BOOKS.

'Thus passed my first years. My mother was in delicate health,

and much absorbed in the care of her younger children. In the

house was neither dog nor bird, nor any graceful animated form

of existence. I saw no persons who took my fancy, and real

life offered no attraction. Thus my already over-excited mind

found no relief from without, and was driven for refuge from

itself to the world of books. I was taught Latin and English

grammar at the same time, and began to read Latin at six years

old, after which, for some years, I read it daily. In this

branch of study, first by my father, and afterwards by a

tutor, I was trained to quite a high degree of precision.

I was expected to understand the mechanism of the language

thoroughly, and in translating to give the thoughts in as

few well-arranged words as possible, and without breaks

or hesitation,--for with these my father had absolutely no

patience.

'Indeed, he demanded accuracy and clearness in everything:

you must not speak, unless you can make your meaning perfectly

intelligible to the person addressed; must not express a

thought, unless you can give a reason for it, if

required; must not make a statement, unless sure of all

particulars--such were his rules. "But," "if," "unless," "I am

mistaken," and "it may be so," were words and phrases excluded

from the province where he held sway. Trained to great

dexterity in artificial methods, accurate, ready, with entire

command of his resources, he had no belief in minds that

listen, wait, and receive. He had no conception of the subtle

and indirect motions of imagination and feeling. His influence

on me was great, and opposed to the natural unfolding of my

character, which was fervent, of strong grasp, and disposed to

infatuation, and self-forgetfulness. He made the common prose

world so present to me, that my natural bias was controlled. I

did not go mad, as many would do, at being continually roused

from my dreams. I had too much strength to be crushed,--and

since I must put on the fetters, could not submit to let them

impede my motions. My own world sank deep within, away from

the surface of my life; in what I did and said I learned to

have reference to other minds. But my true life was only the

dearer that it was secluded and veiled over by a thick curtain

of available intellect, and that coarse, but wearable stuff

woven by the ages,--Common Sense.

'In accordance with this discipline in heroic common sense,

was the influence of those great Romans, whose thoughts and

lives were my daily food during those plastic years. The

genius of Rome displayed itself in Character, and scarcely

needed an occasional wave of the torch of thought to show its

lineaments, so marble strong they gleamed in every light. Who,

that has lived with those men, but admires the plain force of

fact, of thought passed into action? They take up things with

their naked hands. There is just the man, and the block he

casts before you,--no divinity, no demon, no unfulfilled

aim, but just the man and Rome, and what he did for Rome.

Everything turns your attention to what a man can become,

not by yielding himself freely to impressions, not by letting

nature play freely through him, but by a single thought,

an earnest purpose, an indomitable will, by hardihood,

self-command, and force of expression. Architecture was the

art in which Rome excelled, and this corresponds with the

feeling these men of Rome excite. They did not grow,--they

built themselves up, or were built up by the fate of Rome, as

a temple for Jupiter Stator. The ruined Roman sits among

the ruins; he flies to no green garden; he does not look to

heaven; if his intent is defeated, if he is less than he meant

to be, he lives no more. The names which end in "_us_," seem

to speak with lyric cadence. That measured cadence,--that

tramp and march,--which are not stilted, because they indicate

real force, yet which seem so when compared with any other

language,--make Latin a study in itself of mighty influence.

The language alone, without the literature, would give one the

_thought_ of Rome. Man present in nature, commanding nature

too sternly to be inspired by it, standing like the rock

amid the sea, or moving like the fire over the land, either

impassive, or irresistible; knowing not the soft mediums or

fine flights of life, but by the force which he expresses,

piercing to the centre.

'We are never better understood than when we speak of a "Roman

virtue," a "Roman outline." There is somewhat indefinite,

somewhat yet unfulfilled in the thought of Greece, of Spain,

of modern Italy; but ROME! it stands by itself, a clear Word.

The power of will, the dignity of a fixed purpose is what

it utters. Every Roman was an emperor. It is well that the

infallible church should have been founded on this rock, that

the presumptuous Peter should hold the keys, as the conquering

Jove did before his thunderbolts, to be seen of all the world.

