the Greek adjective, translating it "gentle." 364 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS that whensoever he went abroad he should take care not to return to his house before he had acquired a friend by some new obligement." We have, then, three leading English writers of the seventeenth century — Bacon, Taylor, Dryden — as milestones to show how gradually this word " philanthropy " became established in our language. To recapitulate briefly : Bacon uses the original Greek word, spelled in Roman characters, and attributes it to " the Grecians," saying that there is no English equivalent; Taylor, twenty-eight years later, uses it in Anglicized form, without apology or explana- tion, although when quoting and translating the Greek word ^iXavflpom-os, he does not use the equivalent word in his translation. Dryden, forty years later, commenting on a Greek author, makes a sort of apology for the use of the word, as representing something " which we have not a proper word in English to express/' although he uses the English form. It is therefore clear that the word " philanthropy " was taken directly and consciously from the Greek, for want of a satisfactory English word. Men do not take the trouble to borrow a word, any more than an umbrella, if they already possess one that will answer the purpose. Let us now consider the original word <£iXav- 0pikav6pu>Trmj rpcnrov ; and it is repeated later, in the most magnificent soliloquy in ancient literature, where Prometheus accepts the charge, and glories in his offence, of too much love for man, t^v \iav i\6rrp-a /3por5>v. He admits that when Zeus had resolved to destroy the human race, and had withdrawn from men 366 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS the use of fire, he himself had reconveyed fire to them, and thus saved them from destruction ; that he had afterwards taught them to tame animals, to build ships, to observe the stars, to mine for metals, to heal diseases. For this he was punished by Zeus : for this he defies Zeus, and predicts that his tyranny must end, and justice be done. On this the three tragedies turn ; the first showing Prometheus as carry- ing the sacred gift of fire to men ; the second as chained to Caucasus ; the third as delivered from his chains. If we had the first play, we should have the virtue of philanthropy exhibited in its details ; if we had the last, we should see its triumph ; but in the remaining tragedy we see what is, perhaps, nobler than either, — the philanthropic man under torment for his self- devotion, but refusing to regret what he has done. There is not a play in modern literature, I should say, which turns so directly and com- pletely, from beginning to end, upon the word and the thing "philanthropy." Seeking, now, another instance of the early use of the Greek word, and turning from the ideal to the actual, we have Socrates, in the " Euthyphron " of Plato, — composed probably about 400 b. c, — questioned as to how it is that he has called upon himself the vengeance of those in power by telling unwelcome truths. THE WORD PHILANTHROPY 367 And when his opponent hints that he himself has never got into any serious trouble, Socrates answers, in that half -jesting way which he never wholly lays aside — I quote Jowett's transla- tion : — " I dare say that you don't make yourself common, and are not apt to impart your wis- dom. But I have a benevolent habit of pour- ing myself out to everybody, and would even pay for a listener, and I am afraid that the Athenians know this." The phrase rendered " benevolent habit " is fab fakavGptomas ■, 1 that is, " through philanthropy ; " and I know nowhere a franker glimpse of the real man Socrates. Coming down to later authors, we find the use of the word in Greek to be always such as to bring out distinctly that meaning for which it has been imported into English. How apt we are to say that the Greeks thought only of the state, not of individuals, nor of the world out- side ! Yet the great orator Isocrates (born 436 b. c.) heaps praises upon a certain person as being one who loved man and Athens and wis-' dom, — i\dv6pi.