Realised Ideals.
Such a changed France have we; and a changed Louis. Changed,
truly; and further than thou yet seest!—To the eye of History
many things, in that sick-room of Louis, are now visible, which
to the Courtiers there present were invisible. For indeed it is
well said, “in every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the
eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing.” To Newton
and to Newton’s Dog Diamond, what a different pair of Universes;
while the painting on the optical retina of both was, most
likely, the same! Let the Reader here, in this sick-room of
Louis, endeavour to look with the mind too.
Time was when men could (so to speak) of a given man, by
nourishing and decorating him with fit appliances, to the due
pitch, _make_ themselves a King, almost as the Bees do; and what
was still more to the purpose, loyally obey him when made. The
man so nourished and decorated, thenceforth named royal, does
verily bear rule; and is said, and even thought, to be, for
example, “prosecuting conquests in Flanders,” when he lets
himself like luggage be carried thither: and no light luggage;
covering miles of road. For he has his unblushing Châteauroux,
with her band-boxes and rouge-pots, at his side; so that, at
every new station, a wooden gallery must be run up between their
lodgings. He has not only his _Maison-Bouche_, and _Valetaille_
without end, but his very Troop of Players, with their pasteboard
coulisses, thunder-barrels, their kettles, fiddles,
stage-wardrobes, portable larders (and chaffering and quarrelling
enough); all mounted in wagons, tumbrils, second-hand
chaises,—sufficient not to conquer Flanders, but the patience of
the world. With such a flood of loud jingling appurtenances does
he lumber along, prosecuting his conquests in Flanders; wonderful
to behold. So nevertheless it was and had been: to some solitary
thinker it might seem strange; but even to him inevitable, not
unnatural.
For ours is a most fictile world; and man is the most fingent
plastic of creatures. A world not fixable; not fathomable! An
unfathomable Somewhat, which is _Not we;_ which we can work with,
and live amidst,—and model, miraculously in our miraculous Being,
and name World.—But if the very Rocks and Rivers (as Metaphysic
teaches) are, in strict language, _made_ by those outward Senses
of ours, how much more, by the Inward Sense, are all Phenomena of
the spiritual kind: Dignities, Authorities, Holies, Unholies!
Which inward sense, moreover is not permanent like the outward
ones, but forever growing and changing. Does not the Black
African take of Sticks and Old Clothes (say, exported
Monmouth-Street cast-clothes) what will suffice, and of these,
cunningly combining them, fabricate for himself an Eidolon (Idol,
or _Thing Seen_), and name it _Mumbo-Jumbo;_ which he can
thenceforth pray to, with upturned awestruck eye, not without
hope? The white European mocks; but ought rather to consider; and
see whether he, at home, could not do the like a little more
wisely.
So it _was_, we say, in those conquests of Flanders, thirty years
ago: but so it no longer is. Alas, much more lies sick than poor
Louis: not the French King only, but the French Kingship; this
too, after long rough tear and wear, is breaking down. The world
is all so changed; so much that seemed vigorous has sunk
decrepit, so much that was not is beginning to be!—Borne over the
Atlantic, to the closing ear of Louis, King by the Grace of God,
what sounds are these; muffled ominous, new in our centuries?
Boston Harbour is black with unexpected Tea: behold a
Pennsylvanian Congress gather; and ere long, on Bunker Hill,
DEMOCRACY announcing, in rifle-volleys death-winged, under her
Star Banner, to the tune of Yankee-doodle-doo, that she is born,
and, whirlwind-like, will envelope the whole world!
Sovereigns die and Sovereignties: how all dies, and is for a Time
only; is a “Time-phantasm, yet reckons itself real!” The
Merovingian Kings, slowly wending on their bullock-carts through
the streets of Paris, with their long hair flowing, have all
wended slowly on,—into Eternity. Charlemagne sleeps at Salzburg,
with truncheon grounded; only Fable expecting that he will
awaken. Charles the Hammer, Pepin Bow-legged, where now is their
eye of menace, their voice of command? Rollo and his shaggy
Northmen cover not the Seine with ships; but have sailed off on a
longer voyage. The hair of Towhead (_Tête d’étoupes_) now needs
no combing; Iron-cutter (_Taillefer_) cannot cut a cobweb; shrill
Fredegonda, shrill Brunhilda have had out their hot life-scold,
and lie silent, their hot life-frenzy cooled. Neither from that
black Tower de Nesle descends now darkling the doomed gallant, in
his sack, to the Seine waters; plunging into Night: for Dame de
Nesle now cares not for this world’s gallantry, heeds not this
world’s scandal; Dame de Nesle is herself gone into Night. They
are all gone; sunk,—down, down, with the tumult they made; and
the rolling and the trampling of ever new generations passes over
them, and they hear it not any more forever.
