<IQEmiGHT DEPOSfT. 
 
/ 
 
 CONTRIBUTIONS 
 
 TO 
 
 
 LITERATURE; 
 
 DESCRIPTIVE, CRITICAL, HUMOROUS, 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL, PHILOSOPHICAL, 
 
 AND POETICAL. 
 
 BY 
 
 SAMUEL OILMAN, D. D. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 CROSBY, NICHOLS, AND COMPANY, 
 
 111 Washington Street. 
 1856. 
 

 Entered according to Act of Congi-ess, in the year 1856, by 
 
 Crosby, Nichols, and Company, 
 
 in the Clerk's OflGice of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 METCALF AND COMPANY, PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
TO 
 
 THE CHAKLESTON LITEKARY CLUB, 
 
 WHOSE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCES, 
 
 FELT EVEN BEYOND THE PRIVATE SPHERE, 
 
 HAVE AVAILED TO CHARM AND RETARD THE AUTHOR'S DECLINING AGE, 
 
 THESE 
 
 CONTRIBUTIONS TO LITERATURE 
 
 ARE RESPECTFULLY AND CORDIALLY INSCRIBED 
 
 BY 
 
 THEIR ATTACHED ASSOCIATE. 
 
P E E F A G E . 
 
 In the course of an almost absorbing devotion, for 
 forty years, to the duties of the sacred profession, the 
 author of the following pages has indulged in various 
 exercises of a more purely literary character. To such 
 occasional excursions he has surrendered himself, some- 
 times as his own spirit prompted, but more frequently 
 in obedience to the invitation or the request of others. 
 Venturing to judge from the kind manner in which some 
 of his productions have been received, and inspired by 
 the usual fond ambition of authorship, he is induced to 
 publish a selection from these miscellaneous accumula- 
 tions of a lifetime. Many of them are now out of 
 print, and several have never been published at all. The 
 author therefore trusts that the present compilation will 
 be regarded by an extensive circle of friends as a wel- 
 come memorial, even should it fail of a favorable recep- 
 tion from the public at large. 
 
 The different articles have been arranged without ref- 
 erence to chronological order, and indeed on no decided 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 principle of sequence, except a separation of the Poetry 
 from the Prose. The dates of their composition, how- 
 ever, are affixed to the principal articles, partly as a 
 matter of possible interest, partly to explain incidental 
 allusions, and partly to vindicate the originality of some 
 of the thoughts and views. 
 
 The examination of the philosophy of Dr. Thomas 
 Brown will be observed to engross a prominent share in 
 this compilation. The works of that remarkable writer 
 seem destined to a higher rank amongst the productions 
 of the nineteenth century than they have as yet gener- 
 ally assumed. Symptoms of returning justice in this 
 respect have appeared in different quarters. Even whilst 
 revising for the press this portion of the collection, the 
 author was happy to recognize the lofty estimate placed 
 on the writings of Dr. Brown, in the recently published 
 conversations and letters of so competent an authority 
 as Sydney Smith. 
 
 Charleston, S. C, March 1, 1856. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 MEMOIRS OP A NEW-ENGLAND VILLAGE CHOIR .... 1 
 
 THE RECIPROCAL INFLUENCE OP NATIONAL LITERATURES . 93 
 
 ESSAY ON POSTURES 127 
 
 BROWN ON CAUSE AND EFFECT 143 
 
 REV. STEPHEN PEABODT AND LADT 190 
 
 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT . . . . • • • 231 
 
 PERCIVAL'S POEMS 284 
 
 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS 303 
 
 brown's PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS 348 
 
 THE MAN OP EXPEDIENTS 445 
 
 LEXICOGRAPHY AND LEXICONS ... .... 450 
 
 A DAY OF DISAPPOINTMENT IN SALEM 474 
 
 POEMS. 
 
 PLEASURES AND PAINS OF THE STUDENT'S LIFE .... 499 
 
 SEQUEL TO THE SAME 503 
 
 HUMAN LIFE 512 
 
 UNION ODE 544 
 
 NEW-ENGLAND ODE 545 
 
 FAIR HARVARD 547 
 
 ODE FOR THE CHARLESTON WASHINGTON LIGHT INFANTRY . . 548 
 
 ODE ON THE DEATH OF CALHOUN 550 
 
Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 lines on mrs. parsons 551 
 
 ordination hymn , . 552 
 
 the pledge 554 
 
 the whole -world kin 554 
 
 Bethlehem's greatness 555 
 
 characteristics op a pupil 555 
 
 the silent GIRL 555 
 
 THE SUNBEAM ON MT PATH 557 
 
 THE HISTORY OP A RAY OP LIGHT 558 
 
MEMOIRS 
 
 A NEW-ENGLAND VILLAGE CHOIR, 
 
 I 
 
 OCCASIONAL REFLECTIONS. 
 
 BY A M E M B E K 
 
 REVISED AND CORRECTED FROM THE THIRD EDITION. 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
" What though no cherubim are here displayed, 
 No gilded walls, no cedar colonnade, 
 No crimson curtains hang around our quire, 
 Wrought by the ingenious artisan of Tyre ; 
 No doors of fir on golden hinges turn ; 
 No spicy gums in golden censers burn ; 
 If humble love, if gratitude inspire. 
 Our strain shall silence even the temple's quire, 
 And rival Michael's trump, nor yield to Gabriel's lyre." 
 
 FierponVs Airs of Palestine, 
 
MEMOmS 
 
 A NEW-ENGLAND VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 Wishing to present a sketch of manners in New 
 England, and of some changes that have occurred in 
 our taste for sacred music, I have presumed to adopt, 
 for the purpose, a kind of desultory narrative. 
 
 The time when the few humble incidents occurred, 
 which are recorded in the following pages, embraced 
 about ten years, bordering upon the last and present 
 centuries. The place was a village, situated not far 
 from the river Merrimac; and for the sake of avoiding 
 any invidious allusions or interpretations, I shall give 
 to the town the fictitious name of Waterfield. 
 
 Many years had now elapsed, since any interruption, 
 or indeed anything extraordinary, had happened to the 
 music, that was barely tolerated in the meeting-house 
 at Waterfield. At the period when our memoirs com- 
 mence, the long established leader, Mr. Pitchtone, had 
 just removed with his family to one of the new towns 
 in the District of Maine, and the choir, which had been 
 for some time in a decaying state, was thus left with- 
 out any head, or any hope of keeping itself together. 
 
4 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 For some Sundays after his departure, not an individ- 
 ual ventured to appear in the singing-seats. Young 
 Williams, the eccentric and interesting shoemaker, who 
 was an apprentice to his lather, knew perfectly well how 
 to set the tune, but he had not as yet acquired sufficient 
 self-confidence to pass the leading notes round to the 
 performers of different parts, nor to encounter various 
 other kinds of intimidating notoriety attached to the 
 office. The female singers, besides, had been so long 
 and so implicitly accustomed to their late leader, that 
 nothing could have induced them to submit to the con- 
 trol of so young and inexperienced a guide. And as 
 no other member of the congregation possessed suffi- 
 cient skill or firmness to undertake this responsible and 
 conspicuous task, the consequence was, that nearly all 
 the performers, at first, absented themselves, not only 
 from the singing-gallery, but even from public worship. 
 Most of them had been so long habituated to their 
 elevated position, and their active duty in the place 
 of worship, that they could not immediately undergo 
 the awkwardness of sitting below among the congrega- 
 tion, and were not a little apprehensive of meeting the 
 stares of mingled curiosity and reproach, which they 
 knew would be directed towards them. In addition to 
 these circumstances, many had not the heart to witness 
 the embarrassment and pain which would naturally 
 be created in the minister and his flock, by the antici- 
 pated chasm in the usual routine of worship. Two 
 or three, however, of the more courageous in the late 
 choir, ventured to attend church even on the first Sab- 
 bath after the removal of Mr. Pitchtone. They went, 
 indeed, at a very early hour, for the purpose of avoiding 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 notice, and took their seats in some unappropriated 
 pews in a very distant and almost invisible quarter of 
 the gallery. 
 
 The entire congregation having assembled, the clergy- 
 man waited some time for the accustomed appearance 
 of the sons and daughters of sacred song. It is almost 
 universally the practice, throughout our New England 
 country churches, to commence public worship with 
 the singing of a psalm or hymn. On the present oc- 
 casion, no person being ostensibly ready to perform that 
 duty, the minister began the services with the "long 
 prayer." Yet, when this was concluded, an imperious 
 necessity occurred of making at least the attempt to 
 diversify and animate the business of the sanctuary, by 
 an act of melody. Accordingly the Rev. Mr. Welby 
 announced and read the psalm adapted to the subject 
 of the sermon which was to succeed. Then, having 
 waited a moment or two, during w^hich a most painful 
 silence and suspense pervaded the congregation, he be- 
 gan, in a voice naturally strong and clear, to sing the 
 psalm alone, still keeping his usual standing position 
 in the centre of the pulpit. Only one voice was heard 
 to support him. It was that of the venerable deacon, 
 who sat immediately beneath, and who hummed a 
 broken kind of bass, without the accompaniment of 
 words, there being scarcely a hymn-book in the lower 
 part of the meeting-house. The same scene occurred 
 in the afternoon, with the slight addition of a female 
 voice in some part of the house, which lent its modest, 
 unsivilful, and half-suppressed assistance through the 
 concluding portion of the hymn. 
 
 Matters went on nearly in this way for the space of 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 a month, at the end of which the singing began to 
 improve a little, by the gradual return to church, though 
 not to the singing-gallery, of the stragglers who had 
 composed the late choir, and who were now willing 
 to join in the vocal duties of worship under the au- 
 spices of the pastor. At length, when about six months 
 had been thus dragged along, an occasion offered for 
 a return to the deserted orchestra, in a manner which 
 might somewhat shelter the mortification and inspire 
 the confidence of the rallied choristers. 
 
 A Mr. Ebed Harrington, who had recently removed 
 into the village for the purpose of studying medicine 
 with the physician of the place, had some pretensions 
 on the musical score. He was an unmarried man, of 
 about the age of thirty years, and had been, until this 
 period, a hard-working laborer on his father's farm, 
 which was situated in an obscure township in New 
 Hampshire. His complexion was of the darkest, his 
 face exactly circular, his eyes small, black, and un- 
 meaning, his form thick-set, and the joints of his prin- 
 cipal limbs had been contracted by nature or use into 
 inflexible angles of considerable acuteness. He defrayed 
 the expenses of his board and medical tuition by labor- 
 ing agriculturally the half of every day, for his teacher. 
 Dr. Saddlebags. The other half of the day, and a large 
 portion of the night, were industriously devoted by our 
 incipient Esculapius to the study of his new-chosen pro- 
 fession, with the exception of a few evenings which he 
 occasionally spent at different places in the neighbor- 
 hood. It was on one of these visits that he found 
 means to exhibit some imposing specimens of his abil- 
 ities in the performance of sacred music. And having 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 suggested that he had often taken the lead in the choir 
 of his native parish, he almost immediately received 
 a pressing invitation from some of the most active of 
 the singers in Waterfield, to place himself at their head 
 on the following Sabbath, and thus enable them to 
 supply the lamented vacancy which existed in the ap- 
 paratus of worship at their meeting-house. 
 
 The invitation was accepted. That quarter of the 
 singing-seats devoted to the female sex was filled at an 
 early hour, on the next Sabbath morning, by fair occu- 
 pants, furnished generally each with her hymn-book, 
 and waiting with some impatience for the other moiety 
 of the choir to arrive, and for the services to begin. The 
 body of male performers gradually assembled at one 
 corner of the building, out of doors, and discussed 
 several particulars relating to the important movement 
 which was now about to take place. One difficulty that 
 staggered the most of them was the manner in which 
 Mr. Ebed Harrington, their new precentor, should be in- 
 troduced into the singing-gallery. He himself modestly 
 suggested the propriety of being conducted by some one 
 of the gentlemen singers to the spot. But besides that 
 there was not an individual in the circle who conceived 
 himself clothed with sufficient authority, or who felt 
 sufficient confidence in himself to enact so grave a cere- 
 mony, it appeared to be the general opinion, that Mr. 
 Harrington, in virtue of his newly conferred office, should 
 march into church at the head of the choir. While they 
 were debating this point with no little earnestness, the 
 time was sliding rapidly away. All the rest of the con- 
 gregation, even to the last tardy straggler, had entered 
 and taken their seats. An impatient and wondering 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 stillness mantled over the whole assemblage within, and 
 Mr. Welby was on the point of rising to announce the 
 psalm, at the hazard of whatever consequences might 
 ensue, when, by a sudden, spontaneous, and panic-like 
 movement, which I cannot remember who of us began, 
 the tuneful collection without suspended their debate, 
 and rushed in a body into the front door of the meeting- 
 house. Part of us turned off immediately into the right 
 aisle, and part into the left. The stairs leading to the 
 gallery were placed at the end of each of these aisles, 
 at two corners of the building within, so that whoever 
 mounted them was exposed to the view of the congre- 
 gation. With a hurried and most earnest solemnity, 
 the choristers made their trampling way up these stairs, 
 and soon found themselves in a large octagonal pew in 
 the centre of the front gallery, adjoining an oblong one 
 already filled by the ladies. Each individual occupied 
 the seat which he could first reach, and Mr. Harrington, 
 without being offered the post of honor usually assigned 
 the leader, was fain, in the general confusion and for- 
 getfulness of the scene, to assume about four inches of 
 the edge of a bench contiguous to the door of the pew. 
 Here, while wiping from his brow, with a red dotted 
 calico handkerchief, the perspiration which the anxieties 
 and exertions of the moment had profusely excited, the 
 voice of the clergyman in the pulpit restored him and 
 his fellow-singers to the calm of recollection, and fixed 
 all eyes around upon him as their legitimate guide. 
 
 The tune which he selected was well adapted to the 
 hymn announced. Every body remembers "Wells." Mr. 
 Harrington had forgotten to take a pitch-pipe with him to 
 the place of worship, and there was accidentally no in- 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 9 
 
 strament of any kind present. He was therefore obliged 
 to trust to his ear, or rather to his fortune, for the pitch of 
 the initial note. The fourth note in the tune of Wells 
 happens to be an octave above the first. Unluckily, Mr. 
 Harrington seized upon a pitch better adapted to this 
 fourth note than to the first. The consequence was, that 
 in leading off the tune, to the words of " Life is the 
 time," he executed the three first notes with considerable 
 correctness, though with not a little straining; but in 
 attempting to pronounce the word time, he found that 
 nature had failed to accommodate his voice with a 
 sound sufficiently high for the purpose. The rest of 
 the tenor voices were surprised into the same conscious- 
 ness. Here then he was brought to an absolute stand, 
 and with him the whole choir, with the exception of 
 two or three of the most ardent singers of the bass and 
 treble, whose enthusiasm and earnestness carried them 
 forward nearly through the first line, before they perceived 
 the calamity which had befallen their head-quarters. 
 They now reluctantly suffered their voices one after an- 
 other to drop away, and a dead silence of a moment 
 ensued. Mr. Harrington began again, with a somewhat 
 lower pitch of voice, and with stepping his feet a little 
 back, as if to leap forward to some imaginary point ; but 
 still with no greater success. A similar catastrophe to 
 the former awaited this second attempt. The true sound 
 for the word time still remained far beyond the utmost 
 reach of his falsetto. In his third effort, he was more 
 fortunate, since he hit upon an initial note, which 
 brought the execution of the whole tune just within the 
 compass of possibility, and the entire six verses were 
 discussed with much spirit and harmony. When the 
 
10 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 hymn was finished, the leader and several of his more 
 intimate acquaintances exchanged nods and smiles with 
 each other, compounded of mortification and triumph, — 
 mortification at the mistakes with which the singing had 
 begun, and triumph at the spirited manner in which it 
 was carried on and concluded. This foolish and wicked 
 practice is indulged, in too many choirs, by some of the 
 leading singers, who ought to set a better example to 
 their fellow-choristers, and compose themselves into other 
 than giggling and winking frames of mind, at the mo- 
 ment when a whole congregation are about to rise or 
 kneel in a solemn act of praise and prayer. 
 
 The greater part of the interval between the first and 
 second singing, which was occupied by the minister and 
 the devout portion of his hearers in a high and solemn 
 communion with the Deity, was devoted by Mr. Har- 
 rington and his associates above mentioned to turning 
 over the leaves of the Village Harmony, and making a 
 conditional choice of the tune next to be performed, ac- 
 cording to the metre of the hymn which might be read. 
 When the time arrived for their second performance, 
 although Mr. Harrington was more happy than before 
 in catching the true key-note of the air, yet, either from 
 some deficiency of science in himself, or from a misap- 
 prehension on the part of those who sang bass, this im- 
 portant department of the choir began the hymn with 
 a note which happened to be the most discordant of the 
 whole scale. The consequence was dreadful to every 
 one within hearing, who was afflicted with a good ear. 
 Our Coryphaeus interposed his authority to produce 
 silence, by emitting through his teeth a loud and pro- 
 tracted Hush ! After some little difficulty, they sue- 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 11 
 
 ceeded in starting fairly, and carried on the performance 
 with due harmony of tones. 
 
 In the afternoon, Mr. Harrington was at his post as 
 settled leader of the choir. It is true that he found him- 
 self surrounded by only about half the number of assist- 
 ants who had attended the commencement of his vocal 
 career in the morning. But no one had ventured to in- 
 sinuate to him his incompetency, and several of the 
 singers charitably ascribed his mistakes to the accidental 
 absence of the pitch-pipe, and to the modest trepidation 
 which naturally arose from his first appearance. His 
 principal mistake, on the latter part of the day, was that 
 of selecting a common-metre tune which ought to have 
 been one in long metre. He perceived not his error 
 until he arrived at the end of the second line, when, 
 finding that he had yet two more syllables to render into 
 music, he at first attempted to eke out the air by a kind 
 of flourish of his own, in a suppressed and hesitating 
 voice. But he was soon convinced that this would 
 never do. Had he been entirely alone, he might in this 
 way have carried the hymn through, trusting to his own 
 musical resources and invention. But it was out of his 
 power to inspire the other singers with the foreknowledge 
 of the exact notes which his genius might devise and 
 append to every second line. They, too, must try their 
 skill to the same purpose, and while the whole choir, 
 tenor, bass, and treble, were each endeavoring to eke 
 out the line with their own efforts and happy flourishes, 
 a tremendous clash of discord and chaos of uncertainty 
 involved both the leaders and the led together. There 
 was nothing in this dilemma, therefore, for him to do, 
 except to stop short at once, and select a new tune. 
 
12 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 This he did with much promptness and apparent com- 
 posure, though that there was some little flutter in his 
 bosom was evident from the circumstance that the tune 
 he again pitched upon, contrary to all rules in the course 
 of a single Sabbath, was "Wells," — which, however, 
 went off with much propriety, and with none of the inter- 
 ruptions that had marred its performance in the morning. 
 
 There are many of the thorough-bred sons of New 
 England, whose perseverance it takes much greater dis- 
 couragements to daunt than befell the precentorial efforts 
 of Mr. Ebed Harrington on this memorable day. He re- 
 garded himself now as the fully instated leader of the 
 choir in "Waterfield ; a function which he inflexibly main- 
 tained, through good report and through evil report, 
 sometimes amidst almost entire desertion, and at other 
 times with a very respectable band to follow his guidance, 
 until his professional studies were completed, and he 
 himself removed from the neighborhood, to plunge into 
 some of the newly settled territories for an establishment, 
 and introduce, perchance, the arts of healing and melody 
 together. I have never heard one word of his destination 
 or subsequent success. 
 
 The musical concerns of our parish were not involved 
 in the same embarrassment after his departure, as after 
 that of his predecessor. Young Williams had now in- 
 creased in years, skill, and confidence. Nature had des- 
 tined him to be a passionate votary of music. He was 
 scarcely out of mere boyhood, before he grasped the 
 violoncello — or, as we term it in New England, the 
 bass-viol — with a kind of preternatural adroitness, and 
 clung to it with a devoted and ardent perseverance, 
 which very soon rendered him an accomplished per- 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIK. 13 
 
 former. Every leisure hour, every leisure moment he 
 could seize, were employed on this his favorite instru- 
 ment. The first ray of morning was welcomed by the 
 vibrations of its Memnonian strings. Many a meal was 
 cheerfully foregone, that he might feed his ear and his 
 soul with the more ethereal food to which his desires 
 tended. Often too were his musical exercises protracted 
 far beyond midnight, to the annoyance at first of his 
 father's family, who soon, however, could sleep as well 
 beneath the sounds of the lad's bass-viol, as if an uEolian 
 harp were soothingly ringing all night at their windows. 
 As he sat in the solitude of his chamber, a solitude 
 sweetened by his own exquisite skill and the indulgence 
 of his fond taste, he regarded not the cold of winter and 
 not always the darkness of the night. He speedily made 
 himself master of his darling science, as far as such an 
 attainment was possible from the introductions to all the 
 compilations of music within his reach, from Dobson's 
 Encyclopaedia,* and from such other appropriate books as 
 the Waterfield Social Library and Mr. Welby's humble 
 collection of miscellaneous literature might supply. His 
 performance was the admiration of all the country round. 
 His father's house was frequently visited for the single 
 purpose of witnessing the display of his uncommon tal- 
 ents. Most willingly did he exhibit his powers before 
 the representative to Congress, or Mr. Welby and his 
 family, or a bevy of admiring girls, or a half-dozen ragged 
 children, who were attracted from their plays in the 
 streets and the fields, to be soothed and charmed and 
 
 * Dobson reprinted in Philadelphia the Encyclopsedia Britannica, referred 
 to in the text. 
 
 2 
 
14 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 civilized into silence by our self-taught Orpheus. Now, 
 he would draw tears from every eye by the tremulous 
 and complaining pathos of the string as he wound 
 through some mournful air. Now he would make every 
 soul burn, and every cheek glow with lofty rapture, as 
 he executed the splendid movements of Washington's 
 March, Belleisle March, Hail Columbia, or the much 
 less admirable, but equally popular Ode to Science. 
 Now, by a seemingly miraculous rapidity and perfection 
 of execution, he would exert an irresistible power over 
 the muscular frames of his delighted auditors, putting 
 their feet and hands in motion as they sat before him, 
 and often rousing up the younger individuals who were 
 present to an unbidden, spontaneous dance, to the tune of 
 " The Girl I left behind me," the " Devil's Dream," or an 
 equally magical and inspiring combination of notes that 
 extemporaneously flowed into his own mind on the oc- 
 casion. During all these scenes, his own fair counte- 
 nance was rarely ever observed to alter in the least from 
 a certain composed, though elevated and steadfast ab- 
 straction. Occasionally, however, the occurrence of a 
 plaintive strain would throw a kind of compassionate 
 softness into his looks, and some sublime movement of 
 melody or new combination of harmony would fill his 
 rolling eye with tears. The motion of his arm and the 
 posture of his body were indescribably graceful. To 
 some persons of extravagant fancy, he seemed, while 
 playing upon his noble instrument, to be sitting on a 
 cloud, that was wafting him about in the atmosphere of 
 sounds which he created. Sometimes the viol and the 
 bow appeared to be portions of himself, which he handled 
 with the same dexterity that nature teaches the soul to 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 15 
 
 exert over its own body. Sometimes again you would 
 imagine him in love with the instrument, as if he had no 
 other mistress in the world to fix his serious and impas- 
 sioned looks upon, and be agitated by her enchantments. 
 For several minutes he would lay his ear down near the 
 strings, and then throw his body far back, and his eye 
 upward, while, in this new position, his head kept time 
 with a gentle motion, and with a sort of unconscious 
 ease. He never refused to play the most common or 
 indifferent air ; a circumstance that resulted partly from 
 his good nature, which would not suffer him to be fas- 
 tidious or disobliging, and partly from his own conscious 
 ability to make music out of a tune which of itself had 
 small pretensions. Indeed, he was one of those few per- 
 formers, who array in a new and peculiar dress every 
 piece which they attempt to execute. Written notes 
 before him were but a skeleton, which he not merely 
 clothed with a body and animated with a life, but into 
 which he infused a soul and an inspiration that none but 
 the rarest geniuses on earth can cause to exist. 
 
 Such was the temporary successor to Mr., or now, 
 more properly speaking. Dr. Ebed Harrington, in the 
 government of the sacred choir at Waterfield. Charles 
 Williams, as I have before observed, was as yet too 
 young to take the lead in the melodious department of 
 public worship, when that interesting and uncouth per- 
 sonage came to reside in the village. But it is very 
 questionable whether the pretensions of the latter to his 
 honorable office in the gallery would ever have been 
 submitted to, during the two years that he remained, 
 had he been destitute of the assistance rendered him by 
 the musical young Crispin whom I have just introduced 
 
16 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 to my readers. Charles had been almost constantly at 
 his post as leader of the bass, and performer on the vio- 
 loncello. Sometimes, indeed, on a fine Sunday morning, 
 late in May, or perhaps in midsummer, or early in Octo- 
 ber, he would take his instrument, and steal alone and 
 unperceived to some retreat about two miles from the 
 village. Here our truant genius would seat himself be- 
 neath an oak, and try the effect of mingling the audible 
 sounds of his viol with the felt harmony of sunshine, 
 breeze, and shade ; interrupting for a moment or two the 
 chirp of the squirrel and the Greek talk* of the blackbird, 
 but then again stimulating them to a more violent little 
 concert in company with his own instrument, and the 
 long, ringing note of the grasshopper, as it hung sus- 
 pended and motionless over the ground, amidst the calm 
 glare of a burning sun. The delicious enjoyment afford- 
 ed him by such occasions as these would have tempted 
 him to very frequent indulgences of the kind, had not the 
 music in the meeting-house suffered so much from his 
 absence, and had he not been aware that such conduct 
 was the cause of considerable uneasiness and half-re- 
 proachful regret among a large portion of the congrega- 
 tion. Blessed influence of Christian institutions, and of 
 the severe forms of social life, that check the movements 
 of selfishness and eccentricity, and recall the thoughtless 
 wanderer back to the course of duty ! Who can com- 
 plain at the comparatively slight sacrifices which they 
 enjoin, and at the contribution to the common stock of 
 
 * What schoolboy has not listened with delighted astonishment to the 
 almost exact conjugation of something lilce a Greek verb, which the black- 
 bird gives him in its IloXXa), ttoXw, neTrXrjKa ? Has the nightingale itself a 
 better title to Mr. Gray's compliment of "Attic warbler" ? 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 17 
 
 happiness which they demand, in return for the protec- 
 tion, the field of exertion, the inexhaustible sources of 
 enjoyment, and the paths to the attainment of every 
 species of individual excellence, which they so abun- 
 dantly furnish ? 
 
 On the elevation of Charles Williams to the seat of 
 leader of the choir, new life was infused into the whole 
 vocal company. Years had done something for him 
 since the period at which our history commences, but 
 experience and the opening native energy of his mind 
 had done much more. Implicit confidence was now re- 
 posed in his skill and management, even by the shyest 
 member of the choir. He had occasionally supplied the 
 accidental absence of Mr. Harrington, and had been 
 constantly consulted by that gentleman with peculiar 
 deference in all the business, and mystery, and appa- 
 ratus, incident to the due administration of his office. 
 It was even whispjered round in the singing-pews, that 
 Charles had often been happily instrumental in correct- 
 ing or preventing several blunders on the part of his 
 superior, not unlike those which I before recorded as 
 distinguishing the outset of that gentleman's career. 
 
 With such qualifications, and such a reputation, Mr. 
 Williams entered upon his dignities with the highest 
 spirit and the best prospects of success. The choir was 
 instantly replenished by all the old deserters and by 
 many new recruits. Singing-meetings were appointed 
 in private houses on two or three evenings of each week, 
 for the purpose of practice and improvement. A large 
 supply of the (then) last edition of the Village Harmony 
 was procured, and the stock of good pieces, which all 
 might familiarly sing, was enlarged. The whole number 
 
 2* 
 
18 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 of performers was about fifty. This was one of those 
 happy and brilliant periods, which all our New England 
 churches occasionally enjoy for a longer or shorter term 
 in the musical department of the sacred exercises. I will 
 not contend that the psalms now went off with much 
 science or expression. Charles Williams was fully equal 
 to the task of infusing the best possible taste in these re- 
 spects into the choir which he led. But he wisely felt that 
 his authority did not extend quite so far at present as to 
 warrant the attempt to introduce among them any nice 
 innovations on the old-fashioned manner of vocal perform- 
 ance. He was not their teacher in the art. He was only 
 one of themselves, and all he could expect to do was to 
 yield himself to the general stream of musical taste and 
 prejudice, with the exception of such little improvements 
 as he hoped to effect by his sole example, or the commu- 
 nication of his ideas in private to some particular friends. 
 He accordingly began and executed, the most galloping 
 fugues* and the most unexpressive airs with the same 
 spirit and alacrity that he would have expended on the 
 divinest strains of sacred music. 
 
 Notwithstanding, however, these slight unavoidable 
 deficiencies, the present was, as I observed, a bright and 
 happy period in the meeting-house at Waterfield. There 
 was a full choir. It was punctual in its attendance at 
 church. The singing, though a little noisy, was at least 
 generally correct in time and tone. A new anthem was 
 gotten up at the recurrence of each Fast and Thanks- 
 giving Day, and funeral anthems were sung on the Sab- 
 
 * A fugue is a piece of music, in which the different parts start one after 
 another, at the interval of a few notes. 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 19 
 
 bath that immediately succeeded any interment in the 
 parish. There are few who will not acknowledge the 
 luxury of such a state of things, when compared with 
 the necessity of enduring, Sabbath after Sabbath, a fee- 
 ble, poor, discordant band of singers, or listening to the 
 performance of two or three scattered individuals among 
 the congregation, who go through their duty with reluc- 
 tance, and seem not so much to be singing praises as 
 offering up substitutes and apologies. 
 
 Far different from such a picture were the achieve- 
 ments of our renovated choir. Every tune which they 
 performed seemed to be a triumph over the preceding. 
 Charles Williams was so much in his element, that he 
 inspired all around him with the same feeling. 
 
 It is true, there were some peculiarities in the man- 
 ners and customs of the choir, to which a fastidious 
 stranger might object. In warm weather, Charles as- 
 sumed the liberty of laying aside his coat, and exhibit- 
 ing the perfection to which his sisters could bleach his 
 linen, in which practice he was supported by about half 
 the men-singers present. Another exceptionable habit 
 prevailed among us. As soon as the hymn was read, 
 and those ominous preluding notes distributed round, 
 which come before the performance of a psalm-tune like 
 scattering drops before a shower, that portion of the 
 band which sat in front of the gallery suddenly arose, 
 wheeled their backs round to the audience below, and 
 commenced operations with all possible earnestness and 
 ardor. Thus the only part of the congregation which 
 they faced consisted of those who sat in the range of 
 pews that ran along behind the singing-seats. 
 
 It was somewhat unnecessary, moreover, that each 
 
20 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 individual performer should beat time on his own ac- 
 count. But this was a habit of inveterate standing in 
 the church, which nothing short of the omnipotent voice 
 of fashion could be hoped to frighten away. That voice 
 was not yet heard to this effect in the singing-gallery at 
 Waterfield. But it would have cost many an occupant 
 there a pang to resign the privilege of this little display. 
 Let Mr. D' Israeli and the editor of Blackwood's Maga- 
 zine inspect the dispositions of men in their handwrit- 
 ing. But as a school for the study of character, give me 
 a choir of singers, who are in the habit of beating time, 
 each for himself. How could the most superficial ob- 
 server mistake these characteristic symptoms? Here 
 and there you might see a hand ostentatiously and un- 
 shrinkingly lifted above all surrounding heads, like the 
 sublime and regular recurrence of a windmill's wings. 
 Some performers there were, who studied an inexpres- 
 sible and inimitable grace in every modification of 
 motion to which they subjected their finger-joints, wrists, 
 elbows, shoulders, and bodies. Some tossed the limb 
 up and down with an energy that seemed to be resenting 
 an affront. Others were so gentle in their vibrations, 
 that they appeared afraid of disturbing the serenity of 
 the circumambient air. Some hands swept a full seg- 
 ment of one hundred and eighty degrees ; others scarce- 
 ly advanced further than the minute-hand of a stop- 
 watch at a single pulsation. The young student at law, 
 the merchant's clerk, and a few others, whom fortune 
 had exempted from the primeval malediction of personal 
 toil, were at once recognized by the easy freedom with 
 which they waved a hand that no sun had browned and 
 the contact of no agricultural implement had roughened. 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 21 
 
 If, as we have seen, some of the singers were ostenta- 
 tious in wielding an arm to its full extent, others were 
 equally ostentatious in using only a finger, or a thumb 
 and middle finger joined. To the honor of the choir, 
 however, be it said, that there were several of its mem- 
 bers, who performed the duty, which then was custom- 
 ary, of beating time, without any effort or affectation. 
 It should also be ascribed to nothing more than a sense 
 of propriety and laudable modesty, that a great part of 
 the female singers kept time in no other way than by 
 moving a forefinger, which hung down at their sides, 
 and was almost concealed amidst large folds of change- 
 able silk, or of glazed colored cotton cambric. To this 
 a few of them added a slight motion of the head or 
 body, while some of the married ladies openly raised 
 and lowered their hands upon the hymn-books from 
 which they sang. 
 
 In addition to the foregoing general imperfections, 
 which prevented the congregation at Waterfield from 
 witnessing the beau ideal of a sacred choir, it is to be 
 lamented that there were others, which resulted not from 
 common custom, but from individual peculiarities. The 
 taste and knowledge of music, among all the performers, 
 were far from being uniform. While some sang with 
 great beauty of expression, and a nice adjustment to the 
 sentiment of the happy modulations of a flexible voice, 
 others made no more distinction between the different 
 notes than did the printed singing-book itself, or any 
 lifeless instrument that gives out the tone required with 
 the same strength and the same unvaried uniformity on 
 all occasions. Nothing, too, could be rougher than the 
 stentorian voice of Mr. Broadbreast, and nothing more 
 
22 THE VILLAGE CHOIE. 
 
 piercing than the continued shriek of the pale but enthu- 
 siastic Miss Sixfoot. I shall not disclose the name- of 
 the good man who annoyed us a little with his ultra- 
 nasal twang, nor of another, who, whenever he took the 
 true pitch, did so by a happy accident ; nor of another, 
 who had an ungainly trick of catching his breath violent- 
 ly at every third note; nor of several of both sexes, 
 whose pronunciation of many words, particularly of 
 hoiv^ noiv, &c., was dreadfully rustic, and hardly to be 
 expressed on paper. Jonathan Oxgoad sang indeed 
 much too loud, but that could have been forgiven him, 
 had he not perpetually forgotten what verses were di- 
 rected by the minister to be omitted ; a neglect which, 
 before he discovered his error, often led him half through 
 an interdicted verse, much to the annoyance of the worthy 
 pastor, the confusion of his fellow-singers, the vexation 
 of the congregation, and the amusement and gratifica- 
 tion of Jonathan's too good-natured friends. 
 
 There was also a culpable neglect among the male 
 singers in providing themselves with a sufficient number 
 of hymn-books. That it was not so on the other side 
 of the choir, was partly owing to the delicate tact of 
 women, which never suffers them to violate even the 
 minor proprieties of time and place, and partly to their 
 greater attachment to religion. As, in our New-Eng- 
 land churches generally, we have no prayer-books to 
 serve as a kind of endearing bond between the public 
 and domestic altars, the vivid imagination and tender 
 affection of the female singer caused her to cherish her 
 hymn-book in such a connection. The more rough, 
 careless, and indifferent habits of our own sex render us 
 less attentive to these sensible memorials for the heart. 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 23 
 
 Accordingly, in our choir, among the men, the propor- 
 tion of books was scarcely more than one to four or five 
 performers, so that you might often hear some ardent 
 and confident individual, who was stationed too far 
 from the page to read distinctly, attempting to make 
 out the sentence from his own imagination, or, when 
 he despaired of achieving that aim, filling up the line 
 with uncouth and unheard of syllables, or with inarticu- 
 late sounds. It is strange how some little inconveniences 
 of this kind will be borne for a long time without an 
 effort made for their remedy. It was not avarice which 
 caused this deficiency of hymn-books ; far from it ; it 
 was only the endurance of an old custom, which it oc- 
 curred to no one to take the proper steps to remove. 
 Was it not thirty years that Uncle Toby threatened every 
 day to oil the creaking hinge that gave him so much an- 
 guish of soul, — and threatened in vain? 
 
 But I will no longer contemplate the shady points of 
 my picture. On the whole, the blemishes just described 
 were scarce ever offensively perceptible, when compared 
 with the general merit with which the singing was con- 
 ducted and continued to improve for the space of two or 
 three years. Besides, our supply of good music was 
 equal or superior to the demand. Be it remembered, 
 that we were singing within wooden walls to the edi- 
 fication of an American country congregation, who 
 sprang unmixed from Puritanical ancestors, and not be- 
 neath the dome of a European metropolitan cathedral. 
 
 It is impossible to look back without some of the 
 animation of triumph upon those golden hours of my 
 early manhood, when I stood among friends and ac- 
 quaintances, and we all started off with the keenest 
 
24 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 alacrity in some favorite air, that made the roof of our 
 native church resound, and caused the distant though 
 unfrequent traveller to pause upon his way, for the pur- 
 pose of more distinctly catching the swelling and dying 
 sounds that waved over the hills and reverberated from 
 vwood to wood. The grand and rolling bass of Charles 
 "Williams's viol, beneath which the very floor was felt to 
 tremble, was surmounted by the strong, rich, and ex- 
 quisite tenor of his own matchless voice. And oh! in 
 the process of a fugue, when the bass moved forward 
 first, like the opening fire of artillery, and the tenor ad- 
 vanced next, like a corps of grenadiers, and the treble 
 followed on with the brilliant execution of infantry, and 
 the trumpet counter shot by the whole, with the speed 
 of darting cavalry, and then, when we all mingled in 
 that battle of harmony and melody, and mysteriously 
 fought our way through each verse with a well-ordered 
 perplexity, that made the audience wonder how we ever 
 came out exactly together, (which once in a while, in- 
 deed, owing to some strange surprise or lingering among 
 the treble, we failed to do,) the sensations that agitated 
 me at those moments have rarely been equalled during 
 the monotonous pilgrimage of my life. 
 
 And yet, w^hen I remember how little we kept in view 
 the main and real object of sacred music, — when I think 
 how much we sang to the praise and honor and glory of 
 our inflated selves alone, — when I reflect that the ma- 
 jority of us absolutely did not intend that any other ear 
 in the universe should listen to our performances, save 
 those of the admiring human audience below and around 
 us, — I am inclined to feel more shame and regret than 
 pleasure at these youthful recollections, and must now 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 25 
 
 be permitted to indulge for a few moments in a more 
 serious strain. 
 
 How large and dreadful is the account against num- 
 berless ostensible Christian worshippers in this respect! 
 And how decisive might be the triumph of the Roman 
 Catholics over Protestants, if they chose to urge it in 
 this quarter ! They might demand of us, what we have 
 gained by greater simplicity and abstractness of forms. 
 They might ask, whether it is not equally abominable 
 in the sight of Jehovah, that music should be abused in 
 iiis sanctuary, as that pictures and images should be 
 perverted from their original design. For my part, I 
 conscientiously think that there is more piety, more of 
 the spirit of true religion, in the idolatry which kneels 
 in mistaken, though heart-felt gratitude to a sculptured 
 image, than in the deliberate mockery which sends up 
 solemn sounds from thoughtless tongues. How often 
 does what is called sacred music administer only to the 
 vanity of the performer and the gratification of the 
 hearer, who thus, as it were, themselves inhale the in- 
 cense which they are solemnly wafting, though they 
 have full enough need that it should ascend and find 
 favor for them with the Searcher of all Hearts ! 
 
 This is a rock of temptation which the Quakers have 
 avoided ; in dispensing with the inspiration of song, 
 they at least shun its abuses ; and if they really succeed 
 in filling their hour with intense religious meditation 
 and spiritual communion, — if, from their still retreat, 
 the waves of this boisterous world are excluded, and 
 send thither no disturbing ripple, — if no calculations of 
 interest, and no sanguine plans, are there prosecuted, 
 and no hopes, nor fears, nor regret?, nor triumphs, nor 
 
 3 
 
26 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 recollections, nor any other flowers that grow this side 
 of the grave, are gathered and pressed to the bosom, on 
 the margin of those quiet waters, — if, in short, the very 
 silence and vacancy of the scene are not too much for 
 the feeble heart of man, which, if deprived of the stay of 
 external things, will either fall back on itself, or else will 
 rove to the world's end to expend its restless activity in 
 a field of chaotic imaginations ; — if, I say, the Quakers 
 are so happy as to escape these perils, together with the 
 seductions to vanity and self-gratification which music 
 and preaching present, then must their worship, I think, 
 be the purest of all worship, and their absence of exte- 
 rior forms the very perfection of all forms. But, let me 
 ask of thee, my heart, whether tliou couldst fulfil these 
 severe conditions ? Wouldst thou no longer obtru- 
 sively beat and ache beneath the external serenity of a 
 Quaker's composed demeanor and unmodish apparel, 
 and voiceless celebration ? Thou shrinkest from the 
 trial, and art still convinced that the road in which thou 
 canst best be trained for heaven lies somewhere at an 
 equal distance between the bewildering magnificence of 
 the Romish ritual, and the barren simplicity of silent 
 worship. 
 
 I have long doubted whether, in the prevailing mu- 
 sical customs among our New-England Independent 
 churches, there be not something more unfavorable to 
 the cause and progress of pure devotion, than can be 
 charged against many other popular denominations. 
 The Methodist, and the strict Presbyterian, have no sep- 
 arate choirs. They have not yet succeeded so far in 
 the division of spiritual labor, as to delegate to others 
 the business of praise, or to worship God by proxy. I 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 27 
 
 have often witnessed a congregation of one thousand 
 Methodists, as they rose simultaneously from their seats, 
 and, following the officiating minister, who gave out the 
 hymn in portions of two lines, joined all together in 
 some simple air, which expressed the very soul of nat- 
 ural music. I could see no lips closed as far as I could 
 direct my vision, nor could I hear one note of discord 
 uttered. Was it that the heartiness and earnestness 
 which animated the whole throng inspired even each 
 tuneless individual with powers not usually his own, 
 and sympathetically dragged into the general stream of 
 harmony those voices which were not guided by a mu- 
 sical ear? or was it, that the overwhelming majority of 
 good voices, such as, I presume, if exerted, would pre- 
 vail in every cbngregation, drowned the imperfect tones, 
 and the occasional inaccuracies of execution, which most 
 probably existed? It did not offend me that they sang 
 with all their might, and all their soul, and all their 
 strength ; for it was evident that they sang with all their 
 heart. I was conscious of hearing only one grand and 
 rolling volume of sound, which swallowed up minor 
 asperities and individual peculiarities. This was par- 
 ticularly the case after two or three verses were sung, 
 when the congregation had been wrought into a kind of 
 movement of inspiration. Then the strains came to my 
 ear with the sublimity of a rushing mighty torrent, and 
 with an added beauty of melody that the waters cannot 
 give. The language was still distinctly intelligible, and 
 the time perfectly preserved. And although, when I 
 retired from the scene, I could not say how expressively 
 this chorister had sung, nor how exquisitely the other 
 had trilled, nor could compliment a single lady on her 
 
28 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 golden tones, nor criticise the fine science of the counter- 
 point, yet I felt that I had been thrilled and affected in 
 a better way, and could not but wish that what was 
 really to be approved of among the Methodists might be 
 imitated in those happier churches, where religion is cul- 
 tivated without protracting her orgies into midnight, and 
 cordially embraced without the necessity of delirious 
 screams and apoplectic swoons.* 
 
 Perhaps it may be thought that the good old Presby- 
 terian way of accompanying a clerk, or precentor, who 
 is stationed beneath the pulpit, in front of the congrega- 
 tion, will most generally secure the true spirit and per- 
 fection of sacred music. Born and nurtured an inde- 
 pendent as I am, I confess that I sometimes feel inclined 
 to the adoption of this opinion, with a few additions and 
 modifications. There is certainly an advantage in im- 
 posing upon a single individual the business of leading 
 the melodious part of public devotion. It must neces- 
 sarily constrain the congregation to unite their voices 
 with his, unless they are totally lost to all sense of the 
 proprieties of the sanctuary. This custom, moreover, 
 must exclude those miserable feuds and other sources of 
 interruption, which will always to a greater or less de- 
 gree disturb a separately constituted choir. 
 
 But in conceding thus much to the children of the 
 Westminster Assembly, I would beg leave to be stren- 
 uous in insisting upon a recommendation that may ap- 
 pear very strange as coming from a disciple of John 
 Robinson. I caimot find it in my soul to dispense with 
 
 * I am happy to testify that these features are growing far less charac- 
 teristic of the Methodist denomination, than they were at the first publica- 
 tion of The Village Choir. 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 29 
 
 the glorious majesty of sound with which an organ fills 
 the house of prayer. In the tones of this sublime trophy 
 of human skill, there is something that wondrously ac- 
 cords with the sentiment of piety. We know that mar- 
 tial bravery, love, joy, and other feelings of our nature, 
 have each their peculiar and stirring instruments of 
 sound. The connection between religion and the organ, 
 too, is something more than fanciful. Who has not felt 
 at once inspired and subdued by the voice issuing from 
 that gilded little sanctuary, which towers in architec- 
 tural elegance over the solemn assembly below, and 
 seems to enshrine the presiding genius of devotional 
 praise ? 
 
 I am aware that even the united aid of a precentor 
 and organ is insufficient to check certain tendencies to 
 the decline of good singing, which may insidiously creep 
 into a whole musical congregation with the lapse of time. 
 Tunes, it may be said, grow old, and weary the ear ; 
 wretched voices may prevail over the better sort ; in one 
 pew, a w^orshipper may always sing the tenor part in a 
 voice of the deepest bass ; in another pew, every psalm 
 may be screamed through with one whole note out of 
 the way; a devotion like that of the Methodists, which 
 often seems to make them sing decently in spite of them- 
 selves, must not be expected to continue long; a fashion 
 of indifference towards this department of worship may 
 arise and prevail; and especially, the extensive cultiva- 
 tion of secular music in private families may render very 
 many ears so fastidious, as absolutely to frustrate the 
 object of sacred music at church, since the tasteless and 
 indiscriminate clamor necessarily produced by the voices 
 of a mixed congregation must tend to excite in the more 
 
 3# 
 
30 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 refined classes a disgusted and indevout spirit, rather 
 than the sweet and lofty aspirations of choral praise. 
 On all these accounts, it may possibly be argued that 
 our later ancestors have done well in withdrawing from 
 the general congregation the performance of this service, 
 and assigning it to a select choir, who, by concentrating 
 their efforts, and reducing the matter to something of a 
 profession, may keep the stream of sacred song at least 
 pure, though small. 
 
 Nearly all these sinister tendencies, however, might, 
 I apprehend, be counteracted by the application of a 
 little care and system. To prevent the repetition of 
 old tunes from palling on the ear, a new one might oc- 
 casionally be introduced by the clerk, and sung every 
 Sabbath until the congregation were familiar with it. 
 The affliction caused by bad voices might be disposed 
 of by the appointment of a musical censor, or standing 
 committee, whose duty it should be to exercise now and 
 then an act of delicate authority, acquainting the well- 
 meaning offenders with the fact of their vocal disability, 
 and requesting from them in future an edifying silence. 
 As to the decay of devotion, and the increase of indif- 
 ference among a congregation, these appear to me to be 
 far from good reasons for establishing a separate choir, 
 and are rather proofs that such a choir will effect no sort 
 of good. With respect to the last evil which a select 
 choir is supposed to avoid, the fastidiousness occasioned 
 by the private and profane cultivation of musical taste, I 
 know not why a whole congregation, or at least all the 
 efficient voices in it, may not be systematically taught 
 good church music, and the best and purest taste be 
 made general among them. 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 31 
 
 But I will candidly allow that some of these schemes 
 of improvement are rather visionary than practical. Sit- 
 ting at home in one's office, one can easily devise rem- 
 edies for existing social defects, but in attempting to put 
 them into execution, the science of human nature is 
 found to be ten times more embarrassing than hydro- 
 statics itself. Some obstinate pressure from an unsus- 
 pected quarter may burst over the feeble mounds which 
 we are fondly erecting about an imaginary reservoir of 
 beauty and tranquillity. It is a very enchanting employ- 
 ment of the mind to draw sketches of a kind of abstract 
 congregation, where every one present joins in the prayer, 
 and listens profitably to the sermon, and keeps constantly 
 awake, and takes devout part in the psalmody, and where 
 no eye is suffered to wander, nor attention to flag, nor 
 worldly dreams to intrude. But where is there such a 
 congregation on earth ? And would even a Handel suc- 
 ceed in tutoring a mixed audience into a celestial choir 
 of angels? On these accounts, I am not disposed to 
 push my censures on my native communion too far. 
 Perhaps novelty and imagination have done a little in 
 recommending to me the practices of other churches, and 
 if I were familiar with the whole history of their musical 
 condition, I might tell as many strange stories of them 
 as I am rehearsing of ray own. I am not sufficiently 
 read in Puritanical antiquarianism to know whether the 
 Independents once resembled the Presbyterians in the 
 mode of conducting sacred music, and afterwards found 
 it necessary in the course of time to institute distinct 
 choirs, or whether they on purpose instituted a custom 
 diametrically opposite to that of their rival sectaries, 
 after the fashion in which these last had themselves 
 
32 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 abolished surplices and organs. Neal* is silent on these 
 curious points. If one may judge from some merry- 
 traditions prevalent in New England, our good fore- 
 fathers had no choirs, but sang under the dictation of 
 one and sometimes two lines at a time from the minister 
 or a clerk. Most of us have heard of singular divisions 
 to which poor Sternhold and Hopkins were subjected by 
 this custom. Thus, 
 
 " The Lord will come, and he will not 
 Keep silence, but speak out," 
 
 used to make perplexing sense to the pilgrims, when 
 given out to them by a line at a time ; for that such was 
 the manner of uttering it, I have understood from a cler- 
 gyman who learned it at a Massachusetts Convention 
 dinner twenty years ago, where the agreeable and Or- 
 thodox Dr. set the table in a roar by relating the 
 
 anecdote. It is probable, then, that experience and ne- 
 cessity, in the lapse of time, have forced upon our congre- 
 gations the present universal custom of assigning to a 
 few individuals the task of leading the praises in public 
 worship. It might now be dangerous, or rather imprac- 
 ticable, to introduce a reformation. If imperfections ex- 
 ist, perhaps they are a choice of the least. Yet still it 
 were to be wished that the choir might not be regarded, 
 so much as it is, the sole medium through which this 
 portion of worship is offered. It were to be wished that 
 our audiences would consider that body as leaders only, 
 not performers ; to be followed and accompanied, not to 
 be listened to for luxurious gratification, or fastidious 
 criticism, or as an eked-out variety of the tedious busi- 
 
 * Historian of the Puritans. 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 33 
 
 ness of a Sunday. I can conceive that a choir, if prop- 
 erly instituted and administered, might be exceedingly 
 useful in extending and preserving a true tone of taste, 
 in keeping up a good selection of sacred music, and in 
 acting, so to speak, as the teachers of the congregation, 
 in these and kindred respects. But in the very duty thus 
 prescribed them lies their deplorable danger and tempta- 
 tion. They are unavoidably liable, as was above inti- 
 mated, to resolve the matter into a mere profession. In 
 the study of sacred music as a science, and the cultiva- 
 tion of it as an art, they forget its ultimate object. Nor 
 could much else be expected from the narrowness of the 
 human mind. Must it not be hard to attend to the 
 thousand little circumstances which a skilful perform- 
 ance requires, and at the same time to keep the heart 
 strained up to a pitch of due devotion ? And on the 
 supposition that by practice and habit we can acquire a 
 perfect familiarity with the pieces to be performed, and 
 a mutual confidence can be obtained among all the 
 members of the choir; yet, alas! it is in the very process 
 of cultivating this practice and habit, that the spirit of 
 devotion is apt to evaporate, and to leave us admirable 
 performers rather than cordial worshippers. 
 
 This state of things, moreover, has its temptations for 
 the audience at large. The more beautiful the music, 
 the greater is their inclination to listen and admire, 
 rather than to bear a part. It seems a kind of sacrilege 
 to let my indifferent voice break in upon the divine 
 strains which are charming my ear. But the real sacri- 
 lege is in my refraining from the duty. Probably, about 
 the most perfect and affecting sacred music in this coun- 
 try is that at the Andover Theological Seminary. Yet 
 
34 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 who, in listening to the exquisite anthem sung at the 
 anniversary of that institution, does not find himself un- 
 consciously betrayed into an earthly ecstasy of weeping 
 admiration, in which, on analysis, he is surprised and 
 ashamed to find that mere religion has but little, if any, 
 share ? 
 
 Such always have been and always will be the dan- 
 gers resulting from the conversion of taste and the arts 
 into handmaids of religion. Perpetual efforts are requi- 
 site to keep them from becoming her mistresses at last. 
 I appeal to the consciences of hundreds of congregations, 
 who are in the habit of sitting. Sabbath after Sabbath, 
 with Epicurean complacency, and silently listening to 
 the music above them, as to a gratuitous and pleasant 
 entertainment. I appeal with more confidence to the 
 consciences of a thousand choirs, who are engrossed in 
 the anxious business of carrying a psalm off well, and 
 are distracted with numerous likings and antipathies 
 about difi'erent tunes, whether they do not commonly feel 
 cut off, as by a kind of professional fence, from the devo- 
 tional sympathies and sacred engagements of the con- 
 gregation in general. Sharing no active or conspicuous 
 part in the other services, but so very active and conspic- 
 uous a part in owe, is it not the case, that they take little, 
 if any, interest in the former, and regard them rather in 
 the light of a foil to set off" their own paramount achieve- 
 ments, than as a votive wreath, into which it is their 
 privilege, duty, and felicity to weave a humble flower ? 
 
 Sorry I am to acknowledge that such were the pre- 
 dominant feelings in the choir at Waterfield at that point 
 of time in its history from which I have been led insen- 
 sibly so far away by a dull train of digressive reflections. 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 35 
 
 It is impossible to say how much of this defective senti- 
 ment may have been owing to the circumstance of our 
 leader being a gay and rather inconsiderate young man, 
 whom the whole of us were constrained to admire for his 
 musical excellence and many parts of his private charac- 
 ter. Certain it is, that Charles Williams had no other 
 holier aspiration or thought at that time, than to acquit 
 himself with applause as the chief of a vocal company. 
 In every other respect, his example would scarcely be 
 recommended on the score of seriousness or piety. A 
 little knot of whisperers was often gathered round him 
 during both the prayer and the delivery of the sermon, 
 who began, perhaps, with discussing some points con- 
 nected with the common business of the choir, but gen- 
 erally suffered the conversation to stray among still less 
 appropriate and less excusable topics, until the occur- 
 rence of a jest or witticism from Charles betrayed them 
 into something more than a smile, and reduced them to 
 the necessity of separating from each other, in order to 
 escape violating the more obvious decencies of the place. 
 
 Then, again, it ought not to have been Charles Wil- 
 liams, of all persons, who scribbled with a lead pencil 
 upon every blank leaf of every hymn-book and singing- 
 book within his reach, filling them with grinning carica- 
 tures, with ridiculous mottoes, and with little messages 
 to the adjoining pew, some of the occupants of which 
 would blush, when they found themselves glancing with 
 greater eagerness at these irregular and unseasonable 
 billets doux, than listening to more edifying productions 
 from the pulpit. 
 
 And adieu to the composure of that fair chorister for 
 one morning at least, to whom Charles Williams pre- 
 
36 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 sented a bunch of dill, a pleasant little herb, resembling 
 caraway, and common in the gardens of New England, 
 the taste of whose aromatic seeds often serves in summer 
 to beguile some forlorn moments that will occur to many 
 attendants at the meeting-houses of this blessed land, as 
 well as elsewhere. Not that a gallant attention of this 
 kind from the hands of my youthful hero occasioned 
 sufficient perturbation in the mind of the receiver to 
 drown her voice and prevent her from performing her 
 part in the musical services. On the contrary, such an 
 incident generally had the eflfect of inspiring her with 
 more than usual animation, loudness, and expressiveness 
 in her singing, the cause of which could be conjectured 
 by none save such as happened to unite to an accidental 
 observation a sagacious philosophy. No other obvious 
 symptoms of agitation were allowed to escape her watch- 
 ful self-possession, except perhaps neglecting to keep her 
 snow-white pocket-handkerchief folded up as neatly as 
 usual by the side of her hymn-book, and an inability to 
 recollect the text when she was examined by her decrepit 
 grandmother at home. 
 
 Nor were these favors on the part of our leader, in 
 general, very discriminating or partial with respect to 
 their objects. If Charles's bass-viol could have enjoyed 
 a posy of dill, it would, often, undoubtedly, have been a 
 successful rival of his more conscious and susceptible 
 mistresses for such attentions. The time had not yet 
 arrived for the tenderest of all passions to become also 
 the most overwhelming and absorbing in his soul. He 
 had indeed too much constitutional sensibility not to 
 find on his hands a succession of weekly or monthly 
 idols of his imagination ; but at the same time he had 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 37 
 
 too much juvenile carelessness and too triumphant a 
 presentiment of many exploits yet to be achieved by his 
 genius for music, to allow any very deep and lasting im- 
 pressions on his heart. Music, praise, and beauty were 
 to him equally intoxicating subjects of contemplation ; 
 he had not yet had enough of the first two, to admit of 
 his yielding himself entirely up to the influence of the 
 last. 
 
 From the few sketches I have already given of the 
 character of this young man, it will not excite surprise 
 in my readers to learn that his parents, his friends, and 
 himself entertained the wish of changing his present 
 sphere and prospects in life. So much notice had been 
 taken of him in various ways ; his general capacity and 
 activity were so conspicuous ; and there was something 
 about him so interesting, apart from his eminence as a 
 young musical performer, that it seemed to be almost 
 a defiance of Providence to confine him to the obscure 
 profession of a sedentary mechanic. 
 
 I use not the word ignoble^ nor any other term of dis- 
 paragement or contempt, as applicable to that vocation. 
 I am too sturdy an American for that. Happily, in our 
 country, we have scarcely a conception of what the epi- 
 thet ignoble signifies, except in a purely moral point of 
 view. The aristocratical pride- of Europe accounts for 
 this, by insisting that we are all plebeians together, and of 
 course that distinctions of rank among us are ridiculous. 
 Our own pride, of which we have our full share, accounts 
 for the circumstance on the opposite hypothesis, that we 
 are a nation of high-born noblemen. But this is a poor 
 dispute about names. The truth is, we are neither a 
 nation of noblemen nor plebeians. How can such cor- 
 
 4 
 
38 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 relative terms be applied with any shadow of correct- 
 ness, when the very political relations which they imply 
 do not exist ? It is using a solecism to call Americans 
 plebeians, because to that class belongs the conscious 
 degradation of witnessing above them, in the same body 
 politic, an order of men born to certain privileges of 
 which they are destitute by birth themselves. And for 
 a similar reason, it is equally a solecism to regard our- 
 selves, even metaphorically, as noblemen. 
 
 Why then did Charles Williams and his friends de- 
 sire him to emerge from the calling in which his youth 
 had been passed? O, we Americans have our prefer- 
 ences I We think it an innocent and a convenient thing 
 to draw arbitrary lines of distinction between different 
 pursuits ; otherwise, the circle of one man's acquaint- 
 ance would often be oppressively large. It is a pleas- 
 ant employment, too, to clamber over these distinctions 
 in life. Perhaps there is not a country in the world, 
 where occupations are so often changed as in America. 
 We are restless and proud, and since our civil institu- 
 tions have established no permanent artificial gradations 
 among us, we have devised them ourselves. Yet still it 
 is a matter which we act upon rather than talk about. 
 No American lady would dare to refuse her neighbor's 
 invitation professedly on the score of the other being 
 beneath her in society. Yet her refusal would be as 
 prompt and decided as any lady's in England, towards 
 an inferior in rank. 
 
 I do not wish to analyze too minutely the aristocrati- 
 cal leaven among us. I do not exactly understand its 
 principle of operation myself. Pedigree it certainly is 
 not, though that perhaps is one of its elements. Wealth 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 39 
 
 and education have something to do with it. Different 
 vocations in life have much more. Various degrees of 
 softness and whiteness of the hands are perhaps as 
 good criterions as anything. Certain sets of persons do 
 somehow contrive to obtain an ascendency in every 
 town and village. But in the present state of society in 
 our country, this whole subject is extremely unsettled. 
 The mass is fermenting, and how the process will result 
 eventually, time only can decide. Probably some future 
 court calendar will rank among the first class of Ameri- 
 can citizens all families descended in lines, more or less 
 direct, from former presidents of the nation, heads of 
 departments, governors of States, presidents of colleges. 
 Supreme Court judges, commodores, and general offi- 
 cers. The second class may comprehend the posterity 
 of members of Congress, circuit and state judges, clergy- 
 men, presidents of banks, professors in colleges, captains 
 of national vessels, leaders of choirs, and perhaps some 
 others. I have no curiosity to speculate upon inferior 
 classes, nor to determine any further the order in which 
 far distant dinners shall be approached by eaters yet 
 unborn, or future balls shall be arranged at Washing- 
 ton.* 
 
 It is a difficult thing to say precisely how much my 
 hero was actuated by mere ambition in his wish to 
 change his course of life. I do not think he despised 
 his paternal employment. He had not much reason 
 
 =* The London Quarterly Review (1835), in commenting on some sen- 
 tences in the two paragraphs above, which it had somewhere or other 
 picked up, takes them quite au serieuz, and makes them the occasion 
 of a grave and rather ill-natured attack on the character of American 
 society ! 
 
40 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 himself to complain of the proud man's contumely, in 
 his own native village. But there were two strong rea- 
 sons, besides those before specified, which operated in his 
 father's mind to determine him on the project of dis- 
 missing his son from his present occupation. One was, 
 that he was a very unprofitable apprentice. His passion 
 for his favorite art encroached too largely on his time. 
 A round of visits and frolics, to which his musical and 
 campanionable qualities exposed him, absorbed the lat- 
 ter portion of many an afternoon in preparations of 
 dress, and the former part of many a morning in sleep- 
 ing away the effects of such expeditions. The other 
 reason was, that it seemed to be cruel to confine the 
 lad down to an employment for which he had no in- 
 clination, and even no mechanical aptitude. There 
 was little chance of his ever procuring a generous liveli- 
 hood in that employment, and there were other profes- 
 sions more suited to his excursive and occasionally book- 
 ish disposition. These would have been sufficient rea- 
 sons for his father to make the experiment of some other 
 course of life for his son, more conformable to his taste 
 and character, even if paternal vanity had not whispered 
 into his ear, that his boy was born for very great things 
 yet I 
 
 In New England, before the imposition of the Embargo, 
 and in times of peace, there were two ways of rising very 
 high in the world. The one was, to become the clerk of 
 some wholesale or retail merchant in Boston, and the 
 other, to pass through a college. No aspiring lad through- 
 out the country could think of any other avenue to distinc- 
 tion. Charles Williams was not a lover of money or of 
 trade. He was among the very few youths of his native 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 41 
 
 region, who arrive at the age of thirteen without barter- 
 ing a penknife, or at that of nineteen without cheating or 
 being cheated in the exchange of watches. Accordingly, 
 though he had a distant relative in Boston, who, while 
 yet a minor, had gone four times every year to the mar- 
 ket of that metropolis, with a cart full of such assorted 
 commodities as were produced in his native town, and 
 was now one of the wealthiest merchants on the Ex- 
 change, Charles obstinately shut his eyes to the prospect 
 of entering this gentleman's counting-house. There was 
 something in literary pursuits much more congenial to 
 the taste and habits of his mind. 
 
 With all his follies and eccentricities, he had a warm 
 friend and admirer in the Rev. Mr. Welby, who was for 
 sending every young man of the most ordinary capacity 
 to college, that had a soul sufficiently large even barely 
 to meditate on such a purpose. Not that Mr. Welby's 
 object, exactly, was to swell the list of liberally educated 
 persons belonging to the place where he was settled, 
 whenever he should communicate to the Massachusetts 
 Historical Society the topographical and antiquarian 
 account of the town of Waterfield. The propensity in 
 question rather seemed to be with him a kind of weak- 
 ness, and one, too, with which many of his profession in 
 New England are afflicted. Owing their own impor- 
 tance in life, and their peculiar opportunities for useful- 
 ness, to their collegiate education, they have no idea that 
 any greater blessings under the skies can be conferred 
 on an unmarried man, of whatever talents, and at what- 
 ever age, than causing him to leave the plough or the 
 workshop, and, after a struggle of seven years between 
 the Latin dictionary and despair, to obtain a degree. It 
 
 4=* 
 
42 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 is not surprising, therefore, that the warm-hearted Mr. 
 Welby should offer to become Charles's gratuitous in- 
 structor in preparing him for college, — an offer which 
 was gratefully accepted. 
 
 Although our hero was far from being so apt a schol- 
 ar in the niceties of the Greek and Latin tongues, as we 
 have already seen him in the science of music, yet the 
 novelty and dignity of the pursuits which he had now 
 adopted, the definite object proposed for him to accom- 
 plish, and the shame of abandoning his aim in defeat, 
 unitedly prompted him to undergo one or two years of 
 pretty severe application to study. During this time he 
 was still a leader of the village choir, though I cannot 
 say that the partial change in his private life and habits 
 operated in correcting many of those reprehensible char- 
 acteristics which I have before lamented as derogatory 
 to our singing-pew.* And although we had been long 
 taught to anticipate his departure, yet words can scarce- 
 ly represent the sorrow and dismay with which we bade 
 him farewell on the Sabbath before his setting off" for 
 Dartmouth College. 
 
 On the next morning at daybreak, a few of us were 
 at his father's threshold to shake hands with him once 
 more. He had already breakfasted, and had mounted 
 the horse which was purchased for the occasion, to be 
 disposed of again, on the best terms possible, when he 
 
 ^ I had some thoughts of describing a few of the effects which Charles's 
 new mode of life, and new topics of consciousness and aspiration, pro- 
 duced on his behavior in private company; but the sketch might clash 
 a little with a picture of a young farmer fitting for college, which now 
 lies by me in an unfinished manuscript history of a country academy in New 
 England, and which may possibly hereafter be presented to the public. 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 43 
 
 should have entered college. A huge pair of saddlebags, 
 the heirloom of his family for several generations, hung 
 across the horse behind, and contained some changes of 
 wearing-apparel, together with his books, and various 
 articles of pastry for the road, which he owed to the care 
 of his sisters, and some of their female friends. He had 
 already repeated his salutations to his moist-eyed fam- 
 ily and acquaintances, and was holding the reins in his 
 left hand ready to start, when, at a signal from him, I 
 reached him his bass-viol, enclosed in a large leathern 
 case made by his good father for the purpose. He re- 
 ceived it in his trembling right hand with a look, gleam- 
 ing through his agitated countenance, which seemed to 
 say, I leave not every friend behind, — and spurred off 
 his horse up the margin of the river. 
 
 " And who was the next leader of the choir ? " is a 
 question, which, (may I humbly hope?) these memoirs 
 have excited sufficient interest for my susceptible readers 
 to propose. With great diffidence I am persuaded to 
 answer, that it was their humble servant. Who or what 
 I am, separately from my once having discharged the 
 honorable function just mentioned, it is of no sort of 
 consequence to know, and it is clear from my anon- 
 ymous title-page, that I do not think the knowledge 
 would contribute to the eclat of my humble production. 
 If any lines in the following portrait of myself appear to 
 be favorably drawn, let not vanity be ascribed to the act, 
 while I seek to hide the original, and even his very name, 
 from the public gaze.* 
 
 ^The Village Choir, in former editions, was published anonymously. 
 There were no real grounds, therefore, to ascribe to the author the in- 
 cidents and attributes enumerated in the text. In fact, he never was the 
 
44 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 Previously to the departure of my friend Charles Wil- 
 liams, I had acted as player of clarionet to the choir; 
 not, I fear, always with the greatest reputation ; for I 
 scarcely remember a Sunday of my performance, when 
 my instrument did not at least once through the day 
 betray itself into a hideous squeak, as involuntary on my 
 part as if there had been a little evil spirit within the 
 tube, sent there to tempt and torment me. At these 
 agonizing moments, I would cast one glance at the 
 countenance of Charles Williams, and, finding that there 
 was in that image of native civility no mark of fretful 
 reprehension or of tittering infirmity, I proceeded in my 
 part; — nor do I know how I discovered that my fellow- 
 singers were not quite so composed as their leader, unless 
 it were, that while, from alarm and mortification, my face 
 was reddening, and my perspiration flowing, my eyes 
 were enlarged from the same cause, and thus extended 
 the sphere of their lateral vision. But I am no optician, 
 and hazard nothing on this point beyond conjecture. I 
 believe it was instinct that prevented me, on such oc- 
 casions, from seeing so far as into the adjoining pew. 
 There was one face there, on which, if I had ever seen 
 a smile approaching to derision, I know that it would 
 have broken my heart. 
 
 But if I do not deceive myself, the squeak in my clari- 
 onet was the only ridiculous thing about me, and was 
 probably but the more amusing from its striking con- 
 trast to the general gravity of my deportment. On 
 aying aside, therefore, this instrument of my little dis- 
 
 leader of a choir in his life, nor ever played on the clarionet, and only intro- 
 duced his nominis umbra to enlarge the dynasty of his choristers, and to 
 complete the varied and veritable history of a Village Choir. 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 45 
 
 graces, which was a necessary step towards my lead- 
 ing the choir with effect and energy, I trust I had no 
 enormous disqualifications for the office. The authority 
 of Charles had been sustained solely by his transcendent 
 musical talents ; mine, I felt, was to be preserved by the 
 most exemplary demeanor, and an assiduous attention to 
 my duty. I could only boast of a mediocrity in musical 
 knowledge and vocal execution. If I was far below 
 my predecessor in accomplishments requisite for the 
 office, I at least avoided the mistakes into which Mr. 
 Harrington had been often plunged. Until a calamitous 
 concurrence of circumstances, soon to be rehearsed, not 
 an individual, I think, left the choir during my admin- 
 istration, with the exception of those whom death or 
 removal out of town subtracted from our number. I 
 loved the office, for it gave me a little importance, and 
 I was, at that time, of no great account in the parish in 
 other respects. Besides, I was extremely attached to 
 public worship, and to all its hallowed decencies, think- 
 ing it an honor to exercise the superintendence over so 
 important a department as that assigned to me. With 
 regard to punctuality at meeting, (for so we all call 
 church in New England,) the minister himself never 
 outstripped me in that particular. He has more than 
 once, on a stormy day, without commencing service, 
 dismissed my single self, together with one other parish- 
 ioner, who appeared at meeting only in such weather, 
 and came then, as he whimsically alleged, to fill up; 
 and often, on some of our terribly cold and snowy Sun- 
 days, when seven or eight worshippers in leggins* would 
 
 * A sort of cloth boot used to protect the legs against snow. 
 
46 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 well-nigh drown the preacher's voice with the prodigious 
 knocking and stamping of their feet, I was found alone 
 at my post in the singing-gallery, suffering in perfect 
 silence the agony of my frost-bitten extremities, and 
 permitting my attention to be no farther diverted from 
 Mr. Welby, than now and then in watching the dense 
 volumes of congealed vapor, that were breathed out 
 from a few scattered pews in the almost vacant edifice. 
 So far as I can impartially judge, I was one of the 
 most peaceable and unpretending of men. I gave out 
 always, without the least hesitation, whatever tune was 
 suggested to me by any individual in the choir, sacrific- 
 ing with pleasure my own little preferences, and what 
 is more, the pride of authority, to the gratification of 
 others. Perhaps the general manners of the choir were 
 improved during my precentorship. Let me with mod- 
 esty say, and with deference to the shade of my dear 
 friend Charles, who is now no more, that my own 
 example probably contributed to some slight amend- 
 ment in our body after his departure. I had long since 
 formed a secret resolution in my breast, that no old 
 man in the congregation should be more attentive to 
 the services than myself, and I carried it into effect. 
 This naturally influenced a few of my immediate com- 
 panions to adopt a similar deportment ; and the good 
 order of the rest of the choir suffered at most only a 
 negative violation, from the sleep of some, and the stud- 
 ies of others, who preferred looking over the tunes of the 
 Village Harmony, or reading the everlasting Elegy on 
 Sophronia,* or amusing themselves with the inscriptions 
 
 * This Elegy was set to music by I know not whom, and continued to be 
 inserted in some dozen editions of the Village Harmony. 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 47 
 
 of their late leader, to receiving the benefits which might 
 have been derived from Mr. Welby's excellent sermons. 
 
 After a year had glided away very nearly in this man- 
 ner, some sensation was produced in the choir and con- 
 gregation, and, ultimately, some distm*bance occasioned 
 to my own peace and happiness, by the addition of a 
 gentleman to our number, who, on several accounts, had 
 no small pretensions. He was the preceptor of an acad- 
 emy, situated, if I recollect right, not more than ten miles 
 from the town of Waterfield. He was paying his ad- 
 dresses to a young lady of this last-mentioned place, and 
 therefore seized on the opportunities which a remission 
 of his duties every Saturday afternoon allowed him, to 
 visit the object of his affections. The Sabbath, of course, 
 was spent by him in our village, and, as he was a pro- 
 fessed admirer and performer of sacred music, and was 
 a gentleman of liberal education, genteel though forward 
 manners, and a superior style of dress for a country town, 
 he w^as soon introduced into the singing-pew, and with- 
 out the least difficulty found a seat at my left hand. 
 Being blest with a happy degree of modest assurance, it 
 did not require a second invitation for him to assume 
 habitually the same place afterwards, as a matter of 
 course. 
 
 On the very first Sabbath that he joined us, he started 
 me a little by requesting that Old Hundred might be 
 sung to a psalm which the minister had just begun to 
 read. I told him that I should be very glad to oblige 
 him by announcing that tune to the choir, but the truth 
 was, it had not been performed in our meeting-house 
 probably for thirty years; — that there were but four or 
 five singers who were acquainted with it, being such only 
 
48 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 as had chanced to hear it sung at home by their fathers 
 or grandfathers, and that those few had only practised it 
 once or twice together and in private, from mere curi- 
 osity to ascertain how so celebrated a piece of musical 
 antiquity would sound. 
 
 " O, if there are four or five," replied Mr. Forehead, 
 (the name of my lofty new acquaintance,) " who know 
 anything of Old Hundred, by all means let us have it. 
 I beg it, sir, as a particular favor, and will give you my 
 reasons for the request after service." 
 
 My prevailing disposition to oblige, and the great 
 quantity of time already consumed in our conversation, 
 imposed upon me now the necessity of pronouncing 
 aloud, as was usual just before beginning to sing, the 
 name of this venerable air. No sooner had the word 
 proceeded from my mouth, than there appeared to be a 
 motion of keen curiosity among the congregation below, 
 but in the choir around me there reigned the stillness of 
 incredulity and surprise. All the elder members of the 
 flock, I could observe, looked upwards to the gallery, 
 with the gleams of pleasurable expectation in their 
 countenances. Of our well-filled orchestra, only eight 
 individuals arose, for there were no more among us who 
 possessed the least acquaintance with Old Hundred. 
 And even three out of that number were as ignorant of 
 it as those who continued seated, but ventured to expose 
 themselves, trusting to the assistance they might derive 
 from the voices of the other performers, and from the 
 score of the tune itself, contained in some, though I think 
 not in all, of the copies of the Village Harmony which 
 were present. 
 
 The psalm was sung with tolerable correctness ; but 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 49 
 
 accompanied with such a fanning on the part of the 
 females, who were all sitting, and such a whispering 
 among those of the correlative sex who were unem- 
 ployed, that I could bode nothing but disturbance and 
 unhappiness for a long time to come in our choral circle. 
 
 During the reading of the next psalm, while Mr. Fore- 
 head was alarming me with a recommendation to sing 
 St. Martin's, four stout acquaintances of my own pressed 
 forward and whispered with an earnestness that carried 
 the sound over every part of the edifice, " Sing New 
 Jerusalem I " New Jerusalem, therefore, I appointed to 
 be sung, and thus prevented, as I make no sort of ques- 
 tion, more than three quarters of the singers from leaving 
 their seats vacant in the afternoon. 
 
 At the close of the morning service, I had the prom- 
 ised interview and explanation with my new acquaint- 
 ance. It seems that since leaving college he had been 
 reading law for a year in an office at one of our seaport 
 towns, and while there had occasionally assisted in the 
 choir of some congregation, into which had been intro- 
 duced a new and purer taste for sacred music than gen- 
 erally prevailed through the rest of the country. In that 
 choir, as he informed me, no tunes of American origin 
 were ever permitted to gain entrance. Fugues there 
 were a loathing and detestation. None but the slow, 
 grand, and simple airs which our forefathers sang found 
 any indulgence. Mr. Forehead assured me that no other 
 music w^as worth hearing, and wiiat seemed to weigh 
 particularly with him was the circumstance, that the 
 slow music in question was beginning to be in the 
 fashion. It was under the operation of these ideas that 
 he had been so strenuous in forcing upon our choir the 
 
 5 
 
50 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 performance of Old Hundred and St. Martin's, in defi- 
 ance of our helpless ignorance of both of them. 
 
 It appeared to me that his zeal on this point was car- 
 rying him too far; I saw in his aims quite as strong 
 workings of a conscious superiority in taste and of the 
 fastidious arrogance of fashion, as a love for genuine 
 and appropriate music. I could not but question, too, 
 the propriety of suddenly and violently forcing upon a 
 choir and congregation a species of music to which they 
 were entirely unaccustomed. It occurred to me, besides, 
 that though the most slow and solemn tunes might be 
 executed with good effect when sustained by the accom- 
 paniment of an organ, yet it was scarcely judicious to 
 confine the whole music of a vocal choir entirely or even 
 principally to that kind alone. But all these suggestions 
 were of no avail in convincing my opponent, and we 
 parted with not the kindest opinions and feelings re- 
 specting each other. 
 
 In the course of a month, Mr. Forehead's argument, 
 persuasion, and example wrought in a large portion of 
 the choir a very considerable change of taste on this sub- 
 ject. There were some who loved novelty; there were 
 others who yielded to the stranger's assurances respect- 
 ing the fashionableness of the thing; and there was a 
 third description, who were really convinced of the better 
 adaptation of the ancient tunes to the purposes of wor- 
 ship, and had a taste to enjoy their solemn and beautiful 
 strains. All these classes composed perhaps about a 
 moiety of the choir, and were eager for the introduction 
 of the good old music. The other half were extremely 
 obstinate and almost bigoted in their opposition to this 
 measure, and in their attachment to the existing cata- 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 51 
 
 • 
 
 logue of tunes. Disputes now ran high amongst us. 
 Most of us took sides on the question with an inexcusa- 
 ble warmth, and without any attempt at compromise. 
 
 I know of nothing more unconquerable and spiteful 
 than the bickerings of a divided choir while they last. 
 In addition to all the ordinary exacerbations of party 
 spirit, there is a most unpardonable offence committed 
 by each side in suspecting the good taste of the other. 
 Thus vanity is wounded to its deepest core, and con- 
 science and conviction are fretted into a fierce perse- 
 verance, which is not at all diminished by the circum- 
 stance, that the parties must sit, act, and sing in the 
 closest contact, and almost breathe into each other's 
 faces. 
 
 In the midst of this unhappy musical commotion, 
 there was one individual who had the good fortune to 
 remain thus far entirely neuter. It was, reader, the 
 humble historian of these transactions, — the afflicted 
 leader of that agitated band. I had long wished, to- 
 gether with my friend Charles Williams, that a better 
 style of music might prevail among us. But we felt 
 that w^e had neither skill nor authority to effect the ex- 
 change. If the tares should be torn up, we knew that 
 the wheat would be liable to come with them. My pri- 
 vate opinion, as well as general disposition, led me, there- 
 fore, to be as quiescent as possible amid the difficulties 
 now existing. I did not, as I believe, escape all censure 
 from either party, but I received no bitter treatment from 
 any one. Due deference and acknowledgment still con- 
 tinued for some time to be paid me as leader, except 
 perhaps from the pragmatical stranger. But no efforts 
 or prudence on my part could prevent the explosion 
 which was ultimately to ensue. 
 
52 THE VILLAGE CHOIP. 
 
 When it was found that Mr. Forehead had sufficient 
 influence to introduce a few of his favorite tunes on the 
 settled and customary catalogue, and that the matter 
 had proceeded to something more than a simple experi- 
 ment, the admirers of fugues looked upon themselves as 
 a beaten party, and took occasion, when two of the ob- 
 noxious airs had happened to be given out by me on one 
 Sunday morning, to absent themselves altogether from 
 worship in the afternoon. My feelings in this predica- 
 ment are not to be described. I regarded myself as a 
 principal cause of this deplorable feud, and lamented 
 that I had not had sufficient strength of mind to resist 
 the encroachments of the active gentleman at my left 
 hand. But the standard was now raised, and war was 
 declared. I felt that it would be ignominious to quit 
 my post. I gave up for a time my arguments with Mr. 
 Forehead on the propriety of singing slow tunes alto- 
 gether. No attempts were made to effect a reconcilia- 
 tion and return of the absenting party. It was resolved 
 among those who remained behind, to perform no other 
 music than such as we deemed the most genuine, and 
 an express was sent off by the first opportunity to pur- 
 chase thirty copies of the lately published ******* Col- 
 lection. 
 
 In the mean time, however, the controversy had de- 
 scended to the congregation. As long as the choir had 
 kept together on terms of seeming decency, it was hardly 
 to be expected that the audience at large would take 
 part in our little animosities. The parish would never 
 have undertaken to control a whole choir, if that choir 
 would have united in any species of music, however con- 
 trary to the tastes and habits of those who bore no share 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 53 
 
 in its performance. But when it was found that our 
 little vocal commonwealth had been rent asunder, and 
 that so large a division of rnalecontents had retired in 
 indignation to a Sacred Mount, the sympathies of broth- 
 ers, sisters, parents, and friends were at once excited, 
 and musical predilections were enlisted along with the 
 ties of nature to swell the threatening dissatisfaction. 
 For several Sundays I remained firm, supported as I 
 was by all the ostentatious influence and patronage of 
 Mr. Forehead, and the zealous co-operation of his par- 
 tisans. We persisted every Sabbath in singing these 
 five tunes. Old Hundred, St. Martin's, Mear, Bath, and 
 Little Marlborough, unless the minister varied his metres 
 from that standard ; and even then we were prepared with 
 tunes of a similar class. By these means we hoped to 
 awaken a better taste among those of the congregation 
 who were averse to our new style, and eventually to re- 
 call a majority of the dissidents, who we trusted would 
 become convinced of the excellence of our improvements, 
 and gradually return to partake of the honor and pleasure 
 attached to them. 
 
 But our expectations were disappointed. Our triumph 
 had a date of only about three months, and was even 
 waning while it lasted. We could not force the likings 
 of a prejudiced, and, in some respects, exasperated con- 
 gregation. The singing in the meeting-house was the 
 constant topic of every private conversation. All possi- 
 ble ridicule and contempt were thrown out against each 
 of the respective styles in question. All sorts of argu- 
 ments were used, that reason, or passion, or prejudice, 
 could devise. Till at length, I verily believe, our incli- 
 nations became so perverted by the mere operation of 
 
 5* 
 
54 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 party feeling, that many of us hated and despised the 
 venerable air of Old Hundred with as much heartiness 
 as they did the toad that crossed their path at twilight, 
 while others regarded the generally very innocent tune of 
 Northfield with the same abhorrence that we bestowed 
 on a snake. Unfortunately for the better side of the ar- 
 gument at this time, the attachment to a rapid, fuguing, 
 animated style of singing was too deeply and exten- 
 sively seated in the affections of the people of Water- 
 field, to be eradicated by the impotent perseverance of 
 our diminished choir. Pew after pew became deserted, 
 until we found that we were singing, and Mr. Welby 
 preaching, to almost naked walls. The hoary head was 
 still there, for it loved to listen to the strains which had 
 nourished the piety of its youth. A few families of 
 fashionable pretensions encouraged us, for there was 
 something aristocratical in the superior taste of our 
 newly introduced music, and something modish in its 
 reputation. Nothing but the strongest religious feelings 
 induced a few other scattered individuals to appear at 
 meeting, and it was but too evident that full three quar- 
 ters of the usual attendants remained at home. 
 
 This spectacle produced the deepest effect on my 
 mind. I had a sufficient sense of the blessings of public 
 worship to feel and know that they must not be sacri- 
 ficed to a mere point of musical taste. I was therefore 
 perfectly willing to resign all my biases for the sake of 
 seeing our beloved meeting-house again filled with its 
 motley throngs, and of feeling the delicious, though per- 
 haps imaginary, coolness excited by the agitations of 
 several hundred fans, — those busy little agents, so lively, 
 so glancing, yet so silent, — and of hearing the full thun- 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 55 
 
 der of all the seats as they were slammed down after 
 prayer, though Mr. Welby had frequently remonstrated 
 with earnestness against it, — but, much to my satisfac- 
 tion, remonstrated in vain, for I scarcely know many 
 sounds more grateful to my ear than this. Whether it 
 is, that it is connected with the idea of a full congre- 
 gation, which I always loved, or with the close of the 
 prayer, which in early youth I thought insufferably long, 
 or whether it was originally a most agreeable diversifi- 
 cation of the inaction and monotony of church hours, I 
 cannot tell ; but something has w^onderfully attached me 
 to the noise of a thousand falling seats. And this at- 
 tachment you will find very general in New England. 
 Many a minister there will tell you that his attempts to 
 correct the supposed evil have always been ineffectual ; 
 and if you are riding through the land on a summer 
 Sabbath, you may observe that, long before you are in 
 sight of the meeting-house, your starting horse and 
 saluted ear will give decided testimony to the clergy- 
 man's complaint, while all the wakened echoes round will 
 inform you that, if you spur forward for a half-mile or 
 more, you will be in season to hear a good portion of the 
 sermon, though you have lost the prayer.* 
 
 ^ This passage must indeed be regarded as a record of times and habits 
 that have past. For not only has the nuisance of doAvn-slamming seats 
 been replaced by more quiet and decorous fixtures, but the very posture of 
 the worshippers in prayer has been almost universally exchanged from a 
 standing to a sitting one. Few instances of a change of manners in the 
 course of a single generation are more remarkable than this. Had it been 
 predicted, in the time of the author's youth, that in thirty or forty years a 
 majority of the congregations in New England would sit during prayer, and 
 that too with the cordial assent of the clergymen and the most pious among 
 their hearers, the prediction would have been received with a smile, if not a 
 
56 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 I was unable any longer to endure the destitute ap- 
 pearance of the meeting-house, and having consulted 
 with Mr. Wei by, who advised me to make whatever 
 sacrifices I could for the restoration of peace, I caused it 
 to be circulated one day in the village, that on the fol- 
 lowing Sabbath I should return to the kind of music 
 which had lately been abandoned. The necessity for 
 this measure was the more pressing, as I heard it mur- 
 mured that a town-meeting was soon to be called for the 
 purpose of securing a mode of singing which should be 
 agreeable to a great majority of the parish. 
 
 My present associates and supporters, indeed, almost 
 to a man, took umbrage at my determination ; and were 
 not seen in public when the Sabbath came. But I was 
 surrounded by all the choristers of the other party, and 
 the meeting-house was crowded, and the down-falling 
 seats rebellowed again to my delighted ear. 
 
 And now for several weeks was the full-breathing 
 triumph of the lovers of crotchets and quavers over the 
 votaries of minims and semibreves. The latter faction 
 sullenly absented themselves from the singing-pew, and 
 generally from worship, while the former revelled amid 
 the labyrinths of fugues, believing, to their own happi- 
 ness, certainly, the order of consecutive parts to be the 
 sweetest of melodies, and the recurrence of consecutive 
 fifths the most delightful of harmonies. In place of the 
 list of ancient tunes above enumerated, were now sub- 
 
 shudder of incredulous horror. If believed, it would have been considered 
 as indicative of an approaching and lamentable decline of piety. The facil- 
 ity with which the change has taken place, wears an encouraging aspect for 
 the lovers of reform, who may be anxiously awaiting far more important 
 movements in society. 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 57 
 
 stituted Russia, Northfield, the Forty-Sixth Psalm, New- 
 Jerusalem, and others of the same mint. The name of 
 Billings was a sufficient passport of recommendation to 
 any air that was mentioned, while that of Williams or 
 of Tansur was sure to condemn it to neglect. We were 
 encouraged by the looks and voices of all those members 
 of the congregation who w^ere beneath fifty years of age ; 
 or if any such declined to accompany us either with a 
 hum or an articulated modulation, they perhaps testified 
 their satisfaction by the visible beating of a hand, whose 
 arm lay along the top of a pew. 
 
 But this was to me only a silver age, compared with 
 the golden reign of Charles Williams. I felt that my 
 taste had become much confirmed and purified by my 
 recent study and practice of a better style of church 
 music, and I could therefore the less easily tolerate that 
 which I was compelled now to support. By far the bet- 
 ter half of the choir, also, in point of musical skill and 
 execution, refrained from renewing their services, and I 
 w^as distressed to know what methods I could adopt to 
 allure them back. Even my rival and annoyer, Mr. 
 Forehead, I should have been glad to welcome again at 
 my left hand. His voice had both power and sweetness, 
 and perhaps the only defect in his mode of performing 
 was his perpetual attempt at ornament and trilling, a 
 defect still further enhanced by the circumstance, that, 
 instead of trilling with his tongue, he always attempted 
 that accomplishment with his lips alone, being the veri- 
 table original by whom the well-known unhappy change 
 was made upon the word bow in the following distich : 
 
 " With reverence let the saints appear, 
 And bow before the Lord." 
 
58 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 Nevertheless, I was perfectly willing and desirous to 
 enter into a negotiation with him and his party, for the 
 purpose of procuring, if possible, some mutual compro- 
 mise and reconciliation, and filling up again the comple- 
 ment of the choir. 
 
 But this was an attempt of no little delicacy and dif- 
 ficulty. The exasperation of both parties was too recent 
 and too sore, immediately to admit of an amicable per- 
 sonal union, or to allow the expectation that either side 
 would endure the favorite music of the other. Time, 
 however, which effects such mighty revolutions in the 
 affairs of empires, condescends also to work the most 
 important changes in the aspect of humble villages, and 
 still humbler choirs. 
 
 It is the office of this unpretending narrative to record 
 the mutations to which one of the last-mentioned com- 
 munities is exposed in New England. Whether the 
 train of incidents here exhibited be a specimen of what 
 occurs to many other choirs within the same region, my 
 experience does not enable me to decide. Many of my 
 readers, however, will probably recognize, in these me- 
 moirs of a single collection of singers, several features 
 common to all others. 
 
 I have often thought that such communities are a kind 
 of arena for the exhibition of some peculiar and specific 
 human infirmities. Every new combination of our social 
 nature, indeed, seems to produce some new results, in 
 the same manner as each species of vegetables nourishes 
 its peculiar tribe of animalcules. I take it that our Na- 
 tional Congress elicits from its component members cer- 
 tain specific virtues and vices, and certain modifications 
 of feeling, passion, and talent, denied to us mere readers 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 59 
 
 of newspapers at home. Where but on the floor of the 
 American Capitol would the peculiarities of a certain 
 member's sarcasm, and of another member's sublime 
 statesmanship, be generated and developed?* So in a 
 church choir, there somehow arise certain shades of freaks, 
 certain starts of passion, certain species of whim, certain 
 modes of folly, and let me humbly suggest, also, certain 
 descriptions of virtue, to be found exactly in no other 
 specimens throughout the moral kingdom of man. 
 
 May I fondly hope, that these desultory delineations, 
 intermingled though they are with intrusive speculations, 
 and superficial efforts at philosophizing, may at least 
 prove, corrective of kindred effects, if such anyw^here 
 exist, with those which are here exposed? A mirror 
 sometimes shocks the child out of a passion of whose 
 deformity he could not be convinced except by its dis- 
 gusting effects on his own face. And if the perusal of 
 these pages, which have been too carelessly thrown to- 
 gether, in order to indulge some juvenile recollections, 
 and to soothe some painful, heavy hours, be instru- 
 mental in correcting any imperfections to which our 
 church choirs are liable, I shall feel more than repaid for 
 my anxiety in undertaking the perilous enterprise of au- 
 thorship. But let us be moving forward. 
 
 In a very few months, negotiations were entered into 
 with the body of the other party, of whom some half- 
 dozen individuals of the least zealous had from time to 
 time returned, and given in their adhesion to the ruling 
 powers. The truth was, that, on our part, we felt ex- 
 
 * These allusions to Randolph and Webster were perhaps more readily 
 perceived at the first publication of the work, than they may be at this dis- 
 tance of time. 
 
60 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 tremely the want of instrumental music, and a few ex- 
 cellent voices on the treble. After Charles Williams 
 had left us, a tolerable bass-viol was played by an elder- 
 ly storekeeper, a bachelor, who had formerly assisted the 
 choir for several years with that instrument, but had re- 
 signed it as soon as Charles became prepared to supply 
 his place. This gentleman with his clerk, who played a 
 fine flute, had participated in the dudgeon of the lovers 
 of ancient melody. But nearly all of them now wished 
 to return, conscious, undoubtedly, of the improvement 
 which it was truly in their power to contribute to our 
 performances, and unwilling that their talents should 
 any longer be hidden in a napkin. 
 
 The terms of reconciliation and reunion were settled 
 in the following manner. As our performances were 
 required regularly five times on a Sabbath, it was agreed 
 that the arrangement of tunes throughout the day should 
 be two fugues, two of the slow ancient airs, and one of 
 a different description from either. Neither party could 
 well object to airs of a rapid and animated movement, 
 in which all the parts continued uninterruptedly to the 
 close, as is the case with Wells, Windham, Virginia, 
 and many others. Another class of tunes also were 
 very general favorites, though they avoided both ex- 
 tremes that were the bones of contention among us. I 
 allude to those in which the third line is a duet between 
 the bass and treble, of which St. Sebastian's is a well- 
 known beautiful instance. 
 
 For some time, we proceeded together in this new 
 arrangement with as little interruption as could be well 
 expected from existing circumstances. A very few of 
 the most obstinate and paltry-minded, of each side, held 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 61 
 
 out, indeed, for longer or shorter periods, and one or two 
 perhaps never returned till a grand revolution of the 
 whole corps, to be described hereafter, should our his- 
 tory ever reach a second part. For several Sundays, 
 also, four or five Guelphs would contemptuously sit in 
 perfect silence during the singing of the Ghibeline tunes, 
 and as many Ghibelines would return the compliment 
 during the singing of the Guelph tunes. And even 
 when they were compelled to abandon such indecent 
 deportment by the censures to which it exposed them, 
 to my certain knowledge they were silent while stand- 
 ing up with the choir, or moved their lips in a whisper, 
 or sang so very low as to give no sort of assistance to 
 the rest. 
 
 However, these little factious symptoms gradually 
 disappeared, and I had at length the happiness of find- 
 ing myself at the head of my musical flock, with the 
 embers of former grievances well-nigh asleep, and with 
 a decided advantage gained in our taste and selection 
 of tunes. But what struggles and dangers had been in- 
 curred in order to arrive at this improved condition ! I 
 can resort to no illustration of these events more apt 
 than the kingdom of France, which, as some imagine, 
 derives a faint compensation for the horrors of the revo- 
 lution, from the amendments effected in some of its 
 circumstances and institutions, that neither despotism 
 nor superstition can in future hope to wipe away. 
 
 Yet, amidst these various concussions, it will not be 
 surprising that my own authority should have been com- 
 pletely undermined. It is scarce supposable that I could 
 be a very decided favorite with either of the parties who 
 had frowned so awfully upon each other, since I had in 
 
62 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 a manner sided with both of them. Although, therefore, 
 I was most scrupulously impartial in selecting such de- 
 scriptions of tunes as exactly conformed to the terms of 
 the treaty, yet there was not a member of the choir 
 whose friendship was sufficiently zealous to join me in re- 
 sisting the new encroachments of Mr. Forehead. While 
 that gentleman confined himself to a general selection 
 equally impartial with mine, not a spectator thought of 
 murmuring, when he suggested, as he constantly did, 
 this and that particular tune for any given psalm or 
 hymn ; and suggested it, too, with such an air of certain- 
 ty and confidence, that I was not the man to hold up 
 my head, and say at a single glance, " Sir, I am on my 
 own ground here." When he found that his sugges- 
 tions were in this way constantly adopted, it was an 
 easy and natural transition for him next to whisper 
 round of his own accord, to the few who sat near him, 
 the name of the tune to be sung, and to whisper it also 
 to me with the same nonchalance, that I might proclaim 
 it to the choir as usual. And then, with as much ease 
 and as calm a face as Napoleon wore when he stepped 
 from the consular chair to the imperial throne, it only 
 remained for him to assume the precentorship at once, 
 by uttering aloud one Sunday, to my amazement, the 
 name of the first tune in the morning, and continuing 
 the practice from that moment until his departure from 
 the choir and the neighborhood. 
 
 Thus, my own occupation was gone. On the after- 
 noon of the morning just mentioned, I entered the sing- 
 ing-pew and took my seat at some distance from the 
 post of honor, which I felt was no longer mine. It was 
 of no use to appeal to the members of the choir in my 
 
 4 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 63 
 
 defence. I had suffered encroachment after encroach- 
 ment to be gradually made upon my authority, until the 
 last act of usurpation was scarcely perceptible. I knew 
 that I could have no enthusiastic supporters of my 
 rights. I had not one personal qualification by which to 
 balance the imposing and overbearing accomplishments 
 of my competitor. I dare say all the choir and all the 
 congregation thought him the best leader, as I confess, 
 on the whole, he was. Probably the precise circum- 
 stances under which the exchange was made were not 
 discerned by many among them. Perhaps they might 
 have supposed, that my resignation and transfer of the 
 pitch-pipe were voluntary. Indeed, I half hope they did 
 suppose so. But no, — I am willing they should have 
 known the whole truth. But let the matter rest. It is 
 an era in my biography which I do not like to contem- 
 plate. 
 
 I am not ashamed, however, that I continued in the 
 choir. I am certain it was not meanness which kept 
 me there, though some at first sight may so interpret it. 
 It was a struggle between pride and duty, in which duty 
 won the victory, — and though pride had indignation 
 for its ally, yet my devoted and disinterested love for 
 those singing-seats came up to the assistance of duty, 
 and decided the contest. 
 
 Besides, why should I desert those seats ? Should I 
 have felt happier, could I have concealed my morti- 
 fication better, by sitting with the family below? By 
 no means. I might as well remain where I was, and bury 
 my feelings in the flood of sound with which my own 
 tremulous voice was mingled. 
 
 For I considered, that it was always my peculiar lot, 
 
64 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 wherever I was, and whatever I did, to have some mor- 
 tification or other on my hands, or, I would say, on my 
 heart. The squeak of my clarionet was but an epitome 
 of a certain note that has occasionally grated the whole 
 tenor of my fortune and life. I had a disaffected mother- 
 in-law. My schoolmaster was partial tq my rival. I 
 was bound an apprentice to an uncongenial employ- 
 ment, which I could not abandon until I was free. I 
 was once jilted. How I was superseded in the choir, 
 has been seen above. I always try to do my best, but am 
 liable to overdo. I have been disinterested and generous 
 to my friends, till I have spoiled them, and they have 
 sometimes become my foes from expecting more than I 
 could or ought to perform. The same out-of-the-way 
 note, I acknowledge, attaches itself to most of my com- 
 positions. I have written some things in these very 
 pages of a kin with that portentous strain of my instru- 
 ment; but I could not help it; and I expect that, with 
 some praises that may be vouchsafed to this pro- 
 duction, other things will be said of it that will cut 
 me to the very heart. But I will try to be prepared for 
 them. 
 
 And now, reader, you may in some measure under- 
 stand how I could endure to haunt, like a ghost, the 
 scene of my former triumphs. Kemember, however, that 
 I met no scorn on the occasion. Not a soul was there, 
 who would not have regretted my absence. A gentle 
 and quiet exchange of leaders had been effected, and 
 there the matter rested in every mind. The most di- 
 rect way by which I could have caused it to redound 
 to my ill-reputation and discomfort would have been 
 to make a stir about it. Prudence, therefore, if noth- 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 65 
 
 ing else, might whisper to me the proper course to be 
 pursued. 
 
 Thus a fifth leader of the choir at Waterfield is duly 
 and regularly recorded on these veracious armals. His 
 reign, like that of his predecessor, was stormy and un- 
 fortunate. For some weeks, Mr. Forehead adhered in- 
 violably to the articles of union touching the selection of 
 particular kinds of music. But it is the natural ten- 
 dency of usurped power, when thus easily acquired, 
 to produce security, audacity, encroachment, downfall. 
 The precentor's partialities at length began to burst out, 
 and occasional small violations of the treaty were hazard- 
 ed with impunity. But when he attempted to advance 
 farther, and one whole Sunday passed without the as- 
 signment of a single fugue to wake up the indifferent 
 congregation, an alarm was taken by the lovers of that 
 species of melody. A repetition of former disturbances 
 and irritations was threatened. Some of the choir took 
 no part in the performance ; some absolutely left the 
 seats for neighboring pews, and a convulsion was on the 
 eve of again breaking us in pieces. 
 
 The amiable Mr. Welby perceived the indications of 
 an approaching storm. He devoted himself, therefore, 
 the ensuing week, to the preparation of a discourse, 
 which he hoped might check the evil in its commence- 
 ment. Meanwhile, however, the difficulty was provided 
 for in another way. A deputation had called on the 
 existing leader that very evening, and, making the 
 strongest representations of the dissatisfaction which 
 would certainly prevail, if he should continue the course 
 of administration to which he was inclined, extorted 
 from him a promise that he would immediately return 
 
 6* 
 
66 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 to the recent arrangement which had so well secured the 
 harmony of the choir, and the complacency of the con- 
 gregation. 
 
 Bat Mr. Welby knew nothing of the happy turn that 
 affairs had thus assumed, and the members of the choir, 
 on their part, knew nothing of the benevolent officious- 
 ness that was prompting the labors of his study. Even 
 had he been aware that a reconciliation had taken place, 
 it is probable that he would still have interwoven into 
 his next discourse some gentle persuasives to mutual 
 kindness. His utter ignorance, however, of that happy 
 occurrence, caused his sermon in some places to wear 
 an aspect of unnecessary pointedness and severity. Al- 
 though it contained but one explicit allusion to the 
 choir, yet it unfortunately was calculated with exquisite 
 skill to meet precisely such a state of excitement as 
 there was every reason to suppose the singers would by 
 this time be wrought up to. But what was meant for 
 exhortation, was now felt as reproach ; the more tender 
 and soothing the preacher's language, the more it seemed 
 like oil descending on the flames. The whole choir had 
 come together that morning in a state of jealous irrita- 
 bility; they were ready to break out somewhere; the 
 terms of the last Sunday evening's engagement guarded 
 them from waging battle with each other; the one party 
 were moody and disappointed, the other felt injured and 
 suspicious ; " and now to be held up to the congrega- 
 tion, — to be found fault with by the minister, — to be 
 chidden just at the moment when they were all en- 
 deavoring to keep peace together ! " Such were the 
 exaggerated and unjust reflections excited in their minds 
 by one of the mildest and most beautiful discourses on 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 67 
 
 brotherly love that were ever composed, and in which, as 
 I before observed, only one direct allusion was made to 
 them, wherein the preacher expressed his trust, that 
 they who gladdened the house of God with the har- 
 mony of their voices would be particularly careful to 
 cultivate the much sweeter, and, to the ear of Heaven, 
 the much more acceptable harmony, resulting from a 
 union of pious hearts. 
 
 But no matter; it gave to those prejudiced and ca- 
 pricious choristers an object on which to exercise their 
 characteristic waywardness, and an opportunity to make 
 themselves of some troublesome importance. Accord- 
 ingly, to wreak a glorious revenge on the interfering par- 
 son, and to impress on the whole world a sense of their 
 immeasurable consequence, not a soul of them on the 
 afternoon of that day appeared in the singing-seats, — 
 with the exception, let me humbly add, of one^ as un- 
 worthy indeed as the rest, but who would never for such 
 a provocation have deserted that gallery until the imita- 
 tion-marble columns that supported it were crumbling 
 into ruins. "Whatever others might have thought of me, 
 however poor-spirited and grandmother-loving I may 
 have appeared, yet if there have been any moments in 
 my life of loftier triumph, but at the same time of more 
 piteous melancholy, than others, they assuredly occurred 
 during the quarter of an hour when I sat perfectly alone 
 in that deserted singing-pew, fixing my eye and face on 
 no other object than my afflicted minister, who was 
 waiting in trembling dismay for the entrance of the rest 
 of the choir. 
 
 , Never shall I forget the moment when the dreadful 
 truth flashed into his mind, and he perceived, by their 
 
68 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 protracted absence, the mistake that he must have com- 
 mitted in the morning. Yet it was but an instant of 
 agony, and was succeeded by a high-souled though in- 
 voluntary look of calmness, and consciousness that he 
 had discharged no more than a well-meant religious and 
 professional duty. The tears were soon wiped away 
 from his face, a decent composure was assumed, a hymn 
 was quickly selected, which Watts, the sweet psalmist 
 of the modern Israel, could furnish him most appropri- 
 ately for the occasion, and was then announced and read 
 with a tremulousness of voice, that indicated rather a 
 successful effort of firmness, than any yielding weakness 
 of heart. 
 
 I had the honor, on that occasion, of setting and lead- 
 ing a tune, which was accompanied by Mr. Welby's 
 modest, though perfect and full-toned bass. We were 
 the only singers for the remainder of that day. The 
 hearts of some among the worshippers were too full, 
 and of others too anxious, to lend us a helping note. 
 From that moment, the closest friendship was formed 
 and cemented between Mr. Welby and myself, and it 
 was but lately that I paid him the last dollar of the 
 money which he liberally advanced to defray more than 
 half the expenses of my college education. 
 
 I was " monarch of all I surveyed " in that singing- 
 pew for four months. Mr. Welby of course had no 
 apology to make. Apology indeed ! He was in truth 
 the only injured party. Had the whole choir entered 
 the meeting-house on their knees, singing Peccavimus 
 and Miserere^ they would, by such humiliation, have 
 scarcely effaced their violation of sacred proprieties and 
 of the feelings of their pastor. Should Mr. Welby's 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. f9 
 
 Journal of his Ministry, which I know he has copiously 
 recorded, be ever given to the world, I have not a doubt 
 that this transaction will be stated there with ample jus- 
 tice and candor, and make no insignificant appearance 
 among the various trials which a New England clergy- 
 man is called to endure. 
 
 It was long ere a sense of lingering compunction, to- 
 gether with various other feelings and circumstances, 
 brought the wanderers back to their deserted fold. Mean- 
 while I continued the discharge of my solitary duty in 
 the gallery, and was most minutely scrupulous in select- 
 ing the tunes according to the arrangement prescribed 
 amidst the recent troubles. I was determined to give to 
 no person whatever the slightest cause of offence, but to 
 hold out every encouragement for all who chose to re- 
 turn. Mr. Welby and myself derived occasional assist- 
 ance from a few voices below, but often the whole mu- 
 sical duties of worship devolved upon us alone. Few 
 indeed of. the members of the late choir carried their 
 animosity so far as to renounce attendance at church 
 altogether. Mr. Forehead, I think, was never seen in 
 that meeting-house but once again. Soon after his 
 abrupt retirement from the seats, he married and left 
 the neighborhood, carrying off with him one of the best 
 treble voices in the village. 
 
 At the beginning of the following winter, I was com- 
 pelled to fulfil an engagement that I had incurred, to 
 keep a district-school for three months in the county of 
 Rockingham, New Hampshire. Soon after I had taken 
 my departure for this purpose, Mr. Welby was seized 
 with a troublesome affection of his lungs, which scarcely 
 permitted him to perform even his strictly pastoral ser- 
 
70 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 vices. And now the musical tide in my native congre- 
 gation was at its very lowest ebb. For two or three 
 Sundays the minister did not even presume to read a 
 psalm, certain that no one present would rise and sing 
 it. Can my readers imagine from what quarter relief 
 was derived in this gloomy state of things ? From none 
 other than a few of the very oldest members of the con- 
 gregation. Four ancient men, the least of whose ages 
 was seventy-three, indignant at the folly and pertinacity 
 of those singers of yesterday, and wearied out with wait- 
 ing for a return of tolerable music, tottered up the stairs 
 one Sabbath morning with the assistance of the panelled 
 railing, and took their places in the seats left vacant by 
 their degenerate grandsons. Two of them had fought 
 in the old French war, and all had taken a civil or mili- 
 tary part, more or less conspicuous, in the struggle for 
 our country's independence. One, indeed, bore a title of 
 considerable military rank. His hair was as white as the 
 falling snow; the other three displayed white or -gray wigs, 
 with a large circular bush, mantling over the upper part 
 of the back, like a swelling cloud round the shoulders 
 of old Wachusett. Their voices of course were broken 
 and tremulous, but not destitute of a certain grave and 
 venerable sweetness. They kept the most perfect time, 
 as they stood in a row, fronting the minister, with their 
 hands each holding a lower corner of their books, which 
 they waved from side to side in a manner the most 
 solemn and imposing. Their very pronunciation had in 
 it something primitive and awe-inspiring. Their shall 
 broadened into shawl^ do was exchanged for doe, and 
 earth for airlh. Their selection of tunes was of the 
 most ancient composition and slowest movement, with 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 71 
 
 the exception, occasionally, of old Sherburne, and the 
 Thirty-Fourth Psalm. 
 
 How vividly do I remember the spectacle which they 
 presented to my revering eyes, when I attended the 
 meeting-house late one morning, after having walked 
 on snow-shoes the last five miles of the distance from 
 the place where I was employed in teaching, to pay a 
 short visit to my friends. On entering the beloved edi- 
 fice, whose white, though bell-less steeple I had for some 
 time gazed on from afar with emotions almost as strong 
 as if I had been absent several years, it was my purpose 
 to ascend immediately to my usual station. But before 
 I had passed the door, unexpected and unaccustomed 
 sounds for that place burst upon my ears, and my curi- 
 osity irresistibly led me forward to my father's pew near 
 the pulpit, that I might have a full view of the strange 
 choir which had so magically sprung up during my short 
 absence, and that I might not disturb it by my unneces- 
 sary intrusion. 
 
