“For as we are informed, so thick and fast they fell,
Scarce twenty of their number at night did get home well,”—
how many balls lodged with them, how fared their cranberries, what
Berwick or Saco they got into, and finally what pension or township was
granted them, there is no journal to tell.
It is stated in the History of Dunstable, that just before his last
march, Lovewell was warned to beware of the ambuscades of the enemy,
but “he replied, ‘that he did not care for them,’ and bending down a
small elm beside which he was standing into a bow, declared ‘that he
would treat the Indians in the same way.’ This elm is still standing
[in Nashua], a venerable and magnificent tree.”
Meanwhile, having passed the Horseshoe Interval in Tyngsborough, where
the river makes a sudden bend to the northwest,—for our reflections
have anticipated our progress somewhat,—we were advancing farther into
the country and into the day, which last proved almost as golden as the
preceding, though the slight bustle and activity of the Monday seemed
to penetrate even to this scenery. Now and then we had to muster all
our energy to get round a point, where the river broke rippling over
rocks, and the maples trailed their branches in the stream, but there
was generally a backwater or eddy on the side, of which we took
advantage. The river was here about forty rods wide and fifteen feet
deep. Occasionally one ran along the shore, examining the country, and
visiting the nearest farm-houses, while the other followed the windings
of the stream alone, to meet his companion at some distant point, and
hear the report of his adventures; how the farmer praised the coolness
of his well, and his wife offered the stranger a draught of milk, or
the children quarrelled for the only transparency in the window that
they might get sight of the man at the well. For though the country
seemed so new, and no house was observed by us, shut in between the
banks that sunny day, we did not have to travel far to find where men
inhabited, like wild bees, and had sunk wells in the loose sand and
loam of the Merrimack. There dwelt the subject of the Hebrew
scriptures, and the Esprit des Lois, where a thin vaporous smoke curled
up through the noon. All that is told of mankind, of the inhabitants of
the Upper Nile, and the Sunderbunds, and Timbuctoo, and the Orinoko,
was experience here. Every race and class of men was represented.
According to Belknap, the historian of New Hampshire, who wrote sixty
years ago, here too, perchance, dwelt “new lights,” and free thinking
men even then. “The people in general throughout the State,” it is
written, “are professors of the Christian religion in some form or
other. There is, however, a sort of _wise men_ who pretend to reject
it; but they have not yet been able to substitute a better in its
place.”
The other voyageur, perhaps, would in the mean while have seen a brown
hawk, or a woodchuck, or a musquash creeping under the alders.
We occasionally rested in the shade of a maple or a willow, and drew
forth a melon for our refreshment, while we contemplated at our leisure
the lapse of the river and of human life; and as that current, with its
floating twigs and leaves, so did all things pass in review before us,
while far away in cities and marts on this very stream, the old routine
was proceeding still. There is, indeed, a tide in the affairs of men,
as the poet says, and yet as things flow they circulate, and the ebb
always balances the flow. All streams are but tributary to the ocean,
which itself does not stream, and the shores are unchanged, but in
longer periods than man can measure. Go where we will, we discover
infinite change in particulars only, not in generals. When I go into a
museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that
the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked
the earth. I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that
the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men
lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable to-day. “Time drinketh up
the essence of every great and noble action which ought to be
performed, and is delayed in the execution.” So says Veeshnoo Sarma;
and we perceive that the schemers return again and again to common
sense and labor. Such is the evidence of history.
“Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the Suns.”
There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of more
importance than all the rest, which the historian can never know.
There are many skilful apprentices, but few master workmen. On every
hand we observe a truly wise practice, in education, in morals, and in
the arts of life, the embodied wisdom of many an ancient philosopher.
Who does not see that heresies have some time prevailed, that reforms
have already taken place? All this worldly wisdom might be regarded as
the once unamiable heresy of some wise man. Some interests have got a
footing on the earth which we have not made sufficient allowance for.
Even they who first built these barns and cleared the land thus, had
some valor. The abrupt epochs and chasms are smoothed down in history
as the inequalities of the plain are concealed by distance. But unless
we do more than simply learn the trade of our time, we are but
apprentices, and not yet masters of the art of life.