And yet withal has there not been realised somewhat? Consider (to
go no further) these strong Stone-edifices, and what they hold!
Mud-Town of the Borderers (_Lutetia Parisiorum_ or _Barisiorum_)
has paved itself, has spread over all the Seine Islands, and far
and wide on each bank, and become City of Paris, sometimes
boasting to be “Athens of Europe,” and even “Capital of the
Universe.” Stone towers frown aloft; long-lasting, grim with a
thousand years. Cathedrals are there, and a Creed (or memory of a
Creed) in them; Palaces, and a State and Law. Thou seest the
Smoke-vapour; _un_extinguished Breath as of a thing living.
Labour’s thousand hammers ring on her anvils: also a more
miraculous Labour works noiselessly, not with the Hand but with
the Thought. How have cunning workmen in all crafts, with their
cunning head and right-hand, tamed the Four Elements to be their
ministers; yoking the winds to their Sea-chariot, making the very
Stars their Nautical Timepiece;—and written and collected a
_Bibliothèque du Roi;_ among whose Books is the Hebrew Book! A
wondrous race of creatures: _these_ have been realised, and what
of Skill is in these: call not the Past Time, with all its
confused wretchednesses, a lost one.
Observe, however, that of man’s whole terrestrial possessions and
attainments, unspeakably the noblest are his Symbols, divine or
divine-seeming; under which he marches and fights, with
victorious assurance, in this life-battle: what we can call his
Realised Ideals. Of which realised ideals, omitting the rest,
consider only these two: his Church, or spiritual Guidance; his
Kingship, or temporal one. The Church: what a word was there;
richer than Golconda and the treasures of the world! In the heart
of the remotest mountains rises the little Kirk; the Dead all
slumbering round it, under their white memorial-stones, “in hope
of a happy resurrection:”—dull wert thou, O Reader, if never in
any hour (say of moaning midnight, when such Kirk hung spectral
in the sky, and Being was as if swallowed up of Darkness) it
spoke to thee—things unspeakable, that went into thy soul’s soul.
Strong was he that had a Church, what we can call a Church: he
stood thereby, though “in the centre of Immensities, in the
conflux of Eternities,” yet manlike towards God and man; the
vague shoreless Universe had become for him a firm city, and
dwelling which he knew. Such virtue was in Belief; in these
words, well spoken: _I believe_. Well might men prize their
_Credo_, and raise stateliest Temples for it, and reverend
Hierarchies, and give it the tithe of their substance; it was
worth living for and dying for.
Neither was that an inconsiderable moment when wild armed men
first raised their Strongest aloft on the buckler-throne, and
with clanging armour and hearts, said solemnly: Be thou our
Acknowledged Strongest! In such Acknowledged Strongest (well
named King, _Kön-ning,_ Can-ning, or Man that was Able) what a
Symbol shone now for them,—significant with the destinies of the
world! A Symbol of true Guidance in return for loving Obedience;
properly, if he knew it, the prime want of man. A Symbol which
might be called sacred; for is there not, in reverence for what
is better than we, an indestructible sacredness? On which ground,
too, it was well said there lay in the Acknowledged Strongest a
divine right; as surely there might in the Strongest, whether
Acknowledged or not,—considering _who_ it was that made him
strong. And so, in the midst of confusions and unutterable
incongruities (as all growth is confused), did this of Royalty,
with Loyalty environing it, spring up; and grow mysteriously,
subduing and assimilating (for a principle of Life was in it);
till it also had grown world-great, and was among the main Facts
of our modern existence. Such a Fact, that Louis XIV., for
example, could answer the expostulatory Magistrate with his
‘_L’Etat c’est moi_ (The State? I am the State);’ and be replied
to by silence and abashed looks. So far had accident and
forethought; had your Louis Elevenths, with the leaden Virgin in
their hatband, and torture-wheels and conical _oubliettes_
(man-eating!) under their feet; your Henri Fourths, with their
prophesied social millennium, “when every peasant should have his
fowl in the pot;” and on the whole, the fertility of this most
fertile Existence (named of Good and Evil),—brought it, in the
matter of the Kingship. Wondrous! Concerning which may we not
again say, that in the huge mass of Evil, as it rolls and swells,
there is ever some Good working imprisoned; working towards
deliverance and triumph?
