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MISCELLANEOUS STUDIES 
 IN PROSE 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 miscellaneous 
 Studies in Prose 
 
 COMPILED BY 
 GRENVILLE KLEISER 
 
 For the Exclusive Use of Grenville Kleiser's 
 Mail Course Students 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 1911 
 

 Copyright, 1911, by 
 
 GRENVILLE KLEISER 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 ©CI.A303106 
 
 n 
 
TO THE STUDENT 
 
 It is generally recognized that clear and 
 accurate thinking must precede clear and ac- 
 curate expression. The selections presented 
 here have a double value for the student. 
 First, as examples of clear and forceful think- 
 ing; second, as specimens of good English. 
 
 The student of English should be a general 
 reader of the recognized stylists. These ex- 
 tracts should stimulate his interest in the 
 larger works of such writers as Addison, Car- 
 lyle, Macaulay and Newman. "Webster should 
 be closely studied as a master of English style, 
 with special regard to the needs of the public 
 speaker. 
 
 The chapter entitled ' ' Speech and Thought, ' ' 
 from Lotze's famous work, "Microcosmus,'' 
 is particularly commended to the student's 
 attention, and is reprinted here by special per- 
 mission of the publishers. 
 
 GRENvnj:.E Kleiser. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Sir Roger de Co\'erley 
 
 By Joseph Addison (1672-1719) . 1 
 
 DART}ktouTH College Case 
 
 By Daniel Webster (1782-1852) . 6 
 
 WnjJAM Pitt 
 
 By Thomas Carlyle (1795-lSSl) . 71 
 
 On the Athenian Orators 
 
 By Thomas Babington Macaulay 
 (1800-1859) ^^ 
 
 Literature . ^ ^ _ 
 
 By John Henry Newman (1801-1890) 112 
 
 Speech and Thought 
 
 By Rudolf Hermann Lotze (1817- 
 1881) ^^^ 
 
Miscellaneous Studies 
 IN Prose 
 
 SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY 
 
 BY JOSEPH ADDISON 
 
 TELE first and most obvious reflections which 
 arise in a man who changes the city 
 for the country are upon the different 
 manners of the people whom he meets with in 
 those two different scenes of life. By manners 
 I do not mean morals, but behavior and good- 
 breeding as they show themselves in the town 
 and in the country. 
 
 And here, in the first place, I must observe 
 a very great revolution that has happened in 
 this article of good-breeding. Several obliging 
 deferences, condescensions, and submissions, 
 with many outward forms and ceremonies 
 that accompany them, were first of all brought 
 up among the politer part of mankind, who 
 lived in courts and cities, and distinguished 
 themselves from the rustic part of the species 
 (who on all occasions acted bluntly and natu- 
 rally) by such a mutual complaisance and in- 
 tercourse of civilities. These forms of con- 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 versation by degrees multiplied and grew 
 troublesome; the modish world found too 
 great a constraint in them, and have therefore 
 thrown most of them aside. Conversation, 
 like the Romish religion, was so encumbered 
 with show and ceremony that it stood in need 
 of a reformation to retrench its superfluities 
 and restore it to its natural good sense and 
 beauty. At present, therefore, an uncon- 
 strained carriage and a certain openness of 
 behavior are the height of good-breeding. The 
 fashionable world is grown free and easy ; our 
 manners sit more loose upon us. Nothing is 
 so modish as an agreeable negligence. In a 
 word, good-breeding shows itself most where 
 to an ordinary eye it appears the least. 
 
 If after this we look on the people of mode 
 in the country we find in them the manners 
 of the last age. They have no sooner fetched 
 themselves up to the fashion of the polite 
 world but the town has dropt them, and are 
 nearer to the first state of nature than to those 
 refinements which formerly reigned in the 
 court, and still prevail in the country. One 
 may now know a man that never conversed in 
 the world by his excess of good-breeding. A 
 polite country squire shall make you as many 
 bows in half an hour as would serve a courtier 
 for a week. There is infinitely more to do 
 about place and precedency in a meeting of 
 justices' wives than in an assembly of duch- 
 esses. 
 
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 This rural politeness is very troublesome to 
 a man of my temper, who generally take the 
 chair that is next me, and walk first or last, 
 in the front or in the rear, as chance directs. 
 I have known my friend Sir Roger's dinner 
 almost cold before the company could adjust 
 the ceremonial and be prevailed upon to sit 
 down ; and have heartily pitied my old friend, 
 when I have seen him forced to pick and cull 
 his guests, as they sat at the several parts of 
 his table, that he might drink their healths 
 according to their respective ranks and qual- 
 ities. Honest Will Wimble, who I should have 
 thought had been altogether uninfected with 
 ceremony, gives me abundance of trouble in 
 this particular. Tho he has been fishing all 
 the morning, he will not help himself at din- 
 ner till I am served. When we are going out 
 of the hall he runs behind me ; and last night, 
 as we were walking in the fields, stopt short 
 at a stile till I came up to it, and upon my 
 making signs to him to get over, told me, with 
 a serious smile, that sure I believed they had 
 no manners in the country. 
 
 There has happened another revolution in 
 the point of good-breeding, which relates to 
 the conversation among men of mode, and 
 which I can not but look upon as very ex- 
 traordinary. It v/as certainly one of the first 
 distinctions of a well-bred man to express 
 everything that had the most remote appear- 
 ance of being obscene in modest terms and 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 distant phrases ; while the clown, who had no 
 such delicacy of conception and expression, 
 clothed his ideas in those plain, homely terms 
 that are the most obvious and natural. This 
 kind of good manners was perhaps carried to 
 an excess, so as to make conversation too stiff, 
 formal, and precise; for which reason (as 
 hypocrisy in one age is generally succeeded by 
 atheism in another) conversation is in a great 
 measure relapsed into the first extreme; so 
 that at present several of our men of the town, 
 and particularly those who have been polished 
 in France, make use of the most coarse, uncivil- 
 ized words in our language, and utter them- 
 selves often in such a manner as a clown 
 would blush to hear. 
 
 This infamous piece of good-breeding, which 
 reigns among the coxcombs of the town, has 
 not yet made its way into the country; and 
 as it is impossible for such an irrational way 
 of conversation to last long among a people 
 that make any profession of religion, or show 
 of modesty, if the country gentlemen get into 
 it they will certainly be left in the lurch. 
 Their good-breeding will come too late to 
 them, and they will be thought a parcel of 
 lewd clowns, while they fancy themselves talk- 
 ing together like men of wit and pleasure. 
 
 As the two points of good-breeding which I 
 have hitherto insisted upon regard behavior 
 and conversation, there is a third, which turns 
 upon dress. In this, too, the country are very 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 much behindhand. The rural beaus are not 
 yet got out of the fashion that took place at 
 the time of the Revolution, but ride about the 
 country in red coats and laced hats, while the 
 women in many parts are still trying to outvie 
 one another in the height of their head-dresses. 
 But a friend of mine, who is now upon the 
 western circuit, having promised to give me 
 an account of the several modes and fashions 
 that prevail in the different parts of the na- 
 tion through which he passes, I shall defer the 
 enlarging upon this last topic till I have 
 received a letter from him, which I expect 
 every post. 
 
THE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE* 
 
 BY DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 (Argument before the Supreme Court of the United 
 States, at Washington, on the 10th of March, 1818.) 
 
 (The action, The Trustees of Dartmouth College, 
 vs. William H. Woodward, was commenced in the 
 Court of Common Pleas, Grafton County, State of 
 New Hampshire, February term, 1817. The declara- 
 tion was trover for the books of record, original 
 charter, common seal, and other corporate property 
 of the college. The conversion was alleged to have 
 been made on the 7th day of October, 1816. The 
 proper pleas were filed, and by consent the cause 
 was carried directly to the Supreme Court of New 
 Hampshire, by appeal, and entered at the May term, 
 1817. The general issue was pleaded by the de- 
 fendant, and joined by the plaintiffs. The facts in 
 the case were then agreed upon by the parties, and 
 drawn up in the form of a special verdict, reciting 
 the charter of the college and the acts of the legis- 
 lature of the State, passed June and December, 1816, 
 by which the said corporation of Dartmouth College 
 was enlarged and improved, and the said charter 
 amended. 
 
 The question made in the case was, whether those 
 acts of the legislature were valid and binding upon 
 the corporation, without their acceptance or assent, 
 and not repugnant to the Constitution of the United 
 States. If so, the verdict found for the defendants; 
 otherwise, it found for the plaintiffs. 
 
 The case was continued to the September term of 
 the court in Eockingham County, where it was ar- 
 gued; and at the November term of the same year, 
 in Grafton County, the opinion of the court was 
 delivered by Chief Justice Eichardson, in favor of 
 
 ♦Published by kind permission of Little, Brown & Company. 
 
 6 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 the validity and constitutionality of the acts of the 
 legislature; and judgment was accordingly entered 
 for the defendant on the special verdict. 
 
 Thereupon a writ of error was sued out by the 
 original plaintiffs, to remove the cause to the Su- 
 preme Court of the United States; where it was 
 entered at the term of the court held at Washington, 
 on the first Monday of February, 1818. 
 
 The cause came on for argument on the 10th 
 day of March, 1818, before all the judges. It was 
 argued by Mr. Webster and Mr. Hopkinson for the 
 plaintiffs in error, and by Mr. Holmes and the 
 Attorney-General (Writ) for the defendant in error. 
 
 At the term of the court held in February, 1819, 
 the opinion of the judges was delivered by Chief 
 Justice Marshall, declaring the acts of the legisla- 
 ture unconstitutional and invalid, and reversing the 
 judgment of the State Court. The Court, with the 
 exception of Mr. Justice Duvall, were unanimous. 
 
 The following was the argument of Mr. Webster 
 for the plaintiffs in error.) 
 
 THE general question is, whether the acts 
 of the Legislature of New Hampshire 
 of the 27th of June, and of the 18th 
 and 26th of December, 1816, are valid and 
 binding on the plaintiffs, without their accept- 
 ance or assent. 
 
 The charter of 1769 created and established 
 'a corporation, to consist of twelve persons, 
 and no more; to be called the "Trustees of 
 Dartmouth College." The preamble to the 
 charter recites that it is granted on the appli- 
 cation and request of the Rev. Eleazer Wheel- 
 oek: That Doctor Wheelock, above the year 
 1754, established a charity school, at his own 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 expense, and on his own estate and plantation ; 
 That for several years, through the assistance 
 of well-disposed persons in America, granted 
 at his solicitation, he had clothed, maintained, 
 and educated a number of native Indians, and 
 employed them afterward as missionaries and 
 schoolmasters among the savage tribes: That 
 his design promising to be useful, he had con- 
 stituted the Rev. Mr. Whitaker to be his at- 
 torney, with power to solicit contributions in 
 England, for the further extension and carry- 
 ing on of his undertaking; and that he had 
 requested the Earl of Dartmouth, Baron 
 Smith, Mr. Thornton, and other gentlemen to 
 receive such sums as might be contributed in 
 England toward supporting his school, and to 
 be trustees thereof, for his charity; which 
 these persons had agreed to do: That there- 
 upon Doctor Wheelock had executed to them 
 a deed of trust, in pursuance of such agree- 
 ment between him and them, and, for divers 
 good reasons, had referred it to these persons 
 to determine the place in which the school 
 should be finally established. And, to enable 
 them to form a proper decision on this subject, 
 had laid before them the several offers which 
 had been made to him by the several govern- 
 ments in America, in order to induce him to 
 settle and establish his school within the lim- 
 its of such governments for their own emolu- 
 ment and the increase of learning in their re- 
 spective places, as well as for the furtherance 
 
 8 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 of his general original design : And inasmuch 
 as a number of the proprietors of lands in 
 New Hampshire, animated by the example of 
 the Governor himself and others, and in con- 
 sideration that, without any impediment to its 
 original. design, the school might be enlarged 
 and improved, to promote learning among the 
 English, and to supply ministers to the people 
 of the Province, had promised large tracts of 
 land, provided the school should be established 
 in that Province, the persons before men- 
 tioned having weighed the reasons in favor of 
 the several places proposed, had given the 
 preference to this Province and these offers: 
 That Doctor Wheelock therefore represented 
 the necessity of a legal incorporation, and pro- 
 posed that certain gentlemen in America 
 whom he had already named and appointed 
 in his will to be trustees of his charity after 
 his decease, should compose the corporation. 
 Upon this recital, and in consideration of the 
 laudable original design of Doctor Wheelock, 
 and willing that the best means of education 
 be established in New Hampshire for the ben- 
 efit of the Province, the king granted the char- 
 ter, by the advice of his Provincial Council. 
 
 The substance of the facts thus recited is, 
 that Doctor Wheelock has founded a charity 
 on funds owned and procured by himself; 
 that he was at that time the sole dispenser and 
 sole administrator, as well as the legal owner, 
 of these funds; that he had made his will, 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 devising this property in trust, to continue 
 the existence and uses of the school, and ap- 
 pointed trustees ; that, in this state of things, 
 he had been invited to fix his school perma- 
 nently in New Hampshire, and to extend the 
 design of it to the education of the youth of 
 that Province; that before he removed his 
 school, or accepted this invitation, which his 
 friends in England had advised him to accept, 
 he applied for a charter, to be granted, not to 
 whomsoever the king or government of the 
 Province should please, but to such persons as 
 he named and appointed, namely, the persons 
 whom he had already appointed to be the 
 future trustees of his charity by his will. 
 
 The charter, or letters patent, then proceed 
 to create such a corporation, and to appoint 
 twelve persons to constitute it, by the name 
 of the ''Trustees of Dartmouth College"; to 
 have perpetual existence as such corporation, 
 and vrith power to hold and dispose of lands 
 and goods, for the use of the college, with all 
 the ordinary powers of corporations. They 
 are in their discretion to apply the funds and 
 property of the college to the support of the 
 T3resident, tutors, ministers, and other officers 
 of the college, and such missionaries and 
 schoolmasters as they may see fit to employ 
 among the Indians. There are to be twelve 
 trustees forever, and no more, and they are 
 to have the right of filling vacancies occurring 
 in their own body. The Rev. Mr. Wheelock 
 
 10 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 is declared to be the founder of the college, 
 and is, by the charter, appointed first presi- 
 dent, with power to appoint a successor by his 
 last will. All proper powers of government, 
 superintendence and visitation are vested in 
 the trustees. They are to appoint and remove 
 all officers at their discretion, to fix their sal- 
 aries and assign their duties, and to make 
 all ordinances, orders, and laws for the gov- 
 ernment of the students. To the end that 
 the persons who had acted as depositaries of 
 the contributions in England, and who had 
 also been contributors themselves, might be 
 satisfied of the good use of their contributions, 
 the president was annually, or when required, 
 to transmit to them an account of the progress 
 of the institution and the disbursements of 
 its funds, so long as they should continue to 
 act in that trust. These letters patent are to 
 be good and effectual, in law, against the king, 
 his heirs and successors forever, without fur- 
 ther grant or confirmation; and the trustees 
 are to hold all and singular these privileges, 
 advantages, liberties and immunities to them 
 and to their successors forever. 
 
 No funds are given to the college by this 
 charter. A corporate existence and capacity 
 are given to the trustees, with the privileges 
 and immunities mentioned, to enable the foun- 
 der and his associates better to manage the 
 funds they themselves had contributed, and 
 such others as they might afterward obtain. 
 
 11 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 After the institution thus created and con- 
 stituted had existed, uninterruptedly and use- 
 fully, nearly fifty years, the legislature of 
 New Hampshire passed the acts in question. 
 
 The first makes the twelve trustees under 
 the charter, and nine other individuals, to be 
 appointed by the Governor and Council, a 
 corporation, by a new name ; and to this new 
 corporation transfers all the property, rights, 
 powers, liberties, and privileges of the old 
 corporation; with further power to establish 
 new colleges and an institute, and to apply ail 
 or any part of the funds to these purposes; 
 subject to the power and control of a board of 
 twenty-five overseers, to be appointed by the 
 Governor and Council. 
 
 The second act makes further provisions 
 for executing the objects of the first, and the 
 last act authorizes the defendant, the treasurer 
 of the plaintiffs, to retain and hold their prop- 
 erty against their will. 
 
 If these acts are valid, the old corporation 
 is abolished and a new one created. The first 
 act does, in fact, if it can have any effect, cre- 
 ate a new corporation, and transfer to it all 
 the property and franchises of the old. The 
 two corporations are not the same in anything 
 which essentially belongs to the existence of a 
 corporation. They have different names, and 
 different powers, rights and duties. Their or- 
 ganization is wholly different. The powers of 
 the corporation are not vested in the same or 
 
 12 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 similar hands. In one, the trustees are twelve 
 and no more. In the other, they are twenty- 
 one. In one the power is in a single board. 
 In the other it is divided between two boards. 
 Altho the act professes to include the old trus- 
 tees in the new corporation, yet that was Avith- 
 out their assent, and against their remon- 
 strance; and no person can be compelled to 
 be a member of such a corporation against his 
 will. It was neither expected nor intended 
 that they should be members of the new cor- 
 poration. The act itself treats the old cor- 
 poration as at an end, and, going on the 
 ground that all its functions have ceased, it 
 provides for the first meeting and organiza- 
 tion of the new corporation. It expressly pro- 
 vides also that the new corporation shall have 
 and hold all the property of the old, a provi- 
 sion which would be quite unnecessary upon 
 any other ground than that the old corpora- 
 tion was dissolved. But if it could be con- 
 tended that the effect of these acts was not 
 entirely to abolish the old corporation, yet it 
 is manifest that they impair and invade the 
 rights, property, and powers of the trustees 
 under the charter, as a corporation, and the 
 legal rights, privileges and immunities which 
 belong to them as individual members of the 
 corporation. 
 
 The twelve trustees were the sole legal own- 
 ers of all they acquired under the charter. By 
 the acts others are admitted, against their will, 
 
 13 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 to be joint owners. The twelve individuals 
 who are trustees were possest of all the fran- 
 chises and immunities conferred by the char- 
 ter. By the acts nine other trustees and 
 twenty-five overseers are admitted, against 
 their will, to divide these franchises and im- 
 munities with them. 
 
 If, either as a corporation or as individuals, 
 they have any legal rights, this forcible intru- 
 sion of others violates those rights, as mani- 
 festly as an entire and complete ouster and dis- 
 possession. These acts alter the whole constitu- 
 tion of the corporation. They affect the rights 
 of the whole body as a corporation, and the 
 rights of the individuals who compose it. They 
 revoke corporate powers and franchises. They 
 alienate and transfer the property of the col- 
 lege to others. By the charter the trustees had 
 a right to fill vacancies in their own number. 
 This was now taken away. They were to con- 
 sist of twelve, and, by express provision, of no 
 more. This is altered. They and their suc- 
 cessors, appointed by themselves, were forever 
 to hold the property. The legislature has 
 found successors for them before their seats 
 are vacant. The powers and privileges which 
 the twelve were to exercise exclusively are now 
 to be exercised by others. By one of the acts 
 they are subjected to heavy penalties if they 
 exercise their offices, or any of those powers 
 and privileges granted them by charter, and 
 which they had exercised for fifty years. They 
 
 14 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 are to be punished for not accepting: the new 
 grant and taking its benefits. This, it must be 
 confest, is rather a summary mode of settling 
 a question of constitutional rights. Not only 
 are new trustees forced into the corporation, 
 but new trusts and uses are created. The col- 
 lege is turned into a university. Power is 
 given to create new colleges, and, to authorize 
 any diversion of the funds which may be 
 agreeable to the new boards, sufficient latitude 
 is given by the undefined power of establishing 
 an institute. To these new colleges and this 
 institute the funds contributed by the found- 
 er, Doctor Wheelock, and by the original do- 
 nors, the Earl of Dartmouth and others, are 
 to be applied in plain and manifest disregard 
 of the uses to which they were given. 
 
 The president, one of the old trustees, had a 
 right to his office, salary, and emoluments, 
 subject to the twelve trustees alone. His title 
 to these is now changed and he is made ac- 
 countable to new masters. So also all the pro- 
 fessors and tutors. If the legislature can at 
 pleasure make these alterations and changes 
 in the rights and privileges of the plaintiffs, 
 it may, with equal propriety, abolish these 
 rights and privileges altogether. The same 
 power which can do any part of this work can 
 accomplish the whole. And, indeed, the argu- 
 ment on which these acts have been hitherto 
 defended goes altogether to the ground, that 
 this is such a corporation as the legislature 
 
 15 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 may abolish at pleasure ; and that its members 
 have no rights, liberties, franchises, property, 
 or privileges, which the legislature msij not 
 revoke, annul, alienate or transfer to others, 
 whenever it sees fit. 
 
 It will be contended by the plaintiffs that 
 these acts are not valid and binding on them 
 without their assent : 
 
 1. Because they are against common right 
 and the Constitution of New Hampshire. 
 
 2. Because they are repugnant to the Con- 
 stitution of the United States. 
 
 I am aware of the limits which bound the 
 jurisdiction of the court in this case, and that 
 on this record nothing can be decided but the 
 single question, whether these acts are repug- 
 nant to the Constitution of the United States. 
 Yet it may assist in forming an opinion of 
 their true nature and character to compare 
 them with those fundamental principles intro- 
 duced into the State governments for the pur- 
 pose of limiting the exercise of the legislative 
 power, and which the constitution of New 
 Hampshire expresses with great fulness and 
 accuracy. 
 
 It is not much to assert that the Legislatur3 
 of New Hampshire would not have been com- 
 petent to pass the acts in question, and to 
 make them binding on the plaintiffs without 
 their assent, even if there had been, in the 
 Constitution of New Hampshire or of the 
 United States, no special restriction on their 
 
 16 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 power, because these acts are not the exercise 
 of a power properly legislative. Their effect 
 and object are to take away from one rights, 
 property and franchises, and to grant them to 
 another. This is not the exercise of a legisla- 
 tive powder. To justify the taking away of 
 vested rights there must be a forfeiture to 
 adjudge upon and declare which is the proper 
 province of the judiciary. Attainder and 
 confiscation are acts of sovereign power, not 
 acts of legislation. The British Parliament, 
 among other unlimited powers, claims that of 
 altering and vacating charters, not as an act 
 of ordinary legislation, but of uncontrolled 
 authority. It is theoretically omnipotent. 
 Yet, in modern times, it has very rarely at- 
 tempted the exercise of this power. In a cele- 
 brated instance those who asserted this power 
 in Parliament vindicated its exercise only in a 
 case in which it could be shown: First, that 
 the charter in question was a charter of politi- 
 cal power ; second, that there was a great and 
 overruling state necessity, justifying the vio- 
 lation of the charter; third, that the charter 
 had been abused and justly forfeited. The bill 
 affecting this charter did not pass. Its history 
 is well known. The act which afterward did 
 pass, passed with the assent of the corporation. 
 Even in the worst times this power of Parlia- 
 ment to repeal and rescind charters has not 
 often been exercised. The illegal proceedings 
 in the reign of Charles II were under color of 
 
 17 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 law. Judgments of forfeiture were obtained 
 in the courts. Such was the case of the quo 
 warranto against the city of London, and the 
 proceedings by which the charter of Massa- 
 chusetts was vacated. 
 
 The Legislature of New Hampshire has no 
 power over the rights of the plaintiffs than 
 existed somewhere in some department of gov- 
 ernment before the Revolution. The British 
 Parliament could not have annulled or re- 
 voked this grant as an act of ordinary legis- 
 lation. If it had done it at all it could only 
 have been in virtue of that sovereign power, 
 called omnipotent, which does not belong to 
 any legislature in the United States. The 
 Legislature of New Hampshire has the same 
 power over this charter which belonged to the 
 king who granted it, and no more. By the 
 law of England the power to create corpora- 
 tions is a part of the royal prerogative. By 
 the Revolution this power may be considered 
 as having devolved on the legislature of the 
 State, and it has accordingly been exercised 
 by the legislature. But the king can not 
 abolish a corporation, or new-model it, or alter 
 its powers, without its assent. This is the ac- 
 knowledged and well-known doctrine of the 
 common law. ^'Whatever might have been 
 the notion in former times, ' ' says Lords Mans- 
 field, *'it is most certain now that the corpora- 
 tions of the universities are lay corporations; 
 and that the crown can not take away from 
 
 18 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 them any rights that have been formerly sub- 
 sisting in them under old charters or prescrip- 
 tive usage." After forfeiture duly found, 
 the king may regrant the franchises; but a 
 grant of franchises already granted, and of 
 which no forfeiture has been found, is void. 
 
 Corporate franchises can only be forfeited 
 by trial and judgment. In case of a new char- 
 ter or grant to an existing corporation it may 
 accept or reject it as it pleases. It may accept 
 such part of the grant as it chooses and reject 
 the rest. In the very nature of things a char- 
 ter can not be forced upon any body. No one 
 can be compelled to accept a grant, and with- 
 out acceptance the grant is necessarily void. 
 It can not be pretended that the legislature, 
 as successor to the kiug in this part of his pre- 
 rogative, has any power to revoke, vacate, or 
 alter this charter. If, therefore, the legisla- 
 ture has not this power, by any specific grant 
 contained in the constitution, nor as included 
 in the ordinary legislative powers, nor by rea- 
 son of its succession to the prerogatives of the 
 crown in this particular, on what ground 
 would the authority to pass these acts rest, 
 even if there were no prohibitory clauses in 
 the constitution and the Bill of Rights ? 
 
 But there are prohibitions in the Constitu- 
 tion and Bill of Rights of New Hampshire, 
 introduced for the purpose of limiting the 
 legislative power and protecting the rights 
 and property of the citizens. One prohibition 
 
 19 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 is, "that no person shall be deprived of his 
 property, immunities, or privileges, put out 
 of the protection of the law, or deprived of 
 his life, liberty, or estate, but by judgment of 
 his peers or the law of the land. ' ' 
 
 In the opinion, however, which was given in 
 the court below, it is denied that the trustees 
 under the charter had any property immunity, 
 liberty, or privilege in this corporation within 
 the meaning of this prohibition in the Bill of 
 Rights. It is said that it is a public corpora- 
 tion and public property; that the trustees 
 have no greater interest in it than any other 
 individuals; that it is not private property 
 which they can sell or transmit to their heirs, 
 and that therefore they have no interest in it ; 
 that their office is a public trust, like that of 
 the Governor or a judge, and that they have 
 no more concern in the property of the college 
 than the Governor in the property of the 
 State, or than the judges in the fines which 
 they impose on the culprits at their bar ; that 
 it is nothing to them whether their power shall 
 be extended or lessened, any more than it is 
 to their honors whether their jurisdiction 
 shall be enlarged or diminished. It is neces- 
 sary, therefore, to inquire into the true nature 
 and character of the corporation which was 
 created by the charter of 1769. 
 
 There are divers sorts of corporations ; and 
 it may be safely admitted that the legislature 
 has more power over some than others. Some 
 
 20 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 corporations are for government and political 
 arrangement, as such, for example, as cities, 
 counties, and towns in New England. These 
 may be changed and modified r.s public con- 
 veniences may require, due regard being al- 
 w^ays had to the rights of property. Of such 
 corporations, all who live within the limits 
 are, of course, obliged to be members, and to 
 submit to the duties which the law imposes on 
 them as such. Other civil corporations are 
 for the advancement of trade and business, 
 such as banks, insurance companies, and the 
 like. These are created, not by general law, 
 but usually by grant. Their constitution is 
 special. It is such as the legislature sees fit 
 to give, and the grantees to accept. 
 
 The corporation in question is not a civil, 
 altho it is a lay corporation. It is an eleemos- 
 ynary corporation. It is a private charity, 
 originally founded and endowed by an in- 
 dividual, with a charter obtained for it at his 
 request, for the better administration of his 
 charity. *'The eleemosynary sort of corpora- 
 tions are such as are constituted for the per- 
 petual distributions of the free alms or bounty 
 of the founder of them to such persons as he 
 has directed. Of this are all hospitals for the 
 maintenance of the poor, sick and impotent; 
 and all colleges, both in our universities and 
 out of them." Eleemosynary corporations 
 are for the management of private property, 
 according to the will of the donors. They are 
 
 21 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 private corporations. A college is as much a 
 private corporation as a hospital; especially 
 a college founded, as this was, by private 
 bounty. A college is a charity. *'The estab- 
 lishment of learning," says Lord Hardwicke, 
 " is a charity, and so considered in the statute 
 of Elizabeth. A devise to a college, for their 
 benefit, is a laudable charity, and deserves 
 encouragement. ' ' 
 
 The legal signification of a charity is derived 
 chiefly from the statute 43 Eliz., ch. 4. ''Those 
 purposes," says Sir William Grant, **are con- 
 sidered charitable which that statute enumer- 
 ates. " Colleges are enumerated as charities 
 in that statute. The government in these cases 
 lends its aid to perpetuate the beneficent in- 
 tention of the donor by granting a charter 
 under which his private charity shall continue 
 to be dispensed after his death. This is done 
 either by incorporating the objects of the 
 charity, as, for instance, the scholars in a col- 
 lege or the poor in a hospital, or by incor- 
 porating those who are to be governors or 
 trustees of the charity. In cases of the first 
 sort the founder is, by the common law, visi- 
 tor. In early times it became a maxim, that 
 he who gave the property might regulate it in 
 future. ' ' Cujus est dare, ejus est disponere. ' ' 
 This right of visitation descended from the 
 founder to his heir as a right of property, and 
 precisely as his other property went to his 
 heir; and in default of heirs it went to the 
 
 22 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 king, as all other property goes to the king 
 for the want of heirs. The right of visitation 
 arises from the property. It grows out of the 
 endowment. The founder may, if he pleases, 
 part with it at any time when he establishes 
 the charity, and may vest it in others. There- 
 fore, if he chooses that governors, trustees, or 
 overseers should be appointed in the charter, 
 he may cause it to be done, and his power of 
 visitation may be transferred to them, instead 
 of descending to his heirs. The persons thus 
 assigned or appointed by the founder will be 
 visitors, with all the powers of the founder, 
 in exclusion of his heirs. The right of visita- 
 tion, then, accrues to them, as a matter of 
 property, by the gift, transfer, or appointment 
 of the founder. This is a private right, which 
 they can assert in all legal modes, and in 
 which they have the same protection of the 
 law as in all other rights. As visitors they 
 may make rules, ordinances, and statutes, and 
 alter and repeal them, as far as permitted so 
 to do by the charter. Altho the charter pro- 
 ceeds from the crown or the government, it is 
 considered as the will of the donor. It is 
 obtained at his request. He imposes it as the 
 rule which is to prevail in the dispensation of 
 his bounty in all future times. The king or 
 government which grants the charter is not 
 thereby the founder, but he who furnishes 
 the funds. The gift of the revenues is the 
 foundation. 
 