Now that we are casting away these melon seeds, how can we help feeling
reproach? He who eats the fruit, should at least plant the seed; aye,
if possible, a better seed than that whose fruit he has enjoyed. Seeds!
there are seeds enough which need only to be stirred in with the soil
where they lie, by an inspired voice or pen, to bear fruit of a divine
flavor. O thou spendthrift! Defray thy debt to the world; eat not the
seed of institutions, as the luxurious do, but plant it rather, while
thou devourest the pulp and tuber for thy subsistence; that so,
perchance, one variety may at last be found worthy of preservation.
There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the
infinite leisure and repose of nature. All laborers must have their
nooning, and at this season of the day, we are all, more or less,
Asiatics, and give over all work and reform. While lying thus on our
oars by the side of the stream, in the heat of the day, our boat held
by an osier put through the staple in its prow, and slicing the melons,
which are a fruit of the East, our thoughts reverted to Arabia, Persia,
and Hindostan, the lands of contemplation and dwelling-places of the
ruminant nations. In the experience of this noontide we could find some
apology even for the instinct of the opium, betel, and tobacco chewers.
Mount Sabér, according to the French traveller and naturalist, Botta,
is celebrated for producing the Kát-tree, of which “the soft tops of
the twigs and tender leaves are eaten,” says his reviewer, “and produce
an agreeable soothing excitement, restoring from fatigue, banishing
sleep, and disposing to the enjoyment of conversation.” We thought that
we might lead a dignified Oriental life along this stream as well, and
the maple and alders would be our Kát-trees.
It is a great pleasure to escape sometimes from the restless class of
Reformers. What if these grievances exist? So do you and I. Think you
that sitting hens are troubled with ennui these long summer days,
sitting on and on in the crevice of a hay-loft, without active
employment? By the faint cackling in distant barns, I judge that dame
Nature is interested still to know how many eggs her hens lay. The
Universal Soul, as it is called, has an interest in the stacking of
hay, the foddering of cattle, and the draining of peat-meadows. Away in
Scythia, away in India, it makes butter and cheese. Suppose that all
farms _are_ run out, and we youths must buy old land and bring it to,
still everywhere the relentless opponents of reform bear a strange
resemblance to ourselves; or, perchance, they are a few old maids and
bachelors, who sit round the kitchen hearth and listen to the singing
of the kettle. “The oracles often give victory to our choice, and not
to the order alone of the mundane periods. As, for instance, when they
say that our voluntary sorrows germinate in us as the growth of the
particular life we lead.” The reform which you talk about can be
undertaken any morning before unbarring our doors. We need not call any
convention. When two neighbors begin to eat corn bread, who before ate
wheat, then the gods smile from ear to ear, for it is very pleasant to
them. Why do you not try it? Don’t let me hinder you.
There are theoretical reformers at all times, and all the world over,
living on anticipation. Wolff, travelling in the deserts of Bokhara,
says, “Another party of derveeshes came to me and observed, ‘The time
will come when there shall be no difference between rich and poor,
between high and low, when property will be in common, even wives and
children.’” But forever I ask of such, What then? The derveeshes in the
deserts of Bokhara and the reformers in Marlboro’ Chapel sing the same
song. “There’s a good time coming, boys,” but, asked one of the
audience, in good faith, “Can you fix the date?” Said I, “Will you help
it along?”
The nonchalance and _dolce-far-niente_ air of nature and society hint
at infinite periods in the progress of mankind. The States have leisure
to laugh from Maine to Texas at some newspaper joke, and New England
shakes at the double-entendres of Australian circles, while the poor
reformer cannot get a hearing.
Men do not fail commonly for want of knowledge, but for want of
prudence to give wisdom the preference. What we need to know in any
case is very simple. It is but too easy to establish another durable
and harmonious routine. Immediately all parts of nature consent to it.
Only make something to take the place of something, and men will behave
as if it was the very thing they wanted. They _must_ behave, at any
rate, and will work up any material. There is always a present and
extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold. We
should be slow to mend, my friends, as slow to require mending, “Not
hurling, according to the oracle, a transcendent foot towards piety.”
The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be
calm before you can utter oracles. What was the excitement of the
Delphic priestess compared with the calm wisdom of Socrates?—or whoever
it was that was wise.—Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity.