 This was not the first nor the last time that I have 
 witnessed extraordinary energy of character, as occasions 
 called for it, displayed by octogenarians of New England. 
 Few of my readers, perhaps, will fail to remember in- 
 stances analogous to that here recorded. Those appar- 
 ently decrepit forms, which you see at frame-raisings, 
 confined to the easy task of fashioning the pins, and 
 telling stories of the Revolution, or about the door in 
 winter, mending the sled and gathering sticks for the 
 fire, or drawing the rake in summer after the moving 
 hay-cart, occasionally surprise you by the exhibition of 
 an activity and strength which you would think they 
 must have for ever resigned. Who can tell how much 
 
72 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 this latent vigor of theirs may be owing to our bracing 
 climate, joined to the effects of their former stirring life, 
 and particularly to the influence of those preternatural 
 exertions, which they, with the whole country, once put 
 forth in the war of independence ? I thought I distinctly 
 saw, in the efforts of those seniors of my native parish 
 to supply it with sacred music, something of that spirit 
 which had sprung to arms, when the necessities of their 
 country and the voice of Heaven bade them forego 
 every personal convenience, and take up their march to 
 Charlestown, to Cambridge, and to the heights of Dor- 
 chester. Ye laurelled old men! ye saviours of your 
 country, and authors of unimaginable blessings for your 
 posterity! ye shall not descend to your graves, without 
 the fervent thanks, the feeble tribute, of one who often in 
 his thought refers his political enjoyments and hopes to 
 your principle, your valor, and your blood ! 
 
 How soon will it be ere a Revolutionary veteran will 
 be seen no more among us! It is with a feeling of mel- 
 ancholy and desolation that I perceive their number ir- 
 revocably lessening every year. We do not half enough 
 load the survivors with grateful honors.* We ought 
 formally and publicly to cherish them with more pious 
 assiduity. Their pensions are an insufficient recompense 
 of their merits, for the plain reason that they scarcely 
 fought for mercenary considerations. Even those who 
 expected pay, and sometimes could not obtain it from 
 the continental treasury, would have died rather than 
 touch the gold of the enemy. On the anniversaries of 
 
 * This paragraph, as well as the whole book, was written a year before 
 the Bunker Hill Monument Celebration. 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIK. 
 
 our independence, I would therefore assign to all who 
 had any share in accomplishing the Revolution, a dis- 
 tinct place in our civic processions. The orator of the 
 day should add interest to his performance by an ad- 
 dress to their venerable corps. They should be escorted 
 to the festive hall, they should be entertained as honored 
 guests, they should be toasted, and the toast should be 
 drunk standing, and the chaplain of the day should offer 
 prayers for their long and uninterrupted happiness, both 
 in this world and in the next.* 
 
 But this last idea brings me round again to the rever- 
 end choir, on which was fastened the other end of my 
 chain of patriotic reflections. Those of my readers who 
 are interested as much in the links of a dynasty as in the 
 more general facts of a history, may wish to know who 
 was regarded as the leader among that group of an- 
 tiques. And the question is pertinent enough. For al- 
 though they were too far advanced in years beyond the 
 miserable vanities of musical pretension, and were now 
 too much on a level in point of abilities or skill, to be 
 actuated by any aspiring ambition, yet they had also 
 too much experience in the affairs of life not to be aware 
 of the necessity of some ostensible head, in order to man- 
 age even the humblest common concern with requisite 
 harmony and effect. The person, therefore, whom, rather 
 by a tacit, reciprocal understanding than any formal 
 nomination or elective acclamation, they made choice 
 of for their conductor, was Colonel John Wilkins, oth- 
 erwise called Colonel John Ticonderoga, the veteran 
 
 * Many of the propositions here presented have since been singularly- 
 realized in various public celebrations throughout the United States. 
 
74 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 whose hoary locks were above described, and who had 
 been the first to suggest to the others this laudable 
 scheme. Let those who take pride in such humble mat- 
 ters as dates and names remember him, therefore, as the 
 sixth leader of the choir at Waterfield, whose acts are 
 recorded in this faithful chronicle. 
 
 My engagement in New Hampshire having expired, 
 I returned home to pursue my studies. Affairs had, by 
 this time, assumed a much brighter aspect. I found, on 
 my arrival, that nearly all the females belonging to the 
 late choir had volunteered a renewal of their delightful 
 services. How difficult it is for w^oman to persevere in 
 error! Though, physically speaking, the weaker party, 
 yet how often she resists the sinister example of the 
 other sex, and proves herself superior in the strength of 
 her moral powers ! The fair ones of my native parish 
 were the first to perceive the unhappy mistake into 
 which they had been betrayed, and the first to acknowl- 
 edge and practically retract it. Candor requires me to 
 make these statements and reflections, though it were 
 much to be wished that the occasion for it never had 
 existed. But I was willing to forget all the resentment 
 with which I had before wondered at their conduct, 
 when I contemplated the novel and beautiful spectacle 
 that now charmed my imagination. Show me a more 
 interesting picture than reverend and trembling age as- 
 sociated with blooming and youthful beauty in chant- 
 ing the praises of their common Creator. It struck me 
 as an instance of a kind of moral counterpoint^ more 
 thrilling to the soul than the sweetest or the grand- 
 est harmony of mere sound. Willingly would I have 
 refrained from interposing my indifferent voice, had 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIK. 75 
 
 not duty and persuasion united to reconduct me to the 
 seats. 
 
 The experience of life certainly brings every man into 
 strange combinations and juxtapositions with his fellow- 
 beings. Yet, was not mine at the present time rather 
 peculiar? What fate, what hidden sympathy, what 
 kindred gravity of character, drew me into special per- 
 sonal contact and co-operation with four of the most 
 reverend seniors of the land? The contemplation of 
 this new attitude of my presiding genius had some- 
 times almost too powerful an effect on my imagination. 
 1 began to entertain doubts of my own age. At times I 
 thought it my duty to study a new system of ethics and 
 manners, corresponding to my situation. I wished oc- 
 casionally that Cicero's Treatise on Old Age might be 
 substituted in place of his Orations against Catiline, 
 which I was then reading, as preparatory to my admis- 
 sion into college. 
 
 But the dreams of this whimsical hallucination soon 
 fled away, as the months advanced, and Mr. Welby's 
 voice regained its usual health and mellowness, and my 
 venerated fathers in harmony found it too much for their 
 comfort to ascend the stairs on the enfeebling days of 
 spring. Besides, if anything could have restrained the 
 peculiar wanderings of my mind above described, it was 
 the condition in which I was now left. Exposed singly 
 to the fire of a whole battery of eyes and voices from 
 the flower of the parish, and compelled, by my very 
 duty, to maintain constant communications and consul- 
 tations with them, I was soon reminded, by certain in- 
 describably interesting and perplexing feelings in my 
 breast, that I had many years yet to pass before I 
 
76 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 could aspire to the honors, the abstracted attention, 
 and the composure of old age. 
 
 But thoLigh I pretend not to have been exempt from 
 the susceptibilities now alluded to, I call on every scru- 
 tinizing spectator (there having been several of that 
 character at church) to bear witness to the unremitted 
 propriety of my deportment during the summer and 
 autumn which I passed in that critical situation. No 
 manifestation of partialities, no encouragement of female 
 frivolities, and no unfeeling neglect or inattention, that I 
 have ever heard of or imagined, were or could be laid to 
 my charge. Our singing, I may confidently say without 
 undue self-flattery, continued to be of no ordinary merit, 
 though we could not welcome one accession to my own 
 side of the choir. Several strong and rich voices on the 
 other side took the tenor or air of each tune, the rest of 
 them united in a melodious treble, and Mr. Welby and 
 myself put forth our whole vocal powers in supporting 
 them with the bass. Such was the uninterrupted method 
 we pursued, until the approach of winter again called me 
 to a distant place, to replenish my little funds with the 
 emoluments of a district schoolmaster. 
 
 The destinies of our choir were now provided for in a 
 manner somewhat remarkable, but not, I believe, alto- 
 gether unexampled elsewhere in our country. The first 
 intention of the ladies was to leave the seats immediately 
 after my departure. Had it been executed, everything 
 might have been thrown back into the deplorable con- 
 dition in which I had left affairs the preceding winter. 
 Two of my late venerable fellow-choristers were now 
 already gathered to the land of silence, and there were 
 no hopes of obtaining a leader from any quarter. In this 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 77 
 
 emergency, Mrs. Martha Shrinknot proffered her services, 
 and undertook the management of the whole depart- 
 ment, until I should myself return and resume it. She 
 was a lady not much past the age of thirty years. Be- 
 ing of an active and inquisitive turn of mind, she had 
 long since made herself acquainted with the mysteries of 
 setting a psalm-tune, knew its key-note at a glance, and 
 had frequently, on private occasions, even before her 
 marriage, given out the leading tones to the different 
 parts, when passing an evening with a few musical 
 friends, who preferred extracting an hour of rational 
 pleasure from the Village Harmony, to the frivolous 
 entertainments of cards, coquetry, and scandal. 
 
 It might be out of place here to follow Mrs. Martha 
 Shrinknot home, and exhibit her superintending the 
 best-ordered family and the most profitable dairy in 
 the county. My concern with her now is in her public 
 capacity, and I may say with truth, that a leader of 
 more accuracy, more judgment, more self-possession, 
 and more spirited energy, never took charge of the 
 Waterfield choir, nor, as I think, of any other choir. 
 
 Her outset on the first Sabbath succeeded to admira- 
 tion ; and there was every prospect that her reign, though 
 short, would be one of uninterrupted brilliancy and fe- 
 licity. But an ill star seemed to hover over the spot, 
 and new troubles soon arose to disturb the peace and 
 crush the hopes of -the lovers of sacred song. 
 
 Among the females of the choir was a young woman 
 of much comeliness, modest demeanor, and an unsullied 
 character, who had been living in one of the richer fam- 
 ilies of the village, under the denomination of help. I 
 approve the feeling which has substituted this word for 
 
78 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 the offensive one of servant. Servant seems to stamp 
 an irretrievable character on the person who bears the 
 appellation. It is less general and vague than the word 
 help. The latter seems to admit into the mind a sense 
 of independence and a hope of rising in the world. As 
 long as Mirabeau's maxim is true, that names are things, 
 let the young heirs of poverty and dependence in free 
 America solace themselves with the substantial comfort 
 of assuming a title which places them, in imagination at 
 least, on a level with their employers, and soothes the 
 sting which may now and then fret their bosoms, when 
 contemplating the unavoidable inequalities of fortune. 
 For alas! not even will this slight change of name se- 
 cure them from numerous embarrassments and mortifi- 
 cations, as will be seen in the case of Mary Wentworth, 
 the intelligent young woman above mentioned. 
 
 The singing-pew for the females contained three long 
 benches, rising one above another, and receding from 
 the front of the gallery. Mary Wentworth had oc- 
 cupied an unassuming seat on the uppermost of these 
 benches for about three years. At her first appearance 
 there, there had been no little stir among certain of the 
 vocal sisterhood ; a few airs were put on, a few whis- 
 pers circulated, a few stares directed at the modest 
 stranger, and the seats of some of the young ladies 
 were vacated for a few succeeding Sabbaths. But 
 most of them returned sooner or later, on better reflec- 
 tion, or on a reviving desire to bear their part in the 
 melodies of the place, and Mary thenceforward was 
 scarcely disturbed by any kind of notice whatever. Nev- 
 ertheless, her singing was envied by some, and admired 
 by all. To say the truth, she had no equal in this parish, 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 79 
 
 and few elsewhere. Her voice was enchanting in its 
 tones, and astonishing in its compass. She was a per- 
 fect mistress of the art, as far as it can reach perfection 
 in the practice of our country choirs. She was fit to 
 bear a conspicuous part in an oratorio, and would have 
 well repaid any degree of scientific cultivation. 
 
 Mrs. Shrinknot, who knew not, or affected not to 
 know, the squeamishness respecting rank that was en- 
 tertained by some of the young ladies, took occasion, on 
 the afternoon of the second Sabbath succeeding her in- 
 duction into office, to exercise her lawful authority, by 
 inviting Mary Wentworth down to the front seat, and 
 placing her at her own right hand. She wished for the 
 support of her voice, and the assistance to be derived 
 from occasionally consulting her. 
 
 On the next Sunday, Mrs. Shrinknot was seized with 
 an illness which prevented her leaving home. She sent 
 for Mary, and, after much persuasion, prevailed upon her 
 to go that day and assume the direction of the choir. 
 
 The maiden went early, that she might prepare her- 
 self, by time and meditation, with sufiicient self-posses- 
 sion, and avoid the flurry of passing by others in order 
 to arrive at the post which had been assigned her. She 
 had not been seated there long, when she observed two 
 young ladies, who had for some years pretty regularly 
 attended the choir, entering into a pew below, with the 
 rest of their family. This was soon followed by several 
 other instances of the same kind, and poor Mary's heart 
 began to sink within her. She looked frequently and 
 anxiously round, in the hope that some, or at least that 
 one individual, would arrive to shield her from the op- 
 pression of overwhelming notoriety. In vain ! there had 
 
80 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 been visitings, and murmurings, and resolutions, through 
 the whole of the preceding week, and what with the 
 pride of some, who could not endure that a girl at ser- 
 vice should aspire to an equality with themselves, — and 
 the envy of others, whose ears were pained (as they used 
 to say, though in a different sense from my use of the 
 word) by the tones of Polly Wentworth's voice, — and 
 the indignation of others, that the long-established order 
 of sitting should be disturbed, — and the pusillanimity 
 of others, who had neither souls nor pretensions large 
 enough to be proud, or envious, or angry, but who quiv- 
 ered on the pivot, and vibrated to whichever side the 
 multitude inclined, — not a bonnet was forthcoming 
 to gladden the eyes of that fair and desolate house- 
 maid. 
 
 Yet, though a girl of the most modest and unpretend- 
 ing character, Mary Wentworth had an energy of soul, 
 and a sterling good sense, which enabled her to encoun- 
 ter every emergency with composure, and to act accord- 
 ing to the demands of the occasion. Mr. Welby, after 
 waiting a quarter of an hour beyond the usual time, and 
 not knowing himself, poor man, what course he ought to 
 pursue, balancing between his fear of hurting the young 
 woman's feelings, and his duty as a clergyman, at length 
 resolved to commence the services with a psalm, which 
 he read, and proceeded to sing to the tenor part of a 
 tune, that happened to be the universal favorite of the 
 congregation. 
 
 Mary Wentworth rose and joined him in the same 
 part. Mr. Welby immediately permitted his voice to 
 slide, with a graceful and almost imperceptible transi- 
 tion, to the bass, with which he continued to accompany 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 81 
 
 her. The afr was of a slightly pathetic description, and 
 accorded well with the state of her heart. To say that 
 there was not a little effervescence of republican feeling, 
 also, which prompted her on that occasion to put forth 
 the whole blazing extent of her musical powers, would 
 be to arrogate for the fine creature a sort of angelical 
 perfection, and to raise a doubt whether the institu- 
 tions for which our fathers bled have communicated 
 to every one who moves over the land a sense of in- 
 dividual dignity and importance. Yet, although grief 
 and resentment were both laboring at her heart, her 
 strength of character and her instinctive perception of 
 the proprieties of the place, suffered no more of either to 
 predominate than was exactly sufficient to infuse into 
 her performance that combination of melancholy and 
 animation, which is the last golden accomplishment of 
 the female voice. 
 
 In fact, she was surprised at the excellence of her 
 own singing, and this very surprise constantly stimulated 
 her to higher and higher efforts. Her situation and feel- 
 ings inspired new powers, of which she was unconscious 
 before, and inspiration seemed to create and follow in- 
 spiration, like the metaphysical loves in the bosom of 
 Anacreon. 
 
 The effect on the audience was prodigious. At first, 
 there reigned the silence of astonishment that she could 
 summon the confidence to sing. This was very soon 
 exchanged for the feeling and the rustling of admira- 
 tion. A kind of anguish now seized upon the hearts of 
 some of the generous young ladies who had that morn- 
 ing left the choir. They were half willing to be back 
 again there, if for no other purpose than to drown her 
 
82 THE VILLAGE CHOIK. 
 
 voice, and dilute the attention so lavishly and improp- 
 erly bestowed on a human being in the place of wor- 
 ship. 
 
 But the impropriety of this admiration appeared to be 
 forgotten by even the gravest and most devout among 
 the audience. As Mary and the pastor proceeded from 
 verse to verse, one after another of their male listeners 
 rose, and turned their faces towards the gallery, so that 
 by the time the psalm was concluded, and Mr. Welby 
 had laid aside his book, to invite his people, in a low 
 and solemn tone, to the worship of God, one half of the 
 assembly were already in the posture assumed by Con- 
 gregationalists, after the manner of primitive Christians, 
 in the hour of public prayer. 
 
 From seeming evil is educed real good. The general 
 compassion and admiration excited by the case of Mary 
 Wentworth now presented an opportunity which had 
 been long desired among the singers of the other sex, to 
 return with a good grace to the seats. By going thither 
 again ostensibly for the purpose of encouraging and pro- 
 tecting a persecuted young woman, they would screen 
 themselves from the mortification of appearing to regret 
 and retract their former conduct. Accordingly, a depu- 
 tation of ten, on the afternoon of this day, resorted to 
 the spot in the capacity of harbingers or pioneers. In 
 consequence of the continued illness of Mrs. Shrinknot, 
 the females generally declined to follow their example, 
 entertaining in their minds an insurmountable objection 
 against submitting to the substitute whom she had ap- 
 pointed, notwithstanding the overflow of popularity that 
 was now pouring towards that substitute. Not a lady, 
 therefore, was to be seen ascending the stairs in the af- 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 83 
 
 ternoon, with the exception of Mary herself, who came 
 and resumed her former long-occupied seat on the most 
 retired bench in the singing-pew, from which no entrea- 
 ties, or arguments, or considerations, urged by Mrs. 
 Shrinknot or others, could ever after induce her to re- 
 move. The noble girl saw the hopelessness of contend- 
 ing against a host of jealous and restless prejudices, and 
 cared for nothing in that place so much as peace and 
 good singing. 
 
 Mr. Welby was still obliged to act as precentor dur- 
 ing the remainder of the day. The new recruits for the 
 vocal service, the sight of whom gladdened his heart, 
 felt unequal to the task of executing that function among 
 themselves. After he had read the first psalm in the 
 afternoon, and they had waited some time for him to 
 begin the singing of it, he perceived what was wanting, 
 and speedily commenced a tune. He did the same with 
 the two other hymns for that day. Mary would instan- 
 taneously take the treble, and her companions joined her, 
 one after another, according to their power of seizing the 
 parts belonging to them. After a few trifling mistakes 
 in the bass, which the good ears, however, of those who 
 committed them were able immediately to correct, they 
 succeeded in making themselves all masters of the air 
 before the conclusion of the first verse, and then pro- 
 ceeded with tolerable spirit and correctness to the end of 
 the hymn. 
 
 On my return home, I had the felicity to find the choir 
 in a more flourishing condition than it had enjoyed for a 
 long time. About twenty of my own sex occupied the 
 octagonal box, and somewhat less than that number 
 were induced, by the recovery and presence of Mrs. 
 
84 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 Shrinknot, and the prudent humility of Mary, to fill the 
 two lower seats of the adjoining pew. These were all 
 in the best training possible under the management of 
 the former powerful lady, who, on receiving the key- 
 note from the bachelor-merchant's bass-viol, immediately 
 sounded forth the melodious fall of fa, sol, la, fa, and dis- 
 tributed the leading notes round to the performers of 
 each of the four parts, — that complement being some- 
 times effected by an animated counter from the lips of 
 Mary Wentworth. 
 
 From this time until the succeeding autumn, when I 
 entered college, I discharged the duties of chief singer 
 without interruption. It was a smoothly spun and 
 brightly dyed portion of the thread of my life. The 
 choir was making constant improvements, and receiving 
 now and then accessions to its numbers, as was to be 
 expected from the exercise of regularity and perseverance 
 in the main body. 
 
 Very few occurrences happened to disturb the full cup 
 of satisfaction which I was now enjoying in peace and 
 gratitude. I cannot, however, omit mentioning one mo- 
 mentary dash of bitter, that was casually mingled with 
 its sweets. In the middle of Mr. Welby's long prayer, 
 one July morning, the composure of the congregation 
 was startled by the loud crack of a whip before the meet- 
 ing-house. Two or three of the younger members of 
 the choir immediately rushed on tiptoe out of the sing- 
 ing-seats to the windows, from which they beheld a gig 
 and tandem approaching rapidly to the door, and saw a 
 pair of gayly dressed gentlemen alight therefrom. In a 
 moment after, we heard the confident and conscious 
 footsteps of their creaking yellow-top boots ascending 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 85 
 
 the stairs, and on turning my eyes, but not my body, in 
 that direction, whom should I behold but my old ac- 
 quaintance and competitor, Mr. Forehead, accompanied 
 by a gentlemanly-looking friend? They had ridden 
 that morning from Boston, where Mr. Forehead was a 
 successful attorney of much repute in ***** Alley. They 
 both came into the octagonal pew with the same unem- 
 barrassed freedom that they would have entered a bar- 
 room, and took the first vacant seats in their way ; but 
 on reconnoitring, and finding everybody around them in 
 a standing posture, they exchanged smiles of some con- 
 fusion with each other, and rose again. From Mr. 
 Forehead's familiar nod to me, I should have thought I 
 had seen him but yesterday, instead of parting with him 
 full two years before. I should have returned it with a 
 solemn bow, had not the service which Mr. Welby was 
 now performing made it improper for me to bestow on 
 him the slightest recognition. Their assistance in the 
 tune which succeeded was very fine, and very accept- 
 able to the choir and congregation. They joined us 
 again, however, in the afternoon, and while we were 
 singing the first psalm, they thought proper, instead of 
 lending us their voices, to accompany us with a singular 
 stridor^ emitted through the nearly closed lips, and re- 
 sembling something between the sound of a bassoon 
 and the lowest tone of a bass-viol. Some of the choir 
 were frightened, some were shocked, and some very 
 nearly burst out with laughter. My own distress was 
 inconceivable. I felt haunted by Mr. Forehead. Ren- 
 dered absolutely disheartened at the thought of endur- 
 ing that sacrilegious, though I confess not entirely in- 
 harmonious buzz, through the two remaining hymns, I 
 
 8 
 
86 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 retired from the meeting-house and went home. Mr. 
 Forehead immediately assumed my office, for the after- 
 noon, and his friend, at the request of Mrs. Shrinknot, 
 exchanged his imitative experiments for more natural 
 and appropriate tones. 
 
 This, however, was the most disagreeable episode in 
 the present poetic period of my existence. It is doubtful 
 whether at length the separation from my own family 
 caused me a keener pang, than the thought that I must 
 resign, and perhaps for ever, all connection with a little 
 circle, in which I had lately enjoyed, in so eminent de- 
 gree, the double privilege of receiving happiness and 
 doing good. 
 
 After my departure, a variety of causes, unnecessary 
 to be detailed, contributed to the gradual decline and 
 ultimate extinction of the choir on its old foundation. 
 My shorter college vacations I spent at home, and in 
 vain endeavored to arrest this melancholy tendency by 
 the few exertions I could make to rally the scattered 
 members. Sometimes I found that a miserable kind of 
 contest had been waged between Mrs. Shrinknot and 
 the singers of the other sex, who made all the efforts in 
 their power to emancipate themselves from the mortify- 
 ing dominion of a woman. But they could never suc- 
 ceed, not a man among them possessing sufficient tact, 
 knowledge, and presence, to carry off the business of a 
 leader well. The singing was always decent under her 
 management, but under theirs it was perpetually liable 
 to mistakes, interruptions, languishments, and helpless 
 amazements. There was, however, no open, clamorous 
 warfare between the two parties, but only on one side 
 the restless attempts of pride to repair its own mortifica- 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 87 
 
 tions, and on the other the calm defiance of conscious 
 superiority. They avoided an actual clashing before the 
 congregation. The lady always affected a perfect readi- 
 ness to yield her authority, whenever there were gentle- 
 men present who chose to set the psalm. But this state 
 of things of course produced frequent embarrassments in 
 the choir. The bowings and the consultations between 
 Mrs. Shrinknot and the gentlemen, occasioned by doubts 
 respecting the propriety of particular tunes and other 
 matters, were frequently protracted long after the minis- 
 ter had read the psalm or hymn, and the congregation 
 would sit waiting and wondering for the music to begin. 
 Meanwhile, as was to be expected, several of the least 
 zealous members of the choir would from time to time 
 steal off from their duties, to sit below, rather than be 
 witnesses and partakers of such pitiable scenes. 
 
 The prosperity of my former hobby was still further 
 affected by the introduction of theological perplexities. 
 A flaming young preacher, who carried some points of 
 orthodoxy considerably further than I could then, or can 
 even now approve, had been recently settled in a neigh- 
 boring town, and exchanged services one Sabbath with 
 Mr. Welby. Tall of stature, cadaverous in aspect, and 
 gloomy in his address as the very depths of midnight, he 
 arose, and after pausing three minutes, during which his 
 eyes were riveted on his book, he gave out the forty- 
 fourth hymn of the Second Book of Dr. Watts, in a 
 voice a full octave below that tone which is commonly 
 called the sepulchral. The hymn is a terrific combina- 
 tion of images respecting the future abode of the wicked, 
 and contains, among others of a similar nature, the two 
 following verses : — 
 
88 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 " Far in the deep where darkness dwells, 
 The land of horror and despair, 
 Justice hath built a dismal hell, 
 
 And laid her stores of vengeance there. 
 
 " Eternal plagues, and heavy chains. 
 Tormenting racks, and fiery coals, 
 And darts to inflict immortal pains. 
 Dyed in the blood of damned souls ! " 
 
 On that day the person who undertook to act as lead- 
 er of the choir was a middle-aged tinplate-worker, who 
 had lately become a warm convert to the doctrines of 
 Universalism. There were a few of his own persuasion 
 in the singing-seats, and there were some who thought 
 little of the matter either one way or the other, but who 
 would gladly have excused themselves from singing the 
 appointed lines, if others of a milder character could be 
 substituted. 
 
 Mrs. Shrinknot was born to be finally an ultra-relig- 
 ionist, but she had not yet taken her decided part in 
 polemics. Her imagination had been much wrought 
 upon at this very moment by the novel phenomenon in 
 the pulpit. She was already an incipient convert; al- 
 ready prepared to yield up her mind to the whole influ- 
 ence of his manner, and the whole demands of his doc- 
 trines. When she perceived, therefore, that a majority 
 of singers in the octagon had come to a resolution not 
 to sing the forty-fourth hymn, second book, nor even a 
 single verse of it, her whole soul was inflamed with the 
 spirit of personal and controversial opposition. She 
 turned round to Mary Wentworth, and requested her 
 support, as she was about to rise and commence the 
 hymn, in spite of the fixed resolution of the other side 
 of the choir. Mary shook her head with her usual firm- 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 89 
 
 ness, and her friend appeared for a moment damited. 
 But at length, when a sufficient time had elapsed to put 
 the congregation out of all patience, and the young the- 
 ologian had arisen again from his seat, and was again 
 leaning far over the cushion, with eyes prying into the 
 gallery, to ascertain, if possible, the cause of the delay, 
 Mrs. Shrinknot, at the very moment of her rising to com- 
 mence the hymn alone, was interrupted and astonished 
 by the following dialogue, which took place between the 
 tinplate-worker leaning over the gallery, and the clergy- 
 man leaning over the pulpit. 
 
 Tinplate-worker, — " You are requested, reverend sir, 
 to give out another hymn." 
 
 Minister. — " Why am I requested to do so, sir ? " 
 Tinplate-worker. — " We do not approve of the senti- 
 ments of the hymn you have just read." 
 Minister. — "I decline reading any other." 
 Tinplate-ivorker. — " Then we decline singing, sir." 
 Minister (after pausing some time, with a look of 
 wretched anxiety, sorrow, indignation, and horror, at 
 what he felt was a sacrilegious violation of his undoubt- 
 ed authority). — " Let us pray." 
 
 The congregation obeyed his direction, so far as rising 
 on their feet could be so doing ; but had he said, " Let 
 us speculate on the scene that has just occurred," his 
 exhortation would have obtained a far more universal 
 compliance that day than is generally paid to dictations 
 from the sacred desk, and would have corresponded with 
 marvellous exactness to what actually rolled over and 
 over in the minds of the audience, while the minister 
 himself was beginning at the Fall, and going through the 
 whole body of divinity in his prayer, dwelling at much 
 
 8* 
 
90 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 length and with peculiar emphasis on the most dreadful 
 realities of the future world. 
 
 Of course, during the ensuing week, the parish was in an 
 uproar. The communing members, technically called the 
 church, who bore omnipotent sway in the internal affairs 
 of the congregation, pressed upon Mr. Welby the execu- 
 tion of this rule, namely, that he should begin at the 
 beginning of Watts's Psalm-Book on the next Lord's 
 day, and, proceeding regularly through that book, cause 
 every verse of every psalm and hymn, without omission 
 or exception, to be sung in their existing order, and never 
 should depart therefrom, — Watts, like the Book of 
 Common Prayer in the Church of England, receiving, in 
 many parts of this region, an equal reverence with the 
 Bible. 
 
 But the measures taken to secure sound doctrine were 
 ill calculated to preserve good singing. From this mo- 
 ment my poor choir labored with its death-wound. Oc- 
 casionally considerable numbers would attend it, and 
 even the tinplate-worker condescended to lend his ser- 
 vices, when he could look forward and ascertain that the 
 psalms for the day interfered not with his ultra-latitudi- 
 narian creed. But there was no system, no regularity, 
 no zeal, none of that essential e sprit- de- corps which con- 
 stitutes the very life of a band of singers. You could 
 more easily calculate on the weather of an approaching 
 Sabbath, than you could on its miisic. A visit of Mr. 
 Murray, the Universalist preacher, to the neighborhood, 
 was certain to draw three quarters of the choir away. 
 Mary Wentworth departed to keep school at Hampton 
 Falls. Mrs. Shrinknot, disgusted with the moderation 
 of Mr. Welby, who has always satisfied myself with his 
 
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 91 
 
 mild orthodoxy, rode constantly several miles to attend 
 the ministrations of the young divine, who had inno- 
 cently caused an accelerated decay of the choir. A 
 sense of the unfashionableness of singing at the meet- 
 ing-house, would at times pervade all the females of the 
 village, and keep them for several months in their pews 
 below. A hundred caprices, a hundred quarrels, rose 
 one after another, in quicker succession, and of more 
 paltry nature, than I can permit myself to describe. The 
 very knowledge of sacred music seemed to be fast decay- 
 ing. No recruits from the rising generation prepared 
 themselves as formerly to take part in this interesting 
 portion of worship. No movement was started from 
 any quarter to effect a better order of things. All 
 classes were sunk in musical apathy. The Village 
 Harmony, and other Collections belonging to the seats, 
 were carried off and never recovered. Many of the 
 benches in the octagon were broken down by idle boys 
 who went to overlook the doings of town-meetings, and 
 were omitted to be repaired. A feeble attempt was 
 generally made to sing once on each part of the day, 
 but that precariously depended on Mr. Welby's feelings 
 and state of health. And if now and then a scattered 
 worshipper or two straggled into the seats, it was either 
 because they wished to change their places at church for 
 the mere sake of variety, or because they could call no 
 other spot their own. 
 
 Such was the condition in which I found the once 
 flourishing singing-pew at Waterfield, when, after hav- 
 ing passed four years in Harvard College, and three 
 in a lawyer's office in the county of Bristol, I came and 
 nailed up a professional sign in the centre of my native 
 
92 THE VILLAGE CHOIR. 
 
 village. On the first Sabbath, instinct led me to the 
 spot. In going to the meeting-house, I confess I felt 
 too much complacency in the conscious improvement 
 which the preceding seven years had effected in my 
 mind and person. But, alas ! this momentary infirmity 
 was full severely punished, when, on approaching the 
 singing-pew, I perceived it too desolate and dusty to be 
 occupied. I passed a mournful day ; but better times 
 and better things erelong arose, which I may perhaps 
 be able to recount at some future period, when (if my 
 present essay find favor with an indulgent public, and 
 my leisure from an increasing business permit) I shall 
 attempt the History of a Nevj- England Singing- School * 
 
 1828. 
 
 =* It has been one of the fond dreams of the author's life to accomplish the 
 task intimated in this closing sentence. The conception of his plan admit- 
 ted a wide variety of characters, an extensive and diversified field of incident 
 and action, and a representation of many interesting progressive develop- 
 ments of social life in New England. But the imperative demands of a 
 higher path of duty, concurring with several years of impaired health, and 
 somewhat perhaps with his distance from the scene of action, have prevented 
 the execution of an undertaking, to which he would gladly have devoted the 
 vigor of his powers. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF ONE NATIONAL LIT- 
 ERATURE UPON ANOTHER; 
 
 AN APPLICATION OF THE SUBJECT TO THE CHARACTER AND 
 DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 That every nation, like every individual, has an intel- 
 lectual and moral character, original and peculiar to it- 
 self, may be regarded as an established axiom. Conse- 
 quently, the literary productions of every nation must be 
 more or less characterized by the stamp of its peculiar 
 genius. If we could imagine among nations .a long- 
 continued abstinence from mutual intercourse, we must 
 also suppose several sorts of resulting literatures, as 
 diverse from each other, in kind if not in degree, as are 
 those of China and Europe of the present day. A state 
 of things like this would assuredly depress the general 
 standard of thought and laiiguage throughout the world. 
 No nation, any more than a solitary individual, can be 
 imagined to inherit from nature, and to centre in itself, 
 so proud an affluence of thoughts, emotions, and expres- 
 sions, as to place it beyond the reach of improvement 
 from foreign sources. In the same manner as the private 
 members of society are induced to lay aside many a 
 rude peculiarity, to suppress many a narrow prejudice, 
 
94 THE INFLUENCE OF ONE NATIONAL 
 
 and to catch many a bright idea and generous emotion, 
 by means of constant interchanges in life, so is the in- 
 tellect of a whole nation, by coming into contact and 
 collision with the intellect of other nations, enabled to 
 elevate its own habits of thought, to seize upon more 
 effective modes of expression, and to winnow its litera- 
 ture from national or accidental imperfections. 
 
 It is evident, however, that a process of this kind may 
 be carried too far, and that a nation may indulge so ex- 
 travagant a passion for foreign models, as to sacrifice 
 that charm and vigor of originality, for which scarcely 
 any acquired accomplishments can be regarded as an 
 equivalent. For, to recur to our comparison drawn from 
 private life, no individual ought to extend his love or 
 deference for society so far, as to sacrifice a certain origi- 
 nality and independence of character. If he only learns 
 to avoid offensive eccentricities, and gives general proof 
 of having breathed the air of good company, his native 
 peculiarities may not only be forgiven, but admired. It 
 is thus in the intellectual intercourse of nations. We 
 shall see, in the historical survey now to be presented as 
 an illustration of these remarks, how nations which have 
 united a firm self-reliance with a suitable degree of flexi- 
 bility to foreign impressions, have attained the highest 
 literary rank ; and, on the other hand, how their litera- 
 ture immediately degenerated, at the moment when they 
 either disdained, or too devotedly sought for, influences 
 from abroad. 
 
 The first example shall be drawn from the ancient 
 literature of the Hebrews. That literature is the conse- 
 crated drapery of heaven-inspired truths. Yet, as the 
 personal style of Isaiah differed from that of Daniel, or 
 
LITERATURE UPON ANOTHER. 95 
 
 the style of St. John from the style of St. Paul, — as David 
 prophesied in the language of the palace, and Amos in 
 that of the herdman's lodge, — so a reverent and discrim- 
 inating inspection will not fail to perceive that the He- 
 brew literature, like that of all other nations, was more 
 or less subjected to the great law of circumstance. 
 Springing forth, as it did, along a line of two or three 
 thousand years, during which the fortunes of the nation 
 were frequently varying, we shall find it approximating 
 to the highest standard of excellence, according as the 
 inspired writers united with the wonderful peculiarities 
 of the Hebrew mind a liberal susceptibility to exterior 
 impressions ; and then again receding from that lofty 
 standard, either through an injudicious imitation of for- 
 eign models, or an entire exclusion of all foreign influ- 
 ences whatever. Accordingly, behold it first under Mo- 
 ses, the deserved admiration of subsequent ages. To 
 the noble fountain of his own native Israelitish literature 
 and a remoter East, Moses applied a mind, rich, as St. 
 Stephen informs us, in the wisdom and learning of the 
 Egyptians. The union of these two magnificent streams 
 resulted in the production of the Pentateuch ; in the 
 same manner as the influence of two mighty rivers some- 
 times throws up an island, covered with majestic forests 
 and fragrant and beautiful flowers. For what has ever 
 equalled the sublime pictures of creation and nature in 
 the Pentateuch, — the lovely simplicity of its descrip- 
 tions of patriarchal and pastoral life, — the vivid and 
 graphic reality of its narratives, — its authentic charts of 
 the primitive genealogy of nations, — and the concise, 
 comprehensive, and intelligible texture of its legislative 
 phraseology ? To the same period is generally referred 
 
96 THE INFLUENCE OP ONE NATIONAL 
 
 the composition of the Book of Job, which vies in literary 
 excellence with the Pentateuch. 
 
 To the Mosaic era succeeded the times of the Judges, 
 when intercourse with foreign nations was rigorously for- 
 bidden. Accordingly, again, we find a poverty of literary 
 documents to be characteristic of this period ; no poetry, 
 no didactic treatises, nothing scarcely, in short, save the 
 meagre annals of the commonwealth in war and in peace, 
 until the time of David. With David, and especially 
 with Solomon his son, commenced an entirely new 
 epoch. Conquest and commerce now brought the na- 
 tional mind again into contact with foreign influences. 
 Immediately also advanced the standard of Hebrew lit- 
 erature. The delightful little history of Ruth is the first 
 fruits of a transition from the rude age of the Judges to 
 the enlightened period of the monarchy. To this era, in 
 its subsequent advancement, will the world for ever be 
 indebted for the Psalms of David, that inexhaustible 
 repository of sacred poetry, as varied in its subjects and 
 moods of religious sentiment as were the tones of his 
 own exulting or complaining harp. To the same era 
 belongs also that treasure-house of moral and practical 
 wisdom, the Proverbs of Solomon. Contemporary also 
 with this was unquestionably the Book of Ecclesiastes, 
 a didactic poem, or colloquy, of the highest character, in 
 which the Byron spirit of this world appears to be com- 
 paring notes with the Fenelon spirit, respecting their rel- 
 ative opinions and experience of the condition, prospects, 
 and destiny of human nature; the whole closing with 
 that unparalleled lesson for the confident and inexperi- 
 enced, with this initial sentence. Remember noiv thy Cre- 
 ator in the days of thy youth, — which, while it is adorned 
 
LITERATURE UPON ANOTHER. 97 
 
 with a profusion of ingenious and beautiful imagery, 
 obeys, throughout, the laws of a delicate and scrupulous 
 taste. When were the accumulating infirmities of old 
 age ever described with so much physiological exactness, 
 blended with such fine touches of poetry and pathos ? 
 
 Nor ought we to forget, in connection with this topic, 
 the inimitable idyl, or series of idyls, entitled The Song 
 of Solomon, combining a perfect tenderness of sentiment 
 with the fascinating simplicity of nature and the most 
 exquisite music of poetry. The truth is, the good old 
 stock of Hebrew intellect was now again released from 
 the confinement and constraint to which it had been for 
 several centuries subjected; a freer and a wider .atmos- 
 phere was allowed to breathe in upon it ; it was stimu- 
 lated by the fresh contact of a mould different from its 
 own native soil, and the result, as we have seen, was the 
 production of fruits more than usually divine. Traces 
 of Hebrew and Egyptian intercourse are very evident in 
 the sacred literature of this period. Champollion, in his 
 successful studies of the hieroglyphics, was more and 
 more struck by the recurrence of expressions coincident 
 with the language of the Psalms. It is well known 
 that portions of the Song of Solomon refer to the Egyp- 
 tian princess whom he had married, and who is called 
 his sister-bride^ in contrast to the Ammonite princess, 
 whom he had previously espoused. Among the recent 
 wonders of Egyptian discovery is a v/ell-identified por- 
 trait of that very princess, and near it an inscription 
 of the same expression, sister-bride, which occurs in the 
 Hebrew song. In the same Hebrew poem, she is li- 
 kened also to a sacred garden. Every scholar knows that 
 these sacred gardens originated in Egypt, and were 
 
98 THE INFLUENCE OF ONE NATIONAL 
 
 guarded by the first order of nuns. The following trans- 
 lation, by an elegant scholar, of the whole passage from 
 the Song of Solomon, will recall the classical descriptions 
 of the same subject as deduced from Egyptian sources : — 
 
 " A sacred garden is my sister-bride, 
 A sacred garden, and a well-spring sealed ; 
 A paradise of sweets, wherein preside 
 The fairest fruits which spiciest blossoms yield, 
 Such as in youthful Eden were revealed ; 
 Camphor and spikenard flourish 'midst its flowers, 
 Spikenard and balsam, cane and cinnamon ; 
 Gem-scattering fountains bathe its fragrant bowers 
 Of myrrh and incense, balm and origan ; 
 While living waters leap from cedary Lebanon." 
 
 The prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah everywhere exhibit 
 manifest indications connecting them with this most 
 classic era in Hebrew literature. With Daniel and Eze- 
 kiel the pure standard of Hebraism seems somewhat to 
 decline, in consequence of the extreme Oriental spirit too 
 deeply imbibed from the Chaldeans during the Babylon- 
 ish captivity. Then came a wide reaction, under the 
 later minor prophets, who, spurning and denouncing 
 every species of foreign influence, fell back upon the nar- 
 row intellectual resources of the nation, and were con- 
 tented with a literary standard considerably inferior to 
 that of the Davidean era. 
 
 During the next four hundred years, as the nation 
 grew in importance, and came in contact with its differ- 
 ent conquerors, we see the literature of the Apocrypha 
 and the Rabbis assume a higher character, until at 
 length the Hebrew mind, shone upon by the strong and 
 near effulgence of Grecian and Roman refinement, and 
 still specially breathed on, as in the days of old, by the 
 spirit of God, displayed, in numerous portions of the 
 
LITERATURE UPON ANOTHER. 99 
 
 Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament, the boldest 
 stamp of literary excellence. The highest degree, and, 
 as it were, the summary exponent and focus of that ex- 
 cellence, I consider exhibited in St. Paul's celebrated def- 
 inition of Charity, comprising the thirteenth chapter of 
 the First Epistle to the Corinthians, too familiar to all 
 readers to require a repetition. This chapter, to a literary 
 eye, presents a remarkable combination of qualities. To 
 the gorgeousness and fervor of Plato, without his vague- 
 ness and mysticism, it unites the strict and acute anal- 
 ysis of Aristotle, without his cold, material, mechanical 
 philosophy. The inarch, the logical sequence and devel- 
 opment of the sentiments, are truly beautiful, while a 
 luxuriant abundance of ideas and images is crowded 
 within the smallest possible compass, like the miraculous 
 economy of an organized human body. The Apostle, seiz- 
 ing upon the Greek term charity ^ brings to its illustration 
 a throng of Jewish recollections and sacred references. In 
 short, the Hebrew mind, in its highest and purest state 
 of inspiration, mingling and struggling with the Roman 
 and Grecian minds, in their palmiest stage of moral and 
 intellectual cultivation, could alone pour out this un- 
 equalled strain of divine philosophy, which urges forward 
 the whole human race to the path of its loftiest duty, 
 and the attainment of its brightest ultimate destiny. 
 
 The Apostles, with the exception of the Rabbinical 
 authors, were the last writers of the pure Hebrew stock ; 
 since Josephus and Philo, who succeeded them by a 
 few years, were content to sacrifice all remains of nation- 
 ality to the engrossing genius of classic Greece. 
 
 The genius of classic Greece suggests the second great 
 example to illustrate the theory which I have undertaken 
 
100 THE INFLUENCE OF ONE NATIONAL 
 
 to establish. I am aware how scanty and almost imper- 
 ceptible are the traces of foreign influence to be actually 
 discerned in the works of the earlier Greek authors. It 
 has been asserted by some of the ablest critics of the 
 day, that the w^hole body and spirit of ancient Greek 
 literature were perfectly original, — perfectly indigenous ; 
 and that it would have been in all respects such as it is, 
 had no other national literature existed. Now I am 
 willing to allow that the intellect of the ancient Greeks 
 was by far the most original, the most independent, the 
 most spontaneously active and self-fertilizing, of any in 
 existence. But that it ever did, or could, start forward 
 on its peculiar race of glory without an early and pow- 
 erful stimulus of exterior influence, is quite contrary to 
 historical facts and probabilities. Greece was surround- 
 ed by nations who certainly preceded her in the march 
 of civilization and literary cultivation. The Egyptians 
 on the south, the Phoenicians on the southeast, the Per- 
 sians on the east, the cultivators of Sanscrit and other 
 Oriental literatures, had all made very considerable ad- 
 vances in science and letters, for ages before a Greek 
 song was sung in the valleys of the Peloponnesus, or a 
 Greek inscription recorded on its rocks. We know that 
 an active commerce was driven by the Phoenicians along 
 the shores of the Peloponnesus. Is it possible that they 
 could refrain from communicating a portion of their in- 
 tellectual acquirements to so lively, inquisitive, and sus- 
 ceptible a people as the Greeks? We know that the 
 Greeks themselves ascribed to a Phoenician the introduc- 
 tion among them of sixteen letters of their alphabet, and 
 the strong resemblance existing between several letters 
 of the Greek and Hebrew alphabets confirms the tradi- 
 
LITERATURE UPON ANOTHER. 101 
 
 tion. Now, would mere letters be likely to be introduced 
 without a literature ? At all events, is not the tradition 
 itself a conclusive proof that the Greek mind, proud as 
 might have been its subsequent literary achievements, 
 was indebted to another national mind for the very in- 
 strument by which those achievements were effected, — 
 thus confirming the main positions of this essay ? And 
 when we consider, again, those wondrous resemblances 
 between the structure of the Greek language and that 
 of the ancient Sanscrit tongue, — between many por- 
 tions of the Greek philosophy and the Indian philosophy, 
 — between the gods of Greece and those of India, as de- 
 monstrated by Sir William Jones and others, — can we 
 possibly resist the conclusion, that the Greek literature, 
 at a very early period, received an impulse and an im- 
 press from some Oriental source, to which it was indebt- 
 ed for many of those infinitely varied qualities that 
 stamped its glorious and triumphant living reign of two 
 thousand years ? Did Herodotus travel through so many 
 foreign cities without imbibing something of the various 
 national characteristics which he witnessed ? Was he 
 the first of his nation, or the only one of his age, who 
 wandered abroad for improvement? Must there not 
 long have existed between Greece and the surrounding 
 countries, channels of refined intercourse, through which 
 a mental action and reaction must have been constantly 
 reciprocated? Was the Persian court always open to 
 the banished statesmen of Greece, without exercising 
 some influence on her literature ? Do we not perceive, 
 in the majority of Greek authors, a certain tinge of Ori- 
 ental simplicity on the one hand, and Oriental gorgeous- 
 ness on the other, quite distinct from that masculine, 
 
 9* 
 
102 THE INFLUENCE OF ONE NATIONAL 
 
 compact, energetic spirit, which may be regarded as the 
 essential characteristic of the Grecian mind? It is no 
 objection to these views of the subject, that we cannot 
 point out allusions to any extraneous literature, or hear 
 the Greeks acknowledging their obligations to other 
 nations, or find them actually quoting by chapter and 
 verse from the sources in question. Do we find such 
 acknowledgments in Virgil, or Terence ? And yet do 
 we not know that Virgil and Terence would scarcely 
 have enjoyed a literary existence except by means of the 
 Greek originals from whom they drew their very breath 
 of life ? Besides, it is not absolutely necessary for the 
 purpose of my argument that a tangible literature should 
 have preceded the productions of the Grecian mind ; that 
 libraries, parchments, and other written monuments, 
 should have been imported at home, or studied abroad. 
 It is enough if personal intercourse and oral communi- 
 cation were frequent and prolific. If Homer or the Ho- 
 meridse could ever listen with delight to the wandering 
 or stationary bards of other lands, and treasure some of 
 their strains in their own melodious souls, to be after- 
 wards woven into their own majestic and unrivalled 
 harmonies, my general theory is supported. 
 
 It is certainly, moreover, confirmed by the influence 
 which writings in the different dialects of Greece exerted 
 on each other. The tribes who spoke those different 
 dialects may be regarded in the light of so many differ- 
 ent nations. And who will deny that much of the per- 
 fection of the Greek literature was owing to the inter- 
 change among those different tribes, — to their borrow- 
 ing from each other various modes of thought and forms 
 of expression, — to the noble stimulus of mutual exam- 
 
LITERATURE UPON ANOTHER. 103 
 
 pie and competition, — and to the power they thus pos- 
 sessed of working up one general literature from the 
 choicest sources and materials ? Why else did Herodo- 
 tus abandon: his native Dorian dialect, to write his gen- 
 eral history in the Ionic, if processes of this nature were 
 not constantly in action ? 
 
 The views now urged are still further confirmed by 
 the new and strong impulse which was certainly given 
 to the whole Grecian mind, when Pisistratus had col- 
 lected the fleeting fragments of the Homeric poetry, for 
 the benefit of his countrymen. 
 
 We shall soon see by other examples, in the course of 
 the remaining examination, how a revival of the ancient 
 literature of any country within itself produces similar 
 effects with the introduction and commixture of foreign 
 literatures. Sufficient has now been advanced to war- 
 rant the conclusion, that, notwithstanding the self-relying 
 and creative energies of the Greeks, yet even they were 
 benefited by influences from abroad, and that, like their 
 own Apollo, who condescended to accept from Mercury 
 the caduceus, or mystic rod of power, wisdom, diligence, 
 and activity, so was even their intellectual character 
 raised by the enlightened genius of commercial inter- 
 course. 
 
 The question respecting Roman literature is much 
 more easily disposed of. For some hundred years, that 
 literature was like a savage crab-tree, growing in its own 
 native solitude, and producing fruits, pungent and fla- 
 vorous indeed, but small, scanty, and unprofitable. At 
 length, the rich scions of Greece were grafted upon it, 
 and not until then did it start up into a prolific and mag- 
 nificent luxuriance. The Roman literature has been 
 
104 THE INFLUENCE OF ONE NATIONAL 
 
 sometimes slightingly spoken of, as a mere echo or re- 
 flection of the Grecian. But it is a noble echo, like that 
 which speaks out from a mountain rock ; a brilliant re- 
 flection, like that which gleams from a mirror in the pal- 
 ace of kings; and who does not always love to contem- 
 plate the daring and successful image of a glorious 
 original? 
 
 The Roman, however, was far from being a servile 
 imitator, or mere translator. There is a native dignity, 
 a conscious sense of power, in all his movements. Jt has 
 been happily said of him, that whatever he borrows, he 
 borrows like a conqueror. He appropriates to his own 
 intellectual nature many qualities of the Grecian char- 
 acter, making them entirely his own. Yet perhaps he 
 would have assumed a more commanding station in 
 the domain of letters, had he trusted more to his own 
 resources, and paid a less exclusive and absorbing ado- 
 ration to the intellect of Greece. He could have origi- 
 nated much more, if he had dared. But he generally 
 feared to depart from prescribed forms and models. 
 When he does venture to pour out his soul, as Ovid, or 
 to impersonate the very genius of the commonwealth, as 
 Cicero, or to prosecute independent courses of specula- 
 tion, as Tacitus, we are made to feel the inherent majes- 
 ty and energy of the Roman mind. In such cases, the 
 trammels were thrown off; the old traditionary reverence 
 for everything Greek was forgotten ; the pupil rose to a 
 level with his master; and the reader, borne onward by 
 the combination of originality and greatness, finds this 
 only to regret, — that the Roman soul had not more fre- 
 quently thrown itself on the tide of letters, with the 
 same fervor, the same enterprise, the same singleness, 
 
LITERATUKE UPON ANOTHER. 
 
 105 
 
 the same unconscious and spontaneous nationality, with 
 which it threw itself on the tide of battle and victory. 
 
 When letters were beginning to decline in every other 
 part of the Roman empire, they were cultivated with 
 fresh and extraordinary activity at Alexandria. Libraries 
 accumulated, authors were multiplied, and every sort of 
 encouragement was given to the cause of learning. But 
 why did nothing more valuable and impressive proceed 
 from the far-famed Alexandrian school? Why are we 
 only indebted to it for a wilderness of commentary, a 
 body of second-hand and second-rate philosophy, and a 
 mass of literature that merely imitates and counterfeits 
 the literature of olden times ? It is because, at this 
 period, there was no nationality, no independent vigor, 
 in Egypt. Her scholars welcomed the flood of mate- 
 rials which came to them from Greece and Rome ; but 
 they were at this moment only the insignificant portions 
 of Greece and Rome themselves ; they were overborne 
 by the inflowing stream, and had not power to rise 
 up and meet it, to mingle with it, to assimilate it with 
 their own intellectual resources; and for this reason, 
 Alexandria sustains so comparatively low a rank in the 
 community of letters. 
 
 Two or three centuries passed away, and, behold, the 
 national mind of Arabia, which had so long slept in sol- 
 itude and inaction, lighted up by the influence of the 
 Jewish and Christian Scriptures ! Mahomet was but 
 the representative or type of his whole nation. The 
 Koran, for which he so largely drew from the Bible, 
 and from old traditionary thoughts, images, and experi- 
 ences of Arabia, awakened the national intellect to ex- 
 traordinary vigor. And then again, a few generations 
 
106 THE INFLUENCE OP ONE NATIONAL 
 
 later, after the excitement of universal warfare and the 
 orgasm of victory had subsided, and the Arabians were 
 attracted to the treasures of Greek and Roman literature, 
 the genius of the nation took a new and sudden flight. 
 Not only did the Arabians keep the torch of science 
 burning during the Dark Ages, and preserve many lit- 
 erary monuments, which would otherwise have perished, 
 but they themselves effected very considerable achieve- 
 ments in philosophy, history, mathematics, and poetry. 
 To their influence, when they were masters of Spain, has 
 been justly traced the rise of the Troubadours and Trou- 
 veurs in France. The tide of conquest at length rolled 
 back ; the Arabians were placed on the defensive ; they 
 adopted the policy of excluding foreign intercourse, dis- 
 daining the ideas and attainments, as well as the society, 
 of other nations ; — and where is their literature now? 
 
 The example of China also confirms the principles 
 maintained in this essay. The literary monuments of 
 the Chinese are not destitute of considerable talent, in- 
 genuity, and proofs of industry. They have a drama, a 
 history, a poetry, a philosophy, an ethics, and a philology, 
 by no means contemptible. Still, there is a jejuneness, 
 a puerility, a provincial narrowness of grasp, in all the 
 specimens of their literature that have yet reached us, 
 only to be accounted for by the perfect mortmain in 
 which the national mind has been locked up for centu- 
 ries, and only to be removed by a liberal intercourse with 
 the intellect of other nations. 
 
 India surpasses China in almost all the branches just 
 enumerated, and especially in a refined system of gram- 
 mar and logic. Why so ? It is, that she has been for- 
 merly, as she is now, the theatre of national collision 
 
LITERATUEE UPON ANOTHER. 107 
 
 and commixture, and successive Greek, Mahometan, and 
 Christian conquests have necessarily elevated the stand- 
 ard of her literature. 
 
 Persia, again, has a more perfect literature than either 
 China or India. Her central position has blessed her 
 with benign influences from the East and from the 
 West. She has a noble stem of nationality, which has 
 survived the storms of many thousand years ; and when- 
 ever her soul shall be fully opened to influences of en- 
 lightened Christian Europe, she will assuredly take her 
 place among the foremost nations of the earth. 
 
 It is now time to survey the progress of the modern 
 Western world, so far as it may be connected with the 
 particular vein of the present discussion. 
 
 Long had the mind of Europe been slumbering. The 
 inexhaustible and uncultivated millions of the North 
 had everywhere overspread her surface. The ancient 
 and the recent inhabitants had begun to amalgamate. 
 The young nations that had sprung into being from 
 these admixtures had each a genius peculiar to itself, 
 — a genius capable of great things in its own due 
 time. But as yet there was no manifestation ; no devel- 
 opment; no creative spark; since the period had not 
 arrived for collision and influence from abroad. But the 
 Crusades mingled the nations of the East and the West 
 together; and soon after the last of the Crusades, w^e 
 have Dante in Italy, and Chaucer in England, as the 
 glorious fruits. A hundred years later, the scholars of 
 Greece, exiled from their native land by the irruption 
 and oppressions of their Turkish conqueror, spread them- 
 selves through the South of Europe, and were every- 
 where welcomed, not only as Christian brethren in exile, 
 
108 THE INFLUENCE OF ONE NATIONAL 
 
 but as the teachers and enlighteners of mind. Imme- 
 diately revived the general cultivation of ancient litera- 
 ture ; and immediately, too, burst forth, not puerile and 
 slavish imitations of the ancients, but original, indepen- 
 dent, vigorous national literatures. Italy had already 
 led the way in Dante. Her language arrived soonest at 
 perfection. The mental creations of her Boccaccios, Pe- 
 trarchs, Ariostos, and Tassos rolled out in full-orbed 
 beauty, at once the heralds and promoters of similar cre- 
 ations in other lands. It is remarkable, that, since the 
 revival of letters, Italian literature has been able to boast 
 of no very splendid era besides this, its earliest develop- 
 ment ; whereas England, as we shall immediately see, has 
 exhibited four or five such eras at least. The fact may 
 be accounted for, on the principles of this essay, partly 
 by the declining sense of nationality and independence 
 to which the misfortunes of Italy have subjected her, and 
 partly by the restricted intellectual intercourse with other 
 nations, which the policy of her rulers, both religious and 
 political, has imposed upon her. During the last forty 
 years, however, when the aspirations of Italy after a dis- 
 tinct national existence have been frequently revived and 
 encouraged, and she has cultivated with some diligence 
 the different literatures of Europe, her science, her po- 
 etry, her history, and her romance have assumed an im- 
 posing attitude, and borne very valuable fruits. 
 
 At the revival of letters, England first followed in the 
 train of Italy. She received the benefit not only of the 
 awakened cultivation of the Greek and Roman classics, 
 but of the recent emanations of the Italian mind, as well 
 as of several successive translations of the Christian and 
 Hebrew Scriptures. If we can imagine the mind of 
 
LITERATURE UPON ANOTHER. 109 
 
 England arousing at these voices, and coming forth to 
 mingle in the united progress of Greece, of Rome, of 
 reviving Italy, and of the Bible, we can comprehend the 
 existence of a Shakespeare, a Spenser, and the other 
 prodigies of the age of Elizabeth. It matters not that 
 Shakespeare, personally, was but slightly versed in the 
 original productions of other times and other lands. He 
 needed not the accomplishments of minute or extensive 
 erudition. He was the intellectual type of his age and 
 nation. By the instinct of genius, he knew and felt the 
 essence and spirit of what they knew and felt ; and in 
 fact the latest researches have discovered that his edu- 
 cation was sufficiently elevated and comprehensive to 
 bring him within reach of the highest sympathies and 
 affinities, so that he might grasp the fruits and results of 
 the learning of his age, although he himself had never 
 delved about its roots. 
 
 The same influences which wrought the wonders of 
 the Elizabethan era long continued to operate, and con- 
 tributed, we conceive, to the formation of a Dryden and 
 a Milton. The national mind then languished for a 
 generation, after the exhaustion of the civil wars. It 
 was awakened to new and brilliant action in the age 
 of Queen Anne, by the copious influx of French lit- 
 erature, which had arisen to its highest tide-mark in the 
 reign of Louis XIV. 
 
 Immediately after the age of Queen Anne, we have a 
 school more intensely British in its character, and with 
 many characteristic excellences, consisting of such writ- 
 ers as Fielding, SmoUet, Richardson, Chesterfield, Thom- 
 son, and Gray. This school was very naturally begin- 
 ning to languish for want of external stimulus and 
 
 10 
 
110 THE INFLUENCE OF ONE NATIONAL 
 
 sustenance; to its dramatic attempts we may well and 
 feelingly exclaim, in one of its own lines, of unfortunate 
 celebrity, — 
 
 " Oh, Sophonisba, Sophonisba, oh ! " 
 
 while Smollet's history, too unlike his romances, is but a 
 wretched basket of the dryest chips. But as the eigh- 
 teenth century continued to advance, the power and 
 relations of England also extended. Her intercourse 
 with the several nations of Europe, and with Eastern 
 Asia, attracted her to their literatures. The usual happy 
 reaction on her own mind took place, and the middle 
 and nearly the latter half of the eighteenth century exhib- 
 ited the splendid constellation of Johnson, Hume, Gold- 
 smith, Junius, Robertson, Gibbon, Warburton, Cowper, 
 Sir William Jones, Horsley, Burke, and their celebrated 
 contemporaries. The whole world was tributary to Eng- 
 land, and English literature, in consequence, assumed a 
 kind of majestic metropolitan character, as if speaking 
 for the instruction of many nations, or rather of man- 
 kind. But by this very dictatorial attitude it was essen- 
 tially injured. It became too proud and self-relying. 
 At the commencement of the present century, nothing 
 was more characteristic of England, in every respect, 
 than a sovereign contempt for other nations. This feel- 
 ing extended itself to her literary relations. She seemed 
 scarcely conscious that any literature but her own was 
 worthy of a thought. She despised the literature of 
 Germany; she despised the literature of France; she 
 despised the literature of Italy; she despised the lit- 
 erature of the East; even her cultivation of the an- 
 cient classics was pursued as if it were a kind of old- 
 
LITERATURE UPON ANOTHER. Ill 
 
 English prerogative to know something of Greek and 
 Latin; it was simply hereditary, prescriptive, habitual, 
 mechanical, and was more engrossed by the pedantic 
 mysteries of prosody than by the scope and spirit of 
 those divine productions. And what was the conse- 
 quence of this state of things ? Her own literature be- 
 came itself contemptible. A Hayley and a Darwin were 
 idolized as poets ; a Hoole was endured and was even 
 popular as a translator; an Aikin was submitted to as a 
 critic ; a Bisset was listened to as an historian and biogra- 
 pher; and the periodical press was degenerating into the 
 feeblest inanity. But out of this accumulation of insi- 
 pidity was destined to ascend a new and beautiful crea- 
 tion. The whole energies of England were aroused by 
 her vital contest with the military phenomenon of the 
 age. Her pride, though not indeed subdued, was shaken 
 by her dangers. She began to feel fair sympathies with 
 other nations, and to remember that hers was not the 
 only star in the firmament of mind. Moved by the agi- 
 tations of the times, the then rising generation of Eng- 
 land looked for light from every quarter. The finest 
 geniuses sat at the feet of Germany. Scott, by his trans- 
 lations from Goethe, and Coleridge, by his purveyances 
 from German philosophy, contributed to bring the literary 
 productions of that nation into repute ; Roscoe, although 
 then in middle life, awoke a fresh interest in the authors 
 of Italy ; the Edinburgh Review called attention to the 
 almost forgotten excellences of the Elizabethan era; 
 Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael extorted respect 
 for the reviving literature of France ; Germany was 
 rendered still more fashionable by the captivating com- 
 mentaries of Madame de Stael ; and all these powerful 
 
112 THE INFLUENCE OF ONE NATIONAL 
 
 elements, pouring in upon the English mind, already in 
 fervid action, prepared the way for the glories of the first 
 quarter of the nineteenth century, — its Scotts, Camp- 
 bells, Southeys, Byrons, Wordsworths, Moores, Lambs, 
 Coleridges, Milmans, Crabbes, together with its unri- 
 valled school, or rather schools, of periodical literature. 
 The original, native vein of the French intellect was a 
 delightful one ; lively, precise, penetrating, graceful. It 
 welcomed with the utmost ardor the commixture of 
 Greek and Roman materials at the revival of letters, but 
 for a long time it paid them a too absorbing reverence, 
 forgetting its own glorious capacities, and becoming most 
 ludicrously pedantic. At length the genius of the na- 
 tion restored itself to a happier equilibrium, and under 
 its influence sprang forth the long line of authors from 
 Montaigne to Voltaire, who have shed so brilliant a 
 lustre around their country's name. Still the French 
 mind has never yet attained its highest destiny. Drink- 
 ing chiefly from the stream of classical literature, and 
 almost disdaining to be nourished from other sources, it 
 has ever worn a too artificial and antique character. Its 
 whole past literature savors strongly of the classic oil. 
 Rousseau indeed acknowledged his obligations to Eng- 
 land, and especially to England's Richardson, who 
 taught him to draw from his own soul and from nature. 
 But Voltaire, who may be called the very genius of 
 France incarnate, could feel no true appreciation or sym- 
 pathy for Shakespeare, who was equally the incarnate 
 genius of England. The Revolution shook the mind of 
 France from this too narrow and restricted system. She 
 now seeks everywhere with avidity and docility for intel- 
 lectual sustenance. England, Germany, Italy, and the 
 
LITERATtRE UPON ANOTHER. 113 
 
 East combine to prompt her new and freer impulses ; 
 and although of late she has been defiled and tormented 
 with a literature which knows no law, moral, religious, 
 or critical, yet even now she is blessed by some bright, 
 redeeming exceptions. Whenever her political institu- 
 tions shall be so adapted to her character as to secure 
 her repose, how can we doubt that the country of St. 
 Louis, of Henry IV., of Corneille, of Fenelon, of Madame 
 Roland, and of Lamartine, enjoying the most felicitous 
 position in Europe, and with so much of pure Athenian 
 spirit in her composition, shall yet accomplish her part 
 in the elevation of the whole human mind, and thus 
 fulfil the appropriate destiny of beautiful France ? 
 
 Spain and Portugal present striking exemplifications 
 of the principles maintained in this essay. The impulse 
 of Greek and Roman literature at the revival of letters 
 was felt in due proportion by these two nations. Their 
 respective minds were aroused at the summons, and 
 spoke out characteristically and impressively. What 
 might not have been fairly expected from the country 
 that produced a Camoens, or from the still greater and 
 nobler nation that could boast of a Calderon, a Lope 
 de Vega, and a Cervantes ? But what could those na- 
 tions do? Shut out by a jealous Index Expurgatorius 
 from the world of letters, they could but vegetate in 
 solitude and darkness. A few plants, peeping here and 
 there through the fissures in the dungeon wall, have 
 caught some rays of the external light, and manifested 
 a corresponding vigor and beauty ; and such is the brief 
 story of Spanish and Portuguese literature for the last 
 two or three centuries. 
 
 Germany devoted herself so exclusively and intensely 
 
 10* 
 
114 THE INFLUENCE OF ONE NATIONAL 
 
 for two hundred years to the cultivation of the classical 
 authors, and of a dogmatic, formal theology, as almost 
 to forget her own nationality, and the abundance and 
 richness of her interior resources. The vast popularity, 
 however, and general circulation of Luther's Translation 
 of the Scriptures, preserved her from the extreme of ped- 
 antry, and infused into her earlier literature, subsequent 
 to the revival of letters, a certain solemnity and tender- 
 ness. When beginning to awake, at the commence- 
 ment of the eighteenth century, and to look forth for 
 some new impulse to her powers, she was naturally 
 attracted to the commanding literature of her neighbor, 
 France, which she cultivated with undue admiration 
 and docility. Its spirit was permitted to predominate so 
 much over her own, as to check and overlay the half- 
 dormant energies of her native genius. But as she was 
 still at liberty, — as she could go where she pleased 
 among the nations, for sustenance and stimulants, — she 
 next instinctively turned to the literature of England, to 
 •which she gave herself up with her usual fervid assiduity. 
 Hence a very remarkable improvement was effected in 
 her intellectual harvests. Klopstock may be regarded 
 as the representative of this stage of her development. 
 But she still moved on. The untiring and unbounded 
 erudition of her sons brought to light the long-buried 
 treasures of her early popular songs and tales, in which 
 the original germ of the national mind had richly bud- 
 ded ; these were studied with a fond ardor by her schol- 
 ars and poets; an intense German spirit was revived, 
 mysterious like the visions of Walhalla, but delighting 
 as much as ever did Odin or Thor in the materialities 
 of earth. Italy was now visited by the Germans for the 
 
LITERATURE UPON ANOTHER. 115 
 
 effects of her literature and her art ; and out of all these 
 combined workings and influences of three hundred 
 years arose the mountain era. of which Schiller, Wie- 
 land, Richter, Lessing, and Goethe are among the lofti- 
 est summits. 
 
 Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have pursued a course 
 very similar to that of Germany. Like her, they long 
 wrote and read in Latin, when they ought to have writ- 
 ten and read in their own mother tongues. Like her, 
 they were then seduced by the brilliant example of 
 France, and their literatures were but feeble echoes of 
 that of the great nation. And lastly, like her, they have 
 applied themselves to other European sources of instruc- 
 tion, especially to England ; they have revived, and dili- 
 gently cultivated, the study of their old Icelandic and 
 other Scandinavian treasures ; a national spirit is awa- 
 kened within them, which, however, disdains not to profit 
 from every quarter, and the result appears to be a prom- 
 ising era of fresh, vigorous, and beautiful emanations. 
 
 The literary existence of Russia resembles that of an 
 overgrown youth of talents, and therefore hardly comes 
 within the fair limits of the present inquiry. The very 
 alphabet which she uses was the invention and gift 
 of Peter the Great, her representative type, who, by his 
 visits abroad, seems to have been aware of the benefits 
 conferred on the cause of civilization and refinement by 
 foreign impulses. The few specimens of her literature 
 which have been circulated, especially the sublime Hymn 
 to the Deity, translated by Dr. Bowring, and familiar to 
 almost every English reader, are highly creditable to her 
 genius. 
 
 I am unable to assign a reason why so little of original 
 
116 THE INFLUENCE OF ONE NATIONAL 
 
 and inventive literature has been presented by Holland 
 to the commonwealth of mind, or at least so little that 
 has attracted general attention. Whether she was too 
 long and disproportionately addicted to classical eru- 
 dition and severe philosophy under the auspices of 
 her Grotius, — or whether her national elasticity was 
 cramped by her former subjection to Spanish despotism, 
 — or whether she entered with a too absorbing zeal into 
 the theological warfares of the seventeenth and eigh- 
 teenth centuries, — or whether her language, which is 
 but an ungainly dialect of the German, has repelled the 
 study of it by foreigners, — or whether there be some- 
 thing sluggish and fenny in her powers of invention, — 
 she certainly appears to have made no deep and general 
 impression, although both her position and fortunes have 
 been favorable to great intellectual advancement. Dur- 
 ing the last century, however, she led the way in the pur- 
 suit of classical learning and the sciences, and youth were 
 sent from every part of Europe and America, to acquire 
 the highest education at her universities. I learn also, 
 that, within the last twenty or thirty years, several pro- 
 ductions of the Batavian muse, characterized by great 
 refinement and sensibility, have in some measure re- 
 deemed the unpoetical reputation of the Low Countries. 
 This happy movement, however, was preceded by a 
 welcome reception into the country of the most choice 
 and brilliant masterpieces of the modern British, French, 
 and German belles-lettres. 
 
 The principles maintained in this essay are particu- 
 larly fortified by the example of Scotland. Her inge- 
 nium perfervidum was intensely wrought upon by the 
 revival of letters, and the introduction of the treasures 
 
LITERATURE UPON ANOTHER. 117 
 
 of Greece and Rome. The admirable Buchanan, alike 
 classical in his Latin prose and poetry, is the type of this 
 stage of Scottish development. Meanwhile, the stir of 
 this and the subsequent periods kept alive that exquisite 
 old vein of Scottish poetry, which the first James had so 
 successfully cultivated, and which awaited its last and 
 most glorious manifestation in the person of Burns ; for 
 the poetry of Scott, delightful and peculiar as it is, I 
 deem rather a part of the general movement of the whole 
 British intellect, before accounted for, than of the spe- 
 cific progress of his own native land. It is true that the 
 themes and the scenes of his own country, chiefly, were 
 the proximate stimulants of his wonderful powers ; but 
 in the lifetime of Sir Walter the individuality of Scot- 
 land was completely merged into that wider one of the 
 whole British mind, and the great author, as he wrote, 
 felt not the pulse, nor addressed the audience, of Scot- 
 land alone, but of that mighty empire on which the sun 
 never sets. The intercourse of Scotland with France 
 during the short reign of the unfortunate Mary, seems to 
 have produced no striking impression on the national 
 mind ; for France herself at this period was working 
 almost exclusively in the classical mine, and had not yet 
 commenced her peculiarly national literary career. It is 
 said, however, that the dialect and pronunciation of the 
 people of Edinburgh bear marks to this day of the influ- 
 ence exerted by the loquacious and polished court of 
 Queen Mary. During the seventeenth century, the mind 
 of Scotland was principally engrossed by theological 
 exercitations. Exclusively dedicated to the genius of a 
 metaphysical faith, she shared very little in the cultiva- 
 tion of general literature, and scarcely opened her spirit 
 
118 THE INFLUENCE OF ONE NATIONAL 
 
 to influences from abroad. But when her union with 
 England was achieved, then commenced the era of her 
 greatest literary glory. The natural effect of external 
 contact, collision, and competition, arising from her rap- 
 idly increasing intercourse with England, immediately 
 appeared. While reading Hume, Robertson, Smith, 
 Campbell, Blair, and even Stewart, one almost imagines 
 them sitting in their studies, — or rather walking, for they 
 cultivated the habit of dictation, — moulding every sen- 
 tence and every chapter so as to fall with the requisite 
 grace and effect on the Southern ears for which they 
 chiefly wrote. Some of them, indeed, are said to have 
 acknowledged, that they composed in English almost 
 with as much difficulty as they would have done in a 
 foreign language. Hume abounded in Gallicisms, as 
 Johnson once truly remarked in conversation. We have 
 seen, in an old European Magazine, a most formidable 
 list of errors against the English language committed by 
 Dr. Blair in the first edition of his Lectures on Rhet- 
 oric. Robertson seems to have made a special study of 
 English idioms, which he would sometimes employ as a 
 school-boy selects sentences from a Gradus ad Parnas- 
 sum. Thus, in the midst of whole pages of elevated, 
 flowing, and dignified history, he would introduce such 
 mosaic-work remarks as that " Mary doated on Darnley 
 to distraction." The whole of Stewart's first volume of 
 The Philosophy of the Human Mind seems to have been 
 composed exactly in the same tone in which he would 
 have aimed to compose an inaugural address in Cice- 
 ronian Latin. Still, notwithstanding these disadvan- 
 tages in point of language under which Scotland la- 
 bored, the influence of foreign cultivation awakened so 
 
LITERATURE UPON ANOTHER. 119 
 
 much ambition and so much dormant power in her sons, 
 that in her philosophy and her literature, during the lat- 
 ter half of the eighteenth century, she enjoyed the ac- 
 knowledged pre-eminence of being the instructress, not 
 of England only, but of Europe. And at the moment 
 when mere English poetry, as described in a preceding 
 statement, was at its lowest ebb, were heard the native 
 wood-notes wild of Robert Burns, bursting on the aston- 
 ished and delighted ear of civilized man, and creating 
 even new schools of thought, of poetry, of criticism, and 
 of philanthropy, founded on the widest basis of human 
 sympathies and human interests. Nay, even Burns 
 himself, however original and idiosyncratic, was mould- 
 ed under the influences which have just been traced. 
 The finest spirit of English poetry is manifest in a thou- 
 sand touches throughout his works, equally with the 
 ruder strokes of his own Doric muse. He himself ac- 
 knowledges the indebtedness of his intellectual growth 
 to some selections from Goldsmith and other English 
 poets, which captivated his young mind at school. 
 
 Soon after the commencement of the present century, 
 Scottish literature became completely merged and iden- 
 tified with that of England; though, even so late as the 
 establishment of the London Quarterly Review, that jeal- 
 ous periodical complained that the language, as well as 
 the politics, of England, was continually corrupted by 
 the heresies and solecisms of its Edinburgh rival. 
 
 The various problems regarding the ancient literature 
 of Ireland, I pretend not to solve, or at all events to apply 
 to these speculations. Since the conquest, her sons 
 have partaken the intellectual fortunes, and not seldom 
 increased the intellectual glories, of Great Britain. 
 
120 THE INFLUENCE OF ONE NATIONAL 
 
 The populations and the literatures of Europe have 
 sent out their various streams to our own shores, to be 
 reunited and flow on together, in the single channel of 
 American destiny. This new and momentous experi- 
 ment in the progress of the human mind must deeply 
 interest all who more or less directly participate in its 
 advancement. If the principles advanced in the fore- 
 going pages have been established by a competent in- 
 duction, every enlightened scholar amongst us must 
 be desirous of effecting and witnessing their faithful 
 application in his own country. 
 
 Accordingly, our first aim, we apprehend, should be 
 to cherish in our literature the peculiar qualities of the 
 American character, as an indispensable groundwork 
 for the appropriation of all other materials. And what 
 are these qualities ? What are the main, distinguish- 
 ing characteristics which belong to this vast amalgama- 
 tion of races, after having been sufficiently long re- 
 moved from the manifold corruptions, trammels, pre- 
 scriptions, and artificial distinctions of the Old World, 
 and allowed to spring forth anew with the spontaneity 
 of nature? As we apprehend, they are these, — the free, 
 the intrepid, the excursive, the inventive. We see these 
 attributes in most of the public and private movements 
 of our land, — mingled indeed with sad mistakes, — fol- 
 lowed sometimes by disasters, — but finally prevailing 
 over opposition and discouragement. They are discern- 
 ible in our ceaseless emigrations, — all of us being from 
 the first but a nation of emigrants, — in our daring Revo- 
 lutionary and subsequent wars, in our ravenous and in- 
 satiable appetite for territory, in our mercantile specula- 
 tions, our religious opinions, our indomitable Protestant- 
 
LITERATURE UPON ANOTHER. 121 
 
 ism, our camp-meetings, our stump and our legislative 
 oratory, our pulpits, our pleadings, our tribunals, our 
 election-seasons, our periodical press, our multitudinous 
 new inventions, our political expedients, our vices, our 
 various societies to repress them, our laws, our violations 
 of them, our schools, and sometimes in our very amuse- 
 ments, — the most popular exhibition, for instance, at 
 the West, for several years, having been a terrific repre- 
 sentation of the infernal regions, with the actual roaring 
 of the flames, and the audible bowlings of the damned; 
 while at this moment a picture three miles long, repre- 
 senting the whole valley of the Mississippi, is delighting 
 hundreds of thousands of visitors. 
 
 The traces of these same qualities we also perceive in 
 what little national literature we yet can boast of, as 
 haying made an impression on the European world. 
 The theologian Edwards, — our state papers, so eulo- 
 gized by Madame de Stael, — our recent historians, — 
 our eagle-winged Channing, and bird-of-paradise-plumed 
 Irving, — our Brockden Brown, — our other few distin- 
 guished novelists, — and the elite of Bryant's, PercivaPs, 
 and other successful American poetry, — all exhibit the 
 possession of these common characteristics. 
 
 But as these many qualities are peculiarly liable to 
 excess, abuse, and degeneracy, how can their more peril- 
 ous tendencies be better resisted than by the assiduous 
 and liberal cultivation of all rich and wholesome foreign 
 literatures ? 
 
 We have seen, in these remarks, how a resort to such 
 
 sources, in all ages and climes, has been productive of 
 
 the happiest effects; how taste has been rectified, and 
 
 expression improved, and thought fired, and a nation's 
 
 11 
 
122 THE INFLUENCE OF ONE NATIONAL 
 
 mind assisted to burst its old shell, and put on new 
 wings. Fortunately, the facilities for such processes are 
 greater in our own country than were ever known before. 
 Different races may approach each other on our common, 
 friendly soil, without having to wait long ages for the 
 removal of national antipathies ; and their literatures may 
 be brought together without the necessity of fighting 
 their way through mutual mistake, prejudice, ridicule, 
 and exasperation. The Frenchman and the Englishman 
 sit down side by side on the borders of the same stream, 
 and the German teaches his little son the language of 
 his fathers, while he sends him to the common school 
 provided by their adopted country. 
 
 Among modern literatures to be resorted to for these 
 great purposes, the preference should unquestionably be 
 given to the English. Its pages we should turn with 
 daily and nightly hands. It is the well-spring of our 
 language. It embodies a spirit the nearest to our own. 
 "Without fear of undue, servile dependence, let us freely 
 consult its past and present monuments ; let us listen 
 with patience to its malignant or well-meaning criticisms 
 on our national defects, and let us endeavor to ingraft 
 the choicest mental offshoots of our English ancestry on 
 our own free, intrepid, and vigorous stock. 
 
 There are disappointed and jealous American writers, 
 who complain that a disproportionate patronage is lav- 
 ished among us on English literature. But so danger- 
 ous a heresy ought boldly to be met and extinguished. 
 It would be suicidal folly to turn away from the unri- 
 valled treasures of England, out of tenderness for our 
 own authors, however promising and meritorious they 
 may be. We must not renounce the privilege of look- 
 
 
LITERATURE UPON ANOTHER. 123 
 
 ing, almost with a fond adoration, to the country where 
 there now exist, and have existed for many a long year, 
 the mighty workings of an intellect the most robust, — 
 a research the most varied, laborious, and successful, a 
 scholarship the most graceful and accomplished, a sci- 
 ence the most profound, a genius the most inventive, 
 pathetic, and humorous, a poetry familiar with the lof- 
 tiest aspirings or the tenderest tremblings of the hu- 
 man spirit, — all sustained by the advantages of a me- 
 tropolitan position among the nations, a thousand years 
 of traditionary lore and accumulated material, and an 
 intensity of competition, of itself sufficient to call forth 
 whatever powers and excellences lie dormant in our 
 nature. Nothing indeed could better guard us from our 
 national tendencies to a faulty extravagance, than the 
 unwearied and straightforward good-sense of the Anglo- 
 Saxon mind; that mind, by the way, which alone has 
 clung, from the times of the Heptarchy, with a kind of 
 instinctive, yet enlightened and liberal tenacity, to the 
 combined study of the Sacred Scriptures and the pagan 
 classics. 
 
 The remarkable fact here alluded to is at once a justi- 
 fication of the leading principle of this essay, and the be- 
 quest of an invaluable example for Americans to follow. 
 As for the treasure of the Scriptures, it is already, or may 
 be, in the hands of every American citizen. It contains, 
 beside the waters of eternal life, whatever of sesthetic 
 riches can be found for us in the whole body of the Orien- 
 tal literatures, without their childish extravagances and 
 defects. The Greek and Roman classics we must con- 
 tinue to study with unflagging, or rather with increasing 
 ardor. We trust that something even of the utility of 
 
124 THE IXFLUEXCE OF ONE NATIONAL 
 
 that study has been demonstrated in these remarks. But 
 even though it came short of mere mechanical utilitari- 
 anism, and failed to satisfy the political economist, let it 
 be remembered that the alabaster-box of precious oint- 
 ment may be sometimes substituted for the hundred 
 pence given to the poor. It is cheering to find a general 
 sentiment prevailing in our country, in harmony with 
 this viev^^ Notudthstanding incessant attacks on classi- 
 cal learning, and clamorous appeals against it from every 
 quarter to the principle of utility, the hundred colleges 
 and universities throughout our land have persevered in 
 maintaining the Greek and Roman classics in the fore- 
 ground of a liberal education. We may have few or no 
 giants in erudition like those of Europe, but it is evi- 
 dent that our standard of classical learning is rising from 
 the point of depression to which it had once sunk. A 
 goodly number of elementary treatises and text-books 
 proceed every year from the press. The best German 
 preparatory works abound more and more among us, in 
 accurate translations. In all our new Territories and 
 States there is a constant demand for teachers of the 
 classics. 
 
 Abundant encouragement should next be given to the 
 study of the modern European and other languages, 
 as taste and opportunity may lead the way. 
 
 By these means, and by the exercise of an unsleeping 
 discrimination, we may yet hope to build up a literature 
 that shall have something of the primitive and earnest 
 simplicity of the Scriptures, something of the practical 
 good-sense of the English, something of the precision 
 and point of the French, something of Italian smooth- 
 ness, something of Spanish grandeur, something of Ger- 
 
LITERATURE UPON ANOTHER. 125 
 
 man comprehensiveness, and much of the all-pervad- 
 ing, never-dying, perfect taste of the ancient classics, 
 blended with the free, independent, and elastic attributes 
 of our own national mind. Even though these specific 
 foreign ingredients should not be perceived in the new 
 compound of American literature, yet a result may be 
 happily produced no less precious.* 
 
 This is a subject worthy of our most earnest contem- 
 plation. The literature of a country will sooner or later 
 find its way, for good or ill, to the minds and hearts of 
 its whole population. A Voltaire could loosen the faith 
 of palaces and oi faubourgs, — a Hannah More could 
 strengthen that of princes and of peasants. Is it not 
 worth while to furnish the humblest individual with 
 accurate and impressive forms of thought and language, 
 which shall convey as nearly as possible the exact truth 
 of things, and awaken the most desirable associations ? 
 Is it not worth while to provide, by every possible meth- 
 od, that the resources of the listless and the vacant shall 
 be multiplied, that light shall be afforded to the inquir- 
 ing, and that the incessant activity of the intellect and 
 the affections should be furnished with the most salutary 
 and palatable food ? A literature which accomplishes 
 this for any country, is the greatest of its blessings. Mis- 
 fortunes may overwhelm her; the tide of invasion or the 
 
 * It has been acutely remarked, on the circumstance of one national char- 
 acter arising from the union of any two separate races, that " in morals, as 
 in physics, the commingling of two ingredients appears to produce a third, 
 totally different from the rest. The new substance does not unite the quali- 
 ties which distinguished its constituent elements while they remained apart, 
 but acquires qualities which were found in neither." — For. Quart. Rev., 
 No. 71. 
 
 11* 
 
126 RECIPROCAL INFLUENCE OF NATIONAL LITERATURES. 
 
 changes of time may sweep away the accumulated mon- 
 uments of her wealth and grandeur ; her sons may sit 
 down to weep by her broken columns, or, more bitter 
 still, they may be forced to remove in exile from her 
 cherished dust ; but if they can still press her immortal 
 literature to their bosoms, they have not yet lost their 
 mother-land, — she lives, and speaks to her children. 
 
 1836. 
 
ESSAY ON POSTURES. 
 
 WRITTEN FOII AN EARLY NUMBER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.* 
 
 " Sedeant spectentque." — Virg. 
 " In most strange postures we have seen him set himself." 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 Mr. Editor, — 
 Among the many ingredients which go to form the 
 complete scholar, all must allow posture to be quite 
 pre-eminent. He would deserve a sneer for his pre- 
 tensions, who affected the literary character whilst at 
 the same time he was ignorant of the rare and difficult 
 accomplishment of sitting with his feet against the wall 
 at a higher level than his head, or of leaning in due 
 contemplative style upon his elbow. But the subject 
 has unfortunately never been reduced to a science. How 
 is it, sir, that the motions of the stars, for centuries to 
 come, have been nicely adjusted to the fraction of a sec- 
 ond, — that metals, and alkalies, and gases have been 
 classed and systematized, — that the operations of the 
 mind have been analyzed and developed, — that anat- 
 omy, even anatomy, that kindred department, has left 
 almost no region of its own unexplored, — whilst the far 
 
 * The North American Eeview originally included a Miscellaneous De- 
 partment. 
 
128 ESSAY ON POSTURES. 
 
 more domestic, human, useful, and every-day business 
 of postures has remained unnoticed and forgotten ? To 
 remove this scandal to science is the object of the few 
 humble pages following. The author will be satisfied 
 if he but excite attention to the subject, and will gladly 
 leave the consummation of his attempt to greater adepts 
 in attitude than himself. 
 
 Posture, sir, in its most general sense, may be defined, 
 a modification of the body and limbs, for the purpose 
 either of ease or show. It may be divided into standing, 
 kneeling, lying down, and sitting. The first belongs 
 chiefly to the arts of dancing-masters and drill-sergeants ; 
 the second, to love and devotion ; the third, to ladies of 
 fashion and delicate valetudinarians ; it is the fourth and 
 last only which now claims our attention, and that, prin- 
 cipally, so far as it respects the sedentary class of people, 
 called scholars. We shall enumerate the several varie- 
 ties of sitting postures, describing them as exactly as 
 possible, and dwelling on the peculiar advantages which 
 they possess with the quiet votaries of literature. 
 
 First. The most universal, easy, and gentlemanlike is 
 denominated the cross-kneed posture. All ranks, classes, 
 and ages of males, together with some individuals of the 
 other sex, cultivate this attitude with very happy suc- 
 cess. It is no uncommon thing to see as many as six- 
 teen or seventeen in a company, who, throughout an 
 entire evening, most patiently and heroically persevere in 
 this inoffensive mode of arranging the nether limbs. The 
 child of three years of age adopts it among the first imi- 
 tative accomplishments which excite the joy and admi- 
 ration of his parents. The aspiring school-boy, by piling 
 one knee upon another, adds a year to his existence, and 
 
ESSAY ON POSTURES. 129 
 
 bodies forth the dignity of the future man. The youth 
 who is just entering the world, who has a letter of intro- 
 duction to Mr. of Boston, or New York, or Phila- 
 delphia, would be put to infinite embarrassment if the 
 privilege of crossing his knees were denied him. But 
 without going through every age for the illustration of 
 this division of our subject, I proceed to observe, that 
 the cross-kneed posture is not to be adopted by all per- 
 sons, at all times, and on all occasions. It is much too 
 nice and trim for every-day use. I know many a re- 
 spectable farmer who will never sit in this fashion 
 except in his best suit, on a Sunday, or at a board of 
 selectmen, or at the examination of a district school, or 
 when visiting an acquaintance in town. What, sit 
 cross-kneed and erect in a plain frock and trousers, and 
 on a common working-day I Why, sir, it would be as 
 preposterous and uncommon, as to read the Bible on a 
 Monday, or to fix one's thoughts and eyes during the 
 offering up of prayers on a Sabbath. 
 
 But this part of our subject is susceptible of a few 
 subdivisions. Of cross-kneed postures there are five 
 kinds: — 1. The natural^ which consists in throwing one 
 knee over the other, and thinking no more about it. 
 This is by far the best, and ought to be recommended 
 universally to your readers. 2. The broad-calfed^ which 
 is effected by turning the upper knee out in such a man- 
 ner, as to present as large a face of the inner calf as pos- 
 sible. This was very much in fashion nineteen years 
 ago, but has since that time gradually subsided, and is 
 practised, I believe, at present, only by those who love 
 the fashions of their youth, and a few country-gentlemen 
 in nankeen pantaloons. 3. The long-legged, so called, 
 
130 ESSAY ON POSTURES. 
 
 because this posture requires the foot of the upper leg to 
 reach quite down to the floor. It was attempted to be 
 brought into fashion about ten years ago, but it could 
 not succeed, in consequence of the shortness of the limbs 
 of some gentlemen in high ton at that time. It is never- 
 theless a graceful and elegant posture, and may be prac- 
 tised by your readers, for variety's sake, and with consid- 
 erable ease, if they will but remember to draw the foot 
 of the under leg in an oblique, retrograde direction, giv- 
 ing the upper an opportunity to descend and meet the 
 floor. I have seen it employed with much execution at 
 tea-parties and morning calls, but it is too much of a 
 dress thing to be used on common occasions. 4. The 
 aivkivard. This consists in bringing the upper leg round, 
 and locking it behind the other. Persons of absent 
 habits, or of indifferent breeding, use this posture in com- 
 pany. In private, it is employed when a man gets a 
 little nervous, and is besides almost always assumed un- 
 consciously, when one is engaged in a deep mathemati- 
 cal investigation. Hence, great mathematicians, with 
 some splendid exceptions, are rarely exempt from the 
 habit of sitting in this mode. Lastly. The bowsprit 
 posture. This your fashionable, juvenile readers will 
 recognize to be the one which is at present universally 
 in vogue. It consists in extending out the leg as far 
 and as high as the muscle can bear. Two or three years 
 since, our boot-manufacturers — [shoemakers is a word 
 quite out of date) — very kindlyas sisted this posture by 
 stiffening the instep of the boot, so that the style in ques- 
 tion could be properly preserved without much painful 
 tension. 
 
 I am strongly inclined to believe, that the bowsprit 
 
ESSAY ON POSTURES. 131 
 
 posture was adopted in this country out of compliment 
 to our gallant seamen. It is at present used by about 
 one half of the gentlemen you meet ; but so far as my 
 observation extends, appears (probably in consequence 
 of the peace) to be somewhat on the decline. 
 
 I would remark, by the way, that the cross-kneed pos- 
 ture is now almost out of use with the other sex. There 
 was indeed an attempt, about five or six years since, to 
 get up the fashion among ladies of adopting this posture, 
 and at the same time of bending over the upper foot, so 
 as to make it form a crescent. She whose foot could de- 
 scribe the most complete curve was envied and admired 
 by all her competitors. But alas I Mr. Editor, there are 
 but few persons whose feet are sufficiently flexible to 
 enable them to shine in this accompfishment. And so it 
 was dropped. Out of a company of twenty-five ladies 
 whom a friend of mine reconnoitred the other evening at 
 a tea-party, twenty-one sat with their feet parallel and 
 together ; two, a matron somewhat advanced, and a 
 maiden lady, whose old associations of gentility induced 
 them so to sit, were found in the cross-kneed predica- 
 ment ; and the remaining two, being the youngest of the 
 whole company, had drawn their feet under their chairs, 
 and crossed them there. 
 
 Bat we have too long deferred the more immediate 
 object of this essay, which is to show the connection be- 
 tween posture and literature. At what times, and on 
 what occasions, shall the cross-kneed posture be adopted 
 by the decorous and conscientious scholar ? In the first 
 place, let him be sure immediately to assume it on the 
 entrance of a stranger into his study. It is almost as 
 great a mark of ill-breeding to use any other mode of 
 
132 ESSAY ON POSTURES. 
 
 sitting on such an occasion, as it would be to hold your 
 book still open in your hand. I own, that no posture in 
 which you can sit conveys quite so barbarous a hint to 
 your poor visitant as the holding of your book open, 
 which, I regret to say, is sometimes unthinkingly indulged 
 in by scholars, who would be sorry not to be thought gen- 
 tlemen. But, sir, let me repeat it, the cross-kneed is the 
 posture in which to receive a visitor with whom you are 
 not on terms of considerable intimacy. It gives you 
 time to collect your ideas; it tacitly informs your visitor 
 that he is of consequence enough in your eyes for you to 
 think about the position of your limbs ; it thereby concil- 
 iates his good feelings, and induces him civilly to pre- 
 sent before your face a similar example. When you are 
 thus both seated according to due form and manner, you 
 may interchange thoughts with much facility and effect. 
 But be sure not to abandon the cross-kneed posture till 
 the end of the first half-hour. After that period, you may 
 venture to stretch your feet out, and lean back in your 
 chair. By the end of the second half-hour, you may put 
 your feet over the fireplace, and if your visitor stay two 
 hours, and be somewhat tedious and unprofitable, con- 
 trive by all means to get a table between you, and thrust 
 your feet up into his face. Time is valuable, insomuch 
 that the saving of it is one of those few instances where 
 the end sanctifies the means. It often is not enough to 
 pull out your watch, — not enough to sit ten minutes 
 without saying a word to your companion, or even look- 
 ing at him, — not enough to glance every two minutes at 
 your study-table ; no, sir, the only method often which 
 is efficacious is the attitude I have just mentioned, which 
 may be called the assault-and-battery posture, and which 
 
 
ESSAY ON POSTURES. 133 
 
 exhibits a new and fair illustration of the importance of 
 our subject to the man of letters. 
 
 In the second place, let the votary of literature adopt 
 the cross-kneed style in general company. The great 
 advantage of it there is, that it saves him from a thou- 
 sand ungraceful attitudes, and strange crookednesses, 
 which savor too decidedly of the study, and into which 
 he w^ill be apt almost inevitably to slide, if he ventures 
 beyond the sheltering precincts of the cross-knee. It 
 has too long been the reproach of the scholar, that he 
 behaves like nobody else. For mercy's sake, then, Mr. 
 Editor, since everybody else behaves so very well, let us 
 act like them. Let us not bring a reproach upon our 
 profession, and render a life of letters unpopular, by our 
 manner of sitting. A few sacrifices of this nature will 
 cost us no very tremendous effort, and may be of incal- 
 culable service to the cause of literature and science. 
 
 In the third place, the style in question is to be as- 
 sumed amidst all kinds of plain reading, where but little 
 attention and study are required. Indeed, so appropri- 
 ate is it on these occasions, that scholars might very par- 
 donably denominate it the belles-lettres posture. How 
 delicious, Mr. Editor, when you have brought the Edin- 
 burgh or the Quarterly, and for my own part, let me add, 
 too, the North American, from the bookseller's, all new 
 
 '' and fresh as is the month of May," 
 to take your ivory knife in the right hand, your Review 
 in the left, your cigar, if you please, in your mouth, and 
 at a window, on which the rays of the setting sun are 
 richly, softly falling, and a western breeze is luxuriously 
 blowing, to sit — how? Unworthy he of all these in- 
 valuable blessings, who takes any other posture at first 
 
 12 
 
134 ESSAY ON POSTURES. 
 
 than the true belles-lettres-cross-kneed. Or when, in the 
 society of friends, you read aloud the adventures of Con- 
 rad, Roderick, or Robert Bruce, or in imagination range 
 through old Scotland with the author of the Antiquary, 
 or visit England, France, Italy, and Greece with modern 
 travellers, — whilst you gracefully hold the book with a 
 wide-spread hand, your thumb and little finger pressing 
 on the leaves to prevent them from closing, your middle 
 finger propping the back, and the other two faithfully 
 employed each to support a separate cover of the book, 
 — do not fail to complete the elegant scene by adjusting 
 one knee above the other in the manner worthy of your 
 employment. Take, generally, this posture, moreover, 
 when you read history, — when you snatch up the Spec- 
 tator or Mirror to save the odds and ends of your pre- 
 cious time, — when you are reading letters from persons 
 with whom you are not intimately acquainted, (posture 
 not being to be thought of in perusing the epistles of 
 your much-valued friends,) and on all occasions, in short, 
 when your mind only goes out to gather ideas, copiously, 
 easily, freely. So much for this posture, sir, on which I 
 would gladly write pages and pages more, if some other 
 classes did not press upon me with strong claims for con- 
 sideration. 
 
 Secondly. Next to the cross-kneed, that which is most 
 appropriate to secluded, literary characters is the pm'ieto- 
 pedal posture. This consists, as will be seen at once 
 from the etymology of the term, in fixing the feet 
 against the wall. This posture was instituted for the 
 relief of literary limbs. However valuable, indispensable, 
 and gentlemanlike may be the cross-kneed, it would be 
 fatiguing and unhealthy always to conform the body 
 
ESSAY ON POSTURES. 135 
 
 strictly to its rules. For this reason, allow the feet of 
 your readers occasionally to make the delicious and 
 grateful transition from the floor to the wall ; with this 
 strict proviso, to be transgressed on no condition what- 
 ever, that they never shall so sit in the presence of a 
 being of the gentler sex. And here let me expatiate, pa- 
 rieto-pedal posture, in thy praise! At this very moment, 
 while I am assuming thee in languid luxury, holding in 
 my hand a Horace, which is prevented from closing only 
 by my forefinger, unconsciously placed on Otiiim Divos, 
 
 — here, as, in a direction parallel to the horizon, I station 
 my feet against the wainscot, and, leaning back my chair, 
 fall sweetly and quietly into a rocking, which is more 
 gentle than the cradle-vibrations of half-sleeping infancy, 
 
 — here let me ponder on all thy excellency. I feel thy 
 influence extending through my frame. I am brought 
 into a new world ; the objects around me assume side- 
 long positions ; the trains of my ideas are quickened ; 
 the blood rushes back, and warms my heart ; a literary 
 enthusiasm comes over me ; my faculty of application 
 grows more intense ; and whatever be the book which 
 I next reach from the table, I find my interest in its 
 contents redoubled, my power of overcoming its diffi- 
 culties increased, and altogether my capacity of gaining 
 knowledge incalculably enlarged and extended. Mild, 
 and easy, and lovely posture I I^et the votary of de- 
 corum stigmatize thee as awkward and half indecent ; 
 let the physician reproach thee as unnatural and un- 
 wholesome; let indigestion, with bleeding at the nose, 
 and personal deformity, shake their hideous fists of 
 threatening out of the mists of the future ; — still will I 
 lounge with thee ; still shall every room where I reside 
 
136 ESSAY ON POSTURES. 
 
 bear marks of thee, whether they be deep indentations 
 in the floor, occasioned by my backward-swinging chair, 
 or blacker and more triumphant insignia impressed by 
 my shoes upon the wall. Be thou my shelter from the 
 spleen of vexatious housewives, and the harassing for- 
 mality of ceremony; soothe my full-fed afternoons; in- 
 spire my dyspeptical dreams, and let my last fatal apo- 
 plexy be with thee. 
 
 Thirdly. We come now to the favorite posture of all 
 severe and laborious students. It is simple, picturesque, 
 characteristic. Place your elbow on the table, prop 
 one of your temples with your knuckles, and, if it be ex- 
 cusable to introduce features into this subject, (though 
 I have another treatise partly finished upon literary 
 tricks,) let a slight knitting of the brow take place be- 
 tween your eyes, and you are at once — I will unhesitat- 
 ingly hazard the assertion — in that position in which 
 Aristotle discovered the categories ; in which Pythagoras 
 investigated the properties of the right-angled triangle, 
 and Locke defined infinity ; in which Newton balanced 
 the world, Copernicus, like another Joshua, made the 
 sun stand still, and La Place deduced the great motions 
 of our system ; in which Bacon sat, while turning the 
 whole course of science, as a pilot turns the course of a 
 ship ; in which Stewart was seated, when he detected 
 the error of the French philosophers, and proved that 
 there must be something besides the power of sensation, 
 which is able to compare one sensation with another ; in 
 which Bentham unfolded the true principles of legisla- 
 tion, and Berkeley devised the theory of acquired vision ; 
 in which Eichhorn made his researches into Genesis, and 
 Paley his into the Epistles ; — a posture, in short, in 
 
 i 
 
ESSAY ON POSTURES. 137 
 
 which the greatest energies of intellect have ever been 
 put forth, and by the efficacy of which alone, assure your 
 young readers, they can hope for eminence, or look for 
 almost indefinite advances towards the future perfecti- 
 bility of our race. Its name is the delving. 
 
 Fourthly. Now, Mr. Editor, let your elhoiu remain 
 precisely where it was in the last posture ; but instead 
 of knitting your brow, and fixing your eyes on the table, 
 let your head turn round, till your open hand is upon the 
 sinciput; let your forehead be smooth, as the sleeping 
 surface of a lake ; let your eyes be rolling on vacancy, 
 and, presto I you are fixed at once in the genuine atti- 
 tude poetical. It is this posture alone which Shakespeare 
 had in his mind, nay, in which Shakespeare must have 
 sat, when he described the fine frenzy of the poet, whose 
 eye glances from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. 
 It was this posture in which the most interesting portrait 
 of Pope was executed, that has descended to our times. 
 So sat he, I will hazard every poet in my library, when 
 he penned this line, 
 
 " And look through Nature up to Nature's God." 
 So sat Milton, when he described 
 
 " Those thoughts that wander through eternity." 
 
 In this posture must Goldsmith, 
 
 " where Alpine solitudes ascend, 
 Have sat him down a pensive hour to spend, 
 And, placed on high above the storm's career, 
 Looked downward, where a hundred realms appear," &.c. 
 
 It could be only while thus leaning and thus looking, 
 that Chaucer used to scatter through his poems innu- 
 merable refreshing descriptions of those vernal seasons, 
 
 12* 
 
138 ESSAY ON POSTURES. 
 
 " Wheu that Phoebus his chair of gold so hie 
 Had whirled up the sterrie sky aloft, 
 And in the Bole =^ was entred certainly, 
 When shouris sote t of rain descended soft. 
 Causing the ground, fele | times and oft, 
 Up for to give many an wholesome air, 
 And every plaine was yclothed faire," &c. 
 
 What other attitude could our contemporary Camp- 
 bell have taken, when he leaped in imagination up to 
 those glorious heights on our side of the Atlantic, 
 
 " Where at evening Alleghany views, 
 Through ridges burning in her western beam, 
 Lake after lake interminably gleam " 1 
 
 In what other posture could the chaste Tasso have 
 placed himself, when he addressed to the Muse of Chris- 
 tianity that invocation, of which you will excuse the fol- 
 lowing imperfect version ? 
 
 " Muse ! not thou, whose meaner brows desire 
 The fading growth of laurelled Helicon, 
 But thou, that chant'st amid the blessed choir, 
 Which pours sweet music round the heavenly throne ! 
 Breathe thou into my breast celestial fire ; 
 O smile, and not thy votary disown. 
 If truth with flowers I weave, and deck my song 
 With other graces than to thee belong." 
 
 Byron must have sat in this posture, in some cold 
 midnight, when he dreamt his dream of darkness ; and 
 Southey must have persisted in the same attitude through 
 a whole vernal season, when he wrote his Thalaba. 
 
 So sat Homer and Scott in the conception of their 
 battles. 
 
 So sat Virgil and Leigh Hunt in the imagination of 
 their sceneries. 
 
 * Bull. t Sweet. | Many. 
 
ESSAY ON POSTURES. 139 
 
 Wordsworth must have arranged his corporeity in the 
 very quintessence of the poetical posture, when he 
 sketched the following outline of his Recluse : 
 
 " For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink 
 Deep ; and, aloft ascending, breathe in worlds 
 To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil." 
 
 So sat his neighbor Wilson, when he described the 
 stream, half-veiled in snowy vapor, which flowed 
 
 " With sound like silence, motion like repose^^ ; 
 
 or the duteous daughter in the sick-chamber of her 
 mother, — she whose feet 
 
 " Fell soft as snow on snoivy 
 
 So sat Thomson when he wrote this line : 
 
 " Ten thousand wonders rolling in my thought " ; — 
 
 and Lucan when he wrote these : 
 
 '• niger inficit horror 
 
 Terga maris : longo per multa volumina tractu 
 ^stuat unda minax : Jiatusque incerta futuri, 
 Turbida testantur conceptos oequora ventos." 
 
 So sat Akenside, when his mind 
 
 " Darted her swiftness up the long career 
 
 Of devious comets, 
 
 and looked back on all the stars." 
 
 So David sat (I would reverently suppose) in his 
 hours of inspiration, when " contemplating man, the 
 sun, moon, and stars." To say nothing of innumerable 
 others. 
 
 Fifthly. The inetaphy sic al posture. Place both elbows 
 on the table, let the insides of the two wrists be joined 
 together, keeping the palms just far enough asunder to 
 admit the chin between them, while the tips of the little 
 
140 ESSAY ON POSTURES. 
 
 fingers come up and touch the outside corners of the 
 eyes. This posture, sir, from its fixedness, gives you at 
 once an idea of solidity. The mutual contact of two of 
 the most tender and sensible parts of the human body, 
 the tip of the finger and the eye, will assist you in mak- 
 ing experiments on sensation ; and as your whole head is 
 fastened, as it were, into a socket, your eyes must look 
 straight forward, and your train of reflection will be thus 
 more continuous and undisturbed. Keep precisely so 
 for several days together, and you will at length arrive 
 triumphantly at the important and philosophical conclu- 
 sion, that mind is matter. 
 
 Innumerable other attitudes crowd upon my recollec- 
 tion, the formal discussion of which, after just hinting at 
 a few of the most prominent, I must waive, and leave 
 them to be treated by writers of freer leisure, and more 
 enlarged views of posturology. For instance, there is 
 the dishabille posture, formed by lying at full length on 
 your chair, crossing your feet upon the floor, and locking 
 your hands upon the top of your head, — very common 
 and very becoming. In conversation, there is the posi- 
 tive posture, when you lean your cheek upon one finger ; 
 the sentimental^ when you lean it upon two fingers ; the 
 thoughtless, when you lean it upon three, thrusting at the 
 same time your little finger into your mouth ; and lastly, 
 the attentive, when you lean your cheek outright upon 
 your whole hand, bend forward, and stare the speaker in 
 the face. There is the sheepish posture, formed by pla- 
 cing your legs and feet parallel and together, laying both 
 hands upon your knees, and contemplating no earthly 
 thing save your own pantaloons. This is to be assumed 
 when you are overwhelmed with a joke, which you can- 
 
ESSAY ON POSTURES. 141 
 
 not for the life of you answer, or when you are attacked 
 with an argument which you have not the ingenuity to 
 repel. There is the clerical posture, formed by laying 
 the ankle of your left leg on the knee of your right, and 
 so forming a triangle. Then there is the laij posture, 
 made by throwing the legs wide asunder, and twirling 
 the watch-chain. There is the musical posture, where 
 you bring one foot round behind the other, and rest the 
 toe most delicately and aerially on the floor. This was 
 used by one of the small band from Bonaparte's court 
 who lately charmed our metropolis with the violoncello 
 and guitar. "Why is it not as appropriate to the flute as 
 to the guitar? There is the monologue posture, when, 
 in default of a companion, you take another chair, place 
 your feet in it, and hold high converse with yourself. 
 But, Mr. Editor, by far the most independent, lordly, and 
 scholarly style is to command as many chairs for your 
 own accommodation as can possibly come within reach. 
 I had a chum, whilst I was in college, who put in requisi- 
 tion every chair but one in the room. He had one for each 
 of his feet, one for each of his arms, and the last for his 
 own more immediate self. As our whole number of that 
 article of furniture was but half a dozen, I was often per- 
 plexed at the entrance of a friend to know how I should 
 economize for the convenience of all seven, — I beg par- 
 don, I should have said, all three of us. After some 
 confused apologies, I used to offer the visitor my own, 
 and betake myself to the window-seat, quite willing, I 
 assure you, to undergo such embarrassments, for the repu- 
 tation of living with one of the best posture-masters with- 
 in the walls. Ah, sir, that was the glory of sitting! I 
 cannot describe the silent admiration with which I used 
 
142 ESSAY ON POSTURES. 
 
 to gaze upon the sprawling nonchalance^ the irresistible 
 ennui, the inimitable lounge, with which my room-mate 
 could hit the thing off after an enormous dinner. I ought 
 here to observe, that the state of mind peculiarly adapted 
 to the posture now under consideration is that of perfect 
 vacuity^ and that, if I write much longer, I shall probably 
 prepare your readers to assume it. I conclude therefore 
 by wishing them all, whatever may be their favorite 
 mode of sitting, 
 
 " The gayest, happiest attitude of tilings.'^ 
 
 1817. 
 
