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ESSAYS 
 
 Biography and Criticism; 
 
 PETER BAYNE, M. A. 
 
 H 
 ▲IrTHOB OP "THB CHRISTIAN LIFB. SOCIAL AND IKDIVIDUAL," ETC. 
 
 SECOND SERIES. THIKD EDITION. 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 HENRY A. SUMNERi& COMPANY. 
 
OOPYEIOHT, 
 
 HBNKY A. SUMNEK & COMPANY, 
 1880. 
 
NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 Earlt in 1855, the publishers of this volume had their attention directed 
 to a critique in the Edinburgh Witness, by Hugh Miller, upon a work en- 
 titled, " The Christian Life, Social and Individual." The book had issued 
 from a Scottish provincial press ; its somewhat commonplace title gave 
 no promise of originality; and its author was quite unknown to fame. 
 It was not strange, therefore, that the Editor of the Witness suffered it to 
 lie for some time unnoticed on his table. When at length he found leis- 
 ure to take it in hand, he hastened to make an apology for his neglect, 
 and to do ample justice to its author. "The master idea," he said, "on 
 which it has been formed is, we deem, wholly original, and we regard the 
 execution of it as not less happy than the conception is good." " Some 
 of the Biographies," he added, " condense in comparatively brief space 
 the thinking of ordinary volumes." Such praise from such a source was 
 a powerful persuasive for the re-publication of the book in this country. 
 An edition was speedily issued, and its reception by the American public 
 was such as is seldom accorded to the first work of an unknown author. 
 The judgment of Hugh Miller was abundantly affirmed by men of re- 
 nown among ourselves. 
 
 Soon after, the present publishers learned that the author of " The Chris- 
 tian Life " had been a frequent, though anonymous, contributor to the 
 periodical literature of his native country. A correspondence with him 
 was thereupon opened, which resulted in a contract on his part to furnish 
 
rv NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 them •with a selection of his puWished essays, together with others yet in 
 manuscript. On their part, they made him such remuneration as was 
 deemed hy him to he amply satisfactory. The first series of the Essays 
 thus furnished has already been given to the public. The second is pre- 
 sented in this volume. 
 
 The selected essays in both volumes were published, with one or two 
 exceptions,, in the author's twenty-third and twenty-fourth years. Of 
 these essays, in their present shape, he remarks : " Some have undergone 
 only a slight revision; others have been so modified as to be materially 
 changed in character; while several, though, save in a single instance, 
 retaining their original titles, may be considered altogether new." Among 
 the contents of this volume, the papers which now for the first time 
 appear in print, are those on Napoleon Bonaparte, Characteristics of 
 Christian Civilization, and The Modem University. The rest have been 
 carefully retouched, and several have received material additions. The 
 whole constitute a body of biographical and critical composition worthy 
 of the author of " The Christian Life." 
 
 It would be out of place to offer any criticism here on the contents of 
 this volume; but it may gratify the reader to learn what estimate Sir 
 Archibald Alison put upon the Essay devoted to his own writings. That 
 distinguished Historian, after complimenting the Essay in question as 
 " able and eloquent," proceeds to say that " it contains a more just and 
 correct view of my [his] political opinions than has ever yet appeared in 
 this country or elsewhere." 
 
 Some account of Mr. Bayne's personal history may be given here in 
 answer to inquiries, by letter and otherwise, which have from time to time 
 been made. It must be premised, however, that there is little to be told. 
 Mr. Bayne is still a young man, — a young man devoted to literary pur- 
 suits, — and so, comparatively, without a history. His native country is 
 Scotland. He was bom in Aberdeenshire, and was graduated at Mari- 
 schall College, in the city of Aberdeen. He subsequently pursued a course 
 of theological study In Edinburgh, and also a philosophical course under 
 
NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR. V 
 
 Sir William Hamilton. That great teacher and Thomas Carlyle appear to 
 have been the two thinkers, who, more than all others, gave shape and 
 direction to Mr. Bayue's mind. From the former he received his philos- 
 ophy; from the latter, his literary culture. Of Carlyle's relation to him he 
 makes this remark : " The influence exerted by him upon my style and 
 modes of thought is as powerful as my mind was capable of receiving; 
 yet," he adds, " my dissent from his opinions is thorough and total." While 
 at Edinburgh, he wrote for Hogg's Instructor the series of articles from 
 which several of those in this volume have been selected. The occasion 
 of this step, he says, was " an inaptitude and distaste for private tuition, 
 and a facility and pleasure, experienced from an early age, in literary 
 composition." It was this " facility and pleasure," doubtless, coupled 
 with rare success, that ultimately led him to devote himself to literature 
 as a profession. The first fruit of this settled purpose was " The Chris- 
 tian Life." It furnished abundant evidence that he had not mistaken his 
 vocation, that his genius was equal to his ambition. The work was 
 published in his twenty-sixth year. He now projected more elaborate 
 enterprises. In a private note he avows " a deliberate and ardent desire 
 to execute four works of some magnitude, three of them, probably, of 
 single volumes, and one of three volumes." The first of these works had 
 already made good progress, when it was interrupted by a change in Mr. 
 Bayne's circumstances, but was not, it is to be hoped, finally aban- 
 doned. 
 
 In 1855, we find him occupying the position of editor-in-chief of The 
 Commonwealth, a newspaper published in Glasgow. From this posi- 
 tion he retired in the summer of 1856 to recruit his failing health. In the 
 autumn of the same year, he formed a determination to take up his resi- 
 dence, for a time, in Germany, for the purpose of making himself famil- 
 iar with the literature of that country. He did not, however, carry his 
 purpose into effect until the opening of the year, when he left Scotland 
 for Berlin. On the eve of his departure, the death of Hugh Miller had 
 made vacant the editorial chair of the Edinburgh Witness. Not long after 
 
 1* 
 
Vl NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 Mr. Bayne's arrival in Berlin, he was appointed to fill the vacancy thus 
 created. The Witness, a politico-religious journal, was the organ of the 
 Free Church, and under the conduct of Hugh Miller it had become a 
 power in Scotland. That Mr. Bayne was thought worthy to succeed 
 such a man, and to assume such responsibilities, was a compliment of the 
 highest character. The appointment was accepted, to take effect at a 
 future day; and meantime he continued his German studies. Before 
 these were completed, a more tender engagement was formed by his 
 betrothal to the daughter of Major General Gerwien, of the Prussian 
 army. 
 
 In the summer of 1857, he returned from the continent, and on the first 
 of August entered upon his duties as editor of the Witness. The columns 
 of that journal have since borne constant testimony to the fertility of his 
 resources. Among other elaborate papers, there has appeared a series in 
 Defence of Hugh Miller's " Testimony of the Eocks,'' against an attack 
 in the North British Review. These papers have excited so much atten- 
 tion that a pamphlet edition of them has been called for and issued. In 
 this way, the intellectual wealth that should be concentrated into books 
 for the pleasure and profit of all, is poured out through channels designed 
 to reach the Scottish public alone. It cannot be, however, that jotimal- 
 ism, worthy and noble though it be, will be allowed to divert Mr. Bayne, 
 for a long period, from what he has demonstrated to be the true mission 
 of his life; and the expression of an earnest desire to that effect, in 
 behalf of his numerous admirers in America, may fitly close this notice. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. 
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY,' 9 
 
 II. 
 
 tHOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, .... 52 
 
 III. 
 
 SIB AECHIBALD ALISON, 85 
 
 IV. 
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, .... 108 
 
 V. 
 
 WELLINGTON, 149 
 
Vm CONTENTS. 
 
 VI. 
 
 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 181 
 
 VII. 
 
 PLATO, 235 
 
 VIII. 
 
 CHAKACTEKISTICS OF CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION, . 259 
 
 IX. 
 
 THE MODERN UNIVERSITY, 304 
 
 X. 
 
 THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS, .... 322 
 
 XI. 
 
 " THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS." A Defence, . . 356 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 IN 
 
 BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM. 
 
 I. 
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 There are cases in which, by reason of certain postu- 
 lates which he finds himself entitled to assume, the task 
 of the critic is simplified and facilitated in an important 
 degree. These postulates enable him to strike the key- 
 note, to determine the ground-tone of his criticism. 
 Towards all that can be characterized as fault, he must be 
 severe ; towards what is merely error, he may be mild, 
 however decided. If lie perceives that the author or book 
 on which he comments is radically ignoble, radically pro- 
 motive of laxity in principle or licentiousness in practice, 
 however marked exceptions may be, and however dexter- 
 ously the mask may be worn, it is his duty, with stern hand, 
 to tear aside the angel's veil, and show the features of the 
 demon. If he perceives that the heart of the book or 
 author is sound, that, whatever errors may mingle with the 
 words spoken, their general sense is unequivocally and 
 firmly in favor of the good, the true, the beautiful, he must 
 
10 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 remember that the value of such a voice is too great to 
 permit the use of any hai'shness, that every objection or 
 hint must be tempered by deference and toned by love. 
 We feel ourselves at present in the happy alternative. 
 However widely opinions may differ regarding Mr. Kings- 
 ley, there is one point upon which all are agreed : that his 
 voice is that of a noble, earnest, generous-hearted man; 
 that his whole nature vibrates with strong and perpetual 
 sympathy with his fellow-men ; and that the gifts which 
 his heart prompts him to turn to the service of his country 
 and his race are of no common order. With such men we 
 may differ, but such men we cannot condemn. The spirit 
 of their whole writings is a pledge that words of honest 
 suggestion, of manly disagreement, will be cordially ac- 
 cepted and soberly weighed. Nay, in criticism we may pay 
 them what is perhaps the highest compliment which can 
 be paid to one of high literary eminence, that he would 
 gladly see his fame and his writings go up in one holocaust 
 and vanish, if a grain of precious truth, hitherto unseen, 
 remained for his fellow-men upon the altar. Mr. Kingsley, 
 we feel assured, will put but one question to any man who 
 dissents from his conclusions — " Are you honest, and do 
 you love the people ? " If he 'can believe an affirmative 
 answer, he will at once invite him to express his dissent to 
 one who cannot be offended. We dissent from many of 
 Mr. Kingsley's views, much as we value his writings ; but 
 we acknowledge that the light in him points to heaven, 
 and that our only difference is as to the mode in which its 
 illumination can be shed around on earth. 
 
 It is but to extend the application of these remarks from 
 Mr. Kingsley to his writings, to say, that there is much in 
 each and all of them which merits instant recognition and 
 applause. A spirit of brotherly kindness breathes over 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY. 11 
 
 them all, of generous, hopeful ardor, of integrity, noble- 
 ness, purity ; and, we have no hesitation in adding, of sin- 
 cere reverence towards God, as well as love towards man. 
 The general influence of these books is good. If the intel- 
 lectual food they afford be slight or questionable, the food 
 for the heart is wholesome and abundant. There are books 
 which cultivate the intellect, while they chill the heart ; 
 books which one might imagine produced by a logical 
 machine, instead of a living man ; books which seem all 
 fuel, and no fire. Such books are invaluable if rightly used, 
 but, on the whole, the want of heart in a book is danger- 
 ous. In Mr. Kingsley's volumes the emotions play, we 
 suspect, rather too important a part ; yet their prevalence, 
 attuned, as they always are, to nobleness and valor, spreads 
 a general healthfulness around. To read his works, is like 
 travelling in a pleasant hilly country, where the fresh hearty 
 breeze brings you the strength of the mountains, and the 
 clear atmosphere shows you every line, and curve, and 
 streamer, of the clouds that race the wind. You may bo 
 compelled to remark that the corn-fields are not so heavy 
 as in the rich plain, that perhaps the poppy and the corn- 
 flower, beautiful to the eye, but light on the granary-floor, 
 are somewhat too abundant, and that there is an ample 
 allowance of gay copse, and heath, and fern. But you feel 
 that, at least, there is no miasma, that there is no haze, such 
 as floats suspiciously over the rich, moist meadow, that you 
 are in a land of freshness, freedom, health. 
 
 "We cannot, however, disguise the fact, that we have 
 hitherto stated what is short of the whole truth. There is 
 one other remai-k to be made concerning all such books as 
 Mr. Kingsley's, which will more than justify us in apply- 
 ing a searching criticism to his works. Nature has not the 
 slightest respect for men's intentions ; with her, bulk and 
 
 2* 
 
12 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 ornament go for nothing. If you have spent half your 
 lifetime in attempting to biidge a chasm, and have, in any 
 way, misplaced the key-stone, your arch will just fall when 
 the scaffolding is removed. Deck your barge in the beau- 
 ties of Cleopatra's, let its sides glitter with gold, and its 
 sails gleam like the iris, if some unseen worm has bitten 
 through its timbers, it will sink just as fast as so many 
 tarred boards rudely nailed together. To get over the 
 ford, how many water-lilies, fairly dispread, and basking in 
 the radiance of their beauty, against just so many step- 
 ping-stones, bare and rugged, as will enable you, though 
 with difficulty, to get across ? 
 
 This is certainly very plain, and may appear trite or 
 irrelevant ; we believe that, in the present day, its impor- 
 tance is incalculable. In a time when thousands write, 
 when a brilliant, ornate, emphatic style is extremely fash- 
 ionable, and when youthful ardor and impetuosity are so 
 commonly combined with peremptory dogmatism, it is 
 of real moment that men constantly remember, that it is 
 the bare fact, the simple truth, which can be of real avail. 
 Language has such powers of disguising error, that it were 
 no very absurd philosophic paradox to assert, that every 
 false opinion has arisen from its misuse. And it is a nobly 
 human task to perform the operation, which nature, ulti- 
 mately performs, upon every proposition presented for con- 
 sideration ; to rub off every hue, to draw aside every veil, 
 to remove every flower, and gaze on the naked fact ; to 
 disrobe the glowing, the charming figure, till it is as bare 
 as a diagram of Euclid's. It is precisely the diagram which 
 nature will own. We would earnestly recommend readers 
 to apply this test to certain of our exuberant and meta- 
 phoric modern writers. Let them take a paragraph which 
 has dazzled them by its sparkling imagery, and borne them 
 
CHARLES KINGSLET. 13 
 
 away in the stream of its fervor ; let them test the appli- 
 cation* of each simile ; let them for the time close their ears 
 to each appeal ; let them hush every murmur of passion ; 
 and then let them apply to the simple argument of the 
 passage the dry light of careful, unagitated thought. Well 
 is it, when the book itself honestly invites this scrutiny ; 
 well is it, when the moral earnestness of the writer awakes 
 in the reader such a conscientious desire for truth, that he 
 feels himself urged to apply such criticism. We honor 
 Mr. Kingsley, in believing, as we said, that he would have 
 us treat his books in this way. 
 
 Mr. Kingsley is one of those men whom we could with 
 most decision fix upon as representative of his age. By 
 this we mean no assertion of extraordinary intellectual 
 powers ; we even intend to exclude the idea of his being 
 a leader among his fellows ; our assertion is, that sympathy 
 is his determining characteristic, that the influences of the 
 time are largely represented in his mode of thought and 
 composition. His is precisely that order of mind of which 
 it can be asserted, that its whole character and actings 
 would have been changed, if it had arrived ten years earlier 
 or ten years later in the world. He is one of those men 
 who seem to be intended to serve as beacons, blazing 
 fiercely after they have been once kindled, and showing, 
 by -the direction of the flame, how the wind of tendency 
 is blowing. All men are moulded and moved by sympathy; 
 a man cannot live by himself; he is bound to his race as 
 no other being on earth is bound. But he also reacts upon 
 his generation, upon circumstance, by force of individual 
 character. These two facts are decisive in determining a 
 man's rank in the scale of greatness, when by great-ness we 
 mean power. The dull man obeys, mechanically, the rul- 
 ing ideas of his time, following his neighbors and feeling 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 2 
 
14 CHAltLES KliVGSLEV. 
 
 little in any way; the impulsive, the sympathetic, the 
 superiorly gifted, are moved by that new force in the agen- 
 cies of the time which voices itself most powerfully; the 
 master minds feel the influences of their age, but see 
 through them and over them, in free, independent strength, 
 and utter words, or perform deeds, which will direct or 
 influence, not their own generation only, but we know not 
 how many succeeding generations. It were an extremely 
 profitable mental exercise to solve, concerning any great 
 man, the problem — What would he have been if placed 
 in a different age? Had Plato and Calvin changed cen- 
 turies, to what extent would their minds have been affected, 
 and their work modified ? We can confidently say, that 
 though each would have been materially altered, yet each 
 would have towered over his contemporaries, listening cer- 
 tainly to all they said, but speaking ever a louder, a more de- 
 cisive word, of instruction, of guidance, of command. Of 
 the second class of minds, in the descending order, the re- 
 ceptive, the emotional, the distinctively sympathetic, it is 
 characteristic that their grasp of truth, in itself, is not so 
 strong as to rid therh sufficiently of influence from the fact, 
 that other men have spoken for it or against it. They 
 love truth sincerely and earnestly, but their power does 
 not second their will ; the emotional part of their nature 
 so far intoxicates the intellectual, that what comes fairly 
 attired in eloquence, pleading fearlessly, and sincerely, and 
 well, is at once received as truth. If we were asked to 
 eliminate the radical, unconscious, determining element in 
 such minds, we would assert it to consist in this : that the 
 instinctive axiom on which they proceed, is rather, that 
 the voice of man cannot be wrong, than that the voice of 
 God alone, simple truth unsu]iported by one vote under 
 the Bun, ip eternally right. "He," says Coleridge, "who 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY. 15 
 
 asserts that truth is of no importance, except in the signi- 
 fication of sincerity, confounds sense with madness, and 
 the word of God with a dream." Yet, so mighty in its in- 
 fluence over man is man's voice, although all would assent 
 to the theoretic proposition, its practical application is of 
 extreme difficulty. Rigorously apply the test of thought 
 to the system of Shelley, and its value is nearly impalpable ; 
 yield to the influence of his marvellous powers of expres- 
 sion, consent like a babe in its cradle to listen to his song, 
 until it lulls you into soft dreams, and bears you away to 
 its own gorgeous cloiidland, and how completely you are 
 mastered! Some clever fellow might give us a jeu cf esprit, 
 entitled, "The works of Shelley translated into the language 
 of Butler ; " two or three pages of a magazine would con- 
 tain it. And how strange were the metamorphosis! From 
 the entrancing smiles, and rich glowing tones, and perfect 
 curves, apd deep, passionate glance of a living goddess of 
 love, to a slight, wind-raised fringe of atheistic foam ! Mr. 
 Carlyle is a very different man from Shelley ; his knowl- 
 edge of man and his pure intellectual power render any 
 comparison between the two absurd; yet we believe his 
 mind to be of the poetic type as distinctively as Shelley's, 
 and we sayj without hesitation, that his influence on his 
 time — extending, as it does, mainly, if not solely, over 
 those who have become acquainted with his writings dur- 
 ing the period of their youthful - ardor — had been nowise 
 so mighty, if his powers of thought had been unaided by 
 his truly poetic powers of expression. 
 
 Mr. Kingsley has been profoundly, influenced by the 
 writings of Mr. Carlyle ; so profoundly, that at times he 
 seems almost to lose his personal identity. The axioms of 
 Mr. Carlyle's system of thought meet us, perhaps twice 
 repeated, in each chapter, and we must allege that they are 
 
16 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 often given in their oi-iginal bareness, without being mate- 
 rially unfolded, or pointing the way towards further truth. 
 Mr. Carlyle's forms of expression and of sentence are con- 
 tinually recurring, while we are forced to own the absence 
 of that original and piercing observation, and that occa- 
 sional rhythmic cadence, which redeem their singularity in 
 his works. 
 
 But Mr. Kingsley is a minister of the Church of England, 
 a believer in Christianity. This is the second explicative 
 fact in determining his mental constitution and analyzing 
 his works. Christianity must be true; but Mr. Carlyle 
 cannot speak falsely: a union must be devised between 
 the two. And so Mr. Kingsley becomes one great repre- 
 sentative of the influence of Mr. Carlyle upon believers in 
 Christianity in the nineteenth century. We speak not in 
 any tone of censure. It is, indeed, much the reverse. We 
 firmly believe that such men as Mr. Carlyle are not sent 
 into our world for nothing — that they may speak truth 
 which it is the duty of Christians to hear, expose errors or 
 delinquencies which it is the duty of Christians to amend. 
 We thank Mr. Kingsley for reminding us of an important 
 tnith, when he tells us, " That God's grace, like his love, is 
 free, and that His Spirit bloweth where it listeth, and vin- 
 dicates its own free-will against our narrow systems, by 
 revealing at times, even to nominal heretics and infidels, 
 truths which the Catholic Church must humbly receive as 
 the message of Him who is wider, deeper, more tolerant, 
 than even she can be." Surely it is not well with a Chris- 
 tian church, when .those who refuse the Christian name 
 exclaim, that they have applied to her the test appointed 
 by her Master, that they have looked round upon her works, 
 and have gained such a knowledge of her by so doing, that 
 they must asBail her. We cannot, indeed, on any bypoth- 
 
CHARLES KINGSLET. 17 
 
 esis defend those who confound Christianity with hierarchy, 
 in their attacks on the church. When they have exhausted 
 Christian morality, when they have raised the standard of 
 holiness and of love higher than " Christ and his disciples " 
 raised it, then they may speak against the Gospel of Jesus 
 but the church must look warily and ponder well, when 
 infidels assert that their standard is higher than hers, that 
 the ancient, all-conquering banner is draggled in the mire. 
 Mr. Kingsley is right in accepting Mr. Carlyle's writings 
 as a stern and momentous warning to Christian churches to 
 awake and bestir themselves. 
 
 From the influence of Mr. Carlyle, and all that he rep- 
 resents of modern doubt, modern inquiry, modern philoso- 
 phy, come those two applications of Christianity to distinct 
 phenomena of our time, which Mr. Kingsley has embodied 
 in Alton Locke and Hypatia. In the fonner, he endeavors 
 to apply Christianity to the arrangements of our social 
 system ; in the latter, his chief effort is to show that Chris- 
 tianity alone allays and satisfies the cravings of the earnest 
 philosophic skeptic. It is unnecessary to dwell upon Yeast, 
 since it is an exhibition rather than a removal of difficul- 
 ties, a 'problem' without its solution. We doubt not Mr. 
 Kingsley would permit us to say, that the answers to the 
 questions proposed in Yeast are to be found in the two 
 works we have just referred to ; not, perhaps, the comjilete 
 and final answers, but, at least, the general outline of those 
 methods by which national and individual health, mornl, 
 social, intellectual, are to be attained. To these two 
 works, then, we propose first to direct our attention, after 
 quoting two short passages from Yeast, the first declarative 
 of Mr. Kingsley's faith in the final victory of Christianity, 
 the second very appropriately and cheeringly conclusive on 
 the point that, however dark may be the revelations of 
 
 2* 
 
18 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 Alton Locke, we have reason even in our century, to thank 
 God and take courage. 
 
 "I believe that the ancient creed, the eternal gospel, 
 will stand, and conquer, and prove its might in this age, as 
 it has in eveiy other for eighteen hundred years, by claim- 
 ing, subduing, and organizing those young anarchic forces, 
 which now, unconscious of their parentage, rebel against 
 Him to whom they owe their being." 
 
 This is a good hope, and the man may act courageously 
 in whose bosom it dwells. Yet we must remark, that such 
 general declarations, except when based on a very wide 
 and accurate induction, are of little value. If the period 
 at which Christianity is to triumph is at an indefinite dis- 
 tance, the announcement is Uttle better than a truism ; a 
 noble, a glorious truism, indeed ; but of application to all 
 times as well as the present. If Mr. Kingsley intends to 
 declare that Christianity has hitherto prevailed over every 
 form of infidelity, in such a manner and within such a time 
 as to dispel all fear for its victory over skepticism in our 
 century, we must demur to his correctness. It is as stern a 
 duty to compute the force and to weigh the triumphs of 
 the adversary, as it is to bare the sword, and march into 
 the conflict. Whatever the shame and agony with which 
 we accompany the concession, we must grant that the 
 doctrines of Voltaire have been extensively victorious on 
 the Continent. The fact is one of unspeakable sadness ; 
 but, like every fact honestly accepted and interpreted, it 
 reads us important lessons. It points us to the Continent, 
 where thrones totter, where armies march, where, for sixty 
 years, human blood has been flowing in torrents from 
 battle-plain and barricade; in these fearful characters it 
 holds up to us the truth, that religion is the sheet-anchor 
 of national stability, that the nations which know not God 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY. 19 
 
 must perish. It tells us also that it is a dangerous thing 
 to dally with. error, to lay the beautifully-tinted, slumbering 
 snake in the bosom. How little did many a philosophic 
 abbe dream, whither all that encyclopfedism was leading ! 
 The ultimate tendency of principles is hard to define. Mcti 
 may plant gardens on the sides of a volcano, and rejoice 
 as the heat beneath insensibly increases, warming the roots 
 of their flowers, and causing them to put forth fresh buds ; 
 until suddenly all are flung into the air. The doctrines of 
 Carlyle and Emerson may lend a fresh vigor to Christianity; 
 but let them who use them for that purpose, at the least, 
 beware. 
 
 Now for our second preliminary extract : — 
 
 " How dare you, young man, despair of your own nation, 
 while its nobles can produce a Carlyle, an EUesmere, an 
 .Ashley, a Robert Grosvenor ; while its middle classes can 
 beget a Faraday, a Stevenson, a Brooke, an Elizabeth Fry? 
 See, I say, what a chaos of noble materials is here — all 
 confused, it is true — polarized, jarring, and chaotic — here 
 bigotry, there self-will, superstition, sheer atheism often, 
 but only waiting for the one inspiring Spirit, to organize, 
 and unite, and consecrate this chaos into the noblest polity 
 the world ever saw realized ! " 
 
 A deliberate consideration of the great and hopeful fact 
 expressed in this passage, the fact that, at this moment, in 
 this island, there are, perhaps, as many noble intellects at 
 work, and as many noble hearts beating, as were ever col- 
 lected in the same space since the world began, might, we 
 think, have spread a general air of moderation, and for- 
 bearance, and deference, over Mr. Kingsley's works, for 
 which we look in vain. 
 
 Such occasional passages as the above do little more than 
 excite our astonishment at the dogmatism of Mr. Kings- 
 
20 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 ley's general opinions, and the asperity of his general 
 appeals. "It miglit seem incredible," said the cool and 
 large-minded Mackintosh, "if it were not established by 
 the experience of all ages, that those who differ most from 
 the opinions of their fellow-men are most confident of the 
 truth of their own." It is a kindred observation, and 
 equally true, that those whose opinions are hastily adopted, 
 those who refuse the long drudgery of thought, and think 
 with the heart rather than the head, are ever the most 
 jSercely dogmatic in their tone. Mr. Kingsley deals round 
 his blows at political economists, at evangelical clergymen, 
 at Calvinists, and others, with such fierce decision, that 
 we might reasonably expect to find him prepared with 
 some all-healing scheme, before which every other ijhilan- 
 thropic or political device would hide its diminished head, 
 or, at least, with some carefully-thought refutation of oppos- 
 ing theories. But, instead of this, we find the remedy he 
 proposes to apply to our social ills to be one concerning 
 which the most ardent friend of the people may entertain 
 serious doubts ; the answer he affords to our philosophic 
 questionings, however true, to be neither very novel, very 
 precise, nor very profound ; and his refutation of opposing 
 theories to be little else than strong appeals to our feelings, 
 with certain disputable axioms from Mr. Carlyle. We are 
 happy, however, to be able to state, that Mr. Kingsley's 
 ablest work, Hypatia, is marked by a great improvement 
 in this respect. If a certain patronizing, pitying, con- 
 descending tone towards an old rheumatic church, and a 
 slow, un-ideal generation, still lingers on the page, we 
 gladly admit that it is nowise so conspicuous as elsewhere, 
 and that the dogmatism has as good as disappeared. 
 
 Alton Locke is a didactic novel, suggested by the sor- 
 rows of the tailors and needlewomen of the metropolis. 
 
CHARLES KINGSLET. 21 
 
 Its objects are, to open the eyes of the public to the horrors 
 endured by large numbers of our working-classes, and to 
 advocate a scheme by which these horrors can be removed. 
 
 The hero, Alton Locke, is a talented youth, born in 
 extreme poverty ; who becomes a tailor, a skeptic, a Chart- 
 ist, an author, and ultimately an advocate of Christian 
 socialism. The book opens with a sketch of his early life. 
 He was quite a remarkable child. Not only was his moral 
 nature superb umanly faultless, but his love of nature was so 
 intense, that he found his delight in zoologizing among the 
 beetles and worms, which children in general shun. 
 
 His mother was also, in her way, remarkable. She was 
 a Calvinist, who carried Calvinism further than we ever 
 saw it carried ; to an extent, indeed, which we consider 
 impossible. She is represented as exceeding logical. "She 
 dared not even pray for our conversion, earnestly as she 
 
 prayed on every other subject Had it not been 
 
 decided from all eternity ? " Yet " her clear logical sense " 
 failed to perceive that just as God knew from all eternity 
 who would be his redeemed in time, so He knew every 
 other matter; that this was not his single act of omni- 
 science and omnipotence. Calvinism sets its foot upon the 
 fact of God's foreknowledge, implying, as it does, certainty; 
 an honest opponent of Calvinism must allow that it enjoins 
 the use of all possible means. We cannot but think Mr. 
 Kingsley has here drawn a supposititious character, has 
 rather looked at what he conceived to be Calvinism, and 
 embodied what he believed to be its inevitable results, 
 than drawn from actual life. There never was a more 
 decided Calvinist than Jonathan Edwards ; we recommend 
 his works to Mr. Kingsley as an answer to the question 
 whether Calvinism destroys active endeavor after conver- 
 sion or all-embracing and earnest prayer. If Mrs. Locke 
 
22 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 was too logical to pray for the conversion of her children, 
 it was by a breach of logic that she prayed for anything in 
 the world. 
 
 His mother's Calvinism develops precocious skepticism 
 in young Alton, so that, when he comes in contact with 
 clever infidelity, among the journeymen tailors with whom 
 he goes to work, he sjjjeedily loses his early belief in the 
 Bible as the Word of God. He becomes acquainted with 
 an old Scotchman, named Sandy Mackaye, shrewd, specu- 
 lative, warm-hearted, and an intense admirer of Mr. Carlyle. 
 The influence of Sandy, and of John Crossthwaite, an in- 
 telligent Chartist tailor, prevails so far with Alton, as to 
 make him an ardent Chartist. He gives early indications 
 of high literary ability, and soon commences to rhyme. 
 In a picture-gallery he falls vehemently in love with the 
 daughter of a dean, in his afiection for whom he is thwarted 
 by a malicious and selfish cousin. He is on the Chartist 
 side on the famous 10th of April, but takes no part in the 
 proceedings. At length he expires, just as he comes within 
 sight of the American coast, whither he had set out, in 
 conformity with the last will and testament of Sandy 
 Mackaye. Besides Alton Locke and Sandy, there are sev- 
 eral other characters of importance ; a philanthropic, scien- 
 tific dean, who is so devoid of aristocratic exclusiveness as 
 to invite a journeyman tailor to reside for some time in his 
 house, on a footing of perfect equality, merely because he 
 has displayed uncommon talents ; a variety of distressed 
 tailors ; and a Lady Eleanor Staunton, who mames a cul- 
 tivated and benevolent nobleman, becomes a widow, ex- 
 pends her fortune in works of charity, is ahead of her whole 
 age in Christian philanthropy and philosophy, converts 
 Alton and Crossthwaite, and in e^-ery way approves her- 
 self what the heroine of a philanthropic novel ought to be. 
 
CHARLES -KINGSLEY. 23 
 
 We shall not enlarge upon the fact that probability is 
 unceremoniously violated in Alton Locke. That such is 
 the case, is undeniable, and has been elsewhere very forci- 
 bly pointed out. This, indeed, is no unusual circumstance 
 in the novels of Mr. Kingsley. His characters very often 
 move in an atmosphere of their own — exhibit qualities 
 and experience emotions peculiar to themselves. That 
 ride of Lancelot's after the fox, in the commencement 
 of Yeast, is a remarkable illustration of the fact. If 
 Mr. Kingsley himself performed that notable ride, we will 
 take his assertion as indisputable; but we must be permitted 
 to doubt whether any other man ever rode after a fox in 
 the like fashion. "With the prize in view, and coming down 
 hill, Lancelot checks his horse to sentimentalize on the 
 affecting circumstance that the hounds have leaped over 
 the paling of a churchyard ; he sees a lady emerge from 
 the church, who quite changes the current of his ideas; 
 he dashes on again after the fox ; but, as the saddle, dur- 
 ing a steeple-chase, is a peculiarly fitting place, from its 
 repose and safety, for philosojjhic dreaming, he thinks noth- 
 ing of his horse, but only of the ladye-love he has just 
 seen; "his understanding was trying to ride, while his 
 spirit was left behind with Argemone." He comes back to 
 himself precisely at the moment when he ought to have 
 stayed away, just as his horse is clearing a high paling; 
 his first act of returning consciousness is to check the steed 
 in mid-air, and of course bring him down on the palings. 
 Really, the probability would have been rather enhanced 
 than otherwise, by our being informed that the whole appa- 
 ratus, horse and man, was constructed of timber, and went 
 by steam. In violence of emotion, again, and sudden 
 change of scene, we might back Mr. Kingsley's novels 
 against any production of the Minerva Press. The period 
 
24 CHAKLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 and scene in which the plot of Hypatia is laid, were so 
 confused and tumultuous, that there is an apology at hand 
 for considerable commotion and excitement. But, even 
 with this concession, we must submit that the whole book 
 wears too much the aspect of a frenzied dream, and that no 
 mere mortal could possibly weep so much, swoon so much, be 
 enraptured so much, as that sorely-tried youth Philammon, 
 within a few days, and yet survive. Mr. Kingsley's iigures 
 seem beyond the influence of those sedatives which nature 
 has kindly appointed for the excited brain. "Day and 
 night successive, and the timely dew of sleep," of which 
 Adam spoke to Eve, seem not to affect them. Nay, the 
 usual tranquillizing effects of mere eating and drinking, 
 the mere clogging of the ethereal principle by the body to 
 which it is chained, appear to be escaped by them. All 
 their emotions are in the superlative degree; if extremes 
 are always false, we tremble for Mr. Kingsley's reputation 
 as a depicter of character. We have our own objections 
 to bring against Mr. Thackeray, but here he deserves all 
 praise ; his characters, however devoid they may be of any 
 important power to instruct or animate, are just the poor, 
 dull human beings, or the supposably clever people, one 
 meets in actual life. Mr. Kingsley's figures appear to move 
 about in an atmosphere of fire-mist. 
 
 In his hero, Alton Locke, Mr. Kingsley has, perhaps un- 
 consciously, drawn a character which is very common in 
 the present day. His radical quality, little as he or Mr. 
 Kingsley thinks so, is intellectual weakness. He staggers 
 on from opinion to opinion, taking his ideas always from 
 the more powerful minds with which he comes in contact; 
 when he dies, we are by no means sure that, had he lived 
 leven years, he would not have returned from America 
 with his opinions entirely altered once more. "We have 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY. 25 
 
 long admired and wondered at the power of Shakspeare 
 in portraying such men as Alton Locke. He has a large 
 class of characters, whose distinguishing quality it is, that 
 persuasion has absolute power over them. Such are Cor- 
 iolanus, Othello, Cassius the friend of Othello ; our readers 
 may recollect many others. They are noble fellows all ; 
 full of fire, of generosity, of intensity ; their words are 
 metaphorical and far-sounding ; but, somehow or other, the 
 reason is always led captive ; the will stoops to receive the 
 yoke ; despite asseveration, despite determination, the point 
 at which they will yield to entreaty can be calculated and 
 assigned. Of this radical type is Alton Locke ; with suffi- 
 cient eloquence of voice and smile, Lillian could have 
 turned him to anything; his actions are impulsive and 
 headstrong, his feelings occupy the throne in his mind. 
 We agree most cordially with the grand truth, whose pro- 
 mulgation brings this book to a conclusion ; the grand 
 truth that Christianity alone can save the working-man : 
 but certainly, the fact that a beautiful benefactress converts 
 Alton to this faith, as the last of a variety of opinions, 
 would weigh very little with us in its adoption. 
 
 Sandy Mackaye is certainly a very ably-drawn and in- 
 structive character. He has been recognized as the best 
 figure in the book, and we care not to combat the opinion ; 
 yet we think that Alton Locke is, in his way, just as true 
 to nature. Sandy is a fierce realist, who reads old history 
 and politics, and the works of Mr. Carlyle; who cannot 
 away with any high-flown mysticism, or wanderings in the 
 regions of the ideal ; who loves the people with a profound 
 and unquenchable love ; whose talk may at times be crab- 
 bed, but whose heart is always . warm ; and who rests im- 
 movably in the fact, that moral excellence is the only hope 
 for the poor man. It were absurd to deny that Mr. Kings- 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 3 
 
26 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 ley has displayed extraordinary powers in depicting Sandy 
 Mackaye. Yet, even here, we have one word of objection, 
 and again its application extends beyond the present in- 
 stance. Mr. Kingsley exhibits on various occasions an 
 intimate acquaintance with Mr. Carlyle's and Goethe's great 
 doctrine of unconsciousness ; he must also from the great 
 " Harpocrates-Stentor " have heard a great deal about 
 silence. How is it, then, that his characters are so ex- 
 tremely conscious, and so extremely talkative ? There is 
 no law of which we can more confidently affirm the uni- 
 versality — witness nature and Shakspeare — than the law 
 that those who act greatly and feel deeply do not talk 
 much. Great men are marked by their power to dispense 
 with human sympathy : " silence is the perfectest herald of 
 joy;" and who does not know that the proud heart, in its 
 moments of deepest anguish, scorns" to vent its sorrow in 
 words ? Mr. Carlyle rightly rejects the story that Bums 
 was seen by some tourists in a theatrical garb and attitude, 
 knowing that his manly mind would have shaken away 
 such frivolous distinction. Cromwell was no man to make 
 collections of bits of armor from his various fields, or of 
 flags from the various castles he reduced. Does Shakspeare 
 make mighty Julius talk much ? We cannot believe that 
 Sandy Mackaye's room was decorated as Mr. Kingsley 
 avers. Political caricatures dangling from the roof; obnox- 
 ious books impaled ; Icon Basilike " dressed up in a paper 
 shirt, all drawn over with figures of flames and devils, and 
 surmounted by a peaked paper cap, like an anto-dorfe ;" 
 — all this is too trivial, too external, for the man who will 
 risk his life for freedom. Go into the room of the juvenile 
 amateur Chartist, whose valor all evaporates at the sight 
 of a baton, and you will probably find the whole. Mr. 
 Kingsley's characters are always opening up to you their 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY. 27 
 
 whole hearts ; every emotion must reach the tongue ; Elea- 
 nor alone, of all his figures that -we at present recollect, 
 exhibits a slight trace of most refreshing taciturnity. One 
 is reminded, in listening to their incessant pai-ade of emo- 
 tion, of those regarding whom Guizot, quoting from Pe- 
 trarch, says, that their "tongue was at once their lance and 
 sword, their casque and buckler." We really mean to give 
 Mr. Kingsley a friendly hint, when we i-emind him of that 
 masterly stroke in Sallust's portraiture of Jugurtha, "plu- 
 rimum facere, minimum de se loqui." 
 
 We cannot dwell upon particular scenes in Alton Ziocke, 
 but we must express our unqualified admiration of that 
 chapter in which Sandy Mackaye, after listening to Alton's 
 poetry about the island in the Pacific, suddenly drags him 
 away to visit certain scenes which he knows in London, 
 and which, by Sandy's irresistible recommendation, become 
 thenceforth the sole subjects of Alton's muse. The boy's 
 rhymes about his adopted island, which was to be colon- 
 ized and converted by missionaries, are remarkably good ; 
 one is tempted to imagine them real productions ; the low- 
 est praise that can be given them is, that they are fac- 
 similes. The fragments of the description of the isle, with 
 its central volcano, which, 
 
 " Shaking a sinful isle with thundering shocks, 
 Reproved the worshippers of stones and stocks," 
 
 admit of no improvement. Sandy laughs heartily at this 
 rhyme, but, relapsing into a very serious mood, leads the 
 youth swiftly away to give him a glimpse of the poetry of 
 reality. He brings him first to an alley, where, on the one 
 hand, a gin-jjalace, and on the other, a pawnbroker's shop, 
 feed, like two hell-born monsters, on the poor. The scene 
 is depicted with harrowing distinctness : — 
 
28 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 "But all this," whines Alton, "is so — so unpoetical." 
 "Hech!" exclaims Sandy, "is there no' heaven above 
 them there, and the hell beneath them ? and God frown- 
 ing, and the devil grinning! No poetry there! Is no' the 
 verra idea o' the classic tragedy defined to be, man con- 
 quered by circumstance? Canna ye see it there? And 
 the verra idea of the modern tragedy, man conquering cir- 
 cumstance ? And I '11 show ye that, too, in many a gari-et 
 where no eye but the gude God's enters, to see the patience, 
 and the fortitude, and the self-sacrifice, and the luve stronger 
 than death, that 's shining in thae dark places o' the earth. 
 Come wi' me, and see." 
 
 Sandy then guides Alton to a miserable garret, where a 
 wretched family drag out a wo-stricken existence in utter 
 want. Yet the pride of other days lingers there, and the 
 work-house is recoiled from. One girl lies dying on a cold 
 bed, yet enjoying the purest joys of religious ra])ture. An- 
 other is driven, to avert the absolute starvation of her 
 mother and the rest, to that resource which is worse than 
 death, which is suggestive of the most profoundly melan- 
 choly reflections to which even our dark world can give 
 rise. No part of Uncle TorrbS Cabin seems to us to 
 reach the pathos which has been reached by Mr. Kingsley 
 in this passage. The mother prefers absolute starvation to 
 shame, and appeals to Sandy to expostulate with her daugh- 
 ter as to her conduct. The latter, in such tones as may be 
 imagined, breaks in thus : — " Rejsent — I have repented 
 — I repent of it every hour — I hate myself, and hate all 
 the world, because of it ; but I must — I must. I cannot 
 see her starve, and I cannot starve myself." And then 
 what inexpressible pathos is here ! — " Oh ! if that fine lady 
 as we're making that riding-habit for, would just spare 
 only half the money that goes in dressing her up to ride 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY. 29 
 
 in the park, to send us out to the colonies, would n't I be 
 an honest girl there ! — Maybe, an honest man's wife ! Oh, 
 my God ! would n't I slave my fingers to the bone for him!" 
 Sandy, on their departure, thus sums up all to the young 
 poet: — "Poetic element? Yon lassie, rejoicing in her 
 disfigurement, like the nuns of Peterborough in auld time 
 
 — is there no poetry there ? That puir lassie, dying on 
 the bare boards, and seeing her Saviour in her dreams, is 
 there no poetry there, callant ? That ould body owre the 
 
 'fire, wi' her " an officer's dochter," is there no poetry there V 
 
 — tragedy 
 
 ' With hues as when some mighty painter dips 
 His pen in dyes of earthquake and eclipse.' 
 
 Ay, Shelly's gran'; always gran'; but fact is grander — 
 God and Satan are grander. All around ye, in every gin- 
 shop and costermonger's cellar, are God and Satan at deatli- 
 gripes; every garret is a haill 'Paradise Lost' or 'Para- 
 dise Regained,' and will ye think it beneath ye to be the 
 people's poet ? " 
 
 That whole chapter is masterly. 
 
 We think also that the description of Sandy's death is 
 a singularly felicitous eifort of genius. The old man had 
 doubted and speculated long, clear only of one thing, that 
 it was his duty to love his neighbor as himself, and give 
 his every faculty to resist the empire of darkness here on 
 earth. The times were perplexing, ominous, dreary; he 
 could not fathom or explain God's dealings with men ; but 
 he stood firm in his integrity ; and closed his ]ij)S with these 
 words, " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right — 
 
 right — right " Higher than this "ground plan of the 
 
 universe," than this simple faith in infinite Wisdom and 
 infinite Love, no finite intellect has gone. 
 
 3* 
 
30 CHARLES KINGSLET. 
 
 My. Kingsley has an immovable conviction that the 
 evils of society can be cured by bringing Christianity to 
 bear upon them. It was the idea of the life of Chalmers. 
 We need not say that our hope, too, lies here. Mr. Kings- 
 ley, in Alton Locke, and in all his books, invokes Chris- 
 tians to commence the aggressive Christianization of the 
 masses of our population. He cuts mercilessly into what 
 is now becoming generally known by Mr. Carlyle's nick- 
 name, " respectability." The Christianity of custom, the 
 comfortable religion that is anxious, for safety's sake, to 
 show a good example, all Christianity that does not recog- 
 nise the equalizing energy of the gospel of Jesus, stripping 
 men to the bare souls, and showing them all brethren if 
 they are in Christ Jesus, he lays bare with ruthless hands, 
 and bids away. Disguise it as we will, the fact f)ointed at 
 in the following paragraph is as undeniable as it is porten- 
 tous : — 
 
 " Is not," asks one, " the Church of England the veiy 
 purest form of apostolic Christianity ? " 
 
 "It may be,'' is the answer, " and so may the other sects. 
 But, somehow, in Judea, it was the publicans and harlots 
 who pressed into the kingdom of heaven ; it was the com- 
 mon people who heard Christ gladly. Christianity, then, 
 was a movement in the hearts of the lower order. But 
 now, my dear fellow, you rich, who used to be told, in St. 
 James's time, to weep and howl, have turned the tables 
 upon us poor. It is you who are talking all along of con- 
 verting us. Look at any place of worship you like, ortho- 
 dox and heretical ; who fill the ])ews ? the pharisees and 
 the covetous, who used to deride Christ, fill his churches, 
 and say still, ' This people, these masses, who know not 
 the gospel, are accursed.' And the universal feeling, as 
 far as I can judge, seems to be, not, 'how hardly shall 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY. 31 
 
 they who have,' but hardly shall they who have not, 
 ' riches enter into the kingdom of heaven.' " 
 
 This is put into the mouth of a' working-man, or one who 
 has but partially emerged from the ranks of those who 
 work with their hands. We shall hope there is somewhat 
 of exaggertion in the words, particularly in application to 
 one part of the island. Yet, granting that the representa- 
 tion is in the main correct, we are forced to remark, that 
 the fault lies as much with working-men themselves, as 
 with any other class. Can any class expunge from the 
 Bible those declarations which make it emphatically the 
 book of the poor? or hide the fact, that Christ and his 
 apostles were poor ? Why, then, must Christianity ever 
 be confounded with the short-comings of Christians, the 
 Church in which all are kings and i:)riests, with a priest- 
 hood? Let working-men ponder this other passage : — 
 
 " Take all the heroes, prophets, poets, philosophers, where 
 will you find the true demagogue, the speaker to man simply 
 as man, the friend of publicans and sinners, the stern foe 
 of the scribe and the pharisee, with whom was no respect 
 of persons ? Socrates and Plato were noble ; Zerdusht 
 and Confutzee, for all we know, were nobler still ; but what 
 were they but the exclusive mystagogues of an enlightened 
 few, like our own Emersons and Strausses, to compare 
 great things with small? What gospel have they, o\ 
 Strauss or Emerson, for the j)oor, the suffering, the op- 
 pressed ? The people's friend ; where will you find hini 
 but in Jesus of Nazareth ? " 
 
 It is to Christianity, then, that Mr. Kingsley looks for 
 the regeneration of society. So far he has our cordial as- 
 sent. When we come to examine his scheme for its appli- 
 cation to our social disorders, we must confess more ol 
 hesitation. He proposes a universal union among the 
 
32 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 various sections of the working-classes, for co-operation in 
 production and division of profits. There is nothing, at 
 least, wild or visionary in the project. There are many 
 associations of workmen in France, and in several instances 
 they have been found successful. It is easy to form the 
 idea of each trade as a vast joint-stock company, in which 
 the workmen are both owners and laborers. Mr. Kingsley 
 proposes no arbitrary levelling of ranks ; he perceives that, 
 in countless cases, individual cupidity and individual help- 
 lessness produce, on the one hand, exorbitant wealth, -on 
 the other, destitution and slavery ; he would substitute the 
 economy of working owners for the cupidity of one, the 
 superintendence of indispensable functionaries for the for- 
 tuitous extortion of middle-men. In this there is really 
 nothing absurd or chimerical. The era of the equal enjoj^- 
 ment of comfort by each class of the community is stUl be- 
 yond ken in the remoteness of the future ; but the period 
 when an attempt may be made towards the approximation 
 of classes has, we hope, arrived ; and we see no danger in 
 adopting, as the basis of this attempt, the principle of co- 
 operation among the laboring class. 
 
 But when we lend this cautious sanction to the essential 
 principle of Mr. Kingsley's schemes, he must bear with us 
 while we give him two bripf but emphatic counsels, atten- 
 tion to which is necessary to even a possibility of success. 
 Fii-st, we must assure him that the difficulties which stand 
 in the way of a practical realization of his plan are of the 
 gravest description. For an exposition of these difficul- 
 ties, we refer our readers to Mr. Gi-eg's very able essays on 
 the subject. We cannot consider the reasonings of that 
 talented writer absolutely conclusive ; but we can say, that 
 they i-ender the tone in which Mr. Kingsley advocates his 
 scheme utterly indefensible. Only in calm and deliberate 
 
CHARLES KINGSLKY. 33 
 
 moods can such questions be treated ; not when the blood 
 is on fire with excitement, and the eye blind with burning 
 tears; in the anxious recollection of what Goethe says about 
 the danger of " active ignorance," and in the conviction 
 that the problem to be solved in theory and practice might 
 demand the abstraction of a Newton and the sagacity of a 
 Napoleon, must such proposals be entertained. We must 
 hear no more about "the fiend of competition." The 
 sympathies of all save those who have a selfish interest in 
 the prolongation of- present distress, are with the philan- 
 thropic reformer. The boyish mistake must not be com- 
 mitted, of confounding with the rancor of cupidity that 
 which may be the anticipation of nature's decision. Our 
 second counsel to Mr. Kingsley is of kin to our first ; we 
 advise him to speak no more in a tone of contempt of 
 political economy. It is true, that he mentions Mr. Mill 
 with respect, but there is no disguising the sneer with 
 which he greets the science of which Mr. Mill is a leading 
 exponent. We may grant he is not quite consistent here ; 
 we suppose he would have Christian pastors acquainted 
 with the principles of social science ; but he cannot rid 
 himself of the influence of Mr. Carlyle's denunciation of 
 political economy. Now, if there is one opinion in the 
 circle of ideas in which every reflective man may be expected 
 to agree, it is, that Mr. Carlyle is here absolutely wrong. 
 It can be no defence to say, that political economists advo- 
 cate such and such a scheme ; this is merely attributing to 
 Mr. Carlyle a vulgar and childish error. Political econo- 
 mists are not men who advocate any scheme whatever, 
 any more than astronomers are men who advocate any 
 particular theory of light or of gravitation : astronomers 
 are men who devote themselves to the discovery of what 
 the laws regulating the heavenly bodies are ; political 
 
34 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 economists are those who bend their jjowers to the elimi- 
 nation of one great class of the laws which regulate the 
 social system. Their only postulate is one which Mr. Car- 
 lyle reiterates, " ubi homines sunt, modi sunt ; " where men 
 exist together for an hour, and act together in any particu- 
 lar way, there will spring up certain modes of thought and 
 action. If there are no such modes in our economic affairs, 
 if this is the only province in the universe where sequence 
 is, prima facie, as untraceable as in the domain of the An- 
 arch old, or if it is an evil that men, before proceeding to 
 work, should simply and without further assumption know 
 the elements with which they have to do, then can Mr. 
 Carlyle be defended in his attacks on the economists. His 
 tone is not that of remonstrance ; it is that of unmeasured 
 contempt and indignation ; and the thunder and flash of 
 his aimless artillery have deafened and dazzled Mr. Kings- 
 ley. The fact is, that the arguments which can be adduced 
 against political economists, as such, are almost unanswer- 
 ably absurd ; they remind one of Shelley's differently-ap- 
 plied expression, " invulnerable nothings ; " they are ghosts 
 too filmy for lead or bayonet, but which the first glimpse 
 of daylight resolves into invisibility. 
 
 In Alton Locke, Mr. Kingsley weighs Christianity as a 
 gospel of temporal salvation for the people. In Hypatla, he 
 measures it as a substitute for ancient and modern philoso- 
 phy. We shall not say that the execution in Hypatia 
 corresponds to the grandeur of the idea or the importance 
 of the subject ; but we accord Mr. Kingsley the high praise 
 that he has in this work correctly read one great sign of 
 the times. The thesis he attempts to prove in Hypatia may 
 be concisely expressed thus : — Christianity brings philoso- 
 phy into life, and life into philosophy : on the one hand, it 
 brings down into the hearts of men the ideas of purity which 
 
CHARLES KINGS LEY. , 35 
 
 floated formerly in a few rare minds ; on the other, it hal- 
 lows all those social relations with which philosophy has in 
 all ages shown such a willingness to meddle. We might 
 expatiate on the power displayed in . separate passages in 
 this book. We might congratulate Mr. Kingsley on the 
 fact, that his colors retain all their richness and brilliancy, 
 being, indeed, rather deepened and enriched than other- 
 wise. But, on the whole, we must pronounce ITypatia a 
 failure. We have a general and grave objection to the 
 method adopted by its author for the promulgation of his 
 views. Even waiving the consideration of the fitness of 
 the novel for the discussion of any controverted question 
 — -and here Mr. Greg's objections have considerable weight 
 — we put it calmly to Mr. Kingsley, whether the momentous 
 interests he desires to serve are best promoted by a series 
 of fictions? It is a new thing, surely, to reconstruct society 
 on a foundation of brilliant and fashionable novels. Really, 
 if this example jDrevails, discussion will become, in the 
 happy ages of our children, a different thing from what it 
 has been hitherto. Its liveliness will be indescribable. Only 
 conceive the change that will come about in the matter of 
 citations. No longer will one groan over such references 
 as these : — Thorn. Aq. Summ. Theol. (lib. x., cap. xi., sec. 
 xii.) ; Duns. Scot, de Sent. Lombard, (prop, iii., sec. iv.) ; 
 Grot, de Jure Belli et Pacis (vol. i., lib. ii., cap. iii.). We 
 shall be charmed by such authorities as these : — " The 
 Christian Religion and the Rights of man " (see exhort, at 
 bedside of Alt. Locke, by Elean. Lyne. stand, nov., vol. xi. 
 ICngs.) ; " The Fundamental Distinction between Religion 
 and Philosoj)hy" (see speech declar. of Ed. Clifford to 
 Angel. Goldfinch. Bent., ser., vol. xix.). There is a good 
 time coming, boys and girls, sure enough! But joking 
 apart, we seriously think novels are not the best' vehicle 
 
36 CHARLES KINGSLET. 
 
 for such important proposals as Mr. Kingsley's. Surely the 
 suffrage of the boarding-schools is not of such extreme 
 value. Would not a few calmly-argued treatises, which 
 men might read and ponder, be of more real weight than 
 an indefinite number of drawing-room fictions ? To this 
 extent our objection applies to all such novels as Mr. Kings- 
 ley's. But of Hypatia we are compelled to say yet more. 
 We think it is a failure on its own ground. We cannot be 
 charged with bias in favor of philosophy against Christian- 
 ity, yet we acknowledge our impression, after witnessing 
 the part each plays in the book, to be rather in favor of the 
 former than the latter. Surely Mr. Kingsley, in almost 
 morbid candor, permitted an adversary to choose his facts. 
 To assail philosophy by a picture of its loveliest and one 
 of its purest martyrs ; to advocate Christianity in a book 
 many of whose darkest scenes are pictures of Christian 
 atrocity, and whose catastrophe is one of the blackest crimes 
 ever gloated over by a Gibbon: — we pause in astonishment 
 at the anomaly! But, rejoins Mr. Kingsley, it was my 
 object to teach a lesson to Christians also ; to show them 
 that force and fraud can never be wedded to Christianity, 
 without a baneful progeny being the result. Such, it is 
 true, was Mr. Kingsley's aim ; but he leaves himself very 
 much in the case of him who wrote a severe attack upon 
 himself and neglected the intended vindication. We see 
 the evil in full operation, there is a dramatic exhibition of 
 that ; but we discover only from a few didactic hints, that 
 matters would have been mended by a difierent state of 
 circumstances. With all its gorgeousness of coloring, and 
 sustained intensity of interest, and general correctness of 
 conclusion, Hypatia mnst be pronounced a failure. 
 
 In the composition of Weshoard Ho, Mr. Kingsley had 
 a purpose less expressly didactic than that of the novels 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY. 37 
 
 we have mentioned. He approached his subject more 
 entirely from the artistic point of view, desirous not so 
 much to illustrate or enforce an argument, applicable at a 
 particular time and to one class of circumstances, as to 
 depict scenes fitted to evoke universal and perpetual admi- 
 ration, and to delineate characters with which all genera^ 
 tions might sympathize. To emerge thus into the wider 
 sphere of general art must have been felt as a decided advan- 
 tage by Mr. Kingsley ; and an advantage corresponding to 
 that exjjerienced by him, might have been looked for, in a 
 more natural and easy freedom of narrative, and in didactic 
 inferences less strained and premeditated, by readers. This 
 expectation would not have been altogether disappointed. 
 Westward Ho is in some respects the most hearty, health- 
 ful, and true, of Mr. Kingsley's fictions. His sympathy 
 with the old heroes whom he endeavors to portray, is gen- 
 uine and jarofound ; in the rocky coves of the coast of 
 Devon and on the pleasant hills of its interior, his step is 
 elastic and joyous as if he had known them in his youth; 
 and although he never wrote without a present glow of 
 enthusiasm in his subject, it may easily be believed that 
 neither in the description of the Greeks of the Nile, nor in 
 the exposure and treatment of our social maladies, was ho, 
 on the whole, so much at home, as in company of the 
 Raleighs and Drakes, with ancient philosophy and modern 
 economics both in the distance. But it cannot be alleged 
 that any radical change has taken jDlace in Mr. Kingsley's 
 style of thought and expression. Sympathy with all that 
 is strong, fearless, honorable, and beautiful, — richness and 
 profusion of color, — hopefulness, buoyancy, breadth of 
 sunny light and general cheerfulness, ^ — these we were for- 
 merly accustomed to from Mr. Kingsley, and these are 
 present still. But the old recklessness of assertion, the 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 4 
 
38 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 old excitement and feverish haste, the old boisterousness 
 of tone, the old extravagance of conception, meet us still. 
 
 The object set before himself by Mr. Kingsley in writing 
 Westward Ho was, as he informs us in his opening chapter, 
 to do honor to the memory of England's heroes of 1588, 
 the time of the Armada, the Drakes, the Hawkinses, the 
 Gilberts, the Raleighs, the Grenviles, the Oxenhams, men 
 not only of England but of Devon ; and, honoring them, 
 to proclaim to Englishmen the " same great message which 
 the songs of Troy, and the Persian wars, and the trophies 
 of Marathon and Salamis, spoke to the hearts of all true 
 Greeks of old." 
 
 Both the aim here indicated and the subject chosen 
 merit high commendation. The period of British histoiy 
 to which Mr. Kingsley leads us back, aifords rich and varied 
 materials for the epic poet, the historian, and the historical 
 novelist. Stirring and lofty incident, well-marked, strong, 
 and noble character, splendid and diversified coloring, 
 equally abound. It was the time when the nations were 
 arranging themselves after the mighty convulsion of the 
 Reformation. The work occupied several centuries, and 
 Mr. Kingsley oontemjjlates one of the most important parts 
 of the imposing process. The spirit of Protestantism had 
 awakened. Superstition, its eye bleared and dim with the 
 darkness of a thousand years, had staggered and reeled, 
 with groping hands that seemed about to fall powerless, in 
 the shafts of the far-stretching moral dawn. But another 
 spirit had come up upon the earth, a spirit ivhose birth- 
 place, can M'e hesitate to say, .was in the nether deep of 
 hell : the spirit of Jesuitism. Into the tottering frame of 
 Superstition this spirit entered, lending a new throb to its 
 fainting heart, arousing it once more to assert its sway. 
 Then began a great contest : its theatre the old and new 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY. 39 
 
 "Worlds, and the great oceans by which they are encom- 
 passed ; its actors the nations that led the van of civiliza- 
 tion. The nations which, at the period chosen by Mr. 
 Kingsley, specially supported the contest, were England 
 and Spain. In England, reigned Elizabeth. Her character 
 was not of the noblest. Vanity might be pardoned ; but 
 the hand of time will never efface the dark stains of cruelty 
 and hypocrisy from that queenly brow : and Mr. Kingsley, 
 chivalrous as he is, might have attained a higher nobleness 
 than that of chivalry, the nobleness of dauntless and un- 
 deviating devotion to truth, by rather damping, on this 
 account, his enthusiasm for " Gloriana." But whatever her 
 failings, Elizabeth represented much of what was noblest 
 in her time : her intellect was calm and sagacious : and she 
 had the will of a sovereign born. She was surrounded by 
 a constellation of able and courageous men, who served 
 her with the loyalty of subjects to their monarch, and with 
 the devotion of true knights to a noble lady. Flattery, in 
 the court of Elizabeth, seems to deserve a less ignoble 
 name. We shall not say it was in small and sordid sel- 
 fishness that Raleigh laid his mantle under her feet, or that 
 the gentie Spenser warbled silver strains of adulation in 
 her ear. Turning from England to Spain, the prospect, 
 though contrasted, is perhaps equally remarkable. Perhaps 
 no nation of modern times has presented an appearance so 
 well fitted to attract the poet or dramatist, as that presented 
 by Spain in the sixteenth century. The Spaniard alone 
 among Europeans retained the ancient devotion to Rome ; 
 a devotion unaffected by doubt, unbroken by inquiry ; a 
 devotion unmeasured in degree and which suggests the 
 infinite. Such devotion cannot exist without imparting to 
 the character of man or nation a certain austere gran- 
 deur, a certain epic sublimity. But this was not the only 
 
40 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 circumstance which renders the Spaniard of the sixteenth 
 century an object worthy of contemplation. His country- 
 men had led the way to the new world. His country was 
 the leading power in Europe. Combining the pride and 
 valor of antiquity, with the spirit of enterprise then begin- 
 ning to mark itself as a characteristic of modem times ; 
 strong in faith as an old Hebrew, yet crafty, cruel, and in- 
 domitable; he exhibits the finest effects of light and shade, 
 the subtlest blending of good and evil. His figure might 
 have been painted by a Rembrandt : his character might 
 have been studied by a Shakspeare. 
 
 To all this we must add a consideration of the stage on 
 which such actors as these played their part. The gi-an- 
 deurs of the western world were then unfolding them- 
 selves, like a mighty panorama, to the eyes of Europe ; 
 and if we would conceive aright the effect produced by 
 that grand panorama, we must heighten its natural colors, 
 as now known and defined by us, with all the hues cast 
 over it by an awakening and excited imagination. In our 
 own time, we have seen the nations startled, allured, and set 
 in motion, by gold. Westward and southward, to the ends 
 of the earth, men have rushed to its witching gleam. But 
 the poetry, the wonder, the enchantment, which hovered 
 over the gold regions of the sixteenth century, are here no 
 longer. We know all about the matter now. We examine 
 the country geologically. We pound the quartz with en- 
 gines. We search the dross heaj) with mercury. All is 
 clear, precise, scientific, prosaic. We call the auriferous 
 localities, diggings ; a word hardly yet adapted for an epic 
 poem ! We know exactly what we have to expect when 
 we go out. If we find one or two nuggets, wo are fortu- 
 nate men ; but our principnl occupations must be digging, 
 with aching back, in a grave-like pit, and splashing and 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY. 41 
 
 rinsing among mud and puddle. The country, too, in which 
 we must work, is of the commonplace. Venturing into 
 the interior, of Australia at least, we may perish for 
 want of water. The natives are wretched Bushmen ; the 
 animals opossums and kangaroos. How different was it 
 in the days of Cortes and Pizarro, of Drake and Raleigh ! 
 If you went out with a few venturous companions, you 
 might found a kingdom, amass untold treasures, and eat 
 from dishes of gold. You expected to see the yellow metal 
 glittering on the mountain-side. The roots of the herb 
 you plucked up by the wayside might be intertwined with 
 wreaths of silver. You had heard of the golden city of 
 Manoa, in the midst of its sacred lake, where the eye lit 
 only on gold. Wise and sober men assured you of the 
 existence of this city, and the wandering Indians who told 
 the tale, themselves believed it. Tlie known wonders of 
 Mexico and Peru seemed to make nothing impossible. Far 
 away in the west, bosomed in forests to which the woods 
 of Europe were shrubberies, and over which gleamed a 
 thousand flowers, seated in that mystic lake, Manoa was, 
 for at least a century, the point towards which the eyes of 
 the daring and adventurous in the old lands were turned. 
 The magnificence of the other physical conditions of the 
 New World corresponded with its interest as the region 
 of exhaustless wealth. The Andes overtopped the Alps, 
 the European rivers dwindled to rivulets beside Amazon 
 and La Plata. The condor soared among the peaks and 
 snows of the mountains, the jaguar prowled amid the end- 
 less forests. Birds, whose plumage vied with the brilliancy 
 of the flowers around them, thronged the river banks, 
 perching on the boughs of gigantic trees, at whose foot 
 crocodiles lay basking in the sun. Let it now be conceived 
 that all this was borne to the nations of Europe on the 
 
 4* 
 
42 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 shadowy wings of rumor, and came with all the power of 
 novelty upon peoples still apt to wonder ; and some idea 
 will be formed of the witching splendors which encircled 
 America in the eyes of Europe, in the sixteenth century. 
 
 With such materials as these, the fervid imagination of 
 Mr. Kingsley could scarcely have failed to produce a power-' 
 ful efiect. N"o one can arise from his pages, however hasty 
 his perusal of the book, without having had his conception 
 of all connected with the period brought out in vivid clear- 
 ness. What we have said can convey but a very faint idea 
 of Mr. Kingsley's luxuriant description and fine enthusiasm. 
 His delineations of character, too, are by no means unsuc- 
 cessful. The English sea-captains of the period, those 
 
 " Adventurous hearts who barter'd bold 
 Their English blood for Spanish gold," 
 
 are brought before us face to face. There is, indeed, no at- 
 tempt made to depict the highest minds of the time in 
 their highest employments. We are brought once or twice 
 to glance for a moment into the councils of the nation, and 
 have a pretty distinct idea of the views entertained by the 
 great actors in the event of the book — the defeat of the 
 Armada. But Sir Amyas Leigh is really nothing better 
 than a rough, shrewd, resolute sea-captain ; one of a class 
 which may have influenced the destinies of England, but 
 hardly such an one as would individually exercise an im- 
 portant influence on them. We doubt not, however, that 
 precisely such men as this Sir Amyas wrested their gold 
 from the Spaniards in that century, bui-ned and ravaged 
 along the Spanish main, and prowled like wolves of the 
 ocean for the silver fleet. As we should have expected, 
 Mr. Kingsley has made them somewhat too talkative, but 
 we think that, in knowledge of the value of sUence, and 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY. 43 
 
 conception of the energy which seeks no vent in words, 
 there has been, since the days of Alton Locke and Yeast, 
 a marked imjDrovement. 
 
 Nor has Mr. Kingsley failed on the side of Spain. He 
 succeeds in fixing in his reader's intellectual vision, with a 
 power and boldness which give assurance that it will not 
 pass away, that figure of the Spaniard of the sixteenth 
 century. We mark his intense egotism, his national pride, 
 his boundless avarice, his cunning, and, above all, his cru- 
 elty. We hate his cold, clear, inevitable eye, his iron brow, 
 his closed and determined lip. But just as we are about 
 to turn from him in loathing, he is brought within the limits 
 at once of art and of nature, and we feel that we have stiU 
 a sympathy in which to embrace him ; for we mark his 
 dauntless valor. The contrast and the union of his quali- 
 ties Mr. Kingsley skilfully brings out ; and what acquaint- 
 ance we have with the history of the period, convinces us 
 that the distinct and striking portrait is closely accordant 
 with fact. 
 
 So far we can proceed with honest heartiness in admira- 
 tion and applause of Westward Ho ! But now we must 
 change our tone. It is not too much to say that every ele- 
 ment of truth and beauty in the book is all but neutralized, 
 by the jaresence of other elements, neither of truth nor of 
 beauty. In construction of plot, Mr. Kingsley never dis- 
 played remarkable skill. But his plot here — the whole 
 machinery of his novel — is an agglomeration of extrava- 
 gance and absurdity. The love afiair, though in some of 
 its touches drawn from the life, is, on the whole, prepostei'- 
 ous. As one passes from volume to volume, he is beset by 
 all the adjectives his vocabulary commands expressive of 
 prodigy, abortion and folly, each seeming to claim a part in 
 characterizing the successive absurdities. Once we lose 
 
44 CHARLES KIKOSLET. 
 
 sight of the love stories and their dependent circumstances, 
 all becomes comparatively right and true. Mr. Kingsley, 
 if his gaze is at times unsteady, if his hand is somewhat 
 apt to shake, may yet be said to be at home with reality. 
 His descriptions of South American river-scenery are mas- 
 terly. A comparison of his pictured pages with those of 
 Humboldt demonstrates minute accuracy. His sketches of 
 the landscapes of Devon are still better; distinct, bold, 
 beautiful. Of his treatment of strictly historical characters, 
 we have spoken. But of his management of plots and 
 love stories, we should rather not speak. Readers shall 
 judge for themselves. We must be excused for glancing 
 somewhat particularly at the incidents of Westward Hoi 
 Their eloquence will prove far more expressive than ours. 
 
 In the first chapter of the book, we are introduced to 
 the hero, a boy of fourteen, by no means clever, but ex- 
 tremely good-natured, and in physical proportions, a young 
 Hercules. Of course he is good-looking, has yellow locks, 
 etc., etc. His name is Amyas Leigh. He is the son of 
 Leigh of Burrough, near Bideford, then a considerable 
 town on the coast of Devon. StroUing through the streets 
 of Bideford, he is attracted by a group around a certain 
 Mr. Oxenham, a mariner, who has sailed to the Spanish 
 Main, and proposes to sail again. The right-hand man of 
 this Oxenham is a wild, rude, stalwart seaman, named Sal- 
 vation Teo, who, in the course of the tale, becomes a Puri- 
 tan of the Ironside order, and approves himself, if sharp 
 and biting as vinegar, yet true as steel. Young Master 
 Amyas has scarcely come up with the group, before we 
 learn that his heart is already set upon sea-life, and that 
 his dreams by night and by day are of the Spanish Main. 
 But he knows he is yet young, and being a sensible fellow, 
 is contented to wait. Mr. Oxenham sails on his voyage, 
 
CHARLES KINGSLET. 45 
 
 Salvation Yeo along with him. ; for a time both go off the 
 boards. Meanwhile the father of Amyas dies, leaving two 
 sons — the hero of the book, and Frank, older than he, a 
 scholar, courtier, perfect gentleman, and bold as a lion, 
 yet of tiny frame and delicate intellectual texture. After 
 a time, Amyas, tired of being flogged by a school-master 
 whom he has outgrown, one day playfully breaks his slate 
 over the pedagogue's head ; whereupon his godfather, Sir 
 Richard G-renvile, and the disrespectfully-treated instructor, 
 conclude that his studies of the humanities may be con- 
 sidered complete. At this point we hear of Rose Salteme, 
 yclept the Rose of Torridge, who, albeit she has no engag- 
 ing quality, beyond beauty and a fondness for romantic 
 narrative, has struck to the heart and vanquished every eligi- 
 ble youth in the neighborhood, and among the rest both 
 Frank and Amyas. We consider it a libel upon Devon- 
 shire to relate this universal falling in love. It is true 
 that Rose turns out better than was to have been expected ; 
 but in her girlhood she is nothing but a gay, sprightly, 
 fiivolous, village belle, of kind heart enough no doubt, and 
 clear harmless nature, but without a trait of such power as 
 might lead captive a strong man. And were there no 
 other pretty girls in Devon ? The fact is, Mr. Kingsley's 
 ladies, especially in the commencement of the book, are 
 insipid ; we have not been able to care a straw about any 
 one of them. Be the case as it might, it is distinctly 
 asserted of the young men of Devon that they all, with 
 one accord, fell in love with the Rose of Torridge ; and as 
 the proceeding was at first extremely foolish, its folly was 
 persevered in with admirable consistency. Rose probably 
 appreciated the silliness of their conduct, for, as the reader 
 will be gratified to hear, she cared for none of them. 
 In due time, Amyas sails on his first voyage, going round 
 
46 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 the world with Drake, whom, ever after, he regards as a 
 chief and hero among men. Of the voyage we have no 
 particulars, but, after much festivity on his return, he goes 
 to Ireland, to fight the Spaniards who have landed at Smer- 
 wick, and meets Raleigh and Spenser. Here he has the 
 misfortune to take a prisoner, named Don Guzman Maria 
 Magdalena Sotomayar de Soto, who at first is all that could' 
 be wished, and gives prospect of a rich ransom, but is the 
 cause ultimately of wo without end. Amyas finds some- 
 thing to engage him in Ireland, and sends his captive over 
 to Devon, to wait his arrival. Here the Don has, of course, 
 little to do, and being a handsome fellow, with a knack of 
 telling tales of his escapes and valorous deeds, with an 
 interesting sadness hanging about him — having, in short, 
 touches of Othello, of the Childe, and of Rochester, in his 
 composition — he is far more likely to be successful with 
 the young ladies than the mealy-mouthed lovers of Rose 
 Salterne. Many of the matches in the power of this young 
 lady would have been excellent. Amyas was sure of pro- 
 motion, and was a hearty, noble fellow. Frank was perfect 
 in courtesy, and sunned in the favor of Queen Elizabeth. 
 There were bonny estates enough in Devon which she 
 might have called her own. In fact, whether they had 
 declared or not — Amyas had not — there were multitudes 
 of suitors to choose among, any one of whom would have 
 made her hajspy. But this Don Guzman was decidedly 
 objectionable. He was a Spaniard, a Papist, a cajitive, one 
 who came with no introductions, and of whose prospects 
 you cbuld have no distinct idea. He foils in love, how- 
 ever, with Rose, though not in the fiery way in which 
 the Devonshire youth chose to do so, and she now, finding 
 a suitor for once independent and able to do without her, 
 responds passionately to his ajffection. Rose elopes with 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY. 47 
 
 her lover, and goes across to America, his wedded wife ; 
 a spirited proceeding, though, we allow, not unexampled. 
 But now the mischief begins to thicken. Frank had, ere- 
 while, persuaded the Devonshire suitors to form themselves 
 into a brotherhood, united by common devotion to the 
 lady, and bound both to cgnfer their friendship on the man 
 she finally preferred, and to stand like good knights be- 
 tween her and any evil. Finding themselves outwitted 
 by the Don, the young gentlemen are, of course, consider- 
 ably irritated, and since it is now an impossible case that 
 any good can result from an attempt at interference, they 
 forthwith resolve to interfere. They find a ship, call it 
 Rose, elect Amyas captain, and set sail after the bridal party 
 for the Spanish Main. One of the ship's company is Sal- 
 vation Yeo. He, it may be remembered, sailed with Mr. 
 Oxenham. That individual, a person of very imperfect 
 character, came to no good. The last words Yeo heard 
 from his lips were an entreaty to take care of his little 
 girl, a child of seven ; and the fixed idea of Yeo's life is 
 now to find this " little maid." She unfortunately has got 
 into the hands of the Spaniards, and her chances of turn- 
 ing up, unless she happen to be needed by the novelist, 
 are few indeed. It is not mentioned that, on the occasion 
 of the departure of the good ship Rose, the shore was 
 lined with spectators, who expressed their interest in the 
 enterprise by shouts of laughter. But certainly no expe- 
 dition so ridiculous ever set sail before or after, in fact or 
 fiction, and we can only pronounce the whole affair a joke 
 too far overdone to be amusing. Meanwhile, the married 
 pair had been as happy as possible. Rose declared after- 
 wards, that at this period she was in Paradise. At least 
 we may conclude that there were no serious quarrels. But, 
 lo ! there appears a cormorant, to bring dismay into this 
 
48 CHAKLES KINGSLET. 
 
 South American Eden. It is a young Roman Catholic, 
 formerly a lover of the bride, and a cousin of Frank and 
 Amyas, wholly under the influence of the Jesuits, and dis- 
 posed, in this household, to do as much mischief as he can. 
 He is perhaps the most watery edition of lago that has ap- 
 peared, as is Rose of Desdemona; for in the skeleton of 
 Mr. Kingsley's tale there is here a singular resemblance to 
 that not very recondite history of Othello. The modem 
 lago strives to awaken jealousy in the breast of Don Guz- 
 man. In this his attempt would probably have been vain, 
 had not those moonstruck lovers come peering across the 
 Atlantic, at a time when every sensible fi-iend knows he is 
 not wanted. Of course, if a whole cargo of lovers come 
 after your wife, you may have some qualms about the ex- 
 clusiveness of her aflFection ; and if the most insane of these 
 come into your garden at night, when you are from home, 
 and your wife, though with the purest intentions, finds 
 herself in the garden at the same time, is it in human pen- 
 etration to pierce the falsehood and malice of a Jesuitic 
 backbiter, who is on the watch for suspicious circumstances, 
 and probably believes in an assignation himself? The end 
 is, that the Inquisition gets hold of both Frank Leigh and 
 the Rose of Torridge, and they die at the stake. The ship 
 Rose now engages in a bloody conflict with certain Spanish 
 vessels, and, being unable to stand a homeward voyage, 
 and proper refitting being impossible, is run ashore, and 
 burned. Its crew, with Amyas at their head, set out on 
 the search for Manoa, and wander for years amid the South 
 American forests. 
 
 After the death of his brother, and his former beloved, 
 it becomes the one aim of the existence of Amyas to wreak 
 his vengeance on the Spaniards, and particularly to come to 
 mortal combat witli Don Guzman. Yeo still keeps looking 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY. 49 
 
 out for his " little maid," and, as every reader of discern- 
 ment will have guessed, he is ultimately blessed with the 
 attainment of his wish. How this comes to pass ; how a 
 fair being, holding partly of Helen of Loch Katrine, partly 
 of Dido queen of Carthage, partly of Diana, huntress of 
 the Aonian wilds, and partly of an Indian squaw, suddenly 
 appeared on an island in the Meta ; how, by slow degrees, 
 she came to honor the white men and love one of them ; 
 how she was the queen and something like the goddess of 
 an Indian tribe ; how she followed the party when they 
 departed, and could not be got rid of even when they 
 arrived in England ; how her savagery was eradicated, and 
 she became all that Wordsworth demanded in a perfect , 
 woman nobly planned ; and how, as is so often the case, 
 the course of true love comes, in the long run, straight and 
 smooth ; all this is deliberately detailed to us by Mr. Kings- 
 ley ! It would be difficult to say whether the incidents 
 connected with the love story of which the Rose of Tor- 
 ridge is the heroine, or those of the touching tale in which 
 this interesting beauty of the woods is made to figure, are 
 the more childish and extravagant. It gives such narra- 
 tives a peculiar and exquisite zest, to remember that they 
 are from the pen of a clergyman of the Church of England, 
 of decided philosophical leanings, and who believes him- 
 self not to belong to the Minerva Press or Rosewater 
 schools. It is strange that a writer, with not a little his- 
 torical knowledge, and some command over reality, should 
 take his place as a constructor of plot, somewhere between 
 a nursery-maid and an Arabian romancer. 
 
 We are strongly moved to hazard the assertion, that Mr. 
 Kingsley has never yet found the most suitable channel for 
 his genius. His personal likings are too intense for a dram- 
 atist ; he possesses not the calm thought or invention ne- 
 
 SECOND SEKIES. 5 
 
50 CHARLES KIKGSLEY. 
 
 cessaryinthe construction of an effective plot or the conduct 
 of a protracted narrative ; his province is not that of pure 
 argument. But he lacks not lyric fire, and every tone that 
 he would draw from the lyre would be a tone of nobleness. 
 Were he to cast off every trammel of plot or action, and 
 break forth into glorious choral songs, tingling with sym- 
 2)athy for the poor and oppressed, glittering in those hues 
 which are too dazzling in prose, he might, perhaps, give 
 the age a few lyrics as certain of immortality as The Psalm 
 of Life. 
 
 On the whole, Mr. Kingsley must be pronounced a man 
 of rich and versatile genius, his powers of great range and 
 .excellent quality, his nature kindly, aspiring, and free from 
 guile. His deficiencies are no less obvious, and we cannot 
 hesitate to affirm that he lacks in many matters of capital 
 importance. So devoid is he of calmness, method, and the 
 power of seeing things in their relative proportions and 
 bearings, that he scarcely deserves the name of thinker. 
 His mind is of that kind, in dealing with which it is even 
 more than ordinarily absurd, to confound the actual beliefs 
 with the logical, to consider assertion of fact or promul- 
 gation of theory, as necessarily implying acceptation of 
 the collateral circumstances of the one, or intelligent belief 
 in the philosophical grounds of the other. Mr. Kingsley's 
 system of thought is an eclecticism without a central point. 
 Platonism, Fichtean Ego-worship, Carlylian hero-worship, 
 Christianity, mingle their elements in his mind, chaotic in 
 their confusion, though gorgeous in their tints. He seems 
 as one sailing on a wild sea, the view obscured with flying 
 foam, but the sun, from above, lighting the prospect, here 
 and there, with glorious bursts of illumination. He cannot 
 plant his foot firmly on the deck, and look fixedly, until he 
 once for all knows that the shore lies there. His eye glan- 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY. 51 
 
 ces from point to point of the horizon, wherever a sun-gleam 
 breaks out, wherever a new iris passes wavering along the 
 foam. Every flash of beauty he hails; into every opening, 
 under the fringe of foam and cloud, he peers. But he forgets 
 that the essential point is to learn the precise bearings of the 
 shore ; for the night cometh, and the shore of truth is one. 
 It is not an altogether seemly spectacle, this of a man tossed 
 about ^t the mercy of his instincts, restless and agitated, 
 not impressed with manly consistency and calmness by a 
 reason that believes and a faith that knows ! The great 
 problem of the place occupied by Christianity in human 
 history, its relation to human interests, its connection with 
 human ethics, he cannot be said to have solved. In his 
 novels, with all their elevating morality, there is no solution 
 expressly given ; what is still more important, there is none 
 tacitly implied. We do not see that the virtues of his 
 characters bud upon the Christian Vine. We cannot per- 
 ceive in what sense he understands that Christianity makes 
 all things new. And, as a Christian minister, this is what 
 all men have a i-ight to demand of him. You cannot claim 
 of a man that his intellect be profound or his taste exquis- 
 ite, but you may demand of every man that he hold what 
 light he has clearly before you, that he have strength and 
 honesty to say he is this and not that, that he have a faith 
 and know it. 
 
II. 
 
 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAT. 
 