 23 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 The leading case on the subject is Phillips 
 V. Bury. This was an ejectment brought to 
 recover the rectory-house, etc., of Exeter Col- 
 lege in Oxford. The question was whether 
 the plaintiff or defendant was legal rector. 
 Exeter College was founded by an individual, 
 and incorporated by a charter granted by 
 Queen Elizabeth. The controversy turned 
 upon the power of the visitor, and, in the dis- 
 cussion of the cause, the nature of college 
 charters and corporations was very fully con- 
 sidered. Lord Holt's judgment, copied from 
 his own manuscript, is found in 2 Term Re- 
 ports, 346. The following is an extract : 
 
 ''That we may the better apprehend the nature 
 of a visitor, we are to consider that there are in law 
 two sorts of corporations aggregate; such as are for 
 public government, and such as are for private charity. 
 Those that are for the public government of a town, 
 city, mystery, or the like, being for public advan- 
 tage, are to be governed accordingly to the laws 
 of the land. If they make any particular private 
 laws and constitutions, the validity and justice of 
 them is examinable in the king's courts. Of these 
 there are no particular visitor; there are no patrons 
 of these; therefore, if no provision be in the charter 
 how the succession shall continue, the law supplieth 
 the defect of the Constitution, and saith it shall be 
 by election; as mayor, aldermen, common council, 
 and the like. But private and particular corpora- 
 tions for charity, founded and endowed by private 
 persons, are subject to the private government; if 
 there be no visitor appointed by the founder, the 
 law appoints the founder and his heirs to be visitors, 
 who are to act and proceed according to the par- 
 
 24 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 ticular laws and constitutions assigned them by the 
 founder. It is now admitted on all hands that the 
 founder is patron, and as founder is visitor, if no 
 particular visitor be assigned; so that patronage 
 and visitation are necessary consequents, one upon 
 another. For this visitorial power was not intro- 
 duced by any canons or constitutions ecclesiastical 
 (as was said by a learned gentleman whom I have 
 in my eye, in his argument of this case); it is an 
 appointment of law. It ariseth from the property 
 which the founder had in the lands assigned to 
 support the charity; and as he is the author of 
 the charity, the law gives him and his heirs a visita- 
 torial powder, that is, an authority to inspect the 
 actions and regulate the behavior of the members 
 that partake of the charity. For it is fit the mem- 
 bers that are endowed and that have the charity 
 bestowed upon them, should not be left to them- 
 selves, but pursue the intent and design of him that 
 bestowed it upon them. Now, indeed, where the poor, 
 or those that receive the charity, are not incorporated, 
 hut there are certain trustees who dispose of the char- 
 ity, there is no visitor, because the interest of the 
 revenue is not vested in the poor that have the benefit 
 of the charity, but they are subject to the orders 
 and directions of the trustees. But where they who 
 are to enjoy the benefit of the charity are incor- 
 porated, there to prevent all perverting of the 
 charity, or to compose differences that may happen 
 among them, there is by law a visitatorial power; 
 and it being a creature of the founder's own, it 
 is reason that ho and his heirs should have that 
 power, unless by the founder it is vested in some 
 other. Now there is no manner of difference be- 
 tween a college and a hospital, except only in de- 
 gree. A hospital is for those that are i)Oor, and 
 mean, and low, and sickly; a college is for another 
 sort of indigent persons; but it hath another intent 
 to study in and breed up persons in the w^orld that 
 have no otherw^ise to live; but still it is as muck 
 
 25 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 within the reasons as hospitals. And if in a hos- 
 pital the master and poor are incorporated, it is a 
 college having a common seal to act by, altho it 
 hath not the name of a college (which always sup- 
 poseth a corporation), because it is of an inferior 
 degree; and in the one case and in the other there 
 must be a visitor, either the founder and his heirs 
 or one appointed by him; and both are eleemosy- 
 
 Lord Holt concluded his whole ar^ment by 
 again repeating that that college was a private 
 corporation, and that the founder had a right 
 to appoint a visitor, and give him such power 
 as he saw fit. 
 
 The learned Bishop Stillingfleet's argument 
 in the same cause as a member of the House 
 of Lords, when it was there heard, exhibits 
 very clearly the nature of colleges and similar 
 corporations. It is to the following effect: 
 ''That this absolute and conclusive power of 
 visitors is no more than the law hath appoint- 
 ed in other cases, upon commission of chari- 
 table uses ; that the common law, and not any 
 ecclesiastical canons, do place the power of 
 visitation in the founder and his heirs, unless 
 he settle it upon others; that altho corpora- 
 tions for public government be subject to the 
 courts of Westminster Hall, which have no 
 particular or special visitors, yet corporations 
 for charity founded and endowed by private 
 persons, are subject to the rule and govern- 
 ment of those that erect them ; but where the 
 I^ersons to whom the charity is given are not 
 
 26 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 incorporated, there is no such visitatorial 
 power, because the interest of the revenue is 
 not invested in them ; but where they are, the 
 right of visitation ariseth from the founda- 
 tion, and the founder may convey it to whom 
 and in what manner he pleases; and the visi- 
 tor acts as founder, and by the same authority 
 which he had, and consequently is no more 
 accountahle than he had been; that the king 
 by his charter can make a society to be in- 
 corporated so as to have the rights belonging 
 to persons, as to legal capacities ; that colleges, 
 altho founded by private persons, are yet in- 
 corporated by the king's charter; but altho 
 the kings by their charter made the colleges 
 to be such in law — that is, to be legal corpora- 
 tions — yet they left to the particular found- 
 ers authority to appoint what statutes they 
 thought fit for the regulation of them. And 
 not only the statutes but the appointment of 
 the visitors was left to them, and the manner 
 of government, and the several conditions on 
 which any persons were to be made or con- 
 tinue partakers of their bounty. ' ' 
 
 These opinions received the sanction of the 
 House of Lords, and they seem to be settled 
 and undoubted law. Where there is a charter, 
 vesting proper powers in trustees or govern- 
 ors, they are visitors ; and there is no control 
 in anybody else, except only that the courts 
 of equity or of law will interfere so far as to 
 preserve the revenues and prevent the perver- 
 
 27 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 sion of the funds, and to keep the visitors 
 within their prescribed bounds. "If there be 
 a charter with proper powers, the charity 
 must be regulated in the manner prescribed by 
 the charter. There is no ground for the con- 
 trolling interposition of the courts of chan- 
 cery. The interposition of the courts, there- 
 fore, in those instances in which the charities 
 were founded on charities or by act of Parlia- 
 ment, and a visitor or governor and trustees 
 appointed, must be referred to the general 
 jurisdiction of the courts in all cases in which 
 a trust conferred appears to have been abused, 
 and not to an original right to direct the 
 management of the charity, or the conduct of 
 the governors and trustees." "The original 
 of all visitatorial power is the property of the 
 donor, and the power every one has to dispose, 
 direct, and regulate his own property, like the 
 case of patronage ; cujus est dare, etc. There- 
 fore, if either the crown or the subject cre- 
 ates an eleemosynary foundation, and vests 
 the charity in the persons who are to receive 
 the benefit of it, since a contest might arise 
 about the government of it, the laws allow 
 the founder or his heirs, or the person spe- 
 cially appointed by him to be visitor, to de- 
 termine concerning his own creature. If the 
 charity is not vested in the persons who are 
 to partake, but in trustees for their benefit, 
 no visitor can arise by implication, but ths 
 trustees have that power." 
 
 28 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 "There is nothing better established," says 
 Lord Commissioner Eyre, "than that this 
 court does not entertain a general jurisdic- 
 tion, or regulate and control charities estab- 
 lished hy charter. There the establishment is 
 fixt and determined, and the court has no 
 power to vary it. If the governors estab- 
 lished for the regulation of it are not those 
 who have the management of the revenue, 
 that court has no jurisdiction, and if it is 
 ever so much abused, as far as it respects the 
 jurisdiction of this court, it is without rem- 
 edy; but if those established as governors 
 have also the management of the revenues, 
 this court does assume a jurisdiction of neces- 
 sity, so far as they are to be considered as 
 trustees of the revenue. ' ' 
 
 "The foundations of colleges," says Lord 
 Mansfield, ' ' are to be considered in two views ; 
 namely, as they are corporations and as they 
 are eleemosynary. As eleemosynary, they are 
 the creatures of the founder; he may dele- 
 gate his power, either generally or specially; 
 he may prescribe particular modes and man- 
 ners, as to the exercise of part of it. If he 
 makes a general visitor (as by the general 
 words visit at or sit), the person so constituted 
 has all incidental power; but he may be re- 
 strained as to particular instances. The 
 founder may appoint a special visitor for a 
 particular purpose, and no further. The 
 founder may make a general visitor, and yet 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 appoint an inferior particular power, to be 
 executed without going to the visitor in the 
 first instance." And even if the king be 
 founder, if he grant a charter, incorporating 
 trustees and governors, they are visitors, and 
 the king can not visit. A subsequent donation 
 or ingrafted fellowship falls under the same 
 general visitatorial power, if not otherwise 
 specially provided. 
 
 In New England, and perhaps throughout 
 the United States, eleemosynary corporations 
 have been generally established in the latter 
 mode — that is, by incorporating governors, or 
 trustees, and vesting in them the right of 
 visitation. Small variations may have been 
 in some instances adopted, as in the case of 
 Harvard College, where some power of in- 
 spection is given to the overseers, but not, 
 strictly speaking, a visitatorial power, which 
 still belongs, it is apprehended, to the fellows 
 or members of the corporation. In general, 
 there are many donors. A charter is obtained, 
 comprizing them all, or some of them, and 
 such others as they choose to include, with the 
 right of appointing successors. They are thus 
 the visitors of their own charity, and appoint 
 others such as they may see fit, to exercise the 
 same office in time to come. All such corpora- 
 tions are private. The case before the court 
 is clearly that of an eleemosjTiary corpora- 
 tion. It is, in the strictest legal sense, a pri- 
 vate charity. In King v. St. Catherine's Hall, 
 
 30 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 that college is called a private eleemosynary 
 lay corporation. It was endowed by a private 
 founder, and incorporated by letters patent. 
 And in the same manner was Dartmouth 
 College founded and incorporated. Doctor 
 Wheelock is declared by the charter to be its 
 founder. It was established by him, on funds 
 contributed and collected by himself. 
 
 As such founder he had a right of visita- 
 tion, which he assigned to the trustees; and 
 they received it by his consent and appoint- 
 ment, and held it under the charter. He ap- 
 pointed these trustees visitors, and in that 
 respect to take place of his heir, as he might 
 have appointed devisees to take his estate in- 
 stead of his heir. Little, probably, did he 
 think, at that time, that the legislature would 
 ever take away this property and these privi- 
 leges and give them to others. Little did he 
 suppose that this charter secured to him and 
 his successors no legal rights. Little did the 
 other donors think so. If they had, the college 
 would have been, what the university is now, 
 a thing upon paper, existing only in name. 
 
 The numerous academies in New England 
 have been established substantially in the 
 same manner. They hold their property by 
 the same tenure, and no other. Nor has Har- 
 vard College any surer title than Dartmouth 
 College. It may to-day have more friends, 
 but to-morrow it may have more enemies. So 
 also of Yale College, and, indeed, of all the 
 
 31 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 others. When the legislature gives to these 
 institutions it may and does accompany its 
 grants with such conditions as it pleases. The 
 grant of lands by the Legislature of New 
 England to Dartmouth College, in 1789, was 
 accompanied with various conditions. When 
 donations are made, by the legislature or 
 others, to a charity already existing, without 
 any condition or the specification of any new 
 use, the donation follows the nature of the 
 charity. Hence the doctrine, that all eleemo- 
 synary corporations are private bodies. They 
 are founded by private persons, and on pri- 
 vate property. The public can not be chari- 
 table in these institutions. It is not the 
 money of the public, but of private persons, 
 which is dispensed. It may be public — that is, 
 general — in the uses and advantages; and 
 the state may very laudably add contribu- 
 tions of its own to the funds; but it is still 
 private in the tenure of the property and in 
 the right of administering the funds. 
 
 If the doctrine laid down by Lord Holt and 
 the House of Lords, in Philips v. Bury, and 
 recognized and established in all the other 
 cases, be correct, the property of this college 
 was private property; it was vested in the 
 trustees by the charter, and to be administered 
 by them, according to the will of the founder 
 and donors, as exprest in the charter. They 
 were also visitors of the charity, in the most 
 ample sense. They had, therefore, as they 
 
 32 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 contend, privileges, property and immunities, 
 within the true meaning of the Bill of Rights. 
 They had rights, and still have them, which 
 they can assert against the legislature, as w^ell 
 as against other wrong-doers. It makes no 
 difference that the estate is holden for certain 
 trusts. The legal estate is still theirs. They 
 have a right in the property, and they have 
 a right of visiting and superintending the 
 trust; and this is an object of legal protec- 
 tions as much as any other right. The char- 
 ter declares that the powers conferred on the 
 trustees are "privileges, advantages, liberties, 
 and immunities"; and that they shall be for- 
 ever holden by them and their successors. 
 The New Hampshire Bill of Rights declares 
 that no one shall be deprived of his ' ' property, 
 privileges, or immunities," but by judgment 
 of his peers or the law of the land. The argu- 
 ment on the other side is, that, altho these 
 terms may mean something in the Bill of 
 Rights, they mean nothing in this charter. 
 But they are terms of legal signification, and 
 very properly used in the charter. They are 
 equivalent with franchises. Blackstone says 
 that franchises and liberty are used as synony- 
 mous terms. And after enumerating other 
 liberties and franchises, he says: "It is like- 
 wise a franchise for a number of persons to be 
 incorporated and subsist as a body politic, 
 with a power to maintain perpetual succession 
 and do other corporate acts; and each indi- 
 
 33 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 vicinal member of such a corporation is also 
 said to have a franchise or freedom. ' ' 
 
 Liberties is the term used in Magna Charta 
 as including franchises, privileges, immunities 
 and all the rights which belong to that class. 
 Professor Sullivan says the term signifies the 
 '^privileges that some of the subjects, whether 
 single persons or bodies corporate, have above 
 others by the lawful grant of the king; as 
 the chattels of felons or outlaws, and the lands 
 and privileges of corporations.^' 
 
 The privilege, then, of being a member of 
 a corporation under a lawful grant, and of 
 exercising the rights and powers of such mem- 
 ber, is such a privilege, liberty , or franchise, 
 as has been the object of legal protection and 
 the subject of legal interest from the time of 
 Magna Charta to the present moment. The 
 plaintiffs have such an interest in this cor- 
 poration, individually, as they could assert 
 and maintain in a court of law, not as agents 
 of the public, but in their own right. Each 
 trustee has a franchise, and if he be disturbed 
 in the enjoyment of it he would have redress 
 on appealing to the law as promptly as for 
 any other injury. If the other trustees should 
 conspire against any one of them to prevent 
 his equal right and voice in the appointment 
 of a president or professor, or in the passing 
 of any statute or ordinance of the college, he 
 would be entitled to his action, for depriving 
 him of his franchise. It makes no difference 
 
 34 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 that this property is to be holden and admin- 
 istered and these franchises exercised for the 
 purpose of diffusing learning. No principle 
 and no case establishes any such distinction. 
 The public may be benefited by the use of this 
 property. But this does not change the nature 
 of the property or the rights of the owners. 
 The object of the charter may be public good; 
 so it is in all other corporations; and this 
 would as well justify the resumption or viola- 
 tion of the grant in any other case as in this. 
 In the case of an advowson, the use is public, 
 and the right can not be turned to any pri- 
 vate benefit or emolument. It is nevertheless 
 a legal private right, and the property of the 
 owner as emphatically as his freehold. The 
 rights and privileges of trustees, visitors, or 
 governors, of incorporated colleges, stand on 
 the same foundation. They are so considered, 
 both by Lord Holt and Lord Hardwicke. 
 
 To contend that the rights of the plaintiffs 
 may be taken away because they derive from 
 them no pecuniary benefit or private emolu- 
 ment, or because they can not be transmitted 
 to their heirs, or would not be assets to pay 
 their debts, is taking an extremely narrow 
 view of the subject. According to this notion 
 the case would be different if, in the charter, 
 they had stipulated for a commission on the 
 disbursement of the funds; and they have 
 lost any interest in the property by having 
 undertaken to administer it gratuitously. 
 
 35 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 It can not be necessary to say much in refu- 
 tation of the idea that there can not be a legal 
 interest or ownership in anj^thing which does 
 not yield a pecimiary profit, as if the law re- 
 garded no rights but the rights of money and 
 of visible, tangible property. Of what nature 
 are all rights of suffrage? No elector has a 
 particular personal interest; but each has a 
 legal right, to be exercised at his own discre- 
 tion, and it can not be taken away from him. 
 The exercise of this right directly and very 
 materially affects the public, much more so 
 than the exercise of the privileges of the 
 trustees of this college. Consequences of the 
 utmost magnitude may sometimes depend on 
 the exercise of the right of suffrage by one 
 or a few electors. Nobody was ever yet heard 
 to contend, however, that on that account the 
 public might take away the right or impair it. 
 This notion appears to be borrowed from no 
 better source than the repudiated doctrine of 
 the three judges in the Aylesbury case. That 
 was an action against a returning officer for 
 refusing the plaintiff' 's vote in the election of 
 a member of Parliament. Three of the judges 
 of the King's Bench held that the action 
 could not be maintained, because, among 
 other objections, "it was not any matter of 
 profit, either in presenti, or in futuro." It 
 w^ould not enrich the plaintiff in presenti, nor 
 would it in futuro go to his heirs, or answer to 
 pay his debts. But Lord Holt and the House 
 
 36 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 of Lords were of another opinion. The judg- 
 ment of the three judges was reserved, and 
 the doctrine they held, having been exploded 
 for a century, seems now for the first time to 
 be revived. 
 
 Individuals have a right to use their own 
 property for purposes of benevolence, either 
 toward the public or toward other individ- 
 uals. They have a right to exercise this 
 benevolence in such lawful manner as they 
 may choose; and when the government has 
 induced and excited it by contracting to give 
 perpetuitj^ to the stipulated manner of exer- 
 cising it, it is not law^ but violence to rescind 
 this contract and seize on the property. 
 Whether the state will grant these franchises, 
 and under what conditions it will grant them, 
 it decides for itself. But when once granted 
 the constitution holds them to be sacred till 
 forfeited for just cause. 
 
 That all property, of which the use may be 
 beneficial to the public, belongs therefore to 
 the public, is quite a new doctrine. It has 
 no precedent, and is supported by no known 
 principle. Doctor Wheelock might have an- 
 swered his purposes in this case by executing 
 a private deed of trust. He might have con- 
 veyed his property to trustees for precisely 
 such uses as are described in this charter. 
 Indeed, it appears that he had contemplated 
 the establishing of his school in that manner, 
 and had made his will, and devised the prop- 
 
 37 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 erty to the same persons who were afterward 
 appointed trustees in the charter. Many lit- 
 erary and other charitable institutions are 
 founded in that manner, and the trust is 
 renewed, and conferred on other persons from 
 time to time, as occasion may require. In such 
 a case no lawyer would or could say that 
 the legislature might divest the trustees, con- 
 stituted by deed or will, seize upon the prop- 
 erty, and give it to other persons, for other 
 purposes. And does the granting of a charter, 
 which is only done to perpetuate the trust in 
 a more convenient manner, make any differ- 
 ence? Does or can this change the nature of 
 the charity, and turn it into a public political 
 corporation? Happily we are not without 
 authority on the point. It has been considered 
 and adjudged. Lord Hardwicke says, in so 
 many words, ''The charter of the crown can 
 not make a charity more or less public, but 
 only more permanent than it would otherwise 
 be." 
 
 The granting of the corporation is but ma- 
 king the trust perpetual, and does not alter 
 the nature of the charity. The very object 
 sought in obtaining such charter, and in giv- 
 ing property to such a corporation, is to make 
 and keep it private property, and to clothe 
 it with all the security and inviolability of 
 private property. The intent is, that there 
 shall be a legal private ownership, and that 
 the legal ov/ners shall maintain and protect 
 
 33 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 the property for the benefit of those for whose 
 use it was designed. Who ever endowed the 
 public? Who ever appointed a legislature to 
 administer his charity? Or who ever heard 
 before that a gift to a college, or a hospital, or 
 an asylum was, in reality, nothing but a gift 
 to the state ? 
 
 The State of Vermont is a principal donor 
 to Dartmouth College. The lands given lie in 
 that State. This appears in the special verdict. 
 Is Vermont to be considered as having intend- 
 ed a gift to the State of New Hampshire in 
 this case, as, it has been said, is to be the 
 reasonable construction of all donations to 
 the college? The Legislature of New Hamp- 
 shire affects to represent the public, and there- 
 fore claims a right to control all property des- 
 tined to public use. What hinders Vermont 
 from considering herself equally the repre- 
 sentative of the public, and from resuming 
 her grants at her own pleasure ? Her right to 
 do so is less doubtful than the power of New 
 Hampshire to pass the laws in question. 
 
 In University v. Foy, the Supreme Court 
 of North Carolina pronounced unconstitu- 
 tional and void a law repealing a grant to the 
 University of North Carolina, altho that uni- 
 versity was originally erected and endowed 
 by a statute of the State. That case was a 
 grant of lands, and the court decided that it 
 could not be resumed. This is the grant of a 
 power and a capacity to hold lands. Where 
 
 39 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 is the difference of the cases upon principle? 
 
 In Terrett v. Taylor this court decided that 
 a legislative grant or confirmation of lands 
 for the purpose of moral and religious instruc- 
 tion could no more be rescinded than other 
 grants. The nature of the use was not holden 
 to make an}^ difference. A grant to a parish 
 or church, for the purposes which have been 
 mentioned, can not be distinguished, in re- 
 spect to the title it confers, from a grant to 
 a college for the promotion of piety and learn- 
 ing. To the same purpose may be cited the 
 case of Paivlett v. Clark. The State of Ver- 
 mont, by statute, in 1794, granted to the re- 
 spective towns in that State certain glebe 
 lands lying within those towns for the sole 
 use and support of religious worship. In 
 1799 an act was passed to repeal the act of 
 1794, but this court declared that the act of 
 1794, "so far as it granted the glebes to the 
 towns, could not afterward be repealed by 
 the legislature, so as to divest the rights of 
 the towns under the grant. ' ' 
 
 It will be for the other side to show that 
 the nature of the use decides the question 
 whether the legislature has power to resume 
 its grants. It will be for those who maintain 
 such a doctrine to show the principles and 
 cases upon Vvhich it rests. It will be for them 
 also to fix the limits and boundaries of their 
 doctrines, and to show what are and what are 
 not such uses as to give the legislature this 
 
 40 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 to furnish an answer to the cases cited, it 
 will be for them further to show that a grant 
 for the use and support of religious worship 
 stands on other grounds than a grant for the 
 promotion of piety and learning. 
 
 I hope enough has been said to show that 
 the trustees possest vested liberties, privi- 
 leges and immunities under this charter ; and 
 that such liberties, privileges and immunities, 
 being once lawfully obtained and vested, are 
 as inviolable as any vested rights of property 
 whatever. Rights to do certain acts — such, 
 for instance, as the visitation and superin- 
 tendence of a college and the appointment of 
 its officers — may surely be vested rights, to all 
 legal intents, as completely as the right to 
 possess property. A late learned judge of 
 tliis court has said, "When I say that a right 
 is vested in a citizen, I mean that he has the 
 power to do certain actions, or to possess cer- 
 tain things, according to the law of the land." 
 
 If such be the true nature of the plaintiffs' 
 interests under this charter, what are the 
 articles in the New Hampshire Bill of Rights 
 these acts infringe ? 
 
 They infringe the second article, which says 
 that the citizens of the State have a right to 
 hold and possess property. The plaintiffs 
 had a legal property in this charter, and they 
 had acquired property under it. The acts 
 deprive them of both. They impair and take 
 awa}^ the charter; and tliey appropriate the 
 
 41 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 property to new uses against their consent. 
 The plaintiffs can not now hold the property 
 acquired by themselves, and which this article 
 says they have a right to hold. 
 
 They infringe the twentieth article. By 
 that article it is declared that, in questions of 
 property, there is a right to trial. The plain- 
 tiffs are divested without trial or judgment. 
 
 They infringe the twenty-third article. It 
 is therein declared that no restrospective laws 
 shall be passed. This article bears directly on 
 the case. These acts must be deemed to be 
 retrospective, within the settled construction 
 of that term. What a retrospective law is has 
 been decided, on the construction of this very 
 article, in the Circuit Court for the First Cir- 
 cuit. The learned judge of that circuit says : 
 "Every statute which takes away or impairs 
 vested rights, acquired under existing laws, 
 must be deemed retrospective. ' ' That all such 
 laws are retrospective was decided also in the 
 case of Dash v. Van Kleeh, where a most 
 learned judge quotes this article from the 
 Constitution of New Hampshire, with mani- 
 fest approbation, as a plain and clear expres- 
 sion of those fundamental and unalterable 
 principles of justice which must lie at the 
 foundation of every free and just system of 
 laws. Can any man deny that the plaintiffs 
 had rights under the charter which were 
 legally vested, and that by these acts those 
 rights are impaired? 
 
 42 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 ' ' It is a principle in the English law, ' ' says 
 Chief Justice Kent, in the case last cited, *'as 
 ancient as the law itself, that a statute, even 
 of its omnipotent Parliament, is not to have 
 a retrospective effect. ' Nova Constitutio f utu- 
 ris formam imponere debet, et non prseteri- 
 tis. ' The maxim in Bracton was taken from 
 the civil law, for we find in that system the 
 same principle, exprest substantially in the 
 same words, that the law-giver can not alter 
 his mind to the prejudice of a vested right. 
 ' Nemo potest mutare concilium suum in alteri- 
 us injuriam. ' This maxim of Papinian is gen- 
 eral in its terms, but Doctor Taylor applies it 
 directly as a restriction upon the law-giver, 
 and a declaration in the code leaves no doubt 
 as to the sense of the civil law. 'Leges et 
 constitutiones futuris certum est dare formam 
 negotiis, non ad facta pr^eterita revocari, nisi 
 nominatim, et de praBterito tempore, et adhuc 
 pendentibus negotiis cautum sit.' This pas- 
 sage, according to the best interpretation of 
 the civilians, relates not merely to future suits, 
 but to future, as contradistinguished from 
 past, contracts and vested rights. It is, in- 
 deed, admitted that the prince may enact a 
 retrospective law, provided it be done express- 
 ly; for the will of the prince under the 
 despotism of the Roman emperors was para- 
 mount to every obligation. Great latitude 
 was anciently allowed to legislative exposi- 
 tions of statutes, for the separation of the 
 
 43 
 
PRx^CTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 judicial from the legislative power was not 
 then distinctly known or prescribed. The 
 prince Avas in the habit of interpreting his 
 own laws for particular occasions. This was 
 called the ' Interlocutio Principis,' and this, 
 according to Ruber's definition, was 'Quando 
 principes inter partes loquuntur et jus dicunt. ' 
 No correct civilian, and especially no proud 
 admirer of the ancient republic (if any such 
 then existed), could have reflected on this 
 interference with private rights and pending 
 suits without disgust and indignation ; and we 
 are rather surprized to find that, under the 
 violent and arbitrary genius of the Roman 
 Government, the principle before us should 
 have been acknowledged and obeyed to the 
 extent in which we find it. The fact shows 
 that it must be founded in the clearest justice. 
 Our case is happily very different from that 
 of the subjects of Justinian. With us the- 
 power of the law-giver is limited and defined ; 
 the judicial is regarded as a distinct, inde- 
 pendent power; private rights are better un- 
 derstood and more exalted in public estima- 
 tion, as well as secured by provisions dictated 
 by the spirit of freedom, and unknown to the 
 civil law. Our constitutions do not admit the 
 power assumed by the Roman princes, and the 
 principle we are considering is now to be re- 
 garded as sacred. ' ' 
 
 These acts infringe also the thirty-seventh 
 article o£ the Constitution of New Hampshire, 
 
 44 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 which says that the powers of governinent 
 shall be kept separate. By these acts the 
 legislature assumes to exercise a judicial 
 power. It declares a forfeiture and resumes 
 franchises, once granted, without trial or hear- 
 ing. 
 
 If the constitution is not altogether waste- 
 paper, it has restrained the power of the 
 legislature in these particulars. If it has any 
 meaning, it is that the legislature shall pass 
 no act directly, and manifestly impairing pri- 
 vate property and private privileges. It shall 
 not judge by act. It shall not decide by act. 
 But it shall leave all these things to be tried 
 and adjudged by the laws of the land. 
 
 The fifteenth article has been referred to 
 before. It declares that no one shall be "de- 
 prived of his property, immunities, or privi- 
 leges, but by the judgment of his peers or 
 the law of the land." Notwithstanding the 
 light in which the learned judges in New 
 Hampshire viewed the rights of the plaintiffs 
 under the charter, and which has before been 
 adverted to, be admitted to their opinion that 
 those rights are privileges within the fifteenth 
 article of the Bill of Rights. Having quoted 
 that article, they say, ' ' That the right to man- 
 age the affairs of this college is a privilege, 
 within the meaning of this clause of the Bill 
 of Rights, is not to be doubted." In my 
 humble opinion, this surrenders the point. 
 To resist the effect of tliis admission, however, 
 
 45 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 the learned judges add: ^'But how a privi- 
 lege can be protected from the operation of 
 the law of the land by a clause in the consti- 
 tution declaring that it shall not be taken 
 away but by the law of the land, is not very 
 easily understood." This answer goes on the 
 ground that the acts in question are laws of 
 the land within the meaning of the constitu- 
 tion. If they be so, the argument drawn from 
 this article is fully answered. If they be not 
 so, it being admitted that the plaintiffs ' rights 
 are "privileges," within the meaning of the 
 article, the argument is not answered, and the 
 article is infringed by the acts. 
 
 Are, then, these acts of the legislature 
 which affect only particular persons and their 
 particular privileges, laws of the land? Let 
 this question be answered by the text of 
 Blackstone. "And first it {i.e., law) is a 
 rule — not a transient, sudden order from a 
 superior to or concerning a particular person, 
 but something permanent, uniform and uni- 
 versal. Therefore, a particular act of the 
 legislature to confiscate the goods of Titus, or 
 to attaint him of high treason, does not enter 
 into the idea of a municipal law, for the opera- 
 tion of this act is spent upon Titus only, and 
 has no relation to the commnity in general; 
 it is rather a sentence than a law." Lord 
 Coke is equally decisive and emphatic. Citing 
 and commenting on the celebrated twenty- 
 ninth chapter of Magna Charta, he says : "No 
 
 45 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 man shall be disseized, etc., unless it be by 
 the lawful judgment, that is, verdict of equals, 
 or by the law of the land, that is (to speak it 
 once for all), by the due course and process of 
 law." Have the plaintiffs lost their fran- 
 chises by ''due course and process of law?" 
 On the contrary, are not these acts "particu- 
 lar acts of the legislature, which have no rela- 
 tion to the community in general, and which 
 are rather sentences than laws ? ' ' 
 
 By the law of the land is most clearly in- 
 tended the general law, a law which hears 
 before it condemns, which proceeds upon in- 
 quiry, and renders judgment only after trial. 
 The meaning is, that every citizen shall hold 
 his life, liberty, property and immunities 
 under the protection of the general rules 
 which govern society. Everything which may 
 pass under the form of an enactment is not 
 therefore to be considered the law of the land. 
 If this were so, acts of the attainer, bills of 
 pains and penalties, acts of confiscation, acts 
 of reversing judgments, and acts directly 
 transferring one man's estate to another, leg- 
 islative judgments, decrees, and forfeitures in 
 all possible forms, would be the law of the land. 
 
 Such a strange construction would render 
 constitutional provisions of the highest im- 
 portance completely inoperative and void. 
 It would tend directly to establish the union 
 of all powers in the legislature. There would 
 be no general, permanent law for courts to 
 
 47 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 administer or men to live under. The admin- 
 istration of justice of the country. ''Is that 
 the law of the land, ' ' says Mr. Burke, ' ' upon 
 which, if a man go to Westminster Hall, and 
 ask counsel by what title of tenure he holds 
 his pri\Tilege or estate according to the law of 
 the land, he should be told that the law of 
 the land is not yet known; that no decision 
 or decree has been made in his case ; that when 
 a decree shall be passed, he will then know 
 what the law of the land isf Will this be said 
 to be the law of the land by any lawyer who 
 has a rag of a gown left upon his back or a 
 wig with one tie upon his head f ' ' 
 
 That the power of electing and appointing 
 the officers of this college is not only a right 
 of the trustees as a corporation, generally and 
 in the aggregate, but that each individual 
 trustee has also his own individual franchise 
 in such rights of election and appointment, 
 is according to the language of all the author- 
 ities. Lord Holt says: "It is agreeable to 
 reason and the rules of law that a franchise 
 should be vested in the corporation aggregate, 
 and yet the benefit of it to redound to the 
 particular members, and to be enjoyed by 
 them in their private capacity. Where the 
 privilege of election is used by particular per- 
 sons, it is a particular right vested in every 
 particular man.'' 
 