\a6r]valos ko.1 irCa in contrast to 66vos, hate, and to i/iorr)^ cruelty ; and speaks of em- 1 Plato, Euthyph., § 3. Jowett's Plato, i. 286. 368 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS ploying philanthropy towards any one cpiXav- Bpumiav tivI xpwSai. So Xenophon, as we have seen, makes Cyrus describe himself on his deathbed as " philanthropic." So Epictetus, at a later period, said, " Nothing is meaner than the love of pleasure, the love of gain, and insolence ; nothing nobler than mag- nanimity, meekness, and philanthropy." So Plutarch, addressing his " Consolations to Apol- lonius " on the death of his son, sums up the praises of the youth by calling him "philan- thropic," — (juXdvOpomoi. In his life of Solon, also, he uses the word i\av6pwTriw;, — des- titute of all philanthropy, or, as we should say, " pitiless," — as if wherever man might be there would also be the love of man. 1 We have, then, a virtue called philanthropy, which dates back nearly six hundred years be- fore our era, and within about two centuries of the beginning of authentic history, — a virtue which inspired the self-devotion of Prometheus in the great tragedy of antiquity; which prompted the manner of life of Socrates ; to which Demosthenes appealed, in. opposition to 1 Isoc, Epist., v. 2 ; Dem., Adv. Leptines, § 165 ; Xen., Cyrop., viii. 7. 25; Epict., Frag., 46; Plut, Cons., §34, Solon, § 15; Diod., xvii. 50. THE WORD PHILANTHROPY 369 hate and cruelty ; to which Isocrates gave pre- cedence before the love of country and the love of knowledge ; which Polybius admired, when shown toward captives ; which Epictetus classed as the noblest of all things ; and which Plu- tarch inscribed as the highest praise upon the epitaph of a noble youth. Thus thoroughly was the word "philanthropy" rooted in the Greek language, and recognized by the Greek heart ; and it is clear that we, speaking a lan- guage in which this word was unknown for cen- turies, — being introduced at last, according to Dryden, because there was no English word to express the same idea, — cannot claim the virtue it expresses as an exclusively modern possession. It is worth noticing that there is another use of the word "philanthropy," which prevailed among the Greeks, and was employed for a time in English. The word was used to ex- press an attribute of Deity, as, for instance, when Aristophanes applies it to Hermes, 12 i\av6pioiria, " Your phi- lanthropy," as we say to republican governors, "Your Excellency." Young, in his "Night 370 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS "Thoughts," addresses the Deity, "Thou great Philanthropist ; " Jeremy Taylor speaks of "the philanthropy of God ; " and Barrow, speaking of the goodness of God, says, " Commonly also it is by the most obliging and endearing name called love and philanthropy." 1 But I do not recall any recent instances of this use of the word. And the use of this word, in this sense, by the Greeks, reminds us that the Greek religion, even if deficient in the loveliest spiritual results, had on the other hand little that was gloomy or terrifying. Thus the Greek funeral inscrip- tions, though never so triumphant as the Chris- tian, were yet almost always marked, as Milman has pointed out, by a " quiet beauty." And this word " philanthropy " thus did a double duty, including in its range two thoughts, famil- iar to modern times in separate phrases, — r the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man. It is to this consideration, I fancy, that we owe those glimpses not merely of general phi- lanthropy, but of a recognized unity in the human race, that we find from time to time in 1 Aristoph., Peace, 394 ; Paul, Titus iii. 4 ; Athanasius, cited in Sophocles's Lexicon ; Young, Night Fourth ; Taylor, vol. iii. sermon 11 (Richardson); Barrow, vol. ii. p. 356 (ed. 1700). THE WORD PHILANTHROPY 371 ancient literature. It is hardly strange that in Greece, with its isolated position, its exceptional cultivation and refinement, and its scanty com- munications, this feeling should have been less prominent than in a world girdled with railways and encircled by telegraphic wires. In those days the great majority of men, and women almost without