 Thomas Babingtoit Macaulay was bom in 1800, the 
 eldest son of the well-known Zachary Macaulay, a wealthy 
 West Indian merchant. By birth he ik English ; by ex- 
 traction he is Scotch. The early part of his education 
 was conducted at home; in 1818, he commenced his uni- 
 versity studies at Trinity College, Cambridge. Of his 
 university career we know nothing more than that it was 
 precisely what might be inferred from his course and char- 
 acter in after years. He was very highly distinguished as a 
 classical scholar, was known as a leading speaker in college 
 societies, and, for his wide and varied acquirements, which 
 he displayed in brilliant conversation as well as in debate, 
 was called by his fellows " the omniscient Macaulay." He 
 was still a youth when he produced two pieces in verse — 
 the one a fragment, the other a iinished and remarkably 
 line production — entitled, respectively, the Armada and 
 Ivry. Then, we think, one who could read the literary 
 auguries, and who had his eye on the young student, might 
 have discerned some distinct glimmerings of that light that 
 was to shine with so clear and fascinating a radiance. 
 The classical distinction might be witnessed every day, the 
 brilliancy of conversation and spirit in debate might excite 
 neither surprise nor expectation, thousands of young men 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 63 
 
 have versified, and with considerable vigor ; but when very- 
 high classic attainments were united with singular knowl- 
 edge of modern history and literature, and a fine, strong, 
 clear gleam was thrown over all by poetic fire, the union 
 might be pronounced rare and hopeful. We would form 
 no common ideas of the youth who could offer us for in- 
 spection such a picture as this : — 
 
 " With his white head unbonneted the stout old sheriff comes ; 
 Behind him march the halberdiers, before him sound the drums ; 
 His yeomen round the market-cross make clear an ample space, 
 For there behooves him to set up the standard of her Grace. 
 And haughtily the trumpets peal, and gayly dance the bells, 
 And slow upon the laboring wind the royal blazon swells. 
 Look how the lion of the sea Ufts up his ancient crown, 
 And underneath his deadly paw treads the gay lilies down. 
 So stalk'd he when he turn'd to flight, on that famed Picard field, 
 Bohemia's plume, and Genoa's bow, and Caesar's eagle shield. 
 So glared he when at Agincourt in wrath he turn'd to bay, 
 And crush'd and torn beneath his claws the princely hunters lay. 
 Ho ! strike the flagstaff deep, sir knight ; ho ! scatter flowers, fair 
 
 maids ; 
 Ho ! gunners, fire a loud salute ; ho ! gallants, draw your blades ; 
 Thou, sun, shine on her joyously ; ye breezes, waft her wide ; 
 Our glorious Semper Eadem, the banner of our pride." 
 
 Here are displayed an eye for the picturesque, a power 
 of grouping, and a command of color, which the first painter 
 in England, either with pen or paint brush, might have 
 emulated. In the same piece, the faculty which has been 
 used with such signal success in the Lays of Rome — the 
 faculty of perceiving the musical cadence of particular 
 names, and introducing them to deepen and strengthen the 
 melody of his verses — was displayed as finely and eflfec- 
 
 5* 
 
54 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 
 
 tively as it has ever since been. In Iwy, a waim, youthful 
 enthusiasm burns through every line, and an attentive 
 observer might have discerned that there was much in its 
 glowing fervor to distinguish it from early productions in 
 general. The picturesqueness found its origin in a happy 
 selection and grouping of telling facts and events, with 
 neither the dimness nor the glare of verbiage ; the spirit 
 and ardor were an echo of the feelings of the time and 
 scene which formed the subject of the poem, and owed 
 nothing to sounding commonplace or redundant adjective. 
 The flowers were the lilies of France; the snow-white plume 
 was the very one which Henry wore ; the flag of Lorraine 
 was historically painted ; and they all took their places in 
 the artistic picture without any aid from Minerva, or Yul- 
 can, or the steeds of Mars. Already it might be said that 
 this man rode a Cappadocian courser of rare breed, and no 
 common hack; he was already far beyond the general band; 
 he had bidden adieu to commonplace. He was not yet 
 known to his countrymen in general; but the time wasjit 
 hand when he was to emerge from the calm regions of 
 privacy and silence, and become a name forever. 
 
 He was about twenty-five years of age when he left col- 
 lege ; he was " fresh from coUege " when he wrote his essay 
 on Milton. The step was now taken iiTCversibly ; the au- 
 thor of " Milton " became at once a marked and applauded 
 man. He might well be so ; there were few such essays in 
 our literature at the time. It was written in that speaking 
 style, where the eye of the' author, writing in all the fervor 
 of generous enthusiasm, seems to flash from every line; it 
 i-olled on like a molten stream, glowing and impetuous ; 
 and, when you looked, it seemed as if gold and pearls had 
 been lavishly thrown in, and all rushed down in princely 
 magnificence. Amazement' at the range of learning was 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 65 
 
 heightened by its rare accuracy and minuteness ; astonish- 
 ment at the profusion of imagery was enhanced by its 
 splendor, freshness, and exquisite point; and the sound 
 heart rejoiced above all, that the genius, which was minis- 
 tered to by such taste and such ti-easures, was kindled and 
 presided over by noble sentiment and devotion to truth. 
 The hand that drew the portrait of Dante, it was felt, pos- 
 sessed a strength and a precision of touch, which might 
 add many a deathless portrait to our national gallery of 
 fame ; the magazine of literary adornment, in which were 
 ranged — all, it appeared, equally ready to the hand — the 
 terrors of ^Eschylus and the flowers of Ariosto, the facts 
 of history and the colors of fiction, seemed inexhaustible ; 
 and the eye which, with sympathetic fire, gazed across the 
 intervening years to the men of England's noblest time, 
 with a glance of proud recognition, was at once believed 
 to possess a power of vision capable of penetrating far and 
 deep into the recesses of our history. The sensation cre- 
 ated by the appearance of this essay was, from all we have 
 been able to learn, profound. Mr. GilfiUan mentions that 
 Robert Hall, when sixty years old, commenced the study 
 of Italian, in order to verify Macaulay's references to Dante. 
 We think any amount of applause was justifiable ; Mr. Mac- 
 aulay wove a brUIiant crown of amaranth and gold for one 
 of the noblest men that England ever produced, and it was 
 right that its gleam should be reflected on himself. 
 
 We have now arrived at a turning-point in Mr. Macau- 
 lay's history. In the essay on Milton, he. wrote with a 
 fervor which seemed scai-cely restrainable by the foims of 
 composition ; he scattered his riches around him like an 
 ancient Peruvian monarch, with inexhaustible wealth, but 
 knowing not its value ; his decisions were firm and clear, 
 but brightened by a rapture as of poetry. That this would 
 
56 'il-IOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 
 
 to some extent alter, was plain; but there were varioug 
 ways in which it might change. The thought might deepen, 
 the decoration might be laid on more sparingly, but the 
 fervid, poetic sympathy with what was noble and true, 
 might endure or even strengthen ; then might the panegyr- 
 ist of Milton, though certainly with no such regal tread as 
 his mighty countryman, emulate Milton himself. Or, all 
 exuberance might be restrained, and the most rigid censor- 
 ship be established over every portion of the style ; whUe 
 the enthusiasm and fervor of youth might be chained sub- 
 missively to the car of a carefully-going logic. We speak 
 in the language neither of censure nor of applause ; we 
 mention merely a fact, when we say, that the latter of 
 these two supposable cases was, approximately at least, the 
 actual one. Mr. Macaulay's style became measured, care- 
 ful, and comparatively cold; in his mode of thought, he 
 exchanged the fervid brilliancy of poetry, for the clear, 
 frosty light of bare logic. 
 
 We must here be permitted to express the extreme diffi- 
 culty we have experienced in endeavoring to analyze Mr. 
 Macaulay's history, as a writer and thinker, and exhibit it 
 as a consistent and complete development. We feel that 
 we require some more information than his works afford to 
 account for the phenomena. To trace the formation of 
 his style to a certain point, is easy ; to discern the consis- 
 tency of his system of opinion, and the strict correspond- 
 ence of his style with this system, when each is completely 
 developed, is also a practicable task ; but to assign and 
 trace the causes which transmuted the impetuous, aspiring, 
 impassioned writer of the essay upon Milton, into the calm, 
 unimpassioned, practical Macaulay, who wrote the essay 
 upon Bacon and the essay upon llanke, is a problem of 
 which we can offer nothing better than a conjectural solu- 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAT. 57 
 
 tion. "We have sometimes fancied that the glowing fires 
 of youthful enthusiasm had been damped by some youthful 
 sorrow ; that, fi'om the pinions of those golden dreams, on 
 which in boyhood and early youth we float, he had been 
 dashed suddenly upon the hard, actual ground of life, and 
 had risen a calm scrutinizer, a logical examiner, and a 
 scorner of the ideal : and we have very often imagined 
 that it was all brought about by a too impetuous recoil 
 fi-om anything approaching to bombast, from any appear- 
 ance of commonplace ; that he heard the general vocifera- 
 tion and rant about ideals and infinites, about tyrants and 
 slaves, about liberty and despotism, and, feeling his English 
 common sense outraged by the din, took refuge in a strictly 
 practical set of opinions, and a measured, unimpassioned 
 style. Whatever the cause, the Macaulay of youth was 
 different from the Macaulay of manhood ; and we proceed 
 to set forth, to the best of our ability, what the Macaulay 
 of manhood is. 
 
 To indicate what we deem the highest order of mind, 
 we shall instance that of Plato ; the example is trite, but 
 we have not space for one which cannot be speedily des- 
 patched. And we need scarcely say that it is but in one 
 aspect that we glance at the mind of Plato. That aspect 
 we in a word define, its attitude towards the infinite. It 
 was a mighty force, and, being a mighty force, could not 
 spend itself in shattering small fences ; it directed itself 
 mainly to penetrate the clouds of mystery above and below, 
 to answer the dread questions which, like swords of flam- 
 ing fire, tokens of imprisonment, encompass ma© on earth. 
 Such a mind sees the practical, but holds it of small com- 
 parative value ; in every direction it penetrates as far as a 
 human mind can penetrate, and then, with a tear such as 
 angels weep, gazes up the height which it cannot scale ; 
 
58 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 
 
 if we have here our all, it exclaims with Fichte, then a 
 doctrine of universal suicide is the only gospel for man. 
 
 In strong contrast to this order of minds, is that at the 
 head of which, by universal consent, stands that of Bacon. 
 Why forever attempt, it says, to scale the infinite ? why 
 still invest a city whose walls reach unto heaven, and round 
 which the human race has sat in vain since its infancy? 
 Let us sow fields and plant vineyards here in the plain be- 
 low, and then may we hope for a happiness that is realiz- 
 able. 
 
 To this last order of minds, of which the grades are in- 
 numerable, Mr. Macaulay belongs, and has belonged ever 
 since his mind settled into manhood. He speaks not of 
 ideals; he generalizes calmly and cautiously; he rests con- 
 tent, where he deems a difiiculty insoluble, in the conviction 
 that it is so. He will have only the good things he can 
 see, and will fly to no others that he knows not of His 
 mind is of that sort which rests satisfied in the fabric of 
 human knowledge as it is, and is urged by no insatiable 
 longings to discover how its foundations are connected 
 with the infinite ; which declares the barriers that obstruct 
 man simply insuperable, and which contentedly devotes 
 its energies to imj^rove and beautify the space distinctly 
 Avithin those barriers ; which concerns itself with the actual, 
 not the ideal ; which keeps by the natural as distinguished 
 from the supernatural. This character is seen in all his 
 opinions. It is ministered to by faculties of a high order : 
 a memory of amazing range and minuteness ; a judgment, 
 in the questions which alone it discusses, clear, discrimina- 
 tive, sound ; a taste delicately fastidious ; and an imagina- 
 tion, not creative, or, to use a more correct word, combi- 
 native, but extremely clear-seeing. We shall endeavor to 
 exhibit his fundamental opinions, in a brief survey of his 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 59 
 
 views on religion, on philosophy, and on government ; and 
 shall then notice his manner of communicating these as a 
 ■\viiter and speaker. 
 
 In his religion, Mr. Macaulay is certainly not ideal. A 
 certain set of virtues are to be practised, a certain set of 
 vices are to be shunned ; and the whole is transacted, as it 
 were, by rule and measure. We do not like to speak of 
 the infinite element in humanity, and far less of the organ 
 by which, according to some, we become acquainted with 
 the infinite. Yet we assert that there is undoubtedly in 
 the human mind a feeling of wants which earth cannot 
 supply, and a set of questionings which time cannot answer. 
 It is this looking, earnestly gazing aspect which distin- 
 guishes man as man ; and we can recognize little in the 
 religion which does not, directly and constantly, concern 
 itself with the agency of God and the scenes of eternity. 
 In Mr. Macaulay's religious system, we can discern little or I 
 none of this connection with what is infinite ; we have 
 seen no traces of fiery conflict with doubt, we have seen 
 nothing which would lead us to believe that he did not 
 consider those doubts which shake strong, nay, the strong- j 
 est minds, mere delusions, and esteem the victory, which,! 
 in an agony of eloquent joy, they proclaim that they have 
 won, a mere dream. We shall prove and illustrate our 
 remarks by an instance or two. 
 
 In his far-famed essay on Ranke's History of the Popes, 
 Mr. Macaulay remarks of the Church of Rome : — " She 
 saw the commencement of all the governments, and of all 
 the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the world; 
 and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see 
 the end of them all. She was great and respected before 
 the Saxon had set foot in Britain, before the Frank had 
 passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished 
 
60 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 
 
 in Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple 
 of Mecca. And she may still exist, in undiminished vigor, 
 when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst 
 of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of Lon- 
 don Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's When 
 
 we reflect on the tremendous assaults which she has sur- 
 vived, we find it difiicult to conceive in what way she is to 
 perish." 
 
 We shall not pass in review the temporal and earthly 
 causes which Mr. Macaulay examines as bearing on the 
 question of the endurance of the Papacy ; we shall merely 
 suggest a view of the subject which he does not take, and 
 a possible method of destruction which has escaped his 
 notice. Suppose there are elements in the settlement of 
 the question which are out of the sphere of earth alto- 
 gether ; suppose it is true that a God, whose will is ex- 
 pressed in millions of solar systems, really manages the 
 matter ; and suppose that he has breathed into one system 
 the breath of life, and made it a living, an immortal soul, 
 while he has destined the other to abide for a time, and 
 then to pass away forever ! This belief Mr. Macaulay can- 
 not consider very crude or antiquated ; we should not much 
 value the Protestantism of him who did not put his trust 
 in this for the endless existence of his system ; and yet it 
 is ignored. We can scarce conceive anything more ghastly 
 or barren than the view which Mr. Macaulay gives us; 
 looking down the vista of the ages, he sees nothing but 
 the old war of systems and names, a haggard, cheerless 
 region, inhabited by fogs and sleety showers, and cold, 
 biting tempests, without any ray of beneficent light from 
 above, to irradiate the gloom and restrain the confusion. 
 We acknowledge a brighter hope : we look for a dawn 
 whose beams of heaven-born light will smite the woman 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 61 
 
 of the Seven Hills with blindness, and bid her pass, in her 
 garments draggled with the best blood of earth, into ever- 
 lasting night. We still believe there is light thrown on 
 the matter by that old and singular passage, which, on any 
 hypothesis save ours, is surely a difficult enigma, and which 
 speaks of a certain " wicked " which was to be revealed, 
 and which, it is said, " the Lord shall consume with the 
 spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness 
 of his coming." We must concede to Mr. Macaulay that, 
 counting on the operation only of earthly causes, his argu- 
 ing has great force ; but his practical religion is utterly 
 insufficient to give a satisfactory decision on the point. 
 And, even on the lowest hypothesis, Mr. Macaulay's conclu- 
 sion excites our utter astonishment. Reason and Scripture, 
 he tells us, were on the side of the Protestants ; and does 
 he really feel satisfied, under the shade of a creed which 
 grants to what is contrary to reason — that is, what is un- 
 true — an equal duration, an equal possibility of duration, 
 with that which is true ? It is a doctrine to drive mankind 
 mad. We believe that truth bears with it the seal-royal of 
 Jehovah, nay, that truth, in all its forms, is the voice of 
 Jehovah, which originally created and ever supports the 
 universe ; and, if this belief is taken away — though we 
 can certainly have no more grief, since every sorrow is 
 swallowed .up in one unutterable wo — it is mockery to 
 talk of joy. With a man of earnest religious mind, the 
 first question in settling the matter would surely be — 
 " Which system is true ? " Here is a complex and marvel- 
 lously perfect mechanism ; as perfect in all its adornments, 
 and as during, to all appearance, as that famed palace, 
 which once arose like an exhalation, and which owed its 
 origin, as we poor fanatics believe, to a somewhat similar 
 agency ; it is said to be false in the core. Here, on the 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 6 
 
62 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 
 
 Other side, is an unassuming system, divided, shattered, 
 talking in many dialects, deficient in machinery; but in it 
 there is believed to lie somewhere the very truth of God. 
 Which will endure, and which will pass away ? If there 
 is a God who is true, the question is simply — which is 
 true ? if there is no God, the matter is more complicated. 
 Here, then, very strikingly, does Mr. Macaulay hold by the 
 natural as distinguished from the supernatural. 
 
 We may here, as fitly as elsewhere, glance at Mr. Ma- 
 caulay's strongly expressed opinion respecting the source 
 of the gross immorality of the Restoration. He traces it 
 simjjly to the Puritans : their rule, he says, produced pub- 
 lic hypocrisy, which, when it could, flung off the mask, and 
 showed the face of public infamy. Now, we do not deny 
 that the Puritans, earnest, godly, truly noble men as they 
 were, directed themselves too much to externals, and pro- 
 scribed, in some instances, what they should not have med- 
 dled with. But Mr. Macaulay's analysis is, we must think, 
 superficial : the source of the phenomenon he explains lies 
 deeper — in the corrupt nature of man. We believe the 
 princijjle was radically the same which we see acting, so 
 often and so banefully, in the history of the Hebrew com- 
 monwealth. After each period of marked national godli- 
 ness, there was a period of marked national decay ; it was 
 so after the era of Joshua, so after the era of .Samuel, so 
 after the era of David, so always. And was it the godli- 
 ness of those periods that occasioned the iniquity of the 
 succeeding time ? Surely not : it Avas the recoil from god- 
 liness of the evil heart of man. The sun shone clear and 
 bright, and beneficently warm ; but a mist arose from th^ 
 earth which darkened his face ; and shall we say it was the 
 shining which caused the darkness? No; we shall rather 
 say that England at the Restoration " closed her Bible ; " 
 
THOMAS B-ABINGTON MACAULAY. 63 
 
 that the radiance of that time was too bright for her daz- 
 zled eyes ; that men love darkness rather than the light. 
 Mr. Macaulay's account of the phenomenon embodies truth, 
 but neither the whole truth, nor the most important truth 
 in the matter. 
 
 When we turn to consider Mr. Macaulay's decisions con- 
 cerning the religion of individuals as distinguished from 
 that of systems, we find the same ignoring of the super- 
 natural which meets us elsewhere. We hear of the " hys- 
 terical tears of such a soldier as Cromwell : " " Scarcely 
 any madhouse," we are told, " could produce an instance 
 of delusion so strong, or of misery so acute," as those of 
 Bunyan in his early doubts, and struggles, and victory. 
 Now, we can hardly think it possible that a man who ever 
 passed through such mental conflicts as those of Bunyan 
 or Cromwell could talk so ; and Mr. Macaulay seems to 
 ignore, as simply out of the question, the Christian doctrine 
 
 — with which strict Christianity stands or falls — that 
 there is really such a thing as spiritual influence from on 
 high upon the human mind. If there is no God — if 
 heaven and hell are illusions — if time is a reality, and 
 eternity a dream — then Bunyan's woes and Cromwell's 
 " hysterical tears " deserved a smile of mingled pity and 
 contempt; but if there is' a God — if heaven and hell are 
 realities — if eternity is an infinite reality, and time a fleet- 
 ing vision — or even if Bunyan and Cromwell believed so 
 
 — then surely, when they considered their infinite concerns 
 in danger, it was conceivable enough, or even logical, that 
 they should be moved regariJing them. " The hysterical 
 tears of such a soldier as Cromwell ! " Singular as it may 
 look, such tears have not in general unnerved the arm of 
 action. King David could wield las sword, could rule his 
 kingdom, could hew the nations in pieces with right valor 
 
64 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 
 
 and energy; but he wept more even than Cromwell. P:uil 
 felt his sins to be a fearful burden ; yet he was no vague 
 arguer, and no loitering worker. In fact, if we examine, 
 the mystery seems to vanish. The belief that there is an 
 Eye that "slumbers not nor sleeps" — an Eye which guards 
 the universe — continually fixed upon each motion, and 
 penetrating every thought — seems to have a tendency, 
 which can be traced, to make one do his work with his 
 might, uncaring what earth can do to him or give to him, 
 but caring, with unmeasured concern, to perform the task 
 appointed him. 
 
 This fatal defect in Mr. Macaulay's religious views viti- 
 ates his opinions on two subjects, to which we can but 
 refer: on the great religious revolution of the sixteenth 
 century, and the Pilgriiri's Progress of Bunyan. It ren- 
 ders his account of the Reformation, actually and literally, 
 an account of the growth of a forest, without once men- 
 tioning the principle of life which gave it animation. To 
 explain this principle of life is not requisite, but to ac- 
 knowledge its presence is utterly indispensable. Mr. Mae- 
 aulay gives us those few causes of the great movement of 
 the sixteenth century, which may be found in the state of 
 the respective reformed nations at the time of the Refor- 
 mation ; but he never asks whether the doctrine of Protes- 
 tantism was an emanation from the throne of God, and 
 we never hear that intense personal earnestness to flee 
 from the wrath to come really kindled the flame which set 
 Europe in a blaze. 
 
 There is incorrectness — at least, deficiency — in Mr. 
 Macaulay's views respecting the FUgi-im's Progress. These 
 have been much spoken of, and much admired, but we can- 
 not join fully in the applause. Here, again, the vital ele- 
 ment is ignored — the fact that Bunyan believed he was 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 65 
 
 clothing in a garb, ■which is formed almost entirely of Scrip- 
 tural imagery, the truths of Christian experience. It is 
 not because it is a literary mastei-piece, or for any literary 
 reason, that Bunyan's work has been so popular with all 
 classes ; but because it reads off, in a dialect which every 
 peasant-Christian can understand, the feelings which every 
 peasant-Christian has known. That the literary excellence 
 of Bunyan's famous work is very high, we admit ; that 
 Mr. Macaulay has spoken beautifully of that excellence, is 
 also true ; and we deny not that the work has been ad- 
 mired by many who could not read it in the spirit thereof; 
 yet we must assert that Mr. Macaulay, in criticising it, has 
 omitted an all-important element. 
 
 The order and the depth of Mr. Macaulay's religious 
 sentiments may be illustrated by a momentary glance at 
 the man whom, of all others, he appears to have selected 
 for admiration. In speaking of Addison, the cold, accu- 
 rate measurement of his developed style seems to warm 
 into something akin to the fervid enthusiasm which guided 
 his pen when he wrote of Milton. Addison is the model 
 virtuous man ; immaculate, unoffending, turning a smiling 
 face on all; but by no means a penetrating, fiery soul. 
 Him Mr. Macaulay delights to honor, and by his creed, as 
 it appears to us, Mr. Macaulay has shaped his own. Mil- 
 ton was a very different man from Addison ; a much more 
 questionable and daring spirit ; one who believed his creed 
 to be written in heaven, or to be none ; a man in whose 
 life may be found certain points which make even an ardent 
 admirer question and doubt. But every spot is a spot in a 
 garment of brightness; we can liken him to one of his 
 own martial angels, passing over the earth, upon whose 
 celestial armor cei-tain stains, imparted by the foul atmos- 
 phere, abide for a time. Addison walked according to the 
 
 6* 
 
66 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 
 
 rules of virtue, and his path was smooth ; Milton trod along 
 his rugged way, urged by the fire within, and found his 
 path through this world a very stern and toilsome journey. 
 Mr. Macaulay in his youth wrote of Milton in a strain 
 which would have kindled the eye of the princely bard 
 with sympathy ; Mr. Macaulay, in the fulness of his years, 
 wrote of Addison in a strain of such softened beauty, with 
 such a thorough aj)preciation of his virtue and talents, that 
 the mild author of the Spectator would have approved and 
 rejoiced. 
 
 In every instance, then, Mr. Macaulay's religion is seen 
 to be of the easy-going, unoffending order ; it concerns not 
 itself with any of the mysteries which torture the individ- 
 ual mind ; it ignores conversion in the sense in which Bun- 
 yan and Cromwell used the word ; it recognizes Christianity 
 as a system of virtues and rules, and seems to proceed in 
 the ignorance that it can be anything essentially different 
 from a mere ethical system ; it is not pervaded with the 
 spirit of that Book which the most earnest of the sons of 
 men have believed to be a message from Heaven. His re- 
 ligion is the normal product of his mind ; it suffices for all 
 ordinary matters of life, and concerns not itself with the 
 ideal or the infinite. And here we must differ essentially 
 with Mr. Macaulay ; whatever else may be bounded, relig- 
 ion must be ideal, must hold of the infinite, or is nothing ; 
 its aim must be the glories of heaven, its morality the holi- 
 ness of God. 
 
 Of Mr. Macaulay's philosophy, it is unnecessary to speak 
 at length ; it coiTesponds strictly with the general structure 
 of his mind. It is practical, wholly practical, immediately 
 practical. In his essay on Bacon, his views are unfolded 
 with unmistakable clearness. He contrasts the two grand 
 orders of human intellect in the person of Bacon and of 
 
THOMAS BABINGTOK MACAULAY. 67 
 
 Plato, and lie speaks thus : " To sum up the whole, we 
 should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to 
 exalt man into a God ; the aim ot the Baconian philosophy 
 was to provide man with what he requires while he contin- 
 ues to be man. The aim ot the Platonic philosophy was 
 to raise us above vulgar wants ; the aim of the Baconian 
 philosophy was to supply our vulgar wants. The former 
 aim was noble ; but the latter was attainable. Plato drew 
 a good bow ; but, like Acestes in Virgil, he aimed at the 
 stars ; and therefore, though there was no want of strength 
 or skill, the shot was thrown away. His aiTow was indeed 
 followed by a track of dazzling radiance, but it struck noth- 
 ing:— 
 
 " Volans liquidis in nubibus arsit arundo, 
 Signavitque viam flammis, tenuesque recessit 
 Consumta in ventos." 
 
 Bacon fixed his eye on a mark which was placed on the 
 earth, and within bowshot, and hit it in the white. The 
 philosophy of Plato began in words, and ended in words ; 
 noble words, indeed, words such as were to be expected 
 from the finest of human intellects exercising boundless 
 dominion over the finest of human languages. The philos- 
 ophy of Bacon began in observations, and ended in arts." 
 
 It is not in our province at present to inquire, whether 
 Mr. Macaulay has, here and in the other paragraphs of his 
 essay, given a precisely correct estimate of the Platonic 
 and Baconian systems of philosophy; what we have quoted 
 is sufiicient to indicate the philosophical tendencies of the 
 writer, and it is with him we here concern ourselves. 
 Of his criticism of Plato, in this view, and his own philoso- 
 phy as thence inferred, we say simply, that it again restricts 
 itself to the finite, the temporal, the immediately practi- 
 
68 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 
 
 cal. If there is no infinite towards which the mind of 
 man must gaze, then is the philosophy of Plato, in great 
 part, a mere abortion, born of vacancy ; if the thoughts 
 which wander through eternity indicate nothing, then is it 
 a mere vagary. But, if this insatiable longing, which has 
 moved the mightiest human minds ; this profound feeling 
 that the earth can never satisfy the immortal soul ; this 
 earnest calling, in all generations, to the earth below and 
 the heaven above to tell us why and whence we are, and 
 whither we go, are all intimations of some state whence 
 we have fallen, and monitions towards some nobler dwell- 
 ing-place than we now occupy ; then the philosophy which 
 concerns itself with these is a noble attendant upon human- 
 ity. I come not, it may say, to tell you how to till your 
 ground, or to spin your flax ; I cannot with demonstrable 
 certainty tell you anything; but I can at least, in the voices 
 of the noblest of earth's sons, warn you that there is some- 
 thing to be known, beyond what is seen ; that the Uttle 
 world does not bound the wants or capabilities of man. 
 The human mind has in all ages exclaimed, " I care not 
 though you carpet my world with flowers, and roof my 
 house with gold, and cover my table with dainties; I shall 
 forever gaze up that wall, over which some clusters of 
 heavenly fruit I can still discern hanging, though I cannot 
 now touch them ; and I will rather gaze wistfully at what 
 reminds me of my ancient glory, and awakens a hope for 
 eternity, than spend all my energies on what is really and 
 utterly unable to make me happy." But, even on Mr. 
 Macaulay's own grounds, we cannot grant that he has fairly 
 represented the work done by the Platonic philosophy and 
 ancient philosophy in general. He asks triumphantly what 
 it did, and we venture to answer. It did much. "Were we 
 to shelter ourselves behind the grand fact, that " nothing 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAT. 69 
 
 is which errs from law," we should hold ourselves justified 
 in saying, that such an amount of human intellect was 
 never absolutely wasted. But we must also express our 
 conviction, that ancient philosophy did perform a most im- 
 portant part in the history of our world, and that its work 
 is traceable. That work we can express in a single sen- 
 tence : it prepared the nations for that better light which 
 was to dawn, it slackened the fetters which bound the 
 human mind, it turned the eyes of earnest men from the 
 sensuous to the spiritual, and, sapping the foundations of a 
 religion which was the product of human nature and of 
 earth, made room for that spiritual, supersensual religion, 
 which came down from God. What more it did, we need 
 not inquire ; we consider this a most important work. 
 
 But truth is one ; there is no schism in the family of 
 nature, there is no useless force in the armory of God. If 
 the truth embodied in the philosophy of Bacon is carried to 
 its limits, it must recognize the philosophy of Plato ; if the 
 philosophy of Plato is carried out, it in no way counteracts, 
 but should beneficently shelter, the philosophy of Bacon. 
 The philosophy of Bacon is based on the constancy and 
 wisdom of nature ; it bows down to facts. And is not the 
 Platonic philosophy, and what represents it in all ages, at 
 lowest, a great fact ? Is it, then, the one fact in nature 
 which is meaningless and futile ? Is every talent of every 
 handicraftsman made use of by the great thrifty Mother, 
 and have her noblest and mightiest sons been mere harps, 
 of the rarest mechanism, and of ravishing melody, which 
 she has recklessly hung out to be played on by the vacant 
 winds ? No true Baconian can say so. Can the Platonist, 
 again, deny that man, though, from his whirling sand-grain 
 of a world, he gazes with wistful eye on the immensity 
 around, and though that gaze be the most important fact 
 
70 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAT. 
 
 in his history, is yet a denizen of earth, and for the present 
 has, as his first duty, to live? Surely not. The truth is, 
 partiality of view always imjDlies error. Bacon and Plato 
 each represented a great class of minds, and each is valu- 
 able in the great world. In the temple of Time, which 
 stretches over the long centuries, we seem to see Plato as 
 one pillar, with his lit eye gazing on the empyrean ; and, 
 in the distance. Bacon, another pillar, looking earnestly 
 upon the earth, where he discovers that fine gold, unob- 
 served hitherto, is gleaming. Which order of mind is 
 essentially the grander and greater of the two, it is not 
 necessary to examine ; we think, as we have said, it is that 
 which Plato heads. At all events, Mr. Macaulay, in his 
 philosophy, as in everything else, belongs with marked 
 distinctness to the other. 
 
 Once more, Mr. Maoaulay's theory of government is in 
 perfect consistence with his philosophy and his religion. 
 " We consider," these are his words, " the primary end of 
 government as a purely temporal end, the protection of 
 the persons and property of men." He permits govern- 
 ments to concern themselves with other matters, such as 
 those of religion and education ; but they are strictly sub- 
 ordinate. He does not endeavor to penetrate into the 
 origin of government, he aims at no ideal perfection. To 
 realize what I propose, he says, is i^racticable ; to realize 
 ideal theories, is impossible, and I have neither time nor 
 inclination to weave cobwebs. It is interesting to contrast 
 the views of Mr. Macaulny on this point with those of Mr. 
 Carlyle. The latter traces it all to hero-worship. It is the 
 right of the foolish to be governed by the wise, he exclaims, 
 and it is the duty, often a stern one, of the wise to guide 
 the foolish ; government arose from the necessity of guid- 
 ance and the jiowcr to guide. This government, if it is 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 71 
 
 that of a true-born king, must concern itself with much 
 more than the protection of life and jsroperty; that alone 
 is simply " anarchy j)?t«s a street constable." To find your 
 wisest is a work of difficulty, indeed ; but it is one which 
 must be done, or all is fatally out of course. Mr. Macau- 
 lay, on the other hand, utters his opinion on this point with 
 clear, unfaltering decision, in these words : — " To say that 
 society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest 
 and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to 
 decide who are the wisest and best ? " The day will come, 
 Mr. Carlyle rejoins, if you fail utterly in finding the wisest 
 and best, when nature will step in to your aid, and, by 
 some world-shattering earthquake like the French Revolu- 
 tion, attempt an adjustment. 
 
 We shall not pronounce an unqualified opinion upon Mr. 
 Macaulay's views of the functions of government ; but we 
 must state, that two considerations have presented them- 
 selves to our mind which seem to cast a shadow of doubt- 
 fulness over the whole. In the first place, we can hardly 
 imagine a government, whose aims were of no more exalted 
 a character than those which Mr. Macaulay declares dis- 
 tinctively its own, gathering round it the sympathy, the 
 loyalty, the love of mankind. Men will die for a king or 
 a commonwealth ; the name of liberty will make them fight 
 valiantly, when the darts shut out the mid-day sun : but 
 for a policeman men will hardly die. Surely something 
 loftier than mere security must, either rightly or wrongly, 
 have lent fire to the eye of patriotism, and drawn men in 
 serried phalanx round their king ; surely it were an imper- 
 fect theory df government which would deprive men of 
 that loftier feeling and motive. In the second place, we 
 cannot but think that government must be progressive in 
 a nobler sense than this theory admits. It is manifest that 
 
72 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAT. 
 
 a skilful machinery, a system of invisible rails pervading 
 society, is all which Mr. Macaulay's theory primarily em- 
 braced; and this might operate as well under a Monte- 
 zuma as under a Cromwell — under a Jove, a Vishnu, or a 
 Mumbo Jumbo, indiiferently. But we trust that, with 
 every advancement of humanity, government also advan- 
 ces ; that, with every fresh burst of light which streams 
 over the nations, it becomes more bright. We hold by the 
 personality of governments ; we think they should have a 
 will and a voice ; and then will every improvement in the 
 general knowledge and condition of mankind be centred 
 in them. Mr. Macaulay's theory is, we think, inadequate 
 to the phenomena of the past, and the requirements of the 
 future ; but, as we have said, we do not mean to examine 
 it at length, and submit that it is quite sufficient for us to 
 exhibit that theory, and indicate its correspondence with 
 his general mental state. 
 
 We have now finished our brief survey of those funda- 
 mental views which lie at the basis of Mr. Macaulay's sys- 
 tem ; we have found them agree in those grand features 
 which mark them as products of one mind; we proceed 
 to consider the mode in which he has given the system, of 
 which they are the foundation, to the world. 
 
 Mr. Macaulay's style is by far the most popular of those 
 which are at present devoted to the conveyance of sound 
 instruction. He 
 
 " Has set all hearts 
 To what tune pleased his ear." 
 
 He is admired with an eager, unbounded admiration, snch 
 as used to be reserved for novelists and popular poets; 
 and the causes of his popularity are patent. He writes i:-_ 
 a calm, sensible mailner; he startles not by any of '"-.ceo 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 73 
 
 apostrophio bursts which astonish and thrill us in perusing 
 the prose of Milton and Carlyle ; he calls not on the mind 
 for sustained enthusiasm or penetrating thought : but he 
 can lay his hand upon such rare means of adornment as he 
 can alone command; he has culled only those flowers which 
 grow far out of the common path, in the byways of history 
 and poetry, and these he scatters over his pages with what 
 we might call an elaborate carelessness and profusion. His 
 imagination, too, is clear and, of its kind, powerful ; so that 
 in his pages everything is reflected with the vivid force of 
 reality. The result of his knowledge, taste, and care, is a 
 style which, for elegance, grace, and quiet force, is a rare 
 model. 
 
 His mode of composition bears marks of the revolution 
 wrought in his general mode of thought. When he wrote 
 Milton, he was impetuous and brilliant, but he altered soon 
 and forever. He recoiled with fierce impatience from any 
 semblance of commonplace ; his words and imagery would 
 all be chosen with the most searching scrutiny. Concern- 
 ing that vast store of imagery, the Greek mythology, we 
 gather his decision from the following clauses uttered long 
 after in speaking of the poetry of Frederick of Prussia : — 
 " Here and there a manly sentiment, which deserves to be 
 in prose, makes its appearance in company with Prometheus 
 and Orpheus, Elysium and Acheron, the plaintive Philomel, 
 the poppies of Morpheus, and all the other frippery which, 
 like a robe tossed by a proud beauty to her waiting-woman, 
 has long been contemptuously abandoned by genius to 
 mediocrity." In Mr. Macaulay's writings, allusions to the 
 Greek mythology have scarce an existence, and, though 
 the remark is here incidental, we must say we regret the 
 fact. If the old religion of Greece was a personification 
 of natural powers ; if, above all, it was the most pei-fect 
 
 SECOND SERIES. *! 
 
74 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 
 
 embodiment, in ideal forms, of ideal beauty, that ever was 
 produced by the mind of man, its beauty is perennial and 
 inexhaustible. And such it surely was. We count the 
 Greek mythology as true and strict a product of nature as 
 the silky leaves of the birch, or the rosy clouds of the 
 morning; and, after a million of poetasters have done their 
 worst, the petals of the roses will be undimmed in beauty, 
 and untainted ini fragrance, when they once more bind the 
 brow of the Spring whose footsteps we are just beginning 
 to hear. In the works of Carlyle, the Greek mythology is 
 used with a power and splendor which dazzle and delight 
 as effectively as if the whole had been discovered, in some 
 ancient tomb, last year. Need we remind Mr. Macaulay 
 that the song of the lark was, according to Mr. Rogers, 
 old in the time of Homer ? Would it not be hard to have 
 forbidden all subsequent poets from listening in rapture to 
 its morning carol, or endeavoring to catch a few of its 
 notes ? It is the prerogative of genius to shed a new light 
 over every form of beauty, as the sun every morning sheds 
 a light, old and yet ever new, over the lakes, and flowers, 
 and mountains, arraying them in a beauty that is ever 
 fresh. 
 
 But Mr. Macaulay, we say, would have imagery which 
 no other could show; he would set out — to use his own 
 words, which strikingly illustrate our remarks — only " an 
 entertainment worthy of a Roman epicure ; an entertain- 
 ment consisting of nothing but delicacies — the brains of 
 singing-birds, the roe of mullets, the sunny halves of 
 peaches." His sentences are irresistibly foscinating from 
 the succession they present -of new and interesting facts, 
 instructing while they illustrate, and amusing while they 
 instruct. ITo is totally destitute of pretension ; he "rolls 
 no raptures;" ho treads calmly along in the confidence 
 
THOMAS BABIKGTON MACAULAY. 75 
 
 that he has a strength of which word-mongers know noth- 
 ing. His pictures float past the reader, like the cumulous 
 clouds on a summer's day, clear, swiftly flying, "and touched 
 with the loveliest hues ; or like the meadows, gardens, and 
 lakes, which glide past, when you sit in an open carriage, 
 going at an easy pace, through a beautiful land, in a crystal 
 atmosphere. The following pair of sketches are done with 
 the minuteness of Teniers, but with a warm glow of color 
 which Teniers could not command: — "The correctness 
 which the last century prized so much reseijibles the cor- 
 rectness of those pictures of the Garden of Eden which 
 we see in old Bibles. We have an exact square, enclosed 
 by the rivers Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and Euphrates, each 
 with a convenient bridge in the centre, rectangular beds of 
 flowers, a long canal, neatly bricked and railed in, the tree 
 of knowledge, clipped like one of the limes behind the Tuil- 
 leries, standing in the centre of the grand alley, the snake 
 twined round it, the man on the right hand, the woman on 
 the left, and the beasts drawn up in an exact circle round 
 them. In one sense the picture is correct enough. That 
 is to say, the squares are con-ect, the circles are correct, 
 the man and the woman are in a most correct line with 
 the tree, and the snake forms a most correct spiral. 
 
 "But if there were a painter so gifted that he could 
 place on the canvas that glorious paradise, seen by the 
 interior eye of him whose outward sight had failed with 
 long watching and laboring for liberty and truth, if there 
 were a painter who could set before us the majes of the 
 sapphire brook, the lake with its fringe of myrtles, the 
 flowery meadows, the grottoes overhung by vines, the for- 
 ests shining with Hesperian fruit, and with the plumage of 
 gorgeous birds, the massy shade of that nuptial bower 
 which showered down roses on the sleeping lovers, what 
 
76 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 
 
 should we t^ink of a connoisseur who should tell us that 
 this painting^ though finer than the absurd picture in the 
 old Bible, was not so correct?" 
 
 Consider this other picture, too ; it is that of young 
 Maria Theresa, when the troubles of war were beginning 
 to darken round her imperial brow : — " Yet was the spirit 
 of the haughty daughter of the Caesars unbroken. Hun- 
 gary was still hers by an unquestionable title ; and although 
 her ancestors had found Hungary the most muntinous ol 
 all their kingdoms, she resolved to trust herself to the fidel- 
 ity of a people, rude, indeed, turbulent, and impatient of 
 oppression, but brave, generous, and simjjle-hearted. In 
 the midst of distress and peril, she had given birth to a 
 son, afterwards the Emperor Joseph II. Scarcely had she 
 risen from her couch, when she hastened to Presburg. 
 There, in the sight of an innumerable multitude, she was 
 crowned with the crown, and robed with the robe of St. 
 Stephen. No spectator could restrain his tears when the 
 beautiful young mother, still weak from child-bearing, rode, 
 after the fashion of her fathers, up the Mount of Defiance, un- 
 sheathed the ancient sword of state, shook it towards north 
 and south, east and west, and, with a glow on her pale face, 
 challenged the four corners of the world to dispute her 
 rights and those of her boy. At the first sitting of the 
 Diet, she appeared clad in deep mourning for her father, 
 and, in pathetic and dignified words, implored her people 
 to support her just cause. Magnates and deputies sprang 
 up, half drew their sabres, and with eager voices vowed to 
 stand by her with their lives and fortunes. Till then her 
 firmness had never once forsaken her before the public eye: 
 but at that shout she sank down upon her throne, and wept 
 aloud. Still more touching was the sight when, a few days 
 later, she came again before the Estates of her realm, and 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 77 
 
 held up the little archduke in her arms. Then it was that 
 the enthusiasm of Hungary broke forth into that war-cry 
 which soon resounded through Europe, ' Let us die for our 
 king, Maria Theresa!'" There is a silent, unostentatious 
 power here which is irresistible; the grand fact stands 
 grandly forth, in its simple majesty, like a Greek statue, 
 where not one superfluous fold of drapery encumbers the 
 silent loveliness ; there is not a word that could be spared, 
 and yet there is not a word too few. It is upon such pic- 
 tures that the distinctive English reader loves to gaze ; there 
 are no sentimental raptures to dim its transparent clearness, 
 there is no trifling prettiness unworthy of its greatness, 
 there is no afiectation ; all is manly, simple, beautiful. 
 
 At times, too, Mr. Macaulay can indulge in a quiet but 
 hearty laugh ; and exactly such a laugh as every English- 
 man can join with him in enjoying. Of the translations 
 of Homer by Pope and Tickell he thus speaks : — " Addi- 
 son, and Addison's devoted followers, pronounced both the 
 versions good, but maintained that Tickell's had more of 
 the original. The town gave a decided preference to 
 Pope's. We do not think it worth while to settle such a 
 question of precedence. Neither of the rivals can be said 
 to have translated the Iliad, unless, indeed, the word trans- 
 lation be used in the sense which it bears in the Midsum- 
 mer Night's Dream. When Bottom makes his appearance 
 with an ass's head instead of his own, Peter Quince ex- 
 claims, 'Bless thee! Bottom, bless thee! thou art trans- 
 lated.' In this sense, undoubtedly, the readers of either 
 Pope or Tickell may very properly exclaim, ' Bless thee ! 
 Homer ; thou art translated indeed.' " 
 
 Of Mr. Macaulay's style we cannot say, as he says of the 
 
 eloquence of Fox, that it is penetrated and made red-hot 
 
 with passion; it is not a turbid, heavy-rolling stream, which 
 
 17* 
 
78 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 
 
 at intervals dashes itself into spray, and thunders foaming 
 over lofty precipices, where the gazer trembles at the stu- 
 pendous height, while his eye is dazzled by the gorgeous 
 rainbows that wreathe it, a description which would apply 
 to the style of Richter or Carlyle ; its flow is even and 
 smooth, or ruflfl^ed only by the mildest summer breeze. It 
 is an honest style ; and this is a matter of importance. 
 There is no lashing of his sides to raise himself into fuiy ; 
 there is no outflow of tears ; all is clear as an English 
 fountain, beautiful as an EngUsh woodland, abounding in 
 such picturesque, unpretentious attractions as an English- 
 man loves. We may diflfer from Mr. Macaulay in his gen- 
 eral modes of thinking ; we may hold that he seldom or 
 never rises into the highest regions of descriptive or didac- 
 tic composition ; but, for point, purity, clearness, and ele- 
 gance, we repeat, his style is a rare model, and will ever 
 continue to be esteemed such. 
 
 We have been very much astonished, indeed, to meet 
 with a severe attack upon Mr. Macaulay as an orator; 
 we think in no character is he more true to himself. He 
 is not a passionate, fiery soul ; it were affectation to assume 
 the oratorical language or gestures of such. His eloquence 
 is calm, clear, unimpassioned, the placid deliverance of a 
 placid mind. Rich in historic adornment, fascinating from 
 the flowing continuity of the sentences, and never exchang- 
 ing the fdain garb of common sense for- the tawdry drapery 
 of nonsense, it trims between dulness and passionate fire, 
 between, transcendental nonsense and transcendental truth. 
 We had the pleasure of hearing him address his constitu- 
 ents in Edinburgh a few months since ; and a more perfect 
 correspondence between his oratory, his works, and his 
 whole character, than that which was discernible on that 
 occasion, we cannot conceive. 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 79 
 
 It were unpardonable to omit mention of Mr. Macaulay's 
 poetic efforts ; but, as these have been ere now noticed at 
 some length in our pages, and as our space is weU-nigh ex- 
 hausted, we shall be extremely brief. Mr. Macaulay, of 
 course, never thought of claiming the title of poet ; his 
 mind is of a class essentially different from the poetic. But 
 all the beauties of his prose find their consummation in his 
 stanzas ; the skill in grouping, the vivid painting, the pic- 
 turesque arrangement of facts, the mellifluous hai-mony of 
 names. His Lays of Rome remind us of the fervor of his 
 Milton; and with extreme admiration there is blended a 
 shade of regret. They have been praised in all quarters, 
 and never a word too much : in their way, we can scarcely 
 conceive anything finer. They are full of that sort of en- 
 thusiasm which inspires delight ; we are never moved to 
 agony, we are never raised to rajsture, and we never imag- 
 ine that the writer was deeply stirred in their composition ; 
 but we are in the midst of the scene, we see the army of 
 the Tuscans as distinctly as Horatius . saw it, and we share 
 the emotions of the bystanders in their pride and valor 
 without their terror. In his verses Mr. Macaulay gives 
 himself the rein ; he curbs not his enthusiasm, he restrains 
 not his fire : in his prose, he seems to write under the eye 
 of some cold censor, the personification of English common 
 sense, who rigidly damps every ardor, and dims every 
 gleam of passion. His Lays indicate what his prose might 
 have been, had he retained the style of Milton: they are, 
 as we have said, the concentration, with an additional flash 
 of fire, of his beauties in prose. 
 
 Mr. Macaulay's external history, as gleaned from one or 
 two contemporary authorities, is soon told. He became a 
 member of the House of Commons in 1831 ; he allied him- 
 self to the advocates of the Reform Bill, and has continued 
 
80 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 
 
 a consistent liberal. About the year 1833, he became con- 
 nected with Indian affairs, and was for several years mem- 
 ber of the Supreme Council of Calcutta. In 1839, he be- 
 came secretary of war under Lord Melbourne, and went 
 into opposition when Sir Robert Peel became prime miin- 
 ister. In 1846, he was rejected by the electors of Edin- 
 burgh ; he retired into a digniiied privacy, ennobled by 
 studies of national importance; he became the most popular 
 of English historians; and, in 1852, he was again victoriously 
 returned for Edinburgh. 
 
 There are three men who may be said to bear rule at 
 present in the kingdom of British literature : their doctrines 
 are repeated, their style is echoed, in all magazines ; their 
 conjoined or antagonistic influence will be powerful in 
 moulding the thoughts of several generations to come : they 
 are Alison, Macaulay, and Carlyle. The man who would 
 form an approximately correct idea of his time must know 
 all the three. Alison must be had recourse to for a general 
 view of the time and its events. He is of wide rather than 
 keen vision, of fervid rather than piercing utterance ; he 
 turns the gaze- of men upon the institutions which have 
 been the growth of ages, and, in a revolutionary age, he 
 calls upon men to preserve what is true, and beware how 
 they unfix those pillars that have so long sustained the 
 political system. His works are immense magazines of 
 facts, and of facts which every thinking man will, in the 
 present day, earnestly ponder. Macaulay, fervid and earn- 
 est in youth, seemed to be unsheathing a sword of flame ; 
 but he suddenly grew calm, and the blade which, after 
 careful polishing, he ultimately displayed, was cold as the 
 brand Excalibur, with the moonbeams playing over it 
 in the frosty night, but invisibly sharp. In him is no in- 
 tensity; he never awakens the profoundest tears or the 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 81 
 
 deepest laughter; the fearful questions concerning God, 
 Freedom, Immortality, at which the most thoughtful and 
 the most noble of the sons of men have stood aghast, he 
 simply bids away ; his writings are a stream in which you 
 may see gold grains gleam, but of which you can always see 
 to the bottom. He is a literary impersonation of the middle 
 class of Englishmen. Carlyle stands in a category by him- 
 self; where the others are admired, he is, so to speak, wor- 
 shipped. The other two concern themselves with institu- 
 tions and laws, the embodied wisdom of many. Carlyle 
 looks to men. Had you formulas sufficient to thatch the 
 world, he exclaims, they would not stead you ; you must 
 have the lit eye that can see, the stout arm that can do, or 
 aU is lost. He penetrates into " the abysmal deeps of per- 
 sonality ; " he cares not so much to register facts, as to 
 pierce into their producing principles and causes. In every 
 direction he seeks to penetrate as far as the human intellect 
 can go, and then, like Plato, gazes earnestly towards the infi- 
 nite. His style is varied, broken and startling : in his best 
 day it was clear as an Italian morning, and extremely beau- 
 tiful ; in after times, though occasionally degenerating into 
 comparative inferiority, it at intervals rose into passages 
 of surpassing grandeur. He has cast his eye over history 
 with a glance whose sympathy was kindled by what had 
 been unseen or unheeded by other men ; wherever tremen- 
 dous force was allied with nobleness and truth, he has 
 recognized with rapture the union, and sympathetically 
 traced its workings. He has broken up old modes of 
 thought and old modes of composition; he has been studied 
 with an earnestness, and loved with a devotion, which no 
 other writer of the day can claim; he has been imitated by a 
 class of writers, whose unapproachable parody could never 
 have been produced, save unconsciously; he has spoken 
 
82 THOMAS BAEINGTON MACAULAY. 
 
 more sense, and given rise to more nonsense, than any 
 litei'ary man of the day. It may be granted to " the little 
 kingdom" to feel a kind of jjride that two of these distin- 
 guished men are her own, and the third hers by extraction. 
 There is an argument having some appearance of subtlety 
 and force, often urged against Macaulay, to whiqli it may 
 be proper briefly to refer. It is alleged that his mind is of 
 that order, which dwells niost congenially in the region of 
 the abstract ; that he can scientifically estimate, rather than 
 act ; that he loves events, rather than men. He is, thus 
 runs the approved phraseology, essentially a mechanical 
 man, not a dynamical. In one form or other, this theory 
 often appears. One man, red hot from Carlyle's French 
 Revolution, remarks snifiingly that Macaulay is an English 
 Girondin. Another recites the story of Gibbon, who sat 
 looking upon Pitt and Fox in passionate conflict, in pre- 
 cisely the same mood, with precisely the same kind and 
 degree of interest, as wanned his philosophic bosom when 
 he contemplatedj through the long, passionless perspective 
 of ages, the Trajans and Tamerlanes of his Decline and 
 Fall. Gibbon and Macaulay are then involved in a common 
 condemnation. The general argument has been expounded 
 with great elaboration, and a certain felicitous piquancy 
 difficult to resist, in one of the ablest of our Reviews.* But 
 both the reviewer in this case, and, as it appears to us, 
 those in general who indulge in the habit of depreciating, 
 on such grounds, our great essayist and historian, omit the 
 consideration of one preliminary question, of vital impor- 
 tance in the discussion. Is not the composition of gi-eat 
 literary works itself action, nay, action of as august and 
 important a nature as any strictly practical operation ; and 
 if it is, and if, in its liighest perfection, it admits not of 
 combination with moro ordinary exertion, is it not in all 
 
 * The Natlonivl. The essay hns since beon republished along with others by the same 
 author, Mr Bagshot. 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 83 
 
 senses right, and noble in a man, so farjto sequester himself 
 from practical life, as to give his powers full scope and fair 
 play for the higher achievement ? Was the presence of 
 mind of a Pitt or Fox, was their practical tact or parlia- 
 mentary skill, was all that they did for us, or left to us, so 
 much greater than that calm breadth of historical vision, 
 which gazed over wide spaces of time, harmonizing the di- 
 vei'se, uniting the remote, seeing all with new clearness, and 
 at last giving to the world a literary masterpiece, which, 
 with all its faults, is imperishable as civiUzation ? It has been 
 remarked that Napoleon possessed powers which would, so 
 directed, have secured him immortal fame as an author. No 
 hypothetic fact seems to us more certain. But as an author, 
 he will never be thought of; both in theory and practice, both 
 in taste and style, he was a bad writer. Pure intellectual 
 action, and mixed intellectual action, were incompatible. 
 But would it have been less great and manly in Napoleon 
 to have devoted himself to pure thought, to such work as 
 that of the Aristotles, Newtons, Goethes, if it had been so 
 ordered by Providence that no diadem should cast its 
 maddening gleam into his eyes, luring him to empire and 
 despair? It matters little to our argument in what way this 
 question is answered : but it is plain that an answer must 
 be given it, before a man can be adjudged of an inferior 
 order, moral and intellectual, for having preserved himself 
 so far from the distracting influences of life, as to permit 
 his mind to work in an intellectual region, serene because 
 it is lofty. For our own part, we scruple not to avow our 
 belief that it may be a man's highest duty and noblest 
 course thus to seclude himself Consider the matter fairly 
 even for one inoment, and it will be .found, that all the 
 great writers of mankind, poets, philosophers, historians, 
 men of science, have in one way or other pursued that 
 
84 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 
 
 abstract method of contemplating truths and events, which 
 is objected to Gibbon and Macaulay. They all afford illus- 
 tration of the fact that there is an antithesis between 
 thought and action, between literary exertion and life. 
 The one is broad, calm, and proportionately slow ; its slow- 
 ness renders it so far unfit for the momentary emergencies 
 of practical endeavor : the other is fragmentary, collected 
 into instantaneous flashes,swift as the lightning and propor- 
 tionately agitated ; and this agitation is totally incompatible 
 with the highest intellectual achievement. It was certainly 
 sublime in Milton to postpone the composition of Paradise 
 Lost at the voice of his country ; but the postponement, 
 with the reason assigned, remains anincontestibleproofof 
 the necessity of calm to high intellectual exertion ; and we 
 can safely pledge ourselves to admit ignoble weakness in 
 any case, where it can be shown that practical assistance 
 was withheld, in a crisis so momentous as that which led 
 Milton from the still slopes of the Aonian hiU to join the 
 battling squadrons in the plain. But the truth is, Mr. 
 Macaulay can hardly be said in any sense to need defence. 
 He has shrunk from no public duty. He has entered with 
 ardor into the political discussions of his time. It seems 
 universally admitted that his administration in India was 
 sagacious and admirable. He preserved only such intellec- 
 tual calm as was absolutely necessary in obedience to the 
 highest hests of his genius. And when he has given us 
 consummate works, we gracefully and gratefiilly blame him 
 for not having given them in an impossible manner ! 
 
 What has Macaulay done to deserve the thanks of his 
 country? He has done much. He has thrown over large 
 poitions of her history the light of a most powerful fasci- 
 nation : he has maintained the purity of the English lan- 
 guage in a time when it is in danger ; he has never stooped 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 85 
 
 for a moment to the ignoble or the low, either in sentiment 
 or style. Of the structure which he has reared, and which 
 is to be his monument to the generations to come, we have 
 been unable to present a finished or complete delineation ; , 
 we have been unable even to glance at its several portions 
 in detail; but we pronounce it a consistent and stately 
 structure, and shall deem ourselves happy if we have, with 
 any fair measure of success, laid bare its foundations, and 
 exhibited, so to speak, the statical laws on which it has 
 been built. "While Britain lasts, English history will be 
 better known than heretofore ; for, while Britain lasts, 
 Macaulay's Essays and Macaulay's History of England 
 will be read. Lastly, he has furnished to cultivated minds 
 a source of pure and exquisite pleasure ; and, in dropping 
 our pen after this summary, we experience a feeling akin 
 to dread, that we have said anything unworthy of one to 
 whom we are indebted for so much knowledge, so much 
 instruction, and so many hours of refined and manly enjoy- 
 ment. 
 
 SECOND SEKIES 8 
 
III. 
 
 SIR AKCmBALD ALISON. 
 
 The present is very prominently a criticizing age. From 
 the quarterly review, whose writer aims at immortal re 
 nown, to the daily newspaper, whose writer aims at saying 
 what will please readers, and gain him the i-ei:)utation of 
 being a smart and spirited young man, every sort of peri- 
 odical is more or less critical. And yet it may be ques- 
 tioned, whether the facility of forming a correct, adequate 
 estimate of any marked writer, is, in a material degree, 
 furthered by this vast amount of reviewing. The very 
 facility of having an opinion increases the difficulty of 
 having a coiTCct one. Each reviewer professes imjjartial- 
 ity ; many honestly endeavor to be fair. But it cannot be 
 doubted that many, whatever their professions, are really 
 and consciously influenced by motives of party or interest ; 
 that many more, striving honestly to divest themselves of 
 all such considerations, are yet, unconsciously but fatally, 
 moved thereby ; while the utter inability to take the cor- 
 rect measure of a distinguished man, by no means neces- 
 sarily precludes self-satisfied dogmatism in j)ronouncing an 
 opinion concerning him. Thus arise innumerable erroi-s ; 
 and, in each instance of error, the great speaking-trumpet 
 called public opinion (which, almost as much as any other 
 trumpet, utters sounds that are produced by another), is 
 
SIR ARCHIBALD ALISOjJf. 87 
 
 made to give forth uncertain or discordant sounds. Hence 
 it is, that certain literary maxims or cries, analogous to 
 certain watchwords in the political world, become bruited 
 about in society respecting known authors ; originating 
 with political opponents, or struck off, more for the sake of 
 their smartness than their truth, by some clever litterateur ; 
 and always, in part at least, erroneous. The influence such 
 cries exert is incalculable. They seem so smart, they are 
 so easily retailed, and they so pleasantly save all trouble. 
 Equijjped in this manner, every spruce scion of the nobility, 
 whose intellectual furniture consists mainly of certain long- 
 deceased conservative maxims, can pronounce decisively 
 that the great whig essayist and historian, Macaulay, is " a 
 book in breeches;" while every new-fledged politician, who 
 steps along in the march of intellect, panoplied in ignor- 
 ance and conceit, feels himself of quite sufiicient ability 
 and importance, to sneer at the king of literary conserva- 
 tives. Sir Archibald Alison, and sublimely remark that his 
 writings are the "reverse of genius." 
 
 In endeavoring to attain a con-ect opinion respecting 
 any celebrated contemporary, almost all such prepossession 
 must be resolutely and conscientiously laid aside. We say 
 almost, because every cry will be found to contain one 
 small grain of truth, and, while fatal if taken as keynote, 
 to be valuable as a subordinate contribution. With as 
 thorough impartiality as is attainable by any effort of the 
 will, in full sight of encompassing dangers, the author must 
 be studied, must be communed with, as it were, face to 
 face, through the works he has given to his fellow-men ; 
 and as great a sympathy as is possible must be attained 
 with him in his views and objects. The grand principle 
 also must never be lost sight of, that God makes nothing 
 in vain ; that the moral world is as varied, as vast, and as 
 
88 SHi ARCHIBALD ALISON. 
 
 complex as the i^hysical ; and that it is only when, coming 
 out of the little dwelling of our own ideas and maxims, 
 we gaze over the thousandfold developments of mind, that 
 we perceive the hai-monious grandeur of the whole. In all 
 cases, narrow intensity marks imperfection. The worker 
 of limited power excels in some one particular: the private 
 soldier knows when to put his right foot foremost, and 
 when to draw his trigger ; the commissariat officer knows 
 how to arrange the provisioning of a division ; the Murat 
 or Lambert can command a body of cavalry, and bring it 
 down with overpowering vigor upon an enemy ; but it is 
 only the Napoleon or the Cromwell that can do all in his 
 single person, and so prove himself born to command. The 
 same holds good of writers. The narrow, limited author 
 has one particular idea, by which he thinks he has taken 
 the measure of the universe ; he sympathizes with one sort 
 of excellence, he has one formula in politics, he has one 
 dogma in religion ; while the king in literature — the Rich- 
 ter, the Goethe, the Shakspeare — displays a countless va- 
 riety of excellences, sympathizes with every sound human 
 faculty, and at last almost attains the serene and all-embrac- 
 ing tolerance of " contradicting no one." These men can 
 take a comprehensive view of nature in all her forms and 
 all her workings ; they know well that, when the magnifi- 
 cent island exalts its head in the ocean, not the smallest 
 insect that formed it has died in vain. 
 
 It is with the earnest desire to attain as close an approx- 
 imation as possible, to the impartiality and width of view 
 and sympathy we have indicated, that we approach the lit- 
 erary measurement of Sir Archibald Alison. Our position, 
 purely literary, precludes political bias ; and, though not 
 subscribing to every article of his political creed, we hope 
 to do him some measure of justice. 
 
SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON. 89 
 
 Th.e fundamental stratum on which Sir Archibald Alison's 
 character, with all its feelings and faculties, is based, is that 
 which is in all cases indispensable, but which in many in- 
 stances has been wanting. That basis is thorough, fervent, 
 well-applied honesty. He is a man who believes with the 
 whole power of his soul. He is not cold and formal as 
 Robertson ; he is not tainted in his whole nature, as was 
 Gibbon, by mistaking a sinewless phantom, called " philos- 
 ophy" — evoked, like some Frankenstein, from vacancy, 
 by the literary necromancy of French savans — for an 
 embodiment of celestial truth: friends and foes alike respect 
 the genuine fervor, linked with earth and with heaven, 
 which pervades and animates the writings of Sir Archibald 
 Alison. This it is which must, we think, make his works 
 essentially pleasing to every honest man. In one place, 
 we may question an inference ; in another, we may detect 
 an imperfect analogy; here we may smile at the identifica- 
 tion of the advocates of organic reform (revolution) with 
 the powers of hell ; and there we may think the laws of 
 chaste and correct imagery infringed ; but we always feel 
 that the company of this man is safe — that his breast holds 
 no malice or guile — that he believes really, and believes 
 in a reality. Such is the base of Sir Archibald's character 
 — a basis of adamant. 
 
 With this comports well the general tone- of his mind. 
 
 He is always animated ; he is always energetic. But here 
 
 a distinction must be made. Sir Archibald is not one of 
 
 those men whom a class of modern writers would specially 
 
 characterize as "earnest." We cannot discover that he 
 
 has undergone any of those fierce internal struggles which 
 
 figure so largely in modem Uterature, and which give such 
 
 a wild and thrilling interest to certain writings of Byron, 
 
 Goethe, and Carlyle. He seems never to have wrestled in 
 
 8* 
 
90 SIE ARCHIBALD ALISON. 
 
 life-£uid death struggle with doubt ; he seems to have early- 
 discerned, with perfect assurance, the great pillars of human 
 belief, and calmly placed his back against them ; his mind 
 is essentially opposed to the skej)tical order of intellect. 
 Hence it is that his beliefs, though honest and unwavering, 
 are not intense ; that he throws all his energy out upon 
 objective realities ; that we have no syllable as to the 
 author's subjective state. We believe that the two latter 
 writers, whom we have referred to as entering largely upon 
 subjective delineation, would declare this to be the more 
 healthy mental state of the two ; it is that, indeed, towards 
 which all their efforts tend. We see as little of Sir Archi- 
 bald Alison when he discusses any question, as we do of 
 Homer when he narrates. But this order of mind may be 
 characterized by various degrees of intellectual power; 
 and, as a general fact, its beliefs will not be held with such 
 intensity as in the other case. When one grasps a precious 
 .casket from his burning dwelling, he grasps it more tena- 
 ciously, and proclaims his triumph with more intense exul- 
 tation, than if he had never doubted for a moment his safe 
 possession of it. 
 
 Sir Archibald's beliefs, then, are not intense ; we must 
 add, that his energy is not concentrated. The stronger 
 the spirit distilled from any substance, the smaller the 
 quantity ; a- small cannon will do as much as a huge bat- 
 tering-ram. We are often reminded of the fact in perus- 
 ing the works of Sir Archibald Alison. In one point of 
 view, his energy may be wondered at, and in some meas- 
 ure commended ; in another point of view, it must be pro- 
 nounced defective, and almost to be regretted. That read- 
 ers may obtain an idea of his powers of working — of the 
 amount which he can perform — we extract the following 
 from a very able article upon Sir Archibald, which ap- 
 
SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON. 91 
 
 peared, some years since, in the Dublin University Magc(r 
 zine : — 
 
 " Like all men who have durably left a name in the annals 
 of serious literature, Mr. Alison has immense powers of 
 application. The mere reading he has gone through, exclu- 
 sive of study and note-taking, appears to an ordinary 
 person incredible. Two thousand volumes, and two-thirds 
 of these in a foreign language, were the -basis upon which 
 he reared his great history ; and the information on other 
 subjects which he exhibits in his miscellaneous writings is 
 not less extraordinary. Politics and history, novels and 
 poetry, the drama and the arts, alike engage his attention. 
 Every masterpiece of antiquity has been scanned by him ; 
 every remarkable Continental work undergoes his scrutiny. 
 The literature of the day, the newspaper press of France 
 and England, of America and the colonies, are ready to 
 illustrate or corroborate his statements ; and, in his hands, 
 trade circulars, blue-books, and parliamentaiy returns, be- 
 come eloquent from the truths they unfold." To this more 
 may be added. Sir Archibald has all along performed the 
 duties of " a judicial office of greater labor and responsibility 
 than any other in Scotland." His collected essays form 
 three large volumes; his great historical work fills twenty 
 considei'able volumes ; and he has just published the first 
 volume of a new history, containing about six hundred 
 octavo pages. Besides all this,- he has published four other 
 works, two of them of great size. That this displays an 
 amazing power of working, no one can deny ; but we think 
 the further position must be allowed, that, however we 
 may praise the honest application which it involves, it is 
 to be regretted that it was not condensed, and dealt out 
 more circumspectly. We speak not of the history ; we 
 direct our attention to the essays. It must be taken as, in 
 
92 SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON. 
 
 one point of view, quite a satisfactory account of every 
 defect in these able and fascinating perfoi-mances, that they 
 were written in such haste that revision was impossible ; 
 under the circumstances, they could not reasonably have 
 been expected to be better. But our veiy admiration of 
 the essays, and our profound conviction of the value of 
 the thought they contain, sharpen our regret that haste 
 should have dejirived them of any polish or vigor — that 
 in any instance it should be suspected by the reader that 
 the plough is going over the top of the ground, and not 
 into it. It may be said, that these essays were written at 
 particular junctures, when it was important, for national 
 reasons, that they should instantly appear. We acknowl- 
 edge the force of this ; it is perfectly sufficient to excuse 
 every defect which marred the essays as they wei-e issued 
 in the pages of the magazine ; but did not their collection 
 in a form adapted to separate publication afford an oppor- 
 tunity for revision and condensation ? Is any one more 
 fully aware than Sir Archibald of the value of thought ? 
 that one grain of its imperishable gold outweighs whole 
 reams of printed paper ? And can any one forget the fact, 
 that men often judge by a slip, or a deficiency, or an imper- 
 fection, and obstinately refuse to believe in excellence 
 which is not uniform? We again profess an extreme admi- 
 ration for many of the essays of which we speak ; and we 
 must avow that no feeling more powerfully affected our 
 mind, as we perused them, than a desire that their author 
 had, with the utmost deliberation and earnestness, applied 
 himself to exhibit, in clear separate form, certain of those 
 views and principles to which he rightly attaches so much 
 importance, and which he has so thoroughly mastered. As 
 we read such essays as those on the Indian Question — on 
 which, in all its aspects, Sir Archibald is admirable — as 
 
SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON. 93 
 
 we discerned great, and true, and important principles 
 slightly obscured, and rendered uncertain of effect, by being 
 connected with certain political crises, and made the basis 
 of certain predictions which could be but partly true, we 
 felt the deepest regret. It seemed anomalous too, that 
 discussions of high ability should occur in a volume con- 
 taining such imperfect and temporary productions as the 
 essays on Napoleon and Mirabeau. One Damascus sabre, 
 whose edge is invisible from sharpness, is worth many 
 ill-tempered blades, clumsy in use, and obscured here and 
 there by rust ; we wish Sir Archibald had devoted more 
 attention to tempering and sharpening, and comparatively 
 little to indefinite multiplication. 
 
 His indefatigable industry has enabled Sir Archibald Ali- 
 son to accumulate very extensive stores of knowledge ; by 
 continual practice in composition, he has them ever at hand ; 
 and he infuses life into all by the sustained animation and 
 fervor of his mind. His judgment, although it cannot be 
 defined as penetrative, or adapted to distinguish very 
 minute shades of thought, is yet of extreme value in those 
 cases where great national characteristics are to be discerned; 
 it is unbiassed either by sentimentality or coldness of heart ; 
 and, although it sometimes is led astray by too prevailing 
 a dread of anything like democracy, its decisions, as em- 
 bodying one important aspect of human affairs, are always 
 deserving of serious attention and deference. In his early 
 days. Sir Archibald was " an enthusiastic mathematician, 
 obtained the highest prizes in these studies in the Univer- 
 sity of Edinburgh, and has often lain awake solving prob- 
 lems in conic sections and fluxions in the dark, with the 
 diagram painted in his mind." This early proficiency in 
 mathematics has characterized very many distinguished 
 men: Milton, Napoleon, Chalmers, Carlyle — men surely 
 
94 SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON. 
 
 of dissimilar, but all of great genius. We doubt not that 
 this mathematical study has availed Sir Archibald much, 
 in enabling him to glance over multiplex national and social 
 phenomena, and discern the one truth which connected 
 them all, and which lent them their signification. 
 
 Sir Archibald's sympathies are wide, and give rise at 
 once to versatility of talent, and fairness to opponents. He 
 is certainly Conservative ; he is an uncompromising, un- 
 questioning Tory. But we think it must be allowed that 
 he treats his opponents generously; that here the only 
 conservatism which attaches to him is that of honor and of 
 chivalry. He would as much scorn to search out, with 
 malignant scrutiny, the pardonable weakness or foible of 
 an opponent, as the true knight of the olden time would 
 have scorned to point his lance just at the spot where he 
 thought the armor of his foe was cracked. He concerns 
 himself with principles ; if he overcomes his antagonist, it 
 is by utterly smashing the arms of his trust by the force 
 of historic truth ; he disdains to take his foe at a disadvan- 
 tage, but he neither asks nor gives quarter. 
 
 It is somewhat astonishing to find the same enthusiastic, 
 rolling utterance in his critical as in his political essays; we 
 presume in one case it is the enthusiasm of belief — he 
 feels he is talking to his countrymen and to posterity on 
 matters of vital importance, and he speaks fervently and 
 loud : in the other, we take it to be the enthusiasm of de- 
 light ; " we have done," he seems to say, " for a time, with 
 the doctrines of currency; we shall let the Manchester 
 school alone, there being room enough in the world for it 
 and us ; let us away to hear the ringing of the squadrons 
 around Troy, to weep or sadly smile with Dante, to see 
 celestial softness in the creations of Kaphael, or to tremble 
 at the wild passion of Michael Angelo." And in criticism. 
 
SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON. 95 
 
 the same mental characteristics are manifested as elsewhere. 
 He does not, by natural bent, turn all his powers to pene- 
 trate into radical laws of beauty or taste. In examining a 
 work of art, he sees great characteristics ; he does not 
 remark the particular waving of a curl, he does not measure 
 every angle, he does not refine about rhythm or euphony, 
 but he sees the eye of Homer glancing into the heart of 
 man, and he follows the hand of Angelo as it strikes out 
 the big bones and muscles. In all cases, he is wide and 
 fervid, not piercing, lynx-eyed and intense. 
 
 In opinion. Sir Archibald Alison, we have remarked, is 
 Conservative ; this is the foundation of all his system of 
 thought. And we must profess our profound conviction, 
 however much on particular topics we might venture to 
 join issue with Sir Archibald, both that his conservatism 
 is a most honest and venerable conservatism, and that it is 
 of incalculable importance and value to true progress. His 
 conservatism is one whose object is liberty, and whose 
 watchword is progress. "We, of course, cannot condescend 
 upon particular views entertained by him on particular 
 subjects ; but, leaving the vexed questions of currency, we 
 think his system may all be shown to branch out from two 
 great stems : — 
 
 1st, Universality of representation. 
 
 2nd, National honor. 
 
 By the first of these, which is an expression of our own, 
 we by no means intend to represent Sir Archibald as an 
 advocate of universal suffrage ; we design it to mean the 
 accordance to every interest in the state of its due repre- 
 sentation and influence. Let the aristocracy, he says, be 
 represented, for then you have continually gathered round 
 the national standard those who are boundJ;o defend it by 
 every obligation of honor, descent, and interest : who have 
 
96 SIK ARCHIBALD ALISON. 
 
 inherited education, by birth, who have unlimited leisure 
 by the possession of wealth, and who are raised by position 
 above the excessive influence of popular clamors. Let the 
 middle classes be represented, that the interests of com- 
 merce be hot overlooked, and that the interests of the 
 farmer be not merged in those of the landlord. Let every 
 one who has proved himself of sufficient industry, honesty 
 and intelligence to rise from the working-classes, and who 
 has a stake in the national welfare, have a vote. But by 
 no means extend the right of voting to all numerically, for 
 then you have destroyed all radical uniformity ; you have 
 committed a suicidal act ; you have put the sceptre into 
 the hand of that which is so vastly the most numerous 
 body in the state — the populace. Their representation 
 in the other case will be indirect but real. Sir Archibald 
 strongly advocates the extension or continuance of repre- 
 sentative rights to the colonies of a mother state. 
 
 From the second great branch of Sir Archibald's system, 
 the upholding, at all hazards, of national honor, proceeds 
 his unqualified protest against utilitarianism as the basis 
 of a system of policy ; his untiring and eloquent advocacy 
 of colonial interest ; his utter disdain of the political creed 
 whose formula is £. s. d. National honor, national justice, 
 national religion, national unity — these are his watchwords. 
 And here, again, his views are wide and practical, rather 
 than penetrating or ideal. He takes his stand upon those 
 virtues which characterize a nation as distinguished from 
 an individual — moderation, calmness, general purity of 
 manners. He trusts for the attainment of these to a na- 
 tional church, and has, therefore, an immasked distrust and 
 dislike of dissent. The renovation of the nation from an 
 individual starting-point, he regards as chimerical; he looks 
 to national religious institutions, and not to men : for the 
 
SIK ARCHIBALD ALISON. 97 
 
 attainment of national virtue, he must have a national 
 church. And here it is that the outline of his system is 
 most liable to objection. "The contest," he says, " between 
 revolution and conservatism is no other than the contest 
 between the powers of hell and those of heaven. Human 
 pride, adopting the suggestions of the great adversary of 
 mankind, will always seek a remedy for social evils in the 
 spread of earthly knowledge, the change of institutions, the 
 extension of science, and the unaided efforts of worldly 
 "wisdom. Religion, following a heavenly guide, will never 
 cease to foretell the entire futility of all such means to 
 eradicate the seeds of evil from humanity, and will loudly 
 proclaim that the only reform that is really likely to be 
 efficacious, either in this world or the next, is the reform 
 
 of the human heart Conservative government, 
 
 as distinguished fi'om despotism, has never yet been re- 
 established in France; and religion has never regained 
 
 its sway over the influential classes of society 
 
 But religion, be it ever recollected, does not consist merely 
 in abstract theological teneta. Active exertion, strenuous 
 charity, unceasing efforts to spread its blessings among the 
 poor, constitute its essential and most important part. It 
 is by following out these precepts, and making a universal 
 national provision for the great objects o? religious instruc- 
 tion, general education, and the relief of suffering, that 
 religion is to take its place as the great director and guide 
 of nations, as it has ever been the only means of salvation 
 to individuals." "However true this may be, it surely is 
 not the whole truth ; it ignores the fact that dissent may 
 spring from religious earnestness, as well as from scientific 
 skepticism. Such religion as any effort of conservatism 
 could enable to " regain its sway over the influential classes 
 of society," would be pronounced by most earnestly relig- 
 
 SEOOND SERIES. 9 
 
98 SHi AUCHIBALD ALISON. 
 
 ious men a misnomer. It might be called " respectability," 
 and so shown to be invaluable to a government; if named 
 religion, rigorous limitations would be made. We shall 
 not enter ujaon this complicated and difficult question ; but 
 we take the truth in the matter to be this: — Sound dissent 
 is invariably based upon individual earnestness ; so it was 
 with the Waldenses, so with the Puritans, so with the 
 Wesleyans; and it were the perfection of government, 
 when this individual religious earnestness was permitted 
 to diffuse itself harmoniously through the commonwealth, 
 neither arrayed in hostility nor monopolizing regard. Sir 
 Archibald Alison, looking entirely from a national point 
 of view, has, we must think, failed to perceive the value, 
 the power, nay, even the safety, of individual earnest re- 
 ligion in a nation : he sees not that, in the fervor of dissent, 
 there can ever glow the true light from heaven ; the iron, 
 the brass, and the clay of false systems cannot, he thinks, 
 be broken, unless the stone is most carefully cut and shaped 
 by the hands of government. The sectary of limited vis- 
 ion, on the other hand, looking entirely fl'om an individual 
 point of view, ignores the vitally important distinction 
 between the individual and national life. In both cases 
 there is error, for in both cases there is narrowness of view: 
 the aim of every government should be to ally to itself by 
 the ties of loyalty every interest in the state, to steady 
 itself by a thousand different anchors. 
 
 We deem Sir Archibald Alison's conservatism a truly 
 noble conservatism ; based on honesty, patriotism, and ex- 
 tensive knowledge ; embracing one great department of 
 truth, which has in all ages to be re-proclaimed. And, in 
 the present age, we think it peculiarly useful. When So- 
 cialism, Communism, Chartism, and the rest, are perambu- 
 lating the world, like so many resuscitations of Guy Fawkcs, 
 
SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON. 99 
 
 each with a lighted brand, purporting to have been kindled 
 by reason and truth, and to be able to shed a paradisiacal 
 light over nations, and yet too evidently threatening to five 
 the world with a very difFerent kind of illumination, such 
 a conservatism takes the link from the red hand, and com- 
 pels the rufiian to pause, to consider, and gi-adually to regain 
 his right mind. The best human system is not all truth — 
 the worst is not all error ; but the friend of advancement 
 has little faith in his cause, if he goes out of his way to 
 denounce conservatism. 
 
 In addressing ourselves to make a few remarks more 
 particularly on Sir Archibald Alison, as historian and essay- 
 ist, it is scarce necessary for us to premise that we must be 
 concise and fragmentaiy. The work by which he is best 
 known, and which has attained a world-wide reputation, is 
 his History of Europe durincj the French Revolution. The 
 origin of that great work, and the preparation for it under- 
 gone by its author, are eloquently discoursed of by the 
 writer whom we have already quoted; his words are so 
 beautiful, and his authority so reliable, that we are glad to 
 enrich our columns by their insertion. " Many illustrious 
 men have neglected their genius in youth — many more do 
 not become aware of possessing it till that fleeting seed- 
 time of future glory is past forever." " Amid my vast and 
 lofty aspii-ations," says Lamartine, " the penalty of a wasted 
 youth overtook me. Adieu, then, to the dreams of genius, 
 to the aspii-ations of intellectual enjoyment!" Many a 
 gifted heart has sighed the same sad sigh ; many a noble 
 nature has walked to his grave in sackcloth, for one brief 
 dallying in the bowers of Circe, for one short sleep in the 
 Castle of Indolence. But no such echo of regret can check 
 the aspirations of our author. Brought up at the feet of 
 Gamaliel in all that relates to lofty religious feeling and 
 
100 SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON. 
 
 the admiration of art, and in not a little concerning the 
 grand questions of national politics, his youth was well 
 tended ; and almost ere he emerged fi-ora that golden, 
 dreamy period, he had embarked on the undertaking which 
 was to be the mission of his life, and his passjyort to im- 
 mortal fame. Among the dazzling and dazzled crowds 
 whom, from all parts of Europe, the fall of Napoleon in 
 1814 attracted to the French metropolis, was a young Eng- 
 lishman, who, hurrying from liis paternal rooi] arrived in 
 time to witness the magnificent pageants which rendered 
 memorable the residence of the allied sovereigns and armies 
 in Paris. Napoleon had fallen, the last act of the revolu- 
 tionary drama seemed to have closed; and in the Place 
 Louis XV., assembled Euroj^e and repentant France joined 
 in the obsequies of its earliest victims and holiest martyrs. 
 It was in the midst of those heart-stirring scenes that the 
 first inspiration of writing a history of the momentous 
 period, then seemingly closed, entered the throbbing heart 
 of that English youth — and that youth was Alison. Ten 
 years of travel, meditation, and research followed, during 
 which the eye and the ear alike gathered materials for his 
 great undertaking, and the mind was expanding its gifted 
 jjowers jjreparatory to moulding these materials in a form 
 worthy of the great events to be narrated, and of the high 
 conceptions which the youth longed to realize. Other fif- 
 teen years of composition were required ere the history 
 was brought to a close, and the noble genius of its author 
 awakened the admiration of Europe." 
 