How such Ideals do realise themselves; and grow, wondrously, from
amid the incongruous ever-fluctuating chaos of the Actual: this
is what World-History, if it teach any thing, has to teach us,
How they grow; and, after long stormy growth, bloom out mature,
supreme; then quickly (for the blossom is brief) fall into decay;
sorrowfully dwindle; and crumble down, or rush down, noisily or
noiselessly disappearing. The blossom is so brief; as of some
centennial Cactus-flower, which after a century of waiting shines
out for hours! Thus from the day when rough Clovis, in the Champ
de Mars, in sight of his whole army, had to cleave retributively
the head of that rough Frank, with sudden battleaxe, and the
fierce words, ‘It was thus thou clavest the vase’ (St. Remi’s and
mine) ‘at Soissons,’ forward to Louis the Grand and his _L’Etat
c’est moi_, we count some twelve hundred years: and now this the
very next Louis is dying, and so much dying with him!—Nay, thus
too, if Catholicism, with and against Feudalism (but _not_
against Nature and her bounty), gave us English a Shakspeare and
Era of Shakspeare, and so produced a blossom of Catholicism—it
was not till Catholicism itself, so far as Law could abolish it,
had been abolished here.
But of those decadent ages in which no Ideal either grows or
blossoms? When Belief and Loyalty have passed away, and only the
cant and false echo of them remains; and all Solemnity has become
Pageantry; and the Creed of persons in authority has become one
of two things: an Imbecility or a Macchiavelism? Alas, of these
ages World-History can take no notice; they have to become
compressed more and more, and finally suppressed in the Annals of
Mankind; blotted out as spurious,—which indeed they are. Hapless
ages: wherein, if ever in any, it is an unhappiness to be born.
To be born, and to learn only, by every tradition and example,
that God’s Universe is Belial’s and a Lie; and “the Supreme
Quack” the hierarch of men! In which mournfulest faith,
nevertheless, do we not see whole generations (two, and sometimes
even three successively) live, what they call living; and
vanish,—without chance of reappearance?
In such a decadent age, or one fast verging that way, had our
poor Louis been born. Grant also that if the French Kingship had
not, by course of Nature, long to live, he of all men was the man
to accelerate Nature. The Blossom of French Royalty, cactus-like,
has accordingly made an astonishing progress. In those Metz days,
it was still standing with all its petals, though bedimmed by
Orleans Regents and _Roué_ Ministers and Cardinals; but now, in
1774, we behold it bald, and the virtue nigh gone out of it.
Disastrous indeed does it look with those same “realised ideals,”
one and all! The Church, which in its palmy season, seven hundred
years ago, could make an Emperor wait barefoot, in penance-shift;
three days, in the snow, has for centuries seen itself decaying;
reduced even to forget old purposes and enmities, and join
interest with the Kingship: on this younger strength it would
fain stay its decrepitude; and these two will henceforth stand
and fall together. Alas, the Sorbonne still sits there, in its
old mansion; but mumbles only jargon of dotage, and no longer
leads the consciences of men: not the Sorbonne; it is
_Encyclopédies, Philosophie_, and who knows what nameless
innumerable multitude of ready Writers, profane Singers,
Romancers, Players, Disputators, and Pamphleteers, that now form
the Spiritual Guidance of the world. The world’s Practical
Guidance too is lost, or has glided into the same miscellaneous
hands. Who is it that the King (_Able-man_, named also _Roi,
Rex,_ or Director) now guides? His own huntsmen and prickers:
when there is to be no hunt, it is well said, “_Le Roi ne fera
rien_ (Today his Majesty will do _nothing_).”[7] He lives and
lingers there, because he is living there, and none has yet laid
hands on him.
The nobles, in like manner, have nearly ceased either to guide or
misguide; and are now, as their master is, little more than
ornamental figures. It is long since they have done with
butchering one another or their king: the Workers, protected,
encouraged by Majesty, have ages ago built walled towns, and
there ply their crafts; will permit no Robber Baron to “live by
the saddle,” but maintain a gallows to prevent it. Ever since
that period of the _Fronde_, the Noble has changed his fighting
sword into a court rapier, and now loyally attends his king as
ministering satellite; divides the spoil, not now by violence and
murder, but by soliciting and finesse. These men call themselves
supports of the throne, singular gilt-pasteboard _caryatides_ in
that singular edifice! For the rest, their privileges every way
are now much curtailed. That law authorizing a Seigneur, as he
returned from hunting, to kill not more than two Serfs, and
refresh his feet in their warm blood and bowels, has fallen into
perfect desuetude,—and even into incredibility; for if Deputy
Lapoule can believe in it, and call for the abrogation of it, so
cannot we.[8] No Charolois, for these last fifty years, though
never so fond of shooting, has been in use to bring down slaters
and plumbers, and see them roll from their roofs;[9] but contents
himself with partridges and grouse. Close-viewed, their industry
and function is that of dressing gracefully and eating
sumptuously. As for their debauchery and depravity, it is perhaps
unexampled since the era of Tiberius and Commodus. Nevertheless,
one has still partly a feeling with the lady Maréchale: ‘Depend
upon it, Sir, God thinks twice before damning a man of that
quality.’[10] These people, of old, surely had virtues, uses; or
they could not have been there. Nay, one virtue they are still
required to have (for mortal man cannot live without a
conscience): the virtue of perfect readiness to fight duels.