The Apollo tends flocks with Admetus; Christ teaches by the

lonely lake, or plucks wheat as he wanders through the fields

some Sabbath morning. They never come to this stronghold; they

could not have breathed freely where all became stone as

soon as spoken, where divine youth found no horizon for its

all-promising glance, but every thought put on, before it

dared issue to the day in action, its _toga virilis_.

'Suckled by this wolf, man gains a different complexion from

that which is fed by the Greek honey. He takes a noble bronze

in camps and battle-fields; the wrinkles of council well

beseem his brow, and the eye cuts its way like the sword. The

Eagle should never have been used as a symbol by any other

nation: it belonged to Rome.

'The history of Rome abides in mind, of course, more than the

literature. It was degeneracy for a Roman to use the pen; his

life was in the day. The "vaunting" of Rome, like that of the

North American Indians, is her proper literature. A man rises;

he tells who he is, and what he has done; he speaks of his

country and her brave men; he knows that a conquering god is

there, whose agent is his own right hand; and he should end

like the Indian, "I have no more to say."

'It never shocks us that the Roman is self-conscious.

One wants no universal truths from him, no philosophy, no

creation, but only his life, his Roman life felt in every

pulse, realized in every gesture. The universal heaven takes

in the Roman only to make us feel his individuality the more.

The Will, the Resolve of Man!--it has been expressed,--fully

expressed!

'I steadily loved this ideal in my childhood, and this is the

cause, probably, why I have always felt that man must know how

to stand firm on the ground, before he can fly. In vain for

me are men more, if they are less, than Romans. Dante was far

greater than any Roman, yet I feel he was right to take the

Mantuan as his guide through hell, and to heaven.

'Horace was a great deal to me then, and is so still. Though

his words do not abide in memory, his presence does: serene,

courtly, of darting hazel eye, a self-sufficient grace, and

an appreciation of the world of stern realities, sometimes

pathetic, never tragic. He is the natural man of the world; he

is what he ought to be, and his darts never fail of their

aim. There is a perfume and raciness, too, which makes life a

banquet, where the wit sparkles no less that the viands were

bought with blood.

'Ovid gave me not Rome, nor himself, but a view into the

enchanted gardens of the Greek mythology. This path I

followed, have been following ever since; and now, life half

over, it seems to me, as in my childhood, that every thought

of which man is susceptible, is intimated there. In those

young years, indeed, I did not see what I now see, but loved

to creep from amid the Roman pikes to lie beneath this great

vine, and see the smiling and serene shapes go by, woven from

the finest fibres of all the elements. I knew not why, at that

time,--but I loved to get away from the hum of the forum, and

the mailed clang of Roman speech, to these shifting shows of

nature, these Gods and Nymphs born of the sunbeam, the wave,

the shadows on the hill.

'As with Rome I antedated the world of deeds, so I lived in

those Greek forms the true faith of a refined and intense

childhood. So great was the force of reality with which these

forms impressed me, that I prayed earnestly for a sign,--that

it would lighten in some particular region of the heavens, or

that I might find a bunch of grapes in the path, when I went

forth in the morning. But no sign was given, and I was left a

waif stranded upon the shores of modern life!

'Of the Greek language, I knew only enough to feel that the

sounds told the same story as the mythology;--that the law

of life in that land was beauty, as in Rome it was a stern

composure. I wish I had learned as much of Greece as of

Rome,--so freely does the mind play in her sunny waters, where

there is no chill, and the restraint is from within out; for

these Greeks, in an atmosphere of ample grace, could not be

impetuous, or stern, but loved moderation as equable life

always must, for it is the law of beauty.

'With these books I passed my days. The great amount of study

exacted of me soon ceased to be a burden, and reading became a

habit and a passion. The force of feeling, which, under other

circumstances, might have ripened thought, was turned to learn

the thoughts of others. This was not a tame state, for the

energies brought out by rapid acquisition gave glow enough. I

thought with rapture of the all-accomplished man, him of the

many talents, wide resources, clear sight, and omnipotent

will. A Cæsar seemed great enough. I did not then know that

such men impoverish the treasury to build the palace. I kept

their statues as belonging to the hall of my ancestors, and

loved to conquer obstacles, and fed my youth and strength for

their sake.