 It is also to be considered, that the presi- 
 dent and professors of this college have rights 
 
 48 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 to be altected by these acts. Their interest is 
 similar to that of fellows in the English col- 
 leges, because they derive their living, wholly 
 or in part, from the founders' bounty. The 
 president is one of the trustees or corporators. 
 The professors are not necessarily members 
 of the corporation; but they are appointed 
 by the trustees, and removable by them, and 
 have fixt salaries payable out of the general 
 funds of the college. Both president and 
 professors have freeholds in their offices, sub- 
 ject only to be removed by the trustees, as 
 their legal visitors, for good cause. All the 
 authorities speak of fellowships in colleges as 
 freeholds, notwithstanding the fellows may be 
 liable to be suspended or removed for mis- 
 behavior by their constituted visitors. 
 
 Nothing could have been less expected in 
 this age than that there should have been an 
 attempt, by acts of the legislature, to take 
 away these college livings, the inadequate but 
 the only support of literary men who have 
 devoted their lives to the instruction of youth. 
 The president and professors were appointed 
 by the twelve trustees. They were accountable 
 to nobody else, and could be removed by no- 
 body else. They accepted their offices on this 
 tenure. Yet the legislature has appointed 
 other persons, with power to remove these 
 officers and to deprive them of their livings, 
 and those other persons have exercised that 
 pow^r. No description of private property 
 
 49 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 has been regarded as more sacred than college 
 livings. They are the estates and freeholds 
 of a most deserving class of men, of scholars 
 who have consented to forego the advantages 
 of professional and public enjoyments, and 
 to devote themselves to science and literature 
 and the instruction of youth in the quiet re- 
 treats of academic life. Whether to dispossess 
 and oust them, to deprive them of their office, 
 and to turn them out of their livings; to do 
 this, not by the power of their legal visitors 
 or governors, but by acts of the legislature, 
 and to do it without forfeiture and without 
 fault; whether all this be not in the highest 
 degree an indefensible and arbitrary pro- 
 ceeding, is a question of which there would 
 seem to be but one side for a lawyer or a 
 scholar to espouse. 
 
 Of all the attempts of James II to overturn 
 the law and the rights of his subjects, none 
 was esteemed more arbitrary or tyrannical 
 than his attack on Magdalen College, Oxford ; 
 and yet that attempt was nothing but to put 
 out one president and put in another. The 
 president of that college, according to the 
 charter and statutes, is to be chosen by the fel- 
 lows who are the corporators. There being 
 a vacancy, the king chose to take the appoint- 
 ment out of the hands of the fellows, the 
 legal electors of a president, into his own 
 hands. He therefore sent down his mandate, 
 commanding the fellows to admit for presi- 
 
 50 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 dent a person of his nomination ; and, inas- 
 much as this was directly against the charter 
 and constitution of the college, he was pleased 
 to add a non obstante clause of sufficiently 
 comprehensive import. The fellows were 
 commanded to admit the person mentioned in 
 the mandate, "any statute, custom or consti- 
 tution to the contrary notwithstanding, where- 
 with we are graciously pleased to dispense in 
 this behalf." The fellows refused obedience 
 to this mandate, and Doctor Hough, a man of 
 independence and character, was chosen presi- 
 dent by the fellows, according to the charter 
 and statutes. The king then assumed the 
 power, in virtue of his prerogative, to send 
 down certain commissioners to turn him out, 
 which was done accordingly, and Parker, a 
 creature suited to the times, put in his place. 
 Because the president, who was rightfully 
 and legally elected, would not deliver the keys 
 the doors were broken open. "The nation as 
 well as the university," says Bishop Burnet, 
 "looked on all these proceedings with just in- 
 dignation. It was thought an open piece of 
 robbery and burglary when men, authorized 
 by no legal commission, came and forcibly 
 turned men out of their possession and free- 
 hold." Mr. Hume, altho a man of different 
 temper and of other sentiments, in some re- 
 spects, than Doctor Burnet, speaks of this 
 arbitrary attempt of prerogative in terms not 
 less decisive. ' ' The president, and all the f el- 
 
 51 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 lows," says he, "except two, who complied, 
 were expelled the college, and Parker was put 
 in possession of the office. This act of vio- 
 lence, of all those which were committed dur- 
 ing the reign of James, is perhaps the most 
 illegal and arbitrary. When the dispensing 
 power was the most strenuously insisted on by 
 court lawyers, it had still been allowed that 
 the statutes which regard private property 
 could not legally be infringed by that pre- 
 rogative. Yet, in this instance, it appeared 
 that even these were not now secured from 
 invasion. The privileges of a college are at- 
 tacked; men are illegally dispossest of their 
 property for adhering to their duty, to their 
 oaths, and to their religion. ' ' 
 
 This measure King James lived to repent, 
 after repentance was too late. "When the 
 charter of London was restored the other 
 measures of violence were retracted to avert 
 the impending revolution ; the expelled presi- 
 dent and fellows of Magdalen College were 
 permitted to resume their rights. It is evi- 
 dent that this was regarded as an arbitrary 
 interference with private property. Yet pri- 
 vate property was not otherwise attacked than 
 as a person was appointed to administer 
 and enjoy the revenues of a college in a man- 
 ner and by persons not authorized by the 
 constitution of the college. A majority of 
 the members of the corporation would not 
 comply with the king's wishes. A minority 
 
 52 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 would. The object was, therefore, to make 
 this minority a majority. To this end the 
 king's commissioners were directed to inter- 
 fere in the case, and they united with the 
 two complying fellows and expelled the rest, 
 and thus effected a change in the govern- 
 ment of the college. The language in which 
 Mr. Hume and all the other writers speak of 
 this abortive attempt of oppression shows 
 that colleges were esteemed to be, as they 
 truly are, private corporations, and the prop- 
 erty and privileges which belong to them pri- 
 vate property and private privileges. Court 
 lawyers were found to justify the king in dis- 
 pensing with the laws — that is, in assuming 
 and exercising a legislative authority. But 
 no lawyer, not even a court lawyer in the 
 reign of King James II, as far as appears, 
 was found to say that, even by this high 
 authority, he could infringe the franchise of 
 the fellows of the college and take away their 
 livings. Mr. Hume gives the reason: It is, 
 that such franchise were regarded in a most 
 emphatic sense as private proper^ty. If it 
 could be made to appear that the trustees 
 and the president and professors held their 
 offices and franchises during the pleasure of 
 the legislature, and that the property holden 
 belonged to the State, then the legislature 
 have done no m^ore than they had a right to 
 do. But this is not so. The charter is a 
 charter of privileges and immunities; and 
 
 53 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 these are holden by the trustees expressly 
 against the State forever. 
 
 It is admitted that the State, by its courts 
 of law, can enforce the will of the donor, and 
 compel a faithful execution of the trust. The 
 plaintiffs claim no exemption from legal re- 
 sponsibility. They hold themselves at all 
 times answerable to the law of the land for 
 their conduct in the trust committed to them. 
 They ask only to hold the property of which 
 they are owners, and the franchises which be- 
 long to them, until they shall be found, by 
 due course and process of law, to have for- 
 feited them. 
 
 It can make no difference whether the leg- 
 islature exercises the power it has assumed 
 by removing the trustees and the president 
 and the professors, directly and by name, or 
 by appointing others to expel them. The 
 principle is the same, and in the point of fact 
 the result has been the same. If the entire 
 franchise can not be taken away, neither can 
 it be essentially impaired. If the trustees 
 are legal owners of the property, they are sole 
 owners. If they are visitors, they are sole 
 visitors. No one will be found to say that, if 
 the legislature may do what it has done, it 
 may not do anything and everything which 
 it may choose to do, relative to the property 
 of the corporation and the privileges of the 
 members and officers. 
 
 If the view which has been taken of this 
 
 54 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 question be at all correct, this was an eleemo- 
 synary corporation, a private charity. The 
 property was private property. The trustees 
 were visitors, and the right to hold the char- 
 ter, administer the funds and visit and govern 
 the college was a franchise and privilege, 
 solemnly granted to them. The use being 
 public in no way diminishes their legal estate 
 in the property, or their title to the franchise. 
 There is no principle, nor any case, which de- 
 clares that a gift to such a corporation is a 
 gift to the public. The acts in question vio- 
 late property. They take away privileges, 
 immunities and franchises. They deny to the 
 trustees the protection of the law; and they 
 are retrospective in their operation. In all 
 which respects they are against the Constitu- 
 tion of New Hampshire. 
 
 The plaintiffs contend, in the second place, 
 that the acts in question are repugnant to 
 the tenth section of the first article of the 
 Constitution of the United States. The mate- 
 rial words of that section are: ^'No State 
 shall pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto 
 law, or law impairing the obligation of con- 
 tracts." 
 
 The object of these most important provi- 
 sions in the national Constitution has often 
 been discust, both here and elsewhere. It is 
 exhibited with great clearness and force by 
 one of the distinguished persons who framed 
 that instrument. "Bills of attainder, ex post 
 
 55 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 facto laws, and laws impairing the obligation 
 of contracts, are contrary to the first prin- 
 ciples of sound legislation. The two former 
 are expressly prohibited by the declaration 
 prefixt to some of the State constitutions, and 
 all of them prohibited by the spirit and scope 
 of these fundamental charters. Our own ex- 
 periences have taught us, nevertheless, that 
 additional fences against these dangers ought 
 not to be omitted. Very properly, therefore, 
 have the convention added this constitutional 
 bulwark in favor of personal security and 
 private rights; and I am much deceived if 
 they have not in so doing as faithfully con- 
 sulted the genuine sentiments as the undoubt- 
 ed interests of their constituents. The sober 
 people of America are weary of the fluctuat- 
 ing policy which has directed the public coun- 
 cils. They have seen with regret and with 
 indignation that sudden changes and legisla- 
 tive interferences in cases affecting personal 
 rights become jobs in the hands of enter- 
 prising and influential speculators and snares 
 to the more industrious and less informed 
 part of the community. They have seen, too, 
 that one legislative interference is but the 
 link of a long chain of repetitions; every 
 subsequent interference being naturally pro- 
 duced by the efl^ects of the proceeding." 
 
 It has already been decided in this court 
 that a grant is a contract, within the meaning 
 of this provision ; and that a grant by a State 
 
 S6 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 is also a contract, as much as the grant of an 
 individual. In the case of Fletcher v. Peck, 
 this court says: "A contract is a compact 
 between two or more parties, and is either 
 executory or executed. An executory con- 
 tract is one in which a party binds himself 
 to do, or not to do, a particular thing; such 
 was the law under which the conveyance was 
 made by the government. A contract exe- 
 cuted is one in which the object of the con- 
 tract is performed ; and this, says Blackstone, 
 differs in nothing from a grant. The contract 
 between Georgia and the purchasers was ex- 
 ecuted, as well as one which is executory, con- 
 tains obligations binding on the parties. A 
 grant, in its own nature amounts to an ex- 
 tinguishment of the right of grantor, and im- 
 plies a contract not to reassert that right. 
 If, under a fair construction of the consti- 
 tution, grants are comprehended under the 
 term contracts, is a grant from the State ex- 
 cluded from the operation of the provision? 
 Is this clause to be considered as inhibiting 
 the State from impairing the obligation of 
 contracts between two individuals, but as ex- 
 cluding from that inhibition contracts made 
 with itself? The w^ords themselves contain 
 no such distinction. They are general, and are 
 applicable to contracts mad? with the State, 
 and are to be exempted from their opera- 
 tion ; the exception must arise from the char- 
 acter of the contracting part}^, not from the 
 
 57 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 words which are employed. Whatever re- 
 spect might have been felt for the State sov- 
 ereignties, it is not to be disguised that the 
 f ramers of the Constitution viewed with some 
 apprehension the violent acts which might 
 grow out of the feeling of the moment; and 
 that the people of the United States, in adopt- 
 ing that instrument, have manifested a deter- 
 mination to shield themselves and their prop- 
 erty from the effects of those sudden and 
 strong passions to which men are exposed. 
 The restrictions on the legislative power of 
 the States are obviously founded in this senti- 
 ment; and the Constitution of the United 
 States contains what may be deemed a bill 
 of rights for the people of each State. It has 
 also been decided that a grant by a State be- 
 fore the Revolution is as much to be protected 
 as a grant since. But the case of Terrett v. 
 Taylor, before cited, is of all others most per- 
 tinent to the present argument. Indeed, the 
 judgment of the court in that case seems to 
 leave little to be argued or decided in this. 
 *'A private corporation," says the court, 
 *' created by the legislature may lose its fran- 
 chises by a misuser or a nonuser of them ; and 
 they may be resumed by the government un- 
 der a judicial judgment upon a quo warranto 
 to ascertain and enforce the forfeiture. Thi^ 
 is the common law of the land, and is a tacit 
 condition annexed to the creation of every 
 such corporation. Upon a change of govern- 
 
 58 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 ment, too, it may be admitted, that such ex- 
 clusive privileges attached to a private cor- 
 poration as are inconsistent with the new gov- 
 ernment may be abolished. In respect also 
 to public corporations which exist only for 
 public purposes, such as counties, towns, 
 cities, and so forth, the legislature may, under 
 proper limitations, have a right to change, 
 modify, enlarge, or restrain them, securing, 
 however, the property for the uses of those 
 for whom and at whose expense it was origi- 
 nally purchased. But that the legislature 
 can repeal statutes creating private corpora- 
 tions, or confirming to them property already 
 acquired under the faith of previous laws, 
 and by such repeal can vest the property of 
 such corporations exclusively in the State, or 
 dispose of the same to purposes as they please, 
 without the consent or default of the corpo- 
 rators, we are not prepared to admit; and 
 we think ourselves standing upon the prin- 
 ciples of natural justice, upon the funda- 
 mental laws of every free government, upon 
 the spirit and the letter of the Constitution 
 of the United States, and upon the decisions 
 of most respectable judicial tribunals, in re- 
 sisting such a doctrine." 
 
 This court, then, does not admit the doc- 
 trine that a legislature can repeal statutes cre- 
 ating private corporations. If it can not re- 
 peal them altogether, of course, it can not 
 repeal any part of them, or impair them, or 
 
 59 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 essentially alter them, without the consent of 
 the corporators. If, therefore, it has shown 
 that this college is to be regarded as a private 
 charity, this case is embraced within the very 
 terms of that decision. A grant of corporate 
 powers and privileges is as much a contract as 
 a grant of land. What proves all charters of 
 this sort to be contracts is, that they must be 
 accepted to give them force and effect. If 
 they are not accepted they are void. And in 
 the case of an existing corporation, if a new 
 charter is given it, it may even accept part 
 and reject the rest. In Bex. v. Vice-ChanceU 
 lor of Cambridge, Lord Mansfield says: 
 *' There is a vast deal of difference between 
 a new charter granted to a new corporation 
 (who must take it as it is given) and a new 
 charter given to a corporation already in being, 
 and acting either under a former charter or 
 under prescriptive usage. The latter, a cor- 
 poration already existing, are not obliged to 
 accept the new charter in toto, and to receive 
 either all or none of it ; they must act partly 
 under it, and partly under their old charter 
 or prescription. The validity of these new 
 charters must turn upon the acceptance of 
 them." In the same case Mr. Justice Wil- 
 mot says : ' ' It is the concurrence and accept- 
 ance of the university that gives the force to 
 the charter of the crown." In the King v. 
 Pasmore, Lord Kenyon observes: "Some 
 things are clear: When a corporation exists 
 
 60 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 capable of discharging its functions, the 
 crown can not obtrude another charter upon 
 them; they may either accept or reject it." 
 
 In all cases relative to charters, the accept- 
 ance of them is uniformly alleged in the 
 pleadings. This shows the general under- 
 standing of the law, that they are grants or 
 contracts, and that parties are necessary to 
 give them force and validity. In King v. 
 Di\ Askew, it is said, "The crown can no^ 
 oblige a man to be a corporator without his 
 consent; he shall not be sujjject to the in- 
 conveniences of it without accepting it and 
 assenting to it." These terms, "acceptance" 
 and "assent," are the very language of con- 
 tract. In Ellis V. Marshall it is expressly ad- 
 judged that the naming of the defendant 
 among others, in an act of incorporation, did 
 not of itself make him a corporator ; and that 
 his assent was necessary to that end. The 
 court speaks of the act of incorporation as a 
 grant, and observes, ' ' That a man may refuse 
 a grant, whether from the government or an 
 individual, seems to be a principle too clear 
 to require the support of authorities." But 
 Justice Buller, in Kiiig v. Pasmore, furnishes, 
 if possible, a still more direct and explicit 
 authority. Speaking of a corporation for 
 government, he says : " I do not know how to 
 reason on this point better than in the man- 
 ner urged by one of the relator's counsel, 
 who considered the grant of incorporation to 
 
 61 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 be a compact between the crown and a cer- 
 tain number of the subjects, the latter of 
 whom undertake, in consideration of the priv- 
 ileges which are bestowed to exert themselves 
 for the good government of the place. ' ' This 
 language applies with peculiar propriety and 
 force to the case before the court. It was in 
 consequence of the "privileges bestowed" 
 that Doctor Wheelock and his associates un- 
 dertook to exert themselves for the instruc- 
 tion and education of youth in this college; 
 and it was on the same consideration that the 
 founder endowed it with his property. 
 
 And because charters of incorporation are 
 of the nature of contracts, they can not be 
 altered or varied but by consent of the origi- 
 nal parties. If a charter be granted by the 
 king, it may be altered by a new charter 
 granted by the king, and accepted by the 
 corporators. But if the first charter be 
 granted by Parliament, the consent of Parlia- 
 ment must be obtained to any alteration. In 
 King v. Miller, Lord Kenyon says, "Where 
 a corporation takes its rise from the king's 
 charter, the king by granting, and the cor- 
 poration by accepting another charter may 
 alter it, because it is done with the consent of 
 all parties who are competent to consent to 
 the alteration." 
 
 There are, in this case, all the essential con- 
 stituent parts of a contract. There is some- 
 thing to be contracted about. There are 
 
 62 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 parties, and there are plain terms in which 
 the ar^ment of the parties on the subject of 
 the contract is exprest. There are mutual 
 considerations and inducements. The charter 
 recites that the founder, on his part, has 
 agreed to establish his seminary in New 
 Hampshire, and to enlarge it beyond its origi- 
 nal design, among other things, for the benefit 
 of that province ; and thereupon a charter is 
 given to him and his associates, designated by 
 himself, promising and assuring to them, un- 
 der the plighted faith of the State, the right 
 of governing the college and administering 
 its concerns in the manner provided in the 
 charter. There is a complete and perfect 
 grant to them of all the power of superin- 
 tendence, visitation and government. Is not 
 this a contract? If lands or money had been 
 granted to him and his associates for the same 
 purposes, such grant could not be rescinded. 
 And is there any difference in legal contem- 
 plation between a grant of corporate fran- 
 chises and a grant of tangible property? No 
 such difference is recognized in any decided 
 case, nor does it exist in the common appre- 
 hension of mankind. 
 
 It is therefore contended that this case falls 
 within the true meaning of this provision of 
 the Constitution, as expounded in the deci- 
 sions of this court; that the charter of 1769 
 is a contract, a stipulation or agreement, 
 mutual in its considerations, express and 
 
 63 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 formal in its terms, and of a most binding 
 and solemn nature. That the acts in question 
 impair this contract has already been suffi- 
 ciently shown. They repeal and abrogate its 
 most essential parts. 
 
 A single observation may not be improper 
 on the opinion of the court of New Hamp- 
 shire, which has been published. The learned 
 judges who delivered that opinion have 
 viewed this question in a very different light 
 from that in which the plaintiffs have en- 
 deavored to exhibit it. After some general 
 remarks, they assume that this college is a 
 public corporation, and on this basis their 
 judgment rests. Whether all colleges are not 
 regarded as private and eleemosynary cor- 
 porations by all law writers and all judicial 
 decisions ; whether this college was not found- 
 ed by Doctor Wheelock; whether the charter 
 was not granted at his request, the better to 
 execute a trust, which he had already created ; 
 whether he and his associates did not become 
 visitors by the charter; and whether Dart- 
 mouth College be not, thereof, in the strictest 
 sense, a private charity, are questions which 
 the learned judges do not appear to have 
 discust. 
 
 It is admitted in that opinion that, if it be 
 a private corporation, its rights stand on the 
 same ground as those of an individual. The 
 great question, therefore, to be decided is, 
 to which class of corporations do colleges thus 
 
 64 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 founded belong"? And the plaintiffs have en- 
 deavored to satisfy the court that, according 
 to the well-settled principles and uniform de- 
 cisions of law, they are private, eleemosynary 
 corporations. 
 
 Much has heretofore been said on the neces- 
 sity of admitting such power in the legisla- 
 ture as has been assumed in this case. Many 
 cases of possible evil have been imagined, 
 which might otherwise be without remedy. 
 Abuses, it is contended, might arise in the 
 management of such institutions which the 
 ordinary courts of law would be unable to 
 correct. But this is only another instance of 
 that habit of supposing extreme cases, and 
 then of reasoning from them, which is the 
 constant refuge of those who are obliged to 
 defend a cause which, upon its merits, is in- 
 defensible. It would be sufficient to say in 
 answer that it is not pretended that there was 
 here any such case of necessity. But a still 
 more satisfactory answer is that the appre- 
 hension of danger is growing less, and there- 
 fore the whole argument fails. Experience 
 has not taught us that there is danger of great 
 evils or of great inconvenience from this 
 source. Hitherto, neither in our own country 
 nor elsewhere have such cases of necessity 
 occurred. The judicial establishment of the 
 State are presumed to be competent to pre- 
 vent abuses and violations of trust, in cases of 
 this kind as well as in others. If they be not, 
 
 65 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 they are imperfect, and their amendment 
 would be a most proper subject for legisla- 
 tive wisdom. Under the government and pro- 
 tection of the general laws of the land these 
 institutions have always been found safe, as 
 well as useful. They go on, with the progress 
 of society, accommodating themselves easily, 
 without sudden change or violence, to the 
 alternations which take place in its condition, 
 and in the knowledge, the habits and pur- 
 suits of men. The English colleges were 
 founded in Catholic ages. Their religion was 
 reformed with the general reformation of the 
 nation; and they are suited perfectly well 
 to the purpose of educating the Protestant 
 youth of modern times. Dartmouth College 
 was established under a charter granted by 
 the Provincial Government; but a better con- 
 stitution for a college, or one more adapted 
 to the condition of things under the present 
 government, in all material respects, could 
 not now be framed. Nothing in it was found 
 to need alteration at the Revolution. The wise 
 men of that day saw in it one of the best hopes 
 of future times, and commended it as it was, 
 with parental care, to the protection and 
 guardianship of the government of the State. 
 A charter of more liberal sentiments, of wiser 
 provisions drawn with more care, or in a bet- 
 ter spirit, could not be expected at any time 
 or from any source. The college needed no 
 change in its organiz-ation or government. 
 
 66 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 That which it did need was the kindness, the 
 patronage, the bounty of the legislature; not 
 a mock elevation to the character of a uni- 
 versity, without the solid benefit of a shilling's 
 donation to sustain the character; not the 
 swelling and empty authority of establishing 
 institutes and other colleges. This unsubstan- 
 tial pageantry would seem to have been in de- 
 rision of the scanty endowment and limited 
 means of an unobtrusive but useful and grow- 
 ing seminary. Least of all was there a neces- 
 sity, or pretense of necessity, to infringe its 
 legal rights, violate its franchises and privi- 
 leges, and pour upon it these overwhelming 
 streams of litigation. 
 
 But this argument from necessity would 
 equally apply in all other cases. If it be 
 well founded, it would prove that, whenever 
 any inconvenience or evil is experienced from 
 the restrictions imposed on the legislature by 
 the Constitution, these restrictions ought to 
 be disregarded. It is enough to say that the 
 people have thought otherwise. They have, 
 most wisely, chosen to take the risk of occa- 
 sional inconvenience from the want of power, 
 in order that there might be a settled limit 
 to its exercise and a permanent security 
 against its abuse. They have imposed pro- 
 hibitions and restraints; and they have not 
 rendered these altogether vain and nugatory 
 by conferring the power of dispensation. If 
 inconvenience should arise which the legisla- 
 
 67 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 ture can not remedy under the power con- 
 ferred upon it, it is not answerable for such 
 inconvenience. That which it can not do 
 within the limits prescribed to it, it can not 
 do at all. No legislature in this country is 
 able — and may the time never come when it 
 shall be able — to apply to itself the memora- 
 ble expression of a Roman pontiff: ^' Licet 
 hoc de jure non possumus, voliimus tamen de 
 'plenitudine potestatis.'^ 
 
 The case before the court is not of ordinary 
 importance nor of every-day occurrence. It 
 has a wide-spread and vital interest. It 
 affects not this college only, but every col- 
 lege, and all the literary institutions of the 
 country. They have flourished hitherto, and 
 have become in a high degree respectable and 
 useful to the community. They have all a 
 common principle of existence, the inviola- 
 bility of their charters. It will be a danger- 
 ous, a most dangerous experiment, to hold 
 these institutions subject to the rise and fall 
 of popular parties and the fluctuations of 
 political opinions. If the franchise may be 
 at any time taken away or impaired, the prop- 
 erty also may be taken away or its use per- 
 verted. Benefactors will have no certainty 
 of effecting the object of their bounty, and 
 learned men will be deterred from devoting 
 themselves to the service of such institutions 
 from the precarious title of their offices. Col- 
 leges and halls will be deserted by all better 
 
 68 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 spirits and become a theater for the conten- 
 tions of politics. Party and faction will be 
 cherished in the places consecrated to piety 
 and learning. These consequences are neither 
 remote nor possible only. They are certain 
 and immediate. 
 
 When the court in North Carolina declared 
 the law of the State, which repealed a grant 
 to its university, unconstitutional and void, 
 the legislature had the candor and the wis- 
 dom to repeal the law. This example, so hon- 
 orable to the State which exhibited it, is most 
 fit to be followed on this occasion. And there 
 is good reason to hope that a State, which has 
 hitherto been so much distinguished for tem- 
 perate counsels, cautious legislation and re- 
 gard to law, will not fail to adopt a course 
 which will in every respect most completely 
 accord with her highest, noblest, and best in- 
 terests, and in no small degree elevate her 
 reputation. 
 
 It was for many and obvious reasons most 
 anxiously desired that the question of the 
 power of the legislature over this charter 
 should have been finally decided in the State 
 court. An earnest hope was entertained that 
 the judges of the court might have viewed 
 the case in a light favorable to the rights of the 
 trustees. This hope has failed. It is here 
 that those rights are now to be maintained, 
 or they are prostrated forever. "Omnia alia 
 perfugia bonorum, subsidia, consilia, auxilia, 
 
 69 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 jura ceciderunt. Quern enim alium appellem ? 
 quern obtester? quern implorem? Nisi hoc 
 loco, nisi apud vos, nisi per vos, judices, salu- 
 tem nostram, quaa spe exi^a extremaque pen- 
 det, tenuerimus; nihil est pr^eterea quo con- 
 fugere possimus." 
 
 70 
 
WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM 
 
 BY THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 WILLIAM Pitt, Earl of Ciiatham, the 
 second son of Robert Pitt, Esq., of 
 Boconnock, in the county of Corn- 
 wall, was born on the 15th of November, 1708. 
 The family was originally of Blandford, in 
 Dorsetshire. Christopher Pitt, the translator 
 of Vida and Vergil, and Thomas Pitt, Gov- 
 ernor of Madras in the reign of Queen Anne, 
 were both of this place. The latter was Chat- 
 ham's grandfather, and likewise remarkable 
 as having purchased, during his residence in 
 the East, the jewel known by the name of the 
 Pitt Diamond, which weighed 127 carats, and 
 was afterward sold by him to the King of 
 France for 135,000 lire, having originally cost 
 20,400 lire. It may also be worthy of men- 
 tion that, by the wife of this gentleman, Chat- 
 ham was descended from the Regent Murray, 
 natural son of James V of Scotland. 
 
 Of Chatham's youth and early habits little 
 is recorded, except that he studied at Eton as 
 a foundation-scholar; was removed to Trin- 
 ity College, Oxford, in 1726, and left the 
 university without taking any degree. His 
 proficiency in the attainments usually ac- 
 quired there may, however, be inferred from 
 the circumstance that some Latin verses of 
 
 ' 71 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 his were judged fit to appear in the collection 
 printed by that learned body on the death of 
 George I ; and still more, certainly, from the 
 predilection for classical pursuits which he 
 displayed in after life, and the decidedly clas- 
 sical tincture which pervades all his composi- 
 tions. Demosthenes is said to have been so 
 great a favorite with him that he repeatedly 
 translated certain of his orations into Eng- 
 lish. 
 
 The immediate cause of his removal from 
 Oxford was a hereditary gout, which had al- 
 ready attacked him at Eton in his sixteenth 
 year. He sought to expel the disorder by 
 traveling. He made the tour of France, and 
 visited Italy, but without realizing his pur- 
 pose ; his gout still adhered to him, it preyed 
 upon his constitution throughout life, and 
 never left him till it gained the mastery. To 
 an ordinary mind this malady would have 
 proved a severe misfortune; Pitt found 
 means to convert it into almost an advantage. 
 Excluded by it from the ga3^eties and dissi- 
 pations of common life, he applied himself 
 the more earnestlj^ to the acquisition of knowl- 
 edge. He read, and wrote, and studied, en- 
 deavoring by every method in his power to 
 cultivate those faculties which were one day 
 to become the ornament of his age and nation. 
 
 In the meantime, however, his immediate 
 prospects were by no means magnificent. He 
 had lost his father in 1727 ; a scanty fortune 
 
 72 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 and a sickl}^ frame made him anxious for some 
 fixt appointment; and he was glad to accept 
 a commission of cornet in the Blues, which 
 some of his friends had interest enough to 
 procure for him. But his inclinations pointed 
 to a different scene. The leisure which his 
 duties left him was still sedulously conse- 
 crated to the improvement of his mind, and 
 he longed to employ in public life those tal- 
 ents he had been so careful to perfect. In 
 1735 this opportunity was granted him. He 
 was that year returned member for Old Sa- 
 rum, to serve in the Ninth Parliament of 
 Great Britain. The appearance he made there 
 was such as to justify all his hopes and to 
 awaken hopes still more glorious. His elo- 
 quence soon became the pride of his friends 
 and the terror of all that opposed him. A 
 fine voice and figure prepossest the hearers 
 in his favor, and the sentiments and opinions 
 which he uttered bespoke a great and noble 
 mind. There was in him a stern, inexpiable 
 contempt for meanness in whatever shape; a 
 fervid enthusiasm for the cause of freedom, 
 for the honor of his country, for all good and 
 worthy things; the whole tempered and ma- 
 tured by a strong, commanding intellect, the 
 force and justness of which might have 
 seemed scarcely compatible with so much 
 youthful ardor. His acquired advantages 
 gave full scope to those gifts of nature. 
 The style he employed was chaste, regular and 
 
 73 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 argumentative, yet both splendid and impas- 
 sioned, and the energetic graces of his de- 
 livery gave new power to what he spoke. 
 When warmed with his subject, when pour- 
 ing forth his own glowing feelings and em- 
 phatic convictions, in language as glowing 
 and emphatic, the attitude of conscious 
 strength which he assumed, his lofty looks, 
 his indignant glance, would dismay the stout- 
 est and most subtle of his opponents ; and the 
 veterans of Parliament have stood abashed in 
 the presence of a youth. Sir Robert Walpole, 
 in his pride of place, with all the dexterity of 
 ministerial management which a life had been 
 spent in acquiring, was awed before this 
 champion of simple virtue. Detected in his 
 sophistries, stigmatized for his corruptions, 
 baffled in his attempts at retaliation or de- 
 fense, this intriguing statesman came at 
 length to dread, as the signal of defeat, the 
 very sound of his adversary's voice. "Let 
 us before all things," said he, "try to muzzle 
 this terrible cornet of horse." 
 