 The standard of historic excellence by which Sir Archi- 
 bald has been regulated, we are able to determine from his 
 own works; we cannot do better than quote the following: 
 — " Passion and reason in equal proportions, it has been 
 observed, form energy. With equal truth, and for a similar 
 
SIK ARCHIBALD ALISON. 101 
 
 reason, it may be said, that intellect and imagination, in 
 equal proportions, form history. It is the want of the last 
 quality -which is in general fatal to the persons who adven- 
 ture upon that great but difficult branch of composition. 
 It in every age sends ninety-nine hundredths of historical 
 works down the gulf of time. Industry and accuracy are 
 so evidently and indisputably requisite in the outset of 
 historical composition, that men forget that genius and 
 taste are required for its completion. They see that the 
 edifice must be reared of blocks cut out of the quarry ; 
 and they fix their attention on the quarriers who loosen 
 them from the rock, without considering that the soul of 
 Phidias or Michael Angelo is required to arrange them in 
 the due proportion in the immortal structure. What makes 
 gi-eat and durable works of history so rare is, that they 
 alone, perhaps, of any other production, require for their 
 formation a combination of the most opposite qualities of 
 the human mind — qualities which are found united only 
 in a very few individuals in any age. Industry and genius, 
 passion and perseverance, enthusiasm and caution, vehe- 
 mence and prudence, ardor and self-control, the fire of 
 poetry, the coldness of prose, the eye of painting, the pa- 
 tience of calculation, dramatic power, philosophic thought 
 — are all called for in the annalist of human events. Mr. 
 Fox had a clear perception of what history should be, 
 when he placed it iiext to poetry in the fine arts, and before 
 oratory. Eloquence is but a fragment of what is enfolded 
 in its mighty arms. Military genius ministers only to its 
 more brilliant scenes. Mere ardor or poetic imagination 
 will prove wholly insufficient ; they will be deterred at the 
 very threshold of the undertaking by the toil with which 
 it is attended, and turn aside into the more inviting paths 
 of poetry and romance. The labor of writing the Life of 
 
 9* 
 
102 SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON. 
 
 Napoleon shortened the days of Sir Walter Scott. Indus- 
 try and intellectual power, if unaided by more attractive 
 qualities, will equally fail of success ; they will produce a 
 respectable work, valuable as a book of reference, which 
 will slumber in forgotten obscurity in our libraries. The 
 combination of the two is requisite to lasting fame, to gen- 
 eral and durable success." 
 
 The general voice of his countrymen, and we might 
 almost say of the world, has set the great history we have 
 named in the list of standard national works ; it is, as the 
 Germans would say, a world-historical book. Its gi-ound- 
 tone is of course conservative ; its style is vivid, animated, 
 and pictorial ; its study is almost a necessaiy part of a 
 complete modern education. We think its study might be 
 most profitably combined with that of Carlyle's powerful 
 and original work on the same subject : in the one, the 
 madness of revolutions is denounced and dreaded ; in the 
 other, there is the stern sympathy of an old Norseman, 
 who gazes on a weltering battle from afar, and the earnest 
 hailing of truth, though it comes " girt in hell-fire." 
 
 As an essayist, Sir Archibald Alison deserves very great 
 commendation. He does not always excel : in the bio- 
 graphic essay, for instance, he appears immeasurably inferior 
 to certain writers of the day ; but, in many instances, and 
 on various subjects, he attains very high excellence. In 
 laying down great principles in political economy, he is 
 manifestly in a congenial element ; in historical subjects he 
 is, as might be expected, sagacious and happy ; and, in 
 criticism, his vision is wide and his judgment powerful. 
 
 In the historical essays, we sometimes come upon para- 
 graphs containing truths of the highest value and the widest 
 application. We were delighted to find the following great 
 fact so clearly stated ; its historical worth we deem incal- 
 
SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON. 103 
 
 culable ; were it once fairly accepted and imbibed by the 
 human race, the gates of Limbo would be choked for three 
 days, so much nonsense would get its mittimus : — " Sub- 
 jugation by a foreign power is itself a greater calamity 
 than any benefits with which it is accompanied can ever 
 compensate, because, in the very act of receiving them by 
 force, there is impUed an entire dereliction of all that is 
 valuable in political blessings — a seciirity that they will 
 remain permanent. There is no example, perhaps, to be 
 found in the history of mankind, of political freedom being 
 either eflPectually conferred by a sovereign in gift, or com- 
 municated by the force of foreign arms ; but as liberty is 
 the greatest blessing which men can enjoy, so it seems to 
 be the law of nature that it should be the reward of intrep- 
 idity and energy alone ; and that it is by the labor of his 
 hands and the sweat of his brow that he is to earn his free- 
 dom as well as his subsistence." 
 
 The same remark holds good of Sir Archibald's critical 
 essays; the principle, for instance, embodied in the follow- 
 ing sentences, lies at the foundation of- all criticism: — "The 
 human heart is, at bottom, everywhere the same. There 
 is infinite diversity in the dress he wears, but the naked 
 human figure of one country scarcely difiers from another. 
 The writers who have succeeded in reaching this deep sub- 
 stratum, this far-hidden but common source of human action, 
 are understood and admired over all the world. It is the 
 same on the banks of the Simois as on those of the Avon 
 — on the Sierra Morena as on the Scottish hills. They 
 are understood alike in Europe as in Asia — in ancient as 
 in modern times; one unanimous burst of admiration salutes 
 them from the North Cape to Cape Horn — from the age 
 of Pisistratus to that of Napoleon." Were we to change 
 somewhat the expression of this thought, and substitute 
 
104 SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON. 
 
 " the perennial in man " for certain of its phrases, it would 
 be astonishing how closely it would resemble a leading 
 doctrine of Mr. Cajlyle's. 
 
 The extent of information possessed by Sir Archibald ; 
 the swift glance which he can cast over it all; his animated 
 rolling diction ; his varied sympathy ; his truly British ab- 
 sence of affectation ; in a word, every excellence of his 
 style, can be found in the following magnificent apostrophic 
 exordium to one of his critical essays : — " There is some- 
 thing inexpressibly striking, it may almost be said awful, 
 in the fame of Homer. Three thousand years have elapsed 
 since the bard of Chios began to pour forth his strains; 
 and their reputation, so far from declining, is on the increase. 
 Successive nations are employed in celebrating his works; 
 generation after generation of men are fascinated by his 
 imagination. Discrepancies of race, of character, of insti- 
 tutions, of religion, of age of the world, are forgotten in 
 the common worship of his genius. In this universal trib- 
 ute of gratitude, modern Europe vies with remote antiquity, 
 the light Frenchman with the volatile Greek, the impas- 
 sioned Italian with the enthusiastic German, the sturdy 
 Englishman with the unconquerable Roman, the aspiring 
 Russian with the proud American. Seven cities, in ancient 
 times, competed for the honor of having given him birth, 
 but seventy nations have since been moulded by his pro- 
 ductions. He gave a mythology to the ancients ; he has 
 given the fine arts to the modern world. Jupiter, Saturn, 
 Mars, Minerva, are still household words in every tongue ; 
 Vulcan is yet the god of fire, Neptune of the ocean, Venus 
 of Love. Juno is still our companion on moorland soli- 
 tudes ; Hector the faithful guardian of our flocks and homes. 
 The highest praise yet bestowed on valor is drawn from a 
 
SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON. 105 
 
 comparison to the god of war ; the inost grateful compli- 
 ment to beauty that she is encircled by the cestus of Venus. 
 When Canova sought to embody his conceptions of heroism 
 or loveliness, he portrayed the heroes of the Iliad. Flax- 
 man's genius was elevated to the highest point in embody- 
 ing its events. Epic poets, in subsequent times, have done 
 little more than imitate his machinery, copy his characters, 
 adopt his similes, and, in a few instances, improve upon 
 his descriptions. Painting and statuary, for two thousand 
 years, have been employed in striving to portray, by the 
 pencil or the chisel, his yet breathing conceptions; language 
 and thought themselves have been moulded by the influ- 
 ence of his poetry. Images of wrath are still taken from 
 Achilles, of pride from Agamemnon, of astuteness from 
 Ulysses, of patriotism from Hector, of tenderness from 
 Andromache, of age from Nestor. The galleys of Rome 
 were — the line-of-battle ships of France and England still 
 are — called after his heroes. The Agamemnon long bore 
 the flag of Nelson ; the Bellerophon combated the gigantic 
 r Orient at the battle of the Nile ; the Polyphemus was 
 the third in the British line which entered the cannonade 
 of Copenhagen; the Ajax perished by the flames within 
 sight of the tomb of the Telamonian hero on the shores of 
 the Hellespont ; the Achilles was blown up at the battle 
 of Trafalgar. Alexander the Great ran round the tomb of 
 Achilles before undertaking the conquest of Asia. It was 
 the boast of Napoleon that his mother reclined on tapestry 
 representing the heroes of the Iliad., when he was brought 
 into the world. The greatest poets, of ancient and modern 
 times, have spent their lives in the study of his genius or 
 the imitation of his works. The Drama of Greece was but 
 an amplification of the disasters of the heroes of the Iliad 
 on their return from Troy. The genius of Racine, Voltaire, 
 
106 SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON. 
 
 and Corneille, has been mainly exerted in arraying them 
 in the garb of modern times. Parnassus is still the emblem 
 of poetry; Olympus, of the council-seat of supreme power; 
 Ida and the Cyprian Isle, of the goddess of love. The 
 utmost exertion of all the arts combined on the opera stage 
 is devoted to represent the rival goddesses as they appeared 
 to the son of Priam on the summit of Gargarus. With- 
 draw from subsequent poetry the images, mythology, and 
 chai-acters of the Miad, and what will remain ? Petrarch 
 spent his best years in restoring his verses. Tasso por- 
 trayed the siege of Jerusalem and the shock of Eui-ope and 
 Asia almost exactly as Homer has done the contest of the 
 same forces, on the same shores, 3000 years before. Mil- 
 ton's old age, when blind and poor, was solaced by hearing 
 the verses recited of the poet to whose conceptions his own 
 mighty spirit had been so much indebted; and Pope 
 deemed himself fortunate in devoting his life to the trans- 
 lation of the Iliad; and the unanimous voice of ages has 
 confirmed his celebrated lines : — 
 
 ' Be Homer's works your study and delight, 
 Read them by day, and meditate by night ; 
 Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims bring, 
 And trace the muses upward to their spring.' " 
 
 We must draw our remarks abruptly to a close ; our space 
 is already exhausted. We need not say the subject is far 
 from being so. We intended to say a good deal concerning 
 Sir Archibald's style ; to show that here, as elsewhere, we 
 have his distinguishing characteristics displayed — wide, 
 not intense thought, giving rise to a flowing and diffuse, 
 rather than a terse mode of expression — diffused, not con- 
 centrated energy, producing a constant glow rather than a 
 piercing fire; and, to point out a few of its defects. Upon 
 
SIK ARCHIBALD ALISON. 107 
 
 the repetitions, the mistakes in imagery, the sameness, fre- 
 quently rendered the less pardonable by commonplaceness, 
 of forms of phrase, we could descant, but must cover all 
 up in this inuendo. 
 
 Sir Archibald Alison's writings are a continued protest 
 against modern utilitarianism ; his whole life has been an 
 effort to break Mammon's threefold chain of gold, silver, 
 and copper ; he has exposed the dishonesty and insanity 
 of political or party cries ; occasionally he has confounded 
 the good with the bad, occasionally his scythe has cut down 
 the corn with the weeds. On the whole, we think he will 
 give us his sanction in saying that change is not wrong in 
 itself: that the frivolous restlessness of the child, which 
 breaks one toy arid cries for another, is to be despised ; that 
 the morbid fickleness of the hypochondriac, who thinks 
 that a change of seat or the attainment of some dainty 
 would insure health, is to be pitied; but that the calm, 
 reasonable desire to change an old habitude or dwelling for 
 a new, entertained by the sagacious and healthy man, is to 
 be respected ; and that it is so in the case of nations. 
 
 Sir Archibald is the son of the Rev. Archibald Alison, 
 the celebrated writer on Taste ; he became a member of 
 the Scottish bar; and the government of the Earl of Derby 
 conferred upon him the title which he adorns. 
 
IV- 
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 Among the men who have led the van of British thought 
 during the present century, who have stamped the impress 
 of their genius upon the forehead of the age, and moulded 
 the intellectual destinies of our time, there is one name 
 preeminently fraught with interest to the student of our 
 internal history. That name is Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 
 In our schools of poetry, of philosophy, of theology — 
 among our critics and our ecclesiastics, our moralists and 
 our politicians — the influence of Coleridge has worked, 
 silently and viewlessly, but with wide-spread and mighty 
 power. As by a verbal talisman, his name opens to our 
 mental gaze vast and varied fields of reflection, invokes 
 grave, important, and thickly-crowding thoughts, and forms 
 the centre round which countless subjects of discussion 
 and investigation group themselves. For these reasons, 
 superadded to the fact, that we know of no easily access- 
 ible account of his life and writings at once concise and 
 comprehensive, we purpose to devote some considerable 
 space to a biographic sketch of this celebrated poet and 
 thinker. 
 
 Towards the latter half of the last century, there lived 
 at Ottery St. Mary, in the southern quarter of the balmy 
 and beautiful county of Devon, discharging there the duties 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 109 
 
 of vicar and schoolmaster, an eccentric, erudite, and remark- 
 ably loveable old man. He was the father of Samuel Tay- 
 lor Coleridge. " The image of my father," says the latter, 
 "my reverend, kind, learned, simple-hearted father, is a 
 religion to me." Richter expressed pity for the man to 
 whom his own mother had not rendered all mothers sacred. 
 Both the remarks shed a beautiful and kindly light over 
 the characters of their authors. 
 
 The vicar of Ottery St. Mary was twice married, and 
 had, in all, thirteen children. Samuel Taylor was the 
 youngest ; his day of birth was the 21st of October, 1772, 
 when he appeared " about eleven o'clock in the forenoon." 
 He speedily gave indications of superior capacity, being 
 able, at the completion of his third year, to read a chapter 
 in the Bible. We soon begin to discern the operation of 
 causes, bearing, with rather singular importance, upon the 
 formation of his character and the shaping of his destiny. 
 The youngest of the family, he was the object of peculiar 
 affection to both parents, and, in consequence, excited the 
 envious dislike of his brother Francis, and the malevolence 
 of Molly, the nurse of the latter. Hence arose annoyances 
 and small peevish reprisals ; for the power of a boisterous 
 and sturdy brother, and a malignant nurse, to embitter the 
 cup of a bard in pinafore is considerable ; so little Samuel 
 became " fretful and timorous, and a tell-tale." A tell-tale 
 is an object of united detestation on all forms of all acad- 
 emies ; it was so at Ottery St. Mary, where Coleridge went 
 to school ; the future metaphysician was driven fi-om jilay, 
 tormented, and universally hated by the boys ; he sought 
 solace at mamma's knee and in papa's books. He became 
 a solitary, moping child, dependent on himself for his 
 amusements, passionately fond of books, of irritable temper, 
 and subject to extreme variations of spirits. At six he 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 10 
 
no SAMUEL TAYLOR COLEKIDGE. 
 
 had read " Belisarius," "Robinson Crnsoe," and "Philip 
 Quarles," and found boundless enjoyment in the wonders 
 and beauties of that Utopia and Eldorado of all school-boys, 
 the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. The following is a 
 portrait of him, about this time, as he sketched it in after 
 years : — " So I became a dreamer, and acquired an indis- 
 position to all bodily action, and I was fretful, and inordi- 
 nately passionate ; and, as I could not play at anything, 
 and was slothful, I was despised and hated by the boys : 
 and because I could read and spell, and had, I may truly 
 Bay, a memory and understanding forced into almost un- 
 natural ripeness, I was flattered and wondered at by all the 
 old women. And so I became very vain, and despised most 
 of the boys that were at all near my own age, and, before 
 I was eight years old, I was a character. Sensibility, im- 
 agination, vanity, sloth, and feelings of deep and bitter 
 contempt for almost all who traversed the orbit of my 
 understanding, were even then prominent and manifest." 
 
 This has to us a deep significance, in the psychological 
 consideration of Coleridge's character. The ideas lodged 
 in the mind at this early period of life, and the habits 
 formed, may, in after years, change their forms, and appear 
 in manifold and diversified developments ; but they retain 
 their place with extreme obstinacy. This childhood of 
 Coleridge's we cannot, on the whole, pronounce healthy. 
 Little boys are naturally objects of dread, rather than of 
 flattery, to old women. Little Robert Clive, for instance, 
 utterly astonished and startled the old women by exhibit- 
 ing himself on the steeple of Market Drayton ; and turned 
 out a man of clear and decisive mind and adamantine 
 vigor. The playground and the meadow, with the jocund 
 voices of his playmates round him, and in the constant 
 consciousness that his independence has to be maintained 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. Ill 
 
 and defended amid their boisterous and fearless sports, is 
 the proper place for the development of the future man. 
 It is our belief that, in these years, an almost instinctive 
 knowledge of character, a thorough command of the fac- 
 ulties, and a power of bringing them, on all emergencies, 
 into swift energetic action, are attained ; and that no sub- 
 sequent education can compensate the premature devotion 
 of these early days to mental pursuits. May we not here 
 find the faint and unsuspected commencement of that 
 anomalous and mournful severance between the powers of 
 action and the powers of thought, which the world has 
 deplored, and may so well deplore, in Coleridge ? 
 
 With all his bookishness, however, with all his indolent 
 inaction and indifference to the sports of childhood, little 
 Samuel had a dash of fierce stubbornness in his composi- 
 tion. The old women, on occasion, found cause for abating 
 their flattery : in proof, take the following anecdote. He 
 was about seven years old, when, one evening, on severe 
 provocation from Frank, he rushed at him, knife in hand. 
 Mamma interfered, and Samuel Taylor, dreading chastise- 
 ment, and in fiercest fury, ran away to the banks of the 
 river Otter. The cold evening air, it was reasonably calcu- 
 lated, would calm his nerves, and bring him quickly home; 
 but the calculation was incoirect. He sat down in resolute 
 stubbornness on the banks of the river, and experienced 
 " a gloomy inward satisfaction," from reflecting how mis- 
 erable his mother would be ! It was in the end of October: 
 the night was stormy ; he lay on the damp ground, with 
 the mournful mui-muring of the Otter in his ear ; but he 
 flinched not, nor relented; with dogged determination, 
 he resolved to sleep it out. His home, meanwhile, was in 
 a tumult of distress and consternation. Search in all direc- 
 tions was instituted ; the village was scared from its slum- 
 
112 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 bers, and, ere morning, the ponds and river were dragged. 
 At five in the morning the little rascal awoke, found him- 
 self able to cry but faintly, and was utterly unable to move. 
 His crying, though feeble, attracted Sir Stafford Northcote, 
 who had been out all night, and he was borne home. The 
 joy of his parents was inexpressible; but in rushed a young 
 lady, crying out, "I hope you'll whip him, Mrs. Coleridge!" 
 Coleridge infoi-ms us, that neither philosophy nor rehgion 
 was ever able to allay his inveterate antipathy to that 
 woman. 
 
 Just as his youngest son was completing his ninth year, 
 the good old vicar of Ottery St. Mary died. Through the 
 influence of Judge Buller, a presentation to Christ's Hos- 
 pital, London, was obtained for Samuel Taylor ; and about 
 April, 1782, he went to London. Here he was, before 
 enter'ing the hospital, domesticated with an uncle. This 
 uncle looked upon him as a prodigy, and was very proud 
 of him. He took him to taverns and coffee-houses; accus- 
 tomed him to hear himself called a wonderful boy; taught 
 him to converse and discuss with volubility ; and, in short 
 " spoiled and pampered him." 
 
 This fast mode of life, however, soon came to .an end : a 
 very different regimen and environment awaited him in 
 Christ's Hospital. Here he found himself under the strict 
 discipline of Bowyer ; his food was stinted ; and he had 
 no friends to encourage him by approbation, or refresh his 
 heart by kind indulgence on a holiday. Though enlivened 
 by occasional swimming matches, and wanderings, some- 
 what hunger-bitten, in the fields, his existence was, on the 
 whole, a joyless one. "From eight to fourteen," he says, 
 "I was a playless day-dreamer — a Jielluo Ubroi-um.'" The 
 manner of his becoming possessed of suflicient opportunity 
 to indulge his keen and insatiable appetite for books, was 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 113 
 
 singular and characteristic. He was wandering one day 
 along the Strand : physically, he was pacing the hard pave- 
 ment, jostled by the thronging crowd, stunned by the sur- 
 rounding noises ; mentally, he was breasting the waves of 
 the Hellespont, and gazing, through his vacant but glitter- 
 ing eyes, at a light in the distance. The hands, as in som- 
 nambulism, caught impulse from the mind, and were cleav- 
 ing the smoky air in act of swimming. Suddenly he was 
 awakened. By feeling beneath his feet the hard dry sand 
 on the banks of the moonlit Bosphorus, and the kiss of 
 Hero on his lips ? Ko : but by a sudden grasp of the hand, 
 and an exclamation in his ears, " What ! so young and so 
 wicked ! " His wandering, unconscious jfingers had come 
 into too close proximity with a passenger's pocket, and 
 pocket-picking was suspected. The simple-hearted little 
 dreamer told the whole truth : belief could not be with- 
 held, for the whole, we can well see, was written on his 
 cheek and in his eye ; and the man, interested in the boy, 
 obtained him access to a circulating library. Reading 
 was henceforth his constant occupation, his unfailing solace. 
 " My whole being," we quote his own words, " was, with 
 eyes closed to every object of present sense, to crumple 
 myself up in a sunny corner, and read, read, read." He 
 went right through the library. He was ever first in his 
 class, occupying that station not from any impulse of ambi- 
 tion or youthful emulation, but simply by his surpassing 
 powers. His general book knowledge was wonderful. Be- 
 fore fifteen, he had sounded the depths of metaphysics and 
 theology, was a fluent master of the learned languages, and 
 had comparatively lost taste for history and separate facts. 
 How strongly developed, even at that early age, was the 
 unalloyed exercise of the intellectual powers ! How clearly 
 can we trace, gradually widening, the lamentable severance 
 
 10* 
 
114 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 of which we have spoken ! On the whole, what a wonder- 
 ful boy was this Samuel Taylor Coleridge! The child, 
 even, is father of the man ; and, in the boy, his lineaments, 
 both mental and physical, become ever more conspicuous. 
 Already the dream of fancy, or the abstract effort of thought, 
 had greater charms for Coleridge, than the surrounding, or 
 even the historical, realities of life ; already his mind had 
 become its own dwelling-place, and found within its own 
 compass a sufficiency of object to allure and delight; already 
 he had drawn astonishment to his commanding faculties. 
 Whether the extreme development of the recejJtive powers, 
 and the constant inundation of the mind by the ideas of 
 other men, might not, to some extent, weaken the sinews 
 of the soul, and implant the seeds of that in-esolution 
 which clouded his latter days, were a question ; we would 
 be disposed to render it an affirmative answer. He soon 
 displayed an inability to tread in beaten jjaths, to pursue 
 common methods. He might be found, during play hours, 
 reading Virgil " for pleasure ; " but he could not give a 
 single rule of syntax, save in a way of his own. 
 
 His reading was, as might be supposed, exceedingly 
 varied. It reached Greek and Latin medical books on the 
 one side, and Voltaire's " Philosophical Dictionary " on the 
 other. This latter appeared to the boy conclusive ; to 
 Bowyer, it did not. In utter disrespect for freedom of 
 opinion, and the finer feelings of Samuel's bosom, Bowyer 
 did not attempt, by laborious effiart of philosophical rea- 
 soning, to re-convince him ; he gave him a sound flogging! 
 It appears to have acted with potent persuasion ; and Cole- 
 ridge called it, in after life, the only just flogging he ever 
 received from him. 
 
 In February, 1791, Coleridge entered at Jesus College, 
 Cambridge. He speedily distinguished himself by winning 
 
■SAMUEL TAYLOK COLERIDGE. 115 
 
 a gold medal, for a Greek ode on the slave trade; but, 
 in various subsequent eompietitions, during his university 
 career, his endeavors were not attended with corresponding 
 success. As heretofore, ho was by no means a methodic 
 stu.dent, but he still continued a voracious and desultory 
 reader. He gave proofs, also, of that astonishing conver- 
 sational power by which he afterwards became so distin- 
 guished. His room was the resort of the gowned politi- 
 cians; and Coleridge, besides being the life and fire of 
 debate, put, them, by means of his wonderful memory and 
 swift reading, in possession of the latest political pamphlets. 
 
 It was a time of extreme excitement. The French Rev- 
 olution was exploding; the most wonderful series of events, 
 since the Reformation, was taking place ; the long impris- 
 oned winds had burst their cavern, and their noise was 
 going over the world : Coleridge, as all otliers, felt the 
 influence. The whole atmosphere, political and literary, 
 vibrated with excitement; the glories of the latter morning 
 were deemed to be arising ; and thousands of the fiery- 
 hearted youth of the land hasted to enrol themselves under 
 the banners of the good cause. 
 
 Principles are rained in blood : that has long been an 
 ascertained fact. And what a deluge of blood did it re- 
 quire to rain this one principle ; yea, may we not, from the 
 general appearance of the world at pi-esent, predict that 
 even more blood must be shed ere men are fully convinced 
 of it — namely, that, by simply leaving mankind to the 
 freedom of their own will, they will an-ive, not at regen- 
 eration and highest felicity, but at destruction, misery, and 
 confusion worse confounded? Surely the French Revolu- 
 tion might have taught us this, and instructed us to look 
 for final regeneration to the heavens. But the lesson, if 
 we are now to esteem it acquired, was, as we say, hard to 
 
116 SAMUEL TAYLOE C0LT2EIDGE. 
 
 teach. A whole Egyptian inundation of blood was required 
 to water, and enable to take deep root, this one principle ; 
 and, in pursuance of a method which nature very often 
 adopts, its contrary was first shown in full operation. Re- 
 move the restraints of tyranny ; open wide the floodgates, 
 so long pent up, of human love and sympathy ; and all 
 men, throwing up their caps to welcome the time of peace, 
 will, simultaneously and of necessity, rush into each other's 
 arms! Such was the faith of Shelley, embodied in the 
 " Revolt of Islam ; " such was the belief, for a brief period, 
 of Robert Southey; such was the faith which threw some 
 method into, and some brilliant hues over, the wild, almost 
 demoniac, but yet heartfelt philanthropy of Byron ; such 
 were the hojDes which, for a time, fed the enthusiasm, and 
 based the dream-fabrics, of Coleridge. 
 
 Of his devotion to this creed, he found means of giving 
 proof when at college ; it was a proof characteristic of the 
 man. He was, we must remark, of gentle, truly loveable 
 nature ; honest, brave, ardent ; but not by any means fierce 
 or truculent. He did not plan a college rebellion, for the 
 regeneration of society ; he did not, by fiery and desperate 
 audacity, exasperate the university authorities; he displayed 
 his attachment to new era principles in the following some- 
 what different manner. On the green lawns before St. 
 John's and Trinity Colleges, a train of gunpowder was to 
 be laid, imprinting the grand watchwords of the new epoch, 
 "Liberty" and "Equality." By the ignition of the gun- 
 powder, the words were to be burned into the grass, and 
 to stand forth there, seen by the sun above, and the college 
 windows farther down, for certain days, a monition and 
 benignant illumination to all the world. A " late chancel- 
 lor of the exchequer " executed the redoubtable plan ; and 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 117 
 
 SO Coleridge vindicated his claim to the title of champion 
 of democracy. 
 
 At this period of his career, Coleridge was Unitarian in 
 his religious principles. His grounds of belief were not 
 those commonly held by the professors of that creed. He 
 distinctly avowed his conviction, that the Scriptures taught 
 the doctrine of the Trinity; and that the attempts to ex- 
 plain away their statements on the question, in which 
 Unitarians indulged, were utterly unjustifiable. His rea- 
 sons were almost wholly subjective. Refusing to accede 
 to the doctrine of the atonement, and denying the divinity 
 of our Lord, he calmly pronounced these beliefs the Pla- 
 tonisms or Rabbinisms of the apostles John and Paul. A 
 fuller development of his mental powers ; a wider and more 
 searching survey of the realms of truth ; and a profounder 
 knowledge of the problems of human history, and the wants 
 and workings of the human heart, led him afterwards to 
 the unwavering conviction that Unitarianism was null and 
 void. 
 
 Ere this time, Coleridge had written a considerable quan- 
 tity of poetry. On the whole, it was not of a very aston- 
 ishing description. A delicacy of fancy, without singular 
 exuberance of power ; a command of soft and brilliant 
 language, at times overladen with ornament ; occasional 
 vigorous personation ; these comprehend the main beauties 
 and merits of his earliest pieces. "The Songs of the 
 Pixies," is a piece of fine fancy-painting, indicating a true 
 eye for nature, and a power of delicately pencilling her 
 gentlest and fairest forms. This poem seems to lie just on 
 the line of demarcation between the years of youth and 
 those of early manhood. 
 
 Various circumstances contributed to embitter and darken 
 the latter part of Coleridge's university career. Some pub- 
 
118 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLEEIDGE. 
 
 lie competitions, as the reader will have gathered, resulted 
 in a way to disappoint his expectations. His Unitarian 
 principles, which he wiis far too honest to disavow, barred 
 the gates of prefemient. And some debts, which his sim- 
 plicity and want of decision had led him to contract, sub- 
 jected him to numerous and harassing annoyances. Besides 
 all this, we have found it asserted, that his mild and sus- 
 ceptible heart had been sorely vexed in some love affair. 
 The waiTa-hearted, dreaming youth was, in fact, peculiarly 
 sensible to the enchantment of female gentleness and 
 beauty ; while, of a surety, but few girls were, or ever are, 
 to be found, capable of loving, and of corresponding to 
 the ideal of, the author of " Genevieve." 
 
 In November, 1793, he suddenly quitted Cambridge for 
 London. Arrived in the " great brick desert," feeling the 
 loneliness which a stranger may experience when sur- 
 rounded by thronging myriads of his fellow-men, to him 
 mere automata, and finding himself speedily reduced to 
 pecuniary straits, occasioned partly by his Goldsmithian 
 readiness to give money to any distressed object, he cast 
 about for some means of present subsistence. Shifts there 
 were few; these were none of the' choicest, and hunger was 
 menacing ; he adopted the singular one of- — enlisting as a 
 dragoon. Silas Tomken Cumberbatch (S. T. C.) was the 
 imposing designation by which he was known to his fellow- 
 soldiers ; and, under such auspices as appeared, he com- 
 menced his military career. 
 
 Now it soon became manifest, that nature, whatever her 
 generosity or ungenerosity, had not gifted this Silas Tomken 
 Cumberbatch with qualities to enable him to discharge 
 creditably the functions of a dragoon. Far-stretching flights 
 into dreamland on the wings of fancy, imagined beating 
 of the Hellespont waves with a Hero's lamp in view, ab- 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 119 
 
 stract ponderings on theology and metaphysics, interfere 
 objectionably with the grooming of one's horse ! Besides, 
 the man has no " ambition," and seems stupidly callous to 
 the attractions of "glory." Accordingly, he meets with 
 no promotion ; never rises out of the awkward squad ; and 
 at drill, flounders painfully about, so as to provoke the 
 exclamation of a facetious Serjeant, " Take care of that 
 Cumberbatch — take care of him, for he will ride over you!" 
 
 What a scene ! Was there ever, since the days of the 
 mighty hunter, such a private soldier? What have our 
 painters been about ? What more supremely appropriate 
 theme could be imagined, for a national painting than this 
 scene of " Cumberbatch on drill," or "Apollo as a dragoon ? ' 
 " The rapt one of the godlike forehead ; " the man whose 
 impulse has probably gone deeper than that of any other 
 into the vital springs of British thought and general mental 
 development in this nineteenth century; the man at whose 
 feet men of genius and fame sat, like children round a 
 wizard, earnestly regardful of his smallest word ; stumbling 
 and staggering about, on his ill-groomed steed, the most 
 awkward of the awkward squad ! Talk of Kilmenie among 
 the rustics, after her sojourn by the celestial streams ; talk 
 of Apollo amid the gaping herdsmen of Admetus ; this of 
 Coleridge among the dragoons beats them all hollow ! 
 
 "Eheu! quam infortunii misemmum est fuisse felicem!" 
 This sentence, to the utter surprise of an officer who ob- 
 served it, and, we doubt not, the sheer uncomprehending 
 amazement of his brother privates, Silas had inscribed on 
 his stable wall. With his brother soldiers he was popular ; 
 he wrote their letters, entertained and astonished them with 
 historic narrations, and won their hearts by his gentleness; 
 while they, in return, assisted him to groom his horse. We 
 hear, likewise, of one of the officers — the same, we pre- 
 
120 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 sume, who made the above discovery — condescendingly 
 permitting him, when their path lay in the country and 
 not in the town, to walk abreast with himself and enter 
 into conversation. How indulgent ! How condescending! 
 He would not find such conversation in the messroom, we 
 daresay ; such conversation was probably not to be found 
 in the British Islands ; the day was coming when Hazlitt, 
 Lamb, Carlyle, and De Quincey, were to listen, in rapt 
 attention, to the tones of that conversation ! 
 
 At length, after some four months' drill, the astonishing 
 dragoon was discharged. He returned for some short time 
 to Cambridge, but quitted it soon and forever. 
 
 In the summer of 1794, Coleridge, on a visit to Oxford, 
 became acquainted with a young man named Robfert 
 Southey ; a steady thoroughgoing worker, of strong Uterary 
 tastes and vast information ; who also was under the influ- 
 ence of the Liberty and Equality mania. An acquaintance, 
 which soon ripened into friendship, sprung up between 
 them ; there was a strong, perhaps radical, ■ dissimilarity 
 between their characters ; but the ethereal spark in either 
 bosom urged them together. This intimacy and this friend- 
 ship gave tone to much of the subsequent history of Cole- 
 ridge, and furnish us with one of the raciest and most 
 delicately comic of its episodes. The episode is that of 
 world-renowned Pantisocracy. We shall glance at it. 
 
 The scheme, as seems generally agreed, originated with 
 Coleridge ; a beautiful dream-poem it was, which he mis- 
 took for a reality. The amelioration of the species, the 
 regeneration of the world, the attainment of unmitigated 
 felicity here below, were its objects ; the excitement of the 
 French Revolution, with which the air was still tremulous, 
 gave hue to the undertaking. A coterie of choice spirits, 
 free from all stain of selfishness, and with every energy 
 
SAMUEL TATLOK COLEKIDGE. 121 
 
 devoted to the above gi-and ends, was to be selected : these 
 benign and stainless individuals were to select just as many 
 young ladies of similar perfection, and marry them ; the 
 whole were then to take shipping for the banks of the 
 Susquehanna River, beyond the blue Atlantic. This Sus- 
 quehanna was chosen, Coleridge informed Gillman, on 
 account of the name being pretty and metrical ! Here the 
 choice spirits male were to toil, untiring and unselfish, in 
 the supposable manner of their father Adam before the 
 fall ; the choice spirits female were to do the household 
 work, and perform all the delicate sweetnesses ai^pointed 
 them by nature ; all taint of selfishness, all deleterious ad- 
 mixture, of whatever sort, of human failing was to be non- 
 existent. The unruffled felicity of a second Eden was to 
 be the unquestioned result. Meanwhile, the world, in 
 amazement at its own long stupidity, and rapt admiration 
 at the dwellers in the new Happy Valley, was to open all 
 its prison gates, fling all its crowns into Limbo, and sheathe 
 sword from pole to pole ! Then, by slow degrees or more 
 rapidly, after a gently-brightening silver age or in full and 
 sudden glory, the long-postponed golden age was to gleam 
 upon the world ! All living beings were to be embraced 
 in the scheme of love. Hear this : — 
 
 " Innocent Foal ! thou poor despised Forlorn ! 
 I hail thee Brother — spite of the fool's scorn ! 
 And fain would take thee with me, in the Dell 
 Of Peace and mild Equality to dwell. 
 Where Toil shall call the charmer Health his bride, 
 And Laughter tickle Plenty's ribless side ! 
 How thou wouldst toss thy heels in gamesome play, 
 And frisk about as lamb or kitten gay ! " 
 
 From bards to donkeys the blessings of Pantisocracy were 
 to extend ! 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 11 
 
122 SAMUEL TAYLOE COLERIDGE. 
 
 The pleading of this unassailable scheme, and the object 
 of raising the terrestrial element of cash, caused much 
 lecturing in Bristol, whence the ■world-renovating expedi- 
 tion was to sail. In this town, abode one Joseph Cottle : a 
 man whose nature we can confidently pronounce one of 
 the gentlest, noblest, purest, and most generous to be met 
 with in literary annals, and to whom the world is deeply 
 indebted for his published reminiscences of Coleridge and 
 Southey ; he was a bookseller, and warmly patronized 
 genius. Cottle became acquainted with the schemers ; en- 
 joyed much their conversation ; encouraged their eflforts ; 
 and lived in hourly expectation of the sailing of the fateful 
 ship, bound for the Elysian Susquehanna. His nerves, 
 one fine morning, were thoroughly and conclusively calmed 
 by the receipt of the following note : — 
 
 " My Deae Sik, — Can you conveniently lend me five 
 pounds, as we want a little more than four pounds to make 
 up our lodging bill, which is indeed much higher than we 
 expected ; seven weeks, and Burnet's lodging for twelve 
 weeks, amounting to twelve pounds. — Yours affectionately, 
 
 S. T. COLEEIDGE." 
 
 Foui- pounds wanting for a lodging-bill, and the regen- 
 eration of the world in hand ! One begins to fear that the 
 tough old incorrigible is not to be regenerated yet ! Pan- 
 tisocracy vanishes into vacuity, or is drowned in peals of 
 " inextinguishable laughter ! ' 
 
 Did it all vanish then ? Did the whole of the elaborate 
 and faii-ly-schemed plan fleet into nonentity, and the aerial 
 elemental stuff which dreams are made of? Oh no ; very 
 decidedly not. The golden age, as usual, hung back ; the 
 Eden on the banks of the musically-named Susquehanna 
 could not be set agoing, without fully more than "four 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLElilDGE. 123 
 
 pounds to pay our lodging-bill ; " but there was one part 
 of the scheme, which, being of the ethereal sort, and flour- 
 ishing well when fanned by the airs which blow from dream- 
 land, took deep root. This part, as all our fair readers 
 anticipate, was that in which the young ladies figured; 
 Coleridge and Southey were both engaged in marriage. 
 The union of the former with Miss Sarah Fricker took 
 place on the 4th of October, 1795 ; the provision by which 
 the youthful husband purposed to support himself and his 
 bride being — an engagement, on the part of Cottle, to 
 give him a guinea and a half for every hundred lines of 
 poetry which he delivered him! 
 
 This financial scheme, it was found, would not work ; in 
 fact, to secure a competency in this way, one would out- 
 write Homer 'before his marriage coat, if very carefully 
 preserved, was out at elbow. Cottle paid some guineas in 
 advance ; but Pegasus scorned to be yoked in the provision 
 cart ; and, on the whole, some more substantial and certain 
 plan of subsistence was found necessary. The young couple 
 had taken up their abode at Clevedon, a village on the 
 banks of the Severn. 
 
 The mind of Coleridge was always scheming, and gen- 
 erally his plans were on a gigantic scale ; Cottle tells us of 
 a list of eighteen contemplated works, not one of which was 
 accomplished : his schemes almost invariably, like those of 
 Mithridates, found themselves unduly seconded, and inef- 
 fectually actualized, in execution. His schemes on the 
 present occasion, however, were by no means of a sin- 
 gularly romantic or impracticable character. They were 
 chiefly three : to found a school, to become a Unitarian 
 preacher, and to undertake the editing of a magazine. The 
 latter, after consideration, and with somewhat of reluc- 
 tance, was adopted. The magazine was to be entitled the 
 
124 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 •'Watchman;" it was to consist of high political writing, 
 of biographical essays, and of reviews ; its date of appear- 
 ance was fixed for Tuesday, 1st March, 1796, and its price 
 was to be fourpence. 
 
 Whether the idea of a magazine was congenial or un- 
 congenial to the mind of Coleridge, he entered upon its 
 realization with ardent and manly energy. He undertook 
 a tour to collect subscribers; and accompanied the perform- 
 ance of this primary object with the occasional delLvery 
 of pulpit discourses. His religious views were still Unita- 
 rian, and his pulpit garb would have somewhat startled an 
 orthodox audience ; on one occasion, he appeai-ed in blue 
 coat and white waistcoat. His discourses, too, were "pre- 
 ciously peppered with politics ; " and we must shock our 
 readers by informing them, that subjects were afforded for 
 two of them by the corn-laws and the hair-powder tax ! 
 
 The tour preliminary to the publication of the " "Watch- 
 man," is one of the most brilliant passages in Coleridge's 
 history. His mind was in the warm glow of opening man- 
 hood ; full of hope, ardor, courage, love ; we can well im- 
 agine that the Cherub Contemplation seemed ever to lie 
 and dream in his dark gray eye. His conversation was at 
 the time perhaps at its climax ; men hung in wondering 
 silence on the rhythmic stream which, in wild Ip-ic gran- 
 deur, or in gentlest lute tones, rolled ever jErom his lips. 
 His eloquence attracted crowds when he appeared in the 
 pulpit ; he was the " figurante " in all companies, and his 
 in-esistible powers of persuasion increased his list of sub- 
 scribers, beyond even his own imaginings. Of his pulpit 
 manner, we may form an idea from Hazlitt's description of 
 him a few years afterwards. Earnest solemnity, despite 
 his dress and politics, seems to have distinguished his mode 
 of delivery ; poetic adornment, graphic power, and enthu- 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 125 
 
 siastic exuberance, his style. " The tones of his voice were 
 musical and impressive," says Hazlitt ; and " he launched 
 into his subject like an eagle dallying with the wind." No 
 wonder that he attracted crowds. 
 
 At Nottingham, he had some dealings with Dr. Darwin, 
 who utterly scorned religion, and thought himself in posi- 
 tion to banter Coleridge on the subject. His arguments 
 fell of course like snowflakes on a river ; they might, Cole- 
 ridge said, have been of force at fifteen, but provoked only 
 a smile at twenty. "He (Dr. Darwin) boasted that he had 
 never read one book in favor of such stuff, but that he had 
 read all the works of infidels." The impartial, free-think- 
 ing man ! " Such," adds Coleridge, " are all the infidels 
 whom I have known." " 
 
 We said above, that his powers of persuasion during this 
 tour were irresistible ; but it is unsafe to indulge in such 
 poetic generalizations ; the dull tints and dusts of earth so 
 obstinately mingle with all human glories. Coleridge was 
 in Birmingham, beating up for subscribers — enchanting, 
 astonishing, electrifying. In the strict prosecution of his 
 design, he was destined speedily to find his perseverance 
 and courageous scorn of difficulties put to the test. We 
 must give his own description of the scene ; it at once in- 
 dicates the graphic truth of his pencil, and illustrates the 
 fine hearty jovialty which lay deep in his bosom: — "My 
 campaign commenced at Birmingham, and my first attack 
 was on a rigid Calvinist, a tallow-chandler by trade. He 
 was a tall, dingy man, in whom length was so predominant 
 over breadth, that he might almost have been borrowed 
 for a foundry poker. Oh that face !....! have it be- 
 fore me at this moment. The lank, black, twine-like hair, 
 pinguinitescent, cut in a straight line, along the black stub- 
 ble of his thin gunpowder eyebrows, that looked like a 
 
 11* 
 
126 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLKEIDGE. 
 
 scorched aftermatli from a last week's shaving. His coat 
 collar behind, in fierfect unison, both of color and lustre, 
 with the coarse yet glib cordage that I suppose he called 
 his hair, and which, with a bend inward at the nape of the 
 neck (the only approach to flexure in his whole figure), 
 slunk in behind his waistcoat; while the countenance, lank, 
 dark, very hard, and with strong perpendicular furrows, 
 gave me a dim notion of some one looking at me through 
 a used gridiron, all soot, grease, and iron ! " 
 
 This man was a friend of the species, and gi'and society- 
 regenerator. Attentively he listened to " the heaven-eyed 
 creature," as he poured forth, now like a cataract of sunny 
 foam, now like an jEolian harp, his eloquent pleadings ; the 
 tallow fumes moanwhfle wandering intrusively about the 
 nostrils of the wondrous speaker, mournfully reminiscent of 
 earth. Persuasion that might have melted Shylock ha^-ing 
 had due course, Coleridge paused to become aware of the 
 efiect. "And what, sir, might the cost be ? " " Only four- 
 pence (oh how I felt the anti-climax, the abysmal bathos 
 of that fouepence), only foui-pence, sir, each number, to 
 be published on every eighth day." "That comes to a deal 
 of money at the end of a year ; and how much did you 
 say there was to be for the money ? " " Thirty-two pages, 
 sir; large octavo, closely printed." "Thirty and two pages? 
 Bless me, why, except what I does in a family way on the 
 Sabbath, that 's more than I ever read, sir, all the year 
 round ! I am as great a one as any man in Brummagem, 
 sir, for liberty and truth, and all them sort of things, but 
 as to this (no ofience, I hope, sir) I must beg to be excused." 
 
 From Sheffield, in the January of 1796, Coleridge wrote 
 to a friend reporting progress. In that letter occurs the 
 following sentence: — "Indeed, I want firmness; I perceive 
 I do. I have that within me which makes it difficult to 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 127 
 
 say No, repeatedly, to a number of persons who seem un- 
 easy and anxious." This, so strictly true, we regard as a 
 physiognomic glimpse of importance. With all his bril- 
 ' ' liancy, with all his marvellous powers, with all the genius 
 which dwelt in his wonderful eye, the great disruption be- 
 tween the powers of thought and the powers of action 
 had begun to be conspicuously manifest in Coleridge. He 
 had not the power of saying No ! And yet how necessary, 
 how utterly indispensable, in this world of ours, is the 
 ability to utter, on needful occasions, a clear, defiant No ! 
 Mentally or physically it has to be done every hour of our 
 life ; and would we not be near the mark, in dating the 
 full develoj)ment of self-sustained manhood at the thorough 
 attainment of that power ? 
 
 The " "Watchman " did not succeed ; the causes of its 
 failure were manifold. Too much was expected by the 
 public ; a sufficient staff of talented men was not attached 
 to it ; and, finally, the close, accurate drudgery, necessary 
 to the successful superintendence of a magazine, was sin- 
 gularly uncongenial to Coleridge's nature. 
 
 Some time after the publication of the " Watchman " 
 ceased, we find its editor stationed at Stowey. Here, though 
 for a brief space he enjoyed tranquillity and comfort, the 
 frustrated hopes of his past life sunk deep into his soul. 
 Pie was approaching a critical and important epoch in his 
 spiritual development. It can be discerned, with indubit- 
 able distinctness, that his mind was in an unhealthy por- 
 tentous state — feverish, excited, unsettled ; now in the 
 whirl of fiery enthusiasm and hilarity, now in the morbid 
 disquietude of hopeless depression ; now scheming stupen- 
 dous epics, now cowering, anxious and trembling, to pro- 
 pitiate the "two Giants, Bread and Cheese." All this 
 
128 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 points to a shattered nervous state and prompts mournful 
 forebodings. 
 
 About this time, Coleridge was of very striking appear- 
 ance. In person he was somewhat full, and rather above 
 the common size ; his complexion inclined to light, but was 
 shaded by dark hair ; his eyebrows were large and protrud- 
 ing ; his forehead, as Hazlitt describes it, was " broad and 
 high, as if built of ivory ; " his large gray eye rolled and 
 gleamed, in the light of mild but mighty genius. 
 
 We have arrived, as we said, at a grand crisis in his char- 
 acter and history. "We have seen him in his youth ; we 
 have marked the swift expansion of his faculties, the first 
 meteoric blaze of his fame. His path hitherto must be 
 pronounced brilliant. Not unshaded by sorrow, not un- 
 tinctured with error, it is yet encompassed with a gi-and 
 auroral radiance. The light of genius flashing from his 
 eye, the light of hope and ardor firing his bosom, he has 
 trod along, kindling expectant admiration in all breasts. 
 His very errors have been those of a noble and mighty 
 nature. The banner of human advancement had been 
 thrown abroad upon the winds, inscribed with liberty and 
 with love ; and ardent young souls hastened to range them- 
 selves beneath it ; unweeting that those golden words had 
 been, or were to be, soaked and blotted with blood. "With 
 what in the mighty onrushing of the French Revolution 
 Avas truly noble, with the perennial truths of freedom and 
 advancement, Coleridge had deeply sympathized ; in its 
 wild volcanic fury he never shared, and, when murder and 
 despotism sat in its high places, he utterly abjured its cause. 
 For a time, the ardent, all-fusing love in his own bosom, 
 had bathed the world in kindness and beauty ; the tones 
 of his own heart were those of tenderness and gentlest 
 sympathy, and he had dreamed that he had heard respon- 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOK COLERIDGE. 129 
 
 sive notes from the bosoms of all his fellow-men. Hence 
 had arisen the Susquehanna scheme, the beautiful morning 
 dream of the Happy Valley. Already, in various ways, 
 he had evinced gigantic powers. In a constellation of 
 rarely gifted youths, he had been the central light, the most 
 dazzling star ; his eloquence and his conversation had shed 
 enchantment around him: his "Religious Musings," to 
 specify no other of his juvenile performances, had been the 
 indubitable pledge of power to scale the loftiest heights of 
 thought and of fame, and to sit there crowned among the 
 mightiest. 
 
 But his path, dazzling and wonderful as it was, had been 
 strictly that of youth. An element of excitement had 
 encompassed him ; the atmosphere of his mind had been 
 tempestuous and fiery ; and the grand question which pre- 
 sents itself, at the momentous period of his history at 
 which we have now arrived, is this : — Is his radiance to 
 be merely meteoric, intermittent, and youthful ; or is he 
 henceforth, in calmer air and with steadier glory, to shine 
 in the placid majesty of manhood? 
 
 Southey, the friend of his youth, and the sharer for a 
 time in his dreams, with powers whose might was never 
 considered so rare or so wonderful as his own, calmly and 
 courageously marched from the dreamland of youth, and 
 in gathered energy commenced life victoriously as a man ; 
 Wordsworth, gentle but stalwart-hearted, had virtually done 
 the same ; and how was it with him, whose eye gleamed 
 with a more unearthly radiance than that of either, who 
 was among them the acknowledged monarch — Samuel 
 Taylor Coleridge ? 
 
 What, in our view, marks the full development of man- 
 hood, and dissevers it totally from the states of boyhood 
 and youth, is a sustained self-mastery. When the energies 
 
130 SAMUEL TAYLOK COLERIDGE. 
 
 are not the slaves of excitement ; when the fiery impatience 
 of occasional effort has become the perseverent energy of 
 continued work ; when the powers are ranged in ordered 
 submission under the will ; when the motives are not the 
 faint wavering fatui or meteors of the hour, but the guid- 
 ing principle of the life is clearly ascertained and resolutely 
 adhered to ; — then the boy has passed into the man. 
 
 According to this view of the matter, it is manifest that 
 sound healthful manhood does not necessarily presuppose 
 any vastness of mental power, any extraordinary or aston- 
 ishing genius. A William Burns, for instance, toiling 
 calmly and with stern endurance to find sustenance for 
 himself and his children, may be a sounder, and in stricter 
 terms, a more fully developed man than his world-shaking 
 son the poet, with his wildly-tossing passions and his sadly 
 blasted hopes. The miner, who works resolutely and with- 
 out flinching in the bowels of the earth, may be more a 
 man than the feverish creature of excitement, who now 
 soars above the clouds, and now lies prostrate and hopeless 
 in the mire. Who ever said Byron was a fiilly developed 
 man? 
 
 Still more, it is precisely where the powers are mightiest, 
 and the passions strongest, that the difficulty of attaining 
 calm manhood is sternest. A comparatively easy task it 
 is for the man of common, everyday powers, to attain their 
 proper command, to restrain them within their due me- 
 chanic circle. But when the passions are fierce and mighty 
 as whirlwinds, when the breast heaves with volcanic fire, 
 and the eye rolls in frenzy, when the sensibility is as in- 
 tensely acute to disappointment as the hopes are bright 
 and certain of failure ; then it is, at the momentous crisis 
 when the dreams of youth, whose light has hitherto suffused 
 the world, vanish finally from the soul, that the struggle is 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOK COLERIDGE. 131 
 
 tremendous. The bearing of these remarks upon the char- 
 acter of Coleridge will become manifest as we proceed. 
 
 After the failure of the " Watchman," we find Coleridge 
 residing at Stowey. The urgency of a regular mode of 
 subsistence had become more imperative, fi-om the fact of 
 his having become a father. Pecuniary affairs, however, 
 wore by no means a hopeless aspect ; Charles Lloyd, a 
 young man who had conceived the profoundest admiration 
 for Coleridge's genius, had taken up his abode with him ; 
 occasional sums were obtained from Cottle for poetry ; and 
 at length, in 1798, Mr. Josiah Wedgewood and his brother, 
 who patriotically desired that Coleridge's marvellous pow- 
 ers should be untrammelled by a profession, bestowed upon 
 him an annuity of £160. One half of this sum ceased to 
 be paid at a subsequent period. 
 
 Ere proceeding in our histoiy of Coleridge's character, 
 we must indulge our readers and ourselves with a glance 
 at his Stowey life ; a sunny prospect, which we shall sood 
 find enveloped in cloud and darkness. We avail ourselves 
 of the words of kind and honest Cottle, -vdio waxes hila- 
 rious and quasi-poetical on the occasion ; the time was 
 June 29, 1797. "Mr. C. took peculiar delight in assuring 
 me (at least at that time) how happy he was ; exhibiting 
 successively his house, his garden, his orchard, laden with 
 fruit; and also the contrivances he had made to unite his 
 two neighbors' domains with his own. . . . After the 
 grand circuit had been accomplished, by hospitable con- 
 trivance, we approached the " Jasmine Harbor," where, to 
 our gratifying surprise, we found the tripod table laden 
 with delicious bread and cheese, surmounted by a brown 
 mug of true Taunton ale. We instinctively took our seats ; 
 and there mii^t have been some downright witchery in the 
 provisions, which surpassed all of its kind ; nothing like it 
 
132 SAMUEL TAYLOK COLERIDGE. 
 
 on the wide terrene, and one glass of the Taunton settled 
 it to an axiom. While the dappled sunbeams played on 
 our table, through the umbrageous canopy, the very birds 
 seemed to participate in our felicities, and poured forth 
 their selectest anthems. As we sat in our sylvan hall of 
 splendor, a company of the happiest mortals (T. Poole, C. 
 Lloyd, S. T. Coleridge, and J. C), the bright blue heavens, 
 the sporting insects, the balmy zephyrs, the feathered chor- 
 isters, the sympathy of friends, all augmented the pleasur- 
 able to the highest point this side the celestial ! . . . . 
 "While thus elevated, in the universal current of our feel- 
 ings, Mrs. Coleridge appeared, with her fine Hartley ; we 
 all smiled, but the father's joy was transcendental! " 
 
 All this was too bright to last. As yet, indeed, there 
 seemed no great cause for abatement of the hopes of those 
 who, in ever-increasing numbers and in ever-deepening 
 veneration, encircled Coleridge. We might say, in fact, 
 that it was much the reverse. The dreamy disappoint- 
 ments of youth might become matter for a pleasant smile; 
 the poetic fire,*in which he had clothed nature and man, 
 might yet warm his own bosom and nerve his own arm. 
 
 His political oijinions had attained a fuller development; 
 while retaining all the enthusiasm and love of early days, 
 they had settled into assured stability, on a foimdation of 
 soundest wisdom. His theological views also — a fact of 
 momentous importance, and fraught with richest hope — 
 had undergone revision. More profoundly and with truer 
 reverence, he had acknowledged, in his inmost soul, that 
 the Bible is, in very truth, the articulate voice of God to 
 man ; he had perceived that the whole history of the human 
 race, for the silent but mighty facts of which no youthful 
 imaginings could be substituted, hath, for its centre, its 
 keystone, and its crown, the Lord Jesus Christ ; he had 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 133 
 
 begun to discern that religion, if in any sense strictly re- 
 vealed, must superadd something to the dicta of nature, 
 and be a " religation " or binding again ; he had heard the 
 deep and awful words of mystery which rise from the whole 
 frame of nature and the whole inner world of the soul ; 
 and, in meekest but manliest adoration, he hadbowed down 
 to the triune God. Oh, how Hope now, dashing aside the 
 veil of the shadowing years, seems still, despite our knowl- 
 edge of the end, with brightest smile to point to Coleridge, 
 as he was at the close of the last century ! 
 
 In the years of boyhood and youth, Coleridge's constitu- 
 tion, although not peculiarly robust, was unquestionably 
 sound and healthful ; not free from weakness, not unvisited 
 by pain, he was yet indubitably the possessor of a buoyant 
 spirit and vigorous frame. But on one occasion, about the 
 close of the century, he had been visited by severe and 
 singular bodily ailment, accompanied by excruciating pain. 
 For relief, he had recourse to — opium ! Finding the re- 
 lief he sought, anti unaware that he was dallying with a 
 power, whose deadly necromancy withers the arm and 
 palsies the soul, he went on, heedless and unweeting, until 
 resistance was vain. 
 
 Here, then, was the blasting of all hope ; here was the 
 attainment of calm manhood rendered forever impossible ; 
 henceforward the chaining of his energies in ordered sub- 
 mission to the car of will, was hopeless. 
 
 Beyond all doubt, this was the proximate and decisive 
 agent in bringing about the tragic anomaly of Coleridge's 
 after life. Yet there were other influences at work, which 
 acted mainly as hindrances and counteracting forces to his 
 at once awakening from his trance, and tearing from his 
 bosom the vampire that drank his life-blood. The shatter- 
 ing of his youthful schemes, and the failure of his youthful 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 12 
 
134 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 hopes, had wakened tones of deepest sorrow in his soul. 
 We hear of a " calm hopelessness," of long days of despair- 
 ing anticipation and unbrightened foreboding. Besides 
 this, we have reason for thinking it a fact, and we need do 
 no more than mention it, that his marriage had in some 
 respects been an unhappy one. 
 
 But for the mighty magic of opium, which, at such a 
 crisis, came in to throw a shade of most mournful gloom 
 over the character and life of Coleridge, these secondary 
 disturbing influences might well have been overborne ; but 
 for the depressing effects of these influences, opium might 
 never have succeeded in throwing its withering influence, 
 finally, and irremediably, over his soul: in their mutual 
 operation, they produced what we have called the grand 
 severance in Coleridge's character. 
 
 After visiting Germany, in 1798, and making a stay there 
 of fourteen months, Coleridge settled in the Lake country, 
 and engaged largely in newspaper writing. In 1804, he 
 visited Malta. Returning, after a residence of considerable 
 length, to England, we find him, in the year 1809, com- 
 mencing, once more, the publication of a periodical, this 
 time named, " The Friend." During the period when this 
 paper appeared, the circulating libraries were doubtless in 
 as full operation as ever ; the British public of this enlight- 
 ened age were hanging over their novels, or preparing, per- 
 haps, their ball dresses ; commerce was rushing heedless 
 onwards ; Mammon was stalking abroad, with all eyes 
 turned towards him in supplication or praise; "The Friend," 
 being sadly over-freighted with wisdom, and having no 
 direct bearing on cash, but only on the eternal destiny of 
 man, and his true and lasting temporal amelioration, could 
 not be carried on for lack of support ! This is a fact ; and 
 admits of being thus broadly stated. As we peruse those 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 135 
 
 volumes, now promising fair for literary immortality, in 
 which the published numbers of " The Friend " are pre- 
 served to us, it appears strange and even humiliating, that 
 such periodical writing should, in our century, under what- 
 ever disadvantages, have, failed of adequate support. But 
 what, after all, must we say? That, in this defective world, 
 small worms destroy imposing gourds, that, as Richter re- 
 marks, though wings are admirable for the azure, we want 
 boots for the paving stones, that the consummate linguis- 
 tic skill and high metaphysics of Coleridge were rendered 
 unavailing, not solely through the indifference or stupidity 
 of his countrymen, but through such small and undignified 
 shortcomings, as want of punctuality, want of clearness, 
 and want of business tact. 
 
 Towards the end of his sojourn at the Lakes, Coleridge's 
 mode of existence, as we learn from Mr. De Quincey, was 
 cheerless and anomalous. Towards the afternoon, he de- 
 scended from his bedroom ; and through the still watches 
 of the night, until the morning struck the stars, his lonely 
 taper burned mournfully in his window. The same writer 
 assures us, that the intense glow of sympathy and joyous 
 admiration, with which Coleridge had once gazed upon 
 Nature, had now well-nigh died away : the magic had 
 passed from stream and lake, from wood and mountain, 
 from the ocean and the stars : they woke no tones of music 
 in his breast, they lit no fire of rapture in his eye. Ah, 
 what a mournful change was here ! 
 
 In 1810, Coleridge quitted the Lake country forever. In 
 the early part of 1814, we find him lecturing at Bristol. 
 Opium was now in the full exercise of its tyrannic and 
 deadly power. Sternly, and with sincerest effort, he re- 
 sisted it, but its magic became ever the more irresistible ; 
 its necromancy had smitten his energy with fatal paralysis. 
 
136 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 The effort to free himself from the spell was vahi; the 
 thrill of temporary gladness, as of returning youth and 
 rapture, formed so witching a contrast to the remorse and 
 almost despair of his disenchanted hours, that he ever 
 threw himself again into the arms of his destroyer. He 
 seems to us to be sorrowfully, but truly, imaged by his own 
 " miserable knight," haunted by the spectre of a bright and 
 beautiful lady, from the ghastly gleam of whose eye he 
 could not escape, and whom he hnew to be a fiend. 
 
 The wild fire in his eye, and other indications, revealed 
 to Cottle the melancholy state of affairs. In deepest dis- 
 tress, and actuated by his sincere and tender love for Cole- 
 ridge, he resolved to address to him an expostulating letter. 
 With Cottle, we can find no fault ; the voice of duty to his 
 friend and to his God prompted the efibrt ; but, with deep 
 conviction we must say, he was not the man to perform 
 the task. The delicate and reverential kindness which 
 every sentence should have breathed ; the admiring and 
 bewailing pity, distinguishing minutely and unremittingly 
 between crime and disease ; the manliness of friendly and 
 most earnest advice, with no tone of censorious exhortation 
 or blame ; — these were beyond the mental capacity of 
 Cottle. How sad are these words in reply : — " You have 
 poured oil in the raw and festering wounds of an old friend's 
 conscience, Cottle! but it is oil of vitriol ! ''^ And what 
 an unfathomable sorrow is here : — "I have prayed, with 
 drops of agony on my brow ; trembling, not only before 
 the justice of my Maker, but even before the mercy of my 
 Redeemer. 'I gave thee so many talents, what hast thou 
 done with them ? ' " 
 
 Ah ! little did Cottle, or even Southey, with his far 
 greater soul, know of the fearful battle which this mighty 
 and valiant spirit had to fight; wo must even say that they 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 13? 
 
 did not fully attend to what they might plainly have dis- 
 cerned. Does not the whole course of Coleridge's life in- 
 dicate sternest effort ? His newspaper writing, his editing 
 " The Friend," his long researches into metaphysics and 
 theology ; do they not show an earnest and noble effort to 
 attain "the perennial fireproof joys of constant employ- 
 ment ? " do they not show a soul struggling, with Titanic 
 effort and deadly perseverance, against a viewless but re- 
 sistless power? Could aught which Southey or Cottle 
 might say, instil a deeper abhorrence of opium into Cole- 
 ridge's mind than was there already? Could any human 
 hand portray its effects and influence, in darker hues, than 
 those in which, in his own agonized and blasted soul, they 
 were imaged already to the eye of Coleridge ? It was not 
 advice or exhortation which was needed ; it was kindliest, 
 tenderest co-operation with the efforts of the sufferer : it 
 was admiring sympathy and respectful assistance. Good 
 conscientious Cottle somewhat mistook his function in ad- 
 dressing Coleridge, and his attempt was, of course, unat- 
 tended with any important result. 
 
 In 1816, Coleridge took up his abode at Highgate, in 
 the immediate vicinity of London, under the roof of Mr. 
 Gillman, a physician- Here he thenceforward remained; 
 and here he terminated his career, in 1834. During this long 
 period, he constantly displayed his astonishing intellectual 
 powers; and exhibited, along with them, the marvellous 
 and melancholy prostration of the powers of action. On 
 the whole, from these years there seems to breathe a wail- 
 ing cadence of unutterable sorrow. Splendors there were, 
 beautiful, meteoric ; but they appear but as the gleaming 
 of nightly meteors over the pale Arctic snow, far different 
 from the calm and brightening beams of morn. His men- 
 tal powers were still mighty and rampant, as an army of 
 
 12* 
 
138 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 lions ; but his will, that should have guided and subdued 
 them, was feeble and wavering as a deer. 
 
 Yet how wonderful is the power of genius ! Mournfully 
 as the lines of decision had faded from that cheek, sadly as 
 the fire was dimmed in that eye, broken as were the tones 
 of that once soft and melodious voice, ardent and gifted 
 souls were drawn instinctively towards him. Week after 
 week and year after year, did they listen attentively, did 
 they journey patiently ; drawn by the weird gleam of the 
 halo of genius round his brow. A sort of undefined glory 
 encompassed him ; an influence proceeded from him as of 
 some wizard power, allied to inspiration, and linked in some 
 mysterious manner with infinitude. Round his shrine was 
 ever a brilliant troop of powerful young minds ; among 
 the others, we can see "William Hazlitt, John Sterling, and 
 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 The last mentioned writer, in his lately published life of 
 John Sterling, has devoted a chapter to Coleridge; and we 
 present to our readers the following sketch of him during 
 his Highgate life, from Carlyle's unequalled pencil : — 
 
 " Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate Hill in those 
 years, looking down on London and its smoke-tumult, like 
 a sage escaped from the inanity of life's battle ; attracting 
 towards him the thoughts of innumerable brave souls still 
 engaged there. . . . The good man, he was now getting 
 old, towards sixty perhaps ; and gave you the idea of a life 
 that had been full of sufferings; a life heavy-laden, half- 
 vanquished, still swimming painfully in seas of manifold 
 physical, and other bewilderment. Brow and head were 
 round, and of massive weight, but the face was flabby and 
 irresolute. The deep eyes, of a light hazel, were as full of 
 sorrow as of inspiration ; confused pain looked mildly from 
 them, as in a kind of mild astonishment. The whole figure 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 139 
 
 and air, good and amiable otherwise, might be called flabby 
 and irresolute ; expressive of weakness under possibility of 
 strength. He hung loosely on his limbs, with knees bent, 
 and stooping attitude ; in walking he rather shuffled than 
 decisively stept ; and a lady once remarked, he never could 
 fix which side of the garden walk would suit him best, but 
 continually shifted in corkscrew fashion and kept trying 
 both. A heavy-laden, high-aspiring, and surely much suf- 
 fering man. His voice, naturally soft and good, had con- 
 tracted itself into a painful snuffle and sing-song: he spoke 
 as if preaching, — you would have said, preaching earnestly 
 and also hopelessly the weightiest things. I still recollect 
 his "object" and "subject," terms of continual recurrence 
 in the Kantean province ; and how he sung and snuffled 
 them into "om-m-mject" and " sum-m-mject," with a kind 
 of solemn shake or quaver, as he roUed along." He died, 
 as we have said, in 1834. 
 
 There are four aspects under which Samuel Taylor Cole- 
 ridge presents himself to our gaze : — those of poet, philos- 
 opher, critic, and conversationalist. Our glance at him in 
 these capacities must be very hurried. The perusal of 
 Coleridge's poetry is singularly suggestive of the idea of 
 stupendous powers, never exerted to their fuU extent, and 
 never applied to objects fully worthy of their might. To 
 paint with delicate exactness, until the mimicry produces 
 a titillating delight ; to evoke visions from dreamland, and 
 present them, dressed in the gaudy tinsel of fancy, to the 
 eye of ennui-stricken maiden, demanding no eflbrt of 
 thought, inspiring no new and nobler life ; such may have 
 been the attempts of some, whom it would be deemed 
 hard to exclude from the confines of Parnassus ; but such 
 we must esteem a desecration of poetry, and such could 
 never have been the poetry of Coleridge. To flash new 
 
140 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 light upon the destiny of man, and to kindle his eye with 
 light from heaven, must ever constitute the true mission of 
 the poet; and to this alone could Coleridge, fully and finally, 
 have devoted his jDowers. 
 
 But to these objects, it cannot be said that he ever, in 
 full measure, devoted them. He has done much ; but we 
 are profoundly sensible that he might have done more. 
 Strains of softest, gentlest melody he has left us, strains 
 which will Sound in the ears of the latest generations ; the 
 gift he bestowed upon his country was precious and mar- 
 vellous. Yet might not the Titanic powers to which they 
 bear witness have drawn new notes of grandeur from the 
 great unwritten epic of human history, have thrown new 
 and brighter light on the ways of God to man, have spread 
 out a new auroral banner to illumine man's destiny, and 
 lead him nearer to the celestial country ? In his youth he 
 schemed an epic, which might have set him on the same 
 starry pinnacle with Milton ; but it was his fate to scheme, 
 while Milton, heroic in every fibre, accomplished. 
 
 We shall notice, and that but most cursorily, only four 
 of Coleridge's poems : " Religious Musings," " The Ancient 
 Mariner," « Christabel," and "Love." 
 
 In the Pickering edition of 1844, the date affixed to the 
 "Religious Musings" is Christmas Eve, 1794. If this is 
 correct, the piece was composed when its author was a 
 dragoon ; but Cottle asserts it to have been written at a 
 later period. We are inclined, however, to suspect, that 
 the latter has confounded subsequent revision and addition, 
 with original production. At all events, it was a juvenile 
 efibrt, and truly it was a mighty one. All through it, there 
 glows the white heat of a noblest and holiest enthusiasm ; 
 its tempestuous rapture reminds you of Homer. Some 
 passages gleam with a Miltonic grandeur and sublimity ; 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 141 
 
 and the marvellous power with which the poet spreads Ms 
 vivifying enthusiasm all over nature, is unsurpassed. 
 
 The magnificent personifications with which this poem 
 abounds, are perhaps its distinguishing characteristic. The 
 power of personification, we regard as one of the truest 
 and severest tests of poetic genius ; and among modern 
 poets Coleridge and Shelley are probably its greatest mas- 
 ters. As a specimen of the ability of the former in this 
 way, and also as a characteristic extract from the poem of 
 which we speak, we quote the following lines ; our readers 
 wUl recollect Coleridge's early political views, and the ex- 
 citement of the French Revolution : — 
 
 " Yet is the day of retribution nigh ; 
 The Lamb of God hath open'd the fifth sea 
 And upward rush on swiftest wing of fire 
 The innumerable multitude of Wrongs 
 By man on man inflicted ! Rest awhile, 
 Children of wretchedness ! The hour is nigh : 
 And lo ! the great, the rich, the mighty Men, 
 The Kings and the chief Captains of the World, 
 With all that fix'd on high like stars of Heaven 
 Shot baleful influence, shall be cast to earth, 
 Vile and down-trodden, as the untimely fruit 
 Shook from the fig-tree by a sudden storm. 
 Even now the storm begins ; each gentle name. 
 Faith and meek Piety, with fearful joy 
 Tremble far off — for lo ! the giant Frenzy, 
 Uprooting empires with his whirlwind arm, 
 Mocketh high Heaven ; burst hideous from the cell 
 Where the old Hag, unconquerable, huge. 
 Creation's eyeless drudge, black Ruin, sits. 
 Nursing the impatient earthquake." 
 
 That " giant Frenzy," we are inclined to pronounce the 
 finest personification in the whole compass of modem 
 
142 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLEBIDGE. 
 
 poetry ; and we are not sure that two such figures as this, 
 and "creation's eyeless drudge, black Ruin," are to be 
 found, in an equally short space, in any poem that ever 
 was written. And this was composed ere Coleridge was 
 twenty-five. 
 
 The " Ancient Mariner " is one of the most wonderfiil 
 products of modern times. So much has been said of it, 
 that little need now be added. It is a vivid and awful 
 phantasmagoria, of weird mystery and tenific sublimity. 
 A vision of wildest grandeur, which passed before the 
 poet's ecstatic eye, it was cast into poetic unity by the viv- 
 ifying power of imagination, and limned forth by the poetic 
 hand in magical and meteoric tints, to the rivetted eyes of 
 all men. Its graphic power is absolutely wonderful ; and 
 we need only i-emind our readers what an important ele- 
 ment of poetic eiFect this is. What other men hear of the 
 poet sees ; in the intense glow of poetic rapture, annihilat- 
 ing time and space, he gazes one moment into the flames 
 of Tophet, and the next upon the crowns of the Seraphim; 
 what other men speak of, he paints. It is perhaps the 
 mingling of awe, and mystery, and wildest imagining, with 
 terrific distinctness of picturing, that makes the spell, which 
 this poem throws over the reader, so irresistible. What a 
 picture is this : — 
 
 " The upper air burst into life ! 
 
 And a hundred fire-flags sheen ; 
 To and fro they were hurried about ! 
 And to and fro, and in and out, 
 The wan stars danced between. 
 
 And the coming wind did roar more loud, 
 
 And the sails did sigh like sedge ; 
 And the rain poured down from one black cloud ; 
 
 The moon was at its edge. 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 143 
 
 The thick black cloud was cleft, and still 
 
 The moon was at its side ; 
 Like waters shot from some high crag, 
 The lightning fell with never a jag, 
 
 A river steep and wide." 
 
 Those wan stars, that black cloud with the moon at its 
 edge, and that river of lightning, make up surely one of 
 the most terrific landscapes ever conceived or portrayed. 
 What a still and awful sublimity, too, is there in these 
 lines : — 
 
 " Still as a slave before his lord. 
 The ocean hath no blast ; 
 His great bright eye most silently 
 Up to the moon is cast." 
 
 If, again, we consider the imagery of the poem, we find it 
 also perfect : — 
 
 " Day after day, day after day. 
 
 We stuck, nor breath nor motion ; 
 As idle as a painted ship 
 Upon a painted ocean." 
 
 ' The inexpressible beauty and appropriateness of this image 
 were never surpassed. 
 
 And does not the heart thrill with the aerial melody, and 
 serene loveliness, of these so simple lines'? 
 
 " It ceased ; yet still the sails made on 
 
 A pleasant noise till noon, 
 A noise like of a hidden brook 
 
 In the leafy month of June, 
 That to the sleeping woods all night 
 
 Singeth a gentle tune." 
 
 But we can particularize the beauties of this poem no 
 
144 SAMUEL TATLOK COLERIDGE. 
 
 farther. We regard it as one of the most wondrous phan- 
 tasmagorias, one of the most marvellous pieces of imagina- 
 tive painting, to be met with in ancient or modem poetry. 
 
 " Christabel" is a production by itself. Coleridge wrote 
 no other piece like it, and no man but Coleridge ever could 
 have written it. The idea of satanic enmity and malice, 
 under the garb of angelic innocence and beauty, seems to 
 have been much present to the mind of Coleridge. Geral- 
 dine, and the fiend lady beautiful and bright, are personifi- 
 cations of the same thought ; and it is one of chilliest hor- 
 ror. We give no excerpts from " Christabel ; " its most 
 striking passages have been quoted numberless times. The 
 blending of undefined mystery and awe, with the most 
 vivid bodying forth of each portrait in the picture, and the 
 most delicate minuteness in laying on the tints, perhaps 
 distinguish it as a poem. 
 
 We lack words to speak our admiration of Coleridge's 
 poem called " Love." Its melody rolls trancingly over the 
 soul, raising unutterable emotions; its gentle but mighty 
 enthusiasm, calm as a cloudless summer noon, wraps the 
 whole being in an atmosphere of rapture ; its ideally beau- 
 tiful jjainting laughs at our power of admiration. There, 
 are a few pieces in our language which stand apart from all 
 others, in unapproached, inexhaustible loveliness: among 
 these we place Milton's "Allegro" and "II Penseroso," 
 Shelley's " Cloud," and Coleridge's " Love." Our readers, 
 of course, all know it ; but we must once more recall to 
 their minds its serenely beautiful commencement : — 
 
 " All thoughts, all passions, all delights, 
 Whatever stirs this mortal frame, 
 All are but ministers of Love, 
 And feed his sacred flame. 
 
SAMUKL TAYLOli COLERIDGE. 145 
 
 Oft in my waking hours do I 
 
 Live o'er again that happy hour, 
 When midway on the mount I lay, 
 
 Beside the ruin'd tower. 
 
 > i 
 
 The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene, 
 
 Had blended with the lights of eve ; 
 And she was there, my hope, my joy — 
 
 My own dear Genevieve ! " 
 
 The pieces we have mentioned are the most ■wonderful 
 efforts of Coleridge. We have been able to do little more 
 than refer to them as proofs of his gigantic povi^ers, with- 
 out, in any adequate measure, analyzing or displaying their 
 beauties. 
 
 Of Coleridge, as philosopher and critic, we cannot speak, 
 save in the briefest terms. The " Friend," the " Aids to 
 Reflection," the " Biographia Literaria," and the " Method," 
 are his leading contributions to criticism and philosophy. 
 "We shall not characterize them separately. They abound in 
 profound wisdom and practical insight; a collection of aph- 
 orisms might be made from them, we venture to say, em- 
 bodying all, or almost all, the great truths, religious, moral, 
 and political, whose proclamation constitutes the spiritual 
 advancement and attainment of the nineteenth century ; 
 their style is on all hands considered one of the most per- 
 fect of models. Of his distinction between the reason and 
 the understanding, which was the keystone of his philoso- 
 phy, and which has so widely influenced philosophic thought 
 in our century ; and of his distinction between the imagi- 
 nation and the fancy, to which critics have been so much 
 beholden, we shall say nothing. Their importance may be 
 very great ; they may have led to new and rich fields of 
 thought ; but we are very far from thinking that it is by 
 estimating their precise value, that a correct or adequate 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 13 
 
146 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLEKIDGE. 
 
 idea of the influence which Coleridge has exerted, and the 
 work he has done, is to be obtained. It is in the spiritual 
 impulse which he communicated to British thought ; in the 
 new earnestness and elevated enthusiasm with which ,he 
 inspired the noblest spirits of our age ; in the new life 
 which he kindled in thousands of hearts, that the extent 
 and magnitude of his influence are to be seen. From his 
 works, in their whole range, comes a mild but powerful 
 influence, purging the soul of earthliness, turning the eye 
 heavenward, and nerving the arm to noblest endeavor; 
 while mammonism, selfishness, and baseness, like spectres 
 and night-birds at the morning strains of Memnon, are 
 startled and flee away. To perform this work in our gold- 
 worshipping age, Coleridge seems pre-eminently to have 
 been missioned by the Most High. And when the reader 
 conceives to himself the effect of this, in its thousandfold 
 ramifications, through our families, our churches, and our 
 literary schools, to trace which is at present impossible for 
 us, he will agree with us in thinking the work of Coleridge 
 a far extending and mighty work. 
 
 To Coleridge's conversational powers, allusion has already 
 been made. On all hands they have been recognized as 
 wonderful ; but there has been an important difference of 
 opinion regarding them. Mr. Carlyle, in the work from 
 which we have already quoted, says : — "I have heard Cole- 
 ridge talk, with eager musical energy, two stricken hours, 
 his face radiant and moist, and communicate no meaning 
 whatever to any individual of his hearers — certain of 
 whom, I for one, still kept eagerly listening in hope," etc. 
 The importance of this is very great, and its weight can- 
 not, by any means, be entirely nullified. It is difficult for 
 any reader of Carlyle to believe, or even conceive, that, in 
 any such case, his earnest and fiery eye would not see into 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 147 
 
 the heart of what matter there was. But we must listen 
 to another authority on the subject, which will also be rec- 
 ognized as of weighty import, that of Mr. De Quincey; — 
 " Coleridge, to many people, and often I have heard the 
 complaint, seemed to wander; and he seemed then to 
 wander the most, when, in fact, his resistance to the wan- 
 dering instinct was greatest, viz., when the compass and 
 huge circuit by which his illustrations moved, travelled 
 farthest into remote regions, before they began- to revolve. 
 Long before this coming round commenced, most people 
 had lost him, and naturally enough supposed that he had 
 lost himself. They continued to admire the separate beauty 
 of the thoughts, but did not see their relations to the dom- 
 inant theme I can assert, upon my long and in- 
 timate knowledge of Coleridge's mind, that logic, the most 
 severe, was as inalienable from his modes of thinking as 
 grammar from his language." 
 
 Under the shield of De Quincey, we venture to suggest, 
 that the practical energy of Carlyle, and the fact that long 
 and subtle trains of abstract speculation are not congenial 
 to his mind, may afford a solution of the circumstance, that 
 he failed to discover order or continuity of argument, where, 
 to the more practised metaphysical intellect of De Quincey, 
 all was beautifully and emphatically perspicuous. 
 
 We have finished our cursory survey of the life and 
 works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Around his career 
 are glories as of empyrean light ; and sorrows that might 
 draw tears from the Seraphim. Of kind and gentle nature, 
 and by constitution and early education ill adapted for the 
 sore buffetings of the life-battle, his intellectual vision was 
 wide as that of the eagle, and piercing as that of the 
 lynx; his love of nature was deep and delicate as a Naiad's 
 that has dwelt forever by a fountain in the silent wood; 
 
148 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 his youth was bright, and radiant with the beams of prom- 
 ise; his intellectual prowess, in its full expansion, was 
 gazed on with dumb astonishment ; while, in beautiful union 
 with thisj was a fantastic, almost childish playfulness and 
 genialityof heaxt. His religion, despite the sad anomaly 
 in his character^ and the baleful influence of the power 
 under whose magic he lay, we must, from the whole spirit 
 of his writings, from the deep devotion of his private let- 
 ters,, and from the agonized struggle of his life, declare to 
 have been 'profound and all-pervasive. In a fatal hour, he 
 quaffed the enchanting draught of opium, and there was 
 not enough of rugged vigor in his soul to break the spell; 
 henceforward it was as if the spirit of an eagle was closed 
 in- the. heart of a dove. We image. him.to ourselves as a 
 desert-born steed, with hoofs to outrun the wind, and eyes 
 to outgleam the lightning, but .smitten, at the bright morn- 
 ing hour, by the withering Samiel, and thenceforward stag- 
 gering, with eye dimmed and limbs tottering, along the 
 burning saud. 
 
WELLINGTON. 
 
 Among the many wonderful phenomena of human his- 
 tory, war holds a prominent, if not the most prominent,' 
 place ; in the web of human destiny, it has marked itself • 
 by a deep and continuous stain of red ; it has directed 
 every national development, it has called forth every human 
 emotion, it has entered into the composition of every lan- 
 guage. It is, withal, a phenomenon whose meaning is ex- 
 tremely difficult to read, and of which, we must make bold 
 to say, the readings have been extremely unsatisfactory. 
 