* * * * *

'Still, though this bias was so great that in earliest years I

learned, in these ways, how the world takes hold of a powerful

nature, I had yet other experiences. None of these were

deeper than what I found in the happiest haunt of my childish

years,--our little garden. Our house, though comfortable,

was very ugly, and in a neighborhood which I detested,--every

dwelling and its appurtenances having a _mesquin_ and huddled

look. I liked nothing about us except the tall graceful elms

before the house, and the dear little garden behind. Our back

door opened on a high flight of steps, by which I went down

to a green plot, much injured in my ambitious eyes by the

presence of the pump and tool-house. This opened into a little

garden, full of choice flowers and fruit-trees, which was my

mother's delight, and was carefully kept. Here I felt at home.

A gate opened thence into the fields,--a wooden gate made of

boards, in a high, unpainted board wall, and embowered in the

clematis creeper. This gate I used to open to see the sunset

heaven; beyond this black frame I did not step, for I liked to

look at the deep gold behind it. How exquisitely happy I

was in its beauty, and how I loved the silvery wreaths of my

protecting vine! I never would pluck one of its flowers at

that time, I was so jealous of its beauty, but often since I

carry off wreaths of it from the wild-wood, and it stands in

nature to my mind as the emblem of domestic love.

'Of late I have thankfully felt what I owe to that garden,

where the best hours of my lonely childhood were spent. Within

the house everything was socially utilitarian; my books told

of a proud world, but in another temper were the teachings of

the little garden. There my thoughts could lie callow in the

nest, and only be fed and kept warm, not called to fly or sing

before the time. I loved to gaze on the roses, the violets,

the lilies, the pinks; my mother's hand had planted them, and

they bloomed for me. I culled the most beautiful. I looked at

them on every side. I kissed them, I pressed them to my bosom

with passionate emotions, such as I have never dared express

to any human being. An ambition swelled my heart to be as

beautiful, as perfect as they. I have not kept my vow. Yet,

forgive, ye wild asters, which gleam so sadly amid the fading

grass; forgive me, ye golden autumn flowers, which so strive

to reflect the glories of the departing distant sun; and ye

silvery flowers, whose moonlight eyes I knew so well, forgive!

Living and blooming in your unchecked law, ye know nothing of

the blights, the distortions, which beset the human being;

and which at such hours it would seem that no glories of free

agency could ever repay!

* * * * *

'There was, in the house, no apartment appropriated to the

purpose of a library, but there was in my father's room a

large closet filled with books, and to these I had free access

when the task-work of the day was done. Its window overlooked

wide fields, gentle slopes, a rich and smiling country, whose

aspect pleased without much occupying the eye, while a range

of blue hills, rising at about twelve miles distance, allured

to reverie. "Distant mountains," says Tieck, "excite the

fancy, for beyond them we place the scene of our Paradise."

Thus, in the poems of fairy adventure, we climb the rocky

barrier, pass fearless its dragon caves, and dark pine

forests, and find the scene of enchantment in the vale behind.

My hopes were never so definite, but my eye was constantly

allured to that distant blue range, and I would sit, lost in

fancies, till tears fell on my cheek. I loved this sadness;

but only in later years, when the realities of life had taught

me moderation, did the passionate emotions excited by seeing

them again teach how glorious were the hopes that swelled my

heart while gazing on them in those early days.

'Melancholy attends on the best joys of a merely ideal life,

else I should call most happy the hours in the garden, the

hours in the book closet. Here were the best French writers

of the last century; for my father had been more than half a

Jacobin, in the time when the French Republic cast its glare

of promise over the world. Here, too, were the Queen Anne

authors, his models, and the English novelists; but among

them I found none that charmed me. Smollett, Fielding, and the

like, deal too broadly with the coarse actualities of life.

The best of their men and women--so merely natural, with the

nature found every day--do not meet our hopes. Sometimes the

simple picture, warm with life and the light of the common

sun, cannot fail to charm,--as in the wedded love of

Fielding's Amelia,--but it is at a later day, when the mind is

trained to comparison, that we learn to prize excellence like

this as it deserves. Early youth is prince-like: it-will bend

only to "the king, my father." Various kinds of excellence

please, and leave their impression, but the most commanding,

alone, is duly acknowledged at that all-exacting age.

'Three great authors it was my fortune to meet at this

important period,--all, though of unequal, yet congenial

powers,--all of rich and wide, rather than aspiring

genius,--all free to the extent of the horizon their eye took

in,--all fresh with impulse, racy with experience; never to

be lost sight of, or superseded, but always to be apprehended

more and more.