Such are the shepherds of the people: and now how fares it with
the flock? With the flock, as is inevitable, it fares ill, and
ever worse. They are not tended, they are only regularly shorn.
They are sent for, to do statute-labour, to pay statute-taxes; to
fatten battle-fields (named “Bed of honour”) with their bodies,
in quarrels which are not theirs; their hand and toil is in every
possession of man; but for themselves they have little or no
possession. Untaught, uncomforted, unfed; to pine dully in thick
obscuration, in squalid destitution and obstruction: this is the
lot of the millions; _peuple taillable et corvéable à merci et
miséricorde_. In Brittany they once rose in revolt at the first
introduction of Pendulum Clocks; thinking it had something to do
with the _Gabelle_. Paris requires to be cleared out periodically
by the Police; and the horde of hunger-stricken vagabonds to be
sent wandering again over space—for a time. “During one such
periodical clearance,” says Lacretelle, “in May, 1750, the Police
had presumed withal to carry off some reputable people’s
children, in the hope of extorting ransoms for them. The mothers
fill the public places with cries of despair; crowds gather, get
excited: so many women in destraction run about exaggerating the
alarm: an absurd and horrid fable arises among the people; it is
said that the doctors have ordered a Great Person to take baths
of young human blood for the restoration of his own, all spoiled
by debaucheries. Some of the rioters,” adds Lacretelle, quite
coolly, “were hanged on the following days:” the Police went
on.[11] O ye poor naked wretches! and this, then, is your
inarticulate cry to Heaven, as of a dumb tortured animal, crying
from uttermost depths of pain and debasement? Do these azure
skies, like a dead crystalline vault, only reverberate the echo
of it on you? Respond to it only by “hanging on the following
days?”—Not so: not forever! Ye are heard in Heaven. And the
answer too will come,—in a horror of great darkness, and shakings
of the world, and a cup of trembling which all the nations shall
drink.
Remark, meanwhile, how from amid the wrecks and dust of this
universal Decay new Powers are fashioning themselves, adapted to
the new time and its destinies. Besides the old Noblesse,
originally of Fighters, there is a new recognised Noblesse of
Lawyers; whose gala-day and proud battle-day even now is. An
unrecognised Noblesse of Commerce; powerful enough, with money in
its pocket. Lastly, powerfulest of all, least recognised of all,
a Noblesse of Literature; without steel on their thigh, without
gold in their purse, but with the “grand thaumaturgic faculty of
Thought” in their head. French Philosophism has arisen; in which
little word how much do we include! Here, indeed, lies properly
the cardinal symptom of the whole wide-spread malady. Faith is
gone out; Scepticism is come in. Evil abounds and accumulates: no
man has Faith to withstand it, to amend it, to begin by amending
himself; it must even go on accumulating. While hollow langour
and vacuity is the lot of the Upper, and want and stagnation of
the Lower, and universal misery is very certain, what other thing
is certain? That a Lie cannot be believed! Philosophism knows
only this: her other belief is mainly that, in spiritual
supersensual matters no Belief is possible. Unhappy! Nay, as yet
the Contradiction of a Lie is some kind of Belief; but the Lie
with its Contradiction once swept away, what will remain? The
five unsatiated Senses will remain, the sixth insatiable Sense
(of vanity); the whole _dæmonic_ nature of man will
remain,—hurled forth to rage blindly without rule or rein; savage
itself, yet with all the tools and weapons of civilisation; a
spectacle new in History.
In such a France, as in a Powder-tower, where fire unquenched and
now unquenchable is smoking and smouldering all round, has Louis
XV. lain down to die. With Pompadourism and Dubarryism, his
Fleur-de-lis has been shamefully struck down in all lands and on
all seas; Poverty invades even the Royal Exchequer, and
Tax-farming can squeeze out no more; there is a quarrel of
twenty-five years’ standing with the Parlement; everywhere Want,
Dishonesty, Unbelief, and hotbrained Sciolists for
state-physicians: it is a portentous hour.
Such things can the eye of History see in this sick-room of King
Louis, which were invisible to the Courtiers there. It is twenty
years, gone Christmas-day, since Lord Chesterfield, summing up
what he had noted of this same France, wrote, and sent off by
post, the following words, that have become memorable: “In short,
all the symptoms which I have ever met with in History, previous
to great Changes and Revolutions in government, now exist and
daily increase in France.”[12]