 To discern that war is essentially an evil, demands no ■ 
 singular amount, and no extraordinary exercise, of pene- 
 tration. The fair Earth that smiles daily to the sun, decked 
 in flowery garlands by the hand of Summer, might surely 
 serve a nobler end than to be the dwelling-place of self- 
 exterminating beings ; the lordly rivers, wandering through' 
 stately champaigns, and,- like beneficent queens, scattering 
 rich bounties around them, were surely not designed to be 
 reddened and thickened by the gore of brother men ; the 
 mountains that rise so grandly to meet the glance of Morn, 
 were surely not set there to flash back that glance from the 
 bristling line of steel ; the soft, luxuriant plains of Ceres 
 and Flora were surely destined finally to some higher object 
 
 than to be the battle-fields of Belloha and Mars. War, it 
 13* 
 
150 WELLINGTON. 
 
 must be allowed, is a relic of chaos and old night. But 
 let us not imagine that this is the whole truth concerning 
 it; its source leads us back to the unfathomable mysteries, 
 but its history is not utterly inexplicable, and its actings 
 are not by any means simply malign. Let it be granted 
 that human history bears unquestionable evidence of some 
 fearful taint, of some fatal curse ; let it be recognized that 
 the path of the generations has been over a burning marl, 
 which would not become the pavement of heaven, and 
 war becomes explicable. It has not been all in vain that 
 the generations have ever marched to battle music : the 
 car of Civilization has dripped with blood ; those throes 
 and throbbings which mark every new birth of society 
 have been wars. 
 
 The great event which has given tone and color to the 
 history of our time, and without a knowledge of which it 
 is impossible to understand the nineteenth century, is the 
 first French Revolution. It was the last great awakening 
 of the European intellect ; as every other such awakening, 
 it was followed by wars : — 
 
 "For all the past of Time reveals 
 A bridal dawn of thunder peab 
 Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact." 
 
 We venture the assertion, that the character of these wars 
 has been very widely misconceived. Mr. Carlyle, alluding 
 to them, and to Pitt as one of their chief movers, exclaims : 
 — "The result of all which, what was it? Elderly men 
 can remember the tar barrels burnt for success and thrice 
 immortal victory in the business, and yet what result had 
 we ? The French Revolution, a Fact decreed in the Eter- 
 nal Councils, could not be put down," etc. We shall not 
 stay to ask how it came that the " Eternal Councils " ceased 
 
WELLINGTON. 151 
 
 to act when Pitt came upon the stage, and allowed that 
 singular puppet to cut the threads of destiny and play his 
 part in independence of them ; we shall merely remark, 
 that, to our thinking, the Eternal Councils, or, as we shall 
 prefer saying, the hand of the Christian God, was as mani- 
 fest in the wars as in the revolution. The time was not 
 yet come for democracy; it was destined that the fire which 
 threatened to gird the world should, for the time, be 
 quenched, and nature did not grudge a deep deluge of blood 
 for the purpose. "Were there no other end attained by 
 these wars than to prove, in the groans and thunders of 
 battle, that it was not the doctrine of Voltaire that was to 
 renovate the world — ^ that the light in which the nations 
 were to rejoice was not to shine from the saloons of philo- 
 sophism — it were enough to demonstrate their supervision 
 and direction by the eye of Providence. To use a figure 
 suggested by Shakspeare, the tree of humanity had to be 
 lanced, and lanced fearfully, at least once more, ere it 
 reached its final glory. and beauty. 
 
 The lions of democracy arose in. wild fury ; they were 
 then yoked in glad submission to the car of their emperor, 
 and would have drawn him in triumph, like the god of old, 
 around the world ; but an instrument was i-aised up and 
 duly fitted to dash him from his seat, and to send him to 
 his lonely isle. Upon both of these from the first rested 
 the eye of God. The name of the one was Napoleon : the 
 other was that dauntless, calm, and stately hero, over whose 
 tomb, with a tear of pride, and not of sorrow, Britannia now 
 weeps. 
 
 Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, was bom in 
 Ireland in the year 1769. Both the precise locality and 
 the precise date of the event have been disputed ; we think 
 the writer of the biography which appeared in the Times 
 
152 WELLINGTON. 
 
 has established that the month was April, and rei.dt,f«!d it 
 at least extremely probable that the place was Dublin. By 
 original extraction he was English, but a naturalization of 
 more than two centuries had rendered the family irom 
 which he sprung thoroughly Irish. In the same year which 
 witnessed the arrival, of Wellington in our world, there 
 was another little boy born in Ajaccio ; he was ushered 
 into the woi-ld oh a piece of tapestry, embroidered with 
 scenes from the Iliad ; they called him Napoleon. Arthur 
 Wellesley received his military education at Angers, in 
 France. In the year 1787, he received his commission as 
 ensign in the 73d infantry regiment. In the boyhood of 
 Wellington there occurred nothing deserving mention. 
 
 Strangely enough, it was in Belgium that Arthur Wel- 
 lesley served his first campaign. There he received his 
 first practical military lesson, in its rugged sternness, little 
 dreaming that there lay the commencement of that training, 
 which, on these very plains, was to result in his becoming 
 the envy and admiration of the world. The campaign was 
 extremely disastrous to Great Britain, and extremely prof- 
 itable to her future hero. Of many gi-eat generals, and, 
 with emphasis, of Napoleon himself, it might be said that 
 victory is their ruin. The feeling of danger and the sounds 
 of battle brace their nerves, and clear their intellectual 
 vision; but the sound of a world's applause intoxicates 
 and maddens them ; thinking to shake the spheres, they 
 suddenly find that they are mortal, and fall headlong. But 
 of Wellington, and the whole class of generals which he 
 represented, it may be truly said, that every mistake is 
 worth a triumph, every defeat worth a victory. It was so 
 in the case of Wellesley's first campaign. He saw there, 
 in the most striking illustration, the combined action of 
 defective organization, inefficient coiamissariat, and miser- 
 
WELLINGTON. 153 
 
 able equipment ; he saw, in a •word, the operation of all 
 those eiTors and evils which are born of incapacity ; and 
 he witnessed their result — disgrace and destruction. Per- 
 forming, in his subordinate position, all that clearness of 
 vision and energetic action could effect; seizing every error 
 or reverse, and making it " vassal unto " wisdom ; he served 
 a very valuable apprenticeship to his profession in this 
 Belgium campaign which fell in the end of 1794 and the 
 beginning of 1795. 
 
 In the beginning of the year 1797, Colonel Wellesley 
 arrived at Calcutta ; a short time afterwards, his brother, 
 Lord Mornington, was placed at the head of the Indian 
 government. The main featm-es of his character were now 
 distinctly perceptible. An intellect of uncommon clear- 
 ness, comprehension, and vigor, was ruled and directed by 
 a prevailing and ardent devotion to war; a calm but sleep- 
 less energy, in alliance with a jienetrating intellect, searched 
 every circumstance to its root, unravelled every complexity, 
 and carefully stored every fragment of knowledge, which 
 bore on the theory or practice of his profession ; cheerful- 
 ness among friends, and reserve in general society, masked 
 a soul whose power necessitated its internal working. In 
 person, he is represented as having been handsome and 
 soldier-like ; the light in his eye was steady and piercing ; 
 an occasional abstraction and impatience indicated the fiery 
 energy that was in want of a world to conquer. By acci- 
 dent or intention, he passed a few weeks at Madras, soon 
 after his arrival in India ; the period was short, but it was 
 sufficient to enable him to acquire an accurate and compre- 
 hensive acquaintance with the affairs of the presidency, 
 and the warlike capacities of the Carnatic. The time soon 
 came when it was to avail him much. 
 
 Wellington's campaigns in India were three, The first 
 
154 WELLINGTON. 
 
 was against Tippoo Sultaun, the dreaded ruler of Mysore ; 
 the second was the arduous, but somewhat amusing, chase 
 and destruction of D}iot)ndiah Waugh, the robber of the 
 Mahratta hills; the third was the glorious campaign of 
 Assaye, which rivalled the renown of Plassey, and contin- 
 ued one of the brightest blazons on the shield of "Welling- 
 ton. We shall concern ourselves but slightly with the first 
 two ; Assaye deserves a longer notice. 
 
 The campaign against Tippoo, in which Wellesley served 
 in a subordinate- capacity, ended with the capture of Ser- 
 ingapatam and the death of its former possessor. This 
 took place in the summer of 1799. Colonel Wellesley was 
 appointed to the government of the place, and a very ex- 
 tensive jurisdiction assigned him. His discharge of the 
 duties thus imposed is strongly illustrative of his character, 
 and formed a very important part of that education which 
 produced the fortifier of Torres Vedras and the conqueror 
 of Waterloo. To our great general we may very emphat- 
 ically apply the fine and j)ointed remark of Sallust con- 
 cerning Jugurtha — " Sane, quod difiicillimum in primis 
 est, et proelio strenuus erat, et bonus consilio " — his sound 
 and massive strength availed him alike in camp and cabinet. 
 Even at this early stage of his career, he displayed a com- 
 prehensiveness which could administer the afiairs of prov- 
 inces, and a minute accuracy which could investigate the 
 most intricate or insignificant detail of currency. Into 
 every department of the administration he introduced 
 efficiency ; the afiairs of the provinces over which he ruled 
 spon wore an improved aspect ; and the gratitude and 
 applause of those over whom his sway extended rewai'ded 
 his eflTorts. ' 
 
 The long chase which issued in the slaughter of Dhoon- 
 diah and the dispersion of his followers, is of too small 
 
WELLINGTON. 155 
 
 importance to detain us; but an incident which marked 
 its close deserves notice. In the camp of the robber chief- 
 tain was found his little son, aged four years, and they 
 brought him to Wellesley. He treated the child with 
 tender kindness, protected him while he remained in India, 
 and, on leaving for England, committed a considerable sum 
 of money to the care of Colonel Symmonds for the use of 
 the boy. The act was kindly and beautiful; it rests upon 
 his early laurels like a sunbeam. The campaign against 
 Dhoondiah took filace in 1800 ; Wellesley was Created 
 major-general in 1802. 
 
 The battle of Assaye was one of the boldest and most 
 brilliant ever fought by Wellington. The campaign origi- 
 nated in the antagonism of two great powers, between 
 which lay the contest for the possession of India — the 
 Mahrattas, of the west, and the British, whose territories 
 lay principally to the north and east. The Mahrattas were 
 a powerful and warlike people,, who had successfully resisted 
 the empire of the Great Mogul. Against the British power, 
 three of their mightiest chiefs contended — Scindiah, Hol- 
 car, and the Rajah of Berar. Their force was formidable 
 and imposing. By his experience in other campaigns, 
 however, Wellesley knew well the conditions of an Indian 
 war ; of the country, in its every feature, he had the most 
 intimate knowledge ; and he had formed a correct idea of 
 the power of the British soldier. 
 
 To comprehend clearly the various aspects and move- 
 ments of the battle of Assaye, is not a very simple matter; 
 what picture yrk have ourselves formed of it in our own 
 mind, we shall endeavor to present to our readers. 
 
 The Kaitna, a small branch of the great Godavery river, 
 which rises in the north-west of the peninsula of Hindostan 
 and flows south-east, runs from west to east. On its north- 
 
156 WELLINGTON. 
 
 em bank is the village of Assaye, and, some small distance 
 to the west of that place, the village or station of Bokerdun. 
 It was posted on the ?iorthem bank of this stream that' 
 General Wellesley, advancing from the south, descried, on 
 the 23d of September, 1803, the combined forces of Scindiah 
 and the Rajar of Berar, in number about 50,000, with an 
 immense park of artillery. The British force did not num- 
 ber 5000 men. The right of the enemy's position was at 
 Bokerdun — it was occupied by cavalry ; their left, consist- 
 ing of infantry, extended along the baffles of the stream 
 towards Assaye. Wellesley determined to attack the in- 
 fantry. To accomplish this, he wheeled to the right, and 
 marched along the southern bank of the Kaitna, untU he 
 passed their left. The enemy's cavalry came pouring from 
 its position on their right, and was opposed by the Mahratta 
 and Mysore horse in the British interest. His rear and 
 flanks thus protected, Wellesley succeeded in crossing the 
 river to the left of the enemy. He at once formed his men 
 into three lines, of which the last was cavalry ; facing 
 towards the west, they advanced; the 78th Highlanders 
 were kept in reserve. The confederate Mahrattas had 
 watched these movements with an interest which may well 
 be conceived. They saw the British cross the stream 
 beyond their left flank, and perceived, with an apprehension 
 quickened by the sense of terrific danger, that their left 
 would be taken in flank, and rolled back in utter ruin. 
 Their position was untenable, and an instant alteration 
 was imperative. With a swiftness and regularity to be 
 imputed to French assistance, tliey efiected it. They drew 
 their infantry from the banks of the Kaitna, and flung it 
 across the space between the stream and Assaye, with its 
 left strongly posted on the village ; it once more looked 
 the British in the face. In this line, and in great strength 
 
WELLINGTON. 157 
 
 about Assaye, were the enemy's guns. As the British line 
 advanced, they received a raking and murderous fire ; the 
 guns of Wellesley were at once silenced ; and the 74th 
 and the piquets of infantry on the right, advancing against 
 the left of the enemy, were frightfully hewn up. It must 
 have been a spectacle of fearful but dazzling splendor. 
 Under the fervid Indian sun, those slender lines, the faint 
 noise of whose artillery was swallowed in the tremendous 
 I'oar of that of the enemy, advanced with determined step 
 against the turbaned ranks, a hundred cannon emptying 
 their Cerberean throats upon them, and vast multitudes of 
 the foe before. In their guns there was no safety and no 
 hope. What then remained ? One stern hope was left — 
 the word was given — " Fix bayonets ! " At once, along 
 the thin red lines, through the darkening smoke, the steel 
 gleamed out. On swept the British in the teeth of the 
 great guns ; on to victory. The eye never opened on the 
 plains of Bengal, or the Ghauts of Himmalaya, that could 
 bide the glitter of' the cold British steel ; the vast masses 
 were shattered and dissipated, and the horsemen of Berar, 
 that had rushed on the torn infantry of our right, were 
 dashed back, as a cloud by a tornado, by the British cav- 
 alry. The latter then advanced upon the broken infan- 
 try, trampling it down and scattering it abroad. The bat- 
 tle was won ; but there still was danger. The numbers of 
 the enemy were so great, that it was impossible for the 
 small British force to face them all at once ; the Mahratta 
 gunners, moreover, when the British bayonets advanced, 
 had in many instances lain TOwn as if dead, by their guns ; 
 and as soon as the British, by continuing their advance, 
 left the ground clear, they rose and reloaded their pieces. 
 One large body of the enemy's infantry formed again ; but 
 Lieutenant-Colonel Maxwell charged with the horse, and 
 
 SECOND SEKIES. 14 
 
158 WKLLINGTON. 
 
 broke their ranks; their whole army then dissipated, leaving 
 ninety pieces of cannon in the hands of the British. One 
 of the most brilliant victories in the annals of war was 
 over. 
 
 The defeated chieftains gathered their squadrons once 
 more on the plains of Argaum, but were totally routed. 
 
 In February, 1805, our general left India; after a career 
 where swift energy and dauntless valor in the field, threw 
 a rare and beautiful lustre over moderation, firmness, and 
 wisdom in the cabinet ; where his strong natural genius 
 had been practised and ripened ; where he had earned the 
 admiration and esteem as well of the subjects of his ad- 
 ministration, as of his brethren in the field ; and whence 
 he came, a Knight Companion of the Order of the Bath, 
 after having received the thanks of both houses of parlia- 
 ment, ajid with the first wreath of victory about his brow. 
 He had secured his country in possession of the richest 
 and goodliest conquest under the sun ; he came to establish 
 her throne among the nations at home. 
 
 We shall not trace minutely the career of Wellington 
 between the campaigns of India and those of the Peninsula. 
 In November, 1805, he served as chief of brigade in Den- 
 mark ; returning thence, he commanded for some time at 
 Hastings ; iij April, 1807, he was named chief secretary for 
 Ireland ; in August of the same year, he served with dis- 
 tinction in the Copenhagen campaign ; and, about the 
 middle of 1808, he was appointed to command a force des- • 
 tined for the Peninsula. 
 
 The first campaign which Wellesley served in Portugal 
 is extremely interesting. In it he acquired that knowledge 
 of the affairs of the Peninsula which enabled him finally 
 to conquer ; in it he first demonstrated to the world that 
 there were soldiers who could meet the bravest legions of 
 
WELLINGTON. 159 
 
 the resistless emperor, and that there was a general who 
 could lead them. He received the news of his appoint- 
 ment to the command with what, in him, we might almost 
 call exultant delight, and wrote to Lord Hill, with whom 
 he had formerly served, expressing the hope that they 
 would have more to do than had been the case last time. 
 His wakeful and minute circumspection was displayed in 
 the arrangement, provisioning, and equipment of the troops; 
 his energy struck life into the whole enterprise. Sailing 
 before the fleet which contained his army, he instituted a 
 series of investigations and conducted them with singular 
 success. Every reader of the immortal despatches of Wel- 
 lington must, we think, be struck with admiring astonish- 
 ment, as he perceives with what rapidity their author, amid 
 all the darkness and complexity of the subject, compre- 
 hended, at this time, and mastered his whole position. The 
 possibilities of the contest and the conditions of success 
 were at once before him. The French were strong in 
 Portugal, and held Lisbon ; but Lisbon might be snatched 
 from their grasp, and if it were once secured, the kingdom 
 of Portugal could be defended against them. To win 
 Lisbon then was the object of his first campaign ; he at- 
 tained it by a display of valor and ability which even con- 
 tradiction and stupidity could but partly obscure. He 
 landed his forces at Mondego Bay, and marched southward. 
 A new page was opening in the history of the French. 
 Hitherto, since their revolution, they had rushed hither and 
 thither, like rolling fires over the jjrairie, blasting and black- 
 ening wherever they came ; no troops in Europe had stood 
 before them. But a difierent set of men, under a new 
 general, now landed on the shore of Portugal. In their 
 rude island prejudice, they had scarcely sufficient originality 
 to conceive the idea of fearing the French ; it was almost 
 
160 WELLINGTON. 
 
 a part of their creed, that they could beat them, two or 
 three to one. On the heights and in the defiles of Rolica 
 they first met the veteran legions of Gaul, and swept them 
 away ; around Vimiero, though Junot, Leison, and De 
 Laborde led on the French squadrons, they again hurled 
 them back. .In a few weeks the French army would have 
 been destroyed, and Lisbon gloriously captured. But 
 Wellesley had outrun his nation in knowledge, and the 
 wisdom of his ideas could not be discerned. Sir Han-y 
 Burrard arrived to take the command ; Sir Hew Dalrymple 
 followed ; instead of the ruin of the French army, there 
 came the convention of Cintra. Such was the first cam- 
 paign in the Peninsula. Sir Arthur soon returned home. 
 
 In his absence great and disastrous events took place. 
 The little Corsican came himself into Spain. Gathering, 
 by the swift might of his genius, the various divisions of 
 his army into resistless bolts, he launched them at the 
 various Spanish and British armies. The Spanish hosts 
 were smitten into confusion and almost into annihilation, 
 and the British, under .^ir John Moore, who, whenever 
 they crossed bayonets, vindicated their native valor, were 
 driven back to their waves. The emperor appeared resist- 
 less; and though Lisbon was still in our hands, a deep 
 feeling of hopelessness took possession of a large portion 
 of the British nation. But all was not lost : Britain pos- 
 sessed one man who could command successfully in the 
 Peninsula. He had already advanced far beyond his con- 
 temporaries in knowledge of the state of the seat of war 
 and the circumstances of the enemy; the rare military 
 genius with which nature had endowed him had been fully 
 developed by experience, and had been oftentimes crowned 
 with victory; he knew well the valor and strength of the 
 British soldier; he was himself animated by that calm 
 
WELLINGTON. 161 
 
 dauntlessness which is bom of deliberation and strength. 
 To hjm, as her last hope, Britain confided her army for the 
 conquest of the Peninsula. In the series of campaigns 
 upon -which he entered, he proved himself superior in war- 
 like genius to every one of the great French marshals, and 
 fitted himself to contend with him who was greater than 
 them all. 
 
 To detail the various operations of the Peninsula cam- 
 paigns, is manifestly here impossible ; wf must confine 
 ourselves to a glance at one or two of their most brilliant 
 passages of war. Ere proceeding to these, we shall en- 
 deavor, by a general survey of the difiiculties with which 
 he had to contend, to set in a fair light the genius and 
 prowess of Wellington. 
 
 First of all, we must consider the foes he had to contend 
 with. There were in Spain and Portugal about two hun- 
 dred thousand French soldiers ; men who had shaken 
 Europe by their tread, whose eagles seemed to have been 
 grasped by Victory and borne forward as her own. They 
 were commanded by leaders who had attained their stations 
 by force of military genius, and who had received their 
 batons from the hand of the great military emperor. The 
 fortresses of the kingdom were in their hands. 
 
 After these, the state of the Peninsula and of its inhab- 
 itants demands notice. The country was worn by long 
 war, and the difiiculties of communication were extreme. 
 The condition of the inhabitants was deplorable. Con- 
 cerning the Portuguese, some hope might be entertained. 
 They were poor, and they had been beaten into national 
 ague ; but they were at heart brave, and were not quite 
 impregnable to reason. The Spaniards, on the other hand, 
 save by their irritating Guerilla warfare, were useless, or 
 worse. It was only with the greatest difficulty that they 
 14* 
 
162 WELLINGTON. 
 
 could be induced to sell provisions to the British ; in the 
 day of battle, they were either too obstinate to come into 
 action, or too cowardly to stand their ground when once 
 engaged ; sometimes, particularly when defeat was certain, 
 they flung away their armies with insane foolhardiness. 
 Before the battle of Talavera, for instance, a united blow 
 would have shattered a French army ; but the Spaniards 
 were as immovable as the Rock of Gibraltar ; the oppor- 
 tunity being once irrecoverably lost, they did as those curs 
 to which the English were once likened — rushed into the 
 iron jaws of the French armies, and had themselves crushed 
 like rotten apples. The sickening vexation and the sub- 
 stantial detriment which these Spaniards inflicted upon 
 Wellington were incredible. In his own army, most im- 
 portant reforms were absolutely necessary to the hopeful 
 prosecution of the war. The commissariat, especially, the 
 full efficiency of which he speedily discovered to be indis- 
 pensable, was in great disorder, and it was only by the 
 utmost exertion of his organizing genius and his over- 
 whelming energy that a change was effected. 
 
 But, in order to obtain a comprehensive view of the 
 difficulties and entangling annoyances against which the 
 British general had to contend, and over all which he rose 
 in adamantine calmness, we must image to ourselves the 
 strong opposition which had its seat at home. Like that 
 ancient faction, which, by its plausible oratory and slimy 
 serpentine malice, finally brought to the dust the great 
 Carthaginian conqueror, the British opposition bent its 
 energies, zealously and unremittingly, to thwart the con- 
 queror of the Peninsula. They strove to cripple him by 
 insufficient reinforcements ; they underrated and misrepre- 
 sented his victories ; every retreat or temporary loss they 
 magnified into a rout. Valiant in the unassailable assurance 
 
WELLINGTON. 163 
 
 of perfect ignorance, and flippant as currish stupidity always 
 is, they stood behind the shield of public liberty, and uttered 
 their vociferous criticisms upon the general's movements : 
 it was the course of nature reversed — the lion had be- 
 come provider for the jackals, and they would not on any 
 account abate their inane howling, and allow him to do 
 the work in silence. We can but faintly picture to ourselves 
 the speechless disdain which would curl the lip of Welles- 
 ley, as he heard from afar the unmeasured condemnation 
 of his most masterly movements by some atomic critic ! 
 When, under the guidance of an idea far beyond the utmost 
 flight of critic wing, he marched toward the iron bulwarks 
 of Torres Vedras, did the united howl of the opposing 
 " we " produce only a smile, or did he burst into a regular 
 gufiaw ? Had the howl been as uninfluential and harmless 
 as it was foolish, it would assuredly have been the latter. 
 
 Let the reader calmly present to his mental gaze all this 
 array of difiiculties and- hindrances, and form his judgment 
 of their vanquisher accordingly. We must briefly note 
 the conditions of the contest which rendered it at all hope- 
 ful. Wellington's first and firmest consolation was an in- 
 destructible and well-grounded reliance upon British steel. 
 He soon learned, also, that the difficulty of maintaining 
 communications, and the absence of any one commanding 
 power, made it extremely difiicult for the French to form 
 great combinations. Portugal was defensible. He had the 
 sea behind him securing provisions and promismg reinforce- 
 ments. It was early in the year 1809, that he again landed 
 in Portugal. 
 
 Wellesley disembarked at Lisbon ; he was enabled to head 
 an army of about 25,000 men, including certain Portuguese 
 forces under the command of Beresford. Into every part 
 of the service fresh vigor was at once infused ; the com- 
 
l&'i WELLINGTON. 
 
 missariat was put into efficient working condition ; every 
 necessary arrangement was made, every appointment at- 
 tended to : and the British army, at length in the hand of one 
 who could wield it, proceeded in ardor and confidence upon 
 its career of conquest. Wellesley at once commenced his 
 march to the north ; took Oporto most brilliantly, and swiftly 
 drove Soult out of Portugal. Turning then south-eastward, 
 to act in Spain on the line of the Tagus, in co-operation with 
 the Spanish General Cuesta, he fought the fierce and bloody 
 battle of Talavera, against the combined forces of King Jo- 
 seph and Marshal Victor. It was one of those battles of fi:e- 
 quent occurrence in the Peninsula, in which, after a tremen- 
 dous conflict, the enemy was beaten back, but where, from an 
 inferiority in numbers, or a want of cavalry, the British 
 were unable totally to dissipate them. As it was thus, so to 
 speak, the type of a class, as it seems to admit of very distinct 
 picturing, and as it illustrates well the glory and the sad- 
 ness of war, we shall venture upon, a brief description of it. 
 On the northern bank of the Tagus, in the Spanish prov- 
 ince of New Castile, stands the town of Talavera ; beyond 
 it, to the northward, is a rugged plain, and at the distance 
 of about two miles a hill, with a valley of some extent 
 beyond. This plain was that chosen by Wellesley on which 
 to post his army to oppose Victor; the hill, where his left 
 rested, was the most important point in his position. His 
 line looked towards the east, to face the French who ad- 
 vanced westward. On the right, resting on the town of 
 Talavera, and in a position so secured by natural defences 
 as to be almost unassailable, were posted the Spaniards ; 
 no dependence whatsoever could be placed upon them ; the 
 highest hope was, that they would not run, and might 
 charge a broken column. The rest of the line was occu- 
 pied by the British, their extreme left resting on the hill 
 
WELLINGTON. 165 
 
 we have mentioned. This hill, the key to the whole posi- 
 tion, was of course the object of Victor's principal efforts. 
 On the 27th of July, 1809, the fighting commenced. It 
 extended along the whole British line, but was severest on 
 the left. At one moment here, on account of a temporary 
 weakness, the flank was turned, and the French gained the 
 summit of the ridge. But the valiant and true-hearted Hill 
 rushed to the rescue with fresh troops, searched the ranks of 
 the enemy with a withering volley, and then charged with 
 the bayonet. The foe was hurled down the ridges, to return 
 no more while the sun was above the horizon. The shad- 
 ows fell over the Spanish hills, and the British lay down 
 by their arms to wait for the morning. But Victor knew 
 it to be of vital importance that he should win that hill. 
 A feint attack was made upon another part of the British 
 line, and, under cover of the darkness, the French advanced. 
 Their very bravest came ; but a foe as brave was awake 
 and ready for them. Their dim lines drew nearer and 
 nearer, until their eyes could be seen sparkling through the 
 darkness by the silent British ; then suddenly the stillness 
 of the hills was broken by the echoing rattle of the British 
 musketry, and the red tongues of flame, lighting up the 
 lines of bayonets, fringed the skirts of Night with flre. 
 Again and again did the French columns attempt to gain 
 and hold the level ground on the top of the ridge, but the 
 mangling hail came ever in ceaseless volleys from the un- 
 flinching British, and at length the levelled bayonet drove 
 them down the hill-side. The French drew ofi", and both 
 hosts snatched an hour or two of troubled repose ; by five 
 in the morning they were at the dread work again. The 
 roar of cannon commenced at daybreak. The hill on the 
 left was still the object of the enemy. Column after col- 
 umn advanced to the attack, and still with the same result. 
 
166 WELLINGTON. 
 
 They ascended the hill with that tried and disciplined valor 
 which had won them so many fields ; the British, in their 
 immovable lines, eyed them as they advanced with calm, 
 savage sternness; just as the enemy reached the ridge, 
 they poured in their fire, and advancing with the bayonet, 
 forced them back. So it continued until half-past eight 
 in the morning, when the heat of the sun compelled the 
 weary combatants to desist. Then occurred a most touch- 
 ing scene. There fiowed a small stream towards the Tagus, 
 along the British firont, separating the armies. Thither, to 
 draw water, the soldiers of both armies came. Ceasing 
 for a moment to be teeth of the dragon War, they became 
 individuals and brothers; they fiung aside their warlike 
 implements, chatted in friendly terms, lent each other what 
 little aids could be administered, and mutually succored 
 the wounded. In a few minutes the bugles called them to 
 their ranks, they shook hands like friends, grasped the 
 musket and the bayonet, and the only word between them 
 was death. It was a strange and most melancholy, yet 
 wildly beautiful spectacle. 
 
 The sternest fight of all followed. The main attack 
 now was upon the centre ; it was met, and most gallantly 
 repulsed. But the guards, in an excess of ardor, advanced 
 in slight disorder. The perfect discipline of the French 
 enabled them at once to perceive and take advantage of 
 the circumstance. They charged again ; the guards were 
 compelled to retire ; the French batteries tore up their 
 flanks as they drew back ; and the German battalion, which 
 occupied the ground to the left, was wavering. The victory 
 seemed within the grasp of the French ; but there was an 
 eye beholding the whole from that hill on the left, an eye 
 that seldom failed to discern the moment of necessity, and 
 the mode of relief, the eye of Wellesley. He instantly 
 
WELLINGTON. 167 
 
 ordered up a regiment of infantry and a squadron of light 
 cavalry, to charge the advancing French. With matchless 
 valor and coolness, the diflB.cult operation was executed ; 
 the foe was checked ; the guards formed again behind, and 
 charged with a cheen An Irish regiment took up the 
 huzza, and it went rolling to right and left along the British 
 line. The islanders must have appeared somewhat incom- 
 prehensible to the French: shattered, mown down, fearfully 
 thinned, they yet were in spirit to cheer ; to tame them 
 might well appear a hopeless task. The enemy retreated, 
 and Talavera was won. 
 
 "Wellesley, pei-haps, equalled any general of ancient or 
 modern times in the choice of positions. In care, in accu- 
 racy, in activity, he was a Fabius or a Scipio. He could 
 detect, with a glance as swift as thought, the error of an 
 opponent, as at Salamanca. These faculties are displayed 
 in every part of the Peninsula campaigns ; but on no occa- 
 sion were the whole attributes of his genius called into 
 such striking operation, or displayed in such imposing 
 colors, as in the campaign of 1810, and the retreat on 
 Torres Vedras. It was toward the end of this year, that 
 Lord "Wellington (for such he had been since Talavera), 
 with the slow and stately motion of one who had counted 
 every step, commenced his retreat towards Lisbon, before 
 the overpowering columns of Massena. He had masked 
 his great operation so skilfully, that the French marshal 
 had no correct idea of the extent of the fortifications to 
 which he was retreating, and boasted, with his nation's 
 magniloquence, that he was to drive the English into the 
 sea. It was proper to teach him, that the march was of 
 quite a different nature from a flight. On the heights of 
 Busaco, the British lion calmly faced about, refreshed him- 
 self with a deep draught of French blood, and then, proudly 
 
168 WELLINGTON. 
 
 arising, moved, with regal tread, towards his lair. Massena 
 still vaunted. On he came over the muddy roads, now 
 drenched by the rains, and through a country which had 
 been stripped of everything by the strict command of 
 Wellington. This clearing the country of all means of 
 support for an army, was an essential part of the idea of 
 the campaign ; its purpose is obvious, and the object of 
 Wellington would have been attained sooner than was the 
 case, if the command had been duly obeyed. At length 
 Massena came to a dead halt ; the bulwarks of Torres 
 Vedras were before him. He saw, to his utter astonish- 
 ment, a fortified line extending from the Tagus to the 
 ocean ; mountains scarped, valleys spanned, inundations 
 prepared; the whole bristling with cannon. He gazed and 
 gazed, in blank amazement, for three days ; he found the 
 lines impregnable. Had he forced the first, there was a 
 second, and even a third, to be surmounted. At length, 
 in savage, sardonic calmness, the British lion had lain 
 down, backed by his native ocean, and gazed grimly over 
 the vast squadrons. Hisgrowl would now be given through 
 the throats of six hundred cannon. " You were to drive me 
 into the sea, I think, — Come on ! " 
 
 In due time Wellington left his lines, Massena rolling 
 back before him. The French and their emperor now be- 
 gan distinctly to perceive, that once the British general 
 had laid his iron grasp upon Portugal, there was no might 
 of theirs which could make him relax it. We shall not 
 follow him in his path of struggle and victory. The cam- 
 paign of 1811 was signalized by the fierce but glorious 
 fighting of Fuentes d'Onoro; that of 1812 was particularly 
 rich, boasting both the celebrated sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo 
 and Badajos, and the tremendous blow of Salamanca ; at 
 length, in 1813, he totally dissipated the French forces at 
 
"WELLINGTON. 
 
 169 
 
 Vittoria, and encountered Soult among the Pyrenees. In 
 1814, after the magnificent acconijjilishment of the great 
 task which had once appeared hopeless, he sheathed his 
 sword at Toulouse. All that array of difficulties and toils 
 had been smitten and subdued by the might of his valor 
 and genius ; those proud armies had been humbled ; in no 
 single battle had he been vanquished ; and, dazzled by the 
 beams of his glory, even his factious detractors had been 
 silenced. 
 
 We now draw towards the end of that great martial 
 drama which we have been briefly contemplating. While 
 Wellington was marching upon France, with the armies 
 of Napoleon in retreat before him, the nations of the north 
 were closing in upon their great master. When the ducal 
 coronet had been placed upon Wellington's brow and the 
 marshal's baton put into his hand, after the great triumph 
 of Vittoria, the contest in the north was still doubtful, 
 although the scale of Napoleon seemed steadily rising; 
 when the last blow was dealt at Toulouse, the sceptre and 
 the sword had fallen from his grasp. They sent him to 
 Elba, and Europe snatched a few moments of restless re- 
 pose, while huge armies, not yet disbanded, lay like night- 
 mares on its troubled bosom. But the end had not yet 
 come; the thunders were to awake once more, ere the azure 
 of peace was to smile over Europe. Suddenly it was 
 awakened, as by a red bolt of fire passing across the sky : 
 Napoleon had burst his chains, and was again at the head 
 of his armies. And now the two extraordinary men, who 
 had been born in the same year, and who had, from the 
 first, been destined to meet, were finally to close in the 
 wrestle of death. Once more the wild Celtic vehemence 
 and valor, under a leader of mighty but kindred genius, 
 were to come into conflict with the still, indomitable 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 15 
 
170 WELLINGTON. 
 
 Strength of the Teutons, under a leader whose overwhelm- 
 ing powers were all masked in calmness. We must omit 
 all preliminaries, and endeavor to gaze upon the great con- 
 test itself. 
 
 After various passages of war, the two hosts lay facing 
 each other on the heights of "Waterloo ; the French were 
 posted on one ridge, the British on another, and there were 
 several important posts of defence between them. The dim 
 morning of the memorable 18th of June, 1815, looked down 
 upon the British squares on the one hill-side, and the vast 
 masses of French cavalry and infantry on the opposing 
 heights ; in the valley between them. Summer had spread 
 out a rye-field : ere evening, it was to be trodden flat, and 
 welded together by human gore. 
 
 It is a common enough remark in the present day, that 
 the modem battle lacks the interest and sublimity of the 
 ancient one : mechanically, it is said, you shoot, and me- 
 chanically you are shot at ; the wild fire that lit the eye of 
 an Achilles can gleam no more; the shattering sway of the 
 one strong arm has ceased to be of account in the day of 
 battle ; give us the fiery melee of the olden time, in which 
 a Hector could mingle, and of which a Homer could sing. 
 Is it, then, so superlatively and exclusively noble and diffi- 
 cult, to deal the stem blow, when the nerves are strung by 
 the animal excitement of the combat, and the enthusiasm 
 is raised by the presence and justling of the foe? And is 
 it nothing to gaze, unflinching, upon the slow, steady ad- 
 vance of the column, from which the eye of Death is calmly 
 glaring? Is that deliberate determination of small account, 
 by which death, whether it comes in the shattering cannon 
 ball, or the tearing musket bullet, or the cold bayonet stab, 
 is chosen before flight or surrender ? We declare, without 
 hesitation, that the modern battle is a grander spectacle 
 
WELLINGTON. 171 
 
 than was the ancient : around no Homeric battle was there 
 ever such a terrific sublimity as there hung around the 
 field of Waterloo. Napoleon did not, with bared arm, 
 rush into the midst of the combatants, trusting to his single 
 prowess. "Wellington did not, heading with musket and 
 bayonet the onward charge, expose his bosom to the steel. 
 But did ever an Achilles or an Attila avail so much in the 
 day of battle, as that dark-browed Corsican, or that calm, 
 clear-eyed Briton ? Each remained aj)art, wielding the 
 tremendous mechanism of war, mightier than the veiy 
 gods of Homer. And had the valor which they wielded 
 become mechanism, had human heroism no place in that 
 field ? Let us look upon it, and see. Under the fitting 
 drapery of jagged and trailing clouds, which seemed weej)- 
 ing over the fearful scene, stood a certain number of little 
 squares, ranged on the slope of a valley; toil-worn they 
 were, drenched with rain, and few in number, on the bleak 
 hill-side. On the ridges to which, with dauntless eye, they 
 looked, were ranged three hundred cannon ; from all their 
 throats, through the long and weary hours, was poured 
 forth the shower of iron, tearing and shattering those little 
 squares, winnowing their ranks with a tempest of death. 
 And whenever the mangling shot had done its work, and 
 a gap yawned, on dashed the lancers or cuirassiers, as the 
 ocean dashes on the rock riven of the thunderbolt. Yet 
 it was all in vain. The roar of death from those three 
 hundred cannon-throats they heard undismayed; the gleam 
 of the lances and the glittering of the cuirasses, as the 
 horsemen dashed out from the cloudy smoke, with Death 
 upon their plumes, they eyed unswerving. Hour after 
 hour rolled heavily away, and the patient Earth, with all 
 her summer burden, wheeled on to the east. The squares 
 dwindled, and sevcal united into one ; the arm was grow- 
 
172 WELLINGTON. 
 
 ing heavy, the scent of blood filled the air, the ground was 
 fattening with human gore ; jet they yielded not. In 
 silence they closed up their ranks, as brother after brother 
 fell, a mangled corpse ; with the earnest prayer of agony, 
 they implored to be led against the foe : but yield they 
 never would; the car of Death might crush them into the 
 ground, but it was only so that a path could be made. 
 Sterner or nobler valor never fought round windy Troy. 
 
 " O proud Death, 
 What feast was toward in thine eternal cell ! " 
 
 From noon until eve those cannon had roared, and squadron 
 after squadron of horsemen had poured upon those squares ; 
 and now, as the shades of a gloomy evening were begin- 
 ning to fall, the fight was ever becoming the sterner, and 
 the light in that dark fiery eye, which directed the French 
 colunins, the more wild and agitated. Once more as if by 
 a tremendous efibrt to wrest the sceptre from Destiny, an 
 attempt was to be made by Napoleon. His old guard yet 
 remained. They loved him as children love their father; 
 they had received fi-om his hand the wreaths of honor and 
 victory ; some of them had followed him to the flames of 
 Moscow ; on some of them had risen the sun of Austerlitz : 
 and now for that dear master they were to go against those 
 unconquerable squares. Beyond them lay fame, and honor, 
 and victory ; to yield a foot was destruction and despair. 
 Slowly, under the rolling smoke of those great guns, they 
 advanced, with the firm tread of men whose nerves had 
 long been strung to the music of battle : we shall not liken 
 them to tornado or thunder cloud ; there is no spectacle 
 so fearful to man as the calm, determined advance of thous- 
 ands of las brothers to the strife of death. Let the brave 
 have their due ! The old guard advanced most gallantly ; 
 
WELLINGTON. 173 
 
 but they were ploughed up, as they approached, by the 
 British artillery, and a murderous fire from the unquiveiing 
 British arm searched their ranks as they endeavored to 
 deploy ; valiantly did they attempt it, but it was in vain. 
 Torn and mangled by that terrible fire, they wavered ; in 
 a moment the British horsemen dashed into their ranks, 
 and rolled them backwards in wild confusion. All was 
 won on the one side, and all was lost on the other. Who 
 can tell the feeling of serene and complete satisfaction 
 which then filled the breast of Wellington ! And, ah ! who 
 can image to himself the dread moment when thick clouds 
 rushed over the fire of that imperial eye, whose lightnings 
 were to smite the towers of Earth no more ! Lo ! mid the 
 thickening dusk, while the cheer of another host comes on 
 the gale, the shattered squares have opened into line. At 
 last, the bayonets glittering afar in the cloudy air, they 
 sweep down the ridges to victory. For a moment Napo- 
 leon saw the long line, as it came on like the rolling simoom; 
 Shakspeare could not have voiced his emotions at the sight. 
 And he passed away to his lonely rock in the sea, to exhibit 
 the sublimest spectacle of modern times, whose deathless 
 sorrow could be sung by no harp but that of the melan- 
 choly ocean. 
 
 Now was the time when the genuine and lofty manhood 
 of our mighty Wellington displayed itself. He had reached 
 the highest pinnacle of fame, the eye of Europe was fixed 
 upon him, and his grateful country exhausted in his behoof 
 her storehouse of honor and reward. It is such moments 
 that try men. The towering Andes, with the serene air 
 of the upper heavens about their brows, present us with 
 two phenomena: to those solitudes of the pathless sky, by 
 the force of wind and the tumults of the lower atmosphere, 
 are borne the smallest insects ; in those serene solitudes, 
 15* 
 
174 WELLINGTON. 
 
 in the full flood of the undimmed sunshine, floats the con- 
 dor. The difference between the two is marked. The 
 insects, borne aloft by external, and not by internal strength, 
 are tossed hither and thither in the thin air, with their 
 little pinions tattered, and their little senses bewildered ; 
 the condor, with outspread fans, rests upon the liquid ether 
 rs his native element, whither nature had designed him to 
 ascend. The phenomena are replete with meaning to the eye 
 of wisdom. By popular applause, by confusion and tur- 
 moil, the human insect is often borne for a time aloft, to 
 be dashed about and to fall ; the man who, rising far over 
 his fellows, and basking in the full beams of glory and vic- 
 tory, rests there placid and immovable as the condor, is a 
 trae and mighty son of nature. His strength is fi-om within. 
 So, most emphatically, it was with Wellington; the world's 
 applause did not quicken a pulse in his frame, or flutter, 
 for a moment, his calm and manly intellect. 
 
 In connection with this part of the career of Wellington, 
 there is one name which we cannot pass over ; if not an 
 actual spot in the sun of his glory, it is at least a faint mist 
 which has obscured it. That name is Ney. We must con- 
 fess a very strong wish that Wellington had done his 
 utmost to save Ney. To say he was not required to do it 
 by justice, or even by honor, is probably to assert a fact ; 
 but it is virtually to admit the absence of a satisfactory 
 plea. Why talk of the iron rod of justice or the cold code 
 of honor here ; hath mercy no golden sceptre to extend to 
 the vanquished ? How beautiful, as he returned resistless 
 from the field, would this trait of human kindness have 
 shown ; as a sunbeam on the wings of a proud eagle, that 
 at eventide, seeks his island-eyrie, after having vanquished 
 all that resisted ! He had stilled the tempests of Europe 
 as the wise and kind Magician stilled the elements and the 
 
WELLIJSGTON. 175 
 
 demons; and when, like him, he was to lay his terrors 
 aside, would not the spectacle have been still more noble 
 and sublime, if, like Prospero, he had closed all with a strain 
 of mercy's music? "We shall not say that the affair left 
 a blot on the duke's escutcheon ; we can imagine that, with 
 his rigid habits of adherence to form, his unwillingness in 
 any particulars to overstep his powers or prerogatives, and 
 the natural reserve of his character, he might not feel him- 
 self called upon directly to interfere ; but, had he for once 
 cast all such feelings aside, and striven energetically to 
 save Ney, it ■would have cast such an enhancing light over 
 all his glories, that we cannot but regret its absence. 
 
 We shall not follow the Duke of Wellington in the re- 
 maining portion of his career. As a statesman, he displayed 
 the same decision and the same intellectual perspicacity 
 which had marked him as a soldier ; lie had a deep sym- 
 pathy with that old Conservatism which has now been so 
 severely battered by Free-traders and Manchester schools, 
 but which numbered in its ranks much of the highest and 
 the noblest blood in Britain ; when the trumpet of advance- 
 ment spoke so clearly and so loud that it could be neither 
 mistaken nor resisted, he advanced. It was when he was 
 at the head of the government, in 1829, that the famous 
 measure for the emancipation of the Roman Catholics was 
 passed. 
 
 We- seem to see him, after the pacification of Europe, 
 taking up his abode, in calm majesty, in the island round 
 which he had built such a battlement of strength and of 
 glory. We shall apply to him the superb thought of Ten- 
 nyson : — 
 
 " With his hand against the hilt, 
 
 ■He paced the troubled land, like Peace." 
 We trust that some portraiture of the character of the 
 
176 -WELLINGTON. 
 
 Duke of "Wellington has been jDi-esented to the reader in 
 the foregoing paragraphs. It well became us to trust for 
 such portraiture to his mighty deeds rather than to our 
 puny words. But we deem a few supplementary remarks 
 necessary for the general summing uj) of his character. His 
 radical characteristics were calmness, clearness, strength ; 
 they are easily read, and it is not difScult to refer to their 
 action every portion of his career. We see them every- 
 where : in the unerring but silent care with which he gained 
 a comprehensive knowledge of the conditions of every 
 contest in which he was engaged ; in the piercing and cer- 
 tain glance by which he detected th§, error of an opponent; 
 in the sedate and massive composure of his despatches, 
 where clearness of vision produces pictures rivalUng the 
 efforts of art ; in the marble stillness and strength of his 
 firm cheek and unwiinkled forehead. We trace the same 
 characteristics in his valor. He has been called cautious 
 and hesitating; after the charges of Assaye, the passage 
 of the Douro, and the eagle swoop of Salamanca ! The 
 accusation has been founded on a simple mistake. We 
 have been told, and with sufficient truth, that the word 
 impossible is a word of ill omen; the scrupulous, hesitating 
 ideologist who fears to take a step lest the earth yawn, is 
 little worth. Yet the power to discern the impossible is 
 but the necessary complement of the power to discern the 
 possible. A thousandfold clamor declares that such a thing 
 cannot be done, but the man of commanding intellect dis- 
 tinctly hears the voice of nature saying it can, and does it; 
 he is declared valiant, fiery, and so forth : a similar clamor 
 pronounces such a thing to be possible, but the man of 
 mind still hears the voice of nature whispering — " No," 
 and abstains from doing it ; he is called cautious, phleg- 
 matic, or cowardly. Both clamors have been heard in the 
 
WELLINGTON. 177 
 
 case of Wellington ; and it were a question which was the 
 more inane. Few eyes ever looked upon a battle-field with 
 a surer perception of the possible and the impossible than 
 his ; he would not draw his sword to hew rocks, but when 
 he did draw it, it went through. 
 
 Much has been said concerning the coldness of Wellington's 
 emotions, and his alleged want of kindliness. In this por- 
 tion of his character, too, we find the traits we have speci- 
 fied. He possessed a kindliness all his own. It must be 
 granted that he never exhibited that strange fascination of 
 genius which has been so powerful in many instances — in 
 a Mirabeau, a Napoleon, a Hannibal. Yet a manly kindli- 
 ness was his, which comported well with the massive 
 strength of his character. He loved, if we may so say, in 
 the mass ; his kindness was that of calm, considerate reason, 
 and borrowed no flash from passion. In India he used no 
 small arts to secure attachment ; he was encircled, and he 
 wished to be so, by the dignity of a highborn British gen- 
 tleman. Yet his rule was felt to be kindly and beneficent, 
 and the inhabitants of the wide provinces whose afiairs he 
 administered blessed him in their hearts. He might not, 
 with sentimental sigh, lament over the individual loss or 
 destruction ; but the general prosperity, the happiness of 
 the people as a whole, lay near his heart : he did not care 
 to dispense those small personal favors whence are born 
 kind words and smiles, but he spread his blessings, as from 
 a great cornucopia, over the land. It was so, also, in his 
 military career. If we may say that he did not love each 
 soldier, we must yet assert that no general ever loved his 
 army better. If the individual soldier had to be sacrificed 
 for the good of the army, he hesitated not ; but, since the 
 efiiciency of the army required the comfort and safety of- 
 the individual soldier, the British private could not j)os- 
 
178 WELLINGTON. 
 
 sibly have sustained fewer hardships in Spain than he ex- 
 perienced under Wellington. In a word, and in all cases, 
 those under our great chief experienced that security and 
 assured joy which weakness always finds under the shield 
 of strength. We might appeal to the case of the captive son 
 of Dhoondiah, to prove that kindness lay'deep in his nature; 
 it was this which, uniting with his powerful faculties, natur- 
 ally produced the considerate beneficence which we assert to 
 have distinguished him. We cannot believe that he looked 
 upon his army merely as a machine, and that all his care 
 for it arose from simple calculation ; but he was content, 
 if he deserved his soldiers' love by maintaining their gen- 
 eral comfort, to be without it rather than abstain from 
 sacrificing one for the good of all. Of all theatricality he 
 was singularly void, and his emotions were always under 
 the strict guidance of reason. 
 
 There have been countless historical parallels instituted 
 between Wellington and other great generals. He has 
 been very ably compared to Cromwell, and in some respects 
 he resembled that astonishing man. The same piercing 
 vision, the same swift energy, the same organizing genius, 
 distinguished both. But the parallel fails in a most impor- 
 tant point . the conditions of the time made it morally im- 
 possible for a Cromwell to be produced in the last great 
 European outburst of intellect. In the great Puritan awak- 
 ening, the infinite elements of religion and of duty had the 
 most prominent and j)ervading influence : the Puritan felt 
 himself fighting under the banner of Jehovah; the Earth was 
 to him a little desert, bordered by the celestial mountains, 
 and what mattered it though he fought and toiled here, if 
 he saw the crown awaiting him yonder. A time which 
 produced its highest literary imjiorsonation in Milton, might 
 have, as its great martial impersonation, Cromwell. But 
 
WELLINGTON. 179 
 
 in that mighty shaking of the nations which is still going 
 on, the infinite elements of our nature have probably had 
 less direct influence upon the minds of men than was ever 
 the case before. The highest idea of the philosophism 
 from which it sprung, was, that man should conquer the 
 elements, assert his freedom, and carpet for himself the 
 earth with the flowers of paradise. Science was put into 
 the place of God ; the light of earth was deemed to have 
 utterly eclipsed the light from heaven. Never, perhaps, 
 did the world so minutely answer to the idea of a stage, 
 where puppet philosophers and puppet armies played their 
 l^arts in the most profound unconsciousness that God held 
 the wires ; never was the Divinity, who was silently shap- 
 ing the ends so totally invisible to those who were rough- 
 hewing them. Of the distinctive opinions of this era, we 
 regard Shelley as the greatest literary impersonation ; its 
 two greatest martial impersonations were Napoleon and 
 Wellington. It is but a partial resemblance that there can 
 be between the great Puritan general and the conqueror 
 of Waterloo ; a more correct parallel would be between 
 the Dukes of Wellington and of Albemarle. 
 
 We think we find a singularly close parallel to the career 
 of Napoleon and Wellington in that of Hannibal and 
 Scipio. The first of these ancient generals is pretty gen- 
 erally recognized as the greatest military genius that ever 
 lived. He ran his course from victory to victory, until a 
 general arose to oppose him, whose attention was sleepless, 
 whose accuracy was unfailing, whose intellectual vision 
 was penetrating, whose valor was dauntless, and who could 
 bring troops into the field which no African levies could 
 match. They met on the plains of Zama ; fame has not 
 failed to record that the generalshij) of Hannibal at least 
 equalled that of Scipo ; but victory fled forever to the 
 
180 WELLINGTON. 
 
 Roman eagles. Wellington belonged to the class of gen- 
 erals represented by Soipio ; Napoleon to that represented 
 by Hannibal. The wild force of genius has oft been fated 
 by nature to be finally overcome by quiet strength, and 
 never was it more signally so, than in the case of Napoleon 
 and Wellington. The volcano sends up its red bolt with 
 terrific force, as if it would strike the stars ; but the calm, 
 resistless hand of gravitation seizes it, and brings it to the 
 earth. 
 
 We look upon the late duke as one of the soundest and 
 stateliest men that Great Britain has produced; one of 
 those embodied forces which are sent by God to perform 
 important parts in the history of the world, and around 
 which their respective generations are seen to cluster. The 
 memory of such men is a sacred treasure. The men of 
 Elis did well in appointing the descendants of Phidias to 
 preserve from spot or from detriment their grand statue of 
 gold and ivory ; it had been produced in one generation, 
 it was much if following generations kept it whole and 
 untarnished. Our great Wellington has just been placed 
 in the Temple of the Past, to sit there with the heroes of 
 other times, and to witness that among us too, in the nine- 
 teenth century, a mighty man arose : it is the duty of us 
 and of our children, to see that no blot abide upon his 
 massive and majestic statue. 
 
YI. 
 
 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
 The figure of Napoleon Bonaparte first emerges into 
 the view of history at the seige of Toulon, towards the 
 end of the year 1793. 
 
 The revolutionary storm, in which the evening of the 
 last century went down over France, was at its wildest 
 working. Those fierce, irregular forces, which, in the world 
 of mind are scientifically correspondent to the tornado, the 
 earthquake, the fever, the volcano, in the world of external 
 nature, and which seem retained for seasons of crisis and 
 emergency, were performing their terrible ministry. The 
 statical balance of society had been disturbed : the normal 
 forces, the forces of calmness, of growth, of persistence, 
 required to be re-adjusted. The untamed, i:>rimeval powers, 
 which always underlie the surface of civilization, like old 
 Titans under quiet hills and wooded plains, had broken 
 their confinement; the solid framework of capacity and 
 anthority, by which they had been compressed, had crum- 
 bled down in mere impotence and imbecility; and they 
 now went raving and uncommanded over France. Fear, 
 fury, hot enthusiasm, fanaticism, ferocity, the courage of 
 the wildcat, the cruelty of the tiger, hope to the measure 
 of frenzy, suspicion to the measure of disease, spread con- 
 fusion through all the borders of the country. At Toulon 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 16 
 
182 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
 the general confusion was forcibly represented, though but 
 in miniature. The town, defended by a motley crew of 
 British, Spaniards, Neapolitans, and insurgent French, was 
 besieged, on behalf of the convention, by two armies. 
 These weltered wildly round it, strong in numbers, in valor, 
 in zeal, in stubbornness, but rendered powerless through 
 want of control and direction. Here, as universally over 
 France, the gravitation by which faculty comes into the 
 place of command had not had time to act. Cartaux, the 
 general, strutted about in gold-lace, self-satisfied in his 
 ignorance of the position of afiairs, bold in his unconscious- 
 ness of danger. Kepresentatives of the people, empowered 
 to intermeddle on all occasions, swaggered here and there 
 in the camp, storming, babbling, urging everything to fever- 
 ish haste, making progress anywhere impossible. Noise, 
 distraction, fussy impotence : such was the spectacle pre- 
 sented on all hands. 
 
 Then appeared, to take the command of the artillery, 
 the young Corsican officer, Napoleon Bonaparte. Though 
 very young, just completing his twenty fourth year, he had 
 a look of singular composure, taciturnity, and resolution. 
 Short and slim, but well knit and active, his figure and 
 port were expressive at once of alertness and self-posses- 
 sion ; his eye very quiet and veiy clear. It would hardly 
 have struck a casual observer that here was the command- 
 ing and irresistible mind, which was to introduce order, 
 the highest, perhaps, of which they were capable, among 
 the tumultuous forces of the French Revolution. 
 
 Looking steadily and silently into the matter, the secret 
 of success at once revealed itself to Nai:)oleon. The trooi)S 
 and artillery had been scattered and dissipated. Yonder 
 was the keystone of the arch ; it was an endless business 
 to batter upon each stone in the structure; concentrate the 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 183 
 
 fire upon that one point, bring down that one stone, and 
 the whole must fall. The town and harbor of Toulon lay 
 here to the north; the channel by which both communicated 
 with the Mediterranean stretched yonder towards the south : 
 and that promontory, at some distance from the town, its 
 strong fortifications giving it the name of Little Gibraltar 
 and indicating the importance attached to it, commanded 
 this channel. If, therefore, Little Gibraltar was won, you 
 could sweep the gateway of the harbor in such a manner 
 that the British fleet would be shy of remaining ; and the 
 British fleet once withdrawn, Toulon could offer no resist- 
 ance. Thus clear and definite was Napoleon's thought, 
 and it was to be proved whether he could as skilfully con- 
 vert it into action. In action he seemed thought jyersoni- 
 fied ; thought made alive, and ai-med with the sword of 
 the lightning. The wild valor of enthusiasm had been 
 nothing to this directed courage; the dogged obstinacy of 
 fanatic rage had been weak in comparison with this calm 
 resolution ; the haste and fieriness of Celtic ardor had been 
 tardy to this imperturbable swiftness. Day and night, sleep- 
 ing only for a few hours in his cloak by the guns, he toils 
 at his batteries, collecting cannon, devising feints, turning 
 the very blunders of incompetence into occasions of ad- 
 vantage ; no stupidity, no envy, no obstacle can ruffle his 
 composure or daunt his courage ; no fatigue can blunt his 
 alertness, or cause a nerve to flutter in that slight but 
 steelly frame. At last all is prepared. Suddenly there 
 bursts upon Little Gibraltar an overwhelming fire. Eight 
 thousand bombs are poured on it over night : in the morn- 
 ing, the troops surge in, victorious, through the shattered 
 walls, and Little Gibraltar is taken. Toulon then fills; 
 and Napoleon Bonaparte is a marked man. 
 During the spring and summer of 1794, he was variously 
 
184 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
 employed ; surveying the Mediterranean fortresses, fighting 
 in the Maritime Alps, always doing the work in hand speed- 
 ily, quietly, well. Hitherto he professed Jacobin principles, 
 and had used his pen on behalf of the extreme revolution- 
 ary party. He was now intimate with the younger Robe- 
 spierre. While engaged in the Maritime Alps, he was 
 urged by the latter to accept the command of the national 
 guard of Paris. Had he done so, had Napoleon instead of 
 Henriot commanded for Robespierre on the 10th of Ther- 
 midor 1794, how strangely the destinies of France and of 
 Europe might have been modified ! But his Jacobinism 
 was never too fervent for the control of an austere, calcu- 
 lating, most practical judgment : and it seems likely that 
 already, not distinctly seen, but gi-adually clearing itself 
 of obscuring vapors, his own star, serene, steady, cold, was 
 beginning to concentrate all the energies of his soul into 
 one intense passion of devotion to self He decisively re- 
 fused. Augustin Robespierre was, indeed, an "honorable 
 man," manageable enough, doubtless ; but he had discerned 
 Robes23ierre the elder to be " no trifler." The iron Napo- 
 leon knew the iron Robespierre, and instinctively recoiled 
 from one whom he knew he could not bend. Events were 
 left to their course. The sword of the Terror, held only 
 by the giddy, flustered Henriot, was shivered into frag- 
 ments. Robespierre and his party were overthrown, the 
 Jacobins dispersed, and the current of the Revolution 
 turned into new channels. The reaction set in with ex- 
 treme violence ; and Napoleon, at first perhaps seriously 
 endangered by his connection with the Robespierres, came 
 to Paris and fell out of employment. 
 
 The reaction from the principles of the Reign of TeiTor 
 was violent : but strong as it was, the inhabitants of the 
 capital, not the mere mob, but the sober and weighty por- 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPAETE. 185 
 
 tion of the population, were not disposed to forego the 
 greatest of those prizes for which they had so long and so 
 desperately contended. This sacrifice the Convention, by 
 the constitution of 1795, definitely and beyond question 
 required of them. In the beginning of October of that 
 year the sections of Paris rose in arms. Barras, whose eye 
 had fallen on Napoleon at Toulon, pointed him out to the 
 Convention as a man on whom reliance could be placed. 
 On the night of the third of October he was offered the 
 command of the forces available for the suppression of the 
 insurrection, Barras being nominally his chief. He was in 
 the gallery of the Convention when the proposal for his 
 appointment was made. He retired to deliberate. What 
 thoughts passed through his mind in the interval can never 
 be known : but at the end of half an hour, he had bidden 
 adieu to his Jacobinism forever. To what extent he had 
 been disgusted by the excesses of the Jacobins, to what 
 extent a close observation of that in practice which had 
 looked so beautiful in theory, had intensified or developed 
 the radical skepticism and cynicism of his mind, need not 
 be conjectured; but whatever faintly roseate hues of ro- 
 mance linger about the youth of Napoleon, from his out- 
 spoken and ardent devotion to the revolution, here finally 
 fade away. That man cannot be called the soldier of de- 
 mocracy, who deliberately made himself the instrument of 
 bridling democracy, and subjecting it, before he was him- 
 self its sovereign, to a selfish and contracted oligarchy. 
 
 But a piece of work was now to be done, and the Napo- 
 leon of Toulon became recognizable. There were fifty 
 guns at the neighboring camp of Sablons. These guns 
 were the Little Gibraltar of Vendemiare. Self-possessed, 
 calm, but with that swiftness which startled and bewildered 
 an opponent, like the flash of a meteor out of a dark and 
 16* 
 
186 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
 silent sky, he ordered Murat, a man to be depended upon 
 for swiftness, to bring in the pieces. They were clutched 
 almost from under the eyes of the sectionaries. The Con- 
 vention held its meetings at this time in the Palace of the 
 Tuilei-ies ; on this point the attack of the insurgents was 
 directed, and around this point Napoleon marshalled his 
 defences. On every bridge and quay communicating with 
 the palace, sweeping every street and open space, he posted 
 cannon. In the centre of the bristling circle he stood, 
 quiet, composed, as one at home. It was the fourth of 
 October, 1795. In the early part of the afternoon the 
 Parisians advanced to the attack, numbering about forty 
 thousand. Habituated to street-fighting by six years of 
 revolution, and flushed by some apparent successes of the 
 preceding day, the sectionaries poured furiously along the 
 streets towards the Tuileries. It was not the first time 
 that the citizens of Paris, familiar with the conquering of 
 their King and of their Parliaments, had flooded those 
 avenues. On the famous tenth of June and twentieth of 
 August, 1792, for instance, they had come on in wild flood, 
 and a monarchy had gone down before them. But they 
 were now encountered by a thing new in those years. The 
 unfixed gaze and maudlin good-heartedness of Louis, always 
 ready to parley, unwilling to shed a drop of blood though 
 to save a torrent, terrible only to his fi-iends, had given 
 place to the compressed lips, dark brows, and unflinching 
 eye of Napoleon. Betrayed, uncommanded body-guards 
 were here no longer; but in their place an army in position, 
 strung to exertion in every nerve, as a muscular arm is 
 strung by a determined will. Napoleon would do his 
 parleying through the throats of fifty pieces of cannon. 
 The sectionaries, sweeping on fiercely, were torn up 
 by cannon-ball and grape-shot. The tumultuous masp 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 187 
 
 recoiled ; sobererl suddenly, as fi blustering bully is sobered 
 by the buifet of -a brawny arm. The guns continued to 
 play; the ranks under the command of NajDoleon advanced; 
 in a tew hours the seotionaries were driven to their homes 
 and disarmed. The piece of work was done. 
 
 Napoleon had now stepped fairly beyond the sphere of 
 private life. His marriage with Josephine, for whom he 
 seems to have entertained no slight affection, soon took 
 place. He was appointed to the command of the army 
 of Italy, and in the spring of 1796 reached the head-quar- 
 ters at Nice. 
 
 Of all the periods in the life of Napoleon, the mind is 
 apt to rest with most enthusiasm upon that of his early 
 campaigns in Italy. His fame may be said to have been 
 as yet unsullied ; even that apj^arent defection from the 
 principles of liberty, Avhich a severe investigation of his 
 conduct reveals, admits not unreasonably of being traced 
 to a soldierly love of order. And he had won his exalted 
 position through so honest and unmistakable a display of 
 intellectual power ! Unfriended among the myriads of 
 revolutionary France, and at first scowled upon by envious 
 incompetence, he had approved himself a man of indubit- 
 able and overpowering capacity, who could think, who 
 could act, whom it would clearly be advantageous to obey. 
 One cannot but experience a thrill of emotion as the imagina- 
 tion pictures him in his first appearance among the soldiers 
 of Italy. Of all warrior-faces Napoleon's is the finest. 
 Not oidy has it that clearness of line, that strength and 
 firmness of cliisclling, which gives a nobleness to the faces 
 of all great soldiers ; there is in it, in the eye especially, a 
 deiDth of thought and reflection which belongs peculiarly 
 to itself, and suggests not merely the soldier but the sove- 
 reign. And perhaps the face of Napoleon never looked 
 
188 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
 SO nobly, as when first an army worthy of his powers waited 
 his commands, the calm assurance of absolute self-reliance 
 giving a statue-like stillness to his brows and temples on 
 which still shone the brightness of youth, the light of a 
 fame now to be all his own kindling that intense and 
 steadfast eye, and his gaze turned towards the fields of 
 Italy. Cannot one fancy his glance going along the ranks, 
 lighting a gleam in every eye, as he presented himself to 
 his trooj)S ? " Soldiers," thus ran his proclamation, " you 
 are almost naked, half-stai-ved : the government owes you 
 much and can give you nothing. Your patience, your 
 courage, in the midst of these rocks, have been admirable, 
 but they reflect no splendor on your arms. I am about to 
 conduct you into the most fertile plains of the earth. Rich 
 provinces, opulent cities, will soon be in your power: there 
 you will find abundant hai-vests, honor and glory. Soldiers 
 of Italy, will you fail in courage ? " In a moment he had 
 established between himself and his soldiers that under- 
 standing by which, more than by cannon or bayonet, vic- 
 tories are won. Privates and commanders at once felt that 
 this was the man to follow. 
 
 Then commenced that marvellous series of campaigns 
 which makes the year 1796 an era in the history of warfare, 
 in the development of civilization ; in which the fiery en- 
 ergies, unchained by the French Revolution, were first 
 directed by supreme military genius against the standing 
 institutions of Europe to their overthrow and subversion ; 
 in which the eye of the world was first fixed in wondering 
 gaze on the fully unveiled face of Napoleon. Not merely to 
 the soldier are these campaigns interesting and profitable. 
 It is for all men instructive to mark the achievements of 
 pure capacity, to watch tlie wondrous spirit-element con- 
 trolling and effecting, dazzling difficulty from its steady 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 189 
 
 march, causing lions to cower aside in its sovereign pres- 
 ence. We are so constituted, besides, that we cannot 
 behold energy, perseverance, courage, resolution, without 
 a thrill of emulous sympathy. As we note the progress 
 of that intrepid, indomitable Corsican, fi-om victory to 
 victory, we kindle with those emotions which animated 
 the troops of Napoleon; which sent the grenadiers through 
 the grape-shot sweeping like snow-drift along the bridge 
 of Lodi ; which renewed and renewed the bloody struggle 
 on the dykes of Areola; which made the French columns 
 scorn rest and delay, forget the limit placed to human en- 
 durance, rise over the famtness of fatigue and crush down 
 the gnawing of hunger, march through mountain paths all 
 night and spring exultant on the foe at break of dawn, if 
 only the way was led by him. 
 
 A review of these campaigns, even of the most cursory 
 description, is here impossible, and would be superfluous. 
 All men may be supposed to have a somewhat familiar 
 acquaintance with one of the most brilliant passages of 
 modern history, and to be capable of taking the same point 
 of view which must be occupied in order to cast the eye 
 along their course, as illustrating the character of Napoleon. 
 
 The Italian campaigns seem specially adapted to demon- 
 strate a military capacity at once indubitable, many-sided, 
 and supreme. They exhibit not only the fiery spring that 
 has so' often caught the smile of fortune, but the cool cal- 
 culation and patient resolution which seem to compel it. 
 They show the victor crowned, not once, or twice, or thrice, 
 not under this favoring circumstance of to-day or through 
 that happy thought of to-morrow, but so often that the 
 possibility of fortuitous success is eliminated, and under 
 circumstances of disadvantage, so manifold and so varied, 
 that even envy, unless aided by crotchet, stupidity or fixed 
 
190 NAP015;0H BONAPARTE. 
 
 idea, must own that this is beyond all question, the inscrut- 
 able and irresistible power of mind. The first fierce on- 
 slaught by which Sardinia, bleeding and prostrate, was 
 snatched from the Austrian alliance, by which the gates of 
 Italy were thrown open, and by which Europe was startled, 
 as at three successive thunder peals, by the victories of 
 Montenotte, Millesimo and Mondovi, all in the space of a 
 month, might, at least possibly, have been the result of 
 youthful daring and the valor of the Rei^ublican army. 
 But the defeats of Colli, the Sardinian, were succeeded by 
 those of Beaulieu, the Austiian ; the defeats of Beaulieu 
 were succeeded by the defeats in two campaigns of the 
 well-supported and resolute Wurmser; the defeats of Wurm- 
 ser were succeeded by the defeats, in two camjjaigns more, 
 of Alvinzi, also furnished with overpowering numbers ; and 
 when Archduke Charles advanced to re-conquer a thor- 
 oughlv subjugated Lombardy, he too was met and driven 
 back. There were six distinct campaigns ; and when ISTa- 
 poleon, at their close, dictated, in 1797, the treaty of Campo 
 Formio, he remained indisputably the first warrior in 
 Eiu-ope. 
 
 A great deal has been said of the change introduced by 
 Napoleon in these campaigns, into military tactics. Ho 
 broke through, it is said, all the rules and etiquette of 
 war, poured his forces alwaj's on single points, was now in 
 his enemy's front, now in his rear, and, on the whole, intro- 
 duced a new system of warfare. That he introdiTced a 
 change in the mode of carrying on hostilities, among the 
 generals of Europe, does not admit of doubt. The system 
 of warfare by which Napoleon was overthrown, put in 
 operation by men who had marched under his banner, was 
 indeed a more rapid and fearful thing than that over which 
 he won his first triumphs. But it seems as little doubtful, 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 191 
 
 that the change was nothing more than that natural one 
 which is inevitable in any art or science where consummate 
 genius displays itself. His generalship was essentially that 
 of all the greatest generals. To form combinations with 
 such invention and accuracy, and execute them with such 
 celerity, as will bring an overpowering, force to bear upon a 
 single point, had been the object of generals from Luxem- 
 burgh to Dumouriez ; and had been effected, by the former 
 against William of Orange and by the latter against Bruns- 
 wick, with a skill and celerity not unworthy of Napoleon. 
 Wellington studied war among the Ghauts of Himalaya, 
 yet the ablest combinations and the most impetuous attacks 
 of the best Marshals trained in the school of Bonaparte 
 were unable to baffle him. In our own time we have seen 
 war settle back to that laggard habit, into which it had 
 fallen in the hands of the Austrians before the revolutionary 
 campaigns. The advent of military genius of the first 
 order might have introduced precisely such a change of 
 tactics under the walls of Sebastopol, as Napoleon intro- 
 duced on the plains of Lombardy. He did not provide 
 himself with a new horse ; but he was the man to put 
 Bucephalus to his speed. 
 
 The quickness and clearness with which, in these cam- 
 paigns, he apprehended the features of every position, and 
 the necessities of every situation, are amazing. The reports 
 of spies, the vague hints of rumor, became clear before him. 
 As if by second sight, he saw in the far distance every dis- 
 position of his enemy. With the pieces before him on a 
 chess-board, it would have i-equired discrimination and 
 decision, to estimate or anticipate every move of his adver- 
 sary, and instantly to adapt his own force to thwart it. 
 But with armies overwhelming in number, approaching 
 over wide spaces of country, with only the reports of spies 
 
192 NAPOLEON BONAPAETE. 
 
 or traitors to depend upon for intelligence, with a thousand 
 openings for mishap in the very transmission of orders, 
 with the certainty that a slip might be ruin, to have the 
 whole spread out as clear as the starry spheres before his tel- 
 escopic eye, and again and again, by swift perception and 
 decision, to launch the bolt just where it was needed: — 
 this indeed demanded a master mind. And he effected 
 these things so often and so variously ! First, as we said, 
 D'Argenteau was overpowered in Piedmont, the French 
 army concentrating itself into a wedge and breaking through 
 the centre of the Allies. Then came the brilliant fighting 
 of Lodi and the investment of Mantua. Wurmser and 
 Quasdonowich were next to be overthrown. They were 
 near each other at the bottom of the Lago di Garda, and 
 could they have united, resistance might have been vain. 
 But swift as lightning Quasdonowich was shattered and 
 flung back on this hand, and the whole flood, wheeling 
 round like a heady cvirrent, turned to sweep Wurmser 
 away on that. Wurmser, tough and valiant, retreated for 
 a time, and then advanced again on Mantua, leaving David- 
 owich with a strong army to defend Trient and the passes 
 of the Tyrol. Suddenly, while Wurmser was looking out 
 for the French along his front, he was startled by the intelli- 
 gence that, far in the rear, Davidowich had been utterly 
 routed. In a moment, this spirit-like Napoleon was down, 
 irresistible, upon himself The eye of a civilian may not 
 deserve much confidence; but this overthrow of David- 
 owich first, and advance thereupon on Wurmser, with all 
 his Austrian communications broken, and not improbably 
 in some slight bewilderment, assuredly loohs one of the 
 finest bits of work to be met with in the annals of war. 
 It is needless to multiply instances. Such was Napoleon's 
 mode of carrying on hostilities. 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 193 
 
 The amplitude of comprehension with which he embraced 
 every circumstance of the war, appearing to have the end 
 as distinctly before him as the beginning, and the remote 
 as visibly present as the near, baffles description. Consider 
 that single instance of his first passage of the Po. He has 
 in a month l.iid Sardinia prostrate at his feet; he has taken 
 eighty guns, twenty-one standards, and two great fortresses; 
 he has slain or captured twenty-five thousand of the enemy; 
 he is twenty-six years of age; and now, as he concludes the 
 treaty with the king of Sardinia, Europe is looking on him 
 with wonder and admiration. His treaty is signed. Among 
 other stipulations, he is careful to have it specified that it 
 will be permitted to the French army to cross the Po at 
 Valenza. Beaulieu takes the alai-m; spares no pains to 
 make his position at Valenza sure. He is looking eagerly 
 for the French columns, when lo ! he is informed that N'a- 
 poleon has already crossed at Placenza, fifty miles down, 
 and that he, Beaulieu, must face about fast enough if he 
 would prevent an entrance into Milan. The veteran of 
 twenty-six ! "With the first laurels oh his brow, the plau- 
 dits of Europe in his ears, and a monarch accepting a treaty 
 from his dictation, he had closed his eye at once to the 
 past, saw only the future, and in the veTy council chambers 
 remembered that he was in the field. Thei-e was nothing 
 very brilliant, certainly nothing chivalrous here : but what 
 could escape a coolness, a presence of mind, a power of 
 vision like this ? 
 
 That forwardness of look, that instant forgetfulness of 
 the past, was one of the most remarkable characteristics 
 of this greatest worker of modern times. Other soldiers 
 look to victory for rest ; Napoleon's might have looked 
 upon it with apprehensiveness, as the unfailing herald of 
 new toil. He indulged himself in no raptures over his 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 17 
 
194 NAPOLKON BONAFARTE. 
 
 .battle-fields; not a look did he take: was. the work over, 
 or could it be confided to inferior hands, he was away on 
 the instant, to front battle on some distant field. At Riv 
 oli, his exertions were overpowering. He had three horses 
 shot under him. At nightfall, one would have said that, 
 without repose, flesh and blood could hold out no longer. 
 But not a moment's rest did he take. The victory could now 
 be completed by Massena and others; and he set out on the 
 instant for Mantua, marching first all night and then all 
 day. He arrives at Mantua. Any creature in the form of 
 man, were he a mere incarnated spirit, would surely now 
 seek repose. But Napoleon does not seek it. His soldiers, 
 indeed, are unable to hold out any longer, but not he. He 
 passes the night in walking about the outposts. " At one 
 of these," says Lockhart in his own clear, admirable way, 
 " he found a grenadier asleep by the root of a tree ; and 
 taking his gun, without wakening him, performed a senti- 
 nel's duty in his place for about half an hour ; when the 
 man, starting fi-om his slumbers, perceived with terror and 
 despair the countenance and occupation of his general. 
 He fell on his knees before him. " My friend," said Napo- 
 leon, "here is your musket. You had fought hard, and 
 marched long, and your sleep is excusable : but a moment's 
 inattention might at present ruin the army. I happened 
 to be awake, and have held your post for you. You will 
 be more careful another time." He happened to be awake ! 
 Mr. Emerson might well say .that this was a man of stone 
 and iron. 
 
 But in truth, in these campaigns, he showed himself 
 armed at all points. He could manage the Directory just 
 as well as the Austrians. Barras had recommended him 
 for Vcndemiare, as a man who would not stand upon cere- 
 mony ; and now he found it was perhaps too true. The 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 195 
 
 Directory, professing unbounded admiration, would have 
 divided the Italian army, giving part to Napoleon, part to 
 Kellermann ; thus, in all calculable certainty, ruining Na- 
 poleon, subverting his conquests, and bringing an Austrian 
 army upon France through the Sardinian Passes. He saw 
 through their design and defeated it in an instant, by simply 
 throwing up his command, and compelling them, afraid of 
 public opinion, to reinstate him. For every emergency, he 
 had its own requirement. At Lodi, a furious charge, a 
 display of dauntless valor, was necessary. So he seized a 
 standard and rushed into the tempest of grape. At Areola, 
 the battle was won by a sudden thought, a clever trick, 
 which could, however, have occurred only to a mind abso- 
 lutely imperturbable and perfectly clear. At Tagliamento, 
 he conquered by a stratagem which reminds one very much 
 of the ancient generals. In the thinking and the acting 
 part of bis profession, he was equally at home. You may 
 say of him, that never did any one more notably diminish 
 the interval between the tardiness of thought and the swift- 
 ness of action. As he himself said in after years, his head 
 and his hand were in immediate connection. 
 
 Such was the Napoleon whom we might have discerned 
 at the conferences of Formio, in October, 1797. Ere 
 that time he had observably altered his demeanor with 
 friends and dependants. He appreciated, with his usual 
 clear, cold accuracy, his position ; he was the head of a 
 triumphant army, the unbounded favorite of the French 
 people, now fairly kindled into a passion for military glory, 
 and the subject of so feeble a government as the Directory. 
 He said afterwards that his ambition was strong but of a 
 cold nature : it would have been more strictly con-ect to say 
 that it was of a practical nature, that it never passed the 
 limits of the possible, that, like every other quality and char- 
 
196 NAPOLEON BONAPAKTE. 
 
 acteristic of his mind, it was of a sternly realistic nature. 
 It admits of no doubt that schemes of empire -were already- 
 beginning to dawn upon him. 
 
 It must be added that, at the date of the treaty of Campo 
 Formio, another aspect of Napoleon's character had become 
 manifest. In his dealings with the Lombard peasantry 
 and with the Grand Duke of Tuscany, he had shown him- 
 self thoroughly unscrupulous in the means he used to effect 
 his ends. He crushed the Lombard insurrection with cruel 
 severity, showing an utter disregard to thp effusion of blood. 
 " It is the nature," he said, " of the giant to pqiieeze." It 
 is doubtless a general characteristic of strong and rugged 
 minds to allow the end a large power of justifying the 
 means, especially if they have been accustomed to carnage 
 as the instrument of their purposes. Cromwell's mind 
 seems to have been originally by no means rugged, but 
 rather kindly and affectionate ; yet his words about the 
 " knocking on the head " at Drogheda make one feel some- 
 what chill. At all events, Napoleon had now shown that 
 there might easily be a stronger necessity with him than 
 the necessity of sparing a brother's life. 
 
 In the beginning of 1798, we find him again in Paris. 
 He knew himself to be the most popular man in France, 
 but made a show of retiring into a private station. He 
 lost no opportunity, however, of ingratiating himself with 
 the people, and observed carefully the weakness of govern- 
 ment. But he discerned that his day of opportunity had 
 not yet arrived. He in vain attempted to gain peaceably 
 a seat in the government, and, as his Italian army was no 
 longer around him, he had no sword in hand to cut his way 
 to one. With that ambition of a cold nature, he could 
 bide his time. 
 
 Having been appointed to the command of the army 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 197 
 
 destined for the invasion of England, and discovering that 
 such an invasion was then at least impracticable, he pro- 
 cured the assent of the Directory to a descent upon Egypt. 
 He* sailed in May, 1798. 
 
 There are but two circumstances demanding notice in 
 connection with the Egyptian campaign. 
 
 The iirst is the new and striking instance it afforded of 
 Napoleon's personal endurance. In the burning heat of 
 an Egyptian July, the army set out from Alexandria, to 
 march along the Nile and bring the Mamelukes to an en- 
 gagement. The enemy had cleared the country of every 
 living and evei-y green thing. The sand threw up its burn- 
 ing glare, as if in concert with the flaming sun above. The 
 air swarmed with noxious insects. There was little water, 
 and that nauseous. In one word, all those torments and 
 agonies pressed upon the French hosts, with the descrip- 
 tion of which we have now become so familiar. The sol- 
 diers became mutinous in their torture ; the fiery spirits of 
 Murat ' and Lannes were driven almost to madness ; they 
 trod their tri-colors in the dust. But Napoleon suffered 
 nothing. He would not even sleep in the middle of the 
 day. He " wore his uniform buttoned up as at Paris ; 
 never showed one bead of sweat on his brow ; nor thought 
 of repose excef)t to lie down in his cloak the last at night, 
 and start up first in the morning." Really the forty cen- 
 turies that looked down upon him from the jayramids had 
 seldom seen so remarkable a being. 
 