“Men find that action is another thing
Than what they in discoursing papers read;
The world’s affairs require in managing
More arts than those wherein you clerks proceed.”
As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of
all past change in the present invariable order of society. The
greatest appreciable physical revolutions are the work of the
light-footed air, the stealthy-paced water, and the subterranean fire.
Aristotle said, “As time never fails, and the universe is eternal,
neither the Tanais nor the Nile can have flowed forever.” We are
independent of the change we detect. The longer the lever the less
perceptible its motion. It is the slowest pulsation which is the most
vital. The hero then will know how to wait, as well as to make haste.
All good abides with him who waiteth _wisely_; we shall sooner overtake
the dawn by remaining here than by hurrying over the hills of the west.
Be assured that every man’s success is in proportion to his _average_
ability. The meadow flowers spring and bloom where the waters annually
deposit their slime, not where they reach in some freshet only. A man
is not his hope, nor his despair, nor yet his past deed. We know not
yet what we have done, still less what we are doing. Wait till evening,
and other parts of our day’s work will shine than we had thought at
noon, and we shall discover the real purport of our toil. As when the
farmer has reached the end of the furrow and looks back, he can tell
best where the pressed earth shines most.
To one who habitually endeavors to contemplate the true state of
things, the political state can hardly be said to have any existence
whatever. It is unreal, incredible, and insignificant to him, and for
him to endeavor to extract the truth from such lean material is like
making sugar from linen rags, when sugar-cane may be had. Generally
speaking, the political news, whether domestic or foreign, might be
written to-day for the next ten years, with sufficient accuracy. Most
revolutions in society have not power to interest, still less alarm us;
but tell me that our rivers are drying up, or the genus pine dying out
in the country, and I might attend. Most events recorded in history are
more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by
which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to
calculate.
But will the government never be so well administered, inquired one,
that we private men shall hear nothing about it? “The king answered: At
all events, I require a prudent and able man, who is capable of
managing the state affairs of my kingdom. The ex-minister said: The
criterion, O Sire! of a wise and competent man is, that he will not
meddle with such like matters.” Alas that the ex-minister should have
been so nearly right!
In my short experience of human life, the _outward_ obstacles, if there
were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the
dead. It is grateful to make one’s way through this latest generation
as through dewy grass. Men are as innocent as the morning to the
unsuspicious.
“And round about good morrows fly,
As if day taught humanity.”
Not being Reve of this Shire,
“The early pilgrim blithe he hailed,
That o’er the hills did stray,
And many an early husbandman,
That he met on the way”;—
thieves and robbers all, nevertheless. I have not so surely foreseen
that any Cossack or Chippeway would come to disturb the honest and
simple commonwealth, as that some monster institution would at length
embrace and crush its free members in its scaly folds; for it is not to
be forgotten, that while the law holds fast the thief and murderer, it
lets itself go loose. When I have not paid the tax which the State
demanded for that protection which I did not want, itself has robbed
me; when I have asserted the liberty it presumed to declare, itself has
imprisoned me. Poor creature! if it knows no better I will not blame
it. If it cannot live but by these means, I can. I do not wish, it
happens, to be associated with Massachusetts, either in holding slaves
or in conquering Mexico. I am a little better than herself in these
respects.—As for Massachusetts, that huge she Briareus, Argus and
Colchian Dragon conjoined, set to watch the Heifer of the Constitution
and the Golden Fleece, we would not warrant our respect for her, like
some compositions, to preserve its qualities through all weathers.—Thus
it has happened, that not the Arch Fiend himself has been in my way,
but these toils which tradition says were originally spun to obstruct
him. They are cobwebs and trifling obstacles in an earnest man’s path,
it is true, and at length one even becomes attached to his unswept and
undusted garret. I love man—kind, but I hate the institutions of the
dead un-kind. Men execute nothing so faithfully as the wills of the
dead, to the last codicil and letter. _They_ rule this world, and the
living are but their executors. Such foundation too have our lectures
and our sermons, commonly. They are all _Dudleian;_ and piety derives
its origin still from that exploit of _pius Æneas_, who bore his
father, Anchises, on his shoulders from the ruins of Troy. Or rather,
like some Indian tribes, we bear about with us the mouldering relics of
our ancestors on our shoulders. If, for instance, a man asserts the
value of individual liberty over the merely political commonweal, his
neighbor still tolerates him, that he who is _living near_ him,
sometimes even sustains him, but never the State. Its officer, as a
living man, may have human virtues and a thought in his brain, but as
the tool of an institution, a jailer or constable it may be, he is not
a whit superior to his prison key or his staff. Herein is the tragedy;
that men doing outrage to their proper natures, even those called wise
and good, lend themselves to perform the office of inferior and brutal
ones. Hence come war and slavery in; and what else may not come in by
this opening? But certainly there are modes by which a man may put
bread into his mouth which will not prejudice him as a companion and
neighbor.