 
INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION OF CAUSE 
 AND EFFECT.* 
 
 A WHOLE article of solid metaphysics is a phenom- 
 enon that perhaps requires apology as well as explana- 
 tion. We wdll therefore briefly submit our reasons for 
 its appearance. 
 
 The philosophy of the late lamented Dr. Brown is 
 scarcely known in this country. It was presumed that 
 considerable interest would attach among us to the spec- 
 ulations of the successor of Dugald Stewart, whose own 
 work on the Mind has passed, we believe, through as 
 many editions in the United States as in Great Britain, 
 and who is well known, on becoming emeritus^ to have 
 warmly recommended Dr. Brown to the chair of Moral 
 Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. But further, 
 there is a vague belief among those who are but partially 
 acquainted with the nature of the late Professor's specula- 
 tions, that they coincided too nearly with the dangerous 
 parts of the philosophy of David Hume. A faithful 
 analysis of the work before us will correct this error, and 
 redeem Dr. Brown's reputation. Still further, an unjust 
 
 * Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect. By Thomas Brown, 
 M. D., F. R. S. Edinburgh, &c., Professor of Moral Philosophy in the Uni- 
 versity of Edinburgh. Third edition. Edinburgh. 1818, Svo. pp.569. 
 
144 INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION 
 
 and indiscriminate censure has overwhelmed the whole 
 system of Hume itself with relation to the doctrine of 
 Cause and Effect. When Professor Leslie, in conse- 
 quence of having expressed his approbation of certain 
 portions of that system, encountered from the ministers 
 of Edinburgh strong opposition to his pretensions as can- 
 didate for a chair in the University, the nucleus of the 
 present volume was published in a pamphlet form, and, 
 by distinguishing what was sound from what was excep- 
 tionable in the opinion of Hume, contributed to soften 
 the opposition made to the too honest candidate. The 
 work, in its present very much enlarged state, confirms 
 the points maintained in the pamphlet, and though we 
 profess no love, and but qualified respect, for Hume in 
 his metaphysical capacity, we are willing to assist in re- 
 moving every unfair stigma from every literary reputa- 
 tion. Besides these reasons, the subject itself, we should 
 hope and presume, however abstruse, will not be deemed 
 entirely devoid of interest and importance. Truth is 
 worth looking after, even among the clouds. A bulky 
 octavo is not written in vain, if it gives the world one 
 clear idea, which otherwise it would not have had. The 
 subject of this work, as the author truly remarks, in- 
 volves the philosophy of everything that exists in the 
 universe. Hence it must have some practical bearings. 
 Some portions of the treatise before us might be aptly 
 denominated the philosophy of religion. Considerable 
 light is thrown on our relations with the Deity ; the idea 
 of our dependence on him is somewhat simplified from 
 that dark and confused mystery w^hich hangs over it ; 
 and the clearer the idea, the deeper and better the im- 
 pression it must make on the mind. The system under 
 
OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 145 
 
 review provides also for the admission of the miraculous 
 interference of the Deity, and therefore bespeaks the at- 
 tention of those who honor revelation ; it admits of the 
 doctrine of a particular providence, and must therefore be 
 not unwelcome to the devout. In addition to these rea- 
 sons, we have considered that the race of lovers of pure 
 old-fashioned metaphysical disquisition is far from being 
 extinct. Edwards on the Will is still the principal rally- 
 ing-point of our orthodoxy, and Locke* is a general 
 classic among our colleges. The influence of their style 
 and speculations will make us sure of some zealous read- 
 ers. In the next place, this book is a book of great 
 power. They who read Montorio, Mandeville, Anasta- 
 sius, Don Juan, for the intellectual energy they display, 
 may here find intellectual energy enough, and not be lia- 
 ble to the suspicion of seeking mere amusement from the 
 narrative, or gratifying a corrupt imagination with the 
 sentiments. Lastly, the improbability that the book will 
 be ever published in this country, united with the high 
 price of the English edition, has induced us to present 
 the ensuing careful abstract to those who may not have 
 access to the original work ; while they who have, may 
 be glad of a thread to lead them through a book, which, 
 for the abstruseness of its topics, for refinement in its 
 reasonings, for diffusive amplifications, for winding yet 
 collateral digressions, for long and solemn preambles be- 
 
 * Is not a Si/stem of Metaphysics wanted for our colleges ? — something like 
 a history of opinions in that science, with or without the theories of the com- 
 piler. Would Locke obtain more than a respectable chapter in such a sys- 
 tem ? Brucker, Stewart in his Dissertations, and Degerando would furnish 
 copious and valuable assistance in compiling it. The work of the latter is 
 indeed an admirable specimen of what we recommend. 
 13 
 
146 INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION 
 
 fore the questions discussed are stated, thus creating the 
 suspense of mind which is incident properly to forms of 
 synthetical demonstration, has not many rivals ; and yet 
 has no titles to its chapters, no sketch-arguments, no ta- 
 ble of contents, no indexes ! 
 
 Part First of the " Inquiry " treats of the Real Import 
 of Cause and Effect. 
 
 A cause Dr. Brown defines to be that which immedi- 
 ately precedes any change^ and which, existing at any time 
 in similar circumstances, has been always, and will he al- 
 ways, immediately followed by a similar change. The 
 object of his inquiry is to prove that there is no hidden, 
 mysterious, connecting link between those antecedents 
 and consequents which we call causes and effects, when 
 we speak of the changes which happen in any part of 
 the material or intellectual universe. The substances that 
 exist in nature are everything that has a real existence 
 in nature. These substances have no powers, properties, 
 or qualities, separate from themselves, — words adopted 
 by us only for the sake of convenience, and to express 
 the changes which we observe to happen around us. A 
 follows B, and B follows C. Now by all the effort which 
 our minds can exert, we can form no idea of anything in 
 these sequences, but the substances A, B, and C, and 
 the sequence itself. We may say, that fire has the power 
 of melting metals ; but all we mean, and all we know by 
 it, is, that fire melts metals, which expresses only the 
 two substances fire and metal, and the change, called 
 melting, which takes place between them. These ab- 
 stract terms are indeed of great use in assisting us to 
 avoid circumlocution in our discourse ; but we are apt to 
 forget (and the world, Dr. Brown ! has pretty well forgot- 
 
OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 147 
 
 ten) that they are mere abstractions, and to regard them 
 as significant of some actual reality. The powers of a 
 substance have been supposed to be something very 
 different from the changes which it operates on other 
 substances, and most mysterious ; at once a part of 
 the antecedent, and yet not a part of it ; an inter- 
 mediate link in a chain of physical sequences, that is 
 yet itself no part of the chain, of which it is notwith- 
 standing said to be a link. The most that can be said 
 of these imaginary powers or causes is, that they are 
 new antecedents and sequents thrust in between the 
 former, and requiring themselves as much explanation as 
 the changes which they were brought to explain. 
 
 Such we believe to be the substance of Dr. Brown's 
 first section of twenty pages. His elegant paragraphs, 
 his varied and ample illustrations, his occasionally appro- 
 priate and eloquent reflections, and even many of his 
 collateral arguments and inferences, though important, 
 must of course disappear before the rugged wand of 
 analysis. 
 
 Before proceeding with our abstract, we think proper 
 to notice an obvious objection which has been frequently 
 urged against the foregoing definition of a cause, and to 
 extract our author's reply to it, though occurring in a 
 distant part of his book. If the definition be true, it is 
 asked, why are not day and night reciprocally the cause 
 of each other ? Dr. Reid calculated on a great triumph 
 over Hume by pressing this objection. The Quarterly 
 Review, we observe, has repeated it in an article on Les- 
 lie's Geometry (No. VH.), and a late number of Black- 
 wood's Magazine, in attempting to justify the incessant 
 attacks of the editors on Mr. Leslie's reputation, has 
 
148 INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION 
 
 brought it forward again. We shall subsequently, in 
 some strictures of our own upon the definition in ques- 
 tion, attempt to show that this objection, and all of the 
 same class, might with great ease have been obviated, if 
 the notion of contiguity in place, as well as proximity in 
 time, had been introduced into the definition. Here, 
 however, we will let our author speak for himself. 
 
 " It should be remembered that day and night are not words 
 which denote two particular phenomena, but are words invented 
 by us to express long series of phenomena. What various ap- 
 pearances of nature, from the freshness of the first morning-beam, 
 to the last soft tint that fades into the twilight of the evening sky, 
 changing with the progress of the seasons, and dependent on the 
 accidents of temperature, and vapor, and wind, are included in 
 every day ! These are not one, because the word which expresses 
 them is one ; and it is the believed relation of physical events, 
 not the arbitrary combinations of language, which Mr. Hume pro- 
 fesses to explain. 
 
 " If, therefore, there be any force in the strange objection of 
 Dr. Reid, it must be shown, that, notwithstanding the customary 
 conjunction, we do not believe the relation of cause and effect to 
 exist, between the successive jocm-s of that multitude of events 
 which we denominate night and day. What, then, are the great 
 events included in those terms ? If we consider them philosophi- 
 cally, they are the series of positions in relation to the sun at 
 which the earth arrives in the course of its diurnal revolution ; 
 and in this view, there is surely no one who doubts that the mo- 
 tion of the earth immediately before sunrise is the cause of the 
 subsequent position, which renders that glorious luminary visible 
 to us. If we consider the phenomena of night and day in a more 
 vulgar sense, they include various degrees of darkness and light, 
 with some of the chief changes of appearance in the heavenly 
 bodies. Even in this sense, there is no one who doubts that the 
 
OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 149 
 
 rising of the sun is the cause of the light which follows it, and 
 that its setting is the cause of the subsequent darkness. 
 
 " How often, during a long and sleepless night, does the sensa- 
 tion of darkness — if that phrase may be accurately used to ex- 
 press a state of mind that is merely exclusive of visual affections 
 of every sort — exist, without being followed by the sensation of 
 light ! We perceive the gloom, in this negative sense of the term 
 perception ; — we feel our own position in bed, or some bodily or 
 mental uneasiness, which prevents repose ; — innumerable thoughts 
 arise, at intervals, in our minds, and with these the perception 
 of gloom is occasionally mingled, without being followed by the 
 perception of light. At last light is perceived, and, as mingled 
 with all our occupations and pleasures, is perceived innumerable 
 times during the day, without having, for its immediate conse- 
 quence, the sensation of darkness. Can we then be said to have 
 a uniform experience of the conjunction of the two sensations ; 
 or do they not rather appear to follow each other loosely and va- 
 riously, like those irregular successions of events which we de- 
 nominate accidental ? In the vulgar, therefore, as well as in the 
 philosophical sense of the terms, the regular alternate recurrence 
 of day and night furnishes no valid objection to that theory, with 
 the truth of which it is said to be inconsistent." — p. 387. 
 
 The second section proceeds to urge two points; first, 
 that the sort of antecedence which is necessary to be un- 
 derstood in our notion of power or causation, is not mere 
 priority, but invariable priority. In the unbounded field 
 of nature there are many co-existing series of phenom- 
 ena. Just at the moment when the fire melts the metal, 
 the hand may move the metal. In this case it may be 
 said that the motion of the hand immediately precedes, 
 or is an antecedent to, the melting of the metal, but would 
 not in fact be called the cause of it. Fire alone invaria- 
 
 13* 
 
150 INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION 
 
 bly precedes such a change, and is thus called its cause. 
 So the sun may rise imnciediately before the tide rises, 
 but the want of universal invariableness in this sequence 
 prevents us from ascribing to it the relation of cause and 
 effect. These illustrations we have ventured upon of 
 ourselves, the author having strangely introduced none 
 on this most important point, though he could have se- 
 lected so many, at once rich and impressive, from the 
 wide regions of nature. The second point is an argu- 
 ment in favor of the author's peculiar notion of power ; 
 an argument which he calls the test of identity^ and upon 
 which he relies with much confidence. It is this. How 
 much soever our former habits of thought, or, as the au- 
 thor would have it, our former abuse of language, may lead 
 us to suppose that there is really such a thing as power, 
 which operates any change, exclusively of the substances 
 involved in the very change itself, yet the longer we at- 
 tend to it, and the more nicely and minutely we en- 
 deavor to analyze it, the more clearly shall we perceive, 
 that all which we have ever understood, in the notion 
 which we have been accustomed to express with so much 
 pomp of language, is the mere sequence of a certain 
 change, that might be expected to follow as immediately 
 at another time, when the same antecedent recurred in 
 the same circumstances. Thus, when we say that a 
 spark has the power of kindling and exploding gunpow- 
 der, we say no more and no less than that in all similar 
 circumstances the explosion of gunpowder will be the 
 immediate and uniform consequence of the application 
 of a spark. And because these two propositions com- 
 municate the same identical information, the author 
 maintains that the idea of power in the first proposition 
 is perfectly nugatory or rather is a nonentity. 
 
OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 151 
 
 Section third applies the foregoing arguments to all 
 the mental phenomena. We wish to move our limbs, 
 and they move at our bidding. Here is a sequence, and 
 nothing more, — not an atom of power! 'There is in 
 the first place a desire to move the hand. This is one 
 phenomenon. There is then the motion of the hand, 
 that is to say, the contraction of certain muscles. Thus, 
 reader, you see how magically the author makes the 
 power, which John Locke was pleased to confer on you, 
 slip down into nothing, between these two phenomena. 
 If you doubt it, he calls for his test of identity^ and 
 asks. Should we learn anything new, by being told that 
 the will would not only be invariably followed by the 
 motion of the hand, but that the will would also have 
 the poiuer of moving the hand? He then proceeds to 
 explain the illusion under which the word has been 
 laboring from time immemorial. It seems we have all 
 along supposed such a thing to exist as the will. It is a 
 mistake ; there is no such thing. A volition is but a 
 momentary desire. Nature has so disposed of things 
 around us, that innumerable desires are always fol- 
 lowed immediately by their objects ; of which the in- 
 finite varieties of contractions of the muscles in every 
 part of the body are instances. If your desire of wealth 
 were followed by one hundred thousand pounds as im- 
 mediately as your desire of elevating the eyelid is fol- 
 lowed by that muscular motion, you would call that de- 
 sire will. So, if your will to move a palsied hand were 
 followed by the obstinate quiescence of that hand, your 
 will, with all its boasted energy, its illusive power, would 
 degenerate into, or rather would remain, simple desire. 
 Now it is the rapidity with which the state of things 
 
152 INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION 
 
 about US has permitted certain changes to follow some 
 of our desires and not others, that has led us to ascribe 
 to the former a mysterious quality called power, and to 
 give them a specific name. But the author's acute 
 analysis would seem to reduce into one the two opera- 
 tions of will and desire, and thus to demonstrate that, in 
 all our voluntary actions, there is nothing more than a 
 simple sequence of two phenomena, namely, the will, or a 
 momentary desire, of exactly the same kind with all our 
 other desires, — and the external act. On this head, the 
 author successfully combats the common sophism that 
 the will and the desire may be opposed to each other, 
 and exist so at the same moment of time. When a 
 compassionate judge condemns a criminal to death, he 
 does not at one and the same moment will the criminal's 
 death, and desire his life ; the final will to utter the awful 
 award of punishment succeeds his compassionate desire, 
 and arises from his belief of a greater good upon the 
 whole which will result from a severe decree. And so of 
 all analogous cases. Be it understood, however, that 
 the author has no quarrel against the term will; he 
 allows it to be convenient for the purpose of expressing 
 such of our desires as are immediately followed by their 
 objects ; but he will not allow it to express anything 
 more than desire, nor to involve a peculiar notion of 
 power or energy which it has always been supposed to 
 possess. 
 
 The next question, into which the author enters with 
 equally unshrinking intrepidity, is, whether what is called 
 the will has any power over the thoughts, or trains of 
 thought, or any states or affections of the mind. To will 
 directly the conception of any particular object is, surely, 
 
OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 153 
 
 to have already the conception of that object ; for if we 
 do not know what we will, we truly will nothing. To 
 will directly any idea, therefore, is a contradiction in 
 thought, and almost in terms. The author shows also 
 that it is not less absurd to suppose that we can directly 
 will the non-existence of any idea, since our desire to do 
 so would rather render it more lively. Nor is there such 
 a power as indirect volition, or calling up any particular 
 idea by others which we know to be associated in place 
 or time ; for if we can effectively will the associated 
 ideas, we can as easily will the unknown idea itself. 
 The fact is, we do not call up any of these ideas ; but 
 our desire of remembering something once told to us, or 
 which once happened to us, &c. conlinuing', the natural 
 order of associate ideas suggests itself, till, sooner or later, 
 the unknown idea of which we were in quest takes its 
 turn to present itself to our mental view. If the preced- 
 ing views of these mental phenomena be correct, what 
 becomes of the idea of that poiver which has been al- 
 ways ascribed to the luill? 
 
 Some have asserted, however, (we now go on with 
 section fourth,) that from mind alone we derive our no- 
 tion of power ; and that the notion which we thus ac- 
 quire by the consciousness of our own exertion is after- 
 wards transferred to the apparent changes of matter. 
 This is Mr. Locke's theory. He supposes that when we 
 voluntarily operate any change, we are conscious of 
 exerting power] and thus, when we see a loadstone at- 
 tract or produce a change on iron, we from the analogy 
 of our feelings ascribe power to the loadstone. But if 
 the arguments of the preceding section be right, we have 
 nothing- to transfer from our own feelings to the opera- 
 
154 INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION 
 
 tions of matter. We desire the motion of our arm ; the 
 arm moves ; there is nothing but antecedent and conse- 
 quent here. So, when the loadstone approaches the iron, 
 the iron moves ; here too is antecedent and consequent. 
 In neither case is there a third substance, or a third any- 
 thing, to be called power. If we have anything to trans- 
 fer from our own feelings to the motion of the iron, it is 
 desire ; which is about as reasonable as to transfer to our 
 own feelings the idea of a motive loadstone. Again, 
 Mr. Hume supposes that the animal nisus, which we ex- 
 perience, enters very much into the common idea of the 
 power of one material substance on another. But the 
 author shows, by a copious, elaborate, and beautiful in- 
 duction, that the universal tendency both of vulgar and 
 scientific minds is never to illustrate the operations of 
 material substances by analogies drawn from mind, but, 
 on the contrary, only to illustrate the operations of mind 
 by analogies drawn from matter. Hence, Mr. Hume's 
 idea is opposed to universal experience. The section is 
 concluded by a most eloquent, and, as we think, trium- 
 phant attack upon that imperfect analysis, which has led 
 philosophers to term matter inert, as capable only of con- 
 tinuing' changes, and to distinguish mind alone as active, 
 and capable of beginning changes. If mind often acts upon 
 matter, as often does matter act upon mind. The truth 
 is, that certain changes of mind invariably precede certain 
 other changes of mind, and certain changes of matter cer- 
 tain other changes of matter ; and also that certain chan- 
 ges of mind invariably precede certain changes of matter, 
 and certain changes of matter invariably precede certain 
 changes of mind. Where then is the advantage of one 
 over the other in point either of inertness or activity ? Is 
 
OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 155 
 
 it in the motion which mind produces on matter? But 
 matter, on its part, produces sensation in mind. Even the 
 apparent re5^ of matter, which the author clearly shows 
 is the foundation of our mistaken notion of its inertness, 
 is a sort of action rather than repose. The particles of 
 the seemingly quiescent mass are all attracting and 
 attracted, repelling and repelled; and the smallest un- 
 distinguishable element is modifying by its conjoined 
 instrumentality the planetary motions of our own sys- 
 tem, and is performing a part which is perhaps essential 
 to the harmony of the whole universe of worlds. So 
 much for the supposed inertness of matter, and for the 
 origin of all our idea of power in the mind alone. 
 
 Section Fifth. That original energy, the Omnipo- 
 tent, the Cause of causes, is the subject of this sublime 
 and unequalled section. But it is only physically that 
 we are here brought to consider the divine power, al- 
 though, in passing, the author pays to the dignity and 
 interest of our moral relations with that Being a tribute 
 which could have been dictated only by a mind deeply 
 imbued with the most genuine living piety. The author 
 firmly believes in the original dependence of all events 
 on the great Source of being ; his conviction is equally 
 strong that he is the providential Governor of the world ; 
 but he maintains that God the creator, and God the 
 providential governor of the world, are not necessarily 
 God the immediate producer of every change. To sup- 
 pose that he is himself the real operator and the only 
 operator of every change, is to suppose that the universe 
 which he has made exists for no purpose. In fact, we 
 have ourselves long believed, that, so far from derogating 
 from the glory of our Creator, it actually increases it, to 
 
156 INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION 
 
 suppose that he has communicated to matter those qual- 
 ities and laws which produce most of the events that 
 take place throughout creation. The stretch of power and 
 height of wisdom in this view, if we may dare to com- 
 pare what is in every w^ay infinitely above us, are greater 
 than would be displayed in his universal and immediate 
 interference. Yet it has long been, and is still, the gen- 
 eral belief of philosophers, that, besides the physical 
 causes comprehended in the antecedents of those conse- 
 quences which appear as effects throughout the world, 
 there is an efficient cause that in every case is different 
 from them, and necessary for the production of the effect ; 
 an invisible something, which connects each particular 
 consequent with its particular antecedent, or rather is in 
 every case the sole efficient of it. This efficient cause 
 the Cartesians considered to be the Divine Being alone. 
 That idea is now generally exploded ; yet still the imagi- 
 nary efficient cause is retained, though with a less rever- 
 ent appropriation. Against this theory our author con- 
 tends that, even if you allow its truth, it only introduces 
 a new operator in every change ; it only lengthens a se- 
 quence of physical phenomena, and does not produce 
 anything different from a sequence of regular antecedents 
 and consequents. A is invariably followed by C, and I 
 therefore say that A is the cause of C. But you would 
 insert something between, and say that B is the real effi- 
 cient cause of C. What do you thereby gain ? Have you 
 discovered something between A and C w^hich did not 
 appear to me ? If you have, you have only analyzed a 
 complex phenomenon more perfectly than I, and I am 
 ready to acknowledge the new link of connection. If you 
 have discovered no such link, but only suppose it, then, 
 
OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 157 
 
 whether it be material or spiritual, visible or invisible, 
 you have still to explain how your new cause produces 
 the existing effect, and are driven back to the author's 
 own definition and idea of a cause, founded on the uni- 
 form precession of one event to another, and nothing 
 more. Nor will you gain the least triumph over the 
 author, by appealing from his definition to the supposed 
 constant interference of the Deity in every change that 
 exists ; for, to say nothing of the utter uselessness, the 
 idle, aimless, cumbrous existence of matter, which this 
 appeal supposes, or the blasphemy involved in making 
 the material objects of creation to be, as it were, only 
 necessary reme7nbrancers for the Deity when and where 
 he should act, the author is ready to meet you on your 
 own ground, and he comes prepared with no other weap- 
 on than his own simple definition and idea of power or 
 causation. In all those cases, he demands, in which the 
 direct agency of the Supreme Being is indubitably to be 
 believed, even in that greatest of all eve^its, ivhen the uni- 
 verse arose at his ivill, what notion are we capable of 
 forming of such a change? And are we to consider that 
 highest energy to be different, in nature as well as in 
 degree, from the humble, delegated energies which are 
 operating around us ? The author strenuously contends 
 that we are not so to consider it, and that, if we rise to 
 the strongest conception of the omnipotence of God, of 
 which we are capable, still, in contemplating it, we only 
 consider his will as the direct antecedent of those glorious 
 effects which' the universe displays. This sublime and 
 simple idea he shows to be entirely compatible with our 
 highest conceptions of the intelligence, wisdom, benevo- 
 lence, free choice, and glory of the Supreme Being, and 
 
 14 
 
158 INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION 
 
 that to interpose an imaginary link, an intermediary 
 figment, whether we call it by the name of power or any- 
 thing else, between the will of God and the effect that 
 darts out of it, so far from elevating, would only dimin- 
 ish the majesty of the person and the scene. 
 
 With this magnificent conclusion. Dr. Brown termi- 
 nates the First Part of his Inquiry into the Relation of 
 Cause and Effect. We need not say how forcibly the 
 devout believer in revelation must be struck by the co- 
 incidence of this result with the celebrated description of 
 the creation of light and of the world in the beginning 
 of Genesis. Surely, if nothing more, it is at least an in- 
 teresting fact in the history of metaphysical philosophy, 
 that during the last hundred and fifty years, and in that 
 portion of the globe in which the Hebrew Scriptures 
 have been universally laid open, and more generally read 
 than any other book; — while busy, restless, and ambi- 
 tious thinkers without number have agitated their sys- 
 tems and theories, theologians frowning on philosophers, 
 not so much for refusing to be taught by the Bible as 
 for picking flaws in their schemes of divine power and 
 agency, and philosophers sneering at theologians for de- 
 fending a book which happened to contain no trace of 
 their own refined views of the connection of cause and 
 effect, of power and result; — at last, a philosopher equal 
 to any of his predecessors for severe and logical habits 
 of thought, for intellectual education and metaphysical 
 genius, and superior to them in the advantage of coming 
 later into the world, — an inquirer whose professional du- 
 ty it was to search for truth among all their systems and 
 theories, and who unquestionably was fully equal to the 
 task of examining, analyzing, estimating, and deciding 
 
OP CAUSE AND EFFECT. 159 
 
 on them, — an author, too, who has carried mere refine- 
 ment in reasoning as far as it was ever carried before, — 
 perhaps but just short of a fault, — has at length finished 
 this vain and tumultuous circle of philosophizing, by- 
 coming round to the precise point where Moses began, 
 and demonstrating that the founder of the Jewish polity 
 and literature has, at the very outset, laid down an ul- 
 timate truth, which he has so beautifully amplified and 
 illustrated in his immediately succeeding emblematical 
 picture of creation. So true it is, that the progress of 
 philosophy, like that of social civilization and genuine 
 refinement, is continually tending in its results to the 
 original dictates of divine inspiration, acting on pure and 
 unsophisticated nature. 
 
 Of the notes on this part of the Inquiry it would be 
 unmerciful in us to attempt to convey an idea by means 
 of a detailed abstract. They contain criticisms on Mr. 
 Hume's definition of a cause; an argument reducing 
 what are called final causes to real prior causes in the 
 mind of the Deity; additional considerations to show 
 that the qualities of a substance are not separate from 
 the substance itself; remarks on the universality of a 
 belief, in all ages, of something like an imaginary effi- 
 cient cause; a long essay on the true nature, and in 
 defence of the possibility, of miracles, against the ar- 
 guments of Hume, but on principles different from those 
 of all Hume's former opponents, which the author thinks 
 to have been inadequate ; another long essay, demon- 
 strating the perfect possibility, but the very high improb- 
 ability, of a particular providence, maintaining the rea- 
 sonableness of the doctrine, but refuting its necessity; 
 and two or three other notes, which confirm or illustrate 
 
160 INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION 
 
 some portions of the text. An abstract of the two long 
 essays on miracles and a particular providence, however 
 interesting in themselves to a majority of our readers, 
 might perhaps serve with more propriety as an article 
 for a theological journal. 
 
 To those who have become convinced by the reason- 
 ings of the preceding part, the question will naturally 
 occur, How has it happened that the world has been so 
 long deceived ? Why that universal concurrence of man- 
 kind in every age in supposing certain causes always to 
 exist separately from the substances in which changes 
 are constantly seen to take place ? This question is too 
 imposing to be passed over. Accordingly, the author 
 devotes to it the whole of his Second Part, entitled, " Of 
 the Sources of Illusion with Respect to the Relation of 
 Cause and Effect." We avoid only one error, he tells 
 us, in knowing that w^e have been deceived ; but we 
 may avoid many errors in knowing how that one has 
 deceived us. 
 
 The sources of our error, in supposing causes to have 
 an existence separate from the substances which produce 
 any change, are of two kinds: first, certain arbitrary 
 forms of language ; second, the very nature of things. 
 
 Under the former head, the author first enumerates 
 various metaphorical phrases, which have been employed 
 to express the regularity of the antecedence and conse- 
 quence of certain phenomena. We speak of events as 
 connected or conjoined; and we speak of their bond of 
 connection, as if there were something truly interme- 
 diate. Now, so far as a bond is a sign of proximity^ 
 so far the word is a very good metaphor to express causa- 
 tion ; but inasmuch as it also implies something inter- 
 
OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 161 
 
 mediate between two substances, the frequent use of this 
 metaphor leads to the supposition that the bond con- 
 necting two 6i?ew/!5 is also something intermediate ; and 
 the author, with great acuteness, remarks, that our very 
 ignorance of anything really intervening will only ren- 
 der more mysterious what, obscure as it may be in our 
 conception, we yet believe not the less to exist. Hence 
 the mystery which is often attached to efficient causes, 
 so called. 
 
 Another way in which our language tends to deceive 
 us in this respect, is the necessity which we are under of 
 having some terms to express invariable sequence, and 
 others to express casual sequence. Now it so happens 
 that we have rigidly appropriated cause and effect to 
 express the former, and priority, succession, and other 
 terms for the latter. For convenience^ sake, we never 
 confound them. We use the word cause so exclusively 
 to express the great circumstance of invariableness, while 
 the word sequence ^ or its concrete, to follow ^ is so often 
 used to express mere casual succession, that they assume 
 to our minds the appearance of essential dissimilarity, 
 and even opposition, so that we revolt when we come to 
 hear the words effect and sequence coupled as synony- 
 mous ; a feeling which the addition of the important 
 qualifying adjective invariable to the latter is not able 
 wholly to remove. 
 
 There is yet another form of verbal influence, in some 
 of the most common, unavoidable modes of grammati- 
 cal construction, which seems to have greatly favored 
 the mistake in question. When, in compliance with the 
 analytical forms of grammar, we speak continually of 
 the powers of a substance, or of substances that have 
 
 14* 
 
162 INQUIRT INTO THE RELATION 
 
 certain powers, in the same manner as we are accus- 
 tomed to speak of the birds of the air, of the fish of a 
 river, of a park that has a large stock of deer, or of a 
 town that has a multitude of inhabitants, we gradually 
 learn to consider the power o/a substance, or the power 
 which a substance possesses.^ as something different from 
 the substance itself, inherent in it indeed, but inherent as 
 something that may yet subsist separately. And here 
 follows one of the author's very happiest, yet quite char- 
 acteristic illustrations. Indeed, though but an illustra- 
 tion, it carries in itself the appearance of a triumphant 
 argument. In the ancient philosophy, he observes, this 
 error extended to the notions both of form and power. 
 In the case of form, however, though the illusion lasted 
 for many ages, it did at length cease ; and no one now 
 regards the figure of a body as anything but the body 
 itself. It is probable that the similar illusion with re- 
 spect to power, as something different from the sub- 
 stances that are said to possess it, would in like manner 
 have ceased, and given w^ay to juster views, if there had 
 not been, in the very nature of things, many circumstances 
 of still more powerful influence to favor the illusion in 
 its origin, and subsequently to foster and perpetuate it. 
 
 These circumstances, therefore, will next deserve our 
 consideration. 
 
 The first is the seeming latency of power, at times 
 when it is said to be not exerted. We say that there is 
 in cold, unkindled fuel a latent power of liquefying steel ; 
 that a man has the power of moving his arm, whenever 
 he chooses to move it ; and so forth. With these expres- 
 sions, as popular and convenient forms of language, the 
 author finds no fault ; but he argues at much length, and 
 
OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 163 
 
 with considerable, though, as we think, just refinement, 
 that they are utterly incompatible with the results of 
 philosophical analysis. What is permanent in our im- 
 agination of objects may be very far from being per- 
 manent in the objects themselves which are imagined by 
 us. If power, according to the reasoning in the first sec- 
 tion of the First Part of this treatise, express nothing 
 more than the changes which actually take place in sub- 
 stances, there is no power in the intervals of what is 
 termed exertion, because there is no change, nor ten- 
 dency to change. The power, in short, is wholly con- 
 tingent on certain circumstances, beginning with them, 
 continuing with them, ceasing with them. In the inter- 
 vals of recurrence of these circumstances, however, — or, 
 to use the ordinary popular language, in the intervals of 
 exertion of the supposed I'a.ient power of a substance, — 
 we may think of the circumstances in which its presence 
 is productive of change ; and knowing that, as often as 
 these circumstances recur, the change too will recur, we 
 may transfer to the substance, as if permanent in it, 
 what is truly permanent only in our thought, which, in 
 the absence of the circumstances of efficiency, imagines 
 them present. But a very slight attention, surely, ought 
 to be enough to convince us that it is by our imagination 
 only we thus invest the substance with a character of 
 continued power which does not belong to it. For 
 example, a very high temperature is necessary for the 
 liquefaction of steel by wood. Let them lie for ever in 
 their natural state in the closest proximity, and the power 
 of one over the other will be undeniably non-existent. 
 When their circumstances become changed by the appli- 
 cation of heat, at that very moment, and not till then, ex- 
 
164 INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION 
 
 ists the change of fusion, and consequently the power of 
 fusion, which are therefore equally words without mean- 
 ing where the necessary temperature is not present. Thus 
 also with regard to the supposed latent power which a 
 man has of moving his arm. Is the man who is now 
 before us, who has his limbs all in a quiescent state, with 
 no intention at all stirring in his mind, — is he, in fact, 
 one and the very same complex being with the man 
 who loills just previously to the motion of his arm ? In 
 philosophical strictness, he clearly is not. The addition 
 of the state of volition changes the compound individual, 
 as much as the addition of heat to ice changes that indi- 
 vidual substance to water ; only in the one case a visible 
 alteration takes place before our eyes, and we give the 
 changed substance a new name, and ascribe to it new 
 powers ; whereas, in the other case, there is the same 
 living body before us, at different moments, unaffected 
 in its external conformation by the accession of a state 
 of willing^ although, until that change takes place, the 
 ascription to the living being of an actual power to raise 
 its arm is confessedly absurd, since the arm does and 
 must for ever lie still where the will is not. Our error 
 lies in falsely ascribing a unity and sameness of physical 
 character to substances in all the changes of circum- 
 stances in which they can be placed, and in consequently 
 referring to them in all circumstances what is only refer- 
 rible in certain circumstances. Power, then, is not some- 
 thing latent in substances, that exists whether exercised 
 or not. What is termed the exercise of power is only 
 another name for the presence of the circumstances in 
 which, and in which alone, there is the power of which 
 we speak ; as power not exerted is the absence of the 
 
OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 165 
 
 very circumstances which are necessary to constitute 
 power. Now, from this fallacy of believing that the 
 powers which substances exhibit to us in certain situa- 
 tions are latent at all times in those substances, and yet 
 separate from them, arises the error of supposing that 
 there are mysterious causes of all the phenomena we 
 behold constantly latent in the substances around us, 
 and yet distinct from the substances themselves. 
 
 The author closes this Second Part by discussing one 
 more great source of the error in question, namely, the 
 imperfection of our senses. What at first seems to be 
 the immediate cause of many of our sensations, we after- 
 wards learn is only the first antecedent of a long train of 
 antecedents and consequents, reaching from the outward 
 object to our perceptive faculty, which were at first im- 
 perceptible, but which some finer analysis evolves and 
 presents to our search. Hence we are led habitually to 
 suppose, that, amidst all the changes perceived by us, 
 there is something latent which links them together, and, 
 though concealed from our view at present, may be dis- 
 covered perhaps by some analytic process that has not 
 yet been employed. He who for the first time hears a 
 bell rung, if he be ignorant of the theory of sound, will 
 very naturally suppose that the stroke of the tongue on 
 the bell is the cause of the sound which he hears. By 
 subsequent analyses, however, he successively arrives at 
 various intermediate agencies, — vibrations excited in 
 the particles of the bell itself, — the elastic medium of the 
 air, — the auditory nerve, — the whole mass of the brain. 
 All these phenomena, from the imperfection of his senses, 
 were taking place before him unobserved. He suspects, 
 therefore, that in phenomena the most familiar to him 
 
166 INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION 
 
 there may be, in like manner, other changes that take 
 place before him unobserved, the discovery of which 
 is to be the discovery of a new order of causes. This 
 constant search, this frequent detection of intermediate 
 causes before unknown, irresistibly induces us to sup- 
 pose that in every case whatever in which we behold the 
 antecedent and consequent of a change, there lies be- 
 tween them a connecting link, a separate cause, yet un- 
 discovered. Yet it is evident, that, between the antece- 
 dent and consequent which we at present know, w^e 
 must at length come to some ultimate change, which is 
 truly and immediately antecedent to the known effect. 
 Do we gain anything by saying, that this last antece- 
 cedent has the power or is the cause of producing the last 
 effect? Is it not equivalent to saying simply that it 
 uniformly precedes the effect? For the supposition of 
 a bond or a cause in this last sequence is necessarily 
 out of the case. The truth is, we see only parts of the 
 great sequences that are taking place in nature. If our 
 senses had originally enabled us to discern all the mi- 
 nute changes which happen in bodies, if we had never 
 discovered anything intermediate and unknown between 
 two known events, a cause, in our notion of it, would 
 have been very different from that mysterious unintelli- 
 gible something, between entity and nonentity, which 
 we now conceive it to be, or rather of which we vainly 
 strive to form a conception ; and we should have found 
 little difficulty in admitting it to be, what it simply and 
 truly is, only another name for the immediate, invariable 
 antecedent of an event. 
 
 The object of the Third Part of this Inquiry is to 
 explain under what circumstances the belief of power 
 
OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 167 
 
 arises in the mind. What leads us to suppose that one 
 thing is the necessary cause of another, or, in other 
 words, that any particular antecedent, under the same 
 circumstances, is, has been, and always will be followed 
 by a particular change ? This is a highly curious intel- 
 lectual fact ; the observation of a single moment often 
 suggesting to us a belief which extends through all past 
 and all future time. 
 
 Power, as we have seen, necessarily involves the ex- 
 pectation of a future change of some sort, that is to be 
 exactly similar as often as the preceding circumstances 
 are exactly similar. 
 
 Is this expectation built on the ground of experience 
 only ? Does it imply always, that the consequent has 
 been known to us, as well as the antecedent ; or is there, 
 in the appearance of the antecedent itself, before the 
 attendant change has even been once observed, what 
 might enable us to anticipate that change, as about to 
 take place in instant succession ? The author decides this 
 question entirely in favor of experience. He shows that 
 we have no knowledge of the qualities of bodies a priori , 
 and therefore no knowledge of the effects which they 
 must produce. Nothing, for instance, in the appearance 
 of iron or loadstone indicates to us that these two bodies 
 will rush together on being made to approach each oth- 
 er. Neither their color, nor their hardness, nor any other 
 quality they possess, would suggest such an effect to our 
 minds. Nor is there anything in the color, weight, and 
 other sensible qualities of grains of mustard-seed and 
 grains of gunpowder, which would enable us to predict 
 that a spark, which falls and is quenched on a heap of 
 the one, would, if it had fallen on a heap of the other, have 
 
168 INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION 
 
 kindled it into rapid and destructive conflagration. Nay, 
 the most universal and fan:iiliar of all phenomena, those 
 namely of gravitation, admit of no readier prophecy. 
 We expect an object to fall to the ground, not from ex- 
 amining its color, or shape, or hardness, but because we 
 have frequently observed the event to happen. It is the 
 same too with all the phenomena of the mind, except our 
 instincts, where the knowledge is not in us, but in the 
 great Being who formed us. Nothing a priori assures 
 us that certain motions of our limbs will follow certain 
 desires of our minds, or that the sight of wretchedness 
 will cause in one breast no emotion, but will melt an- 
 other into pity. Experience alone teaches us these and 
 all other mental phenomena. 
 
 But experience informs us only of the past^ while the 
 relation of power is one that comprehends the past, the 
 present, and the future. Something else, therefore, be- 
 sides mere experience enters into that operation of the 
 mind which adjudges to any antecedent in a sequence 
 the attribute of power or causation. Is it by a process of 
 reasoning, then, that we are enabled, as it were, to see with 
 our mind what is invisible to our eyes, and thus to extend 
 to an unexisting future an order of succession, which, 
 as future, is confessedly, at the time of our prediction, 
 beyond the sphere of our prediction ? The author main- 
 tains that reasoning does not enter at all into the matter, 
 but that it is nothing more than an intuitive and irresist- 
 ible belief, which leads us to anticipate the recurrence of 
 the same consequent, following the same antecedent, 
 whenever the circumstances remain unaltered. When 
 we say that B will follow A to-morrow, because A was 
 followed by B to-day, we do not prove that the future will 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 169 
 
 resemble the past, but we take for granted that the future 
 will resemble the past. The past fact and the future 
 fact are not inclusive the one of the other, and as little is 
 the proposition which affirms the one, inclusive of the 
 proposition which affirms the other. There is no logi- 
 cal absurdity in supposing, that the one proposition may 
 be true, and the other not true ; however difficult it may 
 seem to us to believe the one, without believing the 
 other. We may use i\\e forms of reasoning in such a 
 case ; yet the belief will always be found to be involved 
 in the very process. A chemist may say, that because 
 a certain gas has just extinguished a lighted taper 
 plunged into it, it therefore will extinguish it now. This 
 may seem a fair logical enthymeme. But the major 
 proposition is assumed without proof. It is taken for 
 granted that a lighted taper plunged into the gas will 
 always be quenched, which is the very thing that a sem- 
 blance of reasoning is brought forward to prove. So 
 when we say that a loadstone will continue to attract 
 iron because it is magnetical, there is only a show, and 
 not the reality, of reasoning. Belief, and belief unac- 
 counted for, is all that is involved in the whole process ; 
 because, as the very term magnetical implies the quality 
 of attracting iron, we might as well have said that iron 
 will attract iron because it will attract iron. Therefore 
 reasoning has no concern with the operation of the mind 
 in question. 
 
 It is supposed by some, however, and especially by 
 certain mathematical writers, that there are a few excep- 
 tions to the conclusion just drawn. They would seem 
 to contend, that there is a class of facts which are capa- 
 ble of being inferred, even before observation or expe- 
 ls 
 
170 INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION 
 
 rience, with complete and independent certainty of the 
 result. The inertia of matter, and the phenomena of the 
 composition of forces, and of equilibrium, have been 
 urged as instances of this kind. The argument of the 
 sufficient reason has been called in to demonstrate these 
 facts, with a triumphant reliance on its perfect adequacy. 
 The following is D'Alembert's argument to prove the 
 inertia of matter as far as it is comprehended in the con- 
 tinued rest of bodies. " A body at rest," he says, " must 
 continue in that state till it be disturbed by some foreign 
 cause; for it cannot determine itself to motion, since 
 there is no reason why the motion should begin in one 
 direction rather than another." * '• Since there is no rea- 
 S07i^\' an assumption of the very thing to be proved. 
 To be capable of asserting that there is no reason why 
 the* motion should begin in one direction rather than 
 another, is already to possess the largest conceivable 
 measure of experience, to know all the conditions of ex- 
 isting things, with all their mutual influences. What is 
 or is not a sufficient reason, experience, and experience 
 only, can show. We believe, indeed, that a body will 
 not quit its state of rest, if all circumstances remain the 
 same; for this, from the influence of that general law of 
 thought which directs our physical anticipations of every 
 kind, it is impossible for us not to believe. But if the 
 irresistible force of this general faith be wholly laid out 
 of account, and if, in affirming that it cannot quit its 
 state of rest and move in one particular direction, our 
 only reason be, that we see no cause why the body 
 should not begin equally to move in some other direc- 
 
 * Traitd de Dynamique. 
 
OP CAUSE AND EFFECT. 171 
 
 tion, we, in the very supposition that the motion in the 
 particular direction is without a sufficient cause, beg the 
 question which we yet profess to demonstrate. How 
 can we presume that we know, at any moment, what 
 physical circumstances may, or may not, be about to 
 determine some particular motion of the body, since we 
 are equally unacquainted with the efficacy or inefficacy 
 of all the circumstances? And if we suppose ourselves 
 to know previously the efficacy or sufficiency of some of 
 these circumstances, and the inefficacy or insufficiency of 
 the others, and must therefore know, before any reason- 
 ing from the abstract principle, whether a change is or is 
 not to take place, why do we ascribe to the result of the 
 subsequent reasoning the knowledge which was essential 
 for the understanding of its very conditions or terms? 
 
 But our author stops not here. He shows that the 
 argument of D'Alembert, allowing its force and legiti- 
 macy in other respects, does not exhaust all the possible 
 conditions of the case. Is 7'est the only state which a 
 body can assume, even granting that there is no possibil- 
 ity, because there is no reason, that it should move one 
 way rather than another? Recollect that the argument 
 is not about a mathematical point, or an elementary 
 atom, but about the bodies which actually exist in nature 
 around us. Why, then, may not a change take place 
 in the quiescent mass, similar to what we term explo- 
 sion when a mass of gunpowder, previously at rest, is 
 kindled? Here there is no particular motion of the ele- 
 mentary particles, east, west, north, or south, but motion 
 in all these directions. 
 
 The author attacks with equal success a similar argu- 
 ment of D'Alembert with respect to the other case of 
 
172 INQUIRr INTO THE RELATION 
 
 inertia in bodies, nannely, their continued motion when 
 no foreign force interferes to put them to rest. 
 
 So also with regard to the uniformity of their motion ; 
 when it is attempted to be demonstrated that "the mo- 
 tion must be uniform, because a body cannot accelerate 
 nor retard its own motion," the very point in dispute is 
 obviously taken for granted. 
 
 The author wishes it carefully to be remembered, that 
 he does not deny the inertia, nor the other properties and 
 phenomena of matter, which have been attempted to be 
 made the subjects of abstract demonstration ; on the 
 contrary, they appear to him as indubitable as any other 
 instances of the regularity of events. He only objects to 
 our supposed power of predicting these facts indepen- 
 dently of experience. 
 
 By far the largest section in the book is devoted to 
 strictures on several demonstrations of this kind, given by 
 D'Alembert, Euler, and other mathematicians, who, we 
 apprehend, have been pressed somewhat too hardly by 
 our acute and ingenious author. It should be recollected, 
 we think, that these writers did not aim at quite such 
 ultimate, abstract, and metaphysical statements of the 
 case, as alone would justify the torrents of argumenta- 
 tion which are here poured down upon them. They 
 were simply mathematicians. They were engaged in 
 constructing and writing systems of mixed mathematics, 
 in which some general views of matter must necessarily 
 be given, although the principal object of their treatises 
 was only the measurement of abstract quantities. To 
 preserve a scientific form throughout, and indeed to lay 
 a foundation for the whole train of their mathematical 
 reasoning, it was natural that they should throw into 
 
OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 173 
 
 theorems, and definitions, and forms of demonstration, 
 against the delusive solemnity of which our author in- 
 veighs, some of those general laws and properties of 
 matter which are made known to us by universal expe- 
 rience. Even in doing this, we think, they tacitly ap- 
 pealed to experience, and w^ould have revolted as much 
 as Dr. Brown himself at the idea of establishing abstract 
 propositions, independent of the knowledge we already 
 have of the external world. Nor are w^e much afraid 
 that the apparent solemnity and formality of those 
 demonstrations have deluded so many persons as Dr. 
 Brown imagines, into the error which he is combating. 
 D'Alembert would probably have been willing to let the 
 afore-cited argument run thus : " Since there is no reason 
 that ive knoiv o/ why," &c. This little clause would have 
 rested the whole matter on experience, and have ren- 
 dered Dr. Brown's lengthened strictures entirely unne- 
 cessary. Now we venture to say, that the French writer 
 had a tacit condition of this kind in his mind, and sup- 
 posed that every one of his readers had it. Little pre- 
 pared was he to expect, that the thunders of chemistry 
 would be brought to bear on an argument, of which the 
 application was meant to be confined solely and entirely 
 to the measurement of weight and motion. The demon- 
 strations of this nature given by all these writers were 
 good enough for their purpose ; they were never intended 
 to be applied in any form whatever beyond the systems 
 to which they were originally attached, and Dr. Brown 
 himself has not uttered a hint that the mathematical 
 superstructures erected upon them sustain the least in- 
 jury from the unsoundness or incompleteness of the 
 foundations. We are willing to allow, that the reason- 
 is =* 
 
174 INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION 
 
 ings ill question are merely verbal ; that they are built 
 on that very experience of which they seem to preclude 
 the necessity ; and that they partake perhaps largely of 
 that display which is characteristic of the style of the 
 modern Continental mathematicians. But that they 
 were ever brought forward under the least pretension of 
 assuming ultimate metaphysical truths, we no more be- 
 lieve, than that the subsequent long and intricate demon- 
 strations founded upon them were intended as models of 
 oratorical argument. We protest against these quixotic 
 digressions, in which writers in one science try by their 
 own principles the writers in another. What would be 
 thought of an astronomer, who should go far out of his 
 way to overwhelm with confusion the compiler of an 
 Ephemeris, for heading his columns, in defiance of the 
 demonstrated truth of the Copernican system, with sun 
 rises and su7i sets? Had our author shown in a few 
 words, as he might have done, and in a passing way, 
 that the language of mathematicians, if received without 
 due caution, in its whole metaphysical extent, is not 
 strictly true, he would have fully answered his object in 
 the treatise before us, and furnished a very appropriate 
 and sufficient illustration of the necessity of experience 
 in predicting the usual phenomena of matter. But to 
 devote eighty pages of unrelenting and triumphant ratio- 
 cination against mathematicians, and that too in the 
 forced character of metaphysicians, was by far too much. 
 We would rather have seen the same space expended on 
 those glaring faults of style, that carelessness, that ob- 
 scurity, that pomp and exuberance of demonstration 
 where all is plain, that obstinate silence or oracular brev- 
 ity on points of intrinsic difficulty, and, in short, that 
 
OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 175 
 
 total deficiency of didactic skill,* which have made the 
 elementary treatises of so many mathematicians but 
 sealed books to numberless students, who have reluc- 
 tantly and desperately sunk into the mortifying conclu- 
 sion that they were not born for the mathematics, when 
 the truth of the case was they were not born to under- 
 stand writers who studied not, or knew not, how to ex- 
 press themselves. 
 
 We have before hinted at our author's doctrine which 
 makes intuitive and irresistible belief to be the basis, after 
 experience, of our idea of causation. His view of it is 
 this : whatever antecedent we have observed to have 
 immediately and uniformly preceded any consequent, 
 we cannot possibhj avoid believing will precede it again 
 and always, when placed in exactly the same circum- 
 stances. This belief is just as natural to us as to per- 
 ceive external things when they are presented to our 
 senses. The following extract contains the amount of 
 the argument brought to prove this point : — 
 
 " Perception, Reasoning, Intuition, are the only sources of 
 belief; and if, even after experience, — for experience is in every 
 case necessary, — when we believe the similarity of future se- 
 quences to the past which we have observed, it is not from per- 
 ception, nor from reasoning, that our confidence is derived ; we 
 must ascribe it to the only other remaining source. We certainly 
 
 * It is our most serious belief, that a new chapter is wanted in Campbell's 
 Philosophy, and other treatises of Rhetoric, which shall prescribe rules for 
 writing works on the mathematics. Thus, one rule might be, not to sum up 
 the doctrine of surds in the most concise manner possible, and as if the object 
 were only to refresh the memories of veteran mathematicians, while pages 
 are devoted to the easiest and most obvious portions of the doctrine oi plus 
 and minus. 
 
176 INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION 
 
 do not perceive power, in the objects around us, or in any of our 
 internal feelings ; for perception, as a momentary feeling, is 
 limited to what is, and does not extend to what is yet to be : and, 
 as certainly, we do not discover it by reasoning; for, independent- 
 ly of our irresistible belief itself, there is no argument that can 
 be urged to show why the future should exactly resemble the 
 past, rather than be different from it in any way. We believe 
 the uniformity, in short, not because we can demonstrate it to 
 others or to ourselves, but because it is impossible for us to 
 disbelieve it. The belief is in every instance intuitive ; and in- 
 tuition does not stand in need of argument, but is quick and irre- 
 sistible as perception itself." — p. 314. 
 
 Another of the author's finest passages is the follow- 
 ing, which is brought to defend and illustrate his peculiar 
 views of this subject, and closes the Third Part of the 
 work. It will evince, moreover, how far his speculations 
 were fronn those atheistical tendencies of which they have 
 been suspected. 
 
 '• That, with a providential view to the circumstances in which 
 we were to be placed, our Divine Author has endowed us with 
 certain instinctive tendencies, is as true as that he has endowed 
 us with reason itself. We feel no astonishment in considering 
 these, when we discover the manifest advantage that arises from 
 them ; and of all the instincts with which we could be endowed, 
 there is none that seems, I will not say so advantageous merely, 
 but so indispensable, for the very continuance of our being, as 
 that which points out to us the future, if I may venture so to 
 speak, before it has already begun to exist. It is wonderful, in- 
 deed, — for what is not wonderful ? — that the internal revela- 
 tion which this belief involves should be given to us like a voice 
 of ceaseless and unerring prophecy. But when we consider who 
 it was that formed us, it would, in truth, have been more wonder- 
 ful if the mind had been so differently constituted that the belief 
 
OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 177 
 
 had not arisen : because, in that case, the phenomena of nature, 
 however regularly arranged, would have been arranged in vain ; 
 and that Almighty Being, who, by enabling us to anticipate the 
 physical events that are to ensue, has enabled us to provide for 
 them, would have left the creatures, for whose happiness he has 
 been so bounteously provident, to perish, ignorant and irresolute, 
 amid elements that seemed waiting to obey them, — and victims 
 of confusion, in the very midst of all the harmonies of the uni- 
 verse." — p. 319. 
 
 The Fourth and last Part is employed in an examina- 
 tion of Mr. Hume's Theory of our Belief of the Relation 
 of Cause and Effect. If our readers will lend their atten- 
 tion to a few succeeding statements, they will perhaps 
 find that clear ideas of Mr. Hume's philosophy have not 
 hitherto prevailed, and that Dr. Brown's system of Cause 
 and Effect, although corresponding with a portion of Mr. 
 Hume's, yet departs as widely as possible from it on 
 every exceptionable point. We shall take considerable 
 pains to set these assertions in a convincing light; — 
 both because we regret to have learned, that an opin- 
 ion was not long since entertained, by most illustrious 
 authority in England, that Dr. Brown had been endeav- 
 oring to set up a theory of causation, which was ill un- 
 derstood by himself, and which differed not materially 
 from the theory of Hume, — and because, as our au- 
 thor is now laid where he cannot reply to a surmise 
 against the soundness and correctness of his writings, 
 we would try, with at least as fond a reverence as 
 strangers may be supposed capable of feeling, to efface 
 every stain that may unjustly attach to his literary repu- 
 tation. 
 
 Mr. Hume commenced the statement of his views on 
 
178 INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION 
 
 this subject by reviving some hints that former writers 
 had suggested as to the doctrine of a conjunction^ rather 
 than a connection, of the events that are constantly suc- 
 ceeding one another in the world of nature around us. 
 In this simple doctrine, how much alarm soever a mis- 
 statement or a misapprehension of it may have once 
 excited, there was not the semblance of a dangerous 
 tendency. It still left the existence of every object and 
 every event in nature as real and as certain as they were 
 before. In resolving those incessant changes, that are 
 everywhere happening, into a long train of antecedents 
 and consequents, it did not deny, but rather confirmed, 
 the necessity of an antecedent for every consequent, and 
 thus furnished a strong argument for the existence of 
 some great First Cause, — some necessary antecedent 
 of all the effects in the universe. It still left to this 
 great invisible Being the ability to will into existence 
 every substance that is, and the wisdom of arranging 
 that eternal continuity of successive phenomena, which 
 is all the time developing such astonishing results of 
 order, harmony, beauty, and happiness. There was 
 nothing truly sceptical about this doctrine, if by sceptical 
 we mean any quality of an opinion which fairly leads to 
 an irreligious conclusion. The question related purely 
 to a physical matter of fact, which, in w^iatsoever way 
 decided, leaves all the great truths of natural and re- 
 vealed religion as sacredly guarded as they were before. 
 As for Philosophy, she certainly had a right to demand the 
 evidence for that supposed invisible link which connects 
 each change with the substance that produces it. On 
 the absence of that evidence, Hume, trusting to the evi- 
 dence of the senses which God had given him, and per- 
 
OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 179 
 
 ceiving by those senses nothing more than a succession 
 of changes, advances his leading doctrine, that we can 
 have no other idea of causation, than a bare precession 
 of one event to another, without involving anything that 
 intervenes between the antecedent and consequent. Dr. 
 Brown, perceiving the strong ground of nature and the 
 senses on which Hume stood, embraces the doctrine, 
 states and defends it at much length in the First Part 
 of this treatise, insists that every new link which is dis- 
 covered between the two parts of a sequence, such, for 
 instance, as an inflammable gas between the heat of 
 yon candle and the combustion of this pen, becomes only 
 a new unlinked antecedent to the visible effect ; — and 
 not only this, but in his Second Part assigns several 
 satisfactory reasons w^hy the world should have been so 
 long deceived in imagining, and giving a name to, a 
 nonentity. 
 
 The next doctrine of Hume was equally free from the 
 character of scepticism. It was, that the human mind 
 has no capacity of predicting, previously to experience, 
 the particular consequents that will result from any given 
 antecedent, or, in other words, that we are unable of our- 
 selves to divine any of the powders of nature. It required 
 but little reflection to adopt this opinion, which, to our 
 minds, is perfectly independent of the former doctrine, 
 and might be true, whatever theory of causation be so. 
 Accordingly, Dr. Brown, as v/e have seen, in this Third 
 Part, maintains that experience alone is the ground of 
 those predictions which we are every day forming of the 
 future effects of objects now existing around us. Thus 
 far our two philosophers go together. But from this point 
 they separate ; they diverge wddely and irrecoverably. 
 
180 INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION 
 
 Having hitherto agreed with each other, when they come 
 to ask, On ivhat principle of the human mind we predict, 
 after experience, the consequences of causes ? Dr. Brown 
 answers the question, By intuitive and irresistible belief. 
 On thrusting this pen into the candle's blaze, we believe 
 it will burn ; but we arrive at this belief, not from any- 
 process of reasoning, but because, having before seen the 
 same effect proceed from the same cause, %ve cannot help 
 believing it. This simple and clear statement of an ulti- 
 mate fact, so consonant to the most approved rules of 
 the Baconian philosophy, terminates Dr. Brown's system. 
 And whether his system be right or wrong, we do ear- 
 nestly crave leave to insist, that, if ever there was one 
 which deserved to be called intelligible, compact, con- 
 sistent, simple, it is this. Even before Dr. Brown wrote, 
 we were confessedly all in the dark about causation. 
 He does not pretend to reveal the mystery of it to us, 
 but only to check our impatient and unavailing strug- 
 gles after a figment of our own fancy, to exhibit the 
 limits of the human mind on this subject, and to con- 
 fine our reasoning and imagination entirely to the vis- 
 ible side of the curtain of our existence, on which are 
 wrought no other figures, nay, out of which peeps not a 
 thread, but those of experience. If the author himself 
 was so unfortunate as not to understand his own system, 
 he certainly has had the signally good success of causing 
 some readers — humble, and without authority, we al- 
 low, but as conscientiously attentive to the train of his 
 reasonings as their capacities would admit — to compre- 
 hend it to their most entire satisfaction. Nor, until we 
 find some hint in his writings, or hear of some declara- 
 tion that passed his lips, revealing a consciousness of the 
 
OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 181 
 
 unintelligibility of his speculations, can we possibly 
 admit or conceive that he did not understand them 
 himself. 
 
 Let us now turn to Mr. Hume, and see if he has re- 
 ally gained in our author an implicit and unqualified 
 follower. 
 
 Instead of allowing, or perhaps perceiving, the force 
 and authority of that great principle of intuitive belief 
 which terminates Dr. Brown's speculations, he lays ex- 
 traordinary stress on the following maxim, which, in 
 hands as dexterous as his own, may lead into the most 
 licentious, extravagant, and dangerous scepticism. 
 
 " In all reasonings from experience, there is a step 
 taken by the mind, which is not supported by any argu- 
 ment or process of the understanding." 
 
 At the enunciation of this portentous proposition, the 
 mind involuntarily stands aghast. All the realities and 
 well-grounded expectations of life seem to be sinking, 
 like fragments of floating ice, under our feet. The truth 
 of the proposition itself you cannot deny; that is, if you 
 allow that the business of life is carried on by " reason- 
 ings from experience." It is but too evident that from 
 no quarter on earth have we got the information that the 
 future will resemble the past, which is the assumed step 
 that Hume refers to. Hence one feels that he has no 
 right to introduce that assumption into any reasoning 
 which is to guide his future operations. The conse- 
 quence is, he may proceed to beat his head against a 
 rock, with all the calmness in the world, and still be a very 
 reasonable man ; and why ? Because he has no right 
 to assume that the future will resemble the past I and 
 therefore the rock may, as likely as not, meet his head 
 
 16 
 
182 INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION 
 
 with the softness of a pillow of down. A wanton assas- 
 sin may be justified in rushing out of his den, and stab- 
 bing a whole virtuous population one by one through the 
 body ; because, if he supposes that his dagger will sever 
 their souls from their mortal tenements, he most illogi- 
 cally assumes a step in his reasoning for which he has no 
 authority, namely, that the future will resemble the past. 
 Not to multiply examples of this kind, which must press 
 on the imaginations of our readers as numerously as on 
 our own, we will yet instance only religion, which, by 
 the magical waving of this dialectic wand, is made to 
 evaporate into air, along with all other solid realities. 
 For why should you rely on any one attribute of Jeho- 
 vah, — why should you trust in his mercy, hope for his 
 bounty, pray for his blessing, nay, expect his existence 
 or your own one moment longer, — since in so doing you 
 assume that step for which you have no imaginable 
 authority, which is, that the future will resemble the 
 past? 
 
 This is the slough to which Hume would conduct us. 
 It seems a cruel fatality, that the man who has taken off 
 the bandage from our eyes, by which we might have 
 been betrayed into the midst of this miry scepticism, and 
 who has shown us the rock on which we may safely 
 and surely rest our foot far this side of the disastrous 
 results of the maxim of Mr. Hume, should have been 
 suspected of coinciding in the main with that insidi- 
 ous philosopher. Brown asserts that we expect an ef- 
 fect to follow any given cause, or the future to resem- 
 ble the past, only in consequence of an irresistible and 
 intuitive belief which God has wrought into our very 
 constitutions, and which we can no more avoid than we 
 
OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 183 
 
 can avoid perceiving a visible object when we open our 
 eyes. Hence, the mind of itself assumes no step in the 
 above-mentioned reasonings, if reasonings there be ; it is 
 God himself who assumed it, when he so created us that 
 there should be a perfect correspondence between our 
 own minds and the onward progress of rolling events 
 around us. From this view of the subject, not one dan- 
 gerous or shocking consequence flows. It utterly ex- 
 cludes the idea of an arbitrary or unappointed arrange- 
 ment of things, since we find, in millions of instances, 
 events to take place according to our expectations, and 
 in the few instances where they do not, it is in conse- 
 quence of the error of our expectations, arising from a 
 limited experience. So far, moreover, from its involv- 
 ing scepticism, it is quite plain that it justifies and en- 
 courages a universal and confident belief, as directly op- 
 posite to scepticism as pole to pole. And as to exciting 
 any distrust towards the Deity, or any irreligious affec- 
 tions whatever, we have already learned in the beauti- 
 ful passage which closes the abstract of the Third Part 
 of this book, that, in impressing on our minds this una- 
 voidable, this instinctive belief, the Deity has manifested 
 for us a signal tenderness, which must touch every sus- 
 ceptible heart. When we recollect, that, were it not for 
 this truly vital principle in our mental constitution, we 
 must every moment be liable to be crushed by the masses 
 and powers that are resistlessly and incessantly in action 
 all around us ; that we must be constantly exposed to 
 being caught in the wheels of that mighty machinery, 
 whose operations we can now intuitively predict ; or that 
 we must sit still and starve amidst this world of plenty 
 and joy into which we are born ; we may literally say of 
 
184 INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION 
 
 our Creator, with Moses, As an eagle stirreth up her nest^ 
 flutter eth over her youngs spreadeth abroad her ivings, 
 taketh them, bear eth them on her wings, so the Lord hath 
 condescended to take care of his creature man. 
 
 Yet Mr. Hume, writhing beneath the tortures of his 
 own absurd conclusions, sets about with all his meta- 
 physical might to extricate himself from them, although 
 in so doing he only wanders still further from the simple 
 upward path of Dr. Brown. 
 
 Instead of resorting at once, with our author, to an 
 ultimate principle of our mental constitution, an intuitive 
 belief, which would have untied the knot that puzzled 
 him, he makes the affair of the gratuitous step in our rea- 
 sonings from experience a very intricate process, which 
 he would explain to the following effect, as summed up 
 in the Inquiry. 
 
 " When two objects have been frequently observed in succes- 
 sion, the mind passes readily from the idea of one to the idea of 
 the other : from this tendency to transition, and from the greater 
 vividness of the idea thus more readily suggested, there arises a 
 belief of the relation of cause and effect between them ; the tran- 
 sition in the mind itself being the impression, from which the 
 idea of the necessary connection of the objects, as cause and effect, 
 isderived." — p. 391. 
 
 We can afford but some very short commentaries on 
 this passage, which will, however, be sufficient to demon- 
 strate its astonishing absurdity, and will still further 
 evince that Hume and Dr. Brown do not go hand in 
 hand so affectionately together. 
 
 1. Hume begins, " When two objects have been fre- 
 quently observed in succession," &c. He here implies, 
 that we do not expect that one thing is to be the cause 
 
OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 185 
 
 of another, or that the antecedent will again produce the 
 consequent, or, in other words, that the future will resem- 
 ble the past, until after repeated observations of the se- 
 quence. But our belief arises on a single observation, 
 according to Dr. Brown, who instances a vast number of 
 cases in which there can be no doubt, such as the sting- 
 ing of a bee for the first time, or the smell of a new- 
 flower, which w^e immediately believe will in all future 
 time produce the same effects. Our author reconciles to 
 his principle those cases which seem to contradict it ; 
 but we must not stop to show how. The difference be- 
 tween the two writers is our principal object here. 
 
 2. " The mind," continues Mr. Hume, " passes readily 
 from the idea of the one to the idea of the other." There 
 is something so hypothetical, so unphilosophical, in this 
 assumption, that we need not contrast it with our au- 
 thor's simple, open theory oi immediate and intuitive belief. 
 Surely there is some difference between stating an ulti- 
 mate intellectual operation, as Brown has done, without 
 attempting to explain it, and gratuitously representing 
 the mind as skipping backward and forward from idea to 
 idea, as a bird does from twig to twig. 
 
 3. One would have thought the preceding assertion of 
 Mr. Hume quite shadowy enough ; but next comes a 
 statement, which is evanescent and impalpable as the 
 shadow of a shade. " From this tendency to transition, 
 and from the greater vividness of the idea thus more 
 readily suggested, there arises a belief of the relation of 
 cause and effect between them." Whoever can grasp 
 the meaning of this tendency^ and then combine it, some- 
 how or other, wdth the vividness of an idea, so that the 
 union of the two together shall make up the operation 
 
 16* 
 
186 INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION 
 
 of belief, must be blessed with a truly metaphysical ge- 
 nius. Even on the supposition that the statement is 
 clear and intelligible, our author demonstrates its falsity 
 by a long course of arguments, combating particularly 
 the error that the vividness of an idea is essential even to 
 the strongest belief. This is at least a thii'd minor differ- 
 ence. 
 
 4. " The transition in the mind itself being the im- 
 pression, from which the idea of the necessary connection 
 of the objects, as cause and effect, is derived." A transi- 
 tion in the mind, an impression on the mind I — a singular 
 absurdity ! Yet this is the very keystone of the theory 
 which would explain our expectations of the future, or 
 our belief in causation, on any other principle than in- 
 tuitive belief. 
 
 We leave this passage now to the reflections and the 
 judgment of our readers, and will not attempt to abstract 
 more copiously the hundred pages in which our author 
 exposes its fallacies, its assumptions, its absurd conse- 
 quences on the one hand, its inconclusiveness on the 
 other, and the various theories and considerations brought 
 to defend it. The whole topic may perhaps be regarded 
 as an excrescence on the simple exposition of the theory 
 before us. Indeed, the author himself somewhere apolo- 
 gizes for its introduction, by observing that Mr. Hume's 
 opinions on the subject have had so powerful an in- 
 fluence on this abstruse but very important part of phys- 
 ical science, that it would be injustice to his merits, to 
 consider them only with incidental notice, in a work that 
 is chiefly reflective of the lights which he has given. 
 
 Before dismissing our author, we shall venture to offer 
 one or two strictures on the leading doctrine and defi- 
 nition contained in his book. 
 
OF CAtTSE AND EFFECT. 1$7 
 
 We apprehend that both he and Mr. Hume have over- 
 looked an essential element which enters into our idea 
 of a cause, and which, if introduced into their definition, 
 would at least have made it more easily comprehended 
 and received. A cause Dr. Brown defines to be that ivhich 
 immediately precedes any change^ &c. This definition 
 involves only immediate succession^ or proximity in time. 
 Is not contiguity in place equally a part of our notion of 
 causation ? Must not the antecedent in our idea be lo- 
 cally present with the consequent ? It is an axiom, 
 which, at its very first announcement, everybody — 
 child, peasant, philosopher — believes and acknowl- 
 edges, that no power can act where it is not present. 
 It is true we have an idea of remote causes, as well as 
 proximate causes. But every remote cause is supposed 
 to act upon something immediately near it, and then 
 that something to act upon another as immediately 
 near, and so on, till we arrive in idea at the proximate 
 cause, which, to produce the last effect, is believed to 
 be near it, even to actual contiguity. We think that 
 the omission of this idea has led Dr. Brown, as well as 
 Mr. Hume, into considerable embarrassment, when they 
 came to apply their principle to the innumerable coexist- 
 ing sequences of phenomena, which at every moment are 
 taking place throughout nature. They have both left 
 that point in an unsatisfactory state, Mr. Hume to Dr. 
 Brown, and Dr. Brown to us. If nothing more than im- 
 mediate precession in time is admitted into our idea of 
 causation, then why is not the acorn, which is planted 
 at the same time w^ith the cherry-stone, regarded as 
 the cause of the fruit-tree, as much as it is of the oak ? 
 Admit into your definition the necessary circumstance 
 
188 INQUIRY INTO THE RELATION 
 
 of contiguity in place, as well as immediate prece- 
 dence in time, and you escape this objection. We 
 are aware that Dr. Brown has in a manner provided 
 against it by a somewhat cumbrous and not very easily 
 comprehended paraphrase. After beginning his defini- 
 tion, by declaring a cause to be that which immediately 
 precedes any change, he adds, and ivhich, existing' at any 
 time in similar cii'cumstances, has been always^ and luill 
 he always^ immediately followed by a similar change. 
 We would not exclude this portion of the definition, but 
 would only submit, whether the introduction of conti- 
 guity of place as well as proximity in time would not 
 have imparted to the definition more precision, univer- 
 sality, and tangibility. 
 
 That this circumstance of contiguity always forms 
 part of our strict and simple notion of causation, the 
 more we reflect upon it, the more we are inclined to 
 believe. We wish, therefore, that Dr. Brown had called 
 in this idea,* and wrought it up throughout his treatise 
 in his own admirable manner. It is possible that, in so 
 wishing, we do not look round and through the subject 
 with the comprehensive survey of thorough-going the- 
 orists. Yet we cannot but think, that the proposed im- 
 provement would have materially assisted him in keep- 
 ing his main object in view, and prevented many labori- 
 ous circumlocutions in fortifying his positions against a 
 throng of difficulties and objections, that perpetually 
 arose upon him as he advanced. 
 
 * When our author speaks of the term bond of connection as being adopted 
 to express proximity in time, it is remarkable that he did not perceive how- 
 much more appropriate it is to imply proximity in place. 
 
OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 189 
 
 Our author, in the definition before us, seems to us to 
 have revealed just so much of the truth as is conveyed 
 in telling a man in what parallel of latitude his ship is 
 sailing on the ocean. Had he brought in the circum- 
 stance of contiguity in place, we think that this would 
 have been like drawing his line of longitude ; it would 
 have reduced the difficulty to a specific point, and given 
 to our floating, mysterious idea of a cause a fixed, in- 
 telligible, and definite relation. Observe, too, that the 
 objectionable notion of an invisible link would be equally 
 excluded by this as by the other form. 
 
 What then would be our definition ? A cause is that 
 which immediately precedes and is immediately present at 
 any change. If very hardly pressed, w-e might call in 
 the closing phraseology of our author's definition. Yet 
 we think we could do without it. 
 
 "Will our readers briefly analyze this our definition 
 along with us ? Think of any change, any phenomenon 
 whatsoever. Think now of an object or event which is 
 in so close proximity to it as to exclude the contact of 
 everything else existing. If this object or event exist 
 in this closest contiguity immediately previous to the 
 change, w^hat else is your idea of a cause ? 
 
 N. A. Review, 1821. 
 
RExAIINISCENCES OF A NEW-ENGLAND 
 CLERGYMAN AND HIS LADY, 
 
 LIVmG AT THE CLOSE OF THE LAST CENTURY. 
 
 Imagine, nearly fifty years ago, a youthful widow left 
 with four small children in the town of Gloucester, at 
 the head of the harbor at Cape Ann, one of the arms 
 enclosing Massachusetts Bay. Her husband had been a 
 very successful merchant in that place, but had recently 
 died insolvent, his insolvency arising from the capture of 
 several vessels by the French in our war of 1798 with 
 that nation. She had heard of an excellent academy in 
 the township of Atkinson, New Hampshire, not far from 
 the boundary line between that State and Massachusetts. 
 Thither she resolved to carry her son, her " only son," the 
 writer of these memoirs, who was then about seven years 
 of age, — not as Abraham carried Isaac, to the altar of 
 sacrifice, but with the purpose of obtaining for him the 
 blessing of an education. She had learned much of the 
 parental and benevolent character of the minister of the 
 town and his lady, whose house was filled with boarders 
 in attendance at the academy, of which, however, the 
 clergyman was not the preceptor, but only the leading 
 patron and trustee. So, one summer morning, she leaves 
 
REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 191 
 
 the sea-shore with a horse and chaise, taking her boy as 
 her only companion, over an untried and intricate road 
 of forty miles. She passes through the pleasant town of 
 Ipswich, so quiet at that time, that the whimpering of 
 their chaise's whippletree, and the occasional hammer- 
 ing of the village blacksmith in the sultry noon, were the 
 only noises which they heard ; and then, leaving New- 
 buryport far to the right, arrives late in the day at the 
 beautiful village of Haverhill, on the Merrimac, with its 
 noble bridge over the river, and situated on the northern 
 boundary of Massachusetts. Six miles farther north, 
 through a perpetually ascending region, conduct her to 
 the wished-for mansion of the venerable and hospitable 
 clergyman. Here she tells her story of sorrow, declares 
 that she must return the next day to seek by trade a 
 livelihood for herself and her little ones, confesses that 
 she owns not at present a single dollar for their support, 
 and waits to learn the determination of her reverend 
 new acquaintance. The answer is not long in coming. 
 " Madam," said he, in tones which still ring musically 
 in the ears of the writer, and with a cordial smile which 
 seems to shine on the memory as but of yesterday, — 
 " Madam, leave your little boy with us. He shall be one 
 of our family, and enter the academy. If Providence 
 blesses your efforts to secure for yourself a livelihood, 
 well and good ; you may remunerate us in the usual 
 way. But if you are doomed to struggle with adversity, 
 be not anxious about your son ;' here you may be sure 
 that he shall have a home and an education." The 
 charming though elderly lady of the clergyman, who sat 
 silently knitting in the corner of the room during the 
 conversation, with an elegant cap on her head, which 
 
192 REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 
 
 won my boyish admiration, and a more attractive coun- 
 tenance beneath it, smiled all along in perfect approval 
 of her husband's generous proposal, and closed the inter- 
 view by a few kind and precious words of assent and 
 comfort. Romantic as this incident may seem, since 
 the widow had not the slightest claim of any kind on 
 her new-found friends, nor had even her name been 
 known to them until that very day, yet is the relation 
 literally true. 
 
 The next morning, the stranger, with a face beaming 
 with joy, eyes glistening with tears, and a heart filled 
 with gratitude and hope, re-ascended the chaise to pur- 
 sue her homeward journey alone. Such instances of 
 female enterprise are not at all uncommon in New Eng- 
 land, even at the present day. The subsequent exertions 
 of our adventuress in trade were abundantly favored by 
 that benignant Being who, throughout the volume of 
 revelation, so frequently and tenderly promises his espe- 
 cial protection to the widow and the fatherless. During 
 the space of ten or twelve years, every one of her children 
 enjoyed, for a greater or less period, the advantages of 
 the family and the institution at which she had placed 
 her son, and she ever regarded it as one of the most 
 ch^ished blessings of her life, that she was amply en- 
 abftd to remunerate her disinterested benefactor. To 
 him, and to all connected with him, let us now return. 
 I will do what may be in my power, before we part, to 
 make my readers well acquainted at least with good old 
 " Sir Peabody " and his lady. 
 
 The township of Atkinson is one of those numerous 
 subdivisions, of about six miles square, into which nearly 
 the whole of New England is parcelled. The inhabit- 
 
REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 193 
 
 ants of each township form a distinct corporation, all its 
 fiscal, police, and general affairs being conducted by a 
 body called the Selectmen, usually consisting of three 
 persons elected at an annual town-meeting, which as- 
 sembles at the church, or rather the meeting-house. At- 
 kinson, though far below the summit of that granite 
 territory which swells gradually upward from the Merri- 
 mac River until it reaches the Monadnock and White 
 Mountains, still occupies a most commanding position. 
 Looking round on its immense horizon to the south, 
 you might easily fancy yourself on the central apex of 
 the land. With an ordinary telescope you can discern 
 steeples some fifteen or twenty miles distant, counting 
 more than a dozen of them within the whole field, while 
 those of Haverhill, only six miles removed, seem lying 
 comparatively at your feet ; and when a warm, gentle 
 south wind prevails, they send up the faint yet clear 
 tones of their distant evening-bells, so magically soft, 
 that you know not whether they are floating from earth 
 or heaven. To the north, or back of the settlement, ap- 
 pear ascending forests and cleared lands, with here and 
 there a distant steeple, until the eye rests at last on the 
 shadowy outline, scarcely distinguishable from the sky 
 itself, of the Grand Monadnock Mountains. What an 
 object for the daily contemplation of an enthusiastic, 
 imaginative youth ! How they speak to him of eternal 
 solidity and repose I How they grow into and become 
 a part of the stamp of his being, their dim and far-off 
 grandeur shedding a mystic influence on his soul, which 
 no remoteness of years or situation can efface! When, 
 after dwelling for a long time in some level country, 
 he again sees their forms or similar ones near the hori- 
 
 17 
 
194 REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 
 
 zon, he thrills with the sensation of a new return to 
 life. 
 
 There is in Atkinson nothing, properly speaking, like 
 a village. No stream collects there a factory's little 
 population on its banks. The houses are scattered over 
 the whole domain, generally within sight of each other. 
 Every variety of architecture prevails, from the low red 
 cottage, to the ambitious, white-painted, and very siza- 
 ble mansion ; there being, I presume, even here, as in 
 other parts of New England, aspiring souls, who, when 
 about to erect a dwelling-house, might possibly go by 
 night and measure the exact length of their neighbor's 
 residence, for the pleasure of boasting that their own 
 should be six inches larger. The gable-roofed meeting- 
 house, without a steeple, and painted in fading white, 
 stood on an elevation which commanded a large part of 
 the town. At the distance of half a mile on one side 
 appeared the academy, of more modern and ambitious 
 pretensions, and surmounted by a well-proportioned 
 cupola. The township was set off from some adjoin- 
 ing settlements, and incorporated a few years before the 
 Revolution, receiving its name from the Hon. Theodore 
 Atkinson, at that day one of the leading men in New 
 Hampshire. The population has been nearly stationary 
 for half a century, and an idea of its fixed character may 
 be conceived from the fact, that in 1830 it amounted to 
 555, and in 1840 to 557. Thus Atkinson seems to 
 stand like some individual being, and we may well sup- 
 pose certain original peculiarities to be developed from 
 this unchanging and undisturbed position. There are, I 
 believe, few smaller tow^ns in the State. The gazetteers 
 represent the ground as uneven in its surface, but as 
 
RE/. .STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 195 
 
 being of a superior quality and well cultivated, and state 
 that the cultivation of the apple has received nnuch at- 
 tention there; a fact to which I can testify by many 
 savory juvenile reminiscences. The gazetteers also men- 
 tion a remarkable floating island on a bottomless pond, 
 near the outskirts of the town ; but they do not mention 
 the large and delicious cranberries growing upon it, 
 which concur with the very danger of the enterprise in 
 tempting many an adventurous youth to explore its per- 
 ilous recesses. Hard by the meeting-house stood, and I 
 trust stands yet, the modest but not inelegant mansion 
 of the pastor, — rather the handsomest, perhaps, in the 
 whole town, — with a neat court-yard before it, sur- 
 rounded by lilacs and roses, various snow-white articles 
 of apparel surmounting the fence on every washing-day, 
 and with a small fruit and flower garden extending still 
 in front of that, on the opposite side of the road. This 
 house will be the central point of interest in our sketches. 
 Few private dwellings in our country, I imagine, have 
 sent out more genial and extensive influences, or have 
 gathered to themselves a richer abundance of delightful 
 recollections and elevated sympathies. 
 
 Its occupant and proprietor. Rev. Stephen Peabody, 
 possessed a character so remarkable, and in some re- 
 spects so unique, as to deserve being rescued from gath- 
 ering oblivion. He was a native of Andover, Massachu- 
 setts, ten miles to the south of Atkinson. He graduated 
 at Harvard College in 1769, in the same class with the 
 celebrated Chief Justice Theophilus Parsons, and with 
 Colonel Scammell, a brave soldier and early victim of 
 hostile treachery in our Revolution. Mr. Peabody de- 
 lighted, like a true son of his own and of every other 
 
196 REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 
 
 Alma Mater, to take down his College Catalogue from 
 the nail behind the door, on which it hung with the 
 Farmer's Almanac, and entertain all who would listen 
 with the individual biographies and characters of his 
 classmates. He would sooner dispense with his humble 
 salary (to be hereafter mentioned) than fail of his an- 
 nual visit to Boston and Cambridge during every Com- 
 mencement week. It was customary, up to the time of 
 the Revolution, to arrange in the printed Harvard Col- 
 lege Catalogue the names of the alumni belonging to 
 each class, not in alphabetical order, but according to 
 their rank in society. Every modern edition of this 
 document, even in our own time, preserves the same 
 arrangement in the lists of the older classes ; so that 
 whoever may have had an ancestor that graduated at 
 that college, can easily learn his relative social position 
 by consulting the Triennial Catalogue. My venerable 
 clerical friend was certainly not at the summit of his 
 class in this respect, neither was he quite at the bottom 
 of the scale of respectability. I have heard him describe 
 the pecuniary difficulties and struggles he was obliged to 
 undergo, in order to procure his education. His sisters 
 had kindly made him up twelve very important articles 
 of linen, and at the beginning of each term he would take 
 them to Cambridge in his saddlebags, all clean-blanched 
 by their own fair hands, and would wear each of the 
 garments one week, bringing the whole number home 
 again at the end of the term, in a condition fit for the 
 purifying cares of his affectionate laundresses. Through- 
 out his college life, he secured his own diet by w^aiting 
 on his classmates at table ; an office which has been 
 borne by some of the most eminent men in our country, 
 
REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 197 
 
 and was not abolished from our colleges until a recent 
 date. He felt the disadvantage of commencing his lit- 
 erary career late in life, being nearly thirty years old at 
 the time of his graduation, and having borne among his 
 classmates the title of Pate7' omnium. 
 
 Those were not the favored days of Theological Semi- 
 naries, or of charitable Education Societies. He there- 
 fore entered, as was customary for divinity students, into 
 the family of some distinguished minister of the Gospel, 
 on whose farm he labored for his board, and defrayed 
 his other expenses by teaching a winter school. While 
 he was yet a candidate for the ministry, the Revolution- 
 ary war commenced, and Mr. Peabody served for a time 
 as chaplain in the regiment of Colonel Poor of New 
 Hampshire. There might be some affinity between the 
 name of this officer and Mr. Peabody's subsequent settle- 
 ment at Atkinson, since that town abounds in the name 
 of Poor, which, together with those of Page and Noyes, 
 used to comprise about one half of the inhabitants. To- 
 wards the close of the war, he was ordained as the first 
 minister of the town. His salary was eighty pounds, or 
 about two hundred and fifty dollars, per annum, with 
 the addition, I believe, of a few cords of wood ; and it 
 was never increased one farthing during his ministry of 
 more than forty years. It was his custom, on a particu- 
 lar day in the year, to wait at his own house on his 
 parishioners, for the purpose of receiving their minister's 
 tax. As he had open accounts with almost all of them, 
 for labors rendered him, or provisions supplied, or articles 
 manufactured, during the year, the cash balance which 
 he was enabled to sum up and count over after their 
 departure would rather amuse him by its exceeding lit- 
 
 17* 
 
198 KEV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 
 
 tleness, or nothingness, than weigh upon his conscience 
 
 for services overpaid. His farm contained about fifty 
 
 acres. To liquidate his debt for it, which I believe he 
 
 was never quite able to effect, the severest privations and 
 
 hardest toils were cheerfully borne by hinnself and his 
 
 first wife, who was renowned for the number of rolls of 
 
 wool and flax which she would card in a given time. 
 
 The early years of his ministry must have been well 
 
 illustrated (I do not mean paralleled) by a picture I have 
 
 somewhere seen of a poor English curate, and described 
 
 underneath by the following lines : — 
 
 " Though lazy, the proud prelate 's fed^ 
 This curate eats no idle bread : 
 His wife at washing, 't is his lot 
 To pare the turnips, watch the pot. 
 He reads, and hears his son read out, 
 And rocks the cradle with his foot." 
 
 I have heard him mention, that, after having wrought in 
 the field the whole day, he has often sat up all night to 
 compose and finish his sermon ; which, by the way, he 
 wrote in a small, distinct, and beautiful hand. 
 
 In person Mr. Peabody was large and commanding, 
 having attained full six feet in height, and being otherwise 
 of very portly dimensions. His eye was black, and his face 
 was swarthy but well-proportioned. His hair was bushy 
 and curling, swelling out to an ample rotundity behind, 
 like that of Mirabeau. I believe he never followed the 
 coxcombry of our reverend forefathers in wearing a bush- 
 wig, or a wig of any other kind. Though in general 
 courteous and bland in bis address, yet when he heard 
 profane language, or received a personal insult, an awful 
 shadow would gather on his visage, his eye would roll 
 fiery glances in every direction, and the dauntless volley 
 
REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 199 
 
 of rebuke would be poured from his lips. His passions 
 were naturally strong, and he feared no human being 
 alive. Had any of his parishioners dared to attack his 
 person (since he had his quarrels sometimes), I have not 
 the least question that they would have bitterly rued the 
 moment, for his physical powers were mighty, and in his 
 youth he had been the invincible w^restler of many par- 
 ishes round, and being now fresh from the Revolution- 
 ary war, he had not yet learned to identify the higher 
 Christianity with non-resistance. 
 
 His conversation was enlivened with innumerable an- 
 ecdotes, which he related with surpassing glee and 
 humor, reserving the contagious laugh until the closing 
 point, and using all sorts of dramatic accompaniments, 
 frequently rising from table in the midst of a meal, and 
 taking the floor, if he could thereby set off the action to 
 better advantage. 
 
 His musical powers and habits were extraordinary, 
 and he almost revelled through life in an atmosphere of 
 sweet sounds of his own creating. On rainy days, when 
 unlikely to be disturbed by captious or narrow-minded 
 visitors, he would take out his golden-toned violin from 
 a little closet, and draw from its strings the richest and 
 most bewitching notes, a sweet and serene half-smile all 
 the time playing over his lip and cheek and eye. His 
 voice was of vast compass, and exquisitely flexible. He 
 was at home in every part in music. When there was 
 no choir in the meeting-house, he led the singing him- 
 self; and when there was one, he supplied the deficient 
 parts, rolling out a mellow and deep-toned bass, or w^ar- 
 bling with his treble or counter over the whole concert, 
 like an animated mocking-bird. He sang on w^eek-days 
 
"200 REV. STEPHEN PEABODT AND LADY. 
 
 at his work, and sometimes talked aloud to himself" most 
 agreeably. He would sing on his rides about the town, 
 or when travelling in his chaise, alone or accompanied, 
 by night or by day; and all the solitudes and echoes of 
 that region have many a time rung with his loud and 
 melodious voice. He was most fond of sacred music, 
 but did not disdain a scrap now and then of secular. 
 He would sing you, in perfect taste, with graceful ges- 
 ture and a happy look, either sitting or standing, various 
 extracts from the delightful old anthems of Arne or Pur- 
 cell, or from the oratorios of Handel. Coming home 
 from public worship, if a favorite tune had just been 
 sung there, he would repeat it over and over as he en- 
 tered the house, stopping you in a companionable way, 
 looking you smilingly in the face, and asking if it w^as 
 not beautiful. He would, except on Sunday morn- 
 ings, awaken the whole household of sleepers at sunrise, 
 or as soon as he had made the fires, by singing up and 
 down stairs, " The bright, rosy morning peeps over the 
 hills," " The hounds are all out," or some other hunting- 
 song equally stirring. He would take into his lap a 
 little round, favorite dog, and, commanding it to sing 
 with him, he would begin by roaring some tune aloud, 
 the dog immediately joining in with a louder and re- 
 sponsive roar. The only inconvenience from this prac- 
 tice was that the dog one Sabbath followed his master 
 unperceived to the meeting-house, and up to the plat- 
 form of the pulpit-stairs, and too zealously practised 
 there the musical lessons which he had been taught at 
 home. On some warm summer afternoon, when all the 
 windows of the house were open, and one of his young 
 boarders, far up in the garret at his studies, might hap- 
 
REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 201 
 
 pen, for variety's sake, to burst out in some cherished 
 tune or strain, such, for instance, as old St. Anne's, his 
 venerable friend, in the lower story, awaking from his 
 transitory nap, would fall in with his melhfluous bass, 
 and so would they sing for a long time together, until, 
 looking out of their respective windows, they would 
 smile upon each other, as who should say, " Were there 
 ever two better friends than we ? " 
 
 He was, indeed, the soul of good nature, particularly 
 with the young, and seemed never so happy as when 
 four or five of them were clambering about his person, 
 taking and yielding unrestrained liberties in turn. Like 
 the Apostle Paul's charity, he was '' easily persuaded," 
 and you had rarely to ask him more than once to tell one 
 of his inimitable anecdotes, or take down the violin from 
 the closet on a rainy day, or perform his duet with 
 Watch, the overgrown little dog. If a poor and promis- 
 ing young man in the parish was desirous of a liberal 
 education, Mr. Peabody's purse was open for his assist- 
 ance, with a very distant and precarious chance of being- 
 repaid. His hospitality was ungrudging, to the utmost 
 extent of the Apostolic and New Testament standard. 
 Not a day passed that some welcome addition failed of 
 being made to our already crowded table. The parish- 
 ioner coming to return his book to the Social Library, — 
 the old, familiar acquaintance, — the professed old ac- 
 quaintance, too, whom the host was sometimes puzzled 
 to recognize, — the travelling brother-minister, stopping 
 with his horse for a week or two, — the passing belated 
 stranger, too far from the tavern for his dinner, — all 
 were cordially invited to partake of the fare for the day. 
 The very doors of the mansion were left unfastened at 
 
202 REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 
 
 night, — as, indeed, they scarcely needed locks in that 
 primitive society, — and many a winter traveller from 
 Vermont and Upper New Hampshire, going down in his 
 loaded sleigh to the markets on the sea-board, has come 
 in to warm himself by the midnight bed of embers, held 
 long and pleasant conversations with Mr. Peabody as he 
 lay in an adjoining bed-room, and then retired, the par- 
 ties being destined never to see or imagine each other's 
 appearance, or to hear each other's voice again. 
 
 The titles by which he was designated among his 
 acquaintances were various, according to the degrees of 
 affection, or respect, or indifference, with which he was 
 regarded. By some he was called " Priest Peabody," by 
 others " Parson Peabody," by others " the Reverend Mis- 
 ter," by others again plain " Mister Peabody " ; but from 
 all the family, and from all those who were more or less 
 intimately connected with or attached to him, he received 
 the endearing appellation of " Sir Peabody," by which 
 he wdll generally be distinguished in the remainder of 
 these sketches. 
 
 As a divine, he was far from being eminent, though 
 he certainly held in his constitution the elements of a 
 popular preacher, and he exercised, by the force and de- 
 cision of his character, considerable influence in his own 
 little section of the ecclesiastical world. He was occa- 
 sionally called on to preach a sermon at an ordination, 
 and once before the legislature of the State ; and his few^ 
 published discourses on such occasions are quite respect- 
 able in point of style and matter. In his pulpit manner 
 there was frequently a good deal of animation. Pie had 
 often heard Whitfield in his youth, and he would some- 
 times in private imitate that celebrated orator with im- 
 
REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 203 
 
 pressive effect, calling upon the angel Gabriel not to fly 
 back to heaven without carrying with him the tidings of 
 at least one converted sinner, — looking at the same 
 time, in the manner of Whitfield, afar off to the sky, as 
 if he saw the lessening wing of the departing seraph. 
 Approximations to such passages, however, were very 
 rare indeed in his own public performances. In doc- 
 trine, he had always been an inveterate Arminian, show- 
 ing no mercy to Calvinism, or to Hopkinsianism, or Uni- 
 versalism, wherever they might be found. In later life, 
 he advanced still farther into what is denominated Lib- 
 eral Christianity, having purchased and perused Noah 
 Worcester's " Bible News " with satisfaction, recom- 
 mending and lending it to his friends, and reading Buck- 
 minster's Sermons with delight at his Sabbath family 
 services. 
 
 His library, if it deserve such a name, was marvellous- 
 ly small. Besides Matthew Henry's Commentary on the 
 Scriptures, and Cruden's Concordance, I do not think 
 he owned thirty theological books, nor more than that 
 number of any other kind, except a small closetful of the 
 pamphlets of forty years, from which one could catch 
 tolerable glimpses of the political and ecclesiastical mat- 
 ters of New England during that period of time. While 
 studying my Greek Testament at home, to be recited to 
 my teacher at the academy, I always applied in vain to 
 Sir Peabody for a solution of my grammatical and other 
 difficulties, since he candidly confessed that he had 
 grown somewhat rusty on that score. He read some 
 compact and valuable annotations on the Bible (Cappe's, 
 I think, — not Newcome Cappe) at daily morning prayers, 
 and a choice sermon from President Davies, Wither- 
 
204 KEY. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 
 
 spoon, or some other approved divine, at tlie Sunday- 
 evening family service. Great was the pleasure among 
 the youthful portion of his auditory, when for these 
 divines he would substitute Hannah More's Cheap Re- 
 pository Tracts. Sweetly even now on the memory 
 descends " The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain," blended 
 with the recollection of those calm Sabbath sunsets. 
 Our friend's acquaintance with English literature was 
 respectable, though rather stationary, being sustained 
 by the attentive reading of a few solid volumes, which 
 might be taken from the Haverhill Library, or from the 
 small, well-selected Atkinson Social Library, of which 
 he was the founder and librarian. To this establishment 
 about twenty or thirty farmers and others were subscrib- 
 ers, who would carefully return its books wrapped in 
 their pocket-handkerchiefs, and an intelligent shoemaker 
 in the parish could boast that he had perused every vol- 
 ume it contained. Sir Peabody had a good habit of 
 reading aloud a paper in the Spectator, every morning, 
 to the female members of his family, while they were 
 engaged in those earnest cares and gentle mysteries 
 which necessarily succeed the refreshments and exercises 
 of the breakfast-table. The newspapers which he took 
 (for I deem that the newspaper one habitually reads is a 
 constituent part and parcel of the very man) were, first 
 and foremost, the Columbian Centinel, printed semi- 
 weekly at Boston, which w^as the favorite organ of the 
 old Federal party, and therefore of almost the whole clergy 
 of New England, and whose venerable editor, Benjamin 
 Russell, survived at Boston to a green and bright old 
 age of more than eighty years ; next, the weekly Haver- 
 hill Observer, on the same scale of politics, but about 
 
 
REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 205 
 
 which the partisans of the opposite side would merci- 
 lessly pun, in pronouncing it a truly lueakly paper; and 
 lastly, as the violence of party and a general intellectual 
 activity more and more prevailed, The Boston Reper- 
 tory, established with the main design of personally and 
 politically opposing Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Peabody 
 occasionally contributed an anonymous political essay to 
 the Haverhill Observer; but in vain was his name con- 
 cealed from his prying parishioners of the opposite party, 
 who recognized the style and sentiments which he had 
 reiterated among them in private, and who made his 
 lucubrations the subjects of much ill-natured comment 
 and sarcasm in little groups at the shoemaker's or the 
 tavern. 
 
 Our friend was not one of those selfish lords of the 
 household, who engross in silence the first reading of 
 the wet sheet, and bury the news of the day or week in 
 their own uncommunicative spirits. He faithfully read 
 aloud and in order the whole contents to the family, 
 whatever might be our want of interest in some of the 
 columns ; and if an article, however long, particularly 
 pleased him, we were doomed to hear the reading of it 
 repeated, more perhaps than once or twice, to some 
 winter-evening visitor. He kept a minute journal of the 
 particulars of every day, which amounted, at the close of 
 each year, to a thick duodecimo volume. Those forty 
 or fifty volumes, which I have often seen as they lay 
 piled up in the top of the closet, if still preserved, and 
 explored by some competent inquirer, would unquestion- 
 ably furnish materials for a curious and valuable memoir 
 of their writer's life and times. At the end of each an- 
 nual journal, a list was kept of all the deaths which had 
 
 18 
 
206 EEV. STEPHEN PEABODT AXD LADT. 
 
 occurred doring the year in the circle of his acquaint- 
 ance : and the melancholy catalogue, which, as it gradu- 
 ally increased under his hand, called forth from him a 
 sigh of recollection, or a tribute to departed worth or 
 friendship, or a religious reflection, generally contained 
 more than one hundred names every year. 
 
 He would once in a while compose an elaborate letter 
 to some distant acquaintance, containing his opinions 
 and strictures on the prevailing tendencies of the day. 
 They were written with much wisdom and point, and, 
 before being copied off for the post, were read with con- 
 siderable formality to some members of the family for 
 their criticism or concurrence. 
 
 He was given sometimes to deep metaphysical discus- 
 sion; and I have seen him, at a protracted breakfast 
 hour, apparently succeed in convincing ladies who had 
 brought their children to board with him, that the Divine 
 " decrees " were in some way consistent with the perfect 
 freedom of the will. His fair guests had nothing to say 
 in defence of Jonathan Edwards, and listened to his 
 assailant's remains with as little impatience and distress 
 as can well be imagined. 
 
 He found opponents, however, less courteous and sub- 
 missive in certain members of the Association of Minis- 
 ters, who met in turn about once in two years at his 
 house. There, though sometimes everything went off 
 pleasantly, yet often arguments, words, and feelings ran 
 high ; Calvinist and Arminian conflicted in the fierce tug 
 of war : countenances daikened and eyes flashed on both 
 sides: constrained and hurried adjournment was made 
 to the meeting-house, where a few lay-women and fewer 
 lavmen were waiting for the public service: a dinner. 
 
KEY. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 207 
 
 crowned with many a luxury, was partaken with feelings 
 of mingled acrimony and festivity ; the very grace, before 
 and after meat, by different ministers, was criticised in 
 little knots of whispering malecontents ; parties sepa- 
 rated for their homes, foreboding disastrous days to the 
 Church ; — and all are now reposing in the arms of that 
 sovereign, universal peacemaker, whose dominion extends 
 just five or six feet below the wars and passions and jeal- 
 ous alarms which rage on the verdant overlying surface. 
 
 To return to our friend in his pastoral relation, — his 
 sermons were regularly divided, although the divisions 
 never reached the nineteenthly or tiL'entiethhj with which 
 the discourses of olden time are often reproached. After 
 a short introduction, he almost always laid out his mat- 
 ter into four partitions, the last of which was to contain 
 a variety of practical conclusions ; and these, I must 
 confess, were occasionally multiplied and protracted, to 
 the consternation of some among his younger hearers at 
 least. He would often introduce very long extracts 
 from Matthew Henry's Commentaries, and I think from 
 one or two other writers, honestly intimating how far 
 the extract extended, by closing it with " Thus Mr. 
 Henry," or, more briefly, '• Thus he." 
 
 His public prayers were invariably the same, and it 
 might be owing to this circumstance, and a well-disci- 
 plined mental piety, that he was enabled to conduct that 
 part of public worship with fluency, and I have no doubt 
 with sincerity also, while his nearly closed eyes would 
 follow some entering stranger, or late straggler at service, 
 till he reached his pew. 
 
 His funeral services were deeply impressive and affect- 
 ing, and, as he loved his parishioners warmly, his own 
 
208 REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 
 
 tears would generally lead the way for the tears of oth- 
 ers. When, on these occasions, the throng of attend- 
 ants from the neighboring towns was large, he would 
 take his stand near the bier out of doors beneath some 
 tree ; and there his sonorous voice, ejaculating ardent 
 intercessions for the mourners, and solemn admonitions 
 for all, was heard at a very great distance. 
 
 On wedding occasions, with his extraordinary social 
 qualities, he was of course the life of the evening. Even 
 when the parties came to his house, he entertained them 
 with sportive anecdote and sound advice, and on one 
 particular occasion was not the less amusing and in- 
 structive, although the avaricious bridegroom, in lieu of 
 one dollar, the legal fee for the ceremony, tendered him 
 exactly one quarter of that amount. 
 
 For the last thirty years of his life, I doubt if he com- 
 posed on an average four new sermons annually, though 
 he faithfully revised, corrected, and modified his old ones, 
 even if the weather gave him reason to expect no more 
 than half a dozen attendants at service. 
 
 There must have been considerable power and unction 
 in his ministrations, since, notwithstanding a great va- 
 riety of opinions and denominations prevailed in the 
 town, he brought their adherents together in pretty full 
 congregations almost to the last, arresting the fixed at- 
 tention of infidels, Methodists, Baptists, and Universal- 
 ists, as well as those of his own immediate persuasion. 
 I have seen men, who I knew were not believers in 
 Christianity, fastened as by a spell to his discourses from 
 the beginning to the end. I have known the hardened 
 sinner who came to him in private, subdued and softened 
 into tears, and gently guided by his counsels and prayers 
 
REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 209 
 
 into those green pastures and by those still waters where 
 his soul would find enduring rest. Men who had long 
 violently opposed his views, and had been harrowing 
 thorns in his side, yet who constantly attended his ser- 
 vices, I have found from time to lime, in my subsequent 
 visits to Atkinson, become, much to my surprise, as 
 Sauls among the prophets, most affecting instances of 
 calm, fervent, and habitual piety, and dying at last in 
 the full faith and hope of a blessed immortality. There 
 were two or three hardened individuals, indeed, who 
 would never appear inside the sacred walls, except when 
 they had lost one of their own family by death ; and 
 then they would attend and hear the funeral sermon, 
 submitting even so far to public opinion and custom as 
 to offer up a note for the prayers of the congregation. 
 How many ways have God's grace and providence to 
 subdue to himself the stubborn will of man ! I take no 
 notice here of the habitual drunkards of the parish, nor 
 of a few sorry individuals who really had not souls 
 large enough to know how to find themselves within a 
 meeting-house. They remind me of a sublime saying 
 which Sir Peabody himself used to quote from one of his 
 shrewd parishioners with uproarious approbation, that if 
 a million of such souls were to dance together on the 
 point of a fine cambric-needle, they would fancy them- 
 selves to be revelling in infinite space ! 
 
 Mr. Peabody's communion-table was attended by the 
 usual proportion of professors. How observable and 
 lamentable, that just about the same undue proportion 
 still continues in nearly all the congregations through- 
 out the land at the present time ! With a fearless hand 
 he held the keys and wielded the rod of discipline, ex- 
 
 18=**= 
 
210 REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 
 
 communicating from the church the flagrant offender, 
 and then perhaps influencing him in private, until he 
 was brought again into the pale, with the agony of re- 
 pentance at his heart, and the petition for re-admission 
 on his lips. There were occasions, in the course of his 
 preaching, when the blackening cloud and fiery flash 
 which I have before described would overcast his coun- 
 tenance. In his annual sermons, for instance, on New- 
 Year's or Thanksgiving day, while enumerating the 
 blessings of the preceding year, the peace and quiet 
 which the town had enjoyed, and the general satisfaction 
 which the people had expressed in his ministry, his voice 
 would lower and his countenance change, as he re- 
 marked, after a momentary pause, " — a few incendi- 
 aries alone excepted ! " Here he alluded to some secta- 
 rian or infidel opponents who had disturbed his minis- 
 try and interrupted the harmony of the town. Every 
 one knew the individuals to whom he alluded, even if he 
 himself did not look down, as it is altogether likely he 
 would, with glaring eye, over his spectacles, into the very 
 pews of the offenders. 
 
 Once I saw his Christianity most severely put to the 
 test in his public services. It was on a very inclement 
 day, and there were but few worshippers in the meeting- 
 house. When he had reached about the middle of his 
 sermon, a strong perfume of tobacco-smoke became dis- 
 tinctly perceptible to every one in the building. He 
 paused for a little while, gazed round, and, not being 
 able to discover whence it proceeded, resumed his dis- 
 course. In the mean time the mysterious odor grew 
 stronger and stronger, and the house was soon filled with 
 a dense vapor. Again and longer did he pause. And 
 
REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 211 
 
 as, with spectacles now raised to his forehead, his eye 
 explored every part of the edifice, both on the floor and 
 in the galleries, he at length saw ascending from the 
 bottom of one of the gallery pews three separate streams 
 of smoke, in fast-repeated puffs, as if they were issuing 
 for a wager, or were determined to exhaust themselves, 
 in spite of the notice which they had now evidently at- 
 tracted from the minister and the congregation. " Is it 
 possible," exclaimed the grieved and exasperated divine, 
 — " Is it possible that such sacrilegious impiety as that 
 which I see should take place in this house of God ? 
 Let it stop instantly, or if conscience and religion can 
 be of no avail, an appeal must be made to the strong 
 arm of the law." A pause of still and solemn wonder 
 mantled over the thin congregation. Not a word was 
 spoken, not an object stirred, save the three continued 
 streams of puffs, which persevered in their daring out- 
 rage, in defiance of every awful or constraining sanction. 
 " Squire Vose I " at length exclaimed Sir Peabody, ad- 
 dressing himself in a determined, authoritative voice to 
 the preceptor of the academy, who was also a justice of 
 the peace, and whom on other occasions he simply 
 called Mr. Vose, " I desire that you would proceed to 
 the pew in the gallery from w^hich that smoke is issuing, 
 and put down the offence immediately, and that to-mor- 
 row you would take measures to have the offenders 
 prosecuted and punished to the utmost extremity of the 
 law." Accordingly Mr. Vose proceeded to the gallery, 
 extinguished the source of the disturbance, and the ser- 
 vice then proceeded quietly to the close. The next day, 
 the culprits, who proved to be three apprentices and 
 farmers' boys, — though, to his shame, one of them, at 
 
212 REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 
 
 least, was of a manly growth, — becoming alarmed at 
 the threatened consequences of their thoughtless sacri- 
 lege, were induced, if I rightly recollect, to make peni- 
 tent acknowledgments and promises of better conduct 
 for the future, and so were forgiven. 
 
 This leaning to the authority of the civil power con- 
 tributed perceptibly, I apprehend, to characterize much of 
 Sir Peabody's ministerial deportment. There still ex- 
 isted at that time in New England a sort of palpable 
 connection between Church and State, w^hich subsequent 
 legal enactments and alterations of constitutions have 
 everywhere done away. There also prevailed towards 
 clergymen, as somehow connected with the resistless 
 majesty of the civil law, a traditionary reverence, handed 
 down not only from our English ancestors in the times 
 both of the Kings and the Commonwealth, but also from 
 our puritanical Pilgrim fathers, whose policy, it is well 
 known, w^ent far to combine the rod of the magistrate 
 with the pastoral crook. This feeling of reverence, no 
 doubt, was considerably prevented from decaying by 
 the sympathy and co-operation which the New-England 
 clergy exhibited with the popular party throughout our 
 whole Revolutionary struggle, — as, indeed, it was after- 
 wards very much undermined and diminished by the 
 zeal with which they espoused the principles of the Fed- 
 eral party, in the times that followed the French Revo- 
 lution. For the payment of Mr. Peabody-s salary, the 
 law permitted him to look to the whole corporate town, 
 and not to any voluntary assemblage of friends and par- 
 tisans. It was thus guaranteed to him by the power and 
 authority of the State, and, no matter how many sects 
 abounded in Atkinson, they were all obliged to contrib- 
 
REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 213 
 
 ute to the minister's tax equally with the Congregation- 
 alists or Independents, to whose communion he himself 
 belonged, and who were the direct descendants from 
 Oliver Cromwell's own denomination. No combination 
 of enemies could avail to eject him from his pitiful liv- 
 ing. We believe that New Hampshire threw off these 
 slight fettering relics of the ancient order of things sev- 
 eral years previously to Massachusetts, and that Sir 
 Peabody experienced not a little the moral effects of the 
 change before his death. Perhaps the three burners of 
 false incense in the gallery were among the earliest 
 symptoms of the rising spirit of Young New England to 
 question and to break the spell. Such Avas not, how- 
 ever, the general tone of the transition period which I 
 am endeavoring to portray. The traditionary, mystic 
 influence which the minister exercised over his parish- 
 ioners went even, I think, in many cases, beyond the 
 legitimate powers he possessed, and would have been 
 stoutly resisted, could it have been encountered and 
 analyzed by some daring hand. It was something like 
 the sway which one of the Speakers of the House of 
 Commons wielded over that assembly in the third quar- 
 ter of the last century. Long after the royal authority 
 had been shorn of its formidable prerogatives, this gen- 
 tleman had the skill to intimidate many an adventurous 
 orator who had dared to treat lightly the proceedings of 
 the House, by exclaiming, " Let the honorable gentle- 
 man beware of what he says, or he shall assuredly be 
 reported ! " That word reported fell on the ears of Parlia- 
 ment like some mysterious denunciation from the invis- 
 ible world. On one of these occasions, however, some 
 intrepid and independent champion of the popular cause 
 
214 REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 
 
 is said to have replied, " And to whom, in the name 
 of wonder, Mr. Speaker, am I going to be reported ? " 
 Whereupon this was the last time the threat was ever 
 uttered. 
 