 The second circumstance in this Egyptian campaign 
 which seems deserving of special observation is the insti- 
 tution, on the part of Napoleon, of a series of improvements 
 in the condition of Egypt, of which the beneficial effects 
 have not ceased in our own day. This, for the first time, 
 
 brings into prominent view a phase of Napoleon's character 
 
 17* 
 
198 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
 not suggested by his warlike exploits. The power of des- 
 truction was but half his capacity ; nor would it seem to 
 have been that partwhichhemosthighlyprizedormost will- 
 ingly indulged. He too, with the right instinct of'an 
 imperial mind, loved to see the world grow greener round 
 him. The savans whom he had taken with him to Egypt, 
 examined, in obedience to his orders, the " long-smothered 
 traces of many an ancient device for improving the agri- 
 culture of the country. Canals that had been shut up for 
 centuries were re-opened : the waters of the Nile flowed 
 once more where they had been guided by the skill of the 
 Pharaohs or the Ptolemies. Cultivation was extended; 
 property secured; and" adds our authority, "it cannot be 
 doubted that the signal improvements since introduced in 
 Egypt, are attributable mainly to the wise example of the 
 French administration." 
 
 But, on the whole, the Egyptian expedition did not turn 
 out precisely in accordance with the expectations of Napo- 
 leon. His progress eastward was arrested at Acre. The 
 dreams of oriental dominion, which, for a brief space, had 
 fascinated or amused his imagination, faded away forever. 
 He became aware that, in his absence, great events, disas- 
 trous to France, but which might prove propitious to his 
 ambition, had taken place in Europe. He quitted Egypt 
 without appi-izing his soldiers of his departure; and in 
 October, 1799, was once more in Paris. 
 
 The incompetence and corruption of the Directory had 
 ere now disgusted all parties, and the reverses which had 
 been sustained by the French ai-ms, in Holland, Belgium, 
 and Italy, had prepared the people of Paris to welcome 
 back the victorious young general. He brought with him 
 tidings of the victory of Aboukir ; earnest that the old 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 199 
 
 Italian glory might still be recalled. He was received with 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 Circumstances, he soon discovered, were favorable to his 
 • views. A sword was ready for him and he did not scruple 
 to grasp the hilt. Three regiments of dragoons solicited 
 the honor of being reviewed by him, and a large proportion 
 of the military men in Paris requested permission to wait 
 upon him with congratulations. These all were directed 
 to present themselves at his house at six o'clock on the 
 morning of the 18th Brumaire, 10th of November. Mean- 
 while measures were taken by the supporters of Napoleon, 
 Sieyes and others, to turn their presence to advantage. 
 The legislative power was at that time lodged in the Council 
 of Ancients and the Council of Five Hundred. The former 
 was convoked in the Tuileries at seven o'clock on the morn- 
 ing of the 18th, at the moment when Napoleon was sur- 
 rounded by the chief military force of Paris. Two decrees 
 were proposed and passed : first, that the meetings of the 
 legisTative bodies should be transferred to St. Cloud; sec- 
 ond, that Napoleon should be named commandant of the 
 troops and National Guard of Paris. The object of the 
 first was to remove the Council of Five hundred from Par- 
 isian support, in the prospect of its subversion ; the second 
 armed Napoleon with that weapon which it was necessary 
 at least to brandish over the heads of the defenders and rep- 
 resentatives of French freedom, and which he was hence- 
 forth to retain as sceptre. These decrees were passed. 
 Napoleon was invested with his new command in the midst 
 of the officers assembled round him ; and the nomination 
 was hailed by the soldiery with acclamations. 
 
 Nothing further of importance occurred on that day. 
 The two coimcils met next day at St. Cloud. Napoleon 
 had already surrounded the chateau in which they were to 
 
200 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
 assemble by a body of soldiers under Murat ; by this act 
 alone putting the character of the following proceedings 
 beyond doubt. It is painful to trace what followed. One 
 hurries over it as a scene of despicable mock -tragedy, scan- 
 dalous to all parties. The Council of Ancients proved 
 subservient. The Council of Five Hundred assumed a 
 different tone and attitude ; the hall echoed with heroic, 
 death-defiant eloquence ; a patriotic oath was sworn, even 
 Lucien the President, though Napoleon's brother, being 
 compelled to take part in it. The legislators of France 
 were to die at their posts. The presence of Napoleon in 
 the hall served only to endanger his own life, and to raise 
 to height of still nobler temper the loquacious heroes. 
 Then entered grenadiers, with ruthless look, and naked, 
 level bayonets : and the legislators of France, the patriotic 
 oath still hot on their lips, scampered off by door and 
 window ! Had Louis the sixteenth, on the 23d of June, 
 1789, sent a similar force of grenadiers, say under Captain 
 D'Agoust, into the Hall of the Third Estate, would' the 
 result have been this ? 
 
 It was now decreed, by such remnant of the French 
 legislature as gave itself wholly to the purposes of Napo- 
 leon, that the two councils should be adjourned until Feb- 
 ruary, and that the government should be lodged provis- 
 ionally in the hands of three consuls, of whom the first 
 was Napoleon. Sieyes coming, with Ducos his brother 
 consul, next day, to transact business, and thinking, sure 
 enough. Napoleon would consent to remain the mere mili- 
 tary man, leaving civil and diplomatic affairs to be regulated 
 by his own incomparable capacity, discovered that he was 
 mistaken. " Bonaparte," he said in the evening, " can do, 
 and -will do, everything himself." The Abbd and his col- 
 
NAPOLEON BONAI'ARTE. 201 
 
 league felt themselves unceremoniously converted into 
 tools. Napoleon was ruler of France. 
 
 The first act of the Napoleon drama was now approach- 
 ing its completion. In order to obtain for Bonaparte the 
 name of Emperor, and to consolidate power in his hands, 
 two things still remained to be done. It was necessary 
 first, that he should, by a firm and sagacious internal gov- 
 ernment, demonstrate his capacity to secure to France that 
 calmness and stability, which had so long been wanting to 
 the distracted country, and without which the operations 
 of industry could not be sustained : and second, that he 
 should, by some brilliant exploit of foreign warfare, encircle 
 his government with that glory which, in the eyes of 
 Frenchmen, hides innumerable faults, and which might 
 render him certain of the enthusiastic support of the army. 
 The achievement of these two objects may be considered 
 as filling up the period between the 19th Brumaire, 1799, 
 and the coronation, in December, 1804. 
 
 The campaign of Marengo was peculiarly adapted to 
 excite the military enthusiasm of the nation, and to silence 
 any Republican murmurs against the rule of the First 
 Consul which might linger in the army. The skill with 
 which the intention of Napoleon was masked, and the 
 originality of the whole conception of the campaign, might 
 be exhibited and dwelt upon, as demonstrative of military 
 genius ; but the most remarkable circumstance connected 
 with this campaign seems after all to have been its mag- 
 nificent daring. Suspicions have been thrown out, to all 
 appearance groundless, as to the personal bravery of Napo- 
 leon in later years ; but in all the early part of his career, 
 his courage was not only dauntless but fiery. If in any 
 respect the massiveness and adamantine strength of his 
 character could be said to partake of French vehemence 
 
202 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
 and Italia<i excitability, it was in the recklessness with, 
 which he rushed into fire, as at Lodi, or confronted perilous 
 risks, as in crossing and re-crossing the Mediterranean with 
 a Nelson on his track. And the Italian campaign of 1800, 
 with its passage of the Alps and victory of Marengo, could 
 have been ventured upon only by a man whose mind rested 
 on a basis of utter soldierly fearlessness. The prize for 
 which he played was indeed splendid ; but the alternative 
 of success was absolute, instant, irretrievable ruin : yet his 
 hand never shook, his eye never once filmed or quivered, 
 as he staked all on one dread throw. It may indeed be 
 fairly questioned whether, in this campaign, Napoleon's 
 daring did not approach the character of foolhardiness ; 
 whether it can perfectly vindicate its claim to the character 
 of that high valor, whose seeming recklessness advances 
 steadily under the shield of foresight, whose most startling 
 swiftness is but the laggard step of material energy follow- 
 ing the geometry of mind. In the case of any other 
 man save Napoleon, the assertion could be made without 
 hesitation that it did. But much could be risked by an 
 intellect so vigilant, a readirless and presence of mind so 
 reliable, and a resolution so inflexible, as Napoleon's. "I 
 think this is a battle lost," said Dessaix, coming up on the 
 evening of Marengo and seeing the French columns all 
 broken and retreating. " I think it is a battle won," an- 
 swered Napoleon ; and in an hour he had added to the 
 roll of his fame one of the most brilliant victories he ever 
 gained. A man who could thus depend on himself in ex- 
 ecution could be very daring in conception. Be this as it 
 may, the battle was won; the French conquests in Italy were 
 almost entirely restored ; and Nnpoleon returned to Paris, 
 dearer than ever to the French army, the boast and darling 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 203 
 
 of the nation, and with the hopes of his opponents smitten 
 into the dust. 
 
 The internal government of the First Consul was the 
 gradual development of the system of the Empire, and 
 the elaboration of those ceremonies and grandeurs, by 
 which the French people were to be studiously reminded 
 of Charlemagne. It would be inappropriate or impossible 
 to view it separately. Suffice it here to say, that a tranquil 
 and acquiescing, if not in any degree enthusiastic France 
 beheld Napoleon, on the 2nd of December, 1804, set upon 
 his head that diadem, which he had already encircled with 
 a legion of honor and a brilliant constellation of marshals. 
 
 The empire of Napoleon is one of the most remarkable 
 phenomena of modern times, and one fraught with deep 
 and varied instruction. It wiU doubtless form a subject 
 for investigatiiDn and discussion during centuries to come; 
 and more than one may elapse- before its character is accu- 
 rately explained, or its place in the scheme of Providence 
 discerned. But enough has already been done to render 
 it possible to ascertain and define with something of scien- 
 tific precision its essential feature. To do this will prove 
 synonymous with discovering the radical character of him 
 who was the founder and impersonation of that empire. 
 
 It is safe to permit one's enthusiasm large scope in con- 
 templating Napoleon as emperor of France. The structure 
 he erected was truly imperial in its dimensions; stable, 
 many-sided, imposing ; and the mind of which it was the 
 image was the most variously and magnificently endowed 
 that has exercised sovereignty for many centuries ; if, in- 
 deed, in these ages, there has appeared any man who can 
 on the whole be pronounced intellectually greater than 
 Napoleon. No sooner did he become First Consul than 
 
201!. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
 every department of the administration acquired a firmness 
 of tone altogether new. It was not the formalized rigidness 
 of the old regim^, nor was it the fierce tension of the Ter- 
 rorist rule : the one was the regularity of decrepitude, the 
 other the overstrung activity of fever : here method and 
 energy were combined. It is curious that he, whose career, 
 contemplated in a general way, has so brilUant, sudden, 
 meteoric an aspect, should have been called, and called 
 truly, the most methodic of mankind. It is not impossible 
 that Soult, Massena, or Moreau, would have defended 
 France from external enemies nearly as efiectually as Napo- 
 leon. But as every one of his marshals fell even here 
 behind the great leader, so, in all the qualities which belong 
 to the sovereign as distinguished from the soldier, he was 
 incomparably superior to them all. To develop the mate- 
 rial resources of the country; to extend mental cultivation 
 and encourage mental activity, to the utmost limit consis- 
 tent with the security of despotism ; to adorn France with 
 great works ; to preserve national morality and love of 
 order, so far at least as was essential to national stability; 
 and to provide a uniform and equitable system of laws for 
 the nation : — such were the objects he set before him. 
 And he worked in the closet as he worked in the field. 
 Every department of the administration was under his eye. 
 No technical details could repel him ; nay every sort of 
 practical endeavor, every science, every economic and in- 
 dustrial art, enlisted his ardent sympathy. In every depart- 
 ment his suggestions were valuable : he seems to have 
 been as much at home with the jurists engaged on the 
 Code Napoleon, as in directing the organization of the 
 forces. 
 
 It is afiecting to observe how this noblest aspect of the 
 character of Napoleon, his profound and comprehensive 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 205 
 
 sympathy with the works of peace, his instinct, deeper than 
 all his warlike tendencies, that peace is greater than war, 
 comes out in St. Helena. He boasts, with real warmth 
 of exultation, that he would have made the French popu- 
 lace the best educated in Europe : and the emotion with 
 which he thought of Austerlitz was languid in comparison 
 of that with which he recurred to the Code. His general 
 mode of alluding to his victories, indeed, evinced a sagacity 
 and soundness of mind, little less wonderful than the powers 
 displayed in their achievement. They were quite ordinary 
 matters; nothing mysterious or very great about them; 
 dependent on an observance of the value of minutes, on 
 quickness, coolness, presence of mind, and mere work-a-day, 
 matter-of-fact qualities, on a committal oi fewer blunders 
 than your adversary, on fortuitous circumstances which did 
 you noJionor. But the thought was really dear to him that 
 his influence might live in the ways of French existence 
 as a peaceful and benignant presence ; that somewhat of 
 the orderliness and prosperity of citizen life would be 
 traceable to him ; that he would go down to posterity with 
 the fame of a law-giver. 
 
 It would almost appear to be an inseparable characteristic 
 of the mode in which mankind is educated, that truth after 
 truth is lodged in the general mind in an extreme and one- 
 sided form. For the last five and twenty years, the Uterary 
 world of Britain and America has rung with denunciation 
 of hearsay, of tradition, of system. Mirabeau was a man 
 not of systems but "with an eye;" Danton, the same; 
 Napoleon it would be loudly exclaimed, the same. But lU 
 magnificence of rhetoric can in the smallest degree afiect 
 the simple scientific fact, that men and nations work by 
 system, that the inventions and methods of genius can be 
 in great measure stereotypedi and made the property of 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 18 
 
206 NAPOLEOK BONAPARTE. 
 
 the race, that parchments, laws, constitutions, are the ulti- 
 mate fruits of political civilization. To discover the prin- 
 ciples of such, to construct and establish them, is the w^ork 
 of genius ; they are eflfective precisely in proportion as they 
 are put in operation by ability and energy : but it is an 
 error, precisely co-ordinate with the error of misconceiving 
 the corresponding functions of genius, to represent them 
 as in themselves of no value. And in no case does the 
 mind of Napoleon exhibit a greatness so truly and calmly 
 imperial, as in the earnest endeavor to give perpetuity to 
 what otherwise would have been fleeting; to leave its 
 stamp on the institutions of the nation ; to breathe its 
 ethereal spirit into the framework of system. Genius is 
 the vital sap pouring from the root and stem; it is the glory 
 of civilization to conduct and disseminate it through a 
 thousand branches, twigs, and leaves, that fair frmts may 
 ripen season after season, and that common hands may 
 pluck them. Genius is the electric fire of heaven, myste- 
 rious, inscrutable ; institutions, laws, formulas, systems, are 
 the terrestrial wires, along which it may penetrate to every 
 town and village, bearing the words of ordinary mortals. 
 By overlooking this two-fold fact, by exaggerating either 
 of its sides, you throw all human history into confiision. 
 Look only to the regulation, and you become the apologist 
 of solecisms, the admirer of mechanism, the defender of 
 form without spirit, the believer in men that are mummies 
 and in armor that is rust. Look only to the force, and your 
 philosophy becomes one not of man but of men. You learn 
 ti) palliate that sin against the human race by which in all 
 ages national freedom has been crushed under individual 
 strength. You sympathize with expulsions of parliaments 
 and Reigns of Terror. You formalize your fatal, your blast- 
 ing error, and proclaim it as a truth, under the name of 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 207 
 
 hero-worship. Napoleon, as may presently appear, can 
 vindicate no claim to have, in his public capacity, wholly 
 and disinterestedly devoted himself to serve Fr^ince in this 
 best and broadest manner. But as seen by posterity, bear- 
 ing in the one hand that sword which blazed so fearfully, 
 so irresistibly over Europe, and with the other resting on 
 the Code Napoleon, he will continue to afford a sublime 
 testimony to the two-fold truth, whose practical evolution 
 is the evolution of civilization, that the great man works 
 for his race and that the race must work together. 
 
 The Napoleonic empire was one of great advantage to 
 France. That must be allowed at once and emphatically. 
 Napoleon speedily brought all the factions by which the 
 land had been kept in a state of distraction to work har- 
 moniously under his orders, to own the strong gravitation 
 of his genius. " My principle was," he said in St. Helena, 
 " la carriere ouverte aux talens." It is the principle of all 
 prosperous enterprise ; and his magnificent success was the 
 natural result of the ability and determination with which 
 he carred it out. Capacity was the one thing he looked 
 for, and the comprehensiveness of perception with which 
 he detected it was marvellous. His soldiers, his marshals, 
 his ministers, were masters of their work ; pretence, dream- 
 ing, verbiage, he could not tolerate for a moment. He did 
 not himself shrink from labor. His toil was such as makes 
 us amazed at the powers of the human mind and body. 
 While in the field, while directing the motions of large 
 armies on extended lines, while forming combinations that 
 required exact geometric calculation, devising expedient* 
 possible only to a mind acting with the most free and 
 tranquil energy, executing movements and operations which 
 demanded exhausting physical endurance, he yet continued 
 to scrutinize every department of the domestic administra- . 
 
208 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
 tion. He placed his crown on a gloomy brow, where 
 thought and care rather than exultation learned to rest ; 
 and his seat on the throne of France was not what you 
 would call an easy one. There is a pathos in these words, 
 made use of to O'Meara in St. Helena: — "The happiest 
 days of my life were from sixteen to twenty, during the 
 semestres, when I used to go about, as I have told you I 
 should wish to do, from one restaurateur to another, living 
 moderately, and having a lodging, for which I paid three 
 louis a month. They were the happiest days of my life. 
 I was always so much occupied, that I may say I never 
 was truly happy upon the throne." Thus he worked, and 
 made all work who owned his authority. The government 
 in every part was a model of industry and energy. The 
 foreign enemies of France trembled before a power, at 
 once fiery in its intensity and perfect in its organization. 
 The subjects of the empire found themselves stimulated, 
 in whatever direction their capacities lay, by the prospect 
 of civic honor. The private soldier, the marshal, the man 
 of art, of science, of industry — every one could gain a 
 place in the legion of honor, if only his excellence in his 
 department were pre-eminent. The treasures of science 
 and the monuments of art enriched and adorned the empire. 
 Well might Frenchmen regard with pride, and the world 
 contemplate with awe and wonder, this consistent and 
 stable structure. From amid the volcanic heavings of the 
 Revolution, it had risen in its strength and massiveness, 
 like a granite mountain, buttressed about with rocks, re- 
 pressing into submission and silence the fires on which it 
 was based, and beating back proudly the tempests by which 
 it was surrounded. 
 
 But there is a negative side to all this, which must be 
 .fairly brought into view, before the distinctive feature of the 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 209 
 
 Napoleonic empire can be defined, or the character of Na- 
 poleon accurately determined. 
 
 The Napoleonic empii-e was a despotism. To say so 
 may seem the utterance of a truism ; but even if it is so, 
 the truism must be put conspicuously forward. The fair 
 and free development of the human mind in Fi-ance was 
 interfered with, impeded, constrained. Only such expan- 
 sion was permitted to the national intellect, only such 
 action allowed to the national will, as were consistent with 
 the purposes of one man. Whatever mind submitted itself 
 or devoted itself to Napoleon might work and prosper ; 
 but the sun, moon, and stars of intellect had to leave their 
 natural orbits and do obeisance to him. 
 
 Further, the imperial system of Napoleon was specially 
 vitiated by its peculiar adaptation to the purposes of war. 
 It has been said that Napoleon's profoundest instincts ac- 
 knowledged the paramount nobleness of peace ; and this 
 is true. But it has not been alleged that he gave his in- 
 stincts full play ; and the fact is certain, that the whole 
 oi'ganization of French imperialism takes the aspect of a 
 martial apparatus. Countless inducements tempted youth 
 into the army. The whole system of education was adapted 
 to the cultivation of military qualities. The conscription 
 compelled all men to regard themselves in the light of 
 possible soldiers. It is not a beautiful spectacle. The 
 very influences which are by their nature pre-eminently 
 pacific, the knowledge and culture whose natural ofiice it 
 is to elevate, to expand, to humanize the mind, brought 
 into the service of hatred, of ferocity, of war : the rain and 
 sunlight not left to fertilize the field and clothe the forest, 
 but set to ripen one vast harvest of dragons' teeth. 
 
 This glance at the Napoleonic empire sends us back to 
 18* 
 
210 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
 look with more searching scrutiny into the character of 
 its founder. 
 
 It has been exceedingly common, of late years, to speak 
 of the intellectual and moral nature as identical, to confound 
 intellect, feeling, and conscience in one unity of power. 
 But it is not advisable to reject truth, solely because it is 
 very certain; to rush to paradox, merely because men in 
 general acknowledge plain fact. So manifest is it that 
 conscience, reason, and emotion are not synonymous, — so 
 explicit is the testimony to the possibility of a disturbed 
 balance among these, borne by the Jugurthas, the Syllas, 
 the Borgias, of history — that one cannot but suspect, 
 when their necessarily proportionate soundness and devel- 
 ojDment are insisted on, that the asserter has permitted 
 himself to be deceived by some process of more or less 
 subtle logical legerdemain. It is certain that an infraction 
 of any moral law can be brought out as a negative quantity 
 by the calculation of reason ; every crime, be it granted, is 
 a mistake. But this does not justify the assertion, that a 
 powerful intellectual capacity is inconsistent with infraction 
 of the moral law. Mistake may be unconsciously committed 
 under the form of crime, when, were it known or thought 
 of as mistake, it would have been avoided. The whole 
 meaning and point of the common distinction is, that moral 
 defect or delinquency prevents the reason from coming 
 into free and perfect action : that selfishness clogs it, and 
 lets it not gain that high, pure pinnacle, whence it could 
 have swept a sufficiently wide horizon ; that impotence of 
 conscience seals its eye, and permits it not to see the chari- 
 ots of fire, the horsemen, and the spearmen, the unsuspected, 
 unnoticed difficulties and dangers, with which seemingly 
 innoxious crime is filling the air around it. No refining 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 211 
 
 will remove from human nature this possibility, from human 
 history this fact. As well attempt to prove that, the higher 
 you ascend the Alps, the more broad and luxuriant are the 
 coi-nfields, the softer and brighter the roses. Jura and 
 Mont Blanc are high and strong; but their lofty preci- 
 pices are very bare, and they are covered with unmelted 
 snow. This, as well as most other phenomena of nature's 
 scenery, has its analogue in the world of man. 
 
 The intellect of Napoleon Bonaparte was of a supreme 
 order; but the moral and emotional nature, conscience and 
 feeling, were not in proportionate power. This mal-adjust- 
 ment was the essential feature of his character, and wrought 
 his ruin. It found its natural counterpai-t in his imperial 
 system. 
 
 After the conclusive handling the subject has received 
 from Mr. Carlyle, and especially from Mr. Emerson, it will 
 hardly now be maintained that there was not some dark 
 and baneful taint in the character of Napoleon. It may 
 be exhibited with precision under one or two particulars. 
 
 It is impossible, first of all, to acquit him of a guilt for 
 which it were difficult to find another name but murder. 
 Explanation might sufiice in one or two cases. But the 
 savage extermination of the later ItaHan campaigns ; the 
 deliberate order that thirteen hundred Arab prisoners who 
 had received quarter should be shot ; the slaughter of 
 D'Enghien and Palm : these are things which cannot be 
 explained away. Those hands will never wash white. 
 
 After murder may be ranked blasphemy. . A great many 
 superfine things have been said about Napoleon's fatalism, 
 and his rejection of the materialistic logic which argued 
 that there was no God. But really his fatalism was little 
 more than a kind of thunder behind the scenes ; less for 
 use than effect. He did not let fate fight his battles for 
 
212 NAPOLEON BONAPAETE. 
 
 him. He did not commit himself very trustfully to fate, 
 in that early campaign, which lasted seven days, in which 
 he flew along the ridges of the Tyrol and the banks of the 
 Italian rivers like fire glittering and darting among the 
 clouds, and during which he destroyed forty thousand 
 Austrians without taking off his boots ! Fate seemed to 
 have agreed with Dessaix that Marengo was a battle lost ; 
 but Napoleon took the liberty to believe that it was a 
 battle won. If he did not use many precautions to secure 
 his person against assassination, it was not, however he 
 might assert it, because of any confidence in the disposi- 
 tions of fate : it was simply because he considered the 
 omission of such precautions as safe as their observance. 
 In St. Helena, he put off the doctors, having no confidence 
 in medicine, with reference to fate : but he was careful that 
 the state of his stomach should be communicated to his 
 son. Had fate forgotten him ? Napoleon did not whimper, 
 or betray a weak surprise, when overtaken by disaster; 
 but that had far more to do with trust in himself, and gen- 
 eral strength of character, than with trust in fate. His 
 belief in the existence of God may mean more or less. It 
 probably comes to little more than an attestation to the 
 fundamental human instinct that the First Cause of .the 
 Universe is mind. In any view it cannot be alleged in his 
 commendation. Belief in a God without either trembling 
 or worshipping, is a reasonable condition for no finite being. 
 " There are so many different religions or modifications 
 of them," remarked Napoleon, seemingly in a light and 
 careless mood, in St. Helena, " that it is difiicult to know 
 which to choose. If one religion had existed from the 
 beginning of the world, I should think that to be the true 
 one." Not in that way was the bridge of Lodi passed : 
 not in that way was the sword of Austerlitz or of Jena 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 213 
 
 bared and sheathed. By close, earnest, self-subduing study, • 
 by indomitable, sleepless attention, did he perfect himself 
 in the science, and master the art, of war. Strange, that 
 he should have thought a question of which the mere 
 statement involved infinitudes of consequence, might be so 
 lightly shuffled aside, while the concerns of the poor three- 
 score years and ten rose into immeasurable importance, 
 shutting out the heavenly constellations, and sternly con- 
 centrating within their narrow space his whole immortal 
 energies ! The words may be remembered, with those of 
 Tacitus and Suetonius, as showing how utterly limitless is 
 the possibility, even for great minds, to mistake the nature 
 and relative importance of things. Contemplated from the 
 stillness of eternity, will it not seem reasonable., that If apo- 
 leon should have bent his giant intellect to solve that great 
 problem which thus flitted faintly and momentarily before 
 him, and passed away forever ? In other things, he was so 
 little of a skeptic ! A thousand blunders and disasters in 
 war did not conceal from him the possibility of its once 
 more becoming defined and successful, through determina- 
 tion and capacity. Spectacles of poltroonery, corruption, 
 falsehood, unprecedented, perhaps, since the fall of the 
 Roman empire, did not make him skeptical of building up 
 a great, compact, commanding empire. But here he let a 
 whiflF of air blow him from the firm land, to drift off on a 
 dark and shoreless sea. Apply his rule generally, and you 
 put a stop to all work, you paralyze the right hand of 
 humanity. All truth comes with difference of opinion ; all 
 success is rescued from failure. Generalize from error, and 
 you will believe in no truth: generalize from failure, and 
 you will never stir from the spot on which you stand. But 
 the power of rejecting the generalization of skepticism is 
 the mark of a great practical man; the believer, the hoper, 
 
214 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
 . is the man who advances the standard of the race; and 
 this is well enough recognized; only in the case of religion 
 are men apt to accept the skeptical generalization at a glance. 
 Napoleon did not think it worth his while to look : and so 
 it was not given him to catch sight of that one religion, 
 which does, like a thread of celestial, imperishable gold, 
 lie along the whole vista of human history. 
 
 Levity, however, in passing by this great enquiry, though 
 beyond question indicative of a mind in which the author- 
 ity of conscience was not duly acknowledged, is not the 
 crime with which it is intended chiefly to charge Napoleon. 
 It is in another application that use is made of the word 
 blasphemy. He was the first potentate who, deliberately 
 disbelieving the Christian religion, yet deliberately took 
 it and made it a stool on which, while seated on his throne, 
 to set his foot. For state purposes, he deliberately and 
 with perfect heedfiilness, put into the hand of Christ a 
 sceptre which was but a reed, and set on Him a royal robe 
 recognized as a mockery. Hitherto the Christian religion 
 had not been used as a Cagliostro might use a spectral illu- 
 sion, or a mystery of sulphur and saltpetre, purely as a 
 sham, entirely for effect. The door of the apartment in 
 which Napoleon worked would be thrown open of a Sunday 
 for a few minutes, while in a farther room, a mass was 
 being said or sung. Next morning, all the papers had it that 
 the emperor had attended divine service. It was an insult 
 to God and man : a lie to earth, a lie to heaven. The 
 practically atheistic character has adhered to the Bonapart- 
 ist dynasty. That prayer, offered up on occasion of the 
 baptism of the present imperial prince, in which Louis 
 Napoleon and Eugenie, representing magnanimity and char- 
 ity, were recommended to God as furnishing the model of 
 a perfect character for the scion of the race, was a marvel- 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 215 
 
 lous intensification of blasphemy; an improvement even on 
 the stage mass. But is it not a fact to strike one dumb, that 
 men calling themselves Christian priests have been found 
 in our time to lend themselves to these performances ? 
 
 There may be men bold enough, blind enough, or bad 
 enough, to extenuate or deny Napoleon's guilty unconcern 
 in the shedding of blood : and to accuse any modem mon- 
 arch or statesman of blasphemy, in enslaving or insulting 
 Christianity and its ordinances, has in these days almost 
 an antiquated look ; but no denial or palliation is to be 
 apprehended in relation to the third great charge to be 
 brought against Napoleon, that he unhesitatingly and sys- 
 tematically made use of falsehood, that he habitually told 
 lies. To prove this is entirely supei-fluous. Its recogni- 
 tion, even in France, is embodied in the phrase, false as a 
 bulletin ; and to exhibit it in the comprehensiveness with 
 which it applied to all parts of his existence and activity, 
 to his government, to his war, to his conversation, would 
 be to pass his whole history in review. He deliberately 
 took falsehood into his service ; he enrolled, as nearly as 
 possible, the devil in his legion of honor. The central 
 virtue, the keystone of the moral arch, is truth. The Chris- 
 tian God is the God of truth ; and the devil is primarily 
 and emphatically the father of lies. To say, therefore, that 
 a man is a liar, is to say that the' banner has been in his 
 case taken from the hand of God's standard-bearer on earth, 
 conscience, that his moral nature is in anarchy. Mr. Car- 
 lyle expressly affirms that Napoleon was a liar ; he also 
 asserts the necessary conformity, nay, the identity, of the 
 moral and intellectual natures: was Napoleon, then, a fool? 
 Our literature has gone too far in the direction of paradox 
 and puzzle. 
 
 Such is the result of an inquiry into the character of 
 
216 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
 Napoleon, keeping specially in view the region presided 
 over by conscience. But the emotional nature is capable 
 of distinction, from, the province of conscience on the one 
 hand, and from that of pure intellect on the other. To 
 know, to worship, to love; reason, conscience, charity: these 
 may be said to exhaust the capacities and qualities of man ; 
 the will being looked upon as the generalissimo which mar- 
 shals all the powers of the mind, and brings them out to 
 battle. Napoleon lacked the right imperial mantle, charity. 
 
 This is clearly exhibited in the mode in which he ex- 
 tended his conquests over Europe ; specially in the way in 
 which he treated prostrate antagonists and nations. So 
 early even as in his Italian campaigns, he had exhibited a 
 dark and perilous implacability in his dealings with Venice. 
 To offend or insult him was, during his whole career, to 
 incur destruction. His wrath might tarry, but that was 
 only because he had a consciousness that it could not cool. 
 His conduct to the Duke of Brunswick and the kingdom 
 of Prussia was that of a nature too stern, cold, unloving. 
 His breast was not wide enough or warm enough for a 
 nobly philanthropic scheme of empire : you would say he 
 rather loved to see the victim writhing under his heel. It 
 may be argued that it was beyond his power really to do 
 anything for Poland : but at all events, faithfully as the 
 Poles served him, no quickening warmth fell over Poland 
 from the cold glimmering of that solitary star. 
 
 The bareness of Napoleon's nature, his steelly indiffer- 
 ence to the melting touches of human sympathy, is sug- 
 gested, in a very painful and melancholy manner, by several 
 of his conversations in St. Helena. His declarations that 
 he had loved no one may go for little ; perhaps they tell 
 on the other side. But it is appalling to mark how all 
 interest and importance seem to him to concentrate in 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 217 
 
 himself: how the principal point of eulogy to be conferred 
 on his very mother appears to be the entireness of her 
 devotion to him. " Never yet, I believe," he said, " has 
 there been such devotion shown by soldiers as mine have 
 manifested for me. In all my misfortunes, never has the 
 soldier, even when expiring, been wanting to me — never 
 has man been served more faithfully by his troops. With 
 the last drop of blood gushing out of their veins, they 
 exclaimed, Vive V Empereur ! " Yet there never seems to 
 have escaped him a single sentiment of pity for all those 
 myriads that had died for him. One can imagine, on some 
 still, sleepless midnight, when the moan of the Atlantic 
 made the silence seem more deep and melancholy, the sol- 
 diers that had died for Napoleon, that had followed him so 
 faithfully from Montenotte to Beresina, rising before him 
 for a last review, trooping past in their millions, pale and 
 shadowy, and casting on him, from those eyes in which 
 eternity had written its earnestness, an amazed, upbraiding 
 look. But there is no evidence that he ever conceived 
 such a look as possible. It seemed right, appropriate, quite 
 in the order of things, that men and nations should bleed 
 for him. Humanity recoils from such ghastly self-deifica- 
 tion. The snow-clad mountain stands alone. 
 
 Napoleon was not naturally of an evil nature: nay, when 
 you glance over his youth, with its manly frankness, its 
 democratic ardor, its touches of romance, you feel that 
 naturally he was nobler than all save a few men of that 
 time. But the greatest and truest nature cannot escape 
 the influences by which it is surrounded ; and the youth 
 and early manhood of Napoleon were encompassed by 
 influences that might have chilled the heart of an angel, 
 and turned to cynicism the openness of a celestial brow. 
 It was the time when materialistic philosophy and senti- 
 
 9ECOND PTSRTKS. 1" 
 
218 NAPOLEON BONAPAKTE. 
 
 mental morality had brought out, in fullest manifestation, 
 their dire brood, lust and lies. It is doubtful whether, in 
 any age of paganism, Napoleon would not have met with 
 more to exalt him above self and the present, and to inform 
 him that the world of sight is hot, as those vain babblers, 
 singularly satirizing themselves, used to call it, the universe. 
 Everything he saw in public life, except the mere valor of 
 his soldiers in the field, combined to impress him with a 
 contempt for human nature. " Traitors, hypocrites, embez- 
 zlers, liars, scoundrels — such were the men by whom he 
 knew himself to be surrounded, and whom he yoked- to 
 his car of empire with about as much respect as he would 
 have felt for a team of wolves. Ban-as, by whom he rose, 
 he knew to be utterly dishonest, a coward, a thief; Fouch^ 
 was, in his own words, " a miscreant of all colors ; " from 
 Talleyrand and Sieyes down to Barrere, there was no man, 
 or hardly one, whom he could esteem. With the whole 
 spiritual universe representing itself to him as a doubt, a 
 triviality, a matter to be laughed at or sniffed lightly aside, 
 and with the world of man awakening only his contempt, 
 was it so much to be wondered at that his nature cased 
 itself in ice, that he became the friendless, unloving being, 
 who saw in men only his tools, and for whom there was 
 no God but his star ? 
 
 The most cursory glance at the leading events which 
 preceded and accompanied the fall of Napoleon, will show 
 that it was this incompleteness, this bareness of strength, 
 this self-worship, which was the radical cause of his ruin. 
 But it must not be forgotten that his rule brought with it 
 benefits. It did so, not merely to France but to Europe. 
 Capacity is always of a value, of a beneficence, which may 
 be pronounced incalculable. The man of power has an 
 instinctive pleasure in doing work well and seeing it well 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 219 
 
 done ; apart from obstructing influences, it is natural for 
 intellect to produce thoroughness and excellence, as it is 
 natural for the stream to bear the barge, or the wind to 
 purify the atmosphere ; and in spite of opposing selfishness 
 both the instinct and the fact were illustrated in the history 
 of Napoleon. It is a circumstance, not to be too profoundly- 
 pondered, that France was in a more discontented, turbu- 
 lent, poverty-stricken, every way miserable condition, under 
 the innocent Louis XVI, than under Napoleon. And but 
 a few months since. Count Cavour informed Europe, that 
 the Italian provinces of Napoleon had, under his rule, en- 
 joyed an equality of law, and a general prosperity, such as 
 they have not enjoyed under Austria. There may be an 
 infinite remove between the best despotism and a low spe- 
 cies of freedom ; but the despotism of imbecility is the 
 most woeful calamity that can fall upon the human race. 
 Colossal intellectual power, unaided by love, unguarded by 
 virtue, was the essential characteristic both of Napoleon 
 and his empire; it was not good, yet not the woi-st. 
 
 The coronation took place in the close of 1804. The 
 power and glory of Bonaparte had not, however, culmi- 
 nated. His ambition was only awakening. 
 
 In 1805, after overthrowing Mack, at Ulra, he advanced 
 towards the north with the armies of Austria in flight before 
 him. Vienna opened her gates. Massena drove the Arch- 
 duke Charles from Italy. In the month of November, 
 Napoleon was drawing towards Austerlitz, where the em- 
 perors of Austria and Russia, with their combined army, 
 dared at last to await him. The story of the wily Cartha- 
 ginian, ojjposing the invisible might of his genius, to the 
 vast material power, and blundering courage of the Roman, 
 and luring him on to the tremendous catastroi^he of Cann83, 
 must occur to one who marks Napoleon, leading on the 
 
220 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
 emperors towards the fearful snare of Austerlitz. And 
 is it not the Napoleon of Italy we see, as that figure passes 
 on horseback along the lines at midnight, to see that all is 
 ready for the morning, an hour's sleep by a watch-fire hav- 
 ing first refreshed the imperial soldier? 
 
 The victory of Austerlitz laid Austria prostrate before 
 Napoleon ; and when he returned to France, vassal thrones, 
 filled by the Napoleon kindred, had begun to twinkle here 
 and there over Europe. 
 
 The year 1806 saw another nation overcome. It was 
 against Prussia that the flight of the irresistible eagles was 
 this time directed. Bewildering the Prussian king and his 
 generals, by the novelty and rashness of his combinations, by 
 the breathless speed of his assaults, Napoleon brought the 
 force of the kingdom finally to bay at Jena ; and shattered it 
 to fragments. Here again, we have a glimpse of the incom- 
 parable, indomitable worker, whose brain neither victory 
 nor ambition seemed able to heat. His heavy train had not 
 arrived, and the battle was to take place next morning. 
 But the eye of Napoleon, seeing what it brought with it 
 the power of seeing, fell upon a rocky plateau, on which 
 no one had ever thought of placing guns, but on which 
 even a few would have an extraordinary eficct. He became 
 in a moment the artillery officer of Toulon. He set his 
 men to cut a road for the guns through the rocks, encour- 
 aged them by the offer of large sums of gold for every 
 piece brought into position, and spent the whole night 
 among them superintending the work. The victory of 
 Jena was the reward. This " child of fortune " was of that 
 petulant, overbearing kind, which force the fickle mother 
 to take them in her arms. 
 
 Two circumstances of evil omen have to be noticed at 
 this point. 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 221 
 
 The first is that display of imperiousness, insolence, and 
 cruelty, exhibited towards the royal family and the people 
 of Prussia, as well as every one who dared to counteract 
 his projects, which at this time instilled into the breast of 
 the German race that exasperation, that rage, that sense of 
 injustice and insult, with which it came fixedly to regard 
 Napoleon, and which, bursting at length into flame, proved 
 unquenchable. • 
 
 The second is the promulgation of the Berlin decrees, 
 which took place during his short residence at Berlin in 
 1806, and corresponded with that of the decrees of Milan. 
 These famous edicts instituted the continental system of 
 Napoleon, one of his darling schemes, and illustrating, even 
 though based in an erroneous idea, the decision and com- 
 prehensiveness of that extraordinary mind. With that 
 piercing sagacity which distinguished him, he had seen into 
 the fact, that the only European power which presented to 
 him a front really and wholly unassailable, was Great Brit- 
 ain. By one of those magnificent strokes in which the 
 drama of nature surpasses, in boldness of contrast and 
 gorgeousness of decoration, the drama of fiction, Napoleon 
 was made aware almost at the same moment, of the vic- 
 tory of Austerlitz and the defeat of Trafiilgar. It was as 
 if the sun had risen full and bright, touching his diadem 
 with brighter gold ; ai»d on the instant, from the opposite 
 quarter of the heavens, the levin brand had leapt out, and 
 scorched half his crown into blackness. He perceived that 
 England could not be attacked by sea. The only hope 
 was to attack her by land. And the mode in which he 
 concluded this was to be done was determined by his con- 
 ception of the cause of British greatness. 
 
 He imagined the power and wealth of Britain to depend 
 wholly on the sea; that she resembled Tyre, Carthage, 
 19* 
 
222 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
 Venice, and tlie other maritime powers. This was a mis- 
 take. Tyre, Carthage, and Venice became great through 
 mercantile talent and advantage of situation. They pos- 
 sessed, within themselves, no other natural centres of wealth 
 and population. Their position, therefore, was precarious. 
 But Great Britain is hy nature a rich country, and would 
 remain thickly peopled though the rest of the world were 
 ocean or desert. Jt possesses within it more rich and 
 varied sources of natural wealth, more numerous centres 
 of population, than perhaps any equal space on the face of 
 the earth. A ftuitful soil, iron, coal, wood : these make 
 her independent of other lands. She strikes her huge tap- 
 roots among the iron and coal, far beneath the surface of 
 the sea. Of this Napoleon had no idea. He believed that 
 if he ruined her commerce, he ruined herself And how 
 did he propose to ruin her commerce ? By a method which 
 might certainly have checked a portion of her export ti-ade; 
 but which flung back civilization itself on the continent of 
 Europe ; and inflicted intolerable hardship on the European 
 nations. He proposed to close every continental market 
 against British produce. In order to weaken the mercan- 
 tile navy of Great Britain, and produce some clamors among 
 her people, for no more than this could he eflect, he de- 
 manded the sacrifice of nearly the whole commercial navies 
 of the continent, and brought upon the populations of the 
 several countries extreme distress. It seems never to have 
 dawned upon him that there is in trade a precise equation, 
 a geometrical balance, which it is absurd even in imagina- 
 tion to suppose unequal. Why does nation trade Mith 
 nation? Biscause each is advantaged. Buyer and sellei 
 are, and must be, convertible terms. The buyer wants,and 
 comes where he can find; the seller has, and sells; by de- 
 grees the seller brings the goods which are wanted to the 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 223 
 
 door of the buyer ; and that is an export trade. Napoleon 
 made war upon the sellers of England ; but most of these 
 could go elsewhere, or have their goods consumed at home; 
 he made war also and equally upon the buyers of Europe ; 
 which brought such oppression and calamity over the vari- 
 ous countries, that they groaned under his shadow as under 
 the shadow of death. History does not show a more ex- 
 press or instructive exhibition, of the bearing of one kind 
 of knowledge upon another, of the danger in great practi- 
 cal undertakings, or the formation of great theories, of 
 ignorance of the great fundamental laws which govern any 
 province of human aflairs. 
 
 The year 1808 is signalized, in the history of Napoleon, 
 by the opening of what he himself named the Spanish 
 ulcer. In spite of the objections which were to be urged, 
 on grounds of political expediency, to an interference in 
 Spanish affairs, objections which did not escape Fouch^ 
 and Talleyrand, it may be considered doubtful, whether to 
 mere intellectual perception, the impolicy of the measure 
 was obvious. It was of the highest importance to Napo- 
 leon to reduce to utter humiliation every branch of the 
 house of Bourbon. His views on England required the 
 command of the whole sea-coast of Europe. The heroic 
 resistance of the Spanish people could hardly have been 
 anticipated. Most important of all, no sign had ajjpeared 
 on the horizon, unless, indeed. Napoleon had happened to 
 turn his eye on Assay e in the far East, to indicate that 
 Britain possessed a general able to contend with the impe- 
 rial marshals ; wliile the irresolution and incapacity of the 
 British administration of the war made it natural to con- 
 clude that, except on one element, its opposition could not 
 be formidable. Historical fact corresponds with this view 
 of the case. The Spanish conquest might be considered 
 
1.'24 NAPOLEON BONAPAKTE. 
 
 complete, when Wellington appeared with untrammelled 
 powers, on the scene. It was with great difficulty that the 
 latter managed to work his way to free and resolute action, 
 through the terror of military superiors, overawed, seem- 
 ingly, like all Europe, by the fame of the IVench troops, 
 and through the apprehensions of London aldermen, who 
 thought this fiery and reckless young general was going to 
 ruin everything. As soon as it became evident that Brit- 
 ain too possessed one of the select warriors of human his- 
 tory, the Spanish ulcer became indeed a serious matter. 
 But this was hidden in the future. Meanwhile one thing 
 only was evident ; — that the treachery and usui-pation of 
 Napoleon's dealings with Spain were an infraction of the 
 eternal laws of conscience and of mercy, a deliberate and 
 stupendous sin. He did not see how this should work his 
 woe ; he did not perceive that .he was sowing the wind ; 
 intellect was wide awake ; but there came no word from 
 conscience to hint that this was baleful seed: it was sown; 
 and the unexpected whirlwind came. 
 
 The affairs of Spain seeming in a prosperous condition, 
 Napoleon turned again northwards. In the spring of 1809, 
 Austria declared war. The campaign which followed was 
 attended with the same success as had marked all Napo- 
 leon's wars with the house of Hapsburg. Never did the 
 genius of the great soldier shine forth more conspicuously. 
 War was declared on the sixth of April. Napoleon's 
 armies were comparatively few, and lying dangerously 
 apart. But as if at the waving of a magician's wand, 
 they came together, and bore down upon the enemy. On 
 the twentieth of the month, there was one defeat ; on the 
 twenty-first, another ; on the twenty-second, the army of 
 the Archduke Charles, 100,000 strong, was utterly broken 
 aii(J routed. This was the victory of Eckmuhl, The con- 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 225 
 
 queror again entered Vienna. On the sixtli of July was 
 won the crowning victory of Wagrani. War had been 
 declared precisely three months before ; and now the great 
 Austrian monarchy lay once more, powerless and gasping, 
 at the feet of the terrible soldier. Prussia and the whole 
 German land had heard the sound of war on the Danube, 
 with a listening and surmise, of awe and apprehension not 
 unmingled with hope. As a victim in the swoon of death, 
 patching sounds of attempted rescue, might show a heaving 
 of the breast and a quivering of muscle, the nation gave 
 here and there a sign of life and awakening : but as that 
 victim, at the sight of the murderer's knife, reeking with 
 new gore, and in the glance of his eye lit with new triumph, 
 might sink back into stupor, so it drew one deep sigh and 
 settled back into submission. The conviction sank deep 
 into the mind of Euroj)e that this Napoleon was actually 
 invincible. 
 
 Nor can this result excite surprise. If you follow the 
 career of this wonderful man, from Montenotte to "Wagram, 
 if you watch the flight of his eagles from the pyramids to 
 the Niemen, if you estimate the genius displayed in the 
 campaign of Marengo, in the campaign of Austerlitz, in 
 the campaign of Jena, in the campaign of Friedland, in 
 the campaign of Wagram, you pause in awe and astonish- 
 ment at the unexampled spectacle. In these ages there 
 has been no such display of the strange and magnificent 
 energy of mind vanquishing material difiiculty. 
 
 The greatness and glory of Napoleon now reached their 
 point of culmination. Allied to the royal house of Austria, 
 with none north of the Pyrenees daring to lift up a hand 
 against him, with vassal kings on this hand and on that, an 
 army habituated to conquer at his absolute command, and a 
 king of Eome slumbering on his knee, he seemed placed be- 
 
226 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
 yond the shafts of fortune, on the last glittering peak of 
 human attainment. This was in 1810. Fifteen years before, 
 he had been the unnoticed artillery officer, his idea of hap- 
 piness, a decent house in Paris and a cabriolet, with only 
 here and there a piercing eye to discern that under the 
 soiled uniform there lurked one of the immortals. 
 
 But his fall was sudden, headlong, irretrievable. 
 
 Napoleon had begun himself to be the prey of that fierce 
 passion, that intense steady-burning ambition, which had 
 already made so fair a portion of the world its prey. He 
 had not hitherto found empire the pledge of happiness. 
 As his ambition strengthened, his brow had darkened and 
 his eye filled with a more stern and anxious earnestness. 
 He was not now that Napoleon who had addressed the 
 army of Italy, his eye clear and bright, hope and victory 
 on his crest. Ambition and empire had marked themselves 
 on his brow in lines of cai'e. It seems one of nature's 
 grand appointments, that all wild, distempered things take 
 a garment of gloom, of sadness ; that peace, health, and 
 beauty dwell together. The light announces its presence 
 in a smile diflPused over tne whole face of nature : but the 
 samiel wraps itself in the purple mist of the desert : and 
 it is in the lurid cloud that the electric spark lies hid. Na- 
 poleon's ambition had passed all healthy stages ; at each 
 draught of the maddening chalice, his thii-st had become 
 greater; and now, beneath his imperial diadem, his eye 
 cast a troubled and ominous glare. It seems probable that, 
 at this time, the thought of universal dominion actually 
 had hold upon his mind. At all events, there ^^-as still one 
 thorn which pierced him to the heart. Britain still defied 
 him. One power remained which had never trembled at 
 his name or done him the least obcisnnce. The bitterness 
 of the pang which this knowledge occasioned was rendered 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 227 
 
 more intense by a slight but galling mixture of apprehen- 
 sion. He could not feel his very thi'one secure, until this 
 enemy, of boundless wealth, of indomitable pertinacity, 
 and whose supreme maritime dominion made it impossible 
 for him with all his power to do so much as throw ten thou- 
 sand men from Italy to Sicily, was effectually humbled. In 
 one last "continental struggle, he would overwhelm Russia, 
 and then, having crippled Great Britain by the operation 
 of the Berlin and Milan decrees, he would bring all the 
 fleets and armies of Europe, to annihilate, at one fell swoop, 
 the power and independence of the contumacious Island. 
 
 Russia was ready for war. The Austrian match had 
 damped the cordiality which had long subsisted between 
 the Czar and the Emperor. The continental system was 
 becoming intolerable. The gradual confirmation and ex- 
 tension of the piower of Napolepn on the Polish territory 
 was looked upon with apprehension. Enough : the Czar 
 was prepared for hostilities. In the summer of 1812, Na- 
 poleon concentrated his armies for the great Russian expe- 
 dition. 
 
 Much has been said, and perhaps somewhat vaguely, on 
 the subject of the Russian campaign, and the particular 
 error committed by Napoleon in engaging in it or carrying 
 it on. He trusted presumptuously in fate; he entered into 
 conflict with the elements ; and so on. Not at all. He 
 looked as cautiously after the helping of fate now, as he 
 had done at Friedland, or Eckmiihl. "I was," he said to 
 O'Meara in St. Helena, " a few days too late — I had made 
 a calculation of the weather for fifty years before, and the 
 extreme cold had never commenced until about the 20th 
 of December, twenty days later than it began this time." 
 That man left nothing to fate. His intellect was still clear 
 This early setting in of the cold was the first great cause, in 
 
228 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
 his own belief, of the failure of the Russian attempt; the, 
 second was the burning of Moscow. Human prescience 
 could have anticipated neither. 
 
 The truth is, Wapoleon committed one great error in 
 this Russian expedition, and, so far as appears, but one. 
 He did not preserve his rear; he did not secure his retreat. 
 If you look closely into his former campaigns, you find, 
 with the exception, perhajDs, of Marengo, no battle which 
 does not exhibit the most cautious circumspection in secur- 
 ing a retreat. He fell back instantly, though seemingly 
 on the way to victory, if, as at Aspern, his communica- 
 tions in the rear were broken. He always made it a 
 grand object to cut off the retreat of his antagonist; once 
 he had his enemy in a position where defeat was ruin, he 
 attacked with confidence as one sure of an outwitted prey. 
 In St. Helena, he charged the Duke of Wellington with 
 defective generalship at "Waterloo, because, as he alleged, 
 the allied army had no means of retreat. But now his 
 own retreat was insecure : defeat was destruction. He 
 passed across Europe towards the north, accompanied not 
 by the blessings and good wishes, but by the suppressed 
 indignation and muttered curses, of its peoples. Fear and 
 amazement guarded his throne, not love and seemly rever- 
 ence. No human being is strong enough to despise these. 
 Men now watched him with eyes of menace, and with right 
 hands on the hilt. Disafiection had spread deep and far. 
 His imperiousness, his insolent haughtiness, had turned 
 against him even Bernadotte to whom he had given his 
 baton, even Lucien who had served him so well, even the 
 vassal kings on whom he conferred a humiliating grandeur. 
 France was becoming weary and sick at heart ; even glory 
 became cold in its glittering, when there seemed to be no 
 end of war, and when it niight almost be said that in every 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 229 
 
 house there was one dead. He took with him, too, his 
 Grand Army, his old invincibles, that would so proudly die 
 for him ; and who could never be replaced. To all or 
 almost all this, he was blinded. The greatest and most 
 important part of it arose from moral causes and so escaped 
 him. 
 
 The story of the Russian campaign is the most solemn 
 and tragic in the annals of modern warfare, if not in the 
 whole history of war. No poet of these times, so far as 
 one may judge, has possessed a power necessary to its poetic 
 delineation. Perhaps in their very highest moments, Cole- 
 ridge, Shelley, or Byron might have caught certain of its 
 tints of gloom and grandeur ; now and then, a tone of 
 melody from Mrs. Browning's harp may reach the epic 
 height of its sublimity. But he who depicted the Avoe of 
 Othello and the madness of Lear, and he who described 
 the march of the rebel angels to the north along the plains 
 of heaven, might have joined their powers to bring out, in 
 right poetic representation, the whole aspects of the Rus- 
 sian campaign. Perhaps it may lie among those subjects 
 for which common life affords no precedent, and common 
 language no words. And, indeed, no description seems 
 necessary. The poetry of nature, in its weird colors and 
 deep, dark, rhythmic harmonies, is already there ; we 
 have but to open our eyes and contemplate it. Those 
 brave soldiers, those dauntless, devoted veterans, those 
 children of victoiy, swift as eagles, fearless as lions, who 
 had charged on the dikes of Areola, and hailed the sun of 
 Austerlitz, who were the very embodiment of wild south- 
 ern valor, following Napoleon, the son of the lightning, 
 beneath the dim vault of the northern winter, there to lay 
 their fire-hearts under that still, pale winding-sheet of snow, 
 the northern blast singing over them its song of stern and 
 
 SECOND SBBIJES. 20 
 
230 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
 melancholy triumph : what conld he more suhlime poetry 
 than that ? It is sim])le fact. Then, how grandly is the 
 darkness hroken,as those flames touch all the clouds with 
 angry crimson, and a great people, thrilling with a heroic 
 emotion, lays in ashes its ancient cities rather than yield 
 them ui> to an invader. Worthy flowers to he cast hy a 
 nation in the way of that emjDcrov! "It was the specta- 
 cle," said NaiDoleon in St. Helena, alluding to the confla- 
 gration of Moscow, " It was the spectacle of a sea and bil- 
 lows of fire, a sky and clouds of flame ; mountains of red 
 rolling flames, like immense waves of the sea, alternately 
 bursting forth and elevating themselves to skies of fire, 
 and then sinking into the ocean of flame below. Oh, it 
 was the most grand, the most sublime and the most terrific 
 sight the world -ever beheld ! " A sublime sight indeed ; it 
 were diflicult to name one more sublime : unless it were 
 the sight of him describing it, a hoj^eless captive in that 
 lonely isle. 
 
 It is needless to linger on the closing scenes of the im- 
 perial drama. The events of the campaigns of 1813 and 
 1814 have been already fore-shadowed. Europe rose upon 
 Napoleon, like a bristling lion, gnashing its teeth in fury 
 and hatred. Men who had followed him in the field, or 
 had acted under his order, who had learned to guess, not 
 at any particular kind of tactics, but at the working of his 
 mind, were arrayed against him. Bernadotte and Moreau 
 did more to vanquish him than all the generals of the coa- 
 lition. His combinations and designs were anticipated, 
 and only by combinations could he hope to contend against 
 those overwhelming odds. France beheld his disaster with 
 the indifference of ■exhaustion. It was a case in which no 
 conceivable power of intellect or resolution could have 
 availed him. Yet in his whole career there is no period in 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 231 
 
 which his genius and character were more strikingly dis- 
 played, in which our wonder and admiration more con- 
 stantly attend him. Even the hosts that were overpower- 
 ing him paid him the most expressive tribute. They feared 
 to meet himself. The conviction was immovable, that 
 some mystic character of invincibility attached to him in- 
 dividually. Nor was the belief imreasonable ; in hardly 
 any case did he actually come into collision with his foes, 
 without their retiring, bleeding and discomfited, from his 
 terrible gripe. But even victory was fatal to him ; his 
 antagonists could afford more blood in defeat than he in 
 victoiy. And wherever he was not himself present, they 
 were victorious. 
 
 Napoleon has been severely reprehended for the blind 
 and dogged obstinacy with which he clung to empire and 
 prolonged a hopeless conflict. It were difficult to obviate 
 these reprehensions. And yet is it easy to resist a feeling 
 of sympathy with that unconquerable spirit, as those ene- 
 mies, whom, severally, he had so often vanquished, bore 
 down upon him together? It was an epic ending. So 
 dauntless, so indomitable did he stand, firm as adamant to 
 the last : — 
 
 Like a statue thunder-struck, 
 Which, though quivering, seems to look 
 Right against the thunder-place. 
 
 Of Elba, and the brief meteoric gleam of the hundred 
 days, it is needless to speak. Napoleon had fallen, and, in 
 the Europe of 1815, it was impossible to rise. 
 
 So he was borne over the ocean to St. Helena. There 
 he remained ; on his death-bed : for he died day by day, 
 during those weary and mournful years. Sad it is to mark 
 that royal mind preying on itself, the old irresistible ener- 
 
232 NAPOLEOK BONAPARTE. 
 
 gies eating away their own case. One could weep for the 
 hero of Toulon and Lodi, the victor of Rivoli and Wagram, 
 the mightiest emperor since Charlemagne, bickering there 
 about names and shadows with Sir Hudson Lowe. But 
 sympathy must not degenerate into sentimentality ; a rea- 
 sonable compassion will buttress itself on the strength of 
 fact. Napoleon's idea of empire was behind the age ; not 
 Christian ; outraging those instincts, which, even with Chris- 
 tianity abjured in name, cannot wholly leave the hearts of 
 once Christian nations. That old conception of Atlas, one 
 stupendous giant upholding the earth, was not the highest: 
 the world is sustained by the chains of gravitation, wrap- 
 ping it all around, and more invisible than the sunbeams. 
 The progress of humanity is frotn the pyramid ; towards 
 the cottage. 
 
 Of the general result of the Napoleonic wars, and the 
 bearing of the first empire on the progress of civilization, 
 there is not much to be said. Regarding the course of 
 determined opposition taken, throughout, by Great Britain, 
 and at last adopted by the government, and far more nobly 
 by the people of Russia, a fair and deliberate investigation 
 leaves no room for two opinions. That men should court 
 platform effect, by ringing changes on the expenditure in- 
 curred by Great Britain in the restoration of the Bourbons, 
 that men, not desirous of producing any such effect, but 
 biassed by particular opinions, should yield assent to the 
 same view, this is conceivable and natural enough; but 
 that men professedly despising popular opinion, men of 
 piercing insight and accurate knowledge, should give in to 
 so empty a common-place, should speak of Britain as strug- 
 gling, during those years, to suppress the French revolution, 
 or any "fact" of the kind, is truly wonderful. Britain 
 made peace with a revolutionary government : that is a 
 
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 233 
 
 fact; and it settles the question. England would all along 
 have been too glad to cultivate pacific relations with any 
 cabinet in Paris, which did not threaten the total overturn 
 of European relations and its own national existence. The 
 Bourbons were not restored at the peace of Amiens : it 
 was not for their restoration that Britain again took arms 
 and fought on till the peace of Vienna. Britain made war 
 against that great enemy, the inmost desire of whose soul 
 was her subjugation. Warring for nothing, warring for the 
 suppression of the French Revolution, designed in what- 
 soever councils ! The coasts of France were lined with 
 armies ready to land on Britain ; the bays of France were 
 covered with vessels to bring them across : and to the last 
 day of his life, it was the deliberate belief of Napoleon, 
 that the attack might have been successful. Great Britain 
 played in those years a noble part, and one from which it 
 would have been cowardice and infatuation to shrink : it 
 is not seemly for the next generation after that which fought 
 the long, stern battle, to begin to sneer! Since the wars 
 of Marlborough, there has been no such epic period in the 
 history of England. And in the magnificent prosperity 
 which has attended her since, there may be found the nat- 
 ural reward of her constancy and courage. 
 
 It is not so easy, it seems, indeed, impossible, to discern 
 how the Napoleonic empire has aided in the evolution of 
 right civilization, what place it occupies in the scheme 
 of a beneficent Providence. The cycles of the world are 
 slow. Divine purposes may come to light after many days, 
 which for the present are shrouded in darkness. But hith- 
 erto there appears to be little result from all that bloodshed; 
 the battle-field of Europe has not yet grown green. Grant 
 that the fetters of caste have been broken, that a certain 
 social equality has been realized on the continent, that the 
 20* 
 
234 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
 French Revolution occasioned and the power of Napoleon 
 secured these things. Is not, nevertheless, the aspect of 
 European civilization, nay in some respects the aspect of 
 universal civilization, gloomy and discouraging ? Despot- 
 ism, dark, strong, humiliating despotism, reigning on the 
 continent ; the brain of Europe, its free intellectual and 
 moral power, smitten by that baleful enchantment, the arm 
 of Europe, its industrial energy, fettered and constrained : 
 Jesuitism, following Despotism, shedding pestilence where 
 there already is night : — such is the literal spectacle 
 presented by the continent. Freedom is indeed still in 
 vigor, nay, in nascent vigor, in Britain and America. But 
 do these great peoples fully understand and accept their 
 mission ? Do they unite to proclaim to mankind the bless- 
 ing and the glory of that liberty by which they are distin- 
 guished? Do their mutual intelligence, their sympathy, 
 their brave co-operation, woven together into one bow of 
 peace, striding from shore to shore of the Atlantic, write 
 in characters of power and beauty the vindication of free- 
 dom ? The answer cannot be wholly affirmative. 
 
YIL 
 
 PLATO. 
 
 Casting a rapid glance over tie generations of mankind, 
 in their path over the stage of time to the stillness of eter- 
 nity, we discern, for the most part, but a general, confused 
 company, marching steadily on, undistinguishable save in 
 the mass ; as when we see a host in the distance, the indi- 
 viduals are lost in the general body, and we can discern 
 with distinctness only a few, the leaders and standard- 
 bearers of the army ; round these, the various battalions 
 are ranged, and march under their banners. One of the 
 greatest of these standard-bearers we mean at present, for 
 a brief space, to contemplate. 
 
 The assertion that history and biography are one, we 
 must pronounce an error. That history is the condensation 
 or essence of countless biographies, we must also, whatever 
 Mr. Emerson says, declare erroneous. Biography treats of 
 the individual ; history treats of the mass ; and the laws 
 which govern each are diverse. This we can at present 
 stay neither to prove at length, nor to unfold in detail; 
 but remark that there is, in the oft-repeated observation 
 touching the identity of history and biograjDhy, such an 
 approach to truth, as to account for, and render plausible, 
 the error. BiograjDhy and history are intimately, all but 
 inextricably, intertwined. There can be no doubt that 
 
236 PLATO. 
 
 every great thought which has struck new life into tlie 
 veins of universal man has been uttered by some individ- 
 ual man ; that, in the case of the unfolding of every "banner 
 round which the nations have clustered and marched, the 
 proud honor of having ujjreared it can be claimed by some 
 one among the sons of men. Biography in each case asks, 
 " What was it which the individual did ? " History in each 
 case asks, "How was the mass of men affected by his 
 thought or action ? " Individual great men are to history 
 representative ciphers, by which she denotes certain moving 
 powers of thought or action ; national movements are to 
 biography certain great expressive hieroglyphics, by which 
 she calculates the force of her individual great men. If 
 philosophical precision is to be sought at all, they must be 
 kept distinct. Intimately connected truly they are ; twin 
 sisters, looking on each other with the kindliest smile, both 
 feeding the lamp of knowledge, but pouring their pure oil 
 from different vessels. 
 
 The task we propose to ourselves at present partakes 
 both of history and of biography : we desire approximately 
 to ascertain the distinctive characteristics of the man we 
 survey, and to trace his influence upon mankind ; to appre- 
 hend, in a general way, both the mass and momentum of 
 the force which first caused commotion in the stream of 
 time, and to trace the widening ripples it occasioned. 
 
 In the widest distinction, men may be divided into think- 
 ers and actors. Not that thought does not swiftly array 
 itself in armor, and grasp the weapons of action ; and not 
 that action is over effective without a viewless steam power 
 of thought, setting the mechanism in motion ; but that the 
 two great classes of men — whom we represent, on the one 
 side, by the Platos, the Homers, the Solons, the Shakspeares, 
 the Newtons ; and, on the other, by the Alexanders, the 
 
PLATO. 237 
 
 Caesars, the Charlemagnes, the Cromwells, and the Napo- 
 leons — are set in marked contrast to each other, and pre- 
 sent themselves in very different aspects to the eye of the 
 biographer or historian. Nay more, their effects upon the 
 destinies of men are different and distinct in certain grand 
 characteristics. And we may, in passing, hazard the re- 
 mark, that in our day, whUe the effect of gi-eat thinkers 
 upon human history has been most ably and eloquently 
 exhibited, the effect of great actors has been exhibited with 
 far less adequacy and correctness. 
 
 There is but one other remark which we deem it neces- 
 sary to make, ere proceeding to our subject; namely, that 
 our space utterly prohibits anything like detail or minute 
 portraiture. Our treatment of the questions which we may 
 pass in review must be general. We trust that it shall not, 
 therefore, be vague or valueless; the widest truths are 
 always the most general, and are useless only where they 
 have not their roots soundly imbedded in the particular, 
 and so cease to be truths. 
 
 Plato was the greatest thinker of antiquity; he was 
 probably the greatest reflective thinker of all time. Opin- 
 ions have varied exceedingly regarding him, and, save in 
 great leading characteristics, the student of his works will 
 find difiiculty in discerning the features of his philosophy ; 
 but all men regard him as the grandest embodiment which 
 the ages have afforded, of one great phase of human thought, 
 and recognize him likewise as the culminating point of that 
 historical epoch in which this phase of the human mind 
 found, perhaps, its most imposing development, the era of 
 Greek philosophy. Plato and Aristotle are the two sages 
 who lead the two great divisions of philosophic thinkers 
 through all time. But Aristotle was the pupil of Plato, 
 and the critic of his system ; and even while we accord all 
 
238 PLATO. 
 
 honor to the Stagyrite, we can say that Plato was the centre 
 figure of Greek speculation, that he made all who went be- 
 fore his teachers, and that all who came after were, with more 
 or less of intelligence and originality, his pupils. And this 
 fact at once and directly leads us to our proper mode of 
 procedure on the present occasion ; our task shapes itself 
 into the discussion of two questions, the one biographic, 
 the other historic. Respecting Plato himself we ask. What 
 were the distinguishing characteristics of his mind and of 
 his thought ? Respecting the philosophy he represented 
 — the distinctive Platonic, as distinguished from the Aris- 
 totelian phase of Grecian philosophy — we ask. What was 
 the part it played in human history, and in what light are 
 we now to regard it. as a prospective agency? 
 
 Plato was born 430 b. c, in ^gina, an island in the 
 Saronic Gulf, between Attica and Argolis ; or in Athens, 
 for there is a diversity of opinion. His father's name was 
 Ariston, his mother's Perictione, and his own Aristocles. 
 He obtained a Greek education. This is saying much. It 
 implies that every faculty of the intellect, every emotion 
 of the heart, and every capacity of the physical frame, was 
 duly exercised. He excelled in gymnastics ; he wrote poetry 
 in his youth, of which some fragments yet remain.; and is 
 reported to have composed an epic, which he committed 
 to the flames, on seeing its inferiority to the work of Homer. 
 He studied rhetoric and music. 
 
 But the light which was to rivet his eye unchangeably 
 had not yet dawned upon him. He was still a young man, 
 not above twenty, when he heard Socrates ; but his des- 
 tiny, both for himself and for mankind, was thereby and 
 at once fixed. He devoted himself to the search after 
 truth. 
 
 The efiect of the teaching of Socrates upon the philos- 
 
PLATO. 239 
 
 ophic mind of Greece is clearly definable. Cousin pro- 
 nounces him to have given it an irresistible impulse in the 
 direction of reflection ; he turned it inward : he made 
 thought the king of the world and philosophy subjective. 
 This is true, and perhaps the whole truth ; but we neglect 
 a very important element in the Socratic influence, if we 
 overlook the tremendous earnestness with which Socrates 
 sought for truth, the rapt religious devotion with which he 
 sacrificed everything at her shrine, the elevating moral 
 influence he exerted. By the joint endeavors of Grote and 
 Lewes, we may presume that we have now reached the 
 truth concerning the sophists : they were the public, and 
 of course paid educators of Greece, and they were the 
 embodiment of what may be called the morality of poUte 
 Greek society. Higher than this they did not go ; lower 
 than this it were unfair to place them. But Socrates came 
 forth to voice the holier and intrinsically the more powerful, 
 although too truly the ever-obstructed sympathy, which 
 bums in the human breast, for truth itself, truth pure and 
 abstract, truth an-ayed in the unsullied white of heaven, 
 and alluring by no spangle or gold of earth. Truth, he 
 proclaimed, was to be sought for its own sake ; and the 
 method by which it was to be sought, was what in its widest 
 sense may be embraced in the term conversation. This 
 conversation, dialectic, might be either audible or inaudible; 
 it might proceed either in the public school-room or in the 
 private chambers of the soul ; in either case it proceeded 
 by definition and division, by searching scrutiny and dis- 
 crimination of the true from the false or irrelevant. -The 
 great soul of Plato was at once charmed by the words of 
 Socrates ; under the rugged, repulsive form of the dogged, 
 irresistible arguer, he discerned the hallowed and searching 
 fire that is immortally noble, and in-esistibly attractive to 
 
240 PLATO. 
 
 the noble : as if his past life had been but a dream or a 
 May-game, he abandoned everything for philosophy, for 
 truth. Not that anything became excluded, but that every- 
 thing attained a new relation. The sun was set in his 
 system, a retinue of worlds might circle round it, but every 
 one that could not be bound and regulated by its influence 
 must fly away. 
 
 For ten years Plato was the disciple of Socrates. At 
 the death of his master, whom he vainly endeavored to 
 save, he travelled into various lands, and investigated the 
 doctrines of many philosophers : he abode first for a time 
 in Megara, passed thence to Cyrene, thence to Egypt, and, 
 after accumulating what may in general terms be called the 
 whole knowledge of his time, returned to Greece. He 
 opened his school of philosophy in the j.nmortal Academy. 
 He was then about forty years of age. He visited Syra- 
 cuse three times ; on returning from the first visit, he was 
 sold for a slave, but bought by Annicus of Cyrene, and set 
 free : he died at the age of eighty-three, and continued 
 writing, it is said, to the very last. 
 
 On the subject of the travels of Plato, there has been 
 much exaggeration and misrepresentation : for our own 
 part, we cannot regard it as anywise improbable that he 
 should push his researches in the east ; and the remark of 
 Numenius the Pythagorean, quoted by the writer on Plato 
 in the " Encyclopsedia Britannica," "What is Plato but 
 Moses in Attic Greek ? " is certainly a strange one : but 
 we deem the subject of slight importance, since the great 
 fact is unquestioned, that Plato embraced in his own mind 
 all that previous or contemporary philosophers could aflTord 
 him. 
 
 And this unfolds to us one great aspect of the mind of 
 Plato, conveying an important lesson to all men of all ages, 
 
PLATO. 241 
 
 and perhaps with special emphasis to the men of this hasty, 
 feverish time. For ten years, between the age of twenty 
 and thirty, he sat at the feet of Socrates ; for what we may, 
 speaking roundly, call other ten years, he walked over the 
 world, seeking knowledge wherever it was to be found ; 
 and then, with a majesty, becoming one to whom all gen- 
 erations were to listen, he returned to Athens, and opened 
 his mouth under the plane-trees of the grove of Academus. 
 This power of waiting, this silent, dauntless search, not after 
 originality but after truth, showed the intrinsic soundness 
 and strength of the soul of Plato. The gi-andest originality, 
 too, is thus always won : it takes the arms of a giant, a Titan 
 giant, to bear unswerving a world; our own Milton never 
 staggered under his learning, and Plato bore all his with 
 the calmness of commanding strength. 
 
 He is recorded to have been very melancholy. " Plato," 
 says Lewes, whose notice in his " History of Philosophy " 
 is a good introduction, though only such, to the study of 
 the great philosopher — "Plato was intensely melancholy. 
 That great, broad brow, which gave him his surname, was 
 wrinkled and sombre. Those brawny shoulders were bent 
 with thought, as only those of thinkers are bent. A smile 
 was the utmost that ever played over his lips ; he never 
 laughed. ' As sad as Plato,' became a phrase with the comic 
 dramatists." This melancholy is suggestive of much. Plato 
 had looked abroad over mankind, had grappled with the 
 problems of thought, had witnessed the degraded, prostrate 
 state of the world. He found the intellect of man weak, 
 he saw the majority of men wretched, he beheld passion, 
 often almost brutalized, ruling men. While, therefore, he 
 fixed his eye upon truth and immortality, that eye was 
 shaded by a cloud of sorrow and of doubt. It was no 
 misanthropic egotism, that made Plato sad; like the crowned 
 sECOnn SERnss. 21 
 
242 PLATO. 
 
 sage of Israel, he saw that all around him was vanity, and 
 that men would pursue only vanity. He discerned clearly, 
 though it might be that he could not give definite expres- 
 sion to that under a sense of which he labored, the fallen 
 state of humanity. This will appear more obviously in the 
 sequel, but of the fact we are perfectly assured. That is a 
 most striking and suggestive passage in the " Republic," 
 where he speaks of the sowing of virtue in an unkindly 
 soil, and the corruption, by malignant influences, of what 
 is best in human nature into what is worst : it seems to us 
 pointedly and mournfally applicable, as we may be permit- 
 ted with a slight anticipation to remark, to his whole philos- 
 ophy. It is not enough that truth be sown by the hand of 
 man or angel upon our bleak, ungenial world ; there is not 
 depth or richness of soil to nourish its roots, there is not 
 purity or balminess of atmosphere to bring gently out into 
 fulness of beauty its heavenly blossoms. The hand of 
 " some god " must guard it. So Plato felt ; so Christianity 
 says. "Well enough to talk of the beauty of truth and the 
 resistless charm that dwells in her eye : truth is a light that 
 shines through a cloudy atmosphere, and the hand of God 
 must be stretched out from heaven to put the clouds aside, 
 ere men can fully or clearly see it. Nay, even when they 
 see it, their weak eyeballs, as Plato magnificently says in 
 his myth of the cave, cannot look upon it fixedly. In fact, 
 Plato saw the great struggle that goes on in the history 
 and heart of man : there is a sympathy and a profound one 
 for the true, the good, the beautiful, and so there is truth 
 in the assertion, that if men saw viitue, they would fall 
 down and worship it : but there ai"e also other sympathies, 
 which supplement the former, and compel us to admit the 
 humiliating fact, that men cannot look upon pure truth ov 
 pure virtue undazzled. Plato discerned both facts and 
 
PLATO. 243 
 
 the unaided human intellect could do no more : a greater 
 than Plato was required to cast more light upon the sub- 
 ject. 
 
 Plato was, in person, a strong man, but had a weak voice. 
 He was never married. He lived in a region above not 
 only the popular morality and mythology of the age, but 
 above the vast majority of men in all ages. With tremen- 
 dous strength of will, he bent his mind to the continual 
 contemplation of truth. Below him rolled the turbid 
 streams of mundane passion and endeavor. As he dwelt 
 alone in that lofty and silent dwelling of thought, 
 
 " Far off he seem'd to hear the dully sound 
 Of human footsteps fall." 
 
 In his youth, his bosom had been filled with human sym- 
 pathies, which had voiced themselves in passionate melody, 
 and, with all his remorseless dialectics, we believe his mind 
 to have been radically of the poetic type ; but his eye 
 caught the gleam of truth, and, irresistibly fascinated by 
 the sight, he compelled his buoyant, exuberant genius to 
 
 " Braid his golden locks by Wisdom's side,'* 
 
 and walk submissively through life, as her humble servant. 
 All else he scorned with the true philosophic pride. Di- 
 onysius, who had caused him to be sold as a slave, trem- 
 bling for his miserable reputation, hoped Plato would not 
 speak ill of him ; Plato " had not leisure to think of Diony- 
 sius.'' Yet sadness, as we said, descended on his brow ; 
 for the state of man was melancholy, and he himself could 
 not but discern that philosophy could not scale the walls 
 of mystery which girdle humanity: gazing ever upward 
 with wistful eye, he still saw 
 
244 PLATO. 
 
 " The sacred morning spread, 
 The silent summit overhead," 
 
 and felt, however indistinctly, that he was not 
 
 " Nearer to the light 
 Because the scale is infinite." 
 
 He looked to death as the gate of entrance to the abode 
 of pure truth, and life was valuable only as it was used by 
 reason in unveiUng the realities which lay shrouded under 
 phenomena. 
 
 The grand characteristics of Plato's system of thought 
 can be discriminated with sufficient accuracy, and it is to 
 these we must restrict ourselves. We obtain insight into 
 the whole, by considering his idea of knowledge, and the 
 method by which that knowledge was to be attained. 
 
 The knowledge of sensation is varying, and not to be 
 relied on ; sensation gives us the many, and philosopher 
 must seek the one ; there is a " type of perfect in his 
 mind," which man can find nowhere in visible nature ; the 
 knowledge of sense is phenomenal, spectral, merely repre- 
 sentative ; for true knowledge we must turn to reason : so 
 said Plato. Hence arose his world-famous theory of ideas. 
 These ideas were the original perfect types of things, ex- 
 isting, whether independent of God or not, in a region 
 superior to this world. Lewes, with a very happy and 
 exquisite ingenuity, supposes the objective existence of 
 ideas to have been merely the exercise, in the province of 
 philosophy, of the strong tendency of the Greek mind to 
 project its conceptions into realities; that general terms 
 were formed by Plato, as by all other philosophers and 
 men, and that their independent existence was simply an 
 act of creative imagination. Be this as it may, the fact 
 
PLATO. 245 
 
 is certain, that Plato distinctly enunciates the separate 
 existence of the ideal types of which things are copies; 
 and that this is the central ]3oint of his whole philosophy. 
 Knowledge, then, with Plato, meant the perception, in 
 whatever way, of ideas, of the perfect and unchanging 
 types which phenomena bodied forth. To use the words 
 of a very able writer on the subject, "Plato, like a writer 
 of our own time, regarded philosophy as an undressing of 
 the world, as the means of discovering the certainty and 
 the eternity, which are in this world hidden and wrapped 
 up in the garb of the mutable and the temporal." 
 
 Such being the theory of knowledge entertained by 
 Plato, how was this knowledge to be attained ? The ques- 
 tion at once introduces us to his doctrine of reminiscence. 
 The human soul, in a previous state of existence, visited 
 the region of ideas, and the whole object of philosophy is 
 to recall the images seen there. And how can this be done? 
 By reason, aided by sense, or, more strictly, acting upon 
 the information afforded by sense. The phenomena of 
 sense convey somewhat of truth, but, by their multiplicity, 
 diversity, and deviation from the original type, are apt to 
 mislead : sense must submit to reason ; dialectic, the exer- 
 cise of thought by the scrutinizing philosopher, leads to 
 true knowledge. Plato excluded poets from his " Repub- 
 lic," but we imagine he would have listened to the follow- 
 ing words of our great reflective poet : — 
 
 " Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 
 The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 
 And Cometh from afar : 
 
 Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 
 And not in utter nakedness. 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come, 
 
 From God who is our home." 
 
 21* 
 
246 PLATO. 
 
 The God of Plato is the universal architect of ideas : he 
 created first the types, and then the world as a copy of 
 them ; or (for his opinion varies in various works) ideas 
 were created from all eternity, and independent of God, 
 who merely shaped the world after their model. 
 
 We must beware lest we fail utterly to discern the sub- 
 limity of this Platonic region of ideas, or the ti'uth it does, 
 after all, embody. Plato saw that nothing was perfect here. 
 Justice never lifted up her voice among men without being 
 obstructed and half silenced by the discordant noises of 
 fraud, and vile cunning, and adverse circumstances. Men, 
 with half-idiotic listlessness, knew virtue to be fair, and 
 good, and heaven-born, and sunk into the harlot-arms of 
 vice. The visage of truth was dimmed by the mists of 
 earth, or, to use the image of Milton, her foi-m was cut into 
 shreds, and the philo80j)her could only go searching after 
 her members, and endeavor to arrange them into " an im- 
 mortal feature of loveliness and perfection." Plato imag- 
 ined a land where all this was changed; where truth reigned 
 in undimmed splendor, surrounded by justice, and temper- 
 ance, and love, and all the celestial train. Thence he had 
 come when he arrived upon this world of semblance and 
 shadow; thither, while sojourning here, he would stead- 
 fastly look, unheeding the joys or the afilictions of earth; 
 and thither, when death opened the eternal gates, would 
 he return. The truth in all this is the great truth on which 
 Christianity is founded. Thus did the grandest intellect 
 of antiquity, unconsciously to itself, look back to Eden, 
 and forward to Heaven. 
 
 We shall glance at one or two phases of Plato's general 
 system. 
 
 We have heard much of Platonic love ; and, meeting it 
 in the sentimental novel, one is tempted to unite with 
 
PLATO. 247 
 
 Byron in his exclamation, which seems to touch the very 
 sublimity of impudence — 
 
 " O Plato, Plato, you're a bore ! " 
 
 But the idea was, and is, a sublime one. It meant the 
 union of two individuals by that sympathy which results 
 from, as it occasions, unity of aim, when that aim is the 
 highest to which they can aspire, namely, pure truth. In 
 the soul, Plato saw two motive powers, which he repre- 
 sented under the emblem of two steeds : the one of alto- 
 gether celestial mettle, snow-white, shapely, mild, swift, 
 and requiring neither whip nor spur : the other of dark hue, 
 of fierce, unkindly temper, and scarcely to be urged on, by 
 Reason the charioteer, with whip or spur ; like the steeds 
 of the respective horsemen that joined the wild huntsman 
 of Burger. These typified, respectively, the sensual, the 
 earthly, the passionate, — and the intellectual, the celestial 
 portions of the soul of man. The noble courser strove 
 ever towards what was holy and high; the base horse 
 sought the excitements of earthly passion. When two 
 individuals agreed mutually to restrain the black steed, and 
 to turn constantly and resolutely the head of the snowy 
 courser to the abodes of truth, a Platonic friendship or love 
 was formed. "We think that, when well understood, there 
 is but one nobler idea attainable by man than Platonic love, 
 and that is Christian love ; wherein every celestial element 
 of the Platonic flame is embraced, and a truer humanity 
 blended therewith. We imagine the poem of Christian 
 love has not been yet exactly written ; we venture the 
 assertion, that the poem of Christian love has not yet been 
 even faintly prefigured ; we know not that it has been so 
 much as attempted. 
 