'Ever memorable is the day on which I first took a volume of

SHAKSPEARE in my hand to read. It was on a Sunday.

'--This day was punctiliously set apart in our house. We had

family prayers, for which there was no time on other days. Our

dinners were different, and our clothes. We went to church. My

father put some limitations on my reading, but--bless him for

the gentleness which has left me a pleasant feeling for the

day!--he did not prescribe what was, but only what was _not_,

to be done. And the liberty this left was a large one. "You

must not read a novel, or a play;" but all other books, the

worst, or the best, were open to me. The distinction was

merely technical. The day was pleasing to me, as relieving me

from the routine of tasks and recitations; it gave me freer

play than usual, and there were fewer things occurred in its

course, which reminded me of the divisions of time; still the

church-going, where I heard nothing that had any connection

with my inward life, and these rules, gave me associations

with the day of empty formalities, and arbitrary restrictions;

but though the forbidden book or walk always seemed more

charming then, I was seldom tempted to disobey.--

'This Sunday--I was only eight years old--I took from the

book-shelf a volume lettered SHAKSPEARE. It was not the first

time I had looked at it, but before I had been deterred from

attempting to read, by the broken appearance along the page,

and preferred smooth narrative. But this time I held in my

hand "Romeo and Juliet" long enough to get my eye fastened to

the page. It was a cold winter afternoon. I took the book to

the parlor fire, and had there been 'seated an hour or two,

when my father looked up and asked what I was reading so

intently. "Shakspeare," replied the child, merely raising her

eye from the page. "Shakspeare,--that won't do; that's no book

for Sunday; go put it away and take another." I went as I was

bid, but took no other. Returning to my seat, the unfinished

story, the personages to whom I was but just introduced,

thronged and burnt my brain. I could not bear it long; such a

lure it was impossible to resist. I went and brought the book

again. There were several guests present, and I had got half

through the play before I again attracted attention. "What

is that child about that she don't hear a word that's said to

her?" quoth my aunt. "What are you reading?" said my father.

"Shakspeare" was again the reply, in a clear, though somewhat

impatient, tone. "How?" said my father angrily,--then

restraining himself before his guests,--"Give me the book and

go directly to bed."

'Into my little room no care of his anger followed me. Alone,

in the dark, I thought only of the scene placed by the

poet before my eye, where the free flow of life, sudden and

graceful dialogue, and forms, whether grotesque or fair,

seen in the broad lustre of his imagination, gave just what

I wanted, and brought home the life I seemed born to live.

My fancies swarmed like bees, as I contrived the rest of the

story;--what all would do, what say, where go. My confinement

tortured me. I could not go forth from this prison to ask

after these friends; I could not make my pillow of the dreams

about them which yet I could not forbear to frame. Thus was

I absorbed when my father entered. He felt it right, before

going to rest, to reason with me about my disobedience, shown

in a way, as he considered, so insolent. I listened, but could

not feel interested in what he said, nor turn my mind

from what engaged it. He went away really grieved at my

impenitence, and quite at a loss to understand conduct in me

so unusual.

'--Often since I have seen the same misunderstanding between

parent and child,--the parent thrusting the morale, the

discipline, of life upon the child, when just engrossed by

some game of real importance and great leadings to it. That is

only a wooden horse to the father,--the child was careering to

distant scenes of conquest and crusade, through a country of

elsewhere unimagined beauty. None but poets remember

their youth; but the father who does not retain poetical

apprehension of the world, free and splendid as it stretches

out before the child, who cannot read his natural history, and

follow out its intimations with reverence, must be a tyrant in

his home, and the purest intentions will not prevent his doing

much to cramp him. Each new child is a new Thought, and has

bearings and discernings, which the Thoughts older in date

know not yet, but must learn.--

'My attention thus fixed on Shakspeare, I returned to him

at every hour I could command. Here was a counterpoise to my

Romans, still more forcible than the little garden. My author

could read the Roman nature too,--read it in the sternness of

Coriolanus, and in the varied wealth of Cæsar. But he viewed

these men of will as only one kind of men; he kept them in

their place, and I found that he, who could understand the

Roman, yet expressed in Hamlet a deeper thought.