 Sir Peabody was, in many analogous respects, this 
 Right Honorable Speaker of his parish and his day. In 
 his very person he would on some rare occasions stand 
 out as the embodying representative of the grand concep- 
 tions and reverences of the past. Methinks I see his 
 form even now, as it impressed itself on my youthful 
 imagination, looming afar off in the road, on the hill-top, 
 against the sky. He may be going to pay some very 
 formal visit. As he descends the hill wdth an animated 
 and vigorous, but not hurried pace, I discern more dis- 
 tinctly his elaborate and imposing old-time dress, — his 
 high three-cornered beaver hat, — his large single-breast- 
 ed coat, sweeping down on each side with an ample 
 curve, — his vest, " full twice the length of these degen- 
 erate days," ending on both sides with large pockets and 
 lappets, — his snow-white plaited stock, under a smooth- 
 ly shaven, expanded chin, and fastened behind with a 
 silver buckle, — his nether garment terminating at his 
 knees, and fastened there also with small silver buckles, 
 — his long black-silk stockings extending from the knee 
 to the foot, — the whole being finished and consum- 
 mated by shining, square-buckled shoes. He draws still 
 nearer, and with something of the old erect, military air 
 which he had caught in the camp, something of that 
 conscious lingering majesty of church-and-state author- 
 ity about him which I have hinted at in the preceding 
 paragraph, something of the man of the world, and much 
 more of the sociable, good-humored, busy, Christian pas- 
 
REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 215 
 
 tor, he makes to those whom he meets a graceful, cere- 
 monious bow, yet accompanied with a smile, and a 
 hearty " Good day," and passes on. 
 
 This, however, belongs to my earlier and more palmy 
 recollections of him. As age advanced, and means per- 
 haps were straitened, and post-Revolutionary fashions 
 prevailed, his dress and appearance, even in his best 
 array, became less picturesque, aristocratic, and awe-in- 
 spiring. Silk would now give way to worsted, and the 
 shoe-buckle be replaced by the plain galloon or plainer 
 leathern string. 
 
 But far more astounding the change exhibited, even at 
 the former brilliant period, by the very same individual, 
 when engrossed by the labors of some busy season of the 
 year; — holding perhaps the plough; or hoeing the corn- 
 field until the latest shade of twilight; or urging forward 
 the various processes of haymaking; or grafting his 
 trees ; or gathering in the autumnal harvest ; or pressing 
 out his year's stock of cider from immense apple-heaps ; 
 or shaking and gleaning the apple-trees, all of which he 
 mounted for that purpose himself; or laying up the 
 choicest kinds of fruit in his extensive apple-cellar, to 
 bring them out every day through the winter with pro- 
 fuse and hospitable pride ; or butchering a beeve, or 
 butchering a swine, — operations, every detail of w^hich 
 he executed with artistic dexterity, though I imagine he 
 was the only butcher who never sacrificed a lamb with- 
 out repeating aloud to himself or to the by-standers those 
 four lines of Pope, — 
 
 " The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, 
 Had he thy reason, would he skip and play 1 
 Pleased to the last he crops the flowery food, 
 And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood." 
 
216 REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 
 
 Amidst toils like these came forth the large flapped, 
 weather-stained, round, and low-crowned hat, which had 
 commenced its brighter days of service in a very different 
 shape some dozen years before, — the unshaven face, 
 neglected, at some very busy periods, from one Sabbath 
 morning to another, — and the old service-beaten gown, 
 tied up about the waist, or probably no upper garment 
 at all save the reeking shirt that covered his bending 
 frame. 
 
 For his years, he was one of the most laborious men 
 in his parish. With the occasional exception of a hired 
 workman or two, and a small apprentice-boy, he carried 
 on the operations of his farm alone. The whole fuel for 
 several fires in the house, through the long Northern 
 winter, was often chopped and supplied by his stalwart 
 arm alone. 
 
 When polished visitors arrived from the seaport towns 
 or elsewhere, give him but an hour at his toilette, and 
 again he is metamorphosed into the well-dressed, hospi- 
 table entertainer, betraying no complaint at the interrup- 
 tion of his most urgent toils, and carrying on animated 
 conversations for hours together. In short, it would now 
 almost appear that he preferred talk to work, that he 
 would rather play the gentleman than the hard laborer, 
 and that he gladly seized the agreeable duties of hos- 
 pitality as an excuse to escape from the overwhelm- 
 ing drudgeries of the farm. I well know that such in- 
 sinuations were maliciously whispered about against 
 "Priest Peabody" by the mean, insurrectionary spirits 
 of the parish. 
 
 Perhaps there was greater plausibility in the regrets 
 which his more serious friends would sometimes express, 
 
REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 217 
 
 that the demeanor of Sir Peabody now and then sa- 
 vored of an apparent worldliness and carelessness, 
 hardly consistent with the strict proprieties of the min- 
 isterial character. Such regrets may have been some- 
 what justified by his exuberant animal spirits, his love 
 of a busy, bustling life, his exceeding proneness to social 
 intercourse, and the debts, expedients, and multiplied 
 managements, far and near, to which, with a currency 
 changing in value, he was obliged to resort, in the vol- 
 untary task of sustaining a family of twenty boarders. 
 
 He used to relate an anecdote of himself with his pe- 
 culiar humor, — that having once fattened a first-rate 
 calf for market, he sent it by one of his parishioners to 
 the town of Haverhill, anxious to obtain for it the high- 
 est price. " And what shall I tell the people of Haver- 
 hill," said his friend to him, " in order to persuade them 
 to come up to your mark ? " " O, tell them," replied 
 Sir Peabody, " that the calf belongs to a poor man who 
 is maintained by the town of Atkinson." The stratagem, 
 although originally intended as nothing more than an 
 innocent joke, succeeded very well, and Mr. Peabody 
 frequently afterwards had his laugh in person against the 
 purchaser. 
 
 It will be regarded as a striking symptom of the 
 change in public opinion, and even in the spirit of our 
 laws, that Sir Peabody was the acting manager of a 
 public lottery for the benefit of his cherished Atkinson 
 Academy, disposing of the tickets all over the country 
 wherever he was able, and himself personally superin- 
 tending the drawing, while the whole proved an embar- 
 rassing concern, on account of the incomplete sale of 
 tickets, or some other unfortunate mismanagement. It 
 
 19 
 
218 REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 
 
 cost him two or three journeys to Boston in the depth of 
 winter, in vainly endeavoring to procure the consent of 
 the Massachusetts legislature, that the tickets might be 
 sold in that Commonwealth ; and sadly did the family 
 feel, as we all flocked around him at the opening of a 
 fresh Columbian Centinel, and then heard him read with 
 Christian and philosophic calmness from the journal of 
 the legislature, that " the Rev. Mr. Peabody had leave 
 to withdraw his petition." 
 
 Whether all these possible deficiencies from a high 
 pastoral standard were the operating cause of that re- 
 bellious sectarism which broke up his little town into 
 fragments, and for many years prevented the ordination 
 there of any officiating minister, the Searcher of hearts 
 and Former of spirits can alone determine. I have my- 
 self often breathed a wish, in subsequent years, that it 
 had been my lot in early youth to receive my religious 
 impressions from a clerical example of greater spirituality 
 and a more decidedly preponderating piety. But then, 
 again, I have almost immediately recoiled from the 
 thought, as if I had rendered a kind of sacrilegious in- 
 justice and ingratitude to the memory of my old, warm- 
 hearted, unvarying friend. The recollection of his many 
 whole-souled virtues, which I have already enumerated 
 in this sketch, and the positive religious good which I 
 know his ministry in many cases produced, are amply 
 sufficient to redeem it from any deep-stained reproach of 
 inefficiency. Where is the man, and especially among 
 those whose natural constitution prompts them to much 
 outward activity, — where is the man whose character is 
 entirely free from some practical inconsistency ? I know 
 that such inconsistencies are to be lamented and con- 
 
REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LA.DY. 219 
 
 demned, and everybody shall do it for Sir Peabody who 
 does it ill a thorough-searching, thorough-cleansing man- 
 ner for himself. 
 
 The most prominent characteristic about this very 
 peculiar man was, it seems to me, that he was a true son 
 of nature. No child of the forest, no hero of antiquity, 
 ever stepped forth before his fellows with more freshness 
 and freedom of action. There was little or no self-disci- 
 pline or self-training about him ; but whatever part of 
 his character had not been formed and moulded by the 
 stringency of outward circumstances was just as it came 
 from the hand of God. If he had little about him of 
 the loftier and self-denying qualities of the highest spir- 
 itual Christianity, so, on the other hand, he had noth- 
 ing about him artificial, or simulating, or pretentious. 
 
 As I have ventured with a free hand to draw a light- 
 and-shade portraiture of my friend, I ought, in conclud- 
 ing it, to observe, that none had better opportunities 
 than myself of testifying to the reality and solidity of 
 his piety. Having listened to his morning prayers for 
 several years together, after the Bible had been duly read 
 by the whole family around in turn ; having joined his 
 evening devotions at an hour when the distinct, solemn 
 ticking of the clock united with the surrounding dark- 
 ness and stillness to impress every word on the atten- 
 tion ; having witnessed a certain sweet and gracious 
 sanctity which always pervaded his countenance and 
 manners on the Sabbath ; having heard him, hundreds of 
 times and on every variety of occasion, both when alone 
 and with children whom he desired to- impress, utter 
 serious reflections on the vanity and precariousness of 
 life, and the religious responsibility of man ; having vis- 
 
220 REV. STEPHEN TEABODY AND LADY. 
 
 ited his bedside at night, under the youthful struggles 
 of an agitated experience derived fronn perusing Dod- 
 dridge's " Rise and Progress," or Edwards's " History of 
 Redemption," or the Bible itself, — books which he had 
 himself carefully recommended to me to read, — and 
 having there received, in that solemn, though not fearful 
 darkness, his tender, judicious, fatherly, guiding lessons; 
 — I may not hesitate, while acknowledging in his case 
 the existence of imperfections incident to our common 
 humanity, to claim for him the merited appellation of — 
 to me at least — a man of God. 
 
 He sleeps in the small grave-yard behind his meeting- 
 house. Journeying a few years since from Boston on 
 purpose to visit the spot, and standing by his grave while 
 the bleak wind of New Hampshire murmured against 
 his tombstone, and the grand, blue, shadowy Monadnock, 
 unchanged as ever, waited afar off behind me, I could 
 not repress the gushing ejaculation, — "O venerated 
 spirit! It was long mine to witness thy busy, faithful, 
 efficient activity and influence in the scene that out- 
 spreads yonder before us ; I fear not to pray that it may 
 ■ also be mine to meet thee and share thy destiny, w^hat- 
 ever it may be, in the dim and distant eternity." 
 ^ At the same moment, my arm was resting on another 
 monumental stone. It was that of the blessed lady who, 
 in my penniless boyhood, had joined her husband in wel- 
 coming me to her home, and who acted towards myself 
 and a hundred others of both sexes the unstinting part of 
 a friend and mother. Mrs. Peabody, — or " Madam Pea- 
 body," as some called her, — or " Ma'am Peabody," — so 
 all who loved her pronounced it, as a kind of correlative 
 appellation to " Sir," — had died a few years previously 
 
REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 221 
 
 to her husband ; an event which contributed more than 
 anything else to change the appearance and ways of her 
 aged, declining partner. He would sometinnes try after- 
 wards to repeat his ancient anecdotes, but accompanied 
 them with only a faint smile, instead of the old infec- 
 tious and irresistible laugh. Mrs. Peabody was allowed 
 by all who enjoyed the happiness of her acquaintance to 
 stand in the very foremost rank among the daughters of 
 America. She was one of three celebrated sisters ; the 
 other two having been Mrs. Adams, wife of the elder 
 President Adams, and Mrs. Cranch, mother of the pres- 
 ent Judge Cranch of Washington. I apprehend that 
 by the numerous surviving relatives and admirers of 
 those two accomplished ladies it will be considered no 
 disparagement to their just claims, if I assert that Mrs. 
 Peabody was the most interesting woman of the three. 
 She was the daughter, with them, of the Rev. Mr. 
 Smith, of Weymouth, near Boston, and was educated 
 under the best ante-Revolutionary influences of that 
 vicinity. 
 
 Her conversational powers were of a superior order. 
 She was adequate to any theme that custom has brought 
 within the range of the female mind. Possessing the 
 charms of a fine person, a delicate, transparent complex- 
 ion, and a beautiful, speaking eye, with manners highly 
 polished and courtly, a retentive memory, choice and 
 fluent language, and an anxious pressure, a constantly 
 inquiring upward tendency towards the right, — towards 
 some indefinite point of moral and religious progress, — 
 how could she do otherwise than produce a deep impres- 
 sion on all within her sphere, kindling within them a 
 love and reverence for the capacities of human nature, 
 
 19* 
 
222 REV. STEPHEN PEABODT AND LADY. 
 
 and earnest desires to make it better both in themselves 
 and in others ? 
 
 Scarcely ever did the youthful flock that gathered 
 around her sit down at table, that she did not introduce 
 some pleasing or improving topic of conversation, which 
 she would embellish with apt and admirably recited pas- 
 sages from Shakespeare, Dryden, Pope, Addison, Young, 
 Thomson, and Cowper. Her annual visits to her Bos- 
 ton and Quincy friends kept up her stores of refined 
 cultivation, and she always returned prepared to com- 
 municate her interesting observations on society, man- 
 ners, and even the music and scanty painting of the day. 
 Her vigilant eye kept an incessant watch over the con- 
 duct and character of her boarders; sweetly would she 
 rebuke, delicately would she warn, affectionately would 
 she advise. Many a young man did she render thought- 
 ful ; in many a young woman did she awaken lofty as- 
 pirations after excellence. And when they left her house 
 with her lessons warm on their memory, she would deep- 
 en and protract the impression by sending after them 
 her carefully composed and richly laden correspondence? 
 which, if it could be collected and published, would jus- 
 tify the tribute I now delight to pay. 
 
 Not that she always appeared in this refined and ele- 
 vated full-dress of character. Too well for that did she 
 know the household duties of a New-England clergy- 
 man's wife. She was almost as absorbingly devoted to 
 the labors of her own department as we have seen that 
 Sir Peabody was to his. Combing a dozen heads every 
 morning, and shearing them when necessary, — mend- 
 ing innumerable stockings and et ceieras^ — superintend- 
 ing large broods of various poultry, — achieving the 
 
REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 223 
 
 house-work which her one small maid must necessarily 
 leave unfinished, — making those miscellaneous prepa- 
 rations for a large family dinner which might not come 
 within the grasp of her one solitary cook, — and every- 
 where, from true Christian principle, not from sordid 
 thrift, gathering up the fragments that nothing might be 
 lost, — could she be justly charged with fastidiously 
 playing the lady ? And though her morning dress could 
 never, of course, be compared wiih the slouching, non- 
 descript array which I. have tried to suggest as appertain- 
 ing to Sir Peabody, — inasmuch as woman always con- 
 trives, amidst the lowest occupations, to keep herself in 
 more decent trim than man, — yet would I often witness 
 with admiration and reverence the metamorphosis which 
 she also underwent in the latter part of the day. The 
 agitated and agitating housewife of the forenoon would 
 be now in full court-dress, sitting erect in her rocking- 
 chair, and reading Paley's Moral Philosophy, or some 
 work of an equally elevated description, which " Sir " in 
 fact could rarely find time to peruse. 
 
 Now can it be wondered at that I should regard her 
 as the beau-ideal of womankind ? Her image is at this 
 moment in my mind's eye, with that selfsame peculiar, 
 elaborate cap which had appealed so strongly to my 
 boyish imagination the first moment I saw her. Why, 
 indeed, may not the character of a lady be very much 
 interpreted from the contour and structure of her head- 
 dress ? For instance, — to appeal to a diametrically 
 opposite kind of example, though it is logical, I believe, 
 to do so, — could any reader of Dickens possess one half 
 the depth of insight which he now enjoys into the quali- 
 ties of Sally Brass, had the author deprived her of that 
 
224 REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 
 
 specific yellow cap, with which he could not avoid sur- 
 mounting her head, if he wished to convey a complete 
 conception of her character? And in like manner I am 
 certain that those snow-white folds within folds, those 
 muslin-depths of soft bluish tint, those interwoven ad- 
 vancing and retiring festoons of fine thread-lace, and that 
 general poetic effect of outline, position, and air which 
 adorned the majestic crown of my revered and beloved 
 friend, were only so many external symbols, types, and 
 representatives of that matchless purity of heart, those 
 mystic and winning graces, and those exquisite intel- 
 lectual adornments, which lay, like a substratum of vital, 
 productive reality, within the recesses of her noble spirit 
 beneath.* 
 
 Her first husband was the Rev. Mr. Shaw of Haver- 
 hill. I know little of the character or ministry of Mr. 
 Shaw, except that he was generally regarded as a very 
 worthy man, and faithful in his sacred vocation. Bating 
 some economical arrangements imposed by the stress of 
 hard necessity, their house was the centre of an elegant 
 little society for twenty years after the Revolution ; some 
 of the most cultivated residents of Boston and its vicin- 
 ity delighting in a pilgrimage to Haverhill, where they 
 could enjoy the charms of Mrs. Shaw's presence and 
 conversation. 
 
 * A portrait of this lady, executed by Stuart in his best style, with her 
 queenly head-dress and all, and realizing everything that has been said in 
 the text respecting her personal appearance, is now in the possession of Mrs. 
 Felt of Boston, the surviving daughter of Mrs. Pcabody ; to whom and her 
 husband, the Rev. Joseph B. Felt, the whole of this sketch has been submit- 
 ted in manuscript, while their friendly suggestions have been gratefully and 
 faithfully adopted. 
 
REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 225 
 
 In reference to her second marriage, I must relate a 
 curiously interesting anecdote, communicated to me by 
 an old female domestic of Mrs. Shaw's family, herself 
 one of the excellent of the earth, and who followed the 
 fortunes of my friend in both her marriages. Mrs. Shaw 
 had a cousin, Rev. Isaac Smith by name, a man of an 
 excellent and lovely character, an accomplished scholar, 
 a finished writer, and a polished gentleman of the old 
 school. He had visited England, where he had been 
 intimate in the family of the celebrated Miss Hannah 
 More. He was now preceptor of the very respectable 
 Dummer Academy at Byfield, near Newburyport, from 
 which he would make excursions through the country in 
 a one-horse chaise, kindly ready with his services to his 
 ministerial brethren. Much later in life he removed from 
 Byfield to the town of Boston, where he became chap- 
 lain of the almshouse, keeper of the Theological Library, 
 and moderator, by seniority in age, of the Boston Asso- 
 ciation of Ministers, in the discharge, I believe, of which 
 three offices he died, at the advanced period of eighty 
 years. I there happened to enjoy for a considerable time 
 the pleasure of the good old gentleman's acquaintance, 
 when commencing life myself, and prosecuted together 
 with him some agreeable tasks in theological literature. 
 But I must now go back many years to the date of my 
 anecdote. While Mr. Smith was preceptor of the By- 
 field Academ}^, and riding benevolently round the coun- 
 try, in middle life, Mrs. Shaw of Haverhill became a 
 widow. Mr. Smith was one of several gentlemen who, 
 according to common report, now aspired to her hand. 
 I think my good-hearted informant assured me that he 
 had entertained, even in his earlier years, similar fond 
 
226 REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 
 
 pretensions to his fair young cousin. But owing to 
 some diffidence, or delay, or accidental absence on his 
 part, he had been precluded even then from the attain- 
 ment of his hopes by his more successful rival, Mr. Shaw. 
 He sought in no other quarter for the consolation of his 
 wounded affections, but remained just as he was, until a 
 mingled Providence again apparently opened for him an 
 avenue to the former object of his regard. But it so 
 happened that Mr. Peabody of Atkinson was a widower, 
 of about the same standing in that isolated condition 
 with Mrs. Shaw herself, and was now meditating a sec- 
 ond connection in life. He had visited her house too 
 long and frequently, and was too w^ell acquainted with 
 the rare virtues and attractions that centred in her char- 
 acter, not to perceive that a prize so near and so pre- 
 cious ought by no means to be snatched from his grasp 
 without a seasonable effort on his part to secure it. By 
 a singular coincidence, Mr. Smith and Mr. Peabody both 
 selected one and the same day, of violently pouring rain, 
 to secure, by the offer of their hands, the consumma- 
 tion of their glowing and honorable hopes; just as two 
 eagles, o'erwearied with gloomy earth, might choose, 
 unknown to each other, the moment of a driving storm 
 to ascend into the serene and bright upper heaven. The 
 choice of such a day, however, might possibly have been 
 made by either party to preclude the probability of any 
 rivalry or other officious interruption. Be that as it may, 
 they both started from their homes after an early dinner, 
 Mr. Peabody having six miles to ride in a southern di- 
 rection, and Mr. Smith fifteen in a northern. Somewhat 
 after dark, Mr. Smith's chaise, with all the deliberation 
 of conscious security, enters the yard behind the favored 
 
REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 227 
 
 residence, and stops, as usual, at the door in that part of 
 the house. Lydia, my kind and true-hearted humble 
 friend, being the domestic there, appears immediately at 
 the door, with a look of peevish anxiety and agitation 
 uncommon to her. She had long been encouraging Mr. 
 Smith to take the present step, and much preferred that 
 her mistress should join her destinies to him, to her 
 union with any other man. She had ever pitied the 
 frustration of his early pretensions, which she held to be 
 still valid, and she considered, besides, that the superior- 
 ity of his refined and gentlemanly manners, together 
 with the respectability of his connections, entitled him, 
 more than any other aspirant, to the envied hand. But 
 when did ever match-maker succeed in outwitting the 
 wiser decrees of destiny? My well-meaning gossip was 
 obliged, in conclusion, to say, while in after-days, in a 
 low voice, so as not to be heard in the Atkinson parlor, 
 she recounted these incidents to a group of wondering 
 school-boys, — "I am afraid, boys, that w^hen I went to 
 the door, I spoke more sharply to Mr. Smith than I 
 ought to have done; for I said to him, * You are alto- 
 gether too late, sir ; Mr. Peabody has long ago dried his 
 coat by this kitchen-fire, and has been sitting now with 
 Mrs. Shaw for a whole hour in the parlor.' " Where or 
 how Mr. Smith spent that evening, I never had the 
 irreverent curiosity to inquire. I only know that the 
 remainder of his long life was passed in a meek and 
 acquiescent celibacy, tinged with a soft shadow of sad- 
 ness, of which few knew the cause ; * and I believe as 
 
 * Eather recently, a surviving friend of Mr. Smith has obligingly com- 
 municated to me a somewhat different history of that excellent gentleman's 
 affections in later life. So that my closing impressions in regard to his de- 
 clining experience may have been tinged with the shadows of my imagination. 
 
228 REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 
 
 firmly as that I am writing here, that he is now in that 
 blessed world where there is neither marrying nor giving 
 in marriage, and that he is, along with his two excellent 
 friends, what he certainly seemed always and every- 
 where to be while here on earth, as one of the angels in 
 heaven. 
 
 What kind of a treasure Sir Peabody thus obtained, 
 has been already in a good measure portrayed. She 
 was in general duly appreciated in her new place of resi- 
 dence, as she was always received with joy, also, in her 
 frequent visits to the old ; and I am not mistaken in 
 saying, that, with few exceptions, she was looked up to 
 by all the parishioners of both sexes in Atkinson, as a 
 kind of superior being. I have observed the stamp of her 
 bland and gracious manners on the good ladies of the 
 place, even after the lapse of twenty years from her 
 death. Can any one forget that dignified and winning 
 expression with which, at the close of public worship, 
 she followed her husband out of the meeting-house? 
 According to a custom in that town, which I do not rec- 
 ollect to have observed in more than one other part of 
 our country, and I know not whence it originated, the 
 minister was the very first person to depart from the 
 sanctuary, the whole congregation silently standing until 
 he and his lady had passed the threshold of the door. 
 It was at least a respectful and impressive custom. What 
 a contrast to the indecent haste, and scramble, so to 
 speak, with which many congregations start off for home ; 
 as if the benediction were like the dropping of a signal 
 pocket-handkerchief on a race-course I Why, at least, 
 might not all remain for a brief space, while the organ is 
 enunciating its solemn and spirit-stirring ^/2a/(e, which is 
 
REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 229 
 
 scarcely heard or appreciated under the present arrange- 
 ment, and so depart one by one, as varying moods might 
 prompt, consistently with the sanctity of the spot and 
 the occasion ? Nothing, indeed, can be more worthy of 
 imitation than the custom of Episcopalian assemblies, in 
 closing their public services with silent personal prayer. 
 Next to the solemn eflect of such a practice was that 
 reverential repose with which we all used to stand wait- 
 ing, while " Sir" descended the pulpit-stairs and passed 
 along the broad-aisle, bowing alternately on each side 
 with elaborate ceremony, and solemn, expanded eyes, 
 and " Ma'am" immediately followed him out of the pew 
 at the foot of the pulpit-stair, with her look cast down 
 to the floor, as though she had no prerogative to bow, 
 and with a modest, incipient smile on her visage, as if 
 conscious that the pious love of many eyes were directed 
 upon her. Reverence! whither hast thou fled? Since 
 these thine external manifestations have disappeared, 
 hast thou left behind, in the unfettered soul within, a 
 growing love for the substantially true, and right, and 
 holy, and beautiful, and venerable, and eternal ? 
 
 But the same malignant spirits, who had fastened 
 upon and magnified the defects of Mr. Peabody, were 
 not wanting to espy or devise faults in his lady. I pass 
 over the more contemptible of her maligners, who com- 
 plained, that at her tea-visits abroad she preferred white 
 to brown bread, and whom I only mention as indicatiner 
 one feature of the manners of the times, which I trust 
 has long since for ever disappeared. But the more plau- 
 sible and decent of " Ma'am's " detractors levelled their 
 shafts at much higher game. Among these, the favorite 
 whispered scandal was, that she was a woman of tower- 
 
 20 
 
230 REV. STEPHEN PEABODY AND LADY. 
 
 ing pride, and over fond of dress. Of pride she had no 
 more than an angel from heaven, who stoops to protect 
 and sympathize with the poorest and humblest, while he 
 approaches the loftiest and haughtiest with a calm, con- 
 scious sense of his own celestial dignity, which mean 
 spectator-angels might possibly construe into pride. 
 With regard to her alleged attachment to dress, so pro- 
 found is my reverence for her whole character, that I 
 have no doubt she conscientiously mingled her practice 
 on this point with the purest sentiments of duty. Per- 
 haps that characteristic emblematical cap of hers might 
 seem to a cynical observer occasionally decked out with 
 superabundant ornament. I remember reading in mod- 
 ern ecclesiastical history, that the Huguenot ministers of 
 the sixteenth century had the greatest difficulty in pre- 
 venting the pious, lovely, and noble Madame Du Plessis, 
 and several other ladies of high rank, from offending in 
 the very same particular, and were finally compelled, like 
 the Methodist divines of a later day in their war against 
 ribbons, to decline the contest. Perhaps some adorn- 
 ment of the kind is essential to the highest type of a lady 
 of the Caucasian race. Perhaps, too, the very angel 
 from heaven, to whom I just now alluded, may some- 
 times view with too much complacency the lustre of his 
 own pruned, ethereal wing. But let that pass. Could I 
 even be convinced that in my sainted friend the refine- 
 ment of an elevated nature ever faded down into femi- 
 nine infirmity, I would but seize the occasion to remem- 
 ber and inculcate that absolute perfection belongs only 
 to ONE. 
 
 1847. 
 
CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE ORATORY OF 
 EDWARD EVERETT.* 
 
 PUBLISHED IN THE SOUTHERN QUARTERLY REVIEW FOR APRIL, 1851. 
 
 As Mr. Everett needed no accession to his reputation, 
 this re-production of his brilliant life on the rostrum may- 
 be considered as a gratuitous present to the public. It 
 will be thankfully welcomed, not only as in itself a 
 choice contribution to American literature, but as some- 
 thing like an historical monument of the progress of our 
 national culture. The author's life has been coeval with 
 a peculiarly vigorous and critical stage of American de- 
 velopment, whose tendency to absorption in gross, mate- 
 rial interests or coarse political excitements, he has suc- 
 cessfully resisted, while he has aided, as much as any man 
 living, to impart to it a refined and intellectual direction. 
 Gifted with extraordinary powers of mind, which almost 
 from childhood produced upon his native community a 
 kind of mysterious impression, he has incessantly sought 
 to " magnify his office," by communicating a healthy and 
 generous impulse to the spheres within his reach. His 
 large and active ambition, disdaining everything eccen- 
 tric or illegitimate, has invariably been baptized in a 
 
 * Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions. By Edward Everett. 
 In two volumes. Second Edition. Boston : Little and Brown. 1850. 
 
232 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 pure and wholesome element, and confined itself within 
 the limits of immediate usefulness. Pandering to no low 
 or transient tastes, he seems always instinctively to have 
 proceeded on the conviction, that the public mind could 
 be moulded and guided by influences adapted to its better 
 nature ; and the result has shown how well founded was 
 his conviction. If the pursuit of literature is cherished 
 with any fondness in these United States, if the name 
 of scholar is honorable among us, no person, probably, 
 can lay claim to so large an agency in producing the 
 happy effect, as Edward Everett. It is a curious and 
 gratifying circumstance in his very imposing career, that 
 in three widely separated regions, — on our Atlantic coast, 
 by our Western waters, and in the mother country, — 
 processions and festivals have been formed to do him 
 personal honor, — not for his political influence, or lead- 
 ership in any movement of exciting reform, but purely 
 from the milder fame of his admirable and well-directed 
 scholarship. We know of no similar contemporaneous 
 example, nor, in fact, anything like it since the early and 
 enthusiastic days of modern literature. 
 
 As apposite to these observations, we subjoin an ex- 
 tract from the little work of a tourist, published at New 
 York, in 3838. The authoress is describing a Com- 
 mencement occasion at Harvard College in 1836, at 
 which Mr. Everett was present, in his official capacity, 
 as Governor of Massachusetts. 
 
 " It was seventeen years," she observes, " since I had previously 
 attended this celebration ; my thoughts chiefly rested on the au- 
 dience, and were drawn away from the speakers by the throng of 
 memories that clustered so richly over the scene. There were 
 many changes. The old Puritan meeting-house was gone, and 
 had given place to one of elegant and classical structure. 
 
ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 233 
 
 " After musing awhile on these things, until the voices of the 
 speakers sounded, dream-like, amid the deeper voices of the past, 
 my attention was riveted by one conspicuous individual. I had 
 seen that subdued glance years ago, at his first college exhibition ; 
 it was the same, — the same slow raising of the clear blue eye, the 
 same deferential bow at honors conferred. The cheek of the man 
 was pale, on the boy's was a crimson spot, where genius seemed 
 feeding ; time had laid his hand on the head of the man, the boy's 
 fair hair was glossy and full ; the limbs of the man, though not 
 large, were firm, the boy was slender, so slender that it was feared 
 mind would master him, and that he would be one of those plants 
 that die early. Why God so often takes the prematurely ripe, 
 we know not ; but we know that the responsibilities of such mor- 
 al agents, when he permits them to remain, are fearfully great. 
 The eye of Heaven must look searchingly down on the individuals 
 it has gifted so unsparingly. 
 
 "At the Commencement of 1811, he again appeared, still a 
 boy, bearing off the honors of a man. There was another lapse 
 of time, and he stood before the Phi Beta Kappa Society as a 
 poet ; and the lips of the fair opened in praise, and friends gath- 
 ered and fluttered like butterflies around the opened flower, and 
 old men shook their heads in pleasant surprise, or gazed upon his 
 modest brow, and bade him God speed. A few years passed, 
 and he stood to be ordained in the holy character of a Gospel 
 minister. I shall never forget that day. As his fathers in the 
 ministry laid their hands on his head, he looked too slight for so 
 tremendous a charge ; but when, at the close of the service, he 
 pronounced a blessing on the audience, there was a tremulous 
 depth in his voice which spoke of ardent communing with duty. 
 
 " Another period elapsed, and he visited Europe, to glean from 
 its fields pleasure and improvement. In the Chapel of Harvard 
 College, on his return, I heard his first discourse. It was a brilhant 
 summary of interesting things. Since then he has walked the 
 
 20* 
 
234 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 halls of statesmen ; his various orations have risen like a line of 
 beautiful hills on the literary horizon, and he has been crowned 
 with civil honors." * 
 
 A very mistaken and superfluous regret is sometimes 
 expressed by Mr. Everett's admirers, that he has not de- 
 voted his powers to some grand, continuous work, but 
 has employed them on such fragmentary productions as 
 compose the two volumes before us. We think there is 
 in this regret more sentimentality than good sense. If 
 some creating spirit chooses to give us for our refresh- 
 ment a whole grove of noble palms, we will not quarrel 
 with him for refraining to bestow in their room a solitary 
 gigantic oak. If an architect overspreads the land with 
 beautiful and commodious churches, to which many 
 neighborhoods resort for edification and delight, we will 
 not ask him, Why have you spent your life upon these, 
 rather than upon a single towering cathedral ? The truth 
 is, an almost epic unity and interest pervades these vol- 
 umes, notv/ithstanding the piecemeal nature of their in- 
 gredients. They tell an eventful story, as they proclaim 
 the life-like movement of the country in its varied histori- 
 cal, political, material, intellectual, moral, and spiritual 
 relations. Even had Mr. Everett reserved his powers for 
 one huge work, we presume he must have divided and 
 subdivided it into chapters and sections. Now here is a 
 huge book, divided not indeed into chapters, but into 
 profound and brilliant orations and addresses, which 
 grew so, as it were, by nature, and were not artificially 
 cut and carved out by the book-maker's hand. When 
 high merit is presented to us in one form, why should we 
 
 * Poetry of Travelling in the United States, by Caroline Gil man. 
 
ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 235 
 
 complain of that form, and wonder that it comes in no 
 other ? Must Shakespeare be arraigned for working up 
 his plots into five dramatic acts, instead of expanding 
 them into the twelve books of a Paradise Lost? or shall 
 Horace be disparaged, for not assuming the exact in- 
 dividuality of Maro? Mr. Everett has met the demand 
 of his generation, by assisting to shape and direct its 
 mighty but vague aspirings. If he has not written a 
 treatise in three volumes, let him console himself with 
 the thought that he has been doing something better, — 
 he has not thrown his life away, — he has aided to stamp 
 an age I We give all honor to the meritorious produ- 
 cers of three, six, or nine connected volumes. But we 
 suspect several of these fortunate writers will be among 
 the first candidly to confess that Mr. Everett did some- 
 thing to stir the atmosphere which breathed or summoned 
 their fine creations into life. Such boast he may make 
 with Coleridge, but not, like Coleridge, lament his abused 
 and misdirected powers. There are some judicious ob- 
 servations on a subject allied to this, in Lord Jeffrey's 
 article on the Memoirs of Sir James Mackintosh. They 
 were, perhaps, intended as an indirect justification of the 
 critic's own literary career, as well as that of the writer 
 reviewed ; and Mr. Everett himself is entitled to apply 
 them to the multifariously detailed labors of his past 
 literary life. Speaking of Sir James's deferring the ex- 
 ecution of his larger projects, in order to enlighten the 
 public mind through the pages of reviews and other jour- 
 nals. Lord Jeffrey says : — 
 
 " For our own parts, we have long been of opinion, that a man 
 of powerful understanding and popular talents, who should devote 
 himself to the task of announcing principles of vital importance to 
 
236 ORATORY OP EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 society, and render the discussion of them familiar, by the medium 
 of popular journals, would probably do more to direct and accel- 
 erate the rectification of public opinion upon all practical questions, 
 than by any other use he could possibly make of his faculties. 
 His name, indeed, might not go down to posterity in connection 
 with any work of celebrity, and the greater part even of his con- 
 temporaries might be ignorant of the very existence of their bene- 
 factor. But the benefits conferred would not be the less real; nor 
 the conferring of them less delightful ; nor the gratitude of the 
 judicious less ardent and sincere." 
 
 Bat even as a substantive literary treasure, we regard 
 these volumes as equally honorable to the American 
 press with other more consolidated productions. Why 
 should not a collection of orations possess a value as 
 positive and absolute as a history or a treatise ? Could 
 classical literature, for instance, endure the extinction of 
 the speeches of Demosthenes and Cicero, any more than 
 of the writings of Thucydides and Seneca ? Proud as 
 we are of the histories of Sparks, Prescott, and Bancroft, 
 yet we cannot admit that, as a whole, the addresses of 
 Mr. Everett are at all less creditable to the country, or 
 less beneficial in their tendency. They were composed 
 and delivered under circumstances eminently adapted to 
 stimulate the utmost efforts of the intellect. At the cele- 
 brations and dies fasti which called them forth, their 
 author was not invited as a mere portion of the pageant, 
 or to play an assigned part to secure the ceremonial from 
 failure. The whole surrounding community looked to 
 him for an instructive expression of the very spirit of the 
 occasion, as well as of their own cherished and unspoken 
 interest and sentiments in regard to it. The range of 
 time embracing the production and delivery of these ad- 
 
ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 237 
 
 dresses, may well be regarded as a brilliant epoch in the 
 history of New England. The announcement, that Mr. 
 Everett was to be the speaker for the day, awakened 
 unusual anticipations far and near. The audiences, 
 crowded to overflowing, were in a large measure com- 
 posed of the most distinguished men in the country, of 
 every profession, with all that was attractive and accom- 
 plished, in the best degree, of the other sex. No tinsel 
 oratory, no commonplace declamation, could send au- 
 diences like these to their homes in a mood of perfect 
 gratification. Nor were the charms of delivery, — the 
 severe simplicity, yet graceful elegance of manner, — the 
 voice, that could glide at will between trumpet-tone and 
 an almost feminine pathos, — the eye, that could at once 
 command multitudes with its fiery gaze, and yet seem to 
 search the thoughts of every individual,* — and, espe- 
 cially, the exhibition of a glowing enthusiasm, ever ready 
 to break forth, but ever repressed and chastened by the 
 reins of a firm self-control, — at all adequate, of them- 
 selves, to satisfying the demands of the particular audi- 
 ences whom the occasions in question assembled together. 
 There must be discussion and speculation ; the phi- 
 losophy of the subject in hand must be probed to its 
 depths ; there must be novelty in the facts and reflec- 
 tions presented, but without antics or extravagances of 
 
 ^ The portrait prefixed to these volumes presents, in many respects, a 
 happy resemblance. But every distinguished orator ought to be consigned 
 to some effigies in action. The birds of Audubon, the sculpture of Chat- 
 ham, belonging to the city of Charleston, and the Belvidcre Apollo, suggest 
 the immense difference in art between repose and activity. How -would the 
 admirers of Mr. Everett prize a likeness of him, taken in the act of lifting, 
 as it were, from their feet, a crowded audience in Faneuil Hall ! 
 
238 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 thought ; there must be sympathetic, but reasonable 
 appeals to that consciousness of a high future destiny, 
 which is the irrepressible sentiment of American bosoms. 
 With all these requisites Mr. Everett came well pre- 
 pared, from the stores of his immense cultivation, and 
 the workings of his fervid genius, to represent the teem- 
 ing thoughts of the day. Called upon a hundred times 
 for the performance of these arduous tasks, he has never 
 failed to gratify the public expectation. In the facility 
 with which he has ever consented to appear before his 
 fellow-citizens, he has shown equal kindness and intre- 
 pidity, for it is long since he could expect to increase his 
 reputation, or incur no risk of possibly diminishing it. 
 Such are some of the circumstances which may enable 
 us, in part, to form a due estimate of the volumes we 
 are examining. 
 
 They whose good fortune it is to have been present 
 on most, or many, of these occasions, enjoy a rare advan- 
 tage in perusing the present publication. The excite- 
 ment of recollection here surpasses in its effects the ex- 
 citement of novelty. Very many of the addresses are 
 associated with the idea of gala-day triumphs, — 'of 
 delightful anticipations previously cherished, — of refined 
 and densely crowded assemblages, — of the electric sym- 
 pathies inspired by such scenes, — of the pride and admi- 
 ration felt for the orator by whole communities, — of the 
 curiosity experienced .by those who were strangers to his 
 person, — of the intense and never-wearied attention 
 which listened to the last, and would have been glad of 
 more ; and then, of the separation, often to distant 
 homes, with the memory of what had been heard pro- 
 longing the pleasure, and renewing it afterwards for 
 
ORATORY OP EDWARD EVERETT. 239 
 
 many days, as an era or privilege in life. For our own 
 part, stationed here at the remote South, we necessarily 
 have enjoyed but few opportunities of personally listen- 
 ing to these performances. But most of them we pe- 
 rused at their first publication, and now, as we read them 
 again in their collective form, we seem to be renewing a 
 pleasure, as it were, but of yesterday, so deep was the 
 influence which many years ago they exerted upon our 
 minds. 
 
 Nor must it be understood that our orator affected 
 to produce impressions only on refined and brilliant as- 
 semblages. Many of his happiest essays were prepared 
 for the laboring classes of society. His addresses to these 
 classes, combined with Dr. Channing's Lecture on Self- 
 Culture, were as opportune as they were elaborate, and 
 probably did as much, in proportion, to satisfy and ele- 
 vate the toiling, yet questioning masses of the community 
 around, as was effected with more " observation " in a 
 larger field by the religious zeal of Whitfield and Wesley. 
 We cannot imagine how the Socialist question can be 
 more convincingly met, than in Mr. Everett's Lecture on 
 the Workingmen's Party. 
 
 In preparing these publications anew^ for the press, we 
 perceive that the author has very diligently and conscien- 
 tiously employed the critical pruning-knife. Seldom have 
 we known such unrelenting judgments passed by a writer 
 of mature life upon the style of his earlier years. Some 
 of the compositions, in fact, may be said to be in a de- 
 gree rewritten. It must have been entirely a matter of 
 personal interest with himself, for we presume the public 
 would not have demanded the numerous emendations in 
 question, and we have never known his writings charac- 
 
240 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 terized as loose or incorrect. We understand that some 
 critic in a New Orleans paper, in a notice of the present 
 publication, stigmatizes this dressing up anew of one's 
 printed lucubrations as an unwarrantable liberty. The 
 censure seems to us unfounded. Surely the purchasers 
 of previous editions have no right to complain, for they 
 have enjoyed a fair quid pro quo in the best which the 
 author had to give them at the earlier period. Nor is the 
 existing public in any manner abused, for Mr. Everett 
 ingenuously announces that the productions of his youth 
 required some amendment, which he has here endeav- 
 ored to bestow upon them. The only parties we can 
 imagine as likely to be aggrieved are the booksellers, 
 who may possibly retain copies of the uncorrected ad- 
 dresses on their shelves. But we much doubt whether 
 copies enough remain to inflict severe injury in this 
 quarter, at least beyond what can be more than re- 
 paid by a supply of the same article in a fresh and im- 
 proved condition. With regard to the general qujestion, 
 as a point of mere literary ethics, we believe that the 
 practice adverted to can be defended by various consid- 
 erations. Certainly a writer may be supposed anxious to 
 transmit his productions to posterity in a state as near 
 perfection as possible. The inquiry of the future reader 
 will be, not at what age in life they were composed, but 
 by whom they were composed, and if they were finally 
 published or not with the author's sanction. A writer 
 of high and generous aims will naturally wish his works 
 to produce the most beneficial impression, whether his 
 name be connected with them or not. If the name ac- 
 company them, he must wish it associated with as much 
 literary excellence as he can personally and fairly confer. 
 
ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 241 
 
 The world has never yet, that we have learned, com- 
 plained of " new and improved editions." The practice 
 of the brightest and most revered authors of ancient and 
 modern times can be alleged, if it were necessary, in 
 defence of the instance before us. And as to German 
 authors, their little fingers are thicker, in this respect, 
 than Mr. Everett's loins. Nothing is more common 
 with them, than to rewrite successive editions of the 
 same work, until at length it would be hard to recognize 
 an identity between the earlier and later issues. We 
 remember to have once translated a rather bulky treatise 
 of Eichhorn on the Pentateuch, and being, a few years 
 later, solicited to furnish it for a well-known periodical, 
 we found that subsequent editions had so far changed 
 the individuality of the original work, as to require, not 
 a revision, but an absolutely new translation. 
 
 It may be interesting to our readers to compare a para- 
 graph or two, in which Mr. Everett has called up to his 
 side his earlier self, to inspect and correct the young 
 gentleman's exercises. Perhaps they will think, with 
 ourselves, that in some, though not in all instances, the 
 pupil's phraseology may be preferred to his preceptor's. 
 We will take the first example from the opening page. 
 
 EDITION OF 1824. 
 
 " Mr. President and Gentlemen : — In discharging the honor- 
 able trust of being the public organ of your sentiments on this 
 occasion, I have been anxious that the hour, which we here pass 
 together, should be occupied by those reflections exclusively which 
 belong to us as scholars. Our association in this fraternity is 
 academical ; we engaged in it before our Alma Mater dismissed 
 us from her venerable roof, to wander in the various paths of 
 life ; and we have now come together in the academical holidays, 
 21 
 
242 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 from every variety of pursuit, from almost every part of our 
 country, to meet on common ground, as the brethren of one liter- 
 ary household. The professional cares of life, like the conflict- 
 ing tribes of Greece, have proclaimed to us a short armistice, that 
 we may come up in peace to our Olympia. 
 
 " But from the wide field of literary speculation, and the innu- 
 merable subjects of meditation which arise in it, a selection must 
 be made. And it has seemed to me proper that we should direct 
 our thoughts, not merely to a subject of interest to scholars, but 
 to one that may recommend itself as peculiarly appropriate to us. 
 If ' that old man eloquent, whom the dishonest victory at Chss- 
 ronea killed with report,' could devote fifteen years to the com- 
 position of his Panegyric on Athens, I shall need no excuse to a 
 society of American scholars, in choosing for the theme of an 
 address on an occasion like this, the peculiar motives to intellectual 
 exertion in America. In this subject, that curiosity which every 
 scholar feels in tracing and comparing the springs of mental 
 activity, is heightened and dignified by the important connection 
 of the inquiry Avith the condition and prospects of our native land." 
 EDITION OF 1850. 
 
 " Mr. President and Gentlemen : — In discharging the honor- 
 able trust which you have assigned to me on this occasion, I am 
 anxious that the hour which we pass together should be exclu- 
 sively occupied with those reflections w^hich belong to us as 
 scholars. Our association in this fraternity is academical; we 
 entered it before our Alma Mater dismissed us from her venerable 
 roof; and we have now come together, in the holidays, from 
 every variety of pursuit, and every part of the country, to meet 
 on common ground, as the brethren of one literary household. 
 The duties and cares of life, like the Grecian states in time of 
 war, have proclaimed to us a short armistice, that we may come 
 up in peace to our Olympia. 
 
 " On this occasion, it has seemed proper to me that we should 
 turn our thoughts, not merely to some topic of literary interest, 
 
ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 243 
 
 but to one which concerns us as American scholars. I have 
 accordingly selected, as the subject of our inquiry, the circum- 
 stances favorable to the jorogress of literature in the United States 
 of America. In the discussion of this subject, that* curiosity 
 which every scholar naturally feels in tracing and comparing the 
 character of the higher civilization of different countries, is at 
 once dignified and rendered practical by the connection of the 
 inquiry with the condition and prospects of his native land." 
 
 The next specimen is from a subsequent oration. 
 
 EDITION OF 1825. 
 
 " Fellow-Citizens : — The voice of patriotic and filial duty has 
 called us together, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of an ever- 
 memorable day. The subject which this occasion presents to our 
 consideration almost exceeds the grasp of the human mind. The 
 appearance of a new state in the great family of nations is one of 
 the most important topics of reflection that can ever be addressed 
 to us. In the case of America, the interest, the magnitude, and 
 the difficulty of this subject are immeasurably increased. Our 
 progress has been so rapid, the interval has been so short be- 
 tween the first plantations in the wilderness and the full develop- 
 ment of our political institutions ; there has been such a visible 
 agency of single characters in affecting the condition of the coun- 
 try, such an almost instantaneous expansion of single events into 
 consequences of incalculable importance, that we find ourselves 
 deserted by almost all the principles and precedents drawn from 
 the analogy of other states. Men have here seen, felt, and 
 acted themselves, what in most other countries has been the 
 growth of centuries. 
 
 " Take your station, for instance, on Connecticut River. Every- 
 thing about you, whatsoever you behold or approach, bears wit- 
 ness that you are a citizen of a powerful and prosperous state. 
 It is just seventy years since the towns, which you now contem- 
 plate with admiration as the abodes of a numerous, increasingi 
 
244 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 refined, enterprising population, safe in the enjoyment of life's 
 best blessings, were wasted and burned by the savages of the 
 wilderness ; and their inhabitants by hundreds — the old and the 
 young, the minister of the Gospel, and the mother with her new- 
 born babe — were awakened at midnight by the war-whoop, 
 dragged from their beds, and marched with bleeding feet across 
 the snow-clad mountains, — to be sold as slaves into the corn- 
 fields and kitchens of the French in Canada. Go back eighty 
 years farther; and the same barbarous foe is on the skirts of 
 your oldest settlements, at your own doors. As late as 1676, 
 ten or twelve citizens of Concord were slain or carried into cap- 
 tivity, who had gone to meet the savage hordes in their attack on 
 Sudbury, in which the brave Captain Wadsworth and his com- 
 panions fell." 
 
 EDITION OF 1850. 
 
 " Fellow-Citizens : — The subject which the present occasion 
 presents to our consideration is of the highest interest. The 
 appearance of a new state in the great family of nations is one of 
 the most important topics of reflection that can ever be addressed 
 to us. In the case of America, the magnitude and the difficulty 
 of the subject are greatly increased by peculiar circumstances. 
 Our progress has been so rapid ; the interval has been so short 
 between the first plantations in the wilderness and the full devel- 
 opment of our political system ; there has been such a visible 
 agency of single characters in affecting the condition of the coun- 
 try, such an almost instantaneous expansion of single events into 
 consequences of incalculable importance, that we find ourselves 
 deserted by the principles and precedents drawn from the analogy 
 of other states. Men have here seen, felt, and acted themselves, 
 what in most other countries has been the growth of centuries. 
 
 " Take your station, for instance, on Connecticut River. Every- 
 thing about you, whatever you behold or approach, bears witness 
 that you belong to a powerful and prosperous state. But it is 
 only seventy years since the towns which you now contemplate 
 
ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 245 
 
 with admiration, as the abodes of a numerous, refined, enterpris- 
 ing population, safe in the enjoyment of life's best blessings, were 
 wasted and burned by the savages of the wilderness ; and their 
 inhabitants, in large numbers, — the old and the young, the min- 
 ister of the Gospel, and the mother with her new-born babe, — 
 were awakened at midnight by the war-whoop, dragged from 
 their beds, and marched with bleeding feet across the snow-clad 
 mountains, to be sold as slaves to the French in Canada. Go 
 back eighty years farther, and the same barbarous foe is on the 
 skirts of your oldest settlements, — at your own doors. As late 
 as 1676, ten or twelve citizens of Concord were slain or carried 
 into captivity, who had gone to meet the Indians in their attack 
 on Sudbury, in which the brave Captain Wadsworth and his 
 companions fell." 
 
 Whatever correction our author might see fit to apply 
 to his writings, he is at least to be congratulated for hav- 
 ing avoided the affectations into which some of his con- 
 temporaries were betrayed. He confesses and laments 
 having made Johnson and Burke his models in compo- 
 sition ; yet rarely, if ever, is their faulty manner conspic- 
 uous in his productions. On the other hand, he may 
 owe to his study and admiration of those great masters 
 his unsurpassed flow of pure and nearly perfect English 
 diction. Although he had lived several of his most imi- 
 tative years in Germany, and had perused with youthful 
 fervor the popular authors of that country, yet we find in 
 his style no trace of German influence. He was just as 
 much tempted as others have been, and perhaps, by rea- 
 son of his mode of education, more so, to dress up a feeble 
 or commonplace thought with oracular obscurity or fan- 
 tastic outlandishness; but he disdained the unworthy- 
 foppery, and renounced in advance the feverish and un- 
 21 # 
 
246 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 natural popularity which, in some quarters, such arts are 
 apt to gain. In his most ambitious flights, he is never 
 "transcendental"; in his most pointed sentences, never 
 otherwise than purely idiomatic. We doubt whether he 
 ever calls Washington, in the affected ethical slang of 
 twenty years ago, " a true man," and are pretty confident 
 that he does not talk of the " mission " of America among 
 the nations. Steeped as he has been all his life in every 
 variety of foreign literatures, the indigenous redolence 
 of his style is remarkable. The only paragraph in these 
 volumes, so far as we remember, of which the savor is 
 not as essentially English as that of Mr. Clay himself, is 
 the following, which reminds us, though not offensively, 
 of the piquant vivacity of Voltaire, or some other French 
 philosopher, applied to a grave and profound subject. 
 
 "The first king was a fortunate soldier, and the first nobleman 
 was one of his generals ; and government has passed by descent 
 to their posterity, with no other interruption than has taken place 
 when some new soldier of fortune has broken in upon this line of 
 succession, in favor of himself and of his generals. The people 
 have passed for nothing in the plan ; and whenever it has oc- 
 curred to a busy genius to put the question, By what right is 
 government thus exercised and transmitted? the common an- 
 swer, as we have seen, has been, By divine right ; while, as the 
 great improvement on this doctrine, men have been consoled with 
 the assurance that such was the original contract." 
 
 It is common to hear Mr. Everett characterized, in an 
 exclusive way, as " a magnificent declaimer." In the 
 better sense of the word the appellation is correct, al- 
 though it conveys but a very partial account of his ora- 
 tory. Declamation is one of those terms to which dis- 
 paraging ideas have been attached, in consequence of the 
 
ORATORY OP EDWARD EVERETT. 247 
 
 spurious and inadequate attempts that are every day 
 made to exhibit the excellent reality. Genuine declama- 
 tion has in all ages been among the highest efforts of hu- 
 man art. It is an appeal to the nobler passions and sen- 
 timents of an audience, when reason is supposed to have 
 accomplished its office. It invests familiar or forgotten 
 truths with their due grandeur and importance, and en- 
 kindles an interest in them, which is otherwise too apt 
 to languish. There is room for the display of tran- 
 scendent skill and power, in the topics, the phrases, the 
 methods, which a speaker employs for these purposes. 
 Declamation is the poetry of eloquence. The declama- 
 tory passages of the ancient orators are impressed on the 
 memory of every reader of the classics. The Old and 
 New Testaments also abound in the happiest instances. 
 The volumes before us present several admirable speci- 
 mens. But we are surprised to observe, in a continuous 
 perusal of the whole, how very rare, comparatively, is the 
 declamatory element; we mean, of course, only in its 
 higher sense, the inferior sort never having, that we 
 know, been charged upon the author. Mr. Webster him- 
 self, even in his deliberative speeches, to say nothing of 
 his efforts on the rostrum, is more of a declaimer than 
 Mr. Everett. The predominant, nay, almost the entire 
 character of the volumes before us, is didactic. The au- 
 thor enters, as we have already intimated, into the phi- 
 losophy of every subject; and, besides, if his theme be 
 an historical event, he brings forward a new store of illus- 
 trative facts and incidents, unknown to the current gen- 
 eration, whom he thus renders as familiar with it as 
 if they themselves had been among its busiest actors. 
 Then, when he indulges in declamation, the fervid Ian- 
 
248 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 guage springs as naturally from these speculations and 
 verities, as the gorgeous emblazonment of the clouds 
 round the setting sun proceeds from his illumining rays. 
 The versatility and scope of the author's mind may be 
 conceived from the immense variety and importance of 
 the topics which he has been called upon to discuss for 
 the benefit of his fellow-citizens. It seems as if they 
 had supposed he must know and could talk about every- 
 thing that is experienced beneath the circuit of the sun. 
 For instance, he investigates, at Harvard College, in an 
 original vein, the circumstances favorable to the progress 
 of American literature, — traces, at Plymouth, the vast 
 consequences that flowed from the first settlement of 
 New England, — describes, at Concord, with the graphic 
 pencil of a contemporary, the earlier battles of the Revo- 
 lution, — elucidates, at Cambridge, the distinctive prin- 
 ciples of the American constitutions, — institutes, in 
 Faneuil Hall, by a happy stroke of genius, a parallel 
 between the lives and characters of Adams and Jeffer- 
 son, whose twin-death, on one and the same day, fur- 
 nishes a sort of key-note with which the eulogy harmo- 
 nizes throughout, — takes occasion, in one of his Fourth 
 of July orations, to give a general and learned history of 
 Liberty itself, — erects a literary monument, at the dedi- 
 cation of one in stone, to the memory of John Harvard, 
 — addresses, while on a tour in the Western States, three 
 large assemblies in different places, with something spe- 
 cifically appropriate to each occasion, — characterizes, at 
 Charlestown, with the fondness of a son of Massachu- 
 setts, the primal settlement of his native State, — then, 
 with equal familiarity, discourses, before several rising 
 Institutes, on the importance of scientific knowledge to 
 
ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 249 
 
 practical men, and on the encouragement to its pursuit, 
 his style being here in beautiful keeping with his subject- 
 matter, no longer elaborate and ornate as elsewhere, but 
 plain, simple, affectionate even, — lectures, at Charlestown, 
 on the Workingmen's Party, among which, with adroit 
 ingenuity, he succeeds in ranking every decent class in 
 the community, placing, as we have heard, an effectual 
 extinguisher on some threatening agrarian agitations of 
 the day, — expatiates again, and mostly in new trains of 
 thought, on the advantage of knowledge to worldly men, 
 
 — exhausts, at Washington, the subject of African Colo- 
 nization, — demonstrates, at a meeting in St. Paul's 
 Church, Boston, the importance of assisting education 
 in the Western States, — urges on, at Faneuil Hall, in 
 what we regard as the most Demosthenean of his 
 speeches, the completion of the Bunker-Hill Monument, 
 
 — compresses into a lecture, at Salem, the whole merits 
 of the great Temperance question, — unfolds, in an ora- 
 tion at Worcester, the intimate connection between the 
 Seven Years' war and the war of our Independence, — 
 discusses, at Yale College, in what is perhaps, in point 
 of style, the most finished performance of the collection, 
 the education of mankind, — discriminates, before the 
 Massachusetts Agricultural Society, the peculiar advan- 
 tages of the American farmer, — pronounces, at the re- 
 quest of the young men of Boston, a very elaborate 
 eulogy on the life and character of La Fayette, evincing 
 here a felicitous talent for narrative, — talks over, in 
 Lexington, like an actor in the scene, the Revolutionary 
 fight at that place, introducing some curious and appo- 
 site memorials of John Hancock and other worthies of 
 the time, — singles out, for his theme at Beverly, the 
 
250 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 youth of Washington, which he demonstrates to have 
 been a remarkably providential preparation for that 
 hero's subsequent career, — argues, at Amherst College, 
 in a fine vein of philosophy and with large inductions 
 from the history of science, the favorable influence of 
 education on liberty, knowledge, and morals, — exhibits, 
 at South Deerfield, in commemoration of the battle of 
 Bloody Brook, the same familiarity with the Indian 
 wars, that he has elsewhere shown with the battles of 
 the Revolution, and ingeniously defends the Indian poli- 
 cy of the Pilgrim Fathers, — sketches, before the Boston 
 Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, the boy- 
 hood and youth of Franklin, and here indulges, contrary 
 to his w^ont, in a sportive, conversational strain of wit 
 and humor, — maintains, on the Fourth of July, at Low- 
 ell, that the prohibition of colonial manufactures by the 
 mother country was one of the chief grievances that 
 resulted in the American Revolution, — defends, before 
 the American Institute of the city of New York, the 
 principle of protection to manufactures, which he shows 
 to have been a favorite policy in all periods of our coun- 
 try's history, — comes, in Faneuil Hall, to the rescue of 
 the languishing subscription for the long Western Rail- 
 road, in a somewhat dashing speech, which shows, how- 
 ever, a very minute and extensive knowledge of the sub- 
 ject, — elucidates, at Springfield, the influence of the 
 religion of the Pilgrims on the institutions of our coun- 
 try, — contends, in after-dinner speeches, at Boston and 
 Charlestovvn, for the continuance of the militia system, 
 holding now the office of Governor of the State, which 
 he continues to occupy several years onward, — person- 
 ates, in an address at the Harvard Centennial Celebra- 
 
ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 251 
 
 tion, the venerable Winthrop proposing to the govern- 
 ment of the infant Colony a tax in behalf of the College, 
 probably, as the orator thinks, the first ever laid for the 
 support of public education, — strikes some appropriate 
 and happy chord, on each occasion, when toasted at an 
 anniversary celebration in Dedham, at a cattle-show in 
 Danvers, and at a festival of the Irish Charitable Society 
 in Boston, — eulogizes, at a meeting of the Boston Prison 
 Discipline Society, the special objects of that institution, 
 — descants, at Williams College, in a tone of unusual 
 elevation, on the advantages both of superior and of 
 popular education, — acknowledges, at a public scholas- 
 tic examination, his indebtedness to the Boston schools, 
 which had been the best friends of his youth, — specu- 
 lates, before the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic As- 
 sociation, in a profound, but familiarly illustrative way 
 peculiar to himself, on the vast importance of the me- 
 chanic arts, — then speaks Indianee, officially, with an 
 Indian delegation, — then renders an affecting tribute to 
 Dr. Bowditch, — then another to the surviving Revolu- 
 tionary heroes, — describes Education, in a convention 
 at Martha's Vineyard, as the nurse of the mind, — in- 
 dulges in tender, boyish reminiscences at Dr. Abbott's 
 jubilee in Exeter, — brings out, with great power and 
 clearness, before the Boston Mercantile Library Associa- 
 tion, various fundamental ideas on accumulation, prop- 
 erty, capital, and credit, — illustrates the importance of 
 education in a republic, at a School Convention at 
 Taunton, where he introduces, with so much eflfect, the 
 celebrated letter of Elihu Burritt, — pronounces a gallant 
 speech at a Centennial Anniversary of the settlement of 
 Barnstable, — recommends at Barre, to the citizens of 
 
252 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 Massachusetts, with exceeding plainness and force of 
 language, the system of Normal Schools, — celebrates at 
 Springfield, in words of jubilant gratulation, and with 
 spirited, yet true sketches of the approaching future, the 
 opening of the great Railroad, which he had before done 
 something at Faneuil Hall to promote, — speaks, to 
 the Scots' Charitable Society, w^ith more than common 
 elegance, tenderness, point, and enviable reminiscence, 
 — delivers, at the opening of the first course of Lowell 
 Lectures in Boston, a long and interesting sketch of its 
 founder, whose testamentary munificence was equally 
 honorable to his native city and to his OAvn memory, — 
 acquits himself, on fourteen different occasions, while 
 Ambassador in England, with much grace and propriety, 
 but with more diplomatic generality of phrase, and less 
 eloquence and impressiveness, than he is accustomed to 
 display at home, — renders twice at Plymouth, after his 
 return to his native land, fresh tributes to the memory 
 of the Pilgrims, — signalizes his inauguration into the 
 Presidency of Harvard College, by a rich, solid, and well- 
 timed tractate on university education, — presents some 
 fine views on medical education at the opening of the 
 new Medical College in Boston, — pleads, in Faneuil 
 Hall, in behalf of the starving Irish, — solicits aid for the 
 colleges of Massachusetts before committees of the Legis- 
 lature of that State, in two successive speeches, the lat- 
 ter of which appears to us the strongest and closest piece 
 of argument in the collection, — obeys the call of the 
 same Legislature in pronouncing before them a compre- 
 hensive and adequate eulogy on John Quincy Adams, — 
 indulges in a strain of familiarity and good humor at the 
 opening of a High School in Cambridge, — despatches, 
 
ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 253 
 
 at a dinner of the American Scientific Association in the 
 same city, some current objections against such institu- 
 tions, — commends, at a cattle-show in Dedham, the life 
 of the farmer, — commemorates again the nineteenth of 
 April at Concord, exactly one quarter of a century after 
 his graphic oration at that place among the earliest of 
 his celebrities, and indulges chiefly in conciliatory senti- 
 ments towards England, — and, lastly, proves, before the 
 Massachusetts Bible Society, the intimate connection, 
 in all ages and nations, between vital Christianity and 
 the use of the Scriptures in the vernacular tongues. 
 
 What a life to have led ! Or rather, what fruitage 
 falling from the topmost boughs of a tree, whose life be- 
 low must have been so busy in exhausting rich soils, 
 assimilating all finer elements, and expanding beneath 
 the happy influences of opportunity and Providence! 
 
 We regret much that no index of subjects was pre- 
 pared and affixed to the present publication. It would 
 have contributed largely to the future convenience of 
 many a reader, and would have conveyed a more com- 
 plete idea of the author's labors than the mere general 
 announcement, in the table of contents, of an oration 
 pronounced here, and an address delivered there. The 
 lack of such an index is quite imperfectly supplied by the 
 preceding catalogue raisonne of the topics discussed in 
 these volumes. 
 
 Having thus, as we trust, with sufficient readiness and 
 fulness, attested the eminent merits of this collection, we 
 shall now, with some diffidence, animadvert on what we 
 are constrained to regard the defects, though few, which 
 the perusal of it has brought to our notice. Dealing with 
 a writer of less mark, we should probably have declined 
 
 22 
 
254 ORATORY OF EDAVARD EVERETT. 
 
 the unwelcome task ; but if there are certain popular 
 errors and corruptions of style, which may be likely to 
 take shelter and sanction beneath Mr. Everett's example, 
 so much the more is it the critic's duty to point them 
 out, and rescue our literature from the dangers that 
 threaten it. 
 
 A profound writer, in a late number of the Edinburgh 
 Review, closes a long article on the History of the Eng- 
 lish Language with the following impressive exhortation : 
 " When we reflect on the enormous breadth, both of the 
 Old World and the New, over which this noble language 
 is either already spoken, or is fast spreading, and the im- 
 mense treasures of literature which are consigned to it, 
 it becomes us to guard it with jealous care, as a sacred 
 deposit, — not our least important trust in the heritage of 
 humanity. Our brethren in America must assist us in the 
 task.^^ Let the ensuing criticisms be accepted as a very 
 brief response, on our part, to this earnest and flattering 
 challenge. 
 
 We would first notice a few phrases, probably of Amer- 
 ican origin, against which we have long cherished an 
 instinctive suspicion, as trespassers on the domain of 
 pure English. They are such expressions as " in our 
 midst^^' " reliable,''^ " in this connection,''^ " acquit mij duty J'' 
 &c. As they have been but recently introduced into the 
 language, and are in general carefully avoided by the pur- 
 est writers, while sound philological reasons, as we pre- 
 sume, might be arrayed against them, we dismiss them, 
 without further remark, as slips of the author's pen. 
 
 We observe that Mr. Everett seems quite attached to 
 the French form of speech, in such expressions as being 
 arrived^ we are arrived, I am come, corresponding to etant 
 
ORATORY OF EDAYARD EVERETT. 255 
 
 arrive, etc. We are aware that these phrases are justi- 
 fied by very extensive and authentic usage, and by the 
 Gallic element which still, here and there, lingers in our 
 tonofue. But this use of the substantive verb before neu- 
 ter participles with a passive termination, is so much in 
 conflict with the general habitudes of our syntax, that we 
 have no doubt it will gradually retire before a more com- 
 plete and symmetrical growth of the language. The 
 very circumstance, that it attracts attention as an excep- 
 tional form, is a proof that it is felt to be not quite natu- 
 ral, — and, since a more purely English expression can 
 always be substituted for it, and, in fact, even now enjoys 
 as wide and reputable an acceptation as its rival, the 
 time, we think, is not distant, when the more vernacular 
 phrase must be exclusively employed. We can conceive 
 of no advantage in retaining the foreign form, except as 
 a memorial of the toils of our distant juvenile forefathers, 
 in conning their French conjugations. 
 
 Another favorite habit of the author is to employ the 
 words doctor and doctors for physician and physicians. 
 Except in very colloquial and domestic usage, this phra- 
 seology, we believe, is nearly extinct. As doctors of 
 every name have now become so profusely multiplied, 
 the term seems too general, as a means of formally spe- 
 cifying our excellent friends of the profession. 
 
 These verbal discussions require no apology, for all 
 allow that the highest and dearest interests of humanity 
 may depend upon the correct and logical use of the terms 
 we employ. The establishment of right grammatical 
 rules is but the establishment of channels of clear and 
 accurate thought, and sustains a nearer relation to ever- 
 lasting principles than is ordinarily imagined. Many a 
 
256 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 valuable bequest has been successfully contested, through 
 some loophole of ambiguous phraseology, and the des- 
 tinies of the Christian Church have more than once hung 
 on the definition of a term. The movst interesting to 
 man, of all the appellations applied to the Deity himself, 
 is The Word. 
 
 To go, however, from the criticism of words to that of 
 things, though such transition crosses no very wide gulf: 
 We perceive (Vol. I. p. 319) that continued currency 
 is allowed to the old story of Shakespeare's getting his 
 livelihood by holding horses at the door of a theatre. 
 We had thought that this anecdote had been exploded 
 by the researches of modern editors ; but so fluctuating 
 often are these questions of literary history, that it is 
 possible our author may have found some good reason 
 still to regard the account as canonical. 
 
 While in this criticising mood, we may observe that a 
 few more explanatory notes would have rendered the 
 edition more valuable. A brief description, for instance, 
 of the particular occasion on which the oration at Lex- 
 ington was delivered, would have elucidated some of 
 its allusions for many readers, who are now compara- 
 tively in the dark about them. Some method, also, 
 might have been devised, consistent with the author's 
 known modesty, to intimate at times the different official 
 relations borne by him. The point of several addresses 
 is in some degree lost, for the want of such information. 
 For the same reason, it should have been mentioned that 
 the Fourth of July celebration at Fanueil Hall, in 1838, 
 was conducted for the first time on principles of total 
 abstinence. 
 
 Generally, Mr. Everett well exhausts the subjects of 
 
ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 257 
 
 his discussions^ In his masterly address before the Mer- 
 cantile Library Association, on accumulation, property, 
 capital, and credit, while defending the claims of capital, 
 we thought that he omitted one important principle in 
 laying down what he considers " the whole doctrine of 
 interest." He says nothing of the risk attendant on loans 
 of money and other capital, which must evidently enter, 
 as a considerable element, into the theory of interest. 
 A percentage, representing such a risk, being easily cal- 
 culated in ordinary times, may most fairly be charged 
 for the use of the principal, on all who share its advan- 
 tages and who occasion the risk, even though the capi- 
 taHst be regarded as nothing more than a steward, acting 
 for the public benefit. 
 
 We expected the pleasure of re-perusing here the 
 author's speech before the Horticultural Society, pro- 
 nounced immediately on his return from his embassy to 
 England. Both the occasion and the remarks appeared 
 to us much more interesting than those appertaining to 
 several addresses actually introduced. Some explana- 
 tion, at least, of the circumstance would seem to be re- 
 quired, as there is so free an admission of other matter. 
 
 We have already acquitted Mr. Everett of a tendency 
 to German transcendentalisms, or other over-refined 
 speculations. If any portion of his two volumes must 
 enforce a reluctant exception to this acquittal, it will 
 perhaps be found in the following somewhat mystical 
 sentence, which came upon us with a rather startling 
 effect. " It may be," says he, " that the laws of the ma- 
 terial universe, gravitation itself, may be resolved into 
 the intelligent action of the minds by which it is inhab- 
 ited and controlled, empowered to this high function by 
 
 22 *. 
 
258 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 the Supreme Intellect." * This dictum, of philosophy 
 is quite beyond our grasp. According to all common 
 experience, the farther matter recedes from any con- 
 nection with life and thought, the more subjected it 
 becomes to the power of gravitation. Still, we should 
 feel ourselves groping less dimly after the meaning of 
 this proposition than after that of Mr. Emerson's on 
 the same subject-matter, who looks for the time when 
 the world shall see " the identity of the law of grav- 
 itation with purity of heart " ! It is difficult enough, 
 to be sure, to identify, with Mr. Everett, the eternally 
 fixed, uniform, and mechanical operations of gravitat- 
 ing matter with the boundless impulses, the absolute, 
 spontaneous freedom, of the mind ; but to go further, 
 and identify the same operations with the moral emo- 
 tions and unspeakable breathings of the responsible 
 spirit, is, to us, much like smelling the essence of a con- 
 tradiction, or laying hands on sound, as it escapes flut- 
 tering from the string. 
 
 We have cheerfully accorded to Mr. Everett the praise 
 of an unvaryingly pure taste and chastened imagina- 
 tion. But there are one or two passages which we hesi- 
 tate to include in our comprehensive encomium. One, 
 in particular, occurring near the commencement of the 
 address on the battle of Bloody Brook, strikes us as 
 somewhat overstrained. Amply, however, we repeat, are 
 these few falsetto notes redeemed, throughout the rest of 
 the addresses. Generally speaking, never w^as a series of 
 popular harangues cast in a finer mould of good sense, 
 correct taste, sound reasoning, wholesome sentiment, 
 
 * Vol. II. p. 220. 
 
ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 259 
 
 and unaffected diction. Everything is said in the right 
 way and the right proportion, as if the Elysian spirit of 
 the classics had, in these pages, once more visited the 
 upper air; vivacity and solidity blend with and temper 
 each other ; the presiding, the pervading genius, seems 
 everywhere to be wisdom ; nothing is spoken for mere 
 effect ; nothing is far-fetched, yet nothing commonplace ; 
 there are no ekings-out of deficient trains of thought, no 
 admission of superfluous ones; but all is natural, — all 
 full, calm, self-poised, onward-sweeping, transparent, and 
 luminous, like a broad upland river, swollen even with 
 its banks, on a bright vernal day. 
 
 Fain, now, in conclusion, would we present our read- 
 ers w^ith a copious series of the " Beauties of Edward 
 Everett." But, out of the twenty or more passages which 
 we had marked, in the vain hope of extracting them at 
 length, the most daring presumption of a privileged con- 
 tributor may venture only upon a few, referring cursorily 
 to the remainder. 
 
 The following combines two of the author's prom- 
 inent excellences : in the first division, the power of 
 bringing out unconsidered truths into broad and clear 
 relief; in the second, a happy talent for illustrative nar- 
 rative. 
 
 " Nothing is wanting to fill up this sketch of other governments, 
 but to consider what is the form in which force is exercised to 
 sustain them ; and this is a standing army, at this moment the 
 chief support of every government on earth except our own. As 
 popular violence — the unrestrained and irresistible force of the 
 mass of men long oppressed and late awakened, and bursting, in 
 its wrath, all barriers of law and humanity — is unhappily the 
 usual instrument by which the intolerable abuses of a corrupt 
 
260 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 government are removed, so the same blind force, of the same 
 fearful multitude, systematically kept in ignorance both of their 
 duty and of their privileges as citizens, employed in a form some- 
 what different, indeed, but far more dreadful, — that of a merce- 
 nary standing army, — is the instrument by which corrupt govern- 
 ments are sustained. The deplorable scenes which marked the 
 earlier stages of the French Revolution have called the attention 
 of this age to the fearful effects of popular violence, and the 
 minds of men have recoiled from the horrors which mark the 
 progress of an infuriated mob. They are not easily to be exag- 
 gerated. But the power of the mob is transient ; the rising sun 
 most commonly scatters its mistrustful ranks ; the difficulties of 
 subsistence drives its members asunder, and it is only while it ex- 
 ists in mass that it is terrible. But there is a form in which the 
 mob is indeed portentous ; when, to all its native terrors, it adds 
 the force of a frightful permanence ; when, by a regular organiza- 
 tion, its strength is so curiously divided, and, by a strict disci- 
 pline, its parts are so easily combined, that each and every por- 
 tion of it carries in its presence the strength and terror of the 
 whole ; and when, instead of that want of concert which renders 
 the common mob incapable of arduous enterprises, it is despoti- 
 cally swayed by a single master mind, and may be moved in array 
 across the globe. 
 
 " I remember — if, on such a subject, I may be pardoned an 
 illustration approaching the ludicrous — to have seen the two 
 kinds of force brought into direct comparison. I was present at 
 the second great meeting of the populace of London, in 1819, in 
 the midst of a crowd of I know not how many thousands, but as- 
 suredly a vast multitude, assembled in Smithfield Market. The 
 universal distress was extreme ; it was a short time after the 
 scenes at Manchester, at which the public mind was exasperated ; 
 deaths by starvation were said not to be rare ; ruin, by the stag- 
 nation of business, was general ; and some were already brooding 
 over the dark project of assassinating the ministers, which was 
 
ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 261 
 
 not long after, matured by Thistlewood and his associates, some 
 of whom, on the day to which I allude, harangued this excited, 
 desperate, starving assemblage. When I considered the state of 
 feeling prevailing in the multitude around me, — when I looked 
 in their lowering faces, heard their deep, indignant exclamations, 
 reflected on the physical force concentrated, probably that of 
 thirty or forty thousand able-bodied men, and, added to all this, 
 that they were assembled to exercise what is in theory an un- 
 doubted privilege of British citizens, — I supposed that any small 
 number of troops who should attempt to interrupt them would be 
 immolated on the spot. While I was musing on these things, 
 and turning in my mind the commonplaces on the terrors of a 
 mob, a trumpet was heard to sound, — an uncertain, but a harsh 
 and clamorous blast. I looked that the surrounding stalls in the 
 market should have furnished the unarmed multitude at least with 
 that weapon with which Virginius sacrificed his daughter to the 
 liberty of Rome ; I looked that the flying pavement should begin 
 to darken the air. Another blast is heard, — a cry of ' The 
 Horse-Guards ! ' ran through the assembled thousands ; the orators 
 on the platform were struck mute ; and the whole of that mighty 
 host of starving, desperate men incontinently took to their heels, 
 in which, I must confess, — feeling no call on that occasion to be 
 faithful found among the faithless, — I did myself join them. We 
 had run through the Old Bailey and reached Ludgate Hill be- 
 fore we found out that we had been put to flight by a single 
 mischievous tool of that power, who had come triumphing down 
 the opposite street on horseback, blowing a stage-coachman's 
 horn." * 
 
 See here, how a wanton charge can be retorted, and 
 forced to contribute to the honor of the slandered party : — 
 
 " A late English writer has permitted himself to say, that the 
 original establishment of the United States and that of the colony 
 
 * Vol. I. p. 116. 
 
262 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 of Botany Bay were pretty nearly modelled on the same plan. 
 The meaning of this slanderous insinuation is, that the United 
 States were settled by deported convicts, in like manner as New 
 South Wales has been settled by transported felons. It is doubt- 
 less true, that, at one period, the English government was in the 
 habit of condemning to hard labor, as servants in the Colonies, a 
 portion of those who had received the sentence of the law. If 
 this practice makes it proper to compare America with Botany 
 Bay, the same comparison might be made of England herself 
 before the practice of transportation began, and even now, inas- 
 much as a considerable number of convicts are at all times re- 
 tained at home. In one sense, indeed, we might doubt whether 
 the allegation were more of a reproach or a compliment. During 
 the time that the colonization of America was going on the most 
 rapidly, some of the best citizens of England, if it be any part of 
 good citizenship to resist oppression, were immured in her prisons 
 of state, or lying at the mercy of the law. 
 
 Such were some of the convicts by whom America was set- 
 tled, — men convicted of fearing God more than they feared 
 man ; of sacrificing property, ease, and all the comforts of life to 
 a sense of duty and the dictates of conscience ; men convicted of 
 pure lives, brave hearts, and simple manners. The enterprise 
 was led by Raleigh, the chivalrous convict, who unfortunately 
 believed that his royal master had the heart of a man, and would 
 not let a sentence of death, which had slumbered for sixteen 
 years, revive and take eJBfect after so long an interval of employ- 
 ment and favor. But nullum tempus occiirrit regi. The felons 
 who followed next were the heroic and long-suffering church of 
 Robinson, at Leyden, Carver, Brewster, Bradford, Winslow, and 
 their pious associates, convicted of worshipping God according to 
 the dictates of their own consciences, and of giving up all — 
 country, property, and the tombs of their fathers — that they 
 might do it unmolested. Not content with having driven the 
 Puritans from her soil, England next enacted or put in force the 
 
OKATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 263 
 
 oppressive laws wlilch colonized Maryland with Catholics and 
 Pennsylvania with Quakers. Nor was it long before the Ameri- 
 can plantations were recruited by the Germans, convicted of in- 
 habiting the Palatinate, when the merciless armies of Louis XIV. 
 were turned into that devoted region; and by the Huguenots, 
 convicted of holding what they deemed the simple truth of Chris- 
 tianity, when it pleased the mistress of Louis XIV. to be very 
 zealous for the Catholic faith. These were followed, in the next 
 century, by the Highlanders, convicted of the enormous crime, 
 under a monarchical government, of loyalty to their hereditary 
 prince, on the plains of Culloden ; and the Irish, convicted of 
 supporting the rights of their country against what they deemed 
 a foreign usurper. Such are the convicts by whom America 
 was settled. 
 
 " In this way, a fair representation of whatsoever was most 
 valuable in European character — the resolute industry of one 
 nation, the inventive skill and curious arts of another, the cour- 
 age, conscience, principle, self-denial, of all — was winnowed out, 
 by the policy of the prevailing governments, as a precious seed, 
 wherewith to plant the American soil." * 
 
 Next follows a remarkable passage, conceived and 
 executed, unconsciously of course, in the best manner of 
 Macaulay : — 
 
 " If we would, on a broad, rational ground, come to a favorable 
 judgment, on the whole, of the merit of our forefathers, the found- 
 ers of New England, we have only to compare what they effected 
 with what was effected by their countrymen and brethren in 
 Great Britain. While the fathers of New England, a small band 
 of individuals, for the most part of little account to the great 
 world of London, were engaged, on this side of the Atlantic, in 
 laying the foundations of civil and religious liberty, in a new 
 
 * Vol. I. p. 1 59. 
 
264 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 commonwealth, the patriots of England undertook the same work 
 of reform in that country. There were difficulties, no doubt, 
 peculiar to the enterprise, as undertaken in each country. In 
 Britain, there was the strenuous opposition of the friends of the 
 established system ; in New England, there was the difficulty of 
 creating a new state, out of materials the most scanty and inade- 
 quate. If there were fewer obstacles here, there were greater 
 means there. They had all the refinements of the age, which 
 the Puritans are charged with having left behind them ; all the 
 resources of the country, while the Puritans had nothing but 
 their own slender means ; and, at length, all the resources of the 
 government, — and with them they overthrew the Church, tram- 
 pled the House of Lords under foot, and brought the king to the 
 block. The fathers of New England, from first to last, struggled 
 against almost every conceivable discouragement. While the 
 patriots at home were dictating concessions to the king, and tear- 
 ing his confidential friends from his arms, the patriots of America 
 could scarcely keep their charter out of his grasp. While the 
 former were wielding a resolute majority in Parliament, under 
 the lead of the boldest spirits that ever lived, combining with 
 Scotland, subduing Ireland, and striking terror into the Conti- 
 nental governments, the latter were forming a frail union of the 
 New-England Colonies, for immediate defence against a savage 
 foe. While the ' Lord General Cromwell,' (who seems to have 
 picked up this modest title among the spoils of the routed aris- 
 tocracy,) in the superb flattery of Milton, 
 
 * Guided by faith, and matchless fortitude, 
 To peace and truth his glorious way had ploughed, 
 And on the neck of crowned fortune proud 
 Had reared God's trophies,' 
 
 our truly excellent and incorruptible Winthrop was compelled to 
 descend from the chair of state and submit to an impeachment. 
 
 " And what was the comparative success ? There were, to 
 say the least, as many excesses committed in England as in Mas- 
 
ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 265 
 
 sacbusetts Bay. There was as much intolerance on the part of 
 men just escaped from persecution, as much bigotry on the part 
 of those who had themselves suffered for conscience' sake, as much 
 unreasonable austerity, as much sour temper, as much bad taste, 
 as much for charity to forgive, and as much for humanity to de- 
 plore. The temper, in fact, of the two commonwealths was much 
 the same, and some of the leading spirits played a part in both. 
 And to what effect ? On the other side of the Atlantic the whole 
 experiment ended in a miserable failure. The Commonwealth 
 became successively oppressive, hateful, contemptible, — a great- 
 er burden than the despotism on whose ruins it was raised. The 
 people of England, after sacrifices incalculable of property and 
 life, after a struggle of thirty years' duration, allowed the general 
 who happened to have the greatest number of troops under his 
 command to bring back the old system, — king, lords, and 
 church, — with as little ceremony as he would employ in issuing 
 the orders of the day. After asking, for thirty years, What is 
 the will of the Lord concerning his people ? What is it becom- 
 ing a pure church to do ? What does the cause of liberty de- 
 mand, in the day of its regeneration ? there was but one cry in 
 England, — What does General Monk think ? What will General 
 Monk do ? Will he bring back the king with conditions, or with- 
 out? And General Monk concluded to bring him back without. 
 " On this side of the Atlantic, and in about the same period, the 
 v,rork which our fathers took in hand was, in the main, success- 
 fully done. They came to found a republican colony. They 
 founded it. They came to establish a free church. They estab- 
 lished what they called a free church, and transmitted to us what 
 we call a free church. In accomplishing this, which they did an- 
 ticipate, they brought also to pass what they did not so distinctly 
 foresee, — what could not, in the nature of things, in its detail 
 and circumstance, be anticipated, — the foundation of a great, 
 prosperous, and growing republic. We have not been just to 
 these men. I am disposed to do all justice to the memory of 
 
266 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 each succeeding generation. I admire the indomitable jDersever- 
 ance with which the contest for principle was kept up, under 
 the second charter. I reverence, this side idolatry, the wisdom 
 and fortitude of the Revolutionary and Constitutional leaders ; 
 but I beheve we ought to go back beyond them all for the real 
 framers of the commonwealth. I believe that its foundation 
 stones, like those of the Capitol of Rome, lie deep and sohd, out 
 of sight, at the bottom of the walls, — Cyclopean work, the work 
 of the Pilgrims, — with nothing below them but the Rock of Ages. 
 I will not quarrel with their rough corners or uneven sides ; above 
 all, I will not change them for the wood, hay, and stubble of 
 modern builders." * 
 
 The following peroration of the address last cited may 
 venture comparison with some of the finest passages, 
 embodying local associations, in ancient literatm-e : — 
 
 " Yes, on the very spot t where we are assembled, — now 
 crowned with this spacious church, surrounded by the comfort- 
 able abodes of a dense population, — there were, during the first 
 season after the landing of Winthrop, fewer dwellings for the 
 living than graves for the dead. It seemed the will of Provi- 
 dence that our fathers should be tried by the e-stremities of either 
 season. When the Pilgrims approached the coast of Plymouth, 
 they found it clad with all the terrors of a Northern winter. 
 
 ' The sea around was black with storms, 
 And white the shores with snow.' 
 " We can scarcely think now, without tears, of a company of 
 men, Vt^omen, and children, brought up in tenderness, exposed, 
 after several months' uncomfortable confinement on shipboard, to 
 the rigors of our November and December sky, on an unknown 
 and barbarous coast, whose frightful rocks even now strike terror 
 into the heart of the returning mariner, though he knows that 
 the home of his childhood awaits him within their enclosure. 
 
 * Vol. I. p. 243. t Charlestown, Massachusetts. 
 
ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 267 
 
 "The Massachusetts company arriyed at the close of June. 
 No vineyards, as now, clothed our inhospitable hill-sides ; no 
 blooming orchards, as at the present day, wore the livery of 
 Eden, and loaded the breeze with sweet odors ; no rich pastures, 
 nor waving crops, stretched beneath the eye, along the way-side, 
 from village to village, as if Nature had been spreading her floors 
 with a carpet fit to be pressed by the footsteps of her descending 
 God ! The beauty and the bloom of the year had passed. The 
 earth, not yet subdued by culture, bore upon its untilled bosom 
 nothing but a dismal forest, that mocked their hunger with rank 
 and unprofitable vegetation. The sun was hot in the heavens. 
 The soil was parched, and the hand of man had not yet taught 
 its secret springs to flow from their fountains. The wasting 
 disease of the heart-sick mariner was upon the men, and the 
 women and children thought of the pleasant homes of England, 
 as they sank down, from day to day, and died at last for want of 
 a cup of water, in this melancholy land of promise. From the 
 time the company sailed from England, in April, up to the De- 
 cember following, there died not less than two hundred persons, 
 — nearly one a day. 
 
 " They were buried, say our records, about the Town Hill. 
 This is the Town Hill. We are gathered over the ashes of our 
 forefathers. 
 
 " It is good, but solemn, to be here. "We live on holy ground ; 
 all our hill-tops are the altars of precious sacrifice. 
 
 " This is stored with the sacred dust of the first victims in the 
 cause of liberty. 
 
 " And that * is rich from the life-stream of the noble hearts 
 who bled to sustain it. 
 
 " Here, beneath our feet, unconscious that we commemorate 
 their worth, repose the meek and sainted martyrs whose flesh 
 sunk beneath the lofty temper of their noble spirits ; and there 
 
 * Bunker Hill. 
 
268 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 rest the heroes who presented their dauntless foreheads to the 
 God of battles, when he came to his awful baptism of blood and 
 of fire. 
 
 " Happy the fate which has laid them so near to each other, 
 — the early and the latter champions of the one great cause ! 
 And happy we, who are permitted to reap in peace the fruits of 
 their costly sacrifice ! Happy, that we can make our pious pil- 
 grimage to the smooth turf of that venerable summit, once 
 ploughed with the wheels of maddening artillery, ringing with all 
 the dreadful voices of war, wrapped in smoke and streaming with 
 blood ! Happy, that here, where our fathers sank, beneath the 
 burning sun, into the parched clay, we meet, and assemble, and 
 mingle sweet counsel and grateful thoughts of them, in comfort 
 and peace ! " * 
 
 The following is the way in which Adam Smith might 
 have speculated on the wonderful connection and inter- 
 dependence between the labors of science and the labors 
 of art : — 
 
 " But we may go a step farther, to mark the beautiful process 
 by which Providence has so interlaced and wrought up together 
 the pursuits, interests, and wants of our nature, that the philoso- 
 pher, whose home seems less on earth than among the stars, 
 requires, for the prosecution of his studies, the aid of numerous 
 artificers, in various branches of mechanical industry, and, in 
 return, furnishes the most important facilities to the humblest 
 branches of manual labor. Let us take, as a single instance, that 
 of astronomical science. It may be safely said, that the w^onderful 
 discoveries of modern astronomy, and the philosophical system 
 depending upon it, could not have existed but for the telescope. 
 The want of the telescope kept astronomical science in its 
 infancy among the ancients. Although Pythagoras, one of the 
 
 * Vol. I. p. 245. 
 
ORATORY OP EDWARD EVERETT. 269 
 
 earliest Greek philosophers, is supposed to have had some con- 
 ception of the elements of the Copernican system, yet we find no 
 general and practical improvement resulting from it. In fact, it 
 sunk beneath the false theories of subsequent philosophers. It 
 was only from the period of the discoveries made by the tele- 
 scope that the science advanced with sure and rapid progress. 
 Now, the astronomer does not make telescopes. I presume it 
 would be impossible for a person who employed in the abstract 
 study of astronomical science time enough to comprehend its pro- 
 found investigations, to learn and practise the trade of making 
 glass. It is not less true, that those employed in making the 
 glass could not, in the nature of things, be expected to acquire 
 the scientific knowledge requisite for carrying on those arduous 
 calculations applied to bring into a system the discoveries made 
 by the magnifying power of the telescope. I might extend the 
 same remark to the other materials of which a telescope consists. 
 It cannot be used to any purpose of nice observation, without 
 being very carefully mounted on a frame of strong metal, which 
 demands the united labors of the mathematical-instrument maker 
 and the brass-founder. Here, then, in taking but one single step 
 out of the philosopher's observatory, we find he needs an instru- 
 ment to be produced by the united labors of the mathematical- 
 instrument maker, the brass-founder, the glass-polisher, and the 
 maker of glass, — four trades. He must also have an astro- 
 nomical clock, and it would be easy to count up half a dozen 
 trades which, directly or indirectly, are connected in making a 
 clock. 
 
 " But let us go back to the object-glass of the telescope. A 
 glass-factory requires a building and furnaces. The man who 
 makes the glass does not make the building. But the stone and 
 brick mason, the carpenter, and the blacksmith must furnish the 
 greater part of the labor and skill required to construct the 
 building. When it is built, a large quantity of fuel, wood and 
 wood-coal or mineral coal, of various kinds, or all together, must 
 
 23* 
 
270 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 be provided ; and then the materials of which the glass is made, 
 and with which it is colored, some of which are furnished by 
 commerce from different and distant regions, and must be brought 
 in ships across the sea. We cannot take up any one of these 
 trades without immediately finding that it connects itself with 
 numerous others. Take, for instance, the mason who builds the 
 furnace. He does not make his own bricks, nor burn his own 
 lime : in common cases, the bricks come from one place, the lime 
 from another, and the sand from another. The brick-maker does 
 not cut down his own wood ; it is carted or brought in boats to his 
 brick-yard. The man who carts it does not make his own wagon, 
 nor does the person who brings it in boats build his own boat. 
 The man who makes the wagon does not make its tire. The 
 blacksmith who makes the tire does not smelt the ore ; and the 
 forgeman who smelts the ore does not build his own furnace (and 
 there we get back to the point whence we started) nor dig his 
 own mine. The man who digs the mine does not make the pick- 
 axe with which he digs it, nor the pump which keeps out the 
 water. The man who made the pump did not discover the prin- 
 ciple of atmospheric pressure, which led to pump-making ; that 
 was done by a mathematician at Florence (Torricelli), experi- 
 menting in his chamber on a glass tube. And here we come 
 back again to our glass, and to an instance of the close connec- 
 tion of scientific research with practical art. It is plain that 
 this enumeration might be pursued till every art and every sci- 
 ence were shown to run into every other. 
 
 " Not a little of the spinning machinery employed in manufac- 
 turino" cotton is constructed on principles drawn from the dem- 
 onstrations of transcendental mathematics, and the processes of 
 bleaching and dyeing now practised are the results of the most 
 profound researches of modern chemistry. And if this does not 
 satisfy the inquirer, let him trace the cotton to the plantation 
 where it grew, in Georgia or Alabama ; the indigo to Bengal ; 
 
ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 271 
 
 the oil to the olive-gardens of Italy, or the fishing-grounds of the 
 Pacific Ocean ; let him consider Whitney's cotton-gin, Whitte- 
 more's carding-machine, the power-loom, and the spinning appa- 
 ratus, and all the arts, trades, and sciences directly or indirectly 
 connected with these, and I believe he will soon agree that one 
 might start from a yard of coarse printed cotton, which costs ten 
 cents, and prove out of it, as out of a text, that every art and 
 science under heaven had been concerned in its fabric." * 
 
 The following beautiful passage comprises, in our opin- 
 ion, the whole doctrine of physical and nrioral good. The 
 union, here, of profound with familiar reasoning, is quite 
 characteristic of the author. 
 
 ' " But I am met with the great objection. What good will the 
 monument do'^ I beg leave, sir, to exercise my birthright as a 
 Yankee, and answer this question by asking two or three more, 
 to which I believe it will be quite as difficult to furnish a satis- 
 factory reply. I am asked. What good will the monument do ? 
 And I ask, What good does anything do ? What is good ? Does 
 anything do good ? The persons who suggest this objection of 
 course think that there are some projects and undertakings that 
 do good, and I should therefore like to have the idea o^ good ex- 
 plained, and analyzed, and run out to its elements. When this 
 is done, if I do not demonstrate, in about two minutes, that the 
 monument does the same kind of good that anything else does, I 
 will consent that the huge blocks of granite already laid should 
 be reduced to gravel, and carted off to fill up the mill-pond, — for 
 that, I suppose, is one of the good things. Does a railroad or a 
 canal do good ? Answer, Yes. And how ? It facilitates inter- 
 course, opens markets, and increases the wealth of the country. 
 But what is this good for ? Why, individuals prosper and get 
 rich. And what good does that do ? Is mere wealth, as an ulti- 
 
 * Vol. I. p. 297. 
 
272 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 mate end, — gold and silver, without an inquiry as to their use, — 
 are these a good ? Certainly not. I should insult this audience by 
 attempting to prove that a rich man, as such, is neither better 
 nor happier than a poor one. But as men grow rich they live 
 better. Is there any good in this, stopping here ? Is mere ani- 
 mal life — feeding, working, and sleeping like an ox — entitled to 
 be called good? Certainly not. But these improvements in- 
 crease the population. And what good does that do ? Where 
 is the good of counting twelve miUions, instead of six, of mere 
 feeding, working, sleeping animals ? There is, then, no good 
 in the mere animal life except that it is the physical basis of that 
 higher moral existence which resides in the soul, the heart, the 
 conscience, in good principles, good feelings, and the good actions 
 (and the more disinterested, the more entitled to be called good) 
 which flow from them. Now, sir, I say that generous and patri- 
 otic sentiments, sentiments which prepare us to serve our country, 
 to live for our country, to die for our country, — feelings like those 
 which carried Prescott, and Warren, and Putnam to the battle- 
 field, are good, — good, humanly speaking, of the highest order. 
 It is good to have them, good to encourage them, good to honor 
 them, good to commemorate them, and whatever tends to animate 
 and strengthen such feelings does as much right down practical 
 good as filling up low grounds and building railroads. This is 
 my demonstration. I wish, sir, not to be misunderstood. I ad- 
 mit the connection between enterprises which promote the physi- 
 cal prosperity of the country and its intellectual and moral im- 
 provement ; but I maintain that it is only this connection that gives 
 these enterprises all their value, and that the same connection 
 gives a like value to everything else, which, through the channel 
 of the senses, the taste, or the imagination, warms and elevates the 
 heart." * 
 
 We must find room for a piece of literary criticism, 
 * Vol. I. p. 359. 
 
ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 273 
 
 of the very highest order. The author thus argues the 
 influence of pure sphitual knowledge on the progress of 
 poetry. 
 
 " Not a ray of pure spiritual illumination shines through the 
 sweet visions of the father of poetry. The light of his genius, 
 like that of the moon, as he descrihes it in the eighth Iliad,* is 
 serene, transparent, and heavenly fair ; it streams into the deep- 
 est glades, and settles on the mountain-tops of the material and 
 social world ; but, for all that concerns the spiritual nature, it is 
 cold, watery, and unquickening. The great test of the elevation 
 of the poet's mind, and of the refinement of the age in which he 
 lives, is the distinctness, power, and purity with which he con- 
 ceives the s^^iritual world. In all else, he may be the observer, 
 the recorder, the painter ; but in this dread sphere he must as- 
 sume the province which his name imports ; he must be the 
 maker : creating his own spiritual world by the highest action 
 of his mind, upon all the external and internal materials of 
 thought. If ever there was a poetical vision calculated, not to 
 purify and to exalt, but to abase and to sadden, it is the visit of 
 Ulysses to the lower regions.f The ghosts of the illustrious de- 
 parted are drawn before him, by the reeking fumes of the recent 
 sacrifice ; and the hero stands guard, with his drawn sword, to 
 drive away the shade of his own mother from the gory trench, 
 over which she hovers, hankering after the raw blood. Does it 
 require an essay on the laws of the human mind, to show that 
 the intellect which contemplates the great mystery of our being 
 under this ghastly and frivolous imagery, has never been born to 
 a spiritual life, nor caught a glimpse of the highest heaven of 
 poetry ? Virgil's spiritual world was not essentially superior to 
 Homer's ; but the Roman poet lived in a civilized age, and his vis- 
 ions of the departed are marked with a decorum and grace which 
 form the appropriate counterpart of the Homeric grossness. 
 
 * Homer's Iliad, YUI. 551. f Odyssey, XI. 
 
274 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 " In Dante, for the first time in an uninspired bard, the dawn 
 of a spiritual day breaks upon us. Although the shadows of su- 
 perstition rested upon him, yet the strains of the prophets were 
 in his ears, and the light of divine truth, strong, though clouded, 
 was in his soul. As we stand with him on the threshold of the 
 world of sorrows, and read the awful inscription over the portal, 
 a chill, from the dark valley of the shadow of death, comes over 
 the heart. The compass of poetry contains no image which sur- 
 passes this dismal inscription in solemn grandeur ; nor is there 
 anywhere a more delicious strain of tender poetic beauty, than 
 that of the distant vesper bell, which seems to mourn for the de- 
 parting day, as it is heard by the traveller just leaving his home.* 
 But Dante lived in an age when Christianity, if I may so speak, 
 was paganized. Much of his poem, substance as well as orna- 
 ment, is heathen. Too much of his inspiration is drawn from 
 the stormy passions of life. The warmth with which he glowed 
 is too often the kindling of scorn and indignation, burning under 
 a sense of intolerable wrong. The holiest muse may string his 
 lyre, but it is too often the incensed partisan that sweeps the 
 strings. The * Divine Comedy,' as his wonderful work is called, 
 is much of it mere mortal satire. 
 
 " In ' Paradise Lost,' we feel as if we were admitted to the 
 outer courts of the Infinite. In that all-glorious temple of genius 
 inspired by truth, we catch the full diapason of the heavenly 
 organ. With its choral swell, the soul is lifted from the earth. 
 In the ' Divina Commedia,' the man, the Florentine, the exiled 
 Ghibelline, stands out, from first to last, breathing defiance and 
 revenge. Milton, in some of his prose works, betrays the par- 
 tisan also ; but in his poetry we see him in the white robes of the 
 minstrel, with upturned though sightless eyes, rapt in meditation 
 at the feet of the heavenly muse. Dante, in his dark vision, de- 
 scends to the depths of the world of perdition, and, homeless fugi- 
 
 *~ "Del Purgatorio, Canto VIII." 
 
OKATOEY OF EDWAKD EVERETT. 275 
 
 live as he is, drags his proud and prosperous enemies down with 
 him, and buries them, doubly destroyed, in the flaming sepulchres 
 of the lowest hell.* Milton, on the other hand, seems almost to 
 have purged ofi the dross of humanity. Blind, poor, friendless, 
 in solitude and sorrow, with quite as much reason as his Italian 
 rival to repine at his fortune and war against mankind, how calm 
 and'unimpassioned is he, in all that concerns his own personality ! 
 He deemed too highly of his divine gift, to make it the instru- 
 ment of immortalizing his hatreds. One cry, alone, of sorrow at 
 his blindness, one pathetic lamentation over the evil days on which 
 he had fallen, bursts from his full heart. There is not a flash of 
 human wrath in all his pictures of woe. Hating nothing but evil 
 spirits, in the childlike simplicity of his heart, his pure hands un- 
 deiiled with the pitch of the political intrigues in which he had 
 lived, he breathes forth his inexpressibly majestic strains, the 
 poetry not so much of earth as of heaven. 
 
 " Can it be hoped that, under the operation of the influences to 
 which we have alluded, anything superior to ' Paradise Lost ' 
 will ever be produced by man ? It requires a courageous faith 
 in general principles to believe it. I dare not call it a probable 
 event ; but can we say it is impossible ? If, out of the wretched 
 intellectual and moral elements of the Commonwealth in England, 
 imparting, as they did, at times, too much of their contagion to 
 Milton's mind, a poem like * Paradise Lost ' could spring forth, 
 shall no corresponding fruit of excellence be produced when 
 knowledge shall be universally diffused, society enlightened, ele- 
 vated, and equalized, and the standard of moral and religious 
 principle, in public and private affairs, raised far above its pres- 
 ent level ? A continued progress in the intellectual world is con- 
 sistent with all that we know of the laws that govern it, and with 
 all experience. A presentiment of it lies deep in the soul of man, 
 spark as it is of the divine nature. The craving after excellence, 
 
 *- " Dell' Inferno, Cantos IX., X/' 
 
276 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 the thirst for truth and beauty, has never been, never can be, 
 fully slaked at the fountains which have flowed beneath the touch 
 of the enchanter's wand. Man listens to the heavenly strain, 
 and straightway becomes desirous of still loftier melodies. It has 
 nourished and strengthened, instead of satiating, his taste. Fed 
 by the divine aliment, he can enjoy more, he can conceive more, 
 he can himself perform more. 
 
 " Should a poet of loftier muse than Milton hereafter appear, or, 
 to speak more reverently, when the Milton of a better age shall 
 arise, there is yet remaining one subject worthy his powers, — 
 the counterpart of * Paradise Lost.' In the conception of this 
 subject by Milton, then mature in the experience of his great 
 poem, we have the highest human judgment, that this is the one 
 remaining theme. In his uncompleted attempt to achieve it, we 
 have the greatest cause for the doubt, whether it be not beyond 
 the grasp of the human mind, in its present state of cultivation. 
 But I am unwilling to think that this theme, immeasurably the 
 grandest which can be contemplated by the mind of man, will 
 never receive a poetical illustration proportioned to its sublimity. 
 It seems . to me impossible that the time, perhaps far distant, 
 should not eventually arrive, when another Milton, — divorcing 
 his heart from the delights of life, — purifying his bosom from its 
 angry and its selfish passions, — relieved, by happier fortunes, 
 from care and sorrow, — pluming the wings of his spirit in soli- 
 tude, by abstinence and prayer, — will address himself to this only 
 remaining theme of a great Christian epic." * 
 
 In the next extract, we seem to be reading one of Ad- 
 dison's own shorter Spectators. 
 
 " Consider the influence on the affairs of men, in all their rela- 
 tions, of the invention of the little machine which I hold in my 
 hand, (a watch,) and the other modern instruments for the meas- 
 
 * Vol. II. p. 224. 
 
ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 277 
 
 urement of time, various specimens of which are on exhibition 
 in the halls. To say nothing of the importance of an accurate 
 measurement of time in astronomical observations, nothing of the 
 application of time-keepers to the purposes of navigation, how 
 vast must be the aggregate effect on the affairs of life, through- 
 out the civilized world, and in the progress of ages, of a conven- 
 ient and portable apparatus for measuring the lapse of time ! 
 Who can calculate in how many of those critical junctures, when 
 affairs of weightiest import hang upon the issue of an hour, pru- 
 dence and forecast have triumphed over blind casualty, by being 
 enabled to measure with precision the flight of time in its small- 
 est subdivisions ! Is it not something more than mere mechan- 
 ism which watches with us by the sick-bed of some dear friend 
 through the livelong solitude of night, enables us to count, in the 
 slackening pulse, nature's trembling steps towards recovery, and 
 to administer the prescribed remedy at the precise, perhaps the 
 critical, moment of its application ? 
 
 " By means of a watch, punctuality in all his duties, which, in 
 its perfection, is one of the incommunicable attributes of Deity, is 
 brought, in no mean measure, within the reach of man. He is 
 enabled, if he will be guided by this half-rational machine, crea- 
 ture of a day as he is, to imitate that sublime precision which 
 leads the earth, after a circuit of five hundred millions of miles, 
 back to the solstice at the appointed moment, without the loss of 
 one second, no, not the millionth part of a second, for the ages on 
 ages during which it has travelled that empyreal road.* What 
 a miracle of art, that a man can teach a few brass wheels, and a 
 little piece of elastic steel, to outcalculate himself; to give him a 
 rational answer to one of the most important questions which a 
 being travelling towards eternity can ask ! What a miracle, that 
 a man can put within this little machine a spirit that measures the 
 
 * " It is not, of course, intended that the sidereal year is always of pre- 
 cisely the same length, but that its variations are subject to a fixed law. 
 See Sir John Herschel's Astronomy, § 563." 
 24 
 
278 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 flight of time with greater accuracy than the unassisted intel- 
 lect of the profoundest philosopher, — which watches and moves 
 when sleep palsies alike the hand of the maker and the mind 
 of the contriver, nay, when the last sleep has come over them 
 both ! 
 
 " I saw, the other day, at Stockbridge, the watch which was 
 worn on the 8th of September, 1755, by the unfortunate Baron 
 Dieskau, who received his mortal wound on that day, near Lake 
 George, at the head of his army of French and Indians, on the 
 breaking out of the Seven Years' war. This watch, which 
 marked the fierce, feverish moments of the battle as calmly as it 
 has done the fourscore years which have since elapsed, is still 
 going ; but the watchmaker and the military chieftain have now, 
 for more than three fourths of a century, been gone where time 
 is no longer counted. Frederic the Great was another, and a 
 vastly more important, personage of the same war. His watch 
 was carried away from Potsdam by Napoleon, who, on his rock, 
 in mid-ocean, was wont to ponder on the hours of alternate disas- 
 ter and triumph which filled up the life of his great fellow- 
 destroyer, and had been equally counted on its dial-plate. The 
 courtiers used to say that this watch stopped of its own accord 
 when Frederic died. Short-sighted adulation ! for if it stopped 
 at his death, as if time w^as no longer worth measuring, it was 
 soon put in motion, and went on as if nothing had happened. 
 
 " Portable watches were probably introduced into England in 
 the time of Shakespeare ; and he puts one into the hand of his 
 fantastic jester as the theme of his morality. In truth, if we 
 wished to borrow from the arts a solemn monition of the vanity 
 of human things, the clock might well give it to us. How often 
 does it occur to the traveller in Europe, as he hears the hour 
 told from some ancient steeple, — That iron tongue in the tower 
 of yonder old cathedral, unchanged itself, has had a voice for 
 every change in the fortune of nations ! It has chimed monarchs 
 to their thrones, and knelled them to their tombs ; and, from its 
 
ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 279 
 
 watchtower in the clouds, has, with the same sonorous and im- 
 partial stoicism, measured out their little hour of sorrow and 
 gladness, to coronation and funeral, abdication and accession, 
 revolution and restoration, victory, tumult, and fire. And with 
 like faithfulness, while I speak, the little monitor by my side 
 warns me back from my digression, and bids me beware lest I 
 devote too much of my brief hour even to its own commenda- 
 tion." * 
 
 The lovers of the Bible shall be entertained and edi- 
 fied by a choice extract. 
 