 But the enterprise was ineffectual, the cor- 
 net was not to be "muzzled"; and if Sir 
 Robert still believed in his favorite maxim, 
 that every man has his price, it must have 
 mortified him to discover that the price of 
 Pitt was not within the compass of his gift. 
 Unable to gain over, he took the imperfect 
 satisfaction of alienating still further. Pitt 
 was deprived of his commission in the army; 
 
 74 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 and this stroke of official severity, while it 
 confirmed him in his opposition, rendered him 
 still dearer to the public, whose rights he was 
 asserting. It strengthened him also in the 
 favor of Frederick, Prince of Wales, the cen- 
 ter at that period of all who aimed at a change 
 of men and measures. Pitt was appointed 
 groom of the bed-chamber to the prince in 
 the year 1737. He continued in the succes- 
 sive sessions of Parliament to support the 
 same liberal principles which he had at first 
 adopted, the increase of years increasing his 
 experience in the principles of policy and gov- 
 ernment without seeming to abate the ardor 
 of his zeal. He distinguished himself by his 
 animated hostility to the Spanish Convention 
 in 1738, and generally by his aversion to 
 every measure that appeared likely to injure 
 the rights of the subject or the lasting in- 
 terests of the country. His speeches contribu- 
 ted not a little to the dowTifall of Sir Robert 
 Walpole. One of his most brilliant displays 
 is preserved in the reported debate on a mo- 
 tion for an inquiry into the last ten years of 
 that statesman's administration. The motion, 
 tho carried in the House of Commons, was 
 defeated of its object by a ministerial maneu- 
 ver; but it sealed the ruin of the Walpole 
 party, and yet affords a striking indication of 
 the powers of this young and ardent and en- 
 lightened politician. 
 
 The Pelhams, who succeeded Walpole, 
 
 75 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 wishing to secure the cooperation of Pitt, at- 
 tempted to get him brought into office ; but a 
 formidable obstacle stood in the way. The 
 King was offended at Pitt for joining with the 
 heir apparent to oppose the favorite minister 
 and his Hanoverian politics; he refused to 
 consent to his admission. The Pelhams re- 
 signed in consequence, but were shortly after- 
 ward reinstated, and brought Pitt along with 
 them as vice-treasurer of Ireland in 1746. 
 This post was soon converted into that of 
 treasurer, and then exchanged for the place 
 of privy-counselor, and paymaster-general of 
 the forces. His conduct in this latter situa- 
 tion served to display the disinterested in- 
 tegrity of his nature; he disdained to retain 
 any portion of the public money in his hands 
 to profit by its interest, or by speculating with 
 it in the funds, tho his predecessors had acted 
 thus without scruple; he even refused the 
 usual perquisites of his office, when they 
 seemed unmerited by the duties of it. Such 
 a manner of proceeding seemed to exmplify 
 in practise the high principles which he had 
 prof est as an orator; it sanctioned and aug- 
 mented the favor in which he had long stood 
 over all the empire. "With the king it was less 
 successful. George II still viewed Pitt with 
 a jealous eye, and Pitt was still inflexible in 
 maintaining what he thought the true ad- 
 vantage of Britain against all the frowns of 
 royalty and the intrigues of court. In the 
 
 76 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 beginning of the seven years' war, when His 
 Majesty returned from the continent, and 
 presented the subsidiary treaties he had made 
 with Hesse Cassel and Prussia for the defense 
 of his beloved Hanover, Pitt did not hesitate 
 to speak in Parliament against their ratifica- 
 tion. He was, in consequence, dismist from 
 office, and ]\Ir. Legge, who has partaken in 
 his fault, partook also in his punishment. 
 This was in 1755. 
 
 Pitt was now again a private man, but sur- 
 rounded with a blaze of reputation which few 
 ministers would not have envied. The long 
 and brave struggle he had made in defense 
 of their privileges endeared him to the peo- 
 ple ; his virtue, proved alike in place and out 
 of it, gave a new and more steady luster to 
 the splendor which his high talents shed 
 around him. In 1744 the Duchess of Marl- 
 borough had left him a legacy of £10,000, 
 "upon account," as her testament exprest it, 
 * ' of his merit in the noble defense he has made 
 for the support of the laws of England, and 
 to prevent the ruin of his country." Eleven 
 years had now elapsed since the date of this 
 splendid testimonial, nine of which had been 
 spent in office, amid temptations such as have 
 ruined the fame of many a patriot; yet still 
 his popularity had continued to augment, and 
 his late disfavor at court, by investing him 
 with something of the grace of a martyr, had 
 raised it to a higher pitch than ever. Men 
 
 77 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 called him the Great Commoner; he was lis- 
 tened to by the nation as its guardian and 
 father. 
 
 Happy in these circumstances of his pub- 
 lic situation, Pitt was also happy in his do- 
 mestic circle. In 1754 he had married Hes- 
 ter, only daughter of Richard Grenville, Esq., 
 and of the Countess of Temple, a lady whose 
 accomplishments, and graces, and affection 
 formed a permanent solace to him throughout 
 the remainder of his life. In a short time 
 also he had reason to applaud the wisdom of 
 his own anticipations and to pity the inca- 
 pacity of the actual ministers. He spoke 
 loudly against the policy of sending English 
 money to defend Hanover by subsidies; he 
 reprobated the idea of introducing Hano- 
 verian soldiers to defend England. The 
 course of events strongly seconded his reason- 
 ing; the beginning of the seven years' w^ar 
 was marked to Britain by nothing but dis- 
 asters; the nation murmured; addresses and 
 petitions called vehemently for a change, and 
 the universal voice named Pitt as the man. 
 His Majesty was again obliged to treat with 
 this discarded servant. A new ministry was 
 formed in 1756, in which Pitt took the post 
 of Secretary of State, his friend Mr. Legge 
 being Chancellor of the Exchequer. His Maj- 
 esty's repugnance and difficulties are strongly 
 marked by the fact that having a second time 
 dismissed Pitt for his inflexible opposition to 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 the Duke of Cumberland as general of the 
 German war, he was again forced by the pub- 
 lic opinion to recall him with the most ample 
 concessions. Pitt resumed his place of Secre- 
 tary on the 29th of June, 1757, and formed a 
 cabinet according to his own choice. His per- 
 sonal influence, of course, was the predomi- 
 nating; he was unfettered by conflicting col- 
 leagues; even the king's prepossessions began 
 to abate. Pitt, in their preliminary interview, 
 had said to him, "Sire, give me your confi- 
 dence and I will deserve it." His Majesty 
 had answered, ''Deserve it, and you shall have 
 it. ' ' There was at least henceforth no visible 
 discordance between them. 
 
 It was now that the genius of Pitt shone 
 forth with unclouded splendor in the eyes of 
 all Europe. Unconstrained in his movements, 
 the vigor of his own mind seemed to pervade 
 every department of the public service; its 
 influence was soon felt in the remotest corners 
 of the globe. He found the nation deprest 
 and degraded; in three years he raised it to 
 a height of greatness which it had never be- 
 fore attained. Devoting himself wholly to 
 the duties of his office, entirely avoiding the 
 pageantry of levees and public exhibitions, 
 he bent himself with all his might to mature 
 the plans he had formed for the national 
 advantage and to discover fit instruments for 
 realizing them. The extent of his informa- 
 tion, the quickness of his understanding, en- 
 
 79 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 abled him at once to discover where the enemy 
 was most assailable; his projects, magnificent 
 as the mind that conceived them, were ex- 
 amined and provided for with the most scru- 
 pulous accuracy, and put in execution with 
 an energy that insured success. The people 
 were averse to any interference in the Con- 
 tinental war; Pitt objected less to the fact of 
 interference than to the actual manner of it. 
 Dismissing the Duke of Cumberland from the 
 command of the army, to which the conven- 
 tion at Kloster-sieben had shown too well that 
 he was unequal, he assisted Frederick of Prus- 
 sia by subsidies, and gave the English troops 
 to be led by Ferdinand of Brunswick. Some 
 outcry was raised against him at first ; it was 
 thought he should have shaken off the interest 
 of Hanover entirely. But he underwent these 
 censures, persevered in his measures, and 
 *' conquered America in Germany," as he 
 predicted. The French being occupied in 
 these continental expeditions, and Frederick 
 assisted by British gold to make head against 
 them, their colonies and distant possessions 
 were left ill guarded, and fell an easy prey 
 to the vigorous attacks of the English. Be- 
 fore 1760 they had lost nearly all their foreign 
 settlements; they were banished from Africa 
 and Asia, and the Canadas had yielded to the 
 heroism of Wolfe; the navy of France had 
 scarcely an existence; her own coasts were 
 continually insulted, and her people kept in 
 
 80 ^ 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 constant terror of invasion. The talents and 
 diligence of Pitt, the skill with which he ad- 
 ministered the resources of Britain, had raised 
 her to be the arbitress of Europe. 
 
 But all his triumphs abroad were insuffi- 
 cient to secure him against the vicissitudes 
 of faction at home. In 1760 the king died, 
 and the dependents of his successor, George 
 III, began to look with eagerness for a change. 
 It is hinted also that Pitt was not too agree- 
 able to some of his colleagues. The great and 
 uniform success of all his enterprises had ex- 
 alted his reputation to a height which it was 
 painful for a competitor to contemplate ; and 
 his habit of seeing every obstacle give way 
 to the commanding effort of his will had 
 strengthened in him that rigidness of manner, 
 that imposing inflexibility of purpose, which 
 his friends might dignify as the natural ex- 
 pression of a lofty and self-dependent mind^ 
 but which his enemies did not fail to brand 
 with the name of arrogance or domineering 
 ambition. The court sought a cause of quar- 
 rel with him, and one was not long occurring. 
 By the accuracy of his intelligence he had 
 discovered the existence of that family com- 
 pact between the French and Spanish branch- 
 es of the house of Bourbon, the secret influ- 
 ence of which had rendered abortive some 
 recent attempts at making peace. "With 
 his characteristic decision, Pitt immediately 
 moved for a declaration of war against Spain 
 
 81 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 and a vigorous attack on her foreign posses- 
 sions. He judged it better to surprize the 
 enemy than be surprized by him; and the 
 treachery of Spain seemed to authorize the 
 omission of preliminary complaints and nego- 
 tiations. The rest of the cabinet thought 
 otherwise; the question was debated keenly; 
 Pitt's opinion was overruled, and hints were 
 given that his concurrence was no longer in- 
 dispensable. The popularity of a young king, 
 and the national desire for peace, w^arranted 
 them in such proceedings ; but it was against 
 the minister's principle to incur responsibil- 
 ity w^here he had not the management. He 
 resigned his office in October, 1761. The ap- 
 plause of all good men accompanied him in 
 his retreat; he had the character of the most 
 able and virtuous of statesmen. His private 
 fortune was likewise increased by an annuity 
 of £3,000, conferred on him at his resignation, 
 to last during his life and that of his lady. 
 The total inattention he had always mani- 
 fested to his individual interests while man- 
 aging the concerns of the public rendered this 
 annuity a necessary gift. His lady w^as fur- 
 ther honored wdth the rank of the peerage, 
 conferred on her by the title of Baroness of 
 Chatham. 
 
 Again reduced to a private station, Pitt 
 attended chiefly to his duties in Parliament; 
 and, without uniting himself to anj^ party 
 in the State, he kept a watchful eye over the 
 
 82 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 public conduct of ministers, delivering his 
 sentiments in the same fearless spirit which 
 had hitherto distinguished all his public ex- 
 hibitions. When the Peace of Paris, which 
 his own exertions had done so much to bring 
 about, was to be concluded in 1762, he ex- 
 prest himself warmly against the terms of it 
 — against the smallness of the benefit likely 
 to result to England from the commanding 
 attitude she had maintained throughout the 
 latter years of the war. On the question of 
 general warants, arising from the case of 
 Wilkes, in 1764, he delivered an animated 
 speech against the legality of such exertions 
 of official prerogative, reminding his hearers 
 "that an Englishman's house w^as his castle, 
 defended not indeed by battlements and bul- 
 warks, but by the impassable tho unseen bar- 
 rier of law. It might be a straw-built shed, 
 into which every wind of heaven might enter ; 
 but the king could not, the king dared not." 
 That his popularity remained undiminished 
 was evinced by a fact striking enough in it- 
 self, and more so as it regarded him. Sir 
 AYilliam Pynsent, of Burton-Pynsent, in the 
 County of Somerset, passed over his own 
 family in order to bequeath an estate of £3,000 
 a year to this distinguished patriot. Already 
 had the commencement of his political life 
 been dignified by a similar tribute of appro- 
 bation ; it must have been doubly gratifying 
 to find the same testimony still more unequiv- 
 
 83 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 ocally renewed when the busiest and most 
 dangerous part of it was past. 
 
 Pitt was again to be a minister, but never 
 so happy a one as he had been already. In 
 1766 the necessities of the government once 
 more called him to a share in it; the forma- 
 tion of a new cabinet was intrusted to him, 
 but the undertaking did not prosper in his 
 hands. His brother-in-law and old associate, 
 Lord Temple; his friend, the Marquis of 
 Rockingham, could not enter in his views or 
 act along with him, and the Great Conunoner 
 had offended many of his favorers by accept- 
 ing a peerage. He v/as made Earl of Chat- 
 ham and Baron of Burton-Pynsent prior to 
 his entrance upon office. Of his ministry 
 Mr. Burke has left us a curious and often- 
 quoted description. The members of it were 
 the most heterogeneous and discordant: the 
 results they produced betrayed the feebleness 
 of their union. Chatham resigned in two 
 years, disgusted with the untowardness of 
 his coadjutors, and tired of useless exertions 
 to bend their clashing principles to a con- 
 formity with his own. 
 
 This was the last time he appeared in office. 
 His strength and health were exhausted; 
 years and excessive labor had increased the 
 violence of his constitutional disorder; he 
 wanted retirement and repose. His peerage 
 had shut against him the habitual scene of 
 his parliamentary exertions; he was not a 
 
 84 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 constant attendant in the House of Lords; 
 but when some great question called him forth 
 from his retreat, the fire of his genius still 
 shone with unabated brilliancy. The chief 
 theme of his oratory from this period was the 
 quarrel wth the American colonies, the in- 
 terests and claims of which now began to 
 occupy the principal share of the public at- 
 tention. Chatham resisted the imposition of 
 taxes on them; he warmly seconded the re- 
 peal of the Stamp Act. But when war had 
 been undertaken — above all, when France 
 had taken part in it — he was resolute in con- 
 tinuing in arms at whatever risk. The memo- 
 rable scene in which he displayed his anxiety 
 on this head is well known. On the 7th of 
 April, 1778, the Duke of Richmond having 
 moved an address to the King, in which the 
 necessity of admitting the independence of 
 America was broadly insinuated, Chatham 
 deprecated such a consummation in the 
 strongest terms. '^I rejoice," said he, ''that 
 the grave has not closed upon me, that I am 
 still alive to life up my voice against the dis- 
 memberment of this ancient and noble mon- 
 archy. Prest down as I am by the load of 
 infirmity I am little able to assist my country 
 in this most perilous conjuncture; but, my 
 lords, while I have sense and memory I never 
 will consent to tarnish the luster of this nation 
 by an ignominious surrender of its rights and 
 fairest possessions. Shall a people, so lately 
 
 85 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 the terror of the world, now fall prostrate 
 before the House of Bourbon? It is impos- 
 sible ! In God 's name, if it is absolutely nec- 
 essary to declare either for peace or war, and 
 if peace can not be preserved with honor, 
 why is not war commenced without hesitation ? 
 I am not, I confess, well informed of the 
 resources of this kingdom, but I trust it has 
 still sufficient to maintain its just rights tho 
 I know them not. Any state, my lords, is 
 better than despair. Let us at least make one 
 effort; and if we must fall, let us fall like 
 men. ' ' The duke replied, and Chatham made 
 an eager effort to rise that he might speak 
 further; but in vain, his voice was never 
 more to be heard in that senate which it had 
 so often dignified and delighted. He stag- 
 gered, laid his hand upon his bosom, fainted, 
 and was caught in the arms of the lords who 
 sat near him and sprang to his assistance. 
 They carried him into an adjoining room, 
 and the House immediately adjourned. Med- 
 ical assistance being procured, he was con- 
 veyed to his villa at Hayes, in Kent, wherfe 
 he lingered only till the following 11th of 
 May, and then died, in the seventieth year of 
 his age. 
 
 The circumstances of his death, combined 
 with the general character of his life, render 
 that event peculiarlj^ impressive. News of it 
 being conveyed to London by express. Colonel 
 Barre reported the intelligence to Parliament, 
 
 86 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 where it suspended all other business. The 
 sense which the public entertained of their 
 loss was manifested by the honors done to his 
 memory. Party differences seemed to be for- 
 got ; all joined in voting that his debts should 
 be paid by the nation, and that a yearly sum 
 of £4,000 should be permanently added from 
 the civil list to the title he had borne. He 
 was buried in Westminster Abbey with all 
 the pomp of a public funeral, and a piece of 
 sculpture was afterward erected by way of 
 monument, representing the last scene of his 
 parliamentary life, and inscribed as the trib- 
 ute of the King and Parliament to the Earl 
 of Chatham. 
 
 The chief lineaments of Chatham's char- 
 acter may be gathered from the most meager 
 chronicle of his actions. That he was a man 
 of a splendid and impetuous genius — adapted 
 for the duties of an orator by the vehemence 
 of his feelings and the rich gifts of his intel- 
 lect; for the duties of a statesman by his 
 vastness of conception, his unwearied assidu- 
 ity in ordering, his inflexible energ}^ in execu- 
 tion — the highest and the humblest qualities 
 that should combine to form a public man — 
 may be learned from contemplating any por- 
 tion of his public life. A survey of the whole 
 v/ill better show in how extraordinary a de- 
 gree he possest these requisites, and how rich- 
 ly he adorned them all by a truly noble style 
 of sentiment, a rigid adherence to the great 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 principles of honor and generosity, and every 
 manly virtue. And as his mind was singu- 
 larly elevated, so had his fortune been sin- 
 gularly good. Few men that have acted so 
 conspicuous a part have united so great a 
 plurality of suffrages in their favor. The 
 reason is that he founded no sect, was the 
 father of no party, but of the party that love 
 their country and labor for it; having thus 
 been a genuine catholic in politics, his merits 
 are admitted by all. Accordingly, the clam- 
 ors that assailed him in life, the voice of 
 obloquy and opposition, the memory of his 
 failings, have long since died quite away, and 
 Chatham is one in praise of whom the bitter- 
 est of partymen forgot their bitterness. He 
 stands in the annals of Europe ' ' an illustrious 
 and venerable name," admired by country- 
 men and strangers, by all to whom loftiness 
 of moral principle and greatness of talent are 
 objects of regard. 
 
 **His private life," says Lord Chesterfield, 
 *'was stained by no vice, nor sullied by any 
 meanness. All his sentiments were liberal and 
 elevated. His ruling passion was an unbound- 
 ed ambition, which, when supported by great 
 abilities and crowned by great success, makes 
 what the world calls a great man. He was 
 haughty, imperious, impatient of contradic- 
 tion, and overbearing — qualities which too 
 often accompany, but always clog, great ones. 
 He had manners and address ; but one might 
 
 88 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 discover through them too great a conscious- 
 ness of his own superior talents. He was a 
 most agreeable and lively companion in social 
 life, and had such a versatility of wit that he 
 could adapt it to all sorts of conversation. 
 He had a most happy turn to poetry, but 
 seldom indulged and seldom avowed it. His 
 eloquence was of every kind, and he excelled 
 in the argumentative as well as the declama- 
 tory way. But his invectives were terrible, 
 and uttered with such energy of diction and 
 such dignity of action and countenance, that 
 he intimidated those who were most willing 
 and best able to encounter him. Their arms 
 fell out of their hands, and they struck under 
 the ascendant which his genius gained over 
 theirs. ' ' 
 
 If Chatham's faculties had not been more 
 worthily employed we might have regretted 
 that he left so few memorials of them in a 
 literary shape. Many of his speeches, under 
 all the deformities of incorrect reporting, are 
 full of beauty; and a volume of "Letters" 
 to his nephew, published some years ago, may 
 be read with a pleasure independent of their 
 author. See "Life of Chatham," in 3 vol- 
 umes, and the public histories of the time. 
 
 89 
 
ON THE ATHENIAN ORATORS 
 
 BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 
 
 ' ' To the famous orators repair, 
 Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence 
 Wielded at will that fierce democratic. 
 Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece 
 To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne," 
 
 — Milton. 
 
 THE celebrity of the great classical writers 
 is confined within no limits, except 
 those which separate civilized from 
 savage man. Their works are the common 
 property of every polished nation. They have 
 furnished subjects for the painter and models 
 for the poet. In the minds of the educated 
 classes throughout Europe their names are in- 
 dissolubly associated w^ith the endearing recol- 
 lections of childhood — the old schoolroom, the 
 dog-eared grammar, the first prize, the tears 
 so often shed and so quickly dried. So great 
 is the veneration with which they are regard- 
 ed that even the editors and commentators 
 who perform the lowest menial offices to their 
 memory are considered, like the equerries and 
 chamberlains of sovereign princes, as entitled 
 to a high rank in the table of literary prece- 
 dence. It is, therefore, somewhat singular 
 that their productions should so rarely have 
 been examined on just and philosophical prin- 
 ciples of criticism. 
 
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STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 The ancient writers themselves afford us 
 but little assistance. When they particular- 
 ize they are commonly trivial; when they 
 would generalize they become indistinct. An 
 exception must, indeed, be made in favor of 
 Aristotle. Both in analysis and in combina- 
 tion that great man was without a rival. No 
 philosopher has ever possest, in an equal de- 
 gree, the talent either of separating established 
 system into their primary elements, or of 
 connecting detached phenomena in harmoni- 
 ous systems. He w^as the great fashioner of 
 the intellectual chase; he changed its dark- 
 ness into light, and its discord into order. He 
 brought to literary researches the same vigor 
 and amplitude of mind to which both physical 
 and metaphysical science are so greatly in- 
 debted. His fundamental principles of criti- 
 cism are excellent. To cite only a single in- 
 stance: The doctrine which he established, 
 that poetry is an imitative art when justly 
 understood, is to the critic what the compass 
 is to the navigator. With it he may venture 
 upon the most extensive excursions. Without 
 it he must creep cautiously along the coast, 
 or lose himself in a trackless expanse, and 
 trust, at best, to the guidance of an occasional 
 star. It is a discovery which changes a caprice 
 into a science. 
 
 The general propositions of Aristotle are 
 valuable. But the merit of the superstructure 
 bears no proportion to that of the foundation. 
 
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PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 This is partly to be ascribed to the character 
 of the philosopher, who, tho qualified to do 
 all that could be done by the resolving and 
 combining powers of the understanding, seems 
 not to have possest much of sensibility or 
 imagination. Partly, also, it may be attrib- 
 uted to the deficiency of materials. The great 
 works of genius which then existed were not 
 either sufficiently numerous or sufficiently 
 varied to enable any man to form a perfect 
 code of literature. To require that a critic 
 should conceive classes of composition which 
 had never existed, and then investigate their 
 principles, would be as unreasonable as the 
 demand of Nebuchadnezzar, who expected his 
 magicians first to tell him his dream and then 
 to interpret it. 
 
 With all his deficiencies, Aristotle was the 
 most enlightened and profound critic of an- 
 tiquity. Dionysius was far from possessing 
 the same exquisite subtility, or the same vast 
 comprehension. But he had access to a much 
 greater number of specimens, and he had de- 
 voted himself, as it appears, more exclusively 
 to the study of elegant literature. His pecu- 
 liar judgments are of more value than his 
 general principles. He is only the historian 
 of literature. Aristotle is its philosopher. 
 
 Quintilian applied to general literature the 
 same principles by which he had been accus- 
 tomed to .judge of the declamations of his 
 pupils. He looks for nothing but rhetoric, 
 
 92 
 
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 and rhetoric not of the highest order. He 
 speaks coldly of the incomparable works of 
 ^schylus. He admires beyond expression 
 those inexhaustible mines of commonplaces, 
 the plays of Euripides. He bestoAvs a few 
 vague words on the poetical character of 
 Homer. He then proceeds to consider him 
 merely as an orator. An orator Homer doubt- 
 less was, and a great orator. But surely noth- 
 ing is more remarkable, in his admirable works 
 than the art with which his oratorical powers 
 are made subservient to the purposes of poet- 
 ry. Nor can I think Quintilian a great critic 
 in his own province. Just as are many of his 
 remarks, beautiful as are many of his illus- 
 trations, we can perpetually detect in his 
 thoughts that flavor which the soil of despot- 
 ism generally communicates to all the fruits 
 of genius. Eloquence was, in his time, little 
 more than a condiment which served to stimu- 
 late in a despot the jaded appetite for pane- 
 gyric, an amusement for the traveled nobles 
 and the blue-stocking matrons of Rome. It is, 
 therefore, with him rather a sport than a war ; 
 it is a contest of foils, not of swords. He ap- 
 pears to think more of the grace of the atti- 
 tude than of the direction and vigor of the 
 thrust. It must be acknowledged, in justice 
 to Quintilian, that this is an error to which 
 Cicero has too often given the sanction, both 
 of his precept and of his example. 
 
 Longinus seems to have had great sensi- 
 
 93 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 bility but little discrimination. He gives us 
 eloquent sentences, but no principles. It was 
 happily said that Montesquieu ought to have 
 changed the name of his book from L' Esprit 
 des Lois to L 'Esprit sur les Lois. In the same 
 manner the philosopher of Palmyra ought to 
 have entitled his famous work, not ' ' Longinus 
 on the Sublime," but ''The Sublimities of 
 Longinus." The origin of the sublime is one 
 of the most curious and interesting subjects 
 of inquiry that can occupy the attention of a 
 critic. In our own country it has been discust 
 with great ability, and, I think, with very 
 little success, by Burke and Dugald Stuart. 
 Longinus dispenses himself from all investi- 
 gations of this nature by telling his friend, 
 Terentianus, that he already knows everything 
 that can be said upon the question. It is to 
 be regretted that Terentianus did not impart 
 some of his knowledge to his instructor, for 
 from Longinus we learn only that sublimity 
 means height, or elevation. This name, so 
 commodiously vague, is applied indifferently 
 to the noble prayer of Ajax in the Iliad, and 
 to a passage of Plato about the human body, 
 as full of conceits as an ode of Cowley. Hav- 
 ing no fixt standard, Longinus is right only 
 by accident. He is rather a fancier than a 
 critic. 
 
 Modern writers have been prevented by 
 many causes from supplying the deficiencies 
 of their classical predecessors. At the time 
 
 94 
 
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 of the revival of literature no man could^ 
 without great and painful labor, acquire an 
 accurate and elegant knowledge of the ancient 
 languages. And, unfortunately, those gram- 
 matical and philological studies, without 
 which it was impossible to understand the 
 great works of Athenian and Roman genius, 
 have a tendency to contract the views and 
 deaden the sensibility of those who follow 
 them with extreme assiduity. A powerful 
 mind, which has been long em.ployed in such 
 studies, may be compared to the gigantic 
 spirit in the Arabian tale, who was persuaded 
 to contract himself to small dimensions in 
 order to enter within the enchanted vessel, 
 and, when his prison had been closed upon 
 him, found himself unable to escape from the 
 narrow boundaries to the measure of which 
 he had reduced his stature. When the means 
 have long been the objects of application they 
 are naturally substituted for the end. It was 
 said by Eugene of Savoy, that the greatest 
 generals have commonly been those who have 
 been at once raised to command, and intro- 
 duced to the great operations of war, without 
 being employed in the petty calculations and 
 maneuvers which employ the time of an in- 
 ferior officer. In literature the principle is 
 equally sound. The great tactics of criticism 
 will, in general, be best understood by those 
 who have not had much practise in drilling 
 syllables and particles. 
 
 95 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 I remember to have observed among the 
 French Anas a ludicrous instance of this. A 
 scholar, doubtless of great learning, recom- 
 mends the study of some long Latin treatise,, 
 of which I now forget the name, on the relig- 
 ion, manners, government and language of the 
 early Greeks. "For there," says he, "you 
 will learn everything of importance that is 
 contained in the Iliad and Odyssey, without 
 the trouble of reading two such tedious 
 books." Alas! it had not occurred to the 
 poor gentleman that all the knowledge to 
 which he attached so much value was useful 
 only as it illustrated the great poems which 
 he despised, and would be as worthless for any 
 other purpose as th-? mythology of Caffragia 
 or the vocabulary of Otaheite. 
 
 Of those scholars who have disdained to 
 confine themselves to verbal criticism few 
 have been successful. The ancient languages 
 have, generally, a magical influence on their 
 faculties. They were ' ' fools called into a cir- 
 cle by Greek invocations." The Iliad and 
 ^neid were to them not books, but curiosities, 
 or, rather, relics. They no more amired those 
 works for their merits than a good Catholic 
 venerates the house of the Virgin at Loretto 
 for its architecture. Whatever was classical 
 was good. Homer was a great poet, and so 
 was Calimachus. The epistles of Cicero were 
 fine, and so were those of Phalaris. Even with 
 respect to questions of evidence they fell into 
 
 96 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 the same error. The authority of all narra- 
 tions written in Greek or Latin was the same 
 with them. It never crossed their minds that 
 the lapse of five hundred years, or the distance 
 of five hundred leagues, could affect the ac- 
 curacy of a narration ; that Livy could be a 
 less veracious historian than Polybius, or that 
 Plutarch could know less about the friends of 
 Xenophon than Xenophon himself. Deceived 
 by the distance of time, they seem to consider 
 all the Classics as contemporaries; just as I 
 have known people in England, deceived by 
 the distance of place, take it for granted that 
 all persons who live in India are neighbors, 
 and ask an inhabitant of Bombay about the 
 health of an acquaintance at Calcutta. It is 
 to be hoped that no barbarian deluge will ever 
 again pass over Europe. But, should such a 
 calamity happen, it seems not improbable that 
 some future RoUin or Gillies will compile a 
 history of England from Miss Porter's "Scot- 
 tish Chiefs," Miss Lee's "Recess," and Sir 
 
 Nathaniel Wraxall 's ' ' Memoirs. ' ' 
 
 It is surely time that ancient literature 
 should be examined in a different manner, 
 without pedantical prepossessions, but with a 
 just allowance at the same time for the differ- 
 ence of circumstances and manners. I am far 
 from pretending to the knowledge or ability 
 which such a task would require. I merely 
 offer a collection of desultory remarks upon 
 a most interesting portion of Greek literature. 
 
 97 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 It may be doubted whether any composi- 
 tions which have ever been produced in the 
 world are equally perfect in their kind with 
 the great Athenian orations. Genius is sub- 
 ject to the same laws which regulate the pro- 
 duction of cotton and molasses. The supply 
 adjusts itself to the demand. The quantity 
 may be diminished by restrictions and multi- 
 plied by bounties. The singular excellence to 
 which eloquence attained at Athens is to be 
 mainly attributed to the influence which it 
 exerted there. In turbulent times, under a 
 constitution purely democratic, among a peo- 
 ple educated exactly to that point at which 
 men are most susceptible of strong and sud- 
 den impressions, acute, but not sound reason- 
 ers, warm in their feelings, unfixt in their 
 principles, and passionate admirers of fine 
 composition, oratory received such encourage- 
 ment as it has never since obtained. 
 