“Now turn again, turn again, said the pindèr,
For a wrong way you have gone,
For you have forsaken the king’s highway,
And made a path over the corn.”
Undoubtedly, countless reforms are called for, because society is not
animated, or instinct enough with life, but in the condition of some
snakes which I have seen in early spring, with alternate portions of
their bodies torpid and flexible, so that they could wriggle neither
way. All men are partially buried in the grave of custom, and of some
we see only the crown of the head above ground. Better are the
physically dead, for they more lively rot. Even virtue is no longer
such if it be stagnant. A man’s life should be constantly as fresh as
this river. It should be the same channel, but a new water every
instant.
“Virtues as rivers pass,
But still remains that virtuous man there was.”
Most men have no inclination, no rapids, no cascades, but marshes, and
alligators, and miasma instead. We read that when in the expedition of
Alexander, Onesicritus was sent forward to meet certain of the Indian
sect of Gymnosophists, and he had told them of those new philosophers
of the West, Pythagoras, Socrates, and Diogenes, and their doctrines,
one of them named Dandamis answered, that “They appeared to him to have
been men of genius, but to have lived with too passive a regard for the
laws.” The philosophers of the West are liable to this rebuke still.
“They say that Lieou-hia-hoei, and Chao-lien did not sustain to the end
their resolutions, and that they dishonored their character. Their
language was in harmony with reason and justice; while their acts were
in harmony with the sentiments of men.”
Chateaubriand said: “There are two things which grow stronger in the
breast of man, in proportion as he advances in years: the love of
country and religion. Let them be never so much forgotten in youth,
they sooner or later present themselves to us arrayed in all their
charms, and excite in the recesses of our hearts an attachment justly
due to their beauty.” It may be so. But even this infirmity of noble
minds marks the gradual decay of youthful hope and faith. It is the
allowed infidelity of age. There is a saying of the Yoloffs, “He who
was born first has the greatest number of old clothes,” consequently M.
Chateaubriand has more old clothes than I have. It is comparatively a
faint and reflected beauty that is admired, not an essential and
intrinsic one. It is because the old are weak, feel their mortality,
and think that they have measured the strength of man. They will not
boast; they will be frank and humble. Well, let them have the few poor
comforts they can keep. Humility is still a very human virtue. They
look back on life, and so see not into the future. The prospect of the
young is forward and unbounded, mingling the future with the present.
In the declining day the thoughts make haste to rest in darkness, and
hardly look forward to the ensuing morning. The thoughts of the old
prepare for night and slumber. The same hopes and prospects are not for
him who stands upon the rosy mountain-tops of life, and him who expects
the setting of his earthly day.
I must conclude that Conscience, if that be the name of it, was not
given us for no purpose, or for a hinderance. However flattering order
and expediency may look, it is but the repose of a lethargy, and we
will choose rather to be awake, though it be stormy, and maintain
ourselves on this earth and in this life, as we may, without signing
our death-warrant. Let us see if we cannot stay here, where He has put
us, on his own conditions. Does not his law reach as far as his light?
The expedients of the nations clash with one another, only the
absolutely right is expedient for all.
There are some passages in the Antigone of Sophocles, well known to
scholars, of which I am reminded in this connection. Antigone has
resolved to sprinkle sand on the dead body of her brother Polynices,
notwithstanding the edict of King Creon condemning to death that one
who should perform this service, which the Greeks deemed so important,
for the enemy of his country; but Ismene, who is of a less resolute and
noble spirit, declines taking part with her sister in this work, and
says,—
“I, therefore, asking those under the earth to consider me, that I am
compelled to do thus, will obey those who are placed in office; for to
do extreme things is not wise.”