 " When the appointed time had come, the writings of Moses, 
 of David, "and Isaiah, locked up in a dialect which was wasting 
 away in the cities of Judah and on the hills of Palestine (a region 
 at best not as large as our New England), were transfused into 
 the far-reaching, widely spoken tongue, which had become the 
 language of government, of commerce, and of philosophy, from 
 the mouths of the Rhone to the Indus. And in this language, 
 and at this critical juncture of religious history, though their 
 authors were Jews, the books of the New Testament w^ere writ- 
 ten in Greek. When another stupendous revolution, or rather 
 series of revolutions, had transferred the sceptre of empire to 
 Rome, and the Latin language had acquired an almost exclusive 
 predominance in Western Europe and Northern Africa, with 
 some extension in the East, among the first intellectual phenome- 
 na of the new order of things we find the old Italic version of the 
 Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, the parent of the Vulgate and so 
 many subsequent translations. In this way, by means of the 
 Roman language, which did not exist as a dialect on the lips of 
 men when the earUer books of the Old Testament were written, 
 — the language of a people who, in the days of Moses and David, 
 were wandering a wild clan along the banks of the Tiber, — 
 
 * Vol. II. p. 250. 
 
280 OKATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 through this singular medium, — rather let me say this awe- 
 inspiring instrumentality, — these old Hebrew voices, mute and 
 unintelligible as originally uttered, are rendered audible and 
 significant to the Western Church and world. And then, as we 
 descend the line of history, as the Latin and Greek, great world- 
 dialects, become obsolete, — dying, dead languages, as we sig- 
 nificantly call them, — and new tongues are created by the mys- 
 terious power of the vocal faculty, we are to behold, as was so 
 well observed by Mr. Hill, as an invariable consequence, often 
 as the first result of the change, a new translation of the Scrip- 
 tures. Nowhere is this so sure to be the case as in the great na- 
 tional stock to which we belong. Gothic and Saxon antiquity has 
 handed down to us, through the wreck of the Dark Ages, nothing 
 older than portions of the paraphrases and versions of the Scrip- 
 tures, which were made in those dialects respectively, not long- 
 after the introduction of Christianity into Germany and Britain. 
 Indeed, in the ancient Gothic tongue I am not sure that anything 
 has survived but portions of the translation of the New Testa- 
 ment. 
 
 " Thus great and wide-spread families of men have been bro- 
 ken up or have silently passed away, and the tongues they spoke 
 have ceased to be a medium of living intercourse ; hordes of in- 
 digenous shepherds (indigenous we call them) grow up into en- 
 lightened states ; wild tribes of nomadic conquerors pour down 
 from the North, and ripen into polished commonwealths ; undis- 
 covered continents and islands, filled with strange races, are 
 made, as it were, to emerge from the deep ; languages that are 
 dying out mingle on the canvas of human fortune with languages 
 that are coming in, like the melting images of the illusive glass, 
 till it is impossible to tell where one begins or the other ends ; 
 but the word of God is heard along the line of the ages, distinct 
 amidst the confusion, addressing an intelligible utterance to each 
 successive race in the great procession of humanity. The miracle 
 of Pentecost becomes the law of human progress, and nations 
 that have sprung into being cycles of ages since Moses and the 
 
ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 281 
 
 Prophets and the Apostles wrote, still hear them speaking, every 
 man in his own language." * 
 
 Here the contributor looks to the indulgent editor, as 
 if asking, May we go on? The decided, yet kindly 
 shake of the head puts it out of the question, and we 
 can only wish that there were space to introduce pas- 
 sages, on the right foundation of government. Vol. I. 
 pp. 112, 113 ; on the proclivity of despotic rulers to wars, 
 illustrated by a masterly outline of modern wars, 124- 
 126 ; on the Indian policy of the Pilgrims, 238, 239 ; on 
 the tendency of civilization to reproduce and expand 
 itself, 273-275; on the impulse given to the industrial 
 arts by the mere publications of Walter Scott, who prob- 
 ably never did a day's work in his life, in the ordinary 
 acceptation of the term, 302 ; on the superiority of the 
 Bunker Hill Monument to books in perpetuating the 
 memory of the battle, 359, 360; on the unsurpassed moral 
 heroism of La Fayette, 507, 508 ; on the discoveries yet 
 to be effected by the growth of science, 617 - 619 ; on the 
 enviable condition of these United States, so truly and 
 fairly described, that the author, in his preface, needed 
 not to apprehend the charge of over-strained nationality, 
 400, 401 ; on the favorable influence of science upon the 
 loftier kinds of poetry, Vok XL 216-219 ; on the relative 
 conditions of mankind the day before and the day after 
 the discovery of printing, 240, 241 ; on the magical and 
 evil-absorbing influences of the steam-engine, 245 ; on 
 the momentous privileges attached to the elective fran- 
 chise, 316, 317 ; on the decay of the primitive simplicity 
 of school-boy manners in New England, 603 ; and on 
 
 * Vol. II. p. 669. 
 
 24* 
 
282 ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 the superiority of the Christian Scriptures to other books 
 assuming the character of sacred, 672. 
 
 We will but touch upon one topic more. It is interest- 
 ing and even curious to observe how thoroughly American 
 Mr. Everett is in his favorite themes and speculations. 
 He seems as one born to think and to speak for his na- 
 tive country. Rarely does he go beyond her limits, in 
 search of subjects on which to exert his commanding 
 powers. Like those animals whose color is extracted 
 from the ground they grow on, he seems blended and 
 identified wdth his natal soil. What is the spirit of our 
 institutions ? What is the plastic life of our nation's his- 
 tory and being? How may these be developed and car- 
 ried out ? These are the inquiries towards which his face 
 is invariably set. Even his addresses while he was am- 
 bassador abroad, dwelt more on the land of his birth than 
 on the brilliant and exciting scenes around him. Cam- 
 bridge there reminded him of his own humbler Alma 
 Mater ; the cattle-shows of England carried his thoughts 
 and fancies home; and a compliment to himself brought 
 forth some plea for America. Most of his writings 
 correspond with this patriot tendency. It is familiarly 
 known that a series of articles in defence of this country 
 from his youthful pen, in the earlier numbers of the 
 North American Review, attracted respectful attention 
 abroad, and silenced a swarm of travellers and reviewers, 
 whose richest capital consisted in slandering and depre- 
 ciating everything American. In accordance with this 
 darling passion of his life, or rather this bent of his na- 
 ture, the two volumes which we are now to dismiss may 
 be regarded as essentially a picture of the best and 
 brightest side of American existence, reflected as it is 
 
ORATORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 283 
 
 from the character of the various occasions commemo- 
 rated, from the orator's own manner of dealing with 
 them, and from the approving sympathy and interest 
 which followed him. It is not so much Mr. Everett as 
 our own United States that produced these volumes ; 
 most other books written among us might have been 
 composed by strangers as well as by Americans; but 
 these, never. They are one with the country, and apart 
 from the country could not have been. If we wn'shed to 
 acquaint a foreigner with what our life and institutions 
 are doing, and may do to achieve their happier destinies, 
 — what are the prevailing wishes, aims, tastes, thoughts, 
 and habits of our more established population, — what 
 we think of our duties and dangers, — what topics will 
 arrest our attention and engage our interest, — what 
 appeals will stir our hearts, — what, in short, are the 
 most hopeful phases of our condition and prospects, — 
 we would not so soon point him to the journals even of 
 impartial and kindly disposed tourists, as to these uncon- 
 sciously representative, but only so much the more faith- 
 ful, pages of Edward Everett. His country owes him a 
 debt of gratitude and honor, which she must take care 
 to pay. 
 
 1850. 
 
PERCIVAL'S POEMS. 
 
 Mr. Percival has now given to the public three volumes 
 of poetry, and has acquired a flattering distinction in our 
 land. All allow the force and brilliancy of his genius, 
 and the skill of his versification. All have at times felt 
 a pensive chord in their bosoms responding to the sweep 
 of his melancholy lyre. Yet what is the reason that he 
 is not received with quite that measure of general en- 
 thusiasm which would fairly correspond to his merit, and 
 constitutes the choicest outward reward of every poet? 
 It lies, we fear, somewhat deeper than the inelegant typog- 
 raphy of his first volume, the indiscriminate profuseness 
 with which he makes up his contents, the submissive- 
 ness of his imitations, or his frank defiance of public 
 opinion in matters of religion ; though even these ob- 
 jectionable points have undoubtedly had their force with 
 different classes of readers. 
 
 But the most formidable obstacle to Mr. Percival's 
 general popularity is the same, we apprehend, which 
 has hitherto prevented the multiplication of editions of 
 Southey and Wordsworth ; we mean, a disinclination in 
 
 * Clio^ Nos. I. and II. By James G. Percival. Charleston and New- 
 Haven. 
 
percival's poems. 285 
 
 those authors to consult the precise intellectual tone and 
 spirit of the average mass to whom their works are pre- 
 sented. Theirs is the poetry of soliloquy. They write 
 apart from and above the world. Their original object 
 seems to be, the employment of their faculties and the 
 gratification of their poetical propensities ; after which, 
 the world is indulged with the favor of listening to the 
 strains that have charmed and soothed their own soli- 
 tude. A few congenial souls, indeed, will always be 
 found to sympathize with such effusions, and none may 
 be inclined to question the genius from which they pro- 
 ceed ; and sometimes, as is frequently the case with the 
 present author, the inclinations of the poet himself may 
 coincide with the general taste by a happy chance, and 
 thus produce compositions, which deserve immediate, ex- 
 tensive, and permanent popularity. 
 
 But we do not wonder that the success of poets of this 
 stamp is frequently incomplete. We have little faith in 
 this abstracted and unsocial sort of poetry. Science 
 may be prosecuted very successfully, without the least 
 reference to any general standard of taste and feeling 
 abroad. Hardly so with literature. One cause, we pre- 
 sume, of the literary excellence and lasting admiration 
 attained by the works of the ancients, was the practice of 
 reciting them before an audience. Being composed with 
 this view, they must have possessed more life and en- 
 ergy, more direct appeals to human sympathy, the power 
 of being seized more vividly and readily by the average 
 comprehension, and especially, to a greater degree, the 
 happy art of awakening and playing with the attention so 
 as never to push it to the borders of ennui, than if the 
 author sat apart in his own closet, and sang for no other 
 
286 percival's poems. 
 
 object than the gratification of his own ear, and in rever- 
 ence for his own standards of criticism alone. Thus, 
 might it not have been because Homer charmed in per- 
 son the ears of all Greece, that he has reached the hearts 
 of all ages ? Herodotus read his Muses at the Olympic 
 games. The masterpieces of the Augustan era were 
 rehearsed in the court of the emperor. Boileau, Voltaire, 
 Rousseau, Marmontel, produced most of their match- 
 less compositions under the immediate expectation of 
 reading them to coteries or individuals. We cannot but 
 persuade ourselves that such a practice must be ex- 
 tremely efficacious, in securing a more general reception 
 and popularity for works written under their influence, 
 than for those written without it, all other circumstances 
 being equal. The genius of a writer may be overwhelm- 
 ing ; his learning prodigious ; his ear attuned to the 
 finest influences ; his taste fastidiously pure ; and his 
 glances " from earth to heaven " as bright and as quick 
 as inspiration can make them ; — yet if he does not often 
 glance too " from heaven to earth " ; if he does not study 
 the common susceptibilities of the mass of his readers, 
 and industriously tune the key-string of his own soul, till 
 it vibrates nearly in unison with the compounded note 
 sent up from the general breathing of human nature, he 
 may lay his account, and perchance find his consolation, 
 in being the poet of the few rather than of the many. 
 To the cause thus imperfectly set forth, we are inclined 
 to ascribe the limited circulation of Mr. Percival's Clio, 
 which certainly contains some of the best poetry that has 
 yet been sung by " degenerate Americans." 
 
 It may be asked, Would you have poetry written en- 
 tirely in the spirit of vers de societS ? Shall the poet slav- 
 
percival's poems. 287 
 
 ishly abandon himself to the tastes and ideas of others ? 
 Shall he not even aim at elevating the general standard 
 as nearly as possible to ideal excellence ? Shall he refuse 
 to draw his chief resources from the workings of his own 
 soul, thus imparting to his productions a peculiarity, a 
 characteristic individuality, which shall touch some of 
 the finest springs of curiosity and interest in his readers? 
 Shall his profession be that of a dancer, in which every 
 step and posture which is taken is calculated for show 
 and effect ? No, certainly : that were to rush into the 
 opposite extreme. It is the fault which places the poetry 
 of Moore so many degrees below the point of perfection. 
 Scott might probably have failed in the same quarter, 
 and Byron in the opposite, the quartier solitaire^ had not 
 a certain native tact or address, resembling what in 
 common life is called a knowledge of the world, taught 
 them to resist their respective constitutional tendencies, 
 and hit the true point of nature and popularity. Our 
 ideas may be a little further illustrated by instancing the 
 French and German schools of poetry, which severally 
 verge towards the extremes we allude to. Shakespeare, 
 whose single name may be cited in company with 
 schools of literature, will quickly occur to every reader, 
 as maintaining the desirable mean, in perfection. This is 
 the true taste. While the bard is duly independent of 
 extraneous influences, and pours into his strain all his 
 own native fire and force, we would have him at the 
 same time aware that there is an ear of scrutinizing and 
 impatient taste abroad which is listening to him, — an 
 ear which will certainly be dissatisfied if he wastes his 
 music on preludes, and voluntaries, and symphonies of 
 his own wayward devising, and confines not himself 
 
288 percival's poems. 
 
 within some modulated movement, to which the feelings 
 of all his readers shall beat time, like the heads in the 
 platea of an Italian opera-house. 
 
 The Last Minstrel was not in our opinion the worse 
 bard, because, 
 
 " Gazing timid on the crowd, 
 He seemed to seek in every eye 
 If they approved his minstrelsy." 
 
 Still, the poets of the soliloquist school may possibly 
 complain that we do not faithfully represent their case. 
 They may disclaim the disinclination which we charge 
 upon them to consult and to hit that happy medium of 
 taste and propriety which awakens the interest, fastens 
 the attention, and secures an eager perusal from the 
 reading world. They may appeal to their love of ap- 
 plause and to their vanity, as being quite equal to what 
 is felt by more popular poets. They may contend that 
 their mortification at ill-success, and their restlessness 
 under criticism, are as acute and troublesome as those 
 writers can possibly endure who pen every line with the 
 image of a staring public directly before their eyes. 
 Very true. But is not this mortification and restlessness 
 produced by the circumstance that the world and the 
 critics refuse to come up to your standard, and not that 
 you have failed in attaining to theirs ? Is there not a 
 kind of feeling of insulted graciousness, of repulsed con- 
 descension, which you experience, rather than of hum- 
 bling acquiescence, at finding that what has pleased and 
 delighted yourselves in the composition, and been per- 
 mitted to go abroad in public, has failed to please and 
 delight everybody in the perusal ? And when you ap- 
 peal, as Mr. Southey and others sometimes do, to pos- 
 
percital's poems. 289 
 
 terity, say fairly whether you would not wince a little, 
 if you could learn that posterity also will neglect you ; 
 and whether you would not then apjDcal to a more 
 remote posterity still, for your reward, and so on, till 
 posterity and poetry shall be no more. 
 
 If, after all, the recluse fraternity should strenuously 
 deny the truth of our position; if they insist that they 
 are as anxious as others to seize upon that mysterious 
 medium of style, sentiment, spirit, and expression, which 
 shall instinctively correspond to the tastes of the wide 
 world of readers, and that they are willing to make every 
 sacrifice to attain this end; — then they do but force a 
 more disagreeable alternative upon their good-natured 
 critics, who are endeavoring to account for the circum- 
 scribed popularity which awaits their excellent produc- 
 tions. Must we not reluctantly ascribe to them an in- 
 aptitude or inability to infuse into their writings a tone 
 precisely harmonizing with the natural inclinations and 
 principles of taste implanted in the general mind ? Cer- 
 tain early intellectual tendencies, voracious and undis- 
 criminating habits of reading, seclusion from varied inter- 
 course, or a partial feebleness or obliquity in the power 
 of observation, may have prevented them from discern- 
 ing, either in their own minds or those of others, the ex- 
 act limit where delight ends and weariness begins, in the 
 perusal of works of the imagination. Or Nature, in 
 bestowing on them nearly all her rarest and most pre- 
 cious gifts, may have envied them the last, and so with- 
 held that delicate tact, which would have enabled them 
 so to employ their talents as invariably to produce fas- 
 cinating results. Hence, in perusing the writers whom 
 we are attempting to characterize, we are liable to be 
 
 25 
 
290 percival's poems. 
 
 annoyed by a disproportionate stress laid upon certain 
 ideas and sentiments ; or, a strain of thought is dwelt 
 upon too long, — longer than we are willing to follow it 
 out; or our minds become cloyed by an unsparing pro- 
 fusion of beautiful images and poetical luxuries ; or they 
 are often strained and confused by the writer's breaking 
 off from some leading track of thought to run into by- 
 paths and labyrinths, thus holding the faculties in a 
 painful suspense, until we are again brought back to the 
 onward path. There is too little attention paid to those 
 graceful transitions and natural juxtapositions of the 
 thoughts, which carry the reader forward imperceptibly, 
 and enable him to follow the poet in his highest flights 
 without a wearied effort. A heavy, indescribable weight 
 will sometimes come over the eyelids, which are all the 
 while dazzled with beauties, and offended with but few 
 faults. Our minds are constantly rousing themselves 
 up to the task of pursuing pleasure ; and the incipient 
 nod is now and then only checked by our starting and 
 exclaiming. How beautiful ! 
 
 Whoever has attempted a fair sit-down to any of Mr. 
 Percival's volumes must, we are confident, recognize 
 most, if not all, of the peculiarities above specified, and 
 ascribe to their influence the frequency with which he 
 has laid aside the book, and achieved a complete peru- 
 sal only by repeated assaults. 
 
 Yet we will venture to say, (for here closes the unwill- 
 ing and unenviable portion of our task,) that he who has 
 examined to any considerable extent the poetry of our 
 author must have received an ample reward, and found 
 abundant and splendid exceptions and balances to the 
 defects above enumerated. There certainly reigns in 
 
percival's poems. 201 
 
 many parts of it the true ethereal spirit. The vein is 
 often as rich as any we have ever known. The pieces 
 are not few in which the soul of the author, rising as he 
 proceeds, involves itself and the reader in a cloud of de- 
 licious enchantment. He possesses the rare and divine 
 art of imparting to language those mysterious and un- 
 earthly influences which come to us from the strings of 
 an ^olian harp. Without employing our senses as 
 instruments, he can yet diffuse through our frames 
 something like the result of all the sweetest sensations. 
 Other authors often obtain admiration and fame from 
 the excellence and beauty of separate ideas and senti- 
 ments, and the skill with which they arrange them. 
 These gifts are enough to make the fine writer ; they 
 may produce the deepest immediate impressions. But 
 to these Mr. Percival adds the power of exciting in the 
 mind a pervading and continuing charm ; an aggregate 
 effect, separate from the original one, analogous to a 
 secondary rainbow. As you wander through the garden 
 of his poetry, you enjoy something more than the pleas- 
 ure of gazing on individual specimens, or inhaling their 
 successive sweets, or surveying gay beds and fairly or- 
 dered parterres; for the air itself is occupied with a 
 spirit of mingled fragrance. As mere music often speaks 
 a sort of language, so our author's language breathes a 
 sort of music. We are convinced that it is true poetry, 
 since in reading it we have had exactly the same feeling 
 as in surveying admired objects in the sister arts of 
 painting and sculpture. 
 
 To descend, however, to praises a little more particu- 
 lar and discriminating, the author's wide command of 
 the English language deserves honorable notice. His 
 
292 percival's poems. 
 
 rhymes are unhackneyed, yet always very natural. He 
 has scarcely a trick of the mere versifier. We meet with 
 few inversions of the common order of syntax. He has 
 drunk deeply of the best undefiled springs. 
 
 We are next pleased with his intimate familiarity with 
 classical literature. It is evidently of a kind not bor- 
 rowed from Lempritre. It generally appears in inci- 
 dental allusions, which are rather forced upon him from 
 a well-stored memory, than sought after for the purpose 
 of display. It is doubly gratifying to meet with this 
 accomplijrhment in our author; both as it furnishes a 
 proof that the race of ripe classical scholars is flourishing 
 among us, and also that the stock of classical images 
 and ornaments is far from being exhausted. We are 
 persuaded, moreover, that Mr. Percival has caught, from 
 the study of Greek models, a certain Attic purity and 
 severity of style, conspicuous in some of his best- 
 wrought pieces. 
 
 Besides this quality, we also observe, in every part of 
 these volumes, proofs of very extensive and profound 
 general knowledge. There is an almost encyclopedic 
 familiarity with many departments of modern science. 
 It is this ample store of images and illustrations, joined 
 with his happy mastery of them, which gives us confi- 
 dence in the ultimate splendid success of Mr. Percival's 
 authorship. He is not to be named with those poets 
 w^ho set up with a small stock of ideas and a pretty 
 talent, and soon write themselves out. We regard his 
 powers and resources as inexhaustible, and if his spirit 
 be elastic enough to try them all successively, conde- 
 scending at the same time to feel and be guided by the 
 pulse of public taste, (we do not mean merely the public 
 
percival's poems. 203 
 
 of to-day,) he will acquire for the literature of his coun- 
 try and for himself an enviable renown. 
 
 Another agreeable peculiarity in these pages is the fe- 
 licitous art of weaving into the texture of a composition 
 the names of common and vulgar objects, which a poet 
 of ordinary powers would despair of introducing with 
 success. Mr. Percival overcomes in a moment the repul- 
 sive or unpoetical associations attached to such words, 
 and invests them with an unwonted dignity and purity. 
 
 The scenery of our country, too, has to thank him for 
 consecrating some of its objects in his verse. The fol- 
 lowing address has scarcely a fault that we can discern. 
 It may possibly be thought that the picture is not suffi- 
 ciently individual, and that when travelling about with 
 it in your memory, you shall not recognize by it the 
 Seneca Lake distinct from any other fine sheet of water. 
 But this is a precarious objection. The author may not 
 have meant it for a picture of that particular lake, but 
 for a record of his feelings while accidentally gazing, at 
 different hours, on one of the most beautiful of natural 
 objects. But whatever may be the truth of this objec- 
 tion, surely every line of the piece presents a distinct 
 image of beauty, and is in perfect keeping with the 
 spirit of the whole, which was caught from the softest 
 breathing of nature. But we are affronting our readers 
 thus to enact so long the part of a Cicerone. 
 
 ''TO SENECA LAKE. 
 
 " On thy fair bosom, silver lake ! 
 The wild swan spreads his snowy sail, 
 And round his breast the ripples break, 
 As down he bears before the gale. 
 25=^ 
 
294 percival's poems. 
 
 " On thy fair bosom, waveless stream ! 
 The dipping paddle echoes far, 
 And flashes in the moonlight gleam, 
 And bright reflects the polar star. 
 
 " The waves along thy pebbly shore, 
 As blows the north-wind, heave their foam, 
 And curl around the dashing oar, 
 As late the boatman hies him home. 
 
 " How sweet, at set of sun, to view 
 Thy golden mirror spreading wide, 
 
 And see the mist of mantlino^ blue 
 
 Float round the distant mountain-side I 
 
 " At midnight hour, as shines the moon, 
 A sheet of silver spreads below, 
 And swift she cuts, at highest noon, 
 Light clouds, like wreaths of purest snow. 
 
 " On thy fair bosom, silver lake ! 
 O could I ever sweep the oar, 
 When early birds at morning wake, 
 And evening tells us toil is o'er ! " 
 
 This extract reminds us that it is now time to intro- 
 duce others from the two small volumes before us, which 
 we shall do partly for the sake of exemplifying and 
 defending the criticisms already advanced, and partly to 
 adorn our own pages. 
 
 In the following crowded, classical, and animated pic- 
 ture, the occasional resemblance to Lord Byron ought 
 not to be called an imitation so much as a successful 
 attempt at rivalry : — 
 
percival's poems. 295 
 
 ♦'LIBERTY TO ATHENS. ODE. 
 
 " The flag of freedom floats once more 
 
 Around the lofty Parthenon ; 
 It waves, as waved the palm of yore, 
 
 In days departed long and gone ; 
 As bright a glory, from the skies, 
 
 Pours down its light around those towers, 
 And once again the Greeks arise, 
 
 As in their country's noblest hours ; 
 Their swords are girt in virtue's cause, 
 
 Minerva's sacred hill is free ; — 
 O may she keep her equal laws. 
 
 While man shall live, and time shall be ! 
 
 " The pride of all her shrines went down ; 
 
 The Goth, the Frank, the Turk, had reft 
 The laurel from her civic crown ; 
 
 Her helm by many a sword was cleft ; 
 She lay among her ruins low ; 
 
 Where grew the palm, the cypress rose, 
 And, crushed and bruised by many a blow, 
 
 She cowered beneath her savage foes ; 
 But now again she springs from earth. 
 
 Her loud, awakening trumpet speaks ; 
 She rises in a brighter birth. 
 
 And sounds redemption to the Greeks. 
 
 " It is the classic jubilee, — 
 
 Their servile years have rolled away ; 
 The clouds that hovered o'er them flee. 
 
 They hail the dawn of freedom's day j 
 From heaven the golden light descends. 
 
 The times of old are on the wing, 
 
296 percival's poems. 
 
 And glory there her pinion bends, 
 And beauty wakes a fairer spring ; 
 
 The hills of Greece, her rocks, her waves, 
 Are all in triumph's pomp arrayed ; 
 
 A light that points their tyrants' graves 
 Plays round each bold Athenian's blade. 
 
 *' The Parthenon, the sacred shrine, 
 
 Where wisdom held her pure abode : 
 The hill of Mars, where light divine 
 
 Proclaimed the true, but unknown God ; 
 Where justice held unyielding sway. 
 
 And trampled all corruption down, 
 And onward took her lofty way 
 
 To reach at truth's unfading crown ; 
 The rock, where liberty was full. 
 
 Where eloquence her torrents rolled, 
 And loud, against the despot's rule, 
 
 A knell the patriot's fury tolled : 
 The stage, whereon the drama spake. 
 
 In tones that seemed the words of Heaven, 
 Which made the wretch in terror shake. 
 
 As by avenging furies driven : 
 The groves and gardens, where the fire 
 
 Of wisdom, as a fountain, burned. 
 And every eye, that dared aspire 
 
 To truth, has long in worship turned ; 
 The halls and porticos, where trod 
 
 The moral sage, severe, unstained. 
 And where the intellectual god 
 
 In all the light of science reigned : 
 The schools, where rose in symmetry 
 
 The simple, but majestic pile, 
 
percival's poems. 297 
 
 Where marble threw its roughness by, 
 
 To glow, to frown, to weep, to smile, 
 Where colors made the canvas live. 
 
 Where music rolled her flood along. 
 And all the charms that art can give 
 
 Were blent with beauty, love, and song : 
 The port, from whose capacious womb •- 
 
 Her navies took their conquering road, 
 The heralds of an awful doom 
 
 To all who would not kiss her rod ; — 
 On these a dawn of glory springs. 
 
 These trophies of her brightest fame ; 
 Away the long-chained city flings 
 
 Her weeds, her shackles, and her shame ; 
 Again her ancient souls awake, 
 
 Harmodius bares anew his sword ; 
 Her sons in wrath their fetters break, 
 
 And freedom is their only lord." 
 
 " CONSUMPTION. 
 
 " There is a sweetness in woman's decay, 
 When the light of beauty is fading away. 
 When the bright enchantment of youth is gone, 
 And the tint that glowed, and the eye that shone 
 And darted around its glance of power. 
 And the lip that vied with the sweetest flower 
 That ever in Ptestum's * garden blew, 
 Or ever was steeped in fragrant dew, — 
 When all that was bright and fair is fled. 
 But the loveliness lino:erino; round the dead. 
 
 * Biferique rosaria Psesti. — Virg. 
 
298 pekcival's poems. 
 
 " O there is a sweetness in beauty's close, 
 Like the the perfume scenting the withered rose ; 
 For a nameless charm around her plays, 
 And her eyes are kindled with hallowed rays, 
 And a veil of spotless purity 
 Has mantled her cheek with its heavenly dye, 
 Like a cloud whereon the queen of night 
 Has poyred her softest tint of light ; 
 And there is a blending of white and blue, 
 Where the purple blood is melting through 
 The snow of her pale and tender cheek ; 
 And there are tones, that sweetly speak 
 Of a spirit, who longs for a purer day. 
 And is ready to wing her flight away. 
 
 " In the flush of youth and the spring of feeling. 
 When life, like a sunny stream, is stealing 
 Its silent steps through a flowery path, 
 And all the endearments that pleasure hath 
 Are poured from her full, o'erflowing horn. 
 When the rose of enjoyment conceals no thorn. 
 In her lightness of heart, to the cheery song 
 The maiden may trip in the dance along, 
 And think of the passing moment, that lies. 
 Like a fairy dream, in her dazzled eyes. 
 And yield to the present, that charms around 
 With all that is lovely in sight and sound. 
 Where a thousand pleasing phantoms flit. 
 With the voice of mirth, and the burst of wit, 
 And the music that steals to the bosom's core. 
 And the heart in its fulness flowing o'er 
 With a few big drops, tl\at are soon repressed. 
 For short is the stay of grief in her breast : 
 In this enlivened and gladsome hour 
 
percival's poems. 
 
 The spirit may burn with a brighter power ; 
 
 But dearer the calm and quiet day, 
 
 When the heaven-sick soul is stealing away. 
 
 " And when her sun is low decHning, 
 And life wears out with no repining, 
 And the whisper that tells of early death 
 Is soft as the west-wind's balmy breath, 
 When it comes at the hour of still repose, 
 To sleep in the breast of the wooing rose ; 
 And the Up, that swelled with a living glow, 
 Is pale as a curl of new-fallen snow ; 
 And her cheek, like the Parian stone, is fair. 
 But the hectic spot that flushes there, 
 When the tide of life, from its secret dwelling, 
 In a sudden gush, is deeply swelling, 
 And giving a tinge to her icy lips 
 Like the crimson rose's brightest tips. 
 As richly red, and as transient too, 
 As the clouds in autumn's sky of blue. 
 That seem like a host of glory met 
 To honor the sun at his golden set : 
 O then, when the spirit is taking wing. 
 How fondly her thoughts to her dear one cling, 
 As if she would blend her soul with his 
 In a deep and long imprinted kiss ! 
 So, fondly the panting camel flies. 
 Where the glassy vapor cheats his eyes. 
 And the dove from the falcon seeks her nest. 
 And the infant shrinks to its mother's breast. 
 And though her dying voice be mute, 
 Or faint as the tones of an unstrung lute, 
 And though the glow from her cheek be fled, 
 And her pale Hps cold as the marble dead. 
 
 299 
 
PERCIVAL S POEMS. 
 
 Her eye still beams unwonted fires 
 With a woman's love and a saint's desires, 
 And her last fond, lingering look is given 
 To the love she leaves, and then to heaven, 
 As if she would bear that love away 
 To a purer world and a brighter day." 
 
 In the lines to the Houstonia Cerulea, and the address 
 to Seneca Lake, our author comes into competition with 
 Mr. Bryant, as a fine observer of nature, a pensive mor- 
 alist, and a true poet. We recognize in the former a 
 spirit kindred to that which dictated the Lines to a Wa- 
 terfowl. The admirers of Mr. Bryant must admit that 
 Percival's lines on Self-Devotion to Solitary Studies, and 
 on the Prevalence of Poetry, are not unworthy of the 
 genius that produced Thanatopsis, having, we think, no 
 greater resemblance to Akenside than that exquisite and 
 much quoted production has to the Grave of Blair. 
 
 The second number of Clio is not equal to the first. 
 We can only take from it The Coral Grove, highly origi- 
 nal and imaginative. 
 
 " THE CORAL GROVE. 
 
 " Deep in the wave is a Coral Grove, 
 Where the purple mullet and gold-fish rove, 
 Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue. 
 That never are wet with falling dew. 
 But in bright and changeful beauty shine, 
 Far down in the green and glassy brine. 
 The floor is of sand, like the mountain drift, 
 
 And the pearl-shells spangle the flinty snow ; 
 From coral rocks the sea-plants lift 
 
 Their bousjhs where the tides and billows flow ; 
 
percival's poems. 301 
 
 The water is calm and still below, 
 
 For the winds and waves are absent there, 
 And the sands are bright as the stars, that glow 
 
 In the motionless fields of upper air : 
 There, with its waving blade of green. 
 
 The sea-flag streams through the silent water, 
 And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen 
 
 To blush, like a banner bathed in slaughter : 
 There, with a light and easy motion. 
 
 The fan-coral sweeps through the clear, deep sea ; 
 And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean 
 
 Are bending, like corn on the upland lea : 
 And life, in rare and beautiful forms. 
 
 Is sporting amid those bowers of stone. 
 And is safe, when the wrathful spirit of storms 
 
 Has made the top of the wave his own : 
 And when the ship from his fury flies. 
 
 Where the myriad voices of ocean roar, 
 When the wind-god frowns in the murky skies, 
 
 And demons are waiting the wreck on shore, — 
 Then far below, in the peaceful sea, 
 
 The purple mullet and gold-fish rove, 
 Where the waters murmur tranquilly. 
 
 Through the bending twigs of the coral grove." 
 
 Could the published poetry of Mr. Percival be reduced 
 to a single volume of moderate size, and printed in a 
 style worthy of the contents, it would, we have thought, 
 be an acceptable present to the world, honorable to our 
 country, and valued by posterity. But already, we un- 
 derstand, another work is announced from the same 
 prolific pen ; and as long as Mr. Percival will continue to 
 write, our experience of the past raises so high our hopes 
 of the future, that we do not ask him at present to divert 
 
 26 
 
302 tercival's poems. 
 
 his energies from composition to revision and reduction. 
 By and by, in the calm and leisure of his days, he will, 
 we presume, take pleasure in revising his works sternly 
 and impartially, and fastidiously select from them fewer 
 perhaps than the world would do, on which to fix the 
 seal of immortality. In the mean time, may we entreat 
 him to let no false sense of independence, or inordinate 
 admiration of Lord Byron, tempt him any more to flout 
 the Cross, or to throw doubts on the^soul's immortality. 
 Religion may not be wanted by so ethereal a race as the 
 poets. But reviewers and other common men very much 
 need it in the course of their numerous temptations. 
 What would become of the wretched herd of authors, if 
 reviewers were freed from some higher motives and re- 
 straints than are to be found among the miserable ele- 
 ments of this world ? Let poets be careful, then, how, by 
 the acuteness and philosophy lent them in some inspired 
 moment of disappointment and hypochondriasis, they 
 overthrow the labors of the Lardners and Paleys, falsify 
 the demonstrations of the metaphysicians, and disappoint 
 the dearest and most universal sentiment of mankind I 
 
 He must not complain of the severity of these sar- 
 casms, who, besides throwing suspicion on the beautiful 
 enthusiasm for virtue, the perfect purity of sentiment, and 
 even the occasional eulogiums on religion which adorn 
 the other portions of his works, has deliberately, in two 
 or three disloyal stanzas, cut more than one humble be- 
 liever to the heart. 
 
 N. A. Review, 1823. 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 A RECENT visit to the mansion of I. K. TefFt, Esq., of 
 Savannah, furnished me with an unaccustomed enter- 
 tainment, in describing which, I may hope to reproduce 
 it, in a faint degree, for others. This gentleman has 
 devoted a portion of his leisure for several years to the 
 collection of Autographs, or specimens of original hand- 
 writing by eminent persons of various ages and coun- 
 tries. It it were not otherwise known that his literary 
 tastes and habits had peculiarly fitted him for such an 
 occupation, the fact would be sufficiently evident from 
 the actual fruits of his researches. His compilation of 
 manuscripts, by different writers, nearly all of whom 
 have been persons, in one way or another, of consider- 
 able distinction, amounts to about five thousand arti- 
 cles.* They thus constitute a very rare curiosity, or 
 rather assemblage of curiosities, which few can even 
 partially inspect without strong feelings of surprise and 
 gratification. They present, too, a striking testimony of 
 the extraordinary results that may be achieved by di- 
 
 ^ This number has probably been much more than trebled since the first 
 publication of the essay. 
 
304 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 recting one's attentiou and energies to a particular pur- 
 suit, whatever it may be. 
 
 Nor can such a collection be simply regarded as a 
 curiosity. It deserves, in many respects, the higher 
 praise of usefulness. The inquiries and exertions neces- 
 sary to its formation must often bring to light some 
 valuable literary or historical document. It is not mere 
 signatures, or scraps of handwriting, that Mr. Tefft has 
 been so sedulously collecting. He has intended that 
 each specimen should consist, if possible, of an interest- 
 ing letter, or some important instrument. Must it not 
 be readily allowed, that a series of only single epistles 
 from all the eminent men who were active, both in a 
 civil and military capacity, throughout our Revolution- 
 ary war, would of itself constitute an interesting volume, 
 and throw a desirable light on the history of that pe- 
 riod ? Yet such a series might be culled with great ease 
 from the collection we are now contemplating. 
 
 Very few large autographic collections are known to 
 exist. They are among the last intellectual luxuries 
 grafted on a high growth of refinement and civilization. 
 Here and there some peculiar taste or bias determines 
 an individual to the pursuit, and he experiences the in- 
 nocent delight of beholding his treasures rapidly in- 
 cease, while his friends and acquaintances, in the mean 
 time, are permitted to enjoy many an hour of deep in- 
 terest and pleasure in reviewing the results of his quiet 
 yet enthusiastic labors. In our own country, besides 
 Mr. Tefft, there are but two very extensive collectors, the 
 Rev. Dr. Sprague of Albany, and Robert Gilmor, Esq. 
 of Baltimore. Dr. Sprague's collection has attained 
 considerable celebrity, and amounts to more than twen- 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGllAPHS. 305 
 
 ty thousand articles. Mr. Gilmor's, also, is particularly 
 valuable ; and a printed list of the most important speci- 
 mens has been circulated by him for the convenience of 
 himself and his friends. His American is separated from 
 his Foreign collection, and is thus classed: Civil and 
 military officers before the Kevolution,— military offi- 
 cers of the Revolutionary war,— military officers since 
 the Revolution, — naval officers,— signers of the Decla- 
 ration of Independence, — worthies of the Revolution,— 
 signers of the Constitution of the United States, — presi- 
 dents and vice-presidents, — secretaries of state, — secre- 
 taries of the treasury, — secretaries of war, — secretaries 
 of the navy, — attorneys-general, — post-office depart- 
 ment, — governors of States and Territories, — members 
 of Congress, — diplomatic, — law, — divinity, — medi- 
 cine, — literary, — scientific, — artists, — miscellaneous, 
 which includes all that cannot properly be placed under 
 one of the other heads. The foreign autographs in the 
 same collection are subjected to a similar arrangement. 
 The accomplished Grimke, during the last few years of 
 his life, paid much attention to this subject, and has left 
 a considerable collection of autographs, which, had he 
 been longer spared, would undoubtedly have soon been 
 greatly enlarged. Among the most distinguished col- 
 lectors abroad are Rev. Dr. Raffles of Liverpool, the 
 well-known author of the " Life of Spenser," and Rev. 
 Mr. Bolton of Henley-upon-Thames. It would thus 
 appear that clergymen have a particular partiality for 
 this pursuit, though by what affinity I presume not to 
 determine. 
 
 Few autographs, comparatively, have reached our 
 country from the continent of Europe, nor is Mr. Tefi't 
 
 26* 
 
306 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 acquainted with any collector in that part of the world. 
 That there must be such, however, is highly probable, 
 particularly in France, Germany, Holland, and Italy. 
 The English Encyclopaedias contain no information on 
 the subject, though it would seem to deserve a place in 
 their miscellaneous records. The Encyclopsedia Ameri- 
 cana, which is partly a translation from the German, 
 dismisses the article with the tantalizing remark, that 
 " some collections of autographs of famous men are very 
 interesting." I should apprehend that there is a suffi- 
 cient number of autograph-collectors in the world to jus- 
 tify and support an annual publication on the subject. 
 Such a work would be invaluable to the fraternity. It 
 should contain catalogues of all existing collections. It 
 should give an account of new and interesting discov- 
 eries. It should present fac-similes of the rarest and most 
 valuable subjects. By this means, every collector might 
 compare his own deficiencies with the redundancies of 
 others, and an equilibrium be everywhere maintained 
 at much less trouble and expense than are incurred at 
 present. 
 
 Mr. Tefft has succeeded in forming his large compila- 
 tion without incurring any direct expense. Through 
 the liberality of many persons in our country who have 
 held choice autographs in their possession, he has always 
 on hand duplicates of considerable worth, by the ex- 
 change of which with persons, either at home or abroad, 
 he has been enabled to confer so peculiar a value and 
 extent on his collection. Having amassed five thousand 
 specimens, it may be supposed that he has nearly ex- 
 hausted the range of distinguished names; and accord- 
 ingly, when some obliging friend from a distance sends 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 307 
 
 him a parcel, he finds, on looking it over, that it scarcely 
 contributes a single new name to his collection, though 
 the whole may be otherwise valuable and interesting. 
 Some of his most curious specimens he has received 
 gratuitously from friends in Great Britain, although, as 
 might be expected in a very artificial state of society, 
 they would often command considerable prices in that 
 country. The poet Campbell raised forty-five guineas 
 for the Poles by autographs ; and visiting a lady who 
 had notes from distinguished people on her table, he 
 advised her to conceal them, or they would be stolen. 
 Brougham's autograph was valued at five guineas. Dis- 
 tant, undoubtedly, is the day when the casual holder of 
 a few bits of paper in America will think of extorting a 
 compensation from the gentle and devoted collector of 
 autographs. 
 
 One of the most interesting features of this occupation 
 consists in the personal correspondence between the 
 autograph-collector and individuals who are in posses- 
 sion of the desired articles. Between the collectors 
 themselves not only an acquaintance is formed, but often 
 a warm and substantial friendship. If one could imagine 
 the mutual regard entertained between two persons who 
 are in the habit of interchanging a few Birds of Para- 
 dise, or a real Phoenix, or a consignment of the most 
 delicious tropical fruits, or a goodly specimen of Georgia 
 gold, one might understand the emotion felt at the re- 
 ception of a long-sought-for scrap by one of the signers 
 of the Declaration, or perchance the veritable signature 
 of some foreign name, 
 
 "Wherewith all Europe rings from side to side." 
 Again, nothing can exceed the obliging and cour- 
 
308 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 teous language and actions of several distinguished men 
 who have been applied to for autographs within their 
 control. My Savannah friend has rarely, if ever, had 
 the misfortune to be met with neglect in answer to 
 applications of this kind. His letters from such men 
 as ex-Presidents Madison and Adams (both father and 
 son), Professor Silliman, General Lafayette, Washington 
 Irving, Duponceau, Joseph Buonaparte, Dr. Mitchell, 
 Mr. Grimke, Basil Hall, Dr. Raffles, and many others, 
 exhibit their private characters in a truly amiable light. 
 When thus not merely the nature of this occupation, but 
 its external circumstances, are of so agreeable a descrip- 
 tion, we cannot wonder at the zeal with which it is 
 pursued. 
 
 The science of the autograph-collector is not without 
 its higher and peculiar mysteries. By much experience 
 and exercise, he acquires a skilful discernment which 
 belongs not to common eyes. He will tell you of corre- 
 spondences between the handwriting and the mental 
 disposition of individuals, about which he is rarely, if 
 ever, mistaken. He will speak of immediately discern- 
 ing, amidst a hundred new specimens, and before in- 
 specting the signatures, those which have been written 
 by the most eminent persons. And why should it not be 
 so ? Perhaps it will be found more philosophical to credit 
 such pretensions, than to ridicule or distrust them. For 
 if we often judge of a character, with no little precision, 
 by a single tone of the voice, by a single motion of the 
 body, by an instantaneous glance at the physiognomy ; 
 and if, which is yet more to the point, a nation has its 
 peculiar style of writing, so that a French manuscript is 
 as easily discernible from an English one as are the re- 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 309 
 
 spective dialects of the two countries ; if the manuscripts 
 of the same nation at different eras are also perceptibly 
 different, so that a writing of the sixteenth century is no 
 more like one of the eighteenth than are the dresses of 
 those two periods like each other; if the chirographics 
 of the two sexes are almost always immediately distin- 
 guishable, so that a brother and sister, educated under 
 the same circumstances, and taught by the same writ- 
 ing-master, shall yet unavoidably reveal their respective 
 styles ; and if, lastly, different classes of persons shall 
 be knowm by their different handwritings, so that a mere 
 child could pronounce which is the mercantile clerk's, 
 which the lawyer's, and which the leisurely gentleman's, 
 — let us beware how we rashly discredit the experienced 
 inspector of autographs, who deduces from the signature 
 of an individual the qualities of his mind. 
 
 The occupation we are describing (I find it easier to 
 speak in the plural) is sometimes enlivened by moving 
 adventures, hair-breadth rescues, and joy-inspiring dis- 
 coveries, which the uninitiated world knows nothing of; 
 and sometimes it is damped by the most cruel disap- 
 pointments. A manuscript is often sought for with anx- 
 ious diligence for years; and when perhaps all hope is 
 abandoned, and something like acquiescence or resigna- 
 tion is beginning to compose the spirits of the baffled 
 inquirer, not only the desired signature, but (precious and 
 ample reward for all past labors and regrets!) a whole 
 letter by the same hand, is sent in from some unexpected 
 quarter. Mr. Tefft was long in pursuit of an autograph 
 of Kosciusko. He received from a Northern friend a 
 scrap of paper containing the simple signature of that 
 warrior's name, with an expression of regret that nothing 
 
310 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 more under his hand could be found. Some time after- 
 wards, he received from another friend an entire letter of 
 Kosciusko, with the exception of the signature. On 
 comparing the two papers, with trembling anxiety, it 
 was found that they both originally constituted one and 
 the same letter. Sometimes an ignorant descendant of 
 renowned ancestors will be unwilling to part with any of 
 their manuscripts, through an inability to comprehend 
 the collector's object ; sometimes a heaping trunk is com- 
 mitted by a vandal hand to the flames, or, if rescued, its 
 contents are perhaps found to be ruined by the moulds 
 and damps of age. 
 
 But we have perhaps been too long detained from ex- 
 amining the valuable collection which has occasioned 
 these preliminary remarks. We find the manuscripts in 
 excellent preservation, being arranged and classed in six 
 volumes, after the manner of Mr. Gilmor's collection, 
 already described. There is, besides, a box of miscella- 
 neous autographs. Let us first open this. A very cour- 
 teous letter from Captain Hall lies on the top, enclosing 
 an engraved fac-simile of the letter written to him by 
 Sir Walter Scott when detained at Portsmouth by the 
 wind in 1831, and giving some account of Sir Walter's 
 own favorite production, " The Antiquary." This letter 
 has been already published in several American news- 
 papers, and we will dismiss it by simply remarking that 
 Sir Walter's first sentence has been erroneously deci- 
 phered and printed, as we ourselves had the pleasure of 
 discovering. He does not say, " My dear Captain Hall, as 
 the wind seems determinately inflexible," but he says, far 
 more clearly and forcibly, " as the wind seems deter- 
 minedly inflexible." 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 311 
 
 Next is an invaluable document. It is a communica-. 
 tion from the son of Dr. Currie of Liverpool, the biogra- 
 pher of Burns, covering a long and interesting letter from 
 that immortal poet to the celebrated Dugald Stewart. It 
 is written in a large, bold, perpendicular, and slightly an- 
 gular hand, not unworthy the author of " Tam o' Shanter." 
 
 A distinguished professor of a Northern institution, in 
 a very kind letter, thus writes : " We have in Yale Col- 
 lege a very remarkable autograph, or rather auto-deline- 
 ation : it is a sketch of himself with a pen, made by 
 Major Andre, a few hours before his execution. There is 
 also a lock of his hair, taken from his grave. In the 
 sketch, he is represented as sitting at a table ; the por- 
 trait is full length, and about the size of the palm of 
 your hand. It came into the possession of Lieutenant 
 Nathan Beers of the Connecticut Line, then on duty, and 
 who stood near to Andre, as a member of the guard, at 
 the moment of execution. Lieutenant Beers is my near 
 neighbor, and, at eighty years of age, enjoys his faculties 
 perfectly, except hearing. Colonel Talmadge, a very 
 gallant and distinguished cavalry officer, was charged 
 with the immediate custody of Andre's person, and upon 
 his arm the unfortunate man was leaning, on his way to 
 execution, when he first saw the preparation for what 
 he deemed a dishonorable death. He recoiled a mo- 
 ment at the sight, and asked with emotion if he must 
 die in that manner. Colonel Talmadge is still living, 
 and cannot even now relate that tragedy without tears." 
 
 As a happy pendant to the foregoing, we have next a 
 letter from our Lafayette, dated in 1832, saying : — 
 
 " With miicli pleasure I would gratify your autographic incli 
 nations, but have for the present no European writings to offer, 
 
312 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 excepting a note from the King of the French, which I enclose. 
 
 As for this letter of mine, which you are pleased to call for, I 
 
 hope it will be placed in the American part of your collection. I 
 
 beg you to remind me to my friends in Savannah, and to believe 
 
 me most sincerely yours. 
 
 " Lafayette." 
 
 We soon take up a letter, apparently from a London 
 merchant or banker, dated 6th April, 1676, to his friends 
 in the country. It is curious by reason of mentioning 
 that King Charles II. was then at New-Market, " and 
 't is said," continues the letter, " his Majesty in Counsell 
 did on Sunday was seavenight past order that the chim- 
 ney money should be assigned for payment of the bank- 
 ers." This chimney-money probably corresponded to 
 the house-duty of modern times. It is sometimes called 
 hearth-money by the historians. The same letter con- 
 tains the following passing touch of private life: — 
 " Matt. H. and little Kitt were both invited through 
 Easter to Sir Wm. Bucknall. The hinmost was not 
 there, but the foremost was, and questionless the orange 
 was well squeezed." 
 
 Another document is an order, dated in 1724, for the 
 payment of a dividend on the South-Sea Stock, cele- 
 brated in history as the cause of such widely extended 
 ruin. 
 
 There is also an original letter written by Miss Eliza- 
 beth Scott to her father. The chief interest about it is, 
 that Dr. Doddridge once cherished the hope and effort to 
 marry Miss Scott, but without success. She was a lady 
 of great talents and accomphshments, and the author of 
 some poems. The letter before us is only remarkable 
 for a deep tone of piety and filial affection. The writer 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 313 
 
 seems to have been a great bodily sufferer. One little 
 thing about the exterior of her letter bespeaks its femi- 
 nine authorship, and carries us back, as by a magic power, 
 through a hundred years. Some thirty or forty pin-holes 
 are made in the wafer of the letter, the fair and worthy 
 writer apparently not having a seal at hand. The privi- 
 lege of seeing pin-holes, made in a wafer by the fingers 
 of a lady to whom Dr. Doddridge was attached, is one 
 of no small value. If she could have found it in her 
 heart to favor the fond divine more indulgently, doubt- 
 less she would have been able, instead of a pin, to have 
 used a seal, with the device of a blazing heart, and the 
 initials P. D. beneath it. As to the superscription, di- 
 rected upside down, we know not what to say. 
 
 Turning over a number of interesting articles, which 
 we cannot possibly specify, we come to a manuscript 
 sermon of Cotton Mather. It is written half unintelligi- 
 bly, in the finest and closest hand, on three very small 
 leaves, the latter part of it seeming to be only notes or 
 hints for extemporaneous enlargement. The text con- 
 sists of the words, " Blessed be God." An instance of 
 Mather's bold and poetic imagination occurs near the 
 middle of the discourse. Describing the life and charac- 
 ter of the Apostle Paul, who had such valid reasons to 
 bless God for his conversion, he says : " A vile sinner 
 against God may become a high servant of God. As 
 they said. Is Saul among the prophets ? thus they could 
 say of another Saul, Is he among the Apostles ? A fierce 
 persecutor of our Lord Jesus Christ may become a rare 
 ambassador for him." At this point he inserts in the 
 margin, as an after-thought, which he felt necessary to 
 
 27 
 
314 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 crown his climax of antitheses, "and a firebrand of hell 
 may become a bright star of heaven." 
 
 As this autograph of Mather is among the oldest in 
 the collection, I may here mention that the very oldest 
 is dated in 1665, and that on one sheet of paper are fast- 
 ened four small documents written in New England 
 between the years 1665 and 1689. Thus the collection 
 is not yet peculiarly rich in antiquities. 
 
 We now turn over a considerable number of articles, 
 consisting of letters, dinner-notes, orders, and signatures 
 from the most conspicuous Americans of past and pres- 
 ent times. However piquant it may be to the curious 
 in such matters to inspect the hasty undress and confi- 
 dential billets of living Presidents and Ex-Presidents, 
 members of Cabinets and Congress, and various other 
 eminent characters, the laws of decorum must not be 
 violated by transcribing and blazoning them here. But 
 see I we arrive at a mutilated letter from Benedict Ar- 
 nold. It is written in a large, clear, bold, regular hand, 
 and contains a complaint of his character having been 
 cruelly and unjustly aspersed ; concluding thus : " I 
 have the honor to be, with the greatest respect [here 
 some one has written in pencil, a Traitor]^ Your Excel- 
 lency's most obedient and very humble servant. B. 
 Arnold." 
 
 Soon following this is the rough draft of an animated 
 Address to the young men of Boston, dated Philadelphia, 
 1798, by the elder President Adams. It begins thus : 
 " Gentlemen, it is impossible for you to enter your own 
 Faneuil Hall, or to throw your eyes on the variegated 
 mountains and elegant islands around you, without rec- 
 ollecting the principles and actions of your fathers, and 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 315 
 
 feeling what is due to their example." After alluding 
 to the dangers of the country, he writes, " To arms, then, 
 my young friends ; to arms ! " — and concludes in an 
 equally characteristic strain. Some sheets after, we find 
 a letter from the same pen, written from Philadelphia to 
 Boston as early as 1776. It is addressed to a certain 
 Miss Polly Palmer, in a style of playful gallantry. The 
 whole of it is so interesting, that it shall be extracted 
 here entire. 
 
 "Philadelphia, July 5, 1776. 
 
 "Miss Polly: — Your favor of June 15, 1776, was handed 
 to me by the last post. I hold myself much obliged to you for 
 your attention to me, at this distance from those scenes, in which, 
 although I feel myself deeply interested, yet I can neither be an 
 actor nor spectator. 
 
 " You have given me (notwithstanding all your modest apolo- 
 gies) with a great deal of real elegance and perspicuity, a minute 
 and circumstantial narrative of the whole expedition to the lower 
 harbor, against the men of war. It is lawful, you know, to flatter 
 the ladies a little, at least if custom can make a thing lawful ; 
 but, without availing myself in the least degree of this license, I 
 can safely say, that, from your letter, and another from Miss 
 Paine to her brother, I was enabled to form a more adequate 
 idea of that whole transaction, than from all the other accounts 
 of it, both in the newspapers and private letters which have come 
 to my hands. 
 
 " In times as turbulent as these, commend me to the ladies for 
 historiographers ; the gentlemen are too much engaged in action, 
 - — the ladies are cooler spectators. There is a lady at the foot 
 of Pens-Hill, who obliges me from time to time with clearer and 
 fuller intelhgence than I can get from a whole committee of gen- 
 tlemen. 
 
 " I was a little mortified at the unlucky calm which retarded 
 
316 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 the militia from Braintree, Weymouth, and Hingham. I wished 
 that they might have had more than half the glory of the enter- 
 prise ; however, it satisfies me to reflect, that it was not their 
 fault, but the fault of the wind, they had not. 
 
 " I will enclose to you a Declaration, in which all America 
 is remarkably united. It completes a revolution, which makes 
 as great a figure in the history of mankind as any that has pre- 
 ceded it : — provided always that the ladies take care to record 
 the circumstances of it, for, by the experience I have had of the 
 other sex, they are either too lazy, or too active, to commemorate 
 them. 
 
 "A continuance of your correspondence, Miss Polly, would 
 much oblige me. — Compliments to Papa and Mamma, and the 
 whole family. — I begin now to flatter myself, however, that you 
 are situated in the safest place upon the continent. 
 
 " Howe's army and fleet are at Staten Island. But there is 
 a very numerous army at New York and New Jersey, to oppose 
 them. Like Noah's Dove, without its innocence, they can find 
 no rest. 
 
 " I am with much respect, esteem, and gratitude, your friend 
 and humble servant, 
 
 " John Adams." 
 
 The autograph-inspector must not, however, flatter 
 himself that he can always find a very interesting docu- 
 ment, apart from the mere signature or handwriting of the 
 eminent individual to whom it belonged. The every-day 
 correspondence, even of heroes themselves, is not particu- 
 larly heroic. You will turn over many a precious relic of 
 the officers engaged in our Revolutionary war, and find 
 perhaps nothing more important than an order upon a 
 quartermaster-general, or the detail of accidents un- 
 worthy of a permanent record. Yet sometimes a few 
 hastily written lines will transport you in imagination to 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 317 
 
 the heat and bustle of the contest ; as where Lord Stirling 
 enjoins Colonel Dayton, " besides watching the motions 
 of the enemy along the Sound, to get some certain intel- 
 ligence from Staten Island and New York of their prepa- 
 rations or intentions ; and I will be with you in the morn- 
 ing, but say nothing of that " ; — or where Archibald Bul- 
 lock, the first republican Governor of Georgia, begs Colo- 
 nel M'Intosh, commander of the Continental Battalion, 
 in a letter which is quoted by M'Call, the historian, im- 
 mediately to withdraw a sentinel from his door; " since," 
 he continues, " I act for a free people, in whom I have 
 an entire confidence and dependence, and would wish 
 upon all occasions to avoid ostentation " ; — or where 
 Thomas Cushing of Boston, in 1773, invites Elbridge 
 Gerry to a meeting of the Committee of Correspondence, 
 to prepare for the possibility of approaching war ; and 
 says in a postscript, " It is thought it will not be best to 
 mention abroad the particular occasion of this meeting " ; 
 — or when M' Henry writes to Governor Hawley, that 
 he had sat up two nights to produce two numbers of 
 some address to the people, and adds : " We go against 
 Arnold, but let us not be too sanguine. He is covered 
 by entrenchments. War is full of disappointments," 
 &c. ; — or where Rawlins Lowndes writes to Governor 
 Houston of Georgia, " I hope you will be able to keep 
 ofT the enemy until succors arrive to your assistance. 
 General Lincoln set off this morning, and the troops are 
 on their march." 
 
 It is curious, however, to observe the turn taken by the 
 correspondence of the same class of men as soon as the 
 great struggle for independence was over. They enter 
 now upon the field of local or general politics ; or they 
 
 27* 
 
318 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 look after their private affairs, which have evidently been 
 deranged by their long devotion to public service ; or they 
 order from an artist, an eagle, the badge of the Cincin- 
 nati ; or they inquire into the value of grants of land 
 voted them by legislatures ; or they solicit the office of 
 sheriff'; or they take measures to establish academies, 
 and improve society around them. 
 
 We now open the box lettered Distinguished Foreign- 
 ers. And first greets the eye a precious parcel contain- 
 ing several autographs of Sir Walter Scott. We have 
 this note to his favorite publisher and friend, James Bal- 
 lantyne : " Dear James, You have had two blank days, 
 I send you copy from fifty-two to sixty-four, thirteen 
 pages." We have an entire and closely written leaf of 
 the History of France in Tales of a Grandfather. We 
 have a billet without direction, sent probably to some 
 one waiting at the gate of Abbotsford, and couched in 
 these terms : " Sir Walter is particularly engaged just 
 now. Andrew Scott is welcome to look at the arms, 
 and Sir Walter encloses a trifle to help out the harvest- 
 wages." We have an order on a bookseller in this 
 fashion : " Mr. Scott will be obliged to Mr. Laing to 
 send him from his catalogue 
 
 9373 Life of J. C. Pilkington, 
 9378 Life of Letitia Pilkington." 
 And lastly, we have the solitary signature, Walter Scott, 
 which will no doubt be worth its full guinea before many 
 years. One peculiarity distinguishes the manuscripts of 
 this author from all others. It is that he never dots an i, 
 or crosses a t, or employs punctuation of any kind, except, 
 now and then, a solitary period. In this respect his writ- 
 ing strongly resembles the inscriptions of the ancients. 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 319 
 
 On comparing the sheet of copy which he furnished for 
 the printer with the published History of France, I find 
 a number of essential variations. The probability is, 
 that James Ballantyne, who was an accomplished schol- 
 ar, or perhaps the press-corrector, who, in Europe, is 
 often possessed of no mean acquirements, treated Sir 
 Walter's manuscripts pretty much after his own pleasure. 
 The magic weaver had dismissed his fabric, wrought in- 
 deed in the firmest texture and the most beautiful figures 
 and colors. But the finisher went carefully over the 
 whole, adjusted the irregular threads, removed the un- 
 sightly knots, stretched out every part to an agreeable 
 smoothness, and thus rendered the wonderful commodity 
 more fit for the general market. 
 
 Reluctantly laying aside these memorials of the Great 
 Enchanter, we take up a very polite letter from Joseph 
 Bonaparte, enclosing the autograph of his far more re- 
 nowned brother. It is on the outside of a note ad- 
 dressed by Napoleon to Joseph, when the latter was a 
 member of the Council of Five Hundred. It is written 
 on a thick, firm piece of paper, which has been clumsily 
 and hastily sealed with red sealing-wax. The seal is in- 
 scribed with the name of Bonaparte, in the French, not 
 the Italian mode of spelling it; and bears the device of 
 a female figure leaning on a lictor's axe and rods. The 
 superscription is this : — 
 
 " Concitoyen 
 Joseph Buonoparte 
 depute au conseil 
 des 500 
 Farisr 
 
320 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 Thus the autograph fixes its own date before 1800, 
 the Council of Five Hundred having been dissolved on 
 the 9th of November, 1799. In fact, it is not at all im- 
 possible that this very envelope covered a note from 
 Napoleon to his brother, penned during that agitating 
 week which preceded the death-blow of his country's 
 liberties. 
 
 If ever handwriting was characteristic, this little su- 
 perscription is decidedly so. Were a painter of genius 
 employed to represent a field of battle by a few lines and 
 dashes of a pen, he could not execute a closer resem- 
 blance than this. It is difficult to inspect it without be- 
 ing almost induced to stop one's ears. The z's and/s 
 indeed, unlike those of Scott, are dotted ; but the dots 
 look exactly like flying bombs. The i^'s are all duly 
 crossed; but they are crossed as was the bridge of Lodi; 
 and that imagination must be slow indeed, which does 
 not perceive that the hand which produced even this 
 little specimen was guided by a soul whose congenial 
 elements were power, rapidity, confusion, victory. 
 
 What next has found its way to this little world of 
 Autographs ? 
 
 Lafayette's toast : " The Holy Alliance of Nations in 
 the cause of equal rights and universal freedom." Then 
 follows the same in French, all in his own handwriting. 
 
 Next is an order of Southey the poet, on a bookseller, 
 for Aretino and Strabo. 
 
 Next, a note from Wordsworth ; but who will credit its 
 being entirely concerned with the letting of land, the lay- 
 ing down of crops, and the productiveness of a certain 
 blacksmith's shop ? 
 
 There is a characteristic scrap from John Wesley, 
 
• A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 321 
 
 though a few of the words are unintelligible. The read- 
 able part of it is this : — 
 
 " Within a few months I am brought much forward. A few 
 
 more, and I shall be no more seen. May I 
 
 "Your affectionate friend and brother, 
 
 "J. Wesley." 
 
 Two sonnets by Bowles, in his own handwriting, will 
 gratify the lover of poetry, and remind him of the high 
 testimony of Coleridge to the merits of that elegant 
 writer. 
 
 Next, a manuscript of two pages by William Cobbett, 
 which appears to be a diatribe against the English 
 government for its conduct towards America during the 
 last war. 
 
 Next, the beautiful lines of John Bowring, entitled, 
 " Whither shall my spirit fly ? " written in his own hand, 
 and marked by his own signature. 
 
 Next, a note from Lady Byron to her bookseller, order- 
 ing a number of theological works. 
 
 Next, a letter from Adam Clarke, inviting a distin- 
 guished clergyman of South Carolina, who was then in 
 London, to visit him. 
 
 Next, a long and interesting letter from Whitfield on 
 the subject of his school for orphans. 
 
 Dr. Franklin, in a letter lying near, says of Mr. Whit- 
 field himself: " I knew him intimately upwards of thirty 
 years. His integrity, disinterestedness, and indefatigable 
 zeal in prosecuting every good work, I have never seen 
 equalled, I shall never see excelled." 
 
 In turning to a large parcel of American autographs, 
 we observed the following valuable remark in a letter 
 
322 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. * 
 
 of Gouverneur Morris. Speaking of a distinguished 
 Southern politician, he says : " He seems to me one of 
 the best of men, who, even if they begin life wrong, soon 
 get right; and let me tell you, this thing is much more 
 rare than experienced men suppose." 
 
 A letter from Bartram, the celebrated botanist, now 
 attracts the eye. It is dated Charleston, S. C, April, 
 1775. To what friend it is addressed does not appear ; 
 but it is evidently dictated by a heart in which the love 
 of goodness and of botany are both prevalent. " I wrote 
 yesterday," he says, " to your son John, at Jamaica. I 
 begged him to associate with the best characters, and at 
 the same time I begged of him to take notice of the 
 plants and other natural productions of the island, and 
 to send you the seeds and fruits. I am resolved to take 
 another scout in the Indian countries. Believe I shall 
 go among the Cherokees ; thence through the Creek 
 nation to West Florida. I want to see the western 
 and mountainous parts of these Colonies, where I hope 
 I shall pick up some new things. It 's look'd upon as 
 hazardous, but I think there 's a probability of accom- 
 plishing it." 
 
 Of Spurzheim, all that could be obtained was one of 
 his printed lecture-tickets, on which he wrote the date, and 
 on which he also stamped his favorite seal, " Res^ non 
 verba qucesoJ^ Every relic of this distinguished man has 
 been in great demand ; and unfortunately the supply 
 was diminished by the application of his heirs for every 
 scrap on which he had written. 
 
 Despairing, however, to present anything approaching 
 an adequate idea, or even complete catalogue, of the 
 various treasures of this collection, we will only further 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 323 
 
 remark, that the curious in these matters may here in- 
 spect entire letters or notes of James Hogg, General 
 Braddock, Haydon the distinguished painter and writer, 
 Lord Brougham, of whom there are two specimens, Ten- 
 nant author of Anster Fair, Dr. Chalmers, John Gait, 
 Lucy Aiken, Dr. Parr, John Wilson (a note to William 
 Blackwood), Granville Sharp, Clarkson to Joseph Lan- 
 caster, Thomas Campbell, Shee the poet and artist, Rog- 
 ers the poet, Martin the painter, Mrs. Grant of Laggan, 
 J. E,. M'Culloch, Mrs. M'Lehose the Clarinda of Robert 
 Burns, Dibdin the bibliographer, Wilberforce, Dr. Ward- 
 law, Rev. Rowland Hill, Wiffen the excellent translator 
 of Tasso, Marshal Ney, William Godwin, Miss Jews- 
 bury the late Mrs. Fletcher, Godoy the Prince of Peace, 
 Miss Frances Wright, Rev. Matthew Henry the Bible 
 commentator, the Duke of Wellington, Matthews the 
 comedian, Francis Jeffrey, Mr. Alison of Edinburgh, 
 Leigh Hunt, Scoresby the Arctic navigator, Robert Owen, 
 William Roscoe, Mrs. Hemans to a friend on songs and 
 song-writing, Lockhart, Napier the present editor of the 
 Edinburgh Review, Baron Humboldt (an elegant letter 
 of introduction to the late Stephen Elliott, written in 
 French), George Canning, General Oglethorpe when in 
 Georgia, Dr. Fothergill to John Bartram, De Quincey 
 the opium-eater, James the novelist. General Moreau, 
 Miss Edgeworth, and Miss Martineau. 
 
 The collection which we have now attempted partially 
 to describe is liberally open to the inspection of every 
 respectable inquirer. Any important contribution to it 
 is received with gratitude by the proprietor. Should the 
 present essay awaken attention to the subject, the writer 
 will recur with increased pleasure to his " Week spent 
 among Autographs." 
 
324 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 ANOTHER WEEK AMONG THE AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 Several valuable acquisitions have been made to the 
 collection of I. K. Tefft, Esq., and his kindness permits 
 the following notices of them to be communicated to the 
 public. 
 
 We have, first, a letter from John Pynchon to his son 
 in London, dated Boston, May 18, 1672. This was 
 forty-two years after the settlement of Boston. The 
 sight of this manuscript carries us back to " the day of 
 small things " in that now populous and extended city. 
 We see in imagination its three or four churches scat- 
 tered among the three hills of the place. We see its few 
 crooked streets (a quality which they still possess) wind- 
 ing about to accommodate the gathering settlers. Bos- 
 ton at this period contained probably three thousand in- 
 habitants. Even then they were a noble set of men. 
 Only eleven years after the date of this letter, when the 
 Colony of Massachusetts fell under the displeasure of 
 Charles II., who issued a decree against its charter, a 
 legal town-meeting of the freemen was held, and the 
 question was put to vote, whether it was their wish that 
 the General Court should resign the charter and the privi- 
 leges therein granted, and it was resolved in the negative 
 unanimously. Soon after. Sir Edmund Andros was 
 appointed the first royal governor ; and his administra- 
 tion proving arbitrary and oppressive, the people took 
 forcible possession of the fort in Boston, and of the Cas- 
 tle in the harbor, turned the guns Upon the frigate Rose, 
 and compelled her to surrender, seized the Governor, and 
 held him a close prisoner under guard in the Castle. 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 325 
 
 These were evidently the true progenitors of those sons 
 who, in 1765, resisted the Stamp Act, and in 1773 emp- 
 tied the tea-chests into the dock. 
 
 The letter before us, however, which begins with " Son 
 Joseph," is only an effusion of anxiety and complaint from 
 a loving father, who had heard no tidings of his son for 
 a long time. He seems to have resided at Springfield, 
 Mass., and to have made a journey all the way to Bos- 
 ton to hear something of his son. Though short, the 
 letter is full of religious expressions. How different in 
 this respect from most letters in modern days ! The 
 writer prays that his son may be delivered from the tem- 
 pest of the times, and so with his earnest prayers he 
 leaves him to the Lord. 
 
 The next specimen (we take them promiscuously, 
 without classification) is of high value. It is no less 
 than a long letter from the celebrated poet Wieland, 
 author of Oberon. It is addressed to Pfeffel, himself a 
 jurist and diplomatist of considerable eminence. Many 
 an enthusiastic German collector would cheerfully give 
 a small bit of his little finger to be possessed of this 
 treasure. It is observed by Menzel, one of the ablest 
 living German critics, that "it w^as "Wieland who first 
 restored to German poetry the free and fearless glance of 
 a child of the world ; a natural grace, a taste for cheer- 
 ful merriment, and the power of affording it. The cheer- 
 ful, amiable, refined Wieland," he continues, " a genius 
 exhaustless in grace and lightness, in wit and jest, 
 banished the unnatural from German poetry, discov- 
 ered nature in the world as it is, and taught the na- 
 tional mind to move easily, firmly, and in harmony." 
 If we trusted this description alone, we might suppose 
 
 28 
 
326 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 that a German would value an autograph of Wieland 
 as highly as an Englishman would prize one of Pope 
 or Addison, or an American one of Irving. But, unfor- 
 tunately, the delicate wit, sparkling fancy, and fascinat- 
 ing style of Wieland are, in too many of his works, 
 brought into the service of an Epicurean and sceptical 
 spirit. It does not diminish, but rather enhances, the 
 value of the specimen before us, that it was written when 
 Wieland was quite a young man, — only about seven- 
 teen years old; for we have examples enough of his 
 composition at more advanced periods, and our curiosity 
 is particularly gratified by seeing how the youthful poet 
 and scholar expressed himself, so long before he felt the 
 public eyes of admiration and criticism fastened upon 
 him. The letter itself is of sufficient interest to be ex- 
 tracted entire. We make use, with a few immaterial 
 alterations, of a translation furnished to Mr. Tefft by 
 some German friend. 
 
 " GoTTiNGEN, April 16, 1750. 
 "Dearest and best Aulic Councillor :* — 
 
 " I have been waiting three or four days for the departure of 
 the mail, to give you some account of my journey and happy 
 arrival at Gottingen. Our fate, as far down as Durlach, you 
 have learned from Mr. Wild. I arrived safely at Frankfort, 
 where I stayed the greatest part of the time with Mr. Sarasin, 
 and after three days went to Cassel, where I experienced a kind 
 reception from the Countess. She desired me to let the mail- 
 coach proceed, and promised to procure me a private conveyance 
 for Gottingen. An acquaintance of hers conducted me through 
 the whole town, and gave me a sight of everything remarkable. 
 I had her invitation for supper, breakfast, and dinner. I related 
 
 ^f An Aulic Councillor was a member of the Imperial Council, who also 
 exercised the functions of judges of the Supreme Court of the German 
 Empire. 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 327 
 
 to her the conduct of her son, — his faults, his indolence, — with- 
 out the least reserve. She was much pleased when she heard 
 that, notwithstanding all of them, he still retained the affection of 
 yourself and Mr. Lerfe. She promises to aid you in some suit- 
 able method to effect his correction. Full confidence is placed in 
 your skill and experience in education, and she will shortly 
 write to Colmar. The letter I received at Frankfort from the 
 Count gave her a great deal of uneasiness, as it spoke of a rising 
 upon his right shoulder. It was her wish that he should drink 
 beer in lieu of wine at his meals. May I beseech you, my dear- 
 est Mr. Pfeffel, to console her on these two points in your next 
 monthly letter. She truly deserves all the attention and pains 
 that you can take on her account. She is the noblest woman, 
 the best mother, — so without all pretension, and full of kindness. 
 Never have I seen so many good qualities united in one woman. 
 Do not consider this a blind judgment of mine ; on the contrary, 
 I was fully prejudiced against her ere I knew her so complete- 
 ly, and I feel persuaded that, after the visit she intends pay- 
 ing you, you will be of the same opinion with me. The Count, 
 as much as I esteem his good heart, is not worthy of such a 
 mother. May you soon be able to give her better news of him. 
 She expects none before the expiration of three months ; but 
 flatters herself that her contemplated measures, together with his 
 governors, will produce a change of mind. She gave me a letter 
 of introduction to the Pastor Feder, and desired me to write to 
 her from time to time. 
 
 " Monday, the 10th, I arrived here at Gottingen. Your son 
 is perfectly well. We board together with young Stonar (an 
 excellent youth), Escher from Zurich, and Zwickig ; and as our 
 chambers are close together, we can always be in company. He 
 has given me his entire confidence, and I think we shall continue 
 in the closest harmony. How great is my good fortune to culti- 
 vate that friendship with the son which his noblest father has 
 honored me with ! To-morrow our lectures commence, four of 
 which we have in common, and we can recite together. 
 
328 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 " I cannot express my thanks for your letters of introduction to 
 Mr. and Mrs. Less, and the kindness and indulgence you have 
 favored me with. It is my daily wish that an opportunity may 
 occur to enable me by deeds to show that I am not ungrateful. 
 
 " I am much pleased with this city and its establishments, but 
 never walked a more costly pavement. The purse must be con- 
 tinually in hand, and everything is paid for fourfold. 
 
 " May you, my dearest and best Aulic Councillor, continue in 
 uninterrupted health. Remember me in the circles of your ami- 
 able friends, your dearest consort, Mr. Lerfe, Luce and his wor- ' 
 thy companion, the country counsellor, most kindly ; and accept 
 assurances of my everlasting attachment and regard. Your obe- 
 dient friend and servant, 
 
 " WiELAND." 
 
 The next is a truly precious memorial, — a note to 
 Alexander Cunningham from Dr. Hugh Blair, author of 
 the " Sermons " and " Lectures on Rhetoric." Both the 
 authorship and the subject-matter induce us to extract it 
 entire, although it has already been printed in Currie's 
 Life of Burns. 
 
 " Dear Sir, — As you told me that you had in view in the 
 new Edition of Mr. Burn's works to publish some of his Letters, 
 I now send you enclosed, (as I promised you,) his Letter of 
 thanks to me upon his leaving Edinburgh. It is so much marked 
 by the stroke of his Genius, that I thought it worth while to pre- 
 sent it, among letters from some other persons. If you think it 
 proper to be published with other Letters of his, I have no ob- 
 jection. You wiU please take a copy of it, and send me back the 
 Original, which I mean to keep. I would have called with it, 
 but I am still confined by some remains of the Gout, and by a 
 Cold which I contracted on coming to town. 
 
 " Yours, most faithfully, 
 
 " Hugh Blaie. 
 
 " Argyle Square, Friday, Id Decemher.^^ 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 329 
 
 It will be seen here that Dr. Blair in a few instances 
 retains the antique fashion of beginning his nouns-sub- 
 stantive with capital letters. Another peculiarity, and 
 identical with Sir "Walter Scott's, which we formerly 
 noticed, is, that he rarely dots an i or crosses a t, and is 
 much too sparing of his punctuation. Out of the thirty- 
 eight small f s occurring in the note, to say nothing of 
 several neglected /s, only five are dotted. What could 
 have been the secret cause of this distinction ? Was it 
 mere caprice, or was it everlasting principle ? Perhaps 
 a few dots were conscientiously sprinkled here and there 
 to preserve the just rights of this excellent little letter 
 from utter prostration. The i's fare a great deal worse, 
 for they have not the sign of a cross from the beginning 
 to the end of the note. There is nothing, not even a 
 difference in length, to distinguish them from the lofty 
 Z's. The entire note, however, is written in a large, bold, 
 legible hand ; indeed, almost wonderful for a man of 
 about eighty years of age, which Dr. Blair must have 
 been at the time of writing it. Do we then see before us 
 the actual chirography in which were penned those beau- 
 tiful and admirable Sermons that have charmed so many 
 thousand readers of taste and pious sensibility, as well 
 as those far-famed Lectures, which, in spite of some de- 
 fects, have formed and guided the taste of the last and 
 present generations of English and American scholars ? 
 Emotions, at once classical and sacred, may well be ex- 
 cused for overflowing at the sight of a relic like this. , 
 Nor can we be induced to dismiss it without fondly lin- 
 gering over it a little longer, and detecting even the slight- 
 est peculiarity which may transport us in imagination 
 into the familiar presence of the much-honored dead. 
 
 28=* 
 
830 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 Behold, then, the highly decorated flourish of the initial 
 H in the signature of Hugh Blair! See the long and 
 graceful dash which the hand of the octogenarian struck 
 forth upon the superscription of the note! Who can 
 fail to perceive, even in these minute characteristics, the 
 external traces of that elegant mind which had so long 
 been employed in the fervent contemplation of beauty 
 in all its forms and manifestations ? 
 
 We must also notice the large, thick, black wafer, 
 which mutely tells the story of some recent bereave- 
 ment in the family of the venerable sage. The irregular 
 folds, which considerably differ from a perfect parallelo- 
 gram, shall be charitably ascribed to the trembling hand 
 of age, or to the unavoidable hurry of the moment. 
 Doubtless the writer had many billets to answer, and 
 many attentions to respond to, on his occasional visits 
 to town. Nor shall criticism be severe on the slight 
 mistake at the beginning of the note, where, in the ex- 
 pression " Mr. Burn's works," by a wrong location of the 
 apostrophe, the poet's name is written as if it were Burn 
 instead of Burns. We remember that some enemy of 
 the Doctor during his lifetime, goaded by the fact that 
 ten editions of the first volume of his Sermons were 
 called for in one year after their publication, malignantly 
 sent forth to the world an appalling list of all sorts of 
 errors discovered in that single volume of a Professor of 
 Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the University of Edin- 
 burgh. A far different feeling, even a sacred and rever- 
 ent curiosity, has actuated us in thus examining, as it 
 were, the very shreds and dust of this hallowed instru- 
 ment, which we now reluctantly dismiss. 
 
 Following this, we take up what must be allowed on 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 331 
 
 all hands to be quite an autographical gem. It is the 
 superscription of a note, addressed by Frederic the Great 
 to his confidential friend and correspondent, the distin- 
 guished Baron de la Motte Fouque. The paper em- 
 ployed by his Majesty was of a thick, coarse, bluish- 
 white. But what had the greatest warrior of the age, 
 when writing to one of his greatest generals, to do with 
 pink-colored, hot-pressed, wire-wove, gilt-edged, billet- 
 doux fabrics ? The superscription is written in a noble 
 and beautiful style, — bold, grand, flowing, as if execut- 
 ed by a hand accustomed to the victories of the Seven 
 Years' War, — at the same time, however, perfectly dis- 
 tinct and legible, as if characteristic of a monarch 
 who was equally inclined to the pursuits of literature 
 and taste. The leading address is in French, after this 
 fashion : — 
 
 " To my General of Infantry, 
 
 The Baron de la Motte Fouque, 
 
 at 
 
 Brandenburg." 
 
 At one corner of the superscription is written in the 
 German language this announcement : " Accompanied 
 by a box of cherries, and two melons." 
 
 On another fold of the paper is written in French, in 
 Fouque's handwriting, which confers on it a high ad- 
 ditional value, the following notice ; — 
 " Sans-Souci, July 5, 1766. 
 Invitation to come to Sans-Souci, 
 together with the reply." 
 
 The autograph is still further enriched by a distinct 
 and finely preserved seal of the royal coat of arms. The 
 device is gorgeously beautiful. 
 
332 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 Two intelligent Germans, to whom we have shown 
 the whole specimen, much doubt whether, after all, it 
 contains the veritable handwriting of the renowned 
 monarch. They assert that Frederic, having only had a 
 French education, was incapable of writing such correct 
 German as the inscription in the corner of the note. 
 They think it probable that the whole direction proceed- 
 ed from the pen of the royal secretary. If these sugges- 
 tions should prove correct, of course the delightful visions 
 of our imagination respecting the correspondence of the 
 handwriting with Frederic's character must be dispelled 
 into air, unless we suppose that the secretary himself, by 
 long and intimate acquaintance with his master, had 
 imbibed or unconsciously imitated some of his lofty 
 qualities. 
 
 There is next a very curious historical document, 
 penned by the Earl of Annandale in the year 1707, in 
 the midst of the troubles which distracted Scotland at 
 that period. Many a letter has been printed far less in- 
 teresting than this. It transports us to the very field of 
 battle, where we are told of prisoners coming in and 
 Highlanders threatening attacks, and the Duke of Ar- 
 gyle having returned to the camp, and eight score of the 
 enemy having just been seen climbing the hills, &c., and 
 all written on a piece of paper so small as to show the 
 extreme scarcity of that article even in the government 
 camp. 
 
 Lo ! another precious relic ! A leaf from the Diary of 
 Henry Kirke White, the poet. We all remember that 
 poor Henry passed some time in an attorney's office be- 
 fore he was assisted by Mr. Wilberforce to prepare for 
 a university education. While breathing that ungenial 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 333 
 
 atmosphere, he committed to paper this brief skeleton- 
 record of a few of his unhappy days. The very sight of 
 it is dreary and melancholy, like the writer's heart. All 
 that we here learn of his occupations is, that on Satur- 
 day, the 8th of some month, he was engaged in " en- 
 tering up the Hall books ; on Monday, the 10th, copy- 
 ing all the morning certain letters for Mr. Enfield; on 
 Wednesday, fair-copying a schedule of fines and amerce- 
 ments ; on Thursday, do. do. another copy on unstamped 
 parchment ; on Friday, the 14th, drawing advertisement 
 of two heifers, the property of Edward Musson, being 
 stolen or strayed out of his close in the parish of Rad- 
 ford. Attending the printer therewith," &c., &c. 
 
 One blessed blank appears amidst these worldly de- 
 tails. It is that of Sunday the 9th. Nothing is record- 
 ed under this date, except the simple day. And one can- 
 not but vividly sympathize with such a being as Kirke 
 White for this short though happy respite from labors 
 which he must have loathed. Henry Kirke White's 
 Sabbath I It is almost a subject for a poem. Imagina- 
 tion follows him to his closet, to his church, to his lonely 
 evening walk, to the long portion of his night spent 
 over his Bible, his Milton, or some of England's noblest 
 divines. The handwriting of this specimen is manly, 
 and elegantly plain. 
 
 This is succeeded by another rarity, — a letter from 
 the celebrated George Whitfield, dated London, June 13, 
 1755, then in the forty-first year of his age, to his nephew 
 James Whitfield, at Savannah in Georgia. It is so char- 
 acteristic, that it must here be inserted entire. 
 
 " My Dear Jemmy, — I wrote to you a few days ago by a 
 Carolina ship, and since that have received your two letters, 
 
334 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 which convinced me that you was not ungrateful. May this 
 crime of crimes in respect either to God or man, be never justly 
 laid to your charge ! Remember your present, as well as future 
 and eternal all, in a great measure depends on the improvement 
 of a few growing years. Be steady and diligent and pious 7iow, 
 and you will find that God will do wonders for you. The Cap- 
 tain is mightily pleased ; and your father, notwithstanding his 
 affection to see you, is glad you are provided for. Your sister 
 Fanny will soon be married, and Fanny Greville is already dis- 
 posed of. Her husband (a young attorney of Bath) has sent me 
 a very obliging letter. Oh that my relations were born of God ! 
 I hope you will not rest without it. To encourage you in out- 
 ward matters, I have sent you, in part of payment, some loaf- 
 sugar, which I thought would be a good commodity. Your father 
 also hath sent you some buckles, knit breeches, and a dolphin 
 cheese, with a letter. All which I hope will come to hand. 
 Write often ; work hard, and pray much, and beheve me to be, 
 my dear Jemmy, 
 
 " Your affectionate uncle and assured friend, 
 
 « G. W." 
 
 Following this is a curious affair, which appears to be 
 enveloped in a little mystery. It is something like a 
 mourning-card, containing an inscription by the cele- 
 brated Lavater. It was lately given to Dr. Sprague of 
 Albany by Lavater's son-in-law, at Zurich, in Switzer- 
 land, the birthplace and residence of the great physiog- 
 nomist. The following is an exact translation of the 
 whole inscription : — 
 
 " To a Friend after my Death. 
 Let everything be a sin to thee, and that 
 alone, which separates thee from the 
 Lord. 18th November, 1794. L." 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 335 
 
 The sentiment is so excellent, that we will attempt to 
 give it here a metrical clothing : — 
 
 Detest as sinful, and detest alone, 
 
 Whate'er removes thee from the Eternal One. 
 
 Another card succeeds, of a different kind, but of still 
 more value, probably, as an autograph. It is from the 
 celebrated Goethe, who asks of Professor Riemer the 
 loan, for a short time, of the Bohemian Grammar. This, 
 by the way, is an excellent method of borrowing books. 
 The card is a kind of substantial acknowledgment, 
 which leads at once to the recovery of a missing volume, 
 often of more value to its owner than money. When 
 will the borrowers of books exercise consciences void of 
 offence in this matter, and be as scrupulous in restoring 
 to the proprietor some cherished author, or the frag- 
 ment of some precious set of twelve or twenty volumes, 
 as they are in honoring a note at the bank, or discharg- 
 ing the bill of a flourishing tradesman ? Until a more 
 scrupulous punctuality on this subject shall prevail, the 
 morality and the civilization of literature will be far from 
 perfect. To return to Goethe's card, we have only fur- 
 ther to observe, that the signature alone appears to be 
 the handwriting of the great magician-poet, while the 
 rest of the manuscript probably proceeded from his aman- 
 uensis. 
 
 Mr. Tefft has recently received, from a friend at the 
 North, an original manuscript letter of William Penn, 
 which he regards as one of the most valuable autographs 
 in his collection. Letters written by this distinguished 
 man are extreme rarities at the present day, Mr. Tefft 
 having hitherto never been able to procure more than a 
 
336 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 bare signature, cut out from some parchment document. 
 This letter is precious on more than one account, — not 
 only as being a veritable original from the hand of the 
 far-famed Quaker, but as exhibiting the characteristic 
 qualities of the man. We see in it his downright sim- 
 plicity, his quaintness of style, his remarkable force of 
 mind, his rare mingling of religious humility with a bold 
 and decided line of policy. The reader may be remind- 
 ed that Penn, at the date of the letter, was forty-two 
 years of age. Only four years previously, he had pur- 
 chased, settled, and visited his colonial establishment in 
 America. He had now returned to England, and had 
 taken lodgings near the court of King James IL, to exer- 
 cise his influence with that monarch in behalf of his phil- 
 anthropic schemes. In this situation, it seems, he had 
 heard of some unhappy disorders that had disturbed his 
 infant colony in America. The letter before us is chiefly 
 occupied in suggesting measures to suppress them. Car- 
 olinians will be interested in the allusion to the respect- 
 ability and substantial condition of many of the original 
 settlers of their native State. 
 
 Thomas Lloyd, to whom the letter is addressed, suc- 
 ceeded William Penn as President of the Colony. He 
 appears to have been an unsalaried officer. Judging 
 from several of Penn's expressions, we should conjecture 
 that he was dissatisfied with Lloyd's want of energy in 
 suppressing the disturbances, though he shrinks from pre- 
 ferring any direct complaint. His mind certainly seems 
 to have been wrought up into a sad gust of perplexities 
 and anxieties. But now for the letter itself. The or- 
 thography is exactly transcribed. 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 337 
 
 " "Worminghurst, 17th 9 mo 
 1686. 
 "Dear Tho: Lloyd 
 
 " Thyn by way of new york is with me, & first I am extreamly 
 sorry to hear that Pennsilvania is so Litigious, and brutish. The 
 report reaches this place with yt disgrace, yt we have lost I am 
 told, 15000 persons this fall, many of ym men of great estates yt 
 are gone and going for Carolina. O that some one person would 
 in ye zeal of a true Phinias & ye meekness of a Christian spirit 
 together, stand up for our good beginnings, and bring a savour of 
 righteousness over that ill savour. I cared not what I gave such 
 an one, if it were an 100£ or more out of myn own pocket, I would 
 and will do it, if he be to be found, for ye neglect such a care of 
 ye publick might draw on his own affaires, but I hope to be 
 ready in the Spring, my selfe, and I think, with power and reso- 
 lution to do ye Just thing, lett it fall on whom it will. O thomas, 
 I cannot express to thee ye greif yt is upon me for it. but my 
 private affaires as well as my publick ones, will not lett me budge 
 hence yet ; tho I desire it with so much zeal, and for yt reason 
 count myself a Prisoner here. 
 
 " I waite for answear of yt about ye laws ; for yt of ye money, 
 I am better satisfied, tho' Quo warrantos at every turn have 
 formerly threatened. I hope some of those yt once feared I 
 had to much powr will now see I have not enough, & yt ex- 
 cess of powr does not ye mischief yt Licentiousness does to a 
 State, for tho ye one oppresses ye pocket, the other turns all to 
 confusion ; order & peace with poverty is certainly better. It 
 almost tempts me to deliver up to ye K. [King] & lett a merce- 
 nary Gover'r have ye taming of them. O where is fear of god 
 & common decency, pray do wt thou canst to appease or punish 
 such persons, & if in office, out with ym, forthwith. If J. White 
 and P. Robson be of ym, displace them Immediately. Thorn, 
 think not hard of it because of charge in comeing, being and goe- 
 ing. I vjHI be accountable for yt, if thou please but to do yt 
 29 
 
338 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 friendly part, lett T. Hor : J. Har : J. Clap, R. Tur : J. Good : 
 T. Sim, see this & who else thou pleasest. if you have any love 
 to me, & desire to see me & myn with you, o prevent these 
 things that you may not add to my exercises. If a few such 
 weighty men mett apart & waited on god for his minde & wis- 
 dom & in ye sense & authority of yt, you appeared for ye hon- 
 our of god, ye reputation of the governour & credit & prosperity 
 of ye Country, to check such persons, calling ym before you as 
 my ffds [friends] ; men of Credit with me ; & sett your united 
 Shoulder to it, methinks it may be better, to ye Lord I leave 
 you saluting you all in endless Love, being & remaining, 
 
 " Your true and loving 
 ffriend 
 
 "Wm. Penn. 
 " Salute me to thy Dr 
 
 wife, tell her she must 
 
 remember her name in 
 
 my business, also to 
 
 thy children. 
 " give my love to ye Gover'r * &c. 
 
 «P. S. 
 
 " Ffor Bait. & Sas-quhanagh [Susquehannah] I have not ended, 
 being otherwise stopt too, I waite my time, but doubt not being 
 upon good terms, lett none be brittle about my not being there 
 yet, I come with all ye speed I can ;'''tho I must say, twere better 
 all were in another order first ; for these disorders — strike ym 
 back I have had some regard to in staying ; which is a sad dis- 
 appointment to me & ye country. 
 
 * "Who this Governor was, it is difficult to imagine. The historical rec- 
 ords of Pennsylvania mention no presiding officer as being there at this 
 time, except Thomas Lloyd himself. He is designated, however, as " Presi- 
 dent," and there may have been a magistrate subordinate to him with the 
 title of Governor. 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 339 
 
 " The East Jersey Prop'rs believe thy report about my letter 
 to yee. I am not with ym once in two months, they meet 
 weekly, they are very angry with G. Lowry. Salute me to 
 Frds There away, old Lewis & wife ; also to Capt. Berry, I have 
 sent his letters as directed, press him about land for me in East 
 Jersey. I shall fall heavy on G. L. if I live, for denying him in 
 my wrong, till all be taken up yt is desirable. Speak to G. L. 
 thyself about it, for wt he has done will be overturned (I per- 
 ceive) by ym here, & he served. Vale. 
 
 " Myn salute yee." 
 
 Allusion has already been once or twice made to Dr. 
 Alexander Murray. This gentleman was Professor in 
 the University of Edinburgh, and the greatest Oriental 
 scholar of his day. He died about the year 1813. He 
 was author of a " History of the European Languages," 
 "Life of Bruce the Traveller," and other works. We 
 have before us a few extremely interesting memorials of 
 his genius and pursuits. One of them is a sheet of paper 
 crowded in every part with some of the exercises of the 
 great linguist in acquiring a foreign tongue. Among 
 his other accomplishments, he was an elegant poet ; and 
 accordingly, we have here a few rough but very curious 
 sketches from his Muse. The following unfinished stan- 
 za, which appears to be the commencement of a song 
 intended for some festive club, will strongly remind us 
 of the daring, reckless tone of Robert Burns : — 
 
 " Though whingean' carles should vex their hearts, 
 
 And ca' our social meetings sin, 
 Awa! we ken their halie arts ! 
 
 An honest man defies their din. 
 When brithers twelve in Session sat, 
 
 And He was Head that ken'd them a', 
 The Deil came ben, and claim'd his debt, 
 
 The sourest man " 
 
340 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 Probably he was here about to write amang them a\ 
 But perceiving that it would make a false rhyme, he 
 threw by the whole affair, which has thus remained in- 
 complete. 
 
 On another scrap of paper, we find a few elegiac stan- 
 zas, quite unfinished, and full of interlineary corrections 
 and erasures, but intermingled with beautiful touches of 
 poetry. 
 
 A gentleman of Charleston, S. C. has recently pre- 
 sented Mr. Tefft with a letter addressed to him seven- 
 teen years ago, by the celebrated Macaulay. It was 
 written when both himself and his correspondent were 
 members of the University of Cambridge in England, 
 and bears evident marks of that resplendent talent which 
 has since so frequently dazzled and delighted Europe and 
 America. 
 
 Another gentleman of Charleston has contributed a 
 signature of General Moultrie, attached to some public in- 
 strument, and accidentally found in the street. Moultrie 
 had a curious device or flourish with which he ornament- 
 ed his signature. It resembled more than anything else 
 a fortification^ with its bastions, its salient angles, its re- 
 treating angles, its squares, compartments, &c. Might 
 not one fancy that there was always about him a kind 
 of unconscious memory of the most important crisis of 
 his life, and which outwardly expressed itself in this very 
 characteristic manner ? 
 
 We have already mentioned the collection of the Eev. 
 Dr. Raffles of Liverpool. We are now permitted to pre- 
 sent the following extract of a letter from that gentle- 
 man to Mr. Tefft, respecting some portion of his collec- 
 tion, and we must confess that the extraordinary value 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 341 
 
 and magnificence of its contents far surpass our utmost 
 previous conceptions. 
 
 " You ask me about my collection of Autographs, my method 
 of arrangement, &c., &c. I have several series. The first and 
 principal series consists of the autographs, chiefly letters, of em- 
 inent and remarkable persons of all classes and countries, from 
 the time of Henry VII. of England to the present day. These 
 are put upon tinted paper of folio size ; one leaf of the paper con- 
 taining the autograph, and the other the portrait, or something 
 else illustrative of the history of the individual : — for instance, 
 with Addison's autograph you will find his portrait after Sir God- 
 frey Kneller, and an original number of the Spectator. With 
 Dr. Johnson's, you will find a view of the house in which he was 
 born, at Litchfield, and the house in which he died, &c. This 
 collection I hope soon to bind, and expect it will amount to 
 twenty volumes. To this I intend adding a supplementary vol- 
 ume of Biographical Notices. This volume is alphabetically ar- 
 ranged. 
 
 " 2d. My American collection. This is not yet arranged. It 
 contains the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, — one of 
 which alone is wanting,* — all the Presidents, with many of the 
 Vice-Presidents and Governors of States ; Divines, and other 
 public characters, — civil, naval, military, and miscellaneous. I 
 have not yet determined as to the way in which I shall arrange 
 these ; but if on folio tinted paper like the others, I should think 
 that it would amount to eight or ten volumes. 
 
 " 3d. Authors. I have a large collection of letters of authors 
 of all kinds, which I intend to bind up alphabetically, with por- 
 traits in quarto, leaving a blank leaf between each letter for bio- 
 graphical notices. This will contain many duplicates of such as 
 are in the first-mentioned series, and to these I may perhaps add 
 Artists. 
 
 * George Taylor. 
 29* 
 
342 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 " 4th. Nobility. Containing duplicates of such as are in the 
 first collection by reason of their celebrity, or in the third in con- 
 sequence of their being authors ; or such as, having nothing but 
 their rank to distinguish them, are already in neither of the above 
 series. 
 
 "5th. To the above classes I may add several distinct and 
 separate volumes, which are complete in themselves ; e. g. : — 
 
 " A volume containing one hundred and twenty autographs, let- 
 ters of the late Rev. Andrew Fuller, — quarto. 
 
 " A volume containing letters of Fuller, Ryland, Fawcett, 
 Pearce (of Birmingham), &c., — folio. 
 
 "A volume of letters to George Whitfield, all indorsed by 
 himself, — folio. 
 
 " Do. Do. — quarto. 
 
 " The entire MS. of James Montgomery's Pelican Isle, with 
 other poems, composing his last published volume, — quarto. 
 
 " The entire MS. of Wiffen's translation of Tasso, — 2 vols, 
 quarto. 
 
 " The Church Book of Oliver Heywood, the rejected Minister. 
 — An invaluable little book, written wholly with his own hand, 
 containing his covenant, and that of the church, and biographical 
 notices of the members. 
 
 " A Thesis, by Dr. Watts. 
 
 *' A Manuscript (Algebra), by Abraham Sharp of Bradford, 
 the friend and correspondent of Sir Isaac Newton, — a 4to vol. 
 
 " A considerable collection of foreigners, not included in the 
 first series. 
 
 " A collection of Notes, which will form several volumes oc- 
 tavo. 
 
 " A folio volume of documents on vellum. 
 
 " A folio volume of franks of the Peers at the coronation of 
 George IV., &c., &c., &c. 
 
 " I am, sir, &c. 
 
 "Thos. Raffles." 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 343 
 
 In a letter recently received, Dr. Raffles says: " Pray, 
 are your Signers complete ? I look with mingled emo- 
 tions of sorrow and hope upon the only hiatus I have in 
 mine." 
 
 We formerly inquired why so considerable a propor- 
 tion of Autograph-collectors appear to be clergymen. 
 Might not a phrenologist account for it by the disposi- 
 tion to reverence, which may be supposed to be common 
 between both descriptions of persons ? The same senti- 
 ment which conducts the mind to the venerable records 
 of Scripture, and to the Ancient of Days, may guide 
 them also to other relics of antiquity, and every surviv- 
 ing memorial of greatness. The following paragraph 
 from the newspapers exhibits the taste for autographs in 
 a rather curious form : — 
 
 " The Rev. Dr. Cotton, Ordinary of Newgate, has, for a long 
 series of years, been devoting his attention to the collection of 
 dying speeches, trials, &c. of celebrated criminals, as well as their 
 autographs; and whenever they could possibly be obtained, of 
 their portraits also. The Rev. Ordinary likewise possesses an 
 extraordinary collection of Chinese drawings, representing the 
 torments in after-life upon evil-doers, according to Chinese 
 beHef." 
 
 In our first essay on Autographs, we complained that 
 the English Cyclopsedias contained very scanty and 
 trivial notices of the subject. A friend has since kindly 
 sent to us a volume of the " Dictionnaire de la Con- 
 versation et de la Lecture," from which we translate the 
 following article, as an appropriate conclusion to our au- 
 tographic lucubrations. 
 
 " Autograph, from the Greek aiitos, self, and grapho, to write, 
 signifies a writing from an author's own hand. If the men of for- 
 
344 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 mer generations had attached the same value that we do to auto- 
 graph manuscripts of great writers, to letters, and to the signa- 
 tures of celebrated personages, we should neither be compelled to 
 regret the loss of so many Greek, Latin, and French productions, 
 of which there remain scarcely the titles or even a melancholy 
 remembrance, nor the destruction of so many letters, memoirs, 
 and diplomatic documents, which might have assisted in dissipat- 
 ing the darkness and the contradictions that envelop the history 
 of ancient times and the Middle Ages, and in filling up the chasms 
 with which it abounds. In countries where elementary instruc- 
 tion is as yet but little diffused, in ages when it was unknown, 
 and even at very recent epochs, when it was too much neglected, 
 avaricious, ignorant, or superstitious heirs sold by weight, or de- 
 livered to the flames, without scruple and without examination, all 
 papers which had been transmitted to them by deceased relatives. 
 This is no longer the case at the present day, especially at Paris. 
 The preservation of papers and of autograph writings has be- 
 come the object of a special anxiety, of a sort of idolatry, which 
 among some individuals has degenerated into a mania, a folly. 
 From this state of things has resulted a new kind of commerce, 
 which traffickers and speculators openly undertake for the sake 
 of profit. Letters, autographic documents, signatures affixed to 
 diplomas, to pubhc acts, or to receipts, upon paper or parchment, 
 are taken clandestinely from public libraries, from various ar- 
 chives, and from other literary and political depositories, by un- 
 faithful officers or unscrupulous amateurs. They are sought for, 
 they are discovered, among grocers and dealers in goods. Pur- 
 chased for a mere trifle, they are resold to the curious at a 
 very high price. The search for these kinds of manuscripts has 
 also produced a new branch of industry. As comparatively few 
 persons are wealthy enough to form expensive collections of au- 
 tographs, the defect is supplied by engravings, and by the still 
 more economic processes of lithography. Facsimiles, traced 
 after the originals, have been published, either separately or in 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 345 
 
 new editions of our best classic authors, Corneille, Racine, Boi- 
 leau, Bossuet, Fenelon, Lafontaine, Madame de Sevigne, Vol- 
 taire, J. J. Rousseau, &c. They have been inserted in pictu- 
 resque travels and other works. But it is principally in collections 
 devoted to the purpose, that they are found in the greatest num- 
 ber. One of the most prominent is the work entitled ' li'Icono- 
 graphie Universelle,' (Universal Likeness-Magazine,) where the 
 facsimile of the handwriting of each illustrious personage is 
 subjoined to a biographical notice of him, accompanied by his 
 portrait. It is especielly in L' Isographie des Hommes ctlehres 
 {Handwritings of celebrated Men Imitated), published in thirty- 
 one numbers in quarto, from 1827 to 1830, that we find the 
 most curious and the most numerous collection of fac-similes of 
 autograph letters and signatures. It contains not less than seven 
 hundred, of which the originals were borrowed from the library 
 of the King, from those of Vienna, Prague, Munich, &c., from 
 the archives of the kingdom and of the different bureaus of ad- 
 ministration, and from private cabinets. Lithographic collections 
 of autographs have likewise appeared in England and in Ger- 
 many ; but they are neither so complete, nor so well arranged, 
 nor so well executed. The Royal Library of Paris possesses an 
 immense collection of manuscripts, autograph letters, and signa- 
 tures of kings, princes, ministers, warriors, scholars, and illustri- 
 ous persons of both sexes, whether French or foreigners, from 
 the thirteenth century to the present time. Conspicuous among 
 them are the voluminous correspondences of Marguerite of Valois 
 Queen of Navarre, of the Dukes of Guise, the Constable de 
 Montmorency, the Mareschal de Saulx-Tavannes, the Cardinals 
 du Bellay, Richelieu, de Retz and de Noailles, de Peiresc, and 
 de Bouillaud ; collections of letters from Francis I., Henry IV., 
 Louis XIV. ; the original manuscript of the Telemachus of Fene- 
 lon. There also is a choice selection of signatures by men of 
 every kind of celebrity, affixed to receipts and other instruments 
 on parchment, among which are three or four signed by Mo- 
 
346 A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 Here, and discovered a few years ago. This is all that remains 
 of the handwriting of our most illustrious comic author. Several 
 thousand pounds' weight of parchments of a similar description 
 have been sold at different times for very insignificant prices to 
 tradesmen, who, after selecting the rarest and most interesting 
 specimens, have sold them again to different amateurs. The 
 rest has been passed off to bookbinders and to glue-makers. Au- 
 tographs also abound in the archives of the Palais de Justice, 
 and the different dej^artments of administration, still more in the 
 archives of the kingdom, where, among rare and curious docu- 
 ments, there is preserved a charter of St. Louis, together with 
 the original of the instrument containing the famous oath pro- 
 nounced, in the tennis-court at Versailles, in 1789, and subscribed 
 by the great majority of deputies to the States-General. In the 
 same place, also, are preserved the signatures of all the members 
 of the National Convention, and of several other legislative as- 
 semblies. However rich France may be in autographs, she is 
 surpassed, not in number, but in antiquity and rarity, by Italy and 
 Spain, if it be true that the library of Florence contains the Gos- 
 pel of St. John, written by his own hand, and that several auto- 
 graph manuscripts of St. Augustine exist in the library of the 
 Escurial. The most important collections of autograph letters 
 and signatures in the possession of amateurs in Paris, are those 
 of M. Le Courte de Chateau-Giron ; the late Marquis de Dolo- 
 mieu ; Mons. de Monmerque, Councillor of the royal court ; 
 Mons. Guilbert-Pixerecourt, a professor of literature; Mons. 
 Berard, a Deputy and Councillor of State ; and Mons. Berthe- 
 vin, formerly keeper of the Royal Printing Establishment. That 
 of Mons. Villenave, more numerous perhaps than the others, 
 contains, it is said, twenty-two thousand signatures of different 
 writings ; but the greater part of them were written by persons 
 more remarkable by their rank, their titles, and their offices, than 
 for their actions or productions. For instance, all the French 
 generals of the Revolution, even the most obscure, figure in this 
 
A WEEK AMONG AUTOGRAPHS. 347 
 
 collection. We will also refer to the collections of M. de Saint- 
 Gervais, the Marquis Aligre, M. Anatole de Montesquieu, and 
 Mons. Perie, Director of the Museum at Nimes, and husband of 
 Madame Simons-Candeille." 
 
 It may be mentioned, as an instance of the extreme 
 difficulty of procm'ing a complete set of the signatures to 
 the Declaration of Independence, that Mr. Tefft, although 
 an American, and enjoying for many years great facili- 
 ties in the pursuit of autographs, has been able, with the 
 utmost exertions, to procure no more than thirty-nine 
 out of the original fifty-six signatures. It is remark- 
 able that Dr. Raffles of Liverpool should have been so 
 much more successful in this branch of the pursuit. 
 Mr. Tefft' s present list of desiderata is as follows : Brax- 
 ton, Floyd, Hart, Lynch, jun., L. Morris, Middleton, 
 Morton, Nelson, jun., Penn, Ross, Read, Rodney, Stone, 
 Smith, Taylor, Thornton, Wilson.* Should the present 
 notices ever meet the eye of some happy possessor of 
 any of these lacking signatures, perchance he may be 
 still happier by generously transmitting them to the ad- 
 dress of I. K. Tefft, Esq., Savannah, who, we feel as- 
 sured, would in that instance complete the degrees of 
 comparison, and become in very deed the happiest. 
 
 *■ These desiderata have been supplied to Mr. Tefft since the original pub- 
 lication of the essay, and in a great degree, the author is highly gratified to 
 learn, in consequence of its appearance. President Sparks sent him no less 
 than three letters of the Signers. 
 
ESTIMATE OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL WRIT- 
 INGS OF DR. THOMAS BROWN, 
 
 INCLUDING 
 
 SOME REMARKS ON MENTAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 It cannot be regarded as a proof of the superiority of 
 the present age, that comparatively so little attention is 
 bestowed on intellectual philosophy. In spite of the 
 occasional fluctuations of public taste, we are persuaded 
 that the science of mind is still destined to take prece- 
 dence of all others. 
 
 The flippant and superficial remark has been made, 
 and that too by very high authority, that the philosophy 
 of the mind is a useless pursuit, because every one may 
 become his own mental philosopher ; that one has only 
 to look within, and he will there find all that the pro- 
 foundest thinker can acquaint him with. Never was 
 hazarded a bolder or more assailable error than this. Is 
 botany a useless science, because herbs and flowers, 
 enough to fill whole catalogues, may be found within a 
 mile from the cottage of every hard-working farmer ? 
 Is astronomy a vain pursuit, because every sailor on the 
 watch, by only turning his head upwards, can count the 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 349 
 
 stars moving over him, and mark the courses which they 
 take ? Has one man in a thousand the ability to fasten 
 his attention on the operations of his own mind ; and do 
 not the occupations, habits, passions, and characters of a 
 large majority of mankind lead their thoughts away from 
 themselves, and fix them on external things? 
 