 Plato's views of politics are very interesting, and closely 
 
248 PLATO. 
 
 characterize his system. In that very singular and clever 
 medley, written by Mr. Emerson, and headed "Plato," 
 which contains about as comical a mixture of truth and 
 absurdity as was ever concocted by genius and eccentricity, 
 Plato is pronounced a man of balanced mind. He was a 
 man who could see two sides of a thing ; he combined the 
 imagination of Asia with the precision of " result-loving, 
 machine-making Europ^e." We have afterwards the rather 
 startling intimation contained in the following sentence : 
 " As the poet, too, he is only contemplative." And, glanc- 
 ing onwards, we meet the following : " He did not, like 
 Pythagoras, break himself with an institution. All his 
 painting in the ' Republic ' must be esteemed mythical, 
 with intent to bring out, sometimes in violent colors, his 
 thought." We do not deny a poetic element in the mind 
 of Plato ; his mind was probably of the Miltonic type, and 
 his great projection of the ideal world we have already 
 characterized in accordance with this theory. But how 
 could a man be only contemplative, who is the fiercest, 
 most searching arguer and analyzer ? Imagination, we 
 doubt not, exerted a very strong unconscious influence over 
 his system, but it was allowed to intrude for a moment only 
 as the humble handmaid of truth ; and even then, so to 
 speak, it had to take the disguise of dialectic. As to the 
 republic, we utterly repudiate the notion that it was myth- 
 ical : it was not, indeed, brought to the test of experiment, 
 but, if the voice of history is to be credited, that was simply 
 because Plato could not prevail upon the reigning powers 
 of Syracuse to permit the attempt. The whole tone of 
 the work in which his views are expounded, seems to us 
 absolutely demonstrative of the fact, that Plato was in stern 
 earnest, and would have risked his life for his scheme. 
 Taking this for granted, we i-emark, that, as to Plato being 
 
PLATO. 249 
 
 a man who possessed a balanced mind, and so forth, the 
 observations of Mr. Emerson have certainly some truth, 
 but convey an utterly inadequate and vague idea. In a 
 sense, nothing was too little for the attention of Plato, 
 because everything, however insignificant, might awaken 
 some remeilibrance of the former residence of the soul, 
 might afford some glimpse of the essential truth of an idea. 
 But, in order at all to conceive the true position of Plato 
 among the thinkers of the world, we must contrast him 
 with Aristotle, and Bacon, and all that other great class 
 which they represent; and we then discern that his dis- 
 tinctive character was, that he did not, so much.as Aristotle, 
 or by any means so much as Bacon, embrace that gi-eat 
 side of things, which is the actual as distinguished from 
 the ideal, the jjresent as distinguished from the past and 
 the future, the finite as contrasted with the infinite. If 
 this great distinction is to be maintained ; if the one class 
 is that which subjects nature to reason, and the other that 
 which subjects reason to nature ; if there is a difference 
 between the ideal construction of a world from the copies 
 of ideas, and the humble examination of a world by the 
 interpreter of nature ; if Coleridge's remark, that all men 
 are born followers either of Plato or of Aristotle, is other 
 than sheer unmixed absurdity, then Plato was not a man 
 who, in this sense, saw both sides of the matter, but the 
 embodiment of one great phase of the human mind. Clear- 
 ing away every notion of that mythical theory of Mr. Em- 
 erson's, let us see how Plato constructs his state, as con- 
 trasted with the manner in which we may suppose Bacon 
 to have gone about a similar undertaking. 
 
 Bacon at once opens his great embracing eye upon nature. 
 He listens to the voices of history. He hears every excla^ 
 mation of the mob, and watches the gleam in every eye 
 
250 PLATO. 
 
 He enters the senate-house ; he attends the criminal and 
 civil court ; he follows the host to the battle-field. He 
 studies man in the mass ; the great national aggregations 
 into which humanity has been grouped ; the minor move- 
 ments of united masses, bound together by some tie of 
 religious or political motive, as the Assassins, tJfe orders of 
 monkery and knighthood, the Jesuits ; the influence of 
 churches and superstitions. He studies man most carefully 
 in the family; the tree of which the national forest is com- 
 f)osed, and the healthfulness of the whole determined. He 
 looks scrutinizingly at man as an individual ; he asks how 
 individual and national motives act and re-act upon each 
 other ; he weighs the force of patriotism against interest, 
 of private affection against public good. He regards every- 
 thing as already virtually determined for him ; his grand 
 problem is to produce harmonious action among elements 
 already existing ; he turns reverently to nature, as to the 
 manifested power of God, and says. Thou hast determined 
 — tell me how. Every passion in the human breast is 
 taken as a calculated force, not to be extinguished, but 
 partly to be regulated, and partly to be provided for or 
 against. And, when he has done all, he proceeds with fear 
 and trembling, lest at any moment the forces which have 
 escaped his calculation awake, and blow up his fabi-ic. 
 
 Plato has to construct a rejDublic. He looks at once to 
 reason, and turns fi-om phenomena to ideas. He asks, 
 What is the ideal of perfection in a man? He assumes 
 this to be the ideal of perfection in a state, and proceeds 
 to develop it accordingly. The grand distinction between 
 the two constructors becomes at the outset obvious. Bacon 
 took the initiative from nature : Plato takes the initiative 
 from reason, and endeavors to chain nature down on his 
 procrustean bed : but the giant will not be bound. Nature 
 
PLAT/O. 251 
 
 points to the family relation as coeval with history — the 
 holy, personal, tender, beautiful tie between man and wife. 
 Plato can distinctly show that it will be promotive of pub- 
 lic felicity to disregard it. Nature says, I have appointed 
 the family circle for the rearing of men : my way is to 
 " turr the heart of the fathers unto the children, and the 
 heart of the children to their fathers." Plato has abundant 
 arguments to prove that a set of public nurses will manage 
 the matter better. Nature says, I approve a distribution 
 of labor, and have gifted men diversely. Plato says, I am 
 hapjjy to agree with you here — in this case, be my servant. 
 In every instance, Plato judges ; and the fact of his follow- 
 ing nature, in certain cases, is no more proof that he sub- 
 mits to her dictation, than the fact that a man allows his 
 horse to pursue the way homewards when he knows it, is 
 proof that he would not turn his head if he found him 
 going off the road. Nature, in a word, is Plato's bondmaid, 
 not his queen. 
 
 This, we think, indicates both the extent and the source 
 of Mr. Emerson's inaeccuracy. The problem of problems, 
 which has tried and baffled the intellect of man in all ages, 
 is to unite the ideal of his soul with the determinations of 
 nature. The Platonist, the Utopian poet, the socialist 
 dreamer, shapes his ideal such as it may be ; scrimp, spare, 
 and hungry-looking, lik^ the angular ideals of certain dis- 
 mal modern improvers, youthfully fresh and arrayed in the 
 hues of morning, as that which was to convert the banks 
 of the Susquehanna into a pantisocratic garden of Eden, 
 or glittering in all the gorgeous beauty which Shelley hung 
 around his pile in the "Revolt of Islam." He then brings 
 it forth, begilded and bedizened, and proclaims, huskily or 
 musically, that it is to stand forever. Nature arises, and 
 sweeps it away, blowing it all into the air by the link of 
 
252 PLATO. 
 
 some treacherous Guy Fawkes, or summarily ■wrecking it 
 in blood. The Baconist reads nature, and is on the right 
 way, but has as yet, we suspect, been reading but the half 
 of man ; for he must include the ideal in his scrutiny, or 
 make a fatal omission. The man who can and will unite 
 both, will renew the world : or, rather, let us plainly say, 
 that no man will unite both, but that Almighty God, in 
 the evolution of human history, will bring it aboiit by what 
 means — almost certainly, indeed, human — are most in 
 accordance with his high will. 
 
 On the various subdivisions of Plato's political state we 
 cannot enter. They corresponded to the capacities and 
 •feelings of the human being. Philosofihers, answering to 
 wisdom, ruled; the army, corresponding to courage and 
 the irascible propensity in man, defended the state ; crafts- 
 men of various sorts, representing temperance, plied their 
 various avocations for the benefit of all; justice pervaded 
 all classes. The family relation was to be destroyed ; all 
 things were to be had in common. 
 
 Respecting the general tendency of Plato's philosophy, 
 viewed morally, the testimony is uniform and unwavering. 
 Speaking of his works. Sir James Macintosh remarks : — 
 " The vein of thought which runs through them is always 
 visible. The object is to inspire the love of truth, of wis- 
 dom, of beauty, especially of goodngss, the highest beauty; 
 and of that supreme and eternal mind, which contains all 
 truth and wisdom, all beauty and goodness." " When," 
 says Ritter, " we review all these doctrines of Plato, it is 
 impossible to deny that they .are pervaded with a grand 
 and sublime view of life and the universe. This is the 
 noble thought which inspires him to say, ' God is the con- 
 stant and immutable good ; the world is good in a state of 
 becoming, and the human soul that in and through which 
 
PLATO. 253 
 
 the good of the world is to be consummated.' In this sub- 
 lime conception we recognize the worthy disciple of Soc- 
 rates ; to illustrate it, was the object and design of his 
 whole philosophy." " The secret," says Mr. Emerson, " of 
 his popular success, is the moral aim which endeared him 
 to mankind." And to the same effect are all testimonies. 
 This it is, truly, which explains the earnest fascination with 
 which all great souls in after generations looked back to 
 Plato : here was one man wiio could deliberately prefer the 
 unseen to the seen, who could snap asunder and cast aside 
 from his giant arms the fetters of sense and of passion, and 
 ascend, though alone, to the serene solitudes of truth. 
 Hence it is that the hallowed light, streaming from his 
 serene, passionless eye, has touched the heads of so many 
 generations, and lies, like a pUlar of tremulous radiance, 
 along the stream of time : hence it is that, while his sep- 
 arate dogmas pass away, while the outward frame of his 
 system, like a body once arrayed in beauty and buoyant 
 with life, dies and moulders away, the spirit that dwelt 
 within it, the celestial ardor that impelled him towards the 
 holy, the beautiful, and the true, never dies. 
 
 To trace, in its grand lineaments, the influence of Plato 
 on mankind, is a task which might occupy much space, but 
 which may, we think, be disposed of, with considerable 
 adequacy, in even a few paragraphs. That influence soon 
 connected itself with Christianity, and has to be discussed 
 in that relation. Were we to discuss at length the inviting 
 and momentous questions. What is the relation of philos- 
 ophy in general to Chiistianity ? and What is the precise 
 influence which Platonism has exerted in connection with 
 the latter ? we would manifestly be led into wide fields of 
 discussion. But it is often remarkable into how small a 
 compass the essentials of a great subject may be compressed ; 
 
 SECOND SEKIES. 22 
 
254 PLATO. 
 
 and we trust that, avoiding the first question, we may give 
 somewhat of a response to the second. 
 
 The whole course of ancient philosophical discussion, after 
 the time of Plato, was, as we have said, directed by the 
 tremendous force of his impression. Prom Greek philoso- 
 phy arose Roman philosophy ; it was a faint echo, but that 
 echo was mainly of Platonism. Cicero was a great admirer 
 of Plato. 
 
 But a new and altogether singular power now arose in 
 the world. It was strangely allied and strangely opposed 
 to Platonism and all philosophy. It was strangely allied : 
 the conceptions which the gifted mind of Plato had but 
 dimly formed were brought forth in complete development 
 and unsuUed radiance ; whatever was true in his system, 
 was re-proclaimed " with authority." It was strangely dis- 
 severed from Platonism : its essential idea, its starting-point, 
 its object, were different from those of philosophy. Men 
 were not to discover God, and then worship, if so be that 
 their reason approved the same ; God was revealed, and 
 men were to look — God commanded, and men were to 
 obey. We shall borrow an illustration from the geological 
 history of our globe. There was a stage, certain theorists 
 have maintained, in the adaptation of our world to be the 
 residence of man, when it was encompassed by a dense 
 and humid atmosphere, suffused with a faint spectral radi- 
 ance. Behind this mantle of luminous haze, the sun shone 
 . in his own beauty and strength, but no eye on our planet 
 could see him. Now, suppose a physical philosopher to 
 have awakened under the veiling mist, and to have com- 
 menced a series of obser\'ations regarding the origin of 
 light. We can imagine him, after long gazing and careful 
 reasoning, arriving at the conclusion that, since the light 
 seemed stronger in one part of his sphere of vision than 
 
PLATO. 255 
 
 elsewhere, and somewhat more gathered round a centre, 
 there was probably one great luminary from which it radi- 
 ated ; we can imagine him settling dubiously the position 
 of the sun, and arguing about its form ; but doubt would 
 still perplex him : until that glorious morning came when 
 God said, " Let there be light," and the mist, opening its 
 cloudy folds, and rolling swiftly away to east and west, the 
 sun-rays triumphantly streaming along its wreathing gorges, 
 revealed the whole lower world as the recipient of light 
 and heat from one great source, one great sun. That phys- 
 ical philosopher seems to us to emblem well the position 
 of mental philosophy, as represented by Plato, in relation 
 to God, Dim streaks of a celestial fire, faint gleams of a 
 celestial light, suffused, with feeble radiance, the atmosphere 
 of earth : Plato, gazing long and considering earnestly, 
 pronounced that they came from one God, but his tongue 
 faltered, and, like Schlegel, he may be said to have died 
 with the word " but " on his lips. Christianity revealed 
 the union of goodness and God ; the one the light of the 
 universe, the other the eye from which it streamed. Such 
 was the difference between philosophy and Christianity, the 
 great essential difference; the one with piercing gaze looked 
 from earth to heaven, the other descended from heaven to 
 earth; the one endeavored to discover God, the other re- 
 vealed him. There were many more. Christianity was in 
 its essence more human than philosophy. The noble, and 
 dauntless, and untiring Plato had climbed the heights of 
 philosophy, to attain a region of serenity, but of coldness ; 
 he ascended the mountain to near the stars, but he reached 
 the dwelling of eternal snow ; his banner was inscribed 
 "Excelsior," but the light was still at infinite distance above 
 him, when he had to wind that banner around him and 
 die. "Plato the man was almost completely absorbed in 
 
256 PLATO. 
 
 Plato the dialectician ; " a sublime melancholy shaded liis 
 brow. Christianity hallowed humanity, and gathered round 
 itself, as in a queenly robe, every noble and home-like 
 emotion of the heart. Christianity was in its means diverse 
 from philosophy. From the midst of a downtrodden and 
 depraved people, in a wild mountain-land, Christianity 
 shone forth upon the world ; poor mechanics were its mis- 
 sionaries. Hear the grand words of Milton, in speaking 
 of God's way of acting in the case: — "It had been a small 
 mastery for him to have drawn out his legions into array, 
 and flanked them with his thunder ; therefore he sent fool- 
 ishness to confute wisdom, weakness to bind strength, des- 
 pisedness to vanquish pride ; and this is the great mystery 
 of the gospel made good in Christ himself, who, as he tes- 
 tifies, came not to be ministered to, but to minister," etc. 
 It was not the accumulation of the learning of the past and 
 present, and some addition thereto by human original- 
 ity: it was light from heaven, or it was nothing. 
 
 With this great and mysterious power philosophy came 
 into collision, and the philosophy which so came was chiefly 
 Platonism. For several centuries, the grand struggle con- 
 tinued. The combatants on the side of philosophy were 
 the members of the famed Alexandrian schooL The strug- 
 gle took two forms — that of direct antagonism, and that 
 of proposed amalgamation by one of the parties. We can 
 trace neither process. Philosophy, in the hands of such 
 men as Proclus and Porphyry, was directly opposed to 
 Christianity; professing a wide and enlightened tolerance 
 for other religions, and endeavoring, by exposition and 
 eclecticism, to interpret their symbols in accordance with 
 truth, these men turned a deaf ear to Christianity. Their 
 hostile attempt was vain. Plotinus, on the other hand, and 
 his followers, with the whole Gnostic school, and, we sup- 
 
PLATO. * 257 
 
 pose it must be added, certain of the Christian fathers, 
 built up, or endeavored to build, a motley, though magnifi- 
 cent edifice on the twin foundations of philosophy and 
 faith. They, too, failed. Philosophy at last sunk into 
 silence, or withdrew into the cloister with the monk. There, 
 century after century, Platonism continued to maintain a 
 feeble existence, along with the more generally honored 
 system of Aristotle. During the middle ages, took place 
 the famous dispute between the realists and nominalists ; 
 the former asserting the real existence of general terms, 
 the source of the Platonic ideas, and the other asserting 
 general terms to be but marks of general classes, and mere 
 abstractions. In the fifteenth century, about the time of 
 the difiusion of Greek literature over Europe, on the occa- 
 sion of the reduction of Constantinople by the Turks, the 
 study of Plato revived under the patronage of the cele- 
 brated Cosmo de Medicis. The great mover in the matter 
 was Gemistius Pletho, by whose suggestion Cosmo estab- 
 lished a Platonic school at Florence. Marsilius Ficinus, 
 son of Cosmo's physician, was educated, for the purpose of 
 translating Plato into Latin, which he did, together with 
 certain of the works of the later Platonists. Since the 
 Reformation, the works of Plato have been known to all 
 the learned, and his influence has been very deep : the 
 " divine Plato " is a household word in literature. 
 
 All strictly speculative philosophy may be said to be 
 Platonic. Plato might be called the eye of humanity look- 
 ing towards the infinite. The questions which agitated 
 him have never been solved, and perhaps never will be, yet 
 we can nowise agree with the advocates of an exclusively 
 positive science, that the attempts of j)hilosophers to solve 
 them have been merely a kind of sublime crotchets : we 
 
 22* 
 
258 • PLATO. 
 
 recognize the long struggle, as the grandest fact, except 
 Christianity, in the history of man. 
 
 Even late German philosophy, with its swiftly-changing 
 phantasmagoria of systems, is greatly respectable to us, as 
 another embodiment, and it may be the last, of man's en- 
 deavors to scale the universe by himself We cannot, how- 
 ever, look upon this philosophy, or any other, which dis- 
 severs itself from Christianity, as so illustrious as was phi- 
 losophy in Greece in the days of Plato. A moment's 
 reflection upon the contrast between the tnythology of 
 Greece and the religion of Christ, will show our reason for 
 so speaking. And, if we might venture one dubious glance 
 into the future, we would institute a certain parallel between 
 the stage at which modern philosophy has now arrived, and 
 that at which ancient philosophy had arrived at the time 
 of the Alexandrians. Ancient philosophy had striven to 
 stand alone ; when Christianity appeared, it made the two- 
 fold attempt to oppose, and to buttress itself upon it : both 
 attempts failed, and the evolution of modern civilization 
 commenced. For several centuries, modern philosophy 
 has struggled dubiously, and seems at length to have died 
 amid the Moi-phean mists of Germany, or at least to. have 
 reached that stage at which all the questions have been 
 asked, and none satisfactorily answered. Christianity still 
 lives, and the union of Christianity and philosophy is the 
 grandest problem at present before the human mind. With 
 philosophy as opponent, Christianity will stand ; an amal- 
 gamation is opposed essentially to the genius of both. 
 Shall philosophy, entering the temple, become, with nobler 
 auspices than in the middle ages, the handmaid of Chris- 
 tianity ? 
 
YITL 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION* 
 
 A celebrated German author of the last century entitled 
 one of his works Christianity, or, Europe. The words ex- 
 press his emphatic conviction of the inseparable connection 
 between modern civilization and the Christian religion; 
 and this conviction has been entertained by all the most 
 profound thinkers who have directed their attention to the 
 subject. Christianity has been recognized as the original 
 spring, and pervading life of modern existence. Whether 
 it has been looked upon with the eye of reason or of faith, 
 whether it has been regarded as springing wholly from 
 earth or as having come down from Heaven, no one has 
 been able to contemplate modern history at all, without 
 earnestly and deliberately contemplating it. In the eye 
 of Gibbon, there was no answering gleam of faith or hope, 
 as he looked towards that star which rose in the East, and 
 ascended, in tranquil majesty, over the wild sea, strewed 
 with the wrecks of empire, in which went down the sun 
 of Rome. Yet even he could not pass Christianity by, as 
 an ordinary phenomenon. Were it only as a philosophic 
 wonder, he could not but pause to consider that "pure 
 and humble religion" which " gently insinuated itself into 
 
 * A lecture delivered in Manchester and Liverpool, England, Oct. Ig56. 
 
260 CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 
 the minds oi men, grew up in silence and obscurity, de- 
 rived new vigor from opposition, and finally erected the 
 .triumphant banner of the Cross on the ruins of the Capi- 
 tol ; " and which, " after a revolution of thirteen or fourteen 
 centuries," was " still preferred by the nations of Europe, 
 the most distinguished portion of human kind in arts and 
 learning, as well as in arms." Goethe, a far profounder 
 man than Gibbon, and fitly representing a loftier form of 
 that rationalism, of which, in its French manifestation, no 
 better representative could be found than Gibbon, has 
 spokes- of Christianity with deep reverence, as the greatest 
 moral fact of human history, as a point of attainment from 
 which the race cannot recede, consequently as an influence 
 which cannot die. Baron Humboldt finds Christianity re- 
 moulding men's conception of the physical universe, and 
 breathing the influence of a deeper and softer humanity 
 over nations. M. Guizot points to the Church as "the 
 great connecting link — the principle of civilization — be- 
 tween the Roman and the barbarian world." Lord Lind- 
 say and Mr. Ruskin tell us that Christianity is at the heart 
 of all that is truest and best, most nobly human and most 
 purely spiritual, in modern art. If we turn to writers who 
 have more expressly considered the relation of Christianity 
 to human history, we find the attestation still more ex- 
 plicit, the unanimity still more complete. Frederick von 
 Schlegel, the very able author of The Philosophy of -His- 
 tory, discovers in Christianity " the new words of a new 
 life, and new light and moral and divine science, that was 
 to unfold new views of the world, introduce a new organi- 
 zation of society, and give a new form to human existence." 
 Neander, a more powerful and healthful thinker than Schle- 
 gel, agreed with him here, and devoted his life to exhibit 
 the progress already made by the spirit of Christianity, in 
 
CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 261 
 
 pervading and fashioning the life of mankind. "The great 
 Founder of Christianity," says Philip Schaff, one of the most 
 recent, but, it may prove, one of the greatest of Church 
 historians, " The great Founder of Christianity is the vi- 
 tal principle and the guide, the centre and turning-point, 
 and at the same time the key, of all history. ... In an- 
 cient history, what is most remarkable and significant is 
 the preparation for Christianity by the divine revelation in 
 Israel, and by the longing of the benighted heathen. As 
 to late history, Christianity is the very pulse of its life, its 
 heart's blood, its central stream." 
 
 But I must pause. To do more than indicate the abun- 
 dance of testimony on this point is forbidden by the com- 
 prehensiveness of my subject and the proportionate short- 
 ness of my time. I shall consider it beyond dispute that 
 Christianity has been the vital spirit of the modern time, 
 and it will be our endeavor, this evening, to attain some 
 definite and distinct apprehension of those principles which 
 it introduced into civilization, and of their mode of manifes- 
 tation in the several epochs of European history. The 
 task is one of difficulty, and only with extreme inaccuracy 
 can it be now performed ; but its performance with even 
 partial success will amply reward efibrt. No subject of 
 contemplation could be more august than that of the celes- 
 tial influence of Christianity, searching the depths of the 
 human spirit, and evolving its powers in the broadest, the 
 most varied, the most profoundly moral and spiritual, of 
 civilizations. No intellectual exercise could be more invig- 
 orating or profitable, than that of penetrating the essence, 
 or embracing the grand manifestations, of that infiuence. 
 The point we desire to reach is high ; but it is not neces- 
 sary that our prospect be indefinite. Apt as we British are 
 to boast of our practical talent, and our power to appreci- 
 
262 CHAKACTEKISTICS OF 
 
 ate individual facts, there are other nations which might, 
 perhaps, read us a lesson in the art of taking broad views, 
 of reducing the multiplicity of phenomena to the unity 
 of principle, of marshalling facts by law. A traveller, if 
 such may be imagined, passing along the ridge of the Andes, 
 would come upon the sources of the great South American 
 rivers, Orinoco, La Plata, Amazon. As he saw the fountain, 
 bubbling from the hill-side, or trickling down the ice-crag, 
 and as he marked its silver thread winding away on the 
 boundless plain, would no more be revealed to him than 
 the few drops by his side or the thin streak below ? Would 
 not his mind's eye, reaching far beyond his physical vision, 
 behold the stately river, rolling on, in the pomp of its gath- 
 ered waters, hollowing out valleys for the abode of nations, 
 with forests and savannahs green around.it, and cities rest- 
 ing on its banks ? Would he not read the geography of a 
 continent in the trickling fountain and the slender thread ? 
 Thus it is that certain facts do not end in themselves. 
 They are suggestive or representative of a thousand others. 
 And of such representative facts are we in quest this eve- 
 ning. Nay more. An illustration is, indeed, but an illus- 
 tration, and we shall seek not only to discover the fountains, 
 but also, more or less, to trace the streams, of Christian 
 influence in modern times ; but with this premised, we 
 may find the position of our supposed traveller closely sim 
 ilar to that we are to occupy. The centuries which wit- 
 nessed the spread of Christianity, we found ourselves en- 
 titled to regai'd as the moral, intellectual, social, and polit- 
 ical watershed, bounding the whole continent of modem 
 life. Those streams of influence then commenced their 
 course, which have ever since continued to flow. At times, 
 they may have been slow and turbid ; at times, their wind- 
 ings may have been so circuitous that the attainment of the 
 
CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 263 
 
 goal seemed impossible; at times, they may have rushed 
 on in wild haste and tumult, as of the torrent and cataract ; 
 at times they may have disappeared altogether, like rivers 
 running under ground. Yet to them, the grand conforma- 
 tions of national life were alwaysowing; from the most circu- 
 itous winding, there was always a return ; and even though 
 they should in some quarters seem to be lost, and in some 
 others to be tm-bid or obstructed, the experience of the past 
 combines with faith in Divine Providence to assure us, that 
 they wiU ultimately work themselves clear, draw towards 
 them new tributaries, and irrigate with their healing waters 
 all the provinces of human life. 
 
 It will promote perspicuity to keep distinctly in mind 
 that I begin by offering a succinct view of the new influ- 
 ences or principles originally introduced by Christianity into 
 civilization; and shall then proceed to trace their action in 
 the various epochs of European history. 
 
 Christianity, then, first of all, introduced a new moral in- 
 fluence, of mighty power, or rather, a series of new moral 
 influences, into civilization. 
 
 It is not a very safe exercise to exhibit, even on a broad 
 and general scale, how much better we are than other men ; 
 and I most cordially sympathize with that broad and gen- 
 erous philosophy, which scorns to add a glory to truth and 
 righteousness by darkening, beyond what is necessary, error 
 and vice. Christianity need not shrink from acknowledg- 
 ing that God did not leave himself without witness among 
 the heathen nations. " Beneath the ashes of Pagan super- 
 stition," says Schafii " there glowed a feeble spark of faith 
 in the unknown God." " The nations," said Edward Irv- 
 ing, and his words have of late been substantially and un- 
 answerably confirmed by Archbishop Whately, " The na- 
 tions are but the apostacy of the Patriarchal religion, as the 
 
264 CHARACTEKISTICS OF 
 
 ten tribes were of the Jewish, and the Papacy is of the 
 Christian." Many of the Greek philosophers, with their 
 Roman followers, sincerely pursued truth, and propounded 
 elevated and inspiring doctrines. The death of Socrates 
 has been for two thousand years a lesson of magnanimity 
 and of placid courage, and an attestation of the fact that, 
 if conscience and reason are honestly listened to, they may, 
 in the individual case, give such assurance of the immortal- 
 ity of the soul, as will render a man calm and satisfied in 
 death. If, lastly, it is noble to rise superior to the pleas- 
 ures of sense, and to gird up the mind to pursue the wise, 
 the beautiful, and the true, then may we still learn some- 
 thing from Plato's majestic control of passion and passion- 
 ate devotion to truth. 
 
 But such men as ISTeander, Schaff, Whately, to mention 
 no others, have now put it beyond all reasonable doubt 
 that, the moral system of the Pagan world was sapped in its 
 very foundations, and full of irreparable flaws from top to 
 bottom. Philosophy, indeed, pierced at intervals into the 
 region of pure moral truth ; but in no case was the ethical 
 system of any philosopher entirely correct ; principles de- 
 structive of the very essence of virtue were maintained in 
 not a few of the schools ; and, most important of all, the 
 multitude was scorned by all the philosophers. The teach- 
 ing was not perfect for those who enjoyed it, and the mass of 
 mankind could not enjoy it at all. The philosophy of Soc- 
 rates, indeed, seems to have been intended for the house- 
 hold and the market place ; but if from Plato it derived 
 the advantage of mature elaboration and scientific form, it 
 was forever raised by him beyond the sphere of common life. 
 The accepted fashion with philosophers was to approve the 
 superstitions of the vulgar as received by them ; to regard 
 the popular mythologies as mechanical appliances for the 
 
CHKISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 265 
 
 preservation of order J and to be serenely indifferent whether 
 men in general believed their own doctrines or oot. The 
 reasonings of philosophy were to practical morality as a the- 
 ory of rain is to the fructifying shower. When we turn to 
 the mythologies themselves, matters are still worse. They 
 were pervaded by that profoundly manichean character, 
 which, I venture to assert, must attach to all religions framed 
 by the unaided human mind — framed negatively, I mean, 
 by the gradual loss of truth anciently revealed, and sub- 
 stitution of human falsehood — and unpurified by the di- 
 rect inspiration of the Almighty. The torch of natural 
 conscience, blown upon by the tempest of passion and the 
 strong side winds of error, will always toss flickering from 
 side to side, unless steadied by the hand of God. So it 
 was in Greece and Rome. The good and the bad were 
 alike inpersonated in divinities, and alike worshipped. Pre- 
 cepts of virtue alternated with examples of vice. The 
 well-disposed Greek might strive after wisdom, self-restraint, 
 gentle fortitude, and valor, on the model of Minerva ; but 
 why should he not also cultivate brutal ferocity with Mars, 
 whose soul, as has been said, was in the butcher's knife ? 
 The sovereign of Olympus, venerable Jove himsel:^ fur- 
 nished him with a history, not unworthy, — perhaps I 
 should say not worthy, — of the Newgate calendar. One 
 mock divinity would back him when he stole, another when 
 he was unchaste, another when he lied. Of the immortal- 
 ity of the soul, he could not be assured. Death was to 
 him a thought of utter woe. The happiest among the 
 dead were not so happy as the living, and the many were 
 miserable. All that related to a future, or a spiritual exis- 
 tence, was to him a faint forecast, a vaguely hinted mystery, 
 a wavering haze, a mere dream. The two ghastly nega- 
 tions of essential manicheism pressed upop his life : he 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 23 
 
266 CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 
 could not be assured that the good is infinitely better than 
 the bad; and he could not be assured that happiness in 
 this universe is, on the whole, triumphant over misery. 
 
 Great, in all respects, was the change wrought by Chris-, 
 tianity. It did no dishonor to the efforts of reason to scale 
 the precipices of truth and virtue : but for the first time, 
 it let down from Heaven the ladder of faith, on which the 
 way-faring man could ascend to meet the angels and to 
 know his God. It thus assumed a radically different po- 
 sition from that of philosophy. On the other hand, all the 
 impersonated vagaries of heathen mythology were taken 
 up and annihilated in the one God of revelation. The ef- 
 fect on the moral and intellectual state, the influence in 
 bracing up the whole nature and unifying the conception 
 of the moral and physical universe, of the simple belief in 
 one God, instead of many, it is perhaps impossible to exag- 
 gerate. Manicheism, in its very essence, was now as good 
 as extinguished. It might re-appear in flickering gleams, 
 but it could never more reach the heart or brain of Chris- 
 tian nations. " God is light ; " these words proclaimed the 
 eternal and infinite superiority of holiness to wickedness: 
 " God is love ; " these words proclaimed the essential tri- 
 umph of happiness over misery. This was indeed a Gos- 
 pel to mankind. There is something very melancholy in 
 that essential manicheism of unrevealed religions. It seems 
 to me the deepest wail, — the most lorn and dreary ciy, — 
 that has proceeded from the sad heart of humanity. There 
 was good in the world, indeed, the early and the latter rain, 
 the smiling, opulent summer, the palm trees and fountains, 
 the broad harvest fields, the warm home-affections. There 
 must be a divine Giver of all this ; so the rejoicing heart 
 believed in Orumzd, the preserver; in Apollo, the God of 
 light and music; in the benignant strength of Thor. But 
 
CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 267 
 
 was joy the ])i-evailing thing in the world? 'Did not long 
 drought burn up the corn, and turn the bounty of summer 
 into famine and pestilence ? Did not the weary traveller, af- 
 ter long journeying, sustained by hope, over the desert sand, 
 find often, as he came to the remembered well, that its wa- 
 ters were dried up, and he had only to lie down and die ? 
 Did not treachery, falsehood, cruelty, intrude even into the 
 domestic circle, and naight not mortal hatred lurk behind 
 the smile of friendship ? These questions could not be 
 put aside. They were answered by the rising in the soul 
 of a great agony and a mighty fear. Some power, stupen- 
 dous as that of the beneficent Deity, must have it as its 
 special attribute to torment and destroy mankind. So Ah- 
 riman, the god of darkness and destruction, rose up in eter- 
 nal defiance against Ormuzd, the preserver ; the arrows of 
 Apollo shot blight and plague, as well as summer warmth ; 
 and Thor and the good divinities had to wage endless and 
 internecine war with the giant demons of the northern my- 
 thology. So it always was. Man escaped from the sorrow 
 of the world, only by casting the shadow of it over the 
 whole face of Heaven, to sjjread over him one infinite vault 
 of starless night. He could not dare to set Ormuzd above 
 Ahriman ; nay, might it not be that the beneficent Ormuzd 
 would not be swift to punish ; and was it not better, more 
 wise, more prudent, if one must choose, to attend chiefly 
 to the worship of Ahriman, to propitiate the destroyer ? 
 So the simple, sorrowful heart sank down literally to the 
 worship of devils. But Christianity gave at last the sub- 
 lime assurance to man, that love, that light, that beneficence, 
 hold eternal sway in this universe ; that in hating and de- 
 fying evil and all its supporters in earth and hell there is 
 safety, victory, peace ; that God, the Creator and Preserver, 
 has smitten the devil and his angels into eternal confusion 
 
268 CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 
 by the mere breath of his indignation. Christianity showed 
 the shadow of human sin falling over the face of Heaven ; 
 but there it did not settle in the blackness of despair; 
 it brought out the ever-burning celestial lights of divine 
 mercy and redeeming love. And no night can blacken 
 those stars ! 
 
 All those truths of spiritual order, at which Paganism 
 vaguely guessed, were now put beyond doubt. The immor- 
 tality of the soul was distinctly affirmed. The spiritual na- 
 ture of man and his present and future spiritual existence 
 were opened up. Time was made to rest on eternity. 
 
 Virtues which contradicted the whole genius of ancient 
 life and morals, but which, once propounded, awakened a 
 response in man's deepest nature, were proclaimed by Chris- 
 tianity. Gentleness, mercy, humility, — all those virtues 
 which are antithetically opposed to the central virtue of 
 the old world, pride, were preached to the nations in the 
 words of the Saviour. Self-negation came in the place of 
 self-assertion ; trust came for determination ; revenge passed 
 into forgiveness; hate became love; war became peace. 
 To subdue another and reign over him was no longer the 
 sublimest conception, the loftiest ideal, of men and nations. 
 Archbishop Whately rightly recognizes it as a grand dis- 
 tinguishing characteristic of Christianity, that it sent men 
 to learn of little children. 
 
 And all this ethical perfection was, I must repeat, no pos- 
 session of a select few, attained by the method of reason ; 
 it was a free gift from God, bestowed in His Son upon all 
 men, and to be received by faith. " Antiquity," says Nean- 
 der, " was destitute of any independent means, adapted 
 alike to all stages of human enlightenment, for satisfying 
 man's religious needs." This all-sufficing and all-suiting 
 means was now found ; faith did for the multitude what 
 
CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 269 
 
 reasoning could never do ; and the magnitude of the result 
 in relation to the moral life of mankind cannot possibly be 
 over-estimated. The exception became the rule. The 
 change was as that from the wintry scene, with, indeed, 
 here and there an icicle fallen, here and there the snow 
 melted from a spire or house-top, here and there sun-beams 
 clustering about the mountain side, but the general scene 
 all wrapt in snow, and the landscape of summer, where the 
 light rests conspicuously on no single points, and that just 
 because it floods the whole prospect. 
 
 Another change, of a practical nature, bearing relation 
 to the ethical teaching of the world, was introduced by 
 Christianity, too important to be overlooked, even in this 
 brief summary. That mature scholar and profound, if 
 somewhat desultory thinker, Thomas De Quincejr, has 
 brought prominently into notice the fact that Paganism had 
 nothing, or next to nothing, to show corresponding to the 
 moral and doctrinal instructions of a Christian ministry. 
 Archbishop Whately, too, in his work on the peculiari- 
 ties of the Christian religion, has not failed to specify 
 that it alone, of all religions, has no priesthood, no specially 
 privileged class, who can lift moral responsibility from the 
 shoulders of their fellow men, or mechanically open for them 
 the gates of Heaven. The circumstances commented on by 
 these acute writers, though not identical, are closely allied. 
 The fact that no priest comes between the Christian and his 
 God leaves in its untrammelled might the instinct of moral 
 responsibility: the fact that the Christian revelation is one of 
 comprehensive and practical morals, and that the Christian 
 ministry possesses no mystic power apart from its special 
 capacity to bring the Christian system of morals to bear on 
 the minds of men, secures an institution whose express 
 function is, with all therein implied of intellectual and 
 
 23* 
 
270 CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 
 moral influence, the ethical and spiritual instruction of man- 
 kind. The priesthoods of Greece and Rome were the per- 
 formers of a certain set of external rites and ceremonies. 
 They superintended sacrifices ; they read auguries ; they 
 swept temples ; they dusted images ; they laid out banquets; 
 they arrayed processions. In the mysteries, they might im- 
 part one or two moral truths to an initiated few ; but it has 
 never been proved that the teaching of the mysteries was 
 pure, and it reached only to the select coterie. To the j)eo- 
 ple, the priests gave no good instructions, no salutary coun- 
 sels. The alteration effected by Christianity was decisive 
 and all-important. The perfect type -of a Christian minis- 
 try has not, indeed, been preserved in its purity in all ages 
 and Churches. The reverse has more coiTesponded with 
 fact. V Yet it is not easy to present fuUy to our minds the 
 difference between even a Mediaeval priesthood, with what 
 of Christianity they taught, and any priesthood of antiqui- 
 ty. Even a degraded Christian clergy, like that of the 
 Middle Ages, could not but keep before the public mind 
 certain of those grand truths and ideas, by which, so to 
 speak, the moral position of mankind is defined, — the unity 
 of the Godhead, the immortality of the soul, the essential sin 
 of selfishness, the infinite evil and danger of wickedness, the 
 essential joy and eternal bliss of holiness. When our Lord 
 commanded his disciples to "Go and teach all nations," He 
 spoke words fitted to change the moral aspect of the world. 
 I have been compelled to take merely a single glance, 
 comprehensive as might be, at tlie new moral principles and 
 influences introduced by Christianity. I must hasten on. 
 But let it.be distinctly and forcibly conceived that the reli- 
 gion of Jesus substituted the triune God of the New Testa- 
 ment for the pantheon of mythology; that it gave assurance 
 to nations, not Merely to coteries, of the existence and im- 
 
CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. •" 271 
 
 mortality of the soul and of eternal rewards and punish- 
 ments; that it re-adjusted the whole ethical system, by 
 making humility, and not pride, its central point ; that it 
 annihilated Manicheism by showing the arm of the Al- 
 mighty severing the light from the darkness, exalting the 
 one to Heaven, and thrusting the other down to hell ; and 
 that it substituted, for the priesthood of Paganism, the 
 morally and intellectually educational institution of the 
 Christian ministry. 
 
 In even the most cursory glance, however, at the new 
 moral influences introduced into the world by Christianity, 
 it cannot be permitted us to pass by what must be defined 
 as the distinctive fact of the Christian revelation, — that 
 which embraces in itself all its peculiarities, and belongs to 
 it alone ; the fact, namely, that it brought within the sphere 
 of general human vision the Christ of history, the Jesus of 
 the gospels. I would desire you at present to regard this 
 as a simply historical fact, omitting its theological aspects. 
 Consider the Saviour merely as the Christian type of human 
 perfection ; as the ideal of virtue and excellence ; as the 
 exemplar to whom Christians were to look, in every striv- 
 ing after the better, the higher, the holier. Think how Je- 
 sus is portrayed in the gospel narratives. There is, in the 
 drawing of the likeness, a certain rustic simplicity, a cer- 
 tain homeliness as of those peasants who drew it, a sterl- 
 ing heartiness reaching the broadest and deepest human 
 sympathy, of which, perhaps, no better idea could be formed 
 than by comparing it with the style of Bunyan's Pilgrim's 
 Progress, which so closely copied it : yet the lines are of 
 immortal light, imperishable as the light of God's Throne; 
 and as we gaze and gaze upon them, we see that they im- 
 age forth infinite and unchangeable perfection. So unani- 
 mous has been the voice of mankind in setting Jesus at the 
 
212 . CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 
 liearl of all impersonations of human excellence, that a dif- 
 ferent view does really not deserve notice. A very able 
 Soeinian writer of the present day, while refusing to rec- 
 ognize Jesus as divine, is yet constrained to acknowledge 
 Him an exception to humanity. " He stands," says that 
 writer, " so high, that the purest and noblest elements of 
 our humanity must experience an immense development, 
 and all its coarser adhesions be well purged out, before it 
 can enter generally into any vital communion with Him." 
 Consider then, the fact that this ideal man, with whom, 
 considered merely as a type of human virtue, we are after 
 eighteen hundi-ed years still unable to commune, was first 
 given to the world as an historical fact, first set before the 
 eyes of men, by Christianity; consider that, however men 
 might wander from Him, or, turning to his mother or his 
 brother, put Him from them, His divine endurance, His in- 
 finite self-sacrifice. His faithfulness unto death, the unsullied 
 whiteness of that fame on which pharisaic hate and priestly 
 craft could leave not one stain, would always beam out 
 again and again upon the world ; consider that He was ever 
 there, drawing men with that eye, in which celestial holi- 
 ness shone through human tears, drawing them, in the long 
 lapse of ages, nearer and nearer Him, never able altogether 
 to lose sight of Him ; consider that, wherever there ap- 
 peared a new energy to pierce to truth, a new nobleness to 
 aspire after holiness, a new love to consecrate itself for 
 God and man, there was in Jesus an encouragement, an ex- 
 ample, a hope to cheer, a guidance to direct : consider, I 
 say, all this and then you may faintly realize, what words 
 are utterly powerless to express, the transforming and irre- 
 sistible change in the moral position of man, brought about 
 by the mere fact that Jesus lived and died. 
 
 The new moral elements introduced by Christianity con- 
 
CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 273 
 
 stitiite one great class. Another great class I shall define 
 as that of the social elements introduced by the same 
 means. And in the term " social," I must comprehend all 
 that relates, not merely to the domestic, but to the political, 
 commercial, literary, and artistic provinces of life. The 
 modifying and quickening elements introduced into all the 
 social relations and activities, I shall attempt to embrace 
 in one succinct view like the preceding. 
 
 Perhaps the most correct method to be pursued here is 
 to name one principle, -which concentrated in itself an un- 
 bounded energy of social change, and whose various appli- 
 cations effected revolution in special departments. This 
 principle I find in the twofold idea of the unity of the race, 
 implying essential equality in capability, in merit, in im- 
 mortality, and the essential nobleness of all natural and 
 honest work. 
 
 The majesty of man, not as the king, not as the warrior, 
 not as the scholar, not as the millionaire, but simply as the 
 man, was first explicitly declared by Christianity : and the 
 essential equality in honor and dignity, of all endeavor, so 
 it is natural in itself, and pursued with no selfish aim, was 
 also first proclaimed to the mass of mankind in the Gospel. 
 The essential unity of the race was exhibited in that the 
 Saviour took the common nature upon Himself; and in the 
 express intimation, that all nations of the earth are of one 
 blood. The essential nobleness of labor was announced, 
 in the command to do with might whatsoever the hand find- 
 etli to do ; and in the declaration that Christianity makes 
 not a few things, not a select number of the human facul- 
 ties, but all things new. A few words will sufiice to exhibit 
 the pervasive and inevitable energy of this two-fold social 
 truth ; a truth unknown to heathenism. 
 
 It is of the highest importance, it is indispensable, I be- 
 
274 CHAKACTElilSTICS OF 
 
 lieve, to a right appreciation of what Christianity has done 
 for the world, and an intelligence, in any measure correct, 
 of the great divisions of human history, that we fairly con- 
 ceive and master the great fact, which has been so power- 
 fully exposed and illustrated by Neander, and which is one 
 of those great leading ideas that give character to his in- 
 valuable work on Church History, of what he styles the 
 aristocratism of ancient civilization. This aristocratism 
 has already met us in the strictly sectional teaching, both 
 of ancient philosophy and of the ancient mysteries. That 
 was its moral aspect. But its social aspect was equally re- 
 markable. The civilization of antiquity was the civilization 
 of a few freemen and a multitude of slaves. Freedom was 
 synonymous with the privilege of a caste. It was not con- 
 ceived as a common right which all held directly from God ; 
 in theory it was, perhaps, not defined at all ; it was merely 
 a peculiar possession, which a certain number of men carved 
 out with their own swords, and thenceforward defended. 
 This one undeniable fact sets ancient freedom and modem 
 in antithetic opposition to each other. The one was essen- 
 tially selfish : the other is not selfish. Freedom, as well as 
 immortality, was brought to light, when the majesty of man 
 was vindicated in the person of the man Christ Jesus. 
 
 But, again, this inability to conceive equality of social 
 rights was aggravated in its evil efiects by what was its 
 own inevitable consequence — the proscription, more or less 
 complete, of various modes in which human faculty is ex- 
 erted. This brings us face to face with one of the deepest 
 characteristics of ancient civilization. It was essentially 
 martial ; and it was, in a sense, essentially idle. The war- 
 rior was its hero. "The Roman- state," says Schlegel, 
 from its origin, and according to its first constitution, was 
 nothing else than a well-organized school of war, a perma- 
 
CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 275 
 
 nent establishment for conquest." The Greeks were not 
 so exchxsively warlike, but with them too the separation of 
 society into working and unworking castes was distinct. 
 There was associated with idleness in itself a certain idea 
 of nobleness, at least as contrasted with any kind of work 
 of a physical nature. The gentleman was he who had no 
 expi'ess occupation, who might fight, or hunt, or legislate, 
 or discuss philosophic subtleties, or admire works of art ; 
 but who superintended no manufacture and engaged in no 
 trade; Commerce, it is well known, was in the principal 
 civilized nations of antiquity in the hands of slaves. The 
 freeman, even though a plebeian, would not work. The 
 circumstance was enough to vitiate the whole system of 
 ancient civilization. It bore its most pernicious fruits in 
 that of Rome. The free rabble of Rome, the pauper con- 
 querors of the world, who scorned the slavish arts of trade 
 and handicraft, and had two wants, bread and gladiatorial 
 shows, presented one of the most pitiable spectacles the 
 world has yet seen. Certain modern authors of great 
 name have found the cause of Roman decay in the removal 
 of the old agricultural population of Italy, and have ad- 
 duced, from the appearance presented by the urban rabble 
 of Rome, an argument applicable to all states of civilization, 
 as to the essentially inferior and un warlike character of a 
 town population. But these writers seem to me to omit 
 ■ the all-important consideration, that the freemen of Rome 
 were idlers, while the populations of our cities are workers. 
 The invigorating, ennobling influence of labor is present in 
 the one case, and was absent in the other. Mr. McCulloch, 
 and I doubt- not manyothers,haveshown that the modern 
 mechanic is as intelligent, as brave, and it may even be, 
 physically as strong, as the agricultural laborer. It is a sci- 
 entific blunder, as well as a piece of insulting injustice, to 
 
276 CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 
 compare the workmen of such cities as Manchester, Liver^ 
 pool, and Glasgow, with the imperial paupers, who were 
 fed from the harvests of Egypt, and shouted over the 
 writhings of gladiators. But labor never became dignified 
 until it was touched by the golden sceptre of Christianity. 
 Time forbids me to follow the action of this gi-eat two- 
 fold principle into all the departments of social and national 
 existence ; but it is not difficult to trace its general influ- 
 ence. How would it act in politics? There can be no 
 question whatever. However gradually it might proceed, 
 however wisely it might modify by circumstances its com- 
 plete manifestation, the end at which it would aim cannot be 
 mistaken. Christianity could not call forth, as if from the 
 cave in which, for centuries they had lain dead, the energies 
 and activities of the soul of man, and yet leave his politi- 
 cal activity, his power of recognizing himself as the mem- 
 ber of a national body, and acting freely in that capacity, 
 sti-ll to slumber. Self-government is, beyond question, com- 
 petent to man ; and I know not how any Christian can 
 either relieve himself from the duty of conscientiously seek- 
 ing for it, or unconditionally deny it to his fellow-men. 
 What would be its effect in relation to the physical world? 
 It would send men to the field, to the mine, to the work- 
 shop, with an energy and a sense of dignity never experi- 
 enced before ; it would develop the physical resources of 
 the planet to their last jot and tittle ; it would make fire 
 bear man's burdens, and the lightning speak his words ; it 
 would lend gi-andeur to the smoke of the engine and mu- 
 sic-to the roar of machinery ; it would link nation to nation 
 in commercial brotherhood. One glance along the history 
 of the three last centuries answers the question, whether it 
 has done these things. Wlint would be its effect in Lit- 
 erature, in Science, in Art ? In every case, it would unfold 
 
CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 277 
 
 the whole nature, exercise the whole capapities, of man ; it 
 would ennoble human life and hallow the household aflfec- 
 tions; it would broaden, deepen, humanize. 
 
 It was implied in the change in all man's social ideas 
 which we have been contemplating, but it deserves sepa- 
 rate notice, that a different place in the social scale than 
 that she occupied under paganism, should be assigned to 
 woman. In Athens, the focus of ancient civilization, wo- 
 men were little better than slaves. In Rome, they obtained 
 rather more consideration, but they were still, in many 
 respects, deprived of their natural station. Christianity 
 brought emancipation to woman, and with it an inexhaust- 
 ible store of elevating and softening influences to civiliza- 
 tion. It is true, that the change which has in this respect 
 taken place in modern Europe was not exclusively, or at 
 once, owing to Christianity. The barbarians who over- 
 threw the Roman empire, however inferior they might 
 be in other respects, were more perfect gentlemen than 
 their southern antagonists in the important regard of 
 respect and estimation for women. It may be true, also, 
 that the form in which the homage of chivalry to the gen- 
 tler sex finally passed into manifestation was through the 
 worship of Mary. And it may be true, as represented by 
 Mr. Hallam, that the domestic arrangements of the feudal 
 system favored the development of respect and affection 
 towards the wife and the mother. But all this might 
 have failed of its result if Christianity had not j)reviously 
 prepared the soil. And at all events, the fact remains 
 unassailable, that Christianity does proclaim the equal dig- 
 nity of woman ; and that richer, purer, gentler elements 
 have thus entered into Christian civilization than ever en- 
 tered into any other. Woman was the Creator's crown- 
 
 BECOND SESIES. 24 
 
278 CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 
 ing gift to Adam ; and Christianity restored the godlike 
 boon to the world. 
 
 I have now Endeavored to sketch, in hasty outline, the 
 principles introduced into civilization by Christianity. It 
 remains to trace their manifestations in the periods of mod- 
 ern civilization. But it must carefully be noted that our 
 summary has been gathered mainly from a consideration 
 of Christianity as revealed in Scripture, aided by hints 
 from the history of modern times, and that it might be im- 
 possible to exhibit all the influences we have discovered, 
 in distinct manifestation, at any one period. The mode in 
 which this manifestation took place and may be exhibited 
 affords, indeed, an emphatic testimony to the celestial ori- 
 gin and perfect excellence of Christianity. Taking any 
 one age in modern history, it might prove a vain attempt 
 to show that the essentially Christian principles which we 
 have seen were dominant in it. But look to the New Tes- 
 tament, and you have these principles there : contemplate 
 the modern epochs at which the nations of Europe have 
 most certainly made an advance, and you find them, with 
 new power and breadth, asserting themselves the?i. Their 
 development was the advancement of the race ; and every 
 onward movement of the race brought out more clearly 
 their original essence. The lights of history and of reve- 
 lation thus meet. The divine origin of Christianity is vin- 
 dicated by the fact that the human race can add nothing to 
 it, and only in the lapse of long ages can learn to drink of 
 its living water. When, also, the argument is thus con- 
 templated, the essential nature of Christian civilization is 
 satisfactorily established; the charaster of its various pe- 
 riods is rightly ascertained ; and the true j)oint of view is 
 reached from which to discover whether, at any given time, 
 Christian civilization is more or less fully developed, and 
 
CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 279 
 
 what are the circumstances and influences which imperil 
 its character or hinder its extension. 
 
 The history of Europe since the commencement of the 
 Christian era has been variously divided by various histo- 
 I'iaus. It might be exceedingly profitable to consider cer- 
 tain of those modes of division, did our space permit. To 
 do so is impossible. I shall, however, quote the division of 
 Church history, strictly so called, proposed by Philip Schaff, 
 in the general introduction to his great work. It is true 
 that the scope of his division is somewhat too contracted 
 for our entire purpose. But the Christian Church is the 
 central subject of our observations, and therefore it is well 
 to have a distinct view of the various stages of its history. 
 
 Schaff, then, divides the history of the Christian Church 
 into three ages, each age containing three periods. 
 
 "FiEST Agb. 
 
 The ancient, or the Grseco-Latin (Eastern and Western) 
 Universal Church, from its foundation on the day of Pen- 
 tecost to Gregory the Great (A. D. 30-590) ; thus embrac- 
 ing the first six centuries. 
 
 First Period. — The Apostolic Church, from the first 
 Christian Pentecost to the death of the Apostles (A. D. 
 30-100). 
 
 Second Period. — The Persecwtec? Church (ecclesiapressa), 
 to the reign of Constantine (311). 
 
 Third Period. — The established Church of the Grceco- 
 Moman empire, and amidst the barbarian stonns, to Greg- 
 ory the Great (590). 
 
 Secobtd Age. 
 
 The Mediaeval Church, or the Romano-Germanic Cathol- 
 icism, from Gregory the Great to the Reformation (A. D. 
 590-1517). 
 
280 CHAEACTEKISTICS OF 
 
 Fourth Period. — The commencement of the Middle Ages, 
 the planting of the Church among the. Gennanic nations, 
 to the time of Hildebrand (590-1049). 
 
 Fifth Period. — The flourishing period of the Middle 
 Ages, the summit of the Papacy, monachism, scholastic and 
 mystic theology, to Boniface VIII. (1049-1303). 
 
 Sixth Period. — The dissolution of the Middle Ages, and 
 preparation for the Reformation (1303-1517). 
 
 Third Age. 
 
 The Modern, or Evangelical Protestant Church, in con- 
 flict with the Roman Catholic Church, from the Reforma- 
 tion to the present time. 
 
 Seventh Period. — The Reform,ation, or productive Prot- 
 estantism and re-acting Romanism (sixteenth century). 
 
 Eighth Period. — Orthodox- confessional and scholastic 
 Protestantism, in conflict with ultramontane Jesuitism, and 
 this again with semi-protestant Jansenism (seventeenth 
 century and first part of the eighteenth). 
 
 Ninth Period. — Subjective and Negative Protestantism 
 (Rationalism and Sectarianism), and positive preparation 
 for a new age in both Churches (from the middle of the 
 eighteenth century to the present time)." 
 
 This division is comprehensive and useful. Perhaps the 
 way in which the ninth and last period is regai-ded, is the 
 most open to objection. However the phenomenon of ra- 
 tionalism may be estimated in itself, to give it the name of 
 Protestantism, whether qualified by the adjective "subjec- 
 tive," amounting here simply to individual or personal, or 
 no, is, as I shall afterwards have further occasion to observe, 
 to do profound injustice to the Reformers, and to mistake 
 the true character of the Reformation. The great protest 
 of the sixteenth century was against the corruption of a 
 
CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 281 
 
 religion ; it was the cry of nations to have original Chris- 
 tianity purified from human adhesions : but no process of 
 purification can go the length of purifying away the es- 
 sence and substance of what is purged ; and religion itself 
 is washed away, Christianity itself is annihilated, when rea- 
 son is exalted above faith. No amount of liberalism, there- 
 fore, ought to induce us to consider rationalism a develop- 
 ment* of Protestantism; and the only true way of regard- 
 ing it is as a foreign influence, subordinate, possibly, to the 
 further elimination of religious truth, but occupying an es- 
 sentially different position from that of a religion. 
 
 With this qualification — and let me say that it is one 
 which the general tenor of Schafi's work leads me to think 
 he would himself substantially admit — we shall accept his 
 general division, and direct our attention, during the re- 
 maining portion of our time, to the leading characteristics 
 of those three ages which he defines. I may remark that, 
 however these ages may be divided into minor portions, 
 there can be no doubt whatever as to themselves. Early 
 Christianity, Latin Christianity, and Modern Christianity, 
 or that since, the Reformation, are so evidently the grand 
 natui-al divisions of the Christian era, that mistake or dif- 
 ference of opinion cannot exist. 
 
 In the first age, that of early struggling Christianity, the 
 new principles in the Gospel did not fail to exhibit their 
 power and benignity. I think it admits of satisfactory 
 proof, that the scheme of Christian doctrine in its whole 
 theologic breadth, in its connection with all the provinces 
 of human knowledge and philosophy, was not so fully con- 
 ceived by the primitive Christians as it has since been. 
 The intellectual worth and meaning of Christianity was 
 not systematically unfolded before the Reformation. But 
 in pure spirituality of devotion, in fervency of personal 
 
 24* 
 
282 CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 
 piety, the early age stands alone. The light was dewy and 
 beautiful in that new dawn of humanity. Those were the 
 days when Christians walked so closely with God, that light 
 from Heaven beamed visibly around them. Those were 
 the days when men said of Christians, " See how they love 
 one another!" Those were the days when. Gibbon him- 
 self being witness, the form of Christian morality rose amid 
 heathen grossness, so pure, so saintly, that the Pagans them- 
 selves were astonished and abashed, driven into fiendish 
 hatred, or won to penitence and adoration. The voice 
 of Christianity was heard against the licentiousness that 
 reigned in the temples of Venus ; and its eye fell in heav- 
 enly pity on the agony of the gladiator. A softer gentle- 
 ness threw its smile over the faces of men ; and, strange as 
 it might seem, yet in beautiftil natural consistency, a new 
 manliness, a robust valor, recalling better times, also ap- 
 peared. " In an age of enervated refinement," says Nean- 
 der, " and of servile cowardice, the Christians manifested 
 an enthusiasm which gave fresh energy to life, and 'an he- 
 roic faith which despised tortures and death rather than do 
 what was contrary to conscience. This heroism of the 
 Christians did indeed strike many as a phenomenon foreign 
 to the age ; they made it a matter of reproach to them that 
 they possessed a character well enough befitting the ruder 
 days of antiquity, but little suited to their own refined and 
 gentle times." It was then that the hardihood of the 
 Christian faith was proved by its ability to root itself in 
 blood. The sword which had smitten all the nations into 
 submission to Rome was unsheathed against the Galileans, 
 and unsheathed in vain. So intensely and perpetually did 
 those early Christians realize the belief that the seen and 
 temporal is but a wavering film over the unseen and eter- 
 nal, that they hastened even too willingly and joyously to, 
 
CHRlSTIAlSr CIVILIZATION. 283 
 
 martyrdom. The mysterious sjiectacle ■«'as presented of 
 a humility. and self-negation unexampled in the world, and 
 a fortitude which, from female eyes, could smile calm defi- 
 ance into the face of death. 
 
 That power of Christianity to vindicate the essential 
 majesty of man, to give the same celestial gifts tothe babe 
 as to the philosopher, which we found characteristic of 
 Christian principle in the abstract, was now exhibited in 
 practice. "Men," says ISTeander again, "in the lowest class 
 of society, who had hitherto known nothing of religion but 
 its ceremonies and its fables, attained to clear and firm re- 
 ligious convictions. . . . "Every Christian mechanic,'' 
 says Tertullian, "has found God, and shows him to you; 
 and can teach you all in fact that you require to know of 
 God ; even though Plato (in the Timajus) says that it is 
 hard to find out the Creator of the universe, and impossi- 
 ble, after one has found Him, to make Him known to all." 
 
 It is remarkable and undeniable that, from the time of 
 the introduction of Christianity into the world, it was the 
 one principle of vitality and growth amid decay. We have 
 seen how it renewed the character, amid the effeminacy 
 of a decaying civilization. Philosophy and literature speed- 
 ily acknowledged its jDOwer. The philosoj)hic thought of 
 the first centuries was all modified by it. Philosophy at- 
 tempted to make good its position against it : but that was 
 a vain attempt. Then it assayed to unite with Christian- 
 ity, but in that, too, it failed. Christianity, it can never be 
 too strongly enforced, is incapable of ever becoming strictly 
 a philosophy. The essential characteristic of philosophy, 
 I shall agree with Mr. Ferrier, though totally disagreeing 
 with him on every other point, is that its method is reason- 
 ing. Until the conditions of humanity are changed, this 
 confines it to a class. But religion comes to the mass of,; 
 
284 CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 
 men; Christianity speaks to nations; and its method is, 
 therefore, faith. Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism were radi- 
 cally, as the great thinker to whom I have already so often re- 
 ferred suggests, attempts of the ancient spirit of aristocrat- 
 ism in knowledge to introduce itself into Christianity. The 
 endeavor was unsuccessful : but successful or no, the truth 
 remains, that the active philosophic thinking of the time 
 derived its vitality from the position in which it stood with 
 regard to Christianity. Add to this that in Patristic liter- 
 ature, whatever may be its excellences or defects, Christi- 
 anity produced a series of works of a very remarkable or- 
 der, of which it may at least be confidently affirmed, that 
 they rose as far above any mythological literature of an- 
 tiquity, as, in philosophic accuracy and theological breadth, 
 they may have been, in modern times, surpassed. 
 
 This hasty glance at the first age of Christian civilization 
 must suffice. That age extended, as we saw, to the end of 
 the sixth century, at which period the victory over Pagan- 
 ism was complete, and the preparation made for Latin or 
 Mediaeval Christianity. 
 
 In proceeding to consider, in the same brief manner, the 
 civilization of the Middle Ages, it must be distinctly speci- 
 fied that a decline had taken place from the purity of Apos- 
 tolic times. A vail had gradually been woven, becoming 
 more dense from year to year, over those j)ure and perfect 
 principles which were embodied in the New Testament. 
 Mankind was not able to look upon the pure radiance of 
 the Gospel; men desii-ed to have that radiance softened 
 and dimmed for their feeble vision ; and as of old, the sin- 
 ful feebleness was permitted to work its own will. A vail 
 passed over the face of Christ as over the face of Moses. 
 Or, to take another illustration from the ancient dispensa- 
 tion, men were not content with the invisible reign of the 
 
CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 285 
 
 Saviour: they desired a king, a Saul; and they had their 
 wish. 
 
 Not to tire you with authorities, and to compress the 
 matter into a narrow compass, the principal respects in 
 which the Church at the commencement of the seventh 
 century had departed from the purity of earlier times, may 
 be briefly summed as follows : — 1st, In the obscuration of 
 the strictly spiritual nature of Christianity, by a greater or 
 less addition of elements Pagan in their character, specially 
 by a multiplication of forms and ceremonies : 2d, In the 
 circumstance, essentially unchristian in its tendency, of the 
 formation of a sacerdotal caste, in opposition to the idea 
 of a Christian priesthood : 3d, In an abrogation of the orig- 
 inal brotherhood and equality of the Christian Church, and 
 a strongly developed tendency to render it, in its constitu- 
 tion, less and less popular, and more and more aristocratic 
 and monarchical. 
 
 It is very difficult to present anything approaching to a 
 correct view of such a subject as mediaeval civilization, in 
 such space as is now at our command. A thousand years 
 will not compress into a few minutes. But happily we are 
 not without highly competent assistants in making this at- 
 tempt. Milman, Neander, Schaff, Guizot, and others afford 
 us generalized views of the period which testify their cor- 
 rectness by their radical agreement. The characteristic of 
 the Church Christianity was a vast uniformity : the charac- 
 teristic of general civilization was an explicit submission 
 to this uniformity. Milman says of Latin Christianity that 
 it was " the Roman empire again extended over Europe by 
 an universal code and a provincial government; by an hie- 
 rarchy of religious praetors or pro-consuls, and a host of in- 
 ferior officers, each in strict subordination to those immedi- 
 ately above them, and gradually descending to the very low- 
 
.286 CHARACTERISTIGS -OF 
 
 est ranks of society : the whole with a certain freedom of 
 action, but a constrained and limited freedom, and with an 
 appeal to the spiritual Csesar in the last resort." " This," 
 says Schaff, " may be termed the age of Christian legalism, 
 of Church aiithority. Personal freedom is here, to a great 
 extent, lost in slavish subjection to fixed, traditional niles 
 and forms. The individual subject is of account, only as 
 the organ and medium of the general spirit of the Church. 
 All secular powers, the state, science, art, are under the 
 guardianship of the hierarchy, and must everywhere serve 
 its ends. This is emphatically the era of grand universal 
 enterprises, of colossal works, whose completion required 
 the co-operation of nations and centuries ; the age of the 
 supreme outward sovereignty of the visible Church." M. 
 Guizot confirms this view by his comments on the theolog- 
 ical impress which the Church in the Middle Ages imparted 
 to all intellectual exertion. 
 
 It is of great importance to understand the meaning of 
 this great characteristic of uniformity, attaching to Med- 
 iaeval Christianity. 
 
 Through all the provinces of nature there can be dis- 
 cerned a great two-fold fact or law ; the fact or law of unity 
 in variety. Unity in diversity is the law which in all 
 cases distinguishes creation from chaos. And it is an un- 
 changing principle that the wider the diAorsity, so it be 
 ruled by one central law, the higher is the achievement of 
 nature, the greater the perfection attained. Now Chris- 
 tianity contains in itself, potentially, not yet, it may bej 
 worked out, the highest possible manifestation gf this sub.; 
 lime law. Its unity is in Christ ; "one Lord, one faith, one 
 baptism ; " its unifying law is love. Therefore, in whatever 
 position a Christian is placed, with reference to the world 
 or to Christians who dissent from certain of his views, he 
 
CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 287 
 
 must never, at the risk of abandoning essential Christian- 
 ity, relinquish the hope of ultimate unity, or deny the obli- 
 gation of striving to bring all Christians into one great 
 temple, wide as the sky. But Christianity, along with its 
 potential unity, brings also to humanity an expansion, a de- 
 velopment, a variety unprecedented and illimitable. It 
 opens, as we formerly saw, all the fountains of the human 
 spirit. It can no more seal up these, in consistency with 
 its true nature, than it can abjure the unity of its great 
 charter of love. Now the Christianity of the Middle Ages 
 was a great attempt — and so far it deserves admiration — 
 to manifest fully the great Christian law of unity : but it 
 omitted the kindred necessity which alone prevents living 
 unity from becoming dead uniformity, the law of variety, 
 the development of the individual life, the sacredness of 
 those countless faculties and peculiarities of man, whose 
 variegated glory and beauty surpass the fields of the earth 
 and the plains of the sky, and will yet render a Christian 
 humanity the richest and most beautiful of all the gardens 
 of God. 
 
 While, however, this is true, it were not well to forget 
 that mediaeval uniformity by no means suppressed all man- 
 ifestation of intellectual vitality, petrified strong emotion, 
 or prevented the gradual infiltration, into the mind of Eu- 
 rope, of deeper spiritualities than had dwelt in the system? 
 of heathenism. Everything, indeed, wore a theological as- 
 pect ; but if the walls of a vast temple shut out the free 
 air of nature, and cast over all a dim religious light, there 
 were, within that temple, many and great activities at work. 
 The faith of the Middle Ages, be it what it might, searched 
 infinitely deeper and rose infinitely higher, than any faith 
 of Paganism. The hymns of the Church, the scholastic 
 reasonings, the devout simplicity and earnest purity of med- 
 
288 CHARACTEF.ISTICS OF 
 
 isBval painting, bear witness to tlie intensity of moral and 
 intellectual life in those times. All the architectural relics 
 of antiquity settle into dumb stolidity, or sink into elegant 
 insignificance, beside the cathedral of the Middle Ages. 
 All ancient poetry, even including that of ^schylus, is, so 
 far as I am qualified to judge, a playful dallying with hu- 
 man emotion, compared with the " mystic, unfathomable 
 song," reaching to the lowest deeps of man's spirit, of 
 Dante. The Middle Ages present a vast uniformity, but no 
 blank. 
 
 Mediaeval civilization has three principal stages corres- 
 ponding, closely enough, to those three into which we found 
 Schafi" dividing the Church history of that age, but which 
 it may be well to contemplate somewhat differently. The 
 first, we shall call the period before the Crusades ; the sec- 
 ond, that of the Crusades ; the third, that of mediaeval Ca- 
 tholicism in decay, and the gradual accumulation of mate- 
 rials for the Reformation epoch. I can say but a word of 
 each of these. 
 
 In the first, the period before the Crusades, there is dis- 
 cernible, under countless individual phenomena, the going 
 out of one great process, — that of gradually working out 
 from the mind of Europe all remains, not only of the old 
 Paganism, but of the, superstitions of those strong north- 
 ern tribes which overthrew the Roman empire. The con- 
 version of those tribes was, at first, a very general, whole- 
 sale sort of operation. But although the Christianity with 
 which they were indoctrinated was now far from pure, they 
 were, in the centuries preceding the Crusades, gradually 
 brought thoroughly to embrace it, and to conceive for it a 
 deep enthusiasm. It may be afiirmed, too, that in relation 
 to the customs of the barbarians, the influence of the Church 
 was generally salutary. It specially tended to improve 
 
CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 289 
 
 civil and criminal legislation. M. Guizot tells us that it is 
 impossible to contrast the codes of the Church with those 
 of the barbarians, without being struck with the superior- 
 ity of the former. The Church exercised, also, a human- 
 izing influence of a more general nature over the barbaric 
 tribes, softening their rugged manners, and opposing par- 
 ticular customs of a gross or savage nature. It was, besides, 
 for centuries, the most popular institution in existence ; it 
 afforded the most accessible, perhaps I might say the only, 
 channel through which talent could find vent ; not even as 
 it sunk deeper and deeper into corruption, could the Church 
 founded by the Galilean fishermen altogether abnegate its 
 character as the Church of the people. 
 
 The eleventh and twelfth centuries are the era of the Cru- 
 sades. In the thirteenth the enthusiasm died out. The 
 Crusades constitute one of the most remarkable and impos- 
 ing phenomena of history, and exercised, beyond question, 
 a great influence on subsequent times. The heart of Eu- 
 rope thrilled for the first time to a common impulse. The 
 consciousness of nations awoke. Christianity advanced to 
 the East with — ominous token — a sword in its hand. It 
 had not come from the East with a sword in its hand, oth- 
 erwise it might have been as little successful in its contest 
 with the "West, as it proved in its contest with the East. 
 But this is by the way. The Crusades were, in the circum- 
 stances of the case, thoroughly justifiable on jjolitical 
 grounds ; and, since the spiritual essence of Christianity was 
 now deeply shrouded, there could not, humanly speaking, 
 have been found any common excitement for the European 
 nations, uniting so many lofty and noble elements, as that 
 which sent them to rescue the Holy City fi.-om the hands 
 of the infidel. Historians have enlarged upon the effects 
 of the Crusades, tracing them in various directions. But 
 
 SECOND SBBIES. 25 
 
290 CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 
 their greatest result, doubtless, was this, — to shake Europe 
 from that comparative lethargy in which it had lain, to ex- 
 ercise the minds of men on certain broad, expanding con- 
 ceptions, to strike the first spark of life into individual 
 character. 
 
 In the centuries immediately preceding the Reformation, 
 the vail which obscured the great principles of Christianity 
 had become very dense. Christendom itself had an uneasy 
 consciousness that all was not well ; and I am not aware 
 that, any one has since, been found altogether to defend the 
 time. The various attempts made by councils to effect a 
 reformation of manners indicated, if I may so speak, the 
 sense of shame in the heart of the Christian peoples. Such 
 efforts bore no important fruit, and the darkness gi'ew 
 thicker and thicker over Europe. In various places, in- 
 deed, the vail seemed for a moment to be rent asunder, and 
 a ray of the old glory streamed through. Such a ray Un- 
 gered long among the snows and precipices of the Alps, 
 where the hymns of the Waldenses broke the eternal silence. 
 Such a ray cheei'ed the eye and heart of Wickliffe, and an- 
 imated him to the denunciation of Roman corruption. 
 Such a ray fell upon the face of Huss, lighting it with the 
 old martyr smile, as he died at the stake. But still the vail 
 was there. 
 
 The commencement of the sixteenth century is one of 
 the most singular and critical conjunctures in the history 
 of Europe and the world. An immense addition of intel- 
 lectual material had been just made to the stores of the 
 West. The revival of letters, in the middle of the fifteenth 
 century, had brought back all the culture of antiquity into 
 the general school-i-oom of Europe. Printing, with all it 
 even then implied, had lately been invented. America and 
 the East Indies had been opened up. The immediate re- 
 
CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 291 
 
 suit was a vastly increased intellectual and artistic activity. 
 But the direction taken by modern history could have been 
 predicted from none of these things, and remains to all time 
 one of those sublime Providential lessons, which have been 
 so often given by God, and which man will not learn. 
 
 There is no fact in history more certain, than that the re- 
 vival of letters had no tendency whatever to renovate the 
 Papacy, to re-awaken moral life in Rome and in Europe. 
 The learned refinement of the Popes brought with it the 
 moral apathy of that Pagan lore on which it fed. " Deb- 
 auchees," " poisoners," " atheists," are the words used by a 
 writer of so temperate Protestantism as Mr. Macaulay, to 
 describe the Popes who wore the tiara immediately before 
 the Reformation. In a most true and literal sense, even 
 the Papacy was saved by Protestantism. It was actually 
 falling back into Paganism : it was rotting away : and that 
 at the very time when the treasures of knowledge, which 
 so many, more or less exj^licitly, believe and avow to be 
 the one means of moral life for nations, were poured, with 
 unprecedented exuberance, into the lap of Christendom. 
 
 In the beginning of the sixteenth century, two specta^ 
 cles were presented on the stage of Europe. The proud 
 Church of St. Peter's, at Rome, was slowly rising, in pil- 
 lared magnificence, towards Heaven, as if making its ap- 
 peal for divine countenance : and an unknown Augustine 
 monk, in the convent of Erfurth, his face pallid through 
 fasting and watching, was on his knees, sending his earnest 
 prayer to God for light. The fame of St. Peter's went 
 over Christendom. Tetzel came selling indulgences to raise 
 money for its completion. Yes ; the somewhat puzzling pro- 
 gress of humanity had brought it to this : Christianity, in 
 the first centuiy, had been preached by Paul ; Christianity 
 in the sixteenth was preached by Tetzel! The supreme 
 
292 CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 
 enlightenment of the Revival of Letters had produced this 
 last remarkable version of the Gospel, proclaimed with the 
 warrant of the Father of Christendom, that if you paid so 
 much money, your sins were forgiven you ! But, as I said, 
 Luther was on his knees. Over all the grandeur of St. 
 Peter's, through all the noise which the furtherance of 
 that grandeur made over Europe, above all the false en- 
 lightenment of resuscitated Paganism, that still small v-eice 
 went up — even to the throne of God. And from it came 
 the shaping of modern civilization! The Revival of Let- 
 ters had not got near the heart of nations : on the 31st of 
 October, 1517, Jjuther posted his theses on the Church door 
 at Wittenberg ; and in six weeks, Europe was awake. The 
 philosophy, the arts, the poetry of antiquity had once more 
 risen before the eyes of Europe : and once more God brought 
 life to the world out of a despised Galilee, out of the Con- 
 vent of Erfurth, and the New Testament of Martin Luther. 
 That enlightenment, which had been mere dead fuel, 
 choking the life out of Christendom, now, kindled by faith, 
 buret forth into a true and dazzling illumination : that Ref- 
 ormation epoch commenced, which, dating from 1517 to 
 1688, is, I think, take it all in all, the greatest in the history 
 of the human race. From this one fact might, I think, be 
 deduced all the canons of history, and a whole philosophy 
 of the human race. 
 
 The vail woven by human hands across the brightness of 
 Christianity was now rent asunder from the top to the bot- 
 tom. Those mighty principles which were, from the first, 
 present in Christianity, came forth from the slumber of 
 centuries. Never before had they obtained so wide a na- 
 tional extension. The Bible, in the vernacular tongues, was, 
 for the first time, put into the hands of the people. Con- 
 ceive the effect of that one change. *' To give the history 
 
CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 293 
 
 of the Bible as a hook" says Coleridge, " would be little less 
 than to relate the origin or first excitement 'of all the liter- 
 ature and science that we now possess." The idea of a 
 priesthood specially privileged to confer salvation was 
 again struck down, and man once more confronted his God. 
 A Protestant ministry arose ; and I think that, if the his- 
 tory of the Protestant nations since the Reformation is con- 
 sidered, it will be found that, however many its short com- 
 ings, there has never yet acted on the human mind a moral 
 agency, on the whole so powerful and so benign as that of 
 the Protestant ministry. But perhaps the most instructive 
 of all the circumstances connected with the Reformation 
 is the completeness with which it vindicated truth. We 
 saw that Christianity introduced into civilization mighty 
 principles, not only of moral but of social truth ; that it 
 raised man to his full stature, not only in relation to his God, 
 not only as an individual, but in relation to his fellows. 
 And the Reformation, in again unvailing the glories of 
 Christianity, again addressed the whole nature of man. 
 Moral truth sprung to life, and awoke its slumbering 
 sister, social truth. Christianity led freedom by the hand 
 to bless the nations. Great Britain and North America, the 
 centres of civil liberty for the world, are also, and have 
 been, the great centres of Protestantism. 
 
 If we contemplate the epoch of the Reformation, strictly 
 so called, that which commenced with the posting of Lu- 
 ther's theses, and terminated with the close of the Puritan 
 era in Great Britain ; and if we embrace, as we ought, all 
 the forms of intellectual activity exhibited by Protestant 
 nations in that period; we shall find reason, I think, for the 
 opinion I have expressed, that it was the greatest time — 
 most abounding in great works and great men — that hu- 
 manity has yet seen. Luther, Calvin, Bacon, Newton,' 
 
 25* 
 
294 CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 
 Shakspeare, Milton ; — these stand in the very foremost file 
 of humanity. The Institutes of the Christian religion of 
 Calvin, published at twenty-seven, the Novum Organon of 
 Bacon, the Principia of Newton, the Dramas of Shakspeare, 
 the Paradise Lost of Milton, — these rank with the solitary 
 achievements of the race, the heirlooms of nations, the pal- 
 ladia of civilizations. And beyond question, the spirit of 
 the Reformation ruled and impelled this magnificent dis- 
 play of power. From the study of Newton to the camp 
 of Gustavus Adolphus, from the slopes of Naseby, where 
 Puritanism rolled resistless down hill after its Cromwell, to 
 the midnight chamber, where all the earnestness of Pun- 
 tanism was being gathered into one strain of immortal mu- 
 sic by Milton, there worked the same mighty impulse, of 
 re-invigorated faith and awakened intellect. Nor least, but 
 perhaps greatest, of the manifestations of the Reformation 
 spirit, was the departure from Delft Haven, in Holland, of 
 that Httle ship Mayflower, which bore its desolate company 
 of exiles to the deserts of North America, there to found 
 that great Commonwealth, beside which all the glories of 
 Spain's Popish kingdoms of the South were to grow faint 
 and pale, and which, be its faults what they may, was to 
 exhibit the greatest number of self-governing men that the 
 world ever saw. 
 
 The history of Europe since the Reformation has, as I 
 said, been shaped out by that event. Yet a doubt will 
 urge its way into my mind, whether we can really view 
 ourselves as heirs of the men of the Reformation, whether 
 we still really breathe their atmosphere and inherit their 
 spirit. We nmst not be too sure that advance of time has 
 been advance in all respects. That progress of the species 
 is truly a perplexing matter. Tetzel had certainly not pro- 
 gressed beyond Chrysostom or Ignatius. Modern Protes- 
 
CHEISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 295 
 
 tant statesmen seem really to have made no remarkable ad- 
 vance upon Cromwell. Christian poetry has not been car- 
 ried far beyond Milton's Hymn of the Nativity. Perhaps 
 vfe niay even yet have something to learn from the times 
 of the Reformation : possibly, the wave of Christian Civili- 
 zation has receded, and is only now gathering for another 
 sui-ge. Let us glance along the intervening space. 
 
 Popery, startled by the shock of the Reformation, roused 
 itself in the sixteenth century to a new activity. It shook 
 off the Paganism of the Leos and Bembos. Protestantism 
 thus, as I suppose even Roman Catholics would in a sense 
 admit, was the means of saving Romanism from sheer pu- 
 trescence and destruction. But the history of the Papacy 
 since the Reformation has proved that the resuscitation of 
 its life was no sound and complete resuscitation, but rather 
 a specious, an outwardly imposing, but an indubitable, lapse 
 into a deeper disease. By associating itself with Jesuitism, 
 it brought the abomination of desolation into the temple 
 of God ; and by allying itself universally, even in these days, 
 with European despotism, it has denied the unity of truth, 
 and visibly abdicated its right to lead the human intellect. 
 
 Turning to Protestantism, the view is partly cheering, 
 and partly it is not. That intensity of faith, which marked 
 the period of the Reformation, and which has manifested 
 itself at all the great epochs of Christianity, can hardly, 
 even by the most ardent admirer of the present time, be 
 said to be now equally general. And if faith has failed, 
 the shortcoming is important ; for it is in faith that all the 
 mighty deeds of nations are performed. But within the 
 last fifty years, there has been a general and unmistakable , 
 improvement in this respect. 
 