 The taste and knowledge of the Athenian 
 people was a favorite object of the contemptu- 
 ous derision of Samuel Johnson, a man who 
 knew nothing of Greek literature beyond the 
 common school-books, and who seems to have 
 brought to what he had read scarcely more 
 than the discernment of a common schoolboy. 
 He used to assert, with that arrogant absurd- 
 ity which, in spite of his great abilities and 
 virtues, renders him, perhaps, the most ridicu- 
 lous character in literary history, that De- 
 mosthenes spoke to a people of brutes — to a 
 
 98 
 
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 barbarous people ; that there could have been 
 no civilization before the invention of print- 
 ing. Johnson was a keen but a very narrow- 
 minded observer of mankind. He perpetually 
 confounded their general nature with their 
 particular circumstances. He knew London 
 intimately. The sagacity of his remarks on 
 its society is perfectly astonishing. But Fleet 
 Street was the world to him. He saw that 
 Londoners who did not read were profoundly 
 ignorant; and he inferred that a Greek, who 
 had few or no books, must have been as un- 
 informed as one of Mr. Thrale's draymen. 
 
 There seems to be, on the contrary, every 
 reason to believe that, in general intelligence, 
 the Athenian populace far surpassed the lower 
 orders of any community that has ever ex- 
 isted. It must be considered that to be a citi- 
 zen was to be a legislator, a soldier, a judge — 
 one upon whose voice might depend the fate 
 of the wealthiest tributary state, of the most 
 eminent public man. The lowest offices, both 
 of agriculture and of trade, were, in common, 
 performed by slaves. The commonwealth sup- 
 plied its meanest members with the support of 
 life, the opportunity of leisure, and the means 
 of amusement. Books were indeed few; but 
 they were excellent, and they were accurately 
 known. It is not by turning over libraries, 
 but by repeatedly perusing and intently con- 
 templating a few great models, that the mind 
 is best disciplined. A man of letters must 
 
 99 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 now read much that he soon forgets, and 
 much from which he learns nothing worthy to 
 be remembered. The best works employ, in 
 general, but a small portion of his time. De- 
 mosthenes is said to have transcribed six times 
 the history of Thucydides. If he had been a 
 young politician of the present age he might, 
 in the same space of time, have skimmed in- 
 numerable newspapers and pamphlets. I do 
 not condemn that desultory mode of study 
 which the state of things in our day renders a 
 matter of necessity. But I may be allowed 
 to doubt w^hether the changes on which the 
 admirers of modern institutions delight to 
 dwell have improved our condition so much in 
 reality as in apearance. Rumford, it is said, 
 proposed to the Elector of Bavaria a scheme 
 for feeding his soldiers at a much cheaper rate 
 than formerly. His plan was simply to com- 
 pel them to masticate their food thoroughly. 
 A small quantity thus eaten would, according 
 to that famous projector, afford more suste- 
 nance than a large meal hastily devoured. I 
 do not know how Rumford 's proposition was 
 received ; but to the mind, I believe, it will be 
 found more nutritious to digest a page than 
 to devour a volume. 
 
 Books, however, were the least part of the 
 education of an Athenian citizen. Let us, for 
 a moment, transport ourselves, in thought, to 
 that glorious city. Let us imagine that we 
 are entering its gates in the time of its power 
 
 100 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 and glory. A crowd is assembled round a 
 portico. All are gazing with delight at the 
 entablature, for Phidias is putting up the 
 frieze. We turn into another street; a rhap- 
 sodist is reciting there ; men, women, children 
 are thronging round him; the tears are run- 
 ning down their cheeks, their eyes are fixt, 
 their very breath is still, for he is telling how 
 Priam fell at the feet of Achilles, and kissed 
 those hands, the terrible, the murderous, which 
 had slain so many of his sons. We enter the 
 public place; there is a ring of youths, all 
 leaning forward, with sparkling eyes and 
 gestures of expectation. Socrates is pitted 
 against the famous atheist from Ionia, and 
 has just brought him to a contradiction in 
 terms. But we are interrupted. The herald 
 is crying, "Room for the Prytanes." The 
 general assembly is to meet. The people are 
 swarming in on every side. Proclamation is 
 made: "Who wishes to speak?" There is a 
 shout and a clapping of hands; Pericles is 
 mounting the stand. Then for a play of 
 Sophocles, and away to sup with Aspasia. I 
 know of no modern university which has so 
 excellent a system of education. 
 
 Knowledge thus acquired and opinions thus 
 formed were, indeed, likely to be, in some re- 
 spects, defective. Propositions which are ad- 
 vanced in discourse generally result from a 
 partial view of the question, and can not be 
 kept under examination long enough to be 
 
 101 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 corrected. Men of great conversational powers 
 almost universally practise a sort of lively 
 sophistry and exaggeration, which deceives 
 for the moment both themselves and their 
 auditors. Thus we see doctrines which can 
 not bear a close inspection triumph perpetu- 
 ally in drawing-rooms, in debating societies, 
 and even in legislative or judicial assemblies. 
 To the conversational eucation of the Athe- 
 nians I am inclined to attribute the great 
 looseness of reasoning which is remarkable in 
 most of their scientific writings. Even the 
 most illogical of modern writers would stand 
 perfectly aghast at the puerile fallacies which 
 seem to have deluded some of the greatest 
 men of antiquity. Sir Thomas Lethbridge 
 would stare at the political economy of Xeno- 
 phon; and the author of ''Soirees de Peters- 
 bourg" would be ashamed of some of the 
 metaphysical arguments of Plato. But the 
 very circumstances which retarded the growth 
 of science were peculiarly favorable to the 
 cultivation of eloquence. From the early hab- 
 it of taking a share in animated discussion the 
 intelligent student would derive that readi- 
 ness of resource, that copiousness of language, 
 and that knowledge of the temper and under- 
 standing of an audience, which are far more 
 valuable to an orator than the greatest logical 
 powers. 
 
 Horace has prettily compared poems to 
 those paintings of which the effect varies as 
 
 102 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 the spectator changes his stand. The same 
 remark applies with at least equal justice to 
 speeches. They must be read with the temper 
 of those to whom they were addrest, or they 
 must necessarily appear to offend against the 
 laws of taste and reason, as the finest picture, 
 seen in a light different from that for which 
 it was designed, will appear fit only for a 
 sign. This is perpetually forgotten by those 
 who criticize oratory. Because they are read- 
 ing at leisure, pausing at every line, recon- 
 sidering every argument, they forget that the 
 hearers were hurried from point to point too 
 rapidly to detect the fallacies through which 
 they were conducted; that they had no time 
 to disentangle sophisms, or to notice slight in- 
 accuracies of expression; that elaborate ex- 
 cellence, either of reasoning or of language, 
 would have been absolutely thrown away. To 
 recur to the analogy of the sister art, these 
 connoisseurs examine a panorama through a 
 microscope, and quarrel with a scene-painter 
 because he does not give to his work the ex- 
 quisite finish of Gerard Dow. 
 
 Oratory is to be estimated on principles dif- 
 ferent from those which are applied to other 
 productions. Truth is the object of philos- 
 ophy and history. Truth is the object even of 
 those works which are peculiarly called works 
 of fiction, but which, in fact, bear the same 
 relation to history which algebra bears to 
 arithmetic. The merit of poetry, in its wild- 
 
 103 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 est forms, still consists in its truth — truth 
 conveyed to the understanding, not directly 
 by the words, but circuitously by means of 
 imaginative associations, which serve as its 
 conductors. The object of oratory alone is 
 not truth, but persuasion. The admiration of 
 the multitude does not make Moore a greater 
 poet than Coleridge, or Beattie a greater phi- 
 losopher than Berkeley. But the criterion of 
 eloquence is different. A speaker who ex- 
 hausts the whole philosophy of a question, 
 who displays every grace of style, yet pro- 
 duces no effect on his audience, may be a great 
 essayist, a great statesman, a great master of 
 composition; but he is not an orator. If he 
 miss the mark, it makes no difference whether 
 he have taken aim too high or too low. 
 
 The effect of the great freedom of the press 
 in England has been, in a great measure, to 
 destroy this distinction, and to leave among 
 us little of what I call oratory proper. Our 
 legislators, our candidates on great occasions, 
 even our advocates, address themselves less to 
 the audience than to the reporters. They think 
 less of the few hearers than of the innumer- 
 able readers. At Athens the case was differ- 
 ent; there the only object of the speaker was 
 immediate conviction and persuasion. He, 
 therefore, who would justly appreciate the 
 merit of the Grecian orators should place him- 
 self, as nearly as possible, in the situation of 
 their auditors; he should divest himself of 
 
 104 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 his modern feelings and acquirements, and 
 make the prejudices and interests of the 
 Athenian citizen his own. He who studies 
 their works in this spirit will find that many 
 of those things which, to an English reader, 
 appear to be blemishes — the frequent violation 
 of those excellent rules of evidence by which 
 our courts of law are regulated, the introduc- 
 tion of extraneous matter, the reference to 
 considerations of political expediency in judi- 
 cial investigations, the assertions without 
 proof, the passionate entreaties, the furious 
 invectives — are really proofs of the prudence 
 and address of the speakers. He must not 
 dwell maliciously on arguments or phrases, 
 but acquiesce in his first impressions. It re- 
 quires repeated perusal and reflection to de- 
 cide rightly on any other portion of literature. 
 But with respect to works of which the merit 
 depends on their instantaneous effect the 
 most hasty judgment is likely to be best. 
 
 The history of eloquence at Athens is re- 
 markable. From a very early period great 
 speakers had flourished there. Pisistratus and 
 Themistocles are said to have owed much of 
 their influence to their talents for debate. We 
 learn with more certainty that Pericles was 
 distinguished by extraordinary oratorical 
 powers. The substance of some of his speech- 
 es is transmitted to us by Thucydides; and 
 that excellent writer has doubtless faithfully 
 reported the general line of his arguments. 
 
 105 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 But the manner, which in oratory is of at least 
 as much consequence as the matter, was of no 
 importance to his narration. It is evident that 
 he has not attempted to preserve it. Through- 
 out his work every speech on every subject, 
 whatever may have been the character or the 
 dialect of the speaker, is in exactly the same 
 form. The grave King of Sparta, the furious 
 demagog of Athens, the general encouraging 
 his army, the captive supplicating for his 
 life, all are represented as speakers in one 
 unvaried style, a style moreover wholly unfit 
 for oratorical purposes. His mode of reason- 
 ing is singularly elliptical, in reality most 
 consecutive, yet in appearance often incoher- 
 ent. His meaning, in itself sufficiently per- 
 plexing, is comprest into the fewest possible 
 words. His great fondness for antithetical 
 expression has not a little conduced to this 
 effect. Every one must have observed how 
 much more the sense is condensed in the 
 verses of Pope and his imitators, who never 
 ventured to continue the same clause from 
 couplet to couplet, than in those of poets who 
 allow themselves that license. Every arti- 
 ficial division which is strongly marked, and 
 which frequently recurs, has the same tend- 
 ency. The natural and perspicuous expres- 
 sion which spontaneously rises to the mind 
 will often refuse to accommodate itself to 
 such a form. It is necessary either to expand 
 it into weakness, or to compress it into almost 
 
 106 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 impenetrable density. The latter is generally 
 the choice of an able man, and was assuredly 
 the choice of Thucydides. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to say that such 
 speeches could never have been delivered. They 
 are perhaps among the most difficult passas^es 
 in the Greek language, and would probably 
 have been scarcely more intelligible to an 
 Athenian auditor than to a modern reader. 
 Their obscurity was acknowledged by Cicero, 
 who was as intimate with the literature and 
 language of Greece as the most accomplished 
 of its natives, and who seems to have held a 
 respectable rank among the Greek authors. 
 Their difficulty to a modern reader lies, not 
 in the words, but in the reasoning. A diction- 
 ary is of far less use in studying them than a 
 clear head and a close attention to the con- 
 text. They are valuable to the scholar as dis- 
 playing, beyond almost any other composi- 
 tions, the powers of the finest of languages; 
 they are valuable to the philosopher as illus- 
 trating the morals and manners of a most in- 
 teresting age; they abound in just thought 
 and energetic expression. But they do not 
 enable us to form any accurate opinion on the 
 merits of the early Greek orators. 
 
 Tho it can not be doubted that before the 
 Persian wars Athens had produced eminent 
 speakers, yet the period during which elo- 
 quence most flourished among her citizens was 
 by no means that of her greatest power and 
 
 107 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 glory. It commenced at the close of the Pelo- 
 ponnesian War. In fact, the steps by which 
 Athenian oratory approached to its finished 
 excellence seem to have been almost contempo- 
 raneous with those by which the Athenian 
 character and the Athenian empire sank to 
 degradation. At the time when the little 
 commonwealth achieved those victories whicli 
 tw^enty-iive eventful centuries have left un- 
 equaled, eloquence was in its infancy. The 
 deliverers of Greece became its plunderers 
 and oppressors. Unmeasured exaction, atro- 
 cious vengeance, the madness of the multi- 
 tude, the ty^ranny of the great, filled the Cy- 
 clades with tears, and blood, and mourning. 
 The sword unpeopled whole islands in a day. 
 The plow passed over the ruins of famous 
 cities. The imperial republic sent forth her 
 children by thousands to pine in the quarries 
 of Syracuse, or to feed the vultures of ^go- 
 spotami. She was at length reduced by famine 
 and slaughter to humble herself before her 
 enemies, and to purchase existence by the 
 sacrifice of her empire and her laws. During 
 these disastrous and gloomy years oratory was 
 advancing toward its highest excellence. And 
 it was when the moral, the political, and the 
 military charcter of the people was most ut- 
 terly degraded, when the viceroy of a Macedo- 
 nian sovereign gave law to Greece, that the 
 courts of Athens witnessed the most splendid 
 contest of eloquence the world had ever known. 
 
 108 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 The causes of this phenomenon it is not, I 
 think, difficult to assign. The division of 
 labor operates on the productions of the ora- 
 tor as it does on those of the mechanic. It 
 was remarked by the ancients that the Pent- 
 athelete, who divided his attention between 
 several exercises, tho he could not vie with a 
 boxer in the use of the cestus, or with one 
 who had confined his attention to running in 
 the contest of the stadium, yet enjoyed far 
 greater general vigor and health than either. 
 It is the same with the mind. The superiority 
 in technical skill is often more than compen- 
 sated by the inferiority in general intelli- 
 gence. And this is peculiarly the case in 
 politics. States have always been best gov- 
 erned by men who have taken a wide view of 
 public affairs, and who have rather a general 
 acquaintance with many sciences than a per- 
 fect mastery of one. The union of the politi- 
 cal and military departments in Greece con- 
 tributed not a little to the splendor of its early 
 history. After their separation more skilful 
 generals and greater speakers appeared; but 
 the breed of statesmen dwindled and be- 
 came almost extinct. Themistocles or Pericles 
 would have been no match for Demosthenes in 
 the assembly, or for Iphicrates in the field. 
 But surely they were incomparably better 
 fitted than either for the supreme direction of 
 affairs. 
 
 There is, indeed, a remarkable coincidence 
 
 109 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 between the progress of the art of war and 
 that of the art of oratory among the Greeks. 
 They both advanced to perfection by contem- 
 poraneous steps and from similar causes. The 
 early speakers, like the early warriors of 
 Greece, were merely a militia. It was found 
 that in both employments practise and dis- 
 cipline gave superiority. Each pursuit there- 
 fore became first an art, and then a trade. In 
 proportion as the professors of each became 
 more expert in their particular craft, they 
 became less respectable in their general char- 
 acter. Their skill had been obtained at too 
 great expense to be employed only from dis- 
 interested views. Thus, the soldiers forgot 
 that they were citizens, and the orators that 
 they were statesmen. I know not to what De- 
 mosthenes and his famous contemporaries can 
 be so justly compared as to those mercenary 
 troops who, in their time, overran Greece ; or 
 those who, from similar causes, were some cen- 
 turies ago the scourge of the Italian republics, 
 perfectly acquainted with every part of their 
 profession, irresistible in the field, powerful 
 to defend or to destroy, but defending with- 
 out love and destroying without hatred. We 
 may despise the characters of these political 
 condottieri, but it is impossible to examine the 
 system of their tactics without being amazed 
 at its perfection. 
 
 I had intended to proceed to this examina- 
 tion, and to consider separately the remains of 
 
 110 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 Lysias, or ^schines, or Demosthenes, and of 
 Isocrates, who, tho strictly speaking he was 
 rather a pamphleteer than an orator, deserves, 
 on many accounts a place in such a disquisi- 
 tion. The length of my prolegomena and di- 
 gressions compels me to postpone this part of 
 the subject to another occasion. A magazine 
 is certainly a delightful invention for a very 
 idle or a very busy man. He is not compelled 
 to complete his plan or to adhere to his sub- 
 ject. He may ramble as far as he is inclined, 
 and stop as soon as he is tired. No one takes 
 the trouble to recollect his contradictory opin- 
 ions or his unredeemed pledges. He may be 
 as superficial, as inconsistent, and as careless 
 as he chooses. Magazines resemble those little 
 angels who, according to the pretty rabbinical 
 tradition, are generated every morning by the 
 brook which rolls over the flowers of Paradise, 
 whose life is a song, who warble till sunset, 
 and then sink back without regret into noth- 
 ingness. Such spirits have nothing to do with 
 the detecting spear of Ithuriel or the victori- 
 ous sword of Michael. It is enough for them 
 to please and be forgotten. 
 
 Ill 
 
LITERATURE* 
 
 BY JOHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 IN THE first place I observe that Literature, 
 from the derivation of the word, implies 
 writing, not speaking. This, however, 
 arises from the circumstance of the copious- 
 ness, variety, and public circulation of the 
 matters of which it consists. What is spoken 
 can not outrun the range of the speaker's 
 voice, and perishes in the uttering. When 
 words are in demand to express a long course 
 of thought, when they have to be conveyed to 
 the ends of the earth, or perpetuated for the 
 benefit of posterity, they must be written 
 down — that is, reduced to the shape of litera- 
 ture. Still, properly speaking, the terms by 
 which we denote this characteristic gift of 
 man belong to its exhibition by means of the 
 voice, not of handwriting. It addresses itself, 
 in its primary idea, to the ear, not to the eye. 
 We call it the power of speech, we call it lan- 
 guage — that is, the use of the tongue; and, 
 even when we write, we still keep in mind 
 what was its original instrument, for we use 
 freely such terms in our books as "saying," 
 "speaking," "telling," "talking," "calling"; 
 we use the terms "phraseology" and "dic- 
 
 *From "The Idea of a University," by kind permission of 
 the publishers, Longmans, Green & Co., London. 
 
 112 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 tion," as if we were still addressing ourselves 
 to the ear. 
 
 Now I insist on this, because it shows that 
 speech, and therefore literature, which is its 
 permanent record, is essentially a personal 
 work. It is not some production or result, at- 
 tained by the partnership of several persons, 
 or by machinery, or by any natural process, 
 but in its very idea it proceeds, and must pro- 
 ceed, from some one given individual. Two 
 persons can not be the authors of the sounds 
 which strike our ear ; and, as they can not be 
 speaking one and the same speech, neither can 
 they be writing one and the same lecture 
 or discourse, which must certainly belong to 
 some one person or other, and is the expres- 
 sion of that one person's ideas and feelings — 
 ideas and feelings personal to himself, tho 
 others may have parallel and similar ones, 
 proper to himself, in the same sense as his 
 voice, his air, his countenance, his carriage, 
 and his action are personal. In other words, 
 literature expresses not objective truth, as it 
 is called, but subjective; not things, but 
 thoughts. 
 
 Now this doctrine will become clearer by 
 considering another use of words, which does 
 relate to objective truth, or to things; which 
 relates to matters, not personal, not subjective 
 to the individual, but which, even were there 
 no individual man in the whole world to know 
 them or to talk about them, would exist still. 
 
 113 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 Such objects become the matter of science, 
 and words indeed are used to express them; 
 but such words are rather symbols than lan- 
 guage, and however many we use, and how- 
 ever we may perpetuate them by writing, we 
 never could make any kind of literature out 
 of them, or call them by that name. Such, 
 for instance, would be Euclid's Elements; 
 they relate to truths universal and eternal; 
 they are not mere thoughts, but things : they 
 exist in themselves, not by virtue of our un- 
 derstanding them, not in dependence upon 
 our will, but in what is called the nature of 
 things, or at least on conditions external to us. 
 The words, then, in which they are set forth 
 are not language, speech, literature, but rath- 
 er as I have said, symbols. And, as a proof 
 if it, you will recollect that it is possible — nay, 
 usual — to set forth the propositions of Euclid 
 in algebraical notation, which, as all would 
 admit, has nothing to do with literature. 
 What is true of mathematics is true also of 
 every study, so far forth as it is scientific; it 
 makes use of words as the mere vehicle of 
 things, and is thereby withdrawn from the 
 province of literature. Thus, metaphysics, 
 ethics, law, political economy, chemistry, the- 
 olog}^, cease to be literature in the same de- 
 gree as they are capable of a severe scientific 
 treatment. And hence it is that Aristotle's 
 works on the one hand, tho at first sight litera- 
 ture, approach in character — at least a great 
 
 114 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 number of them — to mere science; for even 
 tho the things which he treats of and exhibits 
 may not always be real and true, yet he treats 
 them as if they were, not as if they were the 
 thoughts of his own mind; that is, he treats 
 them scientifically. On the other hand, law or 
 natural history has before now been treated 
 by an author with so much of coloring derived 
 from his own mind as to become a sort of lit- 
 erature. This is especially seen in the in- 
 stance of theology when it takes the shape of 
 pulpit eloquence. It is seen, too, in historical 
 composition, which becomes a mere specimen 
 of chronology, or a chronicle, when divested 
 of the philosophy, the skill, or the party and 
 personal feelings of the particular writer. 
 Science, then, has to do with things; litera- 
 ture with thoughts; science is universal, lit- 
 erature is personal ; science uses words merely 
 as symbols, but literature uses language in its 
 full compass, as including phraseology, idiom, 
 style, composition, rhythm, eloquence, and 
 w^hatever other properties are included in it. 
 
 Let us, then, put aside the scientific use of 
 words when we are to speak of language and 
 literature. Literature is the personal use or 
 exercise of language. That this is so is fur- 
 ther proved from the fact that one author uses 
 it so differently from another. Language it- 
 self in its very origination would seem to be 
 traceable to individuals. Their peculiarities 
 have given it its character. We are often able, 
 
 115 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 in fact, to trace particular phrases or idioms to 
 individuals ; we know the history of their rise. 
 Slang surely, as it is called, comes of and 
 breathes of the personal. The connection be- 
 tween the force of words in particular lan- 
 guages and the habits and sentiments of the 
 nations speaking them has often been pointed 
 out. And, while the many use language as 
 they find it, the man of genius uses it, indeed, 
 but subjects it withal to his own purposes, 
 and molds it according to his own peculiar- 
 ities. The throng and succession of ideas, 
 thoughts, feelings, imaginations, aspirations, 
 which pass within him, the abstractions, the 
 juxtapositions, the comparisons, the discrimi- 
 nations, the conceptions, which are so original 
 in him ; his views of external things, his judg- 
 ments upon life, manners and history, the ex- 
 ercises of his wit, of his humor, of his depth, 
 of his sagacity, all these innumerable and 
 incessant creations, the very pulsation and 
 throbbing of his intellect, does he image forth, 
 to all does he give utterance, in a correspond- 
 ing language, which is as multiform as this 
 inward mental action itself and analogous to 
 it, the faithful expression of his intense per- 
 sonality, attending on his own inward world 
 of thought as its very shadow; so that we 
 might as well say that one man's shadow is 
 another's as that the style of a really gifted 
 mind can belong to any but himself. It fol- 
 lows him about as a shadow. His thought 
 
 116 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 and feeling are personal, and so his language 
 is personal. 
 
 Thought and speech are inseparable from 
 each other. Matter and expression are parts 
 of one; style is a thinking out into language. 
 This is what I have been laying down, and 
 this is literature; not things, not the verbal 
 symbols of things; not, on the other hand, 
 mere words, but thoughts exprest in language. 
 Call to mind, gentlemen, the meaning of the 
 Greek word which expresses this special pre- 
 rogative of man over the feeble intelligence 
 of the inferior animals. It is called logos. 
 What does logos mean? It stands both for 
 reason and for speech, and it is difficult to 
 say which it means more properly. It means 
 both at once. Why? Because really they 
 can not be divided, because they are in a true 
 sense one. When we can separate light and 
 illumination, life and motion, the convex and 
 the concave of a curve, then it will be possible 
 for thought to tread speech under foot and to 
 hope to do without it ; then will it be conceiv- 
 able that the vigorous and fertile intellect 
 should renounce its own double, its instrument 
 of expression, and the channel of its specula- 
 tions and emotions. 
 
 Critics should consider this view of the 
 subject before they lay down such canons of 
 taste as the writer whose pages I have quoted. 
 Such men as he is consider fine writing to be 
 an addition from without to the matter treated 
 
 117 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 of — a sort of ornament superinduced, or a 
 luxury indulged in, by those who have time 
 and inclination for such vanities. They speak 
 as if one man could do the thought and an- 
 other the style. We read in Persian travels 
 of the way in which young gentlemen go to 
 work in the East, when they would engage in 
 correspondence with those who inspire them 
 with hope or fear. They can not write one 
 sentence themselves; so they betake them- 
 selves to the professional letter-writer. They 
 confide to him the object they have in view. 
 They have a point to gain from a superior, 
 a favor to ask, an evil to deprecate ; they have 
 to approach a man in powder, or to make court 
 to some beautiful lady. The professional man 
 manufactures words for them as they are want- 
 ed, as a stationer sells them paper, or a school- 
 master might cut their pens. Thoughts and 
 words are, in their conception, two things, 
 and thus there is a division of labor. The man 
 of thought comes to the man of words; and 
 the man of words, duly instructed in the 
 thought, dips the pen of desire into the ink 
 of devotedness, and proceeds to spread it over 
 the page of desolation. Then the nightingale 
 of affection is heard to warble to the rose of 
 loveliness, while the breeze of- anxiety plays 
 around the brow of expectation. This is what 
 the Easterns are said to consider fine writing ; 
 and it seems pretty much the idea of the 
 school of critics to whom I have been referring. 
 
 118 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 We have an instance in literary history of 
 this very proceeding nearer home, in a great 
 university, in the latter years of the last cen- 
 tury. I have referred to it before now in a 
 public lecture elsewhere; but it is too much 
 in point here to be omitted. A learned Arabic 
 scholar had to deliver a set of lectures before 
 its doctors and professors on an historical sub- 
 ject in which his reading had lain. A linguist 
 is conversant with science rather than with 
 literature; but this gentleman felt that his 
 lectures must not be without a style. Being 
 of the opinion of the Orientals, with w^hose 
 writings he was familiar, he determined to 
 create a style. He took the step of engaging 
 a person, at a price, to turn the matter which 
 he had got together into ornamental English. 
 Observe, he did not wish for mere grammati- 
 cal English, but for an elaborate, pretentious 
 style. An artist was found in the person of 
 a county curate, and the job was carried out. 
 His lectures remain to this day in their own 
 place in the protracted series of annual dis- 
 courses to which they belong, distinguished 
 amid a number of heavjdsh compositions by 
 the rhetorical and ambitious diction for which 
 he went into the market This learned divine, 
 indeed, and the author I have quoted, differ 
 from each other in the estimate they respect- 
 ively form of literary composition; but they 
 agree together in this — in considering such 
 composition a trick and a trade; they put it 
 
 119 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 on a par with the gold plate and the flowers 
 and the music of a banquet, which do not 
 make the viands better but the entertainment 
 more pleasurable, as if language were the 
 hired servant, the mere mistress of the reason, 
 and not the lawful wife in her own house. 
 
 But can they really think that Homer, or 
 Pindar, or Shakespeare, or Dryden, or Walter 
 Scott were accustomed to aim at diction for 
 its own sake, instead of being inspired with 
 their subject, and pouring forth beautiful 
 words because they had beautiful thoughts? 
 This is surely too great a paradox to be borne. 
 Rather, it is the fire within the author's breast 
 which overflows in the torrent of his burning, 
 irresistible eloquence; it is the poetry of his 
 inner soul, which relieves itself in the ode or 
 the elegy; and his mental attitude and bear- 
 ing, the beauty of his moral countenance, the 
 force and keenness of his logic, are imaged 
 in the tenderness, or energy, or richness of 
 his language. Nay, according to the well- 
 known line, '^Facit indignatio vet^sus''; not 
 the words alone, but even the rhythm, the 
 metre, the verse, will be the contemporaneous 
 oflispring of the emotion or imagination which 
 possesses him. ' ' Poeta nascitur, non fit, ' ' says 
 the proverb; and this is in numerous in- 
 stances true of his poems as well as of him- 
 self. They are born, not framed; they are 
 a strain rather than a composition ; and their 
 perfection is the monument, not so much of his 
 
 120 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 skill as of his power. And this is true of prose 
 as well as of verse in its degree. Who will 
 not recognize in the vision of Mirza a delicacy 
 and beauty of style which is very difficult to 
 describe, but which is felt to be in exact cor- 
 respondence to the ideas of which it is the 
 expression ? 
 
 And, since the thoughts and reasonings of 
 an author have, as I have said, a personal 
 character, no wonder that his style is not only 
 the image of his subject, but of his mind. 
 That pomp of language, that full and tuneful 
 diction, that felicitousness in the choice and 
 exquisiteness in the collocation of words, which 
 to prosaic writers seem artificial, is nothing else 
 but the mere habit and way of a lofty intel- 
 lect. Aristotle, in his sketch of the magnani- 
 mous man, tells us that his voice is deep, his 
 emotions slow, and his stature commanding. 
 In like manner the elocution of a great intel- 
 lect is great. His language expresses, not only 
 his great thoughts, but his brief self. Cer- 
 tainly he might use fewer words than he uses ; 
 but he fertilizes his simplest ideas, and germi- 
 nates into a multitude of details, and prolongs 
 the march of his sentences, and sweeps round 
 to the full diapason of his harmony, as if re- 
 joicing in his own vigor and richness of re- 
 source. I say, a narrow critic will call it 
 verbiage, when really it is a sort of fulness of 
 heart, parallel to that which makes the merry 
 boy whistle as he walks, or the strong man, 
 
 121 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 like the smith in the novel, flourish his club 
 when there is no one to fight with. 
 
 Shakespeare furnishes us with frequent 
 instances of this peculiarity, and all so beauti- 
 ful that it is difficult to select for quotation. 
 For instance, in "Macbeth": 
 
 ''Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, 
 Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, 
 Eaze out the written troubles of the brain, 
 And, with some sweet oblivious antidote, 
 Cleanse the foul bosom of that perilous stuff, 
 Which weighs upon the heart? '^ 
 
 Here a simple idea, by a process which be- 
 longs to the orator rather than to the poet, 
 but still comes from the native vigor of genius, 
 is expanded into a many-membered period. 
 
 The following, from "Hamlet," is of the 
 same kind : 
 
 " 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother 
 Nor customary suits of solemn black, 
 Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, 
 No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, 
 Nor the dejected haviour of the visage. 
 Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief, 
 That can denote me truly." 
 
 Now, if such declamation, for declamation 
 it is, however noble, be allowable in a poet, 
 whose genius is so far removed from pompous- 
 ness or pretense, much more is it allowable in 
 an orator, whose very province it is to put 
 forth words to the best advantage he can. 
 