 Such being the universal and inevitable lot of humani- 
 ty, we cannot conceive of a more useful, or directly prac- 
 tical employment, than for those individuals whose op- 
 portunities and powers of contemplation permit, to sit 
 in the seclusion of study apart from active engagements, 
 and there to fix their thoughts exclusively on the consti- 
 tution of the mind ; to trace action up to its central 
 sources ; to take a full survey of the mental phenomena ; 
 to estimate especially the extent of the human powers ; 
 to analyze, to describe, to classify, every internal property 
 and faculty ; to suggest modes of applying them in their 
 proper directions, and to their proper objects ; in one 
 word, to unfold before the sight of their fellow-beings 
 that which so very few know, — what they are, and 
 what they can become. 
 
 Now, though there are not many men capable of origi- 
 nating these comprehensive, introverted surveys and es- 
 timates, yet, after they are made, there are large num- 
 bers who can read them with enjoyment and profit. It 
 is no small thing to direct a man's attention to himself; 
 yet this is effected by the very sight of a book on the 
 mind. The soul for a moment swells before it with the 
 consciousness of its untried and indefinite powers. The 
 contents of most libraries lead one away from one's 
 self. But take such a work as Cogan on the Passions, 
 — though it is a rather dull book, and the author was not 
 
 30 
 
350 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 equal to his task, which abler hands might have wrought 
 into a treatise almost unequalled in interest and utility, 
 
 — we think that any common man who reads this book 
 will become wiser, better, greater, and happier, and will 
 particularly be convinced that every one cannot be his 
 own intellectual philosopher. Passion, habit, prejudice, 
 wild imagination, unprofitable reverie, wrong directions, 
 and mistaken objects of thought, all which, by stealing 
 encroachments or violent incursions, may be fast wear- 
 ing away the character, are liable to be arrested in their 
 progress even by a prosing treatise, which shall subject 
 them to a cool analysis, and make the mind familiar 
 with comprehensive descriptions and classifications of 
 them. 
 
 We feel justified, on the whole, in laying down the 
 following general results, which may be expected from 
 good treatises on mental philosophy. Not to enumerate 
 several advantages of comparatively subordinate value, 
 
 — such as the mental discipline acquired by the prosecu- 
 tion of the study itself, the very dignity of the subject as 
 a theme of speculation, the accession of a mere appropri- 
 ate ornament, if nothing more, to a well-furnished mind, 
 and the like, — ihe first unquestionably great advantage 
 is, to make us reflect upon and feel habitually conscious 
 of our powers ; a state of mind which necessarily pre- 
 cedes all wise and energetic action. The second good 
 result proceeding from this study is, that philosophical 
 self-examination smooths the way directly to moral self- 
 examination, which is the nurse of virtue. A third effect 
 is to excite sentiments of piety by the contemplation of 
 the most excellent and wonderful of the known works of 
 God. 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 351 
 
 Such, we maintain, are the general tendencies of this 
 study. But it may be objected, that these are too indefi- 
 nite and intangible, being subjects rather of speculation 
 than of clear demonstration. We may be asked to 
 point out the express and particular achievements of the 
 science of the mind, and to enumerate any newly dis- 
 covered intellectual instruments, so to speak, which have 
 visibly blessed and gladdened the prospects of the spe- 
 cies, like the mariner's compass, the chronometer, the 
 safety-lamp, the vaccine virus, the steam-engine ; or 
 any which have given new power and stimulus to scien- 
 tific researches, like some of Newton's theorems, the gal- 
 vanic battery, or the blowpipe. The Inductive Method 
 of Lord Bacon will, of course, suggest itself here to 
 every reader at all acquainted with our subject; and in- 
 tellectual philosophers, with the author before us among 
 the number, claim for it the magnificent merit of intro- 
 ducing a revolution not only in their own science, but in 
 every other, and of almost changing the face of the mod- 
 ern earth. But to be candid, we must make a distinc- 
 tion between the inductive method itself, and Bacon's 
 verbal interpretation and proclamation of it. It is the 
 interpretation and proclamation only that truly belong 
 to the science of the mind ; the method itself has been 
 more or less operative in all men from time immemorial. 
 It did not depend on a promulgation by Bacon or any 
 one else, whether a right mode of reasoning and philoso- 
 phizing should, in spite of ancient trammels, occasionally 
 force itself upon inquisitive and strong understandings. 
 Did Locke and Davy, — names which we select to rep- 
 resent improvements in the two departments of intel- 
 lectual and physical science, — did they rely on a di- 
 
352 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 vulged and explicit statute of Lord Bacon for the char- 
 acter and success of their researches ? No more, we 
 apprehend, than Napoleon fought his way to empire 
 under the influence of a formula. 
 
 In making, however, this large concession, or rather, in 
 drawing this due distinction, we are by no means dis- 
 posed either to depreciate the actual merit of Lord Ba- 
 con's rule, or to disavow the past unequivocal successes 
 of the branch of science in question, or to abandon our 
 hopes of its future indefinite triumphs. Much, certainly, 
 was gained by embodying the inductive method in a 
 preceptive frame, and so suggesting and recommend- 
 ing it to the world. If an earlier start along the true 
 path of science was hereby given to men than they 
 would otherwise have taken, and if, by the same means, 
 an incalculable expenditure of time and talents has in 
 many cases been saved, these are achievements which 
 certainly belong to the science of the mind. For we 
 scarcely need contend, that the investigation and laying 
 down of precepts for the prosecution of general science 
 strictly constitutes one department of intellectual phi- 
 losophy. 
 
 But, to take our stand on still more unquestionable 
 ground: supposing all that has been written and said 
 about the principle of Association of Ideas had been 
 suppressed from the very first, and that men had been 
 left to avail themselves of that principle only as nature 
 prompted and experience dictated, can it be conceived, 
 that every individual in the world at this moment would 
 have been equally wise and skilful, equally happy and 
 virtuous ? On the contrary, has not the specification 
 and description of this element of our minds, and the 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 353 
 
 perpetual pressing of its existence and uses upon the 
 attention of men, caused it to become a more constant, 
 systematic, and efficient instrument of thought and prac- 
 tice? Of two orators, in other respects equal, which 
 should we most confidently select for the management of 
 a cause, — one who has been taught the doctrine of as- 
 sociation in all its known relations and effects, or one 
 who only instinctively and unconsciously acts upon it ? 
 To us there seems a vast accession of power and re- 
 sources placed at the disposal of the former. Our own 
 convictions are both deliberate and strong, that in the 
 whole body of literature and mental effort at the present 
 day, comprehending alike the speculations of the labored 
 and formal volume, the pulpit, bar, legislative hall, peri- 
 odical press, ephemeral paragraph, conversation, and soli- 
 tary thought, no contemptible degree of whatever deep 
 research, true sentiment, accurate rhetoric, and just rea- 
 soning are found to prevail, owes its origin, more or less 
 directly, to the influence of what has been said and incul- 
 cated respecting right methods of ratiocination, and re- 
 specting the proper application of the associating prin- 
 ciple. 
 
 Who can doubt that individual virtue has been 
 strengthened, and individual happiness increased, by a 
 scientific acquaintance with the principle of association ? 
 "When gloomy thoughts overshadow and oppress his 
 soul, the well-educated man, who happily has not neg- 
 lected the science of the mind, recollects what has come 
 to him from books, and the lecture-room, concerning con- 
 tinued trains of ideas, and the power of the associating 
 principle. He therefore seizes the assistance of this in- 
 tellectual instrument to lead his attention towards bright- 
 
 30* 
 
354 brown's PfilLOSOPfiY OF MINC. 
 
 er objects of contemplation, and thus to dissipate his 
 gloom. And this he does with much more confidence 
 and effect than the untutored son of sorrow, who, unac- 
 quainted with the whole nature and extent of the blessed 
 power within him, makes perhaps, or perhaps not, a few 
 faint, instinctive efforts to turn the train of his ideas and 
 feelings, but soon again desperately yields up his soul to 
 its fixed and haunting agony. 
 
 We rejoice to believe that the science we are recom- 
 mending is frequently found instrumental also in purify- 
 ing the current of thought, as well as recalling it to its 
 proper channels ; that it assists in eluding the sugges- 
 tions of temptation, in controlling a wayward imagina- 
 tion, in analyzing and dissolving prejudices; and that it 
 produces many other similar effects, favorable to virtue 
 and happiness, w'hich would have arisen less certainly 
 and systematically, had the power of the associating 
 principle been left to its own spontaneous operations, 
 unaffected by former scientific speculations, and unaided 
 by the cultivated habit of self-inspection. 
 
 The very nature of the thing, we confess, forbids us to 
 point out, ocularly, the influence of these intellectual in- 
 struments acting on the minds of men, as one may show 
 the compass in the binnacle, virtually influencing every 
 motion of a ship, and guiding her safely through difficul- 
 ties and dangers. All that we can do is, to throw out 
 our suggestions and the results of our own experience 
 for what they are worth, and leave them to elicit the 
 conviction or dissent of our readers, according to their 
 views, experience, and modes of thinking. But if there 
 be any truth in the preceding reflections, the claims of 
 intellectual philosophy are vindicated, and she can boast 
 
buown's fsilosophy of mind. 355 
 
 of her specific instruments, that wield as prodigious a 
 power, and are capable of conferring as exhaustless bene- 
 fits, as certain more tangible discoveries in the sister 
 department of natural philosophy. Observe, we are 
 careful not to claim for this science the principle of asso- 
 ciation itself, any more than the principle of reasoning, 
 or of memory, or of imagination. It is only the formal 
 recognition, the verbal statement, the didactic exposi- 
 tion, of these principles, which we understand here by 
 intellectual instruments, and for the positively benefi- 
 cial influences of which we are taking the trouble to 
 contend. 
 
 The topical system of the ancients was such an intel- 
 lectual instrument as has been demanded of mental 
 philosophy, and nearly as palpable as the safety-lamp. 
 The discovery of it strictly belonged to the genuine sci- 
 ence of the mind. The art of Mnemonics may be at 
 present only in its infancy. We hold the expectation 
 of new discoveries and methods in this branch of learn- 
 ing to be as reasonable as to look for farther knowledge 
 on the subjects of light and heat. For instance, as an 
 humble example, has a general rule been yet laid down, 
 apportioning the quantity of anything to be committed 
 to memory to the number of times necessary to repeat 
 it, so as to introduce the greatest possible economy of 
 time and labor ? If a half-page of letter-press requires to 
 be only six times read over in order to be well fixed in 
 the memory, and a whole page seven times, it is mani- 
 festly better to divide the task of a whole page into two 
 portions, and thus to save one reading. If, again, a quar- 
 ter of a page only requires to be repeated five times, a 
 further economy may be obtained by dividing the task 
 
356 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 into four portions. It is evident, however, that these 
 divisions may be continued so far as to frustrate the pur- 
 pose of them ; for if the page be broken up into portions 
 so small as one line each, although each portion could be 
 well remembered at one reading, yet the whole page must 
 be read over seven times as at first, and a loss is thus 
 incurred by carrying the divisions too far. But where is 
 the point at which the divisions may cease, and still 
 allow the smallest possible number of repetitions ? Now 
 a few patient and attentive experiments and calcula- 
 tions, upon a memory of average strength and quickness, 
 might conduct an inquirer to some result or formula on 
 this subject, which should prove as useful to the world 
 as a new algebraic expression in the general doctrine of 
 chances. Who will pretend to limit the possible multi- 
 plication of such facts and rules of every kind, connected 
 with all our mental operations ? The time may come 
 when a Grammar or Accidence of the Mind shall be put 
 into the hands of youth, on a very extended and im- 
 proved plan, like that of some of our easy systems of 
 logic, which shall reveal to the opening intellect the ex- 
 tent of its powers, and early teach it the adroit and per- 
 fect use of itself, far beyond what is now practised or 
 conjectured by the most accomplished and experienced 
 men. Should it be incredulously asked, if such things 
 can be expected at this late period of the world, we would 
 inquire in return, how long, on the one hand, the species 
 may yet hope to exist, and, on the other, how long the 
 circulation of the blood has been discovered. 
 
 A complete system of intellectual philosophy, in all its 
 abstract perfection, necessarily cannot be executed until 
 the full extent of the human powers has been tried in 
 
beown's philosophy of mind. 357 
 
 every art and every science that can possibly develop 
 and employ them. Such a period, it is true, stands at 
 an indefinite distance. But still the remark illustrates 
 and strengthens our position at the outset of this article, 
 that the science of the mind is destined to become the 
 most advanced in rank of all. Approximations to its 
 ideal completeness can be made from time to time, as 
 the mind of man exhibits new achievements and ca- 
 pacities to serve as materials for this last and highest 
 branch of knowledge. When the mathematician has 
 exhausted his skill in numerical combination, and has 
 invented methods by which even the relations of infinite 
 quantities can be managed to his purposes, the philoso- 
 pher of the mind steps in, looks at the point which has 
 been reached, and records it on some page of the intel- 
 lectual system. When the natural philosopher has made 
 every possible experiment on matter, has investigated 
 the affinities of atoms, or taken the weight of worlds, 
 or systematized the laws of motion, or measured the 
 long journey of a ray of light from some outer system 
 of the universe, or examined the different properties of 
 opposite sides of that ray, or searched for the lines 
 which divide organized from inorganic substance, and 
 sentient from sluggish life, then the intellectual phi- 
 losopher comes up to revise the task of his inde- 
 fatigable agent and forerunner, marking wherein he 
 has triumphed, or wherein he has been baffled, and 
 notes down on the tablet of his own science the strength 
 and the weakness of the human intellect. When the 
 poet, the orator, the scholar, the reasoner, the histo- 
 rian, the painter, the musician, the sculptor, the archi- 
 tect, with the laborers in every other kindred art or 
 
358 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 pursuit, have exhausted their powers in affecting the 
 souls of men, now moving them with transports of de- 
 light, now stimulating and correcting the progress of 
 thought, now impressing a new character on whole gen- 
 erations, and guiding them to new courses of action, the 
 mental philosopher fails not, with observant eye, to fol- 
 low these varied achievements, and transfers them to his 
 chapter of the influences of mind upon mind. It is 
 equally a branch of his vocation to watch the spontaneous 
 movements of individual and collective man ; to trace 
 the changes of opinion, custom, character; to observe 
 what is universally pleasing or displeasing ; in short, to 
 note and record the operations and affections of the gen- 
 eral mind. When hundreds of solitary thinkers have 
 turned their attention inward to survey the operations 
 of their own individual intellect compared with what 
 they know of others, and have classified, as well as the 
 evanescent and impalpable nature of the subject will 
 permit, those laws of thought and emotion that may be 
 gathered from their combined internal experience and 
 foreign observation, at length some master-philosopher 
 of the mind avails himself of the labors of his predeces- 
 sors, and employs their recorded results to mould into a 
 new frame and aspect this keystone of the sciences. 
 When sciences, which are now unthought of, shall arise 
 and be carried to perfection, calling forth mental powers 
 as yet unexerted and unknown, and when perhaps new 
 combinations and exhibitions of moral excellence shall 
 brighten the face of society, the faithful philosopher of 
 the intellect will stand ready to arrange these freshly cre- 
 ated materials in his ever-growing system. Thus, the 
 Science of the Mind, though susceptible of perpetual ad- 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 359 
 
 vances, must necessarily be the last to arrive at perfec- 
 tion. Its materials are drawn from all the other sci- 
 ences. It is waiting to see what man can do and 
 suffer, for its own business is to record and classify 
 it. We cannot conceive of the final step of its march 
 on earth ; its present incipient existence thus constitut- 
 ing a new proof of a future state of being. Like 
 the leading and essential virtue of Christianity, it never 
 faileth, not even when prophecies fail, and tongues 
 cease, and subordinate systems of knowledge vanish 
 away. 
 
 It is high time to cease confounding the science of the 
 mind with Metaphysics. This word, by common use, 
 has now imperceptibly acquired a new signification, no 
 longer to be found in the dictionaries, and no longer ex- 
 pressive of a distinct science. We will try to explain 
 and fix its present general acceptation. Metaphysics has 
 come to mean something imaginative and hypothetic. 
 It ascribes imaginary and plausible causes to existing 
 appearances, and speculates upon the nature of what is 
 hidden and unknown. We would distinguish it from 
 Philosophy, inasmuch as philosophy ascertains the causes 
 of phenomena, and learns from experience the properties 
 of things. Metaphysics will be found to enter more or 
 less into every department of learning. When Newton 
 discovered and applied the law of gravitation, he was, 
 strictly speaking, the philosopher. W^hen he ascribed 
 that gravitation to the influence of a subtile, ethereal 
 fluid, pervading all bodies, (though the theory almost 
 prophetically accorded with some things which we now 
 know respecting electricity,) he was only the metaphysi- 
 cian. When Haiiy unfolded the mechanical composi- 
 
360 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 tion of crystals, and even demonstrated the necessary 
 forms of their ultimate particles, he acted the part of a 
 philosopher; but in attempting to account for the trans- 
 mission of light through them, one might theorize ever 
 so plausibly, and still be nothing more than a metaphy- 
 sician. When Locke divided our ideas into those of 
 sensation and reflection, although his division might 
 have been incomplete, or even redundant, yet, being a 
 classification of known phenomena, it was perfectly 
 philosophical. But when he accounted for our sensa- 
 tions of different colors by the emission of differently 
 shaped atoms from the surfaces of bodies, he was meta- 
 physical. 
 
 Philosophy reasons rightly from right data ; the rea- 
 soning, or the data, or both, of metaphysics, may be 
 either right or wrong. A spice of metaphysics in a 
 man's mind is a very good thing; in some writers, a 
 slight mixture of it has made many an author popular. 
 It flatters the reader's ow^n consciousness of being pro- 
 found, and it stimulates his imagination to ascribe un- 
 common resources to the writer. Most men of genius 
 have somewhat of the metaphysical characteristic. It is 
 the pioneer to discoveries of unknown relations among 
 things. To improve any science, or to break into any 
 original track of thought, one must have some tendency 
 towards this quality. All the great chemists we ever 
 heard of have been endued with the metaphysical impe- 
 tus. It is conjecture, and fancy, and refined curiosity, 
 which prompt them to experiment, and it is not until they 
 confirm by fact even the most sagacious of their conjec- 
 tures, that they are honored with the name of philoso- 
 X)hers. The science of electricity, if w^e may strictly call 
 
brown's philosophy op mind. 361 
 
 it science, is at this moment half philosophy and half 
 metaphysics. The doctrine of the mind was once almost 
 entirely metaphysics, and rightly bore that name, which 
 it still doubtfully bears, though very much purified from 
 the admixture. Aristotle, however, mingled a good deal 
 of philosophy with his speculation. His followers, and 
 the schools of later date, made the science nearly all 
 metaphysics again. Des Cartes and Malebranche be- 
 gan to restore it to its proper balance, but were still too 
 inveterate metaphysicians to produce the requisite equi- 
 librium. Locke combined the metaphysical and the 
 philosophical attributes to an enviable degree. Hence 
 the improvements which are dated from him. His fol- 
 lowers of the French school, together with Berkeley 
 and Hume, Hartley and Priestley, made very few real 
 advances, in consequence of the undue preponderance of 
 metaphysics in their speculations. 
 
 The Scotch school, so called, vibrated with too forcible 
 a reaction to the opposite extreme. Reid and Stewart 
 were great philosophers, and it is impossible to rise from 
 the study of their works without large improvement and 
 gratitude ; and nature undoubtedly formed them to be 
 also great metaphysicians. They wanted not invention, 
 wing, or acumen. But they fastidiously and conscien- 
 tiously folded up their excursive powers, or only opened 
 them to brood over the chaos in which the science of the 
 mind lay darkening beneath them. They struck out 
 from the mass no brilliant revolving orb. This pecu- 
 liarity, we apprehend, is the cause of a considerable de- 
 pression of their original reputation, and has emboldened 
 the critics to intrude upon Mr. Stewart's weary and hon- 
 orable retreat, with asking what he has done. An insa- 
 
 31 
 
362 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 tiable world is not content with seeing the old cumbrous 
 rubbish removed from the path of science, though the 
 labor is performed, like that of Virgil's swain, in never so 
 elegant a manner. To the disappointment experienced 
 with regard to the Scotch school of mental philosophers, 
 from whom so much was expected, and who were sup- 
 posed to be making a last grand experiment, we ascribe 
 the unmerited neglect which has been shown towards the 
 works of the late Dr. Brown. But it is a neglect which 
 arose from mere error and misapprehension ; for he cer- 
 tainly had the happiness of combining the genius of the 
 severest inductive philosophy with an adventurous meta- 
 physical spirit, which Bacon himself neither by precept nor 
 example condemned. We trust to make all this plainly 
 appear by the following examination of his Lectures on 
 the Philosophy of the Human Mind, although, as will be 
 seen, we shall frequently find occasion to dissent from 
 the author's positions. We are persuaded that his repu- 
 tation as a writer is yet to advance among the votaries 
 of true philosophy. 
 
 According to the extensive scope of the views of Dr. 
 Brown, the Philosophy of the Human Mind compre- 
 hends the following subjects. 
 
 I. Mental Physiology. 
 
 II. General Ethics. 
 
 III. Politics. 
 
 IV. Natural Theology. 
 
 We will proceed to unfold, in the first place, the au- 
 thor's favorite science of Mental Physiology. 
 
 The object of all physical inquiry is twofold. We 
 either attempt to ascertain the constituent coexisting 
 elements of substances, as we find them at any given 
 
brown's philosophy op mind. 363 
 
 moment, and as they compose an apparently continuous 
 whole, or we consider them as the subjects, or as the 
 agents, of those changes which constitute the physical 
 events of the system of the world. What is this piece of 
 glass ? If we consider it merely as a continuous whole, 
 our answer will be, that it is a compound of alkaline and 
 siliceous matter. But if we consider it as the agent or 
 the subject of changes, we speak of its refractive powers, 
 its fusibility at a certain temperature, its resistance to 
 solution by the common powerful acids, and the like. 
 In short, we consider the substances into the nature of 
 which we inquire in these two lights alone, as they 
 exist in space, or as they exist in time. 
 
 The foregoing views are applied by the author to the 
 physiology of the mind. We know the essential sub- 
 stance neither of matter nor of mind ; but the author 
 maintains that the phenomena of thought and feeling 
 have the same relation to the unknown internal essence 
 of the substance mind, which a brittle or a fusible state 
 has to that of the substance glass, or which any sensible 
 properties whatever have to that of the substance in 
 which they inhere. All these various phenomena of 
 thought and feeling he regards as nothing more than 
 modifications, or affections, or states of the mind, which 
 is a simple, uniform principle. They may be complex, 
 like the properties of matter, and so be susceptible of 
 analysis, or they may be the agents and the subjects of 
 innumerable changes among each other, and so sustain 
 the reciprocal relation of causes and effects. 
 
 In conformity to these statements, the author pro- 
 poses, in the first place, to institute a strict mental anal- 
 ysis, a department of philosophy which, he complains, 
 
364 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 has hitherto been much neglected. Some of our mental 
 phenomena are evidently simple, as the feeling of pain, 
 the sensation of color, and that of sound. Others again 
 are complex, or composed of different simple states of the 
 mind, as we shall soon see to be the case with Appetite, 
 and other feelings. What the chemist does in matter, 
 the intellectual analyst does in mind. His object is to 
 develop the elements of any complex sentiment or emo- 
 tion, and to show that it virtually bears the same relation 
 of seeming comprehensiveness to those several elements, 
 that is borne by a piece of glass to the various separate 
 constituents to which it is reduced by the chemist. 
 
 In commencing his introspective analysis. Dr. Brown 
 seizes hold of Memory as the handle and instrument of 
 all his inquiries. On this faculty itself he scarcely be- 
 stows either definition, description, or analysis. He as- 
 sumes it at once as the ^o? ttov arco of his whole sys- 
 tem. Let us then for the present grant him memory, if 
 by this single mystery he promises to solve all other 
 mysteries. 
 
 The first fortress of old error against which he marches, 
 with this simple talisman, is Consciousness. He attacks 
 this first, since all the varieties of those ever-changing 
 feelings which form the subjects of his inquiry are re- 
 ferred to it. He maintains that it is no distinct power 
 of the mind, as it has always been supposed to be. He 
 rigorously denies that at one and the same moment you 
 can have a sensation or an idea, and also a separate 
 simultaneous feeling of consciousness about it. • In the 
 very next instant after the sensation or the idea, however, 
 you have the memory of it. With the memory, more- 
 over, you have an intuitive belief, that you, who just 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 365 
 
 now had the sensation or idea, are the same individual 
 being who have the remembrance of it now. Thus, be- 
 tween the sensation itself, the remembrance of it, and 
 the intuitive belief of personal identity, away slips Con- 
 sciousness into thin air I 
 
 On the subject of personal identity Dr. Brown most 
 admirably argues, that no process of reasoning can ever 
 demonstrate it, because the very essence of every argu- 
 ment consists in the circumstance, that the mind which 
 adopts the conclusion irresistibly believes itself to be the 
 same mind which held the premises. Thus this belief 
 rises above all argument, or rather is the foundation of 
 every reasoning process. It follows directly, that, since 
 no argument can proceed a step without it, the belief 
 itself is intuitive and axiomatic. 
 
 We have thus far considered only the phenomena of 
 the mind in general ; consciousness and personal identity 
 evidently involving all states of the mind alike. The 
 author now proceeds to consider them in the separate 
 classes in which they may be arranged. Dismissing as 
 incomplete and inaccurate all former arrangements of 
 them into powers of the understanding and of the will, 
 and into intellectual and active powers, and so forth, he 
 proceeds to a new distribution. The following remarks 
 on this design appear to us very just, and constitute at 
 once a powerful recommendation of the author's labors, 
 as well as justification of our own humble efforts in re- 
 porting them. 
 
 " A new classification, therefore, which includes, in its generic 
 character, those qualities, [which former classifications have neg- 
 lected,] will of course draw to them attention, which they could 
 not otherwise have obtained ; and the more various the views 
 
 31* 
 
366 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 are which we take of the objects of any science, the juster conse- 
 quently, because the more equal, will be the estimate which we 
 form of them. So truly is this the case, that I am convinced, 
 that no one has ever read over the mere terms of a new division 
 in a science, however familiar the science may have been to him, 
 without learning more than this new division itself, — without 
 being struck with some property or relation, the importance of 
 which he now perceives most clearly, and which he is quite 
 astonished that he should have overlooked so long before." — 
 Led. XVI. 
 
 The following is the principle of the author's new 
 classification. 
 
 The causes or immediate antecedents of the various 
 mental phenomena are either foreign to the mind, or 
 they belong to the mind itself. A change of mental 
 state is either produced by a change in our bodily or- 
 gans, or, without any cause external to itself, one state 
 of mind is the immediate result of a former state of mind, 
 in consequence of those laws of succession of thoughts 
 and feelings which were established by the Creator him- 
 self. 
 
 In conformity with this distinction, he makes his first 
 division of the phenomena of the mind, into its external 
 and internal affections. The class of internal affections, 
 by far the more copious and various of the two, he sub- 
 divides into two great orders, our intellectual states, and 
 our emotions. 
 
 We have sensations or perceptions of the objects that 
 affect our bodily organs; these he terms the sensitive or 
 external affections of the mind. Then again we remem- 
 ber objects, we imagine them in new situations, we com- 
 pare their relations ; these he terms the intellectual states 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 367 
 
 of the mind. Once more, we are moved with certain 
 lively feelings, on the consideration of what we thus 
 perceive, or remember, or imagine, or compare ; with 
 feelings, for example, of beauty, or sublimity, or aston- 
 ishment, or love, or hate, or hope, or fear. These, and 
 various other vivid feelings analogous to them, are our 
 emotions. 
 
 Under the external affections of the mind, the author 
 comprehends not only all those phenomena, or states of 
 mind, which are commonly termed Sensations, but also 
 all our internal organic feelings of pleasure or pain, that 
 arise from states of the nervous system, as much as 
 our other sensations. Many of these are commonly 
 ranked under another head, that of Appetites, such as 
 hunger, thirst, the desire of repose, or of change of mus- 
 cular position, which follows long-continued exertion, 
 the oppressive anxiety which arises from impeded res- 
 piration, and various other diseases, the effect of bodily 
 uneasiness. And here occurs a characteristic instance 
 of our author's peculiar powers of abstract analysis ; an 
 instance, if we mistake not, equally acute with that 
 which before attempted the resolution of the supposed 
 power of consciousness, and more luminously convincing. 
 These Appetites, he says, evidently admit of being an- 
 alyzed into two distinct elements, a pain of a peculiar 
 species, and a subsequent desire of that which is to re- 
 lieve the pain ; — states of mind of which one may im- 
 mediately succeed the other, but which are, unquestion- 
 ably, as different in themselves, as if no such succession 
 took place. The pain, which is one element of the ap- 
 petite, is an external affection of the mind, to be classed 
 with our other sensations; the succeeding desire, which 
 
368 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 is another element of it, is an internal affection of the 
 mind, to be classed with om* other emotions of desbe. 
 The truth is, we give one name to the combination of 
 the two feelings, in consequence of their being so univer- 
 sally and immediately successive. Still, in every case, 
 the pain is felt before the desire of relief is felt, and two 
 states of mind manifestly compose w^hat an imperfect 
 analysis has hitherto presumed to be but one. All imagi- 
 nable objections to these views the author arrays and 
 removes, and we recommend the whole of these specula- 
 tions (Lecture XVII.) as one of the most delightful por- 
 tions of his Lectures. 
 
 Besides those particular feelings of bodily uneasiness, 
 which, as attended by desire, constitute our Appetites, 
 there are other affections of the same class, which, though 
 not usually ranked with our external sensations or per- 
 ceptions, because we find it difficult to ascribe them to 
 any local organ, are unquestionably to be arranged under 
 the same head ; since they are feelings which arise as 
 immediately and directly from a certain state of a part 
 of the nervous system, as any of the feelings which we 
 more commonly ascribe to external sense. Of this kind 
 is that muscular pleasure of alacrity and action, which 
 forms so great a part of the delight of the young of 
 every species of living beings; and which is felt, though 
 in a less degree, at every period of life, even the most 
 advanced ; or which, when it ceases in age, only gives 
 place to another species of muscular pleasure, — that 
 which constitutes the pleasure of ease, — the same spe- 
 cies of feeling which doubles to every one the delight 
 of exercise, by sweetening the repose to which it leads, 
 and thus making it indirectly as well as directly a source 
 of enjoyment. 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 369 
 
 With respect, further, to our muscular feelings, the 
 author observes, that, though many of them may be al- 
 most unnoticed by us during the influence of stronger 
 sensations, they are yet sufficiently powerful, when we 
 attend to them, to render us, independently of sight and 
 touch, in a great measure sensible of the position of our 
 body in general, and of its various parts; and, compara- 
 tively indistinct as they are, they become in many cases, 
 (as in the acquired perceptions of vision, for example, 
 and equally too in various other instances, in which lit- 
 tle attention has been paid to them by philosophers,) 
 elements of some of the nicest and most accurate judg- 
 ments which we form. 
 
 On the whole, although our author does not formally 
 lay down a sixth sense in addition to the ancient enu- 
 meration, he certainly presents some very strong consid- 
 erations in favor of ranking our Muscular Feelings as a 
 distinct, peculiar, and independent order of sensations. 
 
 The pains of appetite, our muscular feelings, and all 
 other mental states of this class, the author appropriately 
 denominates, in his system, the Less Definite External 
 Affections of Mind. 
 
 Having treated of these, he proceeds to what he ranks 
 as the More Definite External Affections of Mind, which 
 comprehend the feelings more commonly termed Sensa- 
 tions, and universally ascribed to five particular organs 
 of sense. 
 
 On this subject our author transfers the celebrated 
 theory of Berkeley, as to our acquired perceptions of vis- 
 ion, to the information given us by our other senses. In 
 the case of sound, there is a very evident analogy to our 
 acquired visual perceptions; since a constant reference 
 
370 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 to place mingles with our sensations of this class, in the 
 same manner, though not so distinctly, as in our percep- 
 tions of sight. We perceive the sound, as it were, near 
 or at a distance, in one direction rather than in another. 
 But what should originally inform the infant that the 
 voice he hears in the next room is nearer than the voice 
 which sounds to him from the distance of five hundred 
 feet? Experience, derived from his other senses, alone 
 teaches him, in process of time, to judge with imme- 
 diate and unfailing precision. The other senses the 
 author also holds to be more or less under the same in- 
 fluence. 
 
 Respecting the corporeal part of the process of Percep- 
 tion, all that is known of it, the author acknowledges, is, 
 that certain affections of the nervous system, including 
 the brain, precede immediately certain affections of the 
 mind. As to the nature of the connection between these 
 antecedents and consequents, he thinks it never will be 
 ascertained, and he dismisses the consideration altogeth- 
 er from his philosophy. The various specific affections 
 of the nervous system, as it is spread from the brain to 
 all the organs of sense, and indeed through every part of 
 the body, are known ; the various and corresponding 
 affections of the mind, which follow them, are also 
 known. With these facts taken for granted, the author 
 proceeds in his task of analyzing these complicated, or- 
 ganic and corresponding mental, affections, and discov- 
 ering and estimating the whole degree and body of 
 knowledge (together with the intricate and often fugitive 
 process of acquiring it) which they furnish of the Exter- 
 nal World, — in which external world he includes even 
 our organs of sense themselves. 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 371 
 
 He argues at great length, that our five senses alone 
 are in themselves insufficient to give us any knowledge 
 or belief of an external world of matter. Injustice to him, 
 let it be borne in mind that he lays down the essential 
 and constituent elements of our idea of matter to be only 
 two, namely, Resistance and Extension. Sight, sound, 
 smell, taste, touch, meaning by touch only the sensation 
 connected with the superficial exterior integument that 
 surrounds the muscular system, he contends, are nothing 
 more than states of mind, which we might experience 
 for ever, without thinking of ascribing them to anything 
 foreign from ourselves, in like manner as we never 
 ascribe any of our internal joys or sorrows to an external 
 cause. Whence, then, do we obtain our notion of some- 
 thing out of ourselves, and whence do we obtain a 
 knowledge of matter? All our information on these 
 points he would derive, originally, from our Muscular 
 Feelings alone. With the experience gained from these 
 muscular feelings, the operations of the five senses are 
 so perpetually, universally, and intimately associated, as 
 to make the senses appear the original sources of the 
 knowledge in question. We decline going over the 
 grounds on which Dr. Brown undertakes to remove the 
 delusion, attacking each sense by itself, particularly that 
 of simple touch, and stripping them all of their long as- 
 serted and allowed pretensions on this score. 
 
 But though we are so indulgent as to spare our read- 
 ers this merely preparatory discussion, they need not 
 think to resist, while we lead them, as we now shall do, 
 into the very central labyrinth of the speculations of our 
 metaphysical Daedalus. Assuming that he has proved 
 the senses to have no original concern in conveying to 
 
372 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 us the idea of an external world, he transfers at once the 
 seat of discussion to the very region of the muscles them- 
 selves, leaving the five senses far behind, in the custody 
 of Aristotle, Mr. Locke, Dr. Reid, and the rest of the 
 whole body of his pondering predecessors. With a spe- 
 cies of indagation altogether characteristic of himself, or, 
 we might say, of himself and Dr. Darwin, he carries us 
 back to the first semi-instinctive movements of an in- 
 fant's muscles. He watches its repeatedly and gradually 
 opening and closing fingers, until a solid body is inter- 
 posed within its little grasp, which impedes the accus- 
 tomed muscular contractions. It is now that the infant 
 acquires, as our author maintains, the first real and origi- 
 nal notion of " outness," of something foreign to himself, 
 of something which is not himself. Those petty muscu- 
 lar motions he feels to be all his own ; but the moment 
 that resistance to them takes place, he ascribes the new 
 sensation to a foreign cause. 
 
 Here we pause to interpose a stricture. Dr. Brown 
 appears to us not to have carried his analysis quite far 
 enough to be perfectly consistent with himself. If an 
 interruption of the child's muscular motions is sufficient 
 to give it a notion of outness, why, for a like reason, is not 
 an interruption of its gazing on a bright object sufficient 
 to give it the same notion ? But this the author will not 
 allow ; since, as we have seen, he denies that from mere 
 sight alone we can acquire the least belief or idea of an 
 external world. Now, he has not told us what there is 
 peculiar to the child's muscular feelings, the interruption 
 of which should draw its thoughts out of itself, more than 
 an interruption of the exercise of its visual faculties. He 
 does indeed in one place, we believe, obscurely hint, that, 
 
brown's philosophy op mind. 373 
 
 as the muscular motions of the child originate from him- 
 self, and continue by his own will, whereas the sight of 
 the bright object comes without any effort on his part, 
 continues without his volition, and is withdrawn without 
 resisting his will at all, this difference between the two 
 kinds of interruption is sufficient to account, in the for- 
 mer case, for the child's having a notion of something 
 foreign from himself, while in the other there is nothing 
 more than a mere succession of natural feelings or states 
 passing through his mind. But the author neither places 
 much emphasis on this distinction, nor brings it forward 
 frequently, which he w^ould certainly have done had he 
 relied much on it. Nor are we willing to admit it as a 
 sufficient explanation of the difficulty in question. For 
 aught we can discern, the child's muscular motion may 
 be stopped, and even his will resisted, and yet the feel- 
 ings resulting from such interruptions shall still be noth- 
 ing more than so many simple states of mind succeeding 
 one another, like phantasmagoric pictures, without the 
 necessity of his referring them to anything abroad. 
 
 How, then, shall this chasm be filled up in our author's 
 investigation ? We would say thus. The child, we ap- 
 prehend, never begins to adopt the belief of anything 
 external to himself until he perceives that some accus- 
 tomed object of gratification is out of his immediate 
 reach, and requires him to originate a voluntary locomo- 
 tion in order to recover it. Indeed, all that can be un- 
 derstood of an external world, at any period of our lives, 
 is simply that which we cannot reach, and over which we 
 can have no control, except by moving the body or the 
 hand from its usual position. We allow, with our author, 
 that muscular pressure gives even to the almost new-born 
 
 32 
 
374 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 infant a perfect notion of one element of our complex 
 idea of matter, that is, Resistance. But we think Dr. 
 Brown should not so gratuitously have coupled the no- 
 tion of Outness with that of Resistance. The former we 
 conceive to be attained even not until long after the idea 
 of Extension, the other element of our idea of matter, is 
 attained. We conceive our author to be thus misled in 
 the very way against which he is constantly guarding 
 his readers, and to be betrayed into that defective analy- 
 sis which he complains of in former philosophers. In 
 subsequent life, the perpetual and close connection be- 
 tween our ideas of something resisting and of something 
 external has induced him to suppose that they both spring 
 up together in the infant's mind. But we have learned 
 in his own school to question our teacher, and to dis- 
 cern another source of the peculiar notion in question. 
 
 The etymological meaning of the word external^ and 
 indeed every meaning which is ever attached to it, im- 
 plies a change or difference of place. As long as the 
 child is locally at rest, sensations of a thousand varieties, 
 " states of mind" both internal and external, may throng 
 upon him in successive waves, and yet all appear to be 
 as much parts of himself as any spontaneous pain or 
 pleasure within. No matter whether it be a smell, or a 
 sight, or a sound, or a feeling of resistance, or a thwart- 
 ing of his will, or any other feeling which begins and 
 terminates at or in himself; we regard all these feelings 
 as exactly on the same level with respect to the point 
 under consideration. But it is the separation of the re- 
 sisting and extended object from himself, it is the ivith- 
 drawal of something from his power, it is the dropping 
 of the rattle out of his hand, it is the removal of the fount 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 375 
 
 of infant life from his lips, that reveals to hirn the secret 
 of something foreign to himself, and convinces him that 
 all existence is not involved in his own, and teaches him 
 the first of that long series of lessons, which he is to 
 be learning through life, comprehending the whole va- 
 riety of local relations in which he stands to outward 
 things, from the spoon that moves towards and recedes 
 from his mouth, to the remotest star whose distance can 
 be scarcely reached even by the imagination. 
 
 But to go back on the track of Dr. Brown. The in- 
 fant has now acquired his notion of Resistance. It 
 remains to be seen how the other element of our idea 
 of matter, namely, the notion of Extension, is obtained 
 by this miniature metaphysician. 
 
 The little fingers before mentioned gradually and re- 
 peatedly close and open, until the child has a notion of 
 the length of time it requires to shut his finger down 
 upon the palm of his hand ; meaning by length of time, 
 the accustomed succession of different feelings attend- 
 ant upon each gradual contraction of the muscle. On 
 the interposition of the resisting object, as before de- 
 scribed, and the consequent interruption of the muscular 
 contraction, the child, according to our author, has a 
 notion of the remaining length of time which it would 
 have taken for the finger to arrive at the palm of the 
 hand. Immediately the interposed object becomes a 
 representative of this remaining length of time. If the 
 diameter of the object interposed be small, the remain- 
 ing length of time will be proportionably small, and 
 consequently the infant's notion of the length of the 
 interposed object corresponds. If the diameter be large, 
 there is a corresponding reverse in the infant's idea, in 
 
376 brown's philosophy op mind. 
 
 consequence of the larger remaining length of tinae. 
 Thus Length, with our author, in its true, original, and 
 significant acceptation, indicates only Time, and is trans- 
 ferred metaphorically from time to longitudinal exten- 
 sion. This doctrine he confirms by a number of reason- 
 ings, facts, and experiments. 
 
 Allowing, then, that the infant derives his notion of 
 the length of an object from the remaining time which 
 that object intercepts, as above described, the next ques- 
 tion is as to the origin of his notion of Breadth, which 
 is the other element of our author's idea of extension. 
 When, after obtaining an idea of a particular length 
 from one finger alone, a second closes, or rather the two 
 close together, and are interrupted by the same object, 
 the infant has an idea of two separate, concurring, co- 
 existing lengths. When three, when four, close together, 
 he has the idea of three, of four separate, concurring, 
 coexisting lengths. And what is this but the idea of 
 breadth ? 
 
 Dr. Brown allows that nothing can be more vague, 
 indistinct, and imperfect than the earliest notions which 
 the child thus acquires of the elements of extension. 
 But every instant that he is awake, he is making new 
 experiments; his muscles never are at rest ; the imper- 
 fection of one experiment is corrected by the next; and, 
 particularly, other muscles besides those of the hands 
 and fingers are put in motion ; the experiments of the 
 arm in every direction extend and confirm those of the 
 smaller members, and the mere muscular perceptions 
 of the child are thus growing more and more distinct 
 and definite every day. 
 
 All these muscular operations and feelings are, by 
 
 1 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 377 
 
 the constitution of our frames, so closely connected with 
 accompanying tactual sensations, that the latter habitu- 
 ally become representatives of the former, and we are 
 led to believe that we measure dimensions by Touch 
 alone, when it is only a secondary and subordinate in- 
 strument in the business. 
 
 We are mistaken if every reader will not concede much 
 truth and originality to these speculations, whatever 
 may be thought of the accuracy of some of the details, 
 and however nearly they may occasionally seem to bor- 
 der on the ludicrous. We have no hesitation in ascrib- 
 ing new and important discoveries to Dr. Brown, in this 
 department of mental physiology. We fear not frankly 
 and gratefully to avow our obligations to him for ex- 
 tending and enlightening the domain of our knowledge, 
 with respect to subjects that must necessarily be near 
 and familiar to us through the whole course of life. Let 
 any one, after becoming familiar with these speculations 
 upon the instrumentality of our muscular system, in 
 conveying to us a knowledge of the external world, be- 
 take himself to Dr. Reid's '• Inquiry into the Human 
 Mind," particularly to his chapter on Touch, and he will 
 at once be convinced of the extraordinary meagreness 
 of his own former views, and be gratified with the new 
 and permanent light which has here been thrown on the 
 intellectual economy. 
 
 From these speculations on the manner in which we 
 acquire a belief of the external world, a very natural 
 transition is made to the theory of Berkeley, who denies 
 the existence of matter, and holds the universe to be 
 only a combination of ideas. The sceptical systems 
 which have been erected on this doctrine owe their 
 
378 BHOWN'S I'filLOSOPHY OF MIND. 
 
 plausibility to his assumed fundamental error, that idea^ 
 can exist separately from the mind. Dr. Brown's sim- 
 ple principle, that ideas are nothing more than the mind 
 itself existing in certain states, would have saved a 
 world of perplexing scepticism and unprofitable contro- 
 versy. 
 
 Several lectures are devoted to the refutation of Dr. 
 Reid's pretensions, who, as many of our readers know, 
 has enjoyed the glory of irrefragably demonstrating the 
 existence of an external world against the sceptical rea- 
 sonings of Hume and other Pyrrhonists. As to the main 
 point of dispute between Dr. Reid and Mr. Hume, our 
 author declares it to be entirely imaginary, since the 
 sceptic himself, after all his refined reasonings to the 
 contrary, allows it to be impossible not to believe in 
 an external world, which very proposition is the grand 
 artillery that Dr. Reid leads against his opponent with 
 so much parade ; both the disputants maintaining with 
 equal earnestness, for their own purposes, that the ex- 
 istence of an external world can never be proved by 
 argument. 
 
 In the course of these discussions, we have another 
 instance of the same acute analysis which we have 
 already seen exhibited on the subjects of Appetite and 
 Consciousness. Dr. Reid had made great use of Per- 
 ception, which, with former philosophers, he considered 
 a distinct and unique faculty of the mind, that, immedi- 
 ately upon sensation taking place, acquaints us with the 
 objects without. Dr. Brown proves this to be a cum- 
 brous addition to the mental apparatus. The two ele- 
 ments to which he reduces this supposed faculty are, 
 first, a sensation, and, next, a mere reference by the 
 
Brown's philosophy of mind. 379 
 
 associating principle to some extended, resisting sub- 
 stance, which v/e have before known only by sensation. 
 Thus, between sensation and association. Perception 
 escapes into impalpable shade ! The author, however, 
 allows it to be a convenient term to express the complex 
 process above analyzed, but denies that there is any 
 such separate and single faculty of the mind. "Whoever 
 chooses to see Dr. Reid's fame still farther lowered in 
 several particulars, may be amply gratified in consulting 
 the relentless pages of our author. 
 
 In analyzing the feelings ascribed to Vision, Dr. 
 Brown claims to have made considerable extensions 
 and improvements upon the wonderful discoveries of 
 Berkeley. That philosopher, together with his successors, 
 had confined his demonstrations to the distance and 
 magnitude of objects alone. They still thought that we 
 perceive the visible figures of bodies by an immediate 
 and original shape, that presents itself to the " mind's 
 eye " as well as the body's. Our author, however, main- 
 tains, that our only immediate sensation in the case is 
 that of Color, and nothing more ; color, without even 
 extension. This color is by long and varied experience 
 intimately associated with our tactual and muscular 
 feelings of extension and figure, and therefore suggests 
 them. It is true the rays of light form images on the 
 retina; and so do odorous particles from a small flower 
 undoubtedly form a distinct figure as they reach the ol- 
 factory organ. But the author maintains, that in neither 
 case does the mind immediately perceive the figure of 
 the external object. He also exhibits many incongruities 
 and inconsistencies involved in the common belief, and 
 we recommend his twenty-ninth Lecture, in which these 
 
380 brown's philosophy op mind. 
 
 speculations occur, as a rare piece of delectably hard read- 
 ing, and of ingenious and staggering argumentation. 
 
 We have now exhibited a sketch of our author's re- 
 marks on the class of our External Affections of the 
 Mind considered simply. But it is not always simply 
 that they exist. They often occur in combination with 
 other feelings. It is therefore to these complex states 
 of the mind that he next proceeds. 
 
 He applies his penetrating analysis here to Attention, 
 which has been supposed to be a separate and simple 
 faculty of the mind. This too dissolves at the touch of 
 his w^and. What is Attention ? It is but a continued 
 desire to know more vividly and distinctly than be- 
 fore any objects of our perception, accompanied always 
 by such a voluntary, fixed contraction of the requisite 
 muscles, as shall enable the object to act with the 
 greatest power on whatever sense we are employing. 
 Now, Desire is only one of the simple emotions of the 
 mind. The author lays it down as an ultimate law of 
 our mental constitution, that all our emotions tend to 
 give the objects of perception an increased vividness and 
 distinctness. And it is to this law, therefore, that he 
 traces the peculiar effects of what is called Attention in 
 making objects more vivid and distinct. But between 
 the desire, which is a common and well-known emotion 
 of the mind, and the consequent muscular contraction, 
 w^hich is an affection of the body, what becomes of the 
 unique faculty of Attention ? It is not, as has always 
 been supposed, a simple mental state, but a process or 
 a combination of feelings. 
 
 Here closes the consideration of the External Affec- 
 tions of the Mind. Next in order of discussion follow 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 381 
 
 the Internal Affections. These were before subdivided 
 into Intellectual States, and Emotions. 
 
 The Intellectual States are reduced into two classes, 
 the Phenomena of Simple Suggestion, and the Phenom- 
 ena of Relative Suggestion. 
 
 By Simple Suggestion is meant the readiness of cer- 
 tain feelings or conceptions to arise, after certain other 
 feelings or conceptions, in trains of longer or shorter con- 
 tinuance. Thus a house suggests the person who lives 
 in it ; that person suggests the profession that he fol- 
 lows ; the profession suggests a multitude of men ; the 
 multitude suggests a whole country ; the country the 
 government, and so forth. Such a train of indefinite 
 length may evidently take place in the mind, without 
 any relation being observed between its successive links 
 Our Emotions may also constitute links in this train. 
 The author gives good reasons for preferring the term 
 Suggestion to Association. 
 
 Next, by the phenomena of Relative Suggestion are 
 implied our feelings of a different order, that arise when 
 two or more objects are contemplated together, feelings 
 of their agreement, or difference, or proportion, or some 
 one or other of the variety of their relations. Though at 
 first sight this classification of our Intellectual States 
 may appear to be excessively simplified, yet the author 
 is confident, that all the intellectual powers of which 
 writers on this branch of science speak are only modes 
 of these two, as they exist simply, or as they exist in 
 combination with some desire more or less permanent. 
 
 The laws which regulate simple suggestion are re- 
 duced to three : Resemblance or Analogy, Contrast, and 
 Contiguity in time or place. If one feeling or idea re- 
 
882 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 semble another, it may suggest it. If it be of an op- 
 posite description to another, it may suggest it. If it 
 has been felt by us before in local or momentary 
 contiguity with another, it may suggest it. Who- 
 ever will watch the trains of thought and feeling that 
 pass through his own mind, will perceive that they fol- 
 low each other in endless succession, only according to 
 one or another of these three laws. By a refinement of 
 analysis, the author believes that he might reduce them 
 all to one ; but he retains this obvious and tangible di- 
 vision, for the purpose of more distinctly exhibiting the 
 various characteristics of the mind. 
 
 The difference between genius and mediocrity he 
 places in this : — the simple suggestions of genius are 
 those generally of resemblance or analogy ; but if a 
 man's suggestions are commonly those of proximity in 
 time or place, he is but a creeping, ordinary person. We 
 cannot give the author's splendid, varied, and extended 
 illustrations of this distinction. , 
 
 The three primary laws of simple suggestion are, 
 however, very much modified and affected in their opera- 
 tion by several circumstances, which the author denom- 
 inates the Secondary Laws of Suggestion, and which he 
 reduces to the nine following classes. He finds that our 
 Suggestions are various accordingly as the original feel- 
 ings which they revive were, — first, of longer or shorter 
 continuance ; secondly, more or less lively ; thirdly, more 
 or less frequently present; fourthly, more or less re- 
 cent ; fifthly, more or less pure from the mixture of 
 other feelings ; sixthly, that they vary according to dif- 
 ferences of original constitution ; seventhly, according 
 to differences of temporary emotion ; eighthly, accord- 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 383 
 
 ing to changes produced in the state of the body ; and, 
 ninthly, according to general tendencies produced by 
 prior habits. 
 
 The illustration of these secondary laws, occupying 
 the thirty-seventh Lecture, presents an elegant specinien 
 of original, true, and beautiful philosophy. 
 
 In defence of his substitution of the word Suggestion 
 for Association, the author objects to the latter, as im- 
 plying sonae previous link or bond of connection between 
 the mental feelings said to be associated. His greatest 
 and plainest argument against such a supposition is, that 
 an object, seen for the first time, suggests many new 
 conceptions ; w^hich renders the notion of any former 
 association purely absurd. His philosophy pretends to 
 go no farther than the simple fact of the rise of one men- 
 tal feeling from the occurrence of another, while the com- 
 mon phraseology introduces a new mystery, and even 
 involves, as he shows, unavoidable absurdities. That 
 our suggestions do not follow each other loosely and 
 confusedly is no proof, he contends, of prior associations 
 in the mind, but merely of the general constitutional ten- 
 dency of the mind to exist, successively, in states that 
 have certain relations to each other. 
 
 Then follows a series of some of his most brilliant 
 achievements. Former philosophers have been at con- 
 siderable pains in enumerating and describing various 
 intellectual powers, such as Conception, Memory, Rec- 
 ollection, Fancy, Imagination, Habit, and the like. Dr. 
 Brown proposes to show, that this variety of powers is 
 unnecessarily and unphilosophically devised. He would 
 reduce them to the principle of Simple Suggestion ; or, 
 at least, to this simple principle, in combination with 
 
384 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 some of those other principles which were pointed out 
 as parts of our mental constitution, in his arrangennent 
 of the phenomena of mind. 
 
 First, the power of Conception, so called, where the 
 perception of one object excites the notion of some ab- 
 sent object, he allows to belong to the mind ; but he 
 maintains that this is the very function which is meant 
 by the power of Suggestion itself, and that, if the con- 
 ception be separated from the suggestion, nothing will 
 remain to constitute the power of suggestion, which is 
 only another name for the same power. There is not, 
 in any case of suggestion, both a suggestion and a con- 
 ception, more than there is, in any case of vision, both a 
 vision and sight. What one glance is to the capacity of 
 vision, one conception is to the capacity of suggestion. 
 "We may see innumerable objects in succession ; we may 
 conceive innumerable objects in succession. But we 
 see them because we are susceptible of vision ; we con- 
 ceive them because we have that susceptibility of spon- 
 taneous suggestion by which conceptions arise after 
 each other in regular trains. 
 
 The next supposed intellectual power to which he 
 calls our attention is Memory. This, he very acutely 
 maintains, is not a distinct intellectual faculty, but is 
 merely a suggestion, and a feeling of relation, the rela- 
 tion of priority in time. When we think of a house, 
 without any relation to former time, or any other rela- 
 tion, we have only a simple suggestion of it; but when 
 we think of it as the abode where we formerly lived, the 
 suggestion receives the name of memory. Now, be- 
 tween the power of simple suggestion and the general 
 power of feeling relations, hereafter to be considered, 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 385 
 
 what becomes of such a faculty as Memory ? It van- 
 ishes before the analytical magic of Dr. Brown. 
 
 So Recollection, which is conceived to be a kind of 
 voluntary memory, and particularly under our control, he 
 reduces to "the coexistence of some vague and indis- 
 tinct desire with our simple trains of suggestion." As 
 long as the desire of remembering a particular event or 
 object continues to exist, a variety of suggestions, more 
 or less directly connected with the event or object, spon- 
 taneously arise in the mind, until we either obtain, at 
 last, the remembrance which we wish, or, by some new 
 suggestion, are led into a new channel of thought, and 
 forget altogether that there was anything which we 
 wished to remember. 
 
 Next, Imagination is reduced to its component ele- 
 ments. The momentary groups of images that arise, 
 independently of any desire or choice on our part, and 
 arise in almost every minute to almost every mind, con- 
 stitute by far the greater number of our imaginations. 
 Here is evidently only a process of simple suggestion. 
 But there are cases in which desire, or intention of 
 some sort, accompanies the whole or the chief part of 
 the process, and it is of these cases that we are accus- 
 tomed to think, in speaking of this supposed power. By 
 Imagination, in the common use of the word, is meant 
 the creative power of the imagination. But is even this 
 a separate and peculiar faculty of the mind ? The fol- 
 lowing is the process by which the author shows that it 
 is not. First, there arises to the mind of any given 
 Imaginer some conception, or simple svggesiion of a par- 
 ticular subject ; next, this subject excites in him a desire 
 of producing by it some beautiful or interesting result. 
 
 33 
 
386 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 This desire, like every other vivid feeling, has a degree 
 of permanence which our vivid feelings only possess ; 
 and, by its permanence, tends to keep the accompanying 
 conception of the subject, which is the object of the de- 
 sire, also permanent before us; and while it is thus per- 
 manent, the usual spontaneous suggestions take place ; 
 conception following conception, in rapid but relative 
 series, and our judgment, all the time, approving and re- 
 jecting, according to these relations oi fitness and unfitness 
 to the subject which it perceives in parts of the train. 
 
 Such is the author's picture of the state, or successive 
 states, of the mind, in the formation of every species of 
 production which goes by the name of a work of imagi- 
 nation. It is not, he insists, the exercise of a single 
 power, but the development of various susceptibilities, 
 — of desire^ — of simple suggestion, by which conceptions 
 rise after conceptions, — of judgment or relative sugges- 
 tion, by which a feeling of relative fitness or unfitness 
 arises, on the contemplation of the conceptions that have 
 thus spontaneously presented themselves. The results 
 of this process will, of course, be different in value ac- 
 cording to the constitution of different minds, and also 
 according to the various influences of those secondary 
 laws of suggestion which were before pointed out as 
 modifying the primary. In the mind of inventive ge- 
 nius, conceptions follow each other, chiefly according to 
 the relations of Analogy, which are infinite, and therefore 
 admit of constant novelty ; while in the humbler mind, 
 the prevailing tendencies of suggestion are those of for- 
 mer Contiguity of objects in place and time, which are, 
 of course, limited, and by their very nature confined to 
 conceptions that cannot confer on the mind in which 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 387 
 
 they arise the honor of originality. The forty-second 
 Lecture, containing the full developnient and illustration 
 of the foregoing principles, is one of the finest, one of 
 the most interesting, in the series. Imagination and 
 fancy, however, seem to be used throughout as synony- 
 mous, or at least with no attempt at distinguishing them. 
 "Where the author endeavors to show the spiritual mech- 
 anism, as it were, by which, in conducting a work of 
 imagination, some images are selected in preference to 
 others, the train of discussion is peculiar to himself, and 
 contains a full condensation of some of his most original 
 doctrines. 
 
 The next Lecture contains two very curious specula- 
 tions, in opposition to the doctrine that Habit is an ulti- 
 mate and peculiar law of the mind, and explaining ail 
 its phenomena by the mere operation of simple sugges- 
 tion ; after which, the absurdity and incompetency of 
 the Hartleian system of vibrations and vibratiuncles are 
 in various ways exposed and refuted. 
 
 We now proceed to describe the other class of in- 
 ternal affections of the mind, comprehending our feel- 
 ings of Relative Suggestion, that is, all our feelings of 
 relation. There is an original tendency or susceptibility 
 of the mind, by which, on perceiving together different 
 objects, we are instantly, without the intervention of any 
 other mental process, sensible of their relation in certain 
 respects, as truly as there is an original tendency or 
 susceptibility of the mind, by which, when external ob- 
 jects are present, and have produced a certain affection 
 of our sensorial organ, we are instantly affected with the 
 primary elementary feelings of perception. These rela- 
 tions we recognize both among external objects and 
 
388 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 our mental feelings of every kind, and they are divided 
 by our author into two general classes. We perceive 
 relations among them as they coexist at any given in- 
 stant in groups, without any reference to succession in 
 time. Thus, you feel that two is to twelve, as twelve 
 is to seventy-two, and you feel this, merely by con- 
 sidering the numbers together, without any regard to 
 time. No notion of change or succession is involved in 
 it. This is the first general class of relations. Next, 
 w^e perceive relations among objects and among our 
 feelings, considered with reference to time, as succes- 
 sive. Thus you perceive the relation of effect and 
 cause between the bloom of summer and the warmth 
 of its sky. 
 
 The first of our classes of Relations, those of which 
 the subjects are regarded without reference to time, are 
 subdivided into five different kinds. First, there is the 
 relation of Position. Mark the furniture standing about 
 your room ; one article on your right, another a little 
 farther on, another directly opposite, and so forth. Sec- 
 ondly, the relation of Resemblance or of Difference. 
 Observe in your path two flow^ers of the same tints and 
 forms, or of different odors. Thirdly, the relation of 
 proportion. Think of the equality between the vertical 
 angles formed by two straight lines, which cut one an- 
 other; of the pairs of numbers four, six, — five, twenty, 
 — and your mind exists immediately in that state which 
 constitutes the feeling of Proportion. Fourthly, the re- 
 lation of Degree. Listen to one voice, and then to a 
 voice which is louder; smell one flow^er, and then anoth- 
 er which is more or less fragrant. Fifthly, the relation 
 of Comprehension. Consider a house and its different 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 389 
 
 apartments ; a tree and its branches, stems, and foliage ; 
 a horse and its limbs, trunk, head, — and you have the 
 feeling of the relation of parts to one comprehensive 
 whole. By some subtilty and refinement of analysis, 
 these divisions might be made fewer, but they are suffi- 
 ciently distinct for every purpose of arrangement. 
 
 Passing over the first of these five classes, the author 
 directs our attention to the relation of Resemblance. 
 To this principle he ascribes all classification^ and conse- 
 quently everything which is valuable in language. It is 
 the use oi general terms, that is to say, of terms founded 
 on the feeling of resemblance, which alone gives to lan- 
 guage its power, enabling us to condense, in a single 
 word, innumerable objects, which, individually, would 
 be utterly impossible to be grasped by us in our concep- 
 tions. It would be unjust to refuse to Dr. Brown a 
 chaplet of glory for the masterly penetration with which 
 he has treated the subject of general ideas, and the un- 
 rivalled degree of light and simplicity diffused by him 
 through dark, tangled difficulties, amid which all former 
 philosophers, without exception, had been hopelessly 
 groping. Time was, when, if we had wished to make 
 a common man tremble, and a wise one appear foolishly 
 profound, we could not have devised a more successful 
 method, than to ask them how they would explain an 
 abstract general notion. The very phrase is even now 
 bewildering and distressing, in consequence of old asso- 
 ciations involved with it. Yes, even now, when our 
 admirable author has revealed to the world, — what the 
 world may well wonder it never clearly and scientifically 
 knew before, though all, down to child and idiot, must 
 have felt and practised upon it every day, — that the feel- 
 33 * 
 
390 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 ing of similarity is that which constitutes a general 
 notion. " The perception of objects, the feeling of their 
 resemblance in certain respects, the invention of a name 
 for these circumstances of felt resemblance, — what can 
 be more truly and readily conceivable than this process ! 
 And yet on this process, apparently so simple, has been 
 founded all that controversy as to tmiversals, which so 
 long distracted the schools ; and which, far more won- 
 derfully, (for the distraction of the schools by a few un- 
 intelligible words scarcely can be counted wonderful,) 
 continues still to perplex philosophers with difficulties 
 which themselves have made ; difficulties which they 
 could not even have made to themselves, if they had 
 thought for a single moment of the nature of that feel- 
 ing of the relation of similarity which we are now con- 
 sidering." (Lecture XLV.) 
 
 The point in dispute was shortly this. One party 
 maintained, that, besides all the objects which we can 
 know individually, there are in existence certain uni- 
 versal forms comprehending whole classes of objects. 
 What does the word triangle represent? Surely not a 
 triangle of three equal sides only, nor one of two equal 
 sides only, nor one merely of three unequal sides. If it 
 signify anything, they contended, it must signify a uni- 
 versal triangle, comprehending all possible properties of 
 all possible triangles. So of the words man, tree, horse, 
 flower, and other common substantives. The phrase 
 Universals a parte rei, which they gave to these sup- 
 posed general essences, was expressive of real existences, 
 and they who maintained the doctrine itself assumed 
 the appellation of Realists. Pythagoras, Plato, and 
 their followers in the schools and closets of two thou- 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 391 
 
 sand years, held this doctrine with more or fewer modi- 
 fications. The last lingering relic of its intlaence in 
 England probably died with Dr. Price. 
 
 On the other hand, their opponents contended, that 
 there is nothing in existence but particular and indi- 
 vidual objects alone ; and that the names which we give 
 to whole classes of them are entirely creatures of our 
 own arbitrary invention, employed, for the sake of con- 
 venience, to comprehend many particulars under one 
 general term. These philosophers, for an obvious rea- 
 son, were called Nominalists. Their doctrine dates 
 from Koscellinus, a native of Brittany, who lived in the 
 eleventh century. Abelard, Occam, Hobbes, Berkeley, 
 Hume, Dr. Campbell, and Dugald Stewart, have been 
 among the most celebrated of its defenders. The Em- 
 peror Louis of Bavaria, and Louis the Eleventh of 
 France, took sides on the question, and led to the field 
 the usual arguments of kings. 
 
 The great stumbling-block of the Nominalists has been, 
 the principle according to which we conduct the classifi- 
 cation of objects, and the comprehension of many under 
 one general term. They have considered it as purely a 
 matter of arbitrary performance on the part of men ; and 
 have never formally explained what constitutes those 
 classes of objects to which we give a common name. 
 They have not allowed that there is any other mental 
 operation in the business of classification, besides the 
 perception of objects, and the immediate employment of 
 general terms. Dr. Brown has satisfactorily developed 
 the true intermediate operation of the mind between 
 these two ; that is to say, a perception of the relation of 
 resemblance among whatever objects we rank under one 
 
392 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 general term. The consideration of this relative sug- 
 gestion elucidates all the mystery, and reconciles nearly 
 every difficulty. It allows to the Realist, not indeed his 
 universal forms and universal ideas, but a real operation 
 of the mind, which fills up the hideous chasm that of- 
 fended him, when persuaded to believe that there was 
 nothing in existence to correspond with a name or order. 
 It grants to the Nominalist the whole absurdity of Uni- 
 versals a parte rei, but it presses upon him the existence 
 of that which he denied, though he needed it; namely, a 
 general notion in the mind, as the ground and reason 
 for the employment of general terms. If it were the 
 7iame only, which, as they say, forms the classification, 
 and not that previous relative feelings or general notion 
 of resemblance of some sort, which the name denotes, 
 then might anything^ insists Dr. Brown, be classed with 
 anything^ and be classed with equal propriety. 
 
 Dr. Brown is far from claiming to be the first who 
 conjectured, that there is some intermediate operation of 
 the mind serving as a transition between the ideas of 
 particular objects and the generalization of them by uni- 
 versal terms. There was formerly the sect of " Con- 
 ceptualists," who maintained that we conceive of univer- 
 sal ideas, and give corresponding names to them though 
 they do not exist in reality. Locke and Reid were the 
 more modern disciples of this school. But this argu- 
 ment has been successfully wielded against them, that 
 it is as impossible for us to conceive of a triangle, or a 
 man, comprehending in their respective natures the va- 
 rious and contradictory properties of all possible trian- 
 gles and all possible men, as that there should be in ex- 
 istence the universal forms of such monsters of thought. 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 393 
 
 Adam Smith had expressly pointed out, indeed, this 
 principle of resemblance used in generalization. But 
 when Dr. Brown tooiv the field, the victory was con- 
 sidered to be in the hands of the Nominalists. How 
 he has snatched the prize away from them, and become 
 at once umpire and conqueror, may be learned from the 
 foregoing sketch, and more at large and satisfactorily 
 from the author's own extended speculations, which he 
 concludes, along with the minor work, by saying : " There 
 have been Realists, Nominalists, Conceptualists. It is 
 as a Relationist that I would technically distinguish 
 myself." 
 
 On recurring to Professor Stew^art's Elements of the 
 Philosophy of the Human Mind, to see whether resem- 
 blance^ as the principle of classification, could have es- 
 caped so acute and profound a thinker, we find that he 
 does suggest it, in his introductory observations on the 
 faculty of abstraction, though unwarily and by chance 
 as it were ; and that he seems altogether unconscious of 
 the extensive influence which it possesses in the opera- 
 tions of the mind. That, in the progress of his inquiries, 
 he loses sight of this principle, and ascribes omnipotent 
 influence to the arbitrary use of names, must be evident 
 to all who peruse his fourth chapter. 
 
 If Dr. Brown has left anything to be desired in this 
 part of his philosophy, it is a more exact and distinct 
 description of what he means by Resemblance. Per- 
 haps the notion is not to be defined, but must be left to 
 the consciousness of the inquirer, like the explanation of 
 a color or a sound. Yet we can easily conceive that an 
 obdurate Nominalist, before he yields his ground, might 
 demand some definition of this mysterious and flexible 
 
394 broavn's philosophy of mind. 
 
 cement, which unites into one class objects so unlike in 
 some respects as an acute angle and an obtuse angle, or 
 a man and an insect, an elephant and an animalcule, or 
 a globular atom and the world. Is it possible to hit 
 upon an explanation of Resemblance, which shall com- 
 prehend the infinitely multiplied cases in which it ex- 
 ists among objects, forms, motions, and conceptions, 
 that involve at the same instant infinitely multiplied 
 diversities ? We decline entering now upon so shad- 
 owy a speculation, wishing, however, that our author 
 had devoted a Lecture or two to its prosecution. 
 
 Among the five species of relations before enumerated, 
 of which one, that is. Resemblance, has just been treat- 
 ed, the reader must recollect that of Comprehension, 
 or the relation of a whole to its parts. To this our 
 author next proceeds. The relative suggestion, which 
 involves this relation, is considered by him as the great 
 single and simple instrument of our reasonings ; nay, its 
 continued operation is that which, according to him, in- 
 volves the whole process of reasoning. He begins with 
 single propositions. In every proposition, he says, that 
 which is affirmed is a part of that of which it is affirmed. 
 Snow is white. White is one of the many feelings 
 which constitute your complex notion of snow. For a 
 proof that reasoning consists of a number of propositions 
 of this kind, each involving this relative notion of com- 
 prehension, we give an example, in the words of the au- 
 thor, of a somewhat extended, abstract, moral argument, 
 as an extreme case. 
 
 " When I say a man is fallible, I state a quality involved in 
 the nature of man, as any other part of an aggregate is involved 
 in any other comprehending whole. When I add, he may there- 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 395 
 
 fore err, even when he thinks himself least exposed to error, I 
 state what is involved in the notion of his fallibility. When I 
 say, he therefore must not expect that all men will think as he 
 does, even on points which appear to him to have no obscurity, 
 I state that which is involved in the possibility of his and their 
 erring even on such points. When I say, that he therefore 
 should not dare to punish those who merely differ from him, 
 and who may be right even in differing from him, I state what is 
 involved in the absurdity of the expectation, that all men should 
 think as he does. And when I say, that any particular legisla- 
 tive act of intolerance is as unjust as it is absurd, I state only 
 what is involved in the impropriety of attempting to punish those 
 who have no other guilt than that of differing in opinion from 
 others, who are confessedly of a nature as fallible as their own." 
 ■—Lecture XLVIII. 
 
 Granting, then, that the process of reasoning is nothing 
 but the perpetual evolution of successive parts, by which, 
 at each new step, that which was just now a part takes 
 its turn to be considered as a whole, and some one of its 
 own parts to be detected by the reasoner, and so on- 
 ward, till he has arrived at some desired or unexpected 
 end of his investigations, — yet it is evident, that, for 
 the purpose of successful ratiocination, the propositions 
 should follow each other in a certain order. How is it, 
 then, that they arrange themselves, as they rise in suc- 
 cession, in this necessary order ? 
 
 Mr. Locke's and the common opinion is, that we have 
 a certain sagacitTj^ by which we find out each successive 
 step that occurs in a rightly ordered course of reasoning. 
 But this is only explaining the difficulty by the difficulty 
 itself. The question still remains, what the order of prop- 
 ositions is, which some persons have more, and some 
 
396 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 less sagacity, or rather facility and readiness, in seizing 
 upon than others. The whole seeming mystery of this 
 order, in the propositions which form our longest pro- 
 cesses of reasoning, depends, according to Dr. Brown, on 
 the regularity of the laics which guide our simple sugges- 
 tions. In the first place, it is necessary that we should 
 have a continued desire to come to some conclusion on 
 any given subject. This continued desire, the nature of 
 all our emotions being more permanent than our flitting 
 and restless intellectual states, keeps the subject itself 
 constantly before our minds ; then, by the primary laws 
 of suggestion before described, the conception of the 
 original subject suggests various other conceptions. This 
 is the second of the three stages in the process. Now 
 to different minds the conceptions suggested are notori- 
 ously different. A man cannot ivill any new concep- 
 tion in a train of reasoning, for that would be to sup- 
 pose the conception already in his mind. Nor does the 
 same man reason equally well, nor even in the same 
 manner, on a given subject, at difTerent times. To-day 
 you can arrive by five steps of reasoning at a certain 
 conclusion, which yesterday more circuitously cost you 
 ten. Another man perhaps might never arrive at your 
 conclusion, in consequence of his conceptions obstinate- 
 ly taking a different course, even when starting from the 
 same subject with yourself. Yet his reasoning may be 
 perfectly correct, as well as yours; the difference between 
 the conclusions arising from the difference between the 
 conceptions suggested. We must, however, remember 
 that there is a third stage in the process, which is, to feel 
 the relation of Comprehension, as above stated, between 
 any conception as a whole and some one of its parts. 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 397 
 
 And different men are also worse or better reasoners ac- 
 cordingly as they have a less or greater tendency to 
 feel this relation. 
 
 In the foregoing subtile speculations, which we have 
 taken much pains to represent in the most intelligible 
 and favorable manner that a severe abstract would al- 
 low, the author has indeed ingeniously accounted for 
 the various opinions existing among mankind, and has 
 thus taught a philosophical lesson of comprehensive 
 charity. But we must confess we looked for more. Is 
 it come to this ? Does reason depend for its authority 
 on the accidental conceptions of men ? We want a 
 rule, that shall decide between the two opposite conclu- 
 sions at which equally acute reasoners may, and do so 
 often, arrive. We do not like that there should be occa- 
 sion for charity. We are anxious for uniformity, though 
 not in the way by which legislative theologians would 
 enforce it. Perhaps such a rule is never to be discov- 
 ered in our imperfect world, where, from unavoidable cir- 
 cumstances, different conceptions must necessarily arise 
 in different minds. But this is the very point, if it must 
 be so, on w^hich we regret that Dr. Brown did not more 
 emphatically dwell. Was he unwilling to confess the 
 weakness of that very instrument with which he has 
 wrought so many triumphs ? No man could have illus- 
 trated the subject more happily. He too, with his rare 
 union of penetration and philosophical devotion, might 
 have pointed out, with perhaps unrivalled felicity, what 
 consolations mankind still possess in the absence of 
 an infallible and convincing test of true reasoning, 
 and what limits the Almighty himself has established 
 for our safety in the very constitution of our minds, 
 
 34 
 
398 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 when he placed us in this dark, agitated, and doubtful 
 state. 
 
 Perhaps an interesting sketch of the various orders 
 of intellects might be taken in connection with Dr. 
 Brown's views and classifications of the simple and rela- 
 tive suggestions. A mind, for instance, which has a 
 peculiar tendency to feel the relation of Comprehension 
 between any whole subject and all its possible parts or 
 properties, is happily adapted, according to the theory 
 just given, to logic, reasoning, and demonstration in 
 general. If the tendency of a mind be to feel the rela- 
 tion of Proportion, (though with some subtilty this rela- 
 tion may be reduced to the former,) its inclination is to 
 mathematical demonstration. If it be chiefly inclined 
 to perceive the relation of Resemblance or Difference, it 
 deals in the generalizations of philosophy or in the dis- 
 tinctions of wit. If its habit be to look for the relation 
 of Degree, or comparison, it will be likely to excel in ex- 
 quisite taste and judgment. If its leading tendency be 
 to feel only the relation of Position, it is of an humbler 
 order. There are a few minds which seem to be blessed 
 with equal and decided capacities for all these five rela- 
 tive suggestions; and if the same minds also are gifted 
 with tendencies towards the higher order of simple sug- 
 gestions, that is to say, the suggestions of Analogy, before 
 dwelt upon, which will almost infinitely multiply the re- 
 sources of new conceptions among which relations are 
 to be felt ; and if also their simple suggestions of prox- 
 imity in place or time be unusually abundant, meaning 
 thereby, apart from the author's nomenclature, only a 
 strong and ready memory, — on such minds nature has 
 conferred a singular and enviable pre-eminence. Of 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 399 
 
 course, the infinite diversities among different minds will 
 follow the corresponding distributions which nature or 
 circumstances may make of the foregoing tendencies, 
 modified also, be it observed, by the secondary laws of 
 suggestion already enumerated. 
 
 Dr. Brown skilfully overthrows the thrice-slain syllo- 
 gistic system, robbing it even of the little reputation it 
 still possessed as a mode of communicating knowledge. 
 He shows that it is in this light, if possible, still more 
 defective than as a mode of acquiring it. 
 
 Besides the Relations of Coexistence, the five classes 
 of which have been now considered, there is one more 
 order, which involves the notion of time, or priority and 
 subsequence, and these the author denominates Rela- 
 tions of Succession. They are of two classes. " They 
 are relations either of casual or of invariable antecedience 
 or consequence ; and we distinguish these as clearly in 
 our thought, as we distinguish any other two relations. 
 We speak of events which happened after other events, — 
 as mere dates in chronology. We speak of other events, 
 as the effects of events or circumstances that preceded 
 them. The relations of invariable antecedence and conse- 
 quence, in distinction from merely casual antecedence and 
 consequence, is this relation of causes and effects^ Our 
 notions of the fitness or unfitness of objects to produce 
 certain results are ascribed by the author to our Relative 
 Suggestions of Succession. " All practical science is the 
 knowledge of these aptitudes of things in their various 
 circumstances of combination, as every art is the em- 
 ployment of them, in conformity with this knowledge, 
 with a view to those future changes which they tend to 
 produce in all the different circumstances in which ob- 
 
400 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 jects caii be placed. To know how to add any enjoy- 
 ment to life, or how to lessen any of its evils, is nothing 
 more in any case than to know the relation which ob- 
 jects bear to each other, as antecedent and consequent, 
 some form of that particular relation which we are con- 
 sidering." 
 
 The faculty of Taste the author analyzes into two 
 separate elements, one of which he refers to this feeling 
 of the Relation of Succession. One of these elements is 
 the existence of certain emotions of admiration or disgust 
 that arise in the mind at the perception of various objects 
 in nature and art. The other element, which involves 
 the feeling of the Relation of Succession, is the knowl- 
 edge of the particular forms, colors, sounds, or concep- 
 tions that are most likely to be followed by those emo- 
 tions. 
 
 The last specimen of Dr. Brown's analytical achieve- 
 ments of this kind which we shall now present, is his 
 explanation of Abstraction, a faculty by which we are 
 supposed to be capable of separating in our thought cer- 
 tain parts of our complex notions, and of considering 
 them thus abstracted from the rest. But the whole mys- 
 tery of this supposed faculty is nothing more than the 
 perception of the relation of resemblance between two or 
 more objects in certain common properties, without vol- 
 untarily or even consciously separating or regarding 
 those other properties in which the objects are unlike. 
 If we are capable of perceiving a resemblance of some 
 sort when we look at a swan and on snow, why should 
 we be astonished, he asks, that we have invented the 
 word lohiteness to signify the common circumstance of 
 resemblance ? Or why should we have recourse, for this 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 401 
 
 feeling of whiteness itself, to any mysterious capacity of 
 the mind, but that which evolves to us the similarity 
 which we are acknowledged to be capable of feeling ? 
 Thus dissolves the last horrida crux that has tormented 
 so many metaphysical as well as unmetaphysical in- 
 quirers. 
 
 We have now exhibited Dr. Brown's outlines of the 
 External Affections of the Mind, and its purely Intel- 
 lectual States; two of the three leading divisions into 
 which he distributes all our mental states or feelings. 
 His peculiar and prominent claims to originality here 
 may be suggested in one word, by mentioning his exhi- 
 bition of the predominant share of influence which the 
 Muscular System exerts in the first class of feelings, and 
 his analytical reduction of the whole of the second class 
 to Simple Suggestions and Felt Relations. ' 
 
 The Emotions remain now to be considered, before 
 completing the author's system of the Physiology of the 
 Mind. He declines venturing on a definition of Emo- 
 tions, affirming that the attempt would be as truly im- 
 possible as to define sweetness, or bitterness, a sound, or 
 a smell, in any other way than by a statement of the 
 circumstances in which they arise. 
 
 The author's general principle of arranging the Emo- 
 tions is their relation to time. They are, — 
 
 Immediate, or involving no notion of time whatever ; 
 
 Retrospective, or relating to the past ; 
 
 Prospective, or relating to the future. 
 
 Admiration, remorse, hope, may serve as particular 
 instances to illustrate this distinction. We admire what 
 is before us ; we feel remorse for some past crime ; we 
 hope some future good. 
 
 34* 
 
402 brown's philosophy op mikd. 
 
 Were they considered only as elementary feelings, 
 without any regard to time, the emotions, he says, might 
 be reduced to the following: joy, grief, desire, astonish- 
 ment, respect, contempt, and the two opposite species of 
 vivid feelings, which distinguish to us the acts or affec- 
 tions that are denominated virtuous or vicious. Such 
 a consideration of them, however, would be much more 
 abstract, uninteresting, and inapplicable to human life 
 and conduct, than the method which he has adopted. 
 
 The immediate emotions are subdivided into those 
 which do not involve any feeling that can be termed 
 moral, and those which do involve some moral affec- 
 tion. 
 
 The following are our immediate emotions of the 
 former kind : cheerfulness, melancholy, wonder, mental 
 Weariness, the feeling of beauty, disgust, our feelings of 
 sublimity and ludicrousness. To the latter subdivision 
 may be referred the vivid feelings that constitute what 
 we distinguish by the names of vice and virtue, consid- 
 ered apart from the mere intellectual judgments we form 
 respecting actions ; our emotions of love and hate ; of 
 sympathy with the happy and with the miserable ; of 
 pride and humility. 
 
 The retrospective emotions are subdivided as they re- 
 late to others and to ourselves. Those which relate to 
 others are anger and gratitude. Those which relate to 
 ourselves are simple regret and satisfaction, without the 
 mixture of any moral feeling; and, finally, remorse and 
 self-approbation. 
 
 The prospective emotions comprehend all our de- 
 sires and all our fears. Of the former, the most impor- 
 tant may be considered as enumerated in the following 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 403 
 
 series. " First, our desire of continued existence, with- 
 out any immediate regard to the pleasure which it may 
 yield ; secondly, our desire of pleasure, considered di- 
 rectly as mere pleasure; thirdly, our desire of action; 
 fourthly, our desire of society ; fifthly, our desire of 
 knowledge ; sixthly, our desire of power, — direct, as in 
 ambition, or indirect, as in avarice ; seventhly, our desire 
 of the affection or esteem of those around us ; eighthly, 
 our desire of glory ; ninthly, our desire of the happiness 
 of others ; and, tenthly, our desire of the unhappiness of 
 those whom we hate." The following paragraph on this 
 subject is a happy specimen of the author's analytical 
 skill, and of the gracefulness and facility with which he 
 makes the common nomenclature of our mental feelings 
 fall into his own philosophical arrangements. 
 
 " I must observe, however, in the first place, that each of these 
 desires may exist in different forms, according to the degree of 
 probability of the attainment of its object. When there is little 
 of any probability, it constitutes what is termed a mere wish ; 
 when the probabihty is stronger, it becomes what is called hope ; 
 with still greater probability, expectation ; and with a probability 
 that approaches certainty, confidence. This variation of the form 
 of the desire, according to the degrees of probability, is, of course, 
 not confined to any particular desire, but may run through all the 
 desires which I have enumerated, and every other desire of which 
 the mind is, or may be supposed to be capable." — Lecture LV. 
 
 In the spirit of the foregoing paragraph, the reason 
 why no peculiar place is set apart for the Passions in 
 this classification is, that our passions are truly no sepa- 
 rate class, but merely a name for our desires when very 
 vivid or very permanent. 
 
 Dr. Brown, also, goes into no separate classification of 
 
404 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 our Fears, since it is evident that they are excited by 
 precisely the same objects which excite our desires. We 
 desire to obtain any object, we fear that we shall not 
 obtain it. We dread any pain or calamity ; we wish, 
 we hope, that we may escape it. Thus, our fears and 
 our desires are correlative feelings, and whatever is said 
 of the one may be referred, by a contrasted application, 
 to the other. 
 
 We have thus given a mere rough synopsis of the au- 
 thor's arrangement of the Emotions. He devotes to 
 them twenty-one of the hundred lectures. This portion 
 of the book will probably be found the most popular and 
 interesting of the whole. It is generally rich and de- 
 lightful writing, with the exception of some commonplace 
 prosing, and a little occasional declamation. The au- 
 thor separately considers each article in the foregoing 
 ample catalogue, metaphysically, morally, and theologi- 
 cally. His speculations on this department of his sci- 
 ence would well bear dividing into a number of pro- 
 found and elegant essays. They are adorned with a 
 variety of apposite and beautiful illustrations, from a 
 rather limited but very select range of reading. Perhaps 
 the most felicitous and striking traits in this busy pic- 
 ture of the emotions are the luminous explanations of 
 the final causes for which each of them was introduced 
 into our mental constitution. The wisdom and good- 
 ness of the Creator are here very impressively vindicat- 
 ed. Even anger, hatred, and other passions, most gener- 
 ally liable to abuse, are shown to bear their necessary 
 part in that harmonious arrangement which provides for 
 the happiness of the species. But this consideration 
 leads the author to establish safe lines of distinction, and 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 405 
 
 to deduce from an enlightened view of our whole nature 
 a body of excellent moral rules. To attempt even a 
 slight sketch of the acute and profound disquisitions, the 
 exquisite analysis, the fine sensibility, the sterling good 
 sense, the eloquent and earnest recommendations of 
 morality, the examination and confutation of many opin- 
 ions and theories of Alison, Hutcheson, Smith, Stewart, 
 and other philosophers, which these twenty-one Lectures 
 exhibit, would be a task agreeable indeed to ourselves, 
 and profitable to our readers, but far too disproportioned 
 to other purposes for which this essay is designed. 
 
 Among the very few topics here treated, on which we 
 have found reason to dissent from the ingenious author, 
 is that of Avarice. It will be seen, in his enumeration 
 of the Desires above represented, that he regards avarice 
 as only a modification of our desire of power. We are 
 persuaded that this is an inaccurate reference of the real 
 and original principle of the emotion in question. Av- 
 arice is often exercised without regard to the attain- 
 ment of any kind of power whatever. It loves money 
 and property purely as such, and not for the gratifica- 
 tions they can purchase. Dr. Brown was aware of this 
 phenomenon, and felt its inconsistency with the above 
 classification of the desires. He labors at great length, 
 and quite unsuccessfully, to account for this obvious 
 anomaly in his system. He falls into a maze of his own 
 creating, by first ranking avarice as an indirect desire of 
 power, and then finding that it is not always a desire of 
 power. He wonders, through a whole Lecture, why the 
 miser should be so eager to deny himself all kinds of 
 gratifications for the sake of that money whose only real 
 value is that it can purchase, and is the representative 
 
406 brown's philosophy or mind. 
 
 of, those very renounced gratifications ! Would not our 
 author's perplexity and inconsistency have been very 
 easily prevented, by only adding an eleventh class of de- 
 sires to the ten already laid down ? Does not avarice 
 flow from a distinct, original, and independent emotion, 
 namely, a love of hoarding, or, as our author would have 
 called it, the Desire of Acquisition ? The child hoards 
 its shells and pebbles, the virtuoso his curiosities, the 
 collector his books, the scholar, often, his intellectual 
 stores, and the miser his gold, almost entirely for the 
 gratification of this simple and separate propensity, with 
 a comparatively faint and fortuitous influence of other 
 motives. And to pursue a favorite train of the author's 
 speculation, before alluded to, it is well for us that our 
 Creator has implanted in our minds this particular de- 
 sire. In His prospective benevolence, indeed, it was 
 intended to be a direct means of acquiring power, as 
 instrumental to our improvement and happiness. But 
 man often fulfils this intention blindly. An inattention 
 to the distinction here pointed out misled the author, we 
 doubt not, into his defective classification. Were it not 
 for the strong operation of the instinctive propensity we 
 are suggesting, man must often have perished through 
 w^ant, the consequence of carelessness and improvidence. 
 We were not left to calculate the benefits resulting from 
 frugality, nor to wait until we should smart from priva- 
 tions, occasioned by lavishness and inexperience. A de- 
 sire of mere acquisition, therefore, seems to be a com- 
 pensation as beautiful as it is indispensable in this fluc- 
 tuating and precarious world. A too great indulgence 
 of the feeling, of course, becomes, like an abuse of any 
 other desire, criminal and mischievous. 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 407 
 
 It was probably in consequence of not adverting to 
 this indubitable law of our mental constitution, that Dr. 
 Brown, in endeavoring to account for the unreasonable 
 excesses of avarice which are sometimes witnessed, was 
 led to lay a very disproportionate stress on the regret 
 that arises from early prodigality. Indeed, he would 
 seem at times to regard this regret as the original foun- 
 dation and main ingredient of the passion. We are con- 
 strained to question the correctness of this theory. Who 
 has not known instances of a decided bent towards ava- 
 rice, which could be traced up to the earliest period after 
 infancy, when it was impossible that the little miser 
 could have felt any inconvenience or regret arising from 
 prodigality or extravagance ? Fasten down the cover of 
 a box, make in it a small aperture, persuade your child 
 to drop into it every coin that is given him, tell him to 
 search for money on the parade-ground early in the morn- 
 ing after each muster-day, instruct him to bargain away 
 his cake and his toys for cash, deliver to him perpetually 
 short solemn lectures and cautions on the propriety of 
 saving and hoarding his money, and such discipline, 
 acting on the native desire for which we have been con- 
 tending, will soon convert him into a sordid wretch, long 
 before he has experienced one feeling of pain at the loss 
 of that cake which in fact he has never enjoyed. Re- 
 gret for squandered means, we allow, is often one among 
 the many other circumstances which Dr. Brown has so 
 happily enumerated as enhancing and aggravating the 
 force of the avaricious principle, and may sometimes 
 awaken and develop it when it has slept for a long time. 
 But we cannot believe it to be the main-spring of the 
 passion itself, nor sufficient, especially, to remove the 
 
408 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 embarrassment which the author has encountered in the 
 exposition of his theory. Even should the separate de- 
 sire on which we insist be denied, still we would ac- 
 count for most of the workings of avarice on principles 
 far different from this regret. But we cannot trust our- 
 selves now with the discussion. 
 
 Dr. Brown has with great felicity assigned several rea- 
 sons for the paradox in common life of a person's parting 
 tranquilly with large sums, while the loss of a small one 
 is sufficient to destroy his happiness for a day. He 
 might have accounted for this latter case, in some in- 
 stances, not so much from merely avaricious feelings, as 
 from the shame of being overreached in a bargaining 
 transaction. To many persons it is an intolerable 
 thought that the tradesman with whom they are dealing 
 will wink, in halfpenny triumph, at his brother trades- 
 man, as soon as their backs are turned. Many, also, 
 contend long for a trifle, from a pure sense of justice. 
 
 We come now to the consideration of our author's 
 Ethical System. The Science of Ethics, he observes, 
 has relation to our affections of mind, not simply as phe- 
 nomena, but as virtuous or vicious, right or wrong. 
 
 What, then, is the virtue which it is the practical ob- 
 ject of this science to recommend? Why do we con- 
 sider certain actions, says Dr. Brown, and, we would 
 add, certain feelings, as morally right, and others as mor- 
 ally wrong? The only test, according to him, is a simple 
 emotion of approbation or of disapprobation. We are so 
 constituted, that we cannot help approving certain classes 
 of human actions, and disapproving certain other classes. 
 God himself, who gave us a relish for wholesome food, 
 and a distaste for what is injurious, has, for analogous, 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 409 
 
 but far higher purposes, created us subject to such im- 
 mediate moral feelings. 
 
 These emotions, our author contends, are uniform in 
 all men, but occasionally modified by three circumstances. 
 First, the influence of passion obliterates for a time, in 
 many minds, the emotions that ought to arise on the 
 contemplation of moral or immoral actions. Secondly, 
 individuals, and even whole nations, have sometimes 
 partial and imperfect views of the true tendencies of 
 certain actions, in which there is a mixture of good and 
 evil, and this is the cause why morality appears to fluctu- 
 ate in different times and places. Thirdly, association, 
 in various ways, exerts considerable influence in modify- 
 ing and perverting the emotions which would otherwise 
 be naturally produced by particular kinds of actions. 
 The author insists, that these three limitations still leave 
 unimpaired the great fundamental distinctions of moral- 
 ity itself, — moral approbation towards the producer of 
 unmixed good as good, and moral disapprobation towards 
 him who produces unmixed evil for the sake of evil. 
 
 He refutes the sophistry and scepticism which pretend 
 that, in consequence of the foregoing limitations, the sci- 
 ence of morality is unsettled, and virtue itself but a pre- 
 carious and fluctuating name. He maintains, that, where 
 one instance can be found of disagreement among men 
 in approving certain actions and disapproving certain 
 others, there are millions of instances, all over the world, 
 of a perfect uniformity of moral sentiment. 
 
 The author next proceeds to examine other theories of 
 morality which have been broached by different writers. 
 Hobbes, who makes virtue to depend on political enact- 
 ment ; Mandeville, who reduces it to a corrupt love of 
 
 35 
 
410 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 praise ; Clarke and Wollaston, who identify it with the 
 fitness and the truth of things ; Hume, who measures it 
 solely by the standard of general utility ; the ancient and 
 modern disciples of Aristippus, who resolve it into the 
 pursuit of selfish gratification ; Paley, who defines it to 
 be " the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will 
 of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness " ; and 
 Dr. Smith, who allows it no other standard than our 
 sympathy with the feelings of others, — are successively 
 met by elaborate confutations. In these strictures we 
 see displayed an instinctive acuteness in seizing the 
 points at issue, and an unrivalled power of argument. 
 The author, of course, throughout the whole speculation, 
 says many things to justify and illustrate his own system 
 of morality, and mode of treating it. We, also, have a 
 few remarks to suggest. 
 
 The great defect of Dr. Brown's ethical theory is, that 
 he has confined his attention entirely to actions^ which 
 are only the occasional signs and representatives of vir- 
 tue and vice in moral beings. We admire his discovery, 
 as it may well be called, and on which another superior 
 mind of our own country,* by a remarkable coincidence, 
 has lighted, that certain feelings of vivid approval and 
 disapproval are the true and original tests of right and 
 wrong. As the physical qualities of substances can only 
 be properly known, distinguished, and described by their 
 effects on our senses, and not by vain attempts to ascer- 
 tain their abstract nature, so the moral qualities of think- 
 ing and responsible agents are to be designated by their 
 effects on other minds. This, indeed, is an ingenious, a 
 
 * The late Professor Frisbie. See his Miscellaneous Writings, edited by 
 Andrews Norton, p. 144, et seqq. 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 411 
 
 noble principle ; it is a bright-eyed offspring of the Ba- 
 conian philosophy; it is the pioneer to satisfactory con- 
 clusions on the subject before us ; it throws at once a 
 flood of light upon this hitherto perplexed and obscure 
 discussion. But having seized on the mighty instrument 
 itself, Dr. Brown seems to have failed to apply it with 
 his usual comprehensive energy. In inquiring what ob- 
 jects, when contemplated by us, excite the approving or 
 disapproving emotion, he has strangely omitted the con- 
 sideration of those mental feelings, or rather stales of 
 mind, which, in the first place, give to actions their entire 
 moral character, and, in the second place, constitute, by 
 themselves, more than nine tenths of the vice and virtue 
 of the world, without ever being brought into action. 
 Thus, simple indifference to the welfare of others we dis- 
 approve as vice. A mere intention, a wish, is often vir- 
 tuous or vicious. Refraining from action is frequently 
 virtue or vice. Mere purity of mind we regard with the 
 approving glow which is paid to active virtue. Regret, 
 shame, anger, joy, and other emotions, are regarded as 
 right or wrong, according to the occasions on which they 
 arise. It is not the blush that we admire and approve ; 
 but the modesty, of which that meteor-like tinge is the 
 enchanting signal. It is not the mere phantasmagoric 
 sight of a man, exposing his life to save a drowning en- 
 emy, that excites within us the vivid feeling of approba- 
 tion ; it is the sublime state of his soul at the moment, 
 which the action itself is only instrumental in making 
 known. 
 
 Now, in consequence of not adverting to these essen- 
 tial considerations. Dr. Brown has left this part of his 
 ethical discussions in no little imperfection and perplex- 
 
412 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 ity. He all along states it as an ultimate law of our 
 constitution, that certain actions excite within us the ap- 
 proving or the disapproving feeling, by which we distin- 
 guish them as virtuous or vicious. He speaks as if the 
 moral nature of every action were immediately and in- 
 tuitively known, as right or wrong, in the same manner 
 as a color is immediately recognized as green or yellow. 
 He takes no account of that long and varied thread of 
 experience, observation, acquisition, reflection, deduction, 
 culture, admonition, discipline, and example, by which 
 moral feelings and ideas are developed in the mind of 
 the child, and by which alone it comes at length to form 
 its judgments of the character of moral actions. This, 
 certainly, is a loose handling of the question, a very im- 
 perfect analysis of the matter under discussion. 
 
 If, therefore, the foregoing reflections are just, the true 
 and amended theory of Dr. Brown, the really ultimate 
 law of our moral institutions, for which he sought, would 
 be this. 
 
 Certain emotions^ desires^ intentions^ or states of mind^ 
 in other men, which are made known sometimes by ac- 
 tions, sometimes by other sensible signs, and sometimes 
 by verbal information, more or less direct, excite within 
 us the vivid feeling of approbation, or disapprobation, 
 corresponding to which we are accustomed to denomi- 
 nate those states of mind, and the actions they produce, 
 virtuous or vicious, right or wrong, moral or immoral. 
 We are the more confirmed in this amendment of our 
 author's philosophical views, from its coinciding with 
 the principles of morality inculcated in the Sermon on 
 the Mount. 
 
 It is from this point, we humbly think, that all ethical 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 413 
 
 science must properly begin. Its adoption, we are per- 
 suaded, would have supplied a palpable defect in the 
 work before us, and saved some readers many an hour of 
 wistful dissatisfaction and perplexity. It is no more cor- 
 rect to confine the question to actions^ than to the looks 
 of the countenance. A tolerably plausible system of 
 morals might be built on the latter, as well as on the 
 former species of exterior manifestations. Would that 
 theory of dialing be complete or scientific, which con- 
 fined the inquiry to the shape of the gnomon and the 
 motions of the shadow alone, while the primary consid- 
 eration of the sun's movements and rays remained un- 
 touched ? Our author, in the outset of the discussion, 
 seems to have had a glimpse of the principle we have 
 been urging, but certainly lost sight of it afterwards. 
 He defines the Science of Ethics, as having relation to 
 our affections of mind, as virtuous or vicious, right or 
 wrong. Then why not proceed, and erect the science 
 upon this broad and true foundation ? Why abandon it 
 almost immediately, and say, " One inquiry alone is 
 necessary, — what actions excite in us, when contem- 
 plated, a certain vivid feefing, " &c.* We trust we have 
 sufficiently shown the very narrow and incomplete rela- 
 tion which this particular inquiry bears to ethical science 
 as a whole. 
 
 In inquiring what constitutes the sense of moral obli- 
 gation, Dr. Brown appears to us to be aiming at a theory 
 of too much simplicity. *' To feel," says he, " the char- 
 acter of approvableness in an action which we have not 
 yet performed, and are only meditating on it as future, 
 
 * Edin. Ed., Vol. IV. p. 148. 
 
414 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 is to feel the moral obligation, or moral inducement to 
 perform it." The late Professor Frisbie seems to have 
 been dissatisfied with this explanation, but in his criti- 
 cism upon it has not, we think, exactly approached the 
 difficulty. " Are there not many actions," he asks, 
 " which seem to us to have very little virtue or merit, 
 yet by which the feeling of obligation is very strongly 
 excited ? nay, is not the obligation often inversely as the 
 merit, as, for example, in regard to the payment of honest 
 debts ? " * To these interrogatories we reply, that the 
 obligation which Professor Frisbie instances is not prop- 
 erly or entirely a moral obligation. Apparently without 
 being conscious of the fact, he has shifted the very point 
 in question. In regard to the payment of honest debts, 
 there is something more than the sense of moral obliga- 
 tion ; there is the sense of legal obligation ; there is also 
 the dread of offending society, creating enemies, and 
 thus injuring one's general interests. Let a law be 
 passed exonerating the debtor ; let public opinion too 
 coincide with the law. There will then be merit in pay- 
 ing the debt, and a merit exactly in proportion to the 
 moral obligation. 
 
 In what respects, then, may it be said that Dr. Brown's 
 theory is deficient ? According to our opinion, he has, 
 undesignedly, however inconsistently with himself, sug- 
 gested the precise and true theory in a subsequent part 
 of his speculations. " When I say," he remarks, " that 
 it is my duty to perform a certain action, I mean nothing 
 more than that, if I do not perform it, I shall regard my- 
 self, and others will regard me, with moral disapproba- 
 
 * Miscellaneous "Writings, p. 157. 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 415 
 
 tion." * Here, we are convinced, he has fallen upon the 
 right key to the nature of moral obligation. It is not 
 enough for us simply to approve an action, in order to 
 feel the whole force of such obligation ; the very word 
 obligation implies some conditional compulsion^ constraint, 
 apprehended penalty in case of our neglecting the duty. 
 Now, what is the penalty implied in the idea of moral 
 obligation ? Surely, as our author suggests above, the 
 pain which all moral beings feel in disapproving them- 
 selves, or being justly disapproved by others. It is this 
 which we dread ; it is this which constrains us. The 
 moment we allow a fear of any other nature than this to 
 operate upon us, such as a dread of corporal punishment, 
 or bodily pain of any other kind, or an injury to our gen- 
 eral interests, the moral changes into the character of 
 physical obligation. 
 
 Dr. Brown's distribution of the Duties is the old and 
 obvious one of duties to others, to ourselves, and to God. 
 His treatment of this subject completes the work, and, 
 on the whole, deserves a similar tribute of praise, and 
 similarly modified, with that bestowed on his treatment 
 of the more general subject of the Emotions. Curious 
 speculations are pursued, current errors are refuted, novel 
 and valuable ideas are advanced, magnificent common- 
 places are unfurled and waved about, and over the whole 
 is diff'used a vivid glow of moral and religious feeling. 
 
 * Edin.Ed., Vol. IV, p. 395. Just to show the author's inconsistency with 
 himself, above alluded to, turn over one leaf of his book, and there will be 
 seen the following sentence : " It is, as I have said, on the one simple feeling 
 of moral approvableness, that every duty, and therefore every right, is found- 
 ed." But in the sentence in the text, has he not said that the sense of duty 
 arises from a fear of disapprobation 1 
 
416 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 A few Lectures, perhaps, in this portion, require a little 
 bracing up of the attention ; one needs a perpetual recol- 
 lection, that one of our immediate duties is to read Dr. 
 Brown's inculcation of the duties, and it requires some 
 resolution steadily to move on. In all probability, these 
 few Lectures were written under the influence of a similar 
 exhausted feeling. Yet, somewhat tedious as they are, 
 they will repay a studious perusal. Nor is any consid- 
 erable number of them fairly liable to the foregoing stric- 
 ture. On the contrary, several will be found to exhibit 
 the author's peculiar vivacity, originality, and other ex- 
 cellences. We instance the beautiful and ingenious Lec- 
 ture on friendship and gratitude, and one on the good- 
 ness of the Deity. 
 
 In treating of our duties to God, the author takes oc- 
 casion to demonstrate the existence and attributes of the 
 Almighty Being. He rightly discards the argument a 
 priori^ which for ever assumes the very point to be proved. 
 He relies altogether on the short, simple, but irresistible 
 argument drawn from the appearances of benevolent de- 
 sign, so profusely scattered over every part of the uni- 
 verse. We are dissatisfied with his attempted demon- 
 stration of the unity of God, and never yet have felt the 
 force of the same point of reasoning when urged by other 
 writers. It is founded on the unity and simplicity of de- 
 sign everywhere exhibited in the works of the Creator. 
 Two objections to this argument we cannot conquer. 
 The first is, that it would be not very difficult to make 
 out a case of irreconcilable contrariety and multiplicity 
 of design, apparent in the works of nature. For instance, 
 in one point of view, what tender care seems to be taken 
 of the happiness of all living creatures, while, in many 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 417 
 
 respects, they seem to be left, with utter indifference, to 
 their miserable fate. The second is, that, even if a per- 
 fect unity of design, without the slightest apparent ex- 
 ception, could be pointed out as prevailing in the uni- 
 verse, it would not absolutely or satisfactorily prove a 
 unity in the power which produced it. A million of dei- 
 ties might conspire in the most complete uniformity of 
 operations. A stranger to this earth would find a certain 
 uniformity of design, nay, thousands of different opera- 
 tions and results harmoniously conspiring to a single 
 end, amidst all the works of men. But it is unnecessary 
 to say how illogical would be his conclusion, that one 
 being was the author of the whole. He might, perhaps, 
 properly infer, that one genus of beings had been at work 
 in the construction of our edifices, canals, cities, and 
 other products of art. The mythology of the Greeks, 
 which peopled every department of creation with presid- 
 ing deities, was built on such an inference. And this, 
 we are persuaded, is as far as human reason can legiti- 
 mately advance, in settling the point of the simplicity or 
 complexity of the divine nature. It is a matter as far 
 removed from positive, abstract demonstration, as the 
 Deity himself is removed from man. It is true, the idea 
 of the unity of God is now embraced in the world with 
 more or less distinctness and purity ; there is nothing in 
 nature to contradict or refute it, since even an actual 
 contrariety of design might be consistent with it ; nay, 
 it is almost a self-evident truth ; philosophy can defend 
 it by most plausible arguments ; but philosophy must 
 not, cannot, assume the triumph of originally establish- 
 ing and making it known. Every attempt to that effect 
 which we witness, concurring with our inability to trace 
 
418 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 it so clearly to any other quarter, only drives us back 
 with increased conviction to the leading representation 
 of the Hebrew Scriptures, that the idea in question was 
 originally and directly communicated from Heaven, in 
 one way or another, to men of Asiatic origin. 
 
 When Dr. Brown comes to consider our duties to our- 
 selves, he takes up the question of the Immortality of 
 the Soul. He advances in the affirmative some argu- 
 ments that are of the highest value, and others that ap- 
 pear feeble and untenable. We will give an instance of 
 each kind. They who hastily infer the destruction of 
 the mind from the destruction of the body, will find it 
 difficult to evade the force of the following reasoning, 
 which has all the weight and acuteness characteristic of 
 the author. 
 
 " When the body seems to us to perish, we know that it does 
 not truly perish, — that everything which existed in the decaying 
 frame continues to exist entire, as it existed before ; and that the 
 only change which takes place is a change of apposition or prox- 
 imity. From the first moment at which the earth arose, there is 
 not the slightest reason to think that a single atom has perished. 
 All that was, is ; and if nothing has perished in the material 
 universe, — if, even in that bodily dissolution, which alone gave 
 occasion to the belief of our mortality as sentient beings, there is 
 not the loss of the most inconsiderable particle of the dissolving 
 frame, — the argument of analogy, far from leading us to suppose 
 the destruction of that spiritual being which animated the frame, 
 would lead us to conclude that it, too, exists, as it before existed ; 
 and that it has only changed its relation to the particles of our 
 material organs, as these particles still subsisting have changed 
 the relations which they mutually bore. As the dust has only 
 returned to the earth from which it came, it is surely a reasonable 
 inference from analogy to suppose, that the spirit may have re- 
 turned to the God who gave it." — Lecture XCVI. 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 419 
 
 Nothing was ever better said. But Dr. Brown was 
 well aware of an argument, which the obstinate ques- 
 tioner of the soul's infimortality still has in store ; namely, 
 that all the mental operations, and consequently what 
 the spiritualist gratuitously calls the mind itself, may be 
 nothing more than phenomena resulting from the union 
 and organization of material particles in a certain man- 
 ner. So that when this organization is dissolved by 
 death, the soul itself must cease to exist. Now to this, 
 our author offers the following feeble argument : — 
 
 " If any one were to say, the Sun has no thought, Mercury, 
 Venus, the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and all their secon- 
 daries, have no thought, but the Solar System has thought, — we 
 should then scarcely hesitate a moment in rejecting such a doc- 
 trine ; because we should feel instantly that there could be no 
 charm in the two words, solar system, which are of our own in- 
 vention, to confer on the separate masses of the heavenly bodies 
 what, under a different form of mere verbal expression, they had 
 been declared previously not to possess. "What the sun and planets 
 have not, the solar system, which is nothing more than the sun and 
 planets, has not ; or, if so much power be ascribed to the mere 
 invention of a term, as to suppose that we can confer by it new 
 qualities on things, there is a realism in philosophy far more 
 monstrous than any which prevailed in the Logic of the Schools. 
 
 " If, then, the solar system cannot have properties which the 
 sun and planets have not, and if this be equally true, at whatever 
 distance, near or remote, they may exist in space, it is surely 
 equally evident, that an organ, which is only a name for a num- 
 ber of separate corpuscles, as the solar system is only a number 
 of larger masses of corpuscles, cannot have any properties 
 which are not possessed by the corpuscles themselves, at the very 
 moment at which the organ as a whole is said to possess them, — 
 nor any affections as a whole, additional to the affections of the 
 
420 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 separate parts. An organ is nothing ; the corpuscles, to which we 
 give that single name, are all, — and if a sensation be an organic 
 state, it is a state of many corpuscles, which have no more unity 
 than the greater number of particles in the multitudes of brains 
 which form the sensations of all mankind." — Lecture XCVIII. 
 