exception, spent their lives within the limit of some narrow state ; and it was hard for the most enlightened to think of those beyond their borders except as we think even now of the vast populations of South America or Africa, — whom we regard as human beings, no doubt, but as having few habits or interests in common with our own. But every great conquest by Greece or Rome tended to familiarize men with the thought of a commu- nity of nations, even before a special stimulus was at last added by Christianity. It does not seem to me j ust, therefore, in Max Miiller to say that " humanity is a word for which you look in vain in Plato or Aristotle," without pointing out that later Greek writers, utterly uninflu- enced by Christianity, made the same criticism on these authors. Thus, in an essay attributed to Plutarch on the Fortune of Alexander, he makes this remarkable statement : — " Alexander did not hearken to his preceptor Aristotle, who advised him to bear himself as 372 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS a prince among the Greeks, his own people, but as a master among the Barbarians ; to treat the one as friends and kinsmen, the others as animals or chattels. . . . But, conceiving that he was sent by God to be an umpire between all and to unite all together, he reduced by- arms those whom he could not conquer by persuasion, and formed of a hundred diverse nations one single universal body, mingling, as it were, in one cup of friendship the customs, the marriages, and the laws of all. He desired that all should regard the whole world as their common country, the good as fellow-citizens and brethren, the bad as aliens and enemies ; that the Greeks should no longer be distinguished from the foreigner by arms or costume, but that every good man should be esteemed an Hellene, every evil man a barbarian." 1 Here we have not a piece of vague sentimen- talism, but the plan attributed by tradition to one of the great generals of the world's history ; and whether this was Alexander's real thought, or something invented for him by biographers, it is equally a recognition of the brotherhood of man. And the same Plutarch tells us that " the so much admired commonwealth of Zeno, 1 Merivale's translation : Conversion of the Roman Empire, p. 64. He also gives the original, p. 203. Compare Good- win's Plutarch, i. 481. THE WORD PHILANTHROPY 373 first author of the Stoic sect, aims singly at this, that neither in cities nor in towns we should live under laws distinct from one another, but that we should look on all men in general to be our fellow-countrymen and citizens, ob- serving one manner of living and one kind of order, like a flock feeding together with equal right in one common pasture." x So Jam- blichus reports that Pythagoras, five centuries before our era, taught "the love of all to all ; " 2 and Menander the dramatist said, "to live is not to live for one's self alone ; let us help one another ; " 3 and later, Epictetus maintained that " the universe is but one great city, full of beloved ones, divine and human, by nature en- deared to each other;" 4 and Marcus Antoninus taugh); that we must " love mankind." 6 "In none of these passages do we find the Greek word iXja.v6punr'ia ; but in all we find the noble feeling indicated by that word; while Aulus Gellius quotes the word itself, and attaches to it the selfsame meaning borne by the English word. 6 1 Plutarch's Morals. Goodwin's translation, i. 481. 2 Jamblichi de Pythag. vita, cc. 16, 33. $i\lav SI BuHpaveff- toto irirruv irphs faravTas TIvBaySpas iropeSmice. 8 Meineke, Fragmenta Com. Grac. * Epictetus, iii. 24. 6 Marcus Antoninus, vii. 31. ii\i\aov rbv faiBp&irivov yevos. 6 Aulus Gellius, xiii. xvi, 1. " Quodque a Graecis i\.avros is used once in the New Testament by Paul ; 1 but in neither language did it become classic or familiar. Minsheu has " philautie " in his second edition, and Beaumont, in his poem of "Psyche;" and Hplinshed, in his "Chronicle" (1577), speaks of "philautie" or "self-love, which rageth in men so preposter- ouslie." But the word is omitted from most English dictionaries, and we will hope that the 1 2 Timothy iii. 2. 