 122 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 Cicero has nothing more redundant in any 
 part of his writings than these passages from 
 Shakespeare. No lover then, at least, of 
 Shakespeare may fairly accuse Cicero of gor- 
 geousness of phraseology or diffuseness of 
 style. Nor will any sound critic be tempted 
 to do so. As a certain unaffected neatness 
 and propriety and grace of diction may be re- 
 quired of any author who lays claim to be a 
 classic, for the same reason that a certain at- 
 tention to dress is expected of every gentle- 
 man, so to Cicero may be allowed the privilege 
 of the "os magna sonaturum," of which the 
 ancient critic speaks. His copious, majestic, 
 musical flow of language, even if sometimes 
 beyond what the subject-matter demands, is 
 never out of keeping with the occasion or with 
 the speaker. It is the expression of lofty 
 sentiments in lofty sentences, the "mens mag- 
 na in corpore magno. " It is the development 
 of the inner man. Cicero vividly realized the 
 status of a Roman, senator and statesman, 
 and the ''pride of place" of Rome, in all the 
 grace and grandeur which attached to her; 
 and he imbibed, and became what he admired. 
 As the exploits of Scipio or Pompey are the 
 expression of this greatness in deed, so the 
 language of Cicero is the expression of it in 
 word. And, as the acts of the Roman ruler 
 or soldier represent to us, in a manner special 
 to themselves, the characteristic magnanimity 
 of the lords of the earth, so do the speeches or 
 
 123 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 treatises of her accomplished orator bring it 
 home to our imaginations as no other writing 
 could do. Neither Livy, nor Tacitus, nor Ter- 
 ence, nor Seneca, nor Pliny, nor Quintilian, 
 is an adequate spokesman for the Imperial 
 City. They write Latin ; Cicero writes Roman. 
 "You will say that Cicero's language is 
 undeniably studied, but that Shakespeare's is 
 as undeniably natural and spontaneous; and 
 that is what is meant when the Classics are 
 accused of being mere artists of words. Here 
 we are introduced to a further large question, 
 which gives me the opportunity of anticipa- 
 ting a misapprehension of my meaning. I ob- 
 serve, then, that not only is that lavish rich- 
 ness of style which I have noticed in Shake- 
 speare justifiable on the principles which I 
 have been laying down, but, what is less easy 
 to receive, even elaborateness in composition 
 is no mark of trick or artifice in an author. 
 Undoubtedly, the works of the classics, particu- 
 larly the Latin, are elaborate ; they have cost 
 a great deal of time, care and trouble. They 
 have had many rough copies, I grant it. I 
 gTant also that there are writers of name, an- 
 cient and modern, who really are guilty of the 
 absurdity of making sentences, as the very 
 end of their literary labor. Such was Isocra- 
 tes; such were some of the sophists. They 
 were set on words, to the neglect of thoughts 
 or things ; I can not defend them. If I must 
 give an English instance of this fault, much 
 
 124 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 as I love and revere the personal character 
 and intellectual vigor of Doctor Johnson, I 
 can not deny that his style often outruns the 
 sense and the occasion, and is wanting in that 
 simplicity which is the attribute of genius. 
 Still, granting all this, I can not grant, not- 
 withstanding, that genius never need take 
 pains, that genius may not improve by prac- 
 tise, that it never incurs failures, and succeeds 
 the second time, that it never finishes off at 
 leisure what it has thrown off in the outline 
 at a stroke. 
 
 Take the instance of the painter or the 
 sculptor; he has a conception in his mind 
 which he wishes to represent in the medium 
 of his art — the Madonna and the Child, or 
 Innocence, or Fortitude, or some historical 
 character or event. Do you mean to say he 
 does not study his subject ? Does he not make 
 sketches? Does he not even call them "stud- 
 ies?" Does he not call his workroom a studio ? 
 Is he not ever designing, rejecting, adopting, 
 correcting, perfecting? Are not the first 
 attempts of Michelangelo and Raffael ex- 
 tant in the case of some of their most cele- 
 brated compositions? Will any one say that 
 Apollo Belvidere is not a conception patiently 
 elaborated into its proper perfection? These 
 departments of taste are, according to the re- 
 ceived notions of the world, the very province 
 of genius, and yet we call them arts; they are 
 the ' ' Fine Arts. ' ' Why may not that be true 
 
 125 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 of literary composition which is true of paint- 
 ing, sculpture, architecture and music ? Why 
 may not language be wrought as well as the 
 clay of the modeler? Why may not words be 
 worked up as well as colors? Why should 
 not skill in diction be simply subservient and 
 instrumental to the great prototypal ideas 
 which are the contemplation of a Plato or a 
 Vergil ? Our greatest poet tells us, 
 
 **The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolUng, 
 Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to 
 
 heaven, 
 And, as imagination bodies forth 
 The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
 Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
 A local habitation and a name. ' ' 
 
 Now, is it Avonderful that that pen of his 
 should sometimes be at fault for a while — 
 that it should pause, write, erase, rewrite, 
 amend, complete, before he satisfies himself 
 that his language has done justice to the con- 
 ceptions which his mind's eye contemplated? 
 
 In this point of view, doubtless, many or 
 most writers are elaborate ; and those certain- 
 ly not the least whose style is furthest re- 
 moved from ornament, being simple and natu- 
 ral, or vehement, or severely business-like and 
 practical. Who so energetic and manly as 
 Demosthenes? Yet he is said to have tran- 
 scribed Thucydides many times over in the 
 formation of his style. Who so gracefully 
 natural as Herodotus? Yet his very dialect 
 
 126 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 is not his own, but chosen for the sake of per- 
 fection of his narrative. Who exhibits such 
 happy negligence as our own Addison? Yet 
 artistic fastidiousness was so notorious in his 
 instance that the report has got abroad, truly 
 or not, that he was too late in his issue of an 
 important state paper from his habit of revi- 
 sion and recomposition. Such great authors 
 were working by a model which was before 
 the eyes of their intellect, and they were labor- 
 ing to say what they had to say in such a way 
 as would most exactly and suitably express it. 
 It is not wonderful that other authors, whose 
 style is not simple, should be instances of a 
 similar literary diligence. Vergil wished his 
 ^neidto be burned, elaborate as is its composi- 
 tion, because he felt it needed more labor still, 
 in order to make it perfect. The historian 
 Gibbon, in the last century, is another in- 
 stance in point. You must not suppose I am 
 going to recommend his style for imitation, 
 any more than his principles; but I refer to 
 him as the example of a writer feeling the task 
 which lay before him, feeling that he had to 
 bring out into w^ords for the comprehension 
 of his readers a great and complicated scene, 
 and wishing that those words should be ade- 
 quate to his undertaking. I think he wrote 
 the first chapter of his History three times 
 over. It was not that he corrected or improved 
 the first copy; but he put his first essay, and 
 then his second, aside; he recast his matter, 
 
 127 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 till he had hit the precise exhibition of it 
 which he thought demanded by his subject. 
 
 Now in all these instances I wish you to 
 observe that what I have admitted about lit- 
 erary workmanship differs from the doctrine 
 which I am opposing in this — that the mere 
 dealer in words cares little or nothing for the 
 subject which he is embellishing, but can paint 
 and gild anything whatever to order ; where- 
 as the artist, whom I am acknowledging, has 
 his great or rich visions before him, and his 
 only aim is to bring out what he thinks or 
 what he feels in a way adequate to the thing 
 spoken of, and appropriate to the speaker. 
 
 The illustration w^hich I have been borrow- 
 ing from the Fine Arts will enable me to go 
 a step further. I have been showing the con- 
 nection of the thought with the language in 
 literary composition, and in doing so I have 
 exposed the unphilosophical notion that the 
 language was an extra which could be dis- 
 pensed with, and provided to order according 
 to the demand. But I have not yet brought 
 out what immediately follows from this, and 
 which was the second point which I had to 
 show, viz., that to be capable of easy transla- 
 tion is no test of the excellence of a composi- 
 tion. If I must say what I think, I should 
 lay down, with little hesitation, that the truth 
 was almost the reverse of this doctrine. Nor 
 are many words required to show it. Such a 
 doctrine, as is contained in the passage of the 
 
 128 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 author whom I quoted when I began, goes 
 upon the assumption that one language is just 
 like another language; that every language 
 has all the ideas, turns of thought, delicacies 
 of expression, figures, associations, abstrac- 
 tions, points of view, which every other lan- 
 guage has. Now, as far as regards Science, 
 it is true that all languages are pretty much 
 alike for the purposes of Science; but even 
 in this respect some are more suitable than 
 others, which have to coin words, or to bor- 
 row them, in order to express scientific ideas. 
 But if languages are not all equally adapted 
 even to furnish symbols for those universal 
 and eternal truths in which Science consists, 
 how can they reasonably be expected to be all 
 equally rich, equally forcible, equally musical, 
 equally exact, equally happy in expressing the 
 idiosyncratic peculiarities of thought of some 
 original and fertile mind, who has availed 
 himself of one of them ? A great author takes 
 his native language, masters it, partly throws 
 himself into it, partly molds and adapts it, 
 and pours out his multitude of ideas through 
 the variously ramified and delicately minute 
 channels of expression which he has found or 
 framed. Does it follow that this, his personal 
 presence (as it may be called), can forthwith 
 be transferred to every other language under 
 the sun? Then may we reasonably maintain 
 that Beethoven's piano music is not really 
 beautiful because it can not be played on the 
 
 129 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 hurdy-gurdy. Were not this astonishing doc- 
 trine maintained by persons far superior to 
 the writer whom I have selected for animad- 
 version, I should find it difficult to be patient 
 under a gratuitous extravagance. It seems 
 that a really great author must admit of 
 translation, and that we have a test of his ex- 
 cellence when he reads to advantage in a for- 
 eign language as well as in his own. Then 
 Shakespeare is a genius because he can be 
 translated into German, and not a genius be- 
 cause he can not be translated into French. 
 Then the multiplication table is the most gift- 
 ed of all conceivable composition, because it 
 loses nothing by translation, and can hardly 
 be said to belong to any one language what- 
 ever. Whereas I should rather have conceived 
 that, in- proportion as ideas are novel or re- 
 condite, they would be difficult to put into 
 words, and that they very fact of their having 
 insinuated themselves into one language would 
 diminish the chance of that happy incident 
 being repeated in another. In the language of 
 savages you can hardly express any idea or 
 act of the intellect at all. Is the tongue of the 
 Hottentot or Eskimo to be made the meas- 
 ure of the genius of Plato, Pindar, Tacitus, 
 St. Jerome, Dante, or Cervantes? 
 
 Let us recur, I say, to the illustration of the 
 Fine Arts. I suppose you can express ideas 
 in painting which you can not express in 
 sculpture; and the more an artist is of a 
 
 130 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 painter, the less he is likeh' to be of a sculptor. 
 The more he commits his genius to the meth- 
 ods and conditions of his own art, the less he 
 will be able to throw himself into the circum- 
 stances of another. Is the genius of Fra An- 
 gelico, of Francia, or of Raffael disparaged 
 by the fact that he was able to do that in 
 colors which no man that ever lived, which no 
 angel, could achieve in wood? Each of the 
 fine arts has its own subject-matter. From 
 the nature of the case you can do in one what 
 you can not do in another; you can do in 
 painting what you can not do in carving; you 
 can do in oils what you can not do in fresco ; 
 you can do in marble what you can not do in 
 ivory ; you can do in wax what you can not do 
 in bronze. Then, I repeat, applying this to 
 the case of languages, why should not genius 
 be able to do in Greek what it can not do in 
 Latin? And why are its Greek and Latin 
 works defective because they will not turn 
 into English? That genius, of which we are 
 speaking, did not make English; it did not 
 make all languages, present, past and future; 
 it did not make the laws of any language. 
 Why is it to be judged of by that in which it 
 had no part, over which it has no control ? 
 
 And now we are naturally brought on to our 
 third point, which is on the characteristics of 
 Holy Scripture as compared w^ith profane lit- 
 erature. Hitherto we have been concerned 
 with the doctrine of these writers, viz., that 
 
 131 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 style is an extra, that it is a mere artifice, and 
 that hence it can not be translated. Now we 
 come to their fact, viz., that Scripture has no 
 such artificial style, and that Scripture can 
 easily be translated. Surely their fact is a^ 
 untenable as their doctrine. 
 
 Scripture easy of translation! Then why 
 have there been so few good translators ? Why 
 is it that there has been such great difficulty 
 in combining the two necessary qualities, fidel- 
 ity to the original and purity in the adopted 
 vernacular? Why is it that the authorized 
 versions of the Church are often so inferior 
 to the original as compositions, except that 
 the Church is bound, above all things, to see 
 that the version is doctrinally correct, and in 
 a difficult problem is obliged to put up with 
 defects in what is of secondary importance, 
 provided she secure what is of first? If it 
 were so easy to transfer the beauty of the 
 original to the copy, she would not have been 
 content with her received version in various 
 languages which could be named. 
 
 And then, in the next place, Scripture not 
 elaborate! Scripture not ornamented in dic- 
 tion and musical in cadence! Why, consider 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews. Where is there in 
 the classics any composition more carefully, 
 more artificially written? Consider the Book 
 of Job : Is it not a sacred drama, as artistic, 
 as perfect, as any Greek tragedy of Sophocles 
 or Euripides? Consider the Psalter: Are 
 
 132 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 there no ornaments, no rhythm, no studied 
 cadences, no responsive members, in that di- 
 vinely beautiful book? And is it not hard 
 to understand? Is not Saint Paul hard to 
 understand ? Who can say that these are pop- 
 ular compositions ? Who can say that they are 
 level at first reading with the understandings 
 of the multitude ? 
 
 That there are portions indeed of the in- 
 spired volume more simple both in style and 
 in meaning, and that these are the more sacred 
 and sublime passages, as, for instance, parts 
 of the Gospels, I grant at once ; but this does 
 not militate against the doctrine I have been 
 laying down. Recollect, gentlemen, my dis- 
 tinction when I began. I have said literature 
 is one thing, and that science is another; that 
 literature has to do with ideas, and science 
 with realities ; that literature is of a personal 
 character, that science treats of what is uni- 
 versal and eternal. In proportion, then, as 
 Scripture excludes the personal coloring of 
 its writers, and rises into the region of pure 
 and mere inspiration, when it ceases in any 
 sense to be the writing of man, Saint Paul or 
 Saint John, of Moses or Isaiah, then it comes 
 to belong to science, not literature. Then it 
 conveys the things of heaven, unseen verities, 
 divine manifestations, and them alone — not 
 the ideas, the feelings, the aspirations, of its 
 human instruments, who, for all that they 
 were inspired and infallible, did not cease to 
 
 133 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 be men. Saint Paul's epistles, then, I con- 
 sider to be literature in a real and true sense, 
 as personal, as rich in reflection and emotion, 
 as Demosthenes or Euripides; and, without 
 ceasing to be revelations of objective truth, 
 they are expressions of the subjective, not- 
 withstanding. On the other hand, portions of 
 the Gospels, of the book of Genesis, and other 
 passages of the Sacred Volume, are of the 
 nature of science. Such is the beginning of 
 Saint John's Gospel, which we read at the end 
 of Mass. Such is the Creed. I mean, pas- 
 sages such as these are the mere enunciation of 
 eternal things, without (so to say) the medi- 
 um of any human mind transmitting them to 
 us. The w^ords used have the grandeur, the 
 majesty, the calm, unimpassioned beauty of 
 science; they are in no sense literature, they 
 are in no sense personal ; and therefore they 
 are easy to apprehend, and easy to translate. 
 
 Did time admit I could show you parallel 
 instances of what I am speaking of in the 
 classics inferior to the inspired word in pro- 
 portion as the subject-matter of the classical 
 authors is immensely inferior to the subjects 
 treated of in Scripture, but parallel, inasmuch 
 as the classical author or speaker ceases for 
 the moment to have to do with literature, as 
 speaking of things objectively, and rises to 
 the serene sublimity of science. But I should 
 be carried too far if I began. 
 
 I shall then merely sum up what I have said, 
 
 134 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 and come to a conclusion. Reverting, then, 
 to my original question, what is the meaning 
 of letters, as contained, gentlemen, in the des- 
 ignation of your faculty, I have answered, 
 that by letters or literature is meant the 
 expression of thought in language, where by 
 ''thought" I mean the ideas, feelings, views, 
 reasonings, and other operations of the human 
 mind. And the art of letters is the method 
 by which a speaker or writer brings out in 
 words, worthy of his subject, and sufficient 
 for his audience or readers, the thoughts which 
 impress him. Literature, then, is of a personal 
 character; it consists in the enunciations and 
 teachings of those who have a right to speak 
 as representatives of their kind, and in those 
 words their brethren find an interpretation 
 of their own sentiments, a record of their own 
 experience, and a suggestion for their own 
 judgments. A great author, gentlemen, is not 
 one who merely has a copia verhorum, whether 
 in prose or verse, and can, as it were, turn on 
 at his will any number of splendid phrases 
 and swelling sentences ; but he is one who has 
 something to say and knows how to say it. 
 I do not claim for him, as such, any great 
 depth of thought, or breadth of view, or phi- 
 losophy, or sagacity, or knowledge of human 
 nature, or experience of human life, tho these 
 additional gifts he may have, and the more he 
 has of them the greater he is ; but I ascribe to 
 him, as his characteristic gift, in a large sense 
 
 135 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 the faculty of expression. He is master of the 
 twofold Logos, the thought and the word, dis- 
 tinct, but inseparable from each other. He 
 may, if so be, elaborate his compositions, or 
 he may pour out his improvisations, but in 
 either case he has but one aim, which he keeps 
 steadily before him, and is conscientious and 
 single-minded in fulfilling. That aim is to 
 give forth what he has within him ; and from 
 his very earnestness it comes to pass that, 
 whatever be the splendor of his diction or the 
 harmony of his periods, he has with him the 
 charm of an incommunicable simplicity. What- 
 ever be his subject, high or low, he treats it 
 suitably and for its own sake. If he is a poet, 
 ''nil molitur inepte." If he is an orator, 
 then, too, he speaks, not only ''distincte" and 
 ''splendide," but also '^apte." His page is 
 the lucid mirror of his mind and lif( 
 
 "Quo fit, ut omnis 
 Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella 
 Vita senis. " 
 
 He writes passionately, because he feels 
 keenly ; forcibly, because he conceives vividly. 
 He sees too clearly to be vague ; he is too seri- 
 ous to be otiose; he can analyze his subject, 
 and therefore he is rich ; he embraces it as a 
 whole and in its parts, and therefore he is 
 consistent ; he has a firm hold of it, and there- 
 fore he is luminous. When his imagination 
 w^ells up, it overflows in ornament; when his 
 
 136 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 heart is touched, it thrills along his verse. He 
 always has the right word for the right idea, 
 and never a word too much. If he is brief, 
 it is because few words suffice ; when he is 
 lavish of them, still each word has its mark, 
 and aids, not embarrasses, the vigorous march 
 of his elocution. He expresses what all feel, 
 but all can not say ; and his sayings pass into 
 proverbs among his people, and his phrases 
 become household words and idioms of their 
 daily speech, which is tessellated with the rich 
 fragments of his language, as we see in foreign 
 lands the marbles of Roman grandeur worked 
 into the walls and pavements of modern pal- 
 aces. 
 
 Such preeminently is Shakespeare among 
 ourselves; such preeminently Vergil among 
 the Latins; such in their degree are all those 
 WTiters who in every nation go by the name of 
 Classics. To particular nations they are nec- 
 essarily attached from the circumstances of 
 the variety of tongues and the peculiarities of 
 each; but so far they have a catholic and 
 ecumenical character, that what they express 
 is common to the whole race of man, and they 
 alone are able to express it. 
 
 If then the power of speech is a gift as 
 great as any that can be named, if the origin 
 of language is by many philosophers even 
 considered to be nothing short of divine, if 
 by means of words the secrets of the heart are 
 brought to light, pain of soul is relieved, hid- 
 
 137 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 den grief is carried off, sympathy conveyed, 
 counsel imparted, experience recorded and 
 wisdom perpetuated; if by great authors the 
 many are drawn up into unity, national char- 
 acter is fixt, a people speaks, the past and the 
 future, the east and the west are brought into 
 communication with each other; if such men 
 are, in a word, the spokesmen and prophets of 
 the human family, it will not answer to make 
 light of literature or to neglect its study; 
 rather we may be sure that, in proportion as 
 we master it in whatever language, and imbibe 
 its spirit, we shall ourselves become in our 
 own measure the ministers of like benefits to 
 others, be they many or few, be they in the 
 obscurer or the more distinguished walks of 
 life, who are united to us by social ties, and 
 are within the sphere of our personal influ- 
 ence. 
 
 138 
 
SPEECH AND THOUGHT 
 
 BY RUDOLF HERMANN LOTZE 
 (From ''Microcosmus")* 
 
 IN WHATEVER may consist that state of ex- 
 citation into which the nerves of sense 
 are brought by external stimuli, it at 
 any rate presents a definite amount of some 
 physical motion of masses that by the law of 
 persistence can not cease of itself, but must 
 either be stopt by some definite resistance 
 or reduced to zero by distribution over the 
 environment. If the organs of sense are de- 
 signed to be to us a medium of knowledge of 
 the outer world, it is necessary, in order to 
 our receiving this unadulterated, that the 
 tremor produced by the impression of one 
 moment should rapidly be so far mitigated as 
 not to counteract the impression of the next 
 moment or blend with it as an adulterative 
 element. So long as the physical stimuli by 
 which the senses are acted on are but incon- 
 siderable amounts of motion, this perpetual 
 effacement of their effects may be accom- 
 plished partly within the organ of sense 
 through the uninterrupted processes of the 
 transformation of matter, partly through the 
 
 ♦From "Microoosmus," by kind permission of the publishers, 
 T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh. 
 
 139 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 generation of the sensation itself. For even 
 sensation, as a newly manifested internal phe- 
 nomenon of the soul, which as a substance 
 stands in a mechanical relation of reciprocal 
 action with the elements of the body, can not 
 merely arise on occasion of nerve-stimulation ; 
 part of the latter must be utilized in its pro- 
 duction. The stimuli of light and sound 
 constantly acting on us keep within these 
 limits of intensity, and we are not aware of 
 any special corrective agency by which their 
 influence require to be adjusted. If, on the 
 other hand, external impressions reach a pain- 
 ful degree of strength, we must expect to find 
 a corresponding provision of means for their 
 removal. Now, as it is the office of the nerve- 
 filaments to transmit to the brain the stimu- 
 lations received at their extremities, it is not 
 to be supposed that this provision can consist 
 in any sudden hindrance to transmission, or 
 in any considerably increased distribution of 
 the stimulation in all directions. Both are un- 
 favorable to the natural function of the sen- 
 sory nerve, and we may look on it as uni- 
 versally characteristic of the organization that 
 it meets threatening disturbances not with 
 new and unusual means, but with means of 
 a type that has already appeared in the 
 healthy condition. So long, then, as the in- 
 tensity of the stimulus does not directly injure 
 the nerve, and thereby, of course, preclude 
 the further effects of a too violent impression, 
 
 140 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 we assume that the excitation is transmitted 
 to the central organs and dissipated by there 
 producing a larger proportion of after-affects, 
 the fainter traces of which may be discerned 
 even in the ordinary degrees of stimulation. 
 Three roads are open for the further ex- 
 tension of the stimulation in the brain; for 
 the sensory nerve finds there: (1) other sens- 
 ory nerves; (2) sympathetic nerves; (3) 
 motor nerves. The transference of its excita- 
 tion to other sensory nerves, consequently the 
 production of an accompanying sensation in 
 other than the actually stimulated parts, must 
 be confined with a narrow range if the pur- 
 pose of sentience, to bring about somehow a 
 knowledge of the outer world, is not to be too 
 much restricted. As a matter of fact, the 
 strongest stimulation of one organ of sense 
 does not produce any distinct stimulation of 
 another; excess of light produces no sensa- 
 tion of sound; a loud sound no sensation of 
 smell. Only the general sense shares in the 
 disturbance through the change effected in its 
 states. A transference of the stimulation to 
 the vegetative filaments of the sympathetic 
 system would be more advantageous, because 
 among the manifold functions of these nerves 
 there are many that without any detrimental 
 effect on life can be for the moment increased 
 in amount, and by which, as well as by many 
 alterations in the process of material trans- 
 formation due to them, the disturbance of 
 
 141 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 the organism can be harmlessly carried off. 
 The phenomena of fever offer an example of 
 transference of excitation in this direction. 
 But in the natural course of life the sensa- 
 tions are specially designed to serve as incite- 
 ments to movements by which the soul some- 
 how subjects perceived objects to its elabora- 
 ting processes. So many reasons render nec- 
 essary the close connection of sensory with 
 motor nerves and the excitation of movements 
 by the direct action of the former, that we 
 can not wonder if even painful disturbances 
 are for the most part counteracted in this 
 way — always kept open for the purposes of 
 healthy life — viz., by a communication to m.o- 
 tor nerves, consequently by means of the pro- 
 duction of motion. 
 
 Hence it is that we find all violent pains 
 in the living body, powerful irritants even in 
 decapitated animals, call forth movements at 
 first in the immediately aft'ected parts, as the 
 impression becomes stronger throughout the 
 whole body. Sometimes there comes to be a 
 changeful succession of these, a tremulous 
 agitation of the whole body — sometimes, where 
 a strong effort at patient endurance is made, 
 a rigid, persistent, exceedingly violent contrac- 
 tion of a single group of muscles is brought 
 about, in order that in the surplus energy here 
 expended the internal stimulation may, have 
 an outlet. So the sufferer grinds his teeth or 
 clenches fists, or straightens his back and 
 
 142 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 stretches out his aimlessly stiffened leg. At 
 last the persistent or increasing irritation 
 withdraws these movements from the influence 
 of the will and exhausts itself in incessant 
 spasmodic attacks. Mental agitations from 
 within act upon the nerves in the same fash- 
 ion as the sense-impressions coming froni 
 without do here. In view of the reciprocal 
 action between body and soul, we can not look 
 upon these two processes as running their 
 course exclusively within the latter and re- 
 quiring special causes to make them assume 
 a corporeal form; from the first they are a 
 certain quantum of effective motion, whose 
 impression on the body, instead of needing to 
 be brought to bear by special means, must by 
 special means be prevented. 
 
 It is unnecessary to describe at greater 
 length the general state of disturbance and 
 the half-convulsive attitudes into which the 
 body is thrown by the pressure of mental 
 emotions. One group of special importance 
 must, however, be singled out from the mul- 
 titude. Where the mental agitation contains 
 likewise a motive to a particular action, ges- 
 tures make their appearance which either 
 copy that action in miniature or exhibit it in 
 its first stage — e.g., the gestures of anger 
 when its object is in sight, or at least known. 
 On the other hand, where the mind is help- 
 lessly tossed to and fro in a sea of pain or 
 pleasure, the internal agitation finds vent 
 
 143 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 chiefly in the most various changes of the 
 breathing, or rather limits itself to this mode 
 of expression, which is never wholly absent in 
 the already-mentioned contortions. In joy, in 
 grief, in surprize, respiration becomes un- 
 equal, accelerated, and deep, or rapid and 
 short, or remittent, irregular, more like a 
 sigh ; with emotion is associated the tremulous 
 movement that takes the place of the quiet, 
 uniform activity of the respiratory muscles 
 and precedes an outburst of sobbing; anger 
 and rage for a moment keeps back the deep- 
 draT\Ti breath, that, after the fashion of all 
 assailants, it may meet its object with firm- 
 braced chest; the fury that has no object on 
 which to expend itself begins to snort, inten- 
 tionally executing and exaggerating respira- 
 tory movements that at other times go on in- 
 stinctively and imperceptibly; finally, in 
 laughter, delight in a harmlessly absurd in- 
 congruity breaks out in spasmodic working of 
 the muscles of respiration. All these convuls- 
 ive movements have the conspicuous peculiar- 
 ity that nothing is effected by means of them ; 
 with air for their material and no aim at any 
 product whatever any more than a direction 
 toward any definite end, they are the purest 
 expression of mere excitement, pleasurable 
 or painful. Even as such they would afford 
 the onlooker a vivid and faithful picture of 
 the internal state; but Nature has attached 
 the vibrating bands of the vocal ligaments to 
 
 144 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 the system of the respiratory organs, and thus 
 gives an opportunity to the faintest ingredi- 
 ents of this aimless disturbance to embody 
 themselves in the audible tones of the voice, 
 and to make themselves heard at a distance 
 in the outer world. So in the animal kingdom 
 we have the sound of pain and the sound of 
 joy — infinitely poorer in definite indication of 
 objects and actions than the rudest gesture, in 
 expression of the hidden emotion itself in- 
 comparably richer than any other means 
 which living races could have chosen for mu- 
 tual communication. For as a photographic 
 likeness is the exact reproduction of the form, 
 so is the voice in its pitch, its peculiar timber, 
 and the degree of steadiness, strain and loud- 
 ness the direct audible likeness of the in- 
 numerable minute and finely knitted impres- 
 sions produced by the emotion of the mind 
 on the mobile masses of the body. 
 
 The view has been held that speech was an 
 invention, in such a sense that out of several 
 means of communication men deliberately 
 chose this; but there certainly is no fear of 
 its being revived in these days, and the fore- 
 going remarks show how, on the contrary, by 
 a naturally predetermined physiological ne- 
 cessity, the soul is compelled to express in 
 tones at least the general character of its 
 inner states. But we are still a long way dis- 
 tant from human language, and modern theo- 
 rists who content themselves with admiring 
 
 145 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 the organic unity and connection of the 
 thought-forming fantasy and the sound- 
 forming voice, overlook a great number of 
 intermediate links, some of which it is quite 
 requisite to mention. 
 
 Nature has bestowed voice on many races of 
 animals ; many develop it into song, none into 
 speech. The question arises, what is the cause 
 of this? Is it that the animals are without 
 any matter which they have the desire to 
 express, or that they are prevented from doing 
 so by some phj^sical obstacle? However the 
 case may stand with the content of animal 
 consciousness, I can not be one of those who 
 answer the latter question in the negative, 
 for I am convinced that defects of organiza- 
 tion would in any case prevent the develop- 
 ment of the animal voice into speech, and 
 that, on the other hand, man's superiority 
 rests partly on the better organization pecu- 
 liar to him. The anatomical investigation of 
 the vocal organs which formerly led Rudolphi 
 to make the assertion that the absence of 
 speech in apes was at all events not deter- 
 mined by any deficiency in their organs, can 
 at most prove that all the conditions of vocal- 
 ization are present; and the most ordinary 
 experience makes it needless to prove this. 
 But speech develops itself out of voice through 
 the articulation of sounds ; and in the animal 
 kingdom we find this either not at .all or only 
 in the most fragmentary form. 
 
 146 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 Taking as a basis of comparison the human 
 system of vowel and consonant sounds, we 
 may note as a remarkable fact, that while 
 some birds can imitate our words, even this 
 mechanical capability has never been observed 
 in any mammal. And yet the formation oJ^ 
 the cavity of the mouth, the teeth, the tongue, 
 the palate, in this class of animals far more 
 resembles the human than that of any bird. 
 It may further be added that among the 
 mammalia different particular consonants and 
 vowels are actually to be met with divided 
 among different species, tho in the same spe- 
 cies they are never united into a compound 
 speech sound. The dog says r and guttural 
 ch very distinctly ; the cat is acquainted with 
 /; cows and sheep with nasal n, and we can 
 hardly doubt that most of the fixt positions 
 of the mouth on which our articulate sounds 
 depend, would be mechanically possible to ani- 
 mals if only there were for their muscles an 
 impulse to produce them, and for their fan- 
 tasy an impulse to combine them together. 
 But even the ape, with its propensity to mim- 
 icry, remains dumb; the dog, attentive as he 
 is to the purport of our words, makes not the 
 slightest attempt at speech ; only birds repeat 
 sounds made in their hearing, but by nature 
 they, too, keep to the inarticulate tones and 
 melodies of their kind. Now wherein lies the 
 obstacle ? In my opinion, in these two things : 
 First, defective sense of hearing ; and second, 
 
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 want of an organically constituted harmony 
 between ideas of sound and the muscular 
 movements that are requisite for the produc- 
 tion of sounds. 
 