 This reasoning will never do. To show its absurdity, 
 let us follow it up for a moment in its own style. " If any 
 one were to say, the Sun has no " mutual attraction, " Mer- 
 cury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and all their 
 secondaries," each separate and alone, have no mutual 
 attraction, " but the solar system has" mutual attraction, 
 " we should then scarcely hesitate a moment in rejecting 
 such a doctrine." Thus, by our author's course of argu- 
 ment, we could disprove one of the most obvious facts 
 of natural philosophy. So, again, What an acid, when 
 alone, has not, and an alkali, when alone, has not, the 
 combination of acids and alkalies never can have ; and 
 therefore such a phenomenon as effervescence between 
 acids and alkalies, according to our author, can never 
 take place. The truth is. Dr. Brown is here guilty of 
 begging the question. The very argument of the ma- 
 terialist is, that although the particles of matter, when 
 separate, are not able to think, yet, when brought to- 
 gether in a certain way, which the Deity may appoint, 
 the result of their influence on each other may be the 
 phenomenon which we express by the word thovght. 
 This our author denies, maintaining that what one par- 
 ticle cannot perform in a separate state, a multitude of 
 particles cannot perform in any sort of combination. It 
 is plain, however, that this is no answer, but only a flat 
 denial of the materialist's argument, and, moreover, in- 
 volves some most careless general positions, which are 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 421 
 
 immediately disproved by an appeal to ordinary experi- 
 ence. 
 
 Before quitting this topic, we would just ask the au- 
 thor, Why so strenuous in maintaining the immateriality 
 of the soul, when, in his noble argument quoted above, 
 he assumes the imperishableness of matter ? 
 
 On the whole, we cannot claim for him the merit of 
 having placed the immortality of the soul on new and 
 stronger vantage-ground than it occupied before. His 
 reasonings on the subject appear to us to be full of as- 
 sumptions. As might be expected, the discussion leads 
 him too far from the track of pure philosophy into the 
 entanglements of metaphysics. In defending the unity 
 and indivisibility of the thinking principle, qualities 
 which he regards as essential to its immortality, but 
 which we do not, he is betrayed into arguments quite 
 inconsistent with other statements in different parts of 
 his work. For instance, he vigorously maintains that 
 the mind can exist only in a single state at once. But 
 according to his whole philosophy elsewhere, and even 
 according to the most common experience, that very 
 mind is capable of existing in an intellectual state, and 
 in an emotion, simultaneously ; and when, before ex- 
 plaining the soul's personal identity, he allowed that, 
 along with the memory of a sensation or an idea, we 
 have an intuitive belief that we are the same individ- 
 uals who had the sensation or idea before. One would 
 suppose that in these cases there are two states in which 
 the mind exists at the same moment. But our author 
 endeavors to surmount the inconsistency, by denominat- 
 ing them one complex state. Now, we confess our- 
 selves quite as unable to conceive how the single men- 
 
 36 
 
422 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 tal principle can exist in what the author defines as a 
 complex state, as how it can exist in two different states 
 at once. If the latter be incompatible with its nature, 
 why is not the former also ? There is certainly some- 
 thing within us which compares one intellectual state 
 with another, — one emotion with another, — and intel- 
 lectual states with emotions. The self-active immortal 
 principle seems to stand, as it were, out of the immediate 
 region of the thoughts and emotions, and to scan, com- 
 municate with, and in some measure to guide and con- 
 trol them. But these are shadowy speculations. The 
 truth is, that the phrase " complex state," or the still 
 more impalpable and metaphysical phrase, which is 
 sometimes a favorite one with the author, " a state 
 of virtual comprehensiveness," is but a wordy covering 
 for an unconquerable difficulty, and leaves the real na- 
 ture of the mind in as much obscurity as ever. Amidst 
 all his horror for rash hypothesis and gratuitous assump- 
 tion, we are astonished at finding him everywhere as- 
 serting, as if it were an axiom of Euclid, that " the mind 
 is not composed of parts that coexist, but is simple and 
 indivisible,^^ Now this is unwarrantable. According 
 to the true spirit of the new philosophy, we have nothing 
 to do with this question. Much can be said plausibly 
 in favor of the compound nature of the mind, without 
 furnishing any fair triumph to scepticism, or exciting 
 any necessary alarm among modest philosophers. 
 
 Indeed, we have no hope of gaining higher assurances 
 of the soul's immortality from any new speculations on 
 its internal structure. Be it simple, or be it compound, 
 we do not despair. "We doubt whether all the philos- 
 ophy in the world can either improve, or set aside, the 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 423 
 
 lucid and trul}^ Baconian argument of the Apostle to 
 the Gentiles, founded on the analogy between the ger- 
 mination of a perishing seed and the revivification of 
 the human soul. The story left to us by the Galilean 
 fishermen, which we are not ashamed to avow is far 
 easier for us to believe than to doubt, needs no support 
 from the visions either of a Plato or a Priestley ; and 
 while we look down into the vacant tomb, that once be- 
 longed to Joseph of Arimathea, we are little swayed, 
 either one way or another, by the ingenuity and 
 strength, or by the feebleness and inconclusiveness, ex- 
 hibited in the reasonings even of Dr. Brown. 
 
 Our abstract terminates here. As an abstract, it is 
 of course imperfect, and must convey a faint idea of 
 the work. We have rather dwelt upon those topics 
 which seemed to require critical remark, than attempted 
 to give a systematic sketch of all the author's achieve- 
 ments. We shall now exact, from various quarters, a 
 few contributions to the illustration of our author's char- 
 acter and writings. We regret that an essay on his 
 life and genius, by the Rev. Mr. Welsh, of Edinburgh, 
 has never reached our hands. The following notice is 
 from a volume of the Edinburgh Magazine, for the year 
 1820. 
 
 " Dr. Brown's character was one of extreme, and, I might al- 
 most say, of fastidious refinement. The habits of speculative 
 philosophy and abstract thought had not destroyed the vivacity 
 of his imagination, or chilled the warmth of his heart. He was 
 by nature an enthusiast, and the prominent features of his mind 
 in early youth were sensibility and ardor. At school he was 
 distinguished by extreme gayety and sweetness of disposition, 
 and his contemporaries remembered how much he delighted and 
 
424 . brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 excelled in the recitation of dramatic poetry. Soon after he en- 
 gaged in philosophical studies, he distinguished himself for acute- 
 ness of reasoning ; and his answer to Darwin's Zoonomia demon- 
 strated the discriminating powers of his mind. It is not for the 
 writer of this letter to presume to analyze the subtilty, and pro- 
 found originality, of his metaphysical inquiries. Among those 
 who attended his lectures, some complained of a certain vague- 
 ness and refinement that bordered on obscsrity ; but when he 
 entered on the moral part of his course, he excited the highest 
 degree of enthusiasm for all that was elevated and noble in hu- 
 man nature. It was then he gave full scope to the lofty concep- 
 tions of his mind, and displayed an energy and devotion in the 
 cause of moral truth that could not be surpassed, and can never 
 be forgotten. 
 
 " Dr. Brown's manners might be considered somewhat artifi- 
 cial, and yet no man had more simplicity and singleness of heart, 
 if that term belongs to one uninfluenced in his opinions, tastes, 
 inclinations, and habits, by the caprices of fashion, or the calcula- 
 tions of a worldly mind. He never sought the society of the 
 fashionable, the rich, or the high-born, on account of any of these 
 adventitious circumstances. He carried the independent purity 
 of his political principles into the morals of private life. His 
 habits were abstemious, simple, and self-denied. His liberality 
 to those who needed his pecuniary assistance was as frank as it 
 was unostentatious. But his benevolence Avas not of a kind to 
 content itself with the cheap indulgence of almsgiving. Long 
 after he had given up medical practice, he gave his time and atten- 
 tion to the sick friends who required his advice ; and what Burke 
 said of Howard, in a sense restricted to the particular objects of 
 his attention, might be said of Dr. Brown universally : ' He at- 
 tended to the neglected, and remembered the forgotten.' There 
 are many persons, wholly unknown to the circles of fashionable 
 life, who received constant proofs of his cheering and kind atten- 
 tion. One instance of this is so characteristic of his turn of mind, 
 
brown's philosophy op mind. 425 
 
 that I cannot omit mentioning it. Two Ayrshire peasants, who 
 had made considerable progress in languages as well as in botani- 
 cal and mathematical science, were recommended to his notice. 
 After presenting them with gratis tickets for his lectures, he in- 
 vited them to breakfast; the conversation turned on botanical 
 drawing. One of them proposed to show the Doctor some speci- 
 mens of his performance in that art. ' I was pleased,' said he, on 
 relating this circumstance, * to see the progress I had made in 
 the confidence of these young men during the hour of breakfast. 
 They first came to my low door, but when they returned with 
 the drawings, they rang at the front door. I had inspired them 
 with the feeling of equality.' 
 
 " The political principles of this excellent man were those of 
 genuine Whiggisra, untainted with the asperity of party preju- 
 dice. His reprobation of tyranny and oppression, wherever it 
 was exercised, will be remembered by those who have heard him 
 express his satisfaction at the overthrow of Napoleon Bonaparte, 
 whose despotism he execrated. He took a deep interest in the 
 political events of his own country. The five restrictive bills, 
 passed during the winter session of 1819, excited his warmest 
 indignation ; and in a meeting held by the Senatus Academicus, 
 on the occasion of condoling with and congratulating his present 
 Majesty, he expressed his opinion of those measures very strong- 
 ly. The most minute circumstances, favorable to civil and relig- 
 ious liberty, interested him to the last ; and, as an affecting in- 
 stance of the sincerity of his feelings on subjects connected 
 with the freedom of his country, I may mention, that, during his 
 last illness, he daily inquired into the state of the Middlesex poll, 
 an event deeply interesting on a moral as well as political prin- 
 ciple, as being the grateful effort of a generous people to reward 
 the son for the virtues of the father ; and when he was told, two 
 days before he died, that it had closed in favor of young Whit- 
 bread, though unable to speak, his countenance and manner ex- 
 pressed the liveliest satisfaction. 
 36* 
 
426 brown's pjaiLosoPHt of MiNt), 
 
 " He had returned in the autumn of 1819 to Edinburgh, in 
 remarkably good health, and engaged with much ardor in the 
 composition of his class-book. He had even sketched out great 
 literary designs for his future execution, but that fatal disorder, 
 "which terminated in pulmonary consumption, seized him during 
 the Christmas recess. He only lectured twice after the vacation. 
 During the last lecture he delivered, he was greatly affected 
 when he read some lines on the return of spring from Beattie's 
 Hermit. He wished to persevere in his course. But his aflfec- 
 tionate friend and physician. Dr. Gregory, forbade it, and strong- 
 ly recommended him to try the effects of a warmer climate. His 
 reply was : ' No, I must die at home ; you have no idea how 
 miserably I am afflicted with the maladie du paysJ His decline 
 was rapid and alarming. As long as he had strength to hold a 
 pen, he continued to give unremitting labor to the writing of his 
 class-book. In February, 1820, he received a short visit from 
 his revered friend, Mr. Dugald Stewart, though at that time he 
 scarcely admitted any one but his medical friend, and the mem- 
 bers of his own family. On taking leave of Mr. Stewart, he said 
 gayly, but emphatically, ' I hope Moral Philosophy will live long 
 in you.' " 
 
 In addition to the above gratifying sketch, an Ameri- 
 can correspondent has obligingly furnished us with the 
 following interesting particulars, which the numerous 
 admirers of Dr. Brown in this country will receive much 
 pleasure in perusing. 
 
 " In compliance with your request, I send you the following 
 very general statements. With Dr. Brown I was personally ac- 
 quainted, and occasionally spent an evening at his house. I ex- 
 perienced much of his hospitality during my stay in that country. 
 Immediately upon my arrival at the city of Edinburgh, after the 
 opening of the session of the University, I called upon Dr. 
 Brown, and procured a ticket of admission to his class. Inter- 
 
BRO^^'S PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. 427 
 
 preting the intent of your request in the sense in which I be- 
 lieve you designed me to do, I have been led to adopt the follow- 
 ing simple plan. The personal appearance of Dr. Brown seems 
 first to draw my attention. His was in a very especial degree 
 that of an intense student. He was of ordinary stature ; of a 
 pale and wan physiognomy ; careless and inattentive in his dress. 
 The character of his countenance was highly attractive, and 
 none could meet him in the streets without noticing it in a par- 
 ticular manner. Profound thought was engraven on every fea- 
 ture. There appeared to be a great mind at work within, and 
 absorbed in the most abtruse speculations. The outward aspect 
 of Dr. Brown evinced to the observing mind, that his trains of 
 thought were those of a high order. Next, as to the mode 
 which he adopted in delivering his lectures. In the class-room 
 he appeared in the most advantageous point of view. His man- 
 ner was grave and dignified. He commanded profound silence, 
 marked attention, and a high expression of regard. He read, or 
 with more propriety I should say he recited, his lectures in an 
 animated strain. He appeared himself to feel the importance of 
 those intellectual views which he had created and was delivering, 
 and was solicitous that the value of them should be perceived 
 and appreciated by those who heard them. He read the poetical 
 quotations, occasionally introduced, in a distinct and impressive 
 manner. I was accustomed to hail w^ith delio;ht the returnino- 
 toll, which summoned us ; and regarded the lecture as a philo- 
 sophical treat. Dr. Brown did not permit his students to take 
 notes during the time of lecturing, owing to a fact with which you 
 are doubtless familiar, namely, that, a few years preceding, some 
 of the lectures of Mr. Stewart were presented to the public in a 
 garbled form, before the author himself had issued them. Dr. 
 Brown was desirous that his students should, at the close of the 
 lecture, apply to him for the solution of those doubts of a meta- 
 physical kind that might arise. With such he would freely con- 
 verse. 
 
428 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 " He was intensely studious. Although- surrounded by such a 
 host of social attractions as Edinburgh presents, he allowed not 
 his studious habits to be violated. I heard him state, that he set 
 apart two evenings during every week, either for the reception of 
 his company, or for his own personal relaxation. The rest of his 
 time he considered as sacred to study. The manners of Dr. 
 Brown were interesting and rather refined. He was full of con- 
 versation ; very vivacious, and remarkable for the versatility of 
 his information and diction. He could instantly enter upon any 
 topic, however remote, and in his usual happy strain. In pri- 
 vate life he was truly amiable. Two sisters lived with him, whom 
 he supported. The most marked affection appeared to exist be- 
 tween them. He was devoted to the gratification of their slight- 
 est wishes. His feelings as a man were generous and noble. He 
 possessed more than an ordinary share of sensibility, and would 
 indulge, in the hour of conversation, in the most sympathetic 
 strain, on any scene of distress which he had either witnessed or 
 of which he had heard." 
 
 A glimpse into Dr. Brown's lecture-room, as most of 
 our readers will remember, is furnished in the saucy but 
 entertaining " Letters of Peter to his Kinsfolk." 
 
 Having collected and presented the foregoing testimo- 
 nials of the peculiarities of our author's genius, and some 
 notices of his life, a few desultory remarks on the former 
 subject, and on the work before us, are all that we now 
 feel justified in attempting. 
 
 The prominent capacity in which Dr. Brown offers 
 himself to our minds is that of a fearless, minute, and 
 ultimate Analyst, This is the characteristic that distin- 
 guishes him from every other author on record. We are 
 not disposed to vindicate his absolute superiority in many 
 other striking qualifications. His style is far from being 
 faultless, his scholarship is neither exquisite in choice nor 
 
broavn's philosophy of mind. 429 
 
 extensive in its range, nor are his observations on life 
 and manners peculiarly rich or original; though in all 
 these, as well as in many similar valuable requisites for a 
 public instructor, he is not only not deficient, but is much 
 more than respectable. But in the art of looking into 
 the elements and finer relations of things, in detecting 
 the action and reaction between mind and matter, in 
 reducing all human knowledge to its first principles, we 
 boldly pronounce him to be without a competitor in our 
 language. The true focus of Dr. Brown's mind, the 
 mark at which its most intense power acted, was fixed 
 by nature for microscopic inspection. His more com- 
 prehensive surveys and larger classifications, though often 
 imposing and magnificent, are sometimes dim, unwieldy, 
 and incomplete. Witness his original arrangement 
 of Politics and Political Econo^ny among the peculiar 
 branches of the Philosophy of the Mind, an arrange- 
 ment, however, which he did not subsequently follow. 
 For another instance to the same purpose, we refer to 
 his Inquiry into Cause and Effect, which wants distinct- 
 ness in its general management and outline, though all 
 the separate details of the argument are conducted with 
 wonderful acuteness and power. Again, while we fol- 
 low him along the track of his curious speculations, or 
 peruse his more splendid and ambitious compositions, 
 we seldom or never meet with those happy generaliza- 
 tions of expression, which so frequently astonish and de- 
 light us in the French school of the last century. In- 
 deed, if a generalization of this kind had struck him, he 
 would not have been content to state and leave it sim- 
 ply to his reader. He would have indulged his favorite 
 habit of tracing out all the particulars that went to form 
 
430 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 it, thus appearing to arrive by gradual steps at a conclu- 
 sion, on which Voltaire or Diderot would have alighted 
 at once. 
 
 But they, on the other hand, displayed little of his pe- 
 culiar faculty and strength. Whoever will gaze, through 
 the medium of Dr. Brown's representations, at the ob- 
 jects of his analysis, will perceive them clothed with un- 
 wonted brilliancy and distinctness, and new points of 
 vision starting up which were unsuspected before. All 
 nature crumbles into infinitesimals before his glance. 
 No man is a warmer adorer of the aggregate beauty and 
 glory of the universe, but no man was ever so prone to 
 regard it as a world of atoms. So too, while he is an 
 impassioned admirer of roses and beautiful faces, he can- 
 not avoid reducing them, by a kind of stereographic pro- 
 jection, into plain surfaces of colored rays. He gazes with 
 a poet's delight on the splendid embroidery which nature 
 hangs around us, but traces the involutions of every thread 
 with still more of the eagerness of a metaphysician. He 
 has erected new landmarks between the regions of illu- 
 sion and those of reality. He has dissolved much of 
 the influence which names exert on our ideas of things. 
 The study of his writings produces on the mind a simi- 
 lar effect with the study of chemistry. We look round 
 upon creation with almost newly furnished optics ; every 
 incident suggests matter of philosophical speculation ; 
 the motions of an infant, and the actions of an adult, 
 " all thoughts, all passions, all delights," assume un- 
 accustomed aspects, and exhibit interesting relations in 
 the varied system of things. It is w^orthy of remark, 
 that, at the same moment when Davy was accomplishing 
 some of his greatest achievements in the analysis of 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 431 
 
 matter, Brown was arriving at some of his most bril- 
 liant results in the analysis of mind. Both natural and 
 intellectual science seem to have attained a point of 
 equal progress, when these two contemporaries arose, 
 to push further analogous discoveries respectively in 
 each. 
 
 The next most remarkable characteristic that distin- 
 guishes our author is the undisguised warmth of his 
 moral sentiments. It is rather out of fashion, with ex- 
 isting literature, to seem very much in love with virtue. 
 The phantom reproach of cant lowers in the distance, 
 and frightens the moralizer into a well-dissembled indif- 
 ference. The public is a kind of good company, whose 
 feelings must not be hurt ^by declamations against its 
 favorite peccadillos. The whining sentimentality of 
 some authors, which was carried to a disgusting extreme 
 about the end of the last century, and which received its 
 death-blow from Sheridan's character of Joseph Surface, 
 has undergone the usual reaction of other human ex- 
 travagances, and writers and talkers are now almost 
 ashamed to testify any enthusiasm in favor of the parlor 
 every-day virtues. Rousseau's delightful declamations, 
 too, were mingled with so much that w^as unprincipled 
 and false, tliat they contributed not a little to the same 
 effect. Dr. Brown has been one of the first to break this 
 chill spell of assumed apathy. He comes forward, with- 
 out fearing the charge of mawkishness or of hypocrisy, 
 and pours out his whole soul in ardent praise of what- 
 ever is good and lovely. He appears as the unshrinking 
 advocate, especially, of all the domestic and gentler vir- 
 tues. The seriousness of his enthusiasm is well calcu- 
 lated to put to flight the sceptical and profligate smile of 
 
432 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 the scoffer. His works, in this respect, might be recom- 
 mended as an antidote to the poison of Byron. Unlike 
 most moral philosophers, he treats not of the virtues 
 and of our moral feelings with the same cold and scien- 
 tific interest that he would inquire into the affinities 
 of a salt or a metal. His inmost sympathies keep 
 pace with his subject, and impart light to it. Several 
 indirect testimonials to the truth and inspiration of 
 Christianity are scattered throughout his Lectures. He 
 is thus shielded from a charge, often urged against the 
 productions of his illustrious predecessor. But we wish 
 that he were more than so shielded, and that Chris- 
 tianity had been more directly, explicitly, and formally 
 introduced into his moral system. We lament the mis- 
 erable mistake, into which so many moral philosophers 
 have been betrayed, in declining any assistance from the 
 New Testament. How might Dr. Brown have added 
 light, sanctity, and authority to his own doctrines, while 
 he in turn would have contributed no small support to 
 the cause of Christianity ! Can it be doubted, that Dr. 
 Chalmers is at this moment supplying the defect on 
 which we have been animadverting? May his attempts 
 be wise and successful. 
 
 We have but a few words to say respecting our au- 
 thor's style. We remember hearing reported a happy 
 jeu d^esprit on this subject, from the admired writer of 
 Letters from the Mountains. When asked how she was 
 pleased with Dr. Brown's poetry, she replied, that it had 
 too much metaphysics for her ; and when immediately 
 again questioned how she liked his metaphysics, she 
 pronounced it too full of poetry. There is at least some 
 foundation for this smart antithesis, though not enough to 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 483 
 
 raise a serious objection against the writings in question. 
 Dr. Brown published several volumes of poetry at dif- 
 ferent times, but, in our opinion, scarcely a line of it 
 was sufficiently metaphysical or respectable to deserve 
 reading over, with the single exception of the Paradise 
 of Coquettes. This work, published anonymously, was 
 immediately, by the unanimous consent of the critics, 
 pronounced to be second of its kind only to the Rape of 
 the Lock. There are metaphysics in it, but we cannot 
 think it too metaphysical. That portion of it particu- 
 larly entitled to this epithet is one of the most ingenious 
 and original efforts of the English Muse. It is a de- 
 scription of the heaven of coquettes, and we have always 
 regretted that so very lofty a flight of the imagination 
 should have been introduced into a work of a design so 
 gay and humorous. It is difficult to read it without feel- 
 ing religiously, rather than facetiously, disposed. It some- 
 what resembles an inspired glimpse into the possibilities of 
 a future state of being, and, with due modifications, would 
 have been much more worthy of occupying a place in 
 Baxter's Saints' Everlasting Rest, that gorgeous and 
 delightful poem in prose, than of serving as a rhapsody 
 in an heroi-comic effusion. 
 
 With respect to the other point of the above-mentioned 
 antithesis, we allow it to be better founded. There is a 
 little too much of poetry in Dr. Brown's metaphysics, or, 
 more exactly speaking, his general style as a writer is 
 over-poetical, — ornamented in excess. We are very far 
 from recommending it as a model, and should be sorry to 
 see it adopted as such, with the same facility with which 
 our young men copied the less ambitious, but still some- 
 what too measured, flow of Mr. Stewart's periods. We 
 37 
 
434 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 have sometimes thought that, having written his Lec- 
 tures when comparatively young, and adopted at that 
 time a florid and towering manner. Dr. Brown was after- 
 wards the less likely to correct it, in consequence of re- 
 taining, repeating, and laboring upon the same course 
 from year to year. He often indulges in solemn parade 
 and emphatic preambles, while approaching the discus- 
 sion of his topics, and talks much of the difficulty of his 
 tasks. We know of no better way to characterize his 
 style, than to denominate it ultra-Ciceronian. Coming 
 short of the perfections attained, on the one hand, by the 
 Roman orator, it leans, on the other, rather towards his 
 faults. It is too elaborate, tumid, and redundant. It is 
 like Akenside's verse turned into prose, except that it 
 sends out not the slightest Grecian savor ; and this last 
 circumstance, coupled with the rarity, amounting almost 
 to absence, of quotations from the Greek, convinces us 
 that the author must have been very superficially versed 
 in the literature of that language. It may seem a hard 
 and rash judgment to estimate a person's scholarship 
 from the number of his learned quotations ; and so in gen- 
 eral it is. But when one is a professed, and, as we may 
 say, an inveterate quoter, filling his productions with ex- 
 tracts from English and Latin authors, we may fairly 
 conclude, that a line or two from Euripides, and a sen- 
 tence now and then from Plato, if they had been ^' famil- 
 iar to his ear as household words," would have embel- 
 lished his moral declamations, or given point to some of 
 his philosophical statements and conclusions. 
 
 Notwithstanding these negative peculiarities, it must 
 not be denied, that our Lecturer deserves to be ranked 
 among the classical writers of the language. He is 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 435 
 
 wanting only in a kind of Augustan perfection ; yet 
 still he is classical, in the same way as that epithet be- 
 longs to Ammianus, to Statius, and to Seneca. The 
 last author, by the way, is a god of his idolatry, and is 
 quoted by him, we remember, alone of all others, five 
 times in one Lecture. No man ever wielded the resour- 
 ces of the English tongue more elaborately than Dr. 
 Brown, or wrote it in more perfect purity. Yet it was 
 the general European standard of its perfection at which 
 he aimed, and not at its idiomatical properties and graces. 
 His style has all the effort and completeness of a well- 
 executed movement by some scientific composer, but lit- 
 tle of the indescribable and native charm that pervades 
 the beautiful melodies of his own country. He is full 
 of brilliancies, while he has few felicities, and it is this 
 defect which will lose for him the greatest number of 
 readers. There are no easy, sweet, and playful turns in 
 his diction, to relieve the strained and everlasting nisiis 
 of scientific disquisition. He hammers everything to 
 the last degree. There is not a thought shown us just 
 as it came into his mind. Though we admire the pro- 
 ductions of his skill, yet we almost hear the workman 
 panting and striving at his labor, and the whole atmos- 
 phere of his book is redolent of oil. 
 
 A favorite figure of speech with the author, which he 
 very frequently carries to a fault, is the climax. There 
 is scarcely a Lecture that does not contain one. To set 
 off some leading idea, or to give force and splendor to 
 an illustration, circumstance is heaped upon circum- 
 stance, and clause mounts over clause, till the breath of 
 the stoutest reader gives way, and the dizzy train of his 
 thoughts often goes with it. 
 
436 buo'svn's rniLOSoPHY of mind. 
 
 We must acknowledge that, in the writings of Dr. 
 Brown, there are too many obscure and difficult pas- 
 sages. After making due allowance for the imperfect 
 state in which his manuscripts may have been left,* for the 
 abstruse and shadowy nature of many of his topics, and 
 even for an occasional mysticism and unattainable aim in 
 some of his thoughts, there still remain too many sen- 
 tences to remind us, by contrast, of the unabating trans- 
 parency of Mr. Stewart's diction. On the whole, we 
 must allow that our author's is often a hard style to 
 read, and, as we should have thought, a much harder 
 one to hear. He seems frequently not to have adapted 
 his sentences to the capacity of the ear. The attention 
 is stormed and borne along, rather by the force and bril- 
 liancy of the expressions, by the earnest energy of the 
 writer, and by the novelty, splendor, and importance of 
 his well-selected topics, than by the clearness and dis- 
 
 * We take the liberty of mentioning here a confused and erroneous ar- 
 rangement of a few of the Lectures, at the end of the first and beginning of 
 the second volumes of the Edinburgh edition, and in the latter portion of the 
 first volume of the Andover. To any one who will examine the matter 
 with ordinaiy attention, there will, as we think, appear so many undeniable 
 reasons for a substitution of the following arrangement, that we shall not 
 take the trouble to enumerate them. It is certain that, as the Lectures now 
 stand, nothing can be more perplexed and ill concatenated. To introduce 
 order among them, we recommend these six movements. 
 
 1. Lecture XXIV. as now numbered should unquestionably be Lecture 
 XXIIL 
 
 2. But the recapitulation prefixed to Lecture XXIII. as it now stands, 
 including pp. 511, 512, Edinburgh edition, and p. 345, Andover edition, 
 should remain as it is. Then the body of the true Lecture XXIII. will 
 properly begin near the bottom of p. 537 Edinburgh, or on p. 362 Andover : 
 " Tliat we now seem to perceive," &c. This, if we are correct, should be con- 
 tinued to p. 563 Edinburgh, or 370 Andover, where Lecture XXIII. will 
 properly end. 
 
BROA\rN's PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. 437 
 
 tinctiiess of each successive position, and a certain 
 smooth and resistless current of language, of which Adam 
 Smith, Paley, and Godwin in his philosophical works, 
 occur to us just now as three of the most remarkable 
 instances. It would be unfair, of course, to refer for 
 this point of comparison to historical or narrative writ- 
 ing. 
 
 Though it is impossible to deny to Dr. Brown the 
 possession of very extensive attainments in polite litera- 
 ture, yet sometimes there occur passages which seem to 
 indicate a want of familiarity with subjects that are 
 at the fingers' ends of every general reader. In one 
 place he condescends to impart, with much display, 
 the information, that Abelard, besides his well-known 
 connection with Eloisa, " was distinguished for his tal- 
 ents and attainments of every sort"; and somew4iere 
 else he tells us, as a perfect novelty, the whole story 
 
 3. The recapitulation prefixed to Lecture XXIV. stands where it ought, 
 ending near the close of p. 375 Edinburgh, or on p. 362 Andover, thus : 
 " boundaries from the other." The body of the true Lecture XXIV. will 
 begin at p. 513 Edinburgh, or p. 346 Andover, thus : " Though the notion of 
 extension," &c., and continue to the end of p. 530 Edinburgh, or p. 357 
 Andover, where the true Lecture XXIII. terminates. 
 
 We know no way of accounting for the disorder here pointed out, except 
 by supposing that Dr. Brown wrote his recapitulations on sheets of paper 
 separate from the bodies of his Lectures, and thus that the bodies of Lecture 
 XXIII. and Lecture XXIV. have accidentally changed places, while the 
 recapitulations continued in their proper order. 
 
 4. The whole of Lecture XXVII., recapitulation and all, should take the 
 place and number of Lecture XXV. 
 
 5. Lecture XXV., recapitulation and all, should take the rank and place 
 of Lecture XXVL 
 
 6. Lecture XXVL, in like manner, should entirely assume the place and 
 rank of Lecture XXVII. A slight inspection will demonstrate the correct- 
 ness of these last alterations. 
 
 37* 
 
438 bkown's niiLOSoniY of mind. 
 
 of the sympathetic needles from Strada's Prolusions. 
 Mr. Stewart touches upon such things in a quite differ- 
 ent manner. 
 
 The remarks hitherto made apply to the general 
 characteristics of Dr. Brown as a writer. We have a 
 few more specific criticisms to offer on the particular 
 Lectures before us. Their posthumous publication is a 
 warrant for gentle treatment, of which, however, they 
 little stand in need. It is enough to secure Dr. Brown 
 the highest praise to say, that he has well discharged the 
 vast responsibility of being the successor of Mr. Stewart, 
 or rather, of taking up the Philosophy of the Mind where 
 Reid and Stewart had left it. He enjoyed, indeed, some 
 peculiar advantages in coming after such men, and inher- 
 iting a certain general excitement and respect toward the 
 science, to which they had been instrumental in raising 
 the public mind. The era in which he wrote, too, was 
 one of remarkable intellectual development. Poetry, and 
 every branch of natural science, were daily accomplish- 
 ing w^onders, and our author's condition was precisely 
 such, that he must either produce corresponding achieve- 
 ments in the Philosophy of Mind, or encounter the mor- 
 tification of failure and obscurity. To these arduous ad- 
 vantages he was equal. Certain it is, that during his 
 life he sustained the highest reputation as a Lecturer, 
 and that on every individual who witnessed his perform- 
 ances, without, as far as we are aware, a single excep- 
 tion, he made a favorable impression, unusually profound 
 and permanent. 
 
 A very valuable, if not the most valuable, feature of 
 this great work, consists in the contributions which it 
 furnishes to the science of Natural Theology. Paley 
 
brown's ruiLosoriiY of mind. 439 
 
 had already collected, from every part of external ma- 
 terial nature, the most striking proofs of benevolent 
 design in the Deity. Brown has effected precisely the 
 same object, with respect to the various phenomena of 
 our intellectual frames. A volume might, with great 
 ease, be extracted from different portions of these Lec- 
 tures, which would completely fill up the chasm in 
 Paley's outline, and deserve a place in every library on 
 the same shelf with his celebrated treatise. Its plan 
 might be consistently extended and improved, by the 
 addition of such extracts as most directly contribute to 
 the cause of religion, morality, and right thinking. One 
 recommendation, at least, of the proposed work would be, 
 that it would present a body of the most clear, original, 
 popular, and least exceptionable passages that occur 
 throughout the Lectures. Its tendency to higher utility 
 can as little be doubted. 
 
 The general plan of the Lectures is, perhaps, too un- 
 wieldy and encyclopedic for a single work. We have 
 no right to complain, indeed, of any author, for giving to 
 the public, at whatever length, a series of delightful and 
 improving compositions. The statutes of his professor- 
 ship might also have enjoined upon this writer a very 
 comprehensive range of subjects, more or less connected 
 with the mind. His original scheme, as we have before 
 seen, included Politics and Political Economy. Why it 
 might not also have embraced Languages, Rhetoric, and 
 Grammar, with equal propriety, we cannot divine. We 
 are of opinion that the proper science of the mind, if 
 treated with the requisite compactness, would be limited 
 to the investigation and description of our mental opera- 
 tions alone. Legitimately it cannot branch out into 
 
440 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 Moral Philosophy, nor into Natural Theology. Each of 
 these should form a system by itself. The philosopher 
 of the mind ought, indeed, to trace the connections which 
 his subject bears with these and all other sciences. But 
 he has no particular business with erecting systems of 
 moral, theological, political, or historical philosophy. 
 For instance, he may, with Dr. Brown, attempt to inves- 
 tigate the true nature of Moral Obligation. This is a 
 sentiment of the mind. But as a mental philosopher, his 
 task stops there. He departs from his particular sphere, 
 when he proceeds to enumerate and enforce the personal, 
 social, political, and religious duties arising out of our 
 sense of moral obligation, since he thus encroaches on 
 the real domain of the moral philosopher. 
 
 Among the inconveniences to which the form of pos- 
 thumous lectures subjects this work, are the innumera- 
 ble recapitulations and repetitions which everywhere 
 occur. Probably all the leading ideas and arguments 
 are stated, to a greater or less extent, three times over ; 
 and many of them even more. So that, were the Lec- 
 tures reduced to a regular treatise, and these repetitions 
 omitted, we should have a book little exceeding in size 
 two thirds of the present. It should be remembered, 
 however, that what is thus sometimes an annoyance in 
 perusal, must have been attended with some advantages 
 to those who originally had the privilege of hearing the 
 Lecturer. And even now, the reader will find much as- 
 sistance in comprehending and appreciating the author's 
 arguments, by studying the recapitulations, in which for- 
 mer statements are frequently placed in better points of 
 view, and altogether new considerations are sometimes 
 presented. Nor, on the whole, do we regret that the 
 
brown's thilosophy of mind. 441 
 
 identical Lectures themselves have been published as 
 they were delivered, with all those little incidental ap- 
 peals to .the honor and good feelings of the students, 
 those occasional compliments to the author's colleagues 
 in office, and those other allusions to circumstances of 
 time and place, which take much from the abstract na- 
 ture of the work, and invest it somewhat with the charm 
 of local reality. 
 
 Although, as we before intimated, our author's style is 
 the very opposite to the sententious, yet the vastness of 
 his philosophy, and acuteness of his mind, have caused 
 him to scatter many weighty maxims throughout these 
 Lectures. We subjoin a few as morsels for reflection. 
 
 " Science is the classification of relations." 
 
 " The form of bodies is their relation to each other in space, — • 
 the power of bodies is their relation to each other in time." 
 
 " The power of God is not anything different from God." 
 
 " The philosophy of the mind and the philosophy of matter 
 agree, in this respect, that our knowledge is, in both, confined to 
 the mere phenomena." 
 
 " We pay Truth a very easy homage, when we content ourselves 
 with despising her adversaries." 
 
 " The difficulty of ascertaining precisely whether it be truth 
 which we have attained, is in many cases much greater than the 
 dilficulty of the actual attainment." 
 
 " Philosophy is not the mere passive possession of knowledge ; 
 it is, in a much more important respect, the active exercise of 
 acquiring it." 
 
 " Happiness, though necessarily involving present pleasure, is 
 the direct or indirect, and often the very distant, result of feelings 
 of every kind, pleasurable, painful, and indifferent." 
 
 " When absolute discovery is not allowed, there is left a proba- 
 bility of conjecture, of which even Philosophy may justly avail 
 herself without departing from her legitimate province." 
 
442 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 " To know the mind well, is to know its weaknesses as well as 
 its powers." 
 
 " There is always in man a redundant facility of mistake, be- 
 yond our most liberal allowance." 
 
 " All the sequences of phenomena are mysterious, or none 
 are so." 
 
 "National ridicule is always unjust in degree." 
 
 " If we had been incapable of considering more than two events 
 together, we probably never should have invented the word time." 
 
 " That men should not agree in opinion, is a part of the very 
 laws of intellect, on which the simplest phenomena of thought 
 depend." 
 
 " Objects, and the relations of objects, — these are all which 
 reasoning involves." 
 
 Three or four Lectures are occupied in giving the sub- 
 stance of the author's doctrine of Cause and Eftect. It 
 is an objection to the doctrine, when urged in his broad 
 and unqualified manner, that it must tend to the discour- 
 agement of scientific inquiry. In pressing his particular 
 views, he unguardedly represents it as a fruitless task to 
 search for any other cause of a given effect, than the ob- 
 vious and apparent one. But this would keep us back 
 in the ignorance of infancy. The author could not have 
 intended such a conclusion ; but he should have provided 
 better against it. Another thought that has struck us, 
 in our perusal of these arguments, is, that they do not 
 come much short of asserting, that the Deity himself 
 cannot know why a particular cause produces its im- 
 mediate effect. One more remark connected with this 
 topic. When Dr. Brown asserts, that nothing can exist 
 in nature but all the substances that exist in nature, 
 what would he say of motion ? Is this nothing, or is it 
 something ? If it be something, can it be called a sub- 
 
brown's philosophy of mind. 443 
 
 stance? In short, the existence of motion, particularly 
 spontaneous motion, though more intimately connected 
 than any other phenomenon with this subject, and per- 
 haps involving its essential difficulty, receives not in these 
 speculations its due share of notice. 
 
 The author loses himself in a criticism on Hume, at 
 the end of the thirty-fourth Lecture. Hume does, not 
 speak of the annihilation of an idea, as Dr. Brown rep- 
 resents him, but of the idea of annihilation. This mis- 
 take destroys the whole reasoning. 
 
 We were disappointed in seeing no attempts to draw 
 the characteristic lines of distinction between man and 
 the brute creation. The subject is nowhere hinted at. 
 It was admirably adapted to the peculiar powers of the 
 author. He does not even encounter the obvious objec- 
 tion, that most of his arguments for the immortality of 
 the soul would as well apply to faithful Tray as to his 
 master. 
 
 We are not satisfied with the liberties everywhere 
 taken in quoting the English poets. Scarcely a passage 
 from them occurs, that is not altered, apparently with a 
 direct intention, though, we are not always fortunate 
 enough to perceive, with a happier adaptation to the 
 subject in hand. 
 
 From the author's ambition to say something of every 
 subject more or less connected with his particular science, 
 we were surprised that he has interwoven no remarks 
 upon Delirium, Hypochondriasis, Liberty and Necessity, 
 and a few others. An evident vein of Necessitarianism 
 runs through all his speculations. That doctrine may 
 be pretty directly deduced from his views of Cause and 
 Effect, as well as from his favorite statements of the op- 
 
444 brown's philosophy of mind. 
 
 erations of the mind. Amidst his loftiest declamations, 
 upon the immortality and other attributes of the soul, 
 we never hear a word of its freedom, although such a 
 topic would have thrown a characteristic lustre on many 
 a splendid paragraph. 
 
 Perhaps it may be wrong to assert, that the author 
 was under obligations to the late Dr. Cogan, as that gen- 
 tleman's name, unaccountably in any view, is alluded 
 to nowhere in the Lectures. Yet it cannot be denied 
 that a strong general coincidence exists between the two 
 writers in their treatment of the Passions and Emotions, 
 and several ethical questions, and particularly in regard 
 to the final causes of the actual arrangement of many 
 mental phenomena. 
 
 Dr. Brown, more frequently than any other writer, 
 goes back to infancy, childhood, and savage life, for the 
 decision of philosophical points. 
 
 He seems to have possessed little sense of the ludi- 
 crous. He never undertakes of himself to combat an 
 error with satire. When he has need of this weapon, 
 he constantly resorts to large quotations from Martinus 
 Scriblerus, or Fontenelle. There is in this respect a 
 striking contrast between him and Dr. Campbell, whose 
 ridicule was as irresistible as his serious argument. 
 
 We were going on to particularize our favorite Lec- 
 tures, and to transcribe abundance of other pencil-marks 
 with which we have cumbered the margins of the au- 
 thor's pages; but there is no end to this kind of critical 
 chitchat, and we forbear. 
 
 1825. 
 
THE MAN OF EXPEDIENTS. 
 
 ^OLTa S' oXXore [xeu TTpoaB' .... oXXor' oma-dev. 
 
 Homer's //., E. 595. 
 
 " All means they use, to all expedients run." 
 
 Crabbe. 
 "It is a fine subject. 
 
 "Button-holes! there is something lively in the very idea of them, — 
 and trust me, when I get among them, — you gentry with gray beards, 
 look as grave as you will, — I '11 make merry work with my button-holes. 
 I shall have them all to myself, — 't is a maiden subject, — I shall run foul 
 of no man's wisdom or fine sayings in it." — Tristram Shandi/. 
 
 The Man of Expedients is he who, never providing 
 for the little mishaps and stitch-droppings with which 
 this mortal life is pestered, and too indolent or too ig- 
 norant to repair them in the proper way, passes his days 
 in inventing a succession of devices, pretexts, substi- 
 tutes, plans, and commutations, by the help of which he 
 thinks he appears as well as other people. 
 
 Thus the man of expedients may be said only to half 
 live ; he is the creature of outside, the victim of emer- 
 gencies, whose happiness often depends on the posses- 
 sion of a pin, or the strength of a button-hole. 
 
 Shade of Theophrastus ! spirit of La Bruyere ! assist 
 me to describe him. 
 
 In his countenance, you behold marks of anxiety and 
 contrivance, the natural consequence of his shiftless 
 
 38 
 
446 THE MAN OF EXPEDIENTS. 
 
 mode of life. The internal workings of his soul are 
 generally a compound of cunning and the heart-ache. 
 One half of his time he is silent, languid, indolent; the 
 other half he moves, bustles, and exclaims, " What 's to 
 be done now ? " His whole aim is to live as near as 
 possible to the very verge of propriety. His business 
 is all slightingly performed, and when a transaction is 
 over he has no confidence in his own effectiveness, but 
 asks, though in a careless manner, " Will it do ? Will 
 it do ? '' 
 
 Look throughout the various professions and char- 
 acters of life. You will there see men of expedients 
 darting, and shifting, and glancing, like fishes in the 
 stream. We will give a few tests by which they may 
 be recognized. If a merchant, the man of expedients 
 borrows incontinently at two per cent a month ; if a 
 sailor, he stows his hold with jury-masts, rather than 
 ascertain if his ship be seaworthy ; if a visitor of those 
 he dislikes, he is called out before the evening has half 
 expired ; if a musician, he scrapes on a fiddle-string of 
 silk ; if an actor, he takes his stand within three feet of 
 the prompter; if a poet, he makes fault rhyme with 
 ought, and look with spoke; if a reviewer, he fills up 
 three quarters of his article with extracts from the writer 
 whom he abuses ; if a divine, he leaves ample room in 
 every sermon for an exchange of texts ; if a physician, 
 he is often seen galloping at full speed, nobody knows 
 where ; if a debtor, he has a marvellous acquaintance 
 with short corners and dark alleys ; if a printer, he is 
 adroit at scabharding ; if a collegian, he commits Euclid 
 and Locke to memory without understanding them, inter- 
 lines his Greek, and writes themes equal to the Rambler. 
 
THE MAN OF EXPEDIENTS. 447 
 
 But it is in the character of a general scholar, that the 
 man of expedients most shines. He ranges through all 
 the arts and sciences — in Cyclopaedias. He acquires a 
 most thorough knowledge of classical literature — from 
 translations. He is very extensively read — in title- 
 pages. He obtains an exact acquaintance of authors — 
 from reviews. He follows all literature up to its source 
 — in tables of contents. His researches are indefatiga- 
 ble — into indexes. He quotes memoriter with astonish- 
 ing facility — the Dictionary of Quotations ; and his 
 bibliographical familiarity is miraculous — with Dibdin. 
 
 We are sorry to say, that our men of expedients are 
 to be sometimes discovered in the region of morality. 
 There are those who claim the praise of a good action, 
 when they have acted merely from convenience, incli- 
 nation, or compulsion. There are those who make a 
 show of industry, when they are set in motion only by 
 avarice ; there are those who are quiet and peaceable, 
 only because they are sluggish. There are those who 
 are sagely silent, because they have not one idea; ab- 
 stemious, from repletion ; patriots, because they are am- 
 bitious; spotless, because there is no temptation. 
 
 Again, let us look at the man of expedients in argu- 
 ment. His element is the sophism. He is at home in 
 a circle. His forte, his glory, is the petitio principii. 
 Often he catches at your words, and not at your ideas. 
 Thus, if you are arguing that light is light, and he 
 happens to be (as it is quite likely he will) on the 
 other side of the question, he snatches at your phrase- 
 ology, and exclaims. Did you ever weigh it? Some- 
 times he answers you by silence. Or if he pretends to 
 anything like a show of fair reasoning, he cultivates a 
 
448 THE MAN or EXPEDIENTS. 
 
 certain species of argumentative obliquity, that defies 
 the acutest logic. When you think you have him in a 
 corner, he is gone, — he has slipped through some hole of 
 an argument, which you hoped was only letting in the 
 light of conviction. In vain you attempt to fix him, — 
 it is putting your finger on a flea. 
 
 But let us come down a little lower into life. Who 
 appears so well and so shining in a ball-room as the 
 man of expedients ? Yet his small-clothes are bor- 
 rowed, and as for his knee-buckles, — about as ill- 
 matched as if one had belonged to his hat and the 
 other to a galoche^ — to prevent their difference being 
 detected, he stands sideways to his partner. Never- 
 theless, the circumstance makes him the more viva- 
 cious dancer, since, by the rapidity of his motions, he 
 prevents a too curious examination by the spectators. 
 
 Search farther into his dress. You will find that he 
 very genteelly dangles 07ie glove. There are five pins 
 about him, and as many buttons gone, or button-holes 
 broken. His pocket-book is a newspaper. His fingers 
 are his comb, and the palm of his hand his clothes- 
 brush. He conceals his antiquated linen by the help of 
 close garments, and adroitly claps a bur on the hole 
 in his stocking while walking to church. 
 
 Follow him home. Behold his felicitous knack of 
 metamorphosing all kinds of furniture into all kinds of 
 furniture. A brick constitutes his right andiron, and a 
 stone his left. His shovel stands him in lieu of tongs. 
 His bellows is his hearth-brush, and a hat his bellows, 
 and that too borrowed from a broken window-pane. 
 He shaves himself without a looking-glass, by the sole 
 help of imagination. He sits down on a table. His 
 
THE MAN OF EXPEDIENTS. 449 
 
 fingers are his snuffers. He puts his candlestick into a 
 chair ; — that candlestick is a decanter ; — that decanter 
 was borrowed ; — that borrowing was without leave. 
 He drinks wine out of a tumbler. A fork is his cork- 
 screw. His wineglass he converts into a standish. 
 
 Very ingenious is he in the whole business of writing 
 a letter. For that purpose he makes use of three eighths 
 of a sheet of paper. His knees are his writing-desk, 
 his rule is a book-cover, and his pencil a spoon-handle. 
 He mends his pen with a pair of scissors. He dilutes 
 his ink with water till it is reduced to invisibility. He 
 uses ashes for sand. He seals his letter with the shreds 
 and relics of his wafer-box. His seal is a pin. 
 
 When he takes a journey, his whip-lash — But I shall 
 myself be a man of expedients, if I fill ten pages with 
 these minute details. 
 
 O reader ! if you have smiled at any parts of the fore- 
 going representation, let it be to some purpose. There 
 is no fault we are all so apt to indulge, as that into 
 which we are pushed by the ingenuity of indolence.' 
 
 1818. 
 
 38* 
 
DESULTORY THOUGHTS ON LEXICOG- 
 RAPHY AND LEXICONS. 
 
 Lexicons being the right-hand, or rather the very eye- 
 sight, of the scholar, all pertinent discussion in regard to 
 them should have a certain interest. Lexicography is, 
 in fact, well entitled to be raised to the dignity of a 
 science. In order to create and advance it, copious in- 
 ductions might be formed from works of the past labor- 
 ers in this field, of every age and nation. The successive 
 developments and improvements, which from time to 
 time have been introduced into the art, would contribute 
 further materials. Other aids might be derived from the 
 observations suggested to scientific inquirers by the na- 
 ture of language, and from the obvious uses, of various 
 kinds, to which lexicons may be applied. 
 
 If such a science could be constructed, it would form 
 a foundation for far more useful and complete diction- 
 aries than we have yet known. I am acquainted with 
 no essay or treatise which aims to place Lexicography 
 on a scientific basis. My present purpose is not so 
 ambitious. I propose merely to throw out a few desul- 
 tory suggestions, that have occurred within my own 
 limited experience, in the hope of eliciting, from better- 
 instructed quarters, contributions to a subject so wide- 
 reaching and prolific. 
 
LEXICOGRAPHT. 451 
 
 To say nothing of other languages, have we at this 
 moment a model English Dictionary, such as might be 
 fairly demanded by the general scholar, or the ordinary 
 reader ? In the first place, what we require in a perfect 
 dictionary for ordinary purposes is, I think, neither a 
 bald glossary on the one hand, nor a cyclopaedia on the 
 other, but something of an intermediate character. In 
 this respect, Webster's Dictionary is admirable. It con- 
 tains many thousand articles, in which the thing repre- 
 sented by a word is not merely expressed by a synonyme, 
 or even by a neat, adequate, logical definition, but a brief 
 description tells you something of the nature and rela- 
 tions of the thing itself. This is particularly the case 
 with objects in natural history, with the technical lan- 
 guage of the law, and with terms in the various arts and 
 trades. Webster is, also, very happy in pointing out 
 instances of the several shades of meaning w^hich the 
 same word sustains in its different applications. Doubt- 
 less his book will be susceptible, with the lapse of time, 
 of continued improvements in both these particulars. 
 Perhaps he carries to a fault the descriptive habit I have 
 mentioned, and sometimes, in this respect, causes his 
 Dictionary to approximate too nearly to the character of 
 a cyclopeedia. His rule of giving the derivations of his 
 words is excellent, however he may have failed of ac- 
 curacy in particular instances, or fallen short of the mod- 
 ern stage of development in scientific etymology. But 
 all dictionaries ought to present the etymologies of 
 words, as often the best means of enabling the student 
 to judge for himself as to their true signification. 
 
 A satisfactory dictionary of the English language 
 should give, systematically, the pronunciation of the 
 
452 LEXICOGRAPHY. 
 
 words, alter the manner of Walker. This is particu- 
 larly desirable for the use of foreigners. It is not suffi- 
 cient to show how the roots of derivative words are pro- 
 nounced. The foreigner should at once be enabled to 
 perceive the sound of each individual vocable. I am 
 aware of the great difficulty of carrying out this whole 
 system to universal satisfaction. Something like the 
 phonetic signs, which have attracted so much notice in 
 England and America, would seem to be available for 
 this purpose. In that system, each articulate utterance 
 of the human voice, at least every elementary sound 
 employed in the English language, amounting, as it is 
 said, to thirty-six (short, I should think, of the reality), is 
 represented by a distinct character. The supporters of 
 the system are very sanguine in the hope of substituting 
 it for our existing orthography, and thus producing a 
 universal change in the drapery of literature, whether in 
 writing or typography. If, however, they can succeed 
 in employing it only for the purpose above suggested, 
 namely, to teach the true pronunciation of established 
 current words in the existing modes of spelling, they will 
 probably render it as useful and popular as it is capable 
 of being made.* 
 
 We need a system of this kind for dictionaries of the 
 French language more than of any other. It is impossible 
 for any combination of our alphabet to represent the 
 nasal sounds, so peculiarly enunciated by that nation, 
 in distinction from every other on earth. Whether those 
 sounds can be traced to the Frank or the Celtic element 
 
 * Since this article was written, a work has been published in Cincinnati, 
 entitled " Smalley's American Phonetic Dictionary of the English Lan- 
 guage." 8vo. pp. 770. 
 
 i 
 
LEXICOGRAPHY. 453 
 
 of that people, I am not aware. In their purity, so far 
 from being disagreeable, they are ranked by some among 
 the noblest and most musical sounds uttered by man. 
 Some writers suppose them to be identical with the ut- 
 terances recorded of a very ancient tribe of Etruscans, 
 who were said to have emitted a vocal sound resembling 
 the clarion cry of an eagle. How far different from that, 
 or from anything heard within the precincts of Paris, are 
 those villanous attempts to represent the nasal tones of 
 France in such dictionaries as that of Meadows, where 
 page after page is loaded with abortions like kong-pang'- 
 sai, to illustrate the true pronunciation of compenser ! 
 How must such representations mislead the learner! 
 Might he not as well give a downright English pronun- 
 ciation to the French vocables before him ? Thousands 
 of pupils, all over the English and American worlds, may 
 at this moment fancy that they are attaining a correct 
 French pronunciation from this Mr. Meadows, when, in 
 fact, they are learning barbarisms, worse than nothing, 
 and enough to agonize every genuine Frenchman who 
 hears them. If, now, some distinctive character could 
 be adopted, instead of these deplorable ongs and ungSj 
 which should represent the nasal sounds, and if the pupil 
 were taught that it is impossible for any alphabetic com- 
 bination to express them, but that they must be imparted 
 originally by oral communication alone, and then men- 
 tally connected with the characters, a great advance 
 might be made in conveying the knowledge of French 
 pronunciation. 
 
 But supposing some phonetic system of this kind 
 adopted for all dictionaries, another Alpine difficulty 
 immediately arises before the practical lexicographer, — 
 
454 LEXICOGRAPHY. 
 
 I mean, the establishment of an authoritative standard 
 of pronunciation. That Walker has been extruded from 
 the throne on which he sat with absolute sway for thirty- 
 years, is no fair ground for concluding that no man or 
 body of men may rightfully aspire to wield the sceptre 
 that has fallen from his hands.* There certainly can be 
 laid down some general principles of pronunciation, such, 
 for instance, as would be that of shortening the ante- 
 penult in a derivative word of three syllables, when the 
 same syllable is long in the corresponding primitive; as 
 patron^ patronage^ &c. By the way, I observe that this 
 rule, though much may be said in its favor, is not 
 practically recognized by Worcester, Smart, or Webster. 
 Whether they are right or wrong in this particular, 
 a body of principles can be established, which would 
 organize and fix, to a very great extent, the general pro- 
 nunciation of our language. Then, however, would 
 come the exceptions and anomalies, to be upheld by in- 
 veterate custom or by the usage of good society, or per- 
 haps to be strangled by the bold hand of the lexicog- 
 rapher himself, and forced to give w^ay to more legitimate 
 and analogical forms of speech. 
 
 But where is the man competent to this whole task ? 
 Where is the man who, having told me whether I must 
 say purfect ox perr-fect^ shall instantaneously receive from 
 me as implicit obedience as the tax-gatherer whom the 
 legislature sends to my door ? I long for such arbitrary 
 rule. I sigh for the repose and certainty of so benign a 
 
 * The present standard in England is believed to be Smart, editor of the 
 dictionary known as " Walker Remodelled." He is said to have been 
 teacher of elocution to Queen Victoria. 
 
LEXICOGRAPHY. 455 
 
 despotism, as much as I desire the Papal infallibility, 
 which shall direct me, amidst the sinkings of extreme 
 unction, whether to say, I die^ or I a7n dying I 
 
 Now, to establish such an authority, we naturally turn 
 our thoughts first to the political, legislative powers in 
 any country. Could they effect the object desired? No. 
 Not all the wealth and political power of the state is 
 equal to the task of giving currency to a new expression, 
 or exterminating an old one. Even although we could 
 attract the attention of any legislature to such a project, 
 — which we could not do if we tried, — we should find 
 these matters quite beyond their authority. They cannot 
 even legislate a coin out of circulation. I receive almost 
 every day, even from our great federal post-office, those 
 old English Brummagem coppers, which should have 
 disappeared half a century ago, but which still retain 
 their vitality, and more than their intrinsic value, in spite 
 of laws, and mints, and Presidents, and national pride 
 and jealousies. And even so, and more also, would it 
 be with winged ivords, which, flying aloft in disdain and 
 defiance from the grasp of power, nestle down on the 
 lips, in the habits, in the hearts, around the hearths, and 
 in the markets of the whole people, among whom they 
 are cherished as an essential, ingrained portion of the 
 national existence itself. Look at the unavailing attempt 
 of the affluent, dictatorial Harpers to alter the orthogra- 
 phy of a few words in American books, in conformity 
 with some of the peculiarities of Webster. With all 
 their millions embarked in the book-trade, with their 
 tempests of steam, and mountains of stereotype, with 
 their monopoly of whole markets, they can scarcely con- 
 strain or influence a single press besides their own to 
 
456 LEXICOGRAPHY. 
 
 omit even a little / in the word traveller* Noah Web- 
 ster himself had tried the experiment on a large scale, 
 some forty years ago, in an attempted radical improve- 
 ment of the whole orthography of the English language. 
 His example was followed by a single person only, — 
 the late lamented Grimke of South Carolina ; and the 
 valuable writings which they both published in that 
 new drapery, fell almost dead-born from the press, in 
 consequence simply of their outlandish, repulsive garb. 
 The retaining by Webster, in his great Dictionary, of a 
 few of these new-fangled peculiarities, constitutes, I con- 
 ceive, the prominent defect of that excellent work. Al- 
 though he might have had good reasons for altering the 
 ordinary spelling of some words, yet his reforms were 
 only partial and capricious. If he began this task, he 
 should have made thorough work of it. But, as we have 
 seen, he had tried the thorough work and failed. No 
 valid reason could be assigned on his part why his few 
 changes in orthography should not have been multiplied, 
 so as to reach the full claims of the phonetic system 
 itself, which requires the spelling of every word to cor- 
 respond uniformly to its oral enunciation. Even Macau- 
 lay, in his letter to the Harpers, while he acquiesced in 
 these innovations in their edition of his history, had not 
 a word to advance in their favor, but passed their merits 
 over, in ominous, half-smiling, mystifying silence, al- 
 though they were the main topic in the controversy be- 
 fore him, between the Harpers and the other publishers. 
 The true principle on this subject I take to be, that 
 
 * I refer to the book-press. The New York Tribune, with its vast cir- 
 culation, adopts "Webster's later orthography. 
 
LEXICOGRAPHY. 457 
 
 lexicographers, as such, ought rarely of themselves to 
 initiate any improvements or alterations in the current 
 forms of a language, written or vocal, but only to be 
 faithful reporters of what is existing and recognized. 
 When general custom has stamped with its seignorial 
 approbation any new form introduced by individuals, 
 the lexicographer's duty is to range it in the cabinet of 
 his faithful columns. Webster, by his attempted innova- 
 tions in orthography, has transcended this rule, and so 
 far failed in his function, since he did not succeed in 
 carrying the public with him; thus rendering his Dic- 
 tionary, in this respect, the dictionary of one man, in- 
 stead of the dictionary of a nation. 
 
 Such, then, being the powerlessness of any single 
 man, or body of men, however strong in wealth or po- 
 litical authority, to enforce modes of orthography and 
 pronunciation on the public acceptance, as well as t*" 
 authenticate the employment of individual words, might 
 we not look with hope of success to some moral or in- 
 tellectual authority, to whom should be referred the 
 verbal usages and exigencies of a country ? I am un- 
 able to state with accuracy the influences, in this point 
 of view, which were exerted by the French Academy 
 in France, and the Academia della Crusca in Italy. But 
 I have sometimes thought, that if there could be a stand- 
 ing convention of scholars, assembling annually, or per- 
 haps oftener, who should be delegated from all our col- 
 leges, universities, courts of law, ecclesiastical bodies, 
 literary and scientific societies, and other kindred insti- 
 tutions, Avhose duty it should be to discuss and decide 
 every doubtful point in orthography, etymology, syntax, 
 prosody, rhyme, orthoepy, purity, obsoleteness, new pro- 
 
 39 
 
458 LEXICOGRAPHY. 
 
 prieties, substantive value of individual terms, and the 
 like, I, for one, as a good citizen of the literary republic, 
 would yield obedience to their decrees, even though pro- 
 nounced against my own philological conscience. I 
 have mentioned rhyme among the objects of consider- 
 ation, because it is very well known that usages and 
 authorities in regard to it are subject to as many vicis- 
 situdes as in respect to anything else. Rhymes which 
 were constantly employed by Pope and Dryden as legiti- 
 mate, would not at present be tolerated, and are regard- 
 ed in no better light than mere assonances.* Some are 
 still dubiously endured. But the tendency, both of the 
 poetical and public ear, is evidently towards exactness 
 of rhyme. The world seems to say to the trembling 
 poet. If you will inflict rhyme upon us, let it indeed be 
 rhyme, the genuine article, and of no mongrel descrip- 
 tion. Thus the range of poetical license is limited, and 
 whole pages and volumes of innocent verses are sacri- 
 ficed in advance. Already the bard shudders in fear of 
 being bereaved of such facile but inexact resemblances 
 as give and thrive^ bough and oive^ improve and love, past 
 and taste, fear and there, afford and lord. 
 
 Now, if a convention of the kind just supposed could 
 be established and generally submitted to, how easy, 
 comparatively, would be the task of the lexicographer ! 
 He would but have to register the decrees of that literary 
 parliament. His function would be simply that of the 
 codifier. Then how free from perplexity would writers 
 
 * Take as an example the closing couplet of Pope's Temple of Fame : — 
 
 " Unblemished let me live, or die unknown ; 
 Oh ! grant an honest fame, or grant me none ! " 
 
LEXICOGRAPHY. 459 
 
 and speakers, both in public and private, pass their re- 
 sponsible existence ! For as Talleyrand used to class 
 blunders in a more atrocious category than crimes, so 
 have I known persons, who, I verily believe, were almost 
 as charitable to a moral obliquity as to a mispronounced 
 syllable or a suspected solecism. How readily, too, 
 might those who, like myself, are passing off the stage, 
 guard themselves from indulging in antiquenesses and 
 obsoletenesses of phrase or enunciation, which might 
 have been the height of fashionable propriety in our 
 youth, but which now, perhaps, extort the same smile 
 from our juvenile hearers as we once bestowed on cimi- 
 lar infelicities in our too-little-venerated predecessors ; — 
 even as the smooth-shaven chin probably excites among 
 our juniors the same wistful speculation as did, in our 
 own young imaginations, the huge, bushy, phenomenal 
 wigs of those septuagenaries who glided off the stage of 
 our early life. 
 
 But, ah me ! in the proposal submitted above, am I 
 not dreaming fondly of an impossibility ? How could 
 we secure steadfastness and consistency in the very 
 legislative tribunal I am imagining ? " Quis custodiet 
 ipsos custodes ? " How prevent dissensions and devia- 
 tions among those subjected to their sway ? If I mis- 
 take not, the history of the two foreign academies above 
 mentioned, with their surrounding contemporaries, is 
 replete with accounts of parties and factions in all mat- 
 ters subjected to their jurisdiction. And so it might be 
 with us. Boileau, in his wonderfully ingenious satire, 
 Sur V Equivoque^ represents the peace of the whole 
 world, and the high interests of orthodox Christianity, as 
 having been at times suspended on some pun or word 
 
460 LEXICOGKAPHY. 
 
 of doubtful meaning. In like manner, might not the 
 peace of our own America, already too often disturbed 
 by our characteristic wordiness, be still more jeoparded, 
 if the matters in dispute were veritable words ? 
 
 On all these accounts, I am constrained to confess, 
 that, since there is as yet no tolerable science of lexicog- 
 raphy, and since the art and task of the lexicographer 
 are environed by so many practical difficulties and im- 
 palpable perplexities, I feel incompetent to present a 
 satisfactory estimate of any particular lexicon or dic- 
 tionary, and can but throw a few empirical random ob- 
 servations into the general reservoir of ideas on the sub- 
 ject. 
 
 Webster's Dictionary must be acknowledged by all 
 as an inestimable treasure. What a dear friend in need 
 it is, whenever we meet with any sort of word which we 
 hardly fancied to exist in the heavens above or the earth 
 beneath ! It is not twenty years since the London 
 Quarterly Review pronounced the number of terms in 
 any language, necessary for the exigencies of modern 
 civilization, to be only about forty thousand. But be- 
 hold, Webster and Worcester have more than doubled 
 the number, and who will venture to deny the possible 
 or probable utility of any of their articles ? Yet, to 
 evince how much the task of compiling such a work 
 transcends the powers of any single man, however 
 industrious and eminent he may be as a philologist, I 
 will here mention that my own very limited reading, 
 during the last twenty-five years, has supplied me with 
 a list of one hundred and eighty-five words which are 
 wanting in Webster's quarto of 1828. How to account 
 for such a deficiency will, I apprehend, appear difficult 
 
LEXICOGRAPHY. 461 
 
 to ray readers, especially when it is remembered that his 
 assistant in preparing the work for publication was the 
 poet Percival, the range of whose erudition is scarcely 
 surpassed among the living scholars of any country. A 
 few of the omissions were probably accidental, but by 
 far the greater number must have occurred through the 
 limited knowledge or the still stranger intention of the 
 compilers. Before the author's death, I communicated 
 to him my list of missing words as far as it had then 
 grown, — a circumstance which may in part account 
 for the appearance of over one hundred of them in the 
 revised editions. The following are among those still 
 wanting. I record them chiefly as matter of curiosity, 
 and would not be understood to vouch for the entire 
 list, or for the uniform accuracy of the annexed defini- 
 tions. 
 
 Arreed^ — used by Milton. 
 
 Barbican^ in fortification. 
 
 Bothy, a hut or small building. 
 
 Branchial. 
 
 Busheller, one who repairs garments for tailors. 
 
 Calavance, a fruit. 
 
 Calceolus, a flower. 
 
 Carapace, perhaps the same as Callipash. 
 
 Cassoon, an architectural decoration. 
 
 Clabbed. 
 
 Clinker, refuse of coal. 
 
 Clinker-built, in marine architecture. 
 
 Clow, in draining. 
 
 Conacre, in husbandry. 
 
 Crinkets, a disease. 
 
 CruiveSy fishing implements. 
 
 39=* 
 
462 LEXICOGRAPHY. 
 
 Cult^ a worship. — Vestiges of Creation. 
 
 Debmised, in heraldry. 
 
 Dian, — not for Diana. — Andrew Marveli's Poenns. 
 
 Dipod, in prosody. 
 
 Dispasted, in physiology or surgery. 
 
 Dochmaic, in prosody. 
 
 Doller^ a machine for lifting. 
 
 Dyslogism^ false reasoning. 
 
 The Fancy^ sporting world. 
 
 Feiiars^ a kind of tenants. 
 
 Finite, applied to verbs. 
 
 Flexion, the same as Inflection, in grammar, 
 
 Forefaulter. 
 
 Gradine. 
 
 Glittery, part of a soldier's equipment. 
 
 Hobble, an instrument of confinement. 
 
 Indicial, in arithmetic. 
 
 Intarsiated, checkered ? 
 
 Lagerstrcemia, a plant. 
 
 Laura, a collection of separate cells, in distinction 
 from a monastery. — Curzon's Monasteries of the Le- 
 vant ; Lord Lindsay's Christian Art. 
 
 Marrionate, in angling. 
 
 Mill, to travel under water, as a whale or fish. 
 
 Mosarab, Spanish Moor? 
 
 Navvy, an English laborer. 
 
 Obsequience, — used in the London Quarterly Review. 
 
 Odic, — the Odic Force of Reichenbach. 
 
 Ozone, in chemistry. 
 
 Parwmiac, in prosody. 
 
 Paid, an Italian coin. 
 
 PeschitOy an ancient copy of the Scriptures, as Syrian 
 Pescbito. 
 
LEXICOGRAPHY. 463 
 
 Pinder. — George a Green was, in olden time, the Fin- 
 der of the town of Vv^akefield. 
 
 Predella, in Romish church-furniture. 
 
 Previous Question, in deliberative bodies. 
 
 Reiver, a robber. 
 
 Roister, — London Quarterly Review, No. 180, p. 249. 
 
 Sarcel, in falconry. 
 
 Senachy, — in London Quarterly Review, June, 1841, 
 Art. Whewell. 
 
 Sennet, a musical term in Shakespeare. 
 
 Stub, to prepare wool for spinning. 
 
 Smolt, a young salmon. 
 
 Sockdologer, — used in Mrs. Howe's "Passion-Flow- 
 ers." 
 
 Spinney, in hunting. 
 
 Theotisc. 
 
 Toril,' — in Andrew Marvell's poems. 
 
 Triptic, a utensil employed in a monastery or church. 
 
 Water-brash, a disease. 
 
 Willock, a sea-fowl. — Kingsley's Glaucus. 
 
 Zymotic, a class of diseases. 
 
 The great rival of Webster's Dictionary, in our country, 
 is Worcester's Universal and Critical Dictionary, pub- 
 lished in royal octavo, in 1846. It is a monument of learn 
 ing and ability, and must be considered as indispensable 
 to every well-furnished library. I understand that in 
 New England it is recognized as a paramount authority. 
 By the kindness of the author, I have been favored with 
 an opportunity of examining the valuable manual, pub- 
 lished in 1855, compiled from his great work. Of course, 
 it cannot present the vast variety of shades and modifica- 
 tions of meaning exhibited in the significations given by 
 
464 LEXICOGRAPHY. 
 
 Webster, or in Worcester's own larger work ; but those 
 which it gives are exceedingly full, compact, and intelligi- 
 ble. Dr. Worcester's Dictionaries, hitherto published, are 
 destitute of one valuable characteristic of the rival work, 
 in withholding the etymologies of the words. But his 
 latest abridgment possesses a new and redeeming fea- 
 ture, in exhibiting the peculiar forces of nearly synony- 
 mous expressions.* This must have cost the author 
 much thought and labor, and evinces in its execution a 
 high degree of discrimination and skill. The work, also, 
 has the high recommendation of presenting the pronun- 
 ciation of every word, on its face, without exception. In 
 fact, vast care seems to have been expended on the de- 
 partment of pronunciation, and it is hard to conceive of 
 any authority, on that point, more complete or satisfac- 
 tory. The adjuncts, prefixed and subjoined to the body 
 of the work, are all appropriate to such a production, 
 and must be very useful in the practice of daily literary 
 life. Indeed, they suggest rich materials towards such a 
 science of lexicography as has been insisted on in the 
 former part of this essay. It is but fair to judge of the 
 execution of any work according to its owmi plan and 
 pretensions. Judged on this principle, very great merit 
 must be assigned to Worcester's Dictionary. But per- 
 haps a further approximation towards perfection is yet 
 
 * The author must have experienced some diflficulty in devising a rightly 
 descriptive title for his late work. 'He calls it "A Pronouncing, Explanatory, 
 and Synonymous Dictionary," &c. Now a book which treats of synonymes 
 can hardly be entitled on that account a synonymous book, as the word has 
 generally been received. The occasion might have justified the daring crea- 
 tion of some such new term as synonymic. But it seems the able author 
 chooses to justify himself by the equally daring creation of a nevr dcjinition for 
 synonymous, which he explains as sometimes signifying, Relating to synonymes. 
 
LEXICOGRAPHY. 465 
 
 to be attained, by combining the plans of both Worces- 
 ter's and Webster's. 
 
 As an instance of the virtual impossibility of any one 
 man's mastering and exhibiting the whole vocabulary of 
 any language, I have already presented a list of the 
 words omitted in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, so 
 far as detected by the casual and limited reading of a 
 single student, in the course of twenty-five years. On 
 consulting Worcester's Universal and Critical Dictionary, 
 I find that he supplies only five of Webster's omissions, 
 given above ; namely. Bothy, Clinker, Dipod, Dochmaic, 
 Obsequience ; — while, of my original list of 185 words, 
 Webster has the following, which are not to be found in 
 Worcester : — 
 
 Alignment^ adjustment to a line. 
 
 Antispast, in prosody. 
 
 Catafalque J in funeral solemnities. 
 
 Cob, clay mixed with straw. 
 
 Cufic, ancient Arabic characters. 
 
 Force, a water-fall. 
 
 Gopher, the wood of the Ark. 
 
 Intention, in surgery. 
 
 Plant, of a tradesman. 
 
 Proper, in heraldry. 
 
 Quintet, in music. 
 
 Septet, ditto. 
 
 Stertorous, snoring. 
 
 I feel sure (and I say it without any affectation) that 
 my reading has been of a more limited extent than that 
 of almost any man, of any literary pretension ; although 
 to exact and careful reading, as far as it has gone, I am 
 ready to confess. Now, if I, within my short range, 
 
466 LEXICOGKAPHY. 
 
 have discovered so many omissions in these two indus- 
 trious, faithful, and learned lexicographers, how large 
 would probably be the catalogue, if one hundred of the 
 most extensive readers in England and America had 
 taken notes similar to mine? Doubtless, also, I have 
 met with many other words in the same predicament, 
 which I failed to verify or record. 
 
 In early life, I commenced, and w^orked for some time, 
 on a task which, if well and thoroughly executed, might 
 result, I apprehended, in considerable literary utility. 
 Other cares and necessities withdrew me from its con- 
 tinued prosecution. The object was a classification of 
 all the words in the English language, according to the 
 various ideas which they represent. All epithets, for 
 instance, implying good moral qualities, were arranged 
 under one division, and those of the opposite kind under 
 another. Words representing mental action, of any kind 
 formed one class ; words representing bodily action, an- 
 other ; words representing the bodily sensations, a third, 
 &c. I can well conceive that writers and speakers may 
 often be essentially aided by such a work, in the proper 
 treatment of their themes. Fortunately, Roget's The- 
 saurus of English Words and Phrases, constructed main- 
 ly on the principle in question, has appeared. It consti- 
 tutes, unquestionably, one of the richest treasure-houses 
 of our vernacular philology. 
 
 An abridgment of Webster, with its peculiarities in 
 orthography, has been adopted for the public schools in 
 the State of New York. How far this was effected by 
 its essential merits, and how far by the overshadowing 
 influence of the Harpers, I presume not to say. Wash- 
 ington Irving has written and published a letter, com- 
 
LEXICOGRAPHY. 467 
 
 plaining of a grossly unfair use made of his partial 
 recommendation of the work. 
 
 The struggle for public favor between Worcester's and 
 "Webster's Dictionaries has been more or less active for 
 some years past. Into the merits of that controversy, I 
 do not propose further to enter ; but I cannot forbear re- 
 marking upon the absurdity of charging Dr. Worcester 
 with having borrowed from Webster's vocabulary. Who 
 can charge another with stealing eirea Trrepoevra out of 
 his battue, when the winged creatures themselves are wild 
 game, flying all about the country, — animals /er<^ na- 
 tures, in which no man can claim private property ? 
 
 Richardson's Dictionary of the English Language is 
 admirable for tracing the history of English words ; and 
 is, therefore, peculiarly valuable to persons of philologi- 
 cal tastes : it is little suited for ordinary purposes. 
 
 Bat the highest hopes of the students of English 
 undefiled are now fixed upon the appearance of the 
 great Lexicon of the English tongue, announced by Dr. 
 Worcester. He has, undoubtedly, brought to its prepara- 
 tion unsurpassed industry, accuracy, capacity, and con- 
 scientiousness ; and we may, with much confidence, look 
 to its publication as the most promising means of gain- 
 ing clear and consistent information as to the character, 
 construction, derivations, meanings, and resources of the 
 English language, which are likely to be enjoyed in our 
 generation. Not the least important and interesting 
 feature of this vast projected work will probably be the 
 illustration, by neat and well-drawn cuts, of all those 
 terms whose meanings can be rendered clearer by such 
 accompaniments. Although illustrative designs have 
 been more or less employed in books, both before and 
 
468 LEXICOGRAPHY. 
 
 ever since the dawn of printing, yet their increasing use, 
 at the present day, and the important place they now 
 hold, are of auspicious omen for literature, as well as art. 
 Clear, exact, copious, satisfactory, and often delightful 
 conceptions of objects are thus imparted to the inquirer, 
 who obtains by a glance what might otherwise cost him 
 hours of research. The improvement in question consti- 
 tutes a new era in verbal lexicography, and must go 
 to enrich the science itself with a choice element. Of 
 course, it cannot be claimed to have originated here. 
 Setting aside technical glossaries, we believe that a 
 recent English work, Ogilvie's Imperial Dictionary, on 
 the basis of Webster, has the honor of being the first 
 " illustrated " dictionary of the English language. 
 
 To make a transition from our own to the classical 
 languages. It must be gratifying to Americans, that 
 Pickering's Greek Lexicon and Leverett's Latin Lexi- 
 con, prepared by the hands of two of our own country- 
 men, are, or at least were at the time of their publica- 
 tion, unsurpassed, even if equalled, by any other works 
 of the kind. I have used them both from the beginning, 
 and feel that I can almost say a Nunc diiniUis, whenever 
 I lay them down. John Pickering, no doubt, was the 
 most erudite man our country has ever produced. Of 
 this fact the sketch of his life and attainments, executed 
 and published, at the request of the American Academy 
 of Arts and Sciences, by Judge White, of Salem, Mass., 
 must establish a clear conviction. When shall we see 
 the more formal and complete monument of his vast 
 acquisitions and achievements, which was invoked by 
 the hopes of Judge White in his admirable little memo- 
 rial ? Pickering's Lexicon, in its matter, structure, and 
 
LEXICOGRAPHY. 469 
 
 arrangement, is of extraordinary excellence. In reading 
 the classic writers of Greece, one finds it a blessed help, 
 pouring all desirable light, and distinguishing the exact 
 shades of meaning in the very passages under examina- 
 tion. Perhaps it is not so full and satisfactory for the 
 Greek Testament, — not at all superseding the use of 
 Schleusner. And even Schleusner, although a very great 
 assistance, must not be depended upon without an inde- 
 pendent exercise of one's own judgment, since his defi- 
 nitions of words and classifications of meanings are ne- 
 cessarily more or less tinged with the foregone conclu- 
 sions of his own peculiar faith and views of the context. 
 The English rival of Pickering's Ijexicon would be 
 Donnegan's, — which I have seen subjected to some 
 rather withering criticisms, — or perhaps Liddell and 
 Scott's, which has been admirably reprinted, and in some 
 respects edited, by Professor Drisler, of Columbia College, 
 New York. This Lexicon embodies, to a great extent, 
 the best results of modern criticism, up to the time of its 
 publication (1846), and (as the highest compliment I 
 can pay it, or any other Greek and English dictionary of 
 foreign origin) is not unworthy of a place by the side oi 
 the second edition of Pickering. Before procuring Pick- 
 ering, my great aid in reading the Greek classics, when 
 obliged to abandon Schrevelius, was a noble and splendid 
 improvement of Budeeus's Thesaurus, printed in 1554. 
 Since Pickering commenced his reign, the Budseus has 
 slumbered very much on the shelf, though its assistance 
 would probably be required if a kind destiny should 
 ever lead me much amongst the Alexandrian writers and 
 the Greek fathers. These matters stir up in my mind a 
 pleasant reminiscence. Paying a visit once to the elder 
 
 40 
 
470 LEXICOGRAPHY. 
 
 President Adams, when he was between seventy and 
 eighty years old, our talk, or rather his talk, as it swept 
 over a very wide range of subjects, lighted at last upon 
 Greek lexicons ; when up jumped the venerable sage, like 
 a sprightly young man, and actually ran up stairs to his 
 library, from which he brought down in his arms a huge 
 folio Constanti?ie, which he exhibited as his favorite com- 
 panion in his Greek studies. 
 
 To all Greek lexicons I feel thankful, in contrast with 
 all Latin dictionaries that I am acquainted with, inas- 
 much as they give, in their alphabetical places, the vari- 
 ous inflexions and irregular oblique cases of all words, 
 as well as the original roots and leading forms. Why 
 should it not be so in all sorts of vocabularies ? One 
 valuable principle in our proposed science of lexicogra- 
 phy would be, that every inflexion of a word at all 
 irregular, or not obvious to the merest tyro, should be 
 introduced in its place, as well as the root. For in- 
 stance, in every Greek Lexicon, when I look for otcro), the 
 future of ^epco, or for ojveyKa^ the perfect of the same 
 word, I find them waiting for me as faithfully as the root 
 4>epco itself. But in looking into a Latin dictionary, even 
 into my favorite Leverett, for tuHj the perfect of fero, 
 I find it absent, and I am driven back to my grammar 
 knowledge of the word, if I wish to proceed any farther 
 with tuli. In like manner, you will find el?, the second 
 person of et/x/, in a Greek lexicon, but never es, the 
 second person of sum, in the Latin dictionary, although 
 the words precisely correspond in the two languages, 
 and although the Latin es is more irregular than the 
 Greek el?, and more difficult to be traced by one not well 
 acquainted with the language. The same inconvenient 
 
LEXICOGRAPHY. 471 
 
 practice, probably the relic of some antiquated pedantry, 
 is also adopted in most dictionaries of modern foreign 
 languages. I have been perplexed by it in using French, 
 Italian, Spanish, German, and Danish dictionaries, and 
 have often been obliged to hunt through the grammars 
 of those languages for certain forms, which, if they had 
 been inserted, as they ought to have been, in their alpha- 
 betical places in the dictionaries, would have saved num- 
 berless fragments of precious time in a life too short and 
 crowded to be thus wasted. I am happy to say that 
 most English dictionaries are free from this monstrous 
 delinquency, and that Webster and Worcester respect 
 the individuality of luent and gone as much as that of 
 their radical go. 
 
 The Latin Lexicon of Leverett professes to be chiefly 
 compiled from the great work of the Italians Fac- 
 ciolati and Forcellini, and from the German works of 
 Scheller and Luenemann, of which it is a much slight- 
 er modification than Pickering's Lexicon is of Schreve- 
 lius. But in its translations, methodical arrangements, 
 and accurate execution throughout, it shows consummate 
 scholarship and industry. I cannot but feel something 
 of the complacency of the sexton who " rang the bell " 
 for the great orator, when I remember that two little 
 boys who began the Latin grammar together, at the age 
 of nine years, under my humble tuition in the morning 
 of my own life, were Frederic P. Leverett of Boston, 
 and William H. Furness of Philadelphia. 
 
 Whenever our contemplated science of lexicography 
 shall utter its decrees, let it abolish from its practical 
 systems all such pedantry as, I am sorry to say, still ad- 
 heres to Leverett, in confounding together in alphabe 
 
472 LEXICOGRAPHY. 
 
 ical arrangement the letters / and JJ and also the letters 
 Uand V. The truth is, there is now no more identity 
 or affinity between J and J", or U and F, than between 
 ikf and N. J is in all cases a vowel, and J is in all cases 
 a consonant. So, respectively, with U and V. Why 
 should the young be perplexed, and all ages be annoyed, 
 by the unnecessary tribulation of distinguishing by an 
 effort of memory what are really distinguished in the 
 nature of things, and ought to be equally distinguished 
 in the columns before their troubled eyes ? 
 
 Let our imagined science also decree that Greek lexi- 
 cons for proper use shall present their definitions in the 
 vernacular language of the country where they are pub- 
 lished. This will facilitate the study of that incompara- 
 ble tongue far more than enough to counterbalance the 
 little advantage gained by an increased knowledge of 
 Latin, on the antiquated plan. 
 
 In connection with this point, may I not suggest the 
 inquiry, whether there has not been, in time past, and is 
 not still, too much that is formal, superstitious, mechani- 
 cal, and pedantic, in insisting that youth shall commence 
 and pursue the study of a language with no other aid 
 than the eternally twirled, tumbled, and dog-eared dic- 
 tionary ? Is not this scheme as unnatural as it is un- 
 necessary ? Does nature send the little bright and in- 
 quisitive learner to a big vocabulary? Does she not 
 immediately teach him words from the lips of a superior? 
 I am therefore for teaching languages by the judicious 
 but not exclusive use of translations, or at least of closely 
 accompanying vocabularies, and copious, clear annota- 
 tions, carried on from lesson to lesson. The quick and 
 active memory of -youth demands something of this 
 
LEXICOGRAPHY. 473 
 
 kind. The importance of saving time demands it. 
 When a large foundation of knowledge is thus naturally 
 supplied, then let the mind be disciplined, and the pow- 
 ers exercised, by the study of pure originals and the 
 use of the dictionary. In this way, I feel persuaded that 
 less disgust at learning would be engendered than has 
 darkened the annals of the past, far higher enjoyment 
 secured, and a vastly greater amount of ripe scholarship 
 developed. 
 
 To revert for one moment to our main topic ; — I am 
 happy to know that Professor Guenebault, who has re- 
 sided for many years in Charleston, as an eminent teach- 
 er of the French language, has long been engaged in a 
 peculiar and (so far as I am informed) quite untrodden 
 path of the field of lexicography.* He has compiled, 
 and is soon to publish, a Vocabulary of such French 
 words and phrases as have originated in cant, or slang, 
 or some provincial or other idiosyncratical sources. Such 
 a task, if executed with the industry, tact, and fidelity 
 which the public have a right to expect, will unquestion- 
 ably furnish many curious and valuable results in the 
 study of philology and social science. 
 
 * I speak here of French literature only. The English works of Francis 
 Grose, among others in the same department, are well known. 
 
 1855. 
 
 40* 
 
A DAY OF DISAPPOINTMENT IN SALEM. 
 
 BY AN ADMIRER OF 
 
 I HAD completed my Northern summer tour, and was 
 lingering through a few days at the Tremont House, in 
 Boston, for the arrival of a party of friends from Canada, 
 in order that we might all start together on the journey 
 to our Southern homes. To beguile the tedious and 
 vacant hours of my delay, I had resorted to the various 
 expedients which suggest themselves to a solitary stran- 
 ger. I had made numerous excursions on foot to the 
 enchanting environs of the American Athens. I had 
 paid a sweet and solemn pilgrimage of several hours to 
 Mount Auburn. I had gone up to the dome of the 
 State-House, on two different sunshiny afternoons, and 
 drank a full flow of delight (no less intense for arising 
 from a twice-told tale) from the wonderful landscape 
 around, more gorgeous and varied than an Achilles- 
 shield, — those distant, slumbering, yet shining towns, 
 — those hundred steeples, scattered, like the religion they 
 represent, in all quarters of the horizon, — those gradu- 
 ated hills far off at the south, along which I could not 
 
 ^ Soon after^ the appearance of Hawthorne's " Twice-Told Tales," the 
 
 author of the present volume, desirous of rendering his testimony to the 
 
 excellent promise they contained, published the above jeu-d^esprit, in the 
 assumed character of a Southern Planter. 
 
A DAT OF DISAPPOINTMENT. 475 
 
 help fancying that Neptune sometimes ascended, as up 
 a flight of stairs, when, tired of the storms and calms of 
 his own ocean, he was desirous of refreshing himself 
 with a glimpse of the works of the demigod man, — 
 that beautiful harbor with its small green islands, — the 
 winding, glistening Charles, with its bridges, and bays, 
 and causeways, — the venerable group of edifices at 
 Cambridge, glowing amidst the picture, as if Learning 
 and Religion had said to each other. Sit we down here 
 together and form a part of the bright glories of this 
 mysterious emblem- world, — that vast city at my feet, 
 with its palaces, halls, camera-obscura squares, winding 
 streets, autumn-brown gardens, mirrored roofs and tow- 
 ers, leafless forests of dim-receding masts, and hazy-blue 
 atmosphere, penetrating, overspreading, and harmonizing 
 all, — itself also harmonizing exquisitely with the gently 
 lessening sounds of a busy population as the shades of 
 twilight deepened, — and last, in still nearer perspective 
 beneath my downcast eye, that extensive Common, 
 crossed by numerous footpaths, in which I could dis- 
 cern now and then a couple of saunterers of different 
 sexes, but too minute by reason of distance for me to 
 distinguish whether they were lovers mutually dreaming 
 away a too short happy hour, or a little brother and sis- 
 ter returning leisurely home from school. I had several 
 times strayed to the Athenaeum (impressive exponent 
 of united intellect, refinement, and munificence), had 
 wandered and paused through its encyclopedic range 
 of apartments, had skimmed the world's periodical lit- 
 erature on the tables of its reading-room, and amidst the 
 favoring silence of the visitors had beheld, with a feel- 
 ing of almost terrific enchantment, the cast of 
 
476 A DAY OF DISAPPOINTMENT. 
 
 ** Laocoon's torture dignifying pain, — 
 A father's love and mortal's agony 
 "With an immortal's patience blending." 
 
 The shops of the booksellers, also, presented their re- 
 sistless attractions in my daily walks. What charming 
 lounges ! How invariably polite and kind, both masters 
 and clerks ! How willing that I should gratuitously enter- 
 tain myself for hours amidst their " treasures new and 
 old," and how especially welcome was I made to the 
 full enjoyment of their luxuries, when it was perceived 
 that I was a rather liberal purchaser of their choicest 
 publications I A chair in the quietest corner of the shop, 
 yet not too remote for a gentle and unoffending glance 
 at the fair customers who applied, at almost every mo- 
 ment, for pocket-books, gold pencils, annuals, tablets, 
 and the last new novel, was always secured for the gentle- 
 man who, on a single day, could select and order to his 
 lodgings a parcel containing Prescott's Ferdinand and 
 Isabella, Bancroft's United States, Sparks's Franklin 
 and Morris, Everett's and Story's Miscellaneous Writ- 
 ings, the works of Thomas Carlyle, Furness on the Gos- 
 pels, and other novelties of like commanding interest. 
 
 One morning, while ruminating somewhat vacantly in 
 my privileged nook in one of these favorite haunts, the 
 graceful and obliging shop-boy brought me a volume, 
 which he said he should have certainly offered me before, 
 had he not believed that every copy had long since been 
 disposed of. He was sure I should be pleased with it, 
 and begged me to give it a cursory inspection. The title 
 of the book, " Twice-Told Tales, by Nathaniel Haw- 
 thorne," put me at once upon a train of musing spec- 
 ulation. I knew not whether to consider it attractive or 
 
A DAY OF DISAPPOINTMENT. 477 
 
 repulsive. Generally speaking, a twice-told tale is a 
 tedious affair. Some tales, however, will very well bear 
 repetition, and who knows, thought I, but such may be 
 the case with those before me ? Twice-told tales, more- 
 over, are often fresh and new to some portion of the 
 audience ; and as I learned from my active little Mercury 
 that this compilation of narratives and fancies acquired 
 their existing title from having nearly all appeared pre- 
 viously in various periodicals, I acknowledged that they 
 at least must possess the charm of novelty for those 
 who, like me, could indulge but sparingly in that sort 
 of reading. Thus, the reasoning of a moment or two 
 (would that all prejudices might be as easily surmount- 
 ed !) dispelled the unworthy prepossessions I had been 
 induced to entertain. On the other hand, a little further 
 reflection awakened me to a sense of the peculiar beau- 
 ties and merits of this singular title. Like all new con- 
 verts, I was now inspired with an inborn zeal for what I 
 had just before repudiated. Tivice-Told Tales! How 
 simple, how antique, how purely Saxon, these three little 
 alliterative words I How they transport us at once to 
 the enchantments of the Middle Ages and of minstrel ut- 
 terances ! Then, again, what a frank and sturdy honesty 
 there is about them I The author of the book seems to 
 say : " I give the world fair warning that these tales have 
 been published before. It is possible you may have dined 
 on the same fare yesterday. If, gentlemen, you can toler- 
 ate a picked-up dinner, here are the fragments of former 
 entertainments, collected and served to the best of my 
 ability. So, walk in ! But if you can put up with noth- 
 ing short of a fresh-killed and entire turkey, and a new 
 batch of pies and puddings directly from the oven, you 
 
478 A DAY OF DISAPPOINTMENT. 
 
 must go your ways and be entertained elsewhere." I per- 
 ceived also in the same circumstance a noble self-reliance, 
 — a modest confidence that the book had merits and 
 would win its way, notwithstanding the unpretending 
 and even self-disparaging character of the title. 
 
 Thus inspired with favorable inclinations, I opened 
 the volume, and glanced rapidly over the first two arti- 
 cles. The result of this hasty inspection was, that I 
 threw a half-eagle on the counter, waited impatiently 
 for the change, and hurried home to my lodgings with 
 the book, which, before I slept on my pillow that night, 
 deserved, at least from my experience, the title of Thrice- 
 Read Tales. 
 
 On the next day, my mind was full of Nathaniel Haw- 
 thorne. I felt rejoiced that a first-rate book was added 
 to our scanty American library, — a first-rate classic to 
 our incipient literary galaxy. I hailed the appearance 
 of another genuine original on this threadbare earth ; 
 and, better still, I hailed the appearance of one of the 
 rarest productions of human nature, — an original, de- 
 void of almost every exceptionable or offensive quality. 
 For alas I thought I, originality is too often attended 
 with some enormous evil genius, some outrageous affec- 
 tation, some perilous error, some frightful absurdity in 
 taste, opinion, or morals. Not so with Nathaniel Haw- 
 thorne. He is as good, as delicate, as pure, as old-fash- 
 ioned, as sensible, and as safe, in all his sentiments and 
 conceptions, as the most timid worshipper of established 
 proprieties could desire. One of the greatest triumphs, 
 indeed, of his genius, is to have mingled so much genu- 
 ine humor, so much keen, flashing wit, with a taste so 
 exquisitely fastidious and refined. Nor does it detract 
 
A DAY OP DISAPPOINTMENT. 79 
 
 from his originality, that he occasionally reminds us of 
 the quaintness of Lamb, or of the almost feminine lus- 
 ciousness of Washington Irving's picked and perfect 
 English. These things are merely extraneous and ac- 
 cidental, — just as if Shakespeare should have made a 
 bow like Sir Philip Sidney, or Lord Byron unconsciously 
 imitated the tone of his friend Rogers. Enough is left 
 behind to constitute him one of the most original of 
 American writers. A single paper of his, " Rills from 
 the Town-Pump," for instance, is enough to give any 
 man a lasting reputation. It is one of those unique and 
 fortunate productions that genius sometimes throws off 
 to excite wonder and delight, and to defy imitation, — 
 such as Horace's Visit to Brundusium, Boileau's Third 
 Satire, Pope's Rape of the Lock, and Irving's Rip Van 
 Winkle. O that respectable, sensible, humorous town- 
 pump! Who would have supposed it possible to elevate 
 a pump to all the dignity and interest of a living person- 
 age ? Who can read the paper, without feeling a loving 
 sympathy for that worthy, eloquent, and slily satirical 
 piece of wrought timber, shall I say ? or may I rather 
 call it that fragment of oaken humanity ? Surely, the 
 inhabitants of Salem, where Hawthorne resides, if they 
 rightly appreciate such an author, would be willing to ap- 
 point him their essayist-laureate, with a handsome salary. 
 They would settle him, as a parish settles a minister, 
 with the understanding that he should furnish something 
 periodically for the gratification and instruction of the 
 town. I should like, at some time or other, as a mere 
 jeu-d^esprit^ to try my hand at imitating him. Yet how 
 impossible to catch his felicities ! How difficult to strike 
 like him first into an unbeaten track of imagination, and 
 
480 A DAY OF DISAPPOINTMENT. 
 
 then to strew it with characteristic flowers of wit, fancy, 
 fact, humor, eloquence, and wisdom, as I went along! 
 
 Thus I ran on in my reflections at different times and 
 places through the day, admiring the depth and felicity 
 of my own criticisms almost equally with the qualities 
 of my new favorite, — till at length I wrought myself up 
 to such a pitch of enthusiasm, that I resolved on the 
 morrow to visit Salem, and obtain, if possible, before I 
 left New England, a sight of the author of Twice-Told 
 Tales. 
 
 Accordingly, I found myself at the appointed hour 
 among the crowd on board the steamboat, which was to 
 transport us over the ferry to the commencement of the 
 new railroad between Boston and Salem. Just before 
 starting, an acquaintance introduced me to two ladies, 
 whom he placed under my charge for the journey, as it 
 was out of his power to accompany them himself. 
 
 " Take care of your heart," said he in a whisper, as he 
 led me aside for a moment. " Between that lovely 
 widow and her daughter, there is but a slender chance 
 of your getting back to Boston entirely unscathed, and 
 the result may be, either that one of them will attend 
 you next fall to grace your Southern plantation, or that 
 you w^ll be induced to transfer your interest to New 
 England, and form a connection and residence among 
 the Yankees. Yet, in either case, I shall congratulate 
 rather than pity you, for they have every sort of recom- 
 mendation one can imagine or desire." 
 
 A caution so abrupt and pointed had, I confess, a 
 singular effect upon my mind. Instead of fortifying me 
 against the charms to which I was to be exposed, it only 
 rendered me more vulnerable to their power. There are 
 
A DAY OF DISAPPOINTMENT. 481 
 
 certain cases in which, if you inform a man of his dan- 
 ger, you do but increase the risk of his losing himself. 
 A calm and unconscious feeling of security is sometimes 
 a better guide through perils, than the exciting terrors of 
 admonition. Cruel and almost insulting inconsistency! 
 To awaken one's anxiety and interest respecting his 
 companions for a pleasure-jaunt, at the very moment 
 that you warn him to beware of losing his heart! So 
 I shall not dwell upon my emotions as I rejoined the two 
 ladies, by whose side I remained until I conducted them 
 to the door of their friend in Salem. 
 
 They were both very beautiful. The widow was two 
 or three years older than myself, while her daughter was 
 just on the verge of sixteen. Their conversation was 
 animated, intellectual, and spirituelle ; bearing marks of 
 the highest female cultivation for which their city is re- 
 nowned, yet modified considerably by the age and char- 
 acter of each party. The daughter was full of enthusi- 
 asm ; imbued with the transcendental philosophy just 
 springing up ; inclined to doubt the utility of all forms ; 
 familiar with Wordsworth and Carlyle; and bent upon a 
 certain philanthropic project of establishing schools for 
 adults, of which the teachers should be children, as being 
 nearer the Source and Centre of all spiritual Light. In 
 short, what with her loveliness and extravagance, I could 
 not avoid perpetually regarding her as a sort of delight- 
 ful dream. Her mother, with equal, though different 
 attractions, I may call, not a dream, but a waking vision. 
 She, too, had her high hopes and aspirations, her large, 
 kindling views, her enthusiastic schemes of improvement; 
 but amidst them all, she seemed to have solid ground to 
 tread upon. She reverenced, though she did not worship, 
 
 41 
 
482 A DAY OF DISAPPOINTMENT. 
 
 the spirit of the Past. She believed there was a desira- 
 ble mediam between slavish routine and vague extrava- 
 gance. She quoted the Edinburgh Review; and once, 
 I remember, when a little excited by her daughter's in- 
 veighing against all forms, she with some warmth ex- 
 pressed her hope that the young ladies of the present 
 day would not take it into their heads to get married 
 after the manner of the turtle-doves. 
 
 Take the tw^o ladies together, however, they were a 
 truly fascinating pair. The very points of contrast in 
 their characters and sentiments did but inspire me with 
 a more vivid interest. The suggestion of my friend, as 
 to one of them accompanying me to the South, irre- 
 sistibly intruded itself on my mind. On him be all the 
 burden of so presumptuous an idea. Of myself, I should 
 not probably have ventured to entertain and cherish it. 
 But the spark had caught. My imagination was kin- 
 dled. And, to my surprise, I found myself silently in- 
 quiring, " Which of them will go ? " 
 
 On bidding them farewell, their cordial smiles, their 
 expressions of gratitude for my attentions, and their 
 frank solicitations for my protection on our expected 
 return the next morning, absolutely banished from my 
 mind for a few moments the object of my visit to Salem. 
 I wandered at random a short time through one of the 
 streets of that beautiful city, without inquiring for the 
 residence of Nathaniel Hawthorne ; but as I mused and 
 strayed along, I involuntarily revolved the questions, — 
 "Which of them will go? Will either of them go? 
 Would not both be pleased with a residence at the 
 South ? Shall I take the enchanting dream ? or shall 
 I invite the more solid waking vision ? " 
 
A DAY OF DISAPPOINTMENT. 48;i 
 
 But the surrounding novelties of a strange city now . 
 dispelled these pleasant reveries, and recalled me to my 
 original purpose. I discovered the way to the lodgings 
 of my favorite author. He was not within, but would 
 probably be at home some time in the course of the day. 
 I inquired respecting his haunts. They were the Athe- 
 naeum, the booksellers', the streets occasionally, or North 
 Fields, or South Fields, or the heights above the turn- 
 pike, or the beach near the fort ; and sometimes, I 
 was told, he would extend his excursions on foot as far 
 as Manchester, along the wave-washed, secluded, and 
 rocky shore of Beverly. 
 
 It was out of the question for me to explore all these 
 places, as I could not prudently spare more than a day 
 on my present adventure. I resolved, however, to do 
 what man and my limited time could do for the accom- 
 plishment of my design. I first visited every bookseller's 
 shop in town, and inquired with an air of assumed in- 
 difference if Mr. H. had been there that morning. He 
 had^ I was told, lounged a few moments at one of them, 
 and taken away the last number of the Democratic Re- 
 view. But in none of these resorts was he at present 
 to be found. I next inquired my way to the Athenaeum, 
 or public library of the city. 
 
 On my asking a gentleman if the person I was seek- 
 ing were present, he replied : " It is scarcely a quarter of 
 an hour, sir, since Mr. Hawthorne was mounting that lad- 
 der, to return to its shelf a book he has had out some 
 time, on the early history of New England. If you are 
 very anxious to see him, he may possibly be found on the 
 Neck below the town, where he sometimes walks on so 
 fine a morning as this." So down to the Neck I has- 
 
484 A DAY OF DISAPPOINTMENT. 
 
 'tened, and although I was still unfortunate in my search, 
 since I saw no human being along those solitary fields 
 and shores, yet I was half repaid for my trouble and dis- 
 appointment by the distant views of Beverly on the one 
 side, and of Marblehead on the other, and the larger and 
 nearer city in my rear, while in front the harbor exhibit- 
 ed its islands, and the rolling and glistening of its cool 
 waves. 
 
 I returned and dined at a hotel ; after which I made 
 another attempt to surprise my quarry at his lodgings, 
 but in vain. He had not been seen since the morning, 
 and in fact was sometimes known to pass a whole day 
 abroad, without communicating his intentions to the 
 household. Still undiscouraged in my pursuit, I inquired 
 the location of some of the most retired, romantic, and 
 beautiful scenes in the vicinity of Salem. When Orne's 
 Point was described, I determined to direct my course 
 thither, thinking it possible I might there discover the 
 interesting object of my pursuit. Passing up Essex 
 Street, in the stillness of the early afternoon, when scarce- 
 ly a citizen was yet returning from dinner to his place 
 of business, I came to its intersection with Washington 
 Street, where I immediately recognized my old friend, the 
 Town Pump; just as Andrew Jackson or Queen Vic- 
 toria would be recognized by one who had for some 
 time been in possession of a faithful, living portrait 
 of either of those eminent personages. I could not pass 
 the spot without stopping, for I felt as if on classic soil. 
 All was silent and solitary around. The beams of the 
 autumn sun came down upon the dry, warm iron basin 
 affixed to the pump's venerable nose. 1 quaffed a gener- 
 ous draught of the cool beverage, partly for my own 
 
A DAY OF DISAPPOINTMENT. 48o 
 
 bodily gratification, partly as a token of respect to my 
 inanimate friend, and partly in honor of the felicitous 
 reporter of his speeches. I then said within myself, " I 
 will wait here awhile, for I may be amused by some of 
 the visitors who have already amused me in description 
 before; — and who knows but the very man I am in 
 search of may, on his return home to a late and solitary 
 meal, pass this way, and, observing a well-dressed, book- 
 ish-looking stranger gazing with fervent admiration on 
 his own glorified pump, betray by a conscious smile 
 his authorship and identity?" So there I stood for half 
 an hour; but of the forty or fifty persons who passed 
 during that time, though many stared at me with some 
 astonishment, yet none appeared to exhibit the slightest 
 sympathy with my situation, nor should I have judged 
 from their physiognomy or carriage, that any one of 
 them was at all capable of composing a book like the 
 Twice-Told Tales. As for the pump itself, it remained 
 all the while untroubled, save by one fair little girl, who 
 filled her pitcher from it, and then retired, gazing with a 
 fond but pardonable vanity into the liquid mirror in her 
 hands, — the very child, I have no doubt, who was im- 
 mortalized for the selfsame act in the original " Rill 
 from the Town-Pump." 
 
 I reached Orne's Point by the middle of the afternoon. 
 It is one of the loveliest retreats imaginable, and lies 
 at the distance of a short two miles from the centre of 
 Salem. A hill covered with trees overhangs a small 
 and beautiful secluded bay. A mile or more down this 
 bay, where it widens towards the sea, one of the longest 
 bridges in the State connects Salem with Beverly. On 
 a calm day, as you stand upon the rocks at Orne's Point, 
 
 41 * 
 
486 A DAY OF DISAPPOINTMENT. 
 
 you will hear the frequent tramp of horses and carriages 
 traversing the bridge, and you will scarcely be able to 
 conceive how so loud and rapid and near a noise could 
 proceed from the little black spot which your eye dis- 
 cerns moving like a slowly creeping insect over the dis- 
 tant bridge. 1 paused for a full half-hour enjoying in 
 solitude the perfect beauty of this delightful scene. Its 
 picturesqueness was not a little heightened by the ap- 
 pearance of two cranes stalking silently in the shallow 
 water, and at length simultaneously rising and soaring 
 slowly away over the trees. Their departure was the 
 signal for my own. After idly skipping a few stones 
 over the smooth surface, and looking round in vain 
 through the trees and on a neighboring cliff for my de- 
 sired companion, I retreated lingeringly towards the main 
 road. " Farewell, unrivalled spot I " said I, almost aloud. 
 " Worthy art thou of the tasteful and observing visits of 
 a being like N. H., and next to the pleasure of seeing 
 himself, I at least feel indebted to him for indirectly and 
 unintentionally giving me this glimpse of thee!" 
 
 Falling into company with a teamster on the Danvers 
 road, who gave me a very interesting account of a Ly- 
 ceum which he subscribed for and attended, I was shown 
 by him the hill on which were executed the Salem 
 witches of old. Listless and disappointed, I rambled 
 thither, and felt my mind somewhat excited by the rem- 
 iniscences incident to the spot. I then pursued my way 
 westwardly across many fields and hills and hollows 
 towards a populous-looking settlement, and found my- 
 self in an ancient and extensive graveyard. I examined 
 a few of the inscriptions, of which one happened to be 
 the epitaph of poor Eliza Wharton, whose sad history I 
 
A DAY OF DISAPPOINTMENT. 487 
 
 had read and wept over when a youth. What an event- 
 ful and fruitful walk, thought I, would this be for Haw- 
 thorne himself I How would trains of historical inci- 
 dents, and heart-touching reflections, be awakened in his 
 iTiind, to constitute, perhaps, a choice portion of the sec- 
 ond volume of Twice-Told Tales ! 
 
 The westering sun reminded me that I must rapidly 
 direct my course to the city. On arriving at the corner 
 where the turnpike leads off to Boston, I remembered 
 that the heights above it had been mentioned as one 
 of the resorts of my favorite author. There was still 
 enough of sunlight left to encourage me in exploring 
 this spot also; while the prospect, which I should at all 
 events enjoy, presented a strong temptation to the enter- 
 prise. I clambered the rocky precipice, and, as I turned 
 round to view the city, the setting luminary threw a 
 strong golden glare on all its steeples and windows and 
 waters, together with the populous villages that spread 
 far out towards the northern horizon. I stood entranced 
 with this new vision. Less magnificent and imposing 
 than the view from the Boston State-House, it exhibited 
 a repose, a oneness, a gem-like completion, which the 
 other does not possess. The noise of Boston was want- 
 ing, scarcely a sound being heard except the striking of 
 the " North clock," which was immediately and faintly 
 echoed by the striking of the more distant " East." I 
 permitted the prospect to fade away before my eyes, one 
 tinge dying out after another, — one object or group 
 hiding quietly behind a nearer, — till the sombre curtain 
 of a gathering twilight left me just glimpses enough to 
 commence finding my way back to town. 
 
 On turning to look for an eligible path down the preci- 
 
488 A DAY OF DISAPPOINTMENT. 
 
 pice, I observed a gentleman standing at some distance 
 from me, eyeing the same scene with an interest as deep 
 as mine, and lingering longer than myself, as if more un- 
 willing to depart, or better acquainted than I was with 
 the method of descending from the height. I immedi- 
 ately approached him, delighted with the belief that I 
 had not undertaken my somewhat romantic pilgrimage 
 in vain. We exchanged a few words on the exceeding 
 beauty of the prospect we had just been surveying. 
 The stranger was accessible and companionable. I told 
 him I was from a distant part of the United States, 
 but was not ignorant of the reputation sustained by 
 Salem in reference to the past progress and present ele- 
 vation of the country. " With no common emotion," 
 said I, as we descended the cliff, and entered the out- 
 skirts of the city, " have I trodden the streets and gazed 
 on the scenes where a Bowditch passed so many years of 
 his life, — and a Holyoke calmly turned his hundredth 
 year, — and the venerable and gentlemanly Prince pur- 
 sued his scientific improvements to so late a period, — 
 where a jurist and a philologist,* who are still living, and 
 have done so much for their favorite sciences and for 
 their country's reputation, long resided, — and may I 
 not add, without flattery, where so many admirable effu- 
 sions have perhaps proceeded from him whom I now 
 have the honor to address?" The gentleman smiled 
 and bowed, as if pardoning the compliment, observing, 
 it was true he had written a few things that had been 
 favorably received by the public, but that he was far 
 from arrogating the distinction I had assigned to him. 
 " However," continued he, as we passed along through 
 
 *Hon. Joseph Story and Hon. John Pickering, since deceased. 
 