376 STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS sin rages less " preposterouslie " now. I once heard a mother say that if she could teach her little boy good words one half as easily as he could learn the bad ones for himself, she should be quite satisfied. Here is the human race, on the other hand, seizing eagerly on the good word, transplanting it and keeping it alive in the new soil, while the bad word dies out, unre- gretted. In view of this, we may well claim that our debt to the Greek race is not merely scientific or aesthetic, but, in some degree, moral and spiritual also. However vast may be the spread of human kindliness in Christen- dom, we should yet give to the Greeks some credit for the spirit of philanthropy, as we are compelled, at any rate, to give them full credit for the word. INDEX INDEX Abbot, Ezra, 332 n. About, Edmond, 271. Achilles, 130, 158. Achilles Tatius, 193. Action, 149. Adam, 109. Adams, John, 98. Adonis, 196. Adrasta, 156, jfEHan, 177. iEneas, 203. ^schylus, 254, 341, 365. /Esop, 212. Agnodice, 152. Ainsworth, Harrison, 280. Alaric, Emperor, 253. Alcaeus, 174-177. Alcestis, 157. Alcibiades, 152, 186. Alcippe, 156. Alexander the Great, 332 «., 371, 372. Alexander (Paris), 138. Alford, Henry, 262, 280. Allen, J. H., 207. Alphonso, Henry, 82. Ameipsias, 1S1. Amphis, 181. Anacreon, 174, 197. Anactoria, 170, 186. Anchises, 141. Andersen, Hans, 312. Andres, Juan, 353 «. Andromeda, 171, 186. Anne, Queen, 212. Anne of Austria, Queen, 41, 50, 70, 72. Antibia, 160. Antigone, 157. Antipater, 153. Antiphanes, i8x, 195. Antonines, the, 186. Aphrodite, 135, 138, 139-142, 143, 144, 147, 149* '50, J 6S» 177, 189, 192, 193* 196, 197- Apollomus, 331, 332 «., 368. Arche stratus, 170. Archilochus, 181. Ares, 141, 143. Aristides, 194. Aristophanes, 134, 180, 369, 370 «. Aristotle, 176, 321, 322 «., 334, 341, 37i- Arnold, Matthew, 231, 244, 246, 277, 278, 283, 284. Arnould, Ange'lique, 72. Arnould, Antoine, 71. Artemis, 135-139* *4i, 142, 147, 149-151, 156, 160, i6x. Aspasia, 180. Astarte, 132. Astley, Sir Jacob, 12. Athanasius, 369, 370 n. Athena, <33-i39» 141. M3, M7» »49~ A then a; us, 173, 195. Atkinson, W. P., 209. Atthis, 171, 186. Auerbach, Berthold, 240. Aulus Gellius, 340 w., 373. Austen, Jane, 208, 250, 316. Austin, Alfred, 280. Avery, Widow, 108. Bacchus, 174, 321, 322. Bachaumont, Counsellor, 46. Bacon, Francis, Lord, 351, 362, 364, Bailey, John, 103. Bailey, P. J., 262. Ballard, Colonel, 8. Balmes, J. L., 337. Balzac, Honore de, 261. Barrow, Isaac, 370. Barth, Heinrich, 344 n. Bartlett, John, 314. Bavaria, Elector of, 75. Baxter, Richard, 28. Beaufort, Duke of, 48. Beaumont, Francis, 375. Becker, W. A., 153. Bedford, Earl of, 36. Beecher, H. W., 264. Bellingham, Governor, 97. Benserade, Isaac de, 80. Bigelow, Jacob, 209. Blackman, Adam, 124. 38o INDEX Blake, William, 579, 315. Bolton, Samuel, 122. Bonaparte. See Napoleon. Bossuet, J. B., 80. Bouillon, Duchesse de, 49. Bourdaloue, Louis, So. Bre'gy, Mme. de, 71. Bremer, Frederika, 262. Bridaine, Jacques, 312. Bronte, Charlotte, 230. Brooke, Lord, 8. Brown, C. B., 257. Brown, John, 255. Browne, C. F. (Artemus Ward), 264. Browne, Sir Thomas, 115. Browning, .Robert, 185, 201, 229, 259, 260, 280. Brunck, R. F. P., 137 «., 159 «., 160 »., 161 «., 171 «. Buckingham, Duke of, 41, 50, 52. Buckle, H. T., 16. Buddha, 324, 326, 333, 336. Bussy-Rabutin, Roger de, 69. Byles, Mather, 89. Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 193, 223, 257, 278, 315- Cable, G. W., 251. Calf, John, 97. Callimachus, 135, 138. Calvin, John, 94, 97, 100. Canot, Captain, 344 ». Carew, Thomas, 130. Carlisle, Lucy, 6, 17. Carlyle, Thomas, 262. Cathn, George, 349 «. Catullus, 174. Cercolas, 172. Ceres, 135, 145, 322. Channing, E. T., 280. Channing, Dr. Walter, 311. Chapelain, Jean, 278. Chapman, George, 230. Charaxus, 172. Charles J., King, 9, it, 16, 41, 43. Charles II., King, 22,36,61,75,81. Charmides, 186. Chatham, Lord, 109. Chaucer, Geoffrey, 361. Chauncy/, Charles, 114. Cherbuliez, Victor, 268. Chevreuse, Duchesse de, 44, 47, 48. Choate, Rufus, 311. Choisy, Mme. de, 71. Christ, Jesus, 162, 324, 340, 341, 346- Cicero, 253, 255, 331, 332 «., 374. Clarendon, Earl of, 11, 15, 22, 33, 35, 36. Cleanthes, 321, 322 «., 338. Cleis, 172. Clemence de Maille, 49, 76. Clemens, S. L. (Mark Twain), 262. Clement of Alexandria, 338, 339 n. Cleobulus, 334, 335 «. Cleopatra, 1731247. Cody, W. F. (Buffalo Bill), 283. Coffin, C. C.,348. Colbert, Mile., 77. Colden, Cadwallader, 348, 349 ft. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 313, 315. Coligny, Gaspard de, 35. Collet, Sophia Dobson, 329 ft. Collett, S. D., 348 «., 356 n. Columbus, Christopher, 319. Conde", Henri Jules de Bourbon, Prince de, 75. Conde, Louis II. de Bourbon, Prince de, 42, 43, 47, 49, 50, 52, 54-60,61, 64-68, 70, 73, 75, 8o, 81. Candid, Princess, 80. Conrart, Valentin, 64. Conti, Armand de Bourbon, Prince de, 43, 47- Confucius, 322, 326, 330, 332 n. Cooper, J. F., 241, 263. Connna, 152, 174. Corneille, Pierre, 80, 278. Cotton, John, 105, 119, 123, 124, 126. Coulanges, M. de, 76. Coulanges, Madame de, 77. Cousin, Victor, 3, 13, 42, 47. Cowper, William, 344. Cranch, William, 98. Crequi, Mile, de, 77. Cromwell, Oliver, 14, 17, 34-36, 74* Crosse, 36. Cudworth, Ralph, 320, 322 n. Cumberland, Richard, 159 «. Cupid, 177. Cyril, 162. Cyrus, 362, 363, 368. Dalton, Michael, 115* D am o phyla, 171, Dante, 165, 242. D'Aubigny, Kate, iS. Darwin, Charles, 309. Davis, J. F., 332 n. Deianira, 157. Demeter, 135, 145-147, 150, 151, 162. Demetrius Pbalereus, 188. Demonax, 128. Demosthenes, 367,368. Denmark, Prince of, 75. De Quincey, Thomas, 337. INDEX 38i De Retz, Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal, 43, 44, 47, 51, 62. Descartes, Ren£, 20, 71. Diana, 135, 322. Dickens, Charles, 229, 252, 279, 280. Dickinson, Emily, 255. Dido, 203. Digby, Sir Everard, 341, 342, 354. Diodorus, 368. Diogenes Laertms, 332 «., 335 «. Diotima, 154, 186. Diphilus, 181. Dombes, Mademoiselle de, 40, 78. Dryden, John, 1, 363, 364, 369. Du Chaiflu,_Paui, 344 «. Diibner, Friedrich, 332 «. Dunton, John, 107. Dupin, A. L. A. (George Sand), 164, 180. Dwight, Timothy, 216. Dyer, Mary, no, 226. Eckermann, 226. Eggleston, Edward, 251. Eliot, C. W M 217. Eliot, Sir John, 35, 41. Elizabeth, Queen, 47, 115. Elliot, Sir Frederick, 267. Elton, C- A., 188. Emenc-David, T. B., 141. Emerson, R. W., 134, 208, 213,222, 225, 228, 248, 260, 272, 278, 309, 3*4- Empedocles, 141. Endicott, John, Governor, 119. Endymion, 142. England, Queen of, 52. Epes, Daniel, 105. Ephippus, 181. Epicharmus, 365. Epictetus, 186, 322, 331, 332 «., 334, 335 »■» 368, 369, 373- Erinna, 171. Essex, Earl of, 23, 32, 36. Eu, Mile, d', 77. Eunica, 170. Euripides, 145, 157, 180. Everett, Edward, 257. Faber, F. W.,280. Fairbanks, Jonas, ng. Fairfax, Thomas, 35. Falkland, L. C, 16. Farrar, F. W., Canon, 210. Felton, C C, 173, 183, 185, 186, 277. Ferdinand III., 82. Feuerbach, L. A., 354 «. Ficinus, 154 n. Fields, J. T., 257. Fiesque, Countess de, 56. Flynt, Alice, 119. Fo, 347. Fontenelle, B. le B., 273. Forster, Charles, 353 n. Forster, John, 35. Fox, George, 121. Franklin, Benjamin, 246. Frederick II., 271. Frontenac, Countess, de, 56. Froude, J. A., 212. Fuller, Thomas, 279. Garrison, W. L. , 339. Gaston, Duke of Orleans, 53, 55, 62, 63, 68. Gautier, The"ophile, 277, 282. Germany, Emperor of. 75. Gilly,W. S.,35i«. Gladwin, 335 «., 347, Goethe, J. F. W., von, 164, 226, 236, 246, 256, 2?6,- 277. Gone, Colonel, 16. Gongyla, 170. Goodwin, W. W M 2071 335 «., 372 «■» 373 «• Gordon, Julien, 25r< Gorgias, 286. Gorgo, 186. Goring, George, 16. Gorton, Samuel, 109, 123. Graces, The, 177. Grant, U- S., 272. Grenvill, Sir Bevill, zi* Griswold, R. W., 129. Grote, George, 146, z6o. Guitant, 64. Guizot, F. P. G., 35Z. Gunter, Colonel, 36. Gurowski, Adam, Count, 375* Gustavus Adolphus, 30, 59. , Gutzlaff, Karl, 348. Gyrinna, 186. Hadlock, Nathaniel, 89. Haggard, Rider, 280. Hale, Sir Matthew, 115. Hampden, John, 8, 33-37? 39i 44* Harmonia, 141. Harte, F. Bret, 262, 263. Harvey, William, 29. Hathorne, John, 23r. Hautefort, Madame de, 44. Hauterive, Madame de, 77. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 228, 230, 232, 249, 272,279, 316. Hayley, William, 279, 315, 316. Hayward, Abraham, 270. Hazlerig, Sir Arthur, z8. 