 Even the highest achievement of animals 
 in the direction of voice-development, the song 
 of birds, is remarkable for a total want of har- 
 monious tone relations. The melody advances 
 in the most irregular fashion ; sometimes lin- 
 gering on one note with all possible purity 
 and with bewitching quality of voice; some- 
 times running through a series of sounds, in 
 each of which an indefinite number of rapid 
 transitions from one pitch to another are com- 
 bined into a kind of chaotic noise ; sometimes, 
 finally, continuing through quarter tones or 
 quite inharmonious intervals. There is no 
 reason to suppose that the sequence of two 
 pure tones forming a concord is impossible 
 for birds, for they do occasionally make it; 
 there is rather, evidently, an absence of any 
 sensuous motive for preferring this sequence 
 to any other. I am therefore of opinion 
 that birds' ear and fantasy lack susceptibility 
 for harmonic intervals, and that the scale 
 seems to them only more or less in the mat- 
 ter of pitch, while the qualitative relations 
 through which to us two tones at a wider in- 
 terval in the scale may be more nearly related 
 than two close together, are lost upon them. 
 This defect would not be a decisive obstacle 
 to speech but for its association with another 
 
 148 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 which we also meet with in the voices of all 
 animals. All are aware of the difficulty there 
 is in expressing their sounds by a written 
 notation, altho in the growling or snarl of 
 dogs, when we think of it as divided into in- 
 finitesimal intervals of time, we have almost 
 every one of these intervals filled with a par- 
 ticular vowel or consonant, yet the animals 
 hardly ever keep their mouth for a measur- 
 able time in one position, and every definite 
 sound has no sooner been uttered than it 
 passes into another. While, then, the voices 
 of dogs or oxen sound to a great distance, they 
 never emit one unequivocal vowel, but from 
 moment to moment hover between one and 
 another. Here, too, I can not think that there 
 is any muscular incapability to prevent the 
 retention of the pure sound; rather I believe 
 that to the ear of animals the distinctions of 
 articulate speech-sounds, tho not incapable of 
 being perceived, have no such emphatic es- 
 thetic value as to lead to any importance being 
 attached to them. In this connection I must 
 introduce a general remark in regard to the 
 sound-material of speech, which forms a 
 continuation of the reflections already made 
 on the peculiar character of human sen- 
 tience. 
 
 Were we to try to put into character all 
 the vowel sounds that have been emitted by 
 individuals or by nations, we should require 
 a countless multitude of signs; but it is at 
 
 149 
 
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 once apparent to our natural feeling that this 
 multitude of different sounds have not all a 
 uniform value. On the contrary, there stands 
 out from among them a very small group as 
 pure primitive vowels, distinguished not only 
 by being recognized as simple elements in our 
 now fixt written language, but by having in 
 themselves an obviously distinct character and 
 a special value. Between these fixt points, 
 a, e, i, 0, u, we insert all other vowel sounds 
 as deviations, approximations, obscurations, 
 and mixtures, just as we reduce the endless 
 variety of tints to a small group of simple 
 primary colors. Thus to our ear the innu- 
 merable vowel sounds are by no means a 
 vague, confused host, that we might increase 
 by the addition of new vowels at any moment 
 when we either gave ourselves trouble to put 
 our mouth into an unusual attitude, or chose 
 to suppose that our vocal organs were differ- 
 ently constituted. The group is a closed one 
 in spite of the endless number it contains, for 
 there are fixt points between which all other 
 conceivable modifications must take their 
 place. The vowels then stand before our 
 imagination as a system, a regular series of 
 intrinsic value, so that our voice in pronounc- 
 ing them does not emit arbitrary sounds, but 
 subjects itself to the inherent necessity and 
 regularity of a scale which would be such even 
 if no one had ever embodied its parts in 
 speech. In spite of the obscurity still hang- 
 
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 ing over the physical conditions under which 
 the several vowels arise, the supposition is 
 probable that in the five simple ones the mani- 
 fold reverberation of the sound-waves of the 
 voice within the cavity of the mouth produce 
 a particularly simple, regular, and symmetri- 
 cal development and intersection of rarefac- 
 tion and condensation, so that the total move- 
 ment of the particles of air, could it be made 
 visible, would form for each of these vowels 
 a figure whose formula could easily be stated. 
 Hence it may arise that these sounds alone 
 appear to us pure, genuine, normal, and sim- 
 ple, and that our ears seek to derive all others 
 from them as compound or mixed. Now this 
 susceptibility for such an objective truth in 
 sounds is what I would assign to the human 
 sense of hearing in contrast to the animal; 
 and the more delicate this power of discrimi- 
 nation the more will sentience strive to re- 
 produce these sounds, through the voice as 
 their productive organ, and to reduce ancl 
 articulate the chaotic sum of possible sounds 
 into these sharply separated elements. 
 
 It would be more difficult to prove the same 
 in regard to the consonants; but a glance at 
 their application in languages shows with 
 what delicacy their mutual affinity is felt, and 
 I think that one would perceive this affinity 
 immediately from their sound, even were one 
 not clear as to the analogy between their 
 modes of origination. Palatals are by every 
 one, apart from any theory, discriminated 
 
 151 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 from others as a connected group of sounds 
 passing into one another. Now, I do not be- 
 lieve that any speech could be formed for the 
 expression of thought were all this otherwise ; 
 did not the whole material of sound stand be- 
 fore us as an objective system of tones, each 
 several member sharply discriminated from 
 the others and yet allied with many by natu- 
 ral affinities, each one pure and distinct, yet 
 capable of grouping around itself a multitude 
 of proximate modifications. From this point 
 of view it is intelligible that human speech 
 has not adopted a considerable number of 
 sounds which we can unquestionably make, 
 but which are too indistinct in their relation^ 
 of affinity with others to be utilizable mate- 
 rial ; it is further not probable that speech in 
 the earliest stage of its growth was content 
 with the three vowels, a, i, u, as the most 
 sharply discriminated and those which alone 
 are perfectly pure, and that not till later did 
 it recognizes e and o, which, without deliberate 
 attention, are never sustained pure, but pass 
 into i and %l I do not mean that only those 
 three have from the first actually been ut- 
 tered ; on the contrary, that strange phenom- 
 enon in speech-consciousness, of sounds and 
 words being different in name from what 
 they are as spoken, may have showed itself at 
 an early period — curious conflict that it is 
 between the conception of the sound as it by 
 rights must be and the facility of uttering it. 
 It seems to me natural, however, that in it« 
 
 152 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 first exercise this working fantasy should 
 most readily exhibit its arbitrary legislation, 
 or recognition of law, in the harshest and 
 sharpest contrasts; a phonic system so weak- 
 ened and moving by preference among such 
 minute distinctions as, for instance, the Eng- 
 lish language, at present can belong only to 
 a time that puts together breccias and con- 
 glomerates out of earlier original formations. 
 My original intention, therefore, was to 
 show that by the human sense of hearing are 
 discriminated distinctions in sounds which to 
 that of animals are not indeed as zero, yet are 
 not perceived in the full significance of their 
 mutual relations. This by itself would ex- 
 plain the absence of spontaneous production 
 of these sounds; but I added above the con- 
 jecture that, besides, the difficulty of produc- 
 ing them is increased by imperfection in the 
 mechanics by which the voice is moved. The 
 process by which all voluntary movements are 
 executed is, as we have already shown, con- 
 cealed from consciousness; the image of the 
 new position to be effected, and the remem- 
 brance of the peculiar modifications of our 
 general sense by which on former occasions its 
 execution was accompanied, are the sole two 
 points appearing in consciousness, to which 
 the carrying out of the movement itself is 
 subsequently attached by means of an uncon- 
 scious and automatically working mechanism. 
 In the case of speech, the auricular image of 
 
 153 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 the sound to be produced takes the place of 
 the ocular image of the movement to be per- 
 formed. To the actual utterance of the sound 
 it is now indispensable that along with this 
 auricular image — which we must conceive 
 both as a mere internal psychic state, but also 
 as a slight stimulation of the auditory nerve 
 thence proceeding — be associated by an or- 
 ganic arrangement the impulse to a distinct 
 muscular movement, namely, to that complex 
 movement by which all the organs concerned 
 in the production of a sound are moved into 
 the necessary relative situations. Where this 
 organic provision is lacking, the conception of 
 the sound may be present, but it will not be 
 manifested in movements of the vocal organs. 
 Now, I think that in general there is such an 
 arrangement of the nerves in all animals en- 
 dowed with voice ; but in man alone probably 
 is this organ so exquisitely developed that 
 there is not only a power of discriminating 
 between the most various sounds as to their 
 pitch no less than as to their melodiousness 
 and timber, but also a finely organized adapta- 
 tion of the motor nerves to the reproduction of 
 all these peculiarities. This is what might be 
 called a corporeal organ of speech; for the 
 body 's contribution to the formation of speech 
 can not extend certainly further than to pla- 
 cing at the soul's disposal this pliable medium 
 of expression, and to inducing it to make use 
 of the same by means of the already mentioned 
 
 154 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 physiological impulse. Physiologists seem, in 
 fact, to have been so fortunate as to discover 
 the organ in one of the anterior convolutions 
 of the cerebral lobes — injury in this spot 
 being followed by aphasia, i.e., want of power 
 to make the desired speech-movements follow 
 the conceptions of sounds. 
 
 When we compare the training of speech to 
 deaf mutes with the training of parrots, we 
 find that one and the same result is reached 
 from two different starting points. The form- 
 er are deficient in conceptions of sound, but 
 their organs of speech are constituted like 
 those of their speaking teacher. By means of 
 their human capacity of attention they can 
 therefore be brought by careful and laborious 
 training not only to form a conception of the 
 particular movement of these organs that cor- 
 responds to a seen character, but also to exe- 
 cute this movement and produce the required 
 tone. Now, the feeling of movement experi- 
 enced by the deaf mute during utterance 
 forms for his memory in future the starting- 
 point which his consciousness first repeats on 
 meeting again with the character, and which 
 then is followed with mechanical ease by the 
 renewed execution of the movement. Of 
 course the modulation of speech so acquired 
 will never quite lose the harshness proceeding 
 from the want of a perception of the pro- 
 duced result. The bird under training, on the 
 other hand, has the conception of the sound, 
 
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PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 but externally his organs are so unlike those 
 of his human teacher that his animal intelli- 
 gence finds the chief difficulty in guessing 
 how the latter produces the sound, and how 
 he himself must manage his differently con- 
 structed vocal organs in order to produce the 
 same. Obviously this can be done only if the 
 bird's organization is such that the tone-con- 
 ception, in so far as it is at the same time 
 stimulation of the nervous tract, acts directly 
 on the vocal nerves, and at once effects for 
 the bird what he could not of himself bring 
 about. To the human child only this mode of 
 learning to speak is natural ; it learns words 
 not by watching the mouth, but through its 
 vocal organs being directed by its conception 
 of sound. Two things are remarkable: the 
 extraordinary interest with which the child 
 devotes himself to this working of his organs 
 of motion, and at the same time the trouble 
 which it costs him to become fully master of 
 them. At a time when the motion of the other 
 parts of the body is far behind the agility al- 
 ready attained by animals of the same age, 
 there awakes — generally along with panto- 
 mimic movements — the effort to talk by means 
 of the most marvelous curling of the lips, con- 
 tortions of the mouth, and movements of the 
 tongue; while usually the power of moving 
 the palate and back parts of the cavity of the 
 mouth is acquired later. By observing these 
 phenomena one can obtain ocular evidence of 
 
 156 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 the working of a physiological impulse evi- 
 dently here impelling the inner states of the 
 general sense into this particular form of ex- 
 pression. And the difficulty which, neverthe- 
 less, is met with in bringing these movements 
 wholly under control in no wise tends to 
 weaken our conviction of an organic founda- 
 tion for them. Just as the eyes, whose whole 
 structure undoubtedly is adapted for the regu- 
 lar uniting of the rays of light, do not per- 
 form this office immediately after birth — nay, 
 are scarce capable of discerning a faint gleam 
 of light — so probably the delicate perception 
 of distinctness in tones and sounds is not from 
 the first present in perfection, but is gradually 
 developed out of an indefinite susceptibility to 
 sound in general, in proportion as its delicacy 
 increases, the instinctive working of its stimu- 
 lations on the vocal organs also becomes more 
 distinct. 
 
 I close these observations on the share of the 
 body in the formation of speech with a sum- 
 mary glance over a field that the wider scope 
 of these inquiries does not permit of my ex- 
 amining. That the bodily organization should 
 have a share in the conditions of speech will 
 not seem unnatural to those who bear in mind 
 that we are here dealing not so much with an 
 operation of the mental energy itself as with 
 the manifestation of this operation in the 
 form of a physical phenomenon. Here the 
 mind is not at home, and it suffers no loss of 
 
 157 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 dignity by having its medium of expression 
 sound, and the power of using this medium 
 conferred on it without any choice of its own 
 Ly independent bodily impulses. In the fur- 
 ther development of speech traces of this 
 physiological influence may still be discerned 
 in some of the phenomena. Not merely the 
 general selection of the sounds utilized in the 
 language of any particular people may pro- 
 ceed from minute peculiarities in the structure 
 of its vocal organs, again in part perhaps de- 
 pendent on climatic conditions (e.g., we find 
 widely diffused among the inhabitants of 
 mountainous countries a preference for the 
 harsh palatal sounds, and among dwellers in 
 islands for dental consonants) ; but also the 
 modifications of vowels and consonants in the 
 inflexion and composition of words suggest the 
 idea of their being, in part at least, the result 
 of organic conditions. But the precise nature 
 of these it would be very difficult to state. 
 Already we tread on doubtful ground in ask- 
 ing whether the tendency to these alterations 
 in sounds is acoustic or phonetic — I mean, 
 whether they are made in order to offer the 
 ear a euphonious balance in the distribution 
 and succession of heavier and lighter sounds, 
 in harmony especially with the accentuation, 
 so that the complete word may float before 
 the sense of hearing like a correctly drawn 
 and proportioned figure; or whether it is 
 mainly the convenience of the vocal organs 
 
 158 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 (which do not slip with equal ease from every 
 position into every other, and can not repeat 
 every movement frequently in succession) 
 that leads, above all things, to a construction 
 of sounds that are easy of pronunciation. 
 This last influence tells in the vulgar pro- 
 nunciation of words correctly known; on the 
 other hand, the explanation of the fact that 
 in most languages the words borrowed from 
 another, especially the proper names, are mod- 
 ified in accordance with native usage, is to be 
 found not always in phonetic convenience, 
 but frequently also in the need felt to con- 
 vert the foreign into the familiar structure of 
 sounds, as if that alone were normal and cor- 
 rect. Nay, a third cause — of grammatical 
 character — may often concur — e.g., a sequence 
 of sounds that in compound words is avoided 
 as disagreeable by modification of a primitive 
 vowel occurs in close juxtaposition in the in- 
 flexion of a simple word, and here does not 
 call forth the slightest effort at alteration. 
 Neither the auricular image of it, then, is in 
 itself displeasing, nor is the pronunciation 
 difficult, but it is displeasing in comparison 
 with the syntactic value of the one word, and 
 pleasing in comparison with that of the other. 
 This last remark leads us to the point where, 
 strictly speaking, human speech begins. From 
 what has gone before, nothing more could be 
 inferred than a tendency to a musical exercise 
 of the voice that renounced the attempt to 
 
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 make use of differences of pitch, and employed 
 instead varieties in sounds. Language begins 
 with the meaning attached to these sounds, 
 and the peculiar form of thought into which 
 that meaning is thrown — a form which is 
 either itself also exprest in sounds, or, remain- 
 ing unexprest, makes the significant sound 
 into a word capable of being syntactically 
 combined with others. 
 
 Of these various elements, taking first into 
 consideration the contained meaning, we know 
 that nowadays it is handed on exclusively by 
 transmission from one to another, and that 
 our sentient fantasy is utterly incapable of 
 divining from the sound of the words in a 
 civilized language a meaning such as shall 
 necessarily correspond to it. It is supposed 
 that in the infancy of speech this was not so ; 
 that then each one, at least of the simple 
 sense-perceptions that men first strove to com- 
 municate, had a sound answering to it, and 
 that it is possible in root words to recognize 
 the meaning attached by the still unsophisti- 
 cated and fresh fantasy of man to each vowel 
 and each consonant, and each simple combina- 
 tion of them. Perhaps it is the fault of our 
 present artificiality that we have no longer 
 any feeling of this, and that — to be candid — 
 most roots seem to us to have come by their 
 meaning quite as a matter of chance; at all 
 events nothing is more precarious than any 
 attempt now to prove the inherent necessity 
 
 160 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 of the connection between the two. Two 
 things we must, moreover, take into account. 
 The physiological tendency with which we 
 have become acquainted would in itself lead 
 only to the expression of the particular kind 
 and amount of mental stimulation produced 
 in us by an impression from without, but it 
 would throw no light on the nature of the 
 cause of this impression. According to the 
 varying degree of mental susceptibility, partly 
 individual and permanent, partly belonging 
 to the moment, the stimulation produced by 
 the same irritant would prove very variable, 
 and here one sound, there another, would with 
 equal physiological necessity attach itself as a 
 name to the same thing. Tolerably similar 
 designations could be expected only for such 
 objects or events as exert an influence power- 
 ful enough to compel similar stimulations in 
 every frame of mind. But we allow that there 
 is another tendency of the fantasy, whose 
 office it is, abstracting from the nature of the 
 passive subjective state, to present a copy of 
 the objective character of the irritant whence 
 the impression proceeds. To this tendency 
 we must in great part attribute the develop- 
 ment of language, which even in its begin- 
 nings was no mere collection of emotional ut- 
 terances, but with genuinely human compre- 
 hensiveness of interest strove to communicate 
 also the tranquil moods of mind and the pas- 
 sionless results of the train of thought. The 
 
 161 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 result of this representative tendency would, 
 however, be uniform and general only sup- 
 posing our sentience found in the single 
 sounds with which it had to work a decided 
 similarity to perceptible qualities of things, 
 and to the forms of events. A perfectly plain 
 and directly intelligible system of symbols 
 would then instruct every one to associate with 
 a particular idea only one particular sound, 
 with the sound only that idea. But clearly 
 this is not the case, and can not be the case, 
 because most objects of perception present a 
 number of marks, and yet no rule determines 
 in what order of sequence our attention is to 
 combine these, or which it is to single out and 
 make the basis of nomenclature. After all, 
 then, only those w^ords are directly intelligible 
 which imitate an actual natural sound — a re- 
 stricted and comparatively unimportant part 
 of the stock of language. 
 
 Let us, then, be content to leave undecided 
 the origin of the simplest words ; there is still 
 a rich field for a research confining itself to 
 tracing the paths by which the fantasy of 
 races, out of the few terms for sensibly per- 
 ceived objects that doubtless formed the origi- 
 nal amount of their store of words, has gradu- 
 ally acquired expressions for the endless vari- 
 ety of supersensible ideas and their subtle and 
 complex relationships. We shall find, if we 
 devote ourselves to this employment, that in 
 the attempts to denote new objects or new re- 
 
 162 
 
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 suits of reflection by judicious comparison 
 with others already known or named, there is 
 displayed, not only an exceedingly vigorous 
 activity of the comparative imagination, but 
 activity of a kind that enters essentially into 
 the mental character of a nation and its mode 
 of conception. The analogies, similes, and 
 images which in our developed languages only 
 poetry still employs, in order to replace the 
 now ineffective diction of every-day life by 
 expressions whose meaning, not yet worn 
 threadbare, again brings freshly home to us 
 the value of what they denote. All these 
 means belong naturally to the youth of lan- 
 guage, and the flowery speech of many tribes 
 not cultivated by reflection resembles in this 
 respect not a little the manner of expression 
 common to its earliest stages. Many a word 
 that now briefly and with clean-cut impress 
 denotes an object indeed, but seems to tell 
 nothing about its nature, contains in its orig- 
 inal full form — which etymological research 
 can sometimes trace — a significant attempt at 
 a theory, at an explanation of the thing de- 
 noted. Of course, the strange error is not now 
 to be justified of seeking to determine the 
 nature of things from the meaning of their 
 names, and of taking the notions deposited in 
 these names by the word-forming fantasy of 
 primitive times as a clue to guide us in attain- 
 ing a knowledge of the things named. There 
 is, however, a deep interest — and one not for- 
 
 163 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 eign to our subject — in observing what par- 
 ticular attribute of an object most strongly 
 attracted that fantasy by its novelty or its 
 importance, hence causing the name to be fixt 
 with reference to it. We should frequently 
 find how delicate was the comparative percep- 
 tion of these times of which no historic retro- 
 spect can now be distinct, with what suscepti- 
 bility it often laid hold of the most general 
 and not always the most obvious resemblances 
 and connections of phenomena, and how even 
 in languages of different types the similar 
 comparisons implied in their terms for the 
 same objects not seldom offer individual in- 
 stances of a surprizing identity of procedure 
 in the common human fantasy. But these 
 fascinating researches, which become convinc- 
 ing and instructive only through the collection 
 of a mass of details, lie outside the narrower 
 path here prescribed to us. We can take up 
 language again only after it has reached a 
 stage of its growth at which the primitive 
 meaning of these picturesque word formations 
 has long since been forgotten. Most of the 
 syllables that at first, through association with 
 perceived phenomena, figuratively exprest the 
 character of a notion, have passed into inflec- 
 tions, terminations, and prefixes, and serve 
 only to indicate sharply, but with colorless 
 abstraction, the formal setting that thought 
 seeks to give to the content of the main con- 
 stituent of the earlier compoujid. 
 
 164 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 In now entering on the consideration of this 
 relation between speech and thought, we are 
 about to encounter questions that in them- 
 selves are not very obscure and scarcely to be 
 called equivocal, yet which, in consequence of 
 the one-sidedness with which they were form- 
 erly discust, have given rise to much hot dis- 
 putation. Whatever more strict sense we may 
 give to the term thought, at any rate speech 
 is not thought itself but its expression, and 
 further, the expression, not of it alone, but 
 also of every other movement of mind — of 
 passion no less than of tranquil feeling. Now 
 it is easy to see that speech may pass over 
 much that thought, in order to be complete, 
 must include; as in every-day conversation 
 many connecting members are left to be un- 
 derstood by the listener, so even the typical 
 forms of construction of a language may be 
 an incomplete, but for all purposes sufficient, 
 expression of the articulation of thought. It 
 is then to make a needless demand to require 
 that the verbal organization of discourse shall 
 fully correspond to the logical organization of 
 thought. On the other hand, the end of speech 
 is not merely to be a brief communication of 
 thoughts ; in order to move the mind of an- 
 other, to persuade, to set forth his own feel- 
 ing with picturesque clearness, and to repro- 
 duce it in his hearer, to indicate his own 
 conviction or uncertainty, to discriminate be- 
 tween the doubting query and the assertion, 
 
 165 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 between the direct demand and the more 
 modest wish, between indignant rejection of 
 an idea and its mere denial — for all these pur- 
 poses the speaker must be able to invest the 
 content proper of his thought in manifold 
 forms that add no material part to the logical 
 structure of his sentence, yet throw over all 
 its parts a peculiar coloring of merely psy- 
 chological significance. Of course the sum of 
 these secondary determinations might, if one 
 cared to take the trouble, be also broken up 
 into sentences of logical brevity, and in this 
 form be added to the main affirmation; but 
 it is certainly not the natural office of speech 
 to say ineffectively and in a prolix manner 
 what it can say shortly and emphatically. On 
 the other hand, there can be added with equal 
 facility those other qualifications which belong 
 to the thought in its completeness, but are 
 passed over; and to do this is of more use. 
 For very often logic, altho all it has to do is 
 to inquire what is the thought underlying any 
 proposition, no matter how much of it is ex- 
 prest, has allowed itself to be led by the in- 
 completeness of the expression into needless 
 and protracted questionings. 
 
 But one thing must be borne in mind: to 
 whatever extent language is designed to in- 
 clude the subtlest movements of feeling, only 
 such exhibitions come within the province of 
 speech as are in some way exprest under the 
 forms of thought. No more than the modula- 
 
 166 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 tion of the voice and the accompanying ges- 
 ture does the mere sound of exclamation be- 
 long to language, even when its meaning is 
 unequivocal ; besides the articulation and sig- 
 nificance of the sound, there must be further 
 a peculiar form of intelligent conception that 
 makes the sound a word, and gives it its syn- 
 tactical value. In order to review these rela- 
 tionships, we must enter at some length into 
 the peculiar nature of thought and the very 
 close connection betwen it and language that 
 has induced us to subject to a common exam- 
 ination these two characteristic elements of 
 human culture. 
 
 On the former occasion I endeavored to il- 
 lustrate a distinction which we have to make 
 between the thinking that alone deserves that 
 name par excellence, and the train of ideas 
 produced by the universal laws of psychic 
 mechanism in all animated beings in like man- 
 ner, but with very different degrees of vivac- 
 ity. In the latter our consciousness is mainly 
 receptive and passive; it receives the various 
 impressions that beset it from the environment 
 with or without connection, with or without 
 order, as chance brings them ; further, it per- 
 mits memory, according to the general rules 
 of the association and recollection of ideas, to 
 repeat the several impressions in the same 
 combination, sometimes significant, sometimes 
 meaningless, in which they were held in the 
 original perception. It might seem that a 
 
 167 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 long continuance of this train of ideas would 
 gradually of itself eliminate the accidental 
 character of its connection ; for in the course 
 of things unconnected details do indeed some- 
 times occur together, but not in constant con- 
 junction. When, therefore, we survey a con- 
 siderable tract of our experience, we find that 
 the more numerous combinations of connected 
 objects gain the preponderance over the more 
 rarely repeated combinations of the phenom- 
 ena brought together merely by chance. Thus 
 are gradually formed fixt images of particu- 
 lar objects, which detach themselves as per- 
 manently coherent groups of attributes from 
 other shifting perceptions; from the concat- 
 enation of events there arise distinct remem- 
 brances that lead us instinctively to expect 
 from present circumstances those consequences 
 which actually flow from them with natural 
 consistency. But however sufficiently in this 
 manner the thus improved train of ideas may 
 qualify the soul of an animal for finding its 
 place in the sphere of its experience and at- 
 tending to the gratification of its appetites, 
 there is yet an utter absence of one mental 
 operation which, as we have found, forms part 
 of human thought. We do not at first merely 
 receptively and passively receive the partly 
 correct, partly incorrect combinations of im- 
 pressions presented by perception, and later 
 the amended selection of these left behind by 
 the self-correcting movement of the psychic 
 
 168 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 mechanism. Our thought, with independent 
 action, breaks up the accidental associations 
 of ideas, and, instead of merely leaving intact 
 those which are coherent, put them through 
 a process of reproduction, after which they 
 appear in forms that at the same time contain 
 an indication of the reason why they are com- 
 bined. Even animal consciousness is right as 
 to the content of its thought when, with the 
 image of a burden about to be laid on, it 
 associates the anticipation of a painful pres- 
 sure; the human judgment, the burden is 
 heavy, adds nothing to this content, but, mak- 
 ing the burden the subject out of which the 
 pressure flows, it vindicates the combination 
 of the two conceptions from the nature of 
 their content, from the connection between 
 cause and effect, and explains the merely 
 actual combination of the two in conscious- 
 ness by an objectively valid law, in virtue of 
 which they cohere. It is needless to accumu- 
 late examples of this kind; if the mechanism 
 of ideation provides not only for the bringing 
 together of the content of consciousness, but 
 also to a certain extent for the elimination of 
 the essentially coherent from the accidentally 
 combined, yet it is thinking alone that exer- 
 cises on this content, that constant criticism 
 by means of which our hypotheses in regard 
 to the necessary connection of all things and 
 events are worked up into a perception of the 
 sam.e, and the merely intuitive picture drawn 
 
 169 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 by sentience and psychic mechanism, is quick- 
 ened by a discernment of the internal bonds 
 that hold together its several points. 
 
 This peculiar activity of thought comes to 
 manifestation in the organization of language, 
 and on the other hand is aided by the latter 
 in its operations. To consider, first, the first 
 part of this relationship, it is not necessary 
 that each several operation of thought should 
 have its own special expression ; but language 
 must separate from one another the simple 
 elements of thought, by whose employment 
 and combination all the more refined and ele- 
 vated offices of thought are fulfilled, in forms 
 that make such employment possible. It is 
 not, it appears to me, fitting to begin the 
 treatment of logic, as is usually done, with an 
 investigation of the simplest form of combina- 
 tion in which thought unites heterogeneous 
 mental elements. There is a still simpler and 
 a prior task wiiich it has perforce to fulfil ; it 
 has to give to every simple element, in order 
 to make it capable of combination with others, 
 a definite form through which, from a mere 
 impression, the raw product of psychic stimu- 
 lation, it is transformed into an organically 
 utilizable thought-atom. The combinations 
 into which thought strives to bring the mani- 
 fold content are distinguished especially by 
 the prominence in them of internal architec- 
 tonic structure from the mere conglomera- 
 tion which the psychic mechanism is adequate 
 
 170 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 to effect. Stones can always be piled in a 
 heap, whatever their form, if it does not mat- 
 ter how they are arranged; an edifice that is 
 to be borne up and sustained by forces work- 
 ing in diverse directions can not be put to- 
 gether out of merely spherical constituent 
 parts — for any design and plan the stones 
 must be hewn into such shapes that they may 
 mutually strengthen one another, and offer 
 notched surfaces for adhesion and dovetail- 
 ing. In like manner thought can not directly 
 make use of sensations, feelings, moods, sim- 
 ple or complex images, as materials for its 
 structure; each of these elements, which are 
 primarily but states of stimulation, it must 
 apprehend in a form that in the subsequent 
 combination decides on the manner of its em- 
 ployment and the particular fashion in which 
 it is grouped with others. Language exhibits 
 this first operation of thought in the distinc- 
 tion of its parts of speech. Inasmuch as it 
 apprehends a content substantively, it recog- 
 nizes it as something independent, self-suffi- 
 cing, capable of acting as the starting-point 
 of a second and the point of destination of a 
 third content; complete in itself and a self- 
 sufficing whole, the substantive is the natural 
 form in which the primitive language-build- 
 ers exprest the notion of a thing, and w^hich 
 they therefore at first used to designate noth- 
 ing that does not present itself to the eye of 
 sense-perception as an independent object. 
 
 171 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 The content stamped with the adjective char- 
 acter is thereby declared to be not independ- 
 ent, to be something whose existence, definite 
 quantity, form, and limitation come from an- 
 other and a substantive content, on which it 
 is of necessity in a perpetual state of depend- 
 ence; and the sensible properties of things, 
 as exhibited by these in a state of repose, are 
 what first held fast in this form of adjectiv- 
 ity. To these elements language adds the 
 third and indispensable one of the verb, in 
 order to indicate the flux by which the course 
 of events connects together these motionless 
 images; this, too, is a form at first intended 
 for the reflection of sensible changes, but soon 
 employed also to express relationships be- 
 tween things in repose — from the movement 
 of our comparative thought, by which alone 
 we apprehend relationships, being interpreted 
 as reciprocal movements of the subjects of the 
 relationships. 
 
 It is enough to have spoken of these three 
 forms which are indispensable to speech; let 
 us leave to philology not only the question 
 which of them is the more original, and prior 
 to the others, but also the genetic history of 
 other forms which, as prepositions and con- 
 junctions, by the introduction of complex no- 
 tions of relation, elaborate language into a 
 perfectly pliable medium of expression for 
 thought. Let us be content with clearly recog- 
 nizing that those three forms present the 
 
 172 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 minimum of organization and division of pre- 
 sented matter with which thought can attempt 
 to begin its operations. Without them our 
 train of ideas would be but a silent, our speak- 
 ing but an audible, strain of music; ideas 
 and tones might indeed refer to one another 
 and reveal their affinities and antagonisms to 
 feeling, but all the sharply discriminative ar- 
 rangement would have disappeared that had 
 been established by a definite form of inner 
 connection. However full of meaning the 
 music of a song may be, it is quite different 
 in character from the words; no note in it is 
 anything substantive waiting for an adjective 
 attribute to be attached to it ; none more than 
 the rest expresses action proceeding from an- 
 other as its living subject, and passing over 
 to a third as its passive object. Never do two 
 tones enter into one of those manifold articu- 
 late relations which language denotes by the 
 cases of substantives, by the active and passive 
 voices of verbs; the genitive that joins the 
 possessor to the possession; the accusative 
 that connects with the agent the result of his 
 action, musical harmony has no means ade- 
 quate to express. Now this is what we signal- 
 ized above as the peculiar function through 
 which the significant sound really becomes a 
 ward; for it is not made such by its signifi- 
 cance; on the contrary, the interjections 
 which most purely and directly express psy- 
 chic excitement form an unorganized residue 
 
 173 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 of the material of language. The sound 
 becomes a word by means of the logical ac- 
 cessory thoughts displayed in the character of 
 the parts of speech; they serve as uniting 
 surfaces and joints for the various contents, 
 which thus become capable of syntactic com- 
 bination in the service of thought. 
 