A DAY OF DISAPPOINTMENT. 489 
 
 Chestnut Street, whose beautiful avenue of trees and 
 eleo^ant residences on each side was now iilamined 
 by the rising moon, " I have often, like yourself, been 
 impressed by the constellation of eminent minds that 
 have shone in our little town since the commencement 
 of the present century. The list you have enumerated 
 might easily be enlarged. You may not have heard of 
 the learning of our Bex\tley, — nor the masterly and 
 comprehensive, but subdued spirit of our Worcester, 
 who lies in his grave among the missionary stations on 
 the Mississippi, — nor of several of our learned, culti- 
 vated, and Sid generis physicians, — nor of some of our 
 " merchant princes," whose sagacity, enterprise, and good 
 generalship established our connections with India, and 
 introduced a flood of wealth and prosperity into the 
 land. I have sometimes entertained the design, as topics 
 connected with this city are always favorite ones with 
 me, of composing a volume which might be entitled, 
 The Worthies of Salem in the First Quarter of the Nine- 
 teenth Century. Such a volume, if properly executed, 
 would, I believe, be very acceptable in this vicinity, as 
 well as to the public at large, and throw a desirable light 
 on the intellectual progress of our country. But as the 
 task could not perhaps be delicately performed during 
 the lives of some of the subjects, an approximation to 
 its completion might be effected by compiling memorials 
 for a future opportunity." 
 
 " And by whom," exclaimed I, as we arrived and 
 stopped at the door of my lodgings, " could the task 
 be so well executed as by yourself, Mr. Hawthorne ? " 
 
 " Mr. Hawthorne ! " replied my companion, with much 
 astonishment. " I have not the honor, sir, of bearing 
 
490 A DAY OF DISAPPOINTMENT. 
 
 that name." Then, with a good-natured smile and a 
 pleasant voice, he abruptly bade me good night, and de- 
 parted hastily down the street. 
 
 Petrified with disappointment and surprise, I had not 
 the presence of mind to go after him, to apologize for 
 my mistake, and learn his real name. After standing 
 some time on the steps, I slowly turned and walked into 
 the house, where the creature-comforts of a generous tea- 
 table afforded me some refreshment from my fatigue, 
 and some diversion to my mortification. 
 
 When half of the evening had passed away, and I 
 had paid a proper attention to my toilet, I visited with 
 some eagerness my two fascinating companions of the 
 morning car. Having briefly related to them my adven- 
 tures and chagrins, and provoked a due admixture of 
 their pity and their smiles, I was invited by the lady of 
 the house to accompany them all to a large party in the 
 city, which they were on the point of attending, and 
 where she assured me I might confidently expect an 
 interview with the object of my search. I need not say 
 with what alacrity I accepted the invitation, and made a 
 fourth in the precious-freighted carriage, which bore us 
 rapidly off to the more brilliantly lighted and brilliantly 
 crowded mansion in the vicinity of the Mall. 
 
 After presenting me to the hostess of the evening, my 
 fair and kind introducer proceeded to acquaint her with 
 the object I had at heart, and to inquire in what room or 
 corner we might find the gentleman in question. " Sad 
 enough!" said the hostess, " Mr. Hawthorne left us half 
 an hour ago, having just made his appearance, and told 
 us that he must return home to his bed, since he was 
 completely worn out with one of the longest day's walks 
 he had ever taken." 
 
A DAY OF DISAPPOINTMENT. 491 
 
 For the remainder of the evening, as my name was 
 unknown to the generality of the company, I believe I 
 must have been distinguished by them as the gentleman 
 with the long face. I was silent and abstracted, with the 
 exception of a half-hour's secluded and agreeable con- 
 versation with my accomplished companion of the cliff. 
 Gleams of precious consolation, however, were occasion- 
 ally afforded me by glances and smiles from the widow 
 and her daughter, as they floated down the whirlpool of 
 attentions, which usually absorb creatures like themselves 
 in a fashionable party. 
 
 As destiny itself appeared to be against me, I resolved 
 to brave it no more, and to resign the hope of seeing a 
 person who seemed to escape me like the foot of the 
 rainbow. On the next morning, leaving him to his prob- 
 able repose after his fatigues of yesterday, I was punc- 
 tual to my appointment with the ladies, and placed my- 
 self between them on the back seat of one of the crowded 
 cars. 
 
 As we waited a few minutes before starting, a gentle- 
 man sitting on the front seat held a conversation with a 
 friend who had accompanied him to the car, and who 
 was pausing outside until the departure of the train, but 
 whose person I was prevented by my position from see- 
 ing. He seemed animated and inspired by the presence 
 of his friend, and conversed in the tone and manner of 
 one who is desirous of expressing sentiments agreeable 
 to the person he is addressing. I give the substance 
 of his remarks. " I heard last evening," said he, "that, 
 after you had gone to Boston yesterday in the car, you 
 came home on foot along the old road through Maiden 
 and Danvers. I heartily sympathize with you for so 
 
492 A DAY OF DISAPPOINTMENT. 
 
 doing. For although the raih'oad is sometimes a con- 
 venient evil, yet this condensing of time within a nut- 
 shell, and filling up the whole of life with nothing but 
 urgent business, will make sad work, I am afraid, with 
 the best parts of our character. The turnpike was bad 
 enough in this respect, whirling us off to Boston, as it 
 did, in an hour and a half, and whirling us back again on 
 the same day, as if in mockery of the good old leisure- 
 ly practice of the last generation. Give me the blessed 
 times when a journey to Boston occasioned a week's 
 thought and preparation, and occupied a long summer's 
 day in the performance. That circuitous ride through 
 Danvers, Lynnfield, and Maiden exerted a blessed ef- 
 fect on our merchants and citizens. It gave them a 
 breathing-spell from care and toil. It afforded them 
 refreshing glimpses of the beauties of nature. It was a 
 kind of week-day Sabbath for the weary soul. Many a 
 match, too, was made in that way by our young grand- 
 fathers and grandmothers. I declare I think I shall in 
 future, as often as once a month, hire a horse and chaise 
 and go to Boston on that route, just to keep up the 
 memory of the days gone by. If the hotel at Lynnfield 
 were only still open, where I could stop two hours and 
 take an old-fashioned dinner at my leisure, the charm 
 would be complete. Nothing makes men so worldly- 
 minded as the calculation of the business value of every 
 instant as it passes. When I can afford to let the min- 
 utes roll unconsciously aw^ay, I seem to escape from the 
 slavish, mechanical, monotonous tyranny of Time, and 
 to partake beforehand of tke glorious absolute liberty of 
 Eternity. Soon after the railroad opened, I went to 
 Boston in the car, because that hubbub Everybody said 
 
A DAY OF DISAPPOINTMENT. 493 
 
 that I must. The finest thing I perceived about the 
 road was, that it had rescued from the marsh and the 
 salt spray some patches of land, which, they say, pro- 
 duced last summer beautiful flowers. But I found that 
 it had entirely banished from the earth those far lovelier 
 flowers. Patience and Resignation. An accidental de- 
 tention of four or five minutes threw almost the whole 
 two hundred passengers into a fever of complaint and 
 agitation. You would have supposed that the country 
 was on the verge of ruin, and the Union about to be dis- 
 solved, simply because our precious and almighty selves 
 would arrive at Boston at five minutes past nine o'clock, 
 instead of precisely at nine. Surely the old method of 
 travelling was more favorable to the cultivation of Chris- 
 tian virtue. If you had not a long day of pleasure be- 
 fore you, you had one at least of resignation, and you 
 did not look for the sky to fall, if you happened to be 
 ten minutes, or even an hour, behind your time. Ah, sir, 
 you must have seen yesterday what we lose by abandon- 
 ing that excellent route. Now there is a gentle rise, then 
 a gentle descent, then a smooth level. Here the road 
 winds round a half-mile, to take you by a pretty though 
 antique dwelling, or to avoid a lofty hill, and there it 
 proceeds a short distance with a straightness that gives 
 you the pleasure of contrast and surprise; and then 
 again it abruptly turns a corner, where a quince-tree 
 is growing over the fence, and presents you below its 
 branches with a new prospect. All is charming variety. 
 Don't you remember the willow-thickets, and the preci- 
 pices in Lynn on the left hand of the road, and the fre- 
 quent and beautiful glimpses of the sea away off" to the 
 right? And then, when you have endured just fatigue 
 
 42 
 
494 A DAY OF DISAPPOINTMENT. 
 
 and absence enough to prepare you for the change, how 
 great is the pleasure of approaching and entering the 
 town ! But what pleasure of this kind does the railroad 
 give us ? There is no anticipation about it, no gentle 
 transition, no blending interchange and succession of 
 feelings, but the only sensation attending it is that of a 
 hard, uniform, concentrated, iron-beaten Now. I only 
 wish that circunristances this very day permitted me to 
 practise what I preach. But I am whirled along with 
 the multitude and the age, and the locomotive's bell has 
 just done ringing for the last time. So good morning, 
 Hawthorne." 
 
 " Hawthorne ? Hawthorne ?" said I, as I jumped sud- 
 denly from my seat to the window of the car, where, on 
 looking out, I caught a dim glimpse of a person who 
 had just turned to make his way into the town. At that 
 instant the train started, and threw me back into my 
 place. One of my feet came with an almost crushing 
 violence on the foot of the younger of the two ladies, 
 who involuntarily uttered a shriek. My confusion and 
 disappointment prevented me from tendering her the 
 apology which was her due. I sat in a moody and sul- 
 len silence for the remainder of the trip. The ladies in 
 vain tried to rally me into good humor. The younger 
 condescended even so far as to beg my pardon for what 
 she called her uncivil shriek. Kind and generous spirit I 
 It was I who ought to have volunteered concession. 
 My foot had no business even with the gentlest pres- 
 sure against hers, — much less with a momentum that 
 resembled the hard tread of a horse. But there was a 
 point of forbearance and politeness beyond which their 
 feminine dignity would not permit them to go. They 
 
A DAT OP DISAPPOINTMENT. 495 
 
 became retired and reserved in their turn, or rather, they 
 opened a most spirited conversation with the friend of 
 Hawthorne; and when we alighted from the carriage 
 that conveyed us from the ferry to their mansion in Sum- 
 mer Street, I received a civil farewell, but nothing like an 
 invitation to walk in, or to visit theni in future. 
 
 My chagrin was somewhat softened by finding that 
 the expected party from Canada had arrived at the Tre- 
 mont House. We set out the next day on our journey 
 South. New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washing- 
 ton, Richmond, and Wilmington, delayed us each a day 
 or tw^o as we advanced. My Boston disappointments 
 faded from my memory, as an ascending balloon fades 
 from the eye, or as one of the well-known " dissolv- 
 ing scenes " lessens and disappears before the spectator. 
 This result may have been hastened by the presence of 
 a fair member of our party, a native of the South, who 
 was placed under my immediate protection, and in 
 whom I found myself cherishing an increasing inter- 
 est, as we visited the museums, and curiosities, and va- 
 rious places of relaxation on our route, or were exposed 
 to the usual calms and incidents of a journey. By the 
 time we had arrived in Charleston, I was very nearly 
 induced to make to hei' the proposition of becoming 
 an ornament to my plantation, — a proposition which I 
 have reason to believe she would have graciously enter- 
 tained. But some evil genius or other provoked me 
 from time to time to delay the proposal, until a bolder 
 and more fortunate hand conducted her to a sphere 
 which was worthy of her graces and virtues. This 
 very incident, however, together with my New-England 
 experiences as above narrated, well exemplifies my usual 
 
-lyC A DAY OF DISAPPOINTMENT. 
 
 destiny, which never allows me to look perfect satis- 
 faction directly and permanently in the face, but only, 
 like Moses in the wilderness, to behold its departing 
 skirts. 
 
 1838. 
 
POEMS 
 
 42* 
 
PLEASURES AND PAINS OF THE STU- 
 DENT'S LIFE. 
 
 A COMMENCEMENT POEM. 
 1811. 
 
 When envious Time, with unrelenting hand, 
 Dissolves the union of some little band, 
 A band connected by those hallowed ties 
 That from the birth of lettered friendship rise. 
 Each lingering soul, before the parting sigh. 
 One moment waits, to view the years gone by ; 
 Memory still loves to hover o'er the place, 
 And all our pleasures and our pains retrace. 
 
 The Student is the subject of my song ; — 
 Few are his pleasures, — yet those few are strong ; 
 Not the gay, transient moment of delight. 
 Not hurried transports felt but in their flight. 
 Unlilie all else, the student's joys endure, — 
 Intense, expansive, energetic, pure. 
 Whether o'er classic plains he loves to rove, 
 'Midst Attic bowers, or through the Mantuan grove, — 
 Whether, with scientific eye, to trace 
 The various modes of number, time, and space, — 
 Whether on wings of heavenly truth to rise. 
 And penetrate the secrets of the skies. 
 Or, downward tending, with an humble eye, 
 Through Nature's laws explore a Deity, — 
 His are the joys no stranger breast can feel, 
 No wit define, no utterance reveal. 
 
500 A COMMENCEMENT POEM. 
 
 Nor yet, alas ! unmixed the joys we boast ; 
 ^ Our pleasures still proportioned labors cost. 
 An anxious tear oft fills the student's eye, 
 And his breast heaves with many a struggling sigh. 
 His is the task, the long, long task, to explore 
 Of every age the lumber and the lore. 
 Need I describe his struggles and his strife, 
 * The thousand minor miseries of his life ? 
 How Application, never-tiring maid. 
 Oft mourns an aching, oft a dizzy head ? 
 How the hard toil but slowly makes its way, 
 One word explained, the labor of a day, — 
 Here forced to search some labyrinth without end. 
 And there some paradox to comprehend, — 
 Here ten hard words fraught with some meaning small. 
 And there ten folios fraught with none at all ? 
 Or view him meting out, with points and lines, 
 The land of diagrams and mystic signs. 
 Where forms of spheres, " being given " on a plane. 
 He must transform and bend within his brain ? 
 Or, as an author, lost in gloom profound. 
 When some bright thought demands a period round, 
 Pondering and polishing ? — Ah, what avail 
 The room oft paced, the anguish-bitten nail .'' 
 For see, produced 'mid many a laboring groan, 
 A sentence much like an inverted cone ! 
 Or, should he try his talent at a rhyme. 
 That waste of patience and that waste of time, 
 Perchance, like me, he hammers out one line, 
 
 Begins the next, — there stops 
 
 Enough ! no more unveil the cloister's grief; — 
 Disclose those sources whence it finds relief. 
 Say how the student, pausing from his toil, 
 Forgets his pain 'mid recreation's smile. 
 Have you not seen, beneath the solar beam, 
 
A COMMENCEMENT POEM. 501 
 
 The -winged tenants of some haunted stream 
 
 Feed eager, busy, by its pebbly side, — 
 
 Then wanton in the cool, luxurious tide ? 
 
 So the wise student ends his busy day, 
 
 Unbends his mind, and throws his cares away. 
 
 To books where science reigns, and toil severe, 
 
 Succeeds the alluring tale, or drama dear. 
 
 Or haj^ly, in that hour his taste might choose 
 
 The easy warblings of the modern muse. 
 
 Let me but paint him void of every care, 
 
 Flung in free attitude across his chair. 
 
 From page to page his rapid eye along 
 
 Glances and revels through the magic song ; 
 
 Alternate swells his breast with hope and fear. 
 
 Now bursts the unconscious laugh, now falls the pitying tear. 
 Yet more ; though lonely joys the bosom warm, 
 
 Participation heightens every charm ; 
 
 And, should the happy student chance to know 
 
 The warmth of friendship, or some kindlier glow, 
 
 What wonder, should he swiftly run to share 
 
 Some favorite author with some favorite fair ! 
 
 There, as he cites those treasures of the page 
 
 That raise her fancy, or her heart engage, 
 
 And listens while her frequent, keen remark 
 
 Discerns the brilliant, or illumes the dark, 
 
 And, doubting much, scarce knows which most to admire, 
 
 The critic's judgment, or the writer's fire ; 
 
 And, reading, often glances at that face 
 
 Where gently beam intelligence and grace. 
 
 And sees each passion in its turn prevail, 
 
 Her looks the very echo of the tale, — • 
 
 Sees the descending tear, the heaving breast. 
 
 When vice exults, or virtue is distressed ; 
 
 Or, when the plot assumes an aspect new. 
 
 And virtue shares her retribution due, 
 
502 A COMMENCEMENT POEM. 
 
 He sees the grateful smile, the nphfted eye, 
 Thread, needle, kerchief, dropped in ecstasy, — 
 Say, can one social pleasure equal this ? 
 
 Yet still even here imperfect is the bliss. 
 For ah ! how oft must awkward learning yield 
 To graceful dulness the unequal field 
 Of gallantry ? What lady can endure 
 The shrug scholastic, or the bow demure ? 
 Can the poor student hope that heart to gain, 
 Which melts before the flutter of a cane? 
 Which of two rival candidates shall pass. 
 Where one consults his books, and one his glass ? 
 
 Ye fair, if aught these censures may apply, 
 'T is yours to effect the vital remedy ; 
 Ne'er should a fop the sacred bond remove 
 Between the Aonian and the Paphian grove. 
 'T is yours to strengthen, polish, and secure 
 The lustre of the mind's rich garniture ; 
 This is the robe that lends you heavenly charms, 
 And envy of its keenest sting disarms ; 
 A robe whose grace and richness will outvie 
 The gems of Ormus, or the Tyrian dye. 
 
 To count one pleasure more, indulge my Muse ; 
 'T is Friendship's self, — what cynic will refuse ? 
 Oh ! I could tell how oft her joys we shared. 
 When mutual cares those mutual joys endeared ; 
 IIow arm in arm we lingered through the vale. 
 Listening to many a time-beguiling tale ; 
 How oft, relaxing from one common toil. 
 We found repose amid one common smile. 
 Yes, I could tell, but the dear task how vain ! 
 'T would but increase our fast approaching pain, — 
 The pain so thrilling to a student's heart, 
 Couched in that talisman of woe. We part J 
 
SEQUEL 
 
 TO THE COMMENCEMENT POEM. 
 
 1 8 5 2 * 
 
 I, WHO once sang the Student's Joys and Woes, 
 
 "Would cliant, to-night, their relrosidective close. 
 
 Nay, start not, chissmatcs, at such theme of gloom, 
 
 Nor charge that I anticipate your doom. 
 
 'T is true, some rare vitality seems given 
 
 To the lithe graduates of Eighteen Eleven, 
 
 Since but a third of our whole corps appears 
 
 Stelligerent t in the lapse of forty years ; 
 
 A proof, perhaps, that, spite of youth's elation, 
 We shunned the fault of over-application ! 
 Yet, though our fated summons be not soon. 
 We 're wearing down life's lessening afternoon ; 
 Not sullenly nor seldom do we hear 
 The lisped cognomen of " Grandfather dear," 
 And, startled, bear as bravely as w^c can 
 Tiiat graphic title. The Old Gentleman ; 
 Not having reached that period when the old 
 Seem pleased and proud to hear their ages told. 
 So, your indulgence I shall no more ask. 
 But straight commence my retrospective task. 
 
 * Delivered on tlie evening of Commencement day, at the residence of 
 the Hon. Edward Everett, in Boston, whither tlie Class liad been in- 
 vited to celebrate the forty-first anniversary of their graduation. 
 
 t A star is prefixed, in College Catalogues, to the names of deceased 
 graduates. 
 
504 SEQUEL TO THE COMMENCEMENT POEM. 
 
 Still for the Student-Man, as Student-Boy, 
 Varied has rolled our course with pain and joy. 
 O those long boding years of work and care, 
 For our embraced Profession to prepare ! 
 And then those longer years, still doomed to see 
 No " call of Providence," nor grateful fee ! 
 But, in due time, hope cheered the patient heart ; 
 In life's grand duties we have borne our part, — 
 Have laid our shoulders to the social wheel. 
 In all that man can do, or think, or feel, — 
 Have sometimes triumphed with a favorite cause, 
 And sometimes wept to see it droop, or pause. 
 
 Amid these storms and outward cares of life 
 Came the dear sunshine of a home and wife. 
 Not ours the selfish scholar's huge mistake, 
 That household ties rude interruption make. 
 From those same ties a finer zest we catch, 
 For every studious moment we can snatch ! 
 If in our ranks some Benedicks there be, 
 They scarcely muster more than two or three ; 
 And I feel sure their fault it has not been. 
 But rather of the world's capricious queen ! 
 
 As down the Past our grateful memory looks, 
 Let us confess the bliss we drew from books ; 
 Those mute companions of the dear-bought hours, 
 Those quickening Mentors of our dormant powers. 
 Our inward life how favored, to have found 
 Such various nutriment spread all around ! 
 Yet, as no good is pure from some alloy. 
 This rank abundance has impaired our joy. 
 How hard the choicest reading to select, 
 And specious dulness in advance detect ! 
 Into what tomes of nonsense have we dipped, 
 What modest, solid pages have we skipped ! 
 
SEQUEL TO THE COMMENCEMENT POEM. 505 
 
 'T is pain to think that we must quit this world, 
 
 With myriads of the brightest scrolls yet furled. 
 
 We snatch but half a life, to leave unread 
 
 Great utterings of the living and the dead. 
 
 Yes, /shall die, before I have looked o'er 
 
 Montaigne, and Marlowe, and unnumbered more. 
 
 May we not hope, that, 'midst the heavenly rest. 
 
 One of the " many mansions " of the blest 
 
 Shall be a spacious Library, arrayed 
 
 In spirit-volumes from the earth conveyed ? 
 
 There all that Omar burned shall be restored. 
 
 And bright gold bindings clothe the priceless hoard ; 
 
 New series of celestial works pour in, 
 
 Never to end, and ever to begin ; 
 
 Some sainted Russian shall the books perfume, 
 
 A softened heaven-light shall the place illume. 
 
 Sweet mystic silence mantle all around. 
 
 Just broken by the outward choral sound ; 
 
 One glance a volume's contents comprehend. 
 
 And leisure last whole seons without end ! 
 
 That heaven of heaven those men may enter in, 
 If washed, I mean, from other stain of sin. 
 Who, in this world, a book with smiles laid down, 
 At the intrusion of some friendly clown ; — 
 All those, in short, who lettered sweets resigned, 
 To give their powers in person to mankind. 
 
 'T is pleasure for the student's thought to trace 
 The advance of Art, and Science, and the Race. 
 Blest are the eyes that see what we have seen, 
 In the brief lapse since our unfledged nineteen. 
 Within that handbreadth have been crowded more 
 Of marvels than ten centuries knew before ; 
 While life, and man, and all things here below, 
 Show a changed world from forty years ago. 
 
 43 
 
506 SEQUEL TO THE COMMENCEMENT POEM. 
 
 Who would have thought dear Harvard's walls had stood, 
 
 In our young days, had her imperilled brood 
 
 To witching Boston been enticed to stray 
 
 Four times an hour, instead of twice a day ? 
 
 Yet of such wonders this is far the least : 
 
 "We sit at an Arabian-Nights' strange feast ; 
 
 We witness metamorphoses, that seem 
 
 Less like reality than some wild dream. 
 
 Through every range of current life extend 
 
 Increasing lights, and comforts without end ; — 
 
 School-books so plain that babes can understand ; 
 
 Two morning papers in a cabman's hand ; 
 
 Mammoth gazettes, each day, as full of new 
 
 Fine matter, as the old Critical Review ; 
 
 Stone-coal, ignited, conquering wintry glooms, 
 
 And western lakes upgushing in our rooms. 
 
 One fount of lighted gas a city serves, 
 
 One whiff of ether calms the frantic nerves ; 
 
 Steam in a month conveys us round the globe, 
 
 Weaves for the nations their protecting robe. 
 
 Prints off ten thousand sheets within an hour, 
 
 And clothes mankind with preternatural power. 
 
 Yet Steam's may be but a Saturnian reign ; 
 
 The Electro-Magnet seeks that throne to gain. 
 
 Antipodes demand the talking wire ; 
 
 Portraits are painted by the solar fire ; * 
 
 New planets ferreted before perceived, 
 
 And facts established almost ere believed. 
 
 Here, animalcular creations ope. 
 
 There, heavens draw near us through the telescope, 
 
 And Berenice sees, 'mid polar cars. 
 
 Her nebulous locks unbraided into stars. 
 
 * Speaking with prosaic precision, the photograph acts only by means of 
 the rays ofliffht in the solar beam. 
 
SEQUEL TO THE COMMENCEMENT POEM. 507 
 
 Nor less in public life have marvels reigned ; — 
 Thrice our torn land its wholeness has regained ; 
 Our strip of States a continent has grown, 
 And Europe risen, to circumscribe the Throne. 
 
 Yet o'er this wonderful Achilles-shield, 
 The trembling student's tear is oft unsealed. 
 Amid such strides of vast material power. 
 He sees new evils lurk, new dangers lower ; 
 He asks for some great moral engine's force. 
 To speed man's spirit on an equal course. 
 As civilized achievement rises high, 
 Mounts the dread tide of vice and misery. 
 Has Education yet the secret gained 
 Of Youth restrained, yet not too much restrained? 
 When will young people cease to play the fool, 
 And take some warning from their parents' school ! 
 Alas ! cigars and oaths, I shrewdly fear, 
 Get nearer to the cradle every year. 
 
 And even in mental discipline alone, 
 With all its lights, has Learning raised its tone ? 
 Is riper scholarship developed now, 
 Than when an Abbot * smoothed the school-boy's brow ? 
 Is intellect more patient and profound. 
 Than when it delved in harder, narrower ground ? 
 Boohs also might improve by quarantines ; 
 Thought oft cries liberty, but license means ; 
 The Press, sometimes a foul prolific sty. 
 Makes the land noisome with its numerous fry. 
 Opinion's leaders rival Shakespeare's Puck, 
 Pert Speculation fairly runs amuck ; 
 Fantasy questions all established things. 
 Tired Reverence folds her once face-covering wings, 
 
 * The former distinguished Preceptor of Exeter Academy. 
 
508 SEQUEL TO THE COMMENCEMENT POEM. 
 
 And, with some lightning truths by Genius given, 
 His daring apothegms shake earth and heaven. 
 
 So, if again to poHtics we turn, 
 Dark futures for our country we discern, 
 With parties, aims, machineries, and ways, 
 Undreamt of by our Hamiltons and Jays ; 
 None knowing, too, if our gigantic state 
 Will fall, or hold its own by sheer dead-weight, 
 Of heterogeneous elements composed, 
 To the w^orld's dregs our flood-gates all unclosed ; 
 While far across the vexed, ship-fevered main, ' 
 Reactionary Europe hugs her chain. 
 
 Yet let us own, amidst the general taint, 
 Proud Liberty endures some wise restraint ; 
 The flood prevails not every place above, — 
 Lights on some resting-spots the wandering Dove ; 
 The germ that bourgeoned at our nation's birth, 
 Nobly assimilates the very earth ; 
 Unchecked democracies the Sabbath keep. 
 Fierce parties o'er a dying statesman weep, 
 And (civic self-control unknown before ! ) 
 Whole States resolve to pass the Cup no more ; 
 The blessed School embowers Youth's flexile tree. 
 And Faith burns brighter, as it burns more free. 
 Science blasphemes no longer, as she pores. 
 And Comte, his Titan Law relaxed, adores ! * 
 
 Classmates, we know not ^vhere this maze shall end ; 
 To our own loorh we know that we must bend ; 
 On other hands the task must be devolved. 
 Before these mighty problems can be solved. 
 
 * M. Comte, in his " Sjsteme de la Politique Positive," recently pub- 
 lished, at length recognizes, with considerable personal sensibility, the moral 
 and religious element in man as a legitimate object of philosophical specu- 
 lation. 
 
SEQUEL TO THE COMMENCEMENT POEM. 509 
 
 For US, though welcoming each hopeful plan, 
 I deem our class conservative, to a man. 
 So, with a prayer that all may yet be right, 
 Let us indulge in apter themes to-night. 
 
 One heart-born pleasure for our student race 
 Is to behold a classmate's well-known face. 
 We do not meet him like another man ; 
 He starts emotions that no other can. 
 Whether in throngs or wastes our footsteps bend, 
 Meet but a classmate, and we meet a friend. 
 Certes, if one my distant home but greet. 
 The door flies open for his welcome feet. 
 Our classmates know us as few others do. 
 Kind to our failings, to our merits true. 
 Hence our unfading, our unique delights. 
 When our " Fair Mother " holds her festal rites. 
 
 Who can forget that famed centennial year, 
 When Harvard hailed her sons from far and near ? 
 What joy, what beckonings, what exchanged surprise, 
 As at each other flashed inquiring eyes ! 
 How changed, yet how the same, ourselves we found, 
 Since last we parted on that classic ground ! 
 The same old joking and peculiar ways. 
 That marked the intercourse of fresher days ; 
 And yet the experience deep we could but see, 
 Ploughed by one quarter of a century ! 
 
 To-night again such greetings we renew, — 
 O'er life's slant pathway memory's roses strew, 
 Light with fresh tints our lingering sun's decline, 
 And closer draw the invaded circle's line. 
 
 Ah yes ! such pleasures have their dark reverse ; 
 Through flowery beds rolls on the ruthless hearse ; 
 Of those familiar forms we miss to-night, 
 Most are for ever sundered from our sight. 
 
 43* 
 
510 SEQUEL TO THE COMMENCEMENT POEM. 
 
 Oft have I passed a mournful day, when came 
 The new Triennial, starred with many a name. 
 It seems but yesterday since Harvard's shade 
 Saw us as Freshmen, curious and afraid. 
 Erelong, what salient characters there sprang, 
 What life and fire from our colHsions rang ! 
 And now, a cohort of that valiant band 
 Knows us no more beneath the spirit-land. 
 What is the meaning of this shadowy scene ? 
 Where are the meteor-friendships that have been ? 
 
 Pause we a moment o'er each name, and see, 
 Even in these few, mankind's epitome. 
 
 Baker, of generous, independent haste ; 
 Farnham, of graceful phrase, and polished taste ; 
 Story, that youthful miracle of Greek ; 
 HiLDRETH, intent on politics to speak ; 
 Cooper, Refinement's many-cultured child ; 
 Reed, meekly pious ; Weston, still and mild ; 
 Prentiss, the spotless and the studious youth ; 
 Lone Waterhouse, through nature following truth ; 
 Hunt, like his own geometry, upright ; 
 Otis, the glass of fashion, frank and bright ; 
 Good-natured Weld ; and unassuming Gray ; 
 Rogers, with happy laugh, and merry play ; 
 Putnam, wise, learned, and old enough to teach ; 
 Damon, of open heart, and fluent speech ; 
 Perkins, the social ; Williams, the retired ; 
 And all with true class-fellowship inspired. 
 
 One grave and name we pass, — but tremble still 
 At passion's force, and self-indulgent will ; 
 Owning the need of Heaven's restraining grace, 
 To curb and sanctify our erring race. 
 
 Brethren, that grace, in its abounding scope, 
 Shed on your path faith, peace, content, and hope ! 
 
SEQUEL TO THE COMMENCEMENT POEM. 511 
 
 May cliildren's children lead you down the way 
 Of cheerful, useful, un perceived decay ; 
 Not forced to toil too late for wearied self, 
 And not too early laid upon the shelf! 
 Blest with keen bodily and mental sight. 
 May books still prove your solace and delight ; 
 And duly may your search be there where lies, 
 Imbedded near, the pearl of richest price ! 
 
 Stay yet, dear friends ; the Minstrel bids you toast, 
 In pure, bright water, our accomplished host ; 
 Who gives, one need not say, our class its name, 
 Tinged with the lustre of his well-earned fame. 
 Health for his labors, for his cares relief. 
 To him, our first and last unenvied chief ! 
 
HUMAN LIFE 
 
 Life, Human Life ! Such is the theme to-day, 
 Which kindles hope in you, in me dismay,* — 
 A theme to me, unpractised wight, yet new, 
 A theme enjoyed, adorned, and filled by you. 
 Life is but tasted at threescore and ten ; 
 What can green twenty-three accomplish, then ? 
 Life is an ocean, where whole myriads sweep, — 
 How can a minim comprehend the deep ? 
 Or atmosphere, where countless insects glance, — 
 Can one poor fly survey the immense expanse ? 
 Who shall direct me on this shoreless route ? 
 Where enter ? rather, at what point come out ? 
 How o'er these fluctuating spaces range ? 
 How sketch one trait of this eternal change ? 
 How, dreaming, can I reason on my dream ? 
 How take the soundings, as I glide the stream ? 
 
 But why thus ready in despair to sink, 
 When smiles like yours forbid my heart to shrink ? 
 
 * This poem was delivered in 1815, at Cambridge, Mass., on the anni- 
 versary of a literary society (the Phi Beta Kappa), before a large audience 
 composed of both sexes. Though widely circulated in manuscript, it has 
 never before been published. Many portions were necessarily omitted in 
 the delivery, while several local and temporary allusions are at present sup- 
 pressed. Other retrenchments and modifications have been made, without, 
 however, impairing the identity and integrity of the piece. 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 513 
 
 Urged by those smiles, my trembling spirit burns, 
 And each dread wave of difficulty spurns. 
 
 Whirled though we are around life's giddy tide, 
 Some steadfast views by care may be supplied. 
 Could Newton, wiser Archimedes, show 
 How the world moved, without a dos ttov (ttS), 
 If Locke the secrets of the mind unsheathed, 
 If Priestley analyzed the air he breathed. 
 Why may not we, with philosophic eye, 
 The laws that guide our moral sphere descry ? 
 Why not transcend the range of chemic strife. 
 And decompose this circumambient life, — 
 Detect the good and evil blended there, 
 Like oxygen and nitrogen in air ? 
 
 Two grand and primal characters we find 
 By Nature's God impressed on all mankind. 
 In Age and Sex. First let us ponder these, 
 For method's show, then ramble where we please. 
 
 Mark, then, what wisdom shines in that decree. 
 Which, varying life, ordained our ages three, — 
 Youth, manhood, and decline. In these we trace 
 A fine proportion and harmonious grace. 
 Deprived of either, life would cease to charm, — 
 A passion-chaos, or a deathlike calm. 
 If all were youth, and this a world of boys. 
 Heavens ! what a scene of trifles, tricks, and toys ! 
 How would each minute of the livelong day 
 In wild obstreperous frolic waste away ! 
 A world of youth ! defend us from a brood 
 So wanton, rash, improvident, and rude ! 
 Truants from duty, and in arts unskilled, 
 Their minds and manners, with their fields, unfilled, 
 Their furniture of gaudy playthings made. 
 Sweetmeats their staple article of trade. 
 
514 HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 No fruit allowed to ripen on the tree, 
 
 And not a bird's-nest from invasion free ! 
 
 In public life, tliere still would meet your sight 
 
 The same neglect of duty and of right. 
 
 Go, for example, to some stripling court, 
 
 And see which there w^ould triumph, law or sport. 
 
 " Adjourn, adjourn ! " some beardless judge would say ; 
 
 " I '11 hear the trial, when I 've done my play." 
 
 Or, should the judge sit faithful to the laws, 
 
 Hear how the counsel would defend his cause : 
 
 " May it please your honor, 't is your turn to stop ; 
 
 I '11 spin my speech, when I have spun my top." 
 
 Meanwhile the jury pluck each other's hair, 
 
 The bar toss briefs and dockets into air. 
 
 The sheriff, ordered to keep silence, cries, 
 
 " O yes ! O yes ! when I have caught these flies ! " 
 
 Such were the revellings of this giddy sphere, 
 Should youth alone enjoy dominion here ; 
 All glory mischief, and all business play, 
 And life itself one misspent holiday. 
 
 Now let us take a soberer view again. 
 And make this world a world of full-grown men, — 
 Stiff, square, and formal, dull, morose, and sour. 
 Contented slaves, yet tyrants when in power ; 
 The firmest friends, where interest forms the tie, 
 The bitterest foes, when rival interests vie ; 
 Skilled to dissemble, and to smile by rule, 
 In passion raging, but in conduct cool. 
 Still, with some deep remote design in view. 
 Plodding, yet wanting ardor to pursue ; 
 Still finding fault in every fretful breath. 
 Yet dreading innovation worse than death ; 
 In arts unwieldy, but too proud to learn, 
 In trifles serious, and in frolic stern ; 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 15 
 
 Selfish in love, — conceive to be alive 
 
 A tender, timorous pair at forty-five ! 
 
 What sighs and wishes — for a thousand pound ! 
 
 What killing glances — at a manor-ground ! 
 
 True sighs and looks are better understood 
 
 By hearts of fresh, uncalculating blood. 
 
 And sure the stream of life must sweeter stray, 
 
 The nearer to the source its waters play. 
 
 Besides, there glows such raciness in youth, 
 
 Such touches come of innocence and truth. 
 
 We love the things, how full soe'er they be 
 
 Of jocund mischief or disturbing glee. 
 
 If they require man's strong, experienced rein, 
 
 Man's darker vices they in turn restrain. 
 
 From youth the profligate their sins conceal. 
 
 And feign that virtue which they cannot feel. 
 
 Before his son what parent is profane ? 
 
 What outcast dares a filial ear to stain ? 
 
 Who does not check his conduct and his tongue. 
 
 In reverence for the yet untainted young ? 
 
 O yes ! in tender age, a holy charm 
 
 Breathes forth, and half protects itself from harm. 
 
 Bereft of that, and to mid-age confined, 
 
 The life of life were ravished from mankind ; 
 
 Tlie same mill-wheel of habits would prevail, 
 
 Vice wax inveterate, folly would grow stale, 
 
 And life's fair task of active bliss become 
 
 A long, dark fit of hypochondriac gloom. 
 
 Thus youth's and manhood's fierce extremes contend. 
 With wholesome war, each other's sins to mend. 
 Waging a sort of elemental strife, 
 They raise and purify the tone of life. 
 The light and shade that fix its colors true, 
 The sour and sweet that give it all its gout. 
 
516 HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 But shall Old Age escape unhonored here, — 
 That sacred era, to reflection dear, — 
 That peaceful shore, where Passion dies away, 
 Like the last wave that ripples o'er the bay ? 
 Hail, holy Age ! preluding heavenly rest ! 
 Why art thou deemed by shallow fools unblest ? 
 Some dread, some pity, some contemn thy state, 
 Yet all desire to reach thy lengthened date ; 
 And of the few so hardly landed there. 
 How very few thy pressure learn to bear, 
 And fewer still thy reverend honors wear ! 
 He who in youth hath fed the pure desire. 
 And rode the storm of manhood's fiercer fire, 
 He only can deserve, and rightly knows, 
 Thy sheltering strength, thy glorious repose. 
 As some old courser, of a generous breed. 
 Who never yielded to a rival's speed. 
 Far from the tumults of Olympic strife. 
 In peaceful pastures, loiters out his life. 
 So the wise veteran crowns his strenuous race, 
 Breathing, released, in dignity and grace. 
 What though the frost of years invest his head ? 
 What though the furrow mark time's heavy tread ? 
 There still remains a sound and vigorous frame, 
 A decent competence, an honest name. 
 In every neighbor he beholds a friend, 
 Even heedless youth to him in reverence bend, 
 Whilst duteous sons retard his mild decay. 
 Or children's children slope his weary way. 
 And lead him to the grave with fate-beguiling play. 
 Thus, as the dear-loved race he leaves behind 
 Still court his blessing, and that blessing find, 
 And, since they must survive the good old man, 
 Tread on his heels as softly as they can. 
 
 ^ 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 517 
 
 Their tenderness in turn he well repays, 
 
 And yields to them the remnant of his days. 
 
 For them he frames the laughter-moving joke, 
 
 For them the tale with pristine glee is spoke, 
 
 For them a thousand nameless efforts rise ; 
 
 To warn, to teach, to please, he hourly tries, 
 
 Nor ever knows himself so truly blest. 
 
 As when purveying comforts for the rest. 
 
 His hands in timely duties never tire. 
 
 He grafts the scion, points the tendril's spire. 
 
 Or prunes the summer bower, or trims the winter fire. 
 
 Nor is this all. As sensuous joys subside, 
 Sublimer pleasures are to age allied. 
 Then pensive memory fondly muses o'er 
 The bliss or woe impressed so long before ; 
 The sinking sun thus sheds his mellowest ray 
 Athwart those scenes he brightened through the day. 
 Then, too, the soul, as heavenly prospects ope. 
 Expands and kindles with new beams of hope ; 
 So the same parting orb, low in the west. 
 Dilates and glows before he sinks to rest. 
 Yes ! if Old Age were cancelled from our lot, 
 Full soon would man deplore the unhallowed blot ; 
 Life's busy day would miss its tranquil even. 
 And earth must lose its stepping-stone to heaven. 
 
 Thus, every age by God to man assigned 
 Declares His power, how good, how wise, how kind ; 
 And thus in manhood, youth, and eld we trace 
 A fine proportion and harmonious grace. 
 
 But Life a richer aspect still supplies : 
 Sex is the theme to which my pencil flies. 
 How Life exulted at that glad decree, 
 When Nature said, Let man, let woman be ! 
 
518 HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 ■T was kindness all, 't was Heaven's redundant grace, 
 
 That wove this blest distinction for our race. 
 
 If men had started from the teeming earth. 
 
 Or, like Deucalion's sons, disdained a birth ; 
 
 If tribes of women from the deep had sprung. 
 
 As she of old, by dreaming poets sung ; 
 
 Had life, with fatal independence, known 
 
 Mere Benedicks, or Amazons alone, — 
 
 Woe worth the gloom of that untoward scene, 
 
 With no redeeming joys to intervene, 
 
 These tranquil duties and bland cares denied, 
 
 Which now so finely checker and divide ! 
 
 The toils of either sex devolved on one. 
 
 Life's crowded business must be half undone. 
 
 Men, torn between the household and the field. 
 
 Must now the spade and now the bodkin wield ; 
 
 Hands, by long rigid labor callous grown. 
 
 Must plait the muslin, or adjust the gown. 
 
 And hordes of uncouth lubbers you might see 
 
 Stalk from the plough (ye Gods !) to pour out tea. 
 
 Not such the picture of our present state ; — 
 No tasks oppress with disproportioned weight. 
 Exempt from pains absurd, and awkward cares. 
 Each willing sex a separate burden bears. 
 The one, adapted and inured to toil. 
 Roves the wide earth, or tills the stubborn soil. 
 The other sways the still domestic sphere. 
 More circumscribed, though not to life less dear. 
 Yet think not thus their interests blend the worse : 
 Identity of sphere would prove their curse. 
 Relation, contrast, makes their being one. 
 As Day consists of morn and evening sun. 
 Scarce a more vital, binding union feel 
 The centre and the circuit of a wheel. 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 Life lives on both ; their contrast simply this, 
 
 Man is its glory, woman is its bliss. 
 
 Joint pilgrims onward through this rugged road, 
 
 Their best relief to ease each other's load ; 
 
 He clears the way, and guards it with his powers. 
 
 While she that pathway strews with choicest flowers. 
 
 If he must brave the hardships of the storm, 
 
 'T is she at least that keeps his shelter warm. 
 
 If he with fortune wage perpetual war, 
 
 'T is she that makes his lot worth fighting for ! 
 
 But ah ! my laboring fancy strives in vain 
 
 For some apt semblance of the human twain. 
 
 Nature has no two webs so closely joined 
 
 As their conspiring influence on mankind. 
 
 Like the glad breeze that animates the air, 
 
 He is the health, and she the music there. 
 
 Or, shining like the sun's compounded blaze, 
 
 He darts the bright, and she the melting rays. 
 
 And can it be that men should e'er combine 
 To frustrate Nature in this wise design. 
 And with a rival's malice dare degrade 
 A sex, their pride, their bliss, their equals made ? 
 Yes, such there are, who hope themselves to raise. 
 As woman sinks beneath their base dispraise. 
 One class traduces her material frame. 
 Others her mind, the last her morals, blame. 
 These three I meet, the sex's champion, 
 And, like Horatius, smite them one by one. 
 
 First, then, some sinewy heroes boast their strength, 
 And cry : " This difference you must own at length. 
 Woman is not so muscular as man. 
 And hence inferior, even on Nature's plan. 
 She is not strong, — she cannot bear such shocks." 
 True, but I tell you, sir, what can, — an ox. 
 
 519 
 
520 HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 Go, then, and rate your merit by the stone ; 
 Woman wars not for cartilage and bone. 
 
 Next comes a railer of a higher kind : 
 Not woman's size offends him, but her mind. 
 Methinks I hear some dapper wight exclaim, 
 Whose sex confers his only right to fame : 
 " Thanks to my stars, I 'm not a woman born ! 
 Learning and science hailed my natal morn ; 
 Nature on me no gifts or graces spared. 
 She gave omniscience, when she gave a beard. 
 Let them whose wonder still on woman doats 
 Produce a Newton hooped in petticoats, — 
 A Doctress Johnson, in her cap and ruff, 
 Or kilted Stewart, deep in thought and snuff." 
 
 Before I answer this right witty spark. 
 His merry charge deserves one grave remark. 
 Where are the schools and colleges designed 
 To train and discipline the female mind ? 
 Would Newton's name, or Johnson's, loom as great, 
 Had they been trammelled in a w^oman's fate, — 
 Condemned through life to ply the eternal thread, 
 Or bake some hapless scholar's daily bread, — 
 Toils, from which learned ideas flit away, 
 Like the scared ghosts that fly the coming day ? 
 Think, then, how base, preposterous, and unfair, 
 A woman's mind with Stewart's to compare ! 
 You shut the gates of science in her face, 
 Then publish that exclusion her disgrace ! 
 
 But while reluctant I the palm concede 
 Which fortune, and not nature, has decreed, 
 Think not I mean to parley with the foe, 
 Or quit the field without one parting blow. 
 O ye profound monopolists of mind ! 
 To whom all wit and wisdom are confined, 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 521 
 
 Who aim to rule the lettered world alone, 
 
 And cannot bear a sister near the throne, 
 
 Who still at every female effort rail, 
 
 And brand their thoughts as feeble, trite, and stale. 
 
 Pray condescend sometimes to leave your lore, 
 
 And be as shallow as De Stael or More. 
 
 But of this triple host, who forms the arriere ? 
 A foe indeed ! yet let not woman fear. 
 Though rudely he assassinate her heart. 
 Yet shall her injured fame repel the dart. 
 Come on, maligners of the sex, declare 
 How weak, how false, how faithless, are the fair. 
 I grant you all, — and yet I '11 win the field ; 
 So woman conquers, when she seems to yield. 
 Allow she has a soft and ductile soul ; 
 Is gold the hardest metal of the whole ? 
 Allow she has a fickle, wavering mind ; 
 Do we not breathe and live on fickle wind ? 
 Allow she has a wily, treacherous heart ; 
 Are you, O man, inveigled by her art ? 
 What ! her superior ? you, her better part ? 
 Besides, have you not had the upper hand ? — 
 Six thousand years of absolute command ! 
 Then why not mould and train, ye sovereign kings. 
 Your pliant subjects into nobler things ? 
 Yourselves, too, will the page of history find 
 Such perfect patterns to frail womankind ? 
 Has your example ruled in life's affairs. 
 More pure, peace-loving, and devout than theirs ? 
 
 I could pursue the triumph, but forbear, — 
 Even woman generously bids me spare, — 
 Content if I have placed in fairer light 
 Her claims of equal dignity and right. 
 44 # 
 
522 HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 Still on my mind a few inquiries press, 
 That urge reply, — our theme demands no less. 
 What makes the nuptial pair most truly blest ? 
 'T is this, — just so much worth must fill each breast^ 
 That, when they wake from love's romantic dream, 
 Their eyes may open on a fixed esteem. 
 
 Again, what constitutes the choicest wife, 
 Next to the praise that she abhors all strife ? 
 'T is this, — identity of bliss and woe, 
 Of hopes and fears, of what they wish or know. 
 Have you not seen an honest, gracious dame, 
 Alive to all her husband's pride or shame ? 
 Have you not visited their generous board. 
 And watched her anxious interest in her lord, 
 Heard the long story, in his hackneyed strain. 
 Told and retold, (ah me !) and told again ? 
 No matter, — she enjoys it quite as well, 
 And would till doomsday, did he live to tell. 
 Her appetite and relish for the jest 
 
 Return as punctual as the dinner 's dressed. 
 
 And see her speaking eye of you implore, 
 
 " Do laugh — though you have heard it all before." 
 
 What churl at this his muscles would restrain ? 
 
 Let yours relax, — it shall not be in vain. 
 
 She looks and acts ten thousand thankful things. 
 
 And helps you to two luscious capon's wings ! 
 Fie on the odious doctrine, somewhat rife, 
 
 That marriage profits by a tinge of strife ; 
 
 That life would grow, without some stringent jar, 
 
 Tasteless as salad without vinegar. 
 
 A savage creed ! gilding with phrase ornate 
 
 Domestic jargon, hymeneal hate. 
 
 There shall not come betwixt our model pair 
 
 More than some transient difference, mild and rare. 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 523 
 
 When mutual faults or shades steal in to show- 
 That both still wander in these vales below, 
 He reprimands by glancing with his eye, 
 And she inflicts her soft reproach, a sigh. 
 That is abundant feud for man and wife, 
 More potent than whole Iliads of strife. 
 Why need invective to make error smart. 
 When gentle signs as deeply touch the heart ? 
 
 One question more the marriage theme demands : 
 How may a husband best adorn the bands ? 
 How can a man that mystic secret find. 
 To keep his partner ever true and kind ? 
 To virtue's laws how make his offspring bend ? 
 How fill the spheres of parent, master, friend ? 
 In short, how spread a heaven above his dome ? 
 Five words shall answer, — he must keep at home. 
 
 And who from Home could ever wish to rove, 
 That tranquil sphere of peace, and joy, and love ? 
 Search Life's whole map, — of all its scenes so fair. 
 Home is the brightest spot that glistens there. 
 'T was there the light, first falling on our eyes. 
 Gladdened our young existence with surprise. 
 There, too, the smile, w^hich met our infant view, 
 Straight to our lips with sweet contagion flew. 
 Such were the lessons home could then instil ; 
 Such heaven-like lessons it exhibits still. 
 There flourish, where no envious arts encroach. 
 Praise without flattery, blame without reproach. 
 If you have virtues (and all men have some) 
 Where can they find so kind a soil as home ? 
 Your faults, though conned, are conned to be forgiven ; 
 Each frown is mercy, and each smile is heaven. 
 No outward trappings there deceive the eyes ; 
 The native heart bursts through, and mocks disguise. 
 
524 HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 There you may stroll, attired in dishiabille, 
 And be allowed some share of merit still ; 
 Nor blast your character (believe it, pray !) 
 Should you go slipshod for a chance half-day. 
 
 Of all the varying scenes that life can boast, 
 Home suits the growth of wit and wisdom most. 
 Besides its calm retreats and noiseless shade, 
 Which lend philosophy the choicest aid, 
 'T is there that Converse bids its glories roll, 
 Converse, that choral interchange of soul ! 
 Whatever else in social life we find 
 Is but the body. Converse is the mind. 
 Come, join the circle, — bid the language flow. 
 Pluck from time's wings the blossoms ere they go ; 
 Let every friend, undaunted, bear a part. 
 To swell the fund of intellect and heart. 
 But let us banish from this blest pursuit 
 The shameless prater, and the shame-faced mute ; 
 The one who talks, and talks, and talks, and talks. 
 The other walks and sits, and sits and walks ; 
 The one, a long obstreperous cascade. 
 Usurps those beds where many rills had strayed ; 
 The other, like a stagnant pool, is found 
 Not only dull, but spreads contagion round.* 
 
 I own there is a better kind of mute. 
 Who cannot yield his share of common fruit. 
 Poor souls ! they silent sit the evening long, 
 At length risk something, and that something wrong. 
 From these let Satire's shaft divert its aim. 
 They need our sympathy, but not our blame. 
 
 But who is she, retiring and alone, 
 That makes her thoughts by sign and gesture known ? 
 
 * The author was unconsciously anticipated in these two characters by 
 Boileau, in his Satire on Woman. 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 525 
 
 No sound can vibrate on her barren ear, 
 
 No voice escape those lips in accents dear ; 
 
 'T is one dead silence all from year to year. 
 
 Yet let not pity too officious rise, 
 
 Nature requites the blessings it denies. 
 
 The expressive look, the motion fraught with grace, 
 
 May rival language, and supply its place : 
 
 And, for that senseless ear, perchance are given 
 
 Ethereal sounds, and intercourse with heaven. 
 
 But hark ! the envious clock proclaims the hour, 
 And friends glide off, as leaves forsake the bower. 
 Nor are you desolate, though left alone ; 
 Home still has pleasures, pleasures all its own. 
 There, as you loll beside your waning fire, 
 And, like the embers, feel each care expire. 
 Your dog, spoiled favorite ! slumbers on the floor, 
 And, whimpering, dreams his day's adventures o'er ; 
 While Puss, with fond, insinuating purr. 
 Rubs by your ankle with her silken fur. 
 And when the elastic frame's worn powers are fled, 
 Home has a pillow for your drooping head. 
 Where, as your drowsy thoughts, in broken train, 
 Announce the approach of fancy's fairy reign. 
 This is the last that floats upon the brain, — 
 Search Life's whole map, of all its scenes so fair, 
 Home is the dearest spot that glistens there. 
 
 But endless questions start on every side : 
 Let not your sweet forbearance be denied, 
 While I discuss, with all consistent haste. 
 Where shall the home we love so well be placed ? 
 Shall rural scenes alone extort our praise ? 
 Or shall the town engross our gliding days ? 
 To show how rural scenes with me prevail 
 I weave my notions in a simple tale. 
 
526 HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 A weary laborer hailed the setting sun, 
 And wandered home, — his long day's work was done. 
 A rippling stream, that crossed his stony road, 
 With broken gleams and tempting murmurs flowed ; 
 He stooped to meet its pure and cooling brim, 
 And gratefully refreshed each dusty limb. 
 Then fared he on, with joy and freedom gay. 
 And felt such raptures as departing day 
 Yields to the child of nature. All the west 
 In one calm, unrepulsive glare was dressed. 
 Far to the north, clouds long and black were seen. 
 And streaks of sky fantastic shone between. 
 The south a heap of splendid vapors bore, 
 "Which every moment differing colors wore ; 
 While through the paler chambers of the east. 
 The silvery moon her gradual pace increased. 
 Oft did our laborer pause amid this scene, 
 Forgetful of his supper on the green ; 
 Forgetful even of his partner's smile. 
 That could his utmost weariness beguile ; 
 Forgetful of those little prattlers gay, 
 That wont each eve to meet him on his way. 
 Received the promised kiss, and strove for more. 
 And gambolled round him till he reached the door, 
 Then, when the well-conned prayer was duly said, 
 With sighing resignation shrank to bed. 
 Though joys like these were to his heart full dear. 
 Yet pleasures more sublime allured him here. 
 The lingering pace, and oft-uplifted eye, 
 That traced quite round the variegated sky, 
 The half-burst exclamation, all expressed 
 The blissful transports that usurped his breast. 
 But ah ! delight so thrilling cannot last : 
 This ravished ecstasy at length was past, 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 527 
 
 And trains of milder contemplation stole, 
 
 By reason's hand directed, o'er liis soul. 
 
 To childlike wonder manly thought succeeds, 
 
 And God's own work to God's existence leads. 
 
 " What generous power has all this beauty given ? 
 
 And whence this rich ' magnificence of heaven ' ? 
 
 Who sends the balmy fragrance of this air ? 
 
 Who decks out Nature in her drapery fair ? 
 
 Could harmony so perfect e'er combine 
 
 Without the guidance of a wise design ? 
 
 And whence did I my powers of thought acquire ? 
 
 Who lighted up this sacred inward fire ? 
 
 Who made my frame ? and who my feeling soul, 
 
 Kindly diffusing pleasure through the whole ? 
 
 'T was thou, great God ! I own thy power divine ; 
 
 Such acts of wonder can be none but thine. 
 
 To thee alone my happiness I owe ; 
 
 Thou bidst my cup of blessings overflow ; 
 
 And since thy mercies thus profusely pour, 
 
 How can I aught but love thee and adore ? " 
 
 Such were the musings of a rustic mind. 
 Nature's plain dictates, simple, unrefined ; — 
 And thus the lowliest hind that turns the sod 
 May look through nature up to nature's God. 
 
 Now view awhile the city's murky glare. 
 Where noise and dust and smoke infest the air, 
 Where works of man on every side arise. 
 And scarce one trace of God salutes the eyes. 
 " Sermons in stones ! " some pious poet sings ; 
 " Sermons in stones ! " right-edifying things ! 
 If so, in yonder well-paved town, I fear, 
 Where every step their eloquence may hear, 
 More homilies are trodden under foot. 
 Than Chrysostom or Gregory ever wrote. 
 
528 HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 But let us fairly grant tlie town its due : 
 With faults, it has redeeming virtues too. 
 Those splendid arts that lend to life a zest, 
 Those darling charities that make it blest. 
 Fly from the country's rude, ungenial air, 
 In quest of social haunts, to nestle there. 
 Hence, though all shapes of meanness swarm in town, 
 Scarce are incorrigible niggards known. 
 Where luxury's ten thousand channels flow. 
 Where want obtrudes the ceaseless tale of woe, 
 The frequent shilling from the pocket parts. 
 And keeps the issue open of their hearts. 
 Next, to the city's intellect must yield 
 The vegetative wisdom of the field. 
 As knowledge floats and shifts from ear to ear. 
 The swelling mass becomes an atmosphere. 
 The meanest artisans who. trudge the street. 
 The poor canaille, who delve for present meat. 
 Derive from frequent converse with mankind 
 Much tact of character, and liberal mind. 
 I should indulge more hope, by reason's light, 
 To set a truckman than a ploughman right ; 
 Though when by both the path of duty 's found. 
 Then, I confess, my preference changes round. 
 The truckman's head is sounder than his heart. 
 The peasant's bosom is his better part ; 
 The former often est yields to tempting things. 
 The latter to his sturdy conscience clings. 
 
 Thus, let your home be planted where you will. 
 Expect, around you, blended good and ill ; 
 Your door, thank Heaven, can still admit the good. 
 And from your inner shrine the bad exclude. 
 
 But ceaseless home is not for social man ; 
 Duties abroad must share Life's mingled plan. 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 529 
 
 And when the youth first quits his native nest, 
 "What doubts and cares annoy his fledghng breast, 
 As the vast range of public life he views, 
 And trembling asks. Which calling shall I choose ? 
 Choose the pale author's, — and behold my books 
 Mangled by critics, and by pastry-cooks ? 
 Choose the attorney's, — feast on breach of laws, 
 Batten on quarrels, and subsist on flaws ? 
 Choose the sad patriot-politician's lot, 
 And by my grateful country — be forgot ? 
 Choose the poor pedagogue's, and wield the rod ? 
 Alas ! not mine the patience of a god ! 
 Choose the j)hysician's, and inflict the pill, 
 And get on well, as others get on ill ? 
 Choose the divine's, and spend my strength to show 
 My listening flock the way they will — not go ? 
 Or choose the merchant's, sport of every wave ? 
 O how superbly wealth shall heap — my grave ! 
 
 Such is the gloom by public life displayed. 
 To him who views it only in the shade. 
 But if we scan it o'er with kinder eyes. 
 From each profession happier tints shall rise. 
 
 First, be the Author in the balance weighed. 
 'T is true, he plies a thorny, thankless trade ; 
 Condemned beneath the public beck to move, 
 And pander to the taste he would improve, 
 And who, to place his fame in decent light, 
 Must write down malice, and make dulness bright. 
 Yet he has pleasures, large, secure, unbought : 
 No power can rob him of the bliss of thought. 
 A few still smile, though all the world deride ; 
 A few still smile, he cares for none beside. 
 How well deserving of a nation's praise, 
 
 45 
 
530 HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 Who gives to lettered toil his studious days ; 
 
 "Who, far abstracted from the rude world's din, 
 
 Expatiates o'er that greater world within ! 
 
 'T is his to stamp his country's rank and name, 
 
 To fix her language, and extend her fame. 
 
 No drudge in science, 't is his godhke fate 
 
 To guide like Bacon, or like Scott create. 
 
 His mind, o'erflowing with conceptions bright, 
 
 Writes what it thinks, not thinks what it shall write, 
 
 Pours its whole genius on the enchanted page, 
 
 Adorns, improves, refines, exalts, the age. 
 
 We own such giant spirits are but rare, — 
 
 Yet do they languish in our country's air ? 
 
 Or must we traverse the Atlantic o'er. 
 
 To find that greatness on a foreign shore ? 
 
 Not so ! such excellence can flourish here, — 
 
 Does flourish, — brightens, moves our lettered sphere. 
 
 Though half adored, from affectation free. 
 
 And fled from pedants, Kirkland,* dwells with thee. 
 
 Next, to the Lawyer's labyrinth draw near, 
 Threading from maze to maze his dark career, 
 By varying rules and precedents perplexed. 
 Pushed by opponents, and by clients vexed. 
 What wear and tear the harassed drudge must find, 
 I do not say of conscience, but of mind ! 
 Yes, lost to all that shame and truth demand, 
 Who pour reproach on this much injured band ! 
 Their short-eyed malice rashly represents 
 The law mere subtlety and impudence ! 
 
 * John Thornton Kirkland, D. D.,late President of Harvard University. 
 The estimate presented of him in the text was hut the echoed sentiment of 
 the surrounding literary community. 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 531 
 
 Calumnious tongues ! as if the world ne'er saw 
 
 A modest, upright steward of the law ! 
 
 Whose faithful zeal, by no restraint outdone, 
 
 Makes his own interest and his client's one ; 
 
 Whose manful reasonings, lucid, fair, and sound, 
 
 No wiles can match, no sophistry confound ; 
 
 Whose stainless honor none suspects of blame, 
 
 Pure as the tablet of a virgin's fame ; 
 
 Whose fruitful wit can make law's barren field 
 
 A harvest of exotic fancies yield ; 
 
 In fine, who can sometimes defend the oppressed, 
 
 And pocket for his fee — a quiet breast. 
 
 Such is the face the slandered law presents ; 
 
 Looks this like subtlety and impudence ? 
 
 Ah ! at that bench in cypress hung so late. 
 
 Where almost more than mortal wisdom sat. 
 
 How justice reigned, — how prompt, exact, and pure ! 
 
 How trembled vice, how virtue felt secure ! 
 
 There Parsons,* like the sun, sank down to night. 
 
 In full-orbed glory, majesty, and light ; 
 
 Soon did the shadow into darkness grow. 
 
 When Sewall,t bright twin-lustre, ceased to glow. 
 
 Wherefore were both not destined to attain 
 
 The long, sweet, tranquil twilight shed by Paine ? :|: 
 
 Now shall I launch you on that stormy sea. 
 Where loud-voiced Politics its rage sets free ? 
 
 ^ The justly celebrated Theophilus Parsons, LL.D., the foremost lawyer 
 of his time. 
 
 t Hon. Samuel Sewall, LL.D.. who succeeded Judge Parsons, for a 
 very short time, on the bench of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. 
 
 X The Hon. Robert Treat Paine, LL.D., one of the earUest judges 
 of Massachusetts after the Revolution, had recently died at a very advanced 
 age. 
 
532 HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 Do I not hear a general murmur burst, 
 
 " In mercy save us from that theme accurst ! 
 
 Cling to Life's poetry, nor look behind, 
 
 Where veering principle outstrips the wind. 
 
 One day embargo, with its colors furled. 
 
 The next, free intercourse with all the world ! 
 
 Mobs, murders, patriots, factions, feathers, tar. 
 
 With cabinets, and embassies, and war. 
 
 Chaotic horror, and eternal gloom, 
 
 Where truth and bliss and virtue find their doom 1 '* 
 
 A truce with pictures pencilled by despair ! 
 'T is not so dark and sickening everywhere. 
 Does not, sometimes, a nation, nobly wise, 
 On her best sons, instinctive, fix her eyes. 
 Cheering them on, while, struggling in her cause. 
 They weave her righteous, life-inspiring laws ? 
 What though, along the lapse of twenty years, 
 One Bonaparte hath whelmed the world in tears „ 
 In the same space one Wellington hath shone, 
 One Alexander, and one Washington. 
 
 That name, for ever blest ! for ever dear ! 
 How can it pall upon a free-born ear ? 
 Shall our spent souls with feebler tumults glow, 
 To hear the hallowed sound oft echoed ? No. 
 Pilgrims may kiss their marble saints away, 
 But his dear image never shall decay, 
 Though still our grateful hearts unceasing homage pay. 
 
 But turn from politics and public rule, 
 To view the humble Teacher of a School. 
 Hark ! as yon low-roofed mansion you draw near. 
 What miscellaneous tumult strikes the ear ! 
 The wholesome rod, perhaps too often swayed. 
 The busy murmurs memory calls to aid, 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 The unlawful whisper, and the bolder tongue, 
 The tedious task, monotonously sung, — 
 The tricks of mischief, which defy restraint, 
 The mock apology, and mock complaint, — 
 Genius too wild and confident to learn, 
 Dulness too deep and sluggish to discern, — 
 Whilst the whole scene, beneath its master's care, 
 Seems like young Chaos, tutored by Despair. 
 
 Yet though the pedagogue's dark lot be hard. 
 Think not from pleasures he is quite debarred : 
 Each crowded hour its special comforts brings. 
 He sits in potent state, like other kings ; 
 Sees many a subject reverently obey. 
 And marks improvement grow from day to day. 
 He doats, with something of a father's pride, 
 On infant worth, close nestling by his side, — 
 Sweet youth ! o'ercome by one forbidding look. 
 Who hides his mournful face behind his book, 
 But, when applauded for his task well said, 
 Pulls down his waistcoat, and erects his head. 
 
 Whilst thus the teacher glories in his boys. 
 Another sex may still enhance his joys. 
 Imagine, then, some pupil nymph consigned 
 To you, the guardian of her opening mind, 
 In all the bloom and sweetness of eleven. 
 Health, spirits, grace, intelligence, and heaven ; 
 While still from each exuberant motion darts 
 A winning multitude of artless arts. 
 Withal, such softness to such smartness joined, 
 So pure a heart to such a knowing mind, 
 So very docile in her wildest mood, 
 Bad by mistake, and without effort good. 
 So humbly thankful when you please to praise. 
 So broken-hearted when your frown dismays. 
 
 533 
 
534 HUMAX LIFE. 
 
 So circumspect, so fearful to offend, 
 
 And at your look so eager to attend, 
 
 With memory strong, and with perception bright, 
 
 Her words, her deeds, so uniformly right, 
 
 That scarce one foible disconcerts your aims, 
 
 And care and trouble — never name their names ! 
 
 Yes, I forget, you have one anxious care, 
 
 You have one ceaseless burden of your prayer : 
 
 It is, — Great God, assist me to be just 
 
 To this dear charge committed to» my trust. 
 
 Such are the comforts of the teacher's lot. 
 And if with these but blest, he murmurs not, 
 But bears contentedly, as bear he must, 
 The mixed renown of usefulness — and dust. 
 
 And yet I cannot quite dismiss him here ; 
 One word I 'II whisper in the Public's ear : 
 Why on the teacher of our youth must wait 
 A menial's wages, and a menial's fate ? 
 Behold the man who all day long for years 
 Moulds your child's life, — yes, even his smiles and tears ! 
 His bosom's close companion w^hy not hail 
 Your own companion in the social scale ? 
 
 Now to the Healing Art one moment turn ; — 
 And first the empiric we condemn and spurn, 
 Who on the blindness of his brethren thrives, 
 Tampering with their credulity and lives, — 
 Unlike those angel-ministers of health, 
 Who boast no " cure-alls," hoard no " patent " wealth, 
 Distrust themselves, and follow nature still. 
 Or compass science to complete their skilL 
 Yes, when we find such men with healing powers, 
 Soothing this miserable world of ours, 
 Whose piercing eye can read your inmost frame, 
 Whose mystic tact can gauge a fevers flame. 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 535 
 
 "Who with a smile your ilhiess can rebuke, 
 
 And make you convalescent by a look, 
 
 It seems as if some more than mortal brood, 
 
 On busy message of dispensing good. 
 
 Had come, like pardoning legates from the sky, 
 
 And half revoked the sentence, " Thou shalt die." 
 
 Perhaps the ambitious youth, whose earnest aims 
 Explore life's mingled periscope, exclaims : 
 " I '11 be no jaded minister of health, 
 But seek the Merchant's glittering prize of wealth." 
 Beware ! that prize a thousand blanks surround ; 
 Crowds of competitors usurp the ground. 
 Commerce, I own, waves her enlightening hand. 
 And in one wreath weaves every distant land ; 
 But dire collapses and revulsions rush 
 The wisest speculator's plans to crush. 
 How often, too, may trade's low maxims wrest 
 Truth, honor, right, from thy bewildered breast ! 
 Yet, if the thought still fires, cast in thy lot. 
 Some pass the quagmires, and contract no spot. 
 Go, march to fortune's summits, and sit down 
 With " merchant princes " in yon classic town.* 
 Crowning, like them, the long, hard, tempting strife 
 By unimpeached integrity of life. 
 Serve, with thy treasures and thy liberal heart, 
 Eeligion, Learning, Charity, and Art. 
 
 Thus having roved o'er life's less hallowed round. 
 Now may we venture upon holier ground ? 
 One sacred task remains, though last, not least, 
 To sketch the ideal of a Christian Priest ; 
 
 * Boston. 
 
536 HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 That bright example Heaven so rarely gives, 
 Which died in Eliot,* but in Lowell f lives. 
 The minister of God ! thrice awful name. 
 Ah, who may dare its vital functions claim ? 
 Yet, would you serve your God with zeal sincere, 
 Approach and act, — naught frowns forbidding here. 
 How blest, who spends his consecrated days 
 In alternations sweet of prayer and praise. 
 Who now soars high, in heaven-aspiring mood, 
 Now treads his earthly round of doing good ! 
 No scene of life by Providence is given. 
 But he comes near to join that scene with heaven. 
 With pure baptismal rite, and lifted eye, 
 'T is he who drowns in prayer your infant cry ; 
 'T is he who seals your holy marriage doom. 
 Soothes your sick bed, — nor quits you at the tomb. 
 Thus with life's every phase he mingles in. 
 And strives, by word or deed, your souls to win. 
 Hence, smiles from Heaven, from man esteem, he gains. 
 And every house for him a home remains. 
 Where'er he goes in duty's toilsome hours. 
 Soft marks of friendship strew his way like flowers ; 
 The kind inquiry, and the smile sincere, — 
 The look respectful, and the attentive ear ; 
 Even the rude boy, who bursts upon his sight, 
 Bows, as he stops the trundling circle's flight. 
 And should he sometimes glance at fashion's shrine. 
 Where gay coquettes salute, defame, and shine, — 
 Where nice gregarious fops together link. 
 Talk, laugh, eat, play, and anything but think, — 
 
 ^ Kev. Dr. Eliot, then recently deceased, minister of the Second Church 
 in Boston, 
 t Rev. Charles Lowell, D. D. 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 At his approach their wanton trifles fly, 
 And cards and dice are reverently laid by. 
 
 But men are men, — and, be the truth confessed, 
 The pastor shares his troubles with the rest. 
 His ways and means are sometimes hugely few, 
 And his black coat is often threadbare too. 
 Yet to such trifles cheerfully resigned. 
 Graver and life-long cares o'erwhelm his mind. 
 Hunting the whole first half-week for a text. 
 To spin therefrom two sermons in the next, 
 His sinking spirit craves some heavenly guide, 
 To search the truth, and rightly to divide, 
 To smite perennial waters from the rock, 
 And rouse and charm and save his various flock. 
 
 And who the pang can tell that cuts his heart. 
 When some fond pastor tries his tenderest art 
 To show an erring soul the path to heaven, 
 And lo ! that flint-hke, dumb return is given, 
 A strange, half-sanctified, sarcastic look. 
 Which mocks instruction and defies rebuke ? 
 
 Less sad than this, — when, on the week's last night, 
 He seeks his desk, the homily to write. 
 Some thoughtless neighbor slowly shuts the door. 
 And runs the stock of village gossip o'er. 
 Our good divine the fretful smile reserves, 
 And breathes a prayer for patience and for nerves. 
 
 Then when he roves abroad in freer air. 
 And pays the willing visit everywhere. 
 The jealous, kind complaint 't is his to hear, 
 And guilt of wasted seasons wakes his fear. 
 He and his flock his visits may condemn 
 As profitless alike to him and them. 
 " Cases of conscience " form not all their themes : 
 He must partake in news, tales, whims, and dreams, 
 
 537 
 
538 HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 To every claimant yield attention due, 
 Salute Tryphoena and Tryphosa too. 
 
 " But must not books and study soothe his care ? " 
 Somewhat, — yet is not peace unmixed even there. 
 As o'er fell controversy's page he bends. 
 Where truth hes bleeding from the wounds of friends, 
 Sees Campbell lay Castalio on the rack 
 And countless jokes on poor Montanus crack, 
 Sees Lardner with his gravity dispense 
 To torture "Wetstein into truth and sense, 
 Sees Calvin's system even with Calvin clash, 
 And sparks of ire from Christian bosoms flash, 
 Sees saintlike foemen into sophisms fall. 
 And pens of almost angels dipped in gall, 
 He casts his eyes despairingly around. 
 And asks, Perfection, where canst thou be found ? 
 
 " But, if his study must unquiet be. 
 Is not the pulpit from vexation free ? " 
 The pulpit, friends ? alas ! 't is often there 
 The sad quintessence dwells of his despair. 
 Who would desire the pulpit for his sphere, 
 When Gallios slumber, and when critics sneer ? 
 There as he stands, with arguments arrayed 
 No vice could front, no unbelief evade, 
 Line upon line, precept on precept plies, 
 Some dozing hearer dreams how bank-stocks rise ! 
 
 Show me the church w^ho love their guide so well, 
 His manner they o'erlook, and on his matter dwell. 
 The veriest trifle in his dress or mien 
 May mar the whole devotion of the scene. 
 So Alcibiades a bird let fly. 
 And caught each frivolous Athenian's eye. 
 A lock misplaced — too long, too short, too sleek — 
 May blast the labors of a studious week. 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 539 
 
 In vain he urges their eternal good, 
 
 His toilet first must win their serious mood. 
 
 Nay, though his language in such lustre shone, 
 
 As Blair or Buckminster were proud to own, 
 
 Yet all in vain. Should he have chanced to tie. 
 
 In haste his band unluckily awry, 
 
 No Providence could more disturbance give — 
 
 (I speak of things that on the record live.) 
 
 If the brass serpent healed old Israel's pain. 
 
 This fatal tie no less diffuses bane ; 
 
 The sly contagion lurks from pew to pew, 
 
 And taints the tittering congregation through. 
 
 Strange, on the threshold of the heavenly ground, 
 
 That earnest minds so seldom can be found ! 
 
 But thus it is. Some give their hearts to gold, 
 
 Some for a fatal appetite are sold. 
 
 Some for a song ; and weaker still than that, 
 
 Some perish smiling at a wry cravat ! 
 
 Saddest, that this regard for outward form 
 Pervades that sex with souls most pure and warm ! 
 From one calamity Heaven shelter me, 
 A fair, fastidious, critic-devotee ! 
 Though to her church each Sabbath she repairs, 
 And deeply loves its homilies and prayers. 
 Nothing quite suits or edifies her there. 
 If not propounded with a graceful air. 
 This seems the touchstone of each word and deed. 
 The Alpha, you would fancy, of l^er creed. 
 If Enoch with a gait ungainly trod, 
 She scarce believes he ever walked with God ; 
 Would doubt the powers ascribed to Moses' wand. 
 If wielded by a cramped or awkward hand ; 
 To the true faith her heart would fain be won. 
 If but the act may be genteelly done ; 
 
540 HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 To all religion's laws devoutly yield, 
 
 Just where religion chimes with Chesterfield. 
 
 I give with pity, and no wish to mock, 
 The spirit of her Sabbath-evening's talk. 
 " How well that preacher moved along the aisle ! 
 What holy gestures, what a reverend smile ! 
 Did ever periods so devoutly roll ? 
 Did ever cadence so convict the soul ? 
 How piously the handkerchief was waved ! 
 Sure such a nice man's audience must be saved ! 
 The afternoon beheld a different treat ; 
 Bare were the walls, and vacant many a seat. 
 Nor strange that shepherd found so thin a fold, 
 Who was so plain, so awkward, and so old ; 
 Too antique-fashioned to be understood, 
 Too unrefined to work our highest good. 
 I own that he is faithful, worthy, true, 
 But what can such insipid virtues do ? 
 His earnestness repels, — his unction shocks. 
 And one may be too strictly orthodox." 
 
 O ye who deal fantastic praise and blame. 
 Whose nimble tongues dispense and tarnish fame. 
 Why thus the transient and the eternal blend ? 
 Why make religion to a shadow bend ? 
 Lo ! stern reality is brooding near ; 
 Will sorrow, conscience, change, regret, and fear 
 Give heed to fantasy's capricious breath ? 
 Will outward graces charm the hour of death ? 
 
 The hour of death ! I may not lift the screen, 
 Which darkly mantles o'er life's closing scene ; 
 Here end its folly, wisdom, pleasure, pain. 
 Here too must cease my desultory strain. 
 
 Yet, patient friends, before I bid adieu 
 For ever to the lyre I strung for you. 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 541 
 
 Indulge me still a momentary stay, 
 To glean some scanty moral from my lay ; 
 Nor, as a fond bequest, will you refuse 
 The parting tribute of a grateful Muse. 
 
 You all, my friends, a line of duty see, 
 Drawn by the hand divine, that made us free. 
 This line observed, promotes our being's aim. 
 But this transgressed, our wretchedness and shame. 
 Small wanderings make the fault, — the whim ; meantime 
 Large deviations constitute the crime. 
 The former move contempt, as weak or droll, 
 The latter justly rouse the indignant soul. 
 Custom, society, and law assign 
 To each offence its punishment condign. 
 The censor's lash, the poet's angry pen. 
 Suffice to check the minor sins of men, 
 While bold and flagrant misdemeanors draw 
 A weightier vengeance from the offended law. 
 This stern tribunal I may not approach. 
 Nor on its high prerogative encroach. 
 Enough for me to satirize the times, 
 And prosecute your Liliputian crimes, — 
 Gibbet some vice, detect some follies' gang, 
 Flog scoundrel freaks, or private whimsies hang. 
 And scourge the small atrocities of man ; 
 'T is all I aim at, — all that Satire can. 
 
 Now Satire has a double list of foes, 
 Some to conciliate, others to oppose. 
 One class deem all is levelled at their head ; 
 They chafe and fume at everything that 's said ; — 
 Poor self-made scapegoats, men without a skin, 
 Who suffer penance for their neighbors' sin. 
 
 The other tribe, of these the exact reverse, 
 But who yet try the Satirist's patience worse, 
 46 
 
542 HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 Are they whom no rebuke can touch with shame, 
 
 No sarcasm rouse, — though much the fairer game. 
 
 If the most general vices you condemn. 
 
 They join the censure, but you can't mean them I 
 
 Pursued themselves, they mingle in the hunt, 
 
 And, though the arrow rankles in their front. 
 
 With keen and charitable zest look round. 
 
 To see their neighbor twinge beneath the wound. 
 
 This pair of portraits have their places here, 
 To guard us from the extremes we all should fear. 
 Ye, whose sore vengeance I have braved to-day, 
 Chancing your peccadillos to display, 
 Pray be not angry if the coat suits true, 
 For I protest I did not measure you. 
 
 And let us all that worse extreme beware. 
 To relish satire, and disdain to share. 
 "Why should we fondly think, complacent elves. 
 The shaft hits anywhere but our dear selves ? 
 Unfair it is to join the bantering laugh. 
 And yet refuse to take our rightful half. 
 No, no ! thou honest and thou liberal soul. 
 Whom candor and humility control. 
 Thou art not quite that monster of a saint, 
 That claims exemption from the general taint. 
 Thou ownst thy failings, since imperfect made. 
 As every solid wears its following shade. 
 
 But even these shadows wouldst thou brush away, 
 And quicken virtue toward the perfect day. 
 In duty's vital sphere be ever found, 
 And strive to make that sphere not large but round. 
 Perfection in the humblest globule lies. 
 As in the bulkiest globe that decks the skies ; 
 And thou mayst find among the narrowest streams 
 The richest murmurs and the sweetest gleams. 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 543 
 
 Then be content to range life's lowliest vale, 
 Nor rashly breathe ambition's dangerous gale. 
 Careless though rivals for a day excel, 
 Polish thy little diamond talent well. 
 Aim to do good, and good will surely flow ; 
 Aim to he good, and Heaven will make thee so. 
 
 But striving to complete thy little sphere, 
 Study His vrill who kindly placed thee here, 
 Nor from that sacred guide presumptuous stray. 
 Who is himself the Life, the Truth, the Way. 
 Walk in that way, and live that life divine, 
 Believe that truth, — obey, and heaven is thine ! 
 Heaven ! where our foibles and our faults shall close. 
 And care and sorrow smile into repose. 
 There, though no eye hath seen, nor ear hath heard, 
 Nor heart conceived the mystic-meaning word. 
 Yet, as once sang a brother, we may find 
 " The grand Phi Beta Kappa of mankind." * 
 New friendships there shall knit our growing powers, 
 And happier warblings charm the bliss-winged hours ; 
 The expanded soul shall breathe immortal air, 
 And live indeed ! for Life is only there. 
 
 =* I oncG found this line, as descriptive of the future state of the blest, in a 
 manuscript poem delivered by some predecessor at one of the anniversaries 
 of the PhL Beta Kappa Society. 
 
UNION ODE, 
 
 COMPOSED FOR THE UNION PARTY OF SOUTH CAROLINA, AND 
 SUNG JULY 4, 1831. 
 
 Air. — " Scots wha liae wi' "Wallace bled." 
 
 Hail, our country's natal morn ! 
 Hail, our spreading kindred-born ! 
 Hail, thou banner, not yet torn, 
 
 Waving o'er the free ! 
 While, this day, in festal throng. 
 Millions swell the patriot song, 
 Shall not we thy notes prolong, 
 
 Hallowed Jubilee ? 
 
 Who would sever Freedom's shrine ? 
 Who v/ould draw the invidious line ? 
 Though by birth one spot be mine, 
 
 Dear is all the rest : 
 Dear to me the South's fair land, 
 Dear the central mountain-band, 
 Dear New England's rocky strand. 
 
 Dear the prairied West. 
 
 By our altars, pure and free, 
 By our Law's deep-rooted tree, 
 By the past's dread memory, 
 By our Washington, 
 
NEW-ENGLAND ODE. 545 
 
 By our common parent tongue, 
 By our hopes, bright, buoyant, young, 
 By the tie of country strong, 
 We will still be one. 
 
 Fathers ! have ye bled in vain ? 
 Ages ! must ye clroojD again ? 
 Maker ! shall we rashly stain 
 
 Blessings sent by Thee ? 
 No ! receive our solemn vow. 
 While before thy throne we bow, 
 Ever to maintain, as now, 
 
 Union, Liberty ! 
 
 NEW-ENGLAND ODE, 
 
 FOR THE UNIVERSAL SONS OF THE PILGRIMS, ON THE TWENTY- 
 SECOND OF DECEMBER * 
 
 Nevv^ England ! receive the heart's tribute that comes 
 
 From thine own Pilgrim-sons far away ; 
 More fondly than ever our thoughts turn to thee. 
 
 Upon this, thine old Festival Day. 
 We would rescue, with social observance and song, 
 
 Awhile from oblivion's grave 
 The loved scenes of our youth, and those blessings recall 
 
 Which our country and forefathers gave. 
 
 ^ Composed for the New England Society at Charleston, and the Sons of 
 the Pilgrims at Plymouth. 
 
 46* 
 
546 NEW-ENGLAND ODE. 
 
 We have gazed on thy mountains that whitened the sky, 
 
 Or have roved on thy tempest-worn shore ; 
 We have breathed thy keen air, or have felt thy bright fires. 
 
 While we listened to legends of yore. 
 We have gathered thy nuts in the mild autumn sun, 
 
 And the gray squirrel chased through thy woods, 
 From thy red and gold orchards have plucked the ripe store. 
 
 And have bathed in thy clear-rolling floods. 
 
 When thy snow has descended in soft, feathered showers. 
 
 Or hurtled along in the storm. 
 We have welcomed alike with our faces and hearts 
 
 Its beauteous or terrible form. 
 We have skimmed o'er thine ice with the fleetness of wind, 
 
 We h'ave reared the thick snow-castle's wall. 
 And have acted our part in the combat that raged 
 
 With the liard-pressed and neatly-formed ball. 
 
 We remember the way to those school-houses well. 
 
 That bedeck every mile of thy land, 
 We have loved thy sweet Sabbaths, that bade in repose 
 
 The plough in its mid-furrow stand. 
 We have joined in thy hymns and thy anthems, that swelled 
 
 Through religion's oft-visited dome, 
 We have blest thy thanksgivings, that summoned from far 
 
 The long-parted family home. 
 
 Can distance efface, or can time ever dim 
 
 Remembrances crowding like these. 
 That have grown with our growth, and have ministered strength, 
 
 As the roots send up life to the trees ? 
 Then be honored the day when the May-flower came. 
 
 And honored the charge that she bore, 
 The stern, the religious, the glorious men 
 
 Whom she set on our rouojh native shore. 
 
FAIR HARVARD. 547 
 
 New England ! speed yet in thine onward career, 
 
 With thine inborn, all-conquering will : 
 Still triumph o'er Nature's unkindliest forms, 
 
 By thine energy, patience, and skill. 
 Thou shalt grow to thy height, as thou ever hast grown, 
 
 O'er the storms of ephemeral strife. 
 And thy spirit, undying, shall cease not to be 
 
 The deep germ of a continent's life ! 
 
 FAIR HAEVARD. 
 
 SUNG AT THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF HARVARD UNIVER- 
 SITY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1836. 
 
 Air. — " Believe me if all those endearing young charms." 
 
 Fair Harvard ! thy sons to thy jubilee throng. 
 
 And with blessings surrender thee o'er. 
 By these festival-rites, from the age that is past. 
 
 To the age that is waiting before. 
 O Relic and Type of our ancestors' worth, 
 
 That hast long kept their memory warm ! 
 First flower of their wilderness ! Star of their night. 
 
 Calm rising through change and through storm ! 
 
 To thy bowers we were led in the bloom of our youth. 
 
 From the home of our free-roving years. 
 When our fathers had Warned, and our mothers had prayed, 
 
 And our sisters had blest, through their tears. 
 Thou then wast our parent, — the nurse of our souls ; 
 
 We were moulded to manhood by thee. 
 Till, freighted with treasure-thoughts, friendships, and hopes, 
 
 Thou didst launch us on Destiny's sea. 
 
54:8 ODE AT A PICNIC 
 
 When, as pilgrims, we come to revisit thy halls. 
 
 To what kindlings the season gives birth ! 
 Thy shades are more soothing, thy sunlight more dear, 
 
 Than descend on less privileged earth : 
 For the good and the great, in their beautiful prime, 
 
 Through thy precincts have mugingly trod. 
 As they girded their spirits, or deepened the streams 
 
 That make glad the fair City of God. 
 
 Farewell ! be thy destinies onward and bright ! 
 
 To thy children the lesson still give. 
 With freedom to think, and with patience to bear, 
 
 And for Right ever bravely to live ! 
 Let not moss-covered Error moor thee at its side, 
 
 As the world on Truth's current glides by ; 
 Be the herald of Light, and the bearer of Love, 
 
 Till the stock of the Puritans die. 
 
 ODE, 
 
 SUNG AT A PICNIC OF THE CHARLESTON WASHINGTON LIGHT 
 INFANTRY. 
 
 Air. — " The Eine Old English Gentleman." 
 
 O WHO are they that formed their ranks, a self-devoted band, 
 When insult rude and lowering war assailed their native land, — 
 Who bear inscribed upon their helms the world's most honored 
 
 name. 
 And wave their little Eutaw flag, baptized in blood and flame ? 
 The Washmgtoii Light Infantry, old Charleston's loyal sons ! 
 
OF THE WASHINGTON LIGHT INFANTRY. 549 
 
 And who are they that boast a line of leaders brave and true, — 
 The mighty Lowndes, — the gifted Crafts, — and Cross, 
 
 with eagle view, — 
 And Simons, warm, — and Miller, bland, — and others yet on 
 
 earth, 
 Whose lengthened years God grant may prove co-equal with 
 
 their worth ? 
 The Washington Light Infantry, old Charleston's loyal sons ! 
 
 And who are they, when trumpet-call and martial duties cease, 
 Who gladly ply their civic toils, the gentle arts of peace, — 
 Who love the social gathering too, in nature's green retreat, — 
 The mossy shade, the woodland breeze, and friendship's cosy seat ? 
 The Washington Light Infantry, old Charleston's loyal sons ! 
 
 And who are they that find their most delightful task and care. 
 In peace or war, to serve, protect, and gratify the fair, — 
 From whom one smile of tender faith can largely overpay 
 The fiery perils of the camp, or labors of the day ? 
 
 Tlie Washington Light Infantry, old Charleston's loyal sons I 
 
 And who are they that know full well each wild excess to check, 
 And throw the rein of self-control round festive freedom's neck, — 
 Who listen to the friendly words by age and wisdom given. 
 And pause amid life's swift career to lend a thought to heaven ? 
 The Washington Light Infantry, old Charleston's loyal sons ! 
 
 And who are they that Avill, while time shall urge his onward 
 
 flight. 
 The soldier and the citizen thus faithfully unite, — 
 Who will, should e'er their ranks be thinned, more close together 
 
 grow, — 
 Who never can a friend forget, nor quail before a foe ? 
 
 The Washington Light Infantry, old Charleston's loyal sons ! 
 
550 ODE ON THE DEATH OF J. C. CALHOUN. 
 
 ODE ON THE DEATH OF J. C. CALHOUN, 
 
 SUNG AT A CELEBKATION OF HIS OBSEQUIES IN COLUMBIA, S. C. 
 
 AiK. — German Hymn. 
 
 Fare thee well ! From storms below, 
 Tried and mighty spirit, go ! 
 "Worker ! to thy high reward ; 
 Faithful servant ! to thy Lord. 
 
 Son and type of thy great time ; 
 Prophet, with the eye subhme ; 
 Statesman, in thyself a host ; 
 Martyr, dying at thy post ! 
 
 Rarest gifts in thee we saw ; — 
 Thought — that probed each hidden law ; 
 Presence — like a felt control ; 
 Speech — that awed a nation's soul ; 
 
 Mind of giant ; heart of child ; 
 Quickly roused or reconciled ; 
 Braving, but forgiving foes ; 
 Stirred, that others might repose. 
 
 Thou wast proud, confiding, free. 
 Like thy State's own chivalry ; 
 Moral stain couldst not endure. 
 Like thy State's own daughters, pure. 
 
LINES WRITTEN AFTER MRS. PARSONS's FUNERAL. 551 
 
 Thundering 'neath the Federal dome, 
 Turnmg fondly to thy home, 
 Feared, extolled, or disapproved. 
 Still thou wast revered and loved. 
 
 Falling at thy noon of fame. 
 Thou, with ripe and world-wide name, 
 Needst no more from life ; but we. 
 Darkling here, have need of thee. 
 
 God of nations ! quench the brand 
 Cast on our imperilled land ; 
 Bid our patriot's honored grave 
 Speak the word which yet may save. 
 
 LINES, 
 
 WRITTEN AFTER THE FUNERAL OF MRS. PARSONS (mARY WEN- 
 DELL holmes), in CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 
 
 A BITTER silence reigned around that bier. 
 
 Where fairest youth and brightest genius slept ; 
 
 The grief we felt knew no relieving tear ; 
 
 Our hearts loithin — our bleeding bosoms — wept. 
 
 Not there was heard the careless, idle talk 
 So oft exchanged above the common dead ; 
 
 Humbled and soft we took our graveyard walk. 
 And neared that tomb with vague, reluctant tread. 
 
652 HYMN FOR AN ORDINATION. 
 
 She was the wonder of her native green, 
 
 By rich and poor, by high and low, beloved ; 
 
 Transplanted thence, she knew no change of scene, — 
 There were no strangers where her presence moved. 
 
 Mary ! what power has stayed thy happy breath ? 
 
 Sure thine elastic spirit sprang on high ; 
 We deemed thee not a creature formed for death ; 
 
 Religion tells the truth, — thou couldst not die. 
 
 Who ever heard or witnessed thee but praised ? 
 
 Age, learning, softened at thine artless wile ; 
 Even rival loveliness unenvious gazed, 
 
 And childhood caught from thee its sweetest smile. 
 
 Thou dazzling grace of beauty's sparkling halls, 
 Thou early votary of the studious cell. 
 
 Glad visitant of poverty's cold walls. 
 And, most, thou ornament of home, farewell ! 
 
 Wide was the circle by thy loss bereaved, 
 All seemed to mourn a sister's life-star set ; 
 
 And one, a passing pilgrim, sadly weaved 
 This funeral wreath of friendship and regret. 
 
 HYMN FOR AN ORDINATION. 
 
 Father ! thy rich spirit shed 
 On this youthful suppliant's head ; 
 Soothe his self-distrusting tears, 
 Temper his abounding fears ; 
 
HYMN FOR AN ORDINATION. 553 
 
 Guide his vast and liigh desire ; 
 Touch his lips with coals of fire ; 
 Pour thy truth upon his soul, 
 O'er the thirsting Church to roll- 
 In thy vineyard called to toil, 
 Wisely may he search the soil ; 
 Sinners may he love and win, 
 Whilst he hates and brands the sin ; 
 Give him boldness for the right. 
 Give him meekness in the fight ; 
 Teach him zeal and care to blend ; 
 Give him patience to the end. 
 
 Seal, this day, the vows that hold 
 Flock and shepherd in one fold ; 
 May he well those mandates keep. 
 Feed my lambs, and, Feed my sheep. 
 Bless his home, his watch-tower bless ; 
 Guide him, with thy gentleness, 
 In the path once taught and trod 
 By the enduring Son of God. 
 
 Grant him, in his charge, to find 
 Listening ear and fervent mind. 
 Helpful counsels, deepening peace, 
 Earnest life, and glad increase. 
 May they, by each other led. 
 Grow to one in Christ their head ; 
 And at last together be 
 Eipe for Heaven, and meet for Thee ! 
 
 47 
 
554 THE WHOLE WORLD KIN. 
 
 THE PLEDGE, 
 
 FOR A TEMPERANCE SOCIETY. 
 
 "When Sin invites with aspect fair, 
 And Misery broods beneath the snare, 
 And Habit clasps with fell control, 
 We pledge — for the Immortal Soul ! 
 
 When Man, imbruted, can despise 
 
 His fond wife's tears, his children's cries, 
 
 The care of self, the social plan. 
 
 We pledge for hee, thou Brother-Man ! 
 
 And since on us the future fate 
 Of myriads yet unborn may wait. 
 Though small the sacrifice will be, 
 We pledge, Posterity, for thee ! 
 
 Since thou. Creator, dost prefer 
 
 The meek and stainless worshipper, — 
 
 From pride and self-reliance free. 
 
 We pledge, O God ! we pledge for thee ! 
 
 THE WHOLE WORLD KIN. 
 
 A sailor's cheek is browned, a lady's white ; 
 The tear on each has- *^-ual warmth and light. 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF A PUPIL. 555 
 
 BETHLEHEM'S GEEATNESS. 
 
 " And thou, Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the 
 princes of Juda." — Matt. ii. 6. 
 
 Wherein, O Bethlehem, doth thy greatness lie ? 
 In warlike host, proud tower, or palace high ? 
 " No ! a sweet babe's first slumber I have seen. 
 And hence the cities own me for their queen." 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF A PUPIL. 
 
 I CAN describe thee in one half a line, 
 
 Dear Susan, thus: — completely feminine. 
 
 'T is this that makes thee self-possessed and meek ; 
 
 This drives those lights and shades across thy cheek 
 
 This gives thy flexile soul, and flexile form ; 
 
 Makes thee, with feelings delicate and warm. 
 
 Quick, faithful, patient, accurate, prepared 
 
 In Memory's tasks, however light or hard. 
 
 'T is this, too, Susan, (ah, true woman's fate !) 
 
 Deepens the puzzling mysteries of thy slate ! 
 
 THE SILENT GIRL. 
 
 She seldom spake ; yet she imparted 
 Far more than language could ; 
 
 So birdlike, bright, and tender-hearted, 
 So natural and gof \ 
 
556 THE SILENT GIRL. 
 
 Her air, lier look, her rest, her actions, 
 
 Were voice enough for her ; 
 Why need a tongue, when those attractions 
 
 Our inmost hearts could stir ? 
 
 She seldom talked, — but, uninvited, 
 
 Would cheer us with a song ; 
 And oft her hands our ears delighted, 
 
 Sweeping the keys along ; 
 And oft, when converse round v/ould languish, 
 
 Asked or unasked, she read 
 Some tale of gladness or of anguish, — 
 
 And so our evenings sped. 
 
 She seldom spake ; but she would listen 
 
 With all the signs of soul ; 
 Her cheek would change, her eye would glisten ; 
 
 The sigh, the smile, upstole. 
 Who did not understand and love her, 
 
 With meaning thus o'erfraught ? 
 Though silent as the sky above her. 
 
 Like that, she kindled thought. 
 
 Little she spake ; but dear attentions 
 
 From her would ceaseless rise ; 
 She checked our wants by kind preventions, 
 
 She hushed' the children's cries. 
 And, twining, she would give her mother 
 
 A long and loving kiss ; 
 The same to father, sister, brother, — 
 
 All round, — nor one would miss. 
 
 She seldom spake. She speaks no longer ; 
 She sleeps beneath yon rose ; — 
 
THE SUNBEAM ON MY PATH. 557 
 
 'T is well for us that ties no stronger 
 
 Awaken memory's woes, 
 For oh ! our hearts would sure be broken, 
 
 Already drained of tears. 
 If frequent tones by her outspoken 
 
 Still lingered in our ears. 
 
 THE SUNBEAM ON MY PATH. 
 
 Late a wanderer far from home, and subdued by pensive care, 
 I lighted on a stranger form, young, feminine, and fair. 
 " I will bring for you, O pilgrim ! " the vision seemed to say, 
 " A sunbeam on your path, a blessing on your way." 
 
 And soon we grew acquainted, though we wist not how or why : 
 She divined my tastes and moods with her quick, sagacious eye ; 
 Giving and winning confidence, — gay, but serenely gay, — 
 A sunbeam on my path, a blessing on my way. 
 
 She was a gracious listener, but when discourse declined, 
 She filled the threatening pauses with her sprightly bursts of mind. 
 One week we dwelt together, but she made it seem a day, — 
 That sunbeam on my path, — that blessing on my way. 
 
 By quiet ministrations of a thousand nameless deeds. 
 She averted my mishaps, she supplied my hourly needs ; 
 Ever studious, like a daughter, to comfort and obey, — 
 A sunbeam on my path, a blessing on my way. 
 
 A hundred damsels pass me, without one look or smile. 
 
 From whom the gray-haired gentleman no deference can beguile ; 
 
558 THE HISTORY OF A RAY OF LIGHT. 
 
 Then why did she so fancy me ? and why so strangely lay 
 A sunbeam on my path, a blessing on my way ? 
 
 I must somewhat believe in those famed mesmeric spheres, 
 By which heart recoils from heart, or heart with heart coheres. 
 One man you loathe, you know not why ; another pleases, nay, 
 Is a very sunbeam in your path, an angel in your way. 
 
 At length, when Duty beckoned us, our separate wa3''s we took. 
 With the firmly pressing hand, and the silent, farewell look ; 
 But very oft, from home's dear bowers, will grateful memory stray 
 To that sunbeam on my path, that blessing on my way. 
 
 And when, as soon must happen, my worn head in dust lies low, 
 And she, still blessing others, through this mingled world shall go, 
 Grant her, my Heavenly Father, I here devoutly pray, 
 Such sunbeams on her path, such angels on her way. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A RAY OF LIGHT. 
 
 The hint for the following composition was derived from a recent dis- 
 covery by a Swedish botanist; namely, that there are certain flowers which 
 emit, in the darkness of evening, the rays of hght imbibed from the sun 
 during the day. A thought hence occurred to the writer, that each individ- 
 ual ray of hght may possibly in this manner perform a variety of successive 
 functions, and even be efficiently darting about from object to object, and 
 from one quarter of creation to another, for an indefinite number of years. 
 Should the idea be questioned, as not strictly philosophical, it must be con- 
 tent to aspire no higher than to the character of fanciful. 
 
 " Let there be light ! " creation's Author spoke, 
 And quick from chaos floods of splendor broke ; — 
 On that magnificent, primeval morn, 
 Myself, an humble ray of light, was born. 
 
THE HISTOKY OF A RAY OF LIGHT. 
 
 Vain were tlie task to guess my native place ; 
 Rushing, careering, furiously through space, 
 Plunged amid kindred rays and mingling beams, 
 These are my first of recollection's gleams. 
 O, with what joy we rioted along ! 
 Darting afar, in young existence strong, 
 Onward we poured the unaccustomed day 
 Through tracts, the length of many a milky way. 
 (For know, we rays of light are living things, 
 Each with ten thousand pair of brilUant wings : 
 No wonder, then, when all those wings are stirred, 
 We flit it so much faster than a bird.) 
 At last, when youthful years and sports were done, 
 Choice, chance, or duty, brought me to your sun ; 
 And while my brother pencils fled afar, 
 To swell the glories of some viewless star, 
 'T was mine to fly about this nook of heaven, 
 Where one huge orb gave light and heat to seven ; * 
 Although short visits now and then I make 
 To distant spheres, for recreation's sake. 
 
 Ah ! ne'er shall I forget the eventful day 
 When to this planet first I sped my way : 
 To many a twinkling throb my heart gave birth. 
 As near and nearer I approached the earth. 
 What was to be my fate ? for ever lost 
 In some dark bog ? or was I to be tost, 
 In wild reflection, round some narrow spot. 
 Then sink absorbed, inglorious and forgot? 
 No, reader, no, — far different the career 
 Which fate designed me to accomplish here : 
 Millions of splendid scenes 't was mine to grace. 
 Though my first act brought ruin to your race. 
 
 659 
 
 * Our luminous autobiographer seems to take no account here of the 
 Asteroids in the solar system. 
 
560 THE HISTORY OF A RAY OF LIGHT. 
 
 Trembling, I reached the serpent's ghstening eye, 
 Then glanced, and struck the apple hanging by, 
 Then to your mother Eve reflected, flew. 
 And thus, at one exploit, a world o'er threw ! 
 
 scene of woe ! the mischief I had wrought, 
 
 Those quick successive shocks, that stunned my thought. 
 
 The poisonous magic from that sire of lies, 
 
 The keen contagion in that woman's eyes, 
 
 All were too much for one poor ray of light, 
 
 New to his task, and meaning only right. 
 
 Distressed in heart, at once myself I hurled 
 
 Far to the outside of this injured world, 
 
 "Wishing to wear my wretched life away 
 
 'Mid scenes where solitude and chaos lay. 
 
 At length, while wandering o'er those realms of woe, 
 
 1 heard a small, sweet voice, that whispered low. 
 In tones of soothing, — 't was a brother ray 
 Sent from the hand that first created day. 
 
 " No longer mourn," the darting angel said, 
 
 " The hopes of man are not for ever fled : 
 
 From his own race a Saviour shall arise. 
 
 To lead him back to his forbidden skies ; 
 
 And hark ! when Bethlehem's beauteous star shall shine. 
 
 Its first and freshest radiance shall be thine ! " 
 
 Cheered by these words, I longed to gain once more 
 This lovely world, and try my fortune o'er. 
 Just then a globe, new struck from chaos out, 
 Met me, and turned my headlong path about ; 
 Back to the sun with breathless speed I flew. 
 And thence rushed down, where bright to Noah's view 
 The glorious rainbow shone, — a lingering stop 
 I made within a small pellucid drop, 
 Glazed its internal concave surface bright. 
 Back through the globule travelled, and outright 
 Darted through air to glad the patriarch's sight. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A RAY OF LIGHT. 561 
 
 Glancing from tlience away, I sported on 
 
 Where'er by pleasure or by duty- drawn ; — 
 
 Now tipping some bright drop of pearly dew, 
 
 Now plunging into heaven through tracks of blue, 
 
 Now aiding to light up the glorious morn, 
 
 Or twilight's softer mantle to adorn. 
 
 Now darting through the depths of ocean clear 
 
 To paint a pearl, — then to the atmosphere 
 
 Again reflected, shooting to the skies 
 
 Away, away, where thought can never rise ; 
 
 Then travelling down to tinge some valley-flower, 
 
 Or point some beauty's eye with mightier powder, 
 
 Or to some monarch's gem new lustre bring, 
 
 Or light with fire some prouder insect's wing, 
 
 Or lend to health's red cheek a brighter dye, 
 
 Or flash delusive from consumption's eye. 
 
 Or sparkle round a vessel's prow by night. 
 
 Or give the glowworm its phosphoric light. 
 
 Or clothe with terror threatening anger's glance, 
 
 Or from beneath the lids of love to dance, 
 Or place those little silver points on tears. 
 Or light devotion's eye while mercy hears ; — 
 In short, to aid, with my poor transient flings, 
 All scenes, all passions, all created things. 
 
 Few rays of-light have been where I have been. 
 Honored like me, or seen what I have seen : 
 I glowed amid the bush which Moses saw, 
 I lit the Mount when he proclaimed his law : 
 I to that blazing pillar brought my mite. 
 Which glared along old Israel's path by night : 
 I lent a glory to Elijah's car, 
 And took my promised flight from Bethlehem's star. 
 
 But not to holy ground was I confined ; 
 In classic haunts my duties were assigned. 
 I primed the bolts Olympian Jove would throw, 
 
562 THE HISTORY OF A RAY OF LIGHT. 
 
 And Pluto sought me for Ms fires below ; 
 
 Over and over gallant Phoebus swore, 
 
 I was the finest dart his quiver bore ; 
 
 Oft was I sent, a peeping, anxious ray 
 
 From Dian, hastening where Endymion lay ; 
 
 When Iris shot from heaven, all swift and bright. 
 
 Thither I rushed, companion of her flight ; 
 
 From Vulcan's anvil I was made to glare ; 
 
 I lent a horror to the Gorgon's stare ; 
 
 I too have beamed upon Achilles' shield. 
 
 And sped from Helen's eye when Paris kneeled ; 
 
 Faithful Achates, every school-boy knows. 
 
 Struck from a flint my whole long year's repose ; 
 
 Ten wretched days I passed in sobs and sighs. 
 
 Because I could not dance on Homer's eyes : 
 
 I once was decomposed from that pure oil 
 
 Which cheered the Athenian sage's midnight toil ; 
 
 I from the brazen focus led the van, 
 
 When Ai'chimedes tried his frightful plan ; 
 
 'T was I from Cleopatra's orb that hurled 
 
 The fatal glance, which lost her slave the world : 
 
 I struck the sweetest notes on Memnon's lyre. 
 
 And quivered on the Phoenix' funeral pyre. 
 
 Nor ancient scenes alone engrossed my pranks. 
 The moderns likewise owe me many thanks. 
 Straight in at Raphael's skylight once I broke. 
 And led his pencil to its happiest stroke ; 
 I sparkled on the cross Belinda wore, 
 And tipped the Peri's wing of Thomas Moore ; 
 To Fontenelle I glided from above. 
 When whispering soft astronomy and love ; 
 And know, whene'er the finest bards have sung 
 The moon's sweet praises with bewitching tongue. 
 Or that blue evening star of mellow light, 
 'T was always after I had touched their sight. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A RAY OF LIGHT. 563 
 
 Nor yet have Poetry and Painting shared 
 My sole regards, — for Science I have cared. 
 When Galileo raised his glass on high, 
 Me first it brought to his astonished eye ; 
 When Newton's prism unloosed the solar beams, 
 I helped to realize his heaven-taught dreams ; 
 When Herschel his dim namesake first descried, 
 I was just shooting from that planet's side. 
 At all eclipses and conjunctions nigh, 
 Of sun, or satellite, or primary. 
 Oft have I served the longitude to fix ; — 
 And heavens ! in June of eighteen-hundred-six, 
 How all New England smiled to see me burst 
 Out from behind her darkened sun the first ! 
 I formed a spangle on the modest robes 
 Of Doctor Olbers' new-discovered globes ; 
 I from the comet's path was downward sent, 
 When Bowditch seized me for an element. 
 Once travelling from a fourth-rate star to earth, 
 I gave the hint of aberration birth. 
 I led the electric flash to Priestley's sight. 
 And played my sports round Franklin's daring kite ; 
 Absorbed in copper once I long had lain. 
 When lo ! Galvani gave me life again. 
 I taught the Swede that, after sunny days, 
 Lilies and marigolds will dart forth rays ; 
 And when polarity made savants stare 
 For the first time, be sure that I was there. 
 When iron first in oxygen was burnt, 
 When Davy his metallic basis learnt, 
 When Brewster shaped his toy * for peeping eyes, 
 And Humboldt counted stars in Southern skies, 
 'T was I that moved, while bursting on their sight. 
 The fiush of wonder, triumph, and delight. 
 
 * The Kaleidoscope. 
 
564 THE HISTORY OF A RAY OF LIGHT. 
 
 Nor scarce does history boast one splendid scene, 
 Or deep-marked era, where I have not been. 
 The sky-hung cross of Constantine, -^hich turned 
 All Rome to truth, by my assistance burned ; 
 When the Great Charter England's rights restored, 
 I scared her monarch from a baron's sword ; 
 When pious Europe led the far crusade, 
 Did I not flash from Godfrey's wielded blade ? 
 Did chivalry one tournament display 
 Of dazzling pomp, from which I kept away ? 
 Was I not present at that gorgeous scene. 
 Where Leicester entertained old England's queen ? 
 Did I not sparkle on the iron crown 
 Wliich the triumphant Corsican took down ? 
 Did I not revel where those splendors shone. 
 When the fourth George assumed Britannia's throne ? 
 And last, not least, could I refuse to hear 
 The summons of the Atlantic Souvenir ? * 
 No, gentlest reader, trust your humble ray, 
 'T is here at length I would for ever stay, 
 If to and fro I could descend and rise 
 'Twixt these bright pages and your brighter eyes ; 
 Absorbed, reflected, radiated, bent. 
 With force emitted, or for ages pent. 
 Through the wide world so long and often tost. 
 The excursive passion of my youth I 've lost. 
 I wish no more in my six-thousandth year. 
 Than just to take my peaceful mansion here, 
 To deck these limnings with my happiest art. 
 And 'mid these leaves to play my brightest part. 
 
 * Firsi published in the Annual of tliat name. 
 1822. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 LRBMv'26 
 
I.