3§2 INDEX Hazlitt, William, 313. Heber, Reginald, 355, 356 «. Hecuba, 158. Hedge, F. H., 347*348 «■ Heine, Heinrich, 276, 278. Helen, 135-158. Helen of Alexandria, 152. Henri IV., 51, 77. Henrietta Maria, 9, 18, 45, 61. Hephaistos (Vulcan), 143, 365. Hera, 133, i35» *4i-i45> *47» M9» 150, 151, 165. Heraclitus, 338. Hercules, 130, 157. Hermes, 170, 369. Hcrmodorus, 138. Herodotus, 173, 178. Hesiod, 134. Hestia, 135, 147-150. Higginson, Francis, 104. Higginson, John, 8g, go, 105, 116, 124. 129. HiUel, Rabbi, 330. Hipponax, 1S1. Holinshed, Raphael, 375. Holland, King of, 75. Holies, DenzU, 8. Holmes, O. W.,260. Homer, 134, 141, 142, 144, 145, 151, i54» iS5. '64, 171-173 »>i 178, 184, 242,279, 314, 341. Hooker, Thomas, 103, 124, 126, 127. Hopton, Sir Ralph, 16. Horace, 169, 174, 175, 206, 211, 254- Horus, 162. Houghton, Lord, 283. Howe, E. W., 251. Howells, W. D., 253. Hue, Abbe\ 332 »., 337 «., 343. Hugo, Victor, 237, 261, 309. Humboldt, von, F. H. A., 323, 353 »■ Hume, David, 34. Hutchinson, Ann, 123. Hutchinson, John, 35. Hutchinson, Mrs. Lucy, 9, 13. Huxley, T. H., 212. Hyde, David, 9. Iamblichus, 331, 332 «., 373 «. Iffland, W.,277. Innis, 4. Iphigenia, 157. Irving, Washington, 243, 245, 247, 284,313. Islam, 344 n. I sis, 162. Isocrates, 367, 36S «., 369. Jacquemont, Victor, 356 n. ' James, Apostle, 105. James, G. P. R., 280. James, Henry, 272. James, King, 97. Jeanne d'Arc, 54, 61, 83, 131, 182'. Jefferson, Thomas, 245, 246, 251. Jeffreys, Dr., 348 «. Jehovah, 132^ Jenkins, David, zx. Jerome, 339. Jewell, Bishop, rig. Johnston, Charles, 344 ». Joli, Guy, 44. Jones, Sir William, 174. Jonson, Ben, 158, 159. Josephus, 337. Joubert, Joseph, 282. JoufEroy, T. S., 3*3- Jourdain, 353 «. Jowett, Benjamin, 367. Julian, 159. Juno, 135, 142-144. Jupiter, 143, 144, 321. Justin, Martyr, 338, 339 «. Juvenal, 331, 332 «., 374. Keats, John, 55, 215, 273, 328. Keeble, Joseph, 115. Keith, George, 113. Kesava, 33% Keshub Chunder Sen, 329 »., 347, 348 «., 355. 356 ». Kirke, Mrs., 18. Knox, John, 97, 183. Kock, Paul de, 261. Kock, Theodor, 182 «., igg. Kotzebue, A. F. F. von, 277. La Bruyere, Jean de, 71. Lactantius, 33S, 339 «. La Fontaine, August, 277, 278. Lamb, Charles, 315. Landor, W. S., 211, 313-315. Larichus, 172. Larousse, Pierre, 260. Latona, 161. Laurent, Archbishop, 82. Lauzun, A. N. de Caumont, Duke de, 77-79. La Valhere, L. F., de la Baume le Blanc, 77, 80. Lecky, W. E. H., 353 n. Legge, James, 332 n. Legge, Will, 4, 22, 25, 32. Leibnitz, G. W., von, 20. Lempriere John, 131. Leopold of Austria, 75. Lewes, Mrs. ^George Eliot), 230. INDEX 383 Lincoln, Abraham, 245, 255, 272, 357- Longfellow, H. W., 270, 278, 279, 313. Longinus, 191. Longueville, A. G. de Bourbon- Cond6, Duchesse de, 43, 47, 71, 278. Louis XIII., King, 41, 51. Louis XIV., King, 40, 42, 51, 75, 81 . Lowell, J. R., 200, 260, 264, 266, 267, 282, 2S3. Lubbock, Sir James, 315. Lucan,33i,332?z., 374. Lucas, Lady, 12. Luke, Sir Samuel, 13, 36. Lunsford, Herbert, 4. Luther, Martin, 351, 353, 354 «. Lycus, 174. Mackenzie, Sir George, 336, 337 ». Mademoiselle, La Grande, 22, 40- 83. MacKaye, Maria, E., 318 n, Mahon, Lord, 45, 53. Maine, Sir Henry, 246. Malebranche, Nicolas, 20. Mancini, Marie de, 80. Marcus Antoninus, 322, 331, 332 «., 334* 335 «•• 373- Marechal de Villeroi, 67. Marguerite of Lorraine, 51, 53. Mane de M£dicis, 22, 70. Marlowe, Christopher, 258. Mars, 19, 53. Marten, Harry, 14, 17. Martin's Colonial Magazine, 32471. Marvell, Andrew, 225. Mary Magdalene, 163. Mary,Queen(Henrietta Maria), 24* Mary, Virgin, 132, 162, 343. Mason, William, 315. Mather, Cotton, 90, 94, 96, 98, 99, 105, 107, 108, 113, 114, 116, 121, 122, 124. Mather, Increase, 90, 105, 120, 124. Matthews, Brander, 252. Maturin, £. S., 257. Maule, Thomas, 89. Maximus Tyrius, 186, 187, 321, 322 «., 334i 335 «• May, Samuel, 121. Mazarin, Jules, Cardinal, 43, 45, 47» 48, 50, 57i 6 7> G9j 7°> 7&J 78, 80,81. Medhope, Major, 12* Meineke, J. A. F. A. 373 «• Melanchthon, Philip, 353, 453 «• Melissias, 160. Menander, 331, 332 «•» 373* Menelaus, 155, 156, 158. Menzel, Wolfgang, 277. Mercury, 321. Merivale, Charles, 342 »., 372 ». Mian ton imo, 101. Millais, I.E., 259. Miller, C. H, (Joaquin Miller), 283. Millet, J. F., 259. Milman, H. H., 341, 342 «., 370. Milnes, R. M. (Lord