 I do not think much of the objection to this 
 view drawn from the fact that in many lan- 
 guages the distinction between the parts of 
 speech is not embodied in special sound-forms 
 answering severally to each. What is of con- 
 sequence is not that the form of our thought 
 should be reflected in that of the sound, but 
 only that it should be present as an accom- 
 panying act of thought. "Whether or not a 
 language indicates its substantives by any ex- 
 ternal mark, its syntactically formless word 
 is nevertheless made into a substantive by the 
 mind of the speaker who utters it with the 
 thought of the substantiality of its content. 
 Thought is not so absolutely dependent on 
 language that combinations of sounds are of 
 necessity the medium through which it ex- 
 presses its formal conception of the content of 
 presentations. Had Nature imposed instead 
 of speech some other mode of expression on 
 the human mind, it would have endeavored 
 to express through this other medium in equiv- 
 alent forms the same distinctions which we 
 have in language under the form of parts of 
 speech ; even had no means of expression been 
 
 174 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 at its disposal, it would none the less have con- 
 tinued inwardly to make the same distinctions, 
 tho in this case much hindered by the absence 
 of the reflex assistance that thought receives 
 from its external medium of expression. The 
 grammatical form of language may therefore 
 lag behind its logical articulation ; but where 
 it does so the language is in a backward stage, 
 and every language free alike from primitive 
 crudeness and from the disintegration of de- 
 cay will express the logical distinctions of its 
 stock of words even in their audible sound- 
 structure. To a far greater extent, indeed, 
 the language-forming fantasy goes beyond the 
 needs of thought, and produces a great num- 
 ber of grammatical forms and syntactical 
 rules that with the progressive advance of 
 reflection are gradually allowed to drop as 
 superfluous. Thus substantives and verbs 
 have gradually lost the wealth of inflections 
 that distinguished them in the earlier stages 
 of language, and thought has learned, by put- 
 ting together many auxiliary words, to re- 
 place the delicate shades of expression which 
 they embodied ; on the other hand, the variety 
 of genders in substantives and adjectives, and 
 the obligation on the latter to conform to the 
 former, are still retained in different lan- 
 guages to different extents — a luxury of speech 
 this, and an ingenious one, which yet forms 
 merely a superfluous esthetic appendage to the 
 logically necessary systematization of thought. 
 
 176 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 Superfluous, that is, if we choose to look on 
 language as exclusively a reproduction of the 
 most general means of thought, through whose 
 arbitrary application the knowledge of things 
 is to be attained. But unquestionably from 
 the first it was meant to be more; a great 
 part of the work that had to be done it has 
 already done for consciousness. Every object 
 of eternal perception, every event, every ex- 
 tended figure pictured by us in imagination, 
 every relationship between several things, may 
 be approached on different sides by our re- 
 flective attention. Almost every content, 
 therefore, admits of more than one notion 
 being formed of it, according as we begin our 
 construction with this or that constituent or 
 point of relation, and add the others in this 
 or that order of succession. The names of 
 objects in a language of long standing are 
 sufficiently set free from remembrances of 
 their earlier meaning, the forms of construc- 
 tion by which relationships are indicated have 
 become sufficiently detached, to leave freer 
 scope to the imagination in this aff'air of in- 
 dividual fancy; former generations must in 
 this respect have felt themselves under greater 
 restraint. From the origin of their words 
 being still in remembrance, and the mode of 
 their combination being under stricter regula- 
 tion, they must have been surrounded as with 
 an atmosphere of common, national thought, 
 which had already fixt the standard of con- 
 
 176 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 ception in regard to innumerable objects and 
 relations of objects, and to continue to think 
 in the spirit of this seemed naturally incumb- 
 ent on the individual. This is the somewhat 
 dubious gift of a developed language that 
 invents and thinks for us. If, however, we 
 consider the inestimable advantage accruing 
 to each individual from the inexhaustible, 
 boundless riches of the world of thought 
 thrown open to him, which he would be wholly 
 unable to create for himself by his own pow- 
 ers, we lose sight of the slight disadvantage 
 of his being thus trained to certain one-sided 
 modes of conception. At any rate, the effort 
 to order one's own thoughts with unrestrained 
 individual freedom can be made only when 
 when it has a point of departure in this na- 
 tional treasure of wisdom handed down in 
 the language, and can thence draw strength 
 for progress. Besides, in course of time a 
 change takes place in this relation between 
 language and thought. The more men ad- 
 vance from simple conditions of life, in which 
 the poetic and genial phase of social relation- 
 ships prevails for good and for ill, to division 
 of labor — set about reflecting on and examin- 
 ing the nature of things, and begin to speak 
 more of business than of feelings — the more, 
 in a word, the working prose of life becomes 
 developed, so much the more does language 
 drop the crude prejudgments concerning 
 things which it originally contained. By the 
 
 177 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 obliteration of their etymology its words be- 
 come mere denotations by means of sounds; 
 the pleasure in sound and its harmonic vari- 
 eties dies away; old time-honored forms of 
 construction perish in consequence of the prac- 
 tical need of terse and accurate modes of stat- 
 ing new relationships. Hence at last we find 
 particular departments — as that of mathe- 
 matics — advancing almost to independence of 
 words, and avoiding the prolixity of speech 
 by a mere sequence of sound-symbols, whose 
 visible connection as written characters is 
 often exprest merely by pauses and accentua- 
 tions in speech. Hence, in general, in the 
 course of a vigorous development, much out- 
 ward beauty is lost, and those nations do not 
 usually advance on this path which continue 
 with much display of sonorous euphony to 
 say little in many words. 
 
 In a survey of the historical development of 
 nations, these relations, to which it is here 
 sufficient to refer, would naturally receive 
 fuller consideration. On the other hand, a 
 more general inquiry to which we have here 
 to devote ourselves, links itself on to these 
 remarks on the reaction of language on the 
 development of ideas. As speech has been 
 called thinking aloud, so the converse proposi- 
 tion — ^that thought is silent speech — has not 
 failed to make its appearance. None of the 
 points connected with this subject has been the 
 cause of more disagreement than this one. 
 
 178 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 On the one side, the capacity of speech is 
 looked on as constituting the decisive superior- 
 ity of human nature, and as alone enabling 
 it to develop veritable thought out of the 
 merely mechanical train of ideas ; on the other, 
 tho the advantages of speech are not denied, 
 not only is thought held to be independent of 
 it, but it sometimes seems doubtful whether 
 they are not overweighed by the disadvan- 
 tages entailed by the habit of mentally cloth- 
 ing all thoughts in words. 
 
 In this respect attention has often been 
 called to the fact that, unknown to ourselves, 
 a strange superstition grows up within us: 
 How apt are we to fancy that an object whose 
 properties we have examined thoroughly, and 
 of which we have formed a complete image, 
 is yet not fully known to us so long as we are 
 ignorant of its name. The sound of the name 
 seems suddenly to dispel this degree of obscu- 
 rity, tho it adds nothing to the content — does 
 not even always bring the light implied in in- 
 dicating the particular place belonging to the 
 object in a series, or within the sphere of 
 some wider notion. Young botanists delight 
 in learning the Latin names of wayside flow- 
 ers, and go contented on their way only to be 
 presently disturbed by a mountain that, 
 strange to say, has no name, and so has prop- 
 erly speaking no right to be there. Now, what 
 do they miss in the one case ? What did they 
 gain in the other? I can not look on this 
 
 179 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 fancy as so insignificant as it appears — nay, 
 I see in it a counterpart or continuation of 
 the genuinely human mode of conception on 
 which I dwelt in discussing sentience. We are 
 not satisfied with the perception of an object; 
 its existence becomes legitimate only when it 
 forms part of a regular system of things that 
 has its own significance quite apart from our 
 perception. Now, if we can not actuall}^ fix 
 the place occupied by a product of Nature in 
 the universe, the name, at all events, allays 
 our disquietude; it at least bears evidence 
 that the attention of many others had already 
 been directed to the object at which we are 
 now looking; it assures us that the general 
 mind has at least been engaged in assigning 
 to this object its special place in the connection 
 of a greater whole. On this account it is that 
 a name given arbitrarily by ourselves is no 
 name ; it is not enough that a thing is called 
 somehow by us ; we must have its real name ; 
 the name must be evidence of its having been 
 received into the world of the universally 
 known and recognized, and thus confront in- 
 dividual caprice as the peculiar and abiding 
 determination of the thing. How little is this 
 attended to by those who allow themselves to 
 be led by the trifling peculiarities of their sub- 
 jective line of thought, by the whims of their 
 imagination, eager for new and capricious 
 paths, to clothe old thoughts in an unusual 
 phraseology, to overturn the established no- 
 
 180 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 menclature of the sciences, and to perform 
 the marvelous feat of calling all things by 
 other than their names! Only the first dis- 
 coverer of an object, or the first inventor of a 
 scientifically efficient abstraction, is entitled to 
 bestow the name under which he takes pos- 
 session for science of this newly won point. 
 
 More serious is the other complaint, that 
 during the long use of speech a multitude of 
 modes of expression are accumulated, which, 
 by means of the syntactic pliability of lan- 
 guage, can be very conveniently combined to- 
 gether, but with which thought can not keep 
 pace. Much can be done with words, and as 
 what is evidently nonsense must admit of 
 being, grammatically and syntactically, quite 
 correctly and elegantly exprest, even that it 
 may be examined and denied; still more, by 
 the readiness with which a grammatically 
 faultless form can be assumed, half-true, con- 
 fused, distorted statements may be made to 
 deceive by an appearance of perfect correct- 
 ness. These processes can be most clearly 
 traced in the combinations of mathematical 
 symbolic language. Many particular groups 
 of signs bearing on one another, at first de- 
 vised for a special case to express a relation 
 there comprehensible, may afterward be made 
 to undergo a series of changes or of applica- 
 tions that for the moment have no assignable 
 meaning, may frequently receive none even 
 when we continue to calculate with them, yet 
 
 181 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 sometimes lead to the discovery of new and 
 veritable relations, whose meaning we only 
 afterward begin to understand. The pliabil- 
 ity of language very rarely indeed leads to 
 such favorable results; for the most part, it 
 only suggests modes of conception that depart 
 further and further from the truth. We must 
 be content to adduce a single but compre- 
 hensive example of this very fruitful source 
 of error. The substantive form belongs origi- 
 nally only to things, the adjective form to 
 qualities, the verb form to events. But, of 
 course, language could not in its judgments 
 always begin with the thing, and annex qual- 
 ities and action to this as the subject; it had 
 to make the qualities in themselves and action 
 in itself also matter of its reflection. Hence 
 it severed their connection with things, and 
 gave them a substantive form, either by add- 
 ing a peculiar termination to express this new 
 character, or by transforming the infinitive 
 of the verb or the neuter of the adjective into 
 a consistent, complete, and independent whole 
 by means of a prefixt article. When we sur- 
 vey the still continued controversies of scien- 
 tific men, who are mainly occupied with gen- 
 eral notions, and can not protect themselves 
 from error by the constant check ©f regulative 
 perception of some sort, we can not but ac- 
 knowledge that nothing is more fatal than this 
 one case of the pliability of language. Almost 
 invariably we find a tendency to make the 
 
 182 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 newly acquired syntactic dignity of words 
 convertible with a new metaphysical dignity 
 acquired by their matter. Thus, we have al- 
 most ceased to speak of beautiful objects — i.e., 
 we forget that what we call beautiful is origi- 
 nally a mere adjective determination not ex- 
 isting apart from a subject; we speak now of 
 the heautiful, or at the best of beauty, and our 
 esthetic thinkers are quite convinced that what 
 can exist only as an attribute is correctly ap- 
 prehended only when it has unnaturally been 
 apprehended as something substantive which 
 is everywhere identical. Need we recall the 
 host of similar instances — the infinite, the evil 
 — or speak of the mischief wrought in ethical 
 inquiries by the habit of speaking, not of the 
 freely willing mind, but of freedom; as if it 
 were a power acting independently, whose 
 energy and achievements could be judged 
 without reference to the nature of the mind 
 to which it pertains? 
 
 In all these cases languages creates for us a 
 mythology, from which, of course, in the use 
 of language we can never wholly set ourselves 
 free without becoming pedantically precise, 
 but against the influence of which on the 
 molding of our thoughts we ought to be care- 
 fully on our guard. Logic does not always 
 assist us in this direction, nay, sometimes in 
 its methods makes pernicious concessions to 
 this false tendency arising from the use of 
 language. It requires that a term to be de- 
 
 183 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 fined shall be subordinated under a higher 
 general notion (which, of course, is always 
 put into substantive form), a special mark 
 being added. In this way adjectival and ver- 
 bal contents under the process of definition 
 lose their natural form and position, which 
 they would retain if the same plan were pur- 
 sued as in plain people's awkward but more 
 correct attempts at definition. It may be a 
 matter of comparative indifference whether 
 one says that, Disease is any departure of the 
 body from its normal state, or prefers to say 
 that, A living body is diseased when it is not 
 in this normal state; but the latter definition, 
 in which what can not exist save as the state 
 quality of something else appears as an ad- 
 jective, and is distinctly annexed to the sub- 
 ject in which alone it has its being, is formally 
 the more correct and the more suitable. Tho 
 we may affirm that, Elasticity is that property 
 of bodies by which they return to their orig- 
 inal form, the proposition, A body is elastic 
 when it does this, is unquestionably to be pre- 
 ferred; for the first form plainly contains 
 the germ of a metaphysically false conception 
 sure to be developed out of such use of terms, 
 namely, the conception of a property, which 
 is nothing else than the denotation of an ef- 
 fect, as the efficient cause or productive means 
 of that effect. Mathematics and Physics, to 
 which almost all that still remains of true and 
 fruitful logic has betaken itself, have adopted 
 
 184 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 this hypothetical form of definition wherever 
 definition is required by the nature of the 
 subject. 
 
 But language does not exist solely to min- 
 ister to thought, and to our poetically living 
 and sj^mpathetic apprehension of the world 
 and its events that substantializing of depend- 
 ent conceptions is no less indispensable than 
 it is dangerous for thought. The same holds 
 true of another drawback of language which 
 is but rarely felt, yet when it is plainly per- 
 ceived, is seen to be of some magnitude. See- 
 ing that in speech the elements of thought are 
 only successively presented, even in the most 
 natural style of expression it is impossible 
 always to avoid an order of words occurring 
 that does not answer to the combination of the 
 ideas denoted by them ; but in a cultured style, 
 with its tendency to intertwine much that in 
 simpler speech is exprest in detached coordi- 
 nate clauses, there is often a most striking per- 
 version of the order apparently required by 
 the general purport of the context. Undoubt- 
 edly an awkward use of these liberties is felt 
 as cumbrous obscurity ; but how much can be 
 tolerated in this respect by our conceptive and 
 constructive imagination is shown most plain- 
 ly by the collocation of words in Latin poetry. 
 Even where they divide closely coherent and 
 separately unintelligible parts of the dis- 
 course, we yet can often hit upon a manner 
 of reading and accenting such as even in this 
 
 185 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 situation enables us to discern their connec- 
 tion. In general, however, it seems to me a 
 mistake to look upon that which most closely 
 conforms to logical order as the best arrange- 
 ment of words. On the contrary, one of the 
 ends of language is to supply the place of 
 perception. Now, as here, it very frequently 
 happens that the unimportant comprehensive 
 background or some striking detail first shows 
 itself, and not till afterward the more im- 
 portant event, as the obvious effect comes be- 
 fore the hidden cause, or passivity on the one 
 side before compensating activity on the 
 other: so that discourse will be most distinct 
 in which the several points of relation are 
 marshaled in an order that brings them vivid- 
 ly before the reproductive imagination, no 
 matter whether or not this corresponds to the 
 logical order of the relations involved. For 
 as even in perception our judgment in regard 
 to this inherent connection is little affected by 
 the order of succession in which objects hap- 
 pen to present themselves, so by thought we 
 can very easily add to the given concrete image 
 of an event those inherent relations by which 
 it becomes intelligible; whereas the imagina- 
 tion has a highly difficult task when it is called 
 on to represent successively certain relations at 
 the bidding of the preceding words, before it 
 knows the concrete concluding points toward 
 which the thought is tending. 
 
 But if the deviation of spoken words from 
 
 186 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 the logical order of thought creates no serious 
 difficulties, perhaps a more important hind- 
 rance is involved in the amount of time which 
 words occupy. Not merely in communication, 
 it may be said, does speech mean the extension 
 of an opinion to be exprest, of a brief sum of 
 meaning, into a long discourse; but, further, 
 the habit of making use of its converts' in- 
 ward reflection into silence discourse, and thus 
 exerts a retarding influence. Thinking, of 
 course, itself requires some time in order to 
 perform its task of putting a variety of ele- 
 ments into relation; but the constant recol- 
 lection of words needlessly protracts this time 
 by its dependence on bodily conditions from 
 which thinking could have kept itself free. 
 
 Many facts confirm this assertion. In try- 
 ing to recall a melody, one finds oneself bound 
 to a certain time; one can not imagine a 
 series of tones gone through in less time than 
 it would take to sing it — well or ill. For we 
 involuntarily accompany the auricular images 
 of tone with slight incipient movements of the 
 vocal organs, and we can not make the former 
 succeed each other more rapidly than the lat- 
 ter can follow upon one another. The music- 
 al expert may succeed in warding off this 
 habit of retardation, and putting himself into 
 the position purely of a listener with regard 
 to the tone-images that revive in his memory; 
 but even he will distinctly recall no greater 
 number of these tone-images in the unit of 
 
 187 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 time than the physiologically limited capacity 
 of his auditory nerve would have allowed of 
 his actually hearing within the same unit of 
 time. We find the same thing in the recol- 
 lection of w^ords; the many trifling difficul- 
 ties caused to a speaker by the alternation of 
 vowels and consonants retard the succession 
 in the word-images even in the mere repre- 
 sentation of discourse. Not for all to the 
 same extent, however ; for the facility of mus- 
 cular movement or of the varying impulses 
 to it in different persons. It is found fre- 
 quently, tho not without exception, that the 
 propensity to rapid speech is inversely pro- 
 portional to the length of the body. Very 
 short people, just as from the shortness of 
 their legs their pace is more swift and in 
 general their heart-beat more frequent, have 
 a natural tendency to speak quickly, and this 
 whether they are also loquacious or whether 
 they are taciturn, and only say rapidly the 
 little they have to say. Tall persons will in 
 general be found to speak slowly and phleg- 
 matically; the rate of their discourse corre- 
 sponds to their longer stride and greater slow- 
 ness of heart-beat; for the rest, sometimes 
 the stream of their discourse flows without 
 interruption; sometimes they prefer to be 
 silent on most subjects. It is long since these 
 observations have become the property of the 
 imitative imagination that moves in living 
 human knowledge; with the aid of some ex- 
 
 188 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 aggeration it has created out of small stature, 
 with its sanguine, lively temperament, a fa- 
 miliar comic type, in which are embodied a 
 ready wit, a disposition to become eager about 
 petty ends, and a tendency to rashness of all 
 sorts; whereas the tall, phlegmatic form — by 
 dint of the same exaggeration a no less favor- 
 ite character — has been taken by it for the 
 expression of circumstantial thoroughness and 
 tardiness in ever respect. 
 
 It is needless to inquire further into the 
 accuracy of these trifling observations; even 
 were they perfectly trustworthy, they would 
 merely prove that our course of thought can 
 not, so long as we convert its content into in- 
 ward speech, exceed a moderate limit of ve- 
 locity. But when w^e note the conscious im- 
 patience with which our thought often would 
 fain hurry on, while yet it is compelled to 
 linger over a simple idea till the compound 
 term for it has been audibly recalled to mind, 
 we are enabled by this further observation 
 ourselves to reduce within its true dimensions 
 the disadvantage supposed to proceed from 
 our being habituated to language. For here 
 we have evidence that this retarding recollec- 
 tion of words is not absolutely compulsory on 
 our course of thought, which really outruns it, 
 and that with us, as in the psychic life of the 
 animals destitute of speech, a small space of 
 time actually contains a great multitude of 
 ideas in the regular coexistence and the me- 
 
 189 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 thodical sequence in virtue of which they be- 
 come the motive of a present purposive action. 
 But could this movement of wordless ideation 
 by itself accomplish all that is really achieved, 
 however leisurely, by the course of our 
 thoughts when shackled by a persistent re- 
 membrance of words? 
 
 This question, we believe, must be answered 
 in the negative — those views be rejected in 
 which, under the influence of an enthusiasm 
 for the ineffable, language is regarded as a 
 source of detriment to a coveted higher knowl- 
 edge. All that thought must of necessity, nay 
 does, possess together in one indivisible mo- 
 ment, language breaks up into a successive 
 plurality, developing discursive thought out of 
 the direct intuition of our representative fac- 
 ulty. Thought running backrv^ard and for- 
 ward moves between the sundered elements 
 of its content, which the obstinate temporal 
 course of this silent speech never allows of its 
 uniting. That relative thinking to which we 
 have already ascribed the dignity of being the 
 germ of all higher intellectual development, 
 we here find censured as the meager form in 
 which habituation to language permits of our 
 performing high functions only inadequately. 
 For does not all this putting in relation defeat 
 its own end? Had our imagination not al- 
 ready under the guidance of slowly unfolding 
 discourse divided the points that ought to be 
 united, why should it require afterward la- 
 
 190 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 boriously to bring the scattered elements into 
 relation? This were in vain, if in our repre- 
 sentative activity we have forgotten the first 
 point of relation by the time we have come to 
 the second; superfluous, if it is possible for 
 us simultaneously to grasp the two, and also 
 their relation, at the same undivided moment. 
 In the first place, we must modify these 
 accusations, for they touch not language 
 alone, but even thought itself — nay, they 
 touch our whole existence. Not only do we 
 think discursively, but we also live so; not 
 only do we elaborate perceptions in this fash- 
 ion, but they present themselves in no other. 
 At no moment are we both what we were and 
 what we shall be; and even of what we are, 
 we are at any one moment conscious to but a 
 small extent. Objects present themselves alike 
 f ragmentarily to us ; we do not feel the pulsa- 
 tion that is the inmost life of things going 
 directly through our heart ; the creative force 
 that stirs in them, and the idea that binds 
 their successive states into a whole, all this 
 we must perforce seek to divine by means of 
 the gradual combination of particular experi- 
 ences ; what in itself may be one, can not but 
 be to us an extended network of relations be- 
 tween many things. If we desire, instead of 
 this separation, that silent insight into things, 
 not intuition of them, which forms our con- 
 ception of the omniscient, toilless knowledge 
 of God, we must be convinced that isolated 
 
 191 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 moments of approach to such a state are 
 granted to us, but that our incapacity to com- 
 bine them into the permanent clearness of a 
 thought without distinctions is the fault, not 
 of language, but of our whole mental consti- 
 tution. When we have listened to a poem re- 
 cited, to a melody sung, and forget the words 
 and the tones, while yet all that was in them 
 lives on in an abiding mood of our soul ; when, 
 after long deliberation and weighing of pros 
 and cons, we have at length come to a resolu- 
 tion, and in the purpose that now animates 
 us feel combined and still efficient the im- 
 pulses that before were severally weighed by 
 our thought; w^hen we first send our glance 
 over the scattered details of a landscape, and 
 then, after the definite outlines have long dis- 
 appeared from our memory, still preserve an 
 indelible total impression; w^e actually suc- 
 ceed in making that combination and fusion 
 of myriads of details into the whole of a su- 
 persensible intuition, which we but reluctant- 
 ly again analyze into its constituent parts in 
 order to communicate it to others. 
 
 In all these cases we became something; 
 the manifold did not remain outside of us, 
 but the whole of its significant internal con- 
 nection was repeated in a new state within 
 ourselves with such perfection we could fancy 
 we had transformed ourselves into the spirit 
 of the phenomena that we admired. But only 
 the Infinite Being that itself is all that it 
 
 192 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 makes the object of its thought, could in this 
 way enter into the being of all things, and, 
 while entering into it, dispense with all the 
 divining inquiry beginning from the outside. 
 The finite mind has no alternative but to com- 
 prehend the nature of things by means of 
 analogies with its own. For it volition is not 
 equivalent to accomplishment, thinking to ex- 
 istence ; for it the active and passive elements 
 are separated from each other as diverse 
 points, and it can apprehend the unit>^ of 
 what here is, and is done only as the trans- 
 ference of an action from one thing to an- 
 other; it does not discern clearly how the 
 manifoldness of successive phenomena is iden- 
 tical with the unity of being, and is forced to 
 divide them as predicates from their subject, 
 to which they are attached only by the thread 
 of a relation; finally, for it, ends are not 
 spontaneously achieved, by the one life of the 
 idea, that is all in all, is converted into the 
 cooperation of many means exhibiting them- 
 selves as independent of each other. All these 
 analogies, these notions of things and prop- 
 erty, of force and effect, of being and phe- 
 nomenon, and all the forms of relation into 
 which these memhra disjecta are combined, 
 must be employed by the human mind to gain 
 a knowledge of things. And so indispensable 
 to it is this putting into relation that even in 
 any moment of exaltation in which we actu- 
 ally find and enter into a higher unity, we 
 
 193 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 feel restless and uneasy till we have exprest 
 its content in some form of the combination 
 of the manifold in which it may be definitely 
 fixt and again participated in by ns in the 
 movement hither and thither of thought. In 
 each poetic imagination, before it has done its 
 work, lies this mystic unity, and in doing it 
 each seeks to escape from this; the best that 
 we could ourselves be would not content us, 
 because we can not be it otherwise than by 
 spreading out its formless depth into the sur- 
 face of a completely related phenomenon. 
 
 Language in all its operations is but the re- 
 production, not the cause, of this tendency of 
 our mind. But, after having at such length 
 stood on the defensive, I can more briefly add 
 the positive assertion that even this form of 
 thinking, the only one possest by us finite 
 beings, would actually remain very imperfect, 
 without this reproduction in language. Lan- 
 guage, of course, does not impart to the mind 
 the elements of thinking ; but it indispensable 
 when the mind has to combine these elements 
 into the spacious fabric of its culture. As 
 w^e always experience a refreshing effect from 
 sense-intuition, and are not convinced of the 
 success of any labor till we have before us 
 some palpable result, so must the auricular 
 images of names and the combinations of 
 sounds that constitute grammatical and syn- 
 tactical forms of speech, present to us in a 
 fixt, sensible form, the former the multiplicity 
 
 194 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 of things, the latter the systematic plurality 
 of their possible relations. There can be no 
 clearness of thought where the many presenta- 
 tions and groups of presentations that in mu- 
 tual relation are to form a thought simul- 
 taneouslj'- occupy our consciousness without 
 Bames, and only in their original character 
 of affections of the soul; even tho thus they 
 may be not a mere heterogeneous assemblage, 
 but already held together by relations corre- 
 sponding to those subsequently to be formu- 
 lated, yet consciousness is not aware of this 
 internal organization. It becomes to ns real 
 and true when in the task of statement we 
 first bring one presentation into prominence, 
 and then, guided by the syntactical form 
 which w^e have given to its name, go beyond 
 it in a definite direction, and rejecting on the 
 way many others, succeed at last in putting 
 into special connection with it the particular 
 second presentation indicated by that direc- 
 tion. No thought is clear and distinct until 
 it has undergone this process of analysis and 
 recombination, and the simplest self-scrutiny 
 may teach any one how, in proportion as the 
 plastic form of the idea comes out into relief, 
 the obscurities disappear that clove to it in 
 its earlier unexprest stage. As a work of art 
 can not be a full harmonious truth until it has 
 been completed in marble or bronze, and as 
 a conception in the artist's imagination is but 
 a disjointed and fragmentary beauty, so 
 
 195 
 
PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 
 
 mankind lan^iage is the universal plastic 
 material in which alone they elaborate their 
 surging ideas into thought. 
 
 I have dwelt at special length on this point 
 of view, which has a close affinity with that 
 which throughout forms the fundamental 
 thought of these inquiries, in the conviction 
 that what we may take to be the highest con- 
 tent of the universe is to be conceived by us 
 only as realized by a regular mechanism. I 
 return but for a moment to the first form in 
 which language exhibited itself to us. Origi- 
 nally designed as a medium of communica- 
 tion, it expanded unawares to us into an inde- 
 pendent organism, over the development of 
 which we have no control, and to whose in- 
 herent nature we must accommodate our- 
 selves. Now, how much language even in this 
 its primary function — i.e., how much the pos- 
 sibility of conversation — contributes to high 
 human development, needs no more than to 
 be mentioned. It is an indispensable instru- 
 ment not only of the first training, whose ab- 
 solute necessity we shall subsequently feel, 
 but also of the further cultivation of the al- 
 ready vitally stirring mind. A course of 
 thought solitarily pursued by the individual, 
 the direction of which only new external per- 
 ceptions would alter, meets with salutary in- 
 terruptions from the questions and answers of 
 another; one-sided associations expand under 
 the influence of a foreign world of thought 
 
 196 
 
STUDIES IN PROSE 
 
 and feeling, which brings alike new intuitions 
 and new points for the contemplation of those 
 common to both. But why refer here in gen- 
 eral to that to which our attention must sub- 
 sequently be specially directed ? Let us mere- 
 ly add that language renders similar services 
 to the thought even of the individual when 
 alone. By the sound of names, by their metri- 
 cal rhythm* in combination, are suggested to 
 him attendant ideas and feelings, as well as 
 remembrances of what is not present that 
 would not in such abundance and distinctness 
 accompany the dumb course of thoughts with- 
 out words. As rime sometimes unexpectedly 
 suggests to the poet a graceful conceit, so 
 words in general, by means of the manifold 
 associations cleaving to their meaning — so fre- 
 quently figurative — guide our imagination 
 along many paths that otherwise would be 
 closed to it, that lead not always to the right 
 goal, it is true — nay, often to a wilderness — 
 but always disclose to us a rich field in which 
 we can pick out the fruits that suit us. 
 
 197 
 
HOW TO 
 
 L/evolop belf- (confidence 
 IN SPEECH AND MANNER 
 
 By GRENVILLE KLEISER 
 
 Author of '''' How to Argue and ff-^in.''^ 
 
 In all fields of endeavor there are thousands of 
 people who are forced to remain in the background 
 because they lack self-confidence in speech and 
 manner — the very fundamental of success. For just 
 such people Grenville Kleiser has written his book 
 <*How^ to Develop Self-Confidence in Speech and 
 Manner." 
 
 The work deals with methods of correction for 
 self-consciousness, with manners as a power in the 
 making of men, with the value of a cultivated and 
 agreeable voice, with confidence in society and 
 business. A series of suggestions is given for an 
 every-day cultivation of these qualities. 
 
 "Embodies in a most encouraging and practical 
 way all that is needed to make one who is naturally 
 timid or fearful in speech and manner, self-poised, 
 calm, dignified and confident of himself. It must be 
 said that the method proposed is one of sober self- 
 estimate and persistent effort along well considered 
 lines of thought and action, designed to eradicate this 
 uneasiness." — Times Dispatch, Richmond, Va. 
 
 I2mo, Cloth. $1.2^, net; by mail, $1.40. 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
NOV 21 1911 
 
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 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 Treatment Date: Jan. 2009 
 
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