 There is another defect in modern Protestantism, which 
 is to me very evident, and which is of a serious, nay, if suf- 
 
296 CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 
 fered to prevail, of a fatal kind. Protestantism has shown 
 a strong tendency to recede from the completeness of what 
 I may call the Reformation idea of truth ; to break up that 
 association of political and social with religious truth, which, 
 with the Reformers, was indissoluble. The men who were 
 in the van of Protestantism in the seventeenth century 
 were the men to whom, under God, the world owes Anglo- 
 Saxon freedom. The full development of the idea. of in- 
 tellectual freedom, of toleration, came somewhat later. But 
 there has recently been displayed a tendency to lose more 
 or less partially, more or less perfectly, both the one and the 
 othei". This has been occasioned by certain remarkable 
 circumstances, in the general history of the last hundred 
 years. Error and falsehood have, during that time, in two 
 conspicuous cases, assumed the name of excellence and 
 truth : and well-intentioned men have been startled from 
 the real good by alarm at the counterfeit. Milton tells us 
 that Satan, desirous to deceive Uriel the regent of the sun, 
 assumed the shape of a stripling cherub, an angel of light. 
 No doubt the subtle fiend would have adopted the sem- 
 blance of one of Uriel's well-known and trusted friends. 
 Now, supposing this whole transaction real, one is tempted 
 to ask whether, after having been once deceived, Uriel, ever 
 after, on the appearance of the angel whose shape Satan 
 had assumed, fell into a nervous shudder, and looked with 
 a suspicious, half-averted glance upon his friend. If so, his 
 case corresponded precisely with that of certain modern 
 Protestants. Freedom of judgment, searching of spirits, 
 full and untrammelled use of reason can be separated 
 neither from true Protestantism nor from true Christianity. 
 But rationalism arose and assumed the name both of Christi- 
 anity and of Protestantism. The assumption of the name 
 of Protestantism was essentially false. The Reformation 
 
CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 297 
 
 was, as I said, a return to primitive Christianity: at all 
 events, it was a religion. But the essential idea of religion 
 is bound up with faith, and it at once loses name and nat- 
 ure if it rests on reason. Rationalism, whether in its child- 
 hood in Britain, its licentious youth in France, its aspiring 
 manhood in Germany, or what is, I think, in certain re- 
 spects, its second childhood among us at this moment, has 
 been and must always be, in virtue of its central principle 
 of deducing everything from reason, not a religion but a 
 philosophy. As a philosophy, it may be good: when it 
 offers itself as a religion, it is infidelity. It has called it- 
 self, however. Protestantism, and maintained that it is only 
 a development of the Protestant principle of freedom of 
 judgment. Hereupon start up many good men and hint 
 an impeachment of freedom of judgment itself Schlegel 
 rushes into the iron embrace of infallibility and Rome. 
 Other German divines, I understand, of perhaps stronger 
 nature than Schlegel, also cower closer and closer un- 
 der authority and prescription. Among ourselves, there 
 could be pointed out indications of the same spirit. There 
 is great talk of caution, of coming prepared, of refusing to 
 hear what has not been fairly approved and stamped by or- 
 thodoxy. Now the very firmness of my opposition to ra- 
 tionalism would set me against the use of such methods to 
 combat it. The adoption of such methods is surely noth- 
 ing else than a confession that rationalism is powerful. It 
 is surely, also, in this country as weak a policy as it is an 
 unprotestant and unchristian proceeding. The young men 
 of Great Britain, I imagine, will be more apt to obey the 
 apostolic precept of holding fast what is good, by being ex- 
 horted boldly to put in force the other apostolic counsel, 
 of proving all things. Cowardice and unfairness will never 
 guard the portals of the Protestant Churches from error; 
 
298 CHABACTEKISTICS OF 
 
 but there must be an insidious moral poison insinuating it- 
 self into the mind of him who would set them there. I do 
 not say that an open and fair encounter of all forms of 
 infidelity will in no case lead to submission to it. But on 
 the other hand, who that knows the truth but will avow 
 that there lies in it a might, on a fair field, to vanquish er- 
 ror ? And whether or not, evil must not be done that good 
 may come ; Satan must not receive the right hand of fellow- 
 ship though he present himself among the sons of God. 
 
 But not only has intellectual freedom been looked at 
 somewhat askance. Civil freedom, the foil, symmetrical 
 development of all those activities which God has implanted 
 in man as a social being, was felt by the Reformers, spe- 
 cially by the Puritans of England and Scotland, to be nat- 
 urally associated with an advance to a higher moral and re- 
 ligious truth. In this they merely brought out, in their 
 own completeness, the principles which, as we saw in the 
 outset, Christianity introduced into civilization. But in the 
 last century the name of freedom was defamed by being 
 applied to Jacobinism, to wild anarchic Communism, and 
 principles destructive of civilization. The result has been, 
 not indeed to put in jeopardy that Anglo-Saxon freedom 
 which was bequeathed to us from the epoch of the Refor- 
 mation, but to introduce, into many Protestant minds, a 
 certain jealousy and apprehension of all political aspiration, 
 a certain leaning towards political repression, on the one 
 hand, and apathy, on the other ; a favor for galvanized or- 
 der and ignoble security ; a vagueness in the conception of 
 political duty. The Protestantism of such minds must be 
 sickly and one-sided, not strongly sinewed, open-faced, and 
 full-grown, as that which, at the Reformation, wedded civil 
 to religious liberty. It is altogether too high an honor con- 
 ferred uj)on falsehood, to permit it to make us dread truth ! 
 
CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 299 
 
 I am profoundly impressed with the idea that the com- 
 paratively shrunken and sectional look, which attaches to 
 our modern Protestantism, is traceable, in great measure, 
 to the causes I have now endeavored to penetrate. Prot- 
 estantism is no longer in possession of the broad fields of 
 political life, and much of the intellectual activity of the 
 age, much of the dominant literature of Protestant na- 
 tions, has cast off its pervading influence. Once more 
 Protestantism must assay the great Christian duty of mak- 
 ing all things new. 
 
 But there are aspects of modem Christian civilization 
 which are of a highly encouraging character. In the first 
 place, as in Germany the rationalistic infidelity was carried 
 to its highest development, so in Germany it has been met 
 by a counter-revolution, which has long been in process, 
 and of which the perfect triumph is becoming day by day 
 more certain. The modern evangelical school of German 
 theology is one of the most cheering and glorious specta- 
 cles presented in the whole course of Church history. In^ 
 fidelity has been made, in the wisdom of Providence, to 
 serve what seems its natural end, to lead to a more accurate 
 study of Scripture, than was ever before engaged in ; and 
 to broaden and deepen the foundations of all the defences of 
 the faith. Had there been no Lessing, Paulus, or Bam-, 
 there might have been no Neander, no Tholuck, no Hcng- 
 stenberg, no Schaff, no Stier. And, let me; ask, if these 
 men had simply stopped their ears, and denounced without 
 answering rationalism, would the result have been so con- 
 sistent with the honor of man, or the glory, or the law, of 
 God ? The use of reason turned to shame the worship of 
 reason. 
 
 But next, Christianity has in these last times once more 
 vindicated its true essence by embodying itself in philan-. 
 
300 CHARACTEKlSTieS OF 
 
 thropy, by again breathing in a soft south wind of love 
 over the face of civilization. Among the fathers of the 
 early Church, the saints and martyrs of the olden time, 
 might have walked the holy Howard. His influence is still 
 amidst us, working in each of those countless schemes of 
 beneficence by which our social evils are one by one at- 
 tacked, which have always been blessed in their promoters, 
 and which will, I believe, be more and more blessed in their 
 objects. "With the name of Howafd, among the fathers 
 of Christian philanthropy, may be associated that of Wil- 
 berforce. The same spirit which put an end to the agoniz- 
 ing atrocities of our prison system put an end to slavery 
 in the possessions of Great Britain. Appropriate work! 
 The Christianity that brought life to the gladiator in those 
 first centuries brought liberty to the slave in these last. And 
 whether the deed was fully and consistently carried out or 
 no by Great Britain, it cannot, I think, be doubted that, in 
 the emancipation of Britain's slaves, the death-blow was 
 given to the universal system. 
 
 Last of all, among those cheering and vital symptoms of 
 modern Christianity to which I can refer, our attention is 
 claimed for the modern missionary movement. What 
 Christian heart does not beat high, at the thought of that 
 mild but piercing radiance of divine light, now glimmering 
 visibly along all the borders of heathenism? The thick 
 clouds are edged with white, and seem, after the long night, 
 to be stirring on the mountain-side, as if to collect themselves 
 for finally rolling up, and opening the valleys to the day. 
 It has been said that " beside every group of wild men in 
 the ethnological department of the Crystal Palace, the 
 Missionary could place a contrasting group of their Chris- 
 tianized countrymen." Again, " The Old Book, the Book 
 of our liedeemer's gift and our fathers' faith .... has 
 
CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 301 
 
 been gradually ascending ; taking to itself new tongues, 
 spreading open its page in every land, printed in Chinese 
 camps, pondered in the Red man's wigwam, sought after 
 in Benares, a school-book in Feejee, eagerly bought in 
 Constantinople, loved in the kloofs of Kafirland ; while the 
 voices of the dead from Assyria to Egypt have been lifted 
 up to bear it witness." Among the millions of India, there 
 is a listening and a surmise ; amid the strange fascinating 
 roar of civilization, advancing- from the West, is heard the 
 deep, still music of the Gospel; a quivering here and there, 
 a faint ruddy flush as of life, seems to announce that the 
 swoon of superstition, unbroken for a thousand years, may 
 ere long pass away. The all-important preliminary victory 
 that had to be won over anti-Christian prejudice on the 
 part of the new lords of India is no longer doubtful. The 
 change which has taken place in the way in which Indian 
 statesmen regard, on the one side, the Christian Missionary, 
 and, on the other, the old superstitions, cannot be better 
 indicated than by citing the words in which it has been ex- 
 pressed by one who is in every way qualified to speak, be- 
 ing himself a gi'eat Indian stateman : — I mean Mr. Macau- 
 lay. In his speech upon the Gates of Somnauth, Mr. Ma- 
 caulay spoke as follows : — " Some Englishmen, who have 
 held high office in India, seem to have thought that the 
 only religion which was not entitled to toleration and re- 
 spect was Christianity. They regarded every Christian 
 Missionary with extreme jealousy and disdain ; and they 
 suffered the most atrocious crimes, if enjoined by the Hin- 
 doo superstition, to be perpetrated in open day. It is la- 
 mentable to think how long after our power was firmly 
 established in Bengal, we, grossly neglecting, the first and 
 plainest duties of the civil magistrate, suffered the prac- 
 tices of infanticide and suttee to continue unchecked. We 
 
 SECOND SEKIES. 26 
 
302 CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 
 decorated the temples of the false gods. We provided the 
 dancing girls. We gilded and painted the images to which 
 our ignorant subjects bowed down. We repaired and em- 
 bellished the car under the wheels of which crazy devotees 
 flung themselves at every festival to be crushed to death. 
 We sent guards of honor to escort pilgrims to the places 
 of worship. We actually made oblations at the shrines of 
 idols. All this was considered, and is still considered by 
 some prejudiced Anglo-Indians of tCe old school as pro- 
 found policy. I believe that there never was so shallow, 
 so senseless a policy. We gained nothing by it. We low- 
 ered ourselves in the eyes of those whom we meant to flat- 
 ter. We led them to believe that we attached no impor- 
 tance to the diflference between Christianity and heathen, 
 ism. Yet how vast that difference is! I altogether ab- 
 stain from alluding to topics which belong to divines. I 
 speak merely as a politican anxious for the morality and 
 for the temporal well-being of society. And, so speaking, 
 I say that to countenance the Brahminical idolatry, and to 
 discountenance that religion which has done so much to 
 promote justice, and mercy, and freedom, and arts, and sci- 
 ences, and good government, and domestic happiness; 
 which has struck off the chains of the slave, which has 
 mitigated the horrors of war, which has raised women 
 from servants and playthings into companions and friends ; 
 is to commit high treason against humanity and civiliza- 
 tion." Still farther, east than India, China has heard tidings 
 of a true celestial empire, from the lips of apostolic men, 
 who have cast behind them all the refinement and social 
 pleasure of Europe, as Paul cast behind him the philosophy 
 of Greece and the lordliness of Rome. Beautiful is this 
 return of the Christian morning from the West to the East. 
 Christianity does not now go forth against heathenism, as 
 
CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 303 
 
 in the old crusading days, clad in visible armor and bearing 
 an earthly sword. It steps gently like the dawn, its only 
 weapons the shafts of light, wearing the breast-plate of 
 faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. 
 Clothed thus in the armor of God, if faith does not waver 
 and love continues to burn, it will conquer. 
 
IX. 
 
 THE MODERN UNIVERSITY; 
 
 OR, 
 
 EDUCATION m THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 Since Charlemagne, with the instinct of a true prince, 
 set himself to re-illume the torch of knowledge in the 
 West, then faint and flickering as if about to expire, while 
 it still cast a fair radiance in the East, in the golden prime 
 of good Haroun Alraschid ; since sallow monks, in dim 
 cloisters, chid the lagging hours in strains of ancient elo- 
 quence and song ; even since Pope Nicholas, in the centre 
 of literature and art at Bologna, signed the charter of the 
 University of remote Glasgow; — what a change has passed 
 over the face of this western world ! So complete, so pro- 
 found, so pervasive has it been, that our very words have 
 changed their meaning, and bear the same relation to their 
 former selves, that the crest of the latest cotton lord bears 
 to the banner of the old crusader. Might we not, for in- 
 stance, puzzle ourselves not a little, in the attempt to rec- 
 oncile the significance belonging to the term University, 
 in modem times, with that it once bore? The meaning of 
 the word was, at its origin, simple and definite. There had 
 been schools in various parts of Europe. Padua, Naples, 
 Salamanca, Lyons, to mention no more, could each boast a 
 
EDUCATION IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 305 
 
 seminary. But the range of subjects over which their in- 
 structions extended was limited. In the thirteenth century 
 the school of Paris embraced, for the first time, within its 
 cuiTiculum, the whole circle of the sciences ; and, appeal- 
 ing to its studium universale, challenged for itself the name 
 of University. The sphere of its influence without was 
 universal, no less than the range of its subjects within. Its 
 decrees afieeted the deliberations of monarchs. The awe 
 of it lay upon peoples, for it was one of the guardian powr 
 ers of the faith, and its breath lit the flames of persecution. 
 It was the centre of attraction for all who, not desirous of 
 immuring themselves in monasteries, yet felt the fascina^ 
 tion of intellectual light. It alone afibrded access to books : 
 and in this lay, perhaps, its greatest power, its noblest dis- 
 tinction. The character of universality and soleness thus 
 eminently belonged to the great school of Paris, and it was 
 well named a University. But can any modern Univer- 
 sity, expressly so called, vindicate to itself a similar charr 
 acter ? Can any Sorbonne now consign its victims to the 
 flames ? Can any four walls now inscribe upon their portal 
 that within them alone burns the lamj) of knowledge ? 
 Did not the University change altogether the relation in 
 which it stood to civilization, when it lost that august and 
 all-important monopoly, the monopoly of books ? 
 
 It may look pedantic, but yet derive countenance from 
 the aspect of things, to say that the modern University, if 
 we will insist upon confining the word to a significance 
 akin to that it once possessed, has now extended itself over 
 the whole world of civilization. The old walls, beaten 
 down by daring men, conspicuous among them John Faust 
 and Martin Luther, have permitted the light they contained 
 to stream out over the world, kindling ilUumination in a 
 thousand places. The old University is still here, but it 
 
 26* 
 
306 THE MODERN UNIVERSITY; OR. 
 
 does no more than somewhat concentrate the rays it for- 
 merly monopolized. It is a class-room, not a University. 
 Knowledge is dispensed in all quarters, with little or no ref- 
 erence to it. If the University must retain the character 
 of universality, — if the University is the sole seat of knowl- 
 edge, — where can we draw the furrow to mark its present 
 boundary ? 
 
 All this, it may be exclaimed, is commonplace, and the 
 iteration of a truism might be somewhat more concise. 
 But it will not be amiss to remember, that truism is just 
 the raw material from which truth — practically available 
 in clearing the ideas and dissipating error — is obtained. 
 Truism in itself is useless enough : you do not consider in- 
 genuous youth profoundly instructed when they are famil- 
 iar with the axioms of mathematics ; but when Newton, 
 skilfully availing himself of geometrical truisms, j)roclaims 
 a truth, at which the Universe opens to the mind's eye in 
 endless perspective, ^s if again the word had been spoken, 
 and mental had succeeded to physical light, do you not ac- 
 knowledge a certain virtue in those same original truisms? 
 Is it impossible, to illustrate a small thing by a very great, 
 that we, setting ourselves on some coigne of vantage, and 
 taking in our hand, by way of spyglass, this truism about 
 the unprecedented universality of the modern University, 
 may have some glimpses, both into the nature of education 
 in our day, and into the particular functions of what still 
 (■nils itself, distinctively, a University ? 
 
 The class-rooms of our modern University, of which, as 
 we said, the express seat of learning is one, are very nu- 
 merous. In every reading room, we see such a class-room. 
 Every jiublic library is another. Every Mechanics' Insti- 
 tute is a third. The British Museum must be reckoned 
 among our class-rooms. The exhibition of 1851 was for a 
 
EDUCATION IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 307 
 
 season a ■well-freqnented lecture room. The American Con- 
 gress and the British Parliament are each departments of 
 this extensive Institution. 
 
 Who are our professors? They are very numerous. 
 Their uniforms, their emoluments, their subjects, their 
 modes of tuition, are marked by the boundless diversity of 
 nature. One great class of professors have been styled 
 "able editors" — perhaps with a touch of irony. Stand- 
 ing in a relation to these, in some respects, it may be, anal- 
 ogous to that in which the tutors In the old University 
 stood to the occupants of chairs, are certain functionaries 
 called reporters. These are seen to advantage in a gallery, 
 scrimp enough of room, overlooking the benches of the 
 British House of Commons. They have in general large 
 heads, and the look of not being apt to be carried off their 
 legs by surges of parliamentary eloquence. Both the edi- 
 torial professors and their assistants have a number of stu- 
 dents so prodigiously great, that it would be- absurd to 
 think of collecting them under one roof. So the instruc- 
 tion is conveyed by means of a singular and highly ingen- 
 ious mechanism, invented by the John Faust previously 
 mentioned. With the aid of this mechanism, vulgarly 
 called a printing-press, the teachings of these learned profes- 
 sors and their tutors are brought within the reach of mill- 
 ions, and every household becomes a class-room. They 
 compel into their service the intellect, theoretical and prac- 
 tical, of whole Parliaments and Cabinets. The- speeches 
 in which honorable members condense the study and re- 
 flection devoted by each to his chosen and particular sub- 
 ject, it is theirs to bring into direct communication with 
 the national mind. The practical education, which may 
 consist in observing and considering the relations of the 
 kingdoms of the world, as discussed in Parliament and 
 
308 THE MODERN UNIVERSITY; OB, 
 
 Cabinet, — the mental influence which may reside in the 
 mere contemplation, with a comprehensiveness and accu- 
 racy not to have been dreamed . of in former ages of con- 
 temporary world-history, — they are the men who dispense. 
 Did they confine their discussions to the relations that sub- 
 sisted between Rome and Carthage, between Athens and 
 Sparta, they would run no risk of lacking recognition as 
 engaged, in University instruction. But as it is only the 
 commonplace present, of which they take the lineaments, — 
 commonplace as the soil of this present Europe, bearing in 
 it the dust of all former generations, the promise of all taU 
 ure haiTests, — they are apt to be thought not at all on a 
 level with gowned professors. Yet what were all the might 
 and power of the Sorbonne, to the influence they now 
 wield over the destinies of men ? 
 
 But ought we not to assign a separate place to those 
 modern dispensers of knowledge, who are technically called 
 publishers? These have vastly increased the number of 
 pupils, and daringly extended the range of subjects, in our 
 modern University. They also use the mechanism pre- 
 viously alluded to. From all corners of the earth, they 
 bring together stoi-es of knowledge, and pour them out be- 
 fore their students. By a flight equally wide and sUent, 
 they pass along the course of time, snatch from every cent- 
 ury the treasure it broods over in the gathering twilight of 
 antiquity, and expose the precious horde to view in aH thor- 
 oughfares. No man can resist their summons, if they only 
 command him to teach. The Humboldts, the Leibnitzes, 
 the Laplaces, the Newtons, the Galens, the Strabos, of sci- 
 ence;; the Macaulays, the Gibbons, the Humes, the Carlyles, 
 the Hallams, the Xenophons, the Thucydideses, of history ; 
 the Wordsworths, the Miltons, the Shakspeares, the Homers, 
 of poetry ; in a word, the great speakers, writers, singers 
 
EDUqATION IK NINETEENTH CENTURY. 309 
 
 of all ages, travel, under their patronage, over all shires, 
 penetrate into all dwellings, and deliver, night and day, their 
 courses of professional instruction. Through the exertions 
 of such men as, say, Henry G. Bohn, every one who can, 
 by any effort of parsimony, muster a shilling a week, nay, 
 a shilling a month, to be employed for literary purposes, 
 who has the necessary intellect, and a certain measure of 
 what also is requisite, leisure, may form for himself, a very 
 accurate notion as to what the past actually was, and how 
 far what learned men have been telling him, of the great 
 authors and actors of antiquity, may be depended upon. 
 There is a certain intimacy with an author, which only a 
 knowledge of the language in which he writes can impart. 
 The mode of expression and the mode of thought are so 
 closely allied, and the former is so graphically indicative 
 of the character of an epoch, that whosoever would dra- 
 matically present to his imagination any period of the 
 world's history, will do well resolutely to urge his way to 
 an acquaintance with its language. Who can imagine that 
 all the authors whom Gibbon marshals on his page, stepped 
 along with exactly the same superb strut as the historian 
 of the Decline and Fall ? As translated by him, they all do 
 so. But this by no means invalidates the assertion, that the 
 contribution of abstract thought or concrete beauty, which 
 any ancient philosopher or poet made to the stores of the 
 race, can be estimated, with substantial correctness, through 
 translation. On this point, one fact is conclusive. The 
 faith of Christendom rests on translation. Nor has it ever 
 been denied that, whatever their individual defects, the 
 vernacular Bibles convey, on the whole, a correct idea of 
 the meaning and intent of the original writers. Though ig- 
 norant of Greek or Latin, the poor man of the present day 
 may hear very distinctly the great voices of Greece and 
 
810 THE MODERJf UXIVEBSITT; OR, 
 
 Rome. He may judge for himself of the nature and range 
 of ancient knowledge, as exhibited, — so the learned inform 
 him, — in its final consummation and perfect form by Aris- 
 totle. He may follow Plato in his loftiest flights, and learn 
 what was the highest pitch of spiritualism and purity at- 
 tained by ancient philosophy. He may form for himself 
 a conception of those wild and gloomy terrors, which he 
 has so often heard connected with the name of ^schylus. 
 He may admire the chaste fervor of Sophocles. He may 
 enjoy the light gracefulness and ease of Livy. He may 
 catch a glimpse of Cicero's grave pomposity, as he elabor- 
 ates, point by point, his stately argument. He may even, 
 although this is more doubtful, have some idea of the ex- 
 haustless vivacity, the hearty, irrejaressible, garrulousness, 
 the pre-Raphaelite minuteness and dashing vigor, the fiery 
 vividness and intensity, of old Homer. 
 
 "We suspect there were no functionaries connected with 
 the ancient University, exactly correspondent to those lect- 
 urers, more or less professional, who now, numbered by the 
 thousand, perambulate at least Great Britain and America. 
 These are the irregulars of the army of knowledge, the 
 Cossacks, the Bashi-Bazouks, the guerilla fighters. The 
 most striking characteristic of their efibrts is, probably, 
 their variety, including a degree of excellence as well as 
 range of subject. There is, perhaps, no stage of stupidity 
 definable, short of express idiocy, at which it becomes im- 
 possible to compose a lecture, to which an audience may be 
 got to listen for an hour. On the other hand, Carlyle, Rus- 
 kin, Thackeray, have taken rank among our public lecturers, 
 and, while doing so, have made most important and valuable 
 additions to our literature. Perhaps those old knights of eru- 
 dition, who used, like admirable Crichtoun, to traverse Eu- 
 rope in the Middle Ages, challenging the learned, at e^cb 
 
EDUCATION IN NINKTEENTH CENTURY. 311 
 
 ■ University town, to dispute with them, made the nearest 
 approach to our modern lecturers. 
 
 This general glance at the world-wide modem Univer- 
 sity reveals a prospect, which seems to us, on the whole, 
 cheering. Viewed in one very important light, educational 
 systems, and even political constitutions, have it for their 
 object to put tools into the hand that can use them, to en- 
 able those specially gifted to speak or to do, to obtain an 
 audience or a field. This object is now, in great measure, 
 achieved. The poorest child is taught to read ; and once 
 genius is in these days taught to read, what is it which it 
 may not know ? "We have heard, it may be, just long 
 enough, of mute, inglorious Miltons. In no age of the 
 world, can such have been very rife. Will and power gen- 
 erally find or make a way for themselves ; it is an integi-al 
 part of their nature to do so. Is it not said that the feeble 
 mushroom will force its way to the light, upheaving stone 
 pavement ? Do we not see, every spring, the frail blade 
 piercing the rude earth ? Nature, rigidly economical in all 
 her ways, does not lightly throw from her the inscrutable 
 gift of genius. There never yet fell the smallest grain of 
 wheat from the great granary of nature ; far less can she 
 afibrd to lose a Milton, or strike any like him mute. If fac- 
 ulty has not been originally given, no education will sup- 
 ply it. If genius exists, an awakening voice is all that is 
 required. Who is so degraded that he cannot now hear 
 such a voice ? If, by some magical exercise of vision, one 
 could perceive, beneath the tattered uniform of a little 
 crossing-sweeper, the faculties of a Bacon, a Newton, a 
 Watt, he might confidently predict that that crossing- 
 sweeper would one day stand before kings. 
 
 But supposing there were among our working classes, a 
 few, or not a few, mute Miltons, are we, therefore, to con- 
 
312 THE MODERN UNIVERSITY; OK, 
 
 aider them inglorious, are we to pronounce them unre- 
 warded ? Though it is one grand result of the general dif- 
 fusion of knowledge, that it secures to society talents which 
 would otherwise have been lost, are we to consider distinction 
 or wealth the highest reward for which working men ought 
 to look in pursuing knowledge? The reverse is emphati- 
 cally the truth. No man has risen to a conception of the 
 peculiar dignity belonging to him as the possessor of mind, 
 no man has breathed the atmosphere of the poet, the phi- 
 losopher, the scholar, who cannot find, in the invigoration 
 and expansion of his own faculties, and the contemplation 
 of truth and beauty in themselves, the loftiest inducements 
 and rewards of study. The ambition to improve one's po- 
 sition in the world is honorable and salutary ; it may hap- 
 pen, too, that a mechanical profession has been originally 
 wrong chosen, and that an ascent to competence or opu- 
 lence is possible only througK its abandonment and an en- 
 trance upon literary pursuits. But as a rule, it may be laid 
 down, that self-culture ought to be dissociated from the 
 idea of material advancement, and not contemplated as a 
 means of success. We are deeply convinced that the 
 aspirations after, knowledge which pervade our working 
 classes are largely vitiated by this taint of selfishness, by 
 low material ambition, whether directed chiefly to notori- 
 ety or to pecuniary profit. To be is in all senses better than 
 to seem ; better, also, than to have. To a true nian, fame 
 is valuable precisely in so far as he can solemnly append 
 to it his own signature. Biassed as we are apt to be, in 
 forming a judgment of ourselves, difficult as it is to survey 
 ourselves and our lives in their bare, objective reality, the 
 approbation of his fellows will always be an assistance to 
 a man who can turn it to account. Although every one 
 ought to retain a light of appeal against the public opinion, 
 
EDUCATION IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 313 
 
 and though. that opinion is, perhaps, never quite correct as 
 to any man, it invariably contains or indicates some impor- 
 tant truth, and eiTS totally in no case. Renown may thus, 
 add substantially to a man's happiness, by affirming and es- 
 tablishing his self-respect. But the mere exaltations upon 
 other men's shoulders, the mere being stared at by foolish 
 thousands, — this, no man of any strength of character will 
 care for, this only the vain, the prurient, the feeble man wiU 
 regard. Nor is the attainment of a high position in respect 
 of worldly possessions necessary to happiness. One rank in 
 life may be, in some respects, better adapted to yield enjoy- 
 ment than another ; but it will be found that severely im- 
 partial nature works such strange enchantment, by her un- 
 noticed ministers, custom and habit, that there is more of 
 resemblp.nce between all ranks than of diiference between 
 any. Is it in cruelty or in kindness, that the laboi-er is just 
 as warm under his fustian jacket, as the duke under his er- 
 mine ; that the carriage, in which the millionaire lolls to-day, 
 is not in the least softer or more pleasant to his limbs, than 
 the cab in which, venturing on a bold stroke for once, he 
 went with his young wife on a holiday excursion twenty 
 years ago ; that the dinner eaten in the shade of the hedge 
 in the interval of labor, is no whit less savory or satisfying, 
 than the turtle and champagne, consumed beneath the blaze 
 of lamps and to the sound of music ? Doubtless it is in 
 kindness, and none the less so that just enough of bcnefi-_ 
 cent delusion is permitted to secure the upward ambition, 
 the striving attitude, of all ranks. The toiler will always 
 think of the padded coach as supporting such aching bones 
 as those to which he feels it would be such luxury; the 
 hungry peasant will always think of rich dainties, as en- 
 joyed with that keen appetite which makes his own crust as 
 sweet, if he knew it, as the rich man's delicacies. But at 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 27 
 
314 THE MODERN 0N IVEESITY; OR, 
 
 all events, we may, on the whole, pronounce, that what is 
 generally understood as success is in no degree essential to 
 happiness; that, while real wants are supplied, and ac- 
 quired wants are few, a man is reasonably sure of attaining 
 the common level of human enjoyment. What, then, are 
 those other rewards, beyond fame and fortune, which at- 
 tend noble self-culture ? They are ill to define ; they are 
 of those things not, seemingly, intended for minute defini- 
 tion : but it is not well with him who can form no idea of 
 them. So far, indeed, it is easy to see. The natural activ- 
 ity of every faculty is productive of pleasure. The habit, 
 therefore, of exercising the reason in thought, the imagina- 
 tion in conception, the aesthetic sensibility in the perception 
 of beauty, the memory, even, in storing up facts, will afibrd 
 a most delicate and intense pleasure. By means of books, 
 a man makes himself at home in all times and all countries. 
 "Whatever there is in him of curiosity, of sensibility, may 
 be gratified. Aided by imagination and sympathy, he may 
 go round the world in his arm-chair. But beyond all this, 
 which belongs to the region of simple psychological fact, 
 there is a loftier reward attending the highest self-cultui'e, 
 not by any means definable. Does not an inextinguishable 
 instinct tell a man, that by becoming more powerful in in- 
 tellect, more true in feeling, moi-e wide in knowledge, he 
 gains a step in the order of being, to which all the distinc- 
 tion of earthly nobilities is but dust and tinsel ? Is there 
 not an instinct, imperishable as our immortality, assuring 
 us that there will one day be a grand equalization, re-ad- 
 justment rather, of ranks, in accordance witli the patents 
 of nobility from Almighty God, possessed by eacli ? Yes, 
 in the bare fact that I become a greater and better man, 
 larger in faculty and knowledge, more fitted to comprehend 
 
EDUCATION IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 315 
 
 this universe and glorify ray God, lies the noblest incite- 
 ment and the proudest reward of study. 
 
 It is truly a stirring thought, that the man who bends to 
 his work in the shoj.) or the furrow can now catch sight, as 
 if beckoning him to join them, of the great of all time; 
 that the modern University stands open and cannot again 
 be closed. It cannot be reasonably doubted that the gen- 
 eral standard of intelligence among the broader orders is 
 higher in these ages than it ever was before. The home of 
 the modern workman, with its newspaper and its shelf of 
 books, is a very different place from the serf's hut of the 
 olden time. Not the shallowest, depend upon it, of our 
 itinerant lecturers, but casts abroad seeds of thought that 
 here and there take root. The instances of self-culture, 
 successful in the most obvious sense, furnished by recent 
 history, would fill a library. 
 
 But we must not allow ourselves to fall into the error of 
 supposing that we have yet stated the whole truth, or at least 
 that there is no qualification, of an important kind, to be 
 made. The modern University is extensive as we have 
 seen, and stands with its gates wide open. But does ca- 
 pacity to enter correspond to the comprehensiveness of the 
 invitation given ? If the healing waters of knowledge are 
 abundant, can all men drink of them ? To listen to plat- 
 form oratory, one woidd be inclired to say that the ques- 
 tion is to be met by an unqualified affirmative. But a more 
 careful consideration reveals the fact that, however tlie mod- 
 em University may stand, in regard to the number of its 
 professors and students, it can bear no comparison with the 
 old, in reference to the degree of scholarship to which it 
 can bring its children. We perfect our sciences, of astron- 
 omy, of history, of politics, filling library after library ; we 
 gather together the flowerage of poetry from the Vedas of 
 
316 THE MODERN UNIVERSITY; OR, 
 
 the Ganges to the Sagas of Norway; we heap up, tier after 
 tier, the philosophical systems in which men have attempted 
 to think out the secret of the world : and having made this 
 great treasure-house accessible to all, we are ready to ex- 
 claim that the world at length is taught, that ignorance can 
 exist no longer. More, we feel, we cannot do ; and it is 
 almost cruel to tell us that our effort is to a great extent in 
 vain. Yet the stern fact is even so. 
 
 The physical expansion of modern times — the extension 
 of man's dominion over nature, in all its powers and in all 
 its regions, which has marked the recent period, — has, 
 while adding to the material resources of the race, contribu- 
 ted also, in the strictest sense, to its intellectual advance- 
 ment. Every practical art has a scientific, a theoretic side. 
 Navigation improves geography ; commerce promotes nat- 
 ural history ; mining and railway cutting advance geology. 
 But inasmuch as man is capable of only so much work at 
 a time, and the labor of the hand tends to render impossi- 
 ble the proportionate labor of the brain, there can be no 
 doubt whatever that the enormous physical energy of the 
 present time acts as a counteractive to the development of 
 pure intellectual energy among the working classes. Look- 
 ing broadly, indeed, at the facts of the case, it is safe to 
 make at once the generalization, that a high state of intel- 
 lectual culture, on the part of the broadest class in any com- 
 munity, is, and must continue, an imagination. .The me- 
 chanic, the miner, the ploughman, who has to lay down 
 daily his strength and his time as the price of his daily 
 bread, can never become intellectually so cultivated as his 
 brethren of the more leisurely classes. We do not go into 
 any invectives against the mammonism of the times. We 
 are not of opinion that the working classes have less 
 time and strength left for intellectual exertion in the pres- 
 
EDUCATION IN NINETEENTH CENTUKY. 317 
 
 ent day, than they had at former periods. On the contrary, 
 it seems to us they never had so much as now. But there 
 are conditions attached to the very existence of human so- 
 ciety, under the present dispensation, which confine high 
 mental culture within certain limits. It is easy to draw 
 fanciful pictures, showing well on platforms, and so life-like 
 that even a Lord Stanley deceives by them first himself 
 and then his audience, in which the workman is exhibited, 
 after his ten hours' labor, devoting his hour or couple of 
 hours in the evening, to the pursuit of some science, to be 
 gradually and comfortably mastered. But the workman 
 himself will assure you of the simple fact, of which physi- 
 ological considerations might have pireviously convinced 
 you, that his mind, after ten hours' labor, unless of no ordi- 
 nary calibre, finds science insufierably dull, and if fit for any 
 exertion at all, falls back on novel-reading. The truth is, the 
 highly cultivated have always been, and will always remain, 
 a class. In our days, the class has widened, and it may 
 widen still more : but a class it remains and must remain. 
 There are, first, the professionally learned, those set apart 
 by the community and paid to instruct it, the occupants of 
 professorial chairs and the like. Next, there is the large 
 class of leisure, of necessity belonging to so highly devel- 
 oped a state of civilization as that of Great Britain and 
 America; the nobility of wealth and title, and the whole 
 body of large annuitants. Of this class, the better portion 
 will always signalize themselves by a love of letters. The 
 learned professions make a class by themselves, directly rep- 
 resenting a large amount of intellectual culture. We are 
 inclined to think that, among those actively engaged in 
 mercantile pursuits, the opportunities of mental cultivation 
 are not, on the whole., much above those belonging to what 
 is strictly called the working class. The merchant of Man- 
 27* 
 
318 THE MODERN UNIVERSITY; OR, 
 
 Chester or New York is, after a hard day's work, almost or 
 altogether as unfit for fresh intellectual exertion as the 
 blacksmith or carpenter. He is also, perhaps, still more apt 
 to lose his leisure hours in ostentatious, joyless, frivolous 
 festivity. His information is apt to be bounded by his daily 
 newspaper. The rule begins to apply to his case, which ex- 
 tends over the whole working class, that the man who is 
 by nature uncommonly endowed, whose mental organiza- 
 tion is of extraordinary robustness, will overcome physical 
 exhaustion, improve the fleeting hour, enter for himself the 
 great modern University, and attain a high standard of 
 mental culture ; while his brethren in general are capable 
 of but slight mental toil, and will enjoy but little mental 
 pleasure. The Hugh Miller, his hands bleeding, his bones 
 aching, with jiutting stone over stone in the wet drain, will 
 find relaxation, comfort, and the means of advancement, in 
 the scientific or philosophical treatise; the masons who 
 toiled by his side during the day wUl drowse and nod by 
 his side, over the evening fire. 
 
 A consideration of those conditions of physical labor, by 
 which the workman is prevented from availing himself of 
 the stores of knowledge now at his command, is fitted to 
 incite us to lend all aid and encouragement, so far as is con- 
 sistent with the requirements, scientifically classified and 
 understood, of the social system, to the efforts made to put 
 a larger amount of time at his disposal. Of all the ai-gu- 
 ments to be urged in support of their objects, by those 
 associations which set themselves to secure a weekly half- 
 holiday, a diminution of the daily hours of labor, a release 
 of children under a certain age from all physical toil, 
 and so on, the most powerful is that which beai-s reference 
 to the abundance of materials for self-culture provided for 
 the working man, but which he, shut in by the ii'on fences 
 
EDUCATION IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 319 
 
 of toil, cnnnot, in any proportionate measure, enjoy. The 
 ■work of the world must be done. It will not be done with- 
 out the homy hand and the sweating brow. But it is one 
 of the grandest aims of civilization, so far to relax the inten- 
 sity of jihysical labor, that mental labor, with its attendant 
 mental joys, will become more and more possible. It is a 
 poor and pusillanimous political economy, which will alto- 
 gether sacrifice the mental interests of the community to 
 the physical ; which will shrink from continuing the child 
 at school until a foundation for self-culture is thoroughly 
 laid, or which will fear to insist that it remains, during life, 
 at least possible, that a superstructure be raised. 
 
 And now, before finally quitting our coigne of vantage, 
 let us have a single look at the old University. Though 
 now but a class-room, it has by no means ceased to have 
 important functions. In the olden time, it was its part to 
 nurse the future. But for its fostering care, infant knowl- 
 edge might have pined and died. But the babe waxed in 
 strength, and went abroad, proud in acquirement, boundless 
 in ambition, in need of no further nursing, the full-grown, 
 brawny Present. The University, which had been his cra- 
 dle, could no longer be his dwelling. But the Past, an old 
 decrepit crone, but of great wisdom, and which the world 
 ought not readily to let die, turned into the vacant halls. The 
 University became the protector and preserver of the Past, 
 and the dispenser of its old-world sapience. The Univer- 
 sities in these days guard the books of the sybil ; they guar- 
 antee to the public that the treasures of antiquity are safe ; 
 and they give certification of reasonable correctness in that 
 translation, through which alone men in general will pos- 
 sess themselves of the thought of former times. 
 
 But this is not their sole use. They are, so to speak, a 
 standing indication of what education, in the highest sense, 
 
520 THE MODERN UNIVERSITY; OR, 
 
 must always be. The sermon in their old stones is this, 
 that a certain separation from the stream of general activ- 
 ity, a certain calm and concentration, a certain deliberation 
 and method, are necessary to intellectual culture. "The 
 grand school-master," says Carlyle, " is practice ; " and if, in 
 using the word education, we had no special reference to 
 thought as distinguished from action, we should not hesitate 
 to affirm his remark. But by the general consent of man- 
 kind, the word is, on the whole, appropriated to that train- 
 ing which results specially in the knowledge of old truth, 
 or the discovery of new, which fits out the scholar and 
 thinker, as distinguished from the warrior, the merchant, 
 the politician. And in order to be educated in this sense, 
 in order to attain the power, of viewing effects in their 
 causes, of embracing multitudinous facts in broad general- 
 ized views, of realizing past times and men in clear imagi- 
 native distinctness, of reaching the unchanging, in truth 
 and beauty, beneath that garb which has varied in every 
 age, the calm represented by University life is indispensa^ 
 ble. Of course, the mightiest men will prove their sover- 
 eignty by triumphing over all rules. A Shakspeare shows 
 you the present, laughing, fighting, dancing, working, weep- 
 ing, with life in every line of the countenance ; yet the 
 wealth of the whole past, the perennial truth and beauty 
 of all time, are in his picture. And he drew that picture 
 for the Globe Theatre, perhaps in brief moments snatched 
 from merriment and the Mermaid Tavern. But the gen- 
 eral fact is sure ; and the stately old University must ever 
 remain to us, to proclaim that the atmosphere of study is 
 an atmosphere of silence. It is an emblem of the still- 
 ness of thought, amid the tumult and haste of action. 
 
 For all that is said, on platforms and elsewhere, in these 
 times, on the subject of self-culture, the matter is, by no 
 
EDUCATIOK IN NINETEENTH CENTURY. 321 
 
 means, easy of discussion. The present is a time of bound- 
 less possibility, but the perils and temptations to which the 
 students are exposed may also be said to be boundless. If 
 there never was a time — and surely there never was — 
 when a powerful intellect, carefully, assiduously, deter- 
 minedly applied, could do more, there never, also, was a 
 time, when severe toil was more necessary, or when airange- 
 ment, selection, sagacity, were less to be dispensed with. 
 Most earnestly would one say to him who, in the nineteenth 
 century, desires to educate himself, Beware of seeking for 
 entertainment, and insisting on the conjunction of amuse- 
 ment with instruction. The goddess of wisdom, old Pal- 
 las Athene, was a stern and martial goddess ; she wore not 
 the light scarf of the Naiad, nor courted the graces of the 
 Paphian Queen ; on her head was a helmet, on her brow 
 the austerity of truth. She required a pure and total al- 
 leigance, and wisdom and knowledge are apt always to 
 do so. There are some laws which do not vary ; and the 
 tough sinews of the Norwegian pine will knit themselves 
 together on the plains of Hindostan, before strength of 
 character and depth of knowledge are attained without 
 severe exertion. "Difficulty," said Burke, "is a severe in- 
 structor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental 
 guardian and legislator, who knows us better than we know 
 ourselves, as he loves us better too. Pater ipse colendi hand 
 facilem esse viani voluit" 
 
X. 
 
 THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 
 
 In no age of the world were startling novelties trans- 
 muted into commonplapes, and paradoxes changed into tru- 
 isms, so speedily as that in which we live. This remark is 
 itself a truism, and requires, therefore, no proof or illustra- 
 tion. But it may not be altogether so trite to observe, that 
 if these novelties acquire a speedy currency, they are apt, 
 from the very fact, to retain their precise original form, with 
 the exact measure of truth, half-truth, or mere plausibility, 
 they at first embodied. An age of travelling is an age of 
 a thousand acquaintanceships and few friendships. You 
 see a face, you enter into chat, you become in a few hours 
 familiar with accent and expression, but next day your 
 companion takes a different route, and you part for ever. 
 The intimate and sympathizing knowledge, the gradually- 
 woven and well-tested bonds of feeling and association, the 
 habitual regard mellowing more and more into affection, 
 which are the characteristics of friendship, cannot so origi- 
 nate. We imagine that our railway-train acquaintance- 
 ships have their i^arallel in our intellectual world : the faces 
 of truths are seen, but their hearts remain hidden ; they 
 glance past us, lea'ving, it may be, the recollection of their 
 outward form, but seldom embraced with thorough and 
 
THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 323' 
 
 earnest comprehension. As in the other case, too, there is 
 an extreme and perilous likelihood that the homely or the 
 profound thought attract no attention, while the gilded 
 counterfeit, all smiles and plausibility, be at once and cor- 
 dially accepted. 
 
 It is a remark common among commonplace, that the 
 newspaper has altogether, or to a large extent, superseded 
 the pulpit. It was Mr. Carlyle, we think, in ' Sartor Resar- 
 tus,' who first broadly asserted the fact. 'A Preaching 
 Friar,' these are his words, ' settles himself in every village, 
 and builds a pulj^it which he calls a newspaper. There- 
 from he preaches what most momentous doctrine is in him 
 for man's salvation ; and dost not thou listen and observe?' 
 This is but the key-note of a strain which has since been 
 played with a thousand variations, but without essential al- 
 teration of a single note ; not a fresh gleam of light has, to 
 our knowledge, been shed upon the subject; the original 
 assertion has neither been questioned in itself nor pressed 
 to its consequences ; and in the meantime, in all heads and 
 over all columns, there float hazy notions of the transfer- 
 ence of priestly functions fi-om the pulpit to the press, 
 of the prophetic mission of the journalist, of the destiny of 
 the broad-sheet to regenerate the world, and so on. 
 
 We venture the assertion, that in all this there is a great, 
 amount of superficiality and mistake; that the generaliza- 
 tion by which pulpit and press are confounded is false. If 
 so, the matter may be serious. True generalization is the 
 ultimate fruit of philosophy ; false generalization is error 
 armed with tlie sword gf logic. True generalization is the 
 result of accurate induction ; the synthesis growing gradu- 
 ally out of the analysis : and on the accuracy of the pre- 
 A-ious analysis will depend the accuracy of those particu- 
 lar assertions which synthesis empowers. A false general!- 
 
324 THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 
 
 zation covers innumerable particular errors, and prevents, 
 in each case, the truth from being known. In the case be- 
 fore us, for instance, if jjreacher and journalist are converti- 
 ble terms, we cease to inquire whether their spheres of op- 
 eration, their mode of mental action, the nature of their 
 influence, and the tests by which they are to be tried, are 
 really the same or different. By classing them under one 
 appellation, we may be misinterpreting certain of the most 
 important phenomena of our time ; we may be introduc- 
 ing confusion into our entire theory of the modern social 
 development. We think it will be found not devoid of in- 
 terest, and may prove rich in suggestion, to investigate de- 
 liberately the whole matter, and endeavor to read off a few 
 of the facts and lessons in world-history, offered by the 
 present aspect of preaching and journalism. 
 
 A first glance at the subject reveals almost all that has 
 hitherto been perceived. The influence of the pulpit does 
 not bulk so largely in the public eye as it did in former ages. 
 Not to mention the time when the monastery was the re 
 treat of learning and the source of knowledge, how differ- 
 ent was the state of matters when Knox thundered against 
 Queen Mary from the pulpit of St. Giles's, or when the di- 
 vines met at Westminster ! In the whole age of the Ref- 
 ormation, the pulpit was, more or less expressly, a political 
 institution. The preacher was a politician. His words, de- 
 livered to his congregation, determined royal marriages, 
 thinned or crowded the ranks of political parties, directed 
 the movements of armies. Whatever may now be dis- 
 cussed in the leading article of a modern newspaper, was 
 then more or less directly treated of in the pulj)it. Knox, 
 it has been said, was a kind of king in Scotland ; Hender- 
 son was one of the leading statesmen of his day. The blind 
 veaeration for the clergy which had marked the ages of 
 
THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 325 
 
 Popery, was succeeded by a more reasonable deference, that 
 seemed as secure. Endowed no longer in the popular es- 
 teem with religious infallibility, the ministers could not 
 alienate that power which was the necessary result of their 
 intellectual superiority — their breadth of view and extent 
 of culture. They were the guides of public opinion. They 
 had the ear of the community. The necessary result was, 
 that they wielded indirectly a vast civil power ; that the 
 attempt to put down Knox would have been resented as we 
 should now resent an interference with the freedom of the 
 press, and that the prerogative of Charles was less power- 
 fiil than the popularity of Roundhead preachers. The 
 altered state of things is obvious. The Church has receded 
 from direct political influence, and the press has advanced 
 in towering prominence. Queen Elizabeth tuned her pul- 
 pits ; a politician of the Long Parliament hearkened dili- 
 gently for the public voice as expressed by the clergy ; a 
 modern politician trims his papers, or rather finds that it is 
 no longer possible to trim them, and takes to trimming his 
 own sails instead. It never occurs to him to ask what is 
 the burden of the discourses of Henry Melvill or Mr. Bin- 
 ney ; but he quietly endorses the mandate of The Times. 
 The Covenanting ministers have been much blamed for 
 their doings in Leslie's camp on Doon Hill before the bat- 
 tle of Dunbar; it is upon 'our own correspondents' that the 
 wrath of all who dare to be angry on the subject is poured, 
 when they look towards the Allied Camp of Sebastopol. 
 The united and resolute demand of the London press, on 
 certain subjects, no ministry can defy ; we are not sure that 
 any ministry could long defy, on an. important question of 
 general policy, the full power of The Times. The Good Re- 
 gent leaned on Knox ; Sir Robert Peel formally thanked 
 Capt. Sterling for his leading articles. To one who reads 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 28 
 
S26 THE PULPIT AND THE I'KESS. 
 
 The Times carefully during the sitting of Parliament, it 
 becomes almost startling to observe how parliamentary 
 measures are suggested, decreed, or whiffed aside, by that 
 remarkable power. It is one of our distinct political agen- 
 cies, an unforseen growth among British institutions, and 
 very singularly supplementing our constitution. Nature 
 and fact always outrun theory; a Times newspaper is too 
 much for an Abbe Sieyes. And not only by direct politi- 
 cal discussion do our newspapers and magazines govern us : 
 they afiect our whole mode of thought. Gradually spring- 
 ing out of our system of social life, they now overshadow 
 it; and it would not, perhaps, be carrying the analogy 
 too far to say, that in that gourd-shadow only stunted 
 herbs and sickly flowers will grow. But we need not ex- 
 tend these remarks. The tendency in the public mind is 
 not to underrate but to exaggerate the power of the press, 
 and as all the information necessary to our discussion is 
 patent to every readei", we are safe in assuming it in his pos- 
 session as we proceed. 
 
 The broad view we have taken indicates that first impres- 
 sion, beyond which, we have said, there has yet been no 
 progress. In general, the impression is, beyond question, 
 correct. But does it exhaust the subject? The influence 
 of the pulpit has receded from observation: has it ceased 
 to act? There are certain facts \\hieh may lead us to hesi- 
 tate before returning an answer in the afiirmative. It is clear, 
 to begin with, that the press has the lion's share of dec- 
 laration and of declamation on the subject. It is heard per- 
 petually ; it alone speaks directly on political questions ; and 
 its tendency is decided to sneer at and underrate the intel- 
 ligence and influence of the clergy. On questions of for- 
 eign policy, too, where Englishmen in general are peculiarly 
 ignorant, and in all economic discussions, the influence of 
 
THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 327 
 
 the press is paramount. But a keen observer may have 
 perceived, that there is a class of questions in connection 
 with which that influence, as exerted on Parliament, very 
 remarkably fails. These are questions which have more or 
 less a religious character. We shall instance one or two, 
 irresistibly suggestive of some other influence to counteract 
 that of journalism. 
 
 The voice of the ruling portion of the London press is 
 unanimous on the subject of the admission of the Jews to 
 Parliament. The whole of that intellectual world specially 
 represented by the press approves the measure. Yet it has 
 been lost in the Houses, and will probably continue to be 
 lost. Again, the ruling press of London demands, with im- 
 portunate unanimity, that the British Museum and the pic- 
 ture galleries be thrown open to the public on Sundays. 
 We do not think there is any probability that Parliament 
 will accede to the demand. The opening of the Crystal 
 Palace may be regarded as a separate question, and here, 
 too, there is the like unanimity on the part of the press, 
 with the like refusal on the part of Parliament.- On the 
 subject of education, the dominant London press may be 
 said to have but one opinion. The theological distinctions 
 which encumber the question are declared unworthy of dis- 
 cussion. They are made the subject of flerce and uncom- 
 promising derision. A system of national education is im- 
 portunately demanded. When you enter Parliament, the 
 scene is completely changed. The network, which before 
 seemed of dew and cobwebs, to be brushed aside with care- 
 less facility, is converted into a fence of iron. Scheme af- 
 ter scheme is proposed ; scheme after scheme is discussed ^ 
 speeches are spoken by the stricken hour, day after day, 
 week, perhaps, after week; honorable members draw upon 
 their vital energies to the shortening of their invaluable 
 
328 THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 
 
 lives ; page after page is printed on broadsheet and in blue- 
 book ; and the conclusion is — nothing ! Theological ques- 
 tions determine the issue. You are in a different atmos- 
 phere from that of the press. 
 
 What is the cause of all this ? "We believe it is, that the 
 indirect influence of the clergy is far more powerful than is 
 believed. It pervades the vast middle class. It tells in 
 elections. Not concerning itself with subjects of general 
 politics or social economy, not consciously intermeddling, 
 sa%'e in a very small and silent way, in any department of 
 politics, it exercises a mighty and penetrating influence in 
 what is perhaps the most natural, appropriate, and healthful 
 manner. The great fact is unquestionable, that in the whole 
 range of questions connected, directly or indirectly, -with 
 religion, the press speaks on one side, and Parliament votes 
 on another. The fact must be accounted for ; and we are 
 inclined to believe that the Radical journalist was, to a cer- 
 tain considerable extent, in the right as to fact, though in 
 the spirit of his remark we do not in the least agree, when 
 he declared, in reference to political action, that ' the white 
 chokers are choking us all.' Of the relative influence of 
 the pulpit on our general modes of thought, we do not yet 
 speak. 
 
 We have found that the exclusive political influence 
 which we are at times apt to attribute to the press, is by no 
 means in its possession. In cases in which the influence of 
 the Church admits of being exhibited — and we might have 
 cited questions more distinctively ecclesiastical, in which eccle- 
 siastical influence is still more direct — that influence is eas- 
 ily traceable. But may this not lead us further to a distinct 
 limning out of the several spheres of the modern pulpit and 
 the modern press? May we not have discovered a key, 
 not only to the peculiarities of their respective political in- 
 
THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 329 
 
 fluence, but to their action upon our whole social life ? Let 
 it be remarked, that we institute a historical, not a philo- 
 sophical inquiry. We do not ask, what are the legitimate 
 provinces of religion and literature, of press and pulpit, as 
 they might be fixed by theory, but what are the provinces 
 which the course of events — the application of new me- 
 chanical agencies, and the unconstrained progress of the 
 human mind — have assigned them ? 
 
 As Christianity embodied in itselfprinciples which searched 
 more deeply into human nature than any system which 
 ever acted upon the human mind, as it touched deeper affin- 
 ities, and awoke more comprehensive elements of joint and 
 several action, than had previously entered into civilization, 
 so the Reformation brought these into more perfect devel- 
 opment and wider action than had been witnessed in any 
 previous century of the Christian era. It awoke to new 
 energy forces which had been but partially engaged in work- 
 ing out the Reformation itself As a rule which may be 
 pronounced universal, revolutions were in former ages ef- 
 fected by conscious, intelligent, reasoning units, and by un- 
 conscious, unreasoning, merely consenting masses. It looks 
 different in Greece and Rome, but was not in reality so : 
 the freemen themselves were in those kingdoms a class. In 
 certain countries, at the era of the Reformation, the people 
 were enlightened and convinced by a gradual and sponta- 
 neous progress ; but even in such instances the heads of the 
 movement were the powers that be ; and in countries which 
 will occur to all, the Reformation was almost entirely a po- 
 litical revolution. But it was, humanly speaking, the last 
 great intellectual revolution which can be so characterized. 
 When it was completed three great fetters were for ever 
 struck from the limbs of those nations which accepted it as 
 the latest development of civilization. Slavery hl,d been 
 28* 
 
330 THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 
 
 previously destroyed in Europe ; ecclesiastical irlfallibility 
 was now discarded ; and the monopoly of knowledge was 
 doomed by the discovery of the printing-press. Modern 
 history is the mad gambolling, or the free and graceful move- 
 ment, of the nations from whose limbs these fetters fell 
 away. Proclaiming loudly the doctrine of private judgment, 
 the political theologians and theological politicians of the 
 Reformation allied themselves with another power, whose 
 epoch was inaugurated by the printing-press — the power 
 of education. Education and the printing-press opened new 
 fields of information and speculation to multitudes, who had 
 never dreamed either of extensive information or original 
 speculation. New departments of intellectual exertion re- 
 quired new intellectual laborers. May it not be, then, that 
 it is not so much the contraction of the sphere of religious 
 and clerical influence which marks the modern age, as the 
 expansion of the whole province over which intellectual in- 
 fluence is exercised? May not all, or almost all, that is 
 done by the newspaper, the magazine, and the volume, be 
 supplementary to what was done of old time by the pulpit ? 
 May not the press and the pulpit be the types and represen- 
 tatives of perhaps the most grand and important of all the 
 developments of the great modern principle of division of 
 labor ? Mfiy they not symbolize a separation between the 
 distinctively moral and the distinctively intellectual provin- 
 ces, paralled in no previous age, but necessary to the con- 
 summation of human culture '; To ask the question, is to 
 receive its affirmative answer. It becomes perfectly evident 
 to one who glances along the period of our modern devel- 
 opment, that there has grown up a demand for knowledge 
 which the pulpit cannot supply, and which, it does not seem 
 unreasonable to say, it ought not to supply. A vast and 
 powerful profession has arisen to meet the new demand. 
 
THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 331 
 
 It is in the natural course of events that press and pulpit 
 have been severed, and, if we look fairly into the phenome- 
 non, we may find that it is by no means a cause of lamenta- 
 tion. 
 
 They are nowise the deepest influences of which we are 
 the most conscious. Unconscious influences, which emerge 
 into consciousness only in the pain or dreariness of their 
 discontinuance, are the most powerful. A child is not con- 
 scious of its mother's love. It is around him like mild sun- 
 shine pervading the atmosphere, coloring all things, but 
 itself unseen. It smiles upon him in his sleep. It makes a 
 little place of rest around him, in which every wind is tuned 
 to melody. It is when it ceases that it is known. It is 
 when the mother's smile of universal indulgence, of uncon- 
 strained, uncalled-for care, is taken from the face of the 
 world, and stern, exacting, merciless demand is written in 
 its every iron line, that the want is^elt. The most powerful 
 influences of nature are all of an unobserved, steady, gentle 
 nature, realized most acutely in their cessation. So it is 
 with light. So it is with dew. So it is with the gentle 
 rain that droppeth from heaven. The healthful operations 
 of nature are never spasmodic ; a fact, by the way, which 
 we commend to Professor Aytouu, as the strongest and most 
 strictly scientific proof producible that the spasmodic school 
 in poetry is a mistake. We imagine that the influence of 
 reUgion, and, we scruple not to say, of the clergy, in our 
 modern system of life, is somewhat of this sort. Sitting 
 monotonously in your pew from Sunday to Sunday, hearing 
 the same psalms or hymns sung, listening to sermons which 
 have at least that characteristic of art, that they can be 
 contemplated as wholes as soon as the exordium and first 
 head are despatched, and having texts repeated in your ear 
 with which you are not only perfectly familiar, but which 
 
332 THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 
 
 constantly recur from Sabbath to Sabbath, you are apt to 
 conclude that your mind is altogether unaffected, and that 
 a total cessation of attendance would occasion no change 
 whatever in your prevailing moods and opinions. But ex- 
 perience of a foreign land, where there was no weekly wor- 
 ship, might work a change in your imj)ressions. The Sab- 
 bath bell has a sacredness and a charm when heard across 
 the sea. You might perceive a something stealing over the 
 mind difficult to define, but marking a real and by no means 
 auspicious change; a certain spiritual dryness; a comparative 
 absence of reverence and child-like looking of the soul 
 towards Heaven ; an infrequency of scriptural associations and 
 imagery ; a discontinuance of that mental condition which 
 belongs to the state in which life is a prayer and work indeed 
 worship. We do not here speak at hap-hazard ; we believe 
 that we mention a fact. And we cannot doubt that an in- 
 fluence of the nature w£ have indicated, very largely per- 
 vades British society. Nay, we are inclined to think that, 
 however unseen, this influence does more really to mould 
 the national character, and has a more powerful hold upon 
 the public mind, than that of the press. The modern church 
 may be different from the old cathedral. The solemnity of 
 Gothic pillars and dim-lit lofty isles may be wanting. But 
 merely to look upon the faces of a congregation met on that 
 business so inseparably associated with man in all ages — to 
 worship God — merely to do homage weekly to the Most 
 High— this must send earnest influences into the recesses of 
 the soul. 
 
 May it not have been in the essence of Protestantism thus 
 to separate, and we may hope, spiritualize, the clerical influ- 
 ence ? The religion which Paul preached was to change 
 institutions from within. It freed the slave, yet it left on 
 him his bodily fetters. It encouraged no rebellion to the 
 
THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 333 
 
 ruling powers, but it breathed a spirit into civilization which 
 was to cause it to arise on new pinions, leaving its old form 
 to moulder in the dust. We think this consideration suffi- 
 cient to impose at least s(* caution upon those who rashly 
 exclaim that the clergy ought to strive to regain an influence, 
 which it is by no means proved they have lost, by preaching 
 upon the characteristics of the age, having recourse to fresh 
 stores of scientific imagery, and so on. Such general dec- 
 larations we always hold conclusive evidence that the speaker 
 has regarded the subject only in that broad, unreflecting 
 way so characteristic of a journalistic age. It is of course 
 the duty of the Christian clergy to apply Christianity to 
 every new want and development of the age ; to show how 
 the imperishable spirit can enter into all forms, and animate 
 all agencies. It is its duty, too, as it is that of every body 
 of men, to watch with reverence and joy the unveiling of 
 the august brow of Nature by the hand of science, and to 
 be ready to call mankind to a worship ever new. But the 
 day which witnesses the conversion of our ministers into 
 political or jjhilosophical speculators, or scientific lecturers, 
 will witness the final decay of clerical weight and influence. 
 The developing powers of civilization have relieved the 
 clergy of certain functions, put theso into difierent hands, 
 and remitted them to purely pastoral work ; are we to make 
 these circumstances positive arguments why they should 
 merge the specialties of their office in a score of vapid, in- 
 definite, and, perhaps, ephemeral novelties ? 
 
 It may be worth while to look this great result of Prot- 
 estantism fairly in the face. It brings us, if we mistake not, 
 into the neighborhood of trutlis of the very highest import- 
 ance, available for the destruction of errors which exercise 
 a subtle and pernicious influence on our national life. Is 
 there not a rightness, a propriety, a consistence at once 
 
-334 THE PULPIT AND THE PEESS. 
 
 ■with nature and Christianity, in encircling the clerical pro- 
 fession with an exclusive spirituality, in defining its functions 
 as more strictly pertaining to the Sabbath, and, while nar- 
 rowing the sphere of formal wo*]iip, in extending the sphere 
 of a worship as truly real and Christian as formal worship, 
 over that whole field of life which the New Testament seems 
 to point to its embracing? "The hour oometh," said our 
 Saviour to the woman of Samaria, " and now is, when ye 
 shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship 
 the Father." " Whether therefore ye eat," says the apostle 
 Paul, "or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory 
 . of God." And again, " Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, 
 do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God 
 and the Father by Him." Has the Christian world yet 
 really possessed itself of the significance of such words as 
 these ? Has it fully appreciated the fact that Christianity 
 is a consecration of life, not of times, seasons, and places, 
 in life ? Has it fully apprehended the scope and effect of 
 that transmutation, by which, when steeped in the light of 
 Christian devotion, all the natural operations of the human 
 brain and hand cease to be common and unclean? To go 
 to chm'ch every day, there to offer up prayers to a God more 
 propitious than elsewhere, to have places of worship always 
 standing open, that the passer by may turn aside to worship, 
 to have days of religious holiday scattered over the year, 
 — all this has a look of sanctity and religion, which prevails 
 greatly with excitable young persons, with Puseyite weak- 
 lings, and the like. But the spirit of true Christianity, of 
 true and robust Protestantism, is the breath of a stronger 
 life than this. It does not call the mechanic to the chui'ch: 
 but it makes the workshop a temple. It hallows the duties 
 of the six days, and makes all true work worship. Over 
 the husbandman in the field, over the miner in the pit, over 
 
THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 335 
 
 ■ the sailor on the ocean, it spteads the canopy of one wide 
 temple-roof. The week-day psalm is the immeasurable hum 
 of labor, the ringing of a thousand hammers, the roar of a 
 thousand engines. The week-day prayer is the earnestness 
 with which a man bends to his work, feeling himself God's 
 workman, and looking up for his blessing. And the grand 
 division of labor which we have discovered has marked off 
 ' ^ clergy for the week-day. The literary class is the priest- 
 hood of the laboring days. It is their function to aid, so far 
 as is necessary by speech, the general work. It is their 
 function further, to bring out in full and vigorous action all 
 those powers of intellect, imagination, sensibility, which 
 expatiate in the fields of science, philosophy, and poetry, 
 whose direct operation is distinct both from conscience 
 and the devotional faculty, but which are of God's appoint- 
 ment, and in their natural development as beautiful and 
 sinless as the trees of the forest and the lilies of the field. 
 To minister to these powers truly and well, to be led aside 
 by no sinful and debasing selfishness, to write and speak as 
 God's servants, are the duties of the week-day clergy. The 
 duties of the Sabbath clergy are as well-defined as theirs, 
 in correspondence with the general distinction between the 
 v/eek-day duties and the Sabbath duties. In the one case, 
 there is the worship of labor ; in the other case, the worship 
 of rest. We cannot here enter upon any proof or discus- 
 sion with regard to the duty of Sabbath-keeping. We must 
 suppose readers to agree with what is our profound convic- 
 tion, that, were the Bible not once consulted on the subject, 
 the natural and unbiassed heart and conscience, collaterally 
 assisted by the physical and mental powers, would urge upon 
 man one day in the seven of worshipping rest. The man 
 or nation has fallen from a normal and a felicitous condition, 
 which does not weakly lay down the instruments of physi- 
 
336 THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 
 
 cal and intellectual toil, and permit the purely devotional 
 part of human nature to arise towards God. To aid men 
 in this worship of rest is the business of the clergy, distinc- 
 tively so called. They guide in the worship of rest, in that 
 Sabbath worship, strictly a type of the celestial, in which 
 labor is suspended. To confound the functions of the two 
 orders of clergy is an important error. The sermon must 
 not be a leading article, or lecture : the leading article or 
 treatise must not be a sermon. The sermon is adapted to 
 that state of mind in which worship is the work : the lead- 
 ing article to that state of mind in which work is worship. 
 Whatever is bad in its kind is unchristian : nothing that is 
 good in its kind, and remains in its place, is profane. The 
 distinction between profane and religious literature is false 
 and pernicious. No moral tagged on to the end or inscribed 
 on every page will make a slovenly treatment of a scientific 
 or historical subject Christian : no absence of direct refer- 
 ence to religion can make a thorough treatment of natural 
 truth profane. 
 
 It cannot be too often repeated that there is, in the actual 
 world, no such thing as a mathematical line. We do not 
 pretend to lay down with geometrical exactness the line 
 between the clerical and literary classes, between the duties 
 and functions of the Sabbath and those of the week-day. 
 But we are convinced that the principle we have indicated, 
 that of the comparative severance between spiritual and 
 intellectual truth, is one of vital importance to an intelli- 
 gence of the modern epoch. And it would be to the advant- 
 age both of the press and the pulpit that there was a better 
 understanding as to their respective spheres and functions. 
 Meanwhile we turn again to the ecclesiastical clergy. 
 
 It is not demanding too much in favor of the body of 
 these men to say, that, apart from their strictly professional 
 
THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 337 
 
 labors, they exercise, from their position, a moral influence 
 upon the community of a nature on the whole benign. It 
 is difficult, in this relation, to speak of the Churches of 
 Scotland and of England indiscriminately. We do not by 
 any means assail even the relative morality and godliness 
 of the English clergy. But, excluding the Dissenters, there 
 are circumstances which render it difficult, from the com- 
 plication of questions entering into the consideration, to 
 form a judgment beforehand of the probable standard of 
 morality among the English clergy. On the one hand, there 
 are higher prizes in the English Church than are held out 
 by any ecclesiastical body in Scotland ; on the other, there 
 is a possibility, if not a probability, of di-udgery and pov- 
 erty, and there are circumstances of favoritism, to be con- 
 templated by one entering the English Establishment, which 
 do not present themselves to the aspiramt to the ministry in 
 any Scottish denomination. Striking the average over the 
 island, we think it must be conceded that, in the vast major- 
 ity of cases, the incitements of ambition, and the desire of 
 wealth, would urge young men to look towards some other 
 profession rather than the Church. It is a supposition, not 
 only warranted by all human charity, but urged upon us by 
 the facts of the case, that the large majority of young men 
 entering the ministry are drawn towards it by noble and 
 lofty motives — by a certain revolt of the celestial prin- 
 ciple within from the materialism and mammonism of our 
 age — by a felt affinity with works of benignity and ad- 
 vancement — by an experienced power to find a life-occupa- 
 tion and a life-enjoyment apart from the common aims and 
 vulgar ambitions of the world. This a priori consideration 
 is strengthened by regarding the average character of our 
 clergy. With the most perfect deliberation we express the 
 'Conviction, that the Christian ministry of the British Isles 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 29 
 
338 THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 
 
 is at present, on the whole, a glory and a blessmg to the 
 land. They have their shortcomings, and there are excep- 
 tions; but there is enough left to justify our assertion. 
 Somewhat to our surprise, we have lit upon a most gratify- 
 ing confirmation of our words in one of the hooks of Mr. 
 Thackeray, a man who is fearless not only in attacking the 
 bad, but also, what is now, perhaps, still more difficult and 
 dangerous, in acknowledging the good. Mr. Thackeray 
 writes as follows : — " And I know this, that if there are 
 some clerics who do wrong, there are straightway a thous- 
 and newspapers to haul up those unfortunates, and cry, Fie 
 upon them, fie upon them ! while, though the press is always 
 ready to yell and bellow excommunication against these 
 stray delinquent parsons, it somehow takes very little count 
 of the good ones — of the tens of thousands of honest men 
 who lead Christian lives, who give to the poor generously, 
 who deny themselves rigidly, and live and die in their duty, 
 without ever a newspaper paragraph in their favor. My 
 beloved friend and reader, I wish you and I could do the 
 same ; and let me whisper my belief, entre nous, that, of 
 those eminent philosophers who cry out against parsons the 
 loudest, there are not many who have got their knowledge 
 of the church by going thither often. But you who have 
 ever listened to village bells, or have walked to church as 
 children on sunny Sabbath mornings ; you who have ever 
 seen the parson's wife tending the sick man's bedside, or 
 the town clergyman threading the dirty stairs of noxious 
 alleys upon his sacred business, do not raise a shout when 
 one of these falls away, or yell with the mob that howls 
 after him." 
 
 This is as appropriate and consistent with fact as it is gen- 
 erous. The yell of triumph emitted by the London press 
 when anything seems to cast discredit on the clergy — as 
 
THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 339 
 
 on the late occasion of Archdeacon Sinclair's charge — is 
 peculiarly offensive, and not less peculiarly absurd. If the 
 clergy are affected with a most objectionable theological 
 nervousness, and do at times, in their public appearances, 
 justify the charge of wordiness, we should think no jour- 
 nalist in the kingdom, with a spark of common honesty in 
 his composition, would stand to a denial that the morality 
 of the press is incomparably inferior to that of the pulpit. 
 The subject is one on which we could expatiate indefinitely, 
 but it is quite unnecessary. It is mattei' of common noto- 
 riety that journalism has become alriiost universally a trade, 
 and that the most earnest, perhaps the only hojjeful, ex- 
 hortation one would address to journalists, is, that they 
 should conduct their trade on the safest commercial princi- 
 ple, and stick to honesty as the Yiast policy. The dishonest 
 recklessness occasionally exhibited in the Loudon press gives? 
 rise to really startling reflections. 
 
 Since we have partially contrasted the professions of which 
 we treat, in a moral point of view, we may contrast them 
 briefly as spheres of talent. We find the expression of a 
 very general idea on this subject in the last number of the 
 " "Westminster Review ; " — " Given a man with moderate 
 intellect, a moral standard not higher than the average, 
 some rhetorical afliuenoe and great glibness of speech, what 
 is the career in which, without the aid of birth or money, 
 he may most easily attain power and reputation in English 
 society ? Where is that Goshen of mediocrity in which a 
 smattering of science and learning will pass for profound 
 instruction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, 
 bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egotism as God- 
 given piety ? Let such a man become an evangelical 
 preacher, he will then find it possible to reconcile small 
 ability with great ambition, superficial knowledge with the 
 
340 THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 
 
 prestige of erudition, a middling morale with a high repu 
 tation for sanctity. Let him shun practical extremes, and 
 be ultra only in what is purely theoretic ; let him be strin- 
 gent on predestination, but latitudinarian on fasting; un- 
 flinching in insisting on the eternity of punishment, but dif- 
 fident of curtailing the substantial comforts of time ; ardent 
 and imaginative on the pre-millennial advent of Christ, 
 but cold and cautious towards every other infringement of 
 the status quo. Let him fish for souls, not with the bait of 
 inconvenient singularity, but with the drag-net of comfort- 
 able conformity. Let him be hard and literal in his inter- 
 pretation only when he wants to hurl texts at the heads of 
 unbelievers and adversaries, but when the letter of the 
 Scriptures presses too closely on the genteel Christianity of 
 the nineteenth century, let him use his spiritualizing alem- 
 bic, and disperse it into thin ether. Let him preach less of 
 Christ than of Anti-christ ; let him be less definite in show- 
 ing what sin is, than in showing who is the man of sin ; less 
 expansive on the blessedness of faith, than on the accursed- 
 ness of infidelity. Above all, let him set up as an interpre- 
 ter of prophec}', and rival ' Moore's Almanack ' in the pre- 
 diction of political events, tickling the interest of hearers 
 who are but modei-ately spiritual, by showing how the 
 Holy Spirit has dictated problems and charades for their 
 benefit, and how, if they are ingenious enough to solve 
 these, they may have their Christian graces nourished by 
 learning precisely to whom they may point as the " horn 
 that had eyes," " the lying prophet," and the " unclean spir- 
 its." In this way he will draw men to him by the strong 
 cords of their passions, made reason-proof by being bap- 
 tize-^i with the name of piety. In this way he may gain a 
 metropolitan pulpit ; the avenues to his church will be as 
 crowded as the passages to the opera ; he has but to print 
 
THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 341 
 
 his prophetic sermons, and bind them in lilac and gold, and 
 they will adorn the drawing-room table of all evangelical 
 ladies, who will regard as a sort of pious " light reading " 
 the demonstration that the prophecy of the locusts, whose 
 sting is in their tail, is fulfilled in the fact of the Turkish 
 commander having taken a horse's tail for his standard, and 
 that the French are the very frogs predicted in the Reve- 
 lations. 
 
 ' Pleasant, to the clerical flesh, under such circumstances, 
 is the arrival of Sunday ! Somewhat at a disadvantage dur- 
 ing the week, in the presence of working-day interests and 
 lay splendors, on Sunday the preacher becomes the cynosure 
 of a thousand eyes, and predominates at once over the am- 
 phitryon with whom he dines, and the most captious mem- 
 ber of his church or vestry. He has an immense advantage 
 over all other public speakers. The platform orator is sub- 
 ject to the criticism of hisses and groans. Counsel for the 
 plairitifi" expects the retort of counsel for the defendant. 
 The honorable gentleman on one side of the House is liable 
 to have his facts and figures shown up by his honorable 
 friend on the opposite side. Even the scientific or literary 
 lecturer, if he is dull or incompetent, may see the best part 
 of his audience slip out one by one. But the preacher is 
 completely master of the situation — no one may hiss, no 
 one may depart. Like the writer of imaginary conversa- 
 tions, he may put what imbecilities he pleases into the 
 mouths of his antagonists, and swell with triumph when he 
 has refuted them. He may riot in gratuitous assertions, 
 confident that no man will contradict him ; he may exercise 
 perfect free will in logic, and invent illustrative experience ; 
 he may give an evangelical edition of history, with the in- 
 convenient facts omitted. All this he may do with impunity, 
 certain that those of his hearers who are not sympathizing 
 29* 
 
342 THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 
 
 are not listening. For the press has no band of critics who 
 go the round of the churches and chapels, and are on the 
 watch for a slip or defect in the preacher, to make a " feat- 
 ure " in their article. The clergy are, practically, the most 
 irresponsible of all talkers. For this reason, at least, it is 
 well that they do not always allow their discourses to be 
 merely figurative, but are often induced to fix them in that 
 black and white, in which they are open to the criticism of 
 any man who has the courage and patience to treat them 
 with thorough freedom of sj)eech and pen.' 
 
 We do not deny that there are touches of truth here ; per- 
 haps, as the daguerreotype of the particular minister whom 
 the writer had in view, the description has certain points of 
 accuracy and suggestion. But, as a fair representation of 
 the talents, requirements, and diificulties of the popular 
 preacher, it is grossly and palpably at fault. Pass from the 
 particular to the general, and it is at once seen to fail. The 
 methods by which the depicted personage is so easily to se- 
 cure popularity, are not an altogether unfair representation 
 of Dr. Cumming's general manner ; but it is Dr. Cumming's 
 manner alone ; we cannot recall a single instance of similar 
 methods having been similarly successful. The other two 
 points, besides dealing in prophetic lore, which can be partic- 
 ularized in this description of the popular preacher, are the 
 general assumption of glib mediocrity, and the assertion of 
 public irresponsibility. We can adduce a fact or two which 
 cut the theory, in both respects, across, as with a scythe. 
 First of all, it is a fact for which we can vouch our own ex- 
 perience, and for which we appeal fearlessly to those who 
 are acquainted with the state of, at least, our Scottish Uni- 
 versities, that a very large proportion of the highest talent 
 in the college class passes into the Church. We do not re- 
 fer to the mere plodders, to the slow, sure, unimpassioned 
 
THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 343 
 
 followers of the steps of their fathei-s, who are removed 
 equally from blunder and brilliancy, but to the really superior 
 fellows, those who are beyond question the most substan- 
 tially and symmetrically gifted, who display a fine, glad recip- 
 iency for every kind of culture, and are devoid neither of 
 character nor of originality. Of these we assert that a very 
 large proportion out of all our college classes enter the min- 
 istry. Whatever, therefore, may be the eifect of the cleri- 
 cal profession on ability, it cannot be asserted that it does 
 not set out with its full share of the youthful talent of the 
 country. We shall grant that, in this respect, there may be 
 a decided difference between England and Scotland. That 
 fatal influence, which, wherever it comes, eats out excellence 
 like a canker; that pernicious principle, which is a practical 
 infraction of God's laws, to the extent of impiety and blas- 
 phemy; that formula, by which there is a local habitation, 
 a name, and a certain consecration given to what nature, in 
 her effort towards perfection, sets herself, specially and uni- 
 versally, to combat; that legalized injustice to the individual 
 and the nation, by which the one is crushed below the level 
 to which inborn and most sacred impulses compel him to 
 aspire, and the other deprived of that inheritance of talent 
 which God alone can give, and which is the most princely 
 of his earthly gifts, — favoritism, casts its shadow over the 
 English Church. But it cannot be doubted that even this 
 evil, precious as the talent is which it must turn aside from 
 the Church, does not altogether avert ability. Let any one, 
 who imagines that it does, read the life of Arnold, and con- 
 sider who were his class-fellows at Corpus. But, next, let 
 ns see how the reviewer's pleasant little theory will consist 
 with the success in general attained in the clerical profession. 
 If so shabby an outfit of ability is needful as that of which 
 he favors us with a catalogue, it is abundantly clear that pop- 
 
344 THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 
 
 ular preachers must be plentiful. Taking one thing with 
 another, no test of the talent required in any profession is 
 more reliable than the relative number of those who win its 
 prizes; and, in the same general view, no test of real talent 
 is superior to that of legitimate and noble success in life. It 
 is superior even to the competition in an University class. 
 Every psychologist knows that, however true to their pecu- 
 liar standard, and however valuable in practice, all the 
 schemes by which the human mind is mapped into express 
 faculties and emotions, are incomplete, and may be fallacious. 
 In accordance with such schemes, every system of academic 
 education must be framed. The consequence is that, though 
 on the whole accurate in fixing the relative talent of those 
 whose intellectual culture they subserve, they cannot be 
 deemed infallible. In the individual case, there may be a 
 balance of faculties too subtle for any analysis generally ap- 
 plicable. There may be some lurking capacity or aptitude 
 which has been brought into no psychological category. 
 There may be some new and delicate mental coloring which 
 meets all attempts at classification with the defiance of gen- 
 ius. But nature is true to herself; she will recognize her 
 own most cunning workmanship ; and therefore it is, that 
 in the general commerce of life, in the struggles for profes- 
 sional preferment, in the natural outgoing of feeling and fac- 
 ulty in congenial action, there may be displayed or develop- 
 ed capacity to convince or sympathy to draw, whose exist- 
 ence had been indicated by no previous test. Now, what- 
 ever may be the cause, success in preaching, as tested by 
 populai-ity, is at least as rare as success in any of the learned 
 professions. There are, in round numbers, twenty thousand 
 preachers in this island. Of these it may, on the whole, be said 
 that they desire popularity ; not by any means for its own 
 sake, or known by that name, but as a necessary form of evi- 
 
THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 345 
 
 dence that their ministrations are impressive. In Scotland, 
 as every one is aware, there is abroad among the clergy an 
 earnest spirit of emulation and noble ambition ; they strive 
 with all their energy to excel ; and among the junior clergy 
 of England, the same fact must, despite all hindrances, hold 
 good. Yet, how many of our clergy attain even a local 
 celebrity ? How many of them attain a national reputation ? 
 To the first question, we shall answer. Not so much as ten 
 per cent. ; to the second. Not so much as five. We found 
 that the clerical body secured to the full its share of the na- 
 tion's talent. We now find that, when this talent is applied 
 to its peculiar work, applied with determined energy and 
 desire to succeed, it is only, at the utmost, in five cases out 
 of a hundred that success is attained. How is this ? It 
 can be accounted for only by supposing that pulpit popular- 
 ity is not so easy to secure as our reviewer imagines. Call 
 it what you like — tact, fancy, feeling, fluency — the popu- 
 lar preacher must possess some quality which is uncommon. 
 Men of acknowledged talent have egregiously failed as 
 preachers. Foster desired earnestly to succeed, strove res- 
 olutely, and emptied his chapels thoroughly. Arnold would 
 have valued pulpit acceptability very much, but he never, 
 to any extent worth remark, obtained it. We could point 
 to men in our own day of powerful logical faculty, of vast 
 knowledge, of unquestioned piety, who have never, though 
 they would conscientiously have prized it, reached j)opular- 
 ity. We would advise the reviewer to make the experi- 
 ment on his own behalf. Let him try to become a popular 
 preacher. He may find it not so easy to make the egg 
 stand on end. 
 