Houghton), 262, 280. Milton, John, 38, 209, 279. Minerva, 53, 135, 139, 322. Minsheu, John, 361-363, 375. Minucius, Felix, 338, 339 w, Mitchell, John, 95, 108, 233. Mnasidica, 171. Mohammed, 322, 324. Mol£, Mathieu, 44. Moliere, J. B., 70, 80, 278. Monk, George, 38. Montagu, Elizabeth, 258. Montaigne, M. E., 205. Montespan, Francoise Athe'nais de Rochechouart, Marquise de, 80. Montpensier, Duchesse de, 40, 78* Montrose, Marquis of, 18. Moody, Joshua, 95. Morgan, Lady, 263. Motley, J. L., 243, 247, 24S, 264, 265. Motteville, Madame de, 69. Miiller, K. O., 179 «. Miiller, Max, 130, 335 »., 337 «., 344«-»37i- Mure, Colonel, 182 «., 183, 198, '199. Murfree, M. N., 251, 263. Muses, The, 170, 174, 177, 187, 188. Mutius, Scaevola, 342 n. Myrtis, 174. Napoleon Bonaparte, 61, 67, 216, 258. Nausicaa, 155. Neander, J. A. W., 343, 353 ». Neptune, 321. Ne storms, 162. Neue, C. F., 182 «., 192. Newark, Duke of, 38. Newcastle, Duke of, 33, 35. Newton, C. T., 170 «. Newton, G. S., 309. Newton, John, 347, Nichol, John, 265. Norton, John, 103, 124. Odysseus, 155, 156. Oliver, Mrs., xoz. 384 INDEX Ollendorff, H. G., 208. O'Neal, Daniel, 4, 28, 32. Orange, Prince of, 20. Origen, 322. Orme, Marion de 1', 83. Orpheus, 135, 142. Osiris, 326. Ossian, 258. Ossoli, Margaret Fuller, 144, 154, 180, 185, 235, 249, 277, 282. Ovid, 134, 172, 181, 196. Owen, Sir Richard, 219. Oxenstiern, Axel, Count, 276. Palatine, Princess, 20, 47, 80. Pallas Athena, 136-139, 151. Paris, 138, 141. Parker, Theodore, 234, 309. Parkman, Francis, 265, 349 n. Parton, James, 253. Partridge, Ralph, 124. Pascal, Blaise, 71. Pascal, Jacqueline, 72. Patroclus, 342. Pattison, Mark, 3 10. Paul, Apostle, 105, 119, 321, 338, 369, 370«., 375. Paulus Silentians, 159. Pauthier, J. P. G., 332 «. Pearson, John, n. Penn, William, 20, 340. Pepys, Samuel, 22. Percival, J. G., 192. Percy, Algernon, 4, 28. Pere la Chaise, 83. Pericles, 172. Perry, Mrs. T. S., 316. Persephone, 145, 146. Peter, Apostle, 105. Petrarch, Francesco, 163. Phasdrus, r73 «., 186, 187. Phaethon, 196. Phaon, 181, 1S2 «., 196, 197. Phelps, Nicholas, Mrs., 90. Phidias, 134, 137, 141. Philip, King, 102. Philip IV,, King, of Spain, 75. Philips, Ambrose, 190. Phillips, Major, 114. Phillips, Wendell, 234, 248, 309. Philostratus, 158, 159 «. Phoebus, 136, 147, 322. Phylo, 156. Pindar, 152, 174. Pittacus, 334, 335 «. Plastow, Josiah, 104. Plato, 139, 154, 159, 173, 177, igg, 214. 322, 334) 335 «-. 34° «-j 34 1 ! 366, 367 «., 371. Plutarch, 173, 186, 331, 332 n. t 334, 335 «•» 368, 369* 37ii 372. 373 »■ Poe, E. A., 316. Polybius, 363, 369. Pompey, 169. Porphyry, 327. Portsmouth, Duchess of, 82. Portugal, King of, 75. Poseidon, 147. Praxiteles, 141. Prescott, W. H., 264. Pride, Colonel, 16. Princess Royal, 44. 1 Proclus, 135, 142 «. Prodicus, 186. Prometheus', 365, 366, 368. Proserpine, 145 > 188. Protagoras, 186. Prussia, Frederick II., of, 271. Prynne, William, 16. Ptolemy, Hepha^stion, 198. Pym, John, 6, 14, 16, 35, 44, 11 1. Pythagoras, 331, 332 «., 373. Quintilian, 134, 331, 332 «., 374- Racine, Tfian, 80, 278. Rahel (Madame Varnhagen von Ense), 224. Rainsford, W. S., Dr., 267. Rambouillet, Madame de, 44. Ramler, K. W., 277. Ram Mohun Roy, 333, 335 «., 355, 356 »• Raphael Sanzio, 133, 165, 353. Reade, W. W., 344 a. Regulus, 342 ». Retz, Mile, de, 77. Retzsch, Moritz, 133. Rhodoclea, 159. Richard I., King, 227. Richardson, Charles, 363 «., 370 «. Richardson, James, 344 n. Richelieu, A. J. du Plessis, Cardi- nal de, 41, 48, 49. Richmond, Duchess of, 18. Ripa, Father, 342. Rivers, Countess of, 13. Rochefoucauld, Due de la, 44, 47, 64, 71. Roche-Giffard, 64. Rogers, Ezekiel, 107, 124. Rogers, Nathaniel, 124. Rogers, Samuel, 279. Rohan, M. de, 54. Rohan, Madame de, 77. Rollo, 82. Roscoe, William, 313. Ross, James, 335 «. Rufinus, 159. INDEX 385 Rupert, Prince, 1-39. Ruskin, John, 164, 259, 353. Sable, Madame de, 71. Sadi, 333, 335 «. Saladin, 227. St. Augustine, 321, 322 »., 324 «., 338, 339 «• St. Aulaire, L. C. de B., de, 42. St. John, J. A., 153. Salvian, 350, 351 ». Samson, J. I., 236. Sand, George. See Dupin. Sappho, 168-199. Satan, 343- Savoy, Duchess of, 52. Savoy, Duke of, 75. Say, Lord, 8. Scamandronimus, 