'In CERVANTES, I found far less productive talent,--'indeed,

a far less powerful genius,--but the same wide wisdom, a

discernment piercing the shows and symbols of existence, yet

rejoicing in them all, both for their own life, and as signs

of the unseen reality. Not that Cervantes philosophized,--his

genius was too deeply philosophical for that; he took things

as they came before him, and saw their actual relations and

bearings. Thus the work he produced was of deep meaning,

though he might never have expressed that meaning to himself.

It was left implied in the whole. A Coleridge comes and calls

Don Quixote the pure Reason, and Sancho the Understanding.

Cervantes made no such distinctions in his own mind; but he

had seen and suffered enough to bring out all his faculties,

and to make him comprehend the higher as well as the lower

part of our nature. Sancho is too amusing and sagacious to

be contemptible; the Don too noble and clear-sighted towards

absolute truth, to be ridiculous. And we are pleased to see

manifested in this way, how the lower must follow and serve

the higher, despite its jeering mistrust and the stubborn

realities which break up the plans of this pure-minded

champion.

'The effect produced on the mind is nowise that described by

Byron:--

"Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away," &c.

'On the contrary, who is not conscious of a sincere reverence

for the Don, prancing forth on his gaunt steed? Who would not

rather be he than any of the persons who laugh at him?--Yet

the one we would wish to be is thyself, Cervantes,

unconquerable spirit! gaining flavor and color like wine from

every change, while being carried round the world; in whose

eye the serene sagacious laughter could not be dimmed by

poverty, slavery, or unsuccessful authorship. Thou art to us

still more the Man, though less the Genius, than Shakspeare;

thou dost not evade our sight, but, holding the lamp to thine

own magic shows, dost enjoy them with us.

'My third friend was MOLIÉRE, one very much lower, both in

range and depth, than the-others, but, as far as he goes, of

the same character. Nothing secluded or partial is there about

his genius,--a man of the world, and a man by himself, as he

is. It was, indeed, only the poor social world of Paris that

he saw, but he viewed it from the firm foundations of

his manhood, and every lightest laugh rings from a clear

perception, and teaches life anew.

'These men were all alike in this,--they loved the _natural

history_ of man. Not what he should be, but what he is,

was the favorite subject of their thought. Whenever a noble

leading opened to the eye new paths of light, they rejoiced;

but it was never fancy, but always fact, that inspired them.

They loved a thorough penetration of the murkiest dens, and

most tangled paths of nature; they did not spin from the

desires of their own special natures, but reconstructed the

world from materials which they collected on every side. Thus

their influence upon me was not to prompt me to follow out

thought in myself so much as to detect it everywhere, for each

of these men is not only a nature, but a happy interpreter of

many natures. They taught me to distrust all invention which

is not based on a wide experience. Perhaps, too, they taught

me to overvalue an outward experience at the expense of inward

growth; but all this I did not appreciate till later.

'It will be seen that my youth was not unfriended, since those

great minds came to me in kindness. A moment of action in

one's self, however, is worth an age of apprehension through

others; not that our deeds are better, but that they produce

a renewal of our being. I have had more productive moments and

of deeper joy, but never hours of more tranquil pleasure than

those in which these demi-gods visited me,--and with a smile

so familiar, that I imagined the world to be full of such.

They did me good, for by them a standard was early given

of sight and thought, from which I could never go back, and

beneath which I cannot suffer patiently my own life or that of

any friend to fall. They did me harm, too, for the child

fed with meat instead of milk becomes too soon mature.

Expectations and desires were thus early raised, after which I

must long toil before they can be realized. How poor the scene

around, how tame one's own existence, how meagre and faint

every power, with these beings in my mind! Often I must cast

them quite aside in order to grow in my small way, and not

sink into despair. Certainly I do not wish that instead of

these masters I had read baby books, written down to children,

and with such ignorant dulness that they blunt the senses and

corrupt the tastes of the still plastic human being. But I do

wish that I had read no books at all till later,--that I had

lived with toys, and played in the open air. Children should

not cull the fruits of reflection and observation early, but

expand in the sun, and let thoughts come to them. They should

not through books antedate their actual experiences, but

should take them gradually, as sympathy and interpretation are

needed. With me, much of life was devoured in the bud.