 Our own impression is, that a universal mediocrity of 
 character is precisely what never succeeds in the pulpit. 
 Dull uniformity, however proper and orthodox, has not a 
 
346 THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 
 
 chance. It is rather some conspicuous quality in which 
 a particular man is different from all others, that attracts 
 attention ; and even this must be of a peculiar nature. The 
 result of mature consideration has with us been, that we 
 can neither explain the phenomenon of popularity, nor lay 
 down rules for its attainment. The preacher, too, is born. 
 Like the poet, he may have a feeble logical faculty ; like the 
 poet, he may abhor the investigation of evidence, the 
 details of fact, the study of statistics ; but, like the poet, he 
 must possess some indefinable gift, by virtue of which men 
 flock round him and love to listen. 
 
 A valuable light is cast upon this subject, as we pass on 
 to consider that other assertion of the Westminster critic 
 as to the irresponsibility of the pulpit orator. Counsel re- 
 plies to counsel, honorable gentlemen upset the arguments 
 of honorable gentlemen, but there is no voice or answer as 
 the honey-dew of pulpit oratory falls upon the congregation. 
 The preacher, is, therefore, shall we conclude, irresponsible ? 
 Of course. Precisely as the newsjjaper editor is irresponsi- 
 ble, who pens his articles without even the criticism of list- 
 less eyes and nodding heads. Precisely as the Westmin- 
 ster writer is irresponsible, when he sends his manuscript by 
 post to his literary liege lord or corrects the proof when it 
 is to come before the public eye. Strange to relate, the ir- 
 responsible editor writes as if a responsibility lay upon him; 
 he fancies he beholds the eye of the indulgent reader — the 
 most merciless of human existences — following his pen. 
 Singular to consider, the Westminster author wiites in tlie 
 lively consciousness of the fact, that if the public dislike his 
 lucubrations, his wary superior will indicate, in terms of op- 
 pressive compliment, that the article, or articles, must be 
 discontinued. Miuht not one who enlightens the world on 
 so large a scale as our clever friend, have hit upon the pro- 
 
THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 347 
 
 found observation that, in order to be popular, a man must 
 be liked? Byron thought that Roberts must have known 
 from the sale of his review that there could be no very ex- 
 tensive selling without buying. The Westminster writer 
 would have puzzled him with his popularity without prefer- 
 ence. As a rule, men prefer dozing on the sofa to dozing 
 in church ; where there is much sleeping, there will soon be 
 vacant pews. The fact of the matter is obvious, and to 
 overlook it is to practise a singular legerdemain upon one's 
 self. The hiss is unnecessary^in the church ; audible criti- 
 cism is quite superfluous ; a respondent might often be a 
 valuable assistant in keeping up interest. The cessation of 
 the steady, clear, piercing, united gleam of a thousand eyes 
 is sufficient; the restlessness and indifference of the congre- 
 gation announce the departure of popularity as certainly as 
 the most fierce outcry of a public assembly. And has the 
 reviewer fairly considered all that the popular preacher has 
 to do, all with which he has to contend ? The advocate, 
 the honorable gentleman, and the speaker on a public plat- 
 form — ; particular difficulties^^as unquestionably lie in their 
 several ways — have all one great advantage. Their sub- 
 ject is new, its interest is fresb. But the preacher discourses 
 on themes with which his audience have been familiar from 
 infancy. Whatever expectation hangs upon his words has 
 peculiar reference to himself; a new truth is not looked for, 
 but he is expected to set some old truth in a new light ; he 
 has to create an interest, and sustain it from week to week, 
 though his doctrinal beliefs are marked by no novelty, and the 
 sources of almost all his imagery have been drawn upon a 
 thousand times. If he becomes monotonous, if he fails in 
 animation, if he is too shallow or too profound, too exclu- 
 sively commonplace or too erudite, too barely logical or too 
 loosely rhetorical, his popularity is sure to decay. Dr. 
 
348 THE PULPIT AND THE PKESS. 
 
 Gumming is, we have said, an individual and peculiar in- 
 stance ; his style of preaching is his own ; it is a style which 
 hardly exists in Scotland, the land of preaching, and which 
 certainly leads to no popularity in North Britain. To 
 preaching in general all we have said applies. 
 
 Our obser\'ations have unconsciously assumed an apolo- 
 getic tone. We have had to clear away a certain amount 
 of rubbish before proceeding on our way. We must now 
 somewhat alter the tenor of our remarks. It cannot, we 
 think, be denied that there are grounds for the prevailing 
 idea, that the clerical intellect lacks the clearness and logi- 
 cal power pertaining to the advocate or journalist. Be he 
 what he may in his own sphere, a minister makes a bad 
 platform speaker and a bad book-writer. A reporter will 
 tell you that clerical speeches admit of remarkable conden- 
 sation, and if the books produced by acceptable preachers 
 within the last thirty years were collected, they would form 
 a pile of confusion, commonplace, and verbosity worthy to 
 enthrone a modern goddess of dulness. In the case even 
 of preachers of commanding genius, the general literary 
 inability remains. Dr. Chalmers was a man of such genius. 
 His original endowment was, we are assured, one of the 
 noblest to be met with in these latter ages. In the pulpit 
 he was irresistible. He gave an impulse to the moral and 
 intellectual life of Scotland. His books are valuable, and 
 may live long. They are great masses of truth and fervor. 
 But, as we peruse them, the feeling that their author was 
 a preacher at all times, and a preacher only, is perpetually 
 present ; we long for the calm tracking of ideas which we 
 expect in a book ; we want the deliberate meeting of objec- 
 tions, the accurate observance of plan, the gradual evolution 
 of the argumentative chain, which ought to characterize a 
 production intended for a world-wide audience and a lasting 
 
THE PULPIT AND THE PKESS. 349 
 
 fame. Butler could not preach like Chalmers, but what a 
 different author is Chalmers from Butler! The Scottish 
 preacher could never divest himself of the consciousness of 
 his congregation, and books which are magnificently-ex- 
 panded sermons must be denied the approval of art. 
 • We cannot ignore the phenomenon we have been consid^ 
 ering. In business-like dealing with facts, in logical acute- 
 ness, the clerical body seems beyond question deficient. 
 The reason is easily perceived, and nowise compels a conclu- 
 sion generally unfavorable to the intellectual capacities of 
 the clergy. It may be, that the clerical profession fur- 
 nishes a more complete practical culture for the mind, while 
 law and journalism foster particular faculties. Two young 
 men of equal capacity part company after quitting college, 
 the one becoming ^n advocate, the other a clergyman. For 
 ten years they follow their professions. The lawyer has 
 acquired the eye of a lynx ; he can untie the most intricate 
 knots; he can think out a whole train of argument from 
 the trace of a foot on the sand. But his soul is clear, cold, 
 passionless; it cuts like a razor, but suggests that the final 
 end of the human mind is to have a razor's edge. The 
 clergyman has fallen far behind his classfellow in argumen- 
 tative skill. His mind has been engaged in spreading, di- 
 lating, representing, attiring ideas, not in grappling with 
 nevf facts, and searching, with swift urgency, for the links 
 of that harness by which they can be yoked to a conclusion. 
 He has been in the habit of addressing himself to the emo- 
 tions as well as the pure intellect. He has made it his 
 business to bring to act upon men those subtle but potent 
 influences, which it is useless, if not impossible, to attempt 
 to reduce under logical formula; influences of reverence, 
 of admiration, of love, of the contemplation of moral ex- 
 cellence ; and familiarity with such influences, both, as 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 30 
 
350 THE PULPIT AND THE PKESS 
 
 preacher and pastor, is to him that culture which perpetual 
 consideration of facts in their logical relations is to the 
 lawyer. The journalist occupies a middle jDosition between 
 advocate and preacher. Pie dare not be so diffuse as the 
 pulpit orator ; he must not be so barely argumentative as 
 the special pleader. His mind is furnished with a perpet^ 
 ual gymnastic in discussing the endless succession of new 
 events. He must generalize with speed, he must arrange 
 with clearness, he must accustom his memory to carry facts. 
 His teaching function is now extremely limited ; Mr. Cob- 
 den used to think it ought to be dispensed with altogether. 
 In a platform speech, in a discussion relative to business 
 matters, he will be more curt, clear, and pointed, than the 
 clergyman. But we may well doubt whether his profession 
 is so noble a culture as that of the latter. It is remarkable, 
 by the way, that men who have failed signally as preachers 
 have notoriously succeeded as journalists, while we are not 
 aware of the case having been reversed. 
 
 In one respect, however, the circumstances of the jour- 
 nalist are more favorable to mental health than those which 
 encircle the clergyman. The preacher may be keenly alive 
 to all that is necessary to maintain him in his popularity ; 
 but he is under great temptations to mistake the meaning 
 and limits of that popularity. In no position in the world 
 is there so great an aptness to confound the voice of a few 
 with the judgment of mankind, the partial applause of a 
 generation with the admiration of posterity. We are so 
 much the creatures of influence, consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, that there is no man who values intellectual health, 
 and does not care for sugar in the mouth, but will desire to 
 work in secret, and to know as little as may be of his celeb- 
 rity. Mankind, besides, is, on the whole, sa\'agely exacting; 
 there can be no doubt of it : and as it is well always to 
 
THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 351 
 
 know under Avhat adamantine conditions we work, it is per- 
 ilous to have the world's criticism tempered by the indul- 
 gence of a congregation. The popular minister is surrounded 
 by an atmosphere artificially heated ; his cheek is apt to flush 
 unhealthily, his joints to relax. And on the instant when 
 he steps into the arena of literature, the authoritative tone of 
 his office, which has become habitual in his canonicals, is an 
 argument against him. One would think it possible, how- 
 ever, at least partially, to counteract those influences. A 
 , minister who has formed a complete idea of the action of 
 his functions on his mind, and who knows accurately his 
 position in relation to his fellow-men, may attain a very 
 noble character. The legal mind is clear as crystal or as 
 ice ; it thinks and writes in uncial characters. The journal- 
 ist is sharp, but may be hard, and has no time for reflection. 
 In the clerical character there may be both stem and foliage. 
 We are accustomed to hear nothing but laudation of the 
 influence of the press on the public mind. Yet it is only 
 in its exterior and obvious action that it has yet been con- 
 sidered. We are well assured that careful- reflection will 
 reveal to every thinking man certain perilous circumstances 
 which attend it. Let not the foolish mistake be made, of 
 supposing that we in any sense or measure assail the press. 
 Such a procedure is out of the question. But by looking 
 into it, by knowing it well in its advantages and dangers, 
 we best learn to appreciate and use it. Might not a some- 
 what cynical admirer of the good old times inquire, whether, 
 in order to the efficient transaction of the world's business, 
 it is after all necessary that every person know what every 
 other person is about ? In former days, action proceeded 
 quietly ; every day's events now produce an immeasurable 
 hubbub of talk. To compare great things with small, the 
 drowsy roll of the old stage-coach is exchanged for the roar 
 
352 THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 
 
 of the railway train. The maxim about minding one's own 
 business is obsolete. A man is now behind his age if he 
 does not mind the business of the King of Siam. Looked 
 at in a planetary point of view, the earth has become some- 
 thing of a chatterbox in her old age ; she is no longer con- 
 tent with her daily achievement of work ; the universal 
 press may be considered the tongue with which she proclaims 
 it through the solar system. It is more than questionable 
 whether the vast multiplicity of the matters brought by the 
 press before the mind does not distract as well as teach. It 
 can hardly be considered questionable at all, that it tends 
 to destroy reflection. One sometimes fears that men at 
 present forget the end of knowledge in its quantity, and do 
 not think of its quality at all. In a remarkably interesting 
 and suggestive German book, by L. Bucher, published in 
 Berlin in 1855, we have met with one or two ideas on this 
 subject as true as they are trenchant. The author considers 
 the daily press of England fitted to blunt the memory and 
 deaden thought. " The custom," he says, " of enjoying 
 each days's spiritual nourishment on a dish of the same size, 
 and, if possible, in the same quantity, renders the memory 
 waste and the judgment dull." With a keen eye, he detects 
 evidence of this in the fact that our journals now experience 
 extreme difficulty in devising methods to impress the weight- 
 ier matters on the attention of their readers. All resource 
 in diction and style has failed to fix the eye as it glances 
 over the wavering sea of words : and italics, large letters, 
 and lines far apart, express the difficulty. The truth of this 
 we must acknowledge. By gazing perpetually upon the 
 pageantry of the world-drama, our eyes become insensible 
 to its splendors. We resemble men who work in a yard 
 where iron vessels are built; the perpetual hammering causes 
 deafness to the ordinary tones of the. human voice. And, 
 
THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 353 
 
 what is singular enough, our standard specific at present for 
 the cure of this deafness is the introduction of new ham- 
 merers ! Go over the whole range of the human faculties, 
 and you will find that the haste, multitude, and tumult of 
 interests which occupy the modern mind, are perilous to 
 their most lofty and noble action. The oak may buifet 
 with an occasional tempest, and strike its roots the deeper, 
 but it grows in calm. 
 
 We found the Reformation to have heralded the great 
 modem division of labor between press and pulpit. In all 
 directions, this principle of division is now carried out. The 
 result has been an unprecedented advance by the species. 
 But Sir William Hamilton has reminded us that " the cul- 
 tivation of the individual is not to be rashly confounded 
 with the progress of the species." Tennyson long since 
 pointed to the advancement of the world and the withering 
 of the individual ; and other high thinkers have of late dis- 
 cerned a danger to completeness, symmetry, and freedom 
 of character, from the extreme division of labor. Now, 
 perhaps, more than ever, the wise man would choose the 
 part of Pythagoras at Samos, would pass from the crowd, 
 and develop his mind symmetrically by making a synthesis 
 of knowledge. At all events, it must become certain to 
 every reflecting mind, that, for a healthful development of 
 the whole character, there is required some calming influ- 
 ence to overarch, like a sky, the din of this ceaseless jour- 
 nalistic commotion. The rest of religion is more than ever 
 precious and necessary. If the Church stepped boldly for- 
 ward, casting aside even apparent nervousness at the facts 
 of science, and endeavoring to improve in many respects 
 the culture of her candidates for the ofiice of the ministry, 
 her mission might be illustrated instead of obscured by her 
 separation from the press. 
 
354 THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 
 
 Of all the symptoms which might be collected of a dis- 
 tempered restlessness, a febrile, joyless excitement, as char- 
 acterizing large classes of London society in the present 
 day, none could be more expressive or more moui'nful, than 
 the way in which the great body of the newspapers uni- 
 formly refer to public worship. The one broad, bold, undis- 
 guised idea entertained and expressed of it by them is, that 
 it is a thing of dreariness and gloom. Truly, from what- 
 ever cause, the Sabbath has become a weariness to all that is 
 represented by the leading journals of London. The feel- 
 ing takes various forms of manifestation. Now it is that 
 of contemptuous assertion of the dulness, the ignorance, the 
 inefficiency, of the clei-gy. Now it is that of indignant ap- 
 peal against the refusal of the British nation, as represented 
 in Parliament, to sanction a Parisian Sabbath, and provide, 
 on that day, public amusements for the populace ; who, it 
 is piteously reiterated, must be driven to the gin-palace, 
 since the dingy and wearisome church can present no attrac- 
 tions. Often it is that of entreaty to the clergymen to be 
 more scientific, or philosophic, or literary, in one word, and, 
 in whatsoever way, interesting. Now we leave totally out 
 of sight the question of the abilities, earnestness, or piety, 
 of the metropolitan clergy. But is it not melancholy, is it 
 not ghastly and appalling, that it could be in the power of 
 men to blind altogether the eyes of their fellows to the 
 blessedness of merely worshipping God? Might not one 
 weep to think that, among multitudes of men in this cen- 
 tury, — men of genius, of culture, the rulers of the age — 
 there cannot arise the very idea of a portion of the human 
 life, in which selfish entertainment is not at all contemplated, 
 in which the question is not of being interested or uninter. 
 ested, but in which man stands amidst his fellows, and un- 
 covers his head before his God ? Surely if in former times 
 
THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 355 
 
 men sought, from week to "week, the hallowing influences 
 of worship, never were they so required as now. When 
 one listens to th'e central roar of London ; when one paces 
 our hurrying quays ; when o;ie enters an Exchange in any 
 of our great cities ; when one watches by night the tongues 
 of flame licking upwards through the darkness, the clouds, 
 for leagues on leagues, touched with a sombre but sublime 
 illumination, in our manufacturing districts ; when, in any 
 way, one catches, so to speak, the bloodshot eye, or feels 
 the fevered pulse, of the nineteenth century ; can he resist 
 the feeling that now, of all ages, there is most need of in- 
 tervals of silence and repose, of seasons of reflection and 
 worship, of times when the mind is laid open to the influ- 
 ences of divine contemplation, and the earth is forgotten 
 and the soul seeks to envelop itself in the calmness of heaven? 
 The sky must be clear of clouds, before the stars can be 
 seen or the dews can fall. The ambitions and interests of 
 earth must be swept from the mind, before the heavenly 
 influences can descend to reinvigorate or refresh. What 
 man can say that his Sabbath practice approaches the ideal 
 of a Christian Sabbath ; but surely the rationale of the 
 Sabbath and of worship is not difiicult to find. 
 
XI. 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS: 
 
 A DEFENCE.* 
 
 Those of our readers who have made themselves acquainted 
 with an article entitled " Genesis and Science," which appeared 
 in the fifty-fourth number of the North British Review, will 
 perceive without surprise that we have deemed it our duty to 
 make that article the subject of particular comment. 
 
 * This article was written and published in successive numbers of the Edinburgh 
 Witness after the present volume was mostly in type. It did not therefore origi- 
 nally enter into the plan of the work, and it may strike the reader as not being 
 entirely in harmony with the other contents. But the marked ability displayed 
 in the discussion, and the great interest which the subject is now exciting in this 
 country, together with the author's sanction, have induced the publishers to give 
 the essay a place in this volume In its original form it excited so much attention 
 in Scotland that a pamphlet edition was called for, and in a prefatory note to that 
 edition Mr. Bayne proceeds to remark as follows : 
 
 " The author does not profess to be a geologist in any sense implying that he 
 has made Geology his exclusive or his principal study. He has devoted to it a 
 considerable measure of attention, and believes that he has made himself master 
 of its main lines of argument and of its general scheme. But he claims only to 
 represent that large class of men, of University education, who, feeling tliem- 
 selves personally concerned with those questions at issue between geologists and 
 theologians, have made it a duty to acquire sufficient geological knowledge to 
 enable them to follow and appreciate argument on the subject. Science must 
 abdicate all claim to an influence at once general and rational, if none but pro- 
 fessional men of science can deal with its logic. 
 
 If there is anything strictly new in the following pages, it is the definite state- 
 ment of the method attributed, in the Age theory of reconciliation between Scrip- 
 ture and Geology to the Mosaic record. Although this has been implied in many 
 works, the writer has not seen it expressly stated. 
 
 He is particularly anxious to have it understood that, Iiowever dangerous he 
 may consider the tendencies and effects of a certain system of Mosaic Geology, 
 he reflects upon the sincerity, the Christianity, or tlie liberality of no man and no 
 Church in still maintaining it. His own sincerity nmst excuse any emphasis 
 which he may use in warning against perils which he cannot help perceiving." 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS: 357 
 
 We are anxious to make it clear at the outset for what 
 reasons and with what aims we address ourselves to this sub- 
 ject. Neither with the North British Review nor with the 
 writer of this article have we, on account of the way in which 
 Mr. Hugh Miller is alluded to by the latter, strictly speaking, 
 any ground of quarrel. "What exception we take is to the 
 opinions expressed, and has no reference to the mode of ex- 
 pressing them. The reviewer pays a becoming tribute to the 
 genius and worth of Mr. Miller ; and the Witness would poorly 
 represent the principles of feeling and action bequeathed to it, 
 by its great founder, if it discovered in manly, plain-spoken, 
 argumentative opposition, anything fitted to compromise dispo- 
 sitions of friendliness. In perfect consistence, however, with 
 friendliness of disposition towards Mr. Miller, it was possi- 
 ble for the writer of the article before us to do him abstract 
 injustice, and, while so doing, to deal unintentional blows at 
 truth itself. And this, in our view, represents the actual state 
 of the case. 
 
 Injustice is here done, first, to Mr. Miller. It was the high- 
 est ambition of his life to serve his God and his country, and 
 the principal way in which he hoped to do so was by applying 
 his geological knowledge to the defence of holy Scripture 
 against infidel assaults masked by science. It was not as a 
 geologist, it was not as a logician, it was not as a literary com- 
 poser, that Hugh Miller aimed principally at distinction. The 
 deepest vein in his nature was his Christianity ; and it was as 
 a Christian that his loftiest aspiration displayed itself. To 
 have- told Hugh Miller that he had yielded a hair's breadth of 
 the defences of Bible Christianity, would have been to have 
 told him that he had shed extinguishing drops on the altar-fire 
 which warmed and lit the inmost shrine of his own existence. 
 " It is done," he said, referring to The Testimony of the Rocks, 
 on the last day of his life, just before the nervous organization 
 
358 THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS: 
 
 finally rebelled against that tyrant soul -which had made it serve 
 too well, — " It is done." He spoke the words, not in vain ex- 
 ultation, but with the serene and noble satisfaction of one whose 
 work was finished, and who in that already saw a reward 
 greater than any which man could bestow upon him. And 
 what was the work which he believed he had completed ? He 
 believed that he had taken the torch of science out of the hand 
 of the infidel, and set it to burn in the temple of the Lord ; 
 he believed that he had exhibited, more plainly than had pre- 
 viously been done, the harmony and accordance between the 
 word and the works of God ; he believed that he had pushed 
 that great enterprise which had been begun by Chalmers, 
 whom of all men he most gratefully named his father on earth, 
 further towards its goal: he believed that he had done the 
 Christian Church a service. In the article in the North Brit- 
 ish entitled " Genesis and Science," it is distinctly represented 
 that Mr. Miller, in his last work, instead of carrying forward 
 the standards of Christianity, carried them back, ■ — that, as a 
 Christian apologist, he did not therein advance, but recede. 
 So far as this reviewer and the North British Review speak for 
 any Church, that Church is put in the position towards Mr. 
 Miller, not of one thanking and honoring for service, but of 
 one expostulating against undue concession, or repelling actual 
 assault. We believe that this is not just to Mr. Miller, and, 
 so believing, feel that it is appropriate in us to attempt to re- 
 store him to the place among the faitliful defenders of Chris- 
 tianity which is his due. 
 
 But the injustice done to Mr. Miller is comparatively of 
 slight importance as a reason for replying to this article, if, as 
 we maintain, in the next place, it inflicts injury on the cause 
 of truth. The name of Hugh Miller might well be left to 
 guard his reputation. But we believe that the interests of truth 
 are here imperilled, and that in a very critical manner. Let 
 
A DEFENCE. 359 
 
 it be understood that we do not consider the questions which 
 have been raised in connection with the first chapter of Gene- 
 sis as at an end. We do not commit ourselves irrevocably to 
 any dogma in the case. But so far we can go with unwaver- 
 ing confidence. The path indicated in The Testimony of the 
 Socks is that in which advance towards clearer light is possi- 
 ble ; the key to the sublime problem has there been given ; 
 while the theory preferred in the article under notice, — the 
 theory best known as that of Dr. Chalmers, — cannot lead to 
 truth or reconciliation, but must imperil the one, and render the 
 other impossible. It is well here to speak with emphasis, be- 
 cause it is of an important part of the defences of Christianity 
 that we speak. It is our solemn conviction that, excluding the 
 express historical evidence of New Testament facts, no argu- 
 ment for the divinity and inspiration of Scripture in the whole 
 range of apologetics is more express, distinct, irresistible, than 
 that to which The Testimony of the Rocks, to say the very 
 least, points the way. It is an argument which might be said, 
 with hardly any figure, to convert faith into sight. Already it 
 appears to us sufficient to convince any reasonable man, we 
 say not of the being of God, or of the general truth of Chris- 
 tianity, but of the positive, supernatural inspiration of Scrip- 
 ture ; and were it once perfectly elaborated, as perhaps ten or 
 twenty years may see it elaborated, it might, we maintain, be 
 fairly pleaded as literally and demonstrably equal in strength 
 to the rising of one from the dead. In one word, the Chris- 
 tian apologist is already able, by Mr. Miller's theory, and will 
 become more and more conspicuously able, to propose to the 
 infidel this dilemma: Either a wandering tribe of the Arabian 
 Desert was acquainted, three thousand years ago, with the 
 most recent revelations of science, or the first chapter of Gene- 
 sis was written by the inspiration of the Almighty. Our read- 
 ers will agree with us, that i/" such a weapon has been brought 
 
360 THE, TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS: 
 
 to the Christian armory, it would be unwise in the Church to 
 cast it aside. 
 
 In the further discussion of this subject we shall first briefly 
 point out wherein the writer in the North British Review 
 misconceives, and consequently misrepresents, Mr. Miller's 
 course . of argument in The Testimony of The Rocks. We 
 shall then endeavor to show how much more sound, defi- 
 nite, and satisfactory, considered as a defence of the inspira- 
 tion of the Mosaic records against the assaults of skeptical 
 geologists, is the theory supported by Mr. Miller than that 
 maintained by this reviewer. 
 
 SCOPE OF " THE TESTIMONY OF THE KOCKS." 
 
 The writer in the North British Review has fallen into com- 
 plete and fatal error in his conception of the general argu- 
 ment in The Testimony of the Rocks. " In the chapter on the 
 Palaeontologieal History of Plants," says the reviewer, refer- 
 ring to Mr. Miller's scheme of harmony between Genesis and 
 Geology, " a corroboration of the theory is sought in the al- 
 leged ' resemblance, almost amounting to identity,' between the 
 classification of modern botanists and that discovered in the 
 various fossiliferous strata." The writer then proceeds to show 
 that this corroboration is not made out. To all that he says, 
 however, there is a simple answer to be given. The whole 
 allegation of Mr. Miller's having sought such corroboration is 
 a delusion. We are here stating not an argument, but a fact. 
 We point to an entire misapprehension of what Mr. Miller did 
 or intended to do ; and the bearing of our allegation on the 
 succeeding argument consists merely in its pointing out how 
 imperfectly the reviewer understood the book he reviewed. 
 Considered in connection with the science of Christian apolo- 
 getics. The Testimony of the Rocks consists mainly, though not, 
 
A DEFENCE. 361 
 
 indeed, entirely, of two parts ; first, a contribution to the argu- 
 ment from design in support of the doctrine of the being and 
 unity of God ; second, a contribution to the argument by which 
 the works of God are brought to bear testimony in favor of 
 his inspired word. The reviewer confounds the two. They 
 do not, however, even stand and fall together ; they ar^ abso- 
 lutely distinct. Sweep away Mr. Miller's whole theory of the 
 reconciliation between Geology and Genesis, and his argument 
 for the being and unity of God, founded on modern systems 
 of botanical and zoological classification, might remain as 
 clearly recognized a contribution to natural theology as any 
 chapter in Paley : deny all validity to his reasonings in the 
 domain of natural theology, and you must still try on its own 
 merits his theory of Mosaic Geology. The mistake fallen into 
 by the reviewer is a remarkable, and not a very excusable 
 mistake. We can hardly believe him to be fully aware of 
 what his words imply when he disparages Mr. Miller's argu- 
 ment in support of the being and unity of God derived from 
 the palffiontological history of plants and animals. He may 
 reject the theory of The Testimony of the Rocks on the first 
 chapter of Genesis, but we venture to say that he cannot reject 
 the preceding argument. Modern botanists and modern zoolo- 
 gists, — thus argues Mr. Miller, — acting in complete inde- 
 pendence of Geology, have, by natural reason, matured a 
 certain classification of plants and animals. This classification 
 is an example of the working of human intellect. In the 
 records of a bygone creation, proceeds Mr. Miller, it is found 
 that a classification which may be pronounced all but identical 
 with this was historically developed. Hence an argument for 
 the being and unity of God. The problem of natural theology 
 is to ascend from the human mind and the visible creation to 
 the Divine mind and the unseen Creator. By a process of 
 observing, comparing, reasoning, the human brain works out, 
 31 
 
362 THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS: 
 
 from the extant creation, one classification : in the lapse of by- 
 gone ages, a similar classification was evolved. Is it possible, 
 on a comparison of the two, not to perceive that a mind of 
 which the human is an image, — a mind that can compare and 
 design, — a mind that is one, — had part in the bygone crea- 
 tion ? 'It may be, that the state of science does not yet admit 
 of the detailed elaboration of Mr. Miller's argument ; but to 
 deny that it does admit of elaboration, would be very like sap- 
 ping the whole edifice of natural theology. To our own minds 
 that argument is one of the grandest contributions, if not the 
 very grandest, ever made to natural theology. A watch, said 
 Paley, reveals design ; therefore a watch can be constructed 
 only by mind. A flower, he added, reveals design ; therefore 
 a flower must have been created by mind. But for Paley's 
 watch Mr. Miller substitutes the superb machine of modem 
 classification, put together, in its thousand complications, by 
 the human mind. That, he says,. is, sure enough, the result of 
 design, the work of mind. Here then, — and he turns on the 
 skeptic, — is the precise counterpart of the magnificent watch, 
 found in the silent desert of bygone ages, — its wheels, its 
 springs, its hands, the same ; will you deny that mind was at 
 the designing of it, — that a reasoning soul like that taken 
 upon him by Jesus Christ inserted its wheels and chains ? 
 
 Mr. Miller walked about Zion, and went around, marking 
 well her bulwarks, and telling the towers thereof; with the eye 
 of a skilful general, he embraced in one view the various 
 points of defence ; and, in The Testimony of the Rocks, before 
 proceeding to prove the integrity of the Mosaic record, he 
 deemed it fitting to silence certain of those batteries of Hume 
 and the materialists, which are still from time to time sullenly 
 firing. And this is the true account of that argument from 
 Palaeontology which his reviewer so strangely misconceived. 
 
 But, next, it is a mistake to represent, as this writer does. 
 
A DEFENCE. 363 
 
 that Sir. Miller, in the Age theory, puts the third day of crea- 
 tion for the fourth. Fiona the circumstance that Mr. Miller, 
 on a particular occasion, and to a popular audience, restricted 
 himself to three of the creative days, and from not observing 
 which days these were, the reviewer concludes them to be the 
 fourth, fifth, and sixth, instead of, as they are, the third, fifth, 
 and sixth. In his popular lecture, Mr. Miller said, that in the 
 geological record he could expect to find reference to but those 
 three days on which creation of organic existences took place. 
 He omitted, therefore, the first two days and the fourth day. 
 But, even in that lecture, he does not say that he makes the 
 day of plants fall on the fourth, instead of the third ; and in his 
 other lectures he so explicitly assigns to each day its own work, 
 that the reviewer is left with but slight excuse. In both cases 
 the third day is that in which flourished the forests of the Car- 
 boniferous epoch. In the lecture implicitly, and in other parts 
 of Mr. Miller's work explicitly, the period assigned to the 
 appearance of the sun and moon is that succeeding the Carbon- 
 iferous epoch, namely, the Permian and Triassic. It is a valid 
 objection to the literary arrangement of The. Testimony of the 
 Socks, that it discusses the question of the Mosaic and Scienti- 
 fic Geologies in two different places, and in ways which it may 
 require a moment's reflection to reconcile ; but more than a 
 moment's reflection is not necessary, and this it was the review- 
 er's duty to have devoted to their comparison. 
 
 We shall quote here a passage from The Testimony of the 
 Rocks, which will at once show how Mr. Miller distinguished 
 three of the creative days, as preeminently geological, from 
 the others, and exhibit the essential features of his theory of 
 reconciliation between Genesis and- Science. " What may be 
 termed the three geologic days, — the third, fifth, and sixth, — 
 may be held to have extended over those Carboniferous periods 
 during which the great plants were created, — ovei- those Oolitic 
 
364 THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS: 
 
 and Cretaceous periods during which the great sea-monsters 
 and birds were created, — and over those Tertiary periods dur- 
 ing which the great terrestrial mammals were created. For 
 the intervening or fourth day we have that wide space repre- 
 sented by the Permian and Triassic periods, which, less con- 
 spicuous in their floras than the period that went immediately 
 before, and less conspicuous in their faunas than the periods 
 that came immediately after, were marked by the decline, and 
 ultimate extinction, of the Palseozoic forms, and the first par- 
 tially developed beginnings of the secondary ones. And for 
 the first and second days there remain the great Azoic period, 
 during which the immensely developed gneisses, mica schists, 
 and primary clay-slates, were deposited, and the two extended 
 periods represented by the Silurian and Old Red Sandstone 
 systems. These, taken together, exhaust the geological scale, 
 and may be named in their order as, -^ first, the Azoic day or 
 period; second, the Silurian and Old Red Sandstone day or 
 period; third, the Carboniferous day or period; fourth, the 
 Permian or Triassic day or period ; fifth, the Oolitic and Cre- 
 taceous day or period ; and sixth, the Tertiary day or period." 
 It is of the highest importance, in considering the claims of 
 the theory of reconciliation between Genesis and Geology 
 maintained by Mr. Miller, to discriminate between its essential 
 characteristics, and what are, more or less, external. and adven- 
 titious. Attracted by its novel and imposing aspect, and daz- 
 zled by the splendor of poetry with which Mr. Miller has 
 invested it, we are apt to conclude that the succession of vis- 
 ions under which, in The Testimony of the Eocks, the revela- 
 tion of the first chapter of Genesis is represented as having 
 been made to Moses, is inseparable from the general theory. 
 Such, however, is not the case. Certain facts and sequences 
 revealed in the rocks have a correspondence with certain facts 
 and sequences revealed in the first chapter of Genesis, — a cor- 
 
A DEFENCE. 365 
 
 respondence so clear and so precise, that it cannot possibly be 
 accounted for except on the grounds of supernatural revelation 
 to the writer of the books of Moses. This is the proposition on 
 which Mr. Miller's theory radically rests. The mode in which 
 the revelation was made is another question : it may have been 
 by a succession of visions, or it may not ; the point of impor- 
 tance is, that the correspondence exists. For our own part, 
 while deeming the hypothesis of a series of visions one of sin- 
 gular aptness and beauty, and while believing that its accept- 
 ance can involve no consequence dangerous to the doctrine of 
 inspiration, we do not profess strictly and literally to maintain 
 it. We conceive that it weakens rather than strengthens the 
 theory of the periods of creation, in exposition and support of 
 which it is put forward. Had Moses seen in vision what the 
 geologist can now see by aid of science, it seems hardly possi- 
 ble that he should not himself have possessed, and transmitted 
 to succeeding generations of the Jewish people, a scientific 
 knowledge of the history of creation. But not the slightest 
 indication exists that Moses scientifically understood what he 
 was made the instrument of revealing ; and it is certain that no 
 succeeding generation before the present could scientifically 
 explain his writings. If the vision theory, strictly so called, 
 compromises this fact, the vision theory must be abandoned. 
 The apologetic worth of the argument from the geologic period 
 lies in the circumstance that the first chapter of Genesis is a 
 scientifically exact revelation, but was, in the wisdom of God, 
 uncomprehended for many generations ; that it is written in 
 characters of perfect definiteness, but in characters belonging to 
 an unknown tongue ; and that, only when at length the light 
 of science is flashed upon the inscription, — only when the lost 
 language is studied and known, — is its meaning plain and 
 unmistakable. This argument must on no account be put in 
 peril. But not only is the hypothesis of a series of visions 
 31* 
 
366 THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS: 
 
 connected in no essential manner with the theory of harmony 
 between Genesis and Geology, as maintained by Mr. Miller ; 
 — it is not absolutely necessary, to impart value to the theory 
 in question, that the geologic days, corresponding to the days 
 of Genesis, be ultimately discriminated in Mr. Miller's precise 
 manner. It is our belief that very few changes will ultimately 
 be found necessary in his scheme of division ; but the great 
 point is, that the mind of the Church should be directed to the 
 availability of the Age theory as a scheme of harmony ; and 
 the service here done by Mr. Miller is to point out in what 
 general manner Geology in its present advanced state may be 
 brought into accordance with that theory. He himself dis- 
 tinctly states that our conceptions of the first two days-periods 
 are not yet exact. If he has not, however, finally and per- 
 fectly triumphed, he joined a school which must finally and 
 perfectly triumph ; and The Testimony of the Rocks is to be 
 regarded as a most important contribution to the literature of 
 that school. This is sufficient to vindicate for Mr. MiUer the 
 claim to an honored place among Christian apologists. 
 
 THE OPPOSING SCHEME OF MOSAIC GEOLOGY UNTENABLE. 
 
 To avoid technical terms, and to make no demands on sci- 
 entific information, in a matter which may, we are convinced, 
 be decided on the grounds of common sense, we shall inform 
 our readers in one word wherein the radical difference between 
 the theory of Mr. Miller and that of his reviewer consists. 
 The theory which the reviewer declines to abandon is, that 
 about six thousand years ago the earth was the scene of that 
 chaos described in the first chapter of Genesis in these words, 
 — " And the earth was without form, and void ; and darkness 
 was upon the face of the deep." In this view the entire series 
 of geologic creations is ignored ; from " the beginning " to 
 
A DEFENCE. 367 
 
 six thousand years ago is one mighty hiatus. According to 
 Mr. Miller's theory, on the other hand, the creative work 
 recorded in Genesis is in correspondence with that revealed 
 in the rocks : the days of Scripture are extended periods of 
 time ; and the chaos which is referred to in Genesis preceded 
 the geologic series, instead of occuring at its close. The 
 essential difference, then, is as to the position of the chaotic 
 period. Those who agree with our reviewer place it imme- 
 diately before the appearance of man ; those who follow Mr. 
 Miller place it before the commencement of the geologic ages. 
 If science negatives a recent chaos, the theory of the former 
 falls at once to the ground. 
 
 Mr. Miller first enunciated his refutation of the theory of 
 a recent chaos to a popular audience, in a popular lecture. 
 The scheme of such a composition did not admit of a detailed 
 or exhaustive exhibition of proof. The lecturer was com- 
 pelled rather to choose, from a mass of evidence, one or two 
 easily apprehended and pointed proofs, such as could be 
 speedily despatched on a public platform. Two such proofs 
 he selected, — the first drawn from old and new coast lines, — 
 the second drawn from the unbroken succession of animal and 
 vegetable life through the whole vast duration of the Tertiary 
 period. These proofs appear to us in themselves conclusive. 
 The reviewer does not attempt to fix the age of the present 
 coast line at less than 2600 years ; and we presume no geolo- 
 gist would consent to set it under 3000 or 4000. He offers a 
 suggestion or two against the relative age assigned by Mr. 
 Miller to the old coast line ; but to these we cannot attach any 
 forcBj and are confident that, were the opinion of British 
 geologists universally taken on the subject, an immense ma- 
 jority would declare that Mr. Miller's calculation of the com- 
 bined ages of the coast lines, — 6500 years, — was far too 
 moderate. The second argument, — that derived from the 
 
368 THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS: 
 
 continuation of types of life, . — is still more powerful. It is 
 hardly a correct representation of this argument to state it as 
 based on the fact of types of life having been carried forward 
 " from one epoch to another.'' The whole question relates to 
 one epoch, the Tertiary. If a chaotic period preceded the 
 creation of man, it must fall, — this all concede, — at the very 
 end of the Tertiary period. It must fall, not only after the 
 original creation of vast numbers of plants and shells now in 
 existence, but after the first creation of the badger, the wild 
 cat, the fox, the red deer, the hare, and other denizens of our 
 woods. The theory of the opponents of Mr. Miller is, that 
 while these were in existence, a chaotic break took place, — 
 they were all exterminated, and then all again created. Do 
 we not almost instinctively recognize in this something unlike 
 the general method of Divine workmanship? The sudden 
 extermination, moreover, must have taken place in a well- 
 peopled world, and the sudden death of its myriads have 
 converted its surface into a vast cemetery. But no tide-mark 
 has been left of this wave of universal death. As the succes- 
 sion of life can be traced for six thousand years, it can be 
 traced during previous periods. 
 
 These, exclusive of certain considerations adduced in other 
 parts of the volume, are the arguments brought forward in 
 The Testimony of the Rocks against the theory of a recent chaos. 
 But it would be, we repeat, a most inaccurate representation 
 to say that these arguments, or any which the popular form in 
 which The Testimony. of the Hocks was drawn up enabled Mr. 
 Miller to use, exhaust the proofs to be advanced against that 
 view. Several years ago. Dr. Pye Smith, one of the most 
 sincere and devout of Calvinistic divines, was so completely 
 convinced by a general survey of the evidence which nega- 
 tives a recent chaos of universal extent, that he proposed his 
 scheme of a chaos merely local, in order to reconcile Geology 
 
ADEFENCE. 369 
 
 with Scripture; and, says Mr. Miller, "be it rememlDered, 
 that between the scheme of lengthened periods, and the scheme 
 of a merely local chaos which existed no one knows how, and 
 of a merely local creation which had its scene fto one knows 
 where, geological science leaves us now no choice whatever.'' 
 The plain fact seems to be,, that the very affluence of the 
 proofs at his command prevented Mr. Miller from attempting 
 synoptically to draw them out. It is said that a man who has 
 a strongly marked genius for any one branch of knowledge 
 will not improbably be a bad teacher in that department : he 
 will be apt to outrun his pupils, and fatally to over-rate the 
 facility of his favorite pursuit. In the same way, a reasoner 
 who is, so to speak, superabundantly convinced of the sound- 
 ness of his theory, may half-unconsciously assume that it is 
 unnecessary to exhibit all its grounds. But if Mr. Miller 
 exhibited no more proof against the proposition of a recent 
 chaos than what at first occurred to him, and was adapted to a 
 popular audience, it is fair, especially when we consider that 
 death has palsied the hand which could have drawn many 
 another shaft from that well-filled quiver, that we should re- 
 member the fact, and view the theory in connection with the 
 whole range of the evidence adducible in its support. 
 
 It is of course out of the question that we should point out 
 here the whole compass of that evidence. We may refer, 
 however, to one or two important portions of it, not directly 
 cited by Mr. Miller in support of his theory. 
 
 Evidence which to us appears of a conclusive character is 
 afforded on the subject by certain American rivers. Between 
 Queenstown Heights and the Falls of Niagara there is a gorge 
 a considerable number of miles in length, which has been 
 hollowed out by the Falls. Sir Charles Lyell pronounced a 
 period of 35,000 years necessary to have completed the work 
 of erosion. If you grant but a half or a fourth part of the 
 
370 THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS: 
 
 time, you must allow that the river has been flowing from a 
 period antecedent by a thousand years to the creation of 
 Adam. But America furnishes a series of examples similar 
 to that of thegorge of Niagara. "We find Mr. M'Ausland, in 
 his very valuable work on Scripture and Geology, quoting the 
 following passage from Professor Hitchcock's well-known 
 work : — " The Niagara gorge is only one among a multitude 
 of examples which might be quoted, and some of them far 
 more striking to a geologist. On Oak Orchard Creek and 
 the Genesee River, between Rochester and Lake Ontario, 
 are similar erosions, seven miles long. On the latter river, 
 south of Rochester, we find a cut from Mount Morris to Port- 
 age, sometimes 400 feet deep. On many of our south-western 
 rivers we have what are called caverns or gorges, often 250 
 feet deep, and several miles long. Near the source of the 
 Missouri River are what are called the Rocky Mountains, 
 where there is a gorge six miles long and 1200 feet deep. 
 Similar cuts occur in the Columbia River, hundreds of feet 
 deep, through the hard trap rock, for hundreds of miles, be- 
 tween the American Falls and the Dalles. At St. Anthony's 
 Falls, in the Mississippi, that river has worn a passage in 
 limestone seven miles long, which distance the cataract has 
 receded. On the Potomac, ten miles west of Washington, 
 the Great Falls have worn back a passage sixty to sixty-five 
 feet deep, four miles continuously ; — a greater work, con- 
 sidering the nature of the rock, than has been done by the 
 Niagara." This list is far from exhausted ; but it is already 
 of sufficient length. There is probably not one of these 
 instances in which a geologist would not declare the river 
 in question to have occupied its bed for more than six thou- 
 sand years. It may just be maintained, though hardly, we 
 should think, by any one making pretensions to geological 
 knowledge, that a watery chaos may have covered the whole 
 
A DEFENCE. 371' 
 
 face of the earth, but that these rivers, though temporarily 
 swallowed up in the universal ocean, may have resumed their 
 courses. We shall not consider this a hypothesis against which 
 it is necessary to argue ; but if there is any mind to which it 
 presents itself with force of evidence, we would point to a 
 case in which such an idea cannot be even entertained. In 
 the volcanic districts of Auvergne, in France, instances are 
 presented of an erosion similar to that exhibited in America, 
 gorges being cut for hundreds of feet through the solid granite 
 on which they rest. The precipices cut by the waters stand 
 there in their nakedness, and the point is distinctly discernible 
 where the work of erosion began. The rock through which 
 it has penetrated was thrown out by the neighboring vol- 
 canoes. Of this no doubt can possibly he entertained. The 
 rock must have been emitted before the erosion began. But 
 the erosion has been proceeding for periods to which the six 
 thousand years of human chronology are as yesterday. In 
 this case too, then, the rivers enveloped in the surrounding 
 ocean must have been lifted from their beds, to be gently re- 
 placed as the six days' work proceeded. But.how was it with 
 the neighboring volcanic craters? Were the loose pumice- 
 stones and scoriae with which they are covered also spared by 
 the dark and boundless tide? In 1831 Graham Island was 
 flung up by volcanic action from the bosom of the sea. It 
 became three miles in circumference, and two hundred feet in 
 height. Then the volcanic action ceased. In three or four 
 months it was swept out of sight by the waves, and existed, 
 says Mr. Miller, "but as a dangerous shoal." If the sea, 
 merely dashing on its borders, had such power over Graham 
 I.-land, would not the univei-sal ocean have swept fiat the 
 sugar-loaf cones of Auvergne ? But there they stand, peaked 
 and sharp, covered with lava which was ejected from the 
 volcanic craters. If the geologist can make any one asser- 
 
372 THE TESTIMONY OF THE KOCKS: 
 
 tion whatever, he can say that no wave ever dashed against 
 their summits. Need we any further proof against a recent 
 chaos ? 
 
 OBJECTIONS TO THE AGE THEORY OBVIATED. 
 
 The negative evidence in favor of the scheme of geologic 
 periods, — that consisting in an exhibition of the scientific 
 grounds which prove the hypothesis of a recent chaos to be no 
 longer tenable, — having been indicated, it would now be the 
 natural sequence of argument to present, at least in outline, 
 the positive evidence which may be brought forward in sup- 
 port of Mr. Miller's theory. But we deem it advisable first 
 to turn our attention to the removal of certain objections, which 
 may present themselves to the ordinary student of Scripture, 
 and which may seem to forestall and forbid all scientific argu- 
 ment in the case. 
 
 It may be objected, first, that the days of the first chapter 
 of Genesis are obviously natural days, and that violence is 
 done to Scripture by regarding them in any other light. This 
 objection has great influence, if no great weight, and comes 
 supported by the prejudice of three thousand years. Yet we 
 are persuaded that, if calmly contemplated, it can, in accord- 
 ance with the profoundest reverence for God's word, and the 
 deepest principles of reasoning, be conclusively set aside. In 
 the first place, it is on all hands conceded that the word " day" 
 has been used by all nations to express indefinite periods of 
 time. In the next place, we learn, from the fourth vei-se of the 
 second chapter of Genesis, that such a use of the word *' day" 
 was not rejected by the authority from which the inspiration 
 of both chapters emanated : "These are the generations of the 
 heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day 
 that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." Nor in 
 other parts of Scripture are similar examples wanting. Mr. 
 
A DEFEN-CE. 373 
 
 M'Ausland, after referring to several passages of Scripture in 
 support of the theory we now maintain, cites, with great apt- 
 ness, the passage in the book of Daniel in which the " vision 
 of the morning and evening" is made to embrace a period of 
 " two thousand and three hundred days." Next, it is worthy 
 of being remarked, as is done by the writer whom we have 
 just mentioned, that Josephus and Philo among the ancients, 
 and Whiston, Des Cartes, and De Luc among the moderns, 
 argued — on grounds, of course, entirely independent of science 
 
 — that the Mosaic days were protracted periods. But lastly, 
 
 — and this is to us by far the most conclusive argument of 
 all, — it is to be maintained that the subject matter of the 
 revelation made in the first chapter of Genesis is in itself suf- 
 ficient to render a deviation from the common historical prac- 
 tice in the use of the word " day," probable and natural. Our 
 opponents may argue that the style is simply historical. But 
 on any showing, the first chapter of Genesis is a historical 
 narration of a kind altogether unexampled. It is as completely 
 separated from any human cooperation or action as the purest 
 prophecy. In such a case, there was at least no presumption 
 against the attachment to the word " day," of that meaning 
 which it bears in prophetic passages. And if the works of 
 God, the sole testimony on earth that can plead authority in 
 the interpretation of the word of God, distinctly exhibit that 
 God did so use the term, will mere human preconception be 
 permitted to put that testimony to silence ? No philological 
 argument will ever prove the first chapter of Gisnesis to be 
 ordinary history. Its language might take that form, be- 
 cause, in the , infinite wisdom of God, it was intended that to 
 the human instrument, Moses, used for its transmission, it 
 should appear historical, and should remain sealed in mystery 
 until brought forth in these latter days, to the confusion of the 
 infidel, and the edification of true believers. It was necessary 
 
 32 
 
374 THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS: 
 
 that its language should not externally and at first sight appear 
 prophetic. But the substance of the revelation, known to God 
 only, did not, and could not, pertain to the domain of ordinary 
 hiirtory ; and when the works of God have enabled us to un- 
 derstand the full significance of the revelation, we may surely 
 admit that it was just, wise, and right in the Almighty to use 
 certain terms in its transmission in a sense which in other parts 
 of Scripture is appropriated to prophetic revealings. .When 
 Scripture history describes scenes in which man has acted, the 
 language of men in its common acceptation is used ; when 
 Scripture reveals what, covered up in the future, is seen by 
 the eye of God only, it adopts a language not in all respects 
 the same as that of every-day life ; and when the sacred 
 volume calls from the past the history of that great creative 
 work in which the hand of God alone was engaged, it is fitting 
 that the language which is used should be that adopted in other 
 parts of Scripture, when man stands aside, and God alone acts. 
 Passing from this objection, it may be right to allude, in one 
 word, to the impression subsisting in certain quarters, that the 
 Age theory puts in peril the reason annexed to the Fourth 
 Commandment. "We confess that this objection appears to us 
 devoid of all semblance of force. Nay, it might, we think, be 
 maintained that the Age theory alone exhibits, in all their 
 Scriptural and scientific breadth, the grounds of the Sabbatic 
 rest. The scheme of the geologic periods points to the resting 
 of God as a fact. Since the appearance of man in the world,, 
 the work of creation has ceased. No species is known to have 
 come into existence since the procession of being was closed 
 by its king. Here, then, is direct confirmation of Scripture. 
 And if the redemption of man is God's Sabbath-day's work, 
 and the reasoning head of this lower creation is permitted, on 
 each recurrent Sabbath in the natural year, to praise and mag- 
 nify his greatness and mercy in that work, shall we say that 
 
A'DEFENCE. 375 
 
 the sanctions attached to the Sabbath-day have become, on ac- 
 count of the light cast by science on God's word, less binding 
 or less sacred ? 
 
 But, once more, it is flatly affirmed, in opposition of the Age 
 theory, that the successions recorded' in Genesis and those 
 revealed in the rocks do not correspond. This assertion is 
 made by the reviewer in the North British, and it is manifestly 
 that on which he mainly depends. If it can be conclusively 
 defended, although the opposing scheme would not yet be 
 established, the scheme of the periods would certainly reqjuire 
 to be abandoned. It is proved, then, that animal life existed 
 on our globe in the geologic periods corresponding to the first, 
 second, third, and fourth Mosaic days, in the account of which 
 days in Genesis there seems, at a first glance, to be no mention 
 of life ; while the creation of creeping things, usually allotted 
 to the fifth Mosaic day, occurred at a much lower point in the 
 scale. Such is the argument of our opponents. It is quite 
 impossible for us to state here the acute and admirable reason- 
 ing by which Mr. M'Ausland strives, in meeting it, to show, 
 entirely from Scripture, first, that the expression "the Spirit 
 of God moved upon the waters," amounts to a declaration that 
 certain forms of life were generated on the first day by the 
 creative Spirit ; and second, that the Hebrew original does not 
 warrant the allotment of creeping things to the creation of the 
 fifth day, but solely that of the creatures which are presented 
 to us by the fifth geologic period. To that reasoning we attach 
 great weight, and commend our readers to make themselves 
 acquainted with it. But we would call their attention at pre- 
 sent more particularly to another argument, — one whose force' 
 cannot, we think, be denied, and for apprehending and weigh- 
 ing which no scientific knowledge is necessary. It i., simply 
 this ; that, even if we conceded, as we by no means do, tliat 
 the theory of the periods anticipates in certain particulars the 
 
376 THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS: 
 
 recorded appearance of animals, it is yet, in this respect, in 
 incomparably closer correspondence with the Mosaic account 
 than the theory to which it is opposed by our reviewer. It is 
 alleged, though most strenuously denied, that in one or two 
 points the one theory makes the rocks announce special 
 processes of creation earlier than Moses; but it is allowed 
 that the other theory makes the Mosaic narrative not deelaia- 
 tive of the time of creation at all; it is allowed that by it 
 the creation of vast forests and countless animals took place 
 before the Mosaic record gives any surmise of the appearance 
 of tree, of animal, of light itself. There may be difficulty as 
 yet in fitting, word for word, by the one theory, the writing in 
 the rocks to the writing in the Bible. The commas and dashes 
 may not be finally set. But the other theory sweeps the whole 
 revelation of the rocks aside, and, in so sweeping it, renders 
 the Mosaic revelation not a revelation of the creation at all, but 
 only that of a recent, and, in comparison with the others, a 
 momentary creation. The supporter of this theory obliterates 
 by one stroke of his pen every chronological mark given in the 
 Mosaic days. He declares that light was not first poured on 
 this world six thousand years ago, but perhaps six millions of 
 years. He declares that plants were not first created six thou- 
 sand years ago, but unnumbered ages before. He declares 
 that creeping thing, fowl, fish, and mammal, were not first 
 created six thousand years ago, but at some unknown time, in 
 the preceding eternity. It will of course be responded that, 
 according to the theory we assail, no succession is alleged, and 
 that it is only when correspondence is affirmed that chronolog- 
 ical sequence can be demanded. We are willing to attach all 
 due weight to this consideration ; but let it have no more than 
 is its due. Which theory, then, is nearer to the truth, more 
 evidently on the way to the truth ? — that which has still but 
 to remove a difficulty here and there, to fit one or two still 
 
A DEFENCE. 377 
 
 dubious correspondences, but which boldly maintains its capa- 
 bility of exhibiting the Mosaic record as a strict account of the 
 evolution of creation on our world since the beginning ? or that 
 which to each Mosaic day prefixes a broad and sweeping nega- 
 tive, and declares that each successive operation there recorded 
 did not then first take place, but untold ages before ? Is the 
 one theory to be condemned because in one or two cases it does 
 not consider a Mosaic affirmative to have implied a negative 5 
 and the other to be preferred, although it embraces, under one 
 unsuggested negative, the whole magnificent procession of crea- 
 tion, from the primeval fire to the end of the Pleistocene 
 epoch ? The state of the question is not that of no difficulty 
 on the one side, and all difficulty on the other. By the theory 
 of the reviewer, that account which sets out from " the begin- 
 ning," and ends with man, passes over without a hint the whole 
 of that work of creation which Geology has revealed. The 
 theory compels us to assume an immense gap in a narrative 
 which has the appearance of being connected. This is really 
 an insuperable difficulty. The opposing theory is not yet 
 finally, minutely, and unassailably established ; but we delibe- 
 rately profess, on the strength of it, to find in the first chapter 
 of Genesis a consistent, unbroken narrative ; we acknowledge 
 no~suppression, but such as the mode and extent of the descrip- 
 tion rendered absolutely necessary; we begin with it at the 
 beginning, and it leads us to the Sabbath of rest, in which the 
 creative work on our world has ceased. 
 
 THK POSITiyE EVIDENCE FOE THE AGE THEOET. 
 
 God created man in his own image : we can never too 
 vividly remember the fact, or too deeply ponder its signifi- 
 cance. In the noblest working of man's highest powers is to 
 be found the best assistance affijrded by the whole domain of 
 32* 
 
378 THE TESTIMONY OF -^HE ROCKS: 
 
 nature towards explaining and illustrating, the methods of 
 Divine operation. The consummate human artist is distin- 
 guished from inferior painters by his power of producing a 
 great effect with slight expenditure of effort or use of material. 
 His eye pierces at once to what is essential and distinctive, 
 seizes the whole of that, and leaves the rest alone : his hand 
 glances for a few moments about the canvas, and the likeness 
 is unmistakable. A burnt stick is to him more than a com- 
 plete set of colors to another ; a few lines drawn by him 
 signify more than the most complex and elaborate light and 
 shade from an unskilful hand. In this power of narrating 
 much in little space, modern science has somewhat curiously 
 furnished a parallel to the achievements of supreme artistic 
 skill. The telegraph transmits, in a few abrupt and discon- 
 nected sentences, those particulars which make up the essen- 
 tial history of a protracted period ; and the art — a very 
 important art — of transmitting telegraphic intelligence, 
 reaches perfection when every item of real moment is trans- 
 mitted, and not one unnecessary word enters into the compo- 
 sition of the telegram. The first chapter of Genesis may be 
 most accurately conceived either as a succession of descriptive 
 sketches from the hand of an infinitely skilful artist, or as a 
 sublime telegram, composed with absolute skill, and bringing 
 us tidings from a dim and remote antiquity. Considered as 
 pictorial sketches, the records of the successive creations are 
 of course not exhaustive ; but it may be boldly affirmed, that 
 in no other instance, whether in the Bible or out of it, has so 
 much been conveyed in so small space. The resemblance, the 
 likeness, is unerring. These outlined sketches are as true and 
 sure representations as if they detailed every motion of every 
 created animal, and showed the light falling over every leaf 
 and wave : but, being sketches, and sketches produced with 
 the smallest possible expenditure of means, they contain dis- 
 
A DEFENCE. 379 
 
 tinetive features, and distinctive features alone. Considered, 
 on the other hand, as sentences of a sublime and wonderful 
 telegram, the descriptions in Genesis are not detailed : were 
 they so, all the chronicles of human history would dwindle 
 into smallness compared with the long annals of those ancient 
 centuries. But were they not here before us, conception 
 would fail to realize, faith would be unable to accept as possi- 
 ble, that marvellous selection of particulars by which the 
 essential history of the planet, probably for millions of years, 
 is condensed into one short chapter. And let it be particu- 
 larly remarked that, whether the theory of the natural days 
 or that of the extended periods is adopted, this character of 
 condensation and selection must be imputed to the Mosaic 
 account of the creation. Both parties find in one chapter an 
 account of the creation of a world and its inhabitants : both 
 must admit that much has been omitted. On neither hypothe- 
 sis, therefore, can a negative be inferred because a positive is 
 asserted. 
 
 We must offer yet another illustration of the method pursued 
 in the Mosaic record of creation. The discovery and definition 
 of that method are the distinctive merits claimed by the advo- 
 cates of the Age theory. On a clear and definite apprehension 
 of that method depends the ability to understand, to test, to 
 apply, the Age theory. We have given one illustration of the 
 method of the Mosaic account of creation from science, and 
 another from art; we take our third from nature. In a clear 
 day, when you look upon a mountainous horizon in the far 
 distance, you perceive a delicate film of faint blue or pearly 
 g ay relieved against the sky. The outline of that film, faint 
 though it be, is, for every kind of mountain-range, definite 
 and unchangeable. The horizon line of the primaries will be 
 serrated, peaked, and jagged. The horizon line of the meta- 
 morphic hills will be more undulating and rounded. The 
 
380 THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS: 
 
 horizon of the tertiaries will be in long sweeps and tenderly 
 modulated curves. In each case, the line of the horizon tells 
 more than can be told in any other conceivable way, of the 
 character of a whole district of country. Those minute jags 
 and points of the primaries are dizzy precipices and towering 
 peaks. The glacier is creeping on under that fibny blue ; the 
 avalanche is thundering in that intense silence. Rivers that 
 will channel continents and separate nation from nation are 
 leaping in foamy cataracts, where you perceive only that the 
 tender amethyst of the sky has taken a deeper tinge. That 
 undulating line of the crystalline hills- telLs of broad, dreary 
 moors, of dark, sullen streams, of sparse fields of stunted corn. 
 That sweeping, melting, waving line of the tertiaries tells of 
 stately forest and gardened plain, of lordly mansions and 
 bustling villages. Now, the Mosaic record of creation gives the 
 horizon lines of the various geological periods. Its descrip- 
 tions are unerringly exact, considered as horizon lines. It 
 is impossible to exchange the one for the other. There is no 
 confusion between them. They reveal the very largest possible 
 amount concerning the several periods in the very smallest 
 possible space. When we investigate those periods in detail, 
 when we enter the valleys folded up under those horizons, we 
 find that only under such horizons could such valleys have 
 been ; that those horizons really, had we but known it, revealed 
 the character of the underlying valleys. In order to prove 
 them untrue, we have to show, either that other valleys than 
 those we have found must have been under such horizons, or 
 that such horizons are only vaguely and at hap-hazard related 
 to such valleys. 
 
 It is agreed on all hands that the first verse in Genesis, "In 
 the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," does 
 not fix the antiquity of the actual matter constituting our globe. 
 It is, however, natural, nay, imperative, to consider the term 
 
A DEFENCE. 381 
 
 " beginning " to have a special significance for our world. 
 Science has now distinctly and finally declared that what may, 
 for our world, be peculiarly called the beginning, was in fire. 
 The eye of science first rests on the earth as a burning mass, of a 
 temperature whose fierce heat cannot be conceived. However 
 long that fire-period may have lasted, it was strictly the begin- 
 ning. A description which, after alluding to it, sets out from 
 its termination, omits nothing. 
 
 " And the earth was without form, and void ; and darkness 
 was upon the face of the deep ; and the Spirit of God moved 
 upon the face of the waters." This verse, according to the 
 theory we now oppose, is separated from that immediately pre- 
 ceding by all the geologic ages. Not only from the beginning 
 of things is it divided, but from the special beginning of this 
 world, — from that period of fire when it was unfitted to sup- 
 port animal or vegetable life, when it was draped by no clouds 
 and embraced by no atmosphere ; — when it was not an 
 ordered planet, but a raging, flaming chaos. By the theory 
 finally embraced by Mr. Miller, on the other hand, this verse 
 is the natural sequel to that which referred to the beginning 
 of the earth. Formlessness, voidness, and — whenever the 
 fire was sufficiently cooled to admit of the formation of water 
 — a universal, boiling ocean, to whose surface no ray of light 
 could penetrate ; — such was the state of the world imme- 
 diately after the commencing fire-period. In describing it 
 the man of science would in vain seek for more apt or 
 expressive terms than those used in the second verse of 
 Genesis. 
 
 " And God said. Let there be light ; and there was light." 
 
 At what precise point in the evolution of the creative plan 
 
 light penetrated to the surface of our plaiiet, and shed a faint 
 
 glimmer through the dense vapor which rose from the seething 
 
 wilderness of waters, science cannot declare. At a certain 
 
882 THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS: 
 
 point, however, light did so penetrate. On this Geology 
 speaks plainly. The universal ocean appears to have first 
 wrapped the world, when the molten granite had, to a certain 
 extent, cooled. Then commenced the deposition of the 
 gneisses, the mica-schists, and the clay-slates. These rocks, 
 particularly those of the two former series, are contorted and 
 -twisted in a manner which completely distinguishes them from 
 all succeeding rocks. To use the expression applied to them 
 by Mr. Ruskin, they " tremble through their every fibre, like 
 the chords of an jEolian harp.'' They were manifestly formed 
 in a sea at first surging and tossing on its bed of fire, and 
 thereafter gradually cooled. This fact explains peculiarities 
 in their form, which otherwise mock aU conjecture. But if 
 these rocks were deposited in the ocean succeeding the ancient 
 fire, beneath the vapors of a boiling sea, there can be no 
 doubt that for a long period they were enveloped in blackest 
 night, and that at a certain moment this darkness was faintly 
 penetrated. Genesis informs us that the first day's work was 
 completed when the diffused radiance first shimmered through 
 the brooding darkness, and there was on this earth light. 
 Darkness and light, — these are the two essentially descriptive 
 words in the Mosaic telegram, embracing the period between 
 the earth's beginning and the close of the first day. To 
 assume that this positive account implies the negative declara- 
 tion that, when the ocean became tepid, and light was grop- 
 ing its way to its surface, no minute creaturS, no Oldhamia 
 antiqua, no trilobite, moved in its depths, is entirely gratuitous, 
 and proves that the whole method of the Mosaic narrative has 
 been misconceived. The important fact is, that science cannot 
 possibly describe those early ages, except in a manner to agree 
 with the first verses of Genesis. The inspired word closes 
 the first great period with the appearance on earth of light, 
 and the man of science can fix upon no scientifically estab- 
 
A DEFENCE. 383 
 
 iished occurrence of that primeval time so magnificently 
 decisive, so sublimely closing one era and commencing another, 
 as even this same penetration of light. 
 
 The work allotted in Genesis to the second day is the for- 
 mation of what, in our translation, is rendered a " firmament," 
 but which all now agree in considering rather an expansion or 
 atmosphere. Mr. Miller regarded the geological interpretation 
 of the work of this day, which he believed to have fallen on 
 the ages succeeding those of the metamorphic rocks, as peculi- 
 arly difficult. Mr. Ruskin, on the other hand, considers it 
 exceedingly easy. "We are, on the whole, inclined to think that 
 though much may stiU be done towards defining the limits of 
 this day's duration, and towards scientifically working out the 
 processes by which the mighty operation of dividing the waters 
 which are under the firmament from the waters which are 
 above the firmament, was performed, the operation itself can 
 be already with sufficient clearness apprehended. The dis- 
 tinctive features of the creative work were still those pertain- 
 ing, not so much to the earth's surface, as to its meteorological 
 phenomena. The first grand advance had been the pervasion 
 of the vapors which encompassed the earth by light. But for 
 a protracted period the faintly-illuminated steam could not be 
 again condensed, so as to fall in rain. It was only as the earth 
 cooled, and the temperature of the air fell, that sudden and 
 local condensation of the vapor could take place. When it 
 could take place, the second day's work was done. And assur- 
 edly this arrangement of the clouds over the face of the sky, 
 this fitting up of that marvellous apparatus by which unnum- 
 bered rivers were to be filled and unnumbered harvests to 
 ripen, was the chief and distinctive operation of that early 
 time. To this assertion science cannot but yield assent. It is 
 a wondrous tale that those few rain-marks on the Old Red 
 Sandstone tell. The few insignificant plants and living crea- 
 
384 THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS: 
 
 tures which then also existed were altogether unimportant as 
 characteristic of the period, compared with that great process 
 of separating " the waters which fciE and flow, from those 
 which rise and float." The North British reviewer is here 
 of a different opinion. We cannot agree with him. We con- 
 cede at once that during the Silurian and Old Red Sandstone 
 periods there existed several species of plants and animals. 
 But to mention these in the record in Genesis would have 
 been a departure from the whole method of that record. Their 
 presence was not distinctive. They passed away after having 
 done little. For us their importance is past. But it has at 
 this day the profoundest and loftiest interest for all men, to 
 know when the Almighty bade the cloud gather up its stores 
 to water the fields we now till, — when the vast, vague, color- 
 less mist drew itself up in draperies of gold, and purple, and 
 scarlet, round the chamber of the blue, — when the tempest 
 was first tamed to the steady gale, and the trade-winds were 
 bid to blow, — when that innumerable army of tjie rain, whose 
 cloudy banners kindle the sky over our heads into beauty, was 
 first appointed to its mighty work of furrowing the mountain, 
 and fertilizing the valley, and shaping the face of the earth, 
 aaon after eeou, as the Creator wills. Be the Bible inspired or 
 no, we shall never recognize any description of the progress 
 in creation during those ages as essentially and scientifically 
 true, which does not, as is done in Genesis, pass over all other 
 things as comparatively unimportant, and throw out into 
 boldest relief the proclamation of this " most magnificent 
 ordinance of the clouds.'' 
 
 On the remaining days we need not linger. The third, — 
 that during which grew the forests of the Carboniferous 
 era, — is described in Genesis as that of herbs and trees, and 
 of the separation of land and water. What were then the 
 distinctive features of the period? Science points them out 
 
A DEFENCE. 385 
 
 as two. Such forests have never clothed the world as those 
 of the Carboniferous era ; and, in order to their growth, it was 
 absolutely necessary that the extent of land should have been 
 very great. In other words, the separation of land and sea, 
 and the growth of a vast flora, distinguished the period ; and 
 when we state the fact, we find ourselves almost necessarily 
 using the words of Genesis. The fourth day was that on 
 which the sun first shone out upon the world. Light had been 
 announced before. The sun now appears. We are compelled 
 to assume it as declared that the sun was not visible until the 
 fourth day. And, wonderful to say, science shows this to have 
 been the case. The plants of the great Carboniferous epoch 
 are such as must never have been touched by a sunbeam. They 
 are such precisely as would have grown in a humid at- 
 mosphere ; their wood is not hardened, as that of plants on 
 which the pure sunlight falls. In the Permian and Triassic 
 ages, trees of tough fibre, and with season-rings, are found ; 
 and the Permian and Triassic periods coincide with the fourth 
 day of the Mosaic account. The fifth day was that of mon- 
 strous creeping things and of birds. Its correspondence with 
 the Liassic and Oolitic periods is unmistakable. The aerial 
 phenomena of our world were now no longer the most striking, 
 novel, or important. The earth was a prepared stage, and the 
 interesi concentrated itself on the living creatures that moved 
 upon it. The inspired telegram, therefore, speaks of these. 
 Last of all, at the close of the sixth day, that of the Tertiary 
 periods, man was created ; the final picture has for its centre 
 a king. The mighty work was finished. The cycle of ope- 
 rations which had begun with the raging flame, and which for 
 long ages had been carried forward by the wild ministry of 
 volcano and deluge, was brought to a termination. The Sab- 
 bath of creation dawned. Do you doubt of the reality of this 
 Sabbath ? Do you question the reasonableness of its being, 
 33 
 
386 THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS: 
 
 as it were, the motive and impulse of the Creator in conferring 
 on man the gentle blessing of Sabbath rest? Then look 
 around, and compare the present scene with those of the 
 bygone days. Think of those periods of fire and flood, of 
 darkness and tempest, of gigantic birds, and dragons at whose 
 huge bones we even yet shudder ; and then remember the soft 
 falling of the sunbeam on the flower, the gentle lapse of the 
 streamlet in the glade, the tender warbling amid the golden- 
 green of the spring woods ; and be assured that the one discord 
 in the Sabbatic harmony of terrestial nature comes from the 
 human heart; that the sin of man alone blots the Sabbath 
 light resting on the face of the earth ; that, compared with the 
 long week-days, the human period is the Sabbath of the world, 
 and that man is the great Sabbath-breaker. 
 
 OPPOSING THEOEIES OF RECONCILIATION BETWEEN GEOL- 
 OGT AND REVELATION: THEIR APOLOGETIC VALUE. 
 
 Having, we venture to hope, set before our readers with 
 suflScient distinctness the true purport of the theory of recon- 
 ciliation between Genesis and Geology supported in The Tes- 
 timony of the Roclcs, and having glanced at the leading 
 arguments for and against that theory, we are in a position to 
 return to that most important question to which we referred in 
 the outset, — Whether this theory is a retrogression or an 
 advance in the line of Christian apologetics, — whether the 
 views of Mr. Miller, or those of his reviewer, are of greater 
 avail in defence of the Christian Revelation ? 
 
 The theory of natural days has somewhat to commend it. 
 It has a clear, compact, what might be called commonplace 
 aspect. At first sight it appears business-like and practical. 
 It comfortably avoids generalization, it requires little illus- 
 tration, and it gets rid of what appears a suspicious sublimity. 
 
A DEFENCE. 387 
 
 It seems difficult to assail, and yet it gives perfect freedom 
 to speculation. Drawing a ring-fence round the garden of the 
 revealed word, it permits as much digging and planting in the 
 country beyond as the most ardent philosopher could desire. 
 The rocks are simply put out of account. The inspired record 
 is assumed to know nothing concerning them. The Bible is 
 declared to be the domain of an implicit, unquestioning faith, 
 which does not desire to see : over the geologic ages a curious 
 reason may expatiate at will. We need not be surprised that 
 such a theory proves attractive to certain minds. Combine 
 true devoutness with sincere love of science, a sense of the 
 need of perfect freedom in the exercise of reason with earnest 
 acceptance of the Christian revelation, — let a sharp logical 
 faculty be united with an undue appreciation of the natural, 
 healthful, divinely-appointed functions of the speculative and 
 imaginative powers, — and you have a mind to which this 
 theory is naturally agreeable. Many persons also, whose 
 minds are not of this order, but who have for a long period 
 regarded the old view as satisfactory, may be expected, though 
 good geologists otherwise, to attach undue importance to argu- 
 ments which convinced them in their youth, and unconsciously 
 to put prejudice for logic. Having been hitherto at rest, these 
 persons will too easily mistake change for danger, and think 
 it safer to remain in their little canoe than to scale the sides of 
 the larger vessel. Yet it is difficult to conceive the two the- 
 ories set fairly in contrast, and the belief still retained that 
 Mr. Miller's is a less complete defence of the inspired volume 
 than the reviewer's. In every point of vital importance the 
 one triumphantly succeeds, the other signally fails. Each 
 apparent advantage pertaining to the theory of natural days 
 is found on examination to be a counterfeit. If it seem clear 
 and compact, it but substitutes the littleness of human con- 
 ception for the sublimity of the Divine operations. If those 
 
388 THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS: 
 
 who rest in it have a feeling of safety, it is but that of the gar- 
 rison which too timidly shuts itself up in a little fortress, 
 leaving the whole of the open country to the enemy. If it 
 appear to vindicate the honor of God, and to prove the integ- 
 rity of his revelation, it in reality puts both in peril, by separ- 
 ating, between the word and the works of the Almighty. Let 
 us carry out a contrast between the two theories somewhat in 
 detail. 
 
 It is undeniable, to begin with, that the theory of natural 
 days breaks the continuity of the Mosaic record, while it is 
 perfectly preserved by that of Mr. Miller. If we can point to 
 a period which was, for this world, literally and scientifically 
 the beginning, and to epoch after epoch succeeding, in which 
 the leading features of the Mosaic and geologic records are 
 unmistakably identical, there is no hiatus in the inspired nar- 
 rative ; the most rigorous philologist may be appealed to for 
 his testimony to its magnificent symmetry and its marvellous 
 condensation. Thus we are enabled to proceed by the theory 
 of Mr. Miller. On the other hypothesis, the small conjunction 
 " and," which so naturally links the first verse in Genesis with 
 the second, forms an objection, in the mouth of the philologist, 
 which may really be pronounced insurmountable. Either this 
 conjunction passes over an immensely extended period of time 
 without hint of its existence, or calls that the beginning which 
 can with no definiteness or accuracy be so defined. The latter 
 is, we believe, the alternative most generally accepted. The 
 "beginning" is declared to have extended to the end of the 
 geologic epochs. But how can it be considered correct to in- 
 clude under the same term a period of flaming ruin, when life 
 was impossible on our planet, before its molten surges had 
 hardened into the adamant that was to bear a world, and pe- 
 riods in which the fire had subsided, — periods when plants 
 grew and creatures Uved, — periods when light fell through a 
 
ADEFENCE. 389 
 
 transparent atmosphere, and animals breathed which were to 
 subsist along with man ? Compared with the human period, 
 the geologic ages are as week-days to a Sabbath ; but it is a 
 positive mistake to describe them as chaotic. They are marked 
 off from the chaos as clearly as from the time of man. They 
 belong no more to the " beginning" than to the last creation, 
 which, according to our opponents, occupied the six natural 
 days. Philology and Geology equally protest against a use 
 of the term " beginning," which would extend it beyond the 
 fire-period. Shall we disregard both sciences, and reject the 
 continuity, completeness, and harmony of the Millerian theory, 
 merely that we may confine to spaces of four-and-twenty hours 
 those days of creation in which that God was at work who has 
 told us that with Him a day is as a thousand years, and a 
 thousand years as one day ? 
 
 In the next place, — and this is a point of fearful importance, 
 — it must now be distinctly conceded that the theory of natural 
 days cannot be authoritatively, accepted and taught by the 
 Churches without occasioning a vast amount of unbelief It 
 seems to us that if an angel were sent from heaven to proclaim 
 to theologians the special temptation and peril of the time, he 
 would declare it to be that of taking up a station apart from 
 and behind the genuine enlightenment of the century. Man 
 is the chief instance of God's productive power here below. 
 His eye is an instrument of infinite delicacy, adapted for be- 
 holding the works of God. His hand is endowed with inex- 
 pressible cunning, to follow up the discoveries of his eye. His 
 mind is the most wondrous specimen of Divine workmanship 
 of all ; and to it, aided and guided by Divine Providence, and 
 acting through the senses, is it appointed to work out man's 
 task in time, and to rear the great temple of civilization. To 
 work with hand and brain is a duty proclaimed by man's con- 
 science, and enforced in his Bible. It is no less than irrever- 
 33* 
 
890 THE TESTrJIOXY OF THE ROCKS: 
 
 ence to God to scorn or defame those results of human inquiry 
 in which instincts implanted and capacities conferred by God 
 have proceeded to their natural goal. Now, we are perfectly 
 sure that no Protestant Church would for a moment de- 
 liberately contemplate this. But one point can no longer be 
 doubted, that, namely, if the theory against which we contend 
 is identified with the Protestant creeds, the conviction will sink 
 into the mind of the scientific part of the community that the 
 Churches are behind the age, that they fear the light, that they 
 would put out the eyes of reason. Whatever may be the case 
 in individual instances, or with peculiarly constituted minds, 
 science will no longer believe in a universal chaos covering 
 the face of the earth some six thousand years ago. On this 
 point, the unmistakable, irresistible tendency is to that au- 
 thoritative unanimity of science with which it is in vain to 
 contend, — that authoritative unanimity whose seal secures 
 belief beyond the walls of the school, which makes us credit 
 the theory of gravitation though unacquainted with the argu- 
 ments of Newton, and rely on that of the circulation of the 
 blood though we never followed the demonstrations of Harvey. 
 When scientific men are thus unanimous, argument ceases. 
 The Churches might then fondly dream that the danger was 
 past. But the religious and philosophical history of the last 
 hundred years renders it easy to see what the result would be. 
 Science would assume the attitude of Galileo ; pitying tolera- 
 tion would supersede both assent and attack ; and the highest 
 culture, separating itself from Christianity, would exhibit to u 5 
 in England and in Scotland what it has already so long ex- 
 hibited on the Continent, — a refined, a self-satisfied, a most 
 plausible Paganism. 
 
 Further, the theory we oppose is avowedly unable to contri- 
 bute anything positive to Christian apologetics. Did we even 
 grant all its pretensions, its attitude would be entirely negative. 
 
A DKFKNCE. 391 
 
 It aims at no explanation ; it demands and it offers no confirm- 
 ation of tire word from the works of the Creator ; it seeks not 
 victory, but only peace; it spreads over the geologic ages a 
 ghastly silence, a Godless desolation, and calls this the tran- 
 quillity of triumph. But the theory of Mr. Miller is a new, a 
 positive, a weighty addition to the external evidences of Chris- 
 tianity. The argument it affords is clear and convincing. The 
 Christian apologist, armed with its reasoning, may challenge 
 the skeptic to produce, from all the records of mythology, 
 ancient or modern, northern or oriental, any correspondence 
 between cosmogony and science which will for a moment com- 
 pare with the correspondence it exhibits between the geologic 
 periods and the Mosaic days. To this challenge the skeptic 
 will in vain attempt to respond. Point after point of marvel- 
 lous correspondence the Christian apologist can urge on his 
 observation, pressing him, meanwhile, to explain how the He- 
 brew leader, legislating for an uncultured tribe, became pos- 
 sessed of those unsurmised secrets three thousand years ago. 
 To omit other instances, let one express and striking argument 
 in favor of inspiration afforded by this theory be particularly 
 considered. We cannot be far wrong in stating that, ever 
 since wit and blasphemy cemented an unholy union, the Mosaic 
 declaration of the appearance of light in our world before the 
 sua was visible has been a favorite subject for infidel derision. 
 The opportunity of attack was indeed tempting. Men natur- 
 ally associate light with the sun and moon, and their separation 
 seems at first sight flat nonsense. For three thousand years 
 the Christian apologist could only say that so it had been* 
 For three thousand yeacs the mysterious oracle was unread. 
 In the nineteenth century, science comes forward distinctly to 
 inform us that, during three sufficiently discriminated periods, 
 there was light on this world, while the sun and moon were 
 invisible. In the fourth oeriod the heavenly luminaries were 
 
392 THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS. 
 
 unveiled. And, lo ! this is what is declared in Genesis. How, 
 we ask, did Moses know that fact ? How did he know that, 
 first when the impenetrable veil of steam covering the primeval 
 ocean became less dense, light shimmered faintly through? 
 How did he know that no clear sunbeam ever found its way to 
 the Carbonife"rous forests ? Could he discriminate the proper- 
 ties of light, separating those which color and harden from 
 those which only irradiate ? The fact comes upon one like a 
 flash of lightning. The book in which, three thousand years 
 ago, the aerial conditions of our planet for uncounted ages 
 before man appeared on the world are unmistakably described, 
 must have come from God. 
 
 Once more, not only does the reviewer's theory break the con- 
 tinuity of the narrative in Genesis ; — it destroys the complete- 
 ness of the word of God considered as a whole. It confines 
 revelation to a part of the world's history. It removes from its 
 ken protracted periods in which, as the rocks cannot but be 
 regarded as demonstrating, the Almighty was at work with our 
 planet, and race after race of plants and animals were showing 
 forth his glory. Turning to the other theory, we see revelation 
 synchronous with the history of our planet. The word in which 
 the redeeming Christ is revealed becomes precisely commen- 
 surate with the time in which the creating Christ has exhib- 
 ited, on our planet, his creative power. The closing books "of 
 the New Testament tell us of a fire which will in the latter 
 time envelope the world. The first book of the Old Testa- 
 ment, read by the light reflected from the works of God, points 
 us to a commencing fire in which the planet, as now consti- 
 tuted, had its beginning. From fire tv fire spans the arch of 
 creation ; from fire to fire spans the arch of revelation ; Christ 
 the alpha and the omega of both. 
 
 END OF SECOND SERIES.