172. Scherer, £. H. A., 246. Schiller, J. C. F. von, 277. Schmolders, August, 353 n. Scipio, 363. Scott, Thomas, xoi. Scott, Sir Walter, 208, 233, 250, 251. Scougal, Henry, 340. Scudery, Mile, de, 70. Seeley, J. R., 212. Semele, 145. Seneca, 321, 322 «., 374. Se'vigne, Madame de, 76, 78, 80. Seward, Anna, 279, 315. Shakespeare, William, 131, 164, 190, 230, 238, 254, 258, 327, 328, 361. Shaw, H. W. (Josh Billings), 264. Shelley, P. B., 315- Shepard, Thomas, 95, 108, 124. Sidney, Sir Philip, 271. Skelton, Samuel, 119. Sleeman, W. H., 344. Sly, Christopher, 311. Smith, Abbv, 98. Smith, Goldwin, 244. Smith, Mary, 98. Smith, R. It., 344 ft. Smith, Sydney, 219. Socrates, 179, 180, 186,' 187, 338, 342, 365-368. Solomon, 126, 132. Solon, 177,368. Sophocles, E. A., 370 n. Sorel, Agnes, 83. Southampton, Henry Wriothecley, Earl of, 190. Southey, Robert, 279, 314, 315* 349* Spain, King of, 52. Spain, Queen of, 52. Spencer, Herbert, 313. Spencer, Lord Robert, 15. Spenser, Edmund, 164, 256, 271, 280, 361. Steere, Sir Henry, 363. Sterling, John, 262, 280. Stobaeus, 322 «., 332 n. Stockton, F. R., 316. Stone, Samuel, 124. Story, W. W., 200. Stowe, Harriet B., 241, 262, 263. Strabo, 172. Strafford, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of, 14, 16. Stuart, Lord Bernard, 33. Stuart, Elizabeth, 20. Stuart, Mary, Queen, 1S3. Suckling, Sir John, 8. Sumner, Charles, 283. Swaamee Narain, 355, 356 «. Swayn, Dick, 121. Tacitus, 337* Taen, Archbishop of, 50. Taine, H. A., 259. Talon, Omer, 44, 67. Tasso, 314. Tatian, 142 «., 181. Taylor, Bayard, 355. Taylor, Sir Henry, 267. Taylor, Jeremy, n, 19, 362-364, 370- Taylor, Thomas, 313. Telemachus, 155, 156* Telesilla, 152. Tennent, Gilbert, 114. Tennent, J. E., 343, 344 «., 352 «. Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 223, 258, 262, 280, 281. Terence, 331, 332 «., 374. Tertulhan, 338, 339 «., 342 «. Thackeray, W. M., 157, 164, 229, 279, 280. Thales, 330, 332 «. Theano, 152. Theodorias, 159. Theodota, 159. Thersites, 210. Theseus, 130. Thirlwall, Connop, 131, 182. Thoreau, H. D., 235, 249, 255,276, *79> 3i7» 360s Thrasymachus, 186. Thucydides, 137, 152. Ticknor, George, 283. Timas, x88. Timocles, 181. Timothy, Apostle, 375 «. Tourguenefr, Ivan, 316. Travers, W. R., 270. Trench, R. C, 262, 280. Trench, Mrs. Richard, 238. 386 INDEX Tupper, M. F.., 262. Turenne, H. de la T. d'Auvergne, Vicompte de, 42, 49, 53, 61, 66, 80. Tyler, Abraham, 85. Uhland, J. L., 197. Uncas, 102. Urquhart, David, 353 «. Urry, Sir John, 24, 32. Valerius Maxiraus, 334, 335 «. Vallon, 65. Van Dyck, Sir Anthony, 5. Vane, Sir Harry, 35, 123. Vatel, 80. Venner, Thomas, 16. Venus, 19, 135, 139, 141, 174. Verney, Sir Edmund, 15. Vesta, 135, 147. Vestris, G. A. B., 271. Villeroi, Marechal de, 67. Virgil, 2o6 fi 218, 279, 314. Voiture, Vincent, 80. Voltaire, F. M. A., de, 42, 131, 182, 184, 258, 271. Vulcan, 322. Wagner, Richard, 254. Wallace, H. B., 257. Waller, Sir William, 16, 35. Walpole, Horace, 239. Ward, Nathaniel, 99. Warham, John, 124. Warner, C. D., 244. Warwick, Earl of, 15, 21. Washington, Colonel, 1, 4. Wasson, D. A., 224. Webster, John, 230. Welcker, F. G. ( 182, 183. Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of, 61. Wells, William, 200, 207. Wentworth, Lord, 4. Whalley, Major-general, 16. Whitefield, George, 114. Whitman, Walt, 263. Whittier, J. G.,264. Wieland, Christoph Martin, 277. Wigglesworth, Michael, 108. Wilkins, Mary E., 251. Wilkins, Sir Charles, 332 n. William the Conqueror, 82. William the Silent, 20. Williams, Roger, 100, 101, 104, 119, 123, 125. Williams, S. W., 348 «. Willis, N. P., 279. Wilson, H. H., 332 «. Wilson, John, 99, 111, 126. Wilson, J. L., 344 n. Winckelmann, J. J., 143. Winthrop, John, 120. Wise, I. M., Rabbi, 356. Wolf, J. C, 174, 192. Wolf, J. R., 346. Wolstenholme, John, 13. Woodbridge, Benjamin, 105. Worcester, Marquis of, 35. Wordsworth, William, 209, 280, 3M- Xantippe, 187. Xenophon, 362, 368. York, Duke of, 38. Young, Edward, 369, 370 n. Zeno, 33i» 342 »■» 37*- Zeus, 133, 138, 141, 143-1471 M9» 189, 195, 365* 366- Zola, Emile, 261. Zoroaster, 322, 324, 326* (€f)c Riticrs'ibc ptcW Electroty fed and printed by I [ . O. Houghton &• Co, Cambridge